tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62614625248059710702024-03-13T04:24:17.449-07:00JFo DrivelAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-59724863984886003982013-09-11T13:24:00.000-07:002013-09-11T13:24:21.607-07:00The Day Two Days before the Ides...of September that is. If you are interested, here is an <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=WpACAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA316&lpg=PA316&dq=calendar+ides+explained+clearly&source=bl&ots=_bgRfQuX_o&sig=8RvcrquWMeA67bVfdfzX-8TPHPA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_6IwUo_kIKLu2gX12ICQDQ&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=calendar%20ides%20explained%20clearly&f=false">old</a> explanation of Ides, etc.<br />
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The eleventh of September is a tough day for me. You see, I suffer from the group mentality that was created when the twin towers were hit by aircraft on 11 September 2001. In case anyone had forgotten. No, I didn't suspect you had. I have to admit, It would be a lot easier to heal from it if news agencies and those interested in making a dollar from suffering would let us remember it our own way.<br />
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Please understand, I don't grudge them their own manner of memory. I just want them to let me have my own way of remembering.<br />
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I lost friends. several... in the events during and immediately after, and for years after the 11th. I remember them well enough. I have learned to live with their loss. But every year it gets plastered back everywhere. Have you ever had a deep cut? Did you ever tear the scab off of it and yell, "I'll never forget how this happened!" No? Me either. It isn't something a rational being would do. Then why is it that we refuse to let this cut heal?<br />
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My friend Carlota had some very Sage advice. (Get it? Her last name is Sage.) She posted this morning, '<span style="background-color: white; color: #37404e; font-family: 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-align: left;">My worry about the catch phrase "Never forget" for 9/11 is that it's too easily morphed into "Never forgive." How about we "Remember, and keep healing?"'</span><br />
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She mirrors my own feelings on that topic. I never approach this day with remembrance on my mind at first. It is always with some significant trepidation. What idiocy can news agencies come up with on this anniversary? What silly armband/mini-flag/Big Gulp/Fishing Lure will I see with 'Never Forget' screen print on it? Is it possible to have too much Never Forgetting? Am I supposed to lose sleep still twelve years after the fact trying to come up with ways for me to Not Forget again on this same date? Will I ever be allowed to forget that it is the eleventh of September and go on with my life in some meaningful way by accident? Am I using up all of my question mark quota in one post?<br />
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I of all people get the need to hold those lost in my memory. I do that. Often. I get the capitalistic tendency to plaster every flat surface with things that the majority of Americans will see and immediately reply with a hearty '<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZdJRDpLHbw">F#$% Yeah(explicit version)</a>!' I don't necessarily get it as bad as some, but I absolutely get it. I just don't buy it when I see it. It is the equivalent of getting all of your old wedding photos out and having them made into T-shirts that you can wear but waiting until long after your divorce to do so.<br />
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Rest assured, I haven't forgotten. I never will. All that I ask is that you let me do it on my own terms. I know there is no opt-out for your fervency. I just want you to turn that thirst for blood to something that can be useful to those who did not and have not been party to heinous acts against the US. Take this day to give blood. (thanks <a href="http://www.maureenjohnsonbooks.com/2011/09/11/911/">Maureen</a>{specifically about the event}) Seek other ways to express your outrage. (thanks <a href="http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/09/10/how-to-be-outraged-on-the-internet/">Chuck</a>{about outrage on the internet}) Write your grievance into a short story or novel. If I am interested in it, then I will read it. Write your op-eds. Paint your faces. Just please, please, please leave me to do it my own way without shoving my nose in red, white and blue every September 11th. I have a tremendous amount of mental fatigue surrounding this date.<br />
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I don't expect this to be a popular post to some people. I'll be surprised if all I hear of it is positive. I can live with that. People see things differently. It is one of the biggest things I love about how different and the same we all are. I just want you to know how I feel here. *shrug* How can we as humanity move on with our lives if we keep being dragged back into the past.<br />
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Marinate, Elaborate, Adjudicate, Pontificate. I will listen.<br />
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~JFo<br />
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P.S. I read this to my friend Angela and she said she agrees with my right to feel my own way about it. :-) Interesting conversations coming up. I love face-to-face debate. I'm sure her husband and kids will have opinions as well.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-44927364168089683702012-11-26T16:09:00.000-08:002012-11-26T16:09:01.169-08:00Ads and the web sites that love themI had a plan to write something concerning ads on sites I frequent. That set of notes has just been eclipsed by an experience so bizarre that is has taken precedence and urgency.<br />
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Full Disclosure: I HATE ADS. I hate them with the fire of all that is hated (hate hate hate).<br />
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In a digital age, as the world moves toward a different delivery method for a large number of goods and services, I find ads less and less relevant to the way I shop and, especially, how I find the things I am looking for. Certainly I get annoyed when I see ads in the sidebar of a website I am viewing, but I am less annoyed --and more likely to view-- ads in this manner than I am the ones that pop up over what I am trying to see.<br />
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Retailers, I get that you think this is still a good way to do things. Let me be clear. YOU ARE WRONG. If you flash your ad in front of me while I am trying to read, I am less likely to buy your product unless it is something I already need. The ad did you no benefit. Also, if your ad is one of these new ones that can't be stopped, moved or closed then I hate you with an unholy fervor. In this last case, I am most likely to add you to a little list I have started of products I will never consider. Read that again. I WILL NEVER CONSIDER THEM.<br />
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I'm not sure when advertisers felt it was acceptable to hijack the focus of an individual perusing a website, but it is not OK.<br />
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Site owners, if you use these ads on your site, you are being added to a growing list of places I don't frequent and links that I will not open. I hope it was worth it. I truly hope you continue to do business and learn from your mistakes. If not, no big, I'll go on my merry way to a competitor. My money spends.<br />
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Now on to the reason I started this post. I have just been subjected to the most baffling advertisement method seen thus far. A video popped up on the page I had just opened to read a news story. It was not close-able other than shutting down my browser and all tabs. There was no way to pause the video, despite there being an obvious pause button. Now, here I will tell you that I am familiar with testing practices. I finally arrived at a point where I could close the page. I did so. Please note that my initial desire was to read something on the site. No more. I went back to the legitimate page I had arrived at this level of hell from.<br />
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I clicked the link again. My thinking here was that something on the offending page was malfunctioning. It was not to be. I have saved off the offending page to further examine this willful attack on my time. I have also added the underlying page to a new list of sites that I will not go to and that also disappoint me. Hey, leave me alone, these are my list titles!<br />
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All of that aside, I hope the salient point taken from this is that there is a good way to get my attention as well as my money. I don't mind seeing ads when they don't affect my browsing. I don't even mind the ads prior to videos I want to see on video sites. In many of these scenarios, there are ways for me to skip or bypass. While I don't see any benefit to pushing ads in my face at all opportunities, I do understand the insecurity behind a company or a site owner doing it.<br />
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Content Creators: Find a better, less-invasive way to do this and people will give you all the money. Do it in such a way where you empower them to look at leisure and they will buy what you are selling. Failure to make it seamless will affect your product campaign. Something to keep in mind.<br />
