Sunshine and Bicycles

I love the sunshine. Growing up, we had a huge eastward-facing-window in our living room. The sunlight would stream in and warm everything. We had a very comfortable armchair and the sun would always hit the top and arms of it. I would drape myself over it and lie there like a dog.

As I write this, sunlight is streaming through the windows of my house in Boston. It makes me so happy. Whenever I'm in a bad mood, sunlight will fix it. The contrary is also true, however, and when it's gloomy it can put me in a bad mood. I think I need to move back to California...

Last weekend I went to Utah to visit a very close friend and the weather was absolutely perfect. It was sunny and warm, but there was still lots of snow in the mountains. Timpanogas looked majestic, as always. It was pretty much the perfect weekend. We even got to ride bicycles.

Technology

I woke up this morning and was excited to talk to my parents (living in Ireland) over Skype. But as I tried to boot up my laptop, it hung after the Dell splash screen. I tried rebooting a few times to no avail. So I pulled out my Accenture laptop and decided to use it to talk to my parents while simultaneously trying to troubleshoot my personal laptop (it's nice having 4 laptops in your room... you never stress too much when one breaks).

Because I regularly perform backups I wasn't too stressed about losing the information on the computer. But it's always a pain. So I Googled to see what I could find out. I tried repairing using the XP boot disk -didn't work. I booted Ubuntu to make sure all my files were still there - they were. I tried the XP repair again, and as it was running I realized that I should go to the repair command line and run fixboot and fixmbr. But when the computer restarted, it would no longer boot from CD. (Getting frustrated at this point...) So I decided to dump my files onto another external hard drive just to have an extra backup. Ubuntu couldn't mount my drive. I ran into that same situation at work with a colleague last week and didn't want to spend more time fixing it.

So... I pulled out the hard drive, connected it to my Accenture laptop via USB, and am using the Accenture laptop as an in-between for my personal drive and my external backup. And then I'm going to wipe my personal drive and start over.

Starting over is always remarkably refreshing. Your OS is so much faster and less cluttered. You don't bother installing all those stupid programs you were messing around with. So in a way, it's not all bad. But I had much more exciting plans for my Saturday than this...

The good news is that I had a great conversation with my parents. I found out that my great grandpa grew up in Aalborg, Denmark (near Elsinore), and my great grandmother grew up in Falkerslev, Denmark (on the island of Falster).

My dad and I also talked stalks and business cases (he's a strategy professor) for a while. It's really nice having such a knowledgeable resource in your own family :)

Comments... defying social convention

Hi. If you're reading this, you have to leave a comment on the post. That's the rule.

I realize that lots of people see and read things but don't ever say anything. They usually remain quiet because they're embarrassed that they were online blog-stalking. But let's be honest... we all do it! That's the point of having a blog!

I don't care if we haven't talked in years. I don't care if we don't know each other well. I don't even care if we don't know each other at all. I'd just like to know who's listening. And I promise not to think it's weird.

And the winner is...

We do not live in a world of absolutes. That's why I hate the question "What's your favorite..." Have you noticed how that question often puts a damper on a conversation? It's because people are so indecisive (which should be the subject of another blog post). A much more effective question is "What are some... that you like?" Everybody can think of something they like.

Today I come before you to give you an absolute. My favorite food from July 2008-February 2009 is (drumroll please)... potstickers. I love them. I'll eat a whole bag in one sitting. No matter how bad of a day I'm having, potstickers will cheer me up.

Here in Boston all I can find at Shaw's are Joyce Chen's "Ravioli Peking". It's by the Italian ravioli in the frozen foods aisle, in case you were wondering. They're pretty good. Not my favorite, but they get the job done.

I think hot wings come in a close second.

Le Cordon Bleu

My old roommate Ryan sold security systems for two summers. One summer as he was out knocking doors, a woman asked for his help with something around the house. Anxious for a break from the monotony and rejection, he agreed.

She provided him with a shirt to wear so he wouldn't get his dirty. It was a chef's shirt from Le Cordon Bleu, a culinary school. She was even kind enough to let him keep the chef's shirt after he finished with the household task.

