Net Life

Brief update on my recent doings around these parts. Can't say it's terribly interesting, but what the hey... it's good enough for this blog, so it'll be good enough for you, thank you very much Mr. High and "I've got something interesting to say everyday" Mighty. Where's your blog then? No? Not so largemouthed now, are we?

Aaaaanyhoo, last week might possibly have been the slowest and most dreadful week of me life. It was insanely dull and boring, and generally just a huge pile of salamander feces to traverse. I managed as usual by my quick wit and runny mind, to get through it, but it was hard, folks, lemme tell ya. Work is about as much fun as walking around in waist high sewage, and no less vomit inducing. And my sparetime is mostly spent messing with the server and stuff. Good ole mgb has put me on to music player deamon - a program running on eg. a server. It sets up a webbased and network enabled streaming possibility for your music, meaning you can listen to it through any browser any place in the world. Also, you can use one of many media players to access your music across the network at home. It's nifty, and it's something I'm gonna be utilizing soon. Being able to listen to my own music while at work or anywhere, really, through any old browser, is pretty damn cool.

Gonna set up some wireless at home in the not so distant future. As soon as I have the cash to shell out for an access point and a PCMCIA wireless card for me laptop. Neither are expenssive purchases by any means, but still it's money out of the budget. Ranc recently announced the arrival in our home, of 1gbit switches. So we're gonna install them at some point. "Install a switch? Isn't it just a matter of switching them, as it were, with the old ones?" you might very well be inquiring at this point. Of course, I've no chance in hell actually hearing you or react to that question unless you email it to me. BUT, since I'm a pretty brilliant guy, I've gone pro-active on your rear end, and anticipated you pondering this very thing. And yes, yes it is just a matter of performing a simple switch. But you have to consider who you're dealing with now. Ranc and I are pretty notorious in our ways, when it comes to doing stuff pertaining to crawling around underneath the table, with wires and stuff. Also, it'd mean going offline for X amount of minutes. And nobody likes offlinetime. But yeah, we'll give it a go, and see how fast stuff is transferred... at some point.

This weekend I was with mum in her summer residence. Was nice enough to get away for a day and just kick back. Weather was pretty nice, sun being it's usual shiny self, but not too hot. We watched the entire Season 10 of Friends, which neither of us had seen yet. I had, through various channels, learned that Rachel and Ross eventually made up, but it was still nice to see. Yeah I know, I'm a sentimental mofo when it comes to my Friends. But it's been 10 years in the company of these 6 quirky NYC pals, and it's hard not to take a sympathetic point of view regarding Rachel and Ross' off and on relationship. Of course we had to finish off with the classic get-off-the-plane stint, but it was nice.. it was good. At least I've seen all the 10 seasons now. S10 wasn't my fav season by far, but it had a lot of the classic laugh out loud moments, so enjoyable overall.

Also, I acquired, from mum, the 7th, and so far final, installment of the Harry Potter series of books. Read 150 pages or so that day, and another 120 at home last night. It's a pretty decent read, something I've been looking forward to for some time. Not being a fanatic, I couldn't be arsed shelling out 300 bigones for a book on opening night, so getting it now and reading it quietly will do me just fine.

Right... that's about it. Interesting, huh? You got to hear about wireless stuff, servers, Harry Potter and Friends. Even the least adamant of readers won't be able to say no to a blog post like this. It's what dreams are made of, folks... dreams are made of. Until next time, keep your pants dry.

Well.. I'm about to gear up completely. Been stumbling a bit lately, and since my most preferred returns from stumbleupon (the best damn firefox extension out there), are humor and tech stuff, I've found a lot of guides for doing cool stuff in Ubuntu. Running many games and win applications under Ubuntu, which is one of my main grievances with the switch for Unix. 

I had tried, unsuccesfully, installing Ubuntu on the laptop a few months back or so. Ubuntu uses a little something called liveCD, which is basically the whole OS on a bootable CD. So when you plug it in the drive and boot from it, you're in the actual OS, with a fully functional interface. Network is configured, so you can browse the web. It's slow tho, because it's being run from the CD. Too slow, in fact, for the laptop to handle. Pissed me off something awful. But, when I went to download the newest version of Ubuntu yesterday, I noticed a little check box with the text "alternate text based installer". Fuck yeah, thinks I, and after getting the first CD, I get the alternate as well, thinking I'll give the laptop another go.

I've basically been looking forward to this the entire day (my day was even more boring than yesterday). And here I am now, it's configuring languages atm, and the installer is just running smoothly and swiftly, it's a doozy. Hoping things will be cool, so I'll have a fully functional Ubuntu powered laptop when I get home. It's mom's old machine, and while it's nowhere near as fast as today's monsters, it's still a pretty good little piece of hardware. It has a pink line splitting the screen in halves, but besides that, everything is in tip top condition. If things work out, I'm gonna give a wireless network a shot. Need a wireless router tho, but they should be fairly easy to obtain. Oh boy, the little tech-geek in me is literally over the top happy with this new development. And has also been rambling on for far too long about Unix and laptops. I'll probably try the switchover for my main box as well, when I can be arsed. Gonna try out some of the cool things I've found. Mmmmm geeking is phun!

First day done with... let me tell you folks, I wish I had gone for the head against a brick wall option yesterday... I was bored shitless. Couldn't focus. I got, as tradition would have it, shit assignments, and while I started one of them, I just couldn't be arsed to finish it or work a lot on it.. I have three weeks for this. I think I can handle that.

On a slightly related note, my cousin sent me an email today, regarding a job at EA Games.. as a games tester. Now, this might not be what I had in mind, but it's not a totally bad idea, that's for sure. I meet the requirements (yes, there are actually requirements), but I've a hard time figuring out what exactly the job is about, and where.. as far as I can read, it's in Spain. Granted, Spain isn't like my favorite country in the world, but I'd not mind going there for some time, to work in games testing.

It's not something I'll go after for 100% sure, but taken the first paragraph of this post, and a LOT of other post into consideration, I'd say it was safe to say I'd like out of my current employment. It's grinding me down, to be honest, and I'm not liking that one bit. Going to Spain for like a few months or perhaps half a year, might be a breath of fresh air. Especially if I'd be working for EA, testing computer games. Can any of you imagine a better habitat? Surely I can't grow tired of that.... or can I? Oh well, it's something to consider.

 I'm bored... With a capital b. Bored to within an inch of my life here.. Don't you know those days? It's like.. I've seen everything, done everything, tried everything. Found and read through every page on teh interweb. Nobody around to talk to, nobody online.. NOTHING.. gaah.. and it's warm and stuffy in here too, despite open windows and a fan going. 

Oh well.. I guess I'll prowl through youtube for lord knows what time.