September 2003 Archives

Here's a latest picture of Eli:

Eli on Christine's lap

I've come down with a cold this weekend. Fortunately, it didn't really come on until after the big Linux InstallFest on Saturday. (I hope that link doesn't disappear soon).

LIF3

The installfest on Saturday was awesome. Chadd, Mike, Dave, and I were there from 9 or so in the morning until 8 in the evening. We helped dozens of people get up and running with Linux or helped them with various problems they were running into while running Linux.

It was also great exposure for Iodynamics. Lots of attendees asked us what we did. Some said they'd heard of us but weren't sure what we did. So, it was a great to educate them. Hopefully, we'll get a little business as a result.

We had some great-looking shirts done in preparation for the installfest. Now we have an official Iodynamics uniform, of sorts. They look terrific.

We also printed a thousand bumper stickers that read “Are you using Linux yet?” and they have the Iodynamics website URL on them. They were very popular with the LIF3 attendees.

Me, helping a gentleman with a Linux install

It's only been a day since LIF3 and already a lot of people have praised the event in online correspondence. I thought I would share some of that here.

This was a great event for attendee and volunteer alike. The attendees walked away with the distro of their choice. The volunteers had a great time networking with their peers and meeting new people.

The LIF3 session I attended was, for me, probably the most productive 3 hours I have ever spent setting up something really new on a PC. Let's just say it was a revelation! Derek, the volunteer from Cedar City, spent most of the session working with me 1-on-1. Red Hat went in without a hitch and recognized all my hardware (except the stupid Winmodem).

Open-source is great. If B. Gates had conducted this session, it would have cost $500.

A new world has opened. My wife will soon be complaining about my spending too much time on the PC. I'm downloading PDFs from Red Hat and will be doing a lot of reading/twiddling.

Doran Barton spent a lot of time getting my garbage-pail system (I just kept tossing things in through the years) to accept a Red Hat server install. I feel I got a tremendous bargain, and learned a ton. I'll look for opportunities to pay it back or pay it forward in the future.

Thanks to Doran and all involved!

And here's a report on the activity posted by my Iodynamics partner Chadd:

It was not only a big success in terms of hooking up people with Linux installs and other know-how, it was a great convergence in the Utah Linux community. Many souls were brought into the true fold, and there was much rejoicing.

XMission and everyone who sponsored or volunteered really delivered the goods at this Linux-powered, caffeine-fueled freakout. There were some NASTY install problems, weirdly configured machines, conflicts, and all manner of arcane hardware. One guy had a rack-mount server donated by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management -- the thing looked like a hand-me-down refridgerator and required two people to schlep it around.

Anyway, I informally tracked success among the participants of each session and I counted four people who did not walk away with a working system. There may well have been more whom I missed. Everyone else got Linux installed and/or had their major questions and issues resolved. Those who couldn't get Linux up and running had faulty devices or hardware that was simply too exotic to overcome during the sessions (4 hours can really fly by when you're installing Linux on, say, a Pentium 90).

I was impressed by the high rate of success among laptop users -- there was a time when Linux and laptops did not get along very well. At LIF3, however, I didn't notice many laptop users who had major problems.

Iodynamics threw its entire staff at LIF3 and we worked all three sessions. Doran Barton tackled the more complicated cases while Mike Morgan, Dave Baker, and I worked the routine RH9 installations. As often as possible, we installed Redhat from our installation server, which worked REALLY well.

Since we were stationed at the front of the room, Iodynamics directed traffic and performed a kind of triage -- diagnosing participants as they came in the door to match them up with tabletop space, installation discs, and finding the guru who was best suited to help with each case. This was great for us because we got to interact with practically everyone who came in.

Iodynamics demo'ed some common applications, including Xine for DVD and mpegs, xmms for mp3s, and OpenOffice and the GIMP for productivity. We also gave tours of KDE and the Linux desktop in general.

The 4:00 p.m. session seemed just a little lighter than the other sessions, but there were several lingering problems from the previous session and many new challenges (like the Acer Pentium, and that 5-hour Gentoo installation -- SHEEEESH!), so, hard-core gurus were in short supply at times.

