I’ll be adding a bit to the blog while in travel mode; but the days are pretty well spoken for in meetings and training sessions.

Other News with a view…

More personal notations. I got to meet up with Art and Jeremy at Left Bank Restaurant in San Mateo yesterday. We talked iPhone, work, and general non-work related catching up. Art lives the “global hobo” lifestyle traveling across Asia so I only see him every few months. Jeremy still works here. So, since we all worked together there at one time, conversation is usually limited to stuff I really cannot blog since my quality of blog filter is in place. I don’t care to spread too much BS about previous work engagements; no matter how much they deserve it :). As an aside, I should also note that my old buddy Ed is gone from there too for about a week now. Good luck with finding a great new thing Ed. Your skills around Linux are legendary. You are the enigmatic sensei (that’s an inside joke for any that live on a certain IRC server).

On the technology side, I finally took my work laptop home to see how difficult the Nortel Contivity VPN client software was to get working. Good news is that with a wired ethernet interface, its no problem. Bad news is that with a Centrino setup (Intel BG 2200) it has problems. The fix on my XP work laptop was to disable the Intel Agent completely in the network properties and use the Windows Almost Zero Configuration tool to do wifi. After making that change, the Nortel client behaved and allowed me to initiate VPN to work.

My Linux musings and experiments are continuing but I’ve had to seriously curtail how many systems remain powered up last few days due to the thriving heat wave we have been having. Today it broke and we have the acclaimed fog belt moving across the bayside. Very welcome!! I’m still at play in the fields of the AMD64 and I bought two 500g Seagate SATA drives from NewEgg and connected them to a two port 3ware card and built a RAID 1 array which gives me a bit under 500g of total space. I’ll probably find some use for such a contrivance. The AMD64 boxen running Debian Sid is very fast and I’ve had a few updates which borked my nvidia drivers; but the Nvidia Drivers Debian Wiki Page helps out a lot.

If you’re looking for a nice RAID alternative fully supported on Linux, I’ve done a few of these including a huge backup system and my smaller two port home systems. For the home computer user, RAID1 provides a very nice feature set for protection of your music and photos and data. If you wanna read all about RAID and what it can do for you, consider this wikipedia entry on it.

The amount of futzing with a 3ware card is pretty minimum. Comes down to a few steps including installing the card and drives and adding power to each drive. Power up the system and choose the 3ware Configuration Utility. Build a RAID 1 array if that’s what you want to do. That initial operation will destory all the data on the drives and it will bond them together to Linux as a single drive. Now boot da Linux and it will be found like this initially:

3ware Storage Controller device driver for Linux v1.26.02.002.
scsi4 : 3ware Storage Controller
3w-xxxx: scsi4: Found a 3ware Storage Controller at 0xec00, IRQ: 19.
scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access 3ware Logical Disk 0 1.2 PQ: 0 ANSI: 0


I found it by simply doing a dmesg |grep 3ware in a console.

Now create the actual file system on the drive. Being root is easier for this; but do it your way. I create XFS file systems on these things and I don’t boot off them. I end up booting off a cheaper IDE drive and then mounting the XFS RAID 1 array.

If you don’t know how to create a file system on Linux; shame on you. You must go read!! Go find a reasonable place about how this is done so you can then grep and grok the various types of file systems that you can create. Debian has some nice shortcuts to creating them. Finally, if you want to mount one at boot time, add it to that secret place on Linux. You know the place, right?

• Learn how to be motivated.  The truth here is that without motivation and creativity you will not rule the day or even seize the moment. It will become mere work and a drudgery and not a goal.  Find the motivation to continue and I think it can be difficult and time consuming and it can demand a lot.
• Find suitable resources that help.  There are suitable resources that can help.  Community resources, health professional, family.  You never really go it alone.  Here in my family unit, I have lots of support.  Outside, I have this circle of friends that tell me positive things like I am looking better, the difference is noticeable, etc.  My personal care Doctor tells me each visit how proud he is of me; how he knows I am getting stronger and healthier and perhaps one day I can dis-continue a blood pressure drug.  All these build one upon the other. Look at this way.  Without this, the next one is impossible.
• Build a strong foundation.  Well, you need to know what you are after and I think its important in this game of health and weight loss and goal driven behavior to know when you reach a goal.  In my current job, I joke with a rather major hosting company I do business with at a partnership level and tell them that “they reached a milestone; a delivery objective”.  They laugh at the project manager speak.  But under that is the foundation.  For them, they pride themselves on delivery.  In any of the games that you play, delivery is important.
• Find strength.  Strength to continue with the plan.  Strength can come from out and in. Just find it.

