We arrived back in Austin today at about 2 PM. The trip from Ionia to Austin took only 21 hours.
Friday, 28 December, 2001. 02:46:53 PM
Today I'm at Bram's house. I'm showing him how my weblog works.
Friday, 21 December, 2001. 10:18:04 PM
Pfizer is a spam house. Usually spammers are frauds, internet gambling operators, porn kings, make money fast schemers, or other shady people. Why then would a company like Pfizer want to be associated with the lowlifes that spammers usually are? Is Pfizer's new marketing scheme designed to appeal to criminals? There is absolutely no logic in sending out spam. One might as well promote your company by mailing out buffalo chips printed with the company logo.
Friday, 21 December, 2001. 03:50:30 PM
better !pout !cry
better watchout
lpr why
santa claus <north pole >town
cat /etc/passwd >list
ncheck list
ncheck list
cat list | grep naughty >nogiftlist
cat list | grep nice >giftlist
santa claus <north pole >town
who | grep sleeping
who | grep awake
who | egrep 'bad|good'
for (goodness sake) {
be good
}
Friday, 21 December, 2001. 11:18:46 AM
OK, I've had it. My e-mail setup is a pretty standard combination of exim and fetchmail, retrieving from a free account on Yahoo. Lately, ALL of my spam has been originating in China, India, Russia, Korea, and Taiwan. I don't know ANYBODY in those countries that I want to receive e-mail from, so I'm going to configure exim to reject anything coming from any domain on those countries. I figure that will cut my spam by 90% or more. I have no idea why, but system administrators in those countries seem to be incredibly inept. I think if a spammer is looking for a wide open relay, all they need to do is pick a *.cn domain, and scan the thing for open port 25's. Drives me nuts.
Friday, 21 December, 2001. 10:46:09 AM
I got the driver for Wells Fargo done with a day to spare. The driver is called hpnptyd and is native to HP-UX. While looking for information on that driver, I was lucky enough to find a BSD license clone called hpvptyd. There were some errors in that driver, but I fixed them all, ported it to AIX, and everyone is happy.
Thursday, 20 December, 2001. 05:10:46 PM
The word "peruse" means to read or examine with great care. It is a mistake to use the word peruse as a synonym for "browse".
Thursday, 20 December, 2001. 02:18:49 PM
Just about everyone in the Sector 7 office has a cold.
Thursday, 20 December, 2001. 02:06:07 PM
I want a wide band receiver. Why? Because anything that's illegal for an American to own is probably a whole lot of fun.
Thursday, 20 December, 2001. 12:24:28 PM
I've got another bad cold. Just before I go to Michigan. On the bright side, I'll be over it about Monday most likely, so it won't ruin my vacation.
Monday, 17 December, 2001. 12:03:04 PM
I'm at the Sector 7 office in Austin now. This is my first full day of work in this office since we moved here. I was laid off just before the move to the new office, and I spent the past two weeks in California at E*Trade. Now I'm on a project developing a driver to support advanced printer features on AIX machines.
Friday, 14 December, 2001. 11:43:17 PM
The Charles Stark Draper Prize. No relation.
Friday, 14 December, 2001. 08:55:43 PM
The E*Trade project is complete. Everything tested 100% yesterday. Today we had a little celebration with E*Trade and the IBM guys, and tomorrow I fly back to Austin. One more company is now using Linux on their critical systems.
Friday, 14 December, 2001. 12:26:12 AM
The home page of the U.S.S. Enterprise, CVN 65.
Wednesday, 12 December, 2001. 03:02:05 PM
Two Israelis were arrested in Los Angeles for plotting to blow up a mosque. I hope they throw the book at those people. In the United States, nationalism has no place. Ethnic groups are supposed to live peacefully as neighbors here. Nationalistic violence has no place in the States. Harshly punishing those bombers would send a clear message that Old World conflicts must be abandoned at the borders. We will not tolerate such bullshit here.
Monday, 10 December, 2001. 01:59:33 PM
Matt Hovey wrote an e-mail last night to let all his friends know that he's engaged. The perpetual bachelor is getting married at last. Congratulations, Matt!
