When, after roughly 10 years of service and for no apparent reason, it decides instead it likes brick form better. Such is what happened to my router on Monday, resulting in my being, well, hammered with emails and other asorted reading material that it took until tonight to finally get caught up on. I had been using one of the old D-Link routers, back in the day when wireless networking was still pretty much getting off the ground. Specificly, I was using this one–discontinued as of March 2008. I bought the thing in 2000 or 2001 or something, and used it to set up my parents’ first network–also my first experience with networking. And my first, and only–thank freaking God–experience with networking involving Windows ME.

The router, and my entire small network as a result, took a very unplanned nose dive at some point early Monday morning while I was still contemplating that whole being mobile thing. There were, from what I could tell, no warning signs or signs of sluggishness–just randomly snap, toast. Deader than Elvice. Of course, being the geek that I am, that had to encourage some troubleshooting. So when I got done with my running around for the day, I came back and devoted part of my evening to see if I can’t coax at least another 30 seconds of life out of the thing. At least long enough for me to finish the backing up of my laptop so I could finish dealing with another, unrelated technical issue–February is apparently the month for those. Of course, not happening. It was done, and there wasn’t any amount of poking and prodding short of prying the thing open and fiddling with the inner workings of it that was about to make it do anything other than sit there. Which, I might have been inclined to do, if I wasn’t lacking both the right type of screwdriver and the motivation to actually bother with it.

Now, ordinarily, such a situation–router suddenly goes sideways and absolutely no idea the cause, plus absolutely no money to immediately rectify the said situation–might have made me consider finding both motivation and screwdriver. You tend to do things like that when your geekyness is impeded by brokeness. But I was kind of forced to plan ahead about a year or two ago. Another issue cropped up, one that I’d originally thought might have been my router contemplating giving out right there–it was about 9 years old, so having it crap out on me at that point wouldn’t have surprised me. That time though it’d been the modem, which I’d only bought from my ISP, TekSavvy, about a month or two before that. fortunately, that was easier than at the time replacing the router would have been–one phone call, and done. But, knowing that I very likely wouldn’t have much longer before going completely netless if it did turn out to be my router, I’d managed to get online for the 20 minutes required to fork over the money for a spare–this was back when I actually had money to fork over for such things. Three days later, this showed up at my apartment. And a day after that, so did the new modem.

Swapping out the modem solved one connection issue. As a result, the router spent pretty much the last year or so in a box. This includes the 4 months since I’ve moved into the new place. And, on Monday evening, after some internal skepticism as to whether or not the thing would still work after it not being used save a brief testing period when I got it, it became pretty much the center of an otherwise unchanged network. Now, here’s hoping the month of technical issues doesn’t continue into March, and here’s hoping if by some twist of fate–or by some act of someone’s cruel sense of humour–it does, that it leaves this router the hell alone. I’m fresh out of spares, and money to fork over for spares. Anyone feel like donating to the Save a Geek foundation?

Every second or third day, now that I’m watching more on TV lately–hey, the olympics are on–I’ve been seeing ads from both Bell and Rogers, both saying their internet’s the fastest for doing blah blah blah because of blah blah blah. I’ve used Bell’s Sympatico high-speed service. Have not, admittedly, used Rogers’s offering–but if it’s as broken as their other network, that might be a good thing. Still, at least one of those advertisements is lying. Most likely both.

I have a solution. Let me test, at their best, both network technologies–Bell’s, and Rogers’s. Provide me 30 days of each to switch back and forth between, and we’ll figure out which is actually faster, if any. If neither is, then you can both shut up about it. That has the added benefit of getting Rogers service into Pembroke, where it currently has no cable coverage–in spite of the fact we see plenty of advertising from them. If that offer doesn’t work, then neither company has the right to defend their claims in any kind of battle, court or otherwise. I dunno, I think that’s pretty damn fair.

And hey, if DreamHost will let me, maybe I can see about taking care of their issues while I’m at it. Couldn’t hurt to suggest it, anyway.

I live in a small town. Not small as in my next door neighbour knows the sister of the lady who taught my grade 3 class–although it might as well be, seeing as a couple doors down from me lives one of my elementary school teachers, but small. Small enough that, surprise of surprises–and I didn’t even know this, people are still getting excited about the prospect of high-speed, DSL internet being brought to their particular community. DSL. That thing I’ve been using for nearly 10 years. And folks are still today getting excited about having it. Scratch that, folks today still actually don’t have that particular option. I knew Pembroke and area was still catching up to everyone else, but I had no idea we were *this* behind the times. Paging the CRTC…

Really, I wasn’t serious. Honest. When I said you were all over the place, it was really intended to be an exageration. You didn’t have to go and get all social with your buying out of Aardvark just to prove a point. Really. And this whole getting into the broadband market, too? That’s just overkill. Really, I didn’t actually mean you were everywhere–you can stop trying to be now. Or at least bring that whole broadband thing to Canada. The CRTC could use a real life example of what we *should* have up here.

