babygeek once said...

This is just a test. If it were an actual post, it would have content rather than this bullshit line about only being a test.

In keeping with my 2 post a week goal, here is a post.  It may not be the post to end all posts, but it's a post nonetheless.

Today we took one of our cats to get a haircut.  She's a long haired cat who often gets mats in her fur.  This is the end result:

 

She is a bit groggy in this picture, but that's because of the stuff they used to sedate her.  I was looking it up on the Internet, and apparently it's like PCP.  So, I'm guessing it was probably really surreal for her to be walking around.

Aside from that, we also spent a lot of time with family today.

In the land of technology, I've been doing a lot of reading of code these days.  I'm actually quite enjoying the process and it seems that the more I'm reading, the more I'm digesting, and the more my mind is understanding what's being done, as well as thinking of other ways something could be done.  That growth is quite exciting.

I definitely miss coding in Ruby.  There is a certain ease that comes with coding in the language.  Yes, perl is a great language, and one that I'm growing to enjoy.  I also want to dabble a bit in Python and expand my knowledge base even further.

I've also put together a list of things that I want to focus on.  It's a mix of my 'weak points' as well as some things I'm just plain interested in.  I'll be hammering away at things one at a time.  (If I can... my attention span certainly wants to jump around quite a bit!)

I can't believe that I've been programming full-time for 8 1/2 months.  It's still a passion and something I really enjoy doing.

In any case, I'm going to sign off now.  I am also thinking that a 'regular' posting schedule might be a good idea.  I definitely benefit from structure.

Really. I'm still here.  I've been trying to lead more of a 'balanced' life as of late, spending a little less time on the computer, a little more time with my partner, and some more time with myself, taking that much needed downtime.

As much as I love technology and computing, I don't want to reach the point of diminishing returns.  So, I've been focusing on some of my other hobbies, such as writing, playing the guitar, and reacquainting myself with one of my first loves - the violin.

I'm going to set myself a goal of at least 2 posts per week.  I think that's a decent amount - not enough to overwhelm myself or my loyal subscribers (yay, loyal subscribers!) but just enough for me to not feel like I've abandoned this blog.

Ah, balance.  Really - that's what it's all about. 

This week I've gotten back into writing, er maintaining, code that is written in perl.  I've worked exclusively on Ruby and Rails projects for the last several months, never touching anything written in perl.  I have to say - I never realized just how much Rails does for you and just how logical some of those conventions are. 

I am excited about getting back into another language.  I feel like I'm going to be learning perl all over again, though.  This time with a bit of a different lens on my view.  Ruby is a very elegant language in a lot of ways.  Because I dabbled in Ruby on and off for a while before getting into it seriously, I feel as though it was really easy for me to get things done.

With Perl, I feel as though I'm walking on eggshells.  Perhaps that's normal.  Afterall, I don't know if I've even really touched anything in perl since last year.  So, I've decided that I'm going to go through some of the exercises in my Learning Perl book, and get my feet wet again.

Being that I'm uncomfortable with the change, it tells me that it's probably a good one. 

Early in my professional coding career (which at this point, is just over 8 months), I was told to commit early and commit often.

Originally I thought that this was just so that important work wouldn't be lost, should a computer crash - temporarily or long term. Eight months later, and I have a confession to make - I don't commit nearly as often as I should, and when I do, there's usually a long string of A's or M's and a bulky commit message.

In addition to my embarrassing confession, I also have a nice realization - committing isn't only for security's sake. I've found it to be a very nice precaution in helping to make sure that a certain change doesn't break shit. Nothing like wading through diffs and commit logs to figure out what the hell and when the hell you broke your app.

It also seems invaluable when it comes to making sure that if you had one iteration that was close to working, you can get it back relatively easily.

Of course, all this would be true for me if I made a more consistent habit out of committing.

When it comes to committing, I'm making a vow right here, right now, to become more committed. Yes, I'm committing to committing.

