Archive for March, 2009

My To-Do List

Just a quick one so I can wrap my head around this I need to do both online and offline:

  • Get my hands on a guitar tuner — they’re only like $10 so procrastinating is not really worth it
  • Call, or get mum to call the guy about my summer job
  • Revamps on the following websites in the following order:
    • Finish off the last little bits of the Tim Fanlisting (Codes, About, fix mistakes)
    • Do the ShadowRO website
    • Do Empty Cage, new layout, put the focus on the blog aspect
  • Move mum’s domain from Network Solutions to be hosted on my hosting plan, as well as make a new layout for her site
  • Study for Math
  • Get money order for room next year

Did you bring your umbrella for the SFUO “Shit Storm”?

Originally posted on my Facebook:

Perhaps I’m not the only the only one feeling her steadfast apathy towards the SFUO migrating into mild irritation? I mean, let’s not overstate things, I still don’t give much of a damn what my ‘student federation’ does. However they are actually becoming hard to ignore, which is something I don’t want in my student government. In fact, if someone ran on the platform of leaving me the hell alone it might actually shake me out of my disdain for the SFUO long enough get me voting on something.

I guess I should start by pointing out that all I know about the UOttawa ‘Shitstorm’ (as the Fulcrum so eloquently put) it is hearsay and a brief skimming of the article written by our two-dimensional student newspaper, (which, to be honest, I probably only picked up to hack my way through the sudoku from hell, and ridicule the paper’s “comic artist” for having the sense of humour of a $2.99 joke book from the bargain bin at Chapters). That is to say, this is based purely on half-truths and what I think is amusing, because I am a sick sad person with nothing better to do.

For those who either don’t go to UOttawa or are blessed with the ability to never know what is going on at school I’ll give a brief synopsis of what happened from how I see it. I painstakingly avoided voting in the SFUO elections and somehow they are back and more annoying than ever, as failed presidential candidate “RPG” decides to accuse the winner of cheating (running on a slate — for shame!), using some obscure passage from a document no one cares enough about to read. Then there was some sort of investigation — people had signs at said investigation that mentioned racism, and slander, but to be honest I was too busy not giving a shit to read them too carefully. To be fair, though far be it from me to actually give a damn about who is “right” in this particular situation, the “Face it, you lost” signs really spoke to me.

But there’s nothing like walking past the newspaper stand in residence and seeing Seamus Wolf’s best politician snarl go down in mortal combat against the tented fingers of the batshit insane RPG. A moment of contemplation before you draw a curly mustache on both of them, chortling at how clever you are. You can hardly tell which one you’d rather ignore as student body president. Mr. Wolf running on a campaign of “I was on the SFUO last year and so my awesomeness now blinds you to the fact that I have no real platform” and Mr. uhm… RPG running on a platform of “I believe in RPG” which just proves that everyone is going to cash in on Heath Ledger’s death this school year. I’m not even going to comment on the Harvey Dent parallels that can be drawn because that’s just mean spirited.

Of course, maybe it’s just because the Almighty RPG intimidates me with his intelligence, clearly I need to be talked down to and given his initials because my mortal brain cannot comprehend his full name. (I’m looking at you, YHWH).

Perhaps the reason for my agitation about this whole thing is really a deep seeded one stemming from waking up for some 8:30AM class and finding myself staring through several equally pretentious candidates for half an hour wondering simultaneously if vegetarians do eat animal crackers and why I am watching infomercials when I pay $5,322.98 a year in tuition to these people. Oh, that’s right, the SFUO is important to me, and… impacts me on a daily basis. Seriously. Every day. Even Thursdays.

In conclusion, once this epic ‘Storm of Shit’ quiets I urge whoever is made SFUO president to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, whatever his name is.

The Bug.

I meant to comment that I have fixed the problem since my last entry but got caught up in other things. So, the problem ended. Basically what happened was the the “kernel” or version of my Fedora upgraded but not my video card drivers. To fix the problem (until updated drivers were avalaible — which are at the time of writing) I had to boot from an older kernel. To do this I simply hit ‘I’ at the boot and picked the second option on the boot list. When the video card driver was avalaible all I did was let it boot normally. Thanks to the guys at Fedora Forum for all their help. I seem to have posed the question properly as they got back to me and were fairly nice about it.

