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Orb Designs Grafitti
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Email Brian Bilbrey |
Orb Grafitti is sometimes a conversation, sometimes a soapbox. I use Linux most often, and I write about that and related software frequently. I also have a day job working as a dogsbody for a small manufacturing firm here in the SF Bay Area. Also, Tom Syroid and I recently co-authored Caldera OpenLinux Secrets, unfortunately cancelled by the folks at $LARGE_PUBLISHER. I'm glad you've come to visit, and always happy to hear from you.
EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so, I'll pay attention to your wishes.
Good morning (damply). I'll give San Diego this: It didn't rain on us! Heh. A short form trip report: Friday we left work around noonish, and headed to the San Jose Airport. Checked in and got exit row seating (perfect for those like me with long legs). On or about the appointed time, we embarked upon our American Airlines chariot and departed for LAX (this is a two hop journey). About 20 minutes into the flight, we started a slow bank.
"This is Captain Whats'isname, you may have noticed we've started to turn. That's not normal..." Whats'isname proceeded to tell us we were down to one backup generator and since we were three minutes shy of the midpoint of our journey, we were turning back to San Jose. *&@^#$^%
Back we went, and stood in line at the gate for 1.5 hours to find that we could get on another plane at a little past 6, land at LAX just after 7, then hop on a puddle jumper to San Diego leaving LA at 7:40. We waited, we boarded, we waited we waited... we left SJO about 7:54, hitting the gate at LAX about 7:35, where they had problems with the jetway. They played back and forth games with that for 10 stinking minutes while the appointed connection flight time came and went and we all stood like cattle in the chute between the seats.
We ran, we rode the terminal bus, we saw the plane, we saw the stairs retract, we begged and pleaded while the starboard engine spun up... and the door opened up, the stairs appeared! Hey HEY - we're on our way to San Diego. We landed, rented a car and collapsed in our hotel, some 10 hours after we left work... I think I could have driven it more efficiently, eh?
More on the trip later - It's time for Marcia and I to head to work! Have a lovely day.
17:45 - Evenin'... Nice to be back home. This "vacationing" thing is for the birds. I am whupped. Right now Marcia is out like a light, and I'm beginning to perk up a bit, following the mid-afternoon doldrums.
To finish the trip report, on Saturday morning, we met up for breakfast with my brother Pete and his daughter, Danielle. After a most excellent omelet ... at a restaurant that I can't remember for the life of me (it was across the street from Von's supermarket, if that's any help), we went up to the aquarium adjoining the Scripps Institute. Smallish joint, really, and strongly influenced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium design. Honestly, aquariums haven't been the same since Lucy Packard asked Dad for a fishtank back in the late seventies. You can now go into two types of aquarium in the world, those built before the MBA, and those after. Those before seem primitive and dingy by comparison... of course, she had the money to do the job right, eh?
After the aquarium, we went up to the glider port, and watch the hang gliders, parasails, and other assorted brightly colored insanities for a half hour or 45 minutes. Saturday afternoon, Pete took off to meet a friend and we took Dani shopping for a birthday present... Well, Marcia took Dani shopping for a birthday present, and they just kept calling, "Sherpa, carry this!" and "Sherpa, carry that!"... Still a successfully restrained time was had by all.
In the evening we headed over to my aunt Trish's pad for a walk on the beach and some excellent chow - Grilled halibut, baked potatoes, salad, bread and other fixin's - yummerlischious. It was nice to see Trish and her son Justin in their own digs, usually they end up making the trip up this-a-way. Justin is, BTW, an excellent guitarist. Additionally Marcia and I may be doing (drafted in, don'tcha know) some web development for a eating disorders nonprofit, of which Trish is the director in her not so copious spare time.
Back to the 'otel, and a quick collapse into another night's restless sleep. We don't sleep well away from home, both suffering from NOBS (Not Our Bed Syndrome). Sunday we had brunch with Peter, Dani, and Marcia's nephew, Aaron, a newish resident of the city (he moved to SD from Michigan a couple of months ago, bright boy!!!). We did very well at brunch at the Hilton resort on Mission Bay. The day was cloudy and a bit chill, at least from San Diego norms. Many people were wearing long sleeves and pants, rather than tanks and shorts.
Then we took our leave of Pete and Dani, dropped Aaron off at his place, and headed down to Seaport Village for a bit of final shopping. Nah, we really weren't there long enough to see the sights, to do the zoo or Sea World or hang out watching the jets out at Miramar (though we did see several flights of fighters during our stay, heh).
Sunday night, our flight left San Diego on time, arriving at San Jose early enough to keep us waiting at the carousel for our luggage for a good 75 to 90 minutes. Sheesh. You'd think the luggage took a later flight ... you don't think ... nah!
