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Last Week Next Week Insights Index Daynotes.com Email: tom@syroidmanor.com
Mmmm. Still reflecting on And We Were Soldiers today. Again, highly recommended. If you have the opportunity to watch it, do so.
Over the course of the last two days, I've: Installed and tested (superficially) Office XP SP2, the latest RH Limbo beta (dubbed "Null" for some strange reason), KDE 3.1 beta, and a couple new app releases bundled with RH Null. As always, results are mixed, but overall I'm very pleased with what I see...
Regarding Office XP SP2... I say superficially because I don't use Office to the extent I used to. Generally speaking, I do most of my word processing chores in Open Office. I use M$ Office XP for the odd time sensitive task; the kind I can't afford formatting screw-ups in (OO is getting better, but it still contains the odd "surprise" when jockeying between Word format and OO "Word format"). In short, installing Office XP SP2 did not break anything, to the best of my knowledge. As always, and especially when dealing with Mickeysoft patches/updates, Caveat Emptor.
On Red Hat Limbo beta 3: While I know of some people who've had less than acceptable results with Limbo (mostly in the form of unexpected segfaults), I haven't had a nit of trouble with it -- and I've done at least six or seven installs on three different systems. Perhaps just the way I held my mouth during the setup phase ;-). I haven't stumbled over any noticeable changes between Limbo beta 2 and beta 3 other than a few new program revisions. In particular, XChat is now at 1.8.10, and several of Red Hat's administrative tools have been updated. Overall, I like Limbo. It's new installer routine is slick and very useable, everything appears to configure as it should, and the distro -- in general -- has a polished feel to it.
KDE 3.1 beta 1 is shaping up very nicely. It sports a TON of new features. Most are tied into Konq (tabbed browsing, WGET-like integration, new configuration options, etc.), but the KDE desktop itself has some notable (and useful) improvements. One of my favorites is the ability to customize pop-up menus. Very nice for fast access to non-KDE-native apps. My Kicker panel is borked (some pieces missing, icons don't display as advertised and can't be altered, and a couple other annoying bits), but based on my experience with KDE over the years, the "Kicker" has always been a troublesome element, and always seems to be the last thing fixed before a beta goes "live". It could also have something to do with the fact I installed KDE 3.1b1 using Mandrake RPMs. I took the Mandrake route because (a) I wanted to do a quick-n-dirty installation just for a look-see, (b) I didn't want to compile KDE from scratch, and (c) currently pre-built binaries are only available for Mandrake and SuSE -- and I reasoned that Mandrake is closer to Red Hat regarding filesystem layout than SuSE. Overall, I'm very impressed with what I see in KDE 3.1; I'll be looking forward to compiling the latest beta source from scratch (under Gentoo 1.4) when I install my new hard drive next week.
I'm off to do some work in the gardens while the weather is nice. Tonight I'm making a special dinner for my dear wife. I found some fresh Tuna yesterday in my travels; I'll grill it up on the BBQ tonight for dinner, and serve it up with one of my specialties: a potato, avocado, and cress salad. Yum. I'll drop in later if time permits.
I was going to write tonight about all the wondeful things I'd done and accomplished the past three days; of the dragons I'd slayed, of the operating systems I'd installed, and of the problems I'd overcome. But I watched a movie tonight, and it changed the course of my thoughts. The movie is called And We Were Soldiers, starring Mel Gibson. It's about the 7th Calvary, and what greeted them when they first set foot in the Ia Drang Valley of South Vietnam in the summer of 1965. Recommended. Highly recommended. The story is timeless in many regards. The time and place is, in many ways, irrelevant. It's about the people who lay their lives on the line -- every day -- to protect the freedom we take so for granted. Freedom, my friends, is not God-given right; it is fought for, all to often with blood, and defended by the people we appoint to defend it.
A quiet and humble tip-of-the-hat to all those who venture into harms way in the course of supporting and protecting the freedoms we all take advantage of each and every day. May God Bless you all.
I'm going to take a couple days off. I have a tutorial to finish, some housework to catch up on, and I need to spend some time with the kids -- they're missing me of late, and Danielle reminded me she starts school next week... My how time flies when you're having fun :=). I'll get a post up late Saturday. See ya' all then...
