The question of the moment : Is it still raining? You see, here in "sunny" California, we forget how to drive in the rain after the pavement has been dry for about 35 minutes. So the commutes during the first few rains of the season bring people to sorry circumstance. They are used to taking that 35mph on-ramp at 60, and become first terribly confused, then dizzy and finally airborne. If it is still raining - I want to stay home. I won't of course, but let's look outside now. And, it is. The sound of the tires had warned me of course, but I could hope that it was just a remnant puddle. Ah, well. Time for the dance of the Sugar Plum Morons.

More in a moment. OK, no more in a moment. Bluefish just dumped core on me. I don't have time to figure it out and retrieve all the typing at the moment (mostly mail, and easily recreated).. Wish me luck on the roads, Happy Monday. Ah - I think it is the stinking Windows menu bar button being mis-interpreted... argh.

Made it safe and sound. Wet roads, but the sun is breaking through. Getting feedback on links in *nix file systems from Svenson (more on this topic later), a new Alertbox came in from Jakob Nielson, this one on Graceful Degradation. See you later.

Hey, there. I just got an offer (in USPSmail) to pay full price for Red Hat 6.1. In return for this magnanimous gesture, I would receive a RedHat Baseball cap. Yeah, way - NOT! I probably do want to get a package update at some time, but probably not until after the release of the 2.4 kernel series. But the mailing did not cost as much as some - only two color printing required.

From this morning's aborted mailbag... Dave Central from my Andover.net e-news is promoting a GPL'd Pizza Delivery System (for any pizza joint that wants to go Linux). Sounds cool to me. Everyone still agrees that the Judge thinks that Microsoft is a monopoly. Many people believe that the Judge is dead wrong. I believe Jerry. Read his article at Byte.com. I also think it doesn't really matter. By the time any potential remedies might be applied, some years from now, the world will have moved on. Here's the kicker, folks. You know how, by the time the book is published, two revisions of the software have been released? Multiply publication time by the extended cycle times of justice, and you have a study in irrelevance. Too bad. Regarding yesterday's quotation from Shakespeare, I got the following from Matt -

Ah, the joys of trying to figure out where that half-remembered text quote
comes from...

About a year ago I stumbled across Project Gutenburg, at
http://promo.net/pg/. Excellent project, I think I need to post their
address again. Anyway, being blessed with a workstation located at a major
web hosting provider, iTOOL (plug - I got stock options ) I recently
downloaded their entire collection, including the complete works of
Shakespeare, and burned them to CD-R in text format. Included an HTML based
index page on the root of each CD, and a "grep"-like search engine, and I
can now find any quote from any classic story, on the fly. For that matter,
there's a version or three of Bartlett's Familiar quotations, increasing the
available resources even more. I highly recommend these people; they're
doing good work, their transcriptions have always been excellent, their
formatting never changes, and best of all, it's all done for free.

Given the proper inducement, I could be pursuaded to send a copy of the
CDs... although I believe there's a commercial outfit selling an even better
version on a two-cd set, for about $30.

Regarding yesterday's uncalled for lesson in links, in the *nix world...

Thanks for the link information. I'll try it out at home just to see how
it goes.
I have a question about it.
When you delete seven, are you deleting the actual file or just the
link. I mean, the seven.1 link still points to the inode where the file
was/is. Can you still use the file through seven.1 ?

Svenson.

OTGH, when backing up data normally, using tar for instance, hard links back up the data. Symlinks just back up the link, not the data. And although you can create links to directories, this is only symlinks. Hard links are prevented from being created under normal circumstances, since you can then easily have a recursion that becomes infinite, whereas symlinks have a separate stack (I think).

Another WebInformant newsletter came in from David Strom. I have mentioned him before - he occasionally writes for Byte.com. He writes about interesting things, and clearly marks the self promotion area at the bottom of each newsletter. I like it. This missive is regarding effective use of email to communicate with your customer base. If you want info on how to find Strom's stuff, I will forward out the message to you - just drop me a line.

You delete a file and it isn't gone. You count up the space taken by files,
as listed by ls and you get a number that is higher than your actual disk
space. Pfew.

No wonder then that mere humans find Unix rather complex.

Svenson.

Hello. The clouds are gone, we're looking at high 60s to low 70s - back to a normal (read: without El Niño) Northern California winter weather <grin> Any laptop suggestions out there? I am going to be looking for a reliable compromise between price and performance, one that will probably run Windows. Next, Bo jumps in the links game...

Sjon commented (on OrbDesigns)
> You delete a file and it isn't gone. You count up the space taken by 
> files, as listed by ls and you get a number that is higher than your actual 
> disk space. Pfew.

> No wonder then that mere humans find Unix rather complex.

Hah, have you counted neuron storage space for forgotten memories? 
<vbg> Talk about nests of dysfunctional links...

/ Bo
-- 
"Bo Leuf" <[email protected]>
Leuf fc3 Consultancy
http://www.leuf.com/

Yep,
My head is full of symbolic links, I recently deleted all the hard
links. Just to count the amount of free neurons.

I found some but I cannot remeber how many :-)

Svenson.

Morning break time. A quick update on the day's events... We (Marcia & I) may be having to change our insurances around, and the bloody dental people will cover nothing real in the first year of insurance, under the presumption that you would sign up, pay your half year's worth of premiums, while getting your teeth completely fixed, then drop them. Meantime, we have continuing work being done under the current dental plan which won't be covered at all if we have to change companies. Stink.

Dr. Keyboard is back and very nearly live (updated through yesterday, although you need to access the last three days via the tommorrow link at the bottom of each day's page, since he hasn't fully updated his calendar page yet <g>). Tom has a warning about YAOSF (Yet Another Outlook Security Flaw) in his Tuesday posting. From what I can tell, this is unrelated to prior art in the virus world, and it appears not to be addressed by the major sites like Symantec and Data Fellows - if I see solutions there, I will post here. Back to the grindstone, now.

Marcia is having an email discussion over guns, quantity and quality, with Bob Thompson. I dunno if either will go public, but I am staying away from the conflagration. On Dave Farquhar's topic of the day, the American Dream, I sent him the following...

You might want to change ALL the dates on VIEW.HTML... <g>.

On the subject at hand, I actually am lucky enough to live the dream. I have a wonderful spouse. I have a job that I enjoy doing AND get paid to do. Between us we make enough to pay the rent, buy the food and the internet connection. Everything (including that last ) other than the basic three is bonus land for me. I am generally happy these days. If you take a hike down any major street, watching faces, happy isn't generally what you see. That's really too bad.

That said, and sent, I find myself in a rather blah state of being, actually. Just still fighting the flu, and it feels like I am losing at the moment. On an entirely different topic, I am fortunate in my choices in friends and readers... regarding that bit of fiction I wrote and posted last week, clearly many people were raised in the school of "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." Thanks, I think.

Oh, Dr. Keyboard is fully live again, with an updated calendar page and everything. He warrents two mentions today, not only for playing catchup with a week or more's worth of postings, and for the razz'ing he took from other daynoters as a result thereof, but also for maintaining such aplomb in his tone - right back to food and beemers, with very little regard for us complaining over here in the colonies... <SEG>

I just read your story. I found it to be quite good. 
When can we expect the next installment?
 
When I read your notes last week, I made a mental note, 
but forgot. Thanks for mentioning it today. Keep it up.
 
Shawn

Good Morning. We have rain coming in shortly, and lots of other exciting things which I am loath to be public about at this time, so bear with me for a few days. Things are, however, getting better.

Br'er Rabbit is one of those dimly remembered stories from my childhood, but for those of you who don't know - Br'er Rabbit once escaped danger by loudly and repeatedly professing his fear of being thrown into the brier patch. Of course this yielded the expected response from the attackers, pleasing the rabbit mightily (happily scampering off through the brier patch, and dismaying his enemies, who where well fooled.

This premise can also hold for semi-intentional behaviour. As of last night, the bit of fiction I posted had accumulated some 30 hits, and only one response of any kind. I posted last night in hopes of getting some more feedback, and am now getting it - "This is what's wrong..." mail helps me - I only learn through making mistakes. So thanks, including Svenson ...

> "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." 
You asked comments. Well you get them. :-) 

As a short fiction piece it is a bit incongruent. I mean that 
it needs some more stage setting, it begins and ends a bit abrupt. 

