November 2006

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Vista RTM x64 new play thing

November 28, 2006 in Views | No comments

Recently, I’ve been playing a bit with my AMD64 box and since I have a Technet Plus subscription with Microsoft, I can get access to operating systems, applications, and other stuff early on.  That’s kinda cool because I am a OS junkie.  I like playing with various OS’es, seeing what they do, etc.  There are interesting challenges on AMD64 systems and this one is really a desktop type computer.  Its got 2g of really fast memory, a 256mb nvidia card, an AMD 4000+ processor.  I’ve had Ubuntu Edgy Eft AMD64, Debian Etch pure 64, and now Vista RTM on it.  Each has its interesting quirks and positives.  My overall thought is that Vista is a nice desktop OS but its demanding on the hardware.  With Linux you have to do this crazy mix of 32 and 64bit libraries and applications.  Some things will not work and others require some massaging and yet others you need what is called a “chroot environment” to get them operational.

I think for the meanwhile, I’ll just run Vista RTM and play around a bit with its interesting applications, etc.  I tend to appreciate Linux on laptops these days and Ubuntu is probably the best I’ve seen on a laptop.  The ACPI and driver tools are topnotch.

Thanksgiving Travels

November 22, 2006 in News | No comments

This T-day, the family unit decided to venture outside the sanctum and go toward Sacramento and the east.  Unfortunately, we decided to do this the day before T-day so traffic on eastbound US 80 was a PITA.  Stop.  Not even stop and go.  We only got the stop part.   A 2 hour drive took us over 4 hours.  All of that to end up in Sacramento for Thanksgiving with the -in (and perhaps out-) laws.  I don’t mind in-law participation and I actually like doing family obligations sometimes; but the traffic the insanity of travel and the end in a hotel room with PS2 stupidity always gets me.  If I’m in a hotel room by myself, no family members beating each other up on different PS2 games, I’m okay.  But when we travel with family unit, we must haul a TV, playstation games, 2 playstations.  It means the amount of crap we travel with is way over the legal limit for a 2–day break.

Tomorrow is the gold-plated turkey day and I’ll go and partake and participate.  I’ve managed to somehow cross my own chasm of grief with the loss of a dear friend and work colleague.  I have not had to do that for awhile.  Back during my GAP days, a co-worker commited suicide.  It was a person I worked with, drannk with, enjoyed life with.  I would never have expected it; but there it happened.  With DaveR, there was always the possibility that a thing could happen; but I refused to believe it.  One always wants to believe that our human spirits are indomitable; able to overcome any fear and enemy.  In the end, we are but mortal things no matter how much we wish to have more or be more.

So, this year I give thanks to a bunch of stuff.  Kids, wife, friends.  Its a bit more tender and almost sad this year because I still have this empty feeling somewhere that tends to come out when I drink a few too many beers.  Perhaps its my wish to still have the DaveR with us and I know it cannot be.

Thanks to everyone, work and other friends.  I don’t say it enough, I know.

 

This is a test

November 19, 2006 in Weblogs | No comments

I’m testing a new blog client. stand by for even more nonsense than usual :)

Rest in Peace DaveR

November 16, 2006 in Uncategorized | No comments

Bye DaveR. You will be missed and your web touched many other webs on this earth. Your friendship meant a great deal to me and I’ll treasure the set of memories I have . I had this feeling late last night you would leave us because the human body can really only take so much pain and suffering before it just gives out. Your spirit can now join the clouds, the wind, the canyons, and the places that all spirits soar on high.

I read this poem years ago written by a young American pilot and somehow it seems so fitting to the way I feel now…

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbedand joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split cloudsand done a hundred things
You have not dreamed ofwheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hovring there,
Ive chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
Ive topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And, while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.

