| Home | Digital Stuff | Books | Photos | Videos | Everything Else | About |
Week ending January 27, 2002
Monday, January 21, 2002 Well, it has been a long weekend. What I thought would be a 2-4 hour move took 8. I guess that's par for the course. Anyway, I came home to find my wife had sprained her ankle. Rather badly and couldn't walk. Needless to say, it was a long afternoon for me after that. Today we tried to go to the emergency room, but it was so crowded we left. Then we were getting worried becuase we had told two people we wanted them to start as nannys. One declined and we hadn't heard from the other. Things were not looking good. I spent some time on the deck today, finishing some benches I'd started a couple weeks ago. Finished one side, so one more to go. Then a friend came over and offered to go get some crutches since I was watching kids. That was nice and they enabled my wife to start getting around. I was disappointed in the Steelers today. I thought for sure they'd be heading to New Orleans for the Super Bowl. The Rams - Eagles game was exiciting. Kept me rivited to the radio and TV this afternoon. Finally our other choice for nanny called back and she will start tommorrow. A load off our minds. Still trying to catch up on lots of writing, but it's fun and I know that once the kids get a little older, it will be much easier. Well, a friend lent us Fiddler on the Roof and everyone is watching, so I'm up to join them. Pretty cool. My company is moving servers as I right this from a colocation facility back to our office. I'm creating this entry through a web browser only. Well, five hours later, it's still cool, but I'm not. We're still moving. What started out as a simple unplug/replug and readdress turned into hassle of figuring out how we can NAT through our existing T-1 and then NAT through our load balancer. It's mainly because we have partners that limit remote calls to certain IPs (makes sense), and someone neglected to update them on the new IPs, so we are trying to use an existing IP. Of course, the one good thing is I am getting better with our Cisco Load Balancer. I've readdressed the thing 3 times this morning and can pretty much move the 3 IPs in five minutes. First of all, a slight change. I moved all the daily entries to #include files, one for each day. A kludgy fix and probably un-interesting, but it is in prepration for a more automated and web based authoring system for my daily thoughts. I am still testing a software called BLOG at work, but not sure if I like it. It runs through FTP and reformats my text into HTML. We'll see. I also got another note about Radio UserLand from a Lockergnome newsletter. Can't find good documenation on the web, the URL in the site refers to a 127.0.0.0 address, so I may have to download it and try it. Or I may build my own ASP/VBScript based system. We'll see. Last week my wife and I were in San Jose, CA for her job. While we were there we visited one of her friends that has a 1 yr old daughter. She mentioned to us that she had just written her daughter a letter that she would give to her when she was 18. It was the second letter, the first having been written before she was born. Her husband also contributed his own letters. Needless to say we thought that was a cool idea. I of course, forgot about it until I got my wife's letter to our three year old today. It was neat to see what she'd written, though I wish I'd written mine before seeing hers. I don't want to post them, because they will be special letters for each kid that they will get when they are 18. I also emailed a few friends who have kids or are expecting and planted the idea in their heads. It's something that I know my wife will treasure and something that I am sure the kids will later in life. I'd like to encourage everyone to do this if they have kids under 18. Even if they are 17, a couple letters are something they will probably treasure. Sit down, spend a couple hours, even over a few days and compose a letter to them. Of course, if you type it, be sure you have a couple copies. This is something you will not want to lose. I'm going to encourage my siblings to also write to our kids. A great vigilante story about people tracking down a fraudulent seller of laptops on eBay. Sellers beware. We WILL get you!!! Interesting interview with Robert Bork, the former Supreme Court Justice nominee. He speaks out against the MS settlement. I tend to agree with these views and I need to get off my butt and submit my comments to the Dept of Justice. My cell phone wasn't working today. My wife called me and said that last two days when she tried to call me, it dropped into a "user not answering" and hung up on her. I tried it and sure enough, that's what happnened. A friend told me the same thing a couple days ago, but I didn't think anything of it. I assumed it would fix itself. After calling Verizon, guess what I found? Making a call fixes it. The cell system apparently "lost" me and making a call reestablished contact. I wonder how often this happens and people who make calls daily don't know. More and more it seems the cell industry hasn't advanced substantially beyond the old analog days. I still miss calls, drop calls constantly and get drop outs. Not static-y noise, just dropped packets which introduce silences into calls. Now I know that this is a difficult