Thursday June 12, 2003 - [ 09:12 AM GMT ]    Topic - GNU/Linux <a href=newsforge.com>NewsForge

• By Robin 'Roblimo' Miller - Miami's Liberty City is one of the worst neighborhoods in a city famous for bad neighborhoods. The Liberty City Learning Center is a privately-run effort to help neighborhood children break the cycle of ignorance that keeps them there. And now, thanks to volunteers from two Florida Linux user groups and hardware donations from local businesses, Liberty City Learning Center can add computer and Internet training to its curriculum.

A one-day install

The install was scheduled for Saturday, June 7. All wiring was supposed to be in place before then, part of a project two local men did to help them earn hands-on experience they needed to get their A+ certifications.

The assortment of old donated PCs was neatly stacked, with a bag of mice and several shelves full of keyboards. Monitors were there, tested, in place on the wall-mounted shelves installed to hold the computers. The one heavy-duty piece of hardware, a surplus dual-CPU server donated by Miami's Channel 4 , was tested and ready to go.

Several people from the brand-new Miami LUG (MiaLUG), aided by three professional sysadmins from the Southwest Florida LUG, based a two-hour drive away in Fort Myers , expected to install LTSP software to make the donated PCs into network-booted thin clients, install necessary application software on the server, make sure everything ran decently, then go out to supper.

Naturally, things didn't go quite as planned....

10:50 a.m. - The Ft. Myers contingent finally arrives. They were supposed to show up at 10, but first they stopped at the home of Gonzalo Porcel Quero , the MiaLUG person who organized the effort after his girlfriend, Martha Arrazola, introduced him to Liberty City Learning Center director Sam Mason.

Martha had met Sam through her work with the Partnership for the Study and Prevention of Violence ; Liberty City is one of Miami's most violent areas, and the Partnership works with the Learning Center because it believes giving local children a chance at a decent education helps prevent violence. The Linux computer lab/Internet idea for the Center was heavily Martha's. Sam had gotten hold of a few old computers and donated educational programs, and found them fine motivators for the many latchkey kids he mentors, but he couldn't afford to buy more computers.

And when Sam finally did get a whole stack of donated computers with help from the Channel 4 Neighbors4Neighbors program, he ran into licensing problems with Microsoft and other proprietary software vendors. "We didn't have money to pay them," Sam says. So those programs couldn't be used. Liberty City residents have an average income of less than $8,000 per year -- less than many Third World countries -- but they are in the U.S., where the BSA and similar groups run rampant (and can bring in Federal marshals to enforce their financial demands), so proprietary software was a no-go here from the beginning.

Neither Gonzalo nor the other LUG volunteers asked for money. They brought dozens of CDs full of software licensed under the GPL and other Open Source licenses, and set to work installing it.

11 a.m. - Chris Williams, a Ft. Myers programmer and sysadmin, huddles with Gonzalo. They decide to replace the existing Red Hat installation on the server with Mandrake 9.1 because of its ease of administration, plus the fact that Gonzalo is used to Mandrake, and he's the one who will be responsible for ongoing maintenance of the Center's computers.

"Of course, we can always SSH in and help him if he has a problem," Chris points out. But still, having a familiar (and easy to use) administration interface is good, and Mandrake's user management is extraordinarily simple. The Center expects to constantly add, delete, and change user accounts, so Mandrake it is. The server OS install begins.

Meanwhile, in the other large classroom in the Center's building (there are two main rooms, an office, restrooms, a little storage, and that's about it), Ft. Myers-ites Frank Sfalanga and Bert Rapp, along with Martha Arrazola, start checking the client machines.

Hmmm, some seem to be missing hard drives. This is not a big deal, since they're going to be thin clients with all programs and user data living on the server; it just means they're going to need boot floppies to get going. Looks like a job for ROM-o-matic !

11:30 a.m. - Mandrake 9.1 up and running on the server. Testing the first connection to the first client. It doesn't work. Uh-oh.

Chris does some head and beard-scratching. Hmmm -- they had one going, then two, now none of them work.

Thinking, diagnosing, wondering now dominate the rooms.

