Why My Life Sucks

Let’s start with my car.  Well, the battery.  It’s dead.  Need to get that fixed ASAP.  dur.  Should have done it this weekend.

Which brings us to “I feel like shit.”  More or less literally, given that I’m taking a crap about once every 45 minutes or so.  For the last 3 days.  “Lots of that virus going around” the doctor says.  My crapping eating habits, due to the various anti-freak out meds I take may also have something to do with it.

Then there is my VoIP provider.  I’ve got 2 routers, and two number, one one each router.  Each router has two phone ports.  I wanted to add a 3rd number to the second phone port of the first router.  This should be simple.  It wasn’t.  6 (six) calls, average time 40 minutes each, and 2 (two) supervisor level personages.  This did not make me a happy camper.  There service if first rate, assuming you don’t have to change any thing.

The Craptop’s hard drive died.  However, I have a cunning plan, and the fact that I know what to do with Gentoo now should make it an faster rebuild.  Bonus, the cunning plan will make the hard drive bigger.  Score all around!

Got a Doctor’s appointment later this week.  Need to tweak my Cymalta I think.  Current load doesn’t seem to be working quite right.

$WeSellUsedMacs is becoming more and more surreal.  Average life span of a tech working there seems to be about 3 weeks. When I’m the most knowledgeable person about Mac hardware/Software in the building they have problems.

Google.  Go back to the way iGoogle was before you fucked it up.  It fails to read RSS titles about 70% of the time and each freaking tab has it’s own settings.  This does not make me a happy camper.  Actually, just fix the RSS feed issue and give and option to apply setting and theams to all tabs and that would fix it.   I may need to go look at my Google Lab stuff, this might be a side effect of those.  More later.

Spammers.  “Comment Spammers” in particular.  Please use software to comment spam that at least tries to make it look like a real comment. The “comment” on the top of the Spam Karma reject pile is ‘22gy2zo5g0a0f8lg paucyh yhtrg’. This, of course, is really a link to really random web sites, but, come on, what happened to “This is very interesting web site. I will be back later” comment spam?

Well, off to see if the Jump Buddy has enough juice yet.

Trying to get an external USB Wifi adapter to work with the toy.     Having some issues, with I suspect is going to result in yet another kernel rebuild.   Sound still has issues, but I’ve decided I don’t care about that any way.   I suspect I’m going to rotate the game master log in to run sidewise, which makes reading PDF files a log easier and because I don’t need to use the keyboard that much with it in that mode.

Speaking of crap, I feel like it today.   Well, right now, No, I don’t but that’s the migraine meds talking.   Woke up this moring with a headache.   Decided to not take any thing until I got to the office so I would have a fighting chance of getting some billable hours done today.

Either I am very very sick, or eating a whole bag of black licorice over the course of a couple hours turns your crap green. Plastic “Army man” green. Sort of scary looking actually.   No, that’s not right, it’s very freaking scary looking.

In other medical news, I under went yet another break down yesterday, and barfed at the office, out of the clear blue, so to speak.   Felt fine at 12:30, talking to Ralph on the Big White Phone around 1:15, having a full on melt-down around 2:15.   Art Dude and Redheaded Girl had to come over.   I suspect my medical load is going to be adjusted come the 22 or so.   Plus I banged the crap out of both knees, so I’m hitting the pain pills harder than my normal load.   Not A Good Day.

It sucks now.   Cold wet and raining.   It’s like it’s the middle of November or something….

Makes my knees feel like, well, painful.   Thank God I’m back on diclofenac.   I don’t want to think about what I would feel like with out it.

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.

It’s just a bad sinus infection.     Doctor is givng her some stronger antibiotics than she was on last week, something for pain and some steroids.   She sleeping now, but with the IV meds she was given plus the time of day, that’s to be expected.

It’s 9:30 in the morning. I’m in St. John’s Emergency room. The Darling Wife woke me up at 7:30 with the worst headache she had ever had. She had taken Tylenol and it had had no effect. When it didn’t get better after 20 minutes, I, being the med blog reading sort I am, freaked and decided to take her to the ER. My 8:15 alarm went off while driving there. My 8:30 alarm went off in triage. The doctor saw her a little before 8:50. He poked and prodded at her for a bit, and spent a lot of time with the light and funnel thing looking in her ears and nose. Ordered blood work and maybe a CAT scan, plus ordered drugs and IV fluids. One shot Benadryl, some sort of anti-nausea and diladud later and she is asleep. They just came to take her to the CAT scan.

