Monday, September 29

Happy Freaking Monday!  

Today was supposed to be my starting date with CompUSA. Trouble is, they hadn't received the results of my background check yet, which should be sometime this afternoon.

I should have expected this. Everytime I went there, it was hold on, other things were taking precedence. I am not pissed, but I am annoyed.

Sigh.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/29/2003 01:00:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

Friday, September 26

Announcing BB2!  

OK, I've played with this and have it to the point where it's 98% or thereabouts done. I don't like somethings on the sidebar, so I'll be playing with the stylesheet to fix them.

And I need a different color combination. It's OK for now, but I'm thinking about something with blue. Where or not the XHTML is valid, or the CSS is valid, I don't know. I haven't tried the buttons to see if I broke anything. I'm sure I did. Thanks to haran for creating this template, and letting me bastardize it for my uses.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/26/2003 04:07:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

Tuesday, September 23

Bad, bad day! Plus more rambling.  

I slept like hell Monday night. Up every hour to go pee. Finally, at 3:00AM, I get up pee, and I'm still awake at 3:30AM, so I get up, make an entry in my private blog, look around the Internet some more, get to bed at 4:30, just in time to roust The_Rose from bed at 5:00AM to get to work.

So, I'm playing around today, writing an email (which still hasn't gotten written, I need to get that done yet tonight), and my system bluescreens. Nothing major, it happens every now and then. This was an inpage interrupt, one liner, I wait, I wait, ok, hit the off button, then power on and reboot. It comes up, and now it can't either read NTOSKRNL.EXE, or it's invalid. Hmmmmm. Reboot again. Same problem. OK, I'll bring up the recovery console and see if I can see what the hell is going on with the system.

Now, it's only trying to boot from the CD ROM drive. Definately not good. I pull out my system utilities CD and boot that, and run ERD Commander. It sees the hard drives, and all the partitions. OK, so far so good. If it's a drive problem, I should be able to recover the data off of it. What a way to spend that first paycheck, but hey, at least I do have a job now. I don't know exactly what I'm doing, but I finally bring up the console and try to run chkntfs. Of course, it's clean, so it won't do anything more. Grrrrrrrrrrr. I run chkdsk, which actually starts doing something. Then, in the 2nd of 3 passes, I hear click......click......click..... OK, so I guess there's a problem with the hard drive. Reboot, try to get into Partition Manager, but that bood CD won't work (my boot floppies are around, and they do work, I just need to get this mountain of crap off my desk to find them!) Reboot into ERD, and check what options I have. Ahhh! There is an option to find bag clusters/allocation units. So, I run that. 5 passes to it, and the first two look like the first two that I already ran. But no error on this one, it's in the third pass already. OK, cool.

It finishes. No problems. Grrrrrrrrr. Copy the c:\winnt\system32\ntoskrnl.exe to d:\, no problem. OK, so close everything up, and reboot. Now, it boots just fine.

I just went to check the events. Interesting that it appears that the controller (not the drive) actually started having issues. So maybe the controller is getting a little overheated. :/ Bizarre.

I'm up and running now. That's the good news.

Well, I guess I get to see if the controller or the hard drive is having issues. I should have another controller around here. It probably needs a flash upgrade, since I know I've done that to this controller.

I also sent my old boss another email on Windows 2003. He was worried that you would need a server on your LAN just to run Office 2003. Nope, but if you want the security features, yeah you are going to need a server. But it's not necessary to have the server to run Windows 2003. I'd be against the Information Rights Management that Microsoft has got going in this software anyways, just because it takes Microsoft 3 tries to actually get something right.

More on the Garfield saga. I guess that when Garfield went to start his new job, the employer did not have fresh water for the employees. As a result, since he went for water, his boss told him not to return. And he's sore tonight. Oh well. I'm still of a mind that he should have gone to school last night.

I've got plenty to keep my busy till I start my new job. I've got to get the kitchen floor scrubbed, and get this computer room cleaned up, get my desk organized, and rearrange the wiring so that the cable modem won't blow anything more up when lightning hits this house again.

