free(time(NULL));

Assortment of Updates

2008-11-20T15:35:00.002-10:00

I've been busy. That's the usual excuse that people use when they haven't posted to their blogs. Yes, I've been busy, but more importantly I haven't been able to come up with a good topic in a while. So, here's a collection of updates (sort of like a sitcom clip show).

Fedora 10 is done. Mirrors are syncing up and users will soon be able to get the 10th release of Fedora Linux from their favorite and/or fastest mirror. A lot has gone in to Fedora 10 and I am pleased to say that it looks really good. I hope users find it nice as well. It's quite nice knowing that we finally reached the end of F-10 development. Of course, F-11 development is right around the corner, but it's nice to give users something new to use.
The revenue product is also nearing a point release in the v5 series. It's also looking nice as well. My team (installer) had a lot of work to, as usual, but I think for each point release we are converging on stability. That is, the number of bugs reported continues to decrease with each point release. To me that means we are doing right somewhere.
Chris and I are busy working on new Python bindings for libparted. There have been several iterations of Python bindings for libparted in the past, but we are doing a complete rewrite from scratch and implementing everything available in libparted and adding things that we can benefit from in Python (e.g., exceptions). It's a really fun project because it's totally new code for once. Expect a Trac page on fedorahosted.org for this project once we get to a dot zero release. For now, you can get the code from here.
I was nominated for the Fedora Board.

Those are all work updates, what about non-work?

I think I posted about this, but what the hell. I saved a ton of money by switching to GEICO.
Speaking of GEICO, a gecko got in to our condo the other day. We haven't found him.
I got a refill for my prescription today and noticed they gave me a generic medication. This alarmed me as I know my particular medication has a patent protecting Big Giant DrugCo and ensuring their massive profits until at least 2010. If they gave me a generic, that means they didn't give me what I needed. Going back to the pharmacy, I was told by the pharmacist that there is, in fact, a generic for my medication and it became available within the past few weeks. Preferring to talk to my doctor first, I asked for the actual brand. Changing seizure disorder drugs midstream is not trivial. It's probably not a generic, but a reasonable substitute for most people (since my medication is patented). Reasonable substitute means jack when you talk about seizure disorder drugs.
I broke a handle on one of our jalousie windows a few days ago and got the part to repair it today. $8.49 at City Mill.
Speaking of breaking things, I was trying to rebuild Karen's mom's Windows desktop computer. Upgraded the RAM to make Windows drag along a little faster, but during the course of working on it, the NIC died (rust in the RJ-45 port) and the power supply exploded. Parts are on the way from the mainland.
I've decided to let the Dutch manage some of my money. The web interface for ING Direct accounts works with Firefox, which is a plus in my book. DCU, make your site work correctly with Firefox and I'll consider using my accounts more.

Tomorrow evening, Karen and I head to the mainland for a crazy road tour. Starting in Washington, DC and including New York and Pennsylvania. We will probably eat turkey in there somewhere.

Christopher Butler, you suck.

2008-11-18T09:55:00.002-10:00

November 18, 2008

Dear Christopher Butler,

[To all Christopher Butlers in the world, I speak only of the one who had my cell phone number before it was assigned to me. You know who you are. The number is a US number in the 808 area code.]

You had my cell phone number assigned to you before me and apparently you spent a lot of money and decided not to pay your bills. I take it you failed to pay your cell phone bill too, which probably explains how the number ended up back in the random assignment pool and how I got it.

At any rate, would you please start paying your damn bills? I am tired of the collections agencies calling me at all hours of the day and night trying to find your sorry ass. Seriously dude, how much shit do you have to buy on credit?

Maybe I should give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's something like identity theft. But I can't really believe that, because it looks like the first things you defaulted on were utility bills and loans and now you're using credit cards and not paying them.

You know what, if you want to keep doing that, fine. Maybe you'll get a bailout bill passed in your name. Could you just do one favor for me? STOP GIVING THEM MY PHONE NUMBER WHEN YOU APPLY FOR A NEW CARD! You might still have the phone you got from AT&T, but you sure don't have the number. Ever notice it doesn't ring? Yeah, I have the number now.

Sincerely,

The current assignee of 808-2XX-7XXX

Attaching Things To Bugzilla Entries

2008-11-10T10:05:00.003-10:00

This is meant as helpful information for people reporting bugs.

When attaching files to a bug that you file at http://bugzilla.redhat.com, take care to watch the type that the attachment is assigned. Bugzilla seems to do a pretty bad job at figuring out file types. The most common problem I see is application/octet-stream when people attach log files.

If you are attaching anything that can be viewed with more, less, most, or your favorite text editor, make sure the type is set to text/plain, please. It's also helpful if you do not tar up or compress log files and then attach them to bugs. Just attach the log files and set the type to text/plain. Makes viewing them easier.

For patches that you want to attach, here are a couple of suggestions. Make sure you are creating unified diffs with diff -u. When you attach the file to the bug, check the box marked Patch so that it's flagged as a patch in Bugzilla. This makes viewing and saving the patch a little easier.

I have seen a number of odd attachments show up in Bugzilla. People turning log files in to OpenOffice documents (and sometimes even presentations), for example. Or taking photos of a log file they are viewing with more, one photo for each screen of text (yes, that was around 20 photos attached to the bug report).

If the person handling the bug requests some information from you in the form of a log file or something similar, but you don't know how to get it, ask. Don't assume you are on your own for collecting the requested information.

Automator

2008-11-04T16:46:00.003-10:00

I discovered a problem recently on my MacBook (MacOS X 10.5) where the default browser and default RSS reader would get reset to Safari each time I'd reboot. It was getting a bit annoying, so I dug around online to see if other people were having the problem. To my surprise, I saw a lot of people having this problem.

