Something Swift this way comes…

So I’ve finally found a firefox extension that I’ve been looking for, called ‘Vimperator‘ after reading Christer Edward’s RSS feed on the Ubuntu Planet.  What this extension does is make firefox operate more like VIM (modal text editor).  Navigating pages can be done completely from the keyboard – LOOK MA! NO MOUSE! But it does take a lot of getting used to.  My favourite editor is vi/vim and it’s still taking me a little time to get used to.

Navigating within a page itself is easy – hjkl are your movement keys, left down up right (respectively), and following links is easier ‘;’ brings up a list of ‘hints’ and you type the hint, then can type ‘o’ to open it in your current tab, or ‘t’ to open it in a new tab, or even ‘Y’ to yank that text if you want.  There are lots of other keycontrol combinations (just like Vim), but the biggest command to remember is ‘:help’.  That will take you to the internal help screen that explains what all the different functions and such are.

I’ve only had it for a day or so, but I’ve cut my mouse usage in firefox to ‘rarely’.  A week or so longer, and a better understanding of the help file, and I doubt I’ll use the mouse hardly at all when browsing the web.

If you are looking for nifty firefox extensions, there are lots on the firefox homepage, but there are many scattered around that other people have written (like vimperator).  Another good blog with a list of extensions is from Aron Toponce.   Some of them are really worth taking a look at if you’re a firefox user and you do a lot of browsing, or even if you do web development.

If you’ve got a favourite list of extensions in firefox, put them in my comments section of this post, and I’ll check them out – if any of them strike me as ‘hey that’s hella cool’ I’ll do a small jerkwater review of them.

S

JH

Okay

I set out this morning to get all my important data and stuff backed up on my secondary hard disk drive. I finally got that drive cleaned off enough to get the data backed up. So, I tar’d up my whole home directory and sent it over there. All of this to reinstall my operating system. I started my reinstall around 10pm EST, and finished the pat (vanilla) install around 10:30 (Kubuntu 32 bit Feisty – 7.04 in case you’re interested). After the install, I basically had to get the major stuff moved over, and the main packages that I use installed (Evolution, gaim, skype, TF5, etc.) And that took me another hour.

I’ve still got a few things to do, but I rather enjoy the 32 bit version of Kubuntu over the 64 bit version because there are some programs that I use that just don’t have packages for the 64 bit version….that can cramp your style tremendously, but hey, I persevered in it for as long as I could.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing today, and fortunately I’ve had some company. Becca the Spud kept me company all day long, Rae has been here on and off and putting up with me ‘hold on, brb’ messages, Annabannana and Bru even talked to me some, helped keep me distracted while things were packing up or moving over or just when I’d gotten tired of working on it and needed a break. So see, you guys just don’t know how often you help me while I’m working on stuff!

That was my day, and in all it was enjoyable – at least that technical part of it. The other parts of it, we won’t talk about, as I’m tired, and it was an overly long day. Let’s just say that I’ll be glad when the Wife gets onto a regular sane schedule at work again and we get into a groove of day to day.

Thanks for reading, and remember to check your fly before you leave the restroom.

S

Sometimes you stand at a cross roads, trying to decide what to do…which path to take. I’m not talking about a Robert Frost road less traveled moment here or anything, I’m just talking about standing at a point in your life and realizing that something you’ve been working at for years may just not be worth it any more. I like to think that I’m rational, a reasoning person…that I’m willing to listen to people. Here lately though, I’ve begun to doubt that. The longer I live, the less patient, the less tolerant I am. Sometimes I see myself getting angry at something and wishing I could pull back, wishing I could throttle the anger until it subsides and cool reason reasserts itself. Sometimes I can do that…sometimes I end up having to just walk away…but more and more lately, I find myself sick with anger and wishing I could just forget the whole situation.

And here I thought I was a calm, collected person. As I grow older I find out that it’s tougher to be calm when you’re just trying to get something done and people (inadvertently or not) stand in your way blocking progress. I guess I understand now why my father would become so impatient when I was younger, impatient and unwilling to listen when he was trying to get something done, to achieve something. I used to look at that and think that was one of his greatest shortcomings, but I see that same thing within me now, and I understand it from a different perspective. Sometimes you just want people to stop questioning everything you do and start doing the things that need to be done to achieve a goal. That rarely, if ever, happens, I’m finding.

