From the mind of a nerd

Why all of the Ubuntu hate?

2013-05-18T17:23:00.001-04:00

I've been using Ubuntu (mostly) as my primary operating system since version 5.10; that's 8 years of Ubuntu on my desktop.

I honestly believe that Ubuntu has done more to get Linux recognized as a viable desktop operating system than anyone. Sure, Red Hat/Fedora does great, innovative things for the Linux ecosystem as a whole, but I'm talking specifically about on the desktop.

Sometimes I listen too much. I let people sway my opinions on things, and I really shouldn't. I'm getting better at that. I also probably follow too many people on Google+, and that causes a bunch of ideas, idioms, philosophies and such to get thrown at me on a daily basis.

Starting back in March, I got caught up in a huge distro-hopping/desktop hopping rut (as I'm sure you know if you follow me on Google+). Because of some of the things people whom I respect were saying, I felt that if I cared about Linux, I shouldn't be using Ubuntu. I think that is wrong.

I started trying other distributions and I even tried some of the derivatives of Ubuntu along the way. The only thing besides Ubuntu that has stuck anywhere is I'm running Ubuntu GNOME on my laptop. I'm not going to get into all of the details of why I prefer GNOME on my laptop and Unity on my desktop, but lets just say that's where I've settled. In fact, Unity would be just as fine on the laptop as well, but I like GNOME Shell better there than on my dual-monitor desktop, and I do want to keep up with what's going on with GNOME. Also, although I'm not a big gamer anymore, I think it's super awesome that Steam if available for Linux now, and my games performed noticeably worse under GNOME than any other desktop - in fact, it was the only desktop where I noticed a discernible difference.

Okay, I started rambling. Back on point.

Ubuntu works. It just simply works. It works just as well as Windows or Mac OS. I think Canonical is doing amazing things still yet. I can't wait to have an Ubuntu phone. It may end up being a niche phone, but I will carry my Ubuntu phone as proudly as die-hard MS fans carry their Windows Phones (which, BTW, I also think is excellent).

There has been talk of Wayland taking over for X.org...talk. For a long time, and it still hasn't happened yet. Ubuntu did something about it. The created Mir, and are doing a lot of work to make the transition happen. Sometimes you have to make a bold move to drive innovation, and I think that is what Canonical is doing. It may be painful for a while, but I think desktop Linux will be better for it.

I've never been more excited about Ubuntu or Linux in general than I am right now. I can't wait to be running Mir and Unity next on my desktop. I'm sure many people in my circles will disagree with me on this, but it's just how I feel.

Something finally clicked, and I think I can finally use what I like, what I feel the best about, take other peoples opinions in stride (no matter how much I respect them) and get on with it and not let every single post I read on G+ send me off in a distro-hopping frenzy again.

You have no excuses.

2013-05-04T17:32:00.001-04:00

I'm gonna start this by saying if you haven't read this, go read it now. I'll wait until you get back. If you have already read that post you can go ahead and keep reading.

So, back in February, Feb 22 to be exact, I injured myself. I was out of work from then until April 1. I spent most of that time in bed. In pain.

Long story short, the main part of the injury has gone away, but I have been left with Foot Drop due to a hematoma pressing on my sciatic nerve. I hope it is not permanent and use of my foot will come back, but it is an unknown at this time.

It sucks. I mean, it really sucks. But you know what? I haven't let it stop me. I just walked over 5 miles (5.19 to be exact). It took me an hour and forty one minutes. I started getting mad when I was walking. I was mad that I couldn't run. I was mad because I saw other people running. I was wishing, hoping, and would have given anything to be running instead of limping along like I was. My hip started getting sore. I have a weird gate to keep from tripping over my toes now. It sucks. It really sucks. I lie in bed every night and try...try so hard to move my foot, but it just won't move. It makes me mad. It sucks, it really sucks.

But.

I just walked over 5 miles. It took me an hour and forty one minutes to do it, but I walked 5.19 miles to be exact.

I've been to the gym every day for the past two weeks too. I can't run, but I can use the elliptical. I can get on a bike, and I can lift weights (staying light lower-body right now, but I'm lifting!).

It sucks. I can't concentrate on anything. My mind is consumed with the fact that I cannot move my foot.

It sucks.

It really sucks.

But, I can't change it. I can only hope that one day my foot will move again, and I can run. I hope it happens before September so I can run the Darlington Marathon.

It sucks, it really sucks, but I can't change it.

If you think you have an excuse that is keeping you from exercising, I promise you don't. The only think keeping you from exercising is you and unlike me and my foot you can change that. You just have to get up off of your ass and start moving.

One step. Then another. You can do it. You just have to try.

You have no excuse.

Now, get up and go walk.

First look at Ubuntu 13.04 and a reflection on a month with Arch

2013-04-25T21:44:00.002-04:00

I've always had a little bit of "distrohopper" in me. I'd usually get bored and want to try something new after reading about it.

Almost always I end up back on Ubuntu after a while. I've really been using Ubuntu pretty much exclusively since 2005.

Last year I switched exclusively to Fedora for a while (about 9 months) because I was having to use RHEL/CentOS at work and needed to learn more about it. It was painful for me, not because Fedora is bad or anything, it's just not my ideal desktop distribution. It was the longest I'd ever stuck with something besides Ubuntu. As soon as I was comfortable with the Red Hat tool-set (and the fact I moved from being a Server Admin to a Software Developer at work), I moved back to Ubuntu.

Recently I got sucked into a huge distro-hopping rutt. I had a lot going on personally, I would become easily frustrated and I was being influenced by the ideals of others.

I'm gonna be a little candid and honest here as to why, and then tell you why I changed my mind in the following paragraphs.

When I first heard about Mir (the new display server being developed by Canonical), my first thought was "Cool!, something that sucks less than X will be coming up". Then I started letting myself be influenced some folks in the open source community who really care about such things and then I started thinking "Hey Canonical! You are evil, you shouldn't do that". I tried out a couple of distros on for size. Soon after, I was back on Ubuntu, but decided to "stick it to the man" and run Kubuntu instead, and then I started having some pretty weird performance issues under Kubuntu 13.04 (still in Beta, or maybe even pre-beta at the time) and tried Arch one more time.

I've been on Arch for the most part for a couple of months now. The distro is pretty awesome. I really liked how much I learned while using it and setting it up on various boxes, and I got really good at going through the installation process. I also got really frustrated with trying to find a DE I liked better than Unity. While there were many things I liked about Arch, there were a few things I didn't like.

