Return Trip, Fun on the Sorrento, Linux, Etc.

Dodging the lunch rush wasn't as bad as I figured it would be this morning. The usual SE winds made for some challenging sections, particularly the climb up to Antioch. I accidentally left one bottle up in my office, leaving only the smaller bottle of Gatorade to quench my thirst. It was gone before I got to Turkey Creek Trail, so I hit the Trek Store for a water refill, then took Nieman home.

I took the Sorrento out to the Trek Store ride. The ride there wasn't without some goofing off. The ultra-steep multi-use path from Switzer has some gravel and dirt a few dozen yards to the north of it, and I took that steep gravel slope instead of the steep, windy paved path. Loads of fun! I goofed off a bit in the Trek parking lot as well. Sharpening my track stand skills, hopping curbs, going up and down stairs, etc. I had to adjust the front derailleur as well, but just with the barrel adjuster while orbiting the parking lot. On my way home, I conquered the same gravel slope I descended, and it was pitch black outside. The rest of my ride home from the Trek Store ride was the same route I took home from the Trek Store this afternoon.

I also had to run out and pick up some stuff for my wife to eat at work. I took the bike out again, for a grand total of a little more than 50 miles ridden today. Not bad at all. It's supposed to storm tomorrow, so I am thinking of keeping the mountain bike geared up. I may end up riding to the express bus tomorrow.

Also, this is my first post from Linux. I'm usually a big OpenBSD fan, and OpenBSD acts a lot like Linux in many ways. Getting it set up just the way you want it takes quite a bit of work, but once you have stuff installed, the programs work the same. Firefox for Internet browsing, OpenOffice for word processing, spreadsheets and the like. I love OpenBSD and won't get rid of it any time soon, but I downloaded Ubuntu Linux and gave it a shot on one of my old Pentium 3 (or is it Pentium /// ?) computers and it seems to be working pretty well. I'm such a geek. Sitting around me here at my computer desk, I have:

• Sun Microsystems SparcStation 5 Running OpenBSD 3.9
• Sun Microsystems Ultra 5 running Sun Solaris 10
• Dell PowerEdge 650 (1U Rackmount) running OpenBSD 4.1
• Dell OptiPlex GX150 (Mini Tower) running Ubuntu Linux 7.04
• Apple MacBook 2.0GHz running OS X 10.4 Tiger
• IBM RS/6000 Model 250 running IBM AIX 5.1/L

And that's not even counting some of the other stuff I have powered off and/or remains to be un-packed since I moved. Where was I? Oh, yes. Linux. I'm almost anti-Linux. Not because I like OpenBSD, Mac OS X, Solaris or AIX better. More because the word "Linux" doesn't really mean anything these days. A person could be a seasoned veteran at Ubuntu or heck, let's say Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SuSE SLES server Linuxes. Linuxen. Linxii. Oh forget it. Someone could be proficient at any of those, but completely worthless as a system administrator of, say, an ArchLinux, Gentoo, or Slackware server. They're that different.

So, I got off on this huge nerd tangent. Are you happy now? I guess I'll go back to playing with Ubuntu and coming up with things to complain about.

Random Tunage:
Grand National - Talk amongst yourselves
Jon Secada - Do you believe in us