Chocolate Bubblegum

Citrix Receiver on 64-bit Arch Linux

2011-11-22T10:51:00.000-06:00

I recently made the switch from Ubuntu to Arch Linux (with E17) on my workstation at work, and I am now in the process of getting all my apps setup and working again. Pretty high up on that list was the Citrix receiver. Work is a largely Windows based setup, with Exchange for e-mail. I actually prefer a few things about the newer versions of Outlook, when compared with most of the Linux clients I have tried in the past.
This means my choices boil down to:

Get Outlook running under Wine (yeah, that'll work out real well)
Run Outlook in a Windows VM (I have this setup, but prefer not to run the VM at all times, it is a real memory hog)
Run a separate computer with Windows on it, just for Outlook (not going to happen)
Get the Citrix receiver working, and use the Citrix version of Outlook that we make available

I chose #4. The problem here is not the linux part, install packages exist for the receiver on linux. The problem is the 64-bit part. Out Citrix server only hands out a 32-bit installer. I went looking, and while Citrix has started offering 64-bit installers now, they only come in .deb or .rpm. There isn't a .tar.gz package like there is for 32-bit. Arch linux, of course, does not use .deb or .rpm packages.

I had the receiver installed on Ubuntu, and it worked mostly. It worked fine, but I could not run the manager app to change the settings, which meant that I could never map my local hard drive to show up as a drive in the software run on Citrix. For e-mail, this meant I could not save or send attachments, unless I used a USB stick for them, because the default settings would auto-mount USB devices.

I found these instructions on the Arch wiki, and followed the manual install instructions. Probably because I had already downloaded the package from Citrix, and sunk some time into getting the installer to run, so I didn't want to take the easy route out and use a pre-built package now.

Just to get the installer to run, I had to do some research, and finally figure out that the "no such file or directory" errors being thrown by echo_cmd were because I only had the 64-bit glibc libraries, and I needed to install the lib32-glibc from the multilib repo as well.

I followed the instructions on the wiki, making modifications as I went because my install of the receiver was in a different directory, and got a working install, except that I had problems getting firefox to see the Citrix plugin for some reason. I also was not able to get the manager app (wfcmgr) to run, despite the wiki article explicitly saying it should. I was getting this error:

/opt/Citrix/ICAClient/wfcmgr: error while loading shared libraries:  libXm.so.4: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I did some more digging, and found the 32-bit library package from the AUR containing libXm.so.4, aur-lib32-openmotif, installed into /opt/lib32/usr/lib directory, instead of into the /usr/lib32 directory where the wfcmgr program was trying to find it.

One way to fix this is with a simple

sudo ln -s /opt/lib32/usr/lib/libXm.so.4 /usr/lib32/libXm.so.4

however, I chose to modify the PKGBUILD to put the libraries in /usr/lib32 with all the others, in case a program went looking for one of the other openmotif libraries in the future.

I also figured out that my problem getting firefox to see the plugin was that I checked whether the plugin was setup with

sudo nspluginwrapper -l

using sudo here, because the wiki article showed the install command, nspluginwrapper -i, being run as root. This showed the plugin to be in place already:

/root/.mozilla/plugins/npwrapper.npica.so
  Original plugin: /opt/Citrix/ICAClient/npica.so
  Plugin viewer: /usr/lib/nspluginwrapper/i386/linux/npviewer
  Wrapper version string: 1.4.4-1

It took me too long to realize that this plugin was not system-wide, but was root-specific, and that I needed to do this as my user instead. I checked and it was not setup for my user, so I used the -i command to install it, and restarted firefox. It is now detected, which means I don't have to skip past the install prompt from the server when the silent-detection routine fails to find the plugin on my system.

In the end, I have a newer version of Citrix Receiver installed and I was able to setup my home directory to be mapped as a drive to be seen inside the Citrixed apps. I do not have the USB device support, because the installer can't figure out Arch's system for managing services, but I don't think I'll miss that.

Sign Criticism

2011-08-16T17:32:00.001-05:00

Driving home after work today, I saw one of those little signs stuck in the ground at a corner that said "Get Customer Leads" and had a phone number. The two thoughts that went through my head were: 1) If you are so great at generating customer leads, then why aren't you contacting me instead of expecting me to call you? 2) If I were to call you, would I end up on your list of customer leads that you sell to others?

Proprietary Drivers Lead to Hardware Duplication

2009-10-09T23:10:00.002-05:00

I'm your typical geek, obsessed with gadgets and technology, so I could probably burn through almost any size budget, buying cool things to hack on and/or play with, without even blinking. Conversely, I'm young, and still working my way up the ladder, so my income is definitely limited. Finally, I'm married, and have two young children, so I have far better things to spend my money on than the new 8.02.11xn enabled light bulb. (Bonus points if it also speaks wireless DMX)

So, the net effect of this, is that when I do get something new to play with, I have to choose carefully, and try to get the most tech bang for my dollar. Case in point, the first time I've gotten a GPS device to play with it is in my corporate supplied Blackjack 2 smartphone. Now, I've wanted a GPS for a while. Geocaching looks like a lot of fun, and is something I've wanted to try for a while. I'm also interested in wardriving as well as helping out OpenStreetMap.org

However, a Windows mobile smartphone without wifi isn't really the best tool for any of these activities. However, it has GPS builtin, and it has bluetooth, just like a typical bluetooth GPS dongle. And, thanks to a hack I found online, the internal GPS can be accessed directly on a COM port, instead of only through the Windows Mobile APIs. In an ideal world, I could just read the GPS NMEA data over bluetooth from my laptop, and use it the same as any other GPS dongle. However, because of the proprietary nature of everything involved, this isn't an option, and I'm forced to buy a different GPS receiver if I want to use the GPS with my laptop.

This is all a software issue though. The technical capability clearly exists in the devices. However, the drivers don't allow for it. Drivers, written by hardware companies, who don't want anyone else to know the intricacies of how to interface with their hardware, as that is "proprietary knowledge" and a "trade secret". Now, there is some legitimate concern here. If you know how to talk to a piece of hardware, and can map inputs to outputs, then reverse engineering, especially the two team, clean room style, becomes much easier. However, many hardware companies write really lousy drivers, full of bugs, and lacking many features.

This is a fight faced by the Linux and BSD communities since the beginning. There isn't enough market share for most hardware manufacturers to create their own drivers for open source operating systems. However, despite offers from the community to do the development, the manufacturers are also unwilling or unable to release any sort of technical specifications, or provide any sort of support at all. Which really created the old school Linux mentality of finding something you wanted to have work, then hacking at it until you had created a working driver for it. The end result here is that the consumer loses, and the manufacturers don't see the problem, when I have to buy a separate GPS device because my laptop can't use the one built into my smartphone.

Metrics Can Lead to Poor Customer Service!

2009-01-30T21:59:00.004-06:00

We eat far too much fast food. Unfortunately, it is too attractive to us. It is quick, relatively cheap, and simple. Also, we can usually pick up something that the kiddos will eat, or at least not complain about. I think the real kicker often is the quick, and that it doesn't mean having to clean dishes around the house, which is all too big of a plus for us right now.

I was realizing today just how low my expectations have become. No matter where I'm ordering, no matter how straight-forward the order, I expect that there will be at least one mess up. If it's just that they forgot to include straws for the drinks, I'm happy. If it is that the ignored a special order request, despite it having been heard, and ticketed properly, I'm unsurprised. And if it is the failure to include some add-on condiment (like sour cream at Jack in the Box) that I paid for, I'm only mildly annoyed. Which is really pathetic. I should expect to get my food the way I ordered it, all of it. If it doesn't get entered properly when I order it, I understand that, although I get annoyed if it happens after I've repeated myself and corrected the order 5 or 6 times. But, when the order gets taken and entered correctly, but made incorrectly, that is either laziness, carelessness, or sloppiness. And yet, I've come to accept and expect it.

However, the point of this rant is about the other annoying practice most fast food restaurants have gotten into at the drive-through window, asking you to pull into a parking space and wait for your food. I find that this also rarely perturbs me, although it really gets under my wife's skin. When I've ordered something that I know takes a bit longer to cook, and there are several cars behind me, then I have no problem with pulling into a space to wait. My only annoyance at is is that I know I won't be asked about any condiments I would like, and I won't be able to point out any issues I find right away, like I could at the window. However, whenever I get asked to pull in when there are no cars behind me, then I blame metrics. Or, an even better variant that I experienced today: this was one of the places were you pay at the first window, and get your food at the second. There were about 3 cars behind me when I paid, and the car in front of me had already left the second window. I was asked to wait at the first window, and not pull up until I was told that my food was ready.

Clearly, both of these requests are intended to minimize time spent at the delivery window. Having worked in a fast food restaurant in college, I know that things like wait time and time at window get tracked by management. Just like we were warned when the "secret shopper" would be stopping by, and everyone knew who he was, so his order always exceeded the minimum standards for amount of ingredients, the employees are going to do anything they can to boost these metrics if there is either reward or consequence attached to it. Whether it is average wait time, average time at window, or even max time at window, the drive is to improve the measured metric, even at the absolute expense of the customer experience. This isn't all that different from backfiring incentives. Of course, this doesn't apply only to the fast food industry, but is a danger with any metric in any industry. If the metric becomes the be-all end-all, then it's entire purpose has been defeated. This is on my mind right now, because I am now part of setting metrics both for myself, and for the department I'm currently responsible for training and overseeing.

Space, the Forgotten Frontier

2009-01-08T18:10:00.005-06:00

I've always been a huge fan of the space program, so the existence thereof has never been something I thought needed justification. However, I find that in my daily life, many of the people I run into hold the opinion that the space program is a huge waste of money with absolutely no benefits whatsoever. I've mostly written this off as ignorance, but still been bothered by it. However, a recent trip to Florida made me consider how poor a job of marketing itself NASA has done.

On this trip, we spent several days at Walt Disney World, then stopped by NASA's Kennedy Space Center, before visiting the Atlantic Ocean (as we had several people, our kids included, who had never seen it before) and then heading back home. The difference between Disney World and NASA was one of the most dramatic I have ever seen. Granted, I was giving Disney World pretty high marks. I had only been the once before, as a young child, so my only memories of it were faint, and glossy with childhood nostalgia. In addition to that, I had recently read Cory Doctorow's book "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom", so I was reliving the book as I walked through the park. So, I spent the entire time at the park annoying my wife with comments about how efficient I found things, how well designed and themed areas were, how well things tied together, how this area was important in the book, etc.

We then visited NASA, where it felt like we had found a run-down back-country tourist-trap/ghost-town. The place was almost deserted, and looked like it was running on a skeleton crew as well. There was one ticket lane open, but the way they were set up, you had to walk up to each one to see if it was open or not. You were largely left to yourself to explore the exhibits, and read the plaques, with little or no direction from the staff. It was overall a horrible experience, and one the kiddos did not enjoy at all. While I can't blame them for that, it did hurt me, their geek dad/space buff, that they weren't as fascinated by the shuttles and space hardware as they were by the princesses and talking animals a few days before.

Even for me, the experience was rather disappointing. I wasn't engaged at all, I didn't learn anything I didn't already know. Yes, there was a shuttle on the launch pad, but you couldn't really see anything more than the top 6 inches of the External Tank from the observation tower. Granted, I had fussy kids to keep me busy, so I didn't get to see some of the exhibits I wanted to. Additionally, this visit was near the end of our trip, and everyone was gearing up for the couple days in the car it would take to get home. Still, it was the sheer underwhelmingness of the experience that impressed upon me the most.

