Robot Monkey Pants

About a month back, I decided to surprise Tisha with a long weekend getaway for Valentine’ Day, our 15th together. What with the complexities of getting time off work and booking things in advance, she had to know we were going somewhere, just not exactly where. After finding the right schedule and her confirming the days off, I booked the trip to Kona, Hawaii, 6 days in total, 2 of them travel days. That left us 4 full days on the Big Island.

Last week I broke down and told her exactly where we were going in case she had any last minute things she needed to do/buy before we left. Also, I have a really hard time keeping happy secrets.

Our adventure started yesterday at noon Chicago time, when our very full plane left from Chicago en route to San Francisco for the first leg of the journey. An uneventful flight ensued, which is pretty much exactly the type of flight everyone is hoping for when they buckle up.

(Having flown on long haul flights overseas on Lufthansa, we’re both pretty spoiled because United just can’t match the experience. First Class was moderately comfortable, but the seats were still jammed in close enough that the person on the aisle has to get up to let the person on the inside get out. I’m just saying, Lufthansa is awesome.)

The flight from SFO to KOA was a bit longer, on slightly more modern equipment, and the crew on that flight were fantastic. Before depearture, the captain came out and introduced himself to everyone in the front of the plane, shaking hands, and personally thanking each one of us for flying with them. On flights to Hawaii, they play a “halfway to Hawaii” game where you make your best guess on the time when we cross the geographic halfway point between take-off and landing. They collect the guesses and the top 3 win a prize. Tisha came second, only 18 seconds off the actual point (on this flight 5:23:28 HST), and won a coupon for some chocolate covered Macadamia nuts. Tisha doesn’t like Macadamia nuts. I, on the other hand, LOVE Macadamia nuts. Real Winner…

This Guy!

One of the flight attendants, on finding out this was our first Hawaii trip, gave us a bottle of champagne to celebrate with. So tonight, we’ll make a toast under the stars.

The Kona airport is a weird experience for someone who hasn’t been there before. Specifically, because you’re never inside. It’s all open air, from the gates to the roadway, with sections that have rain cover but are still decidedly outdoors. I imagine this is old hat to people who’ve flown to warm climes often, but for a pair of cold dwellers like Tisha and I it was something new, and pretty cool.

The car rental counter kept offering me upgrades, so I asked about the convertible. They wanted an extra $70 a day for it, which seemed completely crazy. I played aloof until she got down to $30, at which point I offered $25 andwe called it a deal. I love convertibles.

Our place is enormous. We’re staying in a condo at The Shores of Waikaloa Beach. It’s got a full kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a giant wrap-around balcony (from which I’m writing this entry). Ostensibly there’s wired net I can pay for, but I’m happy to mooch off some other resident’s wireless.

We’re ab0out to go grab some breakfast, do a little exploring, and eventuall get some lunch. At 3 we’re going to the Mauna Kea summit, details here.

More later!

I have a special wish.

It’s not one that will ever be realized, but imagining it makes me happy in all my happy places.

I just wish that for every spam message that annoys someone, the person who generated that spam message gets a slap in the head.

Nothing violent, nothing injury inducing.  Just one of those smacks to the back of the head.  Like this.

The say that spammers spam because for every thousand people they annoy, they get one person who buys whatever they’re selling.  I just like to picture the results if those 1000 annoyances result in 1000 smacks to the back of the head.

Oh, and we should also get to slap the people who buy the spammer’s snake oil, too.

It’s a pretty picture, innit?

Dell is offering a nicely equipped Mini 9 for what amounts to $99 after rebate. The caveat is that you need to sign up for two years of AT&T broadband, at $60/month

Then you can turn it into a MacBook Nano.

In my Google News front page:

Now, what’s that picture over on the right?

Dude.

Within the gap that exists between Idea and Implementation lies danger.

Good Idea: Develop and design a shampoo made for men and marketed towards men

Bad Implementation: Name it “Manpoo”.

[Updated with info on the SDHC card.]

[Updated again with Sound.]

[Updated again with Sound.]

My first MacBook Nano attempt went well, but it was a rush job. I didn’t even order the right hardware to do the job right.

Then it broke. It stopped charging the battery. That was a hardware fault, and after I restored the Ubuntu install, I sent it in to Dell and they fixed it. But, I also ordered another one so I could do it right. Thus I now present the Right Way to do a MacBook Nano with Dell Mini 9 without spending too much money, and getting a nice solid-state Mac.

First up, order the right model. The hackers have managed to get sleep working on the SSDs that Dell installs, so you don’t need to replace the stock SSD if you order the 32GB one. But if you want as big an SSD as you can, you won’t be getting it from Dell. So I ordered the bottom-of-the-line unit with Bluetooth and Camera added. They had a sale at Dell, so the base machine (4GB SSD, 512MB RAM) was $299, plus my addition of Bluetooth ($20), and camera ($25), and I got it for $344 before tax. Currently, it’ll run you $394.

