Yup it does. It's a pity that I like it so damn much. I had a Vanilla Latte at pepperonis for lunch, along with a Ham and Pesto Panninni. Damn, it was nice.

Now I'm all jittery and have to pee a lot. Damn you sweet sweet beans damn you to hell.

I'm also all hyped up because I've just finished ranting about how great Linux is to a co-worker, who expressed interest in the various facets of it, including the potential of embedded linux over something like, say WindowsCE... whoa.. headrush.. :)

Its gonna take me awhile to calm down to a point where I'll be able to resume PHP c0ding...

*breathe....*

Ok, now a rant. A rant about morons.
I've noticed that whenever I spot a car on the road with one of those stupidly large mufflers on them, the first thought that pops into my head is "Cock" or "Moron" or "Dickhead" or "Fucknut".
Its a strange pre-conception. Its not like I know the person who drives the car, or chooses to have a big dumb muffler. There might even be technical reasons as to why such a thing is better (something about balancing airflow im told). I don't care. Having one of those things instantly makes you a dickhead in my mind. Its probably because I see a huge number of people with these cars driving and acting like total morons....all because they have a "performance" car.
Funny, tho, I've never seen a Porche or Ferrarri or any such high,high end performace car with such an attachment... I suspect its because of some proper design on their part, and the fact that the big exhausts are just damn ugly.

Ok. Rant over... for now... or untill I see another moron on the road...

Heeh.. well its been, like 6 months since Christmas.. and I never did finish off the story.. maybe I will later...

Well.. at the moment, my computer is on the blink.. fully.. and i've got a wicked headcold.
And I've totally underestimated how long this project at work is going to take... there might be some late nights coming up.. not looking forward to it.. of course, I'll put in for overtime, which'll be nice...

Righto.. Christmas things.. well, right now its the 26th, and we're heading off to see The Two Towers in around an hour.. but lets start nearer the beginning..

Well.. We had Lemmy booked into a cattery down in Waimate, which meant he had to endure the 2.5hr car ride down here.. he freaked out for a bit.. . then we realised he wasn't getting enough air, so we rolled down the windows, and he was fine.. went to sleep with Daisy after a little while..

The real fun began when we got to the cattery. I got lemmy in my arms.. and there's this dog there. This freaked out lemmy somewhat.. but the real trouble started when we got him about 5 meters from the door of the cattery. He leapt out of my arms and ran off into the bush. The country-side bush. Lemmy has only ever run around our urban/suburban area and I'm sure was quite unprepared for the hazards of an ostritch farm.

Well, there was no catching him.. he was just way too fast. So after some calling, we just went back to Daisy's parents place.

Later that night, we got a call from the cattery people (who were very very nice) saying they'd heard lemmy calling out from somewhere in the bush but they couldn't get him to come out.. so we went down there...

Well, we called out.. and 30 seconds later, Lemmy shows up... now, its like 11pm at this point, and totally dark, so we have torches etc etc..

Daisy manages to grab him, but I think the torches freaked him out, and he became a twisting ball of claws and teeth, managing to scratch up daisy pretty good, and biting into the hand of the guy pretty deeply, and thus he was lost to the bush again.

SO after much calling, and searching and looking around, he shows up again, but this time he has me following him around the place, not letting me close enough to pick him up... he seemed to have settled down, and I think he secretly was having the time of his life... after about an hour of this, we gave up and went back to Daisy's parent's house.....

to be contd...

Hmmm I wrote something in here yesterday...

grr...
didn't show up...

Well.. I'm happy to report that the install has gone pretty smoothly from that point onwards... redhat installed ok over the network, and booted up fine.

Next order of business was the set up of X windows,
which went alright, considering... such things are never a smooth process :) I even got it working with both the inbuilt laptop pointer 'nub' thingy, and also the external serial wheelmouse. 640x480 really does suck a fair bit though ;-)

I compiled fluxbox as my windows manager - there won't be enough RAM for anything fancier, but it's pleasent enough. Took ages to compile on the laptop tho... lesson learned there.

I compiled a 2.4.18 kernel (on one of my faster boxes) and installed it.. no problems, first go! W00t! I then installed a newer e2fsprogs and converted the filesystem over to ext3 (no data corruption and fsck anymore) :)

Of course, this all pretty much cost me another day of doing any real work... now its 3am, and I've got to do a few more changes to this Training CD in time for a 10am meeting... hmmm.. priorities or something............ meh

Well... trying to install RedHat Linux on this old Toshiba Satellite T2130CS Laptop.... (its a 486-DX4 75Mhz, 32MB RAM, 2GB harddisk)...

