Compile

I haven't made any computer-related posts lately, probably because everything on my main machine is running fine and the laptop is running well now that I gave Mandrake 10.1 the boot and went back to 9.2. Heck, even KDE hasn't locked up on me in almost a week. I still haven't upgraded anything my Arch Linux box. I'll probably do all that after I am done with school. I'll be done with exams by May 11 and the all grades will be submitted within a few days after that. I already have 19 students registered for my Summer I class which runs from May 23 through July 5.

Thanks to a student, I did find a free C/C++ compiler that works under Windows, (see bloodshed.net), not that need one all the time but I do need one for the last few lessons of the class I'm teaching now. The reason I need to use Windows is that we are using the Microsoft Assembler (MASM) and we are doing inline code and modules (basically, connecting assembly with C++) so I need the MASM. Otherwise, I would just use GCC. Sometimes it's so hard to find the tools under Windows that you're used to having under Linux.

Voluntary

Voluntary: adj., proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent

I saw a picture in the paper of an older man (a man who looks older than 55) holding a sign that read "HANDS OFF MY SOCIAL SECURITY." Maybe I should make a sign that reads "HAND OFF MY PAYCHECK." The man should be protesting the entitlements given out by the SSI branch of Social Security. SSI is just money given to people (usually younger, thus they haven't paid into it much or at all) who don't want to work. Cut SSI, pump it back into the system so the people who have been contributing can continue to get their money. Don't give money to people who've paid nothing into it.

Definition source: Merriam-Webster.com

Megan's Law

Link for the Pennsylvania Sex Offender Registry:

http://www.pameganslaw.state.pa.us

Gutters

I had to clean out the gutters yesterday. What a job! Our gutters attract pine needles and leaves from all directions. Even the gutter on the front of the house fills up; where there is only one pine tree on the far end of the house. That section of the roof is peaked so the gutter doesn't really come near it. Yet, it still gets enough pine needles in it to clog it and keep it filled with water. I like having trees around the house but I'm thinking at least two of the five pine trees on our property must go. There are another three or four more pine trees that contribute to the problem but they are just off our property and on an easement so I doubt I'll ever do anything about them and I really don't want the township to take them down either. The good thing is that I should not have to clean the gutters out again until fall. But, once I do that in the fall, which is usually at least twice, pine needles still fall throughout winter and by March or April I need to clean them again. If you ever want to get the future owner (like 15 years from now) of your home mad, plant some pine trees today.

Sorry Charlie

...another whitewashing last night as the Braves pounded the Phillies 11-1. The Phillies managed to load the bases at one point - with one out - then, of course, double play. The Braves loaded the bases too (and keep them loaded through walks and singles) then proceeded to score five runs in an inning that lasted about 25 minutes as they batted around. Charlie Manuel, nice knowing ya. If you make it to September without getting the boot, there are lots of fine bars in the Philly area where you can catch the MLB playoffs on TV. Prediction: 76-86, 17 games out.

One Strike and You're Out

from Netscape/CNN news....
(http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?
idq=/ff/story/0001/20050423/0709389990.htm)

Video: Police Handcuffed 5-Year-Old Girl

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A 5-year-old girl was handcuffed by police after she tore papers off a bulletin board and punched an assistant principal in kindergarten class, according to a video released by a lawyer for the child's mother.

Good. Maybe they should arrest the parents too; that is if they can find both of them. We didn't have problems like this even 20 years ago let alone 40 and 50 years ago when parents raised their children properly. I went to public schools and never heard of a student punching a teacher or school official. If a gunmaker can be held liable if a person steals a gun and shoots someone with it or a tobacco company can be liable if a person voluntarily puts smoke into his or her lungs, parents (again, if they can find both of them) should be held liable when a child acts in such a manner. Too much TV, too many "it ain't my fault" attitudes, too many "you're a victim" speeches, and dumbing down the schools have all contributed to this problem of recalcitrant kids in the schools. We didn't have these problems when there were more families, less out-of-wedlock births, less TV, less entitlements, and those who just could not or would not learn (and behave) were weeded out of the system. Instead of "No Child Left Behind" we should have "One Strike and You're Out" for those who cause these kinds of problems at schools. Those who don't want to learn should be expelled.

Yoknapatawpha County

I hope to find to some time to read this weekend. I am currently reading Light in August by William Faulkner. It's not as boring as The Sound and the Fury and a little more robust than As I Lay Dying. Being close to 500 pages it'll take me another week to finish it; I am around page 111 now. After I finish this, I don't know if I'll read any more Faulkner this year or not.

