Know it now…

I’ve been having an hankering to post on workspaces and perceived ergonomics of the home side of a hybrid workspace. The very short version of that is get a standing desk and be willing to put in the money to build and maintain your space. You are spending 32 hours+ a week there… might as well reflect you.

Ok with that out of the way, on to the entry for the evening and most likely the next good long while. I’ve been in a reflective mood for the last couple of months. I think part of it is I often spend the first part of years in a reflective mood. Friends are resetting from the holidays with their family units, work life returns to some level of normal, and life just in general is busy. This is the time of year I often take stock of what has passed, what I think is coming, and generally do any minor resets. 2024 so far has been very much in this paradigm. The most unexpected thing to occur is re-connecting with a friend from the 1900’s that I count amongst my oldest and most cherished.

On the other side of the coin I look at where I am in relation to my peer group in just about everything. On the marriage and kids part… that’s a full on non-starter as I’m very much not in that camp. Which often leaves other aspects of life to balance against. And for the most part I’m right where I should be for the most part. Maybe a bit ahead in some aspects, but by all counts not really behind. That’s the thing I always think that I’m behind and missing something in someway that will be detrimental, and what I find is that I often have paid close attention to the fundamentals that I’m generally in pretty good shape. The trick is telling my inner monologue to chill we are ok… my inner monolouge is still convinced that we will end up on the street next week. I don’t know where this concern comes from, but that is particular brand of “crazy”.

Which is a very long way of saying, for all of my crazy I think it’s turned out pretty good ok.

Amusing only to me…

But you clicked the RSS link because you saw a new post didn’t you?

 

So part of the joy of a MAC is you can replace various system icons with icons of your own or others…. Lets just say I found a found a Futurama icon pack and I couldn’t contain myself when I found “Al Gore’s head”

Hypnotoad and Leonard Nimoy are just the gravy/icing on the proverbial cake.

Problems that are nice to have….

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“)

Covers… sometimes they are worthy

I’m always keeping a eye out for TOOL covers… mainly because I really like the music (if you’ve ridden in my truck anytime in the last 3 years you know this already) and also it seems like they are rarely covered well.

I’ve found two covers that I think do the orginal song justice…. I think…

Staind \”Sober\”

And a acoustic version gotta give it a minute Aaron Lewis \”Sober\” Acoustic

and it would appear that I cannot embed you tube video… now that sucks.