Orb Home
Site Map
Current Week
Orb Designs Grafitti
August 20 through August 26, 2001
Last Week <-- * --> Next Week
--> Link to the Most Recent Week <--
Email Brian Bilbrey |
Orb Home
|
Orb Designs Grafitti
|
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. Tom Syroid and I have co-authored a Linux Book. It was cancelled by $LARGE_PUBLISHER, so we're posting it online, here and here. Have a looksee! 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, and welcome back to the grind. We've moved, arranged, shuffled, sale'd, and generally wore ourselves out doing everything that comes along with picking up a household and putting it down in a new space. BAH! Next time, we'll just leave the stuff behind, and start fresh in a new place... well, most everything, except the computers ... and the shoes... <grin>
The garage sale came off alright - Marcia got rid of lots of stuff to happy new homes, including some excellent sales technique in giving stuffed animals to at least a couple of small children. Overall, a good day yesterday, and a successful move over the last two weeks. I am REALLY glad it's mostly over!
The real problem at the moment is that we're back to the routine, and after a week or more, getting up at 05:30 has fried my brain. I apologize, but I am blanking. So perhaps I'll see you later. In the meantime, take good care!
17:21 - Evening. Mmmmm...
Subject: [Fwd: Fwd: Cheers] A groaner After much careful research, it has been discovered that the artist Vincent Van Gogh had many relatives. Among them were: His dizzy aunt......................................Verti Gogh The brother who ate prunes..........................Gotta Gogh The constipated uncle...............................Cant Gogh The brother who worked at a convenience store.......Stopn Gogh The grandfather from Yugoslavia.....................U Gogh The brother who bleached his clothes white..........Hue Gogh The cousin from Illinois............................Chica Gogh His magician uncle.............................Wherediddy Gogh His Mexican cousin..................................Amee Gogh The Mexican cousin's American half brother..........Grin Gogh The ballroom dancing aunt...........................Tan Gogh A sister who loved disco............................Go Gogh The nephew who drove a stage coach ...............Wellsfar Gogh The bird lover uncle................................Flamin Gogh His nephew psychoanalyst............................E Gogh The fruit loving cousin.............................Man Gogh An aunt who taught positive thinking................Wayto Gogh The little bouncy nephew............................Poe Gogh And his niece who travels the country in a van....Winnie BayGogh
Heh ehe heh. Sometimes life is like a Piers Anthony book. Speaking of books, I need to find the last bit of our book... I'll bet you thought I forgot, eh? Tom is hunting up the original of Lost Appendix, once I have that in hand, the conversion will be completed for Tom and Brian's Linux Book. Speaking of which, do any of you, gentle readers, have an opinion on the topic of a printable version (aka PDF or PS format) of our book? If so, then please click on this Mail Link, and send me your feedback on the topic. For a sample, here's a Chapter 1 PDF file in either Zip format or TGZ format (your choice).
Additionally, although it's been a bit quiet recently (mostly because I've been too busy to stir up much trouble), the Talkabout mailing list is still active, with 34 subscribers. Information about Talkabout is found here, as well as directions on subscribing and more. There's the occasional Linux question that floats up, and occasional links to less public parts of my websites for previews of work or images or whatever.
Well, now it's time to organize an open house, take an opportunity to meet our neighbors and have friends and cow orkers visit the new digs. Guess I'd better go help, eh? Y'all have a lovely evening.
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
Howdy. Tuesday morning, and I can feel my body dropping into it's appropriate groove - I am actually almost awake already, which is a Good Thing [tm]. We finished with the open house stuff last night, and ooooh, I guess I forgot to mention this: The cable modem was down for a while...
Yesterday evening about 20:00, the power glitched a bit. Just enough to beep all the UPS's once, and reset the clock on the coffee machine. Not any other electric clock, mind you, just the coffee machine. Mmmmm. Anyway, later, I went back to the boxen, and saw that the connect light on the 3Com Cable Modem was cycling. I power cycled the box a couple of times over the ensuing half hour, then I read for a while. By around 21:30, when the service still wasn't working, I called "Customer Care", and talked to a condescending butthead named ... well, let's call him Dave.
Dave walked me through all the steps I'd already taken (and told him I'd already taken). Then he decided two things. First, that I shouldn't have the cable modem plugged into a surge suppressor or a UPS, since there was circuitry in the modem that made it behave (and I quote) "...like two big magnets, one repels the other".
"Um, what?" I replied. "That doesn't make any sense."
"Well, we've determined experimentally that ....." he droned on, and on, and on. I finally cut him off and said that while I didn't believe him, and I wanted a reference to where they documented this, did he want me to plug the modem directly into the wall? Well, no, since there didn't appear to be a power problem with the modem, anyway. Aaaaeergh! @#&$&*@ (that last bit was just inside my head)
The short and long of it was that Dave determined that this was a problem with the modem, and scheduled a truck roll for me to have a look at it ... on the 28th! I told him that that was unacceptable, but schedule me anyway, I would let them know if I found a better, more reliable and responsive service in the interim. Didn't phase Dave, the customer disservice specialist that he is.
