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GRAFFITI -- September 14, 2009 thru September 20, 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.

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
September 14, 2009

2203 - Still bent over the machine. My break today involved taking out the trash. Whew. Doing circuit simulations and reviewing Karnaugh maps ... again! Aaargh! Oh, yeah. Go Patriots. And, going back ten years, first Tom, then Bob, then Bo: each in turn encouraged me to keep doing stuff on this site. And Tom posted this:

Regarding dragging Brian into the Gang:

I have a mental image of Jerry Pournelle sitting at one end of a dimly lit table wearing a green eyeshade. Bob Thompson, Bo Leuf, Shawn Wallbridge, Svenson, and the others straggling down each side, cigar and pipe smoke swirling up in the dim light. Under the lone bright light in the room we see Brian, sweating nervously as Tom paces around behind him. "Do you really know what you're getting yourself into? Do you? Eh?" Tom says, leaning heavily over him. Jerry has Royal Armadillo open in front of him, muttering about his Earthlink connection, nodding sagely as he eyes the page layout. Bob is cleaning a large-caliber handgun, muttering "Microsoft Delenda Est" under his breath, and playing with a Windows 98 cd that already has more than the regulation number of holes in it. Bo is picking his guitar, looking over Jerry's shoulder at the laptop, and nodding; he likes what he sees. Shawn is buried in papers, looked decidedly rumpled, frantically coding new additions to his ASP scripts, muttering "Yeah, sure, let him in, fine, just let me get this DONE!" The others are fixing Brian with piercing stares. In the background, there's a gigantic precision balance, balancing a heart against a feather.

"Well," Jerry says with a sigh, "We could use a Linux guy. So, if you can modify your site to the weekly format, combined or separate news and mail pages at your discretion, presto pocus, you're in." Everybody else is nodding sagely, the scales disappear, Brian looks relieved as Tom offers him a beer (Canadian, of course) and a gigantic gold plaque (made from melted-down CD-Rs) drops into his lap, with the words "We do these things so you don't have to" engraved on it.

Or I could be way, way off. I dunno. <seg>

Heh. I'd forgotten that ... Bo is gone on ahead, now. And Tom's been doing fine, far as I know, working in the physical world, rather than this virtual intertube space thingy. I haven't heard from Shawn in a good long time, but Svenson is still a regular correspondent, and still posting, too. Bob is doing well, too.

HEY! Speaking of Bob, he's been working like mad on the Make: Science Room for the last few months. It's live, now. Go. Do chemistry. Scare your mom. (Don't, however, scar your mom: it's bad form). Now, back to the school books. Ciao.

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September 15, 2009

No Post .. All school work. Reading. Brain hurts.

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September 16, 2009

No Post ... Roasting coffee. More school work. Sigh.

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September 17, 2009

2211 - Short post. A thing I want to look into - installing Solaris 10 or Open Solaris in Bootcamp on the Mac. Why? To see if I can, and because it'd be useful come November when I'm going to be sitting in Solaris classes at LISA '09. A couple of weeks ago, I was tracking Wil Wheaton (@wilw) while he was at PAX. He was having fun. And there was a concert that pleased him greatly. This turns me on to Jonathan Coulton, who missed me entirely the last few years. How, I can't fathom, since his gig hits all the filk/folk/geek chords in mini-moog that passes for my soul. So I finally go out hunting and find he's got a live concert gig available in combo CD/DVD format called, appropriately, "Best. Concert. Ever." So I hunt down the wallet, and while I'm making the purchase, both @timoreilly (you know who he is), and @donttrythis (at home ... yeah, Adam Savage) make Jonathan Coulton references. Yikes! Moons aligning much? Now, time to put the dogs out. Ciao!

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September 18, 2009

1957 - Heh. Listening to Best. Concert. Ever. "Working for our robot overlords. Did I say overlords? I meant protectors. Merry Christmas, Chiron Beta Prime." Fun stuff. Thanks, Jonathan! Meantime, I've been and done the school work. Now I'm going to look into stuff ... oh, maybe I'll use Parallels and one of the spare partitions I left aside when I created the latest partitioning layout. More when success happens. Ciao!

