It’s been a rainy weekend.

Friday evening I went out to get my hair cut. I also uncharacteristically stopped at a couple department stores for some idle shopping. I ended up buying a bigger purse (which I needed) but also browsing some other departments. It was nice to just be away from work and home alone for a while.

Yesterday was spent playing with computers. Michael is redoing the MythTV box, the Gentoo Unstable install on it has been somewhat unstable for the past few months, and he wanted to move it over to stable, compile it with DVD support and install another harddrive.

I spent the better part of the day working on my laptops and generally goofing around with other little things. Michael brought home some old laptop harddrives that I tried out to see if they still worked – alas they were trash. I spent some time fighting with my wireless card in Ubuntu Dapper, and finally gave up – but I was helped by the fact that a bug report exists for my problem (thanks to Romana for finding the link to that report for me). Hopefully it’ll be remedied before support for Breezy ends, but for now I’m still using Breezy on these laptops so the wireless will work.

So I grabbed the Breezy CD and installed the server version on both laptops. Once that was completed, I apt-get installed the following packages (plus all their dependencies, which were many):

xserver-xorg
xinit
xfonts-base
xfce4
atmel-firmware
ssh
gnome-system-tools[1]
firefox
aterm
gimp

And the laptops were ready to go! Wireless runs great on both of them.

I made their desktops very basic looking:

– R2A6
– R2B1

I grabbed the background images from this site, which has reasonably high res photos of droids without other stuff in the image.

[1] When I first checked out standard Ubuntu I discovered the network-admin tool, included in the gnome-system-tools package, which is a happy-clicky-gui tool that I use to find and connect to wireless networks. If anyone has a better recommendation for what I should use for this purpose, PLEASE let me know, I haven’t really looked around.

We had a nice weekend with DarkSol (Ian).

He arrived Friday evening around 6PM, the drive up from VA took him about 6 hours. After chilling out for a bit we all piled into the Civic and went over to Sly Fox for dinner. Ian isn’t much of a drinker, so after a bottle of pilsner at home and a pint of Route 113 IPA at Sly Fox he was pretty much done for the night. We got our growlers filled and went home to watch some MST3K, I ended up going to bed around 10 (I’m and old lady).

Saturday morning Michael made a delicious rosemary French Toast breakfast, and we spent most of the day just hanging out in the computer room, talking and working on our computers. In the evening we went out to Ortinos Northside for some food and beers, I was dying to have some of the Delirium Tremens (my FAVORITE beer!) that they had just tapped. We weren’t disappointed, the food and the beers were delicious, Ian even got to try a lambic. When we returned home we sat out back around the fire pit for a couple hours.

At 10 that night Michael and Ian did a join radio show on AKA Radio. I stayed up for some of it, but ended up hitting the sack around 11:30.

Sunday was similarly low-key, Ian and Michael slept in past 10. We actually woke Ian up (we’re terrible hosts) to offer him some breakfast around 10:30 – he had a bit of a hangover, oops! But not surprising, since he had at least 5 reasonably high alcohol content beers Saturday night, quite a bit for someone who doesn’t normally drink.

Instead of going home Sunday evening, we insisted that he spend the night again and leave on Monday morning. The picture below was taken Sunday afternoon, I wanted to get a better one after I saw Caligula’s glowing eyes in this one, but the boys loved it too much.

So the only sights he saw were of some great PA beers, but I think a nice relaxing weekend was what we all needed.

Of course less than a week after Michael spends lots of time to detail all the machines on our network, I bring home another to add to his list :)

I’m friendly with some of the IT guys at work, and the other day one of them was cleaning out one of the “old computer junk” closets. I happen to notice that he’s throwing a bunch of Dell laptop docking stations into a box, so I stopped to ask what was going to happen to all of them.

“We just throw out the docking stations, why, do you want one?”

“My personal laptop is old, but I’ll bring it in tomorrow and see if one of these stations will work with it!”

On Friday I brought my laptop in and went into the warehouse where the piles of old computer junk was piled. Alas, all the docking stations I found were for Dell Latitude notebooks, not Inspirons. Dejected, I walked passed the IT office, said “nope, only Latitude docking stations out there, no Inspirons.”

One of my IT buddies got up and pondered this, “I think there still might be one in the other building, wait here.” So he went to the other building, and came back with a Dell Port Replicator II, the docking station for the Inspiron! ROCK!

