Archive for category Observations that no one else cares about
I can’t see in between, but I can see when the sun goes down and the lights go out.
Posted by Tom in Damn Cardinals, Observations that no one else cares about, Remembering the bad times for the good I have now on October 6, 2011
In the last 5 days I have been to more sporting events then I care to shake a stick at…. Sunday Cardinals – Giants game, follow on Tuesday/Wednesday with playoff Baseball with the Diamondbacks -Brewers.
I’m not gonna lie it’s been kinda awesome.
The part that was more awesome then winning two out of three of those games though is this little thought.
At Sunday’s Cardinals game, the crowd was in Cardinal Red (and Black) and while yes it was only the Giants they are a old rival from the days back in the NFC East. And lets face it there are a fair number of New York transplants and people who while seemingly normal love the Giants. After the Cowboys game two years ago and the Raiders game last year I had come to the opinion that Arizona sports fans would not measure up to these two “storied” franchises. What I forgot about the Cowboys and the Raiders is that they have endured allot of losing in their time, not Cardinal levels of futility, but bad stretches and to a lesser extent the Giants have had the same issues in the past and I’m sure they will in the future that is just how these things work. While it’s easy to love a team when they are winning and going to the playoffs it takes a real fan to stick with them when the chips are down. And after 5-11 last and off to a 1-3 start this year the Cards are defiantly in the “chips” are down category. Things are looking up, but not that up, they are looking up though. So what did I see on Sunday that inspired me to write this…. well I saw a “Red Sea” that stayed with their team the whole time, I saw parents and kids in supporting the Cards even if the dad (not Cody) was supporting the Giants just a little bit more. And it made me realize, that while Arizona is a transient state and everyone is from somewhere else on home game Sundays we are all from Arizona at a Cardinals games. Except for Raiders fans… those people are just mean.
Now while football is religion baseball is a lifestyle.
The last time I went to a playoff baseball game it was in 2001 and the Diamondbacks may or may not have won the championship that year. It was a bought championship and honestly no one in tow cared we just wanted the championship. Flash forward ten years and the only guy left on the field from the 2001 team is the third base coach and in the playoff hunt we are once again. I don’t remember alot from the 2001 playoffs but I don’t remember the Diamondbacks ragging on the Yankees as much as the Diamondbacks were ragging on the Brewers the last night. My favorite parts were the the “Will it sink or Float” and the sinking wedge of Cheese in the pool with the announcer coming on over the PA system and going something to the effect of “And the cheese sinks just like the brewers tonight” which I thought was very cool, the home team antagonizing the other team which for me as a Arizona sports fan is kinda of cool. Also the Diamondbacks Legends race where the D’Backs mascot came out and beat up on the “german sausages” to clear a path for the legends was kinda cool.
Outside of the Suns Arizona has never really had this much pride in it’s pro-sports teams. And well honestly the Suns are just pissing away what ever good will they had left, and I’m more then happy to see the Cardinals and the Diamondbacks move in for the local pride factor even if most of the support comes from people who already have a another team.
Hell there is even room for those stick wielding Canadians that are in town and are trying like hell to stay here.
Evolution of a Workspace
Posted by Tom in Not doing things the easy way, Observations that no one else cares about on June 12, 2011
So I was cleaning my office yesterday… and by cleaning I mean I took out three garbage cans of stuff and I still have more to go. In the process of cleaning I ran across some photos from Kingman and entire stack of photos from my time at NAU. One of those photos was of my desk at NAU and since I often use my desk for various picture testing moments I thought it would be neat to examine the evolution of my home workspace since that is where I tend to spend alot of time.
So first off is the NAU desk circa June 1999.
Fun things to notice in this photo… flat bed scanner, Zip drive in the tower, and of course the 19 inch monitor of doom. This evolved pretty quickly, as I remember it the scanner was put on top next to the printer sometime that summer and shortly after the new year I purchased my first laptop. The first laptop was never photographed neither was the desk in the apartment I had my senior year at NAU.
I had pretty much maintained this type of setup for the previous four years… monitors and CPU’s changed but other then that everything else stayed the same.
So next up is the office my house in Kingman, this photo is circa spring 2004.
This photo is intersting… it’s from right before I completely changed my workspace at home. You will of course notice that there is a video game up so you can probally guess what i was primarily doing at this point. What you don’t see are the three computers on the floor (1 windows box and 2 linux boxes running whatever I was running at the time) attached to the KVM. There is a laptop around at this point but it’s off to the left if it’s anywhere.
Shortly after this picture was taken I ended up with a large corner desk that I broke out the linux boxes to one side and the windows box to the middle then put various network devices and what not towards the other end. That worked out pretty well but I never really utilized the space liked I had hoped I would. That would feed into design decisons later. Also the corner desk was ultimatley left with the house when I moved.
Next is the most compact and probally efficent workspace I’ve ever had and this circa late July through October 2005.