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~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-26313432137001608252012-11-08T11:34:00.000-08:002012-11-08T11:34:37.292-08:00A growing service industry problem<i>Not that long ago I posted two separate stories concerning <a href="http://jeremy-foshee.blogspot.com/2012/10/unhelpful-community-is-unhelpful.html">unhelpfulness</a> and <a href="http://jeremy-foshee.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-art-of-bully.html">bullying</a>. Today I read a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2012/nov/08/top-chefs-unite-against-blogger-s-review">story</a> that brought both together. </i><br />
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I think this the perfect time to revisit these two subjects in one post. Please keep in mind as you read this that these are my thoughts on the subject as they currently stand.<br />
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Yesterday an amateur blogger and foodie, much like myself, was targeted and abused by chefs and self-important people. Let me say that again in case you didn't get the point. A CUTOMER was abused verbally online by SERVICE INDUSTRY PEOPLE. Service being the effective word here.<br />
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My anger has grown from the fact that this type of behavior has become systemic. It was once only reserved stereotypically for women trying to get automotive service or men trying to pick out proper gifts for wives, girlfriends or even Mom. The point is, it was not unheard of. It was, however, restricted to those locations where it was either not noticed or easily handled. Let me be clear again, I DO NOT like stereotypes. I also DON'T like bullies. Some of my best friends are female automotive enthusiasts and male perfumists. Yes, I actually know more than one. I also include both sexes as chefs in my listing of known acquaintances.<br />
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Now to the backstory. <a href="https://twitter.com/James_Isherwood">James Isherwood</a> strikes me as an everyman with a love of food. He has a <a href="http://diningwithjames.blogspot.co.uk/">blog</a> where he discusses his experiences. More importantly, he is entitled to his opinion. A listing of supposed superstars in cooking have taken issue with a review he made of <a href="http://www.hibiscusrestaurant.co.uk/">Hibiscus</a> in London. Here I must admit that the review appeared to me to be open and honest. He described the one plate that didn't satisfy and some behaviors that were strange and extreme. The post was not, in any way I could see, an attack on either the chef or the establishment. It seems the Chef begged to differ.<br />
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In what can only be described as an all out attack, Mr Isherwood was bullied on twitter by at least eight different chefs. I am not including food reviewers or what I would categorize as hangers-on. The scene only succeeded in showing that self-important people don't accept even the slightest criticism. As I stated earlier, I have friends in the food industry. I hold them to a high standard of behavior and ability, and they have never let me down. They have taken and given criticism and have always acted with the gravity that I have come to expect from them. That said, everyone has a bad day.<br />
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Even with the previous statement, I stand in awe of the childish behavior being shown by these people. I've made a list of the names seen in this debacle and I list them here for your perusal and comment. Please agree, disagree or rant as you like on the list I have made:<br />
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<div style="font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Jim Lawson</div>
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Claude Bosi</div>
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Tom Kerridge</div>
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Sat Bains</div>
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Adrian Margots</div>
<div style="font: 12.0px 'Lucida Grande'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
Tristan Welch</div>
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David Anderson</div>
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Jon Mahoney</div>
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The above were all of the people I gleaned from the twitter conversations with James. Below are restaurants they are involved with that I know of.</div>
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Hibiscus</div>
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Hand and Flowers</div>
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Restaurant Sat Bains</div>
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Margot's Padstow</div>
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Launceston Place</div>
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Once again, I am not advocating not eating at these establishments, nor do I think you need to feel any certain way about their behavior or reasoning for their statements. I just want to make a full accounting of what I have seen.</div>
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What I can tell you is that I will have serious reservations eating at an establishment that these folks work at.<br />
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Something seen from the person attacked:<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><a class="account-group js-account-group js-action-profile js-user-profile-link js-nav" data-user-id="229139981" href="https://twitter.com/James_Isherwood" style="color: #999999; text-decoration: none;"><strong class="fullname js-action-profile-name show-popup-with-id" style="color: #333333; font-weight: bold;">James Isherwood</strong> <span></span><span class="username js-action-profile-name" style="color: #999999; direction: ltr; font-size: 12px; unicode-bidi: embed;"><s style="color: #bbbbbb; text-decoration: none;">@</s><b style="font-weight: normal;">James_Isherwood</b></span></a></span><br />
<div class="js-tweet-text" style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;">
Sorry if anyone witnessed the whole saga.... Just one of those things. I'm still learning about this business...none of us are faultless.</div>
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I've seen nothing similar from any of the above attackers, just a lot of deleted tweets.<br />
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Hit me in the comments. I can take it.</div>
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~JFo</div>
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-48371149146188489152012-11-04T11:35:00.000-08:002012-11-04T11:35:10.666-08:00Overholidayification(yes, I made it up) <i> or How I grew to loath the run up to the holiday season</i><br />
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I include Valentine's Day and any other day that has marketability in this title, but the big ones at the end of the year are the target of my ire at the moment. First, let me be clear. I LOVE Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. I would love them even more if the musical artists, stores and any other venue that can make a buck from the season would just SHUT and let me. No! I don't want to hear Christmas music before Halloween. No! I don't even want to hear it before Thanksgiving, and I would REALLY appreciate not hearing it until a bit closer to the time. YES, dear sweet musician, I AM excited that you sang the same old Christmas music in new and exciting ways for you new album, but please listen to this: I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT UNTIL IT IS RELEVANT!!!! *pant* *pant* *smile*<br />
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Stores, you don't get off so easy. I can turn the radio off or listen to my mp3 player. I can NOT avoid your holiday exhibits of 'things-that-never-happen-at-my-house-or-any-other-I-have-ever-seen-or-heard-of' as I attempt to find and purchase my essential items. Grocery stores, I'm looking at you too. If I buy it now, then I will have to cook it well before even Thanksgiving. Please, hold on to it until I need it. THEN you can advertise it until I hate it.<br />
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Clothing stores and websites, if you show me one more Christmas themed article of clothing I couldn't care less about, I swear, I will sew my own clothing from now on out of Chuck Wendig's beard clippings while living in a cave I dug myself with the remains of your server or window hangers. <br />
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In summary, if you are one of those entities that absolutely MUST start advertising your black friday sales or dresses your windows before I have even decided on my Halloween outfit, OR begin playing carols and hanging holly.... Then I hate you with a loathing that borderd on the psychotic. YOU are what is making me hate the holiday, and I can guarrantee that the hatred I begin freeling for my favorite time of year only pales in comparison to the hatred I feel for those creating that situation. Please consider this into your plans as you go about making others as insane or more so than I.<br />
