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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. I am angry with the apparent lack progress in target identification. Fortunately I don't have any buttons under my fingertips. My visceral response to last week's acts of terror is not based on rationality or polite international relations. I want it done to them, and done to them HARD, so that there's no possibility that any more of my American family, including people I know and love, take it on the chin. We'll see what President Bush does...
I nearly finished out the first stage of the Linux distribution Install-O-Rama yesterday, with Stampede Linux and TurboLinux. Stampede is aging rapidly, and seems abandoned. I had MAJOR problems getting it up and running. TurboLinux is also pretty long in the tooth, so I went looking for updates, and found a set of beta CD images that are just days old. I think I'll do those instead, since 6.1 is strongly reminiscent of Red Hat 6, right through the install. So I've those two discs to burn and test, then I'll write up the workstation part of the testing.
In good news, my folks made it back safe from Chicago (they were supposed to fly out on the Tuesday afternoon, and finally gave up on the airlines. They drove back, arriving yesterday. Additionally, Jack and Trudy have returned from New York, where they were staying (upstate, safe and sound). They caught a flight yesterday, only one day late.
Now to work with me, so y'all have a lovely day. See you soon.
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Howdy, folks. Getting a groggy start this morning... I was up some of the night with a recalcitrent stomach. No details, really. But I certainly am not fully chipper, and I think I'll hold off on a major post for the time being. Yesterday I got two more distro's into the Install-O-Rama, and I have one more to go (I'd forgotten two, you see, because they are in retail boxes on my shelves). Then I'll write it up...
Oh, and thanks to the several of you that took the time to ask - I haven't heard back from $PUBLISHER yet, and I am not terribly surprised. Even if they were stunned by the clarity and vision exhibited in my proposal, they still have business decisions to make, in the wake of a changed economy. That's another gift to the world from those terrorists. I am reasonably hopeful however, since I would expect that Linux will do even better in a struggling economy than in the flush-with-play-money arena of the dot-com era. So they need to decide that another Linux book will sell. That'll take some time.
See you later, take care!
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Yeah, I am feeling a bit better, thanks. I'm feeling a bit washed out, though - I wonder if this wasn't a short duration flu variant? Mmmmm. Well, good morning. Let's do a quick news check...
Well, we haven't taken any military action that shows there's an iron fist ready to punish those who would harm America, yet. It's not like we ONLY have to kill the terrorists that did this gig, George! Let's get the other ones who haven't taken action against us yet, and do unto them, first. How about Baghdad, which keep shooting down our planes, a known terrorist supporting government there, eh? There are lots of targets, including a bunch of nutty clerics who have decided to declare Jihad on the United States. Doesn't declaring war on us count for something, George?
Meantime the economic climate in the US continues to meander in it's downhill course, exacerbated by the hit that the financial, insurance and airline industries have taken due to the terrorist attacks. This trickles down quickly, as anticipated reduced travel rates mean airlines won't be buying new planes, which means Boeing is laying off up to 30K employees over the next year...
If you've been in a cave for the past 24 hours, W32.NIMDA, a multi-vector worm/virus beastie has been rather aggressively scouring the Internet looking for a variety of hosts to infect. In addition to the recent IIS exploits, many of which apparently haven't been patched yet, NIMDA travels by email, and can be downloaded and automatically executed by certain versions of Internet Explorer. Once in a system, it infects files all over the computer's hard drive, spreads through open shares in the local Microsoft network (vector #4), and continues it's spread by the previous routes as well. This is a doozy, folks, and hard to evade due to the variety of attack vectors. All of the major AV vendors now have updated files for your consumption - go get them. How bad is this? In terms of network activity, on the machine that Greg and I share, there have been 14,190 logged attempts by NIMDA to get into the server since yesterday morning about 06:23 PDT.
Now I'd best go tend to the office machines - I might have an intense day at work ahead. Y'all take care, see you later.
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And they say life goes on... except for those that died last week in the terrorist attacks. I respect the right of other Americans to express their opinions and views, from Doc's pacifist stance, through Dave with his Faith, John counselling patience, and Bob with his proposed solutions. I lean towards the latter, as I fear that the more time passes, the less spine a politician has. However, someone has noted that they have a "right" to try to change my opinion.
