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GRAFFITI -- May 07, 2007 thru May 13, 2007 >> Link to the Current Week << Last Week << Mon   Tues   Wed   Thu   Fri   Sat   Sun >> Next Week Search this site : Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable.     About 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.

MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
May 7, 2007

2204 - Good evening. Sorry for the delay. The day got away from me, and I really didn't accomplish that much. I plunked OS X back on the Mini, just for fun (that takes a LOT longer than installing Ubuntu on it). The watering setup is now fully functional. I need to decide whether (and how) to extend it, if indeed that's what I want to do. I didn't pay bills this evening - we watched Crash, instead. I did get Jerry's column segment for tomorrow formatted, and now I have to get the trash to the curb. So I'll bid you farewell for now. Mañana.

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May 8, 2007

1351 - Good afternoon. It's been a busy day, and that's not over yet. But I got the bills paid, helped pick up the house before the cleaners arrived, helped the Thompsons pack up for their drive home ... errr, did I miss saying something earlier about that? Yeah, Bob, Barbara and the boys came up for a visit. Then Barbara went off to Malice Domestic with Marcia for three days, leaving Bob and I to subsist on Bacon and Pizza. It was terrible! But we had a good time anyway.

I had lunch in Bethesda with my friend Amanda. I only see her once every six months or so ... that was nice. Now to figure out why the front watering setup for the hanging baskets isn't watering - I found them bone dry today. Maybe the battery has gone flat... it tested fine before I emplaced it a week ago. So there's that to fix, and a couple of screens to fix up. I wonder what other trouble I can find...

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May 9, 2007

0729 - Good morning. A little while ago, a friend sent by email a copy of "Robin Williams' Plan" ... It's plausible, as many of these emails are, and is given the proper patina by tacking on a real Robin Williams quote at the end of the list:

"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'you want a piece of me?' "

I guess I do mean to be a spoil sport, because whenever I get these things, I plug a key phrase into Google, and find out that someone else (usually several someone elses) have previously debunked the origin or phrasing. In this case, it appears that the origin of this particular plan hit Usenet in 2003, and gained Robin's name on the front, and that quote on the tail shortly thereafter. Doesn't make it a bad plan ... But why is it that something like that should be listened to more because a comedian says it, than because some non-famous American says it? Truly, I wonder...

Readers who live in Arizona, have you seen this article: 'HOSTILE' GEORGE WASHINGTON, or this one: Professor could be fired over e-mail? What Professor Kehowski sent to coworkers before Thanksgiving last year was a copy of George Washington's Thanksgiving proclamation of 1789, and a link to that, on Pat Buchanan's site. That site offended some recipients, so now a tenured professor is about to be fired. If you live in Arizona, pay taxes to support the Arizona State Community Colleges, and you have an opinion on the matter, you might want to let the appropriate politicos and education bureaucrats know how you feel. Me, I think that Political Correctness has been carried well past the point of insanity, across this nation. Insanity. Thanks to Jerry for bringing it to my attention.

When I filled out a form for a new mailing list subscription, I had a section to complete with "other information" that might inform or amuse the deciders of membership...

I do maintain USENIX/SAGE membership, have for several years. Pets: Yeah, mostly because I don't have to pay to put them through college. I already gave Dodge an honorable mention. I know others *Admins, but don't know if they are mumble-list members. Oh, yeah ... computers suck. Finally, if I *actually* cared about privacy, I'd probably not sign up for more mailing lists. But I'm not entirely consistent in that philosophy. I currently split my home computing environment betwixt assorted Linux systems and OS X. I am live-in Windows helldesk for spouse and long-term house guest. We decided the dogs don't get computers.

Do you suppose that counts?

Okay, an early start just means I have more hours in the day to get done that which calls. Chowder.

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May 10, 2007

0857 - Good morning. I'm working on this page today in a demo version of BBedit, from Bare Bones Software I've been fighting with Bluefish running as an X application under OS X for several months now, and while Bluefish rocks, the lack of integration between X apps and Aqua apps makes everything external to the editor a study in pain and remembering which fingers do which things under what context. Aaargh. Now BBedit ain't cheap — $125 is the current price — but if it meets my needs and reduces my frustration, then I'll convert this demo to a paid license and consider it worth every penny. I have just a few custom menu things that I will need to figure out how to do here in BBedit...

The Clippings palette appears to be the right tool to do the job that I'm trying to adapt. I have custom items that I use for this site, and for Jerry's site. Okay, not so much items, as specifically configured tags that I use to build these sites. I can create a "brian" clippings palette, and use that to insert the specifically configured tags that I use. Hurrah!