<pant><pant><br />If you are one of those people who puts up decorations the day of or the day after Thanksgiving, then I love you. I have to, you are my family. At least you waited until it was more appropriate. <br /><br />Everybody else, do yourself and your friends a favor. No matter how much you love the season and want to share it with others, please DON'T. You create more monsters than you could ever cast out in normally pleasant and proper citizens. The zombie apocalypse needs to be put off as long as possible. DO YOUR PART!<br /><br />~Nearly-zombie JFo</pant></pant>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-57598486921205705202012-11-03T09:59:00.000-07:002012-11-03T09:59:05.304-07:00The Art of the BullyThe fight against bullying is at an all-time high right now. I'm glad to see this in some ways, but I think we are missing some important aspects of bullying as we seek to address the most hurtful aspects. The three areas I think impact the bullying education of kids, and thus adults, are television, movies and any news outlet to include magazines, papers and shows.<br /><br />Bullying pervades nearly every aspect of our lives. We fail to see many of these variants as bullying. That needs to change so that we can better understand the vectors kids learn bullying. I hate television. The only uses I have for the physical box is as a video game monitor, a computer monitor and a movie screen. I no longer watch daytime or primetime television, and I absolutely refuse to watch the news. Our shows depict bullying in so many ways, I would find it hard to describe them all in a pitiful blog post. A random smattering of topics include: behavior and attitudes toward women, interaction between adults and children, interactions between children and the manner in which children achieve their goals and desires. I know it is a woefully inadequate listing, but these are the major ones I take issue with. We'll start from the beginning.<br /><br />
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<li> Behavior and attitudes toward women: Anyone who has ever really known me knows that I appreciate women. I was raised in the south where Mama is king of her house, and for good reason. Any southerner will tell you. Mama feeds them, fixes them when they are broken, praises them in their endeavors, commiserates with them in loss and celebrates success. There is no greater supporter than a Mama. Mama also provides the first example of hard work and a value system to a little guy or gal. A Father provides some of these as well, but let's face it, Nobody loves you at the same level as Mama. Why then do we have such poor examples in our shows? Why do writers and producers feel it is ok to treat women so badly on the screen? In fairness, I have seen some very strong female characters in movies and shows, but it is a new development. we cannot forget the bad behavior of the past in explaining the crisis we are seeing now. Children learn behavior early in their development. Television and movies have a major impact on that.</li>
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<ul>
<li> Interaction between adults and children: Anyone who has watched the news in recent times will have seen all of the mind-blowing coverage of Teachers taking advantage of school-age children. My opinion on this is clear, it is a breach of trust and a misuse of power. Sure, I remember having crushes on several of my teachers as a kid. I think that is a healthy part of learning emotion in those years. I think it would have done immeasurable damage to my growth as a person if one of my teachers had been 'available' to me at that time. This is further exacerbated by television shows and movies. Behavior between adults and kids in some of these raises my eyebrows often. I know there is supposed to be a thin veil of truth in fiction, but I wonder if these aren't providing more of a learning experience than they should be. In this case, I mean a learning experience ofr both adults AND kids. By watching it on a screen, I think these two parties might begin to think it is accepted behavior when it is not.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li> Interactions between children and the manner in which children achieve their goals and desires: This is a mouthful, but I couldn't think of a better way to describe it. This is a gordian knot. I have seen so many examples of manipulation, sabotage and flat our skullduggery, and that was just on the Disney Channel. I have seen shows in which children manipulate other kids into giving them money, sweets or possessions. I no longer wonder at the growth of the con in this age. There have been movies entirely based on the elaborate scheme hatched by some enterprising child to achieve a very minimal result. I won't name it, I'm still in awe of it. Any production in which one person manipulates another for their own gain is a potential classroom for the children who watch it. It doesn't even matter if the players are children themselves.</li>
</ul>
<br />I have seen so many anti-bullying ads and sites in the last few months and years. The sentiment is well-founded, but I will leave you with this observation: Do you and your kids watch campaign ads during an election year? You have been given front row seats to a class on lying, bullying and manipulation. If you don't believe that, then the propaganda is working.<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-81713479551127788112012-10-20T11:56:00.000-07:002012-10-20T11:56:25.838-07:00Unhelpful community is unhelpful or "How to ensure no one takes your advice seriously ever again" <br />
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I see far too much of this in my daily research. <br /><br /><i>Step 1: (person seeking help): I need help doing X (replace X with any number of things)<br /><br />Step 2: (self-important community assclown) You shouldn't be doing that. You should 'solve for Y' instead. (solving for Y in this case has absolutely zero value for person seeking help)<br /><br />Step 3: ...crickets...</i><br /><br /><br />This has no benefit for a person who may legitimately need help for X. All SICA(self-important community assclown) succeeded in doing was upholding his title to the throne.<br />
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HELP THE PERSON FIRST! Indulge in your self-centered need to correct people second otherwise all you really accomplish is having that person never seek help from whatever community you lurk in.<br /><br />PRO TIP: Find out more about why they are doing it that way. You may learn something. (Like perhaps they are trying to comply with corporate policy.)<br /><br />~JFo Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-56236919570986222902012-09-02T07:24:00.001-07:002012-09-02T07:24:47.906-07:00UEFI vs. Root Canal, You decide!
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I spent the better part of last week
(and a rather long portion of the end of the week bellyaching about
it on Facebook) doing installation testing with some new Microsoft
stuff. My work ground to a screeching halt once it became apparent
that it is no longer easily possible to set up hard disks manually
prior to installation. All of this due to the new GPT (GUID Partition
Table) requirement for the OS. In fairness I had known about this
change for some time and still I refrained from learning anything
more about it than the little I got in passing. Since it didn't
affect my daily life more than a footnote at the time, I think it was
understandable that I didn't waste any effort digging further. My
foray into hand creating GPT disks opened my eyes to all of the
minuscule yet plague-like issues that can be caused by doing in
wrong. Even the information provided by Microsoft appears incorrect.
(I have one more series of tests before I conclude finally that they
are. It is very likely that I am doing something minor that keeps it
failing) The end result was that I let the OS have its head and
partition the disk itself. Now, for clarity, let me say that this was
a painless way to get the OS installed, but it left my inner tinkerer
frustrated. I did some after action review and I will post the
results of that in a moment.</div>
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On to my thoughts of Windows 8...</div>
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At first glance, and as a user coming
in from being Windows free for the last three years at least, Windows
was hard to navigate. It took me a bit of doing to realize what was
needed to advance from one screen to another once I had opened my
e-mail from the start page (the start menu has been replaced by a
page devoted to an Android-esque page of icons for what I assume to
be frequently used items) Once I accomplished this it was on to
discovering how to get to the desktop and then how to get to any
program not listed on the normal desktop or the start page. (for
reference, you right-click on the start page to bring up a bar on the
bottom of the page that will take you to all programs... not terribly
intuitive) Having provided a bit of criticism to those few bits I
found maddening, I would like to say that I think Windows 8 is very
pretty. The installation, once I surrendered to its whims, was
painless and the initial usage issues, once learned beyond, make the
interface useful indeed. There are still quite a number of things
about it that I find annoying, but these I attribute to my
overwhelming love for free and open source software. I find the test
machine quick and responsive and the default apps useful in ways that
they were not the last time I found myself in Windowsland. After
leaving the device on for a time and eating a meal, I returned to
find that the test machine had been powered off. Turning it back on
revealed that it had been suspended, presumably to preserve power. I
was surprised at how quickly it returned to a usable state.
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Lest anyone think I have become over
exuberant in my detraction from Windows or even my praise of those
things I have always found taxing having been resolved, I will now
turn some attention to OS testing I performed on Ubuntu 12.04.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My first installation was a clean
install to one of my test laptops. (I never update versions or clean
install on systems I do active work on. I recommend you don't either
no matter the OS) My first impression was how very pretty the Unity
interface was. It is something I have become accustomed to over the
last little while, but that made the overall impression of change
that much more noticeable. The menus are getting more and more stable
and I didn't encounter any of the failures I had in previous installs
to this same machine just several months before. Congrats team.
Things continue to improve at a noticeable level. Now the bad news.
