There is a little-known benefit to reading UK-based geek magazines while in the USA – since they get here about a month late, anything they report as cutting-edge has been hammered out by helpful folks and posted on their blogs for me to search out.

Case in point: I recently picked up the latest-I-can-get issue of Linux Format, and rebuilt my Linux box (which has been dead for a while now) with the included SuSE 10.1 DVD.

Being SuSE, the install went very smoothly. I chose a 32-bit install this time, since there are a couple of apps I like that have yet to build AMD64 versions. (Yeah, Macromedia, I’m talking about YOU!) While I would like to have that extra little bit of efficiency, it isn’t really critical with my current build.

The bonus part I mentioned before is that there were already a couple of step-by-step HOWTOs for installing the mutlimedia functions SuSE always leaves out due to copyright nastiness. It took me about 20 minutes to get MP3, DVD and other video formats working. Nice. Another 15 minutes to install the nVidia drivers, and then I dug into the serious geekery: Xgl and Compiz. (Go here for cool videos. I have no effing clue why they are in a MS format when MS can’t use this. The webmaster needs smackage.)

Linux has had the concept of ‘multiple desktops’ for some time now. Sure, windows are nice, but if you’re like me, when I’m working on a big project I often have at least 4 windows open at once, and I can get lost trying to find certain windows. Multiple desktops allows me to have a number of things open still, but now they are scattered over 4 or 5 desktops so I don’t have to keep minimizing / maximizing things. Xgl and compiz allow you to go one better, by turning those extra desktops into the face of a cube, and then when you shift desktops you get this really cool effect of a rotating cube.

On top of that is a sheer geeky “wow-factor” effect: windows stretch out of shape when you move them, and get all wobbly. (The effect is in fact called “wobbly windows”). New windows launched will kind of spring out of the background, and menu pop-ups bounce around a little too. This serves no purpose other than eye-candy, but it is damn cool!

So, why would you put all this together? Imagine the following conversation:

MSFAN: Man, Vista is going to be so cool. MS has really got the security down tight for this one.
TUXGEEK: Huh. ‘Bout time. Linux has been a lot more secure for some time now. All Windows had to do was use a REAL admin / user seperation.
MSFAN: Well, the new sidebar and widgets will keep your most-used information right there on the desktop!
TUXGEEK: Check it – SuperKaramba widgets and Beagle search, right there. The SuperK widgets can monitor my system health like fan speeds and temps – Windows widgets can’t do that. Beagle indexes everything from notepad notes to emails, like that new xml-based filesystem will…oh wait, they nixed that last month, didn’t they?
MSFAN: Well, Vista is going to look better! Aero glass roxxors!
TUXGEEK: Dude, check this shit out *wiggle wiggle streeeetch flippity-flippity*
MSFAN: Dude, you suck.
TUXGEEK: Did I mention how this all takes a lot less resources than Vista will? Like 512MB of RAM, where Vista will barely boot on that?
MSFAN: Just STFU already.

Okay, maybe not completely kills, but definitely puts a kink in the works for water cooling.

I was reading the latest issue of MaximumPC magazine yesterday, and they have the new Dream Machine out. Under the hood: Intel’s latest Extreme Edition proc, a Conroe Core 2. The thing kicks some serious ass, and now holds 5 of 6 possible benchmark records – the one it didn’t get is held by an outrageously overclocked quad-video-card monstrosity.

Most interesting though, is what they did to test the new thermal dissipation ratings. In an effort to see just how well the fact meets the hype about the power usage, they tried to overheat the processor. They went so far as to unplug the CPU fan and transcode a full DVD!

The proc temp went up about 3 degrees C.

That’s it.

As for the standard, they pretty much pounded the nails into the coffin for the BTX formfactor. Conceived during the Mad MegaHertz Race when both AMD and Intel procs could heat your entire home, the BTX standard re-arranges the case and plants a massive cooler on the proc, and moves all other heat-generating components as far away as possible.

About the time it launched, however, AMD released a new slew of Cool ‘n Quiet chips that worked just fine with air cooling in the ATX formfactor. Manufacturers of AMD-spec motherboards saw no need to switch, so they stuck with ATX. This left the Intel-only houses dealing with a huge thermal payload, so they grudgingly re-tooled to the new formfactor.

Now, just when Dell, Gateway and others are rolling out BTX, Intel goes and builds a thermally efficient chip. The Intel reps are still touting BTX as the wave of the future, but I’m guessing there will be some pretty pissed-off folks in the case houses.

I was reading this when it made me think of how glad I am that I chose my current profession.

