New Year's Resolutions

In the last few days I've been thinking alot about what I intend to do in the next few months, and the next year entirely. Here's a list of resolutions I've made to myself for the year 2009 (with a list of more attainable goals for myself in parentheses):

1. Lose 60lbs. I'm currently at 207.5lbs (thanks Christmas), so that would put me at just under 150lbs. I'm 5'9", so my ideal weight should be between 130lbs and 170lbs, between 19 and 25 BMI. (Ideal goal: Lose 10lbs before the baby is born, 10lbs by summer, and hopefully 10lbs by fall)
2. Win the lottery. I'd love to win millions and millions of dollars in the lottery and just retire. Yeah, right. (Ideal goal: Find a better paying job. I'm moving to a new job in a few days, but without a pay raise. In order to help make ends meet better, I really need to find a better paying position)
3. Write a program, sell it, retire. Again, it'd be nice to make tons of money so I wouldn't have to keep grinding my life away toward retirement, but alas... (Ideal goal: Use my newfound knowledge of Python to work on the project with my friend etank, while writing software on my own)
4. Gain internet notoriety. Yeah, not a good goal, I know, but it would certainly be nice to create something useful, interesting, or funny to share with the world. A webcomic, internet TV show, webcast, etc. I don't know. (Ideal goal: Pick something I'm good at, do something with it, and stick it on the web. If it's noteworthy, it'll gain traction. If not, what's next?)
   
5. Be a good father / role model to my unborn son. While this doesn't seem entirely unattainable, it is definitely something that will be difficult. I have a lot of bad habits that I need to ensure I don't pass along, and a lot of life lessons I'll have to teach him when he is able to understand (Ideal goal: Take it one day at a time. Teach him what I can)

That's really all I can think of at the moment. Lofty goals, offset by more humble, attainable ones. I'll be surprised if I even achieve any of my "Ideal goals", but I'm certainly going to try.

(Partial sidenote with regards to #2 and #3 above: For my new job, I'm learning C# and ASP.NET. I'm sort of against the idea of "Microsoft" languages, but it's a part of the job, so I've got to do it...)

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex Release Party

For those that are in the Lexington, KY area and are interested in Ubuntu Linux or Linux in general, feel free to come hang out with us on this Saturday, November 15th, 2008 from 2pm EST to 5pm EST at Eastside Technical Center at 2208 Liberty Rd, Lexington, KY.


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We'll have a BUNCH of CDs to hand out (etank received a box of 300 CDs direct from Canonical) and hopefully we'll be having some presentations and good information on Linux and Ubuntu. Hope to see some of you guys there!

Severed Fifth's Denied By Reign Released

Severed Fifth's debut album is finally released. Eight tracks of pounding metal, grinding guitars and machine-gun double bass drumming, sealed with a ripping vocal performance. This album is free. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license.

read more | digg story

Links:

DOWNLOAD FULL ALBUM (Ogg) : Mirror 1 DOWNLOAD FULL ALBUM (MP3) : Mirror 1 BITTORRENT FULL ALBUM (Ogg) : Neuro's Tracker BITTORRENT FULL ALBUM (MP3) : Neuro's Tracker

OLF, Laptop woes, and Updates

It's been an eventful few weeks, to say the least. Where should I start?

OLF (Ohio LinuxFest) was this past Saturday. Basically over 1000 geeks gathered in one location to discuss Linux's past, present, and future. Sponsors and other organizations set up booths to show off their products and services while handing out SWAG (stuff we all get). HP had set up a movie room where all sorts of open source and linux-related videos were cycled through during the course of the day.

There were lots of presentations, but I only managed to make it to a few. I sat in on part of the Xen virtualization presentation, but my attention span is slim and I was running on just 3 hours of sleep (plus 1/2 hour in the car). I also participated in the Foresight Linux Conary/rBuild BOF (stands for "Birds of a Feather" IIRC). Lots of great new information and it looks like it will make packaging for Foresight much simpler (not that it is terribly difficult to begin with). I floated between some other presentations, but ended up just browsing around the booths for most of the time.

At random etank and I ran into Jono Bacon and were somewhat starstruck, I must admit. We introduced ourselves and talked for a few minutes about the Kentucky LoCo team we're a part of and some thoughts on how to raise awareness/interest in it. It was definitely thrilling.


