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GRAFFITI -- July 27, 2009 thru August 02, 2009 >> 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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July 27, 2009

No Post.

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July 28, 2009

Still No Post..

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July 29, 2009

2103 - Monday evening we went out to see the Potter film. Not having read the book recently, I wasn't disappointed. Yeah, it's a slow-ish mover, but I think there's so much groundwork that needs laying for the last two movies that something had to give. Anyway, now I'll break down and re-read Half-Blood Prince one of these days ... or perhaps the whole series again.

Yesterday, I descended into stupidity and moronic behaviour. There I was, innocently preparing a couple of 250G drives for putting into my off-site backup rotation. Hmmm, thought I, I thought that was a 250G drive, not a 750G. Well, I'll wipe it and do something else with it. So I cleared the partition table. It took me about 10 minutes to realize that I'd wiped the partition table of my main mirror set on Slartibartfast, the home Linux workstation/server. Aaaaargh!!! The good news is that after a bit of googling and looking about, I found that gpart, while possibly effective, was slow and didn't natively support JFS. However, testdisk became my new best friend. Half-an-hour, start to finish, examined my drive, rebuilt my partition table, and prompted me to test it by rebooting. Fingers, eyes, toes and teeth crossed, I issued a sync;sync;reboot. W00t! It worked.

In other good news, I was able to take, and thus ace the English placement test early yesterday evening. Now I'm enrolled in Writing 101 for the Fall semester, along with a Computer Architecture course that must somehow be missing from the overall mix of classes. The last "big project" for my Perl class this summer is to write an HTML form page, and an accompanying Perl CGI page to process the form. Um, okay, I think I can handle that. You need that tomorrow? Oh, I've got three weeks? That's alright, then. Grin.

Ten years ago this month, I made my first foray into personal webhosting and online journalling, before the word "blog" existed. In July of 1999, we were living in a two-bedroom apartment on Remington Avenue in Sunnyvale. My little blue Honda CRX died the death, and begat the Blazer That Would Die In Lincoln. And I was "in school" then, too, though not for credit, just for learning. I was online because we had just gotten Speakeasy DSL, and those fine folks encouraged home serving of webs, DNS, ssh, whatever. Remarkable company, Speakeasy: I still think well of them. Marcia's older Gateway PC had become our new webserver, and Orbdesigns.com was born. I don't think I imagined that I'd still be plunking along this many years later. Some of the early readers may certainly have hoped not. Something happened along the way, and all of August was dry. I picked up the ball again in September, so I'll revisit the topic then-ish.

Now, let's see if I can't get those disks configured properly without hosing my system (again!) ... Ciao!

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July 30, 2009

Another night's harvest

1859 - Yum expresses it pretty well. I'm going to add several of those items to a ready-to-heat italian meal of some kind or another. Altogether, it's going to be wonderful. I see from my Inbox that there's a mailbag to format in my near future. And I need to get organized for the next project in my Perl class. Finally, I have a bit of remote work to do this evening at around 2200. So, that should keep me out of trouble this evening. Ciao!

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July 31, 2009

2213 - Molly went to the vet today, fine for her, traumatizing for me. I'll tell that story later. This evening? I got Jerry's July Mailbag formatted and online. That plus a full day's work, and roasting some brazilian coffee for the weekend's java brewing rounded out the day. Ciao!

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August 1, 2009

1819 - Accomplished today: Oil change + front and rear differential service on the truck. Reorganized the furniture in the master to create a sitting area under the space where we wanted to hang the new lamp. Hung the new lamp in the master. Roasted coffee for next week. Harvested 12 pounds of tomatoes out of the garden today. And, may I say, holy cow are these good tomatoes. Just a bit of salt and pepper. Yum-oh! And that's a Good Thing. Now, school work. Ciao!

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August 2, 2009

Row 1 - Normal rainfall Glenn Dale Bell Station, 1921-1987
* Only nine months measured in 2008;
+ : includes low estimate from snowfall

2029 - So the Weather Gods glanced our way, and said, "Hmmm. We pretty much ignored you last month, right? Okay, here's another 0.6" of rain. Will that do for starts?" About 2/3 of that was overnight, and then a short span of big rain between 9 and noon swept through the area, adding the rest. It stayed pretty gray, and just rained a trace more, moments ago. Now, here's yesterday's tomato haul, that's turned into today's lobster pot full of nascent red sauce:

Many happy tomatoes

Eight more lives fed to the Meatgrinder of Freedom. Yeah, we're trying to make Afghanistan an inhospitable place for terrorists, but they can find other trouble spots in the world to dominate and bend to their needs. We feel, and make ourselved obligated to the populaces that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are happy to use when their needs suit, but are also happy to torment and kill at whim. Obama won't use the word win, because there isn't any winning for us in this conflict. But is there even hope of a standoff? Of significant long term progress towards a lessening of world violence as a result of our actions as a nation in the Middle East? I sure hope so, for the sake of our Armed Forces serving and dying over there. Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.

• Spc. Herberth A. Berrios-Campos, 21, of Bealeton, Virginia, died July 24 in Salman Pak, Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.
• Pfc. Donald W. Vincent, 26, of Gainesville, Florida, died July 25 of wounds sustained while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
• Spc. Justin D. Coleman, 21, of Spring Hill, Florida, died July 24 in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit using small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fires.
• Aviation Electronics Technician Airman Andrew Scott Charpentier, 21, of Great Falls, Montana, died July 23 at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, Florida, from a non-combat related illness incurred while assigned to the Navy Expeditionary Guard Battalion, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
• Pvt. Gerrick D. Smith, 19, of Sullivan, Illinois, died July 29 in Herat, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.
• Chief Warrant Officer Douglas M. Vose III, 38, of Concrete, Washington, died July 29 in Kabul Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms fire.
• Lance Cpl. Gregory A. Posey, 22, of Knoxville, Tennessee, died July 30 of wounds suffered while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
• Lance Cpl. Jonathan F. Stroud, 20, of Cashion, Oklahoma, died July 30 of wounds suffered while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.

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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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