Domain Names

So I randomly noticed yesterday that andrewfarmer.name was open, and heck, it's only $10/year. So now this blog is hosted under that. If I someday outgrow the blog, or want to host a real live website again, I'll have it for that too. It'll also be handy for hosting things like my resume, which I have thus far had to host on Lorebroker.

One thing that annoys me is how the domain forwarding works with Blogspot. They tell me to make a CNAME record to ghs.google.com, but don't give me an IP to use for the A record (which requires an IP, not another name). I did a ping of ghs.google.com and was using that IP for a bit, but a later ping give me a different IP, meaning that is some load balancing cluster. I don't want to hard code some IP in my DNS records that belongs to a server that could go up and down depending on demand. For now I had to use the decidedly unsatisfying solution of putting a meta refresh on the free hosting that came with the domain.

If they really wanted to make this feature shine, they'd give us an IP to point our A records at, and let us use multiple CNAMEs, instead of just one. That way I could set up wildcards and such.

Anyway, after getting this blog set up, I decided on a whim to add a Lorebroker development blog at blog.lorebroker.com. Not entirely needed at the moment, since I have no one to blog to, but hopefully useful someday for announcing features and just generally conversing with harry.

And Death to Facebook

Read an excellent article today that rather well articulates the feeling I have been getting lately about Facebook. Sadly, now that I think about it, I think Shana made this same argument some time ago, when she was 'cleaning up' her online presence. To save you reading the whole article, here is the snippet that really illustrates the point (with a +5 Burning Man reference!):

Here's one of Boyd's examples, a true story: a young woman, an elementary school teacher, joins Friendster after some of her Burning Man buddies send her an invite. All is well until her students sign up and notice that all the friends in her profile are sunburnt, drug-addled techno-pagans whose own profiles are adorned with digital photos of their painted genitals flapping over the Playa. The teacher inveigles her friends to clean up their profiles, and all is well again until her boss, the school principal, signs up to the service and demands to be added to her friends list. The fact that she doesn't like her boss doesn't really matter: in the social world of Friendster and its progeny, it's perfectly valid to demand to be "friended" in an explicit fashion that most of us left behind in the fourth grade. Now that her boss is on her friends list, our teacher-friend's buddies naturally assume that she is one of the tribe and begin to send her lascivious Friendster-grams, inviting her to all sorts of dirty funtimes.

I think it just comes down to the fact that we don't diagram and distribute a list of our friends in real life for this very reason. There are some people you don't bring home to mom, and there are some activities that you don't talk about with your boss. Facebook and it's ilk do exactly that if your mom, boss, and drunk friends all happen to be your Facebook friends too. It's not like I am ashamed of anyone, and I think most people are pretty realistic in not judging you by such things, but the problem arises when someone uses Facebook to look up information about you for something important, as some colleges and employers have been doing before accepting students and hiring. Why have a bad image out there?

Now the question is, do I have the guts to pull the trigger on my account? It does have it's useful features, like keeping in touch with my professors in Spain, and looking up phone numbers and email addresses. None of my friends are remotely questionable as far as I know, and I have already cleaned up my profile quite a bit. How much value does Facebook really provide?

If only we could get rid of those damn applications. If I get one more notification I'm going to go berserk.

Death to Turkey

Just for the record, "three thanksgiving dinners" is both a blessing and a curse. Yay to excellent food and people... boo to two days of turkey and stomach aches.

Absolutely no card sorting happened this weekend. I did however log about 18 hours on the magic site, which is tentatively online (in a very very alpha state) at Lorebroker.com. You can't really do much yet, but just getting it up in any form involved a lot of setup and deployment overhead, which doesn't really reflect in the site itself, but required a lot of time. Thankfully all that effort will make future deployments that much faster and more automated.

I learned quite a bit about Capistrano recipe writing, which is pretty neat. I had to rearrange my subversion repo to optimize that some, and got my cap setup all organized. Also took me about four hours to figure out how to automate the building and proper deployment of the bcrypt-ruby library, but it works like a charm now. Encrypted passwords for the win.

I have quite the to-do list just from talking to harry about it this morning. Makes me wish I was at home so I could work on it. Don't really want to risk mixing it in with my day job though.

