Thursday night was the night from Hell, and so was most of Friday with lots of work work to do, but I got it done and left work around 3PM on Friday to celebrate. The boss joined me along with a few colleagues from work and Tyler and we went to the Owl for a few beers. It was good times!

So, as you all know, I was really looking forward to Beerfest and seeing Lemon play on Saturday, so when it was cancelled I was pretty upset. We managed to find a way to cope, however, because Saturday we took advantage of the nice weather and had a BBQ at Brad's house. As the sun set we settled in for a game of poker - shouts go out to Tyler, Blair, Brad, Brad's friend Rob, Marco, and Mike who all made appearances. I lost all my money (as usual), but it was still a good time and I was home early to boot!

Sunday night I met Azure-Dee and Kendra at the RPL to watch Monster, which was a great show and one that Charlize Theron definitely deserved all the accolades for. She makes you feel sorry for someone who doesn't deserve your pity, and she does it very convincingly. I recommend it!

This week is pretty busy for me - I have a CIPS seminar tomorrow night, the Carillon AGM on Wednesday afternoon, that French discussion group Wednesday night, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff that I'm forgetting, in addition to another very busy week at work. Looking forward to the weekend already :)

Speaking of fun things to do - Nick is not coming home for May long weekend, so we've got some deciding to do in terms of what the plan is - we've got to book soon, people!

Last night's lecture was a good one. I highly recommend folks doing a little research into what's happening on the continent of Africa on a daily basis, because it will literally blow your fucking mind. Afterwards, I called up Mike and we grabbed a coffee at Trifon's by the university. Good times!

I got an interesting piece of mail today from Devin and Krista:

Congrats to the happy parents!

This past weekend I wasn't up to much other than fiddling around on the computer and watching some flicks that I downloaded. Saturday night I watched School of Rock, which was a good movie, although for some reason didn't have near as many laugh-out-loud moments as I was anticipating. Last night I saw Anger Management, which had a few laughs but overall is a great example of how Adam Sandler has been phoning it in for a number of years now. Oh well, you can't beat the price!

Tomorrow night I'm going to the Stephen Lewis lecture at the U of R. You are more than welcome to join me if you like! Otherwise, I've got a board meeting on Wednesday, and, of course, Beerfest is Saturday. Tickets go on sale this week - make sure you e-mail me if you need tickets to I can pick them up! This weekend is going to rock!

An interesting statistic that came my way through The Globe and Mail:

[The] study found that, in every province except Manitoba, students enrolled in French-immersion programs outperformed their counterparts in non-immersion programs in reading performance.

In Manitoba, the results for both immersion and non-immersion students were the same.

I made the switch to Linux full-time on all my machines at home last summer. The biggest thing that I had to get used to is where all the files go. Like the early days of Windows, apps in Linux seem to place files wherever they damned-well please. Nowadays in Windows most files obey certain conventions (installed in C:\Program Files for instance), but I honestly still haven't gotten the hang of whatever implicit system people seem to follow. Following up on my earlier post, the good news is that with Red Carpet I don't have to worry too much about that anymore. The even better news is that there is that in conjunction with Open Carpet, there is a repository for Java-based software as well - jpackage.org! For me, I'd rather make installs of everything as automatic as possible rather than fiddle around all over the hard drive, so he's what I did to get it going on my newly-formatted Fedora Core 1 web server:

Installing Java

Grab the latest nosource rpm from jpackage.org for the install you are looking for. For me, I'm looking to use the 1.4.2 install of Java from Sun, but you might have other preferences. In my case, this was the file I was looking for:

java-1.4.2-sun-1.4.2.04-1jpp.nosrc.rpm

There is no automatic way to get this file, because contrary to what some might think, Java's licence means that distributing binary versions is a hassle. We'll have to make a binary RPM for ourselves to install. This is easy enough, just go to Sun and download the binary, which in my case was:

j2sdk-1_4_2_04-linux-i586.bin

At this point, I should mention that while there are definitely binary versions of Java you can go out and install, jpackage.org's structure means that you had better do things their way, because all of their RPM's create a certain directory structure, so if you don't, you're on your own and things might not work. Trust me on this one, use jpackage.org as an "all or nothing" solution as much as you can, I've got hours of swearing ot prove it!