Now you're caught up on last weekend, and I am going to put in a little time on the Debian installation report, before it all falls out of my brain and I have to do the thing over again to remember what to describe. TTFN.
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Good morning! As usual, lots to do, and little time. Yesterday after work, I posted the balance of my review of the weekend trip to San Diego, along with just a few pictures this time. However Marcia has a much more complete set of snaps in her Meanderings section.
I got another page of Debian Installation annotated, and several more pages of screenshots organized. Another couple of days and I might just be done-ish. Additionally, I last night installed Mandrake 8.0 Beta to Gryphon. I think I managed to rush something though, as it appears that bits are missing. Why blame myself? Because when I popped in the second CD-ROM, I hit Enter immediately, instead of waiting for the drive to spool up. I think that nothing got installed over the second disc, because it didn't get recognized in time. And as with most Linux distro installers, there's no going partway back (most of the time). I'll reinstall today, and take a few different choices, as well as be more patient.
First impressions? A clean install. Even in the expert mode, significant configuration features are hidden behind the bland face of an advanced button, where the defaults make sense. In several cases, I clicked on the button, only to mentally review the choices the installer makes and mutter, "Hmmmph. Not too bad!" Funnily, during the package installation phase, along with the progress bar and count down timer, instead of a listing of the packages as they are brought over from the CDROM there's a succession of heavy construction equipment. Dredges, bucket cranes, front-end loaders and so on. Clear point here - this is a work under construction. Good news, however. The utterly confusing and odd "What percentage of packages...?" prompt screen is completely and utterly gone. Good. Never made any sense to me anyway.
More on this later. Now it's time to get ready for departure. Have a lovely day!
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Howdy.A few changes in process around here... I went to start working on the Debian Install Walkthrough last night, and found that all my work of the previous night was gone. Not just saved badly, or directory erased, but gone, as though I hadn't done any of the work, nor previewed it. ::sigh:: I've been running a bunch of semi-beta stuff, lots of changes to my operating environment on Grinch here all the time, and I can't know what caused the problem. So I am headed into the conservative zone...
Debian 2.2r2, strong, solid, dependable. I am writing this using Vim (a version of Vi), and right now I haven't even a graphical browser loaded on the system. I'll check my work using Konqueror over on Gryphon. What's next? I don't honestly know. I may well upgrade this to KDE 2.1, but not necessarily. It really depends on what I want to do next, and I am not sure which direction I'm headed in. Maybe some Agenda development work, perhaps a return to Perl, who knows what... Neither of those need a fancy environment, loaded with features, bells and whistles, waiting to go off.
Mmmm. We'll see. I like not working in a fully homogeneous computing environment - keeps me on my toes.
In other news, tonight is SVLUG, with a presentation by a couple of people from MAPS, the firm that brings us the RBL (Realtime Blackhole List), a version of anti-spam medication for the Internet. There's lots of rancor over how such things are done, and some potentially shady dealings between MAPS and their chief rival, but I'll reserve this discussion until I know a little more.
Now, it's time to head out to work. Jack, Trudy and Henry are off at a show, and won't be back until early to mid next week. So I have a lot of extra hats to be wearing, and I'd better start my neck exercises now. Have a lovely day!
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Good morning. Progress on many fronts. Debian is up and stable and KDE 2.1 is mostly installed, and very nice indeed, thank you. There's still much to be done, but I am headed in the right direction.
In amongst the emails of yesterday, I received one from a John-Mason Shackelford. Here's a couple of excerpts:
I was disappointed to learn about the fate of your book with $TINY_MINDS. I have been combing the shelves at borders eager for its arrival. Have you approached O'Reilly? I wonder if Caldera might purchase it from you. It would sure be nice if their distributions included a decent book. [ ... ] If you haven't read it all ready, you might appreciate Phil Greenspun's _Book Behind the Book_. (Linked here.) You'll find the bitter tale of his efforts to publish _Phil & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing_ painfully familiar and a good laugh.
Well, we were disappointed, too, John! Thanks for the refer, I've read Phil's material before, but don't think that I had dug that one up yet, I am likely to do so soon, perhaps this weekend, if I am in the mood for a little distance commiseration.
The SVLUG meeting last night was good. Two things are very, very clear: Paul Vixie really doesn't like email, and the people working at the not-for-profit MAPS really, really like their work, blocking spam (lowercase, please, since the all-uppercase version is trademarked by the Hormel Company. Go over to MAPS and have a read about their work, from the (in)famous RBL, to the RSS and DUL.
Must fly, running late! TTFN.
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Good morning. Well, I've changed everything around again, and no, I'm not sure why, but here's the email I sent over to Tom last night...