I very rarely, meaning almost never, use AOL’s instant messaging client, in spite of the fact it’s been sitting on my computer for the better part of a year. Probably longer than that. Mostly because, well, all the cool people use MSN. Except my family, apparently. In their defense, though, they are at least on Facebook–of course, that’s exactly where I rarely am.

Fortunately, for me anyway, I now-well, eventually anyway-will have even less of a reason to bother with the service. And more of a reason to stick with AIM. The next version of the program, which will hopefully be equally as stable, if not more so, as its current version, will supposedly include the ability to chat with people on Facebook via the AIM client. No, I’m not an overly huge fan of AOL–I’d of preferred it be MSN, but I’m not an overly huge fan of the Facebook website either. And since I still only go on there to play Mafia Wars, and I don’t even do that very often, I’ll take it. Who knows? Maybe MSN will do the same. Hey, one can dream.

Just about everyone who watches this kinda thing’s been reporting that as of the beginning of March, Google’s officially going to shut down IE 6 support for its services. You’re strongly encouraged–well, by them anyway–to use that as an opportunity to give their new web browser a try. IE 6.0 hasn’t been supported directly by very many for quite a while–since the initial release of IE 7, really. Microsoft almost immediately dropped support for it, and now more and more sites are cropping up that strongly recommend you upgrade. If you’re a frequent user of Gmail and company, if only because your performance will benefit hugely from it, I’d strongly recommend you either consider installing IE 7 or 8, or even do what I recently did and give Firefox a shot. It’s good for your health. Or, at least, Google says it is.

I have absolutely no browser loyalty, whatsoever. I guess I haven’t had it for quite a few years now. For the most part, I’d use Internet Explorer–mostly because it was the default choice when I’d click on something and I didn’t particularly feel like changing it. But I kept Firefox around anyway, for those few occasions where something would come up that IE just wouldn’t play nice with. Or, more recently, in the event I came across a site employing CAPTCHA technology, which sadly neither browser’s come up with a built-in answer for yet. Recently though, meaning just this afternoon, I’ve decided it’s been a while since I did any real major playing with firefox. They’ve made a hell of a lot of improvements, or so the various sites who take note of such things have said, and I wanted to see for myself. So, as of right now and for at least the next couple days, IE gets kicked to the curb in favour of the open source alternative. It may only be a couple days–I haven’t quite decided yet. So far, it does seem to be running a little better on this machine, so it might stick around for longer than that. If nothing else, it’s a temporary break from staring at IE all day. Yeah, I know, you people who’ve been using it forever already can laugh now. I never said I was quick to change.

After yesterday’s launch of Apple’s iPad, everything from Twitter to several of my RSS feeds just blew up. I’m still wondering why, aside from the fact it’s an apple launch event. I mean, not that it doesn’t have its fanpeople, but I don’t see it doing what Apple’s hoping it will in its current form. This is going to get long-winded; you might want to make sure you’ve got a minute to browse.

Overaccessibility

First thing, from a me viewpoint, and from the viewpoint of a member of the blindness community. There is, believe it or not, such thing as too much accessibility. Way too much accessibility. And I think Apple’s trying to reach that level. I was rather politely informed today that I’m being ripped off if I buy a netbook over an iPad, because I won’t be getting the spacial info from a netbook that a touchscreen can give. I’m still waiting to be educated on a down side to that. When I’m working on a blog post, or doing just about anything else I’d usually do on a daily basis, I’m not worrying about where things are on the screen. Quite frankly, I could care less where they are–it’s whether or not I can get to them that matters. I really don’t care if there’s a row of links or menu options scrolling down the right hand side of my screen. If I can get to them, open them, use them, and get rid of them, that’s all that matters. When focusing on accessibility, the interface should still keep its sense of overall functionality. Having to physically look for where it is they’ve positioned an icon, menu option, button or window is, to me, not functional.

