My dog growing up was part Border Collie, part Black Lab. At the time we didn’t know about the border collie personality, and he proved to be quite the handful for a 6-year-old, and 4-year-old, and two not-particularly-interested adults. In retrospect, it was a bad match, though we loved him dearly.

Bringing Mari home was a situation with a lot of potential problems. First off, we already had 4 dogs (3.25 really, mini-pincher Twitch doesn’t seem to count) and that very night I had to start my work-week with my typical 10-hour graveyard shift. While I’d bought her a crate, keeping her cooped up for 10 hours was not a kind option, nor would it likely be a quiet one. That night I had little choice. My roommates, happily, also understood the initial challenges and stepped up magnificently. I went to work, Mari was placed in her crate before I left, and Mav got up a few times in the night to sooth her, then let her out early in the morning to run around a bit before I got home.

Our house has two levels, and most of the top level is either hardwood floors or tile. That made the inevitable accident a bit easier to manage. The carpeted stairs proved to be too big for little Mari to consider going down and messing. On the other hand, the other dogs slept down those stairs, and that left her alone upstairs to make trouble. Her chew toys initially kept her from the furniture, though she did like digging in the large pot of dirt we had as a weight for the barrier to the living room. The major problem was her fussing and crying in the early morning hours before roommates wanted to be awake, and before I got home.

At the time I was working in a dungeon-like basement that adjoined our Orem datacenter. For a long time I had been almost completely alone 3 of the 4 nights I worked, but recently I’d been given a new co-worker, who was also a good friend. He was wonderfully amicable to the idea of bringing her to work, but that too would present problems. As a computer person, even if our little dungeon office had few machines she could mess with, I didn’t consider it an option to let he just run around all night. That meant she’d have to stay in the crate and receive occasional potty breaks. But this was my job and I had to pay attention to the servers first. So if she fussed, she was a potential distraction to myself and co-workers while we fixed problems (which sometimes took several hours). And Dave wasn’t the only co-worker I had to consider. Cade, who had a fairly new dog himself, had no qualms about me bringing her in and encouraged me to do so without worrying about the others. I think he liked he idea of possibly bringing his own furry friend. But I ended up waiting another night to get approval from the majority of my co-workers before I started bringing her in. I had no doubt that having her there wouldn’t be much different than bringing a new-born to work with me each night.

Indeed that’s exactly how it felt. My co-workers either agreed or didn’t mind the idea, and I started toting Mari into work each night, crate and all. Even initially, at 10 pounds, this was awkward. I had to feed her before work, settle her down, tuck her into her crate, then haul her, crate and all out the door. Additionally I carried a large blanket to cover the crate while she slept at work, and a few toys, poo bags, and snacks. I felt very much like a mom carrying around a new baby and accessories. But for the most part it worked out quite well. Mari stayed in her crate and got a few strokes when she fussed. When she woke up at night (usually two or three times), I’d look for an opportunity to pick her up and take her outside for a bathroom break. As this was the end of January there was a lot of snow on the ground and it was quite cold out. Mari didn’t mind either condition (she LOVES snow), and I walked a fine line of making sure she had time to do her business, and making sure she didn’t get to play all night.

Back inside she would get a little drink of water, handed her toy, and be put back to bed. She showed no interest in the snacks. And that was how I managed Mari until she became too heavy to tote around each day (about 6 weeks later).

To be continued…

At the end of January I was a bit down. My parents had finally convinced the bank to accept their offer on a house in Utah and I was to move in and take care of the place until they could come down. A somewhat heated argument had already taken place over whether I could have a dog while living alone in the house. The answer was emphatically NO. Added to a few other petty arguments, I wasn’t too excited about the move. In fact I was down-right depressed and only consoling myself with the idea that it would be for a few months max.

I wasn’t the only one who was depressed over the move. My roommates weren’t keen on seeing me go either. One morning found me in the kitchen with Shea once again brooding over the impending move. Shea knew well the various reasons I wasn’t keen to go, and in a tongue-in-cheek remark she said, “I’ll just get you a dog and then you won’t be able to move out.” The second the words were out of her mouth we both gave each other a hard stare. Her eyes lit up and she said, “If we get you a dog you CAN’T move out!”

I looked at her and after a pause (as my sense of responsibility and my desire warred inside) I managed to squeak out, “I’m trying to protest but I just can’t do it!”