It seems almost axiomatic that a person wouldn’t want to deal with anything resembling work once they got home. Mechanics don’t want to work on their own cars, plumbers don’t want to look at the leaky faucet, and the groundskeeper’s own yard looks like crap. I really like dealing with computers, but even then, sometimes I let things slide probably longer than I should.

They say that to find happiness, you should find a way to make a living doing something you love to do, but you have to be careful with that so you don’t get burned out on it. Seeing the same thing day in and day out can wear on a person no matter how much they love what they do.

So like the mechanic, the plumber and the groundskeeper, I use my skills to do the routine maintenance in hopes of preventing a failure, even though I may skimp on the major service tasks. I keep things generally running smooth.

But boy-oh-boy am I glad I didn’t become a gynecologist.

I took some time off from work today to see if my old swag-gathering skills were still up to par – OSCON’s Exhibit Hall being free and all. Turns out that swag is getting better – I scored 4 T-shirts this time :)

I also ran into an old friend of mine from high school. Ben was the stereotypical computer nerd back then – skinny, with coke-bottle glasses up until our senior year and about 98#s sopping wet. After graduating, though, he went off to college in Berkely and went native – when I came back to Portland, he was sporting the baggy shorts/poncho/chin scruff style of a SoCal hippie.

As of not too long ago though, the scruff, shorts and poncho are gone and he’s looking much more the standard sysadmin. When I ran into him today, he was also holding a definitive open-source icon – free beer. Allow me to explain:

In the open-source world, there is more than one definition of “free”: free as in speech and free as in beer. Speech here in America is pretty free, but you do have to watch your P’s and Q’s so as to not get yourself sued for slander or other such crap. Nice in theory, but can be tricky in practice. Free beer, however, is usually just that – the person that gave it to you doesn’t really want it back.

Well, one of the exhibitors decided to embrace this idea, and trotted out a keg of MacTarnahan’s. This got them quite a bit of attention, of course. It’s a shame I don’t like beer.

The rest of the show was much as you would expect from a geek convention: every power outlet I saw had laptops plugged into it, every table I saw had at least one latop on it, and there was about a 20:1 male/female ratio. There weren’t any cell phones there though – everyone I saw had a Treo instead.

Or nearly so, anyway. No, this is not a remark about the weather – today I did a cabling walk-through for a Baptist Church that’s expanding.

Not your everyday experience. Full-on rebuilding of the whole church with over a hundred new voice and data drops. If I’m lucky, they won’t take our cabling bid but will hire us for the new computers they need.

Once again, I hate HP printers. Different client this time, but the software for these things is just so stupid. Not only do they load half-a-dozen things in the background at boot, they make it impossible to add features later – you have to uninstall all, then go back and do a full install with ALL of the additional crap to get the one added feature you wanted beyond the print drivers. I remember the grand old days when printers did their own work instead of foisting it off on the PC.

And then there’s Symantec – when it works, it’s great. When it screws up, it takes everything with it. Another client had an install of System Works go south on him, and the only way to get it out is to run the SymNRT removal tool – which must remove EVERY Symantec product in the computer, not just the one you want to get rid of. And even then, it likely won’t work, and I’ll have to rebuild this guy’s server from scratch.

Oh, I found out what happened to the new property manager Saturday – he went to the wrong house. In his defense, the house he went to is occupied by a man with a similar first name as mine, but he didn’t think to carry my cell number with him, so he still loses points. So far, he’s just breaking even – willing to come to us to talk about the new agreement, but can’t find the house he’s managing.

Woof.

While Pookie wa in the shower, I got an email reminding me about OSCON this year, so I signed up and figured I should probably request a half-day off so I could cruise the exhibit hall.

Hmmm…webmail no-workee. Server down? Nope, none of our IP addys are responding. Crappity. The T1 is down.

Which means that the server that monitors all of our client’s servers is disconnected. Oh Fuck.

ISP tech support must know about it, because the hotline dumped me to voicemail after a 3-minutes hold time. I’ll try again now…hey, I got through. Turns out they are just doing maintenance, but my line will be down for about another hour.

WTF!?! You can’t send me an email or call me to let me know that my most important server will be down for over an hour? Ok, those of you not in my line of work are probably thinking “Dude, it’s after 10, chill.” No. In over three years of running an ISP myself, the only times I dropped the network for more than ten minutes it was because something blew up, never for maintenance. And by “blew up” I mean “smoked so bad I had to drive across town to pick up the spare head end out of the warehouse”.

And it still only took me an hour-and-a-half. (Traffic was light and the Beastie jumps when you kick her.)

Nitwits.