We'll use the two files we downloaded previously to build a binary install on our system. Keep in mind your versions might be different! First, install the no-source RPM:

[root]# rpm -i java-1.4.2-sun-1.4.2.04-1jpp.nosrc.rpm

If you get a warning about some folders not existing, go ahead and create them (/usr/src/redhat comes to mind as a likely culprit). You'll need to base your new RPM on the binary file you just downloaded, so make sure it's in the right spot:

[root]# cp j2sdk-1_4_2_04-linux-i586.bin /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES

Execute the following command:

[root]# rpmbuild -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/java-1.4.2-sun.spec

If you don't have jpackage-utils installed and it asks for it, use Red Carpet to install it. It will take a long time to execute and when it's finished you'll see stuff like this:

Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/java-1.4.2-sun-1.4.2.04-1jpp.nosrc.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-devel-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-src-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-demo-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-plugin-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-fonts-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-alsa-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpmWrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i586/java-1.4.2-sun-jdbc-1.4.2.04-1jpp.i586.rpm

Now you've got the RPM files you need to install Java using Red Carpet, so go and do it!

Installing Tomcat

I installed Tomcat 4 using Red Carpet and jpackage.org, but I ran into a few snags:

Unresolved dependencies:Installing tomcat4-0:4.1.29-3jpp[JPackage (all distros)]There are no installable providers of >=jaf-0:1.0.1[[Any]] for tomcat4-0:4.1.29-3jpp[JPackage (all distros)]There are no installable providers of >=javamail-0:1.3[[Any]] for tomcat4-0:4.1.29-3jpp[JPackage (all distros)]There are no installable providers of >=jta-0:1.0.1-0.a.1[[Any]] for tomcat4-0:4.1.29-3jpp[JPackage (all distros)]tomcat4-0:4.1.29-3jpp is scheduled to be installed, but this is not possible because of dependency problems.Marking this resolution attempt as invalid.

Looks like it's back to the creating-your-own-RPM drawing board for us, but luckily it's pretty much exactly the same process as before. Here's the condensed version:

[root]# cp jaf-1_0_2.zip /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES[root]# cp javamail-1_3_1.zip /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES[root]# cp jta-1_0_1B-classes.zip /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES[root]# rpm -i jaf-1.0.2-3jpp.nosrc.rpm[root]# rpm -i javamail-1.3.1-1jpp.nosrc.rpm[root]# rpm -i jta-1.0.1-0.b.3jpp.nosrc.rpm[root]# rpmbuild -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/jaf.spec[root]# rpmbuild -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/javamail.spec [root]# rpmbuild -ba /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/jta.spec --without javadoc

(All of the binary files above are available from their provider, in this case, on Sun's Java site)

Now your RPM's are ready to install with Red Carpet and your Tomcat install should go fine! In addition to the tomcat4 package, make sure you grab the tomcat4-admin-webapps package too, because I've got a feeling you'll eventually want to administer your new installation of Tomcat!

Installing Apache

Use Red Carpet to install the httpd package if you don't have it already - you're done!

Installing mod_jk2

Use Red Carpet to install mod_jk2 from jpackage.org and you're done!

Configuration

Getting Tomcat, Apache, and mod_jk2 to talk to one-another is the biggest trick of all. Even though I had done it all before, this time I couldn't get it going for some reason because I had to add some settings in httpd.conf that I didn't before. Rather than explain it all to you, I'll point you towards Diego's guide and you should find what you are looking for. Thanks a million, Diego, you saved me a lot of cursing! Once you go through that, that should be all the general customization you have to do.

Speaking of customization, now it's your turn! I've shown as much as I can right now, the rest is up to you. You'll have to do things like add the appropriate users in tomcat-users.xml and install the applications in Tomcat that you want to use. Also keep in mind that under this install Tomcat runs under a user called "tomcat4", so if that user doesn't have the right permissions, Tomcat might not be able to read the files you need it to read. Please feel free to e-mail me or leave a comment, I'd be more than happy to update this short guide if anybody has any questions or runs into problems.

