Well, I got a new battery. Actually, I got two. Let me explain. I go into $CarPartStore across the street from where Darling Wife works and next to where Redheaded Girl used to work. At $CarPartStore, I speak with Clerk Dude about my need for a battery. Clerk Dude does some computer fu and comes up with a type of battery I need and said that if I bought a 1 dollar “mounting kit” (two felt thingies that go under the cables and some sort of portected goo/lub stuff) he could install the battery. Sounds good to me, not dealing with heavy toxic acidic crap inside a car is worth a buck, plus I get the little felt thingies under the cables, score all the way around. He even yumps the battery out to the car for me. He undoes the battery, puts in new one, plus mounting kit and tells me to start it up.
Nothing. Not even tick-tick-tick etc. He putzes about with the cables. Tells me to try again. “tick-tick-tick-tick” Really weeny tick-tick-tick, I might add.
“Oh, that’s your starter.” sayth Clerk dude.
“No, It’s not. If I hook up the Jump Buddy to it, the car will start.” sayth me.
“I don’t think so, but let’s try it.“ At least he was willing to listen to the customer, unlike the last “expert” I had to deal with (see rant about Vonage VoIP provider below)
Hook up “Jump Buddy”. Car starts, as expected and predicted. Clerk dude, to his credit, shrugs and takes my old battery into the store and puts it on on the battery tester. It’s dead Jim. Highest value, 6 or so volts, at any sort of amps.
He takes the portable tester out and hooks it up the “new” battery. It’s even more dead, Jim. Highest value, 4 volts, and dropped to under 2 under load. It wouldn’t even power the clock whose display at least, is a 7400 TTL based system, which means 5 volts or it’s dead. (It bothers me some times that I know things like that, but don’t remember what the syntax of a SQL insert statement is. It’s not like I’ve done any IC works since, oh, 1978 or so.)
He takes the portable test in to the store, takes battery number 3 off the shelf and test it. Good to go. Replaces battery number 2 (i.e the one I just bought) and has me do a “turn in” paper work thing. (zero days on a 3 year pro-rated warranty, comes to, oh, full price….) While he’s doing that, the store manager type (aka PHB for you Dilbert fans out there) wanders over and asks what’s going on. Clerk dude explains. PHB looks amazed that a product that is known to have a life span is dead. Shocked and appalled even. Really appalled, at one point he was standing with his arms out at 45 degree angle over his head [heralds don't pun, they cant] {rim-shot} Thanks, be here all week. Try the fish...) PHB doesn’t think clerk dude knows how to run the tester correctly. (It’s not hard. I can do now. Hook up battery like you were jumping it, i.e. red clamp on the positive terminal, black on the negative. Push test. Enter the Amps of the battery. Watch LCD. Wait 45 seconds. Read result. I could train Velifer to do it, if he had the thumbs to hook up the battery.) PHB putzes with cables. Pushes Test etc. Still dead. Reads, if any thing, lower than it did out side attached to the car.
I sign the papers and leave, while PHB and Clerk dude start talking about checking lot numbers and who gets to do what with this issue etc. That sounds like a load of fun and games. But Not My Problem.
Got the new D&D group’s first game tonight, I’m all sorts of happy about that.
I use IceRocket to track visitors here. I just got some one from the Islamic Republic of Iran. He, or possibly she, got here via Google Images. This is the page he ened up on.
Frankly, I’m not sure what to say about that.
Other odd search request that end up here:
“army mos, high paying” - Let me make that easy. There aren’t any.
“darling i dont want to be professional for my wife” - Again, not sure what to say there.
“upgrading worth it 10.5.5 10.4″ - NO don’t do it!
“Nixon vs Mondale 1968″ - Ah, dude. Read a history book.
“was jimmy carter in the army” - Rational question. Nope, in the Navy.
“dungeons and dragons for linux” - That’s a bit geeky, but dumb. If it the web based stuff it will run, otherwise, not really. D&D is a table top game.
“1970 olympic flight seized by arabs” - Unless they mean an airline named Olympic, that’s a weird combo.
“drinking beer on lunesta” - Good way to get a long nap.
“upgrading from 10.4.11 to 10.5.5″ - NO Don’t Do It.
“pictures of cats and bats” - No bat pictures, but do have pictures of cats named after bats however, close enough?
“Rants of a lost life” - Nice turn of phrase. May steal that.
“I didn’t get into law school my life sucks” - my fair heart bleeds for you dude.
“can you get high off Amidrine” - Not really. Make you loopy and feel like shit however. Better than the headache, I’ll give you that.
“10.5.5 main.cf group” - Good luck. You will need it.
“using diclofenac with midrin” - Done it, but it’s not really a good idea unless you are getting regular blood test for liver and kidney failure.
“adderall ubuntu” - Odd mix there. Shoulnd’t need the adderal, Ubuntu installs fast enough that you should be able to finish.
