Evolution - Good ole' days part 2

I read the other day that a secret society of higher education facilities and government offices use a high bandwidth connection light years faster than the T1, T3 and fiber we use today. Also, a helluva lot faster than the cable modem, point to point and and other consumer connectivity. And really really reeeeeeely faster than dial up.

This got me thinking about my last post, and the stuff about BBS's, IRC and the lot. When I first met the outside world, it was via the 300 baud modem. There was no place to really "call" mind you. I had the modem thing, and I knew what it was because I had seen, and actually used an acoustic coupler (read - telephone pushed into a plastic housing) that was part of a printer. This was a printing terminal. It was used to print reports from a computer remotely. You would dial the computer, listen for the tone, push the phone into the coupler and viola', if it worked properly, the printer would begin to bang away a report. (this is the simplified version)

Anyways, I got to talking to a guy about the modem I had, and complaining that I didn't know how to use it or even a place to call. He explained how the modem is no good without terminal software, and that the term program did the dialing and the bit-twiddling. He a program (tinyterm I think) gave me the number for dial-in access to a honeywell HVAC system he knew of, along with a password - if I promised to do nothing but poke around. Well, I went home and tried it, and sure enough, it worked!

This was soooooo cool. When I connected, all of the sudden, my screen had a complete controls menu. To me, it was like something out of Wargames. Note, I didn't say "Star Wars", I'm not a fan, plus, I don't think there's ever been a movie or show that captured how computers really operate like Wargames. Seriously. Every time you saw anything computer related it was like Start Trek, lots of blips, beeps, tones, colors, blah blah blah.. Even today you see people banging away at a keyboard on a screen that is obviously being driven by a mouse. Whatever.

Back to the point. I dialed this thing up over and over - resisting the urge to monkey with it. Time passed, and I met people with access to a few local BBS's, which I spent time on. My OL handle was "PorkeyPig", a throwback from my handle on Ham Radio. A 70's thing - I won't go there.

One of my more notable achievements was when a new disk jockey came to town. He started in local Chicago radio on the midnight shift, his name was, and still is, Kevin Mathews. One of his shticks was to gain access to the telephone numbers of famous people and call them at home. It was pretty funny. Well, knowing what I knew about modems and communication, I knew that all a modem really did was repeat the sounds the dialer makes into the phone system, and the system recognized the beeps and connected the call (again, OVERLY simplified).

I recorded his show one night, he had called Sha Sha Gabore or something. I'm not exactly sure. Next, I took my recording and digitalized it, and wrote a lil' program to play those notes into my modem. Yep, next thing you know, they answered!

I called Kev, and told him what I had done, he cracked up. For a while there, whenever a computer related question popped up on the show, I would call and answer it. He called me "Tom the computer guy". He would also use a fake voice (Jim Shorts) to yell "Take the Tones Off!" to himself before he dialed the phone from then on. I like to think that was because of me.

Well, BBS's were great for downloading programs, and minor communication, but weren't much more than that.

I had gotten my hands on the new "window and mouse" based operating system called "GeOS", pronounced "gee ohs" It was a truly graphical environment that ran from diskette.





GeOS came with a paint program, and a writing program. We take this for granted today, but in the olden days, there was no such thing as seeing fonts on the screen as you worked.

At the time, alternatives to local BBS's had sprung up; Compuserve, GeNie, a full color alternative called Prodigy, QuantumLink - later called called America On Line. These sites were "interactive". You could go to a number of different places and download software, you could play "on-line" games and things like that. Funny thing, most of the people I knew had no interest, and laughed at Prodigy and AOL. We all used GenIe. Compuserve was selling it's self as more of a business solution, with stock quotes and crap like that. The others were just serving up information, and a few download areas, but if you wanted Software, GEnIe was the place to go - plus, it was cheaper.

Now this was NOT the internet. These were very complex BBS's. You didn't have a "service providor, or ISP, you dialed it yourself. I liked GeOs even though it really did nothing for me. It was cool, and I liked cool. It wasn't long before AOL made an a new "Geofied" version of AOL - the precursor of what you see today. Well, I broke down and got a subscription, and used it for a while.

One night, after "chatting" (leaving notes) with some guys on AOL, I had a note in my mail box (not email, mailbox). Asking if I was interested in Beta Testing the "New AOL". The "New AOL" was going to be written for this Microsoft Operating system called "Windows". I knew Windows, I've used it. At this time, I had already worked building and selling PC compatible computers, as well as designing networks using a product called "Novell 86", yea.. haha. I had been given a version of Windows (and all the disks, I think there were 4 or 5). I had a customer that wanted me to set him up with remote control for his Wondows PC. OK, reality check. This was the day of 1,200 and 2,400b modems. If you had money, you could get a 5,600b. Windows over remote would draw the screen pixel by pixel. If you twitched the mouse, it started over. Crap.

This was also Windows version none. Not the version 3.1 most people remember.



I had just gotten my own PC, from Kaypro. This was an "AT" box. There was XT, and AT at the time, oh, and the "386" for those with tons of cash. I accepted the invite, and began my first Beta Test. Yes, I was one of the original testers of AOL. One thing I remember that drove me BANANAS was that your "inbox" could not be emptied. You had to read a mail, the choose to delete it, then hit OK to confirm it. Now, if you were away from the PC for a few days, your inbox would pile up with notes from AOL, and other testers. Sometimes 100 or more. Imagine having to open, read, delete and confirm each one? Thank god they fixed that quick.

If memory serves me, it actually was written for the original Windows 3.0 though. It didn't matter. What mattered is that I had a free account for nearly 4 years.

A few years went by, and I had met a kid that went to college in St. Louis. He asked me if I had access to the "internet".

The "Internet" hadn't grown up to be a noun yet.

I had no idea what he was talking about. He said if I could get a dialer, and something called TCP/IP working, I could get on it. Now, I came from the frame of BBS's, you don't just "Get On" something. You need to access it, use passwords and all that. No, you really just "get on it", I found out. Once you were "On" it however, there wasn't much to do. It wasn't until the Browser came along that the Internet had anything to offer the common man.

Well, again, at the time you could either hammer together your own solution, or get a "providor" program to do it for you. This was a subscription based service that would send you a diskette, and a dial up number with a password. Once you dialed up the access number thy gave you, you were greeted with their "home page". You would push pre-defined buttons to move you around the "internet".

In fact, heres a sidebar; One of the original hosting companies that gave you "access" to the internet was "On Ramp". This successful provider was founded by none other than the famous, and one of the original MTV DJ's; Adam Curry.

If you poked around on the disk, which most people didn't do, there were usually a few extra apps, one being the "IRC" or Internet Relay Chat.

This thing was COOOL. Now, I had used "chat" before on AOL, but you could only "Chat" with other AOL'ers, not the outside world. The IRC was the wild wild west of chatting.

There were, and still are, "channels" devoted to ANYTHING you can think of. Yes, including any place your gutter mind chose to go. Well, I don't have a whole lot of gutter in my mind, so I spent most of my time on "#30something", apparently named after the cheesy show.

Every single night, the same group of people would meet there. We would talk, and talk, and talk. Friendships were made, relationships were made, people fell in "love", people fought and behaved the same way you would in any smallish community. A lot of things were discovered here, including testing your marital boundaries. There was debate after debate if "netsexxing" (the precursor to Cyber) was considered cheating. You could ask someone to "go private", and if they agreed, you would open up a private little channel just for the two of you. You could also connect directly to one another, having your own conversation outside the channel, while still being in it. You could tell around 11:00 or so, the channel got very quiet, yet, it was full of people, it was rendezvous time.

I didn't really participate in the Netsexxing so much. I did it once or twice, for the same reason you try drinking, smoking pot, and mechanical bull riding. I'll try anything once.

Well, I IRC'ed a lot, but after a while, as things do, the attraction faded. I came back to IRC for a while and hung on the "#40something" board. My nik on both boards was "Printerz". ( this is my attempt at the 6 degrees thing). We even had a "Channel Party" at a local bar here in Chicago. I think, as much as it was fun, it was the end of IRC for me. That was just too creepy. They were cool and all, but the idea of getting together to hang out with a bunch of people that hung out in the dark on a computer, all alone, hit me that night. I hung up my keyboard for a while.

It wasn't until Yahoo chat came around that I even had an interest in chatting, but again, I just dabbled. I would get on, meet people for a few months, and disappear.

I just can't seem to get the desire to go the chat route any more, I dunno why, I don't even "text".

My favorite thing at Disneyworld has always been the "Giant Ball" as my kids put it. Inside it, there is an attraction called "Spaceship Earth", and when it was designed, it was supposed to show the evolution of communication over time. I scoffed at the idea that a little kid could lie on his bed in front of a "laptop", and "talk" with someone on the other side of the world, and actually "see" them when the do it. This was in the late 80's mind you. WOW, those guys are good.

