Category: Personal

Does anyone really like the new eWeek front page design?

I’ve been interested in Linux for some time now, even looked into switching this Sony VAIO that’s my main machine to it a year ago, but until now I never had the hardware or sufficient motivation. With the Sweet One getting her new toy Twiggy last month, though, I had the hardware in the form of her old box DeepPurple and the motivation came from, well, from somewhere unknown. But it was there.

So the three of us (me, DeepPurple, and the Sony) packed up yesterday afternoon and headed for the CABAL meeting in Menlo Park. The group, which yesterday consisted of our host Rick and the geek archetype Ross, turned out to be extremely generous, intelligent, and friendly. Reminded me a lot of the core members of the Clipper Club of NJ who I blame as much as anyone for my success in the software biz. Blame in a good way, as that’s where I met David Chazin, my first mentor.

My goals with Linux are pretty simple: become a competent user of the system. I don’t want to devolve into a rabid religious fanatic or develop a craving to compile my own custom kernel/personal distribution. Being able to know my way around the OS at the application and general configuration level seems good enough. Run a test server for my web application development work with PHP and MySQL instead of testing live on billsaysthis.com as I do now. Explore Open Office, Mozilla, KDE, and find an UltraEdit-like text editor–no vi for this guy!

Rick, Ross, and I spent a little while discussing this to consider which distro would be the best choice. Rick pulled out a CD album that was amazingly thick with a couple of dozen different choices! garrett had recommended Mandrake, so that was a strong possibility. Red Hat was also considered because it seems to have the biggest penetration in corporations. In the end, though, we decided on Knoppix, a very interesting variant out of Germany.

We chose Knoppix for two main reasons plus one consideration. First, it’s based on Debian–that’s Rick’s general choice and he’ll be one of my primary sources of support–which has a lot of developers and therefore strong application coverage plus probably the best install and update mechanism in apt-get. Second, Knoppix builds on top of Debian extensive hardware detection and hardware driver support plus the ability to run a really complete desktop right off the CD (by complete desktop I mean a large selection of applications, development tools, and utilities). The consideration was that installing a different distro next week or next month, to try it out, is very easy now that the machine is set up with a Linux.

Initially we used the run from CD capability to test the machine. DeepPurple passed the test easily and I could see, as it booted Knoppix, the various bits of hardware being detected. The OS has a utility to install itself to a machine while running, so that was step two, and Knoppix does this with just a few configuration questions. Creating a filesystem (we went with ext3, a journaliing type) was next, wiping out the Windows partitions–no looking back now! A few checks to ensure things were in order and we rebooted, bringing the box up under it’s own power. Sort of felt like watching a baby take her first few tentative stabs at standing without support.

Voila! After logging in, the KDE desktop came up and at first, everything seemed to work just fine. Ross and I brought up Konquerer and a few utilities. Then I opened Mozilla and tried to load this site. Oops, the machine couldn’t find it! Rick to the rescue–for some reason Knoppix had not detected the Ethernet card and didn’t install the DHCP client. A little investigation and some comparisons with his wife Deirdre’s iBook, though, and we found the necessary 8139too driver. An apt-get and some judicious conf editing was all the effort needed to fix that.

It was getting a little late by this point and my stomach was beginning to growl, so I said my goodbyes, packed up, and headed home to TS1 and a delicious steak dinner. Tomorrow I’ll get DeepPurple hooked into the network here and see what fun I can have. Big shout out to Rick and Ross for all their help!

I’m hearing too many Americans who support the war effort calling anti-war protestors unpatriotic. Which makes me think back to Vietnam and its protests–how in the aftermath almost everyone realized that dissent and disagreement are an important part of what makes our country different. That the insults, invective, and hard feelings hurled back and forth were wrong. So why is it happening over again?

At least we seem to have learned the lesson that our troops are not a target for hatred and insults.

31 years ago today the Equal Rights Amendment is Approved by Congress but cannot muster the 39 states required for enactment.

Blistering light races down on a rough and cracked ground

Heat pushes back against the hairs on his freckled arm

Johnny swivels his head while his APC moves through the desert

His ears alert to the unheard sounds of enemy fire.

