Send comments or
suggestions to:
Christopher 'Vulpine' Kalley,
vulpine@cyberfox.org

Copyright © 1998-2006

"Better Vulpines through Technology."


"All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by."


Yuggoth Away Thu Feb 27 18:08:12 CST 2003
Mood: Scientific. Music of the Day: danzig - belly of the beast
Well it looks like NASA has the initial funding for a probe to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt of objects. Woohoo!!! About bloody time we go there. You can find out more here on Space.com.

Nighwish Thu Feb 27 14:08:55 CST 2003
Mood: Happy Music of the Day: Nightwish - Over the Hills And Far Away
Well, some friends of mine (Thanks Techie and Amythest) introduced me to a metal band from Finland by the name of Nightwish. Now this is some fun euro-metal. Lots of grand lyrics, loud guitars and keyboards and a opera trained female singer with a lovely set of err...lungs. ;) So far my favorite of what I'm 'borrowing' is a cover of Gary Moore's "Over the Hills and Far Away". They do a great job of covering this one. Oh...btw for all the media watchdogs out there. Yes I downloaded mp3s, guess what...I'm buying the cds. So go away before I taunt you a second time :)

WineX Foo Wed Feb 26 22:20:21 CST 2003
Mood: Frustrated. Music of the Day: Virgin Steele - Track 15 - Great Sword of Flame
Well, in my search to avoid ever having to install windows again, I've been having fun with WineX by TransGaming. After an evening of hacking, slashing and kicking...I got it to install...but now I can't get anything to work using WineX. Maybe I'll cough up the $$$ they want for support...we'll see. Wine is still a PITA, same as it was 2 years ago. Maybe I should just build a gamer box... after the file server and everything else ;)

The morning after... Wed Feb 26 10:37:15 CST 2003
Mood: Sore... Music of the Day: Pantera - This Love
Gods above and below my body hurt. Between the chill weather making my joints ache and my back and shoulder throbbing with pain, it's not fun. Mental note...no more falling on my ass in the parking lot of a grocery store...it's not fun. :(

New Filk Tue Feb 25 21:59:06 CST 2003
Mood: Songster Music of the Day: My own insanity
Well, got another filk posted tonight...check out the Filk page to see what I can do with Evil Gods and the Friends theme.

Shub-Internet Part Pi Tue Feb 25 21:37:22 CST 2003
Mood: Praying Music of the Day: Futurama Episodes
Well, I'm trying my old Athlon motherboard again...lets pray this works. It would be nice to run a system faster than 266. Hopefully good old Shubby will come though. :)

Pride before a fall... Tue Feb 25 16:32:57 CST 2003
Mood: Sore Music of the Day: Blue Öyster Cult - The Red And The Black
Well, I just hurt my pride, my brain and my back. Here in Austin it's a icy mess. I went to the store to pick up a few things. Rhiannon was all worried about me on ice...not a big deal to me. Ice is easy to drive on. Then I got out of the car...and fell on said ice. Landed on my back and shoulder, and then wacked my head on the curb. Ouch. Rang my chimes nicely. Came home, checked out my pupils, reacting normally, so no concussion. Arm hurts alot, I wrenched it good. But I'll heal, I got got good pain killers. My pride at my balance is shot...but I can live with that , pride heals. Fractured skull is a bit more.

New Filk Tue Feb 25 01:54:54 CST 2003
Mood: Silly Music of the Day: Ozzy Osbourne - Desire
Well, I posted a new filk. This one is about a friend of mine and his adventures...check out Techie-Chan Radio. :)

This weekend. Tue Feb 25 01:21:29 CST 2003
Mood: Sleepy Music of the Day: Lief Sorbye - Jenta Gar Pa Gulvet
Well I had a busy weekend. I drove up to DFW Saturday to hang out with the D/FW Ufies and go to my old doc on Monday morning. Went to a List member's 2nd week of bday party. Had fun, watched Meet the Feebles, was soundly berated for choosing that movie. Some people cannot appreciate muppet humor ;) Sunday was spent hanging out with Amythest and Nymaz. Hit the book stores, went to the Purple Cow for milkshakes (purple milkshakes are weird) and g enerally was a goof. Monday I went to my doc, dropped money I really don't have to get my drugs, then headed back to Austin...trying my damnest to outrun the winter storm coming in. When I hit Austin, I hit the other storm coming the other way. Burrrrrrrrr. Got home safe, though all the ice and bleahness. Found out my computers didn't crash all weekend, a new record for the week....then the power went out :( Now I can't sleep and I'm working on my website...boy is my life dull. ;)

Newton's End of Days Mon Feb 24 21:32:21 CST 2003
Mood: Vaguely Creeped out Music of the Day: Lief Sorbye - Haugebonden
Things I never knew about Sir Issac Newton, like he was also a theologian. According to this, Newton predicted that the world would end in 2060...hmm...isn't there a comet due in around that time...

