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Whoohoo... It's another Monday. ...and a holiday Monday. ...and a good day for some very, very routine work. ...work requiring abso-flippin'-lutley no brain power at all. Heck, I think I'd even pull a Costco run. ...except for all the government employees with the day off busy stocking up for the Superbowl.
Why am I drain bed? ...a little to steeper learning curve than I anticipated when I decided to use Cascading Style Sheets on that church site I'm working on. Thank goodness for the references I'd piled up earlier in the week. I tackled that mountain without any pitons or rope. ...and I'm not one to free climb. But the foundation is more or less laid out; tonight will be a "content" evening. ...then it's off for a first review.
Oh, yeah, next weekend all we have to comfort ourselves with is the All Madden Team presentations... But the week after that? Whaddaya think? Can anyone score against those defenses?
Ah, community... Either here or there or wherever you spend time with your friends...
Tom Syroid's son Landon wasn Landon was injured last night (1930 update). He fractured his femur and that will end up keeping him in the hospital in traction for a time. ...and if you think the people in traction in the sitcoms and commercials have it rough, just imagine what it would be like to be a twenty-month old. No, I don't think so either...
Add in the fun Tom and Leah will not be having trying to run a household by remote: one parent with the Landon in the hospital, another keeping life as normal as possible for Danielle... Oh, and no car...
Okay, the easy stuff first: Bob and Brian hooked up and a plan was in place by mid-morning. There's a car now available to Tom and Leah for the duration; Brian may explain later on his site. Suffice to say, barnraising hasn't gone out of fashion in the communities of this millenium.
Transportation ensured, the next move is distractions for Landon. Teddy bears are cute to look at and cuddle; but, as Shelley pointed out to me this morning, little boys need things to do with their hands to keep them distracted by things like a body cast. So, she and Marcia Bilbrey got together and figured out how to get some new toys headed off to Landon (and Danielle). Cool.
...and since everything was so darned serious yesterday for many people, I've stuck a short piece of sysadmin humor up to take the edge off the morning.
Tom updated last night and we'll let him continue with his story as things progress. ...there'll be opportunities to help in a while if you are so inclined.
On the propeller head front, while playing with ipchains to allow the laptop out to the net through Tux, I managed to lock Tux down tighter than... Well, anyway. That's actually good news to me; it tells me I'm on the right track with what I'm doing...
I know it's not related... It can't be. I don't think... Can it?
I was reconfiguring Tux last night... Yeah, yeah, I know... So I put Mandrake 7.2 on. I figured I'd learned enough from the RedHat install to configure some things on me things on my own; so, what the heck. It's just time...
Interesting. Very interesting. No problems getting the network configuration going. I can get out through the router and I can ping the laptop. ...and hey, Tux has a P-200 in his chest; I thought this was the older motherboard. Actually, I don't remember this motherboard... WT???
No matter; I'm off to the races. Time to throw PMFirewall on him and see what will happen. What? No ipchains installed on this system??? Okay, I'll add it in. Hey, what's this? In DrakConf, there's a new toy called Internet Connection Sharing. WhooHoo... I betcha' I can get in trouble here. So I start things rolling; and, as it trundles, I pop back over to Wolf to play...
To hear a trundle from behind me and find my trackball only moving on the 'y' axis. WT??? Back over to Tux. Do I want to what? Yeah, yeah, 'whatever'... Only to hear the FDD on Wolf cycle...
Major WT???? KVM back to Wolf to find him rebooting.
Um, Mr. Wolf; I had several things open on your desktop. You are an NT box... WT???
Best guess: I enabled a second DHCP server on the network. ...or I just don't know. Nothing new there; I am definitely a "Try turning the screw to the left, Harry. Boom! Okay, Reggie; on the next one, try turning the screw to the right." type of hobbyist.
Okay, full stop; rudders amidships (or some such). Post, reboot all machines and start over.
Okay, Daynoters, especially you of the Linux persuasion... Here's one for you from the Weblogs circuit: The Story of Ping. No, no, no... I know it's an Amazon link. Get over it and scroll down until you hit the first reader review (there, I linked it directly<g>). I won't spoil the surprise, but I don't think we'll see children's books in the same light ever again...
