Only in my home.... Could it take more then 6 hours of work, to complete some thing that *shouldn't* take longer then 20 minutes.


Well... at least it's done, documented, and due for having a report written tomorrow lol.


Oh joy, I can just bet good money if I had any on how long it'll take to do that...

I find myself in a place surrounded by lions.
My muscles may tense with the rage that powers them
Yet I cannot bring myself to strike at my enemies.

I yearn to strike back, rend them limb from limb as they do me.
Yet irregardless of how much I burn, how much I stir,
My arms will not budge, they will not strike.

Oh how I long... To let them feel as I,
To forget my humanity, to strike without remorse..
With that same animal fury as they, so unrelenting.
But to do so, is to walk into the same corrupting fires
That blaze about them, oh how those fires burn.

Even as I bid my heart, become as stone..
It constantly reminds me it is made of flesh.
And not made for such dark ends...


Whether 'tis to be the greatest fool of them all
or weakest creature of all, I bid it to end
before I look back upon all my memories
as just another picture to burn.


-- Tue Apr 29 23:06:04 UTC 2008

Stuck workin'

I'm trying to code and what song do they have on the radio lol.

Work, work all week long
Punchin’ that clock from dusk till dawn.
Countin’ the days till Friday night
That’s when all the conditions are right.
For a good time
I need a good time.

Yea, I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

I cashed my check, cleaned my truck
Put on my hat, forgot about work
Sun goin’ down, head across town
Pick up my baby and turn it around
Good time,
Aahh, I need a good time

I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
Time for a good time

HEY!

Pig in the ground, beer on ice
Just like ole Hank taught us about
Singin’ along, Bocephus songs
Rowdy friends all night long
Good time
Lord, we’re having a good time,

Yea, I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

Whew

Heel toe dosey doe
Scootin’ our boots, swingin’ doors
B & D Kix and Dunn
Honkin’ tonk heaven, Double shotgun
Good time,
Lord, we’re havin’ a good time

Cause I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

Shot of Tequila, beer on tap
Sweet southern woman set on my lap
G with an O, O with a D
T with an I and an M and an E
And a good time
Shhheww, good time
I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

Ahh, turn it up now.

A Shot of Tequila.
Beer on tap.
A good looking woman.
To set on my lap.

A G with an O, an O with a D
A T with an I an M with an E
That spells good time
A good time

Ohh, I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
Time for a good time

Twelve o’clock, two o’clock three o’clock four
Five o’clock we know were that’s gonna go
Closing the door, shuttin’ em down
Head for that Waffle House way across town
Good time
Ohh, we’re havin’ a good time.
Ohh, I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

Ohh, I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

Ohh, I’ve been workin’ all week
And I’m tired and I don’t wanna sleep
I wanna have fun
It’s time for a good time

Ohh, yea, a good time.

I need a good time.

Yea, a good time.

-- "Good Time", Alan Jackson.

Haha !

Managed to get off work early today, that's great from my pov since I usually leave work 15min late on Monday's lol.


Unfortunately it's after dark and I've still not gotten any thing onde, I really wish my family would /remember/ I'm not a fuk'n servant boy some days.


Break time though... starving lol.

FOOD now, work later... work in morning, 'special' operation in evening, so much for taking it easy.

before work...

Just a few minutes until it's time to get ready for work today...


Things have a nice way of arranging it so I've got no time before hand lol. I don't really mind having to work afternons on Mondays, but I would appreciate it if I _could_ get stuff _done_ during afternoons I'm home, rather then having to do things after dark until I pass out, or not at all in this place...


Be stuck at work all day so that leaves the until crack of dawn or point of no return mark (to be sleeping by or hate getting up for work tomorrow) in order to get things finished. That or cram it all into dead line day and really be driving out of my fscking skull trying to get it done with my family around.


Hmm... Wouldn't it be fun to throw everyone out for about 6 hours... ? Lol

m/work/

Well, if nothing else over the past two days... I've at least gotten a chapter done with my book, and taken care of two issues on the website (y). I also managed to weasel through a little bit of code that might just go along way at making improvements hehe.


Spent a few hours relaxing in the proving grounds, didn't want to interrupt the training in the other server. I dunno if it's the time of day I usually /get/ to play or what, but PG#1 has been very laggy for me lately. Although I haven't had any problems on TG#3 which also should be out in England lol.


For tonight my plans are working on a small analytical script for ringing alarm bells, this should be interesting lol.

The more I'm here, the worse I feel
It's like wasting away, on a full stomach.
Every thing points to the past, will it never die?
As I long für the future, to hold all I seek in my hands.
Little more then that dream keeps my bones from breaking.

Oh LORD, why am I tormented so...
I know almost no peace, my enemies no relent, till I am bound and gagged.
I keep my mouth shut, less it bring the rain.
While the wild beats graze around me, in search of flesh.

All I can see, is the emptiness here, so far am I from my goals.
Even the slightest thought of them, makes me crazy.
Just to concentrate a moment on that sensation...
Of all the things that could be, my life fulfilled.


Why can't I have release? Even for a time of rest, just to be at peace.
They come at me, as if thieves by night to take my life.
Fore they take every thing and leave nothing behind,
Nothing save the corpse of my heart.

Where there was once joy, they bring pain.
Where there was once love, they bring sorrow.
Where there was once tranquility, they bring rage.

I find nothing of what I seek here, only a battlefield.
Layered with mines and entrenched with barbwire.
Some times I think, I would throw it all away...
Even my very dignity, my very sanity just for a few seconds.


But I know, that path seals fates but never frees them.
So I continue to stand, although I may crack and crumble.
My body refuses to break completely, surrender is not a word I know.
Yet sadly, nether is peace a word I'm familiar with either.


I am given sweet bread to eat, but nothing else in this place
Where I feel bitterness around me, as the chains that bind me
Are forged ever stronger about me. Whether 'tis by my destruction
Or by my freedom, be they even entwined:

I yearn to walk freely through the light again.


-- 2008-04-26

A very fine Italian expression comes to mind... couldn't spell it correctly to save my life but it fits like a glove. In English, it roughly means:


Damn the misery !

Ninja Class, 2008-04-25T2000Z

Conducted my basics level 'Ninja' Class today in our Raven Shield server. Originally planned for Thursday, 2000 Zulu but moved to Friday 2000 Zulu due to business reasons 8=), then moved from [SAS] Training Grounds #1 to [SAS] Proving Grounds #1 for technical reasons :-(.


I think things went fairly well, first time I've done a training session in a good while now... first time in a long time I've done one without a lesson plan either, you could say I winged it lol. Split things into three phases, because working with Recruit Shadows stealth training was the primary reason behind the session. I tried to keep things basic enough for recruits, less Capt'n Rouge have my head but still keeping the session interesting hehe.


Started off easy trying to get peoples minds into the right mind set. Mindful of ones surroundings, the possible cause and effect of ones actions, and thinking about how we can be more stealthy in what we do so often. And how to adopt from our usual "see tango, shoot tango" functioning, while that works under Green Light conditions it don't the rest of times. And when you doing recon ops, leaving 10 or 20 dead bodies behind doesn't help things. Belive it or not, there is a lot more to stealth then slapping on a suppressor and trying not to blow any thing sky high on the way in.


For the second part of training, I moved us onto the warehouse level so I could give them some practical practice time. Cleared the immediate area of threats and had everyone form an element while I set up a patrol route in between the two main buildings. They had to sneak past me -- I made the patrol route simple, so it was not very hard but still took some effort to complete.


My favorite part was when I turned around on my patrol and saw Ambu standing in the open and shouted 'tango spotted' and fired a warning shot, only to turn left and go 'tango spotted' as I saw Ghost -- good to see that if I had been a real tango, Ghost was ready to put'em down before Ambu could be harmed. Another fun time was when they snuck all ~5 or so of them right under my noise and then I turn around and their all standing behind me hahaha. I also got Ghost to try the patrol route I set up, and I gave it a go myself and snuck past to the designated objective on my first go.


A lot of times when I do training, I'll try to challenge people to do better. Like back with Rct Boone and Rct Mando two years ago, they thought it was impossible to do this one room without blowing the heck out of it with tactical aids. So I doubled dared them into taking the room without any tactical aids, full dynamic assault, and without using suppressed weapons to approach the target room. I tagged along with a light machine gun shooting at them trying to distract them and they pulled off the entry, cleared the room without a hitch, and were like "Wow, we actually did it". While I'm standing here with a smile on my face, thinking "I knew you lads could do it".


I don't like to ask any one to do some thing I'm not prepared to do myself, that's why in my training sessions I'll often try and arrange for me to have a turn at tricky things. I can't do worse then fall flat on my face in front of the recruits, and at best I can show it's actually possible (y).


I remember I once set up a 'room clearing challenge' that was modeled after my personal training sessions but I made it even harder and posted it. No body was able to complete the challenge, not even me for a long time... so i started doing more dynamic training myself and I eventually scored a respectable spot on the score board, only name there but that one really nagged at me. How could I ask the recruits do complete a task I couldn't? So I set out to train until I could, and I did it..