As a sideline to a novel, as you state in the introduction, 
it would probably sound different. It has a style of its own and it
reads easy enough 

It made me think of The Ship Who Sang from Anne McCaffrey 
(which happens to be my favourite writer). So clearly
there is promise in it. 

Just write that novel. I'll buy it. 

Svenson.

Check out this cartoon - it was pointed to in one of my mailing lists the link is here (not anymore, a dead link. Sorry) . Enough fun, I am off to work. Have a lovely day.

VIRUS WARNING... Bob Thompson and ZD Anchordesk in a virtual tie in warning me about the BubbleBoy email virus. This is real, there are warnings at Network Associates here, and at other places. The at-risk systems are Win98 and Win2000, with IE5.0 and WSH installed (usually as default). You can go to the NAI site for more details but there is a LOT of traffic there right now. The page recommends setting your IE5.0 Internet Security Zone to HIGH. This will prevent the virus from automatically running. Yes, this is a virus that will run just because you open the email. No attachments required. Yup, they said it wasn't possible. They were wrong.

The Microsoft site is where you can find the patch to plug this particular hole in the dike. It is claimed that the patch will allow you to safely view mail with "Default" instead of "High" Internet Zone Security. I hate to say it, but YMMV. I just don't know. I don't run IE5 myself, and I am on NT here, which is magically invulnerable to this particular beastie.

Svenson adds that it is ok to aim high, but not straight up, since things tend to come down again. I mutter something about escape velocity, and keep right on shooting. <grin> Later.

I have been blessed (sorta). A good reader going by the handle of ranger-j has found it worth the effort to put Mick through the vegamatic, and tell me what sucked about it, and what sucked less about it. The person behind ranger-j took the time to give me about 2000 words of critique on my meagre 880... I thank you, kind person. I hope to live up to the effort you put into my work.

Now, I have just finished making up a fresh batch of pesto sauce. Three bundles of basil (although ours was home-grown), one head of garlic, peeled, 1/3 cup pine nuts, 1/3 cup parmesan (or romano) cheese. Process, adding olive oil until the favored consistency is achieved (usually about 1/2 to 3/4 cup). This goes extremely well with pasta, on french bread and broiled, as a basis for a green pizza (instead of red sauce, I mean - still LOTS of dead animal products on any pizza passing my lips), etc. So now I go forth to do battle with the kitchen. Wish me luck.

Dan Seto, over here, is keeping up with the pack, daily entries and all. While I have taken exception to his style of presentation over one or two things (my problem, certainly not Dan's), he has an interesting perspective and a strong style. If you haven't yet, check him out. The other day, he got a letter from Dr. Jim Crider, who is now up with his own site, over here. The good doctor has a thriving practice, it appears, and with a little attention to his link structure, will have a thriving website as well.

Meantime, the dinner was... ummm, back in a few.

Dinner was certainly good enough for seconds, don't you think? Actually meat free, with pesto pasta, french bread and lots of salad. That hit several spots. I know, I know, my food groups are known to be sucrose, glucose, fructose and caffeine. I need extra salt on my eggs, just to run up my blood pressure to blow the cholesterol plaques out (Salt - Nature's Roto-Rooter). Me, who stood up and applauded when Dean Edell (the local tv doc) announced that some types of chocolate were anti-oxidants, thus actually, really, truly good for me, the guy for whom they invented the meatlover's pizza. Happy with pasta and salad. Miracles can happen.

Having caught up with some of my email, I will leave you with a pointer to the following site, brought to my attention by a writer on the SVLUG mailing list. This site has an overclocking scheme which is slightly less sophisticated than that of Kryotech (which, BTW, is shipping the Cool Athlon 900, that's right, a 900 MHz Athlon... If I can't have the OC3, then how about one of these, eh?, with a 22" monitor, hey, Tom?). Off to the how-to shows on PBS. Have a lovely evening.


Orb Home / Top

Hola. Firstly, it is Veteren's Day. I personally take far too much of the pleasure and experience of freedom for granted, when the men and women of an earlier day laid their lives on the line in ernest of their support of their country, and the oath they gave. To veterens everwhere, thank you!

We here in the SF Bay Area have the pleasure of 3 competing PBS stations. Generally what this means is that we catch the bits we missed last night, on another station tomorrow night. In this case, on Tuesday night, there was a Nova episode (a 2 hour beast) entitled Decoding Nazi Secrets. The mostly follows the Ultra team at Bletchley Park as the work feverishly to break each of the Enigma variants. Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has deep roots in this little bit of history, and the show is well done and informative. If you have a chance to catch it in your area, do.

