GenY Is Bad With Money? Huh?

This morning, I came across an article about how GenY are financially inept. I’m not quite sure what to think. While I had some financial difficulty transitioning from college into working life, I can’t imagine the pervasive cluelessness of the person in the article. Wouldn’t you expect someone with a background in photography, a profession where most people either operate a small business or work as free-lance contractors, to maybe perhaps receive at university some education about how to run a small business?

Not to mention, I do not understand how you can get through four years on a college student’s income without even the vaguest idea of budgeting! My family had to do this before I even started college to determine if the student loans would be enough to cover the difference between what my parents & I could pay and what college actually cost. Any parent that didn’t bring their kids into that discussion would be missing the entire point of college as “adulthood-lite”. It’s not just about the freedom of living on your own; college is about steadily taking more responsibility for your own life. And the first part of that is being aware of the things you will one day be fully responsible for.

My own problems stemmed more from a lack of planning long-term financial goals. You know, if I want a new car in X yrs then I have to save $Y a month for Z number of months. I do agree with the article that good habits and financial planning aren’t taught enough in schools but I also feel you can get a good education in these topics without taking a class.

Just go to your local library and check out any 5 books on “Getting Your Finances In Order”. Read all five. Then, write a list of what you want to accomplish financially and develop a plan for those goals based on all five books. The odds are you aren’t going to want to slavishly follow someone else’s plan here. Most people’s “financial problems” are actually combinations of smaller problems like personal debt, bad investing habits, no savings or lack of goals. So your recovery plan should focus on the problems you actually have not what some book says to do. For example, it’s pointless to start saving for a house when your credit rating is terrible due to personal debt.

To me, financial planning is common sense and good planning tempered with a bit of knowledge. High schools would do much better to encourage long-term planning skills and the ability to self-teach. Both of these are critical towards successful financial planning. The financial world is very fluid so without the ability to not just make plans but adapt them to changing circumstances is critical for long-term success. If educators simply must to be more specific, perhaps high schools should focus on basic market principles? Don’t most schools teach economics? We were required to take a minimum of one semester which covered markets, running a small business and generating goods/services that customers are willing to pay for. Granted this was an AP Economics class but the non-AP students were still required to take an economics class that covered the same topics, just not as much of the theory of market capitalism. Was my experience really so outside of the mainstream?

Link to full post.

Public Service Announcement: “Eeyore’s Birthday”

“Eeyore’s Birthday”* is NOT really a kiddie event and has nothing to do with “Winnie the Pooh” aside from its name. It’s more like “Attack of the Unrepentant Hippies” than anything else. One of my coworkers did not know this. He had a bit of a traumatic experience with his wife and children this weekend. At this point, he’s really wishing he’d gone to the “Weiner Dog Festival” in Buda instead.

Remember, “Keep Austin Weird” isn’t just a motto to certain residents; it’s a way of life. This is one of the many reasons why although I enjoyed attending college in Austin, I live in San Antonio.

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Tim Burton + Candy = YIPPEE

I watched Tim Burton's "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory" last night....What wonderfully psychotic fun!! Tim Burton's offbeat sense of humor is perfectly captured in the movie and it was just a weird ol' good time. He also conveyed the darker aspects of the story prevalent in Roald Dahl's books much better than the Gene Wilder version. Not to mention I greatly prefer Danny Elfman's gloriously strange renditions of the Oompa-loompa songs.

There were of course wonderful actors in a number of bit roles. Two of the more recognizable ones: Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Bucket and Christopher Lee as Dr. Wonka (he was fantastic in his small role). The kid who plays "Charlie" is good in that stalwart, earnest way necessary for the role to work. But the unquestionably best reason to go see this movie is Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka.

When we did this play in high school, my classmates jokingly referred to the story as "Charlie and the Child Molester". Because it's really easy for Wonka to give off a creepy-creepy vibe instead of a cool-creepy vibe. And/or for him to more of cool gimmick as opposed to a fully-fleshed out person. I was really worried about Depp in the role (it's the only reason I didn't see it in the theater) because he strikes me as the type of actor for whom creepy-creepy would have certain appeal. What I forgot is that Johnny Depp first and foremost an actor who takes "obvious" characterizations then, gives them a unique and wonderful twists. He did just that with Willy Wonka. He's funny and tyrannical in some ways with both a unique sense of justice and a real emotional center covered in layers of social awkwardness. You never doubt Willy Wonka's a person with a history and flaws.

