hm

why don't any of you ever speak up

....

Friends, dark times are ahead for me. I'm not talking about money or the market. I'd kindly request that you pray for me. In whatever form you choose, pray for me. The fire is primed and I'm ready to walk through it.

Quote for my thinkers

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."
-- Thomas A. Edison

I really like this quote. It is the philosophy that many people who embrace linux have. They say, alright, it doesn't work for this. What will? Is there something that this will work with? Will it work for this developer or that user? Will it become the foundation for a new idea?

My red Thwingline Thtapler

Transcribed for your reading pleasure!

Milton
"I, I don't care if they, if they lay me off either, because I, I told Bill that if he movth my desk one more time, then, then I'm quitting. I'm going to quit. And I thold Dom too because they've moved my desk four times. I uthed to be by the window, where I could thee the thquirrels and they were merry. But then they thwitched from the Thwingline to the Boston thtapler, but I kept my Thwingline. They have my thtaples for the Boston and I kept the thtaples from the Thwingline thtapler."

Peter
"Ok, Milton."

Milton
"And if, if they take my thtapler, I will, I will thet this building on fire."

my big project!

Alright, so this has been a couple of months in the making. I bought a computer about a year ago to learn Linux and now I'm going to do something with it.

As you know, I like to think that I'm a poker player! HAHA! See The Chad's Poker -> -> -> -> under Italian Roast. Anyway, I bought a workstation in August and a nice monitor a couple of weeks ago to play poker on. Well, I don't mind how Pokerstars runs on the new box, but I'm not a big fan of Vista. It's a huge memory hog and you really should not need that much horsepower to work. I was already on the way to learning Linux and this is inspiring me to learn faster.

I've been working with Ubuntu and Fedora. Ubuntu is supported/written by Mark Shuttleworth's Cononical. It has his African roots and philosophy of community and sharing. I dig that. Fedora is Red Hat's child. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is THE Linux that powers the big corporate servers. RH is more the commercial, production Linux and they have commercial support for it too. Fedora is really nice and clean IMO. I've seen lots of people who mod it and make it a really solid OS. Both Ubuntu and Fedora run the Gnome desktop environment as a default, but they also support KDE and Xfce if you would prefer.

Alright, the project! I run a database behind my poker to track and analyze my play and my opponents. I'm thinking that I can have the server run the database and it's engine while I play on the workstation. I'm not real sure how I can do this yet, but I'm gonna try! I'm currently in the stage of getting a workstation that will run stars like I want (stable). I'll then work on getting the database engine running smoothly and interacting well with stars. Then I'll wipe vista off of my "production" workstation and build a Fedora box for actual play. As far as I can tell (I hit google AND 2+2), nobody has done this yet, anywhere. People have played poker on Linux, but nobody has run the database that was written in windows, much less off of another computer.

Updates later.

Initiation

This is a reply to a friend who asked about me having a tough time with life. Now, this is a bit of a general thought on the past year.

"I've always tried to strive for wisdom. If I receive nothing else in this life, I choose to become wise. I feel as though if I want or need anything, wisdom will bring it to me.

I know I kind of dodged your Q and I think you deserve an answer. I believe that 2008 was that fire that defines me now as a man. Things only get harder and harder in life, but you go through initiations. I became a man last year. I had to be put to the flames before I could be forged. In life, there is no such thing as a cold-forge. Only hot. 2008 was THE hardest year of my life so far. 09 is looking better, but only time will tell. I still have many a wound to break open and clean before it can heal correctly. We are all scarred. But to become wise, we must have knowledge coupled with experience. I believe that I have knowledge. I'm just going through the experience now. Experience is often a VERY hard thing to go through. Sometimes it is hard to lift your arms. But if you are to climb Long's Peak, you must life each leg many a time when it is most difficult. You will fully believe that you cannot lift your knee even one more time. But what you do is what matters.

Well, I've stood on the summit several times. Each time I go, this lesson is only reaffirmed."

Downtime

We all need downtime. Rest is SOOOOOOOOOOOO important and people underestimate it. Peace is something that people talk about only in theory and never in application.
The only thing that will be work (other than work ldo) will be teaching climbing wed and thur evenings. I'm going to try to get 8 hours of sleep every night and spend lots of time at home.

Here's to a restful week!