So it looks like Dell is telling Linux fans to back down and not to get so excited because:

“Our point of view is that we are listening to our Linux customers,” said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman. He noted that the company already offers factory-installed Linux on some specific Dell Precision workstations for high-end corporate users, but is not currently installing the OS on its other laptop or desktop machines. “However, I won’t rule out the option of expanding the pre-installation program at a future date,” Bolen said.

Well, no shit Serlock. Really. It’s going to take some time to figure this all out? Gosh, I didn’t know that Mr. Computer-Sales-Man. WTF?

Of course it is going to take some time. So that implies the next question: how long? Then my next thought was, fuck ‘em. Why do I need to wait for Dell when someone could already have want I want? A quick google search brought up this page on the Linux homepage “Companies that sell Linux pre-installed on computer systems ranging from laptops to desktop models to servers and clusters.”

Good lord. Going to Penguin Computing configuring a modest computer it’ll be a few bucks over $2000. That is without a monitor, I already have one of those that works fine (though lord knows if the Linux OS they have installed, RedHat, will have the drivers for my current monitor). ::sigh::

w00t! Just took another look see, this time at Insight, and found an HP computer base price $349 which using ManDrake Linux 9.2 (though it does have an Intel processor and not AMD). Adding the few goodies I want (i.e. DVD-RW drive, 1 gig of ram, a decent size hard drive) it comes to $1,194. A few more bucks then I paid for my XP system, but I’ll have to remember that Dell can kiss my arse.

If they can come out with a modestly priced machine with Linux pre-installed and the features (or at least upgrades) that I want, when I need a new computer, then I’ll keep them in mind. . .along with the other options out there which already have Linux pre-installed.

In the meanwhile, I’m going to try and get my old HP (which was ravaged with spyware and other crap before I found the glories of the FireWall) wiped clean and install a free Linux distro from the net. . .there has got to be instructions on how to do that on the web somewhere, lord knows everything else is on the ‘net.

Including blogs of woman who like to read Dave Sim’s Cerebus. . . heh.

A few things today:

Ever read Aardvark Comment? The letters page from Cerebus. Dave would run all sorts of letters in it. Including yours truely five times. Remember Connie Lingus? It took me a bit to figure out that name was just a pseudonym and a funny (if not that original) one. Connie L would send in pictures of herself (?) in various poses to Dave for publication in AC. It has been a matter of speculation who she is.

Seems she is posting to a live journal under a new pseudonym, Dorthy Parka and a blog called “the influence of anxiety“.  She posted this recently to her blog:

I don’t remember who wrote who–I was a fan of Mark’s slickly drawn old-timey-tinged cartoons, which ran in New York Press. His cartoons were dripping with existential horror, satire, and yet still adorably cute. When he was dropped I wrote an angry angry letter to the editor, which was published. But I may have written him before that, or he may have written me in response to my angry angry letter. And somehow he found out that I was not only me, but former Cerebus letters page groupie Connie L., and he would ask me questions (via letter) like “who washes your underwear?” He put delightful doodles on his letters, and send me Garbage Pail kids and Pee Wee Herman paraphrenalia. I later found out that he has a huge collection of Felix the Cat memorabilia. I should have asked him out, right? But he lived all the way in Brooklyn.

So she “came out” so to speak in her blog. She also has a bit to say about Dave:

Dave was an independent comics god who was troubled by his insignificance elsewhere in the world. At the San Diego Comic Con, for example, he was Paris Hilton, and in a bar in Ontario he was just some dude trying to talk to a pretty, long-legged blond. His comic book was well-drawn and well-plotted. He really was a genius. Then at some point he became very religious and very anti-female, and his comic book began to reflect this change. I had to stop reading.

Before he got religion, we went on a bar crawl in the East Village.

Umm. Indeedy do.

Spoilers for Heroes if you have seen the most recent episode.

In other news, Heroes on NBC totally rawked this week. It was the origin episode for Mr Bennett and totally had me cheering him on. Up to now he has seemed a guy that the ends justified  the means, a bad man with good intentions. And yes, he still was, but we get to see why he was doing what he was doing, the end he was trying to justified, and how at the end he made a noble sarcifice for that end. It was enough to make me cry like a little school girl.

