Barkerburgh

But the jury (and by jury, I mean Me) is still out.

Discovered alien. Couldn’t run it as me, because I’m not root. Couldn’t log in as root, neither from any app/point/terminal locally nor via ssh from my W2K machine.

Discovered ssh. Couldn’t telnet. Couldn’t ssh from W2k until I installed it from the Ubuntu gui.

Discovered nano. Why would anybody use vi? Or even vim? Taliban geeks, that’s who.

Disovered sudo and gksudo. Thank you, geek gods! Why can’t I log in as root from the initial log in gui?

Discovered chmod, chown, a couple of others. Couldn’t modify config files because I’m not root. Couldn’t log in as root

Discovered the Root Terminal. Finally! I nearly cried, I swear to Christ.

Discovered info.

Disovered .conf files.

Discovered I actually like digging around in the man files and about 20 different Linux pdfs and chms.

Discovered alien Apache works and alien PHP will install, but they ain’t talking yet.

Knowledge is Power!

(I feel like the kid in the SciFi story who finds the ancient computer left over by a lost civilization and he has to learn how to use it to save his people, but there’s a deadline looming and he’s really only a peasant farmer. Story ends badly.)

Coffee even hurts right now.

I have big wide windows that I love. I have them open all the time year round because I crave the fresh air, and I can’t control the heat in the wintertime; it’s forced water and it’s either on or off.

I have a big oscillating floor fan, that is neither oscillating nor on the floor, stuck in one side of the window blowing out, so that there is a nice wide flow of outside air coming in the the other side. Usually this is highly pleasant. Now it is not.

I also have a small desktop fan blowing at me when I sleep, which seized up last night. It probably only needs a little generic WD40, so no real worries - it’s happened before.

I lost a hard-drive (logical not physical) on one of my computers the other night and I thought I’d lost a bunch of important files (including story files and MP3s), but they’re okay - I just can’t use them right now. However, I need to spend a lot of time restoring the OS on that machine and it’s too goddamn hot to do it now. And seriously, Microsoft, what the fuck is wrong with you people? The COPY command in the Recovery Console won’t handle wildcards or directory copies, even if you use the fucking SET command to tell it to? It’s called the Recovery Console, not the “Fuck You, Fuck Your Files And Fuck The Horse You Rode In On Console”. Not “A Recovery Console for Windows 2000, Mr Gates? ‘Fast, Cheap, or Right, Pick Two’ Console”! It’s enough to make a body want to switch to a Mac or Linux. Jesus Christ on a fucking crutch.

Thank all the saints and angels for television. Cable television. And sudoku. And Freecell.

Anyhoo, I hope you’re all having a nice day. Drink plenty of water and don’t leave your children in a parked car with the windows rolled up, unless you really want to encourage Good Samaritans who have hammers and an urge to use them.

On CNN this morning.

A chips-and-burger van is travelling across a desert/salt flats type landscape. It stops in the middle of nowhere and there’s two guys. One is looking around bewildered at the site; I mean, where’s the customers? The other guy starts setting up for business, opening up the side flaps, putting out condiments, you know.

A meteorite flashes across the sky and hits the desert. Moments later a fleet of off-roaders, SUVs, jeeps etc starts approaching across the desert. They gather around the crater and the guy pays for his kids’ college tuition.

There’s no dialogue.

It was about entrepreneurs and appears to be for the UK’s Orange mobile phone company’s attempt to break into the American market…

It’s quite succinct, funny and well done.

(The science is all wrong, (our boys don’t get incinerated for one) but it is a commercial.)

Please don’t miss this doodletronics blog post. It’s an embedded youtube video of a Folger’s commercial and it’s brilliant, with a hint of Python.

I laughed so hard I nearly spilled my third coffee of the day.

(I didn’t really have anything to say today, so I thought “what the hey, Laura already did the hard part, all I have to do is link…”)