The digestion issues I've been having for the past few months have finally been resolved. I started eating much less during the day, drinking more fluids, and watching my carbs. Sure enough, I feel great throughout the day and rarely have any digestion problems.

The weather has been beautiful the past few days. I went outside around 11pm last night, and it must have been 70 degrees. Most of the flowering tree's in the neighborhood are blooming and the breeze carries their flowery scent. I'm going camping this weekend up in Northern NH (Littleton to be exact) and I'm hoping it won't be too cold. I'm planning on working on the MyFMO project while I'm up there. Continue reading →

It's amazing that the complexity of most trivial things are rarely understood by the general public as a whole. How often do you wonder how those dollar bills in your pocket were made, or what security methods have been implemented to prevent counterfeit bills. What about the keys you use every day to unlock your house or car door (or the remote that magically moves something to unlock your car, while the car isn't even running!).

The more complex our daily lives become, the less we understand. A couple hundred years ago, the world began a transition. People began to specialize in a particular field. This allowed for great progression in every area. Someone dedicating all their time to perfecting and improving a single field very quickly improves that field, assuming they are passionate about their field and enjoy what they're doing.

Ever since I was very young, I have always been obsessed with grasping an understanding of how everything works, regardless of what it relates to. How was it made? Who are the people involved in the process of its creation? What is the history behind it? How would things today be different if it never existed? How would they be the same? These are the questions that automatically go through my mind when I think about something. Try asking yourself those questions with regards to something very trivial. A spoon, a watch, the wheel, the light bulb, nails, the gun, paper, ink, anything!

The more you understand how things around you work and how much is involved in making them work, the more you appreciate everything around you. I'm writing this post on my Blackberry while commuting to my job in Boston, jumping between subways and riding on the train. After thinking about the complexity of something as simple as paper, try thinking about a subway system, or a whole city for that matter (with its many many underground levels, there's an entire city underneath every city!).

I'm using a mobile posting feature of WordPress that allows me to write a post by simply emailing it, something my Blackberry was designed for. : ) Judging by how easy it is to blog this way, and the time for creativity I have while commuting, I expect I'll be doing this more often while commuting to Boston. I can write when I have time, click Save Draft when I need to stop writing, and easily resume writing whenever I'm ready. My Blackberry has a spell checker, and when I'm ready to submit the post, I need only click send. It couldn't get much easier than this!

April 8th, 2006

April 13th, 2006

Yesterday was my birthday. I'm 24 years old (in other words, I'm starting my 25th year). I believe birthday's need nothing more than a verbal confirmation that the day is here. I have nothing against exchanging gift's on birthdays (and many thanks to those who gave me gifts/cards). I have a very realistic outlook on life, and tend to see holidays and other "special" days as nothing more than ordinary days.

I came across Steve Pavlina's site and found an article he wrote on how to become an early riser. I'm going to get myself back into the habit of waking early. Check out some of Steve's other articles. There's a ton of good information on his site. One thing he says you need to do is quit drinking coffee during the day. Hmmm... I've already tried that, and failed.

The past few weeks I've been having digestion problems followed with tiredness during the day. I believe the digestion problems have something to do with internal changes happening in my body from the increased fat loss. My workouts have been consistent. I believe the tiredness is from being sick, even though I exhibit no visual indications that I'm sick. A few months ago, everyone around me got sick in one way or another, but every time I felt the cold coming on, I would keep my workouts on schedule and the symptoms would go away. I think it's still lingering in the background, but I'm not going to let itself manifest!

One of my tenants has about 12 cats in her apartment. She barely understands English. A few months ago, I went in the apartment and saw 5 kittens, born not more than a few days prior. I asked her if she was going to give any of them away, but she didn't understand me. I went back a week later and tried asking her again, but once again, she didn't understand me.

Today I went out to get coffee, but I wasn't sure where I was going to get it. I just drove in the direction that felt right, and just as I was about to pass my Ware St property, I glanced at my clock. It was 10:52am. I suddenly remembered that my tenant, the one with all the cats, had asked me to stop by and pick up the rent at 11am today.

