---

Monday - 15 October 2001

On Guard. The Hawai'i Air National Guard provides air defense services to the state and they made themselves known late last week. Here's how. Last Thursday, as I was walking back from picking up lunch, I heard two low flying jets. I looked up and saw two F-15 Eagles flying with after-burners glowing red. They were headed East and not wasting any time to get there. In all my life here, I don't think I've seen jets so low, traveling so fast. The sound from their engines caused windows to rattle and car alarms to go off for blocks. I even heard what sounded like two large booms, coming in quick succession.

I didn't know what they were up to until I read an article in the paper the next day. It seems there was a single-engine Cessna that turned up on radar near the island of Moloka'i heading towards Honolulu. As it made landfall, it flew all over the city. The Honolulu air traffic control tower had no contact (and no reason as to why) with the plane nor was the plane's transponder enabled. Hence the F-15s.

The Eagles met up and escorted the Cessna to the Honolulu International Airport without incident. There was no word as to what the Cessna's pilot was doing but one wonders how stupid some people can be. By the way, the National Guard, with appropriate approval from the local commander, has the green light to shoot down civilian aircraft if they appear to be a threat. One hopes they don't have to, but if needed, they'll be there.

Not So On Guard. While UNIX and Apache, and I mean UNIX, not LINUX, may be more secure than Windows and IIS, that is not to say UNIX can't be hacked. Proof of this comes by way of a link from TheRegister (see the story here). Someone recently attacked a site that is hosted at pair.com. Pair, the host for my site, uses the latest stable version of FreeBSD and Apache. The link to the defacement is here.

So while you can try to maximize your security by using a host that utilizes UNIX, that does not mean you can't be hacked.

Mission Accomplished. The US Navy successfully lifted and moved the sunken 830-ton Japanese training vessel the Ehime Maru. The ship, accidentally sunk by the US Navy submarine USS Greeneville as it surfaced, had lay at the bottom of the ocean, 2000-feet (~610m) below the surface since February 9th.

But at 3:22pm yesterday, after traveling 14 nautical miles (~26km) under water, towed by the salvage vessel the Rockwater 2, the Ehime Maru was laid to rest, in 115-foot (35m) waters just off of the Honolulu International Airport reef runway. Sometime today, divers are scheduled to go down to the ship to do a preliminary inspection. Once that's completed, the plan is to begin exploring the ship to find and recover the remains of the crew. Once the recovery is completed, the ship will be picked up again, taken out to deep water, and set back down. The approximate cost so far? Sixty million, USD.

On a lighter note:
Q: Why aren't there any WalMarts in Kabul?
A:Because there's a Target on every corner already.

---

A jester, out of work, is nobody's fool.

---

bin/Laden and President Bush meet up in Kabul for the first round of talks in a new peace process. When George sits down, he notices three buttons on the side of bin Laden's chair. They begin talking. After about five minutes, bin Laden presses the first button. A boxing glove springs out of a box on the desk and punches Bush in the face.

Annoyed, President Bush carries on talking as bin Laden laughs. A few minutes later the second button is pressed. This time a big boot comes out and kicks Bush in the shin. Again bin Laden laughs, and again George carries on talking, not wanting to put off the bigger issue of peace between the two countries.

But when the third button is pressed and another boot comes out and kicks Bush square in the privates, he's finally had enough. "I'm headin' back home!" he calmly tells the Saudi. "We'll finish these talks in two weeks!"

A fortnight passes and bin Laden flies to the United States for talks. As the two men sit down, bin Laden notices three buttons on Bush's chair and prepares himself for the Yank's retaliation. They begin talking and George presses the first button. bin Laden ducks, but nothing happens. George snickers. A few seconds later he presses the second button. bin Laden jumps up, but again nothing happens. President Bush roars with laughter. When the third button is pressed, bin Laden jumps up again, but again nothing happens. Bush falls on the floor in a fit of hysterics.

"Forget this," says bin Laden. "I'm going back to Kabul!"

George Dubyah says through tears of laughter, "What Kabul?"

Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

---

Tuesday - 16 October 2001

Short Shrift Mode. Today will be a very busy day. I'm working on a project for class and will need to leave early to go up the the University to interview the Director of Administrative Services for the College of Tropical Agriculture. The college recently went through a reorganization which consolidated 11 departments into the present six. We will be asking the Director what process was used to decide which to close, consolidate, or expand.

