369 On-The-Go!
(C) Sun Mar 28 17:24:30 EST 1999 Venturing Crew 369
Future Silver and Ranger Award RecipientsThe ScouterThe National Office of the Boy Scouts of America would like to document the first Venturer to earn the Silver Award and the first to earn the Ranger Award. Are any of you Venturers close to earning either of these two awards? If so, please send information to the Simon Kenton Council Office attention: Cari Palmer. Parents NightJames D. CorderTuesday April 6th 7:30p.m. the parents of Venturing Crew 369 are invited to meet the Advisors and Committee of Venturing Crew 369. We will cover up-an-coming events and activities. |
Flower Sale PickupJames D. CorderSaturday May 8th 10:00a.m. at the Church. Garage SaleJames D. CorderBring your unwanted stuff and junk to the Reformation Lutheran Church [Hamilton & Livingston Ave.] Friday May 28th 7:00 p.m. with your Venturer for the Book Making Sleepover. Saturday May 29th 8:00a.m. until 3:00p.m. we will have our bi-annual Garage sale. Quote of the MonthBen (Benjamin) JonsonVery few men are wise by their own counsel, or leaned by their own teaching; for he that has only taught by himself had a fool to his master. |
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Starting a new unit!Crista CollinsSecretary--Venture Crew 1076 My name is Crista Collins, a 15 year-old female of Venture Crew 1076, Twin Rivers Council, Albany, NY. I just finished visiting your website and it was of great use to me. You see, I am trying to earn a Ranger award, and one of my tasks was to define and tell about what a Venture is and does. I went to a search engine, and found your site to be most useful. I got all of the info I needed and more, and also spent some time just cruising around your page. I must say that you young men have accomplished a lot, and I admire and praise you. Our crew, 1076, was only recently re-established, due to prior lack of interest. We now have four members: Erik (15), Brian (16), Meredith (15), and myself. We also have a few adult members. One of the main reasons I am writing to you, the youth of Crew 369, is for some guidance. You see, we have been trying very hard to get ourselves off the ground, but we seem to be landing face down in the dust. Since we have so few members, it makes it very difficult to do many activities, such as Search-And-Rescue: the main purpose of our crew. The help that I need from you is this---do you have any tips on recruiting or other things? We have been trying for quite some time to get more people interested, but no one seems to want to get involved. I hope to hear back from some, if not all, of you in the near future. Possibly we could all stay in touch and help each other. Good luck to you.Neil CoplinSecretary/Treasurer Venturing Crew 369 Well, how most of us came to join the group was through the promotion of the program through one of our teachers in school. Generally find a teacher that is interested in the focus of your venture group and let him or her select some students to joining your crew. It might be a wise idea to try this out at several different schools so you get better results. What you'll need to do is to convince the teacher that they should help your program. You need to be able to say how your crew will improve the lives of the students that you plan to recruit. Once you get the support of a teacher, the students will come a little easier. Make a speech that you can give to several high schools during a faculty meeting that you set up with the principal. We have tried other ways to try to get people to join, but the most effective has been this method. With some luck, there will be a whole new batch of people coming in this spring. |
Thank you.James D. CorderCrista, thank you for your kind words of praise! We meet every week on the same night at the same time. Units that meet once a month or once every other week tend to fail. If you only meet once a month and on the meeting night you are sick you could not see your friends for 60 to 90 days:-( The first Tuesday of every month we have a "Munchie" night. Everyone must bring a bag of chips and a 2lt of soda to get in. Don't forget the cups and ice. We just munch away during the meeting. The second Tuesday we finnish off what ever is left over from the first Tuesday. The third Tuesday we go out for pizza or something else social. [no work!!!] This is for fun. It is a chance for the newer youth to get to know the older youth. It prevents clicks from forming!!! The fourth and fifth Tuesday are just working meetings. We try once a month to do something on a non-Tuesday. A campout, movie, trip to a museum... Social and fun... KISMIF-Keep it simple make it fun!!! I as the Advisor plan out the first six months of the program. The second six months is up to the youth. It will either work or fail. We have at least one big service project a quarter. This weekend we are helping cook breakfast for over 2,000 people. We maintain an abandon grave. We help the Center of Science and Industry [museum] In December we get enough food for about 2,500 families. We set goals. We are going to build a new classroom onto the church we meet in for the crew. Last year we set the goal to raise the money. We did it. This year we will build it. Promise anything you want but deliver EVERYTHING your promise. We have five levels to our program. A small group of the youth are about to begin level two. Level one doesn't require any level of responsibility on the part of the youth. Level two does. To attend the classes the youth must write an article for our newsletter, respond to all messages on the reflector from non-members such as The Scouting The Web Award, and update and/or create web pages. If they don't then they can not come to the second level course for 30 days. As for members, have everyone bring a friend! Ask teachers to recommend someone. Ask your council for a copy of the career interest surveys from the Exploring Division. As for activities, if your council is like mine, they are forming a Venturing Committee and a Venturing Officer's Association: See if you and your advisor can join. Crista, feel free to send back comments and questions. We always like hints on how to improve our web site:-) |
