I need a way to build a Linux executable to run on our web hosts' servers. I can't build it in Windows, and we don't have a Linux PC to use. It builds correctly in Cygwin, but Cygwin cant' build Linux executables. I didn't want to wipe any of our existing PCs, so that means we need to get a new PC. Wicked fun. I searched around the web and the classifieds and Dell's site... nothing good there. But, on a lark, I found a floor demo / refurbish of a nice little Sony VAIO laptop at Circuit City. It was the same price as a full low-end desktop system, so I bought it.

Apparently, laptops these days don't come with system recovery CDs; you have to make your own when you get home by running a wizard that burns CDs for you. I guess it saves on shipping CDs ? Since I'm gonna put Linux on this thing, I need a way to re-Windows it, if this turns out to be a dead end (so I can return it). So, I start the recovery disk wizard; it tells me to be sure to use "good quality CD-Rs" ! And then it fails to burn six Sony CD-Rs. Oh boy. Should I return it now or push onward? Onward. It finally works when I switch to these funky black Memorex CD-Rs that I have lying around. Yay.

System recovery disk setup complete, I pop in my Linux CD and install Linux. 30 minutes later, it's a Linux laptop. Sweet. Dismal screen resolution, but still sweet.

Now to get the source files for the license maker from the Windows box to the laptop. Neither computer has a floppy drive. Let's try sharing the Windows folders... nope, Linux can't see it. Fuss with permissions and logins and passwords... nope, no luck. FTP ? Nope, can't figure out how to enable it on either machine. Samba? Can't find it. Burn a CD! Nope, the laptop can't read the Sony CDs and I'm out of black ones. Try a DVD? Nope, laptop can't read that DVD format. FTP up to our website and then download onto the laptop ? Upload goes fine, but the laptop can't see what I've uploaded (password problems) - and now I can't delete or move the stuff I uploaded - our web host is having problems, too.

OK.. I'm stumped. Nothing is working.

Wait... what's this little slot on the side of the laptop? Label says "Memory Stick".. hmm... you mean like the one in our Sony P7 digital camera? Yup. So, drop the files onto the memory stick and pop it in, not expecting that Linux will be clever enough to find the Memory Stick or know how to use it. It finds it! Success! The files have been copied!!

Now let's build them. They built fine under Cygwin, which is just like Linux, right? right?

Of course not. Hundreds of errors whiz by.

Time to slit my wrists.

--

OK, I held off on the suicide thing, and fixed the build issue by downloading a new version of the Crypto++ library - not a sure bet, given that Crypto++ often totally rewrites the interfaces between versions, but this one worked. It built! Put it on the server... PHP can't find it! Dig around for a half hour, trying to figure out how to make PHP find the file that's sitting in the same directory as the PHP file itself.... Aha! It found it! Run it... oh no! Wrong version of the C++ runtime libraries... what? Umm..poke, snoop, google, test.. Aha! I installed the wrong version of Linux! Of course! Time to download a different version (it only takes an hour on a cable modem connection) and rebuild the laptop - again!

All this, because some asshole at our credit card site didn't want to run our license generator any more. I'll think no happy thoughts for him, this Christmas.

--

Wait, did I say a "different" version of Linux? I meant older. And this older version doesn't know how to read the memory card slot on the laptop. WooHoo! Still can't find a way to enable the local FTP services on either box, so I retried using the FTP site on our web host. That worked. Good. Now the source is on the new/old Linux laptop. Try to build it. Fail. Fix a bunch of things that are angering the compiler. It builds! It runs correctly! Upload it to the web server. Try it. Ta-da! It works!

Now to wrap it in a program that can send email.

Every time I get near Linux, I know I'm in for an epic adventure.

Someday, I'll get tired of cat pictures. Someday.

Story on CNN.com:

CNN.com - Racy 'Gilligan' ad draws protest - Jun 10, 2005:

LOS ANGELES, California (Hollywood Reporter) -- With the aftertaste still lingering from Paris Hilton's hamburger commercial, there's new beef over a racy ad from TBS.

A titillating TV spot promoting the cable network's second season of reality series "The Real Gilligan's Island" has become a lightning rod online, where clips of the commercial on http://www.TBS.com are being linked on countless blogs, some of which blast the ad. (TBS is a division of Time Warner, as is CNN.)

...

