A little present to myself
Feb. 2nd, 2005 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
usernamenumberWARNING: Beware of ramble.
The reason I haven't been on lj much (at least not posting my own entries) is because I have been working my ass off on a number of projects here at Red Hat. I was offered the chance to become the Editor (or "poobah", in Red Hat parlance) of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux Essentials class. I like the class, but there are certain elements of it that most of us acknowledge internally could be better and my job was to develop a vision for the course and revise as necessary. It's been months of long, long days, long, long nights and nonexistant weekends but I think/hope that the new version of the course, which I uploaded to the printers yesterday, will be a significant improvement over the older version. The trick now is to wait and see if others agree.
I've been looking forward for some time to taking a deep breath and relaxing at this point. Alas, like an idiot, when my boss asked if I could write some custom courseware for a class we're doing for the DoD(!!!), despite his multiple caveats of "I know your plate is pretty full. Only if you have time.", I said yes because the subject matter looked (and turned out to be) really interesting. Add to this the fact that we're ramping up a new project for Red Hat Academy, which is what I'm supposed to be doing normally this week, and I'm as busy as I was before.
The good thing about all this is that my bosses at Red Hat know what I'm doing and are very good at letting me know the work is appreciated. Not only am I teaching the DoD class, which turns out to be on Maui as many of you read in![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
choose_again's journal, but my Quarterly bonus this time around was enough to afford a little something nice for myself. Elizabeth, to her credit, insisted that I spend it all on myself.
See, the problem here is that I'm a cheapskate. Maybe I listened to too much Jack Benny when I was growing up, I don't know, but I just don't like to spend money, even on myself. I'm so bad about this that I actually found myself kvetching about $8.00 pancakes at the breakfast table during a close friend's bachelor party (no, it wasn't that kind of bachelor party). Anyway, I'd been saying to myself that I wanted to get a hardware mp3 player for some time. I knew I didn't want an ipod because Apple is really taking advantage of the name to charge way more than a comparably equipped competitor. So I started looking at the Zen Nomad series and after several days of research ended up deciding on the Zen Nomad Xtra (40Gb).
We went to Fry's and bought it there instead of getting it cheaper online. An exercise in instant self-gratification, to paraphrase Elizabeth. But here's where things get messy. While we were at Fry's, we started talking about using the device to store data files, not just music. The problem with the Xtra is that you have to use a special utility (though an OSS version exists for Linux) to transfer music and data to the device and all the data has to live in a single directory, no subdirectories, which makes it extremely limited for storing files.
What I really wanted was something that I could just plug into my laptop and have it act like a portable hard drive that could play any mp3 files that happened to be on it as well. As that thought crossed my mind it snagged on the memory of one of iRiver's offerings, whichheiligekuh had once recommended to me. Having so snagged on the memory it began to tug and tug. The reason I hadn't really considered the iRiviers is that, well, they're really frickin expensive. I honestly hadn't considered them a real option despite my bonus being big enough to cover one.
This train of thought culminated in me doing more serious research on the iRiver and realizing that it was, in many ways, exactly what I was looking for: A usb drive, fully Linux compatible, that holds Stuff. Those elements of Stuff which are in mp3, wma or ogg (not supported by the zen) format are playable. Those that are images or even avi movies are viewable (if a bit choppy for the video, so I'm told), on the color screen, which to me just seemed gratuitous. Since mp3s and various Linux ISOs that I only need occasionally take up more space on my laptop than anything else, I could genuinely use a versatile device like that. Unfortunately I reached this decision _after_ coming home with the zen. Fortunately, Fry's return policy should allow us to return it for a refund, but ugh. Why can't things just be simple for once?
My biggest problem with the iRiver was that, really, I'd be embarassed to be seen with it in public. I worked really hard for my bonus and I deserve it, but I hatehatehate people who display evidence of their wealth. Maybe deep down I'm just a big ol' commie, but it really upsets me because, let's face it, every dollar spent on one's self is a dollar that could have been spent on someone who needs it more. It's willfull ignorance of the general shittiness of life that some people live through and an active choosing of one's self over another. Yes, yes, I know you can't fix all the problems and I know that there's nothing wrong, at least within reason, with having nice things, but nonetheless it's always been something that I've felt strongly about. I mean, the two biggest cultural influences in my adolescent/teenage life were christianity and punk. Neither holds people who revel in Things too highly. At least not in principle.
