Closure part 1

I leave HI in 3 weeks. Today serves as a good milestone for the beginning of the end. To help cope with leaving I'll write some cheerful notes about the communities I'll be leaving.

Tonight marks my last 2600 meeting in Hilo. This is a meeting I started over a year ago with a rocky beginning and a successful legacy.

It began with me, lobst4r and Kitten Viscous sitting around talking about data storage. Tonight had 6 of us chatting up a storm. A member from our church comes, a former engineer, it was like play time for him. He brought bricked Linksys routers and he was so excited that everyone was excited about them. When his wife came to get him I said "thanks for letting Jim come out to play!"

I have some awesome friends in this group and it has always been a pleasure to talk with people interested in the same things but with a different approach and perspective. No one else gets excited about neodymium magnets like they do.

There's a 2600 meeting about 1/2 hr from where I'll be in MA, I just hope they're as awesome as the group I'm leaving.

I'm glad the group will continue to meet after I leave.

'Ohana

Big Island Ohana Cafe. Owned by a father and mother, run by daughter and son. I never knew their names or their nationality. They had vintage signs on the wall and still offered banana splits and malt milk shakes. They were cash only.

When I moved here I ate there a couple three times a week, usually getting bacon cheeseburgers, fries and a drink for me and my boss. The store changed owners and my shift moved to the evening when BIOC was closed so I stopped eating there.

We started going to church and would eat lunch at 'Ohana Cafe every Sunday. Over the summer my hana'i nephew paddled every Saturday morning and we took him there for lunch afterwards.

We went often enough that they let me order off menu. I usually got fish over fried rice with eggs over medium. It was fantastic. Jessie got the same thing every time, which with their accent, was pronounced "Frenche Toast."

They closed 2 weeks ago.

Update:

BigIslandVideoNews.com has video of the corner being torn down. It may have been ugly but I don't see 15 new parking spaces being better than the 'Ohana Cafe.

Every Day Carry

I was a Scout once. At the time I didn't understand the need to always be prepared because everything was always provided for me. As an adult I have the pleasure of providing for myself and I like to come prepared. A recent post on Reddit motivated me to make a list of my EDC items.

Every day carry means I always have a Leatherperson Micra & Maglite Solitaire on the key chain. This solves the majority of problems I run into.

In my backpack I carry:

• a makeup bag full of screw drivers
• ace wrap, adhesive medical strips and Neosporin
• Leatherperson Core
• notepad
• 3 pens, 1 sharpie
• Aspire One
• snacks
• Swiss army knife
• water bottle
• 4GB USB drive

In my car I have:

• full 1st aid kit
• change of clothes
• swim suit and snorkel gear
• Maglite Mini LED
• D40x

There're lots of resources for Every Day Carry items on EDCForums and EDCItems

Some people enjoy the serendipity of life and just roll with whatever happens and don't like faking control by carrying all this gear with them. I had a discussion once about whether the burden of always carrying everything was too high. In my mind it's not, I enjoy being prepared and I enjoy solving problems. To me the world is a playground, a workshop, and while it's not broken; I certainly enjoy fixing it.

What do you carry everyday?

Precious

I was reading about secret societies. I came across the Order of the Engineer. They follow a code of ethics regarding engineering. Its purpose is to foster pride and resonsibility in your work. I think it's awesome. It's not a secret society, it's not used to make extra money or get a job. It's about being pono with your work. They get a plain stainless steal ring.

I'm a member of several clubs as outlined in the previous post, none of which have rings or formal introductions. I was lamenting not being a member of any clubs like that when I look at my left hand and saw my wedding ring.

I've tried to talk about this to a couple of friends, neither of whom are married and one of which cannot legally marry. I came across like an asshole I think, pushing my marriage in their face. Now I'm going to try to explain myself here and likely present myself as an asshole to a much larger audience. I feel vulnerable when I'm not wearing my ring and confident when I am. It's a heavy ring, platinum and silver, very comfortable and fits well. It was made by a wonderful and akamai friend as a wedding present. I'm very proud of it. My pride is not meant to be exclusive. I think everyone should be able to marry if they want. I will likely talk about my stance on marriage at another time, this post isn't about that, but about membership in societies.

Jessie and I once had wooden rings we got in Spain. I broke mine catching a Frisbee the week we got back.

A frequent ring I see is the class ring. I never wanted one from high school and I certainly did not want one from my community college.