12 noon - More MiaLUG people arrive, specifically Martin Gaido and Oscar Ferrando. A few minutes later MiaLUG member Claudia Grigorescu shows up with one of the day's most important necessities: Pizza! Soda, too.

2 p.m. - Oscar is still new to Linux, but he makes his living installing commercial network, phone, and TV cable. He has power tools with him, and sets to work organizing the badly done cable the A+ hopefuls had put in. He discovers, along with Bert and Frank, a lot of bad cable, plus a hidden network hub up in the ceiling. They string a cable along the floor from the server to the hub in the computer room that connects to all the clients, bypassing the hub and wiring in the ceiling, and the connection problems disappear.

You can have all the Linux expertise you want, but sometimes it takes a guy with drywall dust on his hands and power tools in his case to get things going.

Now that the problem is traced to bad cabling (and possibly a bad hub; the thing in the ceiling looks pretty old and ratty), the trick is to figure out which cables are bad and to repair or replace them.

This leads to a major Oops! "I knew I should have brought some CAT-5 cable with me," Frank says. "I have a whole roll at home."

Nobody has any cable tips (CAT-5 connectors) either. So after some consultation in English and Spanish, Claudia and Oscar run up to TigerDirect , which is about a half-hour drive from the Center, to get some.

Meanwhile, clients get set up, their MAC addresses get registered with the server, and applications get installed. One PC is left with (legally licensed) Windows, and Martha installs all of the (legal) Windows kidware she finds around on it. She also asks Chris to download and burn a copy of OpenOffice for Windows for that PC, since Microsoft Office is certainly not in the Liberty City Learning Center's budget.

About the Liberty City Learning Center

Miami's Liberty City Learning Center is not a federally-funded or state-supported venture. It was started seven years ago by Sam Mason, personally, out of his pocket. We need to back up a little here to get the whole story, and it's worth getting.

Sam moved to Miami from New York City 15 years ago after retiring from a city job in labor negotiations. "My retirement lasted about two weeks," he says. "I had to have something to do."

Sam went to work for an Urban League offshoot working to build businesses in and generally bring prosperity to some of Miami's worst neighborhoods, among them Liberty City. Along the way ("About eight years ago," Sam says) he saw literacy, specifically the lack thereof, as the biggest single problem facing Miami's black population, and no one was doing anything about it in any effective sense.

"We have five high schools that feed from this neighborhood, and all of them get 'F' grades," Sam says. "Imagine allowing that anywhere else. It would never happen. Someone would do something."

In Liberty City, the only real "someone" turned out to be Sam, and the "something" was using his own savings, plus money from his brothers and sisters, to purchase a nearly worthless former insurance company office at a state auction seven years ago. He opened the Liberty City Learning Center in it, with home-done sprucing up, home-made (but neatly lettered) exterior signs, and scavenged desks and chairs, all without any external funding or support from any government agency.

The original plan was to have schools send "at risk" children, but that never happened, Sam says, "because the school people thought we were after their jobs." So he turned to the community, putting the word out that he and perhaps a few volunteers were willing to help tutor neighborhood kids after school if they were having trouble with reading and math.

And the children come. Sam says the majority of them are brought by grandparents, not parents, a factor he attributes to family breakdowns in the black community. But causes of illiteracy aren't as important here as getting up and teaching kids to read. Sam says, "Reading is the key. You can't learn math unless you can read. These kids do badly in school because they can't read. We teach them, and to teach them we have to motivate them."

That's where the computers and Internet connection come in: Sam noticed that kids like to play with computers. But schools in Liberty City have few computers if any, and local residents certainly can't afford them, let alone afford ISP fees and proprietary software. So the idea of the Liberty City Computer Learning Center morphing at least partly into a neighborhood computer training center came about. Sam learned the hard way that software from major proprietary vendors, even with educational discounts, was priced for formally funded institutions, not ad-hoc volunteer efforts like his.

And so, today, a group of volunteers is setting up computers at the Center with free software and donated hardware.

4 p.m. - The run to and from TigerDirect took longer than expected. "I don't believe I got lost that many times," says Claudia. But here we are, finally, with enough CAT-5 cable and connectors to get things going. Wiring gets strung, Claudia and Martha run down to the little corner store a block away to get more soda, computers get tested, and so does the hub found in the ceiling, which doesn't seem to be working right.

