I made it!

With all of the excitement of life lately, I neglected to study more than a few hours total for my GMAT exam. However, rather than rescheduling, I decided to go forward with it and take it, just to see what happens. Thankfully, I did rather well (690), well enough to help me get accepted into the Miller MBA program (BSU). I start in the Spring!

If you had told me 8 years ago, after having finished my BS, that I would be excited about going to grad school, I would have laughed in your face. Loudly. I guess that has changed with age, and I'm now very pumped about my first two classes, ACC 501 (Financial Accounting) and MGT 500 (Managing Organizational Behavior).

OpenOffice 3 on Ubuntu eee edition

OpenOffice 3 is rumored to be officially released on Monday Oct. 13 (Today, technically). It was reported that the distribution was already being sent out to the mirror locations, though no official link to them was made readily available. But by simply copy-pasting-editing the link from openoffice.org I was able to download the .deb distribution to my Asus eee PC 900 running Ubuntu-eee 8.04.1:

http://openoffice.bouncer.osuosl.org/?product=OpenOffice.org&os=linuxinteldeb&lang=en-US&version=3.0.0

Once downloaded and unpacked, I ran the update script:

./update /usr/lib/openoffice/

This installed OpenOffice 3.0 to /opt/openoffice.org3/ . Now I needed to do some digging and figure out a nice way for the slick Netbook-Remix interface to launch OOO 3 instead of 2.4. So I edited /usr/bin/ooffice to look like this:

#!/bin/sh
# /usr/lib/openoffice/program/soffice "$@"
/opt/openoffice.org3/program/soffice "$@"

This may not be the best practices way of accomplishing this, but it worked for me! Enjoy!

Adventures in retail

Tonight after pulling the cracked radiator from my truck, I needed to run to Walmart and then to Domino's to pick up a quick dinner for the family (mine plus nephew and in-laws).

Walmart
At Walmart, I intended to pick up some magnetic spice racks for the side of the fridge, some Capri Suns for the kids, and an SD card for my eeePC. I struck out with the magnetic spice racks, but found a decent deal on a 2GB SD card in the photo department ($12). Sweet, I thought, and reached down to pull one off the rack. LOCKED! Rats. So, I tracked down La Photo Gal and asked for her to unlock the slider deal so I could take my $12 item and be on my way to track down the Capri Suns. Nope, she said, I have to pay for that item at the photo counter. I'm not allowed to walk through the store with this $12 item without paying for it. Seriously? She's just doing her job, I'm not going to argue with her, so I pay for it, get my little bag, and head to the juice aisle, shaking my head all the way there. Somewhere some brilliant manager made that rule, and probably received a bonus for loss prevention initiatives. Woot.

Domino's
After reaching my car in the Walmart parking lot, I rang Domino's to place our order for 3 medium pizzas ($5 per) and an order of garlic cheese bread. After ordering, I was informed that my total was $32 and some change. Huh?!?!?

"Do you not have the $5 pizza deal anymore?"
"Yes, we do, but it's the special and you have to ask for it."
"Really? That's odd."
"Not really, I mean it's the special, so you have to ask for the special. Make sense?"
"Nope. If something's on sale at Walmart, do I have to tell the cashier?"
"No. They have those barcode things."

I'm pretty sure she could hear me rolling my eyes.

"Ok. What's my new total? I'd like the special."
"$20.50."
"Thanks."

*click*
*sigh*
*weep for America*

eeePC and Ubuntu

Shortly after getting my eeePC 900 I decided to ditch the installed Xandros and installed Ubuntu 8.04 eee edition. It took some tweaking to get a few things working properly, but eventually made it's way to stable and fine.

Then the Ubuntu eee team (which I think is mostly one guy doing the work and thousands asking for it) released 8.04.1 which included a sweet "Netbook Remix" interface. I installed that on the 4GB SSD drive, and setup the 16GB SSD drive as the /home mount. Now, though, I was having speed issues. When running, everything seemed to be "delayed": typing, clicking, etc. After suffering through it for a bit, and doing some research, I decided to start over. I formatted both drives, this time formatting the 16GB /home drive as ext2 instead of the journaling ext3 filesystem. Then I reinstalled Ubuntu 8.04.1 with no problems. Other than the known "no audio after hibernate" bug, I now have zero issues with Ubuntu on this eeePC.