I think I can speak for everyone at Iodynamics in saying that we had a stone-cold blast and we learned a LOT (even Doran). We will definitely be around for the next one.

So there you go!

Lots to report on today. One of my friends and I got into a little tiff and my friend made some negative comments about my online journal. We got over our differences, but I just wanted to say that I'm not at all embarrassed about what I'm doing here. I try to take care to be very considerate of my privacy and others' privacy when I enter this text and make it available for others to view online. I do try to be discrete.

We got the house

Yep, we got the house in Riverton. Well, at least, we submitted the winning bid. We're preapproved for the financing as well. So we're on our way to getting this house. There's still possibilities, I guess, the deal could fall through. Maybe we are really dissatisfied with what we find out after a home inspection is performed. Who knows.

So, what about this house? Well, it's a brick and stucco rambler with a basement. It has 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. It is about 2450 square feet total. It sits on a very rectangular 0.26 acre lot which is on a slightly sloping hill. There is a new development in progress to the north, but right now there is a beautiful view of the Salt Lake valley to the north. If the homes aren't too tall, that view will remain as the lot is a little higher than those being developed.

We have a meeting with our realtor tomorrow morning to begin the arduous process of completing paperwork which must be submitted.

The house does not have any appliances, so we will need to purchase those. Fortunately, one of my best friends does sales at a local Maytag store. I talked to him tonight and he assures me he can find us some great deals.

There's also that repair work that needs to be done on the ceiling in the bathroom and master bedroom. That's probably the only repair that we would insist on being done before we moved in. The other things can be done after we move in, if necessary. I'm guessing my brother can get that done in a matter of a week or so.

Work work work

I spent 12 hours away from home to do work today. I had to go to Logan and do some onsite programming work for an Iodynamics client. We have another client that needs some programming work done which will keep me VERY busy the next couple of days and into next week.

This is good news, of course, because I'm going to need to start thinking about budgeting for a house payment come November or December.

New motherboard and CPU

foo got a new motherboard and CPU tonight. The motherboard is an MicroStar K7N2 - which is based on the nVidia NForce2 chipset. The CPU is an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ with the “Barton” core with a 333Mhz front-side bus speed. (I can dream they created this new generation of the Athlon architecture in my name).

The K7N2 motherboard supports dual-channel DDR RAM, so I got 2 512MB PC2700 RAM modules for the board. This gives me a total of 1GB of RAM, but because of the dual-channel nature of the motherboard, it is able to read and write to both modules at the same time - nearly doubling access speed.

Why did we upgrade? Oh, because my buddy Dave is looking to build a PC to run Linux and that was a good excuse to sell him my “old” hardware (Athlon XP 2000+, MSI KT266 motherboard).

I just updated the Malverbiage database with several new side-splitting quotes. They will also be appearing in my e-mail signatures as well.

Here are a couple of the new ones:

“We make sure our drinks do not kill you. This is something you must remember.”
— Seen on a sign in a restaurant

“I have been diagnosed with Attention Defecate Disorder. This makes me very disorganized.”
—Seen in a school paper.

This last week or so has been, perhaps, the busiest I've been in a long time. That's a good thing, I know, but it does leave me with less time to “flog” my life into a database like I like to do.

Progress?

Iodynamics has paid a couple regular paychecks now and even though we were unable to do a distribution in the period before those, the distribution before that was significant. So... we're not doing too bad.

Of course, our goal is to establish a reasonable insulation against the flux of our business — to treat our salaries like any other bill or liability and make sure there are enough assets within the company to cover those liabilities.

Good hell! I'm talking like some sort of suited-up executive!

Anyway, yeah. We're not doing too shabby.

The coordinates of life

My parents have been brainstorming on ways they can help us get into a house of our own since we moved into Jay and Jennie's basement. We got close to doing something about that this last week or so.

There was a house in Kaysville and we were talking about my parents buying the house as an investment. Then, we would rent it. In the beginning we'd pay what we could, but eventually, we'd be able to pay the house payment so it wouldn't be a loss for my parents to own the house.

