Another Opinion Among Many

Actually, its http://www.whereswilly.com.  From the site: “Do you ever wonder where that paper money in your pocket has been, or where it will go next? This is the place to find out.”

I got a $20 bill out of the ATM (to pay a bill with - boo!) that had this URL on it, so I checked it out.  There’s a companion site, http://wheresgeorge.com, which may have been created first.  Its a neat concept.  I’ve registered so that I can get updates as to where this bill has gone to after it  parts ways with me.  We’ll see if it sits in a vault, like it apparently has before I got it.  Who knows which internet savvy person will notice the message on the bill next!

I was checking out some of the images from the various webcams in the city and around the province to see how yucky the roads looked after our latest storm (which got the kiddies a day off school) and I saw this pretty image from the camera at City Hall.  It often looks like this in the dark hours, but I’ve never taken a capture.  I just think its a surreal look that needs to be shared.  Hence:

Have you done the nutso and “upgraded” or tried out the development release of Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron? I did.  I decided to use the command “update-manager -d” to run Gutsy Gibbon’s Update Manager with the flag to update the distribution to the next release.  Currently Hardy is at 8.04 alpha 3.  For those Debianites, this would be like changing your /etc/apt/sources.list file to point to the “testing” sources and doing the “apt-get dist-upgrade” command after “apt-get update”.

The upgrade went reasonably well with only one temporary show stopper.  Java GUI apps stopped working when I upgraded.  It seems that there’s a bit of a bug in Sun’s Java 6 that doesn’t agree with the new x.org server (from what I gather).  They will fix it in Java 7, which will be a while yet.  Thankfully, I found this ubuntu forum post, that helped me solve the problem.  I used the sed line:

$ sudo sed -i ’s/XINERAMA/FAKEEXTN/g’ /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/i386/xawt/libmawt.so

I hope that this will help you too!

ADDENDUM:

• One thing that you will find is that after every Java update and many X.org updates, your java will stop working again.  Adding the “replacement” string “FAKEEXTN” again should fix the behavior.
• As noted by jazz in the comments (Please read the comments on this post), there are different paths for x86 and x64.
• You may or may not require the additional hacks to the /usr/bin/<java application> script to make it work.  I didn’t for Azureus or Frostwire.
• Any time someone says to “paste” or write a command with the SUDO command or to do “as root“, think before you copy
• Read the MAN PAGE for SED (and AWK) before using it.  Its a powerful command.

Addendum 2: (this is a short one)

Don’t expect anything big with Firefox for this one, at the moment, as Firefox 3 is the designated upgrade from the 2 branch (whether I approve or not - I’m testing and submitting bug reports) ad there seems to be a problem with java and FF3.   If you know how to get it working, let me know.  There are a few little things about FF3 that are great, but, mostly, I hate FF3.  It sucks the biggest moose appendage at the moment.  I yearn for the simple days of Phoenix 0.1…

I’m not sure if RT Cunningham cause this or not, but I’ve been a bit more keen to music videos on YouTube.  I have rediscovered a few gems from “America’s Got Talent” winner Bianca Ryan.  Damn, that girl’s got pipes!

Damn! She’s 11 years old! What’s she goung to be capable of at 20?

So, this month, I’ve started work an hour earlier than before.  Its certainly nice to get home earlier.  That 7:30pm arrival was the pits (I’ll probably be doing them again, though).  So, now, I get home 6:30-6:45, if I don’t have to go elsewhere first.  That part is nice, as I can actually enjoy some “awake” time with the kids, instead of the cranky “before bed” time.  Its not the end of the shift that’s really getting to me (although the other shift is closing time, so there was no question as to when it ended).  Its the start time.  Before, I’d have lots of time after getting the kids off to school to shower and fart around with any dishes left over fromt he previous night.  I could prepare a brunch and generally mosey my ass out the door and be at work in plenty of time (because I’d had to get up with the kids - summer’s different).  Now, I have about 20 minutes between getting the kids off to school and getting me out the door to work.  I’ve got the back a lot of the other stuff up now.

Why does one hour make so much difference?

Who am I kidding? The weather forecast is for 15-30cm of snow and high winds, causing “white out” conditions. Nice. Perhaps the departure may be delayed for a day. We’ll see in the morning…

It’s morning and we’re still here…click the images for a larger version.

So, it looks like its departure Jan 3rd! So, now I have a day off and time to get to the tire shop before they close! That is, unless he’s closed up due to weather…