In fairness I did try to call my parents at every number I had for them to find out just how offensive this course of action was going to be. I can’t say I’m upset that they proved impossible to get a hold of for a few hours. A few critical hours in which petfinder.com and the website for the Utah humane society were thoroughly searched, and in which we all piled into the car to see what we might find at the local shelters. Fortune appeared to favor my parents as all the shelters were closed on Saturday. On a whim we decided to swing by PetSmart which occasionally has adoptions on the weekends. And sure enough, if you haven’t guessed by now, they were indeed having adoptions that day, complete with two liters of puppies. And to make things even more perfect, one of those liters was a set of German Shepherd/Border Collie mixes. The exact mix I’d hoped for. I first picked up the biggest, most active of the group. He was certainly a sweet-heart, but a bit mouthy. Not ruling him out I picked up another pup, who was happily tackling a sibling. As soon as she was in my arms she went completely limp and rested her head against me. SOLD!

Actually we put her through a few behavioral and temperament tests, which she passed with flying colors, but I pretty much had my heart set on her from the moment I picked her up.

Mom and Dad didn’t kill me or my roommates, though they were certainly testy in the phone calls that eventually were answered. And thanks to Mari being so gosh-darn adorable and my roommates being thoroughly helpful in other areas, they seem to have completely forgiven all and warmly accepted my puppy (as long as she never touches their pretty new hardwood floors).

Mari was brought home on January 30th, 2011 and was about eight weeks old. It is now mid-September and I’m only now writing about it because I’ve taken and interest in writing about her training. I figured it was best to start that by introducing everyone to her. So without further ado, here’s Mari!

http://other-world.org/photos/mari/

Later I was reading the news on CNN.com. I was reading about the two men who were caught in New York trying to board a plane to join a terrorist organization. And I made the mistake of reading the comments. What an amazing range of hate an anger. There’s the people who hate Muslims, the people who hate Arabs, the people who hate the Jews, the people who hate Americans, the people who hate Christians, the people who hate the people who hate Muslims, the people who hat the people who hate Arabs, the people who hate the people who hate Jews…you get the idea.

Finally I was reading Julie B. Beck’s talk from the last LDS General Conference. I’ve been trying to make it a point of reading General Conference talks as part of my daily scripture study. She speaks about the struggles of women and the importance or receiving spiritual guidance. But really, the topic is almost irrelevant to the point I’m trying to make. The point is the feel of her message: understanding, hope, faith, perseverance. Pick a General Conference topic. What would it be like if everyone spoke like that? Less fear, more hope; less hate, more love, less badgering, more imploring. I’m sure there are many people out there who certainly do not associate religion with love and kindness. All I know is that when I look at the media today, I feel a sense of despair. But when I read Gospel messages I feel like there is always hope, and always more we can do. Just think what we could accomplish of people just tried being nice to each other.

I still don’t trust the built-in upgrader, so once again we backed everything up and went for a clean install. I started it around 8pm and didn’t finish the main install until about 2am. Now, part of that is that I found a ton of new packages that I want to play with, so the install took a lot longer than normal (little sister Brittany will be jealous to know Stellarium was one of those available in the default install). I would still like to see that sped up. However, I may also be running up against hardware issues. I think this laptop is now almost 6 years old. But aside from the install, with Fedora she runs pretty quick. I don’t care how great Windows 7 is (we’re not even going to talk about it predecessor) it will never run smoothly on this machine.

As usual, things just keep getting better and better. The only problem I’ve had so far was a popup warning about a lock on NFS. I think that was due to me transferring all my files (including the hidden ones) to this machine. But after a restart that too is gone. And all the Fedora 10 guides for getting your favourite extras worked just fine for 11. As usual I spent too much time last night playing with it.

Now I know Linux still isn’t for everyone, so for all you lucky son-of a-guns still on Windows, this is my tribute to you:

Software installation in Linux is difficult

First, for those having trouble the admin login is at http://domain.com/zenphoto/zp-core/ where domain.com is your domain, and zenphoto is changed to the folder you did the install on. In my case it’s http://prettyprettylights.com/art/zp-core/.

After login in the first thing we want to do is add some pictures. so we click on the upload tab. If we have an existing album we select it from the “Upload to” drop-down. If we don’t, then we type a new abum name in the field. Now for the best part. Click the box below it that says “Select Files.” Navigate to the folder with your pictures and select as many as you want. I’m sure there’s an upload limit either imposed by your php.ini, your hosting company, maybe even Zenphoto itself, but that’s not mentioned and I happily uploaded four photos at once.

Once the upload completed I was taken to a screen where I could scroll through and adjust the display settings. I can add descriptions, custom data, adjust the thumbnail size, adjust the part of the thumbnail that displays, all from a fairly easy, intuitive interface.