As the latest highlight of the week indicates, mail-o-rama is the topic. 72 new messages in the last 7 hours. A tired chuckle, a sense of futility and we're off. Svenson checks in with mushrooms in place of pine nuts in the pesto, and a pointer to Jay Ranger's info over on Bo's wiki pages. Later. But sorry, I am one of those clearly demented and diminished people who just don't like mushrooms. At all. My loss, your gain. I used to say, "When I like a thing, the world supply is in danger." <g> Bo himself checks in, telling me that if I aim for the stars, I will at least reach the treetops. Shades of Bilbo up in a tree, cutting down dwarves. Thanks, gents.

The Andover Update is in, with gif2png as the featured tool of the day in linux.davecentral.com ... just a few days late, eh? Anchordesk blurb says that Internet Appliances will outsell computers in just two short years. Heard that one before, Mrs. McGillicuddy.

Gotta get this show on the road, folks. I will check in as I can. Have a great second to last work day of the week, unless you are a government worker and get today off (smile, Dan).

Sterilization is the word that comes to mind. Both of us having forgotten that we have overnight company coming tomorrow, we did no cleaning over the weekend. Preparing the apartment for visitors is the process I refer to as sterilization. Nothing that a nice brisk (as in fast moving) fire, followed by a bit of a washout with a firehose, can't take care of. But then there goes Mr. Computer, overheating, so I guess it is the old fashioned method - rag, brush & bucket... but we're done and everything is shiny again. I love spray paint (really, just kidding, hon...) Dinner is about to roll in the door, so I will be back in a while, probably.

Some customers may experience significant delays
in receiving their e-mail. Some mail may even be
returned with an error "5.1.1 Unknown or illegal
alias:{userID}@pacbell.net"

How's that for an email status update from your ISP? I note that I have received (1) email since I got home from work this evening. This is abnormal enough that I would suspect nuclear war, or an outbreak of the Andromeda Strain. If you try to send email and get it back, don't stress, try me again tomorrow. You will note there is nothing about people working on the problem, nor is there an estimated time (or DATE!!!) of repair. Aaaarrgghh.

Well, they seem to have repaired that email glitch - a message came in from Dan Bowman, which opened the floodgates - at least a hundred since then. OK, make the problem come back, eh? Speaking of problems, Dan said he liked the occasional reference to SF. This note introduces a new feature - spot the author. I will post a passage from one of the many books on the Bilbrey library shelves - anyone can have a shot at guessing the title and author, in order to win - absolutely nothing. But then, I haven't won the lottery yet. Then I might run a game for L-Cow here... No, not really - ;w;ql; qnn3 n lkn wa a skjkjsb kw432i9 98379237 ;annsa OK, Ok, you are my one and only computer forever. I promise. Now, no 480 across the frontal lobes while I am asleep, OK? Round one, Guess the Author, answers and votes reported on Friday.

For if I glimpsed what I had failed to gain by not drinking all 
I should have, I saw what the two draughts I actually had downed 
had done for me.  They say the events of his life slide through 
a drowning man's mind.  Similarly all the things I had seen and 
done since reaching the Commonwealth had returned to me during 
the first upward surges of my flight.  They had returned to fix 
themselves in my consciousness in order and proportion, a portable 
spectrum of values, graded for all occasions. To one so equipped 
new places would never be too strange, nor would old ones lack 
the luster of novelty.

And a tip of the hat to a master, one who took his maker's drink many moons ago, Ray Bradbury, reportedly laid low by a stroke. His words have taken me places where no men yet walk, and to this day, still do. I wish him well.


Orb Home / Top

TGIF, indeed. Dunno why - I've been up since about 4:10. Marcia's already gone to work, but I am not quite that dedicated... It has definitely been one heck of a week - I am seriously washed out. We were going to go fishing tomorrow, but right now, we almost certainly won't in the early morning. Perhaps Sunday, or some lazy fishing (afternoon or some such). I am going to get a cup of coffee, since clearly it is too late to go back to sleep. Just a few moments, please...

