Michael’s mother gave us So What’s the Difference? by Fritz Ridenour for Christmas. It was very thoughtful of her, she knows we’re really getting into religious studies. I tend to enjoy books that explain differences between religions, so I thought this could be a good addition to that collective.

I gave Ridenour the benefit of the doubt, he might be a Christian but there are plenty of Christians in the world who know about other religions and can discuss and write about them in an intelligent manner. Unfortunately I quickly realized that he’s either ignorant or he’s really into pushing Christian propaganda, and quite possibly both.

Now I realize that it might be slanted toward Christianity, and the Bibilcal references that contradict what other religions proclaim are perfectly appropriate since the book is about looking at other religions and comparing them to Christianity. I understand that in a book of this size you can’t go in depth about anything.

But it is completely inexcusable for some of what he says about these other religions to be COMPLETELY FALSE. It’s inappropriate for him to throw around the word “Cult” which so obviously has negative associations in our culture – I follow a definition of “cult” that drops every organized religion into it, but in an objective review of other religions I won’t start saying so, it just upsets people.

This book has had “Over One Million Copies Sold” – since the target market is fundamentalist christians, I’d say most of the buyers actually believe what is presented here. I don’t think I’d be stretching too far to say that many of these people might not even look further than this book (or exerpts read to/shared with them at Church) for understanding of other religions. Just reading the Amazon.com reviews shows me a bunch of Christians who say how great this book is for “Witnessing to others” and how it’s such a great teaching tool.

Sigh. It makes me sad to see such misinformation be so popular.

I’m wireless! *glee*

I have a Belkin F5D6020 Version 2 wireless card. I bought it about 2 years ago for my Compaq, I’d done my research and was convinced it would work fine in Linux. Of course when I got it home I learned that it was harder to get working than I thought. Never did get it working in Debian, Michael got it working in Gentoo, but then the laptop died. The card has floated around the house since then, I groaned at the prospect of trying to get it working again.

After some searching in the Ubuntu forums a bit I learned that it should just work out of the box. Really? That’d be amazing! So I poked around with it, but since our wireless network is secured in multiple ways I had to wait for Michael to help me with that bit. He took a look at it this evening and said “I think you just need the atmel firmware… but I’m not going to do it for you, you have to do it yourself, I know you can.” Meep.

But he was right. It turns out that Ubuntu has an atmel-firmware package in multiverse. It was as easy as `apt-get install atmel-firmware` – and it all works! I am crazy excited.

So far I’m very pleased with Ubuntu’s hardware detection. I’m not as happy with all the junk it installs, this laptop only has a 3 gig harddrive and with little more than the base install I’m up to 2 gigs. As soon as I got it up I installed XFCE4, but I’ve since uninstalled it and loaded up Gnome. Gnome has nice little tools for doing things, like getting on a wireless network, I think I’m geeky enough to have earned some lazy points on this laptop. I even loaded up Synaptic this evening to browse packages – gasp! ;) I’m sure I’ll toss Gnome once I get used to things, I might even drop Ubuntu entirely and install Debian someday, but for now I just want a clicky happy laptop that works in Linux, and that’s what I have. Thank you Ubuntu!

After a slow start this morning, Michael and I got out of the house around 11 to have some driving lessons and do some shopping.

Driving lessons?

I can’t drive a manual transmission car. Never even tried. When we bought the Civic with manual transmission I was scared! But Michael is willing to teach me, so today we went to an empty church parking lot.

Michael kept me to the basics, I stayed in 1st and neutral the entire time, but I did well! I only stalled it a few times when I let up on the clutch too quickly, and managed to keep the ride relatively jerk-free. I even managed not to be nervous or overly self-critical. I’ll have to practice again soon in a bigger parkinglot so I can practice changing gears and going up hills.

Then we stopped at Linens-n-Things to pick up some curtains for our bedroom. When we bought the house every room had normal plastic blinds. They’re not bad, but they aren’t terribly pretty, curtains would help.