Now, I know, these steps might not have been shorter than downloading and installing all the files yourself, but with jpackage.org and Red Carpet you gain a few things that I think are important:

• I don't have to worry about where things are installed - Red Carpet takes care of that for me
• Tomcat runs under it's own user (not root, which is good!) and I didn't have to do anything to create it/get it running
• Tomcat runs as a service, which makes configuring when it starts and stops really easy, especially for bootup
• I can upgrade Apache, Tomcat, and mod_jk2 with a click of a button using Red Carpet - who knows, maybe if IBM and Sun can get together, I can add Java to that list as well!

Another great part of using Linux - installing Ximian's Red Carpet software is free and easy - just execute the following command at the prompt after you've downloaded the necessary software for your platform:

[root]# rpm -Uvh red-carpet-2.2.2-0.ximian.7.0.i386.rpm rcd-2.0.2-0.ximian.7.11.i386.rpmrug-2.0.2-0.ximian.7.1.i386.rpm

Once you've done that, it's simple to launch the X program:

[root]# red-carpet

Better yet, use a command-line version:

[root]# rug

I'll leave the use of the program to you, but it's even more useful if you add the Open Carpet service to your list of service inside Red Carpet. I've been using Red Carpet for almost a year now and I gotta say I'm really impressed. There really isn't any equivalent to it in the Windows world. Not only can you get security updates, but you can also pick and choose from thousands of apps out there that have been released free-of-charge. Almost all of the Java development apps that I use on a daily basis are available using Red Carpet and Open Carpet together - try it today!

The website has been up and down lately (mostly DOWN) because I recently upgraded my web server to Fedora Core 1. If you notice anything that is not working for you, please let me know!

The Minifie lecture on Wednesday night was awesome. I met Mike there just before it started and I had a great time, even though it went longer than I expected. I thought Evan Solomon was a great speaker and seemed to be a great guy, the kind of guy you would want to go out for beers with on the weekend. Basically, his talk was about something that I've been looking for for a long time - he discussed defending the media as a relevant and important institution. My feelings have always been that journalists are people that for whatever reason, whethey they didn't have the courage or the brains, could not be movers and shakers in this world, so they decided to cover it instead. It is in this covering of events that they try to make their mark in this world, through their biased coverage to fit whatever personal agenda they have. Evan did a good job of explaining why the media is very important because of the functions they serve in society. I'm really not doing it justice, but it was a good presentation. I especially liked what he had to say about new technology forcing old mediums to find efficiencies. The one thing that he didn't touch on, though, was that no matter what virtues the media might have, 95% of "journalists" out there are not helping the cause, but hurting it. I think what he had to say was right, and important, but he didn't justify why no one out there is doing it nor did he talk about any ideas to change it. I actually got up and asked a question about what he thought the impact of weblogging is having both as part of the media and just part of society. He basically thought that while you can get some unique stuff in weblogs, it will never be a mainstream part of society's information gathering, rightly pointing out that the proliferation of the Internet has only given rise to more centralization, rather than the opposite.

There have been a lot of things going on lately that really piss me off, and some parts of the lecture reminded me of that, namely the two crazy people who got up to ask questions. One guy was some kind of conspiracy-theorist who thought he had an earth-shattering story that everyone needed to hear when really the reason no one would take his story is because he had obvious mental problems. The second guy quoted stuff most people haven't even heard of before, so you'd think he was smart, but he just raged at Evan over something that Evan didn't even say and when Evan explained it, he got even more mad. It was surreal. The bottom line is, there is a significant amount of the population that has legitimate mental problems and for some reason I seem to run into them all the time. Whether it is people losing their minds over Janet Jackson or people reacting like The Carillon raped and murdered people when all they did was print a harmless and perfectly legal (albeit "tasteless" - whatever that means - it's usually the people who find things "tasteless" that have their heads up their ass the most) article, I seem to run into these types daily. The message I am trying to give you is this - if you spend your life worrying about what other people are doing to your society's sensibilities or your personal space, then you fall into one of two catagories: 1) you have serious mental problems or 2) you have way to much time on your hands. Grow the fuck up - this is life, not academia - people like me who can get through the day without losing it don't need your bullshit.

Anyways, Mike and I went out after the lecture, and it was a bitch to find somewhere to go! It was St. Patty's Day, so, of course, every place was packed full. We stopped at like 4 places in the south end before we finally decided to wait 20 mins at BP's for a table. We were both starving but afterwards I think I had eaten too fast because I wasn't feeling too good - it was time for bed and I didn't even enjoy a green beer or a Guinness!

