Category Archives: Lists

I Live in a Web Browser

Posted on by
2

I don’t know why I keep eying quad-core systems. With the exception of playing music, copying files from my camera, some word processing, and IM, I live in a web browser. Here are some of the big uses:

  • GMail, my mail client. When I’m at my computer, I almost always have GMail up. I have a client for my Treo that lets me check it there. My school e-mail forwards to GMail. My ttwagner.com and n1zyy.com mail forwards to there.
  • Google and Wikipedia. I rely on Wikipedia way too much. But between Google and Wikipedia, I feel like I can do anything.
  • Google Docs is slowly winning me over. I move between my laptop, ‘public’ Office 2007 computers, and an office computer with Office 2003, so I’m hardly sold on any one particular interface. Google Docs is word processing (and spreadsheets) without the crap, although sometimes I do prefer to have it locally. But honestly, my life depends on the Internet, so ‘safety’ of files (in case I lose Internet access) really isn’t even one of the big issues.
  • Google Calendar has proved way more useful than I expected. It integrates nicely with GMail, sending me reminders and offering to let me schedule things that get e-mailed to me. And Goosync gives me an app on the Treo to sync my Treo calendar with my Google calendar. Bliss!
  • All my good photos end up on Flickr, and I buy and sell stuff on eBay often. I get my news through BBC and Google News.
  • I run a private Wiki. This is more useful than I ever imagined. I’m not quite as committed to it as I’d like, but I’m trying to keep all my class notes up there, which has a lot of benefits. During research, it’s a handy link dump. When drafting a constitution for a club here, I used that to allow collaborative editing.
  • I host a few mailing lists. Trying to keep a text file with 90 names and e-mail them and remove bounces and find people is a pain. Mailman is a savior.
  • I host multiple blogs. These are obvious, but there are some more I’m starting.
    • One, that never caught on, takes a pretty literal definition: a web log. I wanted a way for us to keep track of petty things that were going on, and have everything logged somewhere and searchable.
    • I’m also drafting one for the Democrats. A big part of what we do is outreach/publicity, and a blog is ideal for this.
  • Tonight I realized that none of my ‘task management’ systems worked. So I set up Mantis. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well. Setting up Bugzilla is pretty intense, but no so with Mantis. The “problem” is that it was intended for software bug tracking, not keeping track of work I have to do, so I have fields like “Reproducibility” and other holdovers from software. I may do a little tweaking. But my plan is that anything I have to do should end up in there. Everything is in one place, and I can slice the data a million different ways, by priority, by category (one for each class, one for each club, one for each major class project, one for “Life”), etc.

Truly, without Firefox and a browser on my Treo, I don’t think I could get by. And I sometimes wonder if it’s worth paying monthly for a dedicated server. But I get so much benefit from the services I host for myself that it definitely is.

Homes to Consider

Posted on by
1

Today’s real estate market is in a slump. What this means, clearly, is that you should be buying.

If you’re willing to live in the middle of nowhere, here are a few very interesting ideas for homes:

  • $320,000 buys this ~3,000 sq. ft. building, a former railroad station. With just a tiny bit of work, it would be a nice home. Check out the living-room-to-be; mount an LCD TV right over the fireplace and put down carpeting over most of the floor (except for right by the fireplace). There’s a bookcase off to the right, although I’d paint it white. Breakfast nook anyone? Just put down a carpet. This view is pretty inviting, too. (And check out the palm trees outside: it’s Georgia, after all.)
  • If you’re more of an athlete, how about this school in Kansas? $325,000 buys you 24,500 square feet on 5 acres. The gym looks ready to use. Read “17 classrooms” as “17 palatial bedrooms” after you renovate them a bit. (Carpet + less-hideous ceiling + ditch the fluorescent lights.) And tell me that library wouldn’t make a nice home theater.
  • This place in Missouri is ridiculously nice. Tell me the third picture isn’t what you want to see as you walk home. It sets high expectations for what’s inside, but it’s even nicer than you might expect.
  • This old Montana bank is dirt cheap. 6,200 square feet for $140,000. I’d want to totally gut the interior, and the location is probably not desirable, but still… Oh, and put a nice fence up on the roof for safety, and then you have a pretty sweet ‘outdoor’ area. And it has a vault!
  • This place is totally undesirable but ohhh so cheap. It looks like it’s ready to fall down, and the power substation in the front yard destroys whatever value the place may have had. The good news is you may never lose power.
  • Cheap place in Indiana with an associated business.
  • This building is butt-ugly but is situated on a nice dam. I want to live here!
  • Whoa! 40,000 square feet of amazing office space? Might make a nice home.

Granted, you’d be an idiot to buy any of these places without looking carefully into all the costs and zoning laws, and I’m not sure any are in good locations.