RedHerring has a "story" about Transmeta here, I spotted the link on Slashdot. For those either in a cave, or so worried about the µSoft entanglements that other computing news pales, Transmeta is one of the most heavily veiled companies in the valley. We presume that they are doing chips of some kind, with 4 patents issued over the last year and a half. They employ Linus Torvalds, creator and maintainer of the Linux kernel, although in what capacity, it is not clear. Linus is clearly their high profile guy - he is the unofficial company spokesbeing, although he actually hasn't said anything of substance yet. He has an engagement at Comdex, which is expected to at least touch on Transmeta, although predictions range from Linus revealing the website and the business model and products... to dropping a few more cryptic hints, and noting that the Transmeta website may have more information than it does now. (If you gander at the Transmeta site, view the page source to read the comments in the html code).

Meantime, I have a last working day of the week to attend, so I will leave you to your own devices for now - have a lovely Friday.

A bad week for everyone except the writers of anti-virus software... VIRUS WARNING W32.FunLove is anything but. While it is a slow spreader, since apparently it doesn't email itself, FunLove still gets around, having been detected in the US and the EU. It runs in every member of the windows family, but has the most fun in NT, where it modifies the account privileges to give all accounts, from the admin down through guest, administrator access. Further information is available at Symantec, and presumably other anti-virus vendors as the day progresses.

Hello and happy weekend. I am home from work, and checking out the world wide scene. Earthquakes in Turkey (6.5 richter), Al Gore going to visit Microsoft at the same time as Bill G. visits Comdex (referred to as "a computer trade show" <quiet chuckle> - late breaking flash, Al cancels out on Microsoft, citing the software publisher's policy of not allowing reporters on the Redmond campus. Sure it wouldn't have to do with a certain judicial proceeding, or that the nose isn't out of joint that the jefe can't be there to meet and greet?

Ch-ch-ch-changes - Marcia starts work for a new employer on Monday. Clearly we had been getting used to the old stress, and it was time for a fresh batch. Besides, we are hoping that this will be a stable and pleasant situation, perfect for Marcia to practice her black arts of Contract Negotiation.

Tom email'd me with news of a pact between RedHat and RSA. Great, now how will RH meet it's GPL obligations - sure they can give you the source, but then they'll have to kill you. Just kidding, I am sure they will hang a virtual chastity belt around all the bits you aren't supposed to touch. A link to the Yahoo version of this story is here (sorry, another dead Yahoo Link).

Well, at least they have the good graces to let you know that you may
not be getting any email. Users are such ungrateful people 
(wide grin). My ISP, on the other hand, did not let me know that any 
mail being sent to my aloha.net address for the last 10 days was being 
bounced as a "user unknown." Big Sigh. And as of yet, they have not 
fixed it. (Even bigger sigh). Thank goodness Misc. Ramblin's mail 
goes to another ISP.

And yes, I am smiling. Yesterday was one of those drop-dead gorgeous
days that seem to occur this time of the year. Its like Mother Nature 
decides to take a break, and by doing so, creates an atmosphere that is 
so razor sharp and clear that it almost hurts the unfiltered eye. My wife 
(She Who Can Not Be Disobeyed) and I cruised through Waikiki and watched 
some beach volleyball, of the female kind (nudge nudge, wink wink - 
sand does indeed get everywhere when the players are wearing thongs).

But its back to the grind, as it were...

Aloha,

Dan [email protected]
Go University of Hawai'i Rainbow Warriors!

In other news, I am looking into production scheduling software, maybe faking it with project management software - who knows. Meantime, there are games to be played, dinner and dessert to be had, and lord knows what other fun before bedtime at 7:30 sharp (getting up at DARK:30 sucks when it isn't for the sole purpose of fishing) <g> Lastly for now, here is an article on the subject of viruses and Linux, posted at Linux Ticker. Seems to be interesting, informative, with lots of outbound links at the end (always a good idea, to prevent information rot).

