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Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.. |
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April 01, 2001 - Updates at 0801
Good morning... Yeah, it's April Fools' Day, but I have neither the energy nor the desire to come up with a decent prank, so I'll pass on that, let you find your amusement elsewhere. Check out the Onion, it's always good for a chuckle or five. Also, there's this technology update from Google. Instead I'll share with you some pictures from the last couple of days...
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The garden is coming up nicely, you can see some of the beans in the foreground. This picture was taken on Saturday, and there was just dirt there on Tuesday. They come up fast. Also, with the weather warming up a bit (we hit 80F a couple of times in the last few days), the tomatoes are starting to grow well, too. Sally took some time to go bug hunting in the grass, the flowers are blooming, and finally, yesterday, Sally took a nap in her customary position, as my secondary sub-woofer.
On for today, the dog gets a bath, the beans get a trellis, and I start the hunt for work. I'll be tuning up my resume a bit more, and then I'll be back here for feedback from y'all. Thanks for all of your help and kind suggestions over the last couple of weeks -- please keep it up, I appreciate the support. See you back in a bit.
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April 02, 2002 - Updates at 0530
Yeah, really 0530. Amazing, isn't it? Good morning. We were up at about 0330 or so, and I had Marcia to the airport by 0430 for her business trip. She's gone to Atlanta and DC for Sales meetings, and she'll be back on Friday. I don't mind getting up this early to get her on a plane -- it's much nicer for her than having to deal with the airporter service.
And for another nomination in the Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men category, yesterday went downhill rapidly once the dog-bathing part was done. The sewer line between the house and street blocked up again. This owner has been really a PITA about dealing with this problem correctly, exacerbated by an estate agent who doesn't take a stand very well. But finally they're promising a crew out here to dig up the line and deal with the roots and pipe problem that's been plaguing us.
Some fun stuff from yesterday's April Foolery included a couple of messages to the Linux Kernel Mailing List, supposedly from Linus (who happens actually to be on vacation at the moment). They are here and here. Then Doc brought my attention to this patent for a Hyper-light-speed antenna that was written by David Strom, a guy I get newsletters from on an irregular basis. I have to guess (although I'm going to write and ask) that he submitted that just to see if it would get past the examiners. Hmmmm. Not an April Fool, that one, although the examiner may have been an idiot.
More later perhaps. I'm pretty tired, to be truthful.
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April 03, 2002 - Updates at 0840
Good morning. Well, I'm still obviously decompressing from the stresses of the last few weeks, along with making up for lost sleep from last night. I slept through 12 hours. That's rare. and now I'm running late. I did get up at 0550 to put the dog out, and thought about staying up. But I had the alarm set for 0650, so I went back to bed. I had the alarm set, but not turned on. But I'm mostly awake now, and I've got to RUN. See you later, or at SVLUG tonight, at our monthly meeting featuring Larry Wall. TTFN!
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April 04, 2002 - Updates at 0900
Catching up slowly. Good morning. First off, last night's meeting, An Evening with Larry Wall, was quite interesting. As Larry noted, while there are lots of things he could talk about, he was going to talk about Perl6. And he did. Apparently there are two rules about Perl development. Rule #1: Larry is always right. Rule #2: If Larry changes his mind, he is still right. Apparently that covers all the bases. The opening slide of his talk was "Dear Larry, Have you gone crazy?", representative of some of the email that he's getting as the various Apocolypses appear. What are Apocolypses? They're articles about the design and development of Perl6. There are four down, and 29 to go, according to Larry. Find them from the Perl website. Each Apocolypse is illuminated by an Exegesis written by Damien Conway. See this listing for more details.
Also at the meeting, I picked up a copy of Caldera's 3.1.1 OpenLinux Workstation release. I'll give it a test drive for you shortly. Meantime, I've got work to do here, get my day organized and start making progress on setting up my life for a job hunt. It's a paradigm shift and I've not been as focused as I should be yet, for a variety of reasons. However, I don't plan on becoming accustomed to lazing around (never have, actually, since I left college). Even when I was behaving badly, I did it with some dedication (surprising I survived, really), so I'll land on my feet. The good news is that I have an evolving sense of where I want to go. Drop by later, I'll have some more to share, no doubt.
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April 05, 2002 - Updates at 0800
Good morning. At least I would have been back, had events not conspired to keep me occupied in other directions. It stayed foggy/cloudy all day yesterday. When it doesn't actually rain, the difference between clouds and fog is how high the deck is off the ground. It just sort of morphed back and forth between clouds and fog yesterday. Now the sun's breaking out early (creating all sorts of glare havok, as you can see on the webcam.
Also, I've decided to spend a bit more time away from the machine, and relax with an old hobby, balsa scale airplanes, as at right. Well, it doesn't look very airplane-ish at the moment, but it will get there, really. I used to do LOTS of these. Right now I don't want a flyer, just a display model. This one's a Grumman F6F-3 Hellcat. It's not an expensive hobby, as long as I stay out of RC. And I can use it to take my mind out of Linux on occasion, so that I'm a bit fresher (one hopes).
Sally and I are right tired of doing the bachelor gig, and we're looking forward to Marcia getting home from her business trip. She's flying in this afternoon from Dulles, and when she called, asked me to say Hi to everyone, so consider it done! Now I'd best get my morning started properly, by finishing this cup of coffee.
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April 06, 2002 - Updates at 0800
Good morning. Marcia is home, safe and sound. Meantime, a little tickle at the back of my throat has turned into something really quite painful - a full bore sore throat. When I felt it coming on, I started dosing with Zinc lozenges, which often nips this sort of bug in the bud. However, it appears not to have done the trick this time. Such is life...
I did a trial install of Caldera's OpenLinux Workstation 3.1.1 on VMware yesterday afternoon. 3.1.1 is a maintenance release for the 3.1 edition that issued last summer. My first impression is that not much has changed. They're lagging on the kernel version (2.4.13), the installer hasn't changed for about 2 years, and there are hitches in the installation, still. The installer flat failed several times, being unable to start "Lizard". It turns out that a version WILL run, but the more advanced version (the one that wants to have XGA/Framebuffer capable video hardware) won't, and it doesn't do a fallback, it simply says that OpenLInux can't be installed, and points me to the printed documentation. Sheesh. Point in fact, it does work, if I start the install in VGA16 mode. Ah, well.
OpenLinux 3.1.1 comes on two CDs, only one of which is required for installation. The other has a variety of optional binary and source packages that can be added to the running system, but aren't "required", I presume. It didn't set the hostname properly on install, and that makes me wonder... If simple stuff is missing/wrong, and immediately evident on first boot, what else did they do wrong? I'll do another install, and give this a decent writeup sometime in the next few days. Then I'll go back and give Mandrake 8.2 a second chance as well.
More later if there's something interesting to report. See ya!
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April 07, 2002 - Updates at 0730
Set your clocks forward one hour, if last night they stole an hour from you by declaring Daylight Savings Time. They claim that they give it back in the fall, but me? I want interest on my hour. I figure that by October, they owe me back not 60, but 65 minutes. It'll never happen, of course, but I can dream, can't I?
Nothing else much for here today - the head cold/sore throat has morphed into something considerably like my version of the flu. Unlike Dr. K., whose description of attempting to eat snails nearly had me ill in sympathy, I'll leave the details to your imagination. I'm not dying, and so will return soon to torment you. Yes, thanks, I'll take care. 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 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 © 1999-2002 Brian P. Bilbrey.
