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Sunday, 13 May, 2001 at
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The weekly Diary of a PC Geek |
Monday,
May 7, 2001
Monday is a funny way to start a week...
I was thinking last night about Microsoft. Specifically, what are they good for any more?
Yes, I know. Gnawing again at the hand that feeds him, but still. Consider this - we have just witnessed one of the most unprecedented expansions in the history of mankind. When I was in high school, the IBM PC was introduced. I've not yet made it to my twenty year reunion, and yet a machine that didn't exist when I was fifteen has now become a requirement for business.
And that's the minor part of the revolution. We got computers, we found things to do with them, and then we connected them together via the internet to do even more things. And all along that ride, there was Bill Gates and company, smiling, nodding, shoving a copy of some pretty good software into our hands.
We've managed to take these things that were completely unimagined thirty years ago, fledgling geek toys twenty years ago, and put them in the middle of an economic expansion that's seen a boom-bust cycle, and the bust isn't really all that bad, considering. We could have 25% unemployment, and instead we're complaining about actually interviewing for jobs instead of having people throw them at us. Gee, ain't times hard?
Remember the good old days? I mean, pre-MS Office? Remember how you could purchase a word processor, a spreadsheet, a database package, and Harvard Graphics (yes, there was only one choice in some areas), and you'd then be able to thrash around doing all sorts of violent, stupid contortions to get your data out of the database package and into the spreadsheet, where you could analyze it, build a chart, which you would then export to Harvard Graphics for your presentation, and then write the whole thing up all over again for a brochure in your Word Processing package?
Yeah, I know.
It wasn't pretty. Combine it with the fact that some programs used key combinations that would give an eight-year-old child carpal tunnel in the time it took them to spell Microsoft, others relied on function keys, and still others used this funky menu thing to deliver you from your worst nightmares, and, well, computers sucked. That's why us Geek types managed to beat them into submission. Instead of "having a life" we stayed home on Friday nights, beating on those old ten-function-keys on the side keyboards and found neat new ways to kern fonts. Never mind the fact that we didn't know a font from a fig, or that kerning sounded like something you had to do to a high-performance automobile to allow it to corner properly - we knew how to do it. On a dot-matrix printer.
Along came Gates and Company. In developing the Windows system, Gates did what he always has done, and what successful companies have always done - he bought code from some companies, borrowed ideas from elsewhere, and in many, many ways synthesized the information he had into a superior product.
He took Word, which was, in character mode, the second sign of Armegeddon, and turned it into a reasonably decent word processor (until the day it does a reveal codes feature where you can see ALL codes, and they're readable, unlike the abomination they generate and call "html-compatible", they'll remain "reasonably decent", and not ever "good"). He took Excel, which was an exceptional spreadsheet, and made everyone, everywhere, forget about THE PROGRAM THAT MADE THE PC SUCCESSFUL, Lotus 123, which actually was the bastard stepchild of Visicalc. He took the database world, and, well, hosed it up. You can't bat a thousand, no matter how good you are. FoxPro was difficult, Access is less so, but neither are as easy to use as FileMaker Pro. And please, don't talk to me about SQL Server. Presentation software? Yup. Powerpoint's pretty good.
Then, they added things that were required in this new "internet age" and people flocked to them in droves. Whyinhell buy a $450 word processor when for $399 you could get all of them, and they'd work together, and exchange information, and, and, and...
And that's what built Microsoft.
Now, Gates has thousands of employees. Hundreds of thousands of stock option packages sitting there, people waiting for the payoff. And they can't do it again. It was easy to sell people on the first round - "hey, Windows! $79.99!" That was our price point the day Windows 3.0 went on sale. Two boxes - we had two boxes before, with Windows/286 and Windows/386. But Windows 3.0? Five and a quarter or three and a half - remember THOSE choices?
And Microsoft set an expectation, years ago, that they could deliver better for less. Now, we're being told that even upgrades aren't that cheap, that the new products will contain "new features" and Microsoft can't sell the new stuff because the news isn't about what's cool and froody, as Zaphod Beebelbrox would say, but it's about the screwed-up stuff they've done to the new OS to prevent you from stealing it.
Now, don't get me wrong here, because theft of anything is wrong. Stealing from Microsoft is just as bad as stealing from your own parents or children. Theft is theft. Your reasons for it might be justifiable, but in this case, I kinda doubt it. "I had to steal software so my children could computer" just isn't a good excuse. At all.
But I submit to you that a company that spends more time worrying about who's stealing their product and less time worrying about how to improve those products is a company that's past it's peak.
And you know it is. There's the whole PC boom thing. I gave a talk in college to the computer club I helped to found - at the time I noted that there were close to 18 million PCs in use and the sales in the coming years were expected to pass the 2 million units-a-year mark.
