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GRAFFITI -- January 05, 2004 thru January 11, 2004>> 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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January 5, 2004
0715 - Good morning. And here we are in a new year for posting in, with quite a lot to show for it, from last January's perspective. We have a house of our own now (where "our own" == "the bank's, mostly"), and a new canine to keep Sally company. We came through a couple of surgeries for Marcia with flying colours, and Sally survived her stroke with only a remnant quizzical tilt to her head. I am using my new PHP template to generate this Grafitti page, and a cheater for redirection into last year's pages. There is a fresh head shot up at the top of this page, and I have gotten rid of the image links attached to each day's post. Familiarity breeds contempt, or at least blindness. I will occasionally continue to use images and micro-banners (not advertising, mind you) to point you readers at interesting things (at least, things *I* think are interesting), just not week in and week out. But I will still post pictures...
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The dogs are a boon, really...
Meantime, we got the boxes of holiday decorations put up for another 11 months. So Marcia's crafts space is filled out, the shelves I installed put to good use holding all those plastic tubs chock full of hot-melt glue sticks, bits of bark and cinnamon, dried flowers, on and on and on... Meantime, over in the room that will be my woodshop, there is now just some carpet and a couple of 2x4 studs that I will use to mock up the wall that is going up soon. Yeah, that is a early contender for the Thompson Award of Most Boring Picture on the Internet, but it is historical, in that it documents the BEFORE state of that space. More when there is more to report.
I did not get any further, since we slept so late yesterday. And this morning, getting up just after six, was not any treat, let me tell you. Today I have a couple of Windows backup problems to resolve for one client. Then, for an encore, I am moving a bunch of workstations and a server from their staging areas to desks, configuring the network and more. Larry and I may be busy at that most of the day, depending on how prepared the customer is. If it goes really smoothly, then I might be going to pick up a Dell server from a third site, and bringing it back to the shop to turn it into a Linux file, print and mail server. Sounds like a lot of work, eh? Yeah, I think so, too. I had better get to it, then. Have a wonderful day!
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January 6, 2004
0645 - Good morning. An early start today, as I've got to drop by one client site long enough to debug a CD/DVD drive that keeps popping out under Windows XP. It's under Dell's extended warrantee, but it may be more useful to figure it out on my own than go through all the crappy tests that the Tier One techs have in their script. Yes, I've rebooted 400 times. No, there's no new driver, I checked ... ad nauseum projectilus. Then I'm back on the Helix server project at client two. Never a dull moment, as long as you like tech, eh?
Did you despise Lexmark for trying to invoke the DMCA to protect it's printer ink revenue stream? Yeah, so did someone else, so here's what they did with the Lexmark that was. Don Marti of SVLUG and LJ fame suggests that as a good replacement link for anyone mentioning Lexmark anywhere on a website. Heh, Lexmark's marketing folk should love to compete with that meme, if it comes to pass. I'm just doing my little bit, here...
Bill Kendrick, who's done lots of interesting stuff in OSS, including TuxPaint, and a lot of apps for Linux PDAs like the Agenda and the Zaurus, has just had a good "Intro to Open Source" article published, disguised as an article about OpenOffice. Well written, and positive in tone, it's a worthwhile read for someone who doesn't know much about Open Source, but could use a little push over onto the Light Side.
There may have been more in my head to share, last night. But in this weak dawn light, there's precious little left. Time for some coffee and the drive to the first site of the day. Have a good 'un!
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January 7, 2004
0730 - Good morning. Yesterday it snowed for 10 or 20 minutes. It started out like a normal winter's day, mostly clear with a rime of cloud around the northwestern rim of the sky. By lunch time, temperatures had dropped a bit more, and there were more clouds mixed with the anemic sun and sky. Halfway through lunch at a Chevy's, I looked out the window to see snow falling. Not staying, not sticking, but not insignificant all the same. Three hours later, as I left work, it was yet colder still (thanks Tom!!!) and clear as a bell out. WTH? Very weird. And at this moment it's 19° F out. Sweet - the roads may be lovely slippery, eh?
