Journal For Week of November 13, 2000
Last Update: November 13, 2000
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Monday November 13, 2000Oops! I did not pay very good attention to the dates on last weeks page. I have fixed them and am sorry if the convoluted dates confused anyone.
I caught the tail end of a news magazine program on electronic voting and how it changes and affects the audit process. Good timing for the show considering the mess in the U.S. Presidential election and the upcoming federal election here in the Great White North. They showed several systems all which use touch screen technology to present an electronic ballot. One system used in Ontario issues each voter a smart card to unlock the voting terminal so they can place their vote. The smart card is ecencially your ballot which you are issued then return to a polling officer, which provides people with a similar procedure to follow to what they are used to with tradional voting methods. Data is stored on a removable hard drive, which is taken to a central office for the data to be tabulated.
The system in Ontario has an audit process which is that all transactions on a terminal are captured and can be printed out. A competing system used in one US city since 1998 has encountered data loss, thus a recount could never be done if required. This seems to be the argument held by the naysayers who want to hold on to the manual voting system. They also compare a voting terminal to a home PC which can crash and data can be lost. This may not be a fair comparison, but since the show did not go into the hardware in use or even try to cover this point I cannot really comment. But it is possible to setup the bardware in a manner that the data is protected and it would take multiple catastrophic failures for data to be lost.
The next step is voting by Internet which I am not too comfortable with, but it is all ready in use in he private sector. The IEEE holds voting for positions via the Internet.
Trying to get some more reading on firewalls done but can't concentrate on the book long enough to get more than a few pages read in a single sitting. Time to move on and try and work on something else.
With the brain not functional for the work I wanted to do, I went on to the stuff that needs to be done. So the winter front went onto the truck, snow has been shoveled and recycling hauled to the bins at the shopping center. Also started on winterizing my mountain bike by taking off the semi slick tires I used when commuting to the old job. Now for playing in the snow, knobby tires are called for. Can't finish job as the rear rim needs new rim tape as the hockey tape I used on it last time does not stand up well when I remove a tire. Since today is a holiday the chances of a bike shop being open is too slim to make the trip worth it so it will have to wait till later in the week.
Tuesday November 14, 2000
Did some more testing with my Samba setup at work today and am pleased with how things are working out. I now have a procedure outlined for new user setup. I have left the GUI admin tools behind as I am finding working at the command line faster and more consistent.My Linux box at home has been dropping the network setup which is a major pain. I think I have it fixed now so I can get some work done.
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Wednesday November 15, 2000
Having a copy of NTFSdos pays off again. My co-worker had managed to lock himself out of his PC which runs Windows NT. So I dug out my NTFSdos disk and was able to copy the security files off another PC onto his and get him going with out having to do a re-install.Research paid off today. I really wanted to prove myself right about the ability to connect a wireless bar code scanner to my Linux server. So I went digging for more documentation and waded through it. I found an over looked setting which when set correctly, tells the scanner that it is to make a TCP/IP connection to the Host IP address in the network configuration. After configuring a scanner using the new found information it connected to my Linux server. But I got no Login prompt which I think may be do to the small screen and large font that the telnet program used. I tried just punching keys to see if the screen would scroll up to show a command prompt which it didn't. Now I have to see if I can configure telnet to use a smaller font or customize the welcome screen eDesktop puts at the top of a telnet session when it is started so that the Login prompt is not pushed off the screen of the scanner.
The following image is what telnet looks like when on my PC when I connect to my Linux PC at home.
This image shows approximately how much of the above screen shows up on the bar code scanner.
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Thursday November 16, 2000
I got past yesterdays problems with the bar code scanner and managed to login to Linux and run the product location management software off the Linux box on the scanner via telnet. Turns out that the problem yesterday was compounded by the fact that the wireless scanners are configured with caps lock on and screen navigation turned off. So with this information I was able to turn off caps, login then clear the screen and see the command line, or part of it at least.Now the programmer has to test the data management utilities he wrote, I have some user accounts to create, then we can do our final testing and roll out the Linux solution as a live production product.
Now trying to figure out writing and scripts under Linux so I can automate some processes on the bar code scanners. Also need to look at customizing the shell.
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Friday November 17, 2000
How is it that another week has passed by right under my nose? Also just realized that in one more week I will have been in Calgary 3 years. Time flies when you're having fun.I had poor results last night trying to write a few simple test scripts on the Linux PC, mostly due to not getting along with vi very well. I took a second stab at it at work today on my lunch break and things started to click. Working with vi reminds me of using edlin under Dos.
The first try at migrating Baan and Oracle on to the new Dell server has failed. I took a stab at trying to make sense of the error message we have been getting. I went though the registry and all the environmental variables and made a few changes with no results. So at the end of the day today I did a fresh install of Windows NT on the server so we can start again from a clean slate. I also made sure I made a backup of the registry so I can reset the registry if need be. Now On Monday we are going to try and do a restore of Baan and Oracle from the current production server, then apply some registry hacks to get things going. Baan support says that this will work. We'll see!
I have no idea what I did, but my left ear has been ringing for the past 24 hours. Most of the time there is enough noise around me that I don't notice it. But when I go from a noisy environment to a quiet one I notice right away. At least I seem to manage to block it out enough that the ringing doesn't stop me from falling asleep at night.
Stopped by a local bicycle shop to night and was surprised to find that for the next week it has been turned into a bicycle museum. The owner has a large collection of old bikes dating back to a penny farthing from the late 1800's. I spent about half an hour with one of the managers looking at the collection.
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Saturday November 18, 2000
Sleeping in on Saturday never use to be a problem for me. But as of late I wake up at 6 as if it I would be going to work, even though the alarm is off. Could it be I am starting to become a morning person?The federal election is just around the corner and the advanced voting stations are now open. I hate party politics and would much rather vote for a person instead of a party, but our system does not work this way. Haven't heard anyone say any thing about their platform, just lots of verbal bashing of the competition.
The World Track Cycling Championships were televised today. Better coverage of the Canadian riders than I saw on Olympic coverage so I could see my friend Jim Fisher ride in the kilo. Jim also rode in the Olympic sprint, with Kyle Hudson who I also know and had thought he had retired to work with his father. Surprised to see Erin Carter riding who I had not see an news of for a long time. I helped Erin out a couple of years back by driving her to the Canadian Cycling Championships in Quebec. Looks like I better find a better source for Canadian cycling news so I can keep up with what my friends are doing.
The big chore for the weekend is done which was and oil change on the truck. Lucky me as I took the Firewall book I have been reading, as I ended up sitting in line at the lube shop for an hour. Managed to cover some good material on ipchains which I plan to test later today or on Sunday.
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Sunday November 19, 2000
Watched a program on our federal election this morning, and it makes me wonder if anyone really things the way the political pundits on the tube think. For example one person said that she felt many BC voters who are not happy with the NDP, and in protest with vote Liberal. Part of that protest vote is to have a presence in parliament to voice the concerns of BC. They try to back this up by doing a fluff piece on an actual voter who thinks this way. I don't buy it especially with the liberals who have a track record of being expected to tow the party line. So if they vote liberal, and manage to put the local liberal candidate into parliament, that person will have to tow the party line, which as history shows does nothing for BC. This is not what the people are after, they want federal government which will do things for BC.When I was younger thought somewhat along the line of the gentleman I mentioned about, but now am rather cynical of the political process and government in general. But I still will get out there and vote, and hope that my vote will make some small difference. Hey without hope what is there?
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