peltkore's dungeon

The Three Day Expedition Across Southern Idaho

2007-06-22T18:24:18Z

A Beginner's View of Road Bicycling

2007-06-12T22:31:25Z

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED! Read this article at http://korey.peltonweb.com/ instead! I'll be adding past articles and an RSS feed soon... I promise :-)

Sophia's Birth From My Perspective

2007-02-26T17:57:08Z

Here, for all those who are wondering, is the story of my daughter's birth from my perspective. Enjoy!

It was Thursday, February 15, and I had come home from work at 5:10 pm as usual. Emily was complaining of more cramping and contractions, as she had for the past month or so. I was concerned, but didn't give it much thought, even though the birth was a few days past due. I was sort of just waiting for the real action to take place, I suppose.

Next, at around 8:00 pm, she complained of more intense cramping and some bleeding, so off we went to the hospital. They checked her out, told us she was dilated to 2 centimeters, and told us to go home and relax. Ah, well, this was good practice for the real thing.

We went home and I ate something, however Emily didn't eat anything due to the contractions. We decided to go to bed around 11:00 pm. I took the couch while she took the bed. I felt so sorry for her since the only position she felt comfortable in was sitting up in bed with her legs sort of slung over the side. I tried stroking her arm, but that turned out to be a mistake. She looked up at me in horror and told me not to touch her. Ah, yes, I remember reading about this in the birth books and in birthing class, hehe. Sigh.

So, I went to bed on the couch. I'm rather tall, so it was kind of uncomfy, but I did ok. About midnight or so, I woke up to the sound of the howling wind outside, the scratching of the rose bushes against the house, and the creaking of the house being pushed by the powerful wind outside. It was the first big wind storm we'd had in a long while. I got up and took a peek outside the window, expecting to see a blinding blizzard, but there wasn't a drop of precipitation in the air. So, I ambled back to the couch and tried to sleep through the gusts, fearing my windows would shatter any second. Yeah, I'm kind of paranoid, hehe. It was then that I thought, "hmm, babies are always born on blustery nights, aren't they? Egad."

Next, about 1:00 am (Friday) I was awoken by Emily telling me, from the hallway, that it was time to go. I asked her if she was sure and she told me her contractions were very intense and that she was leaking green stuff. The next part of this story is a little foggy to me since my brain isn't completely functional at that hour of the night, after getting about 3 hours of sleep, hehe. I got dressed, helped Emily get dressed (between contractions) and we slowly made our way outside to the car. We had to pause for about a minute after every few steps to allow a contraction to pass. I was quite patient with her while hoping that I wasn't going to have to deliver a baby in the car!

After arriving at the hospital, I parked the car in a parking space, and Emily promptly reminded me that I needed to pull up at the door since she didn't feel like walking too far... ah, yeah, I felt like a real dumbass, hehe. Then again, as I said before, I don't think very clearly at night, nor under pressure :-) After pulling up at the door, Emily instructed me to get a wheelchair and I told her later that I was really grateful to her for helping me stay on task, hehe. I then wheeled her on up to the labor and delivery floor and a nurse and I got her into bed.

Emily was now dilated to 4 centimeters. After hours of watching Emily wince from the contractions, breathing rapidly through each one, and helping her to the bathroom every now and then (the baby was really squishing her bladder) our midwife told us it might be a good time to give Emily a shower. I got into my swimming trunks that I had brought with us (yes, we'd packed a large suitcase full of everything we might need), we sat Emily down on a chair in the shower and I sprayed her down with warm water which she greatly enjoyed. I was so happy to give her a little comfort from her labor. After about 45 minutes of that, the time was about 5:25 am or so and Emily said she felt like she needed to use the bathroom. The midwife told her that she could after giving her another check.

The midwife found that the baby's head was starting to crown and she called in some nurses to help out. I was told that I didn't have time to dress and I was given a wash cloth to wet with cold water for Emily's forehead. After putting the wash cloth on Emily's glistening brow, I took a look down below and saw the very top of my daughter's head appearing and the feeling I felt was sort of a mixture of joy, fear, and anticipation mixed with high levels of adreneline and low levels of sleep, hehe. Next I felt tears come to my eyes as I saw Sophia's entire head emerge with another push. I just couldn't believe I was standing there, in my swimming trunks, finally watching my daughter being born after 9 months of anticipation. It almost felt like a dream. With some more pushing the baby was out and was placed on Emily's chest and Emily and I smiled from ear to ear at each other. Emily looked so beautiful, radiant, and happy and I told her so.

Need A New Computer Operating System, Anyone?

2007-02-15T18:42:34Z

So, Microsoft has produced yet another operating system. From all the technology news articles I've read about it (see your favorite computer and/or technology magazine or search http://news.google.com/ for "Vista") people are quite reluctant to purchase Windows Vista, and for good reason. Vista is just as costly, if not more costly, as Microsoft's past operating systems, yet Vista requires more powerful hardware and it doesn't have very many more features than Windows 2000 and XP. Microsoft spent so very many years in production mode so they could sell the world this operating system? Sigh. I do believe Microsoft has reached the top of the hill (during the Windows 2000 days) and has slid down the other side.

The time has come for business and home computer users to demand something better. In a day and age when technological advances are increasing at an exponential rate and technology costs are dropping, we should expect our personal computing experience to perform similarly, no? Personally, I want an operating system that is cheap, high performance, does everything I want it to do, and runs on the old 1998 computer I've got stored away in my basement. And given today's vast technological improvements, this is not an unreasonable request.

