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I became a vegetarian in May of 2007. It has been a very good experience and Esther, my wife, has adapted her cooking in a most delicious way.

Over the summer, we spent two weeks in Europe, and I completely forgot how “meat-centric” across the pond is. Outside of England, where I first learned about vegetarianism and veganism, I think it would be difficult to be a vegetarian. One would have to never eat at restaurants or friends homes, one would have to eat at home all of the time.

That means that while in Europe, spending time with Esther’s German Grandmother, I had to eat meat. Had to, you ask? Yes, had to.

Recently, in my journey as a Buddhist I have learned a basic question to try and ask myself: is this increasing or decreasing suffering?

To ask my wife’s Grandmother to cook meatless would have caused her to fret, worry and stress, thus increasing her suffering.

So schnitzel abound.

Currently, I am sitting in Esther’s other Grandmother’s living room in Alabama. Granny is a fantastic cook, her cooking over the last 50 odd years has always included meat. This is where I have formulated the Grandmother Clause.

The Grandmother Clause:

Unless a Grandmother asks, I am willing to be flexible about what I eat.

Here is the thing, this doesn’t extend beyond Grandmothers. This isn’t me caving on being a vegetarian, but it does mean that I don’t want the Grandmothers who are cooking for me to be stressed.

My dad’s mother did a fantastic job of making meatless food for me earlier this year, but I know it was stressful to find things that were easy to make for everyone and me, so thus the need for the Grandmother Clause.

Now excuse me while I lie here and digest my chicken-fried steak and dream about ribs tomorrow.

Pay for a feed reader?

But you have Google Reader, why would you need anything else?

The problem with RSS feeds is that they are like tattoo collecting:  easy to get but eventually one runs out of room. I love reading broad and ranging topic from all corners on the Internet, tech news, design blogs, high literature, long-form stories, random photoblogs and odd tumblogs. I was originally skeptical of RSS, but once I bought in, I at the whole hog. I tried to pull a Scoble. I read thousands of blog posts a day, I was a info-junkie.

Eventually I learned that it was not sustainable. I could be a normal human being or I could be consumed by my feeds. I have gone back and forth between reading too many feeds and too few, feeling like I was missing something.

For the past 3 months, I had managed reading only 15 feeds regularly, with 5 or so, irregulars that I visited via bookmarks. I was happy with that amount, it was manageable without being disappointingly meager.

I shy away from sites like Digg because the wisdom of the crowds quickly turns into the stupidity of the masses, linkbaiting and meme chasing, all of which are the temporary high or intermittent reinforcement that the addictive Internet can breed.

When I saw feedafever.com show up in my feed reader multiple times and the concept intrigued me, I broke out the credit card. A personal Digg, a recommendation engine for the self, with a built in feed reader. Sign me up.

Fever is an interesting piece of software, it requires a server with PHP and MySQL, taking it out of the realm of the desktop and creating a personal webapp like WordPress TK. This captures the appeal of similar products like Google Reader, making it available everywhere. Fever also includes a slick chrome-less iPhone “app”, so my feeds are always in my pocket.

The magic of Fever is the recommendation engine. Feeds are broken into two broad categories: Kindling (Must reads) and Sparks (Occasional, infrequent reads). Using some magic and some link comparison, Fever ranks what is “hot” on the Internet basing popularity on the normal body temperature of 98.5. The more popular an entry or term, the hotter the temperature is. Fever ranked as 117.8° on the day of release.

Fever does two things for me, allows me to read what I want and find out what topics are hot in the Internet. The recommendation engine also shows which blogs are part of the echo chamber. In the first few hours, it became very apparent that some sites are either incredibly self-referential or contain a lot of cross posting (I’m looking at you Boing Boing). Fever let me unsubscribe from quite a few blogs, because I know I am catching the hot stories from them.

The odd thing is, Fever works better the more feeds that are thrown at it, so I am subscribed to a lot more feeds. An interesting part of the excellent execution of the feed reader is that new feeds can be automatically added as a “Spark” providing it as grist for the recommendation mill. If I find a blog continues to show up in the “Hot”, I can infer that I might want to add it to the “Kindling”.

So far, Fever has been a success and a $30 (plus hosting) I find it to be quite a steal for such an interesting service.

