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GRAFFITI -- August 24, 2009 thru August 30, 2009 >> 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.

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August 24, 2009

2144- Awwww! Deep bummer for Wil, who just posted "through the fish-eyed lens of tear stained eyes". I utterly grok the empty awful feeling when the dog is gone. We went through much the same thing when Sally chose her time to go.

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August 25, 2009

2212 - Gosh! Yet again! Our condolences to Bob and Barbara Thompson - they had to send Duncan on today.

Baby got a brand new brain! More like, Slartibartfast got a new Core 2 Quad 9550 processor with the VT-x bits that had been expurgated from his laggard 8300 8200 old brain. This lets me run the particular virtual machines that I want using Sun's VirtualBox 3.0. After all, what good is 8G of RAM if you can't use it to replace the room-full of systems that you used to have generating heat. The processor swap itself took about 6 minutes, logged in to logged in. But then, mucking with the BIOS, and finally upgrading all the firmware/BIOS to current ate another hour. But I've now got 64bit CentOS running in a VM. Shiny, eh? I'll be needing that here. Now, time to relax. Ciao!

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August 26, 2009

2040 - A day battling Solaris zones, and losing, deeply. An evening that started with taking the big dog for shots and more bloodwork. Then I pulled a peck of tomatoes out of the garden, and some green beans, and a couple of serrano peppers. The beans and the peppers went into my Barilla meal, making one large meal into two good ones; that leaves me lunch for tomorrow. Very spicy, though. Nothing else interesting going on. Ciao!

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August 27, 2009

Red sauce

2123 - Mmmmmmm. After cooking off the pot of red sauce last weekend, it was time to top it up again. So I did ... on Sunday, and again tonight. Now the pot is definitely full. And it's a robust sauce. That spoon didn't move while I went upstairs to get the camera. The tomatoes, as well as the onion, garlic, bay, and other seasonings that need to cook in for one more session before I can start freezing the sauce. But boy-howdy, it sure smells wonderful.

I'm waiting for my other 'A' from summer session to drop into the academic records section of the UMUC site. All of the graded material is up in my class forum (100 on everything during the class, 98% on the final), so the instructor just needs to get the grade formally submitted. The next two classes start on the 8th and the 21st of September respectively, for Computer Architecture and Writing. I've already got all the books, and will be pre-reading over the next couple of weeks, so that I don't fall behind when life crops up.

Good news from our veterinarian: Molly's blood work shows that the one dangerously bad number (the one that had us thinking Cushing's Disease) has dropped back into range nicely with a couple of antioxidents added to her dietary regime. That's a happy thing. Happy, too, that tomorrow's Friday! Ciao!

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August 28, 2009

2239 - Well, installing Snow Leopard has been moderately eventful and painless. The former is due to my having formatted my new-ish 500G Seagate drive with the wrong partitioning scheme - unusable by Snow Leopard. So I refreshed my SuperDuper! backup one last time, then booted to the DVD, used the Disk Utility to re-partition and reformat the laptop drive, and then installed Snow Leopard fresh. Thereafter, I ran the Migration Utility to pull about 217G of data/apps/configs off the backup and into my fresh install. Yeah, apps and everything. Now I'm installing Xcode. Tomorrow I'll do the i(Life|Work) '09 dance. I've left space on the drive for a Bootcamp install of Windows, and a separate partition that might one day run a Linux natively. All that and reading at the Friday evening, after a workday spent doing deep Solaris hardening on a testbed. Nothing else of interest to report at this time. Ciao!

2307 - Corrrection made above, thanks to Mike Garvey. My brain said Core 2 Quad 8200 has no VT-x, my fingers typed 8300. Thanks, Mike!

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August 29, 2009

No Post......

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August 30, 2009

2035 - Huh. You'd think that since I spent the day — the whole day — yesterday futzing with these computer thingies, that I could have mustered up at least a short post. Naw, evidently I'm a slacker. Today, after shopping, I mowed and edged: front and back. Then I mowed my head and beard while also roasting coffee to get us through the first part of the week. Then we went with Linda to see District 9. I liked it a lot. Corporations behaving like shitheads and people behaving like people do: acting out of equal parts unenlightened self interest and fear. Certainly laid groundwork for what is now almost certainly a pending sequel, given that the film is already over $60M in the black over its $30M budget. Yow!

Crap! Worst month in the whole eight years in Afghanistan for our Armed Forces. Thirteen more of America's bravest lost in our push to bring freedom to Afghanistan. Count the cost, you folks in the Administration. Among other consequences, our two captains who died on August 25 had daughters aged 4 weeks and 9 weeks respectively. Our deepest condolences to the families and units of our fallen heros.

• Sgt. Matthew L. Ingram, 25, of Pearl, Mississippi, died Aug. 21 in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle, and his unit came under small arms fire from enemy forces.
• Spc. Troy O. Tom, 21, of Shiprock, New Mexico, died Aug. 18 in Arghandab, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit.
• Pfc. Jonathan C. Yanney, 20, of Litchfield, Minnesota, died Aug. 18 in Arghandab, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his unit.
• Staff Sgt. Andrew T. Lobosco, 29, of Somerville, New Jersey, died Aug. 22 in Yakhchal, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit.
• 2nd Lt. Joseph D. Fortin, 22, of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, died Aug. 23 in Hussaniyah, Iraq, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
• Cpl. Darby T. Morin, 25, of Victoria, Canada, died Aug. 22 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained during a vehicle rollover.
• Lance Cpl. Donald J. Hogan, 20, of San Clemente, California, died Aug. 26 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan.
• Capt. John L. Hallett III, 30, of Concord, California, died Aug. 25 in southern Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
• Capt. Cory J. Jenkins, 30, of Mesa, Arizona, died Aug. 25 in southern Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
• Sgt. 1st Class Ronald W. Sawyer, 38, of Trenton, Missouri, died Aug. 25 in southern Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
• Pfc. Dennis M. Williams, 24, of Federal Way, Washington, died Aug. 25 in southern Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
• Pfc. Matthew E. Wildes, 18, of Hammond, Louisiana, died Aug. 27 in Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive device.
• Staff Sgt. Kurt R. Curtiss, 27, of Murray, Utah, died Aug. 26 in Paktika Province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when he was shot while his unit was supporting Afghan security forces during an enemy attack.
• Sgt. Earl D. Werner, 38, of Mondovi, Wisconsin, died Aug. 28 in Rashid, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an explosively formed penetrator.
• Pvt. Taylor D. Marks, 19, of Monmouth, Oregon, died Aug. 28 in Rashid, Iraq, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his vehicle with an explosively formed penetrator.

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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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