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GRAFFITI -- October 06 thru October 12, 2003>> Latest: Sunday, 0900 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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October 06, 2003 - Updates at 0654 EST
Good morning. Well, good in the sense that I'm alive to breathe, another day. I'm still married today to the most wonderful girl in my world, and we have a dog who... let's face it, can take a nap right up there with the best of them (although at right, she's faking a bit, but she's on one of her favorite napping pillow thrones). So, good morning.
You may recall the front walk of this house was broken up and then badly redone by some young fellow that the landlady hired. Well, he took his money and took a flyer after getting the concrete in place. When Marcia was talking with the landlady about things related to our giving notice, late last week, it came up that she (the owner) hadn't seen the kid, and would get someone else out to pull the rest of the forms and fill in the remaining trenches, someday. Well, it just plain wasn't safe as it was, so I took shovel and hammer up yesterday afternoon and went to work. You can see the results at left. I've filled and reseeded on the right, filled and mulched on the left. Our payout? The owner will cut our check for the deposit return on walkthough day, instead of waiting the normal thirty days. That's a good thing.
The downside is that I'm sore. Well, another sign of life, anyway. Today I've got a three part gig, starting at the office, then off to a customer site to rebuild a box I built last week. No, really, I do a fine job, but the hard drive in this brand new Dell system committted suicide on the final reboot after installing all the updates, software, etc. Sigh. I was on the horn to Dell within a couple of minutes - they had a replacement drive there the next day. But today's my first shot at getting out there again. Then I'm back to the office to help build another server for an internal application.
Brian Cheesman asked the other day about Shawn Wallbridge... Shawn wrote to check in shortly after reading my page that day. He's fine, just busy as can be over at Frantic Films, his day gig, and a nice one at that. Shawn's been thinking about re-visiting the concept of posting again, and when he does, he'll do it on Wallbridge.net, which is just an image placeholder at the moment. But he'll let us know when he's ready for rock and roll again, and I'll pass the word. Note to self - rattle Tom's cage about his site, and about posting again. He's whetted my appetite with snippets about the interesting things he's been doing with Linux recently, and he might even be able to write about some of them in public.
Now I should be going - It's a long day ahead, and more packing tonight, no doubt. Have a great day!
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October 07, 2003 - Updates at 0625
Hullo. It's even earlier than yesterday, and the good thing about that is that I've less time to make mistakes. Unlike yesterday, when I put Frantic Films in as both the name AND the URL, which seriously doesn't work. Props to Richard Micko for catching that one and mailing me. Then, someone going by the name of Administrator wanted to know what happened to Daynotes.com. It expired on the same day as Syroidmanor.com, and Tom's supposed to be taking care of that Real Soon Now (tm JEP). In the meantime, there's always Daynotes.org to tide you over... There's two questions that come up when people hit the .org site. First, what's with the blank entry. Well, Bob Thompson asked to be removed from the list, and anyone with enough firepower to take on Santa can just write his own ticket 'round these parts. I leave the spot blank as a scar, because I disagreed with his reasoning, but took the link out because I respect his wishes. And Tom's still on the Actively Writing side of the ledger because I haven't edited that page in a long time, and I keep hoping he'll jump back in the fray.
I've got another three stop day in front of me, and that doesn't count the post office and the ATM this morning - I really should be gone already, so I'm going. See you around.
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October 08, 2003 - Updates at 0713
Good morning. Yesterday in the late afternoon, as Sally and I were waiting for Marcia to get home, we spotted a Praying Mantis of some variant (there are about 1800 species in this group). Well, I say We spotted it, when Sally may have noticed a particularly twiggy-looking leave on the siding by the front door...
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I gently convinced the mantis to step onto the broom bristles where I could bring her over into the light for better pictures. I used the end of the lanyard from the camera to initiate an attack from the mantis. Now, while I titled the middle bottom picture "Why can't we all just be friends?", I gave it a second, then a third look. Then I thought, what would it be like if Kermit the Frog had starred in the remake of The Fly, instead of Jeff Goldblum? It works for me. If you asked, "What titles?" Well, hover your mouse over each thumbnail - you should get a title for the image in question. If not, let me know what browser you're using, maybe we can learn something new...
