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GRAFFITI -- September 08 thru September 14, 2003>> Latest: Sunday, 0821 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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September 08, 2003 - Updates at 0800 EST
Good morning. I'm running with a late start today, since my early client visit this morning doesn't actually open their doors until 9 AM. So I whacked the snooze bar a few times, got up around 7, puttered about with the trash and the dog and such, and saw Marcia out the door headed for Annaopolis. She's off to get a blood test done, then she'll come home, have breakfast, and go back to Annapolis for her first appointment with the Ob/Gyn guy since her surgery back in late July. Lucky her.
There's not much to say about Linux at the moment - it's fairly boring when something just works. Last night, Jerry called to ask a couple of questions about things he was putting into the column, then sent out a draft column as a Word-formatted document out for quick review. I opened it using the latest OpenOffice, 1.1 Beta 2 (in Gentoo-speak. I think it's really RC4). Worked like a charm, and Jerry had no difficulties with the edited and saved document back at his end. It's not just boring, it's also good when things just work.
Yesterday's rant about the latest RIAA attack drew some stunning amounts of email... in some other universe. But then, it was a Sunday, and the weather was nice in a lot of places, I hear. I even got out to Home Depot for a minute myself. But most of my day yesterday was spent hunched over a hot keyboard, working on new data layouts for the ETS website.
Now I'd best be moving so that I can be out of the house on-time. See you around.
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September 09, 2003 - Updates at 1823
Well. That day got away from me. I intended to take five minutes for myself when I hit the office this morning, to put up at least a brief post. But events and work conspired against that plan. It was a busy and semi-productive day. I did my darndest to revive a Win98 box that wouldn't talk to the net anymore. Then we evaluated the cost of me rebuilding this box versus the customer buying a new machine. The new machine's the winner, and I'll go back next week to help transfer data, etc. Then I was working on bringing up the first of a group of WinXP-Pro workstations and getting all the updates in place prior to working on the matching server - a big honking dual Xeon Dell box running Window Server 2003. Overkill for the purpose, but we didn't spec the box, and it's lovely all the same.
I've got a few pictures to process, and we'll do some more web-ified house hunting later this evening before going out and looking at some reality this weekend. We're pre-qualified, so I don't see the purpose in paying a penny more rent than we have to, provided the house we are destined for comes along sooner rather than later. Anyway, I'd best go get my supper - the dog's eaten already, Marcia's out, and I'm hungry. See ya!!!
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September 10, 2003 - Updates at 0707
Good morning. Yeah, I have just a few new pictures for you. This first one is from last Saturday. Nothing illustrates so well just how strange this dog really is. Sometimes she just sprawls like yer normal dog to sleep. But often enough that it's one of her preferences, she puts herself in a position where her head and neck are compressed, flattened or creased by a piece of furniture. Then she's out like a light. Very, very weird.
I've been remiss by my own prior standards in publishing pictures of the garden. The sad part is that I just haven't taken as much time to enjoy it this summer as in previous years. It's producing still, and the tomatoes are still doing great, as you can see. But I took out the zucchini last Saturday, since it was failing pretty badly. On the other hand, the summer squash plants are still producing a couple of pieces a week, so one can't complain. The beans were a flop, and something ate my scallions. Odd animal, leaving everything else and eating the onion-y things.
We have a pear tree in the back yard. I've eaten the fruit off of it a couple of times recently, but mostly it's just dropping fruit to the ground as winds and squirrels dictate. Once down out of the tree, the various bugs have a field day. Here we have one of a pair of gorgeous black with blue and orange butterflies who are dedicated to getting a full meal. This one pictured was fighting with the bees for a piece of the action. A few feet over, another was bare knuckles with what appeared to be about half an ant colony on another piece of fruit. And these bugs are single-minded about their supper - I got within just a few inches with the camera to get this and other shots...