“heather alexander alexander james adams wtf” - What? He’s a transexual filk singer. Can’t be the only one…
“fink vs macports” - Use Fink. MacPorts has issues. Not as many as 10.5.5, but fink still wins.
“24Q10″ - Nike Herc Rules!
“bristol stool chart type 4″ - That’s what you want, dude.
“working for michael kors sucks” - But he seems so fun on Project Runway.
“Apple postfix not working 10.5.5″ - I feel your pain.
‘”scary devil monastery” - We don’t talk about chickens here.
“is leopard 10.5.5 worth upgrading” - NO.
“OKLAHOMA ROADS SUCK” - Why, yes. Yes they do.
“MY LIFE SUCKS BACKWA” - Ah? what?
“why did jimmy carter suck” - Don’t know. Let’s re-visit that question in a year.
No, this is not a political rant. I’ve given up on those for a while.
It’s a tech rant.
Let’s start with Apple. OS X 10.4.11 rocked my world. Great OS, pretty user interface, access to a real geek command line and with fairly minimal work could be made to run an X11 interface, like say KDE.
OS X 10.5.5, on the other hand blow goats. I keep finding more and more problems with features that have been removed from Leopard, adn I’m not a happy camper. Getting XFCE4, KDE or Gnome to work, at least with either fink or MacPorts is non trivial. This is starting to chap my buns. More about this once I do get it working. I suspect that there is going to be some special build hand-waving going on.
Next, we have iGoogle. Why? What happened that we needed to move the tabs from across the top to down the side? Why? There isn’t an option to change back to the “old” style, which, to quote my self, also blows goats. The set number of column options isn’t worth this, at least in my arrogant opinion.
Depends. Do you think 1929 to 1941 were good for America as a whole or not? Let’s not forget that we have already started our generation’s long war, which means we can’t depend on an WWII analog to got us out the “Great Depression 2.0″, so, yeah, I’m force to say that the just shy of a trillion dollar bail out is a good thing, in the long run.
The fact that both of us own houses is, really, when you get down to it part of the problem. I’ll grant that my owning a house wasn’t really my idea, and I sort of got sandbagged by my brother in law on when I had to get the mortgage, but I will point out that my mortgage is not one that got sold down the line, and that I’m not doing any of those weird exotic type things, and my interest rate is both fixed and fairly high. Still, if it wasn’t for the fact that we were only going for a fraction of the house’s cost, we should not have gotten the loan, based on the fact that I was, at the time, unemployed (and more or less unemployable). We are pulling out of my death spiral, but it’s a long hard row to hoe.
Just got weird. Again, with out violating more than my own privacy, I can’t go into the full details of why, but yeah, it’s weird.
On the geek side of life, I’ve beaten ’smallbox’ into submission, and it’s back to being mainly a Linux box, with booting into Windows if and when needed. Can’t say enough good things about Hardy Heron, the latest version of Ubuntu aka Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.
I’ve also gotten quite fond of andLinux on the laptop. Really slick design. Runs a modified version the Linux kernel as a service under XP. You get more or less the full KDE experience if you run ‘kicker’ I’ve got mine configured to be a vertical tool bar on the left hand side of the screen, normally in “hidden” mode, so all you see in windows in a small button with an arrow pointing down. Once you click that, you get the normal KDE 3.5 launcher.
In other geek news I’m going to be starting a D&D 4.0 campaign, with the first “full” game coming up this Sunday. Granted it’s ‘Keep on the Shadowfells” to start with, but until the books and SRD comes out that is what we’ve got. The enWord.org’s “Pre-release” book is also a good starting point. The offical WOTC page for it has a 6th pre gen, which gives some idea on how to level up a Warlord, which is new info.
On the personal front, other than “weirdness”, Redheaded Girl and I need to talk about what the word “puppy” means. The white dog in this photo is the “puppy” that they rescued. She had called me to find out if I could keep it for the afternoon while they dealt with a situation out at Art Dude’s property. I said sure. When I got home, well, I went out to look at the “puppy”. Sorry, if you are that size, you are a dog, not a puppy. I’ll grant it might not be full grown, but still, that’s not a puppy. Sweet dog. Gets along just fine with other dogs (or at least with our 3). No clue about cats, but I’m sure we will find out real soon, given the number of cats Redheaded Girl and Art Dude have. Might keep the semi-tamed raccoon and the opossum off her front porch, but most likely not given that the pit bulls next door to her house.
Update: White dog gets along fine with cats. Some of my cat’s don’t deal well with her however.
On the professional front I’ll be back doing work at $WeSellUsedMacs next week. Don’t know how long that will last, but I’m trying to make it a “full time” part time job. I think, I can do a 20-30 hour week now, but we will see.
This is going to be a live blog post as it happens, so to speak.
