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GRAFFITI -- June 05, 2006 thru June 11, 2006 >> 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   
June 5, 2006

0743 - Good morning. My nice, relaxing weekend disintegrated into four hours of heavy yardwork yesterday afternoon. I looked at the lawn, and realized that it would be a nightmare if I let it go until next weekend. But then I had to prune out the dead tulip foliage ... oh, and deadhead the peonies and roses. Then I did a bit of fertilizing in the garden, and harvested out perhaps two and a half pounds of strawberries. Yow!

Above, Lucy went out to play in the rain for a bit. When her hair dried, she ended up with the Courtney Love look, I fear. Out in front, our flowering vine on the lamp post is stunning, isn't it? I know I used to know what that was. Finally, the right two shots are of the garden yesterday afternoon. Quite a lot of progress since the previous shots a couple of weeks ago, eh? There's cucumbers started, and several of the tomato plants are fruiting already. The corn is just shooting up - I don't think we'll have any problems hitting that "knee-high by the Fourth of July" milestone. I'm only hoping that the peppers start taking off soon.

On the Kubuntu front, I futzed around with sound before I realized that I needed to setup the NFS mount for my music store. I installed kernel headers and development tools, then got VMware Workstation up and running. The problems I had under Gentoo AMD64 have been resolved by people smarter than I (they built and packaged Kubuntu 6.06 AMD64, if you need a hint!). Right now I think I'm fully up to speed. About an hour of install and initial tweaking, another hour tonight to install some more apps and get all the mallards lined up.

Now to get to work. I'm making a late start as it is, and there's a downed server that needs either love and attention, or a stern whacking with the cluebat. Have a decent Monday!

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 6, 2006

0638 - Good morning. Welcome to Hell's Day. Some random thoughts:

• Did he drive like a frightened bunny rabbit before he got that Volvo, or did his wife (boyfriend?) give him a ballectomy for his latest birthday?
• I suppose that it's a good thing that listening services aren't installed by default on Kubuntu, but for some reason I've come to expect SSH to be running by default. I should know better than to assume. So I couldn't get to Vimes from work. That's okay, I was able to access a backup copy of what I needed.
• Joe Satriani: Lords of Karma. That song, played really loud, is awesome!
• As today is 6.6.6, they're having a big ol' celebration in Hell, Michigan. I didn't feel like driving that far, but had I, I would have been in the right mindset for going to Hell. The commute to work is likely to be bad enough - yesterday totaled out at 2:45, combined.

Well, an earlier start than yesterday, SSH is working, and I need to be on the road. Happy Hell Day.

0842 - Grrrrr. Section 115 Reform Act (SIRA) of 2006 is bad. Here's a PDF of the Discussion Draft, and here's a separate ipaction.org blog post on the matter. This bill, due to be introduced in the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property on Wednesday, has Berman and RIAA all over it. I'd suggest a call to your Congressman to get this bill squashed now. Here's an outstanding definition in the bill, "The compulsory license .... covers ... incidental reproductions made in the course of the non-interactive streaming provided by the licensee, including cached, network, and RAM buffer reproductions". Then there's "RETROACTIVE ROYALTY PAYMENTS -- ... activity authorized by the license that the digital music provider engaged in during the period beginning January 1, 2001," Bah! Another money and power grab by the RIAA.

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Mon    Tues    WEDNESDAY    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 7, 2006

0850 - Good morning. Just a brief note this morning, as the day gets rolling. In the Register article: RIAA, EFF unite to sabotage digital reform, Andrew Orlowski claims that the SIRA 2006 bill is a good thing, not a bad thing. Once the bill's been introduced, I'll go and read that text, as Orlowski's claims are interesting, in this case. That's offset, in my mind, by the history I have of distrusting just about anything that emits from Orlowski's keyboard. Of course, I probably should also distrust just about everything that emits from my keyboard, too. Speaking of which ...

Jerry's arguments on the Separation of Powers were both re-instructive (as I've clearly forgotten much I once knew from my Civics classes) and illuminating. I was wrong, and the FBI is wrong to have raided that allegedly crooked congressman's Capitol Hill office. They should have submitted their evidence to the House and washed their hands of it. It is indeed a bad precedent. As Jerry concludes, "There are worse ills in a Republic than corrupt members of the Legislature."

RIP Billy Preston, 1946-2006. And with that, I'll bid you adieu until later.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 8, 2006

0831 - Good morning, more or less. I slept quite badly, thanks. No particular reason I can think of. But on the aaaaaargh! front, there's this tidbit of news: Windows Genuine Advantage (a name invented by marketeers, makes me want to vomit copiously) phones home to Microsoft every day. Grrr. Grrr. MS makes excuses and reasons for its crap to do that, but ... I'm not sure I believe them, and I'm quite sure I don't trust them. Too bad the corporate world is fully addicted, eh?