We are talking about the space program here. Space Shuttles with Solid Rocket Boosters and External Tanks, some of the most advanced technology in this country, in the world even. Yet, I couldn't really get into it. If only NASA had the Walt Disney Imagineering department working for them, how might the Space Center be different? How might the public's impression of the Space Program as a whole, be different? Space travel has become routine, so it only makes the news when something goes horribly wrong. At any given point in time, how many people around you could tell you how many people are currently in space?

NASA has done very little that I have seen to work on its public image. So, consequently, very few people know what the agency's mission is, or what its goals are. Even fewer people seem to understand the impact NASA has on life here on earth. The common opinion is that money spent by NASA is either a) turned into smoke when a rocket launches or b) launched into space, and has no impact here on earth, that it is being completely wasted. So, let me throw some numbers your way, ok?

NASA's requested budget for 2007 was $17 Billion. (source) In isolation, that is a large number. Certainly more than most of us will ever see in our lifetimes. However, when we start to add in some context, how does it look? The recent bailout package was approved for up to $700 Billion. The auto industry is asking for $25 Billion in bailout loans. The US national budget for 2007 was $2.784 Trillion, so NASA's slice of the pie was 0.58% of the national budget. Finally, social programs (the place most people say the money going to NASA should be spent instead, totaled $1.581 Trillion. So, for every $1 spent on NASA, we are already spending $98 on social programs. Finally, for every dollar spent by the government on R&D in NASA, it is estimated the government earns $7 in personal and corporate income taxes. (source) Let me repeat that, the government brings in $7 for every $1 it sends out to research projects inside of NASA.

The last piece of the puzzle, is what we call spinoff technologies. Things that had their beginning in the space program, but ended up in the public, usually in very different forms. These are the things I think NASA could really do a better job of publicizing, although they have put together a very neat site to showcase some of them. Many of them are exotic sounding things you'll probably never encounter, such as advanced welding systems and magnetic liquids. However, there are a few that are very important to many people.

Infrared In-ear thermometers, a parent's best friend.
Cordless vacuums, like the DustBuster.
LED lights.

Of course, there is also the obvious, telecommunication satellites. The things that make so many of your phone calls, internet usage, and tv watching possible. Not to mention the many advances in weather monitoring and forecasting, useful both to those in the path of a hurricane, and those with a farm in the midst of a drought. These are things that the space program brought to life, usually inadvertently. It can also be argued that the current age of advanced technology is largely thanks to the space race era, and the many engineers and scientist who worked on the projects, and many others who may never have been involved with the space program directly, but were inspired to go into science and technology because of it. Because ultimately, to me, that is what the space program is all about. It is about solving problems, about exploring, and about learning new things and adding to the sum total of human knowledge, and inspiring new generations to do the same things.

I am a Christian, so I'm not one who believes our only hope for survival is in colonizing other planets, and eventually other solar systems. However, I do believe that the future of the US of A, as a country, relies on our being leaders in technology and science, areas we are quickly falling behind in. We once were the manufacturing powerhouse of the world, but now that is all being shipped abroad. We now import much of our food, more than we really have to. If we stop leading in innovation, what will we excel in, as a country?

Dead-on Accurate

2008-03-09T12:52:00.000-05:00

UCAUTION

IN THE INTEREST OF SAFETY IT IS ADVISABLE TO KEEP MADASI AWAY FROM FIRE AND FLAMES.

From Go-Quiz.com

My Webpage Addiction

2007-09-21T03:57:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday, I had a recurring issue happen to me, which causes me much frustration. I lost about 100 webpages in Firefox. Yes that's right, I lost webpages. Ok, let me explain what I mean.

First, I have a problem. I collect webpages. I think that's about the only way to describe it. I will find a new webpage through any of a variety of means. I might open 15 pages from search results when I'm trying to troubleshoot a problem, or I might follow some links from various webcomics, or be sent something by a friend. Then, for whatever reason, I don't just read the page and move on. Instead, I save it. Either because I don't have the time to read it entirely right now, or I want to try it out later, or I think it's great reference material to keep around, or I want to send it to someone else. So for whatever reason, I want to keep it around.

Because of this, I've got hundreds of untamed bookmarks, synced between browsers, in theory, whenever Google Browser Sync works properly. (It synced at the beginning, but I'm not sure about lately.) I've also got a del.icio.us list that is 234 pages long at 10 items per page. And lately, I've become known (read as:ridiculed) for having as many as 150 tabs open in several windows in Firefox at any given time. Yes, starting Firefox is a 15 minute ordeal.

The strategy of just leaving the tabs open, works best for things I just haven't had time to read, or want to try in the next day or two. In theory. So, pre-Firefox 2.0, I use an extension to save my tabs, and restore them in case Firefox crashed on me. It also had the nice extra of saving the last 2 sessions, so if for some reason it didn't load my tabs properly, I could go back to the previous saved version. (Just don't close Firefox after not having your tabs load, or you will lose the good saved session information.) Firefox 2.0 came along, and with it, integrated session saving. This has been nice, and is more robust that the extension I relied on before (which is no longer compatible with current versions). However, it does not have the ability to re-load the session, or to load an older session.

Why does this matter? Well, I usually have the most tabs open on my laptop. And, for whatever reason I haven't tracked down yet, this is also my least stable installation of Firefox. I deal with a few crashes each day, on average. My laptop also has a quirk dealing with its Wifi, often requiring me to powercycle the radio before it will connect. Thankfully, it's just a key press on my laptop. However, if I fail to realize I'm not connected before I launch Firefox, or if (as happened this last time) Firefox gets auto launched because it was open when my previous X11 session ended, then all my tabs come up unable to connect. Once this happens, I have to go connect to the net, then reload each tab by hand. If I don't, then they will be saved as blank tabs, and Firefox will forget what site was previously loaded in them. Once this happens, they are usually gone, because I obviously do not remember what I had loaded in 150 different tabs. In addition, many of the tabs have been open for weeks, or longer, so they will no longer be listed in my browser history.

So, today, when my laptop decided it wasn't going to resume from suspend anymore, but would instead hang on booting, I managed, through a serious of events, to have this happen. This is probably the tenth time or so I have lost my tabs. It really, really ticks me off. So I decided to see what I could do about it. Unfortunately, the answer is, if I had known what to do, and had been quick enough, I might have been able to save them. Maybe. Depends on how far gone they were once I got the rest of the system functioning again. (How does Gnome just forget you had a notification area on your taskbar?)

There is an API available, with something vaguely like what I would want, mentioned as a potential use case. However, my coding skills are infantile, and creating a program to utilize this would be way beyond me. I did, however, come up with a stop gap measure. I added an entry t o have logrotate copy the session saving information for me (which is updated routinely as Firefox runs). This means, in theory, that I will have snapshots from several days available, and hopefully anything added after the snapshot was taken will be recent enough to still be found in my history.

Yes, I do realize that the real solution is to change my habits, and stop leaving so many tabs open. However, this is my stopgap solution. Time will tell if it works or not. May I never need to use it.

My configuration entry for logrotate:

/home/madasi/.mozilla/firefox/8ryaickb.default/sessionstore.bak
/home/madasi/.mozilla/firefox/8ryaickb.default/sessionstore.js {
        rotate 7
        daily
        copy
        dateext
        compress
        missingok        

}

Kiddo Quote

2007-09-15T05:11:00.000-05:00

So, a while back, we had bought the kids a small treat of some kind, a snack size bag of cookies I think. So, on my day at home with them, I gave them each one, then closed the bag and set it down. So, several minutes later, my daughter walks into the room where I was folding some clothes, hands me the bag, and asks if she can have another one.

I pick the bag up, and being looking at the nutritional information on it. She asks me what it says, so I start reading some of it aloud. Things like serving size, calorie count, etc. She gets this very serious, disappointed sound in her voice, and says, "Oh, man."
"What?", I asked, "Do you know what any of that means?"
"It means I won't get any more."

So cute I almost cried.

Bug Affliction

2007-09-14T10:15:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I lost my swap space again, exactly like last time. Once again, a resume from hibernate failed after a routine fsck check ran. And once again, I missed the fact that my swap was gone until later when I noticed the computer failing to hibernate due to lack of swap space.

Since this was the second time it happened, I was sure that it wasn't due to an accidental run of mkswap. Not that I was doubting it after the first time, but you wonder if maybe some obscure option you hit in the GUI might have triggered it behind-the-scenes or something. This time, I was certain.

I was also thankful I blogged the instructions for fixing it the first time, as it save me a lot of research this go-round. Not that I didn't research it, I just did so after fixing it.

Thankfully, I didn't come up empty handed. I found Bug #90526: Routine fsck deactivates swap, changing UUID. Yep, that's it exactly officer. The clue this time was that I saw the fsck happen as my laptop booted, and realized that the last time seemed to be in close temporal proximity to a fsck as well. It's a confirmed bug, with no indication of a time frame for a fix. However, it's always nice to know that you aren't crazy, and that your issues have already been documented.

Hibernate once again!

2007-05-25T03:35:00.000-05:00

So, the instructions I mentioned in my last post seem to have cured my swap & hibernation issued on my laptop for the time being.

The short version was:

1, determine your swap with 'fdisk -l'
2, do mkswap on your swap partition - RECORD THE UUID WHICH THIS COMMAND OUTPUTS
3, now use this UUID to put into fstab and resume files...RESUME=UUID=<the-swap-partition-uuid-from-vol_ID>
should go in /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
4, update-initramfs -u
5, reboot normally after this finishes

What caused my problem in the first place is still very much a mystery though.

Reading through the threads, it appears that the general idea is that either the hibernate or the suspend failed for an unknown reason. This left the hibernation image stored in the swap space, which can apparently cause the swap space to be considered corrupted, and therefore not be mounted.
However, most of the comments indicate that in this scenario the UUID issues, which are what the above steps fix, only appear once the user has manually run mkswap, which changes the UUID of the swap partition. If, as Ubuntu defaults to doing, you are mounting partitions by UUID, and not just label, then once changed, mounting cannot succeed until the fstab is updated, manually.

However, in my case, I was already getting UUID errors when running swapon -va, which was why I began tracking down the problem in the first place. I certainly didn't run mkswap before the error appeared, so why did either a) the UUID change, or b) the symlink for the UUID disappear? That is half the mystery, and what caused the hibernate to begin failing is the other half.

However, for now it is functioning fine, so I probably won't be spending much time digging further into it, unless I have more problems with it in the future,

Ubuntu 7.04 & a Dell E1505

2007-05-24T02:49:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I've had my laptop for almost 6 months now, and had Ubuntu running happily on it for most of those. I'm intending to put together a detailed article with the hardware specs, and all the little tricks I had to follow to get things working properly, but haven't made a lot of progress. However, I still intend to, since I haven't found them collected together in one place anywhere else.

So, I started with Ubuntu 6.10 (actually 6.04, but I wiped that and installed 6.10 within a week), and upgraded to 7.04 the first day it was officially out. The upgrade improved several things, and made several others worse. I've also got a few annoyances and the like hanging around from 6.10 that probably wouldn't be present if I did a fresh install, but I've got the system so heavily tweaked that I'm highly resistant to the idea.

I'll go into more detail later, but for this post I wanted to highlight an issue that showed up yesterday and that I just got fixed, hopefully. Hibernating & suspending have mostly worked out of the box for me, without any tweaking in 6.10. I'd occasionally have issues where it would refuse to hibernate, with the log just showing that powermanager decided to resume after one of the processors (it's a dual core chip) had shutdown, but before it had written the ram to disk. Depending on the exact timing, this either led to it coming back up and just not suspending, or it would lockup, never finishing suspending or resuming. Other than this, and occasionally resuming with the LCD still off, which I fix by suspending-to-ram, then resuming, it hadn't given me trouble. It worked well enough I normally hibernate, and only actually shutdown or reboot a couple times a month. However, it wasn't quite reliable enough that I'm comfortable just shutting the lid and relying on it to suspend automatically.

