April 2006

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Sunday Thoughts and Memories

April 30, 2006 in Linux, News, Subterfuge, Weblogs | No comments

Often Sundays arrive on my doorstep and its a relaxing kind of day.  The weather here in the SF Bay area has not been nice until recently.  But now?  Good grief!!  Its in the 70s and clear skies.  Beer drinking weather on the back porch I declare.  Many of the Sundays I spend here I try not to engage in meaningful work exercises because everyone needs a day to not do that and I often spend 6 days per week engaged.  Today my daughter had the desire to go to Red Lobster for lunch so off we went.  She likes the Ultimate Feast which is enough food for a hungry adult; but she is 7 and can eat all of it as well.  The waiter just watched in amazement and appreciation.  I like to watch her eat as well.  As kids can be exact opposites, our son is very picky and will not eat things that seem different, not crunchy.  Its a challenge to do a Sunday dinner out with him since many of the restaurants we would go to normally are restricted or even off-limits.

I often spent part of the day wondering over how APM and ACPI either work or don’t work on Linux.  On desktops and servers we really don’t care; but a laptop is a “portable computer”.  That means it can travel to new places and easily start working again.  I have to say on Linux this is still a bit challenging.  On newer laptops I’ve used like the IBM Thinkpad T40, ACPI works like a charm.  But my current crop of Pentuin III 1.1 ghz laptops are not so lucky.  The Dell Inspiron 4100 will not do ACPI and the Thinkpad T23 will not do APM.  So part of this morning was spent trying to get APM on Fedora Core 5 to actually suspend the laptop when I closed the lid.  The fault turned out to be in the DRI module.  I removed that from loading in my xorg.conf file and all was working again.  But then I muddled with the bios settings.

Warning, Warning!!

Do not do that if you really want to get yet another thing working that may rely on certain bios settings.

Next I went back to looking at what “tags” or categories I selected on this weblog entry.  Not enough since I was talking this and that.  I perhaps need a “everything else” category on Wordpress.  I can use that one when my ideas do not link to any of the 7 or 8 I currently own up to.  But really who really cares if I post to any categories?  I used to think categories were important, but…  WAIT!  Now I need to add another category.  Weblogs!

Okay…  I’ll resist the temptation to post anything on current events, uncategorized, or views or anthropology this time.  Man… This owning a weblog is shure difficult.  Categories pin me down too much I think.  I tend to shift each time across my spectrum.  Perhaps I’ll select the categories after I write my blogpost.  How do you guys do it?  Select a category first?  Then read it later and say… WTF was I thinking?

Anyways, this one is all done for now.  I won’t even discuss edting or updating it since the  would need to add more “tags”.  I have resisted the temptation to use Technorati Tags since I don’t view this blog as contributing much to the galactic whole.  Its more my repressed thoughts, subterfuges, and whatever the Hell else I decide to call it.

Going toward the Change

April 29, 2006 in Current Events | No comments

Every so often, we have to take on change.  Change is one of those things that we cannot really avoid.  Even when we decide not to embrace it; it comes up on us when we’re not looking and prompts us with a possible outcome.  I was watching this show last night on NGEO and it was discussing the relative age of early hominid adaptation in Africa being from 4 to 6 million years ago.  One of the determining characteristics was bipedalism.  Get this.  These guys found only about 20 percent of the skeleton and were able to do amazing science thanks to modern medical scanning technology.  Peering inside bone mass, looking at methods of muscular wear, looking at the mass of bone and how its formed.  Johanson was just an amazing guy and told this story of finding Lucy as he was walking to a river to take a swim.  Its like the most serendipitious of discoveries made at the most unlikely of moments.

Anyways, I started thinking about how our perceptions of life have changed since we learned how ancient mankind truly is, what came before it, and what will possible come after.  We are truly a smallish dot when you consider geologic time.  But we are a dot of meaning I believe.  Maybe in the millenia to come we won’t be thought of with much fanfare because others will come that will fix global warming, environmental pollution, political misconsideration.  But still we have produced amazing things in our little lives.

