Some random thoughts (in no particular order)

Work craziness has finally calmed down. My big project is nearing it's end and all of the super important things have been taken care of.
For many of the people I had been working with on this project the craziness has kept on as more stuff has cropped up that I all hush hush. I'm glad I'm not in their shoes...at my pay. If I was payed what they where making I could endure this for much longer. Pretty soon I will be back on the phones talking to people who don't know anything about operating a computer and surfing the internet.
Last weekend Kim went to work and the girls where pretty bad almost the whole time. Athena was awesome, but all she wanted was to be held, which made doing anything pretty difficult.
I did manage to separate laundry and hang up all of our pants and shirts.
I tried to get the girls to play inside as being inside too much can promote more crabiness. Aurora came inside after about 10 minutes and told me it looked like it was going to rain. There was an overcast, but nothing screamed eminent rain. I told her to go back outside, but stressed to her that it was very important to come in side if it did start raining. Five minutes later she was back inside swearing she felt some rain drops. None where to be found so I put back out. Five minutes later she was back in, so I let the girls come back in.
After lunch I made them lay down. Athena was sleeping too so this gave me some free time.
I folded some laundry and put it away. I also just recently got my record player hooked back up to my PC so I can record them to digital ogg files. So I then spent the time removing pops & click and cutting the individual tracks out and saving them as well as adding tags such as artist, song, album etc.
I have been trying out a program called Amarok. I tried it about six months ago but found myself immediately back to using Rhythmbox. Rhythmbox is the default music player in Ubuntu. I don't think it's changed much in the last six months, but I have noticed some lack of functionality in Rhythmbox that Amarok has. Amarok is not quite so light on the resources, but on a good machine I think it is worth it to run over Amarok.
Amarok will automatically find album covers for you, lyrics to the song you are listening to, and embeds the wikipedia article for the band you are listening to.
It has many other cool features as well that is making it the staple for my desktop computer.
On my laptop it runs a bit sluggish. It has a noticeabley longer load time, and clicking on buttons has about a quarter second delay. So for my laptop it is still Rhythmbox. In fact, I think I'm going to try to search around for something even more light-weight.
School is going pretty well. I think I have two A's and a B. It will take making an A on my next test to bring the B back up to an A. I think my percentage in that class is 81% so I'm cutting it pretty close.
Out of my three vehicles I only have one in good repair, the red van.
The truck has a flat and has been stuck at work for the past number of days. There is a metal part I need to stick in a shaft to remove the spare (which is a full tire, not a spare) but I do not have that metal piece.
The gray van is having break trouble. While reaching back last week I had my foot on the break and didn't realize I was pressing down hard on the break. Something gave a little and now the Break light is on and breaking is not as good.
I need to drive the gray van, with the whole family, up to my work. The gray van has an air
compressor built in to it. I could then fill up the truck tire and we could drive both of them home. I am worried someone is going to notice that truck sitting there so long and have it towed. That would be very bad as I have absolutely no money to reclaim it if necessary. I don't even have the money to have the tire patched.
For Aurora's birthday we will be having two parties. She wanted to have her party at the Junior Museum so we reserved that, but we can only get in 25 people with the money we payed. So we will have her friends do the Junior Museum and then have friends n' such over at our house afterwards. Her last two birthday parties I was really bad about calling up all of my friends, but this year I finally buckeled down and did it. I still have a few more people call, but for the most part everyone has been called.

Sleep is one of things I have not been getting enough of lately. Between work, school, and family there simply are not enough hours in the day to get everything done. My typical day:
Wake up at 5:45, leave by 6:30. Drop Aurora off and be at work by 7:30. I get off at 4:30 and head to school. On Monday and Wednesday I get out at 8 and on Tuesday and Thursday I get out at 6:30. When I get home I do laundry, dishes, and general clean up. Each of the girls get two books read a night and that can take up to 45 minutes. The girls need lunches made and clothes picked out for tomorrow. It also helps greatly if I get my shirt ironed at night, so I don't have to worry about it in the morning.

This all sounds like the usual adult-trap so many people find themselves in, but I am really not unhappy. It just sounds worse than it is. Aurora and I have great rides to school. We usually rock out to Black Sabbath and go over some educational stuff, such as spelling words, counting by 5's, 10's, and 2's. We've also been trying to work on nouns, verbs, and adjectives. She is so smart like you wouldn't believe. The stuff the teacher sends her home with is way below her. In a way I feel she is being short changed but not being properly challanged. Well, she is. But she has her unending love of education and parents that are willing to feed her hunger when she is not at school. Even though most (not all) of the material is below her level she really enjoys being at school. I wish we could afford to send her to a Montessory school where she would be allowed to accelerate at her own pace, but such is life.
Athena keeps getting sweeter and sweeter. She gives my hugs and kisses all of the time. Sometimes I have to scold her because I am trying to get stuff done and she won't let go of me, even when I try to be nice to her about it. She has such a beautiful smile and personality. She is 100% kid.
She also possesses my stubbornness. This is good and bad. It means when she makes up her mind, breaking it can be a real event. But I also think it means she is likely to be independent minded. I think my stubbornness is a huge defining point to who I am, so I don't mind if she is born with a good chunk of that, even if it does mean lots of struggles through the coming years.
Arianna is the happiest baby you could ever hope to meet. The only time she is fussy is if she is hungry or tired. It seems that there really are not times that she is inconsolable. She interacts very well too. If you pick her up and play with her she will talk to you and smile and laugh and kick. Aurora is very good at playing with her. She will make up songs and sing them to her and grab her hands and dance with her. It is very sweet. Arianna absolutely loves it.
I am doing my best to bond with her every chance I get. Aurora and Athena both went through stages where they wanted nothing to do with me. This stage lasted months and was very hard for me. It is probably wishful thinking, but I am hoping to keep her on my side for as long as I can. It is hard as a Dad because the mom has a huge head start. The 9 months of carrying the baby around and the breast feeding create a bond between a baby and it's mother that is hard to break in to. It seriously is a hard bond to match a father. It took both Aurora and Athena three years to look at me equally. Even when Aurora was very young and I took her on bike rides to the park and played on the ground with her as hard as I could, she would still prefer Kim who just wanted to sit on the park bench.

