As I mentioned last time, I’ve recently been looking into what people in the real software engineering industry are doing, since I’m going to be interning at NextJump this summer.  As a result, I’ve been making some major lifestyle changes, and I just wanted to give a summary of what I’ve been up to.  This is the second in a series of posts about these changes.I finally gave in an installed linux.  I’ve always been a proponent of the idea that linux was pointless, and to be honest, I really liked Windows 7.  I mean, if you head over to antimovement, you’ll notice my linux poster.

That being said, I wanted to give linux a shot.  So I went out and downloaded a copy of Ubuntu (which seemed to be the smoothest transition for newbies.)

Initially, I only installed it on my laptop, since I had Windows Vista on that, which really blew chunks.  I had some issues getting my wireless to work, but overall the whole process was relatively simple.  I spent a lot of time visiting how-to’s, which led me to the conclusion linux might have been invented by how-to enthusiasts, because there are way too many linux how-to’s out there.

I liked where that was going and also noticed I had an extra 250 gb hard drive floating around, so I installed Ubuntu on my desktop in dual-boot with Windows 7.  The desktop transition was more difficult for me, because support for dual monitors is not entirely strong on linux (really, unexpected) but quickly recognized the configurational power of xRandR.  Still can’t get my third monitor to work, but I’m hopeful for the future (not that I know where I’d put it).

I spent probably a total of about 5 hours distributed over a couple of days getting my colors just right.  I eventually settled on a heavily modified version of the built-in theme called “The Darkness.”

This last point represents a general trend in spending time to modify appearance to my liking.  You may recall I spent several hours messing with eclipse appearance.  The general idea is that I want to see dark backgrounds, with bright text.  I’m spending a lot of time on the computer, and it just feels better on my eyes.  Or it might just be that I like my computer to look different from everyone else’s.  Who knows?

Here’s a screenshot of what my extended desktop looks like:

You’ll notice a black rectangle in the bottom-left corner.  This is because my right monitor has a bigger vertical resolution than my left monitor.  This is actually kind of frustrating because it introduces the possibility that if I move my mouse from the right monitor the left one, the mouse might disappear.  If anyone knows a workaround to this, that would be really ideal!

Also, since linux users are all about terminal, I’ve been discovering the power of that whole game.  I’m still a hardcore newbie, but I’m learning and I’m definitely getting the hang of it.  I really dig the ‘apt-get‘ functionality!

I’ve had a lot of difficulty transferring music to my iPod, so I’m still booting to Windows anytime I want to do that.  Putting music on my Droid is as easy as dragging files into a folder, so that’s no problem though.

Realistically, I’m not sure why I’m even bothering using linux, but it seems like a cool thing to do, and it really does feel neat.  I think a lot of C.S. people use linux, and though I’ve never really fit in with the C.S. crowd, I am choosing it as a career, so I should make an effort.

I haven’t really got into any open-source linux development yet, but I do feel the strange urge to, so who knows, maybe I’ll be contributing to the linux kernel by this time next year?

As we are all well aware, I occasionally go through phases during which I become enamored with some new activity and pursue it to exhaustion.  Well my newest obsession is making positive lifestyle changes.

I’ve actually been at this nonsense for about a month now, so it’s fairly strange I haven’t written about it yet, but I have discovered that a daily dose of running can not only be a tolerable means to an end, but enjoyable for its own sake.

I have been running 5-6 days per week as of late, at least 2 miles but just today I’ve worked my way up to 3.  The end goal would be to be able to run next year’s Boston marathon.  It’s unlikely, but we’re going for it… and I’m not alone either.  It’s a team effort, many of us are catching on.

As a component of this, we are also lifting in the attic and doing a lot of log-chopping.  Those things are great as well.  Ab exercises as well!

And to really put the cherry on top of the Sunday, I’ve cut out virtually all frozen foods.  I am cutting back on McDonald’s and other fast food, but the Big Mac is still amazing.

A lot of people have asked me why… and the reason is that I hate fat people.  Sorry, fat people.

In an exciting conclusion to The Time Kevin Did That Thing Pt.1, we find our hero frantically searching the big city of Boston for some girl receptive to his blue french horn.

Here is where we left Kevin, waiting at the bus station for the girl to arrive.

Disappointed to have found out she took an early bus, Kevin leaves the bus station looking fly in his suit, despite having missed the girl.

At this point, giving up had been discussed, but it was certainly not an option.  It was time to get creative.

It was a hopeless attempt, but he then tried to tell her about this great place to eat called The Super 88 and hope she gives it a try.  No luck, but he did get some beef ‘n’ broccoli.

