So since this is MY new year, here are my resolutions:

1. Lose weight
2. Take better care of my health
3. Start dating again
4. Transfer departments at work to the department I would like to stay for the rest of my career
5. Spend more time blogging
6. Write an article or two for an online site, like I used to for Linux.com

Up to this point I haven’t made any progress on 3, 5 and 6, but I have started riding a bike again, while I don’t always eat healthy I have been making sure I have healthy food every day, and I have somewhat transferred to another role in the company.

At the beginning of October I moved to Mountain View, CA from Atlanta, GA to temporarily switch roles in the company. I may end up remaining in this position or changing, but I will be here until at least the end of March 2010. Because I am close to work I bought a Gary Fisher Cobia to ride to and from work, and will eventually bring my road bike out from Atlanta. Considering it has been about 12 years since I rode a bike over a few miles, I am fairly happy with the rides I have been doing. I rode 10 miles on the 18th, 15 miles on the 24th, 9 miles on the 25th, and 10.5 on the 27th. The ride on the 27th was to and from work, and I happened to get sick from riding in cold weather, but if I can do it sick I know I can do it any day.

Some of you know that my mother suffered from brain cancer, and after getting back into riding and gaining some interest in the things Lance Armstrong has done I have developed and annoyance with myself for not being involved in his Livestrong organization sooner. In the coming months I am going to start being involved in the organization and try to get other coworkers involved as well.

One thing people have said about me is that they can give me a goal and I will reach it, this has always been a work related comment, but I feel that while I do fail at some goals, they may not be total failures but may get put on the back burner until a point in my life where it makes more sense. One thing I would like to do, which I would place more under the dream category, is the Ironman triathlon. I say dream category because it is an intense race, and I don’t know that I can/will put in the time anytime soon to do it. I hope to eventually do something similar that is a real challenge. To give you an idea of another item in the dream category I have Everest at the top of that, but considering I get winded doing a lot of things I have a ways to go to do either of those. Not to mention Everest is very expensive. Thinking about how I must appear to my more recent friends I can see these two things as somewhat shocking, most people know I am ambitious, it isn’t something I hide, but a lot of people don’t know the more physical things I used to do in my life so I appear much more sedentary than these goals would imply.

Anyway I am a little sick right now so I am finishing this up and going to bed after I take some meds.

So as another year starts I feel some things need to change. I need to get out more often, and start to take better care of myself. With my mouth finally starting to hurt less I am taking fewer pain killers and can hopefully start taking my cholesterol meds again. I’m sure they don’t conflict, but I didn’t want to take any chances and forgot to ask the doctors.

My career is in my opinion starting to take shape and taking the shape I would like. While I have had to put a lot of effort into it, and worked a lot of hours, I feel the effort was worth it. I do feel that I may regret some of it later as I didn’t really enjoy life and instead pushed for the career. That may have been the wrong approach, but I have seen a lot of people spend their entire life working towards a career or their piece of the pie and I think that getting that out of the way early leaves you more available for the other stuff later in life. The people in my life who know what I have had to do, mainly friends from work, understand just how difficult it was because they have intimate knowledge of what we do and what challenges exist. Maybe one day I will be important enough that writing a book about my life will make sense, after all a book is a life goal of mine.

So since this is MY new year, here are my resolutions:

1. Lose weight
2. Take better care of my health
3. Start dating again
4. Transfer departments at work to the department I would like to stay for the rest of my career
5. Spend more time blogging
6. Write an article or two for an online site, like I used to for Linux.com

We’ll see how it goes, I don’t know that I do such a good job completing my goals that I write down.

For a couple weeks I have had pressure on my molars, and years ago I learned that my wisdom teeth were coming in at an angle, but all the sudden the teeth were causing incredible pain. I had some vicodin left over from other prescriptions and quickly took one, but no pain killer has ever really helped with pain so I was on the verge of tears all day. I did get Lortab prior to my appointment to help with pain. It appears that it is just vicodin with tylenol, but it was prescribed that I could take two. So far that has only made me sick and very tired.

Luckily I was able to get an appointment today and I saw the doctor. Three wisdom teeth and one molar are being removed next Wednesday, the 4th wisdom tooth should slide in the place of the molar if it decides to come in, but the molar needs to come out either way. One benefit to the visit is that they had this new piece of equipment that makes it easier to detect the early signs of oral cancer. Since I used to dip I get very upset/anxious/sick about even the thought about cancer so I jumped on the chance to get checked. Everything looked fine so now when I notice a bump or something I won’t jump to conclusions that it is cancer.

In 2007 a friend and I both started moving out equipment to rack mount setups. We each had our own reasons, but the common reasons were saving space, organization, and it is kinda nice to say you have a rack in your house. When I was looking for a rack/cabinet I found someone a couple hours away that had a lightly used 45U fully enclosed cabinet for sale. The cabinet came with sides, doors, caster base, two shelves, four-fan unit for the top, and a $350 price tag. A few days after picking up the cabinet I spoke with him again and we made a deal that resulted in me having an entire car full (trunk full and front and back seats full to the ceiling) of equipment. I recreated an album containing the older pictures of the cabinet, and how things were organized, which can be viewed in the Rack Project album.

After moving to Atlanta I was able to acquire even more rack mount equipment and fill in some of the gaps I had to leave empty in the beginning. The details of what is in the cabinet can be read on my Gear page, but here is a parent list.

