Another Word for Nerd

We closed on the “new” (to us at least, it was built in ‘57) house at 8:30am this morning. After the closing, we emptied Amy’s Explorer (which we’d filled with stuff from IKEA last night) into the garage, and then took both trucks back here to Austin.

The movers get here at 8am tomorrow, and by Friday afternoon, we should be established (at least with satellite TV and telephone/DSL service) in the new place.

More details and photos as things happen.

We got the official bid for the rest of the home renovation in today. It’s only $100 over our budget, and we can deal with that easily. Last week the guys caulked and fixed up the outside of the house and the roof, and this week they’re painting. Next week (after we move out) they start on the inside…

We just spent two hours doing final cleanout of our garage in preparation for remodeling before we sell the house.

It took two hours, but we threw away three full-size desk/tables, numerous cartloads of junk and old DEC documentation, a couple old systems, an old NetApp filer appliance, the old kitchen cabinets, etc.

The only thing remaining is to rip up the carpet and pad; the old owners had made the garage into a sort of den with wood paneling and carpet. Once the carpet is up, we’ll clean and mop the floor, then use the wet mop on the walls to get rid of the dust and spiderwebs, and everything will be done.

We had to cut down the four-year-old pepper plant that had grown in front of our garage. We had a moment of silence for Ye Olde Peppere Plante.

Well, I’ve had the iBook G4 for five months now. I don’t think I could have picked a better laptop. I’ve looked at the 12″ Powerbook G4s, but the only real difference is slightly faster memory and a metal case (versus polycarbonate). I’ve used this every day (taking it back and forth to work) for the past month and a half, and have yet to have a single problem.

Instead of “upgrading” to a Powerbook in a couple of months, I’ll pick up a Mac Mini instead, for the pure “ooh neat its tiny” factor, and replace one of my mini-ITX machines (probably the backup server) with it.

is that I can finally get Mr. Pibb again! I’ve drank nothing but Pibb and water for the past two weeks.

The kitchen-table chairs at the Homewood Suites are bad on the back after more than 20 minutes, so tonight (with work’s approval) I went to Office Depot and bought a new chair to use here for the next week and a half since I do a lot of work from here after hours.

Not bad at all for fifty bucks, and it took five minutes to assemble.

The front page of UnixWorld magazine, April 1993.

“Does Steve Jobs Have A Future In Software?”

I’ll have the full article up later today.

Here’s my recently-built PC gaming machine (the Macs take care of all the real work), in a nice case, power supply, etc.

Click for the full-sized picture.

The XM radio performed flawlessly all the way from Austin to Houston with no dropouts, despite the fact that I have the antenna mounted inside the truck (at the very far front of the dash, under the windshield) and I was running off a satellite signal the entire way. It gets a good signal (via a terrestrial repeater) in my office as well, and sounds great hooked to a pair of Polk Audio speakers from an old SGI system.

Apple had a bunch of amazing (and expected) announcements today. $499 headless Mac, $99 flash-based iPod. They’ll sell millions - people have been waiting years for a Mac where they could use their existing keyboard, mouse, and monitor. I’m personally looking forward to iLife ‘05 and iPhoto 5.

Due to the fact that Houston radio (as far as I can tell so far) sucks, I picked up a Delphi XM Roady2 satellite radio receiver along with a home connection kit, and prepaid for three months of XM Satellite Radio service.

Works great here in Austin at my desk, and I’ve got it working in the truck as well. I’m looking forward to using it during the drives between Austin and Houston in the next three weeks.

Being able to listen to CNN and Headline News on the radio is nifty.