9/29 what a week

Been a really interesting week for me. So a quick recap:

1: I wont be doing any more opinion pieces on this blog. I have been offered and after a little discussion and thought, accepted a place to put my opinions. My next opinion piece which I am working on right now will be appearing at thenixedreport.com. I would like to thank the editor of that site for offering this position, especially considering the rocky start we got off to when I publicly called him on the carpet for one of the pieces he wrote.

It takes a great person to be able to take a person who has called you out and then turn around with no rancor at all and offer to give them a place to vent their views points. I am really looking forward to working with him and am grateful for the opportunity he has offered me. I may not be a journalist, but boy howdy do I have some opinions.

2: My old reliable laptop has finally started to give up the ghost. A Compaq Presario R3000, a AMD 3000+ (1600 Mhz) with 512 on board, 40 gig HD and a 32 meg video card. It has been my traveling companion for these last few years and has logged around 40,000 miles with me. The cooling fan died and I didn't notice. It is rather silent to start with and it was sitting next to my desktop which is anything but quiet.

Since I run Sabayon I tend to have to compile software that I use. This jams the CPU to 100% load and leaves it there, sometimes for a long stretch. It did in this case at a time when I started the job and walked away. Too late I checked on it's progress and noticed that the case was insanely hot. While I did manage to get it turned off in time, there was some noticeable damage done. If I lock the CPU down to around 800 Mhz it will function fine as long as I dont stress it too much, but it's days as a work horse are over.

Which brings me to my happy news. I had to get a new laptop. A sparkly HP dv6000t, which has for the first time since my P166 so many years ago, an Intel processor, dual core even. Hi Def wide screen, 2 Ghz, 2 Gig onboard, DVD R/W, and a 256 meg nVidia video card. All for less than $850.00 including shipping via 2nd day air. Too bad I am in bush Alaska and 2nd day air actually means sometime next week, with luck. So it is a race now, to see if the new laptop gets to me before I leave the state for 5 weeks. If not my wife has agreed to ship it to me in Kansas City, but being offline for more than a few days is pure hell for me. Just have to play it by ear I guess.

Did I mention that the thing is being shipped with Vista on it? So for the first time ever I get to try my hand at getting the Windows Tax Refund. That should be interesting and different, however I have my Sabayon install disc all set and ready for it the day I get it. More on that experiance later. Until then ...

Have Fun
~Az

Have been AFK

I have been AFK for awhile. Not because of the responses received from my previous article, just that real life managed to catch up with me. Lots of work and travel to remote villages in Alaska, and when I was home I was spending as much time as I could with my family.

I have in mind several pieces to write. Many of them would probably be considered inflammatory by some, this as evidenced previously doesn't phase me a whole lot. So perhaps over the next few weeks I'll get around to writing them, at this point though even all the notes I have for them are locked away in the mostly unused space between my ears.

Whats else has been going on? Removed PCLOS from both of my laptops, one got Ubuntu just for ease and simplicity in maintenance. The other got Sabayon, and is anxiously awaiting the Sabayon 3.4 mini which as of this writting is still being worked on.

I will be in Kansas City Missouri for 5 weeks starting Oct 10th for a radar equipment school, then home for a week before taking off to Oklahoma City for two weeks for training on a different system, home for christmas, then back to OKC for yet another systems class. I'm really going to rack up the air miles over the next few months going back and forth from Alaska.

On a side note, I had to put up a copyright notice for the site. After I wrote my last article I found it in all kinds of places, and in a few of them mangled fairly well. It was an opinion piece and you will notice the "I" in the title. It was and is my opinion, it does not necessarily mean that I think you should share it. Discuss it to death for all I care, agree, disagree, flame me all you want, but pulling it apart and using pieces out of context is disingenious at best and outright lying at its worst. So thanks to a few who have few if any morals, I feel forced to put certain restrictions upon any opinion pieces that I right.

Have fun
~Az