Another dispatch from Linuxland

I'm becoming more comfortable with the OpenSUSE distro., although I thought that I was going to have to rebuild the installation (and all the customization/add-on work) a few days ago. I'm not positive, but I think that I erred in switching back over to the Windows box while installing updates through the YaST-based updater. When I switched back and started clicking around, I hung it up But Good. After noticing that the hard drive's LED indicator had been dark for at least several minutes, I just pressed the power button and counted alligators. But the system wouldn't POST when I tried to power it back on. That's the first time it's done that since pitching Ubuntu. But it did it, which tells me that it's the hardware and not the operating system, and a quirk I'm going to have to learn to live with. Maybe it's just luck, but holding in the power button for a fraction of a second longer than I normally would seems to be the silver bullet for that problem. AI would be redundant--this thing already has a mind of its own.

It seems that I grabbed OpenSUSE nearly steaming from the build (Oct. 4th release date), so I may have awhile to wait before the next kernel update is made available. I haven't quite figured out how that works. Ubuntu's team, for their own reasons, locks itself into a six month development cycle. If there some arbitrary schedule for OpenSUSE, I have yet to discover it.

For the time being, I'm slowly migrating my "stuff" over to the Linux box. Not to the point where I'll trust it with, say, my Thunderbird files or anything, but the writing and HTML and Java work has been ported. I'm paranoid enough to back everything up to key drive for now. We'll see how long it takes me to become complacent...

YaST really had me scratching my head the other night, though, when I tried to install the MySQL database. Darned if I ever found the installation directory (although I did find one of its files properly placed in the init.d folder), and there were no mysql-d type daemons in the process list either. I should have enough time this weekend to try to install it with non-RPM binaries. (I doubt that I'll ever be competent or independent enough to install from source, though.)

Oh, and while I'm thinking of it, one thing that I do miss from the Windows environment is the mouse-motion scroll on applications--i.e. pressing down the mouse button to activate, then moving the mouse up or down to direct the scrolling. Firefox in Linux doesn't do that trick, for instance. And I realized that I may have to jump back on the Windows box to re-work a graphic because the font it uses may not be supported. Just little stuff like that.

It feels good to have the brain puzzling out things again, but I feel so scattered lately. So many things have to be put in place before I have a proper development setup, which includes a test server (that doesn't double as my workstation) and the network infrastructure that implies for a mixed-OS household. I was hoping to hang out my shingle again as a (very part-time) lone-gun developer after the first of the year, but not enough of the pieces will come together by then, I'm afraid. The first of the year is significant in that I will have ditched the hobby-related responsibilities that tend to bogart what free time school and work leave. Sadly, that's even with Dearest taking up so much of the slack. A skosh over two months more of it, though, and then I'm tetherless.

What's wierd is that I still feel somewhat guilty about it. I didn't think there was enough "chick" instinct in me for that, which is wierder still. More than half of the (official) group can't seem to tear themselves away from the fun/glamorous stuff long enough to understand that they'd be fun/glamorous stuff by themselves and entirely on their own dime if it weren't for people willing to scope out meeting sites, balance the books, put together the get-togethers, publish the newsletter, maintain the website, chat up possible new members, file reports, yadayadayada. Oh, but let the minority who do take on those chores dare to complain, and it's their own fault for "trying to do too much." If you're an office-holder in any volunteer-based (or otherwise vastly underpaid) group, I expect that you grok this to its fullest, no?

Grrrr...

Which brings me back to an earlier theme, that of intelligent selfishness--close kin to what Adam Smith termed "enlightened self-interest" some two-centuries-and-change ago. I haven't had enough downtime to go "walkabout" in my own psyche for awhile, but I feel the building urgency to deal with the fundamental dissatisfaction in my job as well people on the periphery of my life (not the great, good friends that I've known since my teens, mostly newer folks). Basically it boils down to the sense of not being met half-way. And that sense is becoming just too persistent and pernicious to politely ignore anymore. So it's high time for emotional triage. And I think that's all I'm going to say about it for now.

