The Daily Diversion Archive For July, 2001

Monday July 30, 2001

We had a quiet weekend around here for a change.

I wrote that last sentence about 8pm Sunday night. Just to prove me wrong, the powers that be sent helicopters to orbit around our house until all hours of the night. Our friend who cares enough to wonder if we're OK called us up a little after 10PM and tells us that our neighborhood is on the news again. A cop's been shot, there's some dead bad guys and they're shutting down the neighborhood. It was far enough away from us that we didn't have to evacuate our house while the negotiating team was talking to the soon to be beaten-to-a-bloody-pulp-as-soon-as-the-cameras-are-off cop shooter, but we did have to listen to the ever-circling choppers.

Nice neighborhood.

It was nice to see the family on Saturday for my Grandpa's 85th birthday. It was neat to hear that some of the family tune in regularly to this blather. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks to everyone else who drops in as well.

I didn't do much this weekend. I did get some stuff done on the server side, but I had a headache that just wouldn't go away for most of the weekend. I could do without this, thankyouverymuch. Anyhow, apart from filling you all in on the boring details of configuring an Apache Virtual Server, I don't have much else to say.

Lame, I know, but what can you do when your head hurts?

Wednesday July 25, 2001

I've got a lot on my mind today.

Leading off today's rant is my error log. It's full of error messages. It's not that you folks out there are messing up. It's because there are a lot of jerks out there trying to get in to my server. I won't play coy and wonder why. I know. They want to find stuff, to do stuff and to hack stuff. It makes me mad that someone who I don't even know and who probably doesn't even know what's here is launching scripts at my box. These exploits end up in my error log because the people who are launching the exploits aren't even port scanning and looking for an operating system footprint first. This is truly the sign of someone who is just trawling the waters. A casual, sloppy cracker up to no good. I wouldn't claim to have Fort Knox caliber security here, but I will say this: This isn't an IIS box. IIS exploits will not work here. I did leave a _vti_conf directory in my images folder and ever since I did that, my error log has been doubling every week. It's gone now.

For those of you who don't speak web, _vti_conf is a folder found on most Microsoft IIS boxes. If you use Front Page to create web sites, this is one of the folders Front Page creates to do back-end processing. I used to know what is was for, but I've forgotten. Anyway, I'm sure all it took was to have it there where people could see it (with a properly structured query) and all of a sudden I'm an IIS server here. Nice.

Well, as I stated earlier, that folder is gone and perhaps now I can go back to using my error log for looking for html errors in my site.

Just to let everyone know, I traced a bunch of these IP addresses back, and found that most of them are functioning as "Anonymous Proxy Servers." As near as I can tell, an "APS" is an anonymous gateway to launch scripts, exploits and hacks from. I suppose you could also surf porno from these as well. The people who are actually doing the naughty stuff are hiding behind these proxies in anonymity. How good for them. It makes me wonder sometimes why I'm even doing this.

The other thing on my mind today is that I got a chance to play with a Pentium 4 1.7GHz processor yesterday. I'd like to say it was the best thing since sliced bread, but the whole experience of building a new workstation with this all-singing, all-dancing processor left me cold and aggravated. Allow me to explain:

My boss shows up with a new motherboard and processor in a box. He says, "Build it." So I do. The first thing I notice is that the P4 has shipped with 256Mb of Rambus RAM along with it in the box. That's quite a deal. Rambus RAM is supposed to be very fast (400MHz bus as opposed to 100-133MHz for the P3), but it is very expensive. I guess Intel has decided that this is the way for them to ease the blow for having to shell out for a new form factor of RAM. I guess we need faster RAM, but at this red-hot moment, more RAM due to astonishingly cheap prices is doing the trick nicely. The rub here is that only on huge, number-crunching stuff will faster RAM make much difference. The main bottleneck has been and will be for some time the I/O system. If you're using a 5400rpm hard disk drive with an ATA/33 controller, your access times are high and your read rates are slow. Since hitting the hard drive for more data takes an eternity for a processor (and it does), the processor just sits, spinning in idle cycles until it gets its data. Speeding up the processor will get some things done very quickly, but then it just waits even faster for your I/O system to catch up. More and faster RAM is nice because this will keep the processor from caching to the hard drive, but once that's covered, the whole shooting match is still waiting for I/O.