Useability

We could nitpick about just how far accessibility should go all day, but that’s by far not the only reason I don’t see myself owning or using an iPad in the near future, if at all. I’m a huge useability freak. More than I am an accessibility freak–although, in most cases, useability ends up equaling to accessibility. Part of useability is being able to easily move from one application to another, without having to back out of one, flip through a few icons to find another, and wait for it to open. You need to be able to multitask–don’t even ask how many applications I have open right now. Just don’t. The iPad is running a modified version of the iPhone’s OS. Which–you guessed it–means no multitasking. Suddenly, we’ve entered a slightly more modern version of 1999. People don’t have more than one or two programs open, if that. Or so Apple says, anyway. If this is designed to be a portable personal computer, though, and if Apple’s expecting it to be used for anything moderately heavy on productivity, we need multitasking. There’s plenty of agreement that it would have been very useful were it implemented for the iPhone. It only makes sense, and I dare say a lot of sense, that it would be even more useful for the iPad. So why are we still not seeing it? Were I in the market for a smaller machine to cart with me across the border or something, that might be a dealbreaker. Quick startup? Great. Awesome. Long-ish battery life? Bonus. Touch screen? Okay, I might be able to get used to that. Maybe. No multitasking? See ya. Next?

Hardware

Even with the lack of multitasking support, which one can only hope will be remedied in a future version, the device itself might somehow still have some promise. At least until you take a look at its specs, at which point that promise kind of gets up and walks out. There’s no ethernet port–believe it or not, there are places where wifi and/or cell coverage, if you want to pay the $130 or so extra for that feature, is unavailable. But you may still have access to plug in. Except, um, you don’t. There are no USB ports, except for the Apple-provided adapters. Which means you can’t connect it to your external HD if you happen to have one. No SD card slot either, meaning the only way to pull anything off the 64 GB flash drive in the machine would be to hook it to your computer, and do it through iTunes. And, yes, all of 64 GB of diskspace on the actual machine itself–a stock sub-$300 netbook can easily have 160 GB of space, albeit not flash memory. I don’t work like that. apple just basicly decided I can’t use most of what at some point I will probably be using at least once. And they put all of this in a package that weighs just slightly less than your typical netbook, with a battery that lasts roughly equally as long as most models nowadays–particularly when you factor in that you only ever actually get about 70% of the advertised battery life. Suddenly, that sub-$300 netbook’s looking a little more attractive.

Phylosiphy

All that aside, there’s one area of Apple’s operation that I don’t know that I’d ever agree with when it comes to its products. That being, from the instant you purchase an iPod, or an iPhone, or now an iPad, you’re effectively asking Apple’s permission to do anything with it. Want to install a program? Alright, but only if Apple says its okay–or you want to risk breaking your warranty and jailbreaking. On its technical specifications page (link is above), it even lists an iTunes store account as a requirement for the iPad. It’s been said that you’re almost renting your hardware from Apple, not having a whole lot of actual controll over what ends up being done with it. And indeed, with most if not all content needing to come from the app store unless you feel like jailbreaking, I can see where that perception would come from. And I can agree with it. If I buy a computer, even a small portable computer like that one, I want to be able to take it home, throw on a few programs I use regularly and already have handy–and not have to pay for more than one copy of them, since I already have them and all–and go about my business. I can’t do that with the iPad. And if Apple decides, as it’s done before, to change its mind and remove an app from the store? Well, now I’m pretty well out of luck until such time as I can be bothered to jailbreak. There’s a tiny bit of a problem here with that.

Conclusion

What it offers, as limitting as it is, is somewhat promising. I’d consider buying one, if we could just navigate a way around what it doesn’t and likely won’t offer in future. The apple loyalists will brand it as the way we’ll use computers tomorrow. Okay, I can buy that. But I’ll still be using my external hard drives tomorrow. I’ll still have need for ethernet capability tomorrow. And I most definitely won’t be coughing up $30/month to be able to use the internet on my computer without wifi–Rogers already charges me for a data plan I barely use but still have to pay for. If, as they say, we’ll be using computers in this fashion in the future, I’d better still be able to do all of that. Otherwise, go on ahead. Come back to the present when you’re bored. I’m not going anywhere.

And it didn’t even take me banging my head against Google Reader. I’ve been looking for something portable to replace my current favourite, an RSS plugin for Outlook 2003. Mostly because, on days like today when I’m not sitting in front of my computer, as much as I love being able to have direct access to my feeds in Outlook, it helps me all of not at all at the moment. And I might have found it–at least a temporary fix, until it breaks or I find something better.

The software, written in python and running on any OS that therefore supports the language–I have it on Linux at the moment, is just called Planet. It takes one or more RSS feeds, such as the feed from this very blog, and merges them into a single HTML file. The design looks not a whole lot different from most blogs–the entries are sorted latest first, by date, and optionally by feed, with individual headings indicating the start of a new segment. It looks incredibly customizeable, although I’ve not yet actually gotten much time to play with it–a disadvantage of all my current subscriptions being, as said before, on my computer at home which is precisely where I’m not.

