January 2004 Archives

Red Sox, Ortiz avoid arbitration: The Red Sox and Ortiz agreed to terms on a one-year contract for $4,587,500.

Good to hear they signed Ortiz. Sure seems like a lot of people being signed for just one year though. Seems like Theo is putting all his egss in the 2004 basket.

Egenera, the company I work for, released their new web site today. Check it out, I personally think it looks sweet.

This is currently a RUMORED list of Phish 2004 Tour Dates for everyone's information. Do not ask me about anything, this is just something I found and thought I would pass along. I don't know if therre will be more, I don't know why they aren't playing your town, etc etc etc.

Also, album is rumored to be out May 20.

If these hold true, definitely expect to find me at the Worchester shows and Vegas SURE looks like it would be a good time in May.

From my Inbox:

Top 20 Signs of a Pats Fan

20. Didn't flip off the guy who cut you off on the Expressway because he had a Pats sticker in his back window
19. Can't eat unless it is cooked in parking lot
18. You throw snow in the air anytime something good happens.
17. Your alarm clock blares "Welcome to the Jungle" at 5 in the morning.
16. You find it flattering that your new pants make you look like Ted Washington.
15. You thought that the State of the Union address was a presidential rally held just for Tom Brady.
14. Cancelled Subscription to Sports Illustrated just to be able to order a New Subscription and receive Patriots video
13. Even though it's in a dome you're still hoping for snow.
12. You find yourself whistling, "I fought the law and the law won."
11. You think 17-14 is a blow-out.
10. Gave my wife the "There's no 'I' in team" speech when I helped with the dishwasher.
9. You think its hot outside.
8. Instead of asking for a Brewski you ask for a Bruschi
7. You go around kicking cats because they are related to Panthers
6. Considering petition to keep Mia Hamm 5 km from Tom Brady at all times
5. You're wearing your #12 jersey into work and answering to "Brady."
4. Have been going outside without a shirt on because everyday since the Titans game seems warm
3. Considering naming my daughter Tedy, Ty, or Tom.
2. Voices in head telling you to "Kill Grady" put on hold during Belichick press conferences
1. You already took Monday off

Due to recent issues with virii and the like, the IT staff at work has disallowed external pop and smtp. Well, that just sucks for me who has all personal e-mail sent off-site for a reason. So, I figured subversion was necessary. SSH forwarding is a beautiful thing. If you have a server you can ssh to and see the pop or smtp server you are looking for, you can run this script to port forward your connections locally to the desired servers after adjusting the variables at the top. Then, all you need to do is add an entry for your mail server in /etc/hosts that points to 127.0.0.1. Done!

#!/bin/sh
 
# Set up Variables
 
# Mail Server
MAILSERVER=mail.domain.com
 
# SSH Server / User
SSHSERVER=shell.domain.com
SSHUSER=myuser
 
# IMAP Port
# 143 - Standard IMAP | 993 - SSL IMAP
IMAPPORT=993
 
# POP Port
# 110 - Standard Pop | 995 - SSL POP
POPPORT=110
 
# SMTP Port
# 25 - Standard SMTP | 465 - SSL SMTP
SMTPPORT=25
 
# SSH Commands
ssh -fL ${SMTPPORT}:${MAILSERVER}:${SMTPPORT} ${SSHUSER}@${SSHSERVER} tail -f /dev/null
ssh -fL ${IMAPPORT}:${MAILSERVER}:${IMAPPORT} ${SSHUSER}@${SSHSERVER} tail -f /dev/null
ssh -fL ${POPPORT}:${MAILSERVER}:${POPPORT} ${SSHUSER}@${SSHSERVER} tail -f /dev/null

Slowly getting out from the pile of things to do. Between a week away, being sick and just plain being a procrastinator, there is a lot on my to do list. Biggest thing I did today was get my Dream Theater site updated with the latest information. Mostly tour information, but its off the plate for now. Also, working from home today, I got a lot of the needed TiVo caught up. I still have a ton of Simpsons episodes, but other than that, I'm just about back to ground zero.

Also, the last couple of days, I've been spending a bunch of time trying to get my server updated. Had some old packages on it and stuff. This has made me realize just how much I need a new server. Definitely have to figure out where in the budget this fits in, but its near the very top of my list of new purchases. As soon as the rebate check for my phone shows up, I will have to go and deal with this.