Of course, 45 minutes later, the service connected properly on the modem again, indicating to me that the local power glitch had indeed probably affected some nearby pole equipment that needed a remote resetting (not that Dave would even hear of that, oh no!) Feh!
Now on to greener pastures - I have a question about last night's post from Bob...
From: "Robert Bruce Thompson"
Subject:
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2001 08:50:35 -0400
What exactly is a "cow orker" anyway, and what does he do to the cow? Well,
"ork" it, obviously, but I'm not sure what that is.
And why do you have a convention of orkers visiting your new house?
--
Robert Bruce Thompson
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com/rbt/thisweek.html
Um. Well. Just move a letter and add a hyphen Cow orker --> Co-worker reasonably common slang out this-a-way, I've been hearing the phrase for at least two years now. Not too flattering among non-discerning company, but funny in it's way. Great imagery, eh?.b
Then there was this, from second time correspondent Cherie, in follow-up to last night's joke list...
Subject: Wall Poets
Friends don't let friends take home ugly men
-------Women's restroom, Starboard, Dewey Beach, DE
Remember, it's not, "How high are you?" its "Hi, how are you?"
-------Rest stop off Route 81, West Virginia
No matter how good she looks, some other guy is sick and tired of putting up
with her shit.
-----Men's Room, Linda's Bar and Grill, Chapel Hill, N. Carolina
A Woman's Rule of Thumb: If it has tires or testicles, you're going to have
trouble with it.
-------Women's restroom, Dick's Last Resort, Dallas,Texas
Express Lane: Five beers or less.
-Sign over one of the urinals, Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills, CA
You're too good for him.
-Sign over mirror Women's room, Ed Debevics, Beverly Hills, CA
No wonder you always go home alone.
-Sign over mirror in Men's room, Ed Debevic's, Beverly Hills, CA
The best way to a man's heart is to saw his breast plate open.
-------Women's restroom, Murphy's, Champaign, IL
If you voted for Clinton in the last election, you can't take a dump here.
Your asshole is in Washington.
-------Men's room Outback Steakhouse, Tacoma, Washington
Beauty is only a light switch away.
-------Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
If life is a waste of time, and time is a waste of life, then let's all get
wasted together and have the time of our lives.
-------Armand's Pizza, Washington, D.C.
Don't trust anything that bleeds for 5 days and doesn't die.
-------Men's restroom, Murphy's, Champaign, IL
What are you looking up on the wall for? The joke is in your hands.
-------Men's restroom, Lynagh's, Lexington, KY
And with that, I'll leave you for the day. I've got a visit to the Dentist this afternoon (lovely, lovely), and lot's to accomplish in the meantime, so I'd best be off. Take care.
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
Howdy, welcome to the middle of the week. I've got a mailbox full of interesting discussions about the state, shape, and clue-requirements of the current local job market (something I keep a semi-intent eye one, you see). These could suck up my whole morning. Acutally, they already have, quite a bit, so I've stopped reading for the moment to share some time with you.
In starting to write about this, I dredged up the word dicursion , expecting to use it in the context of these emails. After much ado about nothing, I find that it's not a word, but discursion is. OK, I can live with an only slightly failing memory. But since I haven't used discursion in a sentence in a while (and apparently discursion either), I went out looking for context, and explicitly a definition, in order to keep Bob at bay (<grin>). One little problem with that... the word - well, neither word - is in Merriam-Webster. I then headed over to the source, OED.
Wow! Do you know that a US Individual subscription to the OED online resources is about $550 annually? I suppose that if you need it, then you need it badly and the cost doesn't matter, but this is only a shade below the starting network price of around $800.
Finally, I avoided this particular Waterloo at the Hypertext Webster Gateway at UCSD:
Discursion \Dis*cur"sion\, n. [LL. discursio a running different ways. See {Discourse}.] The act of discoursing or reasoning; range, as from thought to thought. --Coleridge.