“Do you need a power supply too?”

Sure.

So he goes and gets the power supply, and returns with a power supply in one hand and a laptop that looks very similar to mine in the other.

“Here’s the power supply, and this is an even older Inspiron than yours, but you might want it for parts?”

It was a Pentium 2, I don’t need more old computers!

“Really, if you don’t take this we’re going to throw it away. I think it’s got a 4 gig harddrive in it that could be used.”

I was persuaded, my Inspiron only has a 3 gig harddrive, I figured that even if it was too old to be useful I could pop out the harddrive and use it in my laptop.

I spent some time on my lunch break pulling up the specs on this Inspiron 7000 and found this site – it’s a pretty decent machine! 366mhz, 128M ram (only can upgrade to 192). It was slightly beat up, doesn’t lock closed properly when you close it, but if this machine actually runs it could be a perfect machine to set up with a wireless NIC in the magic room.

So after confirming that I wouldn’t get in trouble for walking off with company propery (“Nope, it’s been off the books for years, we didn’t even realize it was still around”) I brought it home.

This morning I put in the Ubuntu Dapper Server install CD in and installed it. Got it running with XFCE4 and all. It runs great, these old Dell laptops are great! And even better, it doesn’t have a 4 gig harddrive – it has a 10 gig harddrive! So I’ll probably be putting this harddrive in my laptop to replace the 3 gig one. The only disappointment is with Dapper itself, it still isn’t seeing my Wireless NIC – a flaw I hoped was fixed since the official release, looks like I’ll be sticking with Breezy on my laptop until I find the solution.

I totally scored.

And now DarkSol is sitting next to me using the laptop :) I’d hate to make his visit a side note on an entry about computers, so I’ll blabber on about our weekend with him visiting later %)

I’ve been taking walks at lunch these past few days because it’s been nice, but today it’s a bit more humid than I’d like so I get to finally write in this. Besides, MorganHorse needs something to read when she’s bored at work.

I’ll start with beer. This week I tried some new beers, two of them ended up being quite good.

First was the Three Floyds Gumballhead. Michael talks about it here. It’s a wheat, but it’s dry-hopped, which gives it much good hoppiness. Crisp, a little sweet and goes down easy, very good summer beer. It was on tap at Ortino’s Northside and we brought home a couple bottle-conditioned bottles, I’m not sure which I like more, I’m actually leaning toward the one on tap because it’s sweeter.

Second was the Sly Fox Pub Ale. While IPAs and Belgians are on the top of my list as far as beer styles go, I do enjoy the occasional English-style pub ale, Boddingtons is a favorite and so is Monty Python’s Holy Grail Ale (which I bought as a joke, but have since had in bottles AND on tap – it’s good!). This Sly Fox Pub Ale ranks right up there with these favorites as far as I’m concerned. It has “little bubbles” from the nitrogen that’s pumped in while it’s being poured (a la Guinness and Boddingtons), and has a finish that seemed similar to a Maibock, very refreshing for a pub ale. I don’t order dessert every time we go out, but I couldn’t resist pairing this beer with a slice of carrot cake.

I also tried the Shipyard IPA since it was on special in bottles and I’d never tried that Maine brew. It wasn’t very good as far as IPAs go, watery and pretty weak overall, but at $2.50/bottle I wasn’t expecting much from it.

Now audiobooks! I have been hitting the library for audiobooks these past few months, and early this month the Lansdale Library got in a whole pile of new ones, hooray! I decided to pick up Confessions of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella. Anyone who knows me probably knows that “chic-lit” is not my style, but I guess it was curiosity that drove this choice. This was a highly acclaimed novel in the genre (with several sequels) and addressed a shopping addiction that I can’t relate to at all. As you might expect, I hated it, but I listened to the whole thing. This week I picked up The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova which is about a young woman who is tracking down Dracula, it’s cheesy in an “I’m trying to be dark and serious” way, still not generally my style, but it’s turning out to be fun to listen to.