What groups are you a member that are significant? Do you wear any jewelry that shows your membership?

tracking

Several months ago before I went on my O'ahu trip I heard something on NPR while shopping for supplies. It was a medical comedy sketch. I enjoyed it but was too focused with the task at hand to complete the listening and find out who it was.

Months later I found motivation to track it down. I emailed Hawai'i Public Radio and they eventually told me it was mostly likely a syndicated show out of Cleveland hosted by Robert Conrad. I found their programming schedule and emailed him for confirmation; it was Nichols and May, a comedy duo. The album I'd heard was called Nichols and May Examine Doctors.

Turns out Nichols also directed the Catch 22 film.

There isn't much to see on Internet about these two, YouTube has a few clips though.

Work will set you free

I had a conversation with my brother once about work. He said he liked his work so much, he would go in early and stay late, work weekends, 12 hour days etc. I told him I could never understand that, liking work. At the time I think I was in highschool and my jobs consisted of mowing lawns, digging holes and data entry, so it's easy to understand why I felt that way. What I didn't understand was that it's not just the work that is part of the job. It's the other people, it's the impact, it's the environment.

I've been through a few more jobs since then, most of them had good sides and also bad: cheap/free food, the access to corporate software, the wiring skills I was learned, the cute girl at the lunch counter, the money I was making or the ease of the workload (I started this blog at work).

None of them fulfilled me. I never went to sleep happy and content, usually instead just out of exhaustion or sometimes with the arresting feeling that I'd be stuck doing this job for a very long time.

Now I work at a charter school, 50 students in the High, 25 in the Middle. It's amazing. Kids are like a drug. Being around youth, creativity and the pure joy that kids can have is intoxicating. I have a boss who trusts me and the decisions I make. She fights to make sure I continue to have a job next school year. I have friends that I go the extra mile for and they do the same for me. The people I work with are passionate, caring and willing to try new things. They are fluid. They have a great sense of humor.

Twice a week the middle school has kane (boy) / wahine (girl) day where they take each gender out for a field trip, project or focus group, the other gender stays behind at school. So twice a week I get to see what it's like for them to be alone.

You know who I love most? Middle school girls.

Lulz. No really:

When you put 13 year old boys together they fight, they spit and hit each other. Insults fly out as quickly as the laughing, they're loud. The little boys submit behind the bigger ones. They spend their time trying to look up scantily clad women on Internet and they break things. They're all the bad parts of humans--the aggressive and selfish and destructive energies fueled by the inhibitions of youth; they're assholes.

Putting girls alone means giggling, hula dancing and hair braiding. They look up lol cats on Internet. They're quiet and they help each other. They embody the good forces in the world.

There are, of course, exceptions. There are definitely some laid back and gentle boys and there are some bitchy girls. Most of the time I prefer them mixed. They're a wonderful group that has made my life here several orders of magnitude better.

Now something is different. A place that values me, where I actually make an impact that's not just based on profit. Some days I leave school in a fantastic mood. I roll all the windows down and praise the planet. It's a funny feeling to drive away from work and look forward to going back.

productivity

The video card in my gaming machine was crashing and showing artifacts during POST. It's being RMA'd.

This has stopped me from playing computer games which has let me accomplish all the other chores and projects that've been waiting to get done:

1. Installed uTorrent on my WHS. I have it watch for torrents in whs\public\torrents. I've also set up RSS feeds for the shows I like, the feeds come from feedmytorrents.com. It downloads them all to one dir and then moves them into whs\video\tv\%showname% to make it easy for the wife and the rest of the hosue to find.

I also set up the scheduler in uTorrent to only download and seed at night when everyone else is asleep. uTorrent's scheduler is tedious to configure but works. I tried at first to figure out a way to do with it Task Scheduler in Windows but hade a very difficult time and scratched that idea.

2. RMA'd a bad stick of memory back to G. Skill. I don't really like evanagalizing products but now I will. G. Skill offers everything I like: the memory is good quality, cheap, comes with a lifetime warranty and they have an easy RMA process.

3. I filed my taxes. It's depressing to see how much money I've made compared to how much I have, but it's exciting to think how much I'll get back. No matter what, it has to be done and I don't mind paying taxes. But I recognize the need and the corrolation between the taxes I pay and the services I use and I often feel that I get more than I pay for. I appreciate the roads, the schools, the police and the EMTs. I just wish more of my taxes went to them than to war.

