Why My Life Sucks

I decided rather than fucking up my best machine, I’m going to first see how hard it is to build the debian based mostly from tarballs “perfect” system.

So godzilla isn’t going to be the test box,   The craptop is.     Currently have installed the real freaking basic debian etch from the debian net install cd.

Due to extream amount of time needed to compile stdlib and the compiler, I’m getting those via apt-get.   I also changed to “testing” instead of “etch” as my backup source of packages.

First tweak.   added vga=792 to the default   OS section of the “magic” section of grup’s menu.lst   Should make the screen look better.

I’ve decided not to do any “optimizing” on this test run system.

One reboot later, and yes, the screen does look better.

1. Need a text based web browser – lynx
   1. Needs curses
   2. first fuck up.   Nuked the directory before I ran sudo make install.   Wrote script to do ./configure && make && sudo make install
2. Should have gotten links, which does tables and frames.   Getting it now.
   1. It needs openssl.   Which my magic mymake script doesn’t work on.
3. Next ssh client and server
   1. Another one that my script fails on.   Need to make it check for config vs configure.   Ah, maybe it does not.   Just realized I did the open SSL package.   Opps.   It doesn’t break the file.   Still need to fix ‘mymake’ “RSN”â„¢
   2. Needs zlib
4. First big one Midnight Commander
   1. Needs pkg-config
   2. Need glib
      1. Needs gettext, which takes a long time to compile..
5. ncftp pain free
6. X11     Pain starts now.     Fuck this.   apt-get install xorg xorg-dev
7. Starting to get XFCE4 running,using their graphical installer
   1. gtk+
      1. atk
      2. pango
         1. cairo
            1. libpng
            2. pixman (needed to get later version)
            3. freetype
            4. fontconfig
               1. libxml
            5. libtiff
            6. libjpeg (breaks script.   Also must do make install-libs)
            7. libjasper.     Cheated apt-get install libjasper-dev libjasper-runtime.   Could not find a good tar ball

   Fuck it.   Starting over with Linux from scratch, eat the whole drive no wierd layouts on a non 64 bit machine.

I’ve got about a hand full of application I use, or plan on using

1. The Gimp
2. DigiKam
3. K3b
4. Lyx
5. XFCE4 as windows manager.
6. Second life.

I’m going to do the minimal “net install” cd of Debian on Godzilla, then see exactly what it takes to install those apps, from source code tar balls.

I expect this to be a royal pain in the butt.     However by starting with a Debian basic system, I have a fighting chance of getting it done, because if all else fails I can apt-get the hairy bits.   I’m going to try to use the ia64 version, because Godzilla is, in theory a 64 bit machine.

Problem 1) Either Godzilla’s CD burner is broken or the ISO I have suck.   Trying again, using the Mint 5 install disk

That didn’t work, doesn’t give me the “minimal” option.   Off to burn an ubuntu net boot disk.

Well, shit.     The 64 bit disk boots up, then dies right after the keyboard is selected.     Off to burn a 32 bit version.     Grrrrr.

Opps.   I lied, it just had to think about longer than I was expecting.

If you read my Jan 14th entry, you know I spent some quality time in a mental ward this month.

One of the things that I found out, I really do have Asperger’s syndrome.   Not just I scored really freaking high on an Internet test, not my neurologist thought it highly likely, but 3 separate psychologist diagnosed  me,   each independently of   each other   as having it.   Maybe 4, I haven’t seen my primary shrinks chart on me. Of course I could have been reading the chart wrong, it might have been just one of the 3, but it’s in the chart at $WeTreatCrazyPeople for me, enough that their on call doctor could find it.

Any rate,   I started having a meltdown yesterday, roughly at 11:00.     That’s work hours.   Had the boss come out and ask what was going on, twice.   Mother called.   Wanted to know when I was going to be over.   Short mother / son discourse followed over the phone, ended with me checking out a few minutes early and driving to my mother’s home, at a much higher rate of speed than I normally do.