Now movies! We watched What the Bleep Do We Know!? last night. It was recommended by some people I like and respect as a good film attempting to unite Quantum Physics and Spirituality, so I went into it expecting it to be pretty good. I was horribly disappointed. There were glaring factual errors that even I could pick out, and even some of the things that weren’t outright lies were presented in a misleading way. The leap they made from Quantum Physics to Spirituality was just that, a LEAP. I remember when I first learned about Quantum Physics, by reading Discover magazine in High School – I got that “OH MY GOSH I CAN WALK THROUGH WALLS… wait, I can’t *ponder for 3 years*” But then you get over it because there is not enough evidence to draw conclusions about the nature of reality and all that; this movie didn’t get over it and drew all sorts of wacky conclusions. I’m not trying to say that the movie was all off-base and wrong, it certainly had good moments, but I tire of people trying to link science and spirituality in such a poor manner – it makes them both look bad.

Fabric, there is a fabric outlet within walking distance of my job. I never paid much attention to it because I didn’t care about fabric until I got my sewing machine. I went there earlier this week, and wow! Lots of fabric! Much of it is $1-2 per yard, the nicer stuff is closer to $5 and up – these are not bad prices for fabric I think? I just ended up spending a few bucks on a pile of fabric remnants ($3.50), a pile of buttons ($1.50), a 6″ zipper ($.25) and a package of purple lacing ($.75) – all stuff to practice with. I’ll be making clothes for my stuffed animals for months – hahaha!

Oh, and this week Michael updated Bevilacqua.us to showcase all our computers, Check out the Clockbot Network here.

Finally, (DarkSol) is coming up tomorrow %D I’m excited, between work and family events this week things have been a bit stressful so I needed something to look forward to.

Since I’ve been lazy, stressed and tired all week, there is a bunch of stuff I need to get done this evening before DarkSol arrives tomorrow. Quick cleaning of the house, laundry, mending a fitted sheet to use with the spare bed (with my sewing machine!) and probably half a dozen other things I am forgetting about. Michael is hitting the grocery store today so we’ll actually have food here when he shows up (thank goodness, Michael also mowed the lawn yesterday <3).

And now my lunch break is over *back to work*

Friday night we met up with Michael’s friend from work Juliana and her boyfriend at Triumph Brewing in New Hope for a late (9PM) dinner. I’d never been to Triumph before, it’s pretty far for us to drive (almost an hour) and the only time Michael had gone was on his way home from an event he attended in New Jersey with Bob.

The atmosphere was pretty typical for a hip, modern, brewpub. The clientele was almost exclusively 20-30-somethings, and they ID us at the door (which later struck me as odd, in the table area there was a family with kids – hmmm). They had a band, which playing pretty typical “rock” stuff, it was pretty awful ;) Luckily after finishing a beer at the bar we got a table outside under the stars, the evening was cool and beautiful. We enjoyed their Bengal Gold IPA, which was a pretty average IPA, hoppy and a bit citrusy. We hung out until around 11:30, they talked about going to another bar/club in the area, but I was pretty tired from yet another long week at work and was TOTALLY A PARTY POOPER and said I was tired and wanted to go home. So we got growler of the Bengal Gold IPA and headed home.

We now have 7 growlers, this is our first clear one.

Yum yum, growlers.

Yesterday was a pretty mellow, lazy day. I worked on some tutorials for a while. I also did my first fresh install of Ubuntu Dapper. The LiveCD+Installer thing is a very interesting idea. A pretty fully functioning Gnome session comes up, you click on the Install icon on the desktop to start the install, then you can play games, surf the web, do whatever. Of course having gnome running is pretty heavy overhead if you have an older machine, the install went pretty slow on my 450mhz P3 with 256M ram – and there is no option on that disk to do a text-based install, boo. Apparently you have to download the “Alternate install CD” if you want the text-based install or to do anything special. I wasn’t about to download and burn another ISO for that, so I just went through the typical install.

My main reason for doing this fresh install was Ubuntu-Women support related stuff, I want to be as helpful as I can to people who drop by with more typical installs than what I have on my laptop. Plus, one of the tutorials I’m working on will work best if I have directions and screenshots from a basic Ubuntu install. I also wanted a list of all the default packages installed on a pretty typical Ubuntu install – everyone I asked for such a list would point me to the list of all packages in Ubuntu, or would try to teach me how to install packages(!). So now I have a list (returned by dpkg -l after the install was completed).

