A Cajun-Asian View

I am now running off of LUSFiber Internet. We picked out the top tier with its 50 Mbps symmetrical connection1. Of course, after getting it setup, I couldn't help but run some speed tests on it from speedtest.net2:

... I thought I was on 50 Mbps symmetrical? Oh well, I'll take it!3

1. 1. with 100 Mbps to connections inside the LUS fiber loop
2. 2. the system seems to want you to pick the Baton Rouge server, but I couldn't get the speeds past 5 Mbps down or up there. The Dallas, TX server, on the other hand...
3. 3. This definitely is strange, unless that particular server is considered to be within the "100 Mbps" local loop for some reason...

It's been a while since I last posted here. Just a short little update on a few things. First of all, I've changed employers; I'm currently developing in Flex, which has been an interesting and fun learning experience. I use Flex Builder 3 as my development Environment, but since the Linux Beta of it is somewhat limited at the moment, I've end up running the Windows version on Windows XP Pro in a virtualbox on my work laptop.

Now, my previous employer gave a Dell Latitude D8101 to me when I was let go. I wanted this particular laptop from the different laptops I could have picked as all of the components on it (wireless network, bluetooth, video card2) worked well with Linux and featured a 15.4" 1920x1200 resolution screen. I've found that screen real-estate is a real boon for development work, and I can more easily adapt a Linux environment to my work flow, even if I have to run Windows apps in a virtual environment.

The problem with this particular laptop was the processor was underpowered as a single core 1.8 GHz Intel processor, which I think was a Mobile Pentium 4. The laptop was also maxed out at 2 GB of RAM. Between running apache, postgres, and mysql for my various projects, plus Zend Studio for PHP work3 or Flex Builder in a virtualbox, I find the processor is overworked on a regular basis.

So it when it came down to it, getting another work laptop became a pretty high priority.

1. 1. And my iPhone!
2. 2. With the open source ATI drivers; though it didn't give me the full capabilities of the video card, it works well enough to run Compiz on it if I wanted to. I rarely did due to performance issues
3. 3. And I use the same Eclipse install for mucking around with Ruby

I've set the bar for myself to leave the house some time over the weekend1 and attend Lafayette CampFiber tomorrow. I've been getting a bit down and burnt out lately; hopefully this might get me out of that funk and maybe get me some ideas.

1. 1. instead of getting stuck at home playing certain video games or wasting time on the internet

Frustration defined: EA Games.

For some reason, EA Games thought that an auto-save function wasn't important. And Sim City 4 had a habit of crashing to desktop on me after one to three hours of play. Talk about frustration when after working on a city for two hours, getting so into the game that you forget to save. So after you feel like your city is taking shape, next thing you know you're staring at your desktop saying "What the Hell?". Then the pressing doom of the fact that the work you did for the past few hours just went bye bye in the blink of an eye. Just like that, what was a very fun game becomes the target of ire. I'm surprised I haven't destroyed the game disks yet (like I did with another EA game, NHL 2001...). For many years now, I'd find the disks, go and install them, play a few hours, hit the CTD, then uninstall the game and throw the discs back into storage out of frustration where they lie forgotten for some time until the next time I find them.

The Blue Screen Screensaver from Microsoft.

It looks quite convincing, too!

NoMachine's NX Free Edition Linux terminal client and the Synergy server don't seem to get along when running at the same time, at least on Linux. It seems to be a case of how the programs take over the mouse causes issues with sending mouse events through the NX Client. Not a big problem, as I can just run the NoMachine NX Client on the windows machine to the left while it's running the Synergy client without issue. Or shutdown Synergy server if I need to run the NX Client on the Linux notebook.

This is my current workstation setup. I pretty much just reorganized my room to set this up so I can access all of my systems without having to go back and forth around the room. I can control all three systems visible from the laptop in the middle thanks to Synergy, and I can access and control a Linux server I have off-camera to the left with NoMachine's NX Free Edition Linux terminal server.