o/` Great Expectations Score o/`
On friday night Myk spent a bunch of time on my stupid Compaq laptop. We had both done a bit of research into what it would take to get Debian on it, and it turns out that it would have been a bit of a nightmare. Even getting past the NIC problems, we would have been stumbling at every part of the install and it would have taken days. I would have needed help from Myk, and he doesn’t have the time for it right now. So he decided to try to put Red Hat 8 on it. Now, before you wince and scream about the evil of huge redhat installs and RPMs… just hear me out. Myk was able to get a *very* slim redhat install on here. I wasn’t around when he did it (I wish I was) but in many previous redhat versions this really wasn’t too possible. Now sure, I have mozilla installed, and some Netscape apps, and gimp, which I didn’t really need, but amazingly the install was a little under 700 mb. And I am not really concerned about being able to add more programs, so while I’d never consider using an RPM based distro again on my primary workstation, I think I can deal with having it on my laptop. All I *really* need out of a laptop is a terminal and ssh, I can use programs on other boxes through ssh, so I was never too concerned about that. In all honesty having x run was really a bonus.
So I’ve got WindowMaker running on it. I was a little weary about it, and immediately did all I could to get all the icons off my screen. But now I think I am actually liking it. Once I learned my way around the config tools I was pretty pleased with the results. I still prefer fluxbox and enlightenment of course, but I am not about to go through the dependency nightmare it would take to install either.
Maybe someday we’ll take the time to install debian, but for now at least I have a working laptop, and that’s all that’s important. *Watches herself lose “geek points” for giving up and going with Red Hat*
Yesterday Myk and I sat around playing with our computers (me configuring and naming R2A6, the laptop). Around 4 we decided to head up to N-Tropy’s girlfriend’s place where the party was. I hadn’t eaten all day so almost immediately hit the snacks table. We were going to bring beer, but at last minute we decided that we weren’t really in the mood for drinking… we’ve been really healthy and active lately, and neither of us wanted to spoil that completely. Nita and Darxus showed up after about and hour and a half, it was cool seeing Darxus again because we hadn’t seen him (besides in IRC) since before he moved to Boston back in November. A number of other people that I knew showed up as well, and it turned out to be a really nice night. Ate lots of junkfood, tried to make some pina colada drinks but they turned out to be a bit of a failure because the mix we bought wasn’t very good.
We got to play Disney Trivia, which turned out to be a very close game, everyone came close to winning. We had teams, Nita and I were on a team and for most of the game were losing pretty badly. Some of the questions were really hard, and we all got our fair share of them, but we kept getting ones having to do with the parks, which we knew nothing about, lol. It was fun though, and somehow Nita and I actually ended up winning in the end. After the game I got to see Nita’s laptop. N-Tropy sold it to her that day, so she was installing some stuff on it. It’s a Compaq laptop, and it’s a Pentium (so, probably around 133 mhz or so), but what I was really impressed with is the display! My Presario screen looks like crap, her older Compaq looked amazing. When I mentioned this N-Tropy said that his Presario laptop (a bit newer than mine) has a really horrible looking screen too. I imagine that when Nita’s was built that they were going for quality, and when the Presarios were pumped out it was part of the “Dot Com Boom” and they were able to get away with selling crap. Oh well, at least I can see the text on the screen, and that’s the most important part.
Today we need to go grocery shopping, we have no food except dinne
r food… I’m hungry.
I started reading Great Expectations again. I really like that book and haven’t read it in a long time. It’s falling apart because it’s old and I picked it up at the dump back where I grew up (there is a small “swap shop” at the dump in Cape Elizabeth, lots of junk, and a couple bookshelves of books). I used to have the most recent remake of the film on VHS, but I left it at my aunt’s one summer and never saw it again, it’s ashame, I really should buy that again… I have both the soundtrack and the score which I enjoy, and I did like that movie.
Well I’m going to go make some coffee out of the last few beans we have *wanders off*