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GRAFFITI -- September 27, 2004 thru October 03, 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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September 27, 2004
1916 - Good evening. It's the end of September. Work in the yards is winding down. The number of daylight hours is dropping rapidly, too, with the greatest delta-V (as it were) happening on the equinox, five days ago. It's funny to me, because a weather-liar said last week that the days were going to start getting shorter now. Ahem, dude, they STARTED getting shorter the moment Summer started, back in June. Sheesh. I guess he only gets paid the big bucks because he's prettier than I am, and is able to lie about the weather with a straight face. Speaking of weather, our friends down in Florida are bailing out from their fourth hurricane of the season. Something there just isn't fair, eh? There haven't been four hurricane strikes in a single state since sometime in the 1800's - that was a much less populated Texas, by comparison with today's Florida!
I'm continuing to muck around with OpenBSD on the side. It's light, a full install (mostly because I'm unsure of what to safely leave out, yet) is tiny!
-bash-2.05b# cd /; du -sh
355M .
I've also added Bash, because that's the shell I'm most comfortable with. I'm given to understand that ksh would probably suit me fine, as well. After all, I'm spoiled by tab-completion on the command line. But again, that matters little, since I'm not a shell god, just learning enough to get by each time. But I remember each lesson, and generalize acceptably, so I make my way pretty well.
I've more man pages to read, and a bit of PF (Packet Filter) to bone up on. So I'd better be about it.... huh? Oh, the arm, shoulder and back? Well ... they, um, are. Certainly are, I can say with some assurance. You're confused? Me, too. Have a good evening.
Side note - Last week at this Bat Time and this Bat Channel, I sent you back 5 years. I can't do that today. This week is the five year anniversary of the lost week. Marcia and I went on a camping trip. I wrote a set of daily posts, and scripts to put them up for me. The cron job ran the script to post the update, then backed up the update over my next post, 7 days in a row. So I lost a week's worth of posts automatically. At least the losing was effortless on my part! More time-warpage next week, right here.
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September 28, 2004
2218 - Good evening. Some days go just the way you planned them, others offer opportunities, still others present surprise treats. Today was a touch of all three. I had a moderately successful day at work, helping to solve a annoying problem getting data out into its appropriate venue without display problems. This was another electronic sign problem, and the fundamental difficulty turned out to be one of clock skew, combined with a persistent belief on someone's part that ALL of the data they were sending was actually going out on the wire. Running snoop from one of the target machines told the real tale: The data was going out, but the formatting/display interval commands weren't, even though the source program "sent" both without complaint. Sigh. We ended up fixing the problem in middleware, rewriting a perl sockets and data massaging program to send the right commands on down the food chain.
After some further adventures that will have to wait for another time to tell, and a slippery, wet ride home in the rains dropping from Jeanne's last gasp, I got home in time to see the first two episodes of the Nova series, Origins, on one of the local PBS stations, WETA. Parts three and four of that are on tomorrow evening. The first bits included interviews with a couple of people I'd met at the Contact conference back in 2002, including Penny Boston. They mentioned the "life raining down on Earth with the comets" (aka Panspermia) theory, too, but didn't see fit to mention Bob Zubrin in that context.
Tomorrow I'll be at NERDS, working on a variety of projects. I'll catch you after that's done. Have a great evening.
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September 29, 2004
1803 - Good evening.The Star Wars Trilogy on DVD appears to have RCE (Region Coding Enhanced) "features"on the disks. What this means is a number of things. First off, it won't play on region-unlocked or auto-region players. Second, and more importantly from my perspective, I can't play it with Xine under Linux. So if you want to watch the Star Wars Trilogy on your Linux box, don't waste your money supporting the creator of Jar Jar Binks in his complicity with the movie industry's war on their customers. I'm not telling you to wait for the BitTorrent downloads. Oh, no, that would be illegal. You'll have to tell yourself something like that. And do keep an eye out for discs marked RCE - don't support this practice.
Oh, and thank your congresscritter for using his precious votes to support laws that keep people from using their rightfully owned products.
WHY DO I BUY MOVIES THAT I AM NOT ALLOWED TO WATCH???
BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASTARDS!!!
2314 - I guess Lucy's Indian name is FaceBiter. When the wrong combination of pain and being held combine in that asinine little body, somebody's face is going to suffer. Tonight it was me again - this time I took five stitches in my lower lip for my pains. Dog peed on the carpets TWICE today, and one bit me. I'm starting to think burrito fixin's.