Put in a Fork in Them

Well, it is early but I think the Phillies are done. Sure, they're only 7-8 but their pitching is just getting lit up; 16 runs against the Mets two days ago, geez. Pitching was supposed to be a strong suit but we can flush that hope down the toilet. Last night they were 1/15 with runners in scoring position. Looks like hitting might be worse than the pitching. The NL East is definitely a four-team race this year.

Stop Whining

Conclave 2005 ended yesterday as a new pope was elected. Almost as soon as the announcement was made the whining began. Some seem to think Benedict XVI is too conservative. All I have to say is when something starts getting out of control it's best to bring in someone with a strong view on core beliefs. The worst thing Conclave 2005 could have done was listened to and catered to the lunatic fringe. Good job. I am not Catholic and I am not very religious but I feel that religion provides discipline, guidance, and encourages one to think before one does something. Those are three things, I think, many people have not had in their lives. I don't feel that one has to be religious in order follow a church's teachings. It just seems that whenever someone comes into a role of power and that person is not known as one that gives in easily (or gives away easily), the whiners come out.

Rush Hour(s)

I heard on radio that the turnpike was closed southbound between Allentown and Quakertown this morning. I worked in Philadelphia for two weeks for training before being transferred to Trenton. I was living in Easton and had to drive 20 miles across the Lehigh Valley to get to the turnpike and take in into Philadelphia, another 50 miles or so to work. I worked in the Olney section of town. My exit was Ft. Washington. I don't know what I would have done if, during that two weeks, the turnpike was closed. Traffic was bad enough as is and the wait to actually get to the toll booth at Ft. Washington extended out to the highway, exceeding the allotted length the exit lane sometimes. I do not miss long commutes. People who commute to Philadelphia or NYC from the Lehigh Valley are crazy. Life's too short to spend three or four hours a day in traffic.

We're Going to Pay for This...

Locally, two weekends in row with picture-perfect weather; which worries me. It seems when we get teaser weather like this in April we'll pay for it in May and June. Already, the forecast next weekend calls for rain and temperatures in the 50's. Our brief taste of summer is about to come to an abrupt halt. I predict a repeat of last year where from late May to around June 22 we'll be deluged with rain and temperatures frequently in the low 60's.

Winding Down

The spring semester is winding down. As an instructor, I think I look forward to the end of the term more than I did when I was a student. I can't really explain why. I enjoy what I do and I like the students. Maybe it's just the feeling of completing something. Maybe it's just the fact that my favorite time of the year is approaching; ah yes, sum-sum-sum-sum-sum summertime. Anyway, I'll be teaching another course at NCC from late May through early July then in late August I start the fall term at both NCC and LCCC. The fall seems so far off but as I get older summer seems to fly by faster. But, I hope to enjoy it as much as I can.

Letter to the Editor

The Morning Call published my letter today. They edited it a bit. The original can be seen here. There is a link within that page to their version.

Saturday

Saturday is here. I noticed the other day that it's about time to cut the grass. I started the mower a few weeks ago to get the winter coldness out of the motor. This year, in addition to the obligatory yardwork, I have some external painting to do. I am going to need to rent some kind of scaffolding to reach some areas. But, all that sure beats shoveling snow and being confined to the indoors. Ok, so this is a lame post today but it's better than nothing. I am supposed to have another letter to the editor published in the Morning Call in the next few days. The letter will be posted on the commentary and opinion section of my site.

Laptop II

I gave up on 10.1 and reinstalled Mandrake 9.2 on my laptop. It took some time to configure everything the way I like it and I haven't even set urpmi to grab the latest packages. I'm still on a 2.4.x kernel and Gnome 2.4 but I did grab Firefox 1.0.2 and Thunderbird 1.0.2. The first major update will probably be Open Office 1.1.4. I do enjoy the nostalgia of 9.2; it's so clean and easy to set up, unlike 10.1. In due time I'll start getting all the most commonly used packages up to date.

Military Blogs

A day or two ago I found a page with links to blogs military personnel and others who are, or have been, in Iraq. Not all of them are from people in Iraq but many are. I'll admit that they are much more interesting than my blog. Here's the link:

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/blogs.htm

If you search the web you can find many more, of course. I haven't researched it thoroughly but it appears that active duty personnel do not (I assume cannot) disclose their full name. I figure they can't disclose where exactly there are and, certainly, their mission. I would think that their Internet access is controlled in some way for obvious reasons but, even so, the blogs do provide some unique insight that goes beyond the canned reporting of the media.