One of the most unfortunate parts of being in the computer industry, is that computers primarily exist in office settings. So most computer jobs are in office settings. I hate the office setting. I hate dressing up for work, and having to remember to shave often. I hate the boring feel of the office. The long hallways of non-ending offices and/or cubicles. I hate codes of conduct and people with large salaries who know less about IT than I do. I hate sitting down all of the time and spending the whole day clueless about what the weather looks like outside.
I do love computers though. I love helping people out who run in to problems or need assistance. I love programming and finding the solution to the task you have put forth. I love to run the program or script and trying all possible ways to make it break. I love configuring PCs to work in the most efficient manner, and running applications that make boring repetitive tasks easy.
I wish there was some way I could merge the two. Maybe working on computers over hot firey grills. Or maybe computers out in a field of crops. Maybe there could be a way that I had to four laps to get to the PC and fix it. I like to work on computer, but wish I could somehow meld it with the pleasure of being outside and working hard.
One thing I think I would enjoy is teaching computers at a community college. This way I would be standing up, and moving from class to class. I would need to move from building to building. In stead of implementing upper-managements policies, I would be creating my own lesson plans and implementing them.
Another possibility, and one I've kind of worked for, is doing on site IT help for small businesses and individuals. I do have one client, a local art museum/shop/school. It is three different buildings, and two are two-stories. Working on their needs I sweat, I have to think and solve problems, and I get to help them make important decisions about how to meet their needs. This I really enjoy, and would like to do more of.
At my current job I work with a lot of nice people, and I am put on different projects that I am banking on helping me gain experience for future jobs.
My last job at Convergys gave me lots of experience that I think is a big help in me training to make a career in IT. I think this job is giving me even more experience, in other areas, that will help take that even further.
I do enjoy my job, the people I work with, and I enjoy going to work, but it's not my long-term career of choice.

My delve in to Vista

As part of my school work I need a Windows machine to run Microsoft programs. The good thing is that our school provides us with XP or Vista for free. I went ahead and requested Vista since it is suppose to be the latest and greatest. On Friday night I finally got it installed.The first problem I ran in to was partitioning my hard drive. Partitioning a hard drive is the process of breaking your hard drive up in to separate logical hard drive. So my 500 gig drive can be split up in to smaller drives. My Ubuntu install is on a 200 gig partition. In the Vista installer it starts out with letting me add partitions. I added a 20 Gig partition, but when I selected to have it Vista installed on the partition is just made it told me that it couldn't find a partition that met it's requirements. It did not mention what the requirements where. On my laptop I searched the MS website and it said the requirements where that it was an NTFS partition. The partition was in fact an NTFS partition so that didn't leave me with an answer.I have a CD that Stephen gave me that will boot Windows XP off of a CD. I did that and partitioned the 20 gigs using the XP partitioner and than rebooted. Vista liked XPs partition and continued.Aside from that blunder, the rest of the install was amazingly easy. When I say amazingly, I mean in the sense of a Windows install. In the past, to get even basic functionality out of your Windows computer you had to search around for the disk that comes with all of your hardware and install the drivers. This can take a lot of time and be very frustrating. This is not a problem in Ubuntu. In Vista all of my hardware worked out of the box except my scanner. My graphics card needed it's drivers, but functioned quite well without them. I consider this a major improvement.Next came configuring my system. Just like XP, a lot of the defaults are crap. The default Start menu is the worst. It's very difficult to navigate and I find that it confuses many computer users I help. That was changed to default first.As I moved on to change other settings I found that the settings where very scattered.One problem of any operating system or program that has enough functionality is that it's difficult to place settings in a logical and easy to find manner for the users. This is a problem in both Windows and Linux. But it is much worse in Vista. This is definitely a rollback. It's not a matter of I don't know where things are, it's that trying to find the logical place it may be is more confusing than ever.The look of Vista is very nice. It is sleek and very pleasing to look at.Stability has not been a problem so far either. I have had no crashes or hickups so far. Of course, it hasn't been running for very long either. It's currently only used for school work, and for video games. Being able to break out my old PC games has been fun.The one thing I am left wondering is what does Vista offer that XP doesn't? The only answer I can give to that is the look. Aside from that, the hundreds of dollars Vista is going to cost you is most definitely not going to be worth it. I can't even imagine paying for Ultimate. You also still have to have antimalware on your PC to keep it from being infected.On a business perspective there is actually incentive to not go Vista. With Vista you need a more powerful PC just to get the base system up. This means chucking the old PCs and purchasing new ones. I have heard of horror stories from people trying to just have Vista simply run on PCs that are not top of the line. So business will need all of their PCs to be top of the line just to make their OS run stable? That seems pretty crappy. If business choose XP they get to keep their hardware (saving themselves hundred of thousands of dollars) and still get all the functionality they get from XP.Of course, businesses could be smart and run Ubuntu which will run well on both old computer and new computers. This eliminates the need to worry about malware, allows for great remote management, allows security updates to be installed in a more manageable medium, and provides the satisfaction knowing that your current hardware will enjoy a much longer life cycle than if you used Windows.