So no, I didn't see the rest of Origins, more's the pity. Nor did I get much of anything else done. But I'm having fun. Aren't I? I'm due for some good news, I must be. Unfortunately, that's not happening tonight.
Mike Barkman, R.I.P. His battle with Cancer ended last night at around 9 PM, New Zealand time. We got the word this evening from his son, Ross. He's good bloke and his balanced sense of right, light, and humor will be missed by us Daynoter's and many a reader. Hasta la vista, chum.
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September 30, 2004
2033 - Good evening. It feels like I've been up since yesterday morning. In a sense, I have... we got back from the emergency room about 11, I was ready to try to sleep by around midnight. The lip with five stitches in it didn't help, nor did the washout from the adrenalin rush, and finally, FaceBiter (the dog formerly known as Lucy) decided to practice her repertoire of snoring - a whole concertina's worth. So by morning, while I'd been laying down the whole time, I had slept little. Marcia was up and out early, at the office by 7 AM for end of quarter. At about 0800, I got out of bed and tried to evaluate the situation. I certainly wasn't going to have a productive day and I felt like crap. So I emailed in sick, filled out the timecard and checked things over from the last couple of weeks, since that data needs to be entered into the accounting tomorrow. Then I went back to bed and tossed and turned in the gray zone between sleep and waking.
At around 1400, the phone rang. I couldn't be bothered. It rang again moments later. Ooops, it might be Marcia, or ???, so I leap out of bed, land with an ungainly thud, and make it to the phone before the answering machine kicks in. Not Marcia. It was Lawn Doctor, the service I've retained (upon several positive personal recommendations), wanting to come over today to do seeding and core aeration. I didn't expect them this week, but the timing was right. I was able to calm the dogs while these guys did stuff in their yard. Just before they arrived, Marcia did call, to see how I was doing. Yeah, I'd missed breakfast and lunch, perhaps I should attempt some food, so I did.
An hour later, everything was winding down, and I was thinking it was time to lay down again when the email rang. (Well, "beeped". I've got a RoadRunner WAV file I use for inbound notification.) It had been an oddly quiet e-day, and luck clearly hadn't been going my way these last few days. The email was from the CFO and the VP of Engineering for a local security firm I'd talked to on a lark. They offered me a job. Pleased, I ran back through all the pros and cons one more time in my head, then accepted the offer. I'll be starting work at (nfr)(security) soonish.
Then I started one of the least pleasant tasks there is. I wrote my resignation letter for The NERDS Group. I wrote that, and sent it off. Larry, Cheryl and the rest of the gang are good people, and good at what they do. I fit in well there. I would never hesitate to recommend The NERDS Group to perform network and systems consulting at any level. I am not normally one who's big on change in the employment arena - I certainly wasn't having trouble in my current job - but this opportunity offers a new avenue for growth in the career arena. Additionally, there's a lot to be learned at this new gig with (nfr) and I'm really looking forward to supporting an organization that counts among its employees three OpenBSD developers.
Since I finished that run of elation and sadness, I've been tooling about the place, feeding the dawg and the FaceBiter, paying bills, aching and headachy and wondering why. Then I realized one key factor: I'd not had any coffee at all today. That's undoubtedly having a huge effect on the old body. Now I'll go have a half a cup, see if everything calms down a bit.
One final bit of news regarding the passing of our friend and fellow Daynoter: Mike Barkman. I inquired of his son, Ross, if there were any particular charity that his father favored. He told us that his dad liked the work of the Sallies (the Salvation Army) and the family is requesting donations to that organization in liu of flowers or such. I thought it would be good to pass the word.
Have a good evening.
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October 1, 2004
2115 - Good evening. After 3, maybe 3-1/2 hours sleep last night, I managed to get in nearly half a day's work today. I don't feel good about that, but was just freakin' useless from lack of sleep - it wouldn't be right to get paid for working in this condition. The good news is that the swelling is way down, and I'm truly bushed. I should have no trouble falling asleep tonight (I surely hope!).
