myrddyn

reflections from the kiddie pool
2003-01-29 04:28:39 (UTC)

random daily


Every once in a while when I check my e-mail I hope I will
hear from Daphne. Sad, I know. I just wonder if she ever
wonders how I am doing. We go way back; I'm going to be a
father soon and she doesn't even know.

I have a server and I really really want to run Linux on
it. I also apparently really really suck at installing
it. I want to figure it out so bad, but I always endup
banging my head. With the particular distribution I tried
tonight, I couldn't even get through the partition
section! That's not far, folks, for anyone who doesn't
know.

Normally I pride myself on being a pretty intelligent
person and being able to figure things out, but I have
tried a couple times over the last two years with zero
success. I always end up back with w2k server, which is
fine because it does everything I need it to.

But in a bit of a perverse way I pride myself on being a
moderate computer geek. I usually know more about
computers than anyone else at the party and to be able to
do this would let me feel like I learned something, like
I'm staying on the geek wave. Apparently I'm even a
failure at being a computer dork.

In other news, I totally ignored the State of the Union,
but I'm catching a small, small amount of the follow-up
coverage. Washington politics is so exceedingly stupid
sometimes it just boggles me. We get into these huge
debates about the future of the country when we have
already lost it's past. No, I'm not talking about prayer
in schools, I'm talking about concepts of federalism. The
idea that states and localities act as the testbeds for
tinkering with the system, that they should be the point of
contact with the people, to allow us to feel empowered and
involved. When there is only one system, at the federal
level, it plays right into partisan rhetoric and it is
disgusting.

I am on the local humane society board now. They want us
to sell tickets to the next major fundraiser, a mardi gras
party Feb 22. Tickets are $65/person. I'm a young guy,
with young, poor friends who have better things to do with
their wives on a Saturday night than spend $130 to go to
dinner with a DJ and a cash bar. Part of it is that now
I'm on the board and these things come along, what, a
couple times a year, do I just hit my family and friends up
every time? I might get some hits the first time, but the
fifth? They'll run when they see me coming, and screen my
phone calls. I guess I'm not sure how many tickets I am
expected to sell--2 or 20?--or whether the other board
members have tips to get started, but I tell you this I did
not get on the board just to be a salesperson and to bug my
family and friends, even for a good cause.

I spent all day today tinkering with the computers at the
office since we have the new office network installed.
WIndows ME sucks hard, and every machine I had it installed
on got fucked up when I updated the machines to IE6 SP1
through Windows Update. That caused me to spend all day
today, and part of the day tomorrow, fixing them. It
pisses me off because that is time I am not billing for
legal stuff and it makes me fucking look bad. I can't bill
6 hours to clients if I'm working on computers. It's true,
I could just ignore it and I do voluntarily work on them
when I could be billing, but in my mind it needs to be
done. I built them after all and if the secretaries can't
work more than 5 minutes without a major Windows crash then
that falls on my lap also. On the other hand, the new
wireles network and DSL connection rocks, hard. My w2k box
at work loves it. Too bad I look like a schmoe for billing
less than anyone in the office but my 82-year-old
grandfather every month.

TIme for bed, to dream of hydrogen cars and giant penguins
chasing me and pecking me in the head. If you don't get
the penguin reference, check a big linux web site out.




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