sandmoose.com

Download and Install Apple’s JVM (1.5.02)
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/java2se50release1.html

Download Weblogic 9 for “Red Hat Enterprise Linux (3.0, 4.0, x86)”
http://commerce.bea.com/showproduct.jsp?family=WLS&major=9.0&minor=0

Install on a Linux Machine
Find an available Linux machine on your network and install Weblogic on it. Yes, it really helps to have a Red Hat box lying around for this step as you can’t run the binary installer on your OS X machine.

Copy Installation to Local Machine
Using whatever means you have at your disposal copy the Weblogic installation directory from the Linux server to your OS X machine. You can put it anywhere you want on your OS X machine. I put mine at /usr/local/bea.

Remove Installed JVMs
cd $BEA_HOME
rm -fr jdk150_03
rm -fr jrockit90_150_03

Create Symbolic Link for Apple JVM
cd $BEA_HOME
ln -s /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home jdk150_02

Edit Config Files
Edit the following two configuration files and replace all references to the installed JVM to the Apple JVM.
bea/registry.xml
bea/weblogic90/common/bin/commEnv.sh

Carry On With Business as Usual
That’s it. From here on out you can treat this installation as any other UNIX-based Weblogic installation.

Yes, there was a time when Gateway was a respected name in personal computers. I had been working at my first real job for about six months and decided I really needed a new computer. The old Compaq 386 had served me well but it’s glory days were long behind. However, I didn’t have enough cash to actually buy myself a computer. So I decided to put the whole thing on one of my brand new credit cards. For a long time afterwards I debated about whether this was a good idea or not but considering where the Gateway eventually took me I think it was ultimately a good choice.

So I ordered myself a Gateway Pentium 133MHz somewhere in the later half of 1995. The Gateway came pre-installed with Windows 95 which would be my first exposure to Microsoft’s brand-new operating system and I was very excited about this. It was light-years ahead of Windows 3.1 in every respect and I was absolutely blown away by the new user-interface and overall stability of the system. Most importantly though, the Gateway was fast enough to run games more graphically intense than Solitaire. Eager to make use of all that CPU horsepower I went to the Computer City in Jacksonville Florida and bought myself a copy of Dark Forces — a first-person shooter set in the Star Wars universe. This was a pivotal moment in my career.

Every day I would come home from work, eat dinner, and do a few chores like laundry or cleaning up my apartment. Playing Dark Forces at the end of the day would be my reward for taking care of my apartment. Over the next several of months I played all the way through Dark Forces three times. I went back to Computer City to see if they had any other games I might like. I was hooked.

This time I came home with a game titled Duke Nukem 3D. I didn’t think it could get any better than Dark Forces but Duke Nukem blew it out of the water.

In the summer of 1996 I switched jobs and started working at a new company which had more young people on staff. Every lunch hour these guys would play Quake deathmatch. I started playing with them and had a ton of fun during our lunch hour games. After a few months I was a full participant in the “Internet Quake Community” with my own site dedicated to John Romero’s then-in-development-and-highly-anticipated-but-would-turn-out-to-be-a-future-disaster Daikatana.

What happened next is a whole story in itself. The short version of the story is that through my online activities I got a job offer with a magazine publisher as the webmaster for PC Gamer magazine. In some ways this was a step down from my previous job. It paid less money and wasn’t as intellectually challenging as my existing job. However, I was getting frustrated with developing Windows business applications in PowerBuilder and really wanted more experience on UNIX systems and web development tools. Sometimes you have to take a step back in order to move forward and I felt this was one of those times. Since this story is about my computers and not my move to California I’ll skip over all those details.

Since gaming was now the primary use for my computer I upgraded almost every part of my machine I could to keep up with the demands of newer games. But eventually my upgrade options ran out and I had to once again get a new computer.

To be continued.

Kudos to the state of California for encouraging the use of open-source software when appropriate. After that ridiculously expensive deal with Oracle a while back it’s nice to see some people in authority have their heads screwed on straight.

California Performance Review: Explore Open Source Alternatives

You would think that someone in my position would understand the importance of backups. I have said many times that establishing solid reliable backup procedures is the single most important thing an IT organization can do. Yet still, I found myself without backups for this very weblog when I accidently deleted it last night.

AHHHH!

First of all, why did they have to put the “Delete Weblog” link so close to the “New Entry” link? After the shock subsided I tried to think of how I was going to recover over two years worth of entries. The actual web pages were still online but the content management system’s database for the weblog had been torched so I couldn’t make any additional entries without destroying the existing HTML pages.

