Thanks for Christmas Eve

As I sit writing this missive, thousands of my fellow citizens stand duty in harm's way thousands of miles from here. Thousands of miles from friends and, more importantly, family. I've just had a wonderful Christmas Eve day. Presents, good food, and family. But I digress. The point is that I do this knowing that my fellow citizens, volunteers all, are in harm's way this holiday season.

And if it weren't for those people, the world situation would be far, far worse. This wonderful Christmas of mine would not be possible.

So, to all of you, far away in really crappy conditions doing what you volunteered to do, please accept this:

Merry Christmas. And thank you.

Let Me Say "Thank You"... Again

It's 1973. I'm eight years old. The nerdiness has already set in. I'm a voracious reader. I'm very big into books about submarines, World War II, airplanes, World War II, and Abraham Lincoln. Probably in that order. One summer, my parents took me and my siblings (all four of them) to the Indiana State Fair. I remember wandering around the fair with my Mom's hand firmly clasped in mine. We wandered up to a large table stacked with all kinds of second-hand books. The man working the table was very nice. He asked my Mom if I read. Her response was something along the lines of, "Oh, yes. He reads constantly." I was already pawing through the books on the table. At one point, he reached over, picked up a small, short book. It had a red cover and was a collection of humorous letters sent to the Beatles. It's title was something like, "Hey, John, Paul, Ringo, & George: Can I have a lock of your hair?" Something like that. He then said I could have it. Free. It was mine to take home.

I know that book is still around somewhere. I know I read it many times. Frankly, I read it at least once before I left the fair. My parents, at one point, wanted to watch one of the livestock shows. So, I sat with them and read that book. If I hadn't had that book, I'd still love to read. My parents really encouraged it. Growing up, my bedroom had a medium sized walk-in closet with shelves ringing the top 3 feet. And each shelf was cram-packed with old books. I learned of astronomy, physics, history, calendars, on and on, thanks to that closet of books. And for that, I thank my parents. That, and much, much more.

Still, this stranger added to my love of reading just a bit more. That love has stayed with me. Part of the reason I love to read blogs. I just love reading. And he showed me that a simple act of kindness can have a long-term affect.

That day at the Fair, before we left that stranger's table, my Mom (being a Mom and in her best Mom voice) said, "Say 'Thank you.'" I know I did. Otherwise, I would not have lived through that day. But that was a thank you of an eight year old under penalty of getting a whoopin'. So, here, now, and with Mother safely many hundreds of miles away, I think it befitting that I say,

Thank you.

Dual Monitors, But I Don't Know How

I have a (now older) Pentium 4 computer. About a year ago, the video card went Tango Uniform. As a replacement, I bought a PNY nVidia GEForce 8500 GT. A nice card, frankly. I've heard others say that it's a less-than-stellar performer for games, but I don't play games on my computer. That's what my PS2 / PS3 are for.

Anyway, the card comes with three outputs, a DVI, a VGA, and an S-Video. I recently purchased an LG 19" monitor and mounted it the wall above my current computer monitor. The LG is a nice, little monitor. It even came with VGA inputs. Which got me to thinking, Can I use this for a dual-monitor set-up?

The short answer is, Yes. But here's the problem. I don't know how I got here. Here's how I have them set-up.

• Both monitors are now set-up in their native resolution. The Samsung uses 1920 x 1200. The LG uses 1440 x 900.


• They're set-up in a top/bottom combination. That means that I go through the top of the Samsung, which puts me on the bottom of the LG (mounted on the wall above the Samsung).


• Each can have a different wallpaper.


• Windows boots up and runs from the Samsung monitor.
  

Here's what I remember. I started with the nVidia GEForce window that appears when you go to "nVidia Display" window. I then clicked on one of the wizard buttons, followed by a few of the others, then I wound up with all of the settings I have now.

And it works pretty well. The only drawback is that some of the high-resolution graphics don't pan as smoothly as before. But otherwise, it works just fine.

