So, Neil Gaiman apparently just got back from St. Lucia. This is cool because that's where I was on my honeymoon. He talks about seeing the drive in volcano, and standing under a waterfall. I wonder if the island will make an appearance in his next book.
Update: Poking around the St. Lucia website found this cool little flash app. Our hotel was The Royal St. Lucian, on Rodney Bay in the District of Gros Islet. See if you can find it. Hint: it's near Hooters.
Well, I've got my desktop machine up and running with a shiny new gentoo install, with my laptop not far behind (kernel is compiled, final configuration and reboot will be tonight, most likely.)
I'd like to say the following: /me <3 distcc!
Linux kernel 2.6.9, LVM, X.org X11R6.8.1, and KDE 3.3.0(hmm, looks like 3.3.1 is out. emerge -u world tonight!) all installed and happily running.
I've also installed screen, firefox, xmms, mplayer and gaim.
What are the other must-have linux apps? Any suggestions?
Some site news:
cro.wox.org is no more. It died a while ago, I just got tired of paying for something that was once free, and I have mostly migrated off of using the domain name anyway. Now, I know what you are saying. "What? No more cro.wox.org? How will I survive?"
Have no fear, you can still read through the archives at my old site's final resting place, http://rishel.org/cro.wox.org/, forever immortalized* in the links on the right column of this page.
* for definitions of "forever immortalized" that mean "Until I need the harddrive space"
I had this really weird dream last night, and I hardly ever remember my dreams. Like all of my dreams that I remember, there is no very good storyline, we just kinda jump into the middle of a story. Here is what I remember:
So, I'm going to be on Saturday Night Live (yeah, I know, wtf?), and I have to get to New York. I get lost trying to find the studio, so I decide to park my car and take the subway.
Why do we make such stupid decisions in dreams? What made me think that if I couldn't navigate above ground, that I'd do better below ground on a subway I've never ridden before?
I get on the subway, and I end up even more lost. it's getting towards 11:00 pm, and I just know I'm gonna end up missing my big chance to be on SNL and be forever banned from the show. for some reason I've lost Lorne Michaels' phone number, so I can't call him and tell him I'm going to be late, and they'll have to come up with something else to do.
Why am I so unquestioning when I dream? Wouldn't I have been in New York for a week of practice and rehearsal before I was on SNL? Why the sudden rush to the studio? Damn, my dream self is a moron. This is even forgetting the question of WTF am I doing on SNL.
I'm all pissed off and yelling at myself like a crazy person on the subway, when I hear someone ask if I'm ok. I look up. This guy who's talking to me looks just like Ben Stein.
"You look just like Ben Stein," I say.
"I'm his brother, David Stein," David Stein says.
"You look just like your broth–"
"Yeah, I get that a lot. Look, do you need help?"
I explain my situation. David agrees to help me. He elbows the guy behind him and says "He, do you have Lorne's number?" The guy standing behind David says he'll check and he turns around–
And he's Ben Stein! At this point I realize David doesn't really look a lot like Ben when you compare him to the original. Ben Stein says he has Lorne's number and sends it to my phone via bluetooth.
The fact that my dreams feature bluetooth is so geeky, I am at a loss of words.
Now, things start to get a little fuzzy at this point. I have the number for Lorne, but I don't call him. I still need to figure out how to get to the studio in time, and I only have about 10 minutes at this point, and as far as I can tell, I'm on the wrong train. David Stein and his more famous brother Ben Stein do a really good Obi-Wan-from-beyond-the-grave-voice and tell me to "use your palm".
I am I so geeky. I am shamed.
So I look up mapquest and search for the SNL studio. Now I know they say you aren't supposed to be able to read in a dream, but clearly remember entering into Mapquest the corner of Batman Ave. and Robin Ave. Next thing I know I'm in a car skidding to a halt outside the studio and running in the building, just in the nick of time.
And then I wake up.
Weird, huh? I think I like it better when I don't remember my dreams, cause clearly my brain is retarded when I'm not awake telling it what to do.
The rumors on the internets are strange today. Google finds God. I started to read this article, but got distracted by the ad on the right side of the page:
That picture makes baby emperor penguins cry.
Or maybe it just makes them hungry.
My blog has reached a developmental milestone. Comment spammers. I was getting sick of these bastards making me think people actually read what I write here, only to find it was a stupid spam bot writing URLs for online poker and providing stupid literary quotes in the comments.
I've upped the ante (Har Har Har) on these poker selling morons with the following plug ins: First, Spam Words(updated to working URL) makes it really easy for me to flag a comment as spam, and add keywords to my moderation_keys list. This is followed up by Tarpit, which, when an IP matching my blacklist tries to enter a comment, their system is given a long delay, and then gets a polite "stop it" message, without allowing them to post.
Bring it on, I'll paygos you back to Poland!
P.S. Want to buy some wood?
A couple of news stories about Red Hat has gotten me thinking about where they are heading. Recently, they purchased Netscape's Directory Server. This is basically an Active Directory replacement. Not a very big deal, but at the time, Mark commented on the purchase, saying "now all they need to do is buy Samsung Contact (formerly HP Openmail) and they'd have an Exchange killer. "
No, Mark does not speak with href's and I added that parenthetical because I wanted to link to the old name. Shoot me.
So why am I writing about a week old story and providing a heavily annotated Sandblade quote? Because today, Red Hat announced they have hired the VP at Sun who is pretty much responsible for the success of J2EE in the Enterprise, and placing her in charge of the new "desktop infrastructure technologies group".
This clearly looks like Red Hat is gearing up to compete with Microsoft in the corporate server room. Or are they gearing up to fight with someone else?
I wonder if Red Hat is more worried about Novell than Microsoft? Novell's recent purchases of Ximian and SuSE result in a few very interesting software combinations. On the desktop side, Ximian provides the Exchange Connector, which lets you bring Linux destktops into an Exchange server environment. Combine this with SuSE's OpenExchange Server, which lets you replace that exchange server, and finally, Novell Open Enterprise Server, which provides a migration path for Novell and Microsoft servers to a SuSE server environment with all the Netware goodies running along side.
What is the biggest thing indicating Novell is way ahead of Red Hat? Microsoft says they are. When you look at how far Red Hat has to go to catch up with what Novell already has, you can see why.
Nothing like a killer headache to finish out a monday afternoon.
What in the world was in my Quizno's?
Aah! my head!
Rolling Stone has an article by Matt Taibbi who decides to go undercover in the Republican party in Florida. A Brief Excerpt:
Part of my job, I soon came to understand, was to be supportive when people like portly Tampa sheriff's deputy Ben Mills came in to share their very serious utopian ideas — like the benefits of having a society guarded by a clone army. "We'd save a hell of a lot on benefits and medical expenses," he said. " 'Cause you know if they got wounded…"
"You could just shoot them," I said.
"Exactly — pow! Just shoot 'em dead, right in the ground."
He went on.
"We'd just have a big breeding farm in Colorado," he said. "Course, it'd be a security problem if they got out, you know, if you had rogue clones running around. You'd have to have a special security force to maintain 'em."
"That's where folks like us would come in," I said.
"Exactly," he said.
Folks like us. I was getting the hang of it.
It gets better from there.
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