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Email Brian Bilbrey

EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so, I'll pay attention to your wishes.

Good Morning. Lot's on my mind this morning and very little resolution to be seen on the horizon. We've had one of our busiest social weekends of the year, and I am tired. I can do social, but it's not second nature for me - I have to work at it. I'm told I do OK, but ... well, you know. Or if you don't, then I certainly don't want to bore you with the minutae. Anyway, I'm glad that we're back to the week, a fresh page here to clutter, and nary a rain cloud in the sky (at the moment <g>). But there is a full plate for me...

I'm wondering about the network reconfiguration that I am facing at work. I don't think I'm going to do a full Mandrake install to run a file server. I am leaning towards Debian at the moment, since I find it's the easiest distro to control what goes in and what stays out - plus network updating is an easy-breezy thing with Apt. More on this through the week. My initial explorations with Samba have been successful.

This weekend, the question I was asked more times than any other is, "When are you going to start your next book?" Hmmm. I am really of several minds on this one. It strikes me that a number of factors come into play. I really got pleasure out of effectively communicating what I knew, and what I learned. And I like writing, really I do. But the hours of a part-time writer are terrible, and we can't afford to have me kick over to writing full time just yet. On the gripping hand, my foot's in the door - should I let it slip out? Certainly I'm not feeling as wiped/out or jaded as I was in the week immediately following our final submissions, but ... I fret a bit that RAH had it right, when Richard was explaining to Gwen/Hazel that a writer has to write, though it's a terrible and anti-social habit... We'll see, we'll see.

I apologize in advance for the connectivity problems that are likely - The downtime script just popped the power on the DSL modem as I write, and who knows what it'll be like. Theoretically the line from PacBell to the Covad cage at the CO is tomorrow, then the rest should be scheduled. One time at a thing. Now to work with me. Have a lovely day.

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Good Morning. Last night was a complete and utter waste of time... well, we got the laundry done, but other than that, I spent the whole thing working with the 18^th and 4^th letters of the alphabet - that's right, Recreation in the form of Diablo II. I'm into the last section of the game, and spent a lot of time just wandering around killing things without actually finding any of the required objects, at least until late in the evening. Hmmm. The problem there, of course, is that saving the game gives most of the baddies in the areas I'd painstakingly sterilized a chance to resurrect. Now that's not fair - it's not like I've left the game for years or anything, eh?

I sent Joe Hartman (a correspondent from last week's page) a couple of links I found that apply to creating Linux systems that run from the CD - it looks like you can put the mutable information on a floppy, if you like. I didn't delve too deeply myself... here's my reply:

Hi, Joe -

OK. I found a couple of references for you. First, the LRP (Linux Router 
Project) has perhaps the best set of tools for the job, and a very active 
mailing list that you might be able to mine for resources - lot's of the 
Linuxen are avid space buffs (I know I am).

http://www.linuxrouter.org/

then I found a ref to a Debian-based CD system called Gibraltar...

http://gibraltar.vianova.at/

These mini-distributions would need to be downloaded, customized to meet your 
needs, and then burnt to CD. It can be done, and I suggest getting on the LRP 
mailing list and asking your question there as a good next step.

regards,

.brian

Today I am leaving work at about 2 to come to the dentist and get the permanent crown put in on the upper left front tooth. The least favorite part of the process is the novacaine injection through the hard palate... Oh, and look... time's up. Take care - I'll be back later.

Evenin'. Reasonably productive day, that. The fifth revision of a Cat5E 6 Port Patch Module is done, tested across the complete range of required frequencies. Then we got an email in about the photo requirements for our baluns in a new article on running video over UTP, featuring our participation in the KDTV/Univision station remodel a couple of years back. So tomorrow I will be digital art boy.

The new crown is nice. The lab did a stunning job of color matching, and the other good news is that the neighboring tooth is still quite healthy, thanks. There's some discoloration to it, and the doc was thinking that it might be dead. After the fact, I allowed as how it might be the result of a life of caffeine and 20 years of cigarettes that wonked the color off a bit. He chuckled and agreed, especially since the tooth is quite alive. That does it for dental work for the year... wait, there's less than two weeks left. Hey!

