endperform.org

I use multiple operating systems day in and day out, not only for work, but at home as well.  In the past, I used to be a big, big Linux fan, to the point of zealotry.  These days, however, I’m finding that I’ve taken on more of a ‘use whatever works’ attitude.  That being said, I wanted to run down the operating systems I encounter on an average day.

My Macbook: Mac OS X
OSX is installed on my Macbook, which has become what I call my ‘life’ machine.  I store my photos, my music and my important documents on that machine, hence the ‘life’ tag.  I use the machine on the couch or bed, depending where I am, to check my email, chat, and if I’m on call I log into my work desktop from it.  It’s my go-to machine if I need to do something quickly.

My Work Machine: Arch Linux
I use Arch on my work desktop.  I do software / server support, and all of the servers I support are Unix variants.  Linux is the perfect fit for everything I need to do at work.  Added bonus is that I’m not tied to the Windows domain and I have complete control over my box.  I also have an install of Arch on my desktop at home for other purposes, which I’ll get into shortly.

My Home Desktop: Windows 7 / Virtualbox
Over the past few years, I’ve usually used Linux 90% of the time on my desktop, with 10% going to Windows for my gaming needs.  I tested Windows 7 when it was in Beta/RC status and was pretty impressed with it.  So much so, that I actually bought a retail upgrade copy for the desktop, and now I use it about 95% of the time.  I have Virtualbox installed with a number of Linux distributions installed, which I use for development and work purposes.   Do I lose geek cred for this move?  I don’t think I do, as it’s all about using what works for you.  I’d say that 90% of my time is spent in a Unix environment on any given day anyway.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – Infinity Ward Fail
If you’ve been reading any gaming news lately, you know the big deal for the PC version is that there are no dedicated servers. IW shot themselves in the foot here. You cannot choose a favorite server (there are none), cheaters are a lot harder to deal with, no mods, no admins, and from what I’ve been reading, it’s overall a pretty laggy experience. The last PC Call of Duty I played was CoD2. I have CoD Modern Warfare for the PS3, but haven’t logged much time at all on it. Buyer beware for CoD MW2, though. The single player is short, and the multiplayer experience is iffy.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 both at home and at work, and so far it’s been a pretty decent experience. I’ve had some trouble with networking on the work machine, but found the fixes over at the Ubuntu Forums. I have to admit I hardly go there any more as it just seems overwhelmed with a lot of newcomers’ questions. That’s not a bad thing, but it’s just not something I want to wade through, so generally I wander over, search, and then leave. I may get back into being more active, but I’m just not sure yet.

endperform.org future
I’m still trying to figure out where to go with the site. Part of me wants to move the blog elsewhere and do something else with the frontpage, part of me wants to whip up a podcast, and a third part of me wants to just leave things as they are. I’m torn, but I’ll figure out where it’s going to go soon.

DragonCon 2009
I had the chance to finally attend DragonCon for the first time, if only for a day. Saturday was the chosen day, because it was the weekend, and because that was the day of the Adam Savage panel, which is the main reason I wanted to go this year. The biggest thing that sticks out in my mind is the lines. It took about two and a half hours to get a badge due to essentially a cluster of a registration area. There were two sections, cash and credit, but these were not broken out until near the front of the line. On top of that, there were only a total of three cashiers and about 7 to 10 registration staff. In my mind, there should have been more cashiers to balance things out, but that’s just my observation. The other line was the line for the Adam Savage panel, which ended up outside and stretching down the block. Thankfully the weather wasn’t full-blown hot, but it was warm enough to be uncomfortable. About an hour later we were let inside to sit and wait longer. The wait was worth it, and I ended up in the third row. Adam shared 100 of his wishes and explained a bit about them, then went on to take questions from the audience. In person he’s great to listen to, and I really enjoyed it. Other enjoyable parts of the con were seeing friends, checking out the vendor areas and of course the costumes. We had caught the end of the parade, thanks to the evilly long registration lines, but it was still a decent site. Everything from Star Trek to Ghostbusters was represented.

As the Apple Ripens…
Snow Leopard is performing quite well on my Macbook. The upgrade process itself took about an hour, and after that it’s been smooth sailing. The only issue I had was due to my own fault. I moved some applications from their default locations, so when the upgrade occurred, I ended up with two copies of some programs (I like keeping things somewhat organized). Performance-wise, there is a definite difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard. Finder is much more responsive, startup and shutdown are a lot quicker, and overall the OS is running fine.

iTunes and iPhone OS 3.1 are out as of yesterday and I’ve performed upgrades to these latest versions. So far, so good, but I haven’t used them enough to really dig deep into them and see what happens.

I had an issue with my iPhone yesterday which I thought was highly unusual. I had upgraded to the 3.0 release of the firmware last week, and things were going fine until yesterday afternoon. While sitting on my desk at work, the phone all of the sudden lost connection to the network completely, which never happens because there’s an AT&T tower on the roof of the building. I figured it was just a random service issue, and to back that up a coworker’s phone was also having problems. Eventually for him, the service came back. For my iPhone, however, the service kept coming and going.

I figured once I’d leave work it would clear up, but my assumption was wrong as I didn’t have any service the entire way home. What’s worse is that when I tried to launch any app, other than the apps the phone came with, they would crash. Multiple reboots later and I’m thinking that my poor iPhone has given up on life. After a bit of research, I decided to do a full-blown restore to factory settings, and to my relief, my phone is working once again. I think part of the problem is that iTunes crashed out in the middle of a sync the previous night, which could have caused some corruption that I didn’t see until yesterday. At any rate, the only loss was the music I had on it, but that’s easily replaced.

Sometime next week I’ll be posting about my top 5 favorite apps on my phone.

DSL: It Lives
I managed to get the phone line wired up and the DSL functioning. The line itself was a lot easier than I had hoped. It was just a matter of running the line out to the interface device and hooking up two wires. The most difficult part was crawling around under the house. Hopefully, though, I won’t have to worry about going down there for anything else for a long, long time. The DSL service itself has been running well. Gaming hasn’t been affected, and overall we’re happy with it. In the process, I also canceled Tivo and Vonage, saving us a bit more money.

Valve Releases TF2 Sniper and Spy Update
Valve, within the past week, has released a major update to Team Fortress 2, this time with weapon upgrades for the Sniper and Spy both. Details can be found here, but the other major change is the way the new weapons are unlocked, or should I say given out. With previous updates, you had to complete achievements to obtain new weapons. Now, though, you obtain new weapons by pure luck. There are a few people that seem to have an idea of the statistics, but generally you have a chance for an unlock once per hour. The more you play, the better your chances. Of course, there are some people bitching because of all of the time they spent to obtain the other unlocks, and now people are getting them without much work. Personally, I don’t mind it. Everyone should have a chance to mess around with the new weapons, and some people just don’t have the time required for some of the achievements needed.

JustHost: So far so good
It’s been around a month since I’ve switched webhosting, and so far I’ve been happy with the move. The support is amazing. I had an issue and had it resolved within about 2 hours, which is a big plus. The site does seem to be stable, and I haven’t found any real issues yet. I just need to finish getting the site put back together and I’ll be good to go.