BOFHJournal - June 2001

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29/06/2001 [12:45] This morning has been BIOS updates for laptops, pricing for SODIMMs for same (did you know you have to disassemble a Dell Latitude LS H400ST to put more RAM into it, and I'm not allowed to (void guarantee)) and navigating the subtle intricate paths that must be travelled to update our 3Com AirConnect firmware and software to v2.0. We need v2.0 because it supports 128bit encryption, and there's no way people are using unencrypted RF traffic in my building. [14:40] RIght, off to meeting. More on Access Points and Encryption on Monday.

28/06/2001 [10:30] Happy birthday to my girlfriend. 24 today. This evening we all go out on the grass and eat pizza until we burst. We may do something on the weekend too. Probably go to London and look in the Tate Modern and the British Museum. I'm trying to decide if I try with these boot disks again this morning. It's annoying work as I never seem to get anywhere. [12:35] Oh, caloo-calay, frabtious day! I've got it working. Here's some key word in case people start looking for the solution I've just found for working with "Ghost, Multicast, boot disk, 3Com NIC, 3CCFE575CT, packet driver, problems, initialisation, initialise". The bits I needed were the disk I created which didn't work before Christmas, a newer elpc575.dos file from someone else's attempt and the line "FORCESPEED=200" (that's 100Mb/sec full duplex) in my protocol.ini file. From now I now have boot disks which'll deal with any machines in the building which will be around come the move to Windows 2000. Naturally this is pretty useless for any group multicasting of Windows 2000 machines as Ghost 6.0 Enterprise Edition doesn't deal with Active Directory or Domains under Windows 2000. I'm hoping that I can just replace the ghost.exe with a newer one, come that time. Anyway, for one-off ghostings of the new images the secretaries will be getting, this is just fine. Likewise the laptops. [15:35] And so it came to pass, that with the advent of Ghost boot disks the last Windows 95 installation in the building (on a laptop) was obliterated utterly in a haze of not much better Windows 2000. Even though the problems would be much greater now, at least the screen would look nicer, and USB would work correctly.

27/06/2001 [12:35] It's a sad day when I'm so tired in the morning that I put on odd socks from the pile-which-hasn't-been-matched-up-yet. Also that the monitor which broke last night (power fine, connection fine, no image) works once I've carried it up and down stairs. Why couldn't it have simply started working at 20:00 last night? [15:10] I never should have gotten back into it. I was lulled into a false sense of security by that damned new Dell Latitude L400 and it's 3Com 3C980-oh-and-I-pretend-to-be-a-3C905-as-well built in NIC. I thought to myself, well if you can boot from floppy and fire up Ghost happily, I should try with those 3CCFE575CT-D PCMCIA cards again and see if I can't get something that'll make installing Windows 2000 the work of a couple of seconds, and then sitting back while the image goes across. How fucking wrong I was. I'm now in a twisty maze of protocol.ini and driver files, all alike. If I meet any grues it's going to go very hard for them. [16:55] Right, that's it. I've had enough of this crap. I'm going to go home soon, open all the windows and put Gladiator on the DVD very loud.

26/06/2001 [14:44] Again I'm forced to resort to Google to solve a problem with Windows (NT and 200) and Office 2000. Basic short story is to look at this link and then do what is says. Everything works properly then. The problem is that I want this to work when I do network point installs under 2000 next year. I thought I could export the registry tweaks as a .reg file but it doesn't seem to import properly. Any suggestions appreciated. This means that the Ghost images I've been doing are now useless as none of them have the special alteration in place. I could Ghost this finished machine (local user set up, printer installed, ready to be shipped), put the old image back on, fix all the changes, then image that, then put the original back, or I could wait until I get another machine and do it another day. It's a lovely day here, again. And I'm stuck inside, again. Lunchtime cycling was pretty good. Should have gone for longer. We do need a new web server. Perhaps we'll just get an Optiplex GX110 and have done with it. Faster disk, faster CPU, more RAM and a good chance that if we want to upgrade it, it'll work rather than barfing on the hardware. We will be putting NT on it and not 2000, because I know its foibles and ticklish bits, and 2000 has far too many holes open to the network at the moment. [16:40] Right, now that I've registered for LinuxExpo 2001 at Olympia on 4/5 July 2001, I can start deciding which T-shirts to wear to the event. It's going to be a prime geek event, so it calls for O'Really designs. I'm thinking "Snooping Email" and "Distributing Clue". [18:15] Incidentally, anyone who's going to be there can look out for me. You all know what I look like unless you've only been to the site with lynx (reminds me, must check the new pages with lynx soon). I'll even sign T-shirts with a pen (supplied by you), but my signature isn't very good.

25/06/2001 [12:35] I expect there are errors associated with they, but I've redesigned some of the pages on the co-larters/O'Really section. I'd appreciate you looking over them and pointing out any errors. I'm fairly proud of them from a parody point of view, other than that, it's more of the same. Some of the image manipulation was fairly tricky too, especially where I didn't have the font they used and I had to rearrange the letters and add my own. The metric buttload of RAM from Dell arrived this morning, in a 'padded box' and not secured in any way. Rattling about the place. I'm not best pleased. I need to schedule time for completing the install of the machine which is going out soon, today, as well as doing some of the other stuff I've been putting off since I started the redeisgn. [14:30] Email spam, in Tex. Novel, I'll grant you. [15:20] Your HTML snippet for the day comes, amazingly, from Microsoft and can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/preview/smarttags/default.asp. Over the next few days I'll be deSmartTaging the entire site, plus any others I do from now on.

22/06/2001 [14:00] Sod the work, I'm parodying again today. With luck it'll either be finished by end of play today, ot some time this evening/Saturday morning. It's just one page, but it makes a certain part of the site look better. Or will. [15:00] Dave Gorman has a good webcam up at http://freespace.virgin.net/dave.gorman/webcam.html which appeals to me quite a bit. [17:30] Running low on inspiration. I'm going to have to leave this new page until the weekend, when I'll have the resources on my machine at home and some alcohol to get my brain running a bit smoother. Now I look at it it's not really anything special. Just something to keep my brain from getting bored and doing some actual work today. Also, reverse engineering XHTML down to HTML4.0/Transitional has a certain terrible fascination that I couldn't not do it. Like I said, imitation through parody (and nicking pages from other people) is about the only thing I do really well. I may not be a good artist, but damn, one part of this thing shows just how skilled I am at image manipulation.

21/06/2001 [13:25] I hate NT. I used to be able to install NT 4.0 onto a Dell GX1 in about six minutes. Only this time the NIC drivers wouldn't take until I'd slapped on Service Pack 5 via CD (normally I don't have to). Naturally, until I had the NIC working, not much else was happening. So that ate up the entire morning. The machine's back in circulation now. Next time it happens I'll take a Ghost image at the point where it diverges from other machines on the network to save time. I would have done it this time, only I didn't. It's almost a relief to set up a Windows 2000 box this afternoon. Say what you like about Microsoft and the operation of their operating systems. The installers (while much less tweakable to the average user) seem to work better with each iteration. At least on standard hardware. I should be going to Central tomorrow to have a look at ePO and take some of the techies there through an installation and configuration. I may not though, it depends how things go here. [18:20] This afternoon I've installed a Windows 2000 box, ghosted it at the point when it was about to diverge from every other install I'll ever do and saved that somewhere to save me the effort next time. I've also recovered a laptop from one person and loaned out another. I hate doing it, but that's what they're here for, I guess. I note that Xawtv (what I use for the webcam) is really coming on now. I should upgrade the OS and the software on it at some point. It may be retro, but with a day's work I could actually have a box which isn't some kind of frankensteinian creation of patches and stuff. It might make it easier to maintain, too. Still, it never crashes (touch wood) and doesn't seem to get overloaded. It'd be for the scraps cabinet if it wasn't doing what it's doing, otherwise. Not many comments (read: mostly none) from anyone anywhere about the new designs. My mum emailed me to say she liked the LART Pocket Reference design, not that it's new. I think she's just been busy. Some time soon I should get around to running the damned Perl scripts I wrote to transfer everyone's home directories to the new hard drive (which has been spinning, partition-free for the past month) and make the shares behave nicely. I dunno. I think I'm still a little wary of Perl + Windows NT. It doesn't seem right. Gym this evening, if I can prize the girlfriend away from her CGI/Perl/Oracle web application she's developing. I installed Win98 on her old machine last night for her to take to her parents. They get the old 17" monitor I saved from the junk pile too. BP-Amoco have a policy that if it's too old (even if it still works) it should be binned rather than returned to the IT department. As it's no longer supported/covered it can't be given away in case it explodes/melts/takes over the world and someone sues them. Naturally if I ask the people in the building who work for BP-Amoco to bin things outside my door, I make sure they get 'vanished' in the correct manner. Next up: two IBM 'buckling-spring' keyboard, new.

20/06/2001 [09:55] Once again Copyleft sneak out my new designs without waiting for me to get the accompanying pages out. Which is cool really as it gets me to pull my finger out and get the damned things done. [12:45] Listening to Frontier Psychiatrist on MP3 again. It's a quality tune. This afternoon I'm at a BOF of major proportions which is Institution-wide. This means I'll be out of here at 13:00 for lunch and then not back again. I didn't explicitly say it in the first entry today, but go and check out the new designs from O'Really now and then follow the links to buy them from Copyleft. You know you want to.

19/06/2001 [10:20] Although I don't normally bother with sites like this, I have to say that I'm impressed with http://www.friendsreunited.co.uk/ as it actually seems to have people on it I know. I've left a fairly huge potted history on there which should either get people to get in contact or scare them off entirely. I don't really care, it'll be good to have some of them to talk to again. I also pointed them at this site, so you never know, some of my old school and college friends could be reading this in a few weeks/months. Hi guys! I worked out last night that I don't need that .NAP file after all. I already have that, it's included with ePO 2.0. That contains the gubbins which lets ePO manage the application (javascript, gifs, database entries, etc.) it's a .pkg file I really need. I think it's possible to generate them, or write them yourself, or something. That's my project for the day/morning anyway. I also managed to get into the corporate section of NAI's site last night, finally. Armed with our grant number (released by Central, blood, stone, etc.) I found all kinds of service packs and maintenance releases, one of which addresses a problem I found and I possibly caused to be created; the VirusScan 4.5.0 + ME for rollout. Anyway, once I'd figured out how everything was applied (thanks *again* Joe) I was able to go back to looking for .pkg files. No luck as yet. [17:20] More progress on ePO. Now I don't seem to be able to get the AutoUpgrade thingy to work with the FTP sites I have to use. While the install appears to be working fairly well on workstations and the server, the notification that stuff is installed and operating correctly is very hard to find. And there's no explanation of the icons and stuff, either, which is a bit pants.

18/06/2001 [11:20] I've got a mortgage meeting with the girlfriend and Nationwide this afternoon at 12:00. That should be fun. This morning I've been mostly upgrading a laptop with 24MB of Windows 98 patches and stuff, installing the MSI installer on one of the servers and then slapping on Active Perl in preparation for some serious scripting in the coming weeks/months. This weekend I was at my parents in Leeds for my father's 60th. That was good, I got to see a lot of relatives I haven't seen in a while and also have a play with the fairly decent digital camera we bought for a present. We came back on Sunday and watched a lot of Buffy on DVD. I don't know how we managed to entertain ourselves before DVDs were around. I just wish that Babylon 5 would start coming out soon so I can see it in the widescreen it was intended to be seen in. Stargate SG-1 looks stunning, Babylon 5 should be better. [13:55] Quality game of the day at Electrotank, this one's a crazy/mini golf game. Try truncating the URL for other games. [14:35] Brain fun of the day comes from This image, which you can always send to your users and have their brains go pop and leave your computers alone. [16:40] I have to say that scanning in a photo copy of a photocopy of a CV of someone who's done lots of books and stuff (with italics etc.) and then doing OCR on it and redirecting it to Microsoft Word is the worst job in the world. I've not been able to do anything decent this afternoon thus far this afternoon. [18:45] More fun and frolics with ePO and Management Edition this afternoon. Only with the help of Joe (what a guy) have I been able to figure it all out. STILL no-one has a .NAP file for ePO v.20 for VirusScan 4.5.1.

15/06/2001 [11:55] So the soundcard arrives from Scan. It's the final part of the girlfriend's new PC. And it's arrived without the headset it's supposed to have. The ATA100 cables I was due a while ago came with it, but it seems to be the OEM (no box) rather than the full retail version. This means no box or any of the extras you'd normally get. So I've been ringing Scan's Customer Services for the last thirty minutes, last number redialing every time the engaged tone came up. Now I've gotten in the hold queue, been disconnected and have now reconnected again first time of trying. I'm hoping the headset will come a little faster than the ATA100 cables did. Now they've cut me off again. [13:05] So I ring back the Sales line again after 2 hours or hold with the Customer Services line. They guy on the other end's promised to see what he can do, so I'm going to wait until Wednesday next week before trying again. Right now I'm going off home to check why the machine on the IP I had via NTL this morning now belongs to another machine which looks like a badly setup linux box. But I'm coming back again. [15:50] Not a lot happening this afternoon. I'm ordering a metric butt-load of RAM if I can get through to my Dell sales guy and waiting for someone to present me with a usable ePO v2.0 .NAP file for Virus Scan 4.5.1

14/06/2001 [09:00] Well done to all of you who noticed the intentional (yes it was. No, no, really, it was... damnit, O.K. it wasn't) typo in yesterday's entry. This has now been corrected. Yesterday afternoon I went to a talk/seminar on a service being offered by Central's Unix services division. Basically it's a use for the second half of some of the managed clusters we have dotted about the place. It's linux (a fiddled about version of RedHat 7.1 with bits cut out and other stuff locked down) for the masses in an easy-to-swallow fvwm2 flavour. For those of us among the masses who want our unix straight, there's the option to put in our own config files for the one true desktop; ctwm. There's lots of applications and stuff and it all sits neatly alongside the Windows 2000 image and proves the same access to the Novell home directories everyone gets on that system. It looks cool and has all kinds of other good things I won't bother mentioning in case someone tries to steal it. Or something. [13:55] Obviously as tomorrow is a big deadline day for people here, everyone will be printing out tonight and tomorrow morning. This means that of course the thing broke this morning. Wouldn't suck up paper. Naturally I got it fixed by swapping the paper tray with another one, but it'd be nice if people would actually print out sooner than 24 hours before things were due, thus giving the printer time to cool down between jobs. [16:55] Just been through the trial of installing ePolicy Orchestrator v2.0 from McAfee. Well, it's certainly big. Aproximately 250MB for the server (including a database engine, unless you have MSSQL 7 already it installs it's own) and 128MB for the Console. Which seems a bit off as Management Edition is only about 8.0Mb, excluding the Repository. It's going to take some getting used to and, while it's undoubtedly much more powerful than Management Console, there are some really odd things about it which will take a while to get used to. Probably the best thing at the moment is the ability to run the Console part of it on another machine. The worst thing is the Windows 2000'y feel, the use of "Directory" and the fact that there's mention of products you don't have and may never want in there from the start, which just clutters up the place. Also the confusion over where stuff goes, but that may be sorted once I've got something in the Repository, which is another bugbear; you need .NAP files compatible with ePO 2.0 for stuff to go in there. And I don't have anything (like VirusScan 4.5.1, 5.4, NetShield 4.5 or even VirusScan/NetShield 4.0.3a) with the right .NAP to hand.

13/06/2001 [12:00] Why don't you people ever tell me when there are typos in the entries? It means I have to go back and look for them myself every so often. Anyway, some of you do, sometimes. So I'm sitting here this morning in preparation for the seminar I'm going to this afternoon which is on a dual-booting Windows 2000/Linux workstation facility which we don't need here, but should be damned interesting. I've also expanded my Perl skills another few milimetres with an archiving script based on today's date and a directory structuring tree. It's pissant, but helps me learn. I've not managed to do anything with Meeting Maker again yet, nor anything with Chubb, who should have rung me back today already. I've been looking at RAM for the workstations and the servers in preparation for this summer and next when we move the machines to Office 2000 and Windows 2000 respectively. I think a good few dozen sticks of 64Mb and some 256Mb's will be enough. Owing to some weirdness in accounting and the budget control here at the institution I have to spend more, or we get into all kinds of problems. This is actually harder than it seems as it's quite difficult to make defendable purchases of kit which costs a lot of money. We've got loads of networking kit (new) so we can't go to gigabit backbone, we have a whole spare server and the few machines which do need to be replaced on desktops, etc. are already budgeted for in the books. Any suggestions? Sensible ones?

12/06/2001 [16:20] Hectic day today. This morning, while the PFY dealt with the Databases of Doom (have you noticed just how not stressed I've been this year? I haven't had to do anything with them, it's great!) I learnt Net::SMTP and had a go at automating virus warnings on the NT servers to send the standard boilerplate plus personalisation to the user who caused the warning in the Event Log. Over lunch I went to the standard BOF and we talked about stuff, and things. When I got back there was a BT engineer waiting for me. He'd been due at 10:00 but hadn't turned up until 13:45. Since 14:05 I've been hairing round the building trying to find out where frames terminate (not my job), trying to find out what the state of contracts will be if the ISDN 2e he's installing for one of our live-in researchers uses both our cables and BT-installed cables. The funny thing is, our building is served by 100Base-FX with 100base-TX to the desktop if you so desire. Only he works for BP-Amoco and they don't let anyone in except via modem (POTS) or ISDN connection. bastard firewall-type thing. So rather than 100Mb/sec he gets 64kbit/sec. NMP. Still, I get to play with an ISDN router when it arrives and figure out how that interfaces with the two laptops the researcher and his assistant have. There are, however, lines of demarcation I cannot cross. If I do, then if the laptop ever goes wrong BP-Amoco's techies will say it's my problem as I've touched it. I'm not going there. [18:30] I don't like Meeting Maker (7.0). Alternatively I don't like Windows 2000. Or, quite probably, I don't like Meeting Maker (7.0) or Windows 2000. Yes, that seems more likely. Sodding install locations mean that it ends up in the Start Menu for the Administrator (who installed it) rather than for All User, which would be much more sensible. Another thing is the permissions on the files meant for it to run. After about an hour of fiddling the only thing which will allow the thing to run without bombing silently is setting all the files, directories and directory contents to "Authenticated Users... Full Control", which is obviously non-optimal. I've had some semi-useful emails from Meeting Maker (the company) which have solved some of the problems, but It Works For Them, which doesn't help. Anyway, had enough for today, I'll reset all the permissions back to standard tomorrow and spend a few dozen minutes working through the files one by one, seeing which ones need to have changed permissions to give me a working system. I think I'll go to the gym now.

11/06/2001 [09:10] Over the weekend we went to Bletchley Park, home of ENIGMA and where Alan Turing spent some of his time during the second world war. One of our friends had just read Cryptonomicon the week before and wanted to see the place. While the mathematics was a little hard to follow in places, the Computer Preservation Society room was excellent, filled as it was with computers and personal computers like the Atari 65XE, RM Nimbus and BBC micros, old VAXes and many other machines I know but don't remember the names of. Worth a visit, if only to play Battle Chess, Repton or Pong, on the original platform. I'm sure I saw an Atari 2600 in there too. Today I have to get back into the work habit again. Not sure what I'll do today. I may do some more experimenting with Meeting Maker 7.0. Try to work out how to publish people's schedules as web pages, perhaps. [11:50] After that visit to Bletchley Park I was moved to note that despite Cats' actions, it was actually Alan Turing that set up us the Bombe. Sorry, sorry. [13:40] For those of you who haven't seen it, you might want to fire up your Windows box (with OpenGL) and download Bridge Builder, which is addictive (or is for me). Doesn't seem to run under NT4, but Windows 9x and 2000 seem fine. I've stuck it on here as well, in case you can't be bothered to go to that site for it. The link is here. [17:00] Meeting Maker sucks. Or perhaps Windows 2000 sucks. Actually, I think it's a combination of the two. I hate it and the stupid pre-installation options you have to set and the lack of post-installation options for frobbing it to put stuff in the places I want.

08/06/2001 [11/06/2001 - 08:55] I wasn't in today as I had the day off. As a result I stayed up late and watched the General Election on the television. Even with the promise of no work the next day I couldn't keep my eyes open past about 12:10 and crashed out while the girlfriend watched Peter Snow gesticulating a bit in front of his Swingometer©. A quality link I got sent today was this one. Which, while I haven't played it yet, looks cool. I'm reliably informed that travelling near the wall makes you go faster. Which makes for some exciting times.

07/06/2001 [12:10] The girlfriend was at her last night of the hospital trial she's doing for them last night, so naturally I installed linux on her new machine and spent until 02:20 this morning getting the mouse to behave under XFree86-4 and still haven't managed to get LILO to work from /dev/hdd1. This is a bugger. I'm *this* close to installing it in the MBR of /dev/hda and having done. Can I recommend The Avalanches' "Frontier Psychiatrist" again to anyone. It's a quality tune. I'd put it up here, but people might complain. Then again, if enough people ask... [16:40] Scary Microsoft link of the day is to do with the way Internet Explorer is looking to help site maintainers with underlinked site. [17:20] Oh, forgot to mention, I've got the day off tomorrow. I'm also going to get my hair cut tomorrow, which should be helpful. I don't know what we'll do with ourselves, but I do know that we'll be up late this evening watching Peter Snow on the election night broadcast. Yeah, it's the parlimentary elections here in the UK today. I voted Liberal Democrat. So there. We may be going to Bletchley Park this weekend. You know, where the Enigma machine was during the war and stuff. Should be good if we actually go. Plenty to see and, if it's a nice day a nice day out in the sun. Also, the company we're going with means it's a car drive (something we rarely do). Anyway, I may do a journal update tomorrow, or I may do one on Monday. It all depends. I may even do it on the weekend. You'll just have to come and look. Other than that, if you think of something that the site could do, show, or change to look like then tell me, I'm getting a little bored of the way it looks.

06/06/2001 [10:25] Well, we now have working blinds in the upper windows now. It's odd, but I think I'll get used to it. Hot off the press is today's first link of the day. Mugging with style, and a keen sense of the motivation of the species. I'm on hold with Scan to find out where the hell my ATA100 cables are which still haven't arrived. Only ten minutes thus far. Plus ten minutes to get onto the hold queue. The reappointment committee of the institution met today on my behalf and I've just been informed on return from a seminar on MeetingMaker software that I've been reappointed until retiring age. Joy. The seminar wasn't very exciting, but was informative.

05/06/2001 [09:45] The electricians are here to fix the upper blinds in the room. They're only three years late. [14:20] The electricians went away again, with the switch which appeared to be the culprit. I did some stuff with the old freebsd box which wasn't doing anything. You may remember that this was what used to be BOFHcam II, but crashed a lot of the time. Dodgy Bt848 drivers. Anyway, it wasn't doing anything and was a FreeBSD-3.0 box, so I've killed it. I can use the hard drive for something more important and put the EDO DIMM (gold dust) in one of the other test machines. [15:10] One of the users came in a few minutes ago with their laptop (ours) and two CDs to install. I should explain that we don't give the users CD-Rom drives for their machines. This leads to them installing stuff, like AOL CDs "to get access to the 'Net" despite the fact they have a 100Mb network connection already. Anyway, I've come up with a reason which is both right and true as to why he can't have a CD-Rom (the game requires one with the CD in to work). The reason is that we're low on CD-Roms (it's true, we seem to have a lot less than we have laptops) and also that I can't sanction losing another one purely for games. [16:05] If you've got the brains today you could try learning this with which to amaze your friends. I know that if my head wasn't clathered with stuff today I'd give it ago. But not now. [17:55] Creating a DNS database under Windows 2000 is a soul-destroying operation, but still, the bulk is done now. All I have to do is the semi-regular updations. Funny thig of this five minutes is The Brains Trust, which is funny, sometimes. So is Untitleddocument. Have a look. No, now.

04/06/2001 [11:30] Quiet weekend. I got the girlfriend's machine perfectly stable but realised that it was running far too hot. For me anyway, 33degC in the case and 48degC on the CPU (1.0Ghz overclocked to 1.33Ghz via 133FSB) is too hot. So I went out to the local Maplin on Sunday morning and bought two 80mm ball bearing fans. They should be more expensive than the sleeved ones, but I don't think the Maplin people knew to differentiate. I also got a hard drive cooler too. All of these came from CoolerMaster. The hard drive thingy was the DCD-4002. Anyway, I stuck in the two fans and the hard drive cooler and the temperature went up. Which was odd. So I took out one fan (chassis, lower front) and turned the rear one round so it was sucking out hot air generated by the chipset and the Voodoo 3. The temperature never gets over 28degC in the case now and the CPU seems to sit (eventually) at about 45degC. Which seems about right. Today's Quality URL of the Day is http://www.thesite.org.uk/sex/general_sex/i_always_wake_up_with_an_erection_is_this_normal.html. Which is self-descriptive, if not concise and to the point. [15:50] Been fighting with the Windows 2000 time service today. It sucks nastily. This is mostly because you can't get to anything other than some command line options. No config files to frob or anything, shite error messages and no way to figure out where the thing is falling over. I'm so tempted to turn off the service all round and stick with Tardis and K9.

01/06/2001 [10:00] Cable modem service died this morning at 00:54:00-ish. This is annoying as I had a few things which happen on the first of the month and they couldn't. I don't know why I don't ask for some rebate for all the outages we have. Discover your secret hobbit name, or don't. It's a Friday, you can do what you like. [11:20] Here's a story a found a while ago which I forgot to mention (as in years ago) but I thought might appeal to a lot of you people out there, It's worth sticking with it to the end, because it's good. I said so. Anyway, here's the link you've read the paragraph to get to. [16:10] Oh, someone sent me this, which is probably someone's attempt with two minutes in Photoshop work, but I like it. If it's not real it's still a good reason why you should never let yourself be photographed. Not that that's an option for politicians. It's here anyway.