Amazing Changes, Rearranges, Life Balances

November 14, 2006 in Uncategorized | No comments

I’m always amazed and somewhat bemused by how work flows and goes.  Witness that we just learned we lost our VP of Sales/Channels.  This person meant a lot to our group and was a primary supporter and enthusiastic promoter of what we could do.  Next I find out that the CEO is leaving and that’s more of a shock.  Is there a moment in a company’s history when you can call it defining?  A defining moment?  A time when the forces align, reach their zenith, make their statement?  I never really know and I never really knew.  I’ve been a project manager for almost 20 years for a variety of projects including really large multi-million dollar environmental clean-up projects for the US Navy, smaller environmental impact statement projects, technology projects touching infrastructure, software, professional services.  I feel I’ve touched a variety of types of projects and learned.  An IBM’er told me once that project management really meant managing people and process.  If you lost one, the other would stifle and fall apart.  Without process, people cannot inter-operate and integrate.  Without people, process walks stilted and with no theme. 

Today I interviewed and a person asked me what a project manager did and I’ve always felt very thankful to Caro at IBM for telling me a good answer.  She was the best project manager I’ve ever met and I’ve seen a few.

Life truly does balance itself on the head of a pin that carefully turns and does cartwheels and summersaults.  It wheels around and presents a new view.  I think anthropologists and perhaps sociologists are well endowed to understand those turns.  Well, perhaps not sociologists…  Just kidding there. :-)   I’ve met a few sociologists and I ain’t impressed.  Well, not so much.  But the worst of the lot are these head shrinkers; these psychologists.  Whoever and whatever gave them the idea that you can understand the complexity of human behavior by being in a room with someone for an hour or so?  Anthropologists spend years with cultures, striving to learn their ways and means.  And shrinkers can suddenly learn this by simply observing and asking questions that do not have answers?  Blech.

I have never met a psychologist that I liked and I’m sure that none of the ones I’ve met were overly impressed with me.  I made a point of casually questioning their methods and techniques and I’m sure it created hostility.  Perhaps they should not repress all those childhood emotions :)

I’m really just kidding here; because I was a social scientist; but I would still call myself an anthropologist.  Perhaps one without portfolio.  I still see things with the tinted glasses of the field worker and the sunrises still tempt me to look and see another reality on those Hayward Hills.  I could see myself climbing that hill with RWR next to me laughing and singing and telling me goofy tales.  Like losing the jeep or watching the brake slip on the jeep and it goes down the hill and hits one of those air propeller things that generate energy.  Or a bar and a song an a boot.  There are so many stories that whirl around like a dervish that I cannot keep up.  Perhaps I’ll write some down one day and combine them with the fabled Linuxcare days.

When Friends Must Leave

November 13, 2006 in News, Views | No comments

There is that old saying “only the good die young” and its hit me here a bit of late.  As we humans get older, its dawned on me that its damned hard to make friends.  Its like some cosmic button was pushed, lever was thrown, or force field was erected. We just cannot seem to engage with others like even my 8-year old daughter has the power to do.  It just gets fucking hard to make a friend. I wonder why.  Perhaps as we age, we become too self-fulfilled or its just harder to reach out to someone.

In my case, I did reach out to a co-worker.  Its a long story and it goes somewhat like this.  I started working at Levanta and met this rather miraculous guy that I have blogged about before.  We started out not on the best of terms. He wanted me to do other things but we ended up with him reporting to me of all things.  Strange, eh?  But the next thing I found out was the level of his friendship.  He is a loyal, trustworthy, and devoted person when you find him as a friend.  An outspoken critic, a sledgehammer wielder, a person who saw things a different way and stretched to reach them.

Now that person’s days are numbered and I just don’t get it.  I’m sad and crying on the inside because he was more to me because it took effort.  Perhaps that’s the last thing.  It takes effort to be and make a friend.  Lots of effort and its worth it; but my track record of finding friends at work is bad.  Each time I’ve done it, I’ve not done well.  This time is the worst and I feel for my friend Dave.

I’m sorry for the other co-workers, for the others that worked around him. Others that knew of his generosity of spirit and mind.  Come back to us Dave.

Its not your time yet.

