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GRAFFITI -- December 06, 2004 thru December 12, 2004 >> Link to the Current Week << Last Week << Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun >> Next Week Search this site : 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.

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
December 6, 2004

0643 - Good morning. While I can be (sometimes) more coherent in the evening than in the mornings, I've never been very happy about that dangling "Next Week" link that hangs about there at the top of the page, active but pointing at nothing from the time that midnight Monday morning comes up until I get around to posting. So Here I Am...

Yeah, it's December and as usual, the year's flown by, with plenty of funky search terms landing people here looking for know's what. Here's some of the choice searches from November's quota (with number of search hits):

• sig sauer p226 : 68 - Not something that I wrote about on a really regular basis, but with four different search strings in my top thirty for variations on the theme, maybe it's an sign that it's time to get out to the range and finish my training (right after I start it, naturalmente).


• Miranda Richardson : 28 - I'm always pleased to see that the interest in the delightful Ms. Richardson continues apace. She's been in many wonderful roles, but Queenie will always be my favorite.


• Blackhawk Automotive Museum : 18 - A neat place to visit, the Blackhawk Automotive Museum was also the subject of a photo essay here a few years back.


• Chevrolet Cavalier : 47 - We sold it. Sold it I tell you, back in January of 2001. Stop already. Grin.


• Ashland : 10 - One of our favorite stopping points, Ashland, Oregon is home to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (and here I thought it was the Ashland Shakespeare Festival, all these years).


• fish wallpaper : 55 - Nope, none of that around here that I can remember. But, I remember now, there is this shot from the Monterey Bay Aquarium trip back in 2001.


• terrorist hunting permit :8 - Bravo!


• diapering : 5 - When did I write about diapering? No place that I can remember. But this line posted will only encourage them.


• amputated : 4 - Um, no. Are you volunteering?


• icicle lights troubleshooting : 4 - Now that's a little too technical for a fluff site like this. Heh. I've never actually owned icicle lights, and Marcia despises them.


• orthopedic body cast picture or diagram : 3 - Wow. Three searches that specific, that landed here? Are body casts really that much fun?


• a president thats legs were useless : 2 - A grammar that's to parse, hard. Perhaps FDR is the man you were looking for.


• barbie in the nutcracker : 2 - And how long have you been troubled by these visions?


• blood spatter : 2 - Ah, another CSI fan.


• dog hair pile : 2 - One man's fetish is another man's chores.


• graffiti made in 2004 which r pictures : 2 - And you did so well, spelling out full words, right up to the point when your inner texting self shone through. Don't do this in English class, kids.


• lots of pics sick graffiti writing : 2 - And you too, good sir or madam. Might I suggest a life? Aisle Two, half way down on your right. Only the finest brands are stocked.

So endeth the lesson. I've got a couple of hot projects to move quickly on, so I'd best be on my way. Have a great day!

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
December 7, 2004

0649 - Good morning. Morning posting is like Redskins wins, to be desired, but not expected. That said, We're Number One! ... in some alternate reality. The Monday went as well as can be expected. It didn't snow, and today we're likely to have more rain and temperatures in the low to mid sixties. Huh? Very weird, but according to the weather shamans, we should be grateful, as the big cold will be big, and cold.

In recent news, I got the webcam going again, following the cutover to Debian last month. There were some fiddle-y bits in getting the fonts stuff working right, but the camE is great. Be warned though, there's nothing GUI about it, and it does secure image transfers over SSH (which double rocks, thanks Tom Gilbert!). And in other, other news, I've pitched all the data off of Gryphon, and reimaged him. Her. It. Angua. Angua's an OpenBSD box, because the best way to learn is to dive in. I don't have desperate need of a traveling Linux box at this time, but I do need connected useful OpenBSD to start building the knowledgebase a'fresh.

I gave about half of the 60G disk to OpenBSD, the balance is empty pending future changes in direction or need. With an initial install that has it's definition next to cryptic in the Dictionary, thereafter life's a breeze. Read the "Afterboot" manpage, follow the directions, go forth and conquer. Not grossly tricky, but it's the subtle differences that are going to bite me in the ass before I'm done. That's why it's best to have a sacrificial box in place, ready to test something (or some command on), prior to committing new knowledge to the point of the sword on a production box. I've got a few of those that I'll be responsible for sooner or later. I'm sure, from the perspective of the folks I work with, sooner can't come soon enough, so that they can spend more of their gray cells on their job description, instead of holding my hand while I ask questions.