Which describes perfectly the mailing list conversation I am witnessing, so it was the right word after all. I'll have to find another occasion to casually make use of discursion, since I've pretty well ridden this horse into a lather already. Now, let's close for the moment with some feedback from Don Armstrong on cow orkers:
Subject: orker From: Don Armstrong My brother used to have an official orker's licence at one stage - only they spelt it hawker - possible the difference between American spelling and that of the English language. Entitled him to sell things without an established shop, so I guess we can work out from that what a cow orker would be. Regards, Don Armstrong
Mmmm. Yes, but this is a slightly more derogatory implication, methinks. After all, when one is accused of "orking" a cow, it is not likely to spring to (the American's) mind that one is "hawking" or selling. No, far more likely that us colonists with our only extended taste of humor came from Benny Hill (ye gods - do I ever know a batch of people who know ALL about Benny Hill, but can't remember what that Monty Python guy did, wasn't there a movie last year?)... Oh, I digress, apologies. Anyway, your average american will hear "orking", add an unspoken 'p' as prefix, and assume that your doing something both forbidden in the Bible and offensive to people native to India. No winning that argument, it's like responding to "When did you stop beating your wife?" Whoops. Mouth runneth over, film at 11. See ya again soon, me hopes.
Ah, life. Speaking of which, I need to water the tomatoes (which appear to be making a late-season, post-move comeback, then hit the road in to work. Y'all have a great day, catch you another time soon.
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
Good morning. Nothing much interesting going yet, on top of which I am suffering badly from the pre-coffee blues this morning (unlike most days). Yes, you heard me right - these posts normally happen before my morning cup of caffeine. That's reserved for the drive to work. I really am a creature of habit and this is my groove. But today, it ain't working. So instead, I'll inflict another list of funnies on you, courtesy of Cherie...
Subject: Truisms of the Day >1. Definition of a teenager? God's punishment for enjoying sex. > >2. Transvestite: A guy who likes to eat, drink and be Mary! > >3. The difference between the Pope and your boss. The Pope only expects > you to kiss his ring.. > >4. My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone. > >5. The only time the world beats a path to your door is if you're in the > bathroom. > >6. I hate sex in the movies. Tried it once, the seat folded up, the drink > spilled and that ice, well it really chilled her mood. > >7. It used to be only death and taxes were inevitable. Now, of course, > there's shipping and handling, too. > >8. A husband is someone who after taking the trash out, gives the > impression he just cleaned the whole house. > >9. My next house will have no kitchen--just vending machines and a large > trash can. > >10.The only thing wrong with a beautiful drive to work is that you still > end up at work. > >11.Americans are getting stronger. 50 years ago, you needed a station > wagon to hold $10 worth of groceries. 20 years ago, it took two > people to carry ten dollars' worth of groceries. Now, a five-year-old > can do it. > >12.A blonde said, "I was worried that my mechanic might try to rip me > off, I was relieved when he told me all I needed was turn-signal fluid." > >13.I'm so depressed... My Dr. refused to write me a prescription for > Viagra. He said it would be like putting a new flagpole on a condemned > building. > >14.My neighbor was bit by a stray rabid dog. I went to see how he was > and found him writing frantically. I told him rabies could be cured > and he didn't have to worry about a Will. He said, Will! What will? I'm > making a list of the people I wanna bite." > >15.Clinton is in the supermarket picking up some things for the new > office when a stock boy accidentally bumps into him. "Pardon me," the > stock boy says. "Sure," Clinton replies, "but it'll cost you." > >16.Jesse Jackson, Jim Bakker, and Jimmy Swaggert have written an > impressive new book ... It's called: "Ministers Do More Than Lay > People."
With that, I'll be off. Back later with something a bit more... substantial, one hopes. See you then.
15:23 - Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. It turns out that a post that doesn't get posted to the servers isn't really a post. Well, big surprise to no one, least of all me! Kudo's to my lovely Marcia for catching that one fairly early, yielding a 06:45 scrivening that made it online at about 08:15 or thereabouts.
One of the nicest things about our new digs is pictured at the left and right. We are blessed with this fence that gives us a marvelous faux ramshackle look that everybody, but everybody, darling, is pining for. Me, can't tolerate following fashion, never have, no color sense, nothing. So I want a white fence. At the right you can see the start of my process to take us a bit further uptown. Since it's fiddle-y brush work, it'll take a while, and perhaps a sunburn in the making before I get it done, but already I can tell it's going to look better to my eye. Now let's visit the patio farm...
|
|
|
|
|
We'll open this edition with a pan-shot of the mass of tomato plants. They've been a bit out-of-sorts since I dragged them over here. Definite attitude problem, combined with something a bit fungal. I picked up a safe sulfer-based anti-fungal spray for them, which seems to have stopped the problem in it's tracks. Now (as snap two shows), there's some pretty robust new growth starting up, good color and stem size. We'll see how it goes, but I am likely to have to build some trellis work for these again soon. No strings from rafters above to suspend the vines here!
The Mama Mia variant is going especially strong, with lots of fruit, shown in the third picture. Need to see how those are coming along. The ones from earlier in the season looked glorious, but were a bit sparse inside, and fairly pithy and tasteless. We'll see shortly how the latest crop is shaping up.
Marcia's ivy trellis is starting to fill in also, and we've potted a new batch of Cilantro (shown in front of the still vigorous Parsley) and Basil for even more culinary adventures later this year. I am glad to have even a smallish garden - I find it relaxing to care for the plants a bit.