Please, note I didn't say which year and I didn't specify how far past.
But there was an expansion that grew, and grew, and grew. You're unlikely to see it again in your lifetime on such a scale - a computer is a comparitively delicate product. It requires a stable power grid (unlike California), a stable telephone system (unlike my home here), and environmental conditions that do not exist in many of the mud-hut communities that have not yet joined "The Information Age".
Microsoft is stuck now with the expectation that they will produce new, good, fantastic, and incredible products. And they can't. They've lost their focus, they've lost their ability to see where they need to go, and it's pretty clear from the way the company is dissipating the brainpower they had that they're going to produce more products, of lower quality, with fewer features that are needed. And more crap to give us more headaches. And by "us" I don't mean us professional geeks that have been doing this for fifteen years or more. I mean "us" as in those of us who have computers and keyboards in front of us right now.
Let's face it. Microsoft is a has-been that has yet to realize they're a has-been. Every dinosaur fights to the death, Microsoft won't be the first exception. Won't be the last, either. It will likely be the nastiest.
Microsoft still matters on the desktop. Microsoft still has some effect and influence in the server arena. But Microsoft's momentum is going the other way. Linux is growing in market share for three simple reasons - it's secure, you can install what you want, and you can get it to do more with less. The demands of Microsoft's software have driven us to buy newer, faster, and better computers, and then toss them away before they've been used eighteen months. Is it the software driving the hardware, or the other way 'round? We'll never know.
If you've got shares of Microsoft, sell now. The company is going to go through bobbles in the future, and if we're very fortunate, the DoJ suit will get the company broken up. In 2041, or thereabouts. And once you can buy stock in Microsoft Desktop Applications Company, Inc., do so. But get out now. Don't buy any stock in Linux companies, but buy their products. Sooner or later market leaders will emerge, and then you can buy their stock. But get out of Microsoft now.
Microsoft trumpets about the freedom to innovate. I wish they'd allow the rest of us the same freedom.
Well, any day that starts with a Caddyshack reference can't be all bad. The traffic guy this morning on Channel 11 made reference to "Gunga da Gunga" this morning as they segued to him from the report about the Dali Lama (that racist <BIG GRIN> (Link to Last Week)) arriving here today.
Despite that, SWMBO does her best, however. Calls me before I get to the office and lets me know she just put $30 in gas into her car. According to all signs and portents (all we have to rely on right now until we get the gas gauge looked at) we'd driven about 300 miles on the tank of gas we had - we know that we can get about 420 free-way miles before you flat run out of gas, so that's one good point. If not freeway miles, we're looking at about 320 stop-and-go city miles. Since Ann drives both, I prefer she fill up somewhere short of 300 miles. Oh well.
And this morning, my first task (after swapping out backup tapes) was to figure out just what the heck to do with our servers. Both new Dell servers (less than a year old, and both with single 16 Gb SCSI drives right now) are nearly full. The key question is WITH WHAT? Batch files to the rescue, and shortly thereafter, I'm left staring at a folder on one server that's got nine gigs worth of data. Of what? Seven people shrug. You know if I blow away any of it without backing it up, I'm deeply, deeply screwed. But if I don't, where do we put these five and six-gig jobs that show up nearly daily now on our doorstep? Ah, well. We'll find a way.
And again, the Microsoftian World View got in my way. Some of you might be familiar with Excel 2000's method of operation on Windows 98 - barf up as many windows as you can and let the user sort them out. When I open one spreadsheet in Windows 98, I get - Spreadsheet.xls - Excel - Spreadsheet.xls - Personal.xls - Book1.xls.
Lovely buncha coconuts there, eh? But on NT 4.0, the OLDER OPERATING SYSTEM, I get ONE EXCEL ICON in my task bar, ONE excel icon in my task switcher, and one big heart attack - WHERE'S THE DAMNED SPREADSHEET! Oh - Window. Never mind.
Is it any wonder I hate these people? And what's worse is there is as yet no widely available and reliable replacement. I know, I know - StarOffice. But A) I lack DSL at home, B) I'm not running Linux there, C) SWMBO occasionally brings home paperwork from the office, which needs to go back there - boy, will she be disappointed when I tell her no way Jose on the Office XP Xperience. Ain't gonna do it here. I'm not going to fork over more bucks to those bastards until I start using more than 15% of the current office suite I purchased. Sheesh.
Anyway, just another day at the office. And just in case they're trying it in a store near you; avoid Mountain Dew Code Red. It's cherry-flavored Mt. Dew. It's one of those "sounds good in theory" deals...
On a somber note, Sjon Svenson lost another family member late last week. Our condolences go out to him.