Consensus was that it's a known bug and happens when you are using the built-in disk encryption in OS X. I'm using that because I wanted to know that if someone ripped off my laptop, I'd at least make it more difficult for them to get in to it.

Apple users tend to be different sorts of problem solvers than Linux users. As a Linux user, I expect to find a patch or be able to make a patch myself and recompile the software. Apple users don't really do that, they tend to find workarounds in other ways.

The recommended workaround was to use Automator to open Safari (which controls the default browser and rss reader settings), open the Preferences window, select Firefox for the browser, and NetNewsWire for the RSS reader. Save the resulting script from Automator and have it run when you log in.

While this solution is clunky, it does work (it's also amusing to watch the script launch when I log in. It's like someone else is controlling my system for a minute). What was more interesting to me is using Automator. It's a drag and drop scripting environment for the GUI. I was able to script mouse actions using this system. I think this is pretty cool. It hides everything from me and just lets me graphically put together a script.

My question for Linux users is do we have anything like Automator for GNOME? Or really any desktop environment?

IP Phone Finally Working

2008-11-03T11:50:00.003-10:00

It's taken me weeks, but I finally have a working IP phone. I have my Red Hat extension configured as line 1 and my Fedora extension configured as line 2.

There was a post somewhat recently from someone who purchased a Grandstream GXP-2000 IP phone and got it working with talk.fedoraproject.org. Having had no luck with my Cisco 7960G, I decided to go with the Grandstream phone.

Configuration of the GXP-2000 is certainly easier, but getting an IP phone to work on your LAN behind whatever you're using for a firewall is a royal PITA.

I tried STUN since the phone can do that. The phone was able to register itself and I could make and receive calls, but you'd never hear anything. Someone pointed out that I needed to forward tens of thousands of ports for the RTP traffic. I found some iptables PREROUTING and FORWARD rules that seemed to be correct. Still didn't help.

I fooled around with NAT settings, but nothing ever worked. Other people I talked to suggested running Asterisk locally or running siproxd or some other stack of software that would let the phone connect. The whole point of having the physical IP phone was to avoid any sort of software on my workstations and servers to make the phone work. Running siproxd wasn't really an option because I use OpenWRT on a WHR-G54-HP for my router/firewall/vpnc box. Not enough space to store siproxd.

Digging around online pointed me to an iptables kernel patch. It added the ip_conntrack_sip.o and ip_nat_sip.o modules. I'm using OpenWRT 0.9, the last whiterussian release. One thing that I find irritating is when I mention OpenWRT people, I am immediately told to change to DD-WRT or to upgrade to Kamikaze or something else. Why? I don't care and 0.9 works fine for me. Unless there is something I really can't get working under 0.9, I don't want to change or upgrade.

However, these kernel modules almost caused me to look in to DD-WRT, but I couldn't find any evidence that DD-WRT would make my SIP situation any easier. OpenWRT runs 2.4.30. My device is MIPS, so compiling these modules for 2.4.30 for MIPS was going to be annoying and/or impossible.

Finding the patch was the first trick. The OpenWRT dev team removed the iptables SIP patch about 3 years ago due to licensing concerns. I found that svn revision 3289 was the last time they had the SIP patch. I checked that out from svn.openwrt.org and proceeded to build for my router. It took a little while, but I eventually got the two modules and copied them to the router.

With the modules loaded and the following iptables rules in place:

iptables -A INPUT -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT iptables -A FORWARD -o vlan1 -p udp --dport 5060 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o vlan1 -j SNAT --to-source [public IP]

The phone finally works. The kernel modules are making life easier for me because I don't need a lot of iptables rules to get the phone working.

For details on my OpenWRT configuration, go here.

My talk.fedoraproject.org extension is 5100345.

Government Employees Insurance Company

2008-11-02T14:23:00.003-10:00

Some of the commercials are amusing. I decided to see what my quote would actually be. I've been a Progressive customer for more than 5 years and have been pleased with their rates and service. Hawaii is the third state where I've used Progressive. The rates were lowest for me in Georgia and New Hampshire and I assumed they would be lowest for me in Hawaii. My thought was if Progressive charged me more in Hawaii, I'd look elsewhere. My six month premium in Hawaii with Progressive was $819. That's lower than what I paid in New Hampshire, but higher than Georgia. As long as it wasn't more than what I was paying most recently, I was happy.

I checked GEICO today and come to find out that the same coverage with them would cost me $356 every six months. In other words, it's $463 cheaper.

So I changed to GEICO today. I started the new policy and set up EFT for payment. I was paying $137 per month with Progressive. With GEICO, it comes out to around $59 per month. Each carrier adds in payment fees or processing fees and nonsense like that, but $59 per month is way less than what I am paying with Progressive.

I called up Progressive to cancel and they asked why I was changing and I told them what GEICO had quoted me. Progressive's attitude has always been very helpful and understanding when they are not necessarily the lowest for you in a particular market. The representative I spoke too was a little disbelieving that $356 was my quote. She went on to say that in her experience, most Progressive customers who change to GEICO end up coming back after the first 6 month policy renews. Apparently the rates go up after the fact. I'm not really sure if that's the case or not. Even if it is, I can always go back to Progressive if they are cheaper.

I now get to say what they say in the commercials:

I just saved hundreds of dollars on my car insurance by switching to GEICO!

Now to go work on my voip phone setup and call people to test out the connection and ask, "can you hear me now?"

Laser Karaoke

2008-10-30T12:18:00.004-10:00

Karen and I hung out with some of her work friends last night at a bar in Honolulu last night. They have beer, video poker machines, darts, and karaoke. Karaoke gets its own room and I was surprised at how big karaoke is here. This would never go over well on the east coast.

