Happy B-Day To Me, part 1

A decent tax refund plus a birthday can only mean one thing: I've talked myself into buying something.

The digital camera I have now is really handy. It's one of those sub-compact things that I literally carry around in my pocket. It's great for light traveling, but the picture quality and options leaves quite a bit to be desired.

So I decided to upgrade to a Nikon D60.


After a couple of hours with this camera and an instructional DVD (I had no idea how to use this thing), I'm really impressed. I think this will get a heck of a lot of use.

Food

Goddangit. (as Bloyd would say)

In an attempt to try and spend less money on eating out and trying to get better food into my system, I've seemed to slip beyond just eating at home and fallen directly into obsessing about cooking.

I blame Alton Brown. Now I can't imagine cooking with table salt--kosher salt is the only thing allowed. I've already bought more items from the produce department in the last two months than all last year. I've even started buying hardware at a restaurant supply store. (hey, stuff is a heck of a lot cheaper there than anywhere else)

I've managed to meet one of my goals--I'm definitely eating better foods. And I can really feel it. I've got more energy, I'm more alert and it's much easier to maintain my weight.

But not so much on the other goal. I *could* definitely eat (and eat well) on less than what I used to spend on burgers every night, but I'm not doing that right now. Like tonight--I spent an extra couple of bucks buying a brick of real parmesan cheese and threw away that pre-shredded stuff in the can. It's good, but it ain't cheap.

So, here's tonight's dinner. Risotto. Oh man, talk about rich and creamy. Add a few peas and prosciutto and a few glasses of wine. I'm happy.

Dead trees

As many of you know, one of my addictions (so to speak) is books. I don't even want to know what I spent at Amazon and Barnes & Noble last year.

But in an effort to reign-in spending a bit, I started looking for alternatives. The electronic books just aren't up to my standards yet. (although the new Kindle is getting closer--there just needs to be a better selection of books)

There are a couple of used book stores near me, but their selection is very hit-or-miss.

So I signed-up for SwapTree.com last month. Basically you list what books you are willing to trade and then what books you want. After that, the website periodically matches your want/have list with other people's and sends "trade invites". If you accept, you just mail your book to the other person and they do the same. Easy stuff. No "transaction fees" or anything stupid like that.

It's worked really well so far. It's not instant gratification, but I've got like 5 or 6 "new" books for something like $15 worth of shipping costs.

Yet another reason

I hope everyone is having a good Valentine's Day.


(this seemed appropriate for most of my readers)

That being said, I wanted to pass along a little more evidence on the argument for gay marriage. Unfortunately this is a perfect example of how the argument of "there are equally effective existing laws" isn't accurate.

Thank goodness that none of the hospitals I've stayed in have been this uncaring.

Nerd Porn, update

Ok, a quick update and I'm done with this project.

The last bit I planned to do was get the NAS connected to my printer so I could print anywhere in the house. That also meant that it would be moved out of the living room into the office. (so that even since it doesn't look much like a PC, it still doesn't leave the impression that my house decor is post-modern geek chic)

So, to put the NAS in the office and keep it connected to the network, I found a cheap Linksys WRT54G v8 on CraigsList and loaded DD-WRT on it. (DD-WRT is awesome--you take a cheap router and this update gives it the same capabilities of a >$500 router) I configured it as a repeater bridge so that it would connect to my other router via wireless and give me hard-wired connections in the office for the NAS and any other network devices I want.


Here you can see the final setup. The NAS sits behind my monitor while the laptop is running dual-screen with Hulu playing while I work.


(note: no, I'm *not* watching Fox News--that's The Daily Show)

Nerd Porn

Ok, those of you that read this blog but aren't nerds, may I suggest surfing over to The Dieline. (that's a recent addition to my RSS Reader and the reason that I always stop by the vodka aisle every time I go to a new liquor store)

Ok, so I've been wanting to get a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device for quite a while. And when Bloyd got one a while back, that just made it worse. (gadget envy)

I wanted something that would accomplish the following:
1) Backup my lappy--a lot of my critical data is somewhere in the Internet cloud, but there are some things that are nowhere but my lappy. Especially things like my pictures. If my laptop drive dies, I would loose years worth of irreplaceable pictures.

2) More storage space--I've got a 250Gb USB hard drive in the office and a 150Gb travel-sized USB drive that stays in the laptop bag. But they are getting full and I've had to start making decisions on what to keep and what has to go.

