I forgot another tibbit I fixed yesterday and the day before. I have been using ssh to communicate with my W2K3 server and the fedora box while I am still working out my problems with Samba. The command line utilities, scp and sftp, worked fine but the gui ftp program, gftp, did not. A couple of days ago I figured out that I needed to check the sftp subsystem box in the gftp's SSH configuration to get it to work. Then I saw that a few directories were displayed incorrectly and inaccessible. The screwed up directory just happened to be the one I wanted to transfer. Now that is a real bummer. Then yesterday I noticed that Fedora had a new updated version of gftp available. I checked the release notes and noticed they had changed the default setting to on for the sftp subsystem. Better yet the new version fixed the directory problem.

Some of the things I have learned already is that htmlarea and the Yahoo popup blocker do not get along. The popup blocker gets in the way of inserting images, colors, links, etc.

My hack screws up the Urls to ping textarea since I cannot be selective. If Radio had used an id for their textarea I could be selective. Oh well! I have never used the urls to ping feature anyway.

Today I got a lot of stuff done. I have been chasing down problems with using htmlarea on phpwebsite. It didn't work as expected but I have it working now. The instructions just didn't work for me. Along the way I ended up retrieving the latest version using Tortoisecvs. To accomplish that task I had to figure out how to open up port 2401 through the firewall. Finally I hacked up my Radio installation to take advantage of htmlarea. This post is being composed in htmlarea. That is pretty cool.

On Monday Nancy told me they were going to get her cousin to fix our local Habitat affiliate's website. There are a variety of problems with the site but old data is the most prominent. It is basically useless. My guess is that about half the board sees no value in having a website. That got me thinking. Yesterday I created a mockup of the website using my favorite no-cost cms, phpwebsite. Phpwebsite is one of the most popular low cost content management systems. It is a sourceforge project that is primarily maintained by Applachian State University. Since I think I will use it elsewhere I viewed this as a training exercise. I had previously installed it on my fedora box so it was ready for customization. I spent a couple of hours grafting the best ideas I saw from local Habitat affiliate sites onto the menu for the new site. Then I customized the “clean” theme to add a new logo and copyright. I was finished. Although the site is workable as I have designed it, I consider it a prototype which demonstrates the major content and function requirements I consider to be important for the new website. It should be interesting if her cousin sees what I have done. It would be nice if we could have several people add content to the site but I think that he will create a static site. Ultimately the lack of consensus on the priority of the site by the board will doom it to being stale again.

“The Russians are blocking a proper Oil for Food probe.”

I missed this article from the Wall Street Journal. It probably was the primary influence of the U. S. News editorial. It highlights Russia's reluctance to cooperate with the investigation and the hope that this scandal will be swept under the rug. Ten billion dollars of bribes is a lot of money and will cause even the most ardent UN supporter to cringe in disbelief. If this does not shake up the UN and cause a clamor for reform, nothing will! The bad news is that the US would like the UN to take over the government transistion process in the same country they ripped off for ten billion dollars.

“The prospects of the United Nations taking over the transition in Iraq may now be fatally compromised. The world body is caught up in a welter of allegations and evidence suggesting strongly that a noble effort of humanitarian assistance was tainted by greed, bribery, and the most venal kind of power politics. The U.N. was supposed to oversee the oil-for-food program that allowed Saddam Hussein to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy essential food and medicine for the Iraqi people. At least $10 billion, evidently, went into the pockets of political operators.”

I was wondering when this scandal would re-appear. I am kind of surprised to see Mort writing about it. This scandal has appeared in several prominent newspapers and magazines but has received scant national attention. The coverage of this issue has been puzzling. By linking this issue to the Iraqi government turnover, this issue could become the next election year issue. This is not good news for Mr. Kerry and his election campaign.

“To be listed as a GIAC Certified Windows Security Administrator, a candidate must complete a written research paper (practical assignment) to demonstrate their knowledge of the subject matter.“

Wow! I found this web page by accident but it contains a treasure trove of configuration hints in the research papers. I ended up downloading and printing Jorge Ortiz-Fuentes's paper on “Does Windows 2000 security model get along with my Linux?” so I could learn more about ldap troubleshooting and how I could possibly fulfill my universal login quest between my Fedora box and my W2K3 server. One of the first things I noticed was that my ldap.conf on the Fedora box indicates that there have been some recent changes since he wrote the article and I probably will not have to recompile nss_ldap.

I installed Services for Unix a little while ago and things have been somewhat okay. My server locked up once or twice but I blamed those shutdowns on myself even though I could not see that I did anything wrong. Today I tried to scan a document into CorelDraw that I have on my server. I use CorelDraw infrequently and this has worked for me in the past on W2K and now on W2K3. Today the server locked up. I rebooted and tried again. It locked up. Now I am pissed off! After some research and a few more reboots I finally located the culprit, nissvc, or otherwise known as Server for NIS. Task Manager showed it was consuming 30% to 100% of the cpu. I tried changing the settings back to the default settings but I could not seem to get rid of the problem. So I shut it down. Actually I shut down Server for NIS, Server for NFS, and the rest of servers in Services for Unix console. I don't use any of them except sftp and it is not listed.

I am a strong believer in the efficiency and accuracy of completing your tax return using a computer program. I think I have been using tax programs for nearly a decade. So you may wonder why I am mailing in my federal and state tax returns. The answer is the price to submit electronic returns and the fact that I owe money. This year Taxcut eliminated their “free” submittal. In its place they wanted nearly $30 for something I could do for less than a dollar. Even though I am getting money back I am not in that much of a hurry. I cannot believe that I am the only person who noticed the stealth price increase. Since it is in the best interest of the IRS to lower the barriers to electronic submitting more tax returns I am amused by their silence.

I reviewed the returns today and made some minor revisions. I had it wrong yesterday. I am filing:

1. Two federal returns
2. Three state returns
3. Three 1065 returns
4. One school district return.

I will get them signed this evening and in the mail tommorrow.