Anyway, if you're planning on building a P4 system any time soon, you're going to have to shell out and replace a bunch of stuff that's still usable. To get this system running, I ended up having to buy a new power supply and video card. This goes along with the new processor and motherboard. If we were going to go all-out, we would have bought a new hard drive instead of settling for our ATA/66 unit. We also bought a new case as it was just easier than not getting one.

The motherboard I used had to have a 4X AGP capable video card. The older 1X cards we have around here didn't fit. There's a gap in the slot of the AGP port on the motherboard that keeps one from putting a slow card in. Grrr...

The motherboard/processor unit required a special mount for the processor. The heat sink on the P4 is bigger than the ones on the Pentium Pro, so it needs to be supported from underneath. This support is built into the heat sink bracket on the motherboard. The screws for the support bracket go through the motherboard and right into the case. Neato, but kindof annoying. The power supply was the biggest surprise. It needs to be a for-real 300W. The machine does draw a lot of power and does throw a lot of heat, so I'm not that surprised there. What did surprise me is that instead of a single, ATX plug, there are two additional plugs on a P4 board. You just can't use your old power supply with these new boards.

Anyway, I threw the stuff together and loaded NT on it. Yep, it was faster, but not by as much as you'd think. The parts in-between hitting the disk for info went very quickly indeed, but then there was the I/O boat anchor slowing things down. Would an office person notice this kind of improvement? Perhaps, if the worker had to manipulate large spread-sheets or databases. Would a gamer? Probably, just as long as their video card stood up to the challenge. Would Joe Average person notice the difference between a P3@800MHz and a P4@1.7GHz? Maybe, but for sure if they went to use someone else's computer. For the home user, it would be nice to have this kind of firepower, but it really isn't necessary.

Tuesday July 24, 2001

I had some annoying fun today. I got to de-hack a corrupted web server. It was a lot of work, but since it was an old hack, it was well documented. Shame on us for not running the latest Service Pack and ALL the Hotfixes. Shame on the idiots who compromised the server even more.

Now, before you crackers out there (yes, there's a difference between hacker and cracker) decide that this humble IP is the location of that webserver, don't bother. It's not here. These aren't the droids you're looking for, move along.

The only machine I run that needs Hotfixes is thoroughly SP'ed and Hotfixed. Better, it's not in direct contact with the wild, wild web. Better yet, it's not even turned on except when I'm using it.

Anyway, I was shocked at the totality of this machine's cracked state. This particular root kit/exploit had everything from a password stealer (not elegant, but shockingly easy to get when you have Admin access), to programs running as a service, to back door telnet/ftp services. It had corrupted find to not find it's exploit, it had registry entries, it had locked Admin out from even looking at these files, and it had thrown it's mojo just about everywhere on the machine. It's going to need to be scrubbed and reinstalled, but I'm going to leave it up for a couple of days just to see if any files have re-started themselves. Mr. Idiot will have a bit of trouble getting in through his backdoor as this machine is no longer listening to the ports his exploits were set up to listen to. I don't have any idea what this person used this box for, but they could do just about anything with it short of making his bed.

So for those of you out there playing with a webserver over broadband, be very careful as to which ports you're letting through. Be double-damn sure you're all service packed and hotfixed and patched, or you will have uninvited guests. Even if you do all of these things, there's always somebody who knows more about security flaws who may decide to do you before there's widely available knowledge about the exploit they're using. If you don't want to become somebody's spam-whore or play sucker host for a clandestine IRC server, then stay out of the arena. If you're game, then don't be caught all cracked up, have a spare box in reserve and off your network. Backup your data frequently and be sure you're ready for a quick switch.

Monday July 23, 2001

The fact that I've been journaling/blogging now for over a year is a fact that has somehow escaped me. I don't have much of an excuse for missing it because I've been doing monthly archives now and I did notice I have two entries for June. I guess it occurred to me, but in that, "Huh. How 'bout that?" sort of way. Because I've been doing this now for over a year, I think I'll do something different today.