Being a technology nerd, I was amazed at the karaoke contraption. It was larger than a standard sized Coca Cola vending machine. It had PIONEER LASER KARAOKE all over it and Laser Karaoke was written in the same style they used on LaserDisc players. My guess is the Laser Karaoke system is a huge jukebox with LaserDiscs containing the tracks. When you ~~queue one up~~ select a song, you get a video on the screen (some of which were hilarious) and the words appear on the screen and light up as the song progresses.

There's a vocoder, a mixer, and an entry panel where you select tracks. Disc changes are handled by a robotic arm in the machine that changes disks (behind a severely tinted window, so you couldn't see it that well).

In addition to that, it had a money taker attached to it. Songs were $1 each and it would take notes or coins (I think). Karaoke is free on Wednesday nights, so the bar just kept feeding in $5 notes for us.

I sang Livin' On A Prayer, which was fun. The group sang Sweet Child O' Mine twice.

I also learned I need more practice with darts. No injuries though.

Non-member Purchasing at Costco

2008-10-27T13:15:00.003-10:00

In the United States, we have these stupid warehouse sized stores under the names Costco, Sam's Club, B.J.'s, and others. The stores advertise really low prices, but you have to buy in bulk. Few people have a need for a 55 gallon drum of pickles, or a dump truck full of rice, but that doesn't stop people from going to these stores to buy ridiculous amounts of things.

The catch is that these clubs are member-only facilities. You pay some amount of money per year to shop in the store. The return is that you get the super low low prices the store offers. I really don't like the concept and I don't like having to buy huge quantities of things just to save money.

Federal regulations prohibit Costco and stores like it from requiring a store membership to use the pharmacy. Anyone can go in and use the pharmacy and get the low Costco prices.

What else can you buy at these stores without a membership? Well, this one is regulated by states rather than the federal government, but in some states it's possible to buy alcohol without having a store membership. I tested this out on Saturday at Costco in Honolulu.

Getting in the store is a bit tricky since they check for membership cards at the door. I'll leave that one up to you.

Once you get in the store, know that you can only buy drugs or alcohol without having a membership. I tested the purchasing ability with beer. The cashier was unaware of any such Hawaii law that would let me buy alcohol there without a membership. Asking for an explanation, I gave him what the Liquor Commission told me. Section 281-31 of the Hawaii Revised Statutes prohibits class 4 (retail, off premises consumption) liquor license holders from restricting the sale of alcohol based on membership status at the merchant. After calling a supervisor and ultimately the store manager, the store manager was the only one who knew of the law and let the transaction go through.

Now, I knew this would be difficult or impossible, which is why I asked the Liquor Commission if it was possible before going. Armed with their response and vague instructions, I set out to see what I could buy at Costco. It worked, but Costco and I imagine the other warehouse stores want to keep this quiet. It is the cheapest place to get alcohol on island. A 24 pack of beer in bottles cost me $27. A 6 pack here typically costs between $8 and $10.

Aside from some fly-over states and California, I do know that you can do this same trick in Massachusetts. Westford office, enjoy!

NOTES: Every state is different. Some states may allow the retailer to make you go through a different procedure to purchase without a membership.

Paper or ...

2008-10-22T14:48:00.003-10:00

Plastic! No, electronic.

I voted early today because we can do that here. I figured it was better to vote early than wait in a long line on Super Tuesday.

Election law in Hawaii allows for all sorts of ballot types. Voting early is a form of the absentee ballot and this year the state is encouraging people to vote as early as possible because they know that polls won't be able to handle the anticipated demand.

I went to Honolulu Hale after lunch preparing to see if it was a long wait or not. If it was a ton of people, I was just going to bail and head back to work. There were no people in line, so I stayed. After filling out a form and presenting your ID to a poll official, you are asked if you want to vote using a traditional paper ballot or if you'd like to use the exciting electronic voting system. I asked if it was made by ~~Diebold~~Premier and they said no, so I decided to go with the electronic system.

The maker of these systems claims to be Hart. It's not a touchscreen system. It's an LCD display and then a series of buttons along the bottom. The buttons:

CAST BALLOT
PREV
NEXT
ENTER

There is also a big knob on the right labeled SELECT. I think they used engineers from BMW and Yaesu to design this thing because every operation requires turning the knob and pushing a button.

To start the voting process, you enter the four digit access code you were given at the front of the line. The system then explains how the process works. Use the SELECT wheel to highlight your choice and then press ENTER (turn the knob, press a button). At the end of the ballot, you will see a ballot summary page. If you like what you see, turn the SELECT knob to highlight Accept and then press ENTER. If you don't like what you see, you can go back (using PREV/NEXT) to change any selections.

The last step is the literal paper trail. After you Accept the ballot summary on the screen, the system prints out on thermal receipt paper a copy of your ballot summary. The printout is behind another screen and it scrolls by and stops so you can read it. Once you like what you see on the paper, press CAST BALLOT and the paper trails off and the big LCD says you voted.

Figure Out The State

2008-10-21T15:13:00.003-10:00

Dear lazyweb,

When I go to an online store to purchase something, it's the usual routine. You ask me to fill up my shopping cart, select a shipping method, and then log in with the account I made -or- sign up. I give you a billing address and a shipping address, but why do you always insist on having me scroll through a combo box as tall as the browser window to select my state? I give you my city and ZIP code, can't you figure it out from there? I have even been to some sites that figure out the city/location name based on your ZIP code. I *know* you can do this, so how about you stop asking me for my state all the time. Let me give you the ZIP and you go from there.

Is there a legitimate reason that online shopping carts can't figure out the US state based on ZIP code?