And, I guess, to the rest of mankind. Seems Mr. Kershner made the mistake of locking his keys in his suburban. No biggie, you say? Well, Mr. Kershner had one of those remote lock/unlock thingies on the keys. And it fell in the door. And the door closed. And pushed the button on, you guessed it, LOCK. So, regrettably, Mr. Kershner will have to break into his own vehicle.
Now, I promised not to pick on him, because he didn't slaughter me too much when I found myself stranded far from home with a vehicle that was having problems. I mean, the gas gauge went out on our vehicle, and the guy did, eventually, stop picking on me. It only took a month or so... So I promise to be nice. But then...
I have to now offer my sympathies to the rest of mankind, because, at about 3:05 pm central daylight savings time, I got the note where my wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, offered to contact Mrs. Kershner, otherwise known as "She Who Is Feared". Yes, folks, that huge "CRRRRRACK!" sound you heard was indeed the fifth seal on the apocalypse. Five down, two to go. And I live with Juggernaut herself (look it up in the Hindu mythos/theology). We're all toast here, it's just a matter of time. You thought it was going to be some sort of shoe-born disaster, and I'm sorry, but not even close.
With that, I'd best get my lawn chairs ready. When that final strike comes, I'm going to be sitting right next to Red Wing's Prairie Island 1 reactor, bottle of Bud in my hand, executing the last great act of defiance as that nuke lands on me. They may clobber this body, but the spirit will live on. Mostly because SHE told me that if I didn't get it right in this world, she'd find me in the next and keep at it until I finally DID remember to wipe down the counters. Ah, eternity. Can I get off at the next stop?
Tuesday,
May 8, 2001
Update at 6:40 pm : The server I'm on (Vulcan) was down last night when I tried to update. Today's update will be forthcoming, I promise. After the laundry... At least I started trying to update at 6:40 - between my phone company and my servers, who knows when this will get up there.
Update at 9:30 pm: Why is it there are no really good songs about Tuesday? The only thing that keeps running through my head is "Hot Fudge Sundae falls on a Tuesdae this week." If you don't get that one, I can't help you... ;-)
Oh, what's that? Yesterday? Well, we had a few technical difficulties. Well, WE didn't here, but WE in the Great White North where Spaceports' servers reside, we had trouble. Vulcan, the server this site currently rests on, was a bit wobbly in the orbit, and as a result, I couldn't find it. Couldn't post to it, couldn't read from it. Very frustrating.
And let this be a lesson to you. Instead of reading through the FAQs, searching the Forums, and all of the other places one goes to seek enlightenment to avoid bothering the really big-brained folks who make money off of Spaceports, just bug 'em anyway. I finally gave up after about an hour on-line (amazingly enough, without getting kicked off), and posted a message. One of the other fellows posted about three minutes later - "yeah, me too". About fifteen minutes after I went to bed, one of the system guys apparently posted a "gee, I don't see anything wrong." But this morning, all is well.
Oh, my. This was almost funny, if you'd read either Lucifer's Hammer or Footfall... The FEMA part had me nearly laughing out loud. I can see it now.
FEMA Official : Governor "X"?
Gov. X : Yes, this is Gov. X.
FO : Is this a secure line?
GX : Yes, what's the problem?
FO : We have reason to believe that in approximately 20 minutes your state
will be struck with a NEO.
GX : Uh, NEO?
FO : Yes Sir.
GX : Son, what exactly *IS* an NEO?
FO : That's a Near Earth Object, sir.
GX : Son, if it hits the earth, it's about as near as it gets. OK?
FO : Yes Sir.
GX : Now, son, let's have the bad news - how big is this NEO?
FO : About the size of Texas, Sir.
GX : No, boy, I want to know how big the object itself is.
FO : That's correct, sir. Big as Texas, the state.
GX : But son, I'm only the governor of (small southern seaboard state). That
thing will flatten us!
FO : That's right sir, and afterwards, we'll be around to hand out blankets.
Right... Somehow, I'm not encouraged by putting our government - any administration - in charge of something that important. It's just not going to make me sleep well.
And today was one of those I'd rather forget. For the record:
1) One of the programmers was having a problem with their computer not opening jpeg images properly. I looked at a couple of things in the development environment, slapped my forehead, and went into File Mangler. Right click on a jpeg, select Open With, make sure the "Always Open..." box is checked, and select your poison - in this case, IE. Duh.
And since that one didn't learn me proper, we had another programmer with problems. This looked to be some sort of memory issue. We ran through the process three times - well, they ran through the process three times to show me, while I said "uh, just a second" a lot - and then I realized I was hearing an awful lot of grinding from the hard drive. After a fourth reboot, I took a look. You can get into an awful lot of trouble with virtual memory when you've only got three megs free on a hard drive. Yeah, I know.