I've put the crystal ball on the table and I'm going to look into the future at things around me and make some predictions.

I think the flap over the Florida vote count isn't over by a long shot. The Democrats winning control of the Senate may have taken some of the impetus away from them, but the investigation will continue and will continue to be a thorn in the side of Bush v.2s administration until its closing days. I believe that indictments will result, and voting reform will be a hot topic in about a year. Look forward to seeing some sort of uniform machine/technique/guideline laws passed before the end of next year. All jokes about stupidity aside, most people go through some sort of identification process before voting, someone should be verifying that a ballot is legitimate at the polls while the voter is there in the flesh, not in some counting room after the fact. Don't look for on-line voting to be approved anytime soon, either. Until an uncrackable, stable and cheap platform can be agreed on, it just isn't going to be seriously considered by anyone who isn't actively smoking crack.

Locally, the corruption scandal in the Minneapolis City Council will go on and will be costly to quite a few people. I doesn't surprise me that at least one Council member was crooked. It won't surprise me to find out that perhaps more were as well. I wouldn't say that Minneapolis is as for sale as some other cities are, but I would say that power corrupts, and those who have less than they think they should have, will continue to be tempted to abuse their power. Look to this scandal to be the thing that costs Sharon Sayles Belton her Mayoral seat this fall. Look for more indictments at City Hall.

Personally, I'm going to be learning a bunch more about Windows NT to Windows 2000 migration. Fun.

Friday, July 20, 2001

I'm lying in bed after 10PM last night. I'm reading my book and chillin' in the AC.

Honk, Honk.

"Assholes..." I think to myself.

A minute passes...

Hoooooonk, hooooooonk.

"%@*#$(%(..." I rage silently to myself.

Another minute passes.

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK. (totally obnoxious)

"KILL" I mutter under my breath. I get up, put on my clothes and go downstairs.

Honk.Honk.Honk.Honk.

It seemed to escort me down my stairs.

I go to the front door and there's a car, facing the wrong way, next to the curb, directly in front of my neighbor's house. A black Honda Civic of recent vintage. I open the door and go outside. I'm trying to contain my rage as the black Honda blasts a few more honks as I walk up to the driver's window.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?" I notice two guys in the car--East Africans sitting low in their seats. They're stunned at my sudden appearance. "DON'T YOU KNOW THERE ARE PEOPLE TRYING TO SLEEP HERE?" I demand. The passenger says something about trying to get someone in my neighbor's house. "Well get out of your car and go up to the door. You can't just sit out here and honk your horn, It's not OK." With that, I feel I haven't pushed it far enough, but I don't think I should push any further. I turn and walk back into the house, noticing that the passenger has immediately gotten out of the car and is walking up to the house next door. I was surprised that these guys seemed genuinely freaked out and perhaps even sorry for what they were doing. I went back inside my house.

When I get back to the living room, my wife says, "We've gotta get you out of this neighborhood before you get killed."

There were no more horn honks that night.

And the heat goes on.

It's gettin' brutal. We're trapped--tethered to what ever device we've scrounged to make air cooler--and there's no hope for a cool down until the beginning of next week. This means we face the prospect of a weekend without the ability to do much but sweat. 'Gettin' tired of this...

I figure that I'll be doing a lot of geeking around. It's cool in the office. I also figure, that to cool myself off this weekend, a massive quantity of G&Ts will be consumed. Gin and Tonic: What God gave the British to fight the tropic heat. He must me a merciful god.

I had a quick email volley with Ian @ blawg.com regarding another guy who writes cool stuff on the web. I've mentioned this fellow before--he's mecawilson.com and he seems to be having some kind of job-hating meltdown. He's got some crazy stuff up there now, but he almost seems unhinged.

It's edgy, mang.

I highly recommend both these fellas and lileks.com for your daily, lunch-time surfing pleasure. Don't tell me you don't surf on your lunch break, because my log files say you do. Well, not you in the red dress, but most all the rest of you are popping in over your cup of yogurt eaten hastily at your desk. It's OK. I do the same thing.