Venturing Training and Information Sessions to be Held this SpringThe ScouterAfter much anticipation, the Council Venturing Committee will be providing Venturing Basic Leader Training and Information Sessions this Spring. Two dates have been finalized: Tuesday, April 20 at St. Peter's Catholic Church in Worthington, Ohio (from 6:30 p.m. until 10:30 p.m.) and on Saturday, May 15 at Chief Logan Scout Reservation (from 9:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m.). Additional sessions will be announced as confirmed. The cost of these sessions is $3.00 to cover the cost of information, snacks, and materials. The sessions are geared as follows: If you are a former Explorer leader and are familiar with the program, you may attend either session; if you are new to the Venturing or Exploring program, the May 15 session is for you. Information on the six experience areas, Venturing clusters, the Venturing Officers Association (VOA), recognition awards, advancement awards, and coming attractions will be featured. There will be Venturing items and literature from the Scout Shop available for purchase. Questions (or to register)? Please call Kerry Chessman at 888-9623 or Cari Palmer at 436-7200. Venturing Leadership Skills Course AvailableThe ScouterVenturing Leadership Skills Course, No. 34340, is now available. The Venturing Leadership Skills Course was created to help teach young adults the attitudes and skills that good leaders demonstrate. Practicing and mastering these skills and help enable Venturers to have positive leadership experiences. The course is a series of leadership modules divided into four categories: Vision, Communications, Organization, and Synergism. Each module is introduced by an activity and followed by reflection. It is recommend that the modules be conducted in the order listed. The Venturing Leadership Skills Course was specifically designed to be taught to all Venturers in the Crew. It is recommended that the Crew Advisor and/or the new Crew Officers conduct the course. I a Crew is small, they may want to conduct the course with other Crews and/or groups. The course can be conducted on the district or council level, but it was designed to be conducted at the unit level. The unit may choose to hold the course at a weekend retreat or at several crew meetings. Ranger GuidebookThe ScouterThe Ranger program is designed to challenge youth in wide variety of interests available in the outdoor setting. The Ranger Guidebook, No. 3128, is the guide to the core requirements and electives necessary to become a Ranger in the Venturing program. The Venturing Ranger Award was designed primarily for outdoor Venturers but is available to all Venturing members of the BSA. The purpose of the Venturing Ranger award is to:
Going down to Wright-PattersonHo-Sheng HsiaoOur group went to Dayton and visited the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum. An early warm morning, we found fog and snow waiting for us. Not that I cared -- we were there to see the planes, not the snow. Fifty years of military aviation sat waiting for us in the hangers. Though you have to wonder why there's a statue of Icarus in the main lobby. As the home of the Wright Brothers, the first successful in demonstrating powered flight, they held a special section. There was that talking mannequin (which was supposed to be one of the Wright Brothers) with a camera in the back. Mr. Corder wanted to get one. I thought that was pretty neat, though I'd like to stick that moving face on top of MIT's Cog. They also had the original wind tunnel used by the Brothers. Legend was that everyone said they couldn't build a wind tunnel. So they went ahead and built one. It was critical to their successful flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Sounds like a theme for our group. Other exhibits that I never recalled from a visit eight years ago, were the Berlin Air Lift and the Holocaust sections. It was like walking into a tomb -- fake fog, hushed voices. Here, juxtaposed is some of humanity's best and worst, admirable and atrocious. We walked around the modern plane section. Bombers, fighters, all were on display, including some famous experimental planes. The running comment, though, was where the 80's and 90's plane technology. Most of the modern planes (on display) were built and designed in the 50's, 60's, and 70's. As old as those planes seem though, they were built tough. The B-52 Stratofortress, for example, had a section of a damage report on display. Multiple holes in the fuselage, damaged structures and engines, the author wrote. It seemed he assumed that the plane landed in one piece. I'd like one of those, and stay up in the air all the time. Or maybe as a launching point to high earth orbit. We chose to watch "Destiny in Space" at the IMAX theater. Leonard Nimoy (autobiography, "I Am Not Spock") might have narrated, but I wasn't exactly paying attention. I remembering Apollo 13's awed description of an "earthrise", watching Earth rising from the Moon's horizon. They say how they suddenly realize how precious the Earth is. I wanted to experience that. I knew I didn't see it with my nose rubbed here on the ground. But the IMAX shots, with the blue-green haze of Earth hanging off the screen... Think big, I was told, also a lesson in humility. This really hit it home. That, I think, was the best thing I carried back. |
