EPKPhoto's Tidbits

Well, it's certainly the season of operating system upgrades for me. My Ubuntu upgrades are all set, Apple's new OS X Leopard was just released today, and Fedora 8 comes out in less than two weeks. My parents were kind enough to crash the Apple store earlier today when Leopard was released at 6pm. They picked up a couple T-shirts and a family pack of Leopard. If all goes well, I should be able to upgrade to the new OS this weekend (on my PowerBook at the very least). Here's to diving right in and being an early adopter!

For those interested, I am now running the latest version of Ubuntu (7.10 aka, Gutsy Gibbon) to power this server. Unfortunately, the upgrade took way more effort than I initially planned due to some unforeseen issues. My upgrade attempts from Ubuntu Feisty continuously failed with unending segmentation faults, probably caused by some lower level corruption that I had inadvertently caused with some earlier manual package installs. Eventually, I succumbed to a clean install of the server. This worked nicely thanks to my thorough backups, and all is well again at epkphoto.com. Thank goodness that upgrade is behind me. Also, a big thanks to the support staff at RimuHosting for performing my clean install very quickly!

At the risk of showing my computer nerd side, I feel I need to mention that the virtual server running epkphoto.com has passed 100 days of uptime (not being restarted). As quite the bleeding edge Linux user, I'm amazed when I see uptime of this amount. If I managed my servers like a sane administrator, I would probably see uptimes in excess of a year, but my desire for testing the latest and greatest usually implies rebooting on occasion. In this case, my uptime streak is going to end in the next week or so when I upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version (7.10, Gutsy Gibbon). I have been waiting for this release for a number of reasons, not least of which include improved virus scanning speed for my email server and the latest ImageMagick and other packages to run the development version of the website I built for NASA Langley this past summer.

The quarter keeps chugging along here at RIT. As usual, things continue to get busier as we get closer to finals week. Earlier today I met with three of RIT's trustees to discuss the Honors Program with a small group of other upper class honors students. We described a wide range of topics from the program's benefits to its shortcomings to see if the trustees should invest their time to push it to the forefront of RIT's agenda. I came away from the meeting with an improved understanding of how the trustees operate and their perceptive personalities. In other areas of the blogosphere, Blog Action Day has been underway. To that end, I'm closing this post by reminding you to read up on my history of ethanol articles. It seems I don't post my thoughts on the environment often enough, so I'll try harder in the future!

After weeks of waiting, you can now see the photos I took during this year's RIT Honors Program Freshman Orientation on my website. In my typical fashion, I have posted a ton of photos (349 to be exact) instead of whittling them down to the best of the best. For those of you who participated in the events, there's a good chance you're in a few of them. Enjoy the galleries, and let me know if you want digital copies of any of the photos.

I'm a bit overdue for a new photo gallery on the site, so I took some photos at the RIT Honors Fall Picnic this past Sunday. Big Dave helped by snatching my camera for a few shots…so try to guess which are his :). Another tidbit for those who care, I recently added text messaging to my cell phone plan, so feel free to flood my number with texts. If you need my cell #, it's listed on my contact page.

Get ready for another one of my ethanol discussions. It seems Brazil is moving forward to have the World Trade Organization investigate the United States' outrageous farm subsidies. The part that made me happy is the special mention of ethanol and corn subsidies. For those of you who are not well versed in my archive of posts about ethanol, let's just say that corn-based ethanol production is certainly not on my list of things our government should be supporting. The research Brazil and Canada have done to further ethanol production from raw material other than corn is quite impressive. We really need to send a message to our government to stop supporting the inefficient, wasteful, environmentally unfriendly process of corn-based ethanol production that is stifling progress in other forms of alternative energy. Ethanol may help reduce our dependency on Middle East oil, but it WILL NOT be a long term solution. I'm all for using ethanol derived from sugar cane, switch grass, and other biomass until battery and/or hydrogen power displaces it, but if we continue investing in corn, our country will regret the investment down the road. Be sure to read the AP's article on the topic.

Classes have been in session here at RIT for a week now. Tim and I moved in without any major issues. I'm actually impressed at how well we fit into our apartment. Honors Freshmen Orientation also went well…and gave me way too many new names to remember. They're a cool bunch, though (any freshmen reading this?). Now its back to the old game of juggling classwork, honors work, ITS work, and crazy-college-random-fun :). Week 1 went smoothly, so I think I'm up for the challenge. Now I just have to get around to posting all those orientation photos that are still unedited.

Summer flew by as usual.  Here's a quick note to let people know I'm heading back to Rochester tomorrow.  I'm still packing and preparing for the day on the road.  I'm excited to see everybody at RIT again, especially since classes don't start for another two weeks.  After I write this, the computer is the next thing to be packed…so if you need to get a hold of me, I advise calling my cell.

Well, I just finished cutting a hole in a computer case with a hack saw. I can't say I'm the most experienced at using such tools, especially since I broke 2 or 3 blades in the process. But now the rear case fan has plenty of open space to move warm air out of the case of my MythTV system. Now you know what former NASA employees do on the weekends ;). Yes, that's right, I have finished my co-op at NASA Langley for the summer. Fortunately, the response to the work I did was so positive that I should be able to continue providing at least an advisory role to some areas of the Center. I had a great time working for NASA and hope that is not the last time our paths cross.