There's another hub that seems to work, and a single cable between it and the server makes things work. Now it's a matter of putting together boot disks and setting up the variety of old hardware.

Some of the donated PCs have half duplex NICs that are taking up a lot of network bandwidth and slowing down the clients in which they are installed. A few others have video cards that don't get along with LTSP and give out fuzzy or distorted images. Or is it the monitors? Test, test, test, swap, swap, swap.

This is the first installation of this type for most of the participants. Jim, a new MiaLUG almost-member ("I've only been to a few meetings"), is providing plenty of lift-and-carry action, working with Oscar even though Jim's Spanish is nearly nonexistent, and Oscar only speaks a small bit of English and has trouble understandinging Jim's Kentucky-flavored accent.

Lots of smiles and lots of pointing at things seem to help. Communication is achieved, a bit at a time, not only between the computers, but between the people working on them.

The computers are a mixed bunch, and so are the people. One is from Colombia, two from Argentina, one from Spain, one from Venezuela, one from New Jersey, another from New York, one from Massachusetts -- and Jim from Kentucky, of course.

Sam watches them work, and shakes his head. "This is the most wonderful thing I've ever seen here," he says. "All these people, from all over, doing all this work... donating their time and talents."

Sam is aware that today is just the beginning; that he will need to learn to use Linux himself -- which won't be hard since he's a young man of 77, not some oldster set in his ways -- and pass his knowledge on to others, while other volunteers -- probably from the University of Miami and Florida International University -- come in and work with neighborhood children and adults, and pass on their computer and Internet knowledge. And hopefully the neighborhood people will learn enough to keep the knowledge chain going, and going, and going.

6:30 p.m. - Winding down a little. Some people leave. The heavy lifting is done. Chris has been trying to find an LTSP driver for the NICs in a whole stack of old 166MHz donated Compaqs -- he knows there's one out there -- but has not succeeded so far.

Most necessary applications are on the server now, and Chris is making sure users have the necessary permissions to run them -- an important step that can't be forgotten in a client/server environment like this one.

Now it's just test machines, look for those drivers, and make sure everything is working right -- and everything is, except for those pesky Compaq drivers and a couple of recalcitrant video drivers in some way-old Dells.

7:30 p.m. - Inside, just final checks. Outside, Sam is walking around, smelling the lovely smoke from the Bar-B-Que grill across the street. A girl, perhaps 12 or 13, comes up to him shyly. "Mr. Sam, do you remember me?" she asks. "You helped me when I was having trouble reading back in third grade. I just wanted to let you know I'm doing fine now. I read a lot."

Sam talks with her in the twilight, softly, and smiles. He is not talking down to her as an adult talks to a child (except for the fact that he is well over six feet tall and she's in the sub-five-foot range), but treats her as an intelligent human whose words are worth hearing.

A few minutes later, Sam says, "That's the secret with these children. Talk to them like you expect them to be smart, not as if you expect them to fail and fall behind all the time. They get enough of that everywhere else."

8:30 p.m. - Chris is doing a last checkout, making sure Gonzalo knows how to create and delete users while Frank and Bert make sure the 10 client workstations they've set up today are fully functional, which they are.

The obsolete Compaq NIC driver hunt has failed. Since these are small machines, and counter space in the informal computer lab is at a premium, Gonzalo decides it may be better to hunt up cheap NIC cards and install them in the Compaqs, which otherwise make fine little thin clients.

But today is done. And nine volunteers, working off-and-on for about nine hours, have left behind a fully functional neigborhood computer lab without spending a dime on software or using a single piece of new hardware.

9 p.m. - The Ft. Myers group heads out. "The cable problems really slowed us down," Frank says. "We should have been prepared for something like that."

"This is the first time we've done an LTSP install where we didn't do our own cabling," Chris says. "That's the problem. We trusted someone else. A+ trainees... tells you something..."

"Well, next time we'll know," Bert says. "But right now, let's find someplace to eat. We're all hungry, right?"

