Tea from the Celestial Teapot

My grandmother was driving this motor home around 3:30am on Saturday, October 6, 2007 when they ran into a utility pole placed foolishly in their path. 3100 residents of Lafayette, CA were without power after this incident. Her comment was “I’m a damn good driver.”

The motor home itself had a bent frame, a partially shattered windshield, and the broken bumper which is clearly visible at least. Not easily seen is the car which the motor home was towing, as it’s currently underneath the tree. It experienced a pretty seriously caved in roof and hood. Both vehicles were still drivable.

Photo Credit: Bob Johnson

All the components of my evil plan^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H home theater system are coming together at last.

I’ve got:

• Mistubishi WD-57731 57″ 1080p DLP HDTV
• Sony ATR-DG917 7.1 Channel Home Theater Receiver
• Infinity Alpha 40 Main speakers
• Elemental Designs A6-5T5 for center and surround
• Elemental Designs A2-300 12″ powered subwoofer
• Comcast digital cable with HD-DVR
• Nintendo Wii with component video output

Still going to need a DVD player though. I suspect that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray isn’t worth buying yet because of the danger of buying an expensive paperweight and the fact that they are actually evil incarnate.

It’s been a good long while since I’ve posted to this blog; I suppose I just fell out of the habit of doing so.

Since my last post, I’ve started a new job as Manager of Gateway Development at Webroot software in February, having left Voltage Security. I learned a lot while at Voltage and have fond memories, but Webroot offered me much more money and responsibility and I felt I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

I’m about to move to a new place in Sunnyvale, which is a 4 bedroom house I’ll be sharing with Steve Haas. It’s both a fair bit larger than the place I share with Kevin now and also closer to work, which is an extra bonus. For those of you interested in stalking me, the new address is 932 Planetree Pl, Sunnyvale, CA 94086. Please form a queue along with all the other stalkers out front.

In the free software world, of late, I’ve sadly been reduced to the level of occasional stalker. I comment on bugs and try to offer insights I might have on code I’ve written in GNOME, but haven’t actually written any new code in quite some time, though I’m still an avid user of the system and still follow the development process pretty closely. Perhaps at a time in the not-so-distant future, when, perhaps I’m not quite so busy with moving and other considerations I could get back into it and write a patch or two.

We have an annually recurring war with a colony of ants that live under our house. We always have to be careful during the summer about leaving food out, keeping the kitchen clean, etc. And we leave out ant bait, but I suspect our ants have learned to metabolize it or something because the effects of the ant bait are minimal at best.

This morning the ants won a major victory, if only psychological.

Apparently something has died somewhere under the house or in the walls, because when we woke up this morning we discovered the ants engaged in a major operation on our kitchen floor very slowly dragging maggots they had dragged off from … somewhere. They are about the size of a grain of rice, and at first we thought that this was what they were (perhaps from the sink or dishwasher). But closer examination revealed that not only were they maggots, but they were still alive.

The source of these maggots remains a mystery but I feel certain that the supply of maggots hasn’t been exhausted, and a few days from now we’ll be deluged with massive numbers of flies.

The mop, the ant war equivalent of aerial bombardment, caused grievous losses amongst the ranks of the ants. But they will keep coming. They always do.

Update: I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords.

Anyone can see the procedures are onerous with one glance at the TSA Passenger Identity Verification Form. But I was in a position where my name, Robert Adams, was sufficiently similar to some other name on the list that I was unable to use any electronic or expedited check-in procedures and was instead forced to wait in line at the baggage check counter each time. When I did so, the ticket agent would make a call to some sort of higher authority who would, after a few minutes, decide I’m apparently not a threat and finally issue a boarding pass.

I eyed the procedure warily, but this process is a major inconvenience for me so I decided to plow on. I proceeded to obtain a certified copy of my birth certificate, a notarized copy of my passport, and a notarized copy of my drivers license, and provide the TSA with a great deal of other information including my home address, place of birth, social security number, and vital statistics.

It occurred to me, of course, that this letter was an ID theft wet dream before I dropped it into the mailbox. This contains so much identifying information that anyone in possession of it would be able to prove they’re me better than even I can. Now, as I hadn’t heard from the TSA regarding the form, I finally called to ask them what was going on.

They never received it, they claim.

Now I’m left wondering: if the TSA never received it, who did?

Since my blog has been sparse for quite some time, here are some updates on my current state of affairs.

I’ve left my previous employer, On-Site Manager, as a result of a dispute over an illegal non-compete agreement they asked me to sign. Rather than negotiating over some minor changes to the agreement, they fired both Kevin and me over it.

As it turns out, this sort of thing isn’t actually legal and the words wrongful termination were quickly put forth. My hope is that this will finally be filed within the next couple of days.

As far as the work situation goes for me: I’m currently unemployed. Efforts to remedy this situation have so far proved futile, though I’m also working on the side to perhaps put together a business providing electronic medical records software. The business, currently called Lucetia, will hopefully have available a product before the end of the year. At this stage though, it’s all just an idea, and some code I’ve hacked together.

Lucetia EMR is a XUL application based on the Mozilla application development platform. This is the same technology that makes Firefox, that most successful of free software applications, possible. Lucetia is not, however, an open source company (At least not yet).

I am currently seeking assistance from qualified programmers who might want to get in on the ground floor. The job would involve no pay except for a substantial ownership stake in the eventual corporation. This is not a zero-cash startup though; I do have significant savings that I’m investing in this, and as needed will seek outside funding. If my lawsuit goes well, outside funding may be unnecessary.

Email or IM me for more information about the idea and the current status if this interests you in any way. I’m currently working on this full time, so interested parties would have to be willing to provide a substantial development investment for it to be worthwhile.

I got back from my vacation to Alaska on Sunday evening. I went
with my Dad and older brother, and we saw lots of great wildlife and
did a lot of fishing. And oh yea we saw some incredible scenery.

On the first day we took a tour of Kenai Fjords National Park by
boat. We say a great deal of wildlife, including humpback whales,
porpoises, orcas, and we also spotted this Black Bear swimming
across the ocean toward an island, then climbing up a nearly sheer
cliff to vanish into some bushes.

Later on that same tour we noticed this Sea Otter floating around,
wiping some sleep out of his eyes as we approached.

We had the opportunity to travel by float plane to Katmai National
Wildlife refuge, which is a windswept wasteland shaped by glaciers
and dotted with hundreds of small lakes. The Red Salmon were
spawning in record numbers this year, which meant the bears had
mostly eaten their fill of salmon by the time we got there. But
this one at least decided to bring her three cubs to the river to
grab a quick bite or two. We got much closer to a different set of
bears, but these pictures are better since the light was low at the
other location and we couldn’t get good shutter speeds.

The cubs were very young and extremely cute. This one climbed this
small tree and was chewing on the branch while checking us out. I
wanted to go and give him a great big hug (must…resist…pun) but
I don’t think Mama bear would have appreciated that. These are
Alaskan Brown Bears.

I’ve decided to experiment with the whole blogging
thing. A lot of the GNOME folks seem to be down with it, so I’ll
give it a shot. I intend to document my GNOME work here, as well
as events in my life deemed more than trivially significant.

As far as GNOME work goes I’m currently helping Havoc handle
maintaining metacity, writing actual code for metacity whenever
possible, and generally making a nuisance of myself on GNOME
mailing lists. In particular, my hope is that this weekend I’ll
get a chance to maybe go through some applications like
gnome-terminal and epiphany and implement forwarding of
_NET_WM_USER_TIME timestamps from startup notification so that new
instances of old applications won’t pop up in the background
without focus.