Well, I’m half way through my second week of work (time flies!). I’ve got to say, I like it here, though it is a bit lonely. It’s hard not seeing my friends and my family every day, but things will get easier as time goes on. Fortunately, I’ve managed to find a way to get back home to see my brothers and my little sister (although my parents are out of town) and my friends.
In the meantime, I’ve been keeping busy. Work, of course, takes up most of my time. In the evenings, I’ve been hacking on Galago and the Notifications specification Mike Hearn and I are proposing for freedesktop.org. It’s almost complete, and I’m going to run it by the Eventuality and Kopete guys and some other people before proposing it to freedesktop.org. We think we’ve managed to create a decent specification, although we’ll see how its adoption goes.
I finally have my DSL and DirecTV set up. The speeds on my DSL connection are nice. I’m pulling about 310KB/sec download and about 42KB/sec upload. Compare that download to the 150KB/sec I was getting back home. Mmmm…. Of course, there’s always at least one problem. I’m paying for the business account at SBC, which means I should be getting 5 static IPs. However, they’ve now switched to “sticky IPs” and PPPoE for new accounts. My DSL modem is being a pain and only letting me use one of those IPs. On top of that, it seems I can’t reach some sites (such as suprnova.org) and nothing can reach me anymore. It was all working a couple of days ago, so I’m hoping it’s temporary. *Sigh*
DirecTV was a nightmare. I mentioned in my previous entry about most of it. I eventually went to Best Buy and signed up for a new DirecTV account threw them. The 4 receiver deal only works if you pay for all receivers up-front, and then activate them for awhile, and then they’ll reimburse you. Great. I don’t even have that many rooms or TVs. I just wanted free hardware :). However, they had a 70 hour DirecTiVo for $100, so I just bought that and took the new, free multisat dish home with me.
Since I wasn’t allowed to mount the dish to the apartment anywhere, I went to Radio Shack and bought a tripod. It’s a good little tripod. Sturdy enough. About the right height. It just didn’t have a mast for the satellite dish, that’s all. Which, you know, is kind of a pain when you’re in a hurry to set up the DirecTV. So I did what any self-respecting geek would do. I hacked something together, and this is what I came up with: The Elephant Mount.
Yeah, it scares me too. I’m choosing not to touch it, but it works! My new TiVo is nice and happy, recording my shows. My old DirecTiVo is sad, sitting there next to the new one.. I’ll find a use for it though, in time.
Oh, and I bought one of those Pur faucet-mount water purifiers, since the water in the bay area tastes like concrete. The filter doesn’t look so bad sitting on the faucet, really, and should really improve the taste of the water. Except, despite the big “Contains: 1 Microfilter” label on the box, there was no microfilter inside! I’m going to have to make time now to buy one. Another $15 down the drain. Meh. I’ll be, erm, “borrowing” some from home when I visit, since we haven’t used a water filter there in a long time.
Back to the notification spec. I want this done asap.