foxpro.catalyst «

FoxPro workBLOGS and MORE… . . .

Never knew Achilles has his own version of Kenshin Himura’s Hiten Mitsurugi. (I would love to give you Hiten Mitsurugi related links but most sites I found are decorated with a dark blue over black background so go Google things for yourself)

I don’t watch movies in theatres anymore. I read the reviews, download the teasers and trailers, follow their numbers and wait for them in DVDs. So with most of them, I’m quite behind by months.

Movies with swords, dragons and a hint of the pre-digital world (even if the CG-world has a great part in creating them) where knights, warriors, archers rule and maidens who are not overly concerned with slimming down, have always been part of my favorite++ list.

(Heck. I don’t even think those warriors have to endure the ‘Am I that fat?’ questions recursively.)

The story about Troy and Greek mythology as a whole were part of my bedtime stories when I was young. Some of my project codenames were even taken from some of its characters.

I was even hoping I could run as fast as Hermes/Mercury even then.

Moving forward in the future, I find myself running other things. But then of course I have to compile them first.

Anyway, the earthquake last night shook my programming chi so that I couldn’t get myself to code. So I ended up sleeping and thinking that if the Trojans and the Greeks were using computers in their era, the Trojan war would never had occured.

For one, they would’ve scandisk-ed/NAV-ed/SPYBot-ed/LavaSoft-ed the ‘gift’ before they dragged it behind their walls. Their computer-powered detectors could’ve smelled the humans inside and radars could’ve easily tracked the hiding fleet.

Even if their network admins and technicians are busy doing ‘other things’. (Some things don’t change…)

In fact, probably they would even have installed RFID/GPS-related technologies on their slaves and wives, then Menelaus could’ve tracked Helen wherever she was.

Probably Paris and Helen would not even have met, considering that Priam could’ve just fax-ed his peace agreement, or e-mailed it to Menelaus. Paris would end up IM-ing Helen luring her to have cybersex with him not knowing it is one of her lazy male guards reading them and pretending to be Helen in the other side of the ‘line’.

Kinky.

Helen’s would’ve been too busy surfing eBay. Her sys-ad would not even give her rights to install new applications on her PC.

While Menelaus would’ve been preoccupied downloading porn stuff. He would’ve had no time for war. He’s on a T1 connection so he’s taking advantage of it.

Of course Agamemnon, would still be obsessed with conquering Troy. He would hire photoshop experts to fabricate pictures claiming that Troy owns weapons of mass destruction to convince the other kings that it is really time to invade. (Uh… sounds a little familiar)

Achilles would be very busy playing Tekken and his cousin Procla-something (can’t remember his name, his not in my childhood books I think) would convince him again and again to play Warcraft instead.

They could never figure out the logic behind CounterStrike and Bloody Doom.

Hector having the leadership qualities would prefer to comandeer a guild inside Ragnarok Online. That is if Andromache is not watching him.

Hmm… I think I would still prefer Greek Mythology over Geek Mythology any time of the day.

Just random stuff before I’ll dive once more into some codin’ in the middle of the night.

Inanimate objects talk. The problem is you just don’t listen. Try listening. Trust me you’ll hear things with more sense and sometimes which are even more profound than the usual bullshit you hear in radios and TVs.

During client visits to companies and if you’re like me who suck terribly at memorizing names (I do remember faces well (I can even identify a person’s offspring without prior knowledge)), do check the organizational charts. Even if this organizational charts don’t have pictures on it, you can still figure out things.

Trust me it works with me all the time.

This is what I learn from watching Robert Redford spy-flicks. Ah yes… ALIAS and 24 too.

Whoever said ‘databanking’ is easy hasn’t tried it yet. Or if he/she has tried it once, does it like the way newbie-comsci-student-I’ll-do-this-for-the-sake-of-passing-something type of programmer.

Of course ‘databanking’ values/fields in tables A B C D and E are easy. But try organizing them in such a way that they will not fsck things up when we add tables F and G a year from now. And there’s more. If you merely replace the value A.field when a new data for A.field is encoded then you’re missing a lot. There should be a history of these changes, a log of who changes it and all.

I’m not even mentioning the challenging parts yet.

I’m currently mentoring qs in learning VisualFoxpro (we had our first heated argument on database structure and normalization yesterday). So far she’s done with QUE’s Using Visual Foxpro first chapter. Gave her an overview of OOP and have let her tinker with the Visual Foxpro environment as well.

So far so good. Probably she’ll include this learning experience in her blog one of these days.

It made me smile when she told me she’s nervous. I can’t remember the last time I had that ‘nervous-y’ feeling though I know I had some when I was coding during college days.