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Question for the Day: Does this difference make a difference

November 9, 2006 in Weblogs | No comments

I’m always interested in seeing Dave Sifry’s fascinating reports on the so-called Blogosphere.  I’ve been doing the blogging thing for a few years on a few different pieces of software.  Way back when I worked for Technorati, I used Typepad.  Typepad was fun.  I got some links and I gave some.  That’s what it was all about then.  I figure I wrote some genuinely interesting weblog entries; but I ain’t got any of them.  I also typed into LiveJournal for awhile, and I moved with MovableType.  Now I do the press with… Yeah Wordpress.  Why?  Well, heck its because wordpress is coolio guys and gals.  I have also learned how to update it and it takes me about 5 minutes to actually do an upgrade these days.  Just like the “verts” on wordpress.

But my main question for you bloggers and non alike… Does it all really mean anything?  There are numbers and there are stats of real media versus blogs.  My take is that to find out if the difference does indeed make a difference, statistical counts and accounts really won’t mean much when the real arbiter of the fact is the feeling bloggers get.  If a active blog is posted to once in 3 months, is that post a thing of quality?  Does the weblogger feel he has said it all and only needs that one post?  How can we arrive at the quality of life questions?  Statistics merely scratch the surface of why bloggers blog methinks.  I’ll offer an anthropological corollary. Imagine prehistoric hunter-gatherers traversing their wild environments.  They find a thing of value (like a stone, a bone, a rock, a cave).  They paint a picture.  It could be a map.  It could be a history.  It could be a blog of sorts.  What is it really?  There is the quantity of one cave wall painted on; but there is a quality issue.  What was the information flow expected and did it achieve the goal?

Somehow, charts and tables and numbers and statistics fall so short when we ask the quality questions.  We get the numbers but not the why of the numbers.  Why is blogging increasing?  Why do people post only once in 3 months versus 3 times a day?  Why do I post what I do and why do I not post what I don/t?

This is that gooey human behavior and anthropology area where nice powerpoint slides avail us not.  These are the hard questions about why human beings choose a thing and not just the numbers of them that do a thing.

I love the statistical representations. But lets all ask the really and truly hard questions.  Question the answer but use the quality and not quantity questions.  Then new answers may emerge.  People blog because?

I think its human information flow and energy we are seeing.  We have a quality of life thing that we express and mere numbers and graphs and charts can tell us part of it.  But why a single person on the “tail” blogs more than a person on the head of that comet is not revealed.

Such is life.

Wild Chrooting Action on Debian Etch

November 6, 2006 in Linux | No comments

I’ve been playing with my AMD64 system and thus far have installed Windows Vista RC2, Ubuntu Dapper Drake and Edgy Eft, and now I topped it off with Debian Etch’s Pure 64 beta.  On either of the first ones you can install 32bit gooey goodness right next to the 64bit speedster; but Etch is pure 64 so you have to resort to other means to get some things to work.  Its really an exercise in fun and frolic with Debian and learning the chroot environment.  A few commands can create a distribution within a distribution so to speak.  I did this with a Debian Sid/Unstable i386 architecture so I could then play around with getting streaming media, mplayer with 32bit plugins, and other stuff like acrobat reader working.  After getting my bootstrapped chroot environment done; I added the package dchroot and then apt-got firefox, mplayer, mozilla-mplayer, w32codecs.  You have to “bind mount” the chroot environment first though in /etc/fstab and then do a “mount -a” which mounts it all.  Then one can “chroot” in and see a completely different environment with different /etc/apt/sources.list, etc.  I added the venerable and excellent debian.multimedia.org entry in sources.list and started adding stuff.

Then I wrote a script that would allow me to dynamically run applications in the chroot environment without having to do the chroot first.  After doing that, I could open a gnome-terminal and type “firefox” and voila!  The 32bit firefox would launch and if I did a “about:plugins” I saw all the great plugins like java, acrobat, mplayer stuff.  But I forgot something somewhere.  There was no sound and mplayer was not happy.  It would not load WMV files and it always stopped on Quicktime media files.  I found out with some reading I had to also bind mount /dev.  Mere seconds after that, it hit me somewhat.  The chroot had no /dev stuff so it could not do sound.  After adding that to /etc/fstab and doing a mount -a again; sound was working on media streams.  Mplayer was working stand alone mode too.

