January 08, 2001

Whew, what a week!
Bought a 40 GB hard drive (ATA100 compatible) - Read online how there's not much speed increase unless you have two high speed drives since the drives typically don't pump data that fast. Most motherboards do ATA/66 nowadays. I was running out of room on my motherboard for drives anyway so I also purchased a PCI-bus controller. It turns out my Linux configuration doesn't recognize that controller (and drivers are unavailable still), so I can only use the new space in MS-OSes.
Taught some cub scouts how to use a hammer, screwdriver and pliers this weekend. That was fun! If you're not into scouting, and you have kids, you should try it. These kids really enjoy doing new things every week!
Have managed to get SnortSnarf and Snort working together in tandem to give me a web page for intrusion detection on a small network at work. I've found some articles that will help me make it work better, and there's also some automated scripts for downloading the newest intrusion signatures. I'll be implementing that soon.
Taught my son to play Magic:the Gathering which I had bought him for Christmas (the Starter set) and he's really getting into playing it. It involves a little more thought than his Pokemon cards, and I enjoy playing it with him.
Been playing with my cable modem at home, downloading stuff from the net left and right. Lots of updates for Linux. I'm running RedHat 7.0 and I'm waiting for them to release the rpm with the new 2.4 kernel in it. The automated up2date tool they include is a very nice addition. Makes the patch process practically painless!
Hint for anyone wanting to run Linux - get more RAM or don't run X-windows stuff. You can do a lot without using X-windows with a slower box, but X will make a small box do a SSSLLLOOOWWW crawl. My box at home has a 400 Mhz Celeron in it, but X is nice and speedy now with 256 MB RAM.
Read Lockergnome! Get free software. HotDog Pro ver5.5 was given away free to Chris' readers in daily Lockergnome this week. No support, but for all you powerusers who don't need it.....hey, it's free!

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