I lose all of the above at times and I watch other people eat things, drink things, and I want.  Its really hard.  I think its never easy.  There is never a point where you can really say “I’m done with that over-eating thing”.  You always have to measure, account, track.

I’m looking at this after 7 weeks and 30 pounds.  There is no end and no time I could say its okay to sink back.  But I wonder… What other life goals can you apply the same lessons I’ve learned?  We’ll see what happens next

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Most of all, why cannot Amazon sell DRM free mp3’s that I can just download and use on Linux?  I am not a “arrgh matey” if you know what I mean.  I plan on only using the music myself that I purchase.  But I want freedom to use it as I want.  This DRM crapola is rediculous and limiting and music is supposed to set you free.  I notice that iTunes now has their iTunes Plus version which offers DRM free music; but of course you have to upgrade to iTunes 7.2 which then corrupts my ipod with every reboot.  And everyone knows that XP likes to reboot with any ole change.

I am only hoping that Amazon decides to make their mp3 download service available to us running Linux.  I’m this close to going back to buying my music on CD media and then ripping it; but truth be told the pieces I like about iTunes are its collections.  My XP box is this close to becoming a Debian box at this point

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Back before doing archeology, I just roamed and was a hermit, a traveler, a scientist, a stranger even at home.  That was an interesting life though and many time I gaze at the Hayward Hills and remember other hills and valleys, forests and deserts.

These last few days this was all brought back to me.  I could not go to work and I missed it.  I had email and IRC and the phone; but I missed the office.  Last year this time, I worked at home all the time and I had an issue trying to carve the time out to actually get things done.  I was there so I did things for the family but I often stayed up until 2 or 3am because I worked with folks in India and their day started at other times. 

There is no main message to this blogpost I would gather.  I just read it over again and I have not made a point other than a jumble of ideas about time and space.  But that’s okay.  Because sometimes you just flow and sometimes you are iron.

I’ve tried also to stay away from news.  News frustrates, angers, and disappoints me.  That is until this morning when I saw coverage of the Bay to Breakers race.  Here in full glorious sight were people with bags on their heads, other people with nothing on at all, still others dressed as various and sundry characters.  With all the serious news that we all have to contend with; its good to also have a thing to write about which tips the other scales. 

I don’t have serious topics to blog about today.  Its more like a recap of a weekend of rain and some shine and a bit of humor.  I noticed that the average amount of time spent blogging is falling off of late.  With the best of intentions I still read using one of them RSS gators.  On Linux, I’ve been using Liferea which is pretty nice.  But, I’ve also been using the Sage extension for Firefox which rules in the areas of quick reading of a few feeds.  If you want one that can travel across OS’es and a Firefox extension is not your cup of tea; may I humbly suggest RSSOwl?

I also spent some time this weekend getting rid of my last real XP system and replacing it with VMware Server and a virtual XP system.  I just don’t need XP any longer on a real computer.  VMware Server is very nice and easy to install and I can reach my install of XP Professional from anywhere on my home LAN.  Its pretty respectable in speed even over 11g wireless connections.  If you don’t know about VMware Server its what GSX Server turned into.  Give it a look if you want to run virtualized guests within Linux.  Works very well.  I came down to realizing I only need XP Pro for a few tasks on a weekly basis and most times with what I do now,  I can get by with VMware sessions.

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.

The challenge for me in all this is to try to build bridges and not fences.  Fences don’t work and if you want someone to come to the table prepared to discuss a thng; don’t assume you can whisper over a fence and be heard. 

What I’ve learned of late is that communication definitely is a delicate and deadly act.  I’m glad its Saturday.  Now communication is limited to a few avenues.

I’ve also built a careful repository of blogposts around different “tags” or categories but often my blogposts start out in one area and seem to drift much like the continents did eons ago somewhere else. I actually like blogging about open source stuff. Linux is fascinating and how it does things is too. Linux on the desktop will never make it however. Just because lots of people that I know use it and seem to be okay is no real indicator that it ever will actually go somewhere.