Other news: Last week, the DVD drive in my laptop died. I called Dell to get it replaced, and they told me I had to take it into Best Buy. Note to self: never buy a computer from Best Buy again. The guy at Geek Squad was awesome. He was very helpful and knowledgable, and made the process pretty painless, until he mentioned that it was going to be mailed to a "laptop repair center" offsite somewhere, and could take up to a month to repair. Argh! At least it's covered under warranty.

In my laptop downtime, I have clung to my work laptop. I decided in honor of OLF, I would install Ubuntu on it and virtualize my XP system to it. This could not have failed more spectacularly. From what I understand, something in newer HP laptops doesn't like VMWare converter, and it loses its activation because of it. So basically I've got a wonderful Ubuntu install, and a Windows XP virtual guest machine, but it doesn't work. I may have to call to have it reactivated, or I guess I could run the converter on my work desktop and go from there... who knows?

Yet other news: The wife is 21 weeks pregnant today. We found out last Wednesday that we're having a boy (read our other blog for more info). With the looming prospect of being a parent, I'm becoming more and more apprehensive. I think I'll be a great dad in the long run, but I don't know how I'll do with the day-to-day stuff.

Treasures!

penguin
Originally uploaded by jkeyes0

On the way back from lunch today, I noticed one of the departments in the building I work in was having a charity fundraiser, selling "treasures" on tables in the lobby. I gave the tables a quick glance, and stumbled upon this little guy for $2. Normally I wouldn't give in to an impulse like that, but for $2, I decided I would like a little linux reminder to put on my desk. :)

Foresight: LiVES Packaged

According to http://lives.sourceforge.net:

What is LiVES ?

LiVES began in 2002 as the Linux Video Editing System. Since it now runs on more operating systems: LiVES is a Video Editing System. It is designed to be simple to use, yet powerful. It is small in size, yet it has many advanced features.

I've been tinkering with the idea (along with some good friends) of creating a linux-based webcast, and as such, I decided to give this program a shot. I packaged it for Foresight Linux, and it is available by the following command: "sudo conary update LiVES=jkeyes0.rpath.org@fl:2-devel".

If anyone knows of any decent tutorials, or other software that they prefer, add a comment here and I'll take a look. Thanks!

System Administrator Appreciation Day

Somehow in all the excitement about, well, nothing, I managed to forget that today, July 25th, 2008, is System Administrator Appreciation Day! Make sure to say "thanks" to your System Admin, because without them, most likely you couldn't do your job.

http://www.sysadminday.com/

Zombie March Chicago

I am so, SO very excited. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've recently rediscovered a love for zombie movies. The wife and I are leaving town to go to Chicago for a few days tomorrow morning (vacation for me, training/vacation for her). Coincidentally, tomorrow afternoon from 2-6pm, an event is being held in the loop, downtown Chicago.



If I had known about this event a bit further in advance, I might have been able to come up with a costume and participate, but as it stands, I'll probably just try to get our bags dropped off at the hotel and get back to the loop with my camera by 2pm. When/if I get some decent pics, I'll post them up on Flickr and make another post here about it.

I giggled like a schoolgirl and clapped my hands at work (making my officemate noticeably disturbed).

More news as it arises!

Zombie Fest

I don't know what got me thinking about it, really... I think I found a copy of Dawn of the Dead (2004) on my jumpdrive, and decided I wanted to know more about zombie movie zistory. A quick Google search later, and I stumbled upon the following, which is an EXCELLENT resource for the aspiring zombie movie buff.

Zombie Movie History @ Best-horror-movies.com

Reading through that page gave me an insight into the long-lived history of the zombie movie, dating back as far as 1932, with White Zombie. One of my most vivid memories from childhood is watching the original Romero classic, Night of the Living Dead. I'm also a huge fan of Shaun of the Dead.

Basically what I'm getting at is I'd like to put together a ZombieFest, just some people getting together and watching a bunch of zombie flicks just for the sake of watching them. (Including, most likely, Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead (1978), Zombi 2 (Zombie in the USA), and whatever else.

I'll probably end up just watching them by myself, which is totally cool, but if anyone else is interested, I'm searching around to see what I've got access to (public domain, Netflix "watch now", divx, etc.). And on that note, of course, here's Night of the Living Dead on Google Video (public domain).

Oh, another really cool part of the site I visited earlier was the "Ask a Zombie Master" section. Lots of fun Q&A.

New Foresight Member

To those of you reading from http://planet.foresightlinux.org, I'd just like to take a moment to introduce myself. My name is Jordan, and I'm a Foresight Linux user.

