Others: [ solas | Pixie | Sonya | Alan Cox | raskal | SilverStr | Rynsey | Sillz ]

Ok, no, I don't really care :)

About my only achievement today besides not doing the dishes was hacking togeather a good (I thought) review of a couple of diff linux distros. Not bad for midnight huh? Maybe someone from one of these places will send me vendorware or something. Well, the worse one anyway should send me a nice CD as a bribe :)

I think I'll go and harass the dude that works at dowco internet below us for his copy of Corel Linux to borrow.

But that requires me to wake up in the morning, not just go to work. Therefor, I got now, and sleeeeeep! This kinda sucks, I wanted to start the week off with a 10 hour sleep. Hmm... so much for that idea. At least it's only 20 minutes into the new day. Course, even if I go to bed right now I still have 20 minutes of Corny wandering over top of me. Better get started now....

01/28/2000

Pah. So much for a day off. Not that I don't appreciate the thought of course, but my day started at 9 or so with a customer's system not going on the net. Dragging myself out of the idea that I was going to go for a run in the beautiful sunshine, I got the client to do a bunch of different things, and found nothing wrong with our server. Finally they got online and I got a chance to go through the logs and found what appeared to be an ISDN line problem. But would they think of checking that before bitching at us? Nooo.....

Course, when she called their ISP they just said that there was nothing wrong. Bah. I'm still waiting for the imag.net supervisor to get back to me. No bitches from the client yet though so I assume that things are ok now. After that it was off into town to do some things like pay bills and pick up a LONG phone line. Why the phone line you ask? Well, I got my ADSL back (*cough*3.1Mb*cough*) and the stupid apartment only has 2 jacks! So I get to string a long phone cord over the ceiling and over to the computer(s). Hmm... gotta get around to writing my review of Caldera and Mandrake.

New ArcterCam shots up too... Firefly is over and watching some TV and Rex took, well, and interest. So I snagged s cam shot or 2.

01/25/2000

I figure that all this dreaming must be the result of more (and better) sleep. Going to bed at 11 or so at night must be the cause of it... deep REM sleep and all that.

Anyway, another one last night, this almost as screwed up as the last few. I was agent Mulder of the X-Files and was with Scully on some deep cover mission involving sitting in a van dressed in black with our faces mostly hidden and killing kids or something wacked like that. After this was over we went back home (my home street incidently, but without as much of a grade on the hill) for some sort of PR thing the department was doing. Not sure what it was, but it involved us talking on TV.

Hey, it's a dream, it doesn't have to make sense!

One of the people waiting there for us was a little girl that I guess we didn't finish off in the op. She got away or something. Anyway, we pass her or something and she recognizes me (or is it Scully) as we walk by. I'm not sure what we decide to do about it. I remember wandering around and helping someone put up, and then position a big satellite for the broadcast.

I think we tried to figure out a way to avoid talking/seeing the girl so she couldn't identify us, but my alarm went.

Now I think I'm going to head to work to finish up and test some stuff that has to be done by noon.... fun stuff actually, now that I have it working. Sounds like Iambe's trying to call me too, but her cell starts cutting out whenever I pick up the phone... so if you're reading this.. uhmm.. hope you're having a good trip and *wave*!

01/23/2000

Another wacked out dream last night. It was winter (strange as I was boiling in bed) and a bunch of people were going across a field hiking or whatever in the snow. I was riding on the "suicide machine" (a device that my dad and I constructed years ago consisting of 2 skis and a seat mounted on top (it went fast)) and somehow got tangled up with some other group in an accident. Somehow a zipper from one of my... something in my pack or something of our groups (which is strange as I don't remember anyone helping me (I'll explain in a sec)) bags or something. Anyway a zipper got stuck to the kids face! Actually I thought it was his arm but in the end of the dream it was his face. Anyway, you know how sometimes your shirt will get caught in your zipper? Same thing except with skin, and a lot of it (a couple of inches at least). So for whatever reason I was helping this kid (named Martinez and from #north if I recall correctly, a young spanish kid ). and trying to figure out how to unzip this thing properly. After quite some time of doing nothing (sitting in the snow with my tarp or whatever attached to this poor kid and wondering what to do I guess), the kid just pulled!!!!! This is the point where (as it often happens in dream land) the injury relocated itself from his arm to his face. I watched as he slowly pulled, and watched as the zipper ripped down the side of his cheek. Freaky shit huh? I immediately grabbed napkins or kleenex or whatever to stop the flow of blood but when I looked it seemed the wounds on both sides had somehow healed themselves. Almost stitched closed as if the zipper had left bits of itself there as stitches. Around then I told the kid that he'd have an interesting scar but it was going to be ok and then someone who knew what they were doing arrived. I think. Anyway, sometime around then I woke up.

Trippy huh?

01/20/2000

One of the disadvantages of moving my computer out of my bedroom is I can't just roll over and record wierd dreams that I have. I'll do my best...

