Older blog entries for jcheek (starting at number 7)

wow, it's been a long time.

i'm down in the bay area for the first time in a year and a half, and it sure brings back memories.

wow, it's been a long time since i've posted an article here.

embedded linux
i used to think the linux distro arena was crowded... but after taking a gander at the embedded linux arena, i feel smothered. redmond linux is looking for funding, and for that we are focusing on [high level] embedded stuff... but what a crowded space!

talking open source to VC's
...VC's who see open source, specifically publishing your IP on the 'net, as a "major hole" in a business plan. what does it take to convince people with checkbooks that open source doesn't conflict with money making? i'm looking to use lots of good arguments from esr's the magic cauldron.

reusable projects
what we [i?] need is a clearing house for orphaned projects. i've got a linux kb i've been trying to dump off on someone else for a year and a half, and i can't find anyone to pick it up. i think it's got too much potential to orphan. how many other projects are in the same state? wouldn't it be great if there was a site where we could dump our old projects off, and troll for new cool things? methinks sourceforge is halfway there. or does it exist already? please let me know.

good day, bad day.

good day
Fixed the last remaining Redmond Linux Beta 1 bug and shoved it out the door. i announced it on freshmeat and already the flame mail's comin' in... but still a good day.

bad day
went in to work and found my HD crashed, gone gone gone. yes, it contained the only piece of RL work i haven't backed up. for five days. i suppose that'll teach me, but it still really sux.

family
family is begging me to come see them on vacation in a few weeks. trip will be rather expensive and liza says if we see my family we've got to see her family too. so more expense. plus for the past three years almost all our vacations have been family vacations: we fly together, we sit, we chat, we get bored, we leave. when do we get vacations to do what we want to do?

seriously considering not showing up this time.

smb authentication
so it's my turn to decide how to store netbios credentials in userland. in windows when you surf to a \\server\share your default credentials don't allow you to access, a gui dialog pops up asking you for a username/password [and perhaps domain]. how to do that in linux? email me if you have ideas pls. it's gotta be user and program agnostic but live in userland. welllll, i *guess* it could live in kernel land, but i don't think i want it there.

advogato
kudos on the salon piece. my wife reminds me that advogato means 'lawyer' in portuguese.

Redmond Linux
wow, completed all the tasks for announcement 6 days ahead of schedule. now we're looking for help. wanna help?

MS breakup
*yawn*. 'nuff said.

Redmond Linux
put together a roadmap and schedule, and have started work on the web site. If all goes well, i should be ready to publicly announce the project next week. i still want to find an open-source test case management tool. anyone know of one? something that will track who ran what test when, on what build, and what the results were, preferrably integrated with bugzilla.

Car Shopping
we have a two-door '92 plymouth sundance and hauling two kids around in it is getting old. we're looking for a nice used vehicle with leg room and four doors for $13K. anyone have some ideas? please let me know.

Living in Seattle
I love Seattle but i am starting to feel a little removed from the other hackers in the free software community. especially all the code warriors at linuxcare, they all live somewhere else. If anyone gets to Seattle and wants to meet a particular free software coder [ie, me], drop me a line.

DNS LOC info
just bounced across DNS LOC which tells you how to publish your location data in your dns and then allows you to view a map of it. it also tells you how to find your latitude and longitude for the records. i published for cheek.com and redmondlinux.org, although redmondlinux doesn't seem to have propagated yet.

Redmond Linux
just got the bugzilla page up and have already entered some bugs. i've decided to call the first version Amethyst for no particular reason.

LinuxKB.org
well we've announced a major shift in our strategy. basically we're rewriting the back end again. expect something tangible from us someday...

Redmond Linux
finally got redmondlinux.org registered, woohoo! soon i'll get a web site up 8-). proof of concepts went extremely well. i think i will be able to do everything i want to with it. hacking caldera's kernel SRPM, though, is not pretty.

sourceforge
just found out about va linux's sourceforge compile farm. what a cool idea. hopefully they'll put caldera 2.4 on it soon, that way i can build redmond linux on it. right now i'm building it on my home PII-350/128M/15G IDE system; the kernel RPM's take an hour to compile.

my computer, my girlfriend
my wife has started calling my computer my girlfriend cuz i spend so much time on it. gotta start paying attention to her more...

linuxkb.org
top-secret meeting tomorrow about the new direction of linuxkb.org. hopefully some good stuff comes out of it.

my daughters
my wife put up some new pictures of our daughters online. rachel is 15 months and susan is 2 months. take a gander.

advogato
thanks for the certs folks. btw, i notice that editing my notes entries for my id adds extra spaces in the text. after a while i get gargantuan amounts of spaces in between words. ok, actually i'm only up to four, but that's three more than i wanted.

seattle weather
highs in the 50's/low 60's [F] today. what's up with that? isn't it almost june? i wore my coat today.

life
life is good. i'm healthy, happy, and in love, and that's a wonderful way to be.

heh wow, i've been keeping a journal in my .project file on cheek.com [finger joseph@cheek.com], now that this is here i can take the "finger me" out of my .sig 8-).

made build 2 of redmond linux today. build 1 was the first proof of concept, to see if i could reverse engineer caldera's installer's rpm config files and get an installable product. success! build 2, today, is the second proof of concept; can i get an installable product with the lizard source from their cvs server? i've got build 2 on cd now, will install tomorrow and see.

assuming all goes well, the final POC [in build 3] will be whether i can get my own RPM's to install instead of caldera's. if so then redmond linux will be in full swing!

afaik no-one has made a distro based on caldera, it's about time someone does. fyi caldera keeps their build process proprietary, as in it's a trade secret, i emailed and even talked with them on the phone. so that's why the reverse engineering. just don't tell the feds on me.

as soon as i finish the POC's and get situated with a new domain i will officially announce redmond linux. fun fun fun.

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