*To the tune of Jeopardy* Waiting waiting for my fish...

I don't have any fish yet. My tank is getting all ready for their spectacular arrival. Ho hum. I'm getting them tomorrow. For the reals. I have an actual article to write now.

The Neat Thing About Unix

There are lots of neat things about unix, but I'm going to focus on just one aspect. I've only been using unix for about 8 months, so I'm no expert by any stretch of the word. But these are the observations I've made while transitioning from a totally clueless unix n00b, to someone more "in the know".

The neat thing about unix is that once you know your way around and have a good understanding of the workings, you realize that unix is everywhere. If you use the internet, you realize that web addresses use forward slashes instead of backslashes like Windows, and that's a unix thing. If you do more detailed web stuff, you realize that the people that host your webpage for you have it set up so that your home directory is a directory on their server under /home or /export/home most likely as per unix convention, the same way it'd be set up if you had your own little unix box at your house. You also realize that when your host people tell you to go to an IP then a tilde and your login name, that's a unix thing too, because tilde means "home directory". So they're telling you to go to their server, and your home directory. Which is really obvious if you think about it, but prior to my learning anything about unix, it seemed kind of magical and random to me. If you use POS systems, you notice that a lot of their little operations are on top of unix. If you ever log in to a router and it has a command line interface, you suddenly know all about those from learning unix. Same goes for DOS... a lot of stuff in DOS is the same. And it all makes a lot more sense.

Then at some point when learning unix, you'll be reading or learning about something, and you'll think "Hey, that's like this in Windows. And sometimes you'll be doing something in Windows and you'll think "Hey, this is what command I'd be running in unix to do this.".

If you try to look at a language like perl, or php, prior to unix knowledge it's pretty darn confusing. After unix knowledge (or obviously any programming knowledge), these things become a lot easier to grasp. If you ever have to install Apache, a kind of software that runs a website behind the scenes, you understand a lot more how things are laid out on your web hosts system in relation to how you as the webmaster or author or whoever have to do things and work with things. I would recommend to anyone doing any fairly involved website authoring to learn some unix basics.

There are more things that carry over and make more sense than I could even write about here practically. Overall, learning unix is a very worthwhile venture for anyone that does anything with computers or the internet. I imagine it's like driving a car for 30 years then finally learning how it all runs and works. It's just neat to finally understand a lot of the things I took for granted. And I wanted to write about that. This is 00k, signing off.
posted by 00k at 9:25 AM

I just deleted what I wrote for my update accidentally. I'm a n00b. Let's see... I have a laptop now. It isn't mine, but I'm going to pretend it is. It's a Dell Latitude XPiCD, 166MHz with a 2 gig harddrive and 80 megs of RAM. Pretty exciting. I'm going to see if I can install Solaris on it. That'd be pretty okay. Then it'll really be all mine... the benefit of using technology other people don't understand. Might have to settle for linux though. But the idea is that I can get the scripts that format that newsletter on a pc that is local so I don't have to telnet and ftp my little linux box from work, which seems prone to failure. And yet still preferable to using little windows unix clients or emulators or whatever they're called. The big bonus of it all of course is that I get a laptop to play with. All practicality goes right out the window.

I guess some time ago I decided that I would have this newsletter practically writing itself because my scripting skills would be so... mad. Or whatever. That isn't really the case yet unfortunately. Maybe it will be though if I can work on them at work. Then I can avoid filing and stapling and other gay miscellaneous office duties. At least I don't have to answer the phone very much, everyone knows I don't know who the hell does anything or what anything means so I just transfer everything to someone else. Being worthless is highly underrated... it's really helped me out of doing something I really didn't want to do. For now anyway.

I have class in 17 hours. Three hours of math every Monday and Wednesday night till August. If I pass this class, and don't give up, and do all my homework, and learn everything I'm supposed to, and actually get a good grade, I'm going to reward myself with something good. Like a big new bed. With a pillowtop! Or a PDA! That'd be neat. Man... this has been a really uninteresting zombeef entry. Y'know what's really cute about laptops? The way you can close the top, and they go to sleep. It's like how people throw sheets over bird cages and the birds go to sleep. That just seems really cute.
posted by 00k at 1:16 AM

It's Memorial Day. I'm wearing a big baggy blue button up shirt on top of a tank top, and the short sleeves of it make my arms look really small, like a kids. My hair is about an inch away from being down to my belly button. The hems of my jeans are sticking out instead of laying flat like they should. I've come to question a large portion of my dating philosophies. I got a B in math, so now I have a 3.80 GPA instead of the 4.0 I had grown so accustomed to. A 3.906 cumulative. Not perfect.

I was reading all these introduction essays people were writing on the bulletin board of my online English Composition class and laughing about how pathetic these people were. To write long essays for an entire class of complete strangers to skim over briefly and forget promptly. Much to my chagrin, upon reading the schedule I realized I have to write one of those too. It's actually worth points. We'll also be graded upon our participation with other students on the bulletin board. And so here enters the "social aspect".