Crazy two-weeks

The last two weeks at work have been nothing short of crazy. I'm not exactly sure what I am and am not allowed to say, so I wont' say much of anything other than the Florida Parole Comission has needed an immense amount of help from us.
Keep in mind officially I am a contractor who's job is to do tech support over the phone with Department of Corrections employees. Phone support is the bare bottom run of the IT ladder.
I have found myself interfacing with the FPCs CIO and networking admin as well as our CIO, head of security and other people in top positions. We also had an outside person from another agency come in to give us a hand. Last Friday was her last day helping us.
She was a really nice lady named Jane. She thought I was really smart. She would say things like, "We have this really smart guy helping us out on this" and things like that. I quickly became the smart guy, which is a tough position because then all of a sudden any time you don't know something or forget something people say, "Oh, the smart guy doesn't know." The good thing is that Jane was always backing me up. There where plenty of thing that I knew that others where questioning me on. Jane would always back me up. She was pretty smart herself. She knew many things nobody else did.
I was asked to work the weekend, but I already had plans to go out of town for Rachel's kid's first birthday. Rachel is a very important person to me and it would going to the birthday party was something that would have been hard for me to miss.
I was in charge of documenting all the procedures necessary to get our work done. This week we e-mailed the instructions out to technicians across the state to get the work done in their respective offices. I have been issued a laptop that is setup in my bosses office and I have been taking calls from the techs answering questions and making sure everything is going well, which so far it is.
Later this week we will roll out stage two of the task at hand which should have the Parole Commission where they need to be and we will be done.
I will be pretty relieved when this is over as every other thing we have been working on has been put on halt. I've got other projects that have just been sitting dormant trying to get this worked through. One of the projects is showing off a Ubuntu laptop I was asked to setup to show them how this whole Linux thing worked. I was really excited about integrating it with Active Directory but I was told not to put it on the network.
I was actually very happy with how well the Ubuntu install went. Some things I find myself having to finagle went without a hitch. I'm pretty excited about showing all that it can do to my boss. Our organization is very MS friendly so the fact I was even asked to install Ubuntu to show it to them is pretty exciting for me. It is extremely unlikely that they will actually choose to do anything with it though.

7 Reasons Why Windows Won't Succeed On My Desktop

The closed-source operating system is destined to stay stuck with Viruses and all forms of nasty malware endlessly filling up our inboxes with crap, blogger David Baucum opines. Read why he believes Windows hasn't--and isn't--going to be used on his PCs, then join the debate by posting your opinion in the discussion section at the article's end.

It is inarguably accurate to note that, while Microsoft is a success on the desktop market, the closed-source operating system has been a dismal failure on my desktop. There are at least seven solid reasons, which I'll detail below, why Microsoft Windows has not been installed on any of my PCs since 2006, and never will by my operating system of choice.
Microsoft's failure to to be stable, reliable, or secure is all the more mystifying when you consider that it has billions of dollars in capital to throw at the problems.

Average PC users have been swayed by vehement marketing and FUD campaigns from Microsoft that it's so clearly superior to anything and everything from any other vendor. It seems clear that more users have been bamboozled by the outright deception hurled at them from Microsoft and their legions of suckered users.

While Vista, the newest implementation, has overhaul its security and stability, user reports across the web have shown that it's not as stable as many had hoped and anti-malware is still necessary for anyone who wants to keep their PCs clean. Even if it did do a good job, it's too little too late.

One caveat: While I believe all the arguments I lay out below are valid, I don't give a flying flip what you run. Use what you like. Honestly, I JUST DON'T CARE. If you ask my opinion I will give it to you, but I'm not a Jahova's witness, and my operating system choice is not a religious one. It's simply a matter of personal preforance.

Before I dive into the seven reasons Linux on the desktop will remain an also-ran, let's frame the debate with a quick analysis of the current market share of the open-source operating system...not really. I don't care. So let's move in to the reason why Windows will not succeed on my desktop.

Prohibitive Applications
In case you don't know, Linux is a free and open source operating system. This means that the source code used to write the operating system, and most of the program that run on it, is made freely available. This gives me, or anyone else with programming skills, the ability to make whatever changes to the program I want.
For most people this means nothing because they are not programmers. But the non-programmers still win because when the community says, "This program needs to be able to do X" someone out there will write the code to make it do that. This is why Linux is so feature rich.
This also means that you don't pay anything. That's right, it's all 100% free. The operating system is free, the Office suite is free, everything. You simply don't pay anyone any money. For me, that is a real deal breaker.
Another prohibition that Windows and most of it's software developers put on its software is that they use proprietory formats. This might sound like another thing that the average person really isn't going to care about, but it actually affects us in very many ways.
Let's take for example Microsoft Word. It defaults to saving files in a .doc format. The specifications for this format are closed so that only Microsoft, and people who sign deals with Microsoft, have access to the knowledge to implement software that can work with .doc files. This restricts the ability of developers to create applications that work with .doc files, and indeed Microsoft Word is the only program that allows you to succesfully open and edit .doc files. Other programs try to "reverse engineer" the format, but with hit-or-miss success.
This doesn't stop with .doc files. Most closed source programs implement their own proprietory formats that only work with their own program. While this is great for the software provider and their profit margins, it is bad for everyone else, especially the user who is stuck with "vendor lockin."
Open standards are very important in any industry. In the 80's networking relied on closed-source protocols that other vendors could not implement. This meant that business had to pick one provider, pay them loads of money, and could never switch to anyone else without completely replacing their whole entire network.
Once open standards hit the cost of networking went dramatically down because of competition. That's right, open-source created jobs galore and reduced prices. IBM et. all suffered, but to the benefit of everyone else. Microsoft and co do not want this to happen to them. They want you to use only their product and be stuck there. This only benefits them, not you. It's economics 101. Monopolies only hurt.

