03.26.07
Two days of fun
On Sunday, I made a giant pot of chili on Sunday, complete with big chunks of onions, red and yellow bell peppers, deer meat and hot deer sausage, mushrooms and 3 types of beans. I spent over an hour in the kitchen chopping, browning, opening cans, straining, etc. I put in 2 whole fresh tomatoes Denise and I picked up at a local road-side vendor, a can of stewed tomatoes, a big can peeled tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato sauce and a fair dash of spices. It came out really good so now I have lunch & snack food for the next few days.
Where did I get all my culinary skills? From standing in front of the stove and tossing things into a pot - literally. I don’t have recipes or secret formulas (well, I do but nothing to write about.) I would encourage you to do the same. Don’t plan anything other than a few key ingredients. Let everything come spontaneously.
Today, I finally finished updating my Gentoo system. It hadn’t been updated since I packed it away for the big move in November. That’s 4 months of updates that needed processing. If you’re a Gentoo user, you know that you can’t just “emerge –update world” after 4 months. You need to take it in stages. So, I processed all update up to the kernel itself, recompiled a new kernel, then processed more updates, pausing at key packages. I usually pause at things like udev, glibc, gcc…something very fundamental to the system. I also pause with large packages that take forever to update, like Firefox, X, Gnome, etc. They’re just take an obnoxiously long time to build.
My usual pattern is to update to a certain point, then test the system to make sure things aren’t broken. This time, due to the 4 months between updates, that wasn’t possible because some packages aren’t compatible with others unless they are all updated. Case in point, Gnome. Many Gnome packages are supposed to be updated at the same time. During my update-pause procedure, some Gnome packages were updated while others remained at the lower revision - which means testing is pointless since the different versions will no doubt break things.
In the end, everything updated just fine. When I tested things, everything was snappier and speedier - Gnome menus snap when opened, Firefox and Evolution windows open in mere seconds when launched. I’m very happy. Now I can move this Winders box upstairs and put my Gentoo system on my desk and use it as my primary machine in my office. Life is good.