There was a tremendous lag in any menu interaction. Transitions
between windows were delayed and, in some cases, resulted in minor
freeze ups of the interface. I have since seen information to suggest
that this was a display driver issue. I have yet to test this theory
and I would like to point out that at no time was the system
completely unresponsive.</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
My upgrade testing encountered the same
issues mentioned above with the exception that they resolved to a
large extent once I downloaded updates. I don't recall if I did
updates on the pure install, so that is another item to check when I
go back to that machine early in the week.
</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
That is the extent of what I have
accomplished this past week in OS testing. I've done a ton of work on
several other things that I can's give details on yet, but I plan to
in the coming weeks.</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I leave you now with some reference
information on gdisk a GPT fdisk tool and some of the information
from the Ubuntu community regarding UEFI that I found useful.</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Ta</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
~Jfo</div>
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<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
P.S. - Here is an image of the disk as
partitioned by the MS installer. Note the differences in the actual
versus the recommended sizes... minor, I know, but of note none the
less.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2enYfpRZcTA/UENr_rH2ctI/AAAAAAAAAMM/D9qV-0xuZSA/s1600/win8-part.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2enYfpRZcTA/UENr_rH2ctI/AAAAAAAAAMM/D9qV-0xuZSA/s320/win8-part.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
gdisk</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man8/gdisk.8.html">http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man8/gdisk.8.html</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/">http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/walkthrough.html">http://www.rodsbooks.com/gdisk/walkthrough.html</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
UEFI</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting">https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEFIBooting</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
MS disk layout for EFI booting</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824839.aspx">http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh824839.aspx</a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-55728855645070401322012-08-31T04:08:00.000-07:002012-10-21T12:24:43.130-07:00Ah, Internet... I had almost forgotten you were there.<style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
</style> <br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
...<br />
But, Mousie, thou art no thy
lane [<i>you aren't alone</i>] <br />
In proving foresight may be
vain:<br />
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men<br />
Gang aft a-gley,
[<i>often go awry</i>] <br />
An' lea'e us nought but grief an'
pain,<br />
For promised joy.<br />
… -Robert Burns (Courtesy
http://www.phrases.org.uk)</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
Sometimes things just fall apart.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
For those unaware, I no longer work for
Canonical. (I am not a Canonical/Ubuntu hater, I simply don't work
there any longer) Among other things that have happened over the last
year plus, I no longer live in North Carolina, I no longer own a
Mercedes and I no longer have long hair. :) (The sumer heat and
moving belongings took care of the decision there) I won't get into
the whys and wherefores, but I will say that things have changed,
overall, for the better. I am learning new things everyday about
life, myself and others. I'll start back posting some of them here. I
think my next post will have to do with some Windows installation
testing I have been doing, but time will tell.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I leave you all with that for now. More
to come.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
~JFo</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-239583991404468472011-04-18T10:44:00.000-07:002011-04-18T11:00:36.739-07:00The woe of burnout...I agree with the friends (wonderful that they are) who have indicated that I am exhibiting various stages of advanced burnout. They are right, of course. I don't think I ever completely got out of the burnout that I had as a result of working at the <a href="http://www.hp.com/">giant cesspit</a>.<br /><br />I have a ton of great things kicking off to, hopefully, address this and get me back into the manner to which I am known. My buddy Matt and I are training with a fight trainer to cut tons of fat and get us on a good diet and exercise regimen. I'm really excited about that. Matt is a fighter. I want to train as a fighter. Win/win ;-). I'm headed to Wilmington for what I hope is the first of a series of visits aimed at 'getting some ink done'. I'm excited about that too. <br /><br />Carlota wants me to visit in California (How can I say no to her? I can't, that's how. ;-)). This has many benefits. 1) I miss the Carlota. 2) Lots of friends live in the SF/SJ area and I miss them too. 3) Jono lives in SF and I need to meet Mrs. Bacon. 4) This is a perfect opportunity to scout for the Graner invasion that Jono and I need to plan. 5) I miss the Carlota... :-P So I guess you could say that, just on those items alone, I really need to get out there. (Tedo, get ready!)<br /><br />My buddy Mike is brewing beer in Philly. He wants me to head up and partake, and I miss him and James and their wives and families. I've been very slack in my travel to see folks, and I hope to correct that. I'd also really like to head back to Dadeville, AL and visit my family.<br /><br />I hope all of those trips become possible. I vow to do everything in my power to see that they do! (or Carlota will spork me :-/)<br /><br />UDS is in Budapest, and I love the planning and sessions as well as the party on Friday night. I always look forward to these big events with all of my friends and acquaintances and this one looks to be just as awesome as all of the others have been. As an aside, I am thinking of standing up a site to crowdsource the DJ setlists I build for these events. I may not get it done this UDS, but I'd love to get it going fro the next one. :-) More on that later.<br /><br />In summary, there are too many good things happening for me to remain in this funk. I have a lot of things to get on track and an equal portion of items to kick off. I don't have time to be down! To those who should be in the areas I plan to be in, I look forward to seeing you! If you will be at UDS, look me up. I'll be one of the long-haired fellas running around with musical instruments.<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-23296455408362566712011-03-02T12:13:00.000-08:002011-03-02T12:51:19.209-08:00It has been a quiet few months...Welcome to my first post of the year. I must say, it has been a rough time. I have been doing a critical review of my life lately, and I am not impressed with the results of my investigation. This is nothing new, though there are some new aspects of my life that have made me less than happy, but this has only cemented the need for me to make several changes that I have been putting off.<br /> I discovered during this personal inventory that I have been keeping myself in a state of limbo. I'm not sure how long I have been here, but I can say that it seems to have been quite some time. A number of the things I took as burnout, while also being burnout, were symptoms of my general lack of action. I failed to act in a number of circumstances and acted incorrectly in several others. I used to be so decisive. I used to live life if not to the fullest then at least to the 80th percentile. When did that drop so precipitously? Why didn't I notice?<br /><br /> I have noticeably neglected my championing of Open Source Software. I have neglected this blog. I don't spend as much time as I did on things I enjoy. I haven't spent time outside in a while. Could I be affected by whatever it is the winter does to us? Am I depressed? Am I just drowning in work and allowing myself to care less about the things I used to? I think it is a mixture of these. In the last few months I have gone out a bit more than usual. I have been dealing with IRS issues, so that hasn't helped my mood, but the most annoying aspect of my life lately has been the poor decisions I have made in several key areas. Decisions that should have been simple and obvious were suddenly difficult and unclear or undesirable. One big error still haunts me a bit. I am not going to describe it (as I said to Carlota), but suffice to say, it has made me doubt my personal idea of myself. I used to think I was a fundamentally decent person, now I am not so sure. I have meanness in me apparently and I am not certain when or where it came from. I'm thankful to Carlota for talking to me even though I didn't give her details, but the sum of our conversation, while comforting, hasn't changed my overall concern. I MUST determine where this came from. I MUST determine if I can fix it. I WILL change this if possible. I hate to think of my life if this is a defining moment in it. What will it mean in the future if I can expect more of these bad decisions? <br /> To those of you, my friends, concerned by this dialog I say, fear not. You should all know that I don't hurt me for any reason. (Yes, I know that is a bad sentence. No, I don't care. :) ) I am simply trying to jot down some of the reasons I have been so silent here recently. It was pompous of me to think that I had any advice on bettering a life. I am clearly doing a number on mine recently, but I have a basic plan. At one point in time I had several, long-term plans in my life. I regularly had a 1 a 2 and a half and a 5 year plan for my life. They were the reason I achieved what I did in life until my divorce. Since then I have been rudderless, planning nothing but the spur of the moment. I have been reasonably successful. I just haven't been successful for the right reasons nor for the result of some plan as I used to. My goal is simple, have my plans in place by the end of this month without becoming like Charlie Sheen. :-) I think I can do it (plus I don't use drugs so that should be easier).