Usually she doesn't ask me to come upstairs to get the rent, but her husband was filling out the name on the money orders, so she said to come up. The kittens were in the living room, and had grown a lot since I last saw them. I tried asking her again if she would give me one. This time she understood me. She asked me which one I liked and let me hold a couple of them. I finally saw one come around the corner, and asked her if I could have that one. She didn't want to give her to me because she said that one was hers. I agreed to take one of the other ones, but at the last minute, she said I could have hers.

OK, it's just an animal. But cat's have been demesticated by humans since the ancient Egyptians. Probably the best thing about having one as a pet, is how little they need to be taken care of.

I named her Debian, after my favorite Linux distribution. Don't like the name? Too bad. : )

I also added the Style Changer. I coded it a few minutes ago. I designed it in such a way, so that I can just upload a new style sheet and it will show up in the list of available style sheets. It uses cookies to remember what style you selected, so if you have cookies disabled on your browser, it won't work. I don't have any other completed styles at the moment, but I'll be adding new ones soon enough. I'll write a post anytime I add a new style.

So today I went to eat lunch at my favorite healthy restaurant, Life Alive, in downtown Lowell. I brought my laptop in, as they have free wireless Internet access. After turning on my laptop, I was able to connect to the WiFi network and get an IP address, however I had no connection to the Internet. I pointed my browser to http://192.168.1.1 in attempt to see if the configuration page for the router was reset to the defaults; it was. I logged in using the default blank password, and set a password for Life Alive. When I was done eating, I went to the counter to pay for my meal and informed Heidi, the owner, that the wireless network was down, and that it probably lost its ISP configuration. She asked if I wanted to take a look at the router in the back room. I said sure, but after I put a quarter in the parking meter, as it had already been expired for two minutes. I brought in a little network cable with me, plugged my laptop into the router, setup her ISP configuration (DSL), and had her WiFi network up and running in 5 minutes. As I left the back room and headed to the register to pay for the meal, she said it's on the house for fixing the WiFi.

As I walked out, I thanked her and thought about how cool it was that I just earned my $10 meal (food + coffee) in 5 minutes, doing something I love. Wouldn't it be nice to earn a free lunch like that every day!

Well, today went great. I learned a ton of stuff about AerChannel, the product Aerva sells and which I will be supporting. It was exciting to learn how everything works and to see the user administrative interfaces up close.

I nearly missed the train this morning. I couldn't find a parking spot anywhere, and I finally squeezed into a really small spot, leaving a few inches of room on either side. On the way back, I exited the wrong end of the North Station subway exit and had to walk around the block to get to the train. I got there at 4:41 and the 4:40 train had already started leaving. So I grabbed a coffee and caught the 5:10 train instead.

On the train home, which was very packed for the first 20 minutes, I used my laptop and read up about the rsync Linux utility. I decided to use it to create a backup of my entire /home/raam directory on my 2GB USB thumb drive. I created a script to sync everything to the thumb drive, and then delete the ~/downloads directory. The ~/downloads directory usually grows pretty big, and I really don't think it's necessary to keep that backed up. Any downloaded files I want to backup, I simply move to the ~/files directory.

Speaking about Linux bash scripts, I think I'll create a section on this site for those.

Today I start the new job in Cambridge, MA, at Aerva. Am I nervous? No, not really. I was told that I need to mentally prepare myself to cram a ton of information over the next few weeks, so I guess I'm a little nervous about doing that, but overall, I look forward to the experience.

I bought a new bag, a Ground Diabase bag (also check out the review at SNEWS), and I'm really liking it. I first saw it recommended in the Men's Health magazine. It's really comfortable and seems to have a pocket for everything. It will really come in handy carrying my laptop and a few books back and forth from Cambridge.

Over the weekend, I finally managed to install a clean copy of Linux on my laptop (a Thinkpad T41), without all the default applications that usually come with a full-fledged distro. First I tried installing a vanilla copy of Debian 3.1, but because the driver required for my wireless network card (ipw2100) doesn't come with the included 2.6.8 kernel, I had to download and install it manually. After spending a few hours trying to get the driver to work, I decided to download the latest CD image of Ubuntu Linux, a distro based on Debian. After burning the CD, I was pleased to see a new "server" option on the install menu that only installs the base system. After installing the base system, my wireless card was working perfectly.

