Month: December 2003

Barry Smith has begun a series of articles reviewing various GNU/Linux distributions with a focus on the non-guru, non-clueless-newbie audience.

For the majority of computer users, that’s really where they fall, I think. Most know how to use the specific applications they rely on, and they understand where to find files, how to navigate the filesystem, and the difference between saving and running an application.

I take my buddy Justin Timpane as an example. For a while, he seemed to aspire to be a computer geek, then decided that it wasn’t for him and he’d rather do something more real, and more important, than fix computers for a living. These days, he’s both a nurse and an actor — a tall order to fill — and seems to be thriving, enjoying both, although he’s a lot more tired all the time than I remember him 🙂

Anyway, Justin knows how to turn his computer on.

I kid you not, there are people behind a screen every day who do not know this.

There was one lady at my former work (a bank) who had not turned her machine off for several years while working there. She was also one of our “frequent callers” on the helpline because she was so absolutely clueless. This appeared to be a problem endemic to her brain, rather than limited to the technical arena, since people complained about similar problems with her outside of IT.

Anyway, the bank instituted a “save power, turn it off” program (that also had a beneficial secondary effect of helping the IT dep’t roll out patches better) who called the helpdesk in absolute panic the day after we implemented this policy because her machine “wouldn’t turn on”. I went down to see what was the matter.

I saw that her PC tower was turned around backwards under her desk. Cables had obviously been pulled out and put back. The keyboard and mouse were plugged into the wrong jacks (they look identical in shape if you use a PS/2 mouse & keyboard, but you’d think the color-coding mismatch would tip people off).

I fixed the keyboard and mouse mixup. I made sure the cables were secure. I flipped the computer right-way-front again.

I pressed the power switch on the front of the PC.

“So that’s how you do it,” I heard in a murmer from her lips behind me.

Back to what I was saying. Justin knows where the power switch is. He knows his music recording application, Cakewalk Sonar, very well, and even gives me tips from time to time on how to use it. He uses Instant Messaging, email, and most of the web goodies. He knows how to use the pointy end of a screwdriver, is pretty smart, and has reinstalled operating systems. He’s an intelligent, competent, mainstream PC user who knows how to solve problems in general, and can figure out most technical problems he encounters. This, I consider the “mainstream, average PC user”, representing the middle 50% of PC users.

This kind of article is geared for people like him, without aspirations to guru-hood, who use computers as part of their day-to-day life and might be looking for an alternative to Microsoft Windows.

This first installment in the series focusses on the easy-to-use Windows competitor, LindowsOS. I thought it was pretty cool, and will cover the next installment when it comes out.

EDIT: I’ve been to Subway and tried their low-carb wraps. They are really quite good. Five of the eight carbs in the Turkey Bacon Wrap are from the wrap itself. While it’s not appropriate for Induction (you’re trying to break the carb addiction, after all), it’s a nice treat. You can convert any sandwich into a wrap now for an extra $0.50, and from what I understand, in a couple of months Subway is introducing low-carb salads to complement their offerings. Watch this space!

January 1 is often a time of quiet contemplation, reflection, and consideration of times past. Many of us sit down with a sheet of paper, a pencil, and perhaps our partners, and figure out what our goals for this year are going to be. Most often, it really doesn’t matter if we achieve these goals (and heck, how many of us actually keep them anyway?) but simply that we set them, and that we aspire to be better than we are.

What a noble tradition. However, this January 1, for me, isn’t about goal-setting, except for one: to go out and stuff myself silly on a Subway low-carb sandwich wrap!

Yep, Subway Sandwiches has jumped on the low-carb bandwagon. They are coming out with whole-weat sandwich wraps. The wraps have 5 carbs — add to that the sandwich meats and veggies, and you’re talking about a big sandwich that will probably come in under 10 carbs for most people. While not ideal for those on Atkins Induction (less than 20 carbs a day — blowing half the wad on one meal is not recommended), any time past the first two weeks, this might be a pretty good treat, or even a staple.

So, while I’m not saying “Forget the Jared Diet” (eat less and exercise while eating Subway sandwiches daily), this may cast an entirely new light on Jared’s diet for those trying to speed up their weight-loss or manage diabetes by reducing carbohydrate intake.

In related news, I bought a Carl’s Jr. Western Double Bacon Cheeseburger the other day. And I asked them to “hold the bun”. They presented the sandwich very attractively, with ketchup, mustard, and mayonnaise on the side, all on a nice foam dinner platter with a plastic lid. The bacon slices were criss-crossed in an “X” on top of this bun-less double cheeseburger.

I was so freaking impressed I called the Carl’s Jr. number right then and there (1.877.799.STAR) to congratulate them. Other than waiting on hold fifteen minutes while my kids played in the play area, it was cool. It went something like this (though I can’t remember the exact wording):

“Thank you for calling the Carl’s Junior customer service line. I’m Judy; may I have your name please?”