Just now a nearby tank launched two rounds

Against a target over the horizon, further than Johnny

Can see but from the cheers he understands that the

Target was hit and destroyed.

A reporter sitting near him outs down a few hasty notes

Looks up and around for a few beats, puts his pen back to paper

Johnny doesn’t worry about what the man writes,

Only that he gets home with all his arms and legs intact.

Home, that faraway place where a pretty girl waits for him

Home, where he played basketball in the winter, soccer in summer

Home, with his nice warm bed and eggs for breakfast that

Don’t get cooked by adding boiling water.

Johnny has yet to see an enemy combatant though he did meet

Two guys from Liverpool, UK Marines, while standing and waiting

In Camp New Jersey, amid the nasty dust storms, and found

They too were Knicks fans and LFC supporters.

Bouncing along at 40 or 50 klicks an hour, Johnny’s division

Is eating up the dust so fast and sooner than anyone expects

They will arrive outside of Baghdad, dismount and assault

Johnny only hopes his camo and gun will protect him.

The LT taps him on the shoulder and points out into the distance

Where a flock of birds is flying past the end of the line of trucks,

Tanks, and helicopters of Johnny’s group force, barely visible

Past this force that stretches off into infinity, flapping their wings.

Eighteen months go by and what happened on 9/11 still has the power to bring tears to my eyes. I only found out this afternoon that a very sweet woman with whom I worked closely in the early ’90s, Ruth Lapin, perished when the WTC collapsed. We worked together at a regional consulting firm called Automated Concepts and I was recruited to the firm by her husband, David Chazin.

I remember Ruth most enjoyed, other than being with her family, going to Broadway shows. She went to see Les Miserables at least once a month–even driving me a little bit nutty by playing the soundtrack tape every time it was her turn to drive to lunch–and was thrilled to volunteer as a sitter at the Tony Awards. Sitters are the people who get all dressed up and run in to take the place of celebrities while they go onstage, run to the bathroom or whatever; TV demands that no empty seats be seen no matter what.

Ruth had a great, biting sense of humor. We worked on Foxpro and Clipper projects for large corporations (Merck, Sandoz, ATT, Johnson & Johnson among others) and she was a really strong programmer. Dedicated to her work but not someone who put up with a lot of office politics. A good match for David, no doubt, they obviously had the chemistry a truly loving couple needs.

Ruth loved really spicy food. I mean really spicy! The last time I saw Ruth was a farewell dinner with her and David and me and my ex-wife at a Thai restaurant in Somerville (NJ) just before I moved out here to California. After taking our food orders, the waitress asked how spicy we’d like the dishes on a scale of one to four. One is where the cook waves the spice bottle over the dish, two is about as much as an American-trained palate can handle, three is standard for Thai natives, and four is where the chef laughs and laughs as he cooks. Ruth, without hesitating, took her’s at four and then totally enjoyed the meal.

RIP, Ruth.

Tech companies are fighting a losing battle to prevent FASB, the body which sets corporate accounting rules, from requiring them to expense employee stock options. In order to show support that this change should not be made, the board at Apple yesterday got caught in his renown Reality Distortion Field and gave Steve Jobs five million shares of restricted stock in exchange for a boatload of underwater options he already held.

Let’s be very clear: the options, which Jobs would have had to put up some money to actually purchase were they ever to move into positive territory, are totally worthless; the restricted shares will cost him nothing and will be worth whatever Apple’s stock price is at in three years when the vesting period completes. Since the person in Jobs’ position is generally held responsible for the stock price, the board is essentially rewarding Jobs even though he didn’t get his job done.

One of the primary arguments tech companies use is that in their plans, options are distributed much more widely through their ranks than a typical corporation. We’ve all heard the stories of secretaries at Microsoft or Cisco who became millionaires from their options–assuming they cashed in before the current crash. So how does Apple balance reworking all the underwater options held by employees? Jobs, as noted, got free stock but all other staff get to turn in their current worthless options in exchange for new grants whose price will be set six months plus one day later. And they will still have to pay to exercise the new options.

