This is one the best videos of a tornado that I've ever seen. It is from a surveillance camera apparently mounted on the side of building overlooking a parking lot. The information along with the video says the building was damaged, but there were no injouries.
Red Hat 9 was the last free version of Red Hat if I remember correctly. Once upon a time, The Red Hat name was the name in open source. They went enterprise and made a name for themselves. I use Red Hat products every day at work.
At home, I use Fedora products. The latest version of Fedora is
Fedora 9. It is riddled with beta software and poorly thought out
construction. I've had several pieces of software break either in whole
or in part since Fedora 8. It has become clear to me that the Fedora
name has become a beta test of Red Hat's next release. I imagine that
Red Hat 6 will look very much like Fedora 9 with a few bug fixes and a
minor face lift.
Firefox 3 is beta and useful. It has some interesting changes and
some annoying ones. Not a bad choice for a new OS output.
KDE 4 is beta and is completely useless on Fedora 9. KTTSmgr worked
fine on Fedora 8. After an upgrade, it is broken to the point it no
longer works. It isn't like I don't need this software, or that it is
just one of the conveniences of computing. KTTS is the software that
reads text to me aloud. I need that as much as I need a functioning
keyboard or monitor.
Same is true with KDE itself. All I have to do is select a different
theme and X collapse.
It is highly frustrating that Fedora is pulling this kind of crap. I
sit at my desk looking at an error on my screen and wonder if I should
have tried a full install from scratch. That does seem to fix most
things wrong with upgraded units. However, when I think about the
effort involved in that effort, I wonder why I'm not going to Ubuntu, a
distro I've had good luck with in the past and know has a history
working upgrades.
So, where does this leave me? I'm typing on a computer that is
partially broken and no idea if it will ever get fixed. When i download
an official release of an operating system, I want something that
works. If I want cutting edge, I'll go looking for it. I complained
when Fedora waited like six months to go from Firefox 1.5 to 2.0. Those
were real releases of the software, not betas.
What are these guys thinking? For no good reason, they take their and many other people's lives in to their hands and just for the hell of it, drive down the wrong side of the road. Any one know where this is.
The story behind this walkway dates back to 1901 or so. It is a bit breezy for my taste. It looks better than many of the video game traps I've had to traverse in virtual lands.They should copy this thing before the restoration in ... whenever the local government feels like ponying up the dough. In Spain, that could be a while.
Our company is expanding a bit. We had to double the space for the
snacks. The company sells us candy and other assorted junk at cost. It
is on the honer system. They got some new stuff in too. Three kinds of
M&Ms. Peppermint paddies. We get free sodas too. Not sure where
that came from. It is a great way to gain a ton of weight. I'm over
there twice a day. Once for a soda and once for a snack. I heard on a
podcast today that the
obese children rate is leveling off. It must be the cost of food.
Thanks to Justin for the modeling. Justin is one of those folks who
has the permanent jitters. He is full of energy. He hits the snack bar
a couple times a day as far as I can tell and is skinny. One of the
lucky ones I suppose.
That looks pretty violent. To think, my shredder has a hard time with three sheets of paper.
I made a quick recording on my phone and emailed it to myself this morning. The recording was to remind myself of something I wanted to blog about later. When I listened to the recording on my computer, I pictured myself at about 22 or so with a full head of long red hair, clean shaven. That must be the picture of myself that I use as my soul's avatar. I wonder if that makes a difference when I die? Will that image of myself matter?
I'm probably in better shape now than I was then. I walk more.
Nothing trumps youth for health. There are few seventy year olds who
could beat themselves at twenty beyond the advantage of experience. It
is true that I have a bit more around the middle now than I did then.
In Eric the Viking, the gods are all ten year old children playing games with the lives of mortals. All the people who go to Valhalla become play things for the gods amusement, or maids. That is a very interesting interpretation. It has stuck with me long after the movie played. At the end of the movie, they all end up going back to Earth. They are all going to die one day. I guess they must all convert to another religion to avoid Valhalla at that point.
My perception of myself definitely makes a difference here on Earth. It deeply affects my attitude. If I have a fat slob image of myself, I will probably do things that end up leading to my fulfilling that persona. If I have a masculine strapping lad image, then hopefully, I'll head for that goal. It makes a difference in the basis I start from for many decisions throughout my day. Everything I eat to how I carry my stride when I walk will be affected. Most people have a defined self image. They do everything in their power to attain it. Nearly no one knows they do it.
This one is a bush next to my bus stop. I yelled at it a couple weeks ago because it got in my way. It rewards me by blooming pretty.
This is a sign that it took me like a year to read. It is attached to the same sign pole the bus stop sign is on. I was worried it was some kind of notice that the rout would change or something.
Random trip to Jack in the Box.
I had a Hot Wheels vehicle that looked a lot like this. I played
with it until the wheels fell off. I hope they get the same mileage out
of this SUV. That is a pretty cool trick. I've seen RVs with motorcycle
on the back. There are more cool cars in our parking garage.
And my parents are in the smack dab middle of Kansas this week. Worse tornado season in memory. Sometimes I wonder about those two. I got a call the other night that my dad had to park his truck under a neighbor's carport to get it out of the hail.
