Nilknarf News

Actually, Thunder is my main computer, and lightnin' was the name of the WINME box that recently got converted to RedHat9.

The machines on the pod in the basement, the subject of today's picture, are Winter and Sleet, the RH 7.2 and RH 6.0 boxes, and Snow166, a WIN98SE box. Ain't they purty? And then there's the unnamed and unwired Apple laptop, poor thing. I can get it to recognize the NIC when I put it in, but it says that it doesn't have to software to run it, boo hoo. So I have no idea of what to do with it at all, at all. Somebody send me a disk?

The six upstairs machines... well, that's a subject for another entry, it is.

Lest someone get the idea that I know what I'm doing with all of these machines, I say, HA! And Ha! again, 'cause I fooled you, I did!

But I do run SETI on each and every one, and I will again extend the offer of helping anyone contribute to the effort... either under the nilky group name or on your own.

Well, OK, back to cats.

The two remaining cats, the survivors, hate me. For a very good reason, as much as a cat can be said to reason.

I decided after coming home from Sam's killing last night... that these two cats will be indoor cats, no matter how much they hate it. Because I really don't want to bury them prematurely.

No, no, I don't mean that I would bury them before they died.

The main thing around here that kills cats is cars.

And there are no cars allowed in the house. A simple rule, but it keeps the cats (and their people) safe, as long as they're inside. See how that works?

There are dozens of advantages to keeping cats inside, and I won't cover them all here... but suffice it to say, I will feel a lot better about it.

I know that Karen will prove to be a problem, as she has always been on this subject. "But cats want to be free!" she will proclaim. "They loooooove being outside!" And she's right, she is. But.

But she hasn't picked up their broken little bodies from the curb and buried them.

So she doesn't get a vote.

Back to the war... wait, the war is over. O'yeah, that war on terrorism, it's still going on, and will as long as it's politically expedient.

I don't feel up to a rant about BabyBush tonight, though.

But it has been a long time since I had an anti-religion rant, hasn't it? That's been on the back burner, just simmering, waiting for a particularly flagrant violation of the first amendment. Well, it's probably happened when I was looking elsewhere... y'know, they were counting on me looking elsewhere, I'll bet. They probably even purposely drew my attention elsewhere, I bet. http://www.obfuscation.us/archives/000009.php. Go read that, then come back.

Or not, since I really don't have anything more to say....

O'yeah, I do, I forgot to say anything about my day! It was OK... I worked until 13:00, then I had a meeting for superusers for the PACS system until about 16:30. It was OK, but I really hate to start meetings after lunch, especially where I have to use my brain.

Supposed to have meetings all day tomorrow and Thursday, but my boss hasn't arranged coverage for me, so I might not be able to go... but I'll still need to know all of the stuff.

And even though the meetings are about the PACS system, which is all about computers, what we're learning is PACS administration, which is... all about databases. I used to love databases, but... this is Oracle, about which I know nothing. But the basic database stuff is still all there in my head somewhere, it just needs to be awakened. Like, which fields take priority over which other fields and stuff like that, which I knew all about ten years ago in FoxPlus. At one time I was an excellent database programmer... yeah, you'll have to take my word for that.

Anyways, it's interesting. And it'll be even more interesting if I only get partially trained.