This from Democrats.com: "Unable to actually imprison us, these terrorists want us to imprison ourselves. Sorry, but no way. It breaks my heart to think about the people who lost loved ones on Sept. 11, but I will not let it break my spirit. I went to the ballgame Friday night, took in Dvorak's "New World" Symphony at the Kennedy Center Saturday, took my girls out to breakfast in Washington Sunday morning... I wonder what Osama bin Laden did in his cave yesterday?" -- "Terrorism Game Theory" in the New York Times, p. A29

Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

---

Hump Day Wednesday - 17 October 2001

Hammer Time. EE Times has an article on AMD's next generation CPU, code named Hammer. The 64-bit CPU is slated to go head-to-head with Intel's Itanium in the high-end server market. Let's hope they are around long enough to actually ship the chip. See the story here.

Use It or Lose It. For those of you who think Jacob Nielsen is a god, and can't take a joke, skip on down to the next item. For the rest of you, here's a link to the unofficial portal to all things anti-Nielsen. From t-shirts to mouse pads, from wall papers to drinking games. Have fun.

Machines of Steel. Eric S. Raymond, over at LinuxJournal did an article on building a "balls-out maximum crunching power" Linux boxen. Except of course, it shouldn't require exotic forms of cooling, or emit enough noise to rattle the windows, or be so unstable as to be unusable. See the article here.

Much to do and not much time to do it. So I gotta' go.

Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

---

Thursday - 18 October 2001

Coming Up Out of the Dark. Two bodies have been recovered so far from the wreck of the Ehime Maru, with a third found, but not raised yet. The first to be identified is Hirotaka Segawa. The 60-year old Chief Radio Officer was on his last voyage, in more ways than one. He had planned to retire, after 40 years of service, with Hawai'i being his last stop. Segawa went down with his ship while trying to send an SOS. Sigh. Again, our deepest apologies to the family, friends, and Japanese people.

Taking a Dive. The local economic outlook continues to look bad right now. So far, about 12,000 tourism related jobs have been lost since September 11. The hotel industry estimates they are losing about $2.7 million US per day, as compared to last year's numbers. It needs to be noted that last year was a record year for visitors so maybe it isn't as bad as the numbers indicate, but they are still bad. To put the losses in to perspective, in one month, the industry lost more than the entire quarter after the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991.

Getting the Jitters. One of the six Viewsonic LCD monitors we got last week has developed a bad case of the jitters. That is, the image jumps up and down a few pixels several times a second. This is very annoying, not to mention making it difficult to actually use the screen. So I emailed Dell and they are FedExing a new one. It should be here sometime this afternoon.

I will be scrubbing my C: drive down and reinstalling Windows 2000 Pro and all of my applications this morning so I gotta' go.

Aloha!

Top / Home / Monday / Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday / Friday

---

Aloha Friday - 19 October 2001

Bush of Borg. I was surfing the news web sites yesterday and stopped dead in my tracks when I read an AP article that said the US was dropping leaflets over Afghanis'nam entreating the Taliban to surrender because, and I quote, "resistance is futile." Holy reruns Batman! Has President Bush been assimilated? Has the world gone mad? Watch this same bat channel to find out. Engage! [There he goes again. If he doesn't mix metaphors, he mixes TV shows, and sometimes drinks... - ed.]

Costco Run. I think this weekend will be our CostcoRun(tm). On the list, among other things, are three DVDs. Star Wars I, Snow White, and The Godfather Trilogy. Yes, I know, that's quite a mix but there you go.

That Sinking Feeling. American Classic Cruises, parent company of two cruise ships that go inter-island, is reported to be filing for bankruptcy today. This, the first large casualty due to the slow down in tourist arrivals here. The two ships are US flagged, a rarity now-a-days where most companies register their ships in Panama, or some such, to avoid having to provide a safe ship to sail on or having to hire people who have English as their first language, among other things.

Have a Great Weekend Everyone! - Aloha!

---

Last Week    Mon    Tues    Wed    Thurs    Fri    Next Week
Diary Index   Link to the Daynotes Gang

© 2001 Daniel K. Seto. All rights reserved.