Michael P. O'Connor

My Life

Here it is almost 11 and I am just finishing up here

Categories: Church, Geekdom

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Published on: March 18, 2006

Well this has been a bit of a long day. I have setup 4 Linux computers, one was to replace the churches older file server, the only one only had 1.6Gb of disk space, and we were down to the last 2Mb, the new one has 160Gb of disk space on the partition that is going to hold the churches files. The next computer is one that was placed up near the churches audio system, this way we can record the sermons from every Sunday and podcast them (I will post a link when I get the podcast server up and running). The next computer, is one for use when I am working on other computers, it will be nice that if I am working on a problem, I can look things about it up on the web, so this one is the “research” computer so I can research things about the computers if I am stumped on the when I am fixing a computer for the church. The last computer is one for the church’s library, so that when some one from the church is using the library they can look things up on the internet, and maybe type something up in a word processor (I do have to add printer support to the system)
When I started, I thought I would give “ubuntu” a try. Big mistake, it does not let you set a root password, and for the life of me I could not figure out what the root password was, so that killed that system for being the file server, and I did not want to deal with it, I knew Red Hat, so I went with FC4 for the systems. I know it for the most part so it was just easier to deal with then trying to force a new system to work the way I think it should work. I already know the steps I take to force Red Hat to work the way I want it to work, so it was less work to do that.
I been working since 9am on the churches computers today, and here it is 11pm, and I just have to move one last computer up to the new location to get all the stuff done, then I will head home to take a nice (earned) rest (sleep sounds great at this moment to me 😉 )
Well it has been a busy day for me, so by for now, and look her tomorrow for information about the podcast that my church will be doing, I will be setting that up tomorrow.

One major problem with Linux

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Geekdom, Technology

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: March 18, 2006

I love Linux, don’t get me wrong, but it does have one problem. This problem is this, if you want to install a program, you may find that you have to install more libs then you care to. Take today, I am working on getting a computer up and running for my church so we can record the sermons on it, and put them on the net in mp3 format. On my Mac at home I use a program called audacity, a very nice program to work with. So I decided that I would use it on a Linux system to do the recording. Well when I went to install it, I find out I need to install wxWindows, ok no big deal. Well then as I keep going at it I find that i have to also install 4 other libs, as I try to install one, it says it needs another so to install audacity, I had to install the following 5 libs, wxWindwos, GTK+, gLib, ATK, and finally pango. This is the problem to install one program you have to install a lot of accompanying libs (dll for those of you in the windows world) What Linux people need to do, is eather include in the build systems, or the RPM or what ever, include the libs that you will need to run the program, I am a programmer, and a computer geek, but you will never get a non-geek to use Linux if it takes hours to install a simple program, and one forth of that time is spent just searching the web for the libs you need, and the correct versions. Right now I am still working on compiling gtk+ (I have been at this for 3 hours now)
To those of you that write Linux programs, or libs, maybe consider this, people don’t what to have to search high and low for the libs they need, just package them all together so you get what you need when you are set to install a program, many end users will not have the patiences to look for all the libs they might need, heck I don’t even think they would know how to deal with this situation, if you want Joe six pack to use Linux, you will have to meet him half way. Now if you don’t want end users to use Linux, but just computer geeks, well you are well on the right path, because only a geek will take this kind of time to make things work.

Bat in the church today

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Church, Random Thoughts

Comments: 2 Comments

Published on: March 18, 2006

Well today, as I was working on some of the computers for the church (I am still working on them at this time) a bat got into the lecture hall. There were some of the ladies from the church in there doing some scrap booking. Well they were not to happy about the bat in the room, so I was asked if I could get it out. Well I remember from when I was in 7 and 8 grad my sister use to keep buggies, and when they would get out we would use a blanket to try to catch them. So I grabbed a blanket and started to send it in the direction the bat was as it flew by. On the 3rd shot, BINGO! the poor bat fell to the ground with the blanket. The blanket did not cover the poor animal, so I pulled the blanket back and set it back on top of the bat. At that point I let the bat out outside. Later that day I was asked why I did not kill the bat. I will have to say I can not think of hurting a poor little bat just for getting stuck in the church, it just dose not seam right to me to kill one of God’s creates for no reason, and besides I think the bat was cute.
Some of the ladies started to call me “bat man” for catching the bat.

The importance of the ADA

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Random Thoughts

Comments: 1 Comment

Published on: March 17, 2006

Over at John Dvorak’s blog, there was a post about movie theaters wanting to put cell phone jammers in. I know it sounds wonderful, no one talking on the cell phone during a movie, no more cell phone ringing during the movie. But before we go for it, lets think of the down side. Medical emergencies, There are those that have illnesses that might have the problem of 911 being called at any moment, and it is my understanding that every second saved could make the difference between life and death. How about something that can affect a lot of people that are not even handicapped, heart attacks, and strokes, again every second saved could make the difference between life and death or partial recovery or full recovery. I got into a debate there about how this is a bad idea, and some guy there said, first that if some one could have those problem maybe they should not go to the movies, and how does the ADA cover 911 (or phone service as he put it)
Until today I never really thought the ADA was 100% needed, but after talking with some of those people there, I can see why it is needed, some people have such a microscopic view of the world that revolves around their selves that they can not even stop for a second to think about people that have different needs. Well they did convince me of one thing, and that is that the ADA is needed, mainly because of people like them.
I know we have lived with out cell phones for a long time, but I wonder how many people’s lives could have been saved by the use of a cell phone.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK’S DAY

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff)

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Published on: March 17, 2006

I hope every on e has a good St. Patrick’s day today, remember wear GREEN.

