(no subject)
I'm typing this up in a VNC window right now. I won't disclose my location since I don't want to incriminate myself with certain people who might read this in the future, but it will suffice to say I'm not at home. I think most of you regular readers will be able to figure it out.
Before I got into the week's events, I want to let everyone know that I'll be on vacation tomorrow through Friday. I'll be on my annual fishing trip with my dad, but we'll be fishing in northeast Iowa near the Mississippi River instead of in Minnesota like we originally talked about. Either way, it will be a nice change from fishing in southwest Iowa like we have for the most part in years past. It's not that I didn't enjoy it down there, because I did. It's that I haven't fished the Mississippi River in at least a decade and possibly two. I don't remember exactly how much time has passed.
As for the week, it was a pretty good one. I've kept up the exercise program and I've started to replace food rich in carbohydrates with food rich in protein and yes, fat. A good example is breakfast. I still have a bowl of oatmeal, but instead of the two pieces of toast I used to have, I have an egg or two instead. I'm aware that they're high in cholesterol, but they're also good sources of protein. For the most part I've avoided getting sweets from the vending machines at work (though I did break down on Friday morning), opting instead for the peanuts from the machine where the proceeds go to the Special Olympics. As far as the exercise goes, I've either been cycling or walking.
For the Fourth of July, Vik and I had some steaks he bought originally for the girl that he recently got back together with named Erin. I have no idea why he got back together with her since before they made up she would call him all the time and send him threatening text messages and try to make him feel guilty. It turns out that his probation officer won't let him see her, so it's all moot now. Anyway, after we had the steaks and did a lot of talking I went out for a walk while he watched movies, and then later we watched the fireworks on the grass near the parking lot where they were being launched. There were a few fireballs that came from some misfired fireworks, but overall the show went smooth and Vik seemed to be somewhat impressed.After that we went in. Vik went back to his movies and I went back to IRC until I went to work.
As far as work goes, they finally fixed the air conditioning in here sometime on Friday because they were working when I came in on Saturday. I also got my review on Thursday. I was surprised I got such perfect marks on teamwork until Jobi told me it was for working with people in my own department (whom I have good relations with), not interdepartmental work (where it varies depending on the department). And she told me once again that there are some people who are afraid to talk to me because apparently I scare them off. It's something I'll have to work on.
On the computing front, the updates to pkgsrc-2007Q2 have been a disaster. On my laptop some problems with the db4 package have caused a lot of packages to not build, most notably Linux-PAM (under security/PAM) and rpm. On my desktop I haven't been able to get the pkgsrc-2007Q2 tree at all, first due to some bogus errors about the /tmp filesystem being too full for cvs's temporary file(s), and then when I did get to log in with cvs it turns out the all the files for each package are missing, so it deletes my local copies from previous versions of pkgsrc. I hate to say it, but so far this is turning out to be the worst stable release of pkgsrc I've ever seen. I've never had problems like this with pkgsrc before. I filed a problem report about the db4 problem and got a workaround for that thanks to a generous person on the pkgsrc-users mailing list, but I haven't gotten a reply to my email about the problems updating my local copy on my desktop via CVS yet. All this means it will be unlikely that I'll be able to get my laptop's software up-to-date before I leave for Ai-Kon, which was my goal. I'm disappointed with the pkgsrc development team on this one.
Nevertheless I still have a Software of the Week:
This week's Software of the Week is QEMU. QEMU is an emulator that can emulate machines of various architectures and, if the processor type of the machine it's being used on (known as the "host") and the processor of the machine being emulated are the same, it will use instructions from the real processor instead of emulating them. This makes QEMU more efficient and has become a feature in most modern computer hardware emulators, many of which use software from QEMU. Since QEMU runs any operating system that the processor being emulates supports, it's possible to use it to run other operating systems on a system without installing them on a real hard drive. I currently do this with FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Red Hat Linux 7.3 (which was the first Linux distro I ever used, so for me it's a bit of nostalgia) and I've attempted to get Windows 95 installed off an old disk; more updates on that as I learn more. QEMU is availalbe for Unix-like systems and for Windows, and a port with a nice GUI exists for Mac OS X. If you're using Linux , you can also use the QEMU Accelerator, which further speeds of QEMU. The QEMU Web site also has several ready-made disk images you can use with it in case you don't want to make your own.
I've also cut back on playing GTA: Vice City, but I did indulge in getting my first virtual console game for the Wii: F-Zero X, originally released on the Nintendo 64. It was the only F-Zero game I hadn't played yet. Playing it has given me more insight into F-Zero GX became what it was.