Ah well… Nervous.code != Angst(Coding) right?

I got nervous though when I was presenting the ILS and GITS program last week. Darn. I really was. Most of my clients are referrals and last week was one of those outside that referral linkage.

Which makes me wonder… do seasoned professional marketeers get nervous too during their new potential client presentations?

There’s a difference though when the marketing staff is presenting things and the person who is actually making the program/product. The other outweighs the other in some aspects and vice versa.

Now if only I can fuse the best of both worlds.

Though I strongly believe creating a good++ product is the best way to sell things.

Unlocked and loaded. Node-333 released.

I still have some spare time while waiting for someone to dress up and prepare and I have already written the .scx/.prg files in my transportCD-R so I’ll fire up these blog-related tools of mine first.

I have been loaded with quite a number of projects to finish last month (… and now overflowing to this month… I’ll list them later) and as you have noticed blogging has been a little rarer than usual… except for the normal foxpro-related links and stuff. Sharing those news-link type of blogs is not that time consuming… just 2 to 5 minutes at most.

It could even take lesser than that if I’m not on a dial up and I don’t have IKIA taunting my restless pet tiger on my back every now and then.

I haven’t had time to post weird thoughts as of late. That sucks.

I used the word ‘loaded’ instead of ‘busy’. These days everyone seems to be busy or at least pretending to be ‘busy’. Or perhaps really really busy that they can’t even stop and utter the word ‘busy’ anymore.

I encourage humans to blog and they give me that ‘I’m still busy… I don’t have time’ blah-blah-blahs.

Oh come on… blogging is like stopping and smelling the roses.

What is more soothing and relaxing than talking about database/non-database related programs, flows and structures after working for 10 straight hours working on database-related stuff?

Uhmm… OK… there are far better options.

Before i’ll continue the Normalization post I have discussed earlier… allow me to post some random humpie-jumpie links first.

I’m making my alter-ego blog for me tonight.

From GEEK to CHEF. At first I thought it was a joke but then April 1 is months away.

One of the founders of Pyra, the company responsible for Blogger which of course has changed many lives online and offline, decided to quit the tech world to become a chef.

Meg Hourihan summarized it in three words: ‘Follow your heart’. Mushy but true most of the time.

I was viewing some pictures from FooCamp this morning. It’s interesting to see what those minds behind some of the great things IT has to offer are doing. And I remember that every time I see pictures from geek/developer camps, events and conferences you don’t often see a human smoking.

Yup you see them doing some silly stuff like arranging mascots in sex-related positions or presenting in stage while naked in a bath tub or jumping around the stage and howling ‘developers… developers… developers…’ more than 10 times.

Yet… seldom (if not never) do you see a picture of someone smoking a cigar.

Which brings me to my next point… that programmers/developers are indeed logical. (Oh come on don’t make me explain that further.)

… and of course programmers/developers are good role models. [- insert BIG GRIN here -]

What Steve Wozniak learned from failure. Trust me… it has nothing to do with porcupines.

Illusion linkin’-time: Here’s one from Edward H. Adelson… Checkershadow Illusion. Want more..?

Here’s more.

Illusions don’t impress you? How about the relevance of a brilliant movie entitled Blade Runner?

Blade Runner was selected a number of times as one of the best sci-fi movies of all time.

Don’t fret too much jimmo… Matrix is in that list.

Depthcore, the abstract digital artgroup where I belong, released the Verve Pack. Funky artworks… the next pack will be this 15th of October.

Expect at least an artwork from me in that release.

A different digital abstract artgroup also released their art pack… Affekted’s Simplicity Pack.

You see in the ‘underground’ digital art community we do help each other.

Can we say the same thing in the software development world? Probably yes… if it does not involve individuals from opposing platform camps.

I haven’t watched TV for quite some months and I’m not sure if this cool batch of Fido Dido commercials have been released already.

OK… enough humpie-jumpie for now.

Inspiring. (link via Beakman’s blogs)

This article talks about Henry Sy from his daughter’s point of view. Henry Sy, for those who don’t know him, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs here in our country.

He started from ‘humble beginnings’.

Her daughter in this article talks about his father’s 14 Principles which he and his family applies in the way they tackle things. These principles are not only applicable in business but also in education, software development and day to day life.

It is also good to note that Henry Sy came from China and went here to the Philippines at age 12 to seek greener pastures.

Something which is quite different these days. Now, most Filipinos are yearning to jump into the next boat of opportunity that drives them outside the bounds of this country.

