So after playing around with the Cr-48 for the better part of a month, I'm really enjoying it. I finally bit the bullet and flipped that "Dev" switch by the battery and so far I think it's making me like the Cr-48 better. I'm a geek so I like to have a good CLI at my disposal and the Dev mode makes that possible. I can now get root access basically and do all kinds of fun stuff. I have decided though that I will use some restraint and not flash my BIOS or install other OSes... yet. When Google is done with the pilot program, I plan on flashing the BIOS with Hexxeh's magical script Luigi (http://hexxeh.net/?p=328117655) and then trying out everything from Ubuntu to Windows 7 to OSX on it. Of course, I will document my experiences here so you know how all that goes but not until I have fulfilled my obligations to Google. Ultimately, I think I will come back to ChromeOS though as I really enjoy the "living in the cloud" idea with this. It really does pull things back in when you start over on it, that's very nice. It's also nice to know that if I go to any other PC and log into Chrome with my gmail account, all my stuff will follow me there as well. So for now at least, I will use restraint.

What's up with me today? I got an itch to watch the Karate Kid. No not that bogus remake which should really be called the "Kung Fu Kid", the real thing. I started watching part 1 last night and watched part 2 earlier and now I'm on part 3. I'm not sure if I want to watch the one with Hillary Swank. That one was a bit too much of a departure for me. The classic good vs. evil stories always get my attention.

That is the question. I have a Google Cr-48 as you may know and part of the experience with it is the possibility to run in what is called Dev mode. To get there you shut the laptop down, remove the battery, flip a toggle switch near the battery connector under a piece of black tape, and then put the battery back and boot it up. This wipes the SSD "stateful partition" and you basically set things up all over again which isn't so bad since you're already living in the cloud, all your stuff will sync back up. Then you have a more expanded shell and I think the option to update to dev versions of the OS and browser (not confirmed). I've always been the geeky, nerdy type so I want to do that really bad but at the same time I kind of want to keep it in its original, pristine state and test this thing as "joe user" would have it. I hear some people have been successful in clearing a bug with the audio by switching to dev mode and back so I'd like to try that but I'd rather not have to redo my picture etc. (you walk through the original setup each time you switch modes). So the question is to Dev or not to Dev. I guess we'll all find the answer eventually. Stay tuned.

Well it's one week into the new year now and lucky me, I get to be the first to be on-call in our newly expanded rotation, 9 people now. That means I'm keeping an eye on everything from our TV product to our Data services to Internet for us and our recent acquisition as well as data services for the same. It's a lot to be responsible for and ties me down for a week plus because once I'm done with my week, I am backup for another week and even when I'm not designated for either, I'm still what we call an SME (Subject Matter Expert) and can be called on at any time to assist the on-call or backup. Still with our monitoring system and network operations center and technical assistance group staff working 24/7 there's a bit of a buffer for some of it. not to mention there's a mini bonus every time we are the on-call so that helps.

So what is a guy to do if he can't go more than an hour away from home? This morning I'm sitting in the living room, typing a blog entry while listening to my favorite Trek instrumental music as my son sites on the floor playing with his ample Lego collection. Jodi and Hailey are the smart ones still asleep. I think Ethan and I would have been sleeping yet if it weren't for a brief outage at one customer site earlier which woke Ethan and I both up. Usually I like to take this time on the weekends I'm on-call to do PC/Network intensive stuff at home since I can't go anywhere anyway. Over the Christmas/New Year break I took, I did some changes already so there isn't much to do this weekend. Probably I'll get my heart pumping a little with the kids later playing Kinect Adventures.

The human adventure is just beginning...

Starting my list (yes, just starting). I think I'm going to try to blog more. I think I'm going to see if I can put a picture with every entry even if I have to just put random pictures, why? because it makes the RSS feed look cooler. I'm going to try to do a lot of things and probably actually accomplish about 10% of them, that's the way it goes I guess. Oh! I need a picrture...