Another Word for Nerd

I’ve decided to set a few goals for 2006.

I’m going to lose at least 75 lbs. I’m well on my way already, having cut out all “normal” soft drinks (and as many sources of HFCS as possible. In the past month, I figure I’ve lost 5-10 lbs. My clothes are getting baggier and I’ll need to have my wedding ring resized soon.

I’m going to improve my Computer Science education. MIT’s OpenCourseWare is a great thing. I’m currently reading The Little Schemer, will follow it up with The Seasoned Schemer, and I’ll then proceed to go through the courseware for MIT’s 6.001 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. The textbook is online, and I’ve also made a good PDF version of it.

I’m going to reduce the space and power used by my computer equipment, and get stuff that puts off less heat and noise. Once the x86-based Mac minis come out, I’ll be replacing my iMac G5 with an Intel-Mini and a Dell 20“ widescreen LCD. The Dell SC420 (P4 2.53Ghz, 1G RAM, minitower) will probably be replaced by a Pentium-M-based mini-ITX system. As for my Windows-based game machine, I need to get some adjustable fan speed controls (to cut down on the noise), and I’ve already started completely shutting down the machine when I’m not using it. The Mac is used enough that I leave it on 24/7, and the Dell does my automated backups so its on all the time too.

I’m working on ways to improve my memory. As I get older (I’m 31), I don’t feel as ”sharp“ or as ”focused“ as I used to be, and I don’t like that at all. Spending a day with ”brain fog“ renders me pretty much nonproductive.

I’ve been a John Ringo fan since I picked up “A Hymn Before Battle” a couple of years ago, and have voraciously read everything he’s put out since then.

I’d sort of burned out on the Aldenata series, and had been really enjoying his Council Wars titles. I picked up “Ghost” last year when it came out. There were a couple parts of it that I didn’t really care for, but it was an okay book, and worth the cover price.

Today, “The Princess of Wands” arrived. I had ordered it just because it was a Ringo book, and wasn’t even aware that he was starting another universe/storyline. If someone had told me the premise of the book (beyond the jacket blurb), I wouldn’t have bought it - but after reading it in one sitting, I can now say that it’s my *favorite* John Ringo book so far.

Imagine a soccer mom secret agent, expert martial artist, tactical shooter, who also uses a katana and smites evil in the name of God, while being accepting of other religions and not being a Bible-thumper.

It’s a crazy premise - but I love it so far. Can’t wait for the next book!

We drove to the Time Warner office in Katy today. I swapped out the old Toshiba PCX1100U modem for a brand-new ultra-tiny Ambit U10C018. Brought it home, plugged it in, and everything works just fine - no loss of sync or outages for almost 12 hours now.

1. More than 98 percent of convicted felons are bread users.
2. Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests.
3. In the 18th century, when virtually all bread was baked in the home, the average life expectancy was less than 50 years; infant mortality rates were unacceptably high; many women died in childbirth; and diseases such as typhoid, yellow fever, and influenza ravaged whole nations.
4. More than 90 percent of violent crimes are committed within 24 hours of eating bread.
5. Bread is made from a substance called “dough.” It has been proven that as little as one pound of dough can be used to suffocate a mouse. The average American eats more bread than that in one month!
6. Primitive tribal societies that have no bread exhibit a low incidence of cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and osteoporosis.
7. Bread has been proven to be addictive. Subjects deprived of bread and given only water to eat begged for bread after as little as two days.
8. Bread is often a “gateway” food item, leading the user to “harder” items such as butter, jelly, peanut butter, and even cold cuts.
9. Bread has been proven to absorb water. Since the human body is more than 90 percent water, it follows that eating bread could lead to your body being taken over by this absorptive food product, turning you into a soggy, gooey bread-pudding person.
10. Newborn babies can choke on bread.
11. Bread is baked at temperatures as high as 400 degrees Fahrenheit! That kind of heat can kill an adult in less than one minute.

For the past year, I’d had SBC’s standard 3 megabit / 512 kilobit DSL service here in Houston. However, I don’t want to play the “commit to another one year contract to get the same price” games that would be coming up on renewal at the end of January, so I called Time Warner a few days ago and had RoadRunner cablemodem service installed today.

I opted for the 8 megabit / 512 kilobit “Premium” service. It’s $45/month for the first six months, and $75/month after that (fortunately, work reimburses costs for my home Internet connection since I need it for VPN to fix things when I’m on-call). The installer showed up around 5pm, and in contrast to the first guy was competent, polite, friendly, and did really good work resulting in a nice clean install.

So far in doing some download tests, I peak at around 700-750K/sec down. That’s over twice the download speed I had previously, and latency to my colocated server is only around 50ms.

So far, I’m happy. We’ll see how things go and how stable the connection is in the long run.

Update: I spoke too soon. Five minutes after I posted this, the cablemodem lost sync for almost an hour. Hopefully it was just an equipment problem on TW’s end, or maintenance.

Update 2: I can now make the connection drop and lose sync at will by downloading faster than 512kbps/sec. After some research it looks like this older Toshiba PCX110U cablemodem (only DOCSIS 1.0) is known for having problems with high-bandwidth connections. Hopefully a TW office is open on Monday and I can go swap it out for something newer.

Update 3: Finally spoke to someone at TW support, he said they shouldn’t have given me the Toshiba modem and that I just need to go tomorrow and swap it out for an Ambit and things should be fine.