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GRAFFITI -- October 16, 2006 thru October 22, 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.

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October 16, 2006

1003 - Good morning. Yesterday afternoon I spent an hour or so poking around the house, to see if there's anyplace convenient for doing my vertical ethernet run. No such luck. I could do it, I think, if I could disassemble Marcia's desk, to get at the section of wall ... Hmmm, there might be a spot from the other side. I'll have a look tonight. Maybe I should just run down inside the air return, just like the alarm system folks did.

Anyway, Edgy Eft is out in Beta, so I thought I'd give it a try. Two targets: a Sempron-based motherboard system that was lying fallow in the closet, and the Mac Mini down at the TV. Both installs went fine, thanks. But I haven't got either wireless or bluetooth running properly on the latter. In a day or three I may drag that upstairs and connect to the wired network to get things properly updated and aligned.

Argh! All the journals of the Royal Society, free to access through the end of November (link here). Did you think you had spare time between now and then? Kiss it goodbye. Letters from Newton describing a telescope he designed, Papers by Hawking. Argh! Now, back to work for me.

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October 17, 2006

Whoops!

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October 18, 2006

0945 - Good morning. A busy day yesterday full of meetings. In between, there was prep and setup. And I also managed to do some hardware and software rebuild to get a new eval box ready for transit to a customer later this week. In the evening, I mucked around with the Mac Mini. It's running Ubuntu's Edgy Eft beta release at the moment. I was trying to get the wireless networking running, as well as the bluetooth keyboard and mouse. After a fair amount of effort I was able to manually get the bluetooth stuff going, but not consistently nor reliably ... and not at boot time. When you have to type something to get your keyboard to work, there's a problem. And I've had absolutely no joy with the wireless. I might could maybe make it work if I shut off the WPA2 authentication on my WAP .... HAHAHAHAHAHA! Right. Heh.

Best story I've read in a while: Dog saves owner from fire, dies trying to rescue cat. Brave dog. Good dog. But the lesson here, for dogs, is this: You can always get a new cat.

Back to the millstone. See y'all.

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October 19, 2006

0816 - Good morning, and enough. I'm not going to get the wireless working with the Mac Mini and Ubuntu Edgy beta, so it's back to wired connections, as soon as I can figure out that route. Yesterday, Lucy wasn't feeling well, so I headed home early to take her to the vet. He said that there's a dog flu going around the East coast, although there's no indication that Lucy has that (no fever). And she did eat last night (after skipping breakfast, and any offered cookies all day), so ...?

This, from a mailing list:

As a friend said, "The book is cool in it's own geeky way, but the reviews man, the reviews..."

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0833030477/

It's an interesting day. I'm sure to be bloody busy, so I'll bid you adieu for now.

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October 20, 2006

0717 - Good morning. FIOS day, today. Last night I got the new runs of Cat5e about halfway to their destinations. I'll try to finish that up shortly, in advance of the tech's arrival. The trenching crew was working outside yesterday and did a good job. Each time they cut the cable or phone line, they fixed it in about 15 minutes, according to Marcia. So, plenty for me to do here, while I monitor the backups at work from afar. Still looking for something to distract you? Try The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online. Happy Friday.

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October 21, 2006

0907 - Good morning. I'm a bit sore ... lots of stair and ladder work over the last 36 hours. But I now have CAT5e runs from my office to the family room and to the basement. FIOS is installed and running. I pulled a Slackware 11 DVD from mirrors.tds.net, about 3.6G, in under 40 minutes. My download transfer cap with Comcast was 8Mb/s, about 775KB/s in best-case usage. I've got 15Mb/s from Verizon - that was 1.86MB/s in real usage from TDS last night. From this server in Houston, I was only able to get 1.10MB/s out before running into our rate cap, ~10mb/s.

To run the CAT5e, I had to cut holes in the walls. Those all need repairing. The biggest pain was getting the final step, through the plate in the family room and into the basement. I ended up having to cut a couple of extra holes in the family room wall, and running horizontally a ways to clear some ductwork below. It took about 4 hours just for that last bit, mostly because there was just me. All told, 10 or 11 hours went into running and terminating the cables. There's one more horizontal run in the basement, to get a wired connection in the guest suite, but I'm not going to put that in this weekend.

You'll have to excuse me. I'm all geeked out. I have no idea what I'm going to do today, but right now, I don't even want to move. Have a lovely day!