For the last part of training, I wanted to give the guys a chance to relax yet still keep on learning. So I set up a mini live fire scenario where we had to do a double-hostage rescue, rules of engagement red (aka fire on command), and minimise loss of stealth and enemies neutralized to the max possible.

It took maybe 4 or 5 tries but we eventually did the mission, 4 man element, about 3 tangos killed, two hostages rescued, but one causality in the process :-(


What I really liked about the live fire scenario is I got to see my teammates at work. Setting up angles of fire on the risky threats while we snuck past, so if any one got seen, the tango would have a nice double tap to the head before they could fire. And communicating the positions of the enemy patrols among each other and adopting our plan and formation to the situation.


We also found a few bugs in the map that really made sneaking in some spots harder and once we got 'stepped on' so to speak which resulted in the entire element being either gunned down or blown up lol. Eventually though we did it with flying colours (y) but we got plenty of good practice in the middle hehe.



It's nice to do training again, I really love to have a chance to teach people. Of all the tasks that have eventually found there way to me in [SAS], the one I've always carried out the happiest is trying to pass on my experience and what was passed onto me, to a new generation.


In a lot of ways, I think I'm really starting to get to be an 'old man' of sorts among my teammates... Although most of them are older then me by a good margin or just a few years younger. I've been apart of this team for almost 2 and a half years now. I think in a way, I'm kind of like how people such as En4cer or Shield were to my generation of recruits. I'm not the best teacher but I do sincerely try to help us move into the right direction.


You're only at your best, when you accept the limit of your current abilities as such rather then seeking a way to better yourself.


And in the [SAS], we always seek to improve ourselves for the future.

Writer's Block: Happy Friday

What are you most looking forward to this weekend?

Live Journals Writer's Block

That if _anyone_ tries to gloat how they've flooded my schedule,


I have planned nothing for the weekend :-P

So Winucking funny, it's pitiful !!!

I honestly don't know if I should laugh or cry, it's really that bad but I'm laughing my ass off right now lol.


Like last week I set up Microsofts Services For UNIX 3.5 on my XP machine, configured user/group maps from my Windows XP user account to my account on the OpenBSD server with the NFS shares. I followed the documentation that came with the software to get it set up.


If I try to access \\vectra\srv\nfs through Windows Explorer I either get an error message or I get the files, or I get BOTH. And trying to even right click to highlight any thing in Windows Explorer causes lock ups for several seconds. If I use the IP address rather then the alias 'vectra' that I setup in %SystemRoot%\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts it works slightly faster if I try to use the dir command in the command prompt which is stupid.


When I try to map the share to a network drive in Windows Explorer it dies with an error at \\vectra\srv\nfs, but I can 'browse' for it and then use it some times. It also ignores the maps I set up in the graphical SFU admin program so I can't access files -- and still buggers up when I tell it the login datam.


So finally pissed off after a week of this lag & lock crap, I open a command prompt with SFU's shell and check the mount commands documentation which tells me to use the Windows Uniform Naming Convention (UNC) syntax for the file paths.

mount \\vectra\srv\nfs N:

And I get an error message about \\vectrasrvnfs being an invalid command line argument to mount. So I for the hell of it I try the unix style host:share syntax to see if that works.


mount vectra:/srv/nfs N:

and BOOM it friging works !!!



I open windows explorer and go to N:\ in the nav bar and it works QUICKLY just like the NFS Shares mounted on my PC-BSD system do. Now my NFS shares are working through Windows Explorer properly, not like a piece of garbage as it was when doing through the GUI on Windows.



THE IRONY OF IT ALL !?



Microsoft Windows is noted by some people for giving easy, graphical ways to do things that 'unix' systems are supposed to lack quality documentation.


I used the 'easy', 'graphical' interfaces in Windows to do what takes 2 seconds in Unix which is 'supposed' to lack documentation and it works like shit or not at all in Windows.


I used the 'hard', 'command line' like way on Windows, only to find that the 'supposed' good documentation is wrong, and guess what -- Doing it from the command line on Windows works ____better____ then the GUI once you figure it out.



Time to roll on the freaking floor laughing until my sides hurt !!!!

Well, it's been almost 4 hours or more since I took a 'break' from SWAT4... A few min to lay down, then get back to work was the plan.


Family has such a great way of fscking you over, don't they?

Writer's Block: Define Cheater

What is your definition of cheating?

Live Journals Writer's Block

Hmm, guess it depends on the subject.


Strangely when I've got to use mg or emacs instead of vim/vi for some thing I often feel like I'm cheating on an old friend... LOL


Generally I define cheating as unfair advantage, being able to fire 2*as fast for example or shooting through walls, spawn raping, etc.

And as to the 'other' kind of cheating that comes to mind -- not worth doing.

Who flipped the crash override?

Almost 0900 UTC (local 5am, ESD) and time to leave for work in less then ~4 hours... Wide awake and ain't life wonderful?


More to do tomorrow... Because it ain't done tonight +S

Groaning spider

So flib'n tired....


Ma is pissed off because the A/C isn't running a lot, so she can't sleep, for crying out loud how did she ever stand Florida for 30 years?

The less Ma sleeps, the less work _I_ get done, which is bad because that is more time she spends trying to piss me off. I think it's fair to say at this point, the more time I spend around my family -- the more misserable they make me... Productivity isn't even possible around them.


I wish I knew some thing about electrical wiring and manipulating A/C units the 'hard' way, maybe if I did, I could try to hot wire the bloody thing into running for her or fry myself in the process: which would solve the problem too LOL.


Oh what joy it would be... To actually be able to have a /productive/ day and get some sleep at night too, sheesh... I can't remember the last time I could get a decent nights sleep, maybe the early 1990s or late 1980s? For some one born in '88 that sucks lol.


*Sighs* with luck I can at least have time to deal with my mail tonight, it would be kind of nice if I could get some work done tonight, as opposed to having to go to work in the morning, be driven batty, and kept from doing any thing worth doing until after dark... As f'ing usual in this rats nest, I always got stiffed on time to do things but dragged into hop'n, skip'n, and jump'n about to do every thing else but what I've got to get done.


I need a freaking vacation

Whew it's been a long day.


Been trying to get stuff done on the website in between instant messages, I really wish we could pick up the pass but we're kinda split between three countries and our associated jobs.


Had to conduct a tryout in SWAT4 today, first time I've actually done it in SWAT4. Usually I only get to observe but not conduct, this time though it was a situation where I got asked to take care of business. Don't get me wrong, I've done plenty of tryouts and been to a ton of them in both RvS and SWAT but it's still a tryout.


I don't really like conducting tryouts but I've done enough that I can get them running quickly and smoothly when not training others about the process. You've got to be able to judge the recruits performance, and I don't really like to judge people. When it comes to doing tryouts, I am extremely strict, that is more or less how I was trained.


Some of my friends would say I'm just a right * proper bastard, suppose I am really lool. But when it comes to tryouts, even more so because I understand how important they are -- and why we should be strict. I don't have any problem with failing some one on their tryout, who said it was easy? But I'm also as fair as the Tryout SOPs allows me to be, things have to be done _correctly_ but honorably (y).


Although, to be perfectly honest I don't think I've met any recruit that didn't have it in them to pass a Troopers Tryout. If they didn't, odds are they wouldn't have been granted Recruit tags yet.


Heh, I remember my first clan back during my MechWarrior career. When I ended up with [SAS] down in Rvs, I was like "Huh? I'm getting trained and I've not been given a tryout yet?". [SAS]'s selection course I think is as close to the real thing in terms of being more like the military then the average group of gamers.


I'm really an easy going guy for the most part, but tryout conductor == iron fist-ed stickler for the tinest detail. When I conduct a tryout, you can generally be sure that who ever passes got a solid tryout or the ship went down trying!


The one thing I do like about conducting tryouts, is getting to debrief the recruit when they've passed. That's the good part before the paper work and admin work pile up when they've passed haha.

1.5->1.5.1 update, dead flock'er

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR


PC-BSD update for 1.5->1.5.1 went smoothly if slowly but broke flock :-(


Well, at lest they are starting to figure out you don't have to nuke every installed port/pkg to do upgrades... They however still don't seem to have fixed the flib'n syntax error in their sound detection systems XML file, which has been there since the new sound detection system hit.

Hmm, forced to get up early before work.

Interrupted while trying to get 'work' done before having to go to work

Shouted at it's time to go once I finally get to sit down in peace >_>


What a way to start a work day, I love my family!!!

Playing with perl

Ok, so I got bored and wound up with a new toy :-P

Hmm, now to hunt down some snacks...