Old Desktop Screenshots

2008-10-12T10:32:00.005-10:00

Another nerd post.

I was cleaning out some old directories on my laptop and came across a very old picture archive. Among the photos, I found four desktop screenshots from systems I had over the years. It's fun coming across these. I can see how my taste in user interfaces has changed over the years, as well as the set of software I regularly use.

I noticed one thing I failed to do in any of these screenshots. I don't have anything indicating the date. I should have run date in a terminal window somewhere. Oh well. [UPDATE: I meant years, people. And I see now that the clock in blackbox does display the year, so that was nice.]

Without further delay, here are the four in the chronological order I remember:

nomex-afterstep.jpg - I was a big fan of the Afterstep 1.0 window manager (note that the 1.0 is important because that was the code base that was closer to fvwm configuration than the newer AfterStep). I ran this window manager for YEARS before finally going with something else. A tour around the screen starting in the upper left corner: rxvt with a background listing my MP3 collection, x11amp, x48 calculator emulator, pine in an rxvt, Slashdot in Netscape Navigator, Licq for instant messaging, and the GIMP since all screenshots had to contain the GIMP. Along the right edge of the screen is the Wharf, which was supposed to look like the Dock in NEXTSTEP. I've got a clock/calendar, network monitor, CPU monitor, a button with a penguin, a button with the Netscape logo, other buttons, and what I think is a pager in the last one. Also notice the lower right corner of the screen. You'll see my system log tailing messages right on to the root window. That was roottail, a neat program that worked by magic I think. (taken October 28, 1998)

nomex-blackbox.jpg - Blackbox was introduced to me by my friend Logan. He was in to lean user interfaces and blackbox was quite nice. I used it for a while. You can see I am just running Netscape Navigator, xterms, and Licq for instant messaging. You can also see me running ytalk. Wow. (taken September 25, 2000)

goretex.jpg - Still using blackbox here. You can see this is when I was working for Slackware because the top two terminals are logins to accounts on bob, which was our main server for basically everything, including email. On the left, I am logged in as myself. On the right, I am logged in as support. Yes, I answered lots of support at slackware.com email. (taken February 9, 2001)

sgi-o2.jpg - In California, I bought an SGI O2. It was an R5000 at 180MHz, so not super speedy. But it was really fun to use. It came with a camera too (think 8 years ago and how that wasn't really the norm yet). The O2 was fun, but eventually I got rid of it.

The system names were part of my naming style. I used to name systems after Dupont fabric names or textile names that I thought were cool. My server was kevlar, nomex was my workstation. I had burlap for a while. Also had mylar, tyvek, and goretex. I also had warp, weft, and woof. Yeah, getting obscure now. The SGI systems I had followed a different naming system for some reason, mostly arbitrary. Originally the O2 was named o2d2 (also attributed to Logan). I cannot remember what it was named after that. I had an Indy at one point named turtle. I also had an Octane2 named aki (anti-knock index, get it?). SGI systems were non-standard, so it made sense for the naming system to be nonstandard too.

What were the specs of these systems. Nomex was a dual Pentium Pro system with 128MB of RAM on an Intel PR440FX motherboard. It was also a 100% SCSI system. The first CPUs I had were 180Mhz with 256KB of L2 cache, I think. I eventually ended up with 200Mhz processors with 1MB of L2 cache each and I think more RAM. Maybe 256MB of 512MB when it was all said and done. I used this system for a very long time.

Goretex was a Sun Ultra 5, complete with all of the design problems Sun was kind enough to put in to the system. The shitty IDE controller, the shitty floppy controller, the shitty CD-ROM drive, and the shitty framebuffer. The system had a 360Mhz UltraSPARC-IIi processors and 256MB of RAM or maybe more, I forget.

The O2 was a 180MHz MIPS R5000 processor. It had 256MB of RAM, a 9.1GB SCSI disk, and an integrated CD-ROM (this was a big deal for SGI as pretty much every workstation they made lacked the ability to have an internal CD-ROM drive). It also had the AV board for audio/video input/output.

What do I use nowadays? I use Fedora Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and MacOS X. MacOS X is pretty easy to figure, I use its interface. On the Linux systems, I am entirely apathetic now. I use whatever is the default, which is GNOME.

Huh...wha? I just don't understand

2008-10-10T12:35:00.007-10:00

Nerd post follows.

My job presents me with challenging and, sometimes, annoying problems to solve. I write software, which means I also write software bugs. I work on a number of projects, but the one that takes a majority of my time is the installation program for Fedora and RHEL called anaconda.

Lately, I have been in the process of moving the network configuration code to use NetworkManager. This hasn't been easy, despite NetworkManager's web page promising pain-free networking. DHCP installs have worked for a while, but getting manual IP configuration installs to work was another story. I got those working the other day, but guess what stopped working? DHCP installs. I just don't understand.

NetworkManager insists on starting the DHCP client and then immediately stopping it and taking the network interface down. What? Why? I reported the problem to NetworkManager, so we'll see what happens.

It seems that I can't fix everything, I can only shift around the window of things-that-work. Something will always be broken.

[UPDATE: As of 5:00 PM HST 10-Oct-2008, I have DHCP and static IP configuration installs working again. The problem was not in NetworkManager, it was in anaconda after all. Definitely a difficult one to track down.]

Unrelated, but still nerdy, is a tip for users of RPM. Do you use a Linux operating system that uses RPM for package management? If so, do you run on x86_64, s390x, or another 64-bit platform (perhaps even really obscure ones that no one uses anymore)? If you do, you probably have both 32-bit and 64-bit software installed. When you do something like 'rpm -qa', you might see something listed twice. The two entries are for the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of that package. Want to always see the architecture in 'rpm -qa' output? Add this to your ~/.rpmmacros file:

    %_queryformat \
     "%{name}-%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n"

You should add it all on one line in your .rpmmacros file, I am breaking the line here so it won't wrap on this page. Now type 'rpm -qa' and see the architecture listed alongside the name-version-release (NVR).

