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Orb Designs Grafitti -- February 10 thru February 16, 2003
Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. EMAIL - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message.. |
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February 10, 2003 - Updates at 0717 EST
Good morning. The most interesting thing at the moment is the weather. I went to bed last night following the 2300 news/weather report, which was predicting 2 to 4 inches of snow, starting after midnight. As of now, there's still no new snow on the ground and the weather shambler is saying no more than an inch, starting soon. I think that politics would be more interesting if we drafted weatherpeople in as prime players, instead of lawyers. After all, lawyers are rankest amateurs - they may lie, but they have to be consistent one day to the next or they'd never win a long case. Weatherbeings can tell you one thing and then hours later something entirely different, and never acknowlege that they'd said any different. No "Oh, sorry about your outdoor wedding." or "Oops, we really meant that there would be thunder and lightning, not sunshine and light breezes. There's light in both, of course, but going out and playing with a bag full of lightning rods golf clubs looks like it was a bad idea, Bruce." Bah.
The problem is that I haven't lived here for long enough to gauge the weather on my own. One day, perhaps. Until then, I'll have to fall back on the tried and true method: Most likely today's weather is going to be pretty much like yesterday's. That works as well as anything.
Those of you using Red Hat 8.0 (and there are more than a few) have been mostly waiting quietly for the release of KDE 3.1 binaries. They've lagged virtually every other distribution, and KDE hasn't put out any "unofficial" ones. The good news is that the README in the redhat directory on the various mirrors says the release date for KDE 3.1 RPMS is February 15. That's just a few days away. I think you'll find that it's worth the wait - KDE 3.1 is a big improvement, even over the 3.0.x series. It's faster, more stable, and incorporates some nice new features.
I've seen a number of interesting things from assorted weekend surf sessions. There appears to be a Rendezvous With Rama film project in the works. In case you missed it last week, a final straw landed on the camel's back for Bob Thompson in his "relationship" with Microsoft software. There's more, but time is scant. I must fly. See ya!
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February 11, 2003 - Updates at 0601
Hello. Well, yesterday's snow was a bust. That is, it snowed nearly all day, but none of it stuck - the temperatures were just a bit too high. But from the middle of it, I decided it was best not to get all the way out to Gaithersburg just in case temps plummeted. So instead I came home and spent the afternoon with the phone glued to the ear that doesn't hurt... well, it didn't hurt before I spent the afternoon with the phone glued to it <grin>. We got ETS migrated away from PacHell's servers finally yesterday. The straw that broke that camel's back was a week of cut-off service because a tech became confused. No more. They've had an alternate route to the internet for some time now, and with their web and email hosting moved to Rocket, they can dump everything. They've already gotten all their voice lines from another provider.
You're seeing me here this early because I'm for the dentist's chair. It's cleaning time. Speaking of which, Sally's went well, although she was pretty dopey last night. They didn't work on her until mid-afternoon. When we picked her up, she was all droopy-eyed and generally made her normal napping self look positively perky by comparison. Heh.
I do have some short subject items that might be of interest, though. Last night, while I was waiting for a phone call that never came, I experimented with unixODBC, MySQL and OpenOffice.org. This was prompted by reading the article Trail of tears: MySQL, ODBC & OpenOffice 1.0 by Joe Barr. I reasoned that it can't be as hard a time as Joe had. And running Gentoo, it nearly wasn't. I already had MySQL installed and running. All I needed to do was emerge (the Gentoo install tool) the unixODBC package. Then, since MyODBC isn't part of the Gentoo tree, I went to http://www.mysql.org/, fetched that down, unpacked the source, built and installed it (hint: ./configure --with-unixODBC helps a lot - that took me a while to figure out on my own). Testing the MyODBC command line client (isql) seemed to require a user without a password. Accessing SQLconnect through OpenOffice.org did require a password. Hilarity and confusion reigned. Then, a small amount of futzing with usernames and passwords later, I was up and running, connected to MySQL through into OpenOffice. What does that do for me? I don't know yet. I did an article over on LinuxMuse about Rekall, another GUI db app development product, a while back. I'll see what's in this association, and report back over there later.
