Older blog entries for bytesplit (starting at number 78)

MisterP, hello there :) You say that you are a "UNIX expert" and are involved in quite a lot of open source projects? Would you by chance know what any of those projects are? I took a look at your site, but it really does need some links to work you have done :)

Today has been a wonderful one, sort of :) Read on! No, it wasn't me getting to class or anything. My attendance this semester has been awful, I think I am just burned out from college (not like I am close to completing a Bachelor's Degree or anything) and the long drive to the school, which is 55 miles one way. I think physics is interesting, but that hasn't been enough to get me to come to class to hear the professor append this statement to every single thing he says: "sound sensible, it should be". I wish that professor would get off his hight horse and realize that maybe he sounds like a drone. His drawing up diagrams is even worse. I think it's safe to say that most of the students in this course have quit taking notes in class, because he waits until the students have taken a ton of notes, THEN says "you don't really need to know this".

Wait a second, didn't I just say my day has been a wonderful one? Haha! No, really, today I set up a dual-boot of Windows 98 and Linux Redhat 8 on my wife's machine. That's the time I *should* have been in class. :) Everything went pretty well, and I left some notes for her in an opened gedit file, so she can resume doing the few things she always does with the computer (create word docs, surf the net, work on her recipes log). In the notes I didn't mention that she could reboot the machine and log into Windows 98. I wonder if this approach, though a little sneaky, might be better for helping newbies such as myself become acquainted with Linux?

When I got to the college to work my shift as a Computer Lab Assistant, I decided to try and ssh into my box at home. It worked! From there, I ssh'd over to the machine that my wife uses, to edit that note I had left open for her. Hmm, that just reminded. Since, there was already an instance of the note open, maybe she won't see the changes I made to it. If she does, than that is some cool stuff :) My next task will be to see if I can download a large file like an ISO or maybe somethin smaller like the j2sdk, and see if I can burn that file remotely. Already, I have learned that you can't run apps with gui's (or can you?) such as GTK. If not, that is fine with me. What I have going now is very pleasing to me, since that means I can do away with floppy disks and even zip disks, and just copy my college work to the machine at home. Or, rather I can access the home machine and copy the stuff to the machine in the computer lab at the college.

I spent dang near four hours last night getting my path set right so that bash would see the java executable that I wanted it to see, not the first thing it could find (/usr/bin/java). Somewhere along the way, from following the advice of multiple persons, I had messed up the path and created a faulty sym link. And, seeking help online can be very tedious and sometimes perilous. So, I can use the j2sdk1.4.1_01 now. I've always thought that Java was a beautiful language, just the downfalls of it (speed of the jvm, not very low level) turned me off. But, now, having grown a little wiser in my computing years, I'm ready to tackle Java for fun.

I know that a lot of people come to advogato to learn new things in computing, and I didn't offer much of that. Hopefully, though, someone can take what I wrote in light of "pitfalls a linux newbie should watch out for" and maybe write up a document or tutorial on this.

7 Nov 2002 (updated 7 Nov 2002 at 21:02 UTC) »
MichaelCrawford, the only reason I rarely vote is that I can't trust any politician. Part of being a great politician is the ability to effectively tell people what they want to hear. Please excuse the sarcasm, but maybe the better question would be:

Who would you like to screw you the least?

24 Oct 2002 (updated 24 Oct 2002 at 07:14 UTC) »
ade,you do NOT know me, and you have no business making any kind of comments about me. where do you get this "appearance of" crap? you do have better things to do, don't you? surely you don't think "it's cool" to bash bytesplit, do you? i get sick of punks who think they need to put their noses in other folk' business.
raph, please tell me one thing. Where on the front page does it say that when a user's rating drops below 3 that the user's diary entries will no longer appear in the recent diary entries section? if you are no capable, willing or inclined (i don't know, you tell me) to see, understand and agree with some of my arguments (they've not all been in vain), then perhaps you are right about one thing: that i should find some other place to post entries where folks are a bit more mature.

For all those out there watching the "sniper chase in America" closely, I present this question:

What if the sniper(s) really aren't driving a white van, but are driving a pink YUGO?

