EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy say so, I will respect that. If I don't know that you want your email address published, then I won't. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Busy morning ahead - shower, coif, iron... IRON??? Bilbrey, snap out of it, you know that wash & wear is not just a phrase, but a lifestyle. Well, yeah, but out of respect I prefer that I look slightly more presentable than normal for this memorial service.

Other than that, a question to the readership : Plan 1 - keep the page links and setup as it is now. Plan 2 - Change over to the index/links page as an entry point, similar to Bo and Dr. Keyboard (although I am not going to fall into the day-per-page routine - I *like* daynotes stored weekly thank you very much. Plan 3 - Then there was Bob Thompson's original method, which involved a mutable current.html (content filled during the week), backed by a static-named page to which identical content could be linked - this would appear very similar to what I had when I started up, too. The true easiest method for me would be the index page entry point. But I am happy to have a little extra work to make it more convenient. You vote by dropping me an email for the next couple of days, then I'll decide. Then I think that I will be done with format changes for a while.

Short start today - I have obligations. Have a nice day, see you later.

>> I am thinking the right answer is to make the index page -
metajour.html be current <<

Actually, that's how I have always entered your web site, at that page.
So I like it fine.  The only "current" page I've bookmarked is Dan
Seto's; not sure why, but I did.  Well, and now the way Dan Bowman
changed his site I guess I did the same too.

>> Lcow has gotten a big bro - 6 hundred megawiggle PIII, 128M, 18G, DVD
on an Abit baseplate... yup - I am having fun. <<

Gad, are you trying to compete with Syroid or something?  Sounds like a
nice system; I wonder if I can cram the equivalent into a notebook to
cart around for less than $2K - nope, I don't think so.  I suppose if I
want to hit close to $4-5K I can get one of the high end Dell notebooks
with the tremendous hard drives.

I use a notebook because I haul my box from home to work and back every
day.  And once/year or so I travel.  I've considered once I figure the
notebook needs to be replaced that I may build two identical boxes and
transfer the hard drive from one to the other using one of those hard
drive carriers.  Actually, the systems don't have to be identical.  I
figure the home system can have a spare drive for making Drive Images
to, and maybe a CD-RW drive.  Maybe a Zip drive too.  My work computer
(from my company) has a CD-RW and Zip drive, so I wouldn't need them in
the extra box I'd put under my desk.

One vote recorded for index page. And nope, I can't hope to keep up with Syroid, Thompson, Bar, Pournelle, any of them... I just play with my toys and have fun. A laptop would be nice, but the screens are so small - I do hear that the inspirons are pretty good.

The services today were nice, saw lots of family, got home about 2ish and didn't feel much like computers, so I cleaned and did some small fixit chores to occupy me for a few hours. Now I have 65 untended emails in linux-admin. I think it is time for subject-line scan and evaluate.


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Mornin', all. I woke late with a crashing back of the brain headache today, so it is going to be a little light this morning. The keyboard I had been using, a refurbished replacement unit from Gateway, started giving strong indications of impending massive failure. I was getting three characters from one key stroke, no characters from multiple keystrokes, sometimes with the same key at different times. Hmmm. Fortunately the IBM 52G9700 backup 101 key unit, cord coiled about, was waiting in the wings for it's shot. Actually I like the key action on this keyboard. And Marcia tells me that, first, Dr. Keyboard is complaining about his keyboard noise, and second, this IBM keyboard is really noisy. Well, I can always look into other keyboards, but I have spent enough on computing accesories for the time being (no, I am not running a fever). I am not dis-recommending the Gateway units - they work fine, but I am hard on keyboards. On the subject of notebook computers, Gary Berg joins in with the following.

Subject: RE: Current pages and Nethack
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 07:56:16 -0500
From: "Gary M. Berg" 
To: [email protected]

>> A laptop would be nice, but the screens are so small - I do hear that
the inspirons are pretty good. <<

I've got one of the Toshiba with the 14.1" active matrix display running
1024x768.  Pretty good.  But the cost of upgrades to the computer is
high, of course.  Which is a shame.  Basically it's a black box with no
upgrade potential, except for possibly adding some RAM.  Disk upgrades
are by replacement only, as there's no place to stick an extra drive.

