Sunday, 1 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		next day
		last day

Another day catching up on things, with little to show for it. Mike Smith wants semaphores in the kernel, for a very good reason that the code he is porting (Intel's ACPI code) requires them. That's certainly well worth investigating. Downloaded the code and the docco, and since the docco was partially in colour, decided to print it on the ink jet printer. After some hours of cursing and swearing, I have decided that ink jet printers are a Bad Idea, especially when you're using ghostscript to print PostScript across the network: the *&*(&*(&&( won't let go when you dequeue a job, and the printer forgets what it was doing and prints page after page of junk. Roll on cheap colour laser printers.

Greg Edmonds brought around his spray unit this afternoon, and we connected it to the tractor with no great difficulty.

Monday, 2 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Labour Day today, so no work.

I've had this URL of O'Reilly's documentation formatting from Andy Oram for nearly a month now, so it seemed to be about time to see if I can get it to work under FreeBSD. It needs all sorts of things, including procmail and perl. Also the new version wants nsgmls. After a bit of time looking, found a package sgmls with the same source URL in the Ports Collection, and installed that, but things still didn't work correctly. After some investigation discovered that the Port, first committed in July this year, relates to version 1.1.91, which is 4 years old. The current version is 1.3.4, and it seems to be very different. Set to upgrading the Port, but didn't get finished.

The weather forecast claims that the next few days are going to be warm and dry, so filled up the spray unit to spray the weeds in a couple of paddocks. The weather promptly obliged by starting to drizzle, but not enough to abort the activity. Got to the North-East paddock and discovered that the end of one of the jets on the boom was missing, but found a spare. Got through about 70% of the paddock (1.45 ha) on 200 litres of spray, so I suppose we can say 200 litres is the right amount for 1 ha.

Refilled the tank and set out to finish the North-East paddock, then across the creek to spray the South paddock. Well, that was the intention. I got bogged down in the creek and wandered off, cursing the lack of four-wheel-drive on the machine. Watch this space for photos.

Later Greg came and towed me out of the creek. Isn't it fun living in the country?

Tuesday, 3 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Woke up in the middle of the night tonight and looked at the clock. Time hadn't just stood still, there was no time.

After a while it occurred to me that the power had failed. Yvonne had shut the doors to the office, so I hadn't heard the UPS screaming. Decided that there wasn't too much work to do in the middle of the night, so turned over and went back to sleep.

At 6:45 am we still had no power. Doubtless another possum playing “fry myself on the high voltage insulators”. I went out and cranked up the emergency generator, then into the office for the interminable fscks. While they were progressing, the generator spluttered and died. No petrol.

Marvellous. I had put the petrol canister next to the car to be filled up, but that was yesterday evening, and it was still as good as empty. Called the service stations at Meadows and Echunga, but they had no power either, so set off to Mount Barker to get some petrol. On the way was held up by a group of ETSA trucks with a bloke on a ladder polishing an insulator. One of the people on the ground told me that power would soon be back.

Back home with the petrol. The generator was still running, and power was back, so the whole effort had been unnecessary. Isn't it fun living in the country?

More documentation during the day. Also planned my trip to the USA, none too early. It's going to be a tiring time: first to Miami to get a bit of the Linux Storage Management Workshop, then on to Monterey CA for the BSDCon. I'm sure somebody will find more for me to do while I'm there.

Wednesday, 4 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Mail is getting heavy again. I need to find a way to be able to ignore 1000+ mail messages a day for a few days, and not spend a week catching up at the end of it.

Rebuilt XFree86 4.0.3 on sydney, my Dell Inspiron 7500 with the 1400x1050 display. To my surprise it installed nicely, and X -configure produced an almost valid XF86Config: at least I could start it and it worked. The only problem was that it only had the single 1400x1050 resolution. For presentations I need lower resolutions. Added a mode line to the Screen section:

Modes "1400x1050" "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
      

This had the amusing affect that I got all resolutions except 1400x1050. There seems to be an issue here that the default config file will work out its own default mode line, but once you start mentioning them explicitly, it looks in some default database which doesn't include 1400x1050. Where to get the 1400x1050 mode line? The simple answer is to start with the default config file and use xvidtune, which will print the current mode line:

ModeLine "1400x1050" 107.86 1400 1440 1552 1688 1050 1050 1053 1066 +hsync +vsync
      

My complete XF86Config is here.

The nice thing about XFree86 version 4 is that I can now switch the display between internal, external and both, which I couldn't do before. When I change resolutions, it reverts to the internal (LCD) screen. I can't make up my mind whether this is a bug or a feature.

Thursday, 5 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

It's funny. Last month I got a lot of work done, and didn't have to neglect mail too much—I thought. This month mail and other routine things seem to be getting the better of me, especially since I'm off to a couple of conferences later in the month.

Spent most of the morning on the phone to the USA about a project we're doing there. Spent the afternoon attending to sorely neglected SMP issues. I don't like the direction we're going in: now is really the time for an in-depth analysis of what locking we need, but I don't have the time, and others don't have the inclination.

Friday, 6 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Hey, some real work to do, certifying a box. Up early for a teleconference, which I thought was going to be with the customer, but it turned out to be internal only. We need to work on communications. Spent most of the day working out a test plan. I still am no closer with the slides for my presentations in the US.

Spent more time on IRC talking to the SMPng people, also fighting my way through the flood of mail. I'm really quite concerned about the fact that we're not planning enough.

A bloke from Telstra came in to handle a service call I had made a couple of days ago: a bit of noise in the line, but it was gone. He explained that they had had another problem, presumably similar to the one I experienced in November 1998. He said they had just finished replacing 300 metres of cable near Scottsburn Road. Grrr. Another couple of joins to make the DSL connectivity worse when it finally becomes available here.

Saturday, 7 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Woke up in the middle of the night—another power failure, this one mercifully short. It didn't stop battunga's UPS from screaming. What a load of junk. Quite a bit of rain during the night.

Came into the office and just had time to sign in on IRC before the modem dropped the carrier. Several attempts to redial failed, and after grovelling on the floor swapping modems, telephone lines and PPP servers, discovered that 3 of the 5 lines into the house had died. The other two failed shortly later. So much for the repairs they did yesterday: looks like another water-related problem. Isn't it fun living in the country?

Called Telstra and reported the problem, and was given an incident number (S12352111) and the promise that they'd look at it on Monday. A little later I got a call (on my mobile phone) saying that a total of about 100 lines were affected, and they were working on it today.

Finished my mail and decided to go looking for the blokes, but found nobody. I fear that was only a wish on the part of the bloke who called me. Off to Diane Saunders with my laptop to send my mail, but I couldn't make a connection with any kind of PPP. Admittedly, I was running SMPng, but even when I dropped back to a kernel checked out from the PRE_SMPNG tag, I couldn't establish connection. I seem to have a few bogons in the kernel. Must fix that before I go to the USA and have to rely on it.

Sunday, 8 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Who said that a dead Internet connection was God's way of saying “get a life”? Anyway, there wasn't much else to do, and somehow even the work that I could do without and Internet connection seemed difficult. Instead, did some music and some riding. The weather was excellent, and we floated Shaleema and Darah to the section of Kuitpo forest in Razorback road. Darah's getting better at behaving, but after a while she was still hotter than I wanted, while Shaleema was getting quite tired. I wonder why I always end up with such active horses.

Monday, 9 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

It's a funny feeling being cut off from the world. Somehow the concern about not being connected to the Net preoccupied me all day, though I should have welcomed the opportunity to get down to some work without being disturbed.

I did get some work done—slides for the BSDCon talk on SMPng, not before time. At least things are starting to roll more smoothly, though I think this sort of talk really requires about 3 times as much preparation as I will have time to do.

In the early afternoon went and looked for the Telstra people. Found them just down the road from where the last serious problem occurred. They had obviously just localized it, 30 metres towards the last place it had happened. They assumed that the lead mantle of the old cable had cracked, allowing water in. I think they'll find that it was in fact the repair of two times ago. They claimed to have had made an application to the Mount Barker council to replace the entire section, but that the Mount Barker council wanted 30 days to issue a permit. Under those circumstances it's funny that they had just found where the damage was.

Later in the day faults told me that temporary service would be restored by close of business today. Well, I suppose they weren't completely wrong: the fax and Internet lines were there, the spare line that Yana uses was so noisy that nothing got through, and the voice lines were still dead. Between 18:15 and midnight I caught up on my mail.

Tuesday, 10 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

I suppose today gives me some more data about how long it takes to read mail. Normally I hope to be able to read my mail in about 60 to 90 minutes in the morning. That's based on an assumed 800 to 1000 messages a day. Today, in the 24 hours between 18:15 yesterday and 18:15 today, it was 2817, and it kept me going all day long. In the evening I finally had time to start reviewing a document that setuid sent me, but I didn't get finished.

In the course of the day, had a number of conversations with Telstra, but we still only have two lines of five active. Called the faults line at midday and spoke to Gary, who said that there wouldn't be any update until this afternoon, and that he would call me back. I didn't hear from him again.

I must do something about mail.

On 9 October 2000 you received 1951 mail messages.
      

Wednesday, 11 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Still only 3 phones. 725 (fax, which I was using for voice) was noisy, so I tried using 726 (spare), but it had failed completely when I tried. Just as I was confirming that both voice lines were still down, got a call from Dave Fisher, who was under the impression that all five lines were still down. Clarified that, during which 726 came back up again, and 725 briefly became relatively clear. After that it got back to being noisy again.

Called Telstra round lunchtime, spoke to Leo, who told me that they were relaying the cable, and that it should be finished by this evening. If that's the case, it's good news. It's marvellous how the information changes.

Later in the afternoon Dave called back and told me that the repair crew had finished their work. They had “tested the problems with the Pair Gain system out of their area”. After a couple of questions, he explained that this meant that the people who had doing the repairs didn't know what was wrong with the lines, but they were sure it was nothing to do with them. I would hear from Telstra tomorrow morning.

From a work point of view, spent the time working on the slides for next week. I really need to find a better presentation method.

Thursday, 12 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

At 10:30, I was just about to call Telstra and ask about our lines when I got a call from Ray Lewis, saying that he had the pair gain systems working again. Checked that, and they were functional, but there's still the same noise on them.

Later Ray turned up and listened, but he couldn't hear the noise. It was obviously louder using the headset, so he decided it must be something to do with that. He suggested I wait until the blokes down the road had finished their work. That paid off: by the afternoon the phones were back to normal.

More work on the slides for the Con. Things are moving better now, but it still takes its time.

Friday, 13 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

The big news today were the results of the FreeBSD Core elections. I guessed seven of the nine candidates correctly (including myself). I'm glad to see that one third of the team is Australian.

The three were Mike Smith, Peter Wemm and myself. Interestingly we were all from the western states (Western Australia and South Australia), which take up about half the continent but have a population of only about 4.5 million.

Later in the morning a bloke from Telstra came to see why the phones weren't working. He looked a little incredulous when I told him that the service was back to normal.

Saturday, 14 October 2000	Echunga –> Los Angeles –> Miami
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Some people want to have 36 hour days. I didn't quite make that, only 34½, but it wasn't something I would want to do again any time soon.

Left Adelaide at 11 am, slightly late, and off to Sydney, where I started to catch up on my mail backlog (350 odd messages) while waiting for the next flight. Grovelled around on the floor a bit looking for RJ 45s, but all that I found had labels identifying them as either phone lines or some forgettable name which didn't signify anything. Only shortly before leaving did I find a brochure describing the forgettable name and offering Internet connectivity at 100 Mb/s. Oh well, next time.

