It's officially been 72 hours since we last saw Misha. Pris is still crazy depressed and has hunted for him every night thus far.

We've posted pictures, called shelters, vets, and talked to several neighbors. None of whom have seen a medium sized fluffy gray cat; well not one that matches Misha's description anyway.

We've exhausted our human methods and routes, so its time to get primitive and follow Pris when she goes hunting tonight.

Not that I have 0 trust in humans, but I really can't feel anything toward the person(s) who is/are keeping Misha as a new pet. If and when I discover this is happening, I see a pummeling in the near future.

EDIT

No dice. Pris goes to the apartments nextdoor and to the end of the the car garage's roof. None of them have shown us Misha, nor any signs of him.

I'm guessing she can smell where Misha was last, but now apparently we have coyotes in the neighborhood....

The aforementioned news doesn't bide well with my sanity nor pain-riddled conscience.

Were there a moon out, I would call on Inanna to guide him home.

Were there stars out, I would call on Nergal to show him the path.

Were it daytime, I would call on Marduk to give him strength.

Were it a new Moon I would call on Enki to keep him safe from all things.

There is no price I can't pay and nothing I won't suffer for the cost.

My path lays before me.

So Mote it be!

Hiya

Life is life and what not.

I'll post again once I get a stable OS again.

Ah the fun things I do with my off time. :)

Here are a few quickies:

1. To get a list of all users in the /etc/passwd with showing anything about them, try this:

cat /etc/passwd | cut -d":" -f1

That should produce a single column of users, i.e.:

root
bin
daemon
adm
....


2. To take that a step further, and get a list of all non-system users, (all real accounts), try this:

a. Create a perl file in /etc/ and call it users.pl: touch /etc/users.pl

b. Copy and paste the following 3 lines in it: vim /etc/users.pl

#!/bin/bash
#
awk -F: '{if ($3>=500 && $3<=1000) print $1}' /etc/passwd
#

c. Save & close the file: ESC :wq

d. Make the file executable: chmod +x users.pl

e. Execute users.pl

d. The number of "real" accounts you have on your LB(Linux Box) will determine how long the list is. Take notice that all non-system users do not appear. i.e. root, bin, daemon, adm, etc.

3. If you want to cross check if your system is secure or if you're really bored, type: users

a. Rerun /etc/users.pl

b. Technically, the users list will be shorter than the output from /etc/users.pl.



Keep it Open, keep it Free.

Yes, I'm posting this here, so I don't have to google-it anymore, although having completed these steps quite a few times I should be able to remember them; meh.

At any rate, Fedora 13, likes to use Banshee as a default music player but due to licensing issues and as posted on almost every MP3 related question, Redhat no longer provides support for licensed material, i.e. MP3.

We the people of the Linux Community in order to form a more perfect world have set up convenient links, which enable all of us to do just that, using Amarok.

Out of the several media players available to Linux users, Amarok is at this moment my top rated. The Gui resembles Itunes and is configurable, with several options as to what is running/enabled and what is turned off/disabled.

To install Amarok on your Fedora 11,12 or 13 beast use the following steps, which are linked to outside resources. I suppose someday I should set up a repository to make this faster/easier but that would entail more webspace somewhere.

Meh.

Step 1. Install Amarok.

A. yum install Amarok
B. Use YumEx > search for Amarok > select and apply.
C. Download Amarok from http://amarok.kde.org/

Step 2.

open a media stream such as http://www.digitalgunfire.com or http://www.tormentedradio.com. Click on one of the "Download 128k stream" links and choose Amarok as your default media player. Amarok is normally installed to /usr/bin/, hence via cli: amarok: /usr/bin/amarok

Step 3.

Make sure you have speakers plugged in to the correct jack and turned on. Cpt. Obvious strikes again.

Step 4.

Install and enable some new free and nonfree repositories, which will enable various media support. Open the following in a new tab (Ctrl+T): http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration and follow instructions in steps 1 & 2 or the command version toward the bottom.

Step 5.

Update your sound & video drivers:

yum update @sound-and-video

Step 6.

Install the extra xine-lib:

yum install xine-lib-extras-freeworld

Step 7.

Install the gstreamer plugin:

yum install gstreamer-plugins-ugl

Step 8.

Restart Amarok, or close and reopen. You should at this point be able to open just about any media stream out there using Amarok.

Step 9.

Enjoy some live streaming music!

In case you haven't seen or heard about the next engine engagement, click or copy pasta the following link:

http://www.enginetheater.com/events/

I recently purchased a slightly used Dell D620 Latitude dual core i586 laptop as a primary PHP, MySQL, Perl and JAVA development box.

