Nailed In Portland

CNN is reporting on a story first published in the Journal Of Neurosurgery. Seems one of my extended neighbors here in Portland shot himself in the head with a nail gun 12 times in a botched suicide attempt whilst high on methamphetamine.

Surgeons removed the nails with needle-nosed pliers and a drill, and the man survived with no serious lasting effects … The man at first told doctors he had had a nail gun accident, but later admitted it was a suicide attempt. The nails came close to major blood vessels and the brain stem but did not pierce them.

Meth is bad, m’kay?

Those Kooky Finns

Finland is an odd place.

It is a beautiful country noted for its lakes and pristine Nordic scenery. My beloved Linux was developed by a Swedish-Finn. So was my father, as my paternal grandmother was a Swedish-Finn from Karelia. I remember a fun summer spent with Finnish cousins Esse, Vesa, and Janne. Visits from Ilke and Irmili.

Finland is also home to bizarre black metal bands and a suicide rate that puts other countries to shame. Finns have a (not undeserved) reputation as an aloof and unsociable people.

But, if this is what you saw on MTV you might contemplate suicide. And if this guy was your dance instructor you might have a hard time making friends.

Ahh, the paradox that is Finland.

Thanks, Remco!

The Color Of Spring

Happy 01:02:03 04/05/06 everyone!

Here she comes.
Silent in her sound.
Here she comes.
Fresh upon the ground.
Come gentle spring,
come at winter’s end.
Gone is the pallor from a promise that’s nature’s gift.
Waiting for the color of spring.
Let me breathe.
Let me breathe the color of spring.
Here she comes.
Laughter in her kiss.
Here she comes.
Shame upon her lips.
Come wanton spring,
come for birth you live.
Youth takes its bow before the summer the seasons bring.
Waiting for the color of spring.
Let me,let me breathe.
Let me breathe you.
Let me breathe.
Let me breathe you.
Let me breathe.

April Fifth – Mark Hollis

Best Baby Photo Ever

I met my friend Bill in 1982, when I worked as a camp counselor at a day camp in Connecticut. We had a blast warping the minds of our young charges and getting them to sing Zappa and Beefheart lyrics during lunch.

Bill just sent me this picture of himself and his daughter Lucy. This is the best baby picture ever. If you’re a parent, you’re gonna have to work pretty damned hard to top this.

Slippage

It’s not a good practice to be late. Showing up an hour behind schedule to pick up your prom date usually results in your promexperience being somewhat less than optimal. But there are ways to soften the blow, like having a good excuse or calling to tell someoneyou’ll be late. A key factor in not having your reputation permanently sullied by tardiness is to not make a habit of it. If you’re pereniallylate, you’ll get labelled a flake. If you’re usually on-time, when you’re late people will tend to empathize with you.

That having been said, two popular OSes announced slips in their release dates this week. Ubuntu was supposed to ship their “Dapper Drake” release in April. The new release date is June 1. Microsoft was supposed to deliver Windows Vista in Q4 this year. That release will now happen in January.

As similar as these stories sound, they show a marked difference in corporate style. And that difference makes an impact on how the public views the tardiness (for that is what it is) of the releases.

Ubuntu has prided itself on a clockwork release schedule. Every six months a new version of Ubuntu Linux comes out of the Canonical, Ltd. cooker and is eagerly gobbled up by the masses. Thus far, the release schedule of Ubuntu Linux has all the drama and unpredictability of a Prussian forced march. In short, Canonical has a reputation for release reliability. So people were shocked when Canonical CEO MarkShuttleworth proposed a six week delay on the official mailing lists. And this week that delay was confirmed and made offcial.

On the other hand, Microsoft first told consumers Vista (codenamed”Longhorn” at the time) would be ready in 2003. Then they slipped that to 2005. Then they slipped to 2006. And this week the date slipped to January 2007.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m a Linux user and I have no love for Microsoft. But I’m not a zealot. I’m not an apologist.

But dang, the difference here is night and day.