The flight to LA was pretty uneventful, and we landed a little early. When I got to immigration, I saw the longest queue I have ever seen there. Sighed, chose the shortest queue (number 13), and to my great surprise I was out with my baggage rechecked within 5 minutes, only a couple of minutes later than our original touchdown time.

On to Miami, where I had a somewhat adventurous taxi ride to Coconut Grove, and discovered people trying to check in despite obvious misbookings. I was given a suite, which sounds a whole lot better than it was. The Doubletree chain seems to have gone really downhill, and this hotel must be a leader.

Sunday, 15 October 2000	Miami
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

The only way to get breakfast here is to order it in-room (“one of the great pleasures of life”, as the hotel brochure described it. You've got to give them full marks for hype). It arrived 10 minutes later, cold, and the disposable plastic pepper shaker appeared to be broken by design: the Americans love really coarse pepper, and this was no exception. Even after reaming it with a screwdriver, I hardly got anything out. sigh.

Spent the morning finally getting my slides ready for the SMPng talk, then downstairs and found Martin Petersen. Off to lunch, which was less than a revelation, but on the way back into Borders and found the Mark Rashid book that Yvonne wanted, and spent some of the afternoon reading that.

Off to a get-together in the evening, which took place in almost total darkness. Justin Gibbs was also at the conference.

Monday, 16 October 2000	Miami
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

To the university again for the conference this morning. There weren't too many people there that I knew, but I was impressed by how much was going on in the Linux storage subsystems area, and how interested they were in FreeBSD. Justin gave a talk which I could summarize as “Here, I wrote this SCSI subsystem. It's good. Use it!”. Interestingly, they seemed quite interested in the idea. It would be nice if we could donate that to the Linux project. Another paper also described modifications taken from FreeBSD.

In the evening to Vizcaya, an old mansion turned museum, with a dinner put on by some St. Paul Venture Capital. Very opulent surroundings, but I had a conference call at 7:30 pm, and the background noise was devastating, and I had to give up.

Tuesday, 17 October 2000	Miami –> San Francisco –> Monterey
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Back to the university for the morning, and heard about various volume manager projects. It seems that we have four in the offing: the Linux LVM and IBM's offering, currently still in planning, look at storage from one perspective, and VERITAS and Vinum look from an orthogonal viewpoint. VERITAS plans to port their volume manager as feeware, which I think will have difficulty getting established. Spoke far too briefly to Heinz Mauelshagen, with whom I should stay in contact.

Off to the airport and to San Francisco, and found Wes with no trouble. Down to Monterey, stopping by at Fry's in an abortive attempt to get in. Wes thought they were open all night, I until 10 pm, but we arrived at 10:05 pm, and later discovered they shut at 9 pm anyway.

Lots of road work on the way to Monterey, and when we got there I found the hotel with no difficulty, only I had understood the wrong hotel. Finding the right one proved to be quite a task, and we didn't get there until midnight, I strangely hungry. The only food we could get was at Denny's.

Wednesday, 18 October 2000	Monterey
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Up barely awake at 8 am after somewhat less than 6 hours' sleep. The facility was not at all bad, once we saw it by daylight. Keith Bostic did the keynote speech, about the necessity of project management. He's certainly running in an open door with me, and I found much of his talk very good. He should have done a little homework, though: he suggested that we should do things that we've been doing for a long time, and even mentioned bike sheds.

My own talk went pretty well. I hope we can get more people interested in SMPng.

Off for an early dinner at, yes, Domenico's on Old Fisherman's Wharf, 13 of us, about 6 of whom had been together in the same restaurant at USENIX last year. I've been going to that place for 17 years. Yvonne was envious when she found out.

