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April 30, 2003

Update

Well, it's true. My linux machine is dead. Dead-dead-deadski. After one last feeble fsck attempt, I will reinstall Mandrake 9. Don't know when though, with the anklebiter countdown started.

Work work work....

The new job has been going well. After a day of extreme programming with a co-worker, I've been set loose on the application. Despite the overall complexity of the framework being used, I've got a decent handle on things. My only complaint so far is that my mp3s aren't playing so well on the machine....lots of burps, farts and hisses....

In other news, my Mandrake 9 machine at home went kablooey last night. Unfixable file system errors. Nice. I recently made a backup of important files though, so I will probably just reinstall instead of trying to salvage anything...

In anklebiter news.....no baby yet. Jen is still doing well. We're pushing for this Friday (the actual due date) so I don't miss much work ;-)

April 27, 2003

Do You Hate Unix?

Slashdot has posted an article (well, two, actually) about the release of the Unix-Haters Handbook (Note: the PDF has disappeared from the above page, thanks to being Slashdotted). Regardless of what you think about Unix (or any *nix), it's a good, funny read. I'm about halfway through it, and so far, the funniest part has been some unique Unix error messages like:


$ drink <bottle; opener
bottle: cannot open
opener: not found


or


$ man: why did you get a divorce?
man:: Too many arguments


For those of you on linux boxes, before you fire up a terminal and try these, keep in mind the book was written, oh, about ten years ago. Lots of these little quirks have been ironed out.

Also, in case you're a linux, Windows, or Mac disciple, keep in mind the authors of the book did most of their work on OSes like Multics and machines powered by Lisp. I got a good chuckle looking over the /. discussion, seeing all the linux radicals claiming the whole thing was just M$ FUD and that Windows was no better. Perhaps they should at least skim the book's forward before they open their traps...

This page may be a bit quiet for the next few days, as I start the new job in earnest tomorrow, and I've got a bit more coding for my consulting project to finish up. Then, of course, there's the impending birth, which could happen any moment now....

April 22, 2003

Friendly Advice

I finally got the sound working on my linux machine at the new job today. The secret, you ask? Well, if you have a Soundblaster Live 5.1 card (shipped with many newer Dells), save yourself a lot of hassle and go directly here and download the Open Sound System driver for that card. Sadly, the driver isn't free (as in beer). There is a bit of a licensing fee ($20). You can download the driver for evaluation, but it will cease working after x number of days. Still worth it though if you're stuck with the Soundblaster.

April 21, 2003

X-treme Programmer

I've started the ramp-up to my new job over the past few days. Mostly I've just been setting up my workstation....a Dell Dimension with a Pentium 4 2GHz processor, .5 GB RAM, running RedHat 7.3. I'm not too chucked about RH 7.3...my preference would have been Mandrake 9, since it seems to be better suited to newer systems from the get-go. I spent this morning trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to get the Soundblaster Live soundcard working properly. A brief rundown of the steps:

1. Download emu10k1 driver source code.
   
2. Configure and build the source, and install the driver modules.
   
3. Reboot.
   
4. Attempt to listen to an MP3. No luck.
   
5. Download the ALSA emu10k1 driver and utilities.
   
6. Configure and build the driver and utilities.
   
7. Reboot.
   
8. Start XMMS and hear lots of scratches and burps.
   

That, my friends, is called progress.

I also talked with my new boss for a bit about implementing some aspects of Extreme Programming to speed my transition without stalling development. While Extreme Programming covers a whole development methodology, we will focus on pair programming at the beginning. Basically, I'll sit next to the senior development, both of us working on the same machine, and we'll code together. It's an interesting concept, and people tend to love it or hate it. I used it a bit at my first programming job for the similiar purpose of getting me up to speed on the technologies, and it worked quite well. Obviously, it is dependent on the dynamic between the two developers, but I think as long as we don't hate each other (which isn't the case yet, after a few days) it should work well.

April 16, 2003

This Week's Sign the Apocalypse is Upon UIs...

