Advogato blog for Gregoyle

2 Aug 2000

Wed, 2 Aug 2000 16:25:58 GMT

"And then it's nothing but work, work, work, all the time!"

I just installed RedHat 6.2 on a new box and *man* have they got it streamlined now! It autodetected the Voodoo3 (no small feat), also autodetected the Monitor, which neither Caldera, Suse, nor previous installations of Redhat have been able to do (with that monitor). It even set up the *sound* right, from the beginning. Quite impressive.

Started preliminary development of a new Gnome application. I'm still pretty lost about it, and need to check out the documentation on the widgets some more. I actually have a little bit of extra time now to work on coding, so I am psyched.

Started DSL training at work a couple days ago (tech support for Bell Atlantic). I have one response to that, "Man am I glad I have cable!". I have *never* had a problem with my cable modem, have never had an outage, etc. I know only *one* person who has ha any problem at all, and that had to do with the electrical resistance from the signal being designed for also having TV cable (which they didn't). Sounds a little confusing, but it took just one repair job and was then fixed, and they've been fine ever since.

As a counterpoint, there are at least 3 or 4 outages per day (in different areas) of DSL. The software also isn't too grand, and youneed to be able to configure PPPoE manually if you want to use it on a non-Windows/Mac OS. PPPoE can be a beeyatch.

That's it for now, until later, special internet friends.

27 Jul 2000

Thu, 27 Jul 2000 17:04:38 GMT

Man I have got to learn spanish more. I watched a very interesting flick last night call Abre los Ojos (Open your eyes). Weird psychological movie, but good, and it even has some sci-fi elements.

On that note, does anyone know of any good resources for finding foreign jobs in the computer industry (specifically in Spain)? I think I want to move to Spain so i can learn Spanish better. A long vacation is too expensive and not nearly good enough. Feel free to email me at

Not much coding done last night, was kind of in a "lump" mood.

Tried getting back on IRC last night, but found that I had turned off one of my services as a security measure (I think it was named), and wasn't getting authenticated. Now just to find the time to turn it back on...

26 Jul 2000

Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:50:46 GMT

ARRRRGGGG!!! I am at work, which is tech support. If you are in tech support then you know what I am talking about. I was just on the phone with a woman for 20 minutes, and the ONLY problem was that she wasn't clicking "OK" to get out of a window, and she couldn't follow my %@#%ing instructions!!!!

Grr. Okay, I'm feeling better now. Luckily her six year old came on and configured it correctly.

26 Jul 2000

Wed, 26 Jul 2000 21:30:35 GMT

Hmm.. Last night I watched The Ninth Gate, with Johnny Depp. It was actually a decent film, which I certainly hadn't expected. It also had a sort of timeless quality to it, where there was no real evidence to date the film. You saw a computer in one scene, but you never saw him operate it. Sort of like Payback. Kinda cool.

For some reason my CD-R drive is burning iso files into discs that can't be read by any other drive. What a pain. I've had this problem before, I'm just trying to rememeber how I fixed it that time. Just trying to burn redhat CDs for a couple of my friends so they can start on Linux.

I just read that WINE now supports DiabloII, but not Battle.net. If only there were a good way to emulate games that use Glide!! DiabloII and Half Life: Counterstrike are the only things still keeping windows on my machine. One day all games will be put out with a linux version.