How cool is this? I want the Myth Busters right on the 2 liter plastic bottle myth today. I'm thinking the dumped bleach will cause damage to the earth in some way. There is always a trade off. How expensive is Clorox these days?
The freedoms of children. What they say. Where they go on a Sunday afternoon. Elle is on a spaceship that looks a lot like our couch. I offered to be the navigator.
If only it were raining outside. That would make the game complete. We spend far too much time inside. We are lost to our cool air and entertainment centers. Elle knows better. What happened to my dreams. Oh, yes. I found them.
Next week worries me. Tomorrow worries me. I know not what new
things have plans for us. what webs weave the powers in our path? Why,
why? Shall we find our way? Will we fall? We shall fly. The world will
slip by. The sun shines with our without us, but we give off our own
light.
Sometimes we want tomorrows to hurry up and get behind us. Then, of
cause, too many have. Life is like that. You get what you want only to
figure out it was all crap and you should have stopped to smell the
roses.
The pin of a grenade is the smallest piece of mettle that will bring a person's life in to focus for the shortest period of time that seems like the longest. I remember an episode of MASH where a patient had a grenade and every one had to look around for the pin. I remember a show where Japanese soldiers killed themselves by activating pinless grenades and holding on to them too long. There was an episode of the Simpsons where a soldier died because he monologued too long. In True Lies, Arnold's character pulls the pin on a grenade and then lets the 'spoon' fly before he throws it. I had learned about spoons before this. It was nice to get that little detail in a major picture. The best movie grenade line was in Spies Like Us where Chevy's character holds on to a grenade too long, but then throws it at the bad guys. It lands in a box of grenades, so there is no hope of throwing it back. That is still a funny scene.
Apple, pickle, tomato, popper, there have been many names. They all go boom.
Someone has a problem with Obama's race. Someone is really worried
about it. I'm not. I don't like Obama's policies or his willingness to
talk to our enemies. I don't like how much he reminds me of Carter. I
have a problem with the politician. Hillery has all but said she thinks
Obama will be assassinated before the convention.
The only people I hear talking about Obama and assassination are
other democrats. If Obama is assassinated, God forbid, I will loose all
my faith in this country. Not her ability to protect someone, but the
people who cast shadows on her soil. I don't like Obama, the man or the
politician. I'm glad he has the opportunity to run. I'll support him to
a point if he wins. I mean, I may vote against everything he puts up,
but I'll support him as a president. As much as I ever did Clinton any
way.
Hillery is really starting to scare me. I blogged a bit ago about
how I admired her ruthlessness. I do. It is starting to show through
the thread bare seems holding her career together. Ruthlessness is best
served in secret and behind closed doors. Hillery is just starting to
look desperate. That isn't a good look for a politician.
I wonder if the YouTube War will affect Hollywood. Every time I watch a movie and a person is A) blown back by a gunshot hitting them or B) the gunshot that hits the hero makes a louder sound than all the rest, I cringe.
I remember my dad building a ramp for us kids to jump. He built it from plywood. We put it on the sidewalk out front of our house and jumped it many times. The entire neighborhood showed full of kids showed up to try it out. Even ... kids from other streets. One of the young kids who had only had experience with crappy ramps built by other kids asked how strong it was. My father, being my father, went and got the Yamaha 125 cc endureo dirt bike we had at the time and jumped the ramp without so much as a creek or mark left on the ramp. From that day forward the kids of the neighborhood were not allowed to play with my dad any more.
Good times. Wish I had a video camera back then.
Reality really does flow based on a balance of opportunity cost. It doesn't matter how much you pondered an apple vs an orange. The calculations were done for you by every person and fly, earthquake, sunshine, and all other factors that affected the orange and apple. What mystical fruit went extinct before humans cast shadows on the hard dry ground? It is that story you kind of hears that a butterfly flapping it's wings in the amazon triggers a path of events that start a hurricane. Or, the red paper clip guy.
The book Freakonomics opened my eyes to how the study of balancing
opportunity costs can be applied to other things.
Capitalism uses/relies on this balance to work. Communism and
Socialism other single pile efforts are doomed to fail eventually.
Cuba, the last holdout of true Communism just allowed people to buy
home computers and mobile phones.China hasn't been Communist in a
decade or more. No state can supply everything it's people will want or
need all the time. People must be held responsible for their own
survival and happiness. That way, when they get neither, it is their
fault and not the state. The state must survive.
When I took a class in economics, my professor did not get this fact
much less teach it. That class could have changed my life,but it just
detracted me with formulas and a woman crying during our final.
Everything and I mean everything you do and see and hear and feel is
filtered through your brain. Your brain throws out 99.9& of all
the information that comes in and only hangs on to the important stuff.
Isn't that great? You have to learn (program a filters and procedures)
how to do things. As you learn (program filters procedures) your brain
brings about a set of actions based on past experience and, in the case
of intelligent life, things other people tell you or show you.
That last one, ... what people tell you or show you, is a bit
sketchy. I believe one only learns based on experience and
visualization of things that people teach. I only have my experience to
fall back on. If someone tells me something, I can only learn from it
if I imagine myself in the situation, and performing a specific way.
Otherwise, it is in one year and out the other.
