Nielsenhome.net

I'm showing Phillip how Drupal works! :)

We went to the Nielsen ranch out in Ogallala this past weekend to help with branding and join in on the revelry. :) Branding went quickly, and we had lunch and played our guitars. It was a really fun trip! I have pictures here.

Ok, had to put this on here so I remember it. I found an AWESOME linux tool that I wish I knew about before now: lshw. Basically it gives a list of very detailed information about the hardware on your Linux system. It wasn't installed by default in my Fedora installation, but I used "yum install lshw" to grab it and it worked great. This will definitely help with development and administration using a Linux machine...

I know, a weird post for the Nielsenhome.net blog, but it got me excited.

(I should also add that I saw this on the Moving Pieces blog. Here's the original article).

I just posted new pictures! I had a backlog building up... First there was Alex' Birthday, which was great fun. And then right after was Spring Break and then Arianna's Birthday. Good times were had by all!

Then, Alex graduated from being a Tiger Cub Scout to the next rank of Wolf Cub. He did a very good job, and now has several belt loops including Swimming, Astronomy, and Art.

Alex is also in soccer these days, and I took some pictures at his game. It was FREEZING. Well, actually it was 40 degrees, but the wind was blowing about 50 mph. The kids all had little coats on (and thank goodness Alex brought his mittens!). Alex' team, the Green Dragons, won the game 2-0. I have some funny pictures of Alex happily dancing around after the second goal - hilarious. :-P Make sure to check them out!

I have recently resigned from Solekai Systems, to work at a company called Atrato Inc. It was a very hard decision, but because of the industry and several other factors I decided it was time to move on. I'm excited to work at Atrato - I start there on April 7th. Until then, I'm finishing up a contract with Solekai.

It has been a while, so I thought I'd write something. There's a few new pictures at my Picasa site (Click on Pictures in the menu at the top), if you want to check them out.

I just found a new site, http://www.stage6.com that is great for downloading music (not just streaming like YouTube). I went there to find footage from the recent London Led Zeppelin concert. They didn't have any (I think every site has pulled that footage at the request of the band, since they're going to release a DVD of the concert at some point), but they had a BUNCH of great old footage of Led Zeppelin songs.

So i recently ripped the guts out of my 1996 Gibson Les Paul Standard.

!!!

Say what??

The story begins with me reading an article in Guitar World magazine about Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. It was the issue before their big concert in London recently (which apparently went fantastically!). They talked about Gibson's recent reissue Jimmy Page Signature Les Paul, and mentioned that it had "Jimmy Page's coil tap push/pull setup." ??? What the heck, and why haven't I ever heard of it?

After some research, I knew I HAD to duplicate his setup. Basically, your volume and tone controls become extra switches on your guitar. In Jimmy Page's setup, the volume knobs ground out half the humbucker to which they're attached, turning the humbuckers into single-coil pickups. In addition, the tone knobs, when pulled out, will either flip the pickup connections so they're out of phase with each other, or wire them in series (to make a giant pickup).

We decided to take some portraits of the kids since it has been a while. We have many more than these, but we just posted the good ones. And the really bad ones (they're funny!).

Today we're heading over to Mom and Dad's house for a BBQ - it should be great fun. I've spent the morning digitizing songs that I should have recorded months ago. I'll post them, too, when I get a chance. I've digitized Monica's Wedding, as well as my Dad and my performance at Lake MacConaughy this summer at Junie Mae's. Some of the Lake Gig songs turned out great (and some of them didn't). Stay tuned for mp3s coming up soon!

Christie got a new haircut! :) It is pretty short, but we like it.

In other news, Alex lost his first tooth - check out these pictures. Also in these pictures are a couple from Solekai's last "winedown" and Eric and Tammi's new baby Dayla.

We went to the Butterfly pavilion today, and had a great time. :) I had a field day taking a billion pictures, and got a lot of really good ones... Check it out!

My band, Let's Eat Mikey, played last night at Jack Brown's block party - it was a blast! The band had a little bit of a rough start but we finished with a bang (in my opinion)... I was too focused on playing to take any pictures, but I noticed that Mikey had a camera so I'll see if I can get copies of them to post on the site.