All the HTML, XML, and other such files are built dynamicly every update from templates. Those templates contain the raw HTML or XML code, plus a few variables understood by the program for printing things such as the feed name, entry title, when it was posted, etc. The program itself can be scheduled to run via Linux’s crontab command, or the Mac OS equivalent. Or, if you’re insane enough to have managed to get python running on Windows, you can suffer even more brain damage and update it via the task scheduler. I wouldn’t recommend it-windows has a nasty little habit of breaking task scheduler, but it’s your brain.

The only thing that would make me not recommend it for non-techy users is absolutely no problem for me–entirely manual instalation and configuration. Everything from determining how long between checks for new content–enter the crontab utility–to the addition of new feeds absolutely must be done by hand. Personally, even though it’s not really a huge problem for me, I’d still have much rathered it give you the option of just tossing it an OPML file and letting it draw the feed info from that. But then, I also have well over 100 feeds to transfer over when I get the time. Still, for what it does it looks highly promising. And, it can always go away if and when I find something better. But for now, it beats what’s currently out there for hosted solutions (No, FeedMyInbox, I don’t want to pay you $16 for the privelege of being able to have you email all my feeds to me. Sorry.). So, I’ll give it a try for a bit and either really love it or tos it out the nearest window. In the meantime, I have back entries of feeds to go through when I get home anyway, so I can take my time with the moving everything over to the new software. And it’ll definitely take its time.

Before Google, we had Yahoo. And back then, Yahoo was pretty much just search. They came up with the idea for hosting email as well in the mid to late 90’s–around the same time as Hotmail was born. By then, Google was still just search. Flash forward 11 years or so, and they’re everywhere. I mean, granted Yahoo is trying to catch up, and after Microsoft’s purchase of Hotmail and the advent of its own MSN/Windows Live/Bing search engine, it’s trying to play catch-up too, but Google’s still got a hell of a head start.

Now, Google runs its usual search engine. It also probably hosts your email. It hosts at least part, if not all, of your IM conversation. And, with the advent of Google Voice for those lucky enough to be able to use it, it’s become your VoIP provider. They’ve even developed their own web browser, and two operating systems–one for computers, and one for cell phones. I’ve even heard rumours they may or may not be looking into selling electricity. And now, on top of that, they’ve gone and done something only Apple’s done to this point–come out with their own phone, running their own OS. Looking at the articles–and there are several–that pretty much trumpet the launch of what they’re calling the gPhone, also known as the Nexus 1, it just randomly occured to me. Sweet Jesus, Google’s bloody everywhere. And I wouldn’t trade that. After all, my monthly popular posts post is brought to you by Google Analytics. I’m of course still running a couple others, but, as always, that one’s pulling ahead. And why not? It’s got Google all over it. Just one more thing they weren’t doing 11 years ago.

I know, my birthday’s not until June, but if someone’s looking for things to buy, either of these would be absolutely awesome. Granted, this machine’s still going strong–and it’s running a dual core processor, but… still. At least 8 GB of memory. Seriously? For a budget computer? I mean, sure it comes with Windows 7 64-bit, but it’d take me all of a couple hours to whipe that off if I decide to and throw Linux on there instead. And with specs like that, without any sort of customization on my part? Sweet jesus that thing’d run like a dream. Okay, must stop looking. I won’t be able to sleep tonight.

There’s a report out now that’s saying the rate of failure in netbooks within the first year is significantly higher than that of laptops and desktops. Now, not having actually owned a netbook I couldn’t even start to tell you if it’s accurate or not, but having owned 2 laptops and countless desktops, I can say my personal experiences with those are surprisingly positive. They all lasted past their first year, and I only had to replace my first laptop at the 4-year mark, or thereabouts, when it quite literally began to fall apart–it was a Toshiba, what do you expect? Other than that, though, I’ve had none of my machines to this point fail on me. Would that remain the same were I to buy a netbook? I haven’t a clue. But this isn’t exactly prompting me to go and find out.

SquareTrade, an independent US warranty provider, analyzed the failure rates of more than 30,000 laptops covered by its own warranties. It found that 5.8% of netbooks malfunctioned within the first year, compared to 4.7% for regular laptops and 4.2% for premium laptops costing more than $1,000.

Sounds like my best bet would just be to buy another laptop. So who wants to go shopping with me?