I wish I had a free XP license. I'd like to try installing XP on it and see how that runs.

I wish I could find a good, inexpensive car charger for it now...

Sophie Laughing

Is this green?

I don't know about "green", but it's certainly seeming to be a good move for the green in my wallet.

I purchased a 1996 Cavalier that needed some work:

$500 car
$15 part to fix it
$120 two tires
$40 battery
-----
$675 in total

Today, I re-filled the tank. Just shy of 400 miles on that tank, with a good mix of city and highway driving. I achieved 29.25 mpg. Not bad for a 12 year old car that's been sitting for 2 years, eh? :-)

Now if my truck would stop overheating and a fishing boat would magically appear in my backyard, I'd be all set!

Treasure hunt

I think this place would be a blast to visit. I would find it fun to imagine the story behind some of the items for sale there.

Speaking of treasures, my father-in-law came over the other day with a truck full of computers and parts. We spent a few hours gutting the old systems and testing some things before recycling the remaining things we didn't want. I have a box of DVD/CD drives, some old RAM, NICs, a nice SATA controller, a TV Tuner card, some great Antec power supplies, a working 17" LCD monitor, a laptop to work on (seems to have a short in the keyboard), and some SoundBlaster sound cards. $10 for all of it. :) Good geek kill indeed.

Odd choice for categories, Amazon

I don't think I really need to comment on this.

Steal Underpants

Why is it so bad for companies to make money? I hear all of this "windfall profits tax" talk coming from the left side of the political spectrum and I just don't understand it.

How can you punish a company that is making profits? Doesn't that just mean that they're doing what a business is supposed to do? Provide a product or service that a consumer can purchase, and do so in a way that brings more revenue than cost.

If you punish a business for doing just that, what keeps them in business? I was taught at an early age that if I did something that warranted punishment, I should not do it again. I did not like punishment.

I guess in the future, all businesses should be run by masochists.

All of this thought was fueled by the news today stating that Exxon had recorded record profits for this quarter. In most articles, the fact that the profit margins were only 9.7% is barely mentioned, if at all. What's also missing is that many companies operate on margins that are much larger than this, including media/publishing, who often target 20%+ margins, and banks and financial institutions that are still operating on 20%+ margins despite the rocky US economy.

What a weekstart

The transmission, without warning, crapped out on my Regal this morning on my way to work. Luckily (or not?) I was still at a gas station having just filled up the tank. It was upon attempting to leave the gas station that the forward drive gears decided to do their best impression of neutral.

As crappy as the morning was, this still made it all better

Wow I can't believe I didn't break it

A month or so ago Hannah's DS Lite got dropped and cracked the case at the hinge. While we were waiting on the Gorilla Glue to dry, not knowing if it would work to glue it back together, we did some research on replacement shells. Lo and behold, not only are they available on Ebay, but you can get them in limited edition colors, including those never offered in the US markets. Hannah fell in love with the ice blue color only offered in Japan, so we ordered it.

It finally showed up on Friday, and last night I decided to dive into it after watching a few youtube videos demonstrating the disassembly process. By 4 AM (5 hours later) I called it quits, having made three attempts yet unable to get the top screen to display properly. Finally, I got it done today. Those uber-tiny ribbon cables are very difficult to connect with my stubby fat fingers. Next time, small tweezers or rheostat will be used. It turned out pretty sweet!

Sophie June

Here's a sweet video of my daughter, Sophie. She loves her Chuck E. Cheese balloon. Not only does she look like me, she is also distracted by shiny things.

Getting caught up

So it has been a while since my last post. Let's catch up:

1) My daughter, Sophie June, was born. She's perfect and healthy and all is well! You can find a lot of videos on my Flickr and Viddler site.
2) Bathroom remodeled. See Flickr.

The number you have reached isn't the deadbeat you intended to call

Recently I purchased a used LG Migo for Hannah and had it activated with Verizon. From day 1, she was receiving calls from Unavailable and 800/888/866 numbers. She doesn't answer them, but I do for her when I'm around, and ask them to remove the number from their list. Every single one of them is from a DIFFERENT collection agency asking for Tim Rose. He sucks.

Here's what freaks me out, though. We might go a day or two without calls, then the one time I answer one call, there will immediately be two or three MORE from OTHER agencies. It's like they know that someone is currently answering the phone, CALL NOW! How do they do that?