     1: #!/usr/bin/perl
     2: 
     3: use strict;
     4: use warnings;
     5: 
     6: use Getopt::Long;
     7: use Image::Size;
     8: use Pod::Usage;
     9: 
    10: =pod
    11: =head1 NAME
    12: 
    13: image-size.pl
    14: 
    15: =head1 SYNOPSIS
    16: 
    17: image-size.pl [options] [file ...]
    18: 
    19:   Options:
    20:     -f, --ask-file  include output from file(1) 
    21:     -h, --help      print usage help info
    22:     --man           read manual page
    23:     -s, --silent    ignore errors
    24:     -v, --verbose   more verbose output
    25:     -d, --die       blow up on first error
    26: 
    27: =head1 DESCRIPTION
    28: 
    29: A quick perl script to do what I've always wanted, tell me the height and width
    30: of an image file. Without having to open a graphical program (X11) just for the
    31: sake of finding out! File formats supported are based on the Image::Size module
    32: which is required for this script to function.
    33: 
    34: Special thanks to the creators of the llama book for mentioning perls
    35: Image::Size module and thanks to the creators of that module!
    36: 
    37: =head1 OPTIONS
    38: 
    39: =over 8
    40: 
    41: =item B<-f, --ask-file>
    42: 
    43: Politely ask the systems file utility about the files format. This option
    44: requires the file program installed and accessible through your environments
    45: PATH.
    46: 
    47: =item B<-h, --help>
    48: 
    49: Print out a summery of command line options and exit.
    50: 
    51: =item B<--man>
    52: 
    53: Displays this manual page using the provided Plain Old Documentation.
    54: 
    55: =item B<-s, --silent>
    56: 
    57: Ignore failed files and continue, combine with -v or --verbose to include the
    58: file name but still skip printing error messages.
    59: 
    60: =item B<-v, --verbose>
    61: 
    62: Print the file name along with it's width, height, and type (if known). Each
    63: field is also separated by a new line and ordered in a more elaborate format.
    64: 
    65: =item B<-d, --die>
    66: 
    67: Default behavior for  image-size.pl is to print a simple warning message if any
    68: specified file can not be operated on. 
    69: 
    70: When the the -d or --die switches are given, the program will halt execution
    71: with an appropriate exit status instead of continuing. 
    72: 
    73: This is useful for when you do not wish to continue after an error when
    74: processing a list of files
    75: 
    76: Refer to the perl documentation for details about how the exit status is
    77: affected.
    78: 
    79: =back
    80: 
    81: =head1 EXIT STATUS
    82: 
    83: The image-size.pl utility exits 0 on success or returns via perls die() if -d or
    84: --die was passed on the command line.
    85: 
    86: =head1 SEE ALSO
    87: 
    88: L<perl(1)>, L<perldoc(1)>, L<file(1)>
    89: 
    90: =head1 LICENSE
    91: 
    92: Copyright (c) 2008, TerryP <snip>
    93: 
    94: Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any purpose
    95: with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above copyright notice
    96: and this permission notice appear in all copies.
    97: 
    98: THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES WITH
    99: REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND
   100: FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT,
   101: INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS
   102: OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER
   103: TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF
   104: THIS SOFTWARE.
   105: 
   106: =cut
   107: 
   108: 
   109: # message for pod2usage()
   110: my $usage_msg = "$0 -- figure out the height and width of image files\n";
   111: 
   112: # message to display on error getting the image size
   113: my $warn_msg = "File does not exist or cannot be opened: ";
   114: 
   115: my ($deadly, $help, $verbose, $man, $silent, $ask) = undef;
   116: 
   117: {
   118:     Getopt::Long::Configure('bundling');
   119:     GetOptions(
   120:                 'f|ask-file'    =>       \$ask,
   121:                 'h|help|?'      =>       \$help,
   122:                 'man'           =>       \$man,
   123:                 's|silent'      =>       \$silent,
   124:                 'v|verbose'     =>       \$verbose,
   125:                 'd|die'         =>       \$deadly,
   126:               ) or $help++;
   127: 
   128:     pod2usage(-msg => $usage_msg, -output => \*STDOUT,
   129:               -exitval => 1, -verbose => 0 ) if $help;
   130:     pod2usage(-verbose => 2, -exitval => 1) if $man;
   131: 
   132:     exit 1 unless @ARGV;
   133: 
   134:     # check if we are reading file names off stdin
   135:     if ($ARGV[0] eq '-') {
   136:         while (<>) {
   137:             chomp;
   138:             &print_size(imgsize($_), $_)
   139:                 if -f $_ or $silent ? next : &handle_error and next;
   140:         }
   141:     } else {
   142:         foreach (@ARGV) {
   143:             &print_size(imgsize($_), $_)
   144:                 if -f $_ or $silent ? next : warn $warn_msg."$_\n" and next;
   145:         }
   146:     }
   147: }
   148: 
   149: sub print_size() {
   150:     my ($x, $y, $type, $file) = @_;
   151: 
   152:     $x = 'unkown' unless $x;
   153:     $y = 'unkown' unless $y;
   154: 
   155:     # keep it simple stupid
   156:     my $std_msg = "width-x: $x\theight-y: $y\tfile type: $type\n";
   157: 
   158:     # unless asked to shoot off your mouth
   159:     my $verb_msg = "file name: $file\n" .
   160:                    "width-x: $x\nheight-y: $y\n" .
   161:                    "file type: $type\n\n"; 
   162: 
   163:     $verbose ? print $verb_msg : print $std_msg;
   164: 
   165:     print "running file(1) ...\n\n",`file $_`,"\n" if $ask;
   166: }
   167: 
   168: sub handle_error() {
   169:     $deadly ? die $! : warn $warn_msg."$_\n";
   170: }
   171: 

I've almost finished Learning Perl with about 10 pages left, honestly it makes me itch to find a copy of the Alpaca book just to find out more lol.


It's rare that I read about any given language beyond it's documentation or tutorials but I've rather enjoyed this O'Riley, it's understandable why the company has a good reputation (y). I even noticed a module in the appendix that might be handy for implementing a program I've always wanted but have never found one before.


Perl is a very fun language to put to work, I don't think I'd want to do any thing lengthy in Perl (~1000s of lines) but for getting stuff done it's quite handy. It also comes with a ****load of documentation hehe, not to mention I like the POD (Plain Old Documentation) style for doing things.

Melon Popping through BF2

Some recreation for the day hehe: found decent infantry only server of BF2 running my favorite city map. Rotated between weapons as I usually do when I'm not in a squad that is 'serious', eventually wound up as a Squad Leader going helmet popping with a Accuracy International.

I had a couple major runs, just found a nice covered spot and started sighting targets. After pushing the ammo counter to it's limit I racked in a Veteran Sniper Combat badge +S. Normally I aim for centre of mass, some times the heart or lungs of a target specifically when sniping. But I usualyl go for a head shot when dealing with a threat, in BF2 I find them quite easy to manage on other snipers in particular.


It's rare though that I usually stream though targets like that though, like 20 some rounds and almost as many kills later I'm still sniping lol. Given a good mark to shoot at, a secure firing position, I'll usually be able to hit what ever I can see... Having to do that while every one and their dog is trying to shoot you, is a different story >_>

urxvt & utf-8

Found an interesting problemo tonight with using vim in rxvt-unicode. Since the German umlauts and the old double-S (ä ö ü ß) are a bit tricky for me to make without a copy/pasting then where needed I usually use the alternative (ue oe ue ss) where possible. Since vim 7 has spell checking, I've got spelllang set to handle US and British english plus German in the spell checker. Which really works very nice because my spelling is a bit of a hodge podge for those 'differences' in English spelling.

While I was working on the translation last night, I employed both Vims spell checker and a translator program to help me with the grammer. Vims spell checker has the lovely ability of being able to correct things, taking the form I can easily get out of a US QWERTY board and replacing with the proper characters (ä ö ü ß), I knew there was some thing I loved about vim xD


The only thing is, trying to open the file again with vim caused it to display weird, all of the umlauts replaced with strange characters. I checked Vims idea of the files encoding and it was UTF-8, just like my system locale settings should be saying.


Yet, (n)vi, cat, and other utilities were showing them fine. Setting the terminal encoding in vim or launching it with LANG=de_DE.ISO8859-1 got them to display properly but still senseless :\. My ~/.zshrc sets LANG to en_US.UTF-8, why nothing seemed to work right i dunno. Forcing urxvt (rxvt-unicode) to run with the C locale set (LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8") got it working fine.