But not all of us wants to jump in that ship. Some of us share the same views Herdy Yumul points out in this article. (Also a link from Beakman)

Besides, I believe the business of software development is one area our developing country could compete with the other far developed giants.

Speaking of ‘business’ and ‘software development’, I found some good links related to Micro-ISVs while reading Wesner Moise’s blog that tackles this matter.

He also gave independent and small software marketing related links such as: Shareware-Marketing.net – StartUpJournal.com – StartupSkills.com – SoftwareMarketingResource.com and SharewarePromotions.com.

These sites include RSS feeds so my RSSBandit aggregator adds more pounds… as well as the tendency to be ‘info-overloaded’.

I am already subscribed to Eric Sink and Joel Spolsky‘s feeds which also shells out insightful software-related marketing views.

But then of course, if you’re following Microsoft’s moves keenly you’ll learn a lot of strengths and sometimes weaknesses from their visions, moves and ‘workarounds’.

Function RantRelease(PissitivityLevel)

In this digital world of ours, everything is but 1 and 0.

Equate those values to Output or LackofOutput.

There is no such thing as ‘I-fsckin’-did-my-best’ + IIF(PissitivityLevel > nTolerableValue, ‘!’, ‘.’)

Hell no. ‘Losers always boast of their best’. Those are Sean Connery’s words in that 1996 movie, The Rock.

Output or nothing.

Of course we can never control all the other factors, internal and external… but we have Error Traps to at least minimize, catch, record and refrain from doing such errors ‘recursively’.

We also have events triggered during those error occurences. Our behaviours, attitudes… our knee-jerk reactions. I admit though this is one department I should work on. I get terribly annoyed everytime I see a string 0000000s in my life.

Even if these are ‘first class zeros’.

When working for and with me, that is one character you should have.

Return IIF(nFumeReleased > (PissitivityLevel/2), PeaceofMind, Rocks)

Cathy Pountney posted two VFP9 report related articles at MSDN: What’s New in the Visual FoxPro 9.0 Report Writer and Visual FoxPro 9.0 Report Writer In Action.

Since I was a kid, I have always been fascinated with illusions. Here’s one. Probably I’ll be posting more illusion-related pictures/artworks from now on.

Besides… “life is an illusion… peel one layer… another one will reveal”.

I spent most of the day talking and working with a telecom technician who works for a company that provides spanking fast DSL internet connection.

That is if ‘spanking fast’ is defined as the urge to apply a quick blow in the arse to the person next to you every time you get annoyed with the speed. But seriously it is faster than my 56K dial-up internet connection at home.

I even had the chance to ride on their service mobile and talk about life with him, talk about food, the sea and raising children. He accompanied me to a computer hardware retailer, gave me a discount after the owner allowed us to test the component first before even paying for it.

Sometimes we often hear the word ‘sucks’ being added to something. Company-001 sucks. TechBlahBlah sucks.

The world sucks.

Most often we add this word because we’re dissatisfied… or probably because seeing the negative side is inherent to our human traits.

And we do this without even considering the reasons behind such thing.

This technician (I won’t name names nor I would name the company since I don’t like saying negative stuff to a Philippine-based company even if it is already owned by a foreign entity), works with his partner (yup just the two of them) servicing 100++ (or even greater) clients covering an area which is nTechnicians(raised to the power of 32(square miles)).

The company holds N number of employees nationwide five years ago, now they’re down to N/4 and N here is a five digit number having a val(substr(alltrim(str(N)), 2, 1)) > 6. They’re even planning to trim down even more.

Indeed… it is a sucky world out there.

But there’s nothing we could do to improve things by re-stating the obvious.

One must unload(TheSuckinessState).

How?

There are tons of ways really.

But none of them includes including the word ‘sucks’ in anything that disappoints a first person’s pathetic self centered soul.

Got nothing else to do, buddy?

How about fretting about the arrival of the 2038 Bug… and start optimizing your programs to make them Y32768K compliant. Seriously making it Y10K compliant is enough.

Or you can HTTrack with me. The current site on my list is Microsoft.com/SQL/.

I had a weird dream last night.

Ah… all dreams are weird so that’s data redundancy already.

Anyway… in my dream, Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates were playing chess in a park. The ambience was even in 3D… surreal 3D to be precise, sort of a distorted 3D-like environment quite close to Pixar‘s animated chess clip, Geri’s Game.

(Speaking of Pixar, check out this latest Incredibles trailer.)

But this dream’s more darker… and more violet-ish.

Probably Steve Jobs is behind all these ‘Microsoft versus Linux games’, eh? Sounds like an interesting conspiracy theory.

But no, this isn’t about conspiracy theories… this is about my dream.

Besides, Steve doesn’t give an iMice arse about this, he’s too busy on his ‘chameleonic computer‘, you know a Mac whose shell can change colors, or the second Japan Apple store opening or the rumored Apple TabletPC.

There… wandering again… back to the dream.

I can’t remember everything but there was a point in that dream when Linus was taunting Bill… ‘You can’t beat me, I’ve been playing this game since I was still a kid, when I was in beta version. My linux shell commands and libraries naming convention are even inspired by the way chess moves are recorded.’

Bill replied, ‘Are you familiar with the Windows BSOD? It has VxD written all over it.’

I can’t remember who won that game or how the dream ended. But I do remember it shifting places where the next ‘scene’ involves a half cyborg rabbit.

Speaking of chess, the 14th Abu Dhabi International Chess Festival is being held from August 14 to August 24, 2004. One of its main highlight is the ‘Clash of The Computer Titans’ which features the multi-champion Shredder against the Linux-powered Hydra.

Yes… I think humans grew tired of watching those human versus machine chess tournaments (or probably the human versus human battles) already that they’re firing up these machine versus machine tournaments.

Creating a program that do those chess-move-analysis computation I know is an ultimate milestone for humans, but if you’d ask me I still think it is the uber-most-geek-iest way of having an excuse not to play the game.

An excuse not to think which is ironic because humans need to think.

I know… I know… creating such program involves a lot of thinking. But there is a big difference when you think about chess, or think about algorithms prior to the game and during the actual game of chess.

It’s like ‘Uh-oh, the queen is out already, let Shredder (or Deep Blue or Hydra) do the next move for me.’

That’s why my bet is still on Kasparov (that is if he decides to play against a computer once again), or any of his human successor.

To wrap things up, here’s an article that explains why chess grandmasters are so successful in their field.

If you read that article, you’ll realize that chess and this field they call as software development are similar to each other, in ways more than all the possible chess moves combined.

Before I begin to scribble these thoughts that were bouncing around my mind for the past 16 hours let me tell first that I have great respect for the Open Source. From Torvalds, who my previous co-officemate system administrator worships (and I worship that SysAd during Wednesdays and Fridays), to the linux-kernel-super-computers, to the airplanes, air traffic controls and production plants that use it, the centibots, RedHat, SlashDot and lately Miguel de Icaza and Mono.

Throw in Python and Perl if you like, even Paul Graham and Prometheus.

Yes… too many to mention.

Include also the top universities in this country who are pushing Java and Open Source.

In fact the area of Open Source is too broad and deep to tackle. Let me just highlight the topic partially from Dean Mikhail’s post that had ignited these bouncing neurons in my mind.

Imagine a car with the hood sealed tight and the engine closed from the world — would you trust it blindly to get you to where you want to go. — Mikhail Online

In a perfect world, geeky car owners knowledgeable in how the internals of the car works, exist in every square block. In fact not only the car owners but every human knows how the car functions as well.

Besides, in a perfect world everyone has a Porsche Carrera GT as their ‘obsolete means of land transportation’ inside their 1 mile nanotech-protected garage, located in between two vehicles that have perfected the vertical takeoff.

(I won’t even mention that Monica Bellucci look alike chauffeur… she’s a cyborg anyway.)

Perhaps even 8 year olds know about internal combustion, the four-stroke combustion cycle, higher-octane gasoline, cooling and fuel injection systems. Add in the lubrication, exhaust, electrical and emission control systems.

These kids would even mod their cars to make it look like H-Wings from Star Wars (Too bad the mod pics are already ‘off-lined’).

OK… I’m exaggerating things.

But still, in reality things are not this way.

Far from it really.

Take Mr. Anderson’s car for example. Let’s say Mr. Anderson knows the logic behind his car that well. Inside, outside and beyond. Chances are Mr. Anderson has a wife who cares nothing about cars. Hansel and Greta, his two daughters in this world who can’t even move their focus away from their cell phones when riding that vehicle, don’t care either.

Now Mr. Anderson is beginning to wonder if those cell phones were attached to his daughters when they popped out to this world.

Expand that car to a bus… or to a train or a plane if you like. Sometimes humans even tend to know more about how a train works if something wrong happens like what occurred in MRT Kamuning Station this day. (I was on my way home from a certain client visit and I indirectly suffered from the jam.)

Try randomly asking passengers if they know how the engine works… chances are most of them (if not all) will give you that ‘duh-look’. One out of ten would even yell or glare at you for disturbing their peace, probably 2 would give you their cutest smiles with a ‘go away’ subliminal mindset in the background and probably one out of one hundred would bluff their way into discussing things.

