Monday, February 18, 2008

testing my patience

Over the past weekish, my patience has been tested. I like to think I'm a pretty patient guy, but I grow tired.

Problem: bought a new computer and have this habit of hating Microsoft. I'm installing Ubuntu on it, making it a server, then installing some sort of linux on my laptop (that I use everyday).

The CD-burner in my laptop is pretty old and decaying (2001) and the CD-ROM function in the new machine doesn't seem to want any part of it. Blah blah blah, to no avail. Several different brands of CD, several different versions, different types of installations, hell, my girlfriend even had her "Ubuntu guru" friend burn a CD from an ISO that she downloaded. No love for the Chad.

I have a 500gb external usb drive that I've just been reading about how to load from that, but I haven't figured out how to boot from it. But in the midst of that, I stumbled upon a windows/network/yaddahyaddah/ftp/intel/PXE install. That one finally worked. However, it was focused on an old version and as I was in the middle of an upgrade, something happened. It asked me to restart. It wasn't required, but it still asked me. Uhm, yeah.... WTF?!?!?!?!?! So, alright, I can do that. But I'm a bit surprised. Restart... and Ubuntu commits Harry Carry. hmmmmm.... right..... I do a hard reboot and the same thing happens.

I've always loved working on computers, but this is a bit frustrating. One thing that I've noticed, I'm not stressing nearly as much as when I was working on Windoze. I think I've also figured out why: sleep. When I used to do this kind of work, I would do it to all hours of the night/day/night. Yes, I once used a computer for something like 30 hours and change! Now, if I get tired or frustrated/pissed, I just say hey, it'll be there when I come back and I wander off to the couch for a nap. Being rested really seems to help my patience and resilience. It really seems to me that this world is so focused on killing that rest time that it's no wonder that we are all so stressed out, impatient, tired, cranky, inconsiderate, non-confident bags of worthlessness.

I was talking to one of my regulars a little while ago about Europe. She said that they are so proud of the fact that they have coffee for "you Americans." However, there are rarely ever 'to-go' cups. This requires a person to actually sit down and enjoy the cup of java for a little while. "Novel idea!" my regular said. I agree.

Oh, and if anyone can vouch for Ubuntu, Debian, or any other Linux distro, please toss me a line. Thanks! derchad@gmail.com

Friday, February 15, 2008

Lent

My girlfriend mentioned the other day that I'm a little late with my Lent deal. So, I've decided to hash one out before day's end. I'm down to Mondays, dark ale, and recreational boulder problems (climbing easy stuff). The last idea I knocked off was to be above 10,000 feet at least twice a week. Seemed a bit too chilly this time of year.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Arrogance

I was dealing with a peer who does a lot of work with coffee a couple of weeks ago. My thoughts ran into more of a rant. So here you are!

Arrogance -noun The offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.

The girl I was thinking about was arrogant. More, she had arrogant negativity. It is frustrating just being around her, because she thinks that she is THE know-all end-all of coffee. She is really pretty new at her job (less than 6 months). She's the one who always has the answer and will grill you on it later. Everyone desires to stop her face with a couple of knuckles. Yeah, not fun.

The reason that those types of people are hard to handle is that they are not open to a method other than their own. They see one way and anything else is a gross error. To contrast with arrogant positivity, people are immediately repelled to the positive people around.

Arrogant people who are positive are a huge encouragement to many people. They are fun, up-beat, and generally happy people. I like being around them and I can deal with their arrogance, because they are just basically full of shit. The double knockout is when these people can be serious at the right times. I like to think of Matthew McConaughey. He's funny and something of a big-shot. However, nobody takes him too seriously. I think he's a decent actor, not terrible by any means. However, he's not going to land the $100 million I am Legend roles because of it. But he will make a great living at what he does.

As I look back at the definition, I think that it's cool as long as you take out being offensive and make it a big joke. As soon as you become offensive, you drive people away.