Oops, there's more but I'm out of time. Tomorrow morning, I promise. Take it easy.
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February 12, 2003 - Updates at 0708
Wow. Yesterday was a long, long day. Good morning. I took a little more sleep this morning than last - at this hour yesterday, Sharon was prying at my teeth with an assortment of stainless steel implements. Th good news there is that I have received a clean bill of health and don't have to go back for another 4 months. Today, it's Marcia's turn. Yep, three days, three dental visits, one for each of us. How wonderful, thank you, thank you.
Continued from yesterday, outtakes from the world of Linux and technology... Appearing on the SVLUG list, a message from Mr. Ward about using available software tools in ongoing Linux Advocacy efforts - Using Linux for everyday tasks. Next up, Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox opened my eyes this week - he's got an interesting take on how space is under-utilized on homepages. It's a lesson I plan on learning and applying. Most pixels go to waste.
Here's another good one - The One Page Linux Manual, and really it is, double-sided and all. Very useful stuff, that. From my buddy-at-arms, Mike Mills, came this link to Stories for a Computer Audience. It's fairly hard-core tech, but funnier than hell if you like such stuff. Then there's this from my friend near Sacramento...
From: Rick Hellewell
Subject: Watching the 'watchers'
Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003 22:54:05 -0800This story is about the damage that can be done by a network administrator 'gone bad'. The affected company has lost at least $100K (US) in just five days because of this problem. Excerpt from the article (link included):
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OREM MAN IS ARRESTED IN CYBERSABOTAGE CASE Police in American Fork (Utah, USA) have arrested a 33-year-old Orem man they say exacted revenge for being fired as a computer system administrator by changing the passwords to the server and planting a timed virus. (See the full story here: http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/1%2C1249%2C455030966%2C00.html)
-------------------Since I am involved in Information Security at my company, I discuss some prevention for this kind of action on my 'daynotes' pages (here: http://digitalchoke.com/daynotes/2003/2003-02-09.htm#tue ). One can also find similar information at other security-oriented sites (http://www.sans.org , http://www.cert.org ).
The important part of this story for anyone concerned with information security at their business (or at home) is that protecting that information is not just hardware and software, it is also the people that protect that information.
On a lighter note, Kevin Mitnick needed a reminder about the importance of protecting his business network: he got hacked twice in the past couple of weeks. One story is here: http://www.msnbc.com/news/871343.asp , there are many others available. One of the stories said that Mr. Mitnick was "amused".
Regards:
Rick Hellewell
On the book front, I think we've come to a meeting of the minds. Now we have to come to a meeting of the lawyers, get the contract dotted and crossed. But that should be easy-ish, and then I can start writing again, and perhaps this one will see ink on dead trees. Yahoooooooooo! More details once the contract's dried, and I have permission to talk about more.
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February 13, 2003 - Updates at 0645
Good morning. No post early today - gotta roll. Stay tuned.
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February 14, 2003 - Updates at 0715
Good morning. Hey, did you notice that the talking heads on the groove tube are telling anyone who will listen that I am one anxious fella? That's right - at this high level of terrorist alert, I and everyone else here in the Metro DC area and apparently in New York are just quivering blobs of anxiety jello, waiting for the no-seeum no-smellum viscious bio-chemo-logical weapon of mass destruction to be released upon us by some ex-wife herders and sheep rapers. To protect us against this threat, we have many soldiers with automagical weapons, and hummvee's roaming about with Stinger missile launch pods. It's a good thing that they developed that bacterium targeting warhead. Heh.
It's funny, really. I know that Washington's a target. I have since long before we moved here. Of course, so was Silicon Valley, and Sunnyvale was in the heart of that area. If I was concerned, then we may have found a way to move to Montana or something. But I'm not. I'll just live my life, thank you. I'll take a few precautions with extra stocks of some items, but mostly to ward against interruptions of the supply chain, not in case we need to duct-tape ourselves into the house...
