On the whole, I prefer the root canal.

Today I am over at my sister’s trying in vain to use Microsoft’s “Easy File Transfer” (*snort*) to move her files from an older XP system to her newer Vista. (I tried to talk them into trying Linux but the kids have games, husband a proprietary app, yadda yadda.) This is positively the most painful computing exercise in which I’ve engaged all year. Compare and contrast to rsync or any of a number of other methods in Linux for moving home directory files. A more honest wizard prompt might say, “Please answer the following questions however you please, since it’s not going to work anyway.”

Why my kids are great, No. 27.

Today I managed to get some substantial work done around my “Daddy Day Care” duty:

1. Published some new versions of the Translation Quick Start Guide for the L10n folks
2. Edited a new README for Fedora Live images
3. Imported said README into Docs CVS and set it up for our build toolchain
4. Integrated said README further into the fedora-release-notes package for use at official spin time
5. Set up a draft wiki page for a new README file for the standard Fedora ISO spins, and sent mail to the fedora-marketing-list for input. (Open to all comers, actually, so please feel free to pitch in if you’re reading this!)

Tonight I am taking the kids over to Evie’s school for “Open House,” so she can meet her new first-grade teachers and say hello to her kindergarten teachers from last year. Then I’ll probably take the night off from the interwebz, maybe watch the Godard film Contempt which showed up from Netflix.

The b0rken clock.

Even hardcore Windows developers agree: GConf beats the Windows registry, hands-down.

Nobody home but us monsters.

My better half has flown the coop, as it were, for Tennessee through Friday night, so I am home taking care of the kids. I’ve already familiarized myself with the contents of our knife block and the location of incendiary materials, so I should be able to tell if any suddenly “go missing.” Maybe I should develop that ability to sleep with my eyes open that I’ve always wished I had.

I actually may have time to get some substantial work done for Fedora over the next few days, around making PB&J sandwiches and forestalling violence. If not, at least I can still pad my resume for “UN Peacekeeper.”

Superhuman effort required.

Today Eleya brought home (admittedly at my request) the Heroes S1 DVD set. I never really saw the show when it was on broadcast TV, so I’m not yet sure how I’m going to fit in catching up to all those episodes before S2 starts at the end of next month. I suppose we may end up perpetually behind and buying them on DVD. Admittedly, it’s a pretty good deal — if it’s half as good as an average movie we’d buy, that’s still $37 for about 4.5 movies worth of goodness.

The long, delirious burning blue.

Today I took the family to the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Air and Space annex near Dulles. What a day! Unfortunately, neither my camera nor I are up to the challenge of great photography, so you’ll have to take what you can get here at my blog. I really don’t Flickr, but don’t worry — I’ve picked the best photos, which is to say the almost-mediocre ones, for highlights.

We were greeted at the entrance by sculptor John Safer’s 2003 sculpture “Ascent”:

I’ve been to some aviation museums before, but nothing beats the amazing assortment of planes, spacecraft, helicopters, and other paraphernalia at this place. The museum itself is a huge hangar abutted by an observation tower and some conference offices. In it you could get almost close enough to touch this, Eleya’s personal favorite:

(Sorry about the symmetry; I watched too many Kubrick films as a young man.) That plane is the very one that broke the air speed record on its last flight, at the conclusion of which the pilots handed it over to the Smithsonian. How does one do that, anyway? Do you toss the valet the keys? More importantly, how much do you tip?

Notice the manic grin in the next shot as I get next to one of my childhood obsessions:

There was a lot to do there, since they have a couple cool simulators, an IMAX theater, and classrooms. Evie may have decided on a career in sales — here she is being tested on comportment as McDonnell-Douglas’ newest salesgirl:

Finally, we visited the observation tower and watched a few planes land at Dulles — our vantage point was much more striking than the somewhat closer views you get at the terminal. Here are Eleya and the kids looking out at the landscape:

To justify whoring my blog on the Fedora Planet, here’s some computer pr0n — check out those blinkenlights! (Believe it or not, this system was just retired in 1990. Keep that in mind next time you’re belly-aching about your two-year-old ThinkPad!

And finally, for Mr. Blizzard’s benefit, some engine pr0n:

She brings home the bacon.

…and then she fries it up in the pan. Sassy!

From hell’s heart, I stab at thee.

A friend for whom I built a computer about six years ago started having trouble with her Windows XP installation. I’ve already narrowed it down to a driver or startup service issue, but it is truly unbelievable not only how hard it is to arrive at that diagnosis (thanks to missing, obscure, or obfuscated documentation), but then to fix it non-destructively in a reasonable amount of time. To approximate that span, find a comfortable chair and wait for your beard to grow to the length of your forearm. (If you are female, make that the width of your hand.)