The "social aspect" of things has been my enemy for some time.

Just thinking about writing about myself for a bunch of stay-at-home moms and aspiring nurses practically makes me sick. It's going to be a hard class, for all the wrong reasons.
posted by 00k at 2:10 AM

I had crazy dreams last night. I dreamt I was part of this tribe of little ape people, and this bigger tribe of giant ape people came to fight us. They were throwing these huge rocks the size of us at our town and all we had were little blobs of goo to throw.

But then everyone changed, some of the giant apes changed into little colorful blobs of goo on the ground, and I think my tribe changed into something else similar to humans but I don't remember exactly. Then we all shifted again and we all became apes that could turn into angels, all of us the same size and species with the same ability. Then we all stopped fighting because it seemed so silly to fight with ourselves.

Everyone was trying to turn into angels... I figured it out, that you could stretch your hands out downward and look at your feet and think good thoughts and about changing, and then the ground beneath you would get watery looking and wavey, and you'd be an angel.

Then later there was a girl and some guy handed her a sexy shirt of hers on a hanger and he was going to ask her out when he saw it but she didn't want him to so I said jokingly that she was dating my Uncle, and then she made some reference about what a terrible guy the Uncle was and I remembered that he was the bad guy in another dream I'd had. It was weird because it was like she remembered but I didn't, but she was just a creation of my mind. It got me wondering about how much my subconscious knows but isn't telling me. It wasn't any of my real uncles by the way, I think it was a guy called Uncle.

Pretty weird dream anyhow, shame I think I forgot most of it. And I just realized my purse drawing below looks a lot more like an easter basket than a purse.
posted by 00k at 12:09 AM

Thought of the day: Someone should design a little light that goes inside a purse and turns on when it's opened. Cars have them and refridgerators have them... purses should too. Just a little battery operated dealy. Maybe someone already thought of this idea and it just didn't catch on. I wonder. I think it's a good idea anyway. Maybe I'll make a prototype. So someone can steal it easier.
posted by 00k at 10:45 PM

I'm going to buy some fish soon.
posted by 00k at 11:22 PM

Started work. It won't be so bad. And some day, my boss will either go to jail, or go out in a hail of gunfire. Maybe I'll get a quote in the paper! I'm going to write practice lines. One thing I'll be sure to say is that we all saw this coming. You don't hear that so often.

And now for some thoughts. Why don't the manufacturers of things with electrical cords make the cords unique looking? Like with a colored stripe? Then when you went to unplug something from a power strip with 5 other cables you wouldn't have to trace it back to whatever... which is a pain in the ass. Another thought along the same lines. When are they going to start installing sets of three outlets in houses instead of two? We've had two since like... whenever they invented that. For a long long time. But people use outlets way more now. But everyone has to have power strips. That seems silly. I wonder if there's anything preventing my three-outlet idea from coming into fruition.
posted by 00k at 11:29 PM

I start real work tomorrow... or technically today in about 8 and a half hours. I don't really have anything exciting to say about that. I'll probably have more to say about it tomorrow... like about how my boss is crazy and I work in this horribly hostile environment. At least I was warned. I just think that's funny. At this point I'd work in hell if they paid me enough and let me work on webpages. And maybe that will be the case. It will be interesting to say the least. Interesting like a train wreck! Choo choo.
posted by 00k at 1:43 PM

Lots of suicide bombings over the last few days, in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. What I don't understand is how Israeli's are still shopping. I'd like to see a statistic on the odds of death by bombing in an outdoor mall or on a bus in Israel. They can't be good. Those people are either brave, or stupid. I'm sure they're pretty infuriated all the same. That shit is so old. It's like only knowing one move in a fighting game and using it over and over and over. Totally cheap.

I'd also like to see an honest, straight up analysis of what those suicide bombings actually accomplish. It seems a bit taboo to talk about, kind of like speaking of it gives terrorists their power or some such nonsense. Who knows.

I wish there was a really un-politically correct association out there that did all the studies noone else would want to put their names to. Studies on subjects that are generally taboo. It'd be really amusing I imagine, reading studies and statistics on things that are just really un-politically correct in nature. For example, the percent of white people racist towards blacks versus the percent of black people racist towards whites. Or the percent of people in America with Irish decent that are alcoholics, versus other nationalities. What about the percent of couples that practice anal sex? The percent of homosexuals that have had more than 100 partners? I'd love to see political party stats, how many Democrats beat their wives versus Republicans, how many Libertarians have DUI's versus Green Party folks. How many Christians have felonies? How many Christians found Jesus while in jail? The possibilities are endless. I bet some of these studies have been done... and I just haven't heard or read about them. I wish there was a place though that just regularly posted really fun and interesting statistics the average Joe would find amusing.
posted by 00k at 10:35PM

Well here's an excerpt of my hair, now quite red. This picture hardly does the color justice, I will try in time to get a better one. It's a really neat color. Not really so much a "hair" color, but I'm not real picky. I haven't had red hair for a few years. It's quite drastic... I like it. I feel interesting. Of course I'm not, but at least I can feel like it.

