The Wall Street Journal had an article today Ten Things your IT Department Won’t Tell You
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[REPEAT AFTER ME: "Hugh got to hang out with Evelyn Rodriguez and I didn't. I am insanely jealous etc etc etc."]
Ok, you got me...
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Now, I need your help.
Does anyone have copies of the other 3(Bart, Lisa, Homer) that they do
not plan to keep ? If so, I beg of you to send them to me. I would
gladly reimburse for the price of the mag and mailing costs
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Looking up...from my z-list position on the blog food chain ... I realized that I am one of the last bloggers to get tagged with this meme. (See below) This means two things as far as my participation goes... 1.) I am ecstatic to have actually been tagged. And 2.) all of the people who I have a clue about in the blogosphere were tagged with this meme weeks ago. So there is no one that I can tag...
This meme has hit the bottom of the blogosphere.
The meme stops here.
My good friend Steven Hudson at Winextra 'tagged' me with this meme...
Initially I was a bit uneasy - then I started looking in the dark corners of my sordid life ... turns out I remembered stuff that even I didn't know. :) Well, most of it is true...
Eight things you might not know about me...
July 27th, 2007 (Last Friday Of July)
8th Annual
System Administrator Appreciation Day
If you can read this, thank your sysadmin
Advice to employees on the proper use of the System Administrator's valuable time
(In following examples, we will substitute the name "Ted" as the System Administrator)
Here are a few that I 'never' get... :)
The original data had been misplaced, and when the huge magnetic tapes
that stored the data were found, they were “in a format so old that the
programmers who knew it had died.”
The tragic sense that would have accompanied the loss of this knowledge is echoed in accounts of the destruction of the Library at Alexandria, and probably why book-burnings are seen as a sure sign that a society is unhealthy
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Usually I slip, stumble and twist in your calculated cultivated vines.
Today I have been slapped straight and slid onto a sizzling griddle to be served up pink in the middle rare
Life is soooooo good
"...we get baptized in Walden pond amongst a searing mob
because the cleansing blood of Jesus couldn't do a Thoreau job..."
When I worked with Alcoholics and Substance Abusers (Hi, my name is Bill...) I would sometimes turn to the 'parable' of the man with a shovel who began to dig a hole...
As anyone who has ever operated a shovel can tell you it is hard work. And unless there is a treasure to be found the act of shoveling is just plain hard work. Often it is thankless work. The prevailing belief is that anyone can do it so what is so great about digging a hole. All that leads me to this, the shovel operator quickly begins to positively reinforce his or her own work.
In very real sense we begin to 'own' the hole. We take great pride in the straight vertical walls. We gain a sense of accomplishment as the depth of the hole increases. Once we have committed a significant amount of time to the digging process we don't feel that we can give up 'all that hard work'. So we continue to dig...and dig...and then a stunning realization befalls us.
We have succeeded in digging a hole so deep that we can't get out. Yet because we have such a vested interest in the hole we cannot stop digging. The elation and euphoria of achievement slowly becomes replaced with frustration. Literally the walls begin to close in upon us. Faint light shows down on us from a small opening high above. Only occasionally do we get to see the sun. Depression soon follows.
But because it is the only thing we know, the only thing that has given us meaning and value, we continue to dig.
In many respects I have dug a Linux hole. And while doing so I have thrown dirt in many different directions. I attempted to heap a large pile on Microsoft. I believed that the Redmond Behemoth was a monopolistic blood sucker intent on depriving me of my right to self determination. I have even gone so far as to suggest that Microsoft decided what was best right for me.
I was so busy admiring the depth and verticality of my hole that I missed the fact that I was in so deep that I couldn't climb out. Then someone started to throw dirt down on top of me. Dirt from the heaping pile I had tried to bury Microsoft under.
Ok, now watch carefully because this is important...
