Doug Hilton's Blog

Laptop update

It's been a while since I've posted about my adventures in installing Gentoo Linux on my laptop. I now have things working fairlly well, with a few exceptions. (go figure). I got the nVidia drivers to install properly and give me my optimum resolution of 1400x1050, much better than the 1024x768 I was working with for a while. I also now have ACPI working, at least the battery charge applet and other tools like that, but I haven't played around with the software suspend yet.

I also successfully installed Oracle 9i client. This was a surprise to me since I couldn't even install it that easily on Red Hat, which is Oracle certified! I had absolutely no problems and everything is working well. Now, if I wanted to run the DB on my laptop, that would be a different story according to the Gentoo forums. But I don't need the DB, only the client :)

The only thing that I am having issues with is the ARTS library for KDE. Seems that WINE and TOra both want this library, and can't get that to compile. I have searched the forums for the error that I am getting and they all basically say that the GLibC patch that just came out breaks a lot of stuff. The solution, re-emerge GCC. What fun. So I am waiting around for that to finish compiling now. I also found other steps that need to be taken because of my nVidia card but once I get this installed successfully, I'll post a mini HOWTO on that.

Opportunity Update

After staying up late last night watching the landing of the Opportunity rover land on mars, I woke up this morning to more good news. Whilst I was asleep, MER-B sent back a couple hundred photos after successfully righting itself and opening safely. One of the first color photos shows 3 bounce marks and some drag marks where the airbags scraped the ground when they were deflated. It still astounds me that they were able to successfully land not only craft, but two, on the surface of a planet over 100million miles away, and with good accuracy!

I am currentlyl watching NASA TV and their rebroadcast of last nights activities in a condenced form to show only the critical parts. It's still exciting. Before this, they were showing the mission control checks that they were running with Opportunity to make sure that all of the equipment and scientific instruments were in working order. They were discussing data transfer rates and said that Opportunity was transmitting at a screaming rate of 31 bits/second. Very slow by any of our current standards, but more than 4 times the speed in which Spirit was transmitting at only 7 bits/second. It just seems funny that they are so excited at those speeds where we are used to being able to pull gigabytes of data across the internet in a matter of minutes. And these signals are traveling at the speed of light through a vaccum, not through a copper wire.

Opportunity Lands

It's not about 12:30 AM on Sun morning, about 30 minutes after the Oportunity Mars Rover successfully touched down on the surface of Mars. After missing the party during the last landing of Spirit, I decided to have a MER party and watch it on NASA TV (on my kewl satallite dish) with some friends. With all the hype and press coverage, I decided that this was something that I should not miss.

I must admit, it was truely worth staying up late to watch! There was a bit of apprehension while watching, but I'm sure it was not as high as it would have been if I watched Spirit land. I think that is partially due to the fact that Spirit was a success and these are identical rovers, so everything should also be good with this one. Well, so far, so good. The MER landed successfully and was well within all limits that they planned for during the design phase. The only "hitch" to this point, is that the rover landed +Y pedal down, where Spirit landed base pedal down. All that means is that it will take a little longer to flip the rover over and open all the instruments and solar panels up charge up the rover.

I find all this stuff very intreaguing and fascinating. It's been a while since I've shown an interest in the space program. I guess I just had other things on my mind, but the recent missions to Mars have rekindled my interest. And these successful landings have only help with the credibility of NASA and the space program after the tragedies of late.

I have children???

Well, after last weeks disaster with the washer and dryer delivery, they were supposed to deliver it today... I actually got a call yesterday while I was at work (funny thing for a Friday) telling me that they were running behind and they wanted to know if I would be there when they delivered it, yesterday! I had to laugh and tell them that I asked for it to be delivered on Saturday (today), but after checking their records, they told me that it was definately scheduled for friday. Who knows!! Anyway, I got it rescheduled for today, like I originally requested. So, like last week, I woke up at 6:30 so I would be ready if by some strange miracle, they showed up at 7:00. Obviously they did not show up then, and still have not for that matter.

I just decided to call them and check on the status and was told that they called me earlier today and "she" (not sure who that is) cancelled saying that we had to take our kids to soccer practice. Who knew?! I told him that I'm 25 and don't have any kids. I am now waiting to hear back to see what is really going on.