<br /><br /> By the end of this month I will have in place a 1 and 2 year plan. Much of the work for this has already been done, I simply need to get it in the right place and format. I have all of the tools. I have the motivation, and the anger from my latest failures, to get me going. I know I have the friends who care if this is successful or not, but my habit (as you are all aware) is to not rely on you. It is important to me that I do this myself. This is my mess, let me clean it up. Otherwise how will I ever learn?<br /><br />Enough about that. I have begun writing again on a regular basis. This is part of the above mentioned plan. It has been tough, but I am writing 'something' every day. If I have trouble thinking of a story, or if I don't have the passion for working on one of my existing projects, I write observations of my life. They are sometimes caustic and critical, but at least I am writing again. This weekend I am planning to cook out, work on my car and begin work on my yard again. All of these activities force me to be outdoors (weather permitting) so I am interested in how they affect my mood. Sunday is the Day of the Dude and I plan to go bowling, watch The Big Lebowski and generally flourish under my chosen 'religion' for the day. I am The Very Reverend JFo after all. :-D I am hopeful that these activities will be the kick-start to me returning to be the JFo that you are all familiar with. I'm actually thankful that I work from home so that you can't see me as I am now. I'd also lke to mention that a number of people who have known of my current return to writing regularly have asked why I have not been updating the blog. Interesting fact: I have written 22 blog posts for this blog since my last holiday post. None of them were fit to publish because of the state of mind I have been in. All of them had some tilt of darkness to them and I am using some of them as blog posts in my main project book, so you will likely never see them here. :)<br /><br />Anyway...<br /><br />For more info on The Day of the Dude, see <a href='http://dudespaper.com/the-day-of-the-dude-2011-and-two-gentlemen-of-lebowski-giveaway.html/'>www.dudeism.com</a>. If you are nearby, come out and visit me. I'll be the <a href='https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=2275732&l=590d89e94e&id=1209840162'>longhaired, goateed gentleman</a> drinking the white russians.<br /><br />Take 'er easy if you can.<br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-8060147455118174972010-12-23T10:42:00.000-08:002010-12-23T11:12:13.507-08:00Tis the season...For long lines at any department store, short tempers, great food and relatives that remind us why we only ever see each other once a year. :)<br /><br />This is also the season for ridiculous sales on the things we "want" rather than need, food that we should avoid that gets eaten anyway, and the search for that perfect gift for the person or people you cherish most. In short, this season is a mix of the most vivid emotions ranging from Love to hate and all possible variance in between, and all of it gets packed into a few weeks of the year.<br /><br />In speaking with a dear friend the other day, who just so happens to be a psychiatrist (and no, I wasn't paying him for his time :) ), we fell into a conversation about the season and how it affects us, and can affect the outlook and our inter-familial conversations for years to come. I consider him a wise man, but we disagree often on some things. In this case, we disagreed that it was a healthy overall experience for a person to 'put up with' certain behaviors from family members during this time of celebration and reflection. His perspective is that it helps the individual grow mentally, while I believe it teaches a dangerous method of allowing bad behavior to continue to exist in otherwise sane (loosely translated) family members.<br /><br />As is our custom around this time of year, we argued (more of a friendly debate) about the differences in our experience and, therefore, our perception of how these events affect an individual. As a child, there was nothing I loved more in my life than going to visit my grandparents on their farm in Alabama for Thanksgiving and Christmas. The trips were the highlight of my year. As a result, I argue that my foundation in solid family environments has allowed me to see both proper and improper interaction between members of the family, and I vividly remember my grandmother and her correction of bad behavior during this time.<br /><br />My friend's family had much the same, but with a slightly different result. There were members of his extended family that regularly engaged in disruptive and disrespectful behavior during the gatherings, and their contribution went uncorrected. He was confident that seeing this behavior allowed him to see what not to do around family and, while I agree on principle, I think it was his upbringing around individuals that acted properly that allowed him to know the difference. :)<br /><br />The moral of this story, if there is one, is that you can disagree on behavior, belief, style of dress... but enacted bad behavior that goes uncorrected only allows that person to believe that the behavior is accepted by those around them. On this we both agree.<br /><br />So, when I am out during this season of mostly selfless giving and I see someone behaving badly within my realm of influence, I make it a point to correct them as gently as possible. After all, I am no expert in relations. I simply know what I am willing to allow myself to encounter as well as in what way I personally expect to be treated. There is a threshold for the way I allow myself to be addressed, treated or respected below which I allow none to pass without some form of intervention on my part. In the past, some people saw this to be some sort of unnatural requirement on my part. I see it as not allowing yourself to receive less respect than you deserve. I wish for the same for all of you.<br /><br />With that, we come to my real reason for this post. :)<br /><br />Jono Bacon has created something that I think is long overdue: <a href="http://openrespect.org/">http://openrespect.org/</a>.<br /><br />It is a site that should help us understand that respect is not just something you give another, it is something you can earn and set for yourself. Now Jono's site is meant and geared more for software development, but I think this should be the model for mortals the world over regardless of your particular job, race, belief structure or affiliation. It is a great thing to see the self worth of an individual increase when they are shown proper respect. It is something I think has been sorely lacking in this world for too long.<br /><br />Have a look there, take for yourself those ideals and set your threshold for what you are willing to accept. Be true to yourselves. Let none take advantage of your self worth. Love your family, but let them know that there are limits to what you will allow. In this, each of us has an opportunity to grow. Be as respectful to others as you want them to respect you. To each of you, my friends, I offer a hug. To those who don't hug, a hearty handshake is my gift, and to those who don't like to shake hands, have some pie! :-)<br /><br />Happy Holidays!<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-24830181794007993542010-12-09T07:40:00.000-08:002010-12-09T07:52:28.120-08:00Advice, and the people who give/take it.I realized today that, while I was giving advice to a friend, the advice I was giving was something that I myself needed to heed. Thinking back on all of the times I have provided my opinion or some piece of, hopefully useful, advice; I realized that, in many of those occasions, the advice I gave wasn't something that I adhered to in my own life. In those cases where I did abide my own, in almost all of those case I was now not keeping to that standard. It actually made me quite sad.