After that, the BoFs (Birds of a Feather sessions). I went to the PCMCIA BoF, where we messed around with PCMCIA cards. Sadly, some change in -CURRENT has broken the Aviator driver, so I wasn't able to use the cards I had brought with me.

After that the SMPng BoF. At starting time, almost none of the players were there, with the exception of Chuck Paterson. Later Mike Karels and Paul Borman passed by and appeared rather surprised when we invited them in. There still seems to have been a little tension as the result of Mike's unwillingness earlier this year to merge BSD/OS and FreeBSD; certainly he was quite happy when he told him that, based on the pain I had been through analysing the differences for SMPng, that I agreed with him.

Jason Evans turned up later, but by 11 pm I was too tired, and left them to it. Instead followed some Englishmen to the bar, which was horribly noisy. Went outside later to talk to Paul Richards, but then Perry Metzger and Luke Mewburn, the latter from Melbourne. To my surprise, I discovered that Luke is a Core group member and Perry isn't (nor is Charles Hannum). Very late to bed.

Thursday, 19 October 2000	Monterey
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Up without enough sleep this morning and to a developer's discussion about card removal. Wasn't able to contribute much.

Not too much of interest in the morning, so I spent some time trying to catch up on my mail and talking to various people. Talked with Justin Gibbs and Jonathan Bresler about the FreeBSD Foundation, which Justin has founded (in the State of Colorado) along with Jonathan and John Polstra. At the time, all three were core team members, and now none of them are, which is a bit sad. On the other hand, the very existence of the foundation makes me wonder why we have a core team as well. It's quite possible that the next two years will see significant changes as the results of the Foundation.

Managed to miss the SCSI panel at 1 pm. These times are funny (and not made any less confusing by the fact that there was an undocumented break between 3 pm and 3:30 pm). I did manage to get to Paul Richards' talk about Newbus, which I think was probably the best session I went to during the entire conference.

In the evening to the Aquarium (again; I was there last year at USENIX). This time spent all my time talking to people, and didn't even get around to looking at the fish. Why did we have to pay (exorbitant prices) for drinks?

Friday, 20 October 2000	Monterey	Images for 20 October 2000
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Feeling even more tired this morning, but got up at 9 am to listen to Jordan's “State of the Union” talk, only to discover that it had started at 8:30 am. I was surprised how many people made it there.

Later in the morning Jonathan Lemon's talk about kqueue, which was well worth it. I must investigate this more.

In the afternoon to Wes Peters' talk about the virtual home. It's interesting in that DoBox manages to use FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD where each of them fit best.

Later the core team panel, which was fun, since we had never met to talk about things; we did that after the panel. Certainly an interesting experience.

In the evening back to Fisherman's wharf again, where we got together in a smaller circle (only 7 of us). I still think Domenico's is my favourite, but it's on the pricy side.

Saturday, 21 October 2000	Monterey –> Sunnyvale –> Monterey
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Up to breakfast at 9 am this morning, as planned, then got together with Bruce Evans, who wanted to go and hire a car, and Will Andrews, who needed a lift to San Jose. Dropped Bruce at Monterey airport, then off to San Jose and first to Fry's in Sunnyvale. That place gets on my nerves; I don't think I'll go there any more. I did buy a step-down transformer for use back home, but the price was no lower than I would have paid in Australia. Also bought a relatively cheap PCMCIA modem and some video tapes. Then had lunch with Will, dropped him at his hotel, and off to see Roberto, who now has a dog. Had my hair cut by a hairdresser who took my “much shorter, please” request seriously. I feel like a GI.

Back to Monterey, wondering why I had bothered to go to Silicon Valley in the first place. Ate far too much.

