Sunday Snapshot: LAN Party

In the past week or two, three of my four brothers have built themselves computers. They have finally conceded that laptops are a bad investment (I’ve been telling them this for years–my desktop is showing no signs of waning after 7 years while most of them have gone through two laptops in the same period.) And, apart from the economics, they also realize that desktops are immensely preferable as gaming computers.

That, after all, is really why they built their computers.

So last Sunday, after our family (plus some) lunch, Daniel set up a table in the basement and traveled home to get his computer. John went to his separate corner of the city to get his computer. And Timothy brought his down from upstairs.

Daniel, John, and Timothy on computers

In between chatting with my folks, processing my pickles, and crocheting a Christmas ornament, I popped downstairs to take a few photos.

John gave the signal and each boy raised his hand to avoid a face photo.

I switched sides, making it harder for Dan to hide his face–but he managed it nonetheless.

Just another Sunday afternoon when the Menter children re-converge on their house of origin.


And it’s up…

I’ve been wanting to get my little sib’s blogs onto the menterz.com website for quite a while now. It doesn’t seem reasonable to be paying for a domain with our own name on it and then using free hosting at a different domain.

Problem is, the kiddos (Joshua and Grace) are using WordPress.com for their blogs. They like their blogging platform and don’t want to go through the bother of learning html and using it for their blogging (like I do.)

Thankfully, the blogging platform they are using is open-source from WordPress.org. Which means all I have to do is install WordPress on our web server, configure it for their blogs and get their blogs transferred over.

But I’ve never used WordPress–and I’m not THAT comfortable with programming of the non-HTML variety. So it has taken me a while.

Actually, now that I think of it, maybe it hasn’t been all that long. Was it really just this last Sunday that Dad and I sat down together to install WordPress on our web server? I think it was.

I’ve been spending every spare moment since learning how Worpress Themes work–by creating a them that matches my website. I am in the process of switching the blog portion of my site over to WordPress–as it will make it simpler for me to post from a distance (for example, while in between classes at school). I will continue doing my own html for articles, bible studies, book reviews, and the like.

It seems that this will have the happy effect of allowing me to post on my blog more easily, while maintaining my skills in html and css–and maybe even learning a bit of php and mySQL while I’m at it. I’m pretty excited about the prospect.

And, having worked out most of the bugs (I think) with the whole “WordPress blogging” thing, I am now ready to unveil the newest development in the life of “bekahcubed”. While messing around with our web server, we discovered that we could create a new subdomain for me with just a couple button clicks. So, instead of the old www.menterz.com/bekahcubed, you can now access my website at bekahcubed.menterz.com. This is a much nicer url to share. So, please update your bookmarks to bekahcubed.menterz.com.

In addition, you may want to update your RSS feeds or subscribe to my RSS for the first time. I now have two separate RSS feeds: one for the blog content and one for the (more) static articles.

Also, be prepared for an introduction to Joshua and Grace‘s blogs–coming soon to menterz.com


Housekeeping

I haven’t been around much lately. I’ve taken a break from my normal blog-reading/blog-writing ways to do some housekeeping.

First order of business, finish portfolio. (And I’m done. Now I can breathe again!)

Second order of business, figure out my thesis (Yep, I decided to switch to the thesis option. Now I need to get my thesis topic finalized, select my committee, and turn in my MOC. Joy!)

Third order of business, figure out this assistantship thing. (Cleaned the labs today, had a quick meeting. Will be teaching my first lab on Monday!)

And then there’s the “extra-curricular” cleaning.

I decided one day that my computer was getting frustrating and it might be time for an upgrade. So I chatted with my dad about what I might need, and got some input from my brothers (which I decided to ignore ;-)). Then, motherboard manual in hand, I went window shopping at NewEgg. Thanks to a decent insurance settlement for the accident in February, I finally had a bit of money–and so I put in my order for a new hard drive, two new memory chips, a new keyboard, and an optical mouse.

Meanwhile, I’ve been “cleaning” my website–trying to get all my various and sundry web stuff into the same format. It’ll be nice when it’s done. The final format is set up to allow for easy changes via CSS (cascading style sheets.) Once I’ve got everything in the same format, I’ll be able to make changes to my whole website by just making changes to a single file (instead of having to open every file and tweak each file’s code individually.) I’ve decreased my sidebar links down to just the updated ones–and I’ll be re-adding the other links as they are updated. So that’s kept me pretty busy.

But then, my computer parts arrived. I opened them up to discover—I’d bought the wrong hard drive. Instead of purchasing an IDE drive like I knew I had intended, I purchased a SATA drive. GAH! So I repackaged the hard drive, printed a return label, and dropped it off at the UPS store this afternoon. And then I went back to NewEgg and ordered the right hard drive.

I was done with cleaning (the labs) earlier than I’d expected today–so I figured I’d go ahead and install my new memory. After all, hard drives aren’t everything.

But when I opened my computer case, I discovered that I had quite a task ahead of me. The entire thing, inside and out was CAKED with dust. I ended up taking out my CD drive, my DVD drive, my floppy disk drive (I know, ridiculous that I have one of those, right?), and my hard drive and wiped the dust off the exterior portions. I inverted the computer and shook (gently) to leave my carpet flaked with dark grey dust. I removed the case fan and wiped the dust from its blades. I removed the CPU fan–and discovered a MAT of dust. Imagine dryer lint, only composed entirely of dust. That’s what the top of my CPU looked like. I picked the stuff up and it was almost a half a centimeter thick! Disgusting!

So pretty much, I ended up removing every component of my computer, blowing or shaking or wiping it off (depending on whether it was an exposed or enclosed component) and reinserting it after cleaning the case space surrounding it. I use old nylon stockings as dust rags–and I went through three pair on my computer today.

But once I was done cleaning, I installed my two brand new 1 GB (gigabyte) memory cards and my new keyboard and mouse.

I started the computer, and boy does she hum. It’s like she let out a big exhale. “I can breathe again–or maybe even RUN!” And run she does. It takes less than a quarter the “normal” time to load web pages. How did I ever live without all this memory (and a clean computer)?