Claire also had a big part this week – we see her test her powers to the limit, and of course, she survived. But it answers and also raises some questions about the “bomb” that goes off in NYC. For this time she went towards the bomb, and “diffused” it, saving Odessa. In the omens of the future she is seen looking at the “bomb” with sadness in her eyes and running away with everyone else. . .Claire played the role of the hero, and she did it very well. The scene of her coming out of the house, creepy and cool at the same time.

And one more Cerebus tidbit, Steve B has his latest “installment” of Religion in Cerebus blog entries up, go read entry #7.

Well, it snowed. And it was a day. But it wasn’t a snow day. At least for me as I still had to go to work. It was the light fluffly kind of snow, easy to brush off the car. It made a pleasant crunching noise under my shoes this morning.

The roads to work weren’t bad at all:

And it makes the trees and scenery look ever so purty.

It was funny to be leaving this morning and see some guy in an SUV go fish tailing all over the place when he give it just a bit too much gas around the corner and hits the speed bump: off you go flying uncontrollably! Wasn’t that fun. Heh.

In other news, it looks like Dell is listening to its consumers and thinking about having Linux as a pre-installed operating system on its machines:

 Linux Options

It’s exciting to see the IdeaStorm community’s interest in open source solutions like Linux and OpenOffice. Your feedback has been all about flexibility and we have seen a consistent request to provide platforms that allow people to install their operating system of choice. We are listening, and as a result, we are working with Novell to certify our corporate client products for Linux, including our OptiPlex desktops, Latitude notebooks and Dell Precision workstations. This is another step towards ensuring that our customers have a good experience with Linux on our systems.

As this community knows, there is no single customer preference for a distribution of Linux. In the last week, the IdeaStorm community suggested more than half a dozen distributions. We don’t want to pick one distribution and alienate users with a preference for another. We want users to have the opportunity to help define the market for Linux on desktop and notebook systems. In addition to working with Novell, we are also working with other distributors and evaluating the possibility of additional certifications across our product line. We are continuing to investigate your other Linux-related ideas, so please continue to check here for updates.

This is quite welcomed news to me as I was thinking that when my current machine (an 64 bit AMD HP with Windows XP) bites it (::knocks on wood:: as this is the best computer I’ve had thus far, given me almost no problems and does what I want, the only different thing I’d ask for is a CD burner instead of the CD-ROM it has right now. Sure, it has a DVD/CD burner, but that is also the DVD player, and it would be nice to burn CDs while I watch my Simpsons DVDs. But I digress.), I should get a Mac.

Yes, I went there. I was thinking of getting a Mac as I dislike the thought of getting Windows Vista. Windows XP is working fine (other then Windows update telling me I need to install something that calls back to Windows and tells them that my machine is “legit”), but what I’ve heard about Vista is nothing but crud and headaches I don’t want.

So Mac it was going to be. Until I heard this.  I did a quick look over at HP’s site, to see if they had an HP running Linux (not HP-UX, but that I thought, was for servers and workstations, not PCs, but I could be wrong) . . .but no such luck.

Currently I have no real need (thank the gawds) to upgrade / buy a new computer, but when I do, its looking like Dell will have my dinero.

I can’t believe the weekend is over already. Seems like just yesterday I was at work. Oh, right. I was at work yesterday. Meh.

The boss will be back tomorrow. And I’m sure she’ll be busy catching up on emails, voicemails and other such goodness all day. The first day back from time away from work is always. . .fun. I took a half day a couple weeks back to go out to dinner with my sister and a friend of hers in Newport, and that was just . . .wrong. I’ll never take a half day again. I sent out an email stating to catch up with me before I left, and everyone was paging me every other second. I couldn’t get anything done.

So either no more half days or no more sending out the “out of office” email. Umm.

It is supposed to snow tonight – I can see it coming on weather.com and see the webcams of it on weatherbonk.com. I’m not looking forward to driving to work in the snow. Not that driving the ‘Stang in the snow is all that bad – I just take it easy and go a bit slower: no taking off around corners unless I like swinging the ass end of the car around like some cheesy 70s cop show. No, what I hate are the SUVs hauling ass past me going 10 miles over the speed limit.

Dude, just because you have a four wheel drive doesn’t mean you’ll stop quicker, you’ll still slide just fine into that ditch.