Ah Mesa, so incase you haven’t been reading the blog for 10 years or your last name doesn’t start with the letter “K” this was when I was living with Curtis and Kristina. For the first time things really start to come together in terms of workspace and making things work together. And once again you will notice that I have a game up on both screens. And this type of setup would continue to serve me well for for the next couple of years. Other things to notice; no printer the iPaq is up and out of the way and the iPod is down low where I can get to it very easily. What I can’t figure out in this picture is why does the laptop of a PCMCIA wireless card when I know that the laptop had a built in wireless card? I’m sure there’s a good reason…
So flash forward six months I am no long restrained to one desk and have version one of the home office.
Not much change in terms of technology. The laptop would go on the left side of the table and there is another table directly behind me that keeps various other computers and networking gear. Which it turns out is really nice when you need to work on a computer that is not yours.
From this point the work space remains pretty stable… in the summer of 2007 the first MAC makes an appearnce.
This marks the transition to the laptop as the primary computer. Slowly over the course of the next year or so I transitioned off of the desktop and onto the MAC for most all of my day to day computing that wasn’t gaming. The montior on the left was also shared between the MAC and the PC for times when I needed a dual screen it stayed primarily attached to the PC. This also marks the first time that workspace decsions are being made for ergonomic reasons versus gaming reasons. Of course I say that and this is the first picture without a ergonomic keyboard or game on the screen…..
Which brings us to today….
The PC is the same as the last picture, the MAC and iPad are new. Other changes, the MAC now has a dedicated secondary screen that is physically and logically located above the primary screen. The iPad is off to the side for illustration purposes I really don’t have a good place for it yet. Right now the main purpose of the ipad is couch surfing and email.
This setup is really nice when I get my vmware on and decide I want a couple of machines going when I’m working on a project and insist on seeing the desktop of more then one VM.
So that’s the evolution of my workspace in the last 12 years but you know some people just never move past a half built toliet.
Problems that are nice to have….
Posted by Tom in Observations that no one else cares about, Seriously?! on February 7, 2011
So my mind has been stuck in a I.T. kind of world for the last couple of months or so, which is really sad considering what I do for a living (I work in I.T. for those of you coming in off the Google random link boat). I’ve been kicking around the idea of doing so upgrades at home to the old infrastructure, the last time I really overhauled the the desktop/laptop setup was 2007 which resulted in one shiny Santa Rosa MacBookPro and a hastily built Core2Duo desktop. Both computers have served me well for the last couple of years. As always though at about the three years mark I start to bump up to the upper limits of their capabilities… And when I say bump into the upper limits of their capabilities I’m really talking about games. I know shocker…
Ok so lets talk about the gaming situation first. I have a Xbox which may or may not red ring of death on me at any given time (for the sake of argument lets assume that my xbox is stable) In the grand pantheon of my gaming I tend to go with first person type games (Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Half Life, Battlefield, etc) on the PC I will play them on the xbox but if given the choice 9 times out of 10 I will buy them on the PC (the one time being Call of Duty:Modern Warfare2 and I gotta admit I kind of regret that decision). I always play real time strategy games on the PC (Sins of a solar empire) (I have others but I barely play them so they don’t count). So what games to I tend to play on xbox, more of the long form RPG games and platformer type games. Games that could do well on a PC but I choose to play them on my xbox because if I didn’t I would use my for 2 hours a week on Friday nights (outside of football season) for sci-fi and lets be honest all of those shows are on the internet anyway.
OK with the game front my desktop has a solid year left in it (it’s never to early to start thinking about the next major overhaul) so lets focus on the laptop side of the house. I use as Mac as my primary laptop and I have been beyond pleased with it, I consider the Mac my primary computer for all things that involve web publishing (this blog), photos, music etc…. you know all of the stereotypical Mac type things. I do occasionally play games on my Mac but I tend to choose the desktop PC for two reasons. First it’s a desktop so it has a full sized keyboard for my fat sausage like fingers, second at the end of the day it’s a laptop. I will game on a laptop, but lets be honest given the choice almost everyone is going to go with the bigger screen and keyboard every time. I larger issue with my Mac is I’ve taken it as far as I can in terms of memory and storage. Which shouldn’t be a problem, if I weren’t using VMware for some personal projects that clearly come in the category of “because I can”. I could setup vmware on my desktop too, but that’s just not good for a PC primarily used for gaming.
I know I have a rough life.
So really what I’m looking for is the new Mac book pro’s to see what they have for memory and video cards and take it from there. My guess is they won’t have less then 8GB since that’s where the current models are at and start the transition to a laptop centric life (i.e. the current desktop is the last of it’s kind in my life). The eventual plan is to have a non gaming based “server-esque” computer that could be used as a secondary computer if the need arises, but it’s primary function would be to serve as a media server and test system.
Honestly I’m already about 60% of the way there already… what do you think about the name “Starkiller” for the next mac book? (just for some reference, here is the inspiration for the current mac book pro’s name “Aluminum Falcon“)
New Neighbors….
Posted by Tom in Observations that no one else cares about on February 3, 2011
New neighbors moved in last weekend… I noticed a couple of new wireless networks in my neck of the woods… I’m tending to think the new neighbors like “Top Gear”
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