I installed and re-installed a few Linux distros to see, which one would fit my needs best.

Fedora 12 had too many issues, when trying to update from the start, and believe me when I say this, I really really hate when someone else proves me wrong about my Linux distro know-how. I fought with the updater, including trying to go around the auto-updater using YUM, which proved useless. Truth be told, it did update the OS to the new kernel but I was better off with the initial version. Every copy of Fedora * has been placed into the recycling bin; no, I mean the physical one in the kitchen.

OpenSuSe was a nice install and updater, but reminded me too much of WinXp, even though it did come with a clean version of FreeCell. The web-admin menu was nice, but all in all the whole click through several menus to get to Glassfish or Bluefish was a real PITA. I kept the install DVD just in case.

XUbuntu and Ubuntu didn't even make my hit list, so I won't go into them. In fact the install DVDs, were thrown into the trash. Yes, I'm serious, I hate them that much.

In the end I came to the realization that the best Linux distro for all my needs would be one that incorporates all of them in one natural place.

To all my Linux watchers the previous statement sounds kind of silly, I know that. Most if not all Linux distros come with PHP, JAVA, Perl, MySQL and a grip of other development languages.

I installed OpenSolaris 2009.06 because SUN owns or has partnered with Oracle, MySQL, OpenOffice, Java and many others.

In most Linux distros, a user, I.E. YOU can easily mount and unmount an external NTFS or FAT partition using the built in auto-mounter script. In Solaris however, this is not the case.

One must install a few other scripts to make this magic occur and to give the user, YOU, the ability to read & write from these types of partitions.

Conveniently, this has been covered many times, as the Solaris distros change higher functions from time to time. There are hundreds if not thousands of posts, blogs and replies on how almost anyone can mount an external NTFS or FAT partition.

This brings us to the the highlight of the post, the most successful method to mount an external NTFS partition to an OpenSolaris Host:

A link: Mount NTFS on EXT2 EXT3.

The real link: http://blogs.sun.com/pradhap/entry/mount_ntfs_ext2_ext3_in

Have fun!

Keep it open, keep it free.

Previously, on the episode before this one, also known as: The painful truth continued Pt Deux.

I've been waiting to post this.

I tried to write this post previously and failed because I didn't know exactly how or when things would turn out for the better, if they did at all.

Well, the time has come to announce that things have turned out good. In fact they've turned out better than I thought they would. It's probably a good thing I had a retainer when I was younger; my vocal muscles remember how to compensate for odd plastic plating being present.

Yesterday K and I returned to the office of mystery and picked up my new choppers.

They fit great and I can't stop smiling now, because I've been denied that right for a very long time.

I still have a pronounced lisp, although K says I'm adapting very quickly. My only logical reason is that I've taught myself to talk without using my lips, hence regaining the use of them makes things a bit easier.

I know I shouldn't go out at least not yet, but I need to re-mount the fucking horse and show it I'm not scared of it. Truth be told, I'm not scared at all; actually I'm still fuming about how nosy some people are.

We all have one or more things that the general public doesn't need to know about and that is just the way things are. I don't believe we would be human or perceived as "normal", if everything was always perfect in our worlds.

Meh.

The good news in all of this is that yes I have teeth again, and yes we're going out again.

Food. Now there's a strange challenge and here's why: I know how meat lasagna tastes. I know the texture. I know what a good meat lasagna is comprised of and even how to make one. I remember eating lots of it prior to regaining my teeth, yet today at lunch I had no clue what to do with it. I cut into a small piece and sat there looking at it, as if some hidden part of my brain were analyzing it. I knew that I had to chew it, but the whole "chewing" process was beyond my comprehension.

I've lived with oral pain for such a long time that eating or chewing without it is a completely alien concept to me.

Eventually I did kinda remember how to chew and ate almost the whole slab. Mm-nummy :D

I'm pretty sure that since I have no issues with being seen, much less talking public any longer, K and I will be seeing most of you again in the near future at one point or another.

Sometimes, realizing that the journey's end is near can be rewarding... That is unless you're a member of the "Warriors", then you have to make a stand on Coney Island and listen to a high pitched squealing voice repeating, "Warriors, come out to play... Warriors come out to play-y-a".

Things are getting back to normal, with the exception of a new pain that comes along with new teeth. For the first time in a long time, I'm just fine with this new pain, because its supposed to hurt the first few days, then gradually vanish over time.

Yah, things are definitely looking up.

This is a continuation of this: The painful truth continued.

**CONTAINS ABSTRACT THOUGH.**

I went for my scheduled dental impressions this morning, which went flawlessly.