Laptop

I still haven't been able to fix the problem with my laptop. Details can be found here. I may have to reinstall the operating system. I haven't decided if I should go with Mandrake 10.1 Official, wait for 10.2, switch back to 9.2 and "urpmi" what I need, or simply give up on Mandrake and wait for Fedora Core 4 (June). I gave Fedora Core 1 a try last year and I didn't like it on the laptop. I doubt I'll install Arch on it. Arch runs great on my desktop but it takes some time to configure everything. I don't know if I want to do that on my laptop yet. I like having an OS that works right out of the install on my laptop and another I can toy with on my desktop.

Headlines

Here are the headlines from today's local paper.

Page A1:

"Pregnant girl, infant slain"
"Man surrenders, hostages unhurt after I-78 chase, standoff in Lopatcong"
"Testimony begins for soldier charged with killing 2 officers"

That's it for A1. Let's check B1, which is the local news.

"Easton Area proposes 10% tax increase"
"Woman gets 18-40 years for murder"
"New York career college buys local computer school"

That's it for B1. After I read the paper this morning I am going to need something to cheer me up.

Monday Sports Chat

With a weather-perfect weekend behind us, the week starts anew. The baseball season enters week 2 and the Phillies are not in last place. We can thank the Mets for that. Pee-eeew, they stink and Phillies aren't much better. I don't see them making the playoffs this year. They never do. The Marlins and Braves own the NL East. I don't see that changing this year. One of those two will win the division and by the All-Star Break the local sports fans will be counting down the days to Eagles kick-off. I will, however, continue to watch them on TV or listen to them on the radio until the last game. Then, I'll tune in for the playoffs and root for the teams that aren't from NY.

GNOME 2.10 - almost

I decided upgrade to GNOME 2.10 on my desktop PC. I made a mistake by not removing 2.8 first so I had a few problems when 2.10 started. One was the splash screen became part of the desktop background. So, I decided to do a "pacman -Rc gnome" to remove it, then do a "pacman -S gnome" to add it. That worked, sort of. Gnome would crash right after logging in and told me to check the .xsession-errors file. So I did. After gnome-session executes, the next line gave an error relating to libgnome-keyring.so.0. Well, somehow, I got to the desktop after tinkering a bit. Now, the desktop appears, with errors, then loads with generic icons and the menus show all the KDE stuff. The core of the errors says "....settings daemon restarted too many times..." then a few warnings come up about applets or icons or something. Well I searched a bit and others have had those same problems too. However, very few solutions were offered and the ones I tried didn't work. I deleted everything in tmp and everything gnome-related in my home directory. I'm sick of fussing with it now. Looks like I'll be using KDE or WindowMaker for a while.

Ouch

I spent $32 to fill the gas tank yesterday. That's the most I've ever spent at one fill-up on any vehicle I've ever owned. I remember I used to fill up the tank on my old '86 Ford Ranger pickup for around $8; back during that stretch in the late 1980's when gas was as low as 67 cents a gallon. Well, that's it; short post today.

Damn you, Hemingway, II

To continue with the Hemingway theme, I find his novels very vivid and reflecting the times they were written in, similar to Steinbeck. Most of Steinbeck's novels I've read take place in the U.S. (usually California but not all) and Hemingway sets his in places he had lived or spent significant time in.

One can learn a lot about history from reading fiction. The stories told in novels like A Farewell to Arms and To Have and Have Not may indeed be fiction and the author may state so explicitly, but you learn something about the time and the people during the era the book was written. You just know that the events written about in the novel probably happened to somebody somewhere. You know there are deserters in war or smugglers who haul booze and people in the Caribbean. A good novel and a good author can certainly give you quite a history lesson. The exact events may not have ever happened but the themes portrayed were real in those times and places.

Damn you, Hemingway

I am currently reading To Have and Have Not. In one of the early chapters Hemingway kills off a character I thought was going to be an important character throughout the story. The killing of the character is fairly abrupt and graphic, too. I was surprised to this see from Hemingway. To Have and Have Not is the 4th Hemingway novel I've read this year and it seems like this will be the darkest.

Land Ho!

Locally, there is a big story that involves a woman who was shot in the head by a hunter's stray bullet in December. The woman is alive and well, sue happy, and hell-bent on changing all the hunting laws. Now, the hunter was within about 6/10 of a mile from where the woman was when he fired so he isn't totally faultless. This happened in an area that, until recently, was empty land.

What's happening is that every square foot of open land around here is being built up with houses and "lifestyle centers" (formally called malls or shopping centers) without any consideration to what that land's use has been for the past hundred years. When people move into their decadent, 3000 Sq. ft houses on Old Farmer Joe's property, they should consider what the land was formerly used for. Old Farmer Joe may have let hunters use his land to kill the deer in order to keep them from eating his livelihood.