I really do get more done when I am tag teaming something with someone else than I do on my own. It's just so much easier to get started when I have someone to which I am responsible in some way. Maybe that is the fundamental flaw in a day job in cubicle-land... it's too easy to be ignored and left to one's own devices. That, and my personal gain from a job well done is basically limited to keeping my job. It's not even the potential money gain that drives the personal projects to be interesting. It's creating something useful and cool.

More Conquests

In an effort to continue my recent habit of spending money, last night I won some more ebay auctions. This brings my current winnings to include four of each of these:

• Broodstar
• Cloudstone Curio
• Dark Depths
• Dread
• Engineered Plague
• Exhume
• Grave Pact
• Magus of the Jar
• Shaman en-Kor
• Tinker
• Vulturous Zombie

On a side note, I love how ebay makes me feel like a winner each time I win an auction. It's like I won some contest or something. I mean, I guess I have, since it is an auction, but they make it sound so cheesy. I guess that is how you get people to overbid. If they get lost in the idea of "beating the other bidders" then they lose sight of what they really came to do, which was to get something they need at a decent price. I'm happy to say that I have easily saved over 50% so far from what I would have paid in a traditional online card store.

I also managed to get my Black and Blue Creatures sorted last night. It is really surprising to me how many duplicates I have of some commons. For instance, I must have about 35 Orzhov Euthanists. Yet another reason to get the magic site going, just to get those up for sale. It feels good to have half my creatures sorted though. I have a few hours between work and dinner with Bob and Jessie that I hope to spend on the other half. Then on to the last box... Instants!

I hate clever titles

I almost put some stupid pseudo-witty title on this entry, and then remembered that I downgrade people in my mental intelligence hierarchy (oh yes, I maintain one of those) for that kind of crap.

Quoting yourself seriously, using 'lol' to end a sentence, and claiming your life is hard! no one understands me! will also get you downgraded. Thankfully, by avoiding MySpace, I can generally avoid these symptoms of Eternal September. (As if you were smart/unique enough to be incomprehensible!)

Yeah, today I'm feeling cynical.

I got a lot of mental clutter cleaned up last night. Laundry and other chores got done, bills got paid, groceries got bought, etc. I also got some more magic cards bought on ebay. I will now have real Tinkers with which to cheatily whip out Memnarch!

I also started maintaining a To-do list on my Google home page. Tonight's chores involve sorting Magic cards (which I mostly avoided this weekend), and a couple more ebay auctions.

Oh man, lunch soon!

Well over 300 cards on the way to me now. For once I'll get something good in the mail. Man I can't wait for this long weekend to come. I will partake in so much nerdiness! Lisp/Erlang/Ruby ftw...

Xmas List

You know, it was nice being a kid for the sole reason that I always had things to put on my Christmas List. Now it feels like a struggle to think of anything I want (that can easily be purchased by family or friends). I mean, sure, there are things I want (financial freedom, my own business, a Ph.D.) ... but those things are hard to pick up at the local Wal-Mart or Best Buy.

Really what I would like to ask for is just money. The problem is that no one wants to give money, and I feel bad asking for it. Money just seems so un-magical; nothing like opening a shiny box on Christmas morning. Money would be more efficient though, since I could pool all my gift money to buy something big that I would actually use (or at least something big).

It would be nice to have this and this, but that is seriously $1000 worth of electronics. I don't have enough family and friends to even approach that in gift money, and I really should focus on saving up rather than buying more stuff. Sure, it would be useful for the programming to have two monitors, but is it really $1000 useful?

Toys aside, money would be really handy towards helping hit my goal of saving up six months' expenses by the end of the year, which I think I'm going to miss by a couple hundred dollars. I'd probably get way more satisfaction out of hitting that milestone on time than I would opening presents. Does that make me old and thrifty?

Maybe if I framed it as a charity donation. Donate money instead of material goods to the Get-Drew-Out-Of-A-Cube Fund. Any fundraiser needs a good countdown to a goal. Currently I'm $10,345.89 short of my goal. Wanna contribute?

An Offer

This week I have been struck with an overwhelming urge to accomplish a lot of things.

The Magic cards are all sorted by type and color, and the Sorceries are even alphabetical now. I just need to alphabetize the other four boxes and I will finally be done sorting cards. This is easier said than done however, as one of those boxes is my Creatures, which represent over half my cards. I'd really like to get it done before the weekend, but there is only so much sorting I can take.