At some point, we all face the same riveting changes and directional adjustments.  I have a few friends that have been there.  I believe we men are really not as well adjusted to change as women.  Women seem to get it.  They understand much more of the human condition then we faulty males with our fragile egos.  But that’s okay.  As the Byrds said, “for everything there is a season”.  Or something like that.

Don’t worry.  Music is a universal and since it is it talks about the other universals.  Ones like change.

Another few days makes a week

April 27, 2006 in Linux | No comments

It seems I am forever behind in my efforts to actually write a blogpost about somethng of value. Perhaps I need to step back a bit and do the much vaunted “this blog is gonna go on hiatus” thing. Work is really getting to an interest level and since I now have 6 different people reporting to me on a daily basis, I am kinda in “run around” mode.

I have made a few changes here and there. One is I decided I needed a Linux distribution as a desktop which is “easy”. I love Debian truly and utterly but Ubuntu needs updating and doing debian pure takes me some work. I went to Fedora Core 5 for a few reasons. One is excellent hardware support and it also runs well on this old stuff I got. Second is yum. Yum is nice. It does a job of maintaining a nice update on the Fedora systems I own and run.

I’ve been using JblogEditor and Performancing to do blogging in Linux of late and its nice! Take a look at either.

This weekend I am planning a nice sojourn to the land of Blog. Stay tuned!

Seems I cannot blog every day now

April 23, 2006 in Weblogs | No comments

Try as I might, I am not able to do a daily blogpost any longer. Most days I am working about 12 hours or so each day and the weekends, I try to spend away from the regular stuff. Truth be told, I work at least one each weekend day as well.

Its not a lack of desire on my part for sure. I have the desire to post something on a daily basis; but I think what I will need to do is “bank my daily ramblings” and then do compilation post every so often of them. Looks like I will get down to every other day or even less. When I look at my historical postings, I managed every day to post a entry. Perhaps we all go through the yin and yang of posting. At some points, I felt driven to blog, to post, to explore.

There is no way I am gonna stop because my weblog is that bit of me that lets me move around my current boundaries, find things to wonder about and wander around, and finally play the wordsmith at building my posts.

Stand by and I’m gonna try to make some changes in saving drafts of my ramblings and thoughts.

Proxemics, space, time; a continuum

April 18, 2006 in Anthropology | No comments

I resisted writing yet another anthropology blogpost for awhile because I guess I was gathering up some stuff that I think of on occasion. This post takes me back to a class in non-verbal communications I took as a graduate student in anthropology. We had an interesting discussion one afternoon which somehow foreshadowed work I would be doing in Mojave Desert archeology. Our professor asked us if we had ever considered how people were arranged around a fire pit and the space which each person demanded or needed. It dawned on me there was some measurement and as I went through many more fires in the middle of nowhere; it dawned on me slowly but surely that people expect a spatial dynamic. Proxemics is therefore defined as,

The study of the cultural, behavioral, and sociological aspects of spatial distances between individuals.

Interesting few words of description and definition. Well, as I moved onward and in different directions, I ended up studying prehistoric hearth systems over on Edwards AFB, CA. At the time I got interested, I had not yet tied the cosmic knot between that class in proxemics and what I was seeing in the desert firepits. Then one interesting day, I happened to be talking with a friend that was a Physical Anthropologist. Theo was telling me about how other cultures order themselves spatially in burial pits. Whammo! The idea of dual recognition hit me. Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to measure the distance people observed in modern human behavior around firepits, add more people and see how much the hearth had to grow. My working hypothesis then was that the firepits were dynamics of use over time and they simply grew because the old rocks lining them became busted up. What if instead I was seeing a concomitant rise in use instead? What if more people were gathering at one time over a shorter period of time instead of long-term chronological use? What could I imply then about prehistoric population dynamics in the desert? The thought propelled me to suggest that we do some testing. I wanted to dig more hearths on larger prehistoric sites and then measure the differences and perhaps not even dig but get some measurements of the size of firepits across a range of sites in the so-called desert bottom.

Unfortunately, I did not get to finish due to changes in employment. I shelved the ideas and traveled to work all over the Southwest and the Plains and the American west doing archeological work with an engineering company for the next years.