Despite my misgivings and lack of faith at this point the impressions went fine.

The dental impression glop is still wet and messy, albeit tasting a little minty or cherry. I think the cherry flavor is more a visual/mental suggestion, which leads one to "assume" that because it has a pink tone, it must taste like cherries or salmon.

Meh.

I return this Thursday for the initial fitting and bite registry.

I would like to go out Friday, but I don't see that happening, as I must get used to talking with teeth again and chewing food, without biting either of my inner-cheeks.

K and I have reached the point of absolute stir-craziness as the last few weeks have indeed taken their toll on our sanity and my moral outlook.

The last time I was out, minus grocery shopping, job, or dental visit was almost a month ago.

The last time I wanted to go out for any reason at all was about the same amount time.

The last time K went out was to pay her respects to recently renewed grandmother and very good friend Dirk.

Like many of our friends, 2010 has started out like a public restroom stop without toilet paper.

Both of us need time to escape reality and for a few hours actually enjoy life.

Please don't infer that we are at the ends of either rope. Nay, I say. We just need to get the fuck out of the apartment for a while.

K hasn't been feeling well enough to get out, and I have had no interest.

Neither of us are addicted to clubbing as we once were, when we were younger and could manage with 4 or less hours of sleep a night. As I mentioned in a few previous posts, we all need the human touch.

I don't consider going to my job, grocery shopping, or dental visit, "the human touch", it is however a form of human contact.

I relate my job to my faith in human error: job security.

I relate grocery shopping with the animalistic will & need to survive.

Dental visits shall always be related with immense pain.

The human touch is another post entirely.

Overall, things are looking up and I can actually see the end of this leg of the journey.

Looking ahead and moving forward... I seem to have a knack for putting things very bluntly.

I think that the biggest change for me going forward is the fact that I will have teeth, which will allow me to smile and eat again. I can't honestly see myself flirting with anyone because the reality that I hide in plain site is too overwhelming for me. You may not notice the fakery, but I do.

It's one thing to discover the person you are making out with is pierced in some hidden area; it is another to discover their smile isn't real when their teeth move. (You can thank me for the visual later. lmao)

The good news to top everything off is: without the need/want to flirt, I'll have more time to game, sew, web-stuff and write. Plus, the chances of rejection from my horrid pickup lines just bottomed out, and that's a bonus.

Like I said, I have a way of putting things bluntly.

This is continued from The Painful Truth.

**CONTAINS MORE BLOOD**

MUUUUUWAWAWAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA

Uh hum.

So, where am I, and when is everyone going to see my "new" smile? Good question.

Monday, March 1st, I was "supposed" to go get a simple checkup on my healing status and take impressions for my teeth, however... things took a sudden and unexpected turn.

My awesome dentist, no really, he's awesome, asked me how I was doing and was amazed that I healed as fast as I did, then informed me, that due to my mutant healing ability I had to have more smoothing done behind my upper right canine.

I didn't think much of it, until the tools of the trade were presented: 1 long ass syringe of novacaine, scapel, pliers, a pile of gauze, anti-biotics, and a flat tip screw driver looking wedge thing that is used to break or split bone inside ones mouth.

Can you see where this is going?

In the world of dentistry, "Smoothing" is where a person who is getting ready to have dentures fitted must have their gumlines, and now empty teeth sockets smoothed, so the new dentures will have a fairly natural place to rest. The same goes for any construction project, smooth the area, lay the base concrete, mortar, etc then construct your framework, house etc.
If the tooth extractions all go well, and you heal "naturally" your gumline/jawline will be fairly smooth. You might have to return for more smoothing several times, depending on the speed at which you heal, and the initial extractions, bone structure etc. The dentist will not normally have to cut open your jaw/gumline, as any protruding bone will still be exposed. I on the other hand seem to have, according to the dental team, "an almost mutant ability to assimilate and reclaim any and all damage done to me".

Except my fucking teeth.

The skin inside my mouth had reclaimed itself and formed new tissue, sealing the bone under new skin, which left me a little sore, but still healed for the most part, or so I thought.

So fifteen minutes later, I had my newly formed gum line cut wide open and a chunk of my upper jaw broken off using the wedge thing and pliers.

Sounds painful right? The only things that were painful were the first shots, and the sounds of bone being split, cracking and then breaking inside my mouth.

Now a few days later I can smell whatever I'm eating, literally and I can taste the air I'm breathing... literally.

I now have a tiny tunnel that extends from the roof of my mouth to my lower right sinus cavity. That is some freaky shit. I can smoke a cigarette and double hit it, albeit the second hit tastes "odd", kinda like mucus.

