While I wait for 800 GB worth of disks to initialize, I might as well write a bit. This is entry fifty...
Well, after the obnoxious crash of knox in November where we lost one LVM volume due to a hardware failure, we decided to go with something a bit more robust for large file storage. We ordered an IDE-Firewire RAID box and four 200-gigabyte disks. Finally all the pieces have arrived and I'm in the process of testing it all out and see how it works. The setup has been pretty sweet thus far and this is certainly the largest capacity of drives that I've worked with at one time. I would get one for the home if I had that much stuff to store and could justify the cost. (Initialization progress: 12.7%)
Yesterday, I finally signed the salary agreement with Northwestern University to become an official full-time staff. I'm excited because the benefits package is quite generous and I get nice perks like sick days and vacation. One thing that I really like about the benefits is that Northwestern will match one of my dollars into a Fidelity retirement fund with two dollars. Free money! Unfortunately, I can't start to participate until I have a year's worth of employment here (I doubt that my contracting since June counts) and I'm above the age of 24. I guess I'll wait until the next year before claiming that. However, I have decided to aggressively reduce my debts in the meantime and max out my Roth IRA for the year. I should be completely out of credit card debt by the end of March and I'm hoping to completely eliminate my student loan by October. I spent some time in Quicken last night budgeting and scheduling payments so that I keep myself honest. With the exception of variable bills like phone and other utilities, I've scheduled my payments well into March. (Initialization progress: 15.5%)
One idea that I've been playing with is for each credit card that I bring down to zero, I'll give myself a reward. For the first card, I'll give myself a Nintendo GameCube with "Robotech: Battlecry"; for the second credit card, a Rendezevous-enabled Tivo (assuming that they are out by then); for the last credit card, I have no idea. I'm interested in picking up some weights for the apartment so that I can work out at home. I'm starting to enjoy it again now that I'm not struggling so much. However, without some dumbbells and other weights, I'll only be able to develop a limited number of muscles with my pushup and situp regime. I would also need to rearrange my bedroom a bit to make room for the weights and a bench for a proper workout space. (Initialization progress: 18.2%)
One of the tasks for today is to play around with the new Safari browser on a few of the sites I've been working on. Martin Mueller has specifically requested that I check that it work with the Chicago Homer (99% sure that it won't given the complexity of Homer), and I should do a test run on Oyez. I also need to copy over a few more files in order have a complete case audio archive. I have a list on the blackboard that I'll get around to today. I'm still wondering why Apple decided to release another browser though. (Initialization progress: 20.4%)
MacWorld reaction: I was encouraged by Apple continuing to innovate on both the hardware and software front. I wasn't expecting too much from this one -- I'm still working on figuring out how to use their existing stuff -- but I was happy that they released a scaled down version of Final Cut Pro. I have still yet to decide what to do about a video camera rig, though I'm leaning towards getting a Hollywood Dazzle DV converter and just getting an analog camcorder. I figure that it would be a decent learning kit and not break the bank so that I can afford things like bags and tripods. The advantage of the Dazzle is that I can also start to record and archive things like VHS and DVD a bit better than I can now. I'm trying to be prepared when what happened to CD's and MP3's happens to videos and you can rip DVD's and create movie libraries. Since I purchased QT6, I might as well get acquainted with MPEG4 and all that. (Initialization progress: 22.8%)
Final nerd commentary: I've completely switched to Mozilla at this point. I started a few weeks ago on the Mac as I was tired of the bugs in the Microsoft IE rendering engine. I found a nice theme (Orbit 3+1) and have been enjoying it since. The popup-blocking is nice and I really like the tagged browsing. After getting used to it on the Mac, I swapped over on my PC's and haven't looked back. Overall, I'm finally impressed with the Mozilla team's work and can't wait for more. Ironically enough (or not), I'll be heading to Redmond, Washington next week to attend a Microsoft conference on real-time communications. I imagine that it will be heavily centered on Messenger and an accompanying server. I should get in touch with Robin Giese to see what he's been up to with the evil empire. (Initialization progress: 31.0% - Break took to help with Quicktime problem)
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all these plans and you say you're not up to much? Rarrr... I will turn you into Jack's yin-yang table! :P
Well, I'm now sitting on my ying-yang as I wait for the RAID 5 to start rebuilding itself. I ran into an error at around 87%. Now I'm doing little again...
(Initialization progress: 1.9%)
-Chris
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