Please, God, let this just be a sinus infection or a flare up of one her normal things. The other options are to horrible to think about. Please, let this trip be a waste of time and money. I can lose those, I can’t lose her.

AKA a WinBook J¹. This machine is needs to do two wildly separate things. One is to be my work machine, which basically means I need an SSH client, an FTP client and web browser, ideally Firefox 3.x The other is to act as my GM machine in the upcoming Traveller game I’m going to be running. That needs a web server that can support PHP5 and MySQL, plus I need the ability to read a modern PDF file. Printing would be nice, plus the ability to make either an PDF or RTF file, but this is not a requirement.   I also need, in general, an editor (vi is my editor of choice) and Midnight Commander (aka mc) installed.   Running GIMP would also be nice.

This isn’t that big of a deal, except that the machine has only 256 Megs of memory and “only” a 10 Gig hard drive. After much dinking around I’ve decided that I’m going to go whole geek on this project and use Gentoo.   I know that Damn Small Linux will more or less work, as will etch debian, but both of those have weird dependency issues, hence the Gentoo experiment.

This is sort of a live blog of this. And just to make things fun, I’ve got a stomake bug, which means I have to run to the bathroom and talk to Ralph on the BWP ever so often. The anti Ralph stuff I’ve taken, on top of my normal meds is making me very freaking dizzy.

So far, I’ve followed the steps in the Gentoo manual up to step 6. So far, so good, the basic mini-install CD has “just worked”. I suspect that is going to end when soon, because my “network card” is a USB thing, which may or may not be directly supported right out of the box. To make things more fun, the next step will be making this work with a USB wireless thing, but that’s for later.

General comment. Why did they provide “Nano” not VI? I’ve put way to many :wq at the end of files today. Plus random x’s where I wanted a character to go away, etc. To add to the fun, the CTRL key is in the wrong place on this machine.

Standard issue with living in the middle of the country. CST isn’t a default time zone in the “easy to get to” spot. It’s there, but you have to go looking for it. Oddly Mountain time is. In fact all 3 of the timezones other than central are in the basic zoneinfo directory, but CST is in the US sub directory.

Opps.   Need to “emerge portage” first.     Why would there be a new version when I downloaded the “current” version 30 minutes ago?   Got to love cutting edge retro-computing.

I’m now watching it patch the kernel source. It’s as much fun as it sounds like.   After this, I’ve got to find out what modules I need, which, if I understand the manual means I need to emerge pciutils and run lsmod

Just a personal note, the OTC anti-nausea pills are working, however I’m wired and feel more than a little dizzy.     I can feel my fingernails, which is a strange feeling.     Lots of rushing sounds in my ears as well.     Not driving today!

lspci reports I have <long list of stuff>

Well, shit. Need to start the SSH server at the start, other wise you have issues, and it fucking reboots.   Damn.   I hope I can just start the SSH server up, then skip ahead.

(I’ve got the SSH server up, changed root’s password and have attached to if via smallbox).

Looks like I don’t have to redo the longer steps I’ve already taken.   Will see in a few here.

OK, we’re back.   I’m dumping out the results of those test just so I’ll have a record if and when I need to redo something.

lsmod

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia] (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8601 [Apollo ProMedia AGP]
00:05.0 Modem: PCTel Inc HSP MicroModem 56 (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 22)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 10)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 10)
00:07.4 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 30)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 20)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade i1 (rev 6a)