In conclusion:
Funny --> CHECK
Entertaining --> CHECK
Actually Well-Done --> CHECK CHECK CHECK CHECK

I really regret not seeing this in the theater because it totally warranted a $10 weekend movie ticket.

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Steampunk Zen Moment

Isn't this completely gorgeous?


A guy named Von Slatt made this Victorian-style desktop and posted some pictures from the process. There is some incredible detail....


*sigh* I have a distinct urge to go visit a metal-working shop instead of work...

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A Helix Question

Q: What could go wrong drawing a helix in CAD?

*some experimentation*


A: Lots of things...

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A World WIth No Internet....OhNoes!

It usually takes a couple of days for me to have withdrawal symptoms, but this isn't too far off the mark....

Link to full post.

The Great Rhythmbox Meltdown of 2008: After-Action Report

In addition to rebuilding my mp3 library, a fair portion of the last week has been dedicated to determining what exactly caused Rhythmbox to crash and how to correct my unfortunate mis-clicking with led to most of my music files ending up in the Trash bin (and overloading said bin). I will admit my aversion to Rhythmbox made me lose my cool when the problem first appeared and that greatly contributed to the scale of the problems. I thought this warranted a post because this problem was by far the most pervasive issue I’ve had with Ubuntu so far and solving it has/will required me to really consider different approaches to the problem(s).

See full post for my problems, the solutions and some future actions on my part to improve the situation.

I. Problems
Overall, I have three problems that started with the first one and got progressively worse:

1) Rhythmbox began importing non-music files from places NOT in the selected “Import” folder: For some reason, it began importing files from the Windows partition of my internal drive (totally separate drive and partition from the import folder). It just kept adding non-music files at such a rate that removing them didn’t really do any good and it slowed Rhythmbox to a crawl.

I decided to remove everything from my music library and start over. Unfortunately, I clicked “Delete” (send to trash) by mistake. This promptly sent ~2000 music files to Trash before I could initiate the “Force-Quit” for Rhythmbox (which was the only thing which stopped the transfer). Apparently, 1980 mp3 files are too much for Trash which led to my second problem.....

2) When “Trash” got overwhelmed it messed up Nautilus: Which makes some sense, since you access Trash through Nautilus. First of all, I transferred all the files out of Trash and placed them in a “Holding” folder I created for files that needed to be filed later. Once Trash was cleaned out, it recovered well. However, transferring the music files back into my library has slowed down because every so often Nautilus gives me errors when accessing my external HD.

When these messages occur, if I attempt to close and reopen windows to the same files locations, Nautilus doesn’t allow me to. Sometimes if I wait a while, I can access the files and sometimes, I need to restart my computer to regain access. The system logs don’t reveal anything out of the ordinary (error messages, etc).

3) I was getting a lot of glitches in various places: From just browsing my desktop to updating my system, it’s sluggish and prone to freezing up. None of this was occurring before and now, I can’t seem to get away from it. There’s no one thing just a general bugginess. This is quite frustrating.

II. Solutions

1) Rhythmbox was actually the easiest to fix in a way. I never liked the program and only started using it because the no-longer supported XMMS caused sound-card problems in Gutsy. I attempted a couple of times to reopen Rhythmbox in order to see if I could prevent it from importing non-music files in such great numbers...I had no success at all. I also have no idea why Rhythmbox would be retrieving files from a totally separate partition from the import folder shown under “Preferences”!

After some digging, I found I was not alone in having this problem. Unfortunately, none of these posts revealed a solution to the problem. Finally, I just removed Rhythmbox from my machine. I was worried the “Add/Remove” application would tell me I had to do it in Synaptic due to dependencies. However, it was not necessary at all; a few mouse-clicks and this frackin’ app was GONE. I’m currently giving other music players a try but haven’t decided on a replacement just yet.

2) Correcting the Nautilus issues was a great deal trickier. My main problem is that when I try to cut-and-paste the music files back into my library folders, after about 20-50 files Nautilus crashes. I cannot restart Nautilus (for any purpose) usually unless I restart my computer. Thankfully, I can still see the files when maneuvering from the terminal so I know they haven’t been erased or anything.

But I can’t move them from within the terminal because most of the music files have spaces in the files names which the terminal does not recognize. For example:

mv 01 Black Tambourine.mp3 /media/sdb3/MyMusic/Beck/

Doesn’t work because the computer thinks I’m trying to move 3 separate files: “01”, “Black” and “Tambourine.mp3”. Eventually, if I plan to use terminal more often I will need to convert the file names to have underscores (_) instead of spaces. This will be incredibly tedious for 2500+ files so obviously, I’m not doing it right now.

