October 2006

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When you say Beer, say when?

October 31, 2006 in Anthropology, News | No comments

At the most self-aggrandizing, self-fulfilling, and prophetic moments, I am but a mirror to the archeologist and anthropologist that lives within. Some mornings I wake up, full of potential, waiting for some cosmic action or reaction. My son and daughter greet me or me them. They are my genesis, my blood, my genes. They make the mistakes that make them human. My daughter is a loving 8 year old that wants to do everything in one day. My son is a superior 15 year old that has done it all; but wants to not be grounded.

Yet some mornings instead of seeing them, I get the sense of leaves in the air. I

Conundrums, Fall Back, Spring to nowhere

October 29, 2006 in Views | No comments

It seems we are in the season of conundrums. There are conflicting things which could happen given any outcome. One amazing factoid is that the Raiders won today! How did that ever happen? Two games in a row. Goodness.

Today also was the day of falling back. I don

News here and there

October 26, 2006 in News | No comments

Congrats to a few folks out there.  First to Mozilla for its Firefox 2.0 release!  Way to go guys.  The difference does make a difference and the new browser has interesting new knobs, buttons, and dials.  I don’t use a lot of extensions besides Performancing for easy blogging but I am impressed.  No, I am not that hard to impress and I don’t subject my browser to crash tests, smoke and mirror tests, or other stuff.  I do think that Firefox is leaps and bounds better than what I saw on Microsoft Vista RC2 with IE 7.  My gut feel is that Firefox will continue to grow its statistics because people do not see an evolutionary change with IE 7.  Perhaps there are plumbing differences and those are important; but browsing for lots of people is a visual and tactile experience.  Firefox is prettier to look at.

Second bit of news but still important.  Those groovy Ubuntu guys have released their new Edge.  The Dapper one still is supported for some years; but the neat thing about Edgy Eft it is on the edge.  Its software lives there and you can find things like Gnome 2.16, OpenOffice 2.0.4, Firefox 2.0, and other goodies.  The desktop appears more polished and feature rich and its like a leap better than the rpm-based distributions out there by default since it lives with apt-get if you choose to use that instead of Synaptic.  Personally, I’m a debian user from when and using apt-get means more to me especially remotely.  I moved off Debian pure on desktops and laptops because I have grown lazy of late and I like a thing that is all polished and pure and offers nice AMD64 support out of the box.  I run Debian Etch on servers at home; but Ubuntu Edgy Eft makes good sense for someone that simply wants a functional desktop or laptop with little or no cursing, smashing, or other behavior.  If you want to try Linux, Ubuntu can be had for free.  Follow the links to the ship-it and get it.  I downloaded it from Dapper Drake and it installed/upgraded in about an hour.  Fast internet is a requirement these days for a Linux distribution and that should be first in the list of dependencies.  I remember way before doing things on dialup modem.  Whoa… Can you say painful?

Finally, and not so finally; work has become interesting, challenging, and rather stressful of late.  Things not built that should have been built were found out.  There was a rift in the force.  I have some concerns there which I will not mention because it could be like a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Its that “wait and see time”.  People have to step up.

Update on Ubuntu AMD64

October 23, 2006 in Linux | No comments

I spent last few days working on my AMD64 system with a few distributions on it.  I tried Debian Etch’s AMD64 distribution which is pretty pure in nature.  There are things missing from it that you have to run in a chroot environment but it works and installs pretty well.  By far, the nicest mix if you want 32b and 64b applications is Ubuntu Dapper.  I’ve found it works as good or better and the Ubuntuguide is an excellent resource that seems to get better each time I use it.  After a few hours of installing packages, downloading stuff, and learning a bit about the fragile balance of 32 and 64 bit operations, I had a working desktop.  I still don’t feel that the AMD64 distributions really offer that much more at this point.  Too many things require the 32bit libraries and once you see on Debian Etch how fast a pure AMD64 can run, you definitely want a Flash plugin, Codecs, and Adobe Reader.  There are other things missing too; but these seem to be what I miss the most.

For me at the level of hours spent working on it, Ubuntu is the best.  It gives me everything that I could want; even though mp3 playback requires additional labors to get working.  Oh well…  I guess there are small drawbacks to each thing.  Since this system is a play and test system, I may take it to Windows Vista when it releases to manufacturing as well.  I have a Technet subscription so its easy to get evaluation copies of just about anything that Microsoft has out there.

Finally, if you have a AMD64 and you want something that will become genuinely useful in daily computing, I don’t think the pure AMD64 Debian Etch is an answer at this point.  It works very fast; but there are too many things missing to make it comfortable.  I’d probably go with Ubuntu Dapper at this point if you want to actually use the thing.