Dear DH,

I happened to be up during the night for unrelated reasons, and just so happened to be walking past the computer to take care of a thing or two. In so doing, I couldn’t help but notice the tell-tail signs of a severe breakage not entirely unlike one we here at the geek in training household experienced last week. And about 3 or 4 times before that. Your website was toast, my blog was toast, email was toast, your network was probably toast.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I know first hand shit happens. Networks will take a dive. Hardware goes bork, and all manner of hell breaks loose. But 5 times at least in a month? And after you released yet another fluffy newsletter escentially saying these kinds of problems should be behind us? Not cool, DH. So uncool. You’re driving me closer and closer to the point of actually wanting to endure the required brain damage to actually configure, fire up, and test, before using, a web and email solution powered by the unmanaged VPS’s over at Linode. I’d really rather not, you understand. But if you keep leaving me no choice, I’m gonna have to split. My network at home stays up longer than you folks have this month. Now, please, by all means, fix your shit for good. Moving this much crap over to another server, even one managed by me, will be a bitch. Do not force me to do so. You really do not want to force me to do so.

No love,
Me.

PS: Your overly perky and way too optimistic newsletter could use some work. I only bought it for about a minute and a half. And wanted a refund when your network crapped again.

It’s great that you’re coming out with a new, in-house and online equivalent to your on demand option available through your cable services. It’s even greater that you’re extending the option of using it to customers of any Rogers service. But you might want to, maybe, give not screwing over your customers a try if you’re actually planning to do that.

We’re already Rogers customers. We’re already paying, a lot of times way too freaking much, for Rogers services–up until October or so, for me, that included cable. If you’re going to grant us free access to your on demand service online, don’t then go back and decide that it still counts against our bandwidth caps (*). It’s *your* service, on *your* network. For which you’re still getting a *lot* of our money. More so if they’re also paying for TV from you. That’s enough. You’ve just guaranteed I won’t be playing with the new Rogers on Demand online anytime soon. And if I were a Rogers customer still for anything beyond my cell phone–you guys *are* the only ones right now that offer accessible phones that won’t absolutely kill my bank account–you’d be guaranteeing, since it would count against my bandwidth cap anyway, that I would continue my current means of obtaining my television viewing. No love, your local former customer tech geek.

PS: Thank you for not automatically assuming your wireless customers want to pay a monthly charge for *this* service, as well.

(*) Rogers is apparently not going to lift the bandwidth limitations on your internet service if you’re with them and accessing their on demand feature. I don’t get it either, but that’s Rogers. That’s also why I’m with TekSavvy.

I know this isn’t a techy type blog, but well, I’m a techy type geek, and it’s my blog. I’ll get back to writings of a more personal nature just as soon as I have something to write about. In the meantime, have a read. You might yet find something relatively interesting.

I challenged myself yesterday to find something that would equal or better the stats package I’ve been running locally since the opening of the blog. And, in fact, challenged myself to even give Google Analytics a try for the sole purpose of letting it take its best shot at proving it can do a better job of it. In so doing, I fear I may have come across something of an accidental discovery. I’ve been suspecting my current stats package of missing things every so often, but wasn’t entirely sure exactly how accurate my suspicion was. So I installed another plugin to run a comparison. Already, just in a brief test run of the two side-by-side–really, I don’t do that very often, but I was curious–the newly installed one’s picked up on things the current doesn’t. For the curious, the plugin that’s currently being challenged is StatPress Reloaded. The challenger is the more recently updated and, at least on initial outlook anyway, more flexible Wassup plugin. So far, on initial testing, the latter seems to come out slightly more on top. Not sure yet how well it’ll work with a fully implemented WP Supercache, but that’ll be my next step after putting it through its paces like this. In the meantime, I shall now sit back, and watch the thing periodically refresh, thus giving me a few more stats to enjoy. While StatPress likely misses a few.

Since I started this blog, I’ve been running a local tracking tool for the purposes of generating stats of mostly general interest to me–how people got here, what people read when they got here, did they come back, where did they go when they left, all that interesting to me but completely useless to anyone else stuff. It’s also how I generated yesterday’s breakdown of what got the most attention in November. And, while it does give me a lot of information, I can’t help but wonder if I’m still missing a thing of interest or two.

So, I’m finally deciding to take advice long ago given to me by Mike among others, and installing Google Analytics to go along with it. I very very briefly played around with it some time ago, but never actually ended up really getting anywhere with it beyond mildly confused, but that’s mostly due to the fact I haven’t had the time to mess with it in detail. Since I do, and since I’m curious what these two packages combined will do to possibly complement each other, I figured what the hell. Worst case, I decide to pick one and ditch the other. Best case, I keep both. In any event, the comparison over time should be mildly distracting. I’ll be quite interested to see which one misses more and by how much. As for right now, though, I’m almost missing a hockey game.

