Karl’s Asylum ... for the terminally deranged

…not too bad.

Well, This has been an interesting 7 days. Last Sunday we went to see a kitten, as a companion for Hex. Turns out, the place/people we got hom from should be shot, conditions were awful, and if he’s “ready to go”, I’m Novell Certified. (Psh) See Jems site for more details about that.

We brought home a tiny ginger and white bundle. Yes, tiny. Messy too. Straight into the bath he went. All the guides say to “let the kitten settle in, in their own time”. Fudge has never read those sites. He was off straight away. Hex was met the same day. Lots of hissing, swiping and sulking going on there..but the funny thing is that Hex was more afraid of Fudge, despite weighing about 10 times more, and being several times bigger, and older.

I ended up erecting a mesh “checkpoint” so we could go in and out of the back bedroom that he’s sleeping in without him chasing us..that lasted about 30 seconds. The little bugger is a climber, quite seriously so. He’s also stupidly quick..and still so tiny that it feels like you’re about to squish him. Over the last 7 days we’ve been progressively backing off monitoring them and letting them get on with it..there’s the occasional bit of naughtiness which recieves a ding round the ear, but now they’re getting on fine 90% of the time. Fudge is still isolated at night for peace of mind, but I caught them earlier asleep together on the blanket..which was a big soft moment for all concerned.

This 3-4 inch high “mini cat” has mastered the stairs (slow and singly), is happy to explore everywhere, and seems to know no fear. He also is quite happy to scale up legs and chests to sit on your shoulder which can be a bit painful. It is funny though..he mimics Hex, and he’s learning to stalk, which is hilarious.

He’s got a clean bill of health from the Vet, but he’s too little to be jabbed and “debollocked” yet. So after 7 days of Fudge, he weighs just over 400 grams, and is fast becoming a mini-Hex, and I think Hex is enjoying it on the quiet. You need to watch where you’re walking though!

Most of my days have been “go to work, come home, sit with cats and Jem upstairs, eat, sleep”..it’s been quite nice. Now I’m relaxing and watching a CBT video for ESX Server..quite scary stuff, to be honest! I’m glad we’ve worked with Virtualisation already, as it’s quite a lot to take on board. Ah well..back to it..

That I’m an “old man” in computing terms these days. Why? Well…I was sat in the office earlier, watching a younger colleague play Lemmings for Dos.

Complaints about the graphics, how do I up the resolution, is this a Tandy or a high performance PC and so on were heard.

I had to laugh…Welcome to 1991 again. DOS. SVGA if you were lucky. VGA pixel based games. Command lines, dammit. No, it wasn’t friendly, but it was fast, and it was efficient. Welcome to bare-metal computing. Not your pretty picture based, pointing device driven, highly graphical idiot guide interface with the engaging colours and “wipe your arse” wizards, but the stripped out core of sheer power that was command line.

It was sleek, it was powerful, and it relied on a knowledge of the system and the effects of commands..not like the GUI systems now..it’s all got a bit “engineered by intelligent people, run by monkeys” in some respects.

What brought this on? We’ve been playing with Windows Server 2008 core, and Windows Powershell..and you know, I rather like it..command lines make a return! Reminds me of the DOS extenders of my teens. Kix32 was always my favourite..heh.

Mouse? Bum to that. Pictures? No. Wizards? No. Pure command line fun..something I feel I could get my teeth into. I like command lines. GUI are like web apps such as Dreamweaver..any monkey can use them and make them do things, but if it all goes a bit manky..they’re lost. Doing it is no longer understanding HOW it’s done. So what? You point and click this, and it works..where’s the issue?

The issue is a lot of people don’t understand the background processes of WHY it does what it does. How many times have I been asked questions about “why does my webpage do “x”?”, only to find that while the design view offers nothing, the code view is MUCH more useful to finding out a point of failure…

In servers and OS, “Administrators” have in my view got FAR too cushy with GUIs, Wizards and point and click…if it all goes wrong and you need to use commands in non-gui form..can you? More to the point, can you do it from memory, or do you have to go and fetch a book? I think command line driven servers are a great idea..less bloat, less crap, less idiots calling themselves “technical” even though they’re glorified point and click merchants..

Lets just say that Server08 and Powershell are on my “to play with in depth” list..I mean, I grew up with Vic20, BBC, IBM Model 5150s, PC1640s, PCWs…all command line. Some BASIC, Some DOS 1/2/3, some CP/M+ based…I worked on VAX/VMS, supervising 15 or so command line screens at once..I still used the command line extensively up to Windown NT4 in my server admin role at the time…and I’m sure the new generation of scripting languages can’t be that hard!