Summer is here, it is over thrity degrees for the past few days. This morning when I came to work, I found the air condition was not working on my side of the building. The temperature went up when the morning sun heated up the the building. My cubicle was so hot that I can’t even concentrate. Everyone in my aisle end up lining up in front of Starbucks for an ice frappuccino. I suspect the break down of AC is a conspiracy of Starbucks, so we have to buy their chilled drinks. The AC is finally repaired after lunch. The heat made me not very productive in the whole morning. Hot summer without AC is just like living in hell. Global warming is getting worse and worse, and summer will only get hotter and hotter. People will have to stay indoor during the day in summer time if this trend continues. We have to prepare for the worst and the governments should spend more in large scale environment control researchs. Methods to change the weather, balance the rain fall, redirect hot or cold wind front is the only solution to our environmental problems.

In Vancouver, there is a chinse resturant opened by Muslim. It used to located at Main St. Recently it moved to Victoira St. and 41 Ave and changed its name to Ma’s resturant. The dishes in this resturant is very similiar to normal chinese resturants, except they don’t use pork in the ingredients. There are a few famous dishes Xinjiang style dishes in the menu, such as beef cake and some lamb dishes. The food there is as tasty as before they move. The new location is better decorated, the seats are more comfortable, and even installed a TV. There is no trace of Muslim background in the new resturant other than the sign outside saying it was the Muslim Beef House. In the old place, there was muslim scriptures and photos of Mecca haning on the wall. Not a very pleasant eating experience when the Western society openly dispite average Middle-East Muslim as barbarians. I think the Muslim-background in the old place leads to customer loss after the terrorist attacks, so they have to reopen the resturant in a new place without burdens from the Muslim background. I like eating at the Muslim chinese resturant. Peronally, I don’t mind Chinese Muslim provided that they are first a Chinese then a Muslim. It is terrible that some Muslim fundamentalist think religion should have higher priority over nation. For Chinese Muslims, Chinese culture should form their core value system. Beliving Muslim should be merely a personal perference based on Chinese culture.

Today me and Pat visited Alison and her new born baby, Summer Elizabeth Uy. I was joking to Jason if the baby is born in Decemeber instead of May, she would be called Winter. Summer is an interesting name, I havn’t seen anyone with name of seasons yet. But according to Jason, there are quite a few Summers. The baby is very cute, the skin feels like Tofu. She is only 5 weeks old. I didn’t hold her, afraid that I will drop her by accident. I didn’t get the chance to hear her cry, the baby is very quiet when I was there. Jason shaved off the hairs of the Baby, to make her grow more hair. I have heard this traditional wisdom many times, I susepct I got shaved when I was a baby. But I wonder where is the scientific proof of this hair growing method. The baby has no hair, so the veins are clearly seen on the skull under the skin. Together with the out of portion big head, she really looks like an alien. Too bad that babies don’t have warrenty, they are deliveried as-is basises. Isn’t it nice if we could refund and exchange for a better looking baby from God?

The Nvidia driver comes with Fedora core 5 doesn’t support widescreen 1680×1050 resolution. Althought the display setup recongize my Dell 20″ wides screen monitor, only 1280×1024 resolution shows up in KDE. I was searching for solution on the web. No answer exactly match my question. Putting all the bit and pieces together, here is the steps I took to fix the resolution.

1. Update the /etc/X11/xorg.conf, add a modeline configuration
2. Upgrade the Linux kernel to latest release
3. Install the official Nvidia driver and follow the HOW-TO in Nvidia’s linux forum
3a. Download the kernel source from yum
3b. Temporary change /etc/inittab to boot without X
3c. Run the installation script, set the SELinux setting for the new compiled Nvidia driver.

Viola! my KDE is finally displaying in full resolution.

I have also installed synergy share the keyboard and mouse between my PC and Linux box. This is probably the most useful utility for multiple computer, multiple monitor setup.

The next task is setup Samba, FTP server, subversion and automated backup from my PC.

I just picked up my new linux server today. To be exact, I had only picked up a new computer with no software installed. I still have to install Linux myself. My new server has a AMD64 3500+ CPU, 1GB or RAM, 250GB harddisk and a Nvidia 7300GT graphics card. I had waited for a couple of months for the price of 939 socket system to drop due to the newly released am2 chipset. I don’t need a topnotch machine, a med-range budget system well suits my purpose. I will keep my old server up and running until I finished settng my new server. Here is my to-do list for the new server.

1. Install Fedora Core 5, boot up the machine
2. Setup KDE desktop, synergy server to share mouse/keyboard between PC and Linux
3. Setup Samba for file sharing between PC and Linux
4. Setup Apache, mySQL and PHP
5. Setup FTP server, Web admin interface
6. Port phpbb (forum), coppermine gallery (album), wordpress (blog), mediawiki (wiki) to the new server
7. Install and learn Rudy and Ruby on the Rail
8. Give my website a major face lift!

This will probably keep me busy between work and study for a few months.