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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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November 11, 2002 - Updates at 0715 EDT
Good morning, in a manner of speaking. The skies just opened up here and started dumping rain hard, a few short minutes ago. That was presaged by several flashes of lightning and distant thunder. Apparently Montgomery County (where I'll be going to work) is under Tornado Warning. Here, in Prince George's County, it's just a Tornado Watch until 11 this morning. Yummy. How's that go? Oh, watch this, there goes our house?
A productive weekend, although not entirely on the projects that I'd hoped for. For instance, I rather thought that I'd finish the United Linux writeup yesterday, and I made just about zero progress on that. But Greg and I whacked away at our latest project, and we're rather under a deadline for that, so I guess it takes precedence. The thing that really irked me was my office chair. This had been the most expensive chair I'd purchased to date, and it is/was very comfortable. But last week, one of the bits that holds the arms at the right height broke clean in half. I might have repaired that. Before I had the chance to do that, however, yesterday saw the second and last straw: The tilt lock broke. I had the spring set to a fairly stiff setting, and the tilt lock restricting it's range of motion, so that my legs and back could tolerate the long hours I put into this space. With the tilt-lock broken, the chair just kept trying to launch me face first into the monitor, no airbag. So I ended up at Staples, getting a new but less expensive chair, so that I'll feel less bad about it when I have to replace it in a couple of years, too.
Still to do this morning, I've got the trash to get out. I'll be in the office today, then at customer sites all the rest of the week, I think. That should be fun. I suppose I'd best get busy. Have a great day. Happy Monday!
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November 12, 2002 - Updates at 0723
Howdy. So I remembered to get the trash out yesterday morning. Big whoopie. I was going to work. Marcia was going to work. Why was I supposed to remember that as a Federal holiday, Veteran's Day means that the trash isn't collected. Bah! All I know is that I did my part. The next two days for me are going to be onsite at a couple of customer locations, busy days full of the joys of troubleshooting weird problems and documenting stuff so that it's easier to fix next time. Ahhhh, the fun I have!
Much of yesterday I spent spelunking around gingerly in some Solaris boxes, learning about them without disturbing the status quo. These are machines that we support part time, and are documenting in order to give their owners a snapshot of the current state of the machines, both for process and maintenance purposes. Tonight, then, I've got a PCB design to finish revising and get that off in the email to California.
Mmmm. That's all I have for now. I'm definitely starting to feel more chipper again, following my bout with whatever the bug du jour was last week. However, there's not much new to report on any front. I was too whacked to get anything of substance done last night, except for an abortive effort to learn something new about LDAP. But I started that late, and didn't devote much time to it, as my eyes were beginning to point in opposing directions.
Have a lovely day. See you!
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November 13, 2002 - Updates at 0700
Good morning. Sorry, but I have no time left. Instead of writing an update or drinking coffee, I pressed our old SohoWare Broadguard DSL router back into service, as the Netgear has apparently hosed itself. More when I know more, have a great day!
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November 14, 2002 - Updates at 0718
Good morning. There, I've whipped through my overnight email load of a hundred or so in just under 5 minutes. No, I didn't read all of them, but I did read the important ones, file the keepers, dispose of whole threads that weren't up my alley, and generally lay waste to the entire company in short order. Some days I get caught up in that, and lose track of time. Regarding the broken Netgear (it isn't broken anymore, but read on), Holden Aust writes:
From: Holden Aust
Subject: Coyote Linux
Date: 14 Nov 2002 01:50:00 +0000Hi Brian,
You might want to try the Coyote Linux version of the LRP for your DSL router:
I've been using Coyote Linux for more than three years now, both at some work sites and also for a number of friends and it works great. Admittedly it is physically larger than a hardware DSL router box, but I've got several that have been up and running for a year and a half and more and never, ever, had a failure and never had anybody hack them, either (and because it runs on a "throwaway PC" the price is right). It can also serve as your DHCP server.
All you need is a 486DX2/66 or faster PC, a floppy drive, and 12 meg of RAM (if you're using it with a modem or ISDN, you can even use a 386 PC, but that's a bit slow for PPPoE on DSL). I've used this with some old HP and Compaq PCs that were "too slow" to be of use with Windows and they are quiet and work great with Coyote Linux.
There are two disk creators for Coyote Linux, one which is a Windows app with a very nice interface and the other one is a shell script that runs under Linux. It really seems subversive to use a Windows app to build a Coyote Linux boot disk, but the Linux version is several revs more up to date, so use the Linux version to make your boot disk if you give this a try.
By the way, I also wanted to mention two online PC components suppliers that I've done business with for several years and had consistantly good luck with:
New Egg is very fast in shipping and has a huge selection and very good prices.
Thompson's Computer Warehouse (you didn't know Bob had a computer components business down in Florida, did you?) doesn't have as wide a selection as New Egg, but their prices are sometimes even better and they have that great $6.95 up to 150 pound shipping, which is great for shipping cases!