Rolling blackouts, a business survival guide...Okay, I buy things for a living. Ambulances, radios, copy paper, toilet paper... You've heard about my gig from time to time. Thursday was a shopping day; I left work around 0830 and headed out for what was planned to be a rather full day. Nothing special; it was just one of those days with a lot of stops, which meant I'd be on the road longer than the normal run. It also turned out to be the day the first of the rolling blackouts arrived in California.
For those living elsewhere: due to some serious short-sightet-sightedness and political business-as-usual, California is busily Californicating itself. Short version: if you live in the Golden State, you can plan on losing your power for one to two hours for the foreseeable future. ...unless the politicians can come up with a solution. Uh-huh; me too...
Well, for the moment, we'll just have to deal with it. Personally, it's the usual emergency kit at home: candles, firewood, a battery-powered AM radio, a few procedures...
How about business? Well, my outfit is in the business of things going wrong. ...for other people. But we have a basic plan for conserving power when asked, and another for dealing with blackouts. Okay, how about other businesses?
Gee, I'm glad you asked<g>! A few case studies from Thursday's run:
Business Number One, a state-wide chain of vitamin stores franchised to a local businessman (hey, I was in the area): "Well, the store at the big mall... We just close it because that's what they all do over there... This store (at a strip mall)? I guess I can stay open. I have light through the front windows and I have an old receipt book or two..." Okay, he's at least thinking about it. But he doesn't know his power block and doesn't have his radio on...
Business Number Two, a national chain of electronics stores headquartered out of Fort Worth, Texas: "Well, we're all-electronic here; I guess I'll just shut the door and waiait it out..." Good planning, Maynard...
Business Number Three, a national chain of office supply stores. ...and I'll name names: Office Depot. One local store is a co-tenant with Costco in a shopping center. Costco had power; I wandered in after my Costco run to find Office Depot had been blacked out...
...and was met at the door by the manager and several staff members, all armed with flashlights and clipboards with two-part order forms. I was escorted throughout the store (the skylights helped) with all of my purchases logged by SKU, item name, and price. At the check stand, my order was tallied on battery-powered calculators. I signed a charge slip against my store credit card number (other customers used cash without any problems). I was given my copies of the credit slip and order form; the store copies would be entered into the registers to maintain Point of Sale and Receipt records when the power came back up.
Let's see... No loss of business... Increased customer interaction (probably the best treatment most customers received anywhere all day: direct one-on-one with a personal salesperson)...
Who do you think had a plan in place and helped their business plan? ...and who do you think will be open to sell receipt books to those who at least plan? ...and who is just sitting in the dark?
Short shrift this morning. ...and likely today. If I have anything else, it'll be up on the alternate site...
I did post a recipe last night on Shelley's site; if you live in a cold weather climate, it's a winner.
Shelley was a little under the weather yesterday, so my day was just a little jumbled. That's still carrying over as I type this late Friday evening... <sigh>
It'll be okay once I get to class today; on the schedule is an all-day lecture on the respiratory system. By the time I get home, I'll be ready for the weekend... We'll see if my voice holds up...
Drum roll, please! ...and Brian can play a short chorus of Ride of the Valkyries on his kazoo...
A personal milestone: this post was written using the laptop. "Yes, Dan; we've heard that before..." Um, the difference this time is the connection used to ftp the file to and from pair: I've gone wireless, if only for the night!
The lashup: a dial-up D-Link router feeding to Tux (a P-200 running Mandrake 7.2). That feeds through a pair of wireless NICs to the laptop (a P-120 running RedHat 7). Ftp services through gFTP; HTML markup through Bluefish. ...and that was all sorts of fun since their rpm site is down! I had to do the "./configure; make; make install" dance. ...and I don't have that propeller available for my hat quite yet! Sheesh... Still, if you're reading this, it means life is a little more interesting at the Bowman household.
It also means I was up way too late after a teaching day...
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