Yesterday I also aquired the Pimsleur Spanish Levels 1-3. I’ve been playing with the idea of brushing up on my terrible spanish since we considered a trip to Peru earlier this year. I took spanish from 4th grade – 11th grade in school, but it wasn’t taught well, there was no organization to it, so we learned the same grammatical rules several years in a row, had teachers that were from Mexico, Columbia, Spain… very different spanishes in those different places. Living in Maine we had no exposure to real spanish speakers, at the time there wasn’t even a spanish television station in the area. It’s amazing that I took spanish for so long and still can rarely follow a conversation in spanish, let alone speak it myself.

Anyway, I figure it’s about time I get back to learning that. It’d be nice to visit Peru and have a clue what the signs say and how to get directions from natives. Plus, it’ll be really useful when we finally make it over to Europe, spanish is so similiar to Italian and Portuguese that getting around in much of southern Europe would be greatly aided by knowing how to speak spanish. Pimsleur is an audio-only method, but I did learn plenty about pronunciation of letters and words in spanish at school so reading it won’t be a problem once I gain the ability to speak conversationally. I’ll be tossing a few lessons on my mp3 player.

Today we don’t have plans, but it’s beautiful out so I’ll be spending some of the day outside.

I don’t want to be buried when I die. I have a bunch of reasons why, but there are 3 major ones.

1. It is a waste of time and money to go through the embalming process, my body will be a chemical-filled mess when it’s put in the ground and won’t break down naturally.

2. Even if I believed in the religious stuff surrounding the importance of being buried, my body will probably be dug up eventually, either for “progress” (graveyard in perfect spot for commercial development) or “science” (archeologists digging up bones). Doesn’t this eventuality sort of make being buried for some religious reason silly?

3. It just seems weird to bury people, I’m a bit freaked out by it. My father was cremated, as was my grandfather. I’m going to continue that tradition when I die.

Feel free to disagree, I don’t mean to offend. I realize that there is a lot of closure for families when they see an embalmed body at a wake, or that traditional coffin going into ground thing.

But this entry is about reason #2.

When I moved to this area about 5 years ago we lived in an apartment near Montgomeryville. Route 309 in Montgomeryville has a mall, hundreds of big stores, shops and restaurants. In the two years I lived in that apartment they expanded substantially, cutting down trees, building more buildings, I’d say the area grew at least 20% in two years. It’s even more developed today; the gym I go to regularly is one of the newer buildings that they cut down trees to build.

In the middle of all this commercialism was a quaint little, white church. It was across the street from Montgomery mall, nestled between Route 309 and a Burger King and had a little graveyard out back. I always felt sort of bad for that little church, and made an offhand comment more than once that I “don’t want to be buried because I know I’d end up next to a burger king and my poor body would reek of hamburgers for eternity.”

A few months back I drove by this little church, and saw big Caterpillar trucks in that graveyard. What on earth are they doing? They aren’t digging up the graves are they? They wouldn’t…

A few weeks later I noticed that all the gravestones were gone. By this point I was pretty sure they hadn’t taken them away to be washed, they had moved the graves. Gross.

A couple weeks after that there was a sign on the property saying something like “Join Burger King! Move your business here!”

A couple weeks ago I was leaving the gym and saw this:

Guess what used to be where that pile of rubble is? The church!

And this is the former graveyard:

(The pictures are somewhat deceiving, I took them early in the morning and tried to not get cars in the picture, 309 is a very busy route in this area, two lanes going each way where this picture was taken.)

This made me really sad for some reason.

Maybe I’m remembering the cute little white church in my hometown that looked similar to the one that used to be here.

Or maybe it just kills me to see any sacred places torn up and developed.

Or maybe it just depresses me to be living in a society that believes in burial but feels it’s ok to just dig up those bodies and relocate them when enough money becomes involved.

Michael and I went with some of his family members to a Reading Phillies game last night. Game recap here, they won 4-1.

I’m not much of a sports person, as if that’s not obvious. In fact, this is only the second baseball game I’ve ever been to in my life. The first was when I was a teenager, I went to a Portland (Maine) SeaDogs game, which they lost. But the weather last night was beautiful and I wasn’t about to give up free tickets to an outdoor event. It’s pretty amazing how those high powered lights can make the whole stadium look like it is still daylight out, after remarking on this Michael said that we really should hit a Philadelphia Phillies game sometime, since their stadium is HUGE and very impressive. The company I work for often has free tickets in their own box at that stadium, I might try to snag a couple next time an email goes out giving some away.