There were some packages I wanted, but weren't in the repos, but were in AUR. I didn't like AUR. I don't like going outside of a distro (one of the problems I had with Fedora), I don't even like using PPA's on Ubuntu. I like sticking w/ the repos. I made due, but I wasn't comfortable relying on packages maintained by community people who may or may not update them, or ensure their security.
I got things working okay in all of the DE's I tried, but nothing felt very smooth or integrated. I would work along fine, and then run into a wall by finding something that didn't work (like mounting a USB drive, or using my keyboards multi-media keys, or something like that), and although I'd eventually get it working, it was a huge pain in the you-know-what to stop what I was doing, get off track by trying to figure out how to fix $PROBLEM and then go back to what I was doing originally, when there were many other distros out there that "just work".
I never got my fonts right. I tried the "Ubuntu" packages and Infinality packages from AUR (again, I hated having to use AUR), tweaked my config files to no end, and never did get them just the way I wanted. In Ubuntu, I have to do nothing the fonts are just beautiful, in any of the variants and DE's.
Speaking of fonts, although Steam is in the Arch repos, and it works pretty well, the fonts are practically unreadable in games. Before connecting to a CS:Source server, in the "Find Server" window, the fonts are so tiny and jagged, it's nearly impossible to read, and in game, the chat text is pretty bad also.
Also, sure, Arch is a system where you set it up with exactly what you want, but in reality an installed system wasn't using any less resources, or taking up much less space than Ubuntu would. The things that were not installed were mostly insignificant things (that often I'd discover later, like in the above paragraph that I needed/wanted anyway).
The Arch Community...okay, I won't go there. It's Arch.
Not sure if this ties into the "community" comment but it was very off-putting to me to find that the "arch-general" mailing list was moderated. I'd never run into that before for a public mailing list.
I was totally paranoid about updates. I constantly felt my system may eat itself one day, even though many people told me it wouldn't.
I played too much. Pacman was really cool, and it was easy to rip out huge chunks of packages and replace them with others...almost too easy for someone like me. I was endlessly tweaking and trying new things and not getting much at all accomplished.

Well, while that sounds like a lot of negatives, it was a really good experience overall. I learned tons, about a new distribution I'd never used before, and I'm happier for it. Here are some positives I took away from Arch:

You have to know your system. You can't just blindly update, and you have to understand how to manually change settings that are either automagically set for you in other distributions or give you a tool for configuration.
The concept of a rolling-release is not only brilliant, but something I think should be at least offered in all distros that support updating a live system.
There is no default DE, no default set of applications, you can take a base system and mold it into whatever you want to make of it. When you are done, if successful, you could ideally have a perfect system.
The documentation on the Wiki is second to none in the Linux world. I knew this before even trying Arch, because I can't tell you how many times I've used information from the Arch wiki to solve problems in other distros.
Although I took a jab at the general Arch community in the list above, for the most part, anyone in the Arch IRC channels or mailing lists are very knowledgeable and can likely help if you (if they will).

That being said, it was time to come back to reality and get on with things.

Ubuntu 13.04 released today, and I blew away Arch and installed it (even if it means +Alan Pope is gonna pick on me again). It's a great release, has good performance and I'm not unhappy with any part of the distro or the DE (Unity). Everything just works, and I had it all set up in under an hour. I'm one of the folks who actually liked Unity mostly from the beginning (well, at least since 11.10 - 11.04 was still kinda rough).

I'm not an Open Source activist, and I don't have a horse in the race in regards to Mir/Wayland.
Sure I care about open source, and I wish Canonical either gave more back upstream, or did a better job at communicating with upstream, or did a better job of letting everyone know that they already do the previous two things (which ever is applicable).

While I care about Open Source, Open Standards, Free Software and all that jazz, I also care about being able to play games, watch videos, listen to MP3's, and do all the stuff that normal people do on a computer every day. Ubuntu does that for me. It does that for me without me having to follow documentation, add third-party repositories or do anything other than just install the distro, apt-get the extra packages I want and get on with it. Ubuntu is not only great for the average, non-technical user who perhaps isn't familiar with Linux in general, it's great for those of us who are more advanced users because it allows us to get on with what we want and need to do and not be bothered by our operating system.

Overall I think, personally that Ubuntu has done more for Desktop Linux than any other distro. I also hope they find a sustainable revenue stream, and can gain some ground in the server market mostly dominated by RHEL/SLES, although, I think they will remain the gold standard in the big Enterprise Linux arena. I do think Ubuntu should focus on doing what they do best, and that is providing an exceptional end user/consumer Linux experience, but my opinion and $3.50 will get you a coffee at Starbucks.

As for Ubuntu 13.04:
My only real complaint? It really hurts something inside of me that the first thing I have to do after installing any Linux distro is go to Settings -> Privacy and turn things off.

Kudos to Newegg!

2013-04-11T22:44:00.002-04:00

I just have to give a shout-out to Newegg. Usually, you only hear people gripe and whine about a company when something goes wrong. Well, back in February, I did just that, in public on Twitter when I was buying the stuff to build my new machine. I generally don't do that, and I don't generally like it when other people do either. I'm not sure what got into me, but it struck me wrong, and I did it.

What happened was, when I ordered my stuff initially, I bought a Core i5 CPU. After getting everything put together, I decided I wanted a Core i7 instead to get Hyper-threading (which does help when running multiple VM's, among other things). Well, I listed the i5 on eBay, and ordered an i7, with the extra $2.99 for "Rush Processing" and extra for Next Day shipping - the order was placed very early in the morning as well. By 5PM, the order was still in "Processing" (or something like that), and I knew it was too late to get on a brown truck, a plane, another brown truck and make it to my door by E.O.B. the next day. I whined on Twitter, like I hate to see people do.

I was almost immediately contacted by Newegg. It was genuinely a mistake in the order process, and although they couldn't get the CPU to me by the next day, but they promised to make it right. What had made me upset, is that not only would the CPU not get to me the next day, the next day was Friday, which meant I wouldn't get the CPU until Monday. It was supposed to be raining Monday, and not only that, nobody was going to be home to receive the package, meaning it was going to sit in the rain. Luckily the forecast was wrong, it didn't rain, the CPU didn't get wet, and it was waiting on my doorstep when I got home from the doctor on that Monday.

(Side note: this was the same doctors appointment where I got the now (in)famous cortisone shot that caused a side effect, muscle spasm, hemorrhage and resulted in my lingering foot drop...)

Anyway, Newegg, did make it right. Much to my surprise, they credited $100 back to my Paypal account. I was blown away. So, the net result: I sold my i5 on eBay for only slightly less than I originally paid. The i7 was ~$100 more than the i5 was, so I nearly got a free i5 -> i7 upgrade, all because I was a jerk on Twitter.

I actually felt bad. The one time I whine on Twitter, I not only get my way, but it actually felt unfair to me.

So...fast forward to this week. As I mentioned on Google+ recently, I had this little Socket 1156 system in my closet that was missing a CPU, Memory and HDD. I ordered a used Clarkdale i3 from Amazon, 4GB of DDR3 and a small 32GB Adata SSD from Newegg and rebuilt it. It was a pretty snappy little machine, and I really enjoyed having a second somewhat decent machine around to play with (which will result in me leaving my main machine alone!).

Well, two days later, I started receiving errors on boot-up which indicated corruption on my EXT4 file system. The first time I was actually able to recover. I did a fsck /dev/sda1 from the rootfs shell I was dropped into, let it fix it's errors, but I apparently lost some files to corruption (seemed to be fonts, and maybe other things, who knows, but LXDM was missing fonts for sure). I let Pacman do it's magic with a pacman -Qeq | pacman -S - which re-installed all installed packages, and to my amazement that seemed to fix it...until 2 reboots later. I knew I needed to RMA this drive because it was obviously not going to last.