Let me be clear. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights gives each American a soap box. It does not force anyone at all to listen. I dislike someone directly trying to change my opinion, that is, addressing me rather than speaking from their soap box, where I might choose to listen as I will or not. That smacks of evangelism, and morons knocking at my door at 0715 of a Sunday morning, handing out copies of the Watchtower. That's usually the time I gleefully announce my affiliation with Satan (I'm not a Satanist, but don't tell the Christian Scientists <grin>)
I am fairly widely read, and I understand to a reasonable depth the interactions of individuals and nations, although I am not very eloquent in my discursions on the topic. However, my convictions (as opposed to my "opinions") are mine. The people who tolerated terrorists in their midst, who gave money to terrorists, who shelter those evil bastards - they all need to go see their God, and explain themselves, and I hold that it is our job to help them do so. And yes, I am impatient for the job to begin, so be it. There is risk in what we do, there are dangers in everyday life. Terrorists change the equation and if we back down in the slightest, then we might as well roll over now - they will win unless we fight, tooth and nail.
Health matters - I remain at less than 100%, and wonder if I still don't have some form of low grade flu. Not enough to stop me, but it's slowing me down. I've been to bed before 11 each night this week, which is pretty good for me. I imagine a bit more sleep in on the weekend will further help the situation.
My friends Mark and Bonnie are coming out to visit from Colorado at the end of October. I was Mark's best man in their wedding out in Pueblo a few years back, and I haven't seen them since, although we call each other occasionally. They don't live by email as I do, however. Mostly they'll be visiting family out this way, but we'll eke out an afternoon or evening of time together.
On the Install-O-Rama front, I decided to do a brief runthrough of the frontline testing version of Debian last night before doing the writeup... I haven't had the success I'd like. There are a couple of ways to get to the leading edge of the Debian distribution, and I chose to try the hard one: a direct network install of the testing distribution. However, I haven't been able to make it work. I guess I'll subscribe to Debian-Users and ask the question, as a Google search didn't give me much help.
Now to prepare for the working day. Be good. Be strong.
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It's been a long week, and not over yet, by quite a bit. Good morning and happy Friday, after all. I spent another 45 minutes on hold with my lovely friends at AT&T Broadband, the @Home division, in a vain attempt to have a meaningful conversation about their hideous service. Once again I am plagued by downtimes that range from 1 to several hours at a time, two or three times a week over the past couple of weeks. At least with Speakeasy I could get past Tier One by uttering a few magic phrases, and then solve the problems. Here, they just don't know what they're doing. We've clearly got a line quality problem someplace hereabouts, but every time I call, they want to blame the cable modem. So of course I was stunned - stunned, I tell you - when they said, "We've got a known service interruption in your area, and they're working on it now." Which was followed by the extra-special, "We don't report an area as a problem until we receive a set number of calls." Don't live in a sparsely populated area, kids. You'll never trigger their preset call counters, heh. I am sick and tired of the downtimes presented by this "service", and may have to eat humble pie as I head back to Speakeasy. We'll see.
Now a bit of mail...
Date: Wed, Sep 19, 2001 at 09:49:06PM -0700 From: Ward Gerlach Subject: About Military Action Remember that Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance - also known as the "7P Principle". This is especially true when thinking about placing more of our people in Harm's Way. I'm quite sure (from speaking with a number of folks that shouldn't be talking to me at all) that our military folks are proceding as quickly as possible consistent with the 7P Principle. To be really short, we don't throw away OUR people's lives just for the hell of it. Ward Gerlach "When the impossible has been eliminated, that which remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Sir A. C. Doyle
Hi Ward - Yes, agreed, and let's not forget that in some aspects I am an "evil bastard". But I *am* impatient. Probably just as well that I am not in the hot seat... Any action we take, and any action we don't take, stands to risk putting our people in harm's way, civilians and military, when dealing with terrorists.