Fortunately, I’m not completely without options regarding the terminal. Opening Nautilus in root appears to work quite well. To do this, use the below command & provide password when prompted:

gksudo nautilus

Now, Nautilus still crashes after so many files but (1) the terminal displays error messages so I can get some idea of the problem and (2) root-Nautilus can simply be re-launched without reboot of the computer. Unfortunately, I got a bad case of tunnel vision and started relaunching root-Nautilus in order to rebuild my music library; this probably wasn't a good idea and I would recommend to anyone else to correct the problem so you don't have to use root-Nautilus (which is a bit dangerous)....

At this point, my problem is...”case 17 (too many open files)”. This error has occurred for other users: See here & here. It appears to only effect single cut-&-paste actions for music files. When moving a large group of files all at once, it doesn't cause a problem.

In the second link, there's a comment that describes the problem in technical terms I only vaguely understand but recommends installing the following package:

pulseaudio-esound-compat

The comment also provides a rather complicated command-line means of monitoring Nautilus to see if you're developing this problem.

Another comment mentioned opening a Nautilus window then going to the Edit-->Preferences-->Preview menu. For "Sound Preview" select "Never".

After I did both actions I resumed cutting-and-pasting to see what happened....IT WORKED! I moved 140+ files with no errors at all.

(Before I found these fixes, I performed some memory & disk checks; the results were inconsistent so I'm probably going to have to investigate that issue further.)

3) Miscellaneous Glitches. Interestingly greatly decreased once I removed Rhythmbox. It completely disappeared after I fixed Nautilus; apparently, it was using up memory trying to "preview" all those sound files. I have no idea why but I’ll be on the lookout for it reappearing.

III. Future Actions

This begins and ends with the most obvious failing: Human error. What could have been a Rhythmbox-only problem was greatly compounded by my poor reaction and subsequent mis-clicking on “Delete” instead of “Remove from Library” in Rhythmbox. While I’m really angry at myself about the panicking, it appears I’m not alone in making this mistake.

In the future, I need to be more careful about knowing which actions are irreversible and controlling my cursor better to I don’t accidentally initiate said irreversible actions. Also, I need to kill malfunctioning processes quicker. If I had killed Rhythmbox sooner, it would have transferred less music files and potentially not crashed my Trash folder.

I think this time I'll do some serious shopping around before selecting a music player for my desktop. In addition, I need to give a higher priority toward renaming my music files so they can be easily manipulated from the terminal. Also, I noticed that I somehow have 300 more music files on my portable mp3 player than I have in my music library. I have no idea how that’s possible as every song is saved on my computer before transferring to the player but it looks like I need to do a detailed review of all the files to see what’s going on there.

And finally, I need to figure out why my disk checks got sometimes passed and sometimes didn't. It might be a sign of a drive failure or memory wipe to come so I can't let it wait too long...

Link to full post.

Jefferson Memorial Dishonored....By Capital Police

Reading the news at lunch today, I came across this story about a group of libertarians who sought to commemorate Thomas Jefferson's birthday with an i-Pod dance session at the Jefferson Memorial in DC.

They were asked to leave by park police and one of them ended up arrested. The Ars article links to a YouTube video of the arrest. Now, by the poster's own admission it doesn't show the incident immediately leading to the arrest. Still, this is the video of them dancing (ends with the guards breaking it up):


Videos of the arrest and reaction here.

Why was this activity a crime? Why did the Capital Police consider it disruptive at ALL? These people were, as far as I can tell in all three videos, taking a moment to acknowledge Jefferson's memory in their own unique (and totally legal) way.

The cops mention noise but that's BS. "Normal" tourists on a crowded day surely engage in talking, clicking of cameras, wrangling of small children and other activities equally "disruptive" equal to or greater than what's shown in the above video. This group even took to care to got late at night so they wouldn't get in people's way. For all the good it did them...

While your personal tastes may vary, these people just wanted to dance in freedom to remember a man partly responsible for that very freedom. What the hell is wrong with that?!

The camera-guy said it best: "Read these walls you guard!" The Capital Police would better serve the American people by broadening their focus from protecting merely the physical reminders of our country's founding to developing some respect and guardianship for the philosophical, cultural and legal traditions that give meaning to these memorials.

