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GRAFFITI -- June 18, 2007 thru June 24, 2007 >> 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 18, 2007

0737 - Good morning. We had a nice weekend socializing with friends and family. This morning at 0300, Lucy kept nudging me: "Are you asleep? Are you asleep? Look, you're awake anyway... can I go outside?" Sigh. Then at 5, Marcia was up to help her sister and niece get ready to hit the road. I appeared as by magic at 0545 to help haul the suitcases out, and wave goodbye. Yeah, that's an early start, but the goal was to get them halfway around the Beltway before the morning crush started, and it worked. They were northbound on 270 by 0640. An hour later would have tacked another hour's driving onto their trip.

Anyway, time to apply the nose to the grindstone. Have a great day!

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Mon    TUESDAY    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 19, 2007

0653 - Good morning. How bad was it yesterday? Let's just say that I really didn't know until I got home and found my coffee cup, still full, and still on the counter right where I'd left it ... instead of drinking it on my drive into work. That explains a little bit, at least. In the evening I found my second wind and got all the normal Monday chores done, and made my sandwich for today in advance. It's just possible that the world is going to be ending soon, and that might be my fault. Sorry 'bout that.

This one cracked me up. Dude ran WGA under Wine on his Ubuntu desktop ... and it authenticated. I am imagining Monkey Boy's head exploding in his penthouse office in Redmond. Spatter on the windows, all red. Hmmm. I wonder how Microsoft Bob authenticates?

If I can't have a Mach 10 Scramjet, maybe that's the right pony to ask for, so that the bike ends up being an OC-192 connection to the world. I remember, of course, when 1200 baud was a big deal, and getting one of those fancy new 2400 baud Hayes SuperModems was the bee's knees. Much more fun to play Trade Wars at 2400 baud. Screen repaints at 300 baud were drudgerous.

The new CCD design from Kodak is likely to be a big hit. I wonder, after the technology proves out, how well Kodak is going to do licensing this out to any and every vendor. While it'll make a huge difference at the low-end of the range, even with cell-phone cameras, I anticipate huge improvements in the middle ground of reasonably priced digital SLRs. Additionally, there's some cool info I was reading about using an entire set of images that bracket the assorted shutter-speed and aperture settings to create a single image with the best characteristics of each... Where was that? I'll have to look around, I think it was in a review of image-processing software under Linux... perhaps it was Krita that had this feature? Well, here's one post on the topic.

I've posted Jerry's column, and now I need to get this online and head to the office. Happy Tuesday.

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Mon    Tues    WEDNESDAY    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 20, 2007

0653 - Good morning. My friend Wynn sent me this yesterday:

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
    Sir James M. Barrie

I like that. What I do isn't as much of a game that I happen to work at, like baseball, for example. OTOH, I don't have to juice up for the gig. Of course, this next quote is also attributed to Barrie:

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.

Who am I to argue with a man in a skirt? Grin.

I'm thinking some disk like this might be a nice thing to get for my MacBook Pro. Doubling the local storage might be a very good thing. I am already halfway through my stock 120G drive, and with Parallels I'm looking to increase the number of virtual machines on this system, and back out of the desktop altogether, again. No grand rush, though. I suppose I could always use a firewire drive for such things — at 800 Mbit, that wouldn't be too slouchy. Alternatively, I could put VMs on network storage, and move them on and off the machine at will. I'm likely only to need two or three on the system at a time, and most of those don't need to have large local footprints: I can mount home filesystems remotely, or do a home-server iSCSI target for network storage. Many options, and most of them don't cost a dime. Next year, drives will be bigger and cheaper, so I'll wait.

Today I've got to setup a new RHEL4 internal server. I was busy on a number of fronts yesterday and didn't get to that. I'd like this new box to be qualified and running in production before the end of the week (a hope, at best), but I can't even aspire to that if I don't get to work and get on it. Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    THURSDAY    Fri    Sat    Sun   
June 21, 2007

1218 - Good afternoon. What are you going to do when your day starts out with a vision that is best summarized as "attacked by a flock of feral parakeets"? I sure don't know. Gotta run, later...

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    FRIDAY    Sat    Sun   
June 22, 2007

0747 - Good morning. Not much time to spare, and I can't get to Harmony from here, which is ... weird. I've started restructuring systems again, to make another machine redundant. It starts with a big RAID5. I'll explain more later or tomorrow. Gotta go, now.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    SATURDAY    Sun   
June 23, 2007

1742 - Good evening. I'm just now cooling down. I got the oil changed in both vehicles during the morning hours. Then we dropped off a couple of the sewing machines for service and cleaning. Then we went shopping for a storm door for the front.

Yeh, the HOA (subtitle: Busybody Nazis) did finally approve our request for minor changes to the front of the house. I've got to do some restorative work to the posts, and rather than replace the rotting railing with identical cruft (which would NOT have required permission), we got the go-ahead to just do away with a railing around a front porch that's only 12-16" above grade.