I'm not familiar with that end of C++ but I wouldn't be surprised if it relied on the same setlocale() routine as C apps tend to. The FreeBSD handbook said to set LANG and MM_CHARSET and not LC_* variables for the environment. I've fixed it so the system kicks urxvt off with the right locale settings so the problem is fixed.


still a little odd imho lol

Nothin ever stops all these thoughts n the pain attached to them
Sometimes I wonder why this is happenin
Its like nothin I can do would distract me when
I think of how I shot myself in the back again
cuz from the infinite words I can say i
Put all pain you gave to me on display
But didnt realize instead of settin it free i
Took what I hated and made it a part of me

It never goes away
It never goes away

And now
You've become a part of me
You'll always be right here
You've become a part of me
You'll always be my fear
I cant separate
Myself from what I've done
Giving up a part of me
I've let myself become you

Hearin your name the memories come back again
I remember when it started happenin
I see you n every thought I had and then
The thoughts slowly found words attached to them
And I knew as they escaped away
I was committin myself to em n everyday
I regret sayin those things cuz now I see that i
Took what I hated and made it a part of me

It never goes away
It never goes away

And now
You've become a part of me
You'll always be right here
You've become a part of me
You'll always be my fear
I can't separate
Myself from what I've done
Giving up a part of me
I've let myself become you

It never goes away
It never goes away

Get away from me!
Give me my space back you gotta just Go!
Everything comes down the memories of You!
I kept it in without lettin you Know!
I let you go so get away from Me!
Give me my space back you gotta just Go!
Everything comes down the memories of You!
I kept it in without lettin you Know!
I let you go

And now
You've become a part of me
You'll always be right here
You've become a part of me
You'll always be my fear
I cant separate
Myself from what I've done
Giving up a part of me
I've let myself become you
I've let myself become you
I've let myself become lost inside these thoughts of you
Giving up a part of me
I've let myself become you

-- Linkin Park, 'Figure. 09'

Dropped off around 0630 last ngiht :\


Spent msot of it hacking on the SOP Rewrites and chatting with friends. The room clearing section is quite difficult, it needs to be sufficantly normalized which is a sticky operation. Trying to balance between short and sweet with completeness makes managing its verbosity a tricky one to.


I also spent some time doing a little translation work. I quite like trying to translate small portions of text between English and German, because it gives me a chance to get a greater feel for the language. You've got to learn to think a different way when using another language, I generally try to be as accurate as I can but enjoy the 'soft spots' where the idea becomes clear but, trying to put express it in the other language is hard.


I would love some day, the opportunity to learn it in a lot more depth. I'm generally able to read well enough when I have a dictionary to help, but... Trying to express things well is a bit more challenging. It takes time and experience to learn a languages grammer. It's not quite like learning a programming language... Given decent documentation I generally can pick up most common programming languages in an hour or two depending on it's size, I especially love it when some kind of Backus–Naur Form (BNF) listing is available, makes learning a programming language much faster lol.


Conventional languages for people on the other hand, ain't quite so simple :\

I've had a special briefing to give, a Rct to train with, two SNCOs to join int he shoot house for a few things, a ban/unban issue, yukes live op that almost launched, finishing [most of] my auditing and tending to a few site matters, and setting up a reminder should any thing remaining slip my mind.


I'm finishing my report and the last of my work for the day if I've gotta lock myself in a closet to do it >_>


Hopefully this time I won't be working on it at 0500Q lol.

The good news, I've got the first draft done on my report (yay!), the bad news is it is 0550Q and I'm less tired then I was at 1300Q loool. All that is less I guess is one or two more sections that I need to write.


One thing I really need to do is start organizing more of my common things into packages, I freaking love TeX :-).

Also good news is I've gotten auth for putting TeX Live PBI's on their testing server so that means I can get cracking on field testing it here, then start trying to push it on to PBIDir.

With luck, tomorrow might be a SWAT4 Live Op so I'll have time finish work on the site and get some more interesting work done too xD.


I was trained in Rvs, I took that route for the Selection Course and wouldn't change that decision for any thing. But I do rather feel at home with SWAT4. I've been playing S4 since the beta and bought the game shortly after it came out. The thing I dislike about RvS is the door bugs, SWAT4.. Hey some suspects might draw faster then Jesse James but at least they eventually go down when you shoot them, can't say the same for Raven Shields occasional super tangos dancing between bullets ^_^.


What pisses me off is I paid $50 for SWAT4, $30 for SWAT4:TSS and SWAT4:TSS although it is an expansion pack is implemented through the (very shitty compared to SWAT3s) mod system, which is probably the ONLY reason they ever released the SDK. Because the change in dev-teams meant a need for a quick way of hacking in the other 40% of the freaking game!



What a company...

Oy...


Set to work on preparing my report, down to the AFK again the second half a butt cheek is in the chair level of interruptions as normal 8=). Finally took a break for dinner, a nice double whammy of Whoppers



Crashed on the couch for awhile until Coco finally succeeded in guilting me out of my spot, jeeze it's only been _my_ spot for the last decade ^_^.


Dropped off to bed, never made it through most of Mission To Mars and woke up ~0300 in search of some Raspberry Danish.


May as well get back to work eh?


Some times I wonder if I ever sleep without being ready to drop :\

task.done() ? rest : work;

Not an overly busy day compared to the last few but the tiredness is catching up. Current plan of action is 5-10min to lay down and then start getting to work on things.


I need to finish evaluating things, start preparing my report, and get things done as necessary lol. I've also got a related appointment for this weekend so I've noted that my report should be considered due by Monday.


Managed to get in server for some SWAT4, *finally* game time this week. Only had time for two or three rounds though, got to move through on Point and First Cover positions. Been awhile since I've done any serious point work, much of my time as SSM/RSM had me in EL's boots lol. Glad to see I'm still effective though, was able to keep a dynamic pace as Point with an MP5 and as First Cover with the M4A1 and still keep accuracy up.


Firing the M4A1 in SWAT4 when on the move is not very hard but takes practice to do it, gotta learn to control and manage the weapon. The recoil in the game is unrealistically appalling but it makes taking threats out as you move to your Point of Domination a little more challenging then in Rvs or using one of the SMGs.



It's also nice to see how far one of our new Troopers have come, Big12... He's come a long way since the first day he set foot in our server hehe.



It's just the way I am I guess, work a bit, game a bit, work more. When I've got a big task list it tends to weigh on my mind to much to spend an entire day off totally lol.



Today also is my Fathers birthday, he was born in 1946 iirc so it would have been his 62nd.


Happy birthday Dad ;-)

Been in my usually hyper-jumping multi-tasking state as usual.

I've had enough IM windows open simultaneously of late between friends, business, and other matters to be aiming for a new personal record. It's a good thing I didn't expect to get much done as Virtual WO1 on day 1 or day 2 looool.


Some times my systems load is light, at the least I usually will have a web browser, instant messenger, and a command prompt open some where (local or network). Other times even on my desktops 1600x1200 resolution screen space can be hard to get hehe.


That's just the way I am though, I'm usually avail about 14-18 hours a day or more depending on working hours lol. Most people know, don't call me, messenger me ! One thing I do love about IMs over phone calls is you don't have to respond instantly, and you the message buffer handles incomings between AFK spikes... It's sort of necessary with the way life at home is lol.


A few things on my agenda are already in the works... Most of which do to with things with the new AoR in [SAS] and the SOP Rewrites. You could say taking over a larger scope of things calls with it a bit of nose poking around hehe. With the SOPs I've been trying to get work done & keep the RSM informed.


Another thing I would like to do is find some time to learn Perls OO features. I'm no real fan of Object Oriented programming although I believe it is just a means of doing the right things a certain way. In this case it really is just the simple fact that I don't know much about Perls Object Oriented syntax and I'm not interested in waiting for Perl6 to learn it lol.


For me Perl is getting to be kind of like an old friend in the tool chest, like a trusty hammer or a favorite screw driver. I often find my self using Python, Perl, and Ruby for scripting tasks or random programming that I either can't use some thing else for or just don't have time/energy for using another language for.


And for languages and tools I often put to work, I like to know them like a well read book ;-)


What can I say but I love to learn!

Having dived down the rabbit hole an RSM and landed a Warrant Officer Class 1 in Wonderland, I know the red pill was the best choice.


I'm not really sorry to see the RSMs post go, it is really a lot less to worry about. I still have responsibilities but of a different nature, the one thing I really do like about the WO1 task set is the potentional jack of all trades nature it holds.


Some people don't do things by halves, including me. I know many things but am master of few, yet I often study well beyond my skill sets own domain.



I've been transferring as many files as I think relivent over to our new RSM but I havn't had time to formally report for my own orders yet. Now being the most healthy one here I'm stuck on the on call every 2 minutes at the drop of a pin instead of ht emore normal 5 minutes :-(. First time I've seen my mother throwing up in almost 20 years, whether she has a cold or not I know I'm only with allergies. Ended up with blood in the output of one of my allergy attacks today, not sure if that is a good sign or a bad sign but I know one thing -- my sinuses feel a hell of a lot better !


With luck the down time won't be to much... I'm usually like a butler around this house any way :\. I'm not exactly the best person for the job imho but there is no other course of action. What would my family do if I didn't act the way I do.... lol.

Dixie reborn

and a return to KDE, version 3.5.8 while I'm at it




I find the lipstick style that PC-BSD uses by default a little yucky to stare at all day so I set it to my favorite (Keramik). I have installed a ton of colour schemes off kde-look.org but hate most of them..... One that I found was essentially an emulation of Ubuntu's "Human" setup, which I do like very much or else I wouldn't be using a modified form of it.