And the big dump:(chroot) livecd / # lsmod            
Module                                   Size   Used by
ipv6                                   236260   12
dock                                     18448   0
fan                                       12804   0
pcmcia                                 45100   0
pegasus                               33424   0
mii                                       13312   1 pegasus
yenta_socket                     32908   1
rsrc_nonstatic                 20480   1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core                       45076   3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
video                                   26640   0
backlight                           13188   1 video
output                                 11776   1 video
thermal                               24092   0
battery                               16640   0
ac                                         12544   0
processor                           39656   2 thermal
button                                 16528   0
rtc                                       20768   0
tg3                                     111748   0
e1000                                 119616   0
jfs                                     169836   0
raid10                                 30080   0
raid456                             129296   0
async_memcpy                     10880   1 raid456
async_xor                           12160   1 raid456
xor                                       21896   2 raid456,async_xor
async_tx                             15948   3 raid456,async_memcpy,async_xor
raid1                                   30080   0
raid0                                   15872   0
dm_bbr                                 20128   0
dm_snapshot                       24996   0
dm_mirror                           29440   0
dm_mod                                 63428   3 dm_bbr,dm_snapshot,dm_mirror
sbp2                                     29960   0
ohci1394                             38192   0
ieee1394                             92600   2 sbp2,ohci1394
sl811_hcd                           19968   0
usbhid                                 35712   0
ohci_hcd                             29700   0
uhci_hcd                             30988   0
usb_storage                     120608   0
ehci_hcd                             39948   0
usbcore                             133484   8 pegasus,sl811_hcd,usbhid,ohci_hcd,uhci_hcd,usb_storage,ehci_hcd
lpfc                                   216016   0
qla2xxx                             168548   0
firmware_class                 17408   2 pcmcia,qla2xxx
megaraid_sas                     35504   0
megaraid_mbox                   38160   0
megaraid_mm                       18464   1 megaraid_mbox
megaraid                             44360   0
aacraid                               68996   0
sx8                                       25484   0
DAC960                                 73032   0
cciss                                   41220   0
cpqarray                             28004   0
3w_9xxx                               39300   0
3w_xxxx                               32928   0
mptsas                                 43144   0
scsi_transport_sas         37120   1 mptsas
mptfc                                   25988   0
scsi_transport_fc           49028   3 lpfc,qla2xxx,mptfc
scsi_tgt                             22344   1 scsi_transport_fc
mptspi                                 28296   0
mptscsih                             41344   3 mptsas,mptfc,mptspi
mptbase                               78308   4 mptsas,mptfc,mptspi,mptscsih
atp870u                               36352   0
dc395x                                 39052   0
sim710                                 13188   0
53c700                                 33444   1 sim710
qla1280                             123660   0
dmx3191d                             20096   0
sym53c8xx                           77588   0
qlogicfas408                     15104   0
aha152x                               42512   0
aha1740                               15872   0
advansys                             85248   0
initio                                 24900   0
BusLogic                             72948   0
arcmsr                                 29952   0
aic7xxx                             168760   0
aic79xx                             241624   0
scsi_transport_spi         30848   7 mptspi,53c700,dmx3191d,sym53c8xx,aha152x,aic7xxx,aic79xx
sg                                         41360   0
pdc_adma                             17668   0
sata_inic162x                   20228   0
sata_mv                               28936   0
ata_piix                             26372   0
ahci                                     34180   0
sata_qstor                         17924   0
sata_vsc                             16516   0
sata_uli                             15620   0
sata_sis                             16772   0
sata_sx4                             20484   0
sata_nv                               33160   0
sata_via                             19588   0
sata_svw                             15748   0
sata_sil24                         24068   0
sata_sil                             19080   0
sata_promise                     20996   0
scsi_wait_scan                   9472   0
pata_sis                             21892   1 sata_sis
libata                               152248   17 pdc_adma,sata_inic162x,sata_mv,ata_piix,ahci,sata_qstor,sata_vsc,sata_uli,sata_sis,sata_sx4,sata_nv,sata_via,sata_svw,sata_sil24,sata_sil,sata_promise,pata_sis

OK.   That was fun.   I don’t think that configuring a Linux kernel while on medication that makes you dizzy is a good idea.   If this machine boots and has networking on the first pass I’m going to to be surprised.   If it doesn’t well, they supply the auto-detect genkernel tool as well, which is what I’ll do if this fails, and to be honest about it, what I should have done from the start, but I’m going for geek points here.

I’ve just launched the compile a kernel stage.   This is going to take a while, so I’m going to publish this post and go take a bath.   Bonus points if it finishes before I get out!

Migraines.   They are the suck.   Had one yesterday.   It responded well to my standard drugs, but those make me   much like a lizard with out a hot rock to lay on.   I spent most of yesterday in a dark room with minimal contact with the outside world.

Found out the hard way that skipping my Temazpam is a really bad idea.     Intermittent restless sleep is not good.   Makes for a cranky webmaster when he comes into work after refilling his meds.

Finding out that we have to redo our “Email Blast” and dinking with old eBay stuff really makes me cranky.

I’m just in general cranky today.

Need more doughnuts.