Update -- I just heard from them. They screwed up and were looking at the old delivery order number so it never made it on the delivery truck. She also screwed up and confused me with someone else (obviously). So now the are going to deliver it on Mon nite after 6:00 P.M. (HAHA!!) Hopefully that goes better than this :)

This is an outrage!

I was reading Leo Laporte's blog this morning and I came across this article.

Basically, the republicans were taking advantage of a software bug which allowed them to access private documents without a password. They are being accused of leaking the information to the press among other accusations.

I realize this is a hot political year and I'm sure things like this happen all the time, especially in the private sector, but that does not excuse it. I'm really hoping that criminal charges are brought against the the accused and they are impeached. Not that I'm letting my own political views get in the way, but if this were to happen in the private sector and some Joe Schmoe hacked into a corporate network using the same exploit, criminal charges would be filed.

"Against that backdrop, both sides have something to gain and lose from the investigation into the computer files. For Democrats, the scandal highlights GOP dirty tricks that could result in ethics complaints to the Senate and the Washington Bar -- or even criminal charges under computer intrusion laws."

"When I Was A Boy"

Ok.. a bit far fetched for us, since we are all only about 26 or so, but still cute.

When I Was A Boy
--words and music by Frank Hayes

When I was a boy our Nintendo
Was carved from an old Apple tree
And we used garden hose to connect it
To our steam-powered color tv.

But it still beat that ancient Atari
'Cuz I almost went blind, don'tcha know,
Playing Breakout and Pong on a video game
Hooked up to the radio.

And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
Barefoot, uphill both ways,
Through blizzards in summer and winter
Back in the good old days.
Back when Fortran was not even Three-tran
And the PC was only a toy
And we did our computing by gaslight
When I was a boy.

When I was a boy all our networks
Were for hauling in fish from the sea--
Our bawd rate was eight bits an hour (and she was worth it!),
And our IP address was just 3.

And you kids who complain that the World Wide Web
Is too slow oughtta cut out your bitchin',
'Cuz when I was a boy every packet
Was delivered by carrier pigeon

And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
Barefoot, uphill both ways,
Through blizzards in summer and winter
Back in the good old days.
Back when Fortran was not even Two-tran
And the mainframe was only a toy
And we did our computing by torchlight
When I was a boy.

When I was a boy our IS shop
Built relational tables from wood,
And we wrappered our data in oilcloth
To preserve it the best that we could.

And we carried our bits in a bucket,
And our mainframe weighed 900 tons,
And we programmed in ones and in zeros
And sometimes we ran out of ones.

And we walked twenty miles to the schoolhouse
Barefoot, uphill both ways,
Through blizzards in summer and winter
Back in the good old days.
Back when Fortran was not even One-tran
And the abacus? Only a toy!
And we did our computing in primordial darkness
When I was a boy.

Bush's Address

You all know my very strong political views on most of what Bush said last night, but I just want to comment on the whole "gay marriage" issue. Granted, it can be abolished by an amendment, but I don't see that happening. I don't know that there is enough support for that at this time, and I only see the support diminishing as time goes by. This truely comes down as a blatent infringement on our right to live and carry out our lives in the manner in which we choose. The fact that I find most ammusing is that the line drawn between those who support and those who appose gay marriage is usually drawn along regligious lines. Is it not true that there are multiple references to homesexuality in the bible? I'm no bible scholar, but I do remember hearing that some passages could very easily be interpreted as being pro-homosexual. (Please, someone legitamitally support or debunk me).

I did not watch the speach last night as I was not home. One of my MAJOR concerns is the way he intends to handle the environment, especially the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Did he mention anything like that last night?

Wireless Card

I found something very disturbing yesterday when I went to attempt to get my wireless card working. I discovered that the company that acutally produces the cards for LinkSys, refuses to create a driver for linux or even release the specs so someone else can produce a driver!!! WTF? Well, after much disappointment and searching on the internet (thanks to Google), I was able to find out that you can use the windows driver and wrap them using a program called ndiswrapper.

You basically download the windows driver and point this program to the .sys and .inf files and it allows you to use a windows driver to support any 802.11g wireless card. Thank goodness for the resourcefulness of the *nix community!

