I was procrastinating… again, and I came upon this link. Just type in your name and click on the link provided.
Need a ‘pick me up’?
Nov 23
Wow!
Nov 20
Hey, I have a blog! Who knew? I guess I should start using it more often (again).
| You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer |
 And while you may have some problems being “normal,” you’ll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it’s epic films, important novels, or vivid comics… Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world! |
Conversion Complete? Nope!
Nov 15
Well, it has been a long time, hasn’t it? I guess the reason I haven’t been writing (here or on my WIP) is a mixture of Life is what happens while you’re making plans and Computers have the magical ability to suck me in and spit me out.
Whatever the reason, both the blog and the WIP have suffered for it. And I’m done with that mess! Time to get back on schedule and finish all of this work!
So, what have I been doing? Well, it may make me sound slow, but it took a couple of days to get SpamAssassin to do bayes filtering on my email. Truly, I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It’s fixed now, and 99% of my incoming spam is now caught and put off to the side. I had that before, using a client side app. Now it’s all done on the server.
I also decided to convert my laptop to Linux instead of Windows XP. What caused the switch? Well, I recently re-installed XP, since my boot times were atrocious, and I can’t stand slow computers. Before you know it, Windows was slow again. Aaaargh. I absolutely hate that.
It took me a couple of days to get Gentoo working on the laptop (why is it never easy). But now it all seems to be running smooth. I still need Windows to sync with my Dell Axim x51v, and Outlook syncs better with eGroupware than some Linux programs I’ve found. I kept my original Windows XP install, and I use VMware Workstation to boot into XP from Linux. I don’t know what changed, but XP boots about 4 times faster under VMware than by itself, and it’s the exact same install.
The Linux install is still not 100%, but I like it. Linux never makes it easy, especially for laptop owners. I think next time I’ll get a Mac. So, whats missing so far?
- hibernate to ram (sleep) works, but when restarting, starts the shutdown processes (Whhhaaa?)
- hibernate doesn’t work.
- I have a fan that stays on all the time.
That’s about it, I think. Now, back to work!
Nostalgia Reigns Supreme
Nov 7
A couple of weeks back, my bro came in from Calgary. One evening we sat down, had some beer, and went through some really old photos (I had hair!). Since then, I’ve been on a semi-depressive nostalgia kick. I’ve been thinking of all the missed opportunities, the times when if I put in a bit more effort the result would have been awesome. You know, that kind of stuff. I think it’s time to get my head out of my *ss and get back to real life.
One of the things this nostalgia kick has done: it made me want to look at all the old computers I used to own or use. It’s quite a list. So, I downloaded programs like mess and vice which emulate old hardware. Watching a Commodore 128 boot into CP/M 3 is still cool to watch. The Kaypro II boots and runs. I can’t do anything with them, since I have no apps, but it’s cool to watch.
As an offshoot of mess/vice, I’ve also been playing with mame and uae. Once again, it’s fun (although time consuming) to look at all of these old games.
Still, as I said earlier, time to get back on track. Time to look forward instead of backward.
Weekend Update
Nov 4
Hey, I actually wrote over 1600 words today. If I keep this up on a daily basis, I should have entered NaNoWriMo this year. Oh well, maybe next year. For those keeping track, I’m currently at:
The Anshi Legacy
words: 15,548 / 90,000 (17%)
Which is not too bad.
I have some friends that entered NaNoWriMo this year. If they read this and say ‘thanks for mentioning me on your blog’, I’ll know that they’re fooling around instead of writing. So, to save myself the hassle of harassing them, I’ll skip the names and just say Get back to work!.
5 Little known Facts
Nov 2
Hmmm. It seems that I’ve been tagged by Nichole, and I’m supposed to come up with 5 little known facts about myself. I’m then supposed to tag 5 other people so they can do the same. My only problem is that I don’t really know 5 other bloggers to tag, so the buck stops here (to use a worn out cliche, badly). Coming up with 5 things is somewhat tough.
- I’m scared of the dark.
- Only one person in my family knows I blog (Hi bro!).
- I’m scared of heights, and I started rock climbing to over come that. (And every spring, I have to reconquer the fear).
- I write. (Truly, not too many people know that. When I’m published, that will change).
- My sarcastic attitude hides a sensitive soul.
Well, there ya go.
Misc
Here’s another youtube link I enjoyed: YouTube Porky Pig.
I’ve read some of these and found them good. Hopefully the rest are as well.
Reading
Tales of the Otori – Brilliance of the Moon by Liam Hearn
And the world shifts
Oct 27
I’m not sure what is going on here. It’s as though my entire world has gone topsy turvy, and I’ve lost what level of control I had.
Last week was the boys birthday, and I think that’s where it all started. We had birthday party after birthday party, family over for dinner, etc. And I haven’t recovered yet. I still (yes, still) have dishes left from the Sunday dinner. It’s not much, just a couple of glasses really, but still. The house is a horrible mess. And I’ve written about 1000 words this week.
And that’s just not enough. To meet my deadline, I now have to write 1200 words a day, which can feel like a lot. What I seem to have done is slip back into full research mode. And it’s a waste of time. I really haven’t learned anything new.
I wish I knew what happened to me this week.
VMware switch over
Oct 23
The hard drive on my email and web server was beginning to fail. Once the system was running, the hard drive appeared to be fine, but sometimes it failed to boot and the drive wasn’t spinning up. So, what could I do.
The old system was running on a Celeron 450, 128 MB of RAM and a 17 GB HDD. In other words, a very small system. I used g4u to create an image of the hard drive, including partition tables and MBR. I then used g4u to restore the drive image under VMware Server running on an AMD64, 1 GB of RAM and a 1 TB RAID5 array (my primary mythtv backend). I told vmware to create a 20 GB HDD, and the transfer went smooothly. It did, however, take a VERY long time; g4u did it’s imaging and restoring via ftp. The 17 GB HDD took about 5.5 hours to image across a 100 mbit network.
I powered up the VMware Server with the newly created image, and voila. The system boot immediately and ran perfectly. So now, the email and web server believe they are running on an AMD64 3500, 128 MB of RAM and a 20 GB HDD. Speed has gone way up, and hopefully so has reliability.
One test I did when I switched the server was to make a copy of the hard drive image and boot another email and web server under a different IP address. I then upgraded the Gentoo 2005.0 based system to a 2006.1 based system using a script I found on the Gentoo forums. The upgrade went flawlessly. I would have simply changed the IP addresses to start running on the upgraded server, but I had received email on the old server. So, I upgraded the old server, as it was running and live. Gotta love Gentoo!
I’m… so… tired…
Oct 23
What a week. My boys both had their birthdays this week. On Wednesday I spent the afternoon in Ryan’s pre-school class, and baked 24 cupcakes for them. On Friday, I spent the afternoon in Jared’s grade 1 class, with another 24 cupcakes. Friday evening Ryan had his party with his friends, on Saturday, Jared had his. Sunday we had dinner for the whole family and the family birthday party. Today I have to clean up from the dinner.
It would all have been okay, except that my bro came in from Calgary, so to top it off, I climbed into bed at 3:00 AM Sunday morning. Ugh.
So, no writing in a while, which kinda hurts. I’ll catch up this week (I promise).
I had to pass this along. It made me feel like the worst Dad in the world. Read the story and then watch the video.
Please, leave a comment about it.
update: 9:43 AM: It seems that the link is temporarily unavailable.
update: 7:59 PM: It seems that the link back up.