Older blog entries for scottyo (starting at number 9)

I am really getting tired of all the "Meta-" articles. The only thing I can see wrong with Advogato is that it allows too many of this type of article. It reminds me of the old "should we allow anonymous cowards" discussions that popped up on Slashdot. Fortunately, *that* issue was decided from the beginning on Advogato. As a result, the articles and discussions (yes even the ones on meta-issues) are much higher quality here.

I use the certification system to "mark" people that I want to learn from or "follow" in some way. In return, I hope that people who certify me are willing to guage my progress. (In the future, maybe those who certify me will want to learn from or follow me in some way.)

I think the current certification system is fine. And I hope it is not changed too radically. And even though I get tired of the meta-topics, I hope change in what is allowed to be posted is not too great either. I liked Raph's idea of a "workshop" area for articles in progress.

Note that this diary entry is a comment on a current article that I didn't feel like posting to the actual article. It is really nice to have an option like that on Advogato. I can get it out of my system and only people who bother to read my diary will care. If you are reading this and it upsets you, that was not my intention. My intention was to vent *without* starting any kind of flame war. Yes, this is a very nice feature of this place!

Pet peeve:
I really hate websites with black backgrounds.

(Whew...glad to get that off my chest...)

I sent an e-mail to Eric Raymond yesterday to "let him know" that "someone" was using "his name" on Advogato and that I had doubts it was him...

Well...is my face red! It *is* him.

Other: I went to Columbia yesterday to see if anyone needed a Linux gun. Too soon to tell...

I've decided against going to Chicago for the Biz Expo. I've already applied to almost all the Linux companies I'm interested in anyway. Just figure it's a waste of my time and money.

Uncle.

No accounting for oversight. Oh, well...

Ah...the "Dimwit" cert level is gone, I didn't think it was all that bad an idea.

It would be nice to post this for discussion, but for now it will be here:
I like Advogato and I would be willing to pay a monthly or yearly subscription fee to keep it non-banner-ad-supported. I only mention it because I see this route chosen by successful sites that apparently feel the need for revenue to support the increased effort required to maintain them. It's understandable, and banner ads are not necessarily evil, but then follows acquisition and questions of integrity, blah, blah, blah... I'd hate to see that on Advogato. So Raph, if you're listening, and if it ever gets to that point, I'm good for $20 or $30 a year. Heck, even $5 a month would be a bargain as far as I'm concerned. It's sort of like NPR or PBS in my mind. "Viewer-supported web" at it's finest! (Just make the pledge drives brief, please ;-).

Now for my *real* diary entry:
I've begun building python data-structures for my numttt project. Slowly but slowly...

I just experimented with editing a diary entry from an earlier date to see if it retained the older date or gave it the current date. Well the answer is, "It gave it the current date." So, paragraphs below this one are from yesterday. Also, my thanks go to ingvar for leading me to enlightenment about "deities" in general and the dangers of the influence of Eris in particular.

I noticed that linus and esr have joined Advogato today. From the given notes, I'm unsure that these are who they say they are. Will someone remind me how we know?

Edited. I just noticed that whoever signed up as linus has changed their name from "The Linus" to "Linus T." This signals to me that this is someone who needs to be rated as "Dimwit". Remember, as I understand it, that someone rated as "Dimwit" can post comments. So If this guy posts some obnoxious comment, I will quickly remove this elevated certification. However, if it really turns out to be "The Linus T." , then I can proudly say I certified