[room 6]

Still Here

Have spent many sleepless nights trying to get a linux gateway up and running. Have you ever started something and then wondered WHY? WHY have I spent SOOOo much time on this?

I do have a life, I'd like to think I'm not a geek but my behaviour of lately contradicts me. Getting a little USB NIC to work on a Linux box is a nightmare. I have my hands on a copy of SuSE. I will give this distribution a try soon. Might take a while cause I'm quite peeved off with the whole situation.

Hey J, are you out there? How are things? Sorry I haven't called to see how things are lately, will do so shortly.

I did see 'Something's gotta Give' with Jack Nicholson the other night. The man has still got it. He is such a great actor. Diane Keaton (fantastic), Keanu Reeves and Amanda Peet were all very good in it as well. It's a Romance Comedy that is worth watching.

Back Tommorrow

Chelle's back from NZ tommorrow. Can't wait. Only 1 sleep to go.

Member 2004

Look what came in the mail today. It's always exciting when your letter box has a parcel in it rather than a stock standard bill.

To explain my excitement. I've been a Richmond Tigers member since 1996 (9 years including this year) and have never really had any recognition for it. Each year we received a members card, a sticker and a dodgy little badge. Well this year they recognize me as a Silver Member with an engraved Silver Keyring, they have also provided me with a set of DirtyDog sunnies and a club cap with Silver member recognition on it as well. The membership card and sticker were in the pack as well. Good to see that you get a little more for your money this year. Well done RFC.

Looks like Cheech was right. Can't get the damn USB NIC going yet. Compilation errors everywhere. Oh well.

CD Frenzy

Took Chelle to the airport this afternoon. She's off to New Zealand for work for the next few days. Man I hate it when we are apart. Hopping into an empty bed at night, waking up in the morning and not seeing her cute face, really sux. I decided to take on some CD Shopping therapy and purchased the following new CDs. They're not ultra new but been wanting them for a while:

:: Powderfinger - Vulture Street
:: Toni Braxton - Ultimate
:: Robbie Willians - Escapology

A little peeved off that 'SPANISH GUITAR' isn't on this compilation, but I have it on one of her earlier CD's so I guess it aint an issue. We'll see if these will help pass the time. If they don't help I still have the Mandrake USB NIC dramas to keep my mind occupied. After last nights BBQ hopped on to 'hellsmouth' to try and compile a working driver (I think it's called a module) for the damn thing. I was up till 4:00am with no success. Compilation errors everywhere. You must give it to MS Windows, when you are supplied a driver for new hardware all you need to do is install it and it works 9.9 times out of 10. With Linux (in this case), I need to find the appropriate kernal source code and use it to compile one. Will keep trying tonight.

Wish I was back at school

Went to see 'Honey' last night with Jessica Alba from Dark Angel. Look, If I was still at highschool, I think I would have loved this movie. I have a feeling I'm getting old. This movie reminded me of the old Breakdance movies I used to watch and luv back in the 80's when I was in High School. Anyway, the movie was OK 5/10 but 10/10 for a perv factor.

Don't forget Smallvile starts tonight at 8:30. Woohoo, better get that VCR programmed.

Update !!!

Ok. Have finaly managed to get X Windows to run on my Linux box. Would you believe, i had the GUI running and decided to be smart and select my MONITOR from a list of monitors when i was fine tuning resolution & refresh rates. It asked me to reboot, so i did. Once I did, that was it. I could only use the Command Line to do anything. After some hunting down on the web with MR Beki we were able to locate the configuration file (eg. etc/XF86Config-4) we needed to modify to get it running.

When we went to the relevant directory, we noticed another file with the same name but with an extension of '.old'. So we replaced the current config file with the old one and that did it.

By the way, the Linux box's host name is 'hellsmouth'. Anyone know where that is from and what theme I'll be following with my naming convention?

More to do. Shall report back later.

...and the winner is Mandrake 9.2

In the process of setting up another box i picked up to become my new gateway. After much hunting down I've decided to go with the Mandrake Linux distribution. Reason being, i found some good doco that will walk me through the process of setting it up securly step by step. It's already been fun. Took me several hours to work out why the iso's i pulled down, didn't want to work. DAmn Nero, you would think burning an iso would be simple.

Got it going though once i pulled down this little ISO Recorder Power Toy for Windows XP. It adds a "copy image to cd" item to the right click menu of XP's built-in CD recording functions - very quick and easy to use.

Shall keep you posted on my progress. Any handy hints will be greatly appreciated. The fun bit has yet to come. Trying to get a second USB NIC running properly on Linux.

It's been good

What a wonderful break. Hot every day, first bit of rain today, but we do need it. My lawn is yellow and barely surviving. Driven up the coast several times including Mornington and Portsea. Portsea pub is always good. Had the best marinated chicken on pita, lettuce/tomato, hommus and greek tsatziki sauce there the other day. Feel like one again. Last night went to the zoo with several friends and took our picnic stuff along. Babba (an ABBA cover band) was playing. There is so much that goes on in Melbourne during summer that we have no idea of. The Zoo has all these jazz bands and various other bands playing by twilight and all you need to do is bring your picnic basket (you can bring alcohol too). It was a nice evening, shall do it again.

Here are a few shots of Portsea Pub and our picnic at the Zoo.