EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy, say so, I will respect that. Be aware, though, that I am (usually) human and make mistakes.

Good morning. That beast pictured at left (shot moments ago) is going to inflict triple digits (F) upon us for the next three or 4 days. One of the probable events is rolling blackouts. It's just that Grendel could go offline in such an event... we'll see how things shake out.

Now let's talk about traffic. Nope, not the commute, I don't have to face that for another few minutes, yet. My first startlement appeared last Friday, when the corporate site that I build and monitor did double traffic for the week. ETS builds reasonably specialized LAN and Multimedia (Audio/Video) connectivity devices, and has had relatively flat site traffic growth and an overall tiny base. We had nearly 3000 hits last week, from a total of almost 600 different sites. That's a heck of a spike. That rate is translating directly into increased call rates and email interest. Nice, since we don't spam or really have promotion budget for the site. Whoever they are, they made my Friday.

Now here, gentle readers, I must give my thanks to you. I saw around the middle of last week that this place was going to garner over 25K hits this month, and come close to the spike of 9000+ page reads that popped up a couple of months ago. I am honored that you're coming about to visit. The really astonishing number is that, by the time you read this, we'll have had 2000 hits here since yesterday at 0400. Hmmm. Where are people going?

When I look at the stats page for July (Orb stats home here) I see that people are still popping in through the Index (site map) page and having a gander at the VMware work that I did in December and January. Since the URL tracking is cut off at the top 30, I have to dig into the logs to see that a bunch of hits got generated out of the Shakespeare trip this year. Of course my resume drew some traffic as well, but then I asked for the attention there.

Anyway, all I can say is WOW! Glad to have y'all dropping by and hope that I get to hear from you from time to time. Now to hit the other traffic... Have a great day and I'll see you later.

17:21 - Hi. Briefly, briefly. It's hot, though not as hot as it might have been. Only mid-90's here today... I guess they're reserving the hotter stuff for the next three days. Running shorts and cold soda is the order of the day. Now I must to work. I have a variety of things to work on : edits on one chapter and fresh material for another. We shall prevail.

I popped over to ORA and glommed onto the sample chapter for PC Hardware in a Nutshell, by some people, both named Thompson... Give it a read, then salivate and wait avidly for the book.

Now to work. Later.


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Welcome to the eighth month of the new millenium ... oh, wait, that's in August of next year... sigh, damn commercials have me all confused. Sorry, Arthur. Well, good morning, anyway. My day started off today with some strange email about a plug from some crazed Scot, I politely wrote back and asked if I knew the gentleman in question... No reply as yet, he's probably off sharpening his Claymore. {SEG}

Last night was spent randomly approving and disapproving edits on Chapter {mumble}. Well, not randomly, but Tom does good work, and he's a better communicator than I am, more of a craftsman. My style seems to be to throw the pasta against the wall and see what sticks, eh? OK, ok, self-deprecating humor is fun, though. Additionally, I think that I worked out a style for Chapter {mumble} that'll work - we're trying to find a tone for Troubleshooting material that's not too folksy.

We appear to have dodged the bullet again. The projected high temperatures have been downgraded by a good 10° F, which is a vast difference to my ability to work in the evenings. Now tomorrow will be spent in air-conditioned comfort at the SVLUG meeting. The website claims Andy Hertzfeld, from Eazel, about Gnome and the Nautilus project... but the announcement that arrived in the inbox here at Chez Orb says that Bart Decrem and Ramiro Estrugo (also from Eazel) are the speakers. Dunno what happened to Andy, wasn't he a key early Apply guy, as well?

Anyway, time is flying and I must join the daily throng (that's throng, Tom) on the roads of Silly Putty Vale. Later, people, and be careful out there!

19:00 - Hi. Been busy, so a little late with the afternoon update. Let's instead call it the early evening update, alright? Now, a bit of mail today.

Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2000 13:04:58 -0700
From: Rick
Subject: your site

I got to your site through a link from Tom Syroid....

Noticed that you were complaining about the heat, but a very cursory
search of your site tells me "what" and "when" you (Orb) are, but not
"where". I suspect that the "where" is somewhere on your site, but would
think that the "aboutorb" page would have that info. (Even though your
services are not necessarily tied to a requirement for a physical
presence that a potential customer might have to visit.)

But I was just curious.

....Rick.....

Hmmm. I must have left that off...

Hi, Rick. You're right, of course. Sunnyvale, CA and nearby
environs.  Oddly, the heat never did materialize. Instead we have
thickening cloud cover that might go so far as to become threatening
later in the day. Who knows. Very, very odd for August, here.
Morning and night fog - Yes. Real clouds? Verbotten.