No spring chicken

I'm in the best shape I've been in in years, thanks to my 3-4 days a week at the gym, but it seems nothing could have prepared me for opening weekend of softball 2008. Saturday evening I played in a round robin tournament, playing four games in as many hours. This was my first time playing third base. I think that pitching has helped me with my reaction times, and didn't feel like I got burnt too bad playing there. I did catch a couple of hard shots, both numbing my hand for a while, one knocking my middle finger out of whack a bit. I still need to work on my throws to first.

Sunday started our Spring league season with the team that picked me up as a pitcher. My pitching performance was great, though I was having trouble getting the knuckler to the plate, I only had 2 walks in 2 games and was able to keep decent control of the ball throughout both games. I fielded the position well, too, which seems to send the message that the middle ISN'T open, so find somewhere else to hit, which puts us at a defensive advantage, imo.

So, after 6 games in two days, I feel like I've been hit by a Mack truck. Aches, aches, aches everywhere. This is one of those days where I wish I didn't have a desk job, as I know that if I could be up and around all day, I wouldn't be nearly as sore. I also wish we had a hot tub! :-)

Playing Possum

Today I discovered just how true this phrase rings.

Around noon, Noah was out back carrying on, and when I looked, I saw him tossing something into the air, then barking at, lather, rinse, repeat. Curious, I threw on my shoes and a coat and went out there to find Noah tossing around a medium-sized possum. I got Noah to leave it alone, then inspected the scene. No blood, not a lot of sign of struggle, but the damn thing didn't appear to be breathing, and was stiff when I kicked it. This would be the second possum that Noah has either killed or found dead, as I removed a bloody one from the garden this fall. Anyways, I grab a snow shovel and a trash bag and bag it up and toss it into a standard-issue blue trash can. Problem solved, right?

Wrong.

Around 3:45, I go outside to drop a bag of trash into said blue trash can, only when I open the lid, what do I see? A perfectly alive possum, staring at me! The darn thing was alive the whole time! Playing possum, indeed!

So now the trash can is on its side with the lid open in hopes that he will leave and not return to my yard.

Vista back and rockin'

After my previous foray into the world of Ubuntu, I decided to switch back.  I also wanted to force myself to learn and use Vista more, so not only did I remove Ubuntu, I also eliminated the dualboot and install only Vista.

I wasn't totally displeased with Ubuntu, and in fact, the problem that kept me from using much on my laptop wasn't totally the fault of Linux, but rather ATI and their poor linux driver that wouldn't allow my laptop to wake up from sleep. 

And in other softball news

Looks like I just got picked up on a silver team to pitch this spring on Sundays! Woot! I hope I can contribute and that the work I've been doing over the winter will pay off.

New glove is on the way

My custom Rodriguez glove is on its way to Texas from Canada.  Once it gets there, it will be on its way to me.  I'm so excited!  I picked the size (12"), the web, and the colors for each part.  I can't wait to have a nice, quality glove, especially a one-of-a-kind!

Blockbuster Total Access Request

I love Total Access.  I love being able to exchange in store or by mail.  I still find it easier to find new movies that I've never heard of or forgot about by walking along the walls (read: the new releases) at my local brick & mortar Blockbuster store. 

What I need, though:  A way to add movies to my online queue while walking around the store.  Useful would be a setup much like most stores have bridal/baby registries, where you walk around the store and scan barcodes.  Value-added, Blockbuster!  Let's do this!

What's not in my wallet?

Capital One, that's what.  Today I finally received my refund check for a whopping $1.78.  This should mean that the account is finally closed.  It would appear that Capital One did, in fact, do the right thing by not tacking on any fees, which was my fear from day one.

Baby Young

We had our ultrasound today.  All is perfect!  Everything is developing as it should and working properly.  Bladder, kidneys, heart, it's all where it is supposed to be and doing the right stuff!

It's a girl!

Ah another weekend

This weekend was filled with shopping and breaking.

We went to Indy this weekend to find some jeans for the wife.  We found some great ones at Motherhood Maternity that she's pretty excited about, then followed that up with a maternity clearance rack at Kohl's that we raided.  She got a bunch of shirts for $3-4.