thing to build. And that there are lots of variables (interference, changing conditions due to airplaces, trucks, etc) that cause transmission to be difficult, but when my cell phone barely works in the front yard and rarely in the house, something is wrong. And I am in a fairly surburban area. I think there should be some liability for cell phone companies. I get a monthly newsletter from Bruce Schneier at Couterpane Systems that deals with security. This month wasn't as interesting as most, but a fascinating letter sent to Mr. Schneier about liability and what it means in relation to software. Some updates on copy protection to my Digital Rights section. Well, the network is working again, for the most part. What happened? Well, eventually we determined that the name of the domain controller had changed week before last, but it was rebooted two nights ago. Also, the backup controlled was rebooted and they both got confused when they restarted, each thinking they were the primary. I think our backup has issues, but a simple notification and log of the name change would have helped yesterday morning. We were scrambling and emails were exchanged asking what changed. Finally in the afternoon I was digging through logs and detected the reboots. I then asked the admin and got an "oh yeah, I rebooted". Logging helps people. Always. In almost every job, having an audit trail helps to fix the problem. What was interesting and funny is that I got a newsletter from CramSession today stating that most problems on the network boil down to having a good grasp of the Windows networking services AND having implemented them correctly. Kind of ironic. Enron's CEO Resigns. About time! What a load in this article. "Beginning in 1985, Mr. Lay took a second-tier gas-pipeline company, formed through the merger of Houston Natural Gas and InterNorth Inc., and forged it into the nation’s biggest energy trader. Enron became a tireless proselytizer for deregulation and competitive markets, reflecting Mr. Lay’s belief in open markets". This forging was mostly through deciet and lies. And creative accounting. If he had truly built it into a premier company, it would still be that today. Also noticed the auditor won't testify. Go figure. House panel opened. This is a mess. An interesting story about someone who had their Mac stolen and was able to track down the thief because of the software running on the machine (Timbuktu). They tracked the machine and got it back eventually, but no prosecution. Interesting. Perhaps I should do something like this on my laptop. Like Star Wars? Check this out. I like Open Source. Not necessarily agree that everything should be open or that the model always works, but in general, I like the idea. Whether it is best for the individuals and the economy, I don't know, but either way I like the idea. Since I also write (as you can see from this nonsense) I was intrigued by this article on Slashdot:. And by this story about MathWorld. The actual story is here. Some collegues and I are toying with the idea of a book that is also based on some of our earlier writings. However, the story at Mathworld is a scary one, and one that we will have to beware of. This is another example of the $$ overwhelming someone's ethics/morals/whatever you want to call it. Snow in Denver. Lovely for my wife (she loves snow), but a hassle for me. My days started with a trek up to the dealer to pick up my car. I had dropped it off for service, but decided to hold off with the $3k estimate. I've been busy and was unable to get it yesterday as I'd promised the dealer, so I was going to walk up with the dogs this am. Of course, I hadn't planned on 3" of snow. It wasn't too bad. The dogs wanted to run, so I jogged part of the way. I was almost there when I crossed and icy patch. Of course, Boo decided to pick up some speed at the time and dropped me on my knee. Left a nice 2" rasberry on my kneecap. Thanks, Boo. Then the dealer couldn't find my truck, so I spent ten minutes outside waiting with the dogs. The joys of life. I got home without any further incident and found my wife and 3 yr old shoveling snow. I changed clothes and went to work. More adventure. I get there and our development box cannot log onto the network. Can't see the domain controller. Of course, one guy here had the idea that we could unplug the network, log on with cached info, then change to a workgroup and reboot. Unfortunately, once we did this, the local administrator had a password, which no one, including the network admin, remembers. Lovely. I found a few password utilities at SysInternals and Sunbelt Software but no one wanted to pay for them. I think we lost $70 in time already. Oh well, the admin has some sort of cracker program that he's running. We'll see..... An interesting article about Enron here. A friend and I were discussing this yesterday and we decided what happened was criminal. I think some of these executives should be facing criminal charges. After all, how much is enough? How much money do you need to make? Why is it worth changing your wealth from $2 million to $4 million? Is it worth jepardizing people's retirements? Is it worth laying off employees who make $30,000 a year and have a tough time finding another job? It's a crazy world. Free to Fee? Interesting. Got me thinking. Still interviewing nannys. At least we have some good prospects, but my wife has some interesting stories. Talking with one lady she learned that the lady hits her dogs once in awhile to let them know who is "the boss". Jeesh, no hitting in our house. One down, more to check out. Well we got into the server. The admin remembered an old password and tried it. A lesson, keep passwords handy. A good idea to track old passwords. While waiting for things to get fixed, I ran into a K-Mart to grab a few things. This was a Super-K and had a grocery. I was amazed at how many parents were really ticked at their kids! I heard three parents harshly reprimand their kids for the following items:
Got to drop this in the top. If you haven't seen it, go here. Ahhh, another day. It was nice to wake up in my own bed this morning. I know I did that yesterday, but I was tired and hungry from the trip home from San Fran and it wasn't a good wake up. Too early. Today was nice. For Christmas my wife and I were on the same page. She got us some flannel sheets from Bed, Bath, & Beyond and I got a heated mattress pad. Together they have made our bed the most comfortable place I've ever slept. The mattress pad keeps just a little heat going and has resulted in us going from three comforters to one. The sheets are much softer and more comfortable than cotton ones. I never thought I would care, but this is really nice. Started the nanny interview process last night. We were a little worried about finding someone as this is the last week with out current nanny and we were out of town last week. We called an ad in from CA and it ran Sun. So far we've gotten 18 calls. Amazing. I think the economy has a ripple effect in people being out of work and some are choosing to be nannys. Also, I'm sure some two income households have gone to one and the other one might be deciding to stay home instead of seeking another job, hence less nanny work available. Just a theory, but this is more calls than we've ever gotten. Out first interview went well. Delaney (my three year old) loved her. Jumping in her lap and bumping into her constantly. That's what 3 yr olds do when they like you, but he doesn't do that with many people. In fact, with out current nanny, he doesn't talk to her very much. Both my sons are like that. They tend to be hot or cold to people without a lot in between. Amazon posted a profit!! About time. I thought they should have stuck with the books/music/software/video games and other small, easily shipped stuff a long time ago. Then they would have been profitable and still a good stock a year or two ago. Instead all the diversity is dragging them down. Just my 2 cents, but since I like them, and link to their books, I'm glad. Buy a book through one of my links and support this site :).
I'm a minority. Not in the sense that everyone is unique, but in the US, I would be considered a minority because of my brown skin. The reason I bring it up is that I read this article on temp workers that I found from Slashdot. A good debate and here's my contribution: I had the same attitude when I worked in a restaurant and worked 50 hours a week and barely made rent. While I tend to work more than the average joe, I need some free time and that time has a value. Often a value above that of my wage or salary. I hate to have to say it again, but there are more important things than money. Even if you make $8 an hour. Saw that poetry.com has a contest going. I've got a bunch from my past written that I should go through and enter one. Never know. Maybe someone will like my nonsense. Returned from California last night and was glad to get home. I enjoy going out there, but it's always nice to come home. I have lots of stuff to write about the trip, but I'll hit that over the next week. I'll post that stuff in the archives. We went to San Jose for my wife to do some training. I went as the nanny for the week to watch Delaney (my 3 yr old) and Kendall (my 8 month old). I was somewhat dreading trying to entertain the 2 kids for a week in a somewhat unfamiliar location, especially with the little one still nursing, but it went well. And I enjoyed spending the time with my kids. They are fun to be with. Of course, my wife's laptop was having problems connecting via dialup, so I couldn't do any updates. Made some notes with Word, but that was about it. Strange to be without a computer for basically 8 days. I came back to 94 messages at this account, 167 at work, and 194 at my hotmail account. Of course most are SPAM or newsletters, so I get through them pretty quickly. One thing that happened was that I sent a note to someone from work and cc'd them along with a couple work people. They replied a few days later on a separate subject, but the email also got sent to people at work. I'm as bad as most people, but you should check your reply addresses when you do a "reply to all". I think Lawrence Lessig is a great advocate and writer and proponent of sensible digial laws. Another interview with him posted at Slashdot here http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/15/2040217 One interesting note from last week. I drove by the Excite@Home office buildings on Highway 101 between San Jose and San Francisco. In one of the windows in the middle building was a large "So Long" sign. Of course the parking lots were full so I'm not sure how "gone" they are at this point. |