What the frell?

Isn't wednesday the most hated day of the week? It's only two days after the dreaded monday, and there's still a whole two days left before the week-end...

So far the rootless experiment is doing okay. I have been able to build Slackbuilds, and do my daily tasks, often even forgetting I have no clue what my root password is. However, most of my time is consumed trying to type properly: I have been trying to type with full fingers, you know, like secretaries and really good typists do, for like years now. And I just can't stop being a two-finger typer. So I decided the only way for me to learn was to switch to DVORAK, an alternative key mapping designed for speed and reducing hand movement. Let's just say that fore the moment, this little "training" is limited to my home box. I'm not fast enough to use it at work.

I also had my interview yesterday for a position as a web developer. I should have an answer by Friday or monday. Note about the interview: I hate scenarios! No matter what you answer, it's just not possible for you to have the feeling of answering the question correctly. On the other hand, the pre-interview test scores for that position were not above 70%, and I scored 69%, so I guess that's not so bad...

Thew rootless experiment

Ok, I have to test something.

Last night, I took the precaution of:

1) Hiding my Slack boot DVD in a spot I will not lose it, but will not easily reach it either.
2) Configure sudo so my wheel group has access to root.
3) Generated a random 8 character password for my root user.
4) Copied the password, and closing the page.
5) Encrypted the password to an md5 hash.
6) Assigned it as my root user's password.
7) Cleared my copy buffer and root's history.

The reason? I found myself reverting to root and su too often. This way, I will be forced to use sudo for my admin tasks.

For stuff that requires a root access greater than sudo's (such as building SlackBuilds), I can use "sudo su -" which will work, but is not as easy as 'su-ing to root'

I thought about the way Ubuntu did things... no root access by default. Then it hit me that for as long as I can remember, OpenBSD has always been against root login, and informed you about it every time you booted.

So let's see what happens...

CLI for life

Well, I tried a bunch of window managers in the past few days. After the last post, I had an obligation to try and see.

Here's the thing: anything that involves the use of a mouse now feels unnatural to me. See for yourself...

I use:

mutt for email
snownews for RSS feeds
links for browser
ratpoison for window manager
joe for text editing/word processing/coding
mp3blaster for music
irssi for IRC and IM (bitlbee)
centericq for IM
sc for spreadsheet (classic Unix spreadsheet)
screen for multiple terminals
mc for file management
top for system monitoring
tin for news groups

So you can see the problem I may have with using the rodent...

A taste of things to come

Ok, I haven't blogged in a while... been busy.

Here's what's going on: recently I found myself going back and forth between KDE and ratpoison. I think I need something new again, either stick with ratpoison/CLI, or a new challenge.

I tried GNUstep before, but the fact that it's based on Objective-C, and the stuff you have to do to get it properly installed and packaged, turned me away. I have nothing against Objective-C itself, except that my brain can't make sense of the language.

I have also been looking at Rox, a "desktop environment" built around the popular rox-filer file manager. rox filer gives a feel of RiscOS to the Linux desktop, while remaining light and fast. It works with pretty much every window manager, although many prefer to use it with IceWM (including me).

I might be focusing on rox for a while, to see if I can build it all on Slackware, and turn it into a sweet desktop environment, and make cool screenshots and stuff.

You can follow my work here

WTF?!?!?!

Ok, I have a question: Is there a God of public transport? and if so, why the hell does he hate me so much? Again, I had a little moment while taking the bus. Here's what happened.

I dropped my daughter off at her school bus. Her bus was early, so I had a good chance of catching an early bus to get to work. I was happy at the possibility of getting in 5 minutes before 8:30, instead of exactly at 8:30, which is when my shift starts.

I wasn't even on the bus 5 minutes that a chick in the front passed out. Yes yes yes, passed out! So the driver pulls on the side and a few people come up to assist the poor girl.

After a minute or two, I can see that she's sitting up, drinking water, and talking to the other people, so I thought: good, she's alright, let's get moving! But no, the driver decides that, because of policies, she has to wait for her supervisor (that little bus company van) to show up. So we wait...

In the mean time, another bus, which passes within 2 minutes of the closest hospital, stopped, and the driver checked in to see if we needed help. That bus goes nowhere near my work, so I let it go. Then six police officers showed up. Yes, six of them! They were called by different drivers who saw our bus on the side and called 911. They offered to call the ambulance, but none of them offered to take the poor girl in the car, and let us get moving. Then the supervisor showed up, and he didn't offer it either.