Chances are you won’t even try asking for you know the outcome already.

Most of the time, these passengers don’t even care. As long as they arrive safely to their destination… be with their families… just in time for a rerun of their favorite TV show.

Sans the knowledge of how the engine works or what is behind those hoods, life goes on.

And it goes on peacefully.

Replace(variations(‘passengers’), ‘computer users’)

Point is… most computer users don’t give a smurf’s arse on the ‘internals’. Probably some of them would care knowing the logic behind things… but only few care about the source.

In fact try asking some programmers too how memory is managed, garbage collected, dangling references and the /3GB switch.

They would rather finished the tasks at hand than spend a time discussing these things to you. That is if they really know how things are done in depth.

Most users don’t care how machines and mathematics merged in the form of computers with binary numbers as the battlefield. As long as they can type, edit, save and print their assigned papers and spreadsheets the world is fine.

They don’t care how NudeAngelinaJolie1618.jpg was compressed, ‘digitized’, chopped into pieces and transform into bits once again as it passes fiber cables, lines, modems, routers and cyberspace when they’re sharing those things to their peers.

As long as their friend receives the file, laughs and does things which I won’t even mention here afterwards.

They just don’t care.

Sad… but true.

Even in my programming-related client visits, I have experienced this countless of times already. Sometimes from ‘normal users’… sometimes even from computer technicians. And I believe I’m not that boring when I talk. And I’m fresh as mint.

In fact my pet tiger and my three year old baby thinks I am interesting and cute. (OK… I am exaggerating things once again but yes the tiger exists)

Urgh. This is getting longer already… would you mind if I chop this for a while and continue this some other time?

No you won’t.

You don’t even care.

Every time a blackout occurs, I always realize how weak computers are.

Back when I was still working for my old employer, whenever one occurs we would do something ‘progressive-for-the-company’… something like playing basketball or table tennis perhaps.

The rest of the other offices prefer to nap.

Of course we could choose the nap way of doing progressive things, but since one of our senior database programmers snores like a wild boar who hasn’t slept for two decades after chasing Alicia-looking deers and such, our choices are limited.

But returning to the topic of supercomputers… even if we have seen much of these for the past few months, like the one NASA has, or the one IBM is going to build for the military, or the Earth Simulator Center supercomputer in Japan, and there’s this Open Supercomputer codenamed Beowulf… these are still far from my envisioned ‘supercomputer’.

For one, I think a supercomputer should not be dependent on electricity… or batteries.

A supercomputer should be able to sustain itself.

Which makes the brain a better supercomputer than those other so-called supercomputers. It is unplugged and it needs no batteries to function. We even lug it around everywhere we go without a thought, imagine attempting to carry those supercomputers around with us.

Of course it needs food, protein, porn and whatever but still… it works.

Humans really have to work on powering it up instead of being dependent on calculators, computers and phones. I’d still believe that if man hasn’t discovered the cellphone or even phones in general, we could have furthered our mental telephatic powers by now.

Having said that, I am looking forward for this book. As Boingboing.net calls it… ‘Brain Hack: Overclock your Amygdala’.

Mine needs a hibernation period for now.

I acquired a new pet today, a three and a half feet fire-breathing orange eyed lizard with fifteen fingers.

For those who have been following this site for quite some time, I’m sure you have heard about my tiger and pterodactyl. Well this lizard is the newest.

… and the most arrogant.

I’m starting to call this one IKIA, a short cut for ‘I Know It All’. Ikia claims he knows C++, Java, VB6, VB.NET and SQL. He even understands Clipper and VisualFoxpro as well. He claims his fifteenth finger was meant for the space bar and that he can create a program to generate a 7x7 magic cube in less than five minutes.

Impressive claims if you’d ask me… but until I can find another keyboard for him to use, I won’t be allowing his slimy fingers to touch this Logitech keyboard of mine.

Ikia seem to know it all. He started blobbing about certain operating concepts, kernels, threads and other stuff which I believed were discussed when I was in college. Too bad I was busy doodling some non-cs related illustrations then.

Then he proudly stated the words ‘I am good because I can solve things fast.’

BEEP.

I have seen this before, good programmers and even good students bragging that this and that are easy.

Well… while programming is indeed about problem solving, it is not just about problem solving. It is about solving problems efficiently.

Not just solving problems efficiently today… or this month or this year, but solving problems retroactively, currently and beyond. Unlike hardware, software, especially database applications are not meant to deteriorate.

Well at least, that’s how I see things.

Every time I see a new model of a TabletPC, electronic inks and its variations, I remember an old joke again. Of course I know these ‘advanced technologies’ are not a joke.