The Engineer's Creed

With all due respect to the US Marine Corps, my good friend Jeff provided me with the following "Engineer's Creed".

I could not have said it better myself.

This is my calculator. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My calculator is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My calculator, without me, is useless. Without my calculator, I am useless. I must key my calculator true. I must calculate better than any enemy who is trying to out-calculate me. I must calculate him before he calculates me. I will....

My calculator and myself know that what counts in this war is not the problems we solve, the size of our graphs, nor the equations we make. We know that it is the trig that counts. We will trig...

My calculator is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its function and its keys. I will keep my calculator clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before God I swear this creed. My calculator and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but Peace.

Buh-bye, Skippy!

Skippy's List is off of my blog list. No more will it's URL darken this site, or any I run. Why? Well, it's gone well off the deep end, and wound up in "let's talk some seriously deranged, mental s___".

End of discussion.

Monday Night Homework Blues

This will be quick. I'm reading through my textbook, "Digital Telephony", for my master's class. Came across the following quote, "It's well known that..."
Let me be crystal clear here. The following phrases should NEVER, EVER be found in a textbook:

• It's obvious...


• It's easily seen...


• It's clear that...


• It's well known that...

Out.

Rob Huddleston: Your Book ROCKS!

I've been working on some simple HTML and CSS pages. But I was working from books that were 10+ years old. Today, I went out and bought a new HTML / CSS / XHTML book, "HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Your Visual Blueprint for Designing Effective Web Pages" by Rob Huddleston. One of the first pages pointed me towards a VERY cool CSS site, called "Under the Sea" by Eric Stoltz (no, not THAT Eric Stoltz).

To start, just the link to the CSS Zen Garden was worth the price. The "Under the Sea" page alone has enough cool tricks on it that I'll be parsing it for the next week.

The book itself is very well laid out, in my opinion. The information is presented well, not overbearing, does not insult my intelligence, and is straightforward. Well worth the price. (Which was $30 at Borders. Amazon.com may have it cheaper.)

Frankly, if you're looking for a good book on XHTML and CSS, this is it.

Colts vs the Patriots

I sent my younger brother a text message asking where he was.

He sent me this.



I'm pretty certain he was adopted.

God Speed, Col. Ripley

Retired Marine Col. John Ripley, who was credited with stopping a column of North Vietnamese tanks by blowing up a pair of bridges during the 1972 Easter Offensive of the Vietnam War, died at home at age 69, friends and relatives said Sunday.

You will be missed, sir.
God speed.

Nyet, Alexey! No worm from you!

I check out I Can Haz Cheezburger fairly regularly. Like many of the larger sites nowadays, it has a boatload of small adverts all over. Just this morning, as the site was loading, Norton popped up a message:

Attempted Intrusion "HTTP Misleading Application Detection" against your machine was detected and blocked.

Bah-ROO!!??

A quick check of the Norton log shows the following:

Details: Attempted Intrusion "HTTP Misleading Application Detection" against your machine was detected and blocked.
Intruder: infoclicknow.com(http(80)).
Risk Level: High.
Protocol: TCP.
Attacked IP: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
Attacked Port: 1463.

So, who is "infoclicknow.com", I wonder?

A quick ICANN check provided the following:

Registrant:
Alexey Vasiliev +7.3834427722
Alexey Vasiliev
Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
Moskow,NSK,RUSSIAN FEDERATION 630122

Domain Name:infoclicknow.com
Record last updated at 2008-10-22 13:03:18
Record created on 2008/10/22
Record expired on 2009/10/22

Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.freefastdns.com ns2.freefastdns.com

Administrator:
name: Alexey Vasiliev
mail: tel: +7.3834427722
org: Alexey Vasiliev

address: Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
city: Moskow
,province: NSK
,country: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
postcode: 630122

Technical Contactor:
name: Alexey Vasiliev
mail: tel: +7.3834427722
org: Alexey Vasiliev

address: Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
city: Moskow
,province: NSK
,country: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
postcode: 630122

Billing Contactor:
name: Alexey Vasiliev
mail: tel: +7.3834427722
org: Alexey Vasiliev

address: Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
city: Moskow
,province: NSK
,country: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
postcode: 630122

Registration Service Provider:
name: Regtime.net
tel: +7 8462698077
fax: +7 8462698057
web:http://www.webnames.ru

Imagine that? A Russian who is trying to pass malware? Whoda thunk it?

