HalfLoaded.com

There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.

Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.

- Shel Silverstein

So, as most of those who know could have guessed, I’ve become the computer fix-it guy over here. Between our firewalls, proxies and lack of reliable phones, troubleshooting is made difficult. The past week, I have had to fix four computers. That makes nine complete format and OS reinstalls. Of those, all nine had Windows Vista installed. I’m not a Vista guru but it seems to me that Vista was rushed to market. In every case, the only resort available was to upgrade them to XP. I say upgrade because the stability and performance after moving them to XP was remarkable. Every Marine was glad to have the reboots snappy and system stable. Most of them just figured the slowness of their computers was due to the laptop and not due to the bloated operating system Microsoft released.

Only one of them I was able to salvage. I found a nice little hack to reset any users password using Linux and some intuitive programming. This is definitely one of those “must have”’s for the toolbox. The funny thing was, once I restored the Marine’s password, he asked if I could put XP on his laptop just because Vista was so annoying, bloated and slow.

I was also reading a story on how RedHat plans to capitalize on Microsoft’s release of Vista and the slowdown in the economy. I guess both of these type of events have, historically, led to the adoption of alternative software and operating systems. I really hope so. It would be nice to see some more competition out there. Mac has made a nice stand recently with their products. I guess we will see.

For me, I look forward to the late November release of Fedora 10. I’m going to be building up a new computer based on the “Ultimate Budget Box” on Ars Technica’s website. Sub-$500 isn’t bad for a full system with speakers, LCD monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc. Plus, it only pulls 90 watts which will help with the electricity bill.

Anyway, I guess this is all wishful thinking.

This must have been the longest streak without posting yet. It has been nearly two months. A lot has happened here in Iraq but OPSEC rules the roost so I can’t talk about any of it. I will say that the weather is getting cooler, a lot cooler. The highs have only been in the mid to upper 90’s. Between the weather and the fact that home is within sight, everybody is in a chipper mood.

Now, I just wish you all didn’t ruin the economy while we were gone!

A

Well, it wasn’t the greatest way to spend a birthday but I did get to mark another day off the calendar. That is about all I am liberty to discuss. Here is a picture from the sunrise this morning here in Iraq. I hope everyone is well. Thank you all for the birthday wishes. I can’t wait to get home.

So, I can finally start getting my systems ready for my upcoming deployment. Today, Fedora 8 was released to the masses. It took me a good 15 minutes to find an FTP server that had actually sync’d (ftp.fi.muni.cz). I was actually surprised to find it still had bandwidth. As the morning has progressed, the mirrors have progressively become bogged down. Sucks for them! I got my copy! I hate to leech but I can’t use bittorrent at work so I guess that is my only option.

My goal is to get a steamlined Fedora 8 install setup with all the perf tweaks I can. This is going to be my home away from home while I am gone so I want to get it setup as nice as I can. I am going to try putting a lot of software on it so I can evaluate the many applications I have never had the chance to.

It’s time to burn a DVD. I’ll be writing about Fedora 8 a lot so stay tuned if you are interested. BTW, the hardware I am running it on is a Dell D610 w/ 1.5GB RAM and a 200GB 7200RPM disk. Nothin’ too out of the ordinary.