The upgrade to 7.04 seemed to have increased the reliability, if anything, with one odd side-effect. Almost every time I'd resume, it would play its little siren sound, and display a popup notification telling me that suspend had failed. Of course, considering I only get the message after a successful resume, I found the message odd, but haven't bothered to investigate it at all.

So, yesterday, the only change I made was to install some updates, which were for vim-tiny, vim-common, and samba. These shouldn't have had any effect at all on suspending. So, I finish up at work, hibernate, and go home. At home, I start it up to check something, and am surprised to find myself at a login screen. I logging, and check the syslog for clues. I don't see the normal saving RAM to disk messages, or the normal resume messages, and in their place is a message I don't remember seeing before, which comes near the end of logging before the startup happens. PM: suspend-to-disk mode set to 'shutdown' Unsure if this is relevant or not, I finish what I am doing, and hibernate again. Sure enough, once I get to work the next night, I'm greeted upon bootup with a login screen. I google for this string, and find some of the source code, and an old message or two about failed hibernations screwing with their swap partitions, but nothing catches my eye.

A while later, I notice that the computer has basically frozen. Now, it didn't catch my attention at first, as launching firefox puts my computer out of commission for about 5 - 10 minutes usually, as it loads the 200 something tabs I had open last time I shut it down. (No, that's not an exaggeration, there are currently 217 tabs spread across 3 windows. There used to be about 3 times that. You should see my del.icio.us list.) However, this time it is much longer lasting, and I notice that according to the system monitor, which is only updating sporadically, there isn't much network activity, and all the cpu time is I/O wait. This isn't typical behavior. I finally switch over to one of the text consoles, login, and check top, since I can't get any response in X. Looking around, I suddenly notice something, there is about 12MB of RAM free, and 0KB of swap space. Oh, that's because there isn't any swap on the system. WTF? No swap? This system has 1GB of RAM, and 2GB of swap. Why do I have no swap? I try to login to a couple more virtual consoles to investigate and get my swap activated, but by this time the system is so sluggish that the logins time out before ever actually prompting me for a password. I hard reboot, and start googling from a work computer in the meantime.

The problem I run into eventually is that my swap is still listed in /etc/fstab, yet if I run swapon -va it says it cannot find that UUID. I find some interesting information in this post, however, their commands don't work for me. I then find a link to a comment for bug #66637 from 10/31/2006, which does the trick. Just remember all these commands need to be run as root, or prefixed with sudo. After a reboot, my swap is loaded properly, and the system successfully resumes from a test hibernation once again.

Mafiaa

2007-03-29T07:34:00.000-05:00

Ok, so news like this makes me grin. While I understand that downloading copyrighted music is a civil offense, I really think suing your customers is a stupid business strategy. Although, I also think adding "Don't even think about pirating this you evil person you!" messages to CDs, and liner notes, and guilt trip clips before movies is just as insulting to the consumer, especially since you only see these after you've handed over your money, placing you firmly in the classification of paying customer.

However, even once we get over these issues, the way the RIAA primarily, and to a lesser extent the MPAA, are going about these lawsuits is ridiculous, and in many cases fraudulent. They threaten people with lawsuits to get upfront settlements, file anonymous lawsuits by the hundreds, and even tried to scold a college for not keeping IP address assignment logs because "Don't they know they are important?". Well, they may be important to the RIAA, but to the college they hold no special value, and consume valuable & expensive resources to keep around, so the logical choice is not to keep them unless they have a specific need for them.

I'm all in favor of people fighting back on these lawsuits, whenever they have the means to do so. Progress is finally being made too. With several cases having forced the RIAA to pay the defendant's legal fees, this may embolden lawyers to offer their services in exchange for any fees they can recover if they win, which would help more people get qualified representation. In another case, the defendant, who was ruled against on the main issue, has successfully gotten the court to question the ridiculous per song damage figures spouted by the RIAA.

Lastly, if you haven't already heard the joke, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) should join together to form the Music and Film Industry Association of America (MAFIAA).

Simple Pleasures

2007-03-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

Just feeling down, and taking some time to reflect back on my last few weeks, and realizing that my favorite memories from them are of very simple moments.

Listening to my son sing along to the Veggietales theme.
Blowing bubbles in the park with my family.
Playing blacklight miniature golf with my wife.

Little thing, simple pleasures in life, and yet, they are what I remember most fondly just a few days, or weeks later.

'Bout Time

2007-03-09T03:54:00.000-06:00

I'm sure everyone has gotten the stock scam spams. If not, send me a message, I want to know who you use for your e-mail! Thankfully, with Gmail, I only see them in my inbox on very rare occasions.

However, their concept is simple enough. Get enough suckers/greedy people to bite, and the stock price will move. Since the target is almost always a penny stock to begin with, it doesn't take a large change to make some significant profit, if timed properly. Which is probably one of the reasons people still bite on these. They know it's a scam, they know it's going to spike up, then plummet back down, they are just trying to beat the rush, and manage to make some profit off it themselves.

So, I often found myself wondering why the SEC permitted this obvious stock manipulation to proceed. It's guaranteed that they get much of the same spam we do, so it isn't like they don't know about it. I had mentally chalked it up to lack of resources, and the slow process that is an investigation in this country. By the time they got anything actually underway, the scam they were investigating would be old news, and there would be 100 more waiting in the queue.

However, they have begun to take action. On Thursday, they suspended, for 2 weeks, the trading of 35 stocks being targeted in various spam messages. This move appears to be intended as much for the purpose of preventing investors from being scammed, as for providing time to get investigations underway.

The article over at Slashdot, brings up the potential for using this behavior to prevent your competitor's stock from being traded, which is a possibility worth considering. However, for now, I'm just glad to see something being done about it. Wonder what type of spam will arise to take the place of the stock pump 'n dump?

Jealousy

2007-02-21T03:18:00.000-06:00

Chalain has created an incredible verbal analogy over at his LiveJournal page talking about Windows Vista. Chalain is a good friend of Howard Taylor, creator & genius behind Schlock Mercenary, one of my absolute favorite webcomics, and also home of some of my favorite movie reviews as well. Howard linked to Chalain's writeup, which is high praise in and of itself, so I read it. Wow, was it good!

Chalain did a fantastic job, evoking detailed images rich with subtext to illustrate his impressions of this new operating system, and the feelings it brings out in users. Reading how he keeps returning to the theme of how pretty it is almost makes me want to try it, but that would require a new computer, so it isn't going to be happening. However, speaking as someone who just got Beryl up on running on his laptop, that is really saying something.

I also find myself envious of the writing style. The way he shapes the words, molds the sentences, and arranges everything into a cohesive whole just leaves me in awe. I tend to be a logical personality, and find almost all creative endeavors to be very difficult. However, that doesn't mean I can't recognize & appreciate beauty in form when I see it. Then again, maybe if I wrote more often, I'd find myself getting better at it?

OTM Extensions

2007-01-25T20:21:00.000-06:00

There will of course be lesser used variation of the OTM interval.

The MTO interval is for when a device is un-impressive at first, but you later discover something about it that really changes your opinion of it. This will be a very subjective measurement, and therefore be much more difficult to quantify and measure.

There will also be a MTOTM interval, measuring the time from getting an un-impressive device, discovering something cool about it, and then deciding that the device is still pretty lame afterall.

This Post has an OTM rating of 2 days.

2007-01-25T15:09:00.000-06:00

So, in conversation today, we created the OTM rating scale for new technology. This is how long from the time of purchase it takes for your opinion of the item to go from Ooh! to Meh! This should be a required statistic listed for all new devices. This was discovered while playing with a POS at work. (That's Point-of-Sale, keep it clean!) I discovered an unlocking lever on the monitor, and said Ooh! I then played with it, and discovered that it was already at the best position, the others were horrible, prompting a Meh!. We then observed that it took about two seconds to go from Ooh to Meh, and the OTM rating was born!

Green Up!

2006-10-09T21:10:00.000-05:00

So, my weight, which I post online over at PhysicsDiet, is finally coming back down. For about a week now I've been all green, which means I've been losing weight over

a one week period
a 30 day period
and the entire time I've been recording my weight.

In addition to that, I'm also re-nearing 300 pounds with my average weight, which is a pretty big milestone for me. I feel like I'm starting to get things moving in the right direction again, my chart is beginning do dip nicely, and more importantly, consistently. Now, to get the rest of my life under control! Not that it ever was to begin with.

Degrees of Difficulty

2006-09-20T17:10:00.000-05:00

So, I started back to college about a month ago. I'm taking 3 courses, English, Pre-Calculus, and an Introductory C++ Programming class. So far, things have been going well enough. This week, exams start to roll around.

the C++ course has so far been a breeze for me. Computers seem to come pretty naturally to me, programming included, and I have a little prior Java experience, so thinking in code came back to me pretty quickly. So far, I've been able to complete my homework assignments entirely in the lab time, so I haven't had to spend much off-campus time on this course. However, I do need to get caught up in reading my book, especially with exams coming up.

English I've always found a little difficult to categorize. It doesn't seem to be problematic for me, but I can't say that I enjoy it, or that it requires no thought. I don't enjoy writing x-hundred words papers on random subject y, but I don't find it really hard either. This class is Lit II, so it involves analyzing short stories. I've read non-stop most of my life, but usually either for pleasure or for educational value. Stopping, and trying to find deeper meaning in the stories I read for fun is some work. However, this class keeps its own exam schedule, so that is a small blessing. The only problem I've had in this class was not getting my textbook until the day before my third class (which since this is a Saturday class, means the third week).

Pre-Calculus is the class I'm having the most difficulty in. Up until high-school, math was a subject that also came easy to me. In 8th grade, I was skipped past pre-algebra with one other student, and began taking math with the class ahead of me. In late high-school, I slacked off and stopped doing homework or paying attention. I've taken a couple college level math classes before, with passing grades, but they were about 5 years ago. You forget a lot in that time span. I'm finding in this class that I understand the concepts being taught to us, and partially remember many of them, however I often have trouble with some of the underlying algebraic manipulation. I will know what to do, but forget the rules of solving equations, for example: how to handle radicals, or logs, when solving for x. I had a friend who is a math wiz and a math teacher-in-training give me a quick refresher lesson, and I grabbed a College Algebra textbook from the local Half-Price Books to try and refresh myself. However, I'm still trying to fit the time in as the class gives large amounts of homework.

Overall, I've found it takes all my free time to keep up with the homework, and this was when I wasn't working. However, I just started a new job, and am working ten hour shifts. I get home about 2 hours before I need to leave for class, and I have to go to bed immediately upon getting back from class, because I have to get up at 3 in the morning. So, this will greatly affect my study and homework time. Not to mention I may be forced to miss some class due to mandatory overtime.

On top of all that, since I'm getting federal student aid funding, I can't just drop classes, or I have to pay back some of the money. Failing, or withdrawing will also activate re-payment status on my student loans. So, there is a bit of pressure on me to pass, in addition to my natural desire to. And thus, I'd say, for me at least, school just got a whole lot harder.

ARRR!

2006-09-18T17:57:00.000-05:00

Well, in case you aren't among the enlightened, tomorrow is Talk Like A Pirate Day! Being a typical geek, pirates fascinate me, and an excuse to talk like a pirate all day can't be passed up. However, so far, I've forgotten about it, and managed to miss it for the last three years. So, today, my wife reminded me so I wouldn't miss it again. Just one more little reason why I'm madly in love with her. Instead of rolling her eyes and calling me a dork, she actually reminds me of it.

August

2006-09-12T23:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, last time I checked in, I mentioned my new scale, but didn't tell you which one it was. I got the Tanita HD372, and I still love it. I was a little suprised, but Fry's had a couple of them in stock when I went to look, so I didn't even have to order it online.

