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Email Brian Bilbrey

EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so, I'll pay attention to your wishes.

Good morning. Let's start things out with a mea culpa:

From: "Robert Bruce Thompson"
Subject:
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 08:32:05 -05:00

> Antec ATX Tower + 300W PS, an Intel D815EEAL (???) mobo, 
> PIII-800/133 CPU, 256K of PC133 RAM (he didn't want to wait 
> for Crucial or Kingston, I tried), a Maxtor 7200 EIDE 40G, and 
> a 8x4x32 HP CDR/RW drive.

A bit light on RAM, isn't he?

--
Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com/rbt/thisweek.html

Figure we'd take bill g at his word, and work up to 640K. Afterall, 
nobody's ever going to need more than 640K of ram...

And yeah, I typed that wrong, yesterday evening. One little character wrong, and the east coast jumps down your throat, first thing in the morning. No sense of propriety, much less adventure, eh? I've repaired that, in RED, which is my usual thing when fixing the past.

Speaking of the past, I had a busy weekend, in case you missed it. On Saturday I posted a light thinking piece prompted by a letter from Rick Booth, about the Baen Library. Sunday has email commentary on the Saturday rant.

Also, all day Saturday, I worked on a V2 of the Mandrake 7.2 Install. It's done, weighing in at 70+ thumbnailed screenshots. It's as complete a walk-through of the Expert class MDK install as I can do in a day (+ a little, I finished up the text yesterday sometime).

From Friday evening to this morning I figure I've done about 16K words. Not bad, for non-income producing work, eh? My fingers are tuckered out, though, so I'll leave you with the weekend's work to sate you today, and revisit this joynt this evening, hopefully with something cogent to report. Have a lovely day.

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I closed yesterday with "Have a lovely day." Apparently there are people in the world who can't take direction properly. Aside from Landon taking a bad fall and snapping his femur, there was Michael (husband of a friend) who was in a crosswalk when an LA city bus decided to run a red light, and other bad news from other quarters, as well. Landon will be all right eventually, as will Michael. Healing takes time, and takes a lot out of the immediate family, too. We're mulling ways to help out, at least for Tom and family (Michael's more or less OK, though he won't be running any more marathons this year, and a litigation attorney to boot, plus there's eyewitnesses - my guess is that LA should settle large and early).

Hmmm. Let's try this again. Good morning. Be thankful for your health, and your luck. I am. Me? I came home a bit early yesterday, having stopped and picked up a copy of Real Myst, at Jerry's recommendation (down at the bottom of that linked page). Pretty cool, though it took me a while to get Windows re-installed, and it still ain't right. We'll see.

Other recent things you can catch up on: Have you forgotten we're selling the Cavalier? And have you seen the latest Mandrake 7.2 Installation walkthrough? OK, OK. I put a lot into that, and so I'm touting it a bit. <g>

Please, please, please stay tuned to this space. Come back and visit later today - I'll have some news up about how you can help us help Tom out a bit. Now, it's late and I must fly. See you in a little while, perhaps as early as mid-morning, my time.

Tuesday Noon

Welcome back, and thanks. I had a brief chat with Tom, and I'll let him say his piece at his pace, but all is reasonably well, or as much as can be, given a kid in traction. Our hearts go out to the Syroids, along with our best wishes and prayers. The "Gang" has circled up the wagons and done what we feel is right for our friend and neighbor, there shouldn't be much other than a kind word that you'll need to send their way, so far.

Sorry I didn't get back this way sooner, but the inbox has been a tad ... active, and there are other logistics going on, along with the normal buzz of a day in the office, which continues. I've completed a new panel design for a Digital Audio interface panel for a major sports network, and it's out for review right now. Now to do the next thing. I'll be back later, no doubt.

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Good morning. Sorry not to make it back last night... I've been busy on a number of fronts. Let me deal with them in inverse order. First, thanks to Paul Miller for pointing out that the above link to Jerry Pournelle's Byte column for this week was broken. I've fixed it, here and there. I started out of the gate rather quick yesterday AM, and didn't check links as I should have and normally do. Thanks, Paul.

Next, I'd like to acquaint you with the most recent Daynoter, Mike Barkman. This email is representative of the type of support that's been evident for the Syroids, as yesterday developed. This was in my inbox this morning, and describes exactly what I've been feeling about the whole thing, though I don't have the Maori concepts in my background, so use words like community and barn-raising and pulling together. But then, I'm simple (you knew that).