  • Canonical is known for meeting release dates. Microsoft has done nothing but postpone for five years.
  • Canonical invited users to discuss the issue with their employees so that everyone would understand the reasoning and thus understand that a delay was a good idea. Microsoft makes nebulous claims about “needing time to ensure quality.” Five years wasn’t enough?
  • Speaking of five years, MS last released a new version of Windows in 2001. Canonical last released a new version of Ubuntu in October 2005.
  • The ISVs and IHVs (e.g. Dell) that depend on Microsoft product releases to drive sales, especially during the holiday season, just got reamed by Microsoft. Nice way to make your partners happy, Redmond.

Ten years ago Forbes magazine couldn’t write a negative article about Microsoft if they tried. MS was the Golden Boy of American business. But this week Daniel Lyons writes:

Microsoft can’t afford to screw up like this. There are free alternatives to everything Microsoft sells, like the Linux operating system and the Open Office application suite. Rivals like Novell, RedHat, Sun Microsystems and, yes, IBM are pushing those programs big time. Given Microsoft’s delays I can’t believe open-source stuff still hasn’t caught on for desktop computers. It’s amazing, but people will wait months and months for products that are so complicated that no ordinary person can figure out how to use them.

It’s one thing when competition buries you because they’re simply better. It’s another when your own ineptitude helps make your competition better. And Ubuntu is looking better than anything out of Microsoft these days.

Can You Hear Me Now?

It seems that people that use networks where the admins use SmartFilter are now unable to read Boing Boing. Because of “nudity.”

Insanity. Complete, utter, insanity.

So I decided to make things a little more difficult for SmartFilter and their users, and submitted this to BB.

Are you in the UAE, Qatar, or on a corporate network that uses SmartFilter? Say goodbye to mneptok.com. I’m about to be censored.

And don’t shout at me, shout at the people who decided to put you behind SmartFilter. Make them re-think their policy. Take your business elsewhere. Or use TOR. Maybe that will get you an Internet uncensored by machines.

Shacktagged

Yes, dear reader(s), it has been more than two months since my last post. Just haven’t had anything all that exciting to report, nor have I felt the blogging jones.

The Christmas holidays are pretty much a non-event in our home, so it was laid back with a Chinese dinner with friend Ben. The Oregon winter is in full effect, with rain interspersed with periods of just mist, and an occasional dry day or two. Life is deliciously quiet. That may change soon, but that’s a topic for another post.

What has stirred me from my blogotorpor is a tag from friend Scot. Usually these would get bit-bucketed immediately, but Scot rarely replies to this stuff, so coming from him it’s extremely rare. And he’s on the friends A list, so … here we go …

Four shows I enjoy

  • Law And Order: Criminal Intent
  • Babylon 5
  • Twin Peaks
  • Almost anything on the History Channel

Four jobs I’ve held

  • Systems Administrator
  • Site Manager
  • Project Manager
  • Technical Support Specialist

Four places I’ve lived

  • Hartford/New Haven, CT
  • Philadelphia, PA
  • Washington, DC
  • Portland, OR

Four places I’ve vacationed

  • Aspen, CO
  • Tucson, AZ
  • Enlgand/Ireland/Wales
  • My bed

Four cool toys

  • 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica
  • Smith And Wesson .40
  • My Linux desktop
  • functional homo sapiens sapiens brain

Four web sites I visit daily

Four places I’d rather be

  • Lying on a beach in Thailand or Tunisia
  • Getting my pilot’s license
  • 1970
  • In bed

Four bloggers I’m tagging

  • Nice try, this ends here

There it is, by the command of the shacker.

Stay tuned. I promise not to be such a dilletante in the future.

Dishwasher Switches

Our kitchen sink faucet melted down last weekend, and as we await our free replacement parts we’re forced to used the dishwasher to clean our dishes. Usually we don’t use it, as there are only two of us in the house.

