EPKPhoto's Tidbits

Summer is just about over for me. I finished my last day of work and am preparing to head back to RIT. As far as Apple's announcements last week, you may have heard about the new Mac Pros and Xserves. Apple jam-packed these things with enough features to make the geekiest among us drool. I should mention I have altered my plans to get a MacBook Pro…that would be because I ordered a brand new Mac Pro the day they were announced!! I have yet to post this because I am a little frustrated with Apple's shipping plans, but more on that later.

The upgrade to Fedora Core 5 on the router computer went pretty much flawlessly, except for problems I anticipated. The main slowdown came after the actual system upgrade that is applied by booting from the FC5 installation media was finished. More on that in the full post. My main interest now is what Steve Jobs will announce tomorrow at his keynote (10am PST) to kick off Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2006. I hope he has some impressive things waiting. I'm sure I'll comment on that when I know more. Read the rest of this entry »

One thing I mention little of on epkphoto.com is all of the fiddling I do in my spare time with Linux and our home network.  Since I got the chance this past week to work on the network a bit more than usual (being off from work for my wisdom teeth surgery), I thought now would be a good time to introduce more ramblings from this area of my life on my web log.  As much of a security risk as it may be, I'll let out that the Linux nodes of our network run on either the Fedora Core or Ubuntu Linux distributions.  More recently I decided to finally upgrade the computer that acts as a gateway/firewall/router to Fedora Core 5.  I'm finishing up that process with one reboot remaining…so more on that later.

Just so no one worries, my wisdom teeth surgery went well. All four are now gone, and all that is left are dissolvable stitches. I don't know whether it is the pain medicine, but I do have to say I feel much better than I was planning. I'm still working my way to harder foods, but I think my gums will heal quickly.

The time has finally come. Tomorrow I will have all four of my wisdom teeth removed. Fortunately I will be unconscious for the procedure. At least it will give me a sort of second weekend as I recover before going back to work. Not much else to say, so I'll leave it there.

You may remember my story from April about the RIT Juggle-In and how I won a set of juggling clubs. At that time I was taking a juggling class at RIT. This past week, I finally ordered myself four juggling bean bags (ie, vinyl material filled with birdseed…referred to as balls from here on) to diminish my juggling withdrawal. For those interested, I ordered the balls from Renegade at a reasonable price for the quality. You may also notice that I ordered decently large balls that feel more comfortable in my hand than normal smaller sizes. I often find myself casually juggling three balls while working on something else. See the second photo in the full post.

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Happy Independence Day! This past weekend we drove up to Virginia's northern neck to see my aunt, uncle, cousins, and their new pug puppy. When we stopped for gas before the trip, I had to snap a shot of a sign on the pump, "Contains up to 10% ethanol." Originally, I thought this was to feed off of recent somewhat positive media exposure, but it seems more is involved. If you want a good read, follow my link to this PDF from the Virginia Petroleum, Convenience and Grocery Association. By the way, my Treo 700p's camera seems to work quite nicely outside. Read on for more info and another photo. Read the rest of this entry »

Friday after work, my mom and I began a bit of a road trip in a rented SUV to pick up two of my cousins and grandfather in West Virginia.  This was really my first chance to test my new Palm Treo 700p on the road with its unlimited data plan from Sprint.  I have gotten great reception the whole way along major interstates (I-64 and 460 mostly).  This has enabled me to browse the web, check my email, and simply entertain myself without having to worry where I will be able to pick up a wireless connection next with my laptop.  I'm loving my experience with the 700p so far (except for a few issues getting the right plan from Sprint).  By the way, I find it quite surprising (and telling of where our world is heading) that I can see five wireless networks from grandfather's house in this small West Virginian town.  Two of those are not password protected…that is, anyone could connect to them and use the Internet.

It has been quite some time since my last post, and I could no longer stand it :).  I have been home from Rochester for a couple weeks now, and all is well.  This weekend my grandmother, aunt, and cousin are visiting and attending the Norfolk Harborfest festivities.  I have been doing a bunch of computer maintenance around the house since I have been home.  More recently I have been applying some extensive updates to the Linux servers since Thursday night's thunderstorm ended their stretch of uptime.  One had not been rebooted for more than 180 days!  More news to come…

This will be my last update from RIT until the fall! Exams are over, and I am quite happy with my grades. Now that I don't have to worry about school work, and all my stuff is pretty much packed, I can get a good night's rest for the drive home with Dad. It's sure to be a hefty task getting all my possessions home and unpacked, so in the meantime I have some websites of interest. First, regarding my Ethanol rant a few posts ago, check out this article from BusinessWeek that takes a well-rounded look at some of the issues I raised. The second article demonstrates one reason I am very happy being at RIT. It ranks universities based on visits from the campus network to MapWoW.com, a site that uses the Google Maps API to display the map of the extremely popular online game World of Warcraft. RIT landed third on the list, which does not surprise me at all given how wired this place is. 😀