Why can’t I just reboot? Why do I have to choose some option from a dropdown? I only wanted to reboot! Now I was tricked into shutting down a server that isn’t even in the same zipcode! What the hell Microsoft? Why couldn’t you make reboot the first choice? Now I’m stuck making calls and e-mailing people to say “sorry I was confused by the crazy windows shutdown options”. Shutting down should be easier. Instead, the first thing you have to do is click START, which makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER, then you have to choose from some silly dropdown to explain why. I’ll tell you why I was rebooting Microsoft! I’ll tell you why! It’s because you force me to reboot in order to get anything done! that’s why! That’s why I have to reboot the damned server! WTF?! You make my life miserable at every opportunity. Is it because you know I hate you? Is it because you know I’m using a mac and have a FreeBSD machine and OpenBSD machine at home? is that it? Is it because you know about my Ubuntu desktop machine? What is it? Why must you torture me this way?

The DHCP server at my office was reconfigured yesterday and it started forcing my macbook pro to change it’s name. I like having my host name remain constant for various reasons, so I asked in #macosx and some kind user there pointed me to this blog post:

http://www.elharo.com/blog/software-development/web-development/2005/11/29/setting-a-permanent-host-name-in-mac-os-x/

It works on leopard, in case you’re wondering! Solved my problem after a reboot.

Hot & Crusty was such a disappointment this morning. The people behind me in line got served before me, my bagel was burned, the coffee is bitter. The price is higher than ever. Hot & Crusty used to be a Tuesday treat for me. I could stop there at Grand Central Station and get a great bagel and coffee fast and cheap. Now it takes long, the staff is confused, the prices are high, the bagels are burned, the coffee is bitter. It’s so sad. I’m considering not returning.

If you installed Security Update 002 for leopard and suddenly ssh tells you “bus error”, the answer lies here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6863360#6863360

Apparently the guys at rogue amoeba have some work to do - we need instant hijack!

If you are too lazy to read that thread, the fix is:

sudo /usr/local/hermes/bin/hermesctl unload

thereby uninstalling instant hijack and fixing the problem. Somehow…

… and here’s the fix from Rogue Amoeba:

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2008/03/19/security-update-2008-002-compatibility-fix/ 

I was getting on the bus this morning, nothing special about the day, just a regular morning. Or so it seemed. I didn’t have to wait long for the bus either, which is a nice change.
So far so good right? Yeah. Well the bus pulls up and everyone starts to board. I’m about to step on so I go to grab my metro card. For some reason I always look down while getting my card out of my pocket. As I am pulling the card out - the doors close. On my head. Yeah. If there had been metal and not rubber safety strips on the doors I would most likely have been decapitated by the front door of a bus.
What a way to start the day…

Recently the MTA has opted to raise the fare for subways and busses. Not for people who ride once it a while, no - only for those of us who ride several times a day - i.e. those of us who find it more feasible to use the “unlimited” metro cards. They cite rising costs rising costs rising costs. Right. What is rising is my blood pressure. The NYC MTA has a way to rate the subway and bus lines. I’m pretty sure this is just a way to make us (the paying customers) feel better about the fact that the service does not improve while the price continues to rise. We have a chance to tell them how they’re doing. Maybe if I fill out a report card for the 19A I’ll be satisfied? Hmm…

I must admit, I am not satisfied. I understand that the costs of everything seem to be rising these days. I’m not sure why but I know for sure that the price of oil and milk are going up all the time, etc. Ok so I’ll take that into consideration. My question is - does that have a connection to why service isn’t improving? Take for example the bus I take to the subway every morning, the Q19 A. This bus is notoriously late and over crowded. So much so that there are times that the bus is so full it passes my stop by while my fellow 19A-ers and I watch in frustration. Yes, sometimes there are traffic problems or sick passengers. Yes, it’s not easy to keep anything running on a tight schedule. But for the last few years (this year especially) the 19A has been so consistently late that I am starting to believe that the MTA just doesn’t care.

I wish I could just boycott the MTA. It’s cold outside, though. Freezing some days, raining some days. It’s about a mile to the subway that I am forced to take every day, so the bus is really necessary for me. I think the MTA knows that I have no choice - so they can charge me whatever they want. There’s nothing quite so poignant as that realization that your day to day struggle means nothing to those who live off of your wages. When I think about it the word that best describes this feeling is disenfranchised. The fact that I have to pay $85 a month in order to go to work just to live makes no difference - I can’t do anything about it. What could I do? Quit working? Be homeless? Ride my bike to work in the snow?

Any ideas?

The picture says it all…

What follows is a rant/review of Yellow Dog Linux 5.0.2. It’s the second part of the “Golden Apple Project” article series, which tells the tale of my quest to transform a formerly unused Apple PowerMac G4 (450Mhz, AGP Video) into something more useful than an unused OS 9 machine.

After a somewhat discouraging attempt at installing NetBSD (see the first article in the series), I decided to try the OS that first showed me how nice the PPC architecture is for Linux - Yellow Dog. I figured that since Yellow Dog was great when I tried it about 2 or 3 years ago it would be even better now, especially with all the support Terra Soft has been getting from Sony. What I found, however, was that YDL was not quite what I had hoped. In fact I was very disappointed.

