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July 24 to July 30, 2000

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This is about computers, Linux, camping, games, fishing, software development, books and testing... the world around us. I have a weird viewpoint from a warped perspective. If you like that, cool.
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Page Highlights
Just too damn early...;    PCB first pass done;    and Linux advocacy, too;    Gnome Helix screenshots;    Humpday;    OpenLinux Touring Show




MONDAY    Tues    Wed    Thu    Fri    Sat    Sun   
July 24, 2000 -    Updates at 06:53, 17:15

Good morning! As I noted above, it's just too damn early! I slept perhaps a total of 16 hours the three nights of this weekend, 7 last night, and it's just not enough. Whine, whine, whine. Thanks for putting up with that, but now it's done and we can move on.

{Grin} Marcia came home early, standby on a flight that left Phoenix 1/2 hour after her meeting ended. Here I was typing away at something or other and up she pops at the doorstep, having caged a ride home with one of her co-workers. Scared the heck outta me. {Grin, again} We do belong together - I am *much* happier and content when Marcia's about.

I learned some very interesting things about updating a working system wholesale. Tricky business. Good chapter material, roughed out and ready for polishing. On the apm (Automagical Power Management) side of Caldera on Gryphon, I didn't do anything (yet), but the BIOS sleep/suspend function appears to work fine without glitching eDesktop. Hibernation is another trick altogether, and one that I don't think is supported in release form yet. I know someone is working on it though - I saw hints of that in my searching online.

I have some thoughts of my own on the progress of Linux, in keeping with the theme that is appearing on some other sites among the Daynotes Gang. They are still formative, because I'd rather not react, but instead present something that's a fresher rehash of material that's been said a hundred times already (as if it hadn't been {g}). So look for more on this as either the day or the week progresses.

I am going to return to afternoon updates, too. I find (in retrospect) that they help me refocus on my work here, after a day at the salt mines. So I will see you back again later. Additionally, in the context of salt mine labor, the winds of change are in the air again, so I updated my resume on the off-chance... If you can, or care to, have a look-see - tell me what you think. TTFN.

17:15 - Back from the mines... (to beat a dead analogy even futher dead). Aside from the usual fires that acrue over a 3 day weekend, I did manage to finish the first pass PCB design for our Baseband plus Stereo Audio Cascadable Distribution Hub. That sounds nice, huh? Should be a hot mover, if we can get prototypes into the right guy's hands in the next couple of weeks.

> OBJECTIVE
> 
> My overall professional goal in life is to continue learning and applying
> new skills, receiving and providing value in all of my working
> relationships.
 
How about something honest, like:

"Make enough money to buy the stuff I need while having the opportunity to
play constantly with new toys and, at all costs, to avoid being bored."

--
Robert Bruce Thompson
[email protected]
http://www.ttgnet.com
Too true. I called Michelle (the lady who asked for the updated
resume) and told her your version - she laughed and agreed.

I tried to reply to this earlier, and got confused, leaving the
outgoing message hanging... A good idea, and one that bears serious
consideration in light of your viewpoint - it would provide a way of
winnowing out potential employers who are humor-challenged, to boot.

thanks, 
Well, I was actually completely serious about using what I wrote or
something very similar.

Put yourself in the position of the people reading piles of resumes. A
thousand resumes come across their desks. Of those, 999 say more or less
what yours currently says. Yours says something different, something
obviously honest, and something that may well appeal to the person deciding
whether or not to pursue things with you.

If I were going to go back to the wage-slave market, my resume would contain
something very like that.

--
Robert Bruce Thompson
Compelling argument. Done. (I mucked a bit with the sequencing to shorten things up in the above exchange!)
>Responsibilities: Oversight of production personnel, training and
> quality control.

I am not sure that an 'oversight' is a good description of a
responsibility. An oversight maybe but when you are overseeing
production people you might just call it supervising (and not 'super
vising', that would be an oversight again.)


Linux has rock solid stability. OTOH when the web is slow it is said to
suck rocks (trough various implements).
What is the deeper meaning of this.
--
Svenson.

Mail : [email protected]
As in overseer, the guy with a lot of brass on, and a couple of
whips in each hand...

On the Linux paragraphs... 'xcuse me? I don't understand? Have you
got an explicit quote you can point me to so that I might get it?

Thanks for the input.

Hmmm. Linux. Sure seems to get people worked up (including me, upon occasion).

