Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at February 26th, 2005

Though it seems a million years ago now, Kristen and I went to a bed and breakfast on Valentine’s Day weekend. We went “up north.” In this case “up north” meant Bellaire, a small town not far from Traverse City.

The bed and breakfast was named the “Applesauce Inn.” In talking to the owners I’ve learned that the name was largely chosen because it was in the “A’s” making it that much more likely to be found in a list of bed and breakfasts. If so, it worked. I think that’s exactly how Kristen discovered it.

We’d been there before, but that was during the summer and we brought bikes along to entertain ourselves while we were there. Bikes and entertainment only go hand in hand if your definition of entertainment includes sweat, hassle and pain. Mine does. Biking to Alden, a nearby small town seemed to take at least an hour and included a lot of hills, leaving us desparate for water by the time we were done.

This time we had hoped to do cross country skiing. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough snow for that. Instead we drove around the Leelanau peninsula looking for a cheese shop that we’d run across a few years earlier. They made their own cheese there and we’d enjoyed it. Unfortunately we didn’t remember precisely where it was and though we did enjoy driving through the small towns in the process of looking, I was getting a little annoyed with how things were going.

Some actual dialogue from the trip:
Me: So, this cheese shop… Do you remember if it was out in the middle of nowhere?
Kristen: Yes. I think so.
Me: Then it seems that we’re going in the right direction.

We did find it eventually. Much like the cheese shop in the Monty Python sketch, it turned out to be empty of cheese. Unlike the Monty Python sketch, the old gas station it had been in was abandoned, making it empty of shop as well.

By the time we had driven past the 45th parallel (halfway between the equator and the north pole) we’d decided that we’d had enough and began to drive back to the bed and breakfast, resolving to stop at one of the many winerys we’d passed along the way.

On the way back we saw a sign that wasn’t visible going north. The shop had relocated into a combination winery and bed and breakfast. They were having a wine tasting. We stopped, bought cheese, and tasted some wine.

It’s good to step out of normal life and do something like that.

Posted by Jim at February 19th, 2005

When I was living at home, my Mom occaisionally made this cinnamon rolls recipe.

Ingredients:
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup mashed potatoes
1 cup milk
1 package (2 1/4 tsp) dry yeast
2 eggs
5 cups flour (white flour, but a cup or two might be wheat)

Directions:
Melt shortening. Mix with milk, salt and sugar. Let cool. Add eggs and potatoes. Add yeast. Mix in the flour.

Let rise for 1-2 hours. Knead a little. Cut the risen dough into egg sized shapes. Dip into a mixture of melted butter, sugar, and cinnamon.

The mixture:
1-2 cups sugar
1-2 sticks butter (roughly)
? cinnamon (add until you like the color/taste)

After dipping the cinnamon rolls into the mixture, put them into a 9 by 13 inch pan. You can dump any leftover mixture into the pan along with them.

Then let the cinnamon rolls rise till they double in size (this could take hours…).

Then bake at 350 degrees (fahrenheit) for 20-30 minutes.

My mom would make them for Sunday morning’s breakfast–but not on Sunday. She would make them on Saturday and warm them up. I made them for lunch today (in addition to soup). I probably should have made them yesterday, but so it goes. Despite the wait, they still tasted good.

Posted by Jim at February 16th, 2005

Owing to the fact that one of the organizations I work for shares office space in multiple locations, I need to coordinate our IT needs with other organizations.

One of them is entirely Windows based and I ended up explaining our setup to him. The conversation went more or less as follows:

Him: So, I assume you’ve got a Windows 2000 or NT based server and–
Me: Well, not exactly. We’re running Freebsd for a fileserver and then samba so it acts like Windows from a client perspective. And then we’re also running a program that allows the pptp protocol for a vpn though I think we may be switching to openvpn in the future…
Him: What’s Freebsd?
Me: It’s kind of like Linux.

There is a pause on the other end of the line.

Him: Why are you running all that weird stuff?

I didn’t really have a great answer for him. In the end, I think I basically said that I’m more familiar with Freebsd.

That’s kind of true in that I spend more time screwing around for fun on Freebsd, but, I’d bet that I actually spend a lot more time solving problems on the Windows servers. This is partially because I have to deal with more complex needs at the organization that I administrate Windows for than I do at the organization I administer Freebsd for.

It’s also partially that much to my horror, I think that I’ve come to prefer the cultural priorities behind Unix to those behind Windows.

My general observations about doing system administration for both systems goes like this:

Windows is pretty easy to deal with on a day to day basis for someone with experience with the Windows GUI. Everything’s in the same places as it is in XP or 98. Changing passwords, listing/changing group memberships, or changing permissions for individuals/groups is pretty easy stuff overall. By contrast, I find doing many of these tasks a bit more of a hassle in Freebsd (though admittedly not particularly hard).

It’s a little harder in Freebsd because I don’t even have X running on our fileserver and tend to run everything from the command line. Thus, I’ve continually discovered new commands that I can use and the locations of configuration files that I need to edit. Finding these files can be a bit of a bother for a newbie, but as I’ve done this for a while now, I tend to assume the existence of such files and use the man pages to check what they are and where they might be.

Basically, I’ve found it harder to get up to the minimum level of competence needed to administrate Freebsd, but once there I’ve felt more comfortable than I do administrating Windows.