When I go to put my foot down on an unfamiliar trail, I scan the
area and eliminate all the dangerous places. This makes my choice of
where to put my foot limited. If my filter eliminates all places in the
direction I'm going, then I have to stop moving forward and consider
a
different path to my destination. This is opportunity cost analysis. If
I cannot put my foot down in a place aloud by the filter in my brain, I
cannot move forward. If there is no alternate path, I must reassess the
filter I use to take the existing trail, even if there is a danger
involved. I may have to abandon my goal if things are bad enough. That
is part of the filtration process. Is my end goal worth all this
trouble?
Movement in nature, like a rock falling off the side of a hill,
seems random, but if you look close enough you can find the cause and
effect matrix that lead to that rock falling at that moment. Endless
sun and rain, hot and cold. Any time you cannot find the matrix, it is
called faith. When the opportunity cost of the rock staying in it's
spot is greater than the opportunity cost of it rolling down the hill,
it rolls.
It seems sciences have come about because people had needs.
Mathematics seems to have come about as a science only because people
had math problems in their heads and needed a way to write them down.
Mathematics is more a means of communication than a science. Of course,
that is what science is, a means to communicate highly extract ideas
and concepts to other people, to teach really. physics came about as a
way to apply math to real world ideas, if not real world itself.
Economics came about more as a way to make money based on the realities
of commerce and greed. It is not so much a way to teach as a way to
take advantage of data. Biology is about understanding the mechanics of
life and could be called the foundation of medicine. Quantum, well, who
know what will come of quantum. Perhaps ascension. Engineering is not a
science. It is a religion based on math, physics and uncommon sense.
Economics should be a science if it is not already declared one.
I came home today and got past the same AT&T hole without a
single vehicle passing me by. Three lanes of nothing until I was well
past. I walked in the house and found my family in pretty good cheer.
Elle and I had a discussion about politics and individual freedom vs
the greater good. Well, something about the playing with rubber balls
any way. Nat is in to her TV shows. I'm on the twenty first century
idiot box. Work is still there. There are a couple of bucks in the bank
and it is the end of the month. It is warm outside. It is cool inside.
The cat box is cleaned out. The trash is taken out. Elle is in the
bath. She says she brushed her hair real hard, but it's still wet. The
cats are off sleeping somewhere. The racers are nowhere to be heard.
The grass is cut. The sky has pretty clouds just floating about for no
good reason. The wine is good. The cheese cake was good.
I won't say we are in heaven, but you can see it from here.
I'm sticking with the theme tonight. Not much else going on. Having tea. Watching an old episode of Dr Who. Nat and Elle are watching TV. I learned that Vista home does not come with remote desktop. Vista sucks. I think I'm finally sick of Chick Fillet.
Someone tries to throw a flash-grenade into a room, but doesn't quite make it. The training exorcise is bright to a sudden halt. This is why you train. Think of the potential catastrophes this sort of screw up could lead to in a live fire situation.
On this note, I need to keep my head in the game better. Stress management and multitasking are not my highest cards.
ATT dug a bunch of holes down the street where I walk daily. I have to walk in the street to get round the biggest one. Last night, the trucks were there (the picture). This evening there were no trucks or cones. Just a hole and on coming traffic. There was also an unwitting stranger who helped me get past it all. God watches out.
Officially, we have no USB type flash drives at work. People bring
in their own. I have one that I occasionally lend out to my coworkers
who lack such bobbles. My drive came back without it's lid once. Every
since, I loan it without the lid. I looked around and found (Thanks
Wade) some thin twine with a wax coating. I think the coating is to
keep it from fraying. It also helps it stay tied. I used it to tie the
lid to the USB key drive. I'm waiting for Adam (the culprit) to ask for
the drive again. He reads the blog, so he may come across this entry
first.
We joked at one point that a USB key drive would not last long at our office. It would simply be absorbed in some way. We discussed putting a log chain attached to a cinder block attached to the drive with just enough length to reach the top and bottom shelf from the back of a cart. I can just see someone wheeling the contraption down the hall on a cart to move a couple files. It is probably best people bring their own drives.
I forgot one cool thing about VNC. It is handy to copy and paste from the VNC window to the local desktop and back. This script kicks off vncconfig which allows copy and past between desktops. Remember, use the highlighted area for copy and the middle mouse button for paste.
| #!/bin/bash ############################## # Run VNC Server on the local box with some parameters. ############################## # Yes or No routine YesNo() { echo -e "$1 (y/n)? \c" read answer case $answer in [yY]|[Yy][Ee][Ss]) answer=y;; [nN]|[Nn][Oo]) answer=n ;; esac } # If VNC Server is already running check if the user wants to kill it. if [ -n "`ps -elf | grep Xvnc | grep "${HOST}:1"`" ]; then YesNo "VNC Server is already running on display 1, Kill?" if [ $answer == 'y' ]; then vncserver -kill :1 sleep 5s if [ -n "`ps -elf | grep Xvnc | grep "${HOST}:1"`" ]; then echo "VNC Server :1 is still running. You may have to kill manually." exit 1 fi else echo "Exiting without running VNC Server." exit 0 fi fi # Kick off VNC Server vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x900 # run vncconfig, allows copy and paste from vnc sessions. export DISPLAY=${HOST}:1.0 vncconfig & |
VNC is a cool way of controlling computers remotely. Here is a little script for kicking off the vncserver command that gives you a wider screen and kills the vncserver already running.