Matt asked a good question last week - amounting to Show Me The Money. Agreed. The business model which is built around a GPL'd product is clearly not quite ready for prime time. There are too many things that need to get worked out. I do believe that a pure service play is not such a bad thing, but might be best pulled off as a metro, or regional company, rather than national/global conglomerate.

What I find so terribly interesting is that a lack of "faith" in the business model (or lack thereof) implies a weakness in the product. Sure there are things (and people) for which Linux isn't suited. The same is true for MacOS (& hardware), and Windows, and the various midrange and mainframe systems software. Different tools for different needs.

Here's my take (I know, again, but viewpoints change as experience and interaction occur). The core of what we know as Linux, the kernel, was written to meet one person's need. Other people picked it up and added their $0.02 worth, some people shoved the whole kit and kaboodle underneath all the GNU tools and voila - an operating system. Wheeehooooo. Something not controlled by a corporation, but by the {power} users. Note that last.

The advantage that this has over the corporate development model is no accountability to shareholders and quarterly results. If Linus says "Delay the release of 2.4 until this, that and the other are fixed.", then that is what happens. Oooooh. Up pops advantage two! I can still run the stuff they're working on. I have been running kernel 2.4-test1 for the last few weeks on my main machine. I had a look through the list of fixes required to make 2.4 ready for release, found that none of them were showstoppers for my particular hardware, downloaded, compiled and installed it.

JHR has had some difficulty with Linux installs, and I have failed to be helpful to him (no doubt, my fault). I am not sure why he hasn't had success. It is unfortunate. However, he does work magic with his multiboot windows boxen, that I can't replicate here. (Then, I do play with Linux rather more, eh?) I do successful stock installs all the time and tell about that almost NONE of the time, since it's old hat. It's the problems that are interesting to document. There are three words that I will address from his posts of late: Techies, Packages and Incompatibility.

Techies. As in "Give the SW away - but charge whatever traffic will bear for the mandatory high-paid techies to get it up and running and keep it patched together." Hmmm. On a corporate basis, we pay annual and monthly fees for maintenance and consulting on our software, so nothing is particularly different from the windows world. Support for software always carries a price, whether you provide the support internally, or via consulting or support contracts. Nothing special about that. What's challenging to these companies is how to provide a continuing revenue stream to support their being publicly held. On the personal level, I get help and answers "free" as in both speech and beer, all the time from newsgroups and user group mailing lists. What the corporate support contracts are for is not "expensive answers", but answers RIGHT NOW. Immediacy costs money. It implies someone sitting there at the phone, ready to help.

Packages. As in "Brian Bilbrey admits in his Saturday 7/22 post something to the effect that there are "...nearly 4000 packages available these days. As if this were a bad thing? Hmmm. Has anyone ever gone shopping for the free and shareware "PC" (meaning Windows) downloads, over at ZDNet? Any ideas on the number of downloadable programs with supporting files and software (aka, a package) there are? Many hundreds, at least. How many commercial packages are there for the Windows environment? I can't find the exact number, but a round figure bandied about last year was around 50,000. How does one choose? Linux needs more packages. Personally, I *love* having choices.

One of the reasons that 4000 packages was such an interesting number to me is that just a couple of years ago, the count was only hundreds. Do you want the list of all of those packages? It's right here (for Debian frozen) - easy to access. The best thing (in my eyes) about debian is the conflict/dependency resolution capabilities built into the packaging system. For example, if I have Sendmail installed (a MTA - mail transport agent), and I decide I want to work with Exim instead, then when I fetch and install Exim, Sendmail will be automatically de-installed (as having more than one MTA running in the system is a demonstrably bad thing).

Incompatibility. As if Windows weren't. Take a piece of software that runs on Windows 95. Will it also run on 98, NT and 2000? No, no, no.... the same VERSION of the program! See? Harumph. That's not to say that there aren't problems that need to be resolved. Most of these have to do with the locations of configuration files. This pops up in a number of different circumstances, not just in Linux. For instance, when Tom installed FPE (Front Page Extensions) on Hydras, the FPE module wanted to find the apache hddpd configuration files in a specific sub-directory. Not, unfortunately, the subdirectory that apache installs the configuration files in. This is being addressed by the Linux Standards people, with a draft of the FHS (Filesystem Hierarchy Standard) available now, to assist in third party package compatibility issues.