After a few more issues trying to get my module loader to get everything working the way it is supposed to do, I am posting this from my laptop via the wireless card :)

Washer and Dryer Update

A couple of weeks ago, we ordered a washer and dryer from Home Depot. Well, today it was delivered. At least it was supposed to be :)

I got the phone call I was supposed to get yesterday saying that they would be here today some time between 7 and 11 AM. That should have been my first hint that their would be problems :) Not only did they give me a broad window of times, but they told me a time that was earlier than I normally get up to go to work!

So, like a good husband, I got up at 6:45 and got a shower and let Karen sleep. Well, at 10:00 I got a phone call saying that some lazy slacker called in sick today so they were running behind on the deliveries. It would be between noon and 1 when they finally got here. Ok.. whatever, no problem right? Not really, they got here at around 1:30, not too bad.

So they take both the washer and dryer downstairs into the basement to hook them up. It took them a while to get everything hooked up because of all the bolts and supports they put in these things for shipping just so the drum doesn't spin :) Ok, so they finally get everything hooked up, except that the drainage pipe on the washer is too short to reach the drain which is mounted 5 feet up on the wall. (I'm told that this is normal now in new construction). So we now have to go out and buy a hose extension just so we can run our washer.

But wait! It get's better. We plug in the Dryer and poof, nothing happens. So I decided to look at the circuit breaker to see if maybe it was tripped. It didn't look like it, so he decided to check his wiring. Everything checked out fine there and we tried it again. Nothing this time either. But this time when I go up to check the breaker, it's tripped. And it won't turn back on! So who knows if the builder screwed something up and that outlet never worked or what, but the end result is that they took the dryer back and next week, they are going to bring us a new one and bring a 210v tester to try to figure out what the problem is.

Just our luck with this builder and house :)

Compile problems

Well, I finally got the 2.6 kernel compiled on my laptop and booted. Everything comes up fine, with the exception of my sound drivers. I'm getting an error that the module for the intel ALSA sound driver is already inserted into the kernel. Problem is, I'm following the steps someone else posted when they installed Gentoo on the same machine. So I emailed him asking for his help and I'm currently waiting for a response on that.

I am also having an problem getting PSI to build. I tried to emerge it and it built QT 3.x also. Fine, it needs it. But now it complains that the build environment isn't set up properly for QT. WTF? Here is the output that I get when I try to build PSI:
proteus root # emerge psi
Calculating dependencies ...done!
>>> emerge (1 of 1) net-im/psi-0.9-r1 to /
>>> md5 src_uri ;-) psi-0.9.tar.bz2
>>> md5 src_uri ;-) qssl-2.0.tar.bz2
>>> Unpacking source...
>>> Unpacking psi-0.9.tar.bz2 to /var/tmp/portage/psi-0.9-r1/work
>>> Unpacking qssl-2.0.tar.bz2 to /var/tmp/portage/psi-0.9-r1/work
* Applying psi_gpg_fix... [ ok ]
>>> Source unpacked.
Configuring Psi ...
There was an error compiling qconf. Be sure you have a proper
Qt 3.x build environment set up.

!!! ERROR: net-im/psi-0.9-r1 failed.
!!! Function src_compile, Line 32, Exitcode 1
!!! (no error message)

I posted a message on the PSI support forum and again, I'm waiting for a response. When I get these two issues resolved, I should have a functioning laptop with most of what I want on it.

Gnome and XFree86

After a long time compiling, I was finally ready to see if X would start for me this morning when I got to work. Well, what fun would this whole process be if it worked :) It didn't. So I poked around the XF86Config file and changed a few things. Then I tried to restart X. At least this time I got some semblance of X starting, although it was all kinds of squigly lines. So after an hour of poking around on the net, I finally found an article on NVidia's website that points me to a new driver that I had to download and install. Well, everything is up and running now, except it's all scrunched in the middle of my screen. There is a large black area surrounding it. I do remember seeing somethign about using the zoom feature to fill the screen. I'll have to do further research on that. But for now, it's back to work :(

It continues

The install of Gentoo on my laptop is going rather smoothly, just really slow! I am now in my third day of installing/building and it is currently chugging away on gnome. I had it do X while I was sleeping last night and when I woke up, it was done.

