I have spent years working with an assortment of programming languages - C, C++, Pascal/Delphi, Fortran, Ada, MS-DOS batch scripts (I didn't say all *good* languages), bash/csh scripts, SAS, PHP, Javascript...among others. Until recently I would have identified C++ as my "favorite" language. But that is changing.

The more I work with Perl, the more I like it. Yes, I know it's losing ground to Python (a language I do not like even a little). Like every other language I have used it is not perfect, but it does have a lot going for it - it's well-designed (though quirky in a few areas), it allows me to do things that would take twice as long to do in other languages, and I like the community support when I do occasionally get stuck.

Yes, I'm still here. Yes, I know hardly anyone will read this. No, I don't especially care.

Recently I decided to change Linux disctributions on my main system and I installed BlueStar. It is an Arch-based distro which is a new experience for me; I have been using RedHat-based distros for ages, specifically Scientific. I wanted to try something new, and I ended up on BlueStar based on the reputation of Arch and based on a few reviews.

Wow. Wish I had done this years ago. It's faster, it has a better layout, its package manager works well even though it's a little strange, and it runs my VMs just fine. I can run either CentOS or Scientific in a VM so I can still keep up with certification, but I think BlueStar is my new primary distro of choice.

I don't know if I will post more here or not. I need an outlet, and I have not found a social media platform that works for me.

I recently acquired a 10.1" tablet with a break-away keyboard so this little beast can be either a very small laptop or a full-sized tablet. The keyboard is nice and it is very solid, so this is a great solution for my needs. I have wanted one of these for a long, long time, and now I have one.

Where it gets interesting, though, is that it can dual-boot into either Android or Windows. My first thought was that, since I have an Android tablet already, this might be a good candidate for running the last few Windows applications I rely on, which would allow me to convert my Windows system into another Linux workstation, probably for development. I like my laptop, and it works well enough with Windows 10 on it but I am no fan of Windows 10. So, I booted the tablet up in Windows and looked around.

With the release of Windows 8, I wanted a Windows tablet. It seemed like a good system that would work well for me. I had a touch-screen laptop that came with Windows 8 preinstalled (but has since been migrated to CentOS 7) and it was not as bad as I expected - the interface actually made some sense to me and I did not mind it at all, though I definitely preferred the older Windows 7-style desktop. I had a Windows 8 phone at the time which I bought on a whim and it was the easiest phone to use I had ever owned. So, the Metro desktop on a tablet seemed like a good way to work.

Windows 10, not so much.

As a desktop OS, Windows 10 is not totally unreasonable though it is not my first choice by any means. It's not the best version of Windows, and even though I am primarily a Red Hat kind of guy I definitely prefer Ubuntu's interface to Windows 10. But, on the desktop Windows 10 is workable. On a tablet, though, Windows 10 is a big goose egg. It's clunky, it is harder to use and it takes up too much in terms of resources. So, this dual-boot tablet will be in Android the large majority of the time.

My last job sucked. No way to sugar coat it. My manager absolutely refused to say anything positive to me about the work I was doing and actively went out of his way to find people that were unhappy with my performance (meaning, he looked for people that thought I should work 70+ hours/week with unpaid OT for them exclusively) and my final review there for the worst I had ever seen. I missed family events, funerals, trips and more, just to try to keep afloat. Such a prick this fellow was that he took the day off on my last day, requiring someone else to accompany me to HR for my exit processing.

The fellow who was my mentor and who was all that stood between me and that manager was a bright fellow who did work 70+ hours every week and was considered hot property among management. He was the manager's right hand and he did not think I was treated fairly but there was little he could do for me.

That fellow is leaving now, having had enough of the BS himself and leaving the manager in a lurch. No one else in the group held the same respect with that manager and even those in other groups who did not like him respected him (if only privately). Three of the heavy hitters have either left or are about to leave, and the manager will have a shell of a group and no one to keep him above water.

I am smiling a lot today. Sometimes, bad things do happen to bad people.

My son has a laptop that finally got bogged down with crapware and other nasties under the hood and he asked me to reload it for him. He is usually careful online but he apparently found some aggressive adware buried in something else he wanted. He had updated it to Windows 10 from 7 which at the time had seemed like a good idea.

I spent two days reloading this system, using the 4 recovery DVDs that I made from the system (shoulda used CloneZilla and imaged the booger). After that, I made a terrible mistake and tried the WIndows 10 thing since I thought that was what he wanted. Box would not boot so I got to start all over again.

I am going through the process of dowloading all of the WIndows 7 updates right now. I had forgotten what a slow and painful process this is.

With the night behind you
You walk away and I will find you
We are locked in this emotion
We will find the way home

And itâ(TM)s too late
To regret the mistakes we made
Easier to walk away

And itâ(TM)s too late
To deny all the words we say
Nothing will ever be the same

When the world surrounds you
You take your place with me, behind you
These are every word unspoken
This is our way home

And itâ(TM)s too late
To regret the mistakes we made
Easier to walk away

When the world surrounds you
You walk away
You walk away

And itâ(TM)s too late
To regret the mistakes we made
Easier to walk away

And itâ(TM)s too late
To deny all the words we say
Nothing will ever be the same

And itâ(TM)s too late
To regret the mistakes we made
Easier to walk away
You walk away

And itâ(TM)s too late
To deny all the words we say
Nothing will ever be the same

"You Walk Away" by TyDi and Audrey Gallagher

Been reading up on Detroit-style pizza of late and I have decided I have to try it. I ordered my pans last week; hopefully they will be here by this weekend.

