Diary of a Wolfeman

As of 12:15 this afternoon, the two-week clock is ticking. That’s right, I have turned in my notice at my current employer – finally, another company has seen the light and offered me a new job, at a much improved pay rate. And benefits. And vacation time. And retirement package.

Okay, there is a small downside – I’ll be carpooling with Da Roomie ;) Least I can do for the guy who evangelized me to his boss is drive him to work, no?

Anywho, Bossman took the whole thing a lot better than I thought he would – of course, I asked him out to lunch at around ten, so he had a couple of hours to figure it out for himself and kinda knew it was coming. Or maybe he was just stunned that I gave notice instead of just walking out the way everyone else has. Whatever the reason, he behaved himself.

So here’s looking forward to things looking up!

TLAs can sometimes be dangerous. There are, after all, a finite number of them, so there is bound to be some overlap, as evidenced by this blurb title from Slashdot:

“IBM to buy ISS for $1.3 Billion”

I read that and thought to myself “just what the hell does IBM want with a space station? Are they hatching a plan to become our Evil Overlords?”

Oh. Wait. Wrong TLA.

Sorry about the hiatus folks, it’s been busy. I’ll break things down for you.

At home:
Everybody is doing pretty good. N:tNG left Thursday to catch up with B, so they are both now out of Oregon. We’re taking care of the last few things for them, and taking some of their unwanted furniture off their hands as well.

I will be handling the sale of the Toyota that B left behind. At this point, it looks like the Ratboy is wanting to buy it. Of course, that means the boy wants to get his driver’s license right now and it’s hard to slow him down and take one step at a time. The $200-a-month insurance quote he got may help.

For me, having B’s car available suddenly came in handy. I managed to hit a curb at just the right angle in the Beastie to blow the right-front tire, and the spare developed a leak by the end of the day. Of course, this all happened 4 days shy of payday, so I wasn’t able to replace the tire right away. Grrr.

At work:
I have lost a few hours of work due to lack of incoming appointments – not enough work in the shop to justify payroll, so we get sent home. What do I do on those days? Submit resumes. Things have been going pretty well – there are three actual jobs out there that I am qualified for. I have had three interviews split among two of the companies, and have two more interviews scheduled for next Tuesday. (2nd interview with company 1, first interview with company 3). Pretty cool!

Company 1: Smaller, but experiencing rapid growth. Position is mostly in-shop, and I can probably write my own ticket as the Lead for their Managed Services. Shop is in Hillsboro, and will be moving even farther West soon. (Yuck!)

Company 2: Older and larger than Co #1, the position is mostly on-site. Not really sure where they are going with things – they are being a little cagey until they unleash their new marketing campaign. Office is located at 217 / I-5 junction and not going anywhere.

Company 3: Young, but growing good, and I have an insider in my corner. Mostly on-site as far as I know. Again, located in Hillsboro, but probably not moving for a while yet. Biggest downside to this company is their once-a-month payroll cycle will mean some serious changes to my budget system.

All-in-all, things are looking up. Here’s hoping!

Check the full story here.

The first phase of clinical trials indicates China’s first AIDS vaccine is safe and possibly effective, government officials announced at the press conference after a two-month-odd assessment.

“Forty-nine healthy people who received the injection showed no severe adverse reactions after 180 days, proving the vaccine was safe,” said Zhang Wei, head of the pharmaceutical registration department of the SFDA.

“The recipients appeared immune to the HIV-1 virus 15 days after the injection, indicating the vaccine worked well in stimulating the body’s immunity,” he told the press conference.

The results mark the end of the first phase of the clinical trials of the AIDS vaccine, which focused on the vaccine’s safety.

Now that is science worth funding.

Those of you who check timestamps will note that this entry was posted during working hours. I am, yet again, home from work early because there was no work.

This month is looking particularly bad for us. In part, I think the problem stems from Back-to-School shopping – people are already in the stores, and I think they are more willing to simply replace a problem PC than fix a problem unit that is probably a couple years old. (Last year wasn’t a good year for sales, so there are aging PC’s out there.)

This may translate into a handful of on-site configuration calls, but it will mostly be bad for biz. This leaves me facing a potential loss of income as my boss cuts hours due to revenue loss.

Fucking yay.

