This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Yes, I’m a Whore

Yup, added some Google Ads. Just thought I’d finally give them a shot. Cause I want that $5 every 10 months or whatnot from the random people who stumble on this site by accident and then stumble away again through one of those links.

So far just PSAs. We’ll see if anything else ever shows up and if so what. In part, I’m just curious about what will show up, cause I certainly don’t have enough traffic to make any actual cash. But I’ve been meaning to try this for literally years, so today was the day.

I’ll keep them up awhile. If they start to really annoy me, at some point I may get rid of them again.

Dragging

For the last 48 hours or so I’ve just felt bleh. I can’t identify it as a specific “sick” sort of thing, I don’t have cold or flu symptoms or anything, but it’s been the low energy, off and on headaches, heavy feeling head, random aches pains and discomfort, and the occasional dizziness or tingly feeling in the face sort of thing. I’ve been functional, but barely, most of the time feeling like I’d rather be lying down.

I don’t know what this is, but I want it to go away.

Internal Clock

Oh wow, I’m going to be way off filter now. Yesterday I stayed up until about 13 UTC. Normal bedtime is more like 6 or 7. Then I woke up again about 17. I was up until around 19. Then back asleep again until I finally got up around 1 today.

That’s about 10 hours of sleep total, so I’m not short on sleep or anything. But I finally got up for good, oh, 11 hours after the time I generally need to be getting up on weekdays to get to work when I want to be getting there.

My sleep cycle is just going to be so wonked out.

Jet lag without the actual travel. Should be fun!

Amy Crew

Amy is the third little dot from the left in the “shell” in this picture.

This week and last week Amy has been at “crew” camp. She enjoyed it. Yesterday was the big race. Amy’s team lost, but they had fun.

Today is the last day of camp. School will start again very soon.

Yesterday’s Baseball

Yesterday a bunch of us from work went to a baseball game. One of those build team feeling sort of things. It was fun. Seattle lost.

Thought of the Day

I hate it when at the end of a full busy day, I can’t really remember what the day was full of and what I was busy with. I’m sure it was good stuff though.

Sluggish

Cronus has been a little slow lately, and it hasn’t been a memory or CPU issue. But low and behold, I look and my 500GB hard drive (really 465GB, but that’s the whole thing about how hard drives are labeled and the difference between 1000 and 1024, but whatever…)

Where was I? Oh yeah, the drive was 97.8% full.

I just deleted some stuff I’d downloaded that I could get back any time I wanted if I wanted but at the moment I don’t want, and got it down to 88.6% full. That is a lot better, but still pretty full.

I have some more stuff that I’d feel comfortable burning to DVD or such and then removing from my primary drive, but that I don’t feel comfortable completely deleting. So I think maybe tomorrow I’ll go get a blank DVD or two and see what I can do with that. I’d like to get under 80%. Even lower if possible.

I suspect the fullness of my drive may have something to do with some of the slowdowns I’ve had lately. Maybe not, but it certainly seems like 97.8% was pushing it a little bit.

Anyway, time to go watch a DVD with the family. Tonight is an Amy pick. Oh my.

Up Too Late

The sun has come up over northeastern Canada and is about to start heading down the US East Coast. I should really consider sleep soon.

Lucky Kid

New iMacs FINALLY came out today. This has long been scheduled as “Amy’s Year” for a new computer. 2006 was my year. 2007 will be Amy’s. 2008 will be Brandy’s. Then lather, rinse, repeat. So this is Amy’s year, we were just waiting for iMac revisions.

All along the plan was to get the maxed out version of the smallest size when the updates hit. There was some discussion between Brandy and I today on the possibility of getting a baseline model instead as “good enough for now” but I’m a big believer in maxing things out so that you won’t be TOO frustrated too quickly as the thing ages. In the end we decided to stick with the original plan of maxing out the smallest size. (We never considered a 24″ for Amy.)

Since they dropped the 17″, that means we’re looking at a maxed out 20″. So the specs for her will be:

  • 4GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM – 2x2GB
  • 750GB Serial ATA Drive
  • SuperDrive 8x (DVD±R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)
  • Apple Mighty Mouse
  • Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
  • Accessory kit
  • 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
  • ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB memory
  • 20-inch glossy widescreen LCD
  • AirPort Extreme
  • Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

That will beat the specs on my machine Cronus by a decent bit. It should last her for the three years no problem without me even having to do any mid-cycle upgrades. In the additional one to two years before it will be time for my own next computer though, I will be jealous, since she’ll have the best machine in the house for awhile. But it is her turn… so that is OK.

I just initiated the process I need to do to swap money around between a few different accounts before I actually hit the order button. I’ll probably actually hit that button sometime next week and we’ll have the thing the week after that or so. In time to be all set up and running and happy before school starts in any case.

As I said… Lucky kid.

No Easy Victories

My father William Minter’s latest book (co-edited with Gail Hovey and Charles Cobb Jr) is now available for pre-order directly from the website for the book.

It presumably will be available through all the normal channels as well when it is fully released in October. I pre-ordered my copy though.

The summary blurb from the website:

FOR THE FIRST TIME, A PANORAMIC VIEW OF U.S. ACTIVISM ON AFRICA FROM 1950 TO 2000.

“We were part of a worldwide movement that continues today to redress the economic and social injustices that kill body, mind, and spirit. No Easy Victories makes clear that our lives and fortunes around the globe are indeed linked.” – Nelson Mandela

Hundreds of thousands of Americans mobilized to oppose apartheid in the 1980s. That successful movement built on decades of behind-the-scenes links between African liberation movements and American activists, both black and white.

No Easy Victories draws on the voices of activists of several generations to explore this largely untold history. While U.S.-based groups and individuals contributed to African liberation, African struggles also inspired U.S. activism, including the civil rights and black power movements.

Today Africa and the world face global injustices as deadly as apartheid. Understanding this history of solidarity is essential for finding new paths to a future of equal human rights for all.

With a couple of exceptions I’m guessing this is not the sort of book that is the typical reading for most of my blog’s readers, but if this sort of thing interests you at all, go ahead and pick up a copy.