I also blog about anthropology and others have commented it seems like a crazy mix. Well, everything is a crazy mix. Life is a crazy mix of the almost, the pathetic, and the coulda been. Never really doubt how crazy it is and if you think you “own”; well you don’t. Its just the big joke that reality plays on you. But the real joke is there is no reality. You are simply asleep. Dreaming. All of this never happened. There are no pyramid of bloggers that are “authoritarian”.

Turn over, dammit. You’re snoring.

It brings me to the periodic table of elements for people. We all seem to have shares of these common elements like truthfulness, honesty, equity, wonder and all the negative poles. In fact, in many people, most people, all people one can observe what element rules. We all want people to ascribe to higher moral, ethical, and other elements; but our makeup while cosmic in nature is human in composition. So we all have to share all of our elements and be just human but fly to the stars. Its what makes us the best and worst and other ways at things we do. But the real mystery is when you introduce others and their elements to the mix. As solitary human beings we sense out our own elemental lives; but people add a mix and complexity.

Its an interesting set of hypotheses to consider, fellow humans. As you blog out and in, consider what elements you are presenting for the rest of us. We all are made up of the materials that made the universe but we cull them all down to sets of principles, ethics, ideas, philosophies. Don’t tell me measurement of the way doesn’t matter and that results only do. Without measurements of effort, results don’t ever happen. So get honest with yourself in your periodic table of elements.

Lets all be good geologists, anthropologists, and scientists and redo our own particular table of elements.

One of the things I’ve blogged a bit about is how I tend to be a habilis type person with computers and OS’es. I basically use the OS which facilitates my work or play. I don’t have a set of zealotry which extends to any of it. If I use Windows XP, I know what I need there. I need anti-virus, spyware protection, registry cleaning. Windows XP seems to just require more “mantenance”. On Linux, I tend to not worry and get completely lazy. I open up the zip archives that have things that make my windows AV go off. Call it curiousity. I also don’t worry about registry cleaners (doh… of course). And as I blogged there are lesser and lesser reasons for me needing Windows these days which is a good thing. I’ve been doing Linux for about 10 years now give or take a kernel release. Since I am not a developer, I characterize myself as a “user”. A tool user to be truthful. I use tools and computers are tools. If Linux fails me at a job, I just pack it in and move to something else. It was a reality that I could not do complex flowcharting when I needed to before so I used Visio. I still have a thing about Visio at a technical and use level. Its just wonderful software. It does what it needs and it makes it easy to get a thing done. There is still nothing really on Linux to match it; but these days I don’t need its complexity so I can use OpenOffice or StarOffice and its draw program. The OODraw program appears to do a passable job and has export to PDF which is really handy and its integration points into the other programs are great.

At my work location, I simply don’t need Windows nor do many of my cohorts which is very nice. They all run something else and I am the token Debian user. That’s okay by me. We all know that Debian is inherently superior and soon all will know
Almost at the last paragraph now in this blog post. I’ve spent some years blogging the body anthropological because I enjoy now reclining in a chair and extrapolating the things, the ideas, the theories, and the worlds that make up the sciences I truly enjoy. Anthropology is one of those binding things to me. It gives me a thought process to understand, hypothesize, watch, and record events. When I was out stumbling the deserts in the American West, archeology was my mistress. She was a harsh and demanding one at times and made me walk a certain path. I had to walk the right-of-ways of bulldozers, pipelining equipment, powerlines. But I also did a lot of research that was funded by a variety of agencies. It all circles around on weekends and lets me dwell on the places and spaces and the desert sunsets I once saw. If there was one thing I loved truly and fully, it was the archeology. When I got into technology, the thing that shocked me the most was the way people dealt with each other. I remember thinking, “it cannot be this way”. People were and are treated like the software products they write or support or service. In vogue one year, gone and outdated the next. Geez. No wonder we have a disposable cuture at so many levels. In many cases in the past, the leadership was guilty of the same type of heresy; but they did their acts on living people and not services, products, or support.

My wife says it was all the same though. In archeology people did bad things too. I had a boss once we forced out of office for a variety of causes. It came down to me and a senior natural resource planner to take the action but it had to be.

So, its Sunday at almost 1600 now and I can see the places I want this blog to go next. Its always a mirror and I see things which need reflecting. If you don’t blog and perhaps you ask, “why should I”; I would challenge you to read a few weblogs and see if there is a thing which matches. Weblogs are growing at some rate and I think people need a medium to cuss and discuss.

Stand by for future transmissions from this channel. Mike out.