New Office Photos

OK, I've got some more photos of the new office. I know it's just an office building, but I'm into architecture.

There is a long greenhouse-like covered walkway that extends from the parking lot to the building. It has fantastic acoustics. I haven't found the resonating frequency yet.

This is the view from the entrance to our office space. That's Margaret on the left. She answers the phone.

Mark Rebuck has software that "sews" together multiple photos into one. This one is the combination of about 4 photos.

This is the atrium from same vantage point as the panoramic photo above. The plywood is there to protect the glass windows while they complete the construction.

At the opposite end of the office space, there is a glassed-in silo-like spiral staircase.

New Cell Phone

So my employer finally came through with a cell phone. A shiny new LG VX8300.

I can see myself getting a lot of use out of the integrated digital camera feature. In lieu of anyone buying me a real digital camera.

The phone has lots of other interesting features, including bluetooth. Unfortunately most of these features are neutered by Verizon Wireless. Thanks. I'm sure your technically retarded business decisions are making you boat loads of cash.

When a mobile phone has bluetooth it should mean that it becomes less of an information island. Verizon doesn't see it that way. They want you to use bluetooth to attach A-Hole-like accessories like the Jabra BT350, which Versatile was kind enough to provide for me. Now I have another device in my arsenal with which to annoy my wife. Whatdoya say babe? Pretty annoying? Babe? Wanna drive to Hogwarts?

If I want the cool photos I've been snapping, I'll have to email them to myself. Really? That doesn't seem right. Why can't I transfer them to my laptop via bluetooth. Verizon says 'no'.

I keep my contacts in my Yahoo address book. It would be nice if I could transfer them to my phone via bluetooth. Verizon says 'no'.

Luckily there are ways around these problems. With an open source tool called BitPim, I'm able to do all kinds of things with my phone. I'm pretty sure I haven't voided any warranties. Now I can transfer pictures, music, and contacts betwixt my phone and laptop. Cool.

I Hate People: part 3, The Trash Fairy Strikes Back

Back in the day I wrote about the trash fairies visiting my sidewalk.

2006.10.16, 9:55PM: Two guys wearing coats that were inappropriately large/warm for 50 degree weather were hanging out in front of my house. The suspects were making noise, smoking cigarettes, and oh, smashing a mountain bike.

Path #1: Call the police and describe to the dispatcher the scene unfolding in front of me as I peer through the curtains. By the time the police cruiser is deployed to the crime scene, the loiterers are long gone. The police officer and I share awkward glances as we stare at the lump of metal that used to be a bicycle.

Path #2: Finish watching the end of Heroes.

Both paths lead to: JC cleans up bike parts from the sidewalk.

Mathlete Game

Deviousbard sent me this wonderful game. It combines two of my favorite things -- computer games and prime numbers. Both of these are very popular with the women.

Sherry, don't worry, you don't have to have an interweb connection to play! You can save the page locally so you can play sans interweb. Life is good.

On a side note, the domain name for the PrimeShooter game is a little troubling: 1729.com. 1729 is definitely not prime. Maybe I should contact the owner. That's just embarrassing.

Ubuntu

After I got my company laptop, I was happy to overwrite the default Windows installation with Linux.

For two days I struggled with the Gentoo install. Not having the Gettle to do it all for me, I quickly (OK, 2 days) realized that this task was unrealistic for my skill-set.

So, I downloaded the Ubuntu ISO and gave it a try. Wow. I had a working Linux installation in 30 minutes. It took another 15 minutes to get the the direct rendering working. Most of that time was spent reading documentation. The laptop has a dual core processor, but it didn't look like the OS knew about it. So, 10 minutes later (again, most of that time was spent reading documentation) I had a SMP-enabled kernel. Cool.

The default Ubuntu installing uses Gnome for it's window manager. I like fluxbox. So I installed that. Unfortunately, fluxbox doesn't play nice with GDM and/or Ubuntu. It runs fine, but when I logout and try to return to the GDM login screen, the screen goes all crazy-silly. I guess I'll use Gnome for now. There is a fluxbox-ubuntu distro, but I found out about it too late.

After the installation was complete, I was alarmed to find that there was no root account. Oh no, did I forget something? Did I not pay attention during the install? Alas, this is how the default Ubuntu install works. Sigh. The root account can be enabled, but they prefer you use sudo. So far, I've been happy with using sudo.

I wasn't surprised to find that the install didn't pickup my wireless chip-set. I looked at the wireless installation notes. "Download blah1.2422314.323.patch. Apply the kernel patch. Recompile the kernel. Download huh3124.234.23.deb module." It seemed kind of complicated, so I avoided the issue for a few days. On a whim, I decided to try a different method. Gnome has a nice network configuration GUI application. I started that up and enabled the wireless network and that was it. I now have a wireless network connection.

The software updates are easy. Ubuntu checks once a day for any patches. If it finds something, it notifies you by displaying an icon in the upper right-hand corner. Clicking on the icon activates the software updates download/install.

As you can tell, I'm pretty happy with Ubuntu. So happy that I proposed to my kids that we (OK, I) install it on a computer for them to use. My daughter and youngest son were both concerned with not being about to use Word or PowerPoint. God damn you Microsoft. Damn you all to hell.

The New Office

My new employer moved into the new office space two days after I started working for them.

The building is impressive. It's on a huge plot of land and sits far back from the main roads. It was built by the now bankrupt PHICO.

Our offices occupy the top (3rd floor) western half of the building. In the center of our space there is a courtyard that measures 35x75 feet and descends four floors to the basement level. When I walked to the railing for the first time, my legs did that I'm-not-going-any-farther-cause-you-are-gonna-kill-yourself thing. The area is just begging me to either fly some kind of model aircraft into it, drop something into the dark depths, or spit. So I did all three.

A few days after we were settled, the office manager sent an email to everyone, telling us not throw paper airplanes in the courtyard. This was odd because she knew it was only me and another employee having the paper airplane contest. Within the first week of starting my new job, I got in trouble and I was publicly reprimanded. Some things never change.

The land around the building is popular with hawks. On any given day there are 6 to 10 birds of prey flying around the building. It makes me want to get back into flying model sailplanes. On Friday, one of these birds was perched on the railing of our balcony. A coworker, who just happened to have his digital SLR with a 300 millimeter lens, snapped several photos. My son identified the bird as a Northern Goshawk.

As soon as I get my digit SLR (hint hint, Sherry), I'll take some photos of the building.

Google Code Search

I'm currently wiping down my computer.

I just found out about Google Code Search. As you can probably guess (OK, maybe not Tommy or Sherry), it's a search engine specifically tuned to find open source code. Cool enough.

But the thing that made me cream all over the keyboard was Google's decision to use regular expressions for their search string syntax. Good god. Does this mean that regular expressions are going to hit the mainstream? I hope so.

Imagine (Tommy and Sherry, you're exempt from this activity) how much more useful Google would be with regular expression capability.

Update 2006.10.09: All technology can be used for evil.