Being a moron makes life easy - after boring myself to death in Debian for 24 hours, I took grinch up to Mandrake 8.0 beta. Bring your scraper and sponge... I'm likely to wander out into traffic next. ::sigh:: That said, it works like a charm. I previously encountered either an rsync barf, or a reiserfs problem. Anyway, it's time to keep configuring. Later... .b
So, the various things I learned leading up to this juncture are many-hued. The first hue is the rosy pink of embarassment. Last week I was playing with xntpd, ntpdate and related programs. These are used to synchronized date and time across a network. However, when improperly configured, the incorrect date gets set to the system. If that new date is in the past, then when you rsync your webs to your webserver, the most recent data gets transferred... from the webserver right over the top of your changes on the workstation, including deleting files that don't exist on the webserver. Sigh. So that's what happened to all my work on the Debian walkthrough. The only good news there is that my brief foray into Debian this week has freshened my memory, and I am going to try to bash through that install this weekend
Updating OpenSSH is an interesting exercise, as Tom noted in yesterday's post. Between most different versions, the simple secure shell functionality works - that is, using ssh to create a secure connection between two computers, and provide a login shell to the remote user. However, the advanced functions, from scp to ssh-agent, really want two endpoints that can agree strongly about various matters. So with Gryphon already at OpenSSH 2.5.1p1 thanks to Mandrake 8.0 Beta, I thought I'd best take Grendel in the same direction, especially since the other machine I link to lots, Hydras up there in Saskatoon, also is running 2.5...
Turns out there aren't any update RPMS to bring Mandrake 7.2 up to the most recent OpenSSH version: 2.5.1. So instead I uninstalled the 2.3 version that came with, and fetched down sources for 2.5.1p2, the most recent release. Configure, compile and install. Voila... oops. Can't connect. Well, the connection is made, but I can't login... Hmmmm. A little bit of exploration here and there, then back to look at the configuration options. "--with-MD5-passwords" ... How surprising. You'd think that'd be a default for the linux version of OpenSSH, since most distros install MD5 passwords on install (except Debian, which asks if you want them). Reconfigure, recompile and reinstall. SUCCESS!!!!
Mmmmm. Out of time for the moment. Have a lovely day and enjoy your Friday. I'll try to as well. Later.
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Hello. There's a bunch of light from the big fusion furnace in the blue room streaming through my window this morning. Did I mention it was painfully bright? It is. Well. Thanks, yeah, it's the first weekend anticipated to be without precipitation since January. While Sierra snowpacks aren't quite up to seasonal norms yet, we're running a little over 100% of rainfall for the SF Bay Area at the moment. Certainly not like the winter three years ago, when it rained every day for at least 28 days, and flooding was endemic. Not that I cared, or even still do, Marcia has this marvelous ability to distract me and to keep me focused on what's important... Us!
There we go, a little Dixie Dregs via MP3 (from the CD I own, thanks very much RIAAaaaachooo) to perk me up, now, how about a cup of mud? Sound good, back in a moment...
Mmmmmm. Yum. Fresh ground and brewed French Roast. Gee, I sure hope they don't find out the coffee is either *really* bad for me <g>. OK. On the schedule for the weekend. While Marcia is looking hard for restful, I have lots of things I want to accomplish, both in the real world, and here in Virtuality.
First, keep your eyes peeled for me, I've just updated my CV again. I know, not many of you are local to me, and we wouldn't want to relocate without some very, very good reason, but if you've got a local branch, forward that link to them.
In reality, there's a bunch of small chores to be done, requiring errands and work around the homestead, from a bit of spring cleaning to a bit of kitchen reorganization. Then there's some garage work, and perhaps a modification or two to the entertainment center, which was designed before the current deep crop of prosumer electronics existed. Additionally, Marcia and I may take in a walk, and a nap or two...
Here in Virtuality, I have the Debian walkthrough to work on, as well as continuing to remodel the ETS website for a new release. Plus there's some tuning to bring this Mandrake 8.0 Beta installation up to snuff. Also I'd really like to start playing with coding an app or two for the Agenda, but first I needs must clear my plate of other projects. And of course, there's the constant lure of Perl...