One of the things I used to say about being a 'baby programmer' was that I didn't have bad habits and could be molded quite well. And here I've been, getting into some bad habits. No more, I say. No more! Boo on you, Bad Habits. Boo on you.

And speaking of version control, I've been playing around with git this evening. I've also been messing around with mercurial.

I really wish I would have seen this: http://sidux.com/Article420.html before I did an apt-get dist-upgrade. Hopefully this gets straightened out soon.

I'm totally annoyed, which seems to be the theme for the day.

And, my system's fan keeps coming on.  I have an uneasy feeling about that.

Feh. 

This last week or two has left me with plenty to blog about.  I've been knee-deep in the bowels of code with ruby-debug as my trusty sidekick.  The interesting thing, well, one of the interesting things, anyway, is that the more I end up debugging, the more it seems I learn.  Which, is fucking annoying since debugging is a huge pain in the ass and nowhere near as fun as actually writing code is.

But, I've heard it said time and time again, that you learn things by reading other people's code... and well, when you're debugging other people's code, you're doing more than just reading it - you're getting inside of it and their brain, and figuring out how both their brain, and their code works.

Another upcoming post, should I ever find the time to write it, is about some of my philisophical notions about program, and how those thoughts are changing.

This 31 year old 'baby programmer' has formed some opinions about things and it's time to expound on some of the new and scary ideas that are forming in my brain.

In any case, Bells Oberon is back for the season.  What does that mean? Winter is over.  We may get some snow showers mixed with rain, and you can never count out an April snowstorm, but all I know is this - Bells Oberon. Is. Back. 

Update...

9:54pm...

I just realized as I was tagging this post that my tags are: programming, opinions, and beer.  That just struck me as wildly amusing.  And no, I'm not intoxicated.  :) 

This evening was spent installing the dependencies I needed to get the awn-extras running on my system.  Avant Window Navigator is a really nice dockbar.  Sometimes it's nice to zone out on things that have absolutely no consequence.

Aside from that, most of the day was spent catching up with folks, cleaning the house, and sitting around in my pajamas.  It's been a wonderfully relaxing weekend which doesn't get to happen very often, really.  Usually I'm so busy running around and studying that I don't usually get to really relax and come down from my work week.

While I did do some studying and 'geeking-out', I did manage to have a nicely balanced weekend of responsibility and laziness.  Ah, balance - I love it.

In any case, in addition to running awn, I'm also running compiz, which is a requirement for running the dockbar.  I, of course, like the squiggly windows that come along with compiz, but it seems to really slow things down on my system.  I've got a decent enough graphics card - an 256MB nVidia.  I've got a GB of RAM in my system.  While that's not huge in today's standards, it's definitely not the piece of shit.  I'll probably ride the composite wave for a little while, maybe a few weeks, and then end up back to my standard Gnome desktop.   I'm not known for my patience.

Anyway, enough of this - I'm off to read some more of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A friend gave me the book to read and I've just passed the part about the improbability drive.

And with that, I'm off. 

Ok, so I didn't make good on my, "Expect more posts." statement.  I apologize.  I'm a loser who suxx0rs.  What can I say?

I can say - SPRING IS HERE.  Which also means that so are the bees.  Today I saw the first bee of the season, and was sufficiently nervous.  If you want to see me run like a little scared girl, just put me near a bee, or a wasp, or anything else that can sting me, for that matter.  And, so, as I left the store with my partner, I saw a bee hovering around the car.  While I am absolutely thrilled that the weather is 60 degrees, I'm absolutely /not/ thrilled that there are once again scary bees, wasps, and other stinging creatures fluttering about.  Boo.

Meanwhile, going back to my absolute lack of verbosity, I'd like to mention that I've had several topics to blog about this week.  I've read things in my feed reader and have even tagged them, "blogtopics".  What's my excuse, then?  I have none.  I hang my head in shame.  Mock me.  Insult me.  

