the indian wind along the telegraph lines

Ubuntista!

There’s a new topic category here at mneptok.com, Ubuntu. Why the change? For a couple of reasons.

First, I’ve been a user of (and fanatic for) the Ubuntu distribution of Linux for about a year. I use Ubuntu more than any other alternative OS, and so perhaps that merits a special category.

However, the big reason is that I am now not only a user and fan, but also an employee of Canonical, Ltd, the parent company of the Ubuntu project. They have presented me with an offer which I have accepted. Please, no comments on who got the better end of the deal. Don’t scare Canonical off.

I’ll be working for them as Senior Ubuntu Systems Support Analyst starting May 1. I’ll be one of the senior staff overseeing worldwide support operations. This means training, mentoring, and managing junior staff, designing and implementing support options, and yes, answering requests for support via phone and e-mail. In a young, dynamic company no one gets to sit on a “that’s not in my job description” throne. I expect I’ll be doing a lot of work I don’t even have on my radar right now. And that’s exciting.

The support offices are in Montreal, Canada, and we’ll be moving there in the next few months. Must renew my passport, get a work permit and visa, pack up the house, sell the house, and drive back across the continent. Oh, and get two cats and three cockatiels across that continent, too. Whew! This is going to be … hectic.

Canonical has been a pleasure, no, a joy to work with thus far. Jeff Bailey (to whom I will report) and I have had long phone conversations that basically tell me I’ll be working for someone whom I both respect and genuinely like. Speaking with Jane Silber, Canonical’s COO, was every bit as reassuring. It’s nice to find employment with a company that meshes nicely with your own personal ethics and character traits.

I’ll report what I can about what it’s like to work for the company responsible for the best Linux distro on the planet, and give the morbidly curious a peek inside the sausage factory; however, don’t expect NDA violations from this quarter. If you want rumors about what’s going to be in Edgy Eft, go read Slashdot.

Now, I’m off for a dinner on the town with Kristine, and to start explaining to my body that it is going to have to re-acquaint itself with what winter really is. Good thing I kept all my winter garb when I moved to Oregon!

Viva los Ubuntistas! Viva la revolucion!

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

• BBC News
• Boing Boing
• Fedora Forum
• GNOME Foundation’s Request Tracker (private)

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.