Diary of a Network Geek

Have Laptop, Will Travel.

Once, when I started at a new job, someone jokingly suggested that I should have brought my own “tools”, since they didn’t seem to have a workstation for me. I ended up building one from spare parts my first day, and that should have been a warning of things to come. But, now, it seems, that this is a more common thing, at least in Australia. According to this article on AustralianIT, there’s a growing trend down under that employers requiring new hires to supply their own laptop, and the new users seem to prefer it! Frankly, it seems like a security and resource management nightmare, but, whatever works, I guess.
I wonder how long before that happens here in the States?

Late Friday night, I finished reading Spook Country by William Gibson.

Even though Spook Country follows the trend that Pattern Recognition started, taking Gibson further away from science-fiction, I still loved it. For that matter, I loved Pattern Recognition when I read that. Both books take place in the recent past, and share some characters and invented, Gibsonian organizations. (In fact, while Googling some things in the book, I found two websites that “create” a proto-magazine from both books, called Node.)
Gibson’s latest work takes us through a twisting landscape populated with former spies, current criminal families, GPS-programming gurus, and assorted other mystery-men of action. Not to mention a mysterious shipping container, Cuban folk religion and governmental shennanigans. The result is pure Gibson and highly entertaining.

The MacGuffin, the thing that drives the story, is a mysterious shipping container and its equally mysterious contents. Everyone seems to be looking for this container, or trying to figure out why someone is looking for it. Along the way to finding it, which eventually happens, Gibson takes the reader on a tour of pop culture and through a winding maze of artistic landscapes that are so avant garde that they still seem like low-grade science-fiction. One of the things I like so well about Gibson’s recent work is how true it all rings to me. Now, I’m far from being tapped into the art world, but I am fairly tapped into the tech world and when he describes tech, Gibson is very accurate, very real. Yet, somehow, he doesn’t seem to date himself too much either. That’s a real trick when you’re dealing with tech. And, as always, his characters are just strange enough to seem real, like people I might have met once. One of his two main characters, Hollis Henry, former “singer in an early-nineties cult band” The Curfew who’s trying her hand at journalism, put me in mind of a friend of mine who’s an artist now, but used to be the lead singer in a punk band called Culturcide. And, well, I’ve known assorted esoteric hackers of all stripes, not to mention former Special Forces guys, and I’ve even met a former CIA field agent, who was a friend of my father’s.

Oh, and, eventually, Gibson does reveal what’s in the shipping container, but you’ll have to read the book to find out what it is.

I woke up this morning spooning my dog.

Let that soak in for a minute…
Spooning.  My.  Dog.

Now, while there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, I still found it a little disturbing.  Perhaps more so because I had a dream about getting two flat tires with my ex-wife in the car and her remaining perfectly calm the whole time.  Obviously, it was a dream, because that would never have happened in life.  Trust me.

In any case, I am sure that this is a sign I need to get out more, eyebrows or not, if only to meet more people that I’d feel safe dating.  Right now, my best prospects are a Federal parole officer, a friend’s ex, and a reformed lesbian.  Actually, I’m just kidding about one of those, but I’ll let you all guess which one.  So, I think I need some updated pictures for the on-line dating sites I’m still a member of and, well, to start getting out more.

Pray for me.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"They don't hold meetings about rainbows."

Now that my eyebrows are growing back, I’ve been thinking about getting back into shape.

The first thing I need to do is to stop eating like I’m still on chemotherapy!  It’s not that I’m fat, mind, but my six-pack is very well insulated!
In any case, I figured I might add some things to my regular workout routine, when I start that again, that would help me burn the fat around my gut. In pursuit of that, I found an article on MensHealth.com called “15-Minute Work Out – Lean Routine”.
Now, if I can just convince myself it’s worth getting up that extra fifteen minutes…

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It is only when they go wrong that machines remind you how powerful they are."
   --Clive James

Oh, where was this when I needed it!?

Okay, it doesn’t do all the work for you, but the WordPress Plugin Generator pumps out the basic framework of a WordPress plugin in short order. It sure would have been nice to know about this when I was doing my little plugins, the MoonPhase Plugin and the Dale Reckoning (aka Forgotten Realms Calendar) Plugin.

