Welding Information Gathering

Information. Knowledge. Wisdom. The formula is quite simple, but it must be followed in that order. To have the next, you must have the first. It all sounds great until you factor in just how much information there is today to sift through.

Take welding for example. It's not a complicated idea. Take two pieces of metal, and make them one continueous piece. Enter complication: with all the different alloys and filler metals available, plus all the properties of each, there is a huge amount of information available that must be accounted for in order to get a finished product that will last.

To aid in my own informational gathering, I have come across (by way of my Dad, and my Instructor) two websites that appear to be vast resources of Weld Process and Joint Design, and Non-Destructive Testing (NDT).

Unfortunatly, gathering said information takes huge amounts of time. Oh, and modivation. I wonder where modivation comes from?

Web hosting

So, I saw this posting from the Google Operating systems today that discussed several hosting options. Check it out here.

With that said, I thought I should keep this site as well. It is a website full of Demotivators. Just the kind of information you need to continue justifying your bum-ness.

Why won't the internet work?

So, my sister is going to college (finally), and my folks went to her dorm to deliver her new computer. They ordered an HP. Yes, I, or my brother could have built one, but then I'd have to support it and every time something went wrong (hardware, software or anything user related) I'd be the first one to call. Not that that's a bad thing, but it means I'd have to be available to travel to her place and show her the correct way to use it. Oh, that and I would have put Ubuntu on it... That means I'd probably be getting lots of calls on "why won't `such-and-such` program install?"

Alright, I'm being a little hard on my sister. But that's mostly because I just called her to see how she liked the computer, and my dad was still there trying to get the Internet hooked up. Worse yet, the computer came with Norton installed on it. I don't think I've ever seen a program that so completely bricks a machine as Norton does so well. Not only do you have to figure out it's beefy interface and backwards feature list, you can't even disable it properly because when you do it stops you from connecting anything to the Internet.

Yes, yes, it's a security feature for all those people that would inadvertently disable it and never re enable before doing something dangerous. But from a technical phone support call it is a nightmare. The computer had grabbed an IP address, but would not connect to a webpage. Now, I have never attended this school my sister is attending. Better yet, I have never even used a computer on this campus, and the technology webpage is less than helpful in this endeavor. So the question arrives, is Norton blocking information, or does the local network administration need to allow the computer's MAC address to get to the Internet? Oh yeah, it's the weekend. No help coming from that end of the equation, so it's up to the roommate to help out. Good luck there.

Now, I've been using Linux for several years now, and I would never think of going back to a windoze world. Does Linux do everything right? Absolutely not. Do I always have faith in the update process when I run a simple `emerge -uavtDN world` hardly. Do I want to deal with the monopolistic tendencies and backward thinking retroactive software that the largest software company in the world uses while forcing you to purchase expensive licenses so you can view the latest version of bloated software that does nothing more than the same software released in 1994? (ok... exaggeration... 2001). I'd rather eat spoiled meat.

Here's the late breaking update from my sister's computer woes. There is a sign in the hallway (apparently with big red lettering) stating that to get the Internet to work, you simply log onto their proxy server to register your computer. The observation skills of my dad are amazing. No really, I would have thought the solution much more complex than that. Anyway, I shot him a quick email to do a speed test from my favorite place, and found out they have 386kbs up/down. Sounds like they restrict bandwidth per port. Can't say I blame them.
All this drama... and I didn't even leave my chair. Now, all I need to do is email my sister instructions for installing Mozilla FireFox, perhaps Open Office, and Gimp and she'll be well on her way. Perhaps I should get out of my chair... I see the sun is setting so my eyes won't be scorched out of their sockets from that fiery star in the sky.

Ok, we're going to try this blog thing mostly for the trips that I go on to update my somewhat lacking front page. The big trips scheduled right now are to Belize in January '07, and Alaska later on in '07. If you're lucky this page might also include rants from the day... but I wouldn't get used to those.
Now all I have to figure out is how to get this to publish to my web page... should be easy right?

Edit 1: So, I was looking through the help, and I found that the 'address' for blogs is permanent (which on the one hand is kinda nice) kinda sucks... know why? 'cause someone has the address that I want to use and they only have one post. Yes, I only have one post, but theirs is from 2004 see the issue? I thought you would.

Edit 2: The easy part... uh-hu... right... Since blogger is in beta, they don't offer the ftp/sftp to an external webpage currently. Wonderful. I guess I have to wait until later to fix this up good. Add another 'To-do' item to the list... Oh good, I lost the list! Nothing to do here... move along.. move along.