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GRAFFITI -- March 15, 2004 thru March 21, 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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March 15, 2004
0816 - Good morning. A later start than usual this morning. I'm high on hours for the pay period, so really don't have to be rushing about until a planned 1000 arrival at a customer site south of here. First up, here's Richard's latest missive (following up on my answer from Saturday). I've got my responses this morning interspersed below, in bold...
From: "Richard"
Subject: RE: Request for info/Pick your brain
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 2004 00:18:30 -0500Brian:
Thanks for your reply and to Bob for his (I'm assuming it's Mr. Thompson, based on his precise comments about "dual home"). At first I couldn't understand the confusion about dual-homing until I re-read my original email. I neglected to clearly describe or explain that winproxy was running on a separate XP Pro box which had the two NICs, hence my comment to "dual-home" the server. (I will now avoid stating that the XP box was dual-homed, since after googling I discovered that dual-homing may either define a host with two networks/nics versus a network with two connections to the internet. thanks, bob)
Not Bob Thompson - I wouldn't redact *his* last name, and I would have linked his site (like this). But he's a tad busy with the latest book to use brain power on other projects just now, methinks.
For the goofball record the current config is:
internet | winproxy on xp pro desktop | 10/100 8-port hub ----- 10baseT 8-port/10base2 1port hub | | | W2003Server Celeron-XP Pro's more Celeron-XP Pro's & 2 Win98s | multi-function copier/printer workgroup sharedI'm really fond of the 10baset&2 hub. It's vintage/classic. I'm happy that most of the stuff is XP. I'm not thrilled that all of the stuff is the best gray-market has to offer. Save $100.00 in hardware and $1000.00 of lost productivity due to flakiness.
For a counter example, Dell isn't always best in hardware, but I've had very good success with them, and I always buy the next day onsite 3 year warrantee, in the Optiplex line, which is more stable by far. That gets me parts (if I'm up to doing the work) or a tech to do the big jobs or if I'm busy. Saves the customer oodles of time and productivity.
A big thank you to suggesting remote desktop sharing. Very clever, elegant, and easier-to-support! I wouldn't have thought of that all by myself. I'm going to investigate sonic and watchguard. I'm not comfortable using a consumer dlink/linksys/netgear product in this environment. I don't have a good reason for that other than "I'm not comfortable with it". For my soho customers I don't have reservations, but I need to get this customer away from the cycle-the-power to fix things procedure.
If there are remote access issues, I want a VPN (or clients that are already comfortable with SSH, and if that's the case, they rarely need me). If I must have VPN, I want a product with more guts and more company behind it, to keep an eye on vulnerabilities and such. That puts me in WatchGuard / Sonicwall/ Cisco territory (in ascending cost order).
Originally I was thinking internet - firewall - W2003Server - hub - clients, but I need to mull over your config. It's also clever and elegant. In your config how do you configure internet access? Do you setup the clients to dns from the server and gateway thru the firewall? Or do you have it all go through the firewall?
You haven't said explicitly (except at the printer description, where you call it a WorkGroup), but this must be a Domain, not a peer network, right? Okay, then the server really does need to be the first DNS entry for each host. Yes, DNS from the server, gateway points to the firewall. Works like a champ.
Do you have a comment re: mcafee vs. norton? I've usually found them potatoe/potahtoe but it seems others have strong opinions on them.
Yes, I said. Symantec == Norton. Read near the bottom [in the original reply].
Again, thank you for your help and courtesy,
De nada, glad to be of assistance. It also lets me document some of my reasons behind the choices I make for clients here.
rich
Well, it was a reasonably busy weekend. For fun, on Saturday, I installed FreeBSD in VMware 4.0 Workstation. It took finding a magic phrase in the forums there to get it to install, though... First create the virtual machine, then close it. Navigate to the directory where the VM's files are kept (mine is ~/vmware/freebsd/), and edit freeBSD.vmx (or the equivalents, depending if you took the default for the VM name or not). Add the following line:
monitor_control.disable_apic="TRUE"
This Worked For Me (tm), at least with the latest release of FreeBSD, 5.2.1. With that installed, I started mucking about with Ports a bit (the source package manager that gave birth in Daniel Robbins' head to Portage, the pm for Gentoo Linux). Then I put that sideline down, and got my grubbies on.