But it is amazing what you can stick in one.

A programming consultant I know has one of the Dell Inspirons with a 15"
screen.  Very nice!  OTOH, he can probably buy the same machine for half
the price he paid for it less than a year ago.

However, I understand that with correct optioning and the proper base/docking port, you can run an inspiron up to 75G. Wheeeeha.

Gotta run. Catch you later. Remember, I am looking for feedback to ignore. Check Monday's post.

Subject: Rely to: a question to the readership (page links and setup)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 18:25:14 +0100

Answers:

You prompted me to answer because of what you said: "The true easiest
method for me would be the index page entry point"

Here goes:

I do like the static, current/thisweek type of URL.

I dislike the index type of entrypoint (your plan 2 option), because I have
to click on the current week link, and I am lazy.

Actually I usually start a bunch of browser instances from a script
containing a number of URL's I tend to read on a more or less regular
basis, then disconnect, because I am paying for the connection per second,
and there is no point in keeping the line open when I have got the
contents. Then, after a while I find Bo's index page, and I am off line...
Usually he gets skipped (sorry Bo). No doubt my habits will change whenever
I get a 24*7 connection.

The redirection page does not bother me, usually I don't even see it.

I never bookmark anything in your current page. Whenever I need something
form the past I will have to rely on your search facility.
On the other hand I do copy some of your more interesting links -
quite a lot, actually.

Regards, Willem

Thanks sticking with all the changes...

We are having a couple of distributors in for a dog and pony show here at ETS this evening, so I am going to be at work rather late. I revamped a powerpoint presentation for use both tonight and at the BICSI show in Orlando in January. I am not going to Florida. Jack and Don are, though. Last time someone went, they toured Celebration - the Disney planned community. Sounds like Stepford all over again.

Home late. 8pm-ish makes for about a 13 hour day. Sigh. In the new box, I have a Creative DVD drive with decoder, the Dxr2. Win2K reports needing drivers, so I am off to the Creative site to see what's what. Also the Turtle Beach sound card needs some help, apparently. I would rather start with Win2K, then bring the rest of the hardware in. I wonder how this one's gonna go? Probably that's all for me tonight - long day. G'night.


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Jim Crider (Doc Jim) is ducking and running, Matt Beland has apparently gone through a second rite of passage (see Tues 12/14, latter half), and while I was startled a couple few months ago when I read that Jerry did not know who the Eagles were (the rock band), I was clearly unsurprised to find that Bob did not know about Brittany Spears. When he did a modicum of research, he immediately figured that she was some sort of boy fantasy toy. Keerrrect. What his first pass failed to reveal is that her lack of talent combined with her two prominent... talents... are making her vast sums of money. Hmmm. Then there was this from Willem -

     A quick answer while waiting for my batch process to end:
     yes, ease of use seems to be the most important issue. You probably
     want to keep things easy to use, otherwise why bother to publish
     anything? But habits and usage patterns tend to differ, and its not
     easy to make everybody happy.

     It reminds me of GUI applications user interface issues. The freedom
     to use an application in different ways (as opposed to the usage
     constraints of old^H^H^Hclassic style command line/menu applications)
     created new challenges in UI design. For instance: some like to use
     the keyboard, others are more mouse oriented. You can often see user
     interfaces that are incomplete in their support of either of the two
     modes of operation.

     Willem

Lastly (for now), the Berst Alert on AnchorDesk at ZDNet today is about getting value out of your old PC. I am going to look for the key word in getting value out of old hardware, hang on . . . Nope, he doesn't say 'Linux' directly, but Jesse does mention turning older PC's into network or web servers, jobs best done on older hardware with Linux. After all, you aren't going to put NT or Win2K onto a P133 with 32Meg, now are you? Of course there are charities, schools and many more places. Find a home for that old doorstop. Don't just throw it out. Ask me and I will (do my best to) help you turn it into a useful Linux box.