The colour scheme and GTK+ widgets is actually the only good thing I can say about Ubuntu 6.06 when I tested it last year. At first I thought I might try a custom colour scheme with a red title bar, give KDE a nice little FreeBSD flair ;-) But I couldn't get a shade of red that I could live with, like using, and not be distracted by in the same colour. PC-BSDs default window decor, 'Crystal' didn't match well with the human colour scheme so I changed it repeatidly trying to find one that did match well and I could live with. I couldn't find one I liked, so as usual I wound up with Keramik haha. No matter what I do I always find that window decore attractive 0.o. I also installed the Human_KDE icon set to match the human colour scheme.

I copied over the KMenu and Konqueror icons from PC-BSDs default theme into a copy of Human_KDE and I made a clone of the Human colour scheme. Then changed the desired portion of the title bar to use PC-BSDs default colours for it instead, adding some contrast. I loved the match up and it is much more appeasing to my eyes :-)


A bit of both muahuaha !



As far as the screen shot, the background is my 'choice picture of the day', rxvt-unicode is running and displays a listing of my home directory and the system versioning. Normally my desktop is some what dominated by a terminal emulator and a web browser with a few IM windows for icing on the cake. Below urxvt is linux-flock open to a live journal page. Lower left hand corner is XMMS blasting music while the lower right hand corner is a 'KasBar' which provides a replacement for the usual taskbar. While still giving me some thing similar to how Window Maker solves the problem hehe. There are no icons on the desktop only the panel.


I placed the main panel on top because with a laptop + touch pad I find it easier to use and more comfortable on my eyes with the widescreen display. From left to right on the top panel there is the K-Menu button, System [folders] Menu, Settings Menu, Web Browser (flock), Terminal (~/sh/urxvt big), Network Folders, the system tray applet which shows PC-BSDs battery monitor, Klipper the clibboard app I wish Windows XP had, KMix (volume/mixer control), PC-BSDs update manager, KOrganizer (which may be getting the ax soon), Pidgin (AIM/MSN/YIM/ICQ/XMPP chat), and Konversation (IRC). Over to the righter' side is a desktop pager, lock/logout buttons, and a clocklet.


I feel the system has a bit of a Gnome / Ubuntu look and feel to it but I'm finding it quite comfortable. Because I like the pleasant feel of it plus it matches my work flow while still being KDE3 and FreeBSD powered instead xD.

Well after a bit of work the system is now fully operational and I can pass out >_>

Managed to get to bed at a nice early post 0415, only for a crazy set of dreams. I dreamed that my allergies were so bad I could barely breath and my throat so dry it was choking me to death. Yet as much water as I drank, it was as if it never touched my tongue :\

It's kind of strange but when I dream, I usually know I'm dreaming pretty quickly so I wasn't afraid just uncomfortable.


Transition to leading a SEAL team on an dockside assault with an M4 in hand and MP5 slung. Sent the team below while I took down the ships bridge, left the 'abnormal' terrorist leader with a few 9x19mm in the head after I figured out a way around the personal engey shield and regrouped.
Some talk about a dead mans switch and time to evacuate. The SEAL team pulled out while I went to check on the status of the lower level, only to find the NSA and Nurses tending to the hostages.

Transition yet again to being stuck in the middle of the desert with just a pistol in each hand, Tomb Raider style and a bet on who makes it out of their first. Only to end up with a psycho-path trying to get there first, a fairly attractive brunette in toe but horriabley useless in a gun fight in the race to the LZ lol.



Dang man, I have strange dreams lol.



My allergies have not been to bad today but I haven't eaten much all day... There is nothing to take, even the stuff that comes most highly recommended doesn't do squat. Most of them are just 10mg of loratadine which is pretty useless IMHO. With the way I've been feeling I think a decongestant might be helpful but not exactly worth the price tag. I can't wait for winter to come back !!!!!!!!!



I've spent most of my time working on the laptop and chatting with friends. Still havn't gotten much done today of productive use. Next on my list is restoring TeX Live from backup which I can do tonight. If Martínez ever gets back to me about the PBI Testing ftp server I might be able to get a TeX Live PBI set ready to rock & roll, it's a little to freaking big for any of the places I have storage on >_>. Once a working PBI is out, I can try and see what I can do about making a port of it once the PBI's out of my hair.

Reinstalling all the software

still to do:

mencoder -> build from source
konverter -> I still ain't used it but want it installed just in case
linux-flock -> from ports (rpm)
linux-realplayer -> from ports (rpm)
linux-mplayerplug-in -> install after flock
libdvdcss -> build from source
portupgrade -> needed for Neo Ports Manager development (it's the backend)
emacs or xemacs -> from source, rarly use emacs but I like to have a fat and micro sized emacsen installed.

Ports/Packages that PC-BSD actually saves me time on are perl, python, ruby, gtk2, subversion, kdegames, xv, kdegraphics, kdepim, libdvdread, libdvdnav, cdrtools, mplayer, and X.Org ;-)

I've been using Window Maker for a long time now, I think I'll go back to KDE3 for awhile. I've always liked using KDE3, even though I love Window Maker hehe. I've thought about switching to a less 'common' window manager as well but lack the time to RTFM and bend it to my wishes, especially since the ones that interest me can be quite keyboard driven hehe. I can use just about any window manager but I'm partial to Window Maker, the Box family, KDE, and Gnome. The only window manager I've used that I don't like, depending on what one considers 'explorer.exe' any way ^_^ is TWM, I used to use it over VNC to my test machine back in the PC-BSD 1.0RC2 days... I find it very much less then pretty. I don't care much for FVWM1/2 and most of it's variants either but would prefer them to TWM for using 24 * 7 * 365 ! Oh and I also have to reinstall TeX Live 2007 but that I have backed up to beat the bands hehe.


All that is left for tonight is to configure and build Vim before I hit the hay.

./configure --with-features=big --with-x --enable-gui=gtk2 --enable-xfontsel --enable-rubyinterp --enable-pythoninterp --enable-perlinterp --enable-cscope && gmake -j4 && gmake install

Technically all I could leave it as --with-features big and --enable-gui=gtk2 but I usually su[pply the other args to the configure script instictively.


Tomorrow I can finish installing the remaining apps since most of it is just waiting on me to install a ports tree. I also need to get the NFS/SMB shares sorted on Vectra & SAL1600, look up my ICQ# as it seems I lost both my KDM Theme and Pidgin settings by lack of forsite :-(. No matter, I actually like the more Gnome'ish PC-BSD KDM theme lol. I also remember the logins for my AIM/M$N/Y!M/XMPP so that one is not a big problem hehe.


And of course as always to playfully mold KDE to match my work flow, muhauahuaha !

/*
* list of software I've installed tonight:
*/

// languages
gcc43 // including the GNU Compiler for Java
javavmwrapper, JRE, and JDK
rubygem-rtags
rubygem-rake
guile
scheme48

// libraries
Qt4

// development tools
gmake // needed for vim, gtk+, qt3/4, and my tex makefiles
ctags // extended multi-language ctags, *BSD has a C based one
cscope and kscope
webcpp


// games
xgalaga
prboom with freeware doom-data
wesnoth

// graphics software
gimp with animation package (gimp-gap)
inkscape

// browsers
lynx

// local mail clients just in case
thunderbird
thunderbird-i18n
mutt

// chat
konversation // worlds best irc client
pidgin // aim/msn/yim/icq/etc
pidgin-hotkeys
pidgin-guifications
pidgin-libnotify
pidgin-otr
pidgin-encryption
teamspeak_client // linux version



// multimedia
libdvdplay
xmms
xmms-skins
xmms-pipe // control xmms from a named pipe


// documents
gnumeric
abiword
koffice

// personal
zsh
docker
rxvt-unicode
terminus-font
mg // micro gnu emacs, openbsds alterntive to vi

Reinstalling PC-BSD

I complted my backups during dinner so when I booted my laptop tonight, compared the MD5 checksums on the PC-BSD v1.5 CD#1 ISO file and burned the disk. I had K3B installed from PBI when I installed PC-BSD from a 2-Disk set awhile ago but I've never actually used K3B to do things lol. So I put a blank CD-R in my laptops acd0 and looked around on how to burn the ISO.

cdrecord -scanbus               # find out my 'dev'ice
Cdrecord-Clone 2.01 (i386-unknown-freebsd6.2) Copyright (C) 1995-2004 Jörg Schilling
Using libscg version 'schily-0.8'.
scsibus2:
        2,0,0   200) 'PHILIPS ' 'DVD+-RW SDVD8441' 'PA48' Removable CD-ROM
        2,1,0   201) *
        2,2,0   202) *
        2,3,0   203) *
        2,4,0   204) *
        2,5,0   205) *
        2,6,0   206) *
        2,7,0   207) *

cdrecord -v -pad speed=1 dev=2,0,0 PCBSD1.5-x86-CD1.iso
        # with very nice verbose output ;-)

I've never used my laptops DVD+-RW drive for burning disks before, normally I use the install of Nero that came with my Desktop but good ol'Dixie ain't let me down, the CD-ROM came out great. I did an install with the decision to use the entire disk and a custom disk label. The dang gum installer still doesn't have an option to set the time zone to UTC so I set it to Europe/London GMT 0000 which is close enough (my .zshrc sets TZ)

I noticed three problems with the custom disk label part of the installer. The first is, although PC-BSD finally fixed their default of 1024MB SWAP to instead use a more dynamic algorithim... For which it alloted 512MB of SWAP when my laptop has 512MB of PC2700 RAM. My previous install had that much RAM and when under the 'worst loads of its life' top some times reported ~300-400MB swap usage.

