Windows, it bores me.

I used to be quite the hardcore geek, forever digging around inside systems. Overcocking. Watercooling. RAID this or that. Been there, done that and worn the t-shirt until it fell apart. But lately I’ve gotten out of the hardware geek mode. I use the computer to do email and surf the web. Sometimes I use an app to design rockets and manage my iPod, but I lost the passion for computers. So what should I do? Buy an appliance system like a Mac?

Not likely!

Last night I took an Ubuntu 11.04 disk to my computer with the intention of replacing Windows as my daily OS to bring some interest back into my computing life. So far its… interesting. The only anchors to Windows are my iPod and Rocksim an I hope to cover them with virtualisation. Just about everything else I use is open source.

So here I am, 24 hours later trying to get my ancient video card to work properly. This may be a bigger challenge than i realised…

Stuff

Standing on the shoulders of geek giants

I have spent the last week with my new time sink – a Nook Color. I had seen the excelent work done by the crews at Nookdevs and XDA Developers in rooting and developing for the Nook Color, and decided i was smart enough to follow instructions. I had been considering the purchase of a Galaxy Tab, but was having a hard time justifying the cost to myself but the NC was half the price. After making sure the NC was working properly I applied the “Autonooter” patch for my Nook. In less than ten minutes I had a rooted Nook and i was free to customize away. I installed a new launcher and Angry Birds and some other apps and I was off and running. The NC doesn’t have 3G, GPS or a camera, but for 50% of the outlay I got a device that has 95% of the functionality of a Galaxy Tab. People who have seen this have been impressed about the NCs capabilities, but i feel like I’ve been standing on the shoulders of geek giants here. All I had to do was follow instructions to unlock the full capabilities of my e-reader. And I’m writing this post on the WordPress app from the Android app store.

Shade tree mechanic, without the shade tree

I seem to have spent more time than usual working on my car lately. In cold weaather the power steering pump gets noisy but still works fine and had started to think about replacing it. But there were other ominous noised coming from under the hood. The first turned out the alternator that had a bad bearing. Replacing this was easy, but then it needed a new serpentine belt which necessitated taking the engine mount apart. But the noise was still there. I thought it may be the power steering pump, but after some diagnosis (a rolled up piece of paper made a crude stethoscope that I used to locate the noise) I realized it was the belt tensioner pulley. Normally the pulley turns on a bearing, but it had siezed and was turning on the bolt. Fortunately the bolt wasn’t damaged so a new pulley got things working properly again and the car runs quietly again. Then today the heater blower quit working, but that turned out to be a blown fuse instead of a component failure.

Life, it is busy

I just realised it’s been three months since I wrote anything. Time flies when you’re busy with a job, house and farm to keep up. Not enough hours in the day, etc.

It’s almost like it was timed, just “so”

Maybe I’m getting jaded with technology, but I find it just too coincidental that both the household cellphones are having battery issues about 18 months into a two year contract, just before the time when heavily discounted upgrades become available… Hmmm…

Geek Wars – The Hardware Strikes Back

…Or how to dig yourself into a technological hole without really trying.

I recently had two personal technology projects come to the top of my to-do list. The first was a storage upgrade in my computer, the second a storage upgrade and configuration change on my FreeNAS server. Neither one should be particularly difficult, right?