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Sunday, April 25, 1999
Spent most of the day traveling back from Lauglin/Las Vegas. Didn't contribute to any new casinos or even to help pay the light bill at the one where I took up residence for a few days. Did try a few hands of blackjack though with moderate success. A huge gambler I am not.
I was happy to see the updates I added to this site were still intact and I was able to publish them "down" to my local machine when I returned home.
It sure is a bummer that it takes you call day to travel from west to east. It's a day killed, but the "red-eye" flights do me in for several days, so I feel it's better to waste one day vs. three.
Monday, April 26, 1999
I have admitted here many times during the past month or so that I had very little Unix knowledge and that I need to improve this in order to maintain a web site that runs on Unix better. I have chosen to install Linux, partially to help me learn some Unix and partly to see what the craze is all about.
I finally took on the installing Unix challenge today and installed Linux. The machine I plan to play with is an old Pentium and is full of mostly spare parts. After adding a second hard drive to this box (it now has 800 meg and 1 gig drives) I set out to install version 5.1 of Linux. Actually I was surprised how easily it installed and I only have re-installed once to date. I was having some troubles getting it to hit my ISDN router, so I reinstalled it, paying more attention to the network parameters. I was then able to get to the internet with no problems. I also couldn't remember if I had installed the x windows server the first time, so this was another reason for the re-install.
When I started the x windows server I was able to use the early version of Netscape that came with this release. I have Linux installed on a box with only a 640x480 VGA monitor, so I don't plan to do much surfing from this machine. However, I was pleased to see it come back with some network traffic and load a couple of different pages -- as hard as they were to see on this burned out monitor.
I am sure I will keeping you updated on my Linux progress.
Tuesday, April 27, 1999
Want to have some fun. Check out the EarthCam Network where you see shots from Times Square in New York to the muscle beach <g> in California. I checked out the beach from Dayton Beach and Disney World's Main Street last night, but it was little dark. Maybe we can look at he LA traffic jams and be thankful we don't live there.
Thursday,April 29, 1999,
You have probably noticed that I haven't had much of an opportunity to update this site this week. We spent Tuesday at a PTA meeting where Katie and the 5th grade chorus entertained us with about 8 or 10 songs. Then On Wednesday I cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for a picnic for Katie and Andrew's youth group. And today I traveled to Petersburg, VA for this weekend's Winston Drag event.
In addition I installed Linux on Monday and have been toying with this operating system. I have gotten Linux to communicate with the internet but haven't had any success at installing samba so I can see other machines on my home network. I have also had trouble being able to mount the CD-ROM and floppy drive. My simple accept all of the defaults installation shows that both my floppy drive and CD-ROM are mounted and busy when I know they are not. I have run through the installation a couple of times so, which is precisely what I expected.
Part of the problem may be that I don't know anything about Unix and am using Linux as an opportunity to learn the new up and coming operating system. To this end, I have bitten the bullet and ordered a couple of Unix books for Amazon.com from the search form on my homepage. If you are thinking of buying a book from Amazon I would appreciate you using this form as well. Heck, don't even know how to save or edit files in Unix, much less create an executable. I have been able to see the CD-ROM by unmounting and remounting the device. I installed Red Hat Linux 5.1, which I have a boot disk for. I also have version 5.2, but not boot disk, so I have been unsuccessful at creating a floppy the boot image from the 5.2 CD. I think before I get too far along I need to take this box to the next PLUG installfest and allow (beg) some of the Unix gurus there help me.
Back to the Winston Drag Racing event. I also attended this event last year and with the help of a co-worker, Sandy Jarvis, stumbled on a nice bed breakfast. When it turned out that I was returning again this year, I immediately called and made another reservation here again. The name of the Band B is Folly's Castle and the propieters are Tom and Peggy Flynt. They are rally nice people and are doing a nice job restoring this old Civil War house into a Bed and Breakfast. Their renovations have taken about 5 years to date with more work planned. When you stay here, it's like staying in someone's home with the benefit of your private suite. You can visit with Tom and Peggy for a while and then retire to the privacy of your "suite." And Peggy prepares you a "killer" breakfast. Beats the hell out of Chrome and Glass hotels, which I see plenty of in a year's time.