I did manage to clear the underbrush on one server, and cleared up nearly 6 gigs of space by backing up the databases, then PKZipping them (the old command line for me, thanks), along with a directory listing for those files, and some instructions, and then move the file over to the Big "E" drive on one of my servers - that 80 Gig drive certainly comes in handy.
And then I found out that one of the problems I was having with Linux wasn't with Linux. I had another port die on the damned Linksys Hubs. I know they make good networking equipment - everyone tells me so, but I'll be damned if I'll ever buy another one of their hubs. Routers, probably. Almost certainly. But hubs? Go fish. Buncha garbage.
Oh well. Off to see the wizard... I get to inflict dinner on the huddled masses tomorrow night, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and She Who Must Be Obeyed In Training have a Brownie/Daisy meeting tomorrow night - they've got to be at the Savage Library by 6:15 pm - since she gets home around 5:30, that's not enough time to cook, eat, and run. Heck, that's not really enough time to eat and run, but I'll do what I can... G'nite.
Wednesday,
May 9, 2001
Calling this "Hump Day" doesn't even begin to describe the hell... Tonight we had tornados a couple miles south of here. I guess I'm getting old and blase with the technology we have today. Weather guy comes on, shows me where tornados are, shows me path, I call Ann, make sure she's safe, and no worries. When I was a kid, if we heard the sirens, we headed into the basement and hoped. Ah, technology. At least it's good for something.
Today's been one of those see-saw days that flaps me back and forth. Sort of like the very edge of a very large flag in very high winds. Ouch.
Today started out just plain bad - after forgetting to run the dishwasher yesterday morning (there weren't enough dishes in it from the night before), it came back to bite me in spades (no, Mat, not "in the spades" but IN SPADES - means "lots"). To keep on top of the load, I put in another one while getting the kids up for Breakfast. After that, filled the cat bowls. After THAT, I hopped in the showers. And Then I had to get Jack ready so she would not be late.
Just before I get into the office, she calls - lets me know that the teacher we've been hoping Jack will get, and who gets him finally starting next week, will only have him about two weeks - then she's going to take the summer off and decide if she wants to come back. Just Great. Just Lovely.
Then I get to work and the morning calm is shattered by a fellow yelling "TEN GRAND!" Seems one of our vendors was selling us an FTP site and T1 service. Back about ten months ago they were supposed to change our billing to charge us $1000 a month for this line we use only occasionally. Since we use it perhaps 4 times a month, it's just not cost effective. The net loss, of course, being our FTP site and spare T1. So that's what had me shoveling about 2 gigs worth of data down to the Big_E drive (my 80 gig) this morning. I don't think they're going to get the $10,000 - personally, if it takes you TEN MONTHS to notice you're not getting $1000 a month, you need help.
And then, while I'm juggling everything else, I get my Bob Thompson fix this morning. And boy, did I need it...
I just don't know why, but the image of Bob "marking" his computers had me in giggles all day. I wonder if his surge protectors and all the rest would protect him if he got too near the power supply. Oh well. I had a friend who once, during one of those long, country-side rides home from a Friday night "with friends" had to dispose of some rented product, and decided the roadside ditch was good enough.
Regrettably, he didn't notice the electric fence. Talk about the shock of your life... ;-)
Oh well. Round about the middle of this month I'll be rebuilding my current PC. I'm getting all sorts of weird lockups, and last night it started a new trick - you can dial in and connect to the internet once, but if you want to do it again, you have to reboot. Yes, I know the Rnaapp trick, but this is more insidious. I can dial - I hear the modem dial - I hear the systems connect - and then, nothing. I can move the mouse pointer, and all the rest, but I cannot get any of the windows to change.
And another fun thing - it's stopped multi-tasking. I normally run a batch file in the background when I'm on line to "condition the line" - I've wailed enough about dialup here in the past, but I have noticed that if I keep an eye on that little window in the corner, and if it turns up "unknown server" I can sometimes check my mail, and that brings the connection back up.
Anyway, last night the batch file would refuse to run EXCEPT when it was in front of everything.
So I stopped by CompUSA today at lunch and checked out CD-ROM and Fan prices (we aren't fortunate enough, if that's the right word, to have a Fry's here - we either get full-up boxes, or pretty retail packaging, or "Axman Surplus". And some of his stuff looks like it was removed with an axe, let me tell you). I won't bore you - the 2X proprietary SCSI drive I bought with my first PC still runs - and cost me well over ten times what picking up a new one will. Fans? They don't have no stinkin fans. Figures. I guess I'll have to sell my soul to the Ax, man... ;-)
And again, Mr. Kershner brings a happy tear of memory to my eye. His troubles with AT&T/Qwest are the same as I had when they were still US Worst - er, West. In fact, I ended up having an unofficial job at one point, since I was near the window - if a USWorst truck pulled into our lot, I was to send an e-mail to the system administrator. He, in turn, warned everyone our internet access and phone lines would be down shortly - and they almost always were. I think that in eight years of dealing with this stuff, I've yet to see USWest/Qwest EVER hit an install date on the first try.
