I read The Dilbert Blog because Scott Adams amuses me. More so in his blog posts than his comic even. Usually he is cynical and sarcastic in the topics covered everyday, but yesterday as a follow-up to a previous post about how to be happy he made a great point:

Priority-wise, it simply makes sense to take care of yourself before you start searching for a higher meaning. You aren’t much good to anyone else if you’re unhealthy, a financial burden, or an emotional basket case. Fix yourself before you turn outward. It’s best for everyone.

I have many friends and relatives that I try to express this to. They are wonderful caring people who put other people’s priorities and comfort above their own. Then they become stressed out and worried about not being able to help everyone they want to help. Oftentimes they can’t see that being in this state doesn’t allow them to help all the people they want to help very effectively at all.

It may sound selfish at first – that you should put taking care of yourself ahead of taking care of others – but it makes sense. It’s worth taking the time to make things right for you before trying to work on making things right for other people. Everyone will be better off.

A bit more than a week ago I got an email announcing a sneak preview streaming of Wilco’s forthcoming album, Sky Blue Sky on their website. I couldn’t get the plugins to make Quicktime work with Firefox on Ubuntu and didn’t have enough time to make it work just to listen at that time.

Then they announced they would be doing it again last Sunday. Thinking that it’d be great to get a full two months of listening before the album comes out I made sure to get set up to record it.

I ended up not figuring out a simple way to do it in Ubuntu. Had I spent more time I’m sure there is a way, but I’m just much more familiar with my soundcard options and audio functionality within Windows, so I rebooted into Windows for the first time in many weeks.

I did get the entire album saved in the mono version that was streamed. All in all I must say I’m happy with it.

Now, the title of this post has nothing to do with the Soul Coughing song I took the line from, but simply serves as a way for me to talk about the various ways I’ve listened to this new Wilco album.

First I listened to it as it was streaming on my computer and then once or twice at my computer after that. I don’t feel like I focused on it because I’m always doing other tasks at the same time. The only thing I remember that stuck out to me was the guitar work on “Impossible Germany”. I also seemed to discern some sort of coherent influence on the album. I don’t feel like I know enough about musicology to place it or anything, but the whole thing feels like it goes well together and that it came from somewhere.

The next day I listened to it while I walked to and from class. With nothing to do but listen and walk I picked up a lot more detail in the songs. I began to get more of a feel of them. I would have to say my impression is that Sky Blue Sky is a very relaxed album. It doesn’t have the seriousness of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or A Ghost Is Born. None of the songs are really emotionally intense, which is not a criticism. It’s a good collection of songs. The album feels to me like Wilco wrote a bunch of songs and gave them to us saying: here, we wrote these, have a listen sometime.

I then tried the album in my car as I was driving. Usually I get the most out of music when I’m driving because I really pay attention. Maybe I was distracted, but the album didn’t engage me as much in the car as it did when I was walking. Maybe it’s a walking album, just as some albums are driving albums.

In any case, I do like it. I’m sure I will even grow to like it more. First impressions always must be reviewed after listening to an album for months and interpretations change. I also look forward to picking up the CD and hearing the stereo version and having the artwork in my hands.

I downloaded the song “What Light” from Wilco’s MySpace page and put it up on my Vox page.

technorati tags: wilco, sky blue sky, listening

I had to call the 24-hour trouble call center tonight from work because a woman got trapped in the elevator. It was up near the 3rd floor and we’re all down on the 1st. All four of us left in the building anyway. We just barely heard her sounding the alarm button. She apparently was stuck in there for 50 minutes. What a nightmare.

Ugly Firefox 2.0 buttons originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

I don’t know how many people are like me and absolutely can’t stand the buttons in Firefox 2.0. I cringe every time I open the browser. I actually had to wrestle with myself to upgrade it simply because the buttons were an eyesore. When I started playing with the various operating systems in the last few weeks I had to suck it up because they all came preloaded with 2.0.

I finally got unlazy tonight and decided to look for a kindred spirit who might have made a theme to rid the new browser of the ugly buttons. I found Winestripe!Thank you Florian Schmitz! I actually feel more at peace when I see those old familiar buttons on my browser now.


Beautiful Firefox 1.5 buttons originally uploaded by mrwilloby.

technorati tags: firefox, themes, buttons

I still have a draft post sitting in WordPress where I was going to chronicle my previous Windows reinstall last May or something. I never got around to finishing it.

This time around I didn’t want to reinstall Windows. It is always a hassle, but my computer was acting up too much. Now I feel a bit foolish for doing that after everything I went through. I would get the vague error DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL in the middle of installing every time.

After trying many possible solutions I finally began to take the step of unplugging everything except the essentials from the motherboard. At this point I noticed that there was a significant amount of dust caked between the CPU fan blades and the top of the heatsink on the processor. There was probably little to no air being blown through to cool the CPU. All at once I began to realize this was the main problem with my computer. It explained the reboots when I was encoding FLAC files (a processor intensive task) and it might also explain the font corruption that I would experience at times that was annoying me the most. But at this point it was too late. I had formatted the partition already.

This whole ordeal was pushing two weeks. In the meantime I had been getting by running a live CD of Puppy Linux. I’d been using this distribution for about 6 months on my old 400 MHz AMD K6-III in San Jose since it makes it seem really fast. The great thing about Puppy is that the entire OS runs in RAM from a multi-session CD that settings and files can be saved back to and loaded upon the next boot. Apparently it is not very hard on the processor either.