Can I have a nine day weekend, pretty please? Oh, and of course there's the Daynotes Gang to traverse, and see what's new, interesting and important among that brilliant collection of gents (why they let me in, I'll never know). Here's the quicky survey: Tom's looking into time management software, Bob is going into streetlight attack mode, Jerry finished his column, Bo's looking at the credit card thieves, Shawn's feeling under the weather and still excited about RAM prices, Svenson's overclocked his brain, and only speaks of weather at the moment. John D. is playing with PDCs and BDCs, Chris is working the subscription model (well worth it for his most excellent content, especially the message boards (oh, see Bob's, too). Matt's trapped in January by connectivity difficulties that continue following the move to earthquake country, Dave is into floppies and formatting, Steve's playing remorseful catch up following ski and business travel, and Dan S. in recent days has spoken of the Hacker Ethic and the Gospel according to Tux. Doc Jim has had another busy, tiring week (but I always learn so much from his posts), Dan B. is teaching field delivery today, Ben went wireless ... two weeks ago, Bob W. is playing commuter and getting free Palm products for his efforts, and Phil's talking non-subscriptions and intranets. JHR's come out of his two day long Linux-induced coma, Al's impressed by Compaq tech support, Frank is getting into music, Jon S. is celebrating RAIN, nail guns and computer security, Jon H. is also approaching the subscription model, John D. remains ... prolific, with humor, airline mechanics, and several hundred pounds of ground beef. Finally, Mike has a fun time playing with video cards, and mows the lawn.
One last item to celebrate this week - Kaycee is released from the hospital, yesterday. I am so, so happy for her. She's fought a hard battle, and the cancer is in remission. Now she gets to have fresh breezes and real sunshine as a reward. Be joyeous!
With that, have a lovely day. Now to hit the showers, then the errands 'round town. Take care!
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G' morning. Is it that time of year again? Yes indeedily-doo, it's ... Tomato Time!!! I didn't get much in the way of other chores done, but it was an absolutely gorgeous day yesterday, so we shopped and began spring work on the Hovel Bilbrey patented Patio Farm. Am I sore today, from bending, lifting and more? Yepper, you betcha. Would I be happier if I had a 20 x 50 plot to work in the backyard that isn't ours until we find the money to find a house? You betcha, again. But in the meantime, we'll content ourselves with this small effort. To the left and right here you see some beginnings.
We started right in, picking up fresh potting soil, drainage rock, and many plants from Orchard. After a few more shopping stops, we dropped everything at home - the first major back work of the season. Then we did the sane thing, and went out to lunch, pre-spoiling ourselves for the afternoon's work. We went to Case Lupe, in the shopping centre at the corner of Bernardo and El Camino in Sunnyvale. We first went there last month with neighbors Jan and Scott, really enjoyed the food. That's a ditto for this time, too. We'll be going back again, and again. However, the plan backfired a little bit - after all that food, all Marcia wanted to do was nap. Can't say as I blame her, I felt the same way. Instead I worked on the Farm.
After lunch there was one more errand to run - I wanted something new for the Spiders, since I wanted the bench for newer plants. I found a "hook over the rail" basket device (well, Marcia found it while I was having fun in the Tool Corral, but I approved of it...). It holds the three pots the spiders live in, perfectly. Then I started emptying last year's exhausted dirt from the pots and preparing to plant. Pictured at right, the first in were a pair of Beefsteak and a Red Cherry. I like the Beefsteak for making fresh sauces, and the cherry for noshing. Actually, we both really like the cherry for noshing, as you'll see.
After pot shards over the drainage holes, and a 1" layer of rock above that, I layer in the potting soil by double handfuls, interspersing with ash from the fireplace. It seems to provide a slightly improved soil blend for the tomatoes. As you can see, I use really high plant density - I want a lot of production out of very little soil - all 13 plants are potted in a total of less than four cubic feet of dirt. In the next square box (pictured at left), I put in a pair of Roma plants. Roma is excellent for both salad and sauces. Those are joined by the large-ish, quick starting Wild Cherry. I've never tried this variety before, but the plant itself seems fairly robust. We'll see.
Finally, in the two free-standing pots, I put in three each of a Sweet 100 Cherry tomato. These came as a flat of 6. If all live, then wonderful, otherwise I'll replace later with another breed. As of this morning, all of the plants are still upright, without any leaf droop, indicating that the transplant went well. After the plants were in the soil, I watered with plant food, to encourage acclimatization and root growth. I'll continue to feed them every two weeks for the next 6 weeks, then weekly thereafter, as these pots become root-bound bits of inert material. From that point forward, dense tomatoes in small pots become much more of a manual hydroponic operation than a dirt-farming operation.
Today we need to pick up one more bag of soil, for Marcia's herbs and flowers. We also have a Costco and a grocery run to do, so I'd best jump in the shower and get ready for the day. This afternoon, I am likely to put in a couple of hours on the Debian Walkthough. Oh, last night's movie? Mission to Mars starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins and other. Some interesting technical detailing fail to save the movie from being a documentary of all the ways that Murphy's Law can affect a mission, while using scene and context shifts to avoid really spendy special effects, like any planetary landings. The movie ends on the same sort of vaguely unsatisfying "Yeah, so what happens after that?" note that bothered me about STTM.
OK, have a lovely day. See you later, perhaps. TTFN.
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Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2001 Brian P. Bilbrey.