Grub? No Thanks

It's great having a job.  No, really. We get to do stuff that we didn't get to do when I was gainfully unemployed. You know.... stuff like eating at restaurants.  Not that we do it a lot - we like about four restaurants and stay home otherwise because we like our own cooking way more than most restaurants.

So out we went on Friday night, as a treat.  The wife wanted a burger and I wanted barbecue, so we went for burgers.  There is a new Wawa (convenience store, for those of you west of Pennsylvania) in town (no, we didn't eat there) but they're adding restaurants to the Super Wawas. Super Wawa is differentiated from regular Wawa by some feature or other; probably the amount of traffic multiplied by the difficulty of accessing the store, divided by locating parking. And gas (hopefully not the kind you get from food).

But wait!!!! The stupid tire indicator in the car was lit. Until I looked in the manual, I didn't know we had a stupid tire indicator. It was right there, under Stupid Tire Indicator. It turned out to indicate that the stupid tire needed air.  Oops, it actually indicated that A stupid tire needed air (but not which stupid tire needed air). Off to the dollar air machine, after which I could not locate my cell phone holster. I just gave up at that point, as that was the kind of day I was having. Normally the holster is secured securely on my pocket... not today. [UPDATE: it was not the stupid tires.. it was the rims - bent by the hellhole that is Philly]

We kept hearing about this place called Grub, which our family and friends really liked, so off we went. The moment we pulled up, I said to my wife, "I do not like this place."  I wasn't entirely sure why I did not like the place... perhaps it was the clientele, perhaps it was the uncomfortable-looking stools (instead of chairs), perhaps it was the proximity to the gas tanks, I dunno. But I was willing to give it a chance, which they tell me is the important thing. They are frequently wrong.

We went to the entrance, which bore a sign telling us to go round to the other entrance. Always obedient, my wife immediately opened the door and we went in.  BOOM - there was a bar in the middle of the place. Small wonder the nieces and nephews like it there; they can get bombed while burgering.

Before you accuse me of telling those kids to get off my lawn, I have to note that I have never enjoyed dining with LOTS OF NOISE around me.  And, strangely enough, there was LOTS OF NOISE around me. The wife noticed this also. Since she has her own internal din, she was not impressed either.

One of the pleasures of dining out is having someone wait on you.  Nope.  We had to stand in line, order and pay, after which we got this RFID tracking beacon, which meant the NSA already knew what we ordered. Over to a booth, where someone shooed us away, stating that the table was reserved. Oddly enough, there was no sign indicating it was reserved, so we located the single remaining table for two, which had approximately enough room for one.

At this point, a female came over and identified herself as a waitress and informed us there were two - no three people walking around if we needed anything.  This was an interesting new model of restauranting and waitressing, we thought.  After we had ordered and paid, there didn't seem to be any need for a waitress, but since we didn't own the restaurant, it didn't seem worth discussing further.

I have to say that the staff was unfailingly pleasant and didn't not have a single issue with custom orders. They had sweet potato french fries, which I really like. The second line, after fries, on the menu stated they had rosemary on them.  I hate rosemary, with a passion normally reserved for politicans. They were kind enough to kill the rosemary for me, which is good, as I'm not the kind of guy who goes around killing rosemary.

This was the kind of restaurant that gave you cups and you filled them with the soda or drink you wanted. I like this as it (theoretically) removes the chance of getting the wrong drink. And if you DO get the wrong drink, you have bigger problems. And it turned out I did, but not for the reason you think: the Coke was remarkably free of flavor. It was similar to carbonated water with brown coloring. Did I mention it was LOUD in there? LOUD like we had trouble talking to each other? This apparently bothered no one else, as their solution was to simply YELL LOUDER than the competition.

Eventually someone showed up with the burgers and we dug in. It's difficult to spell this but I'll try: pbthlllllt uh. It was the sound of me tasting a burger that had barely been cooked. In fact, it was so undercooked that the meat could not hold itself together as a recognizeable burger (or much of anything else of a meatlike-substance).  The wife took a look and confirmed it as medium-rare. I tend to go for something closer to medium-well but no one asked me. I mean that no one, from the register person to the alleged waitress, asked how I wanted my burger. Since my wife likes hers that way, it was not an issue for her.