And he's right. By the way, W's speech last night was a good'un, and full of the right words, so far as I am concerned. But then I appear to be a bit of a curmudgeon in training, and fling such missives about as to have people sure that they have offended me or worse... I wrote this in response to such an email last night:
Mmmm. I just do this because I like the sound of my own voice. Don't put too much stock in what I say and do, XXXXX - I am extraordinarily self-centered as a result of my recovery from problems with a variety of better-living-through-modern-chemistry vices. What comes closest to the truth is that most of the time I simply *don't care* what other people think - and when I say that I'd rather not have a conversation about a thing, it's because I am protecting my personal space and belief system. If I warn somebody off, or don't reply to emails, it's because I am likely to be a hurtful bastard. I *CAN* flame with the best of them, and knowing that, choose not to in order to maintain my balance. So let me be clear. I am a tech head. That's what I do, and who I am. My personal beliefs about politics, religion, world events and other such folderol have no real teeth behind them, because I don't make it my job to have a fully informed opinion, nor do I need one in order to be a looney on my soapbox at Speaker's Corner in Kensington Park, of a mild Sunday afternoon. I speak what comes out of my mouth, in full expectation that no one else really listens, and so am always surprised (like a sheep, each sunrise) when someone does. And when I don't want to talk about a thing, then I don't. It's not pertinent to my daily life, what I think GW should do. Also, I am likely as not to take a contrarian stand just to make a point, and never, ever let on that I am doing so. Not in this case, but all the same... Personally, I think we've lost our edge, and the world is going to be a nasty nightmare to live in for the next long while. Me, drop me buck nekkid in the middle of PRC, I'll be OK in the long run. So, you'll note in none of the above insane gibbering did I suggest that you think or believe something other than what you do. In fact, I would seriously hope that you don't take me very seriously, as too many of people thinking in the warped way I do would make the world a much scarier place than it already is.
And with that, I'll bid you adeiu for the nonce. Have a nice Friday, and I'll see you back here soon.
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Good morning. Welcome to the new, new world of America vs. Terrorism. I don't suppose it's possible that this is just the latest seasons fare of an extreme form of reality show, as promulgated by the networks? No, I thought not... I am getting more mail.
Date: Fri, 21 Sep 2001 23:19:46 -0500 From: Boss <[email protected]> Subject: US attacks To: [email protected] X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4807.1700 I have, over the last week, seen the opinions of various people, from Doc and Dave's thoughts of diplomacy, to Bob's ideas of nuclear genocide. I think that the US should go after the perpetrators of this heinous act, but my only question is how far you should go. I whole heatedly disagree with Bob, as I have mentioned often over the last short while. I feel that if your nation attacks, be it by nuclear attack, or ICBM or other long range missiles, without care of whom, other then the terrorists gets hurt or killed, then it will only prove how right the terrorists were in claiming Jihad. I wonder where the world lost the 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you', and gained the 'do unto others as they have done unto you' ideal, but I miss that. Let us not mix this with any impression of a wish to forgive and forget, as I doubt anyone who has even heard of the attacks can forget it. What I am urging is a dedicated attack at the perpetrators, not the innocents, as enough of them have died already. To unleash an unrestrained and untrained barrage of weapons of mass destruction upon every Islamic country or country accused of helping terrorists, of which my country was one of the first blamed, would not only be genocide, but political suicide for whatever president made that call. I understand your obsessive interest in punishing those who are responsible, but I think the first priority of the nation should be to find out for certain who is responsible, then punish them and only those responsible for helping them. I would think, and assume, that since the Taliban bans the internet and satellite, most do not know much about this or even that Ossama bin Laden is in their country and has surely committed these crimes. The innocents be spared, punish the guilty. Dwight Wallbridge of Geek's World ***Finally back online, http://www.geeksworld.net ***
On Fri, Sep 21, 2001 at 11:19:46PM -0500, Boss wrote: > I have, over the last week, seen the opinions of various people, OK. Yet on the whole, we don't train our children from birth to hate another country nor to despise people of any other faith. I don't say it is all of Islam that I have problems with, but with those fanatics who will plot to kill us until they succeed or die, I vote they die. > ...country accused of helping terrorists, of which my country was > one of the first blamed... Um, we're talking Canada here, right? Right? I don't think there's been any implication of official or complicit support for terrorism in Canada. We do know that some of these misguided assholes with a deathwish crossed into the US from Canada. Are you saying that ANYONE has said that this is Canada's fault? Are you saying that GW has been targetting Canada for retaliation because terrorists walked on your soil? What the heck are you smoking??? > The innocents be spared, punish the guilty. Well, duh. One small problem. Clearly, the opinions of those of us that prefer the vast glowing glassy plain approach to the terrorist solution aside, what we're likely to do is fight a war of attrition against a nebulous foe, and while innocents probably won't be killed on the same massive scale that the terrorists are willing to inflict on us, some *will* be killed, and their friends and relatives are going to become the tools of terror as a result. We're fighting a hydra here. Cut off one head, 3 or 8 pop up. Oh, and I am not obsessing over this - I don't lay awake at night worrying about that over which I have no control. I am merely steadfast. Oh, and do the rules change if they use a nuclear weapon first? Or a biological or chemical agent? How many Americans do YOU want to die before we can use ALL of the means at our disposal to rid ourselves of this menace? Bah.
The testbed for the Install-O-Rama is the machine formerly known as Grendel, the Gateway PII-233, with a 20G Maxtor drive, 128M of RAM, CD, Floppy, and Colorado T-1000 Travan drive. The NIC is a Kensington card with a DEC chip. The video card is variously a Riva TNT, or a 3DFx Voodoo 3. I've swapped back and forth with those cards as I experimented with various features. The monitor is a Gateway EV-900. A Logitech iTouch keyboard and MS Explorer Optical mouse, routed through a Belkin OmniCube 2-Port KVM switch complete the hardware.
The following distribution/versions are covered in today's edition: Debian 2.2r3, SuSE 7.1, Stampede 0.90, TurboLinux Esprit Beta2, Peanut Linux 9.0,
As a download or set of "Official" CDs, Debian (http://www.debian.org) is three discs of binaries. If you were to pull a complete Debian mirror from the web (stable, testing and unstable trees, source and binary), you'd have used over eight gigabytes of space. Not much these days, but nothing you'd do over a dialup line. Debian is known as the most conservative of the distributions under active development. This is evidenced by the continuing use of 2.2.19pre17 as the primary kernel, albeit with some important features like USB support and ReiserFS backported. On the other hand, the Debian is right on top of any security issues. Debian's package system is in a format different from RPM or TGZ, with what is arguably the best package dependency handling features, and my personal favorite tool in the Linux arena: Apt. Install virtually any version of Debian, point the /etc/apt/sources.list file at one of the mirrors and a specific development tree, then type apt-get update ; apt-get dist-updatedist-upgrade, answer a few questions from the installation scripts, and you've updated to the latest and greatest, as close to the bleeding edge as you desire.
Disk 1 of the Debian CD set is bootable. Debian has the most complete (a polite way of saying long) installation process, and user-handholding is not close to the highest priority with this installer. Some people have said the installer is actively user-hostile. I suppose that can be regarded as true, if you don't know your system, your hardware, or your goals for your system. Debian is not a beginner's Linux - It threw me a couple of curves the first time I installed it. The entire installation is done using text-based menus reminiscient of the old Turbo-C/Turbo-Pascal interface. Here in Linux, this is (and is known as) an ncurses-based interface, so called because ncurses is the library used to create a row/column addressable text screen interface.
There are LOTS of questions that need to be answered, steps to be done in this order and not that. It's not quite as daunting as it sounds, because the installer keeps track of where you are, and prompts you with the next step, almost every time. Here are the steps/screens for installing Debian, in overview:
When all the dust settles, I have a system that boots to a graphical login manager, and by default starts me off in WindowMaker, a capable and popular window manager. There are many other choices. My fully loaded system is ready to go, at a not-very hefty 400M - there's lots of room to grow.
