Advogato blog for nomadamon

31 Jan 2002

Thu, 31 Jan 2002 08:30:44 GMT

finally remembered my password....

been hacking on postgresql and have a few lines of my code in there -- woohoo! 7.2 is soon-to-be-released and is quite amazing.

futzing around with jails and mount_union on freebsd. freebsd is quickly winning my hacker heart.

ever-dreaming of getting out my "web developer" slave-job. Actually considering getting into used car sales -- nothing can suck more than writing retarded applications for retardeder customers. I'd love to get some sort of research position, but I don't have a college d$gr$$, so I guess I'm stuck being a high tech plumber if I stay in the computer field... FUCK!... wanna buy a nice used car?

tired.

out. :wq

5 Oct 2000

Thu, 5 Oct 2000 02:01:24 GMT

this week. vacation. drove to Boone, NC (from Raleigh). if anyone out there needs a *nix sysadmin/programmer type around, _please_ contact me (brent_A_rcfile_D_org). I would seriously like to reside in that beautiful land. hell, this pretty much applies to any lush mountainous area.

17 Sep 2000

Sun, 17 Sep 2000 19:40:02 GMT

sent a patch to the cscope maintainer to finish a bit of work I contributed a while back -- the ability to recursively index files. Originally, I did not take into consideration that ch/parse.c and cp/parse.c would not be indexed, since the the test for a file's inclusion used _only_ the file's name, not its relative location. This is now fixed, at least under the WorksForMe rule ;-) I've not yet _un_debianized my fresh debian install yet, though I was _real glad_ to figure out how to upgrade to unstable.

12 Sep 2000

Tue, 12 Sep 2000 04:28:32 GMT

I wonder if it is just me, or is it _much_ easier to do something significant when I'm off-task? I've amused myself the past few evenings by creating searchable html documentation for gcc (using texi2html and swish-e). I quickly found out that texi2html produced tasteless, bland html (even by my standards) and that swish-e needed metaphone support basically, it was a whole pile of fun stuffed into a time period where I should have been working on other things, but now I do have attractive, searchable gcc docs...

4 Sep 2000

Mon, 4 Sep 2000 20:13:16 GMT

way too much random noise in the headspace this weekend. On Thursday I decided I'd try to fix a bug(?) in g++ that causes __builtin_* functions to cause ambiguity at global scope, even when they were declared/requested within a namespace. Bad Idea. Wasted a weekend. I _think_ I see the general area(s) where the eventual fix will be, but the 3 hour compiler compile has kept me from randomly editing the compiler's source :) I gave the problem all of the spare cycles I had, yet was unable to solve it (eek eek). Now, I must wait til next weekend to fight it again. I _really hope_ someone produces a solution to the problem so [1) I don't waste another weekend and [2) I can see how the problem was solved for future bug hunting fun ;-) On top of this, I had to make a decision to decline a job offer I received on Friday. In fact, I think making this decision slowed down the bug-hunting substantially -- damn distractions! I'm still not comfortable in declining the job, since there would have been a $10k salary increase in addition to 10k stock options, but there is _no way_ I can leave my current employer (who would have a really bad time if I left) on such short notice. This little dilema started me thinking that the general shortage of skilled workers might make an 'employee swap' for employers a very useful/profitable business. Well, this is only useful if the employer and employee actually like each other. I drink beer with my boss on occasion, and would hate to lose a friend over a silly employment issue. Oh yeah, I also decided to wipe out a well-aged debian system and install debian 2.2. I'm gonna _try_ to _not_ un-debianize the box this time. I spent two hours trying to figure out how to upgrade a package the debian way when it would have take 15 minutes to download the tarball and configure/make/make install, but I did the debian thing :), and _hope_ to keep this system a debian system instead of turning it into a Brent's Linux Non-Distro. This experience reminded me how much simpler FreeBSD's ports system is to use.

30 Aug 2000

Wed, 30 Aug 2000 16:33:46 GMT

Can I revoke my certification of myself? Better yet, can I have a 'monkey' category added for me? (eek eek) Today, I like perl... been dreaming in c++... bash's select function never ceases to amuse me... thinking of writing a paper about growing software -- as opposed to magically creating it... I need a better job -- not more pay necessarily, I'd just like to be able to contribute a better portion of my _professional_ work back to the community, instead of having to 'work' after hours to make a difference to the world... I want my email address to outlive me...