That's all for now. I'll be on vacation starting tomorrow and I'll be back probably sometime on Friday afternoon.
Before I got into the week's events, I want to let everyone know that I'll be on vacation tomorrow through Friday. I'll be on my annual fishing trip with my dad, but we'll be fishing in northeast Iowa near the Mississippi River instead of in Minnesota like we originally talked about. Either way, it will be a nice change from fishing in southwest Iowa like we have for the most part in years past. It's not that I didn't enjoy it down there, because I did. It's that I haven't fished the Mississippi River in at least a decade and possibly two. I don't remember exactly how much time has passed.
As for the week, it was a pretty good one. I've kept up the exercise program and I've started to replace food rich in carbohydrates with food rich in protein and yes, fat. A good example is breakfast. I still have a bowl of oatmeal, but instead of the two pieces of toast I used to have, I have an egg or two instead. I'm aware that they're high in cholesterol, but they're also good sources of protein. For the most part I've avoided getting sweets from the vending machines at work (though I did break down on Friday morning), opting instead for the peanuts from the machine where the proceeds go to the Special Olympics. As far as the exercise goes, I've either been cycling or walking.
For the Fourth of July, Vik and I had some steaks he bought originally for the girl that he recently got back together with named Erin. I have no idea why he got back together with her since before they made up she would call him all the time and send him threatening text messages and try to make him feel guilty. It turns out that his probation officer won't let him see her, so it's all moot now. Anyway, after we had the steaks and did a lot of talking I went out for a walk while he watched movies, and then later we watched the fireworks on the grass near the parking lot where they were being launched. There were a few fireballs that came from some misfired fireworks, but overall the show went smooth and Vik seemed to be somewhat impressed.After that we went in. Vik went back to his movies and I went back to IRC until I went to work.
As far as work goes, they finally fixed the air conditioning in here sometime on Friday because they were working when I came in on Saturday. I also got my review on Thursday. I was surprised I got such perfect marks on teamwork until Jobi told me it was for working with people in my own department (whom I have good relations with), not interdepartmental work (where it varies depending on the department). And she told me once again that there are some people who are afraid to talk to me because apparently I scare them off. It's something I'll have to work on.
On the computing front, the updates to pkgsrc-2007Q2 have been a disaster. On my laptop some problems with the db4 package have caused a lot of packages to not build, most notably Linux-PAM (under security/PAM) and rpm. On my desktop I haven't been able to get the pkgsrc-2007Q2 tree at all, first due to some bogus errors about the /tmp filesystem being too full for cvs's temporary file(s), and then when I did get to log in with cvs it turns out the all the files for each package are missing, so it deletes my local copies from previous versions of pkgsrc. I hate to say it, but so far this is turning out to be the worst stable release of pkgsrc I've ever seen. I've never had problems like this with pkgsrc before. I filed a problem report about the db4 problem and got a workaround for that thanks to a generous person on the pkgsrc-users mailing list, but I haven't gotten a reply to my email about the problems updating my local copy on my desktop via CVS yet. All this means it will be unlikely that I'll be able to get my laptop's software up-to-date before I leave for Ai-Kon, which was my goal. I'm disappointed with the pkgsrc development team on this one.
Nevertheless I still have a Software of the Week:
This week's Software of the Week is QEMU. QEMU is an emulator that can emulate machines of various architectures and, if the processor type of the machine it's being used on (known as the "host") and the processor of the machine being emulated are the same, it will use instructions from the real processor instead of emulating them. This makes QEMU more efficient and has become a feature in most modern computer hardware emulators, many of which use software from QEMU. Since QEMU runs any operating system that the processor being emulates supports, it's possible to use it to run other operating systems on a system without installing them on a real hard drive. I currently do this with FreeDOS, ReactOS, and Red Hat Linux 7.3 (which was the first Linux distro I ever used, so for me it's a bit of nostalgia) and I've attempted to get Windows 95 installed off an old disk; more updates on that as I learn more. QEMU is availalbe for Unix-like systems and for Windows, and a port with a nice GUI exists for Mac OS X. If you're using Linux , you can also use the QEMU Accelerator, which further speeds of QEMU. The QEMU Web site also has several ready-made disk images you can use with it in case you don't want to make your own.
I've also cut back on playing GTA: Vice City, but I did indulge in getting my first virtual console game for the Wii: F-Zero X, originally released on the Nintendo 64. It was the only F-Zero game I hadn't played yet. Playing it has given me more insight into F-Zero GX became what it was.
That's all for now. I'll be on vacation starting tomorrow and I'll be back probably sometime on Friday afternoon.