| #!/bin/bash ################################################################## # Run VNC Server on the local box with some parameters. ################################################################## # Yes or No routine YesNo() { echo -e "$1 (y/n)? \c" read answer case $answer in [yY]|[Yy][Ee][Ss]) answer=y;; [nN]|[Nn][Oo]) answer=n ;; esac } # If VNC Server is already running check if the user wants to kill it. if [ -n "`ps -elf | grep Xvnc | grep "${HOST}:1"`" ]; then YesNo "VNC Server is already running on display 1, Kill?" if [ $answer == 'y' ]; then vncserver -kill :1 sleep 5s if [ -n "`ps -elf | grep Xvnc | grep "${HOST}:1"`" ]; then echo "VNC Server :1 is still running. You may have to kill manually." exit 1 fi else echo "Exiting without running VNC Server." exit 0 fi fi # Kick off VNC Server vncserver :1 -geometry 1280x900 |
I would like to write something. Fiction. Creative. As original as something can be written and still have people like it.I'm not good at writing. I'm not as creative as I like to think I am. Oh, I can cobble together words in sentences and paragraphs, but they do not inspire emotion most of the time. At least, not if I'm making them up. It takes work to write. I can sweep the floor and know what the end result should look like before I start. That is difficult when writing. It is for me.
I am inspired by Freakonomics. It is the most poorly written book I've ever read that I liked. It was a pile of anecdotes and facts, hearsay and conjecture based on numbers, yet, I made it to the end and felt a bit informed for my trouble. Freackonomics is one of those look-up books, that make you want to go look things up and learn more on subjects mentioned inside. It is just a bit less entertaining as some of the others like The De Vinci code.
What I want to write is pure fiction. I need to start with short stores. They can be boring. The best place to start is non fiction. Start with writing down of anecdotes from my life. Hmmm. The blog counts for that, so I've already started. Then comes the trial and error. Then comes planning. There is no story clawing it's way out of my sole. I just like the idea of leaving a mark in literature.
Too bad I'm so frigging lazy.
I heard a 60 Minutes interview with John Bon Jovi. I always assumed he was a fag. According to the interview he is married with a couple kids. He sounded like a normal guy in the interview. Normal as in not stuck on himself in a shallow way. He sounded like the CEO of a company or brand. By the sounds of how he works his band, he is.
A buddy of mine won tickets to a Bon Jovi concert when many moons ago. I went to see White Snake. I hate White Snake. They sucked in concert too.
Sometimes it really pays to have a couple bucks left over at the end of the month. Nat went to a sale today at Elle's school where parents usable uniform bits for a huge discount. We got about $250 worth of cloths that still look pretty good for $40. This will keep Elle in uniforms for next year. How cool is that.
Normally, we are broke by the 20th of the month. Due to the economic stimulus package, we have a couple of bucks now that will save us several bucks in a couple months.
Isn't one of the biggest signs of the end of the world the fact that
there is not enough food to go around? I'm hearing about 30%
rises in the States. Food prices have doubled in Egypt. Saudi Arabia is
about the same. China has a booming economy, but people can't find rice
to buy everywhere. Aid agencies are screaming about food for Myanmar
costing too much to give everything people need. There were riots in
Mexico a couple months ago over the price of corn tortillas .When you
add on the fact that we are just now starting to sacrifice food crops
and food crop land to growing fuel for our machines, you get a double
whammy on the cost of feeding the children and workforce of the world.
It is not yet time for Soylent Green yet, but come on. Things are getting scary. Where are the fear mongers? Where are the smelly guys on the street corners shouting that it is the end times? Repent!! Repent!! I suppose there are city ordnances against such things these days.
Three for three. Shit.
I've heard that Republicans are going to loose huge this time round. I can't say I blame Republican voters. Where we are now sucks. The Democrats are not going to do any better. Every one knows it. There is no good choice.
Have I mentioned how tired of the whole thing I am lately? Yet, I still talk about it constantly. It is a sickness.
I read the entire book with the exception of the long lists of names towards the end. I did skip over some of those. I may have fallen asleep at the end of a couple of the tapes. The only time I get to read is right before bed time. I have to recommend Freakonomics. It is the most interesting book that will ever be written by economists ever in my opinion.
There were tons of other bits I pulled from this book. Telling all
of them would spoil the experience of those who take my recommendation.
Three people recommended this book to me. Two I trusted and one I
wasn't so sure about. Cynthia was very impressed. I was kind of
impressed. I do like the anecdotal format. I may even look in to what
other books these two have written. Maybe not.
I have to call this post Sunday Afternoon because I slept through
the morning.
Nat and I are on our way out the door to get something to eat. I have no idea where we are going. Elle will be back tomorrow Yay!!! I miss that little girl. Nat and I are taking our last evening alone together for a bit.
