How about this! Three journal entries in the new system. I’m still
working out the process where the entry is taken from the e-mail and put
in the database. I think I’ve got it working correctly. A couple more
entries should show that everything is working correctly. Fortunately,
these e-mail journal entries are also in the “sent” folder on the
computer I sent them from, so they’re easily recreated and resent should
there be a problem.

It’s a Wednesday night. I’ve been working from home today. The time has
been quite productive. Most of the day on Wednesday is spent on the
phone in meetings. Today was no exception. It started with the weekly
Change Control Meeting at 10:00 a.m. where we review the changes planned
to production systems. At 10:15 I went into the weekly Autonomy Meeting.
This meeting has to do with the project to implement the new search
engine for the LSI Logic intranet. This project is moving along quite
smoothly and is yielding some very nice results.

At noon I was on the phone about the strategy to finish off the AT&T
contract for North America voice and data services. At 2 p.m. was a
phone meeting about the problems we had with the network in Milpitas
yesterday afternoon and evening. 3:00 p.m. was the final phone meeting
on hardware needed for the new disaster recovery site. In the meantime I
built a web page to explain to Bruce Decock, my boss, how we would go
about reducing the amount of spam e-mail that’s coming into the company.

I was supposed to meet at the Church this evening for a Home Teaching
Rescue Night. However, I’ve still got a major cough and get coughing
fits that literally double me over. I’ve also broken out in a rash! No
idea what the cause of the rash is, hopefully it doesn’t have anything
to do with the cough which I believe is left over from the cold I had
last week. I’d sure like to get rid of the cough and be finished with
the cold. My belly is sore enough from coughing!!

This entry was moved from an older journal into this program on 29 November 2002.

This is the second entry to get into the database. I’m still testing the
functionality and verifying that everything gets into the database
correctly. Nina wanted to know what I was doing and was somewhat
incredulous that I’d spend the time doing this rather than just writing
on a piece of paper. It’s fun and interesting, that’s why!

Got up this morning and rather than going down to the club, decided to
work in the yard. With the schedule at the Temple each Saturday, getting
things done in the yard has been rather difficult. So, I’ve decided for
the next several weeks to spend the time in the yard rather than at the
exercise club. I suspect this will be some reasonable exercise, anyway.
So this morning I raked the front yard. I thought it would take about a
half-hour. Wrong. An hour later I was still at it and starting the
cleanup. My arms are quite tired and a bit sore. That was a lot of
workout those muscles haven’t had for quite a while.

With that work, the front yard looks quite a bit better. Much more work
is required!! We’ll go over to Home Depot tonight to pick up some wood
chips / bark to put down in the flower beds in the front yard. We
haven’t done anything with these beds since we got here, so I guess it’s
high time that we upgraded them. I’m sure the neighbors will be relieved
that we’re doing something with the yard!

This entry was transferred from an older journal into this program on 20 November 2002

This should be the first entry in the new journal system. I’m going
“high-tech” with my journal. I send an e-mail to rksjournal@rnsmith.com. A
program on my home computer extracts the journal entry and places it in a
database. From there the entry can be displayed on-line or printed, or
whatever else can happen with an electronic entry. I looked at several other
pieces of software, but none of them had the ability to take an e-mail and
turn it into a journal entry.

Exactly how this will appear on-line is still to be determined. I’m not even
sure I’m ready to have my journal available on-line. One of my options is to
make it available several months after-the-fact. Time will tell what will
really happen. I think that journals are intended to be somewhat private and
only become more public a long time after they are written, perhaps even
after the writer is dead.

But, for right now, the process is to write the journal entry in an e-mail
and send it to the home computer. I will also build an ability to send the
entries in HTML format as well as in the database format to a CD-ROM so that
the contents are somewhat preserved in case of computer problems at home.
It’s been known to happen….

This change comes about in part because the journal that I’ve been keeping
is almost full. I’ve bought a new book, but haven’t started it yet. Also,
most of the entries in my journal happen as I’m on an airplane as that’s
when I have the time to write. My handwriting has gotten so bad that I think
the written journal is fast becoming unreadable. With this system I can
write entries anywhere. All I need is some kind of a mail client, either
browser based or otherwise. The risk is that since these entries will exist
as computer bits rather than as ink on a page, they somehow disappear, or
technology changes so quickly that the format in which the data is created
can no longer be processed, or that the entries get altered somehow. Paper
seems to be a fairly universal media. So, the system will definitely include
the ability to print these journal entries, one per page (or set of pages),
and put them into a notebook. So, the entries will be preserved on paper as
well as on a CD-ROM.

Since this is the first entry, perhaps I should describe the home computer
system. We have a wireless broadband connection to the internet from Sprint
Broadband. Their antenna is on top of Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs
and I have a corresponding antenna on the top of our house. Their modem
provides me an RJ-45 ethernet jack. That jack is plugged into a small HP
Pentium 90 (circa 1996) computer running Linux and a Linux firewall. The
firewall is currently compromised and I’m working on a replacement which
isn’t being very cooperative.

On the other side of the firewall we have four other computers. One is a
generic Pentium II computer, named Bradica, running Linux as the operating
system, Apache as a web server, Sendmail as the Mail Transfer Agent, PHP as
the scripting language, and MySQL as the database server. It is also running
Samba to provide file and print services. I have my own computer, a Dell
Pentium III computer running Windows 2000 and a bunch of other stuff. This
is my primary computer at home. Nina has an IBM Thinkpad Notebook computer
as her primary computer. I often bring my office notebook computer home and
plug it into the home network as well.

I have another Linux computer on the network that I use as a kind of a test
bed as I’m developing software or capability. This system is named Heather.

The journal system is running on Bradica. It is written in PHP and the data
is stored in a MySQL database. Over the next several months the system will
probably grow and change significantly. Meanwhile, from time to time I’ll
mail in another journal entry!

This entry was transferred from an older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.

If you’re looking for the author Roland Smith (Cryptid Hunter, Peak, Elephant Run), you’re in the wrong place! Please navigate to www.rolandsmith.com!

Roland and Nina Smith currently live in Pocatello, Idaho. They have eight children (six living), all away from home. Four are married. They have sixteen grandchildren.

Roland is currently “underemployed” having been laid off from AMI Semiconductor in July, 2007. Roland’s hobbies include genealogy, photography, travel (particularly international travel), and anything to do with computers.

Nina is a full-time homemaker. She also enjoys genealogy, origami, photography, travel, and collecting. She has numerous collections, including medicine bottles, kokeshi dolls, Pez dispensers, Stangl pottery, keys, and occupied Japan figurines.

Roland was born in Utah and raised in Soda Springs, Idaho. Following graduation from High School, he enlisted in the US Air Force and became a Chinese linguist and part of the United States Air Force Security Service (USAFSS). Nina and Roland were married June 12, 1964, and moved immediately to San Angelo Texas. That was followed by a 42 month stay in Japan intersperced with a number of temporary duty assignments for Roland in Viet Nam.

Nina was born in Connecticut and grew up primarily in New Jersy and Connecticut. She married Roland the day she completed High School and then accompanied him to Japan.

The family has lived in Texas, Japan, Indiana, Ohio, Germany, Utah, a second time in Japan, a few months in California, Colorado Springs, and now Pocatello, Idaho. They own a small motorhome and enjoy camping, particularly in state and national parks. They also have discovered cruise vacations and generally take at least one ocean or river cruise each year. They are actively involved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons).