the Compleat Ralph Hogaboom » technology

This is no paint by numbers thriller

ralphhogaboom — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 19:20:00 +0000

I ordered a server from Dell a few weeks ago. It was accidentally shipped to my coworker Tina in Bremerton. I’ve been pestering for her to deliver it to me ever since.

[tinag@talk] That’s it. You get off my back if you ever want to see your server.

[ralphh@talk] What? Where is it? Is it okay? What have you done?

[tinag@talk] First, to prove that I still have it, here’s a picture of … it.

I actually gasped when I opened the picture of my server, bound and blindfolded.

[tinag@talk] Second, tomorrow you will receive, in the mail, the power button. The day after, a CD drive. On the third day, you’ll receive the power cable. And so on. To be perfectly clear: if you ever want to see your server in one piece, you will leave me alone starting right now.

[ralphh@talk] Listen, Tina, we can reason. I know you’re hurting inside, deep down. That’s the only thing that could cause this. But we can work through it. As a team! We can find …. we can find you some help, some professional help.

[tinag@talk] Bye for now.

[system@talk] User tinag has closed the conversation window.

Bon Appetit

ralphhogaboom — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 14:56:00 +0000

It started with the Sextracker statistic I stumbled over in a tech journal.

“70% of all internet pornography viewing is done between the hours of 9AM and 5PM.”
–Sextracker.com

Then, an employee brings in a home computer. “My child has been looking at porn. Can you help me track the activities?” Sure, during lunch breaks. Then — “How do I look at browser history? I think my boyfriend has been looking at porn. LOTS of porn.” I wonder if that has anything to do with the darkening skies, rain, etc driving people back inside.

The interesting thing here is that’s the conflict isn’t stemming from looking at naked people. It’s from secrets. In both cases, people are hurt that those who view aren’t open about it.

We’re supposed to be enlightened in America, right? Porn 50 years ago seems like National Geographic photo essays on naked natives. Or the chunky pulp stuff which gradually gave way to Betty Page, the golden age of pinups. But today, we have events celebrating the artistic side of porn. We have Gina Lynn’s column at Wired (yes, I read it), Sex Drive. We have Dan Savage, columnist for the Stranger, who is so over the top I feel queasy when I read him. We have researchers showing monkey porn to male monkeys (I couldn’t make this up). We have the very people in my office that came to me for help saying “… and I understand being curious, and wanting to see it …” They’re stressing their understanding side.

It would be so unhip to condemn porn.

In both of the above cases, the person worried tried to separate the action (viewing porn) from the trespass (keeping a secret / lying). I was pulled in initially for my technical skills in sussing out the porn, but gave advice anyway.

I don’t think you can keep these things separate, because the action is what drives the trespass. If someone wasn’t confused about what role porn should play in their life, they hide it. They don’t feel confident with seeing it, and so their insecurity compells them to hide.

It’s funny, because the thing that would clear this up is confrontation. But when you’re hiding something, you figure out how to do it well. A constant focus on clearing the web browser history, or hiding your magazines, or whatever else you’re insecure about. I say funny because the root of the issue is there, and it’s being ignored by the focus on hiding. A hider isn’t working on that root, only on hiding.

Until somebody gets wise and it’s knock, knock, we need to talk.

Yes I Was Trying To Drive Her Nuts

ralphhogaboom — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 22:32:00 +0000

[1:44:12 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: How’re you on router configuration these balmy days?
[1:44:53 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: Balmy days of yore, if you will.
[1:45:10 PM] Doc Golbeck says: What type of router config?
[1:45:41 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: Either using the VLAN stuff in the powerconnect, or using a spare IP to give our conference room segregated internet access.
[1:45:58 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: It’s becoming trendy for people around here to ask for that.
[1:46:19 PM] Doc Golbeck says: It was my understanding that Jim did not want the segregated internet access in the conference room…
[1:46:27 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: Ah, that is not the case.
[1:46:33 PM] Doc Golbeck says:
[1:46:51 PM] Doc Golbeck says: Yeah because he doesn’t want people to have to VPN in to get access to our network..
[1:46:59 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: The big thing is to have a segregated network for WIFI right now.
[1:47:02 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: Yeah, maybe you’re right.
[1:47:29 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: But he is ok with both APs being used, WPA on the lan and WEP on the segregated vlan.
[1:47:38 PM] Doc Golbeck says: |-) Hoss, We just discussed that at our last big meeting and he said he didn’t want that.
[1:47:56 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: Holl, I have had several high-level and high-function meetings with him.
[1:47:56 PM] Doc Golbeck says: You trying to drive me nuts?
[1:48:00 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: No, I’m not.
[1:48:06 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: You’re clearly already mad.
[1:48:18 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: Why, I read in your employee file that you clawed your way out of an asylum.
[1:49:19 PM] Doc Golbeck says: very funny. I’m not mad but we’ve been through this before and that is what I recommended but Jim didn’t like the idea and felt that with the new wireless security it was an overkill…
[1:49:24 PM] Hoss Hogaboom says: So, this sailor walks into a bar. He has a steering wheel in the front of his pants.
The bartender says “Why’s that down your pants?”
The sailer says “Arrgggh, it’s drivin’ me nuts!”
[1:49:33 PM] Doc Golbeck says: Dios Mio!
[1:49:54 PM] Doc Golbeck says: ring ring