And people who tailgate me in bad weather conditions. I’m not going super slow, usually just 5 mph under the speed limit, nothing too drastic. But they think I should still be going 5 to 10 mph over the speed limit. Yeah, right. Then I get behind someone who doesn’t get the snow off their car. Usually these people are SUVs or large pick-ups. They have snow still over the top of their trucks, ’cause you know it is too hard to get a broom and knock it off. So I have to deal with getting a windshield full of snow. It’d be one thing if it was just light fluffy snow, but usually it comes off in big chunks. A guy that I used to work with had a chunk of snow/ice fall off a truck and go right through his windshield. He was lucky he wasn’t hurt.

Someone posted a link to Dave Sim’s Blog & Mail entry on a recent letter Dave received about furries, and MetaFilter was off to the races. . .(No, I don’t read MetaFilter, first LinkMachineGo posted a link to it, then it came thru my RSS feed from Technorati). The comments range from the “He so crazy” to “Cerebus is da bomb”, but this one comment made me laugh:

I think Sim was always just writing for himself. That was fine when most of us were with him and suitably engaged and entertained. And that’s ok.

Then he took a left turn, while most of us were expecting a right turn. That’s ok too, hey, we could all use a change in scenery.

But the woods got ugly, he kept making these wierd (sic) turns and the readers ran outta trail mix and water and we had to pee. So we bailed, which was fine with Sim, he was going to the place, no matter what. We said Dave, this is getting wierd (sic), we’re hungry and we REALLY got to pee, could you get back on the main road or even a different road and Sim switched the radio to the crazy am talk shows and turned them up loud. And that’s not ok.

Posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:45 AM PST on February 24

For some reason that comment made me chuckle.  Why? Because I remember way back in some Aardvark Comment where Dave totally ripped into one letter writer who ripped into Cerebus. Dave said (and I’m paraphrasing from memory here) that you wouldn’t go into someone’s house and just piss all over their carpet. So why do you write a letter and metaphorically piss all over him?

Dave did his own thing. It was his comic book. He could give two flying shits what the audience thought of it.  So yes, Dave did leave us wishing we were back on the main road, and that we could use the bathroom and get a bite to eat. But we sat still in the backseat, wondering where he would take us, where the trip would end.

When he turned the radio to the strange AM  talk station and cranked it too loud, some of us skipped those pages, wishing for the better times of the main roads and byways of High Society or Church & State. But we stayed in the back seat, watching the scenery go by. It was an interesting journey, one that I’ve made a couple times now (though with some earplugs along the way), and I’ll prolly do it again.

Why? Because each time I take that journey, I see something new: a new sign post pointing out a scenic overlook or a new curve in the road where there wasn’t one before (was there? Yes, it was always there, you were just too busy trying to talk Dave back to the main road to notice). . .and the experiences, the knowledge picked up on that journey, even when one is driven there by a “batshitinsane” driver, are still worth having.

After the super busy past week I had, it was my weekend to come in on the engineering rotation. Luckily there were no “wet” areas working, but there were still areas open that might need engineering support from my department.

Now Saturdays at work are pretty laid back. Yoga pants, a tee-shirt and sometimes a sweat shirt if it is cold enough (the heat is usually turned down quite a bit in the front office on the weekend during the winter, someone said it was 64 deg F this morning). I usually walk around to the open areas where I might be needed, just to show them that I’m in so if they need help they can call me. Sometimes I make small talk with the operators, as people might be working in areas were they don’t normally work to get some overtime.

This Saturday was nothing out of the ordinary, for a Saturday. . . Quite, restful, productive. I got some work done that I wouldn’t have time to do on the weekdays – I was able to sit at my desk and get it done without interruption.  And I was able to do it in comfort. Now only if the janitor wasn’t vacuuming. . .

Well, this week is over at least. The “fun” continues next week.  I actually had a dream of work this week. Two dreams actually.  But then yesterday, even after a crappy day I had a pretty cool dream. I was walking through this house, a very very large house. Like an enclosed park, but I had this feeling that it was a house. I was walking with a group of people, like we were  taking a tour of the place.

I had this feeling that the house was old, but yet, somehow it was at one time mine. I remember walking pass these two very tall chairs. They were like two stories tall, and made of trees. But yet they were chairs. They were covered in vines, like they hadn’t been sat in for a very long time.

The hallways of this house were the size of streets, and to either side of the “hallway” there was a forest, or a jungle or some form of vegetative growth. But yet, yes, it was a house.