Thanks for dropping by. I'll have to do something about a locator on
the about orb page. I do think ... yup, it's on the resume. Thanks
for the heads up.  

Regards

Rick went on to write later that he lives in an area east of here which most of us Bay Area denizens are wont to refer to as "That Big Convection Oven", only we're not laughing so hard now. Fire up those coal powered babies - we can turn on the airconditioners with the HEPA filters on'm, and it makes for spectacular sunsets, eh?

The update delay was due to a working board design at work that kept me there a little later than usual, then laundry when I got home. We're done with that. A ditto mark from Tom's recent experience (page down a nottch on that previous link): Applixware 5.0, which we are evaluating for the book, installs like a dream. Very civilized and polite. There are some things I don't understand (yet) - I suppose that I ought to read the manual one of these minutes. But first, I have more work to do on chapter 5. Marcia and I are on the road again in a few days, and I want to leave Tom with a big fat chapter to keep him happy while I am off being semi-non-productive.

Last note for now - if you caught Bob's endcap about the article on the Register, you might understand that I believe that MS thinks that eventually Windows 2000 will own the webserver space, if they have to buy it and migrate it, one site at a time, dag-nabbit. TTFN.


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Morning. That bright thing is already up out there, pumping hydrogen around, flexing it's helium, and generally getting ready to make a nuisance of himself. It's 70 now, and a couple of different sources peg the top temperature for today at only the low 90's. Hmmm. Feels to me like it's going to be warmer than that.

Last night, got more done on Troubleshooting. Only three more pages polished, but that was condensing nine pages of raw material, so I don't feel so bad about it. We're trying to put another chapter into the hopper at IDG today, and we'll see how the other bits go.

Good news... Kansans Eject Anti-Evolution School Board Leaders... I was rather hoping this would happen. And I am sure that the ejected board members are good, nice people who sincerely believed they were doing the "right" thing, not only by their own lights, but also for the people who voted them into position. Now good riddance. I also hope that lessons like this teach voters to pay attention to what they're voting for (or not voting for, as the case may be). If you don't vote, then someone else is determining your fate. Get out there.

From the mail bag...

Subject: milllllllenium
   Date: Wed, 02 Aug 2000 10:29:40 +0100
   From: Jan Swijsen 

>oh, wait, that's in August of next year.. 

If you program in C the first element of an arry has number 0. 
Non C programmers are still rooted in the old millenium. 

> http://www.orbdesigns.com/bpages/aboutorb.html 

Still a "Why..." to add? 

-- 
Svenson. 
Mail at home : [email protected] 

Shut Up! {SEG}

17:15 - Hump day indeed! Stinkin' lousy day if you ask me... too many things going wrong, badly or not to plan. In addition I have cancelled going to the SVLUG meeting tonight - I'd rather work on the book and feel bad about missing the meeting than catch the meeting and feel guilty about not working on the book... Did that make sense to you? Well, you hadda be Catholic at one point or another.

The board designs are effectively done, and pending one question from the circuit guy (I do the physical layout, not the EE stuff), off to the PWB House tomorrow for overnight prototype fab. The sheetmetal conceptual is done, and I am going to whip that out tomorrow morning. Then I have to begin organizing the joint for me being gone for a few days. Note to self - must remember to forward email...

It's just hot. Not drop dead hot, nor "I can't possibly get anything done!" hot, just plain old annoyingly hot. Ah, well, the price we pay for living in a paved-over paradise that used to be loads and loads of orchards. "If this is paradise, somebody give me a lawnmower!" David Byrne sang it, but they did that to this place long, long ago. I have watered the farm, checked all the email, now it's time to get to work. Later.


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Good Moaning. Once upon a time, Dan Bowman wondered how I managed to be coherent at this hour of my day. I wonder that, too, and suspect that sometimes I am not. It's a clever sham, though... Made some more progress on Troubleshooting last night. The problem, of course, is that I frequently can't really replicate the trouble I am trying to shoot. Still, I set up circumstances as best I can and test the heck out of the solutions that I'm writing about - It just won't do to tell somebody how to break things worse than they're already broken.

Kuro5hin.org is down, and has been for a couple weeks now. K5 is/was one of my favorite sites (is, since they promise to return). But someone with a severe attitute problem wrote automated story spamming tools, and cracked a bunch of boxes to submit bogus stories from all over, mucking things up and clogging the queue. NFG, and hard to fix without breaking the fundamental site operation characteristics. (yup - that all happened, it only becomes "allegedly" after they know who did it... huh?) After 3 days, the guys took the site down, and went on vacation... We'll see, because there's some excellent material now hidden up there, including a good tutorial series on security.