My personal pick this weekend is the clash of the two best teams in the American League. The Twins and the Mariners go 4 over the weekend. It should be good. I expect I'll be watching at least one of these games in a beer-soaked stupor. It's all good. Here's hoping the Mariners fall on their face. The Twins narrowly beat the A's yesterday in a slug-fest 12-10, so I'm thinking the bats are at least warm.

Thursday, July 19, 2001

My wife is back from her globetrotting and that's a very good thing. It was nice to see her after a week. The dog was happy, our delivery service delivered our groceries, and in a fit of nervous, sweaty energy, I brought up the old tank of an air conditioner from the basement.

The window air conditioners we have in the bedroom and office are pretty new. I personally bought the one in the office. It's less than 6 years old. I think the one in the bedroom might be a couple years older than that. Both are small in a way that the tank is not.

The big one just barely fits in a wide window in the dining room. It must weigh 80 lbs. From what I remember the fascia looking like, it was probably made in the early '70s. The lights in the whole house dim when we turn it on. It makes the same noise when it runs as the old refrigerator in the basement. It's covered in sharp edges and the fascia is long gone. I must say that this is one darned inconvenient piece of equipment. I have bruises on my arm from carrying it up the basement steps last night. It's really loud.

All the above ripping on it doesn't stop it from blowing a blue hurricane into the dining room. It puts out some damn cold air and lots of it. This monster tank really does the trick. From just this unit, we can cool the living room, dining room and the alcove from sweltering to comfortable in about 15 minutes. To make it's job easier, we drape a sheet over the kitchen to dining room doorway, but I wonder if we even need to do that. It just flat-out kicks out the cold.

We keep this ugly old thing around just for these special days where it's just too hot to think. I think there was a summer recently where we didn't even bother disturbing it from it's lair under the basement steps, but the following year, it was lugged up the stairs, plopped in the window and it proceeded to it's job. It's uncanny how well it works for how abused it is.

I picked up this monster in a yard sale the first summer away from the parents' house. It was yet another hot one and I desperate. I think I paid $10.00 for it. The former owner said, "I dunno if it works. The last time I used it was the summer before I got central air. That was two years ago." It was a risk. I was game. I took it home and found to my disappointment that it was too large by an inch to fit in my bedroom windows. My bedroom faced the porch, so I figured I could stand it up on something outside my window, cover the area between my window and the air conditioner with a cardboard cowl, and I would get my air. 20 minutes later I had a small table that was the right size, a cardboard box to cut up, and some duct tape.

It was ugly, and I had yet to turn the thing on, but with everything in place, I turned it on. The lights dimmed, the motor spun and the air coming in through my window turned from steamy to frigid in about a minute. I was overjoyed. About 2 hours later, even though it was 90F that day, I had to turn the damn thing down because it was getting too cold in my bedroom. Wow.

When I moved, it moved with me. The next place was on the second floor and had a window that was the right size for it. We didn't use it much, but it served me well there when we did use it.

When I finally moved into the house, it sat in the basement for a couple of years because I bought the new window unit. I then got a second window unit, and I thought that I'd probably sell the tank. It wasn't to be. The summer I dragged it out of storage was fearsomely hot. I was in need of not hanging out in my bedroom. I remembered the tank sitting down there in the farthest corner of the basement. When I dragged it up, my wife was shocked at the sheer size of the thing. I stuck it in the window and it worked from the get go. What a thing of beauty, this.

I don't doubt that it causes my electric meter spin like a high speed hard disk drive when I'm using it, but it's worth it to not have to run to the movies or to the bar to escape the heat. It's nice to have that option.

Wednesday, July 18, 2001

Hot.

Not like the surface of the sun, more like North Florida about 15 miles inland from the coast. 90F and 90% humidity. Brutal. Just brutal.

Heat like this saps my energy and makes me cranky. I don't feel like doing anything except not sweating. It's nasty.

Needless to say that in weather like this I get bupkus done and this includes updating my website in an interesting manner. So very sorry for the infotainment outage. I just can't think in heat like this.