From: Mike Barkman 
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 20:25:08 +1300

I'd like to acquaint Daynoters with a concept from our New Zealand Maori:
the word is whanau -- pronounced "faaar-no"; and its closest translation
is "extended family". One's whanau is firstly your immediate family, then
relations, then close friends in ever-increasing circles. In times of
need, your whanau is there -- bringing help, food, support, whatever
is needed for the situation.

One can also have, by concept extension, a 'group whanau' -- people
who are closely associated, who may not be exactly friends, or
relations -- but who know you pretty well, share your conversations,
your hopes, your fears, your triumphs, your disasters; as you in turn
share theirs. I guess this is starting to sound like Daynotes.com.
Having been allowed into each others lives, through daynotes, the
process has created a whanau, and now the whanau has kicked into
action spontaneously. I count myself privileged to be a junior
member of a great bunch of guys.

Arohanui ... Mike

=======================================================
Visit my web site at http://www.icarus.gen.nz

We've put together the resources to rent Tom and Leah a car for the time they have to be back and forth from the hospital, I've got to get to work, and put the finishing touches on that bit, and get the car to where Tom is, or vice-versa. So I'll bid you adieu for the moment - keep checking out Tom's pages, and keep those cards and letters going - they're helping buoy their spirits immensely, Tom tells me. Meantime, take care, y'all. I'll be back later with reports on my rebuilding Grinch adventures from last night.

21:00 - Late to return. I know, thanks for your patience. Lots to tell, less time than I'd like. My concentration isn't what it should be, since I appear to be developing something contagious. The first sign was a series of 5 to 7 sneezes in a row last night sometime. That's so unusual that I can't remember that ever happening. Silly me, I thought nothing of it, and finished up my tasks of the evening. Today I started in with more sneezing, a seriously scratchy throat, and pressure behind the eyes. Well, duh. Now it doesn't take a rocket scientist for that one, does it? So right to the Zinc lozenges when I got home this evening. After dinner, 1000mg of C, some Echinacea and more Zinc, along with my post-meal Glucosamine/MSM complex.

We're continuing to support the Syroid's as we can from such a distance. Keep thinking good thoughts for them, as I am sure it's helping. Don't forget KayCee and others who are also fighting the good fight, as well.

In other news, keep an eye on Ken Scott. He's been keeping a bit of a journal himself these last couple of months, but you have to be patient - I think he's on the other end of a slow line, but I could be wrong. He definitely has cute kid pictures posted (playing in snow, as he's from the Denver, CO area).

Grinch rebuild woes, visited. Well, I was going to write revisited, but then, I hadn't been there, this time (yet). Set that against my relatively continuous remodelling schedule for my systems. Hmmm. Anyway. As you know, I picked up Real Myst the other night. Tricky to run, since I didn't actually have any version of Windows running, though I am the legitimate owner of two Win95, one Win98, one WinNT4.0 and one Win2K licenses. Mmmm. So, how to go about this, when I have no space on the front drive. I don't want to use VMware, because games are fairly performance sensititve, and I'm reasonably sure it wouldn't run well. Anyway, I tried to do something trick.

I used VMware to build a Win98 partition on the back 40. Then I set up lilo to boot into it directly. Mmmm. So sorry, too bad, sort of. It worked, exactly every other boot. The first time, I'd boot into Windows, and it'd lock. The second boot, I'd get the "safe" menu, head into DOS (command line) mode, then manually start Windows from there. Sort of a Redmondian version of runlevel 3. I couldn't leave things like that, though. I don't understand exactly what was wrong, but it certainly didn't like booting there, and I was fretting about disk confusion causing Scandisk to wipe Linux from the system for me.

Last night, I got in, swapped the drives about, and wiped the Windows 98 partition, instead loading Windows 2000 Professional. Nice gaming platform with the 3dfx VooDoo 3000 (yep, drivers are still available from the 3dfx site, including those for Win2K) and the Sound Blaster Live Platinum. Once that was loaded in the primary bootable partition on my "C" drive (actually /dev/hdc), I went about recovering my Linux setup. Trickier than I thought. I was able to boot into the rescue mode on the 7.2 installation CDR, and mount the root partition easily enough.