Introducing Ubuntu (http://www.ubuntu.com/). How much does it cost? It's free. Yes, you can install it on as many computers as you want, pass copies of it out to all your friends and neighbors, and use it at both home and office. The choice is yours and you have 100% freedom. How does it work? It's a snap to install and it looks and feels sort of like a mix between Windows and Macintosh. It's user interface is quite intuitive and most Windows and Macintosh computer users have no problems using it. Also, you can give it a test drive by running it right from your CD-ROM or DVD drive; you can then install it on your hard drive only if you decide you like it.

Another great advantage to Ubuntu is that it comes with an enormous collection of software, whereas with other operating systems, you have to go to the store and buy software or you must hunt it down on the Web and download it. With Ubuntu, you can install a variety of web browsers, email clients, media players, chat clients (MSN, Yahoo, AIM, IRC, ICQ, etc.), games, office suites, educational applications, programming languages, and science programs (yes, it's a very, very long list of packages) all from a few clicks of your mouse. And all of it is absolutely free. It's a dream come true. *wipes a tear*

You may be asking now what the downside is. Well, here it is: Ubuntu is Linux and Linux is different from Windows and Macintosh. That is, there are a few gotchas that you may run into along the line. There may be a few peices of software that don't work the way you expect them to or you may have some hardware that doesn't appear to be working with it. But, never fear, there is help for you in abundance! The Ubuntu web site has free community support as well as commercial support. Also, a quick Google search for a problem will most likely produce a list of solutions for you. Additionally, Pocatello has a free Linux support group right in their own back yard: Idaho State Linux Users Group (see http://islug.org/ for more details).

Good luck in your search for the zen of computing and thanks for reading!

Business Psychology

2007-01-09T21:24:31Z

Lately, I've been studying the futures markets in my spare time in an attempt to try to make a few bucks, eventually. I came across a study guide by the New York Board of Trade a few days ago and it contained a really good chapter about the psychology of futures traders. I really enjoyed this chapter because I could identify with a lot of the same thoughts and emotions that occur when certain situations happen in life. So, I thought I'd paste the entire chapter into my blog for you all to enjoy. This chapter is very applicable to business and life in general, so when you encounter certain futures trading specific words, try to replace them with other things that are applicable to your life and business (assuming you aren't a stock or futures trader).

"Ego-inflation that comes from winning trades can lead to major losses. Winning can create powerful emotions that distort reality. The more you win, the better you feel, and your ego takes over. This euphoria may cause you to abandon sound trading principles and trade recklessly. If this happens, large losses almost always follow. Recognize that you are the person responsible for winning or losing. Don't blame the market or your broker. Losses are an opportunity to focus on whatever problems occurred when selecting the trade or during the trade. If you get caught up in personal denial, you won't learn those lessons and, therefore, will probably repeat them. A successful trader quantifies, analyzes, truly understands, and accepts risk. Emotional and psychological acceptance of risk is what determines your mental state in each trade. Individual risk tolerance makes each trader different. Select a trading methodology that reflects your tolerance for risk. As traders, the more we can detach ourselves from the emotions of hope, greed, and fear, the better our chances for trading success. Why are there thousands of good market analysts but few good traders? Perhaps they need to spend more time on psychology and less time on methodology. Feelings are not knowledge. This is particularly true about trading futures. The normal tendency is to feel good about taking a profit (however small) and to feel badly about taking a loss. When taking a loss, traders are forced to admit they were wrong. How many people readily admit they are wrong? In an attempt to avoid that, most traders postpone taking the small loss. 'Maybe the market will turn' or 'We'll give it one more day' or, 'We'll watch it' are some of the insidious excuses people make for not cutting losses short. The inevitable result is the 'small profits, large losses disease,' the reason why most speculators do not make money, even with otherwise great trading strategies. Unless the trader is determined to conquer his or her emotions, it is pointless to discuss trading strategies or market direction. Trading will at best become an enjoyable albeit costly pastime. I think most speculators lose money because their pride or ego prevents them from exiting with small losses. You're not early, you're wrong! Get out! After studying successful and unsuccessful brokers and traders for several years, I am convinced that there are two characteristics you must bring to your futures trading. They are humility and respect. Humility is the quality or state of being humble, not arrogant or assertive, not proud or haughty. Most speculators do not accept that they will be wrong on a certain percentage of their trades. Therefore, they are constitutionally unable to exit small losing trades before they become big losers. This is the single biggest difference I have observed between winning and losing futures speculators. Your first loss will be your least loss. Get out of losing positions and move on to the next trade. It seems the human brain has a difficult time identifying and focusing on new opportunities when it is trying to manage a crisis on another front. Again, cut the bad trades and move on to the next trade. Respect means to hold in high or special regard. Respect PRICE. Price is a loaded gun that can go off in any direction at any time. Don't get caught up in what one broker, trading advisor, research report, or news item says about what the price is going to do, no matter how certain they are. You must respect what the price does. The price contains all the fundamental data, news, hype, fears, hopes, greed, and wishes of the market participants. Your analytical, unemotional job is to focus on the price and the direction it's moving-and what an adverse price move could do to you. NEVER BUCK THE TREND. Furthermore, when price direction changes, don't get caught up trying to find out why it has changed. Be humble-don't get mad, excited, and resentful about the change. Accept it. Later, you'll read why it changed in the paper. I have two analogies my clients have found useful. The first is: 'Never enter a potentially hostile place unless you know where to exit.' If you don't know where to place your stop loss order to get out of the trade, don't go into that trade. The second analogy: Price is a train with an unknown destination. It may start slowly one way, but it may reverse its direction at any time. If you think you can pick the exact place the train will change direction (picking a top or bottom), be prepared to be run over by the train. During consolidation (choppy markets), the train is at the depot determining what direction it will go next. Don't be misled by those false moves: lurching forward and jerking backward several times. The speculator should be prepared to hop on a moving train only after it has gotten up a head of steam and actually committed to moving in one direction or the other. Boarding a train before direction is firmly established often leads to journeys we wish we had not taken. Moral: Ride the train in the direction it's going and avoid markets in consolidation."