Now curtain shopping is not our favorite thing, our last experience was terrible. This time things went well. We picked out some nice light brown curtains and a couple curtain rods and were on our way. I had to frown at the price though, curtains are pretty simple things, I could probably even make them myself if I had a sewing machine.[lj-cut]

Once we left Linens-n-Things I suggested heading over to Lowe’s with the gift card we got from Michael’s father for Christmas. We only planned on getting a new toliet seat (exciting huh?) but ended up stumbling into the lighting area and decided to get some new overhead lighting for the bathroom and laundry room.

We got home around 2:30 and got to work.

First it was the curtains, Michael got them up in about 20 minutes.

Much better!

Then for the new lighting. Doing anything electrical, even something as simple as replacing overhead lighting, is a foreign thing to me that I think should be a complex art only practiced by professionals. Michael continues to prove me wrong. In about 40 minutes he had both awful florescent lights removed and replaced with the nice, new lighting.

Old, cheap, plastic, florescent lighting

New, glass and metal, incandescent lighting

The difference is amazing, even with one 60 watt bulb in each they are a much brighter than the old florescents. Man I hate florescent lights, the last ones to get rid of are those in the kitchen. Maybe during the next trip to Lowe’s.

Then Michael got the new toilet seat put on, but I didn’t take a picture of it because that’d be weird.

And this is Caligula while we worked. Useless animal! ;)

And now we’re just going to chill out. I’m making spinach lasagne for dinner and we have a bottle of Cavit Pinot Grigio to enjoy this evening in front of the fireplace.[/lj-cut]

I have an upset stomach %(

I called out of work this morning, slept a bunch and now I’m sitting here with my laptop.

“Hey, maybe I can do something useful like get my wireless card working while I’m home with this free time!”

No go. My head hurts and I feel too lousy to use my brain x_x

When I got home last night Michael had a laptop on his desk. He’s always bringing laptops home from work to work on, so I didn’t think much of it, but asked about it all the same.

“It’s yours.”
“Mine?!”
“The last of your Christmas presents!”

YAY!!! %D!!

He’d mentioned an old Dell laptop they had at work about a month ago, said he was going to ask his boss to sell it to him so I could have a laptop. But I hadn’t heard anything since. Apparently he was finally able to convince his boss to sell it.

It’s a Dell Inspiron 7500, 600mhz, 128 megs of ram, I’ll have to look up the rest of the specs when I get home, I just haven’t had time. I have been looking at used laptops for a long time, I would have been perfectly happy with my 333mhz Compaq forever if it hadn’t died. All I wanted was something portable that worked in Linux, this machine is faster than any of the ones I was looking at getting.

I started the Ubuntu install around 6PM, got through the CD part, rebooted and let it install the rest of the way while we were at the MontcoLUG meeting. When we came home around 11PM I was welcomed to the Ubuntu GUI login screen! I logged on and at first glance things seemed to be alright, unfortunately I needed to get to bed and couldn’t tinker and test things. Some searches online lead me to believe there shouldn’t be any problems with the basics, Ubuntu Breezy at least supports everything out of the box (Hoary is on it now). The wireless card is really the only thing that might give me trouble, and there is always ndiswrapper if nothing else works.

It’s such torture to be at work when my new laptop is begging for attention!

Finally, the MontcoLUG meeting.[lj-cut]

We had 7 people, met at a house in Telford, which turned out to be on my way home from work, I pass by it every day. I’d say it went very well. Spent a little while just talking, joined our host’s family in their dining room for a pizza dinner (and some delicious homemade chicken soup).

Clockwise from top left: Lyz Krumbach, Michael Joseph, Marty Squicciarini, Tom Lowery, Lee Marzke, Jesus Arocho, Michael Bevilacqua

After dinner I did a presentation on “Text-based communication in Linux” (links related to the talk here). Then we spent the rest of the evening just chatting about Linux, “wiring the house” and the techological advances in sewing machines (which was quite an interesting and surprisingly long discussion). As with the last meeting, the conversation had a life of it’s own, and I would like to think we all came away from the meeting with something. I also got to unload most of my Ubuntu CDs, and a bunch of books received from publishers.