3) Redundancy--since this will be both a backup and storage solution, it needs to be redundant so that the failure of any single hard drive in the house (including its own) would not cause the loss of any data.

4) Access to all my files when not docked in the home office--right now, the 250Gb drive in the office has all of my media and some other data that I can't access unless I'm plugged-in in the office. It would be nice to have access to them when using the laptop on the couch. (like now)

5) Ability to print when not docked in the home office--I do quite a bit of stuff either in the living room or at the dining room table. It sucks to drag the lappy to the office and plug in just to print a receipt from Gmail.

6) Not ugly--I want all of this in a device that doesn't look like a giant, ugly computer. (especially since this might be placed in the living room)

7) Cheap--I could buy something pre-built, but I'm *way* too cheap for that.

After hearing several opinions of people who know more about this stuff than I do, I decided to build my own little PC that would run Windows Home Server.

Windows Home Server (WHS) is server software designed to be used exactly for these kinds of purposes. It's Windows Server 2003 with additional software designed to be used as a home backup / media / storage solution without the regular maintenance sometimes required by server operating systems. (handy, no?)

After some research and a stop by my local Fry's, I came home with:

Shuttle K45 barebones case (cheap, tiny, cute and uses significantly less power than most Shuttle PC's)

Pentium Dual-Core E2200 (cheap but fast enough to power what I need)

1Gb RAM

(2) 1.5Tb Seagate Barracuda hard drives (yes, I bought 2 drives at 1.5Tb each--another good sale)

Extra case fan

OEM copy of Windows Home Server

All told, it put me back about $550. Yeah, I wish it didn't cost that much, but if wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak. Also, you've got to remember that this setup includes a total of 3Tb of hard drive space.



I really like the case. It's slick, small and doesn't look much like a computer. (pill bottle added for size reference)



As expected, there isn't much space in there. Just enough room for me to put in what I bought. (note that the PCI slot at the front of the pic takes up almost half the length of the mobo)



There's barely enough room for the fan that just came with the CPU. It still amazes me that they run so hot that they need a heat sink and fan that big. (CPU on left, fan on the right)



Here's about halfway through the Windows install. I copied the install DVD to a USB memory stick and didn't have to touch the keyboard once during the install. Smooth as could be.



So, here's what it looks like all finished. But it still looks a bit too much like a PC...



Ah, that's better. (replaceable face-plates and a color printer--such a good combo)



It doesn't even look too out of place sitting on the entertainment center.



Now I've got a fully-functioning NAS. And since it just needs a power and network cable, I can hide it virtually anywhere in the house and not have to worry about maintaining it.

And it's still a fully-functioning Windows machine. I've got remote-control software so I can do things like install a BitTorrent client or anything else I want.

But the built-in Windows Home Server software looks sweet. It comes with some client software you install on all your home PC's and it automatically takes care of backups. It does such a good job that I know of someone who had a WHS like mine when his wife's laptop hard drive died. When he bought a new hard drive from the store, he literally booted from a custom CD that comes with WHS and an hour later the laptop was fully restored to exactly where it was before.

The client software also gives me a nice interface for maintaining most of the server settings I need. It also supports a "plug-in" interface so anyone can write plugins for WHS that you can then maintain without touching the server.

It also has a web interface so I can maintain or access my files from anywhere in the world.

I'm pretty impressed so far.

Quick Health Update

Ok, I'll keep this one short. I wouldn't even write one, but I just got a little inspiration that I wanted to share and get feedback on.

Part of my personality is that when I get into a habit or start something new and interesting, I sometimes go *way* overboard. As is relevant to this story, I sometimes do this with music.

As it happens, when I was first diagnosed with cancer and checked into the hospital for the first week of treatment, I'd just downloaded the newest Jack Johnson CD. And since it's not too bad and very calming music, I listened to it a heck of a lot during that week.

But now, whenever one of the tracks from that CD comes around on the iPhone when I'm working (as it just did), it's like I'm back in the hospital. I can see my room. I can feel the IV in my arm. I can remember that one bum wheel on my IV machine. I can even smell that cleaner they use. That's a heck of a memory trigger. Does anyone else have memory triggers that strong, or is it part of my obsessive "trigger-creation" by listening to the same CD over and over?

Anyway, I went it for my last round of tests / scans the other week. My doc says that everything looks good and he's moved out my schedule so that I only have to go in every 4 months. (that's a good thing)