Well, I finally posted the rest of the pictures from our trip to North Carolina. On the last day, we went to "Nauticus" in Norfolk, where they have the U.S.S. Wisconsin docked. It was a fun time, and we were especially glad to see Abe and Amelia again! We looked and the ship, and then went to eat (and race cars!) at Jillian's. And then we bolted for the airport for a flight home. :)

Last night I went to see an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band, called Lez Zeppelin - it was a blast. I went with Joe and Aaron, and it was at the Bluebird Theater in Denver. They are playing at the Fox in Boulder on Friday (I almost want to go again!!). Their guitarist is really good, and they sound just like Led Zeppelin.

We're heading home from the Outer Banks tomorrow, on a flight to Pittsburgh at 3:30. There was a lot of traffic on the way here last Saturday, so we're going to trek out early in hopes of missing it. We hope to go to a Nautical Museum called "Nauticus" tomorrow with Abe and Amelia before we fly out (unless they have a baby tonight!).

I posted some more pictures - from our fishing trip yesterday, a trip to the Corolla lighthouse today, and some pictures of the sunset tonight.

We're on vacation in the Outer Banks (Corolla, in North Carolina, if you want to look it up), and loving it! Christie rented a house pretty close to the beach and a bunch of her family came to stay for a week. The beach is pretty nice - it is hot, but the water is cool.

We got to see our friends Abe and Amelia a couple days ago, and that was great cause we haven't seen them for about three years (since Zach's wedding). We had some lunch, a couple beers, and then went on a nature walk. Amelia is about to have a baby (her due date was a few days ago), so that's exciting!

We took some pictures with Abe and Amelia here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholas.nielsen/20070812AbeAmeliaNorthCarol...

And here are some pictures of us at the beach, and some family pictures with Christie's family:

http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholas.nielsen/20070813NorthCarolinaBeach

That's all for now. Except more, since there's internet up at the beach house, and I have a lot of free time to write entries. :)

Christie's favorite holiday of the year is upon us... We're trucking out to Nebraska for the next five days or so to see a bunch of family and hang out. We're leaving tonight (Tuesday) for Ogallala to stay at the ranch over the 4th, and then continuing on to Ord on the 5th. Grandma Quinn rented a house in Ord and we'll all get to hang out with the Quinn side of the family for a few days, as well as play in the annual 4th of July golf tournament.

Very much looking forward to it - I'm sure we'll have some pictures when we get back! (We'll be driving all the way from Ord on Sunday.)

We went camping two weekends ago with our friends Zach and Nancy up in Glacier Basic (near Morraine Park in the Rocky Mountain National Forest up near Estes Park), and it was great fun. :) Lots of campfires, guitar playing, hiking, cooking, and the inevitable "wee dram" of scotch.

The kids were troopers for the most part - they had fun hiking and loved roasting marshmellows. All in all a good camping weekend! We have some pictures here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholas.nielsen/20070622CampingZachAndNancy

We'd love to go camping again sometime soon, but I think our weekends are full until September! Maybe a fall trip will be in order...

I have a glut of pictures that have been building up for a couple months... I finally posted them to Picasa, so you can check them out at: http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholas.nielsen

New ones include:

Arianna's birthday
our trip to Steamboat Springs
Alex playing soccer
a trip to the Botanical Gardens
Alex' field day and Kindergarten graduation
A bunch of pictures from our vacation in Portland, OR

This page details some interesting alternative input devices:

Alpha Grips
Twiddler
BAT Keyboard
Gyro Ultra Professional Mouse
Palm Mouse
Frog Pad
CyKey
The Fish - handheld mouse
Kord Wrap

HMD

I'm sure the title of this post makes most people think it will be about my sister Monica getting married in less than a month... WRONG! (BTW: congrats Monica and John!)

This is about moving my home computer to Linux. Ditching Windows from my life before it becomes necessary to switch to YET ANOTHER Microsoft operating system (Vista). From news reports, it appears that migration to Vista is much slower than previous versions of Windows, but I don't care. I hate not having a choice about what to use, and I'd like to more actively support open source efforts. Heck, maybe I'll even start contributing, or moving some of my home projects under an open source license.