PS - I'm glad these guys were able to take their friend being arrest so calmly. They were joking a little and pretty relaxed considering how ridiculous the guards were being. Also, kudos to whomever cracked the best joke...."I thought 'Footloose' was just a movie!" :)

Link to full post.

Rhythmbox Woes

Due to the soundcard isues, I had very reluctantly quit using XMMS to play music on my computer. I don't like Rhythmbox but at least it worked. Well......that was a bad plan.

Last night Rhythmbox went KA-BOOM in a major way; I can't even open it without bringing my entire system to a screeching halt. It keeps trying to import all these non-music files on my external hard drive including back-up Windows files I saved on a different partition than my music library. WTF?

Double-unfortunately, during my "panic" phase I attempted to remove the library files so I could re-import them. I accidentally clicked "Delete to Trash" and it crashed my "Trash" folder & file manager. In addition, Nautilus is the only major graphical file manager that doesn't allow you to "Remove from Trash" and send files straight back to where they came from.

Result: I have to spend this weekend recreating my music library by cutting & pasting over 1900(!) music files. AND, I have to get Rhythmbox under control. AND, I'm probably not going to be using it again if I can avoid it. Perhaps it's time to give Amarok or Exhaile a try?

Rhythmbox:

Link to full post.

Charlton Heston Has Passed Away

While updating my BlogRoll, I came across this piece of news. How terrible! He was such a wonderful actor and an interesting person. I always got the feeling the man loved throwing curve balls.

Reasons Why Heston Rocked:
1) "A Touch Of Evil"
2) The Trifecta of "Omega Man", "Soylent Green" & "The Planet of the Apes" - These were very much the founding movies of my sci-fi geekdom
3) He Supported Gun Rights - As a big believer in self-defense, I love that he took a stand for it when it wasn't cool.
4) His cameo in "Wayne's World 2" - Shows what a real movie star can do with one scene.
5) "The Agony & The Ecstasy" - I love watching him & Rex Harrison snipe and banter and show how these two people kind of grew on one another.

Link to full post.

Misc. Work on Personal Enrichment Goals 2008

While I did well earlier in the year with getting PE stuff done, I’ve been slacking off lately. So, I decided to use this weekend to catch up a little bit. Along with the discussed work below, I updated my Calender in Thunderbird to reflect all the tasks and due dates I’ve set for myself. Here’s the recent progress:

1) Research for Disaster Kit(s): I spent a few hours browsing on-line for ideas on what to include in my kit(s). Right now, I plan to create a home kit, an evacuation (to-go) kit and an automobile kit for keeping in my car. There’s several places to go for ideas on what to include. Some of the most helpful:

Red Cross Disaster Planning Guides – The First Place to start. Not just for home planning. They have a very good .pdf for planning your workplace kit.
How To Assemble A Home Disaster Kit - Very Comprehensive List
FEMA's “Plan Ahead” Guide - Not Just checklists but they also have "Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness" (available online here).

Now, I have some of the items on the home list. I need to go through them and see if any of the perishable items need to be replaced. Also, I need to purchase a storage container for the home kit and a couple of backpacks (for evacuation and auto kits).

2) Teach Myself: Controls Engineering: Previous to this weekend, I haven’t even started this one. I wrote myself a lesson plan for the first 2-3 chapters of the (new!improved!) book I’m using with some reading assignments, problems and due dates. I didn't want to go any further ahead because I want to see how quickly I get through the problems from the second chapter; the rate of problem-solving will probably be the biggest factor in how far I get through the book.

After some consideration, I decided to set aside a 2-hr block of time on Wednesday evenings for “class” with a 2-hr “study/homework” time on Sundays. One area of concern of me is the lack of laboratory work. The original class I took in college had several lab sessions involving equipment & software that I cannot easily or cheaply duplicate. I did some browsing on-line for recommended free tools for controls work. The best option I found was Octave which I'll have to teach myself how to use concurrently with the “Controls Engineering”. My schedule reflects that.

3) Maintain Weblog with Improvements: I’m a little disappointed in myself on this one. The last two months, I’ve fallen below my target goal of 20posts/month. As you can see, I won’t allow this failure to continue for 3 months in a row. Also, I’ve added a “Last.FM” playback feature showing the last several songs I’ve listen to. For a while now, I’ve been considering on expanding my Blogroll. However, the list of blogs and online journals I read is huge and changes often. So instead I changed "Favorites to “Places I Like” and added links to places I go most frequently. These are not likely to change in the foreseeable future In addition, I’ve added “Other Places to Find Me” which is small right now but I hope to add more to it as the year progresses.

