Dual Operating System Success (FINALLY!)

I posted back on January 7 regarding my attempts to get a version of Mandrake Linux 9.2 running on my computer. Because I had a tiny hard drive, it took the offer of a free second hard drive to make it possible for this to happen. I met my friend Doug on Friday night, January 9, in order to get the new disk installed and perform my Linux install there with the benefit of another computer handy. I should say at this point that the new disk was a SCSI disk, which will become very important later. We got the disk and the controller card in and were soon running the Linux install. However, the install took a long time, and when it came to the point of configuring X and LILO it began to crash. We tried it a second time and again the install got bogged down. By this time it was 1:00 a.m., Doug had to be somewhere in the morning, and Jennifer was on the floor asleep. I had to pack it in.

Over the weekend I tried numerous times to get the install to work. I got to the point where I could actually get Linux to boot up, but X kept crashing. I discovered that the X libraries had somehow become corrupted during the install. I burned off a new set of Mandrake discs, in case I had incorrectly burned the first set, and still had the same problems. Finally, on a whim, I did a minimal install on the empty portion of my IDE drive. This time, the install went incredibly fast, and within fifteen minutes I had a working install up and running. I attempted to query some online resources at this point, but without any response, my only assumption is that the data transfer rate between the IDE channel and the SCSI channel is so slow on my motherboard that files get corrupted in the process.

What I ended up doing was splitting the SCSI disk in half. I have all my application files for Linux on the IDE drive, while my /home and /var directories and my swap space reside on my SCSI. The remainder of the SCSI contains a FAT32 Windows partition that holds my mp3's, which I can actually mount and access in Linux. The SCSI FAT32 partition is also a handy medium for getting some of my shared files from Windows to Linux, such as contacts and appointments out of Outlook and the like.

Fighting homesickness

I have been spending a lot of time poring over the Transit Toronto website, and I think part of the reason why is that I am homesick for Toronto. Even given that Toronto is probably a lot more run down and clunky than it was when I lived there, it's still my home and there are things about it that I am missing terribly. I hope that part of my homesickness is the result of my continuing unemployment and that when I get a new job I will be in a much better mood.

Why the New Hampshire Primary Shouldn't Matter

Now that Iowa is done, anyone who cares about the Democratic presidential race will turn to New Hampshire. New Hampshire's "First in the nation" primary, and all the idiocy that surrounds it, is supposed to provide a bellweather of a candidate's electability. If a candidate wins New Hampshire, they generally have a good shot at winning their party's nomination.

However, speaking as someone who's lived here over two years, here are the reasons why it shouldn't. (I'm sure this research has been done before, this was more of a research exercise for me personally)

1. Representation by population

New Hampshire's overall population is only 1.2 million - a small sliver of the population of the U.S. Of that, only 98,000 registered Democrats (and 155,000 independents, if you want to count them) turned out to vote in the 2000 primary.

2. Representation by race

New Hampshire is 96% white, which is far higher than the national average of 75%. Therefore, a primary winner in New Hampshire hasn't even seen wide swaths of the nation's minority population.

3. Representation by economic group

In this area New Hampshire is fairly representative of the population in terms of business sectors and employees, so on economic issues a candidate will actually be representative of national interests.

4. Culture

There is no data to back this assesment up (not that I can readily think of, that is), but based on my observations New Hampshire residents are generally

- more conservative on fiscal matters than the general US population
- more liberal on personal freedom than the general US population
- less interested in religion as a deciding factor on someone's candidacy
- generally favor less government and taxes than the general US population

In conclusion, the only reason why a New Hampshire primary winner has generally become their party's candidate for President has less to do with New Hampshire's representation of the nation and more to do with its "first in the nation" status, which over the years has created a coronation mentality.


Sources:

Population number and NH race data
New Hampshire Primary turnout
National race data
Economic Sector Data

Bonnie looks at my weblog

This is a demonstration to Bonnie to show her how easy it is to have a weblog.

Lost and found websites

One day a few months ago I found a website devoted to all manner of trivia and information about the Toronto Transit Commission, which is the transit system in Toronto where I grew up. The website is called simply Transit Toronto, and has a wealth of information related to the Toronto Transit system.

I really enjoyed the TTC and spent a good part of my life on it. When I was growing up, a neighbor used to be my babysitter during the day, as both my parents worked. As I went to school she continued to watch me after school and in the summertime. She and her husband did not own a car, and went everywhere on the transit system. Her husband had I believe worked for the TTC at some point, or if not, certainly knew an awful lot of information about how the system worked.