The Arrow rocks. Yesterday, on my way from site to site, I called in immediately following an "appearance" by Rob Becker. You know, the guy who does the stage show Defending the Caveman? Yah, that one, longest running solo show on Broadway, yadda yadda yadda. Anyway, to make a short story longer, I won tickets from the radio station for Marcia and I to see Becker perform Caveman on the final tour of the show (with Becker, anyway) at the Warner Theatre later this week. Woo hoo!
Today I'm off to Falls Church for a while, then up to Gaithersburg thereafter. There's a heavy fog out there right now, and that's actually quite a bit of road work, so I'd best be on my way in a few minutes. Have a lovely day.
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October 09, 2003 - Updates at 0700
Good morning. I was off in my calculations of what part of the week I was in. Some serious part of me still believes this is Friday right now. But anyway, Defending the Caveman last night was a hoot. Funny, funny show. Still touring around with Rob Becker for the next several months (including Sacramento right after Christmas, all you folks out that way), so go to see it. While free tickets are great, the best seats in the show here were just $50, so I imagine that it's fairly affordable everywhere.
Now, I'm still tired, and I've got to get going, so have a great day!
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October 10, 2003 - Updates at 0714
Good morning. Tom's site is back up (but no new post yet), and so is Daynotes.com. It's Friday, and I'm too tired to be very happy about it. Ask me later... see ya!
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October 11, 2003 - Updates at 0800
Good morning... for some of us, at least. Sally's not feeling too perky today, nor yesterday. She threw up a couple of times, and wouldn't really take much food. Finally this morning she's eaten some dry kibble and taken more water. Hopefully her tummy's settling again, but we'll keep a close eye on her. We've got a busy weekend of cleaning and packing planned, as we have houseguests and a move coming up. That's the other part that I'm sure is disturbing Sally - she knows something's up with all the stacks of boxes going up around the house. She doesn't really know what it means, but she doesn't like it, and she's been pretty mopey as a result. We observed this behaviour last year in the build-up to moving here from California. All we can do is verbally reassure Sally that this pile of boxes does not mean a 6 day car trip.
Places to wish you were. O'Reilly's Foo Camp sounds like one of those. Foo Camp? It's an invitational camp-out in the building and on the grounds of the ORA campus in Sebastapol, California. There's some fun people turning up there, and a lot of it is going to show up on that Wiki, it appears.
I'd best be about my chores. I'll start things updating on Goldfinger here, so the machine stays as busy as I will. Have a great day.
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October 12, 2003 - Updates at 0900
Good morning. From yesterday's marathon cleaning session, the upstairs is vacuumed, all four bathrooms sparkle, and I re-caulked the master bath shower. I'm cleaning better than I would for moving out, but we do have guests coming in later this week. Plus, this way, I'll be able to just swipe a damp rag in a few spots and things will be in shape for the move-out inspection. All I've got left to do today is downstairs vacuuming, and the kitchen floor. That shouldn't be too hard, except for the lethargy induced by all of yesterday's efforts.
Over on Bugtraq, the MS RPC DCOM problem reports came roaring back to life. I saw it late yesterday morning, as Roland was sending to Bob, and Bob was sending to subscribers. So, here's the important part of the message:
as confirmed by 3APA3A and security labs, it seems that the public exploit *works* even if the patch MS03-039 is *installed*
This is a highly critical vulnerability - users MUST block vulnerable ports !
Bleah. The affected ports are TCP 135, 139, 445, 593 and UDP ports 135, 137, 138, 445. Those should be firewalled off in- and out-bound at the edges of your network. Use the XP internet firewall if nothing else, but a hardware gateway/router that costs less than $100 for home or small office will provide an awful lot of peace of mind. For dialiup systems, you need to use a personal firewall product, or a firewalling dialup server (which is considerably more expensive).
Other events on tap for today include the weekly shopping runs, some packing of books, and maybe even a nap. I'm still pretty tired. The good news is that tomorrow is a Federal holiday, and since I was made an official full-time NERD this last month, I get the day off as a paid holiday. Yay, me. Now to go have some coffee and get ready for shopping. Later, dudes and dudettes.
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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.