[rate 5]

My Gramps died on Tuesday. He was ill and it was inevitable, but it is still an awkward lozenge to swallow. I am grateful that he was around as long as was, getting to see me through college, my wedding and my daughter, but there is part of me that feels robbed.

i wanted more time with him, more interactions with Hazel, more. I think he, in his passing, has shown me that I want more from myself, from my work and my life. Not simply more of it, but more in the way of being more better, more interesting and more exciting, more creative opportunities crammed into every day. I want more of a connection with my wife, my daughter, my parents, even my mother-in-law. I want more time with them to do more things, I want more from work, more meaning, more challenges, more collegial friendships. In thinking about my Gramps passing, I can say I want more heart-ache, a little more suffering and even more meaning from each.

I am tired of being merely a spectator to life. I cam done with watching mindless programming, consuming mindless media and having shallow interactions with large circles of “friends.”

I want to experience more beauty in more places and tell more people about it with more well-crafted stories and more awesomely composed photos. I want to ride my bike more and breath the fresh air. I want to play the guitar more and pat into my creative side. I want to love more, by doing things for and with those I love. I am going to miss Gramps more than I will let on, wanting more time with him and wanting to remember more from every remembered interaction and story.

I want to be more like him, a loving husband, a father generous with his time and patience, a fabulous story teller and lover of life. I want his passing not to be a date on my calendar, I want it to be more. I know that as I become a father and grandfather, I will remember my time with him: the summers, the celebrations, the intimate advice giving and the jokes; and know that he gave it all and would always give more.

I want to be more like that.

I am home and it is weird. Weird because I was gone for a week, really more like two weeks with our trip to Charlotte. Weird because I came back before my grandfather has passed. Weird because it feels oddly like I have abandoned him, my grandmother and my uncle who was left taking care of them both. I know I didn’t abandon them, but it sure does feel weird being back.

I had a moment with my gramps that was enlightening and saddening all at once. Sister Catherine, a nun and some relation to my grandfather, called wanting an update and to talk to him. My grandmother answered the call and got the wave off from my gramps. He was not in the mood to talk. But he was just talking to me a few minutes ago.

It took me a little bit, but then I figured it out. I thought that he would have liked to talk to people, after all he is a raconteur, a talker, a conversationalist. He and I agreed he would probably die from diarrhea of the mouth, which is more truth than fiction, talking robs him of the pure oxygen he is taking in.

So why would a man who loves to talk not want to take a phone call?

The goodbye.

My gramps has had a few episodes during this end of life experience. He was sure it was his time, but unfortunately, the bright light was not for him. But as he was experiencing the ups and downs, he was working to get all of his goodbyes said, but what happens when you don’t go peacefully when you want to? What happens when people call to check on you and they find out you are still around? They want to talk.

Eventually you have to say goodbye, it is the way our social contract is built. Not a social contact as it relates to being governed and forming a state, but the social contract that every person has between each other. When walking across campus, people say “Hi.” and as part of the contract, I am obligated to say “Hi.” in return. It breaks the social contract to just end a phone call, we have to wind it down and then eventually say goodbye.

For my gramps it would be inaccurate or inappropriate to say “See you later,” or “Talk to you later.” Because that simply may not be the case. And once he had said his final goodbye, any passing, social contract goodbye would cheapen the heartfelt farewell he had said earlier.

I totally get why he didn’t take the phone call.

When we flew home, we had to leave early, 4:45 in the morning. My gramps has not been getting the best sleep, drifting to sleep and snoozing, but having a hard time getting consistent stretches of sleep. I didn’t want to wake him up before we left, for fear that he might actually be getting restful sleep, so we said our goodbye before I went to bed.

Needless to say, after our goodbye, I didn’t sleep well. It was far to emotional for me to go to bed as easily as my body wanted me to.

My gramps’ goodbye was short and sweet and made me fight back bawling tears. I left him with a kiss after he said “Peace be with you,” and choked back tears as to not seem like a blubbering baby to my wife, cousin, cousin’s girlfriend and uncle.

It was hard.

My uncle reported that my gramps was doing well today and as much as I want to call and talk to him, I won’t. I don’t want him to have to say the goodbye again.

via Gruber

I am not an economist or a politician, so everything you are about to read is purely my own bloviating.

I have a problem with the bailouts that are being thrown at the banking, automotive and potentially the porn industry. Capitalism relies on markets choosing who thrives and who fails, Congress choosing to let Leaman Brothers go under, but saving other banks, investment houses and insurance companies have only postponed the inevitable, while throwing tax payer money in the garbage disposal with a time-delayed switch.

The Big 3 automakers should become the Big 2. If the automakers are not agile enough to respond to customer demand, they should be punished. Simple enough.

I know this will not be popular, but in the “economic stimulus package” that President Elect Obama wants to sign when he takes office should include a tax increase.

Tax increase?!

