Monthly Archive for May, 2008

dead headphonist

Holiday weekends and weddings

Published
by
dead headphonist
on May 26, 2008
in Family and Raves
. 0 Comments

Current Mood:Chillin emoticon Chillin

If you followed the sporadic Tweets this weekend, you’d gather that Char and I attended the wedding of a couple of friends.  The day was perfect, the locale was perfect, and there was free booze at the reception.  I couldn’t find a fault.

Since I picked a holiday (albeit an odd one) to mark the occasion of our wedding, one thought that crossed my mind this weekend was the question of how many couples are actually married on holiday weekends and if that number outweighs any other weekends of the year.   While the data might be interesting, it doesn’t seem that any such statistics are easily available, so I’ll be left to wonder.

As is to be expected, it was a wonderful day for the bride and groom, who are rather enamored with each other (as should be expected).  My bro gave a kick-ass speech.  I was pretty proud of him for finding the words he did, completely on-the-spot.  I think if he bothered, he could be a hell of a writer.

As for the rest of the weekend, we spent a night at a hotel in the nearest half-sized town to the wedding, ate breakfast at some Greek joint, and then headed to my parents for some much needed R&R away from the rat race that is GR.

Pictures from this weekend will be found in the Gallery in the next couple of nights (I have to get them off the laptop).

dead headphonist

The Grand Penguin Experiment

Published
by
dead headphonist
on May 23, 2008
in Technology
. 0 Comments

ubuntulogo1.jpgAnyone who knows me knows that I’m a best tool for the job kind of guy.  I won’t use a screwdriver as a hammer and I tend to want my computers to work the same way; I don’t really like having to work just to get basic things done.  That said, I’ve become disenfranchised from Microsoft’s offerings lately and had begun to gearlust after the stylish, but seriously expensive Macbook.

Mac’s are basically PC’s hardware-wise these days, so there’s no real hardware gearlust like in the days of yore, but there is a certain lust after the nifty features and ease of use of the latest iterations of the OS; an operating system that has managed to shed the 20-some odd years of paradigm that surrounds graphical computing.  Man… that is dead sexy.

My distaste for Microsoft has been primarily driven by the fact that XP is now over six years old and Vista, which was supposed to change everything, has only been able to deliver an experience that is maddeningly frustrating and lacking in the kind of performance that a modern user interface should have at its core.  Moving forward should not result in productivity loss, and Vista takes the concept of eye candy at the cost of productivity to an art form.

Not that everything in Vista is bad.  The new start menu is what Microsoft should have delivered in the first place.  And shutting down is now easier than ever, which to me is a great irony considering that, in my opinion, this is the best feature of Microsoft’s latest pile of stinky code.  For me, there’s not much more.

I’ve attempted many times over the years to use  Linux and it’s classicaly crappy implementation of a laggy, frustrating, non-cohesive desktop.  I’ve tried every iteration of this problematic bug-laden hippy built desktop environment that the geek press has lauded as the next coming of Christ.  I have, obviously, loathed them all.  That is, except one.

Enter Ubuntu 8.04 or Hardy Heron.  On the day of release, I downloaded the ISO and a couple of days later loaded it on the laptop that I’m now writing this on.  It’s taken a while to make it work the way that I want it, but the Ubuntu team has done a really excellent job of bundling the right set of tools to make a desktop experience that is leaps and bounds better than anything I’ve ever used that heavily makes use of the penguin logo.

The accelerated desktop and bells and whistles added for window management through Compiz Fusion are a joy to use.  The package comes with the beta version of Firefox, which I wasn’t sure of at first, but has grown on me over time.  I still don’t like OpenOffice as much as Office 2007, but it is a workable suite for doing basic home word processing and spreadsheeting.

Oh… and did I mention that it is relatively stable and seems to “just work”, which is big for the computer that I use most for cruising the web in the livingroom, blogging, and keeping up with Twitters.  Speaking of which, that’s a real weakness when compared to Windows, but something that is not insurmountable.  The social tools are just lacking.  On Windows, I really enjoy the application Digsby, which has no Linux equivelent.  There are no real good offline blog editors either.