From another machine, I run nmap:
bilbrey@garcia:~$ nmap 192.168.1.3
Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA28 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on (192.168.1.3):
(The 1540 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port State Service
9/tcp open discard
13/tcp open daytime
22/tcp open ssh
25/tcp open smtp
37/tcp open time
111/tcp open sunrpc
139/tcp open netbios-ssn
6000/tcp open X11
Nmap run completed -- 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 6 seconds
Now SSH, smtp, and netbios-ssn (ports 22, 25, and 139 respectively) I know are supposed to be there - I set those up during the install... For the others, I'll want to disable them, or at least ensure that they're secured and not a vulnerability. For example, sunrpc is the portmap program running, to service remote program requests. I don't need it, so I stop it, then remove the startup script from that directory so it won't start on reboot. If I were wanting to run NFS, then I'd want it back, so I am not just removing the package entirely. I go through this process to remove the services that I don't want running, or configure them so that they don't offer external connections (like X11 on port 6000). Yes it's manual, and it's a lot like work, but in the end, I understand the system, what's running, and what I need to monitor and protect. As more worms and virii circulate around the net, vigilance and knowing your system and it's software are keys to maintaining effective security.
Yeah, I like Debian a lot, but until it's installed, it isn't for Aunt Minnie, for sure. But it installs properly, and all the bits that are configured work the first time through. High marks for that. After you've done the ease of use thing with Linux, if you want to get deeper, get Debian.
SuSE (http://www.susue.com) is the most popular commercial Linux distribution in Europe, according to most reports. It's a capable package, with LOTS and LOTS of documentation and discs - 4 books, 7 CDs and one DVD. I've installed SuSE in one version prior to this one, and the current revision on the retail set is 7.2 at this writing, and they tout support for Oracle databases on their website. Their available download sets are something called Live Eval, which to the best description of the people in the SuSE booth at LWCE, is for trying out Linux from a Windows platform. I don't have that option here, which is why I am using the version I have...
The installer is GUI-based, and effectively guides you through the following steps:
The install went like a dream. Clean screens, clear questions, decent guidance onscreen, and much more documentation in the box. Many, many window managers are available with a single click during the software selection step, which lets you try out a bunch of different look&feel designs for the GUI interface - warning: if you like Windows, you'll HATE most of them, until you've gotten to know them a bit better. KDE and Gnome are the most Windows-like in their mode of operation.
The big, big drawback for this 7.1 version of SuSE is the sheer number of services enabled by default - well over a dozen, including such baddies as telnet and rlogin. Aaaaaaaaaack. Admittedly, SuSE 7.1 is a bit old, and I'd expect that 7.2 has rectified this a bit. There are GUI tools to work with the services list and disable them, but you need to know they're there. I could probably talk my mom through this installation over the phone, but she wouldn't have a very secure box when she was done. If you install SuSE 7.1, do it while NOT connected to the internet, and shut off any services you don't need before connecting.
You'll remember that I went through the LinuxISO.org website collecting distributions for this set of tests... Listed there with many other distributions, large and small, is one called Stampede. Stampede Linux (http://www.stampede.org) is still an active project, but at version 0.90, this dog don't yet hunt. Based upon the Slackware distribution, Stampede's 0.90 CD isn't bootable, instead they recommend using their root disk and a Slack boot disk to bootstrap the installation. Sorry folks, if *I* can't install it (and you can't fool me - I am a professional village idiot), then work hard at putting out a version that works. Unfortunately, although development is still apparently active, the pace appears glacial. Keep trying, people, you'll get there yet. I'll check back in a year or so.
It's a good thing that there's a beta of the new TurboLinux available, called Esprit. Otherwise I'd be stuck with posting about TL6.1, which is a capable package that competes head to head with Red Hat 6.0, or at least it did 18 months ago, when it was released. TurboLinux (http://www.turbolinux.com) is a solid Linux competitor, with strong ties into the Linux-on-IBM-Mainframes and clustering gigs. Additionally, they're strong in the Asian market.
On two discs, the Esprit Beta starts right up with a standard text-based linux boot screen, leading to an initial ncurses (text-based) menu screen, for selecting the installation language. Then after a longish and somehow disturbing delay, the GUI installer gets going, and leads you through the following configuration screens:
Once the install is complete, and the system up and running, you're presented with the Gnome GUI login manager, gdm, which offers more options than the original xdm. Incorporated into this beta of TurboLinux is Gnome 1.4 including Nautilus, the advanced file manager that killed Eazel a-borning. Also present is KDE 2.2, just one step back of the latest release. Most excellently, only two ports were open after installation: SSH and X11. I'd still turn off X11, but then, I try to operate in as paranoid a manner as possible, all the time - it means I can sleep better when the worms are roaming.
