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GRAFFITI -- May 26 thru June 01, 2003>> Link to the Current Week <<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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May 26, 2003 - Updates at 0734 EST
Howdy. How are you folks doing on this fine Memorial Day Monday? Along with all the fine relaxing that I've tasked myself with, I took a while this day to cast my thoughts back on those who have fought and died for our liberty, patriots all. I salute you!
Today we slept in just a little bit, then breakfasted on muffins and coffee. I puttered about a little bit, doing the smallest bit of cleaning, and threw myself into the major job of the day - finishing up this re-read of Stranger in a Strange Land. A good yarn, and I do prefer this original manuscript version to the shorter, tighter, bowdlerized version that was first published in the 1960's.
Tonight, we'll grill again, and rain be damned! I think we took another two inches overnight, and there've been sporadic showers throughout the day today. Tomorrow, back to work after a few days off, is slated for more of the same. At this point, it just looks to be cloudy - maybe a little light rain - in the days that follow. Sheesh.
I know, no guest head yesterday. I was a tad too relaxed, I guess. I suppose that I could stand to be independently wealthy - at least for a little while. This relaxing stuff is fairly addictive. Of course, I'd be doing more if I didn't want my systems to be reasonably stable, or if I had the Everglades swamp boat I'd need to do any yard work. As it is, chilling out seems to be working quite effectively. I'll pick up the routine again next Sunday, almost certainly.
Now I want to um.... I don't know what I am going to do. But it's not likely to be strenuous, that's for sure. Take it easy!
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May 27, 2003 - Updates at 0657
Yep, note that time... It's back to the daily grind. Man, I sure dislike dragging out of bed early, the first day back after a four day weekend. I've got a busy four days ahead now, too. Two clients need attending to, today. Then one tomorrow, two on Thursday, and one of those again on Friday, most likely. One of the gigs is going to be setting up a Linux-based email server with anti-virus checking. That'll be fun. I wish I had more for you, but at this hour, as sleepy as I am, it probably wouldn't be worth it. Have a great day!
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May 28, 2003 - Updates at 0719
Good morning. Welcome to Tuendnesday, the first middle day of the week. I'm much better off at this hour today than I was yesterday at the same time. But still, it's bloody early! And if you keep up with such things, then you'll note that the cat got out of the bag and was chased around by a bunch of border collies yesterday afternoon - All of the Thompson's were up to visit over the holiday weekend. Bob, Barbara, Kerry, Duncan and Malcolm. I got a nice, contrite email from Malcolm yesterday evening, laying the blame for the whacked screen door where it belongs. That's right, firmly in the paws of Big Biter (that's Duncan, heh).
We had a lovely visit and actually did most of the stuff I described in short posts over the weekend. That is, we did not much except lay about, read, chat, nap, watch a couple of flicks, play a bit of Trivial Pursuit, and eat lots of mad cow flesh. We won't be making a return visit down there until next fall sometime - The fourth of July is likely to be problematic, and we've got a late summer wedding to attend in Michigan. So goes the game.
I ended up at three sites yesterday, and there'll be two today, so I'd best get along. Have a lovely day.
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May 29, 2003 - Updates at 0649
Getting an early start this morning... I've got to get up to Rockville to dive right into a busy day. Yesterday I built an XSLT-aware version of PHP on an intranet server, installed Debian stable on a new Dell server that's destined to be a gigabit router, and several lesser tasks. Today, I want to install some add-in packages for that system, build a new kernel, get netfilter running and start building some sample IPTables rules, although I won't be able to start testing them properly until the interface cards arrive sometime next week.
We're putting in three Intel PRO/1000 MF Dual Port Server Adapter cards (fiber), and one Intel PRO/1000 MT Quad Port Server Adapter card (copper). In place, each fiber run will go out to a Dell 24 port gigabit switch with a fiber connection, then we'll do zone runs with copper from there. I think we have one of the copper ports setup in the current design as well. It'll be a sweet setup when it's done.
Later this morning, we're off to Gaithersburg for a meeting with a client about mail servers, virus protection in the mail server, and the differences between spam, UCE and real opt-in marketting. Should be a lively get-together, methinks. Then it's back down to Rockville to continue the rest of the day at the client there.
Last night, I rebuilt Debian on Gryphon, with ext3 instead of XFS. Additionally, I added prelink to the mix - a program that goes through the system and prelinks executables to library code offsets, making program startups much, much faster. Other than libGL.so.1 being a non-PIC shared library, most of the prelink went pretty smoothly. It's true, everything does start faster with prelink. It was true in Gentoo, and it's true in Debian, too.
I've got issues with SCO, and thoughts about DRM following some conversations with Bob and reading Linus emails to LKML, but time to deal with neither. Perhaps over the weekend, neh? Meantime, you have a great day!
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May 30, 2003 - Updates at 0715
Good morning. Happy anniversary to us. Five years today, I've been married to my lovely Marcia. I've never been happier. Of course, we're both working today, so it's likely simply to be a night to collapse on the couch together and cuddle a bit while watching a movie. Tomorrow we'll go out and do something nice - a museum run or something. Today would have been better, methinks, as the weather's changed from rain to partly cloudy, just for the day (although there's no firm promise in that).
I guess I'd best be moving along... Have a great day where you are, too!