I still have a ton more to go, but at least I am slowly knocking things off the list. Still have a bunch of posts which I have in my head for here. Some WAY overdue. Hopefully the next few days will afford me some time to do some of that.

A long time ago when I worked at a different job and in Boston, it was a Friday afternoon tradition to head down to Sissy K's after work. On a slow week it was just Craver and I. But usually we had a good group of 5 or 10 and sometimes even a real big group of 20 or so. It was nice because usually it was us and a few other random people in the bar, so we kind of ran the place.

I was recently reminded of these times because I found some MP3s of the guy who used to play on Friday afternoons. Great music that really took me back to the days when Friday afternoons were a big social event for me. Tom O'Donnell and his buddy Carl Johnson played most Fridays. It was a good time. They played mostly older tunes rather than the current stuff that most solo guys play these days. Was great to hear something else rather than the same 30 or 40 songs you hear at every cover gig. Tom may be doing some tunes in Boston in the near future, I'm trying to get some information from him on when he may be around. If you're in the area and enjoy some good music, you should definitely check him out.

With thanks to the folks in #joiito, I have now gained my access to orkut. Time to explore!

seanbonner: Clerks / 237 friendsters?

Bahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Now THAT is funny.

But somehow I have yet to be invited to orkut :(

Reading blogs today, Joi mentioned Spielberg is doing a movie of Memoirs of a Geisha. This should be very interesting. CMS got me to read this a few years ago and I totally enjoyed it. I'll definitely have to keep an eye on Greg's Preview of the movie to keep up on what's going on.

From Jeremy Zawodny:

Configuring MovableType to Ping Yahoo: Three Easy Steps

As usual, keeping up on pings to sites make your site easier for other to find and keep updated on.

It seems as if the snow forecasts have been going down all day long. Now the totals are at about 6 inches, rather than the foor they were earlier today. I'm still staying home to get some good rest and hopefully shake this illness for good. Hopefully I can get the TiVo caught up in the process as well.

Woah, Galeon added the best feature ever for bloggers. It now asks when you try to close a winodw with an edited form in it. So, if I have a blog post that I have yet to hit post on, it will warn me before closing the window. Since I killed off a long post just the other night before sending it to the site, this makes me VERY happy.

On my way back to Boston this morning. I was supposed to return yesterday, but fell hard to an illness that racked my whole body. I'm still not feeling great, but at least I'm awake and not getting sick any more. It will be very nice to get back to my apartment and sleep in my own bed (or at least on my couch). Also, the cat will be very happy to have me back home.

LinuxWorld was good. I think we got some good leads out of it, but only time will tell. I was actually presenting more than anything else at the show. We did a demonstration of how to build up a server on the Egenera platform every hour or so. I think I did my presentations pretty well. Somehow I didn't get nervius at all and just went right through what I needed to do.

The only bad thing was between presentations and making sure everything was ok at the other booths Egenera was in (Intel and BEA), I didn't have a ton of time to check out the show floor. I really would liked to have seen what some other companies are doing, especially some of the smaller and newer companies. Also, its always fun to see what the competition is doing.

Got to see a number of friends from my old company who were wandering the floor. Nice to see some of them, especially a very good friend of mine who I haven't seen in years at this point.

Going back to Boston on Monday is going to throw me some. I already took a sick day today, so I won't have to worry too much about work, but I already have too much to do without even thinking about work. First thing is I need to clean out my e-mail. I got a lot while away and never got a chance to read much of it. Going to be an uphill battle. Task two is to clean out the aggregator. I have almost 3000 posts in it. That's going to be a priority on the Amtrak ride back to Boston, so hopefully that will be done before I even get to my apartment. The next thing is a week of TiVo recordings. I did a good job of thinning out what TiVo would record while I was gone, but its still MANY hours of TV to watch. Also, I should have recieved my package for a PS2 game I was supposed to start beta testing last week. That's going to take up at least a couple of hours a night if I want to do it right (and be involved in future beta tests). I also have all the other normal stuff you need to do after a week away. Things like shopping, cleaning, going through the snail mail, etc etc. So, very busy day today and the next few.

