Archive | December, 2002

Post dated 2002-12-11 00:00:00

Wednesday, 11 December, 2002



Interesting idea for a hacker’s blog-a-thon at Dave Winer’s Weblogs In Meatspace conference proposal. Sounds like it starts too late at night for me.

Jon Udell is very excited about Groove Web Services and, while I understand the words, the meanings of the paraagraphs are eluding me. Wish I had some first-hand-experience with this stuff.

Post dated 2002-12-10 00:00:00

Tuesday, 10 December, 2002



Tuesday is Trash Day. You thought I was kidding when I said the fun never ended, didn’t you?

Slashdot is carrying a story that Microsoft is going to start selling Linux software. Yikes. Yahoo! has the story here

Post dated 2002-12-09 00:00:00

Monday, 09 December, 2002



Monday, and back to real work.

The developers on Slashdot had some interesting observations on the recently announced purchase of Rational Software by IBM. I hope they keep the ClearCase product, as it will be good to see more competition to VSS and CVS.

Eric S. Raymond is a favorite author of mine, and I enjoyed his essay on Asking Smart Questions. In it, Eric suggests we may suffer from a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome and that certainly seems likely.

OSDN has an interesting success story on the deployment of computers in Largo, Florida.

Post dated 2002-12-08 00:00:00

Sunday, 08 December, 2002



Rebooted Partition Magic directly off the CD and changed the active partition to the Windows partition, rebooted and was up and running Windows.

The wireless card is not as easy. While I think I can use the generic Orinoco Prism II drivers, ifconfig threw an error on startup that “A278Kearsarge” was not a valid command. There’s an ampersand in the SSID just before that, and I think it’s causing the configuration file to choke. I’ll dig around and see if I can find a work-around.

Well, The Answers Are Out There. They are just so hard to find. Searching for the problem with the ampersand in the SSID was a red herring. Finally found this page with someone else’s experience with this card and this distribution, and it was all following instructions after that.

Besides for hobbiest hacking, I’ve got to do some household things on the weekend, or else I fall hopelessly behind. I had the pleasure of writing Chrismas cards yesterday, and I help re-arrange the living room to make room for a tree we hope to install next weekend. I also set up the outside lights on the one pine tree Steve and I decorated years ago.

Post dated 2002-12-07 00:00:00

Saturday, 07 December, 2002



Pearl Harbor Day. RIP.

Now that I got Win98SE installed on the laptop for testing of the client app, I decided to mess it up by trying a dual boot with Linux. I used the Partition Magic 8.0 disk to repartition: dropped drive D:, added a Linux partition, moved drive C: so there was a 500 Mb swap partition first on the disk, and then installed Red Hat 8.0. The disks from GLGDW were bogus, but I had a previous set I’d burned, so I got it installed.

The RH installer didn’t like the partition configuration at all. It complained that the other partitioner did not properly understand the geometry of the hard disk, but that it was recoverable. It created a 100 Mb boot partition out of the swap space and installed GRUB as the boot loader. The rest of the install went without a hitch, and I was up and running Linux.

Next came the interesting configuration challenges. Restarting the machine, the Win98SE loader would fail to start Win98, asking for the location of C:\Windows\COMMAND.COM. Tackle that tomorrow.

The other challenge is getting Linux to recognize the wireless card, a LinkSys? WPC11. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Finished off the day by sitting through the entire showing of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” While I had seen bits and pieces before, I am sure I had never seen the whole thing, as several plot twists surprised me. Enjoyed it, and feel that I have now plugged it a little better to American culture. Some day I’ll understand this stuff.

Post dated 2002-12-06 00:00:00

Friday, 06 December, 2002



Thank Goodness, It’s Friday!

A scary story on 2600.org of an amateur photographer detained, his camera seized, on suspicion of terrorism. Don’t get seen on the streets with your camera!

Check out this Amazon Listing. Someone’s having way too much fun!

Post dated 2002-12-05 00:00:00

Thursday, 05 December, 2002



Happy Birthday, Laura!

A pleasant work day, knocking off a little early, dinner together, presents, and sitting around watching the SciFi channel’s mini-series “Taken.” Geek heaven.

Post dated 2002-12-03 00:00:00

Tuesday, 03 December, 2002



Time magazine is featuring a cover story on arthritis, perhaps an indication on where the baby boomers are looking today. Unfortunately, I am personally interested in this story, as well.

According to the US Naval Observatory, Sunrise was at 7:01 this morning, although the sun doesn’t touch the top of the trees till 7:15 or so, thanks to Tyler Hill. Sunset is 4:13 this afternoon. The shortened days are hard; I just want to go hibernate. It doesn’t help that the wind chill this morning was below zero, nor that the mercury a single digit. Brrr.

This article points out the origin of the name ‘blogosphere’ and certainly is an interesting exploration of its ecology.

Post dated 2002-12-02 00:00:00

Monday, 02 December, 2002



Monday arrived with vigor. Lots to do, and fortunately some of it billable.

Monday night is our big night out… grocery shopping. We were just over the top tonight with a stop at Staples as well, for Christmas stuff, discounted batteries (woo-hoo!) and recycled printer paper. The excitement just never stops.

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