One thing I wasn’t liking was the multiple gallery setup. This is a little funny because I would love this sort of feature in just about any other Script, from blogging to CMS systems. But for Zenphoto I was at first content with the idea of doing a new install for every gallery I wanted. Then I came to my senses. It’s a great feature that just needs a little know-how, aka, friendly URLs. A little googling revealed that it was possible, but the documentation was a bit outdated and I hit a few road-blocks.

So, to get Friendly URLs working on Zenphoto 1.2.5:

• Go to the folder where you did the install on your web host.
• Rename htaccess.txt to .htaccess.
• Open .htaccess so that you can make changes.
• Find the line that says “#### !!! Change this to the web path (eg: http://www.yourwebsite.com/photos –> /photos) !!!”
• Below that change it to the folder where you did the install, include a / at the beginning (ex. /art)
• Save the changes.
• Log into your Zenphoto admin area.
• Click on the Options Tab.
• Click on General.
• In URL Options check mod_rewrite.
• Test. Hopefully you won’t get a 404 error.

Since this discovery I may move this to a more generic images folder and see about using includes to plant the albums I want directly into my website where I want them. Part of the Zenphoto appeal is the clean interface on the default theme which should allow it to fit nicely into any standard theme. Maybe a few tweaks to the CSS to make fonts and margins a bit smaller. We’ll have to see how well that works out.

In addition I (as usual) broke down and purchased two books. The first is Women & Money by Suze Orman. The second is Crash Profits. I’ve started reading Orman’s book and one of the initial exercises is to write your own definition of a rich life.

I approached it by thinking about what I wanted to have accomplished by the end of my life. By the time I’ve died I hope I’ve read most of the classics and a great many modern books. I hope to have covered subjects on philosophy, politics, history, mathematics and sciences, and a good chunk of fiction, science fiction, and fantasy.

I hope to have built a family with someone. I hope to have been a parent to my children before a friend. And I hope to have put my spouse first and foremost in my life. I hope to raise my family in a nice home. Not necessarily nice because it was a big house in a superb neighbourhood, but because I was able to fix up a nice place and work hard in the community to create a good environment.

I hope to have taken plenty of time to play, both outdoors, and indoors. I hope I was creative and learned about how the world works. I hope to have built things, not necessarily world-changing things. Just little things that help me understand how things work.

I hope I never stopped learning. I don’t necessarily want to retire early, but I hope I found a job that was enjoyable enough that I’d want to keep doing it. And if not, I hope I had the luxury of trying something new and enjoying that for many years.

As far as finances go, I don’t manage them very well now because I’m afraid of them. I don’t manage them very well because finances are boring. If I were interested in finances I’d have become an accountant. I don’t want to spend my life worrying about finances. I hope I can learn enough in my studies now so that I can set up my finances to largely take care of themselves, with a little nurturing on occasion, like my scorpions. I check in on them, and make sure they have food and water. I give then good hiding places and try and make sure they are kept somewhere that’s warm but not too hot.

I don’t want to spend my life worrying about little things that can become big things. I’ve had the luxury at this point of keeping things fairly under control. I’m not in debt, I have a stable job, I save a good amount of my paycheck, though not as much as I’d like to be saving. But I also sort of skid by. I haven’t taken the steps that would make things even easier. I don’t have any investments and my savings account gives me pennies each month.

Next chapter.

Organization:

• Room gets thoroughly cleaned at least once a month
• Vacuum every two weeks
• Clean bathroom every two weeks
• Go through clothes and get rid of what I’m not wearing regularly
• Organize all the papers
• …AND the filing cabinet

Finances:

• Have taxes done by end of February
• Live off $600 per month (occasional large expenditures OK, like trip to Louisiana, and possible down payment on a house)
• Keep up with Tithing, check at the end of each month
• Take a personal Finance course, learn good investment and plan for retirement.
• Pay gas and Utilities at least a week before they are due
• Find checkbook.

Spiritual:

• Read scriptures daily
• Work on praying twice a day
• Sunday School lessons done a week in advance
• Read at least one gospel book every two months.
• Temple trip at least once a month (preferably every two weeks).
• Work toward being endowed.

Physical:

• Karate at least twice a week.
• Yoga at least once a week.
• Rock climbing at least once a month.
• More biking and roller-blading in the summer.

Social:

• Write to friends and family more often.
• Don’t neglect my friends in town.

