Tom's Insights - Week of 10/1/01

Week of October 1st, 2001

Last Updated: October 10, 2001 20:20

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Monday October 1, 2001

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Tuesday October 2, 2001

I'm deeply torn. I planned to put a post yesterday announcing the end of this journal. My reasons -- I was convinced -- were sound. I have two growing children who are both a difficult ages. Danielle is going through a period of defiance which is taking a heavy toll on Leah. And Landon is mobile and exploring the world around him; everything around him. That means he has to be watched every minute, for his own safety, and to keep him from destroying our home. Then there's my job. Exciting, demanding, and time consuming. Some days I put in 12 or 14 hours. And when I'm done, there are kids to bath and put to bed. Housework. Yah-dah, Yah, dah.

Then there's the time sink sometimes known as Linux. For the last two weeks I'm been struggling to get Linux running on my notebook. I thought I had it. Slackware was working just swell until Friday last week. Then, every now and then when I exited X, the system would lock. Ctr-Alt-Del would get the electrons flowing again, but that only lasted a few hours. Eventually, exiting X locked the system hard; I had to power the system off to get things happening again. Sigh. I fought for 24 long hours to resolve the problem. No joy. In frustration I re-installed Red Hat "Roswell". I was happy again. Linux on my Inspiron is fast, and highly useable for almost all daily chores. Yesterday, Brian wrote to tell me NVidia had new drivers out. Build 1512 was relatively stable, but build 1541 fixed a few bugs and, apparently, added performance enhancements to the GeForce Go chipset. I say apparently because after installing 1541, X would no longer start. Bah. So I went back to 1512. Nope. It's like there's something remnant from 1541, cuz X still won't start. I tried updating the kernel to 2.4.10 to see if that had anything to do with things (hey, I've been at this for three weeks now and just about exhausted logical paths!). But first I had to find a patch for the ext3 filesystem, which I'm running. I found one, and followed the instructions for apply it to the letter. Nope. No can do.

Piffle and rats. I don't want to play this game any more. I'm horribly frustrated with Linux right now, yet I don't want to play by Microsoft's rules either. I was very excited to get the new mobile NVidia chipset in my Inspiron. I'm not so sure about that decision any more. I'm tired, and I've hardly spent any time with my kids the last few days. Perhaps I'm getting too old to play this chandelier game anymore...

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Wednesday October 3, 2001

"The weather is here - wish you were beautiful." - J. Buffett

Another beautiful autumn day in Saskatoon. Unfortunately, I think our Indian Summer is about done. The sun's out (mostly), but in the last 24 hours we've gone from t-shirts and shorts to sweaters and jeans. I suppose we're due; sad to see that heat go, though, especially knowing it won't be back for six or seven months.

No, I haven't decided whether I'll continue my posts here or not. Like I said yesterday, it's a tough call for me. I've met a lot of fine people via these pages -- some I'm closer to than my own blood. I think I'll just mosey along for a week or two, attempt some restructuring in other aspects of my life, and see where my efforts take me. I really don't want to give anything up, but something has to give. There are no more hours in the day; no more borrowing from Peter to pay Paul. I do appreciate the words of encouragement, though. I meant to say yesterday that "I'm doing the best I can with what I've got"... According to the correspondence sitting in my Inbox, it wasn't necessary. Thank you all.

-oOo-

If you bought $1000 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.

If you bought $1000 worth of Budweiser (the beer, not the stock) one year ago, drank all the beer, and traded in the cans for the nickel deposit, you would have $79.

My advice to you is to start drinking heavily.

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Thursday October 4, 2001

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Friday October 5, 2001

'Morning... I haven't had a chance to read any of my fellow daynoters this week, so I apologize in advance if this is "old" news: Sun's StarOffice 6.0 release is now officially in beta. The product has also been renamed to "StarSuite 6.0". Details and download links can be found either:

StarOffice 6.0 Beta Web site: http://www.sun.com/staroffice/6.0beta

StarSuite 6.0 Beta Web site: http://www.sun.com/starsuite

I tried to get the Linux version yesterday, but the site was too busy. I'll try again today; you'll know when I do...