Sigh...another rant

I think that it was FDR who said, "I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made." The folks sounding the alarm about global warming could well say the same.

The fact that the Bush Junta is (ahem!) "grooming" the testimony of its own officials on the subject of global warming (again!) just says it all, doesn't it? As ringing endorsements go, it almost makes the Nobel Prize pale by comparison.

Funny how this regime freely lifts the skirt of your phone call, email, financial, etc. data, yet swaths its own in a lead birka. If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear--isn't that how it works? Oh, wait: That only applies outside the Oval Echo Chamber. Silly me...

Feh. At this point, any official who doesn't immediately resign after being muzzled should be brought up on charges of treason like her/his higher-ups. I used to have mixed feelings about the death penalty, but after this band of brigands, I'm sorry that keel-hauling has gone out of fashion.

A candidate for Keith Olberman

Good thing that the gutless windbag in this article preferred to remain nameless. Good thing for her/him, anyway. What got my back up was the ham-fisted judgementalism on someone's decision to have a child by their dead soldier-spouse. Memo to the US Military Leadership: The men and women that your Cluster@#$%-in-Chief sent to their deaths may have sworn everything but their souls to you, but their widows and widowers didn't. You don't own them, so just STFU when someone tries tidying up the mess this illegal war has made of their life. Oh, and ship this REMF to Iraq while you're at it.

But it's the usual case of the head of the fish stinking first. An organization that can't abide homosexuality, yet punishes rape victims while coddling their attackers. As usual, if it's not the male deciding the how and the where and when, a wanted child is a mistake. Or, in this case, a possible "regret" and an ethical "dilemma".

So whoever you are, here's a big fat FU. You're just lucky that your organization has such a practiced hand at shielding louts like you. If you worked in anything like the Real World--as opposed to your REMF sinecure--your sorry sexist @$$ would be on the curb right now. They don't make enough middle fingers for moralizing busybodies like you.

Another day, another distro.

Well, not exactly. I've made forays into the Linux world with RedHat (pre-Fedora), Mandrake (pre-stupid lawsuit) and Ubuntu (Dapper or Edgy, I can't remember). OpenSUSE 10.3 (GNOME interface)--Novell's alms--was the smoothest installation I've had so far. I had to replace the network card for Mandrake. Ubuntu never did get along with the extra-large monitor, and there were issues with the machine not wanting to boot, which hasn't [crossing toes] happened thus far with OpenSUSE.

And--wonder of wonders--it came with the Java Development Kit pre-bundled. For someone who still qualifies as a "stupid noob," that was a delightful bonus. No having to figure out where this particular flavor of Linux keeps its config. files and hoping that I don't stuff something up by hacking in a couple new environment variables. No being bitten by the little "gotcha" that I had on Ubuntu because of OpenOffice. Considering that the new machine will be used for writing software (mostly in the Java programming language), this alone darned near made me Snoopy-dance.

But I had a minor epiphany after my initial configuration/customization: The jihad flame-wars that are waged over distributions of Linux suddenly made sense, not from the standpoint of nerd elitism, but generic human nature.

To wit: If operating systems were religions, UNIX would be Catholicism--not much variation on the basic doctrine. Linux, by the same metaphor, would be Protestantism--with all the tendencies to splinter into new branches. And like Protestantism from the Luther/Calvin glory days on down, each sect views every other sect as a mouth-breathing rabble of heretics. ;-)

After being burned by the last distribution (actually a recommended add-on that "fixed" my chunky screen resolution by destroying my ability to use anything but a command-prompt), I'm postponing the migration over from my four-year-old Windows computer until I've run through a few updates, particularly for the kernel and hardware drivers.

But for now, it's a new toy to play with--and many thanks to Dearest for assembling it! I'm typically pretty diligent about backing up data, so I won't lose everything if the thing crashes and I move onto the next great distribution. And so I'll offer my cautious and qualified kudos to Novell for demonstrating that for-profit and open-source don't have to be mutually exclusive. I can only hope that they have the wit to treat their developers well, and continue putting out a product that's doesn't make even a stupid noob feel stupid while using it.

