It’s put the main bosses here into a bit of a panic.  Roles are sure to be tossed around.  My boss, however, hasn’t exactly approached me with any news yet.  Which leads me to believe that behind closed doors, he’s playing the “me first” card.

With the impending upheaval that this is bound to bring, it’s high time I stepped up my search.  I’ve been a bit on the quiet side, looking for the “perfect” opportunity, but I think now it’s time to expand a bit and consider a few things that I might not have wanted to otherwise.  True, it didn’t help when I found out that even though I have a 3,0 in-major, just because my overall is slightly below that, they won’t grant my Master’s, I slowed down, trying to re-assess my options.

Looks like I might be the last one standing when the dust settles.  With two out, it’s likely that the 3rd staff member might be leaving too.  The two newer admin assistants, one of whom isn’t working out that well, might be out.  The other one – most of this is over her head.  Not good.

While some might say it’ll be fun to watch the carnage unfold, I don’t think so.  Everyone already expects me to be the “IT guru” – I don’t need to be the “training guru” either.  I dislike simple questions where people could take two minutes and learn it for themselves.  That’s how I learned.  No one took me by the hand and said “this is how to do it”.

My laptop died on Friday.  I put it to sleep and put it in my bookbag, like I do every day.  Took it to work, and it sat under my desk all day.  Got home, tried to wake it up.  No graphics.  Didn’t even get a signal on the VGA out or S-Video connector.

I managed to get the hard drive out and cloned to my desktop, so at least the data is salvaged, and rules out the possibility of a hard drive malfunction (like it ever could have been).  It’s now sitting at the local Intrex shop for the final word on whether or not its salvageable.  I doubt that it is, but remain ever so hopeful.  Perhaps a connector came loose, and that’s all it takes.

I got 2 good years out of it.  When I bought it, it wasn’t through a major outlet.  It was through ibuypower.com.  It was a strong system, especially for the price.  Sadly, it only carried a 6 month warranty.

Unfortunately, I won’t be getting a new laptop anytime soon.  I really don’t need one, as I’ve got my desktop, which just received a major overhaul 3 months ago (new motherboard, memory, processor).  I’ve got my 7 year old laptop sitting here for “light” duty (web browsing) when I don’t want to power up my desktop.  It’s funny, it’s got a 1.2ghz AMD Turion processor, 20gb hard drive, and 256MB of memory.  Talk about ancient.  But it operates, and draws a ton less power than my desktop.

If I do wind up getting a new laptop, I’ll probably go back to Dell.  While I won’t for a desktop system, the laptop makes sense.  Everything on there is so customized.  The warranty is useful in case something like that happens again.  I’m considering a netbook, but those really have about as much power as the laptop sitting out here now. And the tiny TINY screens…

I’d like to hear some feedback from anyone that’s got a netbook.  Might help sway my decision a bit.  =)

The original intent was to run Wireless (Draft-N) standard to stream my movies from my server in the office (which is less than 10 ft away).  That didn’t go so hot.  For whatever reason, despite the strong signal strength and high data transfer rates, my media files didn’t play worth a damn.  Well, the 1080 ones at least.  The 720 seemed to do ok.  I’m at a loss, because I’ve seen that people have been able to wirelessly stream HD content without the buffering every 10 seconds.  I’d be tempted to believe it was a failing of the Samba protocol, but it works fine over wired ethernet.  I’m stumped.  I gave up and did the “elegant” solution of running CAT-5 out to the living room.

Perhaps if I transferred the movies to the onboard hard drive, it would be a different story.  When transferring anything from either of my Windows setups over the wire, they’re averaging 13MBps, which is much slower than the Wireless-N rate that it said I was getting.   I’m considering the possibility of re-visiting the on-board NIC of my server, as that might only be 10/100 (and not gigabit like my desktop).  I’m sure there’s tweaking that I could do between Linux and Windows, but it seems to accomplish the original intent in its current iteration.

Two more issues have cropped up.  I wouldn’t really call them issues, though.  More nitpicky things that anything else, I suppose.  The first is that the blu-ray rips I’ve tested out have been encoded without chapter support.  It’s a nitpicky thing, as I’ve seen a couple that do have that embedded.  It doesn’t take much, which leads me to the inexorable conclusion that the community is lazy.  It’s manageable, but navigating a movie with just fast forward and rewind is time-consuming.  It’s like going back to the days of VHS.  (You can run these movies through a media player on the PC and use the mouse on the scroll bar, so I guess that’s why.)

So that leads me to the next conundrum.  Two, actually.  Requiring further hardware upgrades.  The first is that I’m quickly running out of space.  So that necessitates adding a hard drive.  I’m looking at either a 1TB disk or a 2TB disk.  Each has their own advantages.  Unfortunately, I think that I’m limited for space at the present time.  I’ll need to check, and make a decision from there.  I have a 320 and a 250GB in my server already, so my preference would be to just add an additional drive.  If I have to drop one and add, that means I have to go with the 2TB.  I’d really prefer, with this amount of data, to do two 1TB drives.  We shall see.