Go to Technocrat.net, and check out the lead story (at least it's lead now)... Technocrat runs nude photo. Smile at the photo, read the paragraph or two below, then go back and look at the other stories in the page. One might interest you, too.

I must to work, so y'all have fun. Be back later... I will.

17:15 - Hey. Back home. Got a new version of a customer artwork adapted to one of our products, generated a new silkscreen master for the sheetmetal with Illustrator, then sent the file off to Peninsula Blueprint to get film made. It's done already (2 hour turn for just a few bucks, a good deal), and will be going to the screener's tomorrow, along with the sheet metal. That's one good thing.

Then the bad news started rolling in. The large board (7" x 8") that I finished the layout for turned out to have a little glitch (my fault, to be sure) in all of the output channels. That required ripping out all the traces over about two-thirds of the board, re-placing the components, and laying in fresh tracework. Fortunately, I had a clear idea in my head of how it would work, and it in fact did work out. This has the potential to be a stellar product (but then, don't they all).

So, two hours unexpectedly gone, and the boards are done. I generated the output Gerber files (which interpret the physical design for the photoplotter at the PWB house, Bay Area Circuits. BTW, I really like the people and the service at Bay Area. Raul, Harvey, and the whole gang over there have a wonderful innate sense of how customer service should be, and provide it. They get my business back, over and over again.

Then I started working (finally) the sheetmetal to go around these new products. I got partway into the layout, and realized that either I couldn't assemble it, or the metalshop wouldn't be able to fab the parts in a reasonably inexpensive way.... Hmmmm. So I thought about it, rotating this imaginary shape in my head, flanges, connectors and all... Aha! Got it. Did a quick sketch to fix the concept, put everything down, logged out and came home, it being that time of day. Here we are!

Marcia's got ALL the clothes to pack, the electronics are my baby, and they will be waiting until tomorrow. Now I am going to get back into the Troubleshooting chapter - there's lots left to do and learn. Later.


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Good morning and TGIF. It's been a long week, and it ain't over yet. I've got to pop over to the mines and finish that sheetmetal design, and do a silkscreen layout for it. Then setup the backup scheme for my out time. Busy morning that way. After that I'll be back here working on Troubleshooting, (nearly) down to the wire, then copy up to Tom and over to Gryphon. Then we'll be ready to rock and roll for tonight's redeye.

Maybe I ought to post more Linux rants - It sure generates mail... {Grin}. Nah, better things to do right now. I think I'd best be moving on the next task. I am likely to update this afternoon, then we're going to gun for daily over the next few days - we'll see what happens. Kinda depends on the connectivity scene. TTFN.

16:42 - And now everything really is packed - electronics, books... oh, yeah, clothes, too. Waiting on the airporter van. If the site goes down in the next few days because the DSL box desync's, there's nothing I can do about it until I get home.... I don't imagine this will happen until 5 minutes after we lock the door, at the earliest. Have a lovely week, people, and look for updates here, on the off chance...


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Yes, we're really here. In the same timezone as RBT and Steve Tucker. Tired, tired. 1.5 hours sleep since we got up for work yesterday.

......updating further offline. back in a bit. Bri

13:00 EDT - OK, moved the file up here via SSH, and doing my edits without racking up online charges. While roaming away from the PBI network is not horridly expensive, seems a better choice to be frugal.

So, the trip so far... A nail-biting, tail-gating ride up the 280 to get to SF with a van driver on a mission. Hmmm. Got to SFO 1.05 hours to launch, curbside check-in, grab a polish dog and a couple of snacks and hang out. Started reading Legacy by Greg Bear (two thumbs up so far, 2/3 of the way through now). Into the air and right back down into LAX, for a 3 hour layover and a plane change.

The gate next to ours was roped off - Turns out scene taping for an episode of West Wing. Yes, caught a glimpse of himself, Martin Sheen, energetic and personable. He worked the crowd a bit from time to time, we got a couple of blurry snaps, and one clean profile (look for the photo report on our return, I shan't be burning low speed high cost bandwidth on pix).

Back on a plane at 11:30pm for a 4 hour lope over to Cincinati, and another 2.5 hour layover. Got into Grand Rapids International Airport (International, since there's a flight to Canada once a week!)and to the generic Holiday Inn, some 15 hours elapsed time? Couldn't I have just driven?

Now for a brief nap, then on to the family reunion thing going on this evening. Later (or more likely, tomorrow).


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Nothing posted today!


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