I noticed on Newegg's site when I went to initiate the RMA, that the Adata drive was only able to be returned for exchange (for the same model) only. This was disappointing, but I should've read that first, and I should've trusted my gut and not bought an unknown cheapo drive like that. I really didn't want another one of those drives, because I knew I couldn't ever really trust it. Even though this was an unimportant machine, I did want it to work.

So, I sent an e-mail to Newegg customer support, and the first response was a canned "Sorry, {reiterate what the website already said about exchanging for same model}, Thanks, and have a nice day.

I replied back saying something to the effect of: "Hi, I fully understand that, and it's my mistake for reading that first, but I really don't trust this model drive with my data, and I would love to just be able to exchange it for a better drive".

I didn't hear anything else back for a few hours, but eventually got an e-mail saying that they would issue me a "refund" RMA. They even sent me a prepaid UPS label to ship the defective drive back.

That's simply a great example of taking care of your customers, and that is the reason why I will continue to use Newegg for my hardware purchases.

Perhaps you've had bad experiences with them, but these are the only two issues I've ever had with Newegg, and they made them both right; the first one even going way beyond what I expected, wanted or what they needed to do.

I'm now looking forward to my Crucial m4 SSD arriving tomorrow to bring this little machine back to life again :-)

Font Configuration in Arch Linux

2013-04-11T19:22:00.003-04:00

I'm fairly particular about font rendering on my PC. In Ubuntu, my fonts always rendered nearly perfect, in my opinion right out of the box. In any other distro, I have to do a little tweaking to get things just right.

I didn't have to do a lot to get my fonts beautiful in Arch, and I thought I would document here, in hopes it may help someone else. Remember, font rendering is a very personal thing, and what I like may look horrible to you. Be sure to check out the Font Configuration Page on the Arch Wiki for more suggestions and possible configurations.

First, my goal was to see how good I could get my fonts before relying on patched packages from the AUR. Although there are Infinality and Ubuntu patched packages available there, I wanted to stick with as few AUR packages on my box as possible, and I had read that freetype2 had been improved upstream recently, so I wanted to see how they would look with solid configurations using the default packages.

First, I created a .Xresources file and added the following to it:

I also added the followng to my /etc/fonts/local.conf and my ~/.fonts.conf
(I'm sure it doesn't need to be in both places, but I put it in my $HOME so I can sync to my dotfiles repo easily).

I've also set the font options in Xfce like so:

Ultimately, I was extremely happy with the results and felt no need for external patched packages.

Here are a few more screenshots to give you an idea of how the fonts look in various applications.

Terminator:

Thunar (click for full size):

Firefox (click for full size):

There you go! Maybe these settings will help you, and if not, be sure to explore the Wiki - there are tons of configuration options available.

Dotfiles

2013-04-10T23:33:00.000-04:00

I love exploring folks' dotfile repos on Github. I always find some neat ideas that way. I decided to create a public dotfile repo of my own here, so feel free to look around.

I'm now on Arch

2013-03-30T10:48:00.000-04:00

Outside of Ubuntu (and it's derivatives) Arch seems to have the best Steam and Nvidia support of any distro I've tried.

I got Arch all set up a couple of weeks ago, and then psyched myself out worrying about how stable it would be long term. After doing more research and talking to some folks, I feel those worries were unfounded.

I reloaded Arch, with Xfce4 and it's a pretty snappy setup. Nvidia works as expected, and so does Steam.

Why another switch? Kubuntu 13.04 was dog slow. It wasn't a throughput issue - I got decent framerates in games, and if I did a timed kernel build, it was in line with where it should be, but the entire UI was lagging. An example would be that Dolphin (the KDE file manager) took on average 2 seconds to launch. Even if I closed it and relaunched it right away. Sure, 2 seconds isn't a long time, but when you have a overclocked i7 and an SSD, you shouldn't have to wait 2 seconds for just your file manager to pop open.

Anyway, I'm gonna ride this Arch train for a while and see how comfortable it is. If I don't like it long-term, there is always Tanglu coming.

Looking at Vim again.

2013-03-26T14:44:00.000-04:00

Every once in a while I tell myself I'm gonna learn to code with Vim. I'll stick with it a while, get overwhelmed by the options and/or tweaking my ~/.vimrc based on little guides and snippets from around the web, get discouraged and go back to a GUI editor (I'm kinda stuck on Kate at the moment).
This is what I've come up with for a basic ~/.vimrc right now. I'd love to get some eyes to look at this and give me some advice.

Multi-Core rendering in Serious Sam 3 (Linux)

2013-03-22T21:54:00.000-04:00

I keep htop open all the time on my box, usually on the secondary monitor on the virtual desktop where I play games.

I noticed that in Serious Sam 3, only one of my 8 CPU threads were being utilized, so I did a little searching and I found these two settings that can be enabled in game for multi-core rendering.

ren_bMultiThreadedRendering=1


and


ren_iMaxThreads=4




I set the iMaxThreads to 4 on my machine (4C/8T i7) as I read that any more can flood the driver and result in lower performance and that 4 was the optimal setting for a Core i7 or AMD FX 8 Module CPU. I would guess for a 4 thread CPU, like an i5, or regular Quad AMD, that either 2 or 3 would be optimal, but you might have to do some experimenting yourself.

Hope this helps, and happy Linux gaming!

Have you heard of Tanglu?

2013-03-20T22:16:00.000-04:00

If not, read this. This sounds like it's going to be an awesome project, and I'm going to contribute in any way I can.

To quote some highlights from the initial announcement:

Tanglu will be based on Debian Testing and follow the Debian development closely. It will have a 6-months release-cycle and it’s target audience are Linux desktop users. We will make installing and setting up the distro as easy as possible.

Tanglu will be usable for both developers of upstream software and the average Linux user and Linux newbie. This is possible because in our opinion developers and users don’t have different needs for a desktop system. Both kinds of users like a polished desktop which “just works”. We will, hwever, not apply any kind of fancy modification on upstream software, we will basically just distribute what upstream created, so users can get an almost “pure” GNOME and KDE experience.

Tanglu is designed to be able to solve the issue that Debian is frozen for a long time and Debian Developers can’t make new upstream versions available for testing easily. During a Debian freeze, DDs can upload their software to the current Tanglu development version and later start the new Debian cycle with already tested packages from Tanglu. The delta between Tanglu and Debian should be kept as minimal as possible. However, Tanglu is not meant as experimental distribution for Debian, so please upload experimental stuff to Experimental. Only packages good enough for a release should go into Tanglu.

And the best part (to me, anyway :-) ):

Which desktop will you use?

Everyone can add a new desktop to Tanglu, as long as the desktop-environment is present in Debian. Long term, we will have to offer Linux-newbies a default flavour, probably by setting a default download on the website. But as long as there is a community for a given desktop-environment, the desktop is considered as supported.
At the beginning, we will focus on KDE, as many people have experience with it. But adding vanilla GNOME is planned too.

Yay for another option for a Debian based, pure KDE distro. I'm running both openSUSE and Kubuntu now on different machines. I'm surely more comfortable with Debian, but Kubuntu is simply more up-to-date, and KDE is really well integrated. I'm trying openSUSE, but having used Debian based distros for going on 10 years now, I still don't have the level of comfort, so it lives on my (less critical) Laptop.