Screenshot Sat Feb 22 00:04:03 CST 2003
Mood: :) Music of the Day: Inkubus Sukkubus - Starchild
Just a quick screenshot, showing off some network foo, a little DNS work and 4 gkrellm windows open. Add too many more Unix boxen to this network that this will rapidly become unworkable. Actually I'll probably remove all of them, save the one linking Shub-Internet to the dialup machine...but for now it's fun.

Nyarlaptop Fri Feb 21 17:47:13 CST 2003
Mood: Geeky Music of the Day:
Well, I decided to be a masochist and put SuSE 8.0 back on my laptop. Got networking and X running, but as usual, sound is being a PITA. I'll hack that out one of these days...still I'm happy. :) Only wintendo is Rhiannon's box, which I borrow to play games...hmm still need to play with Wine I guess...

Wanna Rugby Team Thu Feb 20 23:08:20 CST 2003
Mood: Confuzzled Music of the Day: Silence....
Check out an auction for The Welsh Rugby Team. I think the fans are taking things kinda seriously. (This too, from the Welsh Maniac's page ;)

*giggle* Thu Feb 20 21:15:13 CST 2003
Mood: Amused. Music of the Day: Slayer - Hell Awaits
from the SJ Games Daily Illuminator:

The proposal to create a national do-not-call list is sending spasms through the professional telemarketing industry. Telemarketers say their business would be "devastated" by the measure.

These are giggles of sympathy you hear. And cheers of sorrow. And howls of laughter engendered by great regret. Really . . .

-- Steve Jackson ( http://www.io.com/~sj/)

Oh my Gods, they've gone Welsh Wed Feb 19 23:56:41 CST 2003
Mood: Cymraeg Music of the Day: Brain cells melting...
Ok...for a second I thought my brain broke...nope, Alan Cox has gone uber-Welsh. *thud* What scares me, is I understand one post enough to figure out he's writing in Welsh in his posts for now...explaining kernel foo in Cymric (aka Welsh) is funny as hell. And no, I don't speak Welsh...but I can puzzle out the occasional sentence.

Back online with SMP Wed Feb 19 22:25:14 CST 2003
Mood: Geeky Music of the Day: Mercyful Fate - Curse of the Pharaohs
Well, got Yog-Software working with both processors, after jumping though a few hoops to get the kernel working. But now it is. Now to see which drive crashes first. Besides that, eventually I'll have some other things working on Yog, such as a webcam, and cdburning. But that has to wait on drive foo, and getting the fileserver built. *twiddles fingers*

Oy vey... Wed Feb 19 20:48:18 CST 2003
Mood: Abused Music of the Day: Birds of Prey on TV
Well...guess who decided to crash this morning, right on the 36 hour mark. Shub-Internet. 36 hours before, we had another crash, and I assumed it was just bad luck. Nope. So now it's maybe a harddrive. *sigh* So, after trying to run Shub-Internet without a /home drive...that went well. So I took down Yog-Software, added 2nd processor and the /home drive from Shub. Then a little playing with NFS to get it to mount across the network. All good, save that I have to switch kernels on Yog to use the 2nd processor. Fun fun fun. So we see who crashes with which drive...ARGH !!! My life is insane.

New Toys Tue Feb 18 21:43:33 CST 2003
Mood: Geeky Music of the Day: Bat Head Soup - Desire
As I posted a few days ago, Rhiannon got me a gift certificate to Altex for Vday, well today I went and spent it. Got a 16x dvd rom, a set of headphones so I can listen to my music til 3am without waking people up, and a chipset cooling set for Yog-Software, so I can hopefully get the 2nd processor working on him. Life is good, save I have to reboot Shub-Internet to install the DVD. Wah. ;)

Acceptance Speech Tue Feb 18 08:16:55 CST 2003
Mood: Goofy Music of the Day: Pinky and the Brain - Great Dictator
*tap* *tap* Testing, one, two, three...

Is this thing on ?

