Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

4/6/2003

Have Palm, Will Travel

Filed under: Geek Work,Personal — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Sheep which is mid-afternoon or 3:34 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

It all started as a joke…

See, I was at a party several years ago and a guy was laughing about me having my Palm IIIe with me where ever I went. He made some joke that reminded me of the old Western that my Dad used to like so much called “Have Gun, Will Travel.” And, it struck me that I was sort of like that fictional gun-for-hire, but I used technology instead of a revolver. So, a couple of months later, I registered HavePalmWillTravel.com just to have the e-mail domain. Then, I made up cards just like Paladin had on the show and, well, the rest is history.
The only thing is, I’ve never really done anything with that site. I spend a whole lot of time maintaining this site and Fantasist.net and so much time at work that I don’t have a lot of time left over. Besides, I thought I’d get all into PalmOS development, which I never did. So, now I have this site and e-mail address, but not much else there. Any suggestions? If so, drop me a line at Paladin at HavePalmWillTravel.com!

2/11/2003

More CGI

Filed under: Fun Work — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:27 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Gibbous

Never enough!

Well, I wasn’t satisfied with the way the CGI script was running on Fantasist.net, so I kept working on it. Now, I have it so that it reads the stylesheet for the entire site and formats the output accordingly. Took me a bit, but I did finally get it.
Now, of course, I’m trying to adapt the script that makes proper names to CGI as well. Unfortunately, I’m not being quite as successful! Of course, I’ve just started working on this and it took me a year to get this far, so I’ll get it eventually. Just a matter of time and motivation. Not that I’ll ever really be a programmer, of course, but I do like to keep edging into new areas. Always comes in handy for surprising people.

2/7/2003

CGI Programming

Filed under: Fun Work,PERL — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:22 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

It took a year, but I did it!

Did what, you might be wondering? I finally figured out a CGI script for Fantasist.net that I’ve been working on for almost a year.
See, I love words and languages, especially foreign words and languages. In fact, I love them so much that I’ve tried to create them on several occasions, just like J.R.R. Tolkien did. But, since I’m not a trained linguist like Tolkien, I’ve always cast about for help creating the words. I want them to sound authentic, but not be actual words from an actual language. I’d hate to put together words that I thought were quite alien and unique only to find out that I’d insulted a publisher in Istanbul or Delhi! So, I searched for help with that on the web. Boy, did I find help! One of the best places, though, was Chris Pound’s Name Generation page. Chris is a linguist and has made several PERL scripts that generate new words based on input from an existing language. Finally, I could get words that were phonetically similar to an existing language that were new and unique!
But, of course, I wasn’t satisfied with that. I had to go further. What about people who couldn’t figure out PERL? I mean, it’s taken me forever to tweak things and get a good handle on the basics. What about all those potential conlangers who just aren’t up to PERL? My 11-year-old daughter, for instance, has recently gotten into conlanging. How could I make this available for her, without trying to teach her PERL? The answer, of course, is the web. So, I modified Chris’ scripts and played with data until I understood it fairly well. Then, I tried to get it up on the web. I was a miserable failure.
Until last night, that is. I started with a very basic CGI tutorial and started building upward from there until I had a simple form that would give me simple, html-friendly output. From there, it was a simple matter of tweaking the original PERL script, and an html form, until I had a good combination. And, though, I have to work out formatting and style-sheets, here it is at Fantasist.net: WordGenerator.
Enjoy!

1/29/2003

On The Move!

Filed under: Fun Work,Personal — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Dog which is in the evening time or 8:18 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Crescent

Hey, we’re moving!

Yep, that’s right, we’re moving to a new hosting company. These people we’re with now keep getting worse and worse and provide less and less service, so we’re off to join our Comrades in Arms, Fantasist.net and HavePalmWillTravel at their new hosting company.
There might be a slight interruption of service this week as a result, but we’ll be back up soon. Thanks for your patience!

