habitual pragmatist

Well, I’ve been having tons of fun with gentoo over the past few days. I like the idea of do-it-yourself linux distributions, when i have the time for them. And, seeing as I have had the past 3 days off work, I’ve had the time.

I’m actually typing this up on the laptop, while the workstation on which I’ve been playing with gentoo resizes its partitions. I borked up 2 installs already, but this is how one learns new things, when it comes down to it.

At first, I spent all kinds of time convinced I could make my own custom kernel to be all uber-useful. FAIL. So the second time around, I got everything up and running, with gnome all up and active, ATI drivers installed (manually, ’cause emerge didn’t want to have anything to do with installing them on a 2.6.25 kernel) and compiz running, if not very well (windows would wobble, but then no longer refresh their contents). I was upset that the version of Gnome that gentoo provides was 2.20, since the 2.22 version came out month ago, and went about enabling parts of the “testing” branch of portage. Big mistake. I was in dependancy hell, and realized that I wasn’t going to get everything back and moving smoothly with only 2 days experience with the system. On top of that, I’d tried putting all of gentoo on an 8.5GB partition, which isn’t nearly enough space to be installing everything from source comfortably.

So now, I’m resizing the partition on that hard drive, in anticipation of once again installing gentoo, over SSH, from my laptop. Awesome, if you ask me. It’s neat to think I’m remotely installing one machine from another machine.

Perhaps if I get some more time, I’ll get to write an update about how I’m loving my awesome new gentoo system.

I got my new camera in the mail yesterday morning. I’m now the proud owner of a Canon Powershot A590IS. It’s got just enough tweakable geeky options to play with to keep my nerd side happy, without having so much that I wasted money getting options I don’t need. Awesome.

take that!

my boys

Well, some idiot has decided to add this blog to their spam bot. I’m not sure why, since comments are moderated, so their links to “Jessica Alba Ass” don’t show up without my approval. Nonetheless, their ill-programmed bot keeps putting comments on the same post (don’t be late). What’s the deal?

Ahh well, I feel bad for the poor unsuspecting victim whose computer is being used as a blog spam bot, because I’m sure their internet will soon be shut off.

It’s amusing. I’ve been gearing up to do this job writing Drupal modules, and I was talking with my prospective employer when he said “ok, well go ahead and email me your resume”.

“Resume? I have a resume?”

So, last night I actually spent time sitting down and writing down what the heck I’ve been up to the past years. All in all, it’s doesn’t even look that bad. It’s just weird. I haven’t had someone ask for a resume in ages! Most of the time it’s just like: “Oh, you can do this? Well do it, and we’ll pay you”

Maybe I’m returning to the regular boring working world? No more an outlaw.

A tip to all of you who are ever in a group project at some point in your experience of immersive didactic situations: do not show up to your final presentation for said group 30 minutes late. If I’m in your group, you’re damned right I’m not hiding the fact that you screwed up.

Well, slowly but surely I’m learning the innards of building drupal modules. I’ve started learning from “the drupal book“, and it’s a big dive in. It also appears I don’t remember as much PHP/MYSQL as a I used to know, so it may be time to go back and re-read O’Reilly’s Learning PHP. Soon enough though, I’m sure I’ll be a drupal ninja.

Class-wise, My Human Relations class wraps up Tuesday with our big final presentation. Should be interesting enough. Three more weeks of physics, and I’ll officially be a full-time drupal developer for a while. Scary!

Guess I had better keep hitting those books.

Well, couple things to talk about. For one, I’ve been busy as hell with class. My Human Relations class wraps up on July 1st, and my Physics class is running up 3 weeks after that. So, it’s time that the exams and presentations are getting pushed pretty heavily.

Also, I’m a little chaffed that they’re not offering a decent number of classes I need to graduate. I hate the idea of waiting around for an extra semester just to get a particular class just to graduate. I’m still taking easily transferable credits to take off to the next university with me, but I’d hate to see those run out before I have all my requirements done. At least I’m learning something.

Also, since it’s summer, I’ve been taking the time to catch up with people. On Monday night I went down to the Necto and caught up with a few of the fellas I used to play shows with. It was a good time, and I’ll be back there next week, as Rob and Teddy are actually going to be playing.

Miriam is packing up tonight, so I’ve got to go help her load her truck so she can be out of her apartment by Saturday. Actually several people are leaving, which means there will likely be a lot of the gotta-go-say-bye-for-now events coming up.

Last but not least, I’ve been offered some contract work hacking on Drupal. This of course means that on top of however busy I already am, I’m going to be re-learning PHP/MySQL. Woot!

So, considering I’ve felt so bad about not updating in a week, I set aside time before I start cracking into my humongous pile of homework just to do an update.

Both of my classes are reaching a head. I have 2 and a half weeks of business class left. I actually have a take-home exam to do tonight. Physics is about halfway through, and I’m not applying myself as well as I should. The good news is, I got confirmation for my grant for Fall ‘08 and Winter ‘09 semesters, so that’s got me happy.

Work is… well, work. As ever. I should really be finding a job where I am a dedicated tech person, rather than the tech person who always mops up poo-water because the electric room flooded and I’m the only one there.

I guess the only other thing that’s up in my life is that the summer has begun, and I probably wouldn’t have such a stack of homework to do if I didn’t try to fit in as much time with my friends. I’ve been doing as much hanging out as possible, since people are leaving town soon (Dan, Miriam, Chuck), and hell — it’s summer. On top of that, Shro and I are becoming the best of buds. We’re practically attached at the hip, despite living 30 miles apart. I really do need to get cracking on these summer courses though. I can enjoy July and August when they get here.

In the Linux world? I’ve been doing jack and squat. No programming of note. No new installs of note. I haven’t even had a good chance to configure Debian Lenny like I’ve wanted. Maybe after I bust out these assignments I’ll get that going tonight. Who knows? Doubt it though!

Ack! I’ve been so bad. No updates in a week!

I’ll give a more in-depth synopsis of life in the next day or two… but to follow up, I’m lovin’ the bitlbee, and I’ve still got a lot of homework.

I spent 9 and a half hours this weekend cleaning out invalid email addresses from a foxpro database. It was… vile. Last thing I want to talk about is more technology stuff.

And speaking of more technology stuff…

In other news, I started bitlbee for my IM services. It makes IRC and AIM/MSN gel seamlessly. I’ll be trying it out and seeing if it can actually give finch the boot!