Funny thing though. When my kids want to communicate, they go on MySpace or Facebook, and leave notes for one another (BBS'ing), or they just "text" one another (IM'ing).

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I little history

Someone lent me a great book recently, it's called "Commodork". I suppose "Great" is a relative term. If you don't now about Commodore, or were not part of the culture, you wouldn't really consider it great. You probably wouldn't even consider it mediocre, but I did indeed find it great.

Commodore was, in the 80's, "The little company that could". They actually made their first computer in the 70's I'm, pretty sure, the PET computer (and no, I don't have any pet's name Commodore - that would be dorky).

Now, when *I* was a lad, it was the most exciting period in technology in my opinion. Say what you want about the Internet, but I would take 1977 - 1990 any time.

I had just recently graduated high school with no prospects for anything, much less employment. For Christmas, 1982, my parents decided to buy the "family" a home computer. Not any home computer mind you, no, this was the flashy new 2 kilobyte Timex Sinclair with the Z80 chip. This computer didn't have a monitor, no, it plugged into the TV. No storage either. It was a clean "membrane" keyboard on top of a completely self contained computer.


Now I knew nothing about computers, much less this one. Seriously, N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I was lucky however, that my older brother was home for the holidays. He, while at Brown, had done a little programming for college and was at least familiar with programming. So, we broke out the manual, and poured over how the thing operated. He explained to me what computers do, and what they are for, and so on. We got the think hooked up to the small black and white TV we had, (8 inch screen or something), and we "wrote" a program.

What we decided to "write" was a dice rolling program. I don't know why, probably because that's what *he* had to write in college, I have no idea. I do know he's an engineer and a statistician, so my guess would be yes. Anyways, he made me go through the though process of what happens when you roll dice, about randomness, et. and we keyed away. The result was a nifty little program that displayed a line of text "One Die or two?", and depending on your choice, you would get a single digit, or two digits - completely random. WOW!!

OK, so, not so WOW, but for me it was amazing. Simply AMAZING. Here was a little black box. All I had to do was to figure out what I wanted the result to be, and by writing a bunch of stuff, I could make it happen!. Well, I totally took to it.

It was wierd in the sense that, at the time, I was pretty much a looooser. Seriously. I had graduated just barely. I had a 2.nothing GPA or something, I failed math so bad, that I had to take a summer school class with my gym teacher that passed me either to A) get me out of his school, or B) He liked me. I failed so many classes, that I was summer school fixture. I couldn't even get *in* to community college without passing the entrance exam - on which I cheated mightily. I didn't intend to, but the math section literally had the answers attached to it. I changed some and got a few wrong on purpose though. I still had to pass basic math first. We're not talking Algebra here, we're talking basic math. THEN I had to take Algebra I, which I failed at the community college level.

NOTE: Teachers who teach a subject because they have to, have no business teaching it.

This guy was WAY over my head, and he kept getting frustrated that I didn't "get it". He wasn't able to go back in time in his head when "he" didn't get it, he just blew right by me. It came so natural for him that it totally escaped him that it *didn't* come natural for others.

Sooooo.. I had failed this class too, and had to take "applied mathematics" to get my math credit. Let's rewind; I failed general High school math, I was put into Algebra I as a Junior, even though I wasn't qualified to be there, because I was so far behind. I failed that, took it over Senior year, and failed it, took business math in summer school, passed by a nose, failed college math, failed college Algebra and guess what? I PASSED Applied Math.

The Applied Math teacher was an old guy who taught part time. He would explain math in terms that made sense. He would take the time time to explain *why* math did what it did. He showed me where it was used, how it was used. He introduced me to ratio's, and the value in business and life they had.

OK, so WHY on earth did I bore anyone with this? Because NOW I had a BOX that could to the MATH for me!!! All I needed to now was how the math worked!

Well one thing led to another. It wasn't long before I outgrew the 2k, and had to add the 16k memory add-on. I also had to get a cassette recorder for storage. Yes, a cassette recorder. All the home computers of the day used cassettes. Data is nothing more than "blips" Those blips can be recorder as sound, and then played back into the computer. In other words, you would "modulate" the data out to the cassette player that was recording it, and "de-modulate" the data as it was being played back into the computer. Get it?, Modulate?, De-Modulate?, MoDeM?

Well, I outgrew that one too. I saved some cash, because I washed cars at the time, and bought the fancy Texas Instruments TI-99 4/a. The TI had a built in programming language; TI BASIC, it had COLOR, and a real keyboard. I wrote tons of stuff on that box. The magazine of the day, COMPUTE supported only a few computers; Commodore, TI, APPLE and the TRS-80. You could buy the magazine, read about a program, and all of the source code was right in the magazine. All you had to do was type it in.

By this time, I was a math-a-holic. I had gotten a book called "Practical Mathematics", it was a HUGE green book from the 60's. It had everything there was to know in it. I really wanted to know how to do 3-D. Not like "Doom" 3-D, that was light years away. I wanted to be able to write a program like "Tank Command", which required an X, Y and Z axis.

I remember vividly writing a program that would plot functions on an axis. I worked for days on it. I never turned off the computer, because my tape recorder took a dump, so there was no way to save what I was doing. I didn't plan on saving it anyways, I just wanted to know IF I could do it. So, after days of toiling, I got it right. I would type in a formula, and poof, a grid would appear, with the X and Y locations plotted right there. Kinda childish by todays standards, but there was a lot of gymnastics to do something like that. Remember, this "computer" only had 256k, and a 16k video chip. I was SO excited, I tore away from my desk to get my mom and show her, and my foot got stuck on the cord - POOF, all was gone in an instant.

Next, I bought a used Commodore VIC-20. This computer had a 20 column capability, and still used a TV. It was actually a downgrade from the TI, it only had 5k of RAM, with about 3.5 usable. The guy I got it from had all the expansion stuff, including the extra memory cartridge, and, the VICMODEM.

WOW.. A REAL modem. I can't remember how fast it was, by I imagine something along the lines of 150 baud or slower. I say that because I had a 300 for my C-64, then dropped a TON of money on an Anchor Automation 1,200 baud.

When I got C-64, that was nirvana. It was actually, a crappy computer. But, it did have an audience, a HUGE audience. What that meant was Lots of programs, Lot's of support, Lot's of articles on how to use it, Lot's of books on programming it, and LOT's of BBS's (Bulletin Board System) supporting it.

Herin lies the key young computer guys.... It doesn't have to be great, to be great.

The 64 was cool on so many levels. It had great color, it had a great, somewhat "open" BASIC language. You could "peek" and "poke" around the memory, keyboard mapping, video and sound chips; you could pretty much do anything you wanted. Seriously now, anything. I had a program that would actually "bang" the floppy drive head out of alignment. You could do that if you wanted to. You didn't have to write to the OS, you could write to the device. You could easily re-map unused keyboard keys with "sprites" to be able to write games. It was sooo cool.

For business however, it sucked. There was "Bank Street Writer", and some cheesy spreadsheet, but that was about it. I then got the Commodore 128, with the dual drive. The works baby!!!! This unit ran CP/M, a common business OS for the times. It was the default OS for the Kaypro products, the leader in small business computing for a time.

Between the 64, and the 128, I spent HOURS online. Uploading to BBS's, downloading from BBS's, figuring out that if you uploaded with "Ymodem" protocol, and turned on check digits, you you would earn TWICE as many download credits using "XModem". So, I always had a 2-for 1 ratio going for me. BBS's were great, there was always someone to leave a message with. They weren't real-time until later, when they had "doors". You would just post a message, get off, and get back on later to see if anyone answered you. You would NEVER just stay on line, that was sacrilegious. BBS's only had a few inbound phone lines, so to tie one up with something as trivial as "chatting" was a sin. If you were a member, and had special privileges, you could go into a "door", and actually have somewhat of a relay-chat (like the IRC - which by the way, is an upcoming topic) though.

This brings me back to "Commodork"... If you lived through the C-Age, then it is a must read. You'll laugh at every page turn re living your past, you'll be reminded of games, programs peripherals and things that you've long forgotten. You'll re-live those long nights trying to download "F15-Strike Eagle" with having the phone hang up, or someone pick up another line 2 hours into it..

Go to Amazon or Borders and pick it up.. it's fun...

Snort Snort.....

The topic for today kiddies is "Snort". This is the sound that a pig makes, I know, because I have been to the county fair, and I've heard it myself. In addition, I have neighbors across the street that raise and show pigs, and I've asked them, and they concur.

Snort is ALSO the "defacto" standard IDS for enterprise, and not-so enterprise networks. What is an IDS you ask?, well, I'm here to tell you. IDS stands for "Intrusion Detection System". This is not to be confused with a firewall.

What the IDS does is basically review all the traffic passing around your network, and compare them against known rules looking for violations of those rules. This is called "Real Time Traffic Analysis". In addition, it can do all sorts of other things security wise, and best of all, it's FREE.

