I just saw the new King Kong trailer and it looks awesome! The trailer itself gave me chills, which is a pretty good sign.

Well I’ve done enough posting for today.

I got a new shower curtain yesterday that I need to go put up before this morning disappears. I love Restoration Hardware, but man is their stuff expensive! Luckily I got that sucker on sale.

I must be in some sort of mood this morning. I figured since my last post was all Gentoorific, I’d post a little bit about my Windows XP install as well. I just found my personal install notes, so I’ll paste them in here.

I re-install Windows on my laptop every 3-6 months on average. I install all kinds of cruft and it usually starts to get pretty bogged down after 6 months. I also love the feeling of a brand new laptop install and use it as an opportunity to upgrade software that’s essential to the system and gets easily broken. So here goes!

# Windows Update!

remapkey.exe
## Right Ctrl -> Caps
## Caps -> Left Windows

# Customize folder options
## (General)
## Use windows classic folders
## (View)
## uncheck - Display simple folder view in Explorer’s Folders list
## check - Display the contents of system folders
## check - Display the full path in the address bar
## uncheck - Display the full path in the title bar
## check - Show hidden files and folders
## uncheck - Hide protected operating system files
## uncheck - Use simple file sharing
## configure details view and apply to all folders

# Check for latest versions of apps
## putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html)
## geoshell (http://geoshell.com)
## Trillian (http://trillian.cc)
## PGP (http://www.pgp.com)
## Tortoise CVS (http://www.tortoisecvs.org/)
## UltraEdit (http://www.ultraedit.com)
## Irfanview (http://www.irfanview.com)
## Servant Salamander (http://www.altap.cz/)
## FireFOX (http://www.mozilla.org)
## TaskSwitchXP (http://taskswitchxp.sourceforge.net/)
## Winamp (http://www.winamp.com)

# Install PGP
# Install googlebar (http://toolbar.google.com/)
# Install Mozilla Firefox
# Install Trillian
# Install UltraEdit

# Install Servant Salamander
## Add read/write to user Menu (attrib +r, attrib -r - Don’t open shell window)
## (Appearance)
## check - Full row select
## (Viewers & Editors -> Editors)
## Command = C:\Program Files\IDM Computer Solutions\UltraEdit-32\uedit32.exe

# Install GeoShell
# Configure GeoShell
## (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Geo\GeoShell\Plugins\geOTasks0_1)
## Show Captions = 0
## Plugin Min Width = 0
## (HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Geo\GeoShell\Services\Hotkey\szIDs)
## App_RDP = win|r|”C:\Winnt\System32\mstsc.exe”
## App_Irfanview = win|i|”C:\Program Files\IrfanView\i_view32.exe”
## App_Console = shift+win|c|c:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe /K cd \tools && title Console
## App_Sal = win|e|”C:\Program Files\Servant Salamander 2.5 beta 3\SALAMAND.exe”
## App_Putty = win|p|”C:\tools\NetUtils\putty-dev.exe”
## App_UE = SHIFT+WIN|u|”C:\Program Files\UltraEdit\uedit32.exe”
## App_VPN = win|v|”C:\Program Files\Cisco Systems\VPN Client\ipsecdialer.exe”
## App_PWSafe = win|p|C:\Tools\Utilities\pwsafe\pwsafe.exe
## App_Firefox = win|m|”C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”
## (HKCU\Software\geo\geOShell\ShellUI\Desktop)
## Desktop Top = 10
## (HKCU\Software\geo\geOShell\Plugins\geoMenuLaunch0_1)
## Button Caption = “”

# IE Settings
## (Advanced)
## uncheck - Show friendly HTTP error messages
## (Multimedia)
## uncheck - Enable Automatic Image Resizing

# Configure task manager
## check - Show processes from all users
## Options -> Hide When Minimized
## View -> Select Columns (+Virtual Memory Size

# Install Tortoise CVS
## Timo Kauppinen overlay Icons
## External diff application: C:\Tools\Utilities\ExamDiff\ExamDiff.exe

# Configure default putty settings
## (Window)
## 30 Rows, 100 Columns
## 500 Lines of scrollback
## (Window -> Behaviour)
## System menu appears on ALT-Space
## (Connection)
## 90 seconds between keepalives