*feedback yowl*

*wince* yep, it is.
I stand (virtually) before you to accept the missionary position, err... accept the position of Lord of Chaos within the Ruling Pantheon of the Userfriendly Mailing List.

I first wish to thank my worthy competition, Tara, who it seems I married at some time during the race (Chris Jennings ???). I also wish to thank the 21 voters who chose me...either your checks are in the mail, or the evidence has been destroyed by the 3rd party of Canwe, Cheatum and Howe. I also wish to thank my campaign staff (7 cats, 2 ferrets and one redhead) for their various activities, propaganda generation, and blackmail gathering. Never underestimate the damage a ferret with a camera can cause.

Finally I wish to dedicate this win, and all the souls on this list to the Dark Lady of the World Wide Wait, Shub-Internet. May their suffering feed you for 1k Aeons...err, wait...that's not suppost to be in this speech. Please ignore the previous comment ;)

Vulpine

"Are you a God ?" Tue Feb 18 07:48:28 CST 2003
Mood: Beautific Music of the Day: King Diamond - Come To The Sabbath
"When someone asks you if you're a god, you say YES !" Always good advice IMHO. Well, I just found out I've been elevated to the Administrative Pantheon of the Userfriendly List. What does this mean...I have no clue. ;) But it's always good to be part of a ruling body, all the free perks, all the nubile young interns, all the kickbacks. *snort* Well, if I get any, I'll let you know.

The stuff I come up with Tue Feb 18 07:37:35 CST 2003
Mood: Confuzzled Music of the Day: Mercyful Fate - Buried Alive
Well, I officially have too much free time on my hands. Last night Squeaker and me started talking about linking Saint-Germaine, Nikolas Tesla and Nyarlathotep in a RPG (Role Playing Game for the unevolved among us). Then he commented on a Kabbalaistic tree of life with associations to various Cthulu deities. Well, Squeak sent it to me, and I started correcting it. I mean, come on...Shub-Niggurath in Netzach, what was this guy smoking... ;) For those who don't know, the Kabbalah is a form of Hebrew Mystisism, a sort of magickal filing system...linking various attributes, animals and whatnot to different parts of $DEITY. I know enough to be able to do silly things, like correct this guy's linking.

Here is the original

And, Here is mine. Yep, I need less free time in my life. ;)

Woohoo, I slept. Mon Feb 17 05:52:56 CST 2003
Mood: Awake Music of the Day: The Black Sweden - Enter Sandman-Take A Chance On
Well, last night I ended up crashing around 9pm or so...and stayed mostly asleep til now. And as usual for me I had some whacked out dreams...including
  • Playing lead guitar in The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets in a huge musical show along with bands like Rainbow, Scorpions, and a few other metal bands... plus some girl band that involved punk blondes.
  • Watching the Atlantean olympics (???)
  • Being a cop in a Ghost in the Shell type scenerio, including majorly hot cyborg. Woke up with her offering to cook dinner.
*laugh* What can I say, I have a weird subconscious.

Stupid Computer Tricks Sun Feb 16 05:58:50 CST 2003
Mood: Insomniac and Silly Music of the Day: Manowar - The Power Of Thy Sword
From the Userfriendly List...thanks Pollox.

    http://sct.staghosting.com/index.html Stupid Computer Tricks!
    These images are the result of 8 years in the retail computer industry - 8 years that are thankfully behind me. I used to work in the service department in a retail store of a very famous computer company (think cows...). During this time, I was able to observe (and preserve for posterity) the aftereffects of the - shall we say - "technology challenged" folks. My friends and relatives couldn't believe the stories I told - thus this collection of photos.
link found on http://www.hardocp.com/index.html

Egg Cream, at last... Sun Feb 16 00:44:37 CST 2003
Mood: Happy Music of the Day: Oingo Boingo - Dead Man's Party
Well, this is about a week late, but last Saturday I found a place here in Austin that makes egg creams. Now an egg cream is something I haven't had in years and years. So when some friends decided to go to Katz' Deli me and Rhiannon tagged along. Yum yum, yes it's pricy, but it's really kosher deli food. The BLT sandwich was made with beef bacon, not pork...which is something else I haven't had in years. Rhiannon had strawberry cheescake, which she couldn't finish. And I got an egg cream. Heaven. As good as I remembered. I let the redhead have a sip, and she fell in love with them too. So now I have to figure out how to make them myself. :)

The fun in NYC Sat Feb 15 23:11:33 CST 2003
Mood: Slightly paranoid Music of the Day: Joe Satriani - Psycho Monkey
A friend of mine passed me this link about a protest march in NYC. Kinda scary, I wonder if it's time for me to look into moving abroad...