I can tell you one thing I ended up not being thankful for when I woke up this morning after last night’s festivities. I staggered out to the computer, and went through my various news sources, coming up on this bit of disturbing news. It would appear, much to the dismay of just about anyone who’s had any experience with the downloading of torrents over the last… oh, 4 or 5 years or so, Mininova picked yesterday to close its doors to all but legitimately uploaded torrents. Which, as it turns out, rules out just about everything now on my list of things to be downloaded. Fortunately, if you follow the guys over at EZTV, they’ve already moved everything you might be looking for to alternate downloading sources. Which means, at least that illegally downloaded content will remain online. Now, to just hold out a little longer in the hopes that Demonoid makes a reappearance. Rest in piece, Mininova. We’re gonna miss you.

At some point during the night last night, and rather inconveniently after Jessica and I had run off to bed and so I couldn’t immediately determine that it was a network issue, this blog, a rarely updated–and, in fact, rather neglected for a couple weeks–political blog, and our email among other things, decided to take a rather gigantic crap on our front lawn. The first ever self-hosted version of the blog–link’s over there in the right sidebar–was started on this network, hosted by DreamHost, in January of 2006. Since then, I’ve always had something going over here. If not a blog, then some little utility or web app I was playing around with just because I can. Or a forum I was testing for one of the RP projects I’m either involved in or dedicating resources to. So I’ve been with them a while.

In that time, I think I’ve only ever really personally encountered… maybe 4 major, “OMG I can’t access a thing” type failures. It may, in fact, even be less than 4. So when I woke up to a screen full of “can’t connect” messages (thanks, Outlook), I was more than a little bit surprised–albeit temporarily. And, admittedly, more than a little bit frustrated–emails I should have received overnight hadn’t actually hit my mailbox yet. Once I managed to get my end of the cleanup out of the way, though, I started looking into something I hadn’t really looked at since, well, the last time DreamHost’s network went and crapped out.

I’ve been eyeing on and off, usually while the blog etc is offline, the idea of moving most if not all of my various outlets fully away from a managed environment. I’ve been running the DH VPS for a few months now, plus I’ve been running two of my own, unmanaged VPS’s for a couple years. Mostly, it’s been a sort of learning environment for me–see how many different ways I can break the system, then reinstall it, and start all over again. And yet, every time something like this happens, I always toss around the idea for a few days of actually expanding my knowledge overall of the Linux environment, and at the same time put into development my own email, and possibly web, solution–one independant from any particular web host. But I never actually get around to doing that.

I’ve done much of the actual research already–the most likely candidate for when I actually decide to take that leap will probably end up being one that centers around Postfix and MySQL, now I just need to find the energy, motivation, and maybe get frustrated enough with my current setup that I finally just say screw it and go with it. It’s probably gonna suck, but at least then I’ll be able to actually figure out for myself what’s up and died on me. Meanwhile, hey, DH, can we get a more stable network please? I really don’t like being forced into considering enduring the necessary brain damage to actually set something like that up. At least not at such a young age.

A couple months ago, when they released version 2.10 of Glibc into the unstable tree for Gentoo, I thought it’d be fun to try rebuilding everything right then so that I might get what was left of the old 2.9 version off my system. Didn’t quite go as well as I thought–in fact, one of the programs I use fairly frequently when I’m not home, absolutely refused to compile against the new Glibc. Well, crap. There just went that. So I filed this bug report, and expected not a whole lot to get done about it–I’m probably one of a very small subset of users who actually still run that program, right? So clearly it won’t be a priority. I mean, that’s what I’m used to–you send Microsoft an error report, or any of the Windows program authors a similar report, they more often than not just sort of ignore it. I was perfectly ready for them to do that here. I’d even started researching alternative programs I could make use of while on my coming up road trip. Then, in with the other couple hundred of last night’s emails, I get this.

17 Nov 2009; Dawid Węgliński (cla) bitchx-1.1-r4.ebuild,+files/1.1/bitchx-1.1-open-mode.patch:Pass mode to O_CREAT bug #285374

It’s probably not directly related to what I reported. At least, I didn’t think so. So I wasn’t in a real big hurry to test it out. I waited until the automatic synchronisation went off this morning to pick up the new changes, and this afternoon, out of random boredom/curiosity/whatever, I tried yet again to compile the thing. And, surprising the hell out of me, it actually didn’t fall over sideways. I’m really not used to that.

that’s something I literally never saw, like, at all in all my years using, writing about, complaining about, trying to fix, abruptly breaking, and eventually reinstalling Windows. I have no idea how many times I naively hit the “send error report” button on this or that crashed program, utility, or the OS itself, thinking “Hey, Microsoft might get to fixing this.”, only to install several Windows updates that, yep, didn’t actually fix it. So actually seeing an update come across my desk that, wouldn’t you know, actually fixes a problem? Yeah, that’s new. And it’s definitely not hurting my consideration for putting more and more time into using Gentoo locally.

