The Little Garden news, late, June '93

Well. Firstfloor is online, see the contact sheet. Out of the Palo Alto
POP. The Portmaster there is getting full.

I am preparing to do a financial statement (sic) here shortly. There
will be no surprises. It's been 9 months (?!) since I started handling
TLG affairs, and it's about time everyone got to see how things are
arranged.

NEW MEMBER ALERT: I am working on documenting how to bring a new system
onto the internet. Gee, all these years, and no one's done this?! It's
left up to neophyte me? 

COMPLETE: A very simple DNS (for named) file with helpful (really)
comments. It assumes you're smart but not a unix weenie. A how-to
on domainizing your email address (user@domain instead of
user@host.domain), slightly weenie-ish but as easy as I could make
it.

IN PROGRESS: how's and why's of phone lines, modems, software choices,
etc.

THE GOAL: a complete intro and handbook to get at least 90% of the way
there. 

It's all available via anonymous FTP from ftp.wps.com.

PLEASE! If you have anything to contribute to this effort PLEASE! mail
me.


The rest of this is of lesser importance, stop here if you're bored.





I had a slight positive cash flow this month (in spite of a short-term
cash flow crisis; if you have an outstanding invoice please pay it!),
and I bought some test equipment, about $40, which includes a telephone
testset made out of a new GE el-cheapo phone -- the handset is
completely self-contained, with battery-powered dial RAM, redial, etc. I
made a nice test cable (another $5) and it's as good as any telco
buttset, except there's no speakerphone built in. 

This past month I reiterated a lesson I thought I had learned well
enough before. Apparently I needed a reminder.

When I started installing modems and such, I decided to not use "junk"
-- no homemade cables, no gross hacks, just nice standard parts, clean
power strips, neat wiring, etc. It barely costs anything more up front,
and always pays off in reliability -- which becomes more of an issue as
we grow (as we're finding out; see below).

OK so I'm installing FirstFloor in Palo Alto, and having a hell of a
time. Very wierd problems with PPP. Long story short: at the time I was
out of standard cables, so I used one of my trusty test cables, to tide
me over til I got more of my "standards". Lo, my test cable was flakey!
Very odd symptoms. The problems even went away when I swapped in
another, slightly different, modem, on the bad cable!

Lesson: Don't ever use junk when you can use good stuff. Even "just for
the moment" unless it's a really controlled setup.