Tom at 16

Week of June 17th, 2002

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Thursday June 20, 2002

The rain finally subsided yesterday afternoon. No complaints here, as we didn't have much snow over the course of the winter, and our spring was dry as well. In short, we needed. This morning there's not a cloud in the sky, and the air has that clean fragrant smell that only comes after a rain. Wonderful. It won't last long, however. The temperature's already climbing quickly -- it's going to be a hot one...

Leah and I spent last night cleaning from Monday night's storm. One of our front flower beds got washed out pretty bad, primarily because it was full of a mix of freshly turned peat moss and soil. Bleh. And my herd garden in the back took a pounding when the house gutters twenty feet above couldn't keep up with the torrents of water running down the roof; the rain spilled over and landed on all my freshly sprouting cress, parsley, and dill. Double bleh. Just when things were starting to come up nice. Oh well. I salvaged what I could, and I'll re-plant what I couldn't this weekend. Good thing we have a very fast growing season here in Saskatchewan...

Yes, I'll be putting Linux back on my notebook. But only after I resolved my current list of hardware problems with Dell.

Not much else happening on the 'puting front. I've been hard at work on another developerWorks tutorial, this one on "Securing Your Web Server".

Yesterday, Olivier Brugman sent me a URL (after reading my Samba/LDAP stuff on devWorks) of a very ambitious HOWTO project he and a cohort are working on that's targeted at implementing LDAP as an authenticate source for all key system services (mail, Apache, Squirrelmail, and Samba). Much more comprehensive than anything I've done to date. I plan to apply the material to my development box this weekend and contribute back to Brugman's efforts in any way I can. Rather than use Procmail, Postfix, Cyrus-IMAP, and Squirrelmail, however, I'll attempt to link in my existing CommuniGate installation with the outlined backend. For my first shot I'll use RH 7.3, as Brugman did. Down the road I'll try the same on a Gentoo install, just to add a different perspective to the existing HOWTO. Eventually, I hope to integrate my planned LDAP-as-address-book into the solution.

Time to enjoy a cup of Java on the back porch before it gets hot, then it's back to my writing efforts du jour. Later all.

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Monday June 17, 2002

I'm sitting here, feet up on the sill of the front window, watching one of the wildest storms I've ever witnessed blow through Saskatoon. It arrived so subtlely. Great black clouds boiled up on the horizon and just sat there for a good half hour. Then, almost like they had been given the nod from some weather God, they charged us. The rain is lashing down and being driven down the street by the wind, the lightening is flashing all round us, and the thunder booms are shaking the house. Pretty impressive, this Nature stuff.

It would appear my son is destined to spend the majority of his life on the outer edges of the bell curve. Of all children who get ear tubes, only 20% have to have a second set; and he's in the top 5 percentile -- given his age -- for height and weight. I have no idea what percentile he's going to top next, but I'm sure I'm not going to like it...

I'll definitely never buy another Dell notebook; now if someone where to up and give me one, that might be another story... The news is good this time, in a twisted way. As noted, I rec'd a new WAP and PCMCIA card from Linksys last week. I plugged the hub in, and 5 minutes later all the lights were flashing, the firmware had been updated, and I it configured to my satisfaction. I then plugged the new wireless card into my trusty Dell, and... and... nothing. No lights, no response from Windoz, nada. After another 10 minutes of fiddling, I determined that neither of my PCMCIA slots were working. I cursed, and left the scene.

Today I set my notebook down on the dining room table and wandered into the kitchen to get another cup of Joe. I can back and the wireless card was humming away, updating its own firmware, and configuring itself. Cosmic. Absolutely cosmic. So it would appear my recent bout of screen jiggles, and non-functional PCMCIA slots is not an isolated incident -- it's my motherboard. Again. For the third time. Bah. I suspect the operators at Dell know my voice by now.

Actually, I'm surprised at the response my grousing has garnered. It would seem I'm not the only one with a lemon notebook made by Dell. A lot of my regular readers have either had direct (bad) experience with a Dell product, or know of someone who has. Mmm. Caveat Emptor.

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