I went to my 10 year class reunion on Saturday. It was okay. I saw some people I hadn’t seen in 10 years and did some drinking. I was trying to determine if people had changed since high school, but then I realized that I couldn’t remember what most of them were like in high school. I did notice that even after 10 years people stuck with their same cliques from high school as much as possible. That really wasn’t unexpected though. I am glad that I went, but it mostly served as a reminder that things change and you can’t get those days back and you’ll never be as close to those people as you used to be. You just have to live your life and realize that newer and better things will come along. Hi Kim!
Archive for September, 2004
I have a new gun. It is a Smith & Wesson model SW9VE. It is a 9mm, semi-automatic handgun with a polymer frame and stainless steel barrel. It was on sale and I’ve been wanting a good handgun for target practice. When I told the salesman what I was looking for, he immediately recommended it to me, passing over several, more expensive guns. I can’t wait to shoot it and the ammo isn’t too expensive so that’s great.
Also, if you’re in the Nashville area and need a gun I recommend Gun City on Murfreesboro Pike. The people were very nice and just let me look until I needed their assistance. My salesman, Larry, was very curtious and knowledgeable. And you get a free pass for their shooting range when you purchase a gun from them.
I have recently started playing around with Gentoo Linux. Gentoo is a fairly new Linux distribution that has gained quite a following, and for good reason. While not for the Linux newbie, it is certainly cool for those who are looking for a customized system without the hassle of rolling their own.
For example, I wanted a simple system that could serve as a file server/web development platform. I didn’t need all the flashy GUIs, media players, and cute games that seem to infest most distros. So I popped in the Gentoo CD, installed the base system, and started adding packages as I saw fit. Only a bare minimum of packages are in the base install. My only complaint is that for some reason they decided to include nano instead of the defacto vi as the default text editor. What’s up with that? But even in the installation itself, you can customize things like the text editor and such.
Gentoo’s biggest asset is the portage system. Portage is a package manager similar to the BSD ports or Debian’s apt-get. I have used the BSD ports system before and I find that portage is even better. Portage allows you to install from source or precompiled binaries. And you can forget about the “dependency hell” of RPM, portage handles it all automatically.
Another great point about Gentoo is it’s compact and well laid out infrastructure. On many other distros I find that configuration files and binaries are scattered all over the place with little logic. In Gentoo everything is easy to find and in its proper place.
While I am still a bit leary about trying Gentoo on the desktop, I would certainly recommend it to anyone who has a little Linux knowledge and a need for a simple, easy to maintain system that just works.
When I get done typing this I am going to go to the car wash and wash my car. Then I am not sure what I will do. My life is boring.
