Archive for November, 2008

Installed Fedora Core 9 on Older Laptop

Saturday, November 15th, 2008

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With all the machine consolidation in my office of late, and the replacement of Liza's Windows laptop with a MacBook Air, it seemed fitting to take her old laptop and put Fecora Core 9 on it just so that I'd once again have a linux machine in the office. The last laptop I had with linux on it was an interesting experience getting drivers for, etc. as it was RedHat 5 at the time. I used it to type in my old thesis simulation work and get that going again.

Over time, I upgraded it until the last version I had on there was Fedora Core 3. It hadn't been updated in a long while. I've been working with Fedora Core 5 and 6 at work, and while Fedora Core 10 is due out in a week or so, I decided to just get the Fedora Core 9 ISO and burn it onto a DVD and be done with it.

It's interesting to do this process every now and then as you see what defaults they have for the OS. In this case, the Firewall and SELinux were both on by default, and there were no options I saw in the install to disable them, as there was in the past. I'll have to do a few more installs before I'm sure, but normally, I can see people wanting these on by default, but in my office, and at work, where the network is secured, it's just a hassle to mess with ports, etc.

It's up and running and hooked into the router so I can get to it from outside (on certain ports, of course). It was interesting. Fun even. We'll see what I do with it, but it's nice to have an x86_64 linux box at home - like I have at work.

Enlightenment is Never a Gradual Thing

Friday, November 14th, 2008

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I have never considered myself a real people person. Sure, I like people. I like talking to them, I like listening to a good story, and even like listening to them when they don't necessarily have a good story. But I'm happier with fewer people around me. I don't like crowds. I find great comfort in silence. So I would not consider myself to be someone that's got a great read on people.

Because of how I was raised, and what life experiences I've had, I, like many people, do not really see myself as others see me. I don't see when someone is threatened by me if I am not threatened by them. I tend to filter what I see, by what I'm experiencing at the time. Consequently, I do not see deception very well. I'm easily fooled.

In one sense, I like this. I love magic. I know it's not real. I have a great friend that does magic, and he's shown me a lot of the tricks. The manuals, books, tricks, and the very elaborate and expensive machines that really "do" the magic. It's an illusion, but one that I gladly succumb to.

I have held my current position for over seven years. As an hourly consultant. That's a long time in this business. Not as long as some, but a lot longer than others. Why? I believe that it's because I work very hard, I'm smarter than the average bear... in short - I Produce. No two ways about it. I make ideas a reality in timescales that simply don't apply to the other people I work with.

I've heard the CTO call it "Bob Time".

Fair enough. I think it's a compliment, and I take it as such.

But some people close to me (Liza and friends) have been saying for years that many people I work with are threatened by me. In the past, I've agreed - as if to say "Sure, I believe you", when I really didn't. I mean really - who'd be threatened by me? I'm about the most un-threatening person I've ever met. (OK, here I understand that this is very subjective and I'm probably way off base on this, but you get the point.)

Yesterday I was asked to a meeting with several managers in the Shop with the topic of how to move forward in the coming year(s) with the service that my application provides. It was carefully phrased that it wasn't about my application (suite, really) - per se... it was about the service that my application provides. Fair enough, I can't imagine what they are planning on doing - seeing as how there's no application to take it's place (really) in the near future, but I'll play along.

So I get to this meeting and on the manager's whiteboard I see designs about what "could be" where they have gutted my fast-tick server and replaced it with another risk system. It's possible, in theory, to make this replacement, where the theory fails is in the timely delivery of the amount of data necessary to keep the end-users seeing what they want to see when they want to see it.

I am very familiar with the replacement engine. It's a package from a vendor that I cannot name (already been threatened with lawsuits) and a product that I cannot name (ditto). But that doesn't make it any better a product. It's a mess. It's a multi-million dollar mess. And in this meeting I find out that we have contractually agreed to buy 80 seats of this app which they now realize is a horrible waste of money. Not being good business people, they don't understand the concept of sunk cost, and are determined to leverage this expenditure to ruin other things as well.

At the current time, my app does everything it needs to, faster than anyone expects, and at a cost that is so low it's hard to imagine anything purchased beating it in cost/benefit analysis. But they want to leverage this other (bad) product. So they want to merge the two and make the "best of both" solution.

That's the start of the meeting.

I was the only technical person there.

They never asked my opinion. Not once.

They were far more interested in telling me their ideas then listening to why it was a good idea, or not, and what really should be done to try and make use of this horrible multi-million dollar white elephant. I never understood why until today.

They really are threatened by me.

Not for their jobs... I'm the lowest of the low on the totem pole. There's no one I threaten for their job. But their reputation is something else. Also, as they consider themselves to be "smart people", they want to be able to look back at what's been built and say "There - see that? I told him how to do it." Ego.

At the end of the meeting another issue was raised, and I was told that I'd do what one of these managers asked of me - and they knew I didn't like it, and didn't care.

