ithildae

My brain is not working well. I would like to send out Christmas cards to my flist, also a family letter, but I am still quite disorganized. If you would like one, message me your address, and if you would like the letter. This is a tangible way for us to express our love to you, and share the joy of a special season.

I managed to get my main system upgraded to Baselayout-2. It was painless. I got the xorg.conf file to display 1920 x 1200. The prior resolution was 1600 x 1200, fair distortion.

Still to do, figure out why my root partition is invalid when booting 3.0.6 kernel (xfs root partition). Now that I am using upower, what disc burning software will let me burn a *.iso? I have two IDE burners that both read well, but the won't blast. I also want to watch movies on this system. Movies used to work, in the way back years. Not working now.

Next, I need to repair a failed Baselayout-2 conversion. Very unhappy. That system it would be lovely to be running a Windoze app alongside some linux applications. It has multiple cores...

Need to do a reinstall on a system with a failed partition. It won't boot from a thumb drive, and I don't have a system that will blast an ISO right now. Frustrating.

Lots of things to do, findinf energy to do it is rare. The honey-do list does not include computers. That list is longer, and pays better.

I have a system with a non-mounting xfs root partition. This is the first time I have ever had xfs cause me any problems. I have been using it for years and years. At one point, I decided that xfs had a performance benefit for the type of things I was doing, and I have been using it ever since. I guess I find out how wise that decision was in the next little bit. The fact that it has school work, due tomorrow, that is inaccessible is causing some stress in the household. (Maybe, just maybe, if they didn't wait until the last minute, there would be less stress. Give it at least a day for the backup cycle to run, anyway.)

Bug is a very loving and capable young lady. She is now of age. It is time to try your wings.

May you grow and blossom from the decisions you have made!

science is an uncomfortable domain. It always has been. People always questioning, challenging the Ideas that make the most sense to you. Some people never change their minds. Science is dynamic. Not all papers published are for the purposes of advancing knowledge. Sometimes, data is left out, or missinterpretted, leaving a clear and bold conclusion that is not always correct. Science changes one funeral at a time. Science means never having to say you are certain. Every reviewed journal is an adventure upon publication.

Now, let us throw in funding sources for research projects. Competition is fierce for those funds. Sometimes the source of those funds can taint you conclusions, fairly or not. It is gilt by assosciation.

Let us examine Climate Science. First, it uses Science in the name, so we know it is not a real science. Second, everything published from reviewed journals is in support of the concensus oppinion of the entire network. Dissenting voices soon find themselves un-funded, with no place to run experiments. The cohesive orthodoxy is incredible. You would never see it in a science.

You sometimes see experiments funded by fossil fuel companies. Regardless of the results or science questions answered, those results are unacceptable, in any way, because the are funded by a poor source.

The net result for the thinking man is,... Confusion. If it were a science, there would be competing ideas from within the communuty. There are not. What that means is that we are dealing with politics. With politics, any promoted viewpoint automatically spawns the alternate viewpoint.

The problem here is that there is effectively zero vetted science (such as it is) that can be trusted. All data is "cooked". Statistical methods are used on all raw data sets (valid, or not), the specific statistics may or may not be outdated or appropriate. Results are then drawn from cooked data. (Raw datadoesn't show trends well enough, unless the raw data is cherry picked). The debate on the topic is a highly partisan stream with a very low Signal to Noise Ratio. The goal is as much to discredit the opposition as present your own material. The layman is left tochoose sides based on political inclination as thescience is only "settled" in claims in the literature, strident ones at that.

My inclination is to dismiss claims of science made with the stridance and thuggery coming from the human caused climate change camp. If there really is something there, the research should stand on it's own. It doesn't. But, what if there is some truth there? Are there principled steps we can take to minimize the problem, without bankrupting the global economy? Without destroying our ability to feed ourselves? There are so many petty causes attached to "The Solution", that you wonder what the real line is. The nice thing is, it is all democratic, your guess is as good as mine.

My web server shuts itself off from time to time. I think it wants time off for good behavior or something. It did it while I was gone, so the site was down for a few days. Not the end of the world, but a solution needs to be crafted.

