Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

I trust that everyone had a fun New Year’s Eve and now awaken ready for a new year.
We had a little get together and celebrated the New Year with the kids at 9PM – Midnight on the East Coast. We had shot off some fireworks earlier in the night and watched the Dick Clark Dropping of the Ball countdown at 9PM. The kids were excited and happy with all the fun and games.
We cleaned and cleaned until about 11:45PM before trying to get ready for Midnight. Soon after, we hopped into bed, tired from the long day.
Currently, I’m typing this from linux. Yesterday I got the Romtec Trios II installed. I booted up to the linux drive that I hadn’t booted in months. It did not like my new video card at all. After messing around a bit with Mandrake 8.2, I finally decided I needed to install Mandrake 9.0 and wait for the release of Ximian Desktop for 9.0. Currently, Ximian only supports 8.2.
Right now I’m trying to get SMB browsing up on the box so I can grab files from Michele’s computer. I miss Red Carpet, it makes things so much easier with dependencies.

Yet Another Photo Post…
Yes, I know it’s something o’clcok in the morning. I just got home from playing poker. The nicotine of two cigars and the mental adrenaline of driving 40 miles home have got me a bit wired. I’d just stare at the ceiling if I got into bed now.
I played poker at Brad’s Place. I had a good time. It was fun to get away from the usual things, meet some new people and drink beers.
We do play for money, but the buy-in is $20 so it’s not that much to win or lose.
Here is a picture of the biggest pot of the night. It was the last hand and people were going for broke. The game was 7 card – Pass the Trash – Hi/Lo.

We played at nice tables with real chips. Brad even hung nice lamps over the tables.

This is the final pot. The greens were $2, blues $1, reds 25¢, whites 10¢. The final pot was over $70 and split between Brad & Dave. Nice.

Here’s my cashflow during the evening.
While I like to play poker, I’m not a good player. I tend to stay in much longer than I should and it drains my chips. I won several good hands, but lost too many others. I walked away down $20 but it was a good time.
I hope I get a chance to play again soon.
Time for bed now…

Zoe finished the single player game of Super Smash Brothers today.

Zoe & Mira in front of the ‘Congrats’ screen

I’ve got 22 minutes to write this up before leaving to pick up Michele at the airport.
Here are a few photos from Christmas Eve. We had a small party for our friends with children to help pass the time until bed for the children.

I just read an interesting article about the future of the Apple Mac OS.
The Mac OS on a x86 platform would surely put some competition into the computer industry.
Time for me to begin cleaning the house. Michele’s plane lands at 5ish in 8 short hours. Last night I was working on some text and pictures and I accidently hit the reset button on the case. Ouch. You’ll have to wait for later to see it all.

It’s about 6:15 and I’m sitting on the couch with the laptop. Zoe is playing on the new Gamecube and Mira is watching, eating cookies. We had a busy day with lunch at Philipe’s downtown and the afternoon at the Natural History Museum. Mom, Dad, and Matt met us for lunch and were with us for the rest of the day. The girls have been here recently, but we saw a few new exhibits at the museum. There were special exhibits on Dogs and Baseball. We also checked out the regular animals and history of California halls.
The girls had a great time, but all the walking took it out of them and they both fell asleep in the car as I drove home.
I haven’t updated in a while. The party on Christmas Eve, Christmas, and Michele’s trip have made my free time a scarce thing. Michele went on a short trip to Cincinnati for her 20th high school reunion and she left on Dec. 26th at 6AM. I’ve been with the girls since.
I did get away for a bit while the girls were with my parents and Matt, Martin, and I went to go see LotR: The Two Towers at the Cineramadome. We even enjoyed Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles for dinner afterwards. I made my first visit to Amoeba Records. Pretty cool place. I picked up a Flaming Lips CD and a Fatboy Slim CD.
Gotta go, Zoe says it’s my turn on the Gamecube. More later.

The presents are open, I’m drinking coffee, Michele is wearing her new watch, and the kids are eating chocolate and playing with their toys.
Merry Christmas to all. Even if you are not religious, please enjoy the spirit of love & giving.
I’ve got to scoot now, I’ve got to review the Fry’s ad for tomorrow’s big sale.

In two hours I need to get the turkey for tonight’s dinner in the oven. Michele is in here now trying to keep me out. Doesn’t she understand I need to get my cooking groove on?
I’m attempting to cook the turkey & ham in the same oven. 27 pounds of meat to be ready by 4 o’clock….
Hurry up!

Today I announce a new word, Rantosphere. The word ‘blogosphere’ is tired and old. Rantosphere will take the reins of the internet meme buzzword train for a while.
It must be a new word since Google has zero hits for it and thinks I mean rotosphere.
The rantosphere is the collective group of web sites and weblogs that mainly focus on ranting about various issues.
Bow down before my intellectual prowess.
Since am the inventor of this word, I can choose the licensing of my word.
I hereby declare that this work, Rantosphere, is licensed under the Creative Commons ShareAlike License.

I was reading about Lessig’s Challenge on geekandproud. While I like the idea of increasing support to groups that fight for the civil liberties, I’m not sure this one is clearly thought out.
These kind of campaigns tend to have some sort of goal or end. Even the kings of money raising, public radio, don’t raise money around the clock.
I don’t see a end or limit to this challenge. Are people really choosing to double the effective cost of of all audio-visual media, telecommunications, and internet access? Are they willing to do this forever or is there an end in sight? The repeal of the DCMA? The repeal of the Sonny Bono copyright extension act? The collapse of the RIAA/MPAA?
Let’s look at the size of a monthly commitment to Lessig’s Challenge in my case:
$80 – internet access
$50 – home phone
$80 – mobile phones
$20 – Netflix
$30 – (2) CDs
$20 – (1) DVD
$30 – Set of movie tickets
$35 – DirecTV
There’s probably more, but let’s add this up. It totals $345. That’s a lot of money I just don’t don’t see people being able to follow through with this kind of spending forever. It sure would nice for the EFF, but I think it is unrealistic.
What’s the right level of giving? I dunno. I should probably think on it a bit more. I’m going to go watch the Lessig presentation before commenting more.