If you ask me, the hunters should be suing and demanding that people stop taking away their land.

I think there should be restrictions on where hunters hunt but maybe we should stop muscling in on what has been their turf for a long time.

However, I see these types of stories becoming more and more common this seemingly unrestricted and unregulated push to build everywhere continues.

Media Frenzy

I haven't made any comments about Pope John Paul II's passing but maybe I should. Media coverage is so scant. Everyone seems to think that the late Pope was in line with his or her views. I shouldn't be so harsh. Pope John Paul II was a very important world figure, unlike someone like the Prince of Wales. I made a few comments about the late Pope and the media on the opinion section of my site. The link is on the left of my index page.

Speaking of Prince Charles, he moved his wedding back a day so as not to conflict with the Pope's funeral. I guess that's the reason. Who cares. I didn't care the first time he got married and I don't care about the second one. Heck, I don't even think the Brits give a rat's arse about this one. Whether or not the Pope had died I don't even think the media was willing to bite on that wedding story. Don't get me wrong, I like the British. I just don't understand this royalty thing. Same goes for Americans who follow the Kennedy family as if they are special too.

Flood

As was predicted, the Delaware River crested about 14 feet about flood level. Easton and Phillipsburg have some major flooding. Other cities and towns along the Delaware have also been hit hard. I don't have any pictures to post because I did not drive into town to gawk. Check the Web if you want pictures.

April (Snow) Showers

Actually, April snow storm to be exact. I'm in Johnstown right now and, locally, they are calling for 6+ inches of snow. Fortunately, I'll be driving East today and away from the storm. I checked to the weather for back home and the NWS is saying that the Delaware River is going to crest 1-4 feet higher than it did when Ivan moved through and is urging people along the river to evacuate. Hopefully, everyone who has to will get out in time.

GNOME

I switched my main PC's desktop back to GNOME yesterday. I had been using KDE since version 3.4 was released. KDE 3.4 had a quirky post-install configuration due to an error specific just to Arch Linux's pacman. However, if you read the Wiki, like I did, the KDE 3.4 default post-install setup was OK. I'm still on GNOME 2.8 and might upgrade to 2.10 in a week or two. To avoid a flame war, I will not say which I prefer. By the way, sometimes I even use WindowMaker.

As for Arch, I am little behind on the package front. The latest pacman -Syu tells me I can grab 222 MB of updates. Right now, though, I see no reason to upgrade stuff like Open Office, alsa-utils, or nmap. I suspect a good chunk of that 222 is GNOME 2.10 and Open Office. If I do anything it will be GNOME 2.10. I usually do the whole bang about once every two months and grab everything pacman -Syu displays.

Otherwise, my main PC is just humming along. Of the several Linux distros I've used, I like Arch the best. My laptop still runs Mandrake (Community 10.1 as of now) but that's getting me flustered. 9.0 and 9.2 worked great but 10.1 has given me some problems - too many to elaborate on here. I may try Fedora Core 4 once that's out (June?) or I may even drop back to 9.2 with a minimal install then grab all the current packages from Mandrake's Cooker.

Well, this is probably boring to most of you. That's all for now.

April Fools Me

Once the calender rolls over to April, it's usually safe to say Spring has arrived even though it's technically 10 days in. Weather-wise is another matter as we look forward to the first weekend in April and temperatures forecast to be in the 40's with rain/snow showers. Luckily, we had a few nice days during the week which allowed us to get some yard work done. I even got the lawn mower out to give it the obligatory first start of the season and fired up the grill for hamburgers last night. Nonetheless, it looks like the first full weekend of Spring is going to be a dud in the weather department.

This year we need to rotate our garden 90 degrees. The northern part hardly gets any sun so we want to set the garden east-west this year. This, of course, requires some work. Fortunately, I have a father in-law who has this great little Gravely with a tiller. That thing turns up the soil well.

As for the rest of the yard, general maintenance is a chore. I've cleared some land over the past few years so while the yard looks nicer it gives me more grass to cut. I don't mind it so much as long as we don't have a wet summer. Some of the grass in the sunny areas seems to grow about two inches a week; with or without rain to help it.

Hopefully the warm weather will arrive before June 23, unlike 2003 when it seemed like it rained almost straight through from around May 20th to June 23rd with very few days above 75 F. How about 59 on June 4th or 65 on June 21st? Yuck. That was horrible. Many days during that span were around 10 degrees off from the normal high. Some were closer to 20 degrees off. I hope this first weekend is not an augury of another Spring that's a flop.