The Fanboy alienation factor
There's nothing worse to a Linux user than a Microsoft fanboy. This is the problem they pose, I don't care what they use, but they seem to care immensely about what I use. I don't know why this is. The Microsoft fanboys are always there to taunt me and try to make me "see the light." What do they care what light I see? It doesn't affect them at all. It's not even that big a deal to me. I just want my PC to work well and that's what Linux provides me. It's not like this is a major life ordeal.
It's like Coke vs. Pepsi. Who cares. Find which one you like and it get it. I'll drink both, but I prefer Pepsi. Please don't try to tell me to do otherwise. I don't care enough.

Open-Source creates jobs.
I touched on this previously. Closed source created monopolies, which is bad for the market.
Free isn't bad either. Corporations spend hundred of millions of dollars a year on software. The majority of this money is pocketed by the company in a way that they can maximize profits. This means they implement as little as possible on the leanest staff they can get away with and use the rest to increase their bottom line. This is all at the expense on the consumers that purchase their software.
Open-source allows those companies to free up a significant part of their IT expenses.
The obvious problem is that this puts programmers out of business. As a prospective future programmer this of course concerns me.
But there is a caveat, the businesses need programs. People clearly aren't going to program 40 hours a week just because. But, when there is a community of developers (paid or unpaid) this allows them to pool their resources together to hire programmers to work on applications. When just a portion of those millions saved are put towards hiring a (relatively) small group of programmers to contribute to the software that they rely on on a day-to-day basis, we all win. Companies save money, we all get to use the software, and lastly, companies get to use the software the way the want it.
Let's take for example Open Office. Let's say a company is using the software but their are feature that they need. They can bring this up their programmers. Their programmers can then put those ideas out to the community. If the community accepts these ideas then they will all work in collaberation to implement them. This reduces the programming costs for all parties involved while allowing them to collaberate to produce a better product because more ideas and muscle is put behind the project. If the community rejects the idea, or likes it but wants to implement it in a way that isn't quite what the company wants or needs, they can still implement it. They simply fork the code and go from there.
This model currently exists in both the corporate and private sector, though clearly not as the defacto standard. What does this mean to me? It means I get to use corporate grade software for free. I have free access to database toosl, office suites, programming environments, games, and more for free. The companies develop it beceause they need it, the individuals develop it because they want it, and I use it because it rocks.

Resistance from me
This is one thing I mus admit. I love alternatives. Alternatives are usually more fun and represent a lot of the way I run my life. Music found on MTV or the radio has rarely represented my musical tastes. I voted for Nader the last two elections. My clothing selection can't be found at the mall. Even my kids have alternative names, Aurora, Athena and Arianna. There's a saying that it's always the non-thinkers that always come in droves.
Using this rule it's easy to come to the assumption that because most people use Windows that there must be a better alternative, and I'm right. Even the closed-source and even more proprietory MAC is a more stable, reliable and secure choice.

Linux isn't simple, but "It Just Works"
This isn't really 100% true. On the software side of things the market sucks really bad. We are just now starting to see the real potential of software, but we still haven't implemented good software. It is still buggy and not very user friendly. Apple is just starting to make a lot of headway in usability, but the amount of usability they are able impliment should be the technoloy of yesteryear, not cutting edge.
I'm sorry to say that there just isn't an OS out there that really is good. All require the end user to learn and learn lots before they are able to use their PC without having to call up their geeky cousing, or God forbid have to take it to the Geek Squad on a regular basis.
BUT, and this is a realy big BUT, Linux "Just Works" much better than Windows. I was always having to reformat my Windows drive in the past. And when I wasn't reformatting because I had given up, I was researching problems and trying my hardest to squash them.
With Ubuntu I'm using my compuer more than I am fixing it. It is true that it does break. Sometimes things don't work like they are suppose to. But when I look back at my Windows days I know that I have the good life in comparrison.
This is especially important for my wife who doesn't like to have to go through complicated work-arounds to get things done. She hits the power button, logs in, and runs with whatever it is she wants to do.

Linux can do so much
Linux is really just a kernel (the software that handles the hardware) with a bunch of software built around it to give the user an interface to work with. All that extra software is not necessary for a Linux distribution. This gives programmers a lot of power to be creative. Linux can do almost anything. It can run cell phones, networking equipment, electronic toys, portable music players, and of course, your computer.
And you don't have to settle with one of doing things. With Windows there is one desktop and if you don't like it, or it's too much or too little for your PC, tough.
With Linux this is not true. There is a distro that will boot of a 3.25" disk. There's others that will boot off of a CD, no hard drive neccessary. Some distro are made for old computers. With Windows you either have to either upgrade your PC, buy a new PC, or stick with a version of Windows that no longer has security or bug fixes being supplied by Microsoft. With Linux you simply install a distro that was made for older computers and you still get vendor support. Why replace your computer every two years unless you are a gamer? How much PC power and hard drive space do you really need to browse the internet and read your e-mail a couple of times a week?
On the other hand, if you have a brand new computers there are distros that come with all the bells and whistles you expect in a modern operating system. This choice providers power to the end user.
It also provides power to companies. As Vista is being rolled out corporation will have to upgrade their perfectly good hardware to stay up to date. This upgrade is really superficial and unnecessary. The hardware is good and can do all the things that are required of it, the software (Vista) is just too bloated to be any good.
For me this means I can run Linux on all of my PCs. From my 2.0Ghz dual core, 2 Meg RAM, 256M Video Card desktop to my 600 Mhz 384M ram, 64M Video Card laptop. And they both run great. The experience is the same so I don't have to do any relearning.