You do need a subscription if you want rules as soon as they come out, otherwise you'll have to wait 30 days for them to be generally released. It's a very well supported product with complete documentation for a variety of platforms, however, it is LINUX. There is a Windoze version too, but I'll leave that to someone else.

OK, so I decided to put in an IDS, Snort specifically. My first question was what distro?. If you remember from prior blogs, "distro" means "Distribution of Linux". I considered a few, for a variety of reasons, and settled on Fedora. Why?, well, obviously, the best installation guide I found was written as a RedHat/Fedora install, that made it easy. Secondly, Fedora is a very well known, stable and highly supported distro, so you'll have no problem finding the applications and libraries needed to install it.

Now for full disclosure; I installed Snort 4 times, and wiped out and re-installed Fedora once before I got it right. I had trouble with the installation a couple of times, and because of my OCD nature, once I figured it out, I wanted a totally clean installation, hence the reinstall of Fedora.

You will need the following:

1. A computer (duh), not a super computer, but something reasonable. I'm actually running it on a old Dell 4100 with a PIII, a half a meg of memory and junky video card and it runs great!
2. A distro. I'd recommend; Fedora, Red Hat, anything Debian based or Gentoo. I was going to use SmartCom Enterprise, but I got cold feet.
3. Supporting software

• Snort (www.snort.org)
• Apache (web server, usually installed by default in most Linux Distro's if you choose "server configuration" if not, you can install it in the terminal)
• SSL (secure sockets layer, also installed by default)
• PHP (I'm not sure about the leading "P", but the rest means "hypertext processor) You will need to install PHP if it's not pre-installed. After the Linux install, open a terminal window and type "php -v", if you get an error, or nothing happens, you need it.
• MySQL (My "SQL" or Structured Query Language). Again, MySQL is usually installed, but check (type "mysql -v) to see if it's installed.
• BASE (Basic Analysis and Security Engine, get it from SourceForge, click here.)
• Abobe Reader Install this right away.
  

Now, for those of you who don't know how to install software on linux, there's a few ways. There are "package managers" which give you a GUI method. All distros have one, depending on yours it will be "Synaptic", "Kpackage" or something else. You'll find it on your menu as "Add/Remove Software", probably under "system". The other way, which *I* prefer, is in the terminal. Depending again on your distribution, you'll use "apt-get" or "yum". Both are the command version of the GUI, so if you have "Synaptic" open, you'll get an error if you try and use "apt-get".

Fedora uses "yum", but the commands are more or less interchangeable for our purposes. For instance, if you did as I said, and found out "Apache" was not installed, you would need to install it. Here's the rub; it's not called "Apache", it's called "hpptd". A quick "how the heck do I install Apache" Google helped me with that.

So, in the terminal, you would type "yum install hpptd". You'll probably get an error, because to be allowed to install software, you need to have "root" privileges. When you set up Linux, you created a "root" user and a password. You can do two things now, either switch to the root account (which is never recommended, but I find it easier, provided you do it safely), or issue a root level command such as "sudo". Sudo is "Super User Do". It will look like this;

"sudo yum install httpd" You will be asked for the root password, then off you go. Do the same for anything else that's missing.

Now, I'm NOT going to get into the step by step installation, because someone else already did and it's great. One word of caution; Follow it step by step. Do NOT proceed from one step to the next unless you are sure you've done the step accurately and it works properly. This will save you a world of hurt.

Another thing, EXPECT a little frustration. It won't be so bad, it's fun. The biggest headache I had was that I was missing quite a few things. I kept getting "This won't work because you don't have this installed" and "this other thing won't work because it's missing stuff too" so to get thing one to play with thing two, you'll be typing a lot of "yums" or "apt-get's".

I recommend you go HERE for the installation guide. Of all of them, I found it to be the most complete.

Once you get started, you'll be doing some text editing. His examples use the "vi" editor, which I personally hate. I'm a command line guy and I've used terminal editors and control codes, but "vi" sucks. Hate me if you will, but all I want to do is change a line or to and not learn an archaic interface to do it.

I use "kedit" because I have the KDE interface. Your's may be different.

editorial note: I installed KDE from Synaptic because I prefer it over Gnome. Choose what you want, but I am used to KDE. It's like the whole "Windows/Apple" thing - users use what they're comfortable with, and defend it to the bone.

Anyways.....

You'll be editing configuration files (like snort.conf) a lot. You will also be deleting things that need root approval, which gets to be a hassle. I would get "thunar", with is a very straightforward file manager without the glitz (get the "archive" funtions to while your at it). It's great for this kind of stuff. My two favorite commands when doing this sort of thing are; "kdesu kedit" and "kdesu thunar". Both allow me to manipulate files at will, but BE SURE WHAT YOUR DOING BEFORE YOU DO IT.

Before you get started in the nitty gritty, do yourself a favor and make sure you have Adobe Reader. You'll need it to read the manual I pointed you to. There are .pdf readers installed in Linux already, but Adobe lets you copy/paste text, which is a life saver. Simply highlight the command from the guide, insert it into your terminal window and hit enter. shweeeeet.

Another thing, you'll see "tar.gz" alot, think "zip file", it's the same thing for the most part. to "untar" a file, you'll either use the default file expander that came with your distro, or the command line which I prefer. The syntax is: "tar -xzvf FileYourExpanding.tar.gz".

It will unwrap it into a folder beneath the one you're in, named after the filename including all the .1.2.3 stuff.

The rest is pretty self-explanatory.

I'll tell you what, Snort is cool, and it works. The guide give you a little test, a MySql statement to push into the database to see if the BASE system works. If you want to see any real activity, add this line to your "local.rules" file:

"alert tcp any any -> any any (msg:"test"; sid:1000002;)" This will generate notices right-quick. Be sure to remove it once you know everything works.

Finally, I would recommend a real test. Go to www.nessus.org and get "Tenable Nessus for Windows", install it and fire off a scan at your new box. You'll see the alerts pile up and you'll get a great report as to the vulnerably of your box.

There are other great supporting products for Snort such as Guardian, a tool to add bad IP's Snort finds to your firewall automagically, and the "Bleeding Edge Threats" rules website as well as others. Google "snort add-on"

Have fun, and happy hunting!!!!..

(Snort... Snort... Snort...)

Installing Act! on Linux..... or therebouts..

This is a very long but it's not complicated. I just didn't know your level of Linux knowledge, so it's very step-by-step.

Act 6.0 runs on Linux under WINE. In Mepis, you need to have root privileges, and you install WINE using Synaptic and/or KPackage, or apt-get. I prefer the command line myself, but other people like a GUI interface.

Typically, you would either fire up Synaptic, or KPackage (probably under the system menu item as Add/Remove Software) enter the ROOT user's password and when it opens do a search on the word WINE. You should see the wine package (currently at wine-0.942.1). Once you find it, click to install it, and hit apply and wait till it's done. No need to re-boot after installing like Windows does.

Next, you would put your ACT! CD in your drive. Here's the tricky part; You need to figure out what the operating system uses to refer to the CD ROM drive. In my case (Fedora), I had to open the home folder, then the device list, and click on "media:, which showed me the device name of the CD by clicking on it. In my case, the "device name" was "/media/040723_1329/". WINE needs the long filename and path, in the same proper case as it is on the CD. i.e. Act is not the same as act.

If you look on the desktop, after putting in the CD (mounting it), a CD Icon will appear on the desktop too, the title under the CD is the ID that Linux will use too.

Since I don't have an ACT! cd anymore, I'm installing Fireworks as I do this on Fedora.

Once you know what the installation filename is i.e. SETUP.EXE or ACTSETUP.EXE, open up a terminal window. You'll find terminal in the menu under utilities probably. You will see a prompt like "[tom@linuxbox -] $", this is your command line.

In the terminal window, type "wine /media/040723_1329/Fireworks2.exe" in my case, your's will be different. Use the path to the CD ROM drive, and the actual Act! setup filename you found earlier.

Hit Enter, If all goes well, you should see something like the following:

"wine: creating configuration directory '/home/tom/.wine'... "
"wine: '/home/tom/.wine' created successfully"

Then the standard windows installation screen will open with the Act setup running. Follow the steps and install Act as you normally would. Once the install is complete, the window should close.

One thing to note, if you look at the "wine" directory name above, you'll notice it's called "./wine" with a leading period, not "/wine". This is because it's a HIDDEN directory. The only way to get there is to specifically move there. In other words, if you typed "cd /home/{your home name}/wine", you would get an error. If you typed "cd /home/{your home name}./wine" you would go there.

WINE creates what is called a "Virtual Environment" on your Linux PC. It's a fully encapsulated version of Windows (95 or 98, not sure) in your Linux Home folder. In the terminal window, type "cd /home/{your home directory name}" to go to your home folder.

