Matt D's Blog

I saw “40 Days and 40 Nights” last night…Quite funny, a little dumb, but very funny indeed! I also got my HP box back, and itnow runs Debian 3.0 (as does this machine…), and I have to laugh,because while technically the relase for PowerPC is further along thanfor PA-RISC, the installer for PA-RISC seems a bit more polished…but don’t mix the CD installer with the one on the website - it getsa bit confused when it comes time to do kernel modules. Other thanthat, it’s up and running, and will be a place where a few friendscan practice their UNIX coding skills on, as well as being a centrallogging server for my home network.

Well, I am certainly happy to be alive, as I was in a caraccident at about 1:25 PM today. Aside from not being able to think veryclearly, I’m ok. I feel like someone punched me in the head because of theway that the airbags deploy. The driver of the car, and the driver of theother car are OK as well, thankfully. I think that’s enough excitingnews for a year, thank you very much…

Moved to Debian GNU/Linux 3.0. Figured it was time to trysomething more standardized (in a way) than Yellow Dog Linux. Machine workswell with it, aside from a network card bug that forces me to keep the realtek 8139 based card in promisc. mode in order for IPv6 to work…

Well, things have been hectic lately.. can you tell? I haventupdated the page in a really long time…Ok, I finally uploaded pictures of my laptop, my power mac (notice the missing power button, lol),and of my Nissan 200SX. I wrote a PHP based time management system, whichI will be selling soon, for a mere $10. I think it’s worth the amount oftime I have / will be putting into the program. I will have a demoversion up soon to evaluate if it’s worth it or not. I’ll accept acheck, money order, or paypal. It works with the PostgreSQL database,but I will eventually modify it to work with other databases. Myselfand another co-worker are beta testing it, so, by version 1.0, I’llhave a demo up. More info soon… P.S. – Router is at 173 days.

Got my first pay check today. And, my router, as of9:52 PM has an uptime of: 9:52pm up 154 days, 3:00, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00which is cool, considering the Mac catastrophe…the 3Com cable modem iscool, but I need a new one, I want FASTER speeds!!! Enough for now…

ACK!!!!! I hate Apple!! I hate Macs! Why couldn’t Apple makethe power button a little more difficult to turn off????? Well, my uptimestreak has ended at 141 days. My router is still up, however, and I’mnot going anywhere near it!! It all came about as a result of a friendwho was over here taking a computer that I graciously gave to him…Hesuggested that I clean the inside of the Mac….So I did, which wentwithout problem, but when I went to put the case back on……I hitthe damn power button by accident… Ah well, at least my router is stillup….And I cant blame anything other than human error as the case ofthe downtime… Linux was still fine, and the machine is up again, butI will updating the kernel, and installing a nice 100Mbit network cardwhich should improve performance even more… I swiped the card frommy grandmother’s machine, as the DEC based one I had would only do 10Mbitwhich was kind of useless… I’m borrowing a tangerine iBook from work,and I’m writing on it right now, it’s running Yellow Dog Linux 2.1, andit works pretty decently, would be better if it had firewire and somemore ram… anyways, enough for today. Job is still going well, I have a key to the office now.

Well, the party was cool, work today was a bit hectic…I didsomething stupid, cause I was so excited that I didn’t really think of thereprecussions…We got a new server, and I helped set it up, when I should have waited for a co-worker who was in charge of it…He was a bit mad, butgot over it pretty quick, so things are OK between us still..At home, I setup a DHCP relay, so I didnt have to keep typing the wireless network settingsover and over again.

LONG overdue update… Ok, so, thanks to a few nice people at mycollege, I finally have a job. I’m working with the TITAN group, which is full of some really nice people,especially Dr. Fitz, who is the head prof. and my boss. I’d like to thankMike for giving me a chance, and Robin down in RLC for recommending me. :-DAnyways, supposed to go to a party today, and it’s snowing, hopefully I’mstill going to go… Will post how the party was……..

Updated the car page with my latest, and pretty close to finished,idea of what I want to get, and the mods to do to it. Go there now.

Happy New Year! My family is feeling better now. :-)Enjoy the holiday.

My family isn’t feeling too well, can’t figure out why we’reall sick…

Well, close to the end of the year… Christmas was cool.Merry Christmas to all, or whatever holiday you celebrate. I’ve updated the car page, as I have a different idea now then I did before as to what to do…My machines have finally broken 100 days of uptime! The current uptime is:

LCD is in the laptop, as well as a replacement voltage inverterfor the backlight. So now I can use my laptop (actually, I’m doing this updatefrom it right now), and the screen is in VERY good condition for $200…ithas one little, less than half the size of a penny, spot that the pixels areslightly broken - it displays almost the correct color, and it’s not verydistracting, so it’s OK. Can’t wait until Christmas, though I’m quite happyalready. In other news, this week is finals week at my school, andyesterday was bad – I had Calculus and Physics finals… not fun consideringI forgot my calculator to use in Calc..Ouch. I think I got at least a C inboth classes, I was trying for a B in Calc. If I didn’t screw up the finalI’m almost certain I would have had it. I just saw that I got a B in “Literary New York,” which is cool. All my other teachers are slow - thatsthe only grade up there so far, but I’ve taken four finals already.I changed the layout of the site a bit, updated a few things, and made a newpage dedicated to cars. Check it out.

Yay! Finally got the same model LCD display as the one in mylaptop, so I’m guaranteed for it to work. And the best part is that it’sa Christmas present. Can’t wait to get my machine working again. Thanksgiving is coming up soon. A little vacation. Very nice.

Ok, ordered a LCD from Ebay - as it turns out, it mightnot even work! To say the least, this was upsetting. The cable doesn’t seemlike it’ll fit. I may have to resell it. Yuck to say the least. We willsee when I get the panel. Still waiting on N connectors for the antennaproject. Who knows how long you’ll be able to get to this page using www.drobnak.com, my domain expired yesterday. Whois database isn’t updated yetso I can’t renew it yet. Argh. Once it is, I will re-new it. I don’t thinkthere’ll be any problem, as my DNS is hosted seprately.Part 2: ARGH!!!! The display works fine. But it doesn’t fit!The screw holes don’t line up, and the data cable isn’t of the right length.So I’m out of a minimum of $34, and I’m kicking myself for not buying thepanel I needed which would have been the same price as what I’m doing. I’mre e-baying the lcd panel. I hate not having a working laptop. The days get worse and worse………