The sudden rush to sort is mostly to blame on a recent spate of deck building, which has resulted in seven decks that I can't find/don't have cards for. I need to get sorting done to determine which cards I am missing, so I can order them as soon as humanly possible. I want to put the decks together now, and waiting for cards to ship is going to be an amusingly nerdy form of torture.

I'd also like to finish reading the Ender Series (Xenocide and Children of the Mind) before the first two books get stale in my mind. Unfortunately with everything else going on, I am finding it hard to get a good block of free time for reading. My time situation will probably only get worse as we tumble into the holiday season. Maybe I should just unilaterally declare a certain day of the week to be The-Drew-Walks-Alone Day, where I can pursue my nerdy activities without the distraction of social/work engagement. I am already pretty isolated on weeknights though, so sacrificing a weekend day to that would probably result in mass friend mutiny.

Even disregarding birthdays and holidays, my free time is about to get cut even shorter, as Tyler called with an interesting offer yesterday. I am very excited about it. I have no idea what the protocol is on talking about these things, so I'll defer for now, but I am definitely looking forward to meeting with him and Scott on Sunday.

Next week is a short one due to Turkey Day, which is always kind of nice. While Thursday will be completely packed with events, I'm not one to shop so Friday will be a real day off. Surely I can get those books read then.

Then there are the various computer related projects I'd like to accomplish. The magic site got put on hold when I started sorting and reading so much about two weeks ago. Then there is Erlang and Lisp, both on my list of things I really want to learn, have books with which to learn, but are low enough on the todo list that I haven't learned yet.

You know, I was getting way more done when I slept biphasically for a couple weeks there. Maybe I should just go back to that. I really need to find a decent countdown alarm to make that work better, rather than the wake-up-at-this-time alarm I (and most people) have. The key is to sleep for a single sleep cycle, not to wake up at any given time. Too bad real life didn't work like that.

NetJ

So I am about to finish day 3 of the new job... and all I can say is that it rocks. I get to wear normal (jeans, tshirt, hoodie) clothes, I have dual 19 inch LCDs hooked to a dual Xeon 3Ghz box with a rather unnecessary raid 0 array running Ubuntu, and my coworkers rock. Add to that my proximity to home, hour long lunch break, and something totally different to work on, and I'm in heaven.

Still in a cubicle... but at least it has six foot walls instead of the normal five foot ones. Also way less foot traffic, as I'm officially located on Dark Alley (yes, the cubicle rows have street names).

I think the big thing is that everyone here is just generally glad to work here and happy to be here. I also find myself looking forward to the day's tasks, rather than dreading work. I'm sure some of this is honeymoon period... but hopefully it will continue through the whole six months. I figure at least there is no way I can get bored in six months anyway.

The project itself is updating this old dos app to run as a web app in a browser. The app itself is pretty basic, but there is a lot of data to bring into hibernate and provide CRUD for. As far as I can tell, there seems to be a lot of DRY-Violation so far, so I have hopes of making a decent impact on that front. This project is budgeted for like a man-year or more, and if there is really as much opportunity for automation as I think, we might be able to cut that in half.

Anyway, I have been re-engaged by the Ender series at home. Last night I was up until 4 reading Speaker for the Dead. I have read Ender's Game about a dozen times now, but I only read the other three once or twice each, as I never was a big fan of them. Now that I'm not 12 though, I am really getting into Speaker. I can't believe I didn't like it before. It has been gripping, as evidenced by missing my bedtime by about 6 hours last night.

Goal for tonight is to finish Speaker and get to bed early. Bonus points if I have time to sort my Instants. Magic Glee!

Magical

I have been obsessed with all things Magic all week. Read the Time Spiral trilogy, been working on sorting cards, and quite a bit of time on the site. Hopefully soon getting to the point where I can go public with something. I also made three new decks.

In sorting my cards I realized that I don't really have anywhere to put them, so this weekend I hope to cook up some nice storage cases with my dad. I am thinking wood cases with felt linings. I also hopefully have enough black paint left over from my desk to paint them all. They should end up being pretty cool.

I have also accidentally fallen into a bi-phasic sleeping cycle. I get up at about 8am, work, then come home, eat and read until about 7pm or 8pm, fall asleep, wake up at about 11pm-Midnight, work on magic site or read more, back to sleep at 4am, repeat. It is very strange, but I feel like I slack off less after work.

Last night I fell asleep at about 8, slept for what seemed like an eternity, then woke up at midnight completely ready for a whole day. At 5am I finally forced myself to sleep again, just so today wasn't so hard at work. The only weird side effect I notice is that I have trouble keeping track of what day of the week it is, but that is pretty minor.

I'm definitely excited about the site, and really wish I was home right now so I could work on it. Harry is even doing design for me! I'm finally freed from my lack of artistic ability and my chromatic retardation!

In completely weird and unrelated news, one of my profesoras from Spain is visiting the US, and is currently here in the KC area, so hoping to go eat dinner or something with her tonight. I think this is her first time in the US... if I remember right, she has never even been to Madrid, which is only a six hour drive from Ronda. On Tuesday she saw the Grand Canyon, so I'm not sure how we KC people are going to top that.

Anyway, back I go to dreaming about Magic and Rails.

Slums

Today I was talking to Joe about telecommuting, which we both agree is the future of our profession. It just doesn't really make sense for us to show up to some physical place in person when what we do is concentrate and manipulate a virtual space. I can see having common meeting points to keep a group cohesive, but our particular profession is extremely poorly suited to the continuous interruptions of an office environment.

Programming aside, I think the closer an "office" is to your home, the better. And I don't mean physical proximity. In that regard, today's typical office is more like a homeless shelter.

The much touted reasoning for cubicles is that they lead to better collaboration, but I call BS on that. What leads to better collaboration is better common spaces. In a house, if people want to collaborate or be social, they go to the living room, family room, dining room, front porch, or back yard. These are all areas that are understood to be somewhat social in nature, and the person is allowed to choose when to participate. If the person wants to be private, they stay in their office, bedroom, or study. The point of these rooms is privacy and the ability to concentrate.

How this logic escapes the designers of offices just astounds me. Each worker should have a private space in which they can focus and get things done. Its walls should go to the ceiling, and it should have a door that can be closed.

In addition, the workplace should have several common areas, each suited to slightly different situations. One should have lots of food and comfy chairs and couches, and plenty of entertainment options (but not TV). This is for employees to blow off steam, chat with a coworker, or just eat their lunch. (I say no TV because it tends to destroy any interaction between people in a room.)

Another common area should be several office sized rooms with tables, outlets, and connections for small groups of 3-4 to work in the same room if they need to. If you don't know what I'm talking about, visit a good college library. These allow groups to work together without disturbing other groups.

The last area type really depends on the size of the company, but optimally you want a place where everyone can fit at once, for those all-staff events like kicking off the Next Big Thing, or just a company movie night.

The first area is like a living room and kitchen, the second area is like your dining room table, and the third is like your back yard. The private offices are much like your office/study at home. We have all these areas in a house because they serve a social purpose, allow us to establish boundaries and collaborate at will, and make the house comfortable and varied.

In contrast, modern offices are like homeless shelters. Everyone is in a shared room, cubicles being the metaphorical equivalent of bunk beds. There is no food, or at least nothing that doesn't come out of a vending machine. Also, the common areas are usually places of dread (meeting rooms) or discomfort (lobbies and lounges).

Meeting rooms usually have to be scheduled, so they don't allow spontaneous collaboration. It's no big secret that cubicles don't actually allow collaboration, since you have just enough privacy that you can't talk face-to-face with anyone without shouting. So how are your employees supposed to actually work in a team?

Lobbies and lounges are stark places with no relaxation value. "Oh man! I get to go sit and stare out the window by myself in a completely silent room lit by fluorescent lights!" If you don't believe me, ask yourself, which would you rather do? Go take a 15 minute break in your company's lounge area, or take the same break in your living room? You get the point.

The idea of a cubicle doesn't makes sense at all. As far as I can tell, it's only attractive in two situations. First, you need to be able to shout at your coworkers constantly. Maybe this makes sense in the bull pen of a stock trading firm, where the movies tell me brokers shout at each other across the room to get orders made. Thankfully, your typical office worker, much less a programmer, doesn't need to do that. If they need to talk to someone in person, they walk to that person's cubicle, which is really no different than walking to that person's private office would be.

