July 2001

We took two canoe rides over the weekend, the first ended when the rain started to soak us, and the second took us to our old neighbors house... It turns out the elder Brennan is an expert canoe guy, and he gave me a quick lesson on proper paddling, even though I joked about a hour earlier that we didn't even need training to use the canoe. I now know about the C stroke, the J stroke, and can even remember which is the bow, the stern and which way port and starboard is... (well, ok, I don't have that part down yet...)

This is the product I want, which I think all I.T. related departments would find useful. A big flashing rotating strobe light device that mounts on the ceiling (red would be a nice color) that would spin around and alert us when our connection to the internet is down. This would be most useful. It would prevent 20 different people from trying to ping the outside world, or connect via ftp or vnc to see what is going on... most useful indeed...

Question of the day: "Should we write this in ColdFusion or perl?" (Hint: ColdFusion sucks pretty badly... perl does not...)

Hey, http%3A%2F%2F oh... nevermind...

The anniversary approaches... or has it already past...?

I've been doing more and more sql stuff lately... which is probably good. I need to get MySQL up and running again... always seems to be on my to do list... argh...

Berbee?

From Wired: "Open-source software is Wall Street's dirty little secret, Moore said. For some reason, none of the financial companies like to admit that they use Perl, Linux and Apache, but all the firms are teeming with it because it's the only way to get software to conform to the varying needs of a big business. " It's like that where I am to some degree... as much as we buy commercial software to do much of what we do (though I'd prefer we didn't in many cases... but that's another comment altogether) we use perl and other open-source/free software/gnu-type things all the time. It's just the best way to get certain things done...

Last night was our maiden voyage in the canoe, all went well... we watched the Thursday night water ski show on Fowler lake, and just paddled, drifted, and relaxed for a while... it's good to have a canoe again. (You land-lubbers wouldn't understand...)

"There's two kinds of people... boaters, and non-boaters..."

Hey Coleman, I don't know if you normally leave out the instructions for assembling your canoes, but it might help some people... luckily with my 31337 skilz I was able to kung-foo your canoe into existance, but other may not be as lucky...

While at work one day I got an email message from my dad, it stated: "tonite @ 7:00 on fox channel 6 making of the planet of the apes." now that's cool...

Well, we got the canoe home in one piece... actually it was in multiple pieces - some assembly required. I started assemby yesterday night, and need to finish tonight, which involves getting everything to line up properly and putting a lot of screws into place. If all goes well we could be floating on the lake tonight! Oh, I of course had to get paddles, so I swung by Sherpers since I had a $50 gift certificate from my birthday to use. I found two paddles and a PFD, the total was $51.47 and the guy working said "Hey, close enough!" Thanks dude!

I've been reading up on the whole XFree86 under Mac OS X thing (XonX and so on...) and now I'm really getting hyped about getting a new Mac. O'Reilly has got some good articles on Mac OS X issues as well, it's great to see O'Reilly take such an interest in the Mac platform...

Can you tell me where I can send you this file I've got, so that I might have some advice on it? It would really help me out...

The rumors are true... I've got a canoe... picking it up tonight, and getting paddles tomorrow... by Wednesday we should be floating on Fowler...

More bumps on the Road to Linux...

I've been reading more of Running Linux, especially about the XWindows system, which I had hoped to be running by now... ugh...

Krunk!

I came close to setting up the NeXTStation over the weekend, but didn't quite finish... that'll stay on the to-do list...

I'm looking at getting one of those fancy new G4's to run Mac OS X on, my life should change dramatically after that happens. The itching should go away and the swelling should go down a bit... at least that's my hope...

We've got a new machine to travel down the Road to Linux in...

I took the kids to Computer Renaissance the other day... I thought they would have lots of old, rare, computer parts and junk and such.. but it was not so... it was more like a pre-owned store, where you could buy last years model, but any chance of finding an external CD drive for your old NeXTSTATION were nil... I'll have to try Computer Exchange next time, I haven't been there in about 6 years!

I just installed Netscape 6.1 Preview Release 1. So far it's pretty nice. I'm sick of people saying that they wish there was no Netscape, and that IE was al anyone used. I can't help but think these people are morons. "Hey, PLEASE take away my choices! We have too many freedoms, how can we reduce them!" Most of the people use Windows 99% of the time anyway, they rarely (if ever) use the Mac OS, Linux, *nix, Palm OS, or any other browsers than the one Microsoft shoved down their throats... argh....

I got an email from C|Net with the subject: Your PC is a relic. How did they know that!?

Good gosh, could we really be having another rummage sale this year? Yes... I'm afraid so...

Yesterday wasn't just a lockdown kind of day, it was a double-lockdown (aka total-lockdown, or TLD) kind of day...

Please rain...

Ich spreche nicht Programmiersprachen der Fremdsprachen... nur...

A week without therapy is a bad thing. Maddy was afraid of falling down the heating vent, because the grill was removed for painting (again!) When things like that happen you aren't always sure if it's a normal reaction of a 2 1/2 year old, or the result of an SI kid not being aware of where they are in physical space...

I bought a snowblower yesterday. It was 95 degrees at our house. Connect those two things...

We managed to miss a parade yesterday. People were out on the street near our house setting up lawn chairs, and we didn't know what was going on. We went to Home Depot to buy more paint (argh!) and when we came back, people were putting the lawn chairs in their cars... ah well... I heard it sucked.

Sig seen on slashdot: "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.

Today we look at the vCard format. Enjoy...

vCard is the electronic business card... (It sure is!)

What applications use the vCard format? Glad you asked!

I saw Starship Troopers over the weekend. I liked it. It was pretty gory. It was long. It might not have been as long if there wasn't some odd editing, because when I saw it there was a 10 minute segment out of sequence that I saw twice, which sort of confused the hell out of the continuity, and took me a minute to get back on track. Will Neil Patrick "Doogie" Harris ever play a dumb guy? Hmmm...

I also got to see Junkyard Wars, which I haven't seen for a few months. Catch it if you haven't yet.

This is the first year that I can't even (jokingly) say I'm excited about the new fall season. (See, every year I say I'm excitd about it, but it's just a bit I do... by mid-September I conplain about how bad everything is...) This year just looks awful.

There are a lot of 'reality' shows on nowadays... the only one I've seen (and really watch) is American High. It seems to be the only one that doesn't try to put people in outrageous situations. Well, high school is an outrageous situation, but there's no big prive money to the 'winner' or whatever those other shows do...

A big 'high five' out to the kids of the OTN Scroll... keep up the good work!

June Updates