Mikes Thoughts

Sometimes when I’m commuting somewhere here; I look at the hills around Fremont and Newark here in the SF Bay area. The Hayward hills remind me of hills I used to clamber over back in the way gone days. When the sun rises over those hills, I sometimes remember being there. I remember when the destination was never as important as the travel and when the companions were cherished but yet we all wanted solitude. Anthropology while its the study of the vastness of human behavior; archeologists seem to need the solitary nature of person versus excavation unit.

I remember digging out on Edwards AFB in SOCAL and the wind was howling at 45mph and the dust swirled around the unit we were digging. Mark and I would stand up and periodically survey the unit and the wind and dust swirling never amounted to as much as us doing science. As one archeologist remarked at some time; “archeology is the mind wielding a trowel”.

In those other hills, I traveled over terrain I sometimes wondered if another had ever seen. The country was wild and open and I was never sure that another human being had walked the same trail. The other archeologist, sometimes my wife, was 30 meters to my right or left. There on the far side was RWR. He seemed introverted and focused inward. We never talked that much. Until…

Until we went to the Pizza joint or the hotel. One of the more humorous stories took place down in Mojave. We had been out all day long and were dirty and dingy. Tired and filthy. Dirt clinged to every place you wished it would not. We tramped into a hotel and the front desk clerk almost sniffed at us. He gave us the look that we were transients, homeless waifs and we could never spend the night at his place. RWR produced a Corporate AMEX card (no preset spending limit) and put rooms, food, massive orders of beer on the rooms. The clerk just watched us walk away. We were laughing and pointing at him. But we all went to separate rooms.

What was it about that career and life? What was so special that makes me wander the history of my own life gathering its artifacts? It was more than it was. It always was more and the archeologist were more. Simply put, archeologists are bigger than life. Bright minds, dirty trowels, clothes clinging with dirt. But the talk, friends.

The talk was like blogging all the time. Science came out as though we were constipated and we had to remove it using some philosophical diueretic. it was painful because it was so hard; but it felt so good. We gathered and talked. Once a year we produced scholarly papers.

All of this compressed in one drive after a summer’s over BBQ party for my son. I have so much compressed in archives, readers. This blog serves the same need I guess.

Perhaps the quality of this thing has gone down. I don’t blog so much about Linux; yet these days at work Linux is very much in my sights. I’ll blog more about that later. Things are still evolving there too.

I’ve been considering a few of Cormac’s books of late. I had wanted to see the movie adaptation of No Country for Old Men but never did. I read the trilogy All the Pretty Horses and now I note that The Road is coming out as a movie.

This brought me to looking at the authors I really enjoy and the ones that may have let me see a world that was brutal, sensual, or stripped of its ecological niceties. Cormac writes in this brutal way that makes you pay attention. It strips away all the pretty and nice things and lets you see a world perhaps in the West that has terrible truth in it. I hated and loved Pretty Horses for that reason. It upset me, bothered me, made me want more.

The second guy that always got me was Edward Abbey. Mr. Abbey always struck me with his vision questing and desires to see a world for what it was. Desert Solitaire was perhaps the one book I read that made me love the desert even more than growing up in it, practicing archeology in it, seeing its myriad hues.

I remember also reading a passage from a mysterious author named Ambrose Bierce that simply disappeared into the west. Once asked what he thought about a book he was reviewing, he remarked that there were too many pages between the covers. As the venerable wikipedia notes in the link, Bierce simply disappeared. I watched a Gregory Peck movie onced called Old Gringo that tried to capture that moment. Krakauer’s Into the Wild remains the most disturbing vision quest movie though for me. It still haunts steps I take.

Why, I wonder. Because we all take steps like a wandering Alexander SuperTramp. Because we all know that we each have journeyed forth on perilous reaches. Some like Bierce and Christopher did not come back and their mark was larger than their reach.

I wanted to tie a blogpost together with string and twine and wire that made people see that we can read material that challenges, perhaps threatens, even disgusts us at times. Because life is that way. Its not all Winnie the Pooh and 100 acre woods and Piglets that get hungry and afraid. Its terrible lonely death in obscure border towns. They are Cormac’s rules and life either goes on or not.

Most often it does, but some of us are not there for the return trip.