A Lesson On Motivation

2006-08-27T19:55:14Z

Of all the many subjects of interest to me, one of them is human nature and psychology, especially motivation. If we learn more about why we make the choices we make and what motivates us to do the things we do, we can have more control over ourselves and our future, no? Also, we can understand what makes our fellow humans act the way they do.

One of my personal motivational problems is something I call static friction. It's the problem where I face a large, daunting, complicated task and I think to myself "ah, I think I'll start on that next week" or "I think I'll work on something simpler and more fun right now" and the large task keeps getting pushed aside. In physics, static friction is when a massive object has inertia and a lot of energy is required to put the object in motion. However, after the object is in motion, less energy is required to keep the object in motion and momentum takes effect. Yes, the same principle applies to psychology, too. :-)

So, I searched online for motivational guides and I found a really good resource here written by some really insightful people at the University of Texas at Austin. After browing through it a bit, I found some really interesting concepts and so I decided to go through the entire thing and do all the excercises. It was amazing what I discovered about myself. It's rather interesting how you can sort of stumble through life without realizing WHY you go in the directions you go. This instruction guide totally answered my questions about why I make the choices I make with just about everything that I do in my life.

Some of the concepts that helped me get better control over my mind and my actions included the following:

Keep a journal and take notes about your motivation toward the things you do.

Make sure the choices you make in life are YOUR choices.

Make sure your goals are challenging and realistic and view them as specific and measurable.

Create short-term 'enabling' goals to help conquer your long-term goals.

Don't blame uncontrollable factors when you fail; only blame controllable ones.

Focus on internal motivation and only use external motivation to suppliment the internal.

If this sounds interesting to you or you feel discouraged about accomplishing your goals in life or you are like me and you just have trouble getting to work on your goals, I highly recommend that you go through this instructional module and DO ALL THE EXCERCISES. It is geared toward college students, however it's quite simple to apply the concepts to work, hobbies, family life, and many other areas. And feel free to email me if it helped you or if you'd like to discuss anything! (peltkore at peltkore dot net)

Adventures In Browsing Myspace!

2006-07-29T19:33:31Z

Web browsing, for most people, is the most resource intensive computing activity they perform by far. Why is this? Because when you browse the World Wide Web, you download and render documents people have created. Yes, documents that everyone and their dog has created. The problem with this is that most of these people aren't web developers or even the least bit computer-savvy. And that really wouldn't be a problem if people didn't have the idea that the more graphics, animations, and cool effects they have, the better their page is.

Myspace.com, one of the worlds most highly trafficked web sites, is a place where you can find many extreme examples of poorly developed web pages. Today, I was browsing through the myspaces with glee, looking for old school buddies, hot chicks, and other curiosities when all the sudden, it happened. I was no longer able to click anything, select any browser tabs... my browsing came to a standstill. What?!?! What's going on here? I have a very light operating system (Linux with a custom kernel), a light window manager (Openbox), a light web browser (Opera), and a pretty beefy frickin' computer (AMD Athlon XP 1700+, 1.47 GHz and 512 MB RAM). I looked at my processes and noticed I was consuming 100% of my processor (the x.org process, mainly) and a lot of memory. What the hell? Do you need a gawd-damned Cray supercomputer in order to browse myspace.com?!?!

So then I took another sip of coffee and decided to find a solution to this. I mean, really, it isn't myspace users' fault for developing horrendous myspaces that would crash any Windows PC on the planet, regardless of how beefy the computer is. (Linux doesn't crash by the way, hehe. Just thought I would gloat for a moment. :-P) X.org, by the way, is the Linux graphical interface, by the way, and that was the process that was consuming all my processor power. This told me that my browser was trying to render something that was graphically complex. After about a minute of my computer chugging along, I noticed that the page I was trying to view was using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to lay some semi-transparent images over the page. Ah, another horrible abuse of CSS. CSS was originally designed to make web site maintenance easier and to conserve bandwidth on the user end, not to max out your processor and memory.

Then I looked around in my browser settings and discovered that I could turn off CSS. Sure, that removes much of the positioning of objects on the web page, so that everything is inline, and it also removes text styling and a few other things. However, the benefits are awesome. That is, pages render instantaneously. No more waiting, no more browser crashing, no more scrolling a web page at the speed of molasses in January. To do this in Opera, you click Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced tab -> Content -> Style options -> Presentation modes, select User mode from the drop-down menu and make sure Page style sheet is unchecked. So then, depending on whether you want CSS enable, you may toggle between Author mode and User mode. Isn't that spiffy?

And as a last note, if you want to really screw up your computer, just surf myspace with Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows. Don't believe me? Just try it... if you dare! If you use Windows, browse the Web with one of these decent browsers.

Camping and a Rock Concert

2006-05-29T20:53:34Z

I post something to my blog about once a month. Probably because I only have time to do so about once a month. Yeah, something tells me I need to simplify my life a little if I only have one spare moment per month, hehe. Ahem, anyway, on with the story.