I stand now at the edge of dropping six and a half years worth of work. And I know for most of you, you don’t have any idea what I’m talking about – thats fine, sometimes this is just a sounding board for me to work out my own problems, and this is one of those times. I look on the one hand – 6 and a half long years of work, fighting every step of the way to do something, to make something of myself in someway. Then on the other hand I look and realize that I have been wearing myself down every day, having to fight for every inch of ground gained and redoubling my efforts when I lose ground. I’ve been literally exhausting myself at this project, and all I have to show for it is a handful of people that don’t trust my vision, that question my every decision, and demand that I’m doing it wrongly. I’ve got only a couple of people that I can count on, that will do what it takes to help, and I think some days it is those few that I keep doing this for.

So, sometimes you stand at a crossroad and have to decide, is the path I’m walking worth it? Is the constant battle and struggle really worth all the effort expended – is it paying anything off, or is it just demanding more and more of your spirit, your ka, until you’re drained dry?

So, I ask myself right now…is it? Is it really worth it?

And the only answer I can hear inside right now feels like just another jaded ambivalent response from the man inside me that’s slowly growing into my father (both good and bad):

When you stand in the crossroads and can’t make a decision…just fork it.

I hope that none of you ever have to stand in this place, but if you do, maybe you’ll have the courage to walk whatever path you choose, and walk it well.

S

So I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t wait for weeks and weeks (okay okay, shutup! Months and months even!) between posting in my online space since I’m not in school anymore and I don’t have any excuse not to.

So, here I am at a quarter til 2 in the morning making myself fret over the fact that I need to make a post.  Well, actually, I’m not really fretting all that much.  More like thinking that I really hope that I can get some actual substance to this post than general rambling.

So, on to the substance.  First I wanna thank Bru for coming by and watching over the spud today so I could be at work ontime – gotta hate it when the wiffy’s job holds her over uberlate.  Anyways Bru, you’re the bestest big sister a boy could hope for cause you’re always there when I need ya and you’re always happy to help with a smile and a good word.  You’re one of life’s blessings, and you don’t even know it most of the time!

Next, I got to work and found that the boss has actually (sorta) listened to me when I said that I needed a better keyboard/mouse setup.  Data Entry on the old clunker keyboard has been killing my hands, wrists, arms, shoulders, and neck for the last two and some odd years.  So I get there and It’s an /almost/ ergonomic keyboard.  If any of you have ever seen those kb’s with the funky shaped keys, but no actual ergonomic split in the middle, you’ll know what I’m talking about.  Well, it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick I guess, and it’s damned sure better than that old hunk of junk that was in there yesterday.  So that was one bit of good news in an otherwise mediocre day.

The keyboard I /really/ want (for any rich people that are thinking about buying me a belated graduation present, I will love you forever if you buy this for me) is called the Datahand. Unfortunately I don’t have $700.00 to just drop on a keyboard…though part of me thinks that in the long run, that’d be a hell of a lot cheaper than having to deal with Carpal Tunnel, or RSI.  Eh.  What can you do when you don’t have any money?  Not much but bitch and wish, I guess.

Also, I’ve finally settled on a laptop that I want, I just have to get the money up for it over the next however long it takes.  Well, I’ve kind of settled on the laptop I want.  If I had my druthers, I’d get one from system76 – really good linux laptops.  Otherwise I’ve been thinking very seriously about getting a Dell laptop with Ubuntu linux.  And yeah, I know, I’ve told a lot of people that there are better systems out there than the Dells…and there are.  However, I also know that it’s a big deal to have a major hardware vendor like Dell selling equipment running Open Source software – it’s big for the community, and for people who are interested in the Operating system.  To know that they can get a machine that has an (arguably) good warranty with (relatively) good support from a (mostly) reputable vendor, it adds legitimacy.

Now, for all you Open Source people that stumble upon this article (hah!  Right…not gonna happen on this swiffer’s blog, but that’s okay) and say ‘Hey!  Linux has always been legitimate!’…I agree.  Lemme explain.  To someone who’s been vaporlocked into using Microsoft for the last decade, that’s all they know, and they’re used to computers and operating systems (hell, to them, the operating system /is/ the computer…but that’s a completely different rant for another day) that are backed by uber-large mega-corporations that is all but a giant faceless entity that serves the public with a certain feel of complete arbitrary  randomness in good, mediocre, or bad service.  However, they look past that and feel that if it doesn’t have the backing of this major corporation, then it must not be a legitimate product.  This really hearkens back to snake-oil salesmen and those ‘as seen on TV’ advertisements you can’t seem to get away from at 4:30 am, even with a good satellite television system.  So, with a company like Dell being willing to step out and listen to the consumer saying ‘we want a choice!’ from their Ideastorm website and giving us the choice.  I’m hoping that it will snowball and other vendors will see that, yes, there is a market for selling computers with Linux installed on them.