Sure, they're busy. Sure, they're overworked, underpaid, and under appreciated. Aren't we all? Bottom line is that Qwest has THE WORST customer service record of any company I've ever dealt with. And the sad thing is I'd deal with them again, because they're a damned sight better than the fools I've got now, Frontier. So it goes.
Ach, well, anyway. And the best part is that we're headed for the end of the legislative session. If you're not from Minnesota, feel free to skip the next couple of paragraphs.
We have a setup here where our legislature meets only for a certain number of days each two-year session - this year's the budget year, and next year's the "bonding" year (where they borrow money for projects that didn't get done last time round). As is usual, we're headed for that train-wreck ending - these nitwits hold onto stuff until the very last minute - things that were voted down earlier in the session are slammed through at the very last minute.
At least we've got a "tri-partisan" form of government. I think George Carlin would call it a Mongolian Cluster-F**k. They've all pretty much agreed to disagree, and fortunately, our governor goofy has promised to veto the dumbest things, sign the most dangerous, and generally act like a nut.
For example, today, our governor met the Dali Lama. Now, I mentioned earlier this week about Caddyshack references. I'm betting that if you or I were to meet His Holiness, the Dali Lama, we'd attempt to use our time wisely. Not our Governor.
"Have you ever seen the movie Caddyshack?" He asks the Dali Lama. The nice man says "no" and laughs.
The weirdness is spreading, I keep telling you. It's not just me. Of course, I still think it's all Mat's fault...
Thursday,
May 10, 2001
Well, after last night's storms, I woke today with a headache. Not a good sign at all. It's probably stress-related.
When I was younger, I went through "the summer of hell" - in 1986, in fact, I attended more weddings than I had in my entire life to that point - including relatives. I also stood up, or would have stood up, for four of them (one was jumped from July to January for reasons that should best be left unsaid, and since it was moved, they decided to shrink it significantly - I didn't stand, though I would have). Every single one of the ones I stood for were also in mine, four years later.
During that summer, I was single. Painfully so. Took one fellow's fiancé to one wedding, no date to another. Two different dates to two other weddings, on two successive weekends. A few years later, hit another one - couple years after that, another, and finally, mine, in 1990.
I've been in six weddings as an adult, including my own (yes, dear, I count that one), and yesterday came news that one of my oldest friends is getting a divorce. I'd heard, growing up, that the divorce rate in this country is 50%. Out of the six weddings I stood for, four have produced marriages that ended. That's a pretty dismal record. On the other hand, at the only wedding where I had the distinction of being the "Best Man" (there were actually four of us, but I got the most important role - concluding the toast), that's still going. And, of course, ours.
I don't think it's a reflection on me, or the people I know. I think it's more a reflection on society as a whole.
When I was a kid, this climate in Minnesota was pretty much the same - harsher, even than last winter, truth be told. And in the summers we'd regularly top 100, with the humidity, bugs, and all the other nonesense that goes along with it. Yet air conditioning was a luxury (and Central Air was a new-fangled invention). Car air conditioning was a huge, expensive, and somewhat wasteful option. In the winter, we'd go sit in a stadium and watch football, outdoors, in the frigid below-zero weather - and those games sold out!
We were in many ways a busier bunch. "Convenience food" was hot dogs. That was about as easy as it got. Otherwise, we worked hard, ran hard, played hard, and, frankly, died a lot younger.
Today, more people than not drive the roads with windows up on a hot day - air conditioning. We've got a domed stadium for football AND baseball, and we've got fast-food that allows you to pull up, plunk down a few bucks, and you've got dinner.
Sometimes I think we've got more money than sense, as my mom used to say. She was, and is, a stay-at-home mother who always watched us get on the bus, and watched for us to get off the bus at the end of the day. We had home-made bread that didn't come from a machine. We had home-made meals that rarely came from cardboard boxes of food, but rather basic ingredients she put together. I don't eat much pie with a regular pie crust any more, because I've discovered that no one makes a pie crust as good as my mother's. Not even baker's square. Graham Cracker or Cookie Crumb crusts, they're fine. Heck, I can make them. But pastry crusts? Get out of here. Mom's got the corner on that one.
We've increased our prosperity to increase our convenience, and in doing so, we've lost our ability or desire to do the hard things. What do I mean? Well, let's see...