Have a great Wednesday. I fear that I will only have about 5 working days the balance of this year, with the Christmas to New Year shutdown, two days before Christmas, and I will probably take this Friday off as well. Later.

Charles Shultz throws in the towel after a good long run. This is too bad, but on the other hand, the guy has been drawing kids trapped in a timewarp with a dog and some adults who sound like muted trumpets for the better part of 50 years. A moment of silence for the master, accompanied by prayers for his continued recovery. He brought the world a lot of smiles in his day, and his characters have taught us a number of lessons about life, not least of which that if you are an animated dog, you can still be the spokesmodel for a major insurance company.

Someone who sits in a cube near me, here in the farm, has a fish tank, with a coupleof large-ish tropical fish, and a bunch of goldfish cannon fodder. Well, I think that I am going to have to cut out a picture of a frying pan, and tape it face inwards on the tank, with the following text. "Your fate, when he goes on vacation!" I am sure that he will appreciate returning to work tomorrow to find his fish cowering in a corner of the tank. <G>.

Mucking about trying to get the partitioning and formatting right on Grinch. What? Oh, yeah, well, given that it is that time of year, I thought that Grinch would be an appropriate name for the PIII. The 18 gig drive partitions out to 17,202 meg, and I want a 6 G partition for Win98 and/or Win2K, followed by the balance of the drive devoted to a Linux development box. So I work at it. I have some tools to install, and a few other things to do - I may get back to this later. Ta-ta.


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Mornin'. Well, it is still dark, but strongly rumoured to be morning, anyway. I was successful, finally, at getting the first partition set up properly on Grinch. Not as easy as setting up Linux. Now all I have to do is choose some appropriate Linux-based wall paper, say, any of the art from Penguin Computing to keep that MS installation in line. Turns out that for the moment, I can't use Win2K on that box without some more leverage, since Win2K doesn't like the DVD decoder card, and I have not found Win2K drivers for that card on the Creative site. Now to the mail (if any)...

Subject: posting
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 09:27:52 +0000
From: Jan Swijsen 
Organization: Oce

Hello,

I lost my connection yesterday before posting to my regular site.
The daynote is up at my mirror : http://sjonsvenson.com/cal/cccil.html

And, to make sure the whole situation was screwed up, the thisweek.html
has lost its bottom. One cut too far in the cut and paste circus. ( The
week50.html is OK )

Sorry. Svenson

<shameless plug for Matt's company>
Isn't your mirror at iTool?
</shameless plug for Matt's company>    <g> .b

Also, Bo's cat Salem is making a major move online. It is just possible that the image you see of a person on Bo's site is actually a dead Bo, and the cat is playing out the whole charade. Major investigations will be getting underway, more news here as the stomach turns. Oh, and by the way, for those getting email from 'da cat... fishbreath is a compliment. FYI.

I sent Bob Thompson an email from one of my mailing lists about using Linux with BellSouth ADSL service. It was only late at night that I realized that such a message could be taken as taunting, given that high-speed, reasonably priced access avoids a 1 or 2 mile radius around Bob's house. It certainly must seem like a conspiracy. Fortunately, Bob took my message as informative, as intended. Aside from that, in one of the denser markets for broadband access, Sunnyvale, CA, (no, not Sunnydale, Jerry), @Home has been unable to offer service yet, leaving the market open to Pacific Bell. Talk about your tactical blunders, eh?

Well, I have some work to complete here before departing for the fourth last day of work for the year. Yeah, I know, I will just work here instead, but at least I won't have to commute. Have a great day and I will catch up with you later.

Oops, later is now - YAVA (Yet Another Virus (worm) Alert). The beast is called W32.NewApt.Worm, it surfaced in Italy a couple of days ago, and Symantec has updates out already. I don't know about the other vendors. The description on the Symantec pages can be found here.