Explanation: BitchX, BX for short, is a Linux based client for connecting to IRC (Internet Relay Chat). I have no idea why they call it BitchX. But, it’s a decent enough program for what I use it for, so I also don’t particularly care.

Out of random curiosity last year, I started to tinker with Linux on a local machine–specificly, a 5-year-old HP laptop that wasn’t really being used for a whole lot else. Not really being willing to bother considering what I could manage to lose and what I might want to keep–there was 4 years of crap on that laptop pre-install, I just pulled everything off that HD and onto this machine, and went about the business of installing Gentoo. I know, at least three of you are laughing at me for having made that decision. I like a challenge, okay? Since then, I’ve been playing, tweeking, updating, tweeking, and playing some more just to see how long it takes me to get everything working. Or, how long it takes me to break things so horribly it doesn’t even boot, whichever comes first.

There’s a point to this, I swear. The thing that drew me initially to Linux is the fact that it can run on damn near anything with the right amount of tweeking. And the people behind it actually encourage it. I mean, the fact that it’s free doesn’t hurt either but still. I can dig up an old Pentium II, hook it up, pray to god it has an ethernet port on the thing so I can plug it into the router, and probably find a current version of Linux that’ll run on it. Windows and Mac OS can’t really make that claim. Hell, the advent of Vista broke most machines that could have run XP just fine a couple years ago. And Apple’s been trying for, like, ever to find a way to restrict people to buying their hardware if you want their OS.

They’re trying it again, this time in the form of an update that apparently removes Intel Atom chipset support from the OS. While they point out it probably won’t take very long before someone comes up with a patch for it, they also sort of halfway gloss over the entire point as to why I won’t be buying a Mac anytime soon, against the multitude of advice that’ll no doubt be offered to me by Mac and Mac OS users alike. The OS can run on damn near any Intel chipset out there. And it even needs little to no modification to actually do so. You would think, since it means selling more copies of their OS, and since it means they can take even more market share away from Windows and Linux, they’d be all over it. Apparently you’d be wrong.

I don’t like being told what I’m allowed to do with something I already paid for. That’s why I don’t own an iPhone, and why once I’m more comfortable with Linux I’ll probably be switching from Windows entirely. If Apple’s going to insist that if I want to run their OS, whether I have space for it or not I absolutely must buy their hardware, I’ll stick to Linux, thanks. Or, if not Linux, someone who’s not trying to work against me.

I keep threatening to do that post about what the hell happened to me since the last time I was actively blogging (Um, LJ-ing, perhaps?). Well, consider this my attempt at doing so. I’ll warn you in advance there will probably be things that get missed–it *has* been about 4 months, after all.

For starters, there were more than a few trips across the Canada/US border between myself and Jessica, who’s rarely updated LJ is over here for anyone who doesn’t already read her. Things in that department I don’t think can get much better. Well, beyond the elimination of the border but eh, that’s coming. Beyond that, I’ve been doing a lot more experimentation with Gentoo, my for the moment linux distribution of choice. I’d messed around very briefly with Debian and Ubuntu, but couldn’t get quite what I wanted out of those distributions. That, plus I rather like a challenge and Gentoo definitely provides that. I kept an old HP laptop around for the purposes of experimentation–and, actually, it was the same laptop I did most of my blogging on in the old days–so I can break it 6 ways from Sunday and not really be set back more than a couple hours’ tinkering. Works perfectly fine for me. In addition to that, I’ve been continuing to pound pavement in hopes of landing me a job. Not an easy thing to do when every day the unemployment line gets longer, but we manage. This in between trips to catch up with family, because… well, you know, they don’t tend to like it when you avoid them for long stretches at a time.

Then there was the move. I’d spent the last year and a half or so on employment insurance while I looked for work, thus enabling to keep my rather nice–even if I do say so myself–apartment in Ottawa’s west end. Not having found anything though, it became necessary for me to find somewhere else to call home lest I end up going very broke very quickly. So, on October 23rd, everything I own and a few things I forgot I owned got stuffed into one box or another, and carted an hour and a half away to this, a basement apartment who’s upstairs neighbour has perhaps one of the creakiest floors I’ve heard in my life. Now, I’m still looking for work, still finding time to do a little geeking, and still–at least, as of about 2 weeks from yesterday–making trips across the border when I have the time, money and transportation. Not a whole lot has changed, save for my mailing address–which I’m still finding things that didn’t get the notification of that change–and the fact some things in life just plain aren’t as convenient as they were a month ago. But, win some, lose some. That be life.

