Yesterday, my laptop came in. Huzzah! Installing RedHat 9.1beta went pretty smoothly, with just a few caveats -- the sound drivers are a bit touchy, and I need to login as root before I log in as myself for them to be properly initialized. At some point, I'll figure out what gnome-session is doing that Windowmaker isn't, and make some tweaks to my .xsession. The LCD runs at a really funky resolution, but that's actually by design of the hardware. It can play DVDs, and so I'm thinking that I might actually pack up my TV and put it in storage in the basement. On the downside, the wireless card is unsupported in Linux, for now.
Anyhow, yesterday when I was heading to Sree's for lunch, they were playing obnoxiously loud music in the tents they have set up in the fields near the Cut at CMU. I've never fully understood that -- maybe it's supposed to contribute a "we don't care" party atmosphere or something. At some of Debb's early-morning track meets, they did the same thing. Well, this time, I put my hands over my ears as I walked, and eventually they turned the music off. Alas, Sree's was gone already -- I had spent enough time burning the 9.1 ISOs that I missed lunch. Ouch. So I hoofed it down to the Craig Indian place...
On the way back from work, I was inadvertently rude to someone I really, for reasons best not explained, don't want to be rude to.. I was excited about my laptop, and while talking, just talked about it instead of engaging in personal conversation. Argh.
Oh, what's an entry without some politics? Of course, it's not like the U.S. has ever lied about its intentions and activities in Cuba before.... I'm not saying that the U.S. is necessarily lying here, but rather that it has zero credibility when it says this.
And, of course, there's this. Abbas is in a tough place. Islamic Jihad and Hamas are both hard to control and are also a necessary insurance. It's not as simple as dismantling them -- at that point, the Palestinians have no leverage, and Israel has considerably less incentive to negotiate. If Israel is to try to boot them all out, it's certainly better for them that they have some people with guns to make it as painful as possible. On the other hand, if peace is to be achieved, both sides are going to need to be a bit more thick-skinned about what the other side does, and although the Israeli government hasn't done a great job about this, militant groups are even less capable in this regard. Someone, in fairly recent conversation with me, suggested that the Israeli government should simply pay the Palestinians to all leave Israel/Palestine. That seems completely unrealistic to me, about as unrealistic as 'the West' paying all Israelis to leave the area. People generally don't put a price tag on what they consider their homeland. Of course, part of the mess has been caused by the Israeli continued work in capturing people high up in the militant groups, despite the ceasefure.
School Budget Cuts suck. I've heard a lot about some local funding problems, both in this field, and in general. Apparently, the city of Pittsburgh is near bankruptcy, and some city services are shut down. Someone, although oddly, I can't remember who, recently ranted about how Clinton, although not the best president in other ways, didn't screw up the economy as much as BushJr, and suggested that BushJr (Pretzels be unto him) almost seemed to intentionally messing it up. Oh, it was Jeremy. Anyhow, I guess I don't have enough of the Greenspan thumb to judge these things for myself, but it does seem like BushJr's administration seems to be a gross conservative power grab. It's all about big business... Speaking of which, there were three business types at the indian place yesterday, two of them were having a good time, but the third one was lame, and just had water. I think there's a difference between people in such business, who wear such stuff like a coat, and people who actually are business types. I think my dad is the first type, and I very much respect that. I have a tough time respecting people, like those people, who are actually the second.. they were talking about charming the ladies, and ways to bury a competitor, misogynistic and cutthroat. It seemed to me that their eyes were empty.
Oh, yes, SCO is preparing to sue those of us using Linux. Fun.