Email Steve Tucker
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Sunday, March 14, 1999
I wasn't in Atlanta for the NASCAR Winston Cup race today. Had to run down there for a project on Saturday and able to return home in one day. Quite an unusual trip to a race for me.
I only had a little time today to work on the web page and spent that trying to reorganize the page before the site started to get out of hand. Moved everyone's stuff into different directories, etc. The only problem this presented was when I moved the pages to new directories the navigation still works, but some of the graphics on the theme pages navigation bars got lost. You can still click on the link and go there, but the pretty graphics are gone.
I am also in the process of doing away with a lot of theme pages. They are pretty to look at, but suck resources and that could become a problem in the future.
Monday, March 15, 1999
I may have mentioned that I am a Unix neophyte. I attempted to load Linux on one of the machines in my home network over the weekend and quickly learned that I did not know enough about the Unix operating system to even install the software. I was puzzled as to how many partitions to make and what size to make them and what to name them. Therefore, I spent a little while today surfing the web for getting started help in installing Linux and as you can imagine found quite a few sites. I think I going to put up a page in the near future with some of the links in the event someone else may be as puzzled as I am. In any event, it'll give me a good place to go to start looking for Linux help. I would welcome email with any Linux pointers.
My son Andrew will be participating in a Tae Kwon Do regional tournament in Greenville, SC this weekend and will spend a couple of his weekly training session practicing for the tournament. Today will be one of those practice sessions. Usually Mondays are very hectic at our house. Andrew has Tae Kwon Doe at 6 PM, Katie, the 11 year old, has Girl Scouts at 6:30 PM. Our Monday usually goes something like this: Take Andrew to Taw Kwon Do at 6, come back to the house and gather up Katie and head to Girl Scouts. We usually have to go and pick up one of her friends to ride with us. When we return from dropping Katie at Scouts then it's time to pick up Andrew. Usually Katie grabs something to eat before she heads to Scouts, so when we pick up Andrew at 7, then we grab a quick bite to eat and head back to pick up Katie at Scouts. Whew! All we are missing is the meter and advertising sign on the top of our taxi.
I called BellSouth.Net today to inquire about 128K ISDN service and learned that I had actually established two accounts when I signed up. I remember starting the signup process with one user name and thought I had cancelled when I did not complete the signup. When I went back to signup for real I noticed the user name I really wanted wasn't available, but I thought that since I had started the signup process that maybe the name had been reserved and was no longer available, so I chose a new user name. BellSouth.Net has a free 30 day policy and hopefully the agent got my other account cancelled today before I incurred any charges.
It also seems the people who answer the ISP lines are so accustomed to dealing with people with analog dialup accounts that whenever they hear ISDN they immediately transfer you to the telephone company ISDN desk, no matter how many times you tell them you already have ISDN phone service. In my attempt to get my account switched to 128k service ISDN service I can not tell you how many times I have been transferred around and I still don't have the account changed. I will win this battle in the end.
Tuesday, March 16, 1999
I am quickly finding that the more I read about Linux and Unix the less I Know. I don't really know why I want a Linux box. Maybe it's because I can. Now if we already had cable modem's or ADSL in our area it would be something else. Time Warner, our cable provider, says it will be at least the first quarter of the 2000 before they begin deploying cable modems. I think I should read that as being somewhere after July, 2000. Hopefully I would get at least one static IP address. As far as ADSL, BellSouth isn't really giving any indication. Since Winston-Salem was voted in the Top-10 of the most wired communities you would think we could have high speed, always-on internet access already. Not.I have assembled a small group of the Unix and Linux help pages.
When we do finally get the always on service I am sure I will have my own web server, mail server, news server, well you get the picture. Until then I don't suppose it's really necessary. But I want it anyway!
I had a lovely experience this evening with the kids, one which was just a primer of what was is to come as Katie approaches her teenage years. I had purchased some dress slacks for Dillard's dept. store when I was in Daytona Beach, FL (on sale) and took them to the Winston-Salem store to be cuffed and hemmed when I returned home. I told the salesperson I was in no hurry to pick them up since they were busy with a sale of their own and I was getting them altered at no charge. Tonight was the night I was going to pick them up. Suzy had a meeting, so the kids and I took off to a new pizza joint and then I had planned to drop in the mall, pick up them and scoot back out. That is not the way an 11 year old thinks when it comes to the mall.
As we were leaving the store I noticed she had her change purse with her and I inquired as to what that as for. She told me to the penny how much money she had in her change purse and since we were going to the mall she had shopping in the mall on her mind. I told Katie that wasn't what I had planned and you should have seen her big droopy eyes looking at me. I melted to say the least.
So we took off into the mall. Had to stop in Gap Kids and then Andrew wanted to stop in Software, etc. (the kid's got a chance), but of course he wanted to look at the computer games. I looked at the computer software. Andrew entertained the sales ladies with his dancing while Katie salivated over an Adorondack jacket. I suggested she shop for that with her mother and were outta there.
Then we hit the store that Katie was really after. She made a dash to Claire's Boutique where I think she wanted to touch everything in the store.
Finally after much huffing and puffing on my part she selected a butterfly silver necklace ($4) and then Andrew had to have a piece of jewelry. Katie helped Andrew find a necklace (he was already wearing his arrowhead chain and we headed to the register. He got the better deal with a $.99 sale piece. He was actually trying to match her price.