On Sunday, May 14, the Idaho State University Japanese club, which I am a member of, set off toward Tetonia, Idaho for a 3 day camping trip. Yes, my car (a 1985 Volvo 240 DL) even made the trip successfully! The Tetonia/Driggs area was gorgeous. It's a large, green (until summer gets here) valley nestled in the jagged Teton mountain range. Driggs is one of those old-fashioned style western towns whose kept it's original buildings in shape and is like stepping into the past about 150 years or so. The camping was fun, the people were fun (for the most part, hehe), and I had a good time. Except that I lost my eye glasses in the quick current of the nearby stream so that I had to spend half the trip blind as a bat, and my girlfriend, Emily, was sick most of the time. Sigh.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, May 23, my girlfriend and I started off toward Salt Lake City, UT for the H.I.M. concert that was to be playing at In The Venue the following evening. We stayed at the Shilo Inn, rode the glass elevator, played in the swimming pool & hot tub (*wink*, hehe), and had a great time that evening. Then the following day we wandered The Gateway, the huge outdoor shopping mall, and I bought a kick-ass Led Zeppelin t-shirt! w00t! We visited the bazillion stores there, including the Apple store... ahhh, my geekiness is complete, I have visited the Apple store....

Anywho, now I'm just sitting in my room, typing this and sipping coffee on this lovely Memorial day. Today I plan on working on my accounting; yes, I'm learning accounting in my spare time for my job, for my resume, and it's just a good skill to know for general business. And my sister should be over this afternoon... and that'll probably turn my entire day on its side since I'll be flipping from accounting mode to party mode... but that's a good thing, probably. ;-p

New Girlfriend, Gun, and Web Site. Life Is Good.

2006-04-01T00:43:18Z

Wow, it's been quite a month, as the title of this blog entry illustrates. Let me briefly inform you of the three most memorable things!

Emily, my new girlfriend, and I met via a mutual friend (thanks Charles!) on Tuesday, March 14. We emailed each other back and forth for a couple of days, then met at the College Market the following Thursday, and life has been lovely ever since! *Romantic sigh* :-P Emily is pretty, inteligent, hilarious, and you can find her picture in my myspace photo section and in the most recent gallery of my personal web site at http://peltkore.net/~peltkore/. Enjoy!

The next item of interest for March was a purchase I'd been considering for about a year. Big bore rifles are usually quite expensive (about $300 and up) and ammunition is outrageous (between $.50 and $1.50 a round). But thanks to large quantities of military surplus equipment, even penny-pinchers like me can afford a .30 caliber rifle! The Mosin Nagant is a Soviet invention which has been produced throughout Russia, Eastern European countries, and distributed as far east as North Korea from 1891, when it was invented, until the late 50's when it was replaced by the AK-47 and SKS. Nagants shoot 7.62x54 (the European equivalent of the American 30'06) and come in regular infantry long rifle and shorter carbine sizes. I bought a Soviet carbine model (1944, Izhevsk arsenal) for $109 and 440 rounds of ammunition for $39. What a deal! The gun was in great condition, shoots accurately, and emits fire out its muzzle with every shot (unlike the infantry model)!

And last, but not least, I rewrote my personal web site at http://peltkore.net/~peltkore/ in compliant XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS. It's a clean, optimized layout featuring lots of galleries and a few writings of mine. Check it out and email me your critique if you wish! And for details on how I created it, please check out the "About" section.

Debian GNU/Linux Installation. Damn Sexy.

2006-01-23T17:23:54Z

My current favorite operating system is Debian GNU/Linux. It kicks all kinds of ass. But I suppose it's not for everyone. You have to have ran some flavor of *NIX (UNIX, BSD UNIX, Linux, etc) for a while to fully appreciate its simplicity and sleekness. Oh, and for those of you who don't know, Debian is free (as are most flavors of BSD and linux) and you may learn about it and download it at http://debian.org.

My experience started with getting nauseous every time I booted my current workstation OS, which happened to be Fedora Core 4. Fedora comes with a choice of 2 bloated graphical environments: KDE and GNOME. I hate them both thoroughly. Fedora also commonly plops over 4 GB of stuff on your hard drive, half of which you'll never use. Don't get me wrong, Fedora is a pretty cool OS, it's just not my cup of tea. Actually, last week, I was helping my sister install an ethernet card on her PC, which dual boots Windows 2000 and Fedora, and I didn't have the driver cd for the card. Fedora automatically recognized and installed the card in seconds. And Windows 2000 didn't have a friggin' clue and went crying for mommy. That is, it couldn't do jack without a driver cd. So, I had to go to OfficeMax and buy a new ethernet card for $14.95. Sigh. Anyway, I got way off the track there, where was I?

Ah, yes, the Debian install. So, after downloading the 180 MB netinst (the over-the-internet installation) cd image, I burned it to a cd, plopped it into the cd drive, rebooted and installed away. Installation time? About 10 minutes. Yeah, that's a record for me for installing any operating system. Windows takes forever, FreeBSD takes forever, Fedora takes forever. Debian is friggin' lightning, friggin' hot-knife-through-butter, friggin' falling down a flight of stairs after eating at Golden Corral! Then again, it only installs a very small base system of about 250 MB. But I like that because I can pick and choose only the stuff I need to avoid bloat and messiness. Yeah, I kind of like the things I place on my hard drive to have an actual function of some sort. :-)

After installation comes turning off services I didn't need with the handy-dandy update-rc.d command. No big deal. Then came package installation, which is also easier and faster than another other OS I've used. Yes, easier than Windows, hehe. With one simple command (apt-get install somecutefuffyprogram) it downloads the package from a repository on a server somewhere, and installs it. Umm, yeah, you can't get much slicker than that. I just had to type a command press the enter key and watch it do its thing. It also downloads and installs any dependencies the package needs as well. Debian isn't the only OS that does this amazing feat, FreeBSD and Gentoo Linux do it as well. But neither of them have as many packages as Debian (over 17,000 in the unstable* version, which I use) and both of them have source-based packages, which means you must watch large packages compile for hours before you can use them. I dunno, I guess I'm pretty selfish, but I like using a program a little while after I install it. Meh, but that's just me. :-P

Anywho, I was overall extremely impressed with Debian. Simple, easy, and quick. No gotchas, no hangups, and not a single End User License Agreement. Ah, life is good.