Enough self-deprecation.  (Side note: is it bad that when I think of deprecation, I immediately think of mongrel logs telling me that some rails code is deprecated?)

And so, as the evening is drawing to a close, I promise. I'll have something else to say tomorrow.  Will it be exciting?  Thrilling?  Captivating?  Maybe, but probably not.  And with that, I say goodnight.

This evening I did an update of the gems on my system, which included Merb and Datamapper.  I'm really looking forward to exploring this technology.

In any case, it's late and morning comes around way too early.  Even though I don't still keep 'geek-hours', my mind and body are naturally at their best after 10pm.  Unfortunately, life doesn't always conform to one's natural hours.  Therefore, I must take my happy ass to bed.

Look forward to some more posts this week.

Really.  I haven't gone away.  I promise.

So, here's a quick rundown on things:

Ruby on Rails

Lately I've been doing the majority of my programming in Ruby and Rails.  Things are becoming second nature for me and slowly but surely I'm getting self-confidence when it comes to "am I doing this right?"  That's a great feeling to have.

I was discussing it with someone lately who was telling me that all I really need is the self-confidence.  That's great to hear from an observer.  

Linux

I've been trying to get a Linux install up and running on my P3-500 toybox.  Unfortunately the CD-Rom drive is fubarred, so I've been taking the CD drive out of my main PC and putting it into the other system in order to get things working on it.  I installed OpenSuse and immediately felt dirty.  I need this as a Windows replacement box, so I wanted something relatively 'user-friendly'. I'm downloading Mint right now and we'll see how that works out.

Life in General

While spring is officially here, when I look out my window and see several feet of snow still on the ground, and when I walk outside into 7 degree weather first thing in the morning, I can't help but wonder if spring will ever really get here.  I'm looking forward to the Summer - except for the bees, wasps, hornets, and other immensely frightening creatures.  I can't wait to be back in shorts and t-shirts and flip flops.  I love my Tevas.

Anyway, I hope to update more in the next couple of days or over the weekend.  I'm posting this from Safari in Windows and every few moments I get the notification that a script is slow.  So, enough is enough.  It's harshing my mellow. 

I just wanted to say.  I like ruby-debug.  It made today a lot easier.

So, my salute for the day goes to you, ruby-debug.  You make me happy. 

Recently, I've been working on the V and the C parts of MVC with Rails.  I have to say - I absolutely love the 'make things pretty' aspect of web design and development.  I have fond memories of sitting at my Windows 95 computer, designing my very first website.  There's something very blissful about making changes to code and hitting the browser's refresh button to see what the changes have created.

All this (m)V(c) stuff is really getting my creativity flowing again.  I like making things pretty.  I think that this week I'm going to make a new theme Typo to use on this site.  I am currently using one of the defaults.  I'm having the urge to make things pretty.

Yay.

I have two words:

Go Giants!

It was great to see the Giants own the majority of the 1st quarter, but it would've been great to see a touchdown.

I am not a fan of the Patriots.  As for the commercials, so far my favorite has been the fire breathing guy. 

Gotta love the Super Bowl.  Now, off to eat sloppy joes and potato chips. If I only had some beer.

Growth feels good.  Sometimes.  Not always.

When one's ass grows, it doesn't feel good.  Personal growth is sometimes painful.  But growth when it comes to learning, knowledge, and understanding, though like personal growth can be painful, it can also feel really damn good.

Today my entire day was spent refactoring, testing, and working with Capistrano.  I also had a nice discussion about has_and_belongs_to_many and has_many through...  I didn't have one moment where I was drowning in confusion, or where I wanted to hang up the computer and invest in a hot dog cart as a new line of business.  No, I don't have those hot dog cart days very often, but every once in a while, they come up.

In any case, today was lovely.  Yes, lovely,  I feel like I'm getting a lot more comfortable with developing, reading code and understanding what I'm reading... It's a great feeling.  To wax poetic, it feels like I've been walking around with blinders on, and slowly but surely, they are falling away.  I'm beginning to see more things.  

