So after some brief conversations with my personal life coach and all around fellow nerd-ite hess I have determined that I need to jot down my wish list for enhancing my geek life this holiday season.  So without further ado, Santa would you please bring me:

• Bluetooth GPS Receiver – With the Nokia N800 filling more and more interesting roles for me its time to take the next step.  I already have a couple mapping applications.  What I am missing is a little blue dot to show me the way to Grandma’s house.  And speaking of expanding the role of the N800…
• Bluetooth OBD II Dongle – Every car made today has an OBD plug on it which gives you access to all kinds of interesting data from the engine.  Recently, I downloaded some new software for the N800 called Carman that will use bluetooth and GPS to give you a ridiculous amount of information about your journey.  Average speed, rpm, distance and (I hope) something about fuel efficiency.  This is the next step in turning the Honda into a true geek-mobile.
• 8 Port GigaBit Router/Switch – For years I have been very happy with the little 4 port D-Link or Linksys routers with built in WiFi.  But these days I need more.  More ports. More speed. More everything.  With the adition of an HP 8100 network printer and my insatiable need to add more processors to the home network, this is becoming a bottleneck.  The new router is the first step to wiring the house for home entertainment purposes. Of course this means I will also need to upgrade the NICs in all the computers to handle gigabit speeds.
• Dedicated Web/Media Server – The current Linux Franken-box sitting under my desk is doing a lot of jobs right now and perhaps it may just get this assignment while I build something new for a desktop PC.  But having my primary machine also act as an FTP/Web/Media server seems to be a recipe for disaster.  I’ve got enough hardware laying around to make a lightweight box to do server duty.  Just need to get it up and running.
• Terabyte NAS – What good is a gigabit network without some dedicated storage to hook to it?  The current backup arrangements for household data are pretty sparse.  Everything is replicated but not in a nice tight package that can be grabbed quickly as I flee a burning house.
• TV Tuner Card – I keep inching closer to all the working pieces to run MythTv for real.  I am still a little short in the hardware department.  The most notable abscence is a tuner/video capture card.  Need to find one that plays well with Ubuntu.
• Linux on the iMac – I have a first generation iMac laying around doing nothing.  I know it is a solid little machine but it lacks an OS and despite all my efforts with Yellow Dog and old versions of PPC Ubuntu I can’t get it to breathe again.  This would be a fabulous little workstation and/or media kiosk if I could just get it to boot something other than the sad Mac icon.
• New Desks for All – This project is already underway with one 8 foot section installed a few weeks ago.  By the time I’m done I expect the whole front room to be comfortably outfitted with enough deskspace to run my own temp agency.  This also includes some new shelving and some creative tricks to hide exposed wires.  The end result will be work stations for four people with good lighting, an excess of outlets and a couple of spare ethernet cables for random messing about and/or LAN wars.

Couple of things on the theme of marriage, both the beginning (or lack thereof) and the end.

First, a blog post from a pre-teen that shows how much the end of a marriage affects people other than the spouses involved:

Are your parents divorced? If they are how do you react? If they are not what do you recommend? I am asking this because my parents are divorcing. I feel king of scared. I also feel like not talking.

My comment and many others all echo the same sentiments.  Mostly, it sucks when things happen that are out of your control.

Second, an impassioned editorial from Keith Olberman on the passage of Prop 8 in California.  He gets it exactly right.

Looks like I get to play keeper in our indoor soccer game Sunday.  I really enjoy being in goal.  You get to play the whole game, everyone is in front of you so you can follow all the action, and best of all you get to be the agressor in a lot of situations.

I’m not a natural keeper. Never played it in high school and only sparingly in my 20s but the indoor game is a little better suited to me I think.  The goal is small enough that angles matter less.  Its actually a lot closer to a hockey goalie than an outdoor soccer goalie.

Every time I put on the puffy gloves all I can think about is the hockey goalie from the early Nintendo NHL games.  It was literally impossible to knock him over or push him aside.  So that’s how I try to play.  I tend to rush the ball alot even outside the box.  I’m basically playing as a defender who happens to use his hands sometimes.  None of this makes me a great keeper, but it all makes it fun.

Unfortunately, we are going up against team that is guarenteed to send a lot of action my way.  We were rolled into another division this season and the teams are younger, faster, more aggressive and frankly more skilled players.  After six games, we have a goal differential of -18 while our upcoming opponents have a GD of +32.

I can’t wait

Don’t know why but every so often my brain and my fingers have a bit of a disagreement.  This week its over the word “customer” which, because of the scripts I write, I have to type several dozen times a day.

Brain: Ok fingers, lets type out C-U-S-T-O-M-E-R

Fingers: Order isn’t important right?  As long as we get all the characters down, it can’t mean too much what the sequence is.

Brain: No, it is important.  Lets backspace over that.  The query engine cares a great deal about the sequence.

Fingers: Screw you.

Can’t wait til they get all this worked out and I can go back to just typing without thinking about the fingers again.

Something truly amazing has happened tonight. I´m trying now to think of the words to explain to my kids what this means. They were too young to understand anything about 9/11 other than it was something huge and horrible. Now they are old enough to appreciate a little bit what has happened. Our country, our society changes so fast that we can lose sight of where we were less than a generation ago. The year my father graduated high school there were race riots. One group of Americans so outraged at their country´s treatment of them and their families that they felt compelled to take to the streets in violence. Less than 50 years ago this country did not allow so many things that we now take for granted.

How can I help my children understand what is possible in their own lives? How can I convey this profound sense of awe I have tonight when I look at what has taken place in the last campaign?

This one comes from my dad and his local polling place this morning.

There was a 102 year old woman who was in a wheel chair at the polls in the morning. She insisted on walking to the voting booth. The response from those in the polling place was significant. Applause, tears and a general sense of the importance of what was happening there.

I haven’t been involved in politics much in my life but there is something so different about this year. Its not hard to figure out why. The country has changed alot in the last 8 years but this election could still have been a run of the mill cycle except for the fact that there is a candidate with the power to inspire. Whether you agree or disagree with Obama as a candidate, he unquestionably energized the process. Hopefully it signals a return to leadership by inspiration as well as ideals.

I am going back to re-read JKF’s inaugural address because that is the kind of leadership that hasn’t been present in my lifetime and that we may see again soon.

There will be lots of stories today about people voting and for whom and thier reasons why.  This one is probably going to be my favorite.

So, no, I didn’t vote for Barack Obama. I voted for a boy who now has every reason to believe he, too, can grow up to be anything he wants…even President.

eastside93′s Blog | Talking Points Memo | I Didn’t Vote For Obama Today.

Nobody does data like Google and the election is no exception.  Just as I hoped, they have an interactive election map that will let you drill down and view different races.  I’m embedding it here so I can find it fast later today.

The Milligram Experiment on Obience to Authority is truly a worthwhile bit of history and human behavior to study.  I haven’t listened to this report yet but this sounds like a very worthwhile thing to spend some time with.

Much has been written about Milgram and his experiments. But there’s a missing part to the story — the voices of people who took part.

Gina Perry goes in search of those who participated in what’s been described as the most widely cited and provocative set of experiments in social psychology.

Radio Eye – 11October2008 – Beyond the Shock Machine.

A brief summary of the Weekend that Was

• Raked up 6 bags of leaves Saturday morning.
• Watched the leaves make a comeback for the rest of the weekend.  Another 6 bags coming up.
• Attended Video Games Live.  A truly awesome show!
• Watched the Chiefs almost win a game.  This counts as a moral victory.
• Almost won the indoor soccer game.  This was not a moral victory.
• Spent some quality time with the spousal unit.
• Did several hundred pushups.
• Ate too much.

That is all.