Category: Life in General

I realize that this has been out on the ‘Net since 1999, apparently, but I just became aware of it. This is a really interesting article, written by Hans Bodlaender, apparently. I think it is a very well-balanced and wise point of view to have, and as a Christian, I agree with it. I’ll not quote the entire thing here, but just the last couple of paragraphs…. What are we talking about? One can in any case say that evolution theory does not form a proof of Gods existence. Neither do usually holes in that theory turn people into Christians. Creationists that would give mistaken arguments in favor of creationism however can put people on the wrong track, leading people Read more…

Yesterday was a long day, in which my eldest daughter and her Teen Bible Quiz team came in first place in their third match!! I am SO proud of my team!! As their coach, I was nervous about the match yesterday, and in spots, it was VERY close. But my girls pulled through and were rewarded for all the hard work they’ve put in over the last 5 weeks. =:) Today, my younger 2 kiddos are having a practice Junior Bible Quiz session for 4 and a half hours. =:) Another long day. =:) But it is really rewarding watching them–seeing what great children I have and what great little people they are growing up (too quickly) to be!! They Read more…

One word seems to fit… WAHOO!!! A couple of weeks ago, I bought this incredibly cool Logitech MediaPlay mousie. Now, I run Linux by choice, and have for the last 10 years, and most probably will for the next 20 or so. This means that there are certain things you resign yourself to having to figure out yourself. This mousie was one of them. I mean, the smooth scrolling, and etcetera worked fine, as did the 3 other buttons (X sees 5 buttons for a normal 3 button mouse with a scroll-wheel–3 regular and buttons 4 and 5 are the scroll-wheel’s up and down). So, that much worked fine out of the box. But this cute little mousie has 10 Read more…

Just wanted to post an update to my rant yesterday about getting cursors working, etc. I was up until 2 in the morning last night, wracking my brains about how to get a simple drop-shadow to work in perlmagick (ImageMagick-perl interface). Very grumpy this morning as a result and feeling in general rather bad. And the worst of it was that I couldn’t figure it out. ImageMagick is probably the most confusing and simultaneously powerful interface that I’ve yet come across. Anyway, at the end of it, instead of trying to get the perl modules to do what I wanted it to, I’ve cheated and used a system() call from the perl script to get the job done. And it Read more…

Meant to put this up yesterday, but I got distracted, etc…. Welcome to WordPress, Mike!! =:) It looks good on ya. =:)

Okay, how hard can it really be, honestly, to figure out how to get X to change its cursor without having to restart KDE/gnome/etc.? We’re in the stone ages, folks, when the our little user (me, at the moment) has to log out and log in again from his desktop environment to be able to affect changes to his/her mouse cursor. It sure feels like the dreaded Windoze answer of “reboot whenever possible”. Anyone know, is xorg planning anything to help this silliness? Maybe KDE 3.4? Heck, I’d settle for an explanation of what program is at fault here. Also, I’m tired of having to hunt and search for decent CursorXP cursors, then run a home-made script which runs sd2xc.pl Read more…

So, I’ve discovered BloGTK just now, and this post here will be the maiden voyage of said tool in combination with my WordPress blog…. (looks pretty good thus far!!! =:) ) In other news, I found a very interesting blog today from which I’ll quote… One of the joys of running Linux is that all the Windows problems – spyware, virii, worms, zombies, etc – don’t apply. There’s a flip side to this: when something goes wrong, it’s a private hell because you can’t just take your desktop to a shop. Heh. That’s a pretty profound couple of sentences, really. I think that’s why some of my good friends have abandoned Linux. To clarify, I think that when you no Read more…

sudo rpm -e openoffice.org-i18n Good grief. Also, I cannot begin to tell you how frustrating it is to play the disk space shell game every couple of months and try to free up space here and there so that I can compile a new kernel. DANG I need a laptop hard drive that’s bigger than 30 megs!!!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas, all!! =:) I have had a wonderful time with my family for the last several days, and am not at all looking forward to going back to the grind. Among other things, my beautiful kids and bride gave me a XXL Old Navy fleece hoodie (VERY warm and snuggly!!), and the new Tobymac CD (also VERY good and snuggly). OH–also, I got a cool little iced-tea maker!! We’ve probably gone through about 8 pitchers of home-made peach iced tea in the last couple of days. =:) So, here’s wishing you and yours a very blessed time with your family. Here’s to hoping you have/take the time to enjoy your family and friends. Here’s wishing Mike and Liz a Read more…

I just saw this $498 linux laptop the other day and thought I’d mention it. That’s a pretty danged inexpensive laptop. =:) All that, and without Bill!! =:)