I’ll spare you the details of how I actually did get all the entries recovered (in under two hours no less) but I did have an old copy of my weblog database on my personal computer (as opposed to the server this is run from) that proved to be invaluable.

Picture galleries were not affected since they’re based on a different system.

Once again I’m humbled by my own mistakes. My lesson has been learned and backups of this weblog and entire site will become a part of my regular routine.

After my first two years of college I wasn’t exactly sure what career track I wanted to pursue. I decided to take a computer programming class just to see how I would like it. It turns out I did like it. I loved it in fact. Not only did I find the material fairly intuitive but I was one of the people in my class that other people would come to for help. So in the winter of 1992 I convinced my mom to get me a computer for Christmas. This time it was a Compaq 386SX/25MHz.

I did much with this computer. It’s the computer on which I learned how PCs worked. I learned DOS. I wrote many DOS programs in Pascal as part of my course work. I learned how to use Word Perfect, Lotus-123 and even a little bit of dBase.

I also upgraded almost every part of this computer. I upgraded the RAM to a whopping 4MBs. I added a second hard drive for a total of 8MBs of storage. I upgraded the video card so I could see more colors. I installed a modem. I installed a CD-ROM drive and a sound card. The CPU and motherboard were probably the only original parts left in that computer by the time I was done with it.

After about a year of using DOS I added the ‘win’ command as the last line in my autoexec.bat file. Yep, I switched to Windows 3.1. I bought a lot of Windows software at the college bookstore for student prices. I learned how to program Windows applications in C. I wrote a little nutritional database for my mom. That was my first “real” Windows program written in C. I also learned database applications like Borland Paradox and Microsoft Access. I also played a ton of Solitaire and Minesweeper.

This was my main “learning” computer and I have probably done more with this machine than I have with any other machine since then. I remember in last year in college I would sit in my little rented house reading books and manuals trying to soak up everything I could. At the time I thought I was going to be a hotshot Windows programmer who coded everything in C. Little did I know that the business world revolved entirely around Rapid Application Development tools like Visual Basic, Microsoft Access, and PowerBuilder. [Shudder] PowerBuilder.

Upon graduating from college I got a job where I lived, breathed, and ate Microsoft Access for a whole year. Me and my mentor, Rick McClure, managed to crank out an Access application that did things the developers at Microsoft never intended Access to do. It can be considered either a triumph of our will and determination or just an unwieldy hack.

By this time my old 386 was about four years old and was definitely showing its age. Since I had a real job I finally had a little bit of money to buy myself a new computer with. Well, let me rephrase that. Those credit card companies had given me enough of a credit line for me to buy myself a new computer. To be continuedÉ

My first computer was a Commodore 128 which the whole family shared. My mom got it for us on Christmas in 1987. We also got an external 5.25″ floppy disc drive to go along with it. The “128″ refers to the 128KB of RAM it contained. Most of my friends had a Commodore 64 so what we had was technically better. However, software had to be written specifically for the Commodore 128 and most vendors opted to support the larger installed base of Commodore 64 users. So we almost always ran our machine in the 64 compatibility mode.

The vast majority of the software we ran were games my brother and I would play. My friend Jackie would get copies of all the coolest games and bring them over for us. Most games were copy protected but Jackie had connections and could get copies of “cracked” games. We had a few store bought games but most of them were copies. I honestly can’t remember what most of the games were but I do remember a fighting game called Barbarian. It had this one move where one guy would spin around the cut the head off his opponent. Then a little troll would come along and kick the head off screen. We thought that was pretty hilarious. I also remember my brother playing EA’s Summer Games and Winter Games all the time. I also played a lot of Test Drive which is a franchise still going today. We had a few text-based adventure games but I never had the patience to learn how to play them.

The computer did serve some productive function too. During my senior year of high school I used it to write some BASIC programs which was a fun diversion for me. I hadn’t yet entertained the idea of making a living with computers but I thought it would be fun to mess around with BASIC. Even though I didn’t know it at the time that BASIC class sowed the seeds for what would eventually become my career. At that time computers in schools weren’t as common as they are today so the class was restricted to seniors. It was taught by the school’s head football coach who really did know his stuff.

The first program we wrote in class was a simple coin flipping simulation. You type in the command and the computer randomly displays either “Head” or “Tails”. Pretty simple stuff but it got more interesting as the semester went on. My biggest achievement was a little program where you would type in a question. It could be any question as long as the first word was either “Who”, “What”, “Where”, “When”, “Why”, or “How”. The program would look at the first word and display a randomly chosen response appropriate for the type of question. It took me a whole afternoon to write and kept me entertained for the rest of the day. The big achievement wasn’t necessarily in the program’s logic but in how it was structured.