I went out to the garden and briefly mourned last weekend's pea plantings, all dead. Who knew. But there is more seed in the ground there, and as temperatures warm, the peas will spring forth with renewed vigour, right? Right! So I finished turning the rest of the soil in the garden into two more rows, and four mounds (for squash and pumpkins). Then I stretched and staked the final two weeper hoses. Once inside, I got tomatos, green peppers and a couple of herbs started in trays down in the basement for planting in three weeks or so. That finished me for the day. Marcia and I watched parts one and two of "The Five Red Herrings" that evening.
I slept 'til past 10 Sunday morn. We got out, did the shopping and back by around 1230. The rest of the afternoon was spent upgrading, reconfiguring, tweaking and testing a Postfix and SpamAssassin installation remotely at a client site. I had authentication issues there that had me stumped for an hour or so. Upgrade vs. old configuration incompatibilities, but obscure, obscure. That lead into early evening and I was done in once again. As I briefly noted last night (there was no other post on Sunday), we finished up that Wimsey series.
Here we are, all caught up to today. I'm unused to still sitting in this chair past, oh, say 0730 at the latest, on a school day. Weird. And it's Monday, too. Oh, well. Have a great day!
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March 16, 2004
0623 - Good morning. Winter is almost back, but the bands of sleet and snow ended up well north of here, instead of here, as might have been. Larry and I spent much of the day yesterday finishing up an installation of new machines and network at a client site in preparation for a vertical application software team to come in and work their install magic later this week. It's been complicated because of bringing new machines online, and blending some older machines in the mix where they might still serve a useful purpose. But it all works, in the end.
Today I'm making an early start, getting up to Gaithersburg to work there for the day, but finish up a little early. Sally's got a doctor's appointment in the late afternoon, and I want to be there. We're waiting for the results from some tests the Doc ran last week... more when we know more. Now I should go, so you have a lovely day, right?
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March 17, 2004
0712 - Good morning. Let's start with some linkage this morning. From the SVLUG list, Tim U. picked up a script he wrote a while ago and added a bunch of new ideas to it. split-dir is a tool to make copies of directory trees, split into a size ready to use mkisofs(8) (or your GUI burning tool of choice in Linux) to build an image file. This is better than making a tarball of the whole thing and splitting it, because then files can be broken across the boundary, and lose one disc, lose the whole backup. By default, splitdir makes numbered destination directories for the contents of the top level specified directory, then fills it with hardlinks to the files thereunder close to but not over the specified size limit. Then it proceeds to the next "copy". Oh, just play with it yourself. I just used it the other night to split my 48 G home directory into DVD+RW sized chunks. With hard links, it doesn't use hardly any space at all.
Next is a security tool article, the Chkrootkit-Portsentry-Howto. Both Chkrootkit and the Sentry tools (portsentry and logcheck) are very useful tools and this short article helps you put them together into a usefully protective suite.
Last, the new Debian installer needs testing. I saw ... um, someplace ... that Joey Hess had promoted it, talking about new features like automatic partitioning, LVM support, Grub and much more. Let me find the actual announcement. Oh, okay, it's right here, linked off the page above. I'll be checking it out in the days to come - Debian rocks, but has needed a better installer for some time now.
In the last plus one position, ESR has put out a new article following up on his original UI rant of a couple of weeks ago. Well worth reading, good comments that follow the article itself, which concludes with this:
It's been twenty years since the GNU Manifesto and nearly seven since The Cathedral and the Bazaar. I think it's time we stopped congratulating ourselves quite so much on our dedication to freedom and our ability to write technically superior code, and began more often to ask What are we doing to serve the real users? Good UI design, and doing the right thing by Aunt Tillie, ought to be a matter of gut-level pride of craftsmanship.
But if that's too abstract and idealistic for you, think of this. No matter how skilled you are, there are many times when you will be the end user. By learning to demand good UI from others, the time and sanity you save will ultimately be your own.
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March 18, 2004
2003 - Wow! That day got the better of me. I got up a little late, around 0630, and that threw me off to begin with. Following that, nothing about the day went as planned, although progress was made on a couple of fronts. There's so much to do and so little time... I suppose, in a warped way, it's better that winter came back for another little visit, otherwise I'd be whacked in the garden, to boot. Anyway, I'm going to have dinner shortly, and watch CSI perhaps, and give Sally some attention because she's still feeling pretty poorly. She's not wanting any food, really, and that's not a good sign. Anyhoo, see you around. I might even have time soon to think about important things. I know, not bloody likely. Take it easy!
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March 19, 2004
2223 - A rotten, confusing day. Sally hasn't eaten really since a little bit on Tuesday. She lost her supper on Monday and hasn't wanted food at all since Tuesday night when she had a bit of her kibble and that's all. I've been force-feeding her pills, and tricking her into a couple of cookies so the antibiotics won't be riding on an empty stomach. But she's been fading away all week, and seems to have clearly made her own decision. Marcia and I figured that we'd be taking her on that last trip to the vet tomorrow morning...