Join Failbank, We Have All Time Super Low Rates!

2008-10-06T10:12:00.002-10:00

Ever received a pre-approved credit card application from a failed bank? I have! I got one on Friday from Washington Mutual, the latest in a string of failed US banks for 2008.

For the current season rankings, check out the FDIC page on Failed Banks. They list all of the failed banks since October 1, 2000. A failed bank is where the FDIC steps in and does its thing. FDIC insurance is available to nationally and state-only banks, so some of the banks in the list are state only. You can easily tell when you see who shut them down. A national bank is shut down by either the Office of the Comptroller of Currency or the Office of Thrift Supervision. OCC regulates nationally chartered banks. OTS regulates nationally chartered savings and loans. By today's laws, there's not much difference in what you can do at either (that is, you can have a checking account at either type and you wouldn't know it on the surface).

You'll see that Washington Mutual was shut down by the OTS on September 25, 2008. On October 3, 2008, I received a pre-approved Visa application from WaMu. It didn't look like an application. I used to bank at WaMu back in Atlanta, so I thought this was something telling me that WaMu is now JPMorgan Chase and that possibly I still had some account open there. No, it was a stupid credit card application.

Go, failbank!

Safari, Can I See You For A Minute?

2008-10-02T12:56:00.003-10:00

As you know, we've been having some problems lately with web site viewing. I know the workload has increased, but we really depend on the reliable service that your department delivers. You can't handle the facebook.com account like you used to, we had to hire additional help for that. And you don't seem to get along with the customers either, constantly changing data on their reports at random. I just don't think we can continue with these problems going forward.

You're fired.

Royal Caribbean and Lost Workers

2008-10-02T01:34:00.002-10:00

I saw a group of people today with Royal Caribbean ID badges on asking how to get a taxi. I assume they needed to get back to Aloha Tower (where cruise ships dock in Honolulu) and had managed to get lost while around town. I wasn't in a position to help, but someone seemed to be helping them anyway, so that's good.

I wonder what happens if you work on a cruise ship and it leaves without you. Honolulu isn't a bad place to be stuck, but I have read that if you work on a ship, the company basically owns you. They provide everything you need, so I imagine without that connection you can end up somewhere and not have anything (e.g., money, ID other than your company badge, credit cards, etc).

YEILD!

2008-10-01T11:50:00.004-10:00

When you are too dependent on a spell checker:

Sad. My sister took this picture at the generic/not-affiliated-with-her-company parking deck she parks at in downtown Dallas, TX. Then she submitted it to internet.

Whole Foods in Honolulu

2008-09-28T18:20:00.002-10:00

Karen and I went to the new Whole Foods Market that just opened in Honolulu. It's in the Kahala Mall, so we also went to the toy store and Jamba Juice.

Malls here are a bit different than what I was used to on the mainland. For one, they usually aren't isolated large buildings. They are usually several connected buildings with relatively little parking and many entrances and exits. Sometimes stores will have outside facing doors and sometimes they will have inside facing doors. So you can have a store, such as a grocery store, with an outside facing entrance that is technically part of the mall, but appears to exist on its own.

Neither of us were new to Whole Foods. I'd been several times in Atlanta and then again in Boston. It's got some good stuff, but only if your paycheck can support it. Whenever I went there, it was to buy only a few things. I couldn't afford to do all of my shopping at Whole Foods. Funny, that still holds true.

They have a decent selection of Hawaii-grown produce, which is cool. They also carry Seventh Generation products (but those are also at the store Down To Earth in Honolulu as well), which I bought frequently in Boston. Here it's a bit more expensive, but that's because it's hauled out here to this island.

We purchased a few things and decided to leave. On the way out, Karen saw Jorge Garcia coming in to the store. She wanted to covertly point him out without making a scene. She called him 'Hurley', his character's name on LOST. I didn't make the connection. I thought she was pointing a Hurley shirt or something. Eventually I got it and I saw him walking up and, like an idiot, I pointed at him and said, "oh yeah, that is Jorge Garcia."

He was on his phone and headed in to the store. We were headed out. If we had bumped in to him in the store, I probably would have said hi. Oh well.

METRIC: Get Ready

2008-09-24T12:23:00.002-10:00

Gallon, Inch, Pound - They won't always be around. Get ready for the metric system.

I'd like to thank everyone who commented on the blog or emailed me regarding my last metric post. I've already got a list of posts to make and I hope you enjoy reading them.

All of the posts I make on this topic will have a 'metric' label and the title will begin with METRIC: so you can spot it more easily.

Until my next post, enjoy this article from Dr. Wacek Kijewski. You may also find his book useful.

How Many Ounces Are In A Pound?

2008-09-23T13:50:00.004-10:00

Karen and I went to lunch today at the deli at Safeway. Oh yes, eating at the grocery store. You get a container and fill it with food and the price is $6.99 per pound. I proceed to fill my container and then think I should weigh it to figure out where I stand.

The scale they provide next to the buffet is in ounces. I place the container on the scale and it reads somewhere between 23 and 24. Then it occurs to me that I have no idea how many ounces are in a pound. I ask Karen and she can't remember. I look at the scale and see it has units printed up to 30, so I'm guessing this scale can read up to 31.99 ounces or something like that. Seeing the prices are per pound and the scale is small, I figure they are providing a pound scale. So I guess that a pound is 32 ounces.