I'm getting BB2 more whipped into shape. I've got the javascript written and tested that allows me to alternate the colors of the text boxes that each entry goes into, and I've got my article index (at the end of the page) working as well. I've got some of the colors working, although, the .css sheet really makes things work oddly. :( Especially the <span>...</span>. And I really want a different color that green. And I've already ruled out yellow, orange and red (to garish), so I guess it will have to be shades of blue. And I don't really want that (I've got black here, and I don't like messing with it).

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/23/2003 10:32:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

New job! w00t!  

I just had my 2nd interview with CompUSA. I'll be starting Monday at 10:00AM. It's the Lead Network Sales position. It's a start.

I forgot to shave, but that didn't seem to be a problem. Neither did my long hair. Need driver's license and SSN card, and I'm in!

Can't wait to get started.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/22/2003 06:28:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

Sunday, September 21

''Review'' of Sun Java Desktop  

Well, this "review" has been posted on Newsforge. Since Newsforge is pro Open Source, I wasn't surprised that it was a positive review. Unfortunately, it's a fluff piece. It has this, it has that. Guess what Chris Gulker, so does pretty much every modern Linux distribution out there, as well as the *BSDs. It sounds like Sun has tweaked the SuSE distro, and added StarOffice 7. It sounds like a nice distro. But this is supposed to be replacing Windows. What kind of comparisons were made to Windows? Nada. Nice talk about the Documents folder, of which I haven't a clue as to what he was raving about.

This Computer opened with a view of everything on my system that could store data including Linux and other hard drive partitions, CD ROM, floppy, Network Places and my own desktop Documents folder. Presumably this would be configured on production systems to restrict access to just local storage and the user's permitted LAN shares.

Emphasis mine. Has this reviewer ever done anything with Windows? Or is he a complete network newbie? Does he really understand why he'll see those shares?

A review I want to see is at least three fold.

First, how does the system install? How does the default install compare with Windows install? How hard is it to configure the install to be hands off compared to Windows? How much configuration is there after the installation between the two? A user can usually get Windows reinstalled by themselves, if not configured correctly. Can this same user do the same with this distro?

Second, how does that average user get around in this distro? How much retraining is needed? Is he comfortable with all the applications, word processing, spreadsheet, e-mail, calendaring, web browsing? What other applications does he use in his work, even if it's only once a year, are they available under Linux? Mainframe access? What about databases, are they available through a web interface, or are they using FoxPro or Delphi? Dial-up access? Is the printer they use even supported? An old OkiData Microline computer that produces labels might give considerable grief in trying to get it to work.

Third, how does the power or development user that really uses their PC to the max? Are they comfortable with it? Do they have all the applications available under Linux?

Fourth, Microsoft equivalents are good, but document exchange has to be tested. Losing formatting going in either direction is not a good thing. If creating large spreadsheets is part of your job (like The_Rose's), then you'd better make sure that both the Sun and the Microsoft versions can handle each other's big size. If you have a spreadsheet with lots of different functions, you'd better make sure that they come up with the same answers every time on both systems. One rounding error can cause all sorts of pain. On function returning too many or too few digits can cause problems as well. If there are problems, they probably be worked around. But if this is a replacement for Windows, there had better not be many to make. Ideally, there shouldn't be any.

And fifth, how much training is it going to take to make the Windows capable IT staff and move them to the Linux world?

Dollars and sense

I find it interesting that the $50 per seat per year is only if you are already Sun's Enterprise software, which is an extra $100 per seat. Which means for a transition of how much more hardware?

And why are you then tied into their server software?

If you have a bunch of seats, it sounds to me like you're better off hiring a Linux guru to take an existing distro and modify it your needs. If you have over 500 seats, then I'd say that would be your choice. Fixed cost, and you are more liable to have everything exactly the way you want it.

The big question

Is Linux ready to hit the desktop big time? In my (not so?) humble opinion, the answer is still no. It's getting a lot closer, closer than what Sun and Oracle were try to push at us 5 or so years ago. Linux currently has a market share of 2%, possibly bigger than Apple's Macintosh, if not very close to it. And the big problem with that market share is that most of those machines are servers, especially in the corporate environment. Even if there are more Linux server's than Microsoft servers (an issue that can truly never be proven one way or another), there are a helluva lot more desktop machines than servers, and for better or worse, Microsoft has the vast majority of those.

