Well today was my last day of work at Solehi. It was hard leaving a place that I not only worked for the past 8 years but lived in the district for most of my life and attended for 13 years. Departure festivities were held over the past three days but even with that time I did not get to say goodbye to everyone I wanted too. I made it a point to go around this afternoon and personally say goobye to as many people as I could. They truly made me feel like family there, it’s tough leaving.

The people I worked with were top notch and truly dedicated. I wish them all well and hope we keep in touch.

I must say, one of the weirdest things was working with the people who a few years back were my teachers. It was an odd change of pace, but extremely worth it. Fantastic people they are.

I will deeply miss Southern Lehigh and all my friends there. The memories are priceless.

As I left the campus I spent so much of the past 8 years on I wondered where was the trumpet fanfare, the fireworks and marching bands? Well, they were burried deep in my chest. All the handshakes and hugs carried me off from the place with a content, but sad high. Best of luck to them all!

Hmm, this is a tough one.  The wife had said I could get a laptop after we sell the house.  I’ve been looking over a number of choices and originally settled on something from Lenovo, particularly a Thinkpad.  What interests me on the Lenovo side is a T60, probably a T60p.  I’d like something fairly beefy with the capability to do xgl or aigx.  The Thinkpad T60p has an ati card in there and starts at $1587.00 right now (sale price).  To get it up to what I would ideally want bumps the price up to $1746.00.  Now I’m not sure about the warranty on this as that seems extra.  Additionally, this comes with Windows XP home edition, something I am not interested in at all.  I would consider Pro, but at $70.00 more?  Would I really even use it?  Maybe in vmware, but I don’t know.

On the other hand there are the System76 notebooks.  The one I am looking at, the Serval series starts at $1295.00.  To get it a bit more to what I like would put me to $1472.00.  It has the nividia chipset and comes with ubuntu pre-installed so I know all the hardware is going to work.  This also means I am supporting a Linux  hardware vendor that is offerring linux pre-installed systems.  That alone is very inviting.

I have to listen to the latest Linux Action Show and hear the review of the system 76 notebook one of the hosts purchased.   It’s a tough call.  I’ve heard such good things about Lenovo Thinkpads; but the same can be said for System76.

Hey, what do you guys think?  Base systems aside, would you upgrade the memory or purchase the memory from a different vendor getting a stick that may be cheaper?  I want at least 1GB and standard is 512mb.  Do I want to chance a third party vendor for this or just add on  $89.00 for a single stick?  If I get a single gb stick from a third party that will give me a total of 1.5gb or ram.

I cannot really go outside for the dvd-rw upgrade or the hard drive.  Standard hard drive is 40gb, which I think I will keep at that.  I don’t really have that much need for more.  The Powerbook I have from work has been more than adequate running at 20gb Ubuntu partition for a few years now.

I’d like bluetooth compatibility which is $39.00 more.  Maybe I’ll bump this out and get a usb bluetooth dongle, which I hear is about $20.00.  I’ll have to ask Pat about this.

Now all this pricing is for the System76.  It’s a bit higher for the Thinkpad.

Well, only 4 days left of work, 5 days until we hit Ohio, and 8 days until I leave the Lehigh Valley permanently. Boy, is the time going fast. It’s kind of sad, but exciting at the same time. There is so much to do before then and so many people to say goodbye to.

So I got a new home, a new job and now I have to get a new ISP. That really sucks. I’ve been using Speakeasy for a good three years now, but where I am moving to I cannot keep the same service. What bites is originally they told me I could, but when I went to finalize things I could only get iDSL (I’m not sure if that is what it is called) at 128k up/down or T1 at 1.5 up/down. The T1 started at $349 a month so that was out of the question. Now we must soon part ways.

I’m kind of bitter because Speakeasy was awesome. Their support was top notch and you could run all the services you wanted.

Now I am regulated to service from our cable provider. I am in the process of setting up Business Cable which supposedly gives me up to 5 mb down and 2 mb up, but we shall see what we get. Cox cable is the provider so expect to hear more.

Well, first the good news. The house seems to be generating a lot of interest. Word had it that there was an offer made but the people who made the offer had their pre-approval expire. Whether they are in the process of getting a new one or not I do not know. All I do know is that people are coming and going during the day. I see realtor cards come and go. It seems whoever is in last collected all the other cards and left her own.

On the job front I got called for two interviews this Monday. I had a phone interview today for a php position with knowledge of LAMP. That went well so a second interview was set for Monday after another interview for a Net Admin position in a Netware environment. Hard to decide which one I would want more.

That brings me to the bad news. My mom took a little vacation to Ocean City with her friends and got a nasty infection that landed her in the hospital. My mother has Systemic Lupus so any infection can get very serious very fast. Her friends are down there until Saturday. Whether she will be discharged before then is unknown. It’s a wait and see endeavor which may have me staying up here for the weekend and a trip down to pick her up. My father says he can handle it himself, but I feel I should be there too. I hope she recovers enough to be discharged tomorrow or Saturday. It must really stink being in a hospital so far from home.

My mother does not have luck with vacations. Last time she was down at the shore she caught legionaires disease of all things. She was in the hospital for two weeks, most of the time in critical condition with a very poor prognosis. But she pulled through, that woman is a fighter. For a bit there I was very scared.

She told my wife, on the phone, this will probably be her last trip to the shore.