With snow on the way for tomorrow night and in to Wednesday, I may get an unexpected work from home day or two this week, which will help getting caught up on some of this stuff. We'll see what happens though.

I've pretty much given up on reality TV, but watched My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance tonight. Very funny. Starting out with the guy wearing white socks with his tux all the way through to him yelling the girl's name while sitting in the hot tub drinking straight from a bottle of wine. I think it will wear quickly, but so far, so good.

If anyone is going to be around LinuxWorld this week, stop by the Egenera booth and say hello.

I'm hoping Doc will be around and I can grab a few minutes with him. Been thinking about some stuff since reading Cluetrain and am hoping to put them in to action in the near future and would love to talk to him some about it.

Also, Nat said he will be around. Would like to meet him face to face after talking to him a bunch on irc while working on Dashboard.

I've seen a number of my show buddies already who work the booths at a lot of the shows, but still have a bunch of them to see. Hopefully will bump in to a lot of them tomorrow before the show actually starts.

Safely in to NYC. Spent most of the day dealing with getting the booth all set up. Hopefully tomorrow will go a bit smoother. Staying at Park South. Had been compared to Hotel Palomar in SF, but does NOT stack up at all. My room is about 10x10, no idea of how I am going to fit all the booth babes in here for the after party ;)

Yes, I am the type of guy who is so much of an asshole that I order delivery on a night when it's like 20 below with the windchill :)

From The Phish.Net:

Fresh off its well-received, yearlong comeback following a two-yearhiatus, Phish will next month head into the studio to record withGrammy-winning engineer Tchad Blak, who has lent his distinctive touch toacclaimed albums by Sheryl Crow, Los Lobos, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing andThe Bad Plus. Blake will then mix the album, tentatively scheduled forrelease this summer (most likely followed by a tour), at worldmusic-influenced pop star Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in England.

Sweeeeeet.

Well, LinuxWorld Expo New York is next week. I'm off to New York tomorrow morning. Going to spend some time with the family on Saturday and Sunday, then head to the city on Monday. Setup is Monday and Tuesday and then the show is Wednesday through Friday.

I think this is going to be a good show. I really think 2004 is going to be THE year for Linux. Enough banks and other large institutions are using it on their servers that I think its just going to pick up even more momentum and become the operating system taht everyone uses.

I also hope to see a ton of things on desktop linux this year. Besides Ximian's Gnome Desktop, there is lots of other work to be done out there.

OpenOffice.org is the first project that comes to mind. Though a great office solution, it still needs more work. Being able to be fully compatable with other word processors is huge and will be a big win for Linux. Also, adding every feature that people use is really necessary.

Fonts are another thing that is lacking in Windows. Though the first set of Bitstream fonts are great, there need to be more. A full set of anti-aliased fonts will be great.

Desktop publishing is an area which Linux has had little penetration and could use some work. I've seen a few projects recently like Passepartout, though I haven't played much.

I've mentioned before that I would love to see a lot more music applications on Linux. Something like Apple's GarageBand on Linux would be excellent. I really want a bunch of composition software, music recording software, etc etc. I want to be a rock star and need the software to make it possible.

There are probably a ton more, but these are the things that I can think of off the top of my head right now.

Last night I really put to work the fact that I am involved in a bunch of online communities. While talking to the Straw developpers, I mentioned some issues I was having with the latest version. They reported back (as I had thought, that it was a problem with the feed parser). The project uses Mark's feedparser.py to parse it's RSS. Well, Mark hangs out on #joiito, as do I. So, I jumped windows and asked if he was around. He was. So, I reported the two bugs myself and the Straw folks were seeing. He looks at them, fixes them and released a new version of his program. I reported that back to the Straw folks and they updated the version in Straw and now everything works perfectly. What a good liason I made ;)

I really liked tonight's West Wing, but I think they need to get the humor back. It's such a good show, but half of the reason it is is though it's a drama, you still laugh a bunch during each episode. That has been missing this season. Tonight's was VERY dramatic, but I hardly even giggled, where I've had epiosdes where I laugh the whole time. The removal of the focus from the president tonight was also VERY refreshing.

Was at Gillette Stadium most of the day yesterday for a company event. Lots of pictures in the moblog.

Whew. Fourteen hours of work and I got much of what I needed accomplished. Now I basically just need to pack everything up and ship it off to the show in NY. Yay me!

