Boy, time sure flies. It’s already been a year since I jumped on the weblogging bandwagon and surprisingly enough, I’m still on it.
When I first started, I didn’t think I’d really have all that much to say. I probably still don’t, but I say what I want people to know about me, what I do and what goes on around me. If anyone actually reads it, even better!
Being an anniversary, naturally I thought I’d look over my entries for the past year to see if I could spot any evolution in my weblogging. I’m not sure my writing has changed or improved at all. Lots of linkage, lots of writings that I just seem to cut off without really finishing. I tend to do that when writing. Write and write until I run out of stuff to say, then just end it. It definitely makes it hard for me to write up my research, but I’ve been working at changing that. Bad habits die hard though.
It’s been a fun year, and definitely busy and eventful.
I think one of the more interesting things I’ve discovered doing this weblogging thing is other webloggers. It’s interesting and fun to meet people through their weblogs. Some are very personal and spill out all their guts for the world to see, others less so. And all the variety in weblogs! It feels like you can surf and surf and surf until your modem/router burns out and only just touch the surface of the weblog iceberg. Simply amazing. I love cruising through my list of regular weblogs and finding links to interesting things, or checking out a random weblog at Weblog Review.
I think I’ll hang around the weblogging world a while longer
1st Blogiversary: Today, or tomorrow?
June 23, 2003 I made my first weblog entry, which I think would make it my first blogiversary. But thanks to leap year, today marks the 365th day this weblog has been up and running.
Maybe I’ll celebrate both days.
Need more gadgets!
Ok, so the laptop is running quite nicely, and I’ve tested the wireless in a couple of spots at work. I even did some wardriving last night on the way home from eating out. Found a surprising number of APs on the short drive home.
Now the wife is pestering me to get some kind of wirless network thing going on with our desktop.
Ok. Just dropped a brick load of dough on the laptop, and now I have to go out and spend more. That’s technology for you. Well, something I planned anyway…just not quite so soon.
So now I have to learn about wireless networking. I figure I’ll need a wireless AP to start. Tried to do some wired networking between the two, but I only succeeded in messing up the desktop so that I can’t even connect through the modem. It dials and connects, but all I get are socket errors when I try to get online.
No problem, I’ve been wanting to rebuild the machine anyway. It’s been a while since I last did it, and some things are getting flaky. And thanks to the 160GB hard drive I put in it, I can back everything up to that drive and safely blow away the contents of the primary.
Houseboat Hooligans: The Garbage Scow
It started off to be a fine house boating trip. Just another pilgrimage to the house boating mecca of the Shuswap lakes. Only this time, there were womenfolk accompanying us. Food, beer and liquor were available in abundance. With the women aboard, the food was of a somewhat higher quality than the ramen and dry and canned soups of previous trips. Canned and dry goods just wouldn’t do. They wanted something fancier and more elegant. Fresh meat was stocked in the fridge. And there was also shrimp among the provisions. Dinner the first few nights was good, much better than most were normally used to house boating.
The next couple of days were spent floating in on the water between several regular destinations. None of these destinations had facilities for disposing of garbage though. This wasn’t something that we needed to deal with in the past. Trash from dry and canned goods compacts easily and doesn’t take up much space. But this time, the trash was more organic. The trash was shrimp shells and meat packaging. So for two or three days, garbage bags accumulated on the back deck. The weather was warm and sunny. We floated around blissfully drunk, pointing the houseboat into the wind so the smell from the back deck wouldn’t be blown into the main cabin. And then, one day, the wind stopped, or the smell of trash and shrimp shells baking in the sun became too overpowering. In any case, suddenly the trash needed to be disposed of. The stench from the trash was just to much to handle.
The map was consulted to find the nearest garbage disposal area. It was at the other end of the arm and would take most of a day to get there. Too late to head off for it, it would have to wait until morning. So another night was spent partying on the beach and getting loaded. There was little happening near our houseboat though. The smell was just too bad. All the action was happening up the beach.
The next morning we traveled to the Narrows and disposed of our trash. But the smell lingered. Not nearly as bad as before, but it was still there.
Shrimp was never brought on a houseboat trip again.
Stupid computer tricks
Now this is what true computer hacking is all about. Make your computer beep at you or flash keyboard lights when your firewall drops packets. It’s a simple one, but I think it has a high wow factor, especially for non-admins and non-geeks. Maybe I’m just easily entertained.
The Spinning Cube of Potential Doom is another nifty visualization for firewalls.
I like the beeping one. I’ll have to try that out on my server.