Words I Still Can’t Spell

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a list of words I screw up almost every time I try to spell them:

  • Ubiquitous
  • Silhouette
  • Schizophrenia
  • Curiosity

(Ironically, I got every one right on my first try here.) Curiosity is the surprising one, because it’s a simple word. But why the heck isn’t it curiousity? I guess the key is that you drop the “u” sound when going from “curious” to “curiosity,” but it still messes with me. Ubiquitous just has way too many vowels. Silhouette is French, and I always screw up French words. There’s no reason for there to be an h in it, nor a u, really. And the problem with schizophrenia is that it’s prounounced “skit-za-phrenia,” so you expect a t in there, and you don’t expect it to start sch. But it does.

Jobs I’ve Overlooked

Posted on by
Reply

Kyle has a book called Gigs that I’ve been reading. Basically they interview hundreds of people with various jobs about what they do. “We feel that the world hears too much from ‘experts’ of all political stripes, and not enough from the people for and about whom they presume to speak,” one of the editors writes. Reading just a bit of the book so far, I’ve realized a few things:

  • People are people. So many people view people at work as just a human embodiment of a company, or merely as an ‘object’ with which they’re forced to interact. (Sidenote: spending some time in customer service should be mandatory for everyone.) A bus driver talks about the abuse she takes when the bus is late. A flight attendant complains about the time someone threw a hamburger in her face because he didn’t want it. The world would be a much better place if people could see that people were people.
  • I’ve narrowed my horizons far too much. I never considered that I could be:
    • A train engineer. He apparently makes about $90,000 a year and gets to see the country. The hours aren’t great, though, and I’d probably get bored.
    • A member of the paparazzi. I love photography anyway. This guy has a wild job. He doesn’t mention his salary (he works for a magazine), only that one of his photos got him into the “six-figure club,” referring to his revenues from a single photograph. He does claim to have been punched by Alec Baldwin, and mentions that he goes to the bathroom in his car because he has to remain vigilant. Those aren’t the working conditions I look forward to.
    • A porn star, although he makes the job sound less appealing than I’d have imagined.
    • Fisherman. It’s intense work, and risky, but he makes good money.
    • Casino surveillance officer. Watching hundreds of cameras. It actually sounds fun, though I’m not sure I’d be making the $40,000+ that jobs out of college are supposed to pay.
    • Drug dealer. He made good money!

There are so many more I haven’t read. Slaughterhouse human resources director? Chief Executive Officer? (I’ll do it!) Clutter consultant? Crime scene cleaner? Taxidermist? Bar owner? Buffalo rancher? Food stylist? Anchorwoman? (Err, man, in my case.) Television station receptionist? Carnival worker? Squash instructor? Transvestite prostitute? Mother? The possibilities are endless for me! College professor! Bounty hunter! Prisoner! Town manager! Psychiatric rehabilitation therapist!

2008

Posted on by
Reply

I would love to be wrong, but here’s my prediction for 2008: Rudy Giuliani. He’s not who I’m favoring to win (at all), but he’s who I’m currently convinced is going to win. Here’s why:

  • Obama: My favorite. But he’s young in the Senate and has no leadership experience (e.g., as governor). I think he’d do great, but I don’t think enough people think that.
  • Hillary: I’m a Democrat and agree with about 99% of her policies, and yet I’m not too fond of her for no reason at all. I know a lot of people, many who would normally vote Democrat, who would not vote for her. The problem is that I also think that she’s going to get the nomination. Which means it’s going to be down to her and a Republican. More on this in a minute.
  • Edwards: He’d make a great leader, but he’s not getting much attention right now. Unless this changes, I don’t think he stands a chance.
  • Bill Richardson: He’d also be great, but at the current rate, his recognition is so low that I don’t think he stands a chance.
  • Mitt Romney: Not many Massachusetts voters like him, especially since most Massachusetts residents are Democrats. No Democrats would vote for a conservative Republican in 2008. But what Republican is going to vote for the governor of the (arguably) most liberal state in the country, who implemented universal healthcare in the end of his term and was in office when we became the only state to permit gay marriage. He has his followers, but I don’t think he stands much of a chance.
  • Ron Paul: Some of his policies are good, but I think “out there” is the best way I’ve been able to describe him. While he has a very vocal cadre of Internet supporters, I don’t think he stands a chance “IRL.”
  • Rudy Giuliani: From what I’ve heard, a lot of NYC residents hate him. But he’s a moderate. I figure the far-right will go for Romney and lose. The far-left won’t vote for him. But everyone from center-right to center-left, and most undecideds, might be willing to consider him. (I’m not diametrically opposed to him yet, though I think I’d definitely vote blue.)

In addition to the whole, “I could be wrong” thing, this could also change over time. For example, if Edwards starts getting a lot of publicity, he stands a chance. Giuliani could fall in popularity. Obama could push his numbers up, or get the media to talk about something other than the fact that he’s black. Hillary could win over some voters by combating the impression that she’s uncaring and cold-hearted.