# Set screen to non bubblified classic
# Effects -> Enable cleartype
# Effects -> Don’t hide underlined letters

##### Things Missing #####
# Mozilla Bookmarks

# Configure UltraEdit
## (Backup)
## Default Backup Directory - C:\Documents and Settings\Username\My Documents\Backups\UltraEdit
## (Edit)
## check - Use spaces in place of Tabs
## Tab Stop Value/Indent Spaces = 2
## (File Types)
## add .php extension

# Clean up start menu - Organize everything into Net, Multimedia, Utils, and Games folders for the most part

# Install Ultranav driver for T40

# Install Winamp

# Lock down McShield
# Configure McAfee as wanted, then deny set access to the following key
## (HKLM\SOFTWARE\Network Associates\TVD\Shared Components\On Access Scanner\McShield\Configuration\Default)

# Install winpcap, ethereal, nmap, cain, vmware
# Install dameware, l0pht, mappoint, PERL
# Install win2k3 admin pak and res kits

# Install perl modules
ppm install Net::IPv4Addr

# Clean up services
## manual - server, netlogon, messenger, webclient, remoteregistry

# Add perl modules
ppm install file-grep

# Install Outlook, Outlook Connector for Domino, Quintessential, iTunes

## Here we go again - 3/28/2005
# Install bluetooth driver
# Install wildpackets atheros driver

# Firefox Extensions
## SessionSaver - http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/sessionsaver
## miniT -http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/minit
## Web Developer - http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/webdeveloper
## BugMeNot - http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/bugmenot
## GreaseMonkey - http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
## LittleFox Theme - https://addons.update.mozilla.org/themes/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&version=1.0&os=Windows&id=307

And pretty soon I’ll post a comprehensive list of my tools directory and maybe even give you access to my tools repository!

I did it. I’m in the process of replacing Debian on one of my boxes at home with Gentoo.

Ok, now calm down out there..it’s not the end of the world. Up is still up and down is still down.

For at least the past four or five years, I have been a diehard Debian fanatic. In my formative college years, I pretty much tried every distro known to man - my hobby on the weekends was installing operating systems. My first linux experience was with RedHat in my freshman year (and I had some problems of my own). After three weekends and thirty installs, I finally got my redhat system perfect…and then my hard drive crashed! Nevertheless, I was hooked. I progressed from redhat to SuSE to slackware with many in-between and ultimately settled on Debian.

Debian was a dream to me. I never had to worry about rpm-hell and the lovely release structure meant I could run a stable box and still get the latest and greatest gaim or nmap. Over time, though, I became somewhat frustrated with Debian for that exact reason. Being able to pull from stable and unstable was a great benefit, but also became a pretty big hassle. Apt-pinning is great, but it does have it’s limitations. Frequently, there were packages I wanted to install, but glibc incompatabilities would ruin my day. Yes, there is Debian Backports, but their breadth of packages left quite a bit to be desired.

It’s amazing what love does to a man and I was in love with Debian. So I kept using it, stringing things together and making do with what I had. It was still better than anything else around. And yes, I had heard of Gentoo and the flocks of people saying it was the ‘next best thing’ and even gave it a try. But I wasn’t impressed. Everybody always posed it to me as a performance thing. We live in the days where dual-cpu systems are the norm and 4Ghz chips are nothing - what do I need an extra few flops worth of performance for? The days I waste compiling it from scratch negates the benefit! And so I rolled.

Then something happened. I got a new job. And with that new job, came a new laptop. And on that laptop, I was putting Linux. I’ve tried to run Debian on laptops and desktops and it does a pretty decent job, but it’s not what it does best. So I decided to go with something different. I’d heard great things about Ubuntu, so I figured I’d give that a shot. Ubuntu is a beautiful distribution - easy to install, pretty by default, easy to maintain. But being Damon, I like to run bleeding-edge software. What was difficult to maintain in Debian, was even moreso in Ubuntu. Being that most of the other guys at work ran Gentoo, I decided to take the plunge.

Despite the lengthy and tedious install process and endless nights of Google searches for help on installing Gentoo on a T42, I had a pretty decent system going. And if I needed the latest and greatest, I could emerge that specific build. So, for me the greatest benefit of Gentoo is not that everything is “optimized”. The greatest benefit of Gentoo is that due to the fact that your packages get compiled, you don’t have to worry about library dependencies! Portage makes it easy for me to run the latest and greatest software and not “break stuff” on my system. Furthermore, Gentoo has all kinds of great documentation. Because it’s a no-frills distribution, many people have had to figure things out by themselves and posted about it online. The Gentoo Wiki has also been a lifesaver.