Much longer and louder mother son discourse followed for well over 6 hours, with breaks for crying jags, calls to various friends and relatives and several calls to $WeTreatCrazyPeople.   During the calls to $WeTreatCrazyPeople it was established that my random mood swings may or may not be a side effect of   the new medication , and in fact most likely aren’t (never mind they are listed on the product sheet as ‘Contact your health care provider immediately ‘) , they are   in fact a semi-expected side effect of my current medical load AND Asperger’s.

Joy et  Joie und Freude en Vreugde. Happiness be unto me.

This did not set well with me.   In fact, the more I read about medications to control my wanting to kill my self, the more I find that “increased irritability”   is pretty much a given.   Great.   Just fucking great.     If I don’t take my meds, yeah, it’s quite possible I’ll be less likely to go off on the rest of the world.

On the other hand, it’s a damn certainty if I spend 6 months like the first 6 months of last year, I’ll be dead by August.  I’m a very bright person, even if I’m losing my memory.   As an example, I figured out 10 ways to kill my self in their “monitored” rooms, starting with eating the two tubes of the minty fresh tooth paste they fucking gave me.   Towards the end of the list I was getting a bit silly (i.e. falling back wards off the built in bookshelf, with the wooden chair positioned to break my back), but the the first 3 or 4 could be done in less than 15 minutes (the time between checks), would be near silent, and would had a better than 90% success rate.   Combine a few of them and I can pretty much guarantee an in ward death.   Bet that would mess up their stats.   Yes, I told the doctors about this list.   In fact, I got sort of in their face about the fact they were getting pissy about the tiny staples on tea bags, but were giving out lethal doses of sodium fluoride to each and every person that came in.

While I’m ranting   for those that care, if you’re going to take away my “weapons collection”, don’t leave the only real weapon in the house short enough to really be used to kill your self with, and all the kitchen knives.   If you’re going to take my box of rope out , you should also take the 30 ft long CAT 5 cable right next to it.       I’ll not even get into the lethal does of my medications, or the household chemicals that I could use.   My 7th grade science fair project was on what house hold chemicals were dangerous in what mixtures.   Did I mention my long term memory is just fine.   I do remember what those were, and with a tiny bit of Google fu I suspect I could find ones that were around in the 1970’s but are now.   I also suspect that instead of getting 2nd place, they would call the hazmat team and evacuate the school if some one was to repeat it today, and it’s quite possible that the student would be arrested.   Sent to talk to mental health professional would be a given.   Do they even do science fairs in Jr. High/Middle schools any more?

I’m to call my primary shrink on Monday and attempt to get a Monday appointment, if not I’ve got a Wednesday one any way.     That was the point we were to establish if my current medical load is or is not working.   From my point of view it’s not, I still having sporadic suicidal and occasional homicidal thoughts.   The homicidal one are aimed at on person, and, no, it’s not a member of my family or pseudo family/Friends.   And yes, the person does, at times, read this blog.   Add to this, that to the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the world that knows me) feels the fact that I feel like killing my self about 20-40% of the time isn’t the primary problem, it’s my “anger issues“, I have problems.   I’ve seen what the doctors in medical wards think “anger issues” is.   I don’t have it.   I was in the mental ward because I wanted to kill myself and maybe some one else, not because I have a tendency to annoy other people.   Mental wards nowadays are designed as “short stay” systems.   Normally you should be out in 3-5 days, unless you have a really major set of issues.   By their standards, I don’t.

I’ll grant I did get the “low grade aggressive” color code on the chart of clients in the ward.   I think 60% of the males under the age of 60 got that tag.   20% or so got one of the next two higher levels, and at least one got to spend time in one of the two special rooms. I also got the “high risk of falls” code, for what it’s worth.   I don’t have anger issues as defined by the DSM IV.   Raising your voice when answering a question asked by a waitress isn’t a anger issues, it may or may not be rude, it most likely is,   but it’s not something they treat in mental wards, and getting pissy about it doesn’t help.