The game itself was just a baseball game. I enjoyed myself, didn’t eat too much terrible food (just some French Fries and Twizzlers), and soaked in the cool weather. There certainly were a lot of advertisements peppered throughout the entire production and little side games for spectators to keep people interested, they threw a lot of stuff into the stands for people to catch too. I guess this sort of thing is just part of baseball today, and certainly did its job keeping people excited about the game, even if there still was a bunch of people leaving after the 7th inning (a Reading win was pretty obvious by that point).

We got home around 10:30PM. I actually managed to get out of bed on time this morning so I could get to the gym shortly after 6AM. Unfortunately when I got there the parking lot was almost empty, there were a few people milling around the doorway. I got out of my car as a couple women were walking toward their own cars.

“It’s closed. We’ve been here since 5:30 – nothing! We give up!”

How annoying! I am wearing my gym clothes! I need to shower and dress for work! I dragged myself out of bed to get to the gym this morning and they are CLOSED! ARRGG!!

So I sat in my car and read a book that I had stuffed in my gym bag (thank goodness) until someone finally came in at 7AM to open the gym. 7AM? Sigh. They didn’t even bother swiping people’s cards as we came in, there were about 20 people waiting and they “had to wait for the computers to come up” which apparently takes 10 minutes or something. I did manage to get on the elliptical for 20 minutes and the machines for another 20 or so, but I really didn’t do enough, I’ll have to go back tomorrow morning. What a waste of my morning. I’ve been drafting a letter to the gym in my head all morning about how pissed I am, we pay a decent amount of money for a gym that will be open when they say they will be, and the gym is not on my way to work, gas isn’t cheap. I know, I know, this is just once, there was probably some emergency and the person who opens it couldn’t come in, blah blah blah. It just threw off my whole morning.

I’m sitting here at lunch eating some leftovers from dinner last night. Michael made pasta and falafel balls.

Falafel … is a fried ball or patty made from spiced fava beans and/or chickpeas. It is a highly popular form of fast food in the Arab East, but is also made as a snack food for the youth. Falafel is very common in Greater Syria and it is the most popular daily food in Syria. The word “falafel” comes from [an] Arabic word … meaning pepper.

I’d never had falafel before, but he figured we should try it as a substitute for meatballs (which I don’t particularly like). He made a good choice, falafel balls with pasta and tomato sauce are yummie!

I went wedding dress shopping in Iselin New Jersey with Nita. It was fantastic of her to drive us up there.

But talk about an overwhelming experience!

First of all, Iselin is like a Chinatown, except Indian. There is Indian fast food, shops all over the place selling indian videos and such, all sorts of indian clothing shops, indian jewelry – and almost every person we saw on the street was of indian descent. In fact, I think the only european americans we saw all day were the cops and a few at the indian buffet we had for lunch.

Many of the dress shops we entered sold more material than actual dresses, I suppose most basic indian dresses aren’t terribly complicated to make if you know what you’re doing. Of course I’m not going to do such a thing, so we had to just hit the shops that worked in pre-made.

The first shop we went into that we could serious consider things in was a disappointment. There was a whole separate room for wedding dresses, and although the prices were generally reasonable, the feel was high pressure and a bit snobby. The woman helping me actually laughed at me when I told her my price range and the colors I liked. It would seem that she was one of those types that hated that I was some white American girl trying to steal her culture. I decided right then that I wouldn’t be shaken by people holding such distain. She really tried to push me into getting one dress, which I liked, but I couldn’t fit the top on – she said it could be custom fitted, but I don’t want to commit to a custom fit before I know how it looks on me! This is why I’m shopping in real stores! I managed to leave that store eventually, the woman wasn’t too happy though. Sheesh.

We then visited a few other stores. I hate shopping for clothes, and this experience was even worse. The pressure is really on when you’re deciding what dress to wear at your wedding. You’ll have those wedding pictures forever! So many people will see them for years! AAAHH! A couple shops we went to were way out of our price range, nice wedding “boutiques” that informed me that I’d have to spend $2K on any dress that had lasting quality to it. Lasting quality? Do I want it to be durable too? Gosh, I’m only planning on wearing this ONCE! I want it to look nice, but I don’t need something that is hand-woven and hand stitched that took 300 man-hours to create.