Argh. I tried looking in the archives for that joke but after a couple of hours searching, re-filtering and manually scanning things, I can’t seem to find it. It seems that I’ll be needing WinFS to even locate it, but since that would be released probably a year from now and moving of release dates often occur, let me just recreate it.

Fast forward to the future… a couple of scientists ‘out in the field’ re-discovers paper. And of course since they’ve been dependent on paper-less and advanced nano-quantum (or whatever they call it) computer technologies already, they don’t have any idea what it is.

Scientist_001: Station-1029 we discovered something.
HQStation-1029: Be careful spaceboy… can you describe it?
Scientist_002: It’s light… thin… white… lighter and thinner than those laptops issued by EarthGov-00290 last September.
S001: And it comes with a pen-like thing… let me read… it says ‘Pencil’ (‘pen-like’? I guess pens outlived papers)
HQS-1029: Be careful, these might be advanced mines planted by our galactic enemies.
S001: I don’t think so HQ. I haven’t seen something like this before. I’m a pessimist by nature but I feel something good on this.
S002: … and this could be a discovery of the millenniury! (OK… i made up that word)
S001: Wait look! Using this pen-like thing I can write on it!
S002: Where’s the CPU? This is so advanced the CPU is i think so thin and invisible to the eye.
S002: Hooo… I can even flush the things I wrote using the other edge of this pen-like thing. I don’t have to press DEL and click on OK a number of times.
S001: And I think it has an auto-purge feature. No need clean the trash… unless the trash of this thing is located on a different sector.
HQS-1029: Whoa… bring it once here.
S001: Look… look I can even fold it and it doesn’t break. You can’t do that with the computers.
S001: ARGH I dropped it. Hey wait… the data is still there. And it seems to be working fine. No damages so far… not even a scratch.
HQS-1029: WHOA! You can’t do that on these ultra-computers of mine. One crash and it’s goodbye slick baby.
S002: And it can fit the pocket perfectly! And it fits in the other pocket as well. I guess it adjusts to its container automatically. I bet I can even eat this thing!
HQS-1029: Return to base, spaceboys. An unidentified objects are entering the premises of your location. These are probably manned Quasi-borg SPE-OPlanes!
S001: Oh no! They probably have intercepted the communication frequencies.
S002: Something this thing don’t have. More reason to return this to base and replicate things… they’re probably after this thing!
HQS-1029: We’re sending backups… hold on to your sectors. Transmission interrupted.

OK… I did over-bloat some parts, but it holds the gist of it. If you know where and who the links and authors of the ‘original version’, please be kind enough to inform me.

Get well soon, Steve Jobs.

All this memory optimization stuff is but a hoax?

And finally I caved into this technocarnalust of mine.

This involves the ‘monitor dilemma’ I mentioned earlier on my blog.

You see, yesterday (make that the other day since it is 2 in the morning already) after returning a refurbished 15” Samsung monitor that behaves as if it was dissected by three trigger happy aliens, I happen to bump into the shop’s delivery truck that delivered ‘fresh goods’.

The golden loot of that afternoon was a crystal crisp 21” Sun flat screen monitor displayed at the center of the shop, which the vendors are eagerly ‘marketing’.

But who can blame them… it was so lovely… even lovelier than the ViewSonic E70F flat screen monitor I have on my previous workplace in Davao… and ViewSonic has been on top of my list along with the different models of HP.

It’s a refurbished monitor but aside from the one returned, we have purchased around 9 refurbished monitors on that shop already (Samsung, NEC, Toshiba and Sony) and after 7++ months, these monitors are still A-OK. 15” monitor costs around P1,800 (1 dollar is approximately 55 pesos) and 21” sells at around P4,000.

This SUN monitor was being sold at a higher price… 4,500.

And there was I faced between a LackofImmediateNeed and, as Avatar puts it, the ThisOppurtunitySeldomComes data collection battling inside my head.

I was able to convince the head of that shop though to reserve the monitor to me up to 10:30AM the next day (the shop opens around 10AM), until I can decide if I should acquire it.

Back home I did a little research on these Sun monitors.

The ‘net showed that these monitors are really manufactured by Sony for Sun. Some even are bundled for Sun’s 20,000 dollar computer packages. The new model line of Sun 21” monitors even sells for around P52,000 (850+ euros and 952+ dollars if my memory serves me right).

Other reviews were good and convincing too.

There are also refurbished and second hand monitors being sold online but there’s a big difference when it is just around approximately 10 blocks away from your place and you have personally seen it.

