You heard me. Put down the laser pointer and slowly step away. There are two things that a lot of presenters do that just drive me nuts: Reading the slides to me. I can read. I don’t need you to do it for me. And, if every single word you want to say fits on…
Yet another LinuxLaboratory overhaul in the works.
Well, it’s that time again. Time to suck it up and come to terms with yet another “conent management solution” that doesn’t fit the bill as far as Linuxlaboratory.org is concerned. The latest system is MediaWiki, and it’s not working out. There’s about a million things built into MediaWiki that I don’t use, and then…
Cory Doctorow’s toorcon speech
I just wanted to point out this Cory Doctorow blog entry which points to his speech at toorcon. This isn’t brand new (post is from Oct 6, 2006), but I only just found it, and figured others may not have seen it yet. Link directly to the video here. The short story is that it…
When Geek Conversations Go Bad
There’s this annoying trend in the geek culture that I can’t help but comment on, if for no other reason than to let people know about geek culture here in the early 21st century. The trend is this: At any given point in time, a group of geeks can be talking about just about anything…
My LUG/IP Presentation: The Road to Geek Authorship
A few months ago, Tom Limoncelli (noted author and, now, a member of the Google team) spoke at our LUG about topics from his newest book, “Time Management for System Administrators”. It was a great talk, and it’s a pretty darn good book as well. Anyway, the point here is that, after the talk, there…
Ironic Email
I got an email today telling me that two pictures I took while in Portland, OR for OSCON were selected to be included in this application which shall remain nameless, which maps an area and has pictures of the landmarks like restaurants and bookstores and the like. So, I went to check out the application,…
Flying to Paris Tomorrow
Of course, the day before my flight to Paris, there are 21 arrests in England, as Scotland Yard thwarts an alleged terrorist plot involving liquid explosives, and the airlines. On the one hand, I guess I take some small comfort that these people were caught, that they weren’t targeting France, etc. On the other, my…
I once knew a girl…
In my younger days, I knew a girl. She was beautiful, and she was wild. She was not the life of the party, she *was* the party. People wanted to be around her all the time. She could lure complete strangers with a wink and a smile. At some point, I guess everyone figured she’d…
What it means to "make it your own"
I occasionally give guitar lessons, and certainly I talk to people at various stages of ‘guitarmanship’. My younger brothers both play guitar, as does my father, my uncle, 3 of my cousins, and probably some others I’m forgetting. Of these, I think I’m the only person who even *tries* to play *solos* note-for-note – meaning…
…Hippies and Freaks
Many times over the past several years, I’ve heard the open source community referred to collectively as “hippies and freaks”, or “sandal-wearing, long-haired” whatevers. And for a long time I’ve shrugged it off. However, at OSCON ’06, there seemed to be an extremely large segment of the corporate crowd making similar statements… and to a…