Dolly RIP Sat Feb 15 22:17:28 CST 2003
Mood: Mourning Music of the Day: Rainbow - Snowman
Dolly, the Cloned Sheep is dead. Read about it here. Oh Dolly, we hardly knew ya.

Shub-Internet, again. Sat Feb 15 21:45:14 CST 2003
Mood: Hopeful Music of the Day: Testament - Return to Serenity
Ok, after much headache and frustration, I'm trying something new. I put in an older P-II motherboard with a 266 processor and 256 megs of RAM, basically testing to see if it is the motherboard or the hard drives. System runs ok...but I'll be glad when I'm back to using something with more uumph. Though she runs good enough to government work right now. :) I'll post more on the status.

Daredevil & Crazy Lady Sat Feb 15 21:15:48 CST 2003
Mood: Ok Music of the Day: Oingo Boingo - Weird Science
Well, tonight I went with Rhiannon to see Daredevil. It was good, a little darker than I expected, but still good. Look for a cameo by Kevin Smith in the movie. :) The fight scenes are nicely done, and the special effects with Daredevil's hyper-senses looked very cool. Now making Kingpin black was a bit of a suprise, but Michael Clarke Duncan pulled it off very nicely. All in all, it was good. Not as good as it could have been, but worth the viewing. Vulpine gives it two thumbs up.

Of course, no night out wouldn't be complete with a near-confrontation with a psycho...We were pulling out of a parking space, and started to cut someone off by accident. We pull back of the way, and the lady starts honking, yelling and giving us the finger. Well, we responded in kind. So the crazy gets out of the car and starts yelling louder. Lucky for her, and us, prudent heads pervailed and we backed up...just as the cop came over to talk to her. *sigh* Crazy people...gotta love 'em.

"Borked" Opera Fri Feb 14 21:47:04 CST 2003
Mood: *giggle* Music of the Day: Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - Flee
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2003/02/14/

The Swedish Chef Goes After Microsoft
Oslo, Norway - Feb 14, 2003
    Two weeks ago it was revealed that Microsoft's MSN portal targeted Opera users, by purposely provided them with a broken page. As a reply to MSN's treatment of its users, Opera Software today released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. The Bork edition behaves differently on one Web site: MSN. Users accessing the MSN site will see the page transformed into the language of the famous Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork!

Happy Valentine's Day Fri Feb 14 21:32:19 CST 2003
Mood: Happy Music of the Day: None
Well, happy Valentine's Day for all those out there who want to celebrate it ;) And if you don't, happy Lupercalia out there for all those ancient Romans who want to celebrate it. :)

We had a pretty good day here at Cabal23.net, Rhiannon got me a nice mushy card and a gift certificate to Altex. (See note below about what it will be used for ;)) I was going to get her chocolate covered strawberries...but I couldn't find anywhere that had them, so I made them from scratch. Woohoo me !!! I am pretty damn proud of myself, and she loved them So that's our little bit of sap here in Chez Cyberfox. :)

ARGH !!!!!!!!!!!! Fri Feb 14 21:16:05 CST 2003
Mood: Frustrated Geek Music of the Day: None
Ok. Linux hates me. Shub-Internet hates me. *ARGH* !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you haven't guessed, I had more issues today. Ok. Woke up, booted up Shub. No sound. Gkrellm is showing a USB mic installed. ???? After some poking around, remove usb stuff, sound works. Then she promptly crashes. *thud* Reboot, ok...modprobe is failing due to weird config errors, after much arguing and gnashing of teeth, I utterly break modprobe. Not sure how, but it don't do anything. Scream alot more. Reinstall SuSE. Mostly goes ok...except the dual monitor setup won't get recognized. Scream in more frustration, finally setup as a singlehead box. (how do people use one monitor in Linux ???) Ok...time for drastic measures. First, time for a blood sacrifice (and not my own this time) second, find parts for my computer that won't crash. I have a micro ATX motherboard here, I'm going to go get a Duron CPU tomorrow (with help from my sweety, more in a minute) and see if I can get it stable. I didn't want to use the Micro ATX due to lack of pci slots and plans for a gaming box. Oh well, I need a stable box more. Then, we see. *crosses fingers*