Finally, today I was thinking about writing a blog entry and it dawned on me that the final connection was made. I was observing in the office how people position themselves when talking. The full connection was made and thus a blogpost was made. Fires are social, technological, physical, and other phenomena; but I think now that we build them to bond ourselves and have either growth over time or more popularity over space. People grow the hearths to respect those proxemics.

I’ve never gone back but the ideas still flow of the connections of things. As I’ve noted before, my wife tends to think the archeologist in me will never get removed even if I have been removed from it. There is still too much to wonder about and wander through and blog about. Fires are inter-dimensional social, ideological, and technological marvels. How we use them, how we position ourselves to use them, what they mean; are still intriguing to me. Enough to build my ritual fire downstairs this evening with a fireplace and watch the yellow and red lick against the fireplace grate.

Fedora Core 5 Impressions

April 16, 2006 in Linux | No comments

Since I started tracking Linux distributions, I’ve been interested in trying a few and sundry.

Getting back

April 12, 2006 in News | No comments

Its taken me a few days to actually feel like I’m back. After my flight on Sunday, Monday at work was kinda wierd. The clock seemed to dance some mad dance of time not right. I did not get home until almost midnight and then I was awakened every few hours. I shoulda stayed up, drank a beer, etc.

Now I am back, I’m tending to work and life issues. Work is very challenging these days for me and sometimes/most times the days are simply not long enough to get done the things I need. Often email awaits my pleasure in the evenings as well as all day long.

This is not a long blog as I count the words; but I think by tomorrow the pressure will build up, the levels will set in, and I’ll blog a thing. Blogging a thing usually for me means I consider a single thing but I know there will be more. Its that stream of consciousness thing that runs through the phases and moments. Wait and see.

Travel Day today

April 9, 2006 in Current Events | 1 comment

Today is my last day out in Boston and I have to say that I want to come back. I did the Boston Duck Tour yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed the places of historic, architectural, and other merit. Truly Boston is a “city of firsts”. I think I need a week out here with family to really capture all the stuff that is here to do and see. It made me think of other places I have gone that I want a second try at. Here goes in no appreciable order of priority:

  • Grand Canyon - a truly wonderful and unique place that all must see. A few years ago I walked up to it for the very first time and had a basic religious, psychological, and social feeling. It truly was Grand and it really made a statement on the power of nature. I must return and do the helicopter tour or at least stand on the rim and silently observe.
  • Amarillo, Texas - why? Well, my wife and I spent some happy years there as both of us were doing school. Amarillo occupies an interesting spot in Texas (Panhandle) and its a mix of cow town, night life, and geologic changes. The Llano Estacado ends before this or right there. The beauty of the Llano is that one could sit on the porch in New Mexico and watch storms roll and roil miles away. The sky would darken, thunder and lightening would flash and it was a grand vista of sound and beauty.
  • The state of Oregon - the entire state? Yes. Why? My wife and I went on a multiple thousand of mile road tour of Oregon years ago. We started in Portland and ended up driving south down the coast to Bandon and then inland to Bend and on to Burns. You can see the incredible vista of coastline, forests, mountains, and the mighty Great Basin Desert.
  • The Four Corners of the US - Yes all four states and all the archeological, biological, and ecological beauty and treasure that encompasses. Far too beautiful and varied to not go back to.

I know there are others but perhaps the list of places I want to get back to gives the gentle reader an idea of the things I value in my life. The geology and geography and union of both in some cases are breathtaking. Some cities I have not listed like Austin, Texas which have such a different reach and I always have loved the Mojave Desert. Another contender is the entire route of the PCH but especially around San Simeon. There are other places which have struck me or made me think. Many of them are the private places that rule my soul or being. We all have a bit of both. Its our internal geology and geography. That list remains private and not open for review.

End of Linuxworld Boston

April 7, 2006 in Linux | No comments

Its the Friday morning after a 3 day show in Boston. Its nice today to not have a show to rush off to, to stand on my feet and be uncomfortable in clothing I positively hate, and to have be polite. I am usually a polite, nice, and reasonable guy; but the levels of politeness often raise to a abnormal and unreal high during a tradeshow. I do have a simple request for IDG.

