Older blog entries for eliot (starting at number 41)

1 Nov 2000 (updated 2 Nov 2000 at 06:31 UTC) »

Breath, keep breathing. Don't lose your nerve. Breath, keep breathing.

Argh. I'm pretty bad at studying. A test this morning proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt. I suppose it's OK to take some time in the first semester of college to figure these things out, but dangit, I'm getting graded!

So far, this hasn't been a very happy week. Exit Music seems pretty fitting -- depressing and emotional.

How is it November? What happened to the last three months of my life? I remember just yesterday being at LinuxWorld and enjoying AP Stumps over in San Jose.

How come my Concepts of Lifetime Fitness class stresses eating so well and I'm not able to get any good food at the cafeteria? Sure, things taste good most of the time, but it is nearly impossible for me to eat in a healthy-lifestyle manner. Throwing some crappy carrots and bell peppers on the side doesn't help the dripping-with-oil fajitas or fat loaded beef.

Ok, I'm in a bad mood. I'm gonna blow some steam before I blow.

I can't do this alone.

1 Nov 2000 (updated 1 Nov 2000 at 03:18 UTC) »

I like this new <person> feature.

Today was nuts. I still haven't gotten a chance to start reworking the Gabber manual for a task-oriented approach. I should have more time now that I'm dropping Calculus I. 12 hours isn't much.

raph's comments in today's diary about free software and such. Although it doesn't quite seem to be all there, he's hitting on something that's been silently bugging me. Something just seemed a bit wrong with the current community and I hadn't been able to pin it down quite right. Certainly a bit of food for thought..

This semester is literally flying by. It's so disgusting. All I do is sleep, eat, homework and go to class. How dull. Yes, julian, that is college. The only thing that makes it worthwhile is the fantastic people I'm around all the time. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.

Radiohead's cover of Blowout by Pixies is cool.

Fade out again. Fade out.

I'm back.

Ok, so I doubt anyone here remembers me, so I won't go into the gorey details of the latter half of 2000 in the life of Eliot Landrum. Suffice it to say, I'm working full time for Jabber.com, Inc. on Jabber.org documents and going to school full time at LeTourneau University. Besides Calculus, I love my life. :)

At any rate.. I got my password back for Advogato (thanks raph!) and I'm ready to roll again.

/me waves

Come back lilo!! I wasn't really following the whole discussion, but I wouldn't want *anyone* who takes time to write meaningful diary entries to suddenly stop because of anyone else's reasons! Even if lilo were writing completely against everything I am (which he wasn't), I would still want lilo to continue if he wants! Please come back!

Woopie! A new week! Here's to hoping that this will be a succesful and satisfying week.

I really like this article on oreilly.linux.com. The author makes a really good comparison with the Israelites in the desert and the Open Source community... very clever. :)

Got my first envelope with the webb logo on it today! I think I'll keep that one for awhile. :) Came with lots of duplicates of the same info I already had. Hmmm...

Argh!! I've never let my diary entry's get so far apart. Wonderful conversations going on...

Been super busy getting end-user docs done for Jabber, also been working up plans for the new dev-only Jabber.org. After high school graduation last week, I've really started to think of high school in past tense.. Kinda nice. :) Really looking forward to working this summer (for pay) on free software.

Dang, I want Sonique for Linux. WinAmp/XMMS is just pathetic compared to Sonique. I don't understand why free-beer software doesn't go all the way and release it free-speech. Killer software!! I think I'm going to write a detailed letter to Sonique explaining how it would benefit their software and their users.

Still hunting for the perfect Jeep.. I'm looking for a green or black Jeep Grand Cherokee for about $10,000... anyone have any leads? I'm really liking Carmax... wonderful warranty... great security. The only thing you have to worry about at Carmax is the cost and the color. Everything else is taken care of. The really cool thing is that I can search on their web site for cars at any of their nation-wide stores and have the car I want delivered to me.

Welp, got some edits to do for a "Jabber Technical White Paper" written up by Jabber.com. Nice paper, gotta talk to them about how to make the document GFDL compliant.

So much interesting discussion! There's a lot of great topics floating around... wish I had time to respond to some of them.

Yes, Skud, I am an avid Debian user. But, I wouldn't know the solution to your problem. I would however send a message to debian-mentors@lists.debian.org as there are a lot of good people on there that can help you out.

Something I just noticed is that I would hardly know any of the people posting on here unless they were posting diary entries routinely. Take for instance dria. Since I have not been involved at the Open Source Writers Group or LinuxChix (cool site!), I wouldn't know who dria is. But after keeping up with her diary entries (which are interesting, btw), I feel like I know her personally (even though I still don't)... I also know that I would like to get to know her. Then when I was pointed to her interview on /., I was able to learn more about her and her ideas, projects, etc. But these diary entries give me (and everyone else here) a behind-the-scenes and very frank review of her life and work (or lack thereof ;) ). There are other people here that I would like to get to know better as well, dria is just the first person I thought of (and one of the coolest).

Okie dokey.. back to some press releases and some end-user docs..... Oh, I've got that speech to write up too. Is it already Wednesday?