The Microsoft troubleshooting practice for this problem is something like the following:

1. Try safe mode.
2. What? That didn’t work? Oh, in that case, we invite you to drill down through roughly 350 links until you find a completely useless MSDN page that pretends to be about your problem, but is really about this other problem over here.
3. Sure, you could Google this, but then you get hundreds of links to people who have EXACTLY the same problem as you, only unlike Linux, no one can actually diagnose the problem because we’ve made that impossible.
4. UNLESS you’d like to hook up a serial cable to your spare computer, and debug the kernel and whatever stack trace you get.
5. What? You’re not a kernel developer?
6. What? You don’t have another computer?
7. What? You don’t have a null serial cable?
8. Never mind, just reinstall Windows, and kiss all your installed programs goodbye. That’s what everyone does in this case, even though it’s just a futzed driver or service.
9. Oh wait — did we mention when you reinstall, you can’t do it without blowing away all your user data files? Oops, our bad. Glad you bought that extra USB hard disk now, aren’t you?
10. What? You don’t have an extra USB hard disk?
11. By the way, remember to buy your Vista upgrade right away!

OK, this is a slight exaggeration, in that I actually do have a spare computer and USB hard disk. But can you really imagine Joe Sixpack trying to remotely debug his ailing computer over a serial link? Compare this to the actually helpful Google-provided universe of informative information on fixing common Linux problems.

This moment of community self-confidence boosting has been brought to you by the letter “Q” and Stolichnaya.

And to the CD, happy 25th.

To Tom “spot” Callaway, may I just say: Bless you, sir, for your work on Fedora licensing.

That is all.

The not-so-brief rundown.

I realized on Friday night, after I made it to rehearsal, just how mentally exhausting this month has been. My wandering attention made it very difficult to focus on everything going on, meaning I was constantly feeling overwhelmed, and was not getting out in front of my tasks as I prefer to do. On the other hand, it was great exercise for my “working under pressure” muscles, and things worked out.

After recovering from an illness that came down on me like a ton of bricks last Saturday night, I finally got back to the office on Tuesday. Sinus illness tends to hit me hard, probably because mine aren’t in great shape on the best of days to begin with. The congestion headache made it difficult to do any Fedora work, so I gave up for the most part and got a little reading done.

On Tuesday evening I also did a spot for the virtual FUDCon (notes here) and plowed through some email. I believe I did some Docs publishing work and helped out one of our legion of awesome translators who is working on a revamped guide for their contributors.

On Thursday night the guys from the office came over for wings ‘n’ beer. We’d been making an occasional habit of going out on Thursday nights — since several of the other guys are off on Fridays — to a local happy hour, but the service at our usual haunt has been increasingly unsatisfactory despite our really good tipping proclivities. (I could rant about that for a while, but it’s likely not worth it.) So I bought a sampling of really good beers and cooked up some chicken wings. There was a slight smoky mishap involving my ill-advised use of cooking spray — I thought it would make the wings easier to retrieve after baking, since I don’t do deep-frying — but otherwise, yummy!

Friday after work I headed up to a “night-before” rehearsal at Rich’s and as I got there, I felt like everything from the past month had just crashed down on me. My mood was not really conducive to music-making but I resolved to put my all into playing that night, and putting away my fake sheets. That turned out to be the right decision, and the tensions of the month evaporated as we built up some really solid arrangements for Laura’s songs. By the end of the night, I felt that everything was OK and that we’d be in for a good gig.

On Saturday I did a whirlwind shopping tour to pick up some autumn casual and gig-worthy clothes. It’s tough finding good vintage/thrift stuff when you’re a big fat guy like me, so I had to content myself with some new stuff I found that at least obscured the sight line to my inevitably nearing Four-Oh. Thanks to the asinine level of traffic on the roads in the northern Virginia and DC area, Eleya got home with the kids from an appointment with only about an hour overlap before I had to hit the road for our premiere gig.

The gig actually went swimmingly well. There were some various “clams” and other assorted seafood idioms thrown into a few songs — substantially aided and abetted by the worst on-stage monitor mix I’d ever had at that particular venue. The vast majority of the show, however, went well, and we had an inordinate amount of fun on stage. The packed audience truly felt that, and responded in kind with uncharacteristically boisterous applause, even in the middle of songs. I find that DC area audiences tend to be a little jaded, but not so last night — the audience was clearly enjoying hearing Laura backed by a full band, and didn’t mind telling us so.

To all of you who showed up and gave us some love and appreciation either through applause or your kind and generous comments afterward, thank you, thank you, thank you! You guys truly made it a great night, and we promise it will only get better from here on out.