The community
The Linux community is awesome. They are always willing and able to work with people to help them with their needs. From the grandma to the MCSE looking for another way.
The community is always looking for feedback, and that feedback can result in programmers hacking away at your latest ideas. If you notice bugs the developers are usually on-hand to take a look at what's going on and seeing what needs to be done to fix any problems you may have.
There are forums of Linux enthusiests ready to help scoured across the Internet. For businesses that rely on professional support there are multitudes of companies out there willing to help (for a fee of course.)
The community is also extremelly nice. From the developers to the people browsing the forums you couldn't ask for a more nice and open mined group of people.

Closing thoughts:
i really would like to restress the point that I'm not that concerned with what you use. My computer is very use-friendly, secure, safe and stable. I don't run any anti-malware programs, I'm not constantly trying to fix things, and I really just enjoy using my PC. The available software allows my to do all sorts of neet things. When i want software it's usually pretty easy to find what fits my needs. Software packages are incredibly easy to install and I don't need to shell out money at a store full of people who don't know what they are talking about *cough* Best Buy *cough*.
And if anything speaks volumes about it's ease-of-use, my wife can use it. She's very smart, but she is not a computer geak by any means. She expects things to work and doesn't put up with me providing her with things that don't.

New truck and camping

Zeke's girlfriend, Vicki, gave us her 97 Dodge Dakota. I have been spending a lot of time on it. Probably too much time as
there are much more pressing chores around the house to get done.The first thing I accomplished was just throwing away garbage. That was the easy part. It paid well too as this truck seems
to be stocked up pretty well with spare change.One of the first things that had to be fixed on the truck was the headlights. The worked intermittently. The windshield
wipers were busted too. The wipers where as simple as a trip to the Autoparts store. The lights took more digging.Following wiring around a vehicle is not an easy task. I started by checking the connections to the lights themselves.
Playing with that didn't seem to affect whether or not the where on.I then checked the wires leading up in to the truck and I couldn't find anything obvious.I then decided to check from the switch inside the truck and see what I could find. After unscrewing a bunch of stuff I
discovered that the assembly you use to turn the lights on and off had a burnt out plug.I first took the part up to Discount Auto Parts. The guy there said it was a dealer item and they where likely to charge me
over $100 for it. I was hoping this was just the kind of advice you would get at a discount store and headed up to NAPA.
The guy there seemed skeptical they would have it and told me that I may have to go to the dealer and pay over $100 for it.He searched on his computer and wrote down a bunch of number. After a while he came back with the exact right part.when I plugged it in I still had problems as one of three wires that had been crimped together had come undone. I bought
some new crimps at Wal-Mart and promptly lost them so I fixed it with a little electrical tape.The same day I fixed the lights one of the lights went out. After I replaced it I was in good shape.Now that the truck was in a condition that I could drive it without having worry about it raining or being dark I started
using it a lot. The girls really love riding around in it. It's a very family-like fealing having the two girls piled up
next to me (with their seatbelts on of course) in the bench seat.On an attempt to leave town for a camping trip the truck stalled out and wouldn't crank. The engine would turn over but it
wouldn't start. After a 30 minute dinner at Burger King it cranked back up and took us home. It has never done it again
since then, but now I don't trust it.For good measure I changed out the spark plugs. This turned out harder than I expected only because the wires did not easily
unfasten from the plugs. It was a real pain getting each one off. The rest of the work was very simple.One problem is that a lot of Zeke and Vicki's stuff is in the back. It has a cover over the bed, but it wasn't sealed
properly and leaked when it rained. I had to unfasten all of the clamps and push it right up against the cab, but after I
refastened the clamps it stopped leaking. I tested it by taking a water hose and drowning it. Not even a drop came through.The cigarette lighter doesn't work either. This is a big deal as I use my laptop to play music while I'm driving because it
doesn't have a radio in it.Using a voltometer I narred the problem down to the lighter-unit itself. A positive and negative wire leads up to a plug,
which the lighter-unit itself plugs in to. I verified good current on the two wires.I went to three different stores and none of them had the lighter-unit that goes to this truck. I found one that has to
plugs, in the wrong position. It also came with some cables that you can easily use to just fasten to any hot & ground
wires. As soon as I plugged that up and plugged something in the fuse blew. I have no idea what would have caused that. I
am going to have to get a new fuse and do some more playing in that area.In the middle of this I did all sorts of cleaning. I scrubbed the floors with generic lysol and made the dash shine with
some generic Armor All. Aside from the wires hanging out where the stereo system goes it looks really good from the inside.On the outside it is in good shape too except for some dents in front and back passenger side from an accident by a previous
owner.Next month I will get a much needed passenger-side mirror. The parking break also doesn't work well on steep inclines and I
will have to look in to that. The tires are getting near their time to be replaced and they drag pretty hard to the right.One of the deals of taking on this truck is that I don't want to poor money in to it. If I want to fix it up, buying parts
is unavoidable, but I am going to do all of the work myself. If at any point this truck starts costing too much we are just
going to get rid of it. So far all of the work has been pretty simple. I feel pretty good that I can tackle the parking
break problem. I'm not so confident about the alignment issue. The mirror will be fairly simple. I've replaced a few of
them before.I think instead of getting a new CD player I am going to right the wires up to run in to an RCA plug that I can simply plug
anything in to like an MP3 player. I don't have an MP3 player but it would make a nice Christmas or birthday gift.

