Tom at 16

Week of December 9th, 2002

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Friday December 13, 2002

Mmmm. Friday the 13th. Joy. Really makes me want to dive into the day...

I HATE computers. Hate, hate, hate. I spent some time late last night trying to get my wireless working again under Linux. It quit working about 10 days ago (I know, I know... nothing just "quits" working under Linux -- suffice to say something changed, and I don't have a clue what that might be), and since then I've been tethered to a CAT cable. Which, as I've noted many times in the past, I detest. I'm spoiled. I don't always need wireless (for example, when I'm working at my desk), but when I have it it sure makes my life a whole bunch easier. Like when my back gets sore. When I have wireless I can get up and move to another chair, move upstairs to the kitchen table, or even lay down on the bed and work. Anyone who's experienced severe back pain know that changing position frequently is a Good Thing.

Anyway, I tried to fix the problem last night. I upgraded the driver. I downgraded the driver. I upgraded the card services software. I downgraded the card services software. I upgraded my DHCP software. I upgraded the card services software and downgraded the driver. I tripled checked my configuration files. I overwrote my configuration files with a known-good set I had stashed away on another partition. No joy. I'm reasonably confident the problem lies in one of the initialization scripts, but I don't for the life of me know which one. Nor do I have time to go searching right now.

Wireless under Linux needs a whole lot of fine-tuning before it will be useable by the masses. I'll finger it out eventually -- I always do. But I prefer to solve problems with logic and systematic troubleshooting, and not brute force. Unfortunately, I'm out of logic at the moment. Yes, and patience. If I want wireless, it will have to be under Windows XP, and if that does really and truly suck dead bunnies through a straw, nothing does.

I'm not amused. And in case you missed it earlier, I hate computers.

Wednesday December 11, 2002

The weather here is nothing short of stupendous. Warm (30F), the snow's melting, very un-seasonal.

Me... well, I'm just a wee big deluged. I have two pieces of content due Friday, 1500 unread emails that have accumulated in my various mailboxes over the course of the last 10 days, my Linux wireless card has quit again (probably due to a Portage update I wasn't paying attention to), a mildly sore back still (probably because I'm so tired), and fingers that refuse to type. Sigh.

Our house looks very festive, though. Our tree's up and decorated, and this year I put blue and white icicle lights up across the front of the house. Leah and I are down all the kid's shopping; I have one more small thing to buy for my dear wife. Hopefully I can clear the chaos over the next week and start to enjoy the holiday season.

Be well.

Tuesday December 10, 2002

Hi. I'm back. I guess I don't need to tell you it's been a rough few weeks...

Last Wednesday my back problems got worse instead of better. I was almost totally crippled. So my wife gently bundled me into the car and off I went to the doctor. The doc confirmed what I already knew -- that I had pulled a major muscle in my back, and that we needed find a way to reduce the inflammation so it could heal. She send me home with a handful of industrial strength anti-inflammatory pills. The worked for a day, then, for whatever reason, stopped. I phoned the doc back. She said she could increase the dosage of the anit-inflammatories, but doing so probably wouldn't help. So she told me to go to a local drugstore and pick up a bottle of Advil. Take three pills every three or four hours. Religiously. Whether my back was sore or not. Within 8 hours I was noticeably better. I could move without being in constant pain. A day later I felt better than I had in two weeks. Today, my back's still tender, but I'm functional. Amazing. Over the counter Advil.

Thanks to everyone who wrote concerned about my health. I think I can now say with measured confidence that I'm on the mend.

And a tip of the hat to the good Mr. Bilbrey. I learned a lot about the ways of Linux over the course of the last two years, and I consider a pretty competent admin, but Brian continually amazes me with the breadth and depth of his knowledge base. I needed to access a GUI administrative interface to check some settings on the new Dell server in Indianapolis. There's only two ports open on the server: 80 and 22. Brian walked me through reconfiguring two files, one on the server and one on the client, and now I can start an application on the server and it runs on the desktop just like it was local. Well, not exactly. It's slower than sin and screen redraws can take up to 10 minutes (literally), but I managed to do what I needed to do. Excellent stuff.

Between having visitors last weekend and my back problems, I'm so far behind I think I'm first. Until I catch up, my scribblings here will likely remain brief. Thanks for everyone's understanding and patience. Hopefully by next week I'll be back in the groove again...

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