“Matthew P. Barnson”

“Matthew, what can we do for you today?”

“Well, I was just calling to congratulate you guys on a job well done. I ordered a Western Bacon Double Cheeseburger tonight without the bun. The last time I ordered a hamburger without the bun, it was at McDonald’s, and they took a cheeseburger, threw on all the toppings, and wrapped it in paper. It was disgusting. This burger from you guys, though, it just rocked! I mean, the presentation was excellent, it looked attractive to eat, and they didn’t look at me weird or anything.”

“Sir, you mean you’re calling to thank us?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Just to say thanks for making keeping to my low-carb eating regime much easier and more attractive.”

“Umm… okay”

(there was a pause, clicking of the keyboard on the other end)

“So, erm, well,” (she’s obviously trying to read her script at this point and figure out how to respond) “I will be sure and notify the regional vice president and manager of the store about this probl… erm, compliment, and they will see to it that it’s resolved… erm, that they keep up the good work,” she finished lamely.

She asked me for some personal information (address, phone number, etc). I went ahead and gave them to her, and surprise of surprises, she told us we would soon have coupons for two free hamburgers arriving in the mail!

Anyway, that’s my rambling post for the day. Cheers.

I ran across an interesting utility in a post on kuro5hin.org. It’s called Instant Gratification. What it does is, if you’re running a weblog, and someone visits, you get sent an instant message to your IM client! This gives you the opportunity, if it’s a logged-in user or someone on a related weblog (like LiveJournal, Blogger, and others share user accounts among thousands of blogs — but I run Drupal, so it’s just among a few hundred and whether the user logs in is totally up to the user to decide, rather than involuntary) to actually send IM’s to your visitors to determine whether they liked what they saw, what improvements you could put in, etc.

I dig it, and I think I’m going to use it. Now to hack my HTML code to allow it!

There’s another cool utility on that page called Blog Change Bot What this little bot does is allow people to receive Instant Messenger notifications when a blog entry on your site is updated.

Now, I already track users IM addresses (once again, on a purely voluntary basis if they decide to provide them), so converting this to a Drupal module should not be a big deal. I think the two could provide some really useful little utilities to Jon’s, Paul’s, and my blogs. Those are the three I really check every day 🙂 It would be nice if I could avoid checking them at all, and just get an IM when they are updated so I can check them when that happens. I track them on my site cloud anyway, so I kind of get a delayed-reaction notification when they change. It would rock to be notified within moments if they change — that way I can log on, leave a comment, and even fire them off a Private Message while they are still online! Or do similar things when Justin or Sam leaves an entry up here at barnson.org.

The problem is, there seems to be somewhere in the annuls of employment, on page 8394, a sentence that reads: “You must be ill to the point that you cannot do your job, and know it hours before”.

This double bind is where I am tonight. After leaving work early last night, I struggled with the decision today of whether or not to call in sick. I am not severely or acutely ill at this very moment.. but I was for much of last night, meaning I have had no sleep. I have had bouts with aspects of this illness today (including as recently as an hour before the beginning of my shift), and I had a real fear that going in to work tonight would make me be even sicker for the upcoming week.

Therein lies this little nugget of a problem. Now I am here at home, feeling better with each passing hour because I am resting.. and my body needed this rest to recover. But I feel bad that I am not actively suffering for the night I am not at work.. I feel like I should be as bad or worse than I was last night (The possibility of going back to the Hospital where I work as an ER patient came up in conversation with my wife).

I guess its pointless to wonder if I would have felt better had I not stayed home to rest.. and I NEVER call in… I am glad I am recovering from this particular bug, I just second guess myself.

Download TightVNC here if you want to remotely administer your computer from somewhere else. I dig it.

This blog is mostly for my father-in-law 🙂

I recently discovered a very interesting website called blogosphere.us. I discovered them by analyzing my referrer log. Apparently, their program reads some 150,000 blogs to discover what the current “buzz” is, and links to those trends and articles that are causing a stir across the blogging world.

Talk about your grassroots journalism, that’s pretty freaking cool.

Today marks the first day I’ve been simply “overweight” rather than “obese”. The Body-Mass Index still says I’m obese (at my height and age, I won’t graduate to “overweight” until I go below 224 lbs), but my body fat percentage, according to mybodycomp.com is now 22.54% — a really nice reduction versus the nearly 30% I was at the start of November. I’ve also put on, according to them, 7 lbs of lean muscle mass in that time from my exercise program.

I’m consuming around 2,200 calories per day, which with my moderate exercise (3-5 days of light exercise per week) puts my caloric burn somewhere in the neighborhood of 3200 calories per day. If I’m totally sedentary, my burn rate is around 2600 calories/day. It’s actually really difficult to reach 2200 calories a day when low-carbing at 25 grams or less of carbs per day. I basically have to eat till I’m full (not stuffed!) six times a day. If I reduce my calories too much below 2040, though (my Basal Metabolic Rate), it could put my body into fat-conservation, a.k.a. “famine” mode where it becomes really, really tough to lose.

