"pick a disk. any disk." a catchy phrase, along with many others on bullet #4 of apple's new-features-for-leopard website. perhaps this should be rephrased to "pick a disk (and by any we mean either USB of Firewire attached locally, or connected to an AirPort Extreme™ and shared via Bonjour, and formatted with HFS+)". i guess the later wasn't as cool.

ok. so what about those who don't have a USB of Firewire disk lying around? granted, they covered their butts by offering what the most common home user owns (oh, you don't have your own NAS at home in the laundry room?) but some of us have some sort of network based file system in one shape or another. whether it's an lvm volume exported over NFS from a linux server, or a samba share from the family room HTPC running windows media center™, network based file systems are more prevalent than most would imagine. also, what are the odds that every computer in the household is running some form of mac os x?

thankfully, those brilliant engineers over at apple inc. were thinking ahead and built in some form of support. in this how to, i explain how to use a samba export from a linux virtual machine (xen based) as your backup media for leopard's time machine.

click here to learn more ...

can't think of anything to get me this year? i made an amazon wish list!

over thanksgiving break, i was lucky enough to take a trip to the future home of the new york yankees. mr permahos (better known as amanda's papa) is a project manager for the new stadium and invited mr. rackover (amanda's dad), booty, and myself to take a tour with him around the construction site. the day started with a quick trip to the trailer office to suit up (hard hats and bright orange vests a must) followed by a quick trip into center field which is nothing more than a muddy, temporary storage area for steel, pipes, and other misc. machinery. at 80 years young, our tour guide made us look foolish -- maneuvering through obstacles such as thin wooden planks, large awkward rocks, and shaky temporary stairs as though he was walking on a freshly pavaed sidewalk, the 3 of us could barely keep up. another pleasant surprise was VIP treatment we received from every worker at the site. we knew we were walking with somebody important when everyone went out of their way to give papa a "'ow ya doin boss". one gentleman actually stopped his team of men just to come over a shake his hand ... respect! this same man directed us towards home plate and suggested we walk up the bleachers to the main entrance. here we got to check out the HVAC system, along with the intricate granite work which will welcome fans starting in april '09. after climbing a few flights, we ended our journey with a few pictures of the site along with a few laughs.

the day was special on more than one level -- the obvious was a yankee fan getting the chance to have a sneak peek at his team's future home. the second, though not so obvious, was having the opportunity to spend a day with the boys; a best friend, future father-in-law, and of course, the well respected tour guide. i never had the opportunity to meet either of my grandfathers growing up, but mr. permahos help filled that void on the tour de la yankee stadium.

me, mr. rackover, mr. permahos

i've posted a few more photos of the office. still plenty more to come.

last week we finally got to move in to our new space at work. the ground level 'basement' of my building was recently renovated to allow my department were the only ones to inhabit it. here's a picture of my new cube with amanda.

Ok, so since I'm a total nerd, I have to show support for my fellow nerdians. I've been using Linux for only about 5 years, but they were 5 years of non-stop usage. After touching just about every distro available (Gentoo, Ubuntu, Slackware, Debian, CentOS, RHEL) I must say, Ubuntu has finally done something right. Community support rocks, and it's the closest thing to 'it just works'. Granted, I'm glad I had my Linux career start with Slackware, and then on to Gentoo, because those distributions really make you learn something. Making the switch over to Ubuntu was a welcomed one, as I already know *nix fairly well, and I was sick and tired of waiting 4 hours for Firefox to recompile every time there was an update.

That said, I place a stupid countdown image to the next release of Ubuntu. (Can we do something about these absolutely horrific release names?)

it's not too difficult to justify the title. is he not the most adorable baby you've ever seen?

proudly made with gimp

curious how i made the photo? i'll post a how to shortly.

want to see other black and whites?

i was enjoying a nice, spicy mad chicken amigo with nachos from carl's steak subs today when i felt some get lodged in my throat. i gave a quick choke but was too involved in my lunch. once the amigo was no more it started to dawn on me that whatever was lodged in my throat was actually quite large, and hurt like hell. i tried yacking, gargling water, making that loud snot inhalation, to of no avail. at the end of the day when there was clearly no progress made, i realized i'd have to come home and try to vomit this sucker out -- something i was dreading considering how much i despise throwing up.

lucky for me i realized that i could see this sucker when i looked in my throat. it was a piece of nacho in the shape of a triangle. and so the games begin -- nail file, toothpick, pointed end of those plastic floss thingys, until finally i used a pair of tweezers. mind you, this was no trivial task -- if i put whatever appliance i was using at the time in the wrong spot i ran the risk of pulling the trigger. (did i also mention yet that it hurt like hell?) the wining combo was the nail file as a tongue depressor and the tweezers to get in there and yank it out.

