So I passed an enjoyable Sunday evening with the Derek’s family– eating, discussing, plotting, gaming. As usual, there was mirth in the air. (Either mirth, or too little oxygen. Both produce the same euphoric effect.)

I spent the bulk of Monday working on my computers. I have configured the following:
CompUSA eMachine. A Windows XP machine, attached to DSL. This machine provides Internet access to the rest of us. Also, it shares a printer. How nice.
 A new box, built from Totally Awesome Computer parts. Athlon 2700. My main working machine. Also Windows XP.
A Walmart Lindows PC, for all the Linux fun.
 A Windows laptop, which is connected my video quad switcher. Windows 98. PCMCIA ethernet card.
* A retrofitted (from LS Micro parts) PC on the kitchen table, which will control my robot. It has an Internet connection, via a hallway switch, and a joystick. Relatedly, I need to chat with Derek about using DLLs in Visual C++. It’s running Windows 2000 professional.

It was a lesson in frustration, but I finally managed to get most things working — including email. (Yes, I use Outlook Express.)

I lost the serial number from two pieces of my software (though I have the original disks.) A search on the Internet for serial numbers yielded a boatload of hud, if you get my drift. My drift is that those sites didn’t really have the serial numbers, but instead, they had hud: think p0rn, spyware, etc. I did stumble on one site that had the numbers I was looking for, IIRC, that was: www.cerials.net.

So David called to tell me that his original opinion of blogs as esoterica, was in point-of-fact, mistaken. The commoners use them!

Speaking of commoners, now is a good time to review our caste system:

Proletariat –
1. The class of industrial wage earners who, possessing neither capital nor production means, must earn their living by selling their labor.
2. The poorest class of working people.

Bourgeois –
1. A person belonging to the middle class.
2. A person whose attitudes and behavior are marked by conformity to the standards and conventions of the middle class.

Aristocracy/gentry –
1. People of gentle birth, good breeding, or high social position.
2. An upper or ruling class.
3. The class of English landowners ranking just below the nobility.

Mom and Dad spent the extended weekend in the condo in St. George (actually, it’s in Washington City, just outside of St. George.)

Tonight is Jujitsu class. I think I’ve decided to give it a try for a month. Sensai Michael Pease said for $19.95 I could get two lessons plus the gi. I think that signing up for two classes a week is a bit too progressive for me, given my workload, so I will, in all likelihood, instead prepay for a month of weekly lessons. The adventure awaits.

I need to email Kristen in Taiwan.

David, if you are reading this, when you come to visit us, bring my books back that you borrowed! -)

My buddy, Jared, has a cool content management system (postnuke) here: http://www.betteridge.us/
Postnuke has a ton of modules like blogs, image galleries, games, etc. I’ve installed a copy here. Here is the PostNuke getting started guide. There is another CMS that competes with postnuke, but I can’t remember it offhand…

I changed the bblog template for this bBlog. My was too grey/gray, dont’cha think?

I want to be able to print to my shared windows printer from Linux. I think I’ll need samba for that. I will do more research and get back to you’all.

The University of Utah emailed me. They said that they would post accept/reject on my online account by the end of March. The end of March seems like a long time away.

I will experiment with phpTriad, which installs php/apache/mysql in a windows environment.