"That ad is a visual signal, shorthand for a whole world of issues that women have to struggle against every day," read one post on a leading liberal-minded blog called http://www.DailyKos.com, by a writer who identified herself as Nixie Knox.

ugh.

But, here's the part I liked, the four ads on the right side: "ERICO - ERITECH Lightning Rods", "Lightning Rods at Shopping.com", "Professional Lightning Rod Installation", "Hamilton Lightning Rod Systems".

Crooked Timber's Friday Fun Thread is "share your funniest athletic embarassments as a young person". Here are mine:

• I played little league baseball one year. In the last game of the season, last inning, two outs, I hit a low fly ball directly to the right fielder - to lose the championship game. That was the last of my little league career.
• In 9th grade gym class, the coach had us run a lap around the bus loop, roughly 1/4 mile, for time. I took off like a bullet and blew the rest of the class away - not hard to do, because I think I was the only one who put any effort into it; for whatever reason, I just really like the feeling of running fast. The coach, who was also the track team coach, pulled me aside and told me I needed to join the track team. So I did.

  For the next few weeks, we did lots of long slow distance, many laps on the track, learned how to use starting blocks, ran a lot of 100m sprints and 800m runs to see where we'd fit in, etc.. It was my first school athletic team.

  Then, the day of the first meet came. I was gonna run the 400m! (and the 200m and the 1600m relay - whew) The 400m came up. So I got in my lane, waited for the gun, and took off running like a maniac - I got out ahead of everyone, cut to the inside, held my lead and won by many yards, grinning like a fool. Somehow, in the weeks of traning, nobody ever told me that you need to stay in your lane for the 400m. So, I was disqualified, and everybody had a good laugh at the new guy.

PowerPop sayeth:

Honestly, people, if you're interested in tracking complicated political interconnections for big stakes, spend your time figuring out why the fuck the Royal House of Saud gets to set American foreign policy and then fund suicide bombers all while walking hand-in-hand with the prez.

Tee hee.

By simple couch inertia, I've ended up watching two entire episodes of Fox's latest atrocity, Beauty And The Geek: a show in which a group of young, super-hot, but not super-bright women, and a group of brainy but socially inept men pair up and work to eliminate all the other pairs, one elimination per week, by winning little competitions that highlight the women's lack of book learnin and mechanical aptitude, and the men's complete lack of social skills, lack of relationship experience and all-around geekiness. The twist: before each competition, the men have a chance to teach their partners about cars, politics, etc. and the women have a chance to teach their partners about dancing, massage and pop culture. Then the women compete against each other, and then the men compete. The winner of each gets to choose a couple to send to the "Elimination Room", where the two couples have to answer trivia questions. There's not enough personality to generate any politics. Mostly, the women prance around in bikinis and Daisy Dukes and look pitifully at the guys, who are completely overwhelmed by the purrrty gurrrls. It's as shallow and stupid as any reality show I've ever seen - well, that's not true, Joe Millionaire was worse (and I watched all of it); and The Swan was an abomination - so I only watched four episodes of that.

Bored at work, I decided to take a walk. There's a bunch of fast food places a few hundred yards up the road, so I thought I'd make a meal out of it. When I stepped out into the sunlight and humidity from the cool shade of the office building, I had only two things on my mind: a hamburger and a milk shake^*. A couple of minutes later, I was sweating like a madman, standing between a McDonald's and an Arby's. I chose Arby's.

Ordered my Regular and a small strawberry shake and headed back. After the first two drags at the straw, I concluded two things: barring employee error, Arby's shake machines must use a single nozzle for all flavors because the strawberry shake tasted like mocha (aka "Jamocha") as much as it tasted like strawberry; and secondly, a jamocha/strawberry blend is fucking 'orrible. To top it off, when I got back to my cool shady office building, glistening with sweat like a skinny parody of a bodybuilder, my Regular was dry, rubbery and flavorless. That $4.69 was not well-spent.

Here's a Wiki-based version of the old text game, Zork. Pretty funny ab-use of Wiki tech.

After last week's amusing List Of Bad Books by the wingnuts at HumanEventsOnline came out, I imagined that wanting to make such a list and then wanting to wave it around was a conservative failing and that reasonable people (aka "lefties") would never do such a thing. I should've know better. Popular lefty blogger, Kevin Drum, teaches me a lesson...