Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Sorry, Sweetie

    I have a new love. It’s not really new, but I just thought I’d spout off a bit about how much I love this part of my life. Linux, I love you. I love you so much in fact that I want to write a sonnet to you. I just moved a bunch of stuff around my gigantic linux box here, added a user (because he’s going to use my box to run something for my new group and he needed access to the pages and tcl directories). I was able to add him as a user both of the system and the db, move the pages and tcl directories, change permissions on them to allow him to use them, and bounce the server all in about 3 minutes. If I were using… Solaris, that would have taken much longer. Why? Because Linux has nice GUI-based tools for doing this stuff. Solaris may be rock-solid and everything, but Linux is leagues ahead in ease-of-use and in most distributions, bundled software. Everytime I have to help someone set up Solaris, I have to spend several hours downloading things like gcc, make, gzip, emacs, etc. You’d think Sun would give you the option to choose what you want to install. “Is this a developer workstation? Ok, we’ll install the stuff you’ll use every day.” or “You’re going to set this up as a big huge server? Ok, we’ll only install the OS and you can configure the rest.”

    Plus, Linux is just fun. It’s a great tinkering OS. You can get under the hood if you want and play around with services, compiling software, etc. Or, if you’re just into playing with the surface, you can skin just about everything.

    It’s funny. The more I use Linux and Mac OS X, the less I like Windows. I started on Windows and still use it at home and as my main machine at work because I’m just more comfortable with it. That doesn’t mean I like it. I’m kind of tied to it. Why? I work at AOL and we have to use the AOL Client to get mail, and everyone sends docs in Word format. I know all the arguments for StarOffice, KOffice, etc, but I just can’t get into them. Plus, I like to play UT and Jedi Knight too much to give it up.

    I like having all my options open. I love being able to switch from one OS to the other without much difficulty. It’s a great time to be a geek!!!! (and yes, I know this whole ramble was incoherently geeky – so sue me)

  • Stupid

    I was going to write about this last night, but it would have been overly profane and who needs that on their conscience when I know at least my mother-in-law reads this stuff? The last episode of Once and Again aired last night on ABC. It was depressing and it ended poorly. The last episode didn’t measure up (how could it). I don’t know how I wanted it to end, just that it shouldn’t have. It was a great show, as I’ve said before. Oh well. That was the last show I paid attention to on ABC, and probably will be for a good long while. See ya later, Disney. I’ll miss the show, but that’s life. Maybe I’ll read a book.

    Crap segue….

    Yes, I know I didn’t write anything yesterday. I spent many hours on the phone with lawyers this weekend and many more hours working on Monday. Nope, still can’t talk about what this is all about, but it should happen soon. It’s exciting and frustrating to be working on something that will be so huge. People aren’t sleeping and that makes them crabby. They snap and bark and well, they’re no fun to be around. There are conference calls with many people, most of whom don’t understand what’s being said and are relegated to sighing into the phone and taking notes. I’ve been to so many meetings in the past week I’m about to go crazy. I hate meetings. I hate telling people what to do, why they need to do it that way and then having to explain it slower because they didn’t get it the first time.

    I want to work. I want to write code and make things cool and sustainable, maintainable, scalable, etc. I can’t do that in a conference room with a dozen people around a table deciding what not to call things. And on that note, I’m going to get to work…

  • Dude, I thought he was going to crap himself

    I came up with a great line in a meeting the other day. We were talking about bad news, of which I had dispensed a large amount that day. I decided then and there that I’m going to buy a box of Depends adult diapers and start bringing them to all my meetings. For severe bad news, I’ll galantly offer them to the recipient before I give them the news and helpfully offer, “You might want to put these on,” before I launch into the painful topic. It seems the charitable thing to do.

    Yes, that was a much better idea than my idea to start distributing a screen saver that would take processing power from people and use it to serve out http requests. I thought it was brilliant. It could end up being the world’s largest web server. I have no idea how it would work. It obviously wouldn’t work for serving out files since everyone would have to have the files on their machine, but for dynamic requests that are processor-intensive (like, ahem, searches) why not? It makes perfect sense to me.

  • My brother beat me to

    My brother beat me to it. He’s writing a children’s book that I’m going to host here as soon as he’s finished. I haven’t even read it yet, but I have seen some of the character paintings and they’re hilarious. I was going to use the ape to replace my spaceman below, but there’s just something about the spaceman that I can’t bear to part with.

    This week has been insane. I’ve been sick. I haven’t slept well. I started my new job on Monday while still sitting in my old cube. So, not only was I working at 50%, but I had to deal with all my old interruptions while trying to learn all the new ones. On top of that, I have three projects going on that require a lot of thought and I just can’t think straight with a fever, nausea and bowel flucuations. So, I’m going to write this week off and start over on Monday with three things that have to go to QA and two other projects breathing down my neck.

    I wanted a challenge… this is what I get for wishing.

  • Listen to the dog, y’all.

    Listen to the dog, y’all.

  • I am numb.

    I am numb. I spent too many hours in meetings fighting people, and now just want to go home, read Dr. Suess books to Max, kiss Jen and let my brain and voice recover from all the arguing and chest-thumping. I wish it wasn’t so hard, but sometimes it just is.

    Best line from today: “So, the TPD to QA ETA is still TBD?” No, I can’t/won’t explain it, but I love long strings of acronyms thrown together with no thought that someone might have a hard time doing on-the-fly expansion of those acronyms.

  • I have been in meetings

    I have been in meetings from 9am until now, and I have another one in ten minutes. How am I supposed to get any work done (or blogging or surfing) if I’m in meetings all day? It’s insane, I tell you, insane!!

  • It’s a TylenolPM night. Diphenhydramine

    It’s a TylenolPM night. Diphenhydramine take me away!

  • Boy do I want this

    Boy do I want this shirt, and this one, and this one.

  • More dogs should write poetry.

    More dogs should write poetry.