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for December, 2008.
By cormander
At my last job I had no one who even remotely knew what I was talking about most of the time. Well, that’s not true, there was one knowledgeable guy there who I befriended (and is now co-authoring a book I’m writing) and I probably spent more time in his office chatting then I probably should have. But for the most part, I felt like no one knew or even cared about technology, and that was the hardest thing for me asside from the mediocre pay.
The job I have right now is a lot better, and I’m about to hit the 10 month mark. I’m in a department full of system engineers, none of whom talk to any customer. In fact, the only people outside the company we talk to at all are hardware and software vendors, either their sales guys taking us to lunch, or their support engineers on the phone because something broke beyond repair.
I’m a lot happier here, but when I start talking about the kernel they all give me a blank stare, and that’s a little depressing. In fact, sometimes I have to wonder about these guys … just the other day I overheard one of them was asking about how to use the rpm command, and he comes from a background heavy in RedHat. Um…
But we all have our flaws. Like this particular post of mine; I started it, wrote in it, and now that I’m a few paragraphs in I don’t know where I’m going with it. Sometimes I get an idea in my head and I go running with it, only to find myself a mile down the road going “OK now, what was I doing?” Good thing that it doesn’t happen all that often. But it’s all stuff I want to say, who cares if it isn’t organized thought. Sometimes it just takes too much time to have something be true journalism, and I find myself just not posting something simply because it isn’t a complete straight thought.
By cormander
I just came across this article this morning: Keyboards to become scarce in 2012
I don’t think so. I mean, seriously, think about this one for just a second. You lose an incredible amount of control over a computer if you removed the keyboard, no matter how good you make voice recognition software (or whatever else they think it is that’ll cause the demise of the keyboard). And I thought that the age of touch computing from yesterday was a bogus prediction.
I’m speechless, really.
By cormander
Here I see an article about the age of touch computing and here I am thinking to myself; “Umm, sure it sounds cool, but it’ll take much longer for the mouse to die because of it.”
People hate the touch pad on a laptop as is, this isn’t a whole lot different. As for me, you can teach an old dog new tricks, but you can’t get rid of his old habits. I’m pretty sure I’ll be using a mouse on my computer until the day I die (or get my two hands severed, in which case I wouldn’t be using a touchscreen anyway). Reaching all the way over to my screen to open something is too far, my mouse is much much closer. Besides, I spend 95% of my time with my hands on the keyboard.
By cormander
I’ve been working a lot with Tim Post these past few months of various things. He’s been a great mentor among other things. One thing that he is (that I am not) is a debian guy. This works well for the both of us, since I’m a RedHat guy and he isn’t. This creates quite the dynamic between the two of us on how we approach different issues.
One of the things we’ve been working to get going is gridnix, a linux distribution of our own. I’ve pulled Tim in my direction enough to be OK with the idea of using RHEL as a base for the OS, with our own various packages on top of it (and replacing some of the base os, such as coreutils). To this end, I’ve put together my Red Beret yum repo, to use for both gridnix and anyone else in the RHEL/CentOS community who would like to use these updated packages.
I, however, have been unable to pull him all the way in. He refuses to use yum, all for reasons I don’t have a good counter for. So I’ve decided to settle, and agree to use apt’s rpm port. So I looked to Dag Wieers’ site, since he’s the (perhaps only) CentOS core developer who uses apt. I read through his apt tutorial using apt in an rpm world and got myself up with it. So far so good.
This reminds me of what Scott Shinn has to say about the whole thing … he likes to joke that Dag has been converted to the dark side, since he’s kept yum at arm’s length. Well, turns out I’m headed in his direction. The apt utility has a lot of advantages over yum.
By cormander
Some tell the time by the position of the sun in the sky. Others tell time by how hungry they are (or aren’t). Most of us just use a clock in one form or another.
Me, on the other hand, can tell time by looking at traffic:
* 6:00 AM
- No cars on the way to the freeway. Takes very little time to get there.
- Cars driving on the freeway are generally going the speed limit.
It’s early, no one is in a rush to get to work. Besides, it’s dark, why risk it?
* 6:45 AM
- Very few cars on the way to the freeway. Take very little time to get there.
- Cars driving on the freeway are going the speed limit, with a few going over.
It’s still early, still no rush to get to work. And it’s still a little on the dark side.
* 7:30 AM
- Lots of cars on the way to the freeway. Takes a good ten minutes to get there.
- About 1/3 of the cars on the freeway are speeding, some more ridiculously then others.
It’s getting a little later. Some of these people traded in a quick shower to sleeping more and are making up for it on the road. Since it’s not that dark anymore, why not go a little faster, right?
* 8:15 AM
- Might as well be considered a traffic jam. Takes between 10 and 25 minutes to get to the freeway.
- Freeway is overcrowded. About 2/3 of the cars are speeding, most of which are at least 10mph over the limit.
Something kept these people at home this morning. Their alarm clock didn’t go off, or they didn’t set it (which is just an excuse, they didn’t hear it or just flat out ignored it); their kids missed the bus to school and they had to take them there first; or they hate their job and subconsciously drag themselves in the morning to get themselves fired for always being in late.
And because of this, they’re really booking it to get to work. Also, since it’s bright as day by now, people think they can see everything.