I was able to find a very helpful website that detailed exactly what I am trying to do. I was able to get the sound card recognized as well as the on-board NIC and other such hardware. Now I just need to figure out what driver my 802.11g NIC needs. :)

The fun begins

After many fights with my laptop and Window$ 2000, I finally decided to scrap it and put a useable OS on the thing. I installed Gentoo on my new server and rather liked the install and it's maintainability so I decided to go with that. After finding a place to store my 2+ GB of MP3's and other data, I finally started the install last night while watching TV. The base install went off without a hitch, but then I made a mistake. I decided to update the system and bring it current. Well, there are 33 packages that need updated, just for the base OS as it is installed from Stage 3. Not too bad you think? It's been compiling since about 10:00 last night and it's now 9:00 AM!! I'm not sure what is going on since it's running on a P4 with 384M of Ram and 512M swap. We'll see.

The main reasons that it took me so long to make this decision is that I use 2 pieces of software at work that I was unable to find a decent port/replacement for. For all of our DB work with Oracle, we use TOAD, and I use Outlook for email and it's decent calendar and contacts features. Well, I did some searching thanks to google and was able to find TOra to replace TOAD and found Ximian to replace Outlook.

So now my adventure begins. Keep checking back as I'm sure I will be posting little glitches I find and their solutions, etc.

A Rude Awakening

After being (very rudely) awakened at 6:30 this morning to what was supposed to be a very reassuring sound, I realized that my UPS was failing. I heard it beeping this morning and Karen realized that the power was still on, but the UPS was complaining about not having any power. I spent the next 1/2 hour shutting down the server and removed the UPS from the loop so I could go back to sleep.

I have been noticing latetly that it was sending a signal to my server that it had lost power and then regained it, all within a matter of seconds and this would continue for a few minutes. Hmmm... The only conclusion I could come to is that the UPS is failing and that I will now need to spend over $100 to replace it :(

Happy Reverse Birthday to Me

Stacey remembered!!! Last year on January 8 (1/8), Stacey called me to wish me a happy birthday. She actually transposed the dates and thought it was my birthday when in reality, my birthday is August 1 (8/1). So, this year just to be funny, she decided to wish me a happy reverse birthday.

A Morning of Fun

As if I didn't have enough excitement yesterday with my bald eagle sighting, I had to top it this morning. When I was getting off the turnpike on my way to work, a tractor-trailer kicked up a stone that slammed into my windshield. Of course it chipped it and the chip had already started to get a couple of star points, a sign that it was going to grow. With the weather being the way it has lately, I decided to call Cindy Rowe Auto Glass and get it repaired.

I was able to set up an appointment for 10:30 this morning and took my car in. It only took them about 1/2 hour to repair the damage by filling it with a resin. And the nice thing, Liberty Mutual, my insurance company, covered the damage 100%, no deductible. It's a good thing because that one little ding would have cost me $59.95 to have repaired. I guess I won't complain about paying my car insurance anymore.

Bald Eagle Sighting

I was running a few minutes late on my way to work today but that actually turned out to be a good thing. While i was crossing the Susquehanna River on the Turnpike, a very large, dark bird took off from the south west side of the bridge. It flew directly over me, and me, being the curious raptor watcher that I am, decided to get a good look at it. Turns out I could see the massive black body, huge wingspan, and the tell tale white head. It was a mature bald eagle! Quite possibly the closest I have come to one in the wild so far. Now, I have seen them in the wild before, but they are usually several hundred yards away and I am looking through binoculars or a spotting scope, but this one was only 25 or 30 feet above me! Impressive!!

Spirit

Well, there has been much excitement in the past few days over NASA's successful landing of the Spirit rover on Mars. I got to see a little bit of it live on NASA TV thanks to my satallite dish and now I am watching the stream from NASA's website. They have re-run (in a condensed version) the moments in mission control during the decent, landing and waiting game. I'll agree with Stacey, even though I know it was a success, it was still exciting to watch and hear the relief they all felt when certain signals came back.

I look forward to watching Opportunity land live on Jan 24.

l33t link of the day

Thanks to Staczilla for this link.

The website describes this application as:
Mars24 is a cross-platform Java application and applet which displays a Mars "sunclock", a graphical representation of Mars showing the current sun- and nightsides of Mars, along with a numerical readout of the time in 24-hour format. Other displays include a plot showing the relative orbital positions of Mars and Earth and a diagram showing the solar angle for a given location on Mars.