<br /><br />They say the hardest lessons are the ones you visit on yourself. Well, this was a tough pill to swallow for me. I like to think I have given good advice, but given my past history of not following through on it myself, I begin to wonder. A big moment for me was while listening to the clip from Cool Hand Luke that I am using in a jingle for the podcast that Amber Graner and I are discussing the resurrection of. "What we've got here is... failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach." Clearly, in this case, I was the person who couldn't be reached even though the teacher was the same person.<br /><br />It brought into sharp relief those times that people tell us they understand something and then continue life in the same manner as before. Understanding does not indicate acceptance of a set of circumstances, nor does it indicate a willingness to work toward whatever goal is a result of the idea or advice. It seems I will have to pay closer attention to myself before I am comfortable giving advice to anyone else. How can I consider it sound if I am not willing to take it?<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-71940116376773938342010-12-03T12:06:00.000-08:002010-12-03T12:20:48.294-08:00The Box... I haz it!!Folks who know me are quite aware that I am an odd thinker. It should, then, come as no surprise to you that I like thinking 'outside the box'. I've never liked boxes. I remember making a maze in my middle school lunchroom for Halloween lamenting the fact that I didn't have sturdier construction material to make the maze the way I wanted to. I didn't like them then, I don't like them now. Even as a child I despised the boxes that things I bought came in. Now as an adult, I feel like the boxes are wasteful and take up too much space.<br /><br />I am a believer in not only thinking outside the box but in destroying the box and using its pieces to build a better box to think outside of. My thinking is akin to sitting on a porch in the south on a summer day smoking a cigar. Surprisingly enjoyable in and of itself, but also able to be improved by the qualities of the porch I am sitting on. If it has a roof, I am shielded from the sun. By the same token, if it is enclosed with screen, I don't have to worry about bugs.<br /><br />If I own this porch I can do anything I want with it to include completely enclosing it and using it in the winter. The details aren't important. What is important is that it becomes more esthetically pleasing the more work I put into it and more people are likely going to be interested in visiting and sitting on my porch.<br /><br />I think the same is true of thought processes. A person who has a proven ability to create unexpected ideas from a bit of conversation will have more people interested in discussing their ideas with them. This person, for lack of a better term, is constantly refining their box. After all, who doesn't want to go outside their home every now and again and see what needs sprucing up or changing. If you can interest people in your box, you can show them the beauty that lies outside of your box. This is what makes disruptive technology so interesting to us. We see proven leaders in their fields and we then see them creating such unique and new ideas that we want to work with them. We want to be a part of and learn how to improve out thinking in such a way as to develop ourselves more fully into free thinkers. It is definitely one of the main reasons I wanted to work at Canonical. Nothing could be more beautiful than learning and growing every day. This is my wish for all of you in the next years. Continue to grow your minds. Don't let your box fall apart without first having a plan to rebuild bigger and better. Above all, get out there in the sunshine and create!<br /><br />:-)<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-11244925470846015632010-11-30T07:30:00.001-08:002010-11-30T07:47:49.265-08:00Fish, Barrel... Loud Bangs...I had an odd experience yesterday. It is one that I have ever only just read about or saw in movies. <br /><br />I was a target for Social Engineering. Yes, I feel dirty too. Fortunately my suspicious nature precluded me from following through, but I was alarmed at how easy and natural it would have been for me to provide the information that was requested.<br /><br />The setup was simple, I received a call from an unknown number (this was the first clue that something wasn't right). The person on the line stated that she was 'Carolyn' from payroll (this was the second indication for me) and that there had been a 'glitch'. First off, I know of no one at my company named Carolyn. Add to that the fact that I am not the manager of our team. I'm not even the next lower rung. She followed up by saying that she was trying to get a hold of several people in dealing with the glitch. She named 2 people that she was interested in getting phone information for. Normally this request wouldn't raise too many eyebrows, however, my company maintains an internal directory for just such a thing. Now that my spider sense is riding the bellrope of WTF?! into a 9 star fire alarm of frenzy, I had a moment of clarity. I realized just how dangerous this scenario is. My natural predilection is to help in any way I can. After all, it is what I do on a daily basis. For someone unfamiliar with their company's personnel, it would be so simple to provide this information and think nothing more of it, but this simple request can do so much more. A telephone number can tell the requester where in the country the person lives. It also used to have the added benefit of narrowing to a specific region in that zone further reducing the possibilities of finding a location of that particular person. Sounds like a relatively harmless thing right? Well sure until you start looking at the huge list of missing persons all over the country.<br /><br />In this case, I am pretty certain that the fisherman was a recruiter so the information could have been used for something relatively harmless. The fact is, there is no way of knowing. Sadly, I was so floored by my thought process at the time that I didn't do anything more than try to sound like a person who knew nothing and didn't have the information at hand, but I would have preferred to spar a bit, if you will, with the person on the line. I think it would have been entirely possible to blow over the house of cards they had built with their opening statements.<br /><br />My final thoughts on the subject are these: Isn't it illegal to do something like this? If so, what are the ways I can combat this type of information gathering? And finally, If I find out who the person or persons are doing this, where do I go with this information? I don't have the answers, but I do have a question for you. Do you think you would be able to cut through the BS and determine that you were being scammed?<br /><br />Stay vigilant with your information! <br />Knowledge is power.<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-64446078845349437162010-11-19T23:37:00.000-08:002010-11-19T23:41:51.917-08:00My stream of consciousness born of a lack of sleep ☺{This probably won’t be as short as my normal posts, so those of you who actually do read this (all 8 of you ;-)) may want to take a moment to get comfortable.}<br /><br /><b>My Job</b><br /><br />I love what I do. I love the people I work with. Our times go from easy street and partying at UDS wrap parties to fist and jaw clenching emergencies in the blink of an eye immediately before we release. Never have I worked with a smarter and more capable group of individuals than this one. I am part of one of the most intelligent teams I’ve ever worked or dealt with, and I am thankful for them every day. They give me something to work toward; something most of you know I haven’t had in quite some time. ☺<br /><br /><b>Our Project</b><br /><br />In my opinion, Ubuntu stands to be one of the wonders of the world. I’m not saying that as an employee of canonical. It is the result of having worked with one of the most widely used and developed OS on the market today. Without the vast community we have, none of our goals would be met, none of our validation would occur and none of our growth would have happened. This project has the potential to be (and already is in my opinion) the standard for crowd-sourced projects for the ages. I am thankful for the absolute army of individuals we have thinking, breathing and living the open source and free software philosophy. Without their differences of opinion and ability to clearly state their individual and group opinions there would not be a third of the coverage this OS has in users and developers. You should all be proud.<br /><br /><b>My Life</b> <br /><br />I have a great job that requires me to travel on occasion, a nice car, ☺ a great place to live and a lot of new friends that I have met along the way. These are the things that make a success of one’s life. The reality is, it isn’t who you know or the things you have that make one feel complete. It is the memories and experiences that one has that make for a complete life. After all, “You can’t take it with you.” As with all things, there is also the bad. I have many times where I can’t sleep. Many of you are aware that I write on occasion, but I am by no means an author. Authors are published, and I have made it a point not to attempt to publish anything yet. The reasons for this are many, but the main one is that these are stories that I want to write for the sheer joy of the experience right now. I love that the plot doesn’t always develop the way I see it in my head. I love that the characters take on their own personalities and force me into writing them a certain way. The bit that I don’t love about it is the amount of sleep that I lose when great encounters or lines of dialog refuse to allow me to rest. ☺ I estimate that I have lost about 100 pages of really good material because I refused to get out of the bed and fire up the computer.