I have diddled around with Linux a little bit. As stated before, Geek Weekend was a washout, but I did get a little configuring and coding done a couple of nights ago. This week's goals are to get Apache configured and resolve a bunch of DNS entries offline. I'm also going to try to get my UPS to talk to my server. We'll see.

Tuesday, July 17, 2001

Not much to say again today. It's too hot to think. I'm kinda trapped here in the office, surfing the web, drinking water and sweating like a madman. Fun.

I hope to have more to say tomorrow.

Monday, July 16, 2001

Well, Geek Weekend was a wash. I just had too much to do. Fun stuff, too. Linux bows to fun. Such as it is.

I picked up a sun burn this weekend, and true to form, I've gotten sick. Big nosey cold-feelin' sort of creepy crud. This always happens when I get too much sun. Grrr.

Because of maladies real and/or imagined, that's all for now.

Thursday July 12, 2001

We've been worn down. Apparently, there was a guy murdered in his car about a block and a half north of us on the same street. It happened while I was watching the All-Star game. A guy was shot in his car or something. I didn't hear the shots, but apparently my wife did. She was out on the porch. She thought they may have been gun shots, but given the sheer amount of stuff blowing up around our place since about 3 weeks before the 4th, she just didn't bother checking it out.

It's probably a good thing she didn't go outside. The last thing I want to do is go to another funeral. All the same, if it had been 3 months ago, she or I would have undoubtedly been on the phone to 911. I've had it, really.

I'm sick and tired of seeing other people playing by a different set of rules. It's not fair that other people get to make noise and let their kids run riot and feral through the streets. It's not fair that people who don't have any interest in our neighborhood just move in and stink up the place. It's not fair that I have to pick up at least five items of garbage in my front lawn every damn day. I'm serving everyone in my neighborhood that I'm not going to stand for it anymore. I am going to become a crank. I'm going to be confronting my neighbors whenever they're loud. I'm going to be asking their kids to not throw stuff on my lawn. I'm going to be reporting the dead-bolt daycare to child protection. I am through and finished being tolerant of stuff I wouldn't stand for from anyone else.

I've had it with unsupervised children. I'm sick of boom cars. I'm tired of rap music blaring from passing cars. If I wanted to hear music, I'd play it on my own stereo. I'm tired of people having a conversation at the top of their lungs over huge distances. I'm tired of people drinking on the sidewalk. I've just completely had it with people standing in the street. The next person who walks slowly in front of me just to piss me off is going to get an earful of horn and epithets. I'm just tired of it all.

Am I afraid of retribution? Yep. I am. It's not going to stop me.

It's clear to me that a lot of the people in my neighborhood don't care whether the neighborhood goes crappy or not. It's obvious by the trash in the gutters that some folks in my neighborhood are not concerned about the impact this has on everyone else. It's crystal sparkling clear that if everyone's living by the "Golden Rule," you know--Do Onto Others As You Would Have Done Onto You--then some folks definitely need some beating down. I feel beaten down by the actions of my neighbors. The result of this is that I'm going to do some beating down myself. Not physical beating, but the kind of subtle, psychological harassment, and overt passive-aggression that plays with your head after a while.

It's war, daddy-o. War.

Wednesday, July 11, 2001

Cal Ripken goes yard and the AL wins for the 5th consecutive All-Star game. All is as it should be.

It was a pretty good game and really exactly what I expected. When you have good pitchers going against good batters, generally the pitchers will prevail. It always surprises me just how low scoring some years are. This year, there were a bunch of totally dominant pitchers tossin' heat and hooks and just about making it impossible for anyone to do anything. There were the three dingers by the AL, but all it takes for one of these sharp hitters is for the pitcher to leave one up in the zone. The pitch Ripken hit was just waiting for him to crank it out. It was a sweet swing.

The game wasn't all sweetness and light, however. Chief among the annoyances was the tempest in a teapot over Clemens and Piazza. They don't like each other? Who gives a crap. I couldn't care less if Piazza is a sore-head and Clemens is the biggest asshole ever to come out of Texas (that would be hard to believe, given that Norm Green still lives there). Do they play baseball? Yup. Do they play hard? Check. Do they give 100% on the field? 10-4, good buddy. Then I don't care.