Thursday nights' union meeting wasn't too eventful. Today I worked from home as there were guys here in the morning to start work fixing the blinds on the solar-arium that weren't working. They had to order some parts so hopefully they'll be fixed within the next few weeks. I went to Laval tonight for supper with Azure-Dee for the "Cinq a Sept" (5-7) as they call it. We had some great food for cheap and talked in French the whole time. I'm really looking forward to getting involved with this French conversation group to brush up, because, boy, do I ever need it!

Otherwise, I don't have anything planned for this weekend. I've got work stuff to do and some personal computer-type fooling around and I just want to lay low. I have never been closer to personal bankruptcy in my whole life so I'd like to lay low. It's for all the right reasons, and it's nice to relax and save some cash!

This past weekend was a pretty good one. Me and Brad and my sister enjoyed a good game of Pats hockey even though they lost. After the game we dropped off Hali and went to Brad's garage where we played poker until the wee hours with Ryan M. and Bryan, which was a good time because for the first time I won! It figures that it was probably the smallest pot that was ever around the table. but beggars can't be choosers.

I had a huge headache on Sunday so I didn't do much other than head to Brad's that night to watch WrestleMania with Rick and Jerrod. It was a good show highlighted by the miracle that was HHH not retaining the belt. It was super long though, so by the end I was pretty wrestled-out. Props to Brad for saving us $50 ;)

Not too much else has been happening so far this week. Wednesday night I'm planning on going to the Minifie Lecture with Mike and on Thursday night I've got a union meeting. Azure-Dee has been telling me about this French conversation group that she has been participating in that I might check out on Friday night if I feel up to it. My French gets worse by the day so by the end of the week I might just be too shy to attend.

In other news ... Lemon (a.k.a. "Zoo 2k") will be performing at Beerfest on the 27th at the university! It is going to be a rocking time! I am going to try and send out an e-mail soon, but the plan is to get as many people as possible to head out together for a great night of drinking and dancing! Let me know if you need tickets - they go on sale next week. Only $5/each and $2.50 drinks! Rock and/or roll!

On Thursday, me and Azure-Dee checked out a doubleheader at the RPL. Whale Rider was a great show. I was expecting a mix of a kids movie and Free Willy, but I got neither. It is a great movie for all to watch. 21 Grams, however, was pretty much the opposite. There wasn't much to like about this movie aside from the great acting. The most annoying thing about it was the director trying to show off that he knows how to use an editing machine ad nauseum. Interesting experiement, too bad it went horribly wrong!

Today I got up early and took out the recyling for the first time in ages and pocketed $30. Otherwise, I've been working all afternoon. Tonight I'm going to pick up my sister and Brad and we're going to the Pats game tonight. Afterwards, me and Brad are gonna head back to his garage to join some other folk in a another friendly game of poker! Tomorrow is also WrestleMania XX, which I will hopefully get to watch at Brad's too!

The Casino was lots of fun on Saturday night. All in all it was me, Blair, Brad, Steff, Holly, Ryan M., Troy, Angie, Janson, Tyler, Kenny, and Brad Rath. Most everyone lost whatever money they were prepared to gamble, but Holly made out with $60 and Brad won $187 off of maybe three horseraces, the bastard! Afterwards we went to Brad's garage to play some Texas Hold'em, which was fun. I had to leave early since I didn't have a car, so I caught a ride home with Troy et. al. I'm a huge fan of the new poker format, it really seems to even things out.

Since then, I haven't done too much other than work 24/7. I've got a board meeting on Wednesday and then hopefully on Thursday night me and Azure-Dee are going to to the RPL to check out a double-header of Whale Rider and 21 Grams. If you are interested in joining us, give me a call!

I got a peek at the new Lung Capacity gear ... check it out:

Interested in getting some kick-ass clothing? Get in touch with Janson ASAP!