the picture doesn't do it justice, but something had to document this sucker. (this is actual footage of the nacho, not of a random finger nail held in tweezers). like the title says, no more nachos. ever.

no more nachos

i often wonder what other people blog about. a sure fire method to blogging is of course picking a theme and sticking to it. to date, i'm not sure i've had a theme, much less a blog worth reading. nonetheless, i was walking to my apartment one day last week and something struck me -- not sure what, but i've realized just how different my life is now compared to 2 years ago. allow me to explain . . .

it wasn't even 2 years ago that i was packing up my apartment in bethlehem, pa, moving to boston, no job, no apartment, no [non-girl]friends. it was a pretty risky move, considering i hadn't technically graduated college yet. here's what i still needed to do:

• 1 math class which i hoped i could take at Boston University but was NOT approved
• 1 philosophy class which i got an incomplete in but shouldn't have since i did in fact complete it (maybe i should mention i took this class 2 years ago but now that i needed to graduate i actually cared about it)
• 1 computer science compiler class. don't ask, it was the worst
• 1 free elective credit shy

extremely long story short, i took a class at BU, designed a flash website for the free elective credit, talked to my philosophy professor over the phone and discussed what i wrote my final exam on, and the compiler class? yeah, still not sure about that one, but it's done. i also somehow managed to get a full time job, land an awesome apartment in downtown boston with my best friend booty, and apply for graduation. 2 weeks into my new job, i received that $xxx,xxx diploma and probably one of the biggest reliefs of my life! note: do NOT want to go through that ever, ever, again.

reflecting on things i got quite a lot accomplished the summer of '05. fast forward about 2 years my life was about as static as could be. i was working the daily 8 - 7 grind at a job that took advantage of a young, dumb kid straight out of college looking to impress and make a name for himself. my life revolved around work, with a tiny social life (if you even want to call it such) on the side.

it wasn't until about april of '07 that life turned upside down.

• april '07 -- i had finally had enough. i began losing sleep, and found myself genuinely despising my job. i cringed every day i got to work. i dreaded going to sleep sunday nights knowing i had a full week of hell approaching. a friend of mine who is a technical recruiter said to me in an e-mail: " There's nothing worst than waking up Mon. morning to go to a job you hate. " ding! light bulb went off. why was i still there? yet another long story short, i called it quits. this was by far one of the most difficult things i've ever had to do. what would i do differently? not wait as long as i did.
• april '07 -- out with the old, in with the new. financially i couldn't afford to quit my job without seeking a new one. i managed to get a job working as a systems administrator at brandeis university. significantly better benefits, HUGE pay increase, more vacation, free tuition, massive department budget (which means cooler toys to play with), relaxed working environment, better management, and the list goes on. moving on up . . .
• april '07 -- www.nicholasamanda.com becomes nicholas & amanda! i proposed to amanda on patriot's day of this year. my beautiful fiancee and i have been dating since sophmore year of high school -- that's february of '98 for those of you trying to do the math. yeah, blows my mind also. our date to be wed is april 26 of '08 and i'm counting down every minute until then. moving to boston was the smartest move i've ever made, and i'm marrying the proof.
• may '07 -- call me uncle nick! my sister had a baby boy named grant philip lathren. his middle name is philip, named after my late father philip ragusa. he truly is the most precious little guy i've ever seen. aunt amanda and i haven't had a chance to meet him yet but already have a flight booked for mid july.
• june '07 -- new ride. i'm a lexus customer for life.

gosh what am i missing??!! i'm sure there's more that i can't think of. some things that are on the horizon though ... new macbook pro courtesy of work, hascup famous 4th of july bbq, moving in to an apartment with my fiancee before the end of the summer, huge network overhaul at work, new nikon slr??

moral of the story? as my dad used to say, when it rains, it pours.

it has arrived! a 2007, Lexus IS 250 AWD. it doesn't get much sweeter than this. as for the whole title debacle, all done. all i did was go to the dealership on monday (the day after i bought the car) with a receipt from my inspection dated around the same time of my title. the salesman took it back into the offices, talked to some people for a minute, them came back was said, 'ok, you're all set.' i thought there had to be a catch. apparently they were going to take care of the title amendment, amendment fee, bringing it to the RMV, and didn't care about waiting for the process time. i guess this is part of the perks of dealing with lexus and not your average joe.

also, as part of the car delivery, i was introduced to the entire service department, given the cell phone number of the service department's manager in case i had an emergency or was dissatisfied, as well as introduced to a handful of other people who worked at the dealership. as for the car? this is by far the nicest whip i've ever driven, and i'm pretty sure i might be a lexus customer for life.

more pictures to come . . .