Though, some news is better than others…

Well, I don’t have any bad news, though I don’t quite have the final confirmation that my lymphoma is in remission, yet.  The PET scan showed something marginally active where the dead tumor should be, so, just to be safe and sure, my doctor wants to get a biopsy.  This will be a needle biopsy, just like the one I had in March.  It’s not scheduled yet, but I’ll let you all know when it is.
It seems like this keeps dragging out, but, really, it’s moved pretty quickly, all things considered.  And, while I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get a full, complete resolution today, I’d rather be sure than spend a lot of time wondering if Cletus will rear his ugly head again.  The biopsy is, after all, just a precaution, since the PET scan showed one small area only slightly more metabolically active than the surrounding tissue.  My oncologist said that it was using glucose at 4.9, on a 100 point scale, while the “normal” cells in the same area were using it at 4  So, having the biopsy will tell us for sure, but, really, the doctors and I both are pretty sure Cletus is dead.

Oh, and my eyebrows are filling in quite nicely, in case anyone was worried about that, too.

So, yesterday, a pair of recently married friends were asking me about my dating plans.

Well, I hadn’t thought about that much, really.  I mean, I’ve been pretty focused on just getting through my cancer treatments.  And, now, I’d really rather wait until I have hair again.  Or, at least, until my eyebrows grow back in all the way.
But, for those of you who are actively dating, here are a couple things to think about…  First, tips for dating a co-worker, beyond “Don’t”, of course.
Second, there’s tips that men want women to know. And, yes, we do, please read it.
Thirdly, if you get far enough, guys, here are some tips about sex women wish men knew.

And, yes, when I eventually start dating again, I’ll probably post about it here.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
   --Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Or, why wear someone else’s logo?

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about logos and branding lately.
I often wonder what makes people choose to wear particular logos or promotional “gear”. Now, as a die-hard Novell fan, I often wear Novell-branded polo shirts. Most of them I got from sales staff over the years as I renewed our company’s license agreement and support contract. But, I actually bought some Novell logo gear myself once. I needed shirts and Novell’s gear wasn’t any more expensive than plain golf shirts, so, I bought some. I also wear golf shirts with the Linux mascot on them. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, the Linux mascot is a cute, little cartoon penguin named Tux. The chicks dig him.)

But, now that I’m thinking about rebranding both this website and a future, creative website, I’ve been thinking about getting branded merchandise for my own, personal use that ties into those brands. I mean, if I’m going to wear a logo and advertise a product, I might as well advertise my own product, right?
So, I started looking around at various on-line retailers that did custom embroidery on shirts. Naturally, there’s CafePress, but they really cater to a more sales-oriented market and are a little more low-end than I was looking to wear. Back in the day, Branders was another option that was more upscale. But, that was back in the heyday of the Internet bubble, so they were a little more high-end than I’d been looking for. Also, they have significant minimums to buy and, honestly, I don’t need 17 of the same color shirt with a custom logo on it. Well, I did some more searching and found University Fashions. They seem to be the right blend of upscale product, reasonable pricing and no minimums to buy. But, there’s also Corporate Casuals and The Logo Centre, so I’ll have to compare them all, and most likely need to get actual quotes from all three places before I decide to go forward with a purchase or not. Oh, and one other factor is that the Logo Centre seems to be in the UK. That might effect the price a bit.

In any case, my thought was, “Why wear someone else’s logo when I can promote my own brand?” So, maybe, that’s just what I’ll do. If I follow through on getting my own logo merchandise, rest assured that I’ll get pictures of it up here somehow.

Creating language.

Wow, this is new ground for conlangers!
Constructed languages, conlangs for short, have been around for a very long time, but it’s been a kind of “secret vice”, as J.R.R. Tolkien put it. Until now. When the L.A. Times does a story on conlanging, well, it’s hard to keep that kind of thing secret.

Some of you may be wondering when they visited the first time…

So, after spending months lugging my trusty laptop back and forth to the hospital in the cheap, generic bag that came with it, I’ve finally decided to splurge and get a really good laptop bag. I’ve talked with several people and read reviews and finally decided on a Tumi bag. Specifically, the T-Tech Expandable Computer Brief, in black.

But, along the way, I did some searching and found a couple of other options, not to mention some strange and funny links about laptop cases.
First, there’s the Pelican case from Duluth Trading Company. I’m not sure what it is about this “bag” that I found so fascinating, but, well, I did.
Then, there was the DIY Neoprene laptop “bag” on Instructables.
Which lead to me finding the undercover laptop case and the DIY laptop cooler.