Camping

On Firday I took the girls camping. I took the day off so that I could get everything ready. I was having a great day and was pretty excited. The plan was to stay at Torreya State Park in one of the primitive camping spots that is only a one mile hike in to the woods. The camp site sits right on the Apalachicola River and is absolutely beautiful.I did what I could to pack only the essentials, or those things that you probably won't use but don't want to be without, such as a first aid kit. I was able to fit it all in an army backpack and a much smaller travel bag, though both where still pretty heavy. All of the clothes, and anything else that I absolutely did not want to get wet found their way into plastic bags. I picked up some fishing poles and worms so we could fish in the lake. The poles where brim busters that collapse into ~4 foot sticks.I picked Aurora and Athena up from school with the plan to eat at Burger King so that we would only need snacks for the rest of the night. I took the Dodge Dakota because the girls really like to ride in the truck. It is pretty fun, even if it does lack A/C.When I went to pull in to the Publix parking lot where the Burger King sits the truck stalled out in the left turn lane at a red light. Out of the kindness of my fellow citizens hearts they decided to go around and cut me off in stead of helping me push the truck in to the parking lot when the light turned green. After about three light changes I managed to get the truck parked. I called Kim, who was luckily still at work and not elsewhere where I could not reach her.I left a note on the truck that read, "Gone to BK" and the girls and I got some food. Realising that Kim should have been there after a while we headed back to the truck. Kim was there quite frustrated. When she saw the truck she didn't see the note and was looking for us for quite some time.The truck started back up and Kim followed me home.I was pretty frustrated too thinking that camping just wasn't going to happen. When I got back home I chilled out as much as I could. The A/C was broke so chilling wasn't very easy. We decided we would still probably have enough time to make it out to Torreya and camp at a regular camping spot, so we loaded everyone up in the grey van and headed out.When we got there the ranger said he thought we could probably hike out with plenty of day light left so that's what we did. The hike was very pleasant and the girls didn't mind at all. The very slight rain helped as it didn't get us wet, but it did keep us cool. We set up tent with enough light to eat snack.Because of the rain everything was wet but I was still able to get a fire going without much hastle. The new "2-person tent" I bought that day was a dud. One of the poles came broken, there was chex mix and a straw inside of the tent, and it wasn't long enough for me to lay down in. And with the stuff in there it was barely enough room for the girls. My three person tent, on the other hand, easily sleeps Kim and myself with all of our equipment. I thought going down one person wouldn't be a big deal.The girls where having a good time, but would not listen to a word I said. This is very uncharacteristic of them. I was worrying they where not having fun, but they did seem to enjoy everything, they just wouldn't listen.Our first attempt to sleep was a disaster as Aurora was tired and Athena was not. Athena spent all of her time annoying Aurora which made it impossible for her to sleep.My plan was to try and wear the girls out. The girls and I hunted around for twigs and sticks. I started the fire back up in full force and put the tent close enough to it that we could all watch it and lay down. After a while the girls finally went to sleep and so did I.We where all up at the very crack of dawn. It was probably ~7AM. We started by Athena and I going down to the river and getting some water. Aurora stayed and watched the fire. I gave her the air horn and showed her how to use it. I told her if she had any problem to blow it.When we came back I boiled the water in a small frying pan I brought and made oatmeal from some instant oatmeal packs the girls always love. This is when the girls started acting up again. Aurora made a big scene about how gross it was, before she even tried eating it. I was not interested in her complaining later that she was hungry, and I also had no intention on bringing out the bowls, spoons, and the frying pan until lunch. So I made her eat it which she made a really big fuss about it.After breakfast the two entertained themselves by finding millipedes and jumping on roots. This also involved the two of them pushing each other and just in general being bad.For myself I had brought some MREs I purchased at the Army Navy store. One was an omellette. It was completely disgusting. For the same reason I made Aurora eat her oatmeal, I ate most of the omelette. It also had some soda crackers and a fruit bar that I ate and shared with the girls.Once everything was cleaned up we headed down to the river to fish. The girls whined the whole way to the river and in general wouldn't listen to anything I said. We did see an oak snake which the girls where pretty excited about. I showed Aurora how the snake tastes it's surrounding by flicking out its toungue, since it cannot see very well.At the river our worms where dead and stinky. The where some other people in their boats fishing around and they were talking about how poor fishing was going today. We fished with our dead stinky worms for a while. The girls swung their poles around a lot and kept almost sticking others. They have both been fishing numerous times and have caught many fish. They are also very good about being careful, so it was unexpected for them to do everything wrong.I finally gave up, dumped the worms away down the river and had the girls swim. They wanted to go naked, but with all the people around fishing I told them they could only take off their shirts. This was the only time they where good. They played, had fun, and did a great job listening. They swam for over an hour and a half and then we headed back to camp. Once we started walking back the attitudes came back. Around this time the overcast went away and the sun was out in full force. I had asked them many times throughout the day if they where sure they wanted to keep camping. I didn't want them to be camping if they didn't want to. They insisted that they did so we kept on. Right as we where leaving he river Auroa took her hook and kept poking herself with it. I told her four times not to do that and she just looked at me and kept doing it.At that I decided we where going home. I didn't want to spend all of this time yelling at them when we were suppose to be having fun. Back at camp I packed everything up and we started our walk back.The walk back was much worse than the walk to the camp. Without the clouds covering the sky, it was extremely hot. We stopped about five times and we where all pretty worn out by the time we finally made it back to the van.Despite their bad behaviour the girls insist that they had a good time and want to do it again.Next time we do it will be with better weather and we will probably only plan to stay one night.