Problems on the horizon. I think that there is a strong contingent in the Free Software movement that would be perfectly happy if the whole corporate Linux thing were to just fsck off and die, or fizzle and die quietly. GNU/Linux was developed by users for users (often only themselves). If you haven't, then read The Cathedral and the Bazaar. People appear to treat it as gospel, or some other holy document - it's just about a mode, a style of software development - driven by programmer interest and user input. That's it and that's all. Corporate use of the system *is* taking some of the fun out of things. It's like the difference between working at a startup and at a major corporation - there are people and personalities that work better in one situation than the other. Linux still is fun, however (at least for me).

What happened is that the coders and admins snuck this cool thing that actually works pretty well (if you're reasonably technical) in the back door at a LOT of corporations. Now this could have led to the firing of a lot of coders and admins. Fortunately, most companies are reasonably loth to fire some of their best brains. So the mandate came down. Legitimize this Linux thing. Give me someone at whom I may point a finger when the website/email server/oracle database goes down. Let me sign an annual check for a support contract, so there's someone YOU can call when you don't have the answer, and we (the company) can't wait for your newsgroup buddies to put up an answer.

The truth is, people and companies working with and for GNU/Linux are dancing damn near as fast as they can. Scaling to the challenge quickly requires money and other resources. They're being judged against commercial contenders, and the system wasn't "designed" for the commercial market, it just fills some of those niches remarkably well... How this all shakes out? Who knows. I sure don't. I just use Linux every day to get a lot of my job done. I also use Windows every day, to get a lot of my job done. If all the tools I needed were available in the Linux toolbox, I'd probably stop carrying the one from Redmond. It's a lot closer than it was a year ago. We'll see...


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July 25, 2000 -    Updates at 06:50,    17:37

Hullo. Gray day outside, a Thompson sort of day. After all of yesterday's outpouring, I dug hard into OLS last night. Altogether a highly productive day, at work and at work {ahem} home. I do, at this early moment, feel just a bit washed out. Thanks to those of you who wrote, liking and disliking yesterday's Linux rant (LR). I get worked up on these issues sometimes, and then it is helpful for me to let it all hang out.

A couple of tidbits from today's pre-surfing, related to LR. The LDPS 1.0-beta is out (Linux Development Platform Specification), a tool to help third party developers achieve application compatibility across the multitudinous distributions. This is in advance of the LSB. Then there's this thing. It was on Slashdot and I missed it, but it popped up again on Technocrat, and I had a look... a 6-CPU dedicated SETI@Home processor card. How cool, if true. You too can have more processors working on the SETI project than Tom does. Heh.

Lastly, for the terminally bored, check out the Bell Labs Unix history pages. Have fun today - I've gotta run. See you later.

[98K] Desktop Shot #1 - Gnome Helix, w/Term, Bluefish & XMMS [58K] Desktop Shot #2 - Gnome Helix w/Gimp Hi. Glad to see y'all back again. Tom had sent me a query earlier about the WM in use behind a screenshot of Galeon. It so transpires that the underlying window manager was Gnome Helix. I've been happily using Helix for a couple of months now, almost since they put out the first public code. It's highly configurable and kinda fun to work in. There can be lots and lots of panels, I only use one small floating panel, visible in the lower right corner of each shot.

The panel contains (left to right), the folder icon, which brings up the applications and program menu. The world/page icon brings up a browser (currently Netscape). Next is Gnome Terminal, followed by a CD player applet, then a CD device control applet. The small vertical bar with the up arrow in it is the desktop manager, bringing up a scrolled list of all the running instances of applications. Next to that is the Workspace view. I have 8 desktops laid out in a 4 x 2 pattern, as shown. I can click on any desktop to go to it, and click on the rectangles within the desktop view to raise any window and give it focus. The panel closes with the logout icon, a clock applet, and the lockscreen icon. This setup works pretty well for me.

In other news, the day was filled with putting out fires, rather than accomplishing goals on the task list. That's never very fun. Other than that, things may appear to be resolving in terms of image management for OLS. That's nice to know, as we have a couple more graphic-heavy chapters breathing hot and heavy down our necks. Speaking of which, I'd better get to work, here.


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July 26, 2000 -    Updates at 06:59,    18:15

Good morning. We had a gorgeous, horizon-spanning full-gonzo technicolor sunset last night, worthy of any Mel Brooks film. It didn't cover the sky, because there was just this one band of cloud in the north-western quadrant, but the show was definitely on, and lasted for many minutes, as the yellows and oranges proceeded through to red and deep, deep purple. Very, very pretty. Nope, no pictures - they would have been strewn with houses, trees, light standards and telephone wires. This was one of those "You had to be there" moments, rather than a "[gratuitously insert name of famous film company here] moment".