The rest of the problem is directly related to my boss’ inability to either implement a sales plan of his own or find someone to do it for us. Our Managed Services package is a solid product, but that doesn’t help much if no one can sell the damn thing.

At least the day wasn’t a total waste, as I did find a handful of jobs to apply for.

There is a little-known benefit to reading UK-based geek magazines while in the USA – since they get here about a month late, anything they report as cutting-edge has been hammered out by helpful folks and posted on their blogs for me to search out.

Case in point: I recently picked up the latest-I-can-get issue of Linux Format, and rebuilt my Linux box (which has been dead for a while now) with the included SuSE 10.1 DVD.

Being SuSE, the install went very smoothly. I chose a 32-bit install this time, since there are a couple of apps I like that have yet to build AMD64 versions. (Yeah, Macromedia, I’m talking about YOU!) While I would like to have that extra little bit of efficiency, it isn’t really critical with my current build.

The bonus part I mentioned before is that there were already a couple of step-by-step HOWTOs for installing the mutlimedia functions SuSE always leaves out due to copyright nastiness. It took me about 20 minutes to get MP3, DVD and other video formats working. Nice. Another 15 minutes to install the nVidia drivers, and then I dug into the serious geekery: Xgl and Compiz. (Go here for cool videos. I have no effing clue why they are in a MS format when MS can’t use this. The webmaster needs smackage.)

Linux has had the concept of ‘multiple desktops’ for some time now. Sure, windows are nice, but if you’re like me, when I’m working on a big project I often have at least 4 windows open at once, and I can get lost trying to find certain windows. Multiple desktops allows me to have a number of things open still, but now they are scattered over 4 or 5 desktops so I don’t have to keep minimizing / maximizing things. Xgl and compiz allow you to go one better, by turning those extra desktops into the face of a cube, and then when you shift desktops you get this really cool effect of a rotating cube.

On top of that is a sheer geeky “wow-factor” effect: windows stretch out of shape when you move them, and get all wobbly. (The effect is in fact called “wobbly windows”). New windows launched will kind of spring out of the background, and menu pop-ups bounce around a little too. This serves no purpose other than eye-candy, but it is damn cool!

So, why would you put all this together? Imagine the following conversation:

MSFAN: Man, Vista is going to be so cool. MS has really got the security down tight for this one.
TUXGEEK: Huh. ‘Bout time. Linux has been a lot more secure for some time now. All Windows had to do was use a REAL admin / user seperation.
MSFAN: Well, the new sidebar and widgets will keep your most-used information right there on the desktop!
TUXGEEK: Check it – SuperKaramba widgets and Beagle search, right there. The SuperK widgets can monitor my system health like fan speeds and temps – Windows widgets can’t do that. Beagle indexes everything from notepad notes to emails, like that new xml-based filesystem will…oh wait, they nixed that last month, didn’t they?
MSFAN: Well, Vista is going to look better! Aero glass roxxors!
TUXGEEK: Dude, check this shit out *wiggle wiggle streeeetch flippity-flippity*
MSFAN: Dude, you suck.
TUXGEEK: Did I mention how this all takes a lot less resources than Vista will? Like 512MB of RAM, where Vista will barely boot on that?
MSFAN: Just STFU already.

Okay, maybe not completely kills, but definitely puts a kink in the works for water cooling.

I was reading the latest issue of MaximumPC magazine yesterday, and they have the new Dream Machine out. Under the hood: Intel’s latest Extreme Edition proc, a Conroe Core 2. The thing kicks some serious ass, and now holds 5 of 6 possible benchmark records – the one it didn’t get is held by an outrageously overclocked quad-video-card monstrosity.

Most interesting though, is what they did to test the new thermal dissipation ratings. In an effort to see just how well the fact meets the hype about the power usage, they tried to overheat the processor. They went so far as to unplug the CPU fan and transcode a full DVD!

The proc temp went up about 3 degrees C.

That’s it.

As for the standard, they pretty much pounded the nails into the coffin for the BTX formfactor. Conceived during the Mad MegaHertz Race when both AMD and Intel procs could heat your entire home, the BTX standard re-arranges the case and plants a massive cooler on the proc, and moves all other heat-generating components as far away as possible.

About the time it launched, however, AMD released a new slew of Cool ‘n Quiet chips that worked just fine with air cooling in the ATX formfactor. Manufacturers of AMD-spec motherboards saw no need to switch, so they stuck with ATX. This left the Intel-only houses dealing with a huge thermal payload, so they grudgingly re-tooled to the new formfactor.