I'm a 26 year old living in the United States, in Frankfort, Kentucky. I am a Network Analyst for the Kentucky Department of Education - Cabinet for Workforce Development. I support mostly Windows servers and a few Solaris/Unix servers. I have been using Linux full-time since February of 2007, but sporadically since 2001. I had a roommate in college who showed me that there were other things out there besides Windows, and though I couldn't make the switch full-time until just recently, I feel that Linux has been a big part of my life ever since then.

I first heard of Foresight from etank shortly after he started using it. I decided to give it a shot on my new laptop, since I had just purchased it and certainly didn't want to be using Vista. From that time I realized that Foresight has a community that I could grow to be a part of, and a development environment that I can actually participate in. I began working with etank and mkj at the Foresight 20/20 conference in April, and haven't looked back.

Yes, I realize that most of this post was directly copied/pasted from my Foresight wiki page, but it says a lot about me without having to retype.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to doing more as a member of the Foresight community (and hopefully as a developer eventually!).

Posting from Lynx

I'm testing something at the moment... I'm SSH'd into my Ubuntu box at home, running Lynx, and posting here.
Looks like it's working well so far. If this does work, I may try it more often. It's a little weird to look at, but definitely functional. For those that aren't familiar with it, Lynx is a command-line web browser, so I'm not seeing any graphics, just a lot of text.

Foresight membership

The Foresight higher-ups had a FOCUS meeting today (Foresight council meeting).

In this morning’s FOCUS meeting, three new members were approved: jkeyes0 (me!), Zinden, and LanceHaig.

I’m glad to be a part of the Foresight community, and I look forward to contributing in any way that I can.

Packaging frenzy! Foresight Membership?

I spent quite a bit of time at work today creating packages for Foresight. I ended up packaging the following:

• medit
• aqualung
• ManiaDrive

I also tried to package about a half-dozen other things, but failed at all of them. However, that won't sway my determination. I'm really trying to get as many packages that I'm interested in into Foresight, to help make it a more viable day-to-day solution.

In other news, I applied for Foresight membership today as well. By that I mean I put my name on the list to be reviewed by the Foresight council on IRC. Gaining membership shows that I'm playing some part in the community, and allows my blog to be syndicated on Planet Foresight. I'm not sure when the council meeting will be, but hopefully I'll know in advance and I'll post about it here.

Ubuntu Hardy Heron Release Party!

Tomorrow, Saturday April 26th 2008, the Ubuntu Kentucky LoCo Team in association with the BlueGrass Linux Users Group will be hosting the Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) release party. Here are the specifics:

Date: Saturday, 4/26
Time: 3:00pm - 7:00pm EST
Location: Woodland Christian Church
Address: 530 East High Street, Lexington, KY 40502

We're planning on having a couple of people speak about the benefits of linux, the newest changes in this release of Ubuntu and we'll even offer support to new users (bring your laptop along if you want some help!). I'm not sure how the power situation is at Woodland, but I'm sure we can accommodate at least a couple of people at a time.

We're also planning on having some sort of food (probably ordering pizza, and a few other things), so please, everyone come on out!

The Big Day

Well, today's the big day. After I get off work early, I'm heading over to Eric's house and he, fish and I will be leaving for Raleigh, NC for Foresight 20/20. It will probably be about an 8 hour drive, but it'll be worth it to experience a Linux conference for the first time.

In other news, I shaved my beard off. It wasn't growing in quite as nicely as I would have liked. I may try to grow one again in the fall/winter (like waiting 6 months will make a difference...). Here's a new pic of myself (oh yeah, I also got a haircut last night, so the goatee kinda matches the hairstyle for the moment):



In still other news, things have gotten interesting at work. Aside from the terrible situation with Vantage that's still there, our secretary came to me late yesterday afternoon (after 4:15 or so). She said that I have a new "top priority" for the next 2 weeks, passed down from the President of the company.

We have a long-standing contract with a customer and that customer did a walk-through of the plant about 2 days ago now. They visited our Quality Assurance department and... well, let's just say the QA department is in shambles. It looks like something out of the 70's that a tornado has bowled over. The customer in question saw this (apparently they hadn't seen it before...) and said something to the effect of "What kind of quality can we expect out of your products if your quality department looks like this?" Heh.

Because of this, the entire department has been slated for remodeling within the next 2 weeks (meaning, finished within 2 weeks...). A part of that remodeling is that I have to put Panduit (cable management on the walls) up in all the offices and run some new phone / data lines, since people are changing offices. Somehow they've used an entire 24-port switch for 4 people and a total of 5 computers... not sure how that works exactly.

