After a realatively painless ordeal, I have my Linux server up and running. It is an Ubuntu 8.10 LAMP that was actually pretty easy. The whole thing pretty much sets itself up, even though the "15 minutes to a LAMP" guide was a bit of an optomistic title. Here is the guide I used.
After that, I knew that i would need SOME kind of GUI to manage it, but wanteed to avoid an actual "desktop" installed on teh server itself. 1.3Ghz and <1Gb of RAM will make yo uwant to stay "lean and mean".
A web based management tool called Webmin seems the way to go. After about an hour of following the install instructions for Windows XP and having it stillnot work, I realized that Webmin is supposed to be installed on the webserver...not on the PC you want to use to manage it.
DUH !. So I then followed the much simpler instructions for adding the necessary "packages" to my ubuntu server, using a slightly scarry but elgently simple command line.
Then it was just a matter of "surfing" to its IP address on a special port https://192.168.0.5:10000 and BAM! A login that wanted my ubuntu server user and pass.
Now I am faced with dozens of toools switches and features w/o a clue what to do with them. But hey, it works. At least I think it does. I've never seen a broken one so I can't say for sure.
No error mesages anyway.
Now I just ned to develop some actual content.
We'll see.

American Idolatry

We are upon yet another season of the insanely popular "American Idol" TV show on FOX. Even if you have never seen it before, you undoubtedly have seen the eleventy-billion commercials and teaser spots that FOX shows ever 12 seconds.
I have a few problems with it and rue the day every year it begins its several week run for the season. This is season 8 now and after this many times around, I have no longer considered it one of the signs of the impending apocalypse, directly, but I'm afraid to think what could be worse.
I realize that the point of nearly any company is to make a profit, and TV programs are not excluded from this economical constant. As a capitalist, I am all for "going for it" in that pure sense. Even if I don't particularly like the individual(s) that stand to gain the most from each instance of it.
If American Idol is really about the talent and the exceptional performances that it and its fans claim that it is, then it wouldn't take a few months to cut to the chase. Instead we see for several weeks, the miserably pathetic auditioners that we are expected to laugh at for not realizing their own lack of talent. This and the drummed up drama, grandstanding, the suposed back stage stress, arguing, and trash talking, crying on the phone to mom cuz Simon was so mean etc, etc...blah..blah...
It just seems to contrived, fake and manufactured. The blatant dragging out of the results on the votes that come in. "The results...that YOU the fans voted on are here in my hand...and they are.....coming up right after this message.." Coca-Cola commercial "... Joey, I have the vote results here in my hand. and they are.. ...quite a shock... Joey...you are..." (looks at the camera to make sure we are all haning on the next word out of Ryan's mouth) "...NOT..."
(looks at the camera again) "...voted off.." Pandemonium ensues because now there are only 73 centestants remaining in the semi-semi-semi-half-way finals and there is only 11 weeks to go.

VOMIT ! ! !

How can anyone who has just been willing to sit through all that fake drama still have any self respcect after being so manipulated and patronized. How can they sit there and realize that FOX assumes they are mindless lemmings stopping their lives for an hour (or four) and hanging on to find out who "made it" and who the loser is that week.

"Who cares, as long as they keep watching..." I'm sure is the response from the advertisers who fought to shell out between $600-700 Thousand per minute, for commercial spots, and that was in 2006.

To quote Rod Tidwell, "...it's all about the 'Quan' "