<br /><br />Add to that my love of music and my newfound desire to write some original electronic and mashup pieces and you have a recipe that won’t see me sleeping until I die. ☺ This is good though. It is a different thing for me to be interested in something that could keep me up at night by a desire to continue working on it. The friends I have had throughout my life would probably all agree that I love my sleep. They would be correct. Sadly, these things seem to have taken precedence over my beloved slumber. I’m happy in some ways that this has happened. After my divorce I went through 5 years of listlessness. I didn’t care what I did or where I did it. I joined the Army again. I moved all over the southeast US. I didn’t keep track of my finances and was overdrawn on many occasions. I simply didn’t care. To have some of that back in my life is a good thing I think.<br /><br />During that time, I worked across the spectrum of jobs, from carpentry, to Systems and Network Administration to HVAC to Electrical to Plumbing at the Physical Plant of Anderson College to Campus Safety officer to Team Lead of a global enterprise support organization at HP to the Bug master for the Kernel Team of the Ubuntu project. All of that was in the 5 years I spent carelessly trying to find my place again in society. I haven’t found it, but I do care to look some more. ☺ I wonder where that will see me.<br /><br /><b>My friends</b><br /><br />I have the most awesome collection of friends and acquaintances in the world. I mean that, they are, literally, all over the world. Some friends of note who have helped me move upward out of the sludge of lifelessness over the past several years:<br />Amber and Pete Graner and kids: I became an honorary uncle and I think that helped kick start the process quite a bit. ☺ Their house recently burned down proving yet again that bad things happen to good people. If you weren’t aware and you want to help them out, have a look <a href="http://granerfamily.chipin.com/the-graner-family">here:</a> There are still 7 more days that you can contribute. ☺ I love you guys. I’m just sayin’.<br /><br />Carlota Sage: She is the penultimate pinup and she has a wicked and dirty sense of humor. It was in large part her refusal to put up with noncommittal crap from me that kick started my funny bone back up. I’m sure she isn’t aware, but I have so much more funny now and yet, not as much as I used to have. Still working on that though. ☺ Love ya Carlota. <br /><br />There are so many others that gave a part of their lives to me by either allowing me into their homes to corrupt their brains/children/pets/parents. Too many to name, but I am thankful for you all, even though at least 3 sets of you had kids after I moved away… You guys need hobbies :-P<br />So many of you gave your philosophy, long-held beliefs or just a comfortable place to chat that I can’t imagine where my mind would be now without you. To you, the intelligential individuals, I am eternally grateful.<br /><br />So I suppose you gathered that this post is geared more toward things I am thankful for. I thought that was appropriate, given this time of the year. You know, the time of year when I refuse to listen to normal radio due to their penchant for playing certain seasonal songs a month before they should be played. ☺<br /><br />So there you go. These are the thoughts that are banging around in my head as I try to get to sleep tonight. :-/ Hopefully getting them out of my head will help me actually rest… but I doubt it. :-D<br /><br />Now aren’t you glad you read all of that? ☺<br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-62874301822669318252010-11-16T10:33:00.000-08:002010-11-16T10:43:31.107-08:00TMA! Too Many Acronyms!I realize it has been a while since my last blog post... apologies. Today's topic is drawn from the frustration of reading a technical document that shall remain nameless, but nonetheless contained an acronym used twice for different things!<br /><br />This nonsense must end. I was a member of the US Army and I saw the idiocy of most of the acronyms used there. The difference is, they were consistent! There was no using the same acronym for two different things that I recall, but even there the usage is deplorable.<br /><br />Let the record show that I despise the use of acronyms in everyday speech and writing. I understand, but still dislike, their usage in documentation where writing out the words is tedious and unnecessary. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury... I will henceforth stop using acronyms in my daily usage. I think it better that I can spell and write out the words necessary to complete a useful conversation rather than to abbreviate my co-conversator into oblivion. The only possible exclusion I can see is in my IRC chatting. After all, it is difficult to let someone you are speaking with know that you are laughing without using 'lol' (which I also despise but can find the usefulness of)<br /><br />In short, I am an angry hypocrite. :-)<br /><br />That is all!<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-57483445647028707882010-10-05T11:55:00.000-07:002010-10-05T12:13:33.734-07:00Things just keep getting betterSo I decided earlier today to try a processor intensive action on my desktop and see how it fares. I have several long .ogg files (mixtapes created by a <a href="http://daniel.holba.ch/blog/">friend</a>) that I want to play on my MP3 player. Sadly, my player doesn't support OGG Vorbis, so I have a need to convert them. Enter SoundConverter, a tool specifically designed to do such a thing.<br /><br />Now, for a bit of description on my Desktop... It is a custom build. It has an Intel Motherboard, 8 core processor and 6 Gb of RAM. It also has 8Tb of attached storage and 60Gb(2x30 SSD drives) for OS and related programs. Needless to say, it is a beast.<br /><br />I've never really tested it out. I realized the other day that I never really even needed to enter and change any of the BIOS settings(I looked through them, they were all set correctly from the factory). The Ubuntu Kernel Team and a great many of the other teams within the Ubuntu Project have wanted load testing that is effective for quite some time. It is a proposition that I have been investigating since I joined Canonical. It is also needless to say, it is a massive endeavor. How does one accomplish effective load testing on an OS and provide concrete data and results that indicate where possible problems may lie? I am still working on all of that. Now back to our situation at hand.<br /><br />This machine is set up with a 1300Mb swap partition that it has never used. I set out, using the .ogg files to see what kind of pressure could be put on the machine before I see a stutter in my music that is also playing while the test is underway. (That being a major gripe of mine and many users as well)<br /><br />I added 8 of the OGG files to the sound converter to be converted all at once. My load average at the time was around 1.8. I had Terminal open running htop, Chromium open with about 10 tabs of pages and my Rhythmbox app playing some DJ Chuckie. :)<br /><br />All 8 cores went to 90+ percent when I started the conversion and moved between 85 and 95% all during the process, which lasted about 5 minutes. No swap usage and absolutely no skipping of the songs I was playing even when I moved to the Rhythmbox app and changed songs in the middle of the test. I also didn't notice any lag in window selection or loading like I used to on my older hardware. I'm very happy with that. :-)<br /><br />This testing was conducted on the Ubuntu Maverick RC 64 bit. Great Job Ubuntu Project members!! :-DAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-46191111898772779452010-09-03T11:18:00.000-07:002010-09-03T11:24:14.128-07:00Ubuntu Kernel Team Triage SummitSince I've already blogged about it <a href="http://voices.canonical.com/kernelteam/">here</a> I'll refrain from boring you with the detail there already.<br /><br />What I will say is that I am very excited about this Summit. It is the first of its kind and I am really hoping that I haven't stunted it due to my failure to evangelize it enough before now. There simply hasn't been the time. Couple that with e-mail issues of my own creation and you have a recipe for failure.<br /><br />I hope at least a few people hear about it and join in the fun. This should be an opportunity for folks who have very little exposure to the linux kernel and a desire to become more acquainted with the inner workings of linux to get some of the basic information they need in order to get much closer and provide some assistance to the team as we push to get eyes on the thousands of bugs we deal with daily.