So why did I replace Debian with Gentoo on my home box? More likely than not just for something new to try. That box had an excessive amount of cruft on it from when I used to host my domain out of my home before moving to John Companies. So it was either remove all the cruft piece-by-piece or reinstall from scratch. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but I have LVM over raid-1 over raid-0 on that box and the initial Debian install on that box was a very painful experience, not to mention keeping it up-to-date. Building a new initrd was a very painful process. So I decided to see how painful it would be to do so using Gentoo. I was pleasantly surprised when I found this HOWTO on installing Gentoo on an LVM2 root partition - It couldn’t have been easier. Minus a spelling error and some unchecked kernel modules, it was one of the few times I got a somewhat-complicated Linux install up and running on the first try.

So now I’m running Gentoo, I emerge every day, and emerge world on a regular basis. Despite that, I still run Debian on my colo and on another box here at home but now it happily co-exists.

Why didn’t somebody explain Gentoo like this to me earlier?!

As an update, having Debian and Gentoo try to co-exist is causing some problems. I installed Prelude-IDS on my Gentoo box recently. It was no problem at all - a couple emerges, and I was running the latest development version. I thought I would install a sensor on my Debian box, but unfortunately there isn’t a Debian package for the development version. No problem, I thought, I’ll just compile it. Unfortunately, the Debian package for one of the required libraries is not up-to-date enough. *sigh* I’m growing weary.

I played paintball today for the second time in my life - a place called Blast Camp in Hobart, IN.

This place was great! It’s an old naval base and they’ve got about 10 courses to play on - some in old buildings, some outdoors, some with trenches. You can rest assured I was booking it through those trenches. I can’t wait to go again.

I didn’t get hit too bad, like some other people. But I got a couple nice hits.

paintball/IMGP16361

Now don’t get me wrong, I like Dannon yogurt…but it kind of scares me. Since using the pyramid tracker (not my idea, but still very useful :)), I’ve been trying to keep track of what I’m eating an get some better food in my system, like yogurt.

Why does Dannon scare me?

Well when you first open it up - the top of the yogurt looks kind of…gelatinous and abnormal, like it’s been sitting around for a while. Now granted, once you stir it up and get that fruit mixed up it’s great (I have boysenberry today), but that initial impression always makes me shudder just a little bit.

And only now, after staring at the word “Dannon”, do I realize how much it looks like Damon… Do I have a gelatinous look when you first open me?

So I’ve spent the entire week trying to get Prelude-IDS installed on my Solaris box without much success. Now this could be a result of a couple things - 1. the slightly old build of Solaris 9 I have installed on the box or 2. my complete inadequacy with Solaris…which is probably the primary issue. It took me about three days to figure out how to get libprelude installed including figuring out how to get gcc installed, figuring out pkgadd and pkg-get, and getting lost with crle. I’d post more details if I had been more successful, but I’ve hit a wall trying to install libpreludedb.

Maybe I’ll just install those components on my old linux web server that isn’t doing much these days…oy.

Sorry if I’ve been a little bit quiet of late - I’ve been in the DC area for almost three weeks now and posting to my site is usually the last thing I want to do while sitting in the hotel room at nine-0-clock at night.

However, if there is one thing I do want to complain about it’s the chlorine in the water at the hotel, which is one of my biggest pet peeves. I understand they need to keep things sanitary, but isn’t there another way? The place I’m staying at this week has so much chlorine in the shower water, that I get a headache at work because my entire body reeks of chlorine.

Ecch.

It’ll be good to get back.

A really cool optical illusion - don’t strain your eyes too bad!

Rapid Afterimage

*phew*

What a weekend I had. I’m in DC this week, so I figured I would drive home and see the ‘rents as I haven’t been back home for a while. So a nice 6-hour drive to CT I said hi to my parents and even my grandmother and brother+wife came in as well, so it was a good time home. I only spent one night there, however, and Sunday (after dropping a mysterious lovely visitor off at the airport) I shot straight back to the DC area, stopping only once for some gas and snacks. Thankfully, traffic was just fine, but man am I sore today! It was good to be home again, as always, and I enjoyed my relaxing time - short though it was.

I’m looking forward to getting back to Chi-town.