To network or not to network.

Tomorrow I’ll be at the Red Hat Government Users & Developers Conference. If you’re a Fedoran who happens to frequent those kinds of things, look for me. I should be sporting some kind of Fedora logo, either a cap or just a laptop sticker.

I have no idea whether the connectivity will be the usual standard for Red Hat events. Heck, I didn’t even know I could go until today, so I’ll be registering at the door, assuming there’s space left.

Commonalities.

Both Tim Waugh and I are apparently big Justin Currie fans. My copy of his new solo album just showed up and HOLY HELL is it good. I was glad to see a bunch of the Dels play bit parts here and there, and Justin dedicates the record to longtime guitarist partner Iain Harvie.

Now if only get to see him here in the US, life will be grand.

Slipping the surly bonds, II.

This is just too cool not to share. And to keep on topic, umm… awoooooo! Werewolf.

Let it rain.

Aaaahhhhhhhhhh.

Reckless endangerment, part 1.

Verbatim, from a note sent home in Evie’s “Poetry Folder”:

Every Friday your child will bring home their Poetry Folder to share with you. We will be learning a special poem each week. Please have each person that your child reads their poem to initial the page and return it to school on Monday. Thank you.

Care to count the errors? People always ask me why our children speak so well, and I think maybe I should start answering, “Because we don’t trust the schools to teach them how.”

Things that make you go “Duh,” part 35.

Not sure whether to laugh or cry at this one, from Evolution in Rawhide:

So tell me, Evo developers, if top posting isn’t recommended, why is it that when I start a reply, my cursor opens a blank line at the beginning of the message and positions itself there?

Honest assessment.

I wanted to jot myself some notes about last night’s gig, and a good way to stay honest about it is to do it here. Song by song breakdown:

1. Helicopter’s Rope – I think I missed one note when Arch was coming out of his solo, but caught up fine for the refrain. Probably not noticeable, but frustrating since I knew the song cold.
2. High Tide – For whatever reason, I lost my fingering and nerve at the beginning and fumbled around until we hit the verse. Probably sounded terrible. Once we got there, evened it out OK.
3. Halloween – Couldn’t have been better. I even hit my new vocal lines right.
4. Hard – I don’t remember any problems here.
5. Letters – Needed a stronger entrance and I think the drums exited a bit early, but very cleanly.
6. Hurricane – I was SO on the money on this one, after this gave me real trouble at our last rehearsal, for whatever reason. Feeling good after this one.
7. Pilots – Didn’t miss anything in this that I can recall, but it’s hard to remember well since the crowd was so loud over our nice quiet restraint.
8. Our History – Came back with this after Laura’s solo acoustic interlude. Very strong as I remember it, and had all the changes nailed.
9. Roads – Gave Laura some jitters trying to noodle around her entrance, so we need to fix that and get a good bead on how she would like to do it in a stretched fashion. But after that, it was spot on as I recall, and Arch’s solo was AWESOME.
10. Firefly – I think this was really good, except for some very quiet intro notes I had where I forgot we had changed the key by a half-step (never good to get wrong, yuck). Thanks to the fact that Laura hit it for a few bars in soundcheck, I got the last-minute changes she had made at the last rehearsal. I think our vocals may have been killer, but it was very hard to hear them on stage, unfortunately.
11. Proof – Left with a killer rendering of this tune as I recall.

We have a little work to do for the next show, but I am firmly of the opinion that getting it right on stage is what really cements the songs in one’s memory. This show was exponentially better than the first, and I expect the next one will be amazing. Now if we can just do that one at a venue where people are actually listening instead of roaring over us…. At least we got paid very generously.

The good, the bad, and the style-challenged.

My life this week could be summed up with plusses and minuses. For instance, I just got back from Seattle, where:

+ Everything was lush and green because they ACTUALLY HAVE RAIN in Seattle
- There was a pretty boring conference I had to sit through
+ There was wifi at the conference this year
- The wifi was spotty and mostly sucked
+ Discovered a great porter from Okocim
- Found out that Okocim Porter has been discontinued

I did manage to fit in a little Fedora work around the boredom and the barhopping, including fixing some Installation Guide problems and enjoying the awesomeness that will soon be F8. I also had some great sushi and sake at Yama, and a pleasant flight home since the center seat in my row was empty.

Today I took a day off work to recover from the fun of travel and cram in some last-minute rehearsal before our gig tonight at IOTA with Shwa. There’s supposed to be a huge crowd out tonight, which always makes for great energy when performing. I even bought some new shoes to cut down on my dork factor… unfortunately, they’re identical to the ones our guitarist has since they didn’t have the color I liked better in my size. If I wear something crazy on my head, or give myself an enormous oozing gash there, probably no one will notice. Now where did I put that cutlery?

Laptop mode, check.

I’m using my hawt new Dell XPS M1330 and have been a direct beneficiary of the equally hawt F8. The iwl3945 module which cost me about 60%+ in performance at F7 release time is now providing peak performance in Rawhide (pre-F8). Media keys all work great, including volume, track control, brightness, and so forth. Even the IR control works great!

Now that I’m used to the different keyboard feel I have zero qualms about this unit — so much so that I took it to a conference with me this week and have been showing it off to many admirers. When Jeremy posts about all the improvements, he is not kidding at all. Now, it doesn’t hurt that I took options for all the Intel components I could (including graphics and wireless), but there is no doubt in my mind that F8 is going to deliver a really choice confluence of form and function.

I also want to give a well-deserved shout to Bastien and others for the awesome Bluetooth work during this past cycle. Today I showed off to a colleague the excellent capabilities to move pictures and audio using both Fedora and my phone’s built-in functions. Sweet!

For those among you tracking me on the Loserometer.

Every once in a while I get a nice SMS message on my phone from a friend — typically a more wired one like a fellow Fedoran. Since I have no text message plan on my phone, those texting me may wonder why I never respond. Am I too busy? Overly rude? Trapped under something very heavy?

Worry not, I’m simply frugal (or is that miserly?). I don’t have my cell phone with me in the office and since I’m typically on the interwebz then, I figure if people want to reach me they’ve got IRC and email. So I never bothered to get a text plan. If you text me and I don’t respond, don’t be hurt, I love you too.