Now, just when Dell, Gateway and others are rolling out BTX, Intel goes and builds a thermally efficient chip. The Intel reps are still touting BTX as the wave of the future, but I’m guessing there will be some pretty pissed-off folks in the case houses.

Don’t know why this memory resurfaced today, but it’s a fun story.

Way back when I was living in ‘Vegas, former roomies and still good friends of ours the Barbarian and the Fraggle decided to get hitched. In grand ‘Vegas tradition, we pistol-whipped the groom-to-be, threw him in the trunk of the car and dragged him kicking and screaming to one of the better strip clubs as soon as the Fraggle wasn’t looking, lest she bollux the whole plan.

Okay, that’s bullshit – the man was in the front seat trying to get the car to drive faster, and Fraggle was more like “here honey, make sure you take some fives with those singles. Don’t be stingy! You sure I can’t come with?”

Anyway, among the celebrants of the evening were myself, B:tNG, Jason, Jordie and a few others who have slipped my mind. We’re at the club having a good time and B decides it’s his turn to buy the groom a lap dance. Barbarian picks out a likely candidate, and there is some discussion as to her suitability among the rest of us lads. It makes perfect sense now, but a couple of us thought she was a bit on the trashy side and were suggesting another lass instead. The Barbarian had made his choice, however, so she was waved over to the table.

In a flash of insight, B pops up with “you’ll have to excuse me, but I’m buying the lad here his dance, and I need to know the quality. The lads here can’t decide on a candidate, and I want to make sure he’s getting the best.” The insight comes from the fact that B was still blind at the time, and wearing his darkest shades and prominently holding his cane. So what does the dancer do? She says “Here – check for yourself!” grabs both his hands and plants them on her tits.

B, without missing a beat, gives ’em a quick squeeze and says “Nice parity!”

We all bust up laughing, and the Barbarian gets his dance. The whole time, though, Jason and Jordie were wondering how quickly they could lay hands on shades and a cane.

I was reading this when it made me think of how glad I am that I chose my current profession.

It seems almost axiomatic that a person wouldn’t want to deal with anything resembling work once they got home. Mechanics don’t want to work on their own cars, plumbers don’t want to look at the leaky faucet, and the groundskeeper’s own yard looks like crap. I really like dealing with computers, but even then, sometimes I let things slide probably longer than I should.

They say that to find happiness, you should find a way to make a living doing something you love to do, but you have to be careful with that so you don’t get burned out on it. Seeing the same thing day in and day out can wear on a person no matter how much they love what they do.

So like the mechanic, the plumber and the groundskeeper, I use my skills to do the routine maintenance in hopes of preventing a failure, even though I may skimp on the major service tasks. I keep things generally running smooth.

But boy-oh-boy am I glad I didn’t become a gynecologist.

I took some time off from work today to see if my old swag-gathering skills were still up to par – OSCON’s Exhibit Hall being free and all. Turns out that swag is getting better – I scored 4 T-shirts this time :)

I also ran into an old friend of mine from high school. Ben was the stereotypical computer nerd back then – skinny, with coke-bottle glasses up until our senior year and about 98#s sopping wet. After graduating, though, he went off to college in Berkely and went native – when I came back to Portland, he was sporting the baggy shorts/poncho/chin scruff style of a SoCal hippie.

As of not too long ago though, the scruff, shorts and poncho are gone and he’s looking much more the standard sysadmin. When I ran into him today, he was also holding a definitive open-source icon – free beer. Allow me to explain:

In the open-source world, there is more than one definition of “free”: free as in speech and free as in beer. Speech here in America is pretty free, but you do have to watch your P’s and Q’s so as to not get yourself sued for slander or other such crap. Nice in theory, but can be tricky in practice. Free beer, however, is usually just that – the person that gave it to you doesn’t really want it back.

Well, one of the exhibitors decided to embrace this idea, and trotted out a keg of MacTarnahan’s. This got them quite a bit of attention, of course. It’s a shame I don’t like beer.

The rest of the show was much as you would expect from a geek convention: every power outlet I saw had laptops plugged into it, every table I saw had at least one latop on it, and there was about a 20:1 male/female ratio. There weren’t any cell phones there though – everyone I saw had a Treo instead.