I was leaving early because the tickle at the back of my throat indicated that I might be coming down with an impertinent virus of some kind or another. So off home I hared, into warmth and the pleasant relaxation of doing virtually nothing. I tried reading some of Quicksilver (flash warning), Neal Stephenson's latest. But I barely got through a double dozen pages all evening. I wrapped up with some TheraFlu and hopped in bed shortly past ten. I definitely not feeling better this morning, and that doesn't bode well for the rest of the day. Oddly, I'm often at my best early in the day. Odd, because I'm a night person by nature. Oh, well.
The good news was not having to leap out from the covers at 0600, since this morning's first stop is at an office that opens at 0830, just 15 minutes from home. That makes for an almost decadent leisure to the start of my workday, not that I'm complaining, mind you. I'll pick up that server and go build it into a debian box, providing many services for the client, when I'm done.
Thanks to David Griffin for finding that the Weekday links at the top and bottom of the page didn't work. The links used to point to hard coded "name links" in each page, all lowercase, since by that foolish consistency I could ensure (so far as possible) that I didn't screw up doing page and link work at the wee hours that I usually post at. However, now that the links at each day are dynamically calculated and created by the PHP script that runs this page, the weekday name is coming out Capitalized. Not a bad thing, and since the link to the current post is also auto-generated, that part worked. But clicking on Tues above, for instance, was sending you to #tuesday on this page, while the PHP was generating a #Tuesday link. All fixed now.
Now on with your day, and I'll get on with mine. Take care...
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January 8, 2004
1400 - Howdy. Sorry for the delay. We overslept a bit because the alarm was turned off rather than snoozed, first thing this morning. Then it's been busy, busy, busy for me ever since, right up to my limits (which are pretty low, since I'm still feeling quite ratty). One correspondent attributes that to the new picture above... "It makes you look like a cross between a "Sopranos" cast member and an Auschwitz survivor. It would make anyone sick." Hmmm. Maybe I can get a gig on Survivor with a look like this. Okay, back to the grindstone. See you tomorrow.
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January 9, 2004
1859 - Good evening. Another sleep as late as possible, then bail out at warp seven to get to work type of morning... Only this morning, everyone else was already out playing slip and slide on the icy roads. Lovely. Right now the mercury's at 24 degrees and falling. The liars say single digits tonight, high no more than 20 tomorrow. I'm tired, tired, tired and glad that it's Friday. I hope you are too. By the way, expect minor downtime tomorrow morning around here. On the order of minutes at the most, unless things go horribly wrong. Have a great evening.
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January 10, 2004
0822 - Good morning. It's a bit brisk out. At sunrise, the outside of the house had a reading of 7.5°F. I imaging that a few feet away it'd be a couple of degrees colder. Whew! I've spent time in some warmer walk-in freezers. Today I've got some admin work to do for Marcia's machines and for Rocket. Then I'll think about taking a nap (although I probably won't). I'd better be about it, catch you back here later.
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January 11, 2004
0940 - Good morning. Well, posting again yesterday didn't happen. I spent most of the afternoon fighting with migrating data from one machine to another for Marcia. I finally had success with Netscape, but I'm still battling with her Palm M100 HotSync. Bloody stupid stuff, really. The Netscape thing shouldn't have been the issue it was - I could not for the life of me make Netscape see that Marcia had a pre-existing profile and make use of that. After many fits and starts, I finally setup a new account, then migrated data into the appropriate spots in the directory structure. Buttheads. Today I've got to resolve that, get Norton on the box, and take care of a number of other chores. No working on my woodshop this weekend.
Talk about protein shock... We went to the belated NERDS holiday party last night, to a churrascaria called Green Field, in Rockville. A salad bar to start, then turn the little indicator blocks on the table from red to green and they start bringing meat. I ate enough dead animal last night to feed a small tropical island population for a year. And there was triple chocolate cake to finish it off. I'm still quite full this morning. But there's no use wasting food on a fixed-price eat-until-you-drop schtick - I ate until I dropped. Wooo.
Okay, time to shower, go shopping and get the day rolling. Let's see what kind of trouble I can find.
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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.
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