Flesh is willing; but I notice a disturbing trend in blog posts these days. I am going through the week kinda busy and only doing my posts weekends. That’s not really good for me. Its funny tonite though. I’m sitting in a Vagabond Inn Hotel in Sacramento over by the California State Fair and have found a hotel at a level that I would never book. Light switches that don’t work. A desk with no power outlet. Uncomfortable beds and furniture that sags. Perhaps as my wife says I am spoiled by nicer class hotels like Marriott or Hyatt’s. I do like business class hotels with business comfort and roomy room service. I like international hotels in Singapore with almost instantaneous service. This place is creepy. We’re only here for a night though and on a mission of mercy.

Now I’m sitting at the bathroom door; laptop in lap. Beer iced and drinkable and thinking. I watched the sun do its retirement tonite and I remembered so many days in the field as an archeologist watching it. Days in the Mojave; afternoons in the Sequioa. Evenings in the Sierra. Wonderment in the Great Basin. What became of those years? Simply memories that I cull up when the mood strikes. I miss them though. I miss the best part of anthropology which was the cowboy science and the looking at incomplete things and forming pictures. Truly archeology is a record of trash and dumps and converting it all to behavior. I’ve always felt that those prehistoric cave painters were the ancestors of the blogger today. They reached to a pinnacle of expression and found a cave wall. It became their canvas and paradigm and speech network. They marked their world in uncertain hues.

I traveled that world, saw the record, and ate home-cooked rattlesnake chili many times. Drank way too much beer and considered the wonder of a sunset with a bunch of people that fell silent at the same time. Was there some bond or boundary that no one crossed those days? Yes. There was. I have never seen the same boundary and bond today. Computer technologists don’t possess the same joy, frustration, and love. Because archeology reaches to a depth of the spirit and rewards.

I’ll hoist my beer to all those I knew, that I dug with, that broke bread with me. I’m still here guys. I’m sitting in a bathroom blogging.

I’ve been playing around with two cool virtualization technologies. One is on my almost brand spanking new Windows Server 2008 box. This box is a AMD64 dual core 6000+ with 6g of memory. It runs most stuff very robustly and VMware Server and/or Hyper-V are no exception. Unfortunately, on Ubuntu 7.10 AMD64 I can no longer seem to get the Console Monitor to work no matter what I try; so I moved things off that box. Now I have VMware Workstation installed on a Server 2003 box and my 2008 Workstation (uhm Server). Truth be told, Server 2008 is an excellent workstation OS. It flat outflies Vista 64 which I have one of as well. Now I just use the Vista box to serve up my new HP printer software.

I found a few interesting newbie things with Hyper-V which took me a bit to deal with. Ubuntu 7.10 no matter what just won’t install and its been reported a few times. I installed Ubuntu 8.04 server and it works fine but you have to assign a legacy network card and you also have to “associate the real card” with the virtual card or at least I did to make networking work. Then you can just reboot the VM and networking/dhcp comes right up. Hyper-V is pretty cool though once you learn its little tricks and traps. I can see why VMware is threatened. It does some stuff and I’m just starting. Bundling it with an Operating System is smart. Damned smart Microsoft. Good one! That makes VMWare have to give things away like ESXi.

On to VMware Server. As I noted, something is just wrong with Server on Ubuntu 7.10 and I don’t know what. Server Console won’t work but I can RDP and ssh to the guests. What’s up with that? VMware Server seems to be a back step since it does all kinds of weird stuff with web and console. Forget about it!

I could probably just stabilize on Hyper-V but I have been a VMWare customer for years and I want it to work. VMware Workstation is still plenty nice but I think VirtualBox threatens it with its transparent or seamless modes for guest applications. I have not tried VirtualBox on Ubuntu yet; but I may do that at work. Truth is, it appears that VirtualBox is a great personal virtualization thing but I cannot serve up images. Since I am involved with building out a support lab that is all virtual for work; I need to serve up the guests.

I also wonder what’s next for VMWare? They seem to be giving away stuff now and Hyper-V is plenty cool and its something for VMware to worry over. Gnaw that bone VMWare guys. You need some competition! It gives the rest of us new toys and tools to test out.

