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GRAFFITI -- April 07 thru April 13, 2003>> Latest: Sunday, 0810 EDT <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About 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 07, 2003 - Updates at 0711 EDT
Good morning. Among other arrivals in the recent mails, I've gotten my copy of the Prince George's Community College Summer 2003 Catalog. Along with all of the standard courses (which include such things as Beginning Keyboarding and Spanish for Landscape Contractors), there are some real winners:
Our tax dollars at work. Somehow, spending wage-earners' dollars to subsidize classes like that seems to make even less sense than Bob Erlich's plan to legalize one-armed bandits here in Maryland. By the way, that proposal - the centerpiece of his gubenatorial campaign - was gunned down by the Legislative Branch last week or so. Looks to be a pretty good political pissing match gearing up over this one.
Marcia's sideline in embroidery and sewing just bounced up a notch or two... She's now open for business as Marcia's Makings. The site is still morphing a bit - we're going to tune up some graphics for the purpose, but it's live. She's really enjoying this, did I mention?
I grilled for the first time of the season yesterday, and it was delicious New York strip steaks that pleased our eyes and taste buds tremendously. Just in time too, because now it's storming like mad outside, and supposedly snowing a ways north of us, perhaps... no, both north and west of us. Will it sleet or snow here? Who knows, I don't. I guess I'd better get the trash out to the curb, and myself out to work. You have a nicer day than this is likely to be, alright? Go USA!!!
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April 08, 2003 - Updates at 0735
Good morning. I got Sally to give me my summer haircut on Sunday. Well, she participated by watching, anyway, as payback for the haircut I gave her a couple of weeks ago. So what happens? Not just rain, oh no. No snow either, not here. Just sleet. Nearest I can figure out, sleet is rain that has a measurable Rockwell hardness, neh? So that was bouncing off my head when I crossed the parking lots in my travels yesterday.
About email... Yesterday was a good day on our server - only 800 or so rejected outright from a total of nearly 2000. Some significant fraction of the delivered 1200 was marked as spam by Spam Assassin, of course. Over the weekends the reject to accept ratio exceeds 50%, I presume because there's simply less legitimate business email to make up the difference. The good news is that by rejecting at the server, we're doing our bit to keep the spam-related bandwidth wastage down - it's not even crossing the wires to get sorted into the trash in our respective email clients.
As you can see from the timestamp, I'm still running late. My body is sure that this is really still just 0630 or so, and I should be just dragging out of bed a bit ago, instead of showered, dressed and typing like mad in a vain attempt to be coherent. Since I'm not doing so well at that, I guess I"ll let you be, and get myself onto the roads. Today I've got one more Dell workstation and one XP upgrade to install at a customer site (after 2 and 1 each, yesterday), then I'm going to strip down the systems they replace, wiping the drives. So I'd best get to it. Have a great day and Go USA!!!
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April 09, 2003 - Updates at 0729
Hullo. Another ragged early morning for me, in the week following the Daylight Saving Time switch. Well, not so early, but ragged yet. Yesterday completed three days of Windows XP system and upgrade installations at a customer site. While all went well, it ended on a rather frustrating note, about what wasn't done. But what wasn't done wasn't done at the specific direction of the responsible parties. So be it. We'll catch some of those things on the next round of upgrades. Now, a question from Svenson...
From: Jan Swijsen
Subject: Go USA
Date: Wed, 09 Apr 2003 09:56:39 +0200<quote>
Go USA
</quote>You always end with Go USA these days... Why not sheer the UK on for a change?
Regards,
Svenson.Mail at home : sjon (ayut) svenson (doyut) com
Yah, they're helping us out, quite a bit relative to their available resources. And politically it's a huge risk for Blair in his constituency, as well as a challenge for the UK in their "relations" with the EU, which seems to be one generally of tension rather than accommodation. I have been remiss, while berating France and other nations that should know better, to acknowlege the contribution of our British friends. So thanks, chaps! I appreciate that you've joined us with men and material support, at a time when what we do appears to be unpopular among many nations.
As to why I don't cheer them on a daily basis? Well, I live here, not there. I'll leave that to the Brits on the Daynotes list to blow their own horn...
Now I'd best be done here and on into my day. There's a LUG meeting tonight, and another tomorrow - I'm likely to skip tonight's, and just relax a bit. I'm mucking about some more with Red Hat 9 on Gryphon, and continue to be reasonably pleased with its behaviour. Good job, folks. See y'all later, have a great day and Go USA!!!
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April 10, 2003 - Updates at 0915
Good morning. Sorry for the delay, but I rather jumped from bed to shower to car to freeway this morning, in a reasonably successful attempt to get into the traffic before it got really bad. The good news is the drive took me only 50 minutes, when it could have as easily been double that. I'm in Rockville getting ready to update both Sendmail and Samba on a Solaris 8 installation. This is behind the wall, and in a trusted environment, but it's still a very, very good idea to keep up with the Jones' on security matters. Your systems are updated, are they not?
In other news, Red Hat 9 is now the primary boot OS here on Gryphon, at least for a while. I'm working with boot profiles to come to life on the correct network, depending on where I'm working on any given day. That's going... sorta. The jury is still out, primarily because I may be making mistakes in configuration. When I get it working right, I'll pass the word.
I'd best get back to work. Take it low and slow, and Go USA!!!
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April 11, 2003 - Updates at 0650
Sigh. Good morning. No power last night until the wee hours. We slept ... badly, to put it graciously. I had work to do last night and got none of it done, with a very, very busy day ahead. Have a better one than I'm likely to, eh? Go USA!!!
