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GRAFFITI -- November 26, 2007 thru December 02, 2007>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week 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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November 26, 2007
1935 - Good evening. The weekend was exactly as described ... with the Thompson's here on a visit. Bob and Barbara brought Duncan and Malcolm up to visit us on Tuesday last. We had a nice, quiet relaxing weekend. Marcia and Barbara did a bit of shopping on a couple of days, and I helped Bob fettle his new workstation. The dogs got as much food as they could beg out of us, and may have been sad to depart this morning after the traffic abated. I'm a little bummed that I wasn't as energetic a host as I might have been, given the cold I was stifling, but all-in-all it was really nice to have them up. The Kittermans dropped by for a while yesterday, to say hello and get a sneak preview of the best Christmas present you can give to a kid this season: the Thompson's new book from O'Reilly Media: their Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders.
I've just thumbed through my copy and I'll be spending more time on it one day soon. Being in a light-pollution fishbowl, there are a number of objects I wouldn't be able to see without driving out to some more reasonably dark site, but the urge is there (well, that and a telescope, too). Not just now - we have a couple of remodel projects coming up. Winter's too cold to go out anyway. Maybe next spring...?
Now, I have to finish backups and other chores. Be well.
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November 27, 2007
1914 - Good evening. I've got Jerry's mailbag formatted and online, the column segment follows shortly. Earlier today, I called Marcia and told her to uninstall Quicktime on her Windows machines. There's an actively exploited un-patched vulnerability running about right now, and that's the best recommendation I can find. Beyond that, I've not much else to report. Work is. Life is. Oh, and the cold is gone. Yay.
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November 28, 2007
1244 - Good afternoon. Found this one in my personal (not work) administrative inbox just now: "User Quarantine Release Notification - Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:02:52 +0800", theoretically from "User Quarantine Release" on my server. When I look at the headers, it's from this IP address: 203.212.4.26, which is in ChinaNet's range. The email directs me to click on a link to a Chinese webserver to release my quarantined email. Yeah, right. I didn't do that. Don't you fall for such tricks, either. See y'all later...
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November 29, 2007
2255 - Good evening. When things are just working right, there isn't as much to write about. When the tools break, or don't do what I expect, well then it's time to gripe and explain how I fixed it. When these computer-thingies do well, I'm doing stuff with them, instead of writing about them. As it happens, I've been mucking about in a couple of areas ...
First, the good news - Red Hat is finally distributing their releases on DVD. I watch over perhaps 25 subscribed systems, and for the first time yesterday, I went to the Download Software section of the Red Hat Network and found DVD images. Hurrah! Not so much because of the downloading of 5 or 6 CD images and burning them - oh, no. The downside was swapping disks in and out ... Yeah, you can build a Kickstart server, and I've done that, but I only keep my primary production build on there. Everything else is a one-off experimental install from media. DVD makes my life easier. Thanks, Red Hat!
On the not-quite-working-the-way-I-want front, there's Solaris. I logged in and pulled down Solaris 10 x86, Update 4, last night. That was the August release. I decided to take a flier and just "upgrade" my previously installed Update 3 on an old slow box here at the Hovel. The upside was that the upgrade seemed to work - that is, it booted and came up after the upgrade. But then I tried to apply the security updates applicable to the system — several update/reboot cycles later I came to the sad realization that there were packages that seem to have survived the Upgrade install, but then could not be updated thereafter. While that's an interesting problem from a poke-at-it-until-it-hurts standpoint, I decided the better part of valor lay in scraping the system and trying again with a clean U4 install. So that's running right now.
Check out Bird and Fortune for a bit of brit fun. I got one link in email from family on the other coast, and one link from Mike's post today. Funny how things group like that. Happy almost Friday!
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November 30, 2007
No Post......
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December 1, 2007
0943 - Good morning. Last night we went to out to supper at friends, and I helped them pull their old desktop hard drive, and install Windows on another one. That lets them donate their machine and retain their data. Seemed to go okay on the computer front, supper and friends were fantastic, thanks!
There's also this from a long-time correspondent...
I thought you might find today's events of some interest. You included SFC Johnny Walls' death in your Sunday posting.
His funeral was here in Port Orchard today. The nutcases who protest Soldiers funerals (as well as drag the American Flag through the dirt) decided to make a showing. So we gave them a good old Kitsap County welcome.
They were outnumbered by about 300 to 5. It was good to see so many people turn out to support the family. I wish we could do this for every fallen soldier.
Here's my blog posting on it. Links to photos and video are at the end of the post.
Thanks!
A maintenance windows opens at noon, at work. I'll be there, working on updating firmware on a fiber channel storage array, and allocating some more storage for a couple of hosts on our network. I guess the "Senior" in my job title indicates the rate at which the job ages me. Grin, just kidding... Ciao!
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December 2, 2007
1726 - Good evening. A productive day. We slept in a little bit, then got out to do the shopping, including most of our holiday gift-giving shopping. Back homre Marcia organized, then headed over to Linda's to spend some time sewing with a whole group of stitchers. Meanwhile I cleaned up the garage considerably, to the tune of 3 large garbage bags filled. Now Marcia and Linda are back here, awaiting me to make stir fry chicken and vegetables for supper. But first...
I received email this week from a relative of one of our fallen heros. She pointed out that from the perspective of the casualties and their families, there's no such thing as "relatively light casualties" - I completely understand. However, I'm not unhappy that the losses have been dropping, week-over-week. You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to a Sunday when I can look and find no new casualties to report. What I hope is that the falling numbers are indicative of progress that will lead to enough sanity over there that we can start bringing our young folks home to stay. So, still, five lives given in service to our country this week... My condolences to the families and units of the fallen.
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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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