But as I said, it’s a really workable solution to my current distaste for operating systems coming from Redmond.  It has the added bonus of not costing anything more than the 10 cents or so I blew on burning the DVD ISO.  I’m not sure that it’s completely old folks friendly, but I believe that anyone with a slight technical background could find themselves with a really usable desktop with access to a ton of ok applications that meet most basic desktop computing needs.

charmaspice

Ode to Brad - AKA The Hubby Meme

Published
by
charmaspice
on May 5, 2008
in Memes
. 3 Comments

Current Mood:Lovey emoticon Lovey

Normally I am not all mushy and gushy about my hubby Brad (I don’t know why, just not my personality), but seeing as how today is our 7th Anniversary I figued it seemed fitting to finally do this meme I was tagged to do by The Diaper Diaries .  So, here it goes:

How long did you date? I think we had one official “date”, after that we were just kinda together as it seemed right.  To put a number on it we were together for 3 years before we were married - I had to finish school first (if it weren’t for that little deal it would have been sooner).

How old is he? 31, soon to be 32 in 2 months

Who eats more? Probably me, but were a pretty close to being even.

Who said “I love you” first? I think it was him, but I’m not sure.  It’s all so blurry after 10 years.

Who is taller? Him, but then again if he was shorter than 5′3″ I think I’d be a little concerned.

Who sings better? I think we’re both pretty good.

Who is smarter? Probably him, but then again he is way more techie smart while I’m more around the house smart - so we might be pretty evenly matched.

Whose temper is worse? We are both very passionate people when it comes to argueing.  He thinks he’s right, I think I’m right, and we both want our oppinions to be heard.  So, I think we’re both worse!

Who does the laundry? I do the laundry.  Mainly because I am a “little” OCD about it.  I really hate it when my shirts shrink, so he just leaves me be in my madness that’s the laundry area.  Once in a while though he’ll put clothes in the dryer or do the towels for me.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does

Who pays the bills? I took over this a few years ago, it’s only slightly more organized than our previous method - but we have less over draft fees now :)

Who cooks dinner? We both do.  It kinda depends on the dish, cause sometimes his ideas are way better than mine when it comes to certain things.

Who drives when you are together? Mostly me, my car is the family car - and I don’t like to give her up.

Who is more stubborn? Probably me, but I think we both have our fair share of this trait - remember the passionate thing I mentioned in the temper question.

Who kissed who first? He kissed me first, but he missed my mouth completely.  When he came back for the second time I got a little over zealous, and tried to er uh stick my tongue down his throat give him a great big kiss.

Who is the first to admit when they are wrong? We both equally suck at this, but I might suck at admitting this more than Brad does.

Whose parents do you see the most? We see them probably both equally, as they live aways from us.  It also depends on the amount of family events going on with either side.  Thank God I think we’re done with babies & weddings for this year!

Who proposed? He kinda did, there was no suprise proposal.  We went ring “looking” on a whim so he could get an idea of what I liked, and next thing you knew he was buying the ring I tried on.  He came up to Kalamazoo after it was sized and “proposed” in my dorm room right before I had to go take a final.  Thank God I had a good grade in there to start with, because I don’t think I did so well on that exam.

Who is more sensitive? We’re both pretty equal in this arena as well.

Who has more friends? I probably do, but that’s probably because it takes little or no effort for me to find someone on the street to talk to - and next thing you know we’re friends.

Who has more siblings? I do

Who wears the pants in the family? We both do pretty equally.  I tend to be more of the final decision maker in the family, but I think that’s because I hold the keys to the calendar and how much money we have.

Alrighty then, I’d love to hear about the men in your life if you’re a reader.  Feel free to play along.  Leave me a comment, and link back so I can come find out about you and your hubby.

dead headphonist

New Page

Published
by
dead headphonist
on May 4, 2008
in Music and Updates
. 4 Comments

Current Mood:Esctatic emoticon Esctatic

I’ve added that “Music” page that I’ve been swearing up and down that I’d add for MONTHS now.  There’s even a built-in flash player for streaming the MP3’s!  This is examples of the music I’ve done over the years and will eventually contain projects I’m working on now.

Enjoy!