ESR is back on the blog, again. The most recent piece is entitled Deadly Genius and the Back-To-Zero Problem. As usual, Eric raises interesting, thought-provoking ideas:
Arnold Schoenberg (classical music). James Joyce (literary novels). John Coltrane (jazz). Pablo Picasso (painting). Konstantin Brancusi (sculpture). These men had the knack of inventing radical new forms that made the preexisting conventions of their arts seem stale and outworn. They produced works of brilliance, taught their followers to value disruptive brillance over tradition, and in doing so all but destroyed their arts.
Yeah, I thought so, too. Head on over and read it for yourself. Eric sees things where other people don't even see places to look! I, on the other hand, just have these ... voices. Okay, I'm kidding.
I've taken my antibiotics, and I'm waiting the appropriate interval before having some food with the anti-inflamatory. Then I'm for bed. Tomorrow: Dogs at salons, dogs at the vets, cars getting an oil change, shopping a day early, wow, what excitement! Heh, have a good evening.
2135 - Oh, I'd been meaning to mention. I've got a mirror of Tom's Insights tree, up to the time he stopped posting in June, 2003. I'd been meaning to get this online under the old site, but was waiting for action on Tom's part. That didn't happen, and the Syroidmanor domain is expired. But I could count on searching for stuff in Google, and having a Tom answer turn up from time to time. With his site down, then gone, those pages are lost. So I'm posting them online at syroid_insights.orbdesigns.com. I'd be pleased at some inbound linkage to that URL so that Google picks up the data again. Hasta...
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October 2, 2004
2148 - Good evening. More on the topic of Region Coding Enhanced DVD titles. Jimmy Reagan from LinuxGazette's The Answer Gang (and frequent LG article author) pointed me to a resource I didn't find on my own: the TechFAQ What is RCE? page
With the guidance I found on that page, it turns out the discs are perfectly playable, it's just the lead-in code that borks things. Jumping straight into the disc works fine:
bilbrey@goldfinger ~ $ xine dvd:⁄⁄1.1
This is xine (X11 gui) - a free video player v0.99.2.
(c) 2000-2004 The xine Team.
. . .
It runs like a champ. Title 1, Chapter1 is generally the start of the main feature. I was also able to jump into the menu direct (once I found out which Title it was) from the command line, again bypassing the lead-in. Oops, I guess I don't get to see the FBI warning, either.
It's raining again, (or still, depending on your perspective). That rather dampens my prospects for a couple of hours of hiking up in Pennsylvania tomorrow. Jim and I were going up for a tune-up hike and scouting some locations for our two-day trek later this month. But that's likely not to happen, from the looks of things. Anyway, I'm off for the evening, have a good 'un.
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October 3, 2004
2215 - Good evening. I didn't believe it. Neither did the weatherliars, apparently, because "partly cloudy" was the best forecast I could find. But did they look outside? Did they? Jim came on by at around 0930, temperatures in the low 60's, a glorious early fall day, and we drove North. We arrived where state 40, interstate 70, and the Appalachian Trail intersect, near Frederick, Maryland. We parked, strapped on the daypacks and started hiking south. Our first major stopping point was Washington Monument State Park, about three miles downtrail. Follow that link and you can see the monument, the first erected to honor George Washington. But click on that thumbnail to the left and you can see the blue skies of our hiking day, and the view out 50 or 60 miles - unbelievable clarity.
After a short break at the little park area just south of the monument, we headed on down the trail, continuing all the way to the bottom of the Turner Gap (?), where alternate state 40 crosses the trail. Coming out of the woods and into a grassy field, we found, just at the road, this little chapel. People were setting up for a wedding, so us sweaty dirty types steered clear, but I find with a little web work that it's the Dahlgren Chapel, built by ... a Dahlgren, one of the owners of the Old South Mountain Inn, which is just across the road. We'd reached our turnaround point, so we headed back north, reaching the car at about 1600. About 10 miles of trail, we reckon, in a little over 4.5 hours, on some medium trails. On our camping trek, later this month, we'll cover some of the same ground, probably starting from the Washington Monument park, and heading south to a camp/shelter area, then continue on the second day, all the way down to Harper's Ferry. That'll be a nice 20 mile, two day jaunt.
The shoulder and arm twinged a bit, but didn't really trouble me, and my lip is much improved, though still throbbing a bit. It was a good day's hiking, and couldn't have asked for better weather. The temperatures topped out at around 67 degrees - perfect for a little push in the walking pace. Now to drop into the work-mode mindset as I spool into the last two weeks at the current gig. Have a good evening, see you next week!
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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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