It’s rare that anything this cool happens to me, that I feel like blogging about it, and spending some real time on explaining it all.

Yesterday, a friend of mine decided to buy a laptop. Not just any laptop, but a spec perfect laptop for the applications that she needs, and today, I had an opportunity to outrig the thing to my own personal specifications for her.

My first step was setting up her e-mail and IM accounts, that was easy enough, if I could have remembered that gmail now uses 995 for pop (secure pop). In any case - getting past that - the next phase was experimenting with the vino clients in Linux on my PC’s and seeing if I could find something comparable for windows. Because I wanted to be able to take control of the mouse and patch things up if she had troubles with the system, which inevitably she will.

A little bit of history on my PC’s. I bought them both this year. One is slightly older than the other, but they have about the same specs as this one. They are an e-machine and a compaq. The compaq even has nifty compact flash slots so I can use it with my digital camera Sandisk memory chips and move around 250 photos with a point and click.

Both of my PC’s run Linux now. It is just more flexible and runs faster with the customizations built into the version I use (frugalware .7). Frugalware uses the pacman package manager from arch linux and adopts a middle of the road package management slack philosophy - which is that it is easy to use with pacman - but available to have posix compilations. I still have to read up on posix btw.

Up until this Acer pc - I’ve had nothing but headaches with wifi. But literally with Windows Vista Basic installed (which is a perfect match for the 512MB ram) it was just a point and click at the connect frame - and I connected directly to my wireless Linksys WRT54g router. The technology on the antenna side (built into the computer) is called 802.11g (I believe - don’t want to mistype).

Anyway - once all the pc’s were connected on the router, at their various addresses 192.168.1.101, 102, and 103 respectively, all I had to do was search for and install TightVNC for Windows - (both server and client) and I am able to either view the windows desktop remotely, and manipulate it, or to view my Linux desktops upstairs remotely from the kitchen.

I can’t tell you what a joy its been to be free of my upper room scenario and actually be around people and life for a day. I made cheese sandwiches for lunch here in the kitchen and had a couple of hard boiled eggs while hanging out in America - and I’ve been listening to .ogg files that I ripped from my certified collection of CD’s all day. Some of the artists I listened to included David Bowie, Yellow Card. Poe, Depeche Mode, and Bob Marley. I even threw in the second half of the musical rent early this morning for good measure.

In essense, I’m saying that the life on IRC and the life in reality is really a pleasant mix. And I didn’t feel like I was trapped in any one particular place. I plan to buy one of these neat little guys as soon as is earthly possible.

That way the desktops can sit on the desk, and I can go where I please. And the virtual servers out there in lala land can keep virtual serving.

Smile, there aren’t many days when you can actually call it a day and say, man, I really enjoyed this.

Talk to you soon,

-Christopher J. Bradley

Suddenly I’m reminded of an old girlfriend by a song by The Cure
She Kissed a foldout cologne ad from a magazine
And burned holes in it with a lighter
She said our love was smoldering…
I had that thing hanging on my computer desk forever…

Wow - I must have really been suffering from lack of oxygen or something. In any case, I think I’m finally recovering my wits here. My english language sensibilities are returning and I believe I might be able to make one or two cogent thoughts out of the entire mess.

So - I’ve resumed work on my website - with help from Tuxvix again, it is now to be a multipaged website with tabs in the upper right. They appear to work out, and they look pretty slick with the appropriate coloration on the outlines that let you know which page you are viewing at the time. It does take some editing to make everything “fit” together. but it is well worth the effort, and what we’ve got looks really nice.

Second, I’ve been excercising more - that’s helped quite considerably - as well as drinking water. I don’t know I watched this movie on TV about sports, and just started feeling like working out / losing weight - maybe it was subliminal or something. Who knows - anyway - for physical health, now that I’ve kicked smoking, I think I’m in it to win it. Excercise makes a great replacement for smoking.

More to come -

Talk to you soon

Chris Bradley

Well - I’m sure some of you are happy and others sad…

I’m still here biaches…

I almost died of a staph infection when I quit smoking cold turkey 3/13/2007. Haven’t touched a cigarette since. This awesome nurse from ICU saved my life by forcing me to use oxygen through this machine…

Seriously - PM USA Et Al - God Bless You - You’re the next contestants on the Price Is Right…Just wait until you feel my wrath…

Anyone know who the f*ck makes SENECA tobacco?

It says on this pack - “Made under the authority of Tobaccoville USA, USA”…..

Crack kills homies…Put down the tobacco - cause it’s next up…

He was a scholar from a canadian bording school home, who went on to be a scientist and work at University of Toronto with some pretty important things prior to WWII.

When he enlisted in the war, he was given the job “it is speculated” to pick up tags on bodies on one of the beach fronts. It ruined his mind.

When he came home he was in and out of 3 different hospital systems for years 2 Veterans Administration hospitals and 1 hospital here in Niagara Falls.

He ultimately died when I was about 18, due to a heart attack under the care of one of the VA hospitals.

All my parents have ever talked about was why there was no legal recourse (why didn’t they get “money…”)

Don’t they care about the man himself?

That he probably invented chemical and physical substances that affect us to this day and beyond in those labs up in U of T?

I remembered having to carry his casket, because it would “save the family money.” The casket shifted and all I remember is riding in a big black limousine and wanting to drink…to not be sober.