Link to full post.

Movie: "Nim's Island" & Punk Music Recs

"Nim's Island" - Very funny & cute movie. I saw this on a whim after coming across a trailer on YouTube this afternoon. I mean, Jodie Foster & Gerard Butler in the same movie!? I'm there! Jodie Foster was hilarious playing an agoraphobic writer. And Gerard Butler did wonderfully in his two(!) roles. Tons of laugh-out-loud moments and just a great little family movie. It's not just me who thinks it either. The theater was packed and everybody left saying how good the movie was.

PS - Go to this BoingBoing Post for some fantastic punk music recs! Read the comments for a glorious variety of world punk bands. Seriously, with descriptions like "The Pogues vs. a crazy circus sideshow band", how can you resist?

PPS - "Start Wearing Purple" is my new theme song.

Link to full post.

Downtown San Antonio

While downtown for the “Race-for-the-Cure” last Saturday (see post here), the race route passed by some absolutely wonderful buildings. I don’t know if the buildings are because of the tourist industry or we have a tourist industry because of the buildings but downtown San Antonio is simply wonderful for walking around.

Teaser: It is important that you understand that we aren’t afraid of color in San Antonio.

It’s a somewhat frontier-style building that is about a 1000x better than anything that ever existed in an actual frontier town.

It wouldn’t be a trip to downtown San Antonio without some mention of the RiverWalk and its associated facilities. Here’s one of the older buildings which now houses a department store:

Wonderful details and manages to be snazzy without that tacky Vegas approach**.

Most downtowns have some statues and such. With these works of art, you can always tell where traditional gives way to modern:

Is it a polymerase reaction frozen in place as a homage to our UT Medical Center? Is it a giant tomato-basil fettuccine noodle representing the wrath of the Pastafarian God? But most importantly, why is it blocking my view of the gorgeous red-brick shopping center?

It seems obvious in retrospect but I had no idea San Antonio even had a “Visitor Information Center”:

Or that it was so nicely done. The inside was all plasma screen TVs and slick displays. Oddly, even though the lights and TVs were on, they didn’t appear to be open. I didn’t see anyone inside. Very welcoming guys.

When I had jury duty last year, I mainly went to the new courthouse building. However, San Antonio actually has a couple of older court buildings. This is one of them:

Although it’s a funny angle, this building is actually pretty intimidating. Also, the metal in the windows kinda ruins the “historic” vibe of the Greco-Roman style.

We passed by several ritzy hotels, most of which just looked like your typical ritzy hotels. However, one of them would do well as the setting of a horror movie (“Gargolyes on Vacation: Showdown at the Alamo” coming to a Sci-Fi channel near you). Check out some of the vaguely Gothic detail work:

Even the front awning could look creepy in the right lighting.
This is more cheerful, patriotic, Saturday morning lighting.

I have no idea what this building is but after the “Post Office/Courthouse”, this was the most intimidating. It had too many windows. Otherwise, I’d say it resembled some kind of fortress.


Now one of the odder buildings (in terms of its use), “The Scottish Rite Cathedral”

This is the Greco-Roman style done right. Also, it’s incredibly detailed. I didn’t have time to stop and take pictures but the building is covered in these little Masonic touches. Maybe it’s just my Scot-philia but I found it a very friendly building.

Our final building is one of my all-time favorites. It’s this lovely Lutheran Church:

I’m a sucker for detailed brickwork and the colors here are just lovely.

My one architectural/artistic disappoint of the race was the lack of graffiti. Last year, we walked through this underpass with all this gorgeous graffiti art. Unfortunately, this year they’d painted over all the artwork with this boring, ugly flat yellow-white. Yuck. So, I conclude with this picture from last year’s race:


*I mean “Western” in the cowboy sense not the “Western” civilization sense.
**There is a time and place for the Vegas approach. Ex - In Las Vegas at some other time.

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Antarctic Creatures of the Deep

Via BoingBoing, check out these pictures of recent finds in the Antarctic. Two of my favorites from the article:

Imagine going through life as nature's toilet plunger....

This creature appears remarkably OK about it.

Three Words: GIANT. SEA. SPIDER.

GULP. This horror movie script practically writes itself.

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