Yes, I'm serious.

The good news is, the tunnel is closing, and I can actually gargle mouth wash and not have it running out my nose at the same time.

The other good news is, I go back next Monday, March 8th to take impressions for my new teeth.

I plan on calling the office tomorrow and verifying that I'm not due for any unexpected oral surgery in the near future.

If all goes well, next week, K and I plan on heading to Mal, and there are a few other clubs that I would like to attend, but if things take a turn for the worse, at least you'll know I'm at home, safe.

** NOTICE: CONTAINS HONESTY **

You have been warned.

As descendants of our parents, we inherit our families nasty DNA code, and some if not many of its failings; i.e. high blood pressure, hereditary diseases, bad teeth, 30 + years of soda, sugary goodness, etc.

A few of my friends that I see at Bunker, Mal, etc have noticed that I am missing a few teeth and inquired about them, which caused me to finally buckle down and see my local dentist; his proposed fix wasn't what I wanted to hear, nor was the overall price.

Because we are all human, sometimes the school yard bully or the class ass-hat comes out of us and makes us say very hurtful if not harmful things. At my last company for instance, I had a mentor who shall remain nameless, he and I shared a common bond, one that eventually caused me to seek employment elsewhere. It is one thing to say you practice what you preach, it is another entirely to actually do it. At any rate, when his name came up, there were several horrible things mentioned in his regard, and every time a small piece of me died inside.

When I inquired if the same things were said about me, I always received a "No, you're different, you're our friend". To that I say, "Fuck you, you fucking hypocrites". Sadly, it's too bad your bosses and HR department will never live up to what they preach.

I have since distanced myself from anyone that is associated with my previous employer. I'm no stranger to making bad choices, but this one can have no backlash, as I have nothing nice to say about that company.

Fucking ass-hats.

I see a few "friends" at various clubs, who through simple conversation have caused me to wonder about their loyalties. I've reached the point where I don't care how many friends I have, if I've actually met them, or if they relay my doings and sayings to any of my exes.
What I do care about is honesty, plain and simple. If you think I'm a perverted freak, then tell me; I'll ask you if that's the best you can do, but I'll accept it gladly. If you think I'm some form of moron, I'll return the insult with the fact that the best thing that happened to you was windows XP; someday you'll graduate to Solaris, RHEL or Fedora Linux like the rest of us.

I was spared most of the inherited DNA issues save one, bad teeth. By their early 30's both of my parents already had partial dentures, and things only got worse as they got older; if I had the money I would've also most likely.

Here I am, now at 40; yes I'm 40 and I still go out blah blah blah. I'm doing this as long as I can before I'm unable to to it any longer. However, now that I've realized up my final taboo, going to clubs has taken on a very low priority, in fact socializing in general isn't really important. I mean honestly, how can I be sure you want my opinion of the song that is being played, when you keep staring at my teeth or lack thereof?

At any rate, I'm 40 and the DNA issue(s) are finally starting to catch up with me. I'm not a real fan of seeing bloody medical instruments, especially when they're covered in my blood.

In 1990, I had all four of my wisdom teeth pulled at once. I broke and chipped another tooth on new years eve 2008, while trying to open a small bottle of ass vodka without a bottle opener, only to realize after wards that the cap could be unscrewed... In late December 2009, I had almost all the teeth on the top and bottom left hand side of my mouth removed. Today I had almost all the teeth on the top and bottom right hand side of my mouth removed, including the upper front teeth that my friends ask about.

I have to go back in two weeks so the dental team can take impressions for my upper and lower partial plates, which will enable me to eat solid food again until the gaping holes where my teeth used to be heal and I get my permanent partial dentures.

I have no issues about talking shit on people, I do it all the time. The trick is however, that I also have no issues with talking shit to their face(s). That being said, either my lack of teeth, the eight syringes or massive amount of pain meds are making me double guess everyone's comments, body gestures and conversations with me.

For the most part, I do my best to give trust to those I call friend; this trust has been betrayed many many times. So why do I still offer it, you ask? Despite my desire for carnage on a global scale to end to the animal known as man, we all need the human touch.

Now you have the complete history of my fucked up teeth and what mood they put me in.

I was going to ask everyone, if you even think that you're going to talk shit about Ty the toothless wonder, to drop me. Suddenly, I realized a few that watch my posts are so pathetic they need new gossip material to make themselves feel better and to that I say, one day your time will come; I just hope I'm there when it does.

The good news is no matter what happens, I have my adopted families support along with close friends to make this seem lighter than it is. Truth be told, if I adopted a southern accent, I could pass myself off quite easily. Now if I still had my pick-em-up truck ...