Please move the show back to New York!

Its not that Boston is terrible, evil, or anything. Its just that more exhibitors of the BIG kind went to New York and they always go to the SF show. The guys I counted as missing were IBM, Sun, and HP. I bet a lot of the smaller startups out on the “left coast” are also MIA.

My overall feeling about the show is that its smaller here in Boston. Perhaps one could call it more personal; but in reality the crowds were less, the sheer number of exhibitors were less, and buzz about new stuff was less. Since the LWE is truly a corporate and enterprise play these days, at least put the show in its true venue guys. It belongs in places where it can do that mission. At least the (dot) orgs were not on a separate floor this year in Boston. But at the end of the show, I was talking with a Senior manager of Compaq. No, not HP. Those guys don’t admit to being part of HP. To them HP is another thing to struggle through. He applauded the existance of the (dot) orgs but we both agreed they should be in the exact center of the show floor and not on the end. Without those guys, where would Linux actually be? We assuredly need all the corporate interest; but things are powered by the community. So, my message to IDG for Linuxworld SF is to do the right thing with the orgs.

Another thing that will happen this year yet again at the SF show is the glorious Linuxcare Labs reunion lunch that we have each year. I manage to find a new super secret guest each year and I have a few months yet to plan the lunch for this year. The main thing at the lunch is reveling in the years past and talking with good old friends and ex co-workers about those amazing, fun, and crazed days when we started a business unit at this starcrossed entity called Linuxcare. I think people that have never started a business unit have a romantic belief it just springs up like a flower in fast forward mode in well-tilled soil. Not so. It takes watering, time, sun, some care. It also takes a fair amount of effort to birth a thing.

In my current work situation I have also been asked to birth a few things like a new combined entity. I’m surprised that most people believe since a person of authority proclaimed that the groups combined to form a new entity that all of the background BS is just taken care of by the person’s proclamation and we are ready to go tackle real-world problems. There are the core things around how the group will function, operate, how organization works, etc. How we get something called a “budget”. Anyways, those are all my concerns and I don’t really mean to trot them out to my folks; but I get a bit pissed off when people believe things just happen with little or no effort on anyone’s part.

Anyways, closing out the show thing and not varying too far from the post; I think the LWE Boston was not a failure. Its never a failure when I get to do a new thing like volunteer to work with the FSG and LSB and get a thing that I’m personally excited about doing. I also met up with a few old friends which was very nice. I do hope that IDG in all its glory rethinks a few things. But the current bet is that they won’t. They don’t seem to be strong on the thinking side.

Linuxworld Expo Boston Updates and Report

April 5, 2006 in Linux | No comments

I’ve been here in Boston for 2 days now with one expo day left and I have been a secret reporter. Not like the official press but instead watching from a company booth, secretly watching the movements of people and goodies. Its a fact that IBM, HP, and Sun are not here. The show floor is smallish and the contacts one can do are likewise smaller. I have met up with a few friends that have taken me back and met with a few interesting players in areas I find interesting and exciting like Project (dot) Net and a SugarCRM.

I don’t personally think that the show should remain in Boston. It should move back to New York because the shows there were more exciting, attended, fun. More big and small attendees. The dot orgs had some friends from the FSG days for me and I thank Ian and others for agreeing to let me participate and contribute as a community effort on the LSB. I’m gonna start doing volunteer work with the LSB/FSG starting next week and I’m really excited to be doing some work with community value. The work areas I have agreed to contribute and deliver are very challenging to me and I cannot wait to get started.

Tonite I went to a reception at the convention center with AFT and met a variety of people which is always fun. I bumped into HLH today which was the best of times since we agreed to meet up for beers and lunch on Friday.

I have one more 3 hour stint at the show and I’m done for the year. After tomorrow, I have a bit/ton of work to get done which I’ll do in the relative quiet of a hotel room for the next days. Then, its back to the “left coast” on Sunday and I bet I’ll still see rain there.

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