Contrasts

In case you need to swat your local tinfoil-hat internet troll railing against the "atheist" ACLU, this link will come in handy for bitch-slapping him/her hard enough to knock the foam from around her/his mouth. (Call me cynical if you will: Cue the swiftboating in 3...2...1...) [wry grimace]

Speaking of the ACLU, though, Mewonders how it's coming along in its defense of the Baptist preacher arrested for hitting on an undercover cop. Both preacher and police officer were male, by the bye. Like the poor schlep's gonna get a fair trial in Texas otherwise... (In case anyone needs the reminder, the 1996 Texas Republican Party's platform included a little gem about outlawing homosexuality, IIRC.)

But if that isn't enough schadenfreude to get you though the longer Fall nights, how about McCain praying every night" that we won't go to war with Iran? He was for war with Iran before he was against it, doncha know? [extra-sarcastic eyeroll] I've thought for months now that the guy's gone 'round the twist--just in a different direction than his AZ predecessor Barry Goldwater went in the late 80s and 90s. And good shuttance to the both of them--although BG's suggestion that "every good Christian ought to kick Jerry Falwell right in the @$$" made me laugh out loud.

But getting back on topic... I can respect the Captain Brown's Christianity in that he actually seemed to have kept reading his Bible when the fire and brimstone gave way to that feel-good, touchy-feely New Testament. Are there any more like you at home? Seriously.

Kudos

A short break from my HTML fist-shaking at the world's cupidity and stupidity today. Surprisingly for a liberal who supports wildlife causes and sometimes makes donations to the Humane Society, I don't have any philosophical objections to hunters donating game to food pantries and soup kitchens. Of course, having to replace my front quarter-panel last fall because a kamikaze deer ran into it head-on makes it a little more personal. There are just too d--ned many of them in our vicinity, and hand-wringing won't change that. Starvation, CWD, and car collisions are not humane alternatives to hunting.

Voluntary segregation is still segregation

I noticed a piece in the Toronto Star last week that covered the popular hesitation to publicly fund religious schools for Jewish and Islamic students. Supporters of such funding point to state funding of Catholic Schools. Turns out that this just re-opens an old debate.

Which in turns reopens, for me, an old speculation of why anyone needs religious-based instruction six days a week in the first place. Is it so difficult to drill ten little commandments into someone? Don't steal, don't kill, don't lie, etc. How hard is that, really? Are parents really so insecure about their ability to provide the proper example to the next generations that they must outsource it to so-called professionals? Or are they afraid that they may (by genetic fluke or whatever) have unwittingly spawned a demon-seed sociopath that must be tamed with the threat of hellfire? (If so, teaching a fledgling sociopath to revere a genocidal, child-murdering, human-sacrifice-demanding Great Sociopath in the Sky is not particularly bright.)

Or is the insecurity purely cultural? Growing up surrounded by those from similar backgrounds is somehow a bulwark against becoming just another drone in a homogeneous capitalist wasteland? Granted, I'm watching it happen to my nephews, and it's not a pretty sight. But I can't see that imposing additional conformity by segregating them into an artificially-defined subset of their peers is the key to helping them develop their own identity.

And so I hope that the Canadians will have the good sense and political will to cut off the tap for the outdated tradition of funding Catholic schools. It's a revenant from a more bigoted era, and makes as much sense as paying reparations to the American descendants of African slaves. The evil men do lives after them, to be sure. Yet when the redress outlives the evil, it's time to give the whole thing a decent burial and channel those resources into righting present wrongs.

The stupid! It burns!

Gotta be the stupidest thing to come out of the Bush junta lately, which is saying something. Seriously, are these people even trying anymore?

Earlier this year the story was: Illegal immigrants are baaaaad because...because...um...they're a terrorist threat? Except that Timothy McVeigh was an American. And the 9/11 terror-cells had their paperwork in order. Drat. Strike that one.

[Fast forward a few months.]