Yes, a tax increase. My sneaking suspicion is that the American consumer’s psyche needs safety before comfort. We are a horribly undisciplined society and susceptible to advertising ploys, which means that American’s don’t save for the things they truly need: Health Care, Food and Housing.

Yes, but get back to the tax increase!

A tax increase, specifically for reforming health care and providing stabilization and normalization of home values will provide American’s a level of security, thus comfort that they haven’t experienced. One would not need to juggle paying off credit cards, paying the rent or going to the doctors. That would allow American’s to focus on paying down their debt. Once we become a more fiscally responsible country, the spending can begin again, albeit with smaller amounts to spend.

Weighing a new plasma TV versus a much needed trip to the doctors or a mortgage payment isn’t much of an question, but continuing to make tax cuts provide very temporary surges towards the plasma TV option, which puts families further in debt.

Some people will be hurt if the government lets capitalism take the natural course and with increased taxes Americans would feel more able to spend on the “luxury” items when not worrying about basic needs,

For the past two weeks, I have been setting up and playing with an Asus eeePC 901. It is a small 2.2 lb netbook, loaded with 1 Gb of RAM, a 20 Gb solid state hard drive and a Xandros GNU/Linux installation. It is possible to buy and run Windows XP on it, but who would want that?

Compaq Aero (image from Obsolete Computer Museum)

The dimensions are oddly similar to the first laptop I had regular access to, a Compaq Aero 4/25. The Compaq was a 4 pound, track ball driven, PCMIA floppy connected, monochrome, grandfather to the eeePC. The eee’s screen is relatively small, but surprisingly crisp and bright. The 83% of normal keyboard is a little cramped, but not unusable. The sound system is surprisingly good for being so small and did I mention the built in webcam?

I don’t need to continue giving the technicals or a review of the hardware. I want to explain what I have done to make this the perfect geek mobile platform.

Operating System

After charging it and powering on I realized the first thing that had to go was the stock operating system. The Xandros install wasn’t bad, but it felt limited. Enter Ubuntu-eee, my distro of choice on the eee PC, a fork / re-purposing / customization of the Ubuntu distribution of GNU/Linux specifically for the eeePC platform. This distro takes into account the finite number of times a solid state drive can be written to, as well as the smaller form factor of the 8 inch screen. All of these modifications can be accomplished with any Linux distro, but Ubuntu-eee seemed like the easiest step for a Linux-newbie like me.

Software

Tux, the Linux mascot

The GNU/Linux alternatives to Apple or Windows are pretty good, some of it is no different. The idea behind a netbook is not a lot of local storage, that most of one’s data is stored on the internet. That means Firefox 3 comes stock. All of the usual add-on and extensions are available. Two additional add-ons that free up more screen real estate are Tiny Menu and Fission. The real secret to freeing up space is getting rid of the Google Search box, the Awesome bar can do the Google searchiing for you, and then cramming the rest of the toolbar items (forward and back buttons, Awesome bar, bookmarks, any other buttons) into the menu bar.

Because I opted for the 901, with the larger hard drive. I have been able to install quite a bit of software including the GIMP, a photoshop equivalent, Inkscape, an Adobe Illustrator equivalent, and Kino, an iMovie equivalent.

Partitioning

Nerd Alert!

This is part is technical and won’t make a whole lot of sense unless you have some familiarity with the Linux file system.

You have been warned!

The most difficult part of setting up my eee has been the partitioning. The 20 Gb drive is actually a 4 Gb and a 16 Gb drive married together. In my first attempt installing Ubuntu eee, I installed everything on the 4 Gb drive. I quickly ran out of space when testing apps. In my second installation, I dumped everything on the 16 Gb drive, which just seemed like I was giving up. Installation three had my root on the 4 Gb drive and my /home directory on the 16 Gb drive. Again, I ran into space issues due to everything being installed in the /usr directory.

My final installation has me with the OS root installed on the 4 Gb drive, and the 16 Gb drive is divided among my /home and /usr directories. /home takes up 12 Gb and /usr on a seperate 4 Gb partition. I think this will keep me from having to reinstall for a while.

Conclusion

eee PC 901

The eeePC 901 compromises speed for ultraportability. While it can come with Windows XP preinstalled I was surprised at how easy the Linux installations have been to use. For the average consumer, the Xandros base installation will be more than enough, I just prefer the Ubuntu right now.

The eee will be the only personal computer I take when travelling (I am required to take a laptop for some work responsibilities). While I still love my Macbook, the eee is best compromise for a travel laptop and a couch-web-surfing device.