Subject: Re: posting
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 16:27:42 +0000
From: Jan Swijsen 

I think it fell of that seventh stack to the left. in which case it should
still be somewhere under my desk, entangled in the artistically arranged
collection of cable's. Ahum.

Yes, my mirror is at iTool. I still have a small mirror at my current ISP
(Euronet) If nobody screams about the frame based current.html page I will 
swap the mirror to my old (5MB limit) account at Mailbank and turn iTool 
into my main site.

What I am not yet certain about is what to do with my week page. I want to
drop it and keep just the daynotes. But I am not certain about it because the
weeknotes make it easy to visit only once or twice a week and still get all
the daynotes while surfing off-line. With daynotes you would have to click
(hit the web) once for each day. Maybe I should convert the weeknotes into
month notes?

Svenson

On the working topic, I left off that I will be toodling into work on the latter half of the 31st to run a couple of backups and take the whole stinking thing offline and down for the holiday. We shall return to normalcy on Sunday the 2nd, when I will go in, bring systems back up, and do some testing. We did all the before bits that we could afford - now for the real deal. Meantime, Grinch is growing some Linux - I give Linux about 11G to play in, should be plenty... then KRASH into the new millenium with KDE 1.89 edition (alpha 2.0, thanks for the tip, Tom).

Now that is an example of what I like about what the redirector pages bring to us. I was able to bring up a link to what Tom wrote today, and know that the link will still be valid next week. With Bob's pages, I have to work a little harder to get the same thing. No skin off of Bob's nose, of course, and rightly so. His site, his rules. Besides, you can write off linking to what Shawn posts on his ASP'd, database-driven pages altogether. But difference is the garlic in the cornflakes, it's the tabasco on the chocolate ice cream, it's . . . oops, sorry. Didn't know some of you had such queasy stomachs <g> Updates later, as I feel like it.


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Morning, all. I really have been up since about 7, but was working on the final OS install for a while (I think, though Mandrake 6.1 for this box calls) After a few fits and starts which I shall describe later, I got the beginnings of Debian installed on the bottom 11.5 G of Grinch. So, using LILO, Grinch dual boots Win98-SE and Debian GNU/Linux. L-Cow (aka Grendel - the machine name on the network, and probably the new formal name, since Marcia hates the L-Cow name so much) currently boots RedHat 6.0, modified with a more recent kernel, some security updates, and several non-RPM installed chunks of stuff, making this one a challenge to rebuild.

Since I am terminally stupid, I have a couple of errands to run this AM, first to drop another check off to pay for Grinch, since I neglected to actually sign the original check. Sigh. But when the check just pops out of the printer pre-filled out, then I don't have a pen handy, nor do I think about signing it. Of course Nathan didn't notice, when I dropped the check in his hand, either. I probably will go drool over some stuff at Fry's, and probably pickup Mandrake 6.1. If I do, then this box and Grinch may migrate sometime soon - probably Grinch first.

Later.

The system has been rebuilt, using Mandrake 6.1, which is a modified RedHat 6.0, pre-tuned for Pentium and up, with much better initial KDE support. Now I couldn't just save out /etc and then paste it back on after the upgrade, now could I, even though several services were negatively impacted, including the MTA.

Let me back up just a ways. In the process of working on a set of Linux partitions for Grinch, it became painfully obvious that I have a damaged RH6.0 CDrom. This is a bad thing, because when I really screw something up, I can do a re-install and be up and running again in about an hour. But without a CD... and I had been talking about the optimized kernel that Mandrake offers. Yeah, I know, roll my own - that's what the Linux partition on Grinch is for - to experiment without blowing up the production box.