The other factors that hinders me to buy the monitor are things I can override and justify but it’s the LackofImmediateNeed reason that for a spend-only-when-needed type of guy like me, makes things a little harder to decide.

So I let sleep and dreams process subliminally the data, the ‘values’ and other factors gathered.

The next day (that was yesterday morning) I found myself in front of the shop 15 minutes before it even opened, fast forward… and I was carrying a heavy load upstairs to our room and I get to enjoy too, the 1600×1200 wallpapers I created the way they should be displayed sans the resizing.

Now here at 2AM in front of this huge thing, that if I think is not suffering from a major jet lag, would probably be happily devouring me especially that there no one else’s is looking.

Ah yes… same reason why the room lights are still on.

Last Saturday, qs and I bought some PC peripherals and stuff. You see… in my regular job, I’m not only in charge with the development of database applications and systems-related functions, I also do hardware related tasks, canvassing and purchasing of computers, haggling with vendors, installation of lan cables, crimping, crawling and networking, hardware inventory and auditing, maintenance and sometimes preparing and arranging some defective computer parts for the weekly roof top practice target shooting.

Most of the time during these purchases, I am just given a budget and I will be the one in-charge to ‘configure’ the specs and joggle the needs to fit those tight budgets.

With a budget this time of 27K in our pockets (1 US dollar is approximately 55 Pesos), we were able to purchase 1 CPU with an AMD Athlon 2000+ processor and a decent MSI motherboard, a good looking transparent case with an extra fan in the side, an 80GB 7200 rpms barracuda hard disk, another 40GB 7200 rpms hard disk for another department which needs this upgrade after their 2GB hard disk crashed from too much porn, 1 256 DDRAM and another 128 DDRAM, three floppy disk drives, two 52X LG CD-ROM drives, (because of the tight budget in last last week’s purchase I refrain from buying those disk and CD-ROM drives), an Epson scanner (CHED is now requiring photos in TORs), an 8 port CNET switch, two Logitech keyboards (one for me), an AVR and a Logitech mouse.

All in all it was a good loot for 26.5K, I got a discount of P375.00, which is quite less compared to the average 1K discount I got from the previous two purchases.

So while waiting for the CPU to be assembled, we roam around the mall. QS found an MP3 CD-ROM which contains the soundtracks of Shrek 2, Dirty Dancing 2: Havana Nights and 13 Going on 30, which she has been pining for… for quite some weeks now.

I, on the other hand, found a copy of Red Hat 9 Linux installation CDs. I was looking for a copy Fedora which after reading from a number of FilTech blogs online, have stirred my curiosity, but couldn’t find one.

I tried downloading Fedora online but since Wednesday last week, I still can’t get a connection that doesn’t say ‘Busy’. From the looks of it looks like Fedora 3 will be released before I can download Fedora 2.

When we arrived home, the first thing I did was to make that spare 40GB hard disk the primary disk, reconfigured the boot up sequence and booted from the Red Hat 9 installation CD. It was five years ago since I was beside our system administrator when she (yup it’s a she) configured and installed Red Hat in three out of our four office servers. Quite a long time already and a lot has changed since then.

I installed using the default settings ‘probed’ by the Red Hat installer. The Red Hat ‘look’ is even cool that my three year old daughter pulled one chair and sat beside me during the installation. She was quite intrigued too with the blue light the CPU case emits.

Every thing was smooth until my daughter who got intrigued by the little silvery power button located on the edge of the case, pushed it.

I ‘Graaa-ed’, my daughter giggled knowing she did something wrong, then kissed me on the cheeks. I guess Linux-users just develop this kind of charm when they start using this penguin-powered OS, eh?

Anyway… the installation run smoothly afterwards. There are just some little things that could have made the installation smoother and a number more things, in my opinion that needs to be removed or remedied to make Red Hat Linux appeal more to the non-geeks in this world.

You see, if Linux or any bundle of its variation wants to be widely used by ‘ordinary humans’, it should lower down a little to a more ‘duh-i’m-a-noob’ level. Of course, without sacrificing its strength… security-related features included.

I’ll delve more on that one on another post but let me give you one example which probably hard-core Linux users overlooked. During start-up, the geeks’-love-for-details is being reflected in a Linux boot up. Those Initializing processes with OK or Failed brackets coupled with some three letter acronyms… you see, ‘normal users’ don’t give a rat’s arse about those things.

Of course to a geek administrator it means a lot but to Mr. O’ Charlie who only wants to run a word processor those things are gibberish. Microsoft during ‘normal’ boot ups would only display their Windows XP logo which I’m sure has a thousand of subliminal hypnotizing subtle messages floating somewhere around it.