The FoxCam is back. Thu Feb 13 21:27:13 CST 2003
Mood: Very Geeky Music of the Day: Traci Lords - Fallen Angel
Well, I got my Logitech Quickcam webcam working under linux. It was actually fairly easy, SuSE detected the cam just fine once it was plugged in, but didn't map it to anywhere. Then after some research, I found this site all about setting up Quickcams under Unix. Installed the mod, install camE by Tom Gilbert, and voila...I have webcamage. :) So check out the webcam link on the side to check me out :)

New Plush Cthulhus on the horizon Wed Feb 12 19:37:27 CST 2003
Mood: Ia Cthulhu Music of the Day: Meatloaf - Paradise by the Dashboard Lights
From the Toy Vault website.
    "Look for Secret Agent Cthulhu and Super Hero Cthulhu Coming Soon!"
OOOOH... I want :)

Journalism update Tue Feb 11 22:05:08 CST 2003
Mood: Eeeh Music of the Day: Bat Head Soup - Mr. Crowley
Well, I posted the latest version of Journalism up to the Cabal23.net website. Changes are just the archiving feature. Enjoy.

ARGH !!! Mon Feb 10 23:18:32 CST 2003
Mood: Annoyed Music of the Day: The sounds of stress
Well, due to a system crash in mid post, and the SNAFU'd nature of the script I run for posting to the site, I lost Feb's posts. Lucky for me, google had a cached backup of all the posts besides today's, and I recreated today's from the screenshot. *thud* So, a quick bit of editing later, I fixed the script to backup the newspage on each revision. Kinda kludgy, but it will work.

New Shot Mon Feb 10 22:51:24 CST 2003
Mood: Still Geeky Music of the Day: Megadeth - 99 Ways to Die
Well, in honor of the new machine here at Cabal23.net, and to show off the wonders of 3 gkrellm monitors, here is...the latest screenshot



Ok, it's nothing really new, but I'm happy and proud. Other than the 3 gkrellms, and a change in Enlightenment themes, not much different. I need to get a 3rd 19" monitor, and really have some fun. Oh well. When the paychecks come in...if they ever do.

New Server Mon Feb 10 21:40:31 CST 2003
Mood: Geeky Music of the Day: Orgasmo - The Motion Picture
Well after spending a good chunk of the evening working on it, I finally got an internal DNS server running here at home. The new box is named Tru-Namedra, the Binder of Domains. (aka, another Geek Old One) Yes, I am a freak...but a freak running his own DNS server :) Next step, the file server.

Dude, your going to jail! Mon Feb10 17:31:25 CST 2003
Mood: Amused Music of the Day: Judas Priest - You've Got Another Thing Coming
Well it finally had to happen. Steven, aka the 'Dude your getting a Dell' person, got busted. Read the news here.

Mp3 Backup Mon Feb 10 00:46:07 CST 2003
Mood: Tired Music of the Day: Silence.
Well, I finally finshed the fun of mp3 backups. Over 150+ cds later, I have every mp3 backed up in my network. Took long enough. *sigh* Well, at least I have everything nice and safe and sound. At least I hope so. ;)

Dull weekend Sun Feb 9 22:37:14 CST 2003
Mood: Comfy Music of the Day: Tad Morose - Servant Of The Bones
Well, it's been a fairly dull weekend. Cleaned up my rack of doom, need to finish up tomorrow with tying down cables and setting crud up. Saw Halloween: Resurrection tonight with Rhiannon. It was as bad as I thought it would be. Well, at least there were no evil killer Druids in this one. *sigh*

Not much else, more job hunting this week, as well as alot of cleaning. Maybe I'll have some luck this week. Gods I hope so.

Update to shub-inter.net Sat Feb 8 16:00:22 CST 2003
Mood: Bored Music of the Day: Lizzy Borden - Master of Disguise
Well, I did a little dreaming/wishing and came up with my ultimate linux box. The stats are here. So, if you want to get me a gift...feel free ;)

General Ramblings Sat Feb 8 15:01:35 CST 2003
Mood: Bored Music of the Day: Apocalyptica - Creeping Death
Well, I'm sitting here at Shub-Internet plotting out some network foo, backing up mp3s (only have 25-30 cds or so more to burn) and generally being bored. Job hunting sucks, next week is the swallowing of pride and hitting the retail stores, along with temp agencies and praying for the sysadmin gods to take pity on me. Not a whole lot else going on. Need to make a trip down to wal-mart sometime today, pick up some stuff I need. Going to a GWNN munch tonight, get to see some friends. That will be fun. Boy is my life dull. ;)