I see this as great because it will help the overall Debian ecosystem, which feeds not only Debian, but The 'buntu's, Mint CrunchBang and many others.

I just think it's awesome to have something with a pure KDE more closely aligned with Debian coming soon.

Does this all sound as exciting to you as it does to me? Because, man, I'm pumped!

If so, do like I did and sign up for the mailing list, join the Freenode channel and get ready to contribute.

People Behind KDE

2013-03-20T06:53:00.001-04:00

Hi Everyone,
This past summer I did some work to revive the People Behind KDE series of interviews. There had been about an 18 month lag since and interview was published, and I had some awesome KDE folks agree to do interviews with me.

I've loved those interviews for a long time. Back when I first got into Linux and KDE I read them all the time, and looked forward to new ones being published.

I took some time away from stuff like that due to some work requirements, but I'm ready, and able to do some more.

The last ones were more of a "stock" set of questions, but when I do more, I am going to change it up and make it more conversational. It will take a little more time for the interviewee as we'll have to exchange a few more e-mails, but it will give me a chance to ask follow-up questions to responses I've been given.

If you have anyone in the KDE community that you would like to see interviewed on the PBK site, or have any ideas for questions, suggestions on format, or would simply like to help do the interviews, please let me know. Also, if you would like to share your story about your work with KDE, what drives you to keep doing it, and a little more about yourself, don't be bashful; let me know you'd like to do an interview!

Cool script for showing System Info under Linux

2013-03-14T22:47:00.003-04:00

I came across this neat little script today for showing detailed system information under Linux. It's called inxi and you can find it, and documentation here.

Props to the author, and I think it's definitely worth a download if you love these kind of little utilities like I do.

Here is a screenshot of the output w/ the "-F" switch:

New machine time...

2013-02-27T13:11:00.002-05:00

It's been over 3 years since I built a new desktop completely from scratch. Back over the summer I upgraded the desktop I'd had for 3 years, and ended up selling it soon after to help fund a Mac Mini. The Mini has now become the "Family computer" as it didn't quite fill all of my needs, so I built myself a new Gaming/Development rig.

Here are the components I settled on:

Intel Core i7 3770 CPU
Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler
ASRock Z77 Motherboard
16GB DDR3 1866 Kingston HyperX RAM
256GB Plextor M5S SSD
1TB Samsung HDD
Samsung DVD Burner
2GB Nvidia Geforce GTX560Ti graphics by EVGA
Corsair 500W Modular Power Supply
Zalman Z5 Plus case

I had initially ordered a i5-3570K CPU with the intentions of overclocking it. I got it up to 4.4GHz, but it still didn't feel quite as snappy as the Xeon E3-1230-V2 (similar to Core i7 - 4C/8T) that I'd used over the summer, and overclocking was really too complicated, and I worried about the life of the chip.

I wound up quickly re-selling that chip on eBay for $5 less than I originally paid (I'll never understand eBay economics), and I purchased an i7-3770. I got the regular "non-K" version so I could gain Intel VT-d technology which is left off of the K series chips. I was still able to get a modest overclock to 4.1GHz using the ability Intel give to overclock locked CPU's using the Tubo multiplier. Simply setting the multiplier to 41 for "all cores" gives me a nice stable 4.1GHz chip w/ all four cores active, on stock voltage and manageable temps.

Snacking healthy

2013-01-31T23:16:00.003-05:00

There are many ways to satisfy your snack cravings while still eating healthy during your weight loss and fitness journey.

I just wanted to list a few of my favorite snacks, and remember, even with healthy snacks, enjoy in moderation:

Almonds or Dry Roasted Peanuts
Beef or Turkey Jerky (I like Perky Jerky especially)
Hummus and Pita Chips
Greek Yogurt (pre-mixed with Fruit or Honey for convenience, or even better add your own to Plain - can even substitute for Sour Cream in Dip recipies).
Fresh Fruit (try Apples or Pears with Cheese or Bananas with Peanut Butter for extra protein)
Triscuits (the only cracker I'll eat): Enjoy with Hummus, Cheese, Ham, Turkey or fresh Salsa.
Protein Bars are a life-saver when you need a quick snack or even a meal replacement. Be careful, all protein bars aren't created equal. I like Quest bars especially.
Dark Chocolate (I especially like Ghiradelli 86% or Lindt 85%).

Remember, you should never allow yourself to get hungry. Eat smart, and eat often. It'll make your journey easier!

How many calories should I eat?

2013-01-25T21:35:00.001-05:00

This probably doesn't warrant an entire blog post, but I thought of it due to an interaction on Twitter.

So, you want to lose weight, and you know in order to do that, you need a calorie deficit.

There are countless calorie calculators online and smartphone apps to help you with this.

Anytime you restrict calories from your diet, you are upsetting your body. Your brain especially, is used to getting a certain amount of energy. When you restrict calories, you may find that you are moody, and can't think clearly. If you find yourself like this, for more than a few days, there is a chance you have cut too many calories initially.

So, armed with this information, you find a site/app that you want to use, and put in your height and weight and it gives you some numbers. Great. So, you should (depending on the app) get numbers for Weight loss and numbers for maintenance.

One thing that really worked for me, was to set small target weight goals, say like 20lbs lighter than wherever I was a point in time. Use a calorie calculator to find the amount of calories a person your height, and that weight should eat to maintain their weight. Eat that amount. What you will find, is that (perhaps more slowly than you'd like), you will eventually reach that weight. Once you do, you will have adjusted to eating that amount. You can then set another incremental goal and repeat the process.

This can really help in avoiding the yo-yo effect, and can make you happier (and those around you happier) as you reach your goals.

You can't if you think you can't.

2013-01-19T13:17:00.001-05:00

Can't is a bad word. If you are sure that you want to live better, and have improved health and fitness you have to stop saying you can't.

I can't exercise because I don't have time.

Everybody has time. It's yours to decide how to spend it. Instead of watching 'Biggest Loser' on TV once a week while sitting on the couch eating junk-food, spend that hour doing exercises in your home that require no equipment. Do some Push-ups, jumping-jacks, dips (use two kitchen chairs), climb stairs if you have them in your home. You can do crunches, planks, lunges, and a bunch of different stretching exercises. One hour of exercise a week is better than none, and you have to start somewhere. Also, what time do you get up in the mornings? Can you get up an hour earlier? Can you work out in the evenings (perhaps sacrificing TV or internet time)? Do you get a lunch-hour at work? There are plenty of places to find time, you just have to look.

I can't lose weight because my metabolism is slow.

Really? So is mine. I have severe Hypothyroidism. Before I started medication, my thyroid stimulating hormones were through the roof and my metabolism was non existent. If you really think you have a slow metabolism (and aren't just using that as an excuse), do something about it. See a doctor. You likely have a correctable medical condition. Also, your metabolism may be slow simply because you aren't active. Become active, eat a proper diet, and you might be amazed at how you metabolism can respond.

I can't run because my knees are bad.

Cool. Then don't run. Walking is better for fat loss anyway. So is an elliptical (if you have access to one) where you can do high-intensity interval workouts. Those HIIT workouts help with the time factor as well, since they only last about 20 minutes. Also, if you do start running, I'll bet your knees will get better with time as long as you don't overdo it.