Right now, a little before 7 am, the sky is blue all 'round, the sun is peeking between the trees, through the slats of the mini-blinds, and driving a DAGGER into my brain . . . one moment please!

Whew. A reversal of blind closure to seal those chinks in the armor. It's moments like those when I remember that the sun is not just a really bright halogen bulb out in the big blue room, but instead is a nuclear-powered really bright halogen bulb out in the big blue room!!!

Turns out that Gryphon has the best combination of hardware and setup for ripping Audio CD's. If I don't load him with anything, he nearly keeps up even between ripping and encoding. I use the Grip utility.

Subject: Resume Spelling Alert
   Date: Wed, 26 Jul 2000 14:04:53 +0100
   From: [email protected]
     To: [email protected]

Brian,

OK, time for a little nitpicking: can you tell me what the art of
'maintenence' is, as in "system maintenence/upgrades (HW & SW)"?

(I'd better check whether anyone else noticed that, before sending this...
no, lots of comment on your resume, but they missed the really important
things, tsk tsk...)

Anyway, I'd hire you if I could, but I'm not in the position to do
that at this moment. And I don't get the impression you are seriously
searching for something else, as well. Altough, "salt mines"? Hmm. Please
keep doing what you do on your web site, I appreciate it.

Regards,

Willem
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!

Thanks, Willem. Fixed. I don't know why I have a mental block about that 
word. ::sigh:: Again, thanks. And I do intend to keep this up, thanks for 
reading.

Regarding salt mines, there is an inquiry in process. No clue what might 
come of it, though.

Back again. The day is in quick wrap mode, as there's lots to get done - I want to finish up the chapter I am working on tonight. There's this update though...

Hi Brian,

Was reading through your post from Tuesday night, where you explained
that:

> Tom had sent me a query earlier about the WM in use behind a screenshot of
> Galeon. It so transpires that the underlying window manager was Gnome
> Helix

Just a minor nit to pick here: Gnome (Helix or not) is a desktop
environment. The window manager is actually Sawmill, which will also
work on it's own, without Gnome.

Other than that, I agree whole-heartedly. The Helix Gnome product is
wonderful. I just wish that they kept the PPC version up-to-date like
they do the x86 versions. Linux rocks on Apple hardware :)

ttyl
Ken Scott
Too true. You're right, and I *said* that to Tom on the phone, but I
didn't write it. Trying to do too many things at one time is a
crappy excuse. Thanks for pointing out my omission - I will correct.

Ken then wrote again, to remind both of us that the WM formerly known as Sawmill is now called Sawfish, since the prior name was already in use elsewhere. I really, really like the combo. Now to work. Later.


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July 27, 2000 -    Updates at 06:53,    17:15

Hi. A fair hunk of e-correspondence to start my day. The UUASC list (Unix Users Association of Southern California) is a list I subscribed to a while ago - some very bright people over there, I listen a lot, and hope some of the bright rubs off on me. The list was ... well, the word used was "constipated" for the last few days, and now mail is flowing quite well. Hmmm.

Instead of heading straight to work this AM, I am off to the OpenLinux Power Solutions Tour 2000 dog and pony thing, down in San Jose. I signed up for this event a few months ago, then forgot it. It has even disappeared off their website. But day before yesterday, out of the blue (or the aether, or whatever), I get a reminder in my PBI inbox. One interesting bit of trivia - there are two different Wyndham Hotels (where the event is going on) within a mile of each other, and the email doesn't say which one. They do give the phone number, and I found it based on that.

Sure this is going to be a marketing yutz session, but there'll be some free food and possibly other goodies, too. So I am being polite and not wearing my Debian shirt or my Red Hat baseball cap. Figure that would be bad form, y'know. And there's always the possibility that I'll learn something. Addiditionally, a day or two ago Caldera released what they're calling Linux 2.4 Technology Preview, Developer's Release, 2.4 kernel, KDE pre-2.0 and who knows what all else. Probably patched for ReiserFS (to compete with Mandrake 7.1). Heh. There's a banner running on that page, starts off by saying "Set Your Sights"... Given the web-based, DP-centric world we live in, a better play on words would be to write "Set Your Sites". But then, they're probably glad they don't have my sense of humor.

I guess I'd better get to the watering then hit the road. I know it's early, but the Way to San Jose is clogged with cars, every morning. And I'll be travelling (or not travelling...) with the commute, rather than against it like my route to work. TTFN.

