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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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December 02, 2002 - Updates at 0730 EDT
Good morning. Yep, it's Monday, and I haven't been at work since a week ago today. Now, I'm not a natural morning person, and it was harder to drag my tail out of bed than it has been in a longish while. Ah, well. At least it appears that it will be a full and busy week for me. Yesterday's post contained all the sordid details of our trip to North Carolina, so you can always interpret the last week's posts in that light, if you desire.
Looking at the statistics for November, I can see the usual conglomeration of search strings. Linux book and Free Linux book are near the top of the pops, for the book that Tom and I wrote. Another string is this: warning: cannot open /dev/fd1h1440... That's probably a permissions problem. Of course, a disk needs to be in the drive which needs to be cabled properly and operational. Then you need either to be root, or more sanely, your normal user account should be made part of the floppy group. Then log out, log back in, and you should be able to write to the drive.
Someone wants instructions on how to crack the Eagle layout software package. Look elsewhere, buddy. On the other hand, fish wallpaper is another popular search term. For Linux, look to XFishtank. Search for it in all the usual locations. Interestingly, there's four search hits on difference between apache server and samba server. The difference is that the former is webserver software, while the latter is a program to make a non-windows box look like and perform windows services like file shares, printer shares, PDC and other things. Does that help? Finally, down in the noise, there are two searches for download dr. sbaitso. Can anyone tell me about that one? I have no clue.
Well, I'm already running late, so I'd best get the trash out to the curb, and myself into the car and on the road. Have a lovely Monday, best that you can, and I'll do the same.
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December 03, 2002 - Updates at 0730
Good morning. I spent a fair chunk of yesterday installing some new Dell workstations into an existing small business network. The new computers are running Windows XP. The problem I'm having is that, after I've joined the workstation to the domain (it's a Win2K Server AD setup), the workstations still can't see the domain properly, and other systems can't see them. But they're recognized, sorta, and the server resources that the workstations use (file shares) mount just fine. I'm told that this may be related to WinXP winning masterbrowser elections when it definitely shouldn't be. Has anyone got feedback for me on this? I'll be diving into the MSKB as soon as I get back there this morning, as I've got one more workstation to install, and a new printer to bring up on the network.
Over on Linuxmuse, I asked for input on what sorts of applications and/or other things Linux-ish people are looking for information on. Of course, the first question to pop up is a toughie... a Linux replacement for MS Access. I've been looking into Rekall (from The Kompany), which appears to come closest. Fundamentally, there's the database side of things, which is well covered by things like MySQL and Postgresql. The GUI table, forms and reports designer side is what's lacking. Rekall appears to do what's required, but the installation looks a bit hinky. There are other projects, but they seem to have mostly been abandoned, with no development happening in a year or more. I'm not sure why, as Access has an awful lot of applications running out there in the business world. You'd think that some equivalent would have been a bit higher on some developer's itch list.
I've got to go, have a great day!
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December 04, 2002 - Updates at 0724
Howdy. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to start writing posts in the evening. I always feel rushed, these days, and that's fair to neither of us. Ah, well. Living is.
I had a good day yesterday, all things considered. I popped back over to that client site bright and early. First I installed the new printer and the other workstation. Then I started in on the problems I was having with network visibility and login delays. The former remains somewhat problematic, but we've coped with it for the time being. Everyone can see the resources they need to see. I still need to apply the correct registry edits to keep the WinXP workstations from competing in the Browser elections. On the topic of login delays, there were two causes. One was the information coming from the DHCP server. That isn't, contrary to prior belief, the AD server, in this case. The DCHP server is the Sonicwall appliance. And it still had configured as a WINS server a machine that doesn't exist on their network anymore. Sigh. Part two came out of a search hit on ExpertExchange: They supposed to be using the AD/PDC as the primary DNS server for WinXP clients. I changed that to get IP info from DNS, and manually configured the problem workstations for DNS from there, and the boot delays were a thing of the past.
