Progeny

I've been playing around with Progeny Debian Linux today. I downloaded the CD images yesterday, which took 6 hours, and I had to get them from Denmark, as all the U.S. mirrors were swamped. So far, I like it, though I'm installing KDE right now, because I really don't dig Gnome so much. The installation was fairly painless, and detected all of the hardware in my Dell Precision 410 correctly. I didn't like the way it asked for my monitor capabilities, I prefer the Mandrake/RedHat method of just letting me select my monitor model from the list, rather than asking for some fairly generic statistics, or wanting me to dig out my manual and give the vertical and horizontal refresh rates...

I really liked the way it asked about how I wanted to set up Samba, giving me the choice to launch it as a daemon or from inetd.

If you want to give it a shot, the CD image files are available on my workstation here, via FTP.

The bad old days

I'm having a bit of computer deja vu today, as I install Windows NT 4.0 on a Gateway G6-200.  This must have been quite the computer in its day, with a Pentium Pro 200 CPU, 72 (?) MB of RAM, and a 4GB SCSI drive. It's got an Adaptec 2940U (one of the best SCSI cards ever made) and a Matrox Millennium in it.  This would have been the fastest thing on the block when it was new.  The warranty just ran out, since the machine was made 1/09/97...

Catching Up

Al has done it now, he's gone and broken the screen on his iBook.  Ouch.  Reminds me of the time I cracked my Handspring Visor, only more expensive...

CNet takes back their 7 rating for Netscape 6, giving it a painful four out of ten points instead.  Netscape 6 does suck, but I think Netscape 4 is horrible too.  I'm installing Netscape 6 on all of the Windows 2000 machines I'm giving faculty, because 4.7x keeps giving me registry access errors if the user isn't a "Power User".  I tell them that they should use Internet Explorer, but a lot of them refuse to, for purely political reasons, in which case, they can suffer through Netscape 6.  I had high hopes for this version, but they've fallen flat.  There's no compelling reason to use it, rather than Internet Explorer.

Just as I reach contentment, something comes along to make me question my job.   An acquantiance here at the University will be hiring an underling sometime this spring, and he's been telling me about the position, and nudging me to apply.  It'd be in a new direction, working more with web stuff and less with hardware, but it would come with a significant pay increase.  I'll probably apply for it, but I'm not sure if I want the job..

I'm actually getting caught up here at work, it's a bizarre feeling.  I've still got some new computers to deliver, but no one is waiting on me for anything.  I've sent out e-mails, asking them when they'd like them delivered, so I just get to sit back, and schedule it all in, much less frantic that it has been for the last two months.

Wakeup Call

I just spent an hour and a half removing the W95.MTX virus from a faculty member's computer.  It's a nasty little bug, it infects your wsock32.dll file as well as several others.  It will crash your web browsers if you try to access anything at Symantec's web site, keeping you from updating your virus definitions to remove it.  I finally wound up using the removal tool, in conjunction with Norton AntiVirus 2001, for which I updated the virus info manually.  It's a nasty one folks, so make sure those virus definitions are up to date.

Here's a way to get your heart beating in the morning: delete your "Inbox" folder by mistake.  It's okay, I've recovered it now, but I was in panic mode for a bit there.  I've got 400 messages in it, many of which contain important information, like what needs to be fixed.  Sure, I could have gotten one of the central computer folks to retrieve my folder from a backup tape, but I would have been torn between my need for that information, and my need to save face...

Jornada 820

It's always a good idea to check new homes for corpses.  It seems a new homeowner in Toledo, Ohio had a nasty suprise waiting in the living room for him.  Boy, you'd think someone would check the house before just putting it up for auction.  All I have to say, is that the new homeowner is going to need some serious rental time with a Rug Doctor to get that smell out. This quote kills me:

Dean Nowakowski, 33, who lives two houses away, said the last time he saw Bearringer was more than two years ago. “I always wondered what happened to that dude,” he said. “It got awful quiet over there.”

I left work a bit early so that I could go to the eye doctor.  I'm glad I didn't do it earlier in the day, as I'm just now starting to regain my vision well enough to read my computer screen.  They dialated my pupils, and it took about 6 hours to wear off.  Prior to that, it looked to me as if someone had smeared my nice monitor with Vaseline, since I couldn't focus well enough to read anything.  It was worth it, as he discovered that the contacts I'd been wearing for the past two weeks were the wrong size.  The ones I'm now wearing are much more comfortable, and I'm 20/20, albeit a very fuzzy 20/20, since the contacts don't correct for my astigmatisms.  In case you're curious, my vision is pretty bad, my contacts correct -6.5 diopters in both eyes.  So, without them, I can see clearly for about 5-7 inches...

It looks like I'm going to have two PDA's now.  We managed to get a couple of Hewlett-Packard's Jornada 820 devices ordered today.  I say "managed" because it was rather a hassle.  The 820 is being discontinued, which is why it's so cheap, but there is no immediate replacement or equivalent to it.  The only place that seems to have them in stock is HPShopping.com, which does not take purchase orders.  Working for a University where the purchasing process is not a simple one, I can't just order equipment on the purchasing credit card.  HPShopping told me to contact the educational division of HP, who can take P.O.'s.  Of course, they don't have any of the 820's in stock, only the HPShopping.com division does.  The solution wound up being the Dean ordering the devices on her credit card, and then she'll have the University reimburse her for the cost.  What a pain.

So why do I need this, in addition to my "Visor"?  Well, they're two very different devices.  The Jornada is more of an alternative to a laptop, it's something you can sit down and type out some e-mail on, or surf a web page or two.  You can't do that so easily with the Visor.  But, at $540, it's a lot cheaper than a laptop, only weighs 2.5 pounds, and it can run 10 hours between recharging it's batteries.  You can display simple PowerPoint presentations with it, it's got a standard VGA-out port, and there are quite a few appliations you can run on Windows CE.