Speaking of the Federal Communications Commission, I was very pleasantly surprised to see how quickly they processed my upgrade; I took the test on Monday night, and the upgrade was in their database this morning, and if I read things correctly, the paper license is already in the mail. That is a far cry from the way Things Used To Be — these computers do make some tasks easier and faster, I guess.
I spent most of today reinstalling my Linux system at work; I wanted to boot up the Windows 2000 partition to check out a couple of things, but somehow, while I was playing with LILO, I managed to corrupt the partition, and then I followed up by making the Linux partition unbootable, too. So I decided to blow away everything on the machine and make it a pure Linux environment; now that I know what I’m doing, it went pretty smoothly, and I even figured out how to use linuxconf to get xdm to start up automatically (for some reason, the install sees the wrong video card — one which is disabled in the BIOS — and so it installs the non-graphic login handler). I still don’t know what I’m going to do with the system, but since IBM is serious about Linux, I should learn more about it.
Holiday Shopping Ideas
If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, may I suggest a visit to Archie McPhee for something tasteful or tasty. Or you might want to consider one of the fine items chosen for this year’s edition of Dave Barry’s Gift Guide, an annual holiday staple around these parts.