Here's a trick, Linux will complete the command if you hit the "tab" button. SO, if you type "CD Doc" then hit TAB, it will auto complete it (provided the directory exists) and it will say "CD Documents", just hit enter. You need enough letters to distinguish it from any other directory name.

This is a life saver when Linux program names are a mile long.

So, from your home prompt ([tom@linux ~]$ the tilde signifies you're home) type "CD .wine" and you'll see "[tom@linux .wine]$" You're in your Windows folder.

Type "ls" (same as "dir" in windows) and you see the file list. There are 3 .reg files (basically Windows registry files), and 2 folders; "dosdevices" and "drive_c". Type "cd dr" then hit tab, it will autocomplete the "drive_c", then hit enter.

Do an "ls" again, you'll see 2 folders; "Program Files" and "windows". "Program Files" is where your programs go, "windows" is all the system stuff. CD to "Program Files". If you "ls", You should see an "Act" folder, CD to that, and do an "ls", and make note of the Act filename (probably act.exe or actw.exe). If it's not there, poke around until you find it.

NOW, here's another trick. You can use the "pwd" command to figure out where you are. This will save a lot of time. Once you are in the folder that has the " Act.exe" program, type "pwd" and hit enter. You will see the entire path to that file. Simply highlight it and right click, "copy" and you'll have the whole path saved.

Do yourself a favor now, and paste this path into your command window, then add the "wine" in front of it, and the " act.exe" to the end, to see if it actually works. It will look something like this:

"[tom@linuxbox Act]$ wine /home/tom/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Act/Act.exe"

Then hit enter. If Act does not start, fiddle with the command until it does. Once it works, quit Act, then hit the arrow up in the terminal window, it will show you the last command you entered; the one you used to launch Act. again, highlight the whole thing and copy it.

Another Note... the Linux command line does not like spaces. (niether does Windows). In a Windows DOS prompt, the directory "Program Files" is referred to as "Progra~1". In Linux, it is written as "Program\ Files" (there is a space between "Program\ and Files).

Once the install program is complete, you need to make a shortcut to the program. Linux will NOT add it to your menu, as it doesn't know what it is, or what it's for. If this was a Linux app, the installer would know where to put it, including the category. You need to add the shortcut by hand.

On the Desktop, right click, and select "Create new" and "Link to application". In the "General" tab, type the name of the program i.e "Act 6 for Windows" or something. In the "Application" tab, add the description, and in the "Command" section, paste the launch string you copied earlier, then hit save.

You will see a new icon for Act. Try it out. If it works, let me know. I can IM over Yahoo or whatever if you need help. If it works, awsum. It should behave just like the windows version I'm pretty sure. I'd restore a back up and work concurrently with the Windows version until you're sure you like it.

Good Luck!

Tom

How does one *really* become sucessful?

I have a question; How does one REALLY become a great success?

I've read all the books, heard the tapes and have done reasonably well in my life so far. I'm not poor, I'm not "rich", I'm somewhere in the middle. I've followed the paths these guys (and girls) laid out, and somehow that windfall of great success still eludes me.

One thing I've noticed however, is that most of these people already had some significant success before they even started that path to greatness.

Tony Robbins, Dave Ramsey, Brian Tracy, Zig, and the list goes on. If you listen to Tony Robbin's program - which I HIGHLY recommend, you'll hear about his suffering in his 400 square foot apartment doing dishes in the bathtub. Dave Ramsey talks about losing it all, and having his realization while gassing up his Jag.

What these guys dismiss in the first few pages is the successes they've had before they even began the journey. Tony Robbins talks about how they called him "wonder boy", and that he was making $10,000 a month - and lost it all. Ramsey is the same way, he already was a millionaire. Both of these guys, and the others to a certain extent, had already tasted success by most peoples standards.

Their personal journeys, the phenomenal success in life must have been built on habits that didn't exist in their world. What was life like for them at 10?. What was their day to day?

What was it deep down that made them do what they did to even get to the point that they had these phenomenal failures to build from?

I think what may be lacking, unless I'm not reading between the lines right, is the spark that they had to get to success number one. Any ideas??

So many PC's, so little time

My daughter (14) likes to tell people "She has 5 computers at home" as if it makes her sound like Paris Hilton.

If anyone has read my blog, they would know I run a variety of equipment - Mac's, PC's and Linux. The biggest issue I have is that I hate my Mac's.

Yea, yea, yea, they are the "worlds easiest computer" - if so, how do you figure it's intuitive to drop my CD icon in the trash to eject it? To me, it means it's going to destroy it. Intuitive my ass.

After wasting untold hours arguing the benefits of a given operating system, I've concluded that a persons argument for a particular OS is directly proportional to the time they've spent getting to know and using said system.

I have (2) Mac's at home; a cute little iMac my daughter loves. To me, it looks like ET, and a 20" G5 that I use strictly for home video and family photo's. The 20" is ungodly slow, probably because of the screen real estate it needs to continually update. I've even upgraded the RAM.

Well, now I'm finding that I have too many PC's with too many diverse needs and I need to consolodate some how. This is where "Parallels" comes in.

Shameless plug:

Run Windows on Mac OS X without rebooting!

Anyways, I have a Linux Box that my two youngest daughters share with me - they love it (see my other posts), my daughters iMac, my wifes Laptop and my Son's WinXP box. I was thinking of dabbling in the art of Internet sales, primarily eBay to start. Then I started thinking of all the headaches I will have with art, photo's, HTML and coding - combined with the accounting, documentation, emailing and the like. I love my PC's for business stuff.

I haven't invested in "Parallels" yet, when I do, I'll give you the rundown. I have however, heard all about it. It gives you the ability to run a virtual Windows session *inside* OS/X. By the way, virtual environments are nothing new.

Word of caution: I have heard that the Windows Vista user license expressly forbids you to operate Vista in a "virtual environment", if you do, you will be in violation of your license. Nuff' about that

So like I was saying, all you need to do is push Vista up into a virtual environment (just kidding).

The neat thing about Parallels is that in addition to running it in a "virtual" space, it is *interactive* with your Mac desktop too. What this means is that if you're running Word for instance, and want to use the document as a basis for a Quark or InDesign project, all you need to do is drag a copy from the Windows window (jinx) to the Mac desktop. Thats it.

Here's the summary of the "feature rundown" if you're interested:

• Run Windows-Only applications on your Mac (I already covered that)
  
• Play the "Hottest" 3-D games (I'm not a gamer, if you are, it supports both OpenGL and DirectX)
• Use any phone, MP3 player and camera with your Mac (Can't the Mac pretty much do that already? Maybe not, I haven't explored that)
• Run OS/X, Windows and Linux all at the same time (Ahhhhh, *now* we're talking)
• "NO worry's migration" (If this actually works, it would be AWSUM!)
  

It sounds pretty cool, and I think it will finally give me that "everything in one box" that I've been looking for. Watch for future posts in case I have to regale it for some reason ;)

The Secret - pt 2...

The Stone Manor - Lake Geneva Wisconsin. Sold for $74,000 in the 80's




So I was riding my motorcycle this weekend getting mentally lost for a while.

My Bike is my "golf". I hate the idea of having to pay a bunch of money to play a sport, where an old guy in a cart drives around telling me to hurry up. On top of that, it's a sport I'm not very good at, so it's either "Don't talk to me, I'm CONCENTRATING!" or "Where the HELL is the beer cart??", no middle ground. Finally, it takes SOOOOOOOO long. I only have a couple of days a week to get anything done worthwhile, why would I waste 6 hours on a golf course?

I hit the road Sunday morning early. Not as early as I like, but we (My Bro-In-Law) were gone by 8:00AM. We meandered for a couple hours zig-zagging across Northeastern Wisconsin; Walworth, Delavan, Williams Bay, et.

After a breakfast in Delavan I wanted to get back home, so we decided to take a route out of town that would take us Northeast, away from my home, but pretty scenic, and cut across the area once we got further north. It was a great plan, it looked like a cool route - after all, I planned it using my "Walworth County area map" I got when we walked into the "Delavan Family Restraunt". Yep, nothing but the best for me!

"The best laid plans of Mice and Men"

We ended up totally missing our road, and stuck on some backwoods route that was the COOLEST road. Some country road that wound around, up and down, curves, straights, hills, valleys and scenery! It was Serendipitous - but wait, there's more..

As we buzzed along this road, we finally came to an end at the back end of Lake Geneva, the part people who are visiting, don't go to. We drove along the roads until we popped out on the major highway, and dove to the lake. We cruised along the lake shore, and up "Wrigley Ave". If you ever go to Lake Geneva for the first time, you really need to take time to see the homes on the shore - wow!.

Wrigley takes you past the Stone Manor, a mansion built in the 1870's by a guy who made a fortune in Chicago real estate. It is 18,000 square feet. You may not believe this, but in the 80's this place was sold for $74,000. Yep - back taxes.