Tracking the Miles I have biked this year

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking

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Published on: March 16, 2006

Well I tried the site that does those tracking things, but I really did not like how it is done, so I will just update the header file for my site to with the number of miles I have biked this year, as of not it is 23 miles, if you look at the top of the page next to the my logo, you will be able to see the number of miles I have done this year, I plan on keeping that up to date.

I am out of shape

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking, Irish Tin Whistle, Random Thoughts

Comments: 1 Comment

Published on: March 16, 2006

Today I biked up to Squall hill, then down to the Pittsburgh Irish Center for the CCE meeting, this is a group of people that meet to play music together (I don’t play, yet, I hope to be able to join them in playing in the future when I get OK with the Irish Tin Whistle) I was OK going to the place, but coming back (around 9:20pm) coming up Forward Av. I could only make it only 3/4 of the way up. I was whipped out when I got to the top of the hill, but when I got up the rest of the way I got back on and rode rest of the way home, even up Murry Av. I know tonight is going to be a really bad night with my legs.
OK maybe I should give some back info here, for the last year and a half I been having trouble with my legs, cramps and violent twitches of the legs at night, that causes them to kick very hard, I have a bit of a fear that one night I am going to wake up in major pain from a broken toe.
I am hoping that by the end of May that I can bike up Forward Av with out having to stop at all. I have in the past mastered the hill on Neville St. and the hill of Bates, and Forbes Av from Oakland to Squall Hill.

This is wrong, just pure wrong, and I don’t see how it fixes the problem.

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Programming

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Published on: March 16, 2006

In this post I talk about how I had a problem with static variables in a class Well I have solved the problem, but the answer is wrong, just wrong. The way I solved it was call from the program area, the calls to the functions that change the value out of the second lib, into the program itself and it worked. But why does this fix the problem? I don’t know why or how, in fact I still think that the problem should not exist, but it did, and even with the problem, I don’t see the different from the static variable and static functions point of view is.
I still have the middle lib, but I just have to call the static functions that create the data from the program, but then when I am in the middle lib the data is now there for use. Go Fig, if you have any idea what was wrong, is wrong.

static members of objects

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Programming

Comments: 3 Comments

Published on: March 16, 2006

I think I am going to scream. I have an object in a lib that I made, this object has a static member that I expect (as per the C++ specs) that it should be the value I set it to last time I used it. So imagine the following class.
[code]
class a
{
private:
static int A;
public:
static void setA(int v) { A = v; };
static int getA() { return A; };
// there is more stuff but these are what is important
};
[/code]
that is the .h file, now the .cpp file has
[code]
int a::A = 0;
[/code]
Now the above code is compiled up into its own .lib file (MSVC++ 6.0) Now I have another lib that is linked to the above lib and it does something like
[code]
void f()
{
a::setA(20);
}
[/code]
now lets say I have a program that links to the second lib so lets say I call the following
[code]
void main()
{
f();
cout << a::getA() << endl; } [/code] I would expect the output to be [code] 20 [/code] but the output is [code] 0 [/code] I am trying to figure out how to have the value of a::A to stay the same across the calls to the libs.

Attention all Hams and SWL

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Ham Radio, Short Wave Radio Stuff

Comments: 3 Comments

Published on: March 15, 2006

Qrz is reporting that we might see a massive spike in sun spot activity. I don’t know much about how this will affect people into astronomy. But I do know that this will affect RF on earth. It will not help me on the Ham radio band since I do not work on the bands of 6 meters or below. I can work 6 meters, techs are allowed on it, but below 6 meters I can not go on legally. But here is what is exciting me, this should make listening to the Short Wave Radio fun, since the RF in these area of the bands will be able to travel better under high sunspot activity.

Snow??

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Misc (no other place to put this stuff)

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Published on: March 14, 2006

Well I went to lunch with one of my coworkers, and it was snowing out there. What happend? it was in the 70’s yesterday, and now we have snow. I really hate snow, I wish it would go away.

Well I tried to play my first song on the Irish Tin Whistle today

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Irish Tin Whistle

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Published on: March 13, 2006

Well as I have said about 2 times before, I am trying to learn the Irish Tin Whistle. Well as I was practicing today (and boy do I have a loooooooong way to go, before I can do anything OK), but today, I did try a song, a very simple song, but I did try it, and it resembled what I thought it should sound like. I am hoping that by Christmas I can play a few Christmas songs.

A video up for my friends

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Church, Friends

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Published on: March 13, 2006

Many months ago I helped some friends of mine with a video. I was the first (besides them) to find out this info, they had me hold onto it for a while. Last week I was asked if I could put a link up for them so they could post it to their blog, so I added it to my video section of my web site. You can see it at here on my site you can see the Wards web site here. They are good friends of mine from church.

Goals for this year

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Biking

Comments: 4 Comments

Published on: March 12, 2006

I am going to try to bike 1000 miles this year, I got the idea from Rob at unspace

Finally

by Michael O'Connor

Categories: Irish Tin Whistle, Play

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Published on: March 12, 2006

Well I been more then busy this week, but I finally got some free time today (well not really free time, I just multi-tasked, aka recorded the Scanner Net, and finally got to practice the Irish Tin Whistle.
For the last week I been unable to get time to practice it. I also got most of the stuff I brought home from my office organized, I never realized how much stuff I took in over my 2 years and 4 months in CASOS. My couch still has allot of stuff on it to be organized and sorted, and put some where.

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