4. Laundry! Yes! I've done 4 loads this week.

5. Hollowed out a book. The next best thing to do with a book after reading or burning is to gut it.

6. Cleaned up the htpc menus. fixed some error messages and added the photos from WHS.

7. Spending more time with my wife. Always a good idea.

What have you been up to?

My sack

I had to leave my wife's backpack in RVA over thanksgiving, trading for a $10 pack with a bigger central pocket from my dad. It was terrible and smelled like cigars.

I was looking for a new backpack. It needs to carry one laptop, DSLR, water bottle and additional space for misc stuff / books / sketch pad / food. If there are two slots for laptops that would be grand but I recognize that's a niche need and can live without it. When I travel I take a backpack with laptop and travel amenities and a seperate bag for camera and that's a hassle. If I can combine them into one pack it would make everythign easier. I also drive a moped so transporting all my gear in one pack would be a fantastic boone.

I was briefly interested in military backpacks, I figure the military could offer something rugged and they use laptops from time to time, right? I was able to find ALICE and MOLLE style packs locally but they were more oriented to camping than tech, no surprise there. No dice on the ILBE in town. Ruling out the military line puts me in the prosumer grade equpment.

1. The leader has been this Tenba Gen3 for $172. 
2. The Tamrac 5549 is in second but it looks like the camera section is camera only, when I'm not carrying the camera I'd like to be able to utilize that space for somethgn else.
3. Finally the LowePro CompuRover for $250. This is really geared toward professional photographers, it has a mount for a full size tripod.

After I purchased a friend suggested a first responder pack aimed at Fire and EMS. This would be a good option but for the price.

The winner is the Synergy. The price is right, and it has lots of space inside. Two main compartments, the main also having a padded area for laptop. Six pockets accessible from the outside and another two inside along with a few mesh pockets. It has a place for cards which I put my new business cards in it feels like it was actually designed by an engineer, as though they wanted to make a quality item.

I only have a few complaints and if I had design control I would've probably removed one or two pockets but it's not too bad. There is no place to put pens; I like to carry a pen and sharpie but there is no specific place fo these, I fit them into the pocket knife section. The chest strap is non removable, so either you use it or it flaps annoyingly and gets caught.

Now I need to make some protective fittings for the DSLR but there's plenty of space for it and I enjoy crafts.

Meat Parade

Both the vegetarians have left the house for the holidays. The two meat eaters in the house have been having Meat Fest 2008 (tm). We did steak chili, prime rib for Gregmas, steak and eggs for breakfast, chinese food.

There's already a huge fanbase on Internet. So by no means is the bacon weave a new idea, but it's still awesome.

One layer 6 x 7 bacon weave, lightly cook until chewy, definitely before it's crispy. Uncooked turkey slices wrapped around portugese sausage, baked until turkey is done.

Top bacon weave with cheese, roll around turkey/sausage like a bacon burrito and use toothpicks for structure. Bake until done.

Scallops fried in bacon fat and pork stuffing (as the vegetable).

Nom.

gear

I like tools. I like having the stuff to do other stuff with.
In the car I have a flash light and an oversize 1st aid kit.
In my backpack I carry a full size leatherperson Core, lock picks and batteries
On my key chain I carry a leatherperson micra (I feel the same way (Leatherperson warranties are the best, I highly recommend their products)), a 4GB USB drive with tonnes of troubleshooting apps, and a red LED light. For a while I had a tiny little maglite on there as well that I just loved. Unfortunately it wasn't very well designed and fell off while riding to work last week.
What kind of tools do you keep around?

the only way to fix it is to flush it all away

Flooding is another one of nature's recitals that can be added to the list. Hilo is getting a lot of rain right now. This makes for excellent pictures! It's very difficult to shoot in the rain without getting the equipment wet. I missed an amazing photo opportunity at rainbow falls but I just couldnt' bring myself to expose my camera to that kind of rain.

Today we went out again to try and grab a shot of rainbow falls, and while it's still an awesome shot, the falls aren't nearly as big as they were last night. Here's the shot of the day, a drainage canal with a 10" exposure time:



For context of the amount of rain that's been showing up, Rainbow Falls before and after

Hand me that tweaker bag

WHS says my desktop hasn't been backed up in 84 days, which is how long I've been stuck solely on my laptop. Laptop keyboards are smaller, there are less keys, the use of the Fn key becomes essential. I've come up with a guide for your laptop and Internet. Here are some ideas you can try to experience something new.

