I finally had an awesome enough computer to run Gnome and KDE! I was so excited and downloaded Super Karamber, gdesklets, and all the other eye candy I could never enjoy on my old Linux box. (which is now serving as a debian print server) However, having used Fluxbox so long on the old computer caused me to long for fluxbox. There was something I just liked about it. Perhaps it was the inobtrusivness which comes from a lack a large program menu or maybe it was right-clicking for programs or the way I did almost everything in a term window. So I was getting a little tired of having Gnome in Spanish, as I had switched it to about a month ago for fun so I decided it was time to end my session and start a new one. I always wanted to take advantage of having a GUI with a low memory profile since I wanted to begin working on Cinelerra (see my tutorial tomorrow), which takes up quite a bit of RAM.

Linux Uptime: 21:46:52 up 25 days

“Save often and Save Well” that was the motto of one of the best pioneering games of the 80s and 90s, King’s Quest. They spouted that advice because it was easy to make the wrong move and have your character die. If you hadn’t saved, you could lose hours and hours of game play. As anyone knows, it’s just too frustrating in those circumstances to play the game over. The same shoud go when writing a blog post. I had about two paragraphs I had been writing about how I kept forgetting what I had wanted to write so badly while I wasn’t home. One click too many in Firefox killed that sucker. Just like the video games, I don’t feel like writing it again. I’ve always felt that way about writing - unless it’s ridiculously important to me, I just will let it go. On to some of the other things I wanted to write about.

In our recent move, my wife and mother were on a mission to get rid of as much junk as possible as I’ve been labeled by them as a pack rat. I saved this poem from destruction. I don’t remember anything about it, not even the circumstances in which I wrote it. But here it is for you.

Life It’s no longer yours. You can’t do what you want with it. That’s like coming back to live in/remodel a house you’ve sold. You see, the owner dictates what happens to his property, as demostrated in Merchant of Venice. But what do you do if you’re caught in the moment? Especially with the other being so tempting, so manipulative. To give in is a breach of contract. At the same time, you know the judge is forgiving. As far as you know, there is no limit to the forgiveness. Do you push it? Test the limit? Is one moment worth eternity? Especially one quickly forgotten. But…that IS the main question…. the one up for debate. We have access to law books, but they are written in confusing jargon. If only the judge would answer you directly. Yet, he is a witty man. His favorite means of communication is through metaphors and analogies. So I stumble through the books looking for the answer. How do you confront the other without risking it all? It almost seems like one or the other. There must be a compromise… somewhere… But right now… right now somewhere is as good as nowhere. Patience is not my strength. If it is wrong to do it directly, then can it be done indirectly? Is it now right? Half as wrong? Still fully wrong? I really need to know for I fear jail almost as much as the side effects/penalties. In such a “now” world, it’s hard to consider eternity. So now I continue to wonder… I hope that I will somehow find the answer in the books. Until that time I simply dreak making the decision. Which will it be - the moment or eternity?

Here is my photo-documentation on the project.

While talking to my mom last night she asked me to do her a favor. For today, her mother’s birthday, she asked me to write a message on a balloon and let it go into the air, metaphorically going to my grandmother in Heaven. I did it, taking pictures to document the act because that is a symbolic thing to me as a visual person and photographer. I was fine while I did it but when I came inside and looked at the weight which had kept the balloon down while in the supermarket, I was instantly depressed. I was having one of the most amazing days of my life, propped up by the fact that my blog was back and this was just like jumping into one of Ithaca’s gorges. I didn’t even feel like having dinner anymore. Eventually, I got it out of my system and I feel better. I am still a little down, but nowhere near as bad as before. Stay tuned for the next part, where I put up some pictures of the event.

Today would have been my grandmother’s birthday. She died this past March during my Spring Break and I loved her very much. I know that she’s up in Heaven now having a heckuva time with her husband who was taken from her more than twenty years ago. She remained faithful to him to the last day and never remarried. I miss her so much whenever I open up my phone and think of someone to call. I would always call her when I had a free minute. I always get so mad that she didn’t get to see the wedding or my graduation. I mean, I’d like to believe that she was able to see it from Heaven, but she didn’t get to hug me that day. I didn’t get to see the smile on her face. The best way I know to remember her is to use my talents and remember her through my photography. Here is a tribute to her on her bithday:

Just a quick thought that I may elaborate on later (hence the part 1). Some may just call it coincidence, but days like this further my belief in God. Out of the blue I think that perhaps I should just try my server again, after trying EVERYTHING when I first moved in. Now it suddenly works! I feel God put that idea in my head. Thank you.

YES! Thank you God for letting my blog work again!! Oh Happy Day!

One of the things I love about Linux is that it doesn’t slow down like Windows tends to. I can (and did) have the computer up for weeks at a time and it doesn’t go any slower than when I first booted it up. More importantly, after updates the computer doesn’t slow down. I don’t know what others have experienced, but whenever I update Windows or even download anything more than a few hundred megabytes, Windows slows to a crawl. This may be something unique to my computer setup or something, but just downloading the ISOs for Fedora cause my Windows computer to grind to a halt! With Linux, I can download gigs of updates and it doesn’t have any bad effect. I hope that 1) Linux never loses whatever it is about the kernel that makes it this stable when running for days and after updates and 2) that Windows finally learns how to do that.

You may have noticed some instability in the blog recently. This is due to the fact that the place where my server is held recently switched to an ISP that blocks port 80 due to the Code Red Virus. As I’ll be moving soon, it didn’t make sense to enter into a contract with a business tier ISP for the server, so I had to do a few hacks to get the server running. A few more hacks this morning allowed me to get the blog working, since the blog kept looking for the old URI and I had to do some creative things with the URI in order to keep the same one working for those of you who have linked to the top level of my blog.