Being tasked with the responsibility of maintaining and developing Access2003 databases in conjunction with a IIS server offering .ASP pages that contained ActiveX components and VisualBasic code segments means that I now need all the Microsoft assistance I can get.
The wonderful irony of my 'hole' situation is the dirt that is being thrown down on me feels initially like the insult that I originally threw so freely at Microsoft. It is in fact just what I need. I will stop digging. I will allow my hole to be filled back in and I will eventually be able to climb out. True, I may come up covered with dirt but I will emerge into a day full of sunshine.
Hopefully I can leave my pride at the bottom of the hole.
My cardiologist rolls over in his BMW everytime he hears me say it but ...
Breakfast is the luxury meal of the weekend. Fried potatoes, half a rasher of bacon, 2 eggs over easy and ... toast. Hot buttered crunchy toast.
Everything else was happily sizzling away when I went to the 'fridge to secure a couple of slices for toast. After rummaging about for a couple of seconds I pulled the limp bread bag from the back of the lower shelf. There, in the inner cellophane (?) wrapper, was the objects of my desire, the precursor to ... toast.
Slithering my hand forearm deep into the bag I latched on to my objective. Wriggling, twisting and turning I withdrew the treasure. Then my eyes lit up! I not only had in hand the prize but... the best of the best. Not one but 2 crusts, heels if you will. Contrary to the expressed tastes of most everyone I know I covet the crusts. More flavor, more texture, more goodness. And when toasted, more substance than those flat pallets of dried bread. I told you I am a heel and crust-y sorta guy. :)
I ran Lil'BBS, a Wildcat Bulletin Board, for a number of years. That was in 1988 or so and continued until 1992-ish. In that day and age there were the really "big boys" (multi-line boards) or the mega-services of the age (CompuServe). Mostly it was prohibitive long-distance calls or monthly service changes that separated the digerati from the small town folks like me and mine. So I put up a one-line BBS - I was a big fish in a small town pond.
Then along came that "Internet" thing. Where people and companies had previously established their presence at the end of a phone line they now had to build these cumbersome "website" things. So the fearless started in with fancy fonts and graphics and everything - no more ASCII pictures or console text for them. Others simply opened a telnet port on their BBS system and didn't change a thing. No need to fix what ain't broken.
In the heady days that followed the vast and uncharted wilderness of the Internet would be likened to America's Wild West - vast and uncharted and lawless. Soon there would be thousands of sites - offering content about hundreds of things...oh yes, and sex. Then the following week there would be hundreds of thousands of sites offering content on thousands of topics...and sex. Earlier this morning there were millions of sites offering everything all the time everywhere.
Which is my exact point: now there is only one Internet. Sure, it is everything all the time everywhere but it has become one entity.
Let me offer a slightly different perspective of the same phenomena. In the course of about 20 minutes I can read my e-mail, scan my gReader feeds, double check my social sites and I am done. Then I sit in front of my computer and think that there should be more to this Internet experience. Where once I was enamored with the vast complexity of the net I am now sated by the handful of "feeds" that have distinguished themselves as important in my world (net) view.
It should be noted that my shrinking experience is not a case of 'turn-it-on, read for a bit and then turn-it-off. Rather the Internet is an integral part of my computing environment. I no longer differentiate between my computer and the Internet. To that end I find myself doing less real computing with my personal computer. All this brings me to what I think is a logical conclusion. I don't really need all of this Ghz horse power or the HD resolution to do my regularly scheduled digital interfacing. I could just as easily get by with a device specifically designed for the incredible shrinking Internet.
The preceding ramblings have been brought to you with the Palm Foleo in mind. Now before you good folks go all ballistic because I have lead you down the commercial prim rose path please note that I am not touting Palm. Rather I am acknowledging that to be most effective the tool 'must fit the hand'. If the tool doesn't fit the hand - don't pick it up.
Anthony Bourdain kicks a$$ and takes names. I thought that the Food Channel was going down the tubes when the show No Reservations left. Compared with the pablum that is usually served by the foodie network I thought Tony Bourdain was GREAT. I was televideologically devastated when he abandon the ship and left it to only us rats.
