Ursus Pacificus

In a previous post I lauded the ASUS eee-PC. I still think it’s a really spiffy gadget!

Originally introduced to the consumer market as a Linux-only machine, it is now available with MS Windows XP (Sorry, Vista {he-he}) as well. That was a brave move by ASUS, in my opinion… While they didn’t exactly trumpet the fact that it came with Linux pre-installed, they did a fine job of fitting the versatile OS to the hardware and alleviatiing any ease of use concerns, and they marketed the machine with its Linux-based OS with a matter-of-fact-ness just short of arrogance. Their bet paid off. Microsoft was caught off-guard so badly by the success of the Linux-preinstalled eee-PC that they offered to retrofit a special version of their Windows XP operating system to the functional, but somewhat limited hardware. Not “Vista”, mind you. Windows XP.

Now, the product description on Amazon states:

Get the power of a full-sized laptop in the ultra-compact ASUS Eee PC 4G, which offers a full QWERTY keyboard, 7-inch screen, and preinstalled Linux operating system. (This laptop is also compatible with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system.)

“Also compatible”? Interesting. So, when was the last time you saw a consumer-market PC with MS Windows pre-installed that also included a statement in its product description like this: “This machine is also compatible with all major Linux distributions”? I can’t recall ever seeing that, even though in the vast majority of cases, it’s true.

I think who ever wrote the copy for that product description should be pressed to alter it to read: “(This laptop is also compatible with the Microsoft Windows XP operating system, not that you’ll need it.)”

On a related note, Best Buy has started carrying the MS Windows XP version of the eee-PC (but not the original, better Linux-based version). Too bad. They’re missing the point.

This article is stupefying. A jury in Texas (that should tell you a lot) found an HIV-infected man guilty of assault with a deadly weapon for spitting on a cop.

Capital punishment for the mentally retarded is one thing. This is just plain stupidity.

I don’t know about the legal ramifications, but socially, I think this sets a really dangerous precident. Suppose an HIV-infected person is injured and is bleeding and unresponsive. Can an EMT that is bled on charge the injured party with assualt with a deadly weapon? What about in cases of consensual sex?… one partner has HIV, the other knows about it, they have sex, then have a falling out…

What about HPV? It’s know to be a cause of cervical cancer in women, which, if left undetected, can cause death.

Where do you draw the line?

The really stupid thing about this case is that the CDC said,

“Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.”

… and the jury convicted the dude.

“What a country!”
-Yakov Smirnoff

Well the insulation is in for the exterior wall, and I’ve started test-fitting the shower drain.

Insulation is up

Blocked-in wet wall

Test-fitting the shower drain

This article pretty much says it all. Carl Icahn, billionaire who just isn’t rich enough, really wants Yahoo! to be bought by Microsoft. Like Microsoft needs his help. Jackass.

This article in the New York Daily News (and others around the world) discusses a letter written by Albert Einstein in 1954 (a little more than a year before his death), which discloses his views on religion and god.

Einstien calls religion “childish”, god the product of human weakness, and Jews as being “no different. .. than all other people.”

It warms my heart

This article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution talks about a bar owner in Georgia who’s selling t-shirts with a likeness of the classic childrens’ book character “Curious George” (a chimpanzee, in case you didn’t know), looking longingly at a banana, with the caption “OBAMA ‘08″.

Now, George W. Bush (a.k.a. Incurious George) has been likened to chimps from just about day one. This search on Google Images shows plenty of examples of Bush’s simian similarity (many with direct A/B comparisons to real chimps), and apart from the rabid, blindly fiathful twenty-somthing-percent who still think “Ol’ Bushie’s doing a heck of a job”, no one seemed to care.

Now that a black man is being likened to a likable childrens’s book character who happens to be a somewhat anthropomorphised chimp, every bleeding heart in the country with nothing else to worry about (like food, shelter, clothing, education, et cetera) is having kittens.

It’s moderately ridiculous.

What’s more, people in and around the bar’s neighborhood are trying to pressure the town to prohibit the bar owner from selling the shirts. As long as the Constitution of the US is still provisionally in force, the bar guy has an opinion and he’s entitled to express it. The rest of us are free to ignore him or debate him, but we’re not free to shut him down or shut him up.

…and besides, the bar guy is an Obama supporter.

Well, today, I got the wet wall blocked in. Twice. D’OH! First time I used 2×4s. It turned out that I miscalculated how much depth I actually needed, and when I test fit the shower, the valve was too recessed.

The shower with the second set of blocking behind it.

…so, I had to rip out the first set of blocking, run down to Lowe’s and get a bunch of 1×4s. Here’s something I don’t understand. They have regular studs… 2×3s and 2×4s… for about $2 a piece. 1×4s? They’re $5 a piece. They’re “premium”. What a load.

Anyway. Got it all blocked up with 1×4s and huzzah!.. Cut the hole for the shower valve, did the test fit and not quite perfect. Close enough, tho. The shower valve is at the right depth. The shower fits where I planned for it to, and the the nailing fins are mostly in the right places. I still have to block in between the studs at the top of the left shower wall, so I can nail up those fins, but all in all, things are going pretty well.

Remember: Measure with a micrometer, mark with chalk, cut with an axe.

A guy at work told me about this YouTube video.. pretty funny… Unless you’re a Clinton supporter.

Hi…

Well, this may seem a little obscure, or at least geeky… but the box that UrsusPacificus was hosted on when I rolled out my Wordpress implementation has been supplanted. Charlene is my new web host. She’s an AMD Athlon64 X2 with 2GB of RAM in a dull little Micro Center “PowerSpec” micro ATX case. The “system disk” is a 2GB CF card, and the website is living on a software RAID1 composed of 2 old PATA HDDs I had lying around (with PATA-to-SATA adapters).

So, for about $230, with a little old hardware I had lying around, I was able to put together a webserver.

How cool is that?!

My camera’s up at the house, so I have no exciting pictures to show. Sorry.

…and, yes, I’m really digging deep in the list of Andy Griffith Show characters for hostnames.

I still have to clamp the pipes to the blocking and do a couple other minor things, but the supply plumbing is installed, sweated, tested… NO LEAKS! WHEE!

Here’s the pipes and the shower control.

Here’s the joints down in the basement where the shower supply is tied into the cut-offs I had to install before I removed the shub.

Still have to do some more modification to the drain plumbing, but making progress! Here, the old shub drain has been cut from the existing drains.

Next up, I have to extend the wet wall an inch and a half, and block in where the nailing fins of the shower walls will go. After that, insulate, do the bulk of the drywall, put the vinyl floor down, plumb up the drains for the shower and toilet, install the shower, finish the drywall, put in the vanity and toilet, and finally take a freakin’ shower in my freakin’ house!

Oh, then I have to have the floors done.

OK… Back to work!