Jon's Notes
Linksys trouble? revisited
The problems with the cable connection have ceased so it must have been a coincidence that the problems started when the switch was replaced. The linksys switch seems to be working fine.
4-H reports, fair checks, and the Denlers
Mom and I ran errands in Pekin today, I drove and Mary Beth and Andrew were along for the ride.
First we went to the Hoerr's house to drop off our 4-H reports for this year and to pick up our fair checks, mine totaled $42.70.
Next we stopped at the Denler's to pick up my graphing calculator, Mom and company stayed in the van because Mom thought the Denler's might have been having supper but Mr. and Mrs. Denler invited us all in for a while, Robert and I played Civilization: Call To Power 2 over his LAN. Apparently Mrs. Denler invited Mom to join carp. Carp is the name of the home school co-op that Barth's, Denler's, and West's are in, it is just them right now and they are all wonderfully intriguing people, I look forward to joining them.
I was asked if I was going to run for 4-H club president, I said yes so now I am committed.
Gentoo, OS/390, and the feel of OpenBSD
Yesterday I installed
Gentoo Linux on Koara (my Sony VAIO PCG-8C3L) and discovered that I no longer "like" Linux, this is not Gentoo specific, I get the same feeling with RedHat and Debian. Perhaps using OpenBSD so much has warped me, perhaps it simply feels more snappy, either way Linux just does not feel as comfortable as OpenBSD. Now that
Mozilla is running
Lyx is the only program that I like that is not avaliable on OpenBSD.
Dad says that he should be getting a IBM
OS/390 CD-ROM from a co-worker, when it gets here I will load the
Hercules ESA/390 emulator on Ender and run OS/390 on it.
Linksys trouble?
Dad acquired a linksys 16 port 10/100baseT switch apparently forgetting that we had agreed on a ban on linksys products because they caused network problems and were poorly constructed. Said switch replaced my cisco 2900 switch which had the irritating habit of sending broadcast packets twice every second. Since the linksys switch has been the "backbone" switch our internet access has been dying 2-3 times each day and a traceroute shows that it is dying at the first hop outside our network which makes no sense, perhaps mediacom is suddenly flakey but the timing makes me suspect the new switch.
Computers, computers everywhere
I spend far too much time managing computers and not enough time coding, writing, playing with siblings, and doing school work. Part of this problem stems from my wanting a separate computer for each server role i.e. DNS on one box, NIS on another, NFS on another and so on. That approach does increase reliability but it also increases the electric bill and time spent that would have been better spent on other things. I would like to consolidate all of my computers onto a single system except for my desktop, laptop, and 2 HP 9000's that I want to use for a
OpenBSD HP-PA port. Current plan is to wait until mid December in hope that Dad can get an IBM xSeries server from work, if not I will try to sell off the excess computers and acquire some sort of multi processor system, perhaps a sun 220R or 240 or RS/6K. Even if Dad does not get the xSeries server I will still sell off most of my computers because they are reaching the age where their resale value drops sharply.
College considerations
I have been considering college yet again...
Dad and Mom want me to pursue a degree via distance learning but I have yet to find a real computer science distance learning course, not IT or MIS but real CS, perhaps God is trying to tell me that CS is not the field for me. Paths currently under consideration are: law and computer science, computer science, and english/technical writing.
As far as a distance learning degree goes, the english path looks to be the best route.