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...and if you didn't get the visual from yesterday's post about Bradley and me, just imagine two hundred plus pounds of a guy in his late forties (I can still say that until November) on rollerblades, with a free weight in his left hand to counter-balance the small child on a bicycle he's is guiding by the handlebars with his right hand. And when you stop laughing...
Hey, my laptop likes Caldera 2.2! Wowser. I had kid duty (my two plus one other) yesterday whilst Shelley and a friend spent some time sans children (and husbands), the logistics of which involve keeping pretty much a constant watch on the herd. Stuck in the living area, I tried Caldera in the laptop for the sheer fun of it. I'd had the machine out to throw a strictly NT installation on a recovered HDD from work, but I took a minute to look at the Caldera installer. ...and kept looking at it. ...and kept looking at it. ...as it proceeded to install the entire package. Interesting... Neither the Corel nor the Red Hat distribution's automated installers had picked out the correct video drivers for the laptop (Chips and Technologies) and I don't know enough at this point to hack the configuration files. Caldera presented me with several video options to test before we got into the actual install (well, it was installing as it was having me test) and their 'deep probe' worked.
Phase two: Shelley came home and I wandered into the pit, excuse me, the library and proceeded to take down the Red Hat install and let Caldera have its shot at the test machine. Not quite as easy as the laptop: some combination of the video card and my Viewsonic monitor (or perhaps the KVM switch) forced me into several installation restarts until I found one that worked. So far; so good.
Oops, no Freecell here; darn. But hey, there's my network card; and I can ping the other machines and they can ping the test bed (I hadn't managed that yet). Hmmm, there might be time this evening (if the boss let's us off early for the un-holiday) to try that hosts/lmhosts thing I saw on that link from Brian on Saturday.
J.H. Ricketson sends out periodical (it's happened more than once) mailings called "Web Wanderings"; today's missive has an item on network storage. I mention it because I will have a follow-up to one of the Editor's Choice winners, the Quantum Snap Server. I ordered the 20gig version of this little gem last week for Erik to play with; when it gets here, I'll let you know how it works out in a small business environment. At US$999 for a fair amount of Raid 0 storage, we're hoping for an alternative solution to one of our storage issues.
...and for the Linux newbies out there (and there are a few more of us every week), check out http://linux.davecentral.com/ in addition to the resources Brian and Dave put up last Saturday.
Too obtuse again: "a lot of fish" equates to "a lot of time". ...but certainly no worse than my first NT install(s).
Ah well, on to other things. Full day today, but not as scheduled. We have some sort of GI bug traveling though our family; yesterday Daniel came home early from school with and upset stomach and I ended up leaving work early to allow Shelley to keep a medical appointment. That part worked out well, as his homework was done before dinner (leaving Shelley with the question of what to serve to a brood with stomach aches). We'll just have to wait another day to see if we all feel better.
Then there are days when I don't care how it works, just that it works. I guess the laser printer is hanging off Wolf now instead of Athena. All I know is that I went to print a form for Saturday's class on the laser and I received a demand for a password. WT...??? I gave my default and the form popped out. I guess sometime or other (likely while I was dinking with the SmartMedia reader) I pulled the laser from Athena and gave it to Wolf. ...at least I changed the path. ...and I best remember to make that part of the next regeneration of Wolf. Maybe I need to call that box Phoenix; there's certainly enough precedent.
Wolf was supposed to be my hot, never-take-down, production machine. When I went to pick up parts, the geekhaus made me a heck of an offer on some Tyan motherboards and P-200 CPUs; what I ended up with was a dual P-200 NT machine and a P-200MMX gaming machine. Or so I thought... Wolf had a problem with a no-name CDwriter on the SCSI chain; and, while I was trying to learn NT and deal with that, I threw a bunch on spare parts (including mismatched memory and all my oddball video and sound) into the gaming box, figuring that I'd play with that configuration in my spare time. Oops... It ran right fine right from the get go (hence "Athena"). Ah heck, maybe I'll put some basic functionality on that box while I fool around with the NT box. Time went on and Athena became the production machine and Wolf became a test bed for NT, CD burners, software and anything else I wanted to play with. Got a problem? NP, just YANTI and start over. He's still that way: I'm trying the wireless network stuff with him. ...and Athena just keeps running.
I do think once this semester is over, I need to settle Wolf in for the summer. One last glorious YANTI (Tom and Dave have been hearing this for how long???) and I can turn my attention to changing out some of those bastard parts on Athena. On the other hand, why bother? On the gripping hand, why not? I could put that leftover ASUS dual P-200 board in and make it my primary Linux box...