Coming in a close second was that god damn virtual billboard. I admit the virtual 1st down marker in football is a good idea. I even kinda liked the virtual trail on the puck in those NHL games. The virtual sign on the Indy 500 telecast was annoying just for the fact it was shoddily done--it didn't have a shadow. The virtual billboard behind the players was damn annoying. It really distracted from my enjoyment of the game. Worse, it was out of focus for the first half-inning and it tended to wash out the left handed batters. Barry Bonds looked like he was in heavy fog back at the 'stick (3com Park? Some new stadium? Who knows, anymore...). It was just terrible. On top of all this, it was rather guileless--only the pitcher-batter-catcher-umpire view contained the ad. If the shot was the catcher from the side or the batter out of the box, all you saw was the green backstop behind them with no ad on it. I was really peeved that they didn't bother to map all the views they were going to get during the game. It made the technology very obvious, unslick and cheap-looking. To those of you at Fox/Comerica Park/MLB, I say shame on you for cheaping out. If you're going to do something like this, at least make it as unobtrusive as possible. If you don't, this is going to wash out bigtime and there goes your revenue stream.

Beyond these gargantuan annoyances, I did like the microphoned managers, but I could have done without the mics being on their person. Boom mike the whole dugout. I really didn't like the first-basemen wearing mics. The networks are getting lazy. They could have put a guy with a parabolic mic in the bullpen and just paid him to point it at first base whenever there was a runner and that would have been fine. They also could have paid him/her union scale and there'd be more money in the economy. Nope, couldn't do that.

Geek weekend is coming up. Be forewarned. This site may be down this weekend or the early part of next week.

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

I may be updating infrequently for the next few days. My wife is going out of town and I'd like to spend some quality time with her before she leaves. Once she's out of town, I'm going to work like a madman to get my other webserver up and online and configured the way I want. It's going to be a tough row to hoe, but I promised myself that it would be done by the end of July. I'm about 2 weeks behind schedule.

It's been ungodly hot here. We've been camped out in the air conditioned bedroom for the past couple of night and it's been nice, but it's kinda odd having cabin fever in the middle of summer.

Another oddity of this year is that we suddenly need rain. After nearly floating away this spring, we've not had rain in like 3 weeks. The ground in the backyard is cracking, the lawn is wilting and I don't have to cut the grass. It's nice to not have to cut the grass, but I wouldn't mind it if it did rain.

Monday, July 9, 2001

I went to a drive-in movie with my wife and a bunch of our friends on Saturday night. It was the absolute perfect night for a drive-in movie. The temps never dipped below about 78 degrees, there was little wind and since it's been kinda dry lately, there were few bugs. The movie? Hardly worth mentioning, really. It was Cats and Dogs. Although the special effects were pretty cool, the story was pretty lame. It was a good kid flick though.

A few observations about drive-in movies. They're still way cool. Gone are the days of the speaker on a post to put in your window. This particular theatre had a few of them left and still functioning, but you probably had to get there in the early afternoon to get a spot with one. Today, you get your sound the way you want it: Via FM radio through your car stereo. You get much better sound this way and I'm sure it costs a fraction of what it must have cost the theater to maintain the window boxes.

I would ask that those of you with SUVs please take the air out of your tires before you get there. We pulled up and parked in the closest spot we could find, but were trumped by a bunch of folks who were saving a spot for their friends sky-high SUV. The Nissan Pathfinder stopped in the spot directly between us and the screen. This wouldn't have been a big deal as we were able to see over it, however, they pulled in backwards, popped their hatch and set themselves up to look out the back. Good for them, bad for us as their hatch, extending just above the roofline of their SUV, blocked the bottom of the screen for us. Thanks, assholes. Get a smaller car next time.

We didn't see tons of screaming kids and that was nice. We also didn't see any confederate flags, either. Very nice as well. This particular drive-in is very near where I went to high school and I remember seeing triple-features there during the summer when I'd borrowed the car from my stepmom. If you go to a triple-feature in late June or early July and stay for all three movies, you will see twilight before you get home. Guaranteed. That's why we only stayed for one movie. The sun sets in Minnesota in the middle of the summer after 9PM, so Cats and Dogs ended about 11:30. Staying for the second flick (A.I.) was out of the question.