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April 12, 2003 - Updates at 0932
Good morning. That certainly was a week of short updates. But between lots of work, power shortages, Daylight Saving Time, and any other handy excuses, I'll simply beg off. Thanks for bearing with me. There's also been a dearth of publishable mail. I have a couple of writeups to do for friends here and there, a bit of introductory PCB design software tutorial to compose, a Debian system to install, plus yardwork. And that's just for today.
Marcia's got hair, nails, and a day in the Gallery (the Viking Gallery) today, so she's long gone and won't be back until 10 or so. Sally will probably ... um ... nap a lot, just like she did last weekend when Ebony was visiting. As a matter of fact, in the image linked at left, you can see that Sally has even mastered the ancient art of sleeping while appearing to be sitting in a relatively alert position. Unfortunately, she has now been caught. No more getting away with that one!
Now perhaps it is time for a bit of light linkage from the last week or so... Linus weighs in rather decisively on LKML regarding Bitkeeper, but doesn't seem to get the last word in, this round. If you managed to miss the news yesterday, there was an interesting op-ed piece by Eason Jordan in the NY Times yesterday, The News We Kept to Ourselves. I understand that a lot of people don't like what the USA is doing in Iraq. Aside from the threat to us via support for terrorists and WMD development programs, Saddam and his thugs were just plain evil and deserve wiping from the face of the universe.
I just found a fun quote: The desire to own a Porsche 911 greatly outweighs the desire to be kind to your fellow man - Gary Neuman Then there's Independent's Day article culled from Slashdot that talks about how the Indie record labels (the ones that don't treat you, the customer, like a thief) are doing great, thank you very much. Apparently the RIAA's blinders continue to be remarkably effective. Also, this article on The Register brought me to a site called We Love The Iraqi Information Minister, a site that's been taken down hard by extreme linkage,but funnier than hell. Ah-hah! It's now online at http://64.39.15.171/ (new info found in update to original Reg story, woo).
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April 13, 2003 - Updates at 0810
Good morning. Our guest head today is none other than the original rocket man, Dr. Robert H. Goddard. I've dreamt of travelling to space since my earliest days. That explains more than just my affinity for reasonably hard Science Fiction. My head seems to be out there rather than down here, sometimes. In a good way, now, of course, unlike the bad old days when the only way for most of us to reach outer space was through a nasty chemically-enhanced innerspace trip. Been there, done that, and survived to say so. But Robert Goddard didn't live to see his dreams fulfilled, but he worked on them nearly to the day of his death. He built and flew rockets that other respected, reputable scientists said wouldn't work. His hopes, his work have inspired three generations of authors, scientists, dreamers and would-be astronauts throughout much of the world (or at least the Western world, I know not about other places). You can find out more about Dr. Goddard's life and work here, and here, and over here, or hit Google for many more links.
Yesterday, I got several of my desired goals accomplished. Others I just dropped until today. It was pretty out, so I spent some time replacing the plants that I put out a couple of weeks ago. That's right, all my marigolds died in the late snows. So I'm trying again with petunias and some decorative grasses. If you keep your eyes open, you can see Sally lurking in the front doorway, watching me work. Then I toddled on down to Lowes to see what I can see there, just window shopping really. Guess what was out front? Tomatoes!!! Woohooo! I've been waiting for them to appear - I figure that if they're out at the nurseries, then it's safe to plant them. But it might get cold again, neh? So I made use of the old sliding glass door that Fred left laying about.
You remember Fred, don't you? Surely I told you about Fred, the maintenance man who wasn't (or didn't, or couldn't, or just couldn't care, we can't be sure). Anyway, after Fred mangled the house getting the new sliding glass doors in, in back, just before we drove into town, he just left the old ones laying in the back yard. I've been meaning to dispose of them, but now I have a use! They'll be fine toppers for keeping the worst of the direct overhead cold and freezing dew off of my young new tomatoes. I planted a couple of Early Girls, three Better Boys, and three Romas. Of course I'll keep you up to date. I'll bore you to death with garden before the summer's well along, just like I do each year. Thanks for your patience with me.
The Libertarian Party in Maryland (website here) has been dis-credited. Rather, we've lost our legal qualifications for party status under Maryland Election Law. Apparently actually having elected officials currently serving doesn't count as good enough, either. The deal is that there is to be at least 1% of registered voters claiming party affiliation, or poll at least 1% of the total vote (I presume for all offices). There's a petition drive to requalify, but that's likely to take a while. In the meantime, my choices for party are Republican, Democrat, Green or Other. While it's clear in many real senses that I am indeed a member of the genus Other, that doesn't impinge much upon the politics of this day. So perhaps it's time to decide how best to use my primary vote to act as a negative feedback mechanism. That is, which party should I be hobbling by voting for the weaker candidate in the Primaries? I'm not a big fan of the Greens in any sense, but generally I regard them as being of little to no threat (shades of Falling Angels aside). I guess it's time to register as a Democrat. Previously, I have performed this service for the Republican Party. However, there's so little difference between the "serious" candidates/office holders of one party vs. the next that it really doesn't matter which one I choose, I suppose. But it is important to stay involved. An unused franchise is like milk in a glass on the counter during a hot summer afternoon. It starts tasting funny then goes all chunky and... wait. That's the wrong metaphor. Oh, well, good enough, just for the look on your face just now.
Y'all have a good day, okay? For the Coalition forces, it's on to Tikrit (a placename that reminds me deeply of Doug Adams). Go USA!!!
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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 © 1999-2003 Brian P. Bilbrey.