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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
It's been a wonderful, quiet weekend. Other than some "choresy" kinda-stuff yesterday, and some routine housework today, we didn't do a heck of lot of anything. No computers (save for this post now), no peeking at email, no CNN. We watched what Leah affectionately calls a "chick flick" last night (Sweet Home Alabama; pretty good), and two or three Disney movies today. Nothing serious, nothing insightful, nothing that might cause brain-strain of any form.
Tomorrow I climb back into the breech and for the first time in several weeks, I'm looking forward to a new week. See ya' tomorrow.
It would appear the world has run amok. The US Circuit Court of Appeals says the Pledge of Allegience (sorry, sp?) is unconstitutional. The US plans for war with Iraq, while France and Russia plan to veto the latest UN proposal. Can they do that? Yup, I guess they can. The news is full of "B" words. The US is $300 billion in debt. $100 billion for a war with Iraq. $30 billion for the US to put forward bases in Turkey. Oh yes, and Gate is still the richest man in the world -- $46 billion net worth. At last calculation. Things change, ya' know... Oh yes, and "Talking to the Dead" is headlining on Larry King Live. Bother.
And here I sit in the small world I inhabit, thinking about how to pay bills and how to be a better person. Sigh. How insignificant.
The temp outside is -20C. Water is supposed to run in the streets again tomorrow, but by Sunday we're supposed to see -30C again. Weird. Just plain weird.
See Svenson? The counter did turn over. I upgraded to XFree 4.3 this afternoon. Seamless. No problems. And Gentoo 1.4_RC3 was released late yesterday. I haven't tried it yet, as all my machines are currently happy. As in -- in no need of repair. What a blissful state. What a contrast to the world around me.
A Winter of Weirdness. Two months ago, at the end of December, we had water running in the streets. That was followed by a relatively "normal" January -- average temp, about -20C. Two weeks ago, it got cold. Nasty cold. -30-35C. A couple days the wind chill brought the relative ambient down to -45C (C... F... at that temp it don't make much matter). Today started at about -30C, but by mid-morning there was once again, water running in the streets. The forecast is for similar weather for another two days, then back to -20C for a week. Sigh. The good news is, Spring is on the way. Funny how the seaons sometime sneek up on you... I was sitting in the living room enjoying a glass of wine with Leah the other day when I realized it was 5:30 PM and it should be dark. It wasn't -- still dusky. So the sun's coming back to serve our fine land, and frankly, we're kinda looking forward to it. Fresh vegetables growing in the garden... the smell of freshly cut grass... porch sitting... ahhh... I can hardly wait.
I've managed to chew through a lot of important material over the last three days -- and I did it at a measured pace, which pleases me no end. Let's see now...
Phaedrus (my notebook) is sporting the latest-greatest updates from the Gentoo world. XFree 4.2.9.902 (not many numbers left before -that- counter turns over), GCC 3.2.2-r1, glibc-2.3.2-pre1, and a bunch of misc utilities and widget-kinda-stuff. Everything compiled cleanly; everything works as advertised. And the folks at XFree dropped the default translucent cursors for this release; good move guys, not that the translucency was terribly hard to reconfigure. I see there's a 2.4.21-pre4 kernel offering (huh, pre4? WTF happened to pre1?) -- I think I'll just hang out with 2.4.20-r1 for the time being. It works, and other than a few new device drivers, I haven't seen a whole bunch on the kernel side of things lately that affects my configuration one iota. Oh yeah... and I upgraded all my machines to JEdit 4.1-pre11 today. Judging from the changelog, I do believe the good Mr. Pestov is getting close to a final 4.1 release.
Kronk is "on" Red Hat 8.1 beta-something-or-another. Newer than the last release I tried, obviously, as this one installed and the last did not. Frankly, 8.1 is simply a matter of convenience for me. I don't have to apply a lot of security updates or fixes, and I get KDE 3.1 -- shoehorning 3.1 onto 8.0 can be done, but it's a pain in the you-know-what. And I'd just as soon avoid anything sharp or pointy just right now. The problem is, I'm working with an app (actually, a collection of apps) that's... well... not terribly stable. And when it blows up (which it does on a rather routine basis), there's no nice clean way to get it off the system and re-install. And fixing it in place... well, that dog just don't hunt. Which means when it implodes, I have to start with a clean install of the operating system. So for the moment, expedience is a Good Thing. Which makes Kronk a work box in every sense of the word. No fancy customizations, just enough configuration to get the box up and talking to my other boxes, and a handful of "must have" apps. As much as I'd like to put a Gentoo installation on the back side of the hard drive, that ain't gonna happen just now -- not until the front half of the system achieves at least a modicum of stability.
My big news of the week -- I have a test OpenLDAP address book running on Kronk. So far I can query the directory from Mulberry (UNIX), Mulberry (Windows), and Outlook XP with consistent results. Cool. I'll post my configuration files when I'm confident everything works as it should. It's been a long standing goal of mine to get a central directory service happening around here so I can track contact details in a format that doesn't tie me to any one particular app. I've come close a few times, but it's always been "no cigar". This time around I think I'm heading down the right garden path.
OK, I lied. Yes, I did say last week I'd start posting again on Monday. However, Monday got eaten by big hairy creatures. C'est la vive.
All work and no play makes Jack a sad boy. And unhealthy. I was both, so I took some time off last week. Yesterday was the first day I touched a computer since my short post last Thursday. I didn't check email, I didn't surf. Nada 'puters. I don't mind telling you, it wasn't easy. I spend a lot of hours every day in front of a monitor, and to quit "cold turkey" left me with an uncomfortable vacancy in my life for a day or two. But I persevered, and in the end the break did me a world of good. I feel refreshed for the first time in three or four months. My family recognizes me again.
The fact of the matter is I was driving faster and harder than I should have been for the road conditions. I was working too many hours, and not spending enough time being a husband and a dad. And the strains of the job were starting to effect my health. Time to slow down a bit. Work smarter instead of harder. Time to clearly delineate when my work day begins and when it ends. For a while, everything sorta tumbled into one.
For now it's one day at a time. I need to learn a new rhythm -- a rhythm that's a little less hectic.
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