Sunday, 22 October 2000	Monterey
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Nobody is left from the Con, so I had the chance to catch up on the 3000 odd mail messages that have accumulated over the last week. Tried to dial in with the new modem, but it appeared completely brain-dead: no matter what AT command I gave it, it responded with OK and did nothing. Checked the docco, but it described perfectly normal AT commands. Replaced with my old modem, which I had feared was dying, but it worked OK, except that the time out of 40 seconds (count them, 40) was too short. I set it to 80 and got good connections every time.

On IRC, talked to people about digital cameras, and finally decided I should give up on Casio and buy a new camera. Off to Circuit City in Seaside, who had some nice looking cameras, but a sales staff and support which must be the worst I have ever seen. Saw an interesting looking Fujitsu camera with advertised 4.3 mexapixels (count them, 4.3 million), but with no documentation. The sales assistant said it was just like another camera, a Sony with nothing more in common than the flash memory it used. They finally printed out an inaccurate spec sheet which claimed “4.3 Million Pixel File using 2.4 Million Sensor Super CCD,”. In other words, lies, damned lies and specifications. In addition, they weren't able to sell me a PCMCIA adaptor for the flash memory. One of the salespeople was able to volunteer that I'd probably find them at Ritz or Greens.

In the afternoon, off to Ritz in Monterey, where another incompetent salesperson told me nonsense, and then to Greens' in Monterey, where there was finally a salesperson with a brain. Discussed the matter, and finally decided on a Nikon CoolPix 880, which has a genuine 3 megapixel (2048x1536) format, which they call 3.34 million pixels, which implies a “million” equal to 941,835. I wonder where these people learnt to count. About the only thing it doesn't have is a rechargeable battery, which is upsetting, particularly because they didn't have the optional charger and rechargeable battery in stock. I did get a PCMCIA card, however, so I was able to finally download photos directly to my laptop without firing up the evil empire.

Gave up on the new modem and prepared to return it. When I got out the receipt, I noted it said “Winmodem”. Nothing anywhere in the instructions or on the package said that. What a load of losers. That's the last time I buy anything at Frys'.

Monday, 23 October 2000	Monterey –> San Francisco –>
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Up not as bright and early as I wanted this morning, but I had had breakfast and left the hotel by 7:45 am, and made good time until I hit the junction of 101, 280 and 680 in San Jose, at which point the traffic slowed to a crawl. Gave Henry a call and discovered he's still on the East Coast. He did suggest that I take the 280, however, and confirmed that traffic there was still acceptable a couple of months ago.

Took the modem back to Frys' with no great difficulty, then on down Lawrence to the 280, talking on the phone to Henry until coverage got a bit spotty half way to San Francisco. Arrived at the office at about 10:40 for an 11 am talk, and found preparations a little sketchy; no overhead projector was available. We finally got things going, and the talk went pretty well. After that we were about to go out to lunch when Duncan MacKinnon told me there was a meeting about the BBC at 1 pm, so went to that instead, while Ancilla got me a chili dog (food) as part of my commitment to new experiences.

The BBC meeting was interesting: yes, we're going to do this, that and the other about the BBC. About 8 people will be involved, and people were talking about creating up to 15 working groups, which sounds overengineered to me. I'd rather see a lot of discussion by mail amongst all involved parties. That's more likely to lead to a well-balanced product.

Things got quite hectic in the afternoon, and I found myself running around like there was no tomorrow. Dave Mandala is leaving, which saddens me, but he helped me get over it by giving me his wireless Ethernet card (on promise from Hugh that it would be replaced tomorrow. I don't think he realised that, for me, there would be no tomorrow). Took a while to get that going until I realised that the s: at the start of the encryption key info in the Linux config files isn't part of the key, it's an indication that what follows is a string.

After that, tried yet again to get my disk array shipped, and it looks as if we might be making progress this time. Also discussed the Yoyodyne boxes, one of which is to come to me. The real issue was, as ever, the shipping. Considering that the box is a 1U element, we decided I should just hand carry it.

The boxes aren't really from Yoyodyne, of course, but I don't want to breach confidence and mention the name of the customer here.

