Hardrock Sport Disc

This spring I have dealt with a "mid-life" crisis. I'm only 30, so I feel obligated to put the words mid-life into quotation marks hen referring to my current "crisis". When I was 18, I went rock climbing for the first time in my life. I went with the Outdoor Recreation Group at Georgia Tech. We went top-roping at Rock Town, Georgia. Over the next 12 years, I would spend most of my free time climbing or traveling to climb.

Let me be blunt. Climbing is one of the best things that ever happened to me.

When I moved to New York a few years ago, I started ice climbing as well. I also did a little skiing (XC & downhill) but mostly I climbed. I've led 5.10 trad in the Gunks and 'Daks and I've led W4 in the winter.

When I graduated from the SUNY MSW program, I started working with a consulting firm based in Troy. This job requires an obscene amount of travel. As a result, it is often difficult for me to get into the rock climbing gym to train. When I'm on the road, I am often in random small rural towns that don't have much in the way of rock climbing gyms. Equally difficult is the amount of time climbing takes. A day of climbing is . . . an entire day. (or most of it.) When I get in at 11:30 on Frida night from XXXXX, XX it is really hard to feel motivated to get up at 6:00 the following morning to go rock climbing all day.

I need a break from climbing. My climbing partners all feel like I've abandoned them, (Sorry guys.) but that's what I need to do for right now. I am going to take the spring and summer off from climbing. In the fall, I will re-evaluate my decisions.

In the meantime, I need something hair-raising to do. When I was in undergrad, I owned a tricked out little hard-rock mountain bike. That bike and I went everywhere together. My old ride was a nice little 17 inch red chomolly frame, no shocks. It's been a long time since Specialized sold a bike like that. I wanted to buy a bike with an aluminum frame, good components, and no front shocks, but I settled on an aluminium frame, OK components and a front shock. Oh well.

If this bike is 1/2 as dependable as my old ride, it will serve me well. I can't wait to get it.

A little more Jaunty

I've been playing around with the latest version of Jaunty in Gnome rather than KDE. I like them both, although Gnome does feel a little more polished and professional. It should feel mature since it is based on the Gnome 2.x series, which is several years old and is currently at release 26. The KDE 4.x series is only at release number 2, but is maturing nicely.

I am glad to see more cooperation between the two projects. While there will always be differences (Linux = Choice), it is important for the two major desktops to fit together like pieces of a puzzle. For example, both are using dbus for IPC. FreeDesktop.org has done a good job encouraging and facilitating the development of common frameworks and sub-systems between the two desktops.

Linux @ Work

Back in August of 2008 (has it really been that long) I made an executive decision. I quietly took an old laptop at work and installed Ubuntu on it. Since then, I have used this old laptopn (Intel Centrino, 1GB RAM) as my primary system. It's not the fastest computer in the world and the "ancient" ATI card has caused me considerable grief, but I have succeeded.

Earlier in 2008, I tried to convert to Ubuntu at work and failed. I reinstalled Windows and took a few months to learn what I could to address the shortcomings of Linux and my understanding of it.

In the intervening months, I became the Network Administrator in the office. Among other duties, I was asked to maintain the office's supply of computers, including several old laptops. In August, I installed Ubuntu on one of these laptops. It's an old reliable Dell and with a quick memory upgrade, it was once again ready to be a road warrior.

Although I have successfully used Linux for my primary system, I have only been able to do so because I have a second system with Windows on it. I have used this "secondary" system for working on complex Word files and Access databases. I also installed SQL Server on it for projects that would have been too much effort to do in Access. Although I don't like their products, I do have to be able to work with them.

This set up worked acceptably well in the office, but was a real PITA when I was on the road. Recently I took a copy of Office 2003 and installed Word and Excel via Wine. I was impressed. Recently I have been working on getting Access to work as well. I Googled and I Googled but was unable to find any directions to installing Access on Linux.

My solution? Start experimenting. Although it's not the perfect solution, yet, I have succeeded. It is possible and I think it could work even better with more effort and attention. I'll write more later today.

New Focus

I haven't written anything here since October. Although it's only been a few months, the world is a very different place. Obama won the election. The economy drove off the cliff. More importantly, I turned 30.

I'm still trying to figure out what all of this means. I'm sure I'll write more about that in the coming month or so. Some of the things that seemed so important to me, only a few months ago, don't seem as important now. For example, my interest in climbing seems to be in decline. I have been thinking more and more about buying a mountain bike.

I have decided that I need to change the focus of this blog. In October, when I was writing here more regularly, I was caught up in the excitement of the election season. I wrote about it extensively. Although I suspect I will continue to write about politics, I am going to start focusing more attention on other things that interest me. Most importantly, I am going to spend more time writing about K/Ubuntu and my efforts to use it as my primary desktop operating system at home and at work.

Stay tuned. The fun has just begun.