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College trust fund for the daughter of Jack Hensley killed in Iraq

September 22nd, 2004 Tony No comments

At a membership meeting Tuesday evening the Tega Cay Rescue Squad voted to establish a college fund for Sara E. Hensley, daughter of Jack Hensley, killed by terrorists in Iraq this week.

http://www.jackhensley.org/

Mail checks to:

Sara Hensley Trust

C/O First Citizens Bank

2880 Hwy 160 West

Fort Mill, SC 29708

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

linux has a long way to go

August 26th, 2004 Tony No comments

i tried to install the latest firefox browser on my machine. i was unpleasantly surprised to find that there was no quick and easy installer. instead i had to download the .gz file, unpack it, unpack the tar, and run the install script. i had to guess which file actually performed the install because there was no README file.

i picked the right script and the GUI wizard launched. i thought i was on my way. WRONG. half way through the setup wizard i received the following error: “Couldn’t open xpistub library.” I googled for the phrase and found masses of folks with the same problem.

i found one reply to a frustrated user that stated that you needed a fairly recent version of RedHat for the install to work (WHY?). so i decided to upgrade my RedHat install since it is about 1 year old. i remembered that RedHat now has a handy update manager much like Microsoft so I figured this would be pretty fast. WRONG! I double-click the RedHat Network Update icon on my desktop and I receive the following exception!

Exception type SSL.Error

Exception Handler Information

Traceback (most recent call last):

File “/usr/bin/../share/rhn/rhn_applet/rhn_applet.py”, line 424, in refresh

self.model.refresh(force)

File “/usr/bin/../share/rhn/rhn_applet/rhn_applet_model.py”, line 264, in refresh

self.rpc_server.refresh(force)”

I am also told to email this stacktrace to RedHat at a specific address which I did.

Finally I go to the RedHat website as a last resort to upgrade my OS so that I hopefully can get Firefox to install. When I navigate to www.redhat.com I am greeted with:

Site Maintenance

In order to provide you with a better experience on redhat.com we are currently doing site maintenance and upgrading our systems. We apologize for any inconvience this may cause. Please come back in a few hours for full access to our improved site.

To contact Red Hat Support please call 1-888-RedHat1.”

————-

Bottom Line:

Linux has a VERY LONG WAY TO GO.

Can I figure out all the problems? Sure.

Do I want to? No.

I have more important things to debug.

Categories: Computers Tags:

using rsync to copy files from one server to another

August 17th, 2004 Tony 3 comments

if you need to move a lot of files such as moving your website to a new server, rsync via ssh is a super simple way to accomplish the task:

(execute on the new server)

rsync -av -e ssh username@oldserverhost:/home/old_home/ /home/new_home/

leave out the v parameter (verbose) if you do not wish to see the progress.

Categories: Code Tags:

us air boeing 737 wing missing a screw

August 11th, 2004 Tony 1 comment

as i peered out my window on a us air flight from raleigh to philadelphia i noticed a screw was missing in the wing of my boeing 737.

i pondered… just how many missing screws is considered acceptable for safe flight? makes me nervous.

Categories: Uncategorized Tags:

browser emulator unnecessary for html browser testing!

July 21st, 2004 Tony 5 comments

today i was searching for a browser emulator that could ease the pain of testing websites for older versions of Internet Explorer. the bottom line is that there is no such thing. however, there is a VERY nice solution that doesn’t require dangerous multiple boot installations on your machine.

it turns out that Microsoft stretched the truth quite a bit when they told the federal courts that IE could not run independent of the Windows operating system. Skyzyx provides a handy list of zip files you may download. download each of the IE versions you desire, and then simply double-click the executable on your hard drive for each version you downloaded. you’ll instantly be surfing the web with old IE browsers all the way down to Internet Explorer 3.0! these files make no changes to your registry and do not impact your up to date version of IE.

note : i could never get IE version 5.01 to work on my XP box. it loaded upon clicking the exe but threw an exception whenever i navigated to any page. also, favorites are pretty much broken in every version this solution.

testing older versions of Netscape has always been quite a bit easier than IE. netscape maintains an archive of old versions of their browser. installation of any of these older netscape versions will not impact your up to date netscape installation.

Categories: Code Tags: