I don't pay too much attention to my Linux box. It runs so long that I forget how to use it between the times I need to interact with it. I have to re-learn everything I knew just to take another step. It's kind of frustrating, but then it is also a testament as to the stability of the operating system.

Imagine that. An operating system designed with stability in mind. And security, too! And it's free. FREE! That's amazing. I guess money corrupts things...even operating systems. That explains a few things about Microsoft.

But enough Microsoft bashing - who needs to do that anymore? They're an easy target. I think there are enough Microsoft bashers out there that I can take a break from it for a while.

Back to my Linux box. I decided to poke around a little...just a little. I came across my web server logs and thought I would see how many people were reading my blog here (by the hits on the image files that I link to). It looks like I'm pretty much talking to myself.

Except for one other person using an Opera browser. One faithful reader since February...who even stuck it out through March when I think I made only one entry in this blog. The IP address changed in March, but it was still someone on an Opera browser, so I assume it must be the same person. Actually, you know what? I'm not sure how to read this server log. I just see "Opera" listed at the end of the entry, but it also lists Mozilla, among other things, so I'm not sure what I'm looking at. Although, one thing is clear - I have at least one faithful reader.

Is that you, Jeff?

There have been a few stray hits here and there, but few (if any) other repeat visitors. Of course, I haven't done much to publicize this masterpiece.

...............................sorry........gotta pull myself back together after that last comment. Masterpiece? ....................................... Oh, man, I gotta stop saying that. If I had the talent to create a masterpiece, I don't think I'd be wasting my time maintaining a 'blog.

Hey - I do this for FUN! I have to do SOMETHING on the computer that's fun once in a while. Sometimes I actually do something interesting, but mostly I think I do this as therapy to share my agitation with the rest of the world...hopefully with those who can relate to the content. Even if it's not always about computers.

Anyway, there hasn't been much happening in the Computer Circus these days, but I don't want the 'blog to get stale, so I keep writing. I still need to get my files consolidated, so I'm sure there is some activity looming on the horizon. I suppose this is intermission.

What I have been working on the past few days is this program that is probably a waste of time. I'm not even sure I want to disclose the nature of it, as it deals with floppy disks. Oops, I guess I just disclosed the nature of it.

Some guy wrote a virtual floppy disk driver that lets you mount floppy disk images without using a physical floppy drive. I have a bunch of floppies I have been meaning to archive (or consolidate and weed out, etc.), so I thought I would write a little tool to help me with that as part of my file consolidation process.

To make a long story short, all this stuff was written in C/C++, so I had to write some wrapper routines to access them in Delphi. I was creating a virtual floppy disk object that I could interact with easily. You know, something I thought I could whip up in a couple of hours.

Well, I had some problems and wrote to the author of the floppy driver and he said he was already working on some updates. They're not fully tested, but he sent me the updates, anyway. Turns out it looks like the thing was practically rewritten from the ground up and was nowhere near backward compatible, so I basically had to start over.

But the saving grace here is that the guy now has a DLL! This made things MUCH easier! As long as he doesn't change the DLL interface radically in the future, I could conceivably keep up with it. Though if I finish this, I won't be upgrading it, because I'm going to just use what I need and be done with it.

Anyway, I've almost got the basic object done that I want. My wife is working on a project at work and she wanted to put some JavaScript in to make a prototype actually work, so she recruited me to do that part, so I have been working on that instead of the floppy driver for about the last day and a half (two actually). Man, it just reminds me just exactly why I got out of doing web stuff.

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD!!!

I have a sticker on my monitor that reads, "what is your 'H' level?" It is really asking me how happy I am. Oh, man, while I was doing this JavaScript/HTML/DOM/CSS crap, I glanced up at that note at one point, and I think my answer was some negative exponent of a google. It was pretty low. And trying to communicate with my wife about programming issues was not alleviating my stress any.

So that is where I have been lately. I also noticed that the entries I made in my 'blog during this time that I have been programming seemed to reflect a less-than-happy tone. I detected a bit of irritation between the lines (even sometimes running over and through the lines, and even hiding the lines at times). Perhaps my entire 'blog has a hint of that (NNNOOOOOOO!!!!), but the past few entries have seemed particulary...edgy.

Oh I am itching to do some film work! Get me off of this thing!