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Good Morning

Over the weekend Paige and I drove to Dallas and did a little shopping. I finally picked up a copy of Designing with Web Standards by Jeffery Zeldman. I was trying to decide between two different books and asked Paige for advice. She said “I have a good feeling about the orange one.” She was right, as usual. This is a wonderful book for anyone who makes web sites. In it, Mr. Zeldman clearly describes the problems with the way most websites are built today and presents solutions to them using current web standards.

I lost track of time as I was reading yesterday evening, and I read well into the night. As I was reading I wanted to try a few things on our website, so I connected to the internet (we still have dial-up at home). Finally, around midnight, I went to bed. I saw Paige set the alarm earlier, so I didn’t even check it.

Unfortunately, the alarm never went off this morning. A little after 8:00am, someone from Paige’s office tried to call our house. I was still connected to the Internet, so all they got was a busy signal. Then, they called my office to see if I knew where Paige was. Neither of us were at work and there was no way to contact us – hysteria ensued.

Between my office and Paige’s, I think most people had decided we had carbon monoxide poisoning and couldn’t reach the phone. Around 8:45am Paige woke up in a panic. A few seconds later, someone from her office pulled up in our driveway. We were both ready for work and out the door a little after 9:00am. Just as I was leaving, Ben pulled up in the driveway and told me to call my office since they were just about to start calling the hospitals to look for us.

I guess the moral of this story is – never give anyone at work your real address if you want to be more than an hour late on Monday mornings…

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Thanksgiving Pictures

Here are some of the pictures that we took last Saturday when everyone was over for Thanksgiving. I haven’t had time to set up a gallery for them, but if I don’t post them soon it’ll never get done. So I figured I would just put them all here so at least people could see them.

What a bird Max loves Ben and Paula
Me and the guys watching TV Peggye likes it
The kids gathered around the table Peggye and Paige

One more thing while I’m at it. Tickets are not required for my graduation on December 13. So no one has an excuse for not being there, other than the fact that it’s at 9:00am in Commerce…

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Politics

I usually don’t mention anything political here… Actually I think the last political opinion I expressed on this site was probably how SUVs fund terrorism, which led to quite a discussion. But, this reading a statement that Tom Ridge made from News.com, I feel like I just have to share it with people.

Tom Ridge is the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. He recently gave the keynote speech at the National Cyber Security Summit. During that speech, he had this to say:

“Terrorists know that a few lines of code could, ultimately, wreak as much havoc as bombs,”

Um, I don’t know about Mr. Ridge, but personally I’d much rather have my computer stop working than have a bomb fall on my house.

I’m sure someone will post a comment that says something along the lines of “but terrorists will write a virus to shut down the power plants!!!!” (except it will probably be in ALL CAPS with every other word misspelled)

To those who think that way, all I can say is why exactly should a computer that controls a power plant be connected to the Internet? Am I actually suppossed to believe that the computers that are controlling the infrastructure of our country are also used to place bids on eBay? If that’s the case then we have much bigger problems than terrorists.

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This is it

I’m about to leave for my final presentation. This is my last day of school, ever. Graduation is only ten days away.

I feel like I should write something profound. Unfortunately, all I can think about is getting it over with so I can come back home and go to sleep.

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Back to work

The holiday is over and I’m back at work.

What a weekend! We ended up with 11 people at our house for lunch on Saturday. I think that’s a record. Everyone seemed to like the food. We made twice as much dressing as last year, and most of it is gone. I even made the gravy from scratch (for the first time ever). There are some pictures and I’ll post them as soon as I get a chance.

It just hit me earlier today that I don’t have to take off and drive to class. Normally, I would be leaving right about now, but that class is over. I have one more meeting this evening in Commerce, followed by the final presentation on Wednesday. After that, I’m done with school.

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Free time

Wow, I don’t know what to do with myself now that I have a day off. It reminds me of the part in Office Space when Lawrence asks Peter “What would you do if you had a million dollars?” and Peter replies “Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

I did spend a little time working on the website today. I finally got around to adding some of those cute little buttons that everyone else uses (look on the right side, under Links). I stole most of them from Taylor McKnight’s site. On that same site, there’s a like to the origin of these buttons at Antipixel.com. I never really knew how that all got started.