When I left, everything was working fine. By the time I was 45 minutes away, I'd already gotten a call that they were having printing problems. I can't begin to suspect what might be the culprit here, as it was working all day while I was around. I recommended the reboot solution, and said that I would ring them up this morning to see if I needed to get back out there this afternoon after my meetings. We'll see.
Last night, I spent some time looking for and at database front end clients. There's only one I've found that does stuff equivalent to MS Access, and that's Rekall from TheKompany. More on this later, the effort is the first result of a request on LinuxMuse, as I previously noted. I'm for the road, so I'll be seeing you.
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December 05, 2002 - Updates at 0800 and 1140
Good morning, Happy Thursday. It's a snow day here in Greater Metro DC. And I think that it's Sally's first time in the snow. She wandered about in the yard making tracks and trying to smell anything, anything at all, without getting snow up her nose. Finally she gave up, made a little patch of yellow snow, and headed for the door at her version of a gallop. Heh. The roads are getting plowed, and the traffic's a mess. We're staying home.
Marcia's going to work from home, and while I have some billable work that I could do, I took a look at where I am with it last night (it's a documentation project) and decided that it's better done onsite, where I can have access to the systems I'm writing up. While a lot of the information is in printouts and ready for reformatting into the final version, as I do that process other questions arise. Those I can't answer without access. So I'll pass, take an unpaid snow day, and relax. I'll need to be relaxed in order to drive up to Rockville tomorrow. Below is a shot of my favorite intersection, taken moments ago from the DPWT traffic cam page. That intersection is called The Mixing Bowl. Doesn't sound fun in the snow and ice, does it?
Additionally, a couple of days ago we got the Christmas tree up. I say "we" in a very liberal sense. We picked the tree together, I cut the base and set up the tree and the power. I helped Marcia with the lights. The rest she did on her own, and a fine job she did, too. Last night I dug out the card table and set it up in the gift wrapping department, as Marcia starts getting stuff ready for shipment. The good news from that arena is that with but two exceptions, our holiday shopping is complete. Now, that may not be good news for area retailers, who were undoubtedly hoping that Marcia would attempt to stimulate a local economic recovery on her own...
OK, the allotted time has passed. I'll check in later with anything interesting. Take care!
1140 - Snippets from my day... Reading the December Dr. Dobbs, Jerry Pournelle gets in on the opening and the closing ceremonies. In the editorial, he's quoted commenting about Julius Schwartz. In the closing piece, Swaine's Flames, Michael writes about Jerry buying a Newton on eBay, and laments of Jerry ever calling him. I begin to wonder about a certain subversive tendency. For instance, it's hard to read about anything in physics these days (or in any days over the last 25 to 30 years or more) that doesn't find a way to mention Richard Feynman at least once. It appears that Dr. Pournelle is gaining that same stature in the computer writings community. What Jerry does may or may not be pertinent to the matter at hand, but slipping in a reference sells content. How... interesting? Hmmm. You know what irks me? Jerry's got a picture in the upper left corner of most of the pages on his site. That's where one often finds logos or other corporate identity marks. A convention of web design is that images in that corner of a web page are links to the home (or index) page of the site. That's not true for the Jerry image. I should mention that to him one of these days.
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Out in the back yard, the patio furnishings are slowly disappearing under a blanket of snow. Although there's a reprieve on at the moment with the heaviest fall predicted for this afternoon, we've already got over 6 inches here. Sally's solution remains the same, snow day or not, it's a good day to take a nap. The good news is that she can navigate the stairs again on her own. I can now take down the baby gate that we've had blocking the way up for the last few weeks. Out front, a couple of kids wandered by with snowboards under their arms, in search of any sort of hill. Pointing the camera up the street shows you how well-covered the Santa Fe is, as well. Hope you're having fun. We are!
