Author: Todd

We pushed our Disney trip back. Seemed only slightly more intelligent that I finish Magnus before we tear across LA in quest of vacation.
It’s been creepily quiet lately. Nothing from the Vamp Camp…camp. Nothing from Thunder. It’s been quiet on the Demonik front and I’ve heard nothing back from Tiger Hill concerning Psychopath. No word on Mass Destruction. F.J. has been chatting with me about Magnus so it’s the only project I’ve been working on.
I think I’m ready to write a new spec. I guess I’m ready to write a new spec. Not certain what good it will do. I thought Past Tense was a slam dunk. I thought Narcosis was a slam dunk. Then I thought Thunder was a slam dunk. As well as Mass Destruction. Seems like it’s all about the package today. Got very little to do with story or idea. It’s more about who’s producing, who’s directing, what actor is attached…and so on. It’s a little frustrating.

I guess I could work on Narcosis. Patrick and I have discussed that it may just take a script to prove it’s a movie and that we can actually write it to get it moving. And I’ve got around 30 script pages already written. But then I come back to the same question…what’s the point?
Maybe I should just apply for a lowbie executive position. Hard to believe I wouldn’t fly up the ladder when you take into consideration the short bus mechanics in charge of this sinking ship.
Eh, ignore me. Sometimes I just get tired of all the freaking hot air.

Well, my work, pics, music, gamesaves and downloads are now happily backed up. I handed off my installation disks to Devin and once he was running Fedora and screwing around with his own network he would shoot possible fixes to me through chat. This morning he sent me a copy of his Samba.conf and that did the trick. I had screwed with mine so much over the weekend that I had no doubt tweaked something fatal.
I’m an addictive personality. Mel was bitching at me about that certain personality flaw last night. At least now I can put the whole get-the-network-working addiction behind me.
I did run a great test. Snape is a 3.2 system while Smeagol is an old 1.5 system. I set both systems up to race. Smeagol was pulling a 1gig folder to his shared file. Snape was pushing the same sized file to the same shared folder. Although Snape is an Alienware with all the bells and whistles, Smeagol blew it out of the water when it came down to simple data movement. Next I pushed from Smeagol and pulled from Snape but got the same results. Linux is faster. Oh, it’s a snooty little know-it-all bitch, don’t get me wrong. But there’s no doubt it’s faster.

So, I’m done. Smeagol is there to back up my important work. It’s a point and click backup rather than having to screw around with CDs or a DVD. It is convenience. And now it’s working. The two puters are sitting side by side playing nicely. I have learned all I ever want to know about Linux. From now on Linux is dining room china to me. I’m pleased. So pleased I might just go to Disneyland.

Ok, Disney it is. Ugh, though. We live alot further away than we used to. No matter, the mouse is worth it. We’ll tool down to the Orange County, hang out with the Rich Rat, spend the night, sleep late and play it by ear from there.
Mel’s little party is less than two weeks away now. She bought a bunch of decorations of the Halloween persuasion and cut a deal with a New Mexico farmer for 25 head of sheep.

Several peeps have mentioned the absence of “comments” on my journal. Well, I was never that interested in any one else’s opinion. But Dean was crying about it this morning…something about my always taking shots at him on my journal and his not having the opportunity to mount a retaliation attack. I really have no idea what he’s talking about. I have been nothing but fair and sacrificial to Dean and his feelings. I would never do anything to embarrass him or belittle our friendship. I think he’s being stupid.
So, from now on, the comments button at the end of each post will be open. I am not opening comments to the past at this point. I figure what’s done is done. Enjoy.

Samba still won’t allow Smeagol to be seen by Snape. There’s some tiny command somewhere in the config file that’s off. And since every system is different there’s really no walkthru to talk me through it. It’s trial and error and I’m just not versed enough in Linux to know what to try next. Sure, Linux is stable. No argument there. But Smeagol’s purpose in life is to backup my work. Right now he’s just sitting on my desk being all stable.

So I just got off the phone with F.J. We discussed Magnus and he added a great beat I hadn’t thought of. I’ll implement it into the outline. Should be a great little story when I’m finished.
Devin suggested I reinstall Fedora and toggle the “install everything” switch. This morning I checked “standard desktop”. So I did as he requested. All four disks loaded this time and now I’m back into the upgrade stage. Smooth as pie.
So, as I was saying…

Left to right, Jeremy, Sarah, Jason and the Sexy Olga.
Mel and I had a great time. It’s a shame we live so far away from them. There’s just not a quick and easy path from Thousand Oaks to Santa Monica. The 405 is always a nightmare and cutting over the mountains to hit the PCH is beautiful but runs the risk of bumper to bumper foreverness.
In any case I dig the little foursome. I’m awarding them an enthusiastic thumbs up.
Mel’s little birthday party has reached the point of no return. Evites have been sent and party favors purchased. If you find you have not received an invite then the chances are good that I don’t like you nearly as much as you thought I did.
Thanks to Patrick for the heads up…do yourself a favor. Go to iTunes and check out William Shatner’s latest CD — Has Been. It’s…well it’s brilliant. Clapton, Lennon, Frampton, Springstein, the Stones and of course, the Shatner.

Ok, back to work.

As I have been sitting here preparing for an early morning call from New York, I murdered Smeagol, my Pentium IV 1.5gig system. Dead but not forgotten Smeagol is currently being reborn within the world of Linux.
Snape is the Alienware. He handles my entire workload and does it brilliantly but he truly shines within the gaming world. You know, he scored a 438 on his benchmarks and that’s far superior to Dean Lorey’s measly 300’s benchmark. Smeagol sits loyally next to Snape and for nearly a year has served as the holder of backup files and handles AIM when Snape is busy gaming.
Since I no longer run games on Smeagol and since his main purpose is for quick backups then I thought a stable system was needed.
Smeagol’s birth is complete. It’s…well it’s amazing. He’s fast now. He has been sluggish for months but not anymore. I’ve installed Fedora Core II and maybe that wasn’t the smartest choice considering Core III will be available any day now but Devin convinced me to run Linux from the CD by way of Knoppix and I was sold. No more waiting.
The toughest part of the process was waiting for connection in order to download the nearly the 4 iso files barking up a total of 2 gigs…and later burn them to four CDs. Oddly enough during the installation I was never asked for CDs 3 and 4 so that may be normal or a bad thing down the road, I guess we’ll see.
But within 12 seconds of rebooting after the install I was surfing the net. Linux found every piece of hardware, located the network and I did basically nothing but work on Magnus for my coming phone meeting.
Presently there are 116 available updates through Red Hat. It’s set up not unlike Windows update. Hold your pointer over the lower right hand icon and the information appears. So, Smeagol’s updating at the moment.
I guess that would be my first criticism. There’s no status bar on the update. I actually thought he’d frozen up for a moment until I noticed it was fetching a header and recalled reading on one of the Linux forums that the header download could take as much as an hour. Still it would be nice were there some bar showing me the current siltation. Oh well.
And the only other concern is that Snape doesn’t see Smeagol anymore. Smeagol sees Snape of course and I tooled around inside Snape’s files a moment ago just to see if I could. It’s a good bet Devin’s gonna get an IM the moment he logs on.

Last night we tooled down to Santa Monica to check out Sarah’s recently overhauled crib. Rip and Sandra, Sarah’s parents, Mel’s Uncle and Aunt, were in town.
More to come, my call just came in.