The installer woulnd't let me create a second swap partition, so I upped the size to 1024MB. Normally I double check my values with a calculator since the installer seems to lack fdisks ability to handle K, M, and G suffixes but I found BC was gone. I didn't have one handy so I started an XTerm only to find out that 'bc' was not on the install disk :-( so I did it manually.

The other two problems are that I created /usr, /home, /var, and /tmp partitions. It converted the /home mount point to /usr/home and made /home a symlink, the only problem is I created /home before /usr in the installer. So when I rebooted I found a nice surprise that /usr/home was not mounting because /usr was not mounted yet :-(. Also although I made a /tmp partition the PC-BSD installer failed to disable tmpmfs in rc.conf, I had to do that manually. I know rc.conf.local is supposed to be a bit out dated on FreeBSD and the proper way on OpenBSD... But I always use /etc/rc.conf.local for changing rc.conf on PC-BSD, less trouble ;-).

Started PC-BSD, noted the boot menu now shows FreeBSD instead of PC-BSD like in the last release and the splash screen was gone which is fine by me. I usually would clear it when booting but was always too lazy to disable it 8=)

Setup the display for 1280x800 24-bit with 'ati-3d-enable' and switched to a vtty with control+alt+F2 and logged in as root. I had to change roots password, because my is to strong to 'pass' the PC-BSD installers concept of an acceptible multinational password lol. And to add my personal user, during install I only added 'rstaff' because I wanted to create my user 'Terry' with the same UID and GID settings as on my OpenBSD machine, tired of remapping stuff...

passwd                                  # fix roots pw
adduser                                 # add my user

Then I realized that there was one fatal flaw in my plan, all the backups were on Vectra including the copy of my wpa_supplicant.conf file used for an internetconnection via wireless.

There is more ways then one to solve a problem ;-)

Since I don't have a USB Flash Drive I booted my desktop into Windows and stuck in my spare SD Memory card in the hopes of copying the backup of /etc to it but Windows couldn't access the bloody file shares, *Grrr* so I used PuTTY to SSH into Vectra and used cat, copy, and paste to create a new wpa_supplicant file.

Since my laptops card reader is not supported on FreeBSD 6.3 I swapped memory cards in my camera and attached the USB cable, I keep it set to 'Mass Storage' mode rather then PTP so I can transfer pictures to my laptop.

I plugged in the cable, turned on the camera, and in the time it took for me to type ls /dev | grep da the entire computer locked up, frozen solid on 'ls /d' so I had to shutdown with the magic on/off button :-(

So this time I turned off the camera and started my laptop again, turning on the camera during the kernel probe so it would stay in umass mode. Booted into single user mode and did a fsck -y then mounted the camera so I could get the file.

mount -t msdosfs /dev/da0s1 /mnt
cp /mnt/wpa_* /etc/
umount /mnt
                                        # exit single user mode

Logged into KDE with my main user, 'Terry' and I decided to give PC-BSDs networking tool a try, set up my wireless card. It failed to detect my wireless access point so I specified the SSID manually and cat, copy, and pasted my passphrase from wpa_supplicant into the GUI. I then proceded with my master plan, mount my stored backups off Vectra via NFS and start restoring files. So I booted into single user mode again and set to work, I knew I'd need single user mode because with X running things would get fucked soon if I didn't get my xorg.conf back!

Since I rarely write out a mission plan in that much detail when I am 'playing' with one of my computers. I've kept a log of my actions using vi to write /root/fixit.log and have ordered and commented the entries in a more logical order, I just did them in the order I thunk of them hehe.

fsck -y
mount -u -o rw /
mount -a
/etc/rc.d/netif start                   # start the network connection
# and mount my backup files on /mnt
mount_nfs -r 8192 -w 8192 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/srv/nfs/Backups/today /mnt
bash                                    # /bin/sh lacks a bit on  tab-completion

cd /tmp
tar -xf /mnt/etc.tar
cd etc
cp ssh/ssh*_config /etc/ssh/
cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.pcbsd15.install
cp X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/
cp rc.conf.local /etc/ && vi /etc/rc.conf.local # trim my rc.conf
cp pf.conf /etc/pf.conf.my-old
vi /etc/fstab   # create fstab entries for the NFS shares
cd /
tar -xf /mnt/local-share-ri.tar         # install ruby docs pc-bsd lacks
tar -xf /mnt/local-etc /usr/local/etc/sudoers   # restore my sudo config
cd /usr/home/Terry

# add nfs-users and smb groups
pw groupadd -g 7778 -n nfs-users -M rstaff,Terry
pw groupadd -g 19132 -n smb -M rstaff,Terry
pw groupmod -n operator -m Terry        # add myself to the operator group
su - Terry
mv Images Pictures                      # I prefer that name ;-)
mkdir code
# adjust the ownsership of my dirs
chown Terry:nfs-users {Documents,Music,Pictures,code,Videos}
tar -xf /mnt/my-home-backups.tar        # various files, extracts as 'backups/'
# restore the stuff I want saved
mv backups/GNUstep ~/
mv backups/sh ~/
mv backups/misc ~/
mv backups/konversation ~/.kde/share/apps/
mv backups/knode ~/.kde/share/apps/
mv backups/.* ~/                        # restore selected 'dot' files

# connect to my file server and create a new dir for nfs
ssh -p 22222 -i .ssh/mykey Terry@vectra
        su - root
        mkdir -m 1770 /srv/nfs/code     # I'll extract files later
        groupadd -g 7778 nfs-users
        vi /etc/group                   # added my user to nfs-users
        ^D                              # exit vectra root shell
        ^D                              # exit vectra Terry's shell
        cd /srv/nfs
        chown -R Terry:nfs-users ./*
^D# back to working as root on dixie in single user mode
cd /tmp
tar -xf /mnt/root-home.tar
cd root                                 # restore a few files I want there
cp *.ogg ~/
cp .login ~/
cp *-supfile ~/
reboot

on reboot I set out to work with molding KDE into shape and installing PC-BSD updates. With no lockups within the first half hour of operation.

Well, downloading a PC-BSD v1.5 install disk via KGet... Looks like a reinstall / repair is probably going to be the only way to fix Linux GTK+ apps without spending more time and effort then it pays to on the issue. I even tried booting off my FreeBSD 7 partition and setting up linux-flock there. Much more successful then PC-BSD, it died due to a missing gnome library which is probably what I get for installing gnome2, gtk2, linux-gtk2, and mutual friends from packages >_>


I actually like KGet as far as download utilities go. I'm used to using FreeBSDs fetch command which just wraps around a few library routines. What I like most about kget is it just stays out of my way, sits in the system tray, and doesn't take a Ph.D to figure it out ;-)


It's been awhile since I've tried the konqueror integration but it probably would be nice. I do rather like keeping downloads separated from my browser when it's a _big_ file though. That way at least if my browser crashes the download won't get FUBAR'd on me.


So here I sit, downloading the remaining ~500MB of the ISO image and watching The Negotiator which is one of my favorite thrillers. I remember I once caught it on cable one night and had to get the VHS when the chance came up. Now I enjoy the movie twice as much while I watch crooked SWAT team members break almost every damn rule their is to hostage rescue. To quote Kevin Spacey's charactor, "You want to kill him on national television now!?". The whole point of SWAT is to *_save_* lives, even the suspects if you can... but never, ever do you jeprodize the lives of hostages like that.


I need to get my system files backed up, shouldn't take long it's mostly the /etc folder, the parts of my home dir that are still local, and a few things in /usr/local/{share,etc} that I might want to keep. Guess it's time to update my partitioning scheme while I'm at it....

Writer's Block: I Left My Heart in...

What do you love about where you live?

Live Journals Writer's Block

It might rain cats and dogs, thunder and lighting to beat the bands, blow the car cover off the car, and even occasionally hail up but the buildings still stand !


Up until last year there was one road that we used to have a lot of clients in that area. That place is like Twisters Vill, if there is a storm, it'll get whacked. Several years ago I remember we were at the Churches mid-week service and the sound of the wind and thunder was some of the worst I've ever heard in my life. And that is a place where you can probably hear the music and singing down to the highway lol.


