The Time Sink

...and a late start to the day. No, I was up plenty early; it's just taken me this long to get to the computer. As Shelley mentioned yesterday, we're putting ceiling fans in the living room and kitchen. ...and that means attic wiring. ...which means attic access for the poor electrician doing the work. ...which meant a reconnoiter of the attic to see how much junk I'll need to move about to provide access to the work locations. ...and I figure as long as the guy is up there, I'll have him add a drop to the library; that will give the computers their own circuit. Which is a good thing.

I saw an interesting tidbit on John Doucette's page Saturday. It seems gFTP corrupted some of his files. I'd had that problem before and started to work up a bug report; I backed off thinking it was caused by some local issue here. It looks like it's time to re-think things... I just fired up gFTP 2.0.7b on Tux^2 and had the problem repeat; this time much farther along in the file than what occurred the last time. John and I'll be emailing back and forth on this; we'll keep you informed.

Back to work! But with an FTP tale to tell. Yesterday, I mentioned that John Doucette had run across the same gFTP problem I had. Last night, he emailed in that 2.0.8 seemed to have fixed his problem. I went for that and it does indeed seem to have done the trick.

For those of us running out-of-the-box installs of Linux, gFTP 2.0.7 is what we've been getting. If you use gFTP (and it's more than adequate for my needs), it was a straight download and install under Red Hat 7.1. Yep; Red Hat's still on there!

Speaking of updated versions of things, John Vogt is moving his site from Blogspot to Hydras.

Darn that Dave anyway... Here I am getting all comfy with the various Linux distros and trying my best to formulate a cohesive game plan for rebuilding the various boxen and put them to their proper use. Spurred along by the hardware firewall/router locking up on Shelley yesterday...

...and I think I have a plan more or less in place and ready to activate. ...which will help with the pile of stuff in the library that keeps spilling out into the hallway (incurring the wrath of you know who). 'Cause I need to throw out a ton (at least a metric one) of stuff that I Just Will Never Get To...

...and Dave has to go mention this really neat distro that would work "Oh, So Well" as a server. Turbo Linux. I know Turbo Linux. Perhaps I should say I know of Turbo Linux. It came bundled with the last hub I bought. ...and I even know which pile the CD is in. ...and now I'm going to have to load it in some machine to see what happens down that yellow brick road.

Short version: RedHat 7.1 went on the laptop last night. Note to Tom: tongue held to the left on this one. ...and text installation worked much better than the GUI.

Tonight's variation on a theme will be a 'workstation' installation rather than a 'laptop' install; it didn't add in LinuxConfig or PCMCIA services or a few other goodies I expected.

Wow, June already. I'm not sure we're didn't already hit summer in May.

If you're up for a longish read, and if you are a cable modem type, it may be worth your time to take a look at Steve Gibson's latest crusade. Synopsis: Gibson was hit with multiple DDoS attacks; hacked his way into how the systems work (Windows machines; he states that XP will exacerbate future instances); shows that the ISPs will not assist (at least in his case); and developed a way to test for potential infection on Windows machines. The attack system he documents is IRC based...

Who, me? ...been up in the attic creating access points for the electrician. He'll need to be able to pull from my sub-panel in the garage and get to the areas where he'll tie into the existing or add new. Now, I have to figure out what combination of X-10 stuff I need to have available before he gets here. ...and work up a drawing or two.

In the meantime, there's a laptop on the kitchen table in some unknown stage of a test install ('cause I forgot about it and went to bed way late again). ...and a back yard to tend to (after the side job of fixing the sprinklers in the front yard).

Summertime is not good for me on the geek front... I usually wander outside in the morning and run across something that needs fixing or something that could use some time and get stuck on it for hours. Then I'm hot and ready for a quick dip in the pool. Then I'm too wet to come inside and I start looking for another area to putter in. This process repeats itself in an endless loop, quite often for the entire day. With just a little bit of distraction, I can manage to stay outside, doing the reverse-flower rotation (staying out of the sun as it moves across the sky) until it's time to go to bed...

Perhaps today I'll get back to that install on the laptop I mentioned yesterday... I had plans to work on it the evening, but there was still enough light out after dinner to add some bark to the area at the back of the pool. ...and after my shower, it was nicely dark enough to sit back with a brew and contemplate whether or not moving the lanterns in the Japanese garden still let me see enough of the path. ...and it looks to be a full moon later this week.