Lee and Jim brought Ebony over for a goodbye visit. Sally perked up a little bit, and right now is better than she's been in over a week, attention and energy-wise. But no food and precious little water. And we're not going to hospitalize this old girl to squeeze out a few more weeks of time with her. We'll still see the vet tomorrow, and see where the conversation and evaluation takes us. These last two weeks have been hard on all of us.
Thanks for bearing with me. More news later on Saturday, as events and time warrant.
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March 20, 2004
16:23 - On December 8, 2001, Marcia and I went out to meet a little dog up for adoption. She was named Sally and belonged to a couple of women moving to a retirement community where dogs weren't allowed. We found Sally's picture on the web at Furry Friends a couple of days before, called and learned she'd be at a nearby adoption event on Saturday. We got there and waited ... and waited. Finally Sally came down between the stacks of dogfood to the back of the store, Marcia got down on the floor, started hugging her, and wouldn't let go.
A few minutes later the woman running the event wandered over and asked me how *I* liked the dog. I said, "She seems well behaved, but I haven't been able to get near her, Marcia won't give her up!" I chuckled and indicated that was alright, it was clear that this dog was a delight. We couldn't take her home, but Marcia moved heaven and earth to get all the hurdles cleared. By late the following morning, we were driving back up from Gilroy with our new, old dog. Sally sure wasn't six, but she had the sweetest temperament of any dog I've ever met (including Kerry Thompson, although he was a close second). The rest of the story you can find here on these pages, on Marcia's site, and in pictures on Sally's very own page.
Today we said goodbye to Sally. After a couple of last tests to be sure that we weren't seeing fixable problems (we weren't) and a talk about it with the vet, he gave her the sedative. Then they left us to hold Sally while she went to sleep for the last time. We love her very much, and had to let her go - the bad days were far outnumbering the good and it was time for her to go where all the dogs are fast, and all the bunnies and squirrels fat and slow. And it's heartbreaking ... heartbreaking, even though she only had us for a little more than a couple of years.
This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. You'll have to excuse me. I imagine your day is better than mine, so please continue in that vein. I'll rejoin you here shortly.
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March 21, 2004
0915 Jon Hassell forwarded this message, which I liked a lot...
Ten Commandments for Pet Owners 1. My life is likely to last 10 to 15 years. Any separation from you will be very painful. 2. Give me time to understand what you want from me. Do not break my spirit with your temper, though I will always forgive you. Your patience and understanding will teach me more quickly those things you want me to learn. 3. Have me spayed or neutered. 4. Treat me kindly, my beloved friend, for no heart in all the world is more grateful for your kindness than mine. Don't be angry with me for long, and don't lock me up as punishment. After all, you have your job, your friends, your entertainment. I have only you. 5. Speak to me often. Even if I don't understand all your words, I understand your voice when it's speaking to me. Your voice is the sweetest sound I ever hear, as you must know by my enthusiastic excitement when your footsteps fall upon my waiting ear. 6. Please take me inside when it's cold and wet. I'm a domestic animal and am no longer accustomed to the bitter elements. I ask for little more than your gentle hands petting me. Keep my bowl filled with clean water; I cannot tell you when I'm thirsty. Feed me good food so that I may stay well, to romp and play and do your bidding, to be by your side, and stand ready, willing and able to share with you my life, for that is what I live for. However you treat me, I'll never forget it. 7. Don't hit me. Remember, I have teeth that could easily crush the bones in you hand, but I choose not to bite you. 8. Before you scold me for being lazy or uncooperative, ask yourself if something might be bothering me. Perhaps I am not getting the right food, I've been out in the sun too long, or my heart may be getting old and weak. 9. Take care of me when I get old. You will grow old too. 10. When I am very old, when I no longer enjoy good health, please do not make heroic efforts to keep me going. I am not having fun. Just see to it that my trusting life is taken gently. And be with me on that difficult journey when it is time to say goodbye. Never say, "I can't bear to watch". Everything is easier for me when you are there. I will leave this earth knowing with my last breath that my fate was always safest in your hands. I love you.
Our thanks to all those who have sent us their condolences and kind thoughts by email or any other method (including beamed thought rays, eh?). I may be back later today. TTFN.
1238 - Jon Barrett sent us a link to Rainbow Bridge. Thanks, Jon.
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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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