And now, I raise my glass of Diet Cherry Coca-Cola and make a toast - to growth - the painful and the comfortable. Because if I'm learning, I'm growing, and if I'm growing, I'm happy (as long as it's not my ass that's doing the growing).

I've made it through a day of not smoking.  I'm walking around in a perpetually pissed off place.  I keep telling myself I only have to make it until Friday for this 'stint'. Good times. I didn't have any coffee today, either.  Just green tea.  No coffee.  Ack.

In other areas, I've been going through my book on Conceptual Database Design. Someone whose technical knowledge and opinion I hold high regard for, recommended a couple of books to me.  I've been reading one of them and I've found that mind-mapping while reading a book such as this, is a great way to reinforce the material.

I don't always retain what I read as much as I'd like and when I do, it's normally because I take notes while reading.  Last night I tried mind-mapping for the first time and it really helped me.

So, why am I interested in database design?  Everything that I program, whether writing or maintenance programming, deals with databases.  I feel like in order for me to really be effective at designing a web-based application, I need to have a solid grasp of database design. It's not enough for me just to have a shallow understanding of how things could possibly work together.  I need to know theory.  I like theory.

In any case, I was going through an introduction to the Entity Relationship Model, and where the book was discussing what determines a one-to-many, one-to-one, many-to-many relationship, the light bulb came on and it really made a lot of sense.  The language in the book is very 'meaty' so it's not something I can just read through on a whim.  It requires some concentration.

I'm just excited about the prospect of securing a better foundation with these concepts.

note: I've gone through and edited this post 3 times.  My sentence structure and grammar is crap. I'm tired and nicotine-deprived.  I shall put the keyboard down before I drive myself even more insane. 

So, just checking in here.  Today was supposed to be my quit date to stop smoking.  We were going to go downstate (near Detroit) so, I knew that quitting during a 5 hour drive probably wouldn't be a very wise decision.  With that in mind, I decided to set my quit date for Monday. Due to incredibly shitty weather, we decided at the last minute to stay home.  I'm still quitting the whole smoking thing on Monday.  We're planning on going downstate next weekend (weather permitting), for which I'll allow myself to smoke.  Then, it's back to the quitting.  So, that's the plan.

As for the health thing, my knee has been jacked up for a couple of weeks, which has kept me from really doing a whole hell of a lot on the exercise front.  I have, however, been eating much better and I'm happy to say that I've lost somewhere between 6 and 7 pounds since the first of the year.  23  - 28lbs to go to get to my goal weight.  I have an appointment to get my knee checked out on Wednesday, so we'll see.

What happened to my knee?  I'm uncoordinated.  That's what happened to my knee.  On Christmas Day, while at a family gathering, I was standing at the top of the stairs waiting for someone to come out and smoke with me. (Ha!) And so, as I stood there, 100% sober, I lost my footing and fell on my knees on the stairs.  Luckily I didn't fall down all of the stairs.  Seriously.  In any case, the thing that hurt the most was my pride.  And so, I got up, laughed it off, and went on my merry way.  

About a week and a half ago, maybe two, my knee started hurting really badly.  Whenever I walk down the stairs, it feels like it's going to just ... stop working.  So, I'm seeing the doctor on Wednesday to make sure it's just a bruised bone or something.  Again, I'm not the most coordinated person.  Now, stop laughing at me.

On the technology level, I'm currently reading a book on database design. I'm hoping to get a stronger understanding of table relationships, how data relates to other data.  The whole Entity-Relationship stuff.  I have some more thoughts on that topic, but that's another post for another night.  Stay tuned.  Really.

And with that, I'm off to do other things.  Like listen to music and read my book. 

My logic hurts.

Do you ever have one of those days where you end up feeling as though your capacity to learn anything is completely fucked?  I had one of those days today. Okay, not the entire day, but a couple of hours.

