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Sunday, 29 April 2001
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I actually did succeed in getting my desktop PC back online over the weekend. I observe that my modem connection is immensely better than it was at the old place. And said Old Place is now officially in the hands of The New Owners. Some sort of Latin quotation seems in order at this point, but not having received the benefit of a classical education, I'm a bit short of Latin aphorisms just at present. Hmmm... "aphorism"... good word of the day. Merriam-Webster Online says:
Main Entry: aph·o·rism
Pronunciation: 'a-f&-"ri-z&m
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French aphorisme, from Late Latin aphorismus, from Greek aphorismos definition, aphorism, from aphorizein to define, from apo- + horizein to bound -- more at HORIZON
Date: 1528
1 : a concise statement of a principle
2 : a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment : ADAGE
Oh, that reminds me... here's a pseudo-Latinism that I consider something of a family motto — Duit on mun dei. Not bad, eh?
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Monday, 30 April 2001
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Seriously thinking about horsepower upgrades again. My never-awesome K6II-450 seems more than usually sluggish when manipulating audio files in Cakewalk. Incidentally, when I looked up "sluggish" in Merriam-Webster's online thesaurus, I got this utterly delightful list of words that seem positively tailor-made to describe computers in general:
Synonyms lethargic, comatose, dopey, heavy, hebetudinous, slumberous, stupid, torpid
Related Word dragging, draggy, leaden, lumpish; costive, stiff; apathetic, stupefied
"Hebetudinous!" "Costive!" These are wonderful! (Respectively: "Late Latin hebetudo, from hebEre to be dull" and "Middle English, from Middle French costivé, past participle of costiver to constipate, from Latin constipare".) The internet is a Good Thing.
Anyway, I'm thinking of something north of 1 GHz, with a decent video card, all Linux-friendly. No preference Intel/AMD; thinking PIII or Athlon. Open to suggestions as to motherboard/CPU/video combos. RAM I got (SDRAM, not RDRAM); and diskage as well. I have a more-or-less generic ATX 300W mid-tower case. So what should I put in it? Your input eagerly solicited.
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Tuesday, 1 May 2001
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Man, what a busy day! I've decided our PCs would work much better if I could only get these people to stop USING them all the time. Film at eleven.
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Wednesday, 2 May 2001
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New Gateway Solo 9500 notebook (nice, BTW)... restored Win2K onto a blank hard drive via the standard restore CDs. Just so happened that I had it connected to our 10/100 Ethernet network via a little Netgear EN104 10Mb hub at the time. That may or may not be significant. Bottom line... when I finished installing, it worked perfectly. Of course. Until I connected it to ANY OTHER NETWORK DROP IN THE JOINT. That is to say, whenever I connected it to our 10/100 network WITHOUT using the 10Mb hub, it popped up a helpful little box that said that the network cable was unplugged. Of course this was with known good network connections, cables, etc. Spent a while on the phone with Gateway tech support, who were no more clueful (I love that word — if it's not a real word, it ought to be) than I myself. Of course, we tried manually setting the connection to 100 Mb half-duplex and 100 Mb full-duplex, but no joy. The upshot of the affair is that they're shipping me a replacement for the Actiontek NIC/modem that came built into the notebook. We'll see if that makes a difference.
And I'm halfway to getting some more-competent-than-me help with our mail server. The powers that be here have agreed to let me call upon the expertise of an old friend with whom I worked at another company. Nice guy, smart guy, and much more experienced than I am. He'll be happy to let me look over his shoulder, or even to direct me through the process, so that it becomes valuable OJT. Hands-on learning beats book smarts any day of the week, as far as I'm concerned. I have a very visual memory, and it helps me if I can actually associate some kind of visual image with a situation, when I'm trying to solve a problem later on. This becomes invaluable when you're in the situation of, say, walking a user via the phone through a set of menu choices that you don't have in front of your face at the moment.
Dave Farquhar sent this advice about my upgrade situation:
Hi Pete,
If you want a quick horsepower fix on the cheap, there's that Duron-750/FIC AZ11combo I talked about last week. Mine cost $125.50 after shipping. I'll let you know how it runs after I get it, but I imagine it'll be sweet, especially considering the price.
Just a thought.
