JesseWorley.com

I’m coming up on two months with my new company. The new scenery has been good for me, even if I am struggling to bring up and dust off skills I haven’t used in years. I know I’m not doing the best job, but I’m plugging away. There’s a turn coming up around here somewhere.

I’ve got some new songs coming together. One of them is really close. I bought a little recording setup which will let me mic my guitar and vocals with ease. At some point that’s going to turn into some new releases.

There’s a new business venture underway. It’s turning out pretty well so far.

I’ve started working for a new company, which is refreshing. After fifteen months I needed something with a more realistic possibility of getting brought on full time, and I’ve been wanting to stretch my sysadmin legs more so than my previous contract would allow. The new position is on an engineering team, so I’m coming up to speed on hardware again after a few years off. I’ll need to get my Windows Administration chops up too. It’s been a while.

I talked to an old friend tonight who reminded me that I haven’t updated this site in a while. I really shouldn’t be neglecting it right now. Music is actually coming again. You might even hear something new in the near future…

This friend of mine also happens to be a guitarist, and the possibility of some collaborative work came up during the call. It’s funny, I have songs that are missing something right now. Providence, I think, or at least it would be if such a thing were real.

I think we make our own inspiration. We get set in our ways and don’t branch out and take risks, even when we know that we should. When and if we finally do break free from the rut and take a chance we may also open ourselves to the possibility of change in other areas of life. Writing music is my way of putting my inner-dialog in a universal form for anyone interested to experience. Sometimes a piece of music resonates with a listener as much as it does me. Without challenge that inner-dialog becomes silent, and thus there is no music.

I’m starting to find my voice, too. Some verbs make more sense than others, but lyrics don’t come naturally to me. Don’t be surprised to find a singer/songrwriter style folk tune uploaded over the summer though.

It’s also playoff hockey season. I bit the bullet and upgraded my DishTV package to get the stupid Versus network, but I didn’t want to pay the $10/month upgrade. If there’s one good thing about this current market it’s that you can find a bargain anywhere if you’re willing to look. I asked them to half the price and they agreed.

Things feel pretty good just now.

My wife and I moved into a new house on Thursday. It’s a bit smaller than the one we’ve been in, but it’s nice to be able to start over and reorganize now and again. I spent my entire day doing little projects like setting up surround sound in the living room and mounting a cool TV stand to the wall in my office. The house is coming together, but at the expense of one room. All of my junk is being piled into one location, to be sorted later. What was once a series of four piles of twisted, tangled wires in four distinct locations throughout the house have now merged in the “junk room” to form one super-pile.

Once we get control of the stuff in the house I’ll get busy on the studio reorganization. I’ve got a ton of gear to shed, and I’m in the market for some big flat-screen monitors and a couple of grand worth of software. There’s a new computer case en route right now too. The rack just wasn’t getting used anymore, so it’s gone.

I have microphones and guitars, so I’m going to start with those and build up whatever else I need as it’s needed.

I’ve broken my rack down. The only thing left in it is my computer, and I’ve got my eye on a new case for it. 2008 will be the year of software. I’m going to put my cumbersome hardware on the market, scrape some operating funds out of their departure, and retool. I’m thinking simple. Lots of computer monitors, a surface or two, and maybe a new 2-octave input keyboard. I’m going to keep my mics, because a lot of things from here out are going to have live acoustic guitar in them. And vocals, sometimes. Yes, you can be afraid.

We’ve just bought a house down the street, and our moving date is getting close. There’s a lot of work left to be done, but I’m going to use the move as my opportunity to reimagine my studio configuration. I’ll probably be sending some emails to some people I’ve not spoken with in a long while to solicit opinions.

Basically it comes down to this. You have to decide what’s important to you and work within your boundaries. When I was tracking music came easily because Impulse Tracker was intuitive and did not hinder my ability to focus on the substance of the music. Then I bought a bunch of rack stuff. The sound quality of my music went way up, but the music itself was not necessarily better just because I’d spent a chunk of money on my studio. I spent more time trying to make hardware work with other hardware than I did writing music. Eventually it just got old. After a while I just wasn’t willing to do it anymore. I gave up. The music was good, but the act of writing it wasn’t enjoyable anymore.

I’m going to step back and look at this differently in the New Year. It has literally been years since I’ve seriously seen myself composing again, but I believe that maybe I’ve learned what I needed to learn while on this break. I’ll spend January rebuilding and see what I can come up with in a new environment.