I think this whole case shows how messed up law enforcement is, and how the media has the police waving their guns in the dark.

Terrorism at its best, unfortunately, and I don't even think it's really started. Stay tuned.

chipx86, okay I am going to suprise A LOT of people here by doing one thing. Ssshhhhhh.....hint...hint...it has nothing to do with tossing the proverbial grenade back, so to speak.

How do I get involved in a project? I've been to freshmeat.net and sourceforget.net (are the two related or hold the same projects?), and besides the enjoyment I have received from downloading and installing some of the projects (and shaking my head in disgust at some of other borked projects), I have not really gotten a grasp on how to get started reading the source code and possibly submitting patches as time and coding skills improve and permit.

This IS something that I want to do. I've been using Linux far, far more than I do Windows anymore. I really have no use for Windows anymore, except for having to use it at the college or to do something for my wife on that computer. If not for the frustrations in trying to get printing working (my SAMBA skills are shot) on Linux and getting the printing to look presentable at that, there would be no reason for my wife and I to be using Windows.

Some have told me to take a look at CVS (I think), but after going cross-eyed looking at the documentation on that, I still got no where. Having said the above, I wonder this: how in the world does patching really work, anyway? Perhaps an article could go up on advogato about this? For us newbies? If you submit a patch, and it wasn't really to fix a bug but to add what you feel is a cool feature, how does someone else deal with not liking this new feature? The concept of patching confuses me. Or, what happens if you and someone else at the same time download a version of a project and you wind up submitting the same patch as the other person? Won't there be a conflict in submission of the patches?

Lately, I've decided to do away with the arm-tugging of peeps who decide that their programming language of choice is the better one for a newbie to focus on, and have decided that C and C++ are my route. I really feel naive for saying that, because besides scripting languages, there really aren't that many more compiled (or are there?) languages that I could choose from. Anyway, I am enjoying learning C, and am just now ready to tackle pointers and structs. Actually, I am holding off C++ until I feel I have a firm grasp on C++. Baby steps! I don't feel I am going to hired in this area of shortage of programming jobs for a long time anyway, so I have a lot of time!

Later, and be cool :) And, now before anyone goes off writing that "bytesplit is probably playing mind games again", I'm not :)

thomasvs, I found your read amusing :) There is one problem, though. Through your eloquent use of sarcasm lies a fault in logic. Where? That, not talking specifically about technology makes me a "person that hates advogato" :) Look around at the other entries. How many of them do you really think hold a lot of substance in terms of wielding and manipulating technology? Not many! A lot of the entries are just filler, filler and more filler. You know, the fancy, schmanzy buzzwords you see on resumes. Hmm, so where are we? Thomasvs , and I am predicting a handful of others, think that because bytesplit expresses sympathies toward MichaelCrawford or dyork and because bytesplit defends himself against the verbal taunting of folks, who in the real world probably couldn't spell out a complete sentence, that bytesplit must hate coming to advogato. Think about it once more, I implore you :)

apparently raph can't make decisions for himself, and must do what a select few of his band-wagoneers tell him to do: that is, to prevent my entries from showing up in the recent entries. prove me wrong, raph, but at this very instant I am relieved that I don't have social delinquents like yourself working with me. The leeches surrounding you, they know who they are, are all that is wrong with the computing world. You make Bill Gates look like the Mother Theresa of Digital Nirvana.

jimwelch, I hear that the Broken Arrow High School Marching Band is one of the best out of Oklahoma! My former high school marching band, the Harrison County High School out of Cynthiana, Kentucky, won the Class AA KMEA State Marching Band Championship just last Saturday...over perennial AA state titleist Adair County! A kid that I graduated three years before, now band director of George Rogers Clarke (GRC) won the Class AAA title. My former band director, Bob Gregg, just took over the Class A 2nd place finisher Williamstown High School. And, my former assistant band director Chuck Smith led his Class AAAA Lafayette High School (you probably have heard of them and GRC) to their unprecedented 13th straight Class AAAA State Title! So, if you wanna' talk marching band, I'm game :)

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