Thanksgiving was great. We had lots of good food with grandparents and parents. I’m really looking forward to making turkey and dressing tomorrow for family and friends. I even got a call from Michael yesterday evening. It’s always good to catch up with everyone around the holidays.

I can’t wait to have people over for turkey and dressing tomorrow. Look for pictures of turkey and friends (our friends, not the turkey’s friends) tomorrow afternoon or evening.

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Visitors

Geoff and Tony are both in town for Thanksgiving. Last night they stopped by for a visit and we went out to eat at Denny’s with Ben and Paula. Here we are all posing while Paige takes a picture.

It took over an hour for them to make our food, so we had plenty of time for socializing…

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Another helpful hint

Warning, this post is going to be mostly written in the language of the geek. So, if you’re not one of us, please let your eyes go out of focus and scroll on down to the nice posts about turkey and graduation…

I’ve been using RedHat’s new “community-supported” distribution Fedora since the day it was announced. Now that Fedora-Core-1 has been released, I’m using it full-time. Everything was going great until I installed the NVidia drivers for my video card. Here are a few tips for anyone else having problems.

First, the NVidia drivers don’t include modules for the Fedora kernel. Luckily, the installer will compile them for you if you have everything set-up correctly before you start. Here’s what you need to do:

  1. Install the gcc32 compiler installed if you don’t already have it. In a terminal window type “up2date gcc32”.
  2. Make sure you have the kernel-source package installed – “up2date –force kernel-source”. Up2date won’t normally install kernel packages so you have to use the –force option to make it. Also note that this is a very large download (14MB+) so you might be better off installing it from your original CDs if you have a slow connection.
  3. Download the latest driver from http://www.nvidia.com/ if you haven’t already.
  4. Log out of GNOME
  5. Press Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to the first console
  6. Log in as root
  7. Type “telinit 3” to switch to runlevel 3 and kill the X Window System
  8. Change to the directory where you saved the driver
  9. Make the driver executable by typing “chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run”
  10. Tell the system to use the gcc32 compiler by typing “export CC=gcc32”
  11. Install the driver with the command “./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-4496-pkg2.run” (that’s a dot and a forward slash followed by the name of the file you downloaded)
  12. After answering a few questions, the installer should compile a new module for you and install it.

Now we need to edit the XF86Config file so X will actually use the new driver. I normally use VI for editing files, but for these instructions I’ll use nano since it’s easier.

  1. Type “nano /etc/X11/XF86Config” to open your config file for editing.
  2. Scroll down to the line that says Load “dri” and put a # at the beginning of the line. This makes that line a comment which means it won’t be read by the X Server.
  3. Now keep scrolling down to the line that says Driver “nv”. Change the “nv” to “nvidia”
  4. Press Ctrl+O to save the file and Ctrl+X to exit

If you restart X right now, it will come up, but anytime you try to run a 3D application you’ll get this message Xlib: extension “XFree86-DRI” missing on display “:0.0”

I found a solution for this on the nV News Forums. Here’s what you need to do now:

  1. Get rid of a directory with some conflicting files by typing “mv /usr/X11R6/lib/tls/ /usr/X11R6/lib/tls-bad/”
  2. Tell your system about the change by typing “ldconfig”

You can now restart X and have good 3D acceleration. Type “telinit 5” to restart the login manager and get back into GNOME.

I’m sure this will make someone very happy one of these days. I still get e-mail about the last bit of technical advice I posted.

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No more classes, no more books

Yesterday was my last chance to actually learn something in college. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. That’s right, classes are officially over for me. All I have left to do now is take a final exam on Monday and give a presentation on Dec. 3.

It’s funny, I’ve been taking classes in Commerce for the last two years now and all I got out of it is several thousand dollars of debt and a silly piece of paper to hang on the wall in my office.

Of course, that degree on my wall will translate into a lot of money for me, but you get the idea.

One more thing – there will be turkey and dressing at our house the Saturday after Thanksgiving (Nov. 29). Pretty much anyone who reads this site is invited, unless you’re some kind of crazy internet stalker…

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Better

Since I got 3 comments on my previous post about being sick, I thought I’d better put something up here to tell all of those concerned that I’m feeling better now.

Also, I (finally) got my graduation information in the mail today. Everyone needs to be there December 13th. Yes, everyone.