So to add to the insult, they show that they have power over me, and even on top of that, they point out that they don't care - effectively putting me in a 'servant' role. How low did they plan on placing me? Slave?

I was upset, and left early. I didn't go in today, and had the opportunity to watch a little of the show House on DVR with my 14 yr old son. I'm glad I did... it was the seed of The Enlightenment.

One of the characters in this episode asked House (a genius doctor with horrible people skills) why he got into medicine when it was very clear that he disliked people so much. "Research, where you could make your own world, would seem a better fit". House responded with a little story about his childhood in Japan.

He and a hurt friend went into the wrong door of a hospital and saw this janitor scrubbing floors. They found their way to the Emergency Room and as his friend was getting fixed up, House walked around a bit. There was a patient that the doctors were stumped on. Totally baffled about the disease. So they finally decided to call in the specialist. Through the door walks the janitor. He was one of the 'untouchables', but was so smart, and always had the right answer, that they knew when they were completely beaten, they could go to him and he'd know the answer.

House went on to day "It was then I knew it wasn't about fitting in. It was about being right." It hit me like a ton of bricks. That is very similar to how I'm treated by my co-workers at the Shop. I'm the person they call when they have no idea what the problem is, but know in their bones that I'm going to have the solution to their problems.

Case in point: Yesterday one guy couldn't log into his linux box. He'd been able to for weeks, so it wasn't something configured wrong. It was new. Also, someone else was able to get into his box and all was OK. He and his neighbor worked on this for at least two hours. No luck. Then they came to me. I had ti solved in 5 mins. Time. The clock on the box wasn't being synced to the time servers so kerberos didn't like the time shift and disallowed the login. Simple fix - set up the step-tickers file and start ntpd. Easy.

But in the face of the one guy, he was angry. Very angry. He's relatively new - only a few weeks here, but is an old friend of the management group. Good Old Boy. He's never said 'Hi' to me after I've said 'Hi' to him in the halls. Many would call his actions downright rude. So for me to have fixed the problem he and his co-worker couldn't was a blow to his ego.

And the same is true for the meeting I was in.

No one wanted my opinion. They wanted to shape my opinion. When they saw that it wasn't happening, or they felt they'd said what they wanted to say, then they stopped and the meeting was over. That I hadn't agreed with them made the last part easier, but it would have happened anyway. Maying sure to put me in 'my place' was essential to their sense of order. I was (and am) capable of doing great things in record time. This is undeniable. Talent like that usually commands respect. Or fear. They were simply showing themselves to me to be the kind of people that fear me.

It's sad, but it became as clear as day with that TV show. I'm not someone to be treated as an equal. In that sense, I'm 'untouchable'. Yet they know I can solve these things like no one else can, and in so doing, make them look good for having made the choices they have. When you make good choices you don't need a miracle worker to make them look good - so almost by definition, I'm only called in on the very bad decisions.

When I do what they ask, and make something wonderful out of a mess, they hate me for being able to do it so effortlessly. Anger, fear, power... it's not a great combination in a group of people. It leads to bad things.

It's clear to me that they will never treat me kindly. It's not what they are ever going to do. I'll finish my time here and get a new job, because there's no place for me long-term where so many of the management team fear and hate me.

Firefox 3.0.4 is Out – Security and Stability Fixes

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

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This morning I noticed that Firefox 3.0.4 was out with the standard security and stability fixes. Nothing really specific unless you get pretty deep into the bug tracking code for Firefox. I don't - it's not that big a deal.

It's nice to see them moving forward, but I'm looking forward to 3.1 and a faster/better rendering scheme.

DrawIt 3.7.3 is Out!

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

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I just checked and DrawIt 3.7.3 is out with some pretty serious bugs fixed. I didn't notice any because I haven't hit it with anything recently, but it's nice to know they stay on top of things. Probably the funniest bug was he missing images... that just sounds like a "duh" moment for the developer. I know I've had my share.

Anyway, get it and have fun.

Sticking With PostgreSQL and PHP from Marc – For Now

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

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I was doing a lot of thinking about the Marc Liyanage builds of PHP and PostgreSQL and looking for alternatives - specifically MySQL as it's supported by Apple. Seems like a reasonable alternative if that's what I want to do, but I'm convinced now, more than before, that I can wait on Marc and see if he bows out or decides to keep things rolling, and here's the reason: Building PostgreSQL is easy. In fact, I can get it from another site with an OS X Installer package. That's not the problem. PHP is.

Marc packages a lot of third-party libraries with his PHP, and those are a lot more valuable to me than the most current database support. The version of PostgreSQL I have is fine. It works great. I don't need more. PHP is fine. If I find that I need a new database, then I'll look at MySQL as well and see how things shape up. But until I need a new database, I'm going to leave it as-is for now.

The trick will be building PHP from scratch with all the add-ins he's got. There is a build script on his support forum, and I could certainly start with that, and will, if I have to, but for now, I'm one minor release point behind Apple, and that's not a big enough reason to do it all myself.