Monday, 10 December, 2001. 01:56:59 PM
The testing is going slowly right now. I looked up the name of an old friend, Syed Aamer Azam, on the Internet. We worked together at Cambridge on several projects. He was one of the funniest and smartest people I have ever known. As far as I can tell he's a vice president at Clickmarks, and before that he was the CTO of WordWalla.
Saturday, 08 December, 2001. 09:46:56 PM
Here's a nice example of how Ashcroft will bend every law to fight terrorism, except one.
Saturday, 08 December, 2001. 09:31:32 PM
The exact quote by Ashcroft that has angered so many is:
"To those who pit Americans against immigrants and citizens against noncitizens, to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends"
Saturday, 08 December, 2001. 09:16:02 PM
John Ashcroft said last week that people who raise concerns that anti-terrorism measures might cause erosion of personal liberties are aiding the enemy. For the record, I am one of those people who is watching what is done very carefully. I am concerned that many people are being detained, and nobody knows even what their names are. I am concerned that anti-terrorism measures seem to classify computer hacking as terrorism. A 15-year old that hacks a computer is definitely breaking the law, and should be punished, but not as a terrorist.
Ashcroft's statements are the height of anti-Americanism. They attack right to the heart of our open society. It is the duty of Americans to express concerns they have about the laws and policies of their country, and when those laws ignore liberty, then the strongest and harshest criticism is deserved. Now that Ashcroft has suggested that excercising First Ammendment rights might be an un-American action, I will be watching what he does even more closely, reading everything about him that I can find, and criticising his actions when I disagree with them. He's in a high position of authority, and if he's going to use rhetoric like that, the only American thing to do is to lend another voice to his critics.
Saturday, 08 December, 2001. 09:04:10 PM
New photos in the photo section.
Saturday, 08 December, 2001. 08:16:27 PM
The company KPMG apparently wants people to ask permission before they link to their website. Oops.
Saturday, 08 December, 2001. 08:05:15 PM
The news just reported that a woman left her baby on an apartment doorstep. The report also pointed out that California has a law that a woman can abandon an unwanted baby at any hospital legally, no questions asked. The hospital will then take care of the baby and arrange a legal adoption. I think that law is particularly enlightened. It's an example of how to address a real problem in a way that's likely to help, rather than attempting to legislate morality.
Thursday, 06 December, 2001. 04:05:32 PM
Some nut just went on a shooting spree in a factory in Goshen, Indiana. The solution to the problem of rampage shooting is clear to anyone with an NRA card in their wallet: we obviously need to have many more guns.
Wednesday, 05 December, 2001. 05:37:54 PM
The space shuttle Endeavour just launched to the space station. The E*Trade offices have television monitors everywhere, tuned to CNBC, so it was hard not to miss it.
Wednesday, 05 December, 2001. 03:23:20 PM
Windows 2000 just rebooted itself spontaneously while running a test. This is what Microsoft calls an Enterprise OS? What a bunch of crap.
Wednesday, 05 December, 2001. 02:18:25 PM
The E*Trade project has turned out to be a simple testing job. They are setting up a Linux box with their servers on it, and we're using testing tools to make sure that it works just like their Solaris software. We should be out of here in two weeks, right on time.
Monday, 03 December, 2001. 03:25:38 PM
I'm going to California, leaving tonight at 7:15. I'll be back on the 14th.
Monday, 03 December, 2001. 02:02:34 AM
Ron Barksdale called me today. I am definitely flying out tomorrow on a project. I forgot to ask him where I was going though, so I'll find out tomorrow morning.
I put my plane away. I've gotten quite a lot done on it, but I can't take it with me. My plan for the next two weeks is to work whenever I am awake and there is work to do. If I get tired of that, I will work on my compiler. It will be nice to get that compiler done, because then I can continue to build the prototype for the space battle program. The project is still secret. I won't make a website for it until it is a playable demo.
Sunday, 02 December, 2001. 03:20:56 AM
My first project is going to be in either California or Georgia, don't know which. I prefer to go to Georgia, because I've never been there before. But, if I go to California, there are some people that I can go visit.