As the evening wound down, Jesus brought out a bottle of red wine to share. Apparently he and his wife make their own wine! Excellent! Since starting the homebrewing of beer we’ve thought about venturing into wine-making, but until last night I wasn’t convinced it’d be worth it. Jesus and his wife sure can make red wine, not too bitter, not too sweet, nice alcohol content. It was good.

People started yawning shortly before 11 and we wrapped things up. Good stuff.[/lj-cut]

Last night we decided to check another local brewpub off our list and head out to Rock Bottom in King of Prussia with Bob. In Lew Bryson’s book, he defends the fact that it’s in a mall (one of the biggest malls on the east coast!), and so we were hopeful that it would still turn out to be a good place.

I don’t like malls. I don’t like driving around big ones because there are so many people. But I would give this an honest chance.

I think it was around 5:30 that we arrived, had a 15 minute wait (not bad for a Saturday night, we expected worse). Once seated we got a really nice waitress who was honestly excited about the brewery part of the place, she was more knowledgeable than most waitresses we get, it was a pleasant surprise and all the wait-staff seemed to be that way. She got a good tip.

The food was good, entree portions were big. Michael’s dish came with their signature white cheddar mashed potatoes, which I didn’t mind stealing a few fork-fulls of. I got a yummie chicken sandwich. Bob ordered meatloaf, which he seemed to enjoy, he’s the only one who finished everything on his plate. For dessert I ordered the carrot cake that was “made with a whisper of Pale Ale” – yowza! This was some amazing, moist carrot cake, and the slice they gave me was HUGE.

Now, the beer!

I ordered their brewmaster’s special, which was a spicy winter ale based on their amber ale. Honestly? It tasted like an amber ale + a spice cookie. It was good, but probably would have gone better with my carrot cake dessert than with my meal. Then I had their Prussia Pale Ale, which was a pretty average pale ale, I enjoyed it.

The verdict? It was good, but not so outstanding that it’s worth the KoP traffic specifically to get there. I won’t hesitate to go back if I happen to be at the mall, or am meeting friends and KoP is the central location we decide upon (which happens sometimes). I’m glad to know that it’s there.

Michael and I went grocery shopping last night and while checking out the fruits I came across something called a Grapple. “Looks like an apple. Tastes like a grape.”

Why wouldn’t I just eat a grape?

Still, I couldn’t resist. How is this done? Some sort of genetic engineering? I must know! So I picked up a 4 pack and hit the website when I got home.

Unfortunately the truth isn’t as exciting as genetic engineering. On the site they explain how a grapple is made.

“Grapple brand apples begin as a Washington Extra Fancy Fuji Apple. Of all apples this is the one that takes on the grape flavor best. This Patent Pending process is complex and the ingredient mix primarily includes concentrated grape flavor and pure water.
…
There is nothing but flavor being infused into the Fuji apple. The apple takes on no additional sugars or calories. They are not genetically altered in any way.
The apple is as healthy as ever but now has the new exciting grape flavor.”

So they “infuse” a perfectly good apple with fake grape stuff. That’s weird.

They smell like grape juice, nothing like actual grapes. The smell is a bit over-powering, the entire kitchen smells like grape and now my whole cubicle from a single one sitting here. If you smell the apple closely you can still smell appleness through the grapeness.

And the taste? It actually tastes a lot like a normal apple. There is a hint of fake grapeness, mostly in the aftertaste.

I’m not impressed.

My Aunt Elaine and Uncle Chris gave us a Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas. I decided to use this to purchase The Question of God DVD, since I really enjoyed watching it on PBS.

Of course it costs $24.98. You need to spend $25, not including tax, to get free shipping. I’m sure this is done on purpose. The shipping was only $3, but I wasn’t going to just throw that $3 away! So I went searching through their site for cheap stuff. It’s not easy, but I finally managed to stumble upon their Books – Only $1.99 section. I went ahead and spent $3.

So I come home today to 2 Barnes and Noble packages.

Two? Why on earth did they ship them separately?

Then I open them.

Not only did they ship in two separate boxes (a whole box for a dozen cat stickers? egads!) – these are just the first two. The Question of God DVD was held up “1-5 days”! EJKLSJLDFDSSS!