* Note: "unstable" here means that the software hasn't gone through any rigorous test to prove that it is server-quality. And it's been my experience that Debian unstable is about 3 trillion times more stable than Windows. Oh, the irony.

Myspace.com's Technical Issues

2005-10-06T03:47:55Z

According to alexa.com's Top Sites list, myspace.com is now the 8th most popular web site in the world. It's right behind microsoft.com and amazon.com, and ahead of google.co.uk and aol.com. Sadly, the main difference between all these web sites is that myspace.com's web site is sometimes horribly slow and has technical difficulties many times a day. I know this because I'm a myspace.com addict! :-D Probably the main reason behind these problems is that myspace.com doesn't have quite as much cash as the companies who host the other popular web sites. Slashdot.org is another very popular web site ran on a shoe string budget, yet it is one of the most stable web sites I've ever used (yes, I used to be a slashdot.org addict too!). Slashdot.org is so popular that when someone links to another web site from slashdot.org, the influx of traffic from slashdot.org usually crashes the linked web site. This is popularly known as being 'slashdotted' among the slashdot.org locals. So, what is the difference between myspace.com's infrastructure and slashdot.org's? According to netcraft.com, myspace.com uses Microsoft IIS 5.0 on Windows 2000. Yes, that's why we all occasionally get those nasty Windows NT server errors when surfing myspace.com. Myspace.com's web language of choice is Macromedia Coldfusion which any web expert will tell you is the very worst choice for a high traffic web site, right next to Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP). *SHUDDER* By contrast, slashdot.org uses decent software; namely Apache on Linux and mod_perl as their web language of choice. Sure, Microsoft runs Microsoft IIS on Windows too, but then again, they have enough cash to make their web site run on a slice of French toast if they wanted to. Anyway, that's my pro-Linux rant for the day! By the way, I'm typing this on my Fedora Core Linux workstation :-) Get your free Fedora Core Linux operating system at http://fedora.redhat.com! :-D Oh, and speaking of free, here's a cost comparison between the two infrastructures:

Linux + Apache + mod_perl = $0 (yes, it's all free and open source)

Windows + IIS + Coldfusion = $4,000 - $10,000 (depending on options) And that's just for one machine. A site the size of myspace.com probably has a server farm.

Oh, wait, a search on wikipedia.org just revealed that myspace.com was bought in July 2005 for $580 million by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Ok well, umm, I guess we can scratch that 'shoe string budget' reason off our list of why myspace.com has so many technical difficulties. And that leaves only one other reason. That is, the myspace.com technical team needs to learn a bit more on how to run a web site. :-)

Are you living inside a shell?

2005-08-25T16:35:13Z

I believe my mind is changing as time goes by. Well, of course, everyone's mind changes as they go through life and experience new things. But it's interesting to remember the person I used to be and the person I've become in the last 3 years or so.

I used to be rather anti-social, insecure, and I focused my whole life on persuing my career. However, inside that hard, crusty shell, I was really a warm, outgoing kind of person who loved to talk, laugh, socialize, and so on. But oftentimes my shell prevented me from being social with most people and I was only social with a very few people I felt comfortable around, due to my insecurity problem. After college, I met quite a few people who told me I needed to be more social and have more fun, but they really didn't understand how my mind worked and I really didn't feel like telling them. But I took their advice anyway and tried to mingle, which wasn't very successful, but it helped a little to chip away at my shell.

By contrast to my usual mindset, I'd never really had a problem with public speaking, especially if I new the subject well that I was to going speak about. In fact, I used to teach a few general public classes at the local university and I really enjoyed it. Furthermore, it was during that job that I felt the happiest and most fullfilled in my entire career life. I felt I was able to share knowledge with people, speak from a confidant perspective (since I knew the subject matter well), and excercise my atrophied social muscles all at the same time. Even though I was new to teaching and certainly wasn't the best teacher in the world, I loved what I was doing I really enjoyed myself.

Then about six months ago, I found out that the local linux group in my home town was crying out for financial help and was on the verge of extinction. I thought this was a horrible tragedy, since I feel that linux and other open source software is very important. So I gave them a few bucks, posted some lively emails to the mailing list, and set out to help revive them. Six months later (yesterday), we had our first public event at Idaho State University and I was in charge of handing out flyers, linux cds, and greeting the throngs of students. Wow, and boy did I have a really good time. I loved meeting the people and telling them about linux. But that seems like such a direct opposite of the insecure, anti-social person I used to be, doesn't it? I'm changing, I tell you, I'm MUTATING!! (say that with a Russian accent for more effect).

Anyway, the moral to this story is that if you are in a rut, or hiding behind a shell, or if you are limiting yourself with the little comfort zone you've built up around yourself, I suggest you break out of it today and do something totally new and opposite of what you usually do. You may be startled when you find a whole new realm of your mind that you never new existed or revive a personality inside you that had been lying dormant your whole life. Wouldn't it be a tragedy not to discover those areas of your mind and components of your personality? And the only way to discover those areas of your mind is to do something different today and start exploring outside of your shell.

ISLUG

2005-06-07T16:43:58Z

I usually only write in my blog if I'm in an especially creative mood, but I'm going to write in it now just because I haven't done so in over 2 months. Shame on me. Well, in the past 2 months, a few things have changed for me. I bought a old laptop from my roommate for $100 ... ah, the beauty of mobile computing :) The screen on it is a little faded and it doesn't have much CPU or RAM, but it's perfect for text-mode linux! So far, I've used it for just chatting or emailing from various places around the apartment -- curled up in bed, lounging on the couch, and so on. Tonight I'll probably take it to the ISLUG meeting to take notes and such. Which brings me to my next topic....

