Geek

I may have mentioned a couple of thousand times on here that I am a geek through and through. I have been using computers since 1983, where I was introduced to the Apple ][+ in high school (interestingly, for French class) and promptly convinced my mother that I needed a VIC-20 for the next gift giving holiday. I have been online with an active e-mail address since 1985. I used Windows even before I was using Windows-Windows-Windows/386 (props to the person that gets that obscure Windows marketing reference).

I am a lucky man in that I have a few computers in the house. Okay, we have eleven, including the two servers and the media controllers. We are mostly a Mac shop, but I also have my two Lenovo computers, a desktop and a laptop. Both have served me well and I feel I made the right decision in buying these, however, I have alternated between running Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux on these computers because I haven’t really found the combination for the perfect fit. The geek in me says that I should be running Ubuntu Linux because real geeks run Linux and I will lose major points if I don’t follow that trend. Admittedly, my livelihood is doing the Linux (and Solaris) thing for the phone company but I still use Windows XP on my desk at work to get to the Linux servers. Though remarkable progress has been made in a very short time, I have to say that Ubuntu Linux is just not ready for the desktop for the average user. Case in point: Ubuntu Linux’s version of iTunes is called “Ubuntu One”, which debuted earlier this year. I believe they tie in with Digital 7 in the UK. The program of choice to do all this is called Rhythmbox. This combination downloads your purchases into the “cloud” so that you can access them from several computers instead of just one. Cool enough. However, because of the territorial squabbling that is going on, you can’t really sync your iPod to Rhythmbox, you definitely can’t sync a Zune to Rhythmbox and with a little bit of coaxing you might be able to sync your Droid with Rhythmbox. It should be plug and play with the most popular devices. I don’t want to go to Staples, get led into a dark room to buy the Wombat Audio Terminator Three with six LEDs and flashing earbuds in order to sync with Rhythmbox.

Another thing that drove me crazy about the Ubuntu One store is that it took three days to download one album. Three days. I could have driven to Kylie herself and had her sing into the webcam or something faster than that.

So now I’m putting Windows back on the Lenovos in an attempt to maintain a relaxed sanity when it comes to using computers outside of work hours. For the curious, I’m always relaxed at work because that’s what I do.

Now, it’s time to click NEXT.

Okay. I officially welcomed my new laptop into the family today by posing for a new gay geek picture with it.

After a month of tweaking the computer and figuring out how I wanted to use it, I believe I have everything working the way I want it to and it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg to do so. The only thing that’s not quite where I want it to be yet is recording video using my webcam, but that’s why I have the small selection of mini video cameras laying around the house.

And yes, I’m running Windows 7 Ultimate. The latest incarnation of Ubuntu Linux is wonderful, but it’s not quite where it needs to be to be a mainstream desktop environment. As I was telling my friend Matt on the phone earlier today, I work on computers all day long for a living and I love every moment of it. However, when I come home I want to enjoy my computer, not struggle with getting it work and I want it to be a rather affordable experience. I believe the my new Lenovo laptop, which has top of the line specs, was the most sensible way of achieving that goal.

And for the curious, I still love my iMac that runs my recording studio.

So I’m sitting in the sun and surfing the ‘net with my new laptop during my lunch hour. The telephone company here, which is of course the telephone company I work for, offers citywide wi-fi for the twin cities here. I naturally have internet access on my Droid but typing a blog entry on any smartphone can be cumbersome. It’s good to enjoy this outdoors and the wi-fi at the same time. This was the one piece of the puzzle that was missing from my commuting experience; I’m happy that I got it resolved.

I put on my Facebook that I will probably delete my account on there before the end of the week. I have been following some of the drama in the tech news about Facebook’s disregard for it’s user’s privacy. Some of it is hysteria but some of it is valid. I have an e-mail account that I only use with Facebook and it has been getting spammed a lot lately. I mentioned six months or so ago that I was called on my cell phone by a weight loss company based on an ad I had clicked on Facebook by mistake. I’m not liking these things, which is ironic since I live my life relatively outloud here on my blog and on various sites scattered about. When I do delete that Facebook account, I’ll still be here and on Twitter. Twitter doesn’t seem to be guilty of the same thing as of yet but I’m keeping my eye on them.

Earl and I once ended up in a bear event ad online – it was a picture of us kissing that was featured. No one asked for our permission to use it and we didn’t really mind but it shows that anything that goes on the internet is fair game, regardless of how much legal mumbo jumbo (or lack there of) may appear on the site.

I have dropped quite a few blogs from my blogroll; I was skimming over the ones that post 20-30 entries a day and decided not to waste the bandwidth at all. The news that was featured wasn’t unbiased and sometimes it felt like nothing more than an attempt to ramp up ad dollars so I just dropped the feed altogether. I feel saner now.