I can't lift weights because my {back, shoulder, knees, hip, pinky toe} is bad and hurts.

Yes you can! In fact, you probably should. It will help your hurt body part get better. Why do you think they have folks who have had knee surgery doing leg extensions and leg curls? They key is not using too much weight, and building up over time. I'll bet your hurt body part will also build up over time as well.

I can't afford to join a gym.

This one is tricky, because perhaps you really can't. Most likely, it's an excuse. If you think you can't afford something, that you possibly need, it's time to reevaluate your spending habits. You can join an inexpensive gym such as Planet Fitness for as little as $10 a month, or a nicer gym such as the one I go to for around $40 a month. My $40 gym membership is payroll deducted thanks to arrangements my company made, and honestly after a while, you forget that money is coming out (It's around $20 per bi-weekly paycheck). If you are struggling to make ends meet, reevaluate everything in your life. If you are making ends meet, and still think you can't afford a gym, figure up how much you are spending on things such as Starbucks, Cable TV, junk-food, eating out (especially daily lunches). Even things like diet-gimmicks and food that claim to help you lose weight can suck up gym money. I'll bet you can find that $10-$40 a month somewhere. You may have to sacrifice a want in order meet a need, but it could be possible that you can afford some sort of gym membership.

This goes beyond fitness. This extends to your entire life. Anytime you catch yourself thinking you can't do something that you really want to do, you need to reevaluate the situation. I believe you can do anything you want to do if you try. One thing you can't do for sure is will a change to happen. You have to do something to make it happen.

Enjoy your journey. It's an amazing ride. You will learn a lot about yourself, and your entire outlook on life will change. This, I promise.

Fat vs. Loose Skin

2013-01-18T22:08:00.003-05:00

Everyone who loses a lot of weight has to deal with at least some loose skin.

Over time, some or all of that loose skin with tighten up, and go away.
I often see people complain online (usually with pictures) about their loose skin. One is a "internet famous" fitness blogger who is convinced he has loose skin, however, after seeing his constant stream of images (and videos), I'm convinced he still has a lot of body fat in his abdomen and is (perhaps) in some stage of denial about that.

Loose skin is very loose, very thin, and has little body to it. Probably the most common way that loose skin is described is that it's like the skin on the back of your hand. I really don't like this comparison, because that all depends on how fat your hand is. When I was at my peak weight, there wasn't anything thin about the skin on the back of my hand. I think the best description is the skin on the back of an older, slim person's hand. It's nearly paper thin. Perhaps, it would feel like the skin on your eyelid. Yeah, that could be a good analogy.

In any event, if you pinch the skin and the "pinch" is more than a couple of millimeters (or maybe [and this is a stretch] a centimeter) thick, than it's not just loose skin, there is still some fat hanging on for dear life under there.

I thought I had loose skin, until I started really focusing on diet, focusing less on cardio and more on weights. What I've discovered is that my "loose skin" was actually still abdominal fat, and as my BF% goes down so does that loose abdominal fat. I think a lot of folks think they are dealing with loose skin, because it does feel loose it's not tight like it was at your peak weight, that's because there are less fat cells there, but there are still some. once the fat is completely gone, I'll bet provided you have healthy skin, it'll really tighten up as you lose even more fat (notice I didn't say lose weight).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm taking pictures of myself every night. It's 18-Jan-2013 today, and I just took my picture. I weight exactly one pound less than I did on 1-Jan-2013. That could be a normal fluctuation. There is, however a big difference in the pictures. Even after losing so much weight I still wasn't comfortable being seen without a shirt, but my abdominal region is slowly taking form.

I'm still not ready to share shirtless pictures online yet, but perhaps once I've reached my body-fat goal, I will :-)

Remember, no matter what, don't get discouraged. Anything is possible, if you work hard enough.

So you've made a commitment to lose weight? What next?

2013-01-13T22:50:00.001-05:00

Do a quick Google search for "How to lose weight" (or something similar), and you'll find thousands of other opinions on this subject. I've read a lot of it, and if you are really serious about getting fit, I suggest you do the same. No one person, or website holds all of the answers, and one exercise you will need to work on during your fitness journey is the ability to read information and weed out the:

Fads
Just Plain Bad Info
Misguided Info
'Trying to Sell you Something' Info
Good Info
Great Info

Hopefully in some of my posts I can give you some of the latter two. If I give you misguided info, I'll go ahead an apologize up front. If I find out later that anything I have ever posted here was misguided, I will post an update.

Now. To the problem at hand. You want to lose weight, you want to get in shape. What do you do? Should you start walking, running, ellipticalling, cycling and/or swimming that weight off, or should you start pushing some weight around?

I've been on my journey since the end of '09, and I've definitely gone through quite a few stages during that time. I started walking. Really, I was so obese that was all I could do. Well, let me back up. As I first started walking, I did some other things too. When I first started, I had no real concept of calories, burning calories, building muscle or anything at all. I knew I was fat, and I didn't want to be that way any longer. I did all sorts of crazy things. I couldn't do a push up. I tried, and I got stuck on my floor wallowing around like a beached whale on my bedroom floor. Thankfully for us all, there is no video evidence of this. About the time I took my first walk (where I could barely make it 1/8 of a mile), I was also doing weird stuff at night to try and burn calories. Somehow I had such an inflated perception of how many calories these activities were really burning. Also, at the same time, no concept of how food intake, and energy burned via exercise related to each other.

It's been a while (seems like a lifetime to me) since those early days of me exercising, so I've probably forgotten some, but here is a rundown of some of my "exercises" that I did every night.

Stand, hold my arms out and make circles with my hands for as long as I could.
Sit, hold one leg out at a time, and make circles as long as I could.
Stand about 18 inches from the wall, lean forward and do "push-ups" against it.
Stand with both arms straight out and rotate approx 90 degrees in each direction (spinning at my hips).

These exercises may sound silly now, but I did them every night. I really thought I was working out, and although they may seem really basic to someone who is fit, they were absolutely excruciating to me.

I did these exercises and built up my walking. They stayed basically the same, but as I lost weight, I graduated to doing "knee push-ups", and I bought a couple of 15lb dumbells and Google'd the snot out of dumbbell exercises. I kept this routine up until my first gym visit.

What got me into the gym was lifting weight with my friend from work. What kept me in the gym was when I really saw results from spending a lot of quality time with my favorite elliptical machine.

So, looking at what I did, should you stick to cardio or throw in weight training as well? If you are as obese as I was, I think cardio is king for burning through some calories. You have to in order to lose as much fat as I had. Where I made my mistake, is I stuck with the cardio, and didn't take weight training serious enough for too long. I got caught up in the running bug, lost muscle along with my fat, beat my knees to hell and back and wound up a little "skinny-fat" with a lot of excess skin to show for it in the process. Start with cardio, but as soon as you start to look like what you consider "normal", or just plain "overweight" back off the cardio a little and then focus your workouts on building muscle. If you are lifting hard, and doing the right stuff, you'll still burn a lot of calories lifting weight. You have to replace some of that fat with muscle or you'll wind up like I did. You've then lost 160lbs and would still be embarrassed to be seen on the beach without a shirt. In fact, I think being regular old overweight would've looked better than what I looked like without a shirt at my lowest weight. From my neck, to my waist, I looked like an old man, with sagging wrinkly skin. Not what I wanted by a long shot.