Last month, August, was a bit rough. Seeing my weight go flying back over 300 hit me hard. I tried to keep with my rhythm, and thought I was doing ok, but the numbers didn't agree. It's a vicious cycle. Seeing my weight gain would get me down, and when down, one of my comfort mechanisms is eating. On top of this little mini-drama, I had a lot of external pressures dragging me down emotionally as well.

However, it is now well into September. We have done the majority of our travelling for the month, and I'm committed to getting my line back below 300, and back on track to my goal. That goal, by the way, is 195lbs. I had it planned to get there by my birthday next year, however that date may change since I discovered my true weight.

Christmas Decorations

2006-08-29T10:31:00.000-05:00

Ok, I realize that the whole "Christmas is over-commercialized" thing is itself commercialized at this point, and that nobody cares anymore, but I just want to note it down somewhere, because I say I'm going to every year.

Last night, August 28, was the first time I saw Christmas stuff for sale in a store. Granted it was Big Lots, but they had a decent amount of it out, near the generic fall, and Halloween decorations. They also had the stocking instruction sheets that diagram hot to lay it out on the shelves, so it wasn't just a case of having happened upon some extras they were trying to unload.

So, that's what, only 4 months of shopping time now?

Double-Edged Swords

2006-08-01T00:22:00.000-05:00

So, my birthday has come and gone this year, and one of the presents I asked for, and received, was a new Tanita scale. It is nice and shiny, has a solid feel to it (read: it's heavy), and is nice and accurate. The biggest variance I've seen in two consecutive readings was 0.2 lbs, and that was only one. Compare this with my last scale, which has been observed with almost 30lbs of variation between two readings, and once told me I gained about 45lbs from a reading before bed to one right after getting up the next morning. My impassioned arguments regarding the impossibility of such a sudden weight gain had little effect on the scale.

So, this is all really nice, except that my nice, shiny, accurate, new scale also tells me I don't weigh 277lbs any more, but actually something more like 310lbs. I've been posting my progress over at PhysicsDiet.com, and had actually started getting excited because I was only a pound or two away from making the biggest losers chart. For someone who has never had any success losing weight in the past, I was getting positively giddy. However, the addition of the new, correct, but higher weights basically shows up as a huge weight gain. I was tempted to try adjusting all my old readings upwards by the approximate difference between the scales, but that would destroy any accuracy left in the data. I was also thinking about just wiping out my old data and starting fresh, but that isn't any better. At least by leaving the old data alone, I can still see the weight loss trends, and look at the rate of change. Because even though the readings may have been off, they were still coming down consistently, and there is definitely some physical differences in my body to support that downward trend.

So, I didn't suddenly gain 30lbs, I just got a new scale. And discovered that I have a bit further to go before reaching my goal than I anticipated. However, I will reach it, and I will continue onward, one day at a time.

EULA'S

2006-07-01T21:42:00.000-05:00

I avoided bringing up the Sony/BMG rootkit fiasco back when it was big news The reasons were 1) it's a decently technical subject, and if you understand what I'm talking about, you probably also already knew what is going on, and 2) many people more technically proficient, knowledgeable, or eloquent than I have already said quite a bit about it. I do want to mention the issues inherent in the horrible EULA that accompanies these CDs, and other computer software. I dislike these one sided agreements where terms get dictated, and you have only a binary yes/no choice, usually after you've already paid for the item. Software isn't the only place these are found though, not by far. Admission tickets to almost anywhere are pretty bad, parking garage claim tickets, etc. Here is the exact text from the back of a ticket from our recent trip to the zoo.

"This ticket is issued to Holder as a revocable license which may be revoked at management's discretion for any reason including Holder's acting in a disorderly manner or otherwise violating the rules or regulations of the Zoo. The Zoo shall not be required to issue an exchange or refund for any reason including inclement weather. Holder voluntarily assumes all risk and danger of personal injury and all hazards, which are related in any way to Holder's visit. The zoo and its officers, directors, employees and agents are neither responsible nor liable for any injuries, expenses, claims, or liabilities resulting from or related to Holder's visit and Holder expressly releases each of those persons from any claims arising there from. Holder grants permission to the Zoo and its designees to utilize Holder's image, likeness, actions or statements in connection with any live or recorded video, photographic display or other transmission or reproduction without payment, inspection, or review by Holder. Holder agrees not to transmit, distribute or sell (or aid in transmitting, distributing or selling) any description, account, picture, video, audio or other form of reproduction of the visit for which this ticket is issued. Pets are not allowed inside the Zoo."

So, this license says that no matter what, they don't have to give me my money back. No matter what happens I've agreed not to hold them responsible. They can take as many photos/videos of me as they want and use them any way they want, and I don't get to see them first, or even be notified of it. Finally, I'm not allowed to even show my vacation photos, especially not on the Internet. I can't tell you what I saw, or what they have at the zoo, I can't give you my review of it, etc.

Typical all for me, none for you treatment. Do celebrities get special tickets? That can't afford (and don't allow) their likeness to be given away this freely. What if I don't agree to these terms? Am I out my money? These are the kind of things a lawyer somewhere thought up, and it gets shoved down your throat, and most people probably never even read the back of the ticket.

It's these kind of invisible, legally binding contracts we enter into so many times per day, usually without ever knowing it that bug me. America is already lawsuit crazy enough that the zoo feels the need (or the zoo's lawyers feel the need) to limit their liability, and while we are at it, let's throw some other things into the contract. Now if we get a bad review, we have legal grounds to sue. Not that we would, just in case, you know, we needed to.

I Need a New Scale!

2006-06-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

I hate my scale!

Or, perhaps my scale hates me instead? I'm trying to lose weight, and one aspect of that is to weigh myself daily.

I'm following The Hacker's Diet, which uses a weighted average to smooth out the daily weight fluctuations that occur, and let's you see the larger trends. So, of course, it's really hard to repeat a reading on my scale. I get up one morning, weigh myself and see 319.9 lbs. "Wow!" I think, "I broke 320!". But, knowing my scale a little to well, I take another reading, and see 328 lbs. I take about 7 more readings before finally getting a rough consensus around 325.6 lbs. That's way too much variance between readings for my comfort.

My wife doesn't seem to have these problems, so it may be due to my being at the upper end of the rated weight. (Seems like it was rated to 330 or 350 lbs, don't remember for sure.) We grabbed this Weight Watchers branded scale at Wal-mart one day, largely because it could handle my larger weight.

Reading online, I've heard Tanita brand scales recommended, so I'm looking into them. My wife likes an analog scale, but they don't support my weight. However, some of these digitals do, and they look nice too. I'm thinking maybe the HD372 or the HD373 model. Has anybody had any experience with any of these?

Update

2006-06-10T01:12:00.000-05:00

I'm gonna make this quick, since it is late. Things haven't been going the greatest of late. About two months ago, I was laid off from my job. I've been job hunting ever since. It's been tough, and I've been getting really depressed at times.

There wasn't any advance warning, I showed up on a Monday, worked like normal, and as I was getting ready to leave around 5:10PM, was informed I was being let go because my position couldn't be afforded in the budget any longer, and I could take a few minutes to gather my stuff from my desk, and please leave my access card. This brings up one of my long standing irritations, why is an employee expected to give 2 weeks notice, and frequently penalized for not doing so, but a company almost never shows the same courtesy.

Anyway, I've hit rock bottom fairly hard. I let my pride ("I'm not going to be unemployed for long at all.") Prevent me from applying for unemployment until this week, even though we have hit some financial difficulties. We weren't making on my salary alone, which is why my wife started working a while back. Now we are on just her salary, which isn't cutting it either.

However, I've started trying to turn things around, in all areas of my life. I'm working on losing my weight, and getting back into shape. To that end, you, and anyone else who wants to, can check on my progress right here. What better pressure than having the whole world see your diet log, right?

Well, I have more to say, however I will save it for another time. Good Night!

Smart Fasteners, Normal People

2006-05-04T10:57:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I found the story on smart fasteners, as previously promised. Reading it requires free, mandatory registration, so use Bug Me Not. For the most part, the technology sounds interesting, although I'm not thrilled with the idea that my neighbor will be able to disassemble my car without touching it, but hey, that's the price of progress!

Actually, the thing I really dislike is a sub-current running beneath the article, but never actually stated. Not only might this type of technology prevent thieves from removing your airbag, but it might also prevent you from doing any maintenance on your own vehicle. Or you neighborhood mechanic. After all, these unlocking codes will be pretty valuable, so maybe we should only let the auto dealerships have them. They should have been the ones servicing your car all along anyway, right.

Ok, now for my favorite quotes from the article, starting with the worst statement of all.

A potential security breach threat apparently doesn't exist. "I wondered what's to prevent some nut using a garage door opener from pushing the right buttons to make your airplane fall apart," said Harrison. "But everything is locked down with codes, and the radio signals are scrambled, so this is fully secured against hackers."

Now, first, this statement appears to have been made by "Kirby Harrison, a senior editor at Aviation International News, who attended the debut of intelligent fasteners at a trade show in Hamburg, Germany, last year", and not the inventor. However, that doesn't make the statement any less laughable. WEP was locked down with codes and scrambled radio signals too, and it is considered next to useless nowadays. Different situations entirely, but the point stands. As crypto experts are fond of saying, anyone can invent a code that they themselves cannot crack.

The mechanism that holds auto airbags in place is a natural for intelligent fasteners, said Steve Brown, product development director at Textron. Installing airbags with conventional screws is tedious and expensive, and it doesn't provide security. An estimated 50,000 airbags are stolen each year for resale, he said. Intelligent fasteners only respond to radio signals that use appropriate codes. This would prevent removal of airbags by unauthorized people, Brown said.

Ok, as if the first statement wasn't sufficient cause for a cracker/hacker somewhere to decide that the system would be broken (and trust me, a direct challenge like that is more than sufficient), this provides us with a financial incentive. Once the system is broken, stealing airbags just got easier. Instead of breaking in with tools, and risking leaving fingerprints and the like everywhere, walk up with your laptop, and watch the airbag disconnect from the car so you can grab it and take off, no other tools needed. Or, just steal the whole car (perhaps using this method, then disassemble the whole thing easily & at your leisure.

Gone in 20 Minutes: using laptops to steal cars

2006-05-03T15:18:00.000-05:00

From Digg

A look at how thieves are using laptops to steal the most expensive luxury cars. Many of these cars have completely keyless ignitions and door locks, meaning it can all be done wirelessly. Thieves often follow a car until it gets left in a quiet area, and they can steal it in about 20 minutes. Scary stuff.

You'd think someone, somewhere would have learned by now that software can and will be broken, especially when it is protecting something of value. There was a report a while back on "smart fasteners", basically bolts & screws that can be unlocked by computer. The uses mentioned sounded interesting, but the article had the same "it can't be broken because we know what we are doing" tone that is just evident of a lack of touch with reality. I'll look for the link to post later.

read more | digg story

Americans Sicker Than Brits!

2006-05-03T12:21:00.000-05:00

So, I found this article on Slashdot today, and found it very interesting!

In brief, a study was conducted which found that even though Americans spend on average twice as much per person on healthcare than their counterparts in the UK, they are far less healthy. While being richer did tend to correspond with better health, the richest Americans ranked right around the poorest Brits.

Several possible factors and explanations were looked at, such as taking minorities out of the equation and factoring in what would happen if the average Brit weighed as much as the average American (the standard obesity crisis theory). None explained the gap in health. Of course, this excerpt:

Statutory minimum annual leave plus public holidays UK: 28 days (four weeks + public holidays) US: 10 days (0 weeks + public holidays)

taken from this article might offer an insight to certain, let's call them, "environmental factors" which might have an effect on one's health, over time.