My parents got to the point where they were talking to the bank about mortgages and financing and discovered a much better interest rate could be had on the purchase loan if the house was going to be owner occupied. That would mean Christine and I would have to be the ones purchasing the house. My parents would co-sign to make it easier for us to get into the house.

I got real nervous when I began to consider this change of plans. Where I was excited about moving into the Kaysville home when we were going to rent it from my parents, it didn't sit right with me knowing it would be our house.

I think it's because the asking price for the house was about what I was figuring building a custom home would be and the custom home I was thinking would have 1,000 more square feet than this house and it would be everything we wanted (and/or could afford). And, it would be new.

So... we bailed on that.

Meanwhile, we started looking at apartments. If we've got money to consider house payments with, we can consider renting as well, right? Well, it's not so easy to find an apartment that will allow pets around here. At least, it hasn't been that easy so far.

We've also been looking at new homes in Herriman, Utah... again. We were considering Herriman a couple times when I was working at About in Orem last year and earlier this year, but never really did anything about it because our agenda was all contingent on selling our house in Hyrum, which didn't happen until after I was laid off.

Every time we drive to Herriman, though, it becomes a more appealing place to live in a lot of ways. Granted, with more growth, there's more vehicle traffic and congestion to deal with, but there's also a lot of businesses arriving in Herriman to provide the new residents with groceries, dining, and other services. It's a happening place.

I've often heard a saying that buying a house is all about “Location! Location! Location!” That would make a lot more sense to me if I had an office to go into every day (that wasn't in my basement). Because I'm not working for someone else right now, our location possibilities are not very limited. Well, they are limited, somewhat. I won't live somewhere where I can't get broadband Internet access. Christine won't live anywhere with crappy schools and where she can't get to a grocery store within 10-20 minutes.

And I'm not really even all that picky about the broadband Internet access. I know if I get into a house somewhere that has nothing better than dialup, I can get a T1 pulled in and share with my neighbors via wireless networking. So... Pretty much anywhere with decent schools... and electricity.

I think it's going to come down to us just saying, “Let's do THIS.” and going forward with it.

Update: Maya

Maya's enjoying kindergarten. She's learning a lot of cool stuff. It's amazing what a child can learn in a structured learning environment.

This last weekend, Maya tested and received her second-level orange belt in Tae Kwon Do karate. We're very proud of her.

Update: Eli

Eli's getting fat. I need to get some more recent pictures of him taken and get them online.

Update: Lucy

Not much is going on with Lucy these days. I think we need to work on getting her into a playgroup or pre-school or something.

It's late and I should be in bed, but I really, really needed to “flog” this while it was still fresh.

Styx

Tonight was “An Evening With Styx” at the Utah State Fairpark and I went along with my friend Thom, his wife, our friend Jon, and a couple of Thom's friends I don't know well. Thom, bless his heart, got us tickets in the center section of reserved seating on the fifth row. We were nice and close.

I've mentioned my history as a Styx fan in the Fozzolog before, but let me mention it again. Styx was the first band I loved. I was 10 years old when my sister introduced me to the song Mr. Roboto. I got the Kilroy Was Here cassette tape for my 11th birthday. Shortly after, I discovered my brother had The Grand Illusion album on cassette and I “borrowed it” (indefinitely).

In time, I knew most all the songs Styx had recorded. I knew all the names of the members of the band and their history. In reality, I became a Styx fan at a very inopportune time because the band would not record another studio album for seven years (and would not record another good studio album for 20 years.)

Because of this, I never saw Styx live. When the band finally started touring again in the 1990s, I wasn't able to catch them for one reason or another. Finally, in 2003, my time had come to see Styx live.

I was a bit nervous about this show, I'll admit. Styx today is very different than Styx from 1983. Dennis De Young — arguably the “leader” of the band in 1983 — is gone. John Panozzo, long-time drummer, died in 1996. His brother, bassist Chuck Panozzo, is only involved with the band on an extremely limited basis. Replacements were made: Todd Sucherman on drums; Glen Burtnik on bass; Lawrence Gowran on Keyboards.