Computers:

• Sort through the data. Organize it and get rid of old stuff (remember the filing cabinet).
• Make external backups of everything.
• Work towards Network + Certification.
• Work towards LPIC certification.
• Set up proper home network with Samba.
• Learn home network security.
• Finish soldering serial port to router.
• Read a chapter of a computer book a day (a week if it’s more than 20 pages).

Education:

• Figure out a path to finally graduating.
• Read 4 books a month
• Work on math or sciences at least once a week.
• Just be constantly learning.

Some of these goals are more inportant to me than others. And as a vague goal I want to find the things that need to be a priority and work out a schedule for keeping up with them. Essentailly, I want to learn how to put first things first in my day. But I also want one of those priorities to be having a bit of fun each day, and recognizing what fun is. So, here’s the list, today we’ll start with that bedroom…

http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/f9-tips.php

I didn’t add everything, no IE for this little machine. And in other news, while I was out poking about, I discovered that Fedoda 10 should be released in 4 days.  That’s always the way of it. Still, I like to wait at least a few weeks after a release comes out before doing upgrades on my major machines. So the install on the server is still on.

Fedora 9 Desktop

Back in 2003 I was starting to seriously get into Linux. I found myself in sink or swim when my old computer died and my new computer with Windows XP wouldn’t recognize the network card. At that time I installed Red Hat 9 (dual booted with the XP) thinking I had nothing to loose, and with no Internet and a broken backup, nothing better to do. Red Hat 9 not only installed smoothly, it picked up the Network Card that XP wouldn’t recognize. I’ve been a huge Red Hat fan ever since. But immediately following Red Hat 9 were the Fedora and Fedora Core Distros. For a long time, things were never quite the same. In fact, I still have Fedora Core 4 on that old server because of all the effort I put into getting it to run smoothly (not that I have ever done less with Windows). Tonight I installed Fedora 9 on my primary Laptop. The good days of Red Hat are back!

The initial install led me to believe that I would have to do some tweaking, as I’ve had to in the past, in order to get the wireless card working. I had to plug the laptop into the wired network in order to get a few extras during the install. It was also useful for setting up the NTP server and sending Red Hat my Hardware configuration. As one who usually uses older hardware, I want to encourage Red Hat to build in the best possible support for my machines. As soon as the install completed I went to see about setting up the wireless. It was already there! A quick connection to my network and we were downloading the latest updates. At the same time I plugged in my USB drive and started restoring my backups. Incidentally, Fedora 9 (and the Fedora 8 before this) recognize the 8GB Scandisk that I’ve been using without a hitch. For some reason my Mac won’t recognize it (I haven’t eliminated the possibility of a broken USB drive) and my XP laptop has to go through a long, involved, though mostly automated process before I can use it there.

The next step of course is to add a few things. I used Yum to quickly install Thunderbird, Wireshark, Ruby, and Filezilla for starts. We also customized the look and feel very nicely. It was then off to get the essential in Firefox Addons: Web Developer, Firebug, Yslow, Adblock Plus, Show IP,  the Clear Cache Button, All-in-One Sidebar. The Sidebar is on trial. I’m not sure it’s worth the reduced view-space. I then adjusted Firefox to never save passwords, always show the tab bar, and set http://www.google.com/linux as the start-up page.

Everything that bugged me about Fedora 8 is gone. I had some trouble with window borders when I turned on my desktop effects. No sign of that now. As much as I’ve hated Yum in the past, it’s working smoother than ever. When I installed the additional programs I guessed the name of most of them. No problem. They all installed beautifully.

The few grips that I have really have nothing to do with Fedora. I wish Gnome came with an auto Desktop Changer. I’ve been looking up a few alternative options online that look promising. And we may yet have another go at Emerald.

I also need to setup this little machine to play movies. As most Linux people probably know, the codecs for playing DVD are proprietary and often cost money. As such Fedora doesn’t include them by default. I’ll need to look up the free alternatives. That will come later today. My Mac Mini is still my first choice for movie playing anyway.

Finally there is the matter of upgrading between releases. I didn’t do that between Fedora 8 and Fedora 9. Things degenerated a bit towards the end with Fedora 8. But I’m quite optimistic about the eventual move from Fedora 9 to Fedora 10.

So, this means I shall be breaking down and buying and external DVD drive to plug into my Fedora 4 server. As smoothly as this has gone, I now have no qualms about updating that machine. Also, in hte past my first choice for newbies has been Ubuntu. I hate it with a passion, but it’s easy for those who don’t know what they’re doing. No more! As far as I’m concerned, Fedora is back on top. As such we will probably back up Kristen’s box tonight and move her over. Kristen is keen on this. Could be my own infectious enthusiasm.