A Weblog…Again

Upcoming Projects

So, my wife and son will be going on a little vacation in April.  I will have 7 days to myself including one whole weekend.  This is the ideal time to spend some serious time on one of the many mini-projects I’ve been working on or have planned.  The projects include:

1. Configuring the home network correctly for the WDS (Wireless Distribution System) so that the main wireless access point in my office can communicate with the wireless access point in the basement where the XBox360 and home theatre are.  This is key for being able to watch Instant Movies via Netflix.
2. Instead of #1, run Cat 5e cable from my office to the basement.  The challenge with this is running the cabling itself.  Ideally, I would like to run it inside the house, but that may be beyond my skillset.  I am leaning towards doing this instead of #1, because it will be very reliable.  I have had a lot of issues with the WDS implementation by DD-WRT. 
3. Work on my little Contacts application on Google App Engine using Django.  I think I’ll probably start this over from scratch, since it has been so long since I worked on it.  Without having a concentrated, focused amount of time on this, I just don’t seem to be able to make much progress.
4. Work on creating some video-casts showing how to setup the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS).  I haven’t seen any video-casts that cover the basics of UCS, so I think it would be useful.
5. Create a presentation that summarizes the state of cloud computing focusing on the types, definitions, resource pointers, etc.  Though there are a lot of presentations already about cloud computing, this would be more an exercise in self-edification.

Simon’s Rock on NPR

I came across this story about Simon’s Rock on NPR.  I went there from 1987-89 and if I were to believe what is being said in this story, the school has changed a lot.  The school has probably changed and become more academic and less of a "social experiment".  My guess is that changes in college entrances nationwide have also caused the composition of the student body to change, so perhaps it is more of an "early college" for "bored" high schoolers and less of a place for "misfits", which was more the case when I went there.

Oh, and now it costs $50,000 per year, which is $20,000 more than what it cost when I went there, which could also lead to a greater self-selection among the student body.

Tuition and Costs
2008-2009

Tuition and Fees: $37,860
Student Activity Fee: $150
Room and Board: $10,600
Health Services Fee: $640
First-Year Orientation Fee: $525
Total:          $49,775

Indictment & Kiran

The man who killed Kiran has been indicted with "two counts of homicide by vehicle, four counts of serious injury by vehicle, one count of driving under the influence and one count of reckless driving."  This is good news to read, but I guess there is still more to be done with the arraignment to see if he serves any time or not.  Article from the ForsythNews.

Getting in Shape: Day 1

This morning, I woke up at 5:30 and made it to the YMCA for a cardio class at 6:00 am.  It was a pretty standard aerobics-based class with a little bit of weights and some stretches and lasted for 50 minutes.  Needless to say, I was only running at about 20% capacity, because:  1) it was really early and my body isn’t used to it; 2) I didn’t want to over-exert myself on the first day; and 3) I am just out of shape.  The class kicked my ass and I imagine once I do it a couple more times I should get more out of it for sure.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all and hopefully it will be better than the last. 

The year hasn’t started out great for me.  On January 2nd, I went to the local Sports Authority to buy some raquetball rackets.  It was 10:30 in the morning.  I was only in the store for a half-hour.  When I walked out to the car, a Toyota Highlander, the driver’s side door window had been busted and my GPS had been stolen.  The GPS was a Garmin Nuvi that I just got about 6 months ago and was about $250.  I called the police to file a police report and then my insurance company.  Since my deductible was greater than the cost of labor/parts for the window, I paid out of pocket for it, which was $185.  I was able to get the window fixed on the same day as well and it only took about 1 hour.  Since it was an after-market GPS, the auto insurance wouldn’t cover it and they suggested that I check with my homeowner’s insurance.  I’m pretty sure that my deductible is greater than $250, so I’ll have to buy a replacement on my own as well.  So, $400 down the drain.  No fun.