…this was immediately followed by more walking around the Boston University campus…

He then thought of a genius plan, one that would limit the element of surprise, but not ruin the gesture altogether.  Sharps attempted to place a call to the girl, calling himself “The commodore” and demanding that she arrive at a particular location to await further instruction… her phone was on silent.  Suspicious?

…more hopeless walking punctuated by occasional yelling…

…and eventually it came down to giving up any elaborate scheme, calling her and demanding that she come to him.

Turns out they were close, so it was only a little more walking.

Finally, he found her.  The most salient emotion he felt was disappointment at the anticlimactic ending.

She seemed to appreciate it.

…and then she broke his heart mere days later.

I’ve always been a hopeless romantic.  We all know this… and recently I found someone new to be a hopeless romantic to.  She ran away to Boston for the weekend and I decided to try something really awesome.  This is a photo-essay of the experience, part one of a two part epic miniseries.

The idea was simple, drive 6 hours to meet her when her bus arrives in Boston and give her a blue french horn wearing a suit.  I know, I know– it sounds ridiculous, but if you’ve ever seen How I Met Your Mother, you’d get it.

First, we needed to drive for 6 hours to Boston.  Luckily Elena knew the way.

6 hours is a lot longer than you think sometimes.

We got hungry so we broke into an orchard and stole some apples.  They were delicious.

We then met with Obama to see what he thought of the idea.  He endorsed it.

…and it was then time to suit up, so I had to be fitted for a suit.

I tried on a couple of suits, but I wasn’t sure yet.

I also looked at a couple of shirt/tie combos.  I really liked this one.

Then I think I found a winning combination.

We couldn’t park in the city, so we had to take the subway in.

Somewhere after this my digital camera ran out of batteries, so stay tuned for the second installment of this two part megaseries, when the film from the disposables develops.

Interesting, I was finally getting a decent following on Twitter, when suddenly I discover that my account has been suspended.

As a result, I would probably suggest NOT using my Twitter Greasemonkey script.  It spells bad news, and spammy consequences.

It’s strange though, because there are so many users on twitter who were way more spammy than I was.  I did real tweets and shared links from my blog… those jerks!

According to the twitter rules:

*Spam: You may not use the Twitter service for the purpose of spamming anyone. What constitutes “spamming” will evolve as we respond to new tricks and tactics by spammers. Some of the factors that we take into account when determining what conduct is considered to be spamming are:

• If you have followed a large amount of users in a short amount of time;
• If you have followed and unfollowed people in a short time period, particularly by automated means (aggressive follower churn);
• If you repeatedly follow and unfollow people, whether to build followers or to garner more attention for your profile;

I suppose I hit the top-3!

Well I submitted a request to unsuspend my account, but I doubt it will be satisfied.  They said it takes 30 days to review.  I might as well start over…

For now, reach me on Google Voice:

3303 – KEVIN – 1

(330 – 353 – 8461)

Quite possibly the world’s greatest band, Nickelback recently stopped in for an exclusive interview with The Kevin Dolan.  As a result, we’ve decided to launch a Twitter promotional contest to win 3 front-row passes for you and 2 friends to any of 16 summer tour dates.  Expect the interview transcript in a couple of days.

The Contest:

All you have to do to win free front-row passes for you and 2 friends is tweet with the subject #nickelbacksucks and a link to this page, http://bit.ly/FtQMhw.  The rest of the tweet is up to you.

The winner will be chosen at random from all tweets including the subject #nickelbacksucks.  The more tweets you send, the more likely you are to win!  Make sure you are following @thekevindolan to track your tweets.

Available Tour Dates:

Mon, 08/17/09 06:00 p.m. Verizon Wireless Music Center Birmingham – Pelham, AL
Wed, 08/19/09 06:00 p.m. Riverbend Music Center – Cincinnati, OH
Fri, 08/21/09 06:00 p.m. First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre – Tinley Park (Chicago), IL
Sat, 08/22/09 06:00 p.m. Verizon Wireless Amphitheater St. Louis – Maryland Heights, MO
Tue, 08/25/09 05:30 p.m. Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre – Englewood, CO
Wed, 08/26/09 06:00 p.m. USANA Amphitheatre – West Valley City, UT
Fri, 08/28/09 06:00 p.m. The Amphitheater at Clark County – Ridgefield, WA
Sat, 08/29/09 06:00 p.m. The Gorge Amphitheatre – George, WA
Mon, 08/31/09 06:00 p.m. Sleep Train Amphitheatre – Wheatland, CA
Tue, 09/01/09 06:00 p.m. Shoreline Amphitheatre at Mountain View – Mountain View, CA
Thu, 09/03/09 06:00 p.m. Verizon Wireless Amphitheater – Irvine, CA
Sat, 09/05/09 06:00 p.m. Cricket Wireless Amphitheatre – Chula Vista, CA
Sun, 09/06/09 07:00 p.m. MGM Grand Garden Arena – Las Vegas, NV
Tue, 09/08/09 07:00 p.m. Jobing.com Arena – Glendale, AZ
Wed, 09/09/09 06:00 p.m. Journal Pavilion – Albuquerque, NM
Sat, 09/12/09 06:00 p.m. Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion – The Woodlands, TX