The current server is a 1U rack mount PIII at 1GHz and 512 MB RAM. Not upgradable. It is on a UPS. Rather than going newer and larger, I went for a TS-wifibox-2. An ARM9 system about the size of a five port hub. I like the thing a lot. There are only a couple of issues, I am used to gentoo, as it is shipped, not everything is configured correctly. This unit runs Debian. Debian != gentoo. As an added twist, this is an embedded system, with some attendant peculiarities.

I have yet to find online resources to walk me through what I need to configure it as I want. The documentation I have found is either too general, or assumes greater linux knowledge than I possess. Most of the general linux stuff is glossed over in favor of detailed bit twiddling information. Not a problem, I like bit twiddling, but it is not what I got the box to do. I get about 85 - 90% of the way to where I need to be, and run into a issue that just stops me.

Starting Thursday, I need to spend some serious study time to get this thing nailed together. I don't have a real deadline, but I want it done soon. I really like the box, but I need to make it work for me, it is not yet. That is because I just don't know enough, yet.

The demons of academic accounting have won. I was supposed to graduate a few years back, but the college office decided that I didn't fulfill all my requirements, after they said I had. I have been taking appeals upward, as my health and time permitted, to no avail. I am taking my last class [really, for sure] this summer. In all the wrangling, I lost the math degree. Too many classes to make up with the new requirements. (Plus, tuition is going up, sharply, this fall. And the new grad requirements lock in.)

I am taking a Speech, Language, Hearing Sciences class, the physics and biology of speech. A "science" class with a lab, what could be better? It is writing intensive, and a 1000 level class, so it is all I need, and it could be fun. (I use quotes for the sciene part to indicate that I have broken the code. If you put the word science in the title of the discipline or course, it is not a science.)

I am also running several robot camps and taking a full tutoring load this summer. My days start early, and go late. I also have other things for business and Church to fill in any gaps in my schedule. It will be very nice to not need to worry about finishing up the degree. I may even try to get the math degree back. But one course is over $2000 so more classes will not be likely.

Seven more weeks and I am done! What an industrial sized monkey off my back!

I sucumbed. I need a mobile tool that lets me check things online, and access some content from the net. I am unwilling to pay for a smart phone, I spend about $100 per year for my tracfone, $70 per month is not an option. My laptop is too heavy to carry with me on a casual basis. I have been searching Craigslist for an iPad, I got one. A version one, 32 Gig, no cell conectivity. If business growth warrants, I can get a clearwire hotspot for times when WiFi is not available.

Part of the problem with having a device that lrts you be productive anywhere, is that you feel obligated to be productive everywhere. There is also the matter of Apps. Nickled and dimed does not begin to cover it. (I did buy a game.) The ads in the free versions of some apps are in your face and in the way, all the time. On the plus side, you do get to try them out before plunking down your credit card.

I broke down and got a bluetooth keyboard. Bluetooth kills batteries fast, but it is really nice for entry. There is software for ssh and VNC, so I have some server tweaking to finish. I am having trouble with iTunes in Wine, but hope springs eternal.

I, mostly, like the iPad. It does exactly what i expected it to do. It meets my current needs well enough, even as it leaves some of my wants unfulfilled. (I have a friend who think my respone of it doing what I expected is the perfect answer for a new technology buyer.) The price was something I could justfy, (I got an incredible deal) and the family is having fun with it. It is mostly a business device, and it does not play well with my glasses for prolonged reading, so many extra functions may remain unexplored. Printing from the fool thing is my biggest problem. Hopefully when I get the full server functionality, it will fix some wants too.

Tomorrow is _quietude_'s birthday. Thursday is our anniversary. She is working both days. Problem is, she works nights and evenings, and I work afternoons and evenings. We missed mother's day entirely for the same reason. I am thinking of kidnapping her for a very special un-birthday (we share one of those) but life is a little hectic right now, with no sign of things letting up anytime soon. Too much to do. All of it important.

Just got home, through Wisconsin this time. Told Crunch that we were about 100 miles from home when we filled up. Driveway miles: 100.0 She is now convinced the trip odometer is rigged.