I'm taking weight training seriously now, my diet is more dialed-in than ever, and I'm finally starting to look like what I want to look like when I look into a mirror with no shirt. I didn't do this for vanity, not at all, and don't get that impression. I would take the wrinkly sagging skin over all the fat any day. I'd rather be saggy, wrinkly and healthy any day of the week! Do not, however underestimate the importance of weight training. Start with the machines if you are more comfortable, but move to free weights at some point (easier if you have an experienced lifting partner or trainer - you don't want to get hurt!).

Right now, my training schedule looks like this:

4 days weight training, 2 days easy running, and 1 rest day. That gives me three days to recover from weight training and 5 to recover from running (I'm only running on the weekends now). Friday is always my rest day, and it's a treat to come straight home after work 1 day a week.

Another paradox you'll get stuck in, is that you need to have a calorie deficit to lose fat, and a calorie surplus to gain muscle. From my experience, I think a lot of the information around the web on that is a little exaggerated. I have gained muscle and lost fat while on a calorie deficit. I know it's possible. I cannot explain the physics behind it, but I believe an untrained body will build muscle on a calorie deficit if you are lifting heavy, and pushing yourself to increase your weight each session.

The first time I caught the "I'm getting skinny-fat, I need to bulk up" bug, I immediately went to a calorie surplus, and put fat back on in the process. Right now, I'm eating what would be considered "maintenance calories" for me, running 2 days a week, lifting heavy, and eating (or supplementing) 1g protein per pound of body weight each day. I am gaining muscle, and losing fat still. My scale is barely moving, except for the BF% reading it gives me...it's going down.

On January 1, I started taking a picture of myself, with no shirt every night at the same time. I'm sure every night is overkill, but it will help me remember to do it, and I have a lot of disk space. Maybe in a year, I'll turn all those images into a movie or something. Who knows. The point is, if you see yourself change gradually over time, you don't notice it as much. I needed a visual snapshot so that I could see what I looked like each day. It's 13 days in, and I already see a difference versus the Jan 1 picture.

This is a pretty broad post, I know. I am going to make an effort to write one post a week with little anecdotes or tips that have worked for me on my journey. Perhaps, they can help you as well.

Everyone starting out on a fitness journey is at a different starting point. It is so hard to give advice, but I'm going to try. I really want to help people make a difference in their lives. I'm not going to publish my e-mail here in the text of this post, but you can find me on Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook or the comments section here on this blog. Please, if you need someone to talk with, let me know. I don't claim to be a fitness expert, or anything, but I believe in each and every one of you reading this. If you have a desire to make it happen, are willing to put in some work, you can make it happen. I know you can.

What do you want to accomplish? How I improved my fitness.

2012-12-31T19:51:00.003-05:00

Don't be this guy:

Those are pictures of me in 2009. That seems like a lifetime ago. I love these pictures though, because they remind me of who I once was.

I worked on getting out of shape my whole life. I made eating a competitive sport. At one time I would even brag about how much I could eat in a sitting. I'm ashamed of that now, but I was proud of it then. As a kid people would say things like "He's a growing boy!", "He's so healthy!", "He sure isn't a picky eater!". Sure, I was growing, I sure wasn't a picky eater but I sure wasn't "healthy" either. I was fat. I've always been fat.

At the time of those pictures above, I was carrying 320lbs on my 5'8" frame. I couldn't tie my shoes, I had trouble going to the bathroom. I had severe sleep apnea; I couldn't sleep through the night. I would often fall asleep randomly. There were times I'd wake myself up in my vehicle at stoplights when my foot would slip from the clutch because I fell asleep. I wore 3XL Shirts and 46" waist pants. I couldn't walk to the kitchen to get more food without being winded and having to either sit down or lean onto the counter until I caught my breath. I was perpetually sad. I think the sadder I got about the place I was in, the more I ate.

I'm not sure exactly when, but something clicked one day, and I decided to go for a walk. I walked about 1/8th of a mile and I had to sit down on the bumper of a neighbors car and rest before I could attempt to make it back home. I was so sore the next day I could barely move. But you know what? That day after work, I did it again, and again the day after, and the day after that. I started going to the mall and walking at lunch. Fast forward about 6 months and I was down about 50lbs and I could walk for 3 miles without stopping.

A really good friend at work was always encouraging me to join the gym. I didn't want to go to the gym because I was embarrassed. I envisioned this place full of glistening Athenian bodies all in perfect condition, and I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb. People would laugh at me. I would have to change clothes in the locker room. Someone may even see me without a shirt on! I couldn't bear the horror of it all. I kept saying no.

I was at lunch one day and instead of making my usual trip to the mall to walk laps like I usually did I kept driving and I went to the gym. I walked in, and signed up. I wen't back to work and asked my friend if he was going to the gym that night. He said yes, and I told him I was going with him proudly holding out my shiny new membership card.

That night, after work we went to the gym. I went into one of the private changing rooms (where all the fat people go) to change. We went upstairs, and I tried everything my friend asked me to try. I was able to bench press an empty bar, but that was about it. I could curl a 15lb dumbbell (if I used my body motion as momentum). He even talked me into trying to do a dip (I didn't think I was going to get down once I got up on the dip station). Looking back, I really didn't do anything substantial that first night at the gym, but I could barely move when I woke up the next day.

But you know what? I went back the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that too. Before long I was actually able to do real workouts.

There was this one special elliptical machine there. I'm not sure why I liked it other than it was a little out of the way. It was on the back row so nobody would be behind it, but it became my best friend. I would spend an hour on it at a time, each time turning the resistance level up a notch. I kept dong that elliptical until one day I decided I wanted to try and run. I got on the treadmill, and I couldn't do it. I felt like I was going to fall off, so I started running outside. I ran for 1 minute and I felt as though my chest would explode. How could this be? I spent so much time on the elliptical I should be able to do this. I told myself I could do it, and before long I was able to run a mile.

It wasn't too long after that I "ran" my first 5K race. That was in May of 2011. I ran it in just over 33 minutes. I was proud, but I didn't really stick to running. I went back to the connivence and ease of my favorite elliptical machine. I kept losing weight, and I kept lifting weight and getting stronger. During this time, a new "Wellness Committee" was formed at work and I was a member. We were planning to host a company 5K race at a local trail. I was so worried. Everyone was so proud of me, and knew I'd run a 5K before, but in my mind I wasn't sure if I could do it again. So, I started running again. I ran every day. Sadly I lost focus on the weights, and put all my focus into running. The weekend before the company 5K, I ran another 5K that a few of the ladies from work were doing as well. I finished in just over 26 minutes this time, and actually ran the whole way. I was proud of my accomplishment, but what really hooked me was when during the awards handout they called my name. My name. I had won something! You could've knocked me over. I won 3rd place in my age group and got a medal. I felt like I had won the Olympic 5000 meter. I ran the company 5K the next weekend. This was in September of 2011.