Mornin'... OK, if you insist on minor technicalities, afternoon :=)
Yeah, I know. A little sparse on content last night. But it was drawing on 1am, and frankly, I was having trouble finding the correct keys on my keyboard never mind presenting those keystrokes in intelligent form. We're enjoying another splendiferous day here in Saskatoon; the forecast is for temps to rise into the low 30's this afternoon (lessee now... that translates into the low 90's in 'Merican), and the weather to continue sunny and bright for the next several days. In some ways, however, our focus on each-sunny-day-as-it-comes is bit depressing as it veils the recognition that summer here in the prairies is already in its "dog days". I was sitting on the porch last night just after midnight enjoying a rather thick cup of three-times reheated coffee when it struck me that a sweat shirt was in order. The air wasn't cold, per se, but it definately had a fall crispness to it. Oh well. Onward and upward.
I've had several queries over the course of the last two weeks regarding what I'm currently running on my systems here at Syroid Manor, and what -- if any -- future plans I have for upgrades, etc. I've covered this topic in the past, but I do recognize my approach has been "shotgun-ish" and sporadic. I do intend to bring back a "Current Systems at SM" page (and keeping it current ;-) when I revamp my site this fall. Until then you'll have to be content with WYSIWYG, as I do not intend to revamp anything structually until them.
Hydras is an IBM RS/6000 -- quad CPU, 1G RAM, and 13 SSA hot-swap drives primarily in RAID5 configurations -- and functions as my primary server here at SM. It's responsible for this (and several other) Web sites (Apache 1.3.26), DNS (BIND 9.2.1), file storage accessible via NFS (internal *NIX machines) and Samba (internal Windoz machine, Samba 3.0 alpha) and mail (CommuniGatePro 3.5.something/or/another). The system is guarded by a Linksys firewall/hub, and accessible (with the exception of mail and web services) only via SSH (3.4p1). The OS is AIX 5.2 ML01. AIX 5.2 is slated for release this fall, and barring any stability issues, I'll likely update and drop in a bigger boot drive at the same time. My /usr partition is sitting at around 90% capacity, and while that's OK for the moment, I don't have a lot of breathing room should I decide to add some more packages/functionality to the system.
Donovan is my old, trusty 486DX/166 Deskpro. It's currently in semi-retirement, but ready to go to work should I decide to off-load a service to it from another machine (eg, it is more than enough machine to handle OpenLDAP directory queries). Donovan is currently configured with an early beta release of Gentoo 1.4; no GUI anything, server duty only).
Thor is the IBM xSeries model 220 server (dual P4/1.2GHz, 256MB RAM, 18GB SCSI 10,000 RPM HD) I've had on loan for 4-5 months now. It's currently my "dev" box, and is running Red Hat's Limbo beta. Thor returns home this week sometime.
Which leaves me in need of a development system; that is, a Linux installation I can break with impunity. As noted Monday, I intend to move this functionality over to my main working system, Phaedrus, which is a Dell Inspiron 8000 notebook (1GHz, 512MB of RAM, wireless connectivity, CDRW/DVD, and currently, a 20GB HD). My new IBM Travelstar 60GB hard drive arrived in St. Augustine FL this morning, and will arrive on my doorstep late Monday (Excuse me? Did you really think I was going to have my new HD [which is about the size of a small package of cigarettes] shipped to Canada and pay $300+ in customs, duties, taxes, and butt-plug fees, when I have access to my own network of personal couriers?). After pondering things for a day or three, what I'll likely do is chop the new drive into three pieces (WinXP on the 1st, Gentoo 1.4/GCC 3.2 on the 2nd, and the balance formatted as FAT32 for 'spare storage' <-- with thanks to Brian for the suggestion). Gentoo will remain my "daily working environment" (spelled, hands-off for all but important updates). I'll then pickup a spare HD carrier and retain my existing 20GB HD for developmental work (<-- with thanks to Gary Berg for the suggestion). With a spare carrier I can swap drives in about 30 seconds, and by using two separate drives I alleviate any boot loader problems AND restrict all my hacking to a drive physically separate from my "work" drive.