* 9:00 AM
- Traffic jam. By this time, some idiot who doesn’t know how to drive causes an accident (whether or not they’re actually in it is another story). Be prepared for a wait of up to 45 minutes just to GET to the freeway. Might as well just wait until 10AM to leave.
- Not a whole lot of traffic on the freeway. Just about everyone is speeding. Beware of accidents by the idiots who actually made it to the freeway.
* 10 AM – Noon
- Very few cars on the way to the freeway. Take very little time to get there.
- Very few cars on the freeway. About 1/3 of the people are speeding. Things are slowing down b/c of all the cops on the side of the road who have pulled people over.
* Noon – 4 PM
- Lots of cars on the way to the freeway. People are taking their lunch breaks, others are shopping, and some just woke up and hopped into their car to go somewhere.
- Not a whole lot of cars on the freeway. Everyone is speeding because the cops got bored and aren’t around anymore.
* 4 PM – 5 PM
- Lots of cars on the way to the freeway, but not too bad yet. A good portion of people are getting off of work but most of them are still staring at the clock, just waiting for it to hit 5.
- Freeway is starting to get overcrowded, but that doesn’t mean that they’re slowing down either.
* 5 PM – 7 PM
- Traffic jam, and not because there was an accident this time (although it does occasionally happen). Everyone, EVERYONE is trying to get away from the grind. Businesses across the area suddenly become desolate.
- Traffic jam on the freeway. Cars are bumper to bumper for miles on end.
I hate rush hour traffic. I hate how they call it rush “hour”, it’s not accurate at all, rush hour is always at least two hours.
* 7 PM – 10 PM
- Very few cars on the way to the freeway. Takes very little time to get there.
- It’s getting dark, but that doesn’t seem to slow people down this time. It’s after rush hour, so people are enjoying the fact that the actually can speed now. Others speed because they have such a busy life and want to cram everything into the day … they have to shave time somewhere.
* 10 PM – Midnight
- No cars on the way to the freeway. Takes very little time to get there.
- Not a whole lot of cars on the freeway, but no one is going the speed limit (except me and really old people). Cops are everywhere.
* Midnight – 6 AM
- I don’t drive during this time. At least not more then a few times in the past 4 years.
Conclusion:
The later in the day it gets, the more likely it is for people to speed. I’d hate to find out how bad it really is between midnight and 6 AM.
By cormander
Hey Everyone,
As it turns out, God has a blog (http://god-has-a-blog.blogspot.com/). It even has his email address!
Since I enjoy stuff like this, I decided to send him an email…
Oh master of the divine,
What is thy wisdom on the blog full of fail? http://failblog.org/
Is it good, or evil?
Ya know, because I like failblog, and I wanted to show it to God. Maybe he had something to say… and he did! Here is what he said:
Dear Corey,
Wazzup, dude?
So I looked at this 'blog full of fail' of yours, and I have to say, you
present an interesting question. On the one hand, the fail blog encourages
us to mock the simpleminded follies of others, which is evil. Judge not,
lest you be judged.
But on the other hand, did you see that one with Darth Vader following the
procession of priests? I laughed so hard I fell off my chair! Which is
good.
Really, not a lot in this Universe I created can be categorized into
simply 'good' or 'evil'. A lot of it is a grey area. So if you visit the
fail blog and don't mock (*airquote* judge *airquote*) the people, just the
stupid things they do, than I think that's okay. But if you visit the fail
blog to masturbate to the girl in the squishable.com ad, than that's evil.
Got it?
Thank you! Pray again!
Love,
God
On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 7:04 PM, Corey Henderson wrote:
> Oh master of the divine,
>
> What is thy wisdom on the blog full of fail? http://failblog.org/
>
> Is it good, or evil?
>
>
>
I have got to say, this SO better then prayer.
Hope you don’t start to get too overwhelmed with emails.
By cormander
For years I’ve built my own RPMs and have shared so few of them. This hasn’t been because I didn’t want to, just that I haven’t really had the resources (hosting space, a cluster of build machines, time). Well now I’ve finally got all of the above to some extent, and with some additional organization I put in this week, I have put together the Red Beret Yum Repository (http://rpm.cormander.com/repo/).
As of right now only the “testing” repository has anything in it, and only el5 for now, but it’s a work in progress. As soon as I feel that everything in there is ready to be pushed to the production repo I will. Moving forward I’ll have el4 in there, and then possibly start to build these packages for fedora as well.
You might also notice the “grsec” directory in there. I’ll be moving my grsecurity kernel packages into there from now on, and I’ll only be keeping up with the latest kernel (no more backports for 2.6.24, sorry guys, it just takes way too much time for one guy).
By cormander
A few days into November my wife tells me about NaBloPoMo and the she’s going to post in her blog every single day of November. Well it turns out she succeeded. As for me, I decided to boycott it and not post in my blog the entire month of November.
Turns out it was a lot harder then I had thought. I almost posted a couple of times, one of which was about my boycott. But if I posted about my non-posting during the month of November, that would count as a post and would be against my anti-NaBloPoMo’ness, so I had to wait.
Anyway, it’s December now so I’m going to start blogging regularly again. I’ve got some things I’m working on that I’m eager to share with the world.
