Ubuntu Pennsylvania Planet

Jewish Bank Roll

2008-11-17T13:04:27+00:00

Let me start by saying I am not racist.

I dropped my daughter off at preschool and then swung by Giants
to pick up a couple Monsters for my wife. I got in line at the register
and there is a nice old lady working the register.

Her name is Gloria K. I know this because all employees at Giants wear a name tag.
Something that Gloria K. seems to have forgotten.

So anyway, she rings up my two items and the total is $4.22. I reach into my pocket and pull out what she calls a " Jewish bank roll " I had about $20 in my pocket a couple of $5 and a bunch of $1.

She OF COURSE says this with a little smile and a laugh but not to loud because I guess she does not want anybody else to hear her say this because in the back of her mind she knows that it is not politically correct to be a racist.

I was caught a little of guard and explain that I work in a restaurant and that I sometimes make a few dollars in tips and that is why I have so many $1. The explanation was not needed ( I don't have to explain anything to her ) but I made sure I spoke clearly and loudly enough so the lady behind me in line could hear our conversation.

Here is to you Gloria K. who works at Giants in Perkasie, PA. You stupid old dumb ass probably inbred racist bitch.

P.S. When I handed her my money, I gave her 4 one dollar bills, two dimes and I made sure to tell her "I think I probably have a couple of black pennies also".

I haz stuff out now

2008-11-17T03:41:38+00:00

This week the power supply on my giant, server class, desktop died. It was a 680W supply, the board requires at least 650W, so it wasn’t going to be cheap to replace. Alas, after about 2 hours of testing I confirmed it was the power supply and had to hit MicroCenter Friday morning. Came home with a 950W supply - ok, maybe that’s over doing it, but it was on sale! And the sale made it be just as cheap as any of the decent 650-850W supplies on the shelf.. However, in the course of diagnosing the problem I realized one of my UPSs was reporting “Building Wiring Fault” and skipped out to Lowe’s to pick up an outlet tester. With it I discovered that only about half of the outlets in my apartment are grounded, including one of the ones I had computers plugged into. Sigh. This weekend I had to spend some time shuffling around my machines on healthy power outlets. I also dragged out my 1U to use for testing again, my desk is full of computers, and in the midst of this shuffling my living room looked like a computer warehouse exploded.

I hit Cabela’s on Saturday with a friend for fun and brought home a stuffed animal deer head for my wall. I can’t quite explain the impulse, but when I saw the silly thing it made me laugh a lot. I need to laugh more, so home it came.

So all attempts (ok, I didn’t try that hard) at making it look like an adult lives here failed. The Star Wars toys, Wallace and Gromit Toys, and Disney toys are now out of their storage boxes and decorating the tops of my bookcases in my living room. I linked giant resolution photos of each bookshelf so you can browse my expected, stereotypically nerdy library. Ooh fun.

And a picture of my TV. I pondered getting cable, but the $199 installation fee turned me off to that really quick - even if they offered to add the service itself to my business account for free otherwise. Instead I have a VCR, DVD player (pink!), PS2, and an Inspiron 7500 running Ubuntu w/ fluxbox as a media PC to keep me entertained… and so I get to do things like watch Star Trek TNG. Oh and I signed up for NetFlix.

Maybe I’ll get some ballpen balls.

I still have a bike in my living room though. Should do something about that at some point, I think one of my Christmas presents to myself will be an indoor trainer and set it up in my bedroom. Exercise AND having it not look so horrible sitting in my apartment (it’s got an indoor trainer, it’s supposed to be there!), hooray. Also considering getting a Wii (and Wii Fit, for exercise, I swear!)

I also saw Quantum of Solace on Friday evening, following dinner with my friend Mike at Rock Bottom in King of Prussia. Good dinner, good movie. Not enough gadgets, but I liked it a lot more than Casino Royale, which I thought was a bit slow and sometimes lame for a Bond film (really, the first car he drives in a movie can’t be a Ford).

And now the weekend is coming to an end, I’m sitting here on the couch with the cats snuggled up. Heading to bed soon.

Debian Installation Over SSH (Lenny RC1)

2008-11-16T21:33:05+00:00

The Debian Installer lenny release candidate 1 was released on November 12th, which inspired me to check it out and give the installation over ssh a try. Installation over ssh has been supported since the Etch installer, but I embarrassingly have to admit that I didn’t know about it until just recently, and it was just last month that I tried it out for the first time. So this post is more of a “Look, this thing exists and is neat and easy!” than a formal how-to for something tricky.

The screenshots and CD I burned were from Lenny (Testing) which I downloaded here this morning, but this is also supported in Debian Etch in a similar way.

Boot from the CD and in the Installer boot menu select “Advanced options >”

Then select “Expert install”

The installer will load up and you will be presented with the Debian installer main menu.

Since the default language and keyboard are fine to get me going (I can reconfigure them later once I get this going over ssh), I skipped these and went straight for “Detect and mount CD-ROM”. When it asked me if I wanted to Start PC card services I selected “No” since I’m not using any PCMCIA cards.

The next option on the menu is “Load installer components from CD”, which you want to select. Browse the list, but for my basic needs the only thing I needed to load up was “network-console: Continue installation remotely using SSH”

Now you’ll need to get networking going. Select “Detect network hardware” and then “Configure the network”.

Next you want to “Continue installation remotely using SSH”

This will generate SSH host keys and have you set a remote installation password. Once it has these set up you will be presented with a screen giving you an installer@ipaddress location for the install and an SSH fingerprint. Use these to ssh into the installer!

