I’d just like to note, as a corollary to my post a few days ago chronicling the saga of the “failing” list server, that the list server software decided to get even yesterday. It died and stayed dead for about six hours in the middle of the day. I suspect it was doing that just to prove me wrong. Maybe our software has become self-aware and is just smart enough to distract us with this stuff so we don’t actually notice it taking over the world.
Building software yourself? Don’t forget about GNU make’s ability to build in parallel, taking advantage of all those fancy CPUs you have: make -jX where X is the number of processes you want to spawn in parallel. For me it’s an old habit to make X the number of CPUs + 1. Not all software is set up for this, though. I usually try it, and if I get compilation errors I issue a “make clean” then a normal “make” command to see if it’ll build that way.
I just upgraded to WordPress 2.5. Went very well, with the exception that the Popularity Contest plugin causes a fatal error and won’t load. The interface changes take some getting used to, mainly because things moved. It’s nicer overall. I’m looking forward to using the new media/gallery features. The Automattic Subversion repository doesn’t didn’t have a 2.5 tag, so, being impatient me, I jumped to the development trunk. The Popularity Contest issues might be because of that (it was listed as compatible with 2.5), so I’ll try it again after they get a 2.5 tag out there. To the WordPress 2.5 team I say: awesome job folks! Update: http://svn.automattic.com/wordpress/tags/2.5/ exists now. Yay!
In reading the multiple monitor posts over at Jeff Atwood’s “Coding Horror” I was reminded of a conversation I had a couple weeks ago: “Hey, I just wanted to let you know that your web site doesn’t look right on an 800×600 screen.” “You should get a bigger screen,” I reply. “I have a 30″ monitor, I just limit my browser windows to 800×600 to optimize the web stuff I do. You should really redesign your site to fit in 800 pixels, for compatibility.” “I see. Similarly, I have a 50″ TV at home but I only watch stuff in the picture-in-picture window.” “You do?” “Actually, no, I don’t, because that’s dumb.” Even my mother’s computer is capable of 1280×1024 …
A few years ago my father died of cancer. He had a will which left everything to my mother. Everybody thought that everything was okay until a few years later when my mother discovered that she owned only 50% of her house. Investigation into the matter revealed that the deed to my parents’ house did not include provisions for rights of survivorship, and that in Minnesota a will is not enough for that. The deed has to include the right language to make the transfer happen, which is often just appending “with rights of survivorship” after your names on the deed. Since 50% of her property was owned by the state of Minnesota she needed to go to probate court …
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Being a Wisconsinite, holidays like this remind me of Lewis Black’s comments on Wisconsin drinking, from The White Album, recorded in Madison, WI: I love Wisconsin. I love coming here. I’ve performed here a lot because I’ve discovered that you people apparently have some sort of federal grant for drinking. You’re insane! You pay less for liquor than anybody I know anywhere else in the country. Nobody pays less for liquor than you…. I don’t know if you’re using that farm subsidy money or if you’re just hijacking liquor trucks, but this is f*&#in’ insane. Is it volume? It’s unbe-f@#*’-lievable! It’s staggering! I come here because basically, if I spend four days drinking here, even with …
Today has been a day of meetings. Lots of them. I got to my desk for the first time around noon. Since I was meeting someone for lunch I hustled to unlock my workstation, print something, and take off. I routinely unlock my workstation before my monitors wake up, one big swoosh as I sit down. The problem was that my workstation apparently didn’t lock itself[0]. So when I typed my password I typed it into a window… …an instant message chat window… …which was open to a fellow in my Security group. *sigh* This is right up there with the time I typed my password in the wrong field while doing a presentation. [0] Don’t know why. Most people …
“What are you? Mr. Scott?” “Excuse me?” I reply. Did he just compare me to Scotty? “You scheduled your last few changes for way more time than you needed.” “Yeah, I guess so.” So what? I’m busy here. “Didn’t you ever watch Star Trek, where Scotty would tell Kirk that a fix would take a day and he’d do it in an hour?” “Yeah, underpromise and overdeliver…” “Wouldn’t it just be easier to get a 30 minute outage instead of always asking for two hours?” “Sure, but if things go wrong I’ll need that whole two hours to fix them again. If you want to compare me to Mr. Scott that’s fine, but the difference is that Mr. Scott was …
The virtualization community, with all their fancy and generally serious talk of things like live migrations, virtual desktops, and thin provisioning, has completely forgotten their emulation roots. “Emulators? Why would we need emulators anymore?” you ask. To play Oregon Trail, of course! You’ll need to snag an Apple II emulator (I’m using AppleWin) and the Oregon Trail disk images. You may want to turn the sound off if you don’t want folks to know what you’re up to. 🙂 I just scored 7824, which might actually be my personal best.[0] Beat that! —————– [0] Took me what, 20-some odd years to finally get good at this thing?
I love asking you folks stuff, mainly because you’re full of good answers. You’ve helped me find bars in San Francisco, portable KVM dongles, and so on. Now I ask for another favor: help my friend Jon find a place to go on a honeymoon (please, get him out of here!) 🙂 I think I’ve narrowed it down to a few choices: * Hamanasi, in Belize * Tiamo, on South Andros Island in the Bahamas * Manchebo, on Aruba I’m still undecided. I need more information, maybe I need more options. Manchebo seems nice, but mainstream, but easiest. Hamanasi has Mayan ruins and other adventures that don’t exist elsewhere, but getting there will likely be a 19-hour multi-hop adventure. Tiamo …