Its certainly a tale of trials and tribulations...

Pt 1:
Well.. almost an entire day was spent on this so far.. starting off by backing up the windows data that was on the laptop (in case I have to give it back to the owner).. first, tried using IE on the laptop to connect to the ServU FTP server on my main box... boy did that suck.. then tried installing CuteFTP Pro on the laptop... that looked like it was going to take forever...
Then.... I thought.. hang on.. I'm using windows.. why not try using Windows Networking? Whoa. well, that worked.. and copied the 500MB of files in about an hour or so...

Then, on to the install.. I thought, well, lets be up-to-date.. I pull out my RedHat 8.0 install disks, and copy the .rpms to my harddisk on my main box (so I can do an FTP install over the network - the laptop has no CDROM) Cool.
Right.. now make some boot floppies.. *This* is where the real fun begins... Looks like the PCMCIA boot disk, and the extra PCMCIA driver disk are the ones I want..so I create those... but the PCMCIA boot disk won't boot! Gives some hopeless error message, and tells me to try another disk or something. Well.. after *hours* of trying all the boot disks... some booting ok, but not giving me the FTP install option, or providing the FTP install option, but not detecting the network card.. ARGH

So now I go... Well, RH 8.0 is just fuX0red... I'll try my Redhat 7.1 install set.. I remember the FTP thing showing up in the install when I last ran it (ages ago.. can't remember when).. so I pull it out and give it a go..
Well.. progress! The install seems to run alright, detects the pcmcia network adapter ok, finds the FTP on my main machine.. I select the packages I want installed (something which always takes ages)
and hit 'Go'
.
.
Oh.. I selected for the disk format to check for bad blocks.. this is going to take all night. Reboot, repeat above.
.
.
Oh.. ok.... now it's trying to install packages via FTP.. except that its not trying to access the FTP server.. its still 'connected'.. I set the timeout to some huge value... but no data, no action. GAH

*Ding* I can to an HTTP installation.. no logins or problems with timeouts for that.... So I fire up my copy of Apache (for Windows) on my main box, and point it to where I've installed the RedHat rpm files. I run through the install *again*.. Select the packages *again*...

At least now its installing packages via HTTP from my main box.... it started by telling me that the time remaining was 56hours or something... since I've been writing this, that's dropped to 1hr, 28 min... hopefully, thats the more accurate figure..
it has to install about 1.2GB of stuff over a 10Mbit network connect...

I'll write an update tomorrow.. I'm tempted to go to bed :)

Wow.. its been ages since I've written in here..

Went swimming with MissC again.. managed to swim further this time... whether or not that's a sign of increasing fitness, I can't tell :)

Went 10 pin bowling with Dom & Daisy... was pretty fun.. Dom only beat me in the last frame too..

Yesterday, we went to Charlotte's birthday party, which was pretty cool.. we got her a bellybutton ring thing.. very pretty :)
Yesterday, was, coincidentally, Mine and Daisy's 2nd anniversary.. yaay! Got her some Invader Zim stuff shipped over from the states.. its very cool, and she was real pleased with it.. :)

Oh... and I finally went nuts and tried to find a replacement windows shell... All I really wanted was some kind of application launcher.. *sigh* all the ones I tried has appalling support for dual monitors... currently, I'm using ObjectDock, which is a MacOSX dockbar type system... its real pretty, and is actually a pretty good application launcher & taskbar.. 'cept that its got a few bugs, and needs to be restarted everynow and then.. *SIGH*

Friday morning: Dropped Daisy at MissCs for cleaning duties... and me and MissC went to the QEII swimming pools in an attempt at some sort of fitness regieme.. The 50m pool taught us both how badly unfit we both are.. I think we managed, maybe 6 or 7 laps.... *sigh*

That was more than made up for, by the new swirly pools, and the wave pool, and pirate ship and spa pool and stuff... w00t!

That evening, me and Daisy couldn't decide what we wanted for dinner... and we ended up eating outside at Le-Cafe.. very pleasent.. nice weather and stuff... good food (although it made me real gassy later)

We then went to Alice's video, and got out some DVDS... and I bought the LoTR special edition, 4 DVD set.. Ooooo.. its sooo nice.... instead of watching the DVDs we hired, we ended up watching the first half of the making-of... all 2.5 hours of it.. :)

Yesterday... we went to Doms, and watched the extended version of the movie.... wow.. its sooo much better now... everything makes more sense, the character development is much better, no so frantic pacing... verdict: Its all good :)

Got home at 3:30am tho.. boy we're tired...