All that aside, I’m sure once they decide what level of what ever drugs I need to not want to   just kill my self because I’m fucking useless to my self and damn near the rest of the world   and still be able to function in my chosen profession,   I’ll be starting Cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT.     This, by the way, isn’t some thing they do in inpatient mental wards,   and they try not to start you on it until you stable enough to not kill your self.     Really, if you go up to a mental ward,   getting out isn’t based on if your going to raise you voice at some one, it’s if your going to plan harm to self or other.   Hurt feeling doesn’t figure into it, not at that level of the process.   They only care if your safe to self and others, not if your nice and polite.

Let me tell you as a person that been in the BDSM lifestyle for a while I’m not really looking forward to any thing called CBT :-(

CBT, at least the kind that doesn’t normally used metal clamps and/or leather,   should help with the meltdown/explosion/crying jags, at least I hope it will.   I just hope the hell it isn’t group therapy or any form of 12 step program.   I’m not doing those ever the fuck again, and I don’t give a damn if that means I lose every freaking one of my friends and family and end up sleeping under a bridge, it’s not happening.

My top 10 issues, from my point of view are:

1. Progressive short and medium memory loss, coupled with starting to remember past events in far greater clarity than before.
2. Forgetting basic “learned” data, i.e the steps one should take when dealing with a downed web server or the method of extracting selected data from a SQL data table.   Most of this can be looked up via Google, which is good, so far my Google fu is still strong,   but some of it can’t and it’s really starting to bother me.
3. Freak outs/Meltdowns/screaming fits/crying jags.     As The Darling Wife has pointed out, it’s not normal to go from normal not angry level of anger to a screaming rage to back to normal not angry level of anger in less than 120 seconds.   I do this all the time.   I understand that this could be some what of a problem to other people, but on the other hand, I don’t quite understand why they can’t just stop being angry either.     Most of the time I can.   When I can’t I stay that way for several hours, some times days.   Like the last 3 days, more or less.
4. A vastly decreased level of what behavior it takes from other to cause me to either start to think they are doing things deliberately to piss me off or that trigger rage behavior from me.   The fact that one coworker IS doing thing that piss me off, and he knows he’s doing it isn’t helping
5. A continuing belief that to a large part of my family and friends, my concerns are of no importance and that they are either doing thing because they don’t care or because they mean to offend me.   I’ve almost gotten to the point where I hope they are doing it on purpose.   That at least means they are not just ignoring me.   Which bring me to:
6. Being ignored.   The number of “I told you so” events of the last two years is to large to count, but it seems to me that if I say it, it does not matter, it’s going to be ignored and my predicted disaster will happen.
7. It would be nice if my dick worked again.   At least as well as it did, say 2 years ago.
8. Not needing to plan my life around being within reach of a wall or other sturdy object at all times.
9. Not being in pain all the time would be nice as well.
10. Mac OS X 10.5, Vista and KDE 4.x.   It really does suck when the current “state of the art” OS for personal computers of all three major platforms are broken in various ways.   Makes me want to install MS-DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.11 some days.

Items   1-3, and to a leaser extent 4-6 are making me think, on a regular basis, that I should just off my self.   They make me feel totally useless and that I’m not helping any one in the world.   I can deal with 7-9,   and 10 is slowly correcting it’s self any way, the way that software does. I need some one to give my internal software a security and stability patch I think. Maybe my current debug technique isn’t working, an I need to look to something else, but damn, I can’t keep going like this.

PDF files are, with out a doubt, one of the more common “read only” type of files you run across on the Internet.

All the versions of Acrobat Reader, since version 7, IMAO, have sucked very large things very hard, and they want WAY to much money for their PDF creation tools, at least from my point of view.   Well, I’m hear to save the day <cue Underdog music>.