As you may recall, I had the first session of my tattoo about a month ago, based on the Frog and Scorpion fable.  Well I finally had a chance to go back in and get the next step done.

The biggest, most obvious change is that the waves are now blue and most of the lines have been outlined a whole lot thicker.  I think these changes really bring the whole thing together and it looks basically like a whole new tattoo.

Zane, from Human Production Gallery, who is doing this tattoo, also added some blue to the storm cloud and fixed up the red lightning a bit.  The frog’s green is also stronger now.

I’m going back in for some final touchups in a couple of weeks, but this is close to how it is going to look when it’s completely done.

For a full-size picture, click here.

Search great tattoo designs and rate tattoos you like.

On an unrelated note, I received a phone call from one of the people I sent a personal letter to.  The person received the letter regarding the origin of consciousness, and was understandably confused.  What I had not anticipated was this person’s ability  to do some research and give me a call.

Taken by surprise, I explained to them it was for a website, which really kills the whole concept.  Maybe I should consider coming up with a good back-story…

As many of you may know, I applied for an internship at Google for this summer.  Unfortunately, I did not get the position.  In fact, I didn’t even get a “Sorry, we’re not interested” form letter.  I have decided to reapply next summer, but I want to go about it more actively.

I plan on really buffing up my resume with some awesome websites and open-source javascript libraries to show Google I’m worth my salt.  But I imagine lots of potential Google employees have the resume; what I have is something altogether much better.

I am also aware that Google has had fun with their hiring practices before, publishing silly applications asking humorous questions.  It is for this reason that I decided to put my letter-writing to work.  I will be sending the following three letters to several important people at Google staggered over three days.

See if you can figure out what I’m trying to do here.

Letter #1:

Dear Sergey,

Sergey, I understand that this whole thing seems very strange, but I am afraid this is the last time I will acquiesce a request like this. If you are unwilling to help me, I understand, but please do not ask that I send you another letter, before this one.

I’m sure this is all very confusing at this point, but I assure you in the next couple of days, it will become more clear. Be aware that it was you who requested I send this letter.

You will notice that this has been typed in Times New Roman, as you also requested, which is quite hard to find these days… and to answer your question: 19 31 35 48 53 – 40. You’ve always been clever, but that should be all the verification you need.

Again, I am sorry that Google may ultimately fail as a company if you choose not to hire me, but for the sake of my painting career, I ask that you do not.

In the unlikely chance he actually reads this one, he will be immediately quite confused.  He might just write it off, but the next letter will continue to intrigue him.

Letter #2:

Dear Sergey,

In my letter dated 15 May 2034, which I suppose you will be receiving in a day or two, you requested that in order to verify I was indeed sending you letters from the future, I send you a follow-up letter to be received the before my original letter.

I understand your skepticism, as I have already attempted to contact myself from the past with the request to pursue my painting career, with no apparent success, since I am still working for Google as V.P. of User Experience.

So here is the follow-up letter. I hope it finds you in good spirits.

Okay, okay, but I still don’t get it.  The final letter should really cover it all.

Letter #3:

Dear Sergey,

I know this may be hard to believe, but I am writing to you from the future with a very important request. You see, in my time, you and I have become good friends as I have been working at Google for many years now and have slowly worked my way up the ranks to V.P. of User Experience.

I discussed this with you from the future, and you told me that if you had any doubts, I should remind you about Sarah from elementary school. You must have been seven or eight at the time, and I suppose the emotional wounds have yet to heal completely, but I can assure you that one day, you will come to terms with what happened.

The reason I am writing is to inform you that the Kevin Dolan from your time should be applying for a summer internship after his junior year of college at Cornell. As I recall from the summer of 2009, I spent most of my time developing such websites as CourseTopia.com and writing traceability software for Pittsburgh-based company, Pittsburgh Snax & Nut Co. I also began working on jsAnim, my JavaScript animation library, which as I recall was one of the primary reasons Google did hire me as an intern the following summer.