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May 31, 2003 - Updates at 1107
Good morning. My buddy Mike pointed me to a thing called e-Bore, saying that he scored a 60. I went and took the test, then wrote back to him...
I answered honestly and got 40%. But only for a couple of reasons. My grandmothers are dead. I remember the last fax I sent. I only drink coffee, no fancy ones OR tea, so NO was safe there. I don't buy domain names UNTIL I have something to do with them. What IS "First Tuesday"? I've moved beyond single user/password - ssh-agent is my friend - I don't have to have a sane password anymore. So I probably SHOULD have said "YES YES YES" to that one, but technically, the answer is no. So I guess in REAL terms I'm somewhere between 70 and 80 on the e-Bore scale.
Hmmm...
SCO blah blah blah. There's an awful lot of stuff floating around, so I thought I'd try a different tack. Is it just possible that Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Minister of Information, has found a new home advising the stand-up guys at the top of SCO? I mean, say this one out loud to yourself:
There is inappropriate intellectual property in Linux. The development process has no one that is ensuring that inappropriate code is not getting into Linux. All that's there is an honor system, and obviously there are a few, at least, that have broken that honor....
Anything is always a possibility. If you are going to enforce your contracts, claims and intellectual property, you have to be able to go to ultimately the endpoint of infringement.
I can assure you that those villains will recognize, will discover in appropriate time in the future how stupid they are and how they are pretending things which have never taken place.
Yes, that's right, the first two of those are from Chris Sontag's interview with Computerworld. The last is a quote from the master himself, al-Sahaf. But it all sort of hangs together, doesn't it? More and more, though, I'm looking at the mysterious stranger, Darl McBride, a man trapped in the wrong time. The missing 18 minutes of the Watergate tapes are probably of McBride babbling insanely about his rights, no, wrongs, oh whatever. In the current situation, one minute there's no problems with the kernel. The next interview, there is. The issue is IP and Copyright ... no, wait, it's merely contractual. No, it really is copyright, we were just kidding in that last press release. I personally think that if the statements and press releases were read, in strict chronological order, in front of a pre-trial judge, we'd have a summary execution, ahem, I meant judgement in favor of dismissing the whole silly business, and liquidating SCO, funds to be deposited equally between the FSF and the EFF (should anyone actually want to buy the crufty stuff).
For our anniversary dinner last night, we went to a restaurant over in Crofton called the Sly Horse Tavern. It's a nice little rabbit warren of a place, a bit raucus from the golfers coming in from across the way - they were ALL out yesterday, the first sunny day of the month. Marcia had a veal marsala and I had prime rib. We split an apple cobbler with fresh vanilla ice cream for dessert. Lovely place, absolutely excellent food. Recommended!
My apparent late start this morning is due only partly to sleeping in past 0800. Since arising, I've managed to not quite beat the rain, in getting the lawns mowed. The good news there is that the last 10 minutes or so were much cooler as a result of the drenching I received. Now I've got laundry sorted and started, Marcia's due back from an errand shortly, and we're off to do whatever's next on the list. Fare ye well...
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June 01, 2003 - Updates at 1024
Good morning... at least I hope it's good where you are. Sure, we're not dead, so that's good, I suppose. But yesterday we had big winds, a power outage, several periods of torrential rain (totalling up to nearly two inches, and pushing the total rain for May, here in Bowie, up to over 11"), and a lightning storm that lasted better than an hour. Right now, it's supposed to be clearing according to two sites, but we've got dark, dark clouds and heavy winds. The current forecast shows just decreasing rain today, sunny tomorrow, then back to the rains for a four day run. Wow. At least earthquakes are less common here!
And another month rolls by. According to the webstats, we totaled up about 37K page reads, in 14K visits from 8.2K sites. Thanks for spending some of your valuable time here. These numbers aren't a patch on Jerry Pournelle's, of course, but he's been in the game a lot longer and besides, he's got talent, too.
Some of the unique search terms this past month include:
"le conte memorial" Hmm. Am I supposed to remember something? Oh, right, a stone hut in Yosemite.
"birthday probablility problem" What?
"bad line received from identity server" Maybe we are in the Matrix!
"adobe framemaker 7.0 crack download" Repeat after me - this is not a warez or crack site.
"sorry your terminal can't do absolute cursor positioning." So am I, so am I...
"pictures of culam motocross track" Sorry, I've never been there. Wait, have I? No, just "pictures" and "motocross" (as in Madness) matched on a single page.
Gordon Moore is today's guest head. Born in 1929, he took his PhD in Chemistry and Physics from Cal Tech. He started working at Shockley Semiconductor in 1956. The next year, Moore and others left to form Fairchild Semiconductor. It was during this 11 year stint, in 1964 to be more precise, that Moore's Law would be committed to writing for the first time. Four years later, Moore and Bob Noyce left Fairchild to found Intel, where he's worked ever since. First they built memory chips, then the 4004 microprocessor - the first in the single most popular line of CPUs (AMD enthusiasts aside). Now in semi-retirement, Gordon Moore is Chairman Emeritus of Intel. The "law" that bears his name continues to hold sway, bulling right past the bi-annual announcements of its impending demise. Following the trail of Moore through the web leads to many interesting and educational links. Make up your own curriculum here.
I guess it's time to get ready for the Sunday morning errands. Have a lovely day, see you next week! Below, see the results of my taking the BBSpot OS personality Quiz. Sheesh.
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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.