I was living near my parents house, I remember thinking about how I'd lived in 4 places all withing 4 doors of each other... Illiad had had a package sent to my place for some reason (a Dust/Crud Puppy doormat rolled up)... awk, a dream with Illiad in it! Tiggersol was there too... we had to take some sort of a test from the people running the place where I was staying... a linux test of some sort. I thought I aced it and ended up with 2 out of 10! I don't remember exactly what the questions were but they were tricky. I answered questions about Linus Torvalds with "doesn't code well on NT" when the correct answer was "inventor of Linux" or something... weird questions.... There was something about playing Ultimate Doom too, that and Q3.

Very weird.

Comdex yesturday was great for the company but sucked for me personally... my feet and back were absolutely killing me. I felt like crap and ended up puking on the way home (luckily LIMOS pulled over to the side!). An hour long bath and bed at 10:30 however let me feel a lot better. Hell, when the alarm rang at 6:40 this morning I felt good! When I got up at 7:30 I was almost as good (seeing as I actually had to get up at that point). Now it's time for day 2. Hopefully it'll go better for me. Must run to get dressed now to fight my way through the half foot of snow to get picked up by Da Boss.

01/14/2000

2:08am
Nothing like a 14 hour work day to make you feel alive :)

First of all, appolagies to my friends and fans who have been wondering where the hell I've been. Work has been busy, hell, life in general has been extremely busy the last little while, and I haven't had the time to even hop online for very long. The new place is taking time, organizing things here and there (I still have a bunch of stuff to get from my parents place (including a plant! whoho!))... and I still have a couple of boxes and the top of a desk still packed and unorganized (well, beyond the 'I can live without this for the next while' thing).

Things at work are going well... gearing up for Comdex next week (if you're in the Vancouver area head down and look for NetMaster in the Linux pavillion eh?) and doing support. Support and installs have been the bane of our existance the last two weeks... everything taking longer than it should and acting weirder than it should. Had a box blow up and not boot... hell, not do anything... brought it back to the office and swapped things around, and ended up that it worked fine. Or seemed to. I could have slipped onto another plane of existance for a bit or something.

Today and yesturday when not doing installs or coding (I got to code tonight! that's why I stayed late... coding coding coding, not dealing with Mike or Henry or any of the people I don't like talking to about support) I was watching a box that would lock up randomly for no reason at all. But only during the day. Argh.

So what else has been going on? Well, I ran out of clothes today and was forced to do laundry when I got home at 11:30. While getting the last load I was accosted by some old (70) drunken (2 "Wildcat" cans in his hand) guy who told me his life story and asked me about mine when all I wanted to do is get my laundry so I could go to bed and sleeeeeeep!

Yesturday I got a new desk. Well, not really. A buddy of mine (EsoBOFH) snagged the old desks we had at the board and offered me one. So with A's help and huge truck we got it back here in one piece.

Only one problem.... it's facing the wrong way. That is, the long part of the "L" of it is on the wrong side. It should be on the side against the wall, with the short side sticking out into the living room a bit so that I can have it set there so I can watch TV and work on the computer at the same time. But the long part of the "L" is on that side... so it's either face the wall (instead of the window/tv) of lose a chunk of living room. After realizing that if I really wanted to I could turn my entire house into a Coke appreciation shrine if I wanted, I gave up the living room chunk. Hell, I even took my old desk to make a U (and place for the other computer) for my.... Computer Command Center :)

I'm wondering where I had the keyboard before on here... I'm at a wierd angle due to moniter angle and desk height and stuff. I'll work it out though.

With my mouse hand wrapped around and with the elbow on something my Quake game is off too :(

Much more to say, too tired at the moment though. I'll get pics RSN of all the new stuff :)

01/10/2000

Wow... long time no write. You'd think I'd been busy or something. Well, it's late and I want to get to sleep at a decent hour (ie: before midnight), so I'll slap out a bit for you before hitting the hay. I'm going to start on a bit of a downer but end on an up note I think. Well, kinda. And depending on how far I get.

Through circumstances beyone my control today I didn't leave for work till 10 or so. This left me time to sit and relax in front of the TV. Nothing like daytime talk shows to depress me. Today it was Sally. I don't even know why I dignify this crap by linking it. Anyway, Sally's show today was "shocking teen sex confessions". Nothing like oversexed teens to get the ratings up. Before going back to listening to CDs and reading my copy of Linux Journal I watched some bi-curious 19 year old confess her sexuality to her mother. Ohhh.... Ahhh.... such drama! Such true life stuff! At the end of the show her mother turned it back on her and told her that her "friend" that her daughter thought of as a second mother was actually her lover. Oh god. Let me puke and die now. Like they used to say in elementry school... "gag me with a spoon". Well, gag me with a chain gun man, cause I'd probably get on TV like that. Apparently they'll put anything on. Keep an eye out on Sally though, according to her show guide on the 14th it'll be "pregnant mistresses tell all".

Please.

ObNote: "irregardless" is not a real word. It's just "regardless". My world is shattered.

Perl/mod_perl/DBI is going ok. Some database issues are appearing while using mysql though. I may redo peer2peer first just using straight Postgres for now, and leave mysql for the ufies site. I just want the time to go and do it and do it right.