When I mucking about in the yard, of course Sally's enthusiastic about coming out to participate. So after a few minutes, I let her out with me. She wandered the yard for a moment or two, then headed over to where I'd been taking pictures. A-HAH! Little flappy colored things to chase, so she did, galomping back and forth across the area and up into the brush a bit, running through the rotting fruit and other fun bits. I do like it when she's having a good time.
Okay, I've run past my allotment. I hope that you have a lovely day - I'm headed into the office to apply updates to windows boxen, and to help write a proposal. Take it easy!
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September 11, 2003 - Updates at ...
Today left intentionally blank in memory of those who were lost.
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September 12, 2003 - Updates at 0659
Good morning. I had just finished writing the first paragraph of the first version of this morning's post, when the box rebooted itself. At first I suspected that Fritz Hollings had decided to try to destroy my computer... but then I remembered that I don't have any Disney-copyrighted materials on this box. So perhaps it was Reichfurher Ashcroft (the man who, you recall, lost an election to a dead guy) who was emphatically objecting to the material I had written. I started off, sanely enough, by realizing yesterday morning that I didn't need to contribute any more verbage to a day that was already full of it.
So I put away the HTML editor and continued with my day. It was a good day, with tasks accomplished and things learned. All to the good. In the evening, I ate supper, sat and watched a bit of the telly with Marcia, and futzed around with the boxen. But when I started writing this post, I had just reached my boiling point with the obscenities and atrocities being perpetrated against the American people by Ashcroft and Ridge, "to protect us". I then made some comment about arming the whole populace, and declaring a general amnesty while the criminal moron element is weeded out in a more dramatic fashion than usual. I closed that paragraph by offering to pink-slip the whole Department of Homeland Security and let the semi-warm bodies made thereby redundant serve as a human shield breakwater for Jamaica in advance of the next Force 5 hurricane.
It was at that point that the box stopped. There's nothing in the log file, no indication of what went wrong. I've had it be the video before, but usually then I'm running something 3D-ish and challenging. Even then, I can usually use OpenSSH to access the box and reboot it from within, instead of having to one-finger salute the front of the tower. Sigh. Perhaps it was a comment on my rhetoric, but I'll never know. Committing suicide is just the wrong way to send a message, whether by human or machine.
Time for a link-fest to clear one or more lists from my mail client and bookmarks file... First up is a pointer to David Wheeler's paper on evaluating Open Source and Free Software programs. Well written and worth saving for the rainy day when you decide to pitch Linux to the PHB in your life. The other day, Don Armstrong wrote to say...
Brian, I was just chuntering through those "saved for future reading" files, and I came across the following. Now, I would certainly have got it via some daynoter's postings, possibly even yours, but just in case you haven't seen it or remembered it, I thought it would be the sort of thing you'd be interested in - I sure was, when I DID get to it one and a half years late.
http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2002/04/rauch.htmP.S. Best wishes with the land hunting. Remember the land is more important than the dwelling - you can always build or expand a dwelling, but it's an awfully hard trick to manage with land.
Best wishes,
Don Armstrong.
I thanked him for the thoughts and the link, noting that while I don't recall seeing that article on The Atlantic before, that piece, entitled Seeing Around Corners, is one I would have recommended on these pages had I seen it then, as I am now. It's about building and simulating societies on computers - using something a couple of notches more sophisticated then the Sim's Hot Date Night module to determine plausible scenarios for such events as the disappearance of the Long House Valley Anasazi. A good read, and I'm pleased to see that The Atlantic hasn't put such content behind a pay-wall. I subscribe to the dead-trees edition, too, there's good stuff there.
