Another Word for Nerd

“Bush Creates National Security Service“. What’s next, a National Socialist Workers Party? We’re already being encouraged to spy on our neighbors.

Google released the Google Maps API today, and I’ve been playing with it for a couple of hours. I’ll be using it along with their AJAX methods to map out wireless access points when I go driving around with my iBook, new GPS, and iStumbler for a couple of hours this weekend.

Update: the AJAX version is done. Pulls its point data from an XML file.

The BBS Documentary is *really* good. It’s bringing back a lot of memories. My first computer with a modem (in 1988) was a HP 110 laptop with a built-in 300 baud modem. I moved from that to an Atari ST with a Hayes Smartmodem 300..

We slept late (way late - 3pm), then got up and headed for Galveston around 5. Took the ferry over to the Bolivar Peninsula, and went to the beach in Crystal City. Got some sand between our toes, then headed back, and finally got home around 10pm. We’ve been discussing getting a possible rental “weekend getaway” apartment in Crystal City or Galveston, sometime after the house in Austin is sold and some other things are resolved. It’s really nice and peaceful, but not too far away that we can’t just drop everything and go when needed.

Tried to get some sleep, but I’m just in a funk for some reason. Probably because it’s hard for me to realize that yes, I have a week off from work, but it’s still hard for me to relax and stop doing things like checking my work email and making sure my cell phone is charged. I’ve been a on-call-24/7 workaholic for going on ten years now, and *not* being a workaholic is hard to do after all that time.

I’d never been really happy with a lot of the end-user interfaces and directories for accessing podcasts, until I got an invite to Odeo earlier tonight. This really *rocks*. I’ve put up some screenshots.

DSL has been down for a large portion of houston since around 2pm this afternoon. I’m riding on a neighbor’s open access point (thank goodness he has a cable modem and not DSL as well). After my DSL is back up, I should go over and show him how to secure things, or at least change the default admin password on the router. I’ve already changed his wireless setup to use a less-congested channel (as there’s tons of people in a 2-3 block radius using channel 6 already).

As if all the email spam I get wasn’t enough, now I’m getting voicemail spam.

The $20 2-port PCI USB 2.0 controller I picked up from CompUSA works fine without any configuration at all in my Ultra 60, under either Solaris Express or the latest OpenSolaris build:

Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford pcipsy: [ID 370704 kern.notice] PCI-device: usb@5,3, ehci0
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford genunix: [ID 936769 kern.notice] ehci0 is /pci@1f,4000/usb@5,3
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford pcipsy: [ID 370704 kern.notice] PCI-device: usb@5, ohci0
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford genunix: [ID 936769 kern.notice] ohci0 is /pci@1f,4000/usb@5
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford pcipsy: [ID 370704 kern.notice] PCI-device: usb@5,1, ohci1
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford genunix: [ID 936769 kern.notice] ohci1 is /pci@1f,4000/usb@5,1
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford pcipsy: [ID 370704 kern.notice] PCI-device: usb@5,2, ohci2
Jun 21 15:34:23 bradford genunix: [ID 936769 kern.notice] ohci2 is /pci@1f,4000/usb@5,2
Jun 21 15:34:24 bradford usba: [ID 912658 kern.notice] USB 2.0 device (usb46d,c03d) operating at low speed (USB 1.x) on USB 1.10 root hub: mouse@2, hid0 at bus address 2
Jun 21 15:34:24 bradford usba: [ID 349649 kern.notice] Logitech USB-PS/2 Optical Mouse
Jun 21 15:34:24 bradford genunix: [ID 936769 kern.notice] hid0 is /pci@1f,4000/usb@5,2/mouse@2
Jun 21 15:34:24 bradford genunix: [ID 408114 kern.notice] /pci@1f,4000/usb@5,2/mouse@2 (hid0) online

I’ve been really busy at work the past week, but I finally had time to do a full build of the public OpenSolaris release:

root@bradford:/> cat /etc/motd
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      mrbill  Jun. 21, 2005
SunOS Internal Development:  root 2005-06-21 [mrbill]
bfu'ed from /opensolaris/mrbill/archives/sparc/nightly on 2005-06-21
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_16  October 2007

root@bradford:/> uname -a
SunOS bradford 5.11 mrbill sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60

I couldn’t sleep…

So I just finished building OS/360 and IPLing MVT on the Hercules emulator.

I still need to build the HASP job scheduler and the TSO time sharing option.

When all of this is complete, I’ll have a complete circa 1964-1970 mainframe system running on my desktop! Here’s a current screenshot so far.