Update

Oh! I forgot, I finally got back down to Apprentice level. That's where I really belong and I had to have a talking with the folks who bumped me up to Journeyer.... Yes, I'm a part of the Julian circle. :) That's a fun little map that pvg made up... Go julian!!!

I knew I shouldn't have been browsing in another window. Mozilla lost my diary entry. Lemme see what I can remember...

This week went by fast, it was kind of a frustrating week, but satisfactory nonetheless. I got a lot of good Gabber stuff done, including:

  • Completing the wonderful manual for Gabber. I'm very proud of that. :)
  • Debian package of Gabber.
  • Debian packages for gtkmm/gnomemm 1.1.8... those weren't fun. Took me quite awhile and many many recompiles to get them built right. I hope someone uses them now. (They are on Gabber's home page)

I heard Sullivan (chrome for Mozilla by those Alphanumerica guys) came out this week.. I haven't had a chance to go grab it yet. I really like Aphrodite.

Mad week of writing ahead.... We're going to release JabberCentral this week if everything goes as planned. That means lots of writing.

I'm very sad at the sheer number of folks on Advogato.. There's no way for me to even get a tiny look at recent diary entries.. much less all of them. I can't keep track of anyone now. :(

Answer to dria's QOD:

Well, where praytell is here? I'm assuming it is Advogato.org since otherwise it would be asking the question so many folks have asked for so long... (where (here == 'earth')). I for one, am on Advogato to write my little ramblings and fragments of thoughts. I also like being able to have a central place to read others diary entries as well. It is very nice to be able to peak into the real lives of other active open source community members. Also, I like the design of the site. :)

Ok, other brain refuse:

I seem to have developed a pattern of writing diary entries every two-to-three days. I simply can't do one every day, and I want to do more than one a week. Seems to be a good compromise.

I've never used a <ol>.

Mozilla gets confused by pressing [TAB] in a text box.

Gabber documentation is looking *very* good. I'm very proud of myself. :) Writing docs for apps is much easier than explaining terms and illustrating compiling/configuring a program. I did two more major sections today and just have Messaging, Preferences and Panel Applet to cover. Does Gabber have a panel applet yet?

Despite warnings by stpeter, I decided to go ahead and start reading Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. I hate having a book just sitting there without me reading at least a good portion of it. Just bugs me.

I need to go get a new band for my Grandfather's Rolex.. This leather is getting worn off quick (I bought the leather band like in January). Guess I'll have to go with one of those annoying hair-pulling strechy metal ones.

This college thread is very interesting. I may consider writing a piece on it. Unfortunatly, I have no experience in that area yet. I have thought about alot of this before though. The interesting point in this thread is about how college is supposed to teach more than just skills. That is definitly something I want to get out of college.. something more than skills. Of course, I want to take some classes (and possibly some minors/majors) in areas outside of Computer Science.. I am looking forward to apologetics, Biblical studies, and lots of liberal arts (writing & literature). The point really isn't for me to get skills to get a good job, but to do some intense learning. I may think otherwise next Fall though....

There's too many entries in Recent Entries!! There's no way to keep track of them all now.. maybe I need some hierarchy or something...

That's all for now.. gonna go read and listen to Dave Matthews.

Laleedaaa... Welp, March was fast. February was fast. January was fast. I remember hearing about when your under 20 life always seems slow. I've never experienced that. My life has always gone fast. That's probably not a good thing.

I've noticed a couple of things since I found http://www.advogato.org/recentlog.html. (Wow was I stupid to not find that page. I always wondered how people were keeping track of other folks diary entries so easily... here I was clicking on users.. sheesh.) Everyone has some very unique diary styles. There's Iain who does little phrases with bullets. Then there's crackmonkey who has bold headers over each paragraphs, sometimes the headers have little to do with the topic. That's cool. And well.. I guess there's not too many other styles. I just ramble. I wonder if anyone cares. Oh well, I like writing down what I'm doing... It helps me focus more.

I stayed up very late last night writing some more User Land docs for JabberCentral. I also tried to get all of the libs required for Gabber installed on my notebook. That didn't go over well. I've still got some weird errors. Today I really hacked at a Gnome Manual page for Gabber. I'm very happy at how that is turning out. No offense to Gnome folks, but most apps right now have such little documentation. I don't want x-virge's little baby to go without the best docs.

My summer is looking quite happy. While I don't have anything major planned (no camps or anything), I've got Freshman orientation at LeTourneau University, Sergeants at Arm at the Texas state Republican Convention and probably a couple of Linux / Open Source conferences. I may try to go to Cornerstone Fest with my friends... I dunno about that. I'm not sure if I'd get totally sick of music or not be able to get enough of it....

My server is plugging along quite happily. The only problem is that I've only got two patch cables. Most annoying to switch my box and my notebook.... (I've got three computers on this little network.)

I hate April Fools. All the jokes are so stupid. Call me a grouch.. whatever. It's just dumb. I do have to admit that Google's little joke was good.. but the rest, blah. Especially Slashdot. Geeze! Last year when they did I got *so* turned off to Slashdot.

Ok, enough babbling for now. I'll go write somewhere else now.

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