gushue.net

Stupid Wal-Mart. I went back up there this morning after work, intending to buy a TV that had just dropped in price. Parents came with me, so they could use their new Wal-Mart credit card for it, since I didn’t have enough money on me today to get it, or even put it on layaway. But things didn’t quite go according to plan. Something odd came up on the register, saying it needed to be authorized. The CSM had to come to the department, and ended up phoning the credit card people. They didn’t give a reason, just that they couldn’t authorize the purchase. Annoyed, we went home. Parents phoned up the credit card place, to figure out what was going on. The card is new, and wasn’t even used yet. Apparently, their side of the system saw it as the transaction going through twice, with the first being approved, and the second not. On the store side, it didn’t go through at all. Really weird. So my mother phoned the store to figure out what happened, and they will be holding one of the TVs until Friday, since the transaction should be voided on their side by then, and hopefully working. I’ll check at work tonight to make sure that one was actually put aside. I’ll be pissed if they didn’t, and ends up being sold. I don’t know if any more of those will be coming in.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll have a shiny new TV this week. I planned to get one in a couple of months, but I wasn’t expecting a big price drop on it.

In other news, I attempted to install Linux on my laptop this week. It worked, kinda. For some reason, the onboard network port hasn’t worked properly for a while now, but I’ve been too lazy to phone up Dell Canada’s Tech Support. Their email support was of no use at all, ending with them telling me to phone Dell Canada’s number after numerous detailed emails back and forth. One of these days I’ll get around to that. And, my wireless network card seems to have problems in Linux. I managed to get the interface up and running just fine, but with any kind of traffic, it locked up the whole system, making it unusable. Which sucks. So, right now I have Windows XP installed on it again. I’m going to give it another try, for the ClearType. I hope the bugs I hate either don’t appear, or that I can deal with them this time.

Oh, and apparently it’s Grey Tuesday. From the press release: DOWNHILL BATTLE (February 18, 2004) — A coalition of websites will join in an online protest to offer free downloads of a critically acclaimed album that is being censored by a lawsuit threat from EMI Records. The action is an act of civil disobedience against a copyright regime that routinely suppresses musical innovation. The Grey Album, which remixes Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ White Album, has been hailed as a innovative hip-hop triumph, but EMI sent cease-and-desist letters to any record store that stocked it. This Tuesday (”Grey Tuesday”) the coalition of sites will offer free downloads of the Grey Album, and turn their pages grey, to take a stand against a copyright regime that serves neither musicians nor the public interest. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of that kind of music (Jay-Z that is, I like The Beatles), but I’m on the side of the protesters with this. Stupid record labels and the RIAA.

After months of not using my Sun Ultra 5, I finally decided to get it running again. I’m currently installing Gentoo Linux, which will probably take forever, since I’m going to go the compile route, and this computer isn’t exactly a speed demon compared to current computers. The last time I was in the middle of doing this, the power went out and I didn’t continue with it. My sister borrowed the 15" monitor I was using for it shortly after. But I have it in my room for now, so I can do this install. I mainly want a place to keep backups of things that are on krypton (especially my email, which goes back as far as 1996, although not as complete as the last few years). Once I get it booting without a monitor and keyboard and mouse, she can use it again :)

Of course, ideally, I’d like to be able to use it as a Linux workstation (not Solaris, I tried that when I first had the system, and hated it). That would require a spare monitor that works with it, and the space to put it. Right now, I keep my laptop on top of the Ultra 5 most of the time. Damn, the hard drive in there is loud. Also, I need to get another switch - all of the ports on mine are currently full, which sucks.

Time to let Gentoo do its thing, and check out del.icio.us - an online bookmark thing that looks pretty cool.

I’m really liking Dreamhost as a web host. It has some great features, sensible limits, and a good price. Nice speeds too, from what I’ve seen so far. Thanks to Tech Knight for recommending it (I had been considering Dreamhost before he even mentioned it, too). I mainly moved to this host for the purposes of the MARP Forums, since some of the users there have donated towards hosting. I really appreciate that, and so do the other users on those forums. That being said, you can donate directly towards the costs of web hosting with Dreamhost, using a neat PayPal payment thing. A lot of other sites have just a PayPal donation button, but they could turn around and just use that money for beer and hookers, or something. Just one nice little feature of Dreamhost. Feel free to donate a couple of bucks if you want ;)

Anyway, enough about that. I haven’t been updating this weblog with much lately (or ever, really, heheh). Same with my LiveJournal too. That’s just because I’m either working, sleeping, or just lazing around with not much to say.

I’m planning on heading out to play some pool tomorrow night, and meeting Jon (psx00) in the process. That reminds me, I need to get the web hosting stuff for my friends up and running again this weekend. It’s been too long since it’s been broken. I should set that up through my Dreamhost account, instead of dealing with broken RedHat (Debian is much better). I should move *.blackplasma.net to here, too. After I figure out all of the email aliases and subdomains that I have. Don’t want to lose access for something for any length of time. That’ll probably take a while to fully switch over.

Something else I need to buy are batteries for my PDA. The rechargable alkalines I have right now are all crappy, I need to get some NiMH batteries for it. Not that I really use it a lot, but it’s great for the calendar app, and keeping track of the hours I work (just writing it down on my wall calendar for now). And if the weather was nicer, I’d probably take more pictures with my camera (that reminds me, need to have batteries charged for tomorrow). But winter sucks, so I don’t like going outside to take many pictures. My gallery isn’t working at the moment anyway :(

So the first thing to do on this weekend off - make a list of things I’d like to get done this weekend, and start working on that. I’m sure not even half of it will be done, but anything is better than nothing.

Well, I’m going to be even more broke than usual now. Got a letter from the Newfoundland and Labrador government about my provincial student loan. CIBC gave up on me apparently, and got their money from the government. Now I have to pay back the government :(

Overall, for both of my loans, there is about $44k. That really sucks. I’ll figure something out, I guess.

I’m still trying to save money though. I just transferred the last bit of money in my bank account to my ING Direct account. Not that it’s much, just over $10. But it’s better to save a little than none at all. I have $20 in my wallet for this weekend (I’m off this weekend - and tonight), but that’s it. No plans for saving there yet though, don’t know what I’ll do with the money. Possibly put it into GICs at some point.