And we got the blessing for a storm door. So we picked out an Anderson, one with a sliding top window section that pulls down an insect screen when it comes. NICE bit of gear, that. And it only took me about 3.5 hours to install it. The one hitch was that the frame around the door (aka brickmold?) was not all at the same elevation relative to the surface of the front door. The top lintel piece stands a good half inch proud of the verticals each side of the door. So I first had to fabricate and attach some robust firring strips to the uprights. Needs some more finish work, but not until I paint after doing the rest of the front porch work. So, maybe pictures tomorrow. Now, to relax and get the rest of the computer migration done.

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
June 24, 2007

1247 - Good afternoon. Well, sort of. What I thought was working-outside-allergic-reaction yesterday afternoon appears in fact to be a summer cold. Clogged head, aches and cranky as all hell. Poor Marcia. I'll survive, and she will, too. Further down, I have some pictures of new storm door and of the garden. But first...

I pay some attention to the news. It was a bad week in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bad for the locals, and bad for our fine young men and women in the Services. Twenty six souls rode into Valhalla in this week's reports, and that doesn't, I think, count most of the twelve losses we suffered over a single 24 hour period this week. Sigh. My condolences to the families and units of the fallen. Thank you for your sacrifices on our behalf!

• Staff Sgt. Michael A. Bechert, 24, of New Castle, Ind., died on 14 June in San Antonio, Texas of wounds suffered when his vehicle struck an improvised explosive device on May 30 in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Cpl. Dustin R. Brisky, 26, of Round Rock, Texas, died June 14 in Tallil, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an explosion.
• Pfc. Michael P. Pittman, 34, of Davenport, Iowa, died June 15 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.
• Sgt. Danny R. Soto, 24, of Houston, Texas, died June 16 in Rashidiyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive devices
• Cpl. Zachary A. Grass, 22, of Beach City, Ohio, died June 16 in Rashidiyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when the vehicle he was in struck an improvised explosive device.
• Staff Sgt. Roy P. Lewsader, Jr., 36, of Belleville, Ill., died June 16, in Tarin Kowt, Afghanistan, from wounds suffered when his vehicle was struck by a rocket-propelled grenade.
• 1st Lt. Frank B. Walkup, IV, 23, of Woodbury, Tenn., died June 16 in Kirkuk, Iraq, from injuries sustained in Rashaad Iraq, when an improvised explosive device detonated near his position during dismounted operations.
• Pfc. David A. Wilkey Jr., 22, of Elkhart, Ind., died June 18 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit June 17 in Baghdad.
• Capt. Joshua E. Steele, 26, of North Henderson, Ill., died June 17 in Panjway, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. 1st Class Christopher D. Henderson, 35, of Hillsboro, Ore., died June 17 in Panjway, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. 1st Class John M. Hennen, 26, of Vinton, La., died June 17 in Panjway, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Richard K. Parker, 26, of Phillips, Maine, died June 14 in Scania, Iraq, from wounds suffered on June 13 when improvised explosive devices detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Pfc. Larry Parks Jr., 24, of Altoona, Penn., died June 18 in Arab Jabor, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Eric L. Snell, 35, of Trenton, N.J., died June 18 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with insurgents using small arms fire in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Sgt. Derek T. Roberts, 24, of Gold River, Calif., died June 14 in Kirkuk, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Val J. Borm, 21, of Sidney, Neb., died June 14 in Kirkuk, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Farid Elazzouzi, 26, of Paterson, N.J., died June 14 in Kirkuk, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Darryl W. Linder, 23, of Hickory, N.C., died June 19 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device.
• Sgt. 1st Class William A. Zapfe, 35, of Muldraugh, Ky., June 19 in Muhammad al Ali, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Pfc. Joshua S. Modgling, 22, of Las Vegas, Nev., June 19 in Muhammad al Ali, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Dustin J. Perrott, 23, of Fredericksburg, Va., died June 21, in Miri, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Shawn P. Martin, 30, of Delmar, N.Y., died June 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Stephen J. Wilson, 28, of Duluth, Ga., died June 20 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Pfc. Jacob T. Tracy, 20, of Palestine, Ill., died June 18 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle June 17 in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Pfc. Raymond N. Spencer Jr., 23, of Carmichael, Calif., died June 21 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit was attacked by insurgents using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire.
• Spc. Karen N. Clifton, 22, of Lehigh Acres, Fla., died June 21 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when her vehicle was hit with a rocket propelled grenade.

Now, some pictures...

In the two pictures at left, (the thumbnails can be clicked to see a larger image) you can see the new storm door, and a detail shot of how I shimmed the uprights out to flush with the lintel piece. I'll caulk, prime, and paint those when I do the rest of the front porch.

The garden is pretty robust this year. I'm able to get peppers out nearly every day already. and I've got squash every third day or so. That pace will pick up shortly. When the tomatoes start ripening, then is when the deluge begins. I like very much that the squash is doing quite well by comparison with previous years.

Now to shamble on downstairs and help Marcia find some outdoor fabric that we have squirrelled away in the garage or nearby environs. Happy Sunday if you have that in you. It's not clear that I do, at this juncture. Be well.

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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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