Let’s face it, I just don’t write as much music as I used to. Heck, I really don’t write at all anymore, except for little bits and pieces of songs just now and again. This whole site has been so music-centric for so long that over the last few years I’ve just kind of let it drop. If there isn’t music to write, then there really aren’t words to write either (or so it would appear).

I’ve decided to redesign this site yet again, and more importantly to re-task it once the new design comes online (soon, very soon). There will still be music, and there will still be words, but they will no longer have so much to do with one another. I’ve long wanted a place to write about more than myself, and that will be the new direction. One might call it a more traditional blog, as I will certainly have things to say about the things I see in the world, but I hope it will keep a certain intimate and proprietary feel. My intention is not to join the ranks of the news bloggers out there, but more to add another element to my own story - that of the world around me.

Read more this entry »

I had to go see a doctor this morning. I had chest pains, couldn’t breathe well, and was generally just not feeling up to par. Of course I feared the worst, having not taken the absolute best care of myself to this point, but it turned out to be pretty minor. I wasn’t sure whether they’d want to crack my chest open first or just go straight to the morgue, so I was pleasantly surprised when the pills they gave me not only worked right away, but also helped me get some sleep this afternoon. It’s been hard to sleep for the last little while, what with the not breathing and all.

I’m fine though, you can all go on about your daily lives.

Well, it’s once again time for my annual hosting service rant. This time it’s over Host Excellence, who for some unknown reason screwed up a bunch of permissions on a few of my sites this week. I’ve been on and off the phone with them all day, and have shot a half dozen updates into my ticket in the queue, but the gallery application is still messed up.

So I’m shopping, and will probably end up moving my sites yet again. I just know that someday I’ll find a hosting company who owns up to their mistakes, sends out notifications before they go jacking with the servers, and fixes problems in a reasonable time frame. Host Excellence is absolutely, without question not that company.

Is it wrong to hold other sysadmins of the world to those same standards which I’m held to professionally?

One of my laptops recently died on me, so I replaced it before our trip to Kerrville with an old one I had in the closet. It’s nothing special, an old P3 with 256Mb of RAM, but it runs great and I don’t mind banging it up on the road. I usually stick with Linux on laptops, but this one was loaded with Windows when I pulled it out, so it was Windows I ran while we were there. When we got home, however, it got an upgrade. I didn’t load my usual Gentoo on it, but rather Ubuntu. I’ve heard so many good things, so why not?

It loaded fast, boots fast, runs pretty quick, and looks great. Gnome is sharp and everything is easy to get to. I can control my wifi card through a nice little app, and as long as I want to use Evolution and Firefox I can browse and check email with ease. What if I want to use Thunderbird though? What if I want Thunderbird with the Enigmail extention and support for gpg? How do I add those?

The answer is apt-get. It’s not a good answer, though. Read on.

Being pretty familiar with Linux/Unix, I just plow ahead. I’ve heard people talk about this apt-get thing. Let’s hammer at it a couple of times and make it install stuff. A couple of minutes of whacking at the command did little but turn up vague responses. Apparently there’s no such thing as gpg or thunderbird, says apt-get. And you know what, I’m sick of dealing with sudo. Wouldn’t it be nice to just be root when you should be root?

Look through the man pages. Ask Google. Apt-get doesn’t do searches. You should only run it once, though, and that’s only to get a better manager - aptitude. Ok, I can do that. Aptitude will find the packages through a poorly implemented search function. Good. Install Thunderbird. Cool. Now how do I get rid of Enigmail? And all those games. And the pieces of OO.org I don’t want. And sound daemons. Ask apt-get. It doesn’t know.

Ok, no problem. They’re sure to have forums or a good help system. Search for “replace apt-get with decent package manager” - 1192 responses. Research. Bang away at apt-get some more. Learn to appreciate aptitude. Start to miss emerge. Continue piling crap onto disk.

There has to be a better way, I thought. Then the clever idea hit me, I’ll just install vnc and do this from my main computer instead of this laptop kb/mouse. Apt-get vnc. Not found. Start all over.

It’s been less than 24 hours since I first installed Ubuntu. In that time I learned exactly 2 things.