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October 22, 2006

1509 - Good afternoon. I'm lazier than hell. Not enough to put off my Sunday post, but there's a stumbling block: I've got name-resolution problems with my source site, defenselink.mil. One moment, please. Okay, it appears that running an authoritative nameserver is more difficult on the FiOS network. I've reconfigured my in-house caching BIND9 installation to use the Verizon nameservers as forwarders, and everything's working again. I'll probably muck with it more another day.

The talking heads say that our boys are having a bad month in Iraq, and the numbers appear to correlate with that statement, unfortunately. They stand in harm's way on our behalf ... I'm sad for our losses, and proud of our men and women in uniform!

• Sgt. Nicholas R. Sowinski, 25, of Tempe, Ariz., died on Oct. 11 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Pfc. Kenny F. Stanton Jr., 20, of Hemet, Calif., died on Oct. 13 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Airman 1st Class Leebernard E. Chavis, 21, of Hampton, Va., died Oct. 14 while performing duties as a turret gunner with the Iraqi police in the vicinity of Baghdad, Iraq.
• Cpl. Luis E. Tejeda, 20, of Huntington Park, Calif., died Sept. 30 in Al Asad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations in Hit, Iraq.
• Sgt. Brock A. Babb, 40, of Evansville, Ind., died Oct. 15 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Hines, 26, of Olney, Ill., died Oct. 15 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. Jonathan J. Simpson, 25, of Rockport, Texas, died Oct. 14 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• 2nd Lt. Johnny K. Craver, 37, of McKinney, Texas, died Oct. 13 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• 1st Lt. Joshua Deese, 25, of North Carolina, died Oct. 15 in Balad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Kirkuk, Iraq, during combat operations.
• Sgt. Jonathan E. Lootens, 25, of Lyons, N.Y., died Oct. 15 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Kirkuk, Iraq, during combat operations.
• Pfc. Keith J. Moore, 28, of San Francisco, died Oct. 14 in Baghdad, Iraq, of a non-combat related injury.
• 1st Sgt. Charles M. King, 48, of Mobile, Ala., died Oct. 14 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Kane, 35, of Darby, Pa., died Oct. 14 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Spc. Timothy J. Lauer, 25, of Saegertown, Pa., died Oct. 14 of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Capt. Mark C. Paine, 32, of Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., died Oct. 15 in Taji, Iraq, from injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• 2nd Lt. Joshua L. Booth, 23, of Fiskdale, Mass., died Oct. 17 while conducting combat operations against enemy forces in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Garth D. Sizemore, 31, of Mount Sterling, Ky., died Oct. 17 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries suffered when his patrol came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire during combat operations.
• Spc. Daniel W. Winegeart, 23, of Kountze, Texas, died Oct. 17 in Baghdad, Iraq, from injuries sustained when his Light Medium Tactical Vehicle drove off an overpass.
• Sgt. Lester D. Baroncini Jr., 33, of Bakersfield, Calif., died Oct. 15 in Samarra, Iraq, of injuries suffered when two land mines detonated near his HMMWV.
• Pfc. Stephen D. Bicknell, 19, of Prattville, Ala., died Oct. 15 in Samarra, Iraq, of injuries suffered when two land mines detonated near his HMMWV.
• Spc. Jose R. Perez, 21, of Ontario, Calif., died Oct. 18 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq, from injuries suffered from enemy small arms fire.
• Sgt. 1st Class Daniel A. Brozovich, 42, of Greenville, Pa., died Oct. 18 in Ashraf, Iraq, from injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his Armored Security Vehicle while on combat patrol.
• 2nd Lt. Christopher E. Loudon, 23, of Brockport, Pa., died Oct. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Cpl. David M. Unger, 21, of Leavenworth, Kan., died Oct. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Cpl. Russell G. Culbertson III, 22, of Amity, Pa., died Oct. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Joseph C. Dumas Jr., 25, of New Orleans., died Oct. 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Staff Sgt. Ryan E. Haupt, 24, of Phoenix, Ariz., died Oct. 17 in Baqubah, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Norman R. Taylor III, 21, of Blythe, Calif., died Oct. 17 in Baqubah, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Pfc. Nathan J. Frigo, 23, of Kokomo, Ind., died Oct. 17 in Baqubah, Iraq, of injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.

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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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