A personal note

I will state for the record that I as far as operating systems go, I am agnostic. What job are you trying to do on a computer? Pick the software that does that job, and then let that decide your operating system and/or hardware. But if you are talking about generic computing, word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, e-mail, and stuff like that, I'm going to go with an Intel processor running Windows (probably 2000) every time. Yeah, I'm a geek, but even I don't run Linux on a permanent basis on my own personal computer. I've booted Knoppix off of CD ROM, and I played with Linux several years ago when you booted with a floppy. I cannot believe that my Windows box doesn't run like any other Linux geek's box. I'm even running on crappy hardware, a pitiful 450MHZ P3 with 384 megs of RAM (the max this box will take). My next box will be.... another entry, some other time.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/21/2003 12:57:00 AM    Links to this post

Wednesday, September 17

So Sun wants to compete with Microsoft?  

My old boss sent me an email today basically asking for my input on what Sun is doing to compete with Microsoft, called Sun Java Desktop.

The article he sent me as well as the Wired article, which for some reason didn't even make it to their front page. The actual announcement about this software appears to actually be from August 5th, almost a month and a half ago.

I find this quote sticks out for me (from either article):

Sun officials say its system will cost as little as $50 per user per year and can be installed on any computer that can run Microsoft's Office 2000. The software also is designed to interoperate with Windows-based programs such as Exchange and Microsoft Office.

As little as is an interesting statement. I'd also be interested in As much as in the cost factor as well.

Neither article has any links as to what is actually going to be in this package. Going to the Sun site shows this Learn About article and this "feature" article which doesn't really tell me much. Let's look at the components as I see them.

Major systems Sun supplied Supplied by others Other or unknown

• Operating system (Windows 2000/XP replacement - non Graphic User Interface (GUI) component) - Linux - ? ^{Note 1}
• Desktop (Graphic User Interface component of Windows 2000/XP) - ? ^{Note 2}
• Browser (Internet Explorer replacement) - Mozilla - Mozilla.org
• Sun One Messaging and Calendar (Outlook replacement) - Sun? Ximian? Novell? ^{Note 3 & Note 4}
• Star Office (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and FrontPage replacement) - Sun - Openoffice.org ^{Note 5}
• Mainframe connectivity software - IBM? ^{Note 6}
• Imaging software

Other programs that are probably still very much alive and kicking in the Division of Liquor Control are Lotus 123. dBase III, Fourth Dimension databases and various batch files and command line utilities that are used in the Point of Sale system. Those would have to be identified and migrated. And the hard part might very well be the identification part.

---

Questions, questions, everybody's got questions!

My other concern with this is the amount of training that is going to be required, quite a lot. The entire staff of MIS is going to have to be trained. New standards are going to have to be determined and documented. The new software may very well look and act 98% of what the users are used to, but that 2% difference can make everybody's work life miserable. Fixing a sound card trouble under Windows is quite trivial. Solving a sound card trouble under this system may be trivial, or it may be a chore. A whole different skill set is going to be needed. Setting up network printers will be totally different. Laptops set to dial into the Internet and/or Liquor Control are going to have been completely redone. Some laptops may not even be workable to connect to the Internet because of the modems that they use. From what I remember about the laptops, that may be every one of them. Configuration software for things like the switches, routers and hubs is another situation that needs to be clarified.

Where is the training available for all this? Can New Horizons handle this, or is the training strictly out of California?

I have to wonder what extra software and/or hardware would be required for such a move? No additional hardware because you salvage what you were using for the Microsoft solution I can believe. I am just not so sure about it on the software side.

The company Sun needs to be looked at fully. They are more noted for their servers and for their workstations, not for their consumer software, which is the kind of software we are looking at. The major parts of Sun Java Desktop provided by other companies need to be looked at as well. Is Sun going to have umbrella coverage of everything they provide, or just the pieces/parts that they actually wrote or modified?

If Sun does not provide umbrella coverage, what is going to be the cost to get the support of the other companies involved? Because that will be an additional expense to what is already going to Sun. What about the additional software that Liquor Control is going to need? Where is that support going to come from, and how many dollars?