The other reason cubicles are attractive is the ability to cram a lot of people in one big room, leaving flexibility to change the floor plan nearly at will. While this actually makes some sense, it doesn't necessitate that cube walls are only five feet tall. If you want to have modular office walls, make them go to the ceiling and put doors on them.

So think about it, would you prefer to live in a comfortable house or a homeless shelter? My guess is you picked the first one... so why do you allow your employer to keep you in the second?

48 Hours

Not 48 hours back to back, but that is how many hours at the current job I have left. Just six days.

(I gave my two week notice, but they let me use my vacation time for last four days, making my last day a Monday.)

It feels good to have that done with. I just need to wrap up my last project before then and hopefully get out of here without any parties or luncheons. I'd rather just say goodbye to people 1-on-1. Group goodbyes are just awkward.

It is amazing how your bosses suddenly talk to you like a normal person when you give your notice. I guess they don't have to tow the line anymore, and can be honest. My former supervisor (who I was about to rejoin on a project) just regaled me with a nice rundown on why this place fell apart and when it happened. Very insightful. If there is any reason to feel bad about my decision, it is leaving him shorthanded.

But mostly I feel good about it. I will have a new project in a new place with new people. One with a clear beginning and end, with a raise to boot. I'll also be closer to home and closer to the University, which I increasingly suspect I will join again in the future for a Ph.D.

Anyway, it's lunchtime now, so I'm going to go get my caffeine fix.

Preparations

Op, another week went by.

I have been entirely occupied by Magic in one form or another for the last seven days. Some of those days were spent playing with Bob and Mark. Some were spent working on the site (much setup and an organized fresh start). Some have been consumed by sorting and deck making. The rest have been spent reading the Time Spiral books. It's so nice to be back into Magic world again.

I have had relatively little to do in preparation for tomorrow. In one sense I look forward to getting it over with. I figure there can be three outcomes, and I am perfectly happy with two of the three, and the third option isn't that terrible. On the other hand, I hate dealing with crap like this. It'd be nice if I didn't have to bother with giving notice, but that is a quick way to ruin a reference.

I actually caught myself today being kind of repulsed by YC News. The whole startup idea has gotten so trendy, and I have this weird aversion to all things trendy. I know it's kind of irrational. There are more startups because it is cheaper and easier than ever to do it, but my contrarian vein continues. Not like I can really talk anyway, as I have been sitting on an idea for nearly two years now. While I have made limited progress in that time, mostly I have wasted it. I know I will regret it someday if I never follow through on this. I just keep finding financial reasons to put it off. At least with the banishment of DotA I seem to be able to work on things during my evenings and weekends now. Here is hoping for some productive time!

Wish me luck tomorrow!

Gorillaz

So I can't help listening to Feel Good Inc. by the Gorillaz nonstop today. Today is the best day in a long time for me. I can't divulge details just yet, but let me just say I am overjoyed!

Whee happy music!

I made good on my promise to work out last night, and am suitably sore to prove it. The little gym at our apartment complex is decent, but it definitely lacks a curl bar and a decent place to do dips and situps. I managed about a dozen dips on the treadmill bars, but the belt is too close to my knees and I can't go down properly. Settled for tricep extensions instead. The lack of a curl bar prevents me from doing skull crushers or barbell curls, which I enjoy as a way to end my workout, but I'll deal with it since the place is included in my rent. I can always do situps under the couch anyway.

My new office chair is positively delightful. Sometimes I just go sit in it for no reason other than feel that relaxed feeling for a few minutes. It takes all the tension out of my back and definitely makes me a happy camper.

Anoche soñe con unos amigos españoles. Ellos estaban hablando totalmente en ingles, y yo en español, asi que nadie se podia entender. Ademas, estabamos en el medio del puente en Ronda, y hacia lluvia, pero nadie se daba frio, y el mar estaba cerca (a pesar de que el mar no este cerca de Ronda). Fue 2005 tambien... por que todos los amigos eran mis amigos de España en 2005. Que raro!

Pues, me voy! Que todo se lo pase bien!

Oil Change

So I have been telling myself that I will get up early and go have my oil changed before work ... since last Friday. The problem is, every time 6:15am comes around, I just tell myself "I'll do it tomorrow" and go back to sleep.

I seriously need to stop being lazy.

