The Time Sink

Well, now... That was an interesting weekend. All sorts of stuff done on Saturday and not much done on Sunday at all... Then again: Day of Rest.

One thing that did get done from a standing start late Friday: a site design and skin for a friend's support forum. Yep, there's an Ikonboard 3 under the hood there. ...and that's one sweet environment to work in: everything is modularized; it's just a matter of finding where the modules you need to modify hang out. All in all a challenging but rewarding experience...

Interesting time last night: I lost my connectivity to the local server... Yeah. ...and with a testbed machine with live graphics that needed to be saved (...and to the server, because if I just save them locally, I'll forget about them and won't remember to re-save them and then things are lost and out of sync and what happens if I take that machine down or hose it while I'm throwing Debian on it at 2350 some night 'cause that's how it works around this place and anyway that's maybe the machine causing the problem 'cause the server is saying it has an IP conflict and it's shutting down the local interface and it's not really a server anyway but really a NT4ws used as a file and web server and that on a P-100 that has a fan going out and I hope it's the redundant pusher fan and I really need to get RedHat or Debian up on one of the tablets and make it the local server 'cause I can mirror that puppy and just leave the wireless link for the external connections and I wouldn't have to deal with this type of thing 'cause I could move files around on PCMCIA cards and where the heck was this going???)

Oh, yeah. Server. Ahem. <Deep breath...> Okay, so I lost the server from the kitchen workstation. ...but not the net. WT? ...and the server is saying it has an IP issue with some MAC address. WT??? ...and really want this stuff saved. So I stuck it on the HDD, a Smart Media card and a PCMCIA card. ...and went looking.

Okay, shut down... Cool? No, same issue. Hmmmm... The kids' machine? Nope: off. Shelley? Nope, she shut down after she posted. Wolf? Wolf??? Can't be. Nope, he's showing the same lack of local connectivity. ...and can hit the net. ...but I shut him down anyway. Tux? Simply cannot be... What is left??? (Do you have it yet?) The router? No, I can get outside. Well, maybe... Fire up Wolf and 'look' at the router (dialup). Nope, fine there. Wait... The wireless access point? No way; it's passive! Well, look here: it somehow decided it liked Janus's IP address better than its own. WT??? "Reset"? ...or "Restore Defaults"? Reset. ...and all is well in the land of the TimeSink.

So what happened? ...and why the revert to the home IP? Inquiring minds and all that... The access point will only talk to one MAC address and that's the testbed in the kitchen; so it's not the bad guys driving by warchalking me... Dunno'. Maybe when I was dinking around with things the night before. ...but I don't let the wireless network link control the wireless branch. Hmmm...

The marketing cycle gets closer and closer: September 30, RedHat releases 8.0; October 9, I find it on the shelf at the local Office Depot. Last May, the gap was 24 days....

...and I finally found out a 'maybe' on why that Compaq system I picked up for a song was sitting there at the time. The other night I put a CD in to play and it didn't. Well, it did, there was just no sound. ...and the sound on the system worked. Hmmm... Cable? I didn't recall what I saw or didn't see when I was inside it last week. So, this afternoon, as I was parenting, I opened the case up to see what I could see. Aha. No audio cables. Easy fix. ...times two.

So I put in a Yoga DVD I'd just picked up. Whoa. I take back every thing I ever thought about DVD players in computers. That was just beautiful! ...both sight and sound. Wow. Then again, I still can't see me sitting in front of a computer screen watching something for hours...

Man, I feel like such a tramp. ...a Windows tramp! I finished that blasted TV show last night and went to make a comment over on the blog. ...and ended up checking out the website for the show. ...and downloading Winamp. ...and the Birds of Prey skin for it. ...and the 'Visualizer'. ...and the theme song. ...and then listening to the theme while watching the eye candy in full screen mode.

What a waste of CPU cycles. What a glorious waste of CPU cycles. Watching the lights in a building in the background light up as the music plays and the character leaps from roof top to roof top...

But it's really okay; that is a test bed system, right? Right? Right???

I spent my time last night making a first pass at cleaning up the new workstation installation (pic on the blog). I've spent enough time with it now to be satisfied with the Windows side of things. I have a three day weekend coming up in a few hours; that should give me time to clear another major chunk of the library and still have time to start in on the Linux side of things...

I have a copy of both RedHat 8 and Debian 3 to play with on the Compaq. I'd like that box to dual boot, but that's just because. I'm planning on bringing Tux out here and letting him handle all the day to day stuff as he's done for over year now, gorked KDE libraries and all <g>. ...and I have a copy RedHat 7.1 that I think will work on the pen-tablets, so it's time to start playing with setting one of them up as a file server (for somewhat less than that $1200 figure being bandied about this week). ...and then there's Freesco for another one of those to see about using it as a router. Yeah, a full weekend, not counting soccer and such.

Whew... I almost didn't make it here today! I mean with Daniel's homework project, soccer pictures, Daniel's homework project, soccer games, Daniel's homework project, the football game this evening, Daniel's homework project..

'Sokay, we won. ...both the game and the homework. Now to head off into Sunday before I fall asleep in the chair.

For those of you following along with the office move, it's pretty much over. At least it got to the point where I felt I had my office finally cleaned up enough to hang the artwork...