Daily Doings at the Line of Death Bar & Grill

A couple of weeks ago, I was at OfficeMax, looking to buy a box of 12 Uniball Roller pens. Those ar the ones with the plain black barrel. They didn't have any in stock. I suspect they've been discontinued by the manufacturer. That's a shame, since I've been using those pens for nearly 20 years. Instead, they had the Uniball Vision, which are OK in my opinion, but not exactly my style. I settled on a 3-pack of Uniball JetStream pens, which look and feel nice in my hand.

I hope these will last me for a while.

I've also noticed that the regular Uniball Roller pens dry up after years of disuse, even if I store them upside down. Perhaps that's why they were discontinued.

Scanning and reading through the old newsletters for the Dayton DECUS LUG brought back a lot of old memories, mostly good. I remember the times we got together, the presentations we sat through, the food we ate (we miss the seafood chimichangas at Casa Lupita), and the conversations we had -- some lasting for hours until we had to go home.

Attendance in our little group used to be in the hundreds (at least that was the size of our mailings), even though no more than 20 showed up for meetings. Then Digital got bought out by Compaq,which got bought out by HP. DECUS evolved into Encompass, which evolved into Connect. Now there's about 6-7 of us that get together once a month for dinner and conversation. All of us are current or former system administrators and system programmers who like to "talk shop" after hours.

Now, most people -- including myself -- get most of their tips and help through online forums, blogs, and the like. This has me wondering: are user groups dead? Or have they gone dormant? Or do they still exist in an online form?

Dayton's DMA has undergone a similar transformation, from what I know. Even though I haven't been active with that group in years, I'm guessing their turnout for meetings is very small compared to what it's been years ago. I got tired of the constant product marketing, and the dog-and-pony shows, so I stopped attending.

...to my Windows networking problem.

The Windows application layer might not think I have a network, but if I go deeper to the physical level, I have one. I can ping the systems. And I can probably ftp between them, if I open up the right port (21). So.....why not run an ftp server on the laptop, and an ftp client on the desktop? That'll enable me to do what I mostly want to do: transfer files between the laptop and the desktop.

I initially chose the Home FTP Server from snapfiles.com. After some iterations futzing with the configuration -- I needed to set up an account and a virtual directory on the server -- I was all set. I fired up the command prompt on the desktop, connected to the laptop, and transferred a couple of files.

The next iteration of this is to use the FileZilla client on the desktop, and the FileZilla server on the laptop.

Of course, I need to keep security in mind, so I need to remember to close off port 21 after I shut down the ftp server. And I should only run the ftp server when they're connected.

As Oliver Wendell Jones would say, "Piece o' cake."

Shout-outs: Happy birthday folkmew and diva_di!

After several email exchanges with Jacky in Australia -- my colleague from techrepublic.com -- his last recommendation was for me to wipe my C: partition clean and do a brand new install of XP. I told him I'd rather not do that. It would take me days, if not weeks, to reinstall everything I've had on my system in the past 8 years. Although I'm quite certain that it will get rid of a lot of the problems I've been having with the system. (Rebooting and/or reinstalling gets rid of many problems with Microsoft software.)

So I'll just continue doing what I'm doing -- going to the library to download large files onto the laptop, copy them to a flash drive, and copy them to my desktop machine.

I did find a network diagnostic tool at http://support.microsoft.com/kb/914440 . But alas, it only works under Service Pack 2, and I've already upgraded to Service Pack 3. Of course, I can always rollback to Service Pack 2, run the tool, and then reinstall Service Pack 3.

Just got back from a nice little housefilk in Columbus this afternoon. Just the thing for a cold, gray November day in Ohio. The attendance: infobits, host Alison (WINOLJ), braider, fuzzyvanman, rms_butterfly, joecoustic, robin_june, myself, Ron, Jesse, and peteralway and archiver_tim came all the way down from Michigan to be with us. We also had some of Alison's friends from OSU there, taping, filming, and having us sign release forms. Apparently they're doing a project on filk music for their Folklore Studies course.
Lots of music and mirth were made. It's been too long since the last one.

Now I get to go back up my computer, one partition at a time. It's time to do so.

I still can't see my "Microsoft Windows Network" when I browse under "Entire Network", even after several iterations of help from hms42.

If I go to Tools|FolderOptions|General and turn off common tasks, I'll see the "Entire Network" icon. When I click on it, I see the Microsoft Terminal Services and Web Client Network icons. I don't see an icon for Microsoft Windows Network. But I can still ping orac and tardis and get a response from the pings. I also enabled the icon in the "MSHOME Properties" window (MSHOME being the default name of the workgroup).

I also tried rolling back SP3, resinstalling Windows from the upgrade disk, and reinstalling SP3.

I also tried upgrading the driver on my network card.

Some history: I had a hub and ethernet cabling. The network worked fine under Windows 98. In June, I acquired a Linksys wireless router. Even though I still use dial-up, I wanted to use it as a wireless access point for the laptop. I couldn't use it that way, so I wrapped up everything and saved it for future use. Now I'm using a crossover cable.

The day started at 5am, when my alarm went off. I did my morning ritual and arrived at the polling place around 5:55. We had people waiting to vote when I showed up. We got the machines up and running in time. There were a few snafus at first, but we were able to iron them out. Most of these were lack of proper training for the paper ballots. It was a busy day. After the polls closed at 7:30 and we did the end-of-day procedures, we congratulated each other for a job well done.

Now, after spending 45 minutes catching up on email and LJ, I'm caught up. I think I'll turn on the news and watch the results. Or conk out.

(Oh yeah. I voted absentee because I didn't think I'd have a chance to cast my vote in person, even though I worked at the same location I usually vote in, but in a different precinct.)

Some somewhat random thoughts, in the form of bullet points:

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This past week, I've been getting daily emails from moveon.org asking me to sign up and volunteer at their Beavercreek office for a big push this weekend.

And i'm thinking, "Why bother?"

First, I don't live in Beavercreek. Beavercreek is in Greene County, a neighboring county which is "deep red". Lots of McCain/Palin supporters there. I'd be knocking on doors only to have them slammed in my face. Not my idea of a good way to spend my Saturday. Besides, I don't like political people knocking on my door.

Second, I'll be working as a pollworker on Tuesday. As far as I know, I need to remain impartial. I don't know if that extends to my political activities before November 4.

Third, there's no way I know of that I can express my feedback to the folks at moveon.org. I'd reply to one of their messages, but there's no guarantee that they read the email sent to the address they use to send out their notices.

So I'll just stay at home today, working on my homework that's due on Monday, and housework, and getting the backyard/patio ready for winter.

My variation:

Copy this sentence into your LJ if you're in a heterosexual marriage -- or have been at one time -- and you don't want it"protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

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