Month: March 2008

  • My virgin expirence with Debian was bloody

    Acquiring a box
    So I bought a new box from a friend of mine, Reggie. I helped him build a box like a year/year and a half ago. (Actually, I just told him what went where and made him do all the work.) For whatever reason he became obsessed with water-cooling and decided he wanted Big Water.

    I got a phone call one day that one of the hoses leaked onto the motherboard around the processor and so shorted damn near everything in the box out. Reggie went to CompUSA and had them build another box.

    CUT TO: Three weeks ago. Reggie called to check up on me and told me that he was delivering for Edible Arrangements on Saturday for $15/hr in addition to his Monday-Friday accounting job as well as working a couple of nights a week for Domihoes. He then said (and I quote) “I woke up this morning and something was wrong with my computer. I think it got a virus, so I just said ‘fuck it’ and went to Walmart and bought another one. I’ll let you have this one for $125.”

    Now for those of you who really know me, you know I HATE second-hand boxes, but I knew the owner and thought I knew the specs. I thought it was 2 GB of DDR2 and a dual-core chip of some kind. It turned out to be 6800+ 64bit AMD chip with 1 GB of DDR1, but hell, it was a decent box for a steal and I know that I can put at least another GB in, if not max out the no-name off-brand mobo. I do know that the mobo has an ATI Radeon Express chipset/controller and given the fact that the 32-bit P4 MSI board I had could take 4 GB, so I should be able to put at least that much in this board.

    Assembling the parts
    So I went home for Easter and brought back my old 15″ CRT that came with the Gateway I purchased in ’98. I used the black $12 keyboard that I originally purchased for Black Widow. (I forgot how well it types. Too bad it’s a PS/2 and I no longer require a keyboard on deepblue).

    I chose to install Debian because it is one of the platforms that we support at work for our product, I had never worked with Debian (I had worked with Ubuntu which forked off of Debian) and I am wanting to gain more experience with multiple operating systems in the hopes of one day becoming a highly skilled, highly paid SysAdmin.

    DeepBlueFinal

    Installation isn’t a snap
    As I had a 64bit AMD chip, I decided to go with that architecture’s build. Thrice I ran the installer, and thrice it chocked at 78% when it was “writing language to drive”, so I opted for the i386 build which installed like a champ.

    I then wanted to set a static IP address for both miniMax0r and deepblue, Doing so on miniMax0r was uneventful, but no matter what I did on deepblue, it didn’t want to read from the conf file. Actually, it must have been reading at least something out of the file, because the box would loose its connection to the Internet, but ifconfg would report the old DHCP IP address, not the new, static one despite having restarted the networking service and bringing the interface up and down. After struggling with this for a couple of hours, I decided to try resetting the box, at which point, ifconfig reported the static IP and the box could connect to the internet. If anyone out there thinks they know what was going on, please enlighten me.

    If I only knew more about DNS and Networking
    What I want to be able to do is instead of having to specify a port on the existing domain and have to forward that through the router, I want to be able to go

    ssh deepblue.professortom.net

    or 

    ssh max0r.professortom.net

    without just aliasing the IP and having to forward the ports explicitly. Having to do so makes it pointless to have a C-name pointing back to the address and makes me mad. Any thoughts on this will be greatly appreciated.

    I don’t want to pay for the electricity to run this box as with the fans and lights I think it will easily consume 3 times the energy that miniMax0r consumes, but it will be nice having my own version of the company’s product running on a box that I maintain so that I have a better understanding of how things work. This was going to be my workaround for the lack of a server in techsupport (we have to have something we can test on after all) but a box came into work the other day that is supposed to be the new server whenever someone has a chance to get around to installing it.

  • Hot Water 2

    I was working on a post this morning and heard something like a very badly compress MP3. It was coming from behind me, so I assumed that it was the back speakers. (I have a 4.1 system, but miniMax0r only supports 2.1). But the noise kept getting louder, so I investigated.

    It turns out that my ceiling was leaking through the closet doorway, which meant that the hot water heater in the apartment above me was leaking.

    I called the office and then I called Mom to have them call the office. They showed up in 10 minutes. Hurray for moms motivated by their sons saying, “I’m moving back in.”

    The leak has stopped now and I will be late to work because of it.

    This is the third water heater that I know of they’ve had to replace. (mine, the one upstairs and another one I saw at the dumpster two months ago.) In the words of [info]unixwolf, Fuck this dump.

    But the bad news doesn’t stop there: when I called Mom, she informed me that my grandfather on my Dad’s side had some stomach and memory problems. They took him to the local hospital and they sent him on to the ‘ham. Mom says that he’s doing much better, can remember everything and is even joking about it, but I’m on call just in case.

    Mom had to cancel a church social that involved over 90 people.

    This is not the way to end the week.

  • Happy Birthday
    [info]whester!

    whesterisunsure
    [info]whester is unsure why we are taking this picture in the bathroom.

  • All my shirts now come with purple buttons!

    All my shirts now come with purple buttons!

    I am now the proud, happy owner of an iPod Shuffle thanks to non other then [info]ehowton. You see, a while ago, he tried to persuade me that I didn’t need to purchase the iPod Classic and that I would be just as happy with the Shuffle. Turns out, the bastard’s right. Though I have only had Purple miniMe for two weeks, I can’t imagine ever living without it. Yes, it does suck that it doesn’t display p0rN Coverflow and only holds 240 songs, but those aren’t really limitations–they’re freedoms. Would it be nice to instantly recall any song that is in my collection and see the album cover for it? Sure it would. But it’s not necessary. By limiting what I can take with me, I’m forced to focus and appreciate what I do have. This allows me to become more intimate with my music.