My nervousness went away immediately, once the band came out. In fact, I felt I had butterflies in my stomach the whole time. It was a completely exhilerating and life-fulfilling experience. I remember thinking at one point about three quarters through the show that if I died tonight, I could die peacefully. There would be nothing left undone... because I finally saw Styx live.

The band was incredible. I think I was most impressed with bassist Glen Burtnik. He's now my favorite member of the band. What a great guy! I mean, this guy made me consider an alternative sexual orientation! He rocks.

I think my favorite part of the show was the “old school medley” which included fourteen songs from older Styx albums including Light Up (from Equinox), Mademoiselle (from Crystal Ball), Shooz (from Crystal Ball), Man In The Wilderness (from The Grand Illusion) — probably my favorite Styx song, Great White Hope (from Pieces Of Eight), Borrowed Time (from Cornerstone), Halfpenny Twopenny (from Paradise Theater), Mr. Roboto (from Kilroy Was Here), Heavy Metal Poisoning (from Kilroy Was Here), and Edge Of The Century (from the album by the same name).

All the songs off Cyclorama — the new album — were great too. Kiss Your Ass Goodbye was awesome. One With Everything was jaw-dropping. JY's vocals on These Are The Times were heartfelt, especially after his dedication of the song to soldiers on active duty.

During Come Sail Away, one verse stuck out in my mind.

I look to the sea, reflections in the waves spark my memory
Some happy, some sad
I think of childhood friends and the dreams we had
We live happily forever, so the story goes
But somehow we missed out on that pot of gold
But we'll try best that we can to carry on

When I heard Lawrence Gowan sing that verse, I wanted to turn and embrace my two childhood friends sitting on each side of me (but I didn't... out of respect of their manlinesses... and mine, I guess). This song had developed a new meaning to me since I fell in love with the music of Styx in the early 1980s.

Oh, one last thing... I don't think I've ever seen so many pairs of women's underwear flung onto a stage in my life!

Well, here are some pictures. I'll find some more (I took close to 190) in the next few days and create a section for them under Events.

	JY makes a funny face while Lawrence pounds keys behind.
	Lawrence and that sexy Glen Burtnik during Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.
	Glen Burtnik, singing Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, from a perch on the stage-right speaker stack.
	Glen running across the stage.
	Lawrence takes a stand... on his stand.
	Lawrence exhibits his 360-degrees of freedom by spinning his keyboard platform while playing.
	Tommy Shaw.
	Lawrence displays a banner made by a fan for Tommy Shaw which wished him happy birthday (the following day was Tommy's 50th birthday).
	Tommy solos during Renegade.
	The whole band.
	Eight high-power confetti cannons showered EVERYONE with little pieces of orange paper.

Before heading to bed, I took a moment to see what was new at engrish.com and nearly passed out trying not to laugh loud.

Just got back from a Sons OF Nothing show in Park City. I'm tired, but I have some stuff to “flog.”

Harry O's

The show was at Harry O's - a venue the band has performed at a couple times before. There was a decent crowd of over 100 people who showed up very enthusiastic about experiencing the “Floydshow”. The music was pretty good, but I was a little disappointed with the evening.

First of all, the club's front video projector had broken, so they moved another projector into its place that was nowhere near as bright. The “screen” on stage was hoaky as heck and nothing looked good.

Fortunately, Harry O's has four plasma display panels around the club as well as 3-4 other projectors which project onto free-floating muslin-covered rings. It's a neat effect, especially when I'm projecting something round like the moon or some circular visualization.

Nonetheless, I was miffed about the on-stage projection. I remember the first time I showed the video footage I prepared for Astronomy Domine at Club Suede. There's a clip from that footage which is from astronomical data on the sun. It's basically a close-up of the surface of the sun showing sunspots and other variations in temperature. When I showed this behind the band at Club Suede, it was so cool because the picture took up the entire rear wall behind the band so this moving/rotating sun is slowly rotating behind the whole band. Oh, it was sweet.