Moving just keeps getting more expensive. I found in last night's mail a bill from Speakeasy for a $250 early termination fee as a result of having to cancel the DSL service on the old line. Bah! Yes, it's in the terms of service, but I would have re-ordered here, if it were even remotely feasible or timely. When I spoke to the person in Speakeasy accounting just now, I asked what I would do in the intervening WEEKS until they could connect service to the new location. She replied, "We give you free dialup." Yeah, right. I am so sorry that they clearly do not understand.
She said, "There's nothing we can do about it." Lie number one - There's nothing she's going to do about it. Hmmmm. We're going to pay this bill. But in the long run, it costs Speakeasy. Now I won't go back to them, nor will I recommend them to you or anyone else on these pages, on the mailing lists I frequent, or anywhere else. They're getting bigger, and losing the personal touch that says "Yeah, let me talk to my boss and see what we can do about that." It's the not making an effort that ticks me off most...
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
Good morning, welcome to Friday, one of my favorite days of the week. Although it's definitely less work than moving, the daily grind does take it's toll, especially the early morning reveille noises. Did you miss them? Yeah, more pictures on view from yesterday afternoon's post, if you like.
Oooh, now isn't THAT nice! It's coming up on Install-A-Thon time once again, and I am pulling down ISO images to burn to disk for the testing. Depending on the source, I am getting download speeds in excess of 300 KB/s. WooHoo!. Right now with Roswell Disc 1 (the latest Red Hat beta), I've got 415.1 of 648.6 MB complete, 273.9 KB/s ( 00:14:01 remaining). Very tasty.
What's Install-A-Thon, you ask? Well, every once in a while, I seem to go on these ... binges ... of installing OS software on a machine, kind of like trying on a bunch of wingtips to see which pair is least uncomfortable. Well, things are definitely getting better, because Linux installs are more like picking the best, most comfortable running shoe now, instead. But with a spare machine around, I can do this without disrupting my daily routine.
Which spare machine? Remember Grendel, was once our gateway/firewall/mail/web server? With all of this now hosted by Greg's box, in a colo facility down in Inglewood, Grendel is at loose ends - not even powered up at the moment, which is a pathetic situation for a solid old box that ran 24/7 for me for better than two years, neh?
OK, time's up. Gotta roll. Have a lovely day, see you back here soon.
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
Good morning, and welcome to another busy weekend day around Hovel Bilbrey II. We're headed off to Costco first thing, so I've only got moments to put this post up. Why? Because I've been futzing around with my email, and following links and assorted other random surfing. Bah! Too much life, not enough time.
Following the shopping run, we're cycling over to Linux10. Linux10 is a picnic in honor of the 10th anniversary of the announcement of Linux on Usenet...
From: [email protected] (Linus Benedict Torvalds) Newsgroups: comp.os.minix Subject: What would you like to see most in minix? Summary: small poll for my new operating system Message-ID: <[email protected]> Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki Hello everybody out there using minix - I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-) Linus ([email protected]) PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
So, in at least one sense, Happy Birthday, Linux. I have no idea how long we're liable to be at the picnic, nor what the rest of the day holds. There's likely to be snaps up later, or tomorrow, too. So you have a great weekend, I'll see you a bit later.
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
Howdy. Well, I am sore again, resulting from a variety of activities yesterday. As noted, we went to the Linux10 picnic, which was fun. Good food, a fair number of the gathered Linuxen squinting at the upper fusion furnace in big blue ceiling'd room and muttering about temperature gradients and glare factors... There was a grand variety of comfortable clothing, from tie-dye jobs to full-formal SCA getups. Lot's of food on the grills, and a kiddy pool full of ice, sodas, waters, and assorted other things. A well-organized event. We only stayed for an hour or so, then cycled home.
Oh, yeah, reason number one for being muscle-sore: we cycled to and from the picnic. Marcia rides her bike on a regular basis, whereas I make an annual pilgrimage. Thus, I pay for my sins. <grin> However, since we rode, I decided not to bring the camera, so I have no pictures of the event to share. I'll provide a pointer once I find some, for those that are interested.
When we got home, we made a couple of runs to Goodwill with the Blazer, dropping off collected goods that didn't sell in the garage sale last weekend, and that we didn't want or need to keep. Then we began the big garage organization drill. Our goal is to be able to use the garage to park vehicles in. It'll be a bit of a squeak, but I think we're almost there. A bit more of that this morning, and it'll be done, I think. Then we're going to re-arrange Marcia's office space a bit, so I'd best start my breathing exercises, take some anticipatory anti-inflammatories, and get ready for my day. See you later!
Top / Site Map / Orb Home / Email to Bilbrey
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 by 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.