As we wound our way up the hill, heading North, ( a route I've driven hundreds of times, since I was a kid), I flew past a new Gate. It was a huge gate, as Lake Geneva Gates go, but this one had big, gold lettering. It said;

"Expect a Miracle"

It was really cool looking. Based on how things have been going, and always lookng out for inspiration and clues, I fully contributed this to my karma. I've never seen it, I've been by there a jillion times, and how could I have missed it in the past?. I got up this morning, and said "heck, I think I'll google it.." and did.

It is owned my a woman, who ownes a company, not one block from here. Not only that, but one of my old employees dated her son! Wierd.....

I'm not sure that there are any underlying cosmic vibrations that may be travelling the earth, but I think it's something..

So here's my "butterfly effect".. I'm posting my experience, I've not had ONE comment on my blog yet. Maybe the moon will be in the 7th house, and jupiter will align with mars, and perhaps the good fortune I've been expecting will come crashing down on me...

In short, from here on out, I will "Expect a Miracle"..

Yep, Ubuntu is Feisty alright..

OK, so over the weekend I broke my PC. Anyone who knows me would not be a bit surprised. I'm a little OCD when it comes to computers, and I am constantly tinkering with them. I suppose if I was born in the 40's, I would be one of those guys with a souped up chevy or something.

I bought a 3D graphics card card from ebay, and installed it over the weekend. It worked just fine, so I pushed in and tried to set up Beryl (think Windows Vista, only better). Well, when I rebooted I got the famous "X windows no longer works, sorry kid, nice try" and a prompt.

Most Linux jocks wouldn't be a bit phased by this, but I'm lost without a GUI. I'm an old time DOS hack, but my memory just doesn't work well enough these days to memorize a new operating system, so I did what anyone else would do. I resigned myself to the fact I lost all my stuff (yea, I know, I should have backups) and re-installed.

I figured that my piecemeal method of getting 3d to work versus a fresh install where Linux handles setting up my card is the better choice anyways. Well, it worked great, and I was up and running again. I flew through my wireless card setup thanks to my trusty USB that had the drivers, and a copy of the web page I used to fight through it the first time.

Once I got it all running, I popped up the "updater", and noticed that "Feisty" had been released over the weekend. Feisty is Ubuntu 7.x, with better support for things like Wireless and 3D. Well, I think you know me by now - I hit "upgrade" and it did.

The download/upgrade process took a little over 3 hours, with minimal babysitting on my part. I re-booted and "wham", it came right up!.. "excellent" (think Bill & Ted)

I had a good strong signal on my wireless, I had the new NetworkManager up and running, it saw my router without any problems, and I jumped into Firefox. Alas, too good to be true. "www.msn.com not found".

After some fiddling, I determined that I have a connection, but no IP addrees. I mis-concluded that I needed my old driver, so I went about de-installing the new stuff, and installing the old stuff. After a second re-boot, I had lost all connectivity. CRAP!

Now, I had to put all the new stuff back, and back out the changes I made. This took a while, as I had to figure out exactly what I did to break it, and what was installed before I messed with it. Lucky I also have a windows laptop that works, for me to look up these issues on the web.

Anywhom....

After hours of messing around, I was about to give up when I came across "dhclient". This is different that the standard dhcp program. Once I had my connectivity back, and could see that I was connected to my router, I popped up a terminal window and typed " sudo dhclient ra0", and "viola", it worked, firefox was off and running.

Now, I had to figure out how to get that command in the startup process. I edited the init file and added it to the end and it worked fine - under KDE, not Gnome. CRAP! again.

Turns out that the cool new NetworkManager only gets in the way on Gnome, you have to remove it for this to work. Hopefully a new version will take care of it. When I uninstalled NetworkManager, everything worked fine.

Now, the real work starts.. I need to rebuild my kid(s) environments too, anyone remember what my 8 year olds Painted Penguins name was??????

Shhhhh.. It's a Secret

Ok, something weird and wonderful happened to me today.

I've been listening to "The Secret" on an audio book (if you don't have a subscription to Audible, I highly recommend it ). I don't want to give away the "Secret", but suffice it to say that it re-packages old knowledge in an understandable and motivational form. **SPOILER** I cannot really discuss my impression of the book without giving it away, so if you havn't read it, and plan on reading it, STOP NOW!.

I can do without the spiritual music in the background, giving it somewhat of a voodoo feel, because it's probably a turn-off to anyone without the patience to listen to the first few minutes. There's a whole science of subconscious reaction - and this one tripped my triggers. You need to give it some time.

Once you get past the mystical yoga-like musical track, the book gets to the point pretty quickly.

"The Secret" doesn't break any new ground for me, being a student of "possibility" to begin with. You see, I've already been down this road, and I *know* with 100% of my being, that it works. "The Secret" sort of collects the teachings of the bible, Motivational speakers and writers of old and new, as well as a strong dose of Quantum Physics. "The branch of physics that uses quantum theory to describe and predict the properties of a physical system"

Back in the old days, the 80's, I had being unsuccessful down to an art. Really, I did. My future father in-law (god rest his soul) referred to me as "the bum". He would answer the door, I would ask "Is Cindy here?", he'd yell upstairs "Cindy, da' bum is here, close the door in my face and walk away - such was my life. It actually was a really fun life in that moment.

I was a bartender at night (7 to close), and pretty much drank and played golf during the day. Oh, drank at the golf course too. We would make a bunch of cash from tips, leave the bar around 1 or 2, hit the all night restaurant where I would buy breakfast for all my friends, then get up late, take a shower, make a cooler of lemon aid and vodka, sit out on the pier and tan, then play 9 holes and sober up and finally, go back to the bar.

I was making nada' for all practical purposes. Finally, I decided to go to community college. My High school grades sucked, and I barely got out of there. I was taking a couple of history courses, and political science courses as the most logical direction for a drinking, fun loving manipulator like myself was Politics!.

I wound up getting myself elected to the Student Senate, and that gave me a feeling of self worth that I didn't have before. I quit the bar, and started working at a small computer place. First I learned to build computers, then I moved into sales. I made a whopping 6 grand that year. I got my first credit card too, a "Diners Club" card, I used primarily for cigarettes and gas.

I was watching TV late at night, when I saw the "Tony Robbins" course offered on TV. I was mesmerized. Here's a guy telling me that "He" has the secret to success, and if I bought his program, I could learn it. Things like "Have anyone in your life you want", "Have as much money as you want", "Have great health and happiness". This was the first time I'd ever bought anything over the phone. I didn't tell anyone, I was TOTALLY EMBARRASSED THAT I DID IT!

I can remember *vividly* opening the package. It came to my house in a cardbord box. I was sitting in the parking lot of school, in my crappy old brown mustang with the white quarter panel (I cunched it in an accident), and the red-white and blue hood (loaned it to a friend, he wrecked the hood). Both parts came from the junkyard.

I stuck the first cassette into the player, and got that familiar "da da daaa, da da dahhh, da da da da da da da da daaaaaaa" music, and then heard him speak. What a hyper son of a bitch. This guy was NUTS. Nuts and full of passion... Back then I think I almost turned it off thinking this guy was some kind of fanatical lunatic, and on tape two he would introduce me to Amway.

I listened to the whole program, side A on the way to school, side B on the way home. I had nothing to lose, so I did the "exercises" every day, just as he described them, exactly when he told me to. When I finally got to the "Goal setting seminar", I was a full blown student. He tells you to set goals, great goals, un attainable goals. Just let your mind free, write whatever you think. Short term, mid term, long term. It's a fantastic experience and I recommend that too.

To make a long story short, I set probably 50 goals. Good ones, bad ones funny ones, stupid ones, immediate ones, 5 and 10 and life goals. It took me about 10 years, and I achieved about 80% of them. Some, like being a professional bowler, weren't in the cards. I'm not saying it wasn't do able, I just wasn't as committed as I thought I would have been.

I did set income goals.

At the time, I was making 6k a year, and I made the mental commitment to double my income every year. Here's the rub - I had no idea HOW it would happen, I was just committed to IT happening. See, making a goal like this if your an exec, or someone around money, you can get in touch with big dollars. If you make $40k a year, you know what it's like to have $80k, because you probably have experience with people who do. Someone who makes $40 k however, would really be stretching themselves to commit to making $800k a year with no plan at all.

I made that commitment, I was going to make $100k a year. I was going to make about 16 times my current income in 5 years. Now, if I had the actual resources, knowlege or ability to make $100k at that moment in my life, I would have. You have to understand that this was waaaayyyyy out there for a guy like me. I didn't even KNOW anyone that made that kind of money. My Dad made $40k, and I thought HE was loaded.

I applied the teachings, I stuck to the rules, I made the commitment and through completely unrelated circumstances, I was making about $150k a year. It took me more like 7 years, but I got there.