A real funny from the shopping trip:  We pulled into a shopping center from a side road, forcing us to drive beside a Best Buy.  On the roadway we were traveling was a group of emo/punk hooligans, probably in the 14-16 yr old range.  One of the boys, right in front of us (but I don't think they knew that we were there, or that they were in our way), decided to be cool rebel tough guy and throw his pop cup against the side of the building, spraying pop and ice all over it, and leaving the cup, lid, and straw on the ground.  I pulled up next to them, rolled down the window, and simply stated "Hey, you dropped something back there."  I really wish I could post a picture of the look on his face.  It was a nice mix of ghost/fear/nausea.

Broken this weekend?  My wife accidentally dropped my phone into a cup of cranberry juice.  [LG] Chocolate doesn't float in juice.  I went to the Verizon Wireless store, worried that I was about to be a lot less lighter in the wallet as I didn't have the damage insurance.  Thankfully, the replacement phone cost the same amount ($50) as the insurance deductible would have.  No problem!

Our old bed bit the dust today, too.  Hannah and I were wrestling  and one bounce split the rail.  Woops.

Who am I?

Sitting here tonight, listening to the latest episode of Cranky Geeks, and what do I hear?  That I am the newest CEO of Ziff Davis Media!  Ok, maybe not, but it's always strange to hear your name on a relatively popular podcast.  I decided to do a little more Googling on "Jason Young".  I'd done this before, but pretty much just found entries for a college pitcher.

Today's interesting finds:

• SuperJason - dot net developer (strange coincidence!)
• JasonYoung dot com - artist and really slick site
• Ramble On - blog of a systems manager
• The Big Think - blog of...a guy with a woodworking hobby?
• I'm a light board operator ...?
• I'm an Olympic Discus Thrower and strength coach at Texas Tech

When Googling "Jason P Young", go ahead and click "I'm feeling lucky", because my flickr site is the top result!  Also of note:

• Resident surgeon @ Loyola University Chicago.  Not only is his middle initial P, but his middle name is also Paul

That was fun!  Who I really am, though, is a non-smoker!  I feel confident, at this point, that it's for good.  On New Year's Eve, I was in a basement with a bunch of friends that still smoke, and I was honestly having a hard time breathing, and the smell was making me feel ill.  The same goes for today at lunch with my boss and coworker.  I don't remember feeling this way the last time I quit.  Is it the Chantix?  I have no idea, but it feels great.

Ever have one of those days?

I'm having one!  One of those days when everything just falls nicely into place:

1. The plumbers came and without issue removed our leaky water softener.  Only thing left to do is cleanup.
2. My order from PartsExpress showed up, one day after I placed the order.  I have successfully made my first two coax cables now with compression connectors.  Time to jump in the attic and make these splits and drops!
3. My new glasses, which were supposed to be in tomorrow, showed up today!  It was quite odd, actually, because I had to run to WalMart to get some supplies, and had planned on stopping in the vision center to see if, by chance, they were in.  As I was backing out of the driveway, they called to let me know they were in.  WIN!  It's nice having glasses that fit properly and whose lenses I can see through.

Vista gone, Ubuntu follows

I decided that since I wasn't really using Vista much on my laptop, booting almost exclusively into XP, that it was time to try out Ubuntu again. I got rid of the Vista boot manager, then the Vista partition, and went about installing Ubuntu 7.10 on that partition of my laptop.

The only real headaches I ran into were:

1. Wireless card. I needed to use the special unsupported driver for the Broadcom card that came in my Gateway laptop, but I needed some supporting libraries installed, which I couldn't do from the CD. I finally figured out that I needed to use a cable to plug into my router to update to this driver. Then all was well!

2. Video card. See above. Along with this, to run Compiz Fusion with this accelerator (ATI something-or-other), I needed to install xgl and set my x sessions to use it. Simple enough!

I now have the slick graphics turned on, and have installed some gooey Gui fun: Some screenlets and the Avant Window Navigator now adorn my Ubuntu Desktop.

The only headache left to solve is the suspend/hibernate modes. I cannot get the laptop to wake up from this, requiring a hard reset via the power button if I decide to close the laptop lid while booted into Ubuntu. My guess from the little research I've done so far is that I won't be able to solve this nicely, as it appears to be an issue with the video drivers required for the slick graphics.