I had another plan for a picture.  However at drill we ended up having a firecall, so snapped a couple of quick pictures on my phone while we were out on the call.  Grain Dryer fire.  I think we were on scene around three hours.

Fortunately it wasn’t as cold as it has been the past couple of weeks or it could have been really nasty.

I got the idea from FireMom over at Stop, Drop, and Blog.  She is participating in Project 365 again this year.  Project 365 has the goal of a photo every single day of the year.  A little bit less intensive version of that is a “52 Project.“  Or a photo every week of the year.

My goal of using my Nikon D60 DSLR Camera a bit more, plus actually publishing the photos I do take, is one of those goals that I can incorporate into this blog.  However, I decided that for my first post, I will actually use a picture that I took on my blackberry.

In the picture is my new bandsaw that my parents got me for Christmas.  I actually need to still mount it to the workbench, but it is set up and tested in the picture.  This will help a lot with projects offline.  (Such as finally redoing the trim in the entryway, model train work, etc.)

Now of course, this removes another excuse from actually doing the trim pieces.  The proof is in the pic so to speak.  So now I just need to run to the hardware store sometime and get those trim pieces…

Wow – how things change.  9 years ago today I first registered olorinpc.com 1/1/2001.  This site has undergone quite a few transformations over the years.  From a hand-coded in html site to a full blog running the latest version of wordpress.

My old logo:

A few different versions from mid-2001 till last year when I went to the current theme.  Not all of the versions I tried out, but this is a good selection.

The site has undergone a few different hosts as well.  Originally hosted off a server in my dorm room my freshmen year of college, then off my student webspace, a server my dad provided, blogger, godaddy, and now as of a couple of years ago 1and1.  In some ways, I miss running off of my own server, but there is a whole lot less word to having someone else host.

Merged the site with comp.cx for a while.  (Which is now gone.)

Scripts didn’t pick up well in the archive site….

Migrated to blogger for a while when I started updating more regularly, though we had a newsfeed on comp.cx.

First version of this site when I moved it to wordpress.  It was actually a sub-site of supergeekblog.com for a while till I moved it to it’s own host.

Well the long and the short of it is, for almost a decade olorinpc.com has been around in one form or another.  Before that I had a freeservers site, a geocities site for a bit, etc.  So I have been doing websites in one form or another for over a decade.  As we start 2010 it is kind of crazy to think about.  On the other hand, makes me wonder what the next changes to olorinpc.com will bring!

Christmas was a bit different this year.  Originally we had planned on heading down to the Twin Cities to visit family.  However with the blizzard rolling in, we made the call to stay here in Jamestown.  Shane and his family made the same call, so we had a Christmas event here.  It was rather fun, though with the volume of snow that fell, we ended up all being trapped for three days.

The Ede kids looking cute:

The Ede Family Photo:

The Barnard Family Photo:

Last but not least, ThatEdeGuy and me, with Lightning and Sparky:

So all in all – we had a fun Christmas!

Hope everyone else did too   Have a fun and save New Years tonight.

Now I have been feeling a bit of the BSG shakes lately.  You know, Friday night withdrawal.  (Still hoping to get my hands on the BSG Box Set with all seasons.)

Caprica is coming out soon and the Extended Pilot Episode is available on Syfy.com and is actually worth watching.  I am still not convinced the show will be as good as BSG, but the pilot  was enough to make me give it a chance.  However, if you too are missing BSG, the vid linked on Geeks are Sexy today should bring a smile to your face.  Take a look:

Merry Christmas everyone!  I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.

Safe travels to all of those moving about the country.

Well the weather was just looking too questionable, so Jennie and I made the call to not head to MN for Christmas.  For those who don’t know, both of our families live in Minnesota.  This tends to make things interesting as we try to visit everyone we can when we make the 6hrs to visit.  It also is great as we get to see a bunch of people at once

Though we do hope to make it down after the storm passes to make the rounds and try to visit everyone then.

I might get some posts up on here and Epic Plains over the weekend, but not sure if I will manage to get any set up or not.  Either way, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas!

