George's Personal Site

Yesterday I officially started work on my software architecture book. I’ve been collecting notes for about a year now (and it’s embarrassing to see those dates on files and realize I haven’t really started yet). Ken claims he’s going to pester me for status updates, and Nicholas promises to proofread it. My goal is to have a complete draft by the end of the year. We’ll see how it goes.

My stuff has been in the house about 10 days but I’m still not quite unpacked yet. The Pittsburgh house had lots of built-in storage and mantles, but the new house does not. Which means there’s plenty of books and knick-knacks without a home.

Despite that, some of you may be wondering what it looks like, so here are >>pictures<< .

If you ride up to Chautauqua, you can continue on the road up Flagstaff Mountain. To the very top it’s about 2500 feet, but I didn’t get quite that far today. I did get to the Lost Gulch Overlook, which has quite a nice view and is about 2/3rds the way up.

Good things about this ride:

I shipped a server out to Colorado in advance of my trip. FedEx dropped it really hard. So hard that the hard drives rattled around on the inside of the case. A part broke off of one of the circuit boards, so I had a local person solder it back on this morning. Success! Though it makes some chirping noises like a cricket, I was able to copy off the data I needed. (It was backed up on my parents’ server too, but it would have taken days to download).

Kevin is going to send the other server along from Pittsburgh any day now. Let’s hope it comes through safely.

For those that don’t already know, Boulder is about a mile up from sea level. That, plus the fact that I’ve been slacking on proper exercise (loading and unloading trucks apparently does not count) means that running and biking have been a bit more difficult than I’d hoped.

Let me give you a quick update on what has happened since I saw any of you last in Pittsburgh. The morning of my departure, I hauled a whole carload cardboard over to recycling and another carload over to Goodwill. Kevin thought he was coming over to pick up the housekey but ended up helping me with the last bit of hauling (and sweating). My thanks go out to him and to all of the gang that packed the truck with me the night before.

On Friday, we had a “Hip Hip Huzzah” party to celebrate many people graduating and my departing Pittsburgh. There are pictures of the party and Dr. Owen’s hooding ceremony

We’re wrapping up this chapter. Owen departs Tuesday and I’ll be gone the following Wednesday, bound for Boulder (again).

Kevin, Maja, and I ate out at Royal Caribbean last night. The red beans and rice were so tasty that I did some internet “research” today and concocted a new beans and rice recipe for lunch today. I think it’s a keeper. Enjoy!

Jamaican beans and rice recipe

Originally from this Spanish blog

Kubuntu lets you right-click on a file and gives you the option to “email file”, but it will try to send it with the KDE email program, kmail. I use Thunderbird. Let’s fix that action:

Edit the file:

/usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde-profile/default/share/apps/konqueror/servicemenus/email.desktop

to read:

[Desktop Entry]

Actions=Email

Encoding=UTF-8

ServiceTypes=allfiles


	
[Desktop Action Email]

Name=Email File