This might get Nat interested in gaming.
|
Inspired by the ever cute Sanrio
character "Hello Kitty" ©,
Katherine wanted to bring a little color (and a bit of snappy fashion!)
into the male dominated (and admittedly gothic themed) gaming world of
Warhammer
40K! Katherine's devotion to painting her gaming miniatures in constant
tribute to Hello Kitty has stirred much interest in the gaming
community
- and there are growing hopes among many gamers that where one girl
blazes
a pink trail into the gaming world - others may follow! :-)
|
I'd learn Warhammer if Nat decided she wanted to play. I bet we
could get Ken D. and a couple others going too. I wonder what kind of
gaming will appeal to Elle when she gets a bit older. I wonder if Rose
and Elle will game in some way. That thought brings a smile to my face.
This information must not fall in the wrong hands. I only know one man who games successfully with his wife. Save yourselves!!!
Now, that is a lot of iron. Tanks weigh eighty tons. That is about as much as you can put behind a semi truck. Look at all the wheels on some of those trailers.
Today's lunch conversation was split over two areas. We went
to
Beck's Prim for burgers. We ate outside We spoke of goofy stuff about
movies and small talk. We nearly got pooped on by irate birds. Oh, and
TV shows. Something about TV shows. I don't remember. It's funny. I
have no idea what details went by. It was like I wasn't even there.
Something about Armadillos too. I must have needed food. I hadn't eaten
out for lunch in months. I don't even remember it.
It's funny because I remember walking over there. The weather was
nice, cool and breezy. I remember crossing the street, dodging cars.
People gunned their engines to hurry us up.I remember coming back and
nearly breaking my neck in a whole in the sidewalk.
We had a break later in the day and spoke about one of our coworkers
who is off to do missionary work in Cyprus. This lead to the discovery
of where Cyprus is and it's population. Then the conversation turned to
the quake in China and an internet hunt for the map of where everything
happened. Anyway, my coworker will learn Arabic to make web pages and
media that pushes the Christian religion in the middle east. I'm all
for that. He and his wife need funding. I'm thinking of asking my mom
if she knows where they might get helped out. Her church helps
missionaries.
A friend sent me a joke in email. "The judge asked the prostitute
'when did you realize you had been raped?' the prostitute answers
wiping away tears 'When the check bounced.'" An old joke that still
cracks me up.
My goodness I was busy today. I made releases. I tested things. I
bugged things. I fixed a script or two. The stress level was hight.
Customers were waiting. It is just one of those days. I'm not the only
one. Every one is at the edge. It is kind of nice to be honest. Things
happen quickly at a smaller company. I remember working for a huge
corporation. It was a pain to get some things done. When you
needed a
drastic change to something whether it was a large or small thing, the
step were the same. You had to follow procedure for building a refinery
or buying toothpicks, it was paperwork.
We may have taken a break, but it was only a few minutes. It
is
amazing how much faster that break makes the entire afternoon go. I
don't get out of work until after 18:00 most every evening. I get to
work before 8:00 most days. Typically I take a short lunch. Sometimes I
go walk around the parking garage. Today Nat was thinking about coming
up for lunch, but her asthma was acting up so she didn't want to get on
the road. That break kept me running the rest of the day.
I'm impressed. Those little front loaders are not as easy to use as you might think. I can't tell if any one was in the truck or not.
I've never been much on magic tricks. I like knowing how they are done better than watching them in the first place. I guess that is the engineer in me.
Iron man was pretty
cool. It had all the elements of a good Kelly Movie. I liked it. I
thought What's his name did a pretty good job. He is a talented addict.
I'm listening to the Democrats run in their race for the nomination.
Hillery is behind a bit at the moment. Obama is the odds on favorite by
some measures. There have been hints of a double winner ticket with one
of them as the nominee for president and the other for vice president.
There have been jabbing at each other and complimenting each other.
There have been raised voices of race vs gender and experience vs
'change' which means nothing.
The Democratic Party has held the number one spot in the news cycle
only temporally bumped by the odd disaster for the last several
months.The competition has sparked new interest in voting. The
challenge has sparked interest in even the very young who have other
things to worry about than voting.
As a card carrying right wing conspiracy collusionist, I wonder if
it was not all planned. Let's face it, McCain is all but unknown right
now. I'm sure he is biding his time and saving his money until the real
race after the Democratic Convention sometime in June. Sounds
like a
plan.
It all sounds so scripted. This election so far sounds like a bad
movie of the week. It seems like every one is doing what is already
written. I get this feeling with all the interest in this battle for
the Democratic nomination, the over all election is going to be boring.
I think the Democrats are going to walk it in the executive and
legislative branches.
I do not think McCain has a chance of winning. I feel he was chosen
to run because the Republicans know he is a scapegoat. They have to run
someone and they might as well run someone who will not live long
enough to have a real chance at the prize again. I have a hard time
keeping a straight face when people ask me if I'm going to vote for
McCain.
Who is the Libertarian candidate?
Firefox 3.0 is pretty nice. I'll have to upgrade elsewhere. I
deliberately didn't even look at the new Firefox until Fedora supported
it because of all the hassle I had going from 1.5 to 2.0. I fluted 2.0
was working for me so far so I waited. One annoying thing is that
Firefox comes to the front when you double click on an html file or
send a link in from another program. This is annoying because I need to
activate several links from my RSS aggregater at once. The old
Firefox
let me. The new one tries to take my box over every link.
The screen saver fades correctly. It amazes me how much of a pain in
the ass that flicker was. Nat complained about it from the other
side
of the room. It was highly distracting. Hopefully that is the last of
it.
