Zone of Mr. Frosti

Well, the day has come. It seems like I have finally destroyed my new toy called Debian. I tried to custom compile the kernel and managed to not only install a bad primary source, but also mislinked my backup source. Looks like I will be installing Debian again from scratch. I know there are recovery techniques (I would hope), but now that I am more comfortable with the install, I will do it again cleanly. Ah, the smell of progress…

After a furious battle with Debian, I opted through no coincidence to watch 12 Angry Men. An excellent movie that everyone should see as part of their courtroom education. Henry Fonda nailed the passive hero role on the head.

Also, I think it amusing to mention that Kristin (who has no money like me 🙂 ) has decided that she will be purchasing a $200 cage for her two, soon to be three, guinue pigs. I have offered to build her the same cage for about $50 in parts but she seems hesitant to take the offer. I can’t understand why, being that I have built a basement in record time. No, wait – I am still working on that one.

And yes people. The day for a LAN here is soon approaching. 16 network ports have been installed and tested, with 54g wireless broadband internet access. I will talk to my dad about borrowing some folding tables and lots of chairs for as many people as we can cram down here. Pictures of the basement and the Debian website soon.

Catching me up on the horror movies that I have never seen before, Kristin made me watch the Blair Witch Project. For those people that actually fear the supernatural, it can be a nerve-wracking experience to the first time viewer.

On Saturday, to top off the horror-fest, we watched none other than The Exorcist itself. I can’t convey in words how disturbing scenes from that movie were. The spider-walk scene, and the crucifix-mutalation scene are things that persist in your mind when you close your eyes at night.

Needless to say, I have met my horror movie quota for the next few weeks, so I will stick to the comedy titles. On that note, Kill Bill Vol. 2 was a fantastic movie, with satisfying directing, and excellent cinematography.

Restate my original assumptions: Our existance boils down into humanity attempting to arrange and organize a naturally chaotic universe. This makes sense, as our entire existance is collecting information, and arranging it for use later.

Don’t hate PCI Express. The current PCI bus has a peak bandwidth of 133 MB/s for all devices to pool. This is a serious bottleneck, which has brought about the AGP bus. (As ISA bottlenecks spawned PCI) It looks now, like AGP was a temporary fix to a greater problem, as the PCI bus is still limited. Rather than having specialized buses, Intel is going back to a standard bus for all devices, with a scalable bandwidth, dedicated to each device.

Also, nVidia (which is dead to me after last years sales fiasco) is trying to make a comeback on my company, ATI with this new card. It impressively runs its memory at 1100 mhz, and hit 12,000 in 3DMark03.

Music Midtown looks like it is shaping up amazingly well this year. If you only go to one concert this year, this should be it. The line up is amazing so far. I can’t wait to see Damien Rice, Finger Eleven, Foo Fighters, Fuel, Gary Jules, Kansas, Puddle of Mudd, Tantric, The Doors, The Offspring, and Ween

Anyone who is an audiophile will appreciate that I burned a CD this morning in 2 minutes 03 seconds. I find this amazing. It seems like this is approaching hard drive speeds. Haven’t seen any burners out there faster than 52x though, I guess the technology has capped already.

Day Three Using Debian

I have 4 of the Big 5 in terms of computer applications down. Office Productivity, Email / Instant Message, Image manipulation, and Internet. The one that eludes me still is 3D acceleration dependent applications (read that as games and slacking off). Apparently there is MESA which is software rendering – GROSS. And there is DRI which is the ATI equivelent driver software. Also there is no “Double click and play” 3D API for Linux. Everything is more difficult on a laptop too. I am at a point where I cannot find the answers to my questions online, so I will ask Linux-Guru-John for help. Hell, I come in to VS for something useful huh?

I have started to read “The Universe in a Netshell” by Stephen Hawking, and my suggestion right now is for everyone to read this book. Chapter One outlines how to build a nuclear weapon, and Chapter Two jumps straight into quantum mechanics. From what I understand, a nuclear weapon draws its power from a comparingly insignificant amount of matter. If the matter in the human body were to be destroyed, it would be an apoctalyptic event for Earth. Of course, we posess neither the scientific equipment nor the power to accomplish such a feat. A good read for anyone curious about the universe in an untraditional sense.

Feeling scholarly, I also showed Darren Aronofsky’s Pi to Matt. You might remember him from such films as “Requiem for a Dream” (also fantastic) We were discussing Hawkin’s works earlier and theorms and the Tora’s code.

Well, the Regular Guys Show has been canned. They are the latest victims of the Macarthy-esk FCC crackdown on “indecent content”. When will this tyranny end? There is now a gap in morning shows. I made a desperate attempt to listen to the 99X morning show, and it was a mistake. They are completely immature and just rude. Not funny, just obnoxious. I have been robbed of my morning routine, and I would encourage everyone to write your congressmen, about the FCC’s actions.

The basement is in a state of neverending upgrades. I dont feel like it is my place yet because all of the stuff that is out is not where I would put it. MY dad does some electrical work and leaves 50 tools out on my desks, and the contractor unplugs my rear left speaker. I must have organization damnit!

Question – If you are “trying a product” and it is great, would you want to know what other comepting products out there are like, or would you be content with what you have?