Also I've been thoughful about events of recent days, and some interesting exchanges that I've had and witnessed. Usually this leads me to frothing at the mouth and speaking in tongues, but apparently I am starting to calm a bit in my rapidly approaching dotage. Some of these thoughts are about this place - these pages - the value they hold for me, and maybe for others.

Certainly I have neither the hit rate nor the quantity of correspondence that Jerry, Bob or Tom do, for instance. But then, I am an amateur, reasonably speaking. Personally, I am both pleased and heartened to find that this month will likely be my third 10K page view month in a row. I get hardly any email at all about the site outside of the Gang proper, and the occasional Linux question, but that's OK, these pages are really for me - As Robin Williams once said, "Welcome into my mind." In an email earlier today I noted:

I would do what I do on my pages anyway ... I started this because I wanted 
Jerry's job, and he said (at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html)
that I should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of
finished material.

The difference is that I won't throw away the material, because for me, a fair hunk of this is reference material - What have I done, when? I know I installed Debian in a VMware jail sometime. When was that? I probably at least mentioned it here. Once I have a time and event context, my memory is surprisingly effective at pulling out the details. So in a sense, you could call this site off-line storage for my brain.

Additionally, I really enjoy the overall quality of my online experience with y'all, and with the daynoters and other sites that I read. Being a deranged person, I suppose that my Internet interactions could have been less than exemplary, but instead I find them intellectually and personally interesting and challenging. There is more than one Internet out there, from the AOL consumer eyeballs and shopping sites, to pron, warez and idiocy. I am grateful that you let me join you in this particular, refined instance of the connected society.

The other bit of thoughtfulness in this otherwise echoing skull is that I am really, really blessed. There are people in the world who are in problems and troubles through no choice of their own, from Kaycee to Rob, the son of a friend who is facing a different sort of addiction. I'm glad to have a loving wonderful family, to share my life with my lovely Marcia, and to have you all around this particular campfire. There's more to this living thing than meets the eye, and every day I learn just a little more. This place is a part of that. Thanks for dropping by - I'll see you tomorrow.

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Good morning, and good news. The Pacbell portion of the new DSL installation (RADSL in Covad terms) is done, and they've scheduled the Covad tech to come in, complete the setup and go live . . . tomorrow morning. I kid thee not. Very, very cool. Presumably this all works like it should, first time out. I deserve that after all the grief this PBI line has put me through. Hurrah!

John, thanks for your kind words about last night's post. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in the details and the implementation, and forget why I'm here. But not for long, not for long.

Now, I have a lot to do, and little time (less than I did a while ago, since I've lost a half a working day tomorrow. So thanks and I'll put in an update later today (after work, probably early evening).

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Good morning. The good news today is that the Covad install is still on, so far as I know... I spent a couple of hours preparing for the event - I strung a fresh run of Cat5 from the front room to the back, replacing the prior non-Cat5 cabling I had in place. Instead of terminating with a RJ45 plug, I used a splitter box, and punched down two pairs at one jack, and two pairs at another, so I can do Data and Voice over the single run, albeit on different pairs. Alternatively, I can reconfigure to have two data jacks in the front room quite easily, which could be nice for Marcia's laptop, except that the company only allows direct dial-in access, rather than over the Internet connections. Hmmm.

I popped over to the Speakeasy site, and got into the section detailing the correspondence with Covad. It appears that they don't put in a POTS splitter at all, but instead install inline filters at each voice outlet. OK, so half the work I did last night was for naught. Still, we have better quality wire now.

Matt and I spoke for a while last night, discussing the best route for maintaining continued service throughout the changeover. Here's the drill - I plan on having service continuously available throughout the changeover. Last night I broke down and upgraded Grendel to 2.2.18 kernel, and added a third NIC. Turns out that may not be needed either, if I decide to go get another hub and build a couple of crossover cables at work. Either way, the server should be responding to requests on both lines.

The new IP address is 61.81.69.163. So if my plan goes awry, then send me mail at Speakeasy, and hit the mirror at Tom's place (found at the mirror link next to my name, from the Daynotes main page). More later as the day progresses.

