Even as I write this, I'm backing up tons of crap from my laptop's Windows 2000 install onto my office Novell network via the Linux system I also have on my laptop. Shouts out to Chuq, who graciously installed all the Novell client stuff for my Linux system. Later today, all this crap will find its way onto my desktop, where it will be promptly burnt onto a CD-ROM. Then I can get risky trying to fix my Win2K setup, because if I somehow really screw it up, I don't have to care.

Apologies if anyone has been sending me email, but all that stuff I keep on my laptop.

It's been a long 24 hours. Last night I was playing around with my laptop, trying to upgrade my RedHat 7.1 to 7.2. I ran the install four times, I think, and it either bombed in the middle or I got errors on boot of missing components. That's bad enough, but I don't have any data worth keeping on the Linux side. But when I discovered that I could no longer boot into Windows 2000, that started to inspire fear.

The Linux install is now working great — turns out the CDs I was using were defective in some way. But I'm still struggling to even get into Win2K. Whatever happened also seems to have hosed the password database, because I can't log in as the administrator. So now I'm working to mount my ntfs partition in Linux, but the technology might not quite be there yet.

Two resolutions: 1) never use ntfs, always use fat32 for future Win2K installs; and 2) backup backup backup!

Happy Thanksgiving (belatedly) everyone!

I took off for the holiday, driving down to the Carolinas to visit my sister's family and my dad. The drive down was terrible — the traffic getting out of DC was the worst I've seen, and to top it off I forgot tons of stuff in my hurried attempt to beat the traffic. But once down there, everything got much better. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious (thanks Anne and Sarah!), and the time I spent with my dad on Friday and Saturday went really well. Two trip highlights: my sister's son Jack meekly asking me for a robot for Christmas (good boy!), and shooting 90 at my dad's country club.

Slashdot has a suprisingly good discussion about how to organize a web division. Given that I now have staff, this is something I've been thinking a little about recently.

I just got the memory I ordered for my two webservers. Don't have time to install it now, but I will be down this weekend for a while while I do the upgrade. And a shout out to Crucial — good prices, good interface, good service. I swear, after this, I'm never even going to consider using my neighborhood CompUSA for stuff like this.

Washington Post: Military Favors a Homeland Command. I bet they do; it's something they've probably wanted for a while now.

The office is always a little slow the week before Thanksgiving. It's just after the election, so people are taking a little extra time off, and there just isn't all that much for some people to do. I, on the other hand, just got my personal high score on Spaced Penguin: 5,468,499.

Guess what Al Gore is doing now…

College Football Wrap-up

USC ended its regular season with a bang, beating Clemson 20-15 in the big game. Gooooo Cocks! They're 8-3 for the year, and no doubt bowl bound. Cornell, on the other hand, ended their season on a low note, losing to Pennsylvania 38-14. They finish out at 2-7. UMass put my teams in the win column overall, beating Rhode Island 24-7, and moving to 3-7 with one game left to play.

Perfect. While all the other media outlets dropped the ball on last week's report on the Florida vote, at least the Economist gets it.

Simon Garfinkel: How Not to Fight Terror. "It looks like Bush and Ashcroft are using September 11 as an excuse to clamp down on civil liberties, not as a wake-up call for solving these hard problems."

Washington Post: N. Alliance Sets Up Shop In Capital. "Three days after capturing this capital from the Taliban, the Northern Alliance is increasingly assuming the functions of a new administration, to the alarm of Western powers seeking to promote a broad-based government to end the country's recent history of civil war and factional feuding." This should not come as a suprise to anyone. The Northern Alliance was always operating in accord with its own agenda, which had little to do with ours.

New York Times: Suspicious Letter to Senator Tests Positive for Anthrax. Another Democrat gets an anthrax-laced letter. See a pattern?

William Safire: Seizing Dictatorial Power. Safire is a freak. He says we shouldn't corrupt our judicial system with military kangaroo courts. So far so good. But then he goes on to say that we should assassinate bin Laden and the other members of al Qaeda rather than let them surrender. If Bush's new courts are bad, and they are, because they deny due process and make a mockery of the concept of justice, why is flat-out killing the preferred option?

Washington Post: Sen. Thurmond Moves to Washington Hospital. Nothing like a room with a view, I guess.

CNN: Aid workers freed from Afghanistan. Good news indeed. Let's face it — these were hostages, not "detainees".

Washington Post: Lawmakers Struggle With Air Security. "Fewer than 10 percent of checked bags at the nation's airports are inspected for bombs and one overworked detection machine operator was found falling asleep on the job…" I'm with Lieberman: "That's really stunning."

College Football Wrap-up

Didn't have time to post these scores over the weekend, so here are last weekend's rather dismal results. Bad news for USC — the Gamecocks got their head handed to them by Florida, 54-17. The Cocks are 7-3, and can still turn this into a "great" season by beating Clemson next week. And they'll definitely land in a bowl game. Cornell also lost that winning feeling, losing to Columbia 35-28. The Big Red is now 2-6. And UMass gives us the hat trick by getting blown out by Maine 37-7. The Minutemen now stand at 2-7.

CNN: Taliban Withdraw from Kabul. Given all we heard in the last couple of weeks about the weaknesses of the Northern Alliance as a fighting force, what does this withrawl by the Taliban mean? That the Taliban is beaten? That cities are hard to hold? That the Northern Alliance has just taken the bait and the trap will shortly spring?

I went for breakfast this morning, and when I got back, I turned on the TV and saw Katie Couric… or rather heard her voice, and saw a plume of thick smoke rising over the NYC skyline. I almost got sick, right there and then. "Shit, it's happened again. I knew it would." I couldn't watch for long, but as the day went on and the risk of terrorism receded, I felt better. Still, is it always going to be like this when disaster strikes? Maybe it should?

Yesterday was a good day to be a Democrat. McGreevey won the NJ governor's race, and Warner won in Virginia. Democrats also did well in a slew of local races all across the country. I spent last night compiling the results for my day job, and you can see them here.

I got an email today from my friend Ben Green, who just started a new venture, Crossroad Stategies. Good luck!

Bill Moyers: Which America Will We Be Now?

Wow, a stick-figure martial arts game. Kind of fun, until you figure out the "secret" move; then you can play all day long.

AP: Networks Sue Digital Recorder Maker. Given the entertainment industries obsession with controlling exactly how consumers can use their content, this is merely disappointing, not surprising.

New York Times: From Bipartisan to All Partisan on Air Security.

I've been looking for an excuse to update my router/gateway box, and I think I've found it. After reading this article at LinuxWorld, I've decided I'm going to try to install the Trustix distribution. Now, if I can only remember whether I have any ISA ethernet cards in the thing (Trustix doesn't support ISA).

Dave Winer: The Microsoft settlement. "Not good for independent developers." Or innovation, or other software companies, or consumers. Just good for Microsoft, really.

Zbigniew Brzezinski: A New Age of Solidarity? Don't Count on It. "The bottom line is that in facing the challenge posed by terrorism, the heavy lifting will have to be done by the United States largely on its own."

Washington Post: House Passes Security Bill. Make that a "so-called security bill." Sometimes the GOP does something so stupid, I just can't understand what they could possibly be thinking. This is one of those times. There is no argument to be made for keeping aviation security in the hands of lowest-bidder private companies.