7:30 AM I have uncovered a dastardly plot for world domination by the cats of the world.

I discovered this plot by bribing my cat, Doorstop, with tuna. He spilled the beans on the whole thing; it seems that Bo Leuf's cat, Salem, is plotting world domination through Bo's computer. I don't know quite how he intends to accomplish this, other than that it seems to involve sliding glass doors. The possibilities, of course, are horrendous; I blame violence on TV and sex in movies. We should lock up our children immediately, reeducate all cats, reevaluate the Federal Reserve rates, imprison Bo for allowing his cat to go so horribly wrong, and call off Christmas.

Seems to work for people, anyway.

Long and short week around here. I'll be posting updates through Christmas eve - maybe - but there won't be anything on Christmas. I've already agree to go "unplugged" for the day, as a present to my wife. Hey, it beats Tom's idea of driving around crowded shopping mall parking lots.

But it will be a long week, as well; this is the week that I get to do a full and complete inventory of all our hardware and software. I'm excited. Can't you tell? I'm giddy, I am.

But, there is a bright side; my wife went nuts and purchased "team t-shirts" for the iTOOL IT staff. They're Dilbert shirts, showing Dogbert smashing a computer and a huge caption that reads "The Network is Down!! - But I Feel Better." On the back, she's added an iTOOL logo, and we each have a knickname, selected by our wives (and in one case, mother.) Mine is "NT God." Dave's is "SQL God" - this after he absolutely refused to let his wife make it "SQL Stud." Coward. Last but not least is my Minion, Little John, who's shirt continues the theme with the title "God in Training".

Works for me. <G>

Finally, some sad news reported by the BBC last night; British actor Desmond Llewelyn, known to Bond fans everywhere as Q, was killed in a car accident yesterday. Sad news made even more - ironic, I guess, in that he was shown in the last movie training his replacement.

Later.

Today was ripped apart, demolished, trashed, and devoured by rabid users. Trust me on this one.

6:30 AM Yeah, yeah, Bob, I know, Dr. Keyboard syndrome. Between inventory and... well, more inventory, I didn't get around to posting yesterday. Want your money back? <SEG>

I did take the time, whilst setting up a really, REALLY BIG Access database to hold all this inventory data, to ponder a few mysteries. Like life on other planets. The death of Elvis. Is that really Tom, or just a recording? Could I ever actually do this job without my toys?

Some of these questions had no apparent answers; some were unthinkable (do this job without toys? Please.) and others were just wierd. (Although, the more you think about it - why ISN'T there a veal flavor J-ELLO?) But I didn't really think about anything IMPORTANT. Nothing mind-bending or Earth-shattering. I didn't come up with a simple cure for cancer, or a means of ending world hunger. (Although the answer is obvious; shoot every other person. The question then becomes Me or You? I favor You, but you may disagree.)

I did start thinking about this computer world we live in. Linux, Windows, Mac, whatever. The Internet. (Big I now, rather than lower-case.) ATM machines. I was reading Slashdot - or going slumming, as I call it - and there was a long discussion on the release of the Quake source code. The original version, of course, not the latest. Rigth above it was a post about Microsoft releasing instructions on how to remove Linux from a system. The two stories actually had a lot in common. The Quake GPL (Gnu Public License) story was filled with posters whining about the strictest terms of the GPL, and how it was nice of John Carmack to give up his work and all, now why couldn't he just give up ALL of it? The Microsoft story was filled with posters whining about their precious battle against the forces of Darkness. Oh, sorry, "Darkne$$"

It made me wonder.

What ever happened to the old-style hacker? I used to go home after school and play with my top-of-the-line 386, 25Mhz PC with its 4 MB of RAM, 2X CD-ROM, and 40 MB hard drive. I lost the case screws less than a week after I got the machine, and I didn't care because the case was rarely on the machine anyway. Need to rebuild DOS? No problem, where'd that floppy go...

Hand-editing AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS. Dailing the local BBS with my 9600 baud modem to play Trade Wars and chat with other geeks about configuring my system. There were other operating systems; at various times, I knew people who were experimenting or was experimenting myself with OS/2, Amiga, DR-DOS, and even a very early version of linux. (This would have been around 93, so that was what, kernel 0.7?) I remember lots of good-natured "fighting" between the Mac users and the PC users, and a lot of bragging (I got OS/2 running in 2 hours! It took you three days!) and a rare fight. Hack wars, where everyone tried to trash everyone else's system. (Ah, the days when a backup meant floppies!)

My point is that it was all FUN. Even when we soundly whipped the Mac people in our discussions - as was only right and proper - it was all fun. Personal attacks happened, but they were fairly rare. Most of us read science fiction for fun, particularly authors like Heinlein, Pournelle, Niven, Clarke, and Asimov. Star Wars was a cool set of movies, but they were MOVIES.

So why is it, when communication is so much better, so much faster, so much EASIER, that the old-style hacker is hard to find? Slashdot bills itself, without too much argument, as the premier site for geeks and hackers to congragate online and discuss what's going on in our world. So why is it filled with stupid people? I mean, real, 100-proof, Grade-A morons. These people sound like religous zealots, only less flexible.

So what happened to my world?

8:30 Short update today.

Lots of comments on my musings of yesterday (actually, the musings were from the day before, but I digress...); mostly from people who also miss the days when even your opponents - the dreaded Mac users - were friends, and software debates sounded less like a dog fight. I did get a few comments - not all of them printable - from people who disagreed. Their privelage, of course, but I have to say that some of them proved my point, to me at least. It seems that since I use and like Windows as well as Linux, I must be on Microsoft's payroll. Nope, sorry to disappoint. I wish I were; it being the holidays, I could use the cash.

Anyway, as I write this I'm finishing my download of the new development version of Mandrake Linux; version 7.0, beta. It uses the pre-release version of the 2.2.14 kernel, a new install routine, and a very interesting security feature where you select how secure you want the box to be by default. There's still tweaking to do, of course, but it's overall much better than the alternatives I've seen. Besides that, I've heard a lot of good things about Mandrake, and I want to take a good hard look at it. Full report on the details after Christmas. Maybe. If you're good.

And now it's time to burn the CD and start playing; later, all. I probably won't post until after Christmas, or if I do, it'll be short. So have a good one; I hope you're all well, happy, and with the people you care about the most. Or, failing that, at least get a lot of good loot. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Blessed Yule for the pagans, Happy Hanukkah... (this was easier when you could just say "Happy Holidays" and be done)...