Recent blog entries for mrorganic

My cable modem was knocked out by a lightning strike over the weekend, and I just got things put to rights yesterday afternoon. I'm lucky the cable-modem was all I lost: it sounded like the lightning strike actually hit my house. The power went out, my television's picture-tube was gaussed something terrible (although after leaving it turned off for awhile, the picture and color were restored), etc. The repairman told me that the lightning also fried the junction between the outside cable line and the link to the pole.

And just to make things fun, this crummy weather is supposed to last all week.

This overview of the SCO situation is interesting. I remember back when SCO was one of the few vendors who actually sold and supported a commercial UNIX on PC hardware. I actually got my hands on a copy and installed it -- and found that even back in the mid-1990's, Linux was a better Unix than SCO's product in certain ways. I remember thinking even then that SCO had better get into a different line of work because their UNIX business was doomed. Of course, I thought the same of Sun and SGI: but Sun continues to do well with their own UNIX variant, and SGI has long since moved the core of their business to Linux...and SGI was always more of a hardware company than a software company anyway.

Funny how the wheel turns. I started "blogging" on Advogato long before "blog" had entered the public vernacular, but drifted away as the pressures of work and my personal life started to take a toll. But now I find myself wanting to get back into the (hobby? practice? avocation?) of writing about computers and software. I don't want to start up a regular blog for a number of reasons, the primary one being that I don't have much to say about politics these days -- I'm frankly sick to death of the whole topic.

Also, I have found that my interest in computer science has been re-fired lately -- I will be forty years old soon, and this presents me with a good excuse to perform a tour d'horizon of the field where I have spent the bulk of my life so far. I don't delude myself that my thoughts are in any way profound or even original; it's just that I find it cathartic to sit down and get some ideas down "on paper" rather than just float around and eventually dissipate. I'm often glad that I write about things that years later I think are silly or badly-considered: it helps me to understand how I've changed.

What I won't do here (or at least will try not to do) is go on long political rants, or chronicle my personal life. I intend this to be a technically-oriented space, a scratch- pad for my thoughts and ideas on computers, software, and other technology. I'm sure that philosophy, religion, and esthetics will intrude -- writing software is a human activity, after all -- but I will try to keep things centered.

Wow. I can't believe this blog is still active after four years!

I still have some programmer-ish thoughts to convey, so I'll stick them here....

Here's a good definition of the word irritating: someone who hears a slightly-risque (and only kind-of-funny) joke, and then has to go and repeat that joke to everyone he meets. And I mean everyone -- strangers, family, waitresses, bank tellers, and store clerks. It's a ribald joke that might be well-received in a bar after a few beers when one is among friends. Told to a complete stranger (especially a female), it could lead to charges of sexual harassment.

How can someone be so socially tone-deaf?

There oughtta be a law, I tells ya.

Snow. Mucho snow. But then, I live in Minnesota -- that's to be expected, I suppose. We've had a very mild fall so far, so I can't complain too much.

Wow, I feel bad for not posting an update here sooner. But the end of the deathmarch left me with almost no energy for anything computer-related, and I resolved to stay away from computers on my vacation. (I cheated a bit, but I was pretty good about it in general.)

In other news, I've decided to try Mac OS X out. I bought a new iBook (14", 933MHz G4 CPU) complete with 640MB RAM and an Airport card. I pondered getting a PowerBook instead, but really an iBook is fine since I just want to tool around with Mac OS X a bit. I haven't followed the Mac world too closely since I parted ways with my old Performa a few years back, but Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) looks like it could be the Perfect Unix: a great Unix back-end (based on FreeBSD 5) combined with a great UI. Plus, Xcode looks like a pretty nifty IDE.

The deathmarch didn't exactly end so much as it just petered out. In celebration, I scheduled a two-week vacation around Thanksgiving. I desperately need the time off to rest my brain.

The deathmarch may be nearing its end. Thank $DEITY.

Still on the death-march. Still working my way through Quicksilver (great book so far!).