The main differences between Detroit and Sicilian are the pans used to bake them and the arrangement of the cheese around the edges. Detroits are made with the cheese pushed up against the sides of the pan so it caramelizes and gets crunchy.

To be continued.

Anyone that knows me knows I am very deep into baking bread though I am not afraid to step out of my comfort zone and make the occasional dessert.

My son has decided to follow. He is already better at making layer cakes, he churns out cookies almost weekly, and he is often poring through cookbooks looking for more things to make to fatten the family. He is an accomplished pie maker - bake-off coming this summer.

So I now have two computers running at home, one running Linux and one running Windows 10. The Linux machine is my âoeeverything but emailâ system. The Windows system serves one single purpose â" filtering my email for me.

Why do I have hardware dedicated to running an email filtration system on a platform that's untrustworthy? There are a lot of email filtering applications around, but this one application is the only one I can find that does exactly what I want it to do and it works really well. It cleans out my pop3 mailbox for me of all the crap and leaves only legit emails behind. If it eliminates an email I want, it can put it back. It catches between 80-100 junk emails a day. Unfortunately, I have no way to install it under Wine â" it was discontinued about a year ago and the only way I have to register it when I install it is to use a registry capture that Windows knows how to insert into the registry for me. I have looked for other email filters and I have not found another one that works quite the same way.

I am going to try putting ReactOS in a VM and installing the filter there. If that works, the Windows machine is a dream that once was.

The Linux machine on the other hand is the workhorse. It does the image processing, documents, web surfing, limited gaming (I don't have a lot of time to play anymore) and development work when I am so inclined. I have not yet found a suitable video editing application but I am sure there's an application out there that will work â" I have not looked hard for one as the need for such is relatively recent. I can still do these on the Windows box until I find what I need.

Little by little, I am breaking what little hold MS still has on my computing.

I have been using the Opera browser for quite some time. It has worked well for me about 95% of the time and when it has not I have always had FireFox loaded so I could keep moving. That has just come to a complete end.

Check this out. So, Opera is being acquired by Qihoo, which makes Opera now a Chinese-controlled application (well, soon to be anyway). I have a deep distrust of Chinese software (and I have good reasons for that) and I question the motivations behind the buyout. What will be added behind the scenes to the browser and what data will it collect and send home? I do not intend to make it easy for China to collect my data, though I am sure they have more than I would like to imagine..

For now I am on Firefox. But Vivaldi is looking like a solid competitor in the making. It's not yet up to scratch, but it's functional enough and I like the interface except for the default font.

Goodbye, Opera. It was fun while it lasted.

It has been forever since I have posted here. Well, 3+ years anyway. Slashdot has worked hard to drive away the user base, but even so I am still here, plodding along (quietly most of the time).

Windows 10 is here. It's pretty. It's friendly. It's nefarious software that now shows ads on the lock screen unless you burrow down to turn it off. It saves your passwords to third-party websites on a centralized server somewhere (which I found out when I got a new computer a few days ago and logged into Amazon and it auto-filled my email address and my password for me even though it the the first log-in ever from that system). Tablet mode blows. I actually did not mind Windows 8 and 8.1 (I think I am one of 3 people that was ok with it on a touch-screen laptop). It's fast (kinda) but it blue screens just like every other version of Windows.

My old system is getting a transplant and I am making some computing changes. No more Windows on the Dell - period. I'm dropping in an SSD, loading up CentOS 7 and calling it a day. I can do everything I need on Linux with only a couple of exceptions, and that is why I will have the new system standing by to run Windows â" to support the few apps I cannot work without. Once I get CrossOver working with those apps or I find replacement apps that fill the same need and work the same way, the new system gets redone as well.

The password thing is a special headache. Now that I know for sure that Microsoft is saving all of my log-ins from the Windows machine, all of those passwords need to change. This thrills me to no end.

So, where am I these days? Still on the east coast, still working in Linux full-time and still baking bread. I am no longer a slave to the same s**t company and the douchebag manager I served last time I posted and I have been in a much better role since the spring of 2014. Kiddo off to college, another on a competitive basketball team.

All is well, I suppose.

I took the RHCSA exam this morning, and managed to pass it on the first try.

And the villagers rejoiced.

If every day goes like this, how do we survive?
We're working late on the night shift to get peace of mind.

Eric Prydz, "Every Day"

I can relate to this one all too well, especially of late...

It has been close to a year since I have bothered to post anything on here. I still read almost daily, and once in a great while I find something on here that entices me to comment though it's rare. Anymore the room is quiet, with the occasional political post or the intermittent technical post.

I am not really sure why I have stayed. I guess part of me is comfortable here and just cannot get motivated to move on, even though there isn't too much holding me here. At one time I had a good number of friends here (a few of whom I actually met in person), but I have slowly and steadily lost connection with almost all of them. I know it's my fault.

So why am I posting now? I am not really sure, to be honest. I think I am just reminiscing about times past, friends that have sailed for bluer waters and a portion of my life that has slipped through my fingers. *shrug*

I know it has been a looong time since I have posted anything. I still read here though, and today I have a question.

I have an email provider that does spam filtering above my local box. That is, I get filtered results with no opportunity to see what has been filtered out. The problem there is that sometimes it filters out emails I actually want and there's no way to get them at all.

I need a new email provider. My needs are simple - I need POP/SMTP access, I do NOT need web access, and I want absolutely no spam filtering at all. I'll filter out spam locally. I do not care if it's a paid service or free.

Any suggestions?