Life and Times

When is it pointless to try to repair a system?

The newest addition to my functioning computer collection (bringing the total to 2, from 2) is celes.jmaclabs.com is now in the case formerly known as infinite.wdogmedia.com and has caused the demise of tungsten.jmaclabs.com (these are all internal addresses that don’t route or even (generally) show up on DNS) having stolen it’s memory, CD burner, hard drive, and 2 IDE cables. Probably other parts I can’t recall.

I’ve also got another processor on order (it’s a dual board) that I found for $40. I’d optimally like to get a few more hard drives in it for a RAID setup and possible use as a fileserver. But right now it’s slated to be used for misc purposes as a test bed server. It’s running Debian Testing with the 2.6 kernel series, drive/filesystem management is done by EVMS with LVM running on top of that and ReiserFS as the primary file system. So, root is /dev/mapper/momo/root Ben has suggested using more Xenosaga names to offset my Final Fantasy fixation, Celes and Momo are possibly an odd combination though so I really should rename one or the other. Momo needs to go with Ziggy, but I’m not sure I could name a system Ziggy.

First time in a bit I’ve had a functional linux system that I wasn’t worried about horribly breaking, so today I was playing with CUPS and remote X sessions (both for good reasons, we will likely be setting up an internet spanning VPN for webhosting related personnel and the ability to print to any system with ease will be nice, IPP is nice, even winders supports it) so I had OpenOffice.org running on Rydia (this computer) remotely from Celes and was printing from Rydia -> Celes (remote X) -> Rydia (CUPS) -> Epson Stylus, I felt very geeky.

On the music rating front, Ben has an interesting review of the new U2 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Go read it.

On my music rating front:

1891 Songs unrated
649 Songs rated
35 songs rated 5 star
4 songs by U2 rated 5 stars, continued dominance
3 songs by Bush rated 5 stars, really can’t go wrong with pure rock
93 songs rated 4 stars
7 songs by U2 rated 4 stars
6 songs by Newsboys rated 4 stars
257 songs rated 3 stars (the catchall category for songs that are decent but not excellent, my normal playlist is 3+)

Full Rating System Here (as if you really cared)

I’ve broken another power adapter, I have a term assignment due thursday and 59% battery life remaining.

Halo 2 is finished, actually a couple days ago. They have decided to make a trilogy out of it for some reason, it would have been better to just end it given the time between games.

Xenosaga II (which is also a trilogy, but a much more in depth and better written trilogy) has announced a release date of 2/15/2005 in North America it seems. The Official Site

Back to Halo 2, I didn’t really like this plot, and I didn’t particularly care much about fighting as the covenant. I have to say that I prefer humanity winning because the master chief rules rather than humanity winning because the covenant are a pack of idiots who are tearing each other apart. Humans of course were the forerunners and were set back millenia technologically by the activation of the halos clearly (conjecture) so should win.

Ben and I did up a DVD of a skit for church, I’ve tinkered a lot with that this weekend.

My Sociology Term Assignment really sucks, we have 10 questions to answer in under 2 pages. (No, not 2 pages per question, 2 pages total) concerning a short story entitled “The Lottery” which has absolutely nothing to do with Sociology and is a lousy story, both from a standpoint of a story and as an allegory. My professor and I disagree on any number of aspects of the story and interpretation of it, and as such I have felt the need to over prove each of my points, meaning I’ve passed 2 pages already and am only on question 5. Ben suggests I need to add an appendix and declare that my 15 page appendix is not part of my 2 page paper….

My speech in Communications went well on Wednesday, more speeches today so I really don’t need to be awake for class.

Ben and I stood in line for Halo 2, it’s good, I’ve been playing the past 2 hours through on normal difficulty campaign. The no health (shields only) takes some getting used to, and battle is much faster paced. Nice that the marines are willing to drive though, and the battle rifle is cool. In general I’ve found ammo to be lacking a bit so far and don’t particularly like the covenant weapons, although I use the sniper rifle to good effect.

Taking a lot of time for me to get used to the changes, so only at the bridge now.

“The wedding should be … light holiday eggnog” — Ben

A few days ago I posted that I was updating my iTunes playlists. My overall goal is to rate every song I have.

So, to that end.

I have rated 337 songs.
I have 2175 songs to rate.
23 songs have been given 5 stars.
U2 accounts for 5 of these, the highest.
51 songs have been given 4 stars.
U2 also accounts for 5 of these.
Michael W. Smith has 4, Dave Matthews Band 3.
3 stars is the largest category, the general decent song category.
2 is second largest, the category of “eh, it’s ok, but I don’t listen to it much”.
1 star is larger than I was expecting and may need to be dealt with (deleted). However, I have also tossed Christmas Music into this category as I don’t like to listen to Trans-Siberian Orchestra in the summer.

Bush of course won the election, I’m not surprised. I am surprised by how big the margin was and also how many seats were picked up in the senate and house by republicans.

Off in about an hour to film something at church, might be interesting as I really don’t know what I’m doing I feel even though I have a fair bit of experience now, Ben has always been around as the creative one.