Finally - log in from your remote PC and complete the installation.

I went back and configured keyboard to confirm it was correct and languages so I could add a couple of locales, so don’t forget to do this if you need to change something about your configuration.

Christmas Cards!

2008-11-16T13:35:24+00:00

Last year was very, very busy so I never got around to it, but this year I’d like to send out Christmas cards again.

Drop me an email with your address if you’d like one: lyz@princessleia.com (Please put “Christmas card” in the subject so I can filter it appropriately).

Typical disclaimer: Nope, I’m not a Christian, and the cards will non-religious in theme even if they happen to use the word “Christmas” - not going to bother restricting myself to just the “Happy Holidays” ones.

I’m trying to think of what I’m going to do for Christmas. This will be my first Christmas alone, but I don’t want that to mean I’m not going to bother doing anything. Seriously considering even getting a small real tree, I love having a real Christmas tree in the house, and so does Caligula :)

Rebuilding

2008-11-14T01:39:36+00:00

So in case you haven't noticed (I expect most except for my family DIDN'T notice), my site is in a funky state of flux. I am trying really hard to figure out the CSS for the site. While doing that, I decided to rebuild the server and update to Ubuntu 8.10.

I now have a build doc that allows me to rebuild the server and data in under 30 minutes. Considering it takes much longer to do the same on our work servers, I think it's pretty impressive.

UPDATE: I gave up on figuring out css for the site. Thanks to ikiwiki's css-market, I found something I like...for now.

May the force be with you

2008-11-13T20:17:34+00:00

Lionshead #2²2⁰2¹.

broken redirects

2008-11-13T15:03:01+00:00

With the move to cherokee I broke all of my permalinks. I fixed the feed redirect, but I still need to fix the others. I’ve got class now, but I’ll be working on it later. No one reads my blog anyway, so it doesn’t really matter

Moved server to Cherokee

2008-11-13T00:56:49+00:00

So I’ve moved this server from Apache to Cherokee. I’ve been using Cherokee at work a lot and have taken quite a shine to it. It’s got a really nice admin interface, and very decent documentation. Apache is getting old, and crufty, and probably much too heavy for what I need it for. Cherokee is lighter, may not be as flexible (I can’t say yet as I’ve just started using it), but sometimes that’s a good thing. I got this blog moved in a matter of minutes, setting up the virtual host was painless. I will make updates as I continue to get more familiar with the application, I’m thinking of making a django site for finding houses with cool Christmas lights, Cherokee will be a part of that project. If you notice any strangeness, please let me know!

Obama calls for US military mobilizationa and draft

2008-11-11T04:02:52+00:00

Who did we just elect? Where Obama and I differ on social and economic policy, as well as civil liberties and philosophy of the role of government (read: just about everything), I thought we agreed on military service and conscription.

Apparently, that’s not the case.

Obama calls for US military mobilization.

But it’s also important that a president speaks to military service as an obligation not just of some, but of many. You know, I traveled, obviously, a lot over the last 19 months. And if you go to small towns, throughout the Midwest or the Southwest or the South, every town has tons of young people who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s not always the case in other parts of the country, in more urban centers. And I think it’s important for the president to say, this is an important obligation. If we are going into war, then all of us go, not just some.

I don’t know how I missed this back in September. I don’t know how I don’t know about this. It’s conceivable that I was on a mental vacation that day, but I would think that there would have been more hullabaloo about it on the news.

Oh, wait, the Republicans wouldn’t mind it, too. They’re just too smart to sponsor at this time H.R. 393, the Universal National Service Act of 2007, also known as the latest version of NY Democrat Chuck Rangel’s Draft Reinstatement Act.

Here are the particularly scary parts of H.R. 393:

SEC. 102. NATIONAL SERVICE OBLIGATION.

      (a) Obligation for Service- It is the obligation of every citizen of the United States, and every other person residing in the United States, who is between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform a period of national service as prescribed in this title unless exempted under the provisions of this title.
      (b) Forms of National Service- The national service obligation under this title shall be performed either--
            (1) as a member of an active or reserve component of the uniformed services; or
            (2) in a civilian capacity that, as determined by the President, promotes the national defense, including national or community service and service related to homeland security.
      (c) Age Limits- A person may be inducted under this title only if the person has attained the age of 18 and has not attained the age of 42.

SEC. 103. INDUCTION TO PERFORM NATIONAL SERVICE.

      (a) Induction Requirements- The President shall provide for the induction of persons described in section 102(a) to perform their national service obligation.
      (b) Limitation on Induction for Military Service- Persons described in section 102(a) may be inducted to perform military service only if--
            (1) a declaration of war is in effect;
            (2) the President declares a national emergency, which the President determines necessitates the induction of persons to perform military service, and immediately informs Congress of the reasons for the declaration and the need to induct persons for military service; or
            (3) members of the Army, Navy, Air Force, or Marine Corps are engaged in a contingency operation pursuant to a congressional authorization for the use of military force.

The bill requires women to register for selective service, as well. It addresses conscientious objectors by placing them in noncombatant positions, meaning there is no way out of this.

The bill does not specify penalties for noncompliance, nor does it address post-secondary students (does allow high schoolers to continue until they earn a diploma, drop out, or turn 20).

What’s the likelihood of H.R. 393 suddenly getting passed? Slim and none. However, it exists, and Congress has been rather swift to move on things such as the PATRIOT Act, the DMCA, FISA Amendments, and the recent Wall Street bailout. Moreover, there is significant, indefatigable evidence that Obama supports the reinstatement of the draft.