So what has changed to make me switch? I've used every single version of Windows since I bought Windows 95. I even had a version of Windows 3.11 that you installed from floppy disks! (probably still have it somewhere in the elephant graveyard in my basement...) Well, up until now, there were two compelling reasons to run Windows. Not just compelling; it was impossible to reasonably circumvent these two requirements for my home computer:

1. My home finances - I run Quicken
2. My sporadic but long-standing addiction to PC computer games.

First Quicken: I love Quicken. It does a great job of sorting through my income and expenses, balancing my checkbook month-to-month, and tracking my investments. I like how it gives me control over my current finances and provides budgeting and planning tools as well. Frankly, if I didn't have something like Quicken helping me out, I probably wouldn't do much more than a bare minimum of financial planning and tracking. I probably wouldn't even balance my checkbook. With Quicken, I can spend two or three hours a month and I have an ongoing financial outlook, balanced checkbook, spending trends, graphs of cash flows, stock analysis, retirement planning, etc.

Alex' birthday was yesterday (yup, St. Patrick's Day!), and he had a fabulous time. We had a party at our house, and he got to pick 6 friends from school to come. Instead of a cake, we roasted marshmellows on the deck and had smores. :) My primary job for the party was to make the fire and then babysit it... Heh. But it was a nice day to sit out on the deck, and I was relieved of all other responsibilities (other than taking a few pictures) so that was fine with me.

Speaking of pictures, here's a bunch:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholas.nielsen/20070317AlexBirthday

You can also look at the rest of my pictures by clicking "Pictures" in the main menu up top.

On Friday night, Christie's parents came over for steaks on the deck, and to celebrate Alex' birthday. It was a load of fun, as you can see from the pictures also included above.

After the party yesterday, we had some yummy homemade macaroni and cheese (with smoked gouda and swiss guyere) - Alex' choice. Then we opened more presents. All in all a long, but fun day!

Heh - well, the body shop called and my car is totaled after all. They said it was too close, too many repairs. I went to the shop and said my farewells to the millennium boat - as well as got my garage door opener and my Express Toll Pass. :-P

I went to the Dodge dealership in Boulder after work on Friday to check out a 2005 PT Cruiser convertible GT that was still on their lot. We haggled quite a bit and I offered some insanely low offers, and then I left. They called me Saturday morning after I had time to think about it, and I decided I wanted the car. I made them a more reasonable offer that they accepted. So I am now the proud new owner of a PT Cruiser GT!

It is pretty darn nice... 230 HP, turbo engine, leather seats, convertible, dark blue (my color of choice), 17" wheels, sports suspension, 6 disc changer, etc.

Guh! I just got done doing my taxes. What a way to spend a couple hours... Fun stuff. My refund was huge ($6K) so I think I need to do a little adjusting on my W-4 form at Solekai...

I had a thought about my car - why not have the best of both worlds?? I was secretly hoping that my Intrepid would be totaled so I could buy a little convertible. But now that they're fixing the Dodge, I'm starting to think I could buy a little convertible anyway... Hmm... Nothing too new (or too pricy), but maybe a 96 Miata or something...

(Evil Grin)

My Intrepid R/T lives! At least, in theory... I talked to the body shop yesterday, and although there is a lot of damage, the car has held its value well enough to make it worthwhile to fix. :) I love that car, but part of me was wishing it'd be totaled. I had been looking at new cars, and now the R/T has this subconscious stigma associated with it since I broke it...

But now I'm used to the idea of having the R/T back. It'll be clean, in good working order, I'll install my computer again, and I'll still be zipping around with a surprising 225 HP. ;) (Not to mention the sports tires, killer transmission, etc.). Hell, maybe I'll even talk the shop into an oil change and filter replacements while it's there!

Bad news is that it will take at least two weeks from today until the car is taken care of, so I'll be bummin' rides and renting cars until then... In a related note, I just added "free rental car" to my insurance policy for next time. :-P

We just went to Puerto Vallerta in Mexico last week with our friends Zach and Nancy, and had a fantastic time. I managed to wreck my car on the way to the airport, but we made it to the beach nonetheless. Margs and sand are great therapy, I have discovered!

Here are the pictures from our vacation:
http://picasaweb.google.com/nicholas.nielsen/20070217MexicoZachAndNancy

I've created a new website that I hope will fill my needs better than the old one. Hopefully, since it is easier to modify I'll keep it up-to-date more often. ;) My old website is still available. I'll likely migrate the wiki content to the new site, but all the rest of the old content will rest in peace where it lies. Onward and upward!