• Linksys WRT54G 4-Port 10/100 54mb Wireless Router
• Canon CanoScan 8400F
• brother HL Series HL-2070N Laser Printer,
• 4U, Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Desktop
• 5U, AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ File Server
• 1U, Intel Pentium III, 850mhz Endian Firewall/Router
• 1U, Intel Pentium 4, 2.4ghz IBM x305 Servers (x4)
• 1U, Tripp Lite HTR07-1U UPS (x2)
• 1U, Dell PowerConnect 5012 Gigabit Switch
• 1U, Cisco Catalyst 2900 XL 24 port Switch
• 1U, CAT5e 24 port Patch Panel
• 1U, Rack Writer
• 2U, Intel Pentium 4, 2.6C Linux Desktop

I am currently not using the Cisco switch, the 2U desktop, or any of the x305 1Us on a regular basis. With the monitor and 5.1 audio connected to the same power source I am pulling 515 watts right now, which does raise the power bill, but not to an outrageous amount.

I am opening up time to start doing a little consulting so I have taken some time to organize the work space and make it a better work environment. The following pictures are of my home office that were taken on March 2nd, Home Office album is on PicasaWeb.

I haven’t tried it yet, but this recipe is probably going to give you the real Swiss fondue experience. The fondue I had in Zurich had white wine in it, which was different from other fondue I have had, but sooooo good.

1/2 lb Emnenthaler Cheese (shredded)
1/2 lb Gruyeye (shredded)
1 clove Garlic
2 cups Dry White Wine
1 tbs Lemon Juice
2 tbs Flour
3 tbs Kirsch
1/4 tsp White Pepper
Nutmeg and/or Paprika to taste

Rub the inside of the fondue pot with the garlic clove – add clove to pot or disgard
Heat up the White Wine & Lemon Juice – should be hot but do not boil
Reduce heat to low and slowly add cheese while stirring
Slowly add remainder of ingredients while stirring
If fondue is too loose add more cheese
If fondue is too stiff add more wine

I have felt like a jerk not being able communicate with a lot of the people I have to talk to, co-workers are of course excluded from that since they all speak English. A lot of stores seem to be closed on Sunday, and they are of course different from stores in the U.S. The food is good, I have had Italian, Swiss-American, Swiss, and some German food and have enjoyed them all. The Swiss-American burger could have been better, but it was of course “American” food in another country. Food is pretty expensive. I have been paying 20-30 CHF for a meal, which is about $17-$25. Not horrible, but when that $25 is fries, a coke, and bratwurst it is a bit expensive.

I am pretty sure I am going to put in the effort to relocate to Zurich even with the downsides, I feel there is more opportunity for travel, career advancement, personal growth, and excitement here than in CA or NY and certainly more than Atlanta.

You are more than welcome to browse through all of the photos taken during the trip along with some of my favorites displayed below.

RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://peterjmanis.com$1 [R=301,L]

Apparently Wordpress couldn’t handle that correctly because I made a small change to my permalinks. I have since updated it to

RewriteRule ^(.*)/(.*)/(.*)/$ http://peterjmanis.com$1/$2$3/ [R=301,L]

Everything should now redirect properly.

1. Improve Django and Python skills
2. Work on a startup
3. Improve eating habits
4. Lose 40 lbs
5. Create an Android application
6. Drink more water
7. Eliminate all debt
8. Start dating again
9. Create a solution log
10. Move up in Google
11. Travel internationally

1. Improve Django and Python skills
2. Work on a startup
3. Improve eating habits
4. Lose 40 lbs
5. Create an Android application
6. Drink more water
7. Eliminate all debt
8. Start dating again
9. Create a solution log
10. Move up in Google
11. Travel internationally

I have already started all of these so we will see how they work out.

People also went nuts over the whole Janet Jackson breast incident, and that was a quick flash that was handled by her as a mistake (covering up quickly). There are people who are not going to handle a picture of a woman breast feeding as it was intended, a non-sexual photograph. I happen to know someone who is in the petition, a girl who just had a baby in 2008, she also happens to be one of the most argumentative women I have ever met in my life and would find any excuse to justify her being on that petition.

It isn’t that there is anything really wrong with the photographs (other than the 4yr old breast feeding), personally I think nude photos should be more accepted in our society, but that just isn’t going to happen. I don’t know that Facebook is the place for photos of women breast feeding and I hope that Facebook continues to remove the photos.

The Atlanta Circuit City stores are closing and I was able to pick up a Canon EOS Rebel XS for $449.99, which is a really good deal (except that as I check Newegg right now it is the same price but they have free shipping and I had to pay tax at CC).

Many don’t know that I used to have a great interest in photography, but never had the spare resources to buy a nice camera. I am hoping to use this opportunity to learn how to properly use the camera and take some fantastic photos. My trip in February is going to be a great opportunity, but I need to learn before I leave so I can reduce the number of poor photos.

If the LHS slice is in extended form, then the RHS must have just as many items as the number of items in the LHS slice.

Book meme:

- Grab the nearest book.
- Open it to page 56.
- Find the fifth sentence.
- Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
- Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

via both Leah Culver and Eric Florenzano’s blogs

Sentence from Python in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition by Alex Martelli