On OS X, in theory, “Preview.app” should “just work”.   In actual use, it’s a dog and has other issues, plus is, shall we say, feature poor.     For a while I was doing the magic FTP hand wave and getting version 7 of the “real” Acrobat Reader, which was better than the current version, but still has issues.     Looking for other readers, particular ones that weren’t X11 apps “ported” to OS X wasn’t going well.   Then I found Skim. This, is as the cool kid say, is the shiznitz.   OK, maybe they don’t say that, but it is the best PDF reader for OS 10.4 or 10.5 I’ve found.   Among other things “Full screen mode” mean exactly that, which wasn’t something I thought you could really do on a Mac.

On the Windows side of life (assuming Windows 2000 or better)   There is Foxit reader.   This freaking rocks.   Has damn close to the version 7 UI, so the learning curve is, for me at least, damn near dead flat, and it’s freaking god like fast, even on marginal machines.   This does go on any Windows machine I have to deal with for more than an hour.   It might go on before FireFox, on some machines. (i.e ones that has Internet Explorer 7 installed, which I can tolerate for small amounts of time).

Mac OS X types, of course, don’t have to big of a problem creating PDF files, it’s more or less built into the OS, and it’s right there on the print popup.   Windows folks have a slightly harder time.     This does not have to be the case.     PDF Creater will fix that.     Makes any thing that can print into a PDF creater   Highly recommenced.   It’s damn near one of the first things I put on a Windows box after Firefox.

Either I’ve totally lost it, or there is something very very wrong with it.   Works great, all test work fine, right up until you do the final grub stuff.

You reboot, it starts to reboot, then dies attempting to mount root, which sounds dirter than it is.   Kernel panic, complete with blinking keyborad LEDs.   The fact that I’m trying this on what is in theory a 64 bit machine, with the 32 bit code base may or may not have any thing to do with it.     I’ll dink later once I have another drive installed in Godzilla.

Any rate, Godzilla is running the Elyssa version of Mint Linux (XFCE sub version) and most of my tools are back on it.   Which is good, becuase when ever I sit down at the machine Elyssa shows up in the corner, reminding me why I should try to get my shit together.

Something went very very wrong, so I’m starting over from ground zero.   Other than the Windows chunk on that drive, it’s a whole new layout.   I suspect that the some what simple minded version of GRUB’s menu.lst file I was using had some issues with /boot and / not really being on the same chunk of hard-drive.     Any rate, it’s the week end project.   That and getting the rear tire fixed.

Sort of had to start over, but not quite as bad as it could have been.   I’ve gotten up to the final build of glibc and gcc (again, I think, hard to say), both of which take a while to run.   Current system has me ssh’ing into the machine from Silver Tabby, reading the LFS hand book via Konqueror, so I can cut and paste commands via highlight and middle click (i.e. X11’s way).     Building GCC and Glibc takes a freaking long ass time, and LFS has you do it like 3 times, boot strapping you into a system.   Hopefully more later to night, but I’ve taken my night time meds, so I suspsect that I’m going to fall asleep watching gcc run sanity tests or some such like.

Short version:
I had the meltdown of all meltdowns, and I got to spend some quality time if a very structured and supporting environment.

Shorter version:

I went fucking nuts and spent some time in the local mental ward.

The Darling Wife, Redhead Girl and Mother were very supportive.   Mother slightly less so than TDW and RHG, but there is a reason for that.   Due to Art Dude’s new working hours he was not as involved in it as the other three, but I’ve heard reports that he was attempting to stop Mother Dear from doing her normal family “information spreading” thing, for which I thank him, and of course, him letting RHG go off and be of help to me was major support in it’s own right.   Thanks Dude, I know it was hard.

There will be several pithy post, some aimed at known readers, some random comments and at least one actual story with humor attached.   Later.

First comment.   I discovered that if I don’t have any thing else to do, drinking tea is a good way to kill time.   You have the the whole make the tea ritual (i.e. get cup, get tea bag, hot water, sugar, milk/creamer, spoon etc) all of which takes up time, and in a mental ward might take longer than in say, my kitchen.     Then there is the brewing stage, and, depending on where I was at the time, the what to do with the used tea bag.   Tossing into the toilet will make the staff unhappy, just in case it matters.   Seems they don’t really flush and keep making the water brownish for an hour or so.   Following all that, we have, of course, drinking the tasty beverage.   Net time kill, about 10-15 minutes, if you don’t push your self. During my 4 full days there (Friday through Monday), I did, on the average, 10 cups of tea per day, not including those during meal times.   Oddly, I’m not burned out it and had a cup at the office today.

