8/1/97
TGIF! Only 5 hours more till I get to go home, (hopefully)
find my GF, and relax. Until then, I get to answer more questions on the
phone. I’ve been quite delightful, even though I was told (again) that our
system sucks (see here
for more info). But I can deal with that, I have been, so there! In the
alt.tech-support.recovery FAQ
it says that the average burnout time for tech support is 18 months. I’ve
been here for three years or more, so I’m in trouble!
I have my computer at home setup so that when I’m online, I’m at redpoint.dyn.ml.org
This is using the free dynamic DNS project at www.ml.org,
a great project! You can (when I’m online) ftp,
telnet, or
surf there. Soon I’ll setup a page
for this, with more information about it. Next on the list of projects is to
setup diald, which is a linux program to keep you online when
you want basically. You can set times when it keeps you online, and if you are
offline and try to connect to the net, it dials in and connects for you, then
disconnects after a certain time period. Also I want to get procmail setup
to d/l my mail to my local server, where I can do that mail thing with it.
Re-doing my web page is also on the list.
Any other computer based news….. oh yea. I killed IE4b2 off my system…
because of this:
When I selected all my cache files (trying to save disk space), with CTRL-A, I
watched the status bar, and it counted the files it was selecting, and also
calculated the disk space they were using. A cute feature, but
on a P75 with 16 megs ram, taking 20 seconds to select 1000 or so files is too
long. So I switched directories…. and watched the number of files count down,
and the disk space count down!!! I reselected the files in my cache
dir, and it did the same thing. I deleted the files and it sucked so much
CPU power doing the calculating for "disk space freed" that it
crashed the computer!
Let me repeat that in case you don’t understand. IE4b2’s explorer calculates
the number of files it selects as well as calculating the space used by each
in every operation! If you don’t get it, just take my word for it that this
is a slooooooow way of doing things, and (obviously)
a crappy one. Another example of Microsoft shafting the user with a cutesy
upgrade that just slows down the computer more.
Speaking of which, have people forgotten that computers are for work? What about
people who aren’t netting (is this a new word? should I copywrite it?) all day?
People do actually use computers for things other than the Internet you know,
though you wouldn’t know it from the software people are putting out. Hey
Microsoft! How about making Visual C++ faster and better, instead of adding a
bunch of Internet/ActiveX stuff to it. Ditto Borland, et all. Fix the bugs,
make it faster, then add new stuff. Anyone seen any software get
smaller lately? no. Anyone seen any software get faster lately? no, unless
you buy a new processer.
I’m looking for a webfilter like the one that linux has, that blocks any
information from certain IP addresses (ie: ad.interlink.net). This means
no more banners. Wish I could find a win95 equivelant though.
I’m alone at work too, which means I’m bored out of my skull. It’s a Friday
so the calls are at a minimum, and there is no one to talk to. My news server
is down too, so I’m doing this update 🙂.
