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October 08 through October 14, 2001
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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. Tom Syroid and I have co-authored a Linux Book. 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. As they said in Wayne's World, "Game on!" Sheesh - there's still something I don't understand. The terrorists get to hijack planes, cut people up, then crash the planes into big buildings, killing thousands of people. We are, after all, a big target. OTOH, the terrorists hide among women and children in the back country of a backward nation, then scream Jihad when we kill 20 people in the process of doing a facilities reduction. And we have to be cautious of world opinion? Sorry, no, that's not right. They don't understand what they've gotten themselves in for. And they will do their darnest to commit as many people as possible, based on their rhetoric about our evil ways. Bin Laden and his cronies need to get put down like the rabid dogs they are. Oh, yes, and my fellow Americans? Stop supporting the IRA - they do the same damn thing every day too.
George says, "I know many Americans feel fear today." (according to this Yahoo echo of a Reuters story). Bah. I am proud to be an American. The terrorists will not rule this world, they'll just die. Take'm down, destroy their capacity to inflict harm, and make sure that they understand that every hand and heart is turned against them. If they kill - return that to them seven-fold, less they mis-understand our intention and desire. We did not go looking for this fight, but we will finish it.
Yesterday we did a SF Bay Area circling drive, with a stop at the Golden Gate bridge for a stroll out and back. Gray day, but pretty all the same. I have some pictures that I'll put up later. It's going to be a busy week all around. See you back here soon, take care!
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Good morning. That update stamp just above is a starting time, not a finish - yeah, I am running late. Up late, I've been configuring services on the once and future Grendel. Right now everything else takes a backseat to getting that box back in shape to serve webs and email and such. I'm definitely partway there. Mitigating the rush factor is Pacific Bell, which is blundering the handover of the circuit to Covad 10 ways from Sunday. The line is dead, again. That's twice they've killed tone on the line in the process of "assisting" Covad in bringing this DSL line up for me. And again it's costing me working hours - I have to be home between 2 and 6 today to help them cope with their screwup. Bah!!!
Let's see what CNN has to say... Nothing much new overnight. The networks finally discovered the Anthrax that turned up in Florida, and in local news there, last week. We continue to execute strikes into Afghanistan, apparently. But I haven't sat glued to the tube. Oh, yeah. UN Workers Killed!! In Steve Gibson bold on several sites - well, duh. The UN has workers in dangerous and afflicted places all over the world, that's part of their mission. There's no place more dangerous nor afflicted than Afghanistan right now.
I've gotta run - it's late already. See you later.
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Good morning. The good news is that when I got home, the phone line was live again. Mmmmm. I wonder what's up with that. Do you suppose that Pacbell knowingly screwed up, again, and waited for yet another complaint prior to repairing our broken line, for the second time in two weeks? No, I'm sure that that wasn't the case. PacBell and the other ILECs have no problems sharing space and revenue with CLECS like Covad, Northpoint and Rhythms... Oh, wait, uhhhhhhh. Heeeehee. So I promptly called Repair services yesterday afternoon, to cancel the truck roll so that they wouldn't charge me for driving up and finding the working line that they fixed at the CO. That took half an hour of voice mail maze, dropped calls, and explaining to the pleasant tier one that I talked to when I finally got a live body. Of course, during the afternoon, the truck showed up anyway, didn't ring the bell, instead just left a sticky on the door. Try the doorbell next time, people.
Speaking of trying the doorbell, UPS showed up with the hardware portion of the DSL install kit yesterday. I don't need it, as I've said numerous times to the people at Speakeasy, but apparently it's just easier to refuse shipment than to try to get them (Covad) to understand that they've got a compete\nt customer with own hardware. However, the UPS person didn't ring the doorbell either, just dropped the box and ran. Sigh. So I've got to rope in the UPS guy at work today when he turns up, explain the situation to him, and get that box sent back to Covad.
This is all pertinent because once the line had tone on it, I popped on the DSL modem and poof - hard link. Excellent. Ping the gateway... not excellent. 100% packet loss. Sigh. On the horn again, this time with Covad self-install support. We went through the whole story together, then he threw me on hold, and worked with several other people, trying to determine why I wasn't getting any traffic back. He'd pop back online and tell me, "Yeah, now we're trying this, give me a few more minutes." and I was happy to. Finally, he said, "Yeah, the line is trained, and we're seeing the ping traffic from your modem going into the Speakeasy network, do you want me to call them for you?"
Sure, sez I. So back on hold I go. Ten minutes later, he comes back, stating that he's still on hold with their people. Mmmm. I'll call them myself - no need to tie up the Covad guy anymore, he's done his part. So I call Speakeasy, get in the support queue, and 15 minutes later, the phone system drops me. Not Speakeasy, but, I think, the phone network. I tried to call back and couldn't get through for 20 or 30 minutes. Finally I got through, got back in queue, and after 15 minutes got through to a tech. I explained events to her, she popped up something on her screen, and mumbled something...
"Excuse me?"
