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May 30, 2004

Time to play catch-up

Okay, so I've been slacking off in my posts lately. What can I say? I've been extremely busy and that's the only excuse that I have at the moment.

But, I'm back to update things and let everyone know what's been going on in the past couple of weeks.

1. I finally got all of the junk out of the basement. We found an abatement company to come and pick up what was left over after the employees got through with the PCs, monitors, printers, faxes, etc. Luckily, most of the stuff was taken by employees... one of them took over 15 PCs by himself. I was more than glad to give them to him, and even more glad to see them go. By the time it was all said and done, I had loaded up a total of 6 palettes full of equipment and hauled them to the back lobby for the abatement company to pick up. I was expecting them to bring a big truck that we could load all the palettes on, but instead they brought a van. All of the equipment had to be manually loaded into the van, and once it was all in, there wasn't any spare room to move.

The basement looks really good now. I really opened up the monitor wall, and have more space to put stuff out there. I also was able to get the closet cleaned up a bit and organized, but I'm afraid that it's started to pile back up again. I don't know why I'm so surprised by that. By now, you'd think that I would've come to accept these things.

2. Amanda had her last day of school last Tuesday. She's a college girl once again, and I couldn't be more proud of her. She starts classes in August, and is really excited to be going back. I'm hoping that we'll be able to make ends meet during the summer, up to a point where we can have her going to school without having to work as well. I'm keeping my fingers crossed ... here's to good fortune.

3. The Crusade is next weekend, and I'm getting a bit excited about it already. Even though it's one of the longest weekends of the year, and I have to work my ass of getting ready for it, I just really love the experience. Thus far, I've been able to get several people involved, and I'm hoping for more this coming week. Steven and Raphiel will be down and joining in the fun, and what's really neat is that this'll be Raphiel's first trip down to our place since we met him a few years back. Amanda's mom and sister will be here as well, and they're staying the weekend with us like they did last year. I had a great time with them, and I'm hoping that it'll be more of the same this year. I tried to get Michael to participate this year, but it seems that he couldn't get the time off. I told him to at least consider coming up on Sunday and joining in, but I'm not convinced that he'd do that yet. I've also invited Mom and Mike to come as well, but again it doesn't seem like they were too interested in doing so.

But as far as the Crusade is concerned, we're doing quite well. This is the first time in a long time that we've had the set up and ready to go a week prior to the event. I have to hand it to Jerry and Mickey, they've really put this one together. Since all of their work has been completed, it gives Kyle and I the entire week next week to get everything setup for phones and computers. It won't be a rush job like years past, where everything litterally came down at the last second.

The one real downside to this years Crusade will be the lack of our good friend, Robert. He's done every Crusade with Kyle and myself, and was part of the team. He's down in South Carolina being a Marine at the moment, so he doesn't exactly have the time to make a trip to KY and work the weekend. That's okay though ... he'll be in our thoughts. :)

4. I finally got Fedora Core 2 DVD downloaded and installed. It amazes me how damn difficult it is to find a good mirror to download the DVD from. I would assume that it wouldn't be nearly as popular as the 4 disc set is, as DVD burners really haven't caught on as of yet with the mainstream market. But they're nearly impossible to find with a decent speed. The other side of the issue is that most download applications, either Web browser or programs like wget, have a 2GB limit. Apparently the people who maintain wget is working on their limitation issue, but for people like me who want to set the download in the background and forget it, the 2GB limitation is a huge hassle at the moment. The Fedora 2 DVD is 4.1GB, and there's no way around that.

The other day, while doing a search for a fix for wget, I came across a Web site that mentioned using a Linux application called ncftpget. It works like a mix between wget and an FTP client. Technically it *is* an ftp client, but with no 2GB limit and the ability to continue downloads if they get stopped. There's no GUI to speak of, only the command line. The Web site that mentioned ncftpget also mentioned a good download site with a fast transfer rate, claiming to have downloaded the DVD in 3 hours over DSL. Well, I didn't get that kind of speed, but I definately found it to be more of a reliable download source.

ftp://redhat.secsup.org/pub/linux/redhat/fedora/core/2/i386/iso/FC2-i386-DVD.iso

5. Amanda and I have started to clean up the apartment and re-arrange furniture. While I was at work the other day, she managed to completely re-arrange the living room. I wasn't too sure about it when I saw it at first, as she put the chair in an area that can't view the TV well, but the more I see it the more I like it.

She closed the door that leads into the office and put the chair in front of it. We had discussed doing this for a while now, and since it has been done, I'm happier with it. It's not nearly as noisy as it was before, and there is a bit more privacy throughout the apartment. Before, if I was sitting in the office in my underwear and someone knocked on the door, I would have to scramble to find some pants to put on. Now, that's not the case at all ... I just stay in here until I know that the coast is clear to make it into the bedroom. :)

......

Well, that's about it for playing catch-up. I have a three day weekend thanks to Memorial day, so I'm going to go and work on our apartment with Amanda some more. We're moving the office into the dining room and making the office into a spare bedroom.

Later!

Posted by ed at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)