Photo Gallery (courtesy of Southwest Florida GNU/Linux Users Group )

  ( Post a new comment ) If anyone else in South FL needs help with LTSP...       by cwitc on 2003.06.12 8:15 (#55711) User #179730 Info | www.cwitc.com

you may contact us through SWFGLUG.org or you can contact me directly at www.cwitc.com and we'll assemble the task force. We're especially interested in helping schools and learning centers because the children are the future. Due to the fact that LTSP has a lower total cost of ownership, centralized administration, and minimal hardware requirements for the workstations, it allows more children to have access to advanced technology yet avoids the proprietary lock-in and licensing costs of commercial software. It's all about community!Linux - because a PC is a terrible thing to waste. [ Reply to This | Parent ]

ME interested by Anonymous Reader 2003.06.12 21:58

Re:ME interested by Anonymous Reader 2003.06.13 4:27

Kudos!       by HarryLeBlanc on 2003.06.12 11:15 (#55734) User #4934 Info

It's so nice to read a story about people doing something to make a positive change. Those LUGgers volunteering a day of their time will make a huge difference. Imagine if every LUG in the country took it on to do a similar setup in some deserving local community center. What a difference we could make! [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Kudos! by Anonymous Reader 2003.06.12 18:07

Great Article       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.12 15:15 (#55812)

Wonderful Article!! It was "Liberty City" in the title that caught me. I'm from the Miami-Ft Lauderdale metro area, in suburbia to be exact. Nice to see Free/Open/Libre software being used in a capacity beyond hobby exploits or even reducing corporate expenditures. [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Looks like a good thing to remember here       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.12 19:05 (#55893)

Plan Ahead make a list and make sure everyone knows what is needed basicly. Ie Cat 5 when networking is a good thing to thow in the car if you have it even if you dont use it. [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Looks like a good thing to remember here by concord 2003.06.13 11:02

Lies!       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.12 19:18 (#55896)

We all know that these people REALLY spent the whole day writing Windows viruses and smoking dope. Stop lying to us, you bastards! [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Lies! by Anonymous Reader 2003.06.12 21:22

Re:Lies! by Anonymous Reader 2003.06.12 21:39

Re:Lies! by Anonymous Reader 2003.06.12 22:11

Important things       by WilliamRoddy on 2003.06.12 23:43 (#55935) User #173511 Info

When, amidst all the shouting about lawsuits and ownership rights and intellectual property, one is threateded with grief about choice, I like to remember such stories as the one Mr. Miller has just written, and say to myself, "I made a good choice in switching to Open Source." A choice for the better. Against such kindnesses the Gates Empire has few defenses. Bill [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Good work       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.13 7:27 (#55977)

Good work guys. It's wonderful to see time and effort going to making a difference. My only question is why was another south florida LUG (Flux) not invited to help - we have many members who would have been more than happy to donate time, effort and hardware to this cause as well. [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Re:Good work by concord 2003.06.13 10:58

Thanks for posting this story       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.13 10:15 (#55998)

Thanks for posting this story. I really appreciate the narrative format and background information. I work with a group of volunteers in Chicago call NPOTechs npotechs.org that does work along similar lines. You all are inspiring! [ Reply to This | Parent ]

MIALUG       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.13 14:26 (#56037)

Guys: I am one of the members of Mialug.org also, I want to tell thanks to everybody specially to the people of SWFLUG for their help and support. For those who are members of other LUGs in south florida, we can create any kind of general meeting and in the next project we can go all together. For more information about MIALUG visit our website at: www.mialug.org or send us an email. Regards ;) [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Familiar feeling       by johngnubie on 2003.06.13 16:29 (#56054) User #179811 Info

FREE GEEK MICHIANA (freegeekmichiana.org) a volunteer group born out of mlug.org and nwilug.org have built two ltsp based computer labs. We use K12ltsp V2.1.2, nice mix of stability and edutainment. They have certainly been learning experiences. We are hoping to add more labs soon, we are also developing educational programs, ala our name sake in Portland: freegeek.org. Keep up the good work! [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Rob thanks for this story       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.13 19:18 (#56066)

It was awesome to read this and remember what a great tool computers are for helping people. Joe Moraca Sarasota, FL [ Reply to This | Parent ]

Squeakland.       by Anonymous Reader on 2003.06.16 23:14 (#56499)

Here's my small bit. Kids like to experiment. Try new things. They might want to give Squeak [squeakland.org] a try. As you can see kids are smarter than we give them credit for.

