Days log, 2008-12-05

The highlights of the day >_>

Driving my mother nuts:

Demanding proof by math, that if I do something consistently the same way every week, and you consistently complain about how it comes out; prove that doing it in the first place, is not a waste of my time.

Mother: Check the tub in the guests bedroom
Me: I never saw a bedroom with a tub in the middle of it.
Mother: You know what I mean.
Me: Yeah, but I also understand English.

-> that really pissed her off lol.

Probable revenge? I’ll probably get to spend my Saturday lugging boxes of Christmas decorations around.

Other topics:

I eventually managed to get some lunch today… I dunno why, but I haven’t been eating frequently lately; where frequently is my usual 2 meals a day, and occasional snack. So hungry, I counted the (18) hours, since my last meal lol. Managed to escape for a bit… food, film, and fun.

That left me, sufficiently exhausted, but much more relaxed… Hit the web, then SWAT; joined Medic & Ambu for some rounds, then back to surfing. Lately, I’ve been in-haling more and more of LaTeX documentation. I have a project coming up in the near future, that’ll be requiring it, so (y).

I’ve been trying to re-valuate various modules of my usual operating environment, but it seems that like Vi, TeX is just to hard to displace :. It’s just proven to be the best fit, although it lacks troff’s terseness :-(. The evaluations of course: nroff/troff+macro packages, Texinfo, LaTeX, DocBook, and of course HTML/CSS

Needless to say, I do not use word processors for writing documents, and avoid using them like the plague.

Just spent a fair amount of time, downloading TexLive 2008 on Vectra; kicking myself in the process, for not putting my .screenrc under CVS! My systems have TexLive 2007 installed, but despite ~3 months passing, I never got around to fetching 2008 lol. I’ll need to get it setup on my machines sometime this weekend; and probably fetch a few packages off CTAN.

I do periodically review the software and technology I use, and for what purposes I use it. It really helps in maintaining my systems (and installing them ^_^), and just getting things done. I enjoy both efficiency and comfort, which is probably why my laptops also my most used work-station…. and contains all of the software systems I use for various tasks.

I wish that dang keyboard would arrive soon.

A short look at the big 3

Hmm, the idea of GM, Ford, and Chrysler go under? What can I say, but burn baby burn!!!

Chrysler is so bad, they’ve got a big flash-sign on there home page; Fords website is actually quite nice, I’m rather impressed; especially how they’ve the flash / non-flash parts; GM’s website I am not even going to comment on. Looking at there stock prices though, I’m glad I don’t own any stock in Ford lol.

I would hate to see a company like ford go under, because of their history; I wouldn’t mind seeing less fords on the road though >_>. I’m anxious to see what happens in the coming year. It’s an imense amount of jobs,

Hmm, rubber banding between C++, Python, and Bourne is an interesting way to pass time, especially when you start wishing for a hybrid.

Wait, ain’t her name Perl?

>_>

Nothing to do until morning, and nothing if I’m not needed at work…. (YKYMF!)

Brains to far gone to concentrate on serious coding (Choice between Windows or SSH to Vectra, not fun)

To wide awake to sleep

To tired to care about any forums beyond [SAS], until I’m free of work.

My e-mail will continue to pile up anyway, so why bother reading until I can think clearly (vive la Google)

I actually have nothing to read, worth reading, that I haven’t read a thousand times (Heck, I just skimmed through SUSv2/SUSv3 out of boredom)

I hate Tuesdays lately :

So far, I’ve gone most of the day without eating, minimal to drink, and about 7 hours between bathroom breaks. It’s 30 F (-1.1 C) out and getting worse; I’ve had my hands chilled, thawed, and rechilled by more then a few degrees, several times :

When we finally got home, I cracked open the Potato Chips and some dip to gnosh on; had a nice snack before chores. I generally don’t eat junk food anymore, but my last meal was around 10pm last night lol.

Hmm, 20 pushups in about 3 minutes.

Either I really need some damn sleep, or it has been that long since I tried something called exercise :. Well, Iw as much more active back then… but that’s a different story lol.

It’s good to have the space again to actually exercise…

Interesting finds

%Windir%system32 (typically C:WINDOWSsystem32)

clipbrd.exe — ClipBook Viewer

Big question, can I actually use it for anything? (Grrr, vim is better); windows clipboard management out of box seems to suck, or require finding a program almost no ones ever heard of :

ftype — manages file associates

very bloody useful – no more need to invoke explorer.exe to play with them.

systeminfo — quick print useful data

Gotta remember this next time I’m working on a system; msinfo32 provides more info, but for some dang reason always seems to need start.exe or rhe run dialog to launch it. systeminfo gives a good first look, and is easier to grep.

Windows XP does have some useful changes from DOS 5/6 based releases, but I’ve never actually found a lot that isn’t in my MS-DOS reference >_>.

You know you’ve been using computers to much when….

All of your mental calculations are off by one, because you keep counting form zero.

You surround long strings of written arithmetic in parentheses, based on the Operator Precedence in ANSI C; and wish the rest of the world did the same.

You habitually use semi-colons and comment symbols in documents, as if they were natural.

You can’t remember the last time you spoke to someone on the phone.

You give people your Instant Messenger, rather then you’re phone number

You can type your login faster then your street address.

Your calculator has it’s own programming language, but you can’t make it count from zero.