Ah but my faith in humanity was resurrected... The Travel Channel had the good sense to recognize that Bourdain's travels to eat in exotic places were twice as interesting as just the eating as displayed on the Fud Channel.
Enter of all groups... Red Hat - those wacky Linux folks... who in an attempt to show just how well rounded they are... publish a 'Summer Reading List'. Now sure there are some 'nerd' titles... Infotopia and Dreaming in Code: Two Dozen Programmers, Three Years, 4,732 Bugs, and One Quest for Transcendent Software... But I was very pleasantly surprised to see the first book listed as The Nasty Bits by none other than Anthony Bourdain. Oh yeah!
Bonus: Anthony Bourdain sometimes slithers into the blog of his alleged friend Michael Ruhlman and post rants and raves.
In my world 'The Saint' is not the fictional character recently portrayed by Val Kilmer and earlier by Roger Moore. 'The Saint' is my wife of nearly 25 years. To have put up with me for nearly a quarter century is proof in and of itself that she has saintly qualities. So when The Saint speaks I pretend to ignore her...while hanging on her every word...
She was listening to Tom Waits'* (Looking for the) Heart of Saturday Night featured on NPR's Barren River Breakdown. Her observation was that she never hears Waits on the radio. Which in turn prompted me to observe that it is difficult to classify Waits' music. What genre does it fit into?
The Saint replied, "Progressive Urban Folk".
I liked the sound of it. Spoke clearly to me of his musical experimentation style (Progressive). His gritty inner-city themes and flavors (Urban). As well as his just plain down to earth, street level raw emotion (Folk). So you can imagine how surprised I was to see him labeled; Rock/Pop.
Any hoooo, I will be sticking with The Saint - seein' as how she's stuck with me all these years. :)
If you Google 'lenova' you are asked if you meant 'lenovo' which is a courtesy extended by the great and munificent Goz. Which would be alright but the Goz then goes on to list a number of entries for 'lenova'. Which prompts me to ask if there is a mass misspelling of the name of the company? Or is it a gender thing; masculine lenovO or feminine lenovA?
Anyone have any insights on this?
I have a growing feeling. A feeling that I cannot deny. It is a sense that Linux is suffering. It is suffering from 'Joe-Average-Everyday-Desktop-itis'. And I would like it to stop. So I am pleading with you gentle reader - Don't even consider Linux.
When I came innocent to the Linux fold in 1996 I wanted a better Operating System. I wanted to be unshackled from the bonds of corporate megalomaniacs who insisted that they knew what was good best for me. I wanted stability, security, and a clean fast PC. I wanted to be captain of my own ship, steering my own computing destiny.
By sheer dumb luck I stumbled upon Slackware. I would like to tell you that it was a well researched intelligent decision. I would like to tell you that I made an informed choice. I would like to tell you that I listened to the voice of popular opinion. Nope, I just bought the book and CD-ROM that caught my eye. A book that at the time I could afford.
So when I read the following article from Think Thick it struck a resonate chord with me. Among other things it speaks to the work that a user must do to make the most of Linux. I believe this work is exactly what set Linux apart from the other OSs. In addition I believe that this prerequisite work is what is missing from the 'Joe-Average-Everyday-Desktop-itis' distros that tout themselves as the next great Linux.
Then I came across this excellent article from tuxmachines.org entitled Slackware 12: The anti-'buntu. From the title alone I knew the author had hit the nail on the head. Then I had this great idea. I would respond to the Think Thick '10 Things' article (in RED) with excerpts from the 'anti-'buntu' article (in GREEN). So here goes... (NOTE: You should read each article independently too.)
Protection for Linux usually means a firewall, either installed in your computer, or in a router/hardware firewall. This, of course, implies a little bit more work for the user.10. Linux assumes that you are an intelligent person.