1. Change the color scheme to silver. This isn't all that amazing and comes default with many computers, but the truth is I just figured out how to do it myself. So I did it and it makes a big difference. Right Click on the desktop, Properties, Appearance Tab, Color scheme -> Silver.
   
2. Add some XP Power Toys.
   
1. Since I just started messing around with photography, I found it incredibly nice that MS provides support for RAW images. Until now I've been stuck shooting in .jpeg which just hurts my geek heart.
2. ClearType Tuner. I haven't noticed a night and day difference but when I installed it I saw what I could be seeing.
   
3. Alt tab replacement also added a slight change to the interface. It's not terribly exciting but a nice change.
4. Stay away from Virtual Desktop Manager. It says 'up to four desktops' when it really means 'always and only four desktops that you can't configure very easily and whose background we will mangle.' I was excited and veyr let down.
3. Buy some memory! Newegg's prices on laptop memory is dropping by the day. 2GB of DDR2 for <$50. This is probably the best upgrade you can make to your laptop. Installing is a cinch, if you want it but don't know how and are afraid to try shoot me an email and I'll be glad to walk you throught he steps. After this upgrade you'll wonder how you ever survived without it.
   
4. Windows / Microsoft Update and Driver updates. This shouldn't really be on the list, but I come across so many machines that haven't done much of either in a long time. If you're an IE user be sure to upgrade to IE 7 for the added tab support. I recommend upgrading to Microsoft Update because it will also cover your Office install and more MS software in the future. Driver updates are essential for the smooth running of your PC. Particularly pay attention to the video and chipset drivers.
   
5. Uninstall any McAfee, Symantec / Norton system manglers you have. Certainly don't pay for it. I use AVG, it's free and auto updating and it doesn't bring my PC to slug's pace.
   
6. StumbleUpon. When you join let me know so that we can be friends with each other. You can set up hot keys too so you don't have to struggle with a touchpad. I use Alt + Z to Stumble and Alt + UpArrow for I like it, Alt + DownArrow for I don't like it + Stumble .
7. Take your laptop to the head. You haven't joined the information age until you've written an email on a commode.
8. Take apart your computer and dust it. Especially if it's out of warranty you have nothing to void :). The panels on the bottom are probably fine to take off and look at without hurting anything. Buy a can of compressed air, read the directions and spray out the insides. Cleaning out the fan on the bottom can really help increase the battery life because the fan doesn't' have to work so hard to spin. Also a good time to check what kind of memory it has and see if it can support more. If you don't want to open the case to exam your RAM, head to Crucial's site and use their Scanner Tool, it'll tell you everything you need to know.
   
9. Find a forum regarding your laptop. There are enthusiasts everywhere for everything. Who knows, this junk PC could be a DIY dream. People have some incredible ideas for the hardware sitting under your finger tips. Google your model number and forum and you're likely to find something good. I once stuck a hot screw driver into the PCI Express slot at the suggestion of a forum.
10. Backup your data right now. Not tomorrow or this weekend. Do it tonight. Hard drive failures are the worst. Don't be that teary eyed person that has to explain why all your children's pictures are now lost forever.

Publishing Short Stories

The two previous posts have been waiting to see the light of Internet for almost a month. I've been debating how to publish these stories. I thought about Scribd, I considered submitting it to a short story zine or two. I knew I wasn't publishing for money and I didn't want anyone else to control it. I also knew that I didn't want to create another account with another site and that's really what helped me decide to go with Google Docs.

I didn't read about publishing rights like I wanted to, so I'm not sure what they're covered under. If you're interested in republishing these or using them leave me a comment and we can work something out.

Ninja Edit:
I meant to end this post with a question. Have you ever published anything, in physical media or on Internet? What experience did you have, what avenues did you pursue?

Old Crow

The Mrs. PI and I got into a conversation today about cheap toilet paper and how god awful it is. How it's a PITA to use and how ineffective it can be. I concurred and instantly made a short list of things I do not like to buy less than top shelf of.

• Headlights. The difference between $15 and $25 lamps can be your car
• Olive oil, if it's not Extra Virgin, it's not EVOO
• Toilet paper
• Computer memory.
  
• LCD monitors.
  
• Bras. The most powerful force on the planet need support

What are your top shelf buys?