KTTSMGR (KDE Text To Speech Manager) has some issues. Things
just
sit there and don't start reading for a while sometimes. The CPU is at
100% and nothing is happening. The problem seems to be in the engine
that actually does the rendering, not KTTSMGR. It does read the
frigging HTML code half the time. That is a pain in the ass. It is
still usable at the moment. I may complain more about this because I
use text to speech daily.
Remember, I'm using an upgrade that kept my settings. For the most part everything looks similar, but different. Several programs simply went up a notch in version. Some buttons moved around and a couple things seem to be better. So far, nothing hits me as a drawback. The change seems incremental. Not much to write home about.
This is probably the best video on the net ever. Well, in the last couple of days. Well, in the last fifteen minutes. It is cool. In a geek sort of way.
Looks pretty cool, but this guy is going about marketing all wrong. First of all he is a dud. Second, He better have that ting patented out the wazoo. It looks way to easy to just copy. It uses what looks like off the shelf tech and existing game settings. I think it would be better if you could figure out how to use two or three projectors to get better side peripheral images.
There are a lot of things that weed makes you do worse. For example: everything. Well, everything except walk in front of dangerous shit saying "Fuuuuck youuu BOYO!!!"
I heard that the quake in China if superimposed over a map of the U.
S. would stretch from Main to Arizona. Many people have lost their
children. Millions are homeless. Tens of thousands are missing or
buried under rubble. There are dozens of videos making the
rounds.
There are after-shocks every so often. Remote areas are still cut off.
People are living in tents. People are scraping for food and medicine.
People are building hand cranked generators to charge their mobile
phones. People are sending text messages (SMS) in stead of calling
someone because it saves on batteries and doesn't tie up the service as
much.
China says the Olympics will go on time. They will also accept help
from all those who offer. For all the bitching I have done about China
having the Olympics I have to say, it seems to have helped China become
a world nation as apposed to a nation willing to be the workhorse of
the world. I know the majority of Chinese are rural. The videos show
people in office buildings, stores, bars, restaurants, and apartment
blocks. running out. Staying out. People are afraid to sleep inside in
some cases.
This is all happening a million miles away, in a country that is a whole different culture. It is happening to people I do not know and that I do not really understand. This would have been a news story a couple years ago. Just another bit of background noise passing by on the evening news. Today, however, I get emails with links to videos of people on the street in these places. I get first hand accounts by bloggers on the scene.
So, the upgrade to Fedora 9 didn't go so well. After running the
upgrade, X will not start. X is the windows part of the OS. I can get
to the command line, but no programs that use GUI interfaces will run.
I'm sure it is due to the frigging ATI drivers. I truly loathe ATI for
having shitty drivers for Linux. Guess what. I do not have a copy of
Fedora 9 on disk, so I cannot just turn around and install it from
there. I have to obtain one. Nat does not have a DVD burner in her box.
We really need to rectify that.
I have put off the updating of the server until I get my desktop
working. I do not remember if I installed the ATI drivers on my server
or not. Surely I was too lazy to have done so. Waiting is harder than
it sounds. The first thing I need to do is back up some data. Then I
need to get the DVD of Fedora 9. Then, I need to try an upgrade. When
that doesn't work, I need to install fresh. Did you catch my faith in
the upgrade process? Then comes restoring what data I can and starting
the process of getting all the settings where I can use the box again.
Pain in the ass.
Yes, I'm an idiot. I should have:
The last time I did one of the YUM upgrades I got caught in a
circular dependency during the upgrade. When attempting to install
everything from the DVD, I got no warnings or errors. The box just sat
there acting like it was doing something. This time, I still got those
errors, but doing the upgrade this way at least tells me what is going
on. My trouble is once everything is installed, the software that puts
the GUI up breaks. I can see the computer attempting to switch from the
CLI (Command line interface) to the GUI with some flickers. Then ...
nothing.
It was my own fault. I have not yet lost any data that I'm aware of.
Wish me luck.
And then I gave it a shot
It turns out all I had to do was remove (rename) my xorg.conf file.
The system created another one when I rebooted the box. Things seem
normal for the moment. I'll keep bitching if things break
posting my results.
This time in Moscow, a dump truck flips up when the driver fails to tell that the truck is too tall to go under an overhang. Do they not put those height signs on overhangs in Russia? The person in this accident was injured and had to be rescued. You don't get to see them drop the truck. I guess that is the money shot.
Spoiler
Warning
Cleaner is a show
about an ex-cop who cleans up the remains of people who die. There is
some gore and people dressed in scrubs. There is a kid who gets in the
way. There is a cop and a partner. There are bad cops who were not all
that bad. There is a woman and a pregnancy. There is a ledger that kept
track. The movie had all the most important bits of a who-don-it
including a predictable ending. I didn't even fully watch the show. I
was skimming through and guessed who the killer was half way through
the flick. I hate that.
Fedora 9 is out today. I'm running an upgrade via YUM as I type. It will probably take all night. I hope there are no troubles. There were some conflicting packages last time, but only a couple. The repo files are getting more and more complex. There are several base URL entries in the one's on my machine. I had no idea. I never look in those files until there is trouble.