I’m not complaining exactly. I just thought it was funny.

A few months back I purchased Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher of the Carnegie Mellon Project on Gender and Computer Science.

This book had been described to me as “Required reading for women in IT.”

It’s not. [lj-cut]

It’s a wonderful book detailing the work at Carnegie Mellon and institutions around the country to boost the number of women in Computer-related education programs. It does a great job of outlining the problems many women face when confronting computer science in primary schools and universities. It provides solutions for encouraging women in these places promotes a culture different than the typical “white male hacker” image that is so often broadcasted.

I think this is a book that needed to be written. If the view toward women in IT is going to change, a fine place to start is on an institutional level where progress can be monitored and methods for attracting and keeping women in IT programs tweaked in a controlled environment.

This book is required reading for anyone working to create a computer-related education program that attracts women.

But required reading for women who are already working in IT? The book was not written to address the real issues women who have or are trying to build a career in IT face. There are only two reasons I can think of that someone would think it was required reading:

1. All women in IT feel like they’re “the only one”

I would find it difficult to believe that a woman heavily involved in IT would not have encountered any of the many online groups composed of women and involved with encouragement and mentoring if it’s something they were concerned about. There is LinuxChix, WorldWIT, various open source sub-projects that target women (Debian Women, KDE Women…), GenderChangers, just to name a few.

And if anything, this book made me feel more isolated. I fall into many computer nerd stereotypes, I have many of the same hobbies as my male counterparts. The book does not focus on girls like me who just love computers but instead it tends to focus on the generic pool of intelligent women who could do CompSci but instead go into other field.

2. All women in IT are involved with and concerned about women’s issues

Again, not true. Not every women involved in IT is working to break down the gender barriers. Not that they’re opposed to it, but they’re just like any other geek who loves computers, just because they’re a woman doesn’t mean they have to be a feminist.

In fact, I would consider myself someone “involved with and concerned about women’s issues” in IT, and reading the entire book was a bit much. I would have been happy with an article :)[lj-cut]

Back on October 19th I wrote an entry with the subject Returning to Healthy Habits. There was tons of good advice in the comments. The entry has been very helpful getting me on the right track and knowing what bad habits I need to target and deal with.

Now that the holidays are over I think it’s up for an update on how I’m doing.[lj-cut]

The good news is that I have been very restrained when it comes to the sugary snacks at work, which I’m quite proud of because there were so many around the office during the holidays (and the holidays won’t end! There are still new boxes of chocolates and candies every day!). I haven’t been buying soda at all at work, just drinking water, tea and coffee. There has been no prolonged stress or depression that makes me want to run to food for comfort. And Michael has been cooking so we’ve been having more healthy meals and fewer “I’m too tired lets go out/get take out” evenings. Best of all, because of these changes my stomach hasn’t been bothering me lately and I haven’t put on any more weight in these past 3 months.

The bad news? Pennsylvania Breweries 3rd Edition, By Lew Bryson, need I say more? The holidays – I might have been well-behaved at work, but I seriously indulged when we went on vacation. I’m still tired a lot, I think this is also a carry over from the vacation, it’s easy to get used to being lazy. I haven’t developed any exercise routine, and since it’s winter now I haven’t been able to take walks at lunchtime, so I’m less active than I was when I wrote that entry on October 19th! I also have no good snacking/meal/grazing routine in place yet. I started bringing fruit to work, this went well for a few weeks, but then I just wasn’t eating it, and didn’t resume the practice after I came back from vacation.

So here’s the plan:

Establish snacking/meal/grazing routine – review suggestions from October entry, experiment a bit.

Stop being so lazy and start doing some sort of exercise. I’ll start simple with situps and pushups and hit up on his offer to let me borrow his DDR mat to see how I like it.

Keep all drinking to weekends – the brewery exploring thing is very fun, I am not going to commit to giving it up. But I can quell the temptation to have a yummie ale or a glass of wine with dinner on a Tuesday.

We’ll see how I’m doing in another 3 months.[/lj-cut]