A month later

[altivo]

Well, the change is not dramatic. I can't complain that I'm busier than before, nor that I'm bored. I finally reached the point today where I was confused about the day of the week. (I changed the calendar page in the dim pre-dawn light, as always, so I didn't see it to remind me.)

Things actually accomplished:

Vegetables planted, most of them flourishing. We will have cucumbers and tomatoes for sure, probably pole beans and zucchini, and maybe some winter squash. Eggplant, melons, and peppers are still in question, as I battle the bugs that are eating the poor plants. Swiss chard is a maybe, as it seems to be outracing the bugs at last. Lettuce was a total loss, as were the snap peas. (A moment of silence for those devoured before their time.)

More time with my mate, definitely more good than bad. A little more time for music participation, not as much as I'd like. No more practice time yet.

Pensions activated and all are now paying regularly. (Well, Social Security won't send the first check until sometime in August, but that's normal for them.) Medicare "parts" A, B, and D are secured. Still undecided about additional "Medigap" as I haven't had a medical insurance claim since 1997.

Not yet accomplished:

More time for reading. More time for writing.

Sort through the junk I brought home from my desk at work, along with a lot of other paper and "stuff." Object: clear my home workspace for hobby activities in amateur radio and computer tinkering.

Immediate goal:

Find out how the chipmunks are getting into our garage and block it up. We have a live trap set, and are catching as many as 6 or 7 a day. I'm sure the same ones are coming back again and again, because we just dump them outside and shut the door. They seem to have learned that they get a few sunflower seeds and no one hurts them. I hate to actually kill them, and I suspect we'd have to take them miles away before they'd no longer just come back, so we have to figure out where they get in. So far, no luck.

Current distracting time waster:

Trying to get a reasonably complete and modern UNIX (or UNIX-like) operating setup for daily use. Preferably on my DEC Alpha workstation, as it's a 64 bit processor with plenty of storage and plays nice with X11 so I can use any computer on our wifi as a remote X-terminal. Alas, not getting very far with that. The Alpha processor has fallen out of favor very quickly. The only Linux that still supports Alpha is Gentoo (wince... that's the ultimate geek toy but I'd rather not spend so much time.)

Strong recommendations for OpenBSD and NetBSD from online acquaintances so I downloaded the current OpenBSD and loaded it. They call it "supporting" the Alpha, but the only things that work are the OS itself, some language compilers, and text editors. Desktop GUI is sort of half there, word processing or a working web client are not there at all. These things are "available" via what OpenBSD calls the "port system" which is basically just an automated set of scripts that will download source code and compile it for you. The idea is good, and the scripts do work. But everything I've tried to add by that method has failed, with a single exception. The xchat IRC client, which I use only occasionally, did compile and install without a hitch. The rest have all broken down with compatibility issues, either because a dependency can't be fulfilled or because some tool (such as a newer release of the C compiler) is simply not available on OpenBSD.

I've spent some time today looking at NetBSD, but I suspect it has similar issues. Either would be fine for a coding toy or something to just tinker with indefinitely. Neither is likely to work for me as a productivity system. I don't want to buy another computer when I have probably at least ten perfectly usable ones sitting around. Only two or three of them are capable of serving as a multipurpose workstation meeting today's bloated software and memory demands, though. The Alpha is really my first choice, even if it is a bit exotic. The second choice is my older Pentium 4 desktop, but it has only 10M ethernet and limited storage. Also, being a Dell, and 12 years old or so, I can't count on much longevity from it. I've worked younger Dell machines to death already.

So... it's beginning to look a lot like Gentoo here. After all, I have endless time on my hands, right? [not]

Comments

[cabcat.livejournal.com]

Gad so many things done and to do. I've not seen chipmunks except in pictures and movies can they cause a lot of damage?

Windows 10 seems to pretty good even running on older machines that can run it. One of my coworkers has it running on an early 2000's machine and says it works surprisingly well on older machines.

[altivo]

Well, you probably remember that I really, really dislike Microsoft and Apple both. From my viewpoint, Windows 10 is an effort to commandeer your computer, and control it for you. They are going to force download "patches" whether you want them or not, and without consideration for any limitations/costs of bandwidth to you. That alone would kill it for me, because internet connection here is slow and costly.

I prefer UNIX style environments anyway. And I'm running an Alpha Personal Work Station, which hasn't had Windows available for it since Windows NT 4.0 in any case. Trying to install Gentoo Linux now.

Chipmunks are about the size of a hamster, smaller than a rat, bigger than a mouse. They can do typical rodent damage, chewing stuff up and making a general mess. They are also noisy, chirping and trilling as loud as many birds. Cute little buggers, but I don't want them inside my house or garage. Strictly diurnal, they sleep in burrows at night so owls don't get them. Cats and hawks are their main predators I think. Probably fox and coyote too. In winter they hibernate underground.

[atomdrache]

Gentoo may be your best option, as far as things go that give you bash, X11, and overall decent hardware support. In my experience, the BSDs will often purport to boot on this or that Alpha machine, but then support for your graphics card or disk controller just sits in a to-do list that hasn't been touched since the port's only maintainer mineralized and became entombed in limestone. It boots from a CD-ROM! We'll do the rest later. This page was last updated during the Bush administration.

I had that problem a lot when trying to put some BSD or other on an Alpha, VAX, or RS/6000 system.

If you really want to delve into something weird and useless (but which still has SSH and X, if archaic versions of each) I may have some old OpenVMS Alpha installation media rattling around somewhere.

[altivo]

It does look that way. However, I'm now on the 5th day of battling Gentoo's horribly bad installation and configuration information. I used Slackware for years, so I'm not a Linux noob. But the Gentoo docs for Alpha are full of errors and statements that are just plain wrong. At least one critical utility (fdisk) that is included on the installation CD is no longer capable of doing the job, which tells me clearly that they are no longer testing the Alpha build very well. The genkernel default build will not compile, either.

Looking more closely this morning, I find that the kernel included on the LiveCD was not built under the version that is being distributed (4.0.5) but under 3.17.x. I am currently checking to see whether the config taken from that kernel is even able to compile in this version. I give it no more than a 50% chance.

The fdisk they shipped has lost its ability to create a BSD style disklabel, essential in order to initialize a drive for booting with SRM and aboot. I had to use an OpenBSD system to get a working label onto the drive, and it took several attempts.

OpenVMS for Alpha is fine, but as you say, of limited usefulness. I have it up and running, version 8.3. I have the installation media and license for 8.4 but haven't installed it. Debian was good until they dropped all support about 3 releases ago.

If I actually had an RS/6000 I could live with AIX. I managed that for a few years in the 90s. ;p

[atomdrache]

Oh man. I am sorry to hear that. Last time I put Gentoo on one of those things was at least five years ago, so quite likely it's going the way of all unmaintained ports.

[altivo]

It does look that way. I'd fight to keep it alive, but my own coding skills are getting seriously out of date. I moved from applications to systems in the mid 1980s, and from there to quality control and instruction in the 90s. I did lots of complex work in assembly language at one time, but I've always hated C so maintaining UNIX systems at the code level is not going to be my strong point at this late date.