It was about this time last year that I started this blog in an attempt to motivate myself to get something done. It worked like that for a little while, but after a couple months (and the transition to Spain) I slacked off again. I just realized that I have been in my apartment for two months, and have yet to start working out regularly again. Lame!

Going to correct that when I get home today.

In unrelated news, I got my computer chair last night. It's so nice and comfy. Sitting at my computer is no longer painful after 20 minutes (it replaces a cheapo wooden kitchen chair). That brings me hope of actually getting something productive done in my spare time, assuming I make it through the current gauntlet of birthdays. Seriously, what is with people being born in October and November? Best I can surmise is that we can blame this on Valentine's Day (evil holiday, but that is another rant).

And More Meatballs

On my last post, Mum (hi mum!) left the following comment:

How much of this relational retardation is due to a generation of people where interactions are primarily "virtual"? Do interactions then take on an air of discomfort because ones have not learned to be genuine when dealing with "real" people? The rules of virtual communities are very different and are much more self focused than in-the-flesh interactions ever could be.

I was going to reply in the comments, but as I was writing, it kept getting longer and longer, so I just decided to make a full post about it.

Two of the group were definitely in their late 30s, which is, even at this point, too old to have their social norms set by virtual interaction. I agree that virtual interaction tends to be more anonymous and requires an entirely different set of social skills and cues than real-life interaction, but I also know at least two people that I have never met in real life with which I still manage to have a "deep" relationship (as deep as my friendship with Bob/Mark/Michael/etc).

After a weekend to reflect on this post, I think the issue is that our only culture now is mass culture (which isn't exactly a revelation). In the past, people cared about their neighbors, the events in their town/church/school, the history and cultural significance of things in their state or region. Now our only shared community seems to be mass culture, like hit songs, hit TV shows, hit movies, and professional (televised) sports. (A really excellent book on this phenomenon is called Bowling Alone.) I don't think people have lost the ability to interact on a deeper level, they simply have a narrowed range of topics for discussion. The old 'deeper' subjects still exist, but they require slightly more effort to broach than last night's Idol episode. Why would people that barely know each other dig for commonality when they have the obvious commonality of mass culture to fall back on?

I notice this creeps in even with my parents. I currently don't have television service. I supposed if I wanted to fish out some rabbit ears I could at least have the local channels, but I don't bother. Despite this, my mom still asks during idle conversation whether I have seen some new show or funny commercial. She isn't asking because we don't know how to interact socially, but these things are easy subjects when a 'deeper' subject isn't being pursued.

I think I only notice how pervasive mass culture references are now because of my varied attempts to not keep up with them. I don't have TV, I don't listen to the radio, and my time on the internet is confined to Hacker News and Slashdot. My only real connection to current events is the Economist, which isn't exactly trendy (thankfully, as I find the sparse dribble in more mainstream weeklies like Time and Newsweek to be rather repetitive and narrow), and NPR, which isn't either. I notice the references because I no longer get them. Maybe this whole tirade was just me feeling left out.

With Meatballs

So I was sitting in the break room upstairs eating some Spaghetti-O's when a foursome of generic business-casual people came in. Each was in their 30s, with alternating black or tan slacks and pastel-colored shirts. The two women wore gold bracelets and necklaces with little gold looking swirly things, and the guys each had their cell phones in holsters on their right hip.

They proceeded to ask each other where they were from, how long they had been working here, etc. Then an obvious awkward lull while they waited for the Pepsi Machine to do its business. I'm watching all this from the corner seat of the corner table with my Economist next to my bowl, amused. One of the guys brings up the Chiefs and miraculously the silence is broken. They chatter on about Sunday game rituals, like chili with the family or feeding the dogs bacon for good luck (no joke!).

At first I am amused at how utterly generic and meaningless this conversation is. Nothing more than an awkward cover story for being forced to mingle without supervision during a break in their day-long meeting. It kind of reminds me of being a new hire, and spending those first weeks constantly chatting with people that seem interested in you, but really are just excited to have new meat listen to their stories. Only, all four of these people looked like new hires, so it was bonus awkward.

Suddenly though, I got this gut-wrenching rage. Is this really our common culture? This... nothing? This shallow platitude driven nonsense? Instead of trying to meet people we simply all pretend to be generic people because we think that is what other generic people want. Short of the feeder-of-dog-bacon, not one of these people exhibited a personality quirk or unique story. And even bacon-feeder wasn't exactly stepping out of bounds by admitting that she liked dogs. Gasp!

