Well, I'm at work and I have a meeting in an hour. I have quite a bit of database work to do, and an hour is only enough to get started where I would be annoyed to have to leave it after sixty minutes. Thus I'll be futzing around with some stuff in the meanwhile and writing this entry.
Current futz task -- CVS. For those not in the know, CVS stands for Concurrent Versioning System. Basically it's a server that one can set up to track changes in files such as text files and source code. I use it to establish a central authoritative source for my source files. The exciting thing about this is that yesterday, I managed to figure out how to make my Java IDE (Integrated Development Environment -- basically a glorified text editor) talk to CVS so that I can work on my code in my environment of choice and automate much of the tasks that I have. It's very sweet. I have set up two CVS servers -- one at work for my work-related code and one at home for my personal projects. I have my IDEs at work and home both set up to talk to the servers. Thus it's an order of magnitude easier to work on work-related things at home and save the changes and vice versa.
Current home futz task -- rebuilding the home network and delegating resources. On Tuesday, I indulged in the cardinal sin -- gadget lust. (I've still got it in me, bjslote.) Basically I've been annoyed that I have a nice TiBook that I've been using as a desktop because I've attached external Firewire drives to hold my respectable MP3 collection. I wanted a situation where I could play my music anywhere in the apartment and I was not constrained to computing at my desk sitting on my uncomfortable chair. SO, I moved the Firewire disk over to my Windows 2000 machine, reformatted the disk (Windows doesn't speak to HFS file systems.) and I've set up my iTunes on the TiBook to use a SMB share to store the music archives. I could have just copied the MP3's from my iPod to the share, but because of a previous power outage, the file system was hosed and I restored from the iPod anyways. The problem with this is that the iPod does not store its files in the nice organized directory structure that iTunes produces when ripping MP3s. So, I'm once again ripping my MP3s. It'll take a week or two, but the end result will be better setup that I can also import into MusicMatch if need be.
So, in order to achieve the portability requirement for this scheme, I also shelled out the bucks to purchase a LinkSys WAP11 802.11b Access Point / Bridge to enabel me to use 802.11 hardware in my apartment. For the TiBook, I purchased an AirPort card from Apple (if you're using 802.11b, Apple makes it real difficult to use other hardware). Thus between BestBuy and Apple, I've spent a bit more than $300 to upgrade my network. Ouch. On the other hand, I also picked up an UPS for my desktop in order to protect the Windows 2000 box from power outages. Since the other computers I'm using are retired laptops, my entire network will be able to survive power outages well.
In other news, I'm out of news for now. I'm sure that I'll be writing more later on when I want to avoid database work.
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