EmmonsNet

It's pretty obvious that Microsoft is getting nervous with the upcoming release of it's latest operating system, Windows 7. Why wouldn't they be after the total blowback they endured over the worst thing they put on the market since Windows ME - Vista. It's no surprise that the Redmond software giant just had to start spewing it's usual Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt in an attempt to distract consumers and retailers from it has clay feet.

The latest salvo from it's arsenal of flimsy marketing tool set to convince retailers how great their products are is the 'Get The Facts' corpse freshly dug up, dressed in a puke green training modules targeted at staff members of retail chains like Best Buy.

Fortunately, a few of the staffers at Best Buy are not just some mindless wage slaves punching a clock to support their weekly beer consumption while attending the local community college. A few of them are Linux users smart enough to call bullshit when they see it. Especially when they are given 'training material' that is just a cover for an attempt to sway them towards discourage consumers from choosing any other operating system other than Windows and full of straight out lies.

What does a geek do when he can't sleep and counting sheep is just too twentieth century?

I found the answer to that question last night at around midnight when I could not sleep and just could not stomache one more second of the crapastic series 'Stargate' on the Scifi channel. Oh, excuse me, I mean the newly renamed Scyfy channel.

I discovered a online flash game called Sheepteroids. It's like a mix between insomnia and the 1979 arcade classic by Atari - Asteroids.

While destroying floating sheep may not be a cure for sleepnessness, it enabled me to kill about an hours worth of time before I was finally fatiqued enough to fall asleep.

If you are old enough to have that nostalgic urge to play the classic game one more time, you can check out Atari games page to work out your space bar on the classic Asteroids flash game.

It pokes fun at a few of the stereotypes associated with Linux and computer geeks in general. It's just damned funny and I could not resist posting this 'Swith To Linux' video even though it has been around a couple years.

I've been working with Linux well over ten years now and I have still trying to figure out how to get my brain lasers into high earth orbit without the pentagon knowing about it.

I love all the great utilities that are available out of the box with Linux. With the power they put at my fingers tips, I feel pretty darned near omnipotent at times when I am in front of the command line. Especially when some of the simplest utilities easily lay bare everything that is going on with the OS for me to scrutinize.

Earlier this evening a friend of mine who less than six months into his Linux journey catches me on IRC asking how he can tell which processes are consuming the most system resources as it happens.

Now here is where a little CLI magic comes with with the help of handful of *nix commands and a pair of pipes.

To grab a snap shot of the processes currently running on your box, you would use the 'ps' command. It has a heck of a lot of options. You can read more about it here or type 'man ps' in your console.