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December 06, 2002 - Updates at 0700
Good morning. I'm sorry to say that I have no time left and I haven't even started yet. There's a few pictures in yesterday's midday post, but right now I have to go dust off Marcia's truck, then hit the roads, albeit slowly, myself. There's a bit more snow that fell after I finished shovelling yesterday, but not that much. Wish me luck...
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December 07, 2002 - Updates at 0845
Good morning. It is a pretty, sunny day outside, but still quite cold, so the snow isn't going anyplace soon. And the forecast warns of possible sleet or snow again on Wednesday night next, into Thursday. Maybe I ought to go buy my own snow shovel, eh? The picture at left is the end result of my work on late Thursday evening, clearing snow for our departure to work yesterday morning. I started out in a heavy double coat, and finished in a t-shirt. All possible thanks to the kindly neighbor who lent me his snow shovel. However, my back liked that not at all, and Ibuprofin was my friend yesterday. I'm much better today, thanks.
I had a good day yesterday. I spent it researching and implementing Snort, the packet sniffer. We'll be putting that box in various places in the network and watching for attacks. Their network is heavily segmented with several areas that are firewalled off from the balance of the network, and multiple entry points from the Internet and the WAN. It's quite secure, and there haven't been any problems noted. We're just working at being more proactive. That good day was offset by a one and three quarter hour drive home, slowed severely by the quickly setting ice after sundown. Don't get me wrong, slow is good under icy conditions. But I was greatly amused by the electronic road signs that warned of possible icy conditions on my drive in yesterday, as I was surrounded by snow. Stating the obvious again, are we?
Mike asked me about some other possibilities for LinuxMuse articles yesterday, too. I was apparently too confident in my memory-retention powers to write it down. So if you're looking, Mike, drop me a line with what you are looking for, eh?
Finally, I'm making the effort to re-rip the CD collection into Ogg Vorbis format. Why, you ask? Well, as you recall, the MP3 format is a patented, proprietary format owned by Thomson, subject to license fees both from producers as well as consumers. There are other reasons for moving away from MP3: As a result of the licensing change, which charges even open source decoders, the XMMS project and others have stopped supporting the MP3 codec in their codebase. While it's still available, some distributions, notably Red Hat 8.0, ship with an Ogg-only XMMS version, no MP3 ability. Finally, for a given file size, the Ogg Vorbis format encodes and decodes the music with greater fidelity, according to some tests. My ear isn't necessarily good enough to tell the difference, so I'll reserve judgement there. But I'm re-ripping all my CD's, and dumping the MP3 directory, several gig worth, down the drain.
Ebony is coming to visit Sally for a sleepover. Lee and Jim are leaving her with us overnight while they do something or other. This is also a trial run for January, when I might be taking care of both dogs while many people are travelling, including Marcia, for the sales conference that's upcoming. So I guess I'd better get a little organized. Have a great day!
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December 08, 2002 - Updates at 0821
Good morning. Ebony, our guest dog for the weekend, has been keeping us very close company. He's about 9 years old, and seems to be a black setter. He's good natured and absolutely devout if we have food in our hands. The rest of the time, he minds well, plays a little bit, and is generally good company.
On the CD-ripping front, I'm about one quarter of the way through our collection, and almost through with the C's! Yeah, I know, but Marcia's Bolton and Brooks take up a big chunk of the front end. Just because it's not to my taste doesn't mean I won't rip it for her, neh? Right now I'm in the middle of the Sheryl Crow set. Mmmm. I guess I'll listen to the Tusday Night Music Club, in honor... Much of the balance of my day yesterday was spent working on the Zaurus, experimenting with software and hardware combos to improve it a bit. There are a number of commercial applications available relatively inexpensively from The Kompany.
I must not have slept well, though. I'm groggy yet, and that's usually not the case for me unless I've slept way too long or short. I guess I'll go have some coffee and see what kind of trouble I can rustle up for the day. See you around.
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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.