And why is it such a big deal to buy a laptop with linux pre-installed on it when I’m probably going to nuke the drive and reinstall it when I get it to have it completely customized?  Well, anyone that’s tried to run Linux on a laptop knows that that’s one are where it’s rare to take a windows laptop out of the box, put linux on there and have everything ‘just work’.  There’s usually at least /one/ thing, like a wireless card (damn you broadcom!), or a row of media buttons, or a webcam (this is a sore subject with me right now…I’m not a programmer, but if I were, I’d try to write a reliable webcam program) that just doesn’t work well or right. When you buy a laptop from a vendor with Linux preinstalled, then all the hardware has to work with the OS, and properly.  This is a big deal – especially if you’re going to want to use a wireless chipset somewhere and don’t have the knowhow to either set up the ndiswrappers or finagle the system so it reads your wireless adapter correctly.

So…now that I’ve talkd for a half hour, you now understand why, if you ever ask me about laptops, you’ll usually find me mulling over Linux laptops and fretting that I’m not going to get the money together to get one before the vendors stop selling them.  As it stands, Bru gave me some money for my graduation, and so did my mother-in-law…all told i’ve got about 90 bucks that I can stash away and try to start building it up over the next year to see if I can get the machine I want.  *sighs*  Sometimes it sucks to be at the very bottom end of the middle class.  Meh.

Anyways, enough from me on all of that.  If any of you are still with me after all of that even.  I hope you have a good day after reading this when you realize ‘Wow, I’m so not as screwed up as the Swiffer, and that makes me happy!’

Anyways, God Bless, Eat your Vegetables, and Don’t forget to Flush,

S

Okay, so I started out with good intentions, I was going to try and make a post at least every other day this summer, keep people abreast of my goings and comings and all things Swift. Yeah, well, come to find out, the road to hell is not only paved with Good Intentions, they also use them to build the overpasses, the support struts, hell, even the McDonald burgerjerk buildings are made out of them. Apparently I suck at resolutions. This is something that I knew long ago, which is why I never do any newyear’s resolutions anymore.

To let everyone know, yes, I have finally graduated, and thank you very much Steveo for that very graphic representation of a comment that I should probably have kept to myself about Ron Jeremy and Mario Mario. (It’sa ME! MARIO!) Oy. Anyways, yeah, back to the family’ish friendly posts.

Yes, I did graduate, with honours, and I’m glad that it’s done. All I need to do now is get off of my butt and start pedalling my resume around to see if I can find gainful employment in my chosen profession. With that said, I don’t think that I’ll have to worry about finding anything in the next 6 months, because that seems to be the minimum amount of time that it takes graduates to get their shit together and get a job. The sad thing is, there doesn’t seem to be a huge market in my area for the kind of work I want to do…so I’ll either end up doing something slightly different than what I want (linux based desktop/network administration) or moving to another area. The idea of a move frightens the holy hell out of me…being away from my support system, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to just drive ten or fifteen minutes down the road and see my parents, or my sister and nephew…of knowing that when they need something that I won’t be there to call on. I know that they’ve all said that this is my time, that I need to not worry about all of that and to go out and take my life by the reigns and live it, but I’m nothing without my family. I love and need them too much, and they love and need me just the same. I don’t know that I could be away from all of them like that without it stressing me overmuch.

I guess that I’m getting the cart before the horse right now as it were though, worrying about something that may not happen. I guess that’s what made me such a good student – trying to forsee every problem and deal with it before it becomes an even bigger problem, but not so good in life maybe, especially where matters of the heart are concerned. Ah well, live and learn Swift, live and learn.

The other news that I have right now is that I finally went to the Optometrist and had my vision tested. It appears that I do indeed have a problem with my eyesight, and I need glasses (which I now have). It’s a slight problem now, but it will get worse as I go along. For those of you in the know, apparently I’m farsighted with an astygmatism. However the hell you spell that. Oh, also, it’s official. I’m definitely red-green colourblind. So yeah. Anyways, that’s the news for now, though I have thought about adding some linux-focussed tutorials to the site, I don’t think many people would really appreciate them since I only have two or three readers. But hey, it’s my website, I can add what I want, right?

Next project to work on – find a (working) way to post to this place using Vim.

And yes, that will work in whatever OS you use. Go check it out. It rocketh.

And now my lil’ chilluns, that’s all the news for now!

Be safe, God bless, and don’t speed.

S