Camping and a boat

This weekend I am going to take the girls camping at Torreya State Park. Kim and Arianna will be staying home.This trip should be pretty excellent. We will be primitive camping next to the river a few miles hike. We will be there soon enough to allow for plenty of stopping along the way, as I'm sure it will be a nice little hike for my two daughters, but we've been through rougher walks in Nevada with my dad with the girls.The weather forcast calls for some rain, but if it is anything like what we had the last two days, it shouldn't be anything we can't rough through. We will bring some fishing poles and worms and hopefully catch some fish. Aurora is quite the fisher, and even if Athena and I catch nothing, she'll probably land a few.After much effort I got Vicky, Zeke's girlfriend, truck transfered in to my name. I get off work at 4:30p and the tag office closes at 5p. Because it was under a Georgia registration they needed the truck on location to verify the VIN. This presents a problem because without a license plate I can't really drive it any where. There is a tag office ~1 mile from my house so on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I drove immediately home after work but could not get the truck to the tag office before 5. On Friday I left just a little bit early and made it just in time and got everything transfered over.The truck had a problem where the head lights worked intermittenly. Most often they did not work.On Saturday I went to my parents house with Athena to pick up my Nick's boat, which he is letting us borrow indefinitely. On the trip home it started pouring down. On top of having no head lights, the left wiper was shot as well. We pulled over at the T&T canoe rentals on the Wakulla River and waited out the rain. Athena was asleep but woke up when I turned the car off and started crying that she wanted to go home. Then she had to go to the bathroom. The rain was still pouring down, but a three-year old that has to pee is not a matter to be taken lightly. I held her and ran her through the rain to the canoe rental place. The lady at the shop was just closing down on account of the weather. She let us stay on the porch as long as I promised to lock the gate behind me. When the rain settled to a small trickle we locked up behind ourselves and went back to the truck. I put switched the wipers, discovering that the working wiper isn't really for this vehicle, but work enough to not come undone, and we headed back home. While I probably should have had my head lights on, it wasn't such that I was endangering us at all.I'm not really learned in how wiring works in vehicles, other than the complete basics, so the headlights problem wasn't something I was good at hunting down. With some luck I discovered that the switch hooks up to a part that had a blown part in it. On Sunday I went by Discount Auto Parts. They told me I was going to have to get the part at the dealership. I tried NAPA and they happened to have the part, which came to some surprise to the clerk there so I guess I lucked out. With some windshield wipers everything totaled to < $50 and when I got home I now had a road worthy truck.On my drive to work this morning there was some nice rain and was glad to see the headlights and new wipers where doing me good work.The next pressing matters on the truck will be:The right rear-view mirror is non-existant.The tires need to be replaced.A good cleaning with Armor All and other cleaners.
There are other smaller matters but these have some urgency to them.
so I mentioned previously about grabbing Nicks boat. It has a working trolling motor, but the engine proper has some of it's own issues. The mounting bolts are frozen. I have serious doubt that the motor will even crank as it has not been cranked in probably four years. I know absolutely nothing about boat motors and getting it working will probably be done by paying someone. It also needs a mariner battery for the trolling motor and a charger so I can charge it in between outings.The boat's trailer needs some new tires. One of them has pretty bad dry-rot which made me very uncomfortable as I was towing it home.As I now have a pickup truck and boat in my yard I feel I fit in much better with my community members in Woodville. Maybe I should get a "Heritage Not Hate" bumper sticker. If that happens someone needs to buy me a first class ticket to the city. *Shudder*
Aurora spent the night at Judith's last night. Judith took Aurora to school today, which I bet was fun for both of them. We took Athena to McDonalds last night because she felt left out not staying at Grandmas.

The Online Desktop

There has been a lot of buzz about the online desktop. The online desktop is something that I have been skeptical of. I have recently given some online Google apps a try, and so far I like it. In fact, I like it a lot. I am now convinced that there is very little that really needs to be local on the desktop. I have been imaging where the online desktop could go and how it could work. I think what we need is for programmers to start utilizing and building the online desktop to it's extent. The following is a rough idea of how I think the online desktop could be a seamless and pleasant experience for the end user.

In a true online desktop, when you boot up your computer and sign in your local computer would have your whole online profile stored localy that automatically starts connecting to online services.

At the top (or bottom, or wherever you want it) of your screen you would have a bar. This would allow you to access local services. In this example we see a typical Ubuntu/Gnome Linux toolbar. In the top-left we have menus so we can easily make changes to our system or access locally isntalled programs. Under places we may have access to all sorts of content. Our bookmarks/favorites will all be in here, as well as access to local and networked drives.

Then we have a shortcut to the terminal window, again for local administration.

Next we have a place to type in a URL. If everything is properly integrated this should actually be used less-and-less. We may have services that automatically take us to our desired pages. So if we want to access our pictures, we may select "My Pictures" under Places and it will take us to pacaseweb.google.com or to flickr.com, depending on the user's preferences. The important thing is that the user can select the services he or she uses, but it is all accessed via the internet.

Next we have some icons representing the status of some local and online services. The first icon is the Google Desktop icon we use so that even when we are searching our local drives we do it via an html web-like service.
The second icon is our skype web-telephone icon. The normal status shows us that we are connected and have no incoming calls or messages. Even our phone service easily becomes an online experience that we can access anywhere we have an internet connection without worrying about our location.