    The Pearl of Great Price

    Dad's Glider

    I’ve read [info]ehowton go on and on about how he will purchase music recorded on this label, but NOT that one. We actually had this conversation at the party of the decade. I had just given [info]ehowton a copy of the Gold Disc version of the Amadeus score. As we were listening to it, E remarked that, “I get goosebumps when I listen to this.” And I knew what he meant. The music had a full sound, was well played, well recorded and we had one heallva playback system.

    Years ago, I saw this movie that greatly impressed me starring Anna Paquin and Jeff Daniels called Fly Away Home. For those of you who don’t recall the movie, it’s the one the opens with Amy (Paquin) and her mom in a violent car crash and the mother dying. Her father (Daniels) comes all the way from Canada to New Zealand to take her to live with him as the parents had divorced some ten years previously.

    Cut to a tree-hugging setup where Amy finds some Canadian Goose eggs in an area that was being de-forested for an apartment complex. The geese imprint on Amy which leads to the conundrum of teaching the geese how to migrate. It just so happens that Tom is into flying lightweights and so they hatch a plan to migrate the birds to North Carolina.

    Mark Isham scored the movie. I first became acquainted with his work via October Sky. That movie had a great introspective, coming-of-age score, but the album is all cut up making it very difficult to listen to. As moving as the October Sky score is, Fly Away Home (an earlier film) just puts it to shame. When I started collecting scores, I naturally wanted to add Fly Away Home to my collection. It turns out that it was never released commercially. There was, however, two albums that were released in hopes of garnering an Oscar; I believe there were roughly 1000 copies of each album made.

    Two years ago I found the album on Ebay for $45 (which is the going street price), but turned down the opportunity citing the ancient Chinese disease, Fundsalow. I immediately regretted that decision. For the next six months after that auction expired, I would search Ebay for the Fly Away Home score, but it was not to be had. I even posted on my blog that I would pay a finder’s fee to whomever could procure the goods.

    While waiting for Purple miniMe to ship, something nagged me to see if the album were for sale on Ebay. Much to my surprise, there was not one, but two copies, each for the going rate of $45. I immediately made my purchase and must say that amongst the other songs that I have transferred to Purple miniMe, the Fly Away Home score has gone with me wherever I have gone.

    The track that gives me goosebumps every time I hear it is one of the central themes of the film. This piece first occurs at the beginning of the film when Tom goes for an early morning flight with his glider (pictured above). “Dad’s Glider” starts with an anticipation of flight–running down the checklist and making final adjustments. Take-off is presented by a two-measure cymbal-roll/crescendo and flight is a single violin. While there should be much joy at this point, the careful listener will notice that there is much sorrowful solitude in flight juxtaposed with the spectacular view. There is a yearning to be safe on the ground and yet a struggle to stay in the air. Finally, the landing comes in somberly as Death would take someone home from their long journey.

    Enjoy with me now “Dad’s Glider” by clicking on the cover for just a taste of what this album has to offer.

    FlyAwayHome

  • On Writing

    The only book I ever read of Stephen King’s is, ironically enough, the only work of non-fiction that he ever wrote–On Writing. If you read this book the things that you will pick up are to have the best command of the language you are working in and “write, write, write.” I think that all books about the entertainment industry read the same way “create, create, create!” There is a truth that that mentality I suppose,

    Writing is no harder the ditch digging.
    I recently was having a chat with a friend of mine that is cooking up a new project. He said that he’s just like me: if he doesn’t feel the inspiration, he doesn’t write it. He then went on to say that the way he broke the habit was to write anyway. But here’s his secret: he says that doesn’t mean forcing yourself to write what you need to write–that creates a very bad case of writer’s block. He says that he sits down and writes what he has the inspiration to write. Once the words start flowing he then goes back to what he needs to write and works on it accomplishing much this way. To this end, I too want to try this idea.

    As some of you know, I read an article via one of Google’s blogs that talked about using Google Reader and pulling the RSS feeds for jobs that you are interested in. This also allows you to get a feed on those jobs that are in your area. Lately, I’ve seen this post go by quite a bit. Since the above mentioned conversation with my writing friend, I’ve thought about responding to this ad and seeing if instead of doing full-time work they would be willing to employ me on a per-placement basis. I’ve also considered doing the same with the local newspaper.

    My thought is that if I were to get paid for my writing again (remember I used to work for The Exponent, UAH’s student-run newspaper?) I would be motivated to write. And if motivated to write, then maybe this would help me get in the swing of things so that I will start setting the time aside and hopefully become prolific with my screenplays.

    Also, I’m now currently working at Steak-Out only one day a week. I don’t think it makes much economic sense to continue working there, but it is income and imcome is hard to let go. I figure that I could continue to work the long hours at Book Systems and write in my spare time and thus make money.

    I knew that I was going to need writing samples. I also know that I did good work for The Exponent and had a few great blog entries to boot. Therefore, I have spent the weekend posting all of the Exponent articles to Live Journal under the tag Exponent. I then added three blog entries from Xanga: my World Trade Center post, my King Kong post and my Insured Motorist post. I have back-dated every post on Live Journal to the date that it originally appeared; I have not added the Exponent posts to Xanga because Xanga does not support this feature. You can read my writing samples via Live Journal tag. Xanga users please note that you can leave anonymous comments on LJ; if you decide to do so please “sign” your comment so I know who you are.

    I’ve had a couple of friends tell me that long ago I used to be a good writer and that from my writing I seemed to enjoy my work but that my last several blogs have been informative and bland. Always seeking out the feedback, I would like to hear from you my adoring public. Do you think that the pieces that I have on my writing samples tag are good enough to land another writing job? Do you think that those articles are better then what I have recently produced? You decide.