So I'll keep using BBedit for a while, and see how it suits me. I really should read the manual ... errr, 393 pages worth, in my copious spare time.

Basil, chocolate mint, thyme, cilantro, tarragon.

Speaking of copious spare time, I took care of some lingering MVA issues that trailed Marcia's new car. I mailed out a Mother's Day card, and a little something to go with that (book rate, it'll be late, I'm sure). Also yesterday, I bought and installed a couple of flats of begonias in the front flower beds. I added some white-flowering sutera, a trailing plant, to all of the hanging baskets, and put some of those in a formerly empty shallow pot out back, too. That'll need some dedicated watering to stay alive. I also found some cilantro, so that's the herb garden done for this year. I'll probably harvest and re-start with the sweet basil at some point, and with the cilantro, too. But it's in good shape.

Over on the farming side of the yard, I still need to find some salsa pepper plants. I guess I'll go with zucchini from seed. So today I'll head over to the other side of town, and check out those nurseries.

But that's about all. I still need to wind down a bit from $PRIOR_FIRM, and Marcia thinks that I've been working too hard on my "time off" in between jobs. So I'll go have some coffee, a spot of breakfast, toddle into town for a short while, then veg for the day. At least that's the plan for now.

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May 11, 2007

0826 - Good morning. A moderately low-sweat day yesterday. I did find both zucchini and pepper plants (although I bought cayenne - it's possible that's what was being marketed as "Salsa" pepper last year) and put them in the garden. I made the appropriate alterations to watering, tested that, and walked away.

I also picked up some jumper cables to keep with the vehicles. That was the result of learning that we had no jumpers in-house when Marcia's battery was discovered to be flat, two days prior to departure for Paducah. We used to have jumpers, but they must have been traded away at some point over the last 5 years, unseen in a wheel-well or the like. So now we both have a set. Before you ask, it turns out that the dealership improperly instructed Marcia about the operation of the three-way switch for the "dome" light, and since she didn't drive the car for four days (Sunday through Thursday), that was enough drain to take the battery out. The funny thing was, after coming out, picking up the car, replacing the battery (Fitzmall does the right thing), and returning it, they told her the same damn thing. We *do* need to advise them of that, one day.

The balance of the day was spent mostly on the machines, although I broke for a couple hours of nap in the middle of the afternoon. The big update was to get a Subversion repository up and running on Vroomfondel, the home server. Then I brought all of my web work under revision control (finally, eh?). There's nice Subversion integration in BBedit, too. Maybe today I'll put my documents directory under Subversion as well. I need to water out front, but that's all there is on the must-do list.

Marcia expressed an interest in having a laptop available when she traveled, one that's hers instead of corporate: to get pictures off the camera, do a bit of email, a bit of writing if the inspiration particle hits the right duck. We have this old Compaq Presario laying around. It's a 2.4G Celeron with a gig of RAM - not insubstantial. But the battery on that was flat (do you sense an underlying theme here)? It turns out the battery wasn't just flat, it was toast. But buying a new battery for that laptop at $125 is muy less expensive than running out and buying even the cheapest craptop we could find. So that came in yesterday, and charged up right nicely. I installed my old copy of Windows 2000 Professional on it - a much saner choice I think. We tried for assorted linuxen while Marcia and Barbara were at Malice Domestic, but couldn't get the wireless going - a key thing for someone on the road. Yeah, I could buy something supported, but was going for frugal here — use as much stuff as I already had — and that Win2K Pro was just collecting dust.

Side note: Marcia posted! Yeah, even Bob was harassing her about the 7 week hiatus. Grin.

Our SSL certificate expired mid-afternoon yesterday. We had a bit of fun in the late evening, did Greg and I, before we got the new two-year certificate in place and responding nicely for all of its uses, from https to pop3s, imaps, and smtps (TLS). It's a chained certificate, and there's always a bit of fun getting that setup right, especially when you don't do it every day, or even every year. So now we're good until 2009, when we're doomed to make the same multi-pass installation sequence. Hell, if we learned from History, then we'd have to do something different next time.

And now for something completely different. Or, well, something. Have a great day.

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May 12, 2007

0800 - Good morning. Two days of doing virtually nothing leaves me strangely unmotivated. I did less than when Bob and the dogs were here, and it shows. Well, I did replace my Treo with a Samsung M610 yesterday. But that was not anything like work or challenging... The Treo is fine, except for the recent drops (physically, to the floor, antenna first). It doesn't seem to have as good reception or call quality anymore. So I've moved to the Samsung, and I can keep the Treo in my bag as just a Palm-ish device — it still works fine in that regard.

