Childish, I know... but...

Best... Name.... Ever!

2005 Aug 19 (Fri), 21:20 Zany Zoot Suit!

rpmstrap (local mirror), my silly little chroot-making tool for RPM-based distros, apparently has quite a few more uses than I had originally thought of or even intended.

Apparently, it's been quite useful to people running VPSes. Xen threads recommend it. It's mentionned in the Xen wiki as well as in other things on the topic. I see it mentioned in a couple of IRC logs for Xen. It's even inside StrongboxLinux.

I've been contacted by people using this to deploy clusters, build recovery sets, etc.

All this really kind of blows me away. I mean.. yeah sure, it seems obvious... but I never thought of using it for these.

Well, anyway... Got 0.4 out the door. Now have some new scripts for things like Scientific Linux and Mandriva (though the Mandriva one is rather buggy). Been pondering how to do some stuff with rpmstrap and PDK... but haven't gotten much done there yet.

2005 Aug 22 (Mon), 16:34 Reception

Jessica's mother wanted to throw us a reception, so here's the pictures from it.

2005 Aug 24 (Wed), 13:57 Fartface Meringue

Sorry folks, the Pimpscript, SVN, and a couple of other things I run are down right now. Turns out the hoster has also changed their support system so I can no longer force a reboot remotely.

These should be back up sometime soon.

2005 Aug 25 (Thu), 13:38 Correction

It's been pointed out that a post I made a little over a year ago concerning my brother was not entirely accurate. When he passed away, everyone assumed it was an overdose (because of his history of substance abuse) however it was not. He actually had died of heart complications (which is something that us Hart men have a tendency towards). Everyone assumed it was an overdose becuase of his past, but an atopsy proved otherwise. Unbeknownst to most in my family at the time, he had actually confided in one of my brothers that he had been clean and sober for quite a while before his death. This is why the autopsy was requested, because everyone wanted to know the truth. Thankfully, the truth was very good news (not that he had passed away, but that he hadn't overdosed).

I also mentioned that he was a racist in life. I'll admit I hadn't seen him in roughly 5-8 years before his death, so I have no idea if he later on turned around on this subject. All that I do know is tha last time I personally saw him I helped bail him out of jail for getting into a knife fight with a hispanic gentleman over a racial issue. Additionally, growing up I recall seeing swastikas on at least one of his motorcycles and actually getting into a discussion with him over african americans when I either was about to serve or had just returned from my mission to Mississippi.

Now, I want to assume the best with respect to him. I want to assume that he did see the error in his logic concerning racial biases as he saw the problems substance abuse had caused him. I don't know if he did, but I would like to think he did. He ultimately was a very smart man (honestly, everyone in my family is quite smart, just in different ways) and I should think that if he hadn't seen the error in his thinking about racism, he certainly has where-ever he is now.

I want to assume the best about him, as I want to assume the best about everyone (even though I usually wind up being disappointed and angry at people).

There is, however, one thing about my brother that I can honestly and truthfully relate to. He was someone who everyone assumed the worse for. When he passed away, everyone assumed it was an overdose. Like him, I am someone who everyone assumes is unwell.

The simple fact is this: I've never been terribly close with anyone in my family. I grew up an only child with 6 brothers and sisters. And because of this, none of them really understand me, or even can relate to me.

I am liberal-LDS. I am someone who values logic and scientific fact and has managed to reconcile these things with his religion. I have arrived at the amazing conclusion that there is not one scientific fact (or even strong theories, as there really isn't such a thing as scientific "fact" ;-) that contradicts the teachings of the gospel. I have found that when you really look at both science and my religion, and you really understand them, the two are extremely complimentary. In fact, there's more scientific evidence supporting my religion than anyone inside my religion would allow themselves to see.

So, in being liberal-LDS I can relate to my family on the "LDS" level, but very rarely on the "liberal" level. So many of them are indocturnated by their cohorts into thinking that the two mean starkly different things. And while it is by no means the teachings of the church, many of the members misunderstand and think that "liberal" is somehow evil and abhorent. Many members are part of the conservative right... thinking that this is what makes a person Christian... even though the church leadership has really done their best to extoll the fact that this isn't true.

Many of them fail to realize that, if you look back through the scriptures and especially at the life of Jesus, there are some extremely liberal teachings there. I'll not bore you with many quotes, primarily because this isn't the forum for such a thing, however, I can share with you my favorite passage.

It's in John, Chapter 8. Jesus is on the mount of Olives (also known as Mount Olivet, and it is actually a pretty big place). Scribes and Pharisees bring a woman before him and say:

Master, this woman was taken in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned; but what sayest thou?

Jesus instead ignores them and stoops down to write on the ground (method of teaching). They continue to ask him. He finally stands and says to them:

He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her

He then stooped back down and continues to write on the ground.

Now, he was the only person there who was without sin. Every other person there had sinned (everyone sins, it's a freaking fact, none of us are perfect). However, he was the only one completely free from it. He said that the person without sin there should cast the first stone. He was that person... and yet he did not cast the stone at her. Instead, he stooped back down and continued his teachings.

What he was telling them was that none of them were without sins, and none of them were in a position to condem this woman.

Is it me, or does this not seem like a very conservative line of thought? From what I read and hear this sure seems contradictory of conservative mantra to me. As near as I can tell (and, not to toot my own horn, but I'm a pretty smart guy) the conservative right is as far away from Christianity as taught by Christ as they can be.

So, at the end of the day, I am left quite alone and often misunderstood by my own family. Because they don't really understand me, and they somehow cannot relate, they assume the worse for me, very much like my brother who everyone assumed had overdosed, even though he had not.

However, I am fine with this. I have managed to work though those issues that had been preventing me from reaching happiness and contentment. I have achieved inner peace and am satisfied with where I am in my life. I've even found someone else who is liberal-LDS to be my helpmate. I continue to love my family in spite of the fact that they may not understand me, and might even be confused about things.

At any rate, I apologize for the introspective rant I just gave. I had something on my mind and I had to get it out before it consumed me.

2005 Aug 30 (Tue), 13:30 Wanda and the Colossus?

Games.... feh... You know I used to play them to avoid excessive drama caused by jerks. Stupid online gaming ruined all that. At least I am getting pretty good at diffusing it.

However, there is one game coming out soon that I am really looking forward to: Shadow of the Colossus by Sony for the PS2.

Just got the demo last night in my OPM and played through it a dozen or so times. Damn, I am excited for this game to come out finally.

For those who don't know, Shadow of the Colossus is made by the creators of Ico. For those who have been stuck under a rock for the last five years, Ico is the landmark title that really redefined story-telling and emotional content in videogames. Ico also failed commercially primarily because it was released amidst a large number of blockbuster titles (GTA3, MGS:SoL, etc.)

Now, Shadow of the Colossus is actually very much a different beast than Ico was. For one, the controls are much more complex. For another, the game really seems to be more of a sequence of intense boss battles. Even still, I am certainly very excited for it from what I've played thus far.... and I cannot wait until it is released.

2005 Aug 31 (Wed), 12:39 Man-handling Fruppencies

Welp, rpmstrap (mirror) version 0.5 has been released. Yay! Yippee! Hooray! ..... ahem....

Anyway, here's the new features over the last release:

• AMD64 support for CentOS 4
• Support for Scientific Linux
• Support for PDK (see this)
• Addition of some of my rpmdiff utils
• Pre and post scripting abilities

Thanks to all those who contributed to make this an even better tool.

BTW, don't know what fruppencies are? Well, they are knockers... hoots.... melons... jugs... And the title of this post actually comes from the punchline to one of my more obscure comics.