Update The Setup

papers/setup.mdwn

@@ -9,11 +9,12 @@ I thought it might be interesting to write up my own.
 Who are you, and what do you do?
 --------------------------------
 
-I am a system administrater at Canonical (the people who make Ubuntu).
+I am a system programmer and computer forensics researcher at Los
+Alamos National Laboratory.
 
 Mostly I hack around the periphery of free software projects,
 occasionally tossing patches to projects that capture my interest.
-A partial portfolio is on my [source code page](src/).
+A partial portfolio is on my [source code page](http://woozle.org/neale/src/).
 
 I also do computer security training for middle and high school kids,
 college students, and professionals.
@@ -21,45 +22,86 @@ You can read about that at [dirtbags](http://dirtbags.net/).
 
 My hobbies include being a (laid back) disc jockey,
 and fiddling around with microcontrollers.
+I'm active in the local maker community.
+
+I try to minimize energy use,
+and to minimize how many mysterious devices are in the house.
+These goals used to be at odds with one another,
+but recently the two seem to go hand in hand.
 
 
-Hardware
+My Home Computer
 --------
 
-I've decided to be very energy conscious.
+I use a Thinkpad X220 that is usually hooked up to a docking station
-This means my hardware is low-power and not high-performance.
+and external monitor. Connected to the dock is a Happy Hacking Lite 2
+keyboard and Logitech M310 mouse, a Logitech webcam, some old
+Sennheiser headphones, and a pair of inexpensive Amazon speakers.
 
-I use a Thinkpad X220.
+I run Arch Linux with the Gnome 3 desktop,
-My wife uses a Chromebook from 2011, which she loves,
-and my daughter has an X220 that she doesn't turn on much.
-
-We have a brother printer that connects wirelessly and speakes Google Cloud Print.
-I can no longer print natively from Linux,
-which has mattered exactly once in the last two years.
-
-The family shares a Nexus 7 tablet,
-my wife and daughter have Nexus 5x phones,
-and I have a Nexus 6.
-
-We also have a Chromecast that's mostly used for Netflix,
-and a Wii.
-
-
-Software
---------
-
-I run Ubuntu with the Gnome 3 desktop,
 which is the first Linux desktop environment I actually like.
 I think this is mostly because it doesn't try to do many tricks.
 
-Inside Emacs I run Gnus for work email,
+I use emacs shell-mode for most command-line work, and
-and a comint-mode derivative I created for bouncing around work machines with SSH.
+a comint-mode derivative I created for SSH.
-I don't run any sort of terminal emulator:
+I don't usually run any sort of terminal emulator:
 everything is `TERM=dumb` inside my emacs SSH sessions.
 
-My other main program is Google Chrome.
+My other main program is Google Chrome,
+with the Flash plugin disabled.
+Occasionally I will run Gimp, Inkscape, or Mixxx.
+
+
+The Family's Computers
+-----------------
+
+My wife uses a Chromebook from 2016, which she loves, and my daughter
+mostly uses her mobile phone and our 7-inch tablet.  There's a 2011
+Chromebook in the house that gets used occasionally, too,
+mostly for Google Docs.
+
+Sometimes my wife logs into my laptop, to run Chrome on a bigger screen.
+
+My daughter has an X220 that she used to play Minecraft on,
+but it doesn't get much use since Minecraft PE added most of the features she liked.
+
+
+Other Home Network-Connected Devices
+-------------------
+
+I brought in a Google OnHub wireless router in an effort to demystify
+the router for my family. It worked.
+
+We also got a couple of Nest thermostats to test the claim that they
+pay for themselves. This would probably be true if we had air
+conditioning in the house, but we haven't saved enough on heating yet.
+But it is handy that they turn the heat off when you leave the house,
+and several times we have twiddled the temperature while out of town,
+usually to pre-heat the house when we're arriving late on a cold night.
+
+We have a Brother laser printer that connects wirelessly and speakes Google Cloud Print.
+I can no longer print natively from Linux,
+but it turns out I don't really want to print things from Linux much anymore.
+Google Cloud Print lets you submit a PDF through a web form,
+so it's not a big problem.
+
+We also have a Chromecast that's mostly used for Netflix,
+and a hacked Wii with a few movies on a connect USB hard drive.
+Our television is *not* a "smart TV" and I really hope we can avoid ever having to bring such a thing in to the house, they seem slow and buggy, not to mention the ads.
+
+Our car is an all-electric Tesla Model S, which is offset by a small
+solar array on the roof.  The car has an ext4-formatted USB flash
+drive plugged in, with our entire music collection.
+
+
+Mobile Computing
+-----------------------
+
+The family shares a Nexus 7 tablet.
+My wife and daughter use Nexus 5x phones,
+and I use a Nexus 6.
+My wife and I wear Pebble smartwatches.
 
-Occasionally I will run Gimp and Inkscape, too.
 
 
 What would be your dream setup?
@@ -68,10 +110,16 @@ What would be your dream setup?
 I'm pretty happy with what I have now,
 although I wish I had time to get Acme working for me as nicely as Emacs,
 since I am not an Emacs fan.
+The thing holding me back is Acme's reliance on special fonts that have not kept pace with Unicode's expansion,
+although I need to take another look at the "use system fonts" setup it can do.
 
 It bothers me that X11 is such a horrible mess,
 but now that I'm not maintaining my own window manager,
-it's less of an issue.
+it's less of a concern.
+I'm looking forward to Gnome working under Wayland:
+Wayland's compositing architecture is the Right Thing,
+especially in light of the fact that modern desktops like Gnome
+already hack around X11 to get (slow) compositing.
 
 I'd like to get my daughter off her X220 and onto a Chromebook,
 because I feel like desktop system administration is a skill she will never need as an adult.