Trudy sent a link to a Flash thingy called Clinger. Now, I don't have Flash on this box, so I don't actually know what I'm sending you into, but knowing Trudy, it's neither unbearably offensive nor too naughty. But I make no promises. Please let me know.... Then Jack complemented that sending with a collection of Computer Haiku:
Computer Haikus ------------------------------------------- The Web site you seek cannot be located, but countless more exist. -------------------------------------------- Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return. ----------------------------------------------- Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You ask far too much. ------------------------------------------------ Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams. -------------------------------------------------- Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that. -------------------------------------------------- Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But, now it is gone. ------------------------------------------- Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down. -------------------------------------------------- A crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone. -------------------------------------------------- Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred. -------------------------------------------------- You step in the stream, but the water has moved on. This page is not here. -------------------------------------------------- Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, but we never will. ------------------------------------------------ Having been erased, the document you're seeking must now be retyped. -------------------------------------------------- Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank.
Hours of fun, I tell you. Next up, reader Alberto Lopez sent to myself and some other Daynoters a plea to post the plight of Adrian Lamo. If you haven't seen or heard this story, here's the drill. Lamo, 22, supposedly a fairly light-colored hat-wearing kind of hacker, has had the rep of a guy who breaks into systems and networks uninvited, then tells the afflicted party and helps to secure the site (I should imagine for some kind of fee or another). Now, recently our little hacker buddy apparently bit off more than he could chew when he whacked the New York Times. Instead of welcoming his revelations and assistance with open arms, they've filed charges and he's been arrested. Now, according to several sources, he'd not just broken in. He stands accused of creating user accounts and using them to access LexusNexus to the tune of $300K, as well as digging into proprietary and privileged data about employees and customers of the Times, and modifying the Op-Ed database. Now, it strikes me one way if someone comes up to my house, defeats the locks and then offers to sell me a better lock. But if that person defeats the locks, prowls the house trying on the wife's underwear, taking a jello bath and having carnal relations with the dog, I'd be ready to put him in a body bag and ask questions later. Clearly the Times feels the same way about it, and just maybe they're ready to have Jayson Blair come back to build a good "true" story on Lamo for them. But if you're of a mind to support Adrian Lamo, then you'll want to start with the Free Lamo site.
I'll close with a site reference from reader David Thorarinsson, who sent me a couple of links from this tree. In particular, this image about Bag End and this one about a Google search on French Military Victories. There are 238 images in that collection, and at least one or two are not work-safe, but they're ALL funny, I think (but then, I'm warped, aren't I?)
Okay, enough already, except for one item... Congrats to John Dominik, who's intestinal fortitude for the oddball economy that he's been suffering through has been admirable... but the good news in less syllables is that he's got an employer again! Way to go, John! Now, I'm going to be late as it is - I like to try to beat the school buses out on the road - it makes the drive up to Gaithersburg much shorter if I can get out of town before the buses are about. I'll rant on that another day. See ya!
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September 13, 2003 - Updates at 0809
Good morning. Today is the first day of proper house hunting, as opposed to that virtual web stuff. The good thing about virtuality is that we can look at features of lots of properties, and think about our uses and space requirements (and space likes/wants), and practice that sort of critical thinking on lots of properties before getting out into the world. Wish us luck. See ya!
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September 14, 2003 - Updates at 0821
Good morning. The house hunting went well yesterday. We saw about 8 properties - one that was near-perfect (but right at the top of our affordable range), two that were real dogs (as in, "Eeewwww, let's take a shower after visiting that place."), and the rest in between. Marcia and I are in agreement on a couple of things - just because the bank says we can afford a specific loan amount doesn't mean we have to toe that line. Secondly, even though we have an aging dog, we can't buy the property with her in mind - it's going to be our house long after Sally chases the blonde chicks into doggy Valhalla.
Of the five houses we could both stomach and afford, two are really contenders. Both would suit our needs today, but have room for improvement down the road, primarily in the kitchen. They both have unimproved basements that I could partition as I want. So we're resting on those, and waiting for some more choices to come up. Beyond that, there's not much to report. Since it was raining, we were able to eliminate a couple of properties just based upon how the property handled water - pooled near the foundation is a bad thing.
Today is shopping day, then Marcia's headed up to the Viking Gallery for service on her Designer 1, and I've got some web work to do. I hope that your day is good, too. Take it easy...
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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.
