Cool Links/Computers

Here is a link to GNUWin II. If anyone is interested in free software for Windows, check this out. It is actually an entire CD of free software, but you can just see what's there and take what looks interesting if you want. I particularily recomend OpenOffice.org as a replacement to Microsoft Office. It's what I use and it works great for everything I do. Mozilla is also a very cool browser. Tabbed browsing is awesome.

Word of the Day

"Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)"
Pusillanimous Pu`sil*lan"i*mous, a. L. pusillannimis; pusillus very little (dim. of pusus a little boy; cf. puer a boy, E. puerile) + animus the mind: cf. F. pusillanime. See Animosity.

1. Destitute of a manly or courageous strength and firmness of mind; of weak spirit; mean-spirited; spiritless; cowardly; -- said of persons, as, a pussillanimous prince.

I'll get back to my epic installation in a minute but first, here's some non-techy news. So I'm sitting here at my computer, deciding if I'm going to continue installing Slash or just go to bed. Suddenly the wall in front of me shakes, I hear a loud BOOM! and the lights flicker a bit. WOW! Well, I know I live in St. Paul, but my first reaction was that a bomb had gone off in the street outside my window. I mean, it wasn't really a metallic crashing sound, but more of thundery sort of sound. I looked out the window, but didn't see anything. No fire. No pile of cars. So I run downstairs and the rest of the family is at the door. I looked out, and there sat a car, crumpled and smoking on the lawn.

I need to give a little bit of background if aren't familiar with our house. We live on a corner. On the north, there is a winding road with a woods to the north, then houses to the south. As the road twists and turns along the woods, it lines up perfectly with our house. This mean that if you wanted to drive a car into our house, you would have a pretty good stretch to accelerate along. Seems like someone just did that. I walked out and the car was dark. One house down, there was a group of people swearing and yelling. Looked like maybe there was a little pushing too. My dad was on the phone with 911; our neighbor was on the phone with 911. I was looking around to see what had happened and what damage there was. It was really dark, so it was hard to see, but I saw some wire and this big metal thing. What in the world is that? Well, it ends up that it was part of a telephone pole. Yup. The boom I had heard was the sound of a big log hitting the ground. Fortunately it only had a street light on it, so the only power cable that was down was the one that powered the light.

The whole chronology of it is hazy, so I'll just stick to what I figured out. There's this drunk taxi driver with three passengers. He's driving really fast, goes off the road for a while, hits a pine tree with about a diameter of four inches. Then he get's back on the road, driving straight toward our house. He hits the phone pole and goes up onto our lawn. The phone pole falls on the car, then hits the ground. The wire is down all the way down the street. The driver got scared, started running down the street. Our next door neighbor was one a cell phone and followed him till the police picked him up. We hung out with the passengers, who where not very happy, a little bruised, but fine. The fire truck arrived first. Then a cop car. Then another cop car. Then an ambulance. Then another cop car. They had picked up the driver, who was in the back of one of the cars. Before they left, the firemen roped off the downed wire, which effectively blocked off all our vehicles from going anywhere. I think Xcel will clean it up pretty quick though.

Well, that was very interesting. It would have been so easy for the guy to swerve a little right and hit our car. I think our crown vic wouldn't have been as forgiving as the phone pole, actually. I think I'll work on Slash now, listen to Lifehouse, then go to bed.

Well, I'm doing an experiment. I'm trying to get Slash running on my computer. Like I mentioned yesterday, it is complicated. So far I have MySQL running and am slowly working my way through installing Bundle::Slash. Then I'll have to install the actual Slash code. Then I have to get it all set it. If it works, I'll try to switch my blogging over to that. Slash includes some very cool features like having polls, categories, and allowing people to comment! ... Right, I just stopped there and have come back to this after 2 hours. whatever

Right, like I said, I'm going to write a couple entries in today. I really don't have anything to say, and I need to go to class now. :)

Ok, well it is now friday and I've finally figured out how to make the blog availible to the world. (it's this little button called "Publish") Umm, I'm going to post a couple things today to see how it turns out.

Well, here it is. My "blog." I've been thinking about doing this for a couple weeks now, but haven't gotten around to it. School can do that to ya. The plan was to put it on my own server, but well, that takes work, and time, and software to write or download, and a fast enough computer to run it, and on and on. Maybe I'll change it over later. Like in 5 years? Anyways, hopefully I'll start posting things--interesting things I would hope--soon.