While on the subject of food, let’s talk mental ward meals.   While hospital food isn’t really as bad as it’s reputation makes it out to be, it’s damn sure not very good.   Avoid pasta products, and remember that if in a mental ward, they aren’t going to give you knife, even a plastic one.   A plastic spoon and fork can, normally, render white meat chicken into bit sized chunks.   It fails at thicker beef products and pork.   White meat chicken is harder to mess up.   Order it, if you are give an chance.   Avoid any thing that claims it’s a “burger” that doesn’t say “hamburger”,     “Turkey” and “Garden” are key word to avoid when attached to “Burger”.     And as I said above, avoid pasta products, unless part of some sort of side dish.

Last note: Quaker Oat’s Chewy Granola Bars. I support this product and/or service. You could, in theory, live on these (assuming a source of Vitamins C and D). I suspect say, 10 or so of these, 2 glasses of whole milk and a glass or two of orange juice and you would be good to go. Quite tasty and going to turn into my “candy bar” of choice. Note that some of the other QO Granola bars suck of the wind, go for these.

More later

Linux From Scratch (or LFS) is for people that think Gentoo is too hand holding.

Oddly, I find it to be exactly what I’m looking for, despite the terminal lack of hand holding.   It assumes you can read, and have some Linux experience, enough to know what to do with say a general statement like “it is important to unpack each package as the lfs user and cd to the build directory.   Commands listed here assume a bash shell”.     It expect you to know when to say ‘tar xfvj’ vs ‘tar xfvz’ and to know how to clean up a whole directory in one swoop.   (rm -rfv DIRNAME).   The hand book is clean and to the point,   assuming the last few sentences parsed as something like English to you.     I, however am going to have to think real hard about doing package management of some sort once it’s up and running.   I suspect I’m going to fall back on having a tab on my iGoogle page with links the RSS feeds of my current packages so if I see one that looks like needs to be re-done I can just do it by hand.   This is more or less what they expect you to do.   I really don’t want to have to recompile glibc and/or gcc any more often than I must.   Each one of those takes about an hour, plus or minus to do.

Speaking of which, I just finished the first “live glibc” build.   No errors in the test phase wOOt! I am 1337!

Would I recommend this to say, any other member of my extended friend and family?     Other than maybe Uncle Jerry or Uncle Ron, no.   Timbert could do it, but tends to shy away from that level of bit twiddling, at least now.

Do I think it’s the coolest thing ever?   Yes.   More, of course, as it comes along.

Before I drop in to the madness that the Godzilla project is sure to be, I just wanted to point out the new blog in my daily blog list.

Meet The Law Dog. Born of American parents in Malta, spent his childhood as part of the ex-pat community in Nigeria, post about the correct way to make tea and is currently a rural west Texas peace officer.   Screamingly funny when the mood strikes, thoughtful at all times.   If I could some how arrange it, he would be one of the people that would show up at Art Dude and Redheaded Girl’s place in the country to remove the critters.     Once you read the blog you will know I don’t mean the dogs or chickens, but yeah, they have a bad infestation of them there.

Because, as many of my friends and family can tell you, I’m a bit touched in the head, and because no freaking distro out there does exactly what I want, I’m going to bit the big freaking bullet and do the “Linux for Scratch” project on Godzilla.

