Why My Life Sucks

I’ve restarted my Sunday D&D game, with every one at 1st level. I’ve got some ideas on this, and will soon start posting over on the 4 Winds Bar blog as to what’s what and who is who.

I’ve registered “FOREVENSECTOR.COM, FOREVENSECTORONLINE.COM and THEFOREVENSECTOR.COM, all of which point to the same web site. It’s still in beta and is easy to break. More about it once I’ve actually got my legal papers in line.

I’ve more or less given up on the “compile you own freaking version of Linux” pseudo-distros.

GM’s Laptop and the Library Machine, plus the spare production level machine are running Debian Stable, more or less.
Godzilla, where I hope to be doing most of my work soon, is running Mint XFCE4 Elyssa, and Smallbox is still running along with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Hardy Heron). The Dell Book laptop is running Windows/andLinux and is a very odd looking machine right now. Dual monitors, with one of them being it’s original LCD screen dismounted and rotated 90 degrees. Photo soon as I get that room cleaned up. Smallbox, Godzilla and the DellBook are all, in theory any way, dual boot machines.

BlueMac is running 10.4.11. YumpMac is running 10.5.6 with finkish KDE, SmallMac is running 10.4.11 and the Big White Box is running 10.4.11 with finkish KDE, most of the time. Sometimes it’s running 10.5.6.

I promise, no more posts about my computers. Unless I do some thing really off the wall to one of them.

In past wars of the US (and pseudo US) the rallying cry of the troops tended to be “Remember {BLANK}” where blank expands to The Maine, Pearl Harbor, The Lusitania, The Chosin, or The Alamo.

Of wars of any duration (there by ruling out Grenada, Panama and Desert Storm) we find the following exceptions

The Revolution. “Don’t tread on me”, “Live free or Die” “Liberty or Death”

The Civil War. “The Union Forever” or random screams AKA the “Rebel Yell”.

Viet Nam “N days and a wake up” (where N equals number of days left in country, normally under 335 (one year, less one year’s worth of leave == 335 days ‘in country’))

The Long War AKA Global War on Terror, AKA Enduring Freedom. “Let’s Roll”. (see footnote)

This says something about both what the war is about, and what the troops are thinking. Of these, only one, that for The Long War is a take action sort of thing. I’ll grant it’s also a memorial quote as well.

I’ll also grant I don’t have a clue about the War of 1812 and the Mexican American war.

Like I said, random thought.

Footnote. For a while I was following Mr. Pournell’s lead and was calling the war between the US and the USSR (1917-1989) “The Long War”, but the US Military is now calling the GWoT “The Long War” now. I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I strongly suspect my preferred choice “The Final Crusade” would not be taken. Still does my heart good to know that one of the men calling in air strikes on Taliban positions is, in his heart of hearts a Paladin, a follower of the Lion Hearted King and a Crusader for Good.

OK, 10.5.6 fixed a lot of the issues I have with, to the extent that my humping around mac has been converted to 10.5.6, KDE 3.5 running. Not quite as well as it did under 10.4.11, but Good Enough. The Big Mac isn’t, normally, it does has an external drive that can boot that way, but that’s it’s normal way.

But that’s not what I hear to talk about.

What I’m hear to talk about is the fact that OS X isn’t really Unix, it’s some sort mutant almost Unix.   Not quite like say, AIX, but close.

For example, it does use the various Apache text configure files.   However, if you make even one change “by hand”, you are fucked if you use the GUI to do any thing, in that it will, with out warning, nuke your changes. This really applies to SSL related configurations. That doesn’t effect most web sites, just, oh ones that need to get credit card numbers, like say $WeSellUsedMacs

Here is the thing that really chaps my buns about it, however.     If you poke around on something that really does need the GUI, like, for example,   the mail server (OK , yeah, I could go in a beat up on postfix’s main.cf, but life is to short for that),   at times, your web server control files get stomped on.

This is sub optimal.

It’s really sub optimal if your mail sever’s anti-spam/anti-virus thing has gone off the tracks and is eating 50-70% of the CPU time, resulting in a web server that seems to be running on a 386sx machine.

I did mention, some where that our mail server and our web server are the same physical machine right?

Any rate, after fixing the damn it’s a freaking pig in deep mud speed issue (Field fix.   Turn off the spam filter), I then get SSL related issues, because it (OS X’s GUI Server interface) mangled the Apache files.   Thank all the small gods for back up files.

I went to my shrink today.       Based on my two weeks on my current meds, I’m not clinical depressed, I might not have ADHD and I might not have Aspergers.

I am, on the other hand, Bipolar.     Which in a way is good, because they have meds that work on that.   I’ll know more in 3 weeks, when I see him again, but my med list just got a bit strange.     I’m tapering off Aderall ,only taking 5mg each morning, for the first week, then stop taking it at all after that.     Going down one notch on Xenex(2mg XR) and down one notch on Zyprexa (down to 7.5 mg), and keeping at 50mg of Pristiq.

It seems that giving Pristiq to a bipolar person with out a mood stabilizer (Zyprexa in my case) is a Bad Thing.     Results in me being, even by my standards full on asshat.   Hopefully, the slight lower dose will stop the being a asshat and let me wake up on time.     I’ve been late (very late in some cases) 8 out 10 days I’ve been on Zyprexa.     This is not good thing if your trying to get on full time status so you can get insurance.

Sigh of heaviness.

Still doing the “linux from scratch” thing on the craptop.     When your   SBU is 12 minutes it takes a while.   However I should end up with a box that exactly what I want, and not a thing more than it needs.

I will then, of course study up on how to make my own distro for that great need, that of computer geeks that want to design table top role playing and war games, and want a Linux distro just for that.   I suspect that this is not going to be the distro that kills the microsoft market, but by all that is lawful good, Toonix is going to be finaly released.   Yes I just added Yet Another Domain to my collection.   toonix.org will be the contact point once I get it together.

Just started the whole “Linux from scratch” thing.   Using the 6.3 version, which is one back of cutting edge, but it does have the “book” and all the packages and patches on it.

Project target: Game master and game designer machine.

This means, on top of every thing else, I need lyx, Firefox, Gimp 2.6, the LAMP stack and Digikam installed.     There are a few other, Midnight commander, ssh client/server, plus space for data files.

I “Standard Build Unit” (i.e. how long binutils takes to build) is 12:08.   This is going to be a pig.   GCC is going to take some thing like an hour and 15 minutes to build.   Bleh.