I guess I'll be along to work now. I sure hope it's better than yesterday's trawl, which had traffic at a dead stop on the Beltway in front of me at Kennilworth as I got on the road, and stayed that way all the way around to Conneticut. Yes, it's been worse, but generally it's a whole lot better. Wish me luck ... hasta!

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Mon    Tues    WEDNESDAY    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
December 8, 2004

0643 - Good morning. Yesterday morning, literally moments after I ran the publish script to push the morning update here, I remembered what had been troubling me: I was due to be in the dentist's chair at 0700. That's a problem, sitting here at 0649. I was fifteen minutes late, and still out and back on the road by 0742, a quick and painless small filling taken care of.

Dual mode email, that which presents itself as text or html, as the MUA (mail user agent, aka client) prefers, was my main chore yesterday. We had the newsletter to get out to 11,000 customers, and no one knew how the used to achieve the goal. I helped with the formatting and editing, then created the text version with appropriately shortened URLS. Then I researched and found first that the mime-type of variable version email is called "multipart/alternative". Armed with that knowledge, I went searching for how to appropriately create such a beast. I found a number of erroneous but promising looking paths, then finally the correct choice of search terms brought me to Metamail.

After reading the man page and experimenting a bit, I was able to compose my mail to the Mailman list, using the html and text edition files and command line options. I'll show you a close variant tomorrow (so that it's documented for many of us, eh?) but I don't have it to hand here and now.

Much to do today, so I'll be about it. Have a great day!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
December 9, 2004

0702 - Good morning. An effective day yesterday, and the work week is more than half done. We've got some connectivity service changes to put in motion today, and a few more tweaks to my latest mental picture of the network architecture to be. I guess you could say that I'm enjoying my job. However, I'm not enjoying all the advertising and other crap that's resulting from our "relationship" with our current Bank. Here's my latest communication, suitably sanitized:

from the desk of Brian Philip Bilbrey 000 Some Street, Bowie, MD 20720 Attn: Xxxxxxx Xxxxxxx Senior Vice President Xxxxxxxxx Bank 666 Long Road Medium Town, MD, 00000 Dear Ms. Xxxxxxx, I write to you today to express my disappointment in the recent spate of advertisements and communications of changes in service terms and conditions I've received by postal mail over the last several weeks. There have been several offers of insurance, credit cards and other services. These services are being offered by other vendors, not Xxxxxxxxx Bank. Yet the outer envelope in all cases purported to be a communication from Xxxxxxxxx. Yes, this guarantees that I'll open the envelope, because your firm is our bank. However, the implicit deceit in packaging is having a less than salutary effect on my perception of the Bank, and are causing me to consider the wisdom of continuing to retain my account with Xxxxxxxxx. Additionally, there is the most recent communication of changes in the Terms and Conditions (T&C) regarding our Safe Deposit Box Lease. Please consider in the future issuing changes to the T&C for a service by including both the prior text and the new text in a single document, so that it's easy for your customers (such as myself) to discern the actual differences, and then decide whether or not the changes make it worth the continuing business relationship. By only showing the new T&C (and of that, only those parts of the T&C that are changed), you force your customers to do comparisons with our original documents and any subsequent communications, in a vain attempt to figure out under what terms we are now doing business with you. This is a reprehensible practice, unfortunately all too common. I submit to you that at least as much care and effort should go into retaining your existing customer base as you put into pitching plans to gain new customers. After all, isn't positive word-of-mouth one of the strongest "marketing" tools there is? I look forward to your reply. Sincerely, Brian P. Bilbrey

I don't hold out much hope, But it'll be interesting to see both the tenor and the quality of the reply, if there is one. If there isn't, that'll be even more interesting, since the VP in question is in charge of the Customer Contact Center. Now, I'm off to a late start, so I'd best be going. Ciao.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
December 10, 2004

2030 - Good evening. Fooled you. More to the point, fooled me. I thought I could get up early enough this morning to get at least a wee dram of a post up, but that wasn't to be. I did not get home until 7 last night, as rain and fog and morons made for a two hour commute home. Then I had vast amounts of paper work to do, getting the ball rolling on left-behind-in-California business. Nothing bad, but needed to dig up supporting documentation, make copies, sign affirmations and the like. All done last night, notarized and mailed today.