And here is a thumbnail from our recent visit to Sacramento. I know, the image quality kinda sucks golf balls through a garden hose, but the scanner is better than none (barely). This is me holding my niece Alexandra, my sister Barbara holding Rob, the new nephew, with Marcia on the right. Even with the quality of the scan, you can tell that Rob is the new nephew - we still have to take the tags off, eh? (Oops, forgot to mention the size - about 120K JPG file)


Orb Home / Top

I can be called a slow starter. But that's only fair - I did warn you that I was shagged out (not the british "Austin Powers" usage, but the one indicating tired beyond the norm). We slept about 11 hours. Now my back hurts, I have the glimmerings of a caffeine withdrawl headache and I have the most interesting hair this side of the Mississippi. Why is it that, in a sitcom, when someone gets out of a bed after a supposed night's sleep, I start laughing? Do you guess that I find that even my disbelief cannot be suspended when someone arises in the morning, stunningly coiffed? You would be right.

Soon to be available, a hardware accelerated 3D X-server for Linux. Notice of that arrived in my box last night. An article about it is available here. You may think, well, so? Gamers and CAD users like stuff like this. It may also help with the GUI stuff, especially Gnome.

There is lots of funny stuff flying around via email, here's a sample... I am not responsible, don't shoot the messenger.

> I'm with Bo. You Americans mess everything up. [from CWJ]

Come now. Bo didn't mention value judgements as to the desirability of what
had been perfected. He merely made an unsupportable statement that Americans
hadn'd perfected anything.

Fast food = not real food (perhaps not, but American fast food franchises
have popped up all over the world, like toadstools)

Nuclear weapons = destroy the planet (yes, but ours do it with panache)

Computers = destroy my life (but if it weren't for Americans, you wouldn't
even have one computer, let alone enough to destroy your life)

Telephones = feel free to interrupt my life at any time (install a PC-based
automated attendant like mine (see above). I only get calls from people I
want to hear from. Americans perfected that, too).

Radio = are you sure you did this? I think the BBC may have something to day
on this one (my old college radio station (Grove City College) was the first
radio station to broadcast regularly. It started several months before KDKA
in Pittsburgh. The BBC was very late to the party. Grove City sent over
several freshman students to help the BBC get started.)

Television = speaks for itself. Too much. (but then there's Buffy the
Vampire Slayer)

Mass production = mass faults (ah, but without it instead of posting stories
about your BMW, you'd be telling us about your horse, if you were lucky
enough to be able to afford one. Come to think of it, you'd probably be
telling us about your ass.)

Automobiles = well OK, I like these but again I remain to be convinced the
Yanks perfected these. BMW would have something to say on this one. (we
actually did perfect them, but then the federal government got involved.
It's been downhill ever since.)

Balloon-fram construction = you put this in on purpose so no one would be
able to contradict the whole list (Rats. You figured out my cunning plan)

Plumbing = OK, you do have good plumbing, better than French anyway (The
Romans of 2,000 years ago had better plumbing than the French have now. Come
to think of it, Ethiopians probably have better plumbing than the French.)

Electricity = perfected it? You run around with your weedy 110 volt systems
and call that perfection? (American voltage was set at 110 because it was
determined that the skin resistance of most people made a 110 volt shock
unlikely to kill. You Europeans, with your manly 220/240, are not so
fortunate. Let's try an experiment. I'll touch a live wire here and you can
do the same there. We can use web cams to televise the results on the net.
Just make sure your web cam computer is on a different circuit than the one
you touch.)

Antibiotics = a European invention, you just stuff them into your cows to
make them inedible (at least our cows are sane)

Machine tools = not my area (nor mine)

Combined arms operations = well at least one of your former Presidents can't
use both hands at once, not even for pressing The Button (Your mother wears
army boots)

Microsoft Windows = OK, I'll give you this one, you have raised this one to
a state of perfection (Thank you for your support.)

> CW-J

Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com

I stand in awe. As I wrote to the principles in the matter...

Dear Sirs,

I cede the role of class clown to the Right Honorable Robert Bruce
Thompson.  I once had hopes of greatness, but this ship has founder'd
upon the shoals of harsh reality.  The true extent and depth of his
wit.... no, sorry, end the sketch, I can't go on - simply not
believable.  And now for something completely different...

(still laughing, too.  thank you all)

On that note, I am going to start the day properly. I will drop in later to see what's going on. It is sunny and wonderful outside, so we should be out in it for a while.