Jaless Alexey! Nyet!

NOTE: Very poor translation: S____ Alexey! No!

Attitude

I, er, enhanced an image that a friend sent me of his new pet.

He appreciated it.

Random Friday Night Post: The Alpo Story

Background: I was a volunteer firefighter for 8 years. I worked out of one of the busiest stations in Maryland. I mainly worked on the ambulance, which is the setting for tonight's post.

We've been dispatched for an "unknown" medical emergency. I'm the third aide, meaning I'm sitting in the back of the ambulance. We just pulled up on location. I hop out, aide bag over my shoulder. I'm standing beside the ambulance wondering when the driver and second aide are going to get out. I start to walk towards the passenger side door of the cab when I hear a low growl over my shoulder.

I slooooooowly turned my head. There, about 8 feet away, was a medium-size, mangy, dirty, ugly dog. Does Cujo ring a bell, friends? Now I realize why the other two guys are not getting out of the ambulance.

They're too busy laughing their asses off.

I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do, whether make a jump for the back of the ambulance from whence I came? The cab so that I can kill the driver and aide before I get mauled?

Just as I'm trying to decide, I hear a crunch, crunch, crunch sound behind me as if someone were walking across gravel. I again slooooooowly turn my head a little further.

I beheld a beautiful sight; a police officer was coming up behind me, with both his flashlight beam and full attention on the dog. And his non-flashlight-holding hand was on his gun. No, not just on it, but his hand around the grip. All he had to do was pull up and the gun would be unholstered.

Fortunately, the dog was as stupid as it was ugly. He did not like the idea of tangling with two people. He finally drifted off, and I and the (expletives deleted for decency) driver and second aide went on about the business of this call.

As you're probably aware, firefighters are known for harassing each other. Mercilessly. I became immortalized thereafter (or at least until I did something else even better) as "Alpo".

And now you know the REST of the story...

Technology is overrated.

Sometimes, it's better to go with the simple answer to a particularly thorny problem.

This from a friend of mine. Five screens, three games. He and his wife were watching three NFL games simultaneously, and they both have their respective fantasy football sites up on their laptops (operating wirelessly through their access point).

This is known as serious visual overload.

(sniff... sniff) I'm so proud!

Oh, yeah, baby!

Just. Too. Sweet!

From ABC affiliate WZVN in Florida,

Two men were beat up and then arrested after Charlotte County Sheriff’s deputies say they tried to rob a paraplegic man inside his home.

As they say, get some.

There's An Hour I'll Never Get Back

The wife and I have season tickets for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). In the past, the music director was Yuri Temirkanov, a Russian who was big into the classics (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, etc). Then, a few years ago, the BSO selected Marin Alsop to become the first female music director of a major national symphony. All well and good. Except that Alsop is big on, er, um, contemporary music. Frankly, based on what I've heard, "contemporary crap" is a redundancy. Let me put it another way. How do you tell if what you're about to hear is equivalent to cat's mating in a back alley? Look for the word "dissonance" in the program. That is the catch word. Last week, we went to a show in which the program spoke of "ascending skyward" or some such. The name of one of the piece's was "UFO", written by a contemporary composer by the name of Michael Daugherty. It was written as a one-person percussion piece and was to be played by Evelyn Glennie, oh, excuse me, Dame Evelyn Glennie. According to her website, she's a "Musician, Motivational Speaker, Composer, Educationalist, Jewellery designer."

Danger! Danger!