I’ve got a more or less stock HP s7400n, with 512 megs of memory and a 150 gig hard drive. It came with XP home installed, but after a few months became dual boot, then became a fully Linux machine. For a variety of reasons I need it to become a dual boot machine again. I’m going to install a copy of XP pro SP 2 (from MSDN, which makes it as close to a “pure” copy of XP as your going to get) and Ubuntu 8.04 desktop on it. The drive layout will be 40 gigs to XP, 30 gigs to ‘/’ and 80 gigs to /home, which I plan on making read/write to XP. So far I’ve rebooted to the XP install CD and started making the 40 gig install. It took just shy of 16:41 to do a full format of the 40 gigs.
We are now doing the copy files thing. Still in text mode. Hit the first reboot point at 22:03.
While I’m waiting, target is a 100% up to date version of the OS, all peripherals working, base line system. I’ll post later what I have to add to the base systems and those times.
OK booted into graphics mode, and it claims it’s installing. Also claims I have 37 minutes left. Total time so far 24:16
Ok, just got to the wanted the magic numbers and computer name 27:17
XP network config (Default, workgroup name SPELLBOOK) 29:33
I had to leave the room at 32:47. When I came back at 37:43 it wanted to reboot. Did it.
OK at 39:29 I have created the two accounts and have logged in as my self, and in theory have a running system. Screen isn’t right, no sound, etc. About to get drivers.
First ah crap moment. No network drivers….
OK did the trivial “anti teletubby” things to set it up the way I like. Off to down load drivers.
Downloaded drivers from HP site. Fairly easy to do. Installed on flash drive, which I have tested, does work on smallbox. Will copy to smallbox hard drive and install.
Next ah crap. Sound driver wants something from Microsoft. Let’s just get the damn network working…
Network and graphics installed, wants to reboot. Did it.
OK network works, and I have activated the product.
Side note
If I didn’t have a room full of computers when I did this, I would have been stuck. No drivers for the network means nothing else gets installed. Actually, I would have just gone a ahead and install Linux to get the network drivers, which would have been a bit ass backwards.
Ok, doing first Windows Update. Joy.
And… It failed. That’s oh crap number 3
Going to finish the HP drivers and try again. Updated the graphics driver. Rebooted.
Installed 915 chip set. Reboot.
Found the UAA HD Audio Driver thing for HP. Sound seems to be working now. Oh, of course, reboot.
Installed the RelTek Audio drivers. Reboot.
Ok, got last driver loaded, no “yellow ball” devices or generic devices in the hardware manager. About to try to do a Windows update, again. The last device was a modem, which I really didn’t need to install, but I did, because I wanted no “not working” devices. Of course I will have no idea if the modem does or doesn’t work in Linux, because I don’t use modems.
Oh… Windows updater and “We think our customers are thieves” software needs to be updated.
Odd. It wants to load service pack 3 on me. I didn’t think that had been released just yet.
SP3 takes some time to down load it seems.
Downloaded and starting to install….
SP3 installed and rebooting…
Ok. Rebooted, ran Windows Update again. Wants to load IE7 and AntiMalware of the month. Off to do that.
IE7 and AntiMalWare installed. Reboot.
Re-run Windows Update. No “High Priority” updates, but 4 software and 2 hardware optional
Root Cert update, goes with IE7
Media Player 11. Going to install it, but I don’t care. Will install WinAmp soon any way,
.Net frame works 1.1 and 2.0
Network driver
Monitor Driver
Install we go…
Oddly, no reboot.
I installed Firefox, and my standard set of toys for it.
I then installed current version of Second Life. Frame rate was not good, but I can live with it on that machine. Total disk usage, 4.44 gig. Windows is more or less done.
Booted Ubuntu 8.04 desktop CD. Told it what kind of keyboard, what time zone and created my account. Did the partition thing by hand, because I don’t want my data files on the OS partition. After I set those up, it did something I didn’t think it would do. It read my Windows account and wanted to know if I wanted to import it into Ubuntu! Never seen that. Said yes, mainly to see what it did with Firefox, being one of the things that it said it would import. It’s busy now formatting and installing. Timing the format isn’t fair because it doing 4 times as much space, but it does seem to be faster.
No question about it. It installed faster. A lot faster. Just did the only required reboot, after doing the install.
What worked stock out of the box?
Well, sound, video and network. None of which the stock windows install handled.
Granted once I rebooted and logged in it told me it needed to do some updates. 57 of them, totally 37 some odd megs. Lots smaller than the Windows updates, but still a lot, given that I downloaded the ISO only a few days ago.
And, yeah, it did import my wallpaper. “Prairie Wind” looks odd on a Gnome desktop. Looks really bad until you tell it to tile it. Didn’t seem to import the Firefox stuff, but that’s OK. Would have been cool, but not really a show stopper.
Looks like 2.2 gigs of space taken with a base line install. (Gnome based.)
Only real down side I see, it defaults to firefox 3 beta, which the Google Tool bar doesn’t work with.
I can live with that.
It’s pretty clear to me, the “easy to install” OS is Linux, not windows, assuming you start with a “stock” package, not a OEM tweaked disk.
More on what I add beyond Firefox and Secondlife later.