The Mac vs PC debate is an interesting one.  PC dominates the market place, so why is there such strong opinions?  Often times it seems people prefer which ever they started on.  Although in cases like mine, that isn’t really true.

Myself, started as an Apple geek.  My first computer (which came from my Dad) was an Apple IIe.  Dad had the Macintosh and eventually upgraded that to a Performa.

Winter of ’98, with the help of a buddy (thanks irrision) built my first computer.  Installed Win95 briefly, but quickly upgraded it to Win98.  I loved the fact that it ran on any hardware, so I was able to save a ton of money getting my own parts and building my own version of a desktop computer.

The love went from there, as a high school kid and then starting out college, kept upgrading the thing to keep it close to gamer specs.  I continued to work with Windows, advancing along with it from Win2k, WinXP, (I won’t mention WinME), and even working with Windows Server Editions.  Through my consulting job I worked with MS SQL, Server side installations of software, Active Directory, etc.  Oh and got a Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician cert.  So it is safe to say I am pretty much on the PC side of things.  Or I have been.

The home laptop is starting to age and get flakey.  So I am hoping to upgrade/replace it within the next year.  My old desktop died about a year ago and I never bothered to replace it. I was going to with a spare machine, but a friend of my Dads needed a computer, so passed it off to them.  Pulled the old hard drives, converted them to external drives and haven’t worried about it since.

So it is just the laptop I am looking at replacing.  It is no longer cost effective for me to build my own machine.  Perhaps if I were going for a top-end gaming machine I could make it worth it, but I don’t game much anymore and really am not concerned with squeaking out a few extra frames-per-second.

This is a good point to go into the Mac vs PC topic.  It really seems to come down to what you want to do on a computer, budget, and comfort.  Let’s look at some Pros and Cons for me:

PC Pros:

Long time user, advanced knowledge

Have been building/using/repairing for over a decade.

Fairly reliable, providing virus and spyware blockers are used and updated

Cheaper to buy, easy for me to maintain

Software I have is PC based, would be starting from scratch

PC Cons:

I know how they can fail, hardware and software

Viruses and spyware – constantly evolving and constantly annoying

Not cost effective to home build anymore

Don’t really game anymore

Can’t run MacOSX in virtual (easily or legally)

Mac Pros:

My Dad loves his Macbook, as I do when demoing it.

Photoshop supposedly runs better on it

Writing and photography tools have a lot of support for Mac.

The Macbook Pro’s just look really sweet

With VMWare Fusion I could run Windows in a virtual (and my windows apps)

Mac Cons:

I am not as familiar with the support (both software and hardware) with modern apple products.

Price – they are freaking expensive for a comparable PC

So, I think I am going to demo my Dads Macbook a bit more.  I need to save up anyways, my Gadget Budget is a bit low (and may be non-existent for a while).  My normal computer usage is now internet (blogging and such), writing, or photography.  So software compatibility isn’t that large of a concern to me.  In the end, despite being a PC guy for over a decade, I am contemplating going back to Mac.  Both have come a long way, but it is tempting.  I just have to get over that price thing.  (Oh and of course budget for it.)

I did find a couple of interesting articles online looking at the topic as well.  You might be interested in checking those out as well.  I will do a follow-up later once to do some more looking around, testing, and generally looking.  (Here is article 1 and here is article 2.)

Today I wanted to share one of my favorite comics I discovered in the last year.  I think anyone who was worked in a corporate office environment will appreciate this, though it follows IT guys specifically.

Introducing: Business Casual

A few of my favorite strips from 2009:

Day job I am the reporting guy.  Run reports, develop reports, etc.  So I loved this one!

I think a lot of us have had projects that have changed from time to time…

Ever feel busy?  I have had a conversation just like this with IT buddies before…

Well I hope you enjoy those comics.  If you do, subscribe to the RSS feed and have them pop up in your favorite feed reader every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Over on Epic Plains I just finished compiling my list of Literary Resources that I subscribe to.

I put together a post on it as well, so head on over and check it out!