If you look at 1969 we had a "police action" - a war - going on in Southeast Asia. We had our own government struggling with protests, the beginnings of inflation, and literally hundreds of other crises. Our military was looked down upon, because they took and carried out orders that many people back home didn't agree with. Rather than blaming those that gave the orders, they blamed the nineteen year old kids who were drafted in to do a job. The Oil Crises loomed over the horizon (though we didn't know it then), and we were, quite literally, polluting ourselves out of our homes.
But some how, some way, we found a way to chuck all the problems, and put a man on the moon. Yes, we built on the work that had been done that decade, but it was done.
Today, we're faced with a drooping economy, falling consumer confidence, and a tax "surplus" that's being dumped back in our laps. Why? We've got a social security contract with a baby boom generation that wants to get out of it what they put into it, never mind the fact that they paid for their parents, and their two-kid families can't pay for themselves, their parents (still alive), and two or three others besides - in addition to their own kids. None of the people involved wants to fix it, including our President - he'd rather shift the blame to privitization and have someone else take the heat. We're looking at falling consumer confidence because a number of businesses that didn't exist even eight years ago don't exist any more - their bubble burst just as fast as it grew, which is a fairly obvious no-brainer if you ask me.
Where are the LEADERS? Not the people who want to get out front and say "hey, you folks go that way, and I'll catch up" but the people who say "I've got a job to do" and they do it?
Leadership isn't an easy thing - I know. I've tried. And I'll do it again, and again, and again, until I get it right. I don't have a choice in this, because there are two children who are counting on me to make sure they grow up - not under the threat of Chinese "disapproval" of our actions, not under the threat of "honey, make sure you take your oxygen tank and bio-suit when you go outside, you know how that stuff eats away your skin in 20 seconds" and not under the debt of providing for rich old people who are living longer than we ever dreamed of, and demanding better than their children can afford.
None of this will help my friend's marriage. It takes two people to make a marriage, and two to break one. If done right, marriage is the very toughest thing you can do in your life - it requires you to remain friends with one person for well over half your life, and you select that person based on completely arbitrary reasons that you might only vaguely be able to articulate, and you do so when you've so little experience in the world that a pair of big tits might sway your judgement and jaw.
Marriage is tough. And I don't doubt that my friends have sought every possible avenue. I know him, he's a stubborn pollock, he's not going to give up on something without a fight. I know her, she's a stubborn squarehead Scandahoovian. If there's a fight to be had, she'll be there trying to get involved. Neither of these two are blameless, but there's also nothing that we, as bystanders, can do. It takes two. And we're not the right two. Apparently, neither were they.
My headache's still here, but I'm keeping it. I'm reminding myself that things didn't always come so easy.
Well, just in case you doubted me, here ya go - Governor Goofy meets Dali Lama, and, well, you know the rest. And those storms last night have left their debris, which you can see here. And for some reason, when I saw Al's site today, I had a sudden fear that Al was walking around town sans trousers. We'd make a hell of a pair - "Bull Snake" and "earthworm". Oh well, enough bragging.
Today was most certainly a day to find out just what happens when the dog catches his tail. It starts like this - I'm having problems under Linux with this computer I'm trying to turn into a firewall. First, the network card died, and then the port on the hub died. Now it tells me that the card can't be found because of interrupt conflicts.
So I've got two choices. I can install Winders 98 or similar again, and have it report to me the various bits and pieces that are still working in there. Or, more likely, I can just shoot my foot off. Well, not really - I can install DOS. Specifically 6.22. And run that up the flagpole.
So, I start by checking the network. Viola! A copy of 6.22 downloaded from our MSDN subscription! Create and clearly label the disks, stick in the hard drive with SUSE on it (it's not going anywhere), and... "This version of DOS is an UPGRADE." Some nasty words froth forth.
So I head back to the internet, and find... no one knows the password for the MSDN site. We finally find it, get in, and download the new version of DOS 6.22 (this is a 1 Mb file, so it's pretty quick). Decompress, follow directions, and ... "This version of DOS is an UPGRADE". Lovely. Nasty words frothing more noisily now.
Download MS-DOS 6.0. Get smart. "This time, I'll set it up on CD. I'll put everything on one CD, boot with a floppy, flip to the CD, and ..." Oh, stop laughing, you. I need to format a boot disk with MSCDEX.EXE, CDROM.SYS and a few other twiddly bits.
It wasn't until I tried it that, like a whack on the back of a head from a steel-ruler-bearing-nun, that I remembered those fitful hours tweaking and twisting config.sys and Autoexec.bat files. Oh, damn.
