"your grandma wears combat boots"

Was an insult kids used to hurl at each other on the playground when I was young. Well maybe it was just me (shrugs). Anyone else ever hear that? I mean my granny did. She got the boots from the Army-Navy surplus store. She chewed tobacco too. And sometimes she used to use that old powder snuff.

When I asked her about the boots; she just said they were cheap and lasted a long time. Good footwear should suit what your are doing I suppose and liked to dig wigglers. That's an earthworm of a certain variety for those who don't know. Wigglers are good for fishin'. A past time I highly recommend. She was good at both too.

She knew where the biggest fattest wigglers were just by looking at a piece of ground and used a potato rake to get them. Once I helped her and my uncle clean a whole string of fish...and was proud we got it done. Then they showed me the number 3 washtub full. It was well after dark when we finally finished. We filled a chest freezer and ate fish many times over the next few months.

Granny filled my speech with a few choice phrases too. "Somebody bumped my elbow" If there was a bit too much spice. "Hunger makes the best sauce" So true. "Stuck my finger in it." Meant she added a bit of sugar (finger in because she was sweet).

Granny taught me to make biscuit too. She asked me "Why me?" when I asked her to show me how. "Your aunt makes them better doesn't she?" I replied "you taught her didn't ya?" I really think she liked that.

So what brought all this to mind? This story about an 87 year old woman who beat a snake to death. See my uncle once showed me a rattler and a button from a snake Granny killed "with one shot" he said. See Granny carried a snub-nosed nickel-plated .38 in her pocket book. Don't think she needed a permit when she first started. And she killed that snake at 81.

Maybe one day I'll show ya how to make a "hoe cake" Like Granny taught me. Hoe cake is not made with cornmeal either...it's flour and buttermilk pretty much. The cornmeal version still exists on many tables as a quick fried bread.

Now Nanna (my other grnadma) was a different story. She was a painter of many stills of wildlife and called Miami "My-am-muh"

Something linux works for?

We've used GCompris at times. Good babysitter ;-) and it's educational Better than a 'boob' tube anyway.. It's pretty nice and seems well behaved. Decent audio to set the mood. It plays chess, (quite well ....more on that later), has many puzzles that are thought provoking. You can learn to parachute into a boat or drive a submarine (it ain't easy). And there alot more games.

There are a lot of games written to run on linux. Happy Penguin seems to be keeping some type of list. I play mahjongg once in a blue moon. Used to love the asteroids: think that one is only in KDE though. I don't use it. Now I see another linux version here...something interesting because it allows me to run thin clients. I mean I only need one more terminal. Might be a bit heavy though. it's linux educational software called K12LTSP meant to run a server for schools.

But if ya just wanna look without installing...the GCompris site says it is included on Knoppix. What does that mean? Well it means you can download a cd....boot it instead of your Windows XP or whatever and...teach your kid how to drive a submarine.

Linux is good for some things

Having used it for over 12 years I can say it performs certain tasks well.

Some cons on using linux exist. There is no Shockwave support. As far as I know there are no plans to have any so if you need it, don't bother.

On the other hand it is a free operating system and you can purchase/scavenge cheap parts and build a very nice computer these days.

Purchasing the latest technology and operating system from M$ comes with a nice price tag. If you are at all handy with a computer options abound. Knoppix detects most hardware and will give anyone who is interested in the OS a look at a live system on their hardware.

A destop oriented version is Ubuntu. It is based on Debian which is at version 5 at the moment.
Gentoo is my choice I have run it since version one was deemed fit by drobbins. He has now forked funtoo.

At present this box serves well for running some educational software for one user and some stuff for me like git. Everyone wants the computer time here. Youtube videos are great and I can play music fine there. Haven't tried to play a movie yet but do have vlan installed. If I need to I can reboot into XP and run user accounts from there. I prefer the little one stay entertained by such things as GCompris. This is available on windows. After checking into it. The M$ version is shareware sort of...the full version is free on linux OS Microsoft users are used to paying so it shouldn't be a bad thing for them to make a contribution by helping us opensource advocates.

As long as movie disks will play and youtube...I can start ssh and login from the other box and do things like git and friends. Or play with ruby and any other webapps I wish. Life is good. Except there are 3 users and only two pc's. (starts looking thru the spare parts).

elogv

Installed the elogv app...nice little tool if all you want to know about as far as 'system' messages is what emerge says. Me I like all messages to go to the right place and portage's elog facility is a nice little app. It doesn't however do some of the things I'd like to work on a system. Messages from sensors debug etc should all have thier own logs and whomever should be notified should get as helpful a mail as possible...yes I said mail...it's a loopback from the system logs so we use it to give feedback to the user...nuff said.

Now root@localdomain doesn't get any mail for gentoo's default install from existing documentation and I don't see any docs on how to make it work. But somebody should be set to receive system messages at least thru looback.

Slackware did this much out of the box with a zipslack install 15 yearsa ago

this is soothes me at times. I like it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTY2pmKguDg

Initial blog

Need a place to keep some notes anyone can refer to. This be it I guess. Likely that is the way such things as blogs came to be. Later many of the links here will be links on a side bar. This is just a quicky for now.
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Flameeyes is a developer for Gentoo and the author of Autotools Mythbuster.

Gilles Dartiguelongue is also a Gentoo developer. Something about his blog there is rejecting my comments though I have twice tried to submit a comment with two valid email addresses one from comcast and and one gmail Settings problem or?...I'm banging my head here.

I wanted to comment on his recent elog blog

I will check into this elog and perhaps this provides all that is needed...not sure where that command is at present. What gentoo needs IMO is a mail system install to send system mesages to an account@localhost Instead of banging your head ...bang the system messages on them. If they keep getting the mail sooner or later they will seek help or fix it if they can...no users want a broken system don't think.

Now I know you realize that not everyone has a domain name and/or a static ip. Especially the 'home linux desktop' crowd or mob or what ever probably generates a lot of bugs. If sending mail to root@localhost from the system/emerge logs is some kind of secutity hole...then let them designate the recipient. Or disable it when they want.




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I have been learning to use the gitorious. It is a software collaboration tool meant for Unix environments apparently. At least I hope it works better on linux anyway as it is far less than intuitive to set up MSysGit on a M$..I am off tomorrow and will test that theory maybe then. I got the gui to run on windows but (shrugs) it wasn't what I expected. Once I learned a few simple console commands I was more productive though.
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My wife once observed that sarcasm doesn't translate well from the Net. She might well have gotten that somewhere else. It is very true...nor does tone of voice. Hence the use of emotes. They are a good thing. Helps to convey the writers tone...but it isn't perfect. I say all this because in order to be productive people need to communicate without offending one another. That isn't always possible. But I will try.
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I am not real fond of M$. Though perhaps I should be. I've spent many an hour using one or the other of their operating systems to surf the Net or game or whatever since 1995. Also I've used Linux of one flavor or another since '97 or '98

I've three linux installs on the two up and running computers we have here. It's great for somethings. I have a tendency to break mine. Well at least the Ubuntu ones. Gentoo so far has been fine. Or at least if I really wanted to I can make it work again.
LOL not the Ubuntu one. broke my x support and now can't get it to stop at console mode. I wrote a new /etc/X11/xorg.conf to the appropriate partition but still that didn't fix it yet..if I REALLY wanted to I'm sure I could fix it. I'm just preoccupied for now.

One Gentoo install works fine and is up-to-date. One is a year old I think.Haven't booted it in a while.

Blogs shouldn't be real long don't think so that's enough for one.