I found an article on DistroWatch entitled Is RPM Doomed? All I can say is that I certainly hope so. At the office I have four servers running RedHat (one 6.1, one 6.2, two 7.0) — all of which are behind on some major security patches because of version conflicts within RPMs. It is too big of a PITA to manage, so I give up.

I’m standardizing on Debian for all of our production machines, a decision I made some months ago after running regan on Debian for just under a year with _no_ issues. apt-get has worked like it _should_. Yes, DEB packaging has flaws (just like all the rest), but none so crippling as to keep me from doing what I need to do, as RPM packages have.

</rant>

Google was an accident? [aso/.]

Delving further, I find J. Bradford Delong‘s site an altogether interesting read. No editorializing from me here, just a link…

I’m late, but on 08 Feb: “A new version of the windows alpha build has been released. This should address a lot of the issues that some of you have been having (console windows, buddy icons, etc.) [...] Enjoy!”

Gaim site || download gaim-0.60a5.exe

Linux to power most Motorola phones [news.com, ASO/.]: Awesome, imo. I’ve used only Mot phones since May, 2000 (StarTac 3000, StarTac 9868W, and my current v60c) and will have no other.

As seen here on MozillaZine: TechTV article regarding killing DNS resolver cache in Windows. Should speed up browsing…

You’ll notice I’m now sporting a link at the bottom to the W3C where you’ll find “This Page Is Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!” I took it upon myself today to explore the evolution of HTML since around version 3.2 when I learned it, and found I was not up to snuff on a lot of syntax. I then spent the afternoon re-learning a lot of what I thought I already knew about HTML, and updating myself to XHTML standards.

A nice side effect is that this page now displays nearly the same in Gecko (Mozilla, Phoenix, etc.), IE(6), and old Netscape(4.8).

Next chore is to update all the rest of the pages here to standard and update other sites I’m responsible for.

I’ve posted my CoolMon config. Modify to suit. [screenshot] [miklm.ccfg]

New Win32 builds of Phoenix have been posted, and I found some tweaks linked from the MozillaZine forums that will do amazing things for your browsing speed. Here is my user.js file.

Update: Another Phoenix tip — today its all about icons. Phoenix uses the Mozilla dragon icon by default, and comes with no other. So, go here and download your choice of icons, save it to your phoenix program directory (eg, c:\Program Files\Phoenix\) as chrome\icons\default\main-window.ico (you’ll have to make the icons\default directory) — then change the icon in Windows by right-clicking your shortcut -> Properties -> Change Icon -> Browse and select the new icon. The main-window.ico file will make it use your new icon in the task bar for the window. [screenshot]

And after you do that, watch this: Terry Tate: Office Linebacker

In searching around for my old ICQ number (2548139), I ran across what is probably the oldest record of my existence online.

Date: Sat, 2 Nov 1996 20:16:14 -0600
From: Michael Merritt [mikl_m@juno.com]
To: Multiple recipients of list [garyslist@creature.tn.org]

Back when Juno was an e-mail only provider, gave you access to a toll-free number from anywhere… Soon thereafter I remember switching to real Internet access through US Internet, the only local provider in Pulaski until late 1999.

My .sig then:

====================================================
= Michael Merritt          E-mail: mikl_m@juno.com =
= Phone: (615) 363-8236        Fax: (615) 363-4036 =
= 3950 Bethel Road               Pulaski, TN 38478 =
====================================================

I remember being “online” at the Richland Raider BBS in ’95… Enough of this pining for the old days rubbish. I’ve got work to do today.

No good news from the Phoenix front. First, there was this Slashdot post (make what you will of it), but then followed up by this discussion on the Phoenix forums at MozillaZine.

I’ve found myself using Phoenix nearly exclusively since October or November, and will be greatly saddened if it dies or stagnates. Here’s hoping that things pick up and development gets back on track.

Update (22:31): Frank pointed me to this thread posted this evening at MozillaZine. Guess it was just a bit preemptive to jump to conclusions regarding the stall in development.

227 days uptime. Gone. Down the drain. I managed to keep my two servers up and running for 227 days without a single second of downtime, and then we blew a circuit breaker at 00:15 Wednesday at the office which went undiscovered until after 06:00, by which time the battery backup units had long since drained. I guess now would be a good time to do upgrades like adding drive space or something… Time to add an automated generator at the office, eh? At least we’ve put off-site monitoring in place as of last night that will alert us via cell phone (SMS text messaging) should we lose network connectivity again. Yes, we should have done that a long time ago…

It snowed some this morning, but seems to have slacked off by the late afternoon. It better either come a foot of snow, or go ahead and turn into spring. I hate bleak winter weather unless it includes enough snow to sled in or make snow balls.

Update: I just got a free large Coca-Cola from Long John Silver’s. That may be the bright point of my week.

I’ve decided that the “new” logo up there is utterly despicable, and I’m tired of this blue background too. Problem is, I don’t have time right now to change it. Yes, its 02:12, and I’m at the office (as I have been since 08:15 Monday, and most of the weekend). Two Cisco 26xx routers are newly configured, and I’m working on a Lucent/Ascend MAX TNT. That isn’t going so well, so if you care to volunteer support, drop me an email.

Which reminds me, Steve called me earlier tonight to inform me of some improvements to Sublimemail that he wants me to test on my mail domain. I’m looking forward to seeing how this works, since my SPAM levels have been steady increasing of late.

Speaking of improvements, I got fed up with Trillian on Friday as it kept munging my Buddy Lists on AIM. I prefer Gaim in Linux for a messaging client anyway, and was elated to find a much-improved 0.60-alpha4 release for Win32 available. I’ve been using it for three days or so now, and its still got several annoying bugs that need stomping, but its much better than -alpha3 and I’ll take it and its bugs over Trillian for now.

Update: I couldn’t stand it anymore. Layout changed again.

Can anything else break today? So far I’ve had the following devices fail:

I have a new favorite web browser, and therefore you should too. “Phoenix is a redesign of the Mozilla browser component, similar to Galeon, K-Meleon and Chimera, but written using the XUL user interface language and designed to be cross-platform.” It doesn’t have all that extra junk that you don’t need; therefore Phoenix > all_else(browsers).

I got a chance to trade a lesser amount of cash plus my trusty ol’ HP Omnibook 4100 for a much more uptown Dell Latitude. Yee haw, etc. System specs here (“cromwell” is the system name).