Aaron Baer

NASA has just released some information regarding what happened to the Earth after the tsunami causing quake a few weeks ago. The North Pole moved an inch.. and the whole planet changed shape a bit... that's incredible. What's also incredible is it's something that really happens all the time. Check out the short article for some more info.

Oh sad sad day.. Brad and Jennifer are spliting. After 7 years even.. say it ain't so.. anyway... Busy freakin' week this week. Things have shimmied into overdrive at work. It was a good week there though I was able to stay on task and have everything going smoothly for my scheduled development tasks. Next week starts the nitty gritty but I think it's going to go quiet alright this year. Things are definately more on the ball than the last few years as far as the business getting decissions made and being proactive on making this year go well.. But enough of that.. I got the Pod today.. so now I guess I'm part of the Pod People. I've been Podified. Awesome device. She will be named "slyPod". Living life with a real time sound track is something that I've been waiting for now for a long time. Of course I ran into the normal issues that I see around the web regarding using the iPod mainly with linux. I thought that I was going to be able to leave it formated hfs+ and was successfull the first night copying tracks and files but the next morning I ran into it. The whole can only mount you read only and wanting me to fsck.hfsplus it. There wasn't anything wrong with it.. I could mount it fine to Danielle's iBook.. and I found that there currently just isn't a work around for linux. So I reformated it fat32 and now it works with everything. Must get three things; firewire for the laptop I use 95% of the time, a protective cover for the devices itself, and some freakin' better headphones. I tell you.. you'd think they'd ship better ear buds right off for a device that cost so much. But they're mediocre at best. I'm sure there are reasons they do it that way.... but as I said before... anyway...... So today Eden's at school until 3:30 and I'm going with Danielle to help here pick out some more stuff for her computing environment. Printer.. speakers... mouse... ear buds... you know the usual stuff. That should be fun. I'll have to look around for some accessories for my new slyPod too. So I think I'll chill out a bit more... Lots of things to take care of this weekend. It must be the busy season.. Because I'm busy!

Fun weekend.. New Years 2005.. another year gone by.. I hope that this is the start of a good one. It seems so so far. Lost of things to look forward to. This weekend has been great. Staying home, hanging out with Eden, doing projects around the house. For New Years we went to sushi with Danielle and Matt then headed back to the house and just drank, played games, and hung out listing to music the whole evening. Really it turned out to be a great time. Projects accomplished so far around the house this weekend. Patched the gapping hole in the hallway that was left over from the bathroom remodel. Will have to prime it later tonight or tomorrow. Hung Coat Rack in same Hallway after the first attempted ended with the coats on the floor. This time it should stay up. Also, I hung the blue shelf in the Studio. That also should stay up. Things left to do.. Touch up paint the ceiling in the bed room. Paint and hang the shudders for the bedroom. Paint the newly patched hallway wall. I'm sure there's more. oh yeah.. Laundry.. damnit.. there's always Laundry.. We went on a great walk today. I'm sure Nellie was ready for it. I think she was a little stir crazy this morning. But we went to the Park .. then back to the house for some lunch and then on another walk. The weather here was awesome today.. Sunny, blue skys and mild.. 40ish.. I'm in the bling now baby.. The holidays left me able to finally purchase the long awaited geek toy that I've been hoping for for a long long time now. Thank you so much to Mom, Dad, Sarah and Fred.. I ordered it on Friday so I don't have it yet but that hasn't keep me from checking their website to see if anything new is happening with the order. (It's a holiday weekend even.. I know.. I know.. but I'm a bit of a freak sometimes.. ) Yes.. an iPod.. So one of the other things I've been checking out this weekend is the whole podcast revolution. Interesting that it takes getting an iPod to check out this media because it really is independent of having an iPod.. it just shares a name. Anyway.. Not to many Linux clients out there that automate the process but after trying a couple we'll see how bashpodder works out. I think I'll have a beer.. want one?

This is a great article. It made my lunch extreemly enjoyable today. It's an article from the Science and Technology section of the Economist about Albert Einstein's miracle year, 1905. Basically in 1905 he released 5 papers regarding research and discovery that he had made in the previous years and was ready to unleash them onto the world. So basically in 18 months he "he showed that atoms are real (it was still controversial at the time), presented his special theory of relativity, and put quantum theory on its feet." If you have a flare for science and discovery I think you'll really enjoy the article. Even if you don't have a large amount of technical knowledge you should still be able to understand and be amazed at what Einstein accomplished and how it's been influencial even today. My three favorite quotes: "The second consequence is that the world is “non-local”. That is to say, quantum interactions occur instantaneously over arbitrarily long distances. What is more, there is no mechanism in quantum mechanics which explains how particles “communicate” to match up their quantum properties in this way. For example, if one particle is spinning in one direction, its partner must spin in the opposite. However, the first particle does not have a definite direction until it is measured (Schrödinger's cat again), so the second particle cannot “know” how to point until a measurement is performed on the first particle, by which time the second particle may be millions of kilometres away. Einstein termed this “spooky action-at-a-distance”." ... "The idea of an invariant, which, largely because of Einstein, became central to physics in the 20th century, is something that stays constant under various transformations. A circle is invariant under rotation, because it looks the same no matter how it spins. A square, on the other hand, is invariant only under rotations of 90°. Rotate it through a right angle, or a multiple of a right angle, and it is indistinguishable from its unrotated self. Rotate it by any other angle, and it will appear different." ... "Ultimately, it was the same skill in discernment that led Einstein to the general theory of relativity. One of the consequences of the speed of light being invariant is that nothing can travel faster than it. Einstein realised this in his first relativity paper of 1905. He did not immediately see another consequence, that the invariant also implied that mass and energy are interchangeable, the rate of exchange being defined by the speed of light and governed by the one equation in physics that most people have heard of: E=mc², in which “E” represents energy, “m” mass and “c” the speed of light. This equation, whose consequences were played out in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, occurred to him a few weeks later, and he published it in another paper, which he wrote up in November 1905."