I then got a 64GB SSD (available here for $220), and a 2GB DIMM (here for $22). All said and done, we’re up to less than $620 for something smaller than a MacBook Air with the same amount of RAM and SSD (as originally sold), which would cost you a lot more. Now, granted, you get a much nicer keyboard, screen, and CPU for that price. However, nobody I know with a MacBook Air is using it as their only machine. In fact, many of the people I know with them are using them as a secondary laptop. And, for a secondary lightweight laptop, this seems like a pretty sweet bargain. On top of that, I have 3 USB ports, an ethernet port, and user replaceable battery, RAM, SSD, Wi-Fi.

You’ll need a USB DVD drive (which I cobbled together with an old disk enclosure and an IDE DVD drive), a Leopard 10.5 retail DVD (which I have), and the right boot disk, as outlined here.

Here’s a pic of the new baby next to the old one. The old one is a 16GB SSD with 1GB of RAM. It’ll get Ubuntu put back on it, and will inherit the 32GB SDHC card I have that won’t work on the Mac version (more below).

From left to right: Original Dell Mini, New MacBook Nano, glass of Maudite (yum)

You’re probably wondering what works and what doesn’t. Here’s the breakdown, using the 7.5 beta of the boot disk and OS X version 10.5.6.

It’d be easier to list what doesn’t work.

• Sound works, but you can’t mute for some reason. If you sleep the machine, sound will not work until reboot. [EDIT: There's now a hack to bring sound back after a sleep. Mute isn't there yet, but I think it's close.] [EDIT:] Sound is now fully working.
• Large SDHC cards don’t seem to work. My 2GB SDHC card works like a champ, but my 32GB card doesn’t. [EDIT: I lie. They work just fine with the latest SDHC kernel extension].
• Getting SD cards to survive a sleep/wake is in beta. I’m trying that kernel extension out now, but reports are promising. Worst case is eject the card before your sleep. [EDIT: Works like a charm.]
• The keyboard takes a little getting used to.

It’s pretty solid and very nifty. Now that I have the 64GB SSD, getting the 32GB SDHC card isn’t as important to me, but I’d still like to get it working combined with the 32GB SD, that’s a solid 98GB of storage.

The forums at MyDellMini are indispensible if you’re going with the Dell (which I like, since all the components are accessible, and the hacking community is robust).

Weapons, ammo, pants seized at Burress’ NJ home.

But I wish I did.

A few weeks back, I ordered a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 as a backup/spare laptop.  The order was inspired by Tisha’s laptop giving up the ghost unexpectedly, and us realizing that it would be nice to have some sort of viable spare in situations like that.

I didn’t want to spend a lot, and the price was just right on these things.  Plus, I’d learned back in October that there was a successful path to getting OS X running on those things, and it became a lot more attractive an option.

I ordered mine configured with Ubuntu, a 16GB SSD, 1GB RAM, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam.  For reasons that are not entirely clear to me right now, I didn’t include bluetooth.  In any case, after all was said and done, it came out to less than $500 shipped — a bargain!  Of course, a week after I ordered it, Dell started offering 32GB SSDs for an additional $25.  I have a knack for that sort of thing.

I ran it as an Ubuntu laptop over the Thanksgiving break, and I generally got by just fine with it.  I’d ordered a new 32GB SSD from a third party and was going to put OS X on that.  It arrived last night, and to my chagrin I discovered I’d ordered something that won’t fit my laptop.  (Want it?)  So I gave up, ordered the right part (which is on backorder) and plugged away getting OS X onto the existing 16GB SSD.

This guide is pretty much spot on.  Using a cobbled-together USB DVD-ROM (made from a desktop IDE DVD-ROM drive mounted into an old USB hard disk enclosure) I booted the custom boot ISO for this laptop, then used my 10.5 retail copy of Leopard.  For reasons unclear to me, I could not get my 10.5.4 copy to work — perhaps Apple changed the format of the disk.  No worries, the install went flawlessly, except the bit at the end where it says it failed, but that’s to be expected.

After another reboot, installing the 10.5.5 combo update, then running the remaining scripts on that page, I had a reasonably working OS X laptop.  The caveats are:

• Say no to installing two-finger scrolling.  It crashes the AppleScript with an error, and therefore doesn’t finish the install.  Subsequent runs of the tool worked when I said “no” to that option, and I got my sound.
• If you have a 16GB or smaller SSD, don’t try to sleep the laptop.  It isn’t terribly reliable and could lead to kernel panics.  I expect this to go away once I get my 32GB.
• I’ve read the SDHC support isn’t quite there yet.  The biggest SD card I have at home is 2GB, which I’ll try tonight.  I have a 16GB card on order, and will see how that performs.

Noteworthy:

• This thing can operate dual headed.  I hooked it up via VGA to the 19″ LCD on my desk at work, and got dual headed display with 1024×600 (native) on the laptop screen, and 1600×1200 (native) on the external.
• iChat works just dandy with the integrated web cam.  It’ll also use the webcam to snap your picture during setup just like a regular Mac.
• I’m not 100% sure, but I think the OS X install changed the MAC address for my wireless.  I need to investigate that more.
• Spaces, Time Machine, etc. all work as you’d like them to.
• It automatically swaps the Alt/Windows keys so the key next to the spacebar is Command (like on a regular Mac).
• I installed all the software updates that were waiting after the 10.5.5 Combo (except hardware-related ones like the Airport updates), and everything seems normal.
• Flash works great.  Youtube plays just dandy in its regular window.  Fullscreen might be a bit jumpy — I haven’t decided if it’s the machine or the net at this point.

