Monthly Archives: July 2004

Hour 5 of a Stage 1 install

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Ever install Gentoo Linux? What a time consuming ordeal.

This morning I tried a stage 3 install, because I didn’t want to spend a ton of time installing a Linux, but after it was all done, it wouldn’t boot properly. Very frustrating, to say the least.

So I started over. This time I’m following some instructions from a user on the Gentoo forums. This HOWTO uses a stage 1 install, which means every part of the system is compiled from scratch. There’s no way it will be done with it’s current compiling task before I leave from work, but it’s cool, I got it setup so I can SSH in from home to see if it’s done, and then continue on with the steps. So maybe tomorrow when I come in, it will be done.

I’m not sure why I’m willing to put up with this, but I want a successful install and won’t give up until I have one.

Something I actually like about NBCs Nascar coverage

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I really like the fact that they don’t go to commercial the second the checkered flag flies forcing the winner to sit in his car until the tv station comes back from commercial. That’s the way Fox did it. I’m sure the drivers didn’t appreciate being forced to sit and wait when they would rather be celebrating.

The window treatments in my house suck!

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The majority of the windows in my house are treated with blinds. Some are the standard cheapo plastic horizontal type and the others are a nicer cloth vertical blind. However, they all suck! For starters, they all came with the house, and they’re all ugly! And they’re either broken and don’t close properly, or they’re falling apart and starting to fall out of the wall. I’m thinking winter project.

On the good news side, my landscaping is starting to take some shape. I think when all is said and done, it will look decent. In a couple of weeks I’ll take some pictures.

I want to see more of this

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Smoker fined for throwing cigarette end on the ground.

Complete Story

This is no different than any other kind of littering, and I shouldn’t have to clean it up. I live on a fairly busy road, and all those ends everybody throws out their windows add up. And they eventually wind up in my yard. I would be so happy if the police would start citing for this criminal activity.

I hate the reading pane

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If you use Outlook 2003, I’m sure you know what the reading pane is. Well, for the record, I hate it, and it’s always on by default. Everytime you create a new folder, there it is. Now it’s not too much work to turn it off, but just the fact that it’s there drives me nuts.

Well, today I wanted to find a way to globally turn off this feature. It wasn’t hard. Here’s all that you need to. Edit the shortcut you use to launch Outlook and add the following switch to it: /nopreview

Then wammo, no more reading panes ever again. Want more switches? Check this site out: http://www.outlook-tips.net/howto/commandlines.htm

Posted in IT

Going golfing tonight

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I haven’t been on a course in over two years, so I’m really looking forward to getting out. I’m playing in an outing next month, so hopefully I can get out a couple more times before then.

Update: Well, I went and had a lot of fun. We won’t talk about what I shot though. Because of slow players in front us we played the last two hole in the dark, which really wasn’t fun.

Slackware, Debian, Slackware, Debian….

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The story of my life when it comes to Linux. I just can’t decide what to use. Right now I’m using Debian on a computer at home, and it’s(was) working quite well. I used the new(still in beta) Debian Installer to get a base Sarge install complete. Sarge is what�s known as Debians testing branch. It’s pretty stable and contains much newer packages than their stable branch.

Normally I just use Linux for LAMP stuff and never install any X packages, but last night I wanted a GUI. So I ran through and apt-getted X and Gnome. Much to my amazement, it worked on the first shot.

But to my disappointment, even in Sarge for a desktop environment, the packages are too out of date for me. I want Gnome 2.6 and Gimp 2 and such.

So I felt brave and changed my apt sources to unstable and performed the ‘ol dist-upgrade and it broke everything when one of the upgrades failed.

Ah well. You can’t really learn anything if everything always works perfectly, right? I’ll try some more stuff tonight.

Update: Well, I guess I’m wrong. I redid a system again today installing Sarge, and after successful installation of gnome, it appears it is 2.6. Nautilus shows version 2.6.3. What was I looking at last night? Gimp is still version 1.2 though.

A nice day

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Yesterday, I took a half day off of work and we arranged for my parents to watch all the kids, and the wife and I got to go out for a nice afternoon and evening.

First we went to the movies and saw the Harry Potter movie. The last movie we saw at a theater was The Grinch, so it’s been awhile. The movie was really good, IMHO.

Then we went out to dinner, we weren�t sure if we wanted to go to Chili’s or someplace we’ve never been yet. We opted for Texas Roadhouse which has been around for awhile, but we’ve never eaten at. I had a Portabella Mushroom Chicken dinner and my wife had a Sirloin Tip dinner. Mine was excellent and my wife said she enjoyed hers as well. So dinner was a hit.

Well, then we decided to hit a couple of the local malls to walk off the huge dinner. With full intentions of making the evening about us, we found ourselves in a kids clothing store buying outfits for all the kids, then at a toy store buying an expandable tunnel for the kids, then at another kids store buying more clothes for the kids. Then we stopped at Target so my wife could show me some stuff she was thinking about getting the kids, and I bought my son another matchbox car.

By this time it was a little after 8pm, and was time to head home. And while it was great to spend some quality alone time with my wife, it was great to be home and play with the kids for little bit before they went to bed.

Hopefully we can do it again real soon.