Off to the airport, which was faster than I expected. Just as well: I had trouble with the security people again. They have this damn silly X-ray machine which fogs film. You can take the camera out so the film doesn't get fogged, but then you have to had carry the thing. I had several cameras and films, and I've been there before. Last time they agreed to a hand search, but this time the security people refused. We got the supervisors from American Airlines and the security guards' supervisors in there, and finally they agreed to search the camera case and put the rest through the X-ray machine. When I got to LA, they took my boarding pass and replaced it with a business class boarding pass. I don't know if that was a coincidence, or whether it was Qantas' way of saying sorry.

Tuesday, 24 October 2000
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Hey, what happened to Tuesday?

Wednesday, 25 October 2000	–> Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Arrived in Sydney with no particular trouble, and through the red channel with the Yoyodyne box. The customs people were clearly confused by the fact that it was a prototype and that it would go back to the USA in a month, and finally they let me through with no paperwork.

Back home in Adelaide, and the mail flood continued:

On 24 October 2000 you received 1031 mail messages.  On 25 October 2000 you received 1160 mail
messages.
    

Somehow I was feeling more than usually tired, and didn't get very much done.

Thursday, 26 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

More catching up work today. Somehow I've taken on too much work.

Friday, 27 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

More catchup work. Lots of things to do round the house, too. Yet Another Conference Call, this time with some interesting news: we're restructuring, and we have a new CEO, Art Tyde. And Pat Lambs is leaving in order to Get A Life.

Saturday, 28 October 2000	Echunga	Images for 28 October 2000
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Finally I'm getting on top of the work. Got the Yoyodyne box out and fired it up, apparently the first person in the team to do so. We didn't get any docco, and just turning it on showed that it apparently booted and did nothing further. Took it apart and put in a VGA card, which showed it had pretty a standard Debian installation with no further customization. I noted also that it had three 45 GB drives, which gives it about 80% the storage capacity of my disk array. Pity I need the number of disks, not the storage capacity.

We even found a bit of time to go riding in the Peters Creek section of Kuitpo forest, where we hadn't been before. It's very nice there, and the weather was beautiful. The horses took a while to warm up, but they became very hot after a while. Spring is here.

Sunday, 29 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

The weather's still wonderful, and Yana had stayed overnight at Strathalbyn, so on the way to pick her up we decided to explore some of the land to our East, specifically Hack Range Road, where we had never been before. It's quite pretty up there, and at one point we had a good view clear to Mt. Lofty. Judging by the terrain, I'd guess that we'd have line of sight from our property as well once we get above the line of trees. We couldn't get out the other end of the road; they had blocked off the very end for some ancient car race, so we had to turn around and go all the way back. Grrr.

Later we went past a house for sale in Rodert Road, just round the corner from where we live. Pity it wasn't on the market when we were looking. Only 7 ha, but that's plenty for us, quite a nice house and a very nice garden, also quite a bit cheaper. Still, we don't want to move now.

Monday, 30 October 2000	Echunga	Images for 30 October 2000
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

A week between two overseas trips is too little, especially when I have to write the paper. Mail continues to flood in, and it occurs to me how little time is left over after I address a day of heavy communication. There must be a lesson to be learnt here, but I'm not sure if I have time to learn it.

Tuesday, 31 October 2000	Echunga
		Top of page
		previous day
		next day
		last day

Spent most of the day handling routine issues and writing the slides for Malaysia. At least I'm making headway now, and they're looking more professional than they used to. Now to persuade groff to incorporate a daemon image.

Do you have a comment about something I have written? This is a diary, not a “blog”, and there is deliberately no provision for directly adding comments. It's also not a vehicle for third-party content. But I welcome feedback and try to reply to all messages I receive. See the diary overview for more details. If you do send me a message relating to something I have written, please indicate whether you'd prefer me not to mention your name. Otherwise I'll assume that it's OK to do so.