I would be wrong. A pound is apparently 16 ounces. I mention this here because it shows the failure of the imperial measurement system in use in the United States. Everything is arbitrary and you have to memorize conversions. I know 16 ounces are in a pound now, but I have no idea about any of the other weight measurements. I'd have to look those up.

"But didn't you learn this in school?", you ask. No. I went to grade school in the 1980s and we were taught the metric system. There was some coverage of the imperial system, but it was assumed that we would pick that up through everyday usage. The thought was that we all needed to be ready for the big metric conversion.

"But you have to memorize metric conversions too!", you say. That's true, but the big difference is the conversions are common across all measurements. You only need to know 3 base units and then know the prefixes. And it's base 10 too, so it's shifting the decimal point. What are the three base units?

meter - This gives us a measurement for length.
gram - This gives us a measurement for weight.
liter - This gives us a measurement for volume.

There's also the second and the unit for temperature, but those can be discussed later. [The SI temperature unit is actually Kelvin, but all SI using countries use degrees Celcius for everyday use.]

OK, then you need to know the prefixes. Kilo- is 1000. Milli- is one thousandth. Centi- is one hundredth. All you're doing is shifting the decimal point. And those prefixes are the same across the meter, the gram, and the liter.

I'd also like to point out that with metric being base 10, you never need to look at decimal values on measurements. You can always shift to another prefix so that you are looking at a whole value. Most people won't do this because you always want to see the same units for a particular task, but it's still valid.

The imperial system is arbitrary. For length, we have the inch, the foot, the yard, the mile. Others? One inch is something, so that's the base I guess. A foot is 12 inches. A yard is 3 feet. A mile is 5280 feet. How many yards are in a mile? How many inches in a yard or mile? Wait, let me get a calculator. You either memorize or do multiplication and division on a regular basis. With metric you shift the decimal point.

Volume and weight? I can't remember them all. I know we have a US gallon which is 3.8 liters or 4 quarts. A quart contains either 4 pints or 2 pints, I can never remember. And then a pint contains some number of cups, I think. And then the system is all messed up with the notion of fluid ounces. Using ounce for something else!

Weight has pounds and ounces, I which I now know it's 1 to 16. I know of nothing else for weight in this system.

We already use many things in the US that are metric labeled. Coca Cola comes in 2 liter bottles, FDA labels on all food containers use metric measurements, prescription and over-the-counter drugs are sold in metric units, car engine displacement is in liters, injections are in "cc" units (cubic centimeter, which is a milliliter), IKEA manufacturers everything to metric dimensions, the entire automotive industry is metric, and the list goes on.

This is why I joined the United States Metric Association. They seek to encourage metric usage in everyday measurements and in businesses. They offer conversion assistance for individuals and businesses and explain what laws are currently on the books in the US. Did you know you can do business exclusively in metric in the US and it's legal?

The goal is to encourage metric usage rather than forcing the conversion by law. We all know that failed in the 1970s due to poor execution.

Get ready for more metric blog posts than you care to read.

Apple Store Waikiki Opening September 27

2008-09-23T10:54:00.003-10:00

My inbox has a message from Apple announcing the grand opening of the Apple Store in the Royal Hawaiian in Waikiki. Doors open at 10:00 AM HST on September 27. The first 1000 or so people in line (line?) get a free t-shirt.

While I don't care about the t-shirt, it will be nice having an Apple Store literally around the corner from me. Now, if the Royal Hawaiian could also get a Lego Store and a Tower Records [sic], that would be awesome.

O'ahu now has 3 Apple crack deal^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Stores for your spending pleasure. The Waikiki store is the largest. The Ala Moana and Kahala stores are the same layout. Mall stores that look like shotgun houses. The Waikiki store opens on to Kalakaua Ave and will probably have a big giant Apple logo hanging from the building.

Software Packaging on MacOS X

2008-09-21T10:01:00.003-10:00

When I first used MacOS X, it was version 10.0. It was a little rough around the edges. I remember trying to do some pthreads programming and discovered that pthreads hadn't been completely implemented yet. Ooops.

I then found another problem and started poking around in the kernel source (the kernel project is called xnu, the installed kernel file is /mach_kernel). What I found was a huge disappointing combination of BSD code with Mach kernel code. Yuck. My attempts to submit patches upstream were met with failure. But I wasn't the only one.

I upgraded to 10.1 shortly after 10.0 and it improved some things, but not much. For example, I still couldn't have a UFS filesystem and run iTunes. iTunes would crap itself if it was running on UFS. It wanted HFS because of its case-preserving ability (I guess the programmers were lazy). I hear Apple fixed this later on by making it more difficult or even removing the ability to install to UFS filesystems. That's one way to fix the problem.

I left OS X after 10.1 and went back to Linux for my workstation. I should point out that when I moved around between operating systems, it was always for my workstation system. My servers have always been Linux and most likely always will be. And Linux is still where I do almost all of my software development.

Enter 2008. I get frustrated with my company-provided laptop. It's old and slow and can't do virt under Linux (technologies such as Xen or KVM). I ask for a new one that can do virt and am told no several times. So I go buy my own laptop and start using it. I buy a MacBook and load it 4GB of RAM.

Since it is a personal system, I decide to keep OS X installed on it. That, and I wanted the ability to edit video and easily work with my camera and OS X is just better at that (JWZ sums it up pretty well here). But I also use the system during work to check email, IRC, IM, and read the web. In an effort to do more from it, I start installing the few tools I need to access our source repositories from OS X and tools so I can work with the build system from not-just-Linux. The result is the horrible time wasting project found here.