This is a headline from Sport Illustrated:

Kansas receives permission to talk with Self

I wonder who they had to ask?

April 15, 2003

Basketball

Betcha never thought you'd read something here about the University of Pittsburgh basketball team....but here it is, my $.02 about the new team's new coach. While it's good for Jamie Dixon that he was named head coach (and the players, who lobbied hard for him), it's a bit odd that a team that is now considered a national power (despite their early exit from the NCAA tournament) would almost immediately hire an untested coach who was passed over by two smaller colleges. But Dixon comes with Ben Howland's stamp of approval, so perhaps he won't be all that bad.

The War Is Over?

It looks as if life can return to normal (did ever leave?). Most of the major news sites have toned down their emphasis on the war in Iraq and said that the major military action is now over and the coalition will now work on rebuilding Iraq. This is great, but where is Saddam Hussein? I don't think any in the intelligence community would claim he was killed, and there's a good chance he fled to Syria, or is well-hidden in one of his spacious bunkers.

Of course, even though everyone would like you to believe that the US is not going to unleash the dogs of military action on Syria, but the rhetoric sounds very similiar to what we heard before the Iraqi invasion. Of course, for you conspiracy theorists out there, Israeli PM Ariel Sharon has given you a bit of fodder. I don't think our military can rest easy quite yet....

April 14, 2003

Moving Over Stone

Jen and I went to Cooper's Rock yesterday. I'm fairly sure it was my first time on rock since our trip to Bishop last year. That has to be a record. It was fantastic day....warm sun, cool breeze. Oddly, there's not a leaf to be found on the trees in the forest.

It was so good to be on rock again...to feel the crystals of gritstone under my fingers...to work hard to move over stone smoothly. After so much time on plastic, I forgot what a joy it is to really rock climb. I've been much more motivated to climb lately (after several months of little climbing and lots of bike riding), and yesterday just stoked the fire a bit more. I'm not sure I'm going to start "training" again, but I certainly want to climb a lot again. I was pleasantly surprised that I could do most of the circuit of moderate to hard problems that I did last year. Of course, it didn't include anything all that hard, and I certainly didn't project anything, but it was reassuring nonetheless.

In other news...there are some other updates on the site, especially with the anklebiter section. We've been busy getting things ready for the "Big Day".

April 13, 2003

Rally Wrap-Up

Marcus Gronholm has won the Rally New Zealand over Peugeot teammate Richard Burns. Subaru's Petter Solberg took home third, almost two minutes off Marcus' pace.

It was an odd Rally New Zealand, with many retirements (including all of Hyundai and Ford's Markko Martin). Skoda had a fine rally, with Toni Gardemeister finishing fifth, and Didier Auriol taking eighth. Tommi Makkinen's seventh place pulled Subaru closer to Ford for third place in the manufacturer's championship. The new Ford Focus was quick, with Martin setting a hat trick of fastest stage times on day 2, but Martin was forced to retire when he couldn't restart the car after a spin on a later stage. Francios Duval has similiar problems on day one, leaving to fight for a place in the points. Nothing for Ford to be concerned about though...just the typical bugs that accompany releasing a new car.

With Skoda's intended release of the new Fabia, this leaves Subaru as the sole manufacturer running a larger car (even the Mitsubishi Lancer is smaller). While Solberg had a decent rally, he wasn't setting any fastest stage times (which he did quite a bit last season), and Tommi Makkinen struggled all rally with his Impreza. Is it time for Subaru to go back to the drawing board. The newest WRC cars are small and nimble, and while the Impreza is still one of the lightest cars, it's just bigger than everything but the Skoda Octavia. Could change be in the air?

April 12, 2003

Rally New Zealand : Day Two

Saturday's round of the WRC Rally New Zealand is over, and Marcus Gronholm is still in charge, even after flipping his Peugeot on SS13. Richard Burns is currently almost a minute back in second place, and Subaru's Petter Solberg is another 50 seconds back in third place. Sebastien Loeb continues his fantastic season holding down fourth (in a rally he's never run). I don't expect the results will change much tomorrow, with the top five trying to maintain a steady pace to hold their positions....

