Oshogatsu greetings...

Just wishing everyone a happy new year, and a very geeky Otakushogatsu.

Here's my card.

Finally I write a post about something other than Richie's health...

Ever since Wednesday night I've basically been living through a nightmare...my husband Richie is in the hospital and nobody exactly knows what's going on. They are testing and testing and so far nothing conclusive.

However, you try to find the good whenever and wherever you can. And this is good.

I finally have the MacBook where I want it. 2GB of RAM. It does make a difference. 1GB is great, but 2GB is better. Way better. Richie was able to get some nap time in as I took the boxed Micron RAM to the Apple Store in Northridge to get it put in. Yeah, I know I could have done this myself...but what if I screwed it up? It's considered a "DIY" fix, but still...Apple gets kind of funky when home-done repairs go wrong.

Anyway, maxing the RAM on a MacBook makes it...MIGHTY. Things tend to move fast, even when Rosetta is involved. w00t.

I want to experiment with Parallels now. However, I have more important priorities to think about, so those experiments will probably be tabled for a while. Richie's health, and the next semester at school, have to take priority, in that order. Geeking around must be third on the list at best.

Main screen turn on...It's YOU!!!

I know not everyone is happy about this, but dammit, I think Time made an excellent choice when they chose John and Jane Q. Internet User as Person of the Year.

Yeah, in a perfect world Dr. Howard Dean should have got it for winning most of the US back into the Blue column with his "50 State Strategy." But in a perfect world Ah-nuld der Gropenfuhrer would be on his way back to Fucking Austria and we'd be preparing for the inaugural of Governor Phil Angelides. Or maybe the inaugural of Governor Warren Beatty because maybe only a movie star could dislodge another movie star from the California State House. OK, at least we have Secretary of State Elect Debra Bowen to celebrate. Time to throw those Diebold DRE machines into the same shredder they used to turn the EV-1 into metallic mincemeat.

Anyway, just when it looked like Big Media and Big Telecom was going to turn the current Internet into a frontage road for their super toll road, in rides the Googleplex to bring the democracy back to the Internet. Maybe they don't do 100% of a good job "doing no evil" but still they do a hell of a lot of good for a company that's gotten so big so quick. And it's not just the Googleplex. AOL is beginning to look like they ain't so bad now that they've almost given up the ghost on their stand alone system and joined the Free Generation. I've parlayed my AIM account into 5GB of encrypted storage for my stuffs that might have gotten lost in a disk crash. That came in handy. And it was free.

Yeah, probably Web 2.0 is going to bust up just like v1.0 did in 2000. This time I don't have a dog in the fight like I did when I was working for Onyx Networks in their quest to become the UUNet of the Pacific Rim. I'm just going to watch and enjoy it while it lasts, then hope that I'm not taken down in the undertow in some indirect way.

One A...in the course I wasn't expecting to get one...

I'm now finding out what my likely grades are for this semester...well at least on one class, anyway.

Would you believe...STATS 1????!?!????

SPSS test went off with no hitches, the "statistics concepts test" was way easier than I thought, and even though I need to do a rewrite on my paper the current paper was graded an A. So I am likely to have an A. Amazing. Freaking amazing.

The question of the day:

It's been asked many times before, I will ask it again. Pirates or Ninjas?

I stand four-square on the side of Ninjas.

Here is a synopsis of the controversy.

I will leave you with a picture, from an Iga-Togakure associated dojo. Does this chick not look like she can kick ass, take names, and chew bubblegum? Does this chick not look like she's out of bubblegum and in the mood to kick even more ass?


(you can click it to get a better look.)

Well?

One of those "WTF?" facts of life...

Why is it that people are opting for USB2 drives over FireWire while most computers have a FireWire/IEEE 1394/iLink port? The USB2 protocol is inferior, requiring an intelligent host, while FireWire runs without any intervention by the computer. This is why you see FireWire ports on DV cameras: you don't have to build smarts into a DV camera to handle a data transfer. You can't use USB2 drives for video geeking, because it robs CPU to do data transfer.

Because of this, good inexpensive FireWire drives are hard to find, and Apple no longer includes FireWire ports on the iPod. That is SO wrong. Is FireWire an endangered species? Do geeks have to start a "Save FireWire" movement? Just a thought.

RIP James Kim

One of the original TechTV guys is no more. James Kim's body was found today in Oregon, where he had died seeking help for his family who had become stranded on a snowbound road.

His wife Kati and two daughters Penelope and Sabine were found safely.

My thoughts go with the survivors. It's interesting how more than just geeks feel a loss about this death. It seemed like the news began following this more closely when the rest of the family was found. To Michaela Pereira's credit, she had been plugging this story all week on the KTLA Morning Show, before everyone but the geek community had heard about this story.

He died valiantly trying to find help for the ones he loved. I suppose that is not a bad way to die.

Update time...

1.) My DSL linespeed is finally up to where I'm happy with it. I was getting something like 500-650 down, but since I'm paying for 768/128 I really, really wanted a scoch more bandwidth. Now I apparently have it. Yay! My upstream speed has always been hovering around a little above 128.

2.) Life with the new lappie has been just lovely. It's way faster than anything I have owned, ever. And when Leopard comes out either in Q1 or Q2 2007 it should be absolutely SSSMOKIN'. And I'm not talking about the heat factor either. The Core 2 Duo is a 64-bit chip. Once more of the system becomes 64-bit native, and there wasn't 64-bit native code up until Tiger, things will only get faster. The big hangup is with the two apps that have to run PPC-to-Intel translated through Rosetta: Office 2004 and Photoshop Elements 4. Everything that's native Universal Binary code tears along happily. As far as heat goes, again, if it has to go through the Rosetta emulator things get warm quickly. If it doesn't, it's surprisingly cool considering the reports about Core Duo (Yonah) in the past. Merom (Core 2 Duo) uses less current draw than the original recipe Core Duo does.

3.) School has been absolutely nucking futz these past few days and it'll only get worse. It's going to be a bumpy ride for the next few days, and Tom Reed's visit down here is not likely to provide a respite.

4.) I will be taking a breather on Saturday for a few items: Apple Store for some helpful podcast hints, Jo-Ann's for $1 Simplicity Patterns (limit 10). Next Saturday it will be patterns from McCall's and Butterick that will be on sale: $2/pattern (limits unknown). That will also be when Tom will be down so who knows when we'll get to those. However, I will need to keep plugging away up until then and after. The first big priority is the Excel spreadsheet for Stats 1. I will be at school all day tonight, so I'm bringing the Happy Lappie with me to finish the job. Maybe I'll even input the 48 cases I need to input on my personal project. Wouldn't that rock?

I will likely observe Internet silence during this crazy period. See you later.