ToDo: Make to do list

How do you keep track of your to dos? I'm a fan of to do lists, but I think that a hard copy of a to do list is not nearly dynamic enough for my needs. I like something I can access from work, my pda, home and any other internetted computer. A widget that works on my google hompage would be nice too.
Google does make a To Do list and there are tonnes if you search. I guess my needs in order of importance

mark items as completed but not removed from the list
ability to share specific items with specific people
Works with Google start page
easily synced with an offline pda

And just for kicks, here's my to do list this weekend:

• Buy car washing soap
• wash car
• put NIN sticker on bumper
  
• burn CDs / DVDs for friend
  
• assemble tattoo

What's on your list this weekend?

Cleaning up part 2

I originally wrote this post on July 4th and apparently never got around to publishing it. Can't imagine why.

Do Not Want:

• The sound of door knocking. I hate it when I'm sleeping, I hate it when I'm awake
• Missing a birthday/wedding /anniversary. All of which I've done in the last month
• Not cat calls, those are sweet. But being whistled at. As though my attention can be whistled for. I'm not brooding with you
  

Want:
Optimus Prime VS Megatron

Word to your mother

Some people don't realize that the word irregardless is over redundant. I used to really enjoy word play and grammar, often correcting people on their grammar (what an asshole thing to do). These days I try really hard not to correct anyone, mainly because mine has turned to poop.
We decided to provide other options for the over redundant uses of regardless:

• abregardless
• aregardless
• nonregardless
• deregardless
• reregardless
• unregardless
• antiregardless
• disregardless
• preregardless
  

You're welcome world / Webster.

I ordered two two x one gigabytes of ram. Two packages of two ram sticks, each one gigabyte. I've been frothing ever since I submitted the order. I've never had a computer with maxed RAM, I've been looking forward to this moment since around 2001. Tonight I installed it to find that only 3 of the 4 gigs is available. Also it hasn't made that much of a different from the 1 gig previous. What a let down. My Vista Experience Index won't refresh either.

In more upbeat news, this is the bathroom sign I'm going to print up and use at work on Thursday:



Update: Vista apparently just can't see any memory above 3 GB. I removed one stick of RAM and while the BIOS noticed it had changed, Vista didn't even bat an eye 'cept the BSODs stopped. I'm now in possession of a single 1 GB ddr2 800 mhz stick of RAM and also four 256 MB of varying speeds. If you need, let me know,
They're priced to move.

2nd Update:
This is the article where MS explains that their 32-bit OSes only support 3.1 GB of RAM

omghideousdog

Reading a friend of a friend's blog I came across the cutest post I've ever seen about seeing eye ponies. It reminded me of Sam



I was turned on to the ugliest dog contest by Mrs Prison Industry's mom several months ago. I heard about the world's ugliest dog and thought how demeaning it would be and how the winner was probably cute ugly like pugs, however my reaction mirrored the judges:


He's so ugly that even the judges
recoiled when he was placed on
the judging table . . .


These pictures made Mrs Prison Industry spray root beer on my keyboard and monitor, despite having already seen these pictures. Please tell me your reaction


More information can be found at Sams' website and blog. RIP

Doubleplus good

The Recycling Center is a site that shows you a recycling center near you. I've been waiting for something like this to drop into my lap for 6 months. Recycling in Hawai'i is popular, there's a $.5 return on all aluminum cans and most plastic bottles. The program is called HI 5, which is awesome. It is however quite difficult to find a place that takes recycling. Reynold's has a center and so far we've been taking our stuff to them. Otherwise we have to look for the Transfer Station, which may or may not be the dump. Eitherway, there's never an address and no one seems to be able to give us decent directions.


Sunset seen from space, you can tag it with AMAZING if you want but only on your own flickr page.


I have a great time making up words to use in my private conversations with people I trust. Here's what I have so far:
Ironicality - Possessing irony: What you just said had a note of ironicality.
Dialectual - Relating to dialects: The meaning is the same, the spelling is a dialectual difference only.
Deliciocity - How delicious a meal is: The most being Terminal Deliciocity. When the food is being prepared but has reached its peak and will not get any better no matter what else you do, it has reached terminal deliciocity.

If you had to....
Create a new activity, social pass time or hot new trend. What would it be?
Mine would be Surfery = Surfing & Archery = Surfing while shooting arrows at targets.

Yours?