[Why don't I use MacPorts or Fink or something else like that? I did and I hate them. Both systems want to _own_ your OS X system. If I go to install, say, GNU sed, don't install a truckload of other crap because it's all interdependent. I am perfectly fine with the system utilities when they work for me. Look at my osxpkgs collection and you'll see a very short list of what I had to install to do Fedora Linux development from OS X. With MacPorts and Fink, I had huge trees of basically every single thing you'd find on a Linux system. WHY? I don't need it.]

Development on OS X is certainly a lot better now than it was under the 10.0 days. Lots of recent tools are available as well as a modern Python. I like it. For the things that did not come with OS X that I need to do work, I compiled and installed them to /usr/local. Here is where we get in to irritating things.

I'm a little more careful with how I manage systems now. First, I backup every system I care about. My laptop is most important to me, so I have several backups. I found that JWZ basically has the same backup philosophy as me. I say basically the same, because here's where we differ:

I only care about my home directory. When the system's hard disk shits the bed, I buy a new one and then do a reinstall from scratch. I restore my home directory and then install the software packages I have in my home directory. I find this to be easier than backing up the entire system.
I don't want to wait to backup the entire system, which is currently 138GB and like a kid on Flintstone vitamins...growing.

Still, his page about backups is as perfect as you can get. Do what he says. It only takes one disk failure to really piss you off. You will want backups. As a Digital Unix developer once told me, "In order to move forward, you have to backup." (ok, he was old)

For everything I add to the system, I keep the bundles or packages in my home directory under a subdirectory titled "Crap I Use" or something like that. When I rebuild the system, I just drag the bundles back to Applications or I run the installers again. For my osxpkgs software, I decided to make packages so reinstalls will be easy (this follows the Unix train of thought where if I can use this hack in at least one place, I might as well spend the time and effort to do it).

Packaging software is one of those annoying developer tasks. Developers tend to have only a passing interest in packaging software. It's almost like a task that falls between development and system administration. I hate system administration. You want to have something to release, but you don't want to learn all of the details of _any_ system's stupid packaging software. What the hell is packaging anyway?

When you install software on a Unix system, files all go to the same directory structure. We don't have a "C:\Program Files" notion on Unix (except for /opt, but that's another story), so we need a way to track what files belong to a specific piece of software so we can remove it later or upgrade it later. Every reasonable Unix system provides a way to do this. On RHEL and Fedora and many others, it's RPM. On Debian systems, it's dpkg. On Solaris systems, it's the SysV pkg* commands. On AIX, it's two systems: one is AIX LPP and one is RPM (!). Each system has a set of commands that lets the user pack up the files that belong to their program in to a single file for delivery to the user.

So what does MacOS X have? Apple wants developers to create self-contained programs where everything is in a bundle that users can drag to anywhere on their system and run by just double clicking it. A bundle is a subdirectory that is named NAME.bundle. Everything the application needs is stuffed in this subdirectory, such as libraries, images, documents, and so on. This works great for software like Microsoft Office or iTunes or Mozilla. But for command line Unix-type software, the model fails. Apple provides another system to track that.

The other system is a bastardization of the half-assed system that was on NEXTSTEP (and OPENSTEP and CamelCaseStEp, please don't argue with me about how it should be written). Apple provides a tool called packagemaker that can create package bundles (a subdirectory called NAME.pkg) that you can install with the package installer. They also provide a program called pkgutil which sort of helps you see what's installed and maybe do things with those packages. Problems I've seen so far under MacOS X 10.5:

The --root option to packagemaker is a bit picky. You have a add a trailing slash on the path you specify, otherwise your staging root directory will end up on the target system. For example:
mkdir pkg-root # put stuff in ./pkg-root for the package packagemaker --root ./pkg-root [options]
The resulting package will install /pkg-root to your system (dumb!). You have to run it this way:
packagemaker --root ./pkg-root/
And then pkg-root is treated like a staging root.

To show all installed packages on the system: pkgutil --pkgs
However, this only shows packages that pkgutil can see. It won't show you any installed packages recorded in /Library/Receipts. It only shows packages with an entry in /Library/Receipts/boms. The locations appear to be mutually exclusive. Why?

It is possible to remove an entry from the installed packages database. All you have to do is:
pkgutil --forget PACKAGE
This removes the entry from the database, but not what is actually on the system. Why is this even possible? Also note that this will again only work for what packages pkgutil can see. If you want to forget something in /Library/Receipts, just rm -rf the directory.

Want to completely hork your system? pkgutil does offer a way to forget a package and remove the files it owns. You can do this:
pkgutil --unlink PACKAGE pkgutil --forget PACKAGE
No dependency checking is done, pkgutil just deletes whatever is owned by that package. You do this on the BSD package, for instance, and totally hose the system. Great work, Apple.

If you pass the --target option to packagemaker, the resulting flat package it generates won't contain anything from --resources. It just ignores Resources. Great!

The different package formats created by packagemaker appear to be recorded differently in /Library/Receipts. A flat package gets a bom file in the /Library/Receipts/boms subdirectory. A package bundle with metadata gets a receipt bundle as /Library/Receipts/NAME.pkg with the bom file in the bundle as Archive.bom.

So that's what I've discovered trying to package software on MacOS X. It's frustrating and annoying. Packaging is a solved problem. And uninteresting. Why can't OS X just use any of the dozens of packaging systems out there that are open source?

Misc Updates

2008-09-16T16:50:00.002-10:00

Got back from Europe middle of last week and played catch up during the end of the week. Lots of work to do and I feel like now I'm basically in good shape with where my stuff is. When Fedora 10 is released, I may actually like it. The last release of Fedora that I really thought was solid was Fedora Core 6. After that, we [the project] hit the gas on development and it's been rapid progress and less testing. But that's just my opinion. The releases are good, in general, but when I compare Fedora Core 6 to what we currently have, I just get the feeling that we've traded stability for rapid development.