On to the subject of my crashing computer...we're literally down to two causes, the motherboard or the hard drives...personally I'm thinking (and hoping) it's motherboard. *sigh* So I've been scouring Ebay looking for a Slot A motherboard. Or maybe I should find a socket A cpu and see if it was the cpu that died in my other board, or the board itself. Why can't computers be simple... *sigh*

Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans Fri Feb 7 23:50:15 CST 2003
Mood: Bemused Music of the Day: Cheese.
Well, after a fairly cruddy week, I sat down with a Cute Redhead and watched one of my $HOLIDAY gifts...Deathstalker IV. Now I remember watching the original one of these in my teens and laughing my head off. It was nice to see they kept to the same standards of quality ;) It's badly acted, badly dubbed, and has lots of gratitious sex and violence. But it's fun, lots of silly lines and goofy comments. And did I mention the gratitious sex and violence ;) *grin* And Rhiannon liked it too. It's not Shakespeare, it's not Conan, but it will entertain you if your standards aren't too high. Give it a shot.

More crashing Thu Feb 6 07:27:40 CST 2003
Mood: Perturbed. Music of the Day: Dream Theater - Puppies on Acid - Take The Time
ARGH !!!!!!!!! This blankity blank computer is trying to drive me insane. More crashes, more instability. *sigh* And I can't fscking afford to fix it. Ok, done whining. :(

Friend Test Wed Feb 5 18:04:36 CST 2003
Mood: see below ;) Music of the Day: weird al - generic blues
Well, I finished out my Friend Test. Well, I'm not suprised at who got what. ;) What can I say, Rhiannon knows me well. ;)

75 - Rhiannon
75 - Vulpine
73 - ....
72 - amythest
71 - ...
66 - Curious
62 - SuGaRpIxIe
58 - aspenleaf1
52 - le Gryph
50 - Donna 		48 - Penni/Archer
47 - Geekgirl
46 - Jasper
46 - WesM
43 - fara333
42 - Mare
42 - Kyojin
41 - needo
40 - Aspen
37 - dravnstar


hmm, makes me wonder who ... and .... are, and curious about Curious ;)

Cooling Shub Wed Feb 5 18:00:11 CST 2003
Mood: Hopeful Music of the Day: Josie And The Pussycats - 3 Small Words
Well, I think I've got the issue with crashing computer solved. Add 2 case fans, a new cpu fan, turning on the powersupply fan (which I didn't know existed.) use rounded cables, tape or tie everything down and offer up blood to Shub-Internet. If that doesn't work...I don't know what will. *thud* So, we'll see how things go. *crosses fingers*

Kushiel's Dart Wed Feb 5 17:26:21 CST 2003
Mood: Frisky Music of the Day: Horslips - 1-02_Green gravel.mp3
Well, I'm 98% finished with the book Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey. It's a combination fantasy/intrigue/erotica novel, set in a medeval France that is very similar and yet very different. The heroine of the novel is a god chosen masochist, called an anguisette, who is also a trained courtesan and spy. Lots of background story weaved into the book, and the way it reads is more of a person's autobiography than a novel. The only drawback in the read is most of the character names and place names are in medieval French which either makes perfect sense, or has me spend half an hour puzzling it out. (I understand medieval French alot better than modern French...too many old history texts I guess.) But other than that, it's a good read. I'm sad that I'm almost done with it. She has another book out, Kushiel's Chosen...and a 3rd on the way (Kushiel's Avatar)...but since they are or will be out in hardcover, probably be a while before I read them. *twitch* *twitch*

Speaking of books, Spider Robinson will have a new book out in August, the latest in the Callahans series. I really really can't wait. :) Spider is one of my favorite authors, his books I can read over and over again. In fact, I may read Callahan's Key after I'm done with Kushiel's Dart.

Early Morning Weirdness Wed Feb 5 07:59:12 CST 2003
Mood: Confuzled Music of the Day: Bad anime.
(07:48:05) Vulpine: 'allo
(07:48:37) Grim Squeaker: Coooffeee
(07:52:52) Vulpine: *thud*
(07:55:03) Grim Squeaker: Kohee, kudusai?
(07:55:22) Vulpine: english ? or Engrish please ?
(07:57:08) Grim Squeaker: Give me coffee before I wake up this afternoon in a flower-printed mumu with the impression of a keyboard on my fact, most honorable fox.
(07:57:31) Vulpine: ok, that's getting quoted....
(07:59:14) Grim Squeaker: Go for it.