So, with Linux Mandrake 6.1 in hand, I proceed to copy off key portions of the system - the host files, the IP Masq stuff, httpd.conf . . . stuff like that. Do you notice anything about mail in that list. Well, I didn't notice that I had forgotten that. Oops. The bat book to the rescue, one modified sendmail.cw file and one modified virtusertable later and voila, most of the email stuff appears to be working again. Whew. Of course, I have been having trouble in the past with mail forwarding, so more reading and learning is in order. [email protected] and [email protected] are both apparently in working order at this time. However, those of you who were getting 403 - Forbidden errors when you tried to access the site earlier... Sorry. Permission problem around the install. sigh.

Holiday jollity is in order, with Marcia's office party tonight. Bah, humbug. So I have got to go clean up, iron another shirt, aaarrrggghhh. Ah, well - only once a year, only once a year. See you tomorrow.


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FrameMaker is moving to Linux now-ish, with Acrobat Distiller next quarter. This news flash arrived my way courtesy of Tom Syroid last evening (Tom - use all your fingers to wish other moterists Christmas cheer! ). There is a news item which has a pointer to the location on the Adobe site where the FrameMaker beta is [supposedly] available for download. Ah, supposedly became really - I am downloading now. This is a date-limited beta, good until the end of next year. I don't really 'need' this, but you know how I am around new toys. If you try this yourself, be patient with the Adobe site - I would imagine that the response times are totally due to lots of requests.

There are four distinct file downloads to be made, then I will fill out a registration form to allow them to track me, sell my name to spammers, and send me a serial number. The privacy policy says I can opt out. The form doesn't offer opt out. Sigh. Ah, the spammers have my name anyway, and this might be fun. So here we go. The directions say to cd to the install directory. I guess I get to define this myself. First spin about in a virtual phonebooth to become super user, then...

cd /usr/local
mkdir framaker
cd framaker
mv /home/bilbrey/*.gz .
tar zxvf fmlinux.tar.gz
cd FM556_linux/fminit/usenglish/
tar zxvf /usr/local/framaker/manuals.tar.gz
tar zxvf /usr/local/framaker/help.tar.gz
cd ..
tar zxvf /usr/local/framaker/dictionaries.tar.gz

Right now, Debian on Grinch is taking up approximately 80 meg, out of the 11 gig allocated. Basic services are all present, but I need yet to get development tools, X and other such candy. More as time flies.

RedHat 6.1 users pay attention to this - it is becoming more widely recognized that the 6.1 release is kind of broken. And in keeping with the small tools philosopy of *nix - there is no one simple fix, although you may be able to use RPM to do a distribution update of some kind or another. But there is a long list of gotcha's at the RedHat site, here - with links to the gotcha solutions. If you are using RedHat 6.1, go, read.

Yesterday, it was a proper cold California December day - I had to put on a sleeved shirt instead of a tank-top over my shorts. Today though, we have a freezing fog. Damp cold is always nastier that dry cold, to my way of thinking. More later, for sure.

Subject: Spam-away
Date: Sat, 18 Dec 1999 12:09:30 -0500
From: Robert Bruce Thompson 
To: "Brian Bilbrey (E-mail)" 

You have control of your domain, so just do what I do: give them 
a dummy email address in your domain, something like
mailto:[email protected] or (better still) [email protected]. 
That way, you can get the email you need from them and then later 
redirect messages to that account name to the bit bucket (which I 
invented, if you remember my message of a few days ago). If you 
ever need to contact them again, you can just modify your mail 
configuration file to allow messages to the temporary address to 
get through to you again.
 
--
Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com

Now to work - I have a chapter to review.

That young Syroid feller is a heck of a writer - I've used Outlook (or has Outlook used me ???) - I don't envy the bloke in the least. However Tom is doing a bang-up job. When this book hits the shelves, if you or anyone you know uses or will use Outlook 2K, buy them this book. But the rest of the book may yet suck, so I will stop gushing until the beast is on the market... <SEG> Note my shame below. This book is co-authored by Bo Leuf. I can't even say the dog ate my disk. I am just stupid.

The party last evening was alright. There were lots of people neither of us know (since Marcia is so new to the company), but as 'Nando would say, "They loooooked maaaahvelous!" Really, such a well dressed bunch of people. I met Marcia's direct co-worker bees, nice people. Unfortunately there were flashy lights, mirrorballs, and music with way too much bass for my taste - I guess I am getting old, after all.

