Older blog entries for bribass (starting at number 2)

<rant>

I have just had the worst 24 hours in recent memory. Allow me to enumerate:

• Yesterday, I am at the Bookie (the student bookstore here at WSU) to take care of my cap and gown order for commencement (I'm finally getting out of this pee-pee soaked heck hole!). When I get there, I find that Monday (the 17th) was the last day they are accepting orders. Nowhere on any of the material they (or the University) sent out, nor on any of the displays actually at the Bookie, indicated anything at all about a final date. The only notification is a clipping from Monday's campus paper saying that "today's the last day for cap and gown orders". grrr
• This morning I had a test in my 10:35 am class. I wake up and roll over and the alarm clock reads 10:27! I literally bolt out of bed and make it to campus in 8 minutes (and make it in time for the test. This wasn't so bad, as I think I did reasonably well on the test.
• Having just paid a renewal on my auto insurance, I am acutely aware that my proof of insurance card is about to expire. Only I cannot find the replacements they sent with the bill. No problem, my agent (in Seattle) told me that if I ever had a problem with my policy, I should see the local agent here in Pullman. Considering this a problem, I go and see him this morning. To make a long story short, he told me that since he wasn't my agent, he couldn't help me. grrr
• I come to work and try and log into the box I'd been using (I don't have a box "of my own" yet). No dice. Actually looking at the issue, I find that our local systems pseudo-person had reinstalled the box. With Mandrake! I could live with RedHat, but Mandrake? <advocacy>Debian on my laptop saved the day.</advocacy> Then again, a box I can log into is preferrable to one at which I can't. grrr

I do believe I have run afoul of Murphy's Simultenaity Principle: "If more than one thing can go wrong, they will all go wrong at the same time."

</rant>

Oh Dark Thirty
Finally decided to poke my head out from under the proverbial rock, and try Napster. Ye gods, this thingie is unbearably cool! I never realized that my masquerade firewall would be so useful (at least when one is trying to keep the network traffic going in one direction...;)

Also figured out a solution the power plug on my laptop being unable to work. Popped over to ebay and got myself a port replicator for cheap. All in all, a $20 solution to a $200 repair.

Maybe a little more hacking on NJS, then sleep.

Maybe.

Oh Dark Thirty-Five
I really ought to change that order: sleep, then hacking.

Maybe.

Woo hoo! I finally got around to replacing my main server yesterday. Used to be a dying 486-66 with 32 MB, now a K6-450 with 128 MB. It is so exhilarating to do things like compile a kernel in under twenty minutes (used to take over three hours) or run a bunch of things without touching swap at all.