I know I can get another PostgreSQL. I can get MySQL for sure. I can get and build PHP based on his script. That's a plan, if I need it. There's no reason to build a database from scratch, and there's no great need to have a different one now. We'll just sit tight and see how things play out in the months to come.

Pixelmator Moves Forward with 1.3

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

A while back, there was a flourish of new image editing apps based on CoreImage - I picked Acorn from FlyingMeat but another was Pixelmator. I didn't get it as Acorn did all I needed, but it was interesting to see all the apps come out about the same time (there were a few others of lesser note), with basically the same capabilities just a different spin on the UI.

Well, I have to say, Pixelmator is making me think twice about that. It's more like a Photoshop app with the toolbars, but it's based on the same capabilities as Acorn... it's just a matter of which you prefer.

I'll probably still stick with Acorn, but I'm going to keep an eye on Pixelmator as it's moving in the right direction and may have to give it a good once-over to see if it's a better fit for me.

The Panic Crew Surprises Me with Coda 1.6!

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

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I was blown away this morning to see that Coda 1.6 was released with a new plug-in system as well as a smart spell checker (it checks the code, not your words), and a few other new things, as well as a ton of bug fixes. It's all in the release notes.

Again, they stun me. I've always liked Coda, but it's the fact that they are really moving forward with it so consistently that impresses me. It'll take me a few days to get out from under what I'm doing and give it a good spin, but I'm really impressed. Nice job!

iChm 1.4 is Out!

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

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There are a few times that there's no way around it... you are given a Windows Help file and you have to read it. I've had to do this several times, and while I like keeping documentation on my Mac, it's a pain to try and read these files on a Mac without something like iChm.

It's clean, it works, and it's not a nasty hack. Other than that, it has the limitations of the Windows Help file, which aren't as useful as the help system on the Mac, but that's just a fact of life.

If you have Windows Help files, get this and thank the authors for making you life less miserable.

Getting a Little Concerned About PHP and PostgreSQL Support

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

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I've been using PHP and PostgreSQL for a long time. I'm talking like in excess of 7 years. I love the database and the language, I like the fact that they work well together, and apart. I've been using them for a very long time and very happy about it. Lately, however, I've gotten a little concerned about the continuation of PHP and PostgreSQL on Mac OS X. Specifically, Marc Liyanage has been providing wonderful packages for PHP and PostgreSQL that work wonderfully well together. But it seems he hasn't released an update in a very long time.

In fact, Apple's PHP version is more up to date, and that's saying something.

Apple's PHP has support for MySQL, but nothing for PostgreSQL, so I can't really use that. If I switch to MySQL I can use Apple's stuff and the packages from MySQL which reportedly are pretty decent, but again, I'm learning a new database and that's not a horrible thing, but it's not something I really want to do, either.

If I wanted to build these myself, then I'd have to build PostgreSQL... use that and the Apache2 on Mac OS X to build PHP, and then I'd be OK. But that puts me in the middle of the build process, and honestly, I'd rather have something that I can update and not have to mess with. Sure, it may sound like I'm lazy, but if I go to the hassle of doing this, I might as well put Marc out of business and start updating the builds myself.

Maintaining a build of PHP and another of PostgreSQL might be OK, but there's a lot of people already doing one of these - it's the combination that I'm looking for. With linux, I get it all for free, but that's because they expect you to want that as an option. It'd be nice to see Apple just throw in the PostgreSQL support into PHP and then point to an installer like they do with MySQL.

But I'm worried this is not going to happen. Maybe I need to just email him and ask him straight away if he's stopped doing the builds. At least then I can make a decision to go to MySQL or try to go the route of the builds. Certainly, if I do the latter, and Marc is out of the game, then I'll have his build scripts to work off of, which isn't horrible.

Lots to think about... unfortunately, nothing really looks all that appealing. Probably the path of least resistance is to get MySQL on my Macs and then use the Apple PHP and be done with it. This way, I don't have to worry about continued support - they seem to have made a choice, and will most likely stick with it.

UPDATE: while I was finishing this up I decided to see if PostgreSQL had a pre-built package for Mac OS X like MySQL does. Turns out, they do. With this, I can be up to date on PostgreSQL without having to depend on Marc. I only need to find a way to get PHP support based on this build. Nice to know.

I ended up sending him messages on his support BB... one for PostgreSQL and another for PHP. We'll see if he replies, or if someone else replies. I can see building PHP like Marc does, but how difficult that might be I do not know.

Updated to gfortran from Mac HPC Site (August 2008)

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

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I noticed that there was a new version of gfortran available from the Mac HPC site, though it has probably been available for a while now. I was looking at the Intel FORTRAN compilers and at $600 each, you have to have something significant to use it on in my book. There's nothing wrong with the gfortran compiler, and while I'm not solving weather problems or simulating nuclear explosions, it's still cranking out answers for me that took machines a few years ago a long time to answer. That's not bad.

I still remember very fondly the days in grad school writing FORTRAN code for the Cyber 205, Gould NP1, and the Sun 3/60... fun days indeed.