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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
This timely bit of advice by way of my Fortune this morning:
Are you a parent? Do you sometimes find yourself unsure as to what to
say in those awkward situations? Worry no more...
Go away. You bother me.
Why? Because life is unfair.
That's a nice drawing. What is it?
Children should be seen and not heard.
You'll be the death of me.
You'll understand when you're older.
Because.
Wipe that smile off your face.
I don't believe you.
How many times have I told you to be careful?
Just beacuse.
It's harvest day at Syroid Manor. Suiting for the first day of September, don't you think? I picked my first full-sized green pepper today from the garden (I say "full-size" because Landon's picked [and half-eated] several unauthorized peppers over the last couple months). Gorgeous. A friend, who's quite a green thumb, is in awe of our pepper plants. We have three, and they're all producing like crazy. One of the smaller ones must have 10 or 12 growing on it. It amazes me how such a small plant can support so many large and relatively heavy vegetables. We also dug up a half-dozen nugget-sized Yukon Gold potatoes -- just to see how they were coming along. Yum.
On the computing front today I plan to emerge and tinker a bit with some of the latest Open Source email client offerings. I'll give you my impressions tomorrow. And for all you Slackware fans, here's an interesting snippet from a post to the Gentoo-User list:
The day before yesterday I tried to put portage on Slackware, and all I did was just copying portage tree, portage bin & lib (symlinks as well), /var/cache/edb and /etc/make* stuff(accordingly /etc/env.d), but it seems working now. You can merge, unmerge and upgrade you system with portage on Slackware. I made Slackware tgz package to install portage onto slack, but I don't think you need it because it is too easy!
Although I haven't tried this myself (I don't have a spare box to put a Slack distro on, or I would), I have no doubt it works as advertised. One more reason I like Gentoo as much as I do -- not only have the developers put together a top-notch, powerful distribution, but the work they're doing with one of the key elements of their efforts (the Portage package management system) is portable. Very Cool.
Last but not least... I stumbled across one of the first major annoyances I've run into with Mozilla today. Try as I might, I cannot drag a URL from the address bar and drop it on my desktop -- the program insists on copying it to the system clipboard. If I'm missing something obvious here, I'd sure appreciate being set straight...
23:00 hrs:All in all, a right fine day; hope yours was too. Spent some quality time with the kids, tended to a bit of yardwork, and put the finishing touches on my Gentoo install. My notebook is once again fully functional: XP Pro on the front of the driver, Gentoo Linux behind XP, and a 20G FAT32 partition on the latter 1/3 of the drive for storage/misc. I never thought I'd miss Linux and KDE like I did until I had to work in XP for three days ;-)
I'm typing this from JEdit (4.1 pre4), backed by Blackdown 1.4.1 beta 1 JRE (Yup, found tag completion with thanks to Greg; just had to install the XML plugin). JEdit 4.1 looks solid. It's still not quite as fast -- input-wise -- as some of the programs I've used coded in C or C++ (JEdit it written, as you may have surmised, in completely in Java), but it's certainly useable, and it doesn't muck about with document format like Quanta does.
Getting wireless configured too a couple hours of serious head-scratching, but I tend to be a bit pig-headed about things of this nature, and in the end slayed the dragon. I just finished up an IBM tutorial last week on configuring wireless under Linux; it was one of the hardest pieces I've written in a long time. What made this one so difficult was trying to convey to the reader setting up wireless on a notebook is part science, part trial and error, and a whole bunch old fashioned persistence. Getting wireless to work under Linux is not a plug-n-play procedure; success is a matter of putting the right pieces together, in the right order, and holding your mouth the right way throughout the process. If your card doesn't work with your "out of the box" installation, be prepared to try various combinations of PCMCIA-CS releases (3.2.1 is the current stable release, but you may have to drop back two or three versions to achieve success) and 3rd party drivers. For my particular implementation, the winning pieces/order was: Disable the kernel-based PCMCIA modules; build and install the PCMCIA-CS libraries (version 3.2.1); fetch, build, and install the wlan-ng drivers, and configure up the result. TIP: if you own a Dell notebook and your wireless card locks up your system when installed, open up the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file in your favorite text editor, and remove the include... port 0x800-0x8ff entry and try again.
