Raible Designs

RE: Which new laptop would you buy?

Thanks to all who left comments about my (possible) new laptop purchase. I did some more tests today, and I'm going to have to go with a Windows machine, especially since I hope to replicate the performance I get from my machine at work (Dell Optiplex GX260: 2 GHz, 512 MB RAM, Windows 2000 SP4):

• Opening Photoshop (7.0): 3 seconds
• Starting Eclipse (3.0 M2): 6 seconds
• Running "ant clean package-web" on AppFuse: 18 seconds
• Running "ant rebuild" on Roller: 36 seconds

Yep, that's right, my (work) desktop is twice as fast when opening Eclipse and 4 times faster opening Photoshop (than the Powerbook). So if I get a 3 GHz laptop with 1 GB RAM, it should be even faster than that right?

Right now, I'm looking at the Alienware Area-51m or the Hibersonic Aviator ZX7. At first glance, I'm leaning towards Area-51m, although the Bluetooth USB Adapter (vs. integrated Bluetooth) is disappointing. The Hibersonice has a 17" screen, but that doesn't seem to be that big of deal (after hearing y'all speak up). Also the Hibersonic has a 802.11b NIC, where the Alienware one has a 802.11g.

Forest Lakes

Forest Lake - nice fishing, didn't catch anything.

Jenny Lake

Near Rollins Pass

Weekend with Dad

My pappy is flying in this afternoon, and it's looking to be a great weekend. Julie and Abbie headed to Florida yesterday for a friend's baby shower, so it's a "guys weekend." For Father's Day this year, I got us tickets to the Mile High Nationals (top fuel dragsters) on Sunday. It's a nice WT event, and being from Montana - we'll fit right in! ;-)

I'm picking him up from the airport this afternoon, and we're heading for the hills shortly after. We'll be camping and fishing tonight and tomorrow and I can't friggen wait. Like Dave and his Dad, both my dad and I can sit in front of our laptops for hours on end - so we're leaving them behind and getting out of dodge. Don't expect any updates until Sunday or Monday.

Bear Creek Trail

Awesome trail, saw an Elk.

Our new Internet Service from Comcast

Yesterday, Comcast showed up to install their cable internet service at our new house. Long story short: We bought a new house by DU, but haven't sold ours in Morrison yet. Hopefully it'll sell soon, or we'll be stuck paying two mortgages. I have to give a glowing review to Comcast and how everything was executed in setting up our service. One week ago, I signed up for (and scheduled) an appointment online to have Comcast High-Speed Internet installed. They called me to confirm my appointment two days before, and then gave me a 2 hour window that I had to be at the house. The guy showed up 5 minutes early, and was done 15 minute early. Sweet! We have nothing else in the new place (we haven't moved yet), but we have internet access - yeah baby, yeah.

I'm very impressed - it only took one week to get high-speed internet. Remember the days when it would takes months from the time you ordered DSL until it got installed? I'm pumped too because it's cable, which is the fastest IMO. I have friends in town with DSL and friends with cable; cable is much, much faster (~ 2MB down). You might think I'm biased because I currently work at Comcast. At Comcast, not for Comcast - I'm just a contractor, no benefits for me. The lucky bastards I work with get cable and high-speed internet for free - not to mention a TV in their office/cube (if they want).

A RaibleLand Holiday: My Birthday

I was born on this day 29 years ago, at 4:30 in the morning. I was born at the cabin, with only my dad (who is a Navy man, not a doctor) to assist. I came out with my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck and my whole head was blue. This had to be quite a surprise for my parents, doing the home birth and all. My dad, always good at thinking fast, grabbed his hunting knife from his belt and sliced that puppy off in a split second. And that's why I'm here today.

Ever since I worked at eDeploy.com, where they gave us our birthday's off, I've continued to take the day off. So today, there will be none of this blog checking, e-mail reading nonsense (save for an early morning peak) - but rather a whole bunch of goofing off, playing with my favorite ladies, and possibly some indulgence into a few of my favorite savory Colorado microbrews.

RE: The economics of writing a computer trade book

I found a good tidbit this morning (on the java-writers' mailing list) titled "The economics of writing a computer trade book." Good stuff to read if you're an author or wanting to be an author. Scott estimates the average payout for authors is $20/page for books and $50-$250/page for magazine articles.

Bottom line, write magazine articles if you're doing it for money. If you're doing it for fame, write a book. If you're writing a book, warn your family and friends that you'll be unavailable for the duration of your writing. Don't forget to mention you'll be stressed out, irritable and you'll bitch a lot that they're not paying you nearly enough for your efforts. Then plan a party when the book is released and give yourself (and your family) a pat on the back. I've been waiting to plan this party since March!

Issues I'm having with XP and Red Hat

I got everything setup as needed yesterday, and I'm thoroughly enjoying my seemingly new Windows box. However, I can't get at my data. My data is on my old hard drive and I can't seem to get Windows to recognize it as needed, though it works great as the primary disk. I've posted a question with my issue on experts-exchange.com, so hopefully I'll have it fixed soon enough.

My second issue is very minor. I'm adding a 2nd hard drive to my Red Hat 9 machine, and I'm curious to know where you Linux gurus mount a 2nd hard drive? I currently have it mounted as an NTFS drive at /mnt/windows, thanks to the Linux-NTFS Project. But now I want to format it as a Linux filesystem and share it via Samba.

My third issue is a little wierd. I have Samba setup and running, but I can't login to any of the shared directories. The username/password dialog just keeps prompting me (from my Windows machines). I could probably figure out the problem if I spent more than 10 minutes looking for an answer - but alas, I have not.

Windows is running super fast though, and that makes me happy.

Speeding up my computers

In an effort to speed up my Windows XP machine and stave off the urge to buy a new computer - I'm re-installing Windows XP. I've installed and re-installed Windows quite a bit in my lifetime, but this time I'm doing it different. Rather than risking my data, I bought a new hard drive. Can you believe that the smallest hard drive you can buy these days is 30 GB?! Everything installed easy enough and the machine (1.5 GHz, 1 GB RAM) is much faster, now I'm only going to install the apps I actually use. This means that I'll install them only as I need them. Hopefully this will result in a leaner, meaner machine.

I am strongly considering a new G5, but I need a new (better paying) contract to justify that. And if I do get this $6000 dream machine (23" monitor, 1 GB RAM), it won't be a replacement for my Windows machine - it'll just be a new primary machine. I don't want to have to buy Quicken or Quickbooks for the Mac, it's much easier to just keep the old machine around.

As I write this, I'm on my second attempt at installing XP. The first attempt worked fine, but for some reason - the new hard drive was given a drive letter of F. Maybe it got confused with the new slave drive. So I'm in the midst of a 2nd attempt, this time w/o the slave drive connected. Wish me luck.