Reddit Geek

Hi everyone! I decided to ask redditors for help: I have just moved in to my new appartment in Paris and I have to renovate everything: windows, electricity, plumbing, floors, walls...

I was hoping that the reddit community could help me with technological suggestions (choice of layout, components and materials) to create a swank XXIst century appartment that respects energy consumption and the green philosophy of today/tomorrow. I can supply you with all the information needed (plans and measurements of the place) and even document the 'before and after' pics on this thread.

I have had ideas like: a waterproof touch screen in the shower to select music (and/or video), LED lighting, a big flashing red button to cut the hardline to the internet, fiber optics backbone or gigabit ethernet, hidden cameras in the walls, SMS alerts every time the main door is open...

I am open to all suggestions even the crazy ones if they aren't too expensive or if they are absolutely necessary.

In the order of things, I am at the point where I am dealing with installation of a completely new electrical setup (cabling, fuse box, plugs, lights and anything that will need power). I have only setup electricity temporarily for the renovations and will soon be able to finalize my setup by making holes in the walls to hide my cabling.

This brings me to my first request for help: Designing the electrical panel layout (main power and fuse box) and in the same surface, include the network patch panel (incorporating ADSL phone line) with a BIG RED 'do not press' flashing button to cut the network ling to the outside.

So this is my cry for help. All suggestions are welcome!

Mr. Barack Obama, President

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington DC 20500

August 22, 2010

RE: Oscar Vazquez

Dear Mr. President,

I am writing to ask you to bring Oscar Vazquez home.

As you may recall, in April 2009, you delivered the commencement address at Arizona State University. Among the graduates you addressed that day was Oscar Vazquez, whose mother brought him to the USA illegally when he was just 12 years old. Oscar was an outstanding student. As a high-school senior in 2004, he guided his small team to victory in a national robotics championship—beating out a well-funded 12-person team from MIT to do so! (An in-depth article in Wired magazine, published in April 2005, tells the story of how Oscar and his teammates created “Stinky,” their award-winning underwater robot.)

In college, Oscar studied mechanical engineering; having been an ROTC member since the ninth grade, he hoped to earn an ROTC scholarship and then build a career in the US Marines (a hope he still cherishes), but his immigration status meant that he was ineligible either to receive scholarships or join the service. Instead, he worked menial construction jobs to cover his tuition. At commencement, he received special recognition for his leadership and community outreach work.

In 2009, Oscar—now a husband and father—worked up the courage to address the unresolved issue of his immigration status. Trusting in the system, he voluntarily returned to Mexico, leaving his wife and their one-year-old daughter behind, and has been attempting to immigrate through the proper channels ever since.

Unfortunately, even though his wife Karla is a US citizen, because Oscar remained in the country to attend college after his 18th birthday, he has been barred from re-entering the U.S. for 10 years on “grounds of excludability.” He is currently working a blue-collar job as a night-shift manager at a factory in Mexico; his wife and daughter visit him whenever they can. In spite of these hardships, he does not regret his decision to face his immigration challenges honorably.

In the speech you presented at ASU last year, you told Oscar’s graduating class “We'll need young people like you to step up. We need your daring and your enthusiasm and your energy.” In that commencement address, you also explained that the body of work that a person will create in his or her lifetime is an accumulation of “the choices large and small that add up to a lasting legacy… it deepens and expands with each day that you give your best, and give back, and contribute to the life of this nation. You may have setbacks, and you may have failures, but you're not done—not by a long shot.” Oscar has been trying to make the right choices, and he is committed to giving his best, to making a remarkable contribution to the nation he has called home since childhood. Now, though, he faces a setback that threatens his potential legacy as one of our country’s brightest young minds. There are many nations in the world that would welcome Oscar, his wife, and their child—but he doesn’t want to move to any of those countries. He wants to come home.

Mr. President, I am hopeful that if you consider the extraordinary circumstances of Oscar Vazquez’s life in its full context, you will see how very much this brilliant and dedicated young man has to offer our nation. He is doing his best to remedy the earlier choices—some of them not his own—that have resulted in his being separated from his family and unable to use his degree as he intended, in the service of the country he loves. Please offer Oscar Vazquez a waiver from this ten-year ban so that he can return home to his family and begin building a career that will make Americans proud to claim him as one of our own. Thank you.

With warmest regards,

[Signature]

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While ranting and raving about the amazing android/iphone application that is SubSonic (stream your entire music collection to your phone, even if its FLAC, on the fly), I've run into a good number of geeks who seem entirely turned off by the idea of having a PC at home, that is online 24/7. A seedbox... a Home server... call it what you will. How many of you geeks have one? How many don't? I honestly cant imagine not having one of my PC's on 24/7, the very idea of not being connected makes me uneasy. How will i maintain a ratio on my favorite private torrent trackers? How will i stream my entire 400gb FLAC collection to my phone any time of day? If you pay for an internet connection at your house, how do you sleep at night knowing your not taking advantage of it to upload 24/7? Correct me if im wrong, but Smartphones and Laptops have killed the "Home Server Star" and we have a whole generation of people now that weren't even around when it was more common for people to have home PC's that were left on constantly. It makes me sad, but i guess its also what puts me in a different tier of geekery than most. Are we all really moving into the cloud now? Are we really going to rely on google, dropbox, amazon to host all of our internet service needs? As a geek I think decentralizing things, and having a personal server at home gives you a huge advantage over those who do not.

EDIT: I just want to say thanks to Reddit for taking this thread and running with it, always a pleasure! I have 20 more new reasons to keep my home server up and running the night away.

I'd like thoughts/opinions/advice from fellow redditors. Along with a couple of other items I'm getting her, probably along with a trip to a new Japanese steakhouse/sushi place in town, I'm giving her a DVD I know she wants and will like.

I'm considering doing a double-wrapping job on it so that as she initially unwraps it, it'll look like I gave her a Twilight DVD instead (she, as do I, loathe Twilight).

If she doesn't find it funny, I'm a little concerned about how much of an error this might be. I rather like her, even love her, and would like to keep her around. But there is that little seed of malice in me.

Basically, the internet has been working on and off on this machine. Sometimes I can boot, and it will be connected and work just fine. Other times, it won't be connected at all, but I can leave it for 3 or 4 hours, and it will be working fine after that. This occurs on Windows 7 and Ubuntu. I have tried installing loads of different drivers for the Mobo and for the internet adaptor, but nothing works.

The PC is wired straight into the internet connection. Laptops and phones never have a problem wirelessy and when laptops are plugged straight into it like the PC would be, it works fine.

I have tried removing the router, but doesn't make a difference.

What could be the problem reddit?

I've had it with the windows utility, any other options?