10:45 - Well, no tech yet, but the appointment was made only two days ago. I suspect that I am last on the morning's list, and may push into the afternoon. In other news, Marcia brings up the very good point that her content isn't mirrored anywhere, and if we don't have the ability to serve on both lines, then she'll disappear for a bit - not to worry, she says, she'll be back. I think we could find a way to put her posts up, don't you? Now for a trip to the mailbag:

Date: Thu, 21 Dec 2000 09:22:23 -0800
From: "Rick Hellewell"
To: [email protected]
Subject: New Wiring


Noticed today that you have re-wired your phone outlets to put 
voice and a network connection at the same location using 
CAT-5 wiring.

Contemplating a new re-wire of my phone system. Currently have 
two phone lines at the main location, need to expand line 2 to other 
locations. Was also thinking about putting a data jack there also.

Need to know what you recommend as the data jack combo things 
for the wall. Assume it would have four separate jacks (2 for phone, 
one for data, one for something else later on?). Also, recommendation 
for wiring diagram (what color wires go where).

Enjoy your ramblings....I visit often.

Thanks....Rick....

Hi, Rick.

Ya. First off, here's a useful guide for ethernet wiring that I
found:

http://www.stg.brown.edu/~sjd/wiring/CAT5-wiring.html [OLD DEAD LINK]
http://www.derose.net/steve/guides/wiring/ [NEW LINK]

One difference of recommendation: He talks about T568A wiring as the
main configuration, whereas I consistently use T568B wiring. The
difference is only in which pins some of the colored pairs punch
down to, and matters not a whit if you consistently wire both end
THE SAME!. Pairs do matter, however, as the tp provides the balance
necessary to maintain signal integrity and prevent your wiring from
becoming a high-freq interference broadcasting network ... 

OK.

At your local Frys or Radio Shack or whathaveyou, you can get RJ11
and RJ45 jacks, wallplates, wallmount boxes, or what you want -
that's up to you. RJ11 for voice, RJ45 for Data (usually - while you
can terminate a phone plug (RJ11) in a RJ45 jack, it's not
mechanically as stable as I'd like, though I do that all the time).
Mostly these devices come with punchdown covers, so you don't
actually NEED one of the rather expensive tools. Of course, the
termination quality might suffer - I don't personally know, since I
borrowed the punchdown tool from work.

Pinouts:

An RJ45 Jack, held with the contact pins UP, is numbered 1 to 8 from
left to right, like this:
       1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
   -----------------------
   |   | | | | | | | |   |
   |   | | | | | | | |   |
   |   | | | | | | | |   |
   |                     |
   |                     |
   |                     |
   |______         ______|
          |__   __|
            |___|


The jack, facing you in the same orientation, is numbered 1-8 from
right to left (mirrored, not shown).

Color Coding (T568B) is

1-	WHT/ORG
2-	ORG (ORG/WHT)
3-	WHT/GRN
4-	BLU (BLU/WHT)
5-	WHT/BLU
6-	GRN (GRN/WHT)
7-	WHT/BRN
8-	BRN (BRN/WHT)

***********

What I did was use a pair of dual RJ45 Jack wall mount boxes, since
I had those lying about.
Between I ran a single pull of Cat5 cable, and I punched down 1,2
and 3,6 at one of the jack locations, using the color codes shown
above. These are the transmit and receive pairs for Ethernet
(10/100BaseT). I labeled that jack location for data, and it's used
to connect Marcia's machine in the front room to the hub back in my
office.

Then I punched down the other two pairs at 4,5 and 3,6 (BRN, WHT/BRN
and BLU, WHT/BLU, respectively.) This puts two pairs in the correct
orientation for inserting an RJ11 jack into the RJ45 at each end and
bringing the voice connection straight through (since pins 4,5 on
the RJ45 physically correlate to pins 3,4 on the RJ11 (the center
pair).

While I don't NEED a voice run to the back, I might need to bring
the DSL line output from a front-room installed POTS splitter to the
back where I'll install the DSL modem. I may not need the voice line
at all, in which case I'll reconfigure the latter two pairs to run a
second set of wires to provide a second Ethernet connection (by
putting them on 1,2 and 3,6), in case Marcia ends up with the need
for a second Network connected device out there.

In the once and future house, I am going to be installing a proper
multi-drop Cat5 installation for centralized distribution of voice,
data, video and more. I'll probably use Belden's Mediatwist, or
whatever else is close to the top of the performance curve, in case
I end up with Gigabit Ethernet one of these years. Also handy for
the Video over UTP stuff that's possible now.