It started out as a productive day - I was strolling through commit logs and code.  I even narrowed down the culprit on an issue that I have been fighting with for days weeks. I sat with a huge grin on my face, a product of figuring baffling stuff out.  It was lovely.

And then it happened.  As I looked through jQuery code, javascript, and Ruby, my brain started to melt.  My eyes glazed over and all of a sudden, I felt as though I had the IQ of a guitar pick (or a wooden ruler, I haven't quite decided yet).

I went through a few jQuery tutorials, thinking that it was my own 'fear of the unknown' that kept me from grasping that which I needed to wrap my skull around.  After a couple of hours spent back and forth between reading docs, reading code, and drooling uncontrollably, I finally felt the lightbulb turn back on.  Yay, lightbulb!

Of course, by that time, the day was over.  So, I stuck around a few extra minutes, quickly wrote all of my thoughts down as to make sure they didn't leave or that my stoopidety didn't return. Tomorrow I'll get back into the grind and try again.

See, I'm one of those people who have always had an incredibly easy time learning things, especially when it's of a technological nature.  I picked up a great deal of Linux commands watching over a friend's shoulder eight (8) years ago.  When I can't learn something really damn fast, I get really impatient.  So, hopefully tomorrow I can approach this with a fresh mind and a new surplus of patience. 

A strange thing is happening to me.  Really.

As I've been coding regularly now for several months, I'm starting to notice something:  I'm getting opinions. That's right, I'm a baby-programmer with opinions.  

So far I have an opinion on one aspect of coding.  Well, I have more, but I'm only going to put one out there.  And that is...

Please, please, please - put comments in your code.  Please.  If someone is going to read your code later on, which may happen, please put comments in there.  While I agree that good code should document itself, there is no reason not to put comments in there.  Should a baby-programmer like myself come along at some point and need to work on the code you've written, it would be very helpful to find some comments.  Granted, I know the satisfaction that comes from hours upon frustrating hours of going through uncommented code, only to finally connect the dots and see wtf is going on in there.  BUT, c'mon... Is it that hard to hit the # key and write a few words?

I've read through Rails' ActiveRecord documentation.  TONS OF FRIGGIN' COMMENTS.  I LOVE it.   Seriously.  I enjoyed reading the code and its accompanying documentation.  It inspired me.  It gave me ideas on how to do things differently.  I experimented in irb/Rails Console with new things and ya know what happened?  I learned.  And it was good.

So, please, for this baby-programmer and any others who may follow me - put some commentation in thy code.  Really. 

Happy New Year.

I have to admit it.  I'm thrilled that the holiday season is over.  While I adore spending time with family and friends, eating wonderful food, and engaging in great conversation, the amount of pressure and just plain business that comes along with the season can be overwhelming.

My Holiday Soap Box

This year I was particularly bothered by the blatant consumerism of advertising everywhere I turned.  Everytime I watched television, I was informed that every kiss begins with Kay or that I should have gone to Jared in order to make the person that I love happy.  C'mon.  Really.

When I was a child, I enjoyed the receiving of gifts.  What typical kid doesn't?  But, for some reason, even though my family gatherings weren't large and plentiful, it wasn't all about gifts for me.  Many of my holiday gatherings were spent with close friends of the family.  We exchanged a gift or two, but the most memorable parts of the event, consisted of laughter, food, and hugs.  That was the big deal.  While I used to circle toys that I wanted in Toys 'R Us circulars, I loved the holidays because of being around the people.

I wonder if kids today (oh, God - Did I REALLY just say that?) have the same experiences, or if it's just really all about the toys, Santa, and getting the latest cool thing.  When the time comes for me and my partner to have children, I certainly hope that we can instill the values regarding the holidays that we grew up with - that holiday values aren't synonymous with consumerism and having meaningful interactions with loved ones is often the biggest gift that can be both given and received.  I hope that we'll create special traditions that they will pass down with their own families when the time comes. 

