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Sep. 26th, 2002 10:53 pmIt's been a pretty nominal day, if you don't count the power outage that occurred shortly after 6 pm local time.
As someone who remembers the great blackouts in New York in 1965 and 1977, I always get just a tad twitchy when the lights go out suddenly. Of course, when they go out in the middle of the day in a rural area like Pagosa, the twitch isn't that large.
I can tell you pretty much exactly where I was on November 9, 1965 when the lights went out in the Northeast. I was on my way to my grandmother's house, and I had just stepped off the curb on the northeast corner of 84th Street and 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights when something caused me to look down the avenue toward Manhattan. There was a slight flicker, and snap!... all the lights went out. I was about 100 yards from the apartment, which I reached without incident.
Sitting here, I could not remember the date of the 1977 blackout (the Internet tells me it was July 13). All I can say is that Galina was taking an ESL class at a high school not far from Queens Boulevard a few subway stops down the line from the 74th street underground subway (I never could keep the names - IRT, BMT, etc. - straight, and there is a transfer at 74th street to an elevated line that runs out to Shea Stadium). We were on our way from the school to the subway when the lights went out again. As we were in a narrow street flanked by apartments on both sides, there was no panoramic view this time.
Figuring the subways were not going to be running, not knowing anything about bus routes, and being completely out of cash otherwise (which nixed the idea of a cab), we decided to walk home. Our route took us through Corona, and past some people looting some stores. The spirit of cooperation and consideration that was said to be prevalent during the 1965 blackout was certainly absent in 1977. Maybe it was the fact it was a summertime blackout in 1977 and not a late fall one like the one in 1965, maybe people changed; I don't know.
Anyway, any time the lights go out, there's a little part of me that jumps and thinks back to those days.
* * * Another chunk of El Humungo bit the dust today, despite the blackout. I officially have 6 pages left, after which I have to review my work (I'm not going to spend a lot of time resolving questions... since the client insists that my rate can't be changed owing to editing costs, I figure I'll give the editor something to do).
* * * There is a new "Russian-speaking" Linux community on LJ (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
prolinux). I joined recently and asked for some definitive scoop on Russifying Linux, as my attempts to deal with various Linux Cyriilic HOWTO documents (including a very comprehensive one in Russian dated sometime in 2000), just end up with me banging my head against a wall.
Fellow LJer![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
slapsh came to the rescue with some specific modifications to my RedHat configuration, which I've implemented both on 'onegin' (the desktop) and 'bagger' (the laptop). I've also done a little fiddling on my own to make the console able to display Cyrillic, too. This is important to me, as my preferred mail program is a text-based animal named Mutt.
When I ssh into 'onegin' from 'bagger', I can switch between Latin and Cyrillic letters by pressing the right Alt key (just as I would if I were sitting at 'onegin'). When I use my Windows desktop to log in (via ssh using putty), I can get the screen to display Cyrillic, but pressing the Alt key doesn't apparently get conveyed to 'onegin' via the putty interface (or I simply haven't found the key to the configuration kingdom, yet), so I can't compose in Cyrillic.
Some time ago, I recall I figured out a way to Russify the console of a previous Linux incarnation (I think one of the ones that got rooted), but running Mutt would reset it, so today I went out on the net to find out more about this problem. Serendipetously, I found a page with a link to a procmail "recipe" that takes mail encoded using the Windows scheme (code page 1251) and converts it to KOI8-R. I'm not at all sure I need such an animal, since I've received mail written in Russian by people who work exclusively in Windows, and somehow it's shown as KOI8-R in Mutt, but it's nice to have the information just in case.
The next step is to exercise Galeon on 'bagger' to make sure my eyes weren't kidding me earlier today, and then to see if I can compose documents in Russian in OpenOffice. If I can, it will go a long way toward satisfying a long-felt need in the Linux part of my life.
Cheers...
As someone who remembers the great blackouts in New York in 1965 and 1977, I always get just a tad twitchy when the lights go out suddenly. Of course, when they go out in the middle of the day in a rural area like Pagosa, the twitch isn't that large.
I can tell you pretty much exactly where I was on November 9, 1965 when the lights went out in the Northeast. I was on my way to my grandmother's house, and I had just stepped off the curb on the northeast corner of 84th Street and 37th Avenue in Jackson Heights when something caused me to look down the avenue toward Manhattan. There was a slight flicker, and snap!... all the lights went out. I was about 100 yards from the apartment, which I reached without incident.
Sitting here, I could not remember the date of the 1977 blackout (the Internet tells me it was July 13). All I can say is that Galina was taking an ESL class at a high school not far from Queens Boulevard a few subway stops down the line from the 74th street underground subway (I never could keep the names - IRT, BMT, etc. - straight, and there is a transfer at 74th street to an elevated line that runs out to Shea Stadium). We were on our way from the school to the subway when the lights went out again. As we were in a narrow street flanked by apartments on both sides, there was no panoramic view this time.
Figuring the subways were not going to be running, not knowing anything about bus routes, and being completely out of cash otherwise (which nixed the idea of a cab), we decided to walk home. Our route took us through Corona, and past some people looting some stores. The spirit of cooperation and consideration that was said to be prevalent during the 1965 blackout was certainly absent in 1977. Maybe it was the fact it was a summertime blackout in 1977 and not a late fall one like the one in 1965, maybe people changed; I don't know.
Anyway, any time the lights go out, there's a little part of me that jumps and thinks back to those days.
prolinux). I joined recently and asked for some definitive scoop on Russifying Linux, as my attempts to deal with various Linux Cyriilic HOWTO documents (including a very comprehensive one in Russian dated sometime in 2000), just end up with me banging my head against a wall.Fellow LJer
slapsh came to the rescue with some specific modifications to my RedHat configuration, which I've implemented both on 'onegin' (the desktop) and 'bagger' (the laptop). I've also done a little fiddling on my own to make the console able to display Cyrillic, too. This is important to me, as my preferred mail program is a text-based animal named Mutt.When I ssh into 'onegin' from 'bagger', I can switch between Latin and Cyrillic letters by pressing the right Alt key (just as I would if I were sitting at 'onegin'). When I use my Windows desktop to log in (via ssh using putty), I can get the screen to display Cyrillic, but pressing the Alt key doesn't apparently get conveyed to 'onegin' via the putty interface (or I simply haven't found the key to the configuration kingdom, yet), so I can't compose in Cyrillic.
Some time ago, I recall I figured out a way to Russify the console of a previous Linux incarnation (I think one of the ones that got rooted), but running Mutt would reset it, so today I went out on the net to find out more about this problem. Serendipetously, I found a page with a link to a procmail "recipe" that takes mail encoded using the Windows scheme (code page 1251) and converts it to KOI8-R. I'm not at all sure I need such an animal, since I've received mail written in Russian by people who work exclusively in Windows, and somehow it's shown as KOI8-R in Mutt, but it's nice to have the information just in case.
The next step is to exercise Galeon on 'bagger' to make sure my eyes weren't kidding me earlier today, and then to see if I can compose documents in Russian in OpenOffice. If I can, it will go a long way toward satisfying a long-felt need in the Linux part of my life.
Cheers...