<br /><br />I can't wait for Saturday Sept 11th. :)<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-21504949090857399952010-08-30T12:45:00.000-07:002010-08-30T12:50:54.691-07:00Monday...I can never seem to get any of the things I really need to do finished on a Monday. I'm always overcome by other last minute critical issues either of my own making or some other equally critical venue. More often the latter, but it seems that, lately, I have been causing myself a lot of pain by putting some things off that I don't want to do. Not that I won't do them, it is just that they are usually not fun to accomplish.<br />I've discovered today that they are even less fun when you put them off (as per what I usually discover in every other set of circumstances like these that I continually get myself into :)) One would think I would learn. One would wonder why it is that I keep doing this to myself.<br /><br />One doesn't have an answer for that. :-)<br /><br />Anyone else do anything like this, or are you all better at accomplishing the 'un-fun' better than I am?<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-52740365540395567532010-08-11T20:12:00.000-07:002010-08-11T20:29:52.540-07:00Previous post title got me thinking...Being a teleworker or a telecommuter is a great thing. I can show up for work in my PJs or I can sit on the porch, in the hammock... There are a number of benefits to working from home, but there are also many drawbacks. Many of them a product of not setting rules to work by.<br /><br />Many people try to keep our attention on <a href="http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1640222">burnout</a>, or to use a friend's label "<a href="http://www.southeastlinuxfest.org/node/117">Volunteer</a> <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/akgraner/volunteer-vertigo-and-high-tech-hangovers">Vertigo</a>", but most of the time a simple set of rules would keep us from being affected. I'd like to share some that I use, and I am interested in what you have to add.<br /><br />1) Set up a 'workspace'.<br />For me, this is as simple as the table I use for my laptop in my office.<br /><br />2) Make the rule that nothing other than work will go on in this 'workspace'<br />Sounds easy, right? Well, it isn't. Something as simple as reading your snail mail in your 'workspace' can undermine the rule. This is a difficult one for me to follow through on. I've begun going so far as to get up from the workspace and walking away when the phone rings. It gives me the chance to keep my mind focused.<br /><br />3)Ensure that you set work hours.<br />Most important rule, and most likely to be seen as flexible. In IT it is easy for us to get blinders when we are working on something we enjoy. We lose track of time. This has the side-effect of causing us to begin to dislike what we once loved. I consider this rule one of the most important, if not THE most important.<br /><br /><br />There are many other little rules that I have, but I think I will stop there for now. I may continue in a later post and cover things like "recreational surfing must be done somewhere other than your chosen workspace." Also very important, however, I think the ones above are the keystones. If you can achieve those, then the rest are up to you.<br /><br />Let me know what you do to keep from working all hours. :-)<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-44161209022517260702010-08-09T07:05:00.000-07:002010-08-09T07:18:56.509-07:00All Work and no Play...So it has been some time since I had the chance to blog here at all. Not that any of you were waiting with bated breath for some new drops of idiocy from me, just that I wanted to use this to capture my thoughts... mostly for myself.<br /><br />In the intervening time, I went to Prague for the Platform Rally, was asked to attend and present for the Ubuntu Hardware summit, started doing several songs that I have collectively dubbed 'situational blues', been approached by a friend to do a general topics podcast (details to be posted soon), all while lying amongst tons of bugs and e-mail. <br /><br />It is true that there are thousands of kernel bugs. At times they get overwhelming, but we are working on policies around all of them that i hope will guide reporters to filing the best bug reports that they possibly can. I'm also excited to have several new folks triaging bugs for us. With any luck the Kernel Triage Summit currently planned for September 11th will be most beneficial. (Why Sept 11th you ask? Unfortunately it is the only weekend I have somewhat free before the end of this cycle. I've squeezed it down to 4 hours on the day so that the most people can benefit. Plus it will be recorded and posted for others to review after. But more on that later)<br /><br />I hope that Amber and I are able to get some fun topics for the new podcast together. We will be talking about lots of things, not just Ubuntu (and we may not even talk about that :)). The main goal of this podcast is for us to take time out and laugh... at each other if necessary. :-)<br /><br />So, in review, tons of cool stuff happening. Lots and lots of work to do. Oh, and for those of you not aware, UDS will be in Orlando, Florida in October. Those of you who've always wanted to attend, now is your chance!! :-D<br /><br />More to come...<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-64283236372854967132010-05-18T20:14:00.000-07:002010-05-18T20:18:19.660-07:00In the NewsAs I lay here. Recovering from UbuFlu in the midst of my UDS Hangover, I ran across a news story about Fedora 13 being pushed back due to a Grub bug. The story i saw is: <a href="http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2010/05/fedora-13-delay-fixes-linux-gr.html">http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2010/05/fedora-13-delay-fixes-linux-gr.html</a><br /><br />Some folks have asked me today if I thought this was a failure on the part of Fedora. Of course not. We all want to put out good software, and Fedora is no different. Understanding that this wasn't the only bug that caused them to hold off releasing, I applaud them for explaining the situation a bit and working to put out the best software possible.<br /><br />Just my thought today.<br /><br />Being sick really sucks,<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-78452734935073522642010-05-17T12:02:00.000-07:002010-05-17T12:03:28.953-07:00New Words to useOK, <a href="http://www.globalnerdy.com/2010/05/09/new-programming-jargon/">this</a> made me laugh for a while today.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-66369155144212667632010-05-17T04:48:00.000-07:002010-05-17T05:02:32.982-07:00UDS HangoverBoy, they weren't kidding. There really is such a thing as a 'UDS Hangover'. I calculate that, from the time I hit the bed Saturday night at 11:30PM until I woke up this morning, I have slept over 24 hours and I still feel as if I have been beaten repeatedly.<br /><br />The flight back was uninteresting from a volcanic point of view. No Delay, No changed course. Just a long flight and the usual dehydration to deal with. One would think they would consider putting in a humidification system for planes to keep you from feeling as if you'd had sandpaper installed in your nostrils while you weren't looking.<br /><br />Both flights were staffed by excellent attendants and I continue to have my research reinforced as to dealing with them and ticketing/gate agents. Ever since I began this job and travelling so much, I've taken the approach of always smiling and being cheerful when interacting with them. I've never had a problem. This includes dealings with TSA agents at security checks. I generally find that I have less of a difficult time as long as I am seemingly happy. And just to neutralize the obvious thought that I am always happy or that I never have troublesome items and/or times. I can assure you that I don't always feel like putting up this image of complete happiness, and I have had several situations where I had crazy baggage issues.<br /><br />It all just seems to work out when you do everything you can to make their jobs a bit easier. :-)<br /><br />In the words of undacuvabrutha "Peace, Love and Soul" and I'll add to that Rock-nRoll. ;-)<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6261462524805971070.post-76906199900280845552010-05-16T19:09:00.000-07:002010-05-16T19:15:48.232-07:00Of AllStars and Southern RockThe All Stars Jam was a night not to be forgotten. The band was in the groove and the crowd was participating.<br /><br />I tend to think I was up there way too long, but what can you do when influenced by alcohol and the overpowering draw of classic southern music.<br /><br />I sincerely hope that there was no one recording the whole proceedings, but I am not naive enough to believe that there wasn't. I do know that after we finished up our planned set list we started taking requests, so apparently the crowd was still with us.<br /><br />Claire Newman asked us to play Waterloo by Abba, and I am sorry to say we failed her. I am, however, hopeful that we can make it up to her by either learning it or finding someone who knows it for the next Jam. :) After all, I promised.<br /><br />I thoroughly enjoyed singing with Jono on Tuesday's Gone and Turn The Page. I can't wait until next UDS. :-)<br /><br />Keep on Rockin in the Free World!<br /><br />~JFoAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17765032355719045109noreply@blogger.com0