Not the only one!

2006-03-24T22:00:00.000-06:00

So, my (older) nephew made math nerd of the month at his college. Check it out! It's on page 3, although it's in PDF format, so get your Adobe Reader or Ghostview ready!

And here you though I was the only nerd in my family!

Juggling Miscellany

2006-03-24T21:51:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I sent this link to a friend of mine who juggles. It's a video of a juggler called Chris Bliss doing a three ball act synchronized to some music in front of an audience. I shoulda guessed he'd probably already heard of it.

However, he was nice, and responded with links to this video and this rant regarding the original video clip.

So I read the rant, watched the second video, and then watched that video & the Chris Bliss video side by side at the same time. :) What, I'm a nerd, it's what I do!

I see what the rant's author means. I thought the Chris Bliss video was cool when I first saw it, however I also remember wondering how close he came to dropping the balls several times, and wondering how many times he had to practice the routine to make it through. If you watch his facial expression, there is more than once he looks sure he is about to lose control. I also remember thinking that some of the moves looked really awkward and/or painful. These seem to be most of Jason's main points regarding the video, as well as that a 3 ball routine can easily be synced to just about any random piece of music.

I have to admit that in the video, Jason Garfield looked a lot more relaxed and natural doing the juggling moves, and never looked on the verge of losing control.

Of course, in the end, I've never juggled before, and know nothing about it, so this is all purely my opinion. Except I do know that you would need 0 hands to juggle just one ball! (It's juggling humor.)

Guess My Picture!

2006-03-09T23:14:00.000-06:00

Ok, here's my picture for you. Name the device pictured and/or the event where this was taken for brownie points! This photo is over a year old, and was takin in Austin, TX, USA.

Desktop Defaults

2006-03-08T23:33:00.000-06:00

Ran across this article on /. a while back: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1923402,00.asp

The author makes the somewhat controversial statement that what ends up on users desktops isn't what's best, but what came there to begin with. I tend to agree, based on my experiences with "end users".

The average end user still doesn't understand exactly what a browser is, or why they would want to try a different one. To many home users especially, Internet Explorer is the internet. They do not mentally separate the program from the activity. (The tool from the task.) This is normal for first time PC users. You want to do task XYZ, well you click here on program ABC. Mentally ABC == XYZ. It's only over time and with experience that they may learn they can do the same task XYZ with program DEF as well! For some people, this is like the dawning of the day, and they begin exploring what alternate programs they can use for the other tasks they do on a regular basis. They soon learn that different programs do the same task better, or just differently, have different features, etc., and find the programs that best fit how they want to perform their tasks.

For others, this situation presents overwhelming choices, and is a very bad thing. These are the people who get frustrated with the computer when they have to choose what program to use. It's like ordering coffee at Starbucks. (Or any food from a replicator on Star Trek.) Sometimes you just want coffee, without having to add 15 modifiers to identify a specific drink. They want the computer to just do certain tasks, and do them well, without asking technical questions about how to do them. Layers of obscurity into how things work are not always a bad thing, at least, not if they can be gotten around easily if the user so desires. After all, this same principle lets you drive a car without understanding how a fuel-injection system works. Do you really care what brand spark plugs are in your car, or know if they are gapped properly? Some people do, most don't. If you had to know to drive a car, would you be finding another way to get to work tomorrow?

Usually, single task devices seem to come first, and are extended into multi-function devices, like a cell phone that can check my e-mail, browse the web, play music and movies, and let me instant message people, plus, oh yeah, call someone. However, the argument can easily be made that this is often at the expense of whatever the primary function of the device was originally, and almost always at a price of a steeper learning curve and more complex user interfaces.

However, some people just want a device that does one thing, and does it very well. Do you want your checkbook to play music and have net access built in? Do you really need a TV built in to your fridge? It is my opinion that at some point the idea of computers as specific machines we sit down at to do things will have to fade away, and be replaced with a type of distributed processing. The processing will all be done in the background out of sight, and we will simply perform our activities where they are most natural for us to do so. If I sit down at my desk at home, I can access my bank accounts and pay my bills. I can also do it from the couch or outside if I want to, but it will be what the system assumes I want to do when I sit down at my desk, based on my normal routine. The same system will display recipes for me in the kitchen, if I want, and will have my music follow me as I move around the house, but not into the kid's rooms when I peek in to pull their covers up after they are asleep.

If a system becomes this pervasive and integrated, most people won't want to know what recipe program they are running, or if their lawn maintenance software version is compatible with their new robotic lawn mower they just bought. Yes, some people will know, care, and love every minute detail. They will have custom interfaces for everything, and their houses will literally respond to their every whim. I will probably be one of these people. However, this will be the exception, because everyone else will just want it to work, and won't care if they are using Blinds 3.0 from Windows Corporation, OpenMyBlinds 4.27 from AOL/Time Warner, or GBlinds 2.7 (Beta) from Google World Domination, Inc.

Sit Heer O' Site O'r There!

2006-03-08T22:42:00.000-06:00

Our daughter, now a few months past 2 years old, has become quite the little mimic. Last night, she insisted on standing between us and the television to eat her dinner. We told her to sit down many times, which usually caused her to sit right where she was, momentarily, until she wanted another bite to eat.

Of course, her chair was nearby, but she didn't want to sit in it at the time. Finally, getting frustrated, I told her to either sit in her chair, or sit in the big person's chair (the recliner), pointing at each location as I said it. She then echoed my words right back, in her two year old vocabulary. "Sit here or sit over there!", she said very seriously, pointing helpfully.

Her mother began laughing hysterically, at which point Isabelle came up with her solution, and moved her chair to exactly where she had initially been standing, and proceeded to sit down in it. This sent her mother out of the room in fits of laughter.

I tell you, this whole parenting thing is really interesting. It's a ton of work, but it's definitely got it's moments you can't get anywhere else, and the kids double as living tape recorders!

Reflection Moment

2006-02-28T22:14:00.000-06:00

So, I just finished doing something I could have sworn I'd never do. Driving 20 min both ways to go retrieve my daughter's "blankie" which had been left at Grandmom's house.

Now, I don't have a problem with my daughter having a security blanket. I think it's pretty cute in fact. She isn't actually dependent on it, and will happily go places without it. However, if she hurts herself seriously, or gets really tired and cranky, then she goes looking for it.

Therein lies the reason I went off to retrieve it. Because while she could have gone to sleep without it, that would involve some crying, and some whining, and general unpleasantness. And so, while I once imagined I'd never do such a thing, because I'd never spoil my kids that much, I found myself realizing that it makes lot of sense to just go get it, and keep everyone happy. Besides, I really hate making my daughter cry!

Tooting My Own Horn

2006-01-03T14:41:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to point out that on Januray 1st, this blog celebrated it's first birth day. Nothing else of consequence here, so go read a good webcomic or two.

Business Trip Postponed

2005-12-28T15:02:00.001-06:00

So, my business trip has been postponed. We are now looking at March tentatively. $wife is a bit disappointed, for all the reasons she was excited to be going. Now we are going about canceling our tickets, and trying to figure out what to do with the winter clothes we bought for the trip. At least my company is being more than decent about it, and is offering to reimburse the fees we incur for $wife's ticket (in addition to mine, which they are paying for in the first place), since we had no control over the changing of the trip. I'd love to say, "We'll just take a vacation week and go anyway", but we couldn't afford the hotel or rental car, and it isn't that great of a vacation destination anyway Well, guess that means I go back to plotting where to take $wife out-of-state to first. Any suggestions?

Black Dogs, Electric Sheep, & Dysphoric Humans

2005-12-21T16:27:00.000-06:00

So, I'm feeling quite dysphoric today. I can't concentrate at all, and I'm tired. I had a hard time trying to figure out exactly what I was experiencing. At first I thought I was just tired and not feeling well from sinus (cedar season just began) and getting over a cold. Then I thought, maybe I'm restless from it almost being the holiday weekend, and still needing to go shopping for a gift. However, I also just want to curl up and go to sleep, although I'm not sure I could. (If you don't know, ask your local geek what electric sheep have to do with sleeping (and more specifically, dreaming) And, even if I wasn't at work, I don't know what I'd be doing. Nothing sounds like I'd enjoy it.

I hate this feeling. I almost find myself wishing I was depressed instead, because that's a little easier to deal with. Of course, I wouldn't agree while being depressed. I was diagnosed as having bi-polar disorder several years ago. The symptoms used to be out of control, now they are just really annoying for a couple of days at a time, and pretty much forgotten about the rest of the time. Of course, it'd be nice for them to just go away altogether, but I'm pretty happy that they aren't running my life, or dictating what I do on a daily basis anymore.

I'm not presently on medicine. I used to be, and honestly, it was just as bad, in a way all it's own. It lessened the duration of my depression phases, but heightened the sensation of mixed states and dysphoria. The dysphoric states it created basically left me feeling as though my body was depressed, but my mind couldn't be because of the medicine, or the other way around. Things just never were in sync.

I'm doing much better now, and the majority of my days are just normal, which is quite nice. As for today, it's almost over anyway (the work portion that is), and usually by the time I've figured out what is bothering me, its only a day or two from going away. So, Happy Holidays to everyone!

Movie Review: King Kong

2005-12-19T09:11:00.002-06:00

I saw King Kong with my wife last night. She loved it, except for the parts with giant insects. I'd never seen any of the original films, so it was an all new story to me. I didn't know how much I'd like it, as creature flicks are not my normal fare, but I can say I really enjoyed it. It's definitely one to see in the theater, both for scale of what you see on screen, and for the awesome sound work. I only saw through the CGI at one point, and that was only a matter of seconds. Everything else looked very good, although I didn't spend a lot of time trying to "pick at the seams". It's a little long, but not too bad, and it doesn't feel drawn out. Any shorter, and you'd start feeling it in the story line. It did have a nice epic feel to it. While it wasn't too gory, it's not a kid's film, both for the violence, and the sad ending. Overall, definitely worth seeing at full movie price, and even braving opening weekend crowds for. 8.5 out of 10

Christmas Time Tackiness

2005-12-02T12:28:00.000-06:00

So, it's coming up on the Christmas time of year. Of course, here at work, it's been around for several weeks already. We've already been hit up by our customers for prizes to give away at their office parties. A few even go so far as to inform us they will be taking a large discount off their next invoice if we do not provide a gift. However, today topped all. One customer called up to find out where the gift we were supposed to send them was, because it hadn't arrived yet, so we were expected to drop everything to get them a tracking number on it. Of course, it had been delivered yesterday, but it still struck us as being very tacky! Maybe I'm just too sensitive though, would you conisder it as being beyond the boundaries of good taste??