Okay, how 'bout this: Illegal immigrants are baaaaad because they carry disease? Except that 'round that time, some WASP lawyer carrying a raging, virulent TB strain caused a minor panic. Nope, nobody buyin' that one either.

[Fast forward a couple more months.]

Ooh! Ooh! Chertoff's got it! Illegal immigrants are baaaaad for the environment? Brilliant! What Chertoff said!

[Blink.]

[Blink.]

Did I just read that? The Bush Regime wringing its hands over pollution?!?! Never mind the fact that the average American pitches 4.5 pounds of trash. Every Effin' Day. Multiply that by 365 and that's 1642.5 pounds per year. If we're lucky, 365 pounds of that are recycled. But, then, the whole tu, quoque thing is a huge waste of time to the sociopaths currently infesting the Executive Branch.

Fortunately, this is all pathetically transparent political schtick. Otherwise it'd surely be a sign of the (very imminent) Apocalypse. I should be grateful for that. Yet I can't seem to savor any spiteful satisfaction at the lurchings of this lame-duck Presidency. The neocon Götterdämmerung is causing too much collateral damage to be entertaining. I won't bother to replace my burned-out irony meter until January, 2009...if even then.

Aiyeee.

Completely unrelated, except in the sense of "Did I just read that?", another goodie from Yahoo! News:

TUCSON, Ariz. - Recent tests have shown that a brain-eating amoeba is in Tucson's water supply, but experts say the microscopic bug doesn't pose any health risks.

I mean, I realize that the Rethuglicans since Reagan onward have done their d--ndest to dumb down 'merica an' all. But have we indeed sunk to such a low that a microorganism capable of eating one's brain is not considered a "health risk"? Yes, I have to admit that I wouldn't be all that surprised if the amoebae have a lobbiest at the FDA. But still...

The business-section book title you'll never see

"Dominatrix, CEO"

See, I'm a control-freak, and I'm stuck with a couple of less-than-compatible (meaning with me) software developers on "my" project. One is a prima-donna cowboy code-slinger with a nasty passive-aggressive streak. He works remotely, too--somebody stop my feet from dancing. [sour look] The other is amiable enough, but soooo Not About that whole taking responsibility thing. Worse, he's still too green in our outfit to know what he's talking about sometimes. (Not that that stops him, mind you...)

The mature internalization of this whole situation would be to chalk my current frustrations up to karma payback for the similar aggravation I've caused my past supervisors.

Yeeeeah, like I'm gonna be mature: C'mon, this is office politics we're talking about. FSM forfend! This calls for the refined brutalities of the Cubicle Warrior-culture: Make me nag for status? Ha! Here's a conference call invitation on your calendar. And we're gonna enter your deliverables into Microsoft Project and set you up for the water-torture of reminder email! How's THAT gonna feel?!

But, seriously, I'm quite soberly reconsidering my resolve not to become a manager that I wouldn't want to work for. The fact that I am even reconsidering that disturbs me. Fortunately, my twisted sense of humor arrives to rescue me from undue soul-searching.

Understand that I detest office politics because they're basically high school all over again--except that in adult life the consequences are much further-reaching. But...what if I were to view things through an entirely different lens? Instead of seeing the feudal power-struggles as locker-door clique turf-wars, how about viewing the dynamics as dominance and submission, albeit without the rubber and leather trappings? You must admit that the view is far less dreary than warmed-over adolescence. Although it does carry the downside of the "Eeeeeeeewww!" factor--possibly even to the point of wanting to put out your inner eye with a white-hot poker and/or boil your brain in bleach. I take no responsibility for that, however: You change the lens at your own risk. Personally, I find the view through the high-school lens far more disturbing.

Which, after thinking about it for all of sixty seconds (if that), made me realize that the standards of business writing have indeed dropped so low that one could perhaps bang out a management book on that theme. "Leadership Secrets of the Marquis de Sade," anyone? (In which case, I totally call dibs on the idea!)

Now, if you'll excuse me, The Cowboy hasn't accepted his meeting invitation, so it's time to break out (and break in) the flogger... Metaphorically speaking. Unfortunately.