Once I have the space in this apartment, and everything I’ll immediately need to do so out of boxes and set up, I plan to get back into tweeking the laptop and making things work just that much better. And, with a little luck and a small miracle, it might result in me accidentally coming up on a skill or three I can put in a resume. Never hurts to say you can do something, particularly when that something didn’t require you shell out money you don’t have for a college/university education. Of course, if I don’t get that out of it, then maybe I’ll just have a computer I can use should I ever decide to wipe windows off this one. Either way, I can’t find a down side here.

Well, that’s the summer and part of spring in a nutshell. Not very exciting, just… chaotic, really. Semi-organized chaos, but still. And if this is any indication, the next couple months don’t plan to be any different. Which, surprisingly, is how I like it. Can’t very well go researching new and somewhat impressive things to buy if you don’t have time to, after all.

One of the things I’ve been working at trying to accomplish before the move (more on that later), and haven’t actually managed to accomplish yet, is the replacement of my old Nokia phone–specificly, the 6682. I tried once before, but the folks over at Rogers’s sales department seem to have a bit of a hearing problem. Or perhaps just a comprehension problem.

I ordered the Nokia E71, but about 5 days after the order was placed the phone I actually received wasn’t it. No big deal, I’ll just return it. Except not quite. I fired it back at UPS the same day I received it, and 2 days later, they knocked on my door with the exact same phone–and no return sticker thinggy. Brilliant. I spent pretty much the next week trying to twist their arm into getting me another one before I packed everything up and scrammed back to the Pembroke area. Suffice it to say, and not really all that surprising to me, it ended up actually rather not happening. Go figure.

Then, the move happened. I packed up my old apartment in Ottawa, came 1.5 hours southwest-ish to Petawawa, and unpacked most of it in the span of a day or two. Actually, a lot of stuff’s still in boxes–but, hey, the majority’s actually useable again. I can live with that. Once I had things up and running here, it was back on the phone to Rogers to try and sort this mess out. I still had the phone, in its original UPS packaging, sitting on the end of my desk–well, once said desk finally got put back together–for the first weekend of my living in the new place. Rogers still wanted to email me a shipping sticker thing to print off and use. Which would have been perfect, except I still had absolutely no way to get access to said email. They tend not to remember you told them that 5 times already.

I eventually gave up on that, as my return window was very quickly closing and I was flirting with a headache. I also finally ended up getting net access that Sunday night, but by then I wasn’t about to reenter that same dance. So instead, I called UPS up myself. And, as luck or something like it should have it, this time I got someone with more than half a clue. I scheduled them to come and pick up the thing. I got the address to one of their receiving yards from Rogers that morning, and when shipping dood showed up, it got handed to him. Along with a request to forget about billing me, and stick Rogers with the price tag–something he seemed a little too eager to do, but I wasn’t about to argue. Meant I could cheap out and well, cheap is good, no?

The phone never did come back to me, and the fact they’re not charging me for it on this month’s bill would seem to indicate they did receive it, and didn’t screw up the processing of it. Either that or someone just committed a rather significant oopsy. Either way, as long as the price for that phone doesn’t end up on a future bill, I’m not about to call them up and say otherwise. So now, with that phone being on its way or already back to Rogers and out of my hair, I can focus on getting the one I was actually after.

Which, last week, is exactly what I ended up doing. Only this time, rather than them simply sticking the wrong phone on my bill, the one I was after for whatever reason wasn’t showing up as one I was eligible to actually purchase. Perfect. So far you’re 3 for 3, Rogers. So I give them what for over the phone, and the rep basicly decides at that point to take responsibility for the whole damn thing. Which, when dealing with me, has been known to be a mistake. She tells me she’s going to keep checking, and call me if and when it actually gets sorted out. And, since everything should have been reset when I returned the phone and I knew I was eligible for it before I tried to buy it the first time, clearly it was a problem internal to them.

I wasn’t holding my breath–remember, I used to sit on the other end of similar conversations. I know most folks who say that do it with the complete intent of blowing you off knowing the chances of them getting you again are pretty well slim to none. Particularly when you’re running an operation with multiple call centers in multiple locations dealing with multiple thousand customers nationally. This morning, though, I did get that call. Whatever went and broke on their end wound up getting fixed. Finally. So, after much nashing of teeth and a whole lot of wanting to curse out the next rep to pick up the phone, I managed, somehow, to at least get the order processed. Now, hopefully they send me the correct phone on this attempt. And, hopefully they do it before Google Voice goes global. Otherwise I see a bitchfest in their, and my, near future.