Fasting

2005-12-01T13:38:00.000-06:00

So, I'm fasting today & (hopefully) tomorrow. I don't think today will be a big problem, I'll just be somewhat hungry tonight. Tomorrow, I don't have a clue about. I only recall fasting once before, back when I was in high school, and that was a mis-guided dieting attempt. No, I wasn't trying to starve myself, it was just a recommendation from someone to fast one day per week. I made it most of a day. This time, it's spiritual, as in fasting & prayer. I'm praying for an answer to our prayers for a good job for my wife, and for financial guidance. We managed to get squeezed really tight this month. We had a few surprise expenses come up, as well as a few discretionary spending choices we should have avoided making. So, at this moment, I'm not even sure if I can afford to pay the rent tomorrow, and if we can, how I can buy gas for the cars next week. On top of that, I know that we are supposed to be tithing off every paycheck. I stopped doing this back when I was single, and it always bugged me a little, but I wasn't going to church, so I didn't have anywhere to tithe. (Great excuse huh?) However, my wife and I have started trying to tithe since we started going to church where we live. It's been pretty tough. We have managed off and on for several months now, but not consistently. Either we get sick, and miss church for several weekends in a row, or get pinched financially, and try to convince ourselves that we'll just put it in next week out of the next check. Also, we have heard several messages regarding (and I've been impressed by) the statement that tithes are supposed to be firstfruits. In other words, they come out before anything else; and not in the end, if I have something left over after the bills. Yet, we won't have enough for the bills alone, much less tithe & bills. So, we need financial intervention from the Lord. However, I also am seeking financial wisdom to prevent this from happening again. We have been living paycheck to paycheck for a while now, never tracking our money. We've tried to implement a budget countless times, but never with any success. Like with most other things in my personal life, it's a frustrating failure. There's never enough time, and I never have any energy left over after work. These are some of the reasons why I'm fasting. I don't expect a quick fix, however I do want to demonstrate that I am serious about wanting to change. I had thought about fasting a couple times before, and then it got mentioned in the sermon on Sunday. I thought about it again yesterday, once I realised the situation we were in financially, and decided it was the right choice for me. I don't know if it is right for everyone, nor do I know a lot about it (as I don't with most things spiritually), but I believe it is right for me, at this moment. Well, I'll tell you how things go tomorrow, until then, blessings.

Happy Belated Thanksgiving Day

2005-11-26T22:42:00.000-06:00

Just wanted to say Hi, and Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. Our family traveled to San Antonio, to be with the rest of our family. We had a great time, and got to see the river parade, and the lighting of the riverwalk. I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday, and got to enjoy a little quality time with family and/or friends! I've got a now post topic in mind, but it is far too late at the moment, so it will have to wait.

Interesting Quote Today

2005-11-21T10:51:00.000-06:00

This was one of my quotes for the day, courtesy of my Google homepage:

I believe that every human has a finite number of heart-beats. I don't intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises. Neil Armstrong US astronaut (1930 - )

Now, it's an interesting quote, until you look at who said it. Then is just becomes a bit odd. This is an Apollo astronaut. I don't think he got their without exercising. Perhaps he was referring to exercising just for the sake of exercise, not when it is part of accomplishing a larger goal. Of course, there is no context available, such as when he said it, to whom, and what the immediate preceding bit of conversation was. Still, it caught my interest for a moment.

-- Madasi

Update Overdue

2005-11-14T16:19:00.000-06:00

Well, I made, and immediately broke, my decision on weekly posting frequencies. It's just been one of those two week periods!

The whole family is sick. My wife is getting over it, but still feels it. Our kids are somewhere in the middle of it, and I'm just starting the cycle. It's some kind of cold/flu crud. I couldn't ever tell the difference between the two. Lots of congestion, and runny noses in the kids, sore throats, itchy ears, sore muscles all over, and a general lack of sleep. Fun for the whole family!

Looking down the road, I have a business trip coming up next year. A trip to Buffalo, NY, in January! People keep telling me I'm crazy, and that I'll hate it as soon as I step outside into a real winter. I've got mixed emotions about the trip. I'm pretty excited, because it'll be my first real business trip anywhere. I also enjoy flying a lot, and relish any excuse to do so. However, I'm not looking forward to going through the current hassle they call airport security these days.

My wife may get to come with me, maybe. I'm excited about that! I think she will have a blast. Unfortunately, I'm not sure she will get to come. We can't afford the ticket (my company will cover the room, car rental, and my plane ticket. My wife is permitted to come, but we pay for her ticket), so we were going to use some frequent flyer miles to get one. Or so we thought. I've cycled back and forth countless times now, between getting excited because she can go, and being bummed out because I found out she can't. If she gets to come, I'm gonna be ecstatic. She's never flown, never seen snow, and never been to another state before. The idea of getting to share all those firsts with her, and to have her along for some of my own (first business trip, first time to NY, first time driving in snow!) gets me all warm and cuddly inside. I think we'll have to bring some of her special hot chocolate along.

Well, I mentioned in my last post about looking for a traffic stat service for here, and guess what Google rolls out! They call it Google Analytics. It (optionally) ties in with the their Adwords program, so you may see a small one popping up here in the future. Maybe. I might decide that even a small one is too corporate for this website. Not that I've figured out my voice, or my audience yet. Just thinking aloud.

Well, that covers it for the moment.

-- Madasi

Maintenance Issues

2005-10-25T01:21:00.000-05:00

Ok, My previous post was entered using the aforementioned e-mail posting system provided by Blogger. It works well enough that I will continue using, however the formatting comes out all screwy. I redid the previous post, but it came out with hard line breaks in weird places the first time.
I (finally) kept my promise, and removed the Haloscan commenting system, reverting to the built-in Blogger system instead. Anyone can post, you just have to pass a CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Program to Tell Computers and Humans Apart, in case you were curious), to help fight blog spam.
Speaking of blog spam, it was in the news the other day, being called splog. Come on, splog? I thought spam was a bad name. Personally I would have gone with blam! But, I'm afraid my wife is right, it sounds too cool.
At the moment, the website stats service I was using has been down for many, many months. It was really good, and I keep hoping it'll re-open soon, and be better than ever! However, I may have to begin the search for a replacement. The point being, for the moment, I have no way of knowing how many visitors are stopping by. (Or if visitors are stopping by.)
Well, the weather is chilly, which doesn't happen too often here in Texas, so I'm off to bed to snuggle with my wife. G'Night!

Posting Frequencies: Revisited

2005-10-24T16:39:00.000-05:00

So, I've decided to revisit the issue of posting frequencies. I think I need some more stability in scheduling my life. Instead of the current, get up & go to work, work, get off work, do stuff until I go to bed in time to get up in the morning for work.

As such, I'm beginning here, on my blog. And I'm doing it with this commitment: I will do everything in my power to make a minimum of one post every week, if at all feasible. (In other words, barring emergencies, or family tragedies.)

So, you heard it hear first, I'm going to try to be less of a perfectionist, and post more often, even if it's not quite "finished". One method of facilitating this, is that I'm trying out the ability to post by e-mailing a special address. This should make posting as simple as firing off an e-mail during my day. My logic is that if I make it easier to do, I'll be able to make myself when I have to, and it won't limit me if I want to, but am short on time.

So, until next time, Madasi

-- "I reject your reality, and substitute my own!" - Adam Savage, Mythbusters

Slow Down and Hear the Windchimes

2005-09-09T23:55:00.001-05:00

As I came in late tonight, I heard our windchimes. We have three sets near our front door, and I realized that I hadn't actually heard them in probably months. My wife and I used to just sit outside, and listen to them. Nowadays, I can apparently not notice them for months on end. So, I took this realization as my personal, time to slow down notice. Of course, slowing down is hard! I work full time, my wife is working contract work now, and is looking for a permanent job as well. We have two children, who are less than 2 years apart in age, and both less than 2 years old at the moment, so sleep at night is still not a guarantee around here. Plus, I'm pursuing a hobby, and doing some tech work for a theatre group. And we are currently house searching. And thinking about throwing a party for our friends. And ... you get the picture. I honestly don't remember when life became so hectic that my wife and I barely see each other during the day. But, I missed the windchimes, even if I didn't realize it at the time. So, I'll be trying to slow down occasionally, to savor being alive in general. After all, we only get one go around, so we better enjoy it while we can, right!

Rated PH for Parental Humor Only

2005-08-08T22:18:00.000-05:00

This one will be short. I was playing Cranium with my wife and her family, and we came upon a Gnilleps (spell a relatively easy word backwards in one try without writing it down first). The word was diaper. It's spelled repaid! I dunno exactly what the meaning in there is, but it cracked me up for quite a while. :)

B-Day

2005-07-30T19:34:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday was my birthday. And NASA's. And Sysadmin Appreciation Day. Which is cool because I like one, and I am the other. So happy days to everyone!

2005-07-25T19:35:00.000-05:00

This discovery was part of work today. No wonder the computer wouldn't wake up!

As Seen on /.

2005-07-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

A nice, refrigerant free air conditioning system intended for cars. Utilizes the Peltier effect. Sounds nifty, and while some people were doubting that it would save energy due to it's relative efficiency, remember that while it will increase the electrical demand, it will lower the other demand on the motor from the compressor. An even trade? I'm not qualified to say. But, it'd be nice not to have to go through another refrigerant recharge!

The Stupidest Lawsuit Since the World Began

2005-07-19T22:32:00.000-05:00

The Stupidest Lawsuit Since the World Began as declared by Groklaw, may very well be that. It's taking place in France, but there are no shortage of absurd examples taking place here in the United States of America. Look up almost anything involving the DMCA for starters.

Salon.com Books | "Shut up and act"

2005-07-16T09:05:00.000-05:00

Salon just posted an amusing interview with Bruce Campbell. (Sitting through ads required to read article.)

I'm not going to bother explaining who Bruce is, if you don't already know, go get a little culture in your life! I'll just say, I'm a fan! The article discusses, among other things, his new book and mentions some upcoming movies he is involved in. (Including an Evil Dead remake!)

Go. Read it. Now.

Optimus keyboard

2005-07-14T22:00:00.000-05:00

Now here is a keyboard that has me drooling. And hardware peripherals aren't exactly something that gets me started usually.
But the idea of a re-programmable keyboard, who's keys display exactly what they control in realtime sounds pretty cool! Now, I'm sure you'd have to do some work getting the proper pictures set up if you were creating a new key mapping for a program, but the reward might be worthwhile!
But, conversely, I can see this getting hijacked as well. One moment you are browsing the web normally, and the next your keyboard is displaying all kinds of NSFW images all over it! Very not cool! But, in the end, I'd buy one if it was available today. (Assuming infinite resources!)

2005-07-08T21:44:00.000-05:00

My new son and I in the rocking chair at the hospital.

Wehaddababyit'saboy!

2005-07-05T17:34:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the world, Ethan Lynn Silence. Born at 15:05 on 07/05/05, weighing in at 9lbs 1oz (0.8 oz technically) and measuring 20 inches.

Filler_ninja's Xanga Site

2005-07-02T23:54:00.000-05:00

So, someone I know just started up a blog of his very own, so I had to go support him! Check it out if you get a chance. He's young, and will make a name for himself as a game designer someday, so if you hurry, you can say you heard of him before he was big!

X days to go!

2005-06-29T22:18:00.000-05:00

Just wanted to say Hi, because I haven't been around for a while. We are waiting on my son to be born. His due date is July 6, but according to the doctor and the latest ultrasound, he'll be 9 - 10 lbs. if he is born then. My wife isn't exactly thrilled at the thought of giving birth to a whopping 10 pound baby! She is scheduled to be induced at 6AM on Tuesday the 5th, if she doesn't go into labor first. Which she is trying very hard to do. So, we are waiting, and hoping, and bugging her with "Are you having contractions now?". :)

Google Gulp

2005-04-01T22:37:00.000-06:00

Google's April Fool's joke was Google Gulp! Funny, clever, and geeky, in my opinion. But, my favorite part was the FAQ where Google pokes a little fun at itself, and it's critics, regarding such topics as the invite only G-mail scheme, and never taking things out of Beta. A nice look at how they think. Even if Google's search engine didn't obliterate the competition, I'd like them because of their corporate attitude towards things. I mean, who else has 20% projects?

A Note on Comments

2005-03-30T22:21:00.000-06:00

Not as if anyone ever comments (or reads, other than family), but I wanted to say something about comments. Early on, I switched over to a Haloscan commenting system. This was done primarily for the trackback features. Well, I find I don't use the trackback. It's a pain to use when posting, and I don't get linked to, so it's no value to me. And I prefer the look of Blogger's comment system anyway. And, Haloscan's last news update having been over a year ago doesn't help confidence much either. So, someday, when I have the spare time, I'll dig up my saved template, and modify things back to using the built-in commenting system. So, you know it's coming, just not exactly when. Note: Normally I'd link to Haloscan's website (link to the right somewhere), and to the post where I switched over in the first place, but it's late, I can barely type, this is my third post tonight, and I need to be in bed 30 minutes ago, so Good Night!