April 11, 2003

Geekiness

Wonder what programming will be like 100 years? Here's an article that theorizes about it. There's a fairly interesting Slashdot discussion about it (and here's my $.02 about it).

Tick Tock...

First, after six whole weeks, the World Rally Championship is running again, this time in New Zealand. The weather has been wetter than usual, negating any disadvantage early runners like Richard Burns (current driver's points leader) might have. But the conditions haven't stopped Marcus Gronholm, as he leads the rally after day one by almost 40 seconds. Markko Martin (in the latest evolution of the Focus WRC) is in second and Subaru's Petter Solberg in third. While no one has certainly discounted Gronholm from winning the driver's championship again this year, a win here could reassert his dominance, and give him some nice before points before the tougher summer rallies like Cyprus and Greece, where Peugeot doesn't fare as well. Also....a non-factory team to watch: Antony Warmbold and co-driver Gemma Price. They've had a decent year so far, finishing just outside of the top ten in Monte Carlo.

Other news...I'm fairly convinced my consulting project will never end. I've become very good at sitting on my hands. I want to start my other job now, as I don't want to start in two weeks, then have to take a week off when the anklebiter is born a week or two later. I'd like a solid three weeks or so before I take time off. Bleh.

Annoying linux note of the week...the inability of Mandrake 9 to read audio CD-ROMs. I've been trying to rip as many mp3s from my CD collection as possible for the new job, but most of the software I have just can't see the drive. Thankfully, OS 10's iTunes has a nice ripper built right in....the burn process is a little slower, since I have to go across the network to get the mp3s (since my CD-RW doesn't work with the Mac).

April 09, 2003

Hurry Up and Wait

I am desperately trying to wrap up this consulting project. I want to start my new job as soon as possible (and my new employer would like me to as well), but these folks just won't play ball. I don't ever want for a big company, no matter how much they will pay me. It can't be worth it. Why? Well....

First, there are three (3) groups that my tech contact has to coordinate with just to get my code on their system. Not deployed, not tested, just put on their disks. Then there's the group that oversees all web application projects. They've now begun the process of picking over the project, let us know what's wrong. Now, before you think I'm getting defensive about my code, let me explain. I'm only implementing here, not really designing. I'm migrating a Perl application to Java. It's the original application process they don't like, and they're only speaking up now (about a week before the client would like it go into production).

When I started this project, there was talk that the group I was working for would have to present their application to this web group, but that was nixed once the web group found out they already had a website (btw--these people all work for the same company). Right now, I wish we would have gone in front of this group in the beginning, because we wouldn't be hashing out now. Fortunately, my client things I've been doing good work up to this point, so I can at least rest a little easier knowing I'm not the one screwing things up. Bleh...

The real bummer is that I'll probably be spending a lot time over the next week in the concrete block that is their office space, trapped in a windowless cube farm.

At least I can look forward to my next job, working out a well-lit room in someone's house....

April 08, 2003

CRACK

Salon has an interesting article (sorry, you'll have to click through an ad to read it) about a new program called CRACK (Children Requiring A Caring Kommunity) that pays drug addicts to take birth control or get sterilized.

I'm not really sure how I feel about the whole concept, and it would probably take me quite some time to work through all the issues, but I did find that people's reactions to the program are quite telling.

First, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are furious. Their argument is that the group preys on minorities and the poor. Well, a quick scan of the article will find statistics regarding CRACK's patient demographic, and suprising, the racial percentages are fairly level. As far as preying on the poor, well, there is some merit to that. $200 is another fix for a drug addict. But....most drug addicts would do what they could to score that next fix, and part of me says that it's better that they aren't conceiving kids that will live their days in foster care with potential health problems. The argument is also made that money donated to CRACK might be better off given to drug rehab centers. There is truth to that as well, but I can't believe that Planned Parenthood doesn't receive both public and private donations to help pregnant drug addicts. Shouldn't they offer to give that money up as well?