Maple Sugar FestivalJames D. CorderSpring is just around the corner and the sap is flowing in the maple trees once more. Again 369 was asked to cook for the Maple Sugar Festival, and their thousands of guests and 250 staff. However, this year we were given the honor of cooking for the staff members. The pase is just a tad slower than the main kitchen. That gives one more time to add a bit of flair to their culinary delights. The new griddle just installed for this event was mounted to a wooden counter top. Well, as soon as the quarter inch cast iron griddle was hot enough to cook pancakes, much to our surprise, the counter top caught fire. Upon removing the stainless skins once saw that there was no heat shield between the griddle and the base. With the ingenuity that Scouts are known for, we build a brick buffer between the counter and the griddle: and lunch was on. We were able to keep pase with the hungry hoards of staffers that came to our kitchen and we never ran out of hot food, coffee, or coco. When it was time to turn the kitchen over to the dinner Crew it was cleaned, all the dishes where washed and put away, and the next meal was started for the new chefs. I am so proud of 369, they all chipped in and operated as perfect team. MapleFestHo-Sheng HsiaoBoy Scouts of America, Simon Kenton Council, sponsors an event called the Maple Sugar Festival. It is held at Camp Lazarus, some twenty-odd miles north of Columbus. Once again, Venturing Crew 369 volunteered to help out. The event was two-folds. Visitors came in and ate pancakes with some of the most delicious maple syrup, tapped fresh from Camp Lazarus`trees. There were also the camp staff running the place, and they had to eat too. Crew 369 ran the entire "staff kitchen," along with Post 310, and 999 cleaning the dining hall. We served lunch to a bunch of soaked and tired volunteers. If you were out in the cold and rain all morning, you too would like a nice hot meal fore lunch. We made sure they got it. For some of the youth volunteers, this was the first time being kitchen staff. At first, it looked intimidating and a lot of work. It wasn't. Once we had things in place, everything went on smoothly. The lesson learned here: how to run an operation smoothly, and effectively. The few hours we served the crowds slipped away and it was quickly time to pass the torch to the dinner shift, Post 310. We had a blast:-) We got to meet some of interesting people while dishing out those pancakes and hot dogs. Post 310, for example, showed us a different perspective. This was a post focusing on Fire and First Aid. The atmosphere they brought was relaxed, as one advisor described it "like a family." Antics, ancedotes flew around the room with ease. They also showed us what a healthy, co-ed group looks like. We in turn have our web page, our newsletter, our manual, and some highly skilled people -- lots of things to be proud of. So we traded stories -- from toadies to schools -- all while putting out fires (the griddle had initially sat on a wooden table) and scalding our fingers. This is something definitely worth going back to, next year. It also showed how much could be accomplished with more than a single Crew or Post. So if you're in the area, drop by sometime. |
UNIX isn't UNIXJames D. CorderWhile playing with a Linux box. I realized that I had forgotten what a joke this operating system is! Ok, for a free O.S. it is good. However, it is not a professional quality UNIX at all!!! Now, before any of you jump on my case... Play with some real UNIXes. I understand that no two UNIXes are alike when it comes to hardware. However, the command options for standard UNIX commands should be the same. True: BSD vs. SYSV there are differences. However, I know most of these. I had to farts around with the Linux box for over an hour to get standard cpio commands to work. I gave up and tried tar. It didn't work either... It was time for my meeting to begin, so I put off working on that box until a later date. In short, Linux is a good place to start. Please, NEVER think it is an OS to bet your career on. Some companies do use it. In fact I think part of the Firewall for our web page runs on it. However, the big bucks are in Solaris, HPUX, AIX... Make sure you invest your time in the professional UNIXes... Don't think that because you are good at Linux you are a UNIX System Administrator. The big guns in UNIX know how to work on many flavors of UNIX... Ho-Sheng Hsiao
The strength of Linux isn't the product it produces (which last summer
when I work with professional UNIX, I got my nose rubbed in how Linux
isn't professional at all) but rather the process by which it produces
the product. The process is a system of accountability and development
that is complementary to the professional UNIX world.