Today's short list includes mowing in front, washing the cars, cleaning up the woodshop, and doing a bit of organizational stuff in my office. It's a tad early to get started on all that, though. I'll let the coffee soak in first. Oh, yeah, and I want to get Solaris 10 up and running in a VM again. I am going to have considerably more to do with Solaris in the new gig, and so I want to do some out-of-band work on that here. That I can get started on now...

Ciao!

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Mon    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    SUNDAY  
May 13, 2007

1228 - Good afternoon. Happy Mother's Day, to all you mothers out there, and 'specially to my very own mom.

I didn't get to Solaris 10 until after doing the other chores, after all. The thing I forgot to take into consideration at yesterday's time of writing was this: I had Ubuntu 7.04 64bit installed. While most of the 32bit stuff seems to work okay with the compatibility libraries, I was running into two issues: First, I had several codecs/plugins that weren't working right. That was pushing me back towards 32bitness already, because I've been using vimes primarily as an entertainment center as well as testbed. And I don't have any experience with running VMware under 64bit Linux. I read that it works fine ... better, really. But I'll revert and do some testing at this level, then go back later. So I reimaged Vimes with standard i386 Ubuntu, added all the stuff that I usually need, pulled down VMware Server and got that installed and running. Then I setup a new virtual machine and installed Solaris 10. Rockin'.

And the beat goes on in the Middle East. An Al Qaeda-backed group captures our troops, and is preparing their fate in the media by calling them "crusaders". Our young men and women keep dying to try to bring peace to an area with a statistically significant porportion of Islamic loonies who would rather die than have peace ... and take everyone with them that they can. My hat's off to our fallen troops, following their duty.

• Pfc. Jerome J. Potter, 24, of Tacoma, Wash., died May 3 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Master Sgt. Kenneth N. Mack, 42, of Fort Worth, Texas, died May 5 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Cpl. Charles O. Palmer II, 36, of Manteca, Calif., died May 5 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Christopher S. Kiernan, 37, of Virginia Beach, Va., died May 6 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire during combat patrol operations.
• Staff Sgt. Christopher N. Hamlin, 24, of London, Ky., died of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations May 4 in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Pfc. Larry I. Guyton, 22, of Brenham, Texas, died May 5 in Balad, Iraq., died of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations May 4 in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Col. James W. Harrison Jr., 47, of Missouri, died May 6 at Pol-e-Charki, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from small arms fire.
• Master Sgt. Wilberto Sabalu Jr., 36, of Chicago, Il., died May 6 at Pol-e-Charki, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered from small arms fire.
• Spc. Robert J. Dixon, 27, of Minneapolis, Minn., died May 6 in Baghdad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Sameer A. M. Rateb, 22, of Absecon, N.J., died May 6 at Forward Operating Base Summerall in Bayji, Iraq, from injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.
• Staff Sgt. Virgil C. Martinez, 33, of West Valley, Utah, died May 6 in Kadhimiyah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using an improvised explosive device and small arms fire in Baghdad, Iraq.
• Staff Sgt. Vincenzo Romeo, 23, of Lodi, N.J., died May 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Sgt. Jason R. Harkins, 25, of Clarkesville, Ga., died May 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Sgt. Joel W. Lewis, 28, of Sandia Park, N.M., died May 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Cpl. Matthew L. Alexander, 21, of Gretna, Neb., died May 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Cpl. Anthony M. Bradshaw, 21, of San Antonio, Texas, died May 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Cpl. Michael A. Pursel, 19, of Clinton, Utah, died May 6 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle during combat operations.
• Spc. Dan H. Nguyen, 24, of Sugar Land, Texas, died May 8 in Tahrir, Iraq, when his unit came in contact with enemy forces using small arms fire.
• Sgt. Timothy P. Padgett, 28, of Defuniak Springs, Fla., died May 8 in Tarin Kwot, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when his unit was attacked by enemy forces during combat patrol operations.
• Lance Cpl. Walter K. O�Haire, 20, of Lynn, Mass., died May 9 from wounds suffered while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq.
• Sgt. Maj. Bradly D. Conner, 41, of Coeur d�Alene, Idaho, died May 9 near Al-Hillah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improved explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Blake C. Stephens, 25, of Pocatello, Idaho, died May 8 in Salman Pak, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Spc. Kyle A. Little, 20, of West Boylston, Mass., died May 8 in Salman Pak, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Sgt. Jason W. Vaughn, 29, of Iuka, Miss., died May 10 in Baqubah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle.
• Pfc. Roy L. Jones III, 21, of Houston, Texas, died May 10 in Diwaniyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered from small arms fire.

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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.

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