YouTube Messages Gone

I’ve removed my posts with YouTube content. All of the YouTube posts I had were music videos. Given that YouTube is going after uploaders of materials and apparently taking little responsibility for actually HOSTING materials for which they may not have permission, it may be a matter of time before they come after users.

Good bye YouTube.

Power without Constraint, a Microcosm

I belong to Mensa, the High IQ Society. It is an organization whose membership has scored at or above the 2% level on a standardized intelligence test. In the US, membership is around 50,000.

For me, Mensa represents a venue for communication with other intelligent people. It isn’t as if there’s something wrong with the other 98% of the population, as I generally get along fine with others. It’s just that there are times when I’d like to discuss something such as the latest theory of relativity drives, specifically the microwave propulsion theory of Roger Shawyer. This isn’t exactly a topic likely to be discussed at the local block party. Block party talk is fine, but then so is talk on relativity drives.

Now for me, a brain is a magnificent tool. A Mensa-capable brain is a fine version of brains in general, in that it can be faster, hold and retrieve more information, and can have a quality of thought process not accessible to one of average ability. Such a brain represents power. A powerful tool in the wrong hands is a bad thing. A powerful brain left to the vicissitudes of chance hormonal fluctuations is most unpleasant.

Lots of people hold power. Actually everyone holds some level of power. Some hold more than others. Power is generally constrained by some economic element, whether that element be the market place, the justice system, or nature itself. Essentially if you do good and useful things your power will grow. If you do evil and harmful things, your power will eventually shrink. Change the economics of the environment and power will shift in ways not always foreseen.

I had occasion to see a couple of Mensans in a position of power where they were practically unconstrained. They didn’t care about what or how they thought, as they were more the “stream of unconsciousness” types. Disciplined thought wasn’t an issue for them, and yet they had power. They’d become the consummate intellectual bullies.

It was interesting to watch in some ways. It reminded me on some level of one episode of The Prisoner, “Hammer into Anvil,” where they believe they are the hammer and I the anvil. Du musst Amboss oder Hammer sein. I’d considered the possibility of playing them as Number 2, but then Number 6 couldn’t leave. I could. I did.

I remain the anvil that breaks the hammer.

Alone

I like being alone.

I like taking walks at midnight. I like being by myself for days. I like working on Saturdays in a large, empty office building where security passes maybe twice during the day. I like eating by myself whether at home or as a single person in a restaurant.

I don’t like noise. I don’t like phone calls. While I like email, I don’t particularly like the intrusiveness of IM.

I don’t get coffee shops as a solitary activity. I go to coffee shops to get coffee for work, but I don’t get sitting in a noisy coffee shop. Sometimes I’ll see people with laptops, sometimes people reading books or magazines, sometimes writing with pen and paper. Why? If I’m writing, I want any noise to come from me, and I want no one around. If I’m working, I want an environment similar to my writing environment. (Even if I’m on travel, going wireless at the local caffeine hangout isn’t at the top of my list.) Perhaps it’s just fashionable to go to the local coffee shop and look cool.

Sure, I’m married and have a kid. We also have a pet. We do things together, we go out, and I’m even fairly sociable. Regardless, it drains. I need lots of recharge time. When the wife and kid have retired for the night, I stay up and I recover. I’ll sacrifice sleep in order to heal from a day spent with people.

I like being alone.

It’s Tuesday Morning…

…and I didn’t even watch the requisite amount of television Monday night.

http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/news/media_agencies/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003154980

Let’s see, I cooked dinner (Indian spiced stir fried pork, summer squash and asparagus, salad), went grocery shopping (Wegman’s), and took out the garbage for collection later today. For fun, I wrote a couple of programs in Python and did some data analysis to help understand how long it takes to run an encounter in a play-by-post D&D game. Results are posted on the Myth-Weavers’ site (Google it; I’m tired).

So now I’m posting here. I’ve posted the daily music video from YouTube. I just ate a handful of mini shredded wheat squares while sipping a glass of chilled sake (as in rice wine). I’m tired, but it’s a good tired. It’s always good to keep the brain running fast.

Until next post…

It Doesn’t Always Just Work

The deed is done, the mini has been returned.

The process was simple, almost sterile. I went to the Apple store and told the cashier I wanted to return the machine. He took my receipt, checked the contents of the box, and processed the return. I was charged the 10% or $60 restocking fee as expected. No problem there.

What seemed a tad eerie was that the cashier never asked anything about what was wrong, why I didn’t like it, why I wanted to return it. In some ways that’s fine. I wasn’t about to leave without my money, and he was unlikely to make any type of offer I’d find sufficiently compelling to return home with the machine. It was simple, quick fast. That’s the way the mini was supposed to be. Shame, that.

Sometimes the machine doesn’t always just work.