Sunday meanderings, weather, images

October 22, 2006 in Linux, Views | No comments

No particular big enlightenment to share.  I made an attempt to use Ubuntu Dapper on my AMD64 system over the past days and its kind of painful with having to load 32bit versions of things to get things working.  I’ve sheled running Linux on that beast for awhile since I could do Debian’s pure AMD64 and may end up doing it still.  Some things seemed kind of strange in retrospect:

  • OpenOffice 2.0.2 on Ubuntu was not happy with NFS shares.  I could load a document but not save it.  I think that this is a file locking issue.
  • There is no flash plugin for anything 64bit so one has to run a 32bit version. 
  • Java is interesting until you load Blackdown from the repositores.
  • The Ubuntu installer got my 256mb PCI-x card all wrong and tried to setup Xorg with the onboard nvidia card even though its disabled with a card in the slot.

None of these things are showstoppers except for taking some time to figure out the whole graphics adaptor thing.  GDM, the little pig that is it, crashed the system any number of times because I could not believe at first that it was gonna setup a video card and PCI location for a card that is not active or even asking me…  Bad.

Other than that, its Sunday and its the day before a big meeting at work.  Perhaps work will become all tuned up like a fancy musical instrument…

 

Blogging Linux, Windows, and meeting places

October 20, 2006 in Linux | No comments

A friend told me I had not blogged enough about Linux these days.  What has happened to me is that I still have a deep passion for running the upstart of operating systems; but the number of hours in a single day has dampened my enthusiasm at the present time.  I feel kinda lazy these days so I tend to run what I consider to be a desktop OS for desktops and a server OS for servers.  On the desktop I shamedly admit to running XP Professional most times.  I’ve wondered why that is a few times now when people start telling me the “joys of ubuntu”.  I could take my Boring Badger or my Wispy Weasel or whatever other variant and just do it.  I am a Debian person by default so I gravitate toward things that have package managers which start with the word “apt”.  I’m apt to use a thing which uses apt and I’m very likely to get a thing which includes the words apt-get.  But now I am at this other end of the laziness spectrum.  Many personal events have transpired of late which have kept my energy level higher in family and work things so I’ve tended to merely manage the status quo these days.  I think some of my friend feel that I have abandoned the great quest.  Simply not true.  I’ve stopped at a spot on the trail where I can rest.  Soon I’ll catch back up and people will ask me those “debianized” questions and I’ll have answers fitting. 

I don’t feel completely good about my laziness these days but as Popeye the Sailor once was known to say,

I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.

Reaching forward and backwards

October 19, 2006 in Views | No comments

Its come to me after a 17 day absence that I simply need to write weblog posts.  So many things come and go in a day that without blogging, I seem to miss the measure of them because I cannot live them vicariously again when I blog them.  Age has this determining affect on you and I think as I’ve grown older, I’ve wanted to get more of a keen zest from the things I do; but it gets more difficult at the same time to get that.  Physical deterioration and even mental loss plagues us all as we age.  Even graceful aging takes its toll and I find that things I used to do are not the same if I try them now.  Now I enjoy quieter passtimes with a few friends and a beer.  Before as an archeologist I traveled, nomaded to various ports of call, reached to a zenith and then pulled back.

Its always a case of pulling back when you reach the point.  Sometimes its the point of no return and other times its the point of “know return”.  You know the return from the gambit and gamble yet its worth it.

My wonderful wife, that most of significant of significant others had a coronary angiogram or heart cath if you use the medical terminologies.  There was a risk of an occluded artery at the heart.  It was a week of tears, worry, significant emotional issues.  Then the hospital called and said the date had been wrong and it was the next day.  Suddenly, all the issues piled up and we dealt with it gracefully.  I’ve reached the conclusion in my advancing age that I need her to help me get through all the big and little adventures that life tosses.

After 17 days of no-blog reality, I’m glad to be back.  I feel constipated with worthless blog posts.  So hang on and hang out.  I’ll try to make each one at least have a small bubble of something you can take away.  Perhaps you’ll find some minimal truth in my adventures that will make yours seem better, different, worthwhile…

And then again, perhaps not.

Short and Suite Hiatus

October 18, 2006 in Weblogs | No comments

Sometimes I say a thing I mean and sometimes I mean a thing I say.

On Hiatus for awhile

October 1, 2006 in Views, Weblogs | No comments

The blog is not being posted to all that often anymore.  I’ve reached a few rest spots along my highway.  Blogging has become a secondary thing.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps in the end, bloggers reach some point where they’ve said what they wanted.  Maybe its like a good novel.  You write up the beginning, lay some mystery down in the middle, and then let the characters coalesce to the end.  I once entertained an idea of writing a novel as a serious thing to do. 

At any rate, I’m gonna let the blog speak for itself yet another day; but for the meanwhile, I’m on hiatus from blogging.

Hope you all take care out there and never let the comet become more than the perspective it gives you.