All the “data” on it was sucked over from smallbox any way, and, push come to shove, I’ve proved I can get a fully functional Mint 5 or 6 system up on it in less than 20 minutes, an hour if you really want to do the various updates.   The data should be safe any way, it’s on it’s own partion, but, again, the only thing that would be lost if it died would be the time needed to either SCP it over, or mount the extrnal drive, either way, I’ve got a machine with grunt and video grunt to spare, and, by all that is lawful good am going to get this thing doing exactly what I freaking want.   Not close to it, but exactly.   I’ve got small box, the crap top and Big Silver Tabby as a back up, so it’s not like I’m going to be net less.     Plus, like I said with the whole craptop experiment, I Need Projects.     Failure to have projects makes my brain mush.

The machine needs to let me blog (which means one of Firefox, Sea Monkey or Opera), work on photos (which means Gimp 2.6, all it’s plug ins), either dcraw, ufraw or rawstudio, and digiKam.

Bash shell, c/c++ compiler, wget, linkes, Midnight Commander are assumed.     I suspect it will end up with Apache2, MySql 5 and PHP5 just because.

The madness starts now.

Well, because digiKam, my base line photo tool of choice wasn’t playing nice with Flickr, my current time sink.

Found out why.     Seems that unbutu 8.10 is sort maybe based on KDE 4 (see other rants about that).   digiKam of version less than <0.10 are more or less KDE3 apps.     The shipped version of Konqueror is based on the KDE4 version, and digiKam is looking for the KDE3 version.

Fix?   Go back one level and use Mint 5, which, oddly enough, is based on 8.04, which is what the smallbox uses.   Also it’s a “Long Term Support” which means they will be doing bug fixes and security fixes on it for longer than on Mint 6.

I don’t understand the people that run linux distro’s any more.

I’m in the process of downloading the XFCE version of Mint 5 as we speak.

Plus, I really should have started with it.   It’s code name is Elyssa.   That should be a major hint I should be using it.   I just hope that the X11 drivers are some where near current so Second Life runs at something like normal speeds.   Hate to have to keep bouncing back and forth between Linux and Windows.

Road Dog Porter and Dr. Pepper look exactly alike, if there is about an inch left in the bottom of largish mug. It’s important to remember which one you were drinking last when you pick up the mug and take a swig to take your morning pills.

While Road Dog is a might fine porter, and one that I will be getting more of, it’s not what I want first thing in the morning. It’s mouth feel is really less than optimal after sitting out over night. Plus I’ve just about decided that hops isn’t something you should tasted before say, 2:00 PM, assuming a normal sleep cycle.

Over all, good package.   The current Gnomish version is what I plan on using as my base line install on any machines I update/upgrade in the near term. Being as it is just a slight re branding of Unbutu, however there are some issues.   Hardware detection (at least vs the xfce4 based version of   ubuntu 8.10) seems to work better.   It id’s the sound and video stuff on Godzilla (which is a mutant home built box first made by a moron, and no not me) rather well.

Some important points.

1. Avoid installing any of the “basic” windows manager packages with the term -extras attached
   1. kde-extras is really bad.   Kills networking, at least on Godzilla.   That being said, see item 6 below
   2. gnome-extras hangs the install because it conflicts with mint-gnome-artwork.
2. If you are a geek, turn off the auto check for updated packages.
3. If your not a geek, for all that is   lawful good, leave that turned on and pay attention to it!
4. Make a separate   /home partition.     If you are a geek and plan on doing cutting edge stuff make a $user_data directory and make make a symlink to it from the normal ~/ directory.   That way when you do step 1 (twice) you can just nuke the /home/$USER and not have to worry about damn dot files that have issues.   If your not a geek, just make a separate /home partition so your data doesn’t get lost when your pet geek re-installs the OS, for what ever reason.
5. Trivial bitch, /usr/sbin/update-grub is installed with out the execute bit set on.     /sbin/update-grub requires this.     This matters if you are updating releases on a regular basis.   The bitch is that this doesn’t get flag as an error during they update, so it will cheerfully download the current version, modify the package database as to which version you have, then assume that the older header files can be removed.   And will in fact tell you to do so.   Problem.   Grub didn’t make the new version a boot option.     Again, if this matters to you, you should be wearing your big geek pants and either 1) turn off the magic stuff in grub’s menu.lst file (bad idea) or issue a chmod +x /usr/sbin/update-grub command right after your first apt-get dist-upgrade command.     If none of that made sense to you, you don’t need to worry about it.       I’m sure it will get fixed soonish.   I’m going to file a bug report, just because.
6. If you are going to play cutting edge, remove the gnome network manager, It works great for out of the box dhcp automatic stuff, fails at fix ip stuff. Install a rational   /etc/network/interface file by hand.   Also install a rational   /etc/resolv.conf but that goes with out saying.