About month or so ago, I was inspired to be a more community-oriented person and see what I could do to give what I could to my local community. Since I'm a computer geek, I thought I'd like to inform my local community about Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) to help them save money, gain computer knowledge, and hopefully build more stable and secure computing infrastructures. So, I emailed the local Linux Users Group, Idaho State Linux Users Group (ISLUG), donated a bit of cash, and became their organizer guy :D Tonight we'll have a second meeting and talk about our roadmap to our goals, which mainly consist of sharing FOSS information with the community.

Other than that, my latest projects are a couple of web applications I'm building for a couple of companies, an IRC bot, and just exploring UNIX and the World Wide Web. Ah, my life feels so balanced and pleasant lately. Ok, well, for the past few days it has ... before that, I was working for yet another company, but suddenly decided I was working too much, so I gave that contract job to a friend of mine, BWAHAHA. Mmm, it's good to be connected to people with similar skill sets ;)

Oh, I almost forgot to make a comment on Apple switching from PowerPC to Intel CPUs. What was the reason for this? According to Steve Jobs, "Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far" and "we think Intel's technology will help us create the best personal computers for the next ten years." So, even though AMD makes better CPUs, Apple chose Intel. Well, I suppose Intel is the world's largest chipmaker and offered the best benefits, and that obviously outweighs making a better product, right? Pfft. So now the world is going to have 3 operating systems to choose from that all run on the same CPU: Windows (about $200, pick your own hardware), Mac (about $130, only runs on expensive Mac hardware), and Linux ($0, pick your own hardware). Well, of the three, Mac sounds the most restrictive and expensive. However, Mac will still be very appealing to those who are willing to pay for works-right-out-of-box functionality. Well, I'm still predicting that Linux will take over the world in the near future, simply because it's the cheapest and least restrictive of the 3 choices. Because it can run on anything including a dead squirrel in a cardboard box, it can be a challenge to setup. But given a good community Linux group, I think that problem would go away. Thus, I'm going to see what I can do with ISLUG :)

You Might Be A Redneck, If....

2005-03-29T16:19:06Z

Now that it's Tuesday, I think I've found the time to tell you all what I did last Saturday evening, hehe. Actually, it all started around noon when my sister and I were sitting around the kitchen table, cleaning our guns which we had made thorough use of the previous year. She was cleaning the Highpoint .380 caliber handgun and I was cleaning the Savage .22 caliber rifle, and after a lot of brushing, ram-rodding, wiping, oiling, accidental cuts, and cursing, the guns were like new. We then looked at each other mischievously and said "hmmm, I wonder where we can test these out this afternoon....bwahahaha!" Then we decided to have a good ol' picnic, Idaho style.

We went to the store, bought hotdogs, buns, large marshmellows, catsup, mustard, and some relish, packed up copious amounts of beer and ammunition (not that these two things really go together, hehe), threw the guns in the trunk of the car, and took off to pick up Tony (my sis's bf). After that, we headed up to Trail Creek Road, and began to drive up the the long, twisting road that lay in a ravine, climbing higher towards the moutains that lay south of Pocatello. After getting to the point where asphault turns to dirt, we met a closed gate that said "closed between November 15 and June 15", so we got out, packed up our stuff, and started hiking. After walking about 2 miles up the ravine, we came to one of our favorite places to shoot, which was a large hill with plenty of metal and plastic peices of targets left by previous shooters. I then climbed up the backdrop hill and set a few small, shiny tin boxes and some large, white parts of a Lexmark printers (someone really must have hated that printer, hehe). We then commensed shooting, one at a time, doing contests where the prize was an extra beer, hehe.

As soon as the sun began sinking towards the mountains, we hiked up a trail, started a fire, and began warming outselves (the temperature was about 45 degrees F by then) and roasting hotdogs. Soon we were all full of beer, hotdogs and were having roasted marshmellows for dessert, and then we saw a sight that really completed the evening. About 8:20 pm, over the eastern ridge of mountains, the halo of a huge full moon began to illuminate the small stratus clouds in the east. This was especially spectacular since we were standing on the southwestern hills, the moon was coming up over the eastern mountains, and the glittering lights of Pocatello were in the large valley between. Where's a camera when you need one? After watching the huge, yellow, full moon come up we put out the fire, hiked down to the car, and went home.

The Latest Trend In Web Design

2005-02-01T20:31:14Z

If you are like me and visit some of the major technology web sites and search/portal web sites on a regular basis, you've probably noticed the same web design trend that I have. And just today, msn.com FINALLY decided to join the party. I've dubbed this trend the clean-simple-and-very-few-images trend. I remember being quite astonished about six months ago when hp.com's web site went from "oohhh, look all all these fun and pwwweeety javascript menus" to the web site they have today, which is extremely conservative, simple, and has no javascript animations and very few images. Around the same time, ibm.com, sun.com, dell.com, yahoo.com, oracle.com and many other web sites followed the exact same path and did away with all their javascripts and most of their images. And the reason for this mass migration is simple: images, animations, and other fancy crap don't do anything but annoy web site users, waste bandwidth and consume client computer resources. Over and over it's been proven that clean, simple, and conservative interfaces make users feel comfortable, in-control, and give them the confidence in the interface that they need to get the information they are looking for or make the purchase they desire.

The next point I want to bring up is the fact that msn.com pretty much copied yahoo.com's search interface design, down to the little down-pointing arrow on the search category above the search box. Well, I suppose they can do that since they used yahoo.com's search technology for so many years. But at least they could have done something a little more original. But I guess this is Microsoft we are talking about, so, go figure.... BAH, I say!!!

