This Fortune Intentionally Left Blank

In case you're wondering why I consider this Day Zero and not Day One: the long answer can be found here. The short answer is that I'm a dork.

Katie and my dad left this morning at approximately 8:00 AM EST. It'll be hard not seeing her for 52 days or so. The last time we were separated this long was four and a half years ago when Katie went to London for her senior project. We spend a lot of time at least in each others presence, if not doing things together. It's also hard because the apartment is 90% empty. And it'll be getting emptier as I get rid of furniture (speaking of which, anyone want a nice coffee table?)

Fortunately I did have plenty to do today to keep my mind off of things. I took the car in for its 45,000 mile maintenance, which is always fun. The biggest thing though, was taking part in a service project with my life group members. We went and served at a soup kitchen in downtown Worcester called The Mustard Seed. Another team had prepared all of the food for dinner and we served it and then cleaned up. It was actually really easy because we had a large group (people from outside of our life group joined us), but still a good time of service. It really puts your life in perspective when you serve those less fortunate than you.

On September 2nd I plugged my iPod Mini into my computer thinking I would listen to some music but was treated to this instead:

All I could divine from that image was that my iPod was not very happy. My first thought was "Maybe the battery is extremely low" since it had been a while since I had last plugged it in. But despite letting it "charge" for a couple of hours, I never saw any change. Next I Googled the symptoms to try and troubleshoot the problem. Most sites suggested either restoring the firmware via iTunes or putting the iPod into a special diagnostics mode. Neither of those worked because I could never get the iPod to be recognized by the PC as being attached and despite repeated attempts to restart it into the diagnostics mode I would only receive the sick iPod screen. As I cradled my beloved Mini in my arms I noticed a strange clicking sound.

The sound that my highly trained mind immediately recognized as the feeble attempts of a perishing harddrive to spin up. Clearly this was serious: my iPod was no more. I was very sad.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, "Ian is a highly paid engineer. Why doesn't he just buy a new iPod. The Mini is like a thousand years old. The new Nanos are slim, have color screens, play movies, and cost less than $200. What's the big deal?" Well I'll tell you. First, my iPod Mini has extreme sentimental value to me. It was a gift from one of my favorite college professors for working gratis on a summer project. Second, it's a great design. It's small but still easy and comfortable to hold and the anodized aluminum case is attractive and sturdy. Third, it's one of the few iPod models (for now) that can run Rockbox, an alternative firmware that let's me play audio formats other than MP3s. This is handy since I've switched my audio library over to the FLAC format.

So I decided I would look into fixing my iPod. I knew people had successfully replaced iPod batteries before, but I wasn't sure how easy it would be to fix the harddrive. As it turns out, it wasn't hard at all. Not only can you replace the harddrive, you can replace it with a CompactFlash memory card and even increase the storage capacity of your device. There's even a company, iFixit.com, dedicated to provided spare parts and guides for fixing Apple products. For $100 I was able to order a 32GB CompactFlash card, a new battery with a higher capacity, and the tools necessary to disassemble my iPod.

This is the setup I used (the hair dryer is to soften up the adhesive that holds the end caps on):

The first step is to remove the bottom cap and then pull out the internal metal bracket:


Once the bottom bracket is out you have access to the Click Wheel connector (the orange cable on the left). After you carefully disconnect it you go up to the top and remove the top cap:

Another reason why I want to keep my iPod is because of the custom engraving on the back. Once you unscrew the two tiny Philips head screws, you can remove the guts of the iPod from the casing by gently pushing up on the bottom. Here you can see views of the internals of an iPod Mini from the front and the back:


Here's a shot comparing the two batteries:

The one on the left is the old iPod battery, the one on the right is the replacement.

Here's a shot of the microdrive:

And a comparison of the old 4GB microdrive vs the 32GB CompactFlash card:

Here's the new parts installed and the iPod reassembled:


And last but certainly not least, a shot showing my new and improved 32GB iPod Mini in action:


The whole process was pretty painless. The guides from iFixit clearly explained how to do everything. It took me two hours to do everything, but most of that was getting iTunes to recognize the iPod so I could reinstall the firmware.

1. I refuse to use any facebook application other than the one that gets my status from twitter.

2. I have an irrational fear that an overhead airplane will crash into my general vicinity.

3. My wife and I have had conversations using nothing but movie quotes.

4. Through the attrition of teammates at work, I am now responsible for 35,000 out of 45,000 lines of code.

5. When I started high school I received a locker magnet that said "Excellence is not in being the best, but in doing your best". This has had a profound impact on my life.

6. I have carried on conversations at work speaking nothing but acronyms.

7. I'm very, very good at Sudoku.

8. I own a shirt with a built-in WiFi detector.

9. The longer I live, the larger my concept of the love of God becomes.

10. My middle name is Chandler. Yes, like on "Friends".

11. I spent 15 months addicted to World of Warcraft.

12. I can count the number of grades I've received (including high school, college, and grad school) that were not A's using only my fingers.

13. I estimate that I've spent 25,000 hours over the last twelve years using a computer. And yet I've never gotten carpal tunnel syndrome.

14. My favorite numbers are prime or powers of two.

15. Computers fear me.

16. I married the first girl I kissed.

17. I'm secure enough in my masculinity to admit that I'm a sucker for any romantic comedy involving Tom Hanks or Meg Ryan.

18. My favorite color is teal.

19. If I had enough money I would buy an island and build a castle on it.

20. You wouldn't call me passive-aggressive if you knew how it made me feel.

21. In my opinion, I'm terrible with human relationships.

22. My favorite place on earth is Acadia National Park.

23. I always get embarrassed when people discuss finances.

24. Despite the fact that the class was named "Applicable Complex Variables", I never learned any applications for complex variables in it.