Time to redeploy the nose to the grindstone. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
June 9, 2006

1407 - Good afternoon. Sorry, the day's gotten away from me. I've been reconfiguring and testing eval pool systems, as well as doing some contingency planning for a server reorganization. There are many paths to the next phase ... do I want to commit more hardware? Work my way into assorted virtualization tools? Plenty of choices and plenty to learn, regardless of the final determination.

How illiterate of me! I used "it's" as a possessive yesterday. Gaaah! I hate doing that, and not spotting the error before I publish. So I fixed that today, and cop to the failing here. Life, it's overrated.

Back to work. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    SATURDAY    Sun   
June 10, 2006

1009 - Good morning. Thelma and Louise ... errr, Marcia and Linda Rose are on their way to Atlantic City. It's a birthday present-ish trip for Linda Rose, and they've been planning it for a few months now. Just a one-nighter, and I hope it doesn't break the bank. Me and the dogs are going to do a bit of yardwork, and some experiments with Ubuntu Server 6.06 LTS. I'd like to make it the base platform for a lot of stuff at work, but I need to understand more about their specific setup.

More later perhaps, if there's anything interesting to say.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
June 11, 2006

1221 - Good afternoon. Shortly after yesterday's post I came up short ... on energy. I was suddenly so bloody tired that words failed me. I took a nap, then woke up in time for another nap, had a bit of dinner and a spot of a rest before getting to bed at around 10 PM. Weird, and unlike me. Better today (so far). I did get the dog lawn presents removed yesterday, and I'll take an hour or so and weed out the garden this afternoon. After that, we'll see...

Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi is burning where he belongs, but still it's been a tough week on the troops in the field...

• Spc. Brett L. Tribble, 20, of Lake Jackson, Texas, died in Ar Ramadi on June 3 of injuries sustained in Ar Ramadi, Iraq on June 2, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Cpl. Ryan J. Cummings, 22, of Streamwood, Ill., died June 3, from wounds received while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Darren Harmon, 44, of Newark Del., died in Haditha, Iraq, on June 3, from a non-combat related cause.
• Cpl. Derek A. Stanley, 20, of Tulsa, Okla., died in Salerno, Afghanistan, on June 5, from a non-combat related cause.
• Petty Officer 1st Class Gary T. Rovinski, 44, of Roseville, Ill., died June 5, in Al Anbar Province, Iraq, as a result of enemy action when his HMMWV was struck by an improvised explosive device.
• Maj. Michael D. Stover, 43, of Mansfield, Ohio, died June 3 from a non-hostile incident in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. 1st Class. Issac S. Lawson, 35, of Sacramento, Calif., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 5, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Sgt. Travis A. Vanzoest, 21, of Larimore, N.D., died in Khogyani, Afghanistan, on June 6, when his HMWWV struck two anti-tank mines during combat operations.
• Spc. Curtis R. Mehrer, 21, of Bismarck, N.D., died in Khogyani, Afghanistan, on June 6, when his HMWWV struck two anti-tank mines during combat operations.
• 1st Lt. Ryan T. Sanders, 27, of College Station, Texas, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 4, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their M1A2 tank during combat operations.
• Sgt. Daniel R. Gionet, 23, of Pelham, N.H., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on June 4, when an improvised explosive device detonated near their M1A2 tank during combat operations.
• Sgt. Mark T. Smykowski, 23, of Mentor, Ohio, died June 6 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Petty Officer 2nd Class Jaime S. Jaenke, 29, of Bay City, Wis., died June 5 as a result of enemy action when her HMMWV was struck by an improvised explosive device in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Richard A. Blakley, 34, of Plainfield, Ind., died in Al Khalidiyah, Iraq, on June 6, when he was shot by enemy small arms fire during dismounted combat patrol operations.
• 1st Lt. Scott M. Love, 32, of Knoxville, Tenn., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 7, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Pfc. David N. Crombie, 19, of Winnemucca, Nev., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 7, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Spc. Luis D. Santos, 20, of Rialto, Calif., died in Buritz, Iraq, on June 8, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Sgt. Carlos E. Pernell, 25, of Munford, Ala., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 6, when his camp received indirect enemy fire during combat operations.
• Cpl. Andy D. Anderson, 24, of Falls Church, Va., died in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, on June 6, when his camp received indirect enemy fire during combat operations.
• Sgt. Jose M. Velez, 35, of Bronx, N.Y., died in Kirkuk, Iraq, on June 9, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.
• Sgt. 1st Class Daniel B. Crabtree, 31, of Canton, Ohio, died in Al Kut, Iraq, of injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his HMMWV during combat operations.

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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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