There is a FANTASTIC speech Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University that is so important and compelling, I suggest everyone read it.



Steve points out that moving forward in life, you feel like you're jumping and changing directions all the time, and you may not trust those decisions. You have to have faith. Because, looking back, each and every "dot" in life will make a perfectly logical path from it's origin to this moment in time. Every "dot" will make sense - perfect sense. It makes NO sense going forward, perfect sense going back. Read it.

Back to the "Secret"....

The book is simply a summary of what Jesus, the Apostles, the Kings of old, Carnige, Mellon, Ford, Brian Tracey, Zig Ziglar, Tony Robbins and the like all know and shared with the world. They call it the "Law of attraction". Simply stated, the "Law of attraction" says that what a man thinketh, so shall it be.

The book goes a little out there, and I'm not sure it's entirely accurate. If you don't read between the lines, you may come away with the notion that just thinking, and making a wish on the universe will deliver.

That may actually be what they intended, but I feel that there is an element of action and awareness that needs to take place. Sure, there's the story of the woman who won the lotto - twice - purely through "wishing and Positive Mental Attitude", and there is hundreds and thousands of stories that are testaments to the power of PMA, mine included.

I believe however, that when you create strong focus, you in turn create strong subconscious awareness at the same time. You need to act on opportunities that present themselves. The universe may provide, but YOU need to recognize that opportunity and make it your own, or you will be passed by just as fast.

I have forgotten all of this over the past 5 to 10 years. I left it behind basking in my successes, not enormous successes - I don't own a movie studio or anything - but great sucess in my own right. I have been miserable and frustrated lately, actually, I had been for the past 5 or 6 years. The funny thing is that it never really occured to me until late, how I even got here. I totally lost touch "wit' da one whut brung me" to use an old phrase.

Last week, I was sitting idly on my porch, and I said "God - please help".

The next morning, I went on line to cancel my Audible subscription and noticed I still had credits. I went to the best sellers section to download a bunch of stuff, so I wouldn't waste those credits before I canceled. Well, the "Secret" was right there. I didn't scroll down to it, I must have hit my mouse wheel or something because the book was right in the middle of the page. I downloaded it.

Finally - my point.

In the book, there is a story of a guy who decided to test the power of "intention". He decided to visualize a feather. Not any feather, he visualized a very specific feather. He said to himself, if the universe brings him the feather, he will believe.

A few days later, while walking into a building down town, when the *exact* feather blew up to him as he was opening the door. A miracle. (yea, riiigghhtttt). I thought about it and said wow, what a coincidence.

This morning, when I went into the shower, I dropped my sweatshirt on the floor, kicked of my pajama pants and started to get ready. For some reason, I have NO IDEA why, I walked over to my sweatshirt, and kicked it.

Underneath it was a feather! Seriously.. a green feather!. I looked around the bathroom trying to figure out where it had come from, the girls had a bath last night, were they playing with something with feathers?. I couldn't find anything. A doll, a scrub brush, soap, water cup, rubber toys, nothing with a feather.

I have that feather in my pocket right now. I'm keeping it as a reminder. I have no idea if it has any meaning or significance, but as Tony Robbins says; "It's a cause set in motion".

Don't tell anyone what's in my pocket though - It's a Secret!

It's all One's and Zero's.

OK, I couldn't resist harping on this subject. Here are two great examples of "Hello World" programs, one in Hex (Hexidecimal - a representation on binary), and the other is actually Binary. If you can compile, run and test them, go for it. I just have to take the authors word for it.

HEX

66 BB 20 01 00
00 E8 05 00 B8
00 4C CD 21 60
67 8A 13 84 D2
74 08 B4 02 CD
21 66 43 EB F1
61 C3 48 65 6C
6C 6F 20 57 6F
72 6C 64 21 00



Binary:

01100110 10111011 00100000 00000001 00000000
00000000 11101000 00000101 00000000 10111000
00000000 01001100 11001101 00100001 01100000
01100111 10001010 00010011 10000100 11010010
01110100 00001000 10110100 00000010 11001101
00100001 01100110 01000011 11101011 11110001
01100001 11000011 01001000 01100101 01101100
01101100 01101111 00100000 01010111 01101111
01110010 01101100 01100100 00100001 00000000

The bottom line is that No matter what you write, it ultimatly becomes all ones and zeros........

Frustration - getting the "knack" of C.. See??

OK, pardon my puns. If you're too young to remember, there was a great 70's band called the "Knack", who played great, perverted songs like "Frustrated". Look em' up on iTunes. If your parents are around, blare "Good girls don't", they'll love it - just don't tell em' I told you to. lol

Anyways, on the to topic at hand; "C". I hate "C", I've always hated "C". I hate "C", "C+", C++" and any other derivation of "C" including my current nemesis "C#" (Pronounced C-sharp).

You see, I've been programming on and off for nearly 25 years. I started out on a Timex Sinclair, writing Sinclair basic. I've written dozens of applications that are in use in businesses including my own for years. Basic is a crappy language, I'll give you that, but I have yet to run into an argument that will convince me I need to write in a lower level language like "C". When I say lower level, I mean closer to the machine. Basic is highly interpretive, the machine has to work really hard to use it.

I've been told by dozens of people that I should teach programming, computers or computer history. If I could spend 16 weeks spinning yarns about Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and the rest of the HomeBrew era computer hoodlums, I'd love it. Teaching doesn't pay enough.

Anyways.

Computers really work on a series of one's and zero's. Everything you do eventually becomes one's and zero's. When you write in Basic, Fortran, "C", or whatever, the computer has to compile that down to something "it" understands. Some languages are easier to compile than others. Basic languages need an interpreter to run, or what is called a "runtime". Without the Basic "runtime", the program bombs. The interpreter converts the language to something the computer understands. When you compile a "C" type program, it's turned into something the computer understands already, no need for interpretation. I take issue with this today. To me, requiring the "VB.net" runtime, or requiring the ".net framework" are the same friggin thing. You need a library eternal to your program.

Programmers like to crab about Basic being procedural, lines execute one after another, unless interrupted and re-routed. Well, so are other languages. Basic didn't have the market cornered on procedural programming. In fact, most business applications were procedural, written in COBOL.

"C" languages are considered "Object Oriented", and when you use them, you are doing "Object Oriented Programming", or OOP. Object languages reflect the real world much better than Basic languages did. Lower level Basic languages like "Visual Basic .net", (pronounced "dot-net) are OOP for the most part. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.

A telephone is an "object" we can all agree on that. This object (the phone) has things called "properties", it can be black, red, white, big, small, plastic, ceramic or whatever. These are the properties of the phone. It also has "methods", things it can do. It can dial, it can answer, it can take a message. Finally, it has "events", things that happen. It rings, it lights up and so on. The core of object programming is just that; Properties, Methods and Events.

Let's consider making a P&J sandwich for instance. This was my first formal "program" I had to write in college (community college). Not one line of code. My teacher wanted us to describe how to make a P&J.

Well, most people said "get the peanut butter, get the jelly, put out some bread, yada yada..". I, on the other hand was FILLED with questions, and my teacher loved me for it. Where the the peanut butter come from?, same with the jelly. Was it in the fridge?, the closet?, a cabinet? How do you "get" it anyways?. Do you grasp it?, what if the door was closed?, what if you looked in the fridge and it wasn't there?. I was thinking OBJECT, but being asked to write PROCEDURAL.

This is the basis of traditional old-school programming. Present a problem, determine what the preferred result is, draw a path to get there, think through every possible scenario that may get in our way, follow it step by step and deal with those issues along the way.

OOP says Present a solution, build, borrow or inherit tools to handle whatever may happen on the way to the solution, and let er' rip.

The procedural way to a P&J may be "go to the closet", "open the door", "look inside", and so on...

Well, the OOP approach is different, OOP says "Get the peanut butter", which fires off an event called "get the peanut butter", which in turn fires off events called "Is it in the fridge" and "is it in the closet" and "is it in the cabinet".

Each event reports back if it found it. If "closet" and "fridge" both find it, maybe a "Crunchy versus creamy" method is called, or a "is this one more full than the other" may be called.

You see, *I* don't *care* how the peanut butter is gotten, all *I* care about is getting it. Conversely, if my wife wants a fluffernutter, does she have to go through the whole process?, of course not, she can use the same "objects" that I did. Those objects are dedicated to the ferreting out of peanut butter wherever it may be.

The traditional "first" program for 99% of the programming population is called the "Hello World" program. Here are a couple of examples:

Basic:

10 PRINT "Hello World"

20 GOTO 10


Simple. Line 10 prints "Hello World", line 20 tells the computer to go to line 10, and do whatever it says to do. This is also whats called an "endless loop". Kinda like "Pete and repeat were sitting on a fence". It never ends. Nor, do you have any control over where it prints it. What if you wanted it to go to the printer?

