Jabulani Jonny

Back in 2001 I had just finished a CD and was working as a fly-fishing guide/singer-songwriter.  Sunette and I had been married for a year.  I was making no money and providing no security.  I remember a day when I took my truck to get fixed at a downtown garage.  As I was sitting in their lobby looking out the window I saw a young guy and 3 young ladies walking down the sidewalk.  They were all dressed in business attire, guy in a tie and long-sleeve shirt, ladies in business suits or skirts.  I looked at that guy and envied him.  That looked like such a great place to be, going somewhere, professional, secure. 

That was 6 years ago.  I’m that guy.  I work downtown, wear a tie everyday, have security.  I’m a commercial lender for a large bank in the southeast.  Kind of in the cat-bird seat as far as future advancement.  So, what do I think now that I’m here? 

Well, the security is nice, I’ll admit.  However, I lose my purpose when I walk through the door every morning.  Unless I look at my purpose as being to provide for my family, which I guess that kinda is my purpose.  Atleast a part of it. 

So, was there ever a moment that defined where you are right now?

I regularly check out Blogography.  Dave has a great way of being candid about sometimes touchy sometimes trivial events.  Although his site is definitely rated "M" for mature, I find it funny and pretty spot on.  His recent post about an inconsiderate cell-phone yakker prompted some thoughts about consideration.  Yes, that word that we all heard from mom but didn’t quite know what the heck it meant until we hit early 30′s.  See, consideration, or the-lack-there-of, is my biggest pet peeve.  I find it completely mind-boggling when other folks show a complete disregard for their fellow man.  I’m not talking about not giving to charity or anything, I’m talking about stuff like littering, and talking on a cell in a public place.  I mean, that kind of stuff reeks of inconsideration, which to me is nothing more than someone thinking more highly of themselves than all others.  I know this sounds like I’m preaching, but really, wouldn’t the world be better if we were all just a little more considerate?

Take my recent airport experience for example.  I did see a few "meltdowns" as some weary travelers felt that this was a direct personal attack against them, like Delta was intentionally keeping them from getting home.  There was a guy on the plane that was probably the biggest jerk I’ve ever come across.  For instance, you know that moment when the plane finally eases into the gate, the "fasten seatbelt" sign goes off and everyone stands up to collect their bags?  Well, everyone is now standing in the aisle, waiting to get off, and this guy starts pushing people out of the way to try and get off.  Like no one else had spent 15 hours in the airport and no one else was eager to get off the plane.  I mean, c’mon!  Are there really people out there who don’t have a clue that they share this world with the rest of us? 

So here’s what I propose to whoever reads this (which is really very few apparently, so my impression may be short-lived), let’s all really make an effort to think of how our actions will affect other people.  Let’s not litter, let’s not leave our junk for someone else to clean up, let’s not take the first empty seat if others are available, let’s not talk on our cellphones in public places if we can help it.  If we can’t, then let’s be discreet, go somewhere, cover the mouthpiece, lower your volume.  Let’s just be thoughtful, considerate.  How ’bout it? 

It hit me this morning that the last 4 of 5 posts has been about my computer. You'd think that I have absolutely nothing else going on. You might think that I have an unhealthy relationship with my laptop, my wife might agree. I just try to make this blog informative as well as…as….well, maybe just informative works. Oh look, is that my laptop across the room? I wonder what's on it.

Ok, I’m not even sure I mentioned it in the last couple of posts, but I was up in New York from last Saturday to this past Friday.  I was up there with our game company Zelosport for the International Toy Fair.  We went last year and had a great show, and this year was no different.  We have two new games that are being displayed, Finger Soccer and Finger Baseball.  Both of these are going to be a big hit.  They’re both extremely fun to play and basically the only game of its kind.  We made some great contacts and got some great exposure for all of the games we have available now. 

Just like last year, we had a huge snowstorm while we were there.  Maybe you saw it on the news.  Basically every airport shutdown on Wednesday night and experienced mass cancellations and delays all the way through Saturday.  We were supposed to fly out Wednesday night….nope, cancelled.  We all got different flights on Thursday.  My flight and two of our other guys flights were cancelled.  It was turning into a remake of Tom Hanks’ "The Terminal".

Also, be sure to check out Eric’s blog for a short video of our booth at the Toy Fair.

Here’s a short video.  Yeah I picked the wrong dimensions.  I’m learning to use Kdenlive in Linux for the video editing.  Pretty good program, but i’m still learning.