Am I suffering from computer burn-out? We went into Fry's today for a touchy-feely on laptops. I wouldn't buy there, because they have artificially lowered the prices via the ISP rebate maneuver. Troublesome, because we certainly don't need 3 years worth of an ISP. I am still hoping for an OC-48 in my stocking, though. But I didn't see anything that really reached out and grabbed my attention. The Sony Viao's are cute, and very nicely designed - but too thin to accomodate a CD-ROM drive. What's the point? I need to listen to tunes.

So, back at home, I survey the online pricing/features, etc. Vast amounts of money required for the vast amounts of RAM required to run the OS from Redmond, which is probably what I would do with a notebook for the time being, since there are reasons in the near future for being both MS and Linux compatible. I still ought to look at VMware though - running a WinNT session on a virtual machine under Linux really sort of appeals, don't you know.

Maybe I just got too much sleep, and haven't recovered yet. We shall see, as the day progresses. The high clouds are beginning to roll in, preparatory to the storm system lying in wait off the coast. Storms do lie in wait, you know. They watch, and if you wash your car, up comes the wind, in comes the storm, and poof goes all the work you put into making the beast shiny.

A while back, Tom mentioned an open source CAD (computer aided drafting or design, depending on your viewpoint). This interested me, since I have been mucking about with CAD since about AutoCAD 0.9 :). So off I went, into the interWilderness, hunted down, hogtied and brought back a copy of QCad for my very own. QCad is the work of a gentlebeing by the name of Andreas Mustun. He has graciously released the software into the world under GPL licence. Thank you!

While QCad comes with a manual, I rather pride myself on being able to get a piece of software to function without looking at the manual. hehe. oops. Wait, let's start at the beginning. The UI is clean, minimalist, almost spartan by design. There are (5) pulldown menus, File, Edit, Zoom, Documents and Help. These menus are replicated for the most part by the buttonbar across the top of the drawing area. The action all happens in the vertical button toolbar to the left of the drawing area. Each of the buttons shown in the image at left lead down to one or more layers of sub-functions. As pull-down menus work in, say, MS Office products, these buttons function for QCad. The "top level" buttons access the functions, respectively, for points, lines, arcs, circles, text, dimensioning, hatching, tagging and editing. Needless to say, there is lots of functionality that is not present, in this package. The things it does do, it seems to do simply, easily and well. Everything is well labeled, easy to understand and intuitive. Well, almost everything. How do I select an item and delete it? Still haven't figured that out. Thus, the manual. Hold on for a few minutes. OK, there are layers. A vital function in being able to separate various parts of a drawing.

Oh, I forgot to mention. The right mouse button (or the escape key) backs you up out of function sublevels. Figured those out for myself, by accident. OK, got it. I am used to tools in which selection is the default mode, so that one may select, as a default mouse operation, then select operations to perform on the selected set of entities. The paradigm here is that everything, including selection, is explicit. That is, I use the Tag menu to select objects, then a rather obscure looking iconic button to go into the erase menu, which is sort of like a tagging sub-menu. Having chosen all of the items for deletion, I select a bright blue highlighted arrow to execute the operation. Not exactly the operation sequence or shortcuts that I might have expected.

However, the functions available on the edit menu are unexpectedly rich, including move, rotate, scale, mirror, move & rotate, two center rotation, trim (extend), meet (0 radius fillet), cut (not the obvious, but to split into two), stretch, radius, bevel, convert text to elements, edit text, delete objects, change the layer of an object, move the abs. zero reference, edit element properties. This could do 95% of everything I need a CAD package to do, quickly, cleanly and easily. QCad has a memory footprint in Linux as a static binary of only 3.5 meg. It saves files using basic features of the DXF file format, which is generally interchangable between the various CAD packages in the same way that RTF is interchangable between the various wordsmithing products. While I would have to take a while to get used to the UI, I could use this product. The price is right too, just download it, install it and go.

Oh, you say, but you are running Linux. I can't run that. Well, until you see some of the light, this is one of the GPL'd pieces of software available for both Linux and Windows. The development of this product proceeds apace, with an active wishlist, and a mailing list that is currently generating about 25 or so messages a week. Go to the QCad site and see for yourself. Very, very cool. As a motie might say, "Three thumbs up!" Enjoy.

Cool bit addendum - I can print to file, which creates a .ps (Postscript) file. I can import the resulting file into gimp, edit it and export in a web-able format such as jpg or png. Very fun, especially since there are images and such that are MUCH easier to create using vector graphics as a basis.