There’s more but I’ll delve into that in another blog.

I don’t have much time to explore deeper last Saturday so I made my last quest of changing the display to a much higher resolution. I’m a sucker for higher resolution displays… and since I used the default VESA drivers, the Linux I installed only can go far as the 800×600 dimension limit.

Just for the heck of it I tried misconfiguring the drivers, rebooted (required)… then I got this cyan over blue screen which displays a Yes and a No option with no message.

How in Olympus’ name could I figure that out?

I tried clicking Yes then No but both tries were futile.

After a couple of reboots it was able to restore the old settings though. Again… this was just a rush test installation, I’ll explore more one of these days.

UPDATE:
I installed another Red Hat 9 Linux on an aging and always cranky AMD500 MHz computer of mine in the office today. I paid more attention to details this time and it was able to ‘probe’ my GeForce2 video card and the LG Studioworks monitor which made the resolution better compared to that installation I have done last Saturday.

I tried the Terminal and the other applications and had fun browsing the screensavers. Anyway it will stay there for quite a long time since that old PC crashes often in Windows 98SE, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP installations… yup I’ve tried installing them all in the span of three months.

Red Hat 9 is sailing smooth so far.

My wife, qs, is a PolSci major… I on the other hand, well… studied ComSci. Just a two letter difference but what a big difference it makes in the ‘real world’. ‘Real world’ here would mean beyond the boundaries of an academic classroom.

Two letter difference which I often used on jokes against her. Jokes such as if programmers are running this country of ours in its current state, things would be better. That programmers are problem solvers while some politicians I see often sees problems as a way to bring spotlights into them. They convert problems to votes… while programmers find solutions.

Programmers are often focused on solving the problem at hand while politicians have to consider a lot of factors, linkages, resources, influence before dealing on a certain problem.

While of course I’m well aware that not all PolSci majors are involved with the government and politics, but still having the word ‘Political’ (or Politics-related), the responsibility of government of a country rests on them. They’re supposed to be the future.

In a way or another the studies derived from her course, should’ve been used to improve certain situations… or at least minimized the things that’s pulling us down, such as corruption and other magic-related processes existing in the government/politics.

Compared to computer science, political science has been there since… what? Aristotle’s time..? Herod’s time..? I’m thinking it’s way back there even if the term ‘political science’ was first coined in 1880 by Herbert Baxter Adams, a Johns Hopkins University professor.

Anyway I remember these stuff when I read Jeff Davis’ A programmer’s society replaces a lawyer’s society post from Rick Klau’s What if lawyers became programmers? blog.

And here’s another take from Corante: Hackers, Lawyers, Society and the INDUCE Act (IICA).

Looks like I’m not the only one having those type of thinking.

Lithesome Ice is transferred here inside NSTL119… in time for my lovely wifey’s birthday. At first I thought it was a misconfiguration of some CGI-related files during the server upgrade at Plastiqueweb Networks. After re-chmod-in’ almost every file, I still get errors every now and then. What makes things worse is it sometimes takes around five minutes or more to execute then nothing happens and no error messages were displayed.

It was only when I used the FTP that I get this Disk Quota related error messages. Hmmm… the CheckDiskSpace() probably is one of the overlooked error trapping algorithm I guess.

But returning back to my qs… we celebrated the day by stuffing sea foods into our stomachs… shrimps, prawns, baby lobsters, crabs, clams, oyster and eggs, fish… ah… you name it.

I was even beginning to suspect Sebastian and Jacques were part of our meal this day.

WinUpdateList v1.10 is a nifty utility that displays the Windows updates, service packs and patches installed on your computer and the patches you should be downloading. Double click on the summary grid and it shows the the properties. The files related to the patch are listed on the lower grid. Pressing CTRL+W would fire up the browser opening the page at Microsoft’s Support Center that contains information about the patch and a link to where you can download it. Very helpful if you’d ask me. Especially these days where some humans tend to have grown this fondness for hole-hunting.

Yeah I know there’s WindowsUpdate that comes with Windows… but there are times you prefer having those patches saved on your hard drive so that you won’t be downloading things again if you decide to nuke/reformat your hard disk or install a cleaner OS.

Same holds true when you try to update multiple computers. Unless you’re the type of person who likes to waste bandwidth here and there downloading files again and again.

Probably it would take some time too executing each patch compared to leaving WindowsUpdate to do its thing, but you can remedy this with a small application that saves the patch filename and runs each patch after the other at a given interval. You can even save the file in a database, which you can update later, and ShellExecute each file based on the filenames saved on that database.

Batch scripts can be good alternatives as well.