Dave
Mmmmm... a possibility. Hoped for a bit more horsepower, but that's a stunning price. I keep saying it, and it keeps on being true... these are the good old days.
And here's something that might turn out to be big...
This morning I got (and refused to take) a call from somebody at Microsoft, wanting to have a little chat about our company's software licenses. Then a manager walked in and handed me a letter from the Business Software Alliance, containing the terms of a "truce" lasting from May 1st to May 31st. During this time period a business can get a truce Participation Number from the truce web site; if the company isn't already under investigation for copyright infringement, it can scurry around like mad during the next few weeks, buying software licenses and removing illegal copies of software from PCs. I quote herewith the final paragraph of the letter:
For the purpose of the Truce, BSA members are: Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, Macromedia, Microsoft, Symantec, and UGS.
This is what I believe may best be termed "a shot across the bow."
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Thursday, 3 May 2001
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Well, the replacement NIC/modem card for the Gateway notebook came in yesterday, and it fixed the problem. Apparently the NIC only worked at 10 Mb. So it's on its way back to the cow folks. Prompt service, successful outcome, happy customer.
Today I decided to install WinVNC (for "Virtual Network Computing") on every PC I can get my hands on. It's a freeware TCP/IP-only remote control package, that works cross-platform. That is to say, I could install that host on our NT servers (as I have), and then control them remotely over the network (or internet if I had a VPN set up) from a remote PC running, say, Linux. I'll also be able to use it to remotely ensure that the company stays compliant with our various software licenses. I've been using WinVNC because pcAnywhere for no discernable reason wouldn't actually run over our extremely ordinary little NT-TCP/IP-10/100 ethernet office network. I've used it alsewhere, over phone lines and Road Runner, and it worked very well indeed. But there must be something I overlooked when I tried to set it up here, because it just didn't work. In the meantime, WinVNC works just dandy. Try it for free. If you like it, keep it for free. Kewl. Now when they call me and say "My computer's acting funny..." my first reply will be "Well, let me try to beam in."
Today I also found out that if I type a link into my web page manually in Dreamweaver 3, I have to start the link with "http://" or it assumes that it's a local link, rather than a URL on the web. I usually just copy-n-paste links directly from my browser, rather than typing them in by hand. I only found out about this when I noticed that yesterday's BSA links didn't work. They're fixed now. Live and learn.
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Friday, 4 May 2001
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Today I'm finally going to try and build another computer for my daughter. Some time back I spent about $30 on eBay for a "New Old Stock" (as in "old but never used") Socket 7 motherboard that I THINK goes up to 300 MHz. I have an old AMD K6II-300 and some SIMMs that will fit. I'm going to pull a P166 motherboard out of an AT case and throw this in there. With any luck at all, it'll work. With good luck, it'll work at 300 MHz. And then I'll be left with an extra P166 mobo in good working order. Is it worth scrounging around for an old AT case and putting it back together somehow? I dunno... probably. My inner miser always screams "Well, you can't just throw it away!" Let's see what I can come up with. I guess I'd say that it's probably not worth buying a case for it, but if one falls out of the sky (or more likely, ends up underfoot getting tripped over)... what the heck, right?
I'm about halfway through a software inventory for the boss. Everybody uses MS Office 2000, and we have quite a need for AutoCAD, as well. Gotta make sure we have all our ducks in a row. Understand, I'm not saying that we are out of compliance with our licensing; but frankly, in this casual small office environment, nobody keeps careful track of this stuf. So I guess I get to be the Software Nazi. "No AutoCAD for you! Six months!" It's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.
LATER...
Well, the motherboard was not what it was supposed to be. It turned out to actually be a relabeled PCChips job that only went up to 233 MHz, and didn't even have a core voltage setting low enough for the K6II chip. Let that be a lesson to us all, boys and girls... don't buy a pig in a poke. Either buy a new item from a reputable dealer, or buy used items from local people whom you can call us and harrass if they stick you with a turkey. So I guess I'll just set up my current K6II-450 for my daughter if and when I upgrade myself again. Ah well, c'est la guerre. Another of life's little lessons. Fortunately the price tag on this particular lesson wasn't all that high, except in aggravation. Live and learn.
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Saturday, 5 May 2001
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No entry.