Phoenix, my dual 433 Celeron system has a borked motherboard. It's in deep retirement at the moment. In other words, I haven't decided what to do with it just yet. I might -- down the road, and funds permitting -- drop a new dual Athlon MB in it. We'll see.
Finally, there's Janus, original dual overclocked Celeron with on-board SCSI. Janus too is in a bit of a holding pattern at the moment. Over the course of the last six months, Janus has run just about every variant of Linux know to man, WinXP, Win2K SP2, and even Windows ME (to test compatibility with a Samba project I was working on). In short, it's served whatever need I tossed at it. As noted, I want to revamp my site into a PHPNuke style format (not with PHPNuke, but by hand using PHP/mySQL/Apache). I have no intention of doing such a large makeover "live", which means I need a staging server to build and test the site on. I might use Janus for this purpose, and if all goes well, simply redirect the port forward to this post when the project is ready for prime time. Again, we'll see.
Now that I have a fully notebook again, I plan to spend some time later today tinkering with and testing several XP updates. When I get my new drive, I want to install XP ONCE and only once; in other words, I don't want any surprises in the form of security fixes and/or updates that break more than they fix. I downloaded Office XP SP2 this morning, so I'll install that and monitor the update for a day or two. I also want to have a gander at CuteFTP 5.0 for XP. I thoroughly detest M$'s built-in Explorer FTP client (I can routinely bring Explorer to its knees by using it), plus I need an FTP client that resumes cut-off/failed downloads. I used CuteFTP years ago, and rather liked the program, so I'll return to familiar ground before I start seeking alternatives.
Very long day, but despite the hour, I'm a happy camper. The Dell tech came and fixed my 'puter today: New MB, new LCD, and a brand new CDRW that should be arriving by couier tomorrow. The images on my screen no longer "dance", both my PCMCIA slots works, I updated my BIOS and NVidia drivers tonight... Life is good. I also stumbled across some XP "tweak" utilities I'll share tomorrow.
If you haven't read Lawrence Lessig's keynote speech from OSCON 2002, now would be good time. I don't always agree with Lessig's views, but the man has caused me to re-think more than one unexamined perspective, on more than one occasion. Recommended reading, if only to get one's brain thinking in a new/different direction.
Well gaawwwd damn! It was actually sunny today. ALL day, no less. Will miracles never cease...
Just another day in the trenches for me. A little research here, some editing there, a couple long phone calls to kick around some ideas with my boss (er, Boss ;-) regarding a future project, and a little reading of some very dry, very mystic documentation.
I haven't done much with Red Hat 8 since Friday other than simply use it. So far so good. I've got most things tweaked up to my satisfaction, and most of the daily apps I use (those not installed with RH's default setup, that is) DL'd, installed, and working as advertised: Mulberry (2.2.1) and Moz 1.1 beta. After mucking about with Mozilla 1.0 for a few days, I quickly confirmed my earlier observations -- 1.1 beta is most definately faster than 1.0. It will be interesting to see the end result of build 1.1 after the engineers have stripped out the debugging code. KDE 3.0.2 still has a couple small rough edges that need polishing, but overall, it's solid and well-mannered. I haven't upgraded my notebook to 3.0.2 yet, but I will as soon as I get my new hard drive installed.
New hard drive? Yep. Ordered an IBM 60GB 5400 rpm Travelstar for Phaedrus this weekend. I'm not technically out of room per se, but the IBM xSeries box I've had for the last four months is going back this week. Which means I need a system for development work [spelled, break it, fix it, then write about it]. Unfortunately, I don't have a spare machine kicking around, so the plan is to use my notebook -- at least for the near future. I'll carve the new drive into three partitions: One for XP-Pro (I still need Windoz for the odd task), one for a "hands-off" Linux install (Gentoo); the place I spend 70% of my day, and one for daily Linux hackings (in all likelihood, RH 8/Limbo). If anyone's interested in a 20GB IBM Travelstar (4200 rpm) drive, drop me a line -- it's priced to move...
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