Author: admin

Two months ago, I would never have thought that a significant portion of my computing time would involve Linux.

This semester, I am in EECS 481, Software Engineering. I would give you a link to the class homepage, but the professor decided the content isn’t for the common man — it’s password protected. The core of this class is a single, monolithic (redundant repetition, I know) project. The only constrain to this project is that it must concern a certain domain. The domain for this semester is the software process. How self-referential is that? Our software project must be about the software process.

We decided on a project manager with some automatic environment creation scripts. Basically, the manager of a software company would use a Windows front end to manage his developers. He could see what projects they are working on, what experience they have, etc etc. Whenever he had a new project, he could select which developers should work on it and click a single button to setup a few necessities: A web site, mailing list and CVS repository for the new project.

We needed a server-class operating system for the backend. Though I know OpenBSD fairly well (going on 2 years admin experience), we chose RedHat 7.2. The decision was made simply because of the greater install base of RedHat.

When I first started developing the backend scripts (I did it since no one else had the experience to correctly setup Majordomo and Apache, let alone know how to write Perl scripts), I used VMWare on my main machine. VMWare made my life much easier as I tested these scripts. Before I would do a new install of the scripts, I would backup my entire RedHat machine with two clicks. If the install went haywire (which it often did), restoration was as simple.

Enter my new laptop: a used IBM Thinkpad 600. Ever since I got this thing, I have taken it to every class and worked on code while the professors droned on and on. I got the idea of working on the scripts while in class. RedHat 7.2 installed beautifully. Slowly but surely, my Windows XP partition is touched less and less. The laptop boots into Linux by default.

Linux and open source software has improved dramatically since I last used it (RedHat 6.2 days). AbiWord reads most Word files cleanly (other than tables, bleh!), Mozilla 0.9.9 is now my default browser EVERYWHERE (the Macs at work, my Windows XP machines, this laptop), and I just found a new love: Ximian Red Carpet. Think Windows Update on steroids. I will be trying Ximian Desktop next.

Expect more reports on my new love.

Testing posting from Mozilla… Success!

Oh man:

Hi kids, I haven’t died. This weblog is all but dead, but I am not. Most of my time is being spent working on the backend of this.

I got farked today, farked real good… All because of a little game poll I put up.

So, I turned 21 last weekend, and what do I decide to do last night? Go to Canada! Not only is it still a mockery of a real country, their money has become true play money. The $10 bill looks like a child when nuts with watercolors.

Oh god, these jokes are disgustingly hilarious (or just hilarious and digusting?).

241st! Ya know, I am not sure why my RC5 output is increasing so much lately. I actually disabled the client on my main server at home. The server is stuck between two dressers and has a second server sitting on top of it. Needless to say, the air flow isn’t so great and the temperature was simply too hot when running the proc at 100% 24/7. Maybe someone else is cracking for me… That would make for a pretty cool trojan/virus. Have it simply install dnetc then attempt to infect other computers. When it was finally discovered, distributed.net would be shut down, but hopefully not until I had won the $1000 prize.

I just found my new cell phone. I have put off buying one for almost a year now. The pager provided by work is just not enough to keep my in touch with everyone. I have had two instances where people needed to get in touch with me and the pager has failed. The main problem is that the pager is connectionless communication. Someone dails and number or sends an email, but they get zero confirmation that the page was actually received. With a cell phone, you know if you get through instantaneously. Pagers should be banned.

288th! Woohoo!