Reuters, 06.12.03, 9:38 AM ET NEW YORK, June 12 (Reuters) - NYMEX crude futures were expected to move lower on Thursday, testing technical support and consolidating as traders take profits after pushing well above $32 on Wednesday. "We were due for a corrective pull back," said a New York trader. "There's still concern over inventories." NYMEX July crude was called to open 20 cents to 30 cents lower after ending ACCESS trade down 29 cents at $32.07 a barrel, trading $32.03 to $32.27. Technical analysts on Thursday were expecting support for NYMEX July crude at $31.46, with resistance slated at $32.80. In London at 9:33 a.m. EDT (13:33 GMT), the International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) July crude contract traded 29 cents lower at $28.10 a barrel. Wednesday's rally was fueled by U.S. government data showing crude stocks down last week by 4.6 million barrels to 284.4 million barrels, over 12 percent below last year. Analysts had expected a inventories to be up slightly. "We had a nice run up yesterday so we will probably see some testing of technicals," said a NYMEX floor trader. The trader added that a bounce higher was still a possibility, with $34.75 a target for crude futures and another penny higher for gasoline. The U.S. inventory data showing lower crude stocks came after OPEC announced it would put off fresh supply cuts at a ministerial policy-setting meeting on Wednesday. Fears that ramped up Iraqi output or anemic demand going forward could pressure prices caused the cartel to call for another meeting on July 31. Traders said this potential for a cut would lend some support to the market. Venezuela has said OPEC would cut at its July meeting if Iraqi output returned to a million barrels a day. The price of OPEC's basket of seven crudes rose to $27.86 a barrel on Wednesday from Tuesday's $27.51, the OPEC news agency said on Thursday, approaching the top of the cartel's target range of $22-$28. Iraq awarded its first post-war oil tender on Thursday to six companies for 10 million barrels held in storage but the prospect for future exports stayed uncertain with production was hampered by looting, sabotage and securities concerns. NYMEX July gasoline was called to open 0.75 cent to 1.00 cent lower after ending ACCESS trade down 1.11 cents at 92.30 cents a gallon. Nearby support is expected by chart watchers at 91.20 cents. Resistance is expected at 93.80 cents. NYMEX July heating oil futures were called to open 0.50 cent to 0.60 cent lower after ending ACCESS trade down 0.60 cent at 78.50 cents a gallon. Support is expected at 75.12 cents, with resistance due at 80.44 cents.

June 12, 2003: 6:38 PM EDT By Justin Lahart, CNN/Money Senior Writer

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Quick, which widely-watched asset has risen most over the past month?

Nope, it's not stocks and it ain't bonds. Not gold or pork bellies, for that matter. No, it's oil, which has risen 18.3 percent and now trades for $32.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The black stuff has traded higher during only three periods over the past 15 years -- before the recent war in Iraq, in the mini-energy crisis that hit the country in late 2000 and during the lead up to the first Gulf War.

This isn't the way it's supposed to go. As it became clear that the war in Iraq was not going to go as badly as some traders feared, and that Saddam Hussein lacked the will or, more likely, the ability to scorch his country's oil fields, the market was enthusiastic that oil prices would come scuttling down.

And for a while they did -- but then they bounced back up as it became clear that, thanks to continued looting and 12 years of neglect, Iraq's oil fields would not come on line as quickly as U.S. officials had led the market to believe. Meanwhile, inventory levels remain low after being depleted by the harsh winter, unrest in Venezuela and Nigeria and the conservative stance many buyers took during the lead-up to the Gulf War on the worry that the government might release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Officials are promising that more Iraqi oil will be flowing soon -- at present the country is pumping about 700,000 barrels a day, but they say output could come to a daily 1.5 million barrels by the end of the month. But given the too-optimistic forecasts of the past, said Fimat USA energy analyst Mike Fitzpatrick, the industry is skeptical.

For the economy, the way oil prices keep sticking higher is not a good thing. Higher energy prices act as a tax on both consumers and businesses, drawing money away that might be spent elsewhere. With the summer driving season upon us and gasoline going, on average, for $1.50 a gallon, much of the money from the big tax cut Washington just passed may go straight to the gas tank. The rule of thumb, according to Deutsche Bank chief U.S. economist Carey Leahey, is that each dollar rise in oil cuts $5 billion out of consumer spending.

