leifw

Will the historical trend hold?

posted by Leif Wickland @ 4:35 PM 0 comments

To learn a little more about the candidates, read this article from the Belgrade News.

I'll admit that my endorsement is more a negative statement about a seemly stereotypical Montana Republican candidate than for Mrs. Newman Hardin. However, I do believe her to be the better candidate.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 8:40 AM 0 comments

At the end of October, during which she had finished thirty new poems, she wrote to her mother, "I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name." But when Plath sent her new poems out for publication, but the editors of various magazines rejected them as too strange and disturbing.

...

On the morning of February 11, she committed suicide.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 8:37 AM 0 comments

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The real solution to this problem is to tell blogger to stop trying to help.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 9:31 PM 0 comments

To complete the requirements for my assignment in CS518 I compiled, installed, and safely booted off of a linux kernel that I compiled myself. Somehow, it's odd to take credit for compiling the kernel as if I had some part in making it, which, in this case, I almost did as I configured it specifically for my box's hardware and changed the banner that printed when the kernel starts.

To perform this feat of geekdom, I largely followed the steps provided by Kwan Lowe in the Kernel Rebuild Guide. Many thanks to Kwan Lowe.

In summary, the steps I followed were

1. Get the source
   This was easy because I already had it downloaded for class earlier.

   Modify the source

   Taking the path of least resistance, I modified init/version.c and prefixed the contents of linux_banner to with "Leif's" so that the OS now reports as "Leif's Linux version 2.6.8.1" when it boots.

   Configure the kernel

   Configuring the kernel is vastly easier than it sounds. It ships with a default configuration that is suitable for most any PC; if you don't change anything, it'll probably work. Also, there's a nice graphical config tool that can be started by running make gconfig. The biggest steps here were selecting the exact CPU that I have and eliminating features I knew I wouldn't use, like NUMA-Q support.

   Make the kernel

   Run make bzImage. The wait time for this was a few minutes.

   Make the modules

   Run make modules. The wait time for this was 18 minutes.

   Install the modules

   As root, run make install_modules.

   Install the kernel

   As root, copy the kernel image and the driver ramdisk image to /boot. Then edit /boot/grub/grub.conf and add an entry for new kernel and ramdisk images; this is mostly a matter of copying and pasting and existing configuration's lines and replacing the names of the kernel and ramdisk images with the new ones. You can set the default kernel image to your new kernel, if you're feeling brave.

   Reboot

   reboot

And then, if all went well, you'll be able to pick your kernel from the boot list and watch your handiwork, standing on the shoulders of giants.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 11:42 PM 0 comments

Why aren't fiscally conservative Republicans (and Democrats) up in arms over this?

I think much of the outcry has been muted because fighting a bad tax cut is so subtly good that in an election year it's viewed as political suicide; Joe Sixpack doesn't understand that having more pocket money which is devalued because the currency has weakened is worse than bringing home less money. Joe'll vote against somebody who wouldn't cut his taxes.

While we're talking about deficits, how's this for a marvelously misleading headline? The following article's headline is "Congress analysts see smaller 2004 U.S. budget gap." However, the smaller deficit that the headline refers to is merely a less than 2% reduction of the projection. The article goes on to say that the real deficit is the largest in history.

If we now live in a global economy where we vie against every other nation for economic gain, isn't having a strong currency essential for attracting foreign investment? For example, imagine you're a German gazillionaire and you need to stick your money somewhere. You could put your euros into the US market which you expect to have a 10% annual growth rate or into the EU market which you expect to have a 8% growth rate. Normally, you'd pick the US market, of course. Now figure in that the EU currency has wildly outperformed the US currency over GWB's presidency, gaining 15% value relative to the USD in that time.

Supposing you had put your deutschmarks come euros come dollars into the US market and had experienced 4 years of 10% compounded growth (which, of course, you wouldn't have over the last 4 years), you'd have gained roughly 46.5%. By contrast in the EU market supposing you got that 8% for 4 years, you'd show a 36% gain. However, when you transfer your money from dollars back to euros, it loses 15% of the value it would've had had it remained euros for that time. Consequently, what was a 46.5% gain, becomes a 27% gain, which was obviously easily outdistanced by the Euro gain. See xe.com to verify my 15% currency drop figure.

Now if I remember correctly, the EU requires member states have a balanced budget. Maybe that's not such a bad idea to require of our federal government. It's something that many states impose on themselves.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 1:45 PM 0 comments

The Bozeman Daily Chronicle is carrying a story about a bear wandering around Main Street and busting up a local shop.

All right, so my house is extremely unlikely to be vandalized by a bear, but that crack squad of killer ground squirrels across the fence from me can inflict some serious damage. And I'm out of ammo too.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 7:08 AM 0 comments

Specifically, Coldwell Banker looked at a 2,200-square-foot house with 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms, a family room and a two-car garage. The neighborhood - a more subjective measure - is one "typical for corporate middle-management transferees."

What does this really mean? Well, Bozeman's price is higher than every other city in MT by a significant factor.

• Great Falls ($130,525)
• Billings ($134,650)
• Helena ($158,100)
• Kalispell ($159,684)
• Bozeman ($256,499)

Furthermore, Bozeman's housing market is more expensive than:

• Tacoma, WA
• Denver, CO
• New Orleans, LA
• Orlando, FL
• Anchorage, AK
• Des Moines, IA
• Rochester, MN

But it's not as bad as:

• Any town in California
• Any town in Connecticut
• Any town in Massachusetts
• Seattle, WA
• Portland, OR
• Minneapolis, MN

Finally, it's noteworthy that Butte, MT, did not make CNN's list. At last count, I believe Butte, which has been in decline for decades and stands now at something like a third of its all time maximum population, still had a larger citizenry than Bozeman. However, nobody cares about Butte and people are fleeing the Mining City in droves. Perhaps those in support of Montana's inglorious I-147 should consider the causes of the waning of Butte and the waxing of Bozeman when they cast their votes.

posted by Leif Wickland @ 2:37 AM 4 comments