Last of all, I want to say that as popular and successful as ebay is, I think they really, really have an ugly-ass web site. On the home page, they've got every friggin' color in the rainbow, which make it look like a 5 year old designed it using crayons. Then most of their other pages have various combinations of light-purple on white background and different shades of yellow on a white background. *GAG!* I mean, various shades of yellow on a white background? Who the heck are the graphic artists who came up with that combo? That only looks like one thing to most people: something pissed in the snow!!! Ugh. Anyway, that's just about wraps up today's web design rant :)

Excellent Interview With Larry Ellison

2005-01-10T21:27:00Z

Wow, I just watched a very interesting interview of Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle and I was very impressed with his succinct and insightful views on the wide variety of topics he discussed. Here's the link:

http://www.oracle.com/webapps/dynpages/servlet/Engine?operation=ASE

The show I watched is entitled "University of Illinois and Oracle Fireside Chat" which aired January 4, 2005. Two of the topics he discussed were really interesting to me. The first was about how pirating Microsoft Office on the Internet helped Microsoft create a monopoly in the office suite market. According to Larry, had pirating Microsoft Office been more difficult, MS Office would be less broadly known and widely used, and that would have given competitors more of a chance in that market. I'd say that's a pretty interesting and very truthful explanation of the real situation behind Microsoft's monopoly. The second topic I learned a lot from was the analogy Larry drew between the auto industry and today's computer industry. Only recently has the computer industry matured to the point where, like the auto industry, there are a few giant computer companies (i.e. IBM, Oracle, Microsoft) and a large number of small, niche market businesses (i.e. Intuit, MySQL, Adobe). A person in the audience asked what Larry thought about the chances of success for new computer industry companies and Larry replied that it was similar to the auto industry in that you are probably not going to build another Ford or Toyota, but there was plenty of room in the niche markets, such as building a better battery or carborator. Wow, well, that pretty much spells out the exact thoughts I've been having lately about the structure of a software business I'd been thinking of building :)

The Continuing Growth Of The Internet

2005-01-08T07:34:34Z

The Internet has and continues to change the way people interact. This holiday season, Internet shopping was way up from last year, and brick-and-mortar retail stores, such as Walmart, experienced lower-than-expected revenue. I believe this is a trend that will probably continue for a long, long time. Personally, my online buying has certainly increased in recent years, especially since it's so convenient and I can find better prices online than from local stores. It will be interesting to see how increasing online commerce will effect local and national economies. I mean, people are told to shop at local stores in an effort to support their local community's economy, yet shopping online (or at large retailers like Walmart) is so cheap and easy. Between the Internet and large retailers, are we witnessing the demise of the local, small, mom-and-pop stores?

Also, I wanted to take a moment to congratulate livejournal.com for making an awesome product. To have another company (i.e. sixapart.com) invest in the improvement and continuation of livejournal.com is really one of the sincerest forms of flattery and a great compliment to livejournal.com. Jee, I hope someday I create a great product and get bought by a big fancy company :D I'd also like to point out that it's really amazing to see companies buy "Internet assets" like livejournal.com, just as if they were buying tangible assets. Yes, the Internet is certainly transforming itself into an entirely new and ever expanding global market.

Tis The Season To Be Merging, FALALALALALALALALALABABA!!! ahem

2004-12-14T18:09:12Z

Wow, it's been an incredible month in the IT world. Lenovo bought IBM's PC business, giving it 3rd place in the global PC market, right behind Dell (#1) and HP (#2). This is good since it will build China's economy and also give IBM the chance to focus on developing server related hardware and software. The other recent big news event was Peoplesoft finally submitting to Oracle's purchase offer. According to Oracle, it's a deal made in heaven, and life is beautiful. But if you read the news items about the deal at peoplesoft.com, they make it look like Oracle dragged Peoplesoft away, kicking and screaming. Anyway, the whole purpose of the deal was for Oracle to be able to compete with the German applications-and-database company, SAP. I'm pretty much just summarizing all the interesting news articles I've read this month, so if you want information, just do a search on news.google.com.

A Message To Those Of You Who've Lost Sight Of The Big Picture

2004-11-11T17:36:49Z

I recently was talking with a youth who described to me how his life was so boring, uneventful, and simple. This was my reply to him:

"After reading that statement, it is plain to see that you are viewing your life from only one, small perspective. Kind of like you are looking at your life through a toilet paper roll tube, viewing only a small portion of reality. And, I remember that at your age, that's what I used to do too. However, what you need to do is take a step back for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What you don't realize is that you are at a very important point in your life. You are at the point when a lot of things are going to change very soon, and I doubt that you are totally prepared for them. Well, you need to focus on preparing for those things. What things? I'm talking about college, possibly moving away to college, getting a car, a job, possibly investments, your career, and the list goes on and on. I wish that when I was your age I would have investigated more of those areas to at least get a FRIGGEN CLUE about what those things are about. Now, I'm 24 years old and I'm just bearly getting a handle on most of those things. Sure, I'm still a youngster, but I would prefer to be more educated in different areas. Like, for instance, currently I've been trying to find a good used car to buy. Well, shit, I don't know diddly crap about auto-related stuff and I'm having to learn about that kind of stuff while trying to find a good deal. Anyway, I could give you examples all day long. Anyway, I recommend that you use your time wisely and try to get involved in more things in your life. Go talk to your family members and relatives and do some searching on the net and learn about the critical things in life...BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!! *lightning flashes!!!* Besides, it's a lot of fun to learn about new things. I'm actually starting to like working with autos, and I'll probably learn more about them in my free time."