"Go ahead and try it now," she said. So I did, and ping pinged away like there was no tomorrow. Excellent. It turns out for some reason that my link wasn't configured on their Redback (some piece of networking equipment). Fine. So I confirmed some other details of the IP addresses that I am supposed to have, and checked for the appropriate account balances and credits (that $250 cancellation fee is reapplied to the account, since we're back in the fold). All is good and the line is running sweet.
Now I've got to finish configuring Grendel to be our Internet Server again. More details as they become available. The transition may begin as early as tonight, so be patient if you have any hinks in access. Thanks! Meantime, it's off to work for me. Take care.
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New Server... Grendel's up! Now to go get my blood labs done, then back for coffee and breakfast, then off to Monterey. Everything's pretty much transferred - I have yet to configure our mailing lists, and a few other details, but the big rocks are in place. Take care, see you later.
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Good morning (barely). Bunch of things going on, so I am late with this post, thanks for your patience. First, in one of about 80 digital stills from the Monterey Bay Acquarium yesterday, we see Tux going native. <grin>. About 1/3 of the pictures are too blurry for consumption, since I was shooting no-flash in low light much of the time. However, some of the pictures are stunning. I'll do some selection for you from this week, soon.
Driving home last night, the Check Engine light came on, in the Blazer. Sigh. A quick trip to Precision Tune has turned into an expensive proposition - the EGR valve is borked. In hindsight, I can correlate that to the cyclic behaviour of the engine in the last few miles back from Monterey. So I gave the Benz to Marcia and Barb for her last day of playing California tourist, and I am working from home. Email, web research into lowcost web storefronts, contacts management software, etc. And waiting for the car people to call and tell me how much they plan on lightening my wallet by. Sigh. I guess I'd best get back to work. See you later.
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Good morning. We've actually been up and at it for quite a while now. Up at 0600, everyone showered, Barb packed, we coffee'd and breakfasted. At 0800, we were on the road to the airport, and now Barb is sitting at SFO waiting for for her 1045 flight. Back home, and Marcia's picked a bunch of stuff up, rearranged her office, and is looking forward to a long nap after playing tourist hostess for the week. Barb is wonderful, and a good guest - but vacations are tireing for Marcia and essentially this was hard-work vacation for Marcia, too.
10:55 - Now I've burned an hour and more working with Greg on USB readers, and I am no closer to understanding the problem he's got than I did when we started. My USB SmartMedia reader mounts toot-sweet as a read-write SCSI device. Greg's mounts read-only, as the kernel VFS detects the device is Write Protected. Bah! Well, always more to learn.
Back later, folks. Otherwise I'll NEVER publish even these two paragraphs. Mmmm. TTFN.
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Good morning, friends. I have a few minutes here, then it's time to shower and get ready to go to our Sunday morning house of consumerism worship - Costco. We missed last week with Barb in town, and are likely to have to do penance - I might come home with a weed trimmer, or a big screen TV or who know what? I'll certainly have to do the stations of the Federal Reserve Board, and three or four Hail Greenspans. Mmmmmm.
Good news - I was busy last afternoon, and put together all the Workstation Edition of Install-O-Rama on a single page for ease of reference (and because several of you asked, I am a thoughtless wretch, aren't I?). Then I started working at last on verifying all the references in Appendix C of Brian and Tom's Linux Book. Once that's done, I'll post it, and tar up the whole book for easy download. It'll be mirrored a few places for your convenience. I'll be back with that later today, perhaps.
Woo-hooo. After a week's break from the web (visiting relatives have priority), Marcia is back online, and over the next couple of days is likely also to have lots of area touristy type pictures up for your viewing pleasure. Why not head over there soon?
Last, for now: the 5th Annual Linux Showcase and Conference is on for November 5 through 10 in Oakland, just across and up the Bay from here. The website is http://www.linuxshowcase.org/, and registration for both exhibits and technical sessions is FREE through tomorrow, the 15th. Adieu for the time being. See you later!
18:00 - Back, and done! Tom and Brian's Linux Book is a done deal, complete, fini! The lost Appendix, Appendix C - Collected References Print and Online, has been checked, rechecked, verified and found still there and still helpful. The book links are links to publisher pages. We're bookseller-agnostic. Additionally, as promised, we've made the whole work available as a single tarball for ease of downloading if you don't use wget.
More news on Linux Showcase - I can't register using Konqueror. The silly twits outsourced their registration gig to a bunch going by the name of Registration Control Systems, and they've excluded anyone who's not using Internet Exploiter, or Nutscrape. Ah well, I do keep a backup copy of NS around for just such occasions. I'm now signed up for ALS tech sessions on Thursday and Friday (11/8 and 11/9). Maybe I'll see you there?
Now on to the next thing, which is a heavy dose of C, Zinc, and other cold preventative meds, as I have been feeling a bug coming on all day today. And it's still HOT, too. The good news is that it looks like the fog is coming in, but it doesn't seem cooling, somehow. Let me go have a look... nah, just high clouds. It's 82 F out right now, with 50% humidity. Mmmm. Indian summer, indeed. See you tomorrow!
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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.