When I leave work just after 5pm, the sunlight still shines.  True, it isn’t much, just a sliver over the horizon, but it is still light out. The other day I left work with only my short sleeve work on. . .yeah, 43 deg F isn’t really a heat wave, but compared to the single digits it was pretty nice. Nice enough for short sleeves.

And now when I leave for work, it is sunny out, and when I wake up: sunny out. That hellish week when the sun is right at the top of the hill at this one stop light, so when you start up the hill the sun blinds you and you can’t see the light, is over. The sun is now high enough when I get to the hill that I can once again see the lights.

I can’t wait until spring, until the sand is off the roads and it is warm enough to ride my bike.  I’ve been looking at other bikes, new bikes. . .but my little Kawa suits me fine, and I don’t need another bill to pay. Besides, it matches my car, how could I give that up?

It has been insanely busy for me at work these past couple of weeks. One of my biggest, no, make that my biggest account has almost quadrupled its orders. Thereby increasing the number of calls / pages I get on the floor a day by about the same amount.

So this other R&D project I was working on was given to my boss to help me out on. Trust me, I rather work on the R&D stuff (much more fun and interesting), but it’s either the boss helps me with that or the pile of work exponentially grows on my desk until I can’t get in to my cubical at all. But this week? The boss is out on a business trip this week.

Since the president of the company stated that this project should be moved to the “front burner”, it gets moved to the front burner and the rest of my work sits on my desk. And sits. And sits some more. I manage to get to the high priority jobs, but there are other jobs that need to ship. And when the expediter comes around and asks the jobs status, “I haven’t had a chance to look at it yet.” Isn’t really a good answer.

But it was the truth. I hadn’t had a chance to sit down and look at much on my desk. I sit down for two minutes and I’ve got a crowd of 3 people lined up to ask me questions. My phone rings and I get paged. I end up telling the person on the phone I’ll call them back, answering the page with a quick “I’ll get right back to you”, answering the questions of the three people lined up to see me, returning the page and then returning the call. By then I’ve got a list of  three things I need to get up and do, so I go around and get those three things done, only to be accosted on the floor with more questions. Answer those questions, and then realize that I have to work on my R&D project.

In the meanwhile, the jobs on my desk remain there neglected.

::sigh::

How does my boss do it? I mean, she goes  through this same stuff every day – all the people waiting to ask her questions, calling her on the phone, paging her. . .though, she doesn’t have parts to deal with – and not the size orders on the large account I have to deal with – and she doesn’t have the processes to look after. But she has all of us to answer questions for. . .but I have less questions then I had when I started, and I go days without talking to her, other then saying hello in the hallway.

Mostly nowadays  I go about my business and get my job done, mostly going to see my boss to get the stuff done that I don’t have permissions to do (like changing the process control limits in the system, or zeroing out a lot, etc).

I don’t mind the questions, be them from a new engineer or a manufacturing floor employee asking about one of my jobs,  as I can answer many of them or point them in the correct direction, but how do I do the other parts of my job? How to balance the different aspects of my job? Prioritizing probably helps, and I try doing that. Not sitting at my desk would help – people will walk by to see if I’m sitting there or call my phone before they page me. I don’t know if  they just hold on to their question to catch me later, or if they go find the other team leader or my boss to ask her.

But if I’m not at my desk, then it is hard to get some of my work done – as I need access to the computer system and a flat space to do my work at. Not to mention email, the files on my hard drive, etc. What I need is a lap top that I can carry out to the floor with me and find a nice quiet corner with a bit of flat space and just run back to my desk to pick up work and take it back to the corner.

I wonder what my boss would say if I send her a purchase req for a lap top. . .

So I’ve got a couple. Heck, you probably have a couple.  I’ve got a couple – okay, four – tattoos and both of my ears are pieced (only once in each lobe). I’ve been thinking of getting another tattoo, but I’m not sure what I want to get.

I’ve been following ModBlog where they show some pretty graphic pictures (so that link is prolly not work safe, depending on where you work), and one picture was of a scarification with a tattoo together. Now I can’t find the picture (if I look through all their pictures, I might be able to, unless of course it is filed under tattoos, but I’d think it would be both).

But that shit looks like it would hurt like the dickens, but those that get it done says it is on the same pain intensity as tattoos. Really?  Umm. They look really nice, I like them at least.

Then it comes down to the same question again: what to get? And the question get tougher as I’d like to work the two, scarification and tattooing, together. ::sigh::