n u l l g e l

I just got a weird comment on a very old post. It’s probably comment spam, but Askimet didn’t catch it if it was. The comment did get me to read the post again though. If you didn’t bother to read (or re-read) the post, it was mostly about when Amanda got her Macbook Pro. The post wasn’t all that interesting, but the Mac vs. PC sorta-vs. Linux discussion that followed was. At least to me. Especially, because I’m typing this post in Linux. Amanda loves her Macbook, especially after we added another gig of RAM to it, but instead of joining the Mac cult myself, I’m testing the waters of Linux. More specifically, Ubuntu Linux. I friggin’ love it. For the first time, I’ve installed Linux on my main computer and am still using it after a week. It’s been almost five months, in fact. I’m really holding back now, as I could sing Ubuntu praises for the next hour or two. The fight I have now, is at work. Long story short, I just can’t use it full-time there yet. I’m certainly trying to, though. I’ve managed to port one of my apps to Linux using Mono, but the other app uses a Windows-only mapping component. I’m looking into open-source alternatives to said component, but it might be tricky. And yes. I’ve taken VMware for a spin, but thanks to XP license crud, it’s a bust. There I go again, going into too much detail. I’ll save the rest for comments, if there are any. Ubuntu, yes. Vista, no. KTHXBI.

Ah yes. Many people who know me, will probably be thinking of me today as they search the internets. Why not take some time and learn some LEGO history today? Go on. You know you’re interested. Of course, something about this anniversary isn’t lining up with me. I did most of my speeches in my public speaking class on LEGO, (one was on Atari) and the books that I have say that the creation date of the modern LEGO brick was sometime in 1955. Hmm…

Amanda is 24 today. It seems like only yesterday, when we were celebrating your 21st. Oh, how time flies when you’re having fun.

No. Not the shoes. The robot. The reason I got my current job? That’s okay, I barely remembered him either. But now, he’s back in my thoughts. A few weeks ago, I was asked to give a robotics demo, here at the office, to a few kids participating in a competition a couple of months from now. I was happy to. I figured that I would just show the company’s robot that I wrote the software for. Unfortunately, I was also asked to show my robot. Yeah. The one that’s been sitting, untouched, on my workbench for two and a half years. The one that was severely damaged when we moved into our new house. I figured that I would at least try to put him back together before the demo, but I wasn’t promising anything. Well, the night before the demo, I started piecing Sneakers back together. I was surprised. I had it reassembled and running in a few hours. Luckily, I had drawn up some documentation, because my memory wasn’t helping me much. I had a power supply issue with the desktop computer that I was using to run the control software, but that was it. Anyway… This was a good thing. Sneakers is back online and I’m eager to get to work again. Although, technology has advanced even in the short 4 years since I started, making it difficult to resist starting over or replacing parts with better alternatives. Now if I could only get to moving the rest of the project pages to WordPress and resist driving Sneakers around the office…

Funny stuff… I guess nerds don’t necessarily have to be “computer” nerds. Anyway… Thanks to my digital camo, I’m the head floating in the air on the far right.