Robotanists

Sounds like a pretty good idea. So do it.

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.

Do Something

Dance, fight, fuck or race.

Passage of time.

There are lots of ways to measure the passage of time: clock, calendars. Sometime an event like Christmas, birthdays or anniversaries. A new car, buying school supplies or meeting a co worker for drinks on Thursdays.

This past weekend we rearranged our network used the last of my 1,000' of cat5 cable running wire for the HTPC.

O'ahu

Last week I went to O'ahu with the middle school. I was frantic leading up to the trip, a week of 12 & 13 year olds! after the first day I fell right into it and had the time of my life. The only written assignment was a reflection on the activities we did, here are a few of my excerpts:

Woke up late again. My tent group was already on their way to the beach which is awesome. We chanted E Ale E* to chant out the sun which generously and magnanimously demonstrated its beauty.
This was prefaced by Auntie Ana encouraging us to observe our surroundings and how the morning can dictate how the day will play out. While her intentions were good and even some of the questions she asked were relevant and purposed, but I felt some of them did not point to any useful knowledge if answered; they were tedium. I don't remember the specifics but I remember feeling frustrated.
After a fantastic meat filled breakfast we went to Lo'i. I'm still unsure if this is an event, a verb, a location or a plant. But it involved removing invasive species so that less invasive species (Ulu) could grow. Ulu gets a fee pass in the hearts and minds here. This process was messy, I ruined brand new shoes, but I don't mind. It was well worth it; mud up to my knees working int he 'aina with our class. Giving them a chance to get dirty, use their energy and be kids. I took tonnes of pictures.
In the afternoon we went to the fish ponds. The event was soured for me by the guide mentioning "plants" after "we are working hard to remove all invasive species," referring to haoles.
My brain replied with "Hawaiians are not a different species" & "I'm not invasive." It also knows it's the same Hawaiians that were around to accept the invasive species originally, probably as a business venture or to solve some problem. No matter what, blaming me is not fair.
My heart hates it. It's unfair to expect that everything is not brown skinned is to blame. I think my sense of fairness is acute, so I will just leave the rest to "I did not like that part."

*E ala E chants in the sun, (La in Hawaiian). It helps focus the day with our group and recognize our surroundings as the paradise it is, not just a world of ipods, computers and pop music. It's about the day, the weather, clouds.

I took just shy of 1,000 pictures, 200 of which are good and usable.

productivity 2

I've done so much that I need to make another post about it. Lucky you.

1. Changed the headlamp in my moped
2. Encrypted the drive in my laptop. This way when it gets stolen they'll only get the hardware, not the data. Really the joke is on them, a 3 year old Inspiron with a wobbly screen is no gem.
3. Installed WinPE 2.0 to a flash drive. This is most useful with computers that have no optical drive, or ones that do but no Windows discs are available; when you need to run chkdsk because the machine won't boot, not even in safe mode. Most netbooks don't have optical drives and my desktop didn't for the first 3 months of its life.
4. I had a bunch of 1GB flash drives, so I created purposes for a coulpe of them for work. I made an office installer for one of them with both Mac and Windows versions of Office. 2nd drive is Lotus Notes installer for both OS flavors. This means instead of 4 CDs and a printed paper with IP address and CD keys, I know carry 2 flash drives. They also install in a fraction of the time.
5. Read World War Z
   
6. The wife drew a picture on the side of my WHS and I' in the process of spray painting it. It'll probably make most color coordinated people vomit but it's fun and I'm trying to do it using only the pain we already have. Pics when it's done.
   
7. This isn't directly related to my video card being gone, but I've started a 2600 meeting in Hilo. First meeting was in October and it wasn't until February that anyone actually showed up, but someone finally did. Now Kevin and I meet with the other regular once a months and show off and talk about different tech stuff. It's fully awesome.
8. Today I got an email from the RMA company saying they've shipped my card and it'll be returning on Monday. So the end of productivity is nigh here.
   

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.