So yeah, all this over a music player. But whatever, the point is that I'm over it (mostly). It's been ordered. It should be here tomorrow. I can't wait. I also went a on a bit of a music spending spree getting some of my favorite old cassettes on CD. Can I just take a moment to say that I lovelovelove legal mp3 downloads? I will so pay for that. What's more, I've was shocked to find some very, very dear-to-me music that I though was so obscure I'd never have it on anything but terminally broken cassettes.
For example, mordam records has all their stuff available to either buy on CD for $8 or just download as DRM-free mp3s for $5. It was there that I found Camels, Spilled Corona and the Sound of Mariachi Bands by J Church, one of the first tapes I ever bought at Gilman. One of the only albums I hold more dear than that one is The Many Moods of the Vindictives by the Vindictives, which is in my opinion one of the best punk albums ever made. Lines like "I'm glad to be, so glad to be, I'm glad to be a loser in your world. Cause it's not my world no more!" are what got me through high school. I also found the website of one of the best silly punk bands ever: Pain (not to be confused with any of the innumerable bad metal bands of the same name) and ordered their excellent opus, "Wonderful Beef".
In short, it was a really, really good day. That Vindictives album, by the way, is from emusic.com, which offers legal downloads from an impressively large collection of indie and indie-ish labels (in fact, I just found Camels Spilled Coronas, etc and a bunch of other J Church albums there!). For $9.99/mo you get 40 tracks per month. For $20/mo you get 96 tracks. I got the vindictives album through their free 50 track trial. The mp3s are non-drm so you can do what you want with them, the only downside being that if you don't use all your tracks for a month they don't roll over to the next. /plug.
Ok, so that's that. It's not the most important stuff that's happened recently, but it was the first time I felt like I had time to post, so there it is. In fact, in the middle of posting this I got an email from my boss that pushed the deadline for this new courseware back significantly, so now all I have to do it the RHA work, which makes it almost like having a normal job again. W00!
--Brad
The reason I haven't been on lj much (at least not posting my own entries) is because I have been working my ass off on a number of projects here at Red Hat. I was offered the chance to become the Editor (or "poobah", in Red Hat parlance) of our Red Hat Enterprise Linux Essentials class. I like the class, but there are certain elements of it that most of us acknowledge internally could be better and my job was to develop a vision for the course and revise as necessary. It's been months of long, long days, long, long nights and nonexistant weekends but I think/hope that the new version of the course, which I uploaded to the printers yesterday, will be a significant improvement over the older version. The trick now is to wait and see if others agree.
I've been looking forward for some time to taking a deep breath and relaxing at this point. Alas, like an idiot, when my boss asked if I could write some custom courseware for a class we're doing for the DoD(!!!), despite his multiple caveats of "I know your plate is pretty full. Only if you have time.", I said yes because the subject matter looked (and turned out to be) really interesting. Add to this the fact that we're ramping up a new project for Red Hat Academy, which is what I'm supposed to be doing normally this week, and I'm as busy as I was before.
The good thing about all this is that my bosses at Red Hat know what I'm doing and are very good at letting me know the work is appreciated. Not only am I teaching the DoD class, which turns out to be on Maui as many of you read in
choose_again's journal, but my Quarterly bonus this time around was enough to afford a little something nice for myself. Elizabeth, to her credit, insisted that I spend it all on myself. See, the problem here is that I'm a cheapskate. Maybe I listened to too much Jack Benny when I was growing up, I don't know, but I just don't like to spend money, even on myself. I'm so bad about this that I actually found myself kvetching about $8.00 pancakes at the breakfast table during a close friend's bachelor party (no, it wasn't that kind of bachelor party). Anyway, I'd been saying to myself that I wanted to get a hardware mp3 player for some time. I knew I didn't want an ipod because Apple is really taking advantage of the name to charge way more than a comparably equipped competitor. So I started looking at the Zen Nomad series and after several days of research ended up deciding on the Zen Nomad Xtra (40Gb).
