The Time Sink

The afternoon high tide today is at 1820; I guess I'd better let Shelley know we'll be eating dinner late...

Some friends of the boys are over here also; the odds are we'll be spending the day on the beach. That means the strong sunscreen; heck, I reddened up just standing on the balcony talking with someone for about thirty minutes yesterday. Nice guy too... Normally I wouldn't be talking all that long, but he asked about Linux.

...which brings me to one of the projects in my carry-on luggage: I have one of the old pen-based computers from work with me. The boss would like to try to sell them; thing is, they're beat to death and modified for our use. So the normal market is pretty much closed except for perhaps a parts deal. Then I got to thinking: what if I could get Linux to run on one? Say from the command line? That's all I'd need to create a firewall appliance...

Let's see... I have a serial port, a parallel port, two PCMCIA slots, a video port, an IrDA port and a PS/2 port. What I don't have is a FDD or a CDROM installed on this thing, or a port replicator... I do have my old Panasonic CDROM with the SCSI PCMCIA card. ...and a 16meg PCMCIA flash card.

My current plan is to see if the laptop will read the flash card as a drive; that would let me move drivers and such onto the pen-based machine. Then maybe I can get a working install... Of course, that would be way too easy. This thing currently has a solid state HDD installed with a customized Win95 OS. That has to come out and one of the stock HDDs has to go back in first so I can have some wiggle room. But if it works, I have a PCMCIA HDD that I could move things over to... Then maybe move that onto the SanDisk...

Man, how cool would that be? Run my dialup from the serial port and use a PCMCIA NIC to feed the network? Heck, maybe even a wireless card in the other PCMCIA slot to feed the laptop...

Yep, "on vacation" means on vacation; updates when and if<g>...

Yesterday was a day of sun and sand. ...and wind! Sheesh... Shelley bailed about twenty minutes into it, but I stuck it out. ...and even managed to get some reading in when the boys weren't in the water.

...and last night I stuffed in some time to play with the pen-based unit. ...enough to find out I can use the flash cards to move data to the machine as long as the OS can recognize the PCMCIA slots. ...and that I seem to need access to the PCMCIA slots from DOS to install Linux while I'm over here! WT? Yeah, there's information on floppyless Linux installs, but they all want DOS access to the CDROM through the PCMCIA slot. ...or network access.

Gee, here I am with no NICs and no DOS diskettes... <sigh> I'm not sure I have the time to get into this while we're here...

Man, it got flat cold here today... I'm mean 'brrrrr' cold, with sweatshirts and everything... Of course, we were still out in or near the water.

By 'we', I mean the whacked portion of the family: the two energy bundles and the source of their dementia. ...at least according to She Who Has The Sense To Go Inside Whenever It's Too Cold Or Too Windy. But she's still happy: it's 106 in the valley...

...and since we had a long day and I need to be up early for my nap tomorrow, I think I'll call it a night.

Well, I'm ready for a teeny bit of a weather change: I had to turn the heater on in the car tonight when I went to the store...

Okay, I could have put sweat pants or jeans on, but the de rigueur attire here is shorts and sandals regardless of weather conditions. You can move from a T-shirt or tank top to a sweatshirt if necessary, but it has to be something with a logo. I use a college logo shirt from home rather than a designer label; that works well considering sixty percent of the summer population here comes from within about ninety miles of where we live!

...and I spent most of the day working on that process detail job I mentioned the other week; I have about a solid third of the procedure for drawing up and administering MS meditation in second draft form. Lots of detail...

My sister is the main reviewer at this point; once she pronounces it ready to go, I'll put it out for technical review to some medical types. Then, I'll draft Shelley in as neophyte end user. ...and when we're finished, it will go up on the web as a resource to assist new patients and those who need a detailed process statement.

Well, this week is winding down... Daniel's decided he's had enough and wants to head home. Brad's not quite sure if that's a good idea or not. Shelley's suggestion is a road trip tomorrow. I'm holding out for either warmer weather here or cooler weather at home.

I guess I should just call these "Place-holder Posts" since there isn't any of my usual style of content up. Then again, vacation is vacation...

...and after several days of no sun, we bailed today. No, not for home. Heck, it's 105F there with exercise advisories in effect! Nah, Shelley decided we needed some sundries and a present for Daniel's upcoming birthday from the "local" Target store, so off we went over the mountains and through the woods. Nope, didn't see grandma: wrong season. ...and wrong lyrics. But we did see sunshine about ten miles inland.

Thirty miles inland it was flat out hot, likely around 101 or so. When we came back, we took the northern route; that let us see that the entire coast was socked in by fog from San Simeon south...

K'... That left Plan Sixteen, left over from Shelley's high school days: off to Avila Beach, about thirty minutes away. Score! Sun, sand, and light winds. Perfect. ...for us and everyone else who thought about it! Still, it worked out well: Shelley read a book: I napped, Bradley bounced from project to project; and Daniel ended up riding the waves for three hours straight.

Sittin' in a diner, scarfing down a patty melt and an order of chili-cheese fries... Country music going in the background... Not my usual routine, but that was the evening after a full afternoon at the beach. ...the sunny, warm beach!

...and the fog? It was sitting about one-hundred yards south of us all day. It would make the occasional foray into our area, but then would retreat after a time. No joke: we're talking dense fog a football field away and blue skies overhead.

...and the Pacific Ocean waiting for us. Whew. Daniel and I spent more time in the water than out. ...and finished the afternoon tired and hungry. Oh, Bradley was in the water also; but his body temperature drops more quickly than Daniel's and mine and he has to bail after about twenty minutes. I attribute my ability to stay in to a differing metabolic rate; Shelley is less kind<g>...

She also has a comment or two about fifty year-old guys on boogie boards. ...especially if I dare to comment about any aches or pains.