Because the projector at Harry O's sucked, that effect was totally lost. As was the effect I prepared for tonight's show for the song Sheep from the Animals album. Who knows when the band will play that again.

And then, after the show, I found out Harry O's had given the band an almost insultingly low guarantee. For the amount of preparation that has to go into a Sons Of Nothing performance and the number of people involved, a club needs to guarantee twice as much as Harry O's did.

So those two things were kind of depressing.

There were some attractive young women (a.k.a. hot chicks) who showed up at the club tonight. Some of them were dancing all exotic and sexy to the music. It was quite a sight. There was one girl that made me think later if I wasn't happily married; If I didn't have an immense appreciation for the relative simplicity of my life and lifestyle; If I didn't love my kids... I might have considered talking to her. I guess you could say there was this really, really small part of me that was intrigued by her.

On erotica

I was talking to a friend on the phone today who had been looking over my website and he said nothing on my website surprised him except a mention on the home page about me liking “well-written erotica.”

It kind of made me realize I hadn't really read any erotica (let alone the “good stuff”) in a long time. Probably not since I was a college student. Should I take that off my home page? Or, should I leave it there so I continue to have something on my website that surprises people?

Alright. It's after 4 a.m. now. I'm heading to bed.

Well, it's done. We just dropped off Maya at her school.

Maya waves goodbye before going into the school.

Maya was pretty good about it. She got a little teary-eyed after she had walked through the door into the school, but that was mostly because she was nervous and confused about where to go. I think she'll be fine.

It was funny seeing all the mom's and younger siblings crying like their kindergartner was going away for 2 and a half months as opposed to two and a half hours.

Since Maya's done preschool for half a day a couple days a week the last couple of years, this school thing won't be that difficult of a concept to deal with. I'm mostly worried about her being bored since the teachers said she's a lot more ready than a lot of the kids.

There's just so much going on, it's nuts. Yet, I feel like I'm moving slowly- like I'm in some movie laden with special effects where a crowd of people move around me at 300% speed while I turn slowly at 33% speed. It makes me think of a scene from The Fisher King where Parry (Robin Williams) is trying to follow (and ultimately connect with) Lydia through a bustling crowd in New York's Grand Central Station. Suddenly, the pedestrian crowd — each on their separate ways from/to trains/subways/streets — begin to dance a waltz. They do this for a minute or so while Parry observes and then the clock chimes and everyone resumes their journey to their destination.

I wish I could say Iodynamics is doing well. If you compare our business today to what it was a year ago, and the year before that, you'd see we are definitely growing. Third quarter is usually a dismal time for Iodynamics' business and we're definitely not doing dismal. But, we're not experiencing the kind of growth I'd like us to.

Of course, I'm getting pressure from Christine to make it possible for us to either buy or build a house and to get out of the rut we've been in since I was laid off from About in April.

Christine would like it if I could just go get a job working for some big, anonymous company willing to pay me a competitive salary and provide good benefits. That sounds good, doesn't it? Of course it does. To do this, however, I'd have to turn my back on all the success we've had growing Iodynamics the last five months.

Operating a business is more risky than working for someone else, but there are rewards for those willing to take the risk and do things right. If we do things well, I could provide my family with a better life than I could working for a “competitive salary” for some big, anonymous company.

I need to collect my thoughts and organize them some more before I write anymore about this.

School

Maya's first day of school is tomorrow. It's official. A child of mine is in school. I have a kid in school. That's SO weird... and cool!

I hope she has a lot of fun.

LIF3

XMission is hosting a big Linux InstallFest on Saturday 27 September and Iodynamics is sponsoring the event. We'll be there all day to help people install Linux and learn more about Linux. It should be fun. If you're interested, check out the LIF3 website to learn more and register to come.

In Logan

I drove up to Logan tonight so Mike, Chadd, and I could do some Linux installation and talk about the upcoming XMission installfest. I'm going back to Logan Thursday afternoon to talk to a potential client/partner about a development project. With gasoline prices as high as they've been all year and my income on unstable ground, this is not fun.

Maybe we should just move back to Logan. Heh.

Alright. It's nearly 3 a.m. I'm goin to bed.