Xbox Linux Cluster Wed Feb 5 07:53:36 CST 2003
Mood: Sleepy Music of the Day: Bad anime.
Well, now I've seen it all...some geek got his college to pay for a 3 node linux cluster...made out of X-boxes...check it out here.

Vulpine's thoughts on a dark and stormy night... Wed Feb 5 01:40:44 CST 2003
Mood: Philisophical... Music of the Day: Michael Oldfield - The Source of Secrets
Well, another day, another bad bout of insomnia. Starting to get used to this I think. Still having heat issues, rearranged the case fans AGAIN in Shub-Internet, lets hope this helps...before I go nuts.

Been wondering what I'm going to do with my life. Some things are easy, staying in Austin, staying with Rhiannon , but other decisions, like what to do for a living is still elluding me. A good chunk of me wants to stay in the internet business, but working for IA soiled alot of that for me. And from what I hear from my sources still inside, it's just getting worse for tech weenies. Management there, and at other places look at the economic downturn as a godsend...the carrot and stick approach. The carrot is a job, the stick is whatever asinine policy they want to use. Ok, I've managed techs...I wasn't very good at it but I learned that if you have quality people, the $EXCREMENT gets done. Tech support is high stress enough that you allow the occasional steam blow off, the 5 min reading personal email or looking at Slashdot before the next call, and the insanity that awaits. But no...I guess better to go for poor quality and milk the slaves, err techs for all their worth. Because, to be honest, most geeks right now are rather scared of unemployment. I know I'm not happy to be jobless right now. But frankly, I'd see my pride speaking up, and off to pinkslip land I would go. *feh* Rock and a hard place...

So to all the techshop managers out there, just remember...yes the market is bad, but someday it will get better, and then how you've managed your geeks will be remembered. And if you get left high and dry, with only the drones and dregs of the tech support world in your cubicles, you'll only have yourselves to blame.

Heroic Trio Tue Feb 4 20:37:28 CST 2003
Mood: Befuzzled Music of the Day: Supersuckers - Psyched Out
Well, last night me and Rhiannon watched the Heroic Trio. What can I say about this movie...save...err...it was interesting. Major wirefoo feature, lots of impressive martial arts, and a plot I'm still puzzling out. 3 martial arts heros try to save a pack of babies from being turned into one or more demon princes. (the movie was confused on the #) 1 is a good guy, one is a merc for hire, one is in the service of the evil bad guy. Somehow, they were all trained together at one time...not sure if by the bad guy or someone else...again, plot was lacking in detail. It was confusing as all hell, but fun wirefoo...including a flying spinning motor cycle attack. Ok, it's cheezy as hell, but perfect for a bad movie night. Vulpine says...eeeh, it's worth a cheap rental.

Year of the Goat Tue Feb 4 18:37:01 CST 2003
Mood: Hungry Music of the Day: Judas Priest - You Say Yes
Well, after reading mej's website, I found out that the Chinese New Year was the 1st. And it's the year of the Dark Goat of the Inter...err...Goat ;) And it's year 4700... Cool, I see another century mark ;) Now I want to go out for Chinese food...

SuSE Reinstall...aka *thud* Tue Feb 4 14:12:50 CST 2003
Mood: Masochistic Music of the Day: 15_-_Redemption
Well, in my continuing search to figure out why Shub-Internet keeps locking, I made the assumption that software may be an issue as well as hardware, so I did a complete reinstall of SuSE 8.0. Now that was a mess. I won't go into all the gory details, but lets just say it wasn't fun. And when I finally got it all working...another lockup. Ok...it's not software...I'm back assuming it's heat. So later today I'm going to be having fun with tape and thermal paste trying to keep my box from nuking. Wish me much luck.

Filkage Mon Feb 3 03:32:17 CST 2003
Mood: Insomanac Music of the Day: Racer X - Street Lethal
Well, I couldn't sleep worth a damn tonight, so I started work on a project I've wanted to do for a while. Posting some of filks on the Cyberfox.org website. So check it out at http://www.cyberfox.org/filk/ , and let me know what you think.

