Advogato blog for rybolov

18 Aug 2001

Sat, 18 Aug 2001 00:28:33 GMT

Argh!!! I've been pounding my head up against the debian package of phpgroupware, and now I'm a little bit sore from it. I heard on the phpgroupware IRC channel that the debian packages are hosed. So I wasted alot of time trying to get them going, and I'm a bit miffed. So I guess it's a quick trip to the cvs and I'm golden, Ja?

I'm putting a simple script on all my debian boxen today, /sbin/upgrade, just because I'm lazy.

#!/bin/bash
apt-get update && apt-get -f -y upgrade && dpkg --pending --configure

I went to EUGLUG meeting last night, installing some low-end boxes to be used as web terminals for a community computer room. Details here.

Given my background, I have a new mantra... "Must get Cryptonomicon, must read Cryptonomicon". I knew this before, but now I know even more that I must get it and read it. I got John Katz's Geeks and the introduction itself was worth the price of the book, so I'm pretty happy with it, even though he has a shortage of lovers in the techie community.

Today was all spent calling people and trying to get things going on the money front. You just have to love IT recruiters sometimes.

I just got on the "Job Jar" for PEAK, in Corvallis. It's a list of projects that need people, but for the local linux community. Most of it is web schtuff, but it might be an interesting way to have a little bit of fun.

Musically, I've been listening to alot of Dr. Didg. very interesting guy, IMO. He learned the didgeridoo as a physics project, and now he can make it do all sorts of fun things. Add to that a bit of sampling, cool funk/jazz/world beats, and some electric background, and you've got a very good band.

14 Aug 2001

Tue, 14 Aug 2001 20:21:13 GMT

So I check the notorious slashdot today, and there's an article on search engines... hmmm... so now I've added one wisenut very quickly to Castor. Eventually I'll get the search engines all listed and working, then it's a matter of looking at the engine behind all the fun to see why I'm not getting the right results from some of them. I know for a fact that WhatUSeek is getting the information submitted, but for some reason, Castor says it's not going through. Oh well, life is hard sometimes...

All this talk from gregorsamsa about search engines is funny to me and relevant to what I'm doing. mobius talked about how he was bemused by the results from findwhat. Findwhatis a pay-to-play search engine, and one of the ones I've been having a heartache over because they don't have a free submit your site page that I've found.

I have this friend that I've talked to on occassion.... She used to be a recruiter for any skilled worker. I've worked for her a couple of times as a Russian Translator. So anyway, now she's the recruiting manager for Info Group NW, and I'm on the short list for a few positions. I guess that's a score for the small town thing we've got going on here. The funny thing is, she's bounced around town to different companies, and we always seem to cross paths from time to time. I think this is the first time that the small-town thing has ever been good for me..... hmmmm, makes me wonder.

13 Aug 2001

Mon, 13 Aug 2001 17:26:49 GMT

Just got back from this weekend... a pretty good time was had.

I ended up in Corvallis for the Install fest hosted by the Mid-Willamette LUG. I got there for the last little bit, so not much was happening. From what I heard, sounded like there were alot of people that showed, and lots of good things going on.

I stayed at Cooper and Kassetra's, talking all night, and the next day I took Cooper up to the Erma Bells. I fished the lakes, and he took pictures.... a couple of geeks doing their things in the woods. When we got back, I was so tired I didn't feel safe to drive, so I slept at their house. I just now got back, and I think I smell like a yeti, which isn't as bad as it sounds. ;^)

I got spidered by picsearch so I had a look at what they do. It's interesting to me, so I fired off an email to see if they have an URL Submit page that I can add to Castor.

As far as Castor goes, I've eliminated alot of the search engines that don't work for some reason or another, and I'm slowly picking through the ones that don't, and trying to figure out why. At least google, hotbot, northern lights, and excite (sometimes) work, so it's still a good tool. It just needs more love. obligatory link

11 Aug 2001

Sat, 11 Aug 2001 20:31:23 GMT

OK, so I'm adding entries and fixing up the Castor spider my development version here, and I'm just getting amazed at things...

The original Castor code was written last year, and in that time, the state of search engines has changed considerably.

So many search engines now are only pay-to-be-listed. That's so strange to me. <rant voice="whiney"> Hello, it's just a search engine, not religion </rant>

To their credit, there are several out there that are still free, and that allow you to submit to them from the outside world. Yea, verily. But for now, I'm taking out the search engines that don't work, and I'll figure out why one by one.. I think it will take a bit of time, though.

Heard this today, in my random mp3 collection:

By the old seaside
Ain't no place far to go
I don't know
I don't know
Ain't no place far to go
It's a dollar, she say
Te amo le mas
Te amo le mas
Santo

--Pixies, Santo

So today, I'm off to Corvallis for an install fest, or at least the last of it, and then it's off to the mountains by myself to fish my skinny little butt off and fall asleep alone under a tarp. Life is sweet.

10 Aug 2001

Fri, 10 Aug 2001 23:50:02 GMT

OK, I'm getting back on the bandwagon for the past few days, so I've been noticeably absent in my diary here. I finally was able to adjust back to the "real world" after being deployed.

