Last night I flattened the 8500, which was running LinuxPPC, and re-initialized the hard drive. It’s now got a fresh install of OS9 running on the 270-MB secondary drive, which used to be Beta. I’m setting it up as the scanner/printer/internet/zip station, so that Jen can work on her portfolio and hopefully start learning some Dreamweaver and HTML. The decision was a hard one, but made easier by the fact that the 7100 still runs strong and smooth with a 3-year-old install of MKLinux and Apache 3.1. At some point I’ll retire that one and get the 8500 running better (never was able to get Apache configured properly with LinuxPPC) but until then (or such time as I get OS X running smooth on the laptop) we’ll keep it like that.
The proliferation of cables and wiring under the desk is bugging me again too. Looking to clean up and clear out a lot of the junk under there, and looking forward to getting rid of a lot of hardware when I put the closet in downstairs.
Thinking about the Linksys router last night, I realized two things:
- I have no idea how to configure Linux, let alone Win NT, for DHCP. Win NT I can figure out but Linux is a whole other animal. And considering how much I love fooling with Apache, I don’t want to lose the 7100. –> I found some limited help on the subject from this site, but it looks to be another contrived, oblique, screwed-up half-documented Linux way of screwing up your computer. I’m going to buy the router anyway, but I might have to reinstall MKLinux over again, based on what I’ve found here and there from different sources, most of which say “Use the Red Hat installer- it’s the easiest.” Thanks.
- I’m not sure how the router and DSL modem interact- how the modem is told to get a signal. Does a machine behind the router initiate a session through the router, or is the router making the connection? –> From what the documentation says, it’s a configuration through a web page interface with the router; the router acts as the PPoet software and supplies a login and password.
I can’t figure out how they have it set up. Back to the howto today, I think. If there’s a clean clear explanation, and providing I find some easy documentation for configuring DHCP with Linux, I’ll buy that router today.
Meanwhile, OS X keeps pissing me off. I got the latest version of Apache, downloaded it, and installed it via some instructions I found on StepWise. When I started up the service, it failed, claiming it couldn’t write to the sys/log/ file. Apple decided not to make an application which would start and stop services (or at least not make it readily apparent) so I can’t tell if it’s running or not. I’m gonna try rebooting into OS X and re-starting the process today, and see if it works. If not…?
As for the house, my checklist is as follows:
- Tear out the nasty wood covering the drain pipe
- Finish mudding and sanding the ceilings throughout.
- Fill the crack in the wall with foam –>Buy foam
- Clear and vacuum the basement floor behind the stairs
- Paint the floor behind the stairs –> Buy floor paint(Last thing for the weekend. –> Let it dry during the day with a fan pointed out the front window.)
- Tape off all the ductwork, machinery and stuff left downstairs
- Ready the whole thing for painting.
- One or two coats of Kilz
- One or two coats of Latex white.
Some poor girl in some small town got suspended from school for using sign language on the bus. The school authorities thought it was a ‘safety hazard’. Let me just ask this: What the hell is up with people in this stupid country? doesn’t anybody have a lick of common sense? I think this whole society is headed right into the toilet.
A final rant, and this is directed at Apple: You’d better hurry up and get the documentation for OS X wired tighter than a drum, and make people interested and excited about something. yeah, it’s a cool idea. Yeah, it will be fast/stable/neato. Big deal. I still have absolutely no reason to run it, I have no idea how to install simple programs for it, and any documentation written by anybody for anything close to a UNIX program is a piece of junk. Apache, one of the only reasons I would ever use UNIX, suffers from horrible documentation, an arcane and confusing download/installation/configuration process, and cryptic error messages. My suggestions:
- Document Document Document. Make it easy, or we’re all gonna give up on it.
- Make a simple installer for everything. be different. Think different. Come up with a way of zipping up a UNIX/LINUX install into a simple 1-file package with a clean interface and check buttons, just like InstallerVISE. Or else you’re dead in the water. And stay away from the Windows/UNIX hard-on with installing 150 files for one program. Go back to the days of 1993 when Photoshop installed with 20 files, not 200.
- Give me a good reason to be happy it’s Mach.
- Make it faster.
- Make the thing less of a battery pig. OS X drains my battery in about 30 minutes.
- If the UNIX kernel is supposed to be so much smaller, better, faster, blah blah, why is is so freakin’ huge? Why are all the buttons pulsing? Do i care about that? Why is the Dock such a big deal? I don’t give a crap about that. make the processes easier to use. Make the applications easier to find. make the interface BETTER, not prettier. OS 9.1 is great simply because it’s had 10 years to mature and grow into a clean, efficient workspace. You just threw that in the toilet. Bad move.
