Why My Life Sucks

Why do I say that? Because I know that this is a Textron Marine and Land Systems Division [formerly Cadillac Gage] “Stingray” light tank, being delivered to it’s only user, Thailand. It weights about a third of what a M1A1 tank weighs (22 vs 67 tons, depending on the breaks). And I knew this before I started using Google. Yeah, pretty much “geek with no life”, that would be me.

It’s still a cool photo.

Hat tip to “From my position… On The way!“

This is Velifer, yet another cat named after bats. Velifer is The Darling Wife’s cat, but he likes any one that will pet him.

He also likes to drink bath water, but only AFTER a human has gotten into it, which is a bit weird.

I, for one, would like to know what this is of.   Regardless, it’s way freaking cool.   I mean, seriously, what the hell?   On the other hand, this does make me want to vote Palin/McCain more than before. I mean, if we can have VP who will hang out with people in odd costumes, in 16 or so years having a President who used to be Prince of Drakenwald will not be so weird.

Or should that be moar kitteh fotoz? Any rate this is Vampyressa Pusilla, normally called Pressa, yep, it’s another cat named after a bat. Pressa is one of Ben, the owner of The Original Game Shop kittens. She’s also great for taking low light photos of because she will hold very still for you.

This is the last photo I took of JoJo, the spherical cat of uniform density.

Rest in Peace my old friend

I’m going to do a set of photos of my various pets. Today it’s “Pipistrellus” or “Pip”. Yes, he’s named after Pipistrellus pipistrellus, the common small gray bat. A lot of my cats are named after bats. It’s a Family Thing.

Pip is also known as “The Miracle Kitty” due to how we found him and what it took to keep him alive. Let’s just say that a “dot com” era bonus check was spent on this cat. May have been the best thing I did with any of those checks.

A while ago, I mentioned in a w00t! post Pops and said I had pictures. Here is a picture of Redheaded Girl in “the pose” in front of the “pops” statue to soda.

In related news, the sole seller of Jolt Cola in Tulsa has decided to NOT carry it any more. I bought the last bottle of it. I am sad. I will be forced to get it on the inter-webs or via trips to OKC.

FedEx’s API as seen from a web master’s point of view.

For starters, it has a _very_ odd method of sending data back and forth, which makes for a _fun_ time getting data parsed.

Then their servers just dies at random.

Then, of course, the whole meter issue.

You will note this is NOT my first rant about FedEx or some aspect of them. I’m seeing a trend.

The sad part is they are best of the package shippers.

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.

Well, not really.

Just a random photo of the violets in my back yard.

Just an important safety note for all you retro-computing people out there. Don’t use the Ubuntu 7.10 network install CD to do any thing more than the CLI version. It will fail when it attempts to start down loading what ever desktop version you tell it to do. I know this, I don’t know why I keep trying.

To install Ubuntu 8.04 with a desktop worth using on an older machine do the following
1) download the xubuntu iso, burn it to CD and install from that or

2) do what I did.
Down load and burn the 7.10 (gutsy) mini iso and burn it.
Install the CLI version of unbutu
Log in.
edit the /etc/apt/sources.list file changing all gutsy to hardy
issue
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
take a break
Once you get a command line back issue
apt-get install xorg xubuntu-desktop synaptic
Take longer break.
reboot
Should be in X window with xfc4 running when you get done.