Back in these days BASIC programs were the epitome of “unstructured” programming. BASIC did have having construct like a sub-routine or function. The path of execution though a program was controlled by using GOTO statements. In any program of a non-trivial size the string of GOTO statements would become so complex it was referred to as “spaghetti” code because trying to trace the path of execution would having you jumping around in the code in a rather convoluted manner.

I wanted to make debugging simpler for myself so I spaced out my code in little chunks. Each chunk would perform a single function and would have one entry point and one exit point. The exit point would always return execution to a “main” chunk which controlled which other chunks of code were GOTOed. At the time I had no idea what a sub-routine was in structured languages like Pascal or C but that is what I was trying to simulate in my BASIC program without having been taught it. Yay for me.

On a lighter note, I specifically remember sitting next to a couple of guys I considered my programming partners in that class although I doubt they will have remembered me – Greg Kuhn and his buddy whose name I forget. The buddy wrote a program that would generate random three-word phrases consisting an adjective, adverb, and noun. Most of the phrases didn’t make any sense but every once in a while the program would produce one so funny they would giggle over it like girls for twenty minutes. Come to think of it they were always giggling over something or other.

My father-in-law’s computer managed to catch a nasty virus several months ago. My brother-in-law’s computer is currently infested with difficult to remove spyware which makes his computing experience frustrating. Many other people have the same problems. My computer, however, is healthy and spyware-free after more than two years of usage. Here I will outline my usage patterns that I believe has kept my computer clean and healthy. These tips are presented in order of importance.

I Do My Windows Updates
This is the single most important thing you can do for your Windows machine. Bug fixes that affect the security of Windows are constantly being released by Microsoft via Windows Update. From your start menu click on “All Programs”. At the top of the menu should be an item called “Windows Update”. Click on it to run it. If you’re asked for permission to install an ActiveX thingy just say yes. Then click on “Scan for Updates”. Anything listed as a critical should be downloaded and installed immediately. Drop everything else you’re doing and install those critical updates. You can also have Windows automatically notify you of critical updates. Right-click on the My Computer icon and select Properties from the pop-up menu. Now select the “Automatic Updates” tab. Check the box that says “Keep my computer up to date.” Remember, if you don’t do your Windows Updates you are asking for trouble.

I Don’t Use File Sharing Applications
There was a time when these applications were cool but that time has long since passed. It’s difficult and time-consuming to get good music from the file sharing networks anyway. Chances are you’re either going to get some crappy sounding file because the kid who created it doesn’t know how to properly encode his MP3s. Or more likely you’ll end up with one of the many decoy files placed by the Recoding Industry Association of America. If you really need to get music online you’re much better off with a legitimate alternative like iTunes. The worst part about the file sharing applications is that they are almost always bundled with Spyware. Software that is installed and runs in the background without your knowledge and is responsible for pop-up windows, inexplicable behavior in IE and other nasty things. Some of it can be quite bad and extremely difficult to get rid of. Also, sharing applications, especially Kazaa, seem to be associated with viruses an awful lot. I haven’t personally seen solid evidence linking Kazaa to viruses but have heard enough anecdotal stories to make me very wary.

I Don’t Use Internet Explorer
The reason why I don’t use Internet Explorer is because Mozilla 1.0 offered better web standards support and pop-up blocking back in 2001. It made my browsing experience much more pleasant and it includes several web-development features I find invaluable. The Internet as a whole has gotten a lot more hostile in the past three years and I think most people will tend to have a better experience with Mozilla Firefox than with IE as long as they give themselves time to get used to the different interface. IE includes a lot of automated scripting functionality that has made security exploits possible and still does not offer built-in pop-up blocking. Suring the web with Internet Explorer is kind of like playing Russian roulette with your computer. Even if you’ve done your updates there’s always a small chance you’re going to run across a site that’s going to exploit a big that hasn’t been fixed yet. Depending on what kind of sites your browse that chance could be very small or bigger.

IE toolbars that feature pop-up blocking are available but I would make sure to only use one from a super-trusted source. In my book that includes Google, Yahoo, and not much else.

I Don’t Browse Suspect Sites
My daily browsing routine only takes me to legitimate sites like Wired, CNN, SF Gate, User Friendly, Homestar Runner, etc. Other than annoying pop-up or Flash ads, sites like this are pretty much guaranteed to not do anything bad to your computer. Suspect sites fall into the following categories:

MP3 Libraries: Not too popular these days but there’s still a few around.
Warez: Illegal software and/or key generators
Wallpaper: Sure, you want some cool wallpaper for your computer but try to avoid going to sites that have vast archives of wallpaper.
Sound Files: Sites that include downloadable sound clips from movies and TV shows.