But I couldn't get lilo to write to the MBR on hdc. In order to do this, you use the chroot command to trick the system into believing that a sub-tree is actually the whole filesystem. My problem is that, when mounted, the Linux root filesystem reported as /dev/hdd1, which was actually true. In a chroot environment, the same partition reported as /dev/hdc1. So when lilo executed, it would write the boot record to what it thought was /dev/hdc, in fact /dev/hdd, and useless to me. I worked at that for about an hour, then pitched in the towel. I had previously printed out my fstab, so I knew which partitions were associated with which mount points. I simply reinstalled Mandrake 7.2 from scratch, preserving my /home and /usr/local filesystems, remounting them in the new install, data intacticus. That's why I always like keeping /home and /usr/local on separate partitions. Another trick way of doing this is to create a separate /home partition, then create a /home/local directory. This can be symlinked to the system /usr/local point.

Short and long of it - I can game again, I still have 30 G dedicated to Linux on ReiserFS partitions on Grinch, and everything's back to normal. Now I am going to go relax. Have a lovely evening.

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Good morning, I think. At any rate, morning, certainly. The bug has definitely bit me, but I appear to have stopped the bastard at the inner moat, at least temporarily. My throat, very scratchy but not too sore, kept me up much of the night, unfortunately. But no more symptoms have developed. I am going to stick with the regimen of C, Echinacea and two kinds of Zinc (lozenge and pill) for a couple of days. That it's primarily just my throat would lead me towards suspecting Streptococcal Pharyngitis, but there is none of the extreme soreness that I've come to associate with Strep. So continuing to treat the symptoms for the time being seems the proper course.

For those of you that checked, thanks - I did finally put up a late post last night, but it was very late for me, a little after 9PM local. I did get a bit of a report out on rebuilding Grinch. Additionally, I've been keeping up with quite a lot of email - thanks to all of you for the kind words of support as we help our friend Tom and his family.

Today at the office, I have final touches to put on the panel design for ESPN, including creating the artwork to silkscreen the front and back sheet metal. Then there's revisions on PCB designs that are calling for my attention - we're working on updating our Cat5E panels to give better FEXT (far end crosstalk) numbers: I think we'll achieve a better balance between NEXT (near end...) and FEXT with this design iteration. But I need to be cautious, and double check everything, twice again, because I sure am tired.

On the other hand, Marcia's department at work is having a spa day. They have to report ... to the spa (for facials, manicures, pedicures, whatever), followed by a leisurely lunch out, then the balance of the day off. Not only a thank you for the hard work from the last quarter (they posted STELLAR numbers in their earnings report after the market closed yesterday), but also because they're working all weekend at the sales meeting up in SF this weekend.

And with that, I'm out of time. Hope to return here later. Take care, of yourself and each other.

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Or not... Good morning. Happy Friday!!! From all reports that I can gather, the Syroids are doing OK under the circumstances. Landon is sitting himself up, a rather startling occurance, but that's all right apparently, according to the medicos, since his break is in a place where the sitting up doesn't add too much stress to the healing fracture (mid-bone, rather than up near the hip). Tom's been able to rent them a car for the duration, and Leah was actually home for a while last night and spoke to Marcia for a bit. Keep thinking good thoughts, friends.

Now, my throat, on the other hand, is not doing so well. It hurts more today, but I'm not getting the kind of pain, and localized lymph node swelling that I'd expect from an infection, so I'm just continuing to monitor the situation. If it stays like this for another few days, or gets significantly worse, then I'll visit a doc.

Progeny Debian has finally begun the second Beta round of their version of Debian Linux. They've opened up the beta, check the Progeny homepage for information. I've done a couple of trial installs so far, with mixed results. But then, I put Linux in "stressful" multiboot environments. I was able to do the initial installation on Grinch with only a modicum of difficulty, but when I tried to install on Gryphon... nothing. The video wouldn't initialize properly. So I am going to do a test install on a machine at work today, then make a few bug reports tonight.

We have a management meeting at work today, and I have a continuing design goal for the Cat5E re-design project. Yesterday I spent some time in the machine shop, making a few air coil-winding fixture parts, and cleaning up a badly neglected mill - rust was getting a foothold on the vice and ways. Not anymore.