Ryan wears the chef shirt often. When girls see it, they always ask if he's a chef. Of course, his reply is always "Yes". He then proceeds to unfurl an elaborate story about his time at Le Cordon Bleu school of culinary arts. If he's feeling particularly good, he might even throw in some anecdotes from when he worked in various restaurants.

I fear that the lie has ballooned out of control and that Ryan is actually starting to believe it - for Christmas one year, his mother gave him a chef's hat embroidered "Chef Ryan".

When I left Provo, I didn't expect to see Le Cordon Bleu again. But one day, sitting in Fresh City eating lunch, a Le Cordon Bleu commercial came on the TV. I texted Ryan right away! And it didn't end there... I've seen the commercial a few more times. But the icing on the cake was the huge Le Cordon Bleu add I saw on the T today. I got to stare at it for 20 minutes.

I'm thinking of going to culinary school now. And even if I don't learn to cook, at least I'll get the shirt, right?

http://contact.bostonculinaryarts.com/contactshort/index.asp?src=91006

Geeking Out

I've always been a nerd. I love Star Trek and Star Wars and used to play Magic: The Gathering. I started programming in qBasic before I was 10. The last few days have been particularly nerdy. Let me tell you why.

I brushed up on my CSS, reviewed the basics of AJAX, and read a few chapters of a book on Drupal.

I spent hours trying to get a server (Dell PowerEdge SC420) working. It had Fedora Core installed with a program called Fonality, and I had to get Fedora Core off. I wanted to put Windows Server 2003 on, but I don't have the ISO anymore. Maybe I can contact MS and tell them my product key and have them mail it to me. Anyhow, I put in the XP boot disk because all I want is a WAMP stack on it, and I can do that with XP.

Installing XP is not a complicated process - you put in the CD and it installs. Except this time, it wouldn't. It would boot from CD, scan the computer, then freeze. I did a ton of research and found that since I don't know how to use Grub at all, the easiest way to get Fedora Core off and Windows on would be to use the hard drive Utility Disk. It's a Western Digital drive, so I went to their site. Unfortunately, they have tons of different utility disks and they're all poorly labeled. I took a stab at it and downloaded the DOS ISO. I then burned it and threw it in the server.

It worked perfectly (except that it wouldn't always tab to all the options). I was then able to install XP without any problems. After the install, I noticed that several of the drivers, including the ethernet card drivers, were missing. I went to the Dell website from my laptop, downloaded them, and put them on the server. But they wouldn't install with XP - only Server 2003. Frustrating!

By then I was sick of the server. Between work all day and my geek play at night, I'd been staring at screens for hours and my eyes were getting bloodshot. I returned the borrowed monitor I used for the server to my roommate Mark, and somehow he mentioned that he had an old laptop he no longer needed. My ears perked up.

We credit-carded Nishan's door and got Mark's old laptop from his room. The stipulation was that I wipe the drive completely before use. I downloaded Eraser and started to wipe it. I let it run, although it kept on prompting me for input, which was annoying. I let it run all night.

When I woke up in the morning it had made little progress. I realized that it was set to write over the drive 35 times (for added safety). I attempted to change that default setting, but couldn't figure out how in the documentation. So I did what anyone would do - I got a different program.

I chose Darik's Boot and Nuke. It's simple and boots from a CD. It does exactly what it says it does - erases everything on a drive. In under 2 hours, it was done. I threw in another old drive to erase as well (drive 3 is 84.58% done as I'm writing this). I also decided it would be a good idea to back up my personal laptop, so I pulled out my 500gb LaCie FaPorsche external hard drive and started the backup.

Then I went to a lecture on cloud computing. It was fabulous. :)

Autoflush Toilets, Egg Salad, and Other Bad Ideas

There are several things I enjoy separately but should never be combined. Point in case: last Wednesday I had a ham, bacon, lettuce, tomato, guacamole, and egg salad sandwich. I should have stopped after the guacamole.

Autoflush toilets are wonderful. Disposable toilet seat covers are also wonderful. However, disposable toilet seat covers on autoflush toilets are not wonderful. I can't tell you how many times I've expended the effort to put the cover down, then turned around to sit and have the autoflush toilet flush the cover down.