Other than the drive-in, I did a bunch of motorcycle work this weekend and did a bunch of sitting around on Sunday when the temperatures crested 90. I'm just not interested in heat-stroke, thanks.

Friday, July 6, 2001

As predicted, Independence Day was an odd affair. We went to a wonderful party at my friend Pat's parents' place out in the exurbs. They have a pool and we made good use of it. I really love to swim. I don't do well with Chlorine though. I was well and truly sick for the next day. I'm just not as used to it as I have been in the past. I remember, back when I was 5, going to the emergency room because I got way sick after being in the city pool. Chlorine again. I just don't deal.

It was a glorious time at that party. His folks threw a spread down and there was good eatin' for all. A very nice time was had by all.

Then we changed emotional gears and went to a visitation. My good friend Tim's 21 year old little sister Kate died on Sunday morning. The visitation was a bit much for me feeling as rotten as I did. Couple this with the grief and sadness that go with seeing a 21 year old woman laid out in a coffin and you can start to feel the emotional clutch slipping, the mental gears grinding and the vehicle of state pulling off the the shoulder of life. We saw some old friends there and that was nice, but we've all been reminded that we need to meet each other in much more frequent and happier circumstances. I totally agree.

We then went home and let the dog out.

A mental deep breath was taken as well as some antacids, and off to our evening's get-together we went. We went to a friend's place in Mounds Park to watch fireworks. We stayed a couple of hours, but by about 9 or so I started really feeling putrid. I begged off and my wife was understanding enough to allow me to exit gracefully our evening's fun. I was upset because I didn't get to see any fireworks.

I needn't have worried though.

I mentioned a couple of days ago that our neighborhood sounded like a war-zone for all the fireworks going off. Fireworks are illegal in Minnesota, but you wouldn't know it from the sheer volume of bangs you hear in the days leading up to Independence Day. I also mentioned that I handn't heard many of the pricier whizz-bang fireworks in the preceding days. Well, they made their showing, big-style.

We heard fweeees, we heard flying screeches, we heard numerous bangs and thumps. What I didn't expect was all the mega-class fireworks. I'd seen a few shooting-star sorts in the last couple of years, but it seemed that everyone in my neighborhood had taken a second mortgage on their houses and bought things that were exactly the same as the stuff they were shooting over the capitol building. I've never seen big star-shells over neighborhoods before. It drove the dog nuts. I felt like going out and watering down my roof.

Imagine if you will, the real-live stereo effect of fireworks: I'm laying in bed with the AC on. Off to my right, "FUM!" 2 seconds later on my left, "BOOOM!" This happened no less than a dozen times after sundown on the 4th. I went out on our back balcony and saw one of these things go off. I then realized why our windows were lighting up. Whoever was lighting these things off must have paid big money. They were the same as the ones downtown. Shocked, I went back in the house and said nothing to my wife so's not to disturb her.

My question is this: "Where were the police?"

Are fireworks laws just for the "nice" neighborhoods? Does someone have to get killed to get the police to visit? It's obvious that fireworks laws are being treated like the speed laws on the highway: It's only illegal if you're caught. When are our local police going to learn that they should either enforce the laws, or repeal them. People habitually breaking minor laws diminishes respect for these laws and laws in general.

I say this stuff every year. Too many fireworks in a state where they're illegal. Let's just make them legal. It's patently obvious that making them illegal has had no effect on their use here. Let's not have half-measures, either. I don't want border towns profiteering on searching cars for fireworks as they come in from other states. That's dumb. I also don't want my neighborhood's money being spent in other states either. Legalize these fireworks and the money stays home. The "being bad feels good" thing goes away and I bet use of fireworks declines steadily in a couple of years.

Yes, there will be injuries. I'm not sure I care, though. People who mix fireworks and alcohol get what they deserve. Parents who let their kids play with fireworks should be publicly humiliated. Legalizing fireworks may create more problems than it solves, but the present situation is clearly broken and I'm certain that more rigorous enforcement of the current laws will not fix it.

