Umbral Echoes Blog

The Japanese are, without a doubt, the oddest people on Earth.

The old house has sold! Or, at least, it’s under contract. An offer came in last weekend, but it was way low (considerably below the break-even point). So we countered a lot higher. I expected them to take a pass on it, since this is definitely a buyer’s market, and homebuyers have the pick of the litter, as it were. Not only that, but there were other houses in our neighborhood that were selling for lower than ours, and also new houses going up in the neighborhood that were less expensive.

But somehow, regardless of all of that, they accepted the counteroffer, and within the next 7 days or so they’ll have an inspection done. Anything found on the inspection will need to be taken care of, but pending that, we’ll sign over the house on March 4th.

Now what we need to do is have a bunch of friends over to the old house on the day of closing, and have a big drunken party after the buyers have done their final walkthrough. So when they come to their new home, they will have the added bonus of rooms full of empty booze bottles.  A “welcome home” gift, if you will.

LifeHacker.com recently had an article on using the open-source custom firmware called Tomato. Basically, this replaces your router’s firmware and give you a lot more control over it. The main thing that most people find useful is the ability to increase the wireless signal. I had to stretch the router way across the loft to position it so that I got WiFi reception in the basement, but using this hack I can put the router right by the cable modem and still get great reception.

It also has some nifty features like a real-time bandwidth graph (that updates as you’re watching it), and also a lot of advanced features. Want World of Warcraft to have higher priority than other Internet traffic? Want to make it so that certain websites can only be visited certain times of the day? Want to turn off the wireless during certain times of the day? You can do all that and more.

Me, I just like the neat bandwidth graph (below), and the ability to boost the WiFi signal.  It was also hella easy to install, and use, though the advanced features could have used some better documentation.

I’ve had a few discussions with people over the past few weeks concerning friendship. If a friend disagrees with you on something, does a “real friend” tell you, or do they keep their mouth shut? Or do they bite it down, and agree with whatever you’re saying?

Personally, I’ve always told friends when I disagree with something they say, or do. I don’t (or at least, try not to) do it in an in-your-face manner, but strongly enough to let them know that there might be another way of looking at things. Then again, I’ve always played the devil’s advocate — and not just after I played the part of Satan in a church play when I was 16.  I hate the “yes-man” type of friend, who always agrees with you, and never challenges anything you do or say.

On the other hand, friends should always be supportive of one another, even if they don’t agree with each other.  I guess it’s the same sort of mentality as, “I don’t support the war, but I support our troops.”  That isn’t to say that if your friend is getting hooked on heroin, you should support that.  Which I guess is another dimension — if you think a friend is doing something detrimental, how far do you go to try to stop them?  At what point do you say, “It’s their life, and they’ve made their decision?”

From a series called “You Suck at Photoshop.” There are 4 in this series currently, and here’s #2. The guy reminds me a lot of Dane Cook.

I’m watching the State of the Union address, and as usual there are a lot of “duh” moments in it. Yeah, we’re trying to get our troops home. We need an economic stimulus package to get pushed through soon. Et cetera.

As I watch this though, I’m drawn less to what’s being said, and more to what both sides of the auditorium (Republican and Democrat) applaud on — as opposed to which points only the Republicans applaud on. And also, which comments get standing ovations from just one side, or both. It’s like a gauge of what is going to happen, and what might or might not.

As a quick example, the first thing I saw both sides applaud on was a measure to make congress vote on all earmarks — if it’s important for tax dollars to be spent on, then it should be discussed and voted on publicly.

And dear lord, man. “Nuclear,” not, “nukular.”

As an aside, David Elsewhere is my hero of the day.

When people are sad, sometimes they play sad music to reflect their mood.  Sometimes they play upbeat music, to try and lighten their mood.  Generally I fall into the latter category — I watch a comedy, or listen to some happy music.  But I find that when I’m in  a particularly sour/depressed/bad mood, it doesn’t really work.  In those times, I try to do something to take my mind off whatever it is that’s got me stressed or upset.

What are your experiences?  How do you generally deal with “bad” moods?

Having decided that driving a stick shift makes talking on a cell phone a bit unwieldy, I decided to get a Bluetooth headset.  I had one before, but… well, I lost it within about a week of getting it.  This time I went for the BlueAnt Z9.  It’s not the sexiest thing in the world, but it received some good reviews, and seemed to have good noise cancellation technology — something that might come in handy in convention season.

So far, it’s worked beautifully.  The people (well, person) I’ve talked to said that my voice was actually clearer with the BlueAnt than it was using the phone itself.  Hooking up to my phone, the Samsung Sync, was painless.  They even release semi-regular firmware updates, that fix issues and make other improvements.  It’s pretty easy to operate, light, and comfortable.  I’m not the sort of person to wear it all day long (I just wear it when I’m in the car), but if I were, I don’t think it would get uncomfortable to do so.  I haven’t tried the ultra-noise-cancellation mode, but I have high hopes — the website has a demonstration of the technology, that seems to put it on the level of the Jawbone.

In other news, those of you who use several online services, such as Facebook, Yahoo profiles, Twitter,  Gmail, LinkedIn, YouTube, WordPress, Delicious, Microsoft Network (MSN), etc. will be interested in the DataPortability workgroup.  Below is a video that explains it, but the basic idea is you have your data, and when you want to make a profile on X site, you say, “Here’s my stuff — profile info, media, friends, et cetera.”  And the site keeps sync’d with that central repository of data.  Make a blog post?  It’s posted to all your sites that support that.  Upload a picture?  Ditto.  The names/sites mentioned above have all gotten in (Microsoft just recently), so there’s a pretty big push in this direction.

DataPortability – Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

The past few weeks have been a time of endings, and new beginnings for me.  In both my personal, and my professional life.  But as they say, that which does not move, dies.

After having talked to some of you, and doing some soul-searching over the weekend, I’ve decided to accept the workshop candidate position at White Wolf.  The programming test shook my self-confidence — I didn’t know that my lower-level programming skills had gotten that rusty.  Had I taken that test 6 years ago, I’d have mopped the floor with it.  And I’ll get to that point again.  I’ve sent an email accepting the position at White Wolf, as well as one to the owners of my current company, OneBookShelf.  It will probably be another 6 months at least before I can make the transition, but that will give me time to hone my skills.

Well, apparently my initial impression was correct.  I am damn rusty.  Too rusty, in fact, for the White Wolf programming team in my current state.  I have been given the option to move into what is essentially a paid internship program, or possibly web work.  The internship thing doesn’t pay great, and with other goings-on, the pay rate will make the budget exceedingly tight.  Going into webwork isn’t exactly what I want to do, though there will be mentoring opportunity there as well, and learning of new technologies.

So, I have some things to consider over the weekend.