Second, there is the troubling allegation that this program amounts to "Hitler-esque eugenics." That's quite a stretch. A person can receive a one-time $200 payment for sterilization through the CRACK program, or $200 per year to stay on birth control. Granted, many people opt for sterilization, but isn't birth control a better deal (they aren't just distributing the pill either...most of the time it's a once a month type method)? One of the heads of the group, Barbara Harris, responded this way:

Harris says that the claim that she and others involved with CRACK are practicing social engineering is ludicrous. "We are not picking on the poor," she says. "We're just helping people who need our help but have nowhere else to go." She pauses and then adds: "Paltrow should adopt some of these children and then try and criticize me."

I can't argue with her there. Many of the critics of the program have probably never taken care of a child that suffers from the drug habits of their mother. Like I said, I'm not sure if this program is right, but its critics aren't offering anything but criticism--and that doesn't help the people that really need it.

April 07, 2003

Work....

I'm now in multi-tasking mode. I'm trying desperately to get the PNC project out the door, so I can start the full time position ASAP, but PNC is doing their best to prevent that. 99.85% of the development work is finished, but it seems as if there may be some issues with some of the functionality and how it will fit in with the PNC application server architecture. Our plan for the web app has basically not changed since we first gathered requirements, but now suddenly, someone on the Star Chamber-esque committee that oversees the app server environment decided that the app would be better suited using a database, and there are issues with the current decision of using CSV files. Now, this was not my idea. In fact, we pitched the idea of database, but the group that I'm working for decided they didn't want to deal with it at this point (plus they didn't want to have to pay for development of a front-end app to access the data in said database).

Now I'm stuck trying to explain how the app works, and why using CSV files for the short-tern isn't a bad thing. Of course, I may still have to refactor some code to use a Lotus Domino server (blech), but a conference call tomorrow should clear things up. I don't ever, ever want to work for a large company. The speed at which the IT staff at PNC moves is quite amazing---it's soooo sloooooow.

While I'm sitting on my hands with the PNC project, I'm also learning about the Turbine development framework (this is what I'll be using at the new job). It's an interesting idea, but right now, as I sit in the middle of trying to get it up and running on my machine, I think there's quite a bit of stuff going on...maybe too much. I dunno though....I'm sure my opinion will change once it's up and running.....

April 02, 2003

Mozilla

Big changes are afoot for Mozilla. Lots of good news too, mostly in the form of ditching the kitchen-sink model that has made Mozilla a bloated process-vampire. A few interesting bits:

* Phoenix will become the browser for Mozilla.
* The yet-unreleased Minotaur will become "Thunderbird" and become the mail client.
* The development model will change, conforming to an Apache-esque community, instead of a developer-free-for-all.

Lots of good news here. Phoenix is a great browser, and I'm excited for Minotaur so I can ditch Mozilla on the PC and Evolution on linux.

Quagmire

This sort of response scares me a little bit. Why would Britain already begin to distance themselves from something like this if there wasn't a chance it would happen? This is exactly the sort of situation I feared when we started this war. I think the last thing we want to is to be taking on much of the Middle East ourselves.

April 01, 2003

Updates

First...I accepted an offer for a fulltime job yesterday. I'll be a Java monkey for a little collaboration software startup. Should be interesting. The work consists of using the newer Jakarta-Apache frameworks like Turbine and Velocity. Despite the fact it'll be a paycut from consulting, not having to worry about things like health benefits is a huge relief--they ain't cheap when you're paying out of your own pocket.

I hope to never work on a Windows box again. I just lost about 3 years off my life (and I probably got about 10 grey hairs) trying to port my client's web application from my linux box to a Windows laptop for demos. Yeesh. I'll chalk some of the issues up my lack of knowledge about the Windows command line, but the lack of simple tools like unix tail can be really frustrating. That and the whole file separator issue....But it's up and running now, and I've got a few demos to do over the next few days.