Life is a State of Mind

I just finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and it is excellent reading and really grabs the reader emotionally. Highly recommended. The graphic details will transport you to Afghanistan and then the Bay Area, and the events are captivating and disturbing. They challenge the reader to think about their own reactions to life’s challenges.

In other news, we finally migrated the livestock from four small marine aquariums into the new big tank. The fish are freaked out, but we hope they’ll relax once they get used to the new digs.

With all the holiday party action, new jobs, and planning/prepping for Yuletide Ball Championships; I am afraid I have been lax in updating. Here is a batch mode update…

This morning I had an unexpected adventure, just as I was finishing breakfast and feeding the fish, I discovered that my 30 gallon marine aquarium was leaking on the kitchen counter and from there down onto the floor! I wiped the water with a towel, waited a moment and it was definitely an ongoing leak and not just a spill.

So I grabbed an old 29 gallon tank from the basement, transferred the water, fish, shrimp, corals and heaters/pumps/lights to the temporary replacement, and made sure the leaky tank stopped leaking (about an inch of live sand and water are still in the tank waiting for more time)… then I headed into work. At work I think we can shrink from 5 active marine tanks to 3 if we need to, but we must keep the big fish separate from the little fish and the little predator away from our shrimp… so 3 tanks is the minimum. Must work this out with Sutragirl.

I have been hitting a learning spurt in my dancing, picking up several new groupings and refining technique at both studios. I hope to dance with Cassandra, Ann, Anne-Marie, and Sutragirl at the Yuletide Ball Championships. It should be great fun.

I am replacing my dual 500MHz G4 Mac desktop and 500MHz G4 Mac cube server at home (both running 10.3.9) with a 20″ iMac and a Mac Mini (both running 10.5.1). That is taking a while to get everything set up properly (jump from 10.3 to 10.5 is non-trivial, but fun), and I am discovering that I do not have enough firewire cables, extra drives for backups, and time…

New job has been a huge learning experience (exactly what I asked for… though perhaps a bit much of it) and I have been learning all about openSuSE 10.3, HP Blade c7000s, i-LO server management, PXEboot/tftp/dhcp install servers, YaST, and relearning Solaris, BEA WebLogic, and NFS… Plate is full… and after the holiday break it will be time for MySQL replication servers, MediaWiki, Oracle, and Progress. Folks at the new job are awesome, and everyone tries to do everything… Damned Astaro VPN is not letting me in, but that’s because we cannot save a new configuration with my userid in the PPTP allow file… sigh. It’s fun working on a team of five with three Prius owners on the team!

Children of Hurin is helping me stay in touch with Fantasy/SciFi at night… and the writer’s strike has given me a chance to catch up to almost current on the few remaining decent TV shows…

Just added a Library Thing widget to my sidebar. It’s disturbing how easy to use Library Thing and Delicious Library are, and how they integrate together. Enjoy.

I am reading Valis now, and thoroughly enjoyed The Artificial Kid (thanks Ant). I just watched V for Vendetta, awesomely riveting. Much better than I had hoped.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/nolanhome

Personal:
Today is my mother’s birthday, and I was able to call her but unable to talk a lot because I have a very sore throat. I am extraordinarily fortunate to have a mother with whom I am very close. She is someone I can talk to, someone I love, someone I respect enormously. She has spent most of her life helping people struggle through their lives and find happiness and delight in the little mysteries of life. I am looking forward to her next visit (she lives a few states away) later this month.

Bookshelf (politics and history):
I am currently reading “A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present” by Howard Zinn, which is a real eye-opener of a book. U.S. History completely unlike I learned in school. This book is already on my must read list, get a copy now! The world dislikes our government for many, many reasons and this books helps us understand those reasons and perhaps with that understanding we can do something about it.

Computers:
I am writing this on my Apple PowerMac G4 Cube, which is silent, operates on very low power, and plenty fast at it’s original 500MHz. I deplore the trend in consumer desktop computers to race faster and faster without any regard for energy consumption nor ergonomics. Most modern multiple gigahertz computers are far too noisy to be near our ears, yet people spend their money on these odd contraptions and then spend more money on expensive speakers for them so they can play music louder than the noisy machine. Seems silly to me. I want more computers to come out like the nOrhTec GP+ or the Apple G4 Cube. Both are cool, quiet, energy efficient, fast machines. Neither runs the crap operating system from Redmond.