w00t!! My Sharp Zaurus SL-5000 arrived today, after being delivered to the wrong house, and subsequently opened by the unintended recipient. Oh well, I've got it now.

First impression....this thing is seriously nifty! I could see this thing having all manner of uses. Now if I could figure out how to get a screenshot...it does not use X. Has slots for SD/MMC cards as well as Compactflash, and works with Xircom LAN and modem cards, and a few other memory and 802.11b CF cards. It also runs a flavor of PersonalJava. I think I need to brush up on the Java coding now. One thing I did not see is a serial cable - the device comes with a USB cradle, but unless that works with a Linux development host, it won't be too useful.

This new acquisition will be useful. With a decent-size SD card, it can play MP3's. It has the standard PDA stuff like calendar, todo-list, and address-book. Best of all, I can recompile it's kernel!! :-) Do that with your PalmOS or WinCE box!

No progress whatsoever on the DMS, aside from some minor fiddling with HTML output. Downloaded and played with Redhat's Interchange ecommerce software...this has potential, if I can get it to play nicely with a database of over 400K parts. It's a possibility.

The new motor (JDM B16a) for my '89 Civic LX is scheduled to arrive tomorrow. Called up the shop and got their OK to show up with a car and a huge pile of parts. Ordered up a set of custom axles, which were incidentally cheaper than the '88 Integra axles that some people use for this swap. Now all I need is a new engine wiring harness, an exhaust header, and a new catalytic convertor.

Looked over the motor's ECU, and it does not appear to be ODB-anything. Bummer, cos there's some neat software to show and change parameters from one's palmpilot. Oh well.

Don't know how germaine to slashdot's general content this is, but it's my journal and I'll post what I like :-p

Somehow I managed to wrangle a half-day at work today, so I decided to go visit a new local motocross track. The founders had invited me to come take a spin and check it out. So, despite only having ridden on dirt roads before, I hopped on the CR250 and went to check it out.

There's a very tight, technical woods trail loop, that makes a circuit around the MX track, and would be tight for a mountain bike. And here I am on a CR250 with dropped gearing (good for 90mph on-road)...talk about clutch abuse. I didn't get out of first gear there at all. Did a couple laps of this, then waited till most of the people took a break from the MX track, and went out there. Wow, I still can't get out of first...damn street gearing! The jumps were cool...I've never jumped before, but I came out quite alright. I did skip the double...don't fancy coming up short and smacking into the second face! I have got to get new tires...my rear tire is worn to the point I have no grip with the bike upright, but when leaned over it grabs and shoots me in directions I'd rather not go.

Some things in the real world are better than anything I've ever done on a computer, and I think I've found another one. Wonder if I can still call myself a computer geek...I roadrace, ride motorcycles on and offroad, play soccer, volleyball, shoot things. Oh well, back to messing with outer joins in Postgresql....my arms are sore now.

Well, work on the DMS addons has pretty much stifled...workload has taken a sudden jump as a coworker has decided to just not show 3 Saturdays in a row, and now has not turned up Monday or today either. Now that's just bloody fantastic..grr.

Got tired of writing customer's return authorisations in a book, and started coding a replacement in PHP, stuffing the data in a Postgres table. Messed about some with sequences too...nifty feature, that. This would be something else to add to the DMS addons...especially if customers could fill in the form and request a return authorisation (with approval/denial by me/someone else of course). The whole object of this system is to save me work, of course, and the more typing the customers can do, the longer my hands will survive without carpal tunnel syndrome.

Talked to my manager about some of this stuff...I'm still trying to coax him to move our website to a colo'd Linux/BSD machine, rather than the shared LAME NT box it's currently on.

Been a while since I put something in here...and I'm bored....

I'm beginning to think that PHP is the greatest thing since...oh, Linux or something, especially in combination with PostgreSQL (Mysql fans go away! :-P). Due to limitations in our DMS (Dealer Management System, I work at a motorcycle dealer), I have been coding up some bits and pieces to do stuff, and am now to the point where I can begin tying some of them together.

I mainly deal with wholesale to businesses, who generally have part numbers, often request price/availability checks, quotes and the like. Since I'm the only one in my department (hell, I AM the department), anything that can make the client do stuff instead of me is good. Currently I am working on a PHP-based web interface to take orders, do quotes, return discontinued/superceded parts info, and request return authorisations. Now, I have to figure out how to transfer that information from a colocated box to our office LAN, and the DMS. Should be interesting.

How interesting...slashdot's features are expanding a la kuro5hin. Though I haven't been over there in months. Odd that I read this site daily and I hadn't noticed all the new functionality until now. Oh well, the big blue room has enough distractions, I can't absorb all the information in front of me.