This six months plus a day tactic is being used by quite a few tech companies whose stocks have tanked recently, although Apple’s exemption of its top exec is unusual. The period is the minimum necessary under the current tax and securities law to have the new options considered as different from the originals. Oddly, the rationale for option grants is that they align the interests of the employees with shareholders more directly than just salary and keep the focus on the long term, since grants generally take four or five years to fully vest.

But with this cancel and switch tactic, corporations are completely disconnecting that alignment. For half a year, employees will be best served by getting the stock price as low as possible to minimize the strike price of the new grant. After that, of course, they’ll want to drive the price up. One wonders, though, just how easy it is to make such sweeping changes in momentum and what the effect will be on staff morale.

Why does Steve Jobs deserve different treatment? Last I looked he was an extremely wealthy man and already received substantial compensation for his effort. Remember, Apple isn’t even his fulltime job, he still holds down the chairman slot at runs Pixar Studios. Does this plan really serve the needs of Apple’s stakeholders?

If you think American sports teams are tough on their head coaches/managers, check out English soccer: Leeds fired Terry Venables, a man with a proven track record, after less than one season–even though the men above him sold off the half dozen best players he had!

You’re 50 years old give or take, have a beautiful wife you’ve been married to for 25 years, two reasonably sane children, a job with your buddies building large farm vehicles and live in the Midwest. So what do you do for a change of pace? If you’re Roy in the HBO original film Normal, you announce to the world that you’ve known all your life you’re a woman in a man’s body. And no matter what, you’re finally going to fix that. Tom Wilkinson, so terrific in last year’s In the Bedroom, absolutely submerges himself in the struggle.

Jane Anderson has written and directed a compelling movie about a most unusual sequence of events. How should the people around Roy really react, especially given that this is taking place in a small rural community and not some urbane metropolis? His boss likes him and works to understand and keep him on the job. The pastor of their church attempts to be understanding and provide helpful counseling, though in the end the pastor is unable to reconcile himself to it. The daughter (played by Hayden Panettiere), uncomfortable with her own burgeoning femininity, is curious and accepting.

Jessica Lange plays Roy’s wife Irma and this is a role that could lead a lesser actress to simply chew up the scenery. Lange is far too good for that, though, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see her get an Emmy nomination later this year. Doesn’t hurt at all that at age 53 Lange is just as beautiful as she was 20 years ago in Tootsie. She takes Irma through the entire emotional cycle, finally realizing that she loves Roy too deeply to give that up when Roy becomes Ruth.

I thought Wilkinson was overlooked in all the praise given to Sissy Spacek over In the Bedroom and he turns in an even better performance in a much meatier role. His transformation over the course of the film is so subtle from moment to moment that you watch the last few scenes, particularly where he says goodbye to his dying father and then when he fights with his disbelieving son, and wonder when he became a woman. Just outstanding.

Definitely recommended, another winner for HBO Films.

I realize everybody is seeing the same stuff, writing about it, talking about it but I find it amazing that CNN is broadcasting live images from a crew embedded with one of the American infantry units, the 7th Cavalry, racing north through the Iraqi desert. Followed by live images from Baghdad, where we can hear the noise of anti-aircraft fire. Just mindblowing, once again.

Waiting for the other side to make the next move after a good interview is like having a cat crawl up your arm with her claws extended. When you’re allergic to cats.

Not (quite) as insane as it sounds: The Christ Conspiracy.

When was the last time you heard of an NHL game being snowed out? This is not, after all, eight year olds playing on a pond in Moose Creek but it happened last night to the Sharks. Who get to celebrate by playing three games in three days, something which hasn’t occurred in 23 seasons. Snow: forget about sledding, it’s a weapon in the Evil Lord’s quiver!

Springsteen: A Rocker and a Revered Author Bond for a Cause, includes news of an academic look at The Boss coming this Fall from Random House.

“The opening stages of the disarmament of the Iraqi regime have begun. The President will address the nation at 10:15.” With those few words, 105 minutes after the deadline, Ari Fleischer told the nation, and the world, that the coalition of the willing have begun the attacks to separate Saddam Hussein from this mortal coil.

Update: Apparently the target of opportunity was Hussein himself and would that be a massive stroke of good fortune if he was taken out of play with one shot. Somehow I doubt the fates will allow such an easy win.