I started using the transit system on my own without any adult supervision when I was in the fifth grade. I attended a gifted program one day a week at another school and had to take the TTC to get there. When I was in high school and college, I took the TTC each day to get to school, and when I started working I took the TTC to work every day. The great thing about living in Toronto is that as long as you don't live too far out in the suburbs you can use the TTC to get anywhere.

Reading about the TTC on this site certainly makes me nostalgic for home. I spent a long time scanning the site when I first came across it. I then switched browsers or did an upgrade or something and lost the bookmark. Oddly enough it never came up when I googled on anything related to "Toronto transit." Luckily I mentioned this on the Canadian board at DSL Reports, and someone knew exactly what I was talking about and posted the link.

Riding on the Metro

The Montreal Metro, that is, officially known as the STM, for the "Societe de Transport de Montreal." It used to be known as the SCTUM, which I believe stood for "Société de transport de la Communauté urbaine de Montréal."

I am a big fan of public transit in general, and also websites related to transit trivia.

First Direct-to-Gay Advertising?

While watching the guilty pleasure Queer Eye for the Straight Guy this evening, I saw an Orbitz ad that surprised me.

It was one of the "puppets" commercials from their current campaigns, but something was a little different about it. The commercial starts off with the Robert Stack puppet saying "The boys are planning a trip to Miami and money's tight." I had in my mind some sort of frat house reunion thing. Then the ad cuts to two "field agents" checking out the hotel, one girl and one guy. The girl makes some comments about the amenities while the guy is looking through binoculars. The girl's statement ends with "And the view is fantastic." The guy is looking through the binoculars at a (puppet) guy at the pool in a bathing suit, and he says "It certainly is." The commercial ends with the Orbitz splash and the url for Orbitz: Gay Travel.

Interestingly, nothing in the commercial says "gay travel" other than the url.

Frustration, Jubilation, Frustration, Jubilation

Thanks to the kindness of someone on my message board, I got a free CD Burner that the other person wasn't using. It arrived in the mail yesterday, and I had it up and running in about 1/2 an hour. I bought some blank media late last night and didn't start trying to burn things until today.

First up was some ISO's of Mandrake Linux 9.2, because I desperately wanted to upgrade. I am currently running Mandrake 8.0, and every time I wanted to install something I would go into dependency hell.

I am using an evaluation version of a CD Burning software called Nero, which was recommended to me by a bunch of people at Lakedwellers. Good interface on the program, but I kept having problems burning off the ISO's. The really frustrating thing is that the burn would error out at the end of the burning process, not the beginning. I would see the progress meter get up to 99% and then the error would come. Frustration.

After three or four times, I finally got smart and paid attention to the log files and then searched the site for information regarding the error. It turned out that because the ISO files were so huge, the program couldn't automatically finalize the CD after the burn, I had to finalize it manually. I fixed that step and was able to successfully write the ISO's properly. Jubilation.

So I finally burned off my three ISO's, and happily turned to my next step, installing an upgrade to my Linux system. Then I come to discover that I don't have enough room on my hard drive to successfully upgrade! Frustration.

But then someone else at Lakedwellers offered to give me a hard drive that he wasn't using, so in another couple days I will be back in business. Jubilation.

Old Poetry

I came across some older poetry the other day while organizing (a.k.a. "throwing shit out") and decided to get everything into electronic format for posting here. Some has stood the test of time, others are highly embarassing. I hope to have them published here by the end of the week.

New Year's Resolutions, revised

I think this will be my final list for this year. I've taken out the "get a job" resolution because that is an imperative:

• Participate in positve, non-political online discussions. Recently I've found myself getting all fired up about political flamewars on message boards until I realized that I am getting my blood up over nothing. No one who participates in such discussions is ever prepared to consider the other side, so why bother trying?
  
• Arrive early for all appointments and commitments. I rush around too much, because I leave too late for appointments and usually end up getting there right on time or late.
  
• Use time for valuable pursuits while still having fun. Being unemployed has made it very easy to while away the hours doing useless things.
  
• Live healthy. This encompasses several things, such as "Eat healthier foods" and "Exercise reguarly," along with a general focus on good health.
  
• Develop a regular yoga practice. I enjoy the benefits of yoga, I just need to practice regularly and make it part of my daily life.
  
• Drive responsibly. It's time to stop driving aggressively like a teenager. Let everyone else drive like an asshole, I will take my time.