The second is that I need a Blu-Ray drive, just to transcode correctly (include chapters, etc.)  The drives really haven’t come down much in price, as it’s still a good $75-100 for a decent drive.  The cheapest burners come in at $130.  It almost makes sense to get the burner.  But, I can’t really see buying a BD burner, as media is still expensive ($3-4 per disk, a few as low at $2).  Single and Dual Layer DVD’s are pretty cheap for a fair amount of data backup.

For the additional money I’ve invested in this thing, I could have built a barebones system and hooked it into my existing stereo without issue.  Considering that I have no problems running Linux flavors (and would if I didn’t have so much invested in terms of MS-only software), the final verdict is that the Revo wasn’t quite the cost savings I’d hoped it to be.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a viable platform, but between the stereo updgrade in March and the Revo this month, that’s a lot of money that went out for hardware that still needs additional investment.

Lesson learned, I suppose.  In fairness, I’m pretty sure I needed a stereo system upgrade anyways, but I think, in hindsight, that I should have done more research and found a better way to spend $850.

It’s Sony’s latest Bravia model – complete with wireless rear speakers (a must for me) and home wireless networking.  I got it Sunday afternoon, and after the requisite two hours of running all the cabling to my TV, Cable Box, etc, was working through the instruction manual (for once).  I got to the part about running a firmware update (Blu-Ray is constantly updating, apparently.  Nevermind the single standard to run a standard DVD.)  The system downloads the firmware from the internet, then starts into the process.  This needs a reboot (it’s a PC, in essence, right?)  Well, something screwed up and it was stuck cycling the update.   Here’s where the fun comes in.

I called Sony’s customer support.  I despise tech support.  With a passion.  Being in customer service, I understand that you need to respect the customer.  But for heaven’s sake, don’t apologize and give me the canned response of “it’s broke, you have to have it serviced.”  Give me a solution.  Give me an answer.

I was a bit short with the rep I spoke with.  I was polite, to a degree, and told him that I wasn’t angry or upset with him – but the situation.  I also informed him that I was calling looking for a viable solution that didn’t involve me pulling the unit back out of my entertainment center, packaging it back up, only have to get it returned to Best Buy or shipped to Sony and out for 2-3 weeks.  Does that sound like too much to ask for?  I spend several hundred dollars, I expect something to work with minimal fuss (especially when I’m following the directions.)  Anymore, it seems, that’s too much to ask for.   Like I said, it’s a single-task computer – you’d think there was a hard reset process or something.  Nope.

So, after the hour spent on the phone, I acquiesced, packaged up the unit, and managed to exchange it at Best Buy.  The new unit is installed, but I’m not doing an update until it’s officially posted on Sony’s site.

That should teach me to get the absolute latest model.  Officially, Sony hasn’t even released this model for sale (official release date of 3/31).  I know there’s a big firmware update coming 3Q to provide the 3d technology as well as truly allow me to network it with my PC’s.  When that gets released, I’ll be really happy.

Speaking of new technology, I saw a news tidbit that Amazon is adapting the Kindle App for the iPad.  It’s the best thing that both companies can do.  Apple can convert the Kindle users like me, as well as provide an additional source of revenues to the publishers.  I doubt it’s the unified standard that needs to happen, but it’s a step in the right direction.  I still won’t purchase an iPad (at least the first generation).  e-Ink technology is so much easier on the eyes than LCD.  Not to mention, when I want to do something from fanfic or the web, I can convert it much easier.  I’ve got issues transferring data to my iPhone, and I would imagine that the iPad is going to be in a similar boat.

Since Saturday, I’ve done quite a bit of work to the theme for their site.  It’s enough to me that I’ll wind up actually increasing version numbers. =)

I’ll provide a laundry list of changes:

• Internalized most of the Java to use the WP-packaged binaries (you mean I don’t need to include over 50k of scripts?! No wai!)
• Re-formatted the post comments area
• Created an additional admin area to include “regular” post data that they generate – Restaurant Info, post thumbnail, etc.
• Created a theme options page where they can change the variables for the links.

Those last two items are huge.  As I’ve been discovering, the theme options are what really makes a theme stand out, especially in the “premium” category, where it’s about the only way to distinguish yourself against the competition.   There are some really amazing theme option pages out there.  And some others that truly suck.

All of this work has led me to want to start in on another theme – but right now, I’m kind of lacking in the “graphical inspiration” category.  I suppose that’s what I get for spending too much time on the code aspects of my reading and not the design aspect.  =/

BTW, if you see any random theme changes around here, don’t despair.  I’m just looking through the various themes to get an idea of popular theme options.  I’ll be back to the regular BlackPress theme here soon.