Markl's Thoughts: Shipping Software

2005-03-30T22:13:00.000-06:00

I was directed towards an interesting (to me) read the other day, Markl's Thoughts: Shipping Software. I especially like his thoughts on what shipping software means. As software evolves away from "the disks in the shrink wrapped box at (Best Buy/Fry's/Wal-mart)" and more to "just something I don't remember exactly where/how I got", the lines of shipping and delivery are rapidly blurred. As are others, such as what exactly the product you are paying for is. Many Linux distros are based on you paying for support, and access to their central database of software updates. Updates which, like the OS itself, can be freely gotten elsewhere, but which they neatly gather and package for you. You are paying for the convenience of one stop downloading, and integration into their installation tool, and often a little QC testing, or package customizing. Try quantifying a price on the value of that. I've often wondered how businesses will make money with Open Source Software. In my opinion, it is clearly superior to proprietary closed-source offering on many levels, but from a business plan perspective, it has many challenges to be faced. But, even business models and economic theories change over time, just ask Adam Smith!

On Posting Frequencies

2005-03-30T22:09:00.000-06:00

Well, when I started, I hoped to post every week minimum. However, as my track record shows, I'm doing good to hit once a month. Explanation: I'm not on my home computer much. Short Version: I suck at time management, and have so much to do when I get home from work (and do so little), that play on the computer is lucky to happen once a month. (I'm actually finding myself completely un-interested in computer projects that 2 years ago I would have pulled an all-nighter just to play with. I'm de-geeking.)I haven't played a computer game in months, and even then I couldn't make an hour of playtime in a sitting without becoming utterly bored. Long Version: Work keeps me swamped from clock-in to clock-out. And I stress out about it, because I always feel I should be getting things done faster then I am, and worry my bosses feel the same way. Home keeps me stressed for a million reasons, and I keep me stressed because I always just want to relax form work when I get home, eat and watch a movie with my wife, and then it's late and time to go to bed to get up late in the morning, still tired. I never do much around home. And a little wouldn't cut it, when I have a daughter who actively undoes things around home! :) So, I'm stressed all the time, even when I shouldn't be. And things I enjoy fall by the wayside, like reading e-mail & blogging, even getting on the computer. Not that long ago, I probably spent over 70% of my waking hours at a computer. A few years before that, and I'd bet over 90% of my waking free-time was spent at one. Now, I use one for work, and get on my home computer sometimes once a week for 70 minutes, if that. Not even enough to keep current with e-mail, much less begin to catch up on news, or anything else. Heck, I don't even answer my cell phone anymore (and it's the only phone I have, no home phone.) So, I'm still here, plodding away, and I'll try to keep writing, but it'll always be a lot less than I want, and more than I can spare time.

Movie Thoughts & I Weigh 321 lbs.

2005-03-08T23:40:00.000-06:00

So, yesterday I saw part of Super Size Me. Now, this is a movie that I most likely would not have watched on my own. Documentaries are really not my thing. But, we went to a friend's house, and they were watching it, so I saw about half of it. So, in short, I had a hypochondriac's response. For those who don't know, I'm considerably over-weight, and have been for a long time. So, after seeing part of the 'movie', I had the reaction of, "Hey, maybe that is part of my problem!". No, I'm not going to sue Mc Donald's. Regardless of whether you think they are at fault, simply negligible, or completely responsible, it is still your choice to eat there. What caught my attention specifically was the descriptions of becoming addicted to the food. At one point, he is describing how eating it makes him feel better right away, and one of the doctors (or some professional, I only saw part of it) tells him it sounds like he has become addicted. At another point, a doctor is talking about it, and gives an example using a drug used to detoxify drug overdoses, saying the same drug causes people to lose interest in the food, implying it's more than a hunger satisfaction at play. He also says that the cheese on the burger is like opiates to your body, and when combined with a sugary, caffeinated soda, is a definite recipe for addiction. However, I'd like to see some data to back up some of these claims. I've been addicted to caffeine before, and gone through withdrawals from it. And, if I think about it, I crave a greasy, cheesy hamburger with fries and a coke, far more often than any other type of food, even my favorites. So, I don't think it's a stretch to say I might be addicted. The information from calling the nutritionists was a little more extreme than I personally would have predicted. The vast majority (I don't remember the percentage, watch the movie if you care that much) recommended eating fast food (not just Mc Donald's, but fast food in general) never, or no more than once a month at most. MY wife and I eat fast food very often because it is cheap and fast. We are on a tight budget, but don't always have time to cook, so we choose fast food. Apparently, most nutritionists would tell me that is a huge problem. And, maybe, that is a major thing affecting my health and weight. So, I'm going to try and cut back on fast food and sodas as well. It'll be hard. They still sound good, and I'm not overflowing with willpower. However, they don't ever taste quite as good as I imagine they will beforehand. So, if I can remind myself why I made this decision whenever I start to doubt it, I might make some progress. So, what better way than to make it public? As of today, March 08, 2005 I weigh in at about 321 lbs. on our bathroom scale. Since I'm 6' (about, been even longer since I measured that), according to some sources I should be between 164 lbs. and 188 lbs. Now, I'm not going to be unrealistic about it, and expect to be there within a year. That's around 140 lbs to lose, or another person basically. If I can steadily lose at least 1 - 2 lbs. a month, I'll know I'm at least making some progress. Because, although I don't get weighed often, I do know it wasn't steady, but was still climbing at my last doctor's visit. So, holding steady would be an improvement, and going down, even a tiny bit, every month, will mean progress in the right direction!

Comparisons

2005-02-22T22:08:00.000-06:00

I was talking to my mother the other weekend, and decided to ask her some questions about my grandfather. I didn't know him real well, as he died while I was young, but I do have a few memories of him. One of the things I asked her was what different jobs he had held, as I knew it was a long list. She came up with over 21 different occupations he had held at some point while she was growing up. And, the vast majority were entrepreneurial in some manner. A few things struck me, both similarities and differences. For one thing, he hated working for someone else. He would do it for a while, but once he saw a better way to do something, if they didn't listen, it wasn't long until he left. He wasn't arrogant, but he was extremely mechanically inclined, and a natural problem solver. I find I have some of the same tendencies. Once I see a (in my opinion), better way to do something, it bugs me to no end if my suggestion gets ignored. I'm not the mechanical genius he was (he designed, built, and sold his own well drilling rigs for a while, quite successfully), but you don't have to work long before you find someone doing something, who obviously knows less about it than you do. However, the flip side is, he did things on his own. He ran a drive-in movie theater, ran a gas station, was his own boss. Me, I might think about it, but then I'd start wondering what permits I'd need, how much it would cost, how to get started, if it would work, and I'd never act on it. He did things, I think about doing things. And, that's one thing I'd ask him about if I could, how to be more like him. Did he ignore the permits and do it anyway (he did live mostly in really small towns), or did he know something about obtaining them too? Or did he simply set about learning whatever he didn't know that stood between him and his objective? I know it wasn't an education difference, as he didn't get past 5th grade, and well, I did. Or maybe that is part of the difference. Maybe he had to work harder to overcome that (not that it was a huge handicap back then), and that drive is what empowered him. I don't know. But, I do know I admire him, even if I barely knew him.

GMail

2005-02-02T12:44:00.000-06:00

Well, looks like Google is expanding Gmail quite a bit more. I just noticed that my number of available invites jumped from 6 to 50. So, if you somehow don't already have a Gmail account, now's the time to ask for one. I'm overflowing with invitations, and I imagine this is true for most, if not all, other Gmail users. And, just in case you don't know what I'm yammering about, Gmail is the free web based e-mail service offered by Google, currently on a "by invitation only" beta test. It offers 1GB (or 1,000MB if you prefer (and yes I know that deep down at heart, it's 1,024MB, let's not confuse people ok?)) of storage for your e-mail and attachments, which at it's launch caused many other providers to scurry and vastly increase the size of their provided storage space as well. (The quickness of which implies that it was a fairly trivial change, there was just no incentive to offer increased storage space to their customers before.) Gmail also offers free POP3 access, so it's useful even if you hate webmail. (Which I previously did, but I find Gmail is far nicer.) And, when using it's webmail interface, Gmail has quite a few innovations which make it very nice indeed. But, the tour explains them far better than I could. Yes, Gmail does have it's detractors. Usually either due to the ads or the longtime storage and search capabilities. The ads are far less annoying than on other services I've used. They are text ads, no flashing banners, they are relevant to the subject of the e-mail conversation that is on screen, and since they are on the side, not the top, I honestly find them to be really subtle. (As in ignorable without any effort.) As for the storage and searching arguments, (sometimes combined with complaints about the e-mails being read to generate the ads), well they don't bother me. Bots read the e-mail, not people. They are suprisingly accurate at choosing corresponding ads (or sometimes just related links. It's like searching without having to tell the search engine what you are looking for.), but not perfect. Once you see some of the same word, different meaning ads you'll quickly realize that there is no human behind them. My biggest question is why pick on Google for this? They are doing minimally invasive automated word recognition on e-mails that aren't exactly encrypted in the first place. There are far scarier, and almost never mentioned, examples of real time data monitoring out there. Primarily, credit card companies, and their fraud prevention. Anyway, my point was, I've got invites just on the rare off chance that you haven't been invited already, and want one.

Hooray!

2005-02-01T14:14:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note to say that Bun-Bun is back, and he's a pirate! ARR!!! If you've no idea what I'm talking about, Sluggy Freelance is a web comic that is going on 7 or 8 years now (8 years in August), with great story arcs with plot points being tied up sometimes years later, lots of character development. My wife was afraid of it, thinking it was just another nerd thing until I picked up a few of the "dead tree" editions at Linucon last year. Being bored at the con, she started reading them, and was quickly forced to admit that yes, it's funny, and no, not just to nerds! She is now thouroghly addicted, and plodding her way through the archives to get caught up! (Seven years is a lot of back story!)

Intuit Up to Shadowy Business Practices

2005-01-31T01:14:00.000-06:00

Well, I realize this is quite a few BoingBoing links lately. The humor is, I don't read BoingBoing, I've only seen these posts from other sources. In the case of this post regarding Intuit, and their recent tricks (I'm sorry, business practices) involving Quicken, that wildly popular personal finance software program, I originally saw it on Slashdot. Basically, Intuit has disabled the online features, such as downloading your bank statements, and paying your bills, in older version of Quicken. Now, as one poster on Slashdot, very inarticulately put it, these are functions that could/should be possible directly between the software and the bank, without using Intuit as a middleman for any reason. So, it's not like these old version are costing them money each time they use these particular features. (Or if they are, it's only because Intuit wants it that way, since it isn't necessary to achieve the desired functionality.) So, the only reason that comes to mind right away is that they want cash flow from upgrades. Then there's the newly added note about Intuit sticking up the financial institutions for huge fees to support the new software as well. They are doing this, partially by disabling support for their own file format. Sounds like a well planned 1-2 punch. Force the users to use the new software, then force the banks to support the new software, which all their users just recently switched to. And, since Moneydance costs money, I guess it's time to break out my Linux box and start learning GnuCash!

My Destined Eye Color!

2005-01-30T13:57:00.000-06:00

I likes this quiz. And the picture it comes with is pretty cool to. I always wanted to have blue anime hair as well. :)
Your eye color is dark blue. You rely on your logic
solely, and may have more mature interests than
many of your friends and family your age. You
can sometimes also be interverted and lonely
from a lack of understanding with people, and
can be rather frustrated with some types of
folke. Some may describe you as cold and
distant, and you are honest with how you feel
about things.