1. I will not be running Ubuntu any longer. I prefer a little more direct control over my machines, and as a result operate from the command line 99% of the time. None of my servers even have X installed. The workstations which do have very light implementations. I am a Linux user, and Ubuntu just doesn’t feel Linux enough.

2. My wife will be running Ubuntu within one year. There is only one computer in the house that I don’t like to tinker with, and it belongs to her. Because I’m phasing out all of the software which requires money to run, and because I know Ubuntu will offer her an exceptional desktop replacement, I’m going to mix that in. It’s just Linux enough to let me secure it and lock it into the network, but just simple enough to keep her from being annoyed at the loss of Uncle Bill.

We went to Kerrville for a wedding over the weekend. It was beautiful, everyone was very moved. I performed the usher duties, and Bec was the Maid of Honor. Weddings are so cool, especially in the Texas Hill country. There’s nothing like a drive through that part of Texas to smooth one out.

Except I got pulled over on the way there. You remember that town in Texas where those whacked-out nutjobs got roasted by the ATF? Waco, Texas is the place. Home of the Branch Davidians and one of the most famous Luby’s massacres yet. An officer on the opposite side of the road lasered me, and another caught me on my side a few miles down. I got cited for driving 75 in a 65 on a highway crowded several times over by congested traffic in a drizzling storm on a weekday in the mid-afternoon. Weeee. $150.

I just filled out my plea. I’m going to hang my $150 fine on the heads of a jury, I think. Let’s convene all of the officers, a jury of my peers, a judge, and some witnesses in a room and see if we can’t get the whole mess straightened out, shall we. I love this justice system. It’s going to end up costing far, far more than $150 to get the mess worked up (well, not for me), but everyone will play their part until the bitter end. Thousands and thousands of dollars and hundreds of man-hours later, it will all come down to whether or not a single police officer remembers to bring his or her FCC training certification or radar calibration information to the court. That’s assuming they even show up.

Right now in the United States of America more than half of the citizens are criminals. From simple accidental tax evasion due to incomprehensible laws to idiotic and unjust drug legislation, it’s easier than ever to become one of the bad guys. Many of our laws are simply absurd, yet they are enforced by humans who will one day be looked upon as criminals themselves for maintaining such grievous moral violations upon free individuals. For every person imprisoned or detained for defending their own safety or that of another, for each human incarcerated for possession of wild and natural plant matter, and for all who face tyranny for speaking their mind, the cause of humanity is again cut down. Stupidity runs rampant, from police officers to judges, from lawyers to the President of the United States, and yet all we as citizens can do is hold on as the justice system carries us into the abyss of ineptitude and moral decay. In the meantime, I’m going to make them convene a jury and defend themselves against a citizen with a $150 complaint. Absurdity at its best.

I signed myself up for an account over at freeshell.org last week. I now have shell access from anywhere, which to a geek is a good thing. I’ve had such access for some time through the small assortment of Linux servers I keep running at home, but sometimes I find myself restricted by firewalls and other silly things and cannot reach them. Freeshell fixes this. That means it’s good.

I’m finally digging into the design of my HTPC/PVR. It’s been a long time coming, as we’re still using an old ReplayTV with the single tuner. It works for our needs at the moment, considering I don’t watch TV often enough to use it and the XBOX plays pretty much every other media format we own. The problem is that I’d like to streamline a lot of things, including the management and storage of a lot more shows. I also want to store my media on a dedicated PC instead of my main file server and retask the XBOX as a game console instead of a MP3/movie player. On top of all that I want to be able to burn DVDs, surf the Internet, and record HD OTA stuff.

I’ve decided to build around an Intel chip, throw a couple of gigs of RAM at it, and drop two or three Hauppage dual-tuner PCI cards and an HD card into the slots. I’ll start small, with a single drive, but I reckon a couple or three big hard drives will eventually find their way in. I’ve decided to run HDMI out to my HDTV, which introduces the possibility of DRM limitations. For that reason I’ve decided to go with my favorite OS, Linux. That being said, I’d also like to dual-boot it to XP to play PC games on my big TV via a wireless KB/mouse.

It’s ambitious, sure, but it’s needed. As many computers as we have, as many things we ask them to do, and as integrated into our entertainment lifestyle as they are, it just makes sense to drop all the independent hardware and pull everything into one fantastic and easily-upgradeable package.

Besides, once it’s built I can move the XBOX into the office. I need more distractions if I’m never going to get anything done.