Its the weekend so perhaps its blog-time. Seems that I only write these days on the weekends. I started writing some stuff last night about a slashdot story on Linux and where it would be in 3 years; but I stopped. I’ve been using Linux one way or another for about 10 years now. At home, work, selling it, preselling it, managing it, deploying it. The last year or so I’ve moved off center from it. I worked at Visa and only touched Linux things and now I’m more involved at a few levels since I seem to be moving to a place where I’ll be some kind of Product Manager for our Linux line of appliances. That’s to be defined still I guess. But after reading the comments and the article, I’m unsure where the whole thing is going and perhaps that’s part of the mystique and why the desktop environments replicate but really don’t innovate. I cannot find where Linux will be and my questions are:

• Will Linux on the desktop ever truly arrive for the masses? People point at Dell selling Linux as though this is the first time it happened. Here’s a bit of news for ya. In 2001, Dell was packaging 4 different forms of Linux on desktop machines and laptops. Linuxcare Labs certified that hardware for Dell back then and I managed the technical relationship with Dell back then.
• Will KDE and Gnome ever see it will be better to come together? Perhaps there is one integrating platform between the two camps. We also need to evolve applications in general. Applications are organisms. They require feeding and watering and they need to take a dump every so often. Dumps mean learning for developers I think.

I went to the show at Moscone this year. We need something else and I suggest that its SCALE in Los Angeles. Linuxworld has lost whatever vision and participation it once had. Drop the feeble attempts guys. You’ve lost the thread of what the show is. Somehow its some next generation data center show. You’ve lost the consciousness and evolution of things. The show is not a show-case of Linux and it does not capture a meeting place between Linux and users (corporate, personal, company). its some bastardization of open source and show with a dash of feeble representation by dwindling attendees and exhibitors.

For me personally, I love Linux and what it is and does. I’ve just moved beyond using it on the desktop and have gone backwards unfortunately. Perhaps this habilis has gotten lazy and wants something simple. The idea for me is the tool. The tool must deliver and give function. If I have to run one thing to launch another thing which in turn is virtual and I do that to take care of default tools, I have questions. Like Why. Why am I doing things this way and am I doing the best job at tool using?

I ended up moving some stuff around here and took a database backup which was missing this blogpost. Scribefire kept it in the editing window so I am reposting it. The thoughts still run true on the whole Linuxworld Expo experience…

I visited Linuxworld Expo for the day yesterday. It was yet again different and a few folks commented on the overall size reduction of the exhibition floor. Gone were Novell, no Redhat (again), no Sun, no groups of others. At this point it could move back to San Jose for size reasons much like it moved out of San Jose back in 2001 or so for size reasons.

The show is sad and it seems to be like an anxious shadow casting about furtively for its master image. It just don’t know what it wants to be. Am I data center show focusing on Linux or a Linux show focusing on data center? There was a huge trailer with the next generation data center in it but there were not enough visitors to keep the show floor busy.

At the other end of the spectrum, thanks to the folks at SCALE for making 7x a Westin LAX Hotel event again! The accomodations, staff, location make the Westin a great conference location. I will be attending next February 20-22 for sure! The difference is the difference. SCALE is enjoyable, rewarding, and fun. There is the mix of big enterprise and individual contributor there. I like the spread of papers that one can listen to and enjoying a beverage at the hotel of the event each evening.

I’ll probably drop to one Linux show each year now and it won’t be LWE in SF. I cannot afford OSCON. SCALE remains my show of choice especially after seeing this last Linuxworld. I commented to Doc that it was like someone washed the show in very hot water and it shrunk.

So true; so sadly true.

Its getting to be that time of the year again. People are booking rooms in San Francisco, packing up suitcases, perhaps traveling at the behest of their company. They’re seeking out news of the Penguin in the wonnerful city by the Bay. They may travel long or short distance and if they’re exhibitors their feet will ache, time may crawl by, and other booths start looking interesting.

I’ve done my fair share of booth duties and doing a trade show is always interesting. You meet people that want to know what you do or just want to know what you are giving away. I think the doodads used to be better and more fun. I remember all kinds of interesting little things and big. When I worked at Linuxcare we gave away cars! And bug suckers. Big and small. Linuxcare knew how to package up show things. Perhaps the strangest and best was the “poster”. This was the so-called Simply Supported Poster with the “palm girl” holding a Redhat box on it. I remember handing them out to everyone that morning in North Carolina and then we got the cease and desist request. Redhat was not happy. And it was their show.