A semi-fortuitious happenstance - I got lucky - at lunch today (No, not that kind of lucky, Mat me boy - though if you do succeed in getting that invention off the ground, I'm following... No, no official notice yet on my particular invention, other than I've analyzed the market and it's aimed at boys between the ages of 12 and 90. We'll go no further). Ran into an old friend of mine at lunch today. We chatted a bit, and then, before he left, he asked if I knew. Yeah, I knew. Sometimes the nightmares occur when you're awake.
Dave lost his Grandmother yesterday, and it looks like Kaycee and Debbie are heading for home. I need to putter with something life GIVING, not life-draining. Screw these computers, I'm going outside to look at my peppers...
Yippie Skippie it's...Friday!,
May 11, 2001
Today it's churning for a good many reasons.
ONE - My boss is quitting the company - the company/division he helped to found and grow has become a pain for him - and as it did, he's decided he wants to go elsewhere. A VERY brave decision in this particular economic time, but it leaves seven of us behind, wondering and scratching. And scared.
TWO - Last night we got word that a friend's daughter had to go into psychiatric lockup. Her older sister was also there for a time. Her father beat on her, and her sister. And her father's now divorced from her mother, and he'd damned well better be getting anger-management counselling, because I'm going to lay into him if I ever see him again. And I hope I don't.
THREE - Microsoft. I think their new licensing policies are certainly understandable. Definitely a good move. For their stockholders. For the rest of us, they go so far beyond "sucking" that I'm at a loss to describe it. For those that don't really read that sort of stuff, Bob Thompson today links to two articles (one and two) from The Register. Briefly - you gotta be on Windows Xtremely Poor by Jan 31, 2002. If you haven't upgraded by then (please note this is slightly more than three months past the SCHEDULED SHIP DATE for the product, which means, if you're lucky, they might have found 5% of the bugs in the thing by then - heck, the first service pack usually doesn't ship until six months past, and my rule of thumb is wait at least three months past the first service pack before any MAJOR upgrades), you've got to buy new, instead of upgrading old. That's what we used to call the "kidney punch". And, in the "low blow" department, your licenses are no longer "permanent". They're three years and out. If you haven't re-registered (and paid through whatever orifice Microsoft hasn't stuck something into), your software just quits. Falls over. Bang-zoom-gone. Kablooey.
FOUR - Kaycee and Debbie are on their way home.
FIVE - some personal business is rapidly going into the tank, and I don't much like that.
I normally say "Thank God, It's Friday." Today it's "Omigawd." It's been a hell week, and tomorrow we go see my folks - and my father, who has battled off polio, heart attacks, getting a pacemaker, and prostate cancer - now he's got arthritis. It's not like they can do surgery on his hip to fix it.
The upshot of today is I need to A) give that resume a final polish, B) start looking, and C) become independently wealthy. Since I was hampered by a complete lack of knowledge of this particular need when it came to the parent-selection process as a zygote, and was blinded by both beauty and brains when I chose my spouse, I'm left to rely on either hard work or good, old-fashioned luck. Since my luck lately has been running a bit of a deficit, I'm hopeful it will turn about. But we're back to good, old-fashioned hard work.
Though, before I go, two quick comments. We were <SARCASM> blessed this week with the presence of Reverend Fred Phelps here in the Twin Cities Metro. Rev. Phelps was quite illuminating in his denounciation of a metro parish that had selected a lesbian minister, and was also demonstrating his support for the young man who wore the "straight pride" sweatshirt. I know I sleep better at night with Rev. Phelps knowing the Lord's mind on various issues - he was quite certain that God "hated" certain individuals, and was very vocal in condemning them to hell. I don't know what I'd do without him around.</SARCASM>
And, last night, that damned Weakest Link show was on again. That stormtrooper b*tch running the show called it a special celebrity edition - I didn't know any of the people up there, until Ann said something about "weren't some of them in Survivor?"
If that's the case, I'm so glad I missed the boat on that one. I'm telling you, those people were beyond the shadow of a doubt the dumbest people to walk the face of the earth. And I've met some dumb ones, let me tell you. Once we knew who was on the show, it literally took only seconds to figure out the first one to go would be the Richard fellow - I think he won the whole ball of wax in that first series. After that, it was pretty easy - pick the smartest one, and off they go. When they got down to three, it was a little difficult. You had three dumb-as-post objects voting to get rid of one. The good news is the two women tossed off the fellow who got, I think, two right all night. And with one of the questions, the stormtrooper sounded stunned that he'd gotten anything right. But I feel certain this guy's got several assistants around. I have a hunch if he tried to brush his own teeth, he'd put out his own eye or puncture his ... well, privates. We'll leave it at that.
The good news was that out of the blue this afternoon I got a call from an old friend of mine - a couple bosses back I worked for a man who, frankly, didn't know how to boss people. He didn't know how to manage people. All he could do was lead by example, and he got more out of me than anyone else. And I miss him, but it's nice to know he's doing well. One of those "one phone call lifts your spirits" things.
