Found!

I've been found! I'm not sure how Jacie found me since I don't think I've really told anyone about this, but she is pretty resourceful.

Anyway a few items of note from this week:

• A move to Huntsville is still a distinct possibility -- depends on how attractive the final offer is, of course.
  
• Bryan Hampton and I really got lambasted by an IT guy last week when we suggested that Macs would be a better choice than linux for the kinds of analysis we'll be doing -- "I don't get into religious discussions", he said. Ha, little did he realize who he was dealing with. =)
• On a related note, 2 more engineers from my work approached me this week interested in buying Macs. I don't personally know anyone who's bought a Mac that's wanted to go back to Windows (I don't think, anyway).
• A few neat little quotes this week from my boss, Glen Wilcox: "You know you're a leader when people follow you." "We all have to practice being the people we want to be." "If you truly know yourself, you can't be offended."
• We've also had a few more folks stop by interested in the house -- it'd probably go better if I kept the lawn mowed and painted the front and sides of the house, but who has time for that?

Hope you're having a great week, more soon.

ps. If you like reading blogs, check out Google Reader. It's like an "inbox" for the web, only showing you postings that have been updated via the RSS feed mechanism.

I just subscribe to the blogs of all my friends (and a bunch of other cool news-type sites), click "Show: updated", and then they only appear in the list when they've written something new. Very cool way to keep up on everybody's "goings on" without having to plow through a bunch of websites with stuff I've already seen.

If you've got any spare brain cycles left, try this one: http://www.neatorama.com/feed

Ubuntu day 2

Awhile back I signed up for the "Employee Purchase Program" at work, which means you can buy a 3-year old PC that they're getting rid of for $50. It's a lottery, so once you sign up, they throw your name in a hat, and if they pull it, you get one.

Well, last week my name was drawn.

I get headaches just looking at "Start" buttons, so immediately after plugging everything in I downloaded supposedly the most user-friendly linux build -- Ubuntu -- burned a CD and booted up. After a little trouble with ATA1 errors (I had to pull the jumper off the hard drive), it booted up just fine. Install was easy, updating software was easy, adding a bunch of games and cool apps was easy. Didn't come with tcsh or nedit, but nothing a "sudo apt-get" couldn't fix. Otherwise very smooth.

My assessment: eh.

Not because of Ubuntu, mind you. Ubuntu appears to be a fairly clean and easy to use version of linux -- if you have a PC lying around, I highly recommend giving Ubuntu a shot. My problem is with linux itself -- it seems almost like a new dog that with a little training will do a bunch of cool little tricks. But in the end, that's all you've got -- a dog that does tricks. Where are MS Office, Quicktime, AppleScript, iTunes, iPhoto, Photoshop? They're replaced by clunkier versions that yes, are free (very cool), but feel like they're duct-taped together (bad). What else do I use a computer for? Turns out, not much.

So in the end I have a computer that my girls can use to play on pbskids.org, and I don't have to worry about them getting a virus or messing up the OS.

I guess that's worth $50.

Airport security

Kip Hawley, head of the TSA, gets asked all the questions about airport security that are usually muttered as complaints in that security line...

A few terrific quotes:

I have the sinking feeling that you're defending us against a terrorist smart enough to develop his own liquid explosive, yet too stupid to read the rules on TSA's own website.

and

This feels so much like "cover your [tail]" security: you're screening our shoes because everyone knows Richard Reid hid explosives in them, and you'll be raked over the coals if that particular plot ever happens again. But there are literally thousands of possible plots.

So when does it end? The terrorists invented a particular tactic, and you're defending against it. But you're playing a game you can't win. You ban guns and bombs, so the terrorists use box cutters. You ban small blades and knitting needles, and they hide explosives in their shoes. You screen shoes, so they invent a liquid explosive. You restrict liquids, and they're going to do something else. The terrorists are going to look at what you're confiscating, and they're going to design a plot to bypass your security.

Kip actually has half-decent answers to these questions.

NPR interview with Alice Cooper

I have a lot to say about Terry Gross' interview with Alice Cooper (mp3), but unfortunately I'm too tired to say it right now... Still, if you have any curiosity about the bizarre and extreme heavy metal rockers of the 70s and 80s, this is an interesting perspective.

Given that he's famous for shows with guillotines, electric chairs, and lots of fake blood, unless you're quite familiar with Alice/Vincent's life you're probably in for something of a surprise.

I probably couldn't name 2 songs written by him, nor do I think I've ever heard a song of his all the way through. Still my initial prejudices about what kind of person he must be ended up almost entirely wrong...

LDS CIO has a Mac!

When it comes to LDS software in the past, Macs have been pretty much ignored. PAF was available on the Mac years ago (OS 7-9), but fell into disrepair and is unusable on new Macs. All the audio and video was Windows Media which was a huge headache (until Flip4Mac came out, anyway). And I believe at least some of the websites required IE 6 to look right.

Recently however things have started to turn around, and it looks like I may have found the reason. Check out #6 -- that's the CIO of the church mentioning in passing that he has at least one Mac at home. In fact, it looks like that may be their primary machine at home, at least for the kids, since trying "the Vista thing" was farther down on his list than writing that post!

There may yet be hope for us LDS Mac users.

One lightning bolt: $145

This afternoon lightning struck so close to our house that it shook the whole place.

When I got home, the internet wasn't working and neither was our phone. So after about 15 cycles of plugging and unplugging things in different orders, for different amounts of time, I finally decided that the modem was shot. So I drove down to Wal-Mart and bought a new modem. A quick phone call to Cox and the internet was back up.

Whew, fixed!

Oh, except our phone still didn't work. See, our phone service is through Vonage, meaning that it acts like a regular phone except that the call travels the distance over the internet instead of a traditional phone network. That all happens through a little $50 box. Apparently that was blown too. So I drove back down to Wal-Mart and picked up another Vonage/Linksys VoIP box. A quick call to Vonage and my phone was back up.

Note, I didn't mention that both ethernet cables were bad too, I had to replace them to get things working again.

So in summary, that one lightning bolt wiped out my cable modem, my VoIP box, and two ethernet cables. Net cost to me: $145. Ouch.

On the bright side, my Mac was fine. Thanks to my network devices for making the sacrifice.

Graphics

Here's an impressive set of graphics by Megan Jaegerman, praised by Edward Tufte who has championed the art of conveying complex concepts in print.

Reading down through all the images, I went from "gee, that's cool" to "wow, I need to save all these..."