|
|
|
Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
Well, we're all still here. Most of us. We lost a few people to a bus accident in Texas, and a bunch of folk no doubt expired of old age in the past 24 hours, but no one -- to the best of my knowledge -- died from terrorism yesterday. Which is a Good Thing in the grand scheme of things. The problem is, whether or not someone dies today from neferious causes or tomorrow or the next day, the terrorists have, at least in part, accomplished their goals. We fear the unknown. When will they strike, if at all? Where? How? I don't fear for my own personal safety, but I do feel a quiet anxiety for the future of the world as we know it.
On a personal level, it's been a very long week. Work consumed my days from long before dawn 'til long after dusk. Leah and I were like two ships passing in the night -- literally. Thankfully I don't have weeks like this too terribly often. The rush isn't over, but it has subsided. I've got some reading to do today, and tomorrow I want to get an early start on next week's schedule. This morning, however, I finally managed a few quiet hours to sort my office -- again, both literally and figuratively.
The first order of business was my file systems. I have two (well, three). The one on my desk (which spills to the floor when I get busy) and the one(s) on my computer(s). All were in bad shape. I tend to scribble a lot of notes when I thinking. I do it on paper, as it's quick and I can order whatever I want, however I want, on the page before me. The problem is, only about 5-10% of what I jot down is worth keeping. Which means I have to go through the piles lying all over my desk (and this week, all over the floor), and find the "diamonds in the rough". Then figure out what to do with the keepers. It's a time consuming process, but it's enjoyable -- I always find at least one scribbled note that give me an "ah-hah" or contains a bit of important information I had forgot all about.
As for my virtual/computer-based file systems... well, suffice to say -- this week -- calling it a file system is an oxymoron. So starting about 5 this morning, I began sorting and ordering and burning stuff to CD. I'm still at it ;-). But I'm having fun and it feels good to get things in order. And like my paper-based scribbling, I found a bunch of stuff I had forgotten all about. Stuff I downloaded for a look-see. Stuff for next week when I have a few quiet moments.
I remain delighted with Kronk, my new dual Athlon box. To date, I've only found one thing I don't like -- it's too fast. Actually, that's inaccurate. It's as fast as it's supposed to be. But after working on Kronk for a few hours, suddenly my 1GHz, 512MB's worth of notebook seems SLOOOWWW. Bother. I was afraid that might happen. Oh well. The screen on my notebook still beats anything I've worked on for clarity, contrast, and just plain gorgeous color. Now if I could just figure out a way to shoehorn a couple dual Althon 2000+s into the case, AND keep them cool...
I emerge rsync'd my notebook this morning for the first time in almost two weeks (See? Told you I've been busy ;-). Good Krimmeny. Two and a half fricking pages of updates. I managed to slash that down to just over a page (20-25) by deleting GNOME from my "world" file (if you'll recall, I build GNOME when I first re-installed Gentoo on Phaedrus while I was waiting for KDE RC-6 to release; haven't used GNOME since). I don't anticipate the build process to finish until this afternoon, as the packages GCC's chewing on are all biggies: XFree (4.2.99), QT (3.1.1-r2), KDElibs (3.1-r2), GCC itself (3.2.2), and a handful of XML libraries. We'll see.
I was going to put up a short post, but I just realized I can't keep my eyes open. And rather than fall asleep while I'm typing and making a fool of myself... I get something of substance up tomorrow. Cheers.
I needed a break from work last night, so I switch on the TV and flicked over to CNN to "catch up" with the world at large (I hadn't watched any news since late Friday, so I was feeling a tad out-of-touch).
Aaron Brown was on, hosting NewsNight. I like Aaron Brown. He strikes me as a no-bullshit kinda person who asks difficult, and sometime unpopular questions, while still maintaining focus on the humanity side of the equation. While I like Aaron Brown, I did not like what he was telling me. North Korean ballistic missles, purportedly credible terrorism threats, missle launchers positioned throughout Washington and New York, the multiple diplomatic impasses brewing around the world, a story about the front-line people stationed in Kwait who are preparing to deal with any possible release of chemical, biological, or radiation-based weapons... The tone was somber throughout the broadcast. More somber than I've seen since 9/11. My god... what the hell happened to the world? My back was only turned for a few days...