Noting is as nerve racking as that list of a million packages that scrolls up the screen all preparing to be upgraded. The next step is to determine the dependencies and yell at me if some are missing. As I'm watching the times, I can tell, this is going to take all evening. This is why you should wait a couple of days before kicking off the mass upgrade. I've already decided to wait on upgrading the server for a couple of days. I'm going to go watch TV for a bit. Maybe that will calm me.
Danial and Trevor are brothers. They live in the same apartment.
They work at the same place. Danial never told Trevor that the Mother's
day thing they had planned had been canceled because their Mom, my
Mother in law, had to work a double. That cracked me up when I heard
it. I can't blame them. I know how guys work. They just don't keep
others informed of things unless it is in their way. They have probably
gotten very good at staying out of each other's way.
Spoiler Alert
Arlington Road is
a twisting tale of lies deceit and blowing shit up. It was about the
Oklahoma bombing and how the whole thing could have been a conspiracy.
Well it was kind of about that. It was a bunch of fantasy.
It had too many twists and turns for my taste. It drug along. It
could have been a movie of the week on TV. If it were not for some good
acting by all involved the movie would have stunk up the theater. It
was choppy.
The story is where I have the problem .There were twists for twists
sake. People calling saying they were one person to kidnap someone's
son. The bad guys seem to have everything figured out right up to the
end. I will say thought, I like it when the bad guys win. It is even
more tasty when the good guys get blamed. That is the jucy plumb.
I've had people complain that I show people dying in videos on my blog. This one is very harsh. Some of the people deserve getting hit thought. Most of them are just in a bad spot an pay the price. Adam, don't watch this one. If you do, don't complain.
I heard that for the first time in thirty years, cars out sold trucks in the U.S.. I tell you, that is great. I like the idea of people driving cars on the road. I honestly like the idea of less private useless truck that never have more than a cooler in the back on the road. Sometimes you need a gruck.
So many times the mantra "If at first you don't succeed, back up and floor it." works in off road efforts. This time, it failed. There is no rule of thumb except thumbs are usually the shortest digit.
Where the hell is this? That storm drain just blows it's top when ever the hell it feels like it. I love how cars just keep blowing by at full speed. Oh, hell with the water, I got to get to Star buck's.
Christ this show is depressing. I've made it through the first
couple scenes. I feel like stepping in front of a bus to avoid illness.
They are establishing the idea that going out on your back sucks very
well. Tidy.
Then the family of the mechanic starts showing up. They are
concerned with health and test results. I remember when My grandmother
was dying. She lost her mind before her body. That was depressing too.
Crap. I just noticed a glasses on / glasses off / glasses on easter
egg in one of the bed to bed hospital conversations. I hate it when I
notice this stuff. It is what some people live for. I wonder sometimes
if the directors don't sneak some in just to keep the geeks happy with
something to blog about.
They jumped. That was a funny scene. If I ever jump out of an
airplane, it better be a rickety heap, or I ant going.
They did the Mustang thing. Couple of little surprises there. I like
that scene. I want to rend a track and tare a couple of cars up when I
win the lottery. I'm dreading the touching ending that I smell coming
up.
They pull off two guys having a communication in a bathroom without
it coming off the least bit fag. I'm impressed.
Have you found joy in life?
Has your life brought joy to others.
Wall of China. vroom vroom
Then it is home and the touching scenes I was worried about.
The touching moment came and went. What was I afraid of? I shed a
tear. I smiled.
My joy came the first time I tickled Elle and she tickled me back. I
hope she enjoyed it too.
Oh, I recommend the movie. See it with someone you love. Unless,
that is, you are afraid to cry in front of them.
I do not have the $10 I owe Adam from last week's DnD. Nor, do I
have the $10 for this week. I'm so goddamn sick of being broke. Nat
intends to drop off a twenty this evening. I hope that happens before
food payments show up. She says she likes me much better when I play
DnD. Apparently, it relieves a lot of stress.
The laptop is not going to work. The video card refuses to use the driver that came with XUbuntu. When I click on the slide bar to move the text up and down moves slowly. Click and wait. Click and wait. I need to bounce around the document quite a bit. That is not going to work. My old Palm-Pilot was faster. It is back to a pencil and paper for me.
Just got started and started feeling ill. I felt like crap most of
the day and thought a glass of olive tainted scotch would calm my
nerves. It just made things worse. It was good scotch, don't get me
wrong. I ended up leaving in the middle of an encounter. I hope no one
is mad.
Nat came and got me. I went home and went straight to bed. My head
still hurts this morning from a sinus thing. I was hoping to mow. We
have crap planned all this weekend. I'll fight to get it done after
work all next week. I need to start robing banks so I can afford to
keep the yard pristine for the home owner's comity.
They are not all bad. What pisses me off is some municipalities will shorten the yellow light in order to increase revenue. Sometimes, not even that.
My blog skills came in handy this morning. The big boss wanted to get people with laptops a lock mechanism they can use quickly and easily. I went straight to the manufacturer we normally use and looked at their solution. It actually looked like a good solution. It uses the lock slot on the laptop. I'm not sure if the ultra thin laptops come with a lock slot, but every other laptop I've seen has them. They are all about the same dimensions too. I went around and looked at prices. Honestly, the OEM was competitive.