The only posititve you can possibly draw from the higher oil prices, said Leahey, is that they may reflect better demand, suggesting a better economy. But this is just a faint ray in an otherwise gloomy story.

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Thursday, June 12, 2003 By: Elio Cequea

Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 19:17:28 -0500 From: Elio Cequea Feico57@aol.com To: Editor@VHeadline.com Subject: Ex President Rafael Caldera - Revolutions and History

Dear Editor: Ex President Rafael Caldera talks about The Revolutions and History. But, among other things, he forgot to mention WHY a revolution occurs.

That IS what is important when talking about revolutions. As he indicated, most of the changes caused by them are temporal and things sometimes even return to the way they were before the revolution.

Rafael Caldera's attempt to underestimate some of the changes he mentioned in his writing is nothing but an unsuccessful shot at the significance of what is going on in Venezuela.

All revolutions are attached to a particular historical precedent and to a particular historical moment ... they're not attached to the changes that come after. Those changes are unpredictable. That is why they are called revolutions, and ours is no different.

When implicitly comparing the 1998 Venezuelan Revolution to the French and Russian Revolutions, Caldera failed to mention important similarities. All of these three revolutions were promoted and carried out by the lower social classes. All three of them were the consequence of great social-economic deterioration. The upper classes had more and more and the lower classes less and less. Things were that way until they reach the boiling point: Revolution!

Doctor Caldera did not mention any relevant differences either. Contrary to the medieval France, nobody in Venezuela from the upper classes lost his/her head in the guillotine. And, contrary to the Russia of the Czars, royal families were not massacred. All of these thanks to democracy!

We had the first Non-Violent Democratic Revolution in history!

The Venezuelan Revolution had its reasons, as well as its historical moment, similar to other revolutions. Its consequences and changes are still developing. The revolution itself is over. Thanks God it did not happened like in France or in Russia. Most of us for sure could have lost one or two family members.

Contrary to Rafael Caldera's opinion, people do change as well as history ... many things in our country will go back to the way they were before 1998. However, the same way France and Russia NEVER went back to be a monarchy, Venezuela will NEVER AGAIN go back to the political monarchy he (Caldera) helped to create.

Elio Cequea Feico57@aol.com

By Aaron L. Task Senior Writer 06/12/2003 07:19 AM EDT

Skeptics seemingly are worried about just about everything these days, be it a falling dollar, overly accommodative monetary policy, equity valuations, deficits, deflation and/or bubbles in housing and Treasuries.

Almost invariably, however, it's the things people don't worry about that gets them, which brings us to crude prices.

On Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan highlighted the risks of higher natural gas prices. Conversely, scant few seem terribly concerned about oil prices, Greenspan included. But those believing robust economic growth is imminent, and thus higher stock prices are justified, have reason to be at least a little concerned.

Crude futures did retreat from their prewar highs near $40 per barrel, but have risen steadily since late April and are up 13% in the past month. On Wednesday, crude futures rose another 2% to $32.36 per barrel, the highest close since March 17, after OPEC decided to leave production quotas unchanged at its meeting in Doha, Qatar.

Anticipation of OPEC keeping the status quo was but one factor pushing up oil prices recently, according to Mark Baxter, director of Southern Methodist University's Cox Maguire Energy Institute. Others include struggles getting Iraqi production back on line, concerns about possible conflict with Iran, supply glitches from Venezuela and Nigeria, and concerns about terror attacks on oil facilities.

"All that is keeping people nervous and is going to keep us around the $28-to-$35 [per barrel] range for the next six months," Baxter said.

Oil at those levels is not factored into the bullish forecast of equity strategists. "We still anticipate upside surprises because of a weaker dollar, lower energy prices and fiscal stimulus," Thomas McManus, equity portfolio strategist at Banc of America Securities, wrote on May 19 when he implored clients to "buy the dips." On Wednesday, McManus conceded crude has "moved up so much it's not as much of a positive," and that natural gas prices are "potentially a fly in the ointment."