--- Holden
Mmmm. Coyote is probably worth a go, but for one thing... This particular Netgear box is also my WAP. And it turns out that it just needed a rest. Unplugged for the day, it came hapily back to life this evening. But I'll take a while to look at Coyote soon. Promise.
How's things back on that coast? I ruefully find myself more than a little homesick from time to time. But the fall colours here are wonderful.
catch you later...
And indeed that was the case, it went entirely through it's correct pattern of blinky lights last night, and came right to life. I really don't know what to make of this yet. I need to do a bit of web searching on whether others have experienced this, and if there's new firmware to be found. More later on this.
Friend Pat from the Left Coast (left in the sense of hold the map right side up in your hands, California is on which side?) wrote with a link to a cute article about Linux and Windows: There's Linux in Them Thar Hills, an article by Nancy Peponis on a site called MarketingProfs.com. A fun little read.
Okay. Time's up. On my plate for today, researching and quoting a few Dell boxes plus an HPaq printer for a customer, some more time on the Solaris documentation project I've been working, and the afternoon to fiddle with connecting up various bits of accounting software into a relatively seamless whole for yet another client. I certainly can't say that I'm bored.
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November 15, 2002 - Updates at 0701
Good morning. I made a fair bit of progress on the United Linux installation writeup last night. It should be up on LinuxMuse in a day or so. That'll be followed in short order by a brief overview of what the new distribution's like to use. In other news, Festival finally builds properly in this late-model Gentoo setup I'm running here. That rocks! Festival is a speech synthesis system. That is, it reads. Yes, great glee can be had by getting the machine to say "Do you want to play a game?" And better yet, I still have laying about that Perl script that Greg sent me. That permits Xchat, the IRC client to get chatty. So now when I have IRC running, but the windows not up top, I can still hear when someone's dropped in. That's excellent, as I've missed a few cameo appearances recently. By whom? Well, OpenMosix clustering guru Moshe Bar, for one...
Speaking of Moshe, he's supposed to be in town next week (or nearby, at the Supercomputing Conference in Baltimore, rather). We're still trying to figure out how we'll get together for lunch or dinner, but it's going to happen, I'm sure.
I noted in the email to Holden that I really like the fall colours. More specifically, I'm finding that as the colours fade and the leaves start to drop, revealing the bones of the tree, that's the most beauteous time. This is perhaps affected by the circumstance of the most color happening on grey, stormy days when it wasn't particularly fun to be out. But towards the end of the storms, the bark and the branches, showing wetly black through the leaves as they faded to brown and took a dive... stunning.
Today I'm off up to Rockville, with quite a task list, so I'd best be going. Have a good 'un, and Happy Friday!
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November 16, 2002 - Updates at 0800
Howdy. Welcome to the weekend. You'll excuse the gibberish, but I just dragged out of bed 20 short minutes ago, and the coffee that I started brewing shortly thereafter hasn't made it to a cup in my neighborhood yet. As soon as that machine beeps, I've got a little trip to make. Meantime, the MP3 collection is wending its way from the Pretenders and Eurythmics to Bruce Springsteen and Genesis. I just know that when I start to relax something like AC/DC is going to jolt me out of my comfortable Saturday morning world. Ah, well.
Did you see it on Jerry's site, or on the Byte site directly? Byte is moving to a subscription model, acknowledging the common wisdom that no one actually WANTS to look at most advertising most of the time. This of course runs counter to the philosophy promulgated by the Wharton School and others. We should want commercials. They should pay actors MORE for working in commercials than for working in the pap that holds the commercials apart, since that's clearly where the focus is.
Oh, wait. I digress. I do like Byte. I've liked Byte for years. I'm a subscriber on Jerry's site, from shortly after the time that dead-trees Byte died the death. I've been pleased to be a regular visitor and reader on the Byte site since the online presence was brought to life in 1998. And now I'm a subscriber there, too. It's only 12 bucks US for the year (a low introductory price, I am assured). I did note a couple of what I consider to be flaws in the subscription process - I sent this to the [email protected] mailbox:
From: Brian P. Bilbrey
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Feedback on the subscription process
Date: 15 Nov 2002 20:57:02 -0500To whom it may concern,
At Jerry's prompting, I've subscribed to Byte. I'm pleased to be able to support the magazine that's brought me so much information over the last decades. As I noted to Jerry in an email directly to him,
"I saw your post today and subscribed, because I've depended on the magazine, even as it grew thinner, then died, then the website, even as *IT* grew thinner too. I hope this lets them not just survive, but get more content up - that would be a good thing."
But I have a couple of grumbles about the subscription process that I also noted to Jerry, and they're worth repeating to you:
****
One gripe that you might pass on to the powers that be: On the second page of subscription, there's a paragraph that says in part:
"By providing your e-mail address, you grant Byte.com permission to contact you via e-mail concerning Byte.com products and services..."
That really belongs on the same page as the field where you actually enter the email address. Now I get to hit the subscribe button without going BACK, since I've already entered all the form information. This sort of thing always felt like a sucker play to me.