Cold Virus Kills Skin Cancer

And so far the common cold is winning. Since skin cancer runs in my family, this is very good news.

GROKLAW: Intel Steps Up to the Plate -- New Legal Defense Fund For Linux Users

Good company, Intel. Though, I am confused. OSDL set up this fund? Didn't Red Hat already have a fund set up? Is Red Hat going to throw their fund in to the OSDL fund now? Or are there going to be 2 funds? Or did Red Hat kill their effort for this? I'm confused.

I figure since I bitch about Fleet bank as much as I do, I ought to credit them when they do something good. Friday night, I headed to the ATM to grab some cash to learn that I was $100 short in my account. This annoyed me to no end. I had figured out where my cash situation was just a couple of days before and I knew there should have been more cash in the account. Saturday afternoon, I remembered to check Homelink (Fleet's online banking) to see if I missed something. I then saw something suspicious. I had 2 ATM withdrawl for Thursday from across the street from each other. I knew I had gone to one ATM, gone through the whole process of getting cash out and then gotten a temporarily unavailable message and the machine spit my card out. I then walked across the street and pulled cash out of the machine across the street.

Well, I finally called Fleet today to get it dealt with. The people on the phone were very nice and helpful. I went through the process of the claim and then the woman on the phone said the strangest thing, the thing I didn't think would happen. She told me my account would be credited the money by midnight tonight, though the investigation could last another 6 weeks. I was in shock. Fleet is actually giving me my money. How nice of them. Now I just have to sit and wait for the day that the money magically disappears again if they decide to deny the claim for some reason. The only way I can see that happening though is that if I somehow walked away from the machine and it actually gave me my money and somehow I didn't see it. I know this didn't happen, but it would piss me off if that's how they ruled.

Seems like everyone read Too Much as I had too much to do YESTERDAY. No no, I have too much to do today, not because of laziness yesterday, since it is all work stuff. Just a real busy time at work with LinuxWorld coming up next week.

I officially have WAY too much to do tomorrow. And VERY little of it is stuff I can put off. Gonna be a long busy day.

It's funny how things can change from one week to the next. Last weekend, I spent all day Sunday doing domestic things. Laundry, food shopping, house cleaning, bills, etc etc etc. I meant to do some of the same today. Somehow though, I never got off the couch. Woops!

Watched Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl today. While watching it, realized my subwoofer wasn't working. Through a slow process of debugging the problem and actually reading over the manuals a couple of times, figured out a few different issues and got it working again. My neighbors below me are going to be so happy.

Movie was pretty cool. The effects for the ghosts/ghouls/whatever they were was damn sweet. The crossover beftween one state to another was just amazing. Definitely enjoyed Johnny Depp's acting in the movie, which I wasn't sure I would. And Keira Knightley was very nice to watch.

Though I don't feel it was much of a win. Had the Titans not screwed themselves on the final drive, I think we would have at least seen OT. Hopefully they can look a little more alive next week.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports in Google making effort to avoid lawsuit by SCO:

Google Inc., the world's most-used Internet search engine, has held discussions with SCO Group Inc. to avoid a possible lawsuit over the Linux operating system, SCO spokesman Blake Stowell said.

Please Google, DO NOT pay SCO. It will first off give them ammunition in their fight against IBM, which to this point seems to be a lot of FUD. Second, it will start to make other companies think about this FUD, instead of waiting to see the outcome of the trial. Third, it will give SCO more money to fight with IBM. This is just not a good idea in any way.

After just linking to Dave, it made me realize why anchored permalinks suck. If a permalink is near the end of a page, when viewing the page, the anchor you were trying to point to isn't at the top of the page and therefore renders it useless and you have to read the whole thing anyways.

Dave says "Last night's West Wing was excellent. Worth watching twice." Argh. I knew it seemed good, but I watched it while half asleep and then deleted it off the TiVo. Dumb sleepy me.

I have to say, the Pat's defense does not look as good as it usually does. Hopefully this will change in the second half.

My new entertainment center showed up from IKEA yesterday. After putting it together and pulling apart my old setup, I got it all set up. It looks real nice and it's much nicer than my old setup. The best part is that everything is all organized now. The second best part is that the TV is about a foot higher now and now I can look at it from over my laptop and from the kitchen. Slowly my place gets to the place I really want it to be.