Since the day was not going well at all, I started competing with my fellow noisemakers, in a less than pleasant tone, about my feelings on the burger. I threw it in its regulation red basket, red Special Sauce leaking all over the place. THIS is why we don't go out to eat much. Visions of barbecue danced in my head, right next to visions of Arnold Schwrzenneger as Terminator, with a double-barreled shotgun, after he had a particularly bad day.

Noting my disgust, the wife suggested she take her burger home and I could microwave it later.  I somehow managed to convey that this was not a helpful suggestion.

Seriously - this was supposed to be a treat for us. The thought of having to get up and launch the burger back from whence it came was just too much for me at the moment.  Have I mentioned that the sweet potato fries (without rosemary) were pretty good?  They were.

At this point, the alleged waitress reappeared, asking how everything was. I looked her straight in the eye and told her 'Horrible'. She smiled, said Great, and walked away, happy as ever. I looked at my wife, dumbfounded, and inquired if we had somehow transported to an alternate dimension. I haven't been in the Twilight Zone<tm> in quite a while and did not wish to return.

It became apparent that immediate action needed to be taken. Although immediate action to me involved making the alleged burger airborn, my wife, who has over twenty years of trying to moderate my behavior, suggested the better option would be to simply have them cook me something edible. We settled on me getting money back and suggesting they keep the burger and do whatever they wanted with it (suggestions joyously provided for the asking).

This, of course was not simple. The transaction required a manager. Cheerful as ever, the manager arrived, having heard there was a small issue. If you call one hundred percent of my meal, drink included, a small issue, then yes, I had a small issue. She cheerfully refunded my money, graciously offering a card entitling me to a free meal upon my next visit. Rather than telling her that my next visit would occur right after all taxes are repealed, I politely refused. She somehow sensed that I would not be returning and re-offered me the card. Rather than telling her that my return would coincide with Bush and Obama dancing cheek-to-cheek, announcing that they both lied for their entire terms in office, I again politely declined.  She told me to ask for her personally next time and she'd take care of me. Rather than telling her the next time would be just after this blog gets over ten thousand hits per day (or even a hundred), I thanked her and told her I liked the fries a lot.

As we got in the car, agreeing that this was a bit of a waste of time, I told my wife that I was hungry and coudln't we go somewhere for dinner. Somewhere among the four restaurants we liked. She smiled and proceeded to take us shopping. Right next to the store was a barbecue place, appearing as a bright light piercing the darkness. I went to it, like a starving nerd to a Playboy bunny, just in time to watch the owner locking the front door.

On the way home, I mentioned again that I was hungry and would like some dinner. The wife said she thought I was kidding.  I looked at my wife, dumbfounded, and inquired if we had somehow transported to an alternate dimension. Or perhaps there was some Waitress in her heritage.


MUSIC

Today it's my favorite guitarist ever: Jeff Beck.
One of his best tunes is Cause We've Ended As Lovers. To get the real flavor you need to listen to the album version (Blow by Blow) but this is a pretty good representation. The band features the incredible Vinnie Coliauta on drums (Zappa, everyone) and the really surprising Tal Wilkenfeld, the twenty-something, grinning bassist from Down Under.  Watch this and be blown away.

Since this will undoubtedly lead to the desire to hear more, watch the complete concert, Live at Ronnie Scott's. This is a very good quality show, released on DVD. One of the greatest moments of the show is looking out in the audience and seeing Robert Plant, looking on, amazed. Another is special guest Jimmy Page but I'm not gonna tell you why or when.  Opening the show is Beck's Bolero. Watch and learn.

Jeff Beck is my favorite due to the emotion and the physical way he plays. He only gets better and he's frightening in his seventies. Watch how he plays with the whammy bar, the volume control and the tone control, sometimes together. It's a master class in guitar.

It's SSD for Me

I had forgotten that when I ordered my new laptop, I had asked for a solid state drive.

What is a solid state drive?

It's a hard drive with no moving parts.  Think of it as a really large flash drive.  The effect is to speed up the entire process as the general bottleneck is the mechanical hard drive.  Since you speed up access to the data, everything moves faster.

Unfortunately the ssd arrived a few days after I had gotten a dual boot system all set up (Win7+Xubuntu).

How to make the switch?

There are a number of ways to change things around.   I figured I'd use linux to copy everything from the original hard drive to the ssd.  I also set up an external hard drive in case I had to copy things over.