17:15 - Evenin'. I made up for showing up to work at noon by leaving spot on time. There, shows them. Heh. Anyway, the Caldera road show wasn't half bad. The first half incorporated real food, fulfilling one of my major requirements for a "good" marketing meeting. They had a Director-level body there, as well as a couple of sales engineers ("building a better sale"???). There were presentations by a Sun geek, and a guy from Tarantella... Do yourself a favor, if you're in the market for remote applications access, then check out Tarantella. I didn't even pick up a demo disk, but I shall d/l the eval one day soon. If just half of what he claimed is true, then they've got a killer product on their hands.

The wrap-up was the SSE from Caldera doing an install walk-through with a non-Linux user from the audience (a small, small crowd). The other two ingredients of a good road show also popped up: T-Shirts and toys, in this case copies of eServer (hmmm, gottit already), Solutions Tools (dunno what that is yet), Linux CBT (computer based Linux indoctrination training), and best of all, hot from the presses, a copy of Linux 2.4 Technology Preview, Developer's Release. Heh. Cool. Even though my overnight download was successful, I didn't know that when they were handing these out.

Now I have to do a test install, as this preview release incorporates Linux kernel 2.4-pre3 (I've been running -pre1 for the last few weeks), apparently a sneaky preview of KDE 2.0 (this I want to see), and also new (beta) gcc and glibc versions. Time to break out the toys for a little while and do some research (yes, this becomes a chapter in the book, so it's a legitimate use of time). I may even traverse a few of the Daynotes, as I haven't had time yet, today. Later.


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July 28, 2000 -    Updates at 06:45;    18:12;    22:40

Happy Friday (well, Saturday if that's where you are when the nuclear halogen rolls back around to your side of the Turtle). Effective evening yesterday, more or less. Got LTP (the 2.4 preview from Caldera) up and running without a whimper, although there's still confusion regarding the message that accompanies making the bootloader selection. Hmmm. I think this warrents an email to the developers.

KDE 2.0 is very nice. A bit buggy still, but showing great promise. I have a few tests to run, I'll tell you now, the File Manager / Browser called Konqueror is a kick-butt tool: file, web and ftp browser, with drag and drop capabilities, even from remote FTP sites into your local system. Rendering is good, there appears to be a failure in <center> handling, but other than that, I like it a lot. If Magellan holds up to its promise, then I think that I can dispose of Netscape entirely. We shall see.

Keep your ears peeled for Tech-Net Cast from Byte this afternoon - you might get a smile out of an item or two from Jerry's report. For a take on how life SHOULD be lived, check out Dan Bowman's pages for the week. The coast is definitely the place to be. Did I mention it's time for me to go to work? ::sigh:: Later.

18:12 - About to cook supper (some braised chicken, rice and veg, nothing too fancy), then prep for the first proper tomato sauce of the season. More news later, perhaps. Good week, glad to see it gone. If you haven't yet, go listen to this week's Byte.com Audio Review. I know, I do that every week, but Jerry and Paul talk real nice about Outlook in a Nutshell (straight link only). Check it out, then go buy it. I, too, have been using Outlook for years, and I knew just from doing the TR on several chapters that I needed this book. Go for it. (Disclaimer for occasional readers - Tom and I are currently collaborating on OpenLinux Secrets, due out this fall from IDG Books). Later.

[63K] Linux World... 22:40 - Supper's done, and tomorrow's is simmering... {grin} , but first, in today's mail, finally, my LinuxWorld Expo and Conference materials. Cool. I missed last year's, for some reason that I am apparently blocking out of my mind. I am looking forward to this one. A little networking is always a good thing. There should be a good showing at this one - there will be a photo report forthcoming, following the event. I'll probably attend the Tuesday, since Linus will be on for a while, and the Geek Bowl is in the afternoon. As you can see from the badge shot, I am going under the Orb moniker, with my formal NPS (No Particular Specialty) title. This sounds like fun. And now, r-r-r-r-riiiiight now, it's food time...
[72K] - The farm continues to fare well [68K] - Even the new recruits [45K] - Tomato harvest [57K] - (Mostly) Home grown ingredients [42K] - Friday's supper, the aforementioned chicken

Second from the left, the new lettuce just beginning to come up. Ya, good resolution out of the camera, eh? That is chicken wire. Then you can see the tomatoes modelling in their glory, followed by a pose with the herbs from our patio garden (and some interlopers from the store, but a red sauce ain't right without onion and garlic). I made the supper discussed above, and while it certainly might not be of the 5-Star level of excellence that Chris maintains, we like it.