I then remembered a guy who had defeated old style laptop locks. I
looked up the video for it and sent it along too. It is important in my
opinion to tell people those locks are a deterrent not a fix. The lock
will hopefully stop snatch and grab burgers. Hopefully, anyone with
enough on the ball to defeat one of these locks is after different fish.
They work, not every time, but they do work. I have two personal
anecdotes. A) A buddy at my old job had a son who's laptop was stolen
from his dorm room. His roommate's laptop, on the desk across from his
son's laptop, was fine, because it was locked to the desk with a lock
like the one I suggested. B) My old job had a satellite office broken
into. Electronics were taken, but no laptops because they were all
locked to the desk.
From now on, when I post a dream laptop, it will include a link to a lock.
The guy who imprisoned his daughter for um-teen years and fathered
seven children and maybe more with her is upset that the media portray
him as a 'monster'. I haven't heard any one take even a slightly
sympathetic side with this monster. The monster wants a fare shake. I
will not get in to what I would like to do with him. To be honest, I'm
not upset over this story. I just don't have the strength to throw
verbal daggers. He is going to hell.
I was going to quote some text, but it
is not worth my effort. There was a video on LiveLeak that I should
probably put up. It shows the man on vacation with some friends. He
seems like an over weight slob. I wish the video had subtitles.
It is coming to light that several people knew there was just something wrong with this guy. He was not caught until he turned himself in after the eldest child he fathered with his daughter became very ill. She may not survive. There is no chance any of the children will lead anything resembling a normal life. This monster plans on using an insanity defense. I just feel sorry for every one involved. Even the local priest and shop keepers. You know they are going to have to answer questions like "Wasn't it strange how X, Y and Z he bought on a weekly basis?" What did his wife know? Twenty four years! What are my neighbors up to?
Listen to his laugh in that last one. This is the laugh of a mad man. It doesn't sound like one, but it is.
Coming of age is a load of crap. The whole idea of the coming of age movie or time of life or that one magic issue or challenge that makes you a man or a woman instead of a child is bollix. I don't think I ever had one of these times or moments. Nat says I was never a kid. I've gotten that many times. When I was an adolescent, my friends said I was more mature than my parents.
There was a time when people were born, grew up, worked on the farm,
got sick, then died. They were too busy trying to stay alive to worry
about middle school bullshit. The great philosopher Phebe from Friends
once said (from memory) "When I was homeless, a guy offered to give me
food if I would have sex with him. That is a problem. You guys are
dealing with a bunch of middle school BS."
Religions are full of coming of age business. There is a tribe in
Africa that circumcises young men at age thirteen. That sucks. American
Indians had hunts or other forms of mutilation that I've heard in
passing over the years. The ongoing theme of things is that one has to
go through a challenge of some kind to be proven worthy of such an
honer of being called an adult. I do not remember ever going through
such a task. A bunch of stuff just kind of happened to me and
gradually, I started calling myself an adult.
There was a podcast from NPR where an out of work guy let his son
drop out of high school because he had a real problem with people and
administration. The catch was, they had to sit down and watch movies
together and talk about them. They wrote a book about it. Not a bad
home schooling. The father swears his son has a much better attitude
about learning now than he did while he was still in public school. The
son was 22 at the time of the interview and headed to Vienna to attend
a film school.
That story above smells like a coming of age story. Not really. It
seemed to fit here. I wonder if there is a reason the son did not fit
in with any of the clicks and thus was an outcast. I know I had the
hardest time fitting in anywhere. Hell, today I fit in with hard boiled
geeks and blue collar cops. I never would have figured that one.
When I look back on school, I only feel disdain for all the other
people I knew. There may be a couple exceptions. For the most part, I
hated it. I didn't get it. I wanted out. College wasn't much better.
Work is not bad. For some reason work is easier than school ever was.
Not easier. I understand it better. I get it. The rules are geared to
help people get along for the most part.
I suppose it all boils down to milestones. We celebrate success at
different times. School, we celebrate at the end. Plays, we celebrate
opening night. It might be the last chance.
I was at work this afternoon getting some over night tests set up. I
had just kicked off the evening build. when John came in and asked
where Jake was. I pointed toward Lances office. The discussion in the
new lab between my and Lance's office was something about what the crew
of youngsters were up to some night this week. They were making plans
and horsing around a bit. The noise and to-do spilled the four steps to
Lance's office. The last thing I heard Lance say before I fled the
scene was "I have work to do. It is impossible to get work done between
six and six thirty."
I hate it when thing like that happen. I was one of the bad guys
this time. My stuff was done for the most part. I had double checked
things. Now I was being a jerk. Well, at least I bailed when I figured
out what was going on. I hope Lance got his stuff done.
The whole episode lasted like five minutes. It wasn't like things
were out of control for a day or two. We have a pretty tight ship
really. Hey, we could be getting attacked by replicators and have to fly the entire
city through hyper space to safety. Then we would have to be on our
toes.
I like ending on the 'to be continued' It seems appropriate some how.
I would be pissed if I were the owner of that car. This kind of crap is what's going on across the street from my house. It should be open season on idiots who put other people's lives in danger like this asshole.
They keep getting cheaper. If I wait for a couple years, I'll have one for free. Nat wants an iPod. I'm lucky I have what I have. I should not complain.
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