Weblog Archives - Pre December 2001

Slow day today. The cold that has been working its way around my house finally caught me. My daughter and I were the last two healthy ones. She got sick on Tues and I got hit last night.

Not too much interesting today. I took a assessment for advanced C and scored 61%. Not bad since I haven't written a C or C++ program in about 4 years.

I've been reading Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub, the follwup to the Tailsman that they wrote quite awhile back. The first couple chapters was long and drawn out with lots of flowery languange. It was tough to get through. However, I got a few chapters in and all of a sudden it got much easier. I realized as I read it that Mr. Straub must have written the first part and Mr. King the next. It was neat to see the language change and notice how it affected my reading. I haven't read much Straub and none in quite a few years. I need to read some more and see what I think. Anoter step in trying to become a writer...

Dr. Felton had his suit against the RIAA dismissed. Not sure if this is bad, but it would have provided some reasons for the music industry, the movie industry, etc. to hold off suing or threatening to sue people who crack their encryptions. Cracking itself, in and of itself, should not be illegal. Using these techniques to copy matieral is and should be (to some extent).

Anyway, I noticed this because I follow this in the news and because Dr. Felton agreed to answer some questions from Slashdot yesterday. I submitted one and it got modded up to a 5!!!! :). I never had a 5 before. My question is here.

Why Copyright Hurts Culture - A great article from Wired. More in the Digital Rights

More updates in the PHP section.

Crying babies are hard to deal with. They are upset and don't know why and can't explain it to you. When they are sick, this is especially bad. My wife was up most of the night trying to pacify our six month old who has a cold. I was exhausted and took over around 5, getting her to rest on my chest. Unfortunately, I had to prop up myself on some pillows so she could sleep in a reclined position, while I lay there for a couple hours watching the Denver sun slowly brighten our room. Ahhh, the joys of parenthood :).

I found a couple interesting sites today from one I saw yesterday. dotnetwire.com led me to XML for ASP.NET and ASPAlliance.com where I saw a good article on screen scraping an URL. One of these days I hope to actually get some coding done in this area.

Some updates in the PHP section today. Maybe this will be a decent tutorial one day.

Life is busy. Especially with 3 kids. My 9 year old is pretty easy, in fact, this past 3-4 months he has really grown up and is starting to become a young adult. Not only is he really taking care of himself for the most part, he is helping out with the baby, which is nice. It's nice to see him growing up and doing well. The 3 year old, on the other hand, is a handful. I love him, but he is really a demanding child, wanting lots of social interaction. The 6 month old, of course, needs lots of attention as well, but for the simple reason that she cannot do anything herself.

Not only are they a handful, but my wife and I work and our nanny is not working out that well. We are lucky enough to be able to afford a nanny, though it's not tremendously more than putting both of the little ones in day care. And infinitely better, IMHO. However, finding someone to take care of your children, someone you trust, and someone who is reliable is difficult.

Last night the Rams offense was finally stumped. Of course, the 5 giveaways to Tampa didn't help, but for the first time that I have seen, the Bucs defense stepped up and shut down a good offense. I wonder if they will do it again this year or pack it in. I have mixed feelings about the Bucs. On one hand I have tended to root for them, I especially like Tony Dungee, and have hoped they would get to the Super Bowl for Mr. Dungee's career. On the other hand, I am starting to think that franchise has bad karma and maybe Mr. Dungee would be better off in another city. I also hate to see the Ram's stumped. One of the truly exciting things in the NFL is watching the Ram's track team run up points.

An interesting response from Tim O'Reilly on copyright and software. I read it quickly, but I think I agree with Tim. The developers of software should get to choose the licensing model. Also, my beef with MS is similar to Tim's, but I also feel they should assume more resposibility and liability for crappy software.

Monday, November 26, 2001

My middle child turned 3 this weekend. Kid's birthdays are always exciting and this was nice because it was the first time he was really into presents. At 2 he was still kind of shy and not really into it, but he enjoyed this one. He's a train nut, so we now have 4 or 5 train sets setup all over the house that he plays with.

We are still bombing Afghanistan and it seems that the Taliban are almost overthrown. I think we are making a mistake by installing another government, but time will tell.

On Friday a good friend of mine was laid off from my company. The layoff was a complete surprise to me and something that I never saw coming. In fact, I thought the company was doing pretty well. The thing that really got to me and I spent quite a bit of time thinking about was what my reaction was. And what it should be. I was sad and Friday was a busted day for me. Very little work was accomplished. I hope to find some time to write some thoughts on this down.

Friday, November 16, 2001

Finally, I'm back up. Anyone who was missing me (not likely), I apoligize. I was redirecting to SQL Server Central for awhile because my box blew up at home. Actually I have no idea why it was down. I moved it to a new physical location, plugged into a new hub port, and all of a sudden, no external traffic could get to it. From my local LAN, I was fine. Strange...

Anyways, hopefully I will now be up and this site will be updated more often. I've been working on a redesign, so look for some changes here soon.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

A busy week at the dkRanch with not a lot of time for anything other than the kids. A good thing and it's nice to stop and spend some time relaxing and entertaining the little ones without worrying or trying to accomplish anything else.

The downtime at dkRanch was due to a physical movement of my working environment to a new location where there were no wires. It took a couple days with the kids around to get wires run. Now I have a good environment that affords me some privacy when I need it, but is still close to the "toy zone".

In IP issues, I read a really interesting and thought provoking article. It was at ArsTechnica, a site I just discovered. It is an interesting look at Intellectual Property in terms of humanitarian rights as well. The article is entitled Intellectual Property and the Good Society.

Wednesday, October 10, 2001
Haven't been maintaining very much. I really need to get a system setup that is easier to maintain. Slowly working on that one.

The SSCA bill is in Congress. This is an incredibly scary and deliberately vague bill designed to implement security in every device to ensure content management and limit redistribution rights. I understand there is a need to protect copyrights, but the laws should be specificially written and implemented for different media types and different platforms.

Tuesday, September 25, 2001 - A couple fascinating discussions on some interesting topics today on slashdot.

• IP in Linux - a discussion on the (alleged) theft of some BSD code that is included in Linux without the proper copyright.
• Morals and Layoffs - An essay (and discussion) on any obligations that a company has to its workers. I have a a comment posted as "way0utwest".

Tragedy in the US

Some thoughts, essays, etc. on this horrible event.

Vacation - I spent a week in the mountains with my family and loved it. While I started to have computer withdrawal (no laptops), it was a pleasure to get away and spend time with the little ones away from home. I also got to read 3 books this week (see the Books section).

What's a DBA? My new article at SQL Server Central examines the skills that are needed for a DBA in this world.

Draft:The job market stinks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My take on the current state of technology

dkRanch Hacked!!!!

Yes, I was running an unpatched system. Actually, I had not bothered to disable a number of the items on this server as it was firewalled. Then about 3 wks ago, I move this site from a hosting provider to my own box. Of course, within a week, the Code Red worm was released and basically trashed this box. So, I have spent the last week rebuilding this server and getting it setup again.

Links to visit:

Training Horses
Blog Maverick
Jonathan Schwartz's Blog
SQL Server Central
ESPN
Slashdot
37 Signals
A Mile a Day
Joel on Software
Rockler
My Brother
Woodcraft

Weather at the Ranch

Books