Today I entered geek nirvana. I swear to $DEITY. We went to an install at some place that does data collection and reporting or something, anyway, their techie dude... nick of Prodigy, about my age... was in his office. Well, first of all, let me describe the main office.

(and I did this to Iambe this eve while pacing around my living room and making wild arm gestures)

The cube area has moniters all over the place. All along the edges of the desks encircling the main area is moniter after moniter. Lots of scanners too... both flatbed and single sheet.

Moving from there we go into the network room. One of those big ass command centers you see at comdex and lust after was in there. About 5 moniters on the top row, a couple more on the main section, all displaying data and reports. Wires everywhere. The rest of the room was stuffed to the brim with networking cable, power outlets (all used) and more computers.

Then we get to the room labled "R & D".

You could tell it was a young hacker because the music was loud and heavy metal/rap (*cough*crap*cough*). The room housed 2 people, a programmer (not there) and a network/techie. The programmers desk had 3 moniters (<hand motions> thunk thunk thunk) and 3 keyboards (thunk thunk thunk). MS optical mouse. 2 moniters were a dual head on a windows box and one was off. Oh, and another computer beside the desk (apart from the 2 that belonged with the moniters. The techies area had 2 moniters, one running Storm Linux and one running windows. Another computer and moniter beside. Another computer on the top of the desk. Sub underneath. 4 speaker system running off of Winamp for mp3s all around. Another box and moniter beside the desk. Desk littered with sticky notes and papers. Dead mice all over. Coke cans and assorted supplies on the window sill beside, along with a stack of boil-to-make noodles. Behind him more stacks of computer parts and stuff. I mean stacks. There was just enough extra room in there to be able to navigate comfortably, not enough to make it look empty. There was even a water cooler in there with the label "this here be a PIRATE water cooler. Keep your hands off the PIRATE water" and a larger label below with "captain james" on it.

It's hard to describe. My hands are still shaking.

Lets just say that in this one room I counted 7 moniters (all 17" or greater) and 8 computers, 3 brand new looking cams and more hardware and cabling then I've seen in a long time.

I want to work there. Actually, no, the programmer was using windows (and some Britanny Spears background too..... ) so how about if I just live there? Please? Prodigy was a cool guy too. "One of us" if you know what I mean. Same mindset. Quake player, net junkie, networking dude, icq/irc/userfriend/slashdot type person.

Ok, the day's ticked over. Later.

01/04/2000

I was dissapointed to wake up this morning and not find my car buried in snow. I guess my expectations were raised a little with the flurries we had at work last night.

It was a good night. I got mod_perl actually installed and semi-running thanks to mucho help from cuvarack. Now I have a working base I can go and make it how I want it.

This is the first step in everything.

I even got to bed early... my goal was 10pm and I made it down by 10:30. I think when I told cuv that he said something along the lines of "huh? who is this? what did you do to alan?!" I got up late though, even with 8 or so hours of sleep 7am came far too early, and I was awake enough to reset the alarm for 7:10 or so. Now 3 or 4 nights of that and I will be 100%!

This morning I not only made my lunch but had breakfast too! And tea! Sure the lunchmeat had an expiry of early december, but that could be next year right? Well, if not, hello sick leave! Gave Rex his eye meds and didn't leave the house in a complete state of disarray. Tonight I'm off to watch bad kung fu movies and then hack some more at mod-perl (or sleep early, yea that's it), and tomorrow I'm off to look at a friends kittens. I hope I don't end up coming home with one (she's thinking of giving one away). Luckily I have no room in the house and having 2 cats is probably pushing it with the landlord. So not yet.... Gotta find a copy of doom and maybe quake1 for my other box (Bastard is it's name, as it's cobbled togeather from a few different hardware sources) for fun and amusement on it. Maybe get togeather a doom/quake1/quake2 deathmatch going on it (not that it's easy to DM while sitting crosslegged on the floor (I know, my butt/legs/arms have fallen asleep many a time while configging that box))? We'll see what time permits.

Actually the only thing I didn't get done this morning was re-writing the UFies.org roadmap on my whiteboard... but that can be done this eve easily enough (oh the exciting life I lead).

01/02/2000

It's 2000.

Wee.

Had a good but busy weekend. Now I'm about to reboot to do some software testing while watching The Saint on TV. Now I just need to get a couple of RCA cables to hook the DVD up to the TV. I was going to get around to it today but the only cable I have is about a foot long. Not long enough.

The Dell box that I got from Cat5 is running good now. Only thing is RAM. It has a supreme lack of RAM (32 is usable but a little low IMHO), and the ram is some weird non-pc100 variety. The slot is DIMM shaped, but not PC100, DIMM or SIMM. The current module has only "EDO" on it for clues. It's definately not 72pin SIMM though. Weird. It's usable now, but I'll need more when (if) I throw a 3d card and some games on it. For now it'll do as a windows box to keep me from rebooting when I need to do something in windows.

Saw tiggersol again this weekend, that was good. I'll have to head up to Edmonton sometime to see the 'ol boy again.

Now I love you tig, but this is for you. I'm sorry man, but that was quite silly of you :)