Why is it that we create this weird divide between our personal lives (and hence our personalities) and our 'professional' lives? Is it that we are afraid of admitting our differences in fear of offending someone? I know that is how I feel when taking a new job. Be a yes-man to everyone until you figure out who thinks what and whose opinion actually matters. But even then, I'm not myself, because I just become what those-that-matter expect me to be. How is this behavior considered healthy?

It's just like we are all going through the motions of professionalism, and are afraid to just be people. I want to be friends with my coworkers, and not just 'at work.' Maybe it would just be easier to work with my existing friends, or to start my own company, than to find it elsewhere. I don't know, but I realized in that moment that I don't really care about the paycheck, as long as I can get by. All I really want is to have fun at what I do. Maybe I should reconsider this whole office-career idea, but for what?

Shell Games

So reading blogs today I found a kindred spirit when it comes to money (hyper)management. The guy over at MyMoneyBlog.com seems to have some interesting ways to nickel and dime yourself to riches, or at least extra cash. His series on using 0% interest periods on credit cards to earn interest on money that isn't even yours was amusing to read. While I won't quite go to his extreme, I have been doing something similar for some time.

The idea is to get a 0% period on a card for as long as possible with as high a credit limit as possible. You proceed to max it out, only paying the minimum during the 0% period, then pay it all off before regular interest kicks in. This requires some discipline to pay off on time, but should be easy if you have a pen and a calendar handy.

The point? You keep the real cash in high yield savings for the duration of the 0% interest period, earning a return on otherwise spent money. You use this cash to pay the card off at the end, but keep the earned interest. Obviously you are not getting rich on this scheme, but just delaying purchases like this will probably net me about $400 next year.

The guy at MyMoneyBlog.com advocates using balance transfer offers to basically transfer out negative balances, then request refund checks in the mail. While technically legal and all, it sounds like effort and possible hassle if anyone ever actually notices these shenanigans. He does make over $1000 a year doing it, so I guess if you really want to, some money is there to be made.

I just stick to the much easier method of basically delaying purchases as long as possible. This allows me to feed my paychecks directly into my savings. I can speed this up by paying for shared things (like bills, groceries, and trips) and have other people pay me back in cash, which I can keep on deposit. A bit stingy of me? Maybe... but it's actually kind of fun to play games with money. I think I get more enjoyment out of the act than the reward, as a $5k credit card is only worth about $200/year in interest.

Of course this is only possible with good credit, no balances, and people that pay you back (for shared expenses). Split a meal with someone that never pays you back, and you just flushed any advantage down the tube. Carry a balance on another card, and the interest there dwarfs anything you would earn with this tactic (always pay down high rate debt first - and credit cards are the highest rates). Bad credit, and you won't qualify for the 0% interest periods.

So an amusing trick (among many) to shuffle money and end up with more than you started with. It won't make you rich anytime soon, but it will pay the taxes on your cell phone bill. ;)

Blogging for the (lack of) Masses

Oops, let a month go by without a post.

Obviously we are settled in to daily routines at the apartment by now. I am excited because I finally bought an office chair that will allow me more than 30 minutes on my computer without back pain. The current situation (wooden kitchen chair) leaves me destroyed every night by the time I fall into bed.

Also bought a replacement motherboard for my laptop on ebay. Hopefully that fixes the no-booting problem (which has recently become 100% permanent). My only dota fix for like a week was this weekend when Ben was gone and I could steal his computer. Sad that I need such fixes, but hey, it's my one recreational activity.

That only leaves UPS and shoes on my list of things to buy, which means another $300 or so. I am debating whether to just get it over with now or put it off another month. I am leaning towards now, just to get it out of the way. Last paycheck went mostly into savings, which was a mental boost, but most of the next three will go towards the Amex card. Surprise car insurance this week didn't help matters at all.

Tonight will be filled with chores, but I hope to catch up on some reading too. I need to actually get ahead on my Economists so I don't feel like I am missing anything. Would also be nice to just devote a few days to finishing up The Singularity is Near (which I have been trying to read for a month).

