I tricked myself into thinking that the first couple of times I played Street Fighter IV, I was just having "off" days. Soon, however, I came to realize just how much the first impressions of the game I had were dead on.

I won't lie, fighting games are not my forte. That doesn't mean that I'm terrible, just medicore at most. Better than average with some. Fighting games were a part of my childhood with Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II on the Sega Genesis. I was pretty good at both, albeit I spent more time with Mortal Kombat and was a much more prolific fighter there. Even now I love the occasional fighting game. Guilty Gear is raw, Soul Calibur is great spectacular, and even Tekken has its moments. For me, even though fighting isn't my genre, the pros have always outweighed the cons. Not so in this case.

I could probably go on forever on the reasons why I hate the game, but it would degrade into a rant. Instead, I'll try to keep it to the important things. My first gripe is about the controls. This is, in my opinion, the only one that I have some control of. The XBox 360 controller is great for Soul Calibur and Tekken when you can use the joystick, but for a 2d fighter the joystick doesn't suffice. Sadly however, the joystick is far better than the D-pad. It is uncomfortable for constant use, and makes doing combos hard.

At the insistence of Alan, I was finally pushed into reading Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character). After having read it though, I am a lot more inclined to read anything my good friend is willing to send my way. In fact, he has already got me started on Prime Obsession, but I'll save talking about that one for another entry. For now, back to the book at hand.

A multitude of short stories, this book is an exhibition into the mind of one of the greatest theoretical physicists. Sure, he may not have made the contributions scientists such as Newton and Einstein have to physics (and contribute he did), but what made him so great wasn't his IQ. It was his personality. With everything he did, there was always a light-hearted undertone. With such an eccentric and playful personality, it's almost a wonder he got anything accomplished. Yet ... he WAS an accomplished individual.

This is definitely a book that everybody should read, as most of it is playful. Near the end of the book however, there are a few chapters that have a somber light cast on them. In the final story, Feynman convenys his attitude towards the growing trend in the workplace. He expresses, with a truely heartfelt sentiment, that today many individuals are compelled towards some action to keep their job or maintain a position. Where integrity has been lowered by a compulsory workplace. The last paragraph really hit home and I hope it is something everybody analyzes and can take something away from it.

"So I have just one wish for you -- the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom."

Richard P. Feynman

So, in an effort to further my linux training, I have recently decided to make some attempts at another distro, one that would force me to learn more of the underlying magic. For this task, I ended up choosing Arch Linux. The primary reason for my decision was that Arch Linux is a bare bones operating system, which would force me to install all of the things I have come to love about Ubuntu and would teach me more about each in a straightforward fashion. Well, that was the plan ...

However, there were so many unexpected hurdles that I failed to predict. The major problem was actually VirtualBox. I had had some previous success in the past with using VirtualBox to run Windows, and if anything were to go wrong, I would want access to the internet still to assist me. Plus, I didn't have any plans to repartition my harddrive yet (I wanted to wait till I got a new 10,000 rpm or a SSD), so I thought the best way to test it would be through a virtual partition. Makes sense right?

First install went terrible because I didn't understand the setup. Not a big deal, I just deleted the virtual partition and started over. A few more mistake installations and I was able to install it like a pro. I then boot into my first base install and everything seems to be working. First thing I think to do, logically, is try to update the system. So, in the command line I type:

[root@myhost ~]# pacman -Syu

Nothing ... Well, I double check on the internet to make sure that the command is right (and it is), but still can't figure out what is wrong. My next move is to then hop into the Arch Linux irc channel and see if I can get some help. Luckily help came pretty fast and I was able jump back into setting up my distro. Just a little problem with some ethernet settngs in the rc.conf file. So I rerun the command and this time it starts working, sort of. A few packages into the upgrade, the update halts. Hmmm, as much as I didn't want to do it, I was forced to ctrl+C to get out of it and then run it again. Fortunately, it picks up where it left off and after about 3-4 more times of this, the system gets upgraded. Time to reboot and test it out.

Booting up ... Looks good ......... BAM!!! The Arch Linux VirtualBox window closes on me. A few more tries shows me it isn't a fluke. I had thought, because of the interruptions with pacman, that maybe the install didn't go right. I proceeded to delete the installation, reinstall, update, and reboot. Same thing, even after a few more installations. Many, many hours later after scouring the internet, I find out that it's not anything I have done or a flawed installation disk, but the latest linux kernel used with Arch Linux on VirtualBox. Everytime I upgraded, the system upgrade would install the latest linux kernel26 automatically. Now that I knew the problem it didn't take me long to find out how to fix it. By that time I had installed so many times that it didn't take me long to reinstall and fix what needed to be fixed. It worked.

After nearly 2 days of on/off tinkering I now have a working version of Arch Linux on my virtual partition. I want to install Openbox and test it, but after all the unexpected trouble I had with the kernel, I think I will just repartition my hard drive. There is no telling what trouble I will get into with the VirtualBox drivers when I need to install X. Even with all the hassle, I'm rather happy about the way the installation attempts turned out. It, to some extent, made me learn more about he underlying system. And that, my friends, is what I set out to do when I started my first installation of Arch Linux.