I’m on a flight from Philadelphia to San Diego, trying out Gogo in-flight wifi for the first time. It’s not super fast, but it works perfectly fine and should help pass the time (assuming my iPhone’s battery holds out). Some data (gathered over northern West Virginia via speedtest.net):
Download: 989 kbps Upload: 276 kbps Ping: 407 ms
Ok, it’s not actually summer yet, technically. But it’s pretty close, and it sure feels like summer outside. Inside, things are pleasantly air conditioned. My aunt and uncle are visiting, and the uncle and I are lounging around watching the 2010 FIFA World Cup- England vs. US (presently ending in a tie).
I had a thesis committee meeting yesterday, and it’s really starting to dawn on me that my life as a grad student is rapidly drawing to a close. So it’s June now? Well, I’m working on another paper now, and it should be submitted by the end of September I think. And by the end of December, I’m pretty sure I will have turned in my thesis (you can then begin addressing me as “Dr.”). And after December… well hopefully I will have found a good postdoc by then, and I’ll be doing that.
Lots of projects to do around the house to get it ready to sell.
Oh, and my sister is graduating with a master’s degree in architecture next week. I’ll be out in San Diego for that, and we’ll hopefully get some rock climbing done at Mission Gorge. Should be fun.
So to summarize, things are pretty good these days, but there is some slight trepidation at the thought of getting everything done for my thesis, and selling the house, and finding a postdoc.
I have been woefully neglectful of this blog lately. I’ve been meaning to
post an update, but it just hasn’t been a priority. But as I lay on the couch watching
the Os lose on a Sunday afternoon, I find myself inspired.
Still though, I’m going to make this pretty concise. But it will be a stream of consciousness, so look out.
The wife and I painted half the basement with POR-15 Floor Armour, with the second half to follow next weekend. I think I am high on fumes. I am seriously thinking about where to do my postdoc, since I will be graduating in the fall. I’m trying to finish restoring the Saab, but there is still a ton to do. I did get the head gasket replaced including fixing some pits in the head with JB Weld. I have been working on my rock climbing a lot, generally twice a week in the gym, and I’ve done three fun outdoor climbing trips. My sister is graduating from architecture school in June. My mother-in-law is moving to Texas. My cloud computing setup has been very good. I think the ulnar nerve in my left arm is impinged or something, but other than that I finally feel healthy these days. I am pretty much a vegetarian. I’m pretty happy with the way things are.
That’s all I can come up with right now. Enjoy.
I’ve been spending the week sailing around in the Virgin Islands. I am writing this post from a 47-foot boat anchored off the south coast of Vieques, having already visited St. Thomas, St. John and Culebra.
I think the plan is to spend tomorrow on Vieques and
then sail for St. Croix the next day, ultimately heading back to St. Thomas. Obviously, I’m having a great time. And the AT&T voice/data service is surprisingly good. :]
So, let me see, what’s going on lately:
Thus far, I’ve been keeping all my data at home. For several years now, my setup has included an outside-accessible FreeBSD server and a Linux fileserver on the LAN (which also handles backups). My FreeBSD server hosts this blog, my pictures (in Gallery2), and miscellaneous other things. The need for a static IP address for this server has pretty much limited me to Cavalier for an ISP, which is annoying due to the inherently slow speed of DSL. If I wanted to switch my FreeBSD server to a VPS setup (e.g. rootbsd.net), my pictures from Gallery2 would require too much of my allotted disk space.
So finally I just decided today, for no particular reason, to go all-in and just outsource everything. The key element here, regarding the above-mentioned disk space problem, is to migrate all the photos from Gallery2 onto a cloud-based photo sharing site (I favor Picasaweb)… which is something I’ve stubbornly resisted forever, but now I see it as a resistance-is-futile scenario. So I’m now in the process of setting up a server on rootbsd.net, and migrating photos. I will of course keep copies of the photos here on my fileserver w/ backups, and I will probably keep the FreeBSD server in my basement around for the time being, but migrating all this stuff offsite will surely increase reliability. Not to mention drastically increase bandwidth to my photos and web server.
Oh, and I guess I will finally be able to get a faster ISP. Which will come down to the evil choice between Comcast and Verizon FIOS.
On the topic of nuclear annihilation, there’s a fascinating archive of information just released by George Washington University about the personalities and decision-making process inside the Soviet Union’s military-industrial complex. Lots of quality reading material for the curious, here.
My Snow Leopard DVD came yesterday, and I installed it today on my 15″ MBP (Core 2 Duo). I was surprised that the upgrade from Leopard took so long (about an hour), but everything worked OK. Rosetta had to be installed separately later, which also surprised me.
Another interesting thing is that colors look different in Snow Leopard. I’m noticing especially greens looking more intense. Word on the street is that the default gamma setting is different.
I have one little Cocoa app that I maintain, and I was pleased to discover that it took all of 3 minutes to rebuild it as a PPC/i386_32bit/i386_64bit (triple [!]) universal binary. So I guess that should be future-proof for the inevitable day that 32-bit apps are no longer supported.
What else… Oh, I like the little enhancements to exposé…. my GPU isn’t supported (yet) by OpenCL… that’s about it. On the whole a nice little upgrade.
ETA:
What a joy it is that Flash can’t bring down Safari anymore :]
I recently watched the (cancelled) series Jericho, and it put me in the mood for some apocalypse-themed entertainment. I satisfied this urge by watching The Day After and Fail-Safe. I’m certain I’ve seen parts of the latter, but the former was entirely new to me. Sort of a strange movie actually. By Dawn’s Early Light is up next.
I feel like I’m running out of apocalypses to watch. Any suggestions?