The first part of the concert was a piece by Wagner. Actually, quite good. Then Evelyn made her appearance. She was dressed just like every feminist professor from back in my days at Purdue. Sun dress, long gray hair, the works. And she was playing something that appeared to be a discone antenna. It was supposed to be "other worldly", I'm guessing. I just wished it had stayed in that other world. She ratcheted up to playing a marimba and xylophone, along with (I'm not making this up...) a 55 gallon drum. There were also many "instruments" that I, even though I have a background as a drummer, did not recognize. The worst part? When she used a violin bow and ran it across the edge of a cymbal. Imagine a hundred kids running their fingernails over a chalkboard. THAT'S what that sounded like. I literally cringed and began curling up into the fetal position. I was almost to the point of sobbing, muttering "Please, mommy, make it stop!" when my prayers were answered. It was over.

Of course, many people in the audience were on their feet, clapping and howling. I was clapping simply because it was over.

I imagine some will consider me uncultured. And I would call you a sycophant. It was a cacophony not of sound, but noise. If you want to hear percussion that is truly a pleasant sound (loud though it is at times), I highly recommend the show "Stomp". I had the opportunity to see that several years ago. I remember going into the show and being seated near a lot of kids. I remember thinking, "Oh, this does not bode well." The wife and I had recently attended a show of the Beijing acrobats. We were near a group of kids who made the show a nightmare. We actually left early. But this time was different. When the first person of the "Stomp" cast made his appearance on stage, the kids quieted down. And they never had a chance to get bored. The show just kept them, and me, in awe. THAT was a truly worthwhile show. THAT was percussion. Evelyn's show, by contrast, was the equivalent of a talented child banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

The UFO (which stands for "Unendingly Frickin Odious") finally took back off. Good riddance.

Opera at Nats Park

Opera at Nationals Park in Washington, DC. Kids were playing in front of a large screen down on the ballfield.

We're doomed

This just in. A scientist involved with the development of the Large Hadron Collider has completely destroyed the fabric of space-time in a single quote.

We're doomed.

BRAS for Everyone

I'm taking a graduate class, "Digital Telephony". I have to write a research paper. The topic is going to be a comparison of different broadband services to the home. I'm already researching different types of broadband services, including FTTH (Fiber to the home, which Verizon markets as "FiOS") and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). While looking through different documents for DSL, I kept seeing the word "BRAS".

That got a Tim Allen, "Bah-ROO!?!?"

It stands for "broadband remote access server". That's a special box in the network that allows for a great deal more of data to flow.

The question is whether the engineers who came up with that acronym were hard up, or just have a sense of humor.

My money is on both.

From the Archive: Republicans are 12.329 Times Better than Democrats, and I Have the Proof!

I originally posted this on my personal web site back in 2003. I decided to add it to my blog. Yes, it's political. I want to transfer as much as possible from the site because it's going to be completely changed.

The original post, with one minor correction, is as follows:

On 11 September 2001, Al-Qaeda mass murderers committed the most egregious attacks against the U.S. that she has ever suffered. Ever since that day, Congress and the American public have asked the question of, "How could the U.S. Government have allowed such a thing to happen?" Mind you, the U.S. had been subjected to attacks from Al-Qaeda before, namely the attacks against the World Trade Center (the first time in 1993), the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the attacks against our soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, the USS Cole, and the simultaneous bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on the African continent. All of these attacks occurred during the administration of Bill Clinton, who entered office on 20 January 1993. The first attack was the bombing of the World Trade Center on 26 February 1993. He had from that date until he left office on 20 January 2001, a total of 2885 days, to deal with the problem. His maximal effort was the launching of cruise missiles at a couple of sites in Sudan and Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 9/11, everyone began pointing the finger at George W. Bush as responsible for "letting this happen". Mind you, he had only been in office since 20 January 2001, a total of 234 days.

Doing a quick bit of math, that means that George W. Bush was being held to the same standard as Bill Clinton. Since Bush only had 234 days to deal with the same problems that Clinton had 2885 days with which to deal, this means that we, the US citizenry, consider Bush, a Republican, to be 2885 / 234 = 12.329 time better than Clinton, a Democrat.