Photos can be found here.

I also have a 64GB SSD on preorder.  I think with a larger SSD and some decent storage this could make a completely viable travel & light use laptop.  I couldn’t do serious work on it, of course.  I’ll be spending a good chunk of my weekend working on huge OmniGraffle documents, and this little puppy isn’t going to cut it for that.  I’ll use my real MacBook Pro or my beefy Psystar Mac clone for that work.

But for reading mail, giving slideshows, browsing web, and SSH sessions, it’ll do quite well.

Yesterday was positively historic, make no question.  And enough words will already have been written on how great this election outcome is by the time I hit “Publish” on this sure-to-be-overlooked-by-the-Pulitzer-committee piece, that I’m not going to waste time waxing eloquent on Obama’s win.

But I have some things I want to get off my chest.

First of all, I’m really proud to be a citizen of the United States right now.  As a country, we sent a message to the world — we get it.  We understand.  We’ll be worthy of respect again.  Despite the beliefs of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, and Sarah Palin, the opinion of the rest of the world matters.  The United States isn’t a world power just Because We Say So.  Without the respect of the other nations, the United States is doomed.  We took a big step.

I’m also very proud that my first ballot in a general election in this country went towards the first African-American president.  We made history, and my ballot, in its own little way, was a part of that.  For the first time since 1976 a Democrat received better than 50% of the vote.

It’s big, no question.

But I’m angry.  Angry that in this day and age, so many people still feel the need to pass some laws defining marriage as something exclusively between a man and a woman.  Florida, California, and Arizona passed initiatives to prohibit same-sex marriage.  This simply leaves me irate, andI’m just going to throw it out here right now, laid bare.  If you have no opposition to same-sex marriage for other people, this article is not speaking to you.  But for the others…

The only marriage that concerns you is yours.  That’s it.  If you’re opposed to same-sex marriage, then I recommend you find someone who is not of your gender and set your sights there.  You have no say in anyone else’s marriage.

If you think I’m wrong about that, I want you to pick up a dictionary.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.

Now, look up the word miscegenation.  It’s a mouthful, I know.  Got it?  Good.  Now, hie thee to yon encyclopedia, history book, or friendly neighborhood Wikipedia and look up “anti-miscegenation laws” and bask in the glory of what happens when people get concerned about other people’s marriages when they clearly shouldn’t.

As recently as three years before I was born, my marriage would have been illegal in Virginia.  My.  Fucking.  Marriage. To what end?  Why?

You think people of the same sex shouldn’t marry because it’s some sort of affront to God?  Perhaps your should remember that people once thought that of interracial marriages.  I’m sure some still do.  If you tried to pass an anti-miscegenation law today you’d be chased out of town with pitchforks, and rightly so.  If your affront to same-sex marriage comes from a church’s view or a quote from the bible, I strongly encourage you to read the rest of Leviticus.  Soon you’ll be keeping kosher, sacrificing animals and engaging in a spree of mayhem and biblical killing the likes of which have not been seen in eons.  So, unless you’re going to be taking everything in that book literally as The Word, and I mean everything, climb down off the pulpit and mingle with the rest of us heathen.

That the Supreme Court has not yet overturned these horrible laws is astounding to me.  Let’s look at what the Supreme Court said in its unanimous decision in the case of Loving v. Virginia:

Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not to marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.

Look at that.  “Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man.’”  Wow.  Just reflect on that for a moment.

The Fourteenth Amendment is that which ensured equal rights to all Americans — it abolished slavery and prohibited discrimination based on race.  It was part of the basis for striking down these horrible laws. When one couples this with one of my favorite amendments, the Ninth Amendment (”The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”), it is staggering to me that these laws can even stand up to a Supreme Court challenge.

I’m one of those people who believes, fundamentally, the concept of ‘marriage’ is not a matter for the government anyway.  If it’s some religious church ritual, keep it in the churches and out of the government.  But that’s across the board.  If what the government recognizes as the union of two people of the same sex is a “civil union”, then that should be the case universally.  Man/woman, man/man, woman/woman — if it’s a government official’s stamp of approval on said union, then by the very constitution, all those unions must be labeled and treated equally.

And if some church wants to have a holy ceremony with all sorts of pomp and circumstance and call that a marriage, fantastic.  But that ceremony should have no legal status.  It’s something the church does.  My first communion and confirmation weren’t government events logged anywhere, why should any other church ceremony?

I’m hostile, because I’m angry.  If I’ve offended you, I want you to consider the offense of someone in California who’s just been told their marriage is invalidated.  There is no logical reason to preclude a loving couple of consenting adults from joining together in a lifelong partnership.  And unless you’re one of the people in that couple, it’s really none of your business.

I’ll end with the comic from February.

Gay Marriage