Looking Forward - Hopes and Goals for 2008

So, enough of my soapbox.  In my last post, I said I'd spare the soapbox, but it's something that has been bothering me for well over a month now.  In any case, I'd like to talk about my hopes and goals for this brand spankin' New Year.

Professionally, I'd like to sharpen my programming skills.  Just yesterday I was reviewing some code with my Manager who told me that I've 'leveled up'.  The majority of my recent coding has been in Ruby.  I was pretty stoked yesterday when I sat down in my editor, opened up a method declaration and just started writing.  I'd like to have many more of those coding-with-ease moments this year.  To help further that goal, I've registered over at http://rubylearning.org for the free Ruby course.  Even though I pretty much use Ruby on a daily basis, I'd like to close some gaps in my knowledge.  The course teaches Core and some Advanced Ruby.  I'm hoping that this will make my knowledge base less bumpy. 

Personally, I'd like to concentrate on having a more healthy year than I had last year.  This encompasses several areas and several goals:

1. Quitting Smoking - I was down to about 2 cigarettes a day, which grew to 4 cigarettes a day, which is now at around 1/2 a pack per day.  With the amount of heart disease that runs in my family, along with the desire to have kiddos eventually, I really have no business whatsoever smoking.  I'll be bold here - I'm setting my quit date for January 19.  Now that I'm accountable to all 5 of you, hopefully I can stick with it. :)  While I don't want to say, "I'm never having a cigarette again," I'd really only like to smoke every now and again, such as when going out with other smokers to a bar or something of that nature.  Not on an everyday or even several times a week basis.
2. Losing Weight - While I'm by no means a bovine, I am not in the same shape that I was just a few years ago.  Also, while I don't expect to be the same 125lbs that I was at 21 years old, where I'm at now just isn't acceptable.  I would like to at least be where I was at the age of 27 - 28.  This will require a loss of about 30 - 35 lbs.  If I can lose 2 pounds per week, I can be where I want between the end of March to Mid April.  Ideally, I'd like to be less than that, which should be completely doable at a rate of 2 pounds per week by the end of June.  Again, with heart disease and diabetes prevelant in my family, I have to be mindful. Which brings me to my next goal which is...
3. Exercising More - I'll admit it.  I'm a computer geek.  I'm a nerd.  While I'm not the most uncoordinated being I know, I'm also not the most athletic.  My partner M can pick up any sport she's introduced to and if not excel, at least maintain an average skill.  Me?  Not so much.  I don't love to exercise.  I would rather spend an hour reading a book or tinkering with my computer than taking a walk outside.  But, I am going to commit to at least 30 minutes of exercises at least 3 times a week, and this winter, snowshoe at least once or twice a month.  I also have the ability to go cross-country skiing, which I tried last year and loved.  So, once or twice a month on that one, too.

I do have some other goals, some of which will remain in my own private offline journal. I normally keep the 'personal/emotional' stuff off of this platform, but hell, there are some things I want to do and sometimes putting it out there for others to see is a good way to make sure you do it.  After all, I'm a Leo and don't like to be embarassed. :)

My Wishes for 2008

• I wish for world peace.  While that's not likely to happen anytime soon, it would be a nice thing.  And, maybe if enough of us wish for world peace, one day it will happen.
• I wish for safety for our soldiers.
• I wish for health and happiness for all of my loved ones.  Actually, I wish it for everyone, really.
• I wish for positive changes in the economy.
• I wish for positive growth when it comes to the things we can do regarding global warming.

Finally, may the New Year find you happy and healthy.

Here's to a great 2008! (excuse the rhyme.  really.)

 

 

Here's hoping that all five of my loyal subscribers had a wonderful holiday season!  Mine was wonderful, filled with family, laughter, and good food.