Hence, Republicans are 12.329 times better than Democrats. At least, this is how I see it.

It's At Times Like This That Homeownership Sucks

I was walking through the family room, in an area right next to our laundry room, when I noticed that the floor is wet. I didn't think anything of it since it's raining outside. It wasn't until a short while later that my wife called me into the kitchen to tell me that there was no hot water. Long story short, the new hot water heater installed less than 2 months ago has a leak. It's not in the water heater itself, but on the output pipe. It's at a difficult-to-reach area between the heater and a wall. It's not hard to imagine that the plumber who connected the pipe had an equally difficult time getting back there to seal it.

Unfortunately, we had water out under out carpet to a radius of about 3 feet. I shop vacced it as well as possible. Then we pulled the carpet, shop vacced it some more, then sat it over some chairs. We have a fan blowing over it. Hopefully, it and the padding will be dry before the weekend is over.

Q is Overrated; Barney Collier is Underrated

Face it, Barney Collier is the be-all, end-all of engineers. As the electronics whiz in "Mission: Impossible" from 1966 - 1973, he was the US response to Great Britains "Q". But he was not simply Q's equal. Barney was the true master. Q was a pompous, beancounting REMF who was not worthy to work Barney's slide rule. Barney didn't put things together, hand them off to the team, and say, "Here ya go. And bring it back in pristine order!" He was right there in the field working them himself. For Q, field work was the exception, not the rule. We never saw Barney in a lab environment, unless it was a field-expedient one. I'll bet Barney didn't even own a lab coat. Q tended to make things that were complex; Barney understood that "complicated" meant "more things that can fail". Barney provided enough technology to solve a problem. Barney, being a field operative, understood all too well that sometimes things go wrong and that the primary law of fieldwork is Murphy's. And if something went wrong, he was there to fix it on the spot. Not sitting back in a lab chiding a field operator for not returning some piece of equipment.

There hasn't been anyone like him since. In the 1980s, "Revenge of the Nerds" premiered. It set back engineering as a respectable profession by two decades. "Nerds" reinforced the stereotype of engineers as spectacle-wearing, pocket-protectored social inepts. Greg Morris, the man who brought Collier to life and a truly underrated actor, refused to play stereotypes. Of any kind. After "M:I", he would fall into obscurity because he refused to play stereotypical black roles. As an engineer, he never played a stereotypical technology buff. He looked just as comfortable in a suit with cufflinks as he did in dirt-covered coveralls. He knew and practiced analog and digital circuit design, electromagnetics, chemistry, physics, and power engineering. But he had no problem with social occasions. I'll bet he knew wines as well as he knew Ohm's law.

You may argue that there are others. MacGyver, for example. He's a tree-hugging hippy liberal, so far as I'm concerned. Doesn't want to pick up a gun? Great. Tell that to a man running at you firing a weapon. Barney never had a problem pulling the trigger if he had to. And sometimes, he did. Put it this way, who would you rather have at your side if you're doing an op? Barney? Or MacGyver?

I thought so.

I'm an Extremist? Yeah, baby!

So, according to a study done by two professors from Oxford University (though one has now moved to University of Durham, England), engineers make up the highest percentage of jihadis. Go figure. You're highly trained in all things technical, where watching a TV show that the guy says "Today, we're going to learn to make plutonium from common household items" sounds like a good time, but you can't get a job because you don't know the right person to bribe.

Oh, and women are strictly verboten.

You have an overabundance of hormones, no outlet, and after graduation, golly, gee, you also have a lot of free time.

Here's what gets me. Engineers are upset by this, calling it "ethnic profiling".

WHAAAAAAAAT!?

Ethnic profiling? Oh, get a clue. Better yet, here's a nickel. Go get a personality. And bring me back my change. I never realized wearing pocket protectors and glasses-with-tape-on-the-bridge made me a legit ethnic group. If so, do my flood pants put me in an extra special category?

