Where in heck did the week go?

Several of my coworkers were in Japan this week, including two from my group. Early Monday (Sunday evening for me, thanks to the International Date Line) JB went in and installed the experimental server I spent last week preparing. It basically worked on boot-up -- the few guesses I had to make about the network setup turned out to be right. I've spent much of the week working through a knot-hole making the inevitable configuration adjustments: things I forgot to change, things I simply didn't know about, and so on.

Debugging the things I didn't have time to fix will take longer, but I have a mostly-duplicate system set up now, so it won't be too hard -- make a change here, get it working, ship the changes over. A Debian install is blazingly fast when you have a package list, a local mirror and a 100MHz ethernet.

The biggest problem over in Japan is the printer. They have one, and there are probably Linux drivers, but the documentation on the printer is in Japanese, the documentation for CUPS is inadequate, and at this point (after three trans-Pacific phone sessions) we haven't gotten anything to work. What we'll have to do is find somebody in the printer division who understands Linux. There are a few such, fortunately. The alternative would be to get them to spring for the same kind of printer there that we have here -- there are good arguments on both sides.

Back at home, I now have a DVD burner. Got it on Sunday when Fry's had it on sale for $70 (I was grumbling to myself about missing the one they had for $90 on Saturday). Installed it Tuesday night; Linux recognized it with no problems, but I still have to chase down the (binary) drivers.

They really do grow overnight

My Younger Daughter (age 12) grew 1.5cm last night -- she's now only 5mm shorter than me. Unlikely to last. I can tell her she'll "always be my little girl", but I don't think she'll believe me anymore.

Another fine meme

(from opportunitygrrl and others)

Anyone and everyone who reads this, (if you feel like it) post something you would like to do with me someday. Then post this in your journal (again, if you feel like it).