Use your judgment. You know what’s legit and not legit and the more time you spend on suspect sites the more likely you are to have something bad happen.

I Use Anti-virus Software
I included this last because my anti-virus software has not found a single virus on my system to date. However, it’s a good to have multiple lines of defense and Norton Antivirus is my last line of defense. Some more recent versions of Norton Antivirus will also search out and destroy spyware which may make it more valuable.

Wired has one of the better articles I’ve seen about Microsoft’s next major version of Windows, code-named Longhorn.

If what we’ve been hearing is true then it’s going to be one of the biggest changes in personal computing we’ve seen to date. Rather than me trying to explain it I encourage you to read the article. It’s not too long and is written in clear language that’s easy to understand.

Done reading it? Okay.

It’s important to keep in mind that the ship date for Longhorn is a long time from now (especially given the inevitable delays) and a lot can change in the intervening time. It could be that the concern over the new security features is simply ignorant paranoia but I think people need to be asking Microsoft some tough questions. Are they being a little too over-zealous in their effort to solve their current security problems? What about people who write code as their hobby or profession? Will they be able to run their own code without a major hassle? Will digital media really be more convenient than it is now or will the built-in rights management features throw up unintended roadblocks too often? It seems like the potential for media producers (movie studios and record companies) to completely control how we use the products we buy is certainly there. Do we really want the MPAA and RIAA to have this kind of control?

As they say in Star Wars, I have a bad feeling about this. Security and convenience are often opposing goals. So are DRM (digital rights management) and convenience. In a larger sense security and personal liberty are opposing goals and a balance has to be struck to ensure people can do the things they have a right to while protecting people against malicious individuals.

I’ve been experimenting with Apple’s OSX for several months at work. However, the machine given to me for this purpose is an older model that only runs at 350Mhz and is loaded with a paltry 192Mbs of RAM. While it has been very educational the slow speed kept it from ever replacing my personal Toshiba WinXP laptop for everyday work. That changed yesterday.

In the morning my boss strolled over to by desk with my brand spanking new 15″ PowerBook. What a beautiful machine! So far it has been a sheer joy to use.

I did have to make a few concessions to keep the price of the machine within our budget. The CPU is an 867Mhz G4 instead of a 1Ghz. That doesn’t sound like much compared to the 3Ghz chips Intel is putting out now but you must keep in mind the G4s don’t need as many clock cycles to perform the same operations. According my own informal and highly unscientific tests my new 867Mhz G4 PowerBook can rip audio just as fast if not slightly faster than my 1.7Ghz Pentium 4 based laptop.

I emphasize that my tests are informal and highly unscientific. I’m using two different pieces of software: Easy CDDA Extractor vs iTunes. But it does at least prove that for me the user experience of ripping audio is pretty much the same on both systems.

The other concession I had to make was foregoing the SuperDrive and getting a Combo Drive instead. There just wasn’t anyway I could justify having a DVD burner for work. At least I can still burn normal CDs.

So overall I’m very happy with this system. So far it has performed extremely well in work-related tasks and should have no problem fulfilling the role of full-time work machine. It should be even more pleasant to work with once I get some of my UNIX/Linux development tools running on it.

I can’t believe this. Do a Google search on ‘userdir apache forbidden’ and my little old article comes up as the first result.

After re-reading the article I realize it kind of rambles on for a while before it ever gets to the point. Also there’s a grammatical mistake in the last paragraph. Maybe I should tighten it up if it’s going to be be a top result in Google.

Update: I took a little time today to see what the most popular articles are on this site. The statistics software at the hosting provider here doesn’t provide any information on outside referrers but I can make the fairly educated guess that plenty of people are arriving here due to search results since several of my archive pages are in my list of top “Entry Pages”. Here’s a few.

Terry Tate: Office Linebacker
My most popular archived article. I tried a few obvious searches in Google but didn’t see sandmoose.com anywhere in the results. Maybe another search engine is driving people to this page or other search terms work better with Google. I didn’t exactly try very hard.

The Leaky Shower
Enter the search terms ‘Leaky Shower‘ into Google and this article tops the results list. I kinda feel bad for everyone who might have clicked on that link hoping to learn how to fix their own leaky shower.

New Terry Tate Video
Another Terry Tate article. See above.

Book Review: Fight Club
Enter the search term ‘Fight Club Book Review‘ into Google and this article is the third result.
Right beneath Amazon’s listing.