So my last post was about how I changed my laptop to mimic a Mac, but then backed up a bit ’cause it felt a little cumbersome.  Well since everything was working completely fine, I decided to go tinkering again and change it up.  That’s my nature.  If it’s working great, surely it could work better…right?  I mean if I had my computer waking me up in the morning with a fresh batch of cheese grits, I’d be trying to figure out a way to make it know what kind of cheese I wanted in those grits, and whether I wanted yellow corn or stone ground.  That’s my nature. 

So, I started dreaming about Linux again.  I tried it once before with openSuse 10.0.  This is a Linux distro that’s put out by Novell.  For those not familiar with Linux, it’s an open source operating system, like Windows is an operating system.  Open source means that it’s free, as in cost, and free, as in usage.  It comes loaded with tons of programs.  I ditched it last time cause I couldn’t get my Microsoft Bluetooth mouse to scroll.  Trivial I know, but I just got tired of fiddling.  Well, this time I was determined to get it going.  I decided to go back to Suse with its latest release of 10.2, and I’m hooked. 

After working with my mouse a little more I just decided to ditch it and get one that works out of the box, like the handy dandy Logitech V450 laptop mouse.  I plugged it in and Linux had it up in running in under 10 seconds, scroll wheel and all.  Bam!

I’m telling you, the programs that come with Linux are nothing to sniff at.  They are full featured and OPEN!  I mean, play any file in Amarok or Kaffeine, the two prominent media programs, view and edit any type of image.  This software just rocks and the operating system is just beautiful.  I have to say that it takes a little getting used to, just like any other new software, but I’m loving it.  At this moment I’m listening to tunes off of my iPod, through Amarok, posting to my blog through firefox, chatting with Eric on Kopete, and keeping up with my Gmail in Kontact.  Very nice.  For those that have never tried Linux and you’re interested, you can find several LiveDVD’s or CD’s for many distrobutions.  I’d suggest either Suse or Ubuntu.  These are the two most user friendly in my opinion.  A Live DVD or CD means you literally run the entire operating system off of the disc, without having to install it to your hard drive.  You could also install it to a thumb drive if you have one big enough.  Give it a spin and see if you like it.

Find Live DVD’s and CD’s of Ubuntu here and Suse here.

Last Saturday I was dorking around whilst Sunette as at work and I decided to change up a few things on my laptop, a Dell 9300.  As mentioned in this post I use Litestep to change the way windows looks and feels.  It’s a shell replacement, or theme, program that is very streamlined and can be powerful without taking up a lot of resources.  Many times less than the default Windows Explorer.  That "post" link up there shows a screenshot of my desktop so you can see some of the changes. 

Well, you know I’ve been wanting a Mac right.  Yeah, who doesn’t.  My wife lovingly reminds me that "we just have different priorities right now".  Great, that means I’ll have to wait a bit, but maybe not much longer.  So I decided to overhaul my PC to look like a Mac.  I mean from boot screen to menus to icons to finder to shutdown.  There are several steps that you have to take and pretty much everything that needs to be done can found at the Aqua-Soft forums here and at this handy tutorial.  The tutorial is a little dated but it gives you some good links to some of the extra software that you need to do some of the special features of a Mac, like Expose and Dashboard.   

The quickest way to get you there is use Flyakite OSX.  It will change out everything on your system in one nice installer.  Keep in mind, it’s only changing the way Windows looks, it’s not actually installing OSX on your machine.  Mmmkay?  It does all the dirty work of changing your boot screen and icons and installing a dock type launcher and all kinds of stuff. 

At that point you need to add some of the additional software found at the end of the tutorial.  If you follow all of those steps you’ll get pretty stinkin close to a Mac clone on a Windows machine. 

Well, I tried it for about 4 days but it felt a little clunky on my machine.  I think everything ran fine, but it felt forced in some way.  Don’t ask me to explain.  So…I ended up going back to Litestep, but choosing a very minimalist theme and employing RK Launcher as my bar program and Top Desk as my Window switching program.  Both of these are very cool programs.  Litestep is just so much more streamlined and I cannot live without the main popup menu, basically a start menu, when you right click on the desktop that comes standard on Litestep. 

So here’s a current screenshot of the desktop and one using TopDesk, if you cared. 

And for those out there that still have the default Windows XP blue taskbar and you’ve only changed your desktop picture to the fish instead of the default "Bliss (I’m running through a field of grass)" picture.  COME ON!  BREAK OUT! LIVE!  IT’S YOUR COMPUTER!  MAKE IT YOURS AND NOT BILL’S!!

Wow that’s a lot of caps, but it needed to be said.  So how have you made your machine…your machine?  Other than those on a Mac of course, but you can still comment.  "I’m a big fan"