Ah, today. I was software audit boy today, going around figuring out how naughty and/or nice we were. I was pleased to find things as they are, and what's awry is easily put right. In addition, I'm working on a web-based secure file transfer app for some possible upcoming applications. I'll use LAMP, of course, as that's close to what I know, can use and understand.

We just got home from supper out. We went to a new little Mexican joint around the corner. The food was not bad, but not standout, and the service left more than a little to be desired. We'll not be going back there. Now I want to dive into my latest Terry Pratchett acquisition and finish it off. There's plenty to do, and plenty of chores for the weekend, so I want a bit of unwind time tonight. Have fun!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    SATURDAY    Sun   
December 11, 2004

1414 - Good afternoon. I didn't finish the Terry Pratchett book, Soul Music, until this morning. This Discworld book is primarily the story of Imp y'Celyn (y'Celyn: of the holly, and Imp: sprout or bud. You do the math.) and of Susan Sto Helit, orphan princess of Sto Helit, and grandaughter of Death. Like all of Terry's stuff, a great big blast of fun, front to back.

With breakfast and Pratchett done, I turned to cleaning. Dogs first ... Lucy and Molly are both reasonable bathers, although I have to fight little Lucy FaceBiter a little bit to keep her in the tub. Molly just stands there and suffers and gets in my way by being bigger and harder to work around. But they got a rare rawhide chew each for their troubles. I merely got damp. Now I'm working on bathrooms, while Marcia puts finishing touches on pressies and gets them ready for shipment.

I'd best get back to the grind, or I'll never get started again. I'm a bit whacked by something that's pretending to be a bug of some sort or another. All I really want to do is sleep. But then I won't tonight, and I'll be utterly out of sync for the whole of the coming week. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
December 12, 2004

1526 - Good afternoon. I strongly intend to feel better today. See, the power of mind over hack, hack, fine ... I'm just fine. But I was looking to install VMware on Dangua, the Xandros 3 installation personality on the Sony laptop that used to be known as Gryphon. I did a Google search, and the results were not promising, especial this one: Xandros Desktop Version 3 Released thread on OS News.

So of course I plow on ahead, anyway. When the dust settled, I composed and sent this email to the Rob who posted that tidbit on the forum:

Subject: Regarding Xandros 3 and VMware...

The presales tech support people at Xandros were wrong. The 
following works for me on x86 hardware (explicitly my Sony laptop), 
other architectures ??? Well, not supported by Xandros, are they?

apt-get install xandros-kernel-source-2.6.9
apt-get install 'g++'

cd /usr/src
tar jxvf xandros-kernel-source-2.6.9.tar.bz2
ln -s xandros-kernel-source-2.6.9 linux
cd linux
cp /boot/config-2.6.9-x1 .config

vi Makefile     # make the EXTRAVERSION line look
		# like this, matching the uname -a
		# kernel name
		#   EXTRAVERSION = -x1

cd include
ln -s asm-i386 asm
cd /usr/src/linux
make oldconfig
make		# this takes a long time.

Then, get vmware and install it, I've got 

VMware-workstation-4.5.2-8848.tar.gz

The install likely fails during the vmware-config.pl step. Okay, no 
problemo, vmware-any-any patch to the rescue. I use v.84, later 
may be available or moot on later reading:

cd /tmp
wget http://ftp.cvut.cz/vmware/vmware-any-any-update84.tar.gz
tar zxvf vmware-any-any-update84.tar.gz
cd vmware-any-any-update84
./runme.pl

This patches various bits, then fires off vmware-config.pl again.
All the selections I made work. I can't speak to the samba bits, 
as I never ever do those.

Does this work? I've just installed OpenBSD as a GuestOS on 
VMware 4.5.2 running on a Xandros 3 host. I guess that counts 
as a win. I thought you'd like to know, as yours was one of three 
google hits that talked about Xandros 3 and VMware in the same 
breath. And your take wasn't heartening. Fortunately, the Xandros 
people had it wrong.

There's something I enjoy about installing an unsupported guestOS 
in VMware running on a hostOS that VMware doesn't support, and 
whose tech people say can't run VMware. I must have a 
contentious bone somewhere in my body.

I might admit that was fun. Today, we also got the weekly shopping run done, and the holiday cards written, addressed and ready to be posted. Marcia finished up most of the gift-wrapping that there was, and there are stacks ready for shipment in the next couple of days. Now, of all the tasks that remain, the most personally useful is likely to be learning more about PF. So away I go...

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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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