And speaking of Linux, FINALLY after three weeks of false positives, I think I made some real progress last night toward getting a good solid distribution running on my Inspiron. I started with a clean install of Red Hat "Roswell" (I chose RH because it's the easiest distro to install and needs the least amount of tweaking to get it to a "personally useable" state), put my partitions on ext3 journaling filesystems, and did a stock install (laptop, KDE, GNOME, Developer tools, and Games -- in other words, a laptop install, then added all available package selections).

Next I DL'd and compiled 2.4.10. I case you haven't heard, 2.4.10 is not only the most advanced Linux kernel to date, it's almost one of the stable, due in part to a complete rework of the VM code. Anyone running Linux should seriously consider updating their kernel to 2.4.10. In other words, recommended. The problem I kept running in with Red Hat 7.2 is the ext3 filesystem. I always format my partitions with a JFS if available, but in order to recompile a newer kernel you need to patch it so it supports the ext3 option. To date I was totally and completely unsuccessful in this regard. Which is a Grand Bother indeed. Last night I found the magic formula. The documentation that explains how to apply the ext3 patch is wrong. At least on my machine. It tells the user to CD into /usr/src/linux and type:

gunzip > ../ext3.blah.revision#.blah.gz | patch -p1

at which point I got an error saying the patch I was trying to apply was not a gzip file. Mmm. So I tried inserting a slew of other commands (zcat, gzip, etc. etc.) to no avail. I don't know what made me think of it, but last night I tried simply 'cat'. Presto and pocus, as they say. So the correct command line reads:

cat ../ext3.blah.revision#.blah.gz | patch -p1j

I also managed to get a clean compile first wack. I love it when that happens. I still have work to do, however, but at least I'm making progress...

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Saturday October 6, 2001

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Sunday October 7, 2001

I decided to take the weekend off -- "off" meaning away from computers. I'm pleased to say I stayed my course. This is the first time I'm typed on a keyboard since Friday afternoon. I still have a day to go, though; tomorrow is a stat holiday in Canada. It's Thanksgiving. I work for a US company, however, so I'm not sure how I'm going to carve up my Monday. I think I might put in a 1/2 day, and then take another 1/2 day in November when the US celebrate their holiday.

I really dislike hospitals. That does not mean I don't appreciate them, I just dislike having to be anywhere near one. Why? Because hospitals are a colossal waste of my valuable time. Hospitals are incredibly complex places, and run by a very complex set of rules. If you are badly injured, and in need of help, they are indeed the very best place you can be. If you have a less-than-dangerous injury however, you (understandably so) wait. Just ask me about hospitals and waiting...

Saturday, Leah was bitten by a neighbor's dog. The attack was unprovoked, and came out of the blue. I won't get into the details, as they are not critical. I used to raise dogs; I think I understand dogs. From my experience, dogs are rarely directly responsible when they bite. Nine time out of ten, it's the owners who need to take responsibility. Such was the case on Saturday. Anywhooo... For those not familiar with dog bites, they are usually a crushing wound, not a piercing wound. But when they do pierce, it is generally a serious matter. The dog bit Leah on the thumb, and broke the skin. So I was worried about not only the unseen trauma, but Leah had not had a tetanus shot in over 8 years. So off to the hospital we go -- to wait, and wait, and wait... Leah got her shot, a nurse flushed and disinfected the wound, and we headed home.

That was Saturday. This morning we get up and notice Landon has a developed an angry looking rash (?) around a scratch he got last week when he fell. We put polysporin and a bandage on it at the time, but I was worried about infection. Back to the hospital we go. Turns out it was simply a skin/allergic reaction to the bandage itself (Learned something new today; apparently, children with asthma are prone to skin/allergic reactions). Which is all well and good, except it took us three hours for the aforementioned diagnosis. Sigh. I suppose I should be thankful both Leah and Landon are well...

So that was my weekend "off". No computers; lots of hospital forms.

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