Here I was thinking that I was in trouble, because I thought I’d “stalled” right around 228 lbs, when in fact I was still dropping inches (about half an inch from everywhere significant), except in my shoulders where I added nearly half an inch (I guess those deltoid exercises are doing their job!).

Eating less, exercising, and following a low-carb eating plan has finally given me the energy, feeling of “satiety”, and diverse diet I’ve been needing for years when I’ve failed at low-calorie diets. 12 pounds down in my first month! If other people’s history is any guide, that will probably slow down to about 4-6 lbs per month over the next few months. As I pass 200 lbs, I will probably find the pounds trying harder to stick around — I’m thirty now, not twenty-one any longer like the last time I was less than 200 lbs! And at that point, I’ll be transitioning into pre-maintenance and maintenance on my weight, trying hard to make the weight loss such a slow drop that, realistically, transitioning to my “normal” diet won’t be more than a tiny adjustment to my eating habits once I’m at a level where I want to maintain.

My wife says I’ve put on a lot of muscle in the last ten years (carrying babies around in one’s arms, and coping with household duties tends to do that a little), and so she thinks once I get below about 200, I’ll probably be very comfortable with my proportions. I guess we’ll wait and see where that goes… I’d sure love to be my high-school weight. I remember that, even then, I saw some “pooch” on my belly in the mirror with which I was dissatisfied.

Anyway, if you’re into tracking your stats to see which way you’re going (and heck, I’m unemployed right now so I definitely have the time), this page really helps to understand one’s stats. mybodycomp.com and fitday.com aren’t perfect sites by any means, but they are really helpful in getting a realistic picture of where you are health and diet-wise.

As managers are so fond of saying, “that which cannot be measured cannot be improved”…

Hope ya don’t mind the rambling about weight and stuff. I generally get obsessive over my new hobbies, then my interest dies off after a few months as I simply make it part of my routine rather than an important focus in my life. It’s happened that way with everything else I do; I figure this won’t be much different. Rest assured, within a few months, weight changes won’t be the center of my world…

Well, my job hunt is still proceeding. I’m getting 20-30 jobs in my inbox every day from dice.com and other job sites I’ve registered for, and I diligently respond to the ones that match my skills. So far, the returns from my resumes have been very, very rare, and the interviews nonexistent.

The online route has failed to pan out for me. I’m now into the “desparate cold-calling”, “lots of networking with people,” and “hitting the want ads” phase of the job-search, plus the “look into self-employment options while we still have money in the bank” phase. If you happen to know of an employer looking for a systems administration expert with a specialty in the integration of various operating systems, let me know!

With the demise and/or commercialization of several online music sites (*cough* mp3.com) into near-unusability, what options are available now for the aspiring musician to get feedback on his/her music, and maybe some exposure to producers? I’m serious, where do you go, other than creating your own web site?

Well, the only heavily-populated site I know if is Garageband. Apparently, my little blog on my day-after experiences with GB have ended up tops in Google searches for "Garageband reviews". The high rank of that page (no, I have no idea why Google thinks that should be the top link!) arounsed the ire of an anonymous poster on my board, so the weblog has started seeing some discussion about my derogatory review of what GB is about. I encourage you to check it out and comment, or post comments here about where you think aspiring musicians can go for exposure now that most music sites are making themselves even less accessible to casual listeners.

Note, if you’re not logged in, your posts will be as “anonymous” and I’ll have to approve them before they can be viewed. Spammer-control is what that is 🙂

Okay, honestly its not as bad as all that.. or is it?

While vacationing in Florida over the Thanksgiving holiday, I read, on the following Saturday, of a woman who was trampled and seriously injured during a mad rush to get the 30 dollar DVD player at WalMart in the wee hours of Friday morning. This is of course what is rumored to be the busiest shopping day of the year (although I think it is 2nd now), and is known to retail employees as Black Friday.

For the first time ever, I was there, at 5:58 AM in line to enter target, and yes, i too got the 30 dollar DVD player. But to me, the phenomenon was the interesting part. What was so fascinating was the fact that my day started with no Christmas shopping done, and ended with most of it done, and with considerable savings. For my effort, I did see people shoved, items snatched off shelves, arguments, and the like, but it was a madness I kind of got into.

Underneath it all was a kind of glee, a mad, adrenaline filled rush to get, at prices you can afford, those items that will make the people you love have that moment of big smiles.. and it is a thing I am beginning to think is not as evil as everyone says.

The fact is, we want our friends, family, and kids to have that glee filled moment, and we are willing to fight to do it.. and that’s sort of.. well, sweet. Now, if we can translate that to the other guy who just got the last copy of THE TWO TOWERS, then we’ll almost have it right.

Happy Thanksgiving.