This is sort of like the fact that every Star Trek movie utilizes a different transporter effect, but as you probably know, just about every version of Windows uses a different set of sounds, including the startup and shutdown sounds. On the various Windows and Linux computers I use both personally and professionally, I often modify the sound schemes to the one from the Longhorn Beta, which ultimately turned into Windows Vista. Unfortunately, the Longhorn Beta sounds didn’t make it into Windows Vista (or Windows 7, for that matter), which is a shame because quite frankly I find them to be the most soothing of the Windows sounds.

Yes, I am soundly a geek when it comes to sound. (There’s some of that wit!)

Here is a YouTube clip of the Longhorn Beta startup and shutdown sounds. I really like the ethereal sound of these. I have the whole Longhorn sound scheme and someday I’ll post instructions on how to make these beta sounds your default on your computer. I hope I’m not infringing on someone’s copyright by doing that.

Anyways, here’s the sounds I was just talking about.

So Earl left for Las Vegas this morning and Jamie is in Buffalo until Wednesday night. This leaves me alone at the Manor for a few days and it’s been a long while since I have been in bachelor mode for this many days in a row. To keep it interesting, tomorrow night I spend the night near work so I can do some middle of the night testing again. It’ll be a good gig.

To pass the time this afternoon I decided to go to the local Best Buy to see what they have in the way of computers. I have been itching to buy a new computer lately, though I’m not really in the mood to buy another Apple product. I wanted a laptop that could work on either Windows or Linux so I spent a good hour or so looking each over each system on display. I typed a lot on each one of them to see if I liked the way the keyboard felt and I looked under the hood to see if the specs were really as good as the shelf placard stated. Keyboards on laptops are not as good as they are on MacBooks, and I was expecting that, but some of these keyboards were just downright mushy.

I am curious about this recent trend to put a full sized keyboard on a laptop, in that the keyboard has a number pad on the right as if you were sitting at a desktop. This is strange to me. I have a hard time typing if the keyboard is off center from the screen and because of this peculiar layout, this would most definitely be the case.

After looking over each model on display at Best Buy I decided to skip the whole Best Buy experience altogether because nothing there really tickled my fancy. I then went to the adjacent Wal*Mart to see what deals they had but every computer on display there was in a sad state of affairs; smashed screens, broken cases, missing keys off the keyboards. I guess there’s a lot of animals shopping at Wal*Mart. I was there less than five minutes.

All in all I decided to skip the computer purchase experience and stick with the MacBook Pro for the time being. The though trackpad is starting to die on this computer, it works well for what I need it to do and so I’ll just carry a little mouse with it or something.

I did discover during this excursion that I have a low tolerance for ignorance: people not turning right on red because they’re too busy chatting on the phone, people not watching where they are walking, parents letting their kids run on TOP of the shelf in better home furnishings at Wal*Mart (I wish I was making that up). I don’t know if I’m getting older or if the the general populace is getting more and more stupid as time goes on but I feel like I am firmly out of step and marching down a different boulevard from the rest of society these days.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

I stumbled across this video on YouTube this morning and I think it’s pretty cool. This is the first time I have heard this song as well and it has made it into my music collection.

This is a simple music video made using a Mac.

I am dictating this blog entry to my phone. Look ma no hands!

This will prove to be quite helpful while driving.

I can even update facebook like this.

However this blog entry must be boring.

So after much discussion with Earl, I have decided to get rid of my iPhone and get myself a Motorola Droid on Verizon’s network. There are a couple of reasons for this change in heart, especially since I just declared a couple of weeks ago that I was going to keep my iPhone until it died on it’s own.

The two prominent reason for the switch include the lack of 3G coverage from AT&T for 55 of the 60 miles of my commute, including the twin cities I work in. Another reason is that I can get a pretty good discount with Verizon through work, whereas I can’t with AT&T. I think it’s rather sad that AT&T can’t provide 3G coverage for large swathes of upstate New York whereas Verizon does.

I’m also not happy with Apple’s announcement that they will not support multitasking on the iPhone 3G but they will with the iPhone 3GS. I’m not going to ride out another two years of crappy service from AT&T just to upgrade my phone. I understand that I will have a new two year contract with Verizon but I think the service will be much happier.

Another thing that bothers me is that AT&T won’t let me tether my computer to my iPhone so I can use that data connection on the road. This is just made worse by the lack of decent service to begin with.

My MacBook Pro is starting to show signs of it’s age lately as well. I’m a little disappointed with this since it’s only 20 or so months old. I’m not an abusive user by any stretch of the imagination and for the premium price paid, the Mac should outlive me.

I think I’m going to pass on the next sip from the Kool Aid cup. It’s a good thing that I don’t feel defined by my cool toys.