About an hour into our search I was feeling very discouraged, and it was hot out. I was getting to the point where traditional wedding dresses were looking great and I almost wanted to tell Nita that we were just going back to KoP to hit a David’s Bridal. Nita admitted that she was concerned that we’d either leave with nothing or I’d be so frustrated that I’d wind up buying something that was “good enough”

Finally we arrived at Deen Fashion, 1405 Oak Tree Rd. It was a decent looking place, just selling dresses and the decor was not intimidatingly rich. I went to the counter and told the woman what I was looking for and my price range. She didn’t laugh or snicker, she just went with us through the shop and showed me dresses in my price range.

That’s when I found it. The perfect pink and off-white dress.

I tried it on, and it fit, only needing some minor adjustments. The woman at the shop said she’d give me a slight discount so the dress would be more within my price range (nice!) and that since the alterations were so simple and I lived so far away that they could be done that afternoon and I could take the dress home. EXCELLENT!

It was about 2:30 in the afternoon by this time. I was so excited to have found something. We hit an indian buffet for lunch, which I enjoyed but I’m not so sure about what Nita thought (which made me feel a bit bad, I offered to buy her a hamburger once we left town). After lunch we went looking for something for Nita to wear at the wedding but didn’t end up finding anything, she’s going to do some browsing online and let me know when she’s found something.

We left Iselin around 5. PHEW!

While coming home from the PLUG meeting on Google Internals the other night told me this story.

For those of you too lazy to click (I know I probably would be) the story is about the evolution of a popular Alternative Rock radio station in the Philadelphia area, Y-Rock 100. It was an FM radio station for 12 years, when that died (and left the Philadelphia area without an Alternative Rock station!) some of the DJs recreated it as an internet radio station, and just recently this very popular internet radio station was picked up by the folks over at XPN as Y-Rock On XPN. It’s pretty much commercial-free, the exception being a few seconds when you first connect to the stream. At the end of this month they’ll even have some FM radio time on XPN a few evenings per week. Cool.

Now I don’t listen to music radio much, I never listened to Y-Rock FM when it was around. Most of the stuff on the FM radio is littered with shamelessly promoted garbage and I hate commercials, gossip, and stupid DJs who don’t know when to shut up, I will change the station before listening to any of this. I listen to NPR via WHYY most of the time. When I want music I’ll usually fire up the interesting mix offered by plain old XPN or just pop in a CD of my own. At work I listen to Podcasts and WHYY and XPN streams.

But there are times when I just want to turn off my brain and chill out to some good Alternative Rock. I’m very happy to have this great option via internet radio now. (And thanks to for telling me about it!)

While at PLUG the other night I was asked what sort of techie stuff I’ve been up to lately. I had to confess that I had been doing “Nothing!” I’ve been working with Ubuntu-Women stuff, but that’s more sociological than technical (even if I am learning all the ins and outs of wikis). There are certainly a few causes 1) too hot to be near my computer (there is AC up there, but it can only do so much when it’s 100F out) 2) working a lot of overtime at my real non-IT job 3) other stuff like writing and reading taking up a lot of time and I enjoy them more when it’s hot. Still, it was a bit depressing. I think I’m going to resume my work with Perl-TK in the near future.

Speaking of which, has anyone read Perl Best Practices? Or are there any links/books you can recommend that discuss good Perl (or general) programming practices? I really need to work on writing code that has some sort of quality, in the past “working” has been good enough for me, and that’s the reason I’m a lousy programmer ;D

The heat wave we were having that got us close to 100F for almost a week has drifted off. It’ll only get up in the high 80s today, and the next few days look like they’ll be nice and sunny. Going to the gym in this heat has been tough, it’s air-conditioned of course, but when you’re sweating even before you walk into the gym and the humidity creeps in doing 30 minutes on the elliptical at a reasonable pace and resistance gets really tough – today was the first day I actually made it to 30 minutes.

Finally, I’m delighted to say that I’m going up to Iselin, NJ with Nita tomorrow! We’ll be shopping for my wedding dress, hopefully will find something wonderful and within my budget that I can take home right away – I don’t want to drive all the way back there to get something that’ll need to be fitted/customized. I’m so excited! I’ll have to bring my camera.