One day, the next month, in October I had been working on building up my distance. I had gotten to where I could run a 10K (6.2 mile) distance pretty easily and I decided to keep running. I ended up running over 10 miles that day. When I got home, I tweeted my accomplishment and a co-worker congratulated me and asked me if I was training for a half [marathon]. I wasn't training for a half, but was planning to run the 10K race in an event that had a Half-Marathon as well. So, on the spur of the moment, I signed up for the Half instead of the 10K. The race was under a month away at this time, and I had a week-long trip to Denver two weeks before the race.

I did that Half-Marathon in 1 hour and 50 minutes. I did a few more 5K's, a 10K and a 12K after that. It wasn't too long before I had my first runner's injury. My knee was killing me. I'd overdone it. I didn't run for almost 2 months. What I did do was focus on the weights. I got all of my lifts up, and I was really getting stronger. What also happened is I started gaining weight again. Although I wasn't getting fat, it wasn't all muscle either. My knee was better, and I started running again, while still lifting. Before long the running bug took over and I was running every day again. In August of this year, I ran 128 miles. In September I ran 150 miles. I was getting a little burned out, and in October I cut back a little and ran just under 90. The (same) Half-Marathon was coming up in November, so I started training for distance. I did a 15 mile run during this period for the first time. The Half-Marathon came, and I beat last years time by 2 minutes, finishing in 1 hour and 48 minutes. I'd also cut my weight back down. Way down. It started getting dark after work, so I started going back to the gym. I don't like the treadmill, and the elliptical is boring now, unless I'm doing HIIT cardio or something. I started lifting again.

I've been taking lifting more seriously now than I ever did. I'm eating the right foods, I'm taking the right supplements. I'm hanging onto every word and piece of advice that [NASCAR legend] Mark Martin puts on Twitter. That man is my ultimate hero. He is 53 years old, 6% body fat and has a commitment to fitness and getting stronger that is unequaled. I've been doing lots of research on the proper way to do lifts, the proper nutrition and the proper supplements to take. Right now, I'm sitting at about 15% body fat according to my (cheap) body fat scales. My goal is to hit single digits. I'm certain I'll do it.

I'm not one for taking a lot of pictures, so I don't have any super recent ones, but since I showed some before, I put some other more recent pictures here as well.

I've never been one to tell myself "No" or "You can't do that". Losing weight has changed my life in a lot of ways. It has taught me that I can do anything I want to do, and there is nobody to stop me but myself.

At work, I've been an "IT guy" for many years, but I had a closet desire to be a programmer. Over the past year I spent every night, and every minute of free time I had to teach myself to be a programmer. I was able to make that transition at work back in October. In two and a half months I've doubled my knowledge already, and I'm learning even more each day. No matter what your goals in life are, there is nobody stopping you but you. If you don't like your body, change it. If you don't like your job (or, like me think you'd just like another job better), do something about it. You can't simply will a change to happen. You have to act upon it.

So, whatever your goals are for 2013, get out there and start working on them. Now! There is no time to waste. Remember you can do it. You just have to try.

I'm not going to publish my e-mail here in the text of this post, but you can find me on Twitter, Google Plus, Facebook or the comments section here on this blog. Please, if you need someone to talk with, let me know. I don't claim to be a fitness expert, or anything, but I believe in each and every one of you reading this. If you have a desire to make it happen, are willing to put in some work, you can make it happen. I know you can.

I've been hacking on my Bash Profile

2012-12-30T22:06:00.002-05:00

Here are it's current contents. I'll update the gist if I change anything. It's pretty much self-explanatory.

Edit:
In case you were wondering, this is how the prompt looks:

How do you use Social Networking?

2012-12-30T18:19:00.002-05:00

Between Twitter, Facebook and Google+ (not to mention my RSS subscriptions), I have a lot of information coming at me, that is hard to organize sometime. I tend to compartmentalize my social networking. I think of Twitter as either real-time updates (when something important is happening in the world) or as a way to get interesting links to read. It's also obviously a great way to communicate with friends. I think of Facebook as like a Family or School reunion - simply a place to see what's going on when people I know in real life. Google+ is like a bit 'ol hobby club. There are lots of people on Google+ with a lot of interests, and it not only exposes me to new things and ideas, but lets me communicate with people who are interested in the same things I am interested in.

In regards to Twitter clients, I'm a big fan of TweetDeck. I have been since I first saw it. On my Windows and Linux PC's I use the Chrome App version, and on my Mac I use the version from the App Store. I still think it's the best twitter client for desktop use (and I've tried a lot over the years). It gives me everything I want; a real-time feed that auto-scrolls for my main timeline, and the ability to add and remove extra columns. On my phone (both when I was on Android and now on my iPhone) I simply use the default Twitter client. It works well enough, I don't need columns or anything fancy on my phone, just the ability to check tweets when idle or bored. When playing "catch up" for whatever reason, nothing beats the Twitter website. With it's Vim-like navigation shortcuts, it's a breeze to go through a lot of tweets from my main timeline in a short amount of time.

I use "Favorites" as a bookmark of sorts. I've always been unsure of it's intended purpose. Is it supposed to be similar to a "Like" on Facebook or a "+1" on Google plus (sort of like a "right-on!" or "I agree")? Is it supposed to be like "Bookmarks" or "Favorites" in a browser? I use it like the latter. If I see a Tweet with a link that seems like it would be interesting, and I don't have time to follow the link, I "Favorite" it so that I can see it later in TweetDeck and remind myself to read the link. It works out well because I'm usually on my phone (and on the go) when I favorite something.

The only time I use a "client" of any sort for Facebook or Google+ is using the default apps on my phone. I do use Google Talk, but I never sign into Facebook. I'm not much on instant messaging for idle chit-chat. Usually if I'm on my computer I'm doing something; not just sitting here waiting for someone to chat with. Signing into Facebook chat has always been a disaster. Besides, I suck at small-talk anyway.

We live in such a great time with the ability to communicate with large groups of people instantly. Although I think this is great, I still worry some about future generations (or even the kids of today). Are we losing the ability to communicate face-to-face? If you are in the same building as someone, I see no reason to use technology to communicate when you can simply talk. As great as real-time communication and Social Network is, we don't need to lose the ability or desire to have meaningful and intelligent face-to-face conversations.

Surprised by CentOS

2012-12-27T20:41:00.001-05:00

Since I've moved my main machine to the Mac platform, my Mini-ITX sidekick PC has gotten a little more important. It's now my primary physical Linux box. It is now my externally facing SSH box that I can hit from the outside world, and it's my "irssi server" also. Although I have quite a few Linux machines in VirtualBox on my Mac, this little guy has to be up and running, reliably for me 24/7.

Before, it was always my "toy" box - one I would use to try out various Linux distros, dev builds, even BSD from time to time. Now I wanted something a little more reliable.

This box isn't really a speed demon. It's got a little Atom D525 CPU and 2GB of RAM, it does however have a fairly nice 60GB SSD inside which really breathed new life into it. It's just a shame the box only has a SATA-II connection (the SSD is SATA-III). I had a few options for distros to run, and here is my rundown.

First up, and really the most obvious choice was Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. For some reason Ubuntu past 10.04 does not run well on this box. I can't (don't want to) run 10.04 as it's lacking TRIM support for the SSD (or at least I can't verify for certain that it has or has not been backported into the 2.6.32 kernel in 10.04). I tried asking around on the TRIM thing and mostly got smart-aleck answers about 10.04 being 'old' and I needed to upgrade to 12.04+ (very helpful, fellow community folks on AskUbuntu!). I've even tried the variants such as Xubuntu and even Lubuntu, and they are still very sluggish on this box.