Two Point Five is the distance I ran this afternoon. A couple of months ago, I wasn't ready to run again. We stopped smoking in March, both of us after about twenty years. It was time, for a variety of reasons, but when I tried to jog, a couple of months later, my heart (and lungs) weren't in it yet. What I learned today is that my lungs are in way better shape than they were six months ago. The rest of me has not fared so well - I have added 50 pounds (22.68 kg, 3.57 stone, 1.3658e+28 atomic mass units, 2.4897e+31 electron mass units, 1.3541e+28 neutron mass units, 1.3559e+28 proton mass units, you don't think I am obsessing, do you) since we quit smoking. Within reason, I expected to add some weight, then my metabolism would balance me out, and I could return to eating half a pizza and a quart of ice cream, calling the combination dinner. This is not to be the case. Oh, well. I am going to have to continue, and up the level of exercise, while exercising some restraint on my caloric intake. Coming into the holidays. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Scrooge. The Grinch. [starts sobbing] It's just not fair - someone tell me that the world really is going to end at midnight on December 31. Then I can go back to Costco, and pick up that 10 pound bar of Toblerone. Now that is what I call a fun size candy bar. Ok, ok. I am not going to be timing my runs or anything, this isn't competitive (at the moment, Bob, at the moment). Just me vs the scale, no film at 11.

Yesterday's quote was from Silverlock by John Meyers Meyers. Nobody was interested in that concept, so I shan't continue it. Quotes will appear from time to time, usually (when I can remember) attributed. Thanks.

.sig of the moment time... (to set this one in context, it is referring to messages posted onto usenet newsgroups. Needless to say, this is a very nasty habit they are talking about here <g>, I bowdlerized one word to prevent someone from being offended. If someone wants to be offended, subscribe to alt.sysadmin.recovery )

>"The PROPER way to handle HTML postings is to cancel the article, then hire a
>hitman to kill the poster, his wife and kids, and fsck his dog and smash his
>computer into little bits.  Anything more is just extremism." - Paul Tomblin

An (effectively) empty mailbag. Not dead empty, but only a few messages in each of the various sub-filders that my mail is sorted into by filters. This indicates a slow news day. That's cool. Syroid is up and posted early, more travails with Outlook, mores the pity.

I have a further statement to make on the subject of alt.sysadmin.recovery. Some people might be offended by what they read on that news group. Others would be rolling on the floor, laughing. Don't take my word for it - this is a place not for technical help and assistance, this is one of the ways that professional sysadmins decompress. Sometimes profane, often funny. I enjoy it.

Now I am off to the Lokisoft website, which has apparently changed - the homesite is now a redirector to... I am waiting for it... and waiting. OK, got it... I think I will have a look at the Civilization: Call To Power demo - sheesh - this is taking forever - 6 minutes plus for a measly 58224K file. Catch y'all later. Have a nice Sunday.

Movies we saw. Both on cable, one on purpose, one accidental. First, on purpose, last night we watched The Siege, starring Denzel Washingon, Annette Benning and Bruce Willis. Well done movie, many live street shots in New York. The premise is terrorists creating havok with bombs in NYC, in retaliation for the taking of a Sheik (by the Army, in the person of Bruce Willis' character). Washington is FBI, Benning is CIA and together with Willis, nobody plays nice. The "good guys" win, but you really aren't sure who's good anymore. There is a fair hunk of violence, and some New Yorkers get very, very dead, some in nasty ways (bombings are like that). Overall, a disturbing and well executed movie.

The accidental movie was on this afternoon. I came in from my run (another 2.5 miles completed), and onscreen in short order is Jean-Claude Van Damme, then Raul Julia, both in rather garish costume. Can you guess what's coming? Street Fighter. We stayed with it because it was Raul Julia's last film. Even that wasn't enough to make it worthwhile. Sorry. Miss that one if you can. If you have kids, you may not be able to. Lots of fighting, but mock violence only - I saw several hundred people shot, and not a single drop of blood. Yeah, right.

Also, I managed to download and play the demo for Civilization: Call To Power from Lokisoft - the page for that specific game is here. The demo is turns limited, but you have enough leeway to play and learn about the game and its structure. Certainly good enough to be a christmas present. I will pretend to be surprised.


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