Pointless Post

ralphhogaboom — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:02:00 +0000

[8:48:22 AM] Doc Golbeck says: Hey, I am trying to get a pw and this is what I get:

Server object error ‘ASP 0177 : 8007007f’
Server.CreateObject Failed
/lib/libhogaboom.asp, line 24
8007007f

[8:48:41 AM] Hoss says: Yeah, hang on 1 seconds … I’m working on that right now …

[8:48:49 AM] Doc Golbeck says: oh, ok

[8:49:19 AM] Hoss says: You can get it from my machine for right now.

[8:49:28 AM] Doc Golbeck says: Thanks!

[8:50:13 AM] Doc Golbeck says: can’t resolve by netbios name, what’s the IP?

[8:50:29 AM] Hoss says: .187.

[8:50:37 AM] Doc Golbeck says: thx

[9:06:39 AM] Hoss says: I rebooted that server on Saturday. It did have SP1 on it …. it came up from reboot just fine. BUT – apparently, there’s something in in that stops ADO connections, like what I use to access an Access database.

[9:06:56 AM] Hoss says: SO – for now, it is broken. I’ll let you know when I get it back up.

[9:08:59 AM] Doc Golbeck says: k

Update: And for the record, installing SP1 and rebooting the application sererfixed it.

Yesterday morning Sophie was kissing me goodbye as I was on my way out to work. She said, very sweetly:

“Daddy, can you bring me some claws home from your work today?”

She’s been fixed on dinosaurs as of late, which I’m guessing is the source of interest in natural defense. So I made her some claws.

She played with them off and on last night for quite awhile. Then said:

“Daddy, would you make me some scary teeth?”

CANT STOP

ralphhogaboom — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 10:25:00 +0000

I CAN’T STOP PLAYING SPIDERMAN 2 THE VIDEO GAME PLEASE SOMEBODY STOP ME BEFORE I PLAY AGAIN

I Invented Linux

ralphhogaboom — Wed, 23 Jun 2004 15:12:00 +0000

I’ve been seeing a lot of articles lately about Linux, and whether or not Linux Torvalds is the creator.

He’s not the creator. I wrote Linux.

It was way back in the early 90′s, and I’d just gotten my first computer: a TRS-80. It included the BASIC language, a quick how-to-program guide, and hookups for the TV. I whizzed through the book. Programming quickly became so much to me.

But BASIC was too limited. I began to study some of UNIX, but I was in 8th grade – other than aging texts at the library and some rudimentary access to it on the local college campus when I could sneak in, I couldn’t really get much experience with it.

I needed to start programming in C, and I needed a compiler. A guy I’d met online named R_STALLMAN1989 had a C compiler he let me use, called GCC. It was great! Although working in C on that old TRS-80 was rough, I was able to do it. But it had so many bugs!

That’s why I was so embarrassed when I finally released an OS kernel to emulate UNIX; I called it Ralnux 0.1.

I posted it to a newsgroup, and a young hotshot named Linus was there. He wrote me an email about what license it was under, and then — zap! — my computer was gone. The motherboard fried right out from under me. I couldn’t get back on the BBS’s for two years. My parents were too broke to buy a new computer… and by the time I was able to, and checked the newsgroup, my crummy OS was gone. Linux, written by Linus Torvalds, was all the rage amongst my old crowd, and I felt left out. Besides, I was starting High School. I didn’t have time for programming that was going to lead nowhere.

It wasn’t until 2001 that I looked at the source code to Linux. It was clearly mine. Even some of the same mistakes I made were there.

But I see the contribution that Linux and Open Source has made to the world; I wasn’t going to do anything with it anyway. I’m glad that somebody was there to take the ball and run with it.

But what was so wrong with Ralnux?

I Hate MSN.

ralphhogaboom — Tue, 04 May 2004 04:09:00 +0000

I hate MSN.

mnt /mnt/usbstick

ralphhogaboom — Thu, 19 Feb 2004 17:08:00 +0000

That was easy … too easy. I just got a USB pen drive from work (Kingston 64 MB DataTraveller) for convenience of file transfers (hot fixes, .ini files, etc). Plugged it into my linux box and it worked. Here’s how I did it.

Checked that the USB modules were loaded

# /sbin/lsmod | grep usb

Looking good. Next, created a mount point.

# mkdir /mnt/usbdrive

Then, edited my fstab file.

# vi /etc/fstab

and added the following line:

/dev/sda1 . . /mnt/usbdrive . . vfat . . user,noauto,umask=0 . 0 0

Then saved the file, and quit the terminal. Lastly, I plugged int he drive and opened a command line.

$ mount /mnt/usbdrive

Voila! Nicely mounted.