It's warm today - in the 90's, so naturally I was out in the yard, mowing, edging, hedging, sweeping... Barbecue tomorrow, if it's not too hot.

I wanted to set up a second box, with some form of linux or BSD on it, so that I could remotely access, via secure protocols, the network and machines here. It's an old Packard Bell 166Mhz box, with 16MB of RAM and a 1.6Gb disk. Looking around on the net I found the 'Linux Router Project', but it's defunct now. There were links to something called 'Freesco' ( free cisco, after the network equipment manufacturer ) and downloaded that, created some boot floppy's, and got the old box running. Now I have to figure out what to do with it...

Or I could go with OpenBSD, FreeBSD, or one of the Linux distribuitions.

Note the little prism icon that appears in the Firefox bookmarks for this web page - it is a little 16x16 *.ico file that I made that myself with IconEdit (freeware). Pretty cool...

Note: if you are using IE, you really really really need to consider using something else. There are just too many hacks and holes in it...

I started out with Firefox version 0.90, and have upgraded to 0.92 because of the recent security hacks out there, but it's quick, clean, and installs like a breeze for Win2K. Popup blocker built in. Tabs. You can open all the bookmarks in a folder at once in separate tabs by clicking once. If, like me, you have a dozen or so sites you visit daily this can be a big time saver! It imported my Netscape 7.1 bookmarks without trouble.

Peg, my father's dog, has a tormenter in the yard. Fast as she is, this squirrel is much faster and remains out of reach, chittering angrily at her...

The treed squirrel.

What do other people do? I mean, three hours to put a wireless card in? And I've been working with PC's for decades.

I can't turn on the WPA security yet, because my old card doesn't support it, I think. I'll have to check. When I leave I'll try setting it up. For now, plain old WEP will have to do.

One of the things I had to buy was an UPS for the office. I am just not confident of the power down there - I had the machine spontaneously reboot on me, and that gives one the shivers. I was going to get a nice APC unit, but Fry's had a Belkin unit with twice the volt-amps and with voltage regulation for the same price, so I went with that. It did require charging for six hours first, so I messed around with backing up my old software to the external NetDisk while it did so. It takes a while to recover 4.7GB off a disk and install it onto the new media. But it'll make access of old stuff a lot easier for me. In fact I already found something that a co-worker was looking for, so that's good.

The mopping went OK. It's an old concrete floor, but dirty with twenty years accumulation of stuff. It is warm enough that everything drys very quickly.

Ethernet installation...a bit more difficult. First I had to drill a hole from the location in my father's den where the firewall/router sits, and then string it under the house and through another hole to the new office. Problem: there are so many pipes and wires in the heater room where the access was located that I couldn't get in. I eventually used a long pole with a hook to move the cable to where I could reach it, and then routed it where it was needed.

Power is a bit iffy. The sockets in the room are not good - one has no power whatsoever, the other gave me a pretty good tingle later - bad ground. For now I'm getting around this by running a heavy duty extension cord from a "good" socket, but that's not really a permanent fix.

First order of business: I need to clean up the office-to-be a bit more - mopping and so on.

Second: run ethernet cable to the office, and some power.

Sunday - hot, hot, hot. I got a bit sunburned working outside. Not a lot to say today...

The cats knocked over my CD tower - what a mess. I'd be mad, except that I've finally found my Autocad 14 disk. Man, who'd look for it between Boston and Marshall Tucker?

I took a picture, but I'm tired and the camera's a good twenty feet away. Sorry guys, it's a Sunday.

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Picture of the Week

Photo Notes: This is a shot of a sign posted in New Cuyama (what happened to the old one?). This is on State Highway 166, on the way back from the beach, where I stopped for a cold soda. Cute. Isn't there a saying  that "If your town's population is less that it's elevation...something something something...". I can't recall.

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