I think that a lot of teens view their lives incorrectly. I was one of them. And sometimes at my age (24) I still, from time to time, fall into the mistake of not viewing "the big picture" when looking at my life, my priorities, and my goals. I believe it's very important for everyone to refresh their perspectives every once in a while and make sure they are viewing their lives through the lense of truth and focus on what they really need to be doing.

The Current Status Of The IT Field, As I See It

2004-10-21T23:12:16Z

I recently read an article that said that a lot of computer programmers in the United States are out of work, and that trend is continuing, due to companies outsourcing those jobs to places like China and India. That may be true, but I don't think all hope is lost for programmers. They may have to get more training and slightly modify their vocation, but they have a few excellent selections for their next career move. First of all, the outsourcing will increase the need for project managers and systems architects. This will require programmers in the US to obtain some additional college and training, but will also result in quite an increase in salary for them at the same time. Another choice for programmers would be to start or become employed at a technology company that specializes in providing software and hardware solutions for small to medium -sized companies. I believe this is a field that will be needing a greater number of information technology professionals for a very long time, considering the fact that almost all businesses are steadily becoming more reliant on electronic data. This increase will require more systems administrators, hardware and networking experts, and custom software engineers. In my personal experience as an IT geek, after learning the basics of networking, UNIX, SQL, and a bit of programming, I've got several small and medium sized businesses requesting my services. Anyway, that's my personal view on the current status of the IT field :)

SNIFFLE!

2004-10-08T15:15:45Z

Drat! I have a blasted cold! ARGH! Oh well, there's a couple positive things about having a cold. 1) It makes you grateful when you don't have a cold and 2) it gives you a dark, sinister, evil voice reminiscent of Professor Snape of the Harry Potter series of films.

Oh, also, today I rode my bike to work since it was only about 50 degrees F outside. I did this because my car is still being repaired and I thought I better get in a few more rides before it gets cold and frozen outside.

My job has changed a bit recently. I no longer have as much time to myself as I used to since my co worker on the support team retired and her replacement needs frequent attention for training purposes. I'm rather enjoying the replacement, however. She's a delightful female who is just my age...BWAAHAHAHAH! </evil>

The Woes Of A Gentoo Linux SysAdmin

2004-09-22T23:48:07Z

I just thought I could install Gentoo linux on a server, install all the necessary software, and then all would be well. It was...for a while. Then, one day, I decided I wanted to install fetchmail, a program used to download email from email servers. When I emerged fetchmail, I found it peculiar that it required that 13 packages be updated. It was then that I began feeling a little worried, especially since I had had a previous experience of software updates breaking other software. After the update, my qmail/spamassassin SMTP system stopped working. After shutting off spamassassin and qmail-scanner, SMTP was back up and running. I've tried googling for help, but to no avail. I suppose I'll have to reinstall the whole mail system from scratch. We've lost some mail, so I suppose the users won't mind losing more email. Most of it's spam anyway. *sigh* In the words of a wise chatter in #gentoo-server on irc.freenode.net: "You can run a gentoo server 1 of 2 ways. Either install everything and never touch it again, or update everything on a weekly basis." So, I suppose that forces me to choose the latter since I like the flexibility of installing new stuff every once in a while and that requires up-to-date packages and THAT requires me to update everything on a regular basis, or stuff breaks. Or maybe stuff will break AS I am doing my weekly upgrade. I don't know. Anyway, if anyone has an easier solution to this, I'm all ears.

Changing Colors In rxvt

2004-09-19T19:58:47Z

One of my personal annoyances with regular color terminals (rxvt, xterm, and so on) is that the default color for blue is so dang hard to read against a black background, which is my favorite background color. That shade of blue is especially difficult to see when viewed in regular-size text on a blurry, 15-inch monitor. I actually use a fairly nice 17-inch monitor, but it's still a pain. Anyway, today I finally decided to make a change. I did a little manpage reading (man rxvt) and googled a bit, and created my own ~/.Xdefaults file :D And here are the contents of that file:

rxvt*color4: #6699ff

Ah, so simple, so elegant, and so very effective. The term "color4" refers to "default blue" and I've changed it to a lovely shade of light blue. Here is a screenshot of the before-and-after terminals:

http://perlcode.homelinux.com/~peltkore/rxvt.png

The "before" terminal is in the background and the "after" terminal is in the foreground. Ah, so soothing to the eyes, no?

Self Control, Working Independently, and Success

2004-09-17T15:25:18Z

Success usually comes to those who go the extra mile with a project, a company, or assignment. Oftentimes this requires the person to work independently, all by themselves, in some lonely office somewhere, typing away on a computer, and plunging into tall stacks of books and papers. A good share of the time, the subject matter isn't that exciting, so it require the person to just "dig in" and get the job done. And this, my friend, requires self control, in order to refrain from the urge of just doing something more fun. Like going home for movies, pizza, and beer. And this, my friend, has been my viewpoint for the past week or two, as I've been trudging through learning accounting and some other management software. I'll keep you all posted :)

Oracle sux, Interbase rox!

2004-09-12T21:47:17Z

For many weeks I've been wading through an mountain of Oracle 9i docs trying to get it up and running. I didn't seem to find any quick-n-easy guide to get a simple database up and running, so I decided I'd look for a different database to put on my Sun UltraSPARC server. I mean, why didn't the Oracle docs give a big, fat, red-n-flashy warning statement along the lines of: "You must have AT LEAST a master's degree in computer science AND have a month of time on your hands before attempting to get this big ugly bastard running!" ? Anyway, the open source version of Borland Interbase 6, called Firebird DB, is an excellent solution. It's lightweight, very well documented, simple to get started, AND includes many features of enterprise-level databases, such as ANSI SQL-92 entry-level compliancy. You might want to check it out, if you are into databases.