Argh!!! I've been pounding my head up against the debian package of phpgroupware, and now I'm a little bit sore from it. I heard on the phpgroupware IRC channel that the debian packages are hosed. So I wasted alot of time trying to get them going, and I'm a bit miffed. So I guess it's a quick trip to the cvs and I'm golden, Ja?

I'm putting a simple script on all my debian boxen today, /sbin/upgrade, just because I'm lazy.

#!/bin/bash
apt-get update && apt-get -f -y upgrade && dpkg --pending --configure

I went to EUGLUG meeting last night, installing some low-end boxes to be used as web terminals for a community computer room. Details here.

Given my background, I have a new mantra... "Must get Cryptonomicon, must read Cryptonomicon". I knew this before, but now I know even more that I must get it and read it. I got John Katz's Geeks and the introduction itself was worth the price of the book, so I'm pretty happy with it, even though he has a shortage of lovers in the techie community.

Today was all spent calling people and trying to get things going on the money front. You just have to love IT recruiters sometimes.

I just got on the "Job Jar" for PEAK, in Corvallis. It's a list of projects that need people, but for the local linux community. Most of it is web schtuff, but it might be an interesting way to have a little bit of fun.

Musically, I've been listening to alot of Dr. Didg. very interesting guy, IMO. He learned the didgeridoo as a physics project, and now he can make it do all sorts of fun things. Add to that a bit of sampling, cool funk/jazz/world beats, and some electric background, and you've got a very good band.

So I check the notorious slashdot today, and there's an article on search engines... hmmm... so now I've added one wisenut very quickly to Castor. Eventually I'll get the search engines all listed and working, then it's a matter of looking at the engine behind all the fun to see why I'm not getting the right results from some of them. I know for a fact that WhatUSeek is getting the information submitted, but for some reason, Castor says it's not going through. Oh well, life is hard sometimes...

All this talk from gregorsamsa about search engines is funny to me and relevant to what I'm doing. mobius talked about how he was bemused by the results from findwhat. Findwhatis a pay-to-play search engine, and one of the ones I've been having a heartache over because they don't have a free submit your site page that I've found.

I have this friend that I've talked to on occassion.... She used to be a recruiter for any skilled worker. I've worked for her a couple of times as a Russian Translator. So anyway, now she's the recruiting manager for Info Group NW, and I'm on the short list for a few positions. I guess that's a score for the small town thing we've got going on here. The funny thing is, she's bounced around town to different companies, and we always seem to cross paths from time to time. I think this is the first time that the small-town thing has ever been good for me..... hmmmm, makes me wonder.

Just got back from this weekend... a pretty good time was had.

I ended up in Corvallis for the Install fest hosted by the Mid-Willamette LUG. I got there for the last little bit, so not much was happening. From what I heard, sounded like there were alot of people that showed, and lots of good things going on.

I stayed at Cooper and Kassetra's, talking all night, and the next day I took Cooper up to the Erma Bells. I fished the lakes, and he took pictures.... a couple of geeks doing their things in the woods. When we got back, I was so tired I didn't feel safe to drive, so I slept at their house. I just now got back, and I think I smell like a yeti, which isn't as bad as it sounds. ;^)

I got spidered by picsearch so I had a look at what they do. It's interesting to me, so I fired off an email to see if they have an URL Submit page that I can add to Castor.

As far as Castor goes, I've eliminated alot of the search engines that don't work for some reason or another, and I'm slowly picking through the ones that don't, and trying to figure out why. At least google, hotbot, northern lights, and excite (sometimes) work, so it's still a good tool. It just needs more love. obligatory link

OK, so I'm adding entries and fixing up the Castor spider my development version here, and I'm just getting amazed at things...

The original Castor code was written last year, and in that time, the state of search engines has changed considerably.

So many search engines now are only pay-to-be-listed. That's so strange to me. <rant voice="whiney"> Hello, it's just a search engine, not religion </rant>

To their credit, there are several out there that are still free, and that allow you to submit to them from the outside world. Yea, verily. But for now, I'm taking out the search engines that don't work, and I'll figure out why one by one.. I think it will take a bit of time, though.

Heard this today, in my random mp3 collection:

By the old seaside

Ain't no place far to go
I don't know
I don't know
Ain't no place far to go

It's a dollar, she say
Te amo le mas
Te amo le mas

Santo

--Pixies, Santo

So today, I'm off to Corvallis for an install fest, or at least the last of it, and then it's off to the mountains by myself to fish my skinny little butt off and fall asleep alone under a tarp. Life is sweet.

OK, I'm getting back on the bandwagon for the past few days, so I've been noticeably absent in my diary here. I finally was able to adjust back to the "real world" after being deployed.

I've been doing all of my development in PHP/mysql, but I'm so eagerly eyeballing doing apps in GTK/GNOME. There's something that just calls to me, and I think it's called MDI.... or at least that's just the tip of it all. *drool*

I've got a search engine submit page finally up. It's raw but it's alive. submit.rybolov.net

In other departments, I just bought a Dr. Didg CD, and I'm pretty much hooked on it. I liked the didgeridoo before, but they've got a nice style. I sent off an email to their contact address begging for them to come to the Oregon Country Fair.