Yeah, 2 and 3 sound like they conflict, but they don’t.   If you’re comfortable with editing the /etc/apt/sources.list file to enable the cutteing edge, then do so from the jump.   However if you do that, it’s sort of like Gentoo, it assume your are wearing your big boy pants and will bite you in the ass if you do some thing dumb.   If you have no idea what that means, let the machine handle it for you.   Mixing the two will bite you in the ass and kill the machine.

According to their blog, they are not doing a KDE 4.1 version of the system, an idea I approve of, because it doesn’t feel ready for prime time, at least to me (among other thing the version of digikam I want to run will not work on it), so that they are waiting on KDE 4.2 to become stable before the release a version of it.     The XFCE4 version should be out later this month, which means I will be just living with their basic gnome version for a week or two.   Well, gnome plus my normal tools.   This is the first distro that I’ve decided to make a primary work station that doesn’t have Midnight Commander as a core install.   No big, I’ll just add it to my apt-get install list.

I’ve also decide that on re-branded systems, as long as they are also using the bases systems repositories to avoid meta packages.   Using them results in Bad Things.     So I’ll just go turn on the cutting edge repos and use apt-get/synaptic “by hand”, like a good little geek.

I think once the Xfce version (or flux box) comes out, I’m going to try it on Craptop, and of, course, get Xfce for Godzilla.   I’m not going to try either until they release it however.

I also suspect that the weird ass machine at the office that I’m supposed to make into a sell-able object is going to the the KDE 4.2 version, just because it is very pretty, and more or less looks like Vista.   It’s also unstable as hell, as far as I can tell (KDE 4.1).

There seems to be a trend here.     Windows XP, post service pack 2, stable, predictable, could be made into a usable machine with minimal pain.   OS X 10.4 (aka Tiger) Possibly the best OS ever done.   KDE 3.5.   My desk top of choice.   Rock solid, easy to use and fairly fast.

All of these have been “Upgraded” by version that are, no question asked, prettier than the one before them.   Vista, Leopard, KDE 4.   All require huge upgrades in the processing power of the machines they run on and all of them are broken out of the box.     I’ve just about come to the conclusion that if a major visual effect, out of the box, is a “mirror like” dock, the OS has issues.   If your base line UI requires 3D acceratede graphics to run, you are putting your efforts in the wrong place.

Over there on the right, under all my various propagandising there is my blog lists. I’ve added my work flow “what the fuck have I done today“. I almost used that for the domain, but thought about it and decided that the boss may or may not ever see it and if he does, he will be not happy with that name.

This, I suspect if of little use to any one else in the whole world, other than, maybe, my boss, because I use it as my what the hell am I doing list at work. It should be rant free, but it might have links to rants here.

I’m revamping my work flow system.   Godzilla, not the rapidly falling apart lap top is going to be my primary machine for stuff not done at $WeSellUsedMacsAndNewWiis

Because I can’t leave well the fuck enough alone, I changed the OS on the Linux side of Godzilla, yet again.   I’m using “Mint Linux 6“.   It’s pretty much a very thing plastic disguise over the Gnome version of Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex, so it’s pretty good to start with.   For what it’s worth, it’s live CD found and configured Godzilla’s weird ass on board sound card, which the Xbuntu 8.10 live CD did not.     I’m not surprised at that, it seems that the [K|X]buntu version seem to have a little more issues with hard ware.   Install seems to be a snap.     I’ve turned on the “3rd party drivers” to see what difference, if any it makes in second life.   glxgears indicates I should see some improvement.   More on that later.