When I install an operating system I look for a few basic things, the first of which being a quick and reliable way to install. I’ve installed several operating systems and several distributions of Linux and so far Yellow Dog is the only one that requires either a 3+GB DVD or 6 CD’s to install. 6 CD’s and every one is required? That is simply insane. What if I just want to try the OS for a while? What if I only need a minimal system? What if I don’t have enough hard disk space to install every application under the sun? Yellow Dog Linux was not designed with these “what if’s” in mind.

After a few unsuccessful attempts at downloading the DVD ISO image (each attempt stalled at or near 2/3 completion, which is not YDL’s fault but still not fun) I decided to get all 6 CD images burned instead. At least this way I would be able to download the distribution in smaller chunks. I thought that since I already downloaded everything that the install would go fairly quickly. I was wrong. It took about 2 and a half hours to install from the CDs. Granted, it’s an old 450Mhz machine with a slow FSB and 256K ram, etc. but still - 2 and a half hours is a long time. I moved forward though… swapping discs when asked and watching anxiously as the installer showed me that it was copying package after package of open source software (none of which I was allowed to choose or not choose).

When I tell you I watched anxiously, I am being very literal. The install process consisted primarily of watching the installer. It didn’t ask me any questions. It didn’t let me make any choices. It only prompted me to insert CD after CD. After disc 6 I was finally asked for the root password and was invited to create a user account for myself. I expected to be asked for some networking information at least, but was not. Root password and user account name and password. That’s it. I tried to tell myself that it was a hassle-free install (again since I don’t count the download as YD’s fault, really), but I couldn’t get over the fact that there was no way to configure the network during the install. Normally I would configure the network first, and use it to install the operating system over the network via FTP or HTTP. With YDL network installs are not an option but I would have liked to have my network configuration done before first boot.

So far YDL had already been an unusual experience, and I hadn’t even gotten to first boot. As the machine restarted I told myself that the worst was over and that after I logged in and configured the network everything would be fine. Wrong again. I logged in with the user account I created during the install and saw a very nice looking E17 desktop. I must admit - E17 is coming along nicely. The only word I could use to describe it right now is… pimp! hahaha I mean wow. It’s one gorgeous desktop. Kudos to the E17 team. Unfortunately however, this desktop was basically for my viewing pleasure only. No program would start that was not already running for me, neither from a launcher, nor a menu. Not even the “run command” box worked for me. Seems the user account was running as a different user than X and had no permission to the display. Nothing would work as the regular user except logging in and logging out. The word that best describes this is LAME. If you are keeping track of the adjectives so far you’ll see that the negatives outweigh the positives already.

At this point I had basically lost faith in the YDL distribution. I have seen desktop Linux come a long way over the past few years and YDL took me back to a time when I could undoubtedly expect more problems than ease with Linux. Yet, I logged in as root just so I could at least take a tour and see what all of that downloading and waiting and watching would get me.

As root, launchers worked and the menu too. Firefox started and was very responsive, even with the limited resources. Even OpenOffice’s writer and spreadsheet programs worked fairly quickly. I was reminded that the PPC architecture is great, even without OS X. This moment of happiness was short lived - I found out soon after opening Firefox that there was no flash support for Apple PPC Linux. There will most likely never be official Adobe Flash support for Apple PPC Linux. That saddens me but not to the point where I’m going to give up on the whole project.

I looked around some more and found some more things I didn’t like (while trying to find things to like). Apache came pre-installed and so did Java and Python. PHP and Ruby were left out though, and those are my two favorite languages to code with. Some Gnome games were installed, but not Gnome sudoku (which is awesome, btw).

In summation, if you add up all the adjectives you get this - Yellow Dog Linux on Apple PPC is a disappointing, lame, pimp (remember that E17 is PIMP). A disappointing lame pimp that saddens and frustrates the user, but looks so nice. What else can I say? At least it’s better than OS 9? I’m not sure I can even say that. I guess any Linux is more fun to use than OS 9… but a crippled desktop is a crippled desktop, pimped out or not.

So where does this leave the Golden Apple Project? To paraphrase the beautiful Joss Stone… My hopes for this old PowerMac G4 are “Bruised but not broken”. I’m going to try OpenBSD… and I have plans to revisit NetBSD as well. There is no giving up on this quest! Stay tuned…

So I went to a diner… (a diner called “The Diner”). It’s obviously a diner so it’s pretty obvious that that they sell is… “diner food”, right? You know… pancakes, burgers, eggs, coffee - you know… it’s a diner. Someone walked in and asked the chef what kind of food they served. Hahaha how do you not know what a diner serves? *sigh* what is common sense?

Bad meaning… good!  Haha I got this error while messing around with VMWare on my Ubuntu (Feisty Fawn) system. I have Windows XP running as a guest OS and this “Error success” window popped up when I was trying to use Windows from within VMWare to format my iPod. It didn’t work (I found out that the USB controller support is actually quite limited) but at least I got a laugh!