After Windows wasn’t installing I also made an attempt to install Ubuntu and the computer would lock up during that process too. Now that the computer is under control I have a functioning Ubuntu partition also.

Since I was on a role with the various Linux distributions I decided to try openSUSE since it is the number two download on DistroWatch.com. I am composing this blog from within it right now. I must say that I’m impressed.

Playing around with these different operating systems and seriously thinking about my attachment to Windows over these past few weeks, I’ve come to realize that I don’t need it all that much. Although I consider myself a pretty adept computer user, most of what I do with my PC is fairly basic and software in Linux can accommodate me mostly.

I have re-evaluated my need to boot into Windows primarily. The only things I’ve actually installed on it are the Flock browser, a driver to read ext3 partitions (this is a crucial issue in my acceptance of not being locked into Windows), AVG Free Anti-Virus, and Quicken. My only problem is that I cannot get Quicken Basic 2007 to install under Wine. I really enjoy using Quicken and the last time I tried GnuCash I didn’t find it a good enough replacement. Maybe I’ll give it another spin.

One other thing I decided to do was rely heavily on the PortableApps Suite for the programs I will probably use in Windows. I got a 4GB USB key for Christmas and I’ll be putting it to use. I’ve got Firefox Portable, Thunderbird Portable, OpenOffice.org Portable, Gaim Portable, and VLC Media Player Portable. There are probably a few more applications that I use in Windows that I will need to make sure I can find a way to replace or use. EAC for ripping CDs is essential I know, and I really like Picasa.

I plan on giving some more extensive reviews of my experiences with these various operating systems and my new way of computing over the next few days.

technorati tags: linux, puppylinux, ubuntu, opensuse, portableapps

If you live in New Hampshire don’t voice your support for the bill to decriminalize marijana, especially to a representative who votes in the legislature.

Toby Iselin emailed his representative, Delmar Burridge, knowing full well that they disagreed on the issue. What Toby didn’t expect was a veiled threat that the police would be keeping an eye on him from then on.
The end of the response email from Burridge reads:

I am copying two members of the Keene Police Department in case you want to change your ways and act legal and save your friends.

You are very passionate in your beliefs and would make a great snitch. It is thrilling to dime on your so called friends.

This is kind of pathetic from someone who holds an elected office.

[via Hit & Run]

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I am writing from work.  It is dead right now.  There are two people in the Lab.  I was alone for quite a while earlier even.

Today was Introduction to Information Technology.  I think it will be a straightforward class.  I’ll be interested to see what kinds of issues come up.  The main work in the class will be writing a “business intelligence report” about any information technology that we want.  We’ll have to cover Design, Architecture, Standards, Regulatory Issues, and the Future Evolution of the technology.  I’ve got another couple weeks to come up with my subject.  Choosing is difficult because there are so many things out there that I am interested in.  I’ve thought about doing things with online identity verification, mobile computing, or DRM, but that doesn’t even come close to what all my options are.

Friday’s class was cancelled.  I’ll get to start driving to Tahoe earlier.

Winter quarter started for me today. Having to be at work by 8 AM wasn’t all that bad. The most exciting part of the morning was the reports of a large male stranger with red hair wandering around the building with bulky backpack. One theory was that he was casing the place for laptops to steal.

My first class of the quarter was Information Systems Analysis and Design co-taught by Phil Agre and Christine Borgman. I’m really excited about what I will learn and the new ways of looking at things that I will be exposed to. Iterative design will be the focus of the course: designing a system over and over again after receiving feedback and rethinking the design problem. At one point Phil told us that the goal of presenting a design was to “get your mind blown” by the ideas and criticisms and other perspectives of the audience.

We have one of the most creative assignments I’ve ever conceived of just to get us thinking about design in radically different ways. It is not a major assignment of the class and will probably only take a few hours of work in total. First, we go to an interesting (to us) place in the city. When there, we observe what takes place, interact with people, take note of all the information that exists around us and think about the information issues. Then we think about what sort of information systems could make this place different. Maybe in terms of what technology might be in place in ten years. Then, this is a real kicker, we call up one of our professors on our mobile phones and a have a 30 minute discussion about where we are and what is taking place. Since we are on site, we can report in real time and observe directly what sorts of ideas might work. Phil and Chris will only be able to brainstorm based on what we report to them. This will hopefully lead us to come at design from angles we may have not considered before by showing us in practice what potential is out there. Afterwards we will report to the class for five minutes and receive feedback from the professor we didn’t call on the phone.

I’m looking forward to this. I need to find a place to be on Tuesday the 23rd at 1 o’clock.

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Happy New Year. I’m really quite good at these month long absences of writing. Hopefully that will change. I would like to write more and take more photos to illustrate this site this year. Maybe I will actually change some things around with the way it looks too. It has been a year since I shifted over to WordPress and I haven’t done anything significant.

Maybe more later.

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Today in the San Francisco Chronicle is a little tiny feature about a photoset on Flickr that my friend Jessica created. The only reason that it became a set was because I mimicked one of her photos and then Tamiko caught on. I’m only bitter now because my photo wasn’t included in the ones that were featured.

John Curley, who put together the little blurb, seemingly didn’t bother contacting anyone involved. Excellent journalism skills.

OG bedhead:

UPDATE: After emailing John Curley he called me an “unsung hero” so all is forgiven.

technorati tags:sfchronicle, bedhead, flickr

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