And the bad news is that I can't pick on Jim Kershner any more. He's got a lawyer working for him. Though I'm a bit curious - just exactly when does the half of the brain come out so he can stop the IT gig and start practicing law?
I'm off like a herd of turtles, so you enjoy yourselves. I've got to find a job.
Saturday,
May 12, 2001
It's the weekend, so I've promised not to worry, too much, about things.
After getting up and asking who wants scrambled eggs, and getting an affirmative from three of four, I ended up being the only one to eat them. If I would have known that I would have added the cayenne and chili powder... Oh well.
We got up, got going, and picked up lunch for my mom for mother's day lunch, and went out to the family home for it. I'll get pictures up tomorrow.
And otherwise, it was just a nice day to relax. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed having a working and reasonably well-equipped wood shop connected to my place of residence. And, of course, an ample supply of wood.
Back when Ann and I were dating, and she was still a poor college student, she needed some shelving. I picked up a couple of "heavy duty" shelves at Menards - eight feet long, a foot wide, an inch thick. She took care of the supports. Being an eagle scout and all, I can tell you that it hadn't occurred to me, but Ann, being "pre-law" managed to acquire a couple of milk crates for her own use - legally, I must assume, of course. So, for the last ten-twelve years, we've had these two shelves held up by milk crates. Yeah, embarrassing, I know, but you have to remember - a good friend of mine growing up had a pretty cool desk - a solid-core wood door, set on top of some chimney flues, stacked so the open ends were accessable, and on one end he had some smaller flue-tubes that was for his filing system. Cool desk.
Anyway, I chopped up a couple of spare 2x4s from out there for some shelf supports. We'll have to get some screws in the next couple days, and put them together, but I'll feel a whole lot better when that's done.
And one last observation - I know Stevie Nicks is over fifty, but
still. Wow. 
Oh, SHOOT. I guess this is why I take care of myself, but damnit - 49's too damned young to die, especially for someone like Douglas Adams. Damn, damn, damn. The hours I spent beating my head on an Apple IIe monitor, trying to get through that damned "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" computer version - yeah, read the book umpteen times, and was still stuck. At least I made it off the planet and into the control room before I gave up.
Sunday,
May 13, 2001
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!
Ah, yes. Mother's Day. In a few hours, emergency rooms around the country are going to be filled with women who've eaten what their husbands and families have cooked, poorly, wrong, or not enough.
Me? I was smart - eggs benedict comes out of a pouch of hollandaise sauce mix (hey, I could make it from scratch, but she wanted to eat today), a package of english muffins, a package of pre-cut Canadian bacon (ham, if you ask me), and poached eggs (a minute twenty seconds in the microwave using the egg poacher). First the toasted muffin, a spoonful of sauce under the ham, the ham, the egg (upside down or it slides off), and a couple scoops of hollandaise sauce.
Amazing, aren't I?
After breakfast, she got to pot some more of her plants, then, as would befit any lunatic with fewer brain cells than his shoe size (12 this week, should you need to know), I blissfully agreed to the damned Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Details are on her site. Lord knows it wasn't my favorite idea - wander around, looking at stuff on the ground, sometimes flowers, sometimes indistinguishable from weeds, sometimes just plain weeds. After yesterday's walking through my parent's yard yesterday quite a bit, my knee was acting up today, and that made our wanderings through this place just fun.
Of course, my mood wasn't helped a whole lot by this morning's first whack at a job hunt. I went to the Star Tribune's classified ad section, and got one heck of a shock. Last fall, I'd do the want-ad search using the same terms and every week, without fail, the search on "network or system or admin or mac or unix" would turn up well over five HUNDRED ads. This week's search belched out eighty-four.
Thinking that the local folk have decided to move high-tech, I updated and re-activated my profile on DICE.COM. And that had one-hundred and seventy three matches, instead of the seven-hundred-plus. I really, really need my head examined. Really.
Oh well. This would be the time for me to say "g'nite" and I'll see ya tomorrow... I gotta get this network straightened out here so she can use the laptop to get to her files. Ugh. This Job Ain't Never Done. And tomorrow's our favorite - OFIM. Compounded, tomorrow, by the fact that my boss's boss will be arriving from the home office tomorrow morning to update us on our status. I dunno. On Friday, we were calling it "Black Monday". I made sure I didn't wear all black just in case. Just between you and I, I'm expecting to hear another one of those "hey, here's the date, good luck" speeches. Which makes the job hunt so much more "exciting" let me tell you.
Enough whining. This too, shall pass. Could be so much worse. See ya tomorrow...
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