Liquor Control is going to have a number of people that use their own PCs for any work that they may take home. Most likely that is going to be a Windows PC, and I don't see that changing any time soon. Liquor Control is still going to have support Windows PCs, one way or another.

Another question that I don't think anybody really has a good answer yet: Is Linux sufficiently developed for the desktop?

Linux can be used quite well as a server, and I have no doubts that the computer geeks and nerds can use it as their desktop. But can the business customer use it? Is Liquor Control going to allow employees to install this software on their own equipment if they want to?

This is a new endeavor for Sun. A possible concern is what happens if Sun decides that this program is not as profitable as it should be, and drops it 12 or 18 months from now. Yes, the pieces will still work, but without the overall guiding hand of Sun, how do updates get handled? How does support now get handled it that happens?

Another question is how prepared is Sun for dealing with support? Do they have the people trained to pick up support for this software? Are they truly ready for all the different kinds of hardware that this software is going to be running on?

While Microsoft may be more expensive, it is a well known fact that they are in the software business, especially the consumer level software business for the duration.

I can not let this quote go without comment:

Singer said there's another key difference between Sun Java Desktop and Microsoft Windows-based systems.

"Guess what? It wouldn't have blown up ... with the worms and the viruses" of recent weeks, he said.

If and when Linux has the same marketshare as Microsoft Windows (currently 90-95%, depending on who is doing the figuring), then there will be just as many viruses, exploits, worms and trojans as there currently are for Windows. Anybody who doesn't believe that is believing in security through obscurity, which is woefully insufficient. Look at the marketshare. Yes, Windows has more attacks against it. If you write such software, do you want to hit an audience of 90%, or less than 2%? But is Linux more secure? Today (9/17/2003), Slashdot, a technology news site, reported that both ssh (Secure Shell access) and sendmail (mail server) have had to issue patches dealing with possible exploits.

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Footnotes

Note 1 —	Who's distribution, or based on who's distribution? This is important for support issues, as Sun may not be responsible for any issues with software that they did not develop themselves. Also, the different distributions of Linux have varying ways of updating their software. Update From this, it is telling me that the distribution is a SuSE 8.1 distribution
Note 2 —	I am unable to recognize which desktop, Gnome or KDE Sun is using. Is Sun committed to this desktop? Are they going to support both desktops? Update It appears that this is a Gnome desktop, which is interesting because I just read a message in a local Linux user's group mail list that KDE is more like Windows than Gnome.
Note 3 —	Client side - This reads like a Sun product from their website, but from the screenshot that Sun provides, it is produced by Ximian software which has been recently bought by Novell.
Note 4 —	Server side - What additional cost could this be? Are you expected to replace your existing Lotus Notes/Exchange servers, or will this software work with what is currently in place? Will it work with anything else that is available in the Open Source Software world? Administration of either the Notes or Exchange server may still require a PC with Windows 2000 on it running the Notes/Outlook client.
Note 5 —	While StarOffice is Sun's software to sell, it should be noted that this software is based on the Openoffice.org software. I do not know what additions or modifications Sun makes to this software, but I would recommend that Sun be made explicit in detailing the differences.
Note 6 —	I have to assume that IBM has something similar to PComm for Linux to give you the necessary connectivity to the mainframe. Full compatibility should be key here, because if you need to start FTP(File Transfer Protocol)ing files to the mainframe instead of the PComm way of uploading files, I can see quite a number of automated tasks that are going to have to be rewritten, tested and documented. Full keyboard support should also be verified by users, programmers and operators.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/17/2003 05:29:00 PM    Links to this post

Tuesday, September 16

Are we having fun yet?  

I've got this blog pretty well whipped into shape. I've already announced this over at Teoti, and am just about ready to spam all my friends with it.

Garfield has finally cleaned out his room and moved my old TV from Ohio into the room. Luckily his dad gave him his old digital cable TV box, as that TV doesn't have a remote. Yeah, it's that frelling old. Got to be close to 20 years old. But it works. He's using my universal remote for it right now though, which I'm not that happy about. They kids lost the original remote to the cable box, and then kept loosing my original universal remote. So I bought this one, strictly for me. I'll get it back sometime. I hope.