Different strokes for different folks: JHR boots the world from one machine; I set up multiple machines (easy sometimes as I can get the old boards from work in exchange for helping IT from time to time). The power company likes me and I don't have to heat the library (or the hall) in the winter time.
...and hopefully my oldest will live to see it. Shelley called me at work the other day to vent; she and Daniel had a disagreement on something or other (not an unusual situation). When she calmed down, she gave his line for the day: "Mom, I am not apologizing to Scott; he's just a six year old child..." Daniel is eight.
...and there's been way too much on my plate this week. I'm not teaching Saturday, but I have a major chunk of class prep to do for the two gentlemen covering for me. I'm hoping to finish up tonight <g>.
To tide you over, take a look at this essay on hacking. It's a long read, but I found it interesting. Have a happy Friday...
A late, late post for a Saturday. It wasn't even a particularly locust-infested day, just a lot of catchup on projects from the previous week. Things like taking down a sunshade that got blown up by the winds from last weekend and battening down fenceboards from the same storm.
I did slip in some geek time; I took one of the hard drives for the laptop down to bare metal and gave it a clean NT install. I keep starting and not finishing a solid attempt with the wireless LAN cards (and that's really the last thing keeping Wolf as a testbed. Really! Honest! Maybe...) I figure if I can get the blinky lights to do the correct thing on this configuration of the laptop (my base network config.), then I can figure out what's going on with Wolf's hardware and software.
...and just when I thought it was safe to play in this sandbox, I find Linux drivers for this thing. Supposedly Linux to Linux and Linux to Win32! Maybe I don't care if I can get it to work on Wolf; maybe Tux would like a new toy. ...and the laptop has a Caldera hard drive available. Nope, nope, nope; one thing at a time. Post; try the card in the laptop first; then see if Wolf will take a configuration. Then seen if I can figure out a 'tar' command. Maybe Sunday; after church (and lunch, and who knows what else).
We had dinner out tonight with the couple we usually trade "date nights" with; instead of swapping kids, we paid our sitter to watch both sets of boys. Not to worry; she's a Sea Cadet and able to handle the troops. We are very grateful for Crystal; ever since the incident with the sitter locking himself in the bathroom and calling his mom...
I think Tom may be done. If not things may be going easier for him as it seems his friend Murphy drifted south last night. Remember that HDD for the laptop that I'd spent my spare time prepping to test the wireless NIC? At 0005, as I'm readying the drivers for the install, I hear that "thunk" sound from the drive that quotes the Raven, "Nevermore". Sheesh, at least it occurred before I started with the install; I'd have blamed the problem on the newer drivers. I can say that I had the sense enough to just leave it on the table and head off to bed.
1330 +/- ...and Brian's rainstorm hit us at 0530 (it blasted me awake; that's how I know). Which makes it a Real Good Thing that I spent some time Saturday afternoon with Bradley and his bike. He's now able to stop and step off vs. the controlled crashes from last weekend, and he can now start off from the curb or a push from Mom. That last is important for weekday afternoons when I'm not home as Shelley would really rather have him on the sidewalk. I agree; he still cannot concentrate on anything but riding the bike. Any distraction and he's down. Car? What car?
I'm almost done prepping the latest sacrificial hard drive on the laptop... I take my chances with these; they're cast offs from the pen-based computers the field crews use. MIS is shifting to flash-based hard drives; and, if a machine doesn't come right back up from a disk problem, they just change the disk out. I don't much care as I usually know in a minute or two if the drive is toast; this AMs failure was an exception.
1830+/-...and we're digging out from a hailstorm. ...which the kids totally got into. ...and Shelley totally got stuck in while shopping.
The weather cleared early the afternoon and Shelley decided that would be a good time to head cross-town for some groceries. She came out to find a hail storm in progress and no practical way to get to her car (the MS has trashed her balance). Eventually, the hail storm moved on east and she was able to make it to the car in the rain and start home. That's when she realized that we live to the east of the store. She ended up following the hail storm home. By the time she got to our neighborhood, she was driving on about an inch of hail through flooded streets. She recuperated by the fire for a while... While the boys built a 'hailman' on the patio...
...and it's time for tech support on the wireless gig. I cannot get the driver to start under NT. I can find a clue: the memory assignment comes up with no end point to it. I just cannot figure out why. So... off to write a note and see what I can find out.
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