Invoking the FBI to spread malware

One of these slipped through my spam filters. I had to read it about 3 times and look at the headers before I was sure it was something bad. This is definitely going to scare some people who are going to open the attachment right up to see what they got caught doing.

Pointed out by the commentators at the Pats Game, a sign saying: Eskimo Up! Very fitting.

I'm sorry, but no matter how hardcore a fan you are, it is WAY too cold to be sitting in a stadium for 4 hours. It's currently 9 out before windchill.

I set up a moblog

OK, I am really annoyed with the new T prices set by the MBTA. The extra 25 cents for the subway causes more problems than good. I go to the Prudential Center T stop normally. There is no collector there, so you have to use the automated machines. Probably 50% of the time, the machines are broken or are just accepting change. Well, in the past, you could just throw a dollar on the T and be done with it. Well now, unless I have a quarter in my pocket, I will have to put 2 dollars in. Well, an extra 75 cents just because I didn't have the quarter is just ridiculous. Last night, in the freezing cold, I walked all the way to Copley just so I didn't have to pay the extra 75 cents. It was rather cold last night (somewhere around 0), so this extra walk just plain sucked. The T either needs to have their machine be MUCH more reliable and serviced much more often or else, they need to have manned tellers at every station.

Egenera nabs $30 million in funding | CNET News.com

Some more money for the company I work at.

Hacking NetFlix seems to be the ultimate Netflix companion site. Not only does it list all the movies that come out each week (which makes my life of figuring out what movies I want to rent much easier), but it also follows Netflix news. Definitely an RSS feed that any Netflix user should subscribe to.

Well, these folks have definitely read The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual or so it seems from their article How to Ignore Your Best Customers, the TiVo Way (Part 1) Many of the ideas they talk about being good are the things I was thinking about after reading that book. I think I need to find some time to re-focus on some of that and pushing it through to our Sales and Marketing people. A well supported community is much better than trying to constantly support your end users. If someone else can answer the question why not let them? Why not capture all of this knowledge for everyone to see? It's worked so well in open source software, why can't it work everywhere?

Now this is some cool shit. Acid trip:

These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him.

I definitely did not realize how much the TiVo had changed my TV habits until tonight. I got home and was watching some random stuff on TiVo and a little after 9, I was in between shows and looked to see what the TiVo was recording. It was recording 24. Eh? 24 started back up tonight? I didn't even realize. I guess this is just the way TiVo changes how you think about TV. I sure am glad to have some new TV to watch.

New stuff from Apple today.

First off, the iPod mini. Though rather cool looking and small, this thing is WAY overpriced. It has 4G of storage and is $249. Apple also upgraded the 10G iPod to a 15G iPod and is still $299. Why would ANYONE not want to pay the extra $50 to get an additional 11G of storage? I mean, the cool factor of the mini is definitely there, but the minor (in my opinion) size change just doesn't make it worth the price. If it were $149 it would be something I would consider, but at $249, I'd rather just grab a full iPod at 15G.

Second was GarageBand. This I WANT. From the web page:

GarageBand turns your Mac into an anytime, anywhere recording studio packed with hundreds of instruments and a recording engineer or two for good measure. It’s the easiest way to create, perform and record your own music whether you’re an accomplished player or just wish you were a rock star. And GarageBand is the newest member of the iLife family, so you can add your original music to your slideshows, your DVD menus, burn it to CDs or score your iMovie projects.

This thing looks freaking sweet. This is EXACTLY what I am looking for for Linux. I even posted about it a few weeks ago. I've played a little with some of the music programs for Linux so far without much luck. This looks like a nice and easy application to do what I want. Someone port this!!! ;)

It seems as if Sprint's Picture Mail service sends an e-mail with a link rather than the actual photo out when you try to e-mail them. Anyone know of a way to have it send out the actual pictures, so I can set up a moblog?

Today is going to be the warmest day of the week with temps in the mid-30s. After that, we have this to look forward to:

Thursday...Sunny. Highs around 17. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph. Wind chill reading as low as 8 below.

Thursday Night...Mostly clear. Lows around 6.

My new toy

A bit late, but happy new year all!