When service was over the Pastor told everyone they could stay there if they didn't feel up to leaving. It had to be at least 30-45min before we filtered out. I think the people that left probably wanted to see if they still had a house to go back to lol. On the way home we took that one road, it was seriously blown away man. Dark, any few lights there probably were out of power, there was trees down and debris every where and it was still storming. We finally had to turn around and take the highway after bumping into a crew trying to handle a downed power line in the middle of the road.



Where we live, usually doesn't get hit that bad... You might have water halfway into your shoes some days, or feel like a tumbleweed in the ol'west but it's generally safer then most other places in this city. Although to be honest, given the number of tornadoes per year in Georgia, I think I'd take my chances with the Hurricanes back in Florida if we ever moved closer to that on road lol.



I don't mind rain, I suppose it is strange but I generally like rainy whether; more adventure to travel. It's the tornadoes that worry me. Thunder and lighting I don't care very much for but I've never concerned myself a lot with it. I figure, if the LORD wants me dead, I'm as good as dead whether or nott I get hit by lighting. And if it ain't time to go yet, probably not a lot to worry about.


I don't really have a problem with death I suppose, I know we should always be ready to go but there are a few things I'd like to do/see in life first... The only thing of it, is if I gotta go, I'd rather not take any one with me and a twister is usually not that picky about it's targets. It's always been my expectation that I'll be as good as alone when the end comes, dunno why but that is my suspicion on the matter.

I've had a lot of rolling about on [SAS] related business today, generally productive as far as the NCO and RSM matters go. I also posted a file with my 'musings' on a few tactical matters in an appropriate place. Not sure if it was a good idea to share my thoughts in this case but I've never really cared much about what others think of me, no point starting now 8=).


I've had some time to play with my little music management toy hehe. Basically the idea is to track filename changes in my music collection and then update my playlist files. It's not meant to be pretty or optimal, just effective. If I ever get it finished I'll probably leave it running on the file server so it can look after my music files. Every now and then I do like to rearrange files in ~/Music and it always breaks my playlists, and even when using Amarok for the excellent playlist editing... It kind of sucks to have to redo them manually through Amaroks collection browser, it's a great system but my playlists can some times get quite large.


I've also managed to get my server and laptop set up to use NFS instead of SSHFS. Since it seems I can't count on SSHFS, it has already incured a 'price tag'. Samba's mount_smbfs is to much bother on FreeBSD atm, the program that comes with the fusefs-smbnetfs port seems to be as good as KiA if you want to know any thing more about it beyond the sample config file and source code... That leaves NFS and AFS, not familiar very greatly with AFS but NFS a bit more so. The BSDs seem to do things a bit differently with the exports file then what I've encountered before, the fbsd handbook / obsd faq also leaves a little to be desired compared to some nice BNF notation ^_^. I might be able to do some thing with a SSH tunnel later, right now some thing that works is all that is important...


My allergies have been tremendous lately but it's that time of year again. One thing I really did like about living in Fl. It was to damn hot for most of the stuff that makes me sneeze! It was kind of one of those places you are soaked to the bone just crossing the parking lot to get to the car lol.


Time to get some rest, tomorrows another day... Primary objectives for the near future are getting more work done on the SOP Rewrites and trying to fix my laptops problem with Linux GTK+ apps..grrr.

Tactical Wonderland

An old friend appeared before me with a question before my new orders come, in each hand he held a pill. One Red, one Blue, each representing a course of action. Towards service or my own ends, my reply?

Loyal to the end

days rumble

Well I've put a few thoughts through LaTeX and even discovered that at least the version in my MiKTeX install on WinXP, some times pdflatex.exe/latex.exe will have an endless loop rather then die with the normal error message if you accidentally delete the \end{document} at the end of a doc ^_^


I think I'll probably post the file tomorrow in the members forum, I zipped it with a simple password chosen at random. The question is will I remember what it is later rofl.


I like using tex/latex quite a lot so far, works much better then XHTML+CSS at giving decent output without *eventually* getting annoying to edit and maintain. I've been slowing building up a .sty file for things I use a lot so I don't have to worry about finding the last document I did some thing to when I can't remember a specific.


Probably will pass out in a few hours next to learning perl, glad I'm off work tomorrow... need some rest:\ Maybe I can even catch up with the 30++ messages in my in box haha!


I've done enough for the night, in the future Ineed to play around with the Linux ABI on my laptop and NFS. I have a FreeBSD 7 partition, I think I will see if I can use that to help fix the PC-BSD one... Either way it would probably take less then 2 hours to reinstall my laptop and restore files once I've got a set of PC-BSD v1.5 disks handy...Most of the time of course spent transferring and extracting files on low end hardware lool. NFS, I've always avoided and OpenBSD seems to use a different syntax for /etc/exports then I learned on Linux but as long as it works... SSHFS and SMB/CIFS seem to have failed me, the only remaining options I know available to me are NFS and AFS, nether of which I've had time to test fully yet. I guess that can wait for later.


*passes out*

It is kind of amazing, I posted a review of PC-BSD 1.2 and people occasionally still post comments on it lol. I think I'll do some thing similiar when PC-BSD v2.0 is released, will be a good chance to take a look deeper into KDE4.


Hit over the Library today and checked out the Lama book (Learning Perl), I figure I've been using Perl for a lot of odds and ends lately. And I may as well inhale the book a bit since I'm usually finding myself skimming manual pages, perldoc'ing, and STFW'ing for any thing I don't remember. Hmm, I think Perl was my second programming language but I never went to deep into it back then.


Also pulled a few on PHP, dunno if I'll have time to read them and I *hate* PHP even through it is a language I've had to employ on more then one occasion. I was also lucky enough to find a copy of the Art Of Computer Programming, Volume 4, Fascicle 4. That will make for a bit of an interesting read. If I had the cash, I think I'd love to get all of the volumes that have been published. Considering that Donald Knuth is like 70 years old and the first volume was published ~1968, I don't see how he can possibly live long enough to finish TAOCP when there are at least 2 or 3 more volumes left... but I'd love to read'em some day!


Never really been a big one for computer related books, I'm more of a Science Fiction kind of guy. But hey, I could live at the library xD.

Writer's Block: Lost & Found

What have you lost that you wish you still had?

Live Journals Writer's Block

I could go on for paragraphs about what comes to mind ... wouldn't do me much good.

Since I recently 'lost' it, I'd settle for my web browser back !


As to the other matter, well maybe it was for the best.

exhaustion mounting

Oy..

I've spent most of the week with an almost constent headache, barely been on the computer the past few days and even then mostly AFK. Managed to get some training in today and some work on the SOP rewrites as well but it's still a very tiring week.


I'm looking forward to the time off coming up so I can catch up with stuff, about all I have gotten done this week so far is talking to Noer and Rasa lol.

A crashing BSD

Ok, now I dunno what is worse that my very stable laptop has gone nuts or that I'm not surprised by it at all.


mentally back tracing events:

using urxvt with zsh
vim running in background during perl file editing session
linux-flock playing my favorite radio station via linux-mplayerplug-in and native mplayer
mv ./myfile.mp3 /tmp/ -> trying to move a file off a sshfs mount to /tmp
system locked up with sound stuck replaying a single note
tried to switch to vtty1
system auto-rebooted, never saw the vtty


On reboot I restarted flock and tried to move the file again, system locked up and rebooted when I tried to switch to vtty0...


Now linux-flock segfaults when I run it and the only other linux app I know that is handy, realplayer also segflauts. I ain't seen any thing informative in /var/ yet either.


Now, my Windows XP machine Blue Screen of Deaths and occasionally Black Screens of Deaths! On me all the time when listing to music while using the server browser in Raven Shield, if I use any thing other then WMP: trying WinAmp == instanto death and often same with MPlayer using the usual DirectX related sound/video opts.


So why do I find it sad that for me it is not so much of a shocker that with a third party kernel module installed from pre-compiled binary (fuse) that was ported from another OS, moving data from a mounted network file system (sshfs) to the local hard drive through SSH and said driver, while running binary programs designed for an entirely different system (linux flock+mplayerplug-in), could possibly cause a system to crash?


At least it's got a better damn reason then Windows XP has got looooool


I've tried fsck'ing the drive but the Linux ABI still seems FUBAR.. All things considered with SSHFS and SMB/CIFS, I am seriously considering putting both NFS and AFS into testing here to see if either will fill the gap.

Some musings from ~/Music/Playlists/manager/ideas.outline. The file outlines a format for the stored records and as much of the scripts operation as my mind can think of right now, it is 0420 already...

tags file format
| every song listed as 'file := checksum'

daemon/script
| for all files in collection loop
| | if md5 == known then
| | | if filename == known then
| | | | continue
| | | else
| | | | if md5(filename) in file then
| | | | | generate new entry in file
| | | | else
| | | | | update file with new name
| | | | | update playlists with new name
| | | | end
| | | end
| | end
| done

I like to outline my ideas every now and then for later reference, especially when I'm very tired it helps me make sense of my notes next week.