Then I dipped those lovely tomatoes into boiling water, skinned, (partially) seeded and crushed them. In a pan over medium high heat, I sauted the garlic 'til lightly browned in a couple tablespoons of olive oil, then added the onion and continued to cook until the onion was translucent. Then I added the tomatoes, and chopped fresh herbs, along with the end of last season's Thyme - the Basil and Oregano are fresh. A little cracked pepper and ground sea salt, along with two bay leaves join the fray, and I turned the heat down to low and simmered for two hours. Now that's off, and the sauce is cooling. An overnight stay in the 'fridge, then a quick reheat tomorrow night and mix with ... mmmm ... penne pasta, I think. As yet, I am undecided about the prospect for some mild Italian sausage, but we'll see. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. A snack, that's what I need, a snack.

OK, g'night kids. Don't stay up to late and I do not want to come upstairs and find you reading under the covers with that flashlight. Especially not the Steven King books. Then you won't sleep well for weeks. That's right. Now good night. And Good Night! Later.


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July 29, 2000 -    Updates at 10:07

I now think that last night's theme should have been Supper's Ready, with a tip of the hat to the original Genesis. And here's a weird one, a mostly computer-animated music video (requires Real Player) set to a version of Supper's ready. It's really rather interesting...

How to unexpectedly kill a half hour! Sheesh, I had no Idea there was so much Genesis stuff online - there's over 2000 Google results just on Supper's ready. Very interesting and a total waste of time. Now I simply must throw some Crash Test Dummies into the cup holder and get some work done.

Quickly, and first up, I have run out of room in my /usr partition on Grinch/Mandrake 7.02. The wages of sin, that. I really should de-install a bunch of packages that I don't use. Eventually I plan on migrating over to Debian completely, but not until after this book is done... I have a spare 3 gig partition on this drive, so I am simply going to run Grinch down to runlevel 1 (single user), copy all of the /usr partition over to the larger space, and swap mount points. Then erase the prior partition and hang it back in /mnt/spare, where I use it for parking mp3's that I've ripped and encoded, but have yet to burn to a disc.

Following that (about a 10 minute process), I have got to grab a bite to eat and a shower, then get to work on the book. I'll drop in later.


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July 30, 2000 -    Updates at 08:24

Hey. Did I say later? I meant later tomorrow (well, today, now). I've been working on recreating and troubleshooting various kinds of problems under OpenLinux for the chapter on Troubleshooting. The problem, of course, is that we're writing a single book on a kernel (Linux), an OS (GNU/Linux), services (Sendmail, Apache, Bind, etc, etc), an operating environment (KDE), and all the applications that make all of this work for real people. Of course we can't cover everything. I agonize over how to pick the best representative "learning opportunities" (aka problems, glitches, etc) to help people learn how the system works and how to generalize from one problem to several different yet similar challenges. Hmmm.

Additionally, I've been playing with LTP (the 2.4 technology preview from Caldera). There are bits of this I rather like. BUT... KDE pre-2.0 and some of the pre-2.0 applications appear to be a bit... unstable. Let me be clear here. This is not a bad thing. LTP is a developer's release, designed explicitly NOT for production boxen, but to let people get a taste of the near future. We will be writing about and getting screenshots from this, as it is definitely headed in the right direction for becoming a drop-in desktop environment replacement for Windows. It ain't there yet, but I like what I see.

Happy Sunday. We have the Costco run today. I get to feed the farm. And I am going to do more work on troubleshooting. Meantime, I am going to strip technology preview off of Gryphon the Acer Travelmate, and pop eDesktop back onto it, in preparation for our trip to Michigan. It will be a working vacation in some senses, though relaxation is also in the cards. This trip shouldn't be as go-go-go as the Ashland trip was. While the Shakespeare Festival was a joy, we were rather tightly scheduled.

Oh, um, supper. I ended up browning some mild Italian sausage, then adding to it several ladles of the fresh sauce (I still have about a quart left), then adding that to Penne pasta, a little black pepper and coarse grated Parmesan over the top. Yum. I could actually eat myself to death with that. The sausage had enough flavor that it overwhelmed the sauce - Later this week I think we'll have meatless pasta, to enjoy the flavor of the fresh tomatoes and basil... I was full enough that I didn't even want (and still haven't had) any of the fresh brownies. I know, I am letting the team down, but I was fat and happy last night.

Now for some coffee, a bit of breakfast and onward, into the day. Have a lovely one, yourself, and (like Arnold) "I'll be back!"


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