o/` Sarah McLachlan – I Love You o/`

Install Adventures

09:18:29 -@PrincessLeia2- i should really install the new mplayer
10:06:50 -@PrincessLeia2- there is an mplayer in apt o_O
10:07:13 -@PrincessLeia2- but it’s not the one with quicktime support, it’s the one i already have
10:30:01 -@PrincessLeia2- hrm
10:30:09 -@PrincessLeia2- some things that mplayer needs are “not installable”
10:30:25 -@PrincessLeia2- mplayer-386: Depends: libdvdnav1 (>= 0.1.3) but it is not installable
10:30:41 -@PrincessLeia2- that’s not happiness
10:30:54 * PrincessLeia2 sighs and just reinstalls the old mplayer
10:33:08 -@PrincessLeia2- ugh, i shouldnt even have tried to get the new mplayer, i knew i’d screw everything up %(
10:33:56 * PrincessLeia2 tries to fix it
10:43:41 -@PrincessLeia2- ah, there… back to where i started
10:43:43 -@PrincessLeia2- heh
10:44:01 -@PrincessLeia2- i dont need stupid new mplayer anyway

This was this morning. Reading this from start to finish is actually quite funny… It took almost til noon to get my old mplayer reinstalled properly (/etc/codecs.conf had disappeared and didn’t want to come back when I tried to reinstall, I figured it out eventually…). So after this failure I mentioned in #goddess how much trouble I was having, and how I was giving up. Lucky for me my friend grifter was around and willing to help me install it, yay! It was an insane install %) Took over a half hour of stuff that he told me to do *ugh* … and almost none of which I would have known to do, I even made my own deb package instead of using one I downloaded %D … Now I can watch quicktime movies in linux!!! YAY!!! No more dependency on windows for that *happy dance*

I also got around to finally installing Open Office properly. For some reason I installed it only for my user, I am not sure what I was thinking, but that was obviously stupid. So I finally got around to getting the apt location for OpenOffice and apt-get installed it the right way. Luckily that went perfectly, I have absolutely no problems with it. %)

Fun stuff, I am so excited to have nice mplayer playing everything noew! I saved the log of everything I did in a txt file that I should edit later into instructions, I’m just having too much fun playing movies right now to do that %)

In other news, I got an email yesterday with the subject ‘help’ … now I get anywhere from 0-3 emails a month from people visiting my website, usually it’s “I can help you with completing this section…” or “I have a question about some subject on your site, can you help?” and most of all “I saw an mp3 on your mp3 list, could you send…?” … so I just assumed this email would be about something like that… I couldn’t have been more wrong. About a month ago I posted a section on my site called “Verbal Abuse – A Personal Account Of What I Went Through, it was basically talking about the crappy relationship I had with an ex boyfriend of mine. I didn’t try to draw special attention to it on my page, I even had the page created for quite some time before I linked it to my main page (a mix of laziness and reluctance to share it I guess). Anyway, at the bottom of the page I give my email address, as I am always willing to help people out of who have been through situations like that. The email I got called ‘help’ was from a woman who basically laid out her story for me (about 2 pages worth) and then asked me if I thought she was over-reacting, asked what my advice would be. The letter brought me to tears. Her verbally abusive boyfriend had many of the same tendancies of my ex, and I could see in her writing EXACTLY how she felt, and the memories just hit me. I spent almost 2 hours writing an email back to her, picking apart her mail and sharing with her my similar experiences, even all embarassing stuff (much more detail than I put on my website)… Anyway, she mailed me back this afternoon telling me she had kicked him out, YAY!!! She has much more strength than I did… I told her I’d continue email coorespo
ndence as long as she wanted, forever even… she seems like a really sweet person, I hope she’s able to get out of this.

Anyway, it’s getting late in the day *wanders off to do some laundry and read*

o/` Supreme Beings Of Leisure – Nothin’ Like Tomorrow o/`

I finished a book last weekend:

Pyramids, By Terry Pratchett, 323 pages
This is another book in the Discworld series. It takes place mostly in an “Egyptionesque” kingdom of Djelibeybi, where the new young Pharaoh Teppic (a trained assassin despite his royal lineage) has a few problems, among them being that his Old Kingdom is now a Lost Kingdom. As always, Pratchett’s characters are entertaining, while the story pokes fun at culture. I found this book to be a bit slow at first, and I wouldn’t say it’s one of Pratchett’s best, but it certainly was fun. I was greatly entertained by the camel.

I am about halfway through reading the third book in the coldfire trilogy. I can usually tell a good book when I can read 100 pages in a row, without paying attention to the page number… I did that with this book. It’s definitely worth pushing yourself through the first book, they get much better as they go along.

