Author: cosmo

I love autumn in Colorado. Today was another amazing gorgeous day, and a chance to play ultimate with 15 friends and enjoy the sun, the breeze, and the warm grass. What a way to spend the lunch hour.

This weekend I finally made the switch from KDE3 to KDE4. That’s the windowing system I use in Linux; I’ve been running KDE3 for something like ten years now and really enjoyed it. I had tweaked it so thoroughly that everything worked smoothly and behaved exactly as I expected. But KDE3 reached end-of-life about three or four years ago, and all of the modern software has been ported to KDE4. There’s only so long I could hold out– it’s something akin to continuing to use Windows 95 because you really like the interface, I guess. But someday you have to make the jump to (shudder) Windows Vista.

Anyway, the biggest pain of the migration was what’s called the PIM module: that’s “personal information management” and encompasses email, calendars, to-do lists, and address books. All of those things are absolutely critical to my everyday workflow, both personally and at work. If I don’t have my calendar and to-do list, I don’t know what to do when I get up in the morning. Without my address book I don’t remember anyone’s phone number, and of course without email I’m cut off from the world.

I’ve been resisting KDE4 all these years mainly because the developers changed the underlying technology that powers the PIM stuff. I was worried that all of my data would get garbled, or I wouldn’t have access to my 16 years of accumulated email archives, etc. I was pleased to find that many of my fears were unfounded, although there are still some annoying problems with the new version. The biggest one is the fact that apparently I can no longer use a central data server for all of my stuff… rather than using good old-fashioned text files to store contacts and events, KDE4 uses a full relational database and some behind-the-scenes shared messaging software. Heaven knows why.

The migration itself took a few hours of poking around, figuring out where things are in the new setup, as well as some time tweaking the desktop to have the same layout and magic shortcut keys as my old seutp. I’m probably 90% of the way there, and along the way I discovered some bugs and quirks in KDE4 that others have reported but haven’t been fixed. Sigh.

Overall I’m mostly satisfied with the new KDE4, but honestly if I could continue using good old rock-solid KDE3 for the next ten years I’d probably be happier. As a software guy and all-around Linux geek, though, sometimes I have to swallow the bitter pill.

I’m upgrading a server for a client. You can’t help but love an upgrade message like this:

Here goes…

This cracked me up. Surely I’m not the only person who feels this way.

Well, Thom and I made it back from Canada. We took our annual backpacking trip in British Columbia and Alberta this year on a grand tour of Bugaboos Provincial Park, Banff National Park, Kootenay National Park, the Icefield Parkway through Jasper National Park, and a little foray into Yoho National Park.

As always it was a good time, and I learned some very important things:

• Pack light
• Check the weather
• Orange juice is very expensive at convenience stores
• Thom needs a coffee fix just like I need an OJ fix
• Canada apparently doesn’t have chocolate ice cream– only vanilla
• PACK LIGHT!

I’ve got a few hundred photos to comb through, and will hopefully post them soon.

I’m working with a vendor on behalf of a client, and there are some problems integrating my web code with theirs. They can’t figure out what’s wrong, and the only message their system returns is– and I quote:

Yes, that’s a screenshot of the web page that’s really displayed. There’s no indication of what might be wrong– missing data, invalid authentication, whatever. So they’re all scratching their collective heads about this one. Nice.

As everyone knows, tomorrow is Talk Like a Pirate Day. As Dave Barry wrote in the humor column that launched the previously unheard-of event:

Every year on the 19th of September (no, it doesn’t “adjust” like national holidays to make a convenient three-day weekend) I enjoy a little pirate banter with me hearties. I’m looking forward to tomorrow.

Arrr!

Hey, another recruiter is hitting me up for a contract. Whee! This guy has some really great tidbits in his email, including this gem:

In other words, he hasn’t even looked at my job description; he’s just using the shotgun approach with a bunch of email addresses he’s skimming from Craigslist or whatever. Nice.

Also, can a ninja really be a rock star? I thought the whole point of being a ninja is you’re invisible and deadly. A rock star would be someone who wants attention and the limelight. Hmm.

My server uptime record continues to stretch…

That’s over five and a half years without a reboot. Go Linux!

There was a time, back in the 80’s, when the word “awesome” was commonplace. It was used to describe things that were, well, awesome. We also had words like “dude” and “man”, but that’s not the point of this particular post.

Then, sometime in the 90’s, the word “awesome” faded from the common vernacular. People stopped using it, and the world seemed a little more dreary. But I continued to use it. Awesome is a useful word, and one that makes whatever you’re talking about just a little more exciting and interesting. It’s just such a positive word.

In the early 2000’s, a friend of mine commented that she never heard the word “awesome” any more, except from me. She thought it was quaint, I suppose.

Then, suddenly, in the last few years the word has popped up again and suddenly everyone is using it. I just downloaded the Chrome browser from Google’s web site, and the thank-you message was You’re awesome. Thanks for downloading Google Chrome. Seriously.

Now everyone says “awesome” and I sound like just a guy who’s riding with the crowd. But I want it to be known that I never gave up on that word. I stuck with it through lean times. I described awesome things as awesome, the way they should be.

So all you guys who think it’s hip to say “awesome” again, good for you. I’m glad that word is back in daily use, and I think every time we hear it, the world is just a little bit brighter because “awesome” is nothing but positive.