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GRAFFITI -- October 02, 2006 thru October 08, 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   
October 2, 2006

0638 - Good morning. And into the fourth quarter of the year we march. Starting to feel a bit like fall. Nights are dropping into the 50's and below; we haven't seen an 80° F high for a while, now. According to the press release: Hang on - 2007 Farmers' Almanac Predicts "SHIVERY IS NOT DEAD". I've yet to harvest out the rest of the herbs for drying, and also the carrots need covering. If I get really ambitious, I could (and probably should) rake out the lawns front and back, throw down some leaf mulch, and do an overseeding along with the Fall feeding. That and tearing out the annuals should let me put the yard to bed for the year. Too bad it sounds like so much work, eh?

Speaking of so much work, I installed SUSE 10.1 under VMware over the weekend. For any decent distribution these days, there's precious little to choose between them, excepting proprietary networking and configuration tools, the packaging/updating systems, and ... the installer. Now, I'm a Debian fan, and specifically these days, an Ubuntu/Kubuntu fan. In most cases, I use the Alternate CD for installation, which provides a textmode dialog-type installer. No fluff, little cruft, answer the questions and move along, please. Slackware is still text-based, as is OpenBSD. I've also used these GUI installers in the last year: RHEL4, Xandros, and Ubuntu. Now I've used SUSE 10.1's YAST2-based GUI installer, too.

I'm sad to report that I still hate YAST. I know how smooth an installer can be - I've used Xandros. They continue to have the smoothest installer for Linux that I've ever experienced. Red Hat provides the comfort of familiarity: their GUI installer hasn't changed in years. Ubuntu's is vaguely reminiscient of ... mmm, Ian Murdoch's effort, um, sigh. One moment please: My extended Google-brain needs consulting. Okay, Progeny was the distro I was thinking of ... another Debian-based distro from 2001. Anyway, YAST continues to bug me. Maybe it's the Teutonic underpinnings (not that I have anything against Germany or Germans, but look: bra, or bustenhalter, there's this tendency to spell everything out in excruciating detail....)

The biggest problem was the software updater. I'm a reasonably bright bloke, and I've been using and working with Linux extensively for more than 10 years. I couldn't figure out how to use it. Some of the package names were colored red, others were bold. But there was nothing instructing me what to do, what to check (little check boxen next to each package), what to freaking do. I thought, well, let's be safe, and just check everything. After a bit of spelunking I was able to do that. Eeeek. Little bar at the bottom went red, indicating that my UPDATE activity was going to add more than a gigabyte's worth of new stuff to the 4G root partition I'd configured. Too much, in fact, for the disk to hold. Sigh. Best to bail out then. So I unchecked all the packages and clicked on the Next button. Sigh, again. Packages started updating. It took three cycles of clicking Next to get out of the updater, including a reboot during the installation, to restart under the new kernel. Note to SUSE developers: Don't waste time rebooting during the Installer. Get the rest of the answers, finish the configuration, and reboot once. Once.

Anyway, I understand that Novell's support is stellar. And they have some of the best Directory and networking people in the business. But that installer was to die. (Not to die for.) So, I'm probably just exhibiting my early bias against YAST, but ... it's still not my cup of tea. Once installed, it seems perfectly competent. But there's still that updater tool, and I still don't understand it. Those sorts of things need to be intuitive. Even MS got their updater right, from an intuitive-use perspective. (Not from a force-feeding of DRM and Genuine Advantage perspective, though.)

Time to get going. See y'all later.

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October 3, 2006

1013 - Good morning. Argh! Man decides that he wants to request that a certain book be banned from his child's school curriculum ... during Banned Books Week. Senator Stevens should be able to make use of this link, explaining RAID configurations in easy-to-understand terms. Okay, enough fun, back to work for me.

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October 4, 2006

0645 - Good morning. Hmmm. That's twice in recent memory that I've gone to the Best Buy website only to find that "ONLINE ORDERING IS CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED". Both times were during the evening here on the right coast. That's pretty well consumer prime-time during the week for online shopping. Usually I shop locally at The Computer Place for those instant gratification moments, and I mostly use newegg for my online component ordering. But I'm holding a coupon for 12% off this weekend at Best Buy, and I found myself wondering if they also carry the Nikon D80... But I couldn't find out last night. I'll check again later today. I did note that Newegg isn't carrying the D80 yet. And, I suppose, who am I kidding? Like I have time for another hobby? Another hobby that requires expensive toys? I think I'm suffering from ShinyThing-itis (tm).

Now, I'm running late. See y'all later.

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October 5, 2006

No Post.....

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October 6, 2006

0840 - Good morning. I can account for my time yesterday, and I just didn't make any time for a post here. No particular reason, although I remain pretty busy. Friday's here at the office, especially in the morning, are full of tasks to be accomplished, so I'll catch y'all later, or tomorrow. Still alive, though.