Yesterday Myk stopped at home during his lunch break to pick up a Debian CD… decided to take me back with him so I could take the Jeep and go grocery shopping (ugh)… I guess monday around noon is shopping time for old and disabled people, the store was full of them! Maybe some sort of bus dropped them off… I didn’t see one, but it was crazy. I got the shopping done though… I hate shopping!

It was really nice out yesterday, if I hadnt spent my afternoon grocery shopping (then leaving to pick Myk up from work at 3) I probably would have taken a walk. I never checked the *actual* temperature, but it must have been somewhere around 40. Today it’s all cold and rainy, no walks %( Anyway, it was a nice break from the cool weather.

So I recently downloaded the woody deb package for yahoo!’s official instant messanger. Apparently they recently changed their protocol, so the apt-get version of Gaim no longer supports Yahoo! .. I didn’t really care much at the time since I was all *anti-im* for a couple months, but now I want to use them again. Anyway, I had tried the linux version of Yahoo! Messanger last year, and it was pretty basic, not terribly stable, and I really didn’t like it… but since it has been a whole year I decided to give it another chance, it has not disappointed! Better email alert system, tabs for weather, headlines, mail, calendar, just like the windows version, and I looked in the preferences, and there is an option for skinning! I will have to explore that later. It’s been very stable as well, which is nice obviously. They still call this version “Beta” … I doubt they will ever get to an official stable release since it’s probably like, 3 determined yahoo! programmers working on this as an independent project in their spare time, hehe. Anyway, you can see a screenshot of my unskinned ymessanger here: Linux Yahoo! Messanger.

I was going to spend yesterday working on a mail script for irssi, so it can alert me in the statusbar when I have new mail (like bitchx does)… and then I discovered on the bitchx site that it had been done already! So I downloaded the script, it’s pretty nice. The only thing I don’t really like about it is i had to add another status bar for the mail section, and so now when I have no new mail it’s just blank *shrugs* I’ll get used to it… but when I get new mail it looks like THIS… yay %)

So there was a post to the Lan List yesterday… and a few of our friends are planning a lan party for February 15th, YAY! I love lan parties %) The day before is valentine’s day of course, and Myk and I are going out for sushi %d mmmm sushi, I can’t wait.

Anyway, I am going to go see if there is anything I can find to work on today, maybe I’ll add some useless new sections to my website ;) *wanders off*

o/` The Cure – More Than This o/`

Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and so are you.
But the roses are wilting, the violets are dead, the sugar bowl’s empty and so is your head.

^^ in a fwd from MorganHorse … possibly the most entertaining fwd I’ve recieved in years.

So this weekend… hmm, it was fairly relaxing %) Saturday evening we wanted pizza, so we considered going to Unos, even drove all the way out there, and when we got there there was an hour wait! Gah! So we turned around and started driving home (realizing that most every restuarant would be that busy, it was a rainy saturday evening, where else would people go?), then stopped at Tony A’s, a local pizzeria, and ordered a pizza and wings. Then went to blockbuster and rented The Usual Suspects, Strange Brew, and Black Hawk Down. So we got our food, and drove home. We watched The Usual Suspects first… The movie is a few years old, but I had never seen it, and that’s sad since Kevin Spacey is one of my favorite actors. Besides some small problems (in the scene where they are raiding the boat there is a big explosion in the beginning, this is in a crowded harbor, and no police or anyone show up for quite some time…) I really enjoyed the movie. Then we got out the beer to watch Strange Brew… I broke one of my rules and decided to drink while Myk said he didn’t feel like it (rule: I never drink alone!), but after i had one beer Myk was like “mmm that looks good” and decided to have a few himself… it was a funny movie, and I just died laughing at the stupidest parts! Ah it was great. We flipped through channels for a little bit after the movie ended, watched some old Dr. Who (i really was drunk! hah! … I dont remember it being that cheesey…), then I went on IRC for about an hour to make a fool of myself, around 2 I went to bed. I had a nice night.

Sunday I spent reading and playing Final Fantasy 6. Around 8ish we decided to watch Black Hawk Down. It bored me. I respect the work, effort, meaning, great cinematography, good acting… but it’s just not my kind of movie. I was feeling pretty crappy too, and maybe that’s not
the sort of movie you should watch while your stomach is tied in knots %)

The woman upstairs leaves her fan thingy in her bathroom on all the time, it’s weird.

I installed a neat little mail script for irssi. When I get a new mail it tells me in a little section on the status bar… [Mail: 1 new] and stuff… it’s pretty nice. I had talked about writing on myself, but decided just to use this one since it’s fairly nice %)

I guess I’m going grocery shopping this afternoon. Myk is coming home for lunch, and I guess I’ll drive home with the Jeep to do shopping *oh joy* … I hate grocery shopping.