Yesterday I had to blow up to Baltimore on fairly short notice, and put in a stiff half day. Then I flew back down here to see my doctor (not the cattle-chute center this time, but the guy who will be our doctor while we're in this area). My ear has continued to trouble me, and he gave me more antibiotics, as well as something to help the ear drain. That latter should have been in my treatment plan to begin with, he said. Oh, well. At least the first course of antibiotics knocked down the excruciating pain portion of the programming. With all that, I just didn't have time or energy to put up much more than the one sentence first thing in the morning. Then I forgot even to publish that before I bailed. Sigh, thanks for bearing with me.
There's more fun stuff afoot, but it'll have to wait until weekend. I have a full day ahead of me, unlike my lovely Marcia, who has today off. See ya!
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February 15, 2003 - Updates at 0930 and 1835
Briefly for now, good morning. The overnight snow was not as much as expected, but it's apparently about to pick up shortly, and for tomorrow they've tightened up their forecast from "I dunno" to a sturdy 8-12" in a broad swath that well encompasses our little town. We're going to head out and get a few last minute supplies since we have the opportunity. Then I'll be back for a proper post. See you in a bit...
1835 - Oh, did I not mention it? Happy Birthday, Marcia!!! You can tell her so yourself, if you like. I'm sure she'd like that. Me? Well, you know I think the world of that woman...
There's been a steady non-sticking type of light snow all day. The weather guy on the radio a short while ago said that we'd get another couple of inches accumulation overnight. Then starting about 7 tomorrow morning, over the ensuing 24 hours, we're looking at 15 to 25 inches, maybe more. Then it'll start to taper off, but continue through Monday. Wow! and wow! Iff so, you'll get pictures here, trust me.
On the Gentoo side of Linux, there's been a bunch of updates to important packages in their development tree. I'm taking this opportunity to pull down and install the lot. We'll see what breaks, and then go forth to slay whatever dragons remain. By that, I mean figure out what's broken and help by either reporting it, or trying to fix the ebuild, or whatever. That'll be running for the next two or three hours at least.
Now I need to go finish cooking someone's birthday supper - meantime she's playing working with her birthday present. Take it easy.
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February 16, 2003 - Updates at 0900
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Good morning. Well, as you can see from the snaps above, we've had a bit of snow. The truck and driveway were clear last night at 2300 when we retired. According to the trained weather deceivers, we were to have 1-2" of overnight accumulation, then the storm proper would hit at about 7 AM, and dump 15-25" on us over about a day and a half. Well, overnight, we had about 7 inches of accumulation as measured on the table in the back yard. I've cleaned that off so that I can get a fresh measurement tonight. There's easily been a new inch in less than the last hour. We do live on a "Snow Emergency Route" road, so they're plowing our street clean every once in a while, but the crews are really getting whacked hard - with the snow coming down this hard and fast, they're against the wall, trying to keep up even on just the major thoroughfares.
You can see Sally is coping with the weather, too, in her imperturbable manner. However, the going outside to pee bit is a tad challenging for a dog that's old and low to the ground. She made it about 5 galumping steps from the back door, then squatted right there. I've had to shovel her a path and a clear spot in the backyard. Otherwise she might just shake her head and pee indoors. I guess I can't blame her on that, though.
The Gentoo rebuild went swimmingly last night. Two packages failed to build: gnome-system-monitor and docbook-sgml-utils. I'll go back and puzzle those out later today. I've built and prelinked everything for speed, and man it's fast. Better news, too - I finally appear to have gotten a stable combination of the latest NVidia drivers along with the new revision of ck-sources (a performance-patched Linux kernel from Con Kolivas) and KDE 3.1. Previously, running KDE 3.1, even in the rcN series' over the last couple of months, has been impossible in combination with the NVidia-1.0.4191 kernel module and GLX driver
Now I guess I ought to go shovel the first load off of the driveway, so that I can stay ahead of the game. Have a great day!
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Last Week
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Next Week
Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2003 Brian P. Bilbrey.