Should be a fun 2 weeks...

Adobe AIR

I'll admit, I'm not very savvy when it comes to newer web technologies but I've got to say, Adobe AIR looks to be a pretty sweet product. I've been playing around more with Twitter lately (mostly today, yeah...) and I've found several AIR-based applications that act like instant messengers communicating with Twitter. Currently, I'm running Spaz. Not the most appropriate name, I'll grant you that, but definitely a neat concept and since it's supposed to be multi-platform I should be able to have the same experience with it on Windows and Linux. I'll be giving that a try when I get home this evening.

On that note, I won't be going home to stay after work. The wife and I decided we're going to a Lexington Legends baseball game this evening. I got online and ordered 2 tickets for $23 total, right on the first base line. I'm not usually a baseball fan, but I do prefer seeing it in person if I'm going to watch. I'll try to take some pics (if the game doesn't get rained out) and post them up here.

Foresight Linux User and Developer Conference

Foresight Linux (one of the Linux distros I've been working with lately) is having a User and Developer Conference from April 18th - 20th in Raleigh, NC. Click here for more information.

I'm going to be attending this event. Anyone else interested?

Laptop struggles

I bought a new laptop a few weeks ago (early-mid March). It's a very nice laptop, with the following specs:

• Dell XPS M1530
• Intel Core2Duo T5450 Processor
• 2Gb DDR2 RAM
• 160Gb SATA HDD
• Nvidia 8400GS 128Mb Video Card
• Dell 1505 draft-n wireless card

This laptop came with Windows Vista Home Premium preinstalled from BestBuy. If you know me at all, you know that I'm not a big fan of Vista, or Microsoft in general. It pays the bills to know how to use and support the software, but that's as far as I like to take my relationship with them.

In spite of that, I decided to give Vista on this laptop a fair shake. Right off the bat, I clashed with UAC (user access control). I hate it. Any time I wanted to do anything (I do a lot of system admin work) I had to "Approve/Deny" it. It took me just a few moments to find the setting to disable UAC, then I was back to working.

I managed to hook the laptop up to my TV through HDMI (yeah, the XPS has an HDMI port... how awesome is that?) and watch some Hulu.com on the 56" TV. All was going well, then I noticed that the wireless-n wasn't connecting at the appropriate speed to my D-Link router. My wife's Windows XP machine (don't get me started...) has a Belkin wireless card that consistently connects at 270Mbps, whereas my Vista machine was only getting 130Mbps.

After doing some research, I found out that it was due to the bandVista was using to connect (20Mhz vs 40Mhz for the higher speeds). However, if I changed it over to 40Mhz, even if I was sitting next to the router I'd lose connection after so many seconds.

Because of all this, I decided to give Linux a whirl on it. I first installed Ubuntu 8.04 Beta. Realizing that my wireless card had a Broadcom chipset, I knew I was in for an interesting time, but I didn't know the half of it... Apparently there's a bug in the linux kernel (between 2.6.23 and 2.6.24-14) that stops Ndiswrapper from working correctly, which means it stopped me from using my wireless card. I tested this on both Ubuntu and Foresight Linux 2.0. There were workarounds before the Ubuntu update was released, and I could manage to connect that way, but it was shaky at best.

Once I heard about the Ubuntu update (I think it was a kernel update, to 2.6.24-15-generic), I formatted and reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04 Beta. I installed Ndiswrapper, the Windows wireless driver, and I was off and running. I set up my Nvidia card, all the "restricted" things (flash, java, codecs, dvd playback, etc.) and I was ready to roll. However, I soon noticed that even though Ndiswrapper was working and I could connect to the network just fine, I would randomly drop the connection. I'd be watching a video on Hulu.com and it would just stop playing. The only way I could get it to go again would be either to restart the system or "sudo rmmod ndiswrapper && sudo modprobe ndiswrapper" then wait for the connection to reestablish.

With that said, I've got my laptop at work with me today and it connected to our wireless-g network flawlessly (it even has WPA turned on, which I've never been able to configure on linux before without some major work). I set it up to ping google non-stop, and it hasn't dropped a single packet.

I think the final configuration (at least for the time being) for my laptop is going to be Windows XP Pro SP2 and Foresight Linux 2.0 (they don't have the kernel fix yet, but I can workaround and I'd really like to give it a fair shake). I'll update with more information as it becomes available.