Okay, I, a Purdue-trained electrical engineer, am not the least bit surprised by this finding. Not even a little bit. Unfortunately, it's not something I can put into words. I just understand it.

Second, it's this type of information that, if accurate, will help us to either (a) root out these "engineers" and kill them or (b) stop them from becoming bombers and extremists. It's another data point.

So, all you who are calling this "ethnic profiling" need to grow up. Stop trying to kill the messenger. Deal with the message.

UPDATE: I just checked and the paper is not available from the author's web site. Shouldn't be too hard to find elsewhere on the Internet, though.

From 1 to 60 in One Blog

Seems I've made it. Big time. Skippy's List dropped a little love on me during what he coined Operation Leafblower.

I went from 1 comment in 3 years to 60 in a couple of hours. And among the more notable comments, I have:

• You might want to see about making posting easier.
  
• I'm going to say that you probably need to write more entries. You've been around nearly three years, but you only total in at 30 entries.
  
• Turn off owner approval for your comments. You can always go back and delete any offensive/spam comments later.
  

To which I'd have to reply:

• I'll be posting more often, and I've made it much easier to post.
  
• Based on the very perceptive comment posted on Skippy's List, to wit: "good gods, his stuff is dry and boring. Maybe a few booger jokes would increase his traffic." Ya think? Which is why I point people towards "Skippy's List". He and his cohorts are far better writers than I. Face it. Anyone who comes up with the list of things they are not allowed to do because they lived it (as opposed to just fantasized about it) is probably going to be a bit more fun than I. Sorry. Besides, I don't know any booger jokes. Would a good fart joke count?
  
• I've now turned off owner approval for comments. They should go directly to the page once you've posted them.
  

And, for the record, yet another comment back on Skippy's site was: "He’s gonna check his admin page one day and shit bricks at all the comments there." Yes. I did. I was actually trying to figure out how to make a simple change to the page using the "poke and hope" method when I clicked on the tab for comments and saw... everything. I thought, "Holy Crap! The spammers have found me!" Then I started reading the comments and realized, "No, these are for real." THEN I kept seeing "Skippy says Hi", and "Skippy this" and "Skippy that".

Didn't take long to realize that Skippy had passed some love my way.

To which I can only reply, "Thanks, Skip. I owe you one."

Okay, one more rant...

I said in my previous post that I'd turned over a new leaf. I was going to simply blog on technical subjects, especially my interest in the scientific programming of Freemat. Unfortunately, I have to break my fast on all things opinionated.

I'm about to start a graduate program. It's been awhile since I was an undergrad, so I need to freshen up my classroom skills. I've been studying probability, and it's led me to remember one thing I truly hated about textbooks. It's that textbook authors have a penchant for using phrases such as, "it's clear", "it's obvious", "it's easy to see", and "it is apparent". Frankly, those words should be instantly banned from any textbook. Period. Knowledge is a journey with pit stops along the way. The path from one stop to the next is only obvious to those who have been down the path before. Authors must always bear in mind that they've been down a particular path probably many times. The people reading their material, most likely students, have not.

The problem I have is that, every time I see these phrases, if I'm having a difficult time with the material, I begin to feel like an idiot. I mean, the author said "it can be clearly seen", which makes me feel as if I'm on the front of the Titanic, the lookout is screaming "Iceberg ahead!", and I can't see anything but water. Why do they do that? Is it easier than actually spelling out that which is "apparent"? Does it give them a feeling of superiority? Both? Neither?

Regardless, I reiterate my belief these phrases should be banned from all textbooks everywhere.

Obviously.