Now, the computer processes the lines in order, starting with 10. There is no magic to "10", it could be 1, 2, 15, 99, or 1,8907. As long as the next line number is bigger. It's a procedure - one after another until it's done.

Here's the same thing in "C":

#include iostream.h

main()

{

cout << "Hello World" << endl;
return 0;

}


Not quite as simple; It starts with an "include", which tells the computer I need to do something using input and output, so prepare anything I need to do that.

The IOSTREAM.H handles how to write stuff out (Input/Output). In the Basic example, the computer assumed the screen, unless told otherwise. In this case, we tell it the screen.

The second line "main()" is what's called the "entry point", or the start of the program. The "{" (braces) tell the computer that this is a program, self contained, a beginning and an end. Inside those braces, you may call all sorts of other "programs" if you wanted to.

the "cout << "Hello World" << endl;" says; "Console output (the screen), the words "Hello World", and add a carraige return (end line - endl).

The "return 0;" says; "we're done, and we're not giving any thing back".

Same stuff, except this one ends properly.

Now, in "C#":

using System;

class HelloWorld

{
   public static int Main(String[] args)
   {
       Console.WriteLine("Hello, World!");
       return 0;
   }
}

See????? A little more readable, a little more understandable, but still convoluted.

Now, Visual Basic .net:

'Hello World in Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET)

Imports System.Console

Class HelloWorld

   Public Shared Sub Main()
       WriteLine("Hello, world!")
   End Sub

End Class

Very similar, but no stupid ";" or braces. The last two examples introduce whats called a "class". A class is nothing more than a self contained program. When you "include" something, you are really saying "I want to use the classes that belong to whatever". This way, you don't have to reinvent the wheel.

This is what frustrates me. As a Basic Programmer, 80% of what I want to do is accounted for in the runtime library, and it's assumed that I want to use them. as a "C" programmer, I need to write every stinking thing very specifically. Basic is sloppy, "C" is clean. I'm sloppy.

Take a car builder. If I was a basic car builder, I would say give me a body, make it red, give me some wheels and an engine, an interior and lets drive. Sure, I could modify those things if I wanted to, but for the most part I'm ok with what's provided for me. A tweak here, a twaek there and I'm done. Sure, there are the Farrari and Roll's guys out there, but that's a small universe.

With "C" products, I either have to find the engine, or build it myself. I need to find tires, or build a tire factory, I need to tell the system the exact treads, or find a tread that fits my needs. It's just not as simple. Yes, there is a need for mission critical applications, there are huge systems that need that level of specificness, but for day to day business, VB apps work just fine.

OK, so I didn't make any point at all other than "C" is a pain in the ass to me. That's what's nice about Blogs. I can talk to myself.....

"Do what you do me Frustrated!"...........

It's that tornado time of year

Where I live, we have our share of semi annual Tornado watches, warnings, and hits. Thankfully, none have been anywhere near me. The last time I saw a real tornado, it was from a low lying cloud, and it was running across a cornfield. It came, it lasted about 10 seconds and disappeared that quickly.

I, like most of the people my age, spent my early childhood scared to death of tornado's thanks to the Wizard of Oz. My children have followed suit. Nice to know we have the Wiz' to pass unrealistic fears on to our children, or grandchildren and so on.

I remember being a little kid, at a party at the VFW hall (remember when our dads used to party in the parking lot of the hall on into the night and no one cared?) I looked up into the sky, because the thunder had been rumbling, but didn't have any rain yet. As my dad yakked with some guys, I watched as the clouds seemed to be bumping into an invisible wall, they were moving fast, but then went straight up. It was weird. Then I had that eerie feeling where everything goes quiet, and greenish.. I know now that the weird feeling is more or less the fast drop in air pressure, but I was a little kid, all I knew was that something wasn't right. The clouds got darker, and faster, then the whole ball of wax started to roll. First with an upward twisting motion, then it kinda rolled on it's side, and the whole cloud formation sort of lowered down like a space craft. I grabbed my dad's hand and cried, telling him to look up, he looked up, went "huh", and went back to his buddies.

The whole thing came and went in a few moments, and it scared the daylight out of me. I thought we were dead, and I looked at my dad as fearless. About that time I got over my fear of storms. I don't really know if this incident had anything to do with it, all I know is that from then on, not only was I not afraid, I found them to be really cool.

Which brings me to my point; I have a crapload of weather sites on my browser, for watching storms and things. But when you get the actual weather service bulletins, it's like they speak in weather-guy code.

"The storm is tracking so and so, on a line from so and so northeast to so and so from 3z to 12z"..

I would love to have an app that I can sit down to, type in a center point, say Chicago, and the get a list box of all the Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin cities. From there be able to quick-search the cities and double click on them, and as I do, the app draws lines so I can visualize the line of storms. Also, it would be cool to identify the starting point of a tornado and give it a couple of cities it's passed over, and have it draw a "guesstimate" of the track so I can see it.

I might give it a shot with Google' s Googlemapping API - if I knew anything about HTML/XML. But I don't..

Oh well.

Oh, I wonder if Twister can be the modern equivalent of the Wizard of Oz?.. Maybe I'll sit *my* kids down and watch it - or maybe not.. :)

UUUGHHHHHHH

Have you ever been soooooo close to something, yet it remains just out of your reach? Slipping, sliding, falling and yet the branch is just *inches* away. Knowing that if you twitch, you will slide into oblivion, yet, you must continue to twitch in hopes of grasping that branch and pulling yourself to freedom?

WINE for Linux (or should I call it "Whine")

Guess what!, I have ACT! (version 6.0) running on my Linux box, screenshots to follow...

There is a product out there called "WINE" for Linux. It's not a Windows Emulator, nor is it a "virtual machine" that encapsulates your Windows apps. It's a compatibility environment that creates a virtual drive on your box that will run Windows software. The application "runs", it's not running inside a pretend Windows OS (with the start bar, task bar and all that crap). Your app runs like any other app under Linux.

A couple of things I learned along the way; The "Windows" drive is a hidden device. That's to say that you won't find it using your file manager programs. You need to get there by changing directories to ~/.wine. (Don't you love Linux?) . Again, this is done in a terminal window.

Once you're in the .wine folder, you'll see a few things; a DOS folder, a "drive_c" folder and two config files. The config files contain a bunch of stuff, but from what I can tell, they replicate the Windows Registry as it relates to any programs you have installed.

If you change to the "drive_c" folder, you'll see a Program Files and a windows directories, and changing folders again to the Program Files folder, you'll see where your programs get installed.

Learned thing number 2: IF a folder has a multiple word name like "Program Files", you'll type "cd Program\ Files" to get there. An easier way is to type "cd" then a letter or two of the folder you want to go to, and then hit the tab key. Linux will fill in the blanks. So by typing "cd Pro (tab)" will result in "cd Program\ Files", then hit enter. By the way, if you don't know it already, LINUX IS CASE SENSITIVE. Program and program are NOT the same thing.

Learned thing 3: If you do want to install ACT!, it needs internet explorer.

Finally, unless the program you want to run is part of the path (i.e., its in a folder Windows always looks in like c:\windows\system\), you'll need to point at it specifically. Example. One I got ACT installed, I needed to make a desktop icon for it. The startup command is basically:

"wine "~/.wine/drive_c/Program\Files/ACT/act.exe". It is soooooo cool.

If you want to know how to do it step by step, let me know and I'll help you out the best I can. Remember, I'm learning too.

OK, I give

I searched high and low last night for a Contact Manager for Linux on the order of Act or Goldmine.

Nothing.

Everything I found was either an outlook wannabe, a web based CRM system, or an overly complicated and high priced psudo CRM. Nothing at all like ACT or Goldmine.

These two companies have found the middle ground of sales management tools quite nicely, and they need to address the emerging Linux market.

I have been an ACT user since the olden days, DOS based 1.0 or 2.0. Back when they had user groups, and the owners/developers would actually come out and attend them. I can't remember the guy's names, but there were two of them. I had a business integrating Act with a couple of other products and sold it to Realtors as a peak-performance package.

Nothing could beat Act, it was small, fast, and efficient. It made use of hot-keys that are still in use today. There was nothing cooler than getting a call, hitting "F5" (I think) to search on a name and popping up a record, hitting "F9" to see the notes, and hitting "F4" for your calendar faster than it took for the customer to finish their first sentence. It was seamless.

Now, all these programs are road hogs. We use Goldmine here, we have a site licence, and I hate the product. It's way too much for the average sales guy, and it's quirky, and the support sucks. It's like the old days of SBT accounting - anyone remember that?

They had a vast array of accounting products from AR, AP to GL. They were written on the dBase engine. Once they sold it to you, they more or less directed you to their army of "certified consultants" to actually make use of it, and to support it. Goldmine has gotten that way. Unless you want to wade through the mounds of "almost answers" on their website, you need to contact a "certified goldmine consultant". "F" that.