The topic of the moment is what to do for May long weekend. Slacker Sound Sistims has a rumour about Bif Naked playing the Bar Bar at Kenosee, which would be a blast. I had a long conversation with Nick tonight who is thinking about coming back to Canada specifically for that weekend (which would allow us use of his cabin, I'm sure). Other ideas being bandied about are heading to Candle Lake or some similar lake up north where there will be a chance of large gatherings of young people. Any ideas? We gotta figure this out soon ... it won't be long before we can't get a reservation no matter where we decide to go!

Work hasn't changed - I'm still working my ass off. My schedule this whole week as been get up, go to work, come home, eat supper, work some more, go to sleep. It's really getting on my nerves, because I wouldn't have to be putting in this much time if shit would just work, but of course, since my work involves computers, it never does :(

I have taken a break here and there. On Tuesday night me and Mike went out for coffee for a few hours, and on Thursday night me and Brad went to the Galaxy to check out The Passion of the Christ. It was a very well-made movie - no complaints about acting, cinematography, or anything like that. The movie made me pretty sad in that it demonstrated just how much I don't believe in Christianity at all. There were people who were in tears from almost the very beginning of the movie until the very end and I basically just sat there for two hours. It is also not, contrary to what everyone else is saying, the "most violent movie ever". In fact, I wouldn't even consider it very violent. I've seen a lot, lot worse. I think people are just taking it a bit more serious because seeing your personal Lord and Saviour getting his ass kicked on screen hurts a lot more than seeing Arnold getting his limbs ripped off. What really pisses me off is people who call themselves "Christian" who say they can't watch the movie because it's too gruesome. Let me get this straight - you can't even bear to watch a movie about the pain and suffering and sacrifice you supposedly base your entire belief system and life around? Jesus Christ, give me a break!

I got a tour of the new residences on Friday and they look super cool. I always wanted to live on campus and make tons of new friends, etc. However, whenever those ideas cross my mind I just think about all the people I know who were severely screwed up by living in residence and any regrets disappear. One thing is for sure, the U of R is going be a great place to go to once all the construction on campus is finished.

It looks like the plan is to go to the Casino tonight for a bit of fun. Speaking of the Casino, apparently Uncle Cracker is playing there next weekend and the cost is $35 ... anybody interested in going?

It's taken me a while but I finally finished the book I was reading, The Canadian Establishment: Vol 1. I got this book from my mom, and it's a paperback from 1975 that discusses the thousand most powerful men in Canada and how they got their fortunes. Since the book is almost 30 years old at this point, it's more of a history lesson than anything. If you are interested in business and Canadian history, I'd say this is a must-read. A lot of the book is anecdotes about business deals and other cool stuff, so it's not like it's a boring read either. I'd say if you are looking for some entrepreneurial inspiration you can look to this book to give you some, at least if you're Canadian.

Since we're on the topic of books, I might as well talk about another book I finished reading a while ago that contains a ton of entrepreneurial inspiration, The Art of the Deal, Donald Trump's first autobiography. It is an amazing book in that it's a first-hand account of how he first rose to fame and fortune. He's got two other books that detail his career post-1987 (during which time he lost all his money then made it all back!) but this book starts from when he was a kid all the way to his first period at the top. The lesson in this book is definitely "dream big", because he did and obviously he succeeded - today he's worth around $2 billion! The cool thing was that I read this book before I even heard of his new TV show. I recommend both!

Another book that I read recently was sent to me by Jamie Block (née Thorburn) up in Saskatoon. You see, for a long while now off-and-on we've been corresponding back and forth, mainly regarding religion. We hadn't talked much in the last few years, but I sent her a note just before Christmas to tell her that I hadn't forgotten about her and a book she had recommended. A long time ago we'd decided to educate each other on topics of our own personal interest, so I asked her to pick up a copy of All That You Can't Leave Behind by U2. She asked me to pick up a copy of Letters from a Skeptic, but I hadn't been able to find it in bookstores since it's a specialty book and I was too lazy to order it. Anyways, 'lo and behold that along with her Christmas card she sends me her copy of the book to read! Anyways, I finally did read it and I have to admit it's an interesting approach to Christianity, one that honestly makes me feel a lot less, well, critical of those who subscribe to its teachings. There are some extreme leaps of logic made in the book, but since we're talking about faith and not science, it's understandable. It's a worthwhile first-step on the path to Christianity, if you ever feel inclined to start walking in that direction!