I still listen to radio...sorta

I still listen to radio, after a fashion.

When my commute was about 30 minutes, from home to work, it was NPR.  Plain and simple.  A good dose of the news and Morning Edition features.  I could depend on engaging banter from Steve Inskeep and Renee Montaigne.  Even the curmudgeon views of Frank DeForge were enlightening. Then a strange thing happened.

My early morning "commute" changed from work to the gym.  So my first half hour was from 0430 to just before 0500.  All is right with the world...and NPR.  Then when I get out of the gym and head to work at 0630 things begin to unravel.  NPR is repeating itself word for word from 0430.  Its like de ja news all over again.

So my alternative go to radio station is WKWC ... Kentucky Wesleyan College radio.  This turns out to be a gem.  Progressive, non-repetitive, commercial free (OK, there are a few PSAs and KWC promos) - just good ear candy.  So good in fact that I have taken to tuning in even when I know NPR is not repeating itself.

I turn into a slouch...

On the weekends I turn into a slouch.  It is part of my $WORK/$HOME balance system.  I sleep late.  I set the menu for the next week.  I do a little shopping, mostly grocery needs for the coming week.  I eat to excess (more about this later).  I spend time with my best friend my $WIFE.  (She beats me at Cribbage but I think she cheats :-) )  I get to visit with one or more of my $CHILDREN.  I may even spend some time puttering around in the yard.

The boneless short ribs went into the crock pot early, slathered with Sweet Baby Ray's Original and Sweet&Spicy BBQ sauce ... as Alton Brown is fond of saying, "Them's Good Eats."  Now splitting my time between writing posts and reading about Securing An Ubuntu Server.  While I was out snapping pics for the Yardist post I took the time to refill the feeders - they don't call this place "The Flying Pig Ranch And Thistle Farm" for nothing.

I say "slouch" because it isn't convenient to go the gym (OMHS HealthPark) on Saturday or Sunday.  They don't open until 0700 on Saturday - middle of my morning - instead of 0500 which is when I go during weekdays.  It is even worse on Sunday when they don't open until 1200.  Harrumph!  Oh well, I guess they have to have some $WORK/$HOME balance too.

In coming posts...

The Gym and Podcasts
Setting the Menu

The 99 Days of Freedom Challenge.

Ninety-one days and a couple of hours ago I took the 99 Days of Freedom Challenge.  I committed to stay completely away from Facebook for 99 days.  I stopped cold turkey.  My last post was the declaration of my having take the challenge.  Then I logged out and haven't been back since.  Spoiler alert: the world did not come to a crashing halt.

Initially I did go through withdrawls.  I got fidgety when faced with a blank address bar.  I wondered who was posting the best Kitteh pictures.  I was feeling a concerted lack of unicorns flying across rainbows sprinkling glitter.  Most of all I missed the vitriolic bantering back and forth between the left and the right.

Then just when I thought I was out of the woods ... FB started spamming me with, "Won't you come home" email messages.  "All your friends miss you."  So-and-so posted such-and-such.  "How can you be such a callus cad to ignore your friends like this?"  I felt bad, really bad for as long as it took me to delete the emails, unopened.  Sorry FB I really don't want your free crack.

Now many of you know that I am a social media animal from way back.  Chat rooms and forums before and after they were cool.  I still keep my IRC client tuned to the good old groups.  Now I started spending more time with Google+ ... much higher caliber of time wasting dabbling.  I even started paying attention, albeit short-attention, to Twitter.  But nothing seems to fill up my time as uselessly as those many hours with FB.

(So this has been my attempt at One-page-a-day.  In typical fashion it took me three days to get to this point...where I push the "Publish" button and start over.  *Sigh*)

CrossPost: Yardist Bloodsport

CrossPost: Yardist Bloodsport

OpenSource Lament - Stick-Shift Linux

I have had the pleasure over the past couple of years to see the Linux seed planted and a Linux enthusiast blossom.  Prior to my association with this fellow he had heard of Linux.  It was some cryptic difficult "thing" that seemed to hang around the periphery of his Windows-centric world.  To his credit he wanted not to just know of the back-office systems that provide services to our network he wanted to understand them.

As any sysadmin will tell you the first and most necessary component to understanding Linux is personal initiative.  The person that doesn't want-need-desire to learn Linux can't get it just by loading up the latest distro of Ubuntu.  Linux is a relationship with computing.  It requires a certain kind of passion to enter into such a relationship.  It also requires a certain level of commitment.

Reflection on my early days shows me diving into distros that came on many, many 3.5 inch floppies.  Then if I was successful I got a prompt: root@slackware: ~>  I stared at it for the longest time and then tried some DOS commands...only to be told that "dir" was not found.  I had no comforting background in any of the *nixs.  So I had to start reading TFM.  I eventually discovered "man" and midnight commander (mc).  I was underway.  At least I could see the file system.

Mr. Slackware, Patrick Volkerding was kind enough to include enough FVWM so that once I found the startx command I even got a graphical user interface.  And right there my troubles really began.  I wanted to do the cool things.  With multiple video cards I could run more than one monitor.  With a sound card I could play music.  With an ethernet adapter I could even get on the network.  RTFM.

In those heady days hard drive space and memory were at a premium.  Even worse, resources allocated to a project boxen were hand-me-downs at best.  So it became necessary to roll my own .xorg config files.  And *GASP* recompile the kernel to include the necessary modules to drive my bells and whistles.  At a time when recompiles took way more than just one cup of coffee.  (I would eventually, after a sweeping office PC upgrade, scrounge and build a 5-node MOSIX cluster that cut compile times to a manageable half pot of coffee.)

Software was a matter of downloading tarballs and ./configure ... and ... search for the dependency, download the tarball, ./configure ... and ... search for the dependency, download the tarball, ./configure ... and ... rinse&repeat ... until make && make install were successful.  Then curse and recurse back up the dependency chain until the original make && make install were successful.

So here is my lament.  Linux has become a commodity.  I can slap a DVD in a laptop (of all things) and load Linux ... and everything, everything works.  Through a GUI I can download and install software and the dependencies, if any, are handled in the background.  It all just works.  Well?!?!  If it all just works then what are you bitchin' about?  That Linux Enthusiast I mentioned earlier never got to learn how to drive a stick-shift Linux.

Just my $0.02

I've been away too long old friend(s)

Shame on me.

I drank the media frenzy kool-aid and dived head first into the deep end of the Fazebook pool.  At first it was kool.  Fluries of friends and flashy memes.  Everybody was doin' it.  Likin' this and LOL commentin' that.  Political side-takin' and snide remarkin' screeds.  Oh and did I mention the "Likes" ... like crack cocaine ... just couldn't wait to get those heady little puffs of ego boastin' positive reinforcin' click nods.  Oh I was in it deep, giving as good as I got ... you gotta like to be Liked.

...and somewhere in the back of my mind was a nagging itch.

what happened to my goals and aspirations?  What happened to my focus and concentration...lemme just check who posted the next Kute Kitty pic ... yeah, just like that.  (That didn't really happen.  I was trying to show by example.)  I used to write.  Not masterful works but fairly well thought out stuff.  I used to write poetry, again not master works but not altogether slouchy stuff.  As near as I can figure I managed to drown my muse in the deep end of the Fazebook pool.

Shame on me.

[BONUS EXTRA:  99 Days Of Freedom challenge.]

So I am intent on starting back up here and over at Yardist formally known as Pa^2.

Hope to see ya round these parts more often.