When you forget something, you blame it on your brain not “swapping” the data from short-term to longer-term memory in time.

You think people are backwards, if they don’t understand SI

Debating the endianness of various date formats sounds like fun

You have to pause to remember how to write rarely used letters in cursive, because you haven’t written on paper in years.

You’ve named a computer in honour of HAL9000s female counterpart.

Words like grep, parse, regular expression, archive, constant, null, void, port, IP, socket, packet,; are imprinted on your vocabulary. much to your friends annoyance.

You describe the functioning of your brain, as if it was a computer; because you’re not a neuro-specialist.

You would rather use /bin/ed then notepad.exe

You have several command prompts open at all times, even on Windows.

You can tell the difference between explorer.exe and My Computer.

You can’t tell the difference between explorer.exe and your Windows taskbar, system tray, start menu, and the file manager.

You write corrections to the last message, as if invoking SED.

You use single quotes to define literal text.

You use regular expressions in place of long lists of related identifiers.

You think people are gay, if they don’t think the Macbook Pro is sexy.

You write the “show work” for maths questions in pseudo code, showing the algorithm used instead of the numbers.

You know the size of a byte is machine dependent, but never used a machine without an 8bit byte.

You’ve used 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit, and 64-bit systems, but wonder what will cause commodity systems to go 128-bit in the future.

You have more e-mail, then you can shake a stick at (after spam)

You haven’t used a real dictionary or encyclopedia in years.

Your desk is a dumping ground for CD-ROM disk jackets, but your home directory is neat as a whistle.

You haven’t seen a razor blade in months, but a program got written on time.

telnet and tcpdump are your favorite solutions to networking problems.

You write about network communications, as if they were PF rule sets.

You keep using -> to dereference “mental pointers” in text.

You write encrypted messages in hexadecimals or octal first, then apply a caesar chiper before encrypting them.

After so many years, that rodent with a long tail on your desk is nick named “the rat”

You use the keyboard for damn near everything, short of opening cans.

$ program folder1/folder2/folder3/filename.ext feels more natural then double clicking my computer, double clicking folder1, double clicking folder2, double clicking folder3, and then finally double clicking filename.ext.

Especially when you can type this as prog/f1/f2/f3/file.ext by using the TAB key completion of your shell, using file managers feel clumsy.

Binary files annoy you, because they can’t be easily read in text editors

You know Integrated Development Environments exist, but have yet to find one better then a UNIX shell, text editor, and development tools.

Proof reading is your favorite way to debug EIDTENT.

You write things like: let foo = [ item1, item2, item3, item 4]; whenever you want to define a list of data in chats.

You meet an attractive woman, and wonder if she is computer literate.

You can use several different styles of operating system interchangeably without problem.

People ask you for something, but don’t tell you how many, and you respond with “enter an integer”.

Your bookshelf is full of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Foo Quck References, and Networking books.

You’ve sent people messages in hexadecimal, more then once.

If you had more money, your bedroom would be like a cave with 50 computers humming.

You remind your dog, that a laptop is not a pillow.

The hum of your file server keeps people awake.

Finding old PC parts is like presents under a Christmas tree

….

I can’t believe I am reduced to this…

I finally decided to try something I’ve never bothered with before: X over SSH. Despite it’s pro’s and con’s, I actually do like the X Windows System for the most part, but rarely have time to go spelunking through X.Org.

I installed XMing on my Windows machine (sal1600), booted my laptop (dixie), and ran some tests using Xming.exe / PuTTY.exe – highly successful, and quiet a look on my face, when I saw gVim on FreeBSD, pop up on Windows XP!

Connection link is as follows:

WRT54G Router/Access Point  ->|
| <- WPA Personal /w AES algorithm
dixie -> ~54Mbps 802.11g ->|
sal1600 -> ~54Mbps 802.11g ->|

Personally, I would prefer Gigabit Ethernet connection and some good cat-6 cable, then drop the router for something a bit more direct… but I can’t lol.

dixie runs FreeBSD 7-STABLE; sal1600 runs Windows XP MCE (SP3).

A few quick batch files to make calling XMing easier then kicking XLaunch into ‘just what I want’:

==> xming-1win.bat <==
@echo off
cd /d P:NetworkRemoteXming

start /B .Xming.exe -clipboard -keyhook -lesspointer -unixkill -nowinkill -screen 0 1280x800@1 -swcursor

==> xming-multiwin.bat <==
@echo off
cd /d P:NetworkRemoteXming

start /B .Xming.exe -clipboard -keyhook -lesspointer -unixkill -nowinkill -swcursor -multiwindow

For SSH, I copied my setup in PuTTY for Dixie; enabling Compression and X tunneling, and bingo -> X11 over SSH. Launch Xming, run PuTTY -load Dixie-X11, and bingo! For the same of speed, I also changed PuTTY to using a faster encryption algorithm then what I normally use for a shell. Adding more fonts is quite a necessity, but rather limiting if you don’t like 12px fonts. I can’t help but wonder, if Xming would work with fonts installed on X.Org; only two ways I know to find out; grep X or test it. Note to self: double check memory of how X Servers handles fonts, against the documentation (it’s been awhile). IMHO running X this way is a liability, even over SSH, and a WLAN even worse. But it is quite nice to see, even under this kind of equipment, it’s actually quite usable. I so need a replacement keyboard for my laptop!!!