Insomnia Sucks. Mon Feb 3 01:42:43 CST 2003
Mood: Can't Sleep, Clowns will eat me. Music of the Day: Yngwie J. Malmsteen - Heaven Tonight
Ok, it's Sunday night/Monday morning and I can't sleep. Not looking forward to job hunting. I guess I'm just a tad worried too...not like the market is still worth a damn out there. *sigh* So I'm up way too late. Rhiannon is passed smooth out, but since she has to get up tomorrow at a normal hour, it's kinda expected. No one online to talk to, no geek projects screaming for my attention. Did get to help a friend with some DNS foo tonight, get to dust off my Bind skillz for a bit ;) Nice to be useful for a while.

Hmm, what else is going on. *ponder* Squat. Yeah, this is one happy ass post. *grr* January has yet again proved not to be my month, hopefully Feb. and the months beyond are better. I'd say they couldn't get worse... but that's one way to tempt fate, plus I can imagine all sorts of nasty things to pop up...so I'll just be quiet. ;)

Congratulations :) Sun Feb 2 14:51:01 CST 2003
Mood: Happy Music of the Day: None
To Shane and Andrea of the D/FW Ufies List. They tied the knot yesterday, or in geek parlance, they set each other in their HOSTS.ALLOW file ;) Congrats to you two, and many happy years together.

New Screenshot Sun Feb 2 13:45:55 CST 2003
Mood: Bored Music of the Day: Evil Toons
I got bored, so I decided to take a new screenshot. Showing off a few of the new toys I have working.


As you can see, I've got GkRellM running for both Shub-Internet and Yog-Software. Not as much info on Yog, but mostly it's there to monitor the ppp link and cpu. I've also got J-Pilot running with my old Palm Pilot III. I'm quite impressed with myself, getting this to run. I've also got my usual apps, Xine running a bad b-movie by the name of Evil Toons. Classic Fred Olsen Ray movie, starring Madison an ex-pr0n star trying to make it as a serious actress/singer. She's actually rather funny in this movie, plus well...sans clothing a bit. ;) After watching this movie my advice is, before reading aloud from any book of Ancient Lore, check for footnotes first ;) Not much else new and excited, but I felt like sharing ;)

RIP STS-107 Sun Feb 2 00:06:54 CST 2003
Mood: Sad. Music of the Day: %s
Well, as you probably have heard, we lost the Space Shuttle Columbia this morning. I remember back when Challenger exploded, I was home sick from school, and I was sitting on the floor watching the launch on TV. Today I woke up, logged in to check email, and found out. At first I thought it was a joke. Nope. *sigh* I have always been a fan of our space program, and a believer in it. I just hope this doesn't drive a final nail in NASA's coffin. Because that would be as much of a tragedy as the loss of the 7 astronauts.

Car foo Sat Feb 1 02:37:15 CST 2003
Mood: Fine now. Music of the Day: The humming of the Geek Old Ones.
Oh, something I forgot. Cars can be evil. I had a flat today, not a big deal. Get out...grab jack, donut and lugwrench. Try to take lugs off, can't find a way to get the damn hubcap off. Finally figure out that a screw removes a section of the cap. Then, 4 normal lugs...one WTF kinda lugnut. Puzzle over this thing til some good Samaratan comes over to see if I need help. He points out that it's a locking lugnut, which is new to me...find the key to the nut, loosen the nuts, get the tire changed. Bleed all over my new car. :( I whacked my knuckles on something and bled freely, didn't notice til I was done. Ugg. Too bad the manuals didn't mention these little details. So sometime soon I have to get some normal lugnuts, since the locking ones are a PITA and easily messed up when the mechanics change tires.

*laugh* Sat Feb 1 02:32:04 CST 2003
Mood: Silly Music of the Day: The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets - Cthulhu Dreams
Check this out. One of the more amusing uses of Flash I've seen in a while.

Lipizzaner Stallions Fri Feb 1 01:16:43 CST 2030
Mood: Amazed Music of the Day: Ghoultown_-_05_-_Wicked_Man
Well, along with my geeking, I went with Rhiannon to see the "World Famous" Lipizzaner Stallions. I was so impressed, words cannot describe. I've never been in the military, but I have a vague idea how much effort close order drill takes. Now imagine that with horses, but in the process you add martial arts and/or ballet. Yep...it's a show and a half. Plus, the Stallions are beautiful, the older ones are nearly pure white, and even the youngest is a lovely dapple grey. If you get a chance...go see it. And if your lucky, they'll do the Swing music bit that was pure magic :)