12/31/2002

Everything Old…

Filed under: Geek Work,Personal — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Pig which is late at night or 11:06 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Crescent

is new again!

Well, I successfully moved HavePalmWillTravel to my new web host. And, cancelled the old account. And, got my 10% discount from my new web host, The Host Group. So, I start the year off by saving money. Cool.
Of course, now, I really should update it. A Network Geek’s work is never done.

Well, it sure has been an interesting year. A little rocky at the start, but things seem to be working out okay. Of course, I’m being a little careful these days when I talk about my job. See, I’m still a contractor and I really need to go full-time for the health benefits. Sure, the folks there complain about them, but it’s better than COBRA. And, of course, there are all the issues regarding income and creditors. The less said about that, the better. But, hey, last year at this time, not only was I not working, but I didn’t know how long it would be until I was working again! So, I’m not complaining.

And, my other website, Fantasist.net is doing fairly well. At least, I like the work I’ve managed to do on it this year. Sure, I need to do more. There are some sections that really need to be beefed up, but it’s better than the lame, little page I had there before. And, just today I figured out how to make this lovely blog system cough up foregin language dates to my specifications, so I can finally implement my web-fiction idea. Stay tuned for more on that!

In the meantime, have a Happy New Year!

11/26/2002

ISPs and Updates and Such

Filed under: Personal — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Snake which is mid-morning or 10:49 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is a Third Quarter Moon

Wow, it’s been a long time since I updated my blog!

For one thing, I’ve been wrestling with my web host/ISP for one of my other domain names. I wanted to get a simple upgrade done and two weeks later, I didn’t even have a status report, much less the upgrade. So, I decided to move that domain, which is Fantasist.net, BTW, to a new ISP. So far, so good. They seem to be better than the last folks and they sure are less expensive!

As for other updates, I’m still working at Loomis Fargo. In fact, they’ve started to make noises about bringing me on board full-time. So, I guess I’m still doing okay. It’s been a really easy job for me so far. Nothing more challenging than checking backups and dealing with printer problems, really. Of course, this weekend, I’ll be doing an in-place upgrade on a Novell NetWare server. Got to get up to version 5.1, or we won’t get Novell support! And, at the same time, I’ll update it to the newest NetWare Directory Services revision, too. Two birds with one stone and all that.

Well, that’s enough of an update for now. More later this week. Maybe how I survived Thanksgiving at my in-laws.

1/22/2002

Homeless Wanderer

Filed under: Career Archive,Certification,Novell,PERL — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Rooster which is in the early evening or 7:50 pm for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Gibbous

Well, if you’ve looked at my resume, you know that I’m out of work. In fact, you know that I’ve been out of work since the end of October this past year. So, why, you’re wondering, has it taken so long for me to update the Diary of a Network Geek? Well, mainly, because I’ve been trying to find a job and overcome depression. I’d like to go into details about it, but I’m not quite ready to tear into the crappy company for whom I used to work. At least, not until I find another job. ^_^ I have a funny feeling that the nice folks who might hire me wouldn’t like my attitude toward my last employer, so….
In the mean time, I’ve been playing around with PERL and working on my CCNA certificate. (That’s a Cisco Certified Network Associate, for those of you who were wondering.) And, I probably should update my CNE (Certified Novell Engineer), but I’m not quite willing to do that yet. It’s not cheap and not too many people seem to be looking for CNE’s right now. I guess I should start working on my MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer), but I’d rather not if I don’t have to just yet. When I’m done with my CCNA, I’ll probably work on getting the Linux+ certification that came out this past year. At least it would get my foot in the Unix door! Not like I was promised at Kirby…. Whoops. Almost started in on it!
Well, I’ll update more later, but if you’d like to check out what I’ve done in PERL lately, jump to the Amazing IT Title Generator. Or, head over to my other big website, Fantasist.Net That’s what I’ve really been working on lately. Though I have to admit that I don’t have much there yet. The PERL script is under Resources, BTW. It’s a creativity jump-start tool for authors. Enjoy!

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