I just found out Triumph is making motorcycles again. Call me stupid, call me an idiot, but I would love a brand-new Bonneville.
I found a really cool product online today that for $100 is going to make my internal network work a whole lot better. It’s a Linksys Cable/DSL router, and it should share out my DSL connection via DHCP to all the other machines on my network through my 12-port hub. I’m looking at this as a much easier solution, because originally I was going to attempt installing Dialup services on my NT box for the DSL modem, then installing another NIC card and then attempting to serve out the IPs from that machine. If the router is the DHCP server, that cuts out about 2 months and $200 of problems. So I’ll have, when all is said and done, wired up in the basement:
Phone line –> DSL Modem –> Cable/DSL Router –> SMC hub –> Ethernet through the whole house.
With the hub doing the work for now, I should be able to utilize every jack in the house as DHCP connections. Plus the router acts as a pseudo-firewall; I can’t add any other software, but nobody can get in, if I read the documentation right. I may splurge this week and just buy the damn thing to get it up and running up in the office while I get the rest of the wiring completed in the basement. That way I could actually start using my NT box for surfing the internet alongside the Mac.
So much for my attempted ban on spending this month.
11:18 – Working on some scripts this morning, and I found all the old notes scripts from 2 years ago archived on CD. I also found most of the old sites I did at System Source on CD as well, except for the one I was looking for, The Jewish Times. It’s really good to see that I’ve not lost a lot of the reasoning and learning I did a few years back- I was able to identify problems I made two years ago and fix them, as well as look at some of the problems and begin to think about new ways to solve them. I’m really excited to get working on this.
Still no word from the Globe poster guy. That bums me out- I want a bunch of those.
I replaced cnn.com today on my links page with abcnews.com‘s news page; after a long relationship with cnn.com going back to about 1997, I can’t use their site anymore. it’s just too much hassle to find any news worth looking at. So I’m going to give the Mouse a try, and see if their newsfeed is any better. I might give the AP site a whirl after that, but other than those sites I don’t know who else has a decent online newsfeed.
As for other news sites, I can’t get over how much news.com and zdnews.com are the same. One REAL bad thing about this economic tailspin we’re in right now is that all the content portals have curtailed their reporting to the bare minimum- I fear in a few years that the only thing to read will be direct pulls off the AP newsfeed. Which is about all the current newspapers ever print anymore.
Baltimore-the City That Reads. Too bad the city newspaper, once home of H.L. Mencken, is now designed and written for a 7th-grade education level. No shit. Somewhere it was just published that this city is proud owner of the highest rate of syphilis in the country. Isn’t that nice.
11:00 – Today is a beautiful spring day. I got to spend about 15 minutes outside at lunch, basically walking to and from work. It had better not rain this weekend, or I’m going to go out of my mind.
I got Dan to set up permissions on the Scripts directory at billdugan.com, so I’m starting to get back into working in Perl. My ultimate goal will be to have this log set up as an online form so i can enter text and have it read out of a text file on the server. Then I’ll work on database stuff, after I’ve mastered getting it in and out of a simple text file, and formatting the page the way I want it. With the condition of my office, and the brutal realization that A. I’ll never be able to get a static IP for my NT box at the house via DSL for less than $40/mo, and B. it’ll take me another three months to get the basement/house wiring/server closet finished at this snail’s pace, I’d rather have the scripting access set up on the server to work from either at home or at work.
I started reading a $30 ‘Learning Perl’ book I got at the now dying Bibelot down in Canton; somehow I’m ready to get back into this stuff. I feel like my mind is opening up with possibilities and it’s soaking up information like a sponge. It’s an exciting feeling.
I need to find the Visual Quickstart Guide to CGI I bought two years ago- that was the book that seemed to work the best for me.
Teller the cat, after making a slow recovery from some eye booger problem, turned up lame yesterday. He’s not using his left front paw too much, and last night was remarkably laid back- more so than usual. I figure he must have sprained it jumping off the tower of crap in the living room yesterday.
3:55 – Today is almost blindingly dull. If I don’t stop working on this site soon, and get back to designing, I’m going to lose my damn mind. The Flash stuff is over for the time being, and the client keeps postponing the meeting. The only bright spot has been finding the old Perl scripts and playing with JavaScript a little bit. My back hurts and my eyes are tired. God, do I sound like a whiny bitch.
4:55 – Not much better. I want to go home.