I also took a ride to the ocean over the weekend. I think it was the first time I'd been there in over a year, and there was a ton of development going on. I noticed at least half a dozen new groups of condos, and a couple new houses. It was really nice sitting and listening to the ocean, feeling the breeze, and smelling the salt in the air. It would be nice if I could move closer to the ocean, so I could wake up every morning and go for a run along the beach. I'm thinking of at least making it a weekend habit to wake up early and go for a run there.

So I received a work order yesterday through OnForce (a marketplace that connects buyers and sellers of technology services), and the description of the work order was "Installation of Cisco 1721". I've never actually installed a Cisco router, but when I read the description of the work order, it sounded like all I needed to do was connect the CAT5 cables from the telco box to the DSU/CSU, and then from the DSU/CSU to the Cisco router, and finally to the switch. It sounded pretty easy for $100, so I accepted it. Now I really hate going to a job and not having any idea what things look like, and I wasn't even sure what a DSU/CSU was, so I used my favorite tool: Google!

Sure enough, in less than 45 seconds I had complete instructions, with pictures, of what I'd be doing. I did a quick Google search for "define: DSU/CSU" to learn what it was, and that completed my short research for what I needed to know to complete this job, which by the way, is located in the new Applebee's in Chelmsford.

This lead me to think about how I was using Google as quick learning tool, pulling on the enormous resources of the web. I recall a scene from The Matrix movie, when Trinity "downloads" instructions on how to fly a military helicopter, and within a few seconds she knows everything she needs to know.

With good searching techniques, fast learning abilities, and easy access to a huge database of wealth, is there a limit to how much an individual can be capable of learning?

I've been dying to manage a Linux server in a production environment. I have a 900mhz P3 computer in the server rack at WFCorp which wasn't being used, so I spent most of the day yesterday (Sunday) installing Debain 3.1 (sarge) and ever since then I've been installing and configuring stuff on it. I've got apache, PHP, and MySQL running.

I decided to try installing a Wiki to use for documentation purposes. I already have a bunch of documentation that I've written, however it's all on my PC and not accessible to anyone else. Since I'll be starting a new job soon, having an easy place to point people to, and a place I can write and publish new documentation, will really come in handy. I first installed TWiki. I really didn't like the interface, or the navigation. After spending an hour or two configuring it and playing around with the different settings, I was almost ready to give up on the idea of using a Wiki. Then I tried MediaWiki, which is what runs Wikipedia, the awesome online encyclopedia. I love it. It's easy to use and configure and is perfect for what I'm doing.

I've also setup Squid, which is a web proxy. I've only done basic configuration on it however I foresee the proxy being forced on all PCs in the building so I can control access to the web more easily.

Future plans for the Linux server are as follows:

• Configure iptables to use the server as the main firewall and gateway for the Internet
• Further configure Squid and setup a Group Policy that forces the proxy to be used on all computers in the domain
• Configure the server to allow VPN access to the internal network, allowing easy access to domain resources
• Configure DHCP to replace the current DHCP running on the domain's Windows 2000 Server
• Setup monitoring software to monitor network traffic

Wow. I had read in a health article somewhere that fat-free cottage cheese and jam is a good healthy snack. I already know that fat-free cottage cheese is really healthy because of its high protein content; however I've never been able to eat it plain. It just doesn't taste good. Regular cottage cheese with chives is really good though, but it has quite a bit of fat and sugar. When I heard about fat-free cottage cheese and jam (grape or strawberry), I really didn't think it would taste good. But today I decided to give it a try. I have some 100% natural, no sugar added, strawberry jam, and I mixed that with some fat-free cottage cheese. Wow, it actually tastes pretty good! Try it! It's an excellent snack to have a night if you start having hunger cravings (as I always do!).

If you happen by my site within the past 24 hours, you might have noticed the formatting of the text looked off. Somehow a plugin that I installed yesterday messed up the CSS formatting of the text and also disabled the line breaks that WordPress automatically inserts in. That caused all the text to look jumbled up.

Oh well. I'm just glad I fixed it. I spent the past hour trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Finally, as I should have done in the first place, I thought back to what the last change was that I made on the site. I thought I had checked the site after I installed the plugin yesterday, but I guess not!