We were finally on our way out of the mall. When were heading out I saw a sign that reminded me why I hate this place and have vowed only to returned when absolutely necessary. We are in the heart of tobacco country and while that may be politically incorrect these days, it still the guilded leaf that made our town. The owners of the mall have succumbed to pressure to make the common areas smoke free. I am sure that for no other reason than it's the trendy thing to do. Since my family's resources come from said guided leaf I suppose they are really sending the message that they don't want my money. I am going to try to oblige and give them as little of my money as possible.
Wednesday, March 17, 1999
Happy St. Patty's day. I made sure I wore something green today and good thing I did. The kids checked first thing this AM ready to had out "pinches" to those who didn't. Suzy was a victim.
I am still having trouble with Front Page themes. I did some re-arranging over the weekend and moved some pages from the root directory to their own directory and the some of the themed graphics went away. I have recalculated the links but this did not help, so now the trick I am going to try is to remove the themes from a page publish it and then go right back and apply a theme to that page and publish again. I will report my findings.
Theme Report: Well that was exactly what it took. I have to save the page with no theme and then upload it to the server and then go back into editor and "re-theme" the page and then upload it to the server again. I tried to remove the theme and then save the page and then go and apply a theme so I would have just one upload, but no dice.
Maybe this will cut down on some of my failed pages in the stats log. You can check out my stats if you like.
Thursday, March 18, 1999
I did a little more research into Linux today and found there is a local Linux User Group. In fact, they were going to meet tonight at Wake Forest University, but I was already committed with the kids. It appears they meet every third Thursday and it also appears they have settled in at Wake Forest. Someone there must have an interest in Linux. The local group has named themselves PLUG for Piedmont Linux User Group. I also found another interesting site that looks like it might put some useful Linux links together in one place, especially for newbies like myself. Check out Control-Escape. I wonder if there is a site named Control-Alt-Delete and Shift-Tab?
The local group, like all LUGs I am sure, have what they call installfests. I am sure this is a time when newbies like myself can bring my machine to a gathering place and have someone more versed with the operating system help you to get it installed and start to answer your questions. You will kindly notice that I didn't say answer all of your questions. I remember my beginning days of DOS and my personal learning curve. I am sure I drove some people out of their mind with all of my mind-numbing questions. I still like to do a few things in a DOS window, just for the heck of it.
This group sorta reminds me of some of the local computer clubs that went by the wayside when Vice-President Al Gore created the internet. I hope you all caught that comment last week. He must have inhaled what his partner didn't. This is not intended to be a political site, but this was just too good to pass up! Sorry I didn't think to link this story from CNN earlier.
After the kids and I dinner out of the town we stopped by to see Bob and Barbara Thompson of TTGNET and O'Reilly fame. The kids wanted to play with their border collies and to color some pictures with Barbara. I think the coloring thing is a holdover from when they were younger. I patted the doggies on top of the head. Bob and spent a few minutes talking...computer junk of course. Bob had attempted to download the release copy of IE5 today and shared his trials and tribulations. Bob suggests downloading IE5 to the machine that you might be running the beta version on. This seems to keep the number of files it downloads to a minimum. Might want to check out his days notes for today where all of this is well documented.
I had told Bob I was in no hurry for IE5, but I must confess I attempted to download it from C|Net's Download.Com site when I arrived home with no luck. The download blew up on me a couple of times, so I said the heck with it. I can wait for a couple of weeks when the traffic slows down. You can bet this weekend the net will be clogged with folks attempting to make these 3 and 4 hour downloads with more blow up than those old 6 cylinder Busch Grand National races. Maybe I should set an alarm for something like 4AM eastern time and attempt it then? Not.
For those of you into overclocking or otherwise messing around with system boards, Bob also had a nifty little gadget that you can place in a socket 7 or slot 1 motherboard and it will tell you the voltage being supplied to the processor. Me, I just usually accept the defaults. It called the processor protector. He also mentioned this device in his day notes on Wednesday.
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I realize I will be just a little predjuced on this one, but thanks to a jury in Ohio for their wisdom as they rejected a $2 billion lawsuit brought by union health funds to recover the costs of workers' smoking-related illnesses from Big Tobacco's deep pockets. You can bet the pockets ain't as deep as they once was.
Friday, March 19, 1999
I was sucessful at downloading the IE 5 package this morning from www.download.com. I was speaking with Bob Thompson last night and had mentioned how it appeared that IE5 was just like Outlook98 in that you download a small setup file and then select the options you wanted and then it went to the web to suck it down. He informed me that when you started your download of IE 5 you could click on the advanced tab and ask for a download only and save the files to your hard drive for later installation. That's what I did and it seemed to work just fine. I download about 30 megs worth (I went through the custome process and checked every box so maybe I would have the entire package), saved it to a drive on the network. I then installed with no problems.
I remembered anytime I wanted to make a change to Outlook 98 it would go out to the web and download several megabytes worth of code and of course take forever. I am glad with his help I was able to avoid this with IE5. He says there is a way to do the same thing with Outlook98 but he couldn't remember right off the top of his head.
The one thing I have learned early on with IE 5 is there is an option to have IE head off to Microsoft every time you load the borwser to see if there are any udpates. I personally found this to be a pain in the (well, you get the picture), so I immediately cleared the checkbox for that enhancement.
Spring is springing here in Winston-Salem. Today was beautiful and I tackled the grass cutting chore for the first time of the season. I love the spring and fall around here. I hate the hot suummers and cool winters. I also hate having to cut grass. Maybe a green cement lawn should be in order.
Tommorrow we are heading to Greenville, SC with Andrew so he can compete in a Tae Kwon Do regional torunament. Greenville is about 3 hours south-something of Wisnton-Salem and closer than Greenville, NC.