But it was too late. Everyone had seen it and wanted it. I handed out copies to friends at Suse and a few guys I knew in the support pit at Redhat.

The shows have paled in some regards and IDG seems to be able to do a massively mediocre job at promoting something as fun as Linux. Lets be clear and certain here. Linux is fun. Its fun because its not done yet and the people and companies and pundits that go know its not done. Trade shows must be unfinished too to gain acceptance. You cannot hustle off the .orgs to some other place, city, or floor. Big mistake and IDG gets another bad mark.

Yet still I will go. Why? Well this year I am meeting someone for a business meeting. I’m a SE Manager but I touch many things at Celestix. I get to play with lots of things in the course of a day. And I’m going to meet up with some friends, see other friends, hopefully see the oldtimers from those other halycon days.

Then we’ll wander for lunch and maybe a beer at the Thirsty Bear. That’s just what ya do. So if you are at the show, I’m there with ya. I show up for only a day this year on Wednesday. It will be fun and mediocre. But that’s the declining nature of the whole thing. Linux is changing and since its not done; no one knows what it will change into. I have some questions around evolution of it all. I’m unsure what it all means any longer and perhaps no one really knows and they’re along for the ride as well. That’s okay. It all works for me. I use it the way I want to use it and it works for me.

Linuxworld Expo in SF is just around the corner. Its time to go to the show for my requisite one day and see who’s left that I know that goes. Last year was the last time I arranged a lunch for some of the folks. I just got an idea that the time had come to leave that behind. This year I go on Wednesday and meet up with some potential business partners for work stuff. We may build an appliance prototype with some of them. That should be interesting.

But Linuxworld Expo itself is not so interesting any longer. Its become something that I don’t really recognize any longer and I prefer the community spirit of the SCALE shows down in Los Angeles. But they are the expo’s and they have this memory of the older shows from the Linuxcare days.

So, here I go for a day to do a bit of business and perhaps some fun. We’ll see. I will probably post a one-day review of the show from my vantage point. I’ve moved far away from the mainstream of Linux sometimes it seems. But I think the show may be fun. At least for a day.

What’s the best about traveling? Some would say getting home. It was a 12 hour plane ride where I slept, ate, read most of the time. I managed to sleep for periods up to 3 hours each time which was a joyous reprieve from the monotony of the long ride home.

Jetlag is real though. I’m kinda suffering through it today with being tired but still waking up really early this AM. Back to work and perhaps some normalcy tomorrow but something tells me that tomorrow is going to be exciting because of some of the email threads. I’m up for it! The trip was really good though and a lot of things settled out for my work including building out an entire SE organization fundamental for international operations. I’m excited about that.

Anyways, I’m home and I have the rooms, the network connection, the computers. I found out my combo printer, scanner, fax machine died while gone so I ordered a new one from the “egg”. I got another HP because they just seem the best these days.

Last day in India and I’m flying out today at 1130 or so for Singapore for a night there and then tomorrow back to good ole USofA. I’ve been gone for 2 weeks and did 2 countries I’ve never been to. That’s been a joy to me. I also got meaningful work done with our offices in two different countries. Still need to get to the UK and I’m planning on doing that next. I spent last night drinking some beer, eating some good Indian food, and considering the view from the RainTree rooftop bar. The RainTree staff has been exceedingly kind and courteous and I’d heartily recommend the place if you are traveling to Chennai. I’m still struck by what I saw in both places but the spirit, zeal, wonder of India got me most of all. Perhaps its the anthropologist in me struggling to get out.

Yesterday a work colleague took me for Southern India cuisine for lunch and it was very good and spicy! I had tandoor lamb and rice last night cooked to perfection served with abundant beers.

Now I’m playing the waiting game to get on to Chennai Int’l Airport which can take as an hour to get to in traffic and then there is the waiting around for customs.

I’ll be back in Singapore for one night tonite and then I’m homeward bound. Catch you in Singapore for some final thoughts and perhaps a Chilli Crab or two