So, I'm reading a NYT article about Intel, ( http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/29/technology/29intel.html?adxnnl=1&oref=login&adxnnlx=1101791735-KEyDjzA0gnJ28avwGhNFog/ ) and the section:

Some thoughts:

If the oil supply is limited, and solar/electric isn't cutting it, why aren't we seeing more biodiesel? I want to see more of these: http://wired.com/news/autotech/0,2554,65054,00.html

The best thing is, the infrastructure is already there, and unleaded could be phased out like regular gas was (I never drove a regular gas car, but I remember the tail end of the Regular gas era).

Yeah, well,

Everything is on hold. I got a job (started last week) and everythign is on hold while I get situated at the new job. Above and beyond that I have to deal with my (very nice, very generous) friend's 28.8 dialup because there is no other choice.

Otherwise life is great because I'm out of pizza and into newspapering.

I only wish there was a better way to get my daily dose of slashdot.

Well, I have been fussing with Mandrake (and now Fedora Core 1 via Linux for Dummies) and my eyes are open wider than they have ever been before.

Support. There isn't any official support from ATI for my AIW Radeon 7500- the driver support starts at 8500. This means I have to go to the OS community, and no disrespect, but it's a pain in the ass.

Getting the hang of ./configure
make
make install

Although it is hard to tell a CLI how to browse to /usr/lib/gtk when it needs to be in your $PATH.

I'm working on it. I'm getting better at it. I gave up on glib and xmms for now, Totem is doing just fine right now. In fact, it is entirely sufficient for playing mp3s from /mnt/win_c.

I... I miss WInamp. At least I dual-booted my box and I can still get to XP.

... is easy installation of programs.

Yesterday I installed Firefox.

That's all I did, for hours.

Today I am trying to install linEAK.

But since I didn't install any development tools (development tools? I'm not going to write any code) I can't install linEAK because it needs gcc.

I think.

I miss installers. They just work, 99% of the time. I do remember when it was hit and miss (Win3.11 and dos era) but this is ourtageous.

For the newbie:

to change directory:
cd /home/
cd /home/andy/documents/
If you're in /home/ you can change to /home/andy/ by typing cd ./andy

To execute a command in a given directory (that isn't in your path): ./firefox-installer-bin

This is really need to know stuff. It sucks that it's so basic that no one even realizes they're doing it.

I have a very fresh Mandrake 10.0 and I thought I installed Firefox, but apparently I didn't.

Not only that, my journal page is broken, _broken_ in Konqueror. So very broken I reloaded the page 5 times before I tried scrolling down to see if anything showed up.

There's six columns of... columns on the right hand side, and the backdroung around the text entry box is black.

I was all ready to go off on something and then I found Greplaw and started reading along

ooh, shiny!

War on drugs. So I picked up Penn & Teller: Bullshit on BitTorrent. It was interesting what they had to say about the War on Drugs.

Here's for you SAT fans. IMO,
War on Drugs : Marijuana as Prohibition : Alcohol
I have felt this since college, probably about the time I first tried pot (shocking!).

I will likely never own a land line until I get married.

When I get a land line, there will be two requirements:

1. Always on. During the blackout of 2003 it was nice to at least communicate with people without worrying about whether the phone would work.

So I finally reinstalled Mandrake 9. I had trashed it because the UI (Gnome or KDE) was too different from Windows, the keyboard shortcuts I live and die by just didn't work the same.

WHY?

I knew it was a shitty excuse, but I just couldn't get it to work right. And then the killer: XawTv didn't want to cooperate. It would scan for channels, and for all I knew, I was damned if I couldn't get it configured correctly the first time.

I have found a solution for all of us who might need or want random passwords.

Bottle cap codes from sweepstakes.

It's so simple. I have been collecting Mountain Dew caps for their Dew U promo and entering the codes online. Today it occurred to me that these (seemingly) random numbers would make for great passwords.

Cheap, easily replaceable, and you could probably leave it on your desk and no one would know the true purpose of the cap.

Seriously,
Outsourcing is a good thing. I remember growing up with the droning of the 'trade deficit' the US had, how we imported more than we exported. The concern was that we were losing factories and industry overseas, mainly to Japan.

The concern now is that computer science jobs, namely programming jobs, are fleeing to other countries to cheaper labor with the possibilty of leaving millions of good people without jobs.

So far:
Rockin' the job. Yawn.

Excercise? yeah, well, keep going on that one.

typing? slowly. very slowly. very, very slowly coming along. It's more a matter of a few keys that my fingers can't seem find.

Alcohol. 99.9% success. Broke down and got a 6-pack of Labatt Nordic, the NA beer. Yeah, well, I missed that wonderful beer flavor. Would have toasted my dad's hiring after a long jobsearch, but I had to work and I missed the family dinner.