Bnei noach

Okay, so for now I've given up on converting to Judaism. Why? Well, even the liberal movements won't convert into an intermarriage, particularly when there's a kid involved (and while I'm bringing him up with exposure to jewish/noachide beliefs, events, etc., we won't force our son to be any particular religion). So, I get to default to being a Noachide. I started reading up on this awhile back, it's just taken me this long to give in. So, I'll try to learn as much as I can about those areas I can do something in, and maybe someday when is older and grown up, I'll be able to convert then (as I'd be too old to have kids of either kind, jewish or gentile). But then I sometimes see things that I see as anti-Gentile (as opposed to antisemetic), like this snippet from about half way down the page of http://www.noahide.com/rebbe.htm:

The Seven Laws must be explained in away that the nations can relate to and, because non-Jews do not possessgenuine free will, they will be willing to change more quickly and easily than a Jew.

--Hisvaduyos 5748 3:183, cited in "The Deed is the Main Thing," Kol Boi Ha'olam, p. 385-386.

Now, I'm pretty darned surprised that I didn't have "genuine free will". Pretty darned surprised. I'm going to chalk this one up to some guy having a bad day years ago - everyone has them. But boy does that quote burn in my gut right now.

Newest quote: I knew this day would come, but I'd hoped it would happen 6 months after I'd left. Made by: Me, at the office today, upon relating to Wade my intern that we needed to support multiple data providers. Prior to launch. Which is in less than 2 weeks.

Apple ad clones

Okay, apparently everyone is making clones of Apple's funny ads. Thankfully most of them aren't too bad.

Weekend

Well, I turn THIRTY this weekend. Wow. I will be an old man. Ooooooooold Maaaaaaaan, dude! Hehe. I guess I do feel older, I'm definitely not a teenager, or even near the lower 20s. Between my bifocals and this crick in my neck, I can tell that I'm not one of the newer models. I'm hoping to go to shul for the first time in Months (yes, capital M there) this Saturday - will probably take with me, will invite as well. Hopefully either Saturday afternoon or Sunday sometime my inlaws can take the little bug so that and I can enjoy some downtime. Mind, I have no clue what we'd do - play games, go to a movie, or just eat out without a kid. Maybe we'll do Chili's or something. Work is coming along, we decided to delay rollout until March 1st to ensure a good user experience. We're also looking at MySql (currently in use) vs. DB2 (which has a free version that allows 4GB RAM, 2 CPU and unlimited size DB, way better than Oracle/MSSQL servers). MySql's cluster/replication won't work for us (as it's an in-memory setup, and we'll have way too much data for that small of a space), and DB2 does support clustering (when you pay to upgrade, and when we got there I'm sure we could pay the licensing fee at that time for that feature). So it sounds tempting, but we need more info before we decide to port all of our data/SQL over to it. Wade's (my intern) researching into other options for MySql (if only because the other associated companies in the office have experience with it, whereas no one does for DB2). Well, back to work so I can finish up and get home.

Super Geek

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Outcast Genius 65 % Nerd, 69% Geek, 56% Dork

For The Record: A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia. A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one. A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions. You scored better than half in all three, earning you the title of: Outcast Genius. Outcast geniuses usually are bright enough to understand what society wants of them, and they just don't care! They are highly intelligent and passionate about the things they know are *truly* important in the world. Typically, this does not include sports, cars or make-up, but it can on occassion (and if it does then they know more than all of their friends combined in that subject). Outcast geniuses can be very lonely, due to their being outcast from most normal groups and too smart for the room among many other types of dorks and geeks, but they can also be the types to eventually rule the world, ala Bill Gates, the prototypical Outcast Genius. Congratulations! THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST

New Icon!

New Userpic! Haha. I adapted it from an Adium dock icon (a multiprotocol kick-aabsolutely wonderful MacOS-only :( IM client). Not that I have a MacBook. Although with our SIXTEEN HUNDRED BUCK refund (total), I could. Not that we're that irresposible. We're going to buy a Wii - come on! Well, that and put some money away for Isaac's college fund (which we'll be starting), possibly getting a couch, etc.. I'm getting a refund for the first time in like 3-4 years. I think Signal just didn't do the taxes right any year (which might also explain why we switched to a PEO to do things like insurance and payroll. Anyways, I've been busy at my new job. Can't say much yet, but we're going to be the real estate website for searching for homes. It's been fun trying to figure out what we want to do, setting up blogs, servers, databases, web applications, working with external companies to get the data, reviewing the site, etc.. I really hope we're able to get up and running this week, but we'll see (you can check www.housefront.com to see if we're up and running yet).

Cntrl-Alt-Del

If you're not reading Cntrl-Alt-Delete, you should. Start at the beginning - like all good things, this will take time. And make sure you have plenty of time - you can't read just one.

I just retook the beliefnet.com what's your religion quiz (I just googled it, sorry, no link). Here's my results: 1. Reform Judaism (100%) 2. Liberal Quakers (79%) 3. Sikhism (79%) 4. Baha'i Faith (78%) 5. Orthodox Judaism (75%) 6. Unitarian Universalism (74%) 7. Islam (73%) 8. Jainism (66%) 9. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (65%) 10. Neo-Pagan (64%) 11. Mahayana Buddhism (54%) 12. New Age (54%) 13. Hinduism (49%) 14. New Thought (44%) 15. Secular Humanism (44%) 16. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (43%) 17. Orthodox Quaker (43%) 18. Scientology (41%) 19. Theravada Buddhism (40%) 20. Jehovah's Witness (32%) 21. Taoism (32%) 22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (30%) 23. Seventh Day Adventist (29%) 24. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (27%) 25. Eastern Orthodox (24%) 26. Roman Catholic (24%) 27. Nontheist (20%) Interesting that Judaism is still up at the top. I guess answering that God is noncorporeal and singular would limit my choices :).

Ubuntu

Ok, color me impressed. I worked with Linux at my previous jobs, and certainly at home. I distinctly recall switching back and forth between Debian (got the job done, was rock solid, but was also older than the hills...) and RedHat/Fedora (had new stuff, looked cool, but had RPM hell and no good package manager (aptitude/synaptic-quality)). Eventually, I got a Mac, and I got spoiled for an easy-to-use UNIX-like OS. I stopped using "Linux" pretty shortly thereafter. Well, recently I've used my laptop more than my desktops, and it's a Windows laptop with a now-deleted OEM partition. I decided to put Ubuntu there, as it combined the best of both worlds - Debian's package management (Sun: pay attention. pkgsrc sucks broken egg shells.) and updated and modern packages. I expected to have to do tweaking - it's laptop, after all. I had a wireless network at home, and a widescreen on it, so I expected problems. After installing it and doing TWO, count them, TWO things, it's working fine. Because I have a Broadcom 1390 wireless card (the computer's a Compaq C304NR (C300 series) laptop), I had to unload the bcmwl5 driver, blacklist it, and compile the current ndiswrapper and install the windows driver from compaq under linux. Okay, that required loading g++-4.1, but in the future this shouldn't even be necessary - there is a driver in the kernel, it just doesn't know about this firmware yet. The other thing was the widescreen - just loading 915resolution using synaptic, a quick run of it told me how to set it, Cntrl-Alt-Backspace, and my X was nicely at 1280x800. I proceeded to load LogJam (an LJ client), configure GAIM, and connect to my wireless network. All in all, not too bad. I will have to play with this more - I am very pleasantly surprised with how they've changed the linux desktop market in the last year or so - these are major strides in usability.