toe-dexterious
last update: 06/29 @ 12:48
Robert practicing his penmanship….

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Two Skirts
last update: 06/21 @ 22:22

This morning I asked Robert which skirt I ought to wear, (seeing as he would state his opinion anyway.) I held up one purple paisley skirt and one plain brown one. He looked over and without missing a beat pointed to the purple one and said, ” Mommy, wear the construction one, the one with the construction things on it. The other one is the dirt.”

Did I mention he’s going through a construction truck phase? I like his unique view of looking at things though.

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28 hours later…
last update: 06/20 @ 14:42

Makeing progress. One more problem to solve — not today — and a couple nice to have fixes. At least I can say it was a learning experience. We’ll see how I do on the public facing server next week (there may be some interruptions here…)

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Who says Linux is hard to install?
last update: 06/19 @ 22:28

Well…
I do.
Admittedly, I’m particular about how it’s installed.

I started upgrading our internal server about 10:30 this morning. First, I had to come up with a way to work around my KVM not being happy with my trackball — I’m going down the path of one pointing device per machine (but I can still share my monitor and keyboard).

The install didn’t work. Fortunately, Fedora provides traceback details when it blows up. It didn’t get past mount all lvm, or something like that. So, OK, I can deal with that, it didn’t like my changes to the partitioning scheme that removed the LVM partition.

So I tried again with LVM partitioning but still using the set of partitions I would like. That blew up in the same place with the same error.

So I tried a default partitioning scheme figuring I could resize the default “/” partition and add my partitions post install. Using the rescue boot disk, I resized the partition — but not correctly. It refused to boot and wanted me to approve about a million errors fsck found in the file system (the superblock said it was an 80GB drive but it was physically set up as a 5GB drive — my resize wasn’t quite complete. I tried booting back into the “live CD” I installed from and resizing the partition with the nice GUI tool — but it complained of the same problem.

So I tried installing with a 5GB “/” partition and no other partitions — that way I could just add my additional partitions and not have to shrink anything. Somehow in the process I managed to get the installer messed up so that it was writing the file system after installing the software. That’s backwards and effectively erased what it had installed.

But that seemed like a good path to go down (the small “/” partition, not the erase after install). So I gamely tried again. This time it seemed to stick. After the install (One nice feature of Fedora 7 is the install takes place in a running Linux OS — the CD starts up the OS and lets you play with it as much as you like before installing — of course, if it actually installed, that would be better.), I set up the additional partitions (thanks to the LVM GUI, that was easy). Then I copied over the files from “/” to the new partitions and rebooted.

It stopped cold on the syslog daemon startup. Back to the rescue disk and after some thought I looked at my older PC — thankfully I have my old system running Fedora 7 to compare with. The SELinux context was wrong on the new partition mount points. I reset that (using my older system as a model) and finally had a system that booted by about 9:30 this evening.

Now I’m updating the base software, and have added in my additional drives (with, I hope, the correct SELinux context changes). I’ll reboot and then install the rest of the software and try to get the services I care about running….

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Hot Day
last update: 06/18 @ 20:48
But Sarah had the great idea to get out the pool she picked up late last year as an end-of-season special. Robert really enjoying splashing around in the back yard.

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a little river time…
last update: 06/18 @ 09:37
Uncle Hank brought his inflatable ducky to lock 6 and we all paddled around the gates for a little while: Hank and I in kayaks, Sarah and Robert in the ducky. Then Hank and I ran little falls while Sarah and Robert puttered around in the feeder canal.

The interesting part of the trip was the guys in the open canoe who had heard little falls was not that hard. They avoided being clotheslined by the log across the Z canal, but they flipped in the bottom drop there. We explained, again, that the Z canal was just the beginning and they realized they were in over their heads, so to speak. The good news: no injuries and their canoe was not wrapped around any rocks. They turned around at that point, which was a wise move. Perhaps with more practice and more appropriate gear, they would have a good time on that stretch.

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I’m not sure I approve…
last update: 06/15 @ 19:23

…but Robert really wanted to wear a tie this afternoon. After he was very helpful with the days chore of picking up some IVAR shelves at IKEA — news flash: they no longer make 29 inch high uprights, the smallest are now 49 inches high — helping to cut them down to the size we needed (note the news flash above), and helping put them together in Sarah’s office to set her up with a standing computer desk, it was hard to refuse his tie request. I’m perfectly happy that the he tore it up a couple hours later.

Here he is helping carry the custom cut-down upgrights back to the car so we could take them in to Sarah’s office. Note the cool engineers cap, courtesy of his Grandpa.

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On the Road Again…
last update: 06/12 @ 13:19
Robert in full travel mode for our trip to New Jersey last weekend. We had lots of fun (see the photos) and Harry and Elle introduced us to a very cool sculpture garden.

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Back to the Aquarium
last update: 06/03 @ 17:54
We headed back up to Baltimore on rainy day to check out the aquarium. We all had a good time checking out the fishes. More photos in Robert’s section.

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Flying Solo
last update: 06/02 @ 14:01
Robert started out really not liking haircuts. Then he could tolerate them in a lap and with a toy for distraction. Today he had his first cut in the chair by himself. As long as the electric razor isn’t part of the plan, he’s OK with it now.

As Sarah says, “He’s growing up so fast.”

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