You can also track the location of Beagle II, Viking II, the Mars Orbiters, Pathfinder and the new Spirit and Opportunity landers.

I just keep adding to my list of applications running on my machine at any given time :)

Oracle commandeers ports!!

Well... I spent a few long hours the other day trying to figure out why I could not get J-Boss to successfully start on my new RedHat box at work. I kept getting a port is already bound exception for port 8080, the standard/default port for the web side of the enterprise server. Well, after some playing around with reboots, I noticed that if I stop Oracle (to save time on reboots), J-Boss would successfully start. So, naturally, I came to the conclusion that something in Oracle was commandeering port 8080! After some reasearch on google, I came across this article that explains why Oracle grabs this port and explains how to change or disable it. Well, since I'm not all that knowledgeable about the inner working of Oracle, and our DBA was not available, I decided to just change the default port of J-Boss. Once I did that, everything started up fine upon the next reboot.

New Toys

Well, Karen and I managed to spend quite a bit of money today while we were out shopping. After finding out we were going to become parents in the not so distant future, we decided to ask for money to put towards a washer and dryer for christmas. We ended up getting a decent chunk of changes thanks to all our friends and family, and we went shopping today.

We had been looking somewhat previously and decided that we were going to buy at Home Depot. We looked online a few nights ago and basically decided on which units we wanted. Karen has been asking for a front loading washer because of her height (or lack thereof), and they are also much more efficient and easier on the clothes. One small problem, they are quite a bit more expensive! We expected to spend over $1000 for just the washer alone. Well, we found what we wanted and once we got a customer service rep to help us, we were ordered and out of there in little time. We will be taking delivery of our new GE washer and dryer on Sat, Jan 17, 2004. And the other good part, we got out of there for less that we had expected to spend on the washer alone!

New Nikon DSLR

Once again, I was doing some catch up on my photography newsgroups and mass email lists and got to my most recent issue of Moose Peterson's news letter. Apparently, Nikon has announced the intent to release a new Digital SLR camera sometime in the spring of 2004. They have already named this the D70, and based solely on what I have read in the press release and the name/number, I am guessing that this is a camera to compete with the Canon Digital Rebel which was released a few months ago.

Call me crazy, but this is one area where I don't like seeing Nikon put out something just to compete with what Canon has released. Granted, I have my preferences, but they are both excellent quality camera systems that have their individual strengths and weaknesses. I would much rather see Nikon put it's R&D efforts into developing a better professional camera system (even though I can't afford it right now :( ), than take the time to retroactively compete.

I know that even with the lower price and affordability that this new camera is sure to provide, I will not be looking into buying it when it's available. It just will not do what my photography demands. I just wish I could afford the new D2H.

Upcoming Meteor Shower

Got a phone call last night from Joey (sister's boyfriend) to let me know that he had heard on the radio that there was supposed to be a meteor shower this weekend. Well, I just got my email from spaceweather.com informing me of the upcoming event. I knew of the Leonids in November and another one that was frequently in December, but I never really heard of the annual Quadrantid shower. Turns out, this one is supposed to be one of the best this year, cloud cover permitting. I just hope that we don't get the cloud cover that they are calling for so I can actually see these. Of course, that will mean getting up around 4:00 AM on Sunday morning, but I usually get up for something kewl like that.

New Years

Well, it's 2004... All 22 hours of it so far. So far, I can't complain about anything. Spent new years eve and the midnight celebrations amongst good friends and spent tonite with family with the usual pork and sourkraut for dinner. I for one did not touch any of the sourkraut. Supposedly it brings good luck, but I have never eaten it and seem to be doing fairly well for myself these days.

Last night, Claire passed along an interesting piece of wisdom to me. She told me what her mother told her last year at this time. She said that this is now the year in which your baby will be born. Hard to imagine, but I'm very excited about this prospect. Karen is even starting to show as we had to go and get maternity clothes at the mall today and last night just so she could go out. I'm really starting to enjoy this time, and I know it's driving her nuts :) But that is my job.

Stacey also brought a present for "Fern" to dinner on Tuesday nite. I was worried that she found a bib with a picture of a fern on it or something similar, but it turned out to be an Elmo book from her sister's childhood. Thanks Stacey! Please don't get any ideas about making something for "Fern".