Older blog entries for lsdrocha (starting at number 18)

Man, I still have no job. Worst, no interviews or appointments on the horizon. At the beggining, it was fun, waste my days playing with Linux and code. Now I have no patience for none of this.

On the other hand, a friend of mine (who's a RHCE) was thinking about starting our own Linux venture. Sounds good. Its way better than look for TI opportunities and never find them.

After a few days from the Columbia accident, some things still echo in my head. This thing really sucks, space exploration and everything related is probably the only thing that capture everyone's attention. I mean *everyone*.

Despite the pain of those who lost a relative and/or a friend in the accident, it is very cool to see the crew families reinforcing that they loved their jobs and that the space program must go on. There is a lot of benefits for humankind out there, and space technology must evolve. The show must go on.

I know that is awful to say that, but every big-leap mankind takes still cost human lifes, and it is up to us to make this worthwhile.

But what displeases me most is the fear I have, right now, that Bush manipulates this new burst of patriotism that USA is living to his war against Iraq. I'm not saying that he is doing this, neither that he will, but I surely fear for this. He's the kind of guy that surely would manipulate people's emotions to get what he wants.

I hope that do not happen and, in the aftermath, the accident bring us more knowledge and wisdow about spacetravels. Human life is invaluable and its loss unreplaceble, but if it is unavoidable, then it better bring us more benefits and fortune than just another blood stain for future generations to live with.

May the Columbia crew rest in peace.

Funny thing happen two days ago. I decided to hack html-helper-mode.el and try do do a similar stuff for the Apache-docs project, to make it easier to translate/edit its docs (ok, actually it was for fun...) when I got a call for a job interview. Despite the joy, I felt a little sad, like, I won't spend my days playing with computers/codes anymore. That really bugged me.

Not as funny as trying to explain my girlfriend that "Men hack, women nest", of course.

I'm also playing with some code a friend of mine is using on his job. Is a mix between C and PHP. I realized that I don't suck in PHP as much as I thought.

Since the beggining of my "vacations", I've been swining every day, first thing in the morning. The rest of the day is divided between meals, Civ3, Python and other misc hacks. Girlfriend at night. I wish I was paid to do this, which bring us to the next issue...

Evangelism

I found a brasillian website dedicated to the "death of Linux and the GPL scum". Apparently, the website is maintained by some brasillian programmers who hate the GPL and the Free Software movement. They claim that free software will leave them without jobs and means to support their families. They really miss the point anyway, but the fact is that they seem to close-minded on this that I didn't wrote them a mail or anything. For people who claim to love coding, they should look further into the Free Software movement.

Anyway, that reflects that evangelism in Brasil is not as effective as it was supposed to be. The FS movement here is strong, especially in the south, but I guess it still need improvement.

Misc

There was a little discussion on PontoBR (a brasillian discussion website) recently between people who believes Linux is ready for desktop computers and people who believe that it is not. What really shocked me was the number of people who thinks that Unix-based system should ever be used for personal desktop computers, only for academic, development and networking purposes.

If a system is good enough, safe, secure and stable for this purposes, why not for desktop?

Ok, first post of the year.

So far, I'm still unemployed. Looking for something though, I just sent about 10 CV, and I hope something comes up soon.

In the meanwhile, I have been studying Python and PHP and some MySQL. I spending all morning on the apache-docs, translating everything. A guy contacted me other day and I believe I'll finally get someone to help me on this, especially reviewing the stuff I already translated.

I really want to send all the translation I did to the apache-docs project. I really think it could help, given the amount of repeated, on-the-manual questions I see in forums.

Also, I'm testing/using the 2.5.55 kernel. You know, too much free time in my hands right now.

I have just created the project page for the Gnome-Guitar project.

I started to contribute a while ago, but stopped because of college. Now I'll resume this. Send some chord I added to the database, help designing the new website and everything else.

My grades were published today. They are not the final grades, but it cannot be lowered so I can say that I have finally graduated.

I still have to wait for my diploma, wait the College burocracy and stuff, but it will only consume time (and a little patience), nothing more.

I can finally resume the projects I was working on, I can finaly resume everything in my life that was paused, because it is over.

I have graduated.

Yesterday I did the college's final exam. I hope it will be the last one indeed, but I have to wait to the grades to celebrate anything.

Now I finally can resume stuff that I left behind. I'll restart my Python studies pronto, and I will invest more of my free time on the Gnome-Chord project. This one is actually morphing into Gnome-Guitar so a lot of work is avalible to be done.

And I also have to finish a lot of things back in IPT. My internship ends in 21.dec and I still have some tasks to complete.

At least, I have been very excited about my job search. I applied to a trainee oppening at PricewaterhouseCoopers to work with... Free Software! Apparently, the search for FS solutions has increased a bit here at Brasil so they are hiring. I'd love work as a business analist for FS solutions.

Of course, I'm not sure if I can get this job. But if I do, 2002 would be the perfect year: Graduate, FS Job and the World Soccer Championship.

Well, after a hard month (and year, for that matter), I think I'm getting closer to the end of a cicle.

I finally will graduate, after seven years. In 12 days will be my last exam, and then I just have to wait for the result, which may be published in a week or two.

About a month ago, all I was thinking was about jobs and a career after college, what would I do, where would I work. I even thought about a Master degree. Now I don't care not a bit. I can only think about the exam.

I just checked some things within the college administration, so no mishappens take place with my graduation, if I pass the exam.

I had thoughts about every single article posted here and some other things too, I'd like to remember those thoughts so I could publish, but for now, it is impossible.

One thing though, I was willing to start a research about indirect costs of both proprietary and opensource software in (and for) business solutions. It occured to me that indirect costs are the most difficult thing to analyze/evaluate when choosing one of above the solutions, once it involves training employees, (re)configuring systems among other things, and that can varies not just with the market itself, but depending on the human resources avaliable at each company. Also, indirect costs has more influences in long term investments than the direct costs.

This crossed my mind when I was reading something about MS solutions being cheaper than FS/OS ones in long term, and the linuxers bashes that followed, and I thought to myself that, in a Telecom company, the long term investment (indirect costs) would be extremily different that in a big Advogacy company, just because of the different types of people it would affect.

Anyway, more on that in 13 days. (I need one to rest, right?)

Spent some time reading the Apache manual, and one thing I can tell for sure, the more I learn about it, the more I love it.

My only frustration is being unable to convince as many people as I can to help me translate its manual. I can't just post my translations without some revision, so, for the moment, I'll have to keep the translated files with me, which sucks.

Oh, and I just read the GPL outlaw news salmoni posted in his diary.

Pretty scary, IMHO.