Last night while setting the options for a wash cycle on the machine, in my head I saw:

–no-water-preheat –no-prewash –no-heat-dry

File under “You Know You’re A Geek When.” *sigh*

Backyard Predator

Today I was watching the little birds eating at the feeders in our backyard. Suddenly, as if responding to an unheard signal, every single one of them flew off into hiding. Now, it’s not entirely unusual for these little birds to fly away in groups. But for all of them to do it as if controlled by a single brain is unusual.

I opened the sliding glass door that opens onto the patio and heard a loud rustling in the hedge that forms the rear perimeter of our yard. As I watched, a gorgeous hawk flew out of the hedge and landed on a tree branch. He sat there preening himself after his headlong dive into our hedge in pursuit of his prey. He was a gorgeous specimen of one of nature’s truly beautiful killing machines. And I found it funny that he, like our ‘tiels, liked sitting on one leg, with the other tucked up into his soft chest feathers.

I ran inside and grabbed the binoculars and digital camera. While I was able to snap these photos, I was unable to get woo out of the shower in time to see him. Her loss.

I love it when the wild intrudes into our suburban sprawl. Well, at least when it’s a beautiful hawk in a tree. I’d probably feel differently if it was a wolverine in the bathtub.

Vihara Penguins

I have been an active member of the Oregon Buddhist Vihara for the past year or so. It’s been my pleasure to meet many Buddhist monks, as well as some wonderful Sri Lankan and Western dyakas.

A few months ago my friend Scot agreed to let them host their web site at Birdhouse for free (thanks Scot!) and I set up a content management system for them. Last week I decided it was high time they learned to operate the site themselves, and Bodhiseeha and I agreed to meet this weekend for some instruction. Typically, things weren’t that easy.

Bodhi’s computer, a Dell PIII, runs WindowsXP. When we booted it it took a full four minutes from the time the desktop appeared until the machine was actually usuable. No hyperbole. Four to five minutes. Part of this problem was the fact the machine had a mere 64MB of memory, but most of the problem was software. Being trusting, when getting a new printer Bodhi installed all the software from CD. Same when he got DSL. Same when he got a link from a friend. Spyware, adware, and malware galore.

We were able to cannibalize some RAM from another donated machine and get his up to 192MB. That helped. I ran Spybot and removed the stuff it found. That helped a little more. However, a ton of malicious software remained that I couldn’t remove effectively. The problem is that Spybot doesn’t classify this stuff as malicious, because it does give the user the option of not installing it. But it does not appear in Windows’ “Add and Remove Programs” panel because it’s not truly benign. Of course, trying to remove it manually is like pulling teeth because of Windows’ screwed up registry.

So, quiz time. What’s the path of least resistance to make a malware-infested Windows computer usable?

Answer: Cannibalize the hard drive from that other computer and install Linux. Ubuntu Linux, to be precise. I would say that 90% of Bodhi’s time on the computer is spent writing documents, surfing the web, writing e-mail, and listening to the Sinhala Real streams from the BBC. All of which can be done with Linux without effort. OpenOffice, Firefox, Evolution, and RealPlayer for Linux all provide simple, elegant, fault-tolerant, stable, and, above all, secure, solutions.

Not to mention that Linux (and Ubuntu in particular) is made for people like Sri Lankans. They’re technologically curious, but desperately poor. There is no reason Sri Lankans should be paying Microsoft (the richest company on the planet) for the … ahem … “right” to use Windows and Office. It makes no sense.

So, after 2 afternoons of installation, configuration, and tutorial Bodhi is now an Ubuntu Linux user and loving it. He can still dual-boot Windows so he can use any Windows-only apps, but I installed Firefox and OpenOffice on the Windows side of things for consistency. And you know, he’s really beginning to see the light when it comes to free software. He gets it. He wants to send donated computers back to his village someday, and as of this weekend, those machines will run Linux.

Score one for the good guys. And I mean both users and developers.

And I’ll get to the web site tutorial in the next week or so, knowing the computer won’t be an impediment to getting work done, but rather a vehicle. What a concept.