Iraqi Troop Buildups

The New York Times reports U.S. intentions to increase Iraqi forces by nearly 12,000.

<sarcasm>

Yeah, the “insurgents” are giving us so much trouble by fighting for their right to control their own lives. Oh, no. We’ve gotta send more troops to stop that process. We already look like idiots on the world stage; sure, let’s go make it worse.

</sarcasm>

I only wish it were false–though some people will probably immediately argue that it is. Any force buildup when we were once committed to withdrawing as quickly as possible is hypocritical and breaks promises to the United States as a whole.

Winter Quarter 2005

Contrary to some of my previous academic planning, I’ve decided to get out of political economy (and political sciences in general) and diversify my academic portfolio even more. The Academic Fair was today, 4-6pm, so I wandered around and picked up program syllabi for The Novel: Life and Form with Thad Curtz and Changing Minds, Changing Course with Virginia Hill. I had previously been considering 500 Years of Globalization with Jeanne Hahn, but I think that’s a little much for me.

Right now, I think my primary choice is The Novel: Life and Form, with Changing Minds, Changing Course as a close second. This might switch as my registration time ticket gets nearer and I start looking back at some of my other work.

Amanda and me attended one of the Writing Center’s Self Evaluation workshops tonight. I went because I wanted to review and get hints of what to tell students when I see them for evaluations; Amanda went because she needed to know how to do evaluations in the first place. I think both of us got something out of it.

Only four class days remaining (12/2, 12/7-12/9), plus evaluations, plus a few days of work (at minimum Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, with the possibility–at this point, likelihood–of additional hours during evaluation week).

Upgrading caeryn

After installing Fedora Core 3 in text mode without X installed on caeryn (my home server), I did the following to get her ready for use:

  1. Followed the instructions to initialize Yum off of the Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes.
  2. service httpd start
    chkconfig httpd reset
    service sendmail stop
  3. Yum didn’t seem to want to cooperate, so I downloaded Apt off the web for Fedora Core 3 and did an apt-get upgrade, which seems to have done the job. I also ran:

    apt-get install mysql-server

caeryn is now much easier to update and manage remotely than her old FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE software. Oh, did I mention I switched caeryn to a different box, since the old one can’t boot from CDs through the BIOS? She’s now a 233MHz Pentium MMX (better than her old case, which was only about 133MHz, if that) with 64MB RAM. Hopefully, this helps, though Fedora Core 3 is also more memory/CPU-intensive than FreeBSD.

Domain Names

Today’s the day when I add stuff I’ve been meaning to post about but haven’t. One of them is my recent domain name purchases, including one made just today though Dotster. This includes all domains I own currently, and all automatically renew:

Domain Name
Creation Date
Expiry Date


darkfusion.net
06/06/1999
06/06/2006


dreamrift.net
11/26/2004
11/26/2006


naturalaxis.com
04/06/2002
04/06/2006


naturalaxis.info
11/13/2004
11/13/2005


pixelary.info
11/13/2004
11/13/2005


republicofelisium.info
11/13/2004
11/13/2005

I’ve also owned willworkfora.tv and insidelogic.net in the past. I got the three .info domains for free, since Dotster recently allowed its customers to register 25 .info domains for no charge. Fun. I may not keep the .info domains, or point them anywhere — we’ll see.

Fedora Core 3 Fine-Tuning

I had to add in the MySQL server, since it wasn’t installed properly:

yum install mysql-server

As root on my Fedora Core 3 partition, since SETI@Home, mysqld, and spamd weren't starting properly:

service setiathome start
service mysqld start
service spamassassin start
chkconfig spamassassin reset
chkconfig mysqld reset
chkconfig setiathome reset

Windows XP Install

I've also installed Windows XP Professional on my other partition with Adobe Photoshop 6, Adobe Acrobat 6, Araneae 5 Public Beta, Microsoft Word 2000, and Mozilla Firefox 1,0, and ZoneAlarm Professional. The partition has something like 1.5GB left out of the 4GB allotted, and that's without running any major Windows Update programs. I still have to add in Macromedia Dreamweaver MX to round out the selection.

Fedora Core 3 Reinstall

Apparently, the Fedora Core 3 upgrade didn’t work out quite as well as it should have — flashing the installation with the most recently available packages didn’t work well and stopped me from logging into X.

So I figured, since I have to repartition anyway, I might as well set up a fresh Fedora Core 3 install. Not my ideal solution, since it meant I had to back stuff up, which, without a network connection, took a while, but got done.

I repartitioned the drive, reinstalled Fedora Core 3, then picked up the display drivers for my GeForce 2 Go video card. Once downloaded, I installed the drivers and restarted X, then reconfigured my display.

From there, I ran the instructions for updating Yum from the Fedora Core 3 Installation Notes, then executed yum update to safely update the system software.

From there:

yum -y install pine
yum -y install libdvdcss
yum -y install xine xine-lib xine-lib-devel
yum -y install apt
yum -y install synaptic
yum -y install blogtk fortune fortune-bofh-excuses fortune-hitchhiker fortune-tao

DVD playback works fine, but I can't currently play back MPGs, AVIs, WMVs, or any other movie file. The wireless card I have now works again -- changing some settings to optimize the wireless connection actually screwed over the connection, so that's fixed.

Apparently, xine will play MPG/AVI/WMV fine but Totem won't. I discovered that there are two versions of Totem -- one that uses the xine engine and one that uses a separate engine. I installed the proper version, like so:

yum remove totem
yum install totem-xine

Works just fine. Seems like most of my problems are solved, though others will doubtlessly come up.

Washington Gubernatorial Primaries

From the Seattle Times Breaking News service:

Wednesday, November 24, 2004 12:44 PM
Rossi wins recount in governor’s race

When the final votes in the race for governor in the state were tallied shortly after noon today, Republican Dino Rossi won the the election by just 42 votes over Democratic challenger Christine Gregoire. With a margin that small, a hand recount is almost a sure thing.

Story

Of Gregoire and Rossi, both are moronic clowns. Should’ve voted write-in for Gary Locke…