We went to Fry's and bought it there instead of getting it cheaper online. An exercise in instant self-gratification, to paraphrase Elizabeth. But here's where things get messy. While we were at Fry's, we started talking about using the device to store data files, not just music. The problem with the Xtra is that you have to use a special utility (though an OSS version exists for Linux) to transfer music and data to the device and all the data has to live in a single directory, no subdirectories, which makes it extremely limited for storing files.
What I really wanted was something that I could just plug into my laptop and have it act like a portable hard drive that could play any mp3 files that happened to be on it as well. As that thought crossed my mind it snagged on the memory of one of iRiver's offerings, which
heiligekuh had once recommended to me. Having so snagged on the memory it began to tug and tug. The reason I hadn't really considered the iRiviers is that, well, they're really frickin expensive. I honestly hadn't considered them a real option despite my bonus being big enough to cover one. This train of thought culminated in me doing more serious research on the iRiver and realizing that it was, in many ways, exactly what I was looking for: A usb drive, fully Linux compatible, that holds Stuff. Those elements of Stuff which are in mp3, wma or ogg (not supported by the zen) format are playable. Those that are images or even avi movies are viewable (if a bit choppy for the video, so I'm told), on the color screen, which to me just seemed gratuitous. Since mp3s and various Linux ISOs that I only need occasionally take up more space on my laptop than anything else, I could genuinely use a versatile device like that. Unfortunately I reached this decision _after_ coming home with the zen. Fortunately, Fry's return policy should allow us to return it for a refund, but ugh. Why can't things just be simple for once?
My biggest problem with the iRiver was that, really, I'd be embarassed to be seen with it in public. I worked really hard for my bonus and I deserve it, but I hatehatehate people who display evidence of their wealth. Maybe deep down I'm just a big ol' commie, but it really upsets me because, let's face it, every dollar spent on one's self is a dollar that could have been spent on someone who needs it more. It's willfull ignorance of the general shittiness of life that some people live through and an active choosing of one's self over another. Yes, yes, I know you can't fix all the problems and I know that there's nothing wrong, at least within reason, with having nice things, but nonetheless it's always been something that I've felt strongly about. I mean, the two biggest cultural influences in my adolescent/teenage life were christianity and punk. Neither holds people who revel in Things too highly. At least not in principle.
So yeah, all this over a music player. But whatever, the point is that I'm over it (mostly). It's been ordered. It should be here tomorrow. I can't wait. I also went a on a bit of a music spending spree getting some of my favorite old cassettes on CD. Can I just take a moment to say that I lovelovelove legal mp3 downloads? I will so pay for that. What's more, I've was shocked to find some very, very dear-to-me music that I though was so obscure I'd never have it on anything but terminally broken cassettes.
For example, mordam records has all their stuff available to either buy on CD for $8 or just download as DRM-free mp3s for $5. It was there that I found Camels, Spilled Corona and the Sound of Mariachi Bands by J Church, one of the first tapes I ever bought at Gilman. One of the only albums I hold more dear than that one is The Many Moods of the Vindictives by the Vindictives, which is in my opinion one of the best punk albums ever made. Lines like "I'm glad to be, so glad to be, I'm glad to be a loser in your world. Cause it's not my world no more!" are what got me through high school. I also found the website of one of the best silly punk bands ever: Pain (not to be confused with any of the innumerable bad metal bands of the same name) and ordered their excellent opus, "Wonderful Beef".
In short, it was a really, really good day. That Vindictives album, by the way, is from emusic.com, which offers legal downloads from an impressively large collection of indie and indie-ish labels (in fact, I just found Camels Spilled Coronas, etc and a bunch of other J Church albums there!). For $9.99/mo you get 40 tracks per month. For $20/mo you get 96 tracks. I got the vindictives album through their free 50 track trial. The mp3s are non-drm so you can do what you want with them, the only downside being that if you don't use all your tracks for a month they don't roll over to the next. /plug.
Ok, so that's that. It's not the most important stuff that's happened recently, but it was the first time I felt like I had time to post, so there it is. In fact, in the middle of posting this I got an email from my boss that pushed the deadline for this new courseware back significantly, so now all I have to do it the RHA work, which makes it almost like having a normal job again. W00!
--Brad