Despite all of my qualifications, I ask that you do not under any circumstances hire me. If you do choose to hire me, I will end up developing the Dolan Doctrine, which revolutionizes the way users interface with websites and solidifies Google’s survival after the crumbling of the first version of the world-wide-web (just wait for it…).

That being said, looking back on my life so far, I feel that it would have been better spent as a painter than an Internet rockstar at Google. So I ask that you take this letter to heart, and do not hire me. I mean, without me, Google might have survived on its own…

If you have any questions, feel free to use the contact information from this letter. It is the contact information that is current for your time. It will be very confusing to me at the time, but I will remember receiving it now, and then I will be able to send you a response in your time.

I thought this series was genius, though I am particularly concerned that my letters will not reach the two founders of Google, so I not only sent it to them, but also a couple other Googlers, including V.P. User Experience and someone involved in hiring.

Well I was just checking my Google analytics and found out that I was now the third result for ‘kevin dolan.’  The only two sites beating me now are a Facebook result, and the annoying kevindolan.org.  I did some research to try and figure out how to contact the owner of this website, and I decided to write him a scathing letter.

Here is a transcript of the letter I wrote him.

Dear Kevin Dolan,

I am writing to inform you of my disapproval of your use of the KevinDolan.com, KevinDolan.net, and KevinDolan.org domain names.  I apologize ahead of time, if this email did not make it to the right person and you are not, in fact, the registrar of the aforementioned domain names.  My research has led me to believe that this is you, however.

I am disappointed in the fact that you merely registered these seriously awesome domain names, and did not develop them into anything magnificent– especially, given the fact that you, yourself, are a web developer.

When people Google-search “kevin dolan,” they are disillusioned when they do not find a torrential downpour of awesomeness.  I blame you, in part, for this abomination of the Kevin Dolan name– for registering, but not developing these websites.

So it is with this email that I inform you of my goal to beat you in the Google search results for the name Kevin Dolan.  You see, I too am a web-developer of sorts, and I will stop at nothing to appear first.

That being said, our relationship does not have to be negative.  I am offering to take these domain names off your hand, with a promise to develop them into something truly magnificent.

Sincerely,
Kevin Dolan

I actually sent this via email, a week or so ago, with no response.  Because he failed to respond to me by email, I have decided to send him a letter by standard mail to see if that may ellicit a response.

I will include the following introductory paragraph to make sure he knows that I am serious.

I have attempted to contact you via email with no response.  As a result, I have resorted to sending this letter to you through the United States Postal Service.  I hope this letter finds you in good spirits.

Let’s show this imposter who’s boss!

As many of you know, I had got a tattoo a while back at a terrible place of business known as Pittsburgh Ink.  In general, the whole thing was a terrible experience–

The guy at Pittsburgh Ink, Q was his name, started the tattoos the day we walked in, but Jess and I had to come back several times just to find a time when he was open so he could finish them, and then, after all that, the end product wasn’t all that great, for either of us.

Well I recently came into a bit of money, and I had wanted to get that tattoo touched up for several months now, so I saw this as an opportunity to finally do it.  I called up Danielle, who I know works at Human Production and asked if she knew anyone who could do it.

She told me to come in, and I met with Zane, and he had the idea of doing an entire coverup of the old tattoo.  The new tattoo would be much larger and much more awesome, and feature something more relevant to my life– The Tale of the Scorpion and the Frog!

He drew it up, and I spent about 5 hours under the needle earlier today.  The experience ranged from agonizing to trancendental at times, and in the end we decided to break it into two sessions.  At the top of this post, you can see a picture of it… and you can see a slightly bigger one.

It’s not finished yet, we still need to do the blue in the waves and he said he was going to go over all the outlines again to make them bolder.  It’s not going to be finished for 3 or 4 weeks because of my Portland trip, but I’m really stoked for it and I think it turned out pretty well.

So the bottom line is that if you want to get a tattoo in Bethel Park, to the best of my knowledge you only have two options– Pittsburgh Ink and Human Production.  Pittsburgh Ink should be out of business, whereas Human Production is a high quality establishment.  And that’s Kevin Dolan’s word!

And on another note, I’d like to point your attention to a Kevin Dolan imposter on YouTube which was brought to my attention by Elena… link.  The show is an absolute disgrace to my name and should be taken off YouTube.  There are some funny parts, and I’ve always been a fan of awkward silences, but the only redeeming quality of the entire show is Eugene Chen– he should take over the show.