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October 7, 2006

0835 -Good morning. Here's some interesting viewing: A Rough History of Disbelief, part I. Parts two and three are linked directly below that video. In a different vein entirely, there was this very nice letter (quoted) and my reply:

John Warren wrote:
> Brian, when you start asking for subscriptions like JEP and RBT do, 
> maybe we'll hold you accountable for days like Thursday. I 'll never 
> complain because I'm not sure I'll ever understand how you guys
> manage to post your thoughts five or more times a week. I really
> appreciate it though, and if you decide to start charging for it--I'm
> in. Just tell me when and how much.

Now, there are at least 7,000 things calling for my attention. I'll take a few minutes to have a cup of coffee, and make a list of some of those. Then I'll try to do some of them. With the wind and rain outside, there's fewer decisions to make, and that's a good thing. Ciao!

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October 8, 2006

1306 - Good afternoon. The battles continue in the Middle East, and our troops stand their ground. Some die...

• Cpl. Robert F. Weber, 22, of Cincinnati, Ohio, died near the Qayyarah West Airfield, Iraq, (about 30 miles south of Mosul, Iraq) as a result of a vehicle roll-over on Sept. 30.
• Sgt. 1st Class Scott E. Nisely, 48, of Marshalltown, Iowa, died in Al Asad, Iraq, on Sept. 30 of injuries suffered when his vehicle received small arms fire during security operations.
• Sgt. Kampha B. Sourivong, 20, of Iowa City, Iowa, died in Al Asad, Iraq, on Sept. 30 of injuries suffered when his vehicle received small arms fire during security operations.
• Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, 25, of Garden Grove, Calif., died Sept. 29 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Ramadi, Iraq.
• Cpl. Aaron L. Seal, 23, of Elkhart, Ind., died Oct. 1 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Lance Cpl. Christopher B. Cosgrove III, 23, of Cedar Knolls, N.J., died Oct. 1 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. Chase A. Haag, 22, of Portland, Ore., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 1 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Staff Sgt. Joe A. Narvaez, 25, of San Antonio, Texas, died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 2 after being shot by enemy forces.
• Sgt. Mario Nelson, 26, of Brooklyn, N.Y., died in Hit, Iraq, on Oct. 1 from injuries suffered when a rocket-propelled grenade detonated near his vehicle.
• Pfc. Satieon V. Greenlee, 24, of Pendleton, S.C., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 2 as a result of injuries suffered from enemy small arms fire.
• Pfc. Michael K. Oremus, 21, of Highland, N.Y., died in Baghdad, Iraq, on Oct. 2 after being shot by enemy forces.
• Capt. Justin D. Peterson, 32, of Davisburg, Mich., died Oct. 1 from a non-hostile vehicle accident in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. Denise A. Lannaman, 46, of Bayside, N.Y., died at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, on Oct. 1 from a non-combat related incident.
• Sgt. Joseph W. Perry, 23, of Alpine, Calif., died on Oct. 2 in Muhallah, Iraq, when his mounted patrol came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations.
• Spc. Angelo J. Vaccaro, 23, of Deltona, Fla., died on Oct. 2 in Korengal, Afghanistan, from injuries suffered during combat operations.
• Staff Sgt. Jonathan Rojas, 27, of Hammond, Ind., died on Oct. 3 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries suffered from enemy small arms fire while performing security operations.
• Staff Sgt. Daniel Isshak, 25, of Alta Loma, Calif., died on Oct. 3 in Tikrit, Iraq, from injuries suffered when his vehicle received enemy small arms fire at Hawija, Iraq, during combat operations.
• Lance Cpl. Edward M. Garvin, 19, of Malden, Mass., died Oct. 4 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Cpl. Benjamin S. Rosales, 20, of Houston, Texas, died Oct. 4 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.

Our soldiers, sailor, and marines are doing a stand-up job in a tough situation. Armies are made to break stuff and kill people. Our folks are being asked to keep peace and be constables, in areas where extremist nutjobs seem to want instability and chaos. There are just times when I think we should leave a crate of knives at every corner and get the hell out. Whatever Shrub thought would happen, hasn't. Most thoughtful commentators think that 10 years is too short a time to get a stable Iraq in place. Are you up for 300 billion a year to prop up a place that has oil wealth, if they'd only stop screwing around with sectarian violence? Me, neither. Sigh.

I did some computer maintenance yesterday. The power supply was making a bit of noise, so I put an inline resistor on the chipset fan, swapped out the chassis fan for a three-speed (set to low), and picked up an Antec Neo HE 500. I also cleaned out some of the small cruft that accumulates on my bookshelves: extra cables, CDs that need filing, and the like. Across the hall, Marcia's machine is still pretty loud, but I'll probably wait to do maintenance on her machine until she goes on corporate travel in November. I also want to trade out her noisy Western Digital drives for a Seagate 7200.10 320G SATA-II.

Today we're going over to Linda's for a while. I'm going to put up a ceiling fan for her, and replace the lockset on an outside storage closet, so she can use it for her bike and other stuff. Then we'll go out to an early dinner, so we can come home and feed the puppies not more than an hour or two after their regular suppertime.

Last three songs:
   Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band - Candy's Room
   Elton John - Wrap Her Up
   Dire Straits - Once Upon A Time In The West
Now reading:
   Linux Magazine
   John Barnes - Mother of Storms

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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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