I started my admin jobby job... that's pretty cool. I won't get paid till I get a new social security card, which apparently they just HAVE to SEE to pay me. I lost that a few years ago. My past once again catches up with me, and kicks me really hard when I'm not looking.

There is much to do in the way of administration of the non-vital Solaris lab at my school. I shall make a list of my duties.

1. Get mail working - local works but non-local doesn't
2. Add a jumpstart configuration for the admin class second disks
3. Uninstall Orion (webserver for gayass Java people I guess?) and free up port 80
4. Reinstall Apache on port 80

That's all the big stuff I can think of. I will probably document a lot of shit either here or under my weakass unix section with the hopes of having something substantial to show for it all when I'm all done. We'll see I guess.
posted by 00k at 1:54 PM

Y'know what really cracks me up? The thought of all these people out there that are holding grudges for things against people that those people don't even know about. That seems really funny to me. I like to think I've pissed off all these people throughout my life somehow one way or another, and that sometimes when they're driving, or staring aimlessly about their office, they think about how I wronged them. It's funny because they're thinking about that and it's pissing them off... but in the meantime I have no idea I've done anything wrong. I'm not aware of their grievance, so it doesn't even ever cross my mind. People that hold little grudges in secret are morons. I hope I can prove that to the world... the world is really full of suckers like that. What's the lesson here? If someone pisses you off... you should tell them. If you don't, you're just another sucker... just another doormat. And you deserve every bit of dumpy bitterness you experience as a result.

Well with that out of the way. Let's see... well school's... out... for the summa! Of course I'm going to summer school so that isn't really accurate for me. But I do have something like 8 days off till I start real work, and something like twice that till I start school again. So that's good. I need a vacation too... I really need to vacuum. And wash my hair. And rearrange my furniture. Big plans... big plans. And if life is good and I get paid tomorrow, that means I can do something of importance that costs money. Like buy new shoes. Yes, for the time being, life is good. We'll see if I still feel the same way in a month when I have too many jobs hehe.
posted by 00k at 4:04 AM

Days go by.
Updates, they do not concern me.
I am small, and simple.
I think
and I watch the months go by.
I watch the moments in my life fall away.
They fall from my hands
They fall from my memory.
And it is of no consequence.

posted by 00k at 10:57 PM

I think normal girls all have celebrities they're madly obsessed with and gush over. Brad Pitt, Keanu Reeves, Vin Diesel, whoever. They gawk at magazines with them on the cover, read articles about them, that kind of normal-girl-fan behavior. I bet they even dream about them. I've never really been like that, I don't really care about actors. Or I didn't think I did. But I had a dream about Jerry Seinfeld, and it got me thinking. I've dreamed about Jerry Seinfeld actually a few times, whereas I can't recall ever dreaming about anyone famous more than once. Not even David Duchovny, Mulder from the X-Files. I remember once having an X-Files dream that involved ebola, and Mulder and Scully were both there. That's it though. And I had a bit of a crush on David Duchovny in high school... watched the X-Files all the time and taped the episodes I didn't catch. But I never really dreamed about him regularly. But Jerry Seinfeld, Jerry Seinfeld might as well be a friend of mine, cuz I have a dream and he's just there, like any other random person that shows up in dreams. That's pretty weird.
posted by 00k at 2:39 AM

What the hell is wrong with teachers? Join me in exploring a worksheet I need to have done by 5:30 tonight. Here's a particularly stupid True or False question. "Few vendors such as Microsoft or Novell offer technical certification programs for their software products.". This guy takes his questions verbatim out of the book which is really nice, very little thinking required. However some times he comes up with questions like this, where he changes a word and makes the statement false, but it also changes the entire meaning and structure and then it doesn't make any sense. He doesn't correct the statement to make sense syntax wise as a false statement, instead it isn't true or false really, because it's not even a legitimate question. It doesn't make any sense. Luckily not making any sense seems to imply a default "false" answer, because the book at least knows how to make sense. Sometimes I wonder if my teachers try to be stupid. He's overall a good teacher and he's overqualified for teaching "Intro to Computers", but he sure says and does some dumb shit sometimes. Well... back to work.
posted by 00k at 4:54 PM

It's days like this when I wish I had a protege. I'd say "Protege, I don't feel like writing a blog entry today. But the show must go on. So now protege, now is your time to shine. Write something you've been wanting to say protege, make it brilliant, but subtle. Introspective, but not humorless. Make it everything that I wish I had the zeal right now to be. Do it for me protege, but do it also for yourself, and those out there like you. And when you're done, my paduwan learner, and you've earned the respect and admiration you deserve, when people smile upon you and think, he will someday surpass his master, after that protege, don't forget to fetch me a Pepsi."
posted by 00k at 1:33 AM