long post to make up for silence

"Surprise" birthday party for Aaron today, which wasn't much of a surprise. For one, our Sunday routine of gym-swim-eat at Bishan S-11 had become so predictable that Jasper asking to go to Bishan park after the swim without eating was tell-tale one. Tell-tale two: Jasper accidentally sent an SMS to Aaron instead of Peiling that "He says can consider Bishan park". Ok, suppose we ignore that, then Aaron asks where we're going to eat, Aaron says got restaurant at Bishan park, and we say ok, eat at that restaurant. Then Aaron speaks to Peiling and tells her he'll pick her up, and she says no need, she take cab, then she change and say she got her own way of getting there, then she say Say Yang picking her up...

Anyway, I almost killed GNOME. I tried to install a newer version, naively agreeing without doing anything special other than "apt-get install gnome-core". Totally killed it, because the newer version did not install successfully, so could not log in. So from a text console modified my /etc/apt/sources.list so that the testing and unstable sources were commented out, and then did "apt-get -f install" and that cleaned it up some, and re-installed the stable version of GNOME from the installation CD I burned several months ago. Now things are back to normal, I think, but I've switched to KDE (because that was not whacked), and this version of it at least (KDE 2.2.2) is much more modern than GNOME 1.4 that comes with Debian Woody. So perhaps I'll stick with KDE, though I'll probably fiddle with key-bindings soon (I'm so used to Ctrl-Tab in mozilla to switch browser tabs, but by default that switches virtual desktops). Also got to get used to 1-click being equivalent to double-click.

I guess I got a little carried away upgrading my software, because I upgraded AbiWord (word processor), and it looked really good. And the upgrade for that was smooth. Really starting to use my computer for stuff other than browsing the web, you see. Uninstalled a lot of stuff that I wasn't using, stuff that are security risks, like ssh, telnet daemons. Installed xscreensaver, but actually KDE has a built-in screen-saver that's "matrix" themed, green characters (glyphs) intermittently written down the screen. Also fired up the GIMP and did the initial configuration. Also wrote a super simple shell script consisting only of the line
su -c "shutdown -h now"
and I saved the executable as /usr/local/bin/shalt

I'm quite glad that I managed to get myself out of the apt-get mess, which might not seem like much, but it's a great feeling to know that I can extract the bullet from my foot. Of course, it's still the mighty apt-get, which is uber-powerful and eminently easy to use. It's not like I was dealing with source code. Starting to use "grep" also for scanning text files. Have quite a lot of things to do on Monday... definitely plan to really really configure and install a new kernel. I think my parents want to go shopping in town also.

Interesting that if you don't really follow Singapore Idol, before you know it there are only 3 contestants left. My room is quite well decorated now. Did some painting with my cousins, abstract art pieces, then I did a few more after they left. The first piece I did was for Aaron, who liked it, and Jasper liked it too.

This is the site my lovey recommended, with statistics on the US election. One part of it really stumps me. It's the part where they ask people who they'd vote for "IF ONLY BUSH AND KERRY WERE RUNNING". Then 1% say they would not have voted, but looking at who they actually voted, it was 29% Bush, 38% Kerry, 11% Nader. This makes no sense. The only sensible statistic should have been 100% Nader, because it's only Nader besides Bush and Kerry who were running!!!

For those who thought honesty was the "most important quality", they report that 70% voted for Bush. For household income less than $50,000, which was about 45% of those polled, 55% voted for Kerry, and for those over $50,000, 56% voted for Bush.

Gurmit Singh on TV telling people to get pets only if they're committed, that abandoning their pet should never be an option. I endorse the message. There's also been quite a lot of ads recently about mental illness, on TV or at bus stops, there was one I saw that day one bus stop away from my house, about Churchill having manic-depressive disorder, I think, and ending with a message that roughly 1 in 5 people suffer from some kind of mental illness (e.g. phobia) in their lifetimes, so it's important to be aware, to be understanding and inclusive.

Found a bottle of tahini in a supermarket, then bought garbanzo beans (chick peas) in a can, and there's olive oil at home, which are the ingredients needed for hummus. It's silly that they don't seem to sell hummus in supermarkets here. The only thing I lack is a blender to grind the chick peas into paste...