Author: gfox (old content)

BIOS Futzing

bee resting on some greenery

Saturday was a lazy day! I geeked out most of the day and attempted to install Gentoo Linux on my new machine. It didn’t start well. I downloaded the CD image for installing, burned that to a disc, and installed a hard drive in the new box. Then I edited the BIOS so it booted from the CD ROM. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the system to boot from the CD. Hmm, weird. I pulled out the hard drive, I checked the CD ROM, and saw that the IDE cable had been pulled out. Doh! I hooked that back up, put the hard drive back in and attempted to reboot. It booted from the disc just fine but now it wouldn’t recognize the hard drive. More futzing around, and I noticed I had forgotten to plug back in the power cable to the hard drive! Woops 😉

With the hardware working, I set out to get Gentoo running. I got pretty far actually. I think I did pretty good. Until it came time to configure Grub, the boot loader. I messed something up here, and no matter what I tried, I couldn’t fix it. I gave up.

I changed my mind, and went with Suse instead. I had a few problems determining what my network card was before I could do the FTP install, but once I got that sorted out, the install went pretty smoothly. Now I have a Linux host running Suse. Major geekfest, but pretty interesting. Some day maybe I will try Gentoo again, once I understand more of how Linux works.

As I said to a couple friends today, I know just enough to be dangerous. I think Suse is going to be a good stepping stone for learning on.

Lazy Geekfest

boat overturned on a dock

Pretty lazy week. Work, ride trainer, spent time with Sue, play with the kitty. These are just some of the things I have done this week.

I bought an old machine from work a couple weeks ago. It had no hard drive, and was pretty cheap. I bought a hard drive for it yesterday, and my plan for the weekend is to install some variant of linux. Right now I am leaning towards Suse. Not sure why though. I do like the Gnome desktop. Whatever.

This week, while boring, will turn into a geekfest weekend. plus I have a ride planned for the weekend. Yay!

Internal Wedding

Aphro asleep on my lap

Wow, what a great weekend. Very revitalizing. This weekend seemed much longer than it really was. Thursday night I went to Nanaimo for dinner with my mom and sister. Friday morning I drove back to Victoria for work. This little excursion messed up my internal clock. When the work day was over on Friday, I didn’t know which way was up!

Friday night I stayed home and did a little bike maintenance. It is definitely time to get some new bushings for my Fox rear shock. The is a slight clunk when I lift on the saddle, and it is definitely coming from the connection of the shock to the frame. I also did a little work on my front fork. It was in dire need of a top up of fork fluid which I purchased from this shop.

Saturday morning was the photo club. I forgot to mention in my other post that I received a :fuck: parking ticket! I purchased parking time, placed the receipt face up on my dash, then closed up my truck. Turns out, the receipt had slid down my dash, beneath the tinting on my windshield. It was pretty windy that morning, and I wonder if a breeze blew it down the dash. Crap, this is the second time that has happened! $25 down the drain. Grrr!

Saturday afternoon was Todd and Jennifer’s wedding. Very nice ceremony at St Ann’s Academy, and an absolutely wonderful reception at the Royal Victoria Yacht Club.

Sunday. What can I say about Sunday. I didn’t really do much yesterday. I was a little hung over, and basically lazed around the house all day. I did take Yoshi to the park for a walk while it was warm and sunny, so that was good.

Monday morning I awoke and felt awesome. I am refreshed revitalized, and ready to tackle the week. Isn’t that what a weekend is for?

In a nutshell, that was my weekend.

Firehall Snap

firetruck from Hall 2 Victoria BC

My pics are up from today’s firehall shoot. Cassandra had set up the shoot for us, but when we arrived, we found out that Cassandra’s friend hadn’t told the other guys about us coming. To top that, they had drills the had to attend, so we only had about 15 minutes to shoot! I decided I was just going snap away at anything that struck my fancy. Since I would be shooting so much, I stuck with my digital camera. In the end it was very enjoyable, and I got to talk with a couple of the firemen.

Also, my pics from the night shoot in China Town are up too.

Theme Thursday – Sport

shane doing the big drop at broom hill

I took this shot a couple weekends ago at Broom Hill in Sooke BC. The lighting conditions were difficult since I was looking up into a very bright overcast sky. I made sure to force the flash so I would light up this rider (Shane). I was quick enough to capture him perfectly in frame.

Mountain biking is the first sport that I really became good at. I have been riding since 1997. Since I began to get more interested in photography, I have tried to combine the two whenever possible.

Sleep Results

bee about to land on a flower


Spring has sprung,
the grass has riz,
I wonder where
my sleep iz.

I have this love/hate thing going on with spring. I love the warmer temperatures, the flowers, the blue skies, and the longer days. I hate the longer hours of sunlight.

I have always had difficult sleep patterns. It always takes me a long time to get to sleep, and in the mornings I tend to sleep very lightly. Why is this a problem? This time of year our pets get up early due to the light. The light wakes me up sometimes, and when it doesn’t, the restless animals do. Once I am awake, it takes me a very long time to get back to sleep. This results in me being very tired for a few weeks while my body, and sleep patterns, adjust to the new light levels in the morning and night. Usually I just get used to it, then DST comes into effect, and I get sent into a tailspin all over again.

Today was no exception. I woke up around 6 am, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I was drowsy, so I just stayed in bed until my alarm went off. Copious amounts of caffeine (only in the morning) will get me through this. I just wish there was something I could do to alleviate the sleeping bit.

Referrer Thoughts

sprayer for pesticide

This is such a geek moment. If you can’t appreciate such a thing, you may not want to continue reading 😉 I was scrolling through my external referrer logs today, and came across three entries that just stood out like a sore thumb. They weren’t search engines, they weren’t friends’ sites, they had nothing to do with anything I have ever written about. They appeared to be porn sites. Why in the world would a porn site be in my referrer log. Then it dawned on me. A new form of spam!

Many people (most of them Moveable Typers) have complained about comment spam recently. Bots have been created that crawl the web and insert spammy comments on Moveable Type blogs. I haven’t had any instances of this on my site (go Drupal), but I have had a few slimy and nasty comments that I have ended up deleting.

Is this referrer log strageness a new form of spam targeted at site admins? Could this have been created by bots that were unable to spam my blog comments? I dunno, but it was one of my funny thoughts for the day.