endperform.org

First of all, happy birthday goes out to my lovely wife who’s turning 21 again for the forth time. 25’s not so bad, it’s once you hit the 30s, like me :P

This weekend has been pretty ok, nothing earth shattering, just a usual weekend. We had a decent lunch for her birthday and spent the afternoon together. This evening she’s heading out and I’ll be hanging out here. I think tonight I’m finally going to get to work on a project to make work life easier. My coworkers should be thankful I’m such a computer geek.

Been geeking out the past few nights setting up an old Dell Dimension desktop as the new home fileserver. I decided to install Ubuntu Server edition on it to keep things simple. Within about an hour I had a working machine using LVM and a Samba server installed. It’s easily accessible, and I’m pondering opening up an SSH port to the outside world so I can get back to it. I also installed Lighttpd (my first experience with it) and I have to say it was pretty painless. PHP, mySQL and Cacti are all running happily, and I’m a happy geek.

On my desktop, I decided to try to play with compositing a bit. I installed XFCE (which is what I’m now using at work), turned on compositing effects and installed Avant Window Manager. I kinda like the little dock. It stays out of my way and is very functional. I also have an XFCE panel to the right, which is handling the system tray, time and main menu. I’ll post a screenshot of it shortly.

Something else amazing also happened this past week. My wife, Bethany, decided that she wanted to try Linux out. After a little guidance, she installed Ubuntu herself using Wubi, and has a pretty Gnome desktop complete with compositing and AWN as well. After about two weeks, I’m going to bug her with some questions and repost them here. So far, she seems to be enjoying it a lot, especially the fact that she can change the look of her desktop anytime she feels like it with ease. Score one for Ubuntu!

A few days ago, Bethany and I picked up the Wiimotes and played more WiiPlay, and needless to say it was a lot of fun. It’s so much fun to play with her, then subsequently get jumped on and attacked after beating her. All in all, though, a whole lot of fun and it just makes me happy to be able to do that with her :)

This may be a bit of a lovefest post today, but you know, I’m just going to go with it. In a nutshell, Beth, my fiance, is amazing. I find my love for her growing every day, and there’s no doubt in my mind that she is the one I’ve been searching for. The mother of my child, my rock, my voice of reason, she’s always there for me, and for that I cannot thank her enough. This year, we’ve decided we’re going to try to make my birthday extra-special. Rather than opting for a traditional big-ish wedding, we’ve decided that we’re going to head to New Orleans and elope. While it may not sound like anything exciting to you, for us, it’s actually perfect. It’ll be memorable, we’ll be dressed for the occasion, and it will be all the more special.

Before you ask, no I’m not trying to suck up to her :) She knows how I feel, and once in a while I just get a desire to write about her. 2008 is going to be a good year, I can tell. Things are shaping up and starting to fall into place. We’re working on plans now, and of course there will be pictures when the time comes.