graduation time!

my oldest niece graduated from high school this past saturday. with honors and stuff! she’s one smart cookie. and she’ll be attending the university of tennessee. i am so proud of her! she is so amazing! great job, k1!

changing desktops

when gnome 3 replaced the favored gnome 2 back a few years ago, many got off the train and started using alternate desktop environments such as kde or xfce. i stuck with the new gnome trying out and even liking their new design.

gnome 3.2 polished up some first-gen bugs and made things a little better. i was getting more accustomed to the new feel. sure, i missed some customizing features for which gnome was known, but i learned to be productive with the interface.

gnome 3.4 brought even more new features and continued to fix things. i was still happy.

but then gnome 3.6 arrived and although it had more nice things, i started noticing a trend toward what seemed closer to ubuntu’s unity or mac’s interface. i became a little concerned about the direction gnome was headed.

then i previewed gnome 3.8. the feature highlight video i watched gave me the desire to want to try it out, but in doing so another small feature was removed: terminal transparency.

gone.

what? why?

it’s very minor, but a function i use/rely on regularly for work. on a smaller laptop screen, window switching is time consuming. being able to see through a terminal window to read data saves time.

it is a small thing; but when you start to realize so many small things have been taken away already, they start to add up. you begin to see you are being spoon fed like…like an apple user.

the choices are going away. which is why i have already switched to xfce. totally customizable. choices again.

very nice.

melinda’s country kitchen

i decided this morning to try out a local place for breakfast. i’ve been to melinda’s fir lunch before and like it a lot. i had always wanted to come back for breakfast. on my friday off, i made the trip over. it’s not that far for me, actually. in the shopping center on hill behind burger king and starbucks (on cedar bluff) is where this little restaurant is nestled. the food is very good and the style is what you might find at a diner, but when you realize melinda is from south africa, “country” is the same as cracker barrel.

the items on the menu you’d recognize, but it really is more of a home-cooked meal than you’ll find anywhere outside of home. this morning’s breakfast was very good. light and fluffy pancakes, eggs, toast, and bacon…all very good. (the bacon passes my approval with flying colors, for what that’s worth.) but the signature item for me was the hashbrown casserole. i am not a huge fan of this item anywhere. i mean, fried potatoes taste the same no matter who cooks them, right? not these. i really enjoyed the flavor of these. can’t put my finger on the distinguishing ingredient, but i liked them!

melinda is a cheerful hostess who welcomes you when you walk in. i like the accent, of course, since it’s a familiar one to me. the place is a quiet getaway if that’s what you want to start your day. you can visit her facebook page for more information: http://facebook.com/MelindasCountryKitchen

happy birthday, sis

don’t see that everyday

it was down about 10 minutes. good thing i didn’t need to buy anything!

DCMA needs to die

we can thank bill clinton for signing this stupid law into effect. and now the stupidity has taken new levels. the library of congress has declared that unlocking mobile phones to be illegal under the DCMA.

mike stoltz from the EFF (electronic frontier foundation) sums it up in this quote to engadget:

“This shows just how absurd the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is: a law that was supposed to stop the breaking of digital locks on copyrighted materials has led to the Librarian of Congress trying to regulate the used cellphone market.”

for most people who are don’t care about using their phone other than given to them by the carriers, this will pass them by quietly. for the rest of us who would rather actually own the devices for which we paid money, it’s huge red flag.

what i would hope for is that this is the beginning of decoupling phones from carriers. as in the rest of the world, i can walk into an electronics store and buy a phone, any phone. then i can walk across the street to a carrier, any carrier, and get an account and a sim card, plug that sim card into my new phone, and it all just works.

i see two beneficial aspects to the customer:

1. it causes phone manufacturers to make phone with features that are competitive with other phone despite carrier contracts. that means more phone sales for the companies since carrier contracts don’t include limited phone selections at the beginning. competition between mobile device companies increases for better phone offered on any network, opening the pool for sales.


2. it causes the carriers to improve their networks rather than bank on the phones to bring in their customers. that means they have to focus on their networks and services rather than looking to lock people into their contracts based on a phone selection. competition is encouraged, including lower rates for us.

now, maybe i’ve not looked at this completely or correctly, so i welcome feedback to correct any misconceptions. but if this policy works for the rest of the world, i could work for us. and i would say it should be the case for our mobile device market.

related articles:
• CNET: Unauthorized unlocking of smartphones becomes illegal Saturday
• Ars Tecnica: Unlocking new cell phones to become illegal on Saturday
• Engadget: Unlocking new phones now banned under DMCA, the EFF weighs in

winter weather (finally)

we have finally started getting some of the winter weather we all love…well, that i love. most of the people who live in knoxtropolis want tropical beach weather year round. i have still not figured out why they don’t enjoy seasons.

i took some pictures. check them out.