Bearing in mind that the day to day administrative tasks are a bit easier to do, there’s no good reason for this to be true. Especially when you consider that many of the wizards and dialogues are the same between Windows XP and Windows 2003 server. I think though, that in the end it comes down to the interface. Even when I’ve bothered to install X, I tend to assume that all real system administration in unix will be done from the command line.

When I use Windows, nearly 100% of my daily tasks can be taken care of on the gui level. There’s almost no reason to have a command line except…

Except that I find that there are a lot of things on Windows Server that require the command line too. I remember discovering that a server simply stayed on the list of computers in Active Directory no matter what I did. After finding nothing in “help” and finally going online, I discovered that I would have to run a program that was only accessible from the command line.

There was no hint this program even existed from the Active Directory gui.

Similarly, unlike in unix where you can often configure a program from one configuration file, I find that I sometimes end up configuring different aspects of the same program from two or more dialogues that have no obvious connection to each other.

To be fair, Microsoft does sometimes include a hyperlink between the dialogues, but they don’t always do so.

In the end, despite the fact that Windows is easier for the easy stuff, I find it more frustrating at those unpredictable points at which the gui simply doesn’t do what you need it to and you just have to know that.

Thus, at a certain level of complexity Windows and unix are just as hard and counterintuitive. It’s just that unix forces you to use the command line even for the simple stuff. Thus, when you get to the hard stuff, it’s not a shock. With Windows, you only have to use the command line for the more complex stuff (or disasters), leaving you unprepared to use it when you really need it.

That can’t be all of why I use “that weird stuff,” but that’s a chunk of it. I may say more about this when I’ve done a little more thinking on the matter.

Posted by Jim at February 10th, 2005

A while back, I mentioned the idea of inviting friends/family/interested people over to hang around on a Saturday morning. It didn’t work out. Thanks to the blizzard, I ended up spending quality time with my sidewalk and shovel.

Ever an optimist, I’m trying again. Bearing in mind that Kristen has a flute choir practice on the morning of Saturday, Feb. 19, I’ll be trying for a lunch–soup, sandwiches. Simple stuff.

Will it be kid-friendly? Pretty much by definition. If it weren’t, I’d have to find a babysitter. Will grown-ups be able to think and actually have something resembling intelligent conversation? I make no promises, but I hope so.

People can start dropping by around 11:30 through 2:00 pm. With any luck we’ll avoid blizzards this time.

If you’re interested, email me.

Posted by Jim at February 7th, 2005

A quick observation about working from home.

One great thing about working from home is just how seldom you are interrupted from what you are doing by your co-workers. You have control of when you want to be in touch with people. This may help me be more productive.

On the other hand, at work my cats never leap onto my lap and demand to be petted. Also, my co-workers have never attempted to insert their head between my back and the back of my chair, put their hands on the seat, and hold their legs straight up in the air.

The same cannot be said of my (as of yesterday) four year old daughter.

Thus, things that only interrupt me at home may balance out the things that never interrupt me at home.

Posted by Jim at February 5th, 2005

Prior to moving to Grand Rapids, my experience of Ethiopian food was non-existent. Up until five years ago, the same could be said of virtually all Grand Rapids residents (in fact, now that I think of it, that’s probably still true). Nonetheless, relatively speaking there’s been an explosion of Ethiopian cuisine in Grand Rapids.

“Explosion” may be an overstatement in that Grand Rapids has gone from having zero Ethiopian restaurants to having two.

For those of you who have never had Ethiopian food, I’ll mention a couple basic facts about the cuisine. First of all, you eat with your hands. There are no utensils. You rip off pieces of injera (a flatbread similar to a pancake), grab the food with it, and place it in your mouth.

The food ranges from vegetarian (beans, cabbage, squash) to meat (lamb, beef, chicken). More often than not, it turns out to be stew-like and can be quite spicy.

There are only two Ethiopian restaurants at present, but I’ll list all three that have ever existed in Grand Rapids:

Gojo Ethiopian: Located on Monroe mall, Gojo served a mix of meat and vegetarian entrees. Unfortunately, the owner of the building in which Gojo was located wanted to redocorate and told them to find a new place when their lease expired. They decided to close instead.

Little Africa: Located at Diamond and Fulton, Little Africa serves vegetarian food only. This is not because the owner is vegetarian. Loul Negesh (the owner) just isn’t convinced that it would bring in enough business to justify the expense. Little Africa’s the first place I ever ate Ethiopian food. I never missed the meat.

Ibex Ethiopian: Located in the strip mall on Kalamazoo near 44th street, Ibex serves both meat and vegetarian entrees. Kristen and I got take-out from there last night. It’s good. I may say more when I’ve had a chance to experience more of their menu.

One great thing about Ethiopian restaurants in general is that they’re pretty cheap places to eat. Entrees range from 5-10 dollars and you’ll definitely get full on even the cheapest meal.

Posted by Jim at February 2nd, 2005

I’ve been wanting to buy an iPod for a while, but just couldn’t justify it. $250-$300 to listen to music? Ack. Plus, of course, the fact that I’d mostly want to listen while jogging and can’t quite believe that a mobile hard drive would take the necessary punishment over the long term.

Thus when the shuffle came out I was instantly interested. It’s a much more reasonable price. Plus, a flash drive doesn’t have moving parts. That makes me feel more comfortable about running with it.

I went to the Apple store tonight and ordered one. Now all I have to do is wait a month for it to arrive.