I want Act for Linux, and I WANT IT NOW!!! :)

Another thing.. There is no phrase that make my hair stand up on my neck more than "PC Wizard" or "Guru". God, I hate that. Whenever I hear it, it conjours up images of a really fat guy, greying with a long beard driving a crappy little Ford Fiesta with the plates "WIZARD".

Pleeeeeeeeaaaseee..... Computers are simply not that difficult.

Sometimes you just want to strangle someone

Here I sit in the office, so quiet you can hear a pin drop. I go over the prospect list with sales day after day. So many reasons, so many excuses. There are always the big dogs to be had, but you need lot's of little dogs around until you hit the big one. Last year, I heard from them that it "is a bad year for mail, no ones doing it".

You need to count on your sales people to be your eyes and ears, as they are more in touch with the industry. My eyes and ears are the piles of mail I get when I get home - which none of them I did.

I was looking at some industry awards today, and found that the bulk of them came from Chicago Ad agencies, and lot's of them were direct mail. Most of them were from agencies "that aren't doing anything". Really?

Sometimes you just want to strangle someone!

Wild Hogs

What a riot.. great movie, great story line, touches the soul.. well, maybe not, but it's great.

I could tell it was going to be fun when I noticed all the couples my age (40 summin) at the popcorn stand acting like giddy little kids. Guys were bumping their girls, making candy and make-out jokes and such. I'm not saying that "we" don't identify with the younger crowd, but there's something to say about a movie that talks to me.

It's kinda funny that the message every guy wants to tell his wife comes in the first few minutes of the movie; "Look, I'm a man, and a husband, and a father, but sometimes I just need to be free. I'm wild, I'm a crazy teen inside, I'm a moron (but you already knew that)".

Without spoiling the movie, it's basically a bunch of friends that decide that they need a break from the day to day, and hit the road on their bikes without a plan. Keyword here ladies: without a plan. If follows them on their trek to the coast and their trials and tribulations along the way. It is kinda slapsticky, but it works.

Being a rider, there are scenes that just take your breath away, and make you want to hit the road too.

I can't think of any other movie premise that these four guys could work together in either. There's the ultra sucessful guy whose life sucks but no one knows, the former crazy youth turned suburban dad, the computer geek who's crying out to be cool and the "yes dear, no dear, whatever you say dear" guy who uses the trip as his escape. "Dudly" (William H. Macey) kills me. Think "Fargo meets Revenge of the Nerds".

All in all, it's good fun.

The greatest resource on the web

Business cannot survive without sales, and sales if possibly the most frustrating and rewarding career there is. Good sales guys make good money, great sales guys make as much as the owners, quite often, more. The 80/20 rule applies here though, and finding the 20 is a difficult row to hoe.

Great sales people are built, not born, and they use every moment not selling to educate themselves, improve themselves, network, chatter and deal with the lonely world of selling.

Selling is a lonely world too.

When I was a kid, I wrestled. I could have played football, I could have played baseball, but I gravitated to sports that it was me against him. Sure, there was a team score in the end, but for 6 minutes it was my skills against his. I liked it that way. Selling is sort of the same thing.

A salesperson is only as strong as their skill set, knowledge base and their ability to understand it's not about them, it's about a customers need at this moment in time.

If you want to improve all of those things and then some, hit this website:

http://www.salespractice.com/forums/

You will find a WORLD of successful people, newbies, wannabes and upcoming stars there. There is nothing about selling you can't find there. It is the strongest community of people in a CUT THROAT industry willing to reach out to their competitors, pull them off the floor and hug them for the greatness of the fight.

If you sell, need marketing support, ideas, or have an interest in the mind game of selling and personal achievement, go here now. Do not pass go, Do not collect $100, just go there now. Tell them Tommy sent ya'

Business woes

There's nothing like being in business for yourself, yet, there's nothing like being in business for yourself.

Over a decade ago, me and a couple other guys started a biz on a shoestring. We had us four, a rental property, one piece of equipment, a folding table and a phone.

Today we have nearly 40 employees, nearly 100,000 square feet of space, and millions in revenue.

We're faced with some very difficult decisions, as the landscape of our market has changed drastically. We're not becoming the best buggy whip company in a world of Fords, but it seems like it. Problem is everyone wants to get paid, bills need to be covered, debts need to be serviced, and feeding the tiger is a full time job and then some.

If you're employed by a mid to large business, and it seems things are going swimmingly, yet management has a frown, it's entirely possible they've poured every penny of their personal income back into the biz to make sure you have a paycheck. Secondly, just because the biz brings a million, doesn't mean it's not costing a million and a half to do so.

Things will get better, they always do.. It's the chasm between bad and good that drives me nuts.

Most entrepreneurs say that it was difficult and stressful, but they wouldn't have it any other way. Well, maybe in a few years I might feel that way - but not today.

KDE yet again

I love Linux. Let me say that first. There is no better OS, and I have OS X, and Windows. The only thing preventing Linux from overtaking the free world is the archaic method of program installation. I know, In know, there's a jillion Distro's, that you need to compile for yours. Take the average Windows user though, first off, they have no idea what a "Distro'" is. (short for distribution, a version of linux - there are tons), and anything short of "Click here to install" sends them into a tailspin of frustration. I don't mind it, but geeze, terminal windows?, ./configure's?, make?, make install?, and where the hell did it *put* my program???? I still can't get any DVD players to work, and I've installed 3 of them. (I must be missing something with the skin setup for mPlayer, because I've done exactly what they say and still get skin errors.

By the way, if you install KDE 3.5, and can't find your trash, go to the tool bar, right click and select "add applet". You'll find it there.

Blue Monday

It was a nice weekend, weather was great, got out for a couple of short rides, forgot about hings for a while. It's back to the office today, and back to the stress of the week. This past week has probably been the worst of my 40 some years. I wish I were 18 again, and the only thing I needed to worry about is rent, smokes and gas.

BTW, the Ninja Turtle movie sucked. It was cool for what it was, but after priming my little ones with the 80's Ninja movie on Friday, they were excited to see the goofy hero's save the day again. What we got was Goth Batman in shells. Too loud, too scary and too serious. It seems they made Mike "funny" strictly for comic relief. Even my 15 year old didn't like it. Maybe it's just because I hate CGI. Maybe I'm just a crabby old man.

I think I have it...

OK, I'm using KDE for myself, and Gnome for the little kids. Gnome is simple enough that they won't cause any trouble or be crying to me 7/24 that "the Internet is broken", and KDE satisfies my urge to constantly tinker. "It's the best of both worlds" as Miley would say.

By the way, why is "Internet" capitalized?...

More WMP54G woes...

If you don't know it already, Kernel 2.6.17-11 breaks wireless configs. You need to re-run the setup with the new kernel. Also, you might find that your DNS lookups are really slow.

You click to a website, it waits and waits, then finally it all loads just fine. A lot of people are blaming it on Gnome. It's not, try blacklisting "IPV6", worked for me!

Thank GOD!

I finally picked up my Harley today from winter storage... Drove home in 46 degree rain for about 20 miles, but it's worth it. Hey, it's a Harley. :)

WMP54G and Ubuntu Linux - ARRGGHH!!!!

OK, so I got frustrated trying to put windows, ANY windows on my cheap-o Compaq I bought last summer. I actually own a retail copy of XP BTW, but the box kept hanging up when I treid the install. No screen, nothing. I bought the box with the idea that putting Linux on it would make a cool print server for my wife and kids who are constantly having me run printers around the house. Seemed like a neat idea - that is until you try and use Wireless with Linux, well, Linksys Wireless specifically.

I have a Linksys WMP54G, which was a sweet card under windows, but if you want to commit Hari-Kari, try and set it up under Linux.

I tried setting it up several times, in the past year, whenever I'm in the mood to be crabby for a day. I googled the crap out of WMP54G, I read every stinking newsgroup I could find. Combine that with the fact that I would consider myself a Windows expert, I don't know diddly about Linux.

Well my friends, there is hope. If *you* have one of these cards, let me save you a boatload of frustration;

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/RalinkRT61?action=show&redirect=Rt61WirelessCardsHowTo

The WMP54G, at least the one I have, is an RA61 chipset and if you do what this guy says, step by step, copy-paste if you must, it WILL work!!

By the way, for you Linux Newbies - all of this is done in a terminal window. You can find the terminal with your accessories. If you don't know what a terminal window is, then, for the moment you may want to stick with Windows.

Looking into the Abyss...

"A man looks into the abyss. There’s nothing staring back at him. At that moment, a man finds his character. And that’s what keeps him out of the abyss."

That was a line from Wall Street, when Buddy sees his fast paced, easy come world crashing around him. I feel for Buddy. No, I didn't do anything wrong.