I normally don’t like Gnome based desk tops, but this one feels more like KDE 3.x than any thing else, so I might not change.   I will be installing xfce4 and kde3.5, just incase.

When I go up north and fix Random Dafydd machine this will be the one I use. Why? First one to install a modern version of flash play for Firefox right out of the box. This is good.

Well, I’m of to check FPS and other geek-a-zoid things. Be back later.

If you happen to be one of the 4 people that use the internets and don’t know about I Can Has Cheezburger, it’s unlikely that you read my blog.   However, I’m adding it to the daily list now, just to get it out of the way, so to speak.   You can pretty much assume every one in the freaking world reads this, or at least it seems that way.

One of the things I’m doing is going through my “daily” blog list, removing the ones that I’m really not reading, and adding the ones I am to my blog list. You will find it over on the right hand side. Note that the “Family Blogs” are separate.

First up is “Boobs Injuries and Dr Pepper“. Despite the “Boobs and Dr. Pepper” part of the name, it is not, in fact about The Redheaded Girl. At least not the one I talk about here more or less all the time.

Crystal is a damn good writer, funny, witty and a tear jerker as needed. Read it. You will be glad you did. Her “The Crazy Chronicles“, and why she wrote them quite likely saved my life, and I’m not saying that lightly.

Not sure if this is a good sign or a bad one, but here goes…

The dogs have been going nuts for the the last half hour.   The Darling Wife is out doing new years at her friends, so the first time I assumed it was her returning.   Not so.   Then they went nuts again.   Then again.   I heard a car door open and close.   I looked out the window.   Flashing red and blue lights.   Flashing red and blue lights at 5:00 AM are never a good thing, even if you are a normal person, living in a totally white bread middle class section of totally normal mid-western city, most of which applies to me. The normal person part is open to debate. The rest totally applies. So I toss on a shirt and my slippers and walk out side in my flannel PJ pants.   There is an ambulance in front of a neighbour’s house.   Not the one with kids and fire crackers that caused the dogs to go nuts at midnight, but the other one.   Yeah, that one. Item 5.

I’ve known who the problem child was for a while, just never bothered to up date that post.

I don’t normally wish ill on elderly ladies, but I’m damn close to in this case. She’s caused at least a third of my issues this last year, one way or another.

I don’t do New Years Eve.   Never has been that big of a deal to me.     Once you’ve see the Rhine Valley light up from fire works on a crystal clear night, from the highest point on the local radar horizon nothing Americans can do will match it.   Plus I don’t enjoy getting shit faced drunk any more, so there’s nothing really to do, so I just follow my normal evening plans.   Which tonight included going to bed semi-early.   So, come mid night I was asleep.

None of my dogs like fireworks.   I did not really know this.     My next door neighbor’s children do.   I did not know that either. Not that I blame them, the kids that is.     On the other hand, having Jack, Brandy and Coco all attempt to climb in to my bed, plus most of the cats at 12:01 put an end to the sleep thing I was talking about in paragraph one.     I could tell Jack was freaked out because he never comes into my room.   He just sits out side the door and whines if he wants out.   Not tonight.   Just for the record, normally only Brandy and at most 2 cats are in the bed.   It was a little hard to tell, but I think when the last set of fireworks went off at 12:06 I had all but one of the 6 cats and I know I had all three dogs, and not a single one of them was a happy critter.

Any rate, I only have two new years resolutions.

1) Get my ass out of debt and

2) Try and do something other than go to work every day.     A blog post, here or the other place.   Clean something.   Take photos, write a block of code.   Work on “Opfor”, other than just reading weapon books.     Something.     I’m in a deep rut and I need to get out of it, or just let the sides collapse in on me and get it over with.   I can’t keep going on like this last year.

Edit.   Just found out that with my current set up, I have to include a tag with each post or it makes Firefox act funny.   Oddness.