For the record, my current Gentoo install consists of: the Gentoo-source-2.4.19-r7 kernel, NVidia's 2960-r1 video drivers, the PCMCIA-CS-3.2.1 card services library, the wlan-ng-0.1.14 wireless drivers, QT 3.0.5-r2, KDE 3.1-beta1, Mosfet's waay cool "liquid" theme, Kermitik (sp?) window decorations, and Conectivia's Crystal Icon Theme beta 2.6. My mail wrangler is Mulberry (of course ;-), my browser of choice is Mozilla 1.1 (although I must admit, the KDE 3.1 release of Konq is a lot more stable than any version I've used to date), chat needs are handled by XChat 1.8.9, I've been using Kportage for package management (very nice; check it out), and for console duties under X I use Kconsole. Every has been built under GCC 3.2 with basic optimizations (CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu", CFLAGS="-march=i686 -O3 -pipe", CXXFLAGS="-march=i686 -O3 -pipe"). I've used more elaborate optimizations in the past without problems, but given this system was built from the ground up with GCC 3.2 I chose to keep the equation as simple as possible in hopes of hitting the best ratio of stability/performance. So far, I'm pleased with my decision.
I watched John Q has night. Good movie. Would I sacrifice my life for one of my kids if the situation arose? In a heartbeat folks, in a heartbeat.
Today we tackled the front yard; tomorrow's project is the back. Be good. And enjoy the long weekend.
20:15 hrs: I've spent a good chunk of the last 24 hours getting Gentoo up and happening on my notebook. It's coming. The base install is complete, I've got KDE 3.1 configured and running, Mozilla 1.1 is compiled, and most of the common tools I use every day are in place (ncftp, gnupg, lynx, fortune [gotta get my fortune every day ;-], etc). I even managed to get Quanta 3.0pre to build without error. Now comes the time consuming part -- tweaking and configuring everything to my satisfaction. I've also got to get my wireless card sorted out, which will be my first priority tomorrow. Having any kind of cable plugged this thing drives me nuts.
Back shortly... time to get the kids into the bath...
21:10 hrs: Danielle started school yesterday. Leah and I are both very happy about that. Now I understand why my mother so looked forward to the day when we all retuned to school.
Well, the farmer's got their way. August started wet, and it looks like it will end wet. Which is indirectly contributing to one of the worst mosquito infestations I've even witnessed. According to a local news report, the mosquito population in Saskatoon has increased over 800% over the last two weeks. Sigh. First grasshoppers, and now mosquitos. Most annoying. Fall is definately around the corner; this is the time of year when everyone wants to be outside, enjoying the heat of the sun, but that's pretty much impossible these days. Bother.
Time to do bit more with my Gentoo install before calling it quits for the night. I want to have a boo at the Blackdown 1.4.1 beta, and see how JEdit is coming along; Greg tells me 4.1pre4 is now available. As always, more as I learn it. Be good.
After three days of struggling to keep my head above water, the ocean got to me ;-) I fell asleep HARD on the couch last night (hence no post). Not only do I rarely fall asleep on the couch, I fell asleep watching Emeril -- which is a pretty good indication of just how tired I was...
I installed my new '5400' hard drive into Phaedrus late yesterday. It's a keeper. The "choke point" of most notebooks is I/O as the majority of hard disks in use today are only 4200 rpm. The move to a 5400 rpm drive is nothing short of stunning. Programs that took countless seconds to load, now appear almost instantly. I only did a "base" install of XP on the first partition (I still need to use Word for some projects, but that's about the only time I use Windoz these days) just to ensure the HD worked and performed as advertised with the intent of building up the rest of the drive this weekend. But after seeing the performance differences between my old drive and the new one, I'm afraid I can't go back ;-) As soon as I hang up here, I'm going to start a clean Gentoo install behind the XP partition.