Nice rant, eh?

Tuesday, July 3, 2001

I got some bad news today. My pal Tim's sister died. People who are 21 have no business dying. It's just so tragically sad.

I'd like to take this time to celebrate our nation's Declaration of Independence. 225 years ago, the movers and shakers of the time decided that they'd had enough of being a colony. Because of this move, we have the country we do today.

Imagine the guts it took. At the time, there wasn't anyone even close to being as powerful as the Empire. Today, it would be like Hawaii declaring independence from the U.S. The odds were stacked against them, but they did it anyway. I'd like to extend my thanks for a job well done. Revisionist historians would point out that most of these people were slave owners, profiteers and probably suffered from chronic jock itch and halitosis, but judging these people in today's context is flat-out unfair and diminishes the impact of their actions. Yes, these folks had their flaws, but flawed people can do great things.

Happy Independence Day, everyone. I'll be back on Thursday.

Monday, July 2, 2001

I swear I've heard more fireworks go off in my neighborhood in the past week than I've heard in 6 action adventure movies. There's the pop pop pop of firecrackers, and notably absent are the screech of the more pricey fireworks. I'm sure these will be heard in the coming days.

One of our neighbors two doors down just sold his house last week. We're happy for him, even though he ripped himself off. It's a two story house, roughly equivalent to this one and he only got $92,000.00 for it. The house next door, in about the same condition a year ago went for $120,000.00. I was shocked, but I guess that's the way it goes.

This guy wasn't too bad a neighbor. He wasn't the best on earth, but the reasons for his shortcomings stemmed from things done long in the past, and habits acquired long ago. It's largely because of his unsupervised kids that I started believing that the whole "It Takes A Village" thing was a bunch of shit. The "Village" needs to help out from time to time, NOT be the primary caregiver. Leaving children unsupervised in this neighborhood is like playing Russian Roulette. You may not get hurt, but why take the risk in the first place. I guess I get a little bent out of shape when a guy buys two new vehicles in a year while his 12 and 8 year olds go without daycare or even supervision for most of the afternoon during the school year, and all damn day during the summer.

This guy was pleasant enough in person, and he took care of his place as best he could. I don't deny him nice things, either. I just don't think child care is a luxury to be put behind getting a new car.

Sunday, July 1, 2001

The server move went very well. It was a hot day, and that was the worst thing that happened all day. It was only the hike between the office and the basement that was made worse by the heat, but that was a pretty small part of the project. An annoyance to be sure, but not a show-stopper.

Since I'd had the opportunity to get the basement site prepared ahead of time, all that really needed to get done was to move the DSL router, the boxen and the UPS to the new site. I moved folwell first as there wasn't any traffic on that box as yet. I moved all the cords and cables to the basement and then sat down there for about 10 minutes thinking about how the next half-hour would be spent. I wanted to not have to make more trips than necessary, and I wanted to have as little downtime as possible.

My planning done, I shutdown northome and started grabbing stuff. Keyboards, mice, a UPS, and finally the box itself went down into the basement. Setting up everything downstairs got a bit messy. There's cords and such everywhere, but it didn't take me long to get everything plugged into the right ports. Folwell was the first thing to be powered back up after I made sure the DSL router was up and running and on the switch. Folwell came up without a hitch. Northome, however, wasn't nearly as smooth. The screen output disappeared immediately after the boot scripts. This suggested to me that the secondhand monitor I purchased for the basement site wasn't the equal to the one on the console upstairs. I'll have to reconfigure X, but I'm getting pretty good at that.

I logged remotely, killed X and switched the monitor back to the web server. It was good to go. Nice. I surfed in to the website from my wife's laptop upstairs and it served the site quickly. Mission accomplished.

It was all over by about 11:00 AM, so if you got a 404 yesterday morning, now you know why.

We also did a bunch of housework yesterday. We ended up filling 5 trash bags full of shredded papers. The file cabinet now has some space in it, which we dutifully filled with the junk we hadn't filed in the last 6 months. The paper storm never ends.