Debian was also out due to Debian Stable lacking TRIM support, and I wasn't sure I wanted to run Testing. I did load it, and it worked okay, but never felt "right". I tried it with Xfce, and for whatever reason Debian + Xfce felt very unpolished.

On a whim I loaded CentOS 6 since I knew that RH had backported TRIM support into the 2.6.32 el6 kernel. First, I love the fact that GNOME 2.x is still there. I don't need particularly up-to-date packages on this box. On this box, most of what I use is text apps anyway, irssi, and also stuff like Apache and MySQL will likely get installed at some point, as I plan to put up some sort of home intranet on it soon (gotta get around to developing it first). After install, I enabled TRIM, set the I/O scheduler to 'noop' and disabled any un-needed services and startup-apps and this little baby flies now. Really happy. Long Term support, TRIM support for the SSD, access to a huge amount of apps through the CentOS repos, EPEL and other 3rd party repos if needed (not needed now). Plus, now that this machine is in more of a 'server' mode, there is a certain comfort level there, since I trust CentOS, and I have great familiarity with administering RHEL/CentOS servers.

Back to a Mac

2012-12-26T22:16:00.000-05:00

I recently switched my primary computing environment at home to a Mac. I started out using computers on the Mac platform (I was on System 7 back then). I had a string of Macs starting with a Quadra 660AV, followed by a PowerComputing PowerTower Pro 250 and then I purchased an iMac (Summer 2000, Indigo) and a PowerBook G3 500 FW that I bought at a "steal" right after the PowerBook G4 TiBook was introduced.
My initial use of Macs (and computers really) was Music creation. I eventually made some friends who were into the PC game, Counter-Strike which moved me into PC's. I was able to sell off all of my Macs (I kept the Quadra for sentimental reasons) and build a heckuva PC Gaming rig. Fast forward a half-dozen years or so and I hadn't used a Mac since until I got a MacBook White Unibody as my work machine. It served me well until Lion came out and it was woefully slow. I also as a novelty around that same time purchased a Mac Mini that for whatever reason was horribly slow out of the box, and served as a media server of sorts for a while before finally getting shuffled off to eBay. This man and that machine never clicked at all.

I decided recently that I wanted to learn a little about Objective-C, and so, I needed a Mac. I didn't want to spend the money on one outright, so what does a geek do when he wants a new toy (without shelling out cash)? He sells stuff on eBay, of course. So, I put my Linux rig up on eBay and it brought even more than I expected, and is now acting as a home server somewhere in the Las Vegas suburbs. Yes, I toyed with the Hackintosh idea, and even set it up just to see if it'd work, and it did, but I didn't feel I could trust it over time, with OS updates, and I didn't want to run my main machine on a totally unsupported platform.

I purchased a new "Late 2012" Mac Mini and pumped 16GB of RAM into it that I purchased on NewEgg. I'm really happy with this little machine. My first thrill is the near silence in the room now. I still have two computers running, the Mac Mini and a MiniITX machine I built a while back that is running Linux (and connected to the Mac via Synergy). I can't hear either machine and it's wonderful. I'm also looking forward to a probable drop in my electric bill.

The Mini is a snappy little machine (in contrast to the last Mini I tried) even given the reduced specs compared to the machine it replaced (which in reality was far more than I needed for a home computer). I purchased a Thunderbolt to DVI adapter to allow me to run one display via that connection and another via the built-in HDMI port. I have noticed some oddities on the HDMI connected display, for example, font rendering does not seem quite as nice, but it's my secondary display and hasn't annoyed me too badly.

I'm enjoying Mountain Lion - it's a nice OS that gets out of my way. VirtualBox is running my Windows and Linux Virtual Machines quite nicely and I'm still exploring some new tools and apps.

I'm alternating between Chrome and Safari for a web browser. Firefox feels clunky on the Mac for some reason. I hated the Mac Twitter client, but TweetDeck was in the App Store and is working well. The notifications feature in Mountain Lion has eliminated the need for Growl (for me at least), I'm also using the built in Messages app to connect to my Google Talk (instead of installing Adium). I'm using Sublime Text 2 (as I do on all platforms) and I've installed XCode. I'm happy with the new Mac native version of Gimp that no longer requires X11 to run, Homebrew is the best thing ever and the only app I have purchased so far has been PCalc (on sale for 99 cents in the app store right now). I've also installed the usual collection of Dropbox and Google Drive. Spotify was also a must-install very quickly. I am a little disappointed in Steam on Mac - I'm happy that Counter Strike:Source is on the Mac platform, but the whole thing feels shaky (it crashes every time I exit the game), but aside from that it runs very smoothly on the Intel HD4000 graphics of the Ivy Bridge Core i5 in the Mini. Steam itself did ironically feel much more stable in the Steam Linux beta than the "mature" OS X version.

It's fun getting a new machine, and the Mac suits me well. It's UNIX at it's core, seems it seems to be a superb VM host with VirtualBox allowing me to run both Windows and Linux at will. I'm exploring Xcode and the Objective-C language, but I obviously set up Mono and MonoDevelop as well to have access to C#.

I'm not a morning person...

2012-12-23T00:50:00.002-05:00

...but I play one on TV.

For years, I've generally been the first person on my team at work. This has now spanned two teams, with my recent change of roles at work.

You'd think someone who get's up between 5:30-6AM every day, and is at work by 7:30...7:40 at the *latest* is a morning person, but I'm really not. Times like these prove it.

Although I don't get up at 5:30-6 on weekends normally, I'm almost always up by 7. I also almost always go to bed by 11-11:30, even on Friday and Saturday nights (I just get a tad bit of extra sleep on the weekends). I do this to keep my schedule from getting totally out of whack...which it will, quickly if I let it.

Friday, I left work for Christmas vacation. I don't go back until January 2nd, so that gave me 11 straight days of not having to go to work. Yesterday (Friday), I went to bed semi-late (I think I stayed up until about 12AM), but I couldn't hang much longer since I got up at 5:30 Friday morning. Today, I slept solid until 9AM. I didn't force myself to get out of bed until I couldn't stay there any longer. I only did this because I knew I had time to get my schedule out of sync and back in before having to get back on my work schedule. Right now, I think, I'm in my body's natural cycle. With no obligations, I'm pretty certain I could go to bed around 1 or 2 every night and get up about 9. It simply feels more natural to me.

Enough with the politics...

2012-12-11T20:12:00.004-05:00

Pretty off topic for this blog, but I thought that perhaps now that the (US) elections were over people would stop with the political social media posts. Do you enjoy reading them? I don't think anyone does, yet people still feel compelled to spew political inaccuracies all over social media. If Americans actually understood the policies and politics they love to publicly gripe about so much, we would have a much better society.

I don't care which "side" you are on. I don't think better or worse of you regardless of your political affiliation, however I may think less of you when you show how uneducated you are on critical public policy matters, and even what each party actually stand for yet feel compelled to "parrot" what you think you know all of the time.

If you insist on political posts, think before you post...or at least, do a little research beforehand.