Professional UNIX world accountability/development: I pay company X
amount to maintain and support UNIX. I don't like it, I pay someone
else. I get what I've paid for --
tanstaafl(1).
Development and innovation cycle, slow but flawless, stable and
reliable. It isn't a good place to find a good idea, but if you want
that hole drilled, here's the place to get a good driller.
Free software accountability/development: I create software X. Someone
sort of like it, make changes, sends it back. I become de facto
maintainer. Software accumulates critical mass, my name gets plastered
all over the place. But I've paid for it, with my time. So did the
other users. I screw up or quit investing time in its maintenance, my
name that's plastered all over the place becomes a mug shot.
Tanstaafl all over again. Development and innovation cycle,
fast but sloppy, dynamically stable and reliable -- if the
communications channels can keep up. It is a great place to find a new
idea... somewhere to find out that you actually need to make that hole
into a square hole.
How are these complementary? For one thing, most of the professional
UNIXes and good ideas came around due to the second system of
accountability. The current batch of professional UNIXes have lineages
dating back to when the source code were copied around. The development
of the high-end stuff today would never have emerged on the pure,
professional model of development. Someone had to be a tinkerer. The
BSD socket interface is an example. Even SysV had to implement their
version of sockets. It is a good idea, and has even influenced the
Evil Monopoly.
It is why today Apache runs on over half of the web servers. Perl is
used all over the place. (Duct tape of the web -- so what's the WD-40?)
It is also why the (open, though patented) MP3 specs are running all
over the place today.
On the other hand, the professional UNIXes would never reach the level
of high-end without the corporations like Sun to back them.
One day, some company will make a high-end, professional Apache (think
IBM WebShare) and high-end, professional Perl, and we'd all forget that
they started as free software. And someone will make a new generation
of Apache and Perl (though we wouldn't call it that) with new ideas,
new solutions to solve new problems people never knew they had.
Each process flows into the other and back again. The products come
and go.
Don't bother with "standard" cpio. It is the GNU version. I was able
to get it to write an archive, but it corrupts it somehow. It can't
even read it out. I suspect the maintainer dropped out of sight some
years ago.
I know I've proven your point, and I was also proving my own too. gnu
cpio the product sucks. It probably works, but I haven't figure it out.
It doesn't come with standard interfaces. The maintainer does not own
it, anymore than the dude or dudet in Fee OSs. When there is enough
need for free cpio, someone will take care of it. Or at least, figure
out how the darned thing works. In my opinion, tar is the "safer" bet.
I kind of figured that when you asked for cpio updates for the web
pages. And yeah, I just might get ticked off enough over gnu cpio to
fix it.
Though the library GNU tools use to parse the command line options is
definitely not standard. The algorithm is unlikely to be the same,
probably faster or smaller. The big reason is to avoid copyright
infringement and being sued up the wazoo by the X/Open group. But
it works <shrug>
It was also why Sun's Java didn't have enough momentum to take it
all... when you want something everyone accepts but cannot make any
changes. Not that was a bad thing -- hey, even MS had to comply to
trademarks. It did slow down its development rate for HP, IBM and the
other large developers. And why they are complaining about it. So Sun,
under pressure, created the Community license.
Tar and cpio were established (quasi-standards). Java had just started
to become a standard. Tar and cpio both were in use for several
decades... a free rewrite isn't interesting. Was its lineage from
free software too? (I don't know). What are interesting would be stuff
like firewalls, web application servers, IPv6 stacks, dynamic emulators,
parallel processing languages (Erlang:) cross-language document
repositories (Casbah) and gateways (WHOIS++, ROADS), XML (all current
XML parsers are based on the first free one), directory services,...
But I am sure Java, if/when it becomes a de facto standard in a few
decades, did started off as nearly-free software.
As for "Fun", UNIX is powerful not because people are only doing fun
things with it but because it is stable and reliable. Always remember
people do not purchase computers or software: They purchase Solutions!
It will be very interesting to see how Java/Jini will resist Squeak.
Haven't heard of it? That's because Disney hasn't even begun to market
it mainstream... only to the developers.
Cool, maybe one of those users of public domain cpio can tell me how
to use it. Hmm... maybe I'll just by something like SCO and copy the
binary over. Oh well.
