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Daynotes
Journal
Week of 24 November 2008
Latest
Update: Saturday, 29 November 2008 09:49 -0500 |
08:12
- Barbara
started feeling ill last night around bedtime, and had a very rough
night. She just called and got a doctor appointment for later today. I
hope it's just a 24-hour bug, but she thinks it may be
gastroenteritis.
11:17
- Barbara
was right. It's gastroenteritis. She got an 8:50 appointment, and came
away from it with two prescriptions, one for an anti-nause drug and the
other for one that calms the intestines. I ran by the drugstore and got
those filled. She's resting on the sofa now. She had made an
appointment to take Malcolm to the vet today, so I'll do that for her.
Tuesday, 25 November 2008
09:46
- Barbara seems to be fully recovered. She's just headed out to run errands.
Today,
I'm going to build a replacement for my main desktop system, which
incidentally will also be the new reference mainstream system. I'm
using an Intel Core2 Quad 9650 processor on an Intel Media Series main
board. I thought about installing a standalone video adapter, but the
integrated video is more than sufficient for my needs. Because I'll be
using the system for editing video, it'll be bulked up a bit over
a normal mainstream configuration in terms of memory and disk
storage--8 GB of Crucial RAM and three 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda hard
drives.
Obviously, I'll have to run a 64-bit OS to take
advantage of the 8 GB of RAM, so I'm downloading the 64-bit version of
Ubuntu 8.10 as I write this. I've avoided 64-bitdom until now because
of minor compatibility issues with 32-bit software, but most of those
problems have alternatives or workarounds available. Assuming I don't
run into any problems with 64-bit Ubuntu 8.10, I should have a
fully-functioning system later today.
Wednesday, 26 November 2008
00:00
-
Thursday, 27 November 2008
08:45
-
I finished building the new system Tuesday, and shot video of the whole
build. We went out to dinner Tuesday evening, and I started feeling ill
soon after we returned. Although the doctor told Barbara she wasn't
contagious, that was obviously wrong, because I came down with whatever
it was she had. So, I went to bed Tuesday night and got up regular time
this morning, having lost an entire day.
Barbara's family are
coming over for Thanksgiving dinner. I should take a shower and get
dressed, but I'm still unsteady enough that it wouldn't be a good idea
to get in the shower. Perhaps in a couple of hours I'll be doing better.
00:00
-
Saturday, 29 November
2008
08:59
-
I'm still not 100%, but I managed to get Linux installed and configured
on the new system yesterday. That took a lot longer than I expected. I
started by trying to install the 64-bit version of Ubuntu. To make a
very long story short, it appears that 64-bit Ubuntu is not compatible
with the chipset in the DG45ID motherboard and/or using 8 GB of system
memory. I ended up with 32-bit Ubuntu 8.10 installed with 4 GB of
system memory.
Despite that, the system is wicked fast, and it's
very nice to have 4.5 TB of disk space available. I'll be doing some
video editing on this system, and it should be more than sufficient for
that. Speaking of which, my Canon Elura camcorder died Tuesday, just
after I'd transfered the .DV files of the build up to my hard drive,
and just before I became ill. Although I almost never buy extended
maintenance contracts, I had bought one on this camcorder. Wednesday,
Barbara packed up the camcorder, got an RMA number from Mack Camera,
and sent the camcorder off for repair.
It's been a very strange
week. As of tomorrow, I dive back into the forensics book. I'm trying
desperately to get it all finished by the end of the year, so I'll have
little time for posting here.
09:49
-
Oh, yeah. Something I always forget to do when configuring a new
system. To eliminate the prompt for a sudo password, change the %admin
(last) line in /etc/sudoers to as shown:
thompson@wittgenstein:~$ sudo visudo
[sudo] password for thompson:
# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
Defaults env_reset
# Host alias specification
# User alias specification
# Cmnd alias specification
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
# Uncomment to allow members of group sudo to not need a password
# (Note that later entries override this, so you might need to move
# it further down)
# %sudo ALL=NOPASSWD: ALL
# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL
thompson@wittgenstein:~$
00:00
-
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