Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Good, The Bad, and The PXE

What a weekend! So much going on, and I’m exhausted. I’ll give you a synopsis: 

The Good. Saturday morning, Patti and I went to the open house at Boston University’s Center for Digital Imaging Arts, in Waltham, MA. This was the school I was accepted into a couple of years ago, but issues with financial prevented my from attending. After a 9-month stint with the Art Institutes online division, I realized that online classes were not going to work well for me – I learn best in a hands-on, real classroom environment. So I re-applied to CDIA – here’s hoping that all works out this time!

Also good: choir and chorale rehearsals today. I love working with our “small but mighty” church choir, and singing with the Montachusett Chorale is so much fun! 

The Bad. Working on the weekend. I have never hidden the fact that I hate working in the computer industry with all the red-hot intensity of a thousand suns, but there is something about having to go in during the weekend in order to satisfy the ever-present product schedules (only made worse by my need to be able to focus on just one task at a time). But I will leave that well-enough alone for now and play nice, since I still need to be able to pay the overabundance of bills.

Also bad: coming down with a nasty, achy, head-coldy kinda thing that is just making me feel generally crappy (and knowing that taking a much-needed sick day is probably not a good idea anytime in the next week or so). 

The PXE. My first question was, “what the heck is PXE?” Turns out, that it stands for “Preboot Execution Environment” – it’s basically a way for a system to boot with the assistance of another system over a network connection. It’s also something I needed to putz around with over the weekend for some tests I needed to run. I also discovered that PXE could also stand for “Pretty eXasperating Experience”.

Also PXE: A little something called gPXE, which the the GNU flavor of PXE (basically the freeware version of PXE, and the version I was actually using).

So, how was your weekend?

Thursday, November 10, 2011

A Blogging Haiku

Writing blogs is fun,
but not so drawing a blank.
Too many brain-farts.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

Ramblings Of The Uninspired

Here I sit, in bed with the laptop awaiting my next keystrokes so that I might inflict my next blog entry. Though I am feeling somewhat uninspired at the moment. I do have a list of possible blog topics, but none of them are doing much for me this evening.

And now Her Royal Meowjesty hops up onto the bed as well, saunters up next to me purring loudly, and then proceeds to climb up onto my belly and starts kneading (apparently soft and round equates to “pincushion” in her mind). Thankfully my sweatshirt is taking the brunt of it – this cat is in serious need of a manicure. That is a task best left for the professionals (or at least the masochists);

I’ve once tried trimming the claws of our previous cat, Skooter, some number of years ago … once. She then made it abundantly clear to me that she likes her claws just the way they are, thank you very much. To this day, in the right light, you can still see the vestiges of the scar on my arm that resulted from that error in judgment on my part.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh right – I was trying to think of something to blog about tonight.

Perhaps something will come to me tomorrow.

Sunday, November 06, 2011

Announcement: Montachusett Chorale Annual Holiday Benefit Concert

Patti and I are members of the Montachusett Chorale, an area choral group who raises funds for various local charitable organizations.

This year’s holiday concert will benefit the Montachusett Interfaith Hospitality Network, whose aim is to provide transitional housing and support for homeless families with children. It will be held on Sunday, December 4, at 2pm in the Tata Auditorium of Leominster City Hall, 25 West Street, Leominster, MA. Advance tickets are $12, and $15 at the door (under 18 is free).

If you happen to be in the North-Central Massachusetts area at that time, c’mon over and enjoy an afternoon of great music and help a worthy cause!

Saturday, November 05, 2011

Just Checking In

Had a long day today, culminating in having to go into work (ugh). Plus I have to be up early tomorrow morning.

I’m calling it a night, but not without posting – ha!

Friday, November 04, 2011

I Only Read It For the Articles

I got the Winter 2012 B&H Catalog in the mail a few days ago, and am I a happy camper! For those who may not know B&H is a suppler of photographic, video and pro audio supplies.

So many camera items, lenses, and lighting equipment! Complete drool-fest.

It’s just like Playboy… expect for the smutty pictures.

And the staples.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

Sleep

For tonight’s post I thought I would share a video with you. This is of the composer Eric Whitacre’s Virtural Choir 2.0 performing his piece entitled “Sleep”.  It is breathtakingly beautiful.

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

An Introduction of Sorts

Here we are, in the second day of NaBloPoMo. You might notice that things look a bit different around here. I started toying around with some of the new templates on Blogger to see if a change of scenery might jumpstart my creativity. I’m a visual person, and am driven quite a bit by what things I see and how I see them. As a result this page may morph a time or two again in the near future – or then again it may not.

But enough rambling for now; there will be plenty of that going forward anyway, I assure you.

I am going to take a cue from my friend Carol and, while we’re still early in the month, give you a brief intro (you never know what poor soul will stumble across this and say “dear God – what have I done?”). Anyhow, if you couldn’t figure it out from my info over to the right, my name is Mike Carvin (and if you did figure that out already, you get a gold star – just not from me). I grew up in the teeming metropolis of Laurens, New York but am now living in Fitchburg, Massachusetts (by way of Potsdam NY, Framingham MA, and Marlborough MA) – each is probably fodder for another day. I live there with my wife Patti our two youngest kids: Bethanie, who will be 17 in January, and Thomas, who turned 15 back in September. Our oldest son, MJ (Michael James) is 19 and a PFC in the Army National Guard and presently stationed at Fort Eustis, VA where he is attending AIT (Advanced Individual Training) in aviation electronics. Oh, and we also have a 6 year old cat named Angel (rather, she deems us her purr-sonal assistants).

I am a system certification engineer (a type of QA engineer) at a not-to-be-named computer company. While I must strive almost daily to not say anything negative about the job, I can say that I’m happy to have a job, and one that (nearly) pays the bills at that. That said, I look forward to the day when I can leave there (preferably on good terms) and start out on my new career as a photographer. More stories for another time I see.

In my spare time (wait – spare time? what’s that?) I, with Patti, are members of the Montachusett Chorale, and am involved with our church choir. I will also occasionally dabble in yarn crafts – crochet and knitting to be specific – which is where the “CraftyGuy” moniker comes from. I had until fairly recently also been involved in barbershop singing, which I have had to back-burner in order to make time for school; once I have a degree or certificate in Photography (whichever), I hope to be able to again make time for that hobby. Again, more blog fodder to avail myself of.

A pretty good start, as far as introductions go, I suppose. I can’t very well dump out everything in one sitting, now can I?

Tuesday, November 01, 2011

Here We Go Again

November 1. NaBloPoMo starts again. And yes, Virginia, I’m giving it another go. I know the last two (or three) attempts have been less than stellar, but what can I say – I’m tenacious (or stubborn).

Here I sit with the family watching “Dancing With The Stars” (get over it). Well, we’re all in the living room anyhow; Bethanie is on the kids’ computer, surfing for photos of Andrew Lee Potts or Tristan McManus one moment, chatting on Facebook the next.

Do I actually have something to write about tonight? No, not really, but why should that stop me?

Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Random Thought on Education

For decades, we’ve been throwing more and more money into education in the hopes that all its problems would be solved, and it hasn’t worked yet (I leave the definition of insanity as an exercise to the reader).

That said, common sense would naturally dictate that the answer is not be to decrease education spending either.

So, if education cannot be fixed by spending more money on it, nor by spending less on it – could it be that the problem isn’t money?

Hmmm…

Here’s a thought – how about the education system be allowed to focus more on – get this – education and how to think for oneself (oh, the horror!), and less on social engineering, indoctrination, and shoving politically-correct bullshit down the throats of our nation’s youth?

Here’s an even better idea – how about the educators themselves working on getting back their passion for teaching and imparting knowledge? Whatever happened to that? That passion can be contagious, and those whom we have entrusted to the educators will perhaps pick up on that passion and develop some for themselves in whatever area piques their interest. The lack of this is really one (of many I’m sure) of the main things that has caused our education system to languish.