So I am off... have a lovely day. Later.

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Good morning, perhaps ... for you, I hope. I just did something stupid, and lost the post I've been typing away at for the last 25 minutes. It was stunning, glorious, Pulitzer material if ever there was. Really. Truly. You don't believe me? Good. Anyway, I don't have the energy or gumption to recreate the whole thing again, though I could probably do a pretty good job, if I tried. Instead, I'll summarize.

Woke up at Oh-Dark-colon-thirty, Marcia was out of the house early early early, off to her corporate Sales Meeting in the City. My throat and assorted aches from the viral bug I'm fighting got me up an hour later. The good news I was up to see a gorgeous sunrise.

Progeny Debian for me has one install success, and two failures. So I have some reporting to do, if I can, and their web system permits me. I want this one to succeed, because Debian really is a nice solid distribution. With a few frontend tools to hide the "scary bits" from new users, it could be a real winner. But there's a ways to go. Auto-probing hardware is a tricky biz, prone to error and lockups.

That said, in the interim, to occupy my mind when I'm not napping, I have two other things on tap for today. An installation of Debian GNU/Linux 2.2r2, documented with the help of VMware. It's been over a year since I ran a documented Debian install, and with a walk-through in hand, maybe someone else will be tempted to give it a go. I'll talk about Debian's advantages as I write this.

The second "task" on for today is to help Scott, our neighbor, build up his machine from the components we bought last weekend. That's on for this afternoon sometime. But now, I have some burning to do, to get ready for the Debian adventure. See you later.

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Morning. Throat's not better, thanks, but worse - I was awake for probably three or four hours of the night, though I stayed in bed, rather then getting up and poking about with the computer. My voice is headed south... I may just head into the doctor's tomorrow, unless this eases. I've got a ringing in my ears... oh, wait... AC/DC via .mp3: Hells Bells??? Nope, really just in my ears. Sigh. The good news, such as it is, is that I am starting to develop some other cold-like symptoms, which makes this whole thing viral. I prefer that, in a way, since I really don't like to take antibiotics if I can help it. I prefer to let my body's defences work it out on their own. Got a new bit of mail lately...

Date: Sat, Jan 20, 2001 at 06:14:45PM -0500
From: Dave Browning
Subject: Comments about your site

Brian,

    I have been reading your web site for a while now, and have been
favorably impressed.  I particularly want to find the time to go through
and look at your Mandrake 7.2 installation article in more depth.

    I did stumble across a couple of links in your journal section which
don't work.  At the bottom of every day's journal entry you have a link
to the Site Map and Orb Home.  Neither of those links work.  The ones at
the top left hand corner of the page do work however.

Dave Browning

Thanks, Dave, and thanks for dropping by and reading. I'll have a
look at those links a bit later. I'll bet they're just broken since
new years, when I moved to a new sub-directory. Then I don't have
much in the way of repairs to make (one hopes).

take care, .brian

And right was Dave: but not just the ones at the bottom - between each day as well, the Site Map and Orb Home links were broken. For 2001, I dropped down into a new subdirectory. However, the links (except for those at the page top that I fixed on the initial move) still pointed as though they were in the directory above. All repaired, I think. Now that it's another day, let me re-test them quickly... one more set needed fixing, from the bottom of yesterday's page. I'll recheck the Template page I use to generate a new week later today.

No news on the neighbor Scott front. He never came over to fetch me yesterday, though his wife called about 4 to say she was waking him from a nap. At that point I suggested we try again on Sunday. We'll see what happens. With Debian, I've got about 110 or so screen shots. I think I'm going to break that installation walkthrough into a three or four page beast, to keep the load times from being too long. Should I have the images open in new windows by default? Feedback welcomed on that one, since it would keep the main page present without any effort on your part... I'll start writing one way, and can do a global search and replace if I get some votes indicating a change of pace.

I'm expecting a call from that Canadian feller... and there he was. Check out Tom's post to get the latest Landon and family update... Seems things are generally well. I'm glad. And on that note, I'm going to bail out of this post, and hop in the shower. Marcia's on her way home from the City, and we're going to get her an early birthday present: a Palm-thingy of one type or another. Hours of fun for the whole family. I might be back later, thanks for dropping by.

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