Whew. Can you tell I have too much time on my hands, waiting for the
Covad tech?

And the phone just rang - Joe'll be here in a moment or five, so see y'all later.

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Hmmm. Well, good morning. Sorry about yesterday's disappearing update, it was a longish one, too. I know just where it is, on a hard drive that is not spinning just now - there's a tale to that, of course, but all in good time.

Good Morning! Yep, we've kicked over the traces and have the new DSL line installed. It took awhile to sync up the first few times, and I have more work to do, but I have the server appearing on both 216.102.91.55 and 64.81.69.163. Both DSL lines go into the DLink 10MB hub, then down to eth0 on Grendel, which is nominally responding to 64.81.69.163, but is also IP aliased to 216.102.91.55. This morning, I checked from Canada (by logging into Donovan at Syroid Manor, then pinging back at myself) and find that the DNS change that I put in is already in place up there. It is here, too. Turns out that this plays havoc with the virtual hosting thing, and I may yet change Marcia's webs to respond to the second speakeasy IP address. I've probably just got an Apache configuration thing I don't understand, surprise, surprise.

Part of yesterday's post can be found up at Tom's mirror of this site, but the large part is here. While I was waiting for the DSL guy to arrive, I was re-running the backup of the night before, since it had failed following the updating of the Linux kernel to 2.2.18 (just a silly mistake on my part, which I quickly repaired). However, during the backup, I heard a couple of ominous "CLUNK" sounds from Grendel... ooooooh, Grendel, the home of the last Western Digital HD I own. Hmmm. So a run to Frys later got me a Maxtor 7200 RPM 20G for $139. Most of the rest of yesterday's downtime was not about the DSL madness, which took me all of about 2 hours to get right, but rebuilding and upgrading the server to Mandrake 7.2. I am running Postfix now, which took a little puzzling, but other than that, all is well, I think.

Please let me know at [email protected] of any observations or comments you have on service - I'm bound to have broken one or more things, especially in the virtual hosting bits of Apache while trying to respond to requests from two originating IP addresses.

Back later, thanks for your patience.

16:35 - Good afternoon. It is now formally later. First, I recovered Thursday's post from the scrapheap-bound WD Caviar 35100. Next, lots to report on, so let's start with the pictures. To the left is my sop today to the spirit of the season: the front office Christmas tree at ETS. OK? Now, on to important matters. Networking wars from yesterday. First picture on the right is the new Speedstream DSL modem from Efficient Networks. I haven't seen a jitter yet.

Once we brought up the DSL link, and I saw Yahoo, the installer was done and gone - about 25 minutes total including 10 minutes of online reporting in to the central office... over dialup. They don't use the Internet for such important business, hmmm? Thanks go to Covad technician Joe Stephenson, who got the equipment into the apartment and politely (albeit with a slightly stunned look on his face) got out of my way while I set up the DSL.

Next came the fun stuff. While at Frys I looked for a crossover cable (for a reason to be revealed momentarily). I couldn't find one, and the glazed-eyes shambling salesbeast there had not a clue what I was talking about. I would have made my own crossover nicely, but I wasn't going to buy a crimper set for this one lashup. So I picked up a couple of Cat5 patch cords, and a single color-coordinated Keystone-style jack. The color coordination matters only in the fashion sense, not for function. I then cut the RJ45 termination off of one of the patch cords, and punched it down to the Keystone jack, with the 1,2 and 3,6 pairs reversed (as shown at the left).

Then I plug up the other patch cable to the jack, and I have a McGyver'd crossover cable. Why is that important? Well, the snap to the right is of the final interim equipment setup. Upright is the D-Link 5 Port 10BaseT hub. Both of the DSL modems terminate into this hub. The Alcatel (feeding me PBI DSL) is in the uplink port. The Speedstream is plugged into one of the normal hub ports, requiring... a crossover cable. Ta-daaaa. The third connection on this hub is to the external Ethernet port on Grendel, a KNE2KPCI or something like that. It's from Kingston, it came with the PBI DSL setup, and it uses the Tulip driver.

From there, TCP packets are firewalled. I have reconfigured to primarily recognize the new IP, and am still accepting port 80 and 25 requests on the 216... address. Sometime next week I'll have them shut down the Pacbell DSL and take that whole line down, since it appears that the DNS propogation is progressing nicely. I haven't heard from anyone else - If you're not in California, try pinging orbdesigns.com and tell me if 216.102.91.55 is still reporting back - If you get 64.89.61.163, then your nameservers have the new data.