Slacr

So my new machine is up and running. Quite nicely in fact. I'm especially fond of the modular power supply, as it is built like a tank. My only real worry is that the motherboard sags quite significantly (about an eighth of an inch) under the stock Intel heatsink. It is hard to tell if the sagging is from the weight of the heatsink itself or the pressure I had to apply to install it. Honestly not sure which scenario would be worse. I can't imagine the stock heatsink would be so heavy as to cause the motherboard to sag, but it's not like I pushed that hard on it either. So far everything seems to be running stably, but it just worries me.

The case itself is pretty tight, especially when I had to lace the IDE cable for my DVD drive. For that reason I returned that drive and got a SATA version. The SATA cables are nice and small.

Gentoo installation has so far gone well. All my hardware seems to be supported and I got X correctly configured the first try. The quad core seems to make compiling faster, but I haven't actually tried an objective comparison. Right now it is chugging away on OpenOffice, Firefox, Pidgin, and Conky. When I get home I'll sort out the Java mess and get Eclipse, Ruby, Rails, and Erlang compiled. Then I'll set up Samba and Cups. I know the printer sharing works, but still have to figure out the automatic driver serving. At the moment the client machine has to have the driver preloaded, which isn't a big deal for Ben or Kathy, but it'd be nice if it worked for any visitors too.

I'm also looking forward to trying out AzSMRC and Virtualbox. Hopefully I'll have enough time tonight to mess with that. If not, I guess I have all weekend.

Got new tires last night. Car = smooth as silk now.

Only other real focus at the moment is turning the financial situation around. I have been on a huge spending spree since I got home (computer, tires, apartment, shoes) and don't get my first paycheck until September 7th, which will immediately be passed on to American Express. I look forward to the day when I am putting money back into savings, which should be around October 5th by my latest estimate. Bonus points if harry and I get that side gig, which would move up F-Day quite a bit.

The Skinny on Dry Loop DSL with AT&T

As part of their merger with SBC and Bellsouth, AT&T is required to offer dry loop DSL (what you might call 'naked DSL' or 'toneless DSL') until some date in the future. About a year ago, I had dry loop service, and everything was great. Then I moved out of the country for a while, and just got back. When I called AT&T this time, the representative swore up and down that they no longer offered it, even when I said I was pretty sure it was required by regulators (op! this too!).

I have one friend that had dry loop, and several other friends that were also asking for it getting the same response. AT&T claims it's not offered because there is no demand. Fancy that... no demand for something they don't advertise and actively try to hide.

So finally I found the old number I called a year ago to set up my service. (Randomly stashed text files ftw!) For the midwest (11 states including Texas), that number is 1-800-264-0002. Let me make that clear, since you cannot find this number on the AT&T website.

AT&T Dry Loop DSL: 1-800-264-0002

The representative at this number assured me that they still offer dry loop, and quoted me the following prices (speeds noted as up/down):

• 512kbps/3mbps (with 6 month contract): $49.99/mo


• 256kbps/1.5mbps (with 6 month contract): $44.99/mo


• 512kbps/3mbps (without contract): $54.99/mo


• 256kbps/1.5mbps (without contract): $49.99/mo

While this is generally more than the bundled packages (with phone line), there are no taxes and fees like normal phone service. So if your plan is $49.99 a month, that is what you pay. Currently I nominally 'pay' $34.99/mo for 768kbps/6mbps DSL service, but by the time you add phone line and taxes it comes to about $65/mo. Not to mention I have to pretend to support AT&T's packaged deals, which I detest.

That brings me to the only downside I see. For some reason they could not offer me 6mbps download speeds with dry loop. Now I get to ponder whether that supposed extra speed (which I rarely if ever actually see, as my speed tests seem to top out at 4.5mbps on a good day) is worth the extra $15 a month. If any of you call them up and get 6mbps offered to you, please let me know.

Another tip: In some states telcos are required to offer what is called a measured line. If you have your line mainly for the DSL (and never use the actual voice service), you can ask for a measured line. This is still voice service, but you only get about 20-25 calls a month. The upside is it only costs between $5 and $7 a month. My state (Kansas) doesn't offer measured lines, so I am stuck paying $15.70 for basic service, without a phone even plugged into the wall. If you are like me and asked for the cheapest line possible (because you don't use it), chances are they gave you a flat rate line like mine. You could probably save about $8/mo if you switched to a measured line.