QTParted – Partition Magic for Linux

Well, not quite. This is a Qt frontend to GNU parted. I have a spare 20GB hardrive here so I’ll see what it can do with that!
It’s also available as an RPM on apt-get, but I’m not sure which repository. Here’s the contents of my sources.list:

rpm ftp://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat/9/en/i386 os updates extra
rpm-src ftp://apt-rpm.tuxfamily.org/apt redhat/9/en/i386 os updates extra

rpm http://ayo.freshrpms.net redhat/9/i386 os updates freshrpms
rpm-src http://ayo.freshrpms.net redhat/9/i386 os updates freshrpms

rpm http://utelsystems.dyndns.org/apt redhat/9/en/i386 utelsystems
rpm-src http://utelsystems.dyndns.org/apt redhat/9/en/i386 utelsystems

#newrpms.sunsite.dk
rpm http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/apt/ redhat/en/i386/9.0 newrpms
rpm-src http://newrpms.sunsite.dk/apt/ redhat/en/i386/9.0 newrpms

(via the ILUG!)

what a week…

Kicked off last week jet lagged by 8 or 9 hours in a plane… gah! Hostel was very nice, although I was glad when we got accomodation later in the week.
On Monday I think we went up The Sears Tower. The sky was overcast but it was still an amazing view – Mairead, sorry for ringing you from there, I know it was very later back home!
We spent Tuesday looking for an appartment. I called into the office, met Ed, Jim and others. We got to use a PC to browse appartments.com and found a few nice ones – we arranged an appointment with Carrie in Printers Square for 3pm. Unfortunately all their appartments were simply way beond our budget however.
While we mulled over our accomodation options (live in a cardboard box or an expensive studio!) back at the hostel that night we were given tickets to a baseball game that night. It was on at 7pm, we had 30 minutes to get to Wrigglyville so we rushed! I thought the tickets would be among the cheaper seats, but no, they were for a suite! We joined a line of well dressed people, and stopped outside the Fox Corporate Suite. 🙂 Opening the door, I asked, “Are we in the right place?” We were, and Brett, a marketing executive for Fox made us feel very welcome! It was the first baseball game I’ve been to, and it was brilliant! It’s the infamous one where Sammy Sousa used a corked bat and was discovered when the bat split. It’s been all over the news the past few days. I’ll post pics here tomorrow!
The John Hancock Center is amazing too, although the elevator up hurt my ears no end, and swallowing or breathing deeply never helped. Does the elevator in that building go faster than in Sears?
Finally we managed to find an appartment. It’s up north between Irving Park and Montrose and we’re sharing with 2 Irish girls and an English girl. Thankfully, they aren’t TV Soap fans!
First impressions of Chicago? It’s a great city, and I think I’m going to enjoy my time here! I’m not looking forward to the summer heat and humidity, but as long as I’m in an air conditioned office or appartment I won’t mind too much!
Oh yeah, Owen – Dream Theatre are playing here on July 19th AFAIR, I’ll let you know for sure by email!

King Of Hearts

As I won’t be updating this blog for a few days I thought I’d leave you with a little something special to keep you coming back!
Feast your eyes on “The King Of Hearts”, Cork’s amazing new band, with Owen Kelly on lead guitar! I interrupted a photo shoot this afternoon, and snapped a few quick photos. Apologies for the small size, but if you want the 1600×1200 originals, mail me! 🙂

Gnucash – Euro & US Dollar

Right, so I have all my accounts in Euro in Gnucash. That’s now a problem since I’ll be spending US Dollars for the next 3 months, but I’ll be servicing loans and bills directly from my account in Euros.
I created a “Cash in wallet – USD” account, with a default currency of USD. That worked a treat when I transfered €200 over to it. Up popped a dialog box asking for the exchange rate or some amount. I entered 230, as that’s the USD value I got back. Nice.
That still doesn’t solve my problem though – do I create a USD version of my most used accounts? Anyone?
Do I simply convert ATM withdrawals over to Euro, and track my spending in Euro still? There’s always a few “misc” entries every few days when I can’t remember what I had for lunch 3 days ago. “Misc” entries could take care of any discrepencies.
Note: I am not doing this for business reasons. This is for my personal records! 🙂

Travel Insurance, and last minute stuff!

Getting travel insurance is a pain. It’s my own fault really as I didn’t go about getting it earlier. bah!
It’s nigh on impossible to buy insurance from most travel shops in Cork. You have to have booked a flight/holiday with them as well. One shop was willing to sell me insurance, but then they discovered their internet connection was down so they couldn’t order it online. I offered to get them up and running again but..
Eventually, after queueing for about half an hour in various shops I tried USIT. It was full of students looking for J1 visas and that took another hour. Thankfully I had Stunt Car Racer on the 7650 to keep me occupied!
The VHI were no help. Their Global product costs from €2,000 to €4,000 for the 3 months. Their Plan B only covers me up to $65,000 which isn’t much in the USA.
Everything’s sorted now, met up with Ruairi and Louise. Congrats to the two of you! The ring is lovely! Bumped into Peter Flynn too. We must start the CorkLUG meets again when I get back!
Now to pack..