What Color Eyes Should You Have? ( With Anime Pictures ^-^ )
brought to you by Quizilla

Sysadmin.isSmart == false;

2005-01-29T01:00:00.000-06:00

Here's a link to a story that makes me think. Short version: Step 1) Some Guy uses a non-mainstream browser to try and donate to a tsunami relief fund website run by BT (British Telecom). Step 2) Moronic Sysadmin mis-reads the access logs and decides it is a hacking attempt. Step 3) M. Sysadmin denies access to S. Guy, and reports the "attempted hacking" to the police. Step 4) Almost a month later, police bust in (SWAT style according to some sources) and arrest S. Guy! Observation 1) At least America isn't the only place in the world this could happen. That's not really a good thing, just a misery loves company type thing. Observation 2) Some might say the sysadmin was merely under-educated, or shouldn't be expected to know what such an ancient, text-only, browser like Lynx is. My responses follow: 1) He's getting paid for his technical knowledge, so I would expect familiarity with the logs. And, if he's worth his paycheck, I would demand better behavior in response to something he doesn't know. 2) Does he really call the police at every odd log entry? I mean seriously, boy crying wolf, not to mention technical inaptitude here. But, the reasons it makes me think have to do with a previous brush with Moronic Sysadmins. I was in high school, I had a friend majoring in CS at college. I visited him. At this college, the school's IT department and the CS division fought horribly, because the CS division believed (rightly) that IT was inept. Therefore, CS ran their own separate computer network, which ticked IT off greatly. Anyway, the wiring closet in this building was in the CS computer lab, across the hall from IT. One day, while I was visiting, IT left it unlocked. CS majors are more than just curious, they often actively seek out trouble. And knowing that the closet belonged to IT, I can guarantee somebody tried the knob at least once during every day. So, it was found to be unlocked. Someone got bored, and unplugged some cables. Fiber optic wires I believe, probably linking the rest of the campus to this building. IT eventually found out, and immediately decided that the door's lock must have been picked. (It couldn't have been left unlocked of course.) They then proceeded to pull the access log from the CS lab's door's electronic lock, since the event happened after normal hours, so someone with access had to have opened the lab. They also managed to read the logs wrong, decided the event happened about a day before (or after, I'm not sure) it actually did, and thus looked at the wrong time from the access logs, and tried to implicate the wrong student. In the end, CS found out what happened, and told IT, we know be we won't tell you, we will handle it internally. IT forever held a grudge against who they thought did it, and the feud continued. So, why can inept people get and keep jobs when there are plenty of genuinely good computer people out there without a job? (This isn't a personal rant, I've got a good job, and it isn't doing IT or CS type work.) Of course, this question broadens to almost any type of job. Where do PHBs (Pointy Haired Bosses, it's a Dilbert thing!) come from? Oh well, that's enough ranting and reminiscing outta me.

Wall Drug

2005-01-24T23:57:00.000-06:00

As if going there wasn't enough, you can now visit Wall Drug online! Explanation: My parents told me about Wall Drug as I was growing up. It's a place, fairly well advertised as you get near it. Apparently it has (or had, don't know if they are still there) teaser signs, telling you how far to Wall Drug, starting hundreds of miles away. And then, once you see a couple signs, you inevitably start seeing bumper stickers proclaiming that they have stopped at Wall Drug. And, eventually, you want to say that you too have been to the great place that must be Wall Drug! After all, it's advertised so far away, and it has famous ice water! And it must be good for so many people to put the bumper sticker on their car! And you begin to get excited as the miles left to Wall Drug start to fall in number! And soon, you can't wait, because it's only a few miles left! And, finally, eventually, thankfully, you arrive at Wall Drug! And you find . . . a store. And not much else. Sure, it's not your everyday gas station or Wal-mart, but it's not exactly a genuine tourist attraction either. And the water, well it's cold, but nothing special. And before you go, you grab a bumper sticker proclaiming that you too have been to Wall Drug. After all, if you got tricked into it, then so should someone else. Right? Seriously, I'm not bashing Wall Drug. It's a great example of creative advertising/marketing, and built up expectations not quite being fulfilled. And, honestly, I'm not really sure if I too have been to Wall Drug. If I have been, I was too young to remember it well. It is however a fond childhood memory, hearing my parents talk about it, and compare other tourist traps we ended up at with it. I enjoyed the trips our family took together when I was younger, and hope to share similar experiences with my family some day. Edit: Well, apparently the signs used to be everywhere in the US and other countries as well. Don't just take my word for it!

Explanations

2005-01-17T01:39:00.000-06:00

I took a little heat for mentioning that I was considering getting a second job, specifically for mentioning it along with the fact that my wife didn't know about it yet. So, I figured I'd explain briefly. I wasn't attempting to hide anything from her. After all, she is aware of the existence of this blog, so I must assume she may read anything I write. The only reason I hadn't mentioned it to her was simple, follow-through. I have quite a few ideas. Some of which are even worthy of some serious consideration. However, very very few of them ever live to see the light of day, and even fewer reach completion. So, I learned a long time ago that I tend to get excited about my new idea, and mention it to somebody, and then move on, either abandoning it altogether, or post-poning it indefinitely. Then, at some point they ask me about it, fully expecting me to have finished it, and I have to admit I've basically forgotten about it. And so, through these experiences, I have learned to only speak of my ideas after I've begun implementing them, unless absolutely necessary to get feedback from people beforehand. I still eat my words frequently, but not nearly as often as I almost tell someone, then decide to wait and see what I do first. So, while I don't mind mentioning here that I am considering an idea, I prefer not to mention it to her until I've already written the letter and gotten the addresses to send it to. Besides, we might be able to make it without my getting a second job. My wife did have to quit hers though. So, we are going through some rough times. But, I have faith that we will make it through.

Copyleft Commies

2005-01-15T23:20:00.000-06:00

As seen on Boing Boing over a week ago, Bill Gates practically called anyone looking to reform property rights or patents and copyrights, a communist. Yes, the dreaded C word, Communists! Now, I won't go into why this was a slander, or why it's a travesty to reduce this to an insult to be used when name calling. No, I'll talk about what I find funny in the matter, the geek reaction. If you are walking down the street, and suddenly call someone a commie, what do you think they would do? Well, it appears if they are a geek, they would react with, "That's a great idea, let me whip up some graphics. Here, wanna buy a T-shirt with a Commie logo on it?" T-shirts for sell, with copyleft commie logos, here and here.

Bittersweet Moments

2005-01-06T22:40:00.000-06:00

Well, an out of date website (blog or otherwise) tends to be an un-interesting website. So, with that in mind, I'll torture you with one of those totally personal entries that not even your family members will want to read.
Finding out we were pregnant again was my bittersweet moment. We have a daughter already, and she is, of course, the light of my life. She brings joy into our household daily, and makes me curse the necessity of going to work, and not seeing her grow up. But then, anybody with children knows what I'm talking about already. However, finding out that another child is on the way made us stop and think. First we wondered if it was too soon. After all, our first daughter will only be 18 months when this baby is born. Family tended to heavily voice their opinion that it was too soon. However, friends were on both sides of the issue, with some advising to have all our children as close together as possible. This, however, is obviously a moot point because the baby is already on the way. (Train ... left ... station ... blah, you get the point!) No, my main cause for concern was money. When our daughter was born,we were both working crap jobs. (For the same company, no less.) And, because of timing and minor pregnancy complications, we had to pay the deductible twice. Or, more accurately, we are still trying to pay off those bills. Shortly after finding out we were pregnant the first time, we were told by a nurse, who helped people fill out government paperwork, that we made too much to qualify for any government assistance, so we never applied. Later, we found out that we would in fact have been eligible for Medicaid, and it would have paid it all, but by then it was too late. As things stand now, we've moved more than 5 times in the last two years. I now have my first good job. My wife has a crappy job, and is actively looking for a better one, with no luck. We now know we make too much for any government assistance, as we just went rounds with a caseworker about this. (If things keep up, there may be a rant coming up about the incompetence we have dealt with there!) So, right now, ends are meeting, barely. We both get paid weekly, and most weeks we have less than $5 in the bank on Friday, before we deposit our paychecks. We make enough to get by, on paper. However, neither of us have any experience at truly budgeting, or living on one. So, now that we have another baby coming up, I need to get insurance coverage for my family through my job. (Didn't have it before because we were on Medicaid through this month, residual from the period we weren't working. We don't want to be taking tax money to live, it's actually rather embarrassing to my pride, however, at the time it was the only way to put food on the table.) So, that's about $300 per month out of my check, plus a $2000 deductible come delivery time. Just the monthly premium will stop the ends from meeting, and I have no idea where the deductible will be coming from. In addition to that, my wife's job has begun cutting back her hours, and will probably keep whittling away at them. And, as you can see from that bank balance I quoted, we need every penny she was making to begin with. So, we are looking at scenarios. She doesn't know it yet, but I'm toying with the idea of a part-time second job. Maybe at a small computer shop, or the local cyber cafe thingy. (Hey, I'm a nerd, it's what I know best.) We are talking about dropping cable, cell phones, and yes, blasphemy, internet access. We don't see many movies these days anyway, because our daughter won't sit through them. And television sucks all our time away without giving anything back. So, that's the bitter in my bittersweet. But, I don't think I'd change it if I could. I've found life throws difficult things your way, but that in the end, if you respond properly, good things can, and will, come out of it. That's how I met my wife. But, that's another long boring (for you) entry.

Alton Brown Goodness!

2005-01-04T13:07:00.000-06:00

Alton Brown is coming to Austin on January 30 at 3:00 PM at Book People! Who is Alton Brown? The coolest chef on the Food Network, that's who! He is unconventional in style and tons of fun to watch. And, most importantly, he explains the science behind cooking, thus taking the voodoo out of it. (Don't believe that people consider cooking to be part magic, or at the very least, luck? Ask how to get a souffle or divinity to come out every time and see what type of answers you get!) He also produces the show himself, reportedly even doing all the edits in each episode. Obviously, I'm looking forward to this! Just look at the pictures from the last time he was there. Definitely better than your average booksigning, no? Now, I just gotta grab some copies of his books to get signed, and talk my wife into letting me go!

Dating Games

2005-01-03T10:31:00.000-06:00

Fear of this type of situation would be among the reasons that no force on earth could have forced me onto a blind date, back when I was eligible. I'm not sure if it would be better or worse is she meant it. Thankfully, I'm married, and dating is no longer something I have to worry about. (Of course, being a reclusive geek, I never had to worry about it much!)

Gotta Get My Stuff Done

2005-01-03T01:20:00.000-06:00

Wow, I've definately had days like this! I kept waiting for him to say, so I drew this drawing to explain why I didn't get my stuff done!
Great little animation, and I'm not sure what the style is, with how you kinda see the hand drawing it, sometimes. Interesting effect, in my opinion. Now, I gotta get my sleeping done, my wife commands it!

Like I'll need it!

2005-01-02T23:57:00.000-06:00

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog. I'm new to the blogging world, but I hear having trackback capability is a good thing, and I heard Haloscan was one place to get it for a Blogger/Blogspot site. However, it appears I have to take their comment system to get the trackback functionality. Time, and your feedback, will determine if it stays or goes.

Light!

2005-01-01T23:27:00.000-06:00

And thus, un-announced, un-noticed, and largely un-needed, YAUB (Yet Another Useless Blog) is born into this world. This will be the new home for what was previously Project Darlence, which was another never-visited web-site I once created, which is now completely outdated. It will also be the resting place for several ideas which have existed only in my head up until now. And, if I get really bored (and sadistic!), possible photos of my children. [Evil Grin] --Madasi