Here’s the tally:

• 9 Dozen Andes Creme de Menthe Cookies
• 10 Dozen Iced Pumpkin Cookies
• 12 Dozen Quaker Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
• 1 double batch PB Fudge
• 4 Dozen Peanut Butter Blossoms (Hershey Kiss Cookies)
• 4 Dozen Snickerdoodles
• 4 Dozen Pillsbury Cookies
• 1 Peanut Butter Log
• 2 Batches of Pumpkin Bread (normally 6 full-size loafs)

Not as prolific as it was 3 years ago, but still more than enough sweets.  Now… just have to put all my trays together.

I got my lawnmower 2 years ago when I moved in.  Mom picked it up at an Estate Sale for like $20.  Nice mower, but it was a pain when I got it.  Now, it’ll barely stay running long enough for me to do my postage-stamp front yard.  The self-drive died shortly after I got it. 

I’m looking at a self-propelled mower again (front-wheel drive this time, because of the grading of the lot). 

So anyways – Sears has a couple nice models – around $300 and up.  (Craftsman, of course).  But, they also have some that have been returned (for various reasons, no one knows).  One they had out there was really nice – retails for over $400 new, for $245.  Electric start, big wheels, good sized motor, etc.  But no guarantees on what’s wrong with it.  They also have a lower tier model that sells new (similar features, smaller engine) for $330. 

So… any thoughts or suggestions on what to do? 

This really started over a year ago when I went out to San Fran.  I thought that it was because I picked up tobacco use again.  No doubt that it’s a contributing factor, to be sure.  But with that trip, I stopped tracking my food, and began my decline from exercise. 

It’s amazing to me (again, I suppose) just how much my diet affects everything else.  I know that I’m extremely healthy (tobacco use aside) – with super low cholesterol and extremely healthy blood sugar/blood pressure/etc.  I just need to make a more concerted effort, it seems. 

The new season for one of my gaming leagues kicked off last night.  To say it was a disaster would be an understatement.  It’s beyond my comprehension how my teammates freeze up come match time.  In practices, I can’t get them to shut up sometimes – always calling and communicating.  But in the match, I got nothing from them.  I had to almost scream at them to communicate.  I know when things get bad, people get frustrated, but that’s when you need to talk the most.  I can’t make changes on no communication.  I fully expected in the practice afterwards for us to get rolled, but instead, it was the crew of old – talking, calling, communicating.  Granted, we had a sub, but it makes me wonder if the player I had to sub for isn’t the problem.  =/

So, it’s practice, practice, and more practice now.  I hate that I’ve got to spend so much time on this.  You’d think after several seasons of playing with some of the same guys, we’d have this worked out already.  But we haven’t.  And that frustrates me. 

We’ll see what happens.  All I can do, I suppose.

My last grade got posted last night.  B+  I can’t complain, considering I missed turning in a couple of case assignments, and figured that I’d be lucky if I got an A.  At least my GPA stays above a 3.0, which is all I needed.  I’m sitting down with my Independent Study coordinator on Monday to get that setup.  So it’s just a matter of waiting for the rest of things to get underway.  Financial Aid is set now.  I just need to figure out if I’m set for December graduation or not. 

After a couple of days of tracking my food intake – I just have to say wow.  It’s no wonder I was feeling tired and run down for awhile.  So much garbage.  At least my calorie intake was good, but the nutrients I need… weren’t there.  We’ll see how this keeps up. 

Anyways, that’s it for the moment.

Grades for 2/3 courses are in.  A and A-, so the worst grade I can get in my last class and keep my 3.0 is a C+.  I don’t think that it will warrant it, but you never know.  This professor has been entirely frustrating in his administration of the class.  It was an interesting experience, to be sure, but when you don’t know where you stand heading into the final.  Oh so frustrating. 

I have two weeks without classwork before the (hopefully) final semester kicks off.  I’m working with my advisors to get one course straightened out (budget cuts forced a change), but should be good to go for graduation in the Fall.  The next two weeks will be spent trying to get back into the routine of fitness that I managed to lose in the last year.  My hope is that it sets me up well going into the fall semester.  We shall see, I suppose. 

I’m getting back into tracking my diet and exercise, so that should motivate me a little better.  I use software from www.crosstrainer.ca – the online version now. I did use the desktop version for quite some time, but with constant reformats and lack of access till late at night sometimes, I wasn’t keeping as good a diary.  But with the online version now, I should be better. 

I’ve really got to hand it to Amazon’s Kindle team.  They’re giving one book out of an author’s series away for free (undoubtedly to hook you into the author).  It’s a great, cheap way to keep reading different titles without having to drop a lot of money.  And getting a chapter or two sample delivered is pretty darn nice as well. 

You know what they say… best laid plans and all that.  =/