On the internal network side, I got a new Linksys EtherFast 10/100 5-Port Workgroup Switch. That lets me hook up Grendel, Grinch, Gryphon and Marcia's HP Pavillion, with one slot to spare. Then I can link in the D-Link as a tide-me over as necessary if we get many more connectable devices. Now all I have to do is shut down Grinch and put in a new 3Com card. Whatever I've got in there now, a NE2K knock-off of some kind, is only a 10Mbit device - and I want to do better. Why? I don't care about system to system disk transfers, although those are nice. But over-the network applications work seamlessly at 100Mbits, where I can have significant delays at 10Mbit speeds. I'll get a picture and a couple of timings to show the difference.

That should be enough to tide you over. By the way, the upstream speed is better, so far as I can tell - please feel free to let me know if it seems faster on your end. Thanks. Later.

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After that longish post yesterday, I think it's only fair to chill a bit today. Good morning, and welcome to the Saturday before ... that Holiday. We used to sit on mountain tops and use our home-made binoculars to look down on the Who villages with larceny in our hearts. Now we monitor their Internet purchases, and using a leased line connection into the major shipping vendors, redirect the deliveries to our very own caves. It saves all that nasty chimney work, and I for one am tired of finding a new little dog for stapling a reindeer antler to each year. I thought I'd have an easy candidate this year, what with Taco Bell dumping their old ad campaign, putting the chihuahua on the street. But he headed south quick, just ahead of the INS... Oh, well.

Thanks to Bob Thompson (Winston/Salem, NC), Tim Werth (Kansas City, but which one?) and Matt Harting in Tulsa, OK. for three more data points on the DNS-o-meter. All three are resolving to 64.81.69.163, the NEW IP address. I am monitoring TCP on the interface, watching for traffic from the 216.102.91.55 address.

Check out the Too Much Christmas page over at my radio station, KFOG. There are houses pictured there that require the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant to be operating at full capacity for correct lighting display. These people put Tim Allen to shame. And don't give up on that site halfway through ... check out the joke at the bottom of the page. It's my kind of Christmas humor.

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Good morning. Welcome to the eve of the day that the consumer marketing year revolves around. The stock market and business fortunes rise and fall with the returns of this season, at least in the retail arena. I am sure that's what everyone had in mind all along, aren't you??? Bah Humbug.

The sentiments that (along with rash consumerism) are promoted during this "season of joy" are those that we should maintain and promote throughout the year, unflaggingly: peace on Earth, goodwill towards all men (and wimmen, intelligent and unconscious creatures of all sizes shapes and colors, redwoods, the ozone layer, furry green creatures from Betelgeuse (an odd occurence, since that star is a red supergiant, unlikely to have planets that support life as we know it, but who's counting), wait, that's enough goodwill to last for aeons). But more seriously, I don't have all the answers, but those that do know that these principles are some to live by, not just pick up and dust off once a year.

If you celebrate at this time of year, for any reason whatsoever, then enjoy your celebration. Smile a lot, cry a little, think of your fellow beings on this little dirtball we call Earth, and see if you can't figure out a way to help, just a bit, to make everyone's life a little nicer, all the time. Tell someone that you love them, more often.

If you don't give at the sidewalk (and we don't), do give at the office or from home. Do the research to figure out who to support and do that - there are organizations that help people, not large, well-funded ones like the United Way, but small, local outfits. It might cost you more in time to find the right thing, whether it's in support of kids, battered women, abused animals, fighting a disease, a small theatre that brings a bit of culture to the inner city, or whatever. Do something that keeps you involved. Support PBS if that's your thing. I know, you already do so much with your tax dollars. We do, too. But a little extra never hurts, and this allocation you get to choose.

I have work yet to do, and other things to pay mind to, so I'll leave off of this rant. It's especially important for me to recognize that I don't even live this way as much as I'd like, but I do try to keep the goal in mind (except for squirrels, the fuzzy-tailed rats, I hate'm, I tell ye, I hate'm) Ooops. Well, I do try, really. I may or may not post tomorrow, but either way, thanks for dropping by. Enjoy your celebration.

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