Older blog entries for superant (starting at number 69)

Well this political stuff is keeping me busy. I am surprised no one says anything about Howard Dean, here.

I am trying to install Drupal website software. Having a hard time.

I enjoyed getting Linux on my Sony Vaio PCG-V505BX. I will have to write up my experiences. Pretty much everything is working except suspend.

I got arrested at the Downtown Los Angeles Federal building. That will teach me not to do peace protesting.

I have not done anything on the computer forever. Except I got a Palm m500 and am syncing everywhere and AvantGoing. IS that a verb.

Good thing I did not write the diary yesterday like I planned to.

I hated Linux. I am installing on 10 old Pentiums. I have tried: Redhat 8.0, Suse 7.3, Corel 1.1, Progeny 1.0 As you can guess it has not gone well. The main problem has been X video detection. I have since learned it is Compaq's fault. So I am not as mad at Linux as I was.

I just delivered 10 other computers to a middle school across town. It is nice being Santa Claus, but the gravy train is almost over. There is alot of demand for donated computers. You would think with all my experience with non-profits I would be able to start an organization that could recycle old cast-offs, but it seems like too big a job to me.

Well, my boss did something that makes me crazy (mad as in rabid) She said it is Karen's birthday, so could I cover the phones, so everyone else could go out to lunch. WHAT!!! so of course I said ok. See what bad child rearing can do.

I have given 10 computers to an after school program and 15 computers to a middle school. With the cooperation of 3 orgs we have managed to move some computers.

I am going to buy a new computer. The time has finally come. I am going to CompUsa tonight. I'm more excited than me on my wedding night.

I got the check for the review of RH 8.0. That and the year end bonus from work and I am ready to buy some tech! Charlotte says I should use it for fun. Fsck the bills.

Had fun meeting Alex and his wife. The Linux CDs seem to work, but I should upgrade the X servers. I need to learn more about auto detecting video cards.

I have 30 old pentiums at work I need to find a home for, I am looking for a poor school or similar project.

The bootable Linux CD with Tkfp is also ready. That is a good thing because Dr. Caldwell's talk is this week. ;-)

Next perhaps I will put GnuMed on a CD.

Well, RubyConf was fun. I should have given a more entertaining talk, but I will get better with practice.

Now I am working on making a bootable CD for Dr. Caldwell to use in his presentation at Open Source Health Care Conference at UCLA on Nov 16.

Big job, but I think it will be ready. Need to increase the size of the initrd boot image and fix the browser startup problem.

Thanks to chipx86 for the website redesign.

Turned in my review of RH 8.0. I was very impressed. That is saying alot, since I have been a Debian only user for the last few years. Charlotte asked if I was going to keep it on the machine. I probably would if it worked perfectly with .debs ;-)

Now I MUST focus on Ruby, no reading SF, no distractions. Only 3 weeks before the RubyConf presentation.

Reading the autobiography of Beryl Markham, the woman aviator from Africa. It is holding my interest.

Have to work the office on Saturday. Must..find...more..time. AARGH

OK, Dr Dobbs Linux Digest is out. Mostly links about cluster and Beowulf software.

I am having a hard time preparing my RubyConf presentation. Chroot is kicking me in the butt. Guess what? strace error messsages don't tell you everything. AARGH

Charlotte and I are going out of town for 3 days. We need a vacation!

After watching Enterprise last night I had disturbing thoughts about the type of SF females that we fans like. Looking at Seven of Nine, T'Pol, and Scully, I find they are all disconnected from their emotional response. They have a flattening of affect that results in non emotional interactions with others and very little response to events in the outside world. Of course a Vulcan like T'Pol has a complete excuse for this with the Vulcan religion of suppression of all emotion. But even Hoshi, who has no excuse, seems to have a curious lack of diversity in her emotional response. She is either afraid or resigned to follow orders.

I am concerned that this reflects badly on us SF fans. We like women who we can look at, and think of as sexual objects, without any chance of them responding in any emotional way. They will not be angry, or hardly even recognize that they are being treated sexually. ``Kiss what is kiss?'', as Altaira says in Forbidden Planet. And don't even get me started with Captain Janeway, she makes a better android than Data. Is it time for us to grow up, or should we continue to wallow in our self indulgent hedonism? A real woman[TM] likes to shop for hours, watch romance movies, gets upset when there are large spiders in the house.

Uh, computer software, uh, I'm thinking about it.