Stupid Mac Mini

The hard drive died in my mini this week, I ended up spending almost the entire day Sunday replacing it. The physical replacement took a couple of hours (not particularly difficult, just tedious getting around all the screws and crap), then the process of rebuilding and restoring took even longer than that. I couldn't get a decent rescue disk to boot on the Mini for some reason, so I ended up doing it the hard way: installed Linux fresh on it, then added the dump/restore utilities and moved the latest dumpfiles over to the O.S. disk, then booted on the live Ubuntu disk and did a full restore from there. While I was at it I updated the O.S. since it had been about a year since the last time I did any updates (when you have no KVM you tend to develop a "if it ain't broke..." kind of attitude).
Given the relatively low crunching power of the mini (and the even lower amount of power I require), it's probably
So, kind of a wasted day - after replacing the HD I made some stew. Clau and I have both been fighting various ailments since we got back from Brazil, plus we both packed on some serious pounds over there, so we're going for light soups.

Resolutions

So, just for the record, NY resolutions this year:
1) Better health. I say this almost every year, but this year I mean it. I've put on about 10 pounds since we move to Germany and I want to get back to my pre-move weight. Ideally, I'd actually get into shape to the point where I'd be happy taking diving photos of myself in my swimsuit, but I'll settle for losing 10 pounds.
2) Practice more German - I haven't formed much of a relationship with my German colleagues, mostly due to the isolation of my office and my inability to speak German. Now that I can speak some more German, I want to make an effort to reach out to them and make some more / better connections at work.

Let's see how it works out...

Enjoying Rio

So, Clau and I are here for another week or so - it's been really great to actually have some time to just relax as well as see all the family and friends. Brazil, and Rio in particular, is really changing rapidly before our eyes. For one thing, there's an obvious explosive growth in the middle class, and the number of really, really impoverished people is decreasing. Everything is now considerably more expensive, especially considering the exchange rate, and you can just sort of see the place becoming more prosperous. The mayor and governor of Rio seem to be collaborating on cleaning up the city, and they seem to be taking a page out of Giuliani's book, in particular by focusing on some smaller-level crime. There are endless police checkpoints to make sure folks are wearing seatbelts, and checkpoints for drunk driving. The police have lots of shiny new equipment and kevlar. There are a slew of new laws (and old laws which are finally being enforced) regarding the beaches designed to make them more sterile and tourist-friendly (no umbrellas with beer labels, no glass, no dogs, etc etc. It's actually quite nice.