The only thing that bothered me this year was the constant advertising full of consumerism.  Even though I adore technology, I really don't like the pressure that happens around the holidays.  

Anyway, I'll spare you all my soapbox. :)

Happy Holidays!

So, now I'm running Sidux, which is notably faster than Ubuntu.

 I'm on the 2.6.23.9 Kernel.  I did have some issues installing, as the installer did not write Grub's menu entry properly. It couldn't find my root partition and it kept telling me that job control was turned off, along with an intramfs prompt. 

After examining the entry in the grub menu, I discovered that it left the uuid blank for root.  So, after trying to put the uuid in, and it failing miserably, I changed it to reflect root=/my/device.

Booted up perfectly after that.

There are a few things I need to tweak, but overall, I'm pretty satisfied.  One of the niceties of installing this was that the install took all of 8 1/2 minutes.  Not bad. :)

If you're interested in checking out sidux, you can go to sidux' home page. 

I have my /home stuff on a separate partiiton which means all my settings have been retained.  Anyway, enough blogging about this - I'm going to explore my system. :)  Next step - apt-get install ruby :) 

Hardy Heron didn't happen.  Well, it started to, but then at the very end, it didn't.  So, I took about 30 minutes of deep contemplation and since I was told by the upgrade process that my system may be unstable, decided to backup all my stuff from my main partition (config files that I need) and put 'em over to my spare partition.

I just finished downloading the image of Sidux.  I'm going to install it.  What the hell, eh?  I like more 'bleeding edge' stuff and I also enjoy the package management that comes along with distros other than Gentoo.  So, here goes nothin' :)

 

Ah, what the hell - I'm going to upgrade to Hardy Heron.  It's easier to appease my distro-boredom by doing that than it is to change over to Debian or another distro.

So, I just ran update-manager -d and I'm upgrading Ubuntu to version 8.04.

If it all goes awry, at least I have my little P3 dev box with Zenwalk Linux on it to research how to fix it. :)

Did I mention I'm impulsive? 

Call me fickle - I've been running Ubuntu since the end of April and I'm dreadfully bored with it. Yes, I'm on Gutsy, using the Gutsy-proposed packages and all.  I'm once again contemplating moving over to a different distro.

I started out years and years ago, with RedHat Linux.  I believe it may have been RedHat 5, but I can't quite recall.  Then, I took a break for a while.  Eventually, I ran a dual boot with Fedora.  Then, I switched over to Mandrake (before it was Mandriva).  Or, it could have been the other way around.  In any case, I wasn't 'learning enough' and so I decided - wtf, and I installed Gentoo.  And, boy - did I learn.  After running Gentoo for a while, I moved to Gentoo unstable.  ~x86, baby.  Once I stopped consistently breaking my system, things were rolling along fine.

Then one day, I broke my system. In a really big, and I do mean BIG way.  So, I decided again - wtf, let's see what this Ubuntu is like.  I haven't really had any troubles with Ubuntu.  It's simple and easy and relatively stable.  The biggest issues I had were when I upgraded from Feisty to Gutsy.  And even that wasn't that much of a big deal.

But, the thing is, I'm bored again.  I'd love a distro that will challenge me - not necessarily as much as Gentoo challenged me, but c'mon, more than Ubuntu is challenging me.

So, I'm contemplating making the switch over to Debian (which seems a little more advanced than Ubuntu) or possibly FreeBSD (which, I know is a different beast).  I also use Slackware based distros on some baby machines I have, but I'm not sure if I want to go that route.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.

Unlike most of my distribution-switching decisions, I'm trying to take my time and not act out of impulsiveness.  I'm very impulsive when it comes to changing my system.

I'm leaning more towards moving over to Debian, although I may consider just keeping things simple and going to Ubuntu's Hardy Heron while it's still in Alpha. 

In any case, we'll see - I have learned over the years not to start anything like this towards the end of the weekend.  We'll see if I have the patience to actually put what I've learned into practice.