School's out for summer!

Yep, you heard me right... school is out for summer! Carolers in the streets singing the praises of the hottest of months... or something. I guess carolers praise the praises of the praise of the prai... hmm... they carol the carols of the carolers caroling... *sigh*. you get the gist.

I'm going to avoid gross generalizations in this entry about "what a good year we had" and "how much I enjoyed college" because I'm sure every blogger, and their illegitimate transvestite half-brother, in the world has posted to death about these topics. Rejoice. Just understand that we had a good year and that I enjoyed college... damn.

Shortly after school got out, my family and I flew to Maui, capital of good times and cheap Hawaiian-esque trinkets. It was an udder blast... BAD COW! BAD COW!! Just kidding. It was an utter blast! The beaches were crystal clean and the water was super inviting... what a perfect destination. While we were there, we snorkeled, rode in a helicopter, luau-ed, ate lots of pizza, Burger King and loco moco. Maui is such a beautiful island but it doesn't seem like a place were real people live. I mean, theres only one mall and movie theatre in the Kahului area (by the airport, which, by the way, is named OGG)... how can anyone survive? The one saving grace in that gawd forsaken hell hole is Maui Coffee Roasters-- a purveyor (I love that word!) of pilfered products produced in Panama, picked by a pair of pacifistic plantation proprietors in the pure and prestigious practices perfected by Peruvean politicians. Perfect. And the clerk was hot, too!

As you can tell, I had fun. But the summer which started out with so much promise has turned sour. As many fledgling corporate-whores hoped, I longed for a time where I could make money... and lots of it too... at a job... maybe even doing this thing called work. After applying at several hundred firms, companies, businesses, shanty towns, brothels, bordellos, and the like, I have come up dry. There seems to be one consensus to be found here... whether its a shoestring operation or a mega corporation, no one wants to hire me. What a comforting thought. At least I'm not alone...

So, nix the job-thing. My next idea has been to go to summer school at UCI, session II to be specific. I'll be taking Crim J7 from August 4th (or something... damn those drugs I took in the 70s) to about Sept 10th... and if the class doesn't kill me, the commute will! 35 miles one way will eat up not only my gas but put unnecessary wear-and-tear on my engine, and like it needs any more! My aging '91 Honda Accord has over 160,000 miles and this 6 week course will add another 840!

In addition to this school-thing, I've built a file-server for next year's condo! It's official name is magneto (I hope I don't get sued by Marvel) and its the first pc I've built from entirely new parts! The specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.5 GHz)
512 MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Onboard sound and video
(2) 160 GB HDs [7200 RPM, UDMA 133, Fluid Dynamic Bearings, Server Drives]
Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 Stable (Woody)

all for around $500!

This thing really cooks! I can't wait to take her out on the road and open 'er up! Life is good.

-- Except for phoenix. My reliable workstation has hit hard times. While trying to help Aaron with his new system, I tested out his aptly named processor, “poison proc” and it burned out my motherboard. Not like smoke and explosions but stuff was bad. After several calls to ASUS, my mobo's manufacturer, they hooked me up with a RMA (Return Merchandise Authorization #) and I sent my old board out. Then Maui came and went... still nothing. They finally handed the board over to UPS three days ago and, says the tracking "oracle", I'll be receiving the part tomorrow.

-- Just in time for Jon's Macro-con! Jon will be holding a macross burning-in event from Sunday to Tuesday at his apartment. I was hoping that there would be a keynote by Linus Torvalds or Ingo Molnar or someone, followed by lots of freebies and conference gals. Unfortunately, after perusing the conference schedule below, my dreams were bashed.

Friday
--
configure services
inject live data

Sunday
--
create test network

Monday
--
stress test of all services

Tuesday
--
?

Even though there will be no free t-shirts, conference bunnies or kernel developers, it should be funner than sitting at home, on my ass, eating junk food.

Even though I have been nothing but inconsistent about blogging, my plan is to start forcing myself to blog. Maybe I should invent a blog padlock on the fridge... sure would help me lose weight... although getcoded.net might become fat from my posts and my stomach DoS'ed by food. Why didn't I become an inventor?