I installed Red Hat 7.1 yesterday, to do some hardware compatibility testing for an upcoming computer lab that will be dual-booting Linux & Windows. After some help from another sysadmin on campus, I'm now able to log in to our Netware server and access all of my files, right from my Linux box. Ximian 1.4 is very user friendly, and almost Mac-Like (pre OS X). Each new version of Linux I use impresses me more and more...
It's nearly 1:00 in the morning, but I can't sleep. I don't normally have this problem, but I do tonight. I watched all of the good TV that was on my TiVo, then listened to the rest of the audiobook The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, which was stored on my MP3 player.
Having now done so, I think I could still work for Mr. Jobs if I was asked to do so. I've got a thick enough skin, that I could probably withstand a few of his tirades, assuming I still had my job left afterwards...
The book did make me wonder about NeXT computers, which I've never seen or used. I wonder if they were cool. Maybe I can find one on eBay...
Later: Yup, they're out there! This one looks cool, but I'm not paying that much for a machine with a 25mhz CPU in it...
You don't find out how many people actually read your website until you get lazy and stop updating it for a week. I don't want this site to die, I've just been busy. Spring has finally sprung here in Iowa, and after being shut up inside all winter, I've got urges to go places and do things, but not to update my weblog.
My equipment requests were approved yesterday, now I just have to orchestrate the purchase of the equipment. My coworker and I are getting much-needed 21 inch monitors, as our 19 inch displays are of low quality, as well as being several years old. The new Trinitrons should serve quite nicely.
My request to outfit our building with 802.11b wireless networking was approved too, now I just need to get some wireless cards. Unfortunately, the 802.11b module for my Visor won't be out until May, at least...
We're also going to bite the bullet, and shell out the money for the Norton AntiVirus Corporate Edition. We're tired of trying to keep 250 machines all up to date manually, and of having to clean up after virus infections. Having the centrally managed software should make our jobs much easier.
And lastly, we're getting a CD Duplicator, to enable us to make large batches of CDs for when faculty would like to hand out supplemental digital materials to their students. This should be interesting, I've never used anything like it before, but being able to duplicate up to 75 CDs at a time should be handy, and a lot easier than the current methods..
I've been playing around with Progeny Debian Linux today. I downloaded the CD images yesterday, which took 6 hours, and I had to get them from Denmark, as all the U.S. mirrors were swamped. So far, I like it, though I'm installing KDE right now, because I really don't dig Gnome so much. The installation was fairly painless, and detected all of the hardware in my Dell Precision 410 correctly. I didn't like the way it asked for my monitor capabilities, I prefer the Mandrake/RedHat method of just letting me select my monitor model from the list, rather than asking for some fairly generic statistics, or wanting me to dig out my manual and give the vertical and horizontal refresh rates...
I really liked the way it asked about how I wanted to set up Samba, giving me the choice to launch it as a daemon or from inetd.
If you want to give it a shot, the CD image files are available on my workstation here, via FTP.
It's been a busy past few days, and now that Userland seems to have gotten their server problems remedied, I can write about it. Thursday night, my dad called me and told me that my grandmother had just been diagnosed with colon cancer. I dashed off an e-mail to work, telling them I wouldn't be in on Friday, then drove the 90 miles to my grandparents' house, where I spent the weekend. There are still more tests to come, so no real prognosis yet for my grandmother...
Saturday, we had the mother of all windstorms. Several of the older sheds on my grandparents' farm were blown down, as were many trees. A limb broke off one of the trees near the house, and fell onto the porch, ripping the railing out of the concrete steps. Their dog was sitting on the porch at the time, but he escape with only a bloodied paw and a bad scare. Winds were gusting up to 70mph.