Picked up Sparx from school today, and then took the back way home, then remembered that we had to get The_Rose's prescription refill picked up. We got home after 2:00PM, which was a real problem for Sparx. He was supposed to have called his so-called girlfriend at 2:00PM exactly. He missed it by 10 minutes. The_Rose decided to listen to the conversation. This is not a sick relationship between Sparx and his girlfriend, it's absolutely toxic. The mind games that get played, and believe me, I only know a little of what goes on here, truly frightens me. I would have told that b---h to go fornicate herself a long, long time ago. There really isn't anything wrong with Sparx, he's got the looks, he's got the personality, he just has to get away for awhile to get the stench of her out of his system, and another, much more worthwhile girl will pick him up in a heart beat.

I'm getting more into putting HTML into my blogs, and I'm thinking that I need to create a cheatsheet for putting smilies and such into it as well.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/16/2003 05:01:00 PM    Links to this post

Sunday, September 14

What a weekend  

I haven't done squat. I did get a program to do half of a project that I'm working on. The oldest set of twins are going nuts on each other. I"m ready to kick both of them out.

My project is working on getting my font collection into a little better shape. I'm trying to get the fonts that have the full ASCII character sequence (!-~) into one directory, and the other that don't into another one. I'm currently reading the maxp table (truetype/opentype only) from the file, and if it's less than 95 characters, it certainly doesn't have the full sequence. That helps, but others could have more, but still not have the full ASCII sequence, so I have to be able to decode the cmap table. Working with the maxp table was trivial. The cmap table is much more complex, but it shouldn't be a problem once I get it worked out.

I'm still playing with this blog. I had a blog on Teoti, but nothing has come to replace in the latest revision, T3. I think the original was for Blogger format. I guess I'll print out the source template for that, and then see what I need to change with the blogger template stuff from the FAQ. I'm also going to change the document to index.html from blogger.html, then the url will be http://www.bytehead.org/blog/. Looking at my browser, it seems that my [TeotiContent] button probably won't work any more, so, I'll be replacing that with blogger for easier ease. I already have the BlogThis! button, and that may go as well. And I still haven't figured out what the hell blogroll it! is. :( I think I had some code that's probably now gone. Oh well. Maybe once I figure that one out a little more, I can add it to this blog. :/

Things I should be doing Internet wise:

• Organize bookmarks!
• Publish my bookmarks once I do get them organized!
• Cut out the deadwood
• Republish my bookmarks!

That's pretty much the order that I need to get that done. Adding a little more content to www.bytehead.org would probably be nice. Figuring out what I'm going to do with my.ohio.voyager.net/~bytehead

I seem to be catching the same cold that my wife, and the oldest set of twins has gone through. Which reminds me, I need to put an entry in here introducing them.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/14/2003 08:53:00 PM    Links to this post

Wednesday, September 10

New modem  

My replacement modem came today. I'm not exactly wild about the craftmanship that went into. I had to snap the case together, the volume control slider was discombobulated, and the front panel is a stickon that wasn't really stuck on till I did it.

And of course, the power supply doesn't fit the new one. :( So, I get to call USR tomorrow, and tell them, so they'll ship a new power supply. Free thankfully. It's just a pain to have to wait for it. They had my old modem for two weeks before they sent this. I have a feeling that they might have given a go at fixing it and returning it to me. That would have suited me perfectly. Although , seeing as how I ordered it back in the beginning of 1995, getting an 8 year piece of equipment replaced for cheaper than buying new isn't such a bad deal.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/10/2003 09:26:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

Introducing the main set of characters  

There is me, Bryan (aka bytehead, Buddha and others) a 45 year old alpha geek currently doing the Mr. Mom thing. Moved from Columbus, Ohio June of 2001 to marry my wife, The_Rose.

I have 4 step-children, Garfield and Sparx are the eldest set of twins, and LittleMiss and HatTrick are the youngest set of twins. Talk about fun....

I also currently reign over 5 animals, 3 cats (Kali, Grizelle, and Greybeard, the last two being 6 month old kittens), Bridgette, a border collie/blue tick mix, and a Betta fish (red/blue).

Frequent sites I hit are listed on the left side.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 9/10/2003 08:00:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post