If you are going to perform this, BACK UP ALL OF YOUR DATA.  Seriously.

Someone with a lot of class included an external hard drive case and cables with the ssd.  And some software that boots right from the cd (based on linux).  The directions were clear and concise.  And in several languages.

I was presented with another, easier way to switch things over when I opened the laptop and discovered an additional hard drive bay.  I moved the original drive to the second bay and installed the ssd in the first.  Since I used the original drive, which had mounting hardware attached, the ssd had too much wiggle room so I knew I had to be very careful while cloning the drive.  This wouldn't be a problem for me so much as a very helpful cocker spaniel and a wife without a single graceful bone in her body.

The included software seemed like the way to go, so I read the docs (really, I did!) and booted the cd.  In spite of having a few partitions, I went with the automatic cloning.  The timer said about an hour.  It felt much longer.

Have you ever had to keep a helpful pet from jumping on the couch?  I have.
Have you ever had to remind your wife not to FLOP down on the couch?  I have.

The cd finished and I rebooted.

And nothing happened.

I re-powered and nothing persistently continued to happen.

Of course the manual completely failed to cover this eventuality.  And I refer to it as an eventuality because stuff just seems to happen to me.

So there I was, deflated and on my own.  The wife went to bed and took the helpful cocker with her.

With absolutely no idea what to do, I figured this might be a GRUB error.  GRUB is the linux boot loader that allows one to boot linux and/or other lesser operating systems.  Windows doesn't play nicely with other OSes so if you have to use it, you need to install it first.  Then GRUB will provide you with a basic boot menu to choose which OS you want to use.

I went back and booted to the original hard drive, allowing me to access linux.  I checked and the ssd was cloned; all the partitions were there.

I have never manually used GRUB before so I had very little idea where to start.  There didn't appear to be a GRUB-SEARCH function, so I took a stab at GRUB-INSTALL (lower case, actually).  It's not a particularly good idea to guess at this unless you have lots of time and lots of backups.

If I remember correctly (and I rarely do), it was something along the lines of grub-install /dev/sda.  It happened instantly.

When I rebooted - POOF - there was my boot menu, right on the ssd, where I needed it.  I closed up, took out the original drive, put the hardware on the ssd so it could no longer wiggle and booted into linux.

HOW DOES IT RUN?

It started to boot then gave me something about DO NOT TURN OFF THE COMPUTER and did some sort of service pack thing.  Since I had just booted up, I had no intention of turning the computer off.  However, Windows did, so I had to re-reboot, at which point it went further into configuring some sort of service pack, stopping to remind me NOT TO TURN OFF THE COMPUTER again.  After about the third reboot, Windows fully booted and informed me that a service pack had been installed.

Alrighty then.

The speedup in Windows was also dramatic.  Things tended to happen a lot more instantly than with the original hard drive.  I ran another scan to see what Windows thought of the new drive.  It got done then told me it couldn't test the hard drive for some strange reason.  Since the only change was the hard drive, I did what I usually do with Windows; give up and boot into linux.

Ladies and gentlemen (and guitar players), you need to run down to the store and buy the biggest ssd you can afford to install in your laptop (and desktop).  You can also buy smaller ones just for the OS and put your data on a mechanical hard drive.  Either way you will love it.

HP 8760w Unboxing

I just received my HP EliteBook 8760w.  This thing has the biggest power supply adapter I have ever seen.  It's over twice the size of every other adapter.  It can be used as a weapon (and probably will, but more on that later).

I like a manly laptop.  Thus far, it is a very manly laptop, largely as it is very large.  Incredibly large.  About the size of my Hyundai large.  It's the land yacht of laptops (no, HP, you can't use that as an ad slogan).  Although it does weigh slightly less than my Hyundai, most people would say it is very heavy.  That's what makes it manly (that and the humongous 17" screen).  I mentioned it was a bit heavy: my wife tried to lift it, failed, and stared wide-eyed in agreement.  Again, this is a desktop replacement laptop, not a litebook.

Since the laptop is so bloody wide, they managed to put in a keypad and a really interesting backlit keyboard.  Of course I'd prefer the keypad on the left but that's because I'm a lefty (I do have an external USB number pad).   There is a laptop bag on order but I don't anticipate a lot of travel with this computer.