I have KFOG online playing in the background.... Oh, a very cool bit - these speakers have A and B inputs - one presumes for the computer and for some independent music input - but two computer inputs works just fine, thank you very much, and I can set up sounds to let me know if something is happening on the box that I don't have the monitor pointing at. Huh? Oh, right - let me check on that.

Nope - I hadn't mentioned that Grinch and Grendel share a keyboard and monitor. I haven't gotten the Intellimouse working properly yet, so Grendel is running a Logitech Mouseman on serial, and the Intellimouse is plugged direct into Grinch's PS/2 mouse port. The monitor and keyboard are switched using a Belkin 2 port OmniView KVM, which works great. Now I am off to pay attention to my lovely Marcia, so have a wonderful evening yourselves. G'night.


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A backup surprise (or 7) awaited me this morning. No, not 'in case the first surprise failed.' I opened a spare console window on Grendel (the computer formerly known as L-Cow, or CFKL), and pop'd into elm to check my system mail. None. Hmmm. Pine. None. Hmmm. I should be seeing weekly cron job reports, log rotate reports (especially important since I modified the rotate routines for httpd access logs last night), backup jobs. Nothing. I look at /var/log/httpd/* and voila - no log rotation - this is either a good thing, since I changed the apache log rotation sequence to monthly. Or it is a bad thing, indicating log rotation failed altogether. I pop up one directory level, and ls - OK, messages.1 exists, so log rotation occurred. Where is the email notification? We'll check into that later.

Over to Grinch, I start using the apt-get tool to build more of the system - more on this at a later date. Back to Grendel, I open Netscape to check on the state of the world and my email . . . Aha! My forwarding rules finally worked properly (unexpectedly, but properly)! I have all the overnight job emails in my inbox at [email protected], as requested. Cool. Wait. Backup failed. /dev/tape is read-only? Well. When I was exercising backup yesterday from the command line it worked, after some modes to the script to cope with changes to Samba, and adding a /dev/tape hard link to /dev/nqft0 (the tape device). It should have worked in the cron job. I go, change the permissions on the /dev/tape to 777 and run backup - /dev/tape is read-only?!?!? Oh. Wait. Pull the tape and - yup, the write-protect slider had slipped into condom mode. Back into the drive, run backup. Executes fine. However, there are problems with the cron.weekly script. This is stock from the Mandrake CD. This will require a little research which won't be happening today.

Mail was very light in the main inbox today. And there will be very little activity around the bilbrey homestead today - we are pulling up stakes for the day and headed up to Sacramento to visit my sister and her family. They won't be down for Christmas, so we will trek that-a-way today. Maybe more updates. With me, you never quite know.

I am ashamed to admit that I was incomplete in my reporting yesterday. As Bob Thompson points out, Outlook in a Nutshell is by both Tom Syroid and Bo Leuf. I was looking at the installation chapter that Tom wrote, and in my ravings I neglected to mention Bo. Inexcusable. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Revised above to reflect reality.

Well, let's see how that looks - I thought I would try 3 images on a single row without using a table. Descriptions in just a moment (although the ALT text really says it all). OK - that didn't work, so I stuffed them in a table - small images, shouldn't matter much. On the right is the desk that launched a thousand emails, slightly more cluttered at the moment than previously. In the other corner (center image) lives Grinch. I really ought to spray paint the beast green, and put an evil grin on. Lastly, to the right, you will see my most critical Y2K supplies, and although the picture (wait - let me reshoot this - too fuzzy) - that should tide me over until the third of January, when I must return to work.

We had a nice time in Sacramento, we did early Christmas, since my niece would have had an aneurism waiting for 6 whole days with presents under the tree with her name on them. Some she could read 'Alex' on, the others she conveniently couldn't read, so they must be hers, too. Grin. See you next week.


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