Finally, 20 minutes later, the ambulance showed up. As lucky as I am, they decided to check her on the bus, not opting for the logical option of taking her in the ambulance.

So, in that period, I see every other bus that would bring me to work pass by. Then, the 7:58 bus of the same route I'm on passes by. This is getting ridiculous.

One of the buses that passed us before the ambulance was called deserves the hospital, so I really don't know why they didn't take her there. As I said above, she looked a bit shaken, but not hurt.

This is where I get really pissed off... If you read my blog, you probably know that I was in a bus accident early in October. while today's little mishap delayed us by only 20 minutes, I noticed one thing: no one tried to get the bus back on the road, and get the rest of the passengers moving.

When my accident happened, within five minutes, a police officer and the transit company supervisor we're on the scene, and within 15, there was a replacement bus sent. And the ambulance didn't show up till 40 minutes later.

So let's compare: A girl passes out on the bus. The bus pulls over, wait for the ambulance, police and the supervisor to arrive. They all show up, take the girl on the ambulance, and we move on after 20 minutes.

Now my incident: My bus gets rear-ended by another bus going too fast. Seven people are slightly injured. My forehead is bleeding. The supervisor and the police show up within 5 minutes. Another bus is dispatched to replace ours. The ambulance shows up 35 minutes later, five minutes after being called by the bus company. I get home 2.5 hours later.

Can you see why I'm pissed off?

LinuxWorldNet

Hey fan(s),

This week, I am starting to write on the LinuxWorldNet blog network. I will be dedicated to writing stuff about running Linux/Unix on limited hardware, such as embedded devices, but mostly old hardware, which is a passion of mine. So head for http://minimum.linuxworldnet.com for my blog on Minimum Linux.

Cheers,

Sympatico hell

What the hell was I thinking? I have been a user of a ISP/cable company called Videotron for many years (since pre-2000).

Recently, I decided to go to the competition: Sympatico DSL, and I was going to get all my services under one roof: DSL, phone and digital TV. What a mistake...

First, the phone line "techs" had to come in 3 times to get my internal wiring to work. After the 3rd tech, everything still sounded like crap. Of course when I got my modem and plugged it in, I could barely get any signal. Needless to say the damn thing never worked.

Then, the digital TV guy came in, and decided that because of the way the house is built, and where the dish is installed, he was going to refuse to do the installation, because it wouldn't work. So out goes the idea of everything under one roof...

So finally, I got fed up. The same day the TV guy refused to do the install, I called up Videotron and cancelled my cancellation order. They were very happy to keep me as a customer. I now get the 3 services (TV, Internet, phone) through my cable provider, for about 60 to 75% of what the phone company would have cost me.

Now today, a whole month later, I get a letter in the mail stating I owe the phone company 100$ for cancellation fees. For a service that NEVER WORKED? NO FRELLING WAY!!!

This week

Hey there sports,

Nothing new this week... I've been busy with work, and resting, and I'm migrating my blogs to my good friend Dominian's slackadelic domain using wordpress, because Blogger is starting to piss me off,

Little note about google: If you haven't noticed, I'm a big google fan: mail, reader, pages, picasa, code, etc.

But lately, my satisfaction has been going down. The blogger.com page is dragging until I log in (damn flash) and they totally crippled my Reader setup with their stupid upgrade. Also, I seem to be getting more and more spam in my GMail inbox, which is one of the reasons I chose gmail in the first place: spam control.

WTF?

Things I hate

Ok, it's wednesday! Time to bitch!

What pisses me off this week?

Doctors: these overpaid necessary and highly educated people decide that they now refuse to accept new patients. WTF is with that? I mean, if my company decided that we have enough customers and refused to take new ones, we'd go bankrupt in a matter of months! Who do they think they are to play with people's health like that? They decide to become doctors and take that as a profession, but then refuse to actually do the job? COME ON!!!

Arrogant people: ok, I am not going to say I am not arrogant... I know I am. But I usually try to repress that side of me while speaking to a customer. On the other hand, what exactly makes people think that if they are rude to me, yell and me and call me names, that I will jump off my chair and race to their help? You get more accomplished by being nice than by being an asshole.

Debian: Ok, Debian has just topped it. They were already stretching "Package Splitting" to a ridiculous level. Now, they decided to fork Firefox into something that meets their stupid requirements... All this over a stupid logo. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?