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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.. |
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May 27, 2001 - Updates at 0935
Memorial Day. Take a moment or five to consider the manner in which others have given their lives to protect and serve our various countries. Give thanks. It is important.
Good morning. Gosh, I don't know what it is about Monday mornings. It feels like I've been busy for hours already... oh. I have. I see. Heh! We weren't up at the crack of dawn, as is usual, but it was sometime between 6 and 7 when we began stirring. Since then, Marcia's made us a marvelous breakfast of Beignets, some sort of low-fat New Orleans breakfast dish. Pretty yummy, deep-fried and smothered in powdered sugar. Mmmm. Did I say low fat? I might have lied!
Additionally, I've finished rebuilding Gentoo Linux onto Gryphon, the Acer Travelmate. The goal this time was to see just how much faster KDE is when built against version 2.12+ of binutils. This update enables a feature called combreloc. This permits pre-linking (or some such like that) against relocated code: something common in most C++ code, and rampant in Qt and KDE. This makes KDE run much faster, supposedly. I am pleased to report that this is true. KDE program start times are cut by a factor of 2 to 8, depending on whether it's first load, or subsequent. To get this working, I followed the directions found in this topic on the Gentoo forums. Thanks to Greg for pointing out this particular time sink to me.
I'm fighting a battle between a strong desire to relax, and finishing up the article on OpenOffice.org's Impress (presentation) component. I'll let you know how it comes out later. See ya!
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May 28, 2002 - Updates at 0723
Hola! It is back to the regular routine here at Hovel Bilbrey. Up a few ticks before the crack of dawn, coffee and ice (on the knee) for Marcia, just coffee for me, and a not-so-quick review of my email before I'm really competent to comprehend it. In other words, things are perfectly normal around here. In the rest of the world, however...
Suicide bombers in Israel, Pakistani missile tests, barges running into bridges, 11 year old protesters arrested in SF, kidnap victims with a one year anniversary of their captivity in the Philipines, Taliban and Al Qaeda remnants plotting horror and terror, on and on the litany runs. What a nasty place this world seems from time to time. There are moments in each day when I wonder whether I should be doing something different. Mmmm.
I vote for a government of "democratically" elected officials who theoretically represent my viewpoint to the world. How are they doing? Well, mostly they're walking the thin line they're allowed to, all for being the power-hungry jackals that they are. I generally approve of many of the actions and stances taken by the US, and I do still have the right to speak my mind when I disagree. That's not true over most of the world. Among other things, my taxes pay for a military force which is being used, overall, for missions that I approve of (not that they ask my permission first, heh).
I'm certainly no policy wiz. I'm just a regular joe, with opinions and a soapbox. I contribute to those causes that espouse my beliefs and take my agenda into the right arenas (like the EFF, for example). However depressing it might be, it does pay to stay aware of the world around me. But some days it certainly is a sorry sight.
I spent a not-insignificant chunk of time yesterday fighting with both OpenOffice Impress and MS PowerPoint. I guess I just don't get along with the primary tool of the sales people. Crashes (by both programs), small features that don't carry over, what a PITA! Eventually this will turn into a good article, but right now it's really frustrating. I don't give up until I bend it to my will, however. So wish me luck.
And for another reason, too - it's dentist day today. I was whining to Angie, one of the girls who works in the office there just last week. Once we move to Maryland, I'm going to have to find a new sadist. That's a lot of work. I finally have a dentist that I'm reasonably content with, so clearly, it's time to leave the state. Aaaaergh!
I suppose I'd best get my day rolling properly here, lots to do and less time! See you around.
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May 29, 2002 - Updates at 0730,
1435
Good morning. I *will* finish the OpenOffice Impress article for LinuxMuse today. Back when that's done.
1435 - Indeed, done. Submitted upstream for editing, the Impress article should be up on LinuxMuse tomorrow morning. Now what? Relax for a few minutes. You'd think I would have plenty of spare time on my hands, given that I'm currently between jobs. Not only is that not the case, but I feel busier than I did when I was working full time. How does that work?
Also done this morning: I made Sally thoroughly unhappy by making it bath/flea spray day. Gosh she hates that, big time! I made a Costco run, and dropped by a packaging materials store to make sure all of the items that Marcia wants on hand for packing the house are in stock regularly. They are, and that's a good thing. There are some stunningly good deals for packaging online, but all the savings and then some are eaten, still squirming, by the shipping costs. It's not that the material is heavy, but it's large, which means that all the carriers use dimensional means to price the shipping. Buy boxes in bulk only appears to make sense by the truck load. Any less, and it costs more to ship by UPS that the value of the shipment. Wild!
There are a variety of items that I neglected to mention while I was in my article-non-producing funk. First out, Mr. Lemmings [stop saying that you'll happily throw him off a cliff, it just annoys him] has rejoined those of us who prefer living in virtuality, starting with this very week. This is most excellent, because I do like his sense of humor, even (or particularly) when it's a tad sour. A bland life is boring, don't you think? Next up, Dave Markowitz, currently tail-gunner charlie in the Daynotes Gang, just celebrated on Monday his 34th year on this mudball. Hoorah!
It's not yet 1500 PDT, the temperature outside is over 90, and inside just a few degrees shy of that. I guess it's time to dig out a box fan or two. See you around!
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May 30, 2002 - Updates at 0703
Good morning. Welcome to heat wave central. We're in the midst of a three day mini-spike into the 90's. Although we don't have central air, it's okay - we just turn on box fans in several rooms and shout at each other over the resulting wind-tunnel effect. Right now, at 0645, it's still 75 degrees inside. Outside it is about 67 degrees and rising. But that's not the big news...