Well.. what an evening... it was one of those nights.. a spare evening looking for a purpose.. a reason... something to friggin DO.

So it eventuated.. .We had "Chuckfest" mainly involving the destruction of old, and non-working computer parts... some were thrown, some jumped upon, some run over... A large television was set on fire in a skate-park, decorated with sparklers and then run down a skate-ramp.

And the Uni Commerce department's Base Are Belong To Us, with a new addition to the awful fountain outside it.

Hmmm.. fairly cruisey day... got up at 12.. should have got up at 9:30 when my alarm went off.. ah well.

Worked a bit.. then went to Brazillia for lunch with Daisy. Then went and looked at TVs.. I'm thinking of getting a 21" TV.. so watching DVDs isn't a completely self-defeating experience (like now, on a 14 incher).. found one at the Moorhouse Ave Powerstore for $530.. which is a pretty reasonable deal, I've decided... went to Noel Leemings clearinghouse, and found that the prices there are only *marginally* less than those for new gear.. not worth it really. Hmm.. I'm gonna have to draw up a budget for all this stuff..

Although my new dress pants should be ready by tomorrow.. yaay :)

*Sigh* 2nd Anniversary for me and Daisy in a couple of weeks, then her birthday 2 weeks after that... in between we have Charlottes birthday... then Christmas... then the Big Day Out / Trip to Auckland, then MY birthday... this part of the year always seems to get so expensive Heh.

Well.. what a pleasent Sunday afternoon its been...
the weather has been completely wonderful... clear blue skies and nice n warm...
Me and Daisy went out... in search of cardboard, envolopes and supermarket goodies... we went into the Stationary Warehouse, when I saw that they had a USB Scanner on sale for $70.... it was a returned item, and was missisng the polystynene stuff that always comes with such things.. it was normally $160.. what a score.. :)

Well well well.. what a party....lemme see...
there was pirates.. (not as many as there should have been) Charlotte came dressed as a whory pirate wench.. :) there was drinking... lots of drinking... there was sifty whory dancing on the behalf of many many people... in the laundry... there was bubblegun crisis... childrens hand-slapping games..... company men...

IT WAS OFF THE HOOK

Well.. today so far has been pretty good.. chatting with Daisys dad was not half as scary as I thought it was going to be.. :)

Anyhow... we were supposed to go for lunch, but then Charlotte rings, and we're told to go to Riccarton Mall.. which was cool, because I wanted to buy pants and/or shoes..

I eventually bought $120 of trousers (they're nice tho).. and no shoes today.. next week I think :)
Of course I was then dragged through every girly shop in the place by Char and Maria, which was pretty funny. Charlotte bought a bikini, which was her aim for the day. Maria spent a ton.. buying some new shoes and a bunch of other stuff..
We were mainly looking for things to wear to the Pirate party tonight... alas.. except for some hoop earrings and a scarf for Daisy, we found nothing terribly piratical.. for once, the $2 shop failed us.. no swords, cutlases, eyepatches.. grr. and after halloween you'd think places would be overflowing with this stuff.. ah well

We had Sushi for lunch.. I had smoked chicken, which was nice.. although I made the mistake of putting Wassabi on one of them... OUCH

We went to Northlands, bought more stuff, then dropped Maria & Char home.

Then, there was the PIRATE PARTY.
I'll write mone on this in the morning :)

I think Lemmy has made friends with the black cat that frequents our backyard. ... and the Noise Rock band last night were awful.. nothing like the recording I have of them.. heh

Got up early today.. set my alarm for 8:45.. woke up, turned off the alarm.. re-woke at 11am... ah well, so much for that idea. I was supposed to have a meeting with Trevor this morning, ended up having it in the afternoon.. it took like 2.5 hours too :)

Managed to talk on the phone with Daisy (who's in Waimate) which was real good.. she's back early tomorrow morning, which will be great.. I'm gonna have to deal with her Dad tho.. which will be a bit unpleasant I think... ah well.

DanG and Liz came round tonight - we watched a bunch of Full Metal Panic... thumbs up all round, as well as thumbs up for Invader Zim. It was concluded that Legend of Zu can only be appreciated on a huge screen with big sound.. :)

Now, I'm cleaning up at 2am.. whoohoo... I really should be in bed.. tomorrows gonna be a long day.. with Daisy arriving, me needing to do a buttload of work, and Dans Pirate party in the evening..