This Beta of the new TurboLinux Esprit was posted just a couple weeks ago, and bodes well for the distribution. I didn't have many problems, nor find any real flaws in the cursory walkthrough. I'll be coming back to this one when its released to the world as a final, for a much closer look.
Peanut Linux (http://www.ibiblio.org/peanut/) is an interesting distribution. The material on the site reads like... one guy's Linux distribution. He's really, really enthusiastic, though. I pulled down the 9.0 "Large" distribution CD. Now for the acid test... Um. Not yet. Let me pull down the last release but one, and see if I can have any better luck. Back later or tomorrow with more.
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Good morning. I'll be back later with more on the Install-O-Rama, following up on the first part, posted yesterday. In the meantime, check out this letter from Doc Searls' sister, a Navy Commander (Retired), on the topic of courage, strength and commitment. See you later.
18:47 - When we left off last time, I was just failing to make Peanut Linux obey my will. I have some other options and documentation to read, and we'll have another look at Peanut soon. But for now, let's continue with the parade review of Linux distribution installations. Today's edition of Install-O-Rama includes Corel 1.2,
Based upon the Debian distribution, Corel Linux (http://linux.corel.com/) made a fast, fast start out of the gate, but due to financial woes, Corel has now sold its distro to a new publisher, Xandros Corporation. According to the press release, there'll be a new Xandros-branded version out in early 2002. Meantime, here's Corel Linux 1.2...
The Corel installer takes advantage of aggressive hardware probing, and assumptions about your system and network configuration to ask less questions than any other installation I've experienced. In a very real way, it's disconcerting - I like having fine-grained control over my Linux installs, and there just isn't any way to get there during the install with Corel. But maybe this is Aunt Minnie's Linux... Here are the steps to a Corel Linux 1.2 installation:
This Corel Linux setup is a complete breeze. What throws me for a loop is that I keep expecting more questions, and presuming that something's wrong when they don't ask. And in at least one case, I think they should ask. The network setup defaults to DHCP, and it's not immediately obvious what needs to be done to make it work right. I made all the edits, and it should have been running properly but wasn't. I went back and checked then entries I made, they were all correct, then... well, then it was working. Very confusing.
Other drawbacks include the quantity of open ports in this installation, from ftp and http through snmp, printer, hylafax, X11, fontserver and more. This is likely my fault for selecting ALL packages. A "desktop" install is likely a bit more secure, but remember, this distro is nearly a year old - I'd do a security update of packages facing the world sooner than immediately if I were to put this in a production box.
It'll be interesting to see what Xandros does with this distro, as the few-questions installation could win over some mom-and-pop shops. Keep an eye on the future of this one - especially since it faces strong competition.
Progeny Linux (http://www.progeny.com) is the brainchild of Ian Murdock, a former Debian Project Leader. Like Corel, Progeny produces a commercialized version of Debian, with a much more user-friendly interface for the installation than Debian presents.
Progeny Linux 1.0 boots into a standard text boot screen, where options can be entered prior to starting the system. Pressing Enter starts the boot process that works for me, and after the kernel boots, and the ram disk initializes, the GUI installer gets going, and there are the following steps:
I like Progeny Linux well enough, and it's a great way to get your foot in the door with Debian. Often when I want to take a machine up to Debian's unstable tree for testing out the latest and greatest stuff, I'll start with a Progeny install to seed the system - I like their defaults and configurations. Progeny's business model is leaning towards network update services, like virtually every other commercial Linux distribution. But I really like the basis of this distro, coming from Debian.
And that's all for now, folks. I'm quite thrashed - It was a busy weekend. Along with cleaning the cars and company and assorted other chores, we've gotten the lawn through it's first haircut, as you can see in the pictures, right and left. Be good, see you again next week.
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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 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.