Over the weekend, Karen and I took our current visitor (Gen, which is short for a name I can't spell, but it's pronounced 'Jen') to Maui by way of the Hawaii Superferry. I enjoy transportation, especially boats and trains. I don't know why trains are fascinating to me. Boats are equally fascinating. We took the car this time, so I got to experience the process of taking your car on the Superferry. The quick verdict: it's definitely much nicer and a much easier experience when you take your car than being a walk-on passenger.

We drove the Hana Highway. It was a nice drive, but very stressful since it was my first time driving it. It's single lane in some places. Lots of tourists as well as locals, who drive way faster than anyone else. We came up on a single lane portion of the highway and it was about to take a 90 degree turn to the right and a huge garbage truck rounded the corner. Yeah, that was a close call. We ate in Hana, then headed to Lahaina for the rest of the day. Stayed in Kihei the night before.

People complain about Oahu, but I like the roads here more than Maui. And the roads here are nothing to rave about. I posted pictures of the trip on my Flickr page.

I saw a strange commercial on TV earlier. It's for a MVNO, or mobile virtual network operator (which is telephone nonsense speak for a company that masquerades as a phone company, but doesn't actually own network equipment, they just use other companies...sort of like natural gas suppliers in Georgia), called Jitterbug. They promote it as cell phones for old people. Even the title of the main page says Senior Cell Phones. Hilarious. I only wish they offered rotary cell phones.

Government Spending

2008-09-11T15:42:00.003-10:00

Backstory:

In May, I got a $2 note while in New Mexico. Technically, my friend John received it as change from something, but he was uninterested in the note as much as I so, so I got it. We do still have $2 notes in circulation, just like $1 notes. Personally, I think both should be eliminated, and maybe they will, but as long as they are out there, we still accept them as currency. The $2 note has the lowest circulation count of all notes.

Looking at the note, I thought the paper felt a little strange. I went to the Secret Service web site for info on what to do if you suspect a note is counterfeit. Surprisingly, the Secret Service web site was easy to find...haha...I crack myself up.

The paper was strange and the seal looked odd to me. It was rounded and not really sawtooth like the site described. What next? I called the Secret Service field office in Honolulu and they had me check a few other things over the phone and finally they asked me to mail in the note. Done.

About a week later, they called me and said they have verified the note is genuine and I can come by the field office to pick it up. The United States Secret Service field office in Honolulu is inside the United States Department of Homeland Security facility near Honolulu Harbor and none of that really sounds inviting to visit. I wasn't really interested in going through 9 layers of voluntary security scans to get my $2 note back. I made it a low priority. If I had a day to spare, I'd drop by and pick it up.

... skip to September ...

I receive a notice that I have a registered letter waiting for me at the post office. I get this notice before I leave for FUDCon in Brno, so I can't pick it up until I get back.

I went by today and they checked my ID and had me sign my name twice, write my name, and write my address on the credit card signature pad (have no idea what that will be valid for since it looks like I just played with an Etch-A-Sketch for a few minutes). Then I was handed the letter.

Normal sized US letter envelope. Says it's from the U.S. Secret Service office in Honolulu. And it has the big giant registered mail sticker on it. Once I see Secret Service on it, I have a feeling it's the $2 note.

I open it and sure enough, there it is, stapled to a letter that some field agent wrote explaining that three different field agents examined it and determined it to be genuine. They stapled the $2 note to the letter they wrote, so I'm going to take that as an OK to staple money from now on. They also included a copy of the original letter I sent them back in May.

The U.S. Secret Service gets an A for effort and an A for completeness and checking their work. However, I'm going to give them a C in the things that make sense column. If you read the postmark on the letter, you will see it cost them a grand total of $13.42 to mail this $2 note to me. That's right, the government paid thirteen and a half dollars to mail me a $2 note.

I figured they'd just return it to circulation some other way (you know, like buying lottery tickets or booze), because when it comes down to it, I really don't care that much. I do appreciate them returning it, but damn, $13.42 to send it across town? Come on.

The U.S. government does things like that, but won't provide universal healthcare.

Back from FUDCon Brno 2008

2008-09-11T10:02:00.004-10:00

Left Vienna at 10:10 AM on 10-Sep-2008 and arrived around 9:00 PM on 10-Sep-2008 in Honolulu. Before leaving Vienna, I called home and it was Tuesday night. Oh yeah. I calculated up how much awake time I had and it was a little over 30 hours. I expect it to catch up with me at some point.

FUDCon was great. I am very glad that I got to meet Fedora people in Europe as well as a lot of Red Hat people in our Brno and Stuttgart offices. I have been working online with those people for years and finally got to meet them in person. All great people.

Both Brno and Vienna were very interesting and I wished I had more time while I was there. But I am glad to be back home and am getting back in to normal work mode. I plan on posting something more detailed about my trip later.

Last Day in Brno

2008-09-08T03:04:00.003-10:00

FUDCon Brno 2008 is over and I must say it went really well. Hackfests on the first day and last day. The presentations were very interesting too. Martin Sivak and I did a crash course in the Czech language as the last session on the barcamp day. It was pretty fun for everyone. Martin wrote up a possible story that would play out during the social event later that evening. I would read the English, he would say it in Czech, and the everyone else was to repeat. Pictures are on on the Flickr group.

The social event at FUDCon was really good too and we also had a good time hanging out after FUDCon on Sunday night. Met lots of great people from all over Europe. Some people I've been talking to online for a while and finally got to meet them in person.

I am currently at the Red Hat Brno office waiting for our team meeting in a few minutes. After the meeting, I'm going to head back to Vienna taking the night train. I fly back home on Wednesday.