It is the wisdom of the older that lead the youth. or in-other-words: A wise man learns from his mistakes. A genus learns from the mistakes of others. A fool goes it alone. Sometimes, listen to those that have been there before. Then go with their words on faith.
Oh, there's never been a doubt about it... I will master professional
UNIX.
I understand that no two UNIXes are alike when it comes to hardware.
However, the command options for standard
Well, hey, at least they are all POSIX compliant.
Footnotes
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From Linux to SolarisDennis FoxIn on of my previously articles I wrote about why I went from windows to winning with unix. I found that you didn't need to reinstall or reboot as a standard operating necessity with UNIX. I shifted into linux and got more comfortable with UNIX. I wanted to switch one of my computers to Solaris in order that I might get more familiar with it. While doing so I found a tidbit about Solaris that might help others that are switching from linux and Solaris while maintaining a dual boot partition for windows. When Solaris went to reboot it got stuck at lilo. The reason this happened was because linux left an imprint on the boot record. The way that I got around this was to use the fdisk /mbr command to get rid of the linux imprint and then I sys'ed the dos partition to make it bootable. I then installed Solaris as normal. This will help you in a easy transition to the wonderful world of Solaris. Automating BackupBill Schwanitz On my machine, I decided to beging making rutine backups. One of my dillemas was having to go through the process manually each time I want to do the backup. I figgured, why not just make a script to do this for me!My first goal was to devise a way of getting all filesystems to be backed up wether or not they were online. I also did not want to backup filesystems like swap. Below is an excerpt from the code in my shell script.
awk '{print $1}' < $fsys | sed '/Filesystem/D' | sed 's/dsk/rdsk/g'
What I found when doing the first awk and first sed segment was that I would get all filesystems, as well as the word "Filesystem". I of course do not want to try having ufsdump attempt to grab this. The first of two sed statements will simply look for Filesystem, and simply remove the line. The last sed statement is to change all instances of dsk with rdsk. ufsdump likes this a bit more, I am not sure why yet. In order to have the system do this sequentially, I needed some way of having it increment things, keeping the program as dynamic as possible. Therefore, instead of making the section which grabs the devices be a large variable, I have it in a for loop as shown below. See below for what that looks like.
for disk in `awk '{print $1}' < $fsys | sed '/Filesystem/D' | sed
's/dsk/rdsk/g'`
The rest of the program is rather simple. I also wanted to have some logging to determine if the program messed up, or if there was a generic problem.
echo "--------------------------------------------------------" >> $logger echo "dump starting at:"`date` >> $logger echo "backing up $disk" >> $logger Upon running this program from cron, I noticed my email was rapidly filling up with messages giving output from ufsdump. I had assumed that by doing a standard ">>" redirection that it would redirect all output into the variable $logger. It did not. Upon further reading in "Unix in a Nutshell" I noticed that if you add a 2 to the beginning of the redirection, it would also dump all errors.
ufsdump 0unf /dev/rmt/0mn $disk 2>> $logger echo "backup of $disk ends at:" `date` >> $logger If anyone wants to use this program, they will most likely be required to change some of the options. The above section must reside within the for loop, otherwise the program will not work. You will see something similiar to the following in the log sections.
-------------------------------------------------------- dump starting at: It will then repeat over and over again until it gets all the disks taken care of. On my machine, added a cron job to run the pogram each week. I will probably not bother after a while and just run the program manually because my data will not change much. I plan to have this program do backups of entire netwoks at some point. I am just not sure when I will get to having it do this. For the sake of the article, here is the code in its orriginal context. I have used the /usr/bin/sh (or /bin/sh, same thing) so you should not have a problem running this on any machine.
#!/usr/bin/sh
# Programmer: Bill Schwanitz
# Date: 3-28-1999
# Copyrighted Material
mt erase
# quick recovery.
# ok, let's make our variables
df -ka -F ufs > /tmp/fsys
fsys=/tmp/fsys
logger=/var/log/backup.log
for disk in `awk '{print $1}' < $fsys | sed '/Filesystem/D' | sed
's/dsk/rdsk/g'`
do
echo "--------------------------------------------------------"
>> $logger
echo "dump starting at:"`date` >> $logger
echo "backing up $disk" >> $logger
ufsdump 0unf /dev/rmt/0mn $disk 2>> $logger
echo "backup of $disk ends at:" `date` >> $logger
done
mt rewind
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