Quick fix.Aside to Konstantin, et al., regarding problems with VMWare and the newest 2.6.17 kernels: Just pick up the vmware-any-any update (101) available here, apply, and enjoy. |
Late night musings.Kimchi.I’ve developed an almost heroin-sized monkey on my back for Korea’s official food, which, as it turns out, is not only very healthy, but also comes with its own supercute logo. I have a big jar of the most popular baechu variety in my refrigerator, much to my wife’s chagrin, as she hasn’t yet joined me in my downward spiraling addiction. Fedora.I finally got my new drivel packages out, and fixed up the gnome-sudoku packages as well, to jibe with the new post-Atkins build package set. I also managed to push out some new documentation to the Web site this evening. We have a lot of new translators moving into the project, which is fantastic. I need to do a few tweaks on the Translation Quick Start Guide to make sure we cover all the document metadata. Then I need to get back to the Documentation Guide, and get some steam worked up for the Installation Guide to make sure it will be in tiptop shape for FC6. Reading material.A friend of mine lent me some great stuff, including a paper on complex adaptive systems, a book on the development of Gnosticism, and another book on the idea of decline in Western civilization. Now to find some free time. I eagerly await the direct cortex link hack in FC-18. Gig windup.After attending her lovely wedding last weekend at Ash Lawn-Highland, I’m looking forward to tomorrow night’s — oops, make that tonight’s — gig with Leah in Centreville at the Border Cafe. I feel a lot of positive musical energy on the rise, at least internally, and can’t wait to let it out. Luser.Around all this fun — oh yeah, didn’t I go to work this week, too? — I am trying to seriously dig into Python. I got my Dive Into, I got my Learning Python… now where did I leave those extra brain cells? Oh yeah, at the bar. Oops. |
Not quite da Vinci level, thankfully.The prize, a ginyoowine glass boot (actual height ~6.5″, and freshly sanitized, since I’m not sure how they were packed on their way to Nashville) goes to Dave Malcolm for getting the correct message posted first. Wow, the most non-spam comments ever for a blog entry! (Sad, I know.) Honorary mentions definitely should go to Dave Jones and Toshio for funniest comment — although I am surprised, or maybe relieved, that more people didn’t use the opportunity to lambast my crummy attempt at puzzle-making — and to Gabriel for using /usr/share/dict/words (or at least admitting he did). Note to self: In any future contest, remember to limit the potential personal cost by restricting the geographic area for entries. According to this comment, Kevin Kofler could have sent me to the poor house. Oh, and Dave, you’ll need to send me your address information! |
On the newsstand.Once again you can find examples of my half-baked authorial hackery in the Red Hat Magazine. I reported on the goings on at the Red Hat Summit in Nashville, mostly from a Fedora perspective. Hope you enjoy it! I’m leaving this off the FedoraPeople feed since, y’know, ego isn’t everything. |
It just got a little easier out here for a pimp.Especially if said pimp’s modus operandi includes copious amounts of taffy. Yes, I got my permanent crown put in today, and boy is it shiny!. Thankfully it’s a back molar, so it won’t show much, but I’m using my new mouth bling as an excuse to smack Eleya on the tush whenever possible, and randomly inject “baby” into my sentences in a wholly unnecessary manner: “Hey baby, what’s cookin’ on that grill?” Since my long-suffering wife is recovering from summer colds this week (note the suffering is obviously not connected exclusively to illness, q.v. above), she’s finding this to be ALL KINDS of hilarious, and who can blame her? Now I just need to update my wardrobe and I’ll be all set. (Yo, check out the hat in that link… is it really that far off?) I’ll check back in later with something more Fedora-specific — right now I need to go work on my lingo. “Last time I checked it was illegal to resist me.” So crazy it just might work, baby. |
When is a blog not a blog?For instance, when it doesn’t allow feedback as advertised, I suppose. Sorry about the errors many of you have been experiencing while trying to leave me comments and such. I believe my server at home has experienced a cardiac arrest (a/k/a disk crash). A fellow Fedora guy confirmed my suspicion earlier this morning that this was the case — not too different from the crash I had last year, now that I think about it. Fortunately Apache keeps chugging along until I can get home and repair the damage. UPDATE: The worst has occurred, but fortunately there’s not much work involved in getting things back in order. In the meantime, comments are open again. |
Great videos happen.Well, not by themselves. It takes the work of people like the amazing (and dedicated!) Tim Kiernan to make them happen. Tim (and, I believe, a couple additional camerapeople-slash-crew) put together an energizing, funny, and surprisingly moving video which played at the end of the closing keynote. This guy obviously busted hump to get this ready, since it included scenes from last night’s saloon extravaganza. Everyone was talking about it after the keynotes, in between hurrahs for the OLPC talk given by Mr. Negroponte. Like other people, I will be clamoring to see this new video on the Red Hat site, mainly so I can play it for my wife on our HDTV with big stereo sound, just like I got to experience it live. (She’s a big fan of these videos too.) Fabulous work! Sorry to hog the planet feed this morning, but you really will love this video — play it LOUD. |
Hungover Blogging 102.(Or, the Sequel No One Wanted Anyone Else to Make.) A major difference between this semester’s class and last semester’s class is that now the red squigglies take on a life of their own. Not only do we notice them, they pulse, swirl, and do little June Taylor dance routines around the other bleary artifacts our brains are picking up from our eyeballs The Morning After. Last night’s blowout at the Wild Horse Saloon was totally out of control. Well, as out of control as it gets at a party run by two major publicly traded IT corporations. There was line dancing, a BBQ fondue fountain, a live concert by the Locash Cowboys, and a free and open bar — the latter a very fitting metaphor in both senses of “free,” since (1) you didn’t have to pay for it, and (2) it liberated you to participate in the dance lessons. Shout to Marisol, rock that line girl, and hold on to your glass boots!* I even ran into CEO Matthew Szulik (for the second time during the Summit) and thanked him for the excellent opportunity to rub shoulders with and learn from some of the bright stars in the Linux firmament. This morning adding to the fun of the pounding interstitial music is somebody doing construction work not far enough from the ballroom where our speakers are talking. Nicholas Negroponte is currently extolling the virtues of OLPC, and doing a fantastic job showing why this project really can save the world — or at least make it a richer, more egalitarian place with opportunities for children everywhere. Kids innately love learning, love experience, love new ideas. I think I understand, after seeing Chris Blizzard’s presentation and this one, that’s what OLPC is all about — the hardware/software is a means to an end, nothing more. Time to go find caffeine and a painkiller. Here endeth the lesson. * Aside to A.M.: See, I didn’t mention you at all, your fame is all your own. |
Booby prize.In case there was a doubt, here’s further evidence of the big loser I am: This morning I wake up to a server 600 miles away at home that suddenly won’t let me SSH in. The web server is — obviously — still up. (Of course I don’t auto-update — especially not when I’m around!) Just the following fun rejoinder from my ssh attempts:
Equally predictably, I have no super-secret special-sauce back door to reboot. Yes, my loserhood knows no bounds! I have tried this from a clean “new user” account just to make sure it’s not an ~/.ssh/* configuration problem. Help me, lazy web, you’re my only hope. UPDATE: A little snooping (sorry, I was called upon to speak in one of the Summit sessions before doing any research) tells me that, although common wisdom says this is due to a libwrap/tcp_wrappers configuration error — which I know is not the case here — it’s more likely that it’s too many open connections on my system. Not sure why that’s the case, but I’ll assume it’s either my desktop connections through Nautilus, which I’ve closed, or miscreants. *Shrug* |
