Another dispatch from Linuxland

I'm becoming more comfortable with the OpenSUSE distro., although I thought that I was going to have to rebuild the installation (and all the customization/add-on work) a few days ago. I'm not positive, but I think that I erred in switching back over to the Windows box while installing updates through the YaST-based updater. When I switched back and started clicking around, I hung it up But Good. After noticing that the hard drive's LED indicator had been dark for at least several minutes, I just pressed the power button and counted alligators. But the system wouldn't POST when I tried to power it back on. That's the first time it's done that since pitching Ubuntu. But it did it, which tells me that it's the hardware and not the operating system, and a quirk I'm going to have to learn to live with. Maybe it's just luck, but holding in the power button for a fraction of a second longer than I normally would seems to be the silver bullet for that problem. AI would be redundant--this thing already has a mind of its own.

It seems that I grabbed OpenSUSE nearly steaming from the build (Oct. 4th release date), so I may have awhile to wait before the next kernel update is made available. I haven't quite figured out how that works. Ubuntu's team, for their own reasons, locks itself into a six month development cycle. If there some arbitrary schedule for OpenSUSE, I have yet to discover it.

For the time being, I'm slowly migrating my "stuff" over to the Linux box. Not to the point where I'll trust it with, say, my Thunderbird files or anything, but the writing and HTML and Java work has been ported. I'm paranoid enough to back everything up to key drive for now. We'll see how long it takes me to become complacent...

YaST really had me scratching my head the other night, though, when I tried to install the MySQL database. Darned if I ever found the installation directory (although I did find one of its files properly placed in the init.d folder), and there were no mysql-d type daemons in the process list either. I should have enough time this weekend to try to install it with non-RPM binaries. (I doubt that I'll ever be competent or independent enough to install from source, though.)

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, one thing that I do miss from the Windows environment is the mouse-motion scroll on applications--i.e. pressing down the mouse button to activate, then moving the mouse up or down to direct the scrolling. Firefox in Linux doesn't do that trick, for instance. And I realized that I may have to jump back on the Windows box to re-work a graphic because the font it uses may not be supported. Just little stuff like that.

It feels good to have the brain puzzling out things again, but I feel so scattered lately. So many things have to be put in place before I have a proper development setup, which includes a test server (that doesn't double as my workstation) and the network infrastructure that implies for a mixed-OS household. I was hoping to hang out my shingle again as a (very part-time) lone-gun developer after the first of the year, but not enough of the pieces will come together by then, I'm afraid. The first of the year is significant in that I will have ditched the hobby-related responsibilities that tend to bogart what free time school and work leave. Sadly, that's even with Dearest taking up so much of the slack. A skosh over two months more of it, though, and then I'm tetherless.

What's wierd is that I still feel somewhat guilty about it. I didn't think there was enough "chick" instinct in me for that, which is wierder still. More than half of the (official) group can't seem to tear themselves away from the fun/glamorous stuff long enough to understand that they'd be fun/glamorous stuff by themselves and entirely on their own dime if it weren't for people willing to scope out meeting sites, balance the books, put together the get-togethers, publish the newsletter, maintain the website, chat up possible new members, file reports, yadayadayada. Oh, but let the minority who do take on those chores dare to complain, and it's their own fault for "trying to do too much." If you're an office-holder in any volunteer-based (or otherwise vastly underpaid) group, I expect that you grok this to its fullest, no?

Grrrr...

Which brings me back to an earlier theme, that of intelligent selfishness--close kin to what Adam Smith termed "enlightened self-interest" some two-centuries-and-change ago. I haven't had enough downtime to go "walkabout" in my own psyche for awhile, but I feel the building urgency to deal with the fundamental dissatisfaction in my job as well people on the periphery of my life (not the great, good friends that I've known since my teens, mostly newer folks). Basically it boils down to the sense of not being met half-way. And that sense is becoming just too persistent and pernicious to politely ignore anymore. So it's high time for emotional triage. And I think that's all I'm going to say about it for now.