Girlfriend Advice

Simple, yet under-appreciated advice about girlfriends.  Not applicable to me, but good advice to pass on to my son:

Question:

seriously…how do you serious programmers have and maintain GF’s?

Answers:

The answer is fairly simple, and has been mentioned here in other comments:

Get a girlfriend that has her own passion(s) (other than "you.")

This was one of my highest conditions for dating (and, well, eventually marriage.)

1) I have found that people who are passionate about their work/hobby/art/etc. tend to understand their own kind. It doesn’t matter if it’s not the same thing.

2) Girls who pour everything into you tend to become the kind of girls that need you. Nothing breeds resentment quicker than a "need" relationship.

3) When I need some time to work on my things, it’s nice that she has something to do other than sulk or sit on the phone bitching about what I’m doing or nag me as to when I am going to be done so that I can go back to entertaining her and her whims.

4) People that are passionate about their hobbies tend to be good at them. This can render you any number of benefits depending on her hobbies/talents.

5) People without goals are depressed and depressing.

Original link.

Kiran

One year ago today was the saddest day of my life and probably for everyone else in my family.  It was the day that I lost a niece and my son lost his eldest female cousin.  It has been difficult and painful to even think about what has taken place, but yet I do for to not think about her is to forget her and that would be wrong.  One year ago, we all watched as the last breaths faded away from Kiran, our precocious 10 year old.  She was my mother’s first grand-daughter and indeed held a special place in all of our hearts.  As she was growing up, all of us, her aunts and uncles, were bewildered that she acted the age of someone twice her age.  In fact, we all wondered whether she was growing up too quick.  Sadly, we will never know.  There aren’t many reassuing words or thoughts one can express about the loss of her; I can’t say that she went to a "better place" or that she is "no longer suffering".  I can’t even say that she was in the "prime of her life", because she hadn’t even experienced that.  No, for she was only 10 years old and had the best of her life to look forward to.  I can only mourn, and mourn I shall.

Building a NAS for Home

Since I have some free time coming up over the holidays, I’ve decided to finally build a NAS.  I have an oldish PC lying around that has the following specs:

• Mobo:  Asus A7N8X-X
• CPU:  AMD Athlon XP 2500+
• Memory:  1 GB

I also have 4 hard-drives lying around that are in sizes of 30 GB, 40 GB, 80 GB and 300 GB.  I may or may not be able to use these drives.  It all depends on what configuration I end up with.

Since all the new drives are SATA based, I needed to buy a SATA controller, so I bought the PROMISE SATA300 TX4 PCI SATA II Controller Card from Newegg.

I then bought 3 x 1 TB Hitachi hard-drives. 

I also had to buy a couple of ATX to SATA power adapters since my power supply is legacy.

I will probably go with a RAID5 configuration, so I will get about 2 TB of usable disk space.

So far, the costs are as follows:

• Hard-drives:  $300
• SATA Controller:  $60
• Cables:  $15

Total cost for a 3 TB NAS is $375.

I am still deciding on what NAS software I should use or if I should just use a plain old Linux distro.  The contenders for NAS software are:

1. FreeNAS
2. OpenFiler

I installed both of them as a test run.  FreeNAS was definitely easier to setup and I liked that all of the disk management, etc. happens via the GUI.  OpenFiler is definitely closer to the Linux distro itself, but does seem more powerful.

The end goal of this NAS is not only to store photos, videos, etc., but is also to be a streaming server for video content to a HTPC or device like Popcorn Hour, which looks very enticing indeed.

Notable Books of 2008

Will have to take a look at this list from the NY Times more closely later on:

Link

One Hundred Pushups

Yesterday, I finally decided to start the program to be able to do 100 pushups.  I’m using the regimen that hundredpushups.com stipulates.  On my first day I did the following routine of six pushups, break, six pushups, break, four pushups, break, four pushups, break, ten pushups.  The program requires that you do pushups every other day in order to let your body rest and gradually increases the number.  It is a six week program and I’ll be really satisfied if I can do at least 50 pushups without a break.