Today’s Top Five is a real gem: The Top 15 Euphemisms for Losing Your Virginity

Springsteen smashes world box office record for a single run of shows with upcoming stand at Giants Stadium!

Steve McQueen or Pierce Brosnan? Faye Dunaway or Rene Russo? Norman Jewison or John McTiernan? Sometimes remakes cannot possibly live up to the original, but are just a combination of star indulgence and commerce, and that’s certainly the case with The Thomas Crown Affair. The 1968 version is stunningly creative while 1999’s is a pallid whitewash.

The key to me is that Jewison, director of the original, wanted to use the romantic caper at the heart of this movie as a framework on which to hang more interesting questions and choices and McTiernan was simply looking for a picture that was softer than his usual straight action fare. Amusingly, the very next film McTiernan made was also a sub-par remake of a Jewison film, Rollerball. But enough of that comparison.

I’d be very interested in seeing the screenplay Alan Trustman turned in and the one Jewison used for shooting because the movie goes for long stretches numerous times without a line of dialog. After an opening scene that establishes McQueen as wealthy, aggressive businessman, Affair moves into the bank robbery and goes a long for perhaps 15-20 minutes with barely a spoken word, just movement, gesture, expression, and a single gunshot. The score, by Michel Legrande, pulses and shouts, allowing Jewison and editor Hal Ashby to use brand new film techniques, split screens and composites, to dazzle us.

Later in the film, after a quiet dinner at his Boston mansion, McQueen and Dunaway play a game of chess. He, of course, expects an easy victory but since this game is a minature of the larger game the two are playing throughout the movie, he doesn’t get it. No dialog until after the game is finished but an intense sequence of facial expressions are exchanged but one can see McQueen buckling under the pressure of Dunaway’s seduction. Note that this scene is entirely missing from the remake!

Alan Trustman made his (produced) screenwriting debut with this film and followed it up with two more blockbusters, Bullitt and They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!. Each of these featured young, very strong, very different men as the leads, struggling with a system that has no place for them. All very ’60s hip philosophically, putting the question of one’s meaning as the underlying inner question wrapped around by a very stylish, entertainment.

No less than the reason for existence itself is the inner question addressed. Trustman and Jewison set us up with a protagonist, I won’t call Thomas Crown a hero, who seems to have everything in life. Money, a big house, hobbies, success! Yet this isn’t enough and he sets in motion a daring multimillion dollar bank heist to feed his craving for thrills. As otherwise demonstrated by flying a glider recklessly, playing polo aggressively, and driving a dunebuggy with no regard for the flora or fauna. I was a little disapointed that the best ending they could arrive at was to pair off Dunaway and McQueen, sort of, with the suggestion that two such people could give each other the desired thrills. Then again, who has ever come up with anything better?

Absolutely recommended

Michael Cassutt explains why, despite so many tries, the twains of the Western and Science Fiction shall never meet.

Forty, forty, forty eight hours to go

I wanna be sedated

Nothin’ to do no where to go

Oh, oh, I wanna be sedated

Put me in a half track

And get me to the show

Hurry hurry hurry

Before George goes loco

I can’t control my bombers

I can’t control my Guards

Oh no oh oh oh oh

Forty, forty, forty eight hours to go

I wanna be sedated

Nothing to do, nowhere to go

Oh, I wanna be sedated

Put me in the airport

Get me on a plane

Hurry hurry hurry

Before I go insane

I can’t control my bombers

I can’t control my brain

Oh no oh oh oh oh

Forty, forty, forty eight hours to go

I wanna be sedated

Nothing to do, nowhere to go

Oh, I wanna be sedated

Get me in the airport

Put me on a plane

Hurry hurry hurry

Before I go insane

I can’t control my bombers

I can’t control my brain

Oh no

Ba-ba-baba baba-ba-baba I wanna be sedated

Ba-ba-baba baba-ba-baba I wanna be sedated

Ba-ba-baba baba-ba-baba I wanna be sedated

Ba-ba-baba baba-ba-baba I wanna be sedated

[Original by the late, great Ramones]