One of the things I should do this year – which I may or may get to – is to consolidate my home computer tools.

What do I mean by that?

Well, I’m basically a web guy – I have two main sites of my own (geistlinger.com, and littleghost.com – which isn’t much but for my blog and my photo gallery).

With the exception of using Blogger to generate the actual blog part of my blog site, I have a slew of tools at home that run at periodic intervals to update various portions of both domains.

The trouble is, when I first began hard-core, dynamic web sites, it was in a Windows NT/SQL server environment. So I have a bunch of older tools that run against Microsoft SQL Server (off a 7-year-old box) and posts data to various regions of both domains.

Now I’m more of an OSS dude. All my tools now are LAMP (Perl and PHP), with a healthy dollop of shell scripts. I want to convert the Windows tools to my Linux boxes, but that just takes time.

Will make backups a hell of a lot easier, however. Scripting backups on Windows is a pain in the arse.

Right now, the Windows tools – thanks to the years of tweaking – work very well, so there isn’t a real impetus to make the change.

I just want to, at least eventually. I want one master Linux box that does the work and a secondary box for backups/failover.

We’ll see how that goes…

Something’s going on with Blogger.

This is the tool I use to populate this blog.

Last night, I did two posts. After the first posted, it disappeared from my “edit posts” list. I thought it was me. So I grabbed the code off my site and reposted.

Then I wrote another post (saving this one to my hard drive just in case with the previous one.).

This moring, both posts disappeared from blogger. So they’ve reposted, but what the hell?!?

What if I hadn’t saved the code? And so on.

Just weird, and the Blogger home page doesn’t note any database issues.

Let’s see how long this post sticks around before it’s autodeleted…

Update: This as originally posted Saturday, Feb. 18. Blogger does appear to acknowledge having a problem Friday and Saturday; so this is a repost. Hopefully, this one won’t go away as well..

One of the current blog memes is the need for algerbra.

My opinion:

• I love math, I know it better than 95% of the population, which makes me an idiot in the other 5%, the people who actually use math. But I used to do calculus for fun (yeah, this was before cable), fer Newton’s sake!
• The current meme arguement seems a little misplaced to me. You don’t need to solve quadratic equations, but most high school graduates should be able to do algebraic basics. The basics are essentially fraction work, percentages and the dreaded word problems (X cost over Y months, what is if the final charge is $100 and Y = 3.5 months, what is the monthly cost….).
• Some very educated people – even if they try – won’t grok algerbra. Many very intelligent people have no social skills or writing abilities. Lack of algerbra could affect some, as well. Get over it. Not everyone is a Renaissance (wo)man.
• Life – for most folks to different degrees – requires a dash of algerbra, if for no other reason than to figure out, for X days in month and Y monthly salary, how much they have to work with per day. Don’t belittle the basics. Better to know this than to know how to program the coffee maker…

Update: This was originally posted Friday, Feb. 17, but Blogger has had issues. Reposted for the third time.

I’ve gotten less and less interested in sports as I’ve gotten older, but one pretty much constant in my sports-viewing life is that I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Winter Olympics.

I dunno, just not my bag. Especially with all the new “sports,” like the snowboarding and so on (note: I feel the same way about ping-pong in the Summer games, and curling [that’s a sport?!?] in the Winter Olympics.

I don’t watch much TV, either, so the impact on my viewing pleasure is little, but, still.

Why?? I just don’t get them. Power to those who compete, however, I don’t mean to diminish that. They probably wouldn’t want to watch me code…

Update: This was originally posted Friday, Feb. 17, but Blogger has had issues. Reposted for the third time.

I’m seeing more and more of this recently: Different online sources with different facts.

Right now – 9:50am 2/11/2006 – Front page teasers re: Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s recent surgery:

• CNN.com: Hospital: Sharon in ‘no immediate danger’
• MSNBC.com: Emergency Surgery: Life of Israel’s Sharon said to be ‘in danger’

OK…

Dave Sifry (Mr. Technorati) has a State of the Blogosphere report online.

Interesting, with few surprises but some interesting insights (spam pings and other such deviations of blogs, which is expected but interesting).

The figure that stood out to me, however, was the staying power of blogs. Sure, blog creation/posts and so on are way up over a year ago, but the – as Sifry neatly phrases it – “there’s a reasonable amount of tire-kicking” with blogs going on.

While the number of blog has increased dramatically, the percentage of folks who stick with it is staying roughly the same:

• February 2006 Technorati tracks over 27.2 Million blogs; 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created (50%)
• October 2005 Technorati tracks 19 million blogs, about 10.4 million bloggers were still posting 3 months after the creation of their blogs (54%).

So – overall – while more blogs are created, the same percentage die quickly. While this means – overall – more blogs, it also means that the perceived value vs. effort has not increased, even as the blogosphere has expanded.

Interesting.

Had Thai food (takeout) tonight; I just love curry.

And for some reason, I like green curry better than the others (red, yellow, brown…). Why?

No clue. I think the difference between the curries is the blend of spices that make up the curry (curry is not a spice; it’s a blend of spices – much like “pasta” doesn’t mean much specific). But I could be totally wrong. Whatever.

The weird part – to me – is that curry is a kind of weird food for an American. Fairly common today, more so because more Indians and others from curry-friendly nations have come here as part of the dot.com boom/bust/Web 2.0, but not your traditional American steak and potatoes. Over a decade ago, it’d have been tough to find a restaurant serving curry in most towns in the US. Or – I’d guess.

And I was a picky eater as a kid.

How the hell did I develop a taste for curry?

I – oddly – am very adventurous with food. I’ll try most anything, and like a lot of the weird (ostrich, alligator, buffalo, jack fruit and so on).

And I have leftovers for breakfast. Excellent!

First trip on the company plane today, and – I’ve got to say – this is the way to go.

Get to the airport two hours before departure and all that? Take your shoes off and all that?

Here, drive up to the “terminal” (a building); park 10 spaces away from the terminal, walk in, walk out to plane and … that’s it. Two hours later you’re at the two-hour flight destination, not just getting ready for boarding.

Veddy nice.

WATCHING:
Million-Dollar Baby
Clint Eastwood, director

I seem drawn to the not feel-good movies. This, the tale of a white-trash woman who dreams of becoming a title-holding boxer, starts depressing and goes downhill from there.

It’s an interesting movie – I especially like the way everything was not all wrapped up neatly at the end – but not as good as I expected. Three stars maybe – but maybe that’s because I’m not a fan of boxing. Solid performances all around, especially by Hillary Swank, but not a movie I’ll return to any time soon.

All movies

Well, this has been the mildest winter in Chicago since they first began keeping records a century or so ago (but there’s nothing to the global warming nonsense), yet I’ve still got – in early February – Spring Fever.

Wanna get out of the house and cut the lawn or something.

We’ve had very little snow this year, which my back appreciates, but it’s going to be bad for the plants this summer – need some groundwater. We had the same problem last year, which was almost drought-like (again, here’s nothing to the global warming nonsense). It has rained a bit (we’ve had more thunderstorms than snow storms thus far this winter, which is just freaky), which helps, but the snow pack also helps insulate the ground and protect plants’ roots, so that’s not happening.

Today is the 250th anniversary of the composer known as Mozart.

I love classical music; of the classical composers, Wolfie was always my favorite.

Thanks for Symphony No. 38 [Prague] (my favorite)

Thanks for Symphony No. 41 [Jupiter] (last symphony; perhaps the best).

And countless other pieces.