There is a vim plugin for outlining but that is kind of over kill for me. Vim has a 'listchars' setting that alters from Vi's behavior how and what it displays things when 'list' is set.

I have a function named My_OutlineMode() and an automcmd that calls the function whenever creating a new file or reading a new buffer with a file.outline

setl listchars =tab:\|\ " Mark \t's with |'s
setl list

That makes each level of indentation be highlighted and displays a pipe symbol '|' at each tab stop (e.g. indentation level) without inserting it into the file. I find it a tad distracting while coding -- indentation is used in programs for a reason after all! But for outlining ideas, I find it really helps to visually display the collation of ideas to indents. Maybe because I use blank lines and tabs to order thoughts in my outlines but what ever works hehe.


I remember I first learned about list/listchars when trying to help someone in #vim that wanted code to display each indent level with leading dots, kind of like how KATE can be set to show a '.' at each tab stop. So I made a note of it in case I would want to do something like that myself later.

After looking at Vim 7.x's omni completion during a conversation in #vim on irc.freenode.net I got an inkling to try making Vim auto complete the end of HTML tags without pressing ctrl-x + ctrl-o each time.


I'm sorry to say, it only took about 3 minutes:

imap </ </<c-x><c-o>


which tells Vim to enter </, press control+x following by control+o which is the insert mapping vim uses by default to do auto completion.


Yes I'm that bored... Haha


Hmm, I did think of an interesting idea which would a 'collection monitoring playlist updater' that would use MD5 checksums (or a faster algorithm due to the size of some of Wiz's mixes). The idea would be a sort of tags-file / flat-file database that maps MD5 checksums of all known files to current file names. If a file name of a checksumed file has changed, update all playlists with the 'new' file name.


An interesting idea, especially since I use a mixture of XMMS and MPlayer these days rather then ol'Amarok.


As it would probably take more then ~15 minutes to md5 1.9GB of music files over a sshfs mount on my laptop, it'll have to wait for another night but what an interesting idea xD

a python filled sigh

Some how it makes perfect sense...

While every one is sound asleep, even the dogs...

I'm spending my time with the music blasting and digging into code on my laptop and being quite happy during the duration.

Until Ma is off the couch, then I'm already miserable 8=)


At least I've managed to finish most of the work I was trying to do on Neo Ports Manager. Just committed changes to how it handles port build options, I'm still not happy with it from a design stand point... But it should be suitable for being activated in NPMs Beta Release whenever that occurs.


Actually getting any thing else done in the next four or five hours is questionable.

Musings of an RSM.

Well, I expect I'll probably get flamed over it but I've posted a WARNO in the SNCO forum.


I need to know exactly what is going on so I know just how much needs to be done. Perhaps my tone and style of writing is not the best for the situation, never has been one of my strong points for that matter. I think it serves the purpose well though, warno := helps me to order my thoughts and instructions in a manor for others to read and understand without a headache trying to figure them out.


The selection of a "warning order" I think was also appropriate, it's advance warning of coming instructions and providing as much information and instruction as I can now. It's also a point of fact that we need to get going hehe.


Once every thing is done, I want to grab the SSMs, sit down, discuss it and work on an OPORD (Operations Order), get with any Sgts who have more to say. Once that is done, type set the operations order and issue it. I figure it is probably the best way for me to handle the situation. I've mentally alotted about a week for start and a week for finish, after that.. If nothing comes in I guess it is RSM from hell time.


Because, whether I like it or not (and I don't) I need to make sure things are running smoothly and push things in the proper direction as necessary... I want to make sure of where we are on the map before I push, to hard or softly... One thing I do want to do and Noer seems to be a step a head of me is a consistency to what we teach. I want as part of the OPORD or an attachment to it, a listing of every thing 'big' on that issue and boiled down to it's simple form for routing through the SNCO and NCOs.

I could write that part in 5 minutes, have it type set in another 5, but I want to make sure nothing is missing from our current environment.


I am not going to sit and watch another generation of [SAS] Members face the same things mine had to during training... As the motto I would put on my sigblock if I could (bloody forum rules and all). Lead me, follow me, or get the fuck out of my way.

In this case I think we probably have a better group for getting the tasks we need done done, then we have since Randoms time as Cpl loool.

note to self, send our new webcoder some instructions and concept mock-ups on the new 'project' I have in mind for the website hehehe.

I'll never understand it...


If I try to do any thing while others are awake here it causes my productivity to shrink and headache to grow exponentially.


Is this some kind of universal law I've never heard of? Or is it just my family likes to bitch when I don't get stuff done but loves to drive me freaking crazy whenever I *try* to get stuff done? Lol...



I so need to get out of here... Marching in the thunderstorm would probably be more peaceful :\

After having been wanting to for ages I have finally fixed up my OpenBSD machines partitions.


I had an 80GB hard drive formated (wd1a) and moved /usr/local/ on to it and put my SMB shares on it for the free space.


Since wd0 is a 8GB disk split into a, b, h, d, g, and e partitions the biggest is wd0g mounted on /usr with ~6GB free but I had almost 10GB of files on /usr/local (wd1a). So I had to copy my backups and videos to the windows machine via Samba/Network Neighborehood before I could move all of my files in /usr/local/srv to a temporary place in /usr and then archived the rest of the directory.

cd /usr
mkdir storage
mv local/srv storage
tar -cf /var/tmp/local.tar local

I had to relabel the disk and then format the partitions, I created wd1a and wd1d to use as /usr/local and /srv with ~15GB more free space in case I need it.

umount -f local
disklabel -E wd1
newfs wd1a
newfs wd1d

During the disk label I changed to 'disk geometry' (g d), deleted the a partition (d a) and created the a and d partitions (c a and c d) keeping with the prompts on it and specifying 12G and 45G for the partition sizes.


Fixed my fstab and then mounted the partitions

vi /etc/fstab
# 8GB Primary Master, PATA drive
# device        mount   type    opts            dump    fsck
/dev/wd0a       /       ffs     rw              1       1
/dev/wd0h       /home   ffs     rw,nodev,nosuid 1       2
/dev/wd0d       /tmp    ffs     rw,nodev,nosuid 1       2
/dev/wd0g       /usr    ffs     rw,nodev        1       2
/dev/wd0e       /var    ffs     rw,nodev,nosuid 1       2
# 80GB Primary Slave, PATA drive
# device        mount           type    opts    dump    fsck
/dev/wd1a       /usr/local      ffs     rw,nodev        1       2
/dev/wd1d       /srv            ffs     rw,nodev,nosuid 1       2

mount -o rw,nodev /dev/wd1a /usr/local
mount -o rw,nodev,nosuid /srv

I'm some what tempted to mark wd1d 'noexec' but I may wish to run scripts from there later if I ever move ~/code over. After that it was just a quick hop, skip, and jump to restore my files.

tar xpf /var/tmp/local.tar
mv storage/srv/smb /srv/
vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

I corrected all of my shares in smb.conf from command line mode:

:1,$s/\/usr\/local\/srv/\/srv/g

I could've used ex but I rather like paging up/down with ^U and ^D instead of using 'addr1,addr2p' in ex.

mount
/dev/wd0a on / type ffs (local)
/dev/wd0h on /home type ffs (local, nodev, nosuid)
/dev/wd0d on /tmp type ffs (local, nodev, nosuid)
/dev/wd0g on /usr type ffs (local, nodev)
/dev/wd0e on /var type ffs (local, nodev, nosuid)
/dev/wd1a on /usr/local type ffs (local, nodev)
/dev/wd1d on /srv type ffs (local, nodev, nosuid)
# df -h
Filesystem     Size    Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/wd0a      147M   30.4M    110M    22%    /
/dev/wd0h      393M   35.6M    337M    10%    /home
/dev/wd0d     98.3M    2.0K   93.4M     0%    /tmp
/dev/wd0g      6.7G    398M    6.0G     6%    /usr
/dev/wd0e      148M   84.1M   56.2M    60%    /var
/dev/wd1a     11.8G   76.9M   11.1G     1%    /usr/local
/dev/wd1d     44.3G    5.1G   37.0G    12%    /srv

Windows wouldn't see the file shares and sending the HUP signal to Samba to reread it's conf file immediately didn't help any. So I gave Vectra a reboot to double check my fstab entry (yes I am paranoid), I could've just killed the processes and reloaded them manually for the same effect.

# uptime
 9:14PM  up 19 days,  3:29, 1 user, load averages: 4.12, 4.16, 3.86
# reboot

I love OpenBSD :-)


EDIT:

To prevent some nasty time outs.

vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
ClientAliveInterval 15
ClientAliveCountMax 45

vi ~/.ssh/config # or /etc/ssh/ssh_config for all clients
ServerAliveInterval 15