Also, why not leave the little selection boxes blank and let people choose TO receive the email updates and partner advertising, rather than making them opt out by unchecking pre-selected boxes. If this is so that the marketing folks can later say something like, "...and 73% of people have allowed us to sell their names to outside businesses and vendors." Well, not true. 73% of people didn't notice they were supposed to uncheck that box unless they *really* wanted their name sold around.
****
Ah, well, the important thing is that I *did* subscribe, right?
All the best,
.brian
I received an email from the Mailman software that runs my Talkabout mailing list. It told me that another witless idiot had tried to spam our members only list, and would I like to check the message for either approval or rejection. What follows is the rejection message I sent (Only the first sentence is stock):
Non-members are not allowed to post messages to this list. Now stop spamming people you fucking morons. Pay attention to the Federal Government. Soon there will be the DEATH PENALTY for spamming. Then how will your children eat? Get a real job flipping burgers or something else socially redeeming rather than your current gig, you noxious parasite.
Sure, that's out of line just a little bit. And although the initial mailing list hold post message apparently got through to that address earlier in the evening, this one didn't. But it still felt good to write and send it. Really.
Now, there's just 39 emails demanding my attention, the coffee maker must have done it's duty, and I'm having a bed head day on the WebCam. You'll bear with me for a moment please, while I deal with a couple of these items...
Okay, I got an email from the helpful and bright Rick Moen, noting that some links around here were broken as VA Software moved things around without a thought for continuity. So I am going to do some repairs, but here's his letter, and my response:
From: Rick Moen
Subject: Fix for a broken link
Date: 16 Nov 2002 01:56:16 -0800Hey there, Brian! I happened to notice on http://www.orbdesigns.com/bpages/2001/z20010514.html ...that you have
Most important from my perspective, I came across the solution to my rsync using ssh problem, thanks to an SVLUG email from Rick Moen - This page at VA [link] discusses the problem (shortly, large files lock up the rsync/ssh combo, hard), and the range of solutions available. If you use rsync and ssh to make local network backups, as I often do, both here and at the mines, this is some seriously good info, folks.The link is broken because the idiots at VA couldn't be bothered to pay for their external hosting of that database. (Why they hosted it externally is beyond me.) However, I managed to sweet-talk them into signing over the copyright[1] to contents of that knowledgebase, which I was obliged to strip down to plaintext. It's temporarily parked here:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/kb/
The particular article you linked to is here: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/kb/185
Also possibly of interest is rsync in the context of directory-duplication: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/kb/200
If you want to automate rsync backup over ssh without security problems, here's how: http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/ssh-publickey-process (There's a bunch of stuff you may find useful in that directory.)
[1] http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/va-linux-knowledgebase
--
Cheers, "Entia non sunt multiplicanta praeter necessitatem."
Rick Moen -- William of Ockham (attr.)
On Sat, 2002-11-16 at 04:56, Rick Moen wrote:
> Hey there, Brian! I happened to notice on...
[snip]Hi, Rick.
Nice to hear from you. How's life on that coast? Marcia and I moved out to Maryland this last summer. All is well, although this ain't California, Toto... Hello to Deidre, too!
Thanks for the link info - I'll go back and do some link revisions.
Additionally, for the purposes of automated rsync backup, there's an option even better than passphrase-less keys: It's called Keychain, written by Daniel Robbins of Gentoo fame. The details are in a series of IBM DevWorks pages (free reg, blah blah), and the project page is here:
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/keychain.xml
Your email's posted this morning to give people info and access to the re-sited resource you're providing. Thanks!
Wow, that's more work than normally goes into a Saturday morning post. Have a happy Saturday!
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November 17, 2002 - Updates at 1045
Good morning. After long thought, I decided that building my own desk required rather more time and expense than I was willing to go through right now. I mean, I don't have anything but small tools. Nice panel cuts with a circular saw can be problematic. Sure, I could also use non-power tools, but I don't have many of those, either. And my home woodshop really just .. doesn't exist. So in order to build this, I need to buy some of these, and build one of those, on and on. While that's a fun process in its way, I don't want to do a major setup in a house we don't own. I'd want more power in a home shop, for one thing.
So instead, we went out desk hunting for something a little sturdier than what I had. The prior Sauder desk was nice enough, once upon a time. But it didn't have the strength to stand up to the load of a large monitor on the desk surface, and a fair number of bits were broken pretty badly during the move. So we found a new desk, I tore down the old one, and put up the new one. Here's the process in pictures:
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The demolition went smoothly, mostly using the drill-driven screw driver, a hand philips, and the occasional persuasion of Mr. Claw Hammer. The new shell went up smoothly. With the desk still away from the wall, I rewired the setup to work with the modified configuration provided by the new desk. With 6 computers in the house, two switches, one hub, a cable modem, and several peripherals that connect to one or more machines, it was a bit... exciting for a little bit. But everything's back to life properly now. All I don't like is the phone placement. I need to do something about that.
And that puts paid to this post that I've been trying to finish and upload for the last two hours. I was distracted by a couple of large Belgian waffles that my love made.
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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.
