Magic City VitaeLog

I've finally pulled a bunch of photos from the archives, and re-posted them to the gallery... for the 4th time this year.  Hopefully, this will be the last time!

I'm up to about 4th Quarter 2004, but I'll be adding thousands more pictures over the next week or so... 

Clicky here to see them!

How many people dread visits to their state's department of motor vehicles?  It usually does not rank too much higher than getting your teeth drilled or listening to Celine Dion songs.

I was shocked when I got a hand-written letter from the Montana Department of Motor Vehicles. Yes. I got a real hand written note. Here's the back story:

So, I finally got sick of Linux and the many stupid things that it would do, like deciding I didn't actually NEED any of the kernel or initrd files in the boot folder, and deleting them for me.  I reloaded my server with NetBSD, only to find that it didn't handle requests with mysql very well, nor did it have support for fuse-ntfs (the writeable NTFS filesystem).  This is needed, don't ask me why.

 So, I'm now back to FreeBSD, after having to load it twice.  You see. even though NetBSD and FreeBSD share the same Exact file system (ffs), they don't partition the filesystem in the same manor.  So, after I had taken the time to load NetBSD, copy all my files from one partition to another, and format the drives under NetBSD, I quickly found out that I wouldn't be able to read any of that data under FreeBSD.  I had to reload NetBSD to get the data off those partitions, and then reload FreeBSD and copy the data back onto those partitions.  

 When you are talking about almost a Terabyte of data, that takes time.

So... I'm back to FreeBSD (6.2) after a while away.  Its good to be home, again! 

Somebody asked me recently, "What is your page about?"  I was
a little taken aback, since none of the web sites I've hosted on this meager
server have ever actually had a goal.  They've been there to serve my purpose,
or to serve no purpose at all.  I've finally found a voice, or at least
something to yak about.  Now, whether that voice will find an ear will be
an interesting experiment.  

I plan on bringing my experiences in Billings, Montana to those that don't
live in Billings or Montana for that matter.  This is an interesting city,
in many ways. Even at an estimated 100k people in the Magic City, Billings, MT
is still a small city; at least in the hearts of those that live here. 
The residence here, those that grew up with family from here, are only separated
by a generation or two from those that settled the harshness of this
land.  It can be terribly harsh.  Temperatures are inhuman in the
winter (as many not living here would guess, with its northern position in the
United States).  Few would guess that it is also inhumanly hot in the
summer time.  Spring and Fall bring rapid temperature changes and a
sandblasting wind that cuts through every stitch of clothing.  Those that
live here have imbibed that harsh attitude and mixed it a deep adoration for
human life with a stubbornly individualist personality. 

So, this is a new entry on another new site. Hopefully, this will go well. I've moved over from phpnuke to Drupal... mostly because phpnuke didn't REALLY fit what I wanted in a site. It was close, but not 100% of the way. I'm hoping that I can pull more of what I want this to be into this new format. It seems cleaner and more streamlined, without all the extra crap that comes with phpnuke.