And then there was the line Brown used just before transitioning to a commercial: "When we return we'll take you back to the good old days when all we had to fear was total annihilation."
I don't mind telling you, I get pretty nervous when world leaders start playing brinkmanship, especially when they do so with incomplete or inaccurate information. Powell told Congress the ricin found in England came from Northern Iraq. European authorities dismissed the statement saying it was "homemade". What's that? Oh, I see. Powell was actually referring to the potential the ricin found in England could have come from Iraq. I see. Well, no I don't, actually. But that's OK. Well, no it's not OK, actually.
I have work to do. It's not going to come easily, though. I'm not at all focused on the task at hand. I'm tired, confused by events around me, and whatever kind of bug I've been harboring for the last week is not helping matters.
Ah well. Be good and try to have a nice Thursday. Let's hope cool heads prevail in the days to come.
Yes, yesterday's reference to "DNA" was supposed to read "NDA". I really do need to slow down a bit and at least proof-read what I'm typing. RSN. I can remember years ago having a small wooden plaque on my desk. It said, "When this rush is over, I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. I've worked for it, I deserve it, and no one can take it away from me." Amen.
The piece I'm working on at the moment morphed in mid-stream. Due to a lack of resources at the time, I had to base some of the material I was writing about on another individual's way of doing things. Unavoidable at the moment. But unfortunately, this time around it's come back to bite me in the ass and I've got a significant amount of material to re-write, re-think, re-structure, and cross-check. Bother.
Kronk is growing on me ;-) I still don't have much on it other than Red Hat 8, a couple enterprise apps, and a few of my everyday favorites (Mulberry, JEdit, and the latest nightly of Phoenix), but what I do have installed works, and works well. I've finally found the solution to JEdit's sluggishness -- a pair of 2000+ Athlons and a Gig of RAM.
Gotta run. I feel like a harried air traffic controller this morning... I've got flights circling above, waiting to land on my desk, but there's no gates available.
I'm slammed this week, so don't expect much here in the way of "feature rich" content for the next few days. I sat down at my desk yesterday morning at about 7. I crawled into bed about 1am. I was back at my desk (I won't tell you I was coherent -- I was upright with my eyes open, however) at 5am this morning.
And while I can't go beeking off about the products I'm working with right now (well, I could, but then I'd have to kill you), I can tell you I'm learning lots and slowly making progress in the right directions. Such is the world of corporate services and DNA's.
Leah's better. Danielle's still coughing up a storm. Landon's better too. Weather's cold. Be well.
Last week several people asked me why I didn't build my own system from sratch. In addition to the reasons already provided, here's another. Yesterday Kronk "threw a propeller". I walked into my office and the system sounded like it was about to launch itself out the window. A quick check of the situation revealed one of the CPU fans had lost a blade. I couldn't just leave it, as the fan would have self-destructed in short order. And I didn't want to unplug the fan and leave the CPU without any cooling. So I powered the system off, unplugged all the cables, put it under my arm, and drove up the street to our local London Drugs (where I purchased it). I put it on the computer manager's desk, explained what had happened, and said, "fix". "Please". He had a replacement fan in stock, swapped out the defective one, and ran some tests to ensure everything was working as advertised. I was home again in twenty minutes. I can only speculate what a pain in the petuda all this would have been if I had bought all the pieces from individual suppliers. I can say with some certainty the problem would have taken a lot more than an hour to resolve.
My task list for the day is long and noble. I've got to get a copy of DB2 8.1 installed on Kronk an research some possible content, I've got a tutorial that needs a final pass before submission, and I haven't check email since Friday afternoon -- scarey stuff. I may write a bit more later if I manage to get a handle on things around here; no promises, though...
Send questions or comments about this site to
webmaster@syroidmanor.com.
Copyright © 1998-2003 Tom Syroid. All Rights Reserved