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September 19, 2009

1052 - A couple of different attempts with OpenSolaris and Parallels turned out to be less than stellar successes. I had a fair amount of difficulty installing, and there's custom goo that needs doing for networking, and it appears to have stability issues at boot time. Sigh. Okay, so I installed the latest OpenSolaris release under VMware Server 2.mumble over on Slartibartfast. I can access it as easily here as there. So that's the answer to that. I got the install done, then took a snapshot of the post-install environment so that I can start mucking with it and know I have a stable base to return to. Now, yard work. Ciao!

1436 - Oh, yeah. Arrrrrr! Avast! Morrrre like guidelines! Yep, it's Talk Like A Pirate day!

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September 20, 2009

1511 - Progress is. Several chores are done: the shopping, coffee roasting, commode cleaning. I have some pre-reading to do for the upcoming week's school work, so I think I'll attack that next. But two things first... The recent week's coffee was from The Coffee Project courtesy of my sister. The beans were labeled "Mexican FT Chiapas Organic", and the brew itself was pretty yummy. This week we'll be drinking Bolivian FT Organic Caranavi from the same place. After that, I've got about 4 week's worth of assorted beans from Sweet Maria's, so it's getting close to reorder time.

Second, there's this MIT project called Personas. It "shows you how the Internet sees you". If you post stuff online in your own name, or people write about you online, you might find this interesting. Me? I don't know where that unusually large section labeled "Sports" comes from, and why books are so small, but other than that, it certainly reflects my wide-ranging and eclectic set of interests:

Me vs. Personas

Another tough week. Our condolences to the families and units of the fallen.

• Sgt. Tyler A. Juden, 23, of Winfield, Kansas, died Sept. 12 in Turan, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit using rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fires.
• Sgt. 1st Class Duane A. Thornsbury, 30, of Bridgeport, West Virginia, died Sept.12 in Baghdad, Iraq, of injuries sustained during a vehicle roll-over.
• Pfc. Matthew M. Martinek, 20, of DeKalb, Illinois, died Sept. 11 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, of wounds suffered in Paktika province, Afghanistan, Sept. 4 when enemy attacked his vehicle with an improvised-explosive device followed by a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms fire.
• Staff Sgt. Nekl B. Allen, 29, of Rochester New York, died Sept. 12 in Wardak province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised-explosive device and small arms fire.
• Spc. Daniel L. Cox, 23, of Parsons, Kansas, died Sept. 12 in Wardak province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised-explosive device and small arms fire.
• Staff Sgt. Bryan D. Berky, 25, of Melrose, Florida, died Sept. 12 near Bala Baluk, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained from enemy fire while supporting combat operations.
• Spc. Demetrius L. Void, 20, of Orangeburg, South Carolina, died Sept. 15 at Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained when a military vehicle struck him while conducting physical training.
• 1st Lt. David T. Wright II, 26, of Moore, Oklahoma, died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device Sept. 14 in southern Afghanistan.
• Sgt. Andrew H. McConnell, 24, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania, died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device Sept. 14 in southern Afghanistan.
• Sgt. Robert D. Gordon II, 22, of River Falls, Alabama, died Sept. 16 at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Landstuhl, Germany, from a non-combat related illness, after becoming ill Sept. 11 in southern Afghanistan.
• Sgt. 1st Class Bradley S. Bohle, 29, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, died Sept. 16 in Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle Sept. 15 with an improvised explosive device.
• Sgt. 1st Class Shawn P. McCloskey, 33, of Peachtree City, Georgia, died Sept. 16 in Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle Sept. 15 with an improvised explosive device.
• Staff Sgt. Joshua M. Mills, 24, of El Paso, Texas, died Sept. 16 in Helmand province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle Sept. 15 with an improvised explosive device.
• Pfc. Jeremiah J. Monroe, 31, of Niskayuna, New York, died Sept. 17 in Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.

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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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