Cutting “Mini” Losses – or the $60 Question

It’s already Monday morning, if just barely. After the Apple store opens the new mini will be returned for a refund. I never even powered it.

Here’s the deal. Ultimately I thought it might make sense to migrate to Apple over the coming years. At present I have two Dell towers, one IBM ThinkPad, and an old Toshiba Satellite. The two Dells and the ‘Pad are my main computers. The new Dell is currently Windows only, though not for long. (It doesn’t run Linux well yet. It will, given time for developers.) The old Dell is regularly used to connect to work and is dual boot. At 6 years, it’s a sturdy machine, if a bit aged. (If you want to see a brilliant piece of mechanical engineering, look inside an old Dell.) The ‘Pad travels, is dual boot, and can do most anything. Even at 4 years, it’s still reasonably fast and capable. The mini was to be the wedge to move toward Apple, starting with the old Dell tower.

The mini was the low end machine, $600. To replace the old Dell I’d probably have to spend another $200 for an appropriate KVM switch and printer. Hmmm, that’s another 33%. Good. Really good. Next I’d have to invest time in making a VPN connection to my employer’s network, as well as invest time running VNC to the lab boxen. That could be an hour, could be ten. Given my company is currently Apple-hostile (we used to be almost exclusively Apple), I have no hope this will be easy. (The company is generally Linux-hostile, but the lab folks are generally Linux geeks. When there are Linux issues, I actually have a chance of seeing them solved.) If I get through all of that, I’ll have spent $800 as well as many hours making this little machine do the same things I’m currently doing now with the old box. I shudder to think of migrating my functions on the new Dell tower (SCSI scanner, MS Office, et al.) to a Mac.

So. Here’s the $60 question. Do I keep the Mac mini and start bleeding the finances and my time, or do I return the pretty little box and take the $60 loss for returning it?

The proverbial bottom line is that the Mac mini is a losing proposition for me. I’ve been here before, doing the tradeoff on investment in money and time, and comparing it against the potential resulting benefit. Frankly Windows is lousy and Linux is going downhill, but I don’t see the benefit of migrating to Apple for now. I’ll take the loss and move onward.

I hate computers. I really do.

So I’ve done it

I’ve gone and bought a Mac mini. I’ve taken the plunge to Apple, I have the pretty little device in hand. I connect the power cable, and I get ready to connect it to the KVM switch only to discover – it’s a PS/2 KVM switch, NOT usb. I have a usb-to-ps/2 plug, but not one that goes the other way. Likewise my printer is parallel port accessible only; the mini is usb. First boot with the mini won’t happen tonight.

I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.
I hate computers.

An Apple a Day…

…keeps computer viruses away. Okay I’m a Linux geek who also – reluctantly – runs Windows. A few months ago we bought a new computer, a Dell that was unsurprisingly not Linux compatible. It will be, but it is not yet. I’ll rephrase that. SuSE Linux v10.0 won’t install on it, and v10.1 operates unreliably. I have better things to do with my time than hand-hold a bloody operating system. All that said, the old ThinkPad runs SuSE 10.0 just fine.

A funny thing happened with the new Dell. My wife uses Windows exclusively, and I get to maintain it. Joy. Botched as it may be, Windows can do some things Linux cannot. “Entertainment” things run under Windows, things that are either terribly difficult or impossible to run under Linux. I can do magic under Linux at the commandline. I’ve even rolled a few of my own custom kernels over the years, so it isn’t as if I’m totally clueless. I’m just tired of fighting machines and software when I’d rather spend some time working with them.

Enter the Mac mini. A coworker of mine uses a Power Mac for development whereas I use Linux. We’ve always been able to share s/w and work. He swears by the Mac. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I used one of the original Macs. 400K single sided floppy that contained the OS and applications. Yup. No joke. I’d been away from Apple for many years, and didn’t consider them to be important. Then came OS X, then the mini.

Now I’m looking seriously at the bottom-of-the-line mini for experimentation. Is it a good idea? It’s a gamble, certainly. I think it will do what I want. Primarily it will replace an old Dell I currently use to connect to the lab machines at work. It runs SuSE 10.0 also, but it’s six years old. If I can make the mini run VPN and a VNC viewer, it will match what I can easily do now with the old Dell. My online searches show me it I should be able to do both VPN and VNC with little trouble.

Ha! I have dreams of running a Mac mini, connecting to work from home, and luxuriating in the elegance of a machine that exudes beauty and power. Sure. Right.

Weirdness Test

We entered the home, and everything was silent. it all seemed unreal. None of us could hear the other.

General D&D Things

I currently pay a couple of games of Dungeons and Dragons, or D&D. One is a live, in-person game and the other is a play-by-post game run at Myth-Weavers. I’ll add more to this as I become familiar with the WordPress environment.