So what did I learn today?  Well, one thing I learned is that Debian is powerful stuff as is any Linux distribution.  I imagine you can do the chroot thing on any; but its so easy on Debian.  Even after the few moments (erm… hours?), of not really knowing what to do, I had to admit to still having fun.

So…

Looking for a challenge on that AMD64 system and want something that is a desktop?  Or just want to hone your skills of debian foo?  Well go administer and build a chroot environment.  Its fun, you get a sense of accomplishment seing the windows media files playing in mozilla.  And you learn yet another valuable lesson about Linux.  I am no way a Linux power user.  I qualify myself as a question-asker if nothing else.  If I use an OS as a desktop, it has to do it all.  My measurement is that on Windows XP Pro I can play a variety of files and formats.  If Linux wants to hold my interest it must do that too.  The direction of getting there on Linux is a bit different or perhaps trickier or less defined sometimes.  But the path along the way can be very rewarding.

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Ruminations and Deliveries

November 5, 2006 in Anthropology, Views | No comments

Its quite an interesting world we live in.  Witness the fact that my wife and I finally got a “nanny” that comes over on occasion and plays referee to our two bundles of joy.  Its not like either of them really need what could be called a babysitter; but I’m sure parents understand that the desire is to find a person with good values, that will share thoughts, and also just kinda “be there”.  Our daughter realy likes that being there part and she had rebelled against what she called a second mom coming in.  That lasted until she met the Nanny we had selected from a agency my wife had found.  Voila!  The two went up to my daughter’s room immediately and started hitting it off.  Truth be told, my daughter is a social butterfly and loves to meet, and then talk, to others.  Anything is conversation fodder for her.  Sharks, Zoo Animals, Horses, cartoons and movies.  My daughter will just strike up a conversation on topics and she has the other part down too.  The listening part.  Listening is what an anthropologist friend told me once was “the silent part of the conversation”.  You know… Them anthropologists are smart cookies for the most part.  I’ve always felt that my 15 or so years doing that one thing enriched my listening abilities.  Doing anthropology means listening.  One listens to either live conversations or dead ones.  The live conversations consist of stories, tales, jokes, songs, bullshit known and unknown, and a myriud of non-verbal queues.  Proxemics are so much a part of conversation.  How close is too close?  Is there a difference in space allowance when you first meet someone?  Where do people sit having intellectual versus social conversations?

The dead conversations are harder to track and the language is fragmentary.  Prehistoric hunter-gatherers often left their conversations on cave walls in the form of their life blogs.  They recorded their thoughts but their tapestry was different.  And fragmentary.  Prehistoric archeological sites are fragmentary spatially and temporally.  Things are just missing that would make it easier.  But if the conversation were easier then archeology would be easier too.  Archeology is that search for the missing values and the interpretation of the missing from the found.  Its a delicate act of defining relationships and inter-relationships.

Both conversations took my time years ago and there was value in both.  I found that doing anthropology lasted me a day and more.  I lived it, loved it, dreamt it, wrote it. Now, I’m more of an armchair type which reflects backwards on those days often.  What is it about that different lifestyle that makes it worthy of memory I wonder?  People sometimes ask what it was like to dig up dinosaurs.  I always have to gently remind them of what the real intersection and conversation was.

Now I find myself a communicator but work is so different.  Doing technology renders the drawing differently.  I could find a thousand things to value in the new conversations; but truth be told all these technologists don’t add up to a single anthropologist or archeologist I met.  I wish that honesty was more of a trait with some of these guys.  It seems that any possible sin, no matter how vilified is actually believed in if one can say “its the cost of doing business”.  Then all can be validated and certified. The techno-leaders of this brave new culture really should not be leaders.  They all separate out too low on the food chain. 

And that is frustrating in technology these days.  Very frustrating.