A New Leaf

Let's see. I've been online now for well over a year, and received a whopping 1 comment for any of my articles. The "Hmmm" factor is going gangbusters here. Considering that most of my posts have been political in nature, and considering that I obviously cannot write a well thought out political piece, I'd say that's a wrap. End of story. Full stop. Think I'll simply point people towards others, such as Mike the Marine and Blackfive (for military discussions) and Skippys List (for humor).Instead, I think I'll concentrate on technical discussions, primarily concerning Freemat and its many uses.
UPDATE: Okay, so I can't read a calendar. I've actually had this blog since November 2005. That means that I've been here for almost *3* years, with only one comment to show for it. One.
Sigh.

One Helicopter Away from Two Pieces of Lead

I'm one of those people that looks at history and imagines what would be if things had happened slightly differently. For example, what if the bomb placed under the table as Hitler was working in early 1945 had worked as planned? On that one, I think the war in Europe would have ended several months sooner. Berlin may not have fallen to the Russians because the Germans would have sued for peace with the Western Allies and surrendered to us. So long as we were able to get the Russians to stop right now.

I look at today's news and the BBC has an article on Mahmoud's visit to Iraq. All hugs, kisses, and kumbye-allah. He even said, and I quote, "Without the presence of the foreign troops the region will live in peace and brotherhood."



And I wonder, what if we hadn't lost all of those helicopters during the raid into Tehran in 1980? What if those Delta operators managed to get into the trucks, as planned, blown out the section of wall on the outside of the US embassy compound, and stormed the embassy? Old Mahmoud is lucky. Very lucky. Because when the Delta guys were storming the building, those holding our people captive were going to get a very special gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They were going to get two pieces of lead. Right between the eyes. Despite the fact that this was going to make our then-Secretary of State a bit queasy, they were going to meet their 72 virgins. (And, as Jeff Dunham said, did they realize that no one has ever said those virgins had to be female?)

There wouldn't be any doubt about Mahmoud's complicity in the takeover of our embassy. Because, buried in a file somewhere, would be a picture of his lifeless eyes staring into space, two (probably just one) neat holes dead set between them.

You got lucky once, Mahmoud. Once.

More Linux Frustrations

As stated in my previous post, I've managed to load Ubuntu Linux (my version of Ubuntu is a GUI over a Gnome Linux kernel), dual-boot my computer between Linux and WinXP, and start some very basic programming.

Er, I may have left out that last part about the programming.

I used Synaptic Package Manager to load the Gnu C Compiler (gcc) into Ubuntu. I even managed to get the basic "Hello, world!" program made and compiled. And that's when the frustrations started.

I went a step beyond the "Hello, world!" by writing a really small program that would calculate and display the value of sin(1). That's it. Nothing fancy. Just wanted to see how the output would look. How many digits it would display.

Here's the program:

#include
#include

main()

{

double x;

x = sin(1);

printf("%f", x);

}

As I said, absolutely nothing fancy. I could have probably made it simpler, but this was simple enough. Then, I compiled it with the following command:

gcc complex.c -o complex

and got the following message:

/tmp/ccNjXwiK.o: In function `main':
complex.c:(.text+0x17): undefined reference to `sin'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Those of you who are used to programming in Linux have seen the error. I did not include a link to the math libraries, meaning I didn't add the "-lm" switch with the command. Hence, my command should have been:

gcc complex.c -o complex -lm

That little switch tells the compiler to link to the math library.

Here's my obviously really stupid question: WHY do I have to link to the math library when I have #include math.h in the header of the program? When I compiled this exact same program in my Windows box, I received absolutely no errors with the following command:

cl complex.c

See how simple that was? Just typed in the command for the compiler, and it compiled. Wow! What a thought? Who would have thunk it?

Instead, I have to manually put in a switch telling the compiler to load the math library. When I have math.h in the header.

Yeah, Linux is so much better than Windows.

Its the New Year... And Now For Something Completely the Same

This will be a working log of my efforts to:

a) take a computer currently loaded with Windows XP Home edition,
b) re-partition the hard drive,
c) install Ubuntu Linux onto one of the new partitions,
d) install Windows 98 onto the remaining partition,
e) create a multi-boot system and
f) use the Ubuntu Linux system, along with Gnu C Compiler (GCC) to learn C programming.