Happy anniversary to us! That's right, another year of life married to the marvelous Marcia is just beginning. Four happy years down, many more yet to come. Last night, just as we were retiring, I surprised Marcia with a little gift - a Seiko. Tonight we'll go out to supper someplace. Woo Hoo!
I did post yesterday afternoon here, as promised, and after a brief review by both Molly and Greg, posted the third installment in the OpenOffice article series over on LinuxMuse. Today, I'll poke around in the remaining corners of the OpenOffice toolbox, and see what I can come up with to flesh out the fourth and final article on this capable Office suite. I've also tasked myself with developing a list of resources that I'll regularly review for news items that meet our criteria for posting in the LinuxMuse news topic.
I guess I'll get to it, then. Have a lovely day. See you back here (or over on da Muse) if there's anything interesting to report.
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May 31, 2002 - Updates at 0641
Good morning. I am here to inform you that yesterday went entirely not as planned. When I woke up, I felt a little ragged, like I hadn't slept well. Not unexpected perhaps, as it was the first really hot day/night in a long time. But by mid-morning, that had degraded into the beginnings of a full-blown migrane. I haven't had one of those in a couple of years! So I stretched out on the couch, and stayed that way for a few hours.
I was feeling a bit better by late afternoon, but clearly our evening out plans weren't going to be happening. So instead, what should arrive in the mail but the movie that Marcia ordered months ago, the Harry Potter flick. So, with just a tinge of guilt on my part, we watched that and enjoyed it thoroughly.
So that's all I have to report. Happy Friday.
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June 01, 2002 - Updates at 0845
Good morning. Well, that's another week down the drain, and another month to match. Two months from today, we'll be on the road driving East. I'm looking forward to the trip, to settling into a new area, and the adventures we'll have while there. WooHoo! I've just joined a new forum, at the prompting of Don Armstrong. Apparently there are more than a few Marylanders therein, ready to lend a hand. How lovely!
Here's a little bit of business. The monthly reminders just went out for mailing lists the world over. Of course, that includes my little Talkabout mailing list, which has yet to recover from the swoon it went into following my server move to RackShack. My fault, of course, since it took a while to re-figure the setup given the security Greg and I (well, Greg, anyway) had implemented on Rocket. Also, we've been busy building up LinuxMuse, and I just haven't taken the time to work at reviving that community. I'm sorry and I'll do better. Ah, but the business at hand... This address: <mjgar {at} hotmail.com> failed to receive its message, with this error: "host mx14.hotmail.com[65.54.232.7] said: 552 Requested mail action aborted: exceeded storage allocation" OY! Your mailbox is full!
Today we're going to take ourselves and Sally out to the coast for a while. We're not going to be as near to an ocean as Marcia would like, once we've moved. So we'll get a fix or two before we go. See y'all around!
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June 02, 2002 - Updates at 0900
My, aren't we having fun. We've been up for an hour or more, and I'm still nursing my first cup of joe. However, I have a couple of pictures from yesterday...
About mid-morning yesterday we loaded up the dog and ourselves into the Blazer for a little trip to the coast. Marcia is going to miss this ocean a lot, she says. I dunno about Sally, though. The look on her face was something like, "This is the world's BIGGEST BATHTUB, isn't it? You KNOW I hate baths, don't you?" We had not taken Sally to the coast before, and she didn't quite know what to make of it all. But she ran about a bit, smelling things, hopping up on rocks (with a little help), and seemed to have a good time. So we decided to continue our trip by heading south to Santa Cruz. Clearly this was all just a bit too much excitement (and driving) for the poor puppy - she lost her lunch, there in the back of the truck, headed south on California Highway 1. She really seems to hate riding. She doesn't know how to enjoy it, how to stick her head out the window and let the wind try to steal her ears and tongue. She'll have none of that.
Adding insult to injury, we had to give her a bath when we got home. She as much as said to me, "But wait! I just had a bath last weekend. I don't need a bath! I'll lick all this sand off, it'll be fine, you'll see... sigh." All arguments that carried no weight with me, especially when I had to bath the dog, the inside of the truck, and run 5 loads of laundry. She was moping around most of the afternoon, giving us looks as you can see at the left. It took until late evening, after she got to clean out my ice cream bowl before she really cheered up again.
Fluxbox screenshot (1600x1200, 289k)
In between doing chores, I spent time playing with working on my desktop. Here's my latest ~/.xinitrc :
/usr/bin/xplanetbg -latitude 37 -longitude -122 &
/usr/X11R6/bin/xfishtank -b 50 -f 15 -r .1 -d &
/usr/bin/fluxbox
Yep. No default KDE at the moment for Mrs. Bilbrey's son! Fluxbox is a nice, lightweight windowmanager that's KDE and GNOME application compliant, and it has some nice features. But what's really fun is running two active programs in the root window as desktop background. I'm running Xplanet and Xfishtank, both. The xplanet viewpoint is from geostationary orbit directly over Sunnyvale (not down to the minute and second, but close enough). The desktop image updates every five minutes, so I watch the terminators sweep across the globe, and night falls on screen at the same time as it does outside. Then, over the top of that, fish swim and bubbles rise. It's a horrid waste of compute power, and oodles of fun.
On tap for today, we've got a trip to the Veterinarian to pick up tranquilizers for the trips to Ashland next month, and to Maryland at the end of July. Then we've got a bit of grocery shopping, and we'll go out to supper tonight. In between, I'll spend some time working on the final OpenOffice article for LinuxMuse. You have a great Sunday, too!
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2002 Brian P. Bilbrey.