I've been stuck using Word under XP for the past few days, and frankly, I can't wait to get back to Linux. Yep, I'm hooked. The 2.4.19 kernel is as stable as a rock, the performance and useablility enhancements contained in KDE 3.1 beta are stunning, and I simply LOVE Mozilla 1.1 (the final is out -- go get it from Mozilla.org).
I'll leave you with this Canadian-oriented giggle, compliments of Roland:
A man walked into the produce section of his local supermarket and asked to buy half a head of lettuce. The boy working in that department told him that they only sold whole heads of lettuce. The man was insistent that the boy ask his manager about the matter. Walking into the back room, the boy said to his manager, "Some a**hole wants to buy a half a head of lettuce." As he finished his sentence, he turned to find the man standing right behind him, so he added, "and this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half." The manager approved the deal and the man went on his way. Later the manager found the boy and said "I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier. We like people who think on their feet here. Where are you from, son?" "Canada, sir," the boy replied. "Well, why did you leave Canada?" the manager asked. The boy said, "Sir, there's nothing but whores and hockey players up there." "Really!" said the manager. "My wife is from Canada!" The boy replied, "No way? Who did she play for?"
Smile. We're on the downside and heading for a weekend ;-)
Yesterday was not a good day. We got hit with a power outage in the afternoon for no explanable reason (no menacing storm clouds lurking about, no power wires lying in the street... ??). My UPS kept Hydras alive throughout, but when my hubs went down they somehow clobbered my current mail queue which took me several hours to sort out. Then the doctor informed us that Landon's got another ear infection. He's now had two sets of ear tubes to control the problem (only 5% of kids who get a first set need a second), and we're bordering on being back to square one again. The plan is to try and control the infection with over-the-counter medication for the moment (Children's Tylenol and some brand of nose/ear stuff), but if that Dawg Don't Hunt, then it's back to the ear specialist for another "whadda we do now" consult. Bleh.
Sorry, this will have to be brief tonight. Between the power outage, fixing my mail queue, and a trip to the doctor, I lost way too much ground yesterday, which I'm maddly scrambling to recoup tonight.
My new hard drive arrived today. If I can get my head back above water by tomorrow night, I'll stick it in my notebook and update you on my first impressions. Later.
We had quite the furious little storm pass through our fair city last night. The lightening show was pretty spectacular; so much so, I decided to keep the electronics around here unplugged until things settled down a bit, which didn't happen until well after midnight.
Dinner was excellent. I overdid the tuna a bit, but it was such a treat to have fresh tuna (not something you find in the middle of the prairies very often ;-), neither Leah or I noticed much.
We oiled the wheel of our local economy yesterday... I picked up two of "Rogue Warrior" Richard Marcinko's latest titles: Detachment Bravo and Echo Platoon. Leah stumbled upon a new cookbook by one of our favorite chefs, Jamie Oliver, and we found some new condiments for our "exotic oils, vinegars, and sauces" pantry. Then there was all the school supplies Danielle needed, and of course she couldn't possibly start a new school year with the same old backpack she used last year. Oh yeah... and I picked up a Formula One car you assemble from Lego-like blocks for Landon (650+ pieces), which entertained Leah for over 2 hours last night. Leah's not usually all that good with with technical assembly scenarios, but this one appeared to amuse her no end.
The rain last night appears to have awoken the mosquito population, and they're some kinda hungry... I think I'll just sequester myself away in my office for the day to avoid any violent confrontations with the little critters -- I've got an IBM tutorial (on configuring wireless under Linux) to put the finishing touches on, so I shan't be bored. Have a good Monday.
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