To start, the system in question is a re-built Dell Dimension 4600. It currently holds 512 MB RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and two generic CD-ROMs.

I'm initially going to try to use Symantec's Partition Magic 8.0 to re-partition the hard drive.

UPDATE: Using Partition Magic 8.0, I was able to re-partition the 160 GB hard drive into four logical drives. They are a 120 GB drive (C:, for Windows XP), a 20 GB, a 1.5 GB, and a 10 GB. These are all approximate sizes. But, combined, they take up all of the hard drives physical space. I formatted the 20 GB and the 10 GB drives as EXT3, the current standard Linux format. The third I created as a Linux SWAP drive. To go a bit more in-depth, I partitioned the hard drive between the primary (C:, where WinXP resides) and an extended. From the extended, I created the other three logical drives.

My next step was to install Ubuntu. I started with an Ubuntu 6 (6.10) CD. I placed it in the drive, re-started the computer, and then ensured that the computer booted from the CD-ROM. It did, and I was brought up in a standard Ubuntu Linux desktop graphical environment. One of the icons stated "Install Ubuntu". I double-clicked that icon. In short order, I was asked to provide my name, a name for my user account, and a password. I was also asked to confirm the date and time. The next screens were the important ones.

At one point during the install, I was brought to the screen where I have to select an option to partition the hard drive. Apparently, the Partition Magic didn't do everything that Ubuntu wanted in order to install the OS. The first screen provided three options:

• Resize the primary partition (hda1) & use the freed space.
• Erase the entire disk (NOTE: Self-defeating. Not an option.)
  
• Manually edit the partition table.

I selected the third option to manually edit the partition table. I set the 20 GB partition as the root ("/") drive, the 10 GB partition as the media drive, and the 1.5 GB drive as the swap drive. I made sure that all other drives were removed (select the blank option at each menu), and checked "reformat drive" next to the three Linux drives. I then clicked on "Next". The screen that came up said that it was ready to install Ubuntu and it would install "Grub" on "hd0". Grub is the program used to select the particular OS in a multi-boot environment. I clicked on "Install". Ubuntu required ~20 minutes to install the Linux OS.

After install, the system re-started and the Grub program kicked in. The menu that came up had three options for Ubuntu (normal mode, safe mode, and a memory test) and one for Windows XP. I selected the normal mode (which was highlighted by default), and Ubuntu came up properly. Ubuntu popped up a window telling me to download certain updates. I did so, which took some time. There were 217 updates! After that, Ubuntu re-started. This time, Grub had 5 options for Ubuntu (6.10, 6.12) and one for WinXP. I selected the top one (highlighted by default) and came up in the Ubuntu environment. I then upgraded Ubuntu to the latest version (7.04). Again, after re-starting, there were now 7 options for Ubuntu (6.10, 6.12, and 7.04) in Grub. Selected the default entry for Ubuntu 7.04 and entered the Ubuntu environment.

Once it finished loading, I started up Firefox and web surfed. Everything worked properly.

I re-started the computer and selected Windows XP. WinXP also came up properly. However, Skypemate and Norton Anti-Virus no longer have icons in the system tray. This probably has nothing to do with the partitioning of the hard drive. The last thing I did in WinXP was to load both some Windows updates and some Norton updates. Most likely, these created some hiccup in the system.

Re-booted back into Ubuntu. I've noticed that Ubuntu comes up much faster than previously when I'd loaded it onto a different computer.

Started Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager). Discovered that the GNU C Compiler is already installed. I know this because I checked under "Development" and "gcc" (which stands for GNU C Compiler) was already checked. I opened a command terminal and typed "gcc". When I hit enter, it replied, "gcc: no input files". It appears to be working.

I've now re-partitioned the hard drive (step (b) is complete), installed Ubuntu Linux on the other partition (step (c) is complete), created a multi-boot system (step (e) is partially complete) and GCC is loaded onto the Linux system (I'm ready for step (f)).