Running is therapy

I installed Sun’s Java in Ubuntu and then installed the Java OpenGL (Jogl) libraries. I figured I would document that here in case others find it useful.

First I followed this: The “correct way” to install Java (His words not mine).

That worked without issue. Then after installing that I figured I would try to install the Jogl libs in case the urge struck me to learn more about OpenGL programming. That was more hit and miss, most of the stuff I saw was windows related. Anyway after a little fighting…

I downloaded the latest release: Jogl Zip File

Unzip that file, and copy the jogl.jar to: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/lib/ext and the libjogl*.so files to: /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/lib/ext

Not bad at all, but it took some surfing to figure it out.

Periodically I check the ruby on rails site to see if it’s still written in PHP.  It is…http://rubyonrails.com/index.php

Most people go to http://rubyonrails.com/ and it looks fine, I type the index.php in there just to check that they still aren’t using rails.  I believe this is called spitting on your own dog food.

Strangely my right thumb has been going numb lately.  I think it might be RSI related.  I am going to take some advil to see if it’s just some wrist swelling or something.  Anyone else have problems with this?

Finally, the Steelers dig themselves out of last place in the division.  Man do they stink this year…but hey, we aren’t last anymore :)

I wanted to reinstall and since I use the same machine for everything, including earning a living, I didn’t want to take the time to reinstall Gentoo.  I installed Ubuntu Edgy Eft – 6.10.  It hasn’t been that bad.  I have always liked apt, and a lot of things have worked fine.  I don’t like a lot of the defaults, but I backed up all my configs before reinstalling so I was able to make things feel the same overall.

I have been using Gnome instead of FVWM or XFCE4 or Enlightenment (I have a tendency to flip between the three) and really it’s pretty usable.  I installed brightside to overcome Metacity’s brain dead lack of mouse flipping virtual desktops. It does grate on me when I run a `ps` to see all that crap running, so I grep -v it all out :)

The clincher for me possibly keeping this set up are the fonts.  Everything looks wonderful.  I live and breath text, and staring at crappy fonts is no way to spend ones life.

I read a lot of news online…too much really.  However a lot of the sites I visit Firefox prints a little header across the top saying that it blocked a popup.   Who is still doing this?  No one allows popups anymore,  it’s insane.

Lifehack: I know it’s a little trashy to do, but I put an old beat up exercize bike on my sidewalk with a free sign on it. Someone took it! w00t. Now, I need to find other things in here I can do that with.

I downloaded the QIF formatted checking account transactions from my bank this morning. I opened it in vi and was looking around…spent about 4 minutes looking at perl modules to parse it…spent 30 seconds thinking about writing a script to parse them and do various things with the output…then I figured fooey on all that. I deleted all the entries but the ones for going out to eat. Then I ran it through a bash one liner


$: egrep -r "T-" QIFDownload.qif | awk -F"T-" '{print $2}' | awk '{sum+=$1} END{printf("%.2f\n",sum)}'
241.79


That’s right…in the last month I have spent almost 250 dollars in eating out…most of it lunches. GAH :)

I was watching a campaign ad for some politician. In the ad an opponent was dispariged for wanting to send more troops to Iraq. While I don’t know anything about either person in the race, I _do_ think that sending more troops should at least be considered. One of the reasons, in my opinion, that Iraq has gone so poorly is that the troops have been understaffed. Generals predicted that we would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq to quell the violence after the toppling of Saddam.

See, no matter what one thinks of this war, it’s important to not lose site of the fact that we ARE already there. The reasons for going were lies. The mission was a fools errand, but, we ARE there. As an American I think we are compelled to do the right thing. We OUGHT to fix this mess. Maybe the answer is to pull out, I don’t know, I don’t pretend to know. However, sending more troops shouldn’t be off the table. I’ll tell you this…neither side will do that. As I see it, because of the current political situation, we have two choices. Pull out and let the place degrade to chaos, or stay and let undermanned troops die. It’s a flase dilemma created by the inept children who are running our great nation into the ground.

* EDIT typo *