I hate mondays!

I guess I am going to go get a couple things done before Myk comes home for lunch… *wanders off*

It was quite a surprise to wake up to the developing story of the Space Shuttle Columbia losing contact with the ground. Even moreso when I saw the video of it breaking apart and the newscasters saying “it doesnt look good.” Just when the United States needs reassurances of our power, something like this happens. *moment of silence*

Crontab In Debian Stable

Now I’ll be the first one to defend linux’s wondefulness, but as with every operating system, there are tangable flaws. I completed the birthdayperl script (the one that queries a database to see if a birthday matches tomorrow’s date, and emails me if so) and went to put it into a simple crontab so it would run daily. I am doing this on our debian stable webserver/gateway, and for some reason the crontabs that I am testing just *don’t work* So after 2 days of utter frustration I discover the trouble.

First I thought “This is user error” … because I am not quick to blame linux when I know my experience is lacking. So I besides reading all the local documentation I could find on cron and crontab, I googled for a bit to make sure there wasnt something important I was missing. Nope.

Then I think maybe it is something with my script that is making it not work. Nope, it should run perl scripts fine.

Ok, maybe cron is crashing because something in my script is doing something bad. Nope, I am running it as a normal user, no one would release a system with that sort of major flaw.

How about if I restart cron after I put in the crontab! Nope, what is the point of a crontab? So a regular user can setup timed jobs without needing to consult the admin… “hey mr/ms admin can you restart cron?” “grrr!”

I was at a complete loss… finally last night we were testing some stuff out, and I just gave up and wandered off.

This morning I check my email and apparently the script ran! WTF? Unfortunately the script was a bit broken (hell I didn’t expect it to run!) and ended up emailing me like 50 times til the script crashed *oops* … but it was then I found the problem!

Apparently it takes a few minutes for the crontab to install. Stupid? Yes. Why didn’t I discover this sooner? Because I never even *thought* to wait more than 30 seconds or so to test the crontab .. I’d want to test it, so I’d set it up to work for the turn of the next minute, right? Why 5 minutes in the future? *mumbles something about how silly debian is* I love debian, but on redhat crontabs are installed within seconds (that was a major reason why i never thought of this solution, I had used crontabs in redhat in the past…)

Yep, that was my crontab adventure… At least it ended well and my birthday script works %)

*wanders off to get ready to go out for pizza*

Sometimes we make choices that we don’t want to make.
Choices that may hurt us, hurt friends, but in the end it’s for the better.

We cannot regret these choices.
But they may haunt us.

I am haunted.

Dont understand?
Dont care?
Dont ask.

I was just talking to myself anyway *sighs and wanders off again*

o/` U2 – With Or Without You o/`

I got a pirate paint brush through a trade on neopets yesterday, YAY! Noew firethrower13 (above, the neopet I adopted) is all “ARR!!!” I should make a new little webpage for him since he’s all piratized, hee… I spend too much time with neopets, *uses the excuse that they are to replace real pets she doesnt have*

Speaking of pirates, one of Myk’s friends gave us copies of Age of Mythology, Mech Commander 2 and Homeworld. YAY! New games! I will have to check them out this weekend %)

Mmmm games. I was talking to DarkonZero the other morning in IRC … and he just recently bought Final Fantasy: Origins *is so jealous* … it’s final fantasy 1 and 2, released as a playstation game. It got me feeling all nostalgic about old Final Fantasy games. Now true, I did just discover final fantasy a couple years ago, so I am not a fan from “back in the day” … but I still have love for even the old games. I decided the other night that I wanted to play FF5 … so I start playing from the start, la la la happy playing … *goes to save* I COMPLETELY forgot that the disk is damaged and prevents saving! The save screen is all froozy, I assume it saves the game, but you cant see the save screen, obviously it would be a mess if I wrote over some file I didnt want to %( So I sighed and took the game out and decided to play FF6 instead, mmm FF6… I never did finish it, I just didnt have time, between working, and my ex monopolizing time (on MY PS2 might I add), and just daily chores and errands that need to be done. So I think I will take the time to finish it this time, it gives me something to do other than reading on weekends, and I really do miss playing Final Fantasy… Ok, I guess it was a mix of playing NeoQuest and talking to DeeZ that made me want to get back to my beloved RPG’s %)

I am over my depression I had yesterday… I think I was just tired, I didn’t sleep well (surprise surprise) the night before. *Shrugs* Oh, I got my mail-on-birthday script done yesterday afternoon %) It wasnt too difficult actually, on wednesday I thought it would be impossible (i had a headache and couldnt focus) but it all made sense once I looked at again yesterday %) It looks like it’ll work fine.. *crosses fingers* … I’ll just have to make sure I keep an eye on it ;) yay perl

I hate AOL. I sent a fairly important email to my grandparents last friday (they sent me some money, so I wanted to thank them and touch base IMMEDIATELY). And yesterday I get “Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender” msg because for some reason the mail was refused by the AOL servers, UGH! So I decided not to take the chance of that happening again so I just sent it from my Yahoo! mail account. Ugh. They mailed me back this morning, all excited about this trip I said we were planning to make to New England in the spring… I didn’t say which spring *g* jk! I think we are sorta trying to plan a trip, it’s just hard right now.