I've been doing all of my development in PHP/mysql, but I'm so eagerly eyeballing doing apps in GTK/GNOME. There's something that just calls to me, and I think it's called MDI.... or at least that's just the tip of it all. *drool*

I've got a search engine submit page finally up. It's raw but it's alive. submit.rybolov.net

In other departments, I just bought a Dr. Didg CD, and I'm pretty much hooked on it. I liked the didgeridoo before, but they've got a nice style. I sent off an email to their contact address begging for them to come to the Oregon Country Fair.

5 Aug 2001

Sun, 5 Aug 2001 04:41:18 GMT

Back from Annual Training with the Oregon Army National Guard.

Had lots of time to think to myself, and it was very good.

Went on a platoon-sized live-fire at Ft Lewis. We went out on a patrol with live amunition, and we got to shoot some targets and then send out an assault element.

As for the techie things... well, I'm still in the "go kill things" mode, so it will be a few days before I'm back and ready to program. I'm just glad I still have a box to come home to.

14 Jul 2001

Sat, 14 Jul 2001 08:54:40 GMT

S'alright, S'OK. S'OK, S'alright.

This morning I spent hanging out with the kids while Alyse slept. She got home at 0830, having been up all night.

Evening-ish, I went over to the kyrgan house to rescue him from php/MySQL and to finally get close to finishing this project I've been working on for him. It's putting some production figures into a database, and retrieving them with selectable criteria. Of course, the whole thing uses htaccess to keep track which users are which, and I've built quite a scheme for adding/deleting, and updating users, clients, and client locations.

One of these days I'll even have to explain how it all works together to him....lol

sethcohn made me a template for business cards that he's going to do a run on for me. I'm oh-so thankful for it. Check out the logo he used.

My chest is sore where I landed on my bike yesterday. I landed right on my handlebar end as it was sitting on the ground and sticking straight up. I think I'm going to get a huge, wicked-looking bruise on my sternum. :^) That's what I get for having too many things to think about instead of the task at hand, and when that includes logs and rocks, you're going to get burned.

I'm going to the Oregon Country Fair tomorrow (sigh, today even) with some friends from Corvallis and Portland. This promises to be interesting, since one of them is very straight-laced (like my roommate back in Monterey, 10 years ago) and will probably lose his mind the first time he sees a topless, painted woman. I'll try not to laugh my ass of.

I'm looking at working on a project that I've been wanting to do for several months. It's called the Castor Submit Spider, and it's a PHP application that uses the Snoopy Class (replicates a simple web browser) to submit your url to multiple web sites in one go. I think this is a very good gift to the world, and comparable systems I've seen use a weird combination of frames and javascript with timers and targets. I think what really needs to be done is a standard form for the front-end with some widgets to click on and a place to fill out what URL you want to submit. It all seems fairly easy enough.

I dunno, I'm feeling hungry again, and ready to kick some booty. I had an interesting, self-explorative week, and I'm seeing the results now.

13 Jul 2001

Fri, 13 Jul 2001 09:32:01 GMT

Biking, biked across town, climbed Dillard, and launched my body down a cool singletrack/switchbacks. On the way back, I rode through some of the ritziest houses in town, and it really made me feel weird because here are these people who think they've got it all, but they live packed right up against each other. I guess the Idaho boy in me keeps popping out at unexpected times.

Well, I worked some more on my project for Paul... retrieving info from a MySQL database with php. It's simpler than we originally figured it would be, but I'm doing it in my "spare" time so it ends up taking forever to get something done on it.

So here it is early in the Friday morning, and I'm going to sleep.

10 Jul 2001

Tue, 10 Jul 2001 01:47:11 GMT

Blah... another day where not much happened. I guess I was too busy over the weekend, and now I have to make up for it.

I got a NDA/Noncompete rough draft from a company I most likely will do contractor work for... I'll check it out and see what I think. They want me to secure up a few boxen, do some installation/auditing, all for whatever rate is fair, and then see if they like what I do to it.

I've been thinking alot, and I finally came to a conclusion. I think my tower box died because it got jealous. I spent Saturday out on the town with the sexy, thin, low-maintenance laptop, and in a jealous rage, the tower box blew a fuse. Oh well, sometimes lovers do that. That's what I get for not beating down the beast from time to time, and it got too attached to me. It's always ugly when a good machine turns down the dark and twisted path.

What else? Well, I spent alot of time being the responsible adult on call while Alyse ran amok and made a parade float. I applied to a webmaster/sysad job for the local school district, doing advising and running the webserver.

9 Jul 2001

Mon, 9 Jul 2001 10:28:43 GMT

Well, this was an interesting day. I installed a shopping cart for Adam, and got that all working, at least database wise.

in the afternoon, I went with all the Gaming Geeks (sethcohn, kbob, Paul, and others) to Emerald park, where we had a picnic/BBQ. Cooper Stevenson and his wife Kassetra came down from Corvallis to ostensibly coordinate LUG things (Corvallis and Eugene LUG's). I've been talking to Kassetra on POSIXnap, an opennap server network, and she's pretty cool. I had also emailed cooper a few times, and it's funny that the two are married, because I know them from different places.

When I got home, my workstation/mail box was dead. I ran it over to Paul's, and he couldn't revive it. So, I've got an almost new box and the RAM, HD, and proc out of the old one.... it's all for the best probably, because I might have to give the box to my former employer in the future.

At any rate, it's way late and I'm tired and I need to talk to alot of people tomorrow... so I'm stumbling to bed.