As you well know, I like things done a certain way, which makes ordering a laptop an exercise in frustration (but hopefully an exercise in hilarity for you).  All I really wanted was a large, manly linux laptop.  This, of course, was strictly impossible.  The success of ordering linux on a computer is approximately slightly less than the success of a voting a libertarian into the White House.  And even if you succeed, it's the wrong distribution of linux (although Dell will preinstall Ubuntu on certain models).   So I had no choice but to pay the Microsoft Tax and get Windows 7.  Yes, regardless of whether you are going to use Windows or not, you pay for it.

Since I occasionally have to use Windows for work, I figured I'd leave it installed and dual-boot with a real operating system (Xubuntu 12.04).  In the past I have just run Win XP virtually under linux, where it is more stable.

I started the task by booting into Win 7 and setting up the laptop for Windows use.  I was immediately reminded of why I hate new computers by HP's painful (and offensive) setup routine.  I realize HP needs to make everything as Idiot-Proof as possible, but apparently HP isn't aware of Murphy's Corollary which states "If you make something idiot-proof, they'll just make a better idiot."  In fact, at work we refer to ourselves as The Home of the Better Idiot.  Perhaps they should have a selection for Live Brain Cell Install, which would cut out the BS.

And speaking of BS, do you have any idea how much crapware comes with an HP laptop?  To be fair, the great amount of it is HP crapware, but still....  one of my favorite utilities, Revo Uninstaller, got put to work for the better part of an hour.  I removed such things as HP QuickWeb, HP Setup, HP Wallpaper, HP Defaults, HP Connection Manager, HP Client Automation Agent Preload, File Sanitizer for HP ProtectTools, MS Silverlight, Office 2010, and the ubiquitous Bing Bar (go Bing yourself).  I began to wonder if blowing out the entire laptop and reinstalling Win 7 would take less time.

Dear HP:  We aren't idiots.  We don't need our installs managed.  Some of us don't even need our security, tools, or internet connections managed.  Really.

Once that crap was out of the way, another software favorite from the past came in handy: Hijack This. Hijack finds all the startup crap, browser crap, and services, allowing you to select what really starts up.  Normally this barely fills a page.... the HP list filled three pages.  Three pages of crap that didn't really need to be started up with the computer.  I'll bet Windows starts up much faster now....

Prominently figured on the list of people who need to be seriously punished is the Microsoft guy who decided that sound must be enabled by default.  If I want to hear a DING every time I do something, I'll stay at work all day.  XP didn't even allow you to turn sound off until it was completely installed, which drove many a technician up a tree.

Making Win 7 usable for me involves another long stretch of hard labor.  It's not so much an operating system as a virus.  Sometimes for fun, I bring up Services and randomly turn stuff off.  It's just that there are so damn many of them... starting with Firewall.  And Themes.

Apropos of nothing, Firefox just updated on my desktop and informed me that it was incompatible with ZoneAlarm so it was shutting it down.  WTF?  I don't have these issues on linux.


At this point, it was time to play with the hard drive partitions and install linux.  I booted the Xubuntu cd into live mode and opened Gparted.  I wound up with Win7, HOME, and linux system partitions.  I told it to install linux and a few minutes later, I had a dual boot laptop.

What I neglected to specify was that I wanted a functional dual boot laptop.  When I went to go into linux, I got all sorts of screen scrambling, which got fixed in recovery mode.  Once in Xubuntu, I saw the notice indicating I had 267 updates to download and that it had discovered some proprietary drivers (ATI/AMD FGLRX).  During the live cd boot, it discovered the webcam.  No word yet on what's going to happen with the fingerprint reader.

Bravo for linux: the OS had discovered not only my video card, but bluetooth and the wireless chip.  This wasn't always the case, requiring lots of jumping through hoops to get things to cooperate.

True to form, I'm having trouble with the touchpad.  Every laptop I have had recently has discovered the touchpad ok but the cursor jumps around like mad.  I know there are a few solutions for this so it's time to go looking.  The first solution is to (as root) type `syndaemon -t -d'.   Seems to be helping.

At this point, the laptop was fully functional with both OSes.   More as I find it.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The screen is beautiful.  And large.  The audio seems plenty loud and of good quality, although I still need to test it with some decent input.  So far it's been streaming stuff.

I don't expect to use the battery too much, if at all.  And good thing, as 20 minutes of low-quality streaming video ate about a third of the battery.