25. I've had the same hair style my entire life.

I know it's technically only Christmas Eve, but this year Katie and I are doing something new. Something that will actually extend Christmas over two days. That's two days of awesomeness!

In years past Katie and I have done a torturous circuit of all of our relatives to try and see everyone in the area on Christmas. This usually left us exhausted by the end but it was our major opportunity to see people we hadn't seen since last Christmas, so we did it. But in the past your several relatives have moved farther away from each other making for even longer travel times on Christmas.

So this year Katie and I decided that our best bet would be to celebrate Christmas over two days, spending all of Christmas Eve with Katie's family and Christmas Day with mine. Ultimately it will mean less travel time and more family time for both of us. The festivities will begin today around 1:00 PM.

Now if only it would stop snowing.

Man, it's been a while since I last blogged. Work has been ... interesting lately. And not in a good way. January is going to be intense I think.

But for now, I'm on vacation for two and a half weeks. Tomorrow afternoon Katie and I fly back to Seattle to spend Christmas with our families. But for now I'm doing chores.

It's been two and a half weeks since I left World of Warcraft. I find myself missing it every now and then, but in general I feel a lot more productive. My website redesign is going well. Structurally I need to figure out how I want to do the navigation bar and then I need to check the layout in other browsers and make whatever corrections are necessary. Which means I probably need to look and see if any of our computers here still have IE 6 (I've been doing all my development with Firefox). After the structural layout looks good I'll be working on a color scheme.

One thing I'm not sure about is whether or not I want to use javascript. I've been looking at script.aculo.us effects and they are pretty cool, not too mention easy to extend. But I don't know if I want to make my page dependent on people having javascript enabled. These are the tough choices of a web developer.

This morning I woke up to a sad sight: our Betta fish, Mr. Fishy, was laying on his side at the bottom of the fish tank. At first I thought he might have just been pining for the fjords*, but after prodding him a couple of times it was clear that he was dead. We had only had him for a year but he quickly became a part of our lives.

But in keeping with the theme of today, I'm thankful we got to make his last year on earth a pleasant one. He had a good long life. The average life expectancy of a Betta fish is two to three years, and he had already been owned for three years before we got him, so he was at least four when he died. The maximum they live is only five years.

So it'll be a slightly more somber Thanksgiving for us this year. Not that that will keep me from stuffing my face with mashed potatoes mind you.



* Bonus points if you understand what I'm talking about.

Well, hopefully not. But Katie's got the flu, so I'm taking care of her.

So it's been a week now since I officially stopped playing World of Warcraft and it's been going ok. No major withdrawal symptoms yet. I've been grumpy and irritated all week, but that's more because of my job than anything else. Thankfully it's nearly Thanksgiving, and I have some PTO I need to use so I've got a nice long break coming up.

One thing I'm attempting to do with my new free time is to blog more. To that end I've joined the ranks of those who twitter. Katie is slightly disgusted at the level of social minutiae that is twitter, but she is at least supporting me in my desire to try and communicate more with other people. I did have to promise to not let it end up as this (warning: profanity).

I've also decided that I want to renovate my web site. I really like the boxes with rounded corners and drop shadows (probably because I invested a lot of tears, sweat, and blood to make them work in Firefox and IE) but I'm not sure I'm happy with the layout. I know I'm not happy with the background. I've always admired my friend Eric's color schemes so I can always stare at his site until I get some inspiration. So I'll be doing an overhaul of the color scheme, possibly the layout (such as adding a twitter feed) and probably the underlying architecture of the site.

I have a lot of project ideas floating around in my head. I hope to bring some of them to life in the near future. I don't want to talk about them yet as they are all in the conceptual stage at the moment.

My life is a mess right now.


Ok that's not true. I'm not sick. I'm still married after five years and the relationship is still improving. I'm financially better off than a lot of people right now (one advantage to renting over owning a home: no mortgage). I have a Betta fish (surely a sign that I am a successful person).

But I don't do anything.

If you were to ask what my interests were I'd say: computers, the Internet, programming, cool technology, learning about cool technology, getting technology to do cool things, reading, video games, etc.

If you were to ask what I actually do in my free time I'd say: reading, video games.

Now, you could argue that my interests don't necessarily involve doing stuff,but I've never claimed to be a very active person. The point is not that my interests don't lend themselves to doing things, but that even though I'm interested in a variety of (technical) things, my actual activities don't involve anything of that sort. I never blog, it's been a couple of years since I programmed for fun, and despite a preponderance of technology I rarely use it for anything more than its basic functionality. It's like I've reverted to being a college kid who does nothing but classes and Halo. Actually that's exactly what I've become, although my drug of choice isn't Halo. It's something far more insidious.

True confession time: I play World of Warcraft. And it's taking over my life.

Now I'm not blaming my problems on WoW. It's certainly my fault for not balancing my life. Although if the game weren't really fun then it probably wouldn't be much of an issue. I have friends who play WoW. Possibly they do a better job of not getting sucked into it. But I, alas, have failed. Rather than spend time on my other interests I find myself logged in to WoW. There's so many things I'd like to explore but I don't.

Therefore, effective immediately, I've canceled my subscription to World of Warcraft. This is no guarantee that I'll get back into blogging or programming or anything else, but I can guarantee that as long as I play WoW I won't be getting back into those things.

And so I direct the words of the bravest little hobbit of them all to my friends in World of Warcraft: "I regret to announce — this is The End. I am going now. I bid you all a very fond farewell."

And humble too.