Right, so it’s 10 and I still havent gotten any cleaning done (my usually friday morning thing), I just don’t feel like it.. makes me very glad I got a lot done yesterday %) But I should end this entry so I can do it, and then take a shower *yawns* Maybe I’ll even find something to work on today or (as i suspect) I’ll just play games. *grabs the windex and paper towels an
d wanders off*

o/` Stabbing Westward – Stabbing Westward – Perfect o/`

I cleaned this morning, you know what it means when I clean and it’s not a friday? No, the place is not a mess! I’m depressed again. Bleh.

All through my high school career I did very well in my classes. I would never have called myself an over-achiever there, I did work much harder than a lot of people, but I never was able to get ahead the way I wanted to *shrugs* … still I graduated with an A- average, and never came home with a report card grade under a B-. My parents came to expect that. When I worked my ass off for 3 days to study for a history test and came home with a 99 my parents didn’t care… When my sister came home with a 93 on an exam that she “actually studied for” they threw a party. I would come home completely crushed when I got a D on a chemistry test, and my mother would MOCK ME “aww, you didnt get an A?” then “Well do better on the next one and your grade will be good” my sister came home with a D and it’s all *support* … My entire life has been marked by this sort of thing. I worked at a gas station… when I didn’t do extra work it was all “what is wrong with you?” when a lousy worker actually got all their appointed work done it was “good job!” … I am so sick of this double standard. I don’t expect my life to be all praise, but I hate being taken for granted…

I was talking to a friend this morning, recalling the “days when I was poor” … it was really sad. I guess it cheered me up a little ’cause I have so much to be thankful now that I am living with Myk… we may not be able to buy a BMV … but at least we can afford to buy what we want and need at the store every week.

I started work on that daily “check if there is a birthday” script yesterday. I only got a far as writing the first part about getting the next day, it’s not as simple as date + 1 … then leap years, i didnt even take into account that anyone’s birthday could be on febuary 29th, if it was i’d remember it %) I started working on the mysql query, and got a bit of a headache and couldnt concentrate anymore so i just got frustrated and gave up. I will hopefully finish it sometime today…

I am going to go noew… *wanders off*

o/` Bjork – Aurora o/`

Linux is better than chocolate chip cookies.

That stupid MS SQL worm has been knocking around comcast networks the past couple days, we checked out the access log and it hit our debian webserver box a bunch of times yesterday. I hate M$.

So we watched the State Of The Union Address last night (and no, I didn’t play the drinking game, just for the record the official count for that was 160 drinks, hee). I had a headache tho, so about 24 minutes into it I just wanted to go to sleep. I finished watching it though, that’s the first time I’ve watched the whole thing! It was just the normal sort of thing, saying he’d increase spending everywhere, while funding a war, cutting taxes and decreasing the budget deficit. Yay for america.

I think most of my entries start out so bitter because I write this in the morning and I am not a morning person.

So, I finally thought of a project to get my mind busy for a little while! See, yesterday I learned how to use the mail command… I was able to send a mail to my yahoo account. So I think I am finally going to write that “mail when there is a birthday” script… See last night I got Myk to set up the internal site for our address/phone/email/birthday book, yay! So now we have the mysql database setup. My script will execute to query the database daily (probably with a simple crontab) and if a birthdate in the database matches the following day it will email me to warn me. It’ll be nice, and it’s something to work on for a bit so I dont feel useless.

So I visited the scifi server the other day, I guess I was just bored… And it was actually fun, finally ‘officially’ apoligized to bluefox83 … I mean he was a jerk too, but I took my “dont forgive” thing a bit too far with him, and I never let him explain himself. And that being part of my psuedo-new-years-resolution it was good to get that out of the way, I hate having people hate me. Anyway, I was chatting in two rooms there… and three fairly active rooms on psiblade, as well as two private messages… and I couldn’t keep up! GAH! I must be losing my touch… the slowness of psiblade and not turning on my instant messangers for a couple months is making me lose my edge ;) Heehee…

Anyway, I am gonna go get to work on this little project of mine, *wanders off*

http://www.marcmelzer.net/sotudg/ <– State Of The Union Drinking Game