Third the GMail notifyer shows us we don't have any mail. It would be blue if we did. What would be better would be an icon that could connect to an POP or IMAP service and show us the status of our e-mail regardless of our provider. A simple click, or double-click, could take us to our online provider.

The rest of the icons show us the status of local services, UPS status, wireless status, volume, date/time (this is actually updated periodcally from an NTP server ensuring accurate reporting), and a logout/shutdown button.

This could probably be streamlined to provide a much more streamlined, online experience.

Below our menu bar we would have tabs, like what is provided in Firefox, Opera, and IE7. Each tab would be a different web page. Certain web pages could be made to open automatically upon computer boot. Ideally you would have one configurable page that would allow you to put your important services together. A great example of this is Google's igoogle. With igoogle you can have all of your RSS feeds, news, mail status, calendar, and much more all on one page. Further services could be added to bring you even closer to your physical desktop. Widgits could be configured that show all local hard drives and allow you to browse their content right in you web browser. Another could show you the status of things such as attached cameras (and allow you to pull photos directly from your camera to your online images), music (purchased through various online retailers such as, but not limited to itunes), videos (youtube.com, google videos, etc.) and anything else.

So with all of this, why would anyone want to do everything online? The two biggest reasons are accessability and data backup. When you use online services, you can have a relatively seamless computer experience anywhere you go. And if for some reason you have computer problems, including hard drive failure, your data is (hopefully) safely stored by a 3rd party online content provider.

Most tasks most commonly performed on a local computer are now available as online services. I would predict the following are the most often performed tasks on a computer:

1. Writing a paper. This is usually done in Microsoft Word or Open Office. http://docs.google.com/ has a great online office suite supporting word processing and spreadsheets.
2. Listening to music. This may be harder to turn in to an online service because of the RIAA, but it could easily become an online service such as youtube where you can upload your ripped CDs or music purchased through online service and then listen to it based on your login. There are already various online radio services, but the RIAA and other organisations are trying hard to kill these off.
3. Watching videos. Youtube.com and videos.google.com are the two most popular ways of doing this currently. There are countless other web sites that provide the exact same service to varying degrees of quality. The current problem is a way to upload your own legally purchased videos so that only you can watch them.
4. Playing games. Online games are clearly not up to par with cutting edge video games, and it is unlikely that the likes of Halo 3 will be an online Java or Flash game anytime soon, or that any cutting edge game could easily be provided via a small download online. But for those of us content with the online flash games to play things like Tetris, pinball, etc. the online experience is actually pretty good.
5. Manage finances. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge there is not ane online version of Quicken or Microsoft Money. This may be a good thing though.

The easier we integrate these services into online applications that become seemless with the desktop experience, the easier and more useful we make the whole computer experience. We are already to the point where many users don't pay attention to the difference of what is a local service and an online service. If we put it all online, make it accessible from anywhere then we really empower ourselves to have all our information on the go and sharable within an instant.

Bad experience at the mall.

We had quite an experience at the mall yesterday. After a planned trip to the swimming pool failed to materialize, we decided to just walk around the mall. This would allow us to just get out of the house and do something.
With us was Kim and myself, Aurora, Athena, Arianna, and Rachel with her twins, Malachi and Magdalene. We had our double-stroller and Rachel had hers.
Athena was very grumpy the whole entire time. The only time she was happy was when we visited the toy store.
When we decided to go back home we had to take the elevator back up to get to where we parked. The elevator is very small, and our two double-strollers, plus two standing adults and two stranding children made for a very tight squeeze. I was holding Arianna when I heard scream. I looked over to find Athena’s arm stuck in the elevator door. It was trying to open, and with her arm rested against it it was pulling it in to the wall.
I panicked really bad. I was in a frenzy and had little rational control over myself. I first tried to force the door open but it was apparent that the door motors where way too strong for me. At this point I thought for sure that she was going to loose her arm. Kim was pulling on her arm trying to get it out when she yelled to hit the “Door Close” button. Rachel looked and saw that it only had a “Door Open” button. I tried to look but being in a panic I couldn’t see straight. I was finally able to make out that aside from the numbers there was only a “Door Open” and “Alarm” button. I started hitting the alarm button which made a ringing sound. We were all sitting there with the door partially open screaming when her arm finally came out. We are not sure if the Alarm button triggered the elevator door to stop trying to open, if it just stopped trying to open on its own, or if Athena just managed to get her arm undone by herself.
Then Kim yells, “You dropped the baby.” Arianna was lying on the ground behind me crying. I have absolutely no recognition of what happened, but I think I tried to lay her in the stroller and in a panic didn’t set her down properly. I really don’t know for sure though. She probably dropped about three feet down. We all left the elevator being really quiet. I kind of expected there to be someone there waiting for the elevator looking at us like, “What the hell is going on.” But no one was there.
Athena’s arm was just fine. It had a little bruise, but it wasn’t anything bad. We filed a report with the mall security. My adrenaline levels were very high and it took me a long time to come down. When I got home I was still pretty shook up and I had to take a nap. When I woke up I felt much better.
Kim took both Athena and the baby to the doctor and he verified they were both ok.

RACHEL!

Today Rachel is coming to pay us a weekend visit. She could do us a kinder favor and move to Tallahassee, but there's not sense in beating a dead horse.
When Kim and I lived in Orlando Rachel was always there for us when we needed her. And, we did need her quite a bit.
Even better than Rachel visiting is that she is bringing over her twins, Malachi and Magdalene. They will be turning one at the end of next month, and we will be heading out to Orlando to celebrate the occasion.