What an awesome day so far. Woke up earlish to take the dog's out. Porter is a handfull to say the least. Beautiful, interesting, spastic. We're dog sitting him this weekend for Ian. He goes home tommorrow. I did get to play with some fun stuff today though. Mostly it was a day in the pajamas and that worked out great. I started the day putting together the Mark I that I was talking about in the previous post. Unfortunately the LMR-400 that I got from Rick this week didn't have the correct connectors on both ends. Didn't even think about it at the time but it makes sense now. Guess I'll have to make a trip down on Monday to exchange it for what I need. Hopefully he'll have it. We might have to make it. The rest of the day I spent tricking out Danielle's new 12" iBook. Let me tell you what this is one nice laptop. I've used OSX and these laptops quiet a few times in the past and always was interested and impressed. Spending a day with one.. I'm sold. Typing this right now on it. I'll tell you what though, I'm not worried about leaving my wondeful Gnome and ass kickin' Linux any time soon. You can bet on that. But Eden will have one of these (probably 14") in the next few months. And I'm sure to spend some time on it that's a bet. Listening to Green Day and hanging with Eden and doing some holiday projects. We went to dinner at HoHo's tonight. Delishious.. Just about the perfect place to do dinner on a night like this. They were packed when we left. A Good Day inDeed.

Sitting here.. enjoying time.. Glad that the week is over and that an extra day is available for relaxation. Friday is a day off. Awesome. Jeremy and Meghan are coming over tomorrow night for dinner, movies and fun. And I have a ton of fun new wireless gear to play with.. I'm building a network for a house in North East Portland. So this week I ordered and received an awesome device called the Mark I together with a 9dbi omni with downtilt and all the other fixin's that go along with that it's going to be one sweet setup. Look for pictures later this weekend. I also picked up the rest of the gear to help Meghan set up the Mother Ship with a wireless network. So I'm going to have to work out some time to get over there to finish up that. I'm sure to talk with her tomorrow about it. Tis the season.. People are doing.. having.. and being.. I think I'm just going to sit here and be right now. Late. Oh by the way.. Eden and I went to the coast last Friday. It was beautiful.. great weather and a wonderful sunset.. check it out

The Personal Telco Project Holiday Party was last night. It was absolutely the best party to date. Hosted at Nocturnal the music was great, the food was plentiful and the drink was on. Thanks to everyone who was able to make it and thanks to the awesome awesome people at Nocturnal. I also took care of registering slyness for the next year. _sweet_ , don't have to worry about that for quiet a few months now. Today.. Presentation run through for the official presentation Jim and I are giving tomorrow to the department here at work. Also, we have our Department Holiday party today. That should be blast.

Got my stitches out this morning. All three of them. No big deal. In and out of the Doctors office. Then hung with Eden for a bit. Went to get a baggle on Hawthorne and a killer Cinimmon roll from Bowers Bakery. Since then I've been taking care of work stuff. Nothing super fantastic. Setting up some oracle stuff on finweb and doing some Truecomp configuration stuff for Matt. I'm going to start working on some more detailed formating for the presentation Jim and I are giving on Wednesday. The Personal Telco Holiday Party is tomorrow night. Guess I'd better figure out what I'm going to bring. Pot Luck at Nocturnal. I also have to get my music set together tonight to. I've been making a list of tracks that I want to include I'm thinking 5 tracks will be enough. I also still have to make file final updates to the Mississippi project wiki. Michael is going to have to start writing that grant soon and I'm sure there are more details I'll have to get him. Blar.. OK. back to it.

Alright.. Tonight I'm just hanging out. This week has kept me busy. Eden's been out of town visiting her mom. I guess I've been running around. Saturday night was constructive. Jimmy and Rob came over and we worked on a couple of Personal Telco thing. We put another nic in cornerstone and worked on some systems for the coming PKI. Sunday I went with Mickey and Jeremy to see The Incredibles and then we went to Dots for beers and a sandwhich. The movie was excelent. I would say Pixars best. Not quiet sure yet what Disney is going to do for animated movies with out them. Monday.... I actually stayed home Monday night. Nothing extravagant to report. However, Tuesday I was greeted by a message on my phone when I got home from work. "Dude, T-bone's back in town." Which of course lead to a bl00d bath of Halo2 amoung other terrible things. Wednesday. Personal Telco Board Meeting. Excelent. Hangin' after at Darrin's. Priceless. Tonight.. _chill. Need to do some cleaning. Get a start on some things now so that I don't run out of time. I've been brushing my teeth and feeding the animals. Living.

OK.. so things are coming together nicely. I'm still not excited about all of the formating, fonts, colors and what not.. But it's definately coming together. And wordpress's interface is fast and easy to work with. Lets try and upload a photo shall we? Eden's heading to Florida for the week. God's speed Buck. RIP.