In other news, school, blargh. Well, sort of blargh, maybe like, half blargh. Because I decided to make my minor Computer Science I have to take Math. Which was one of those really terrible ideas I once had. The course is soundly kicking my ass into next month. And the final for it is on the last possible day, that would be April 30th! Which is pretty sucky. The worst part being that I have no idea what is going on in this class. I can only assume it is something appallingly difficult and leave it at that. For fear of my sanity.

I have more to say I think, but I should really be doing some school readings. Later.

Grub — not just for dinner anymore

Not surprisingly as soon as I start getting settled in Fedora I get a big huge ka-boom moment where I thank the lord that I have two internal hard drives and on of them has good old slow, but pretty effective Windows Vista on it while I figure out how to make Fedora obey again. I do love a challenge but sometimes I have a moment of wondering why Windows is not still my primary OS. I know how Windows works, I can generally make it do stuff. With Fedora I am a complete dumbass.

But I love a challenge, so here I am about to put my Fedora drive back in to fix it. For the sake of making this entry semi-useful I’ll outline what happened and the fix I was given lest someone else around here stumble upon the same problem. I doubt it since no one reads my blog, but hey, maybe writing it out will help me.

Basically, what I did seemed like a good idea at the time. On Fedora a little orange iconishthing pops up from time to time that says ‘Hey, you need to update this sucker.’ Generally I do just that and everything works like a dream, however, this time a large problem occured. Upon rebooting my machine I noticed that my resolution on the login screen was weird. Thinking this to be some sort of thing the update was twaeking I attempted to log in. Only, well, all I’d get to see was a white screen and nothing else, though it seemed to have loaded alright. So, at this point yesterday we get a resounding sigh followed by a whispered ‘Aw, fuck me.’ before asking my room mate if I can use her computer for just a moment. She grudgingly obliges and I throw myself upon the mercy of the uber nerds.

I shall pause here to illustrate some details for the non-nerds out there. On the internet there is a geek hierarchy, a kind of feudal fifedom of various kingdoms and suchlike. Those with more knowlage rank higher than the morons who don’t even know what their GUI is, and couldn’t put in a new ram chip if their very soul depended upon it. I am around the middle ground generally, maybe lower middle, regardless. Because of this when I don’t know what to do I must fling myself upon the mercy of the great nerds.

Some people may think this is funny. And perhaps a hyperbole, but it is no such thing. Asking the internet for help is serious business, sometimes you get lucky and the great nerds are benevolent, granting you at least a grudging shove in the right direction, but should you offend them, or should they be in a not-so-great mood your request for help leads to naught but scorn. Should you point out you were simply asking for help and that there is no need to get touchy about anything you will be treated to group scorn. As the great nerds may insult your intelligence as they see fit, but you, pitiful help-asker must take all the scoffing and patronizing they can dish out.

Don’t get me wrong, most of the time I get helpful and concise messages from the great nerds, but this is mainly because I google first, say please, and thank you, type in proper English and usually know how to describe my problem. I also display a willingness to learn which I am told goes a long way. But sometimes, no matter how polite you are, the nerds feel mean.

So, now I have a solution, the problem is the driver for my graphics card isn’t yet compatible with my update, so I need to hit shift on booting and boot from an older update (or kernel). Hopefully I will then be able to use my machine until such a time as my graphics card is compatible, which should be soon they say. Crisis aborted. Phew.

In other news I beat Fable: The Lost Chapters, I played as Good and let me tell you I was a bad ass motherfucker despite playing a hero.

Fonts, fonts, fonts, fonts… fonts.

Okay, so, the latest leg of my Linux adventures is finding a way to install normal, downloaded free true type fonts on my lovely little Fedora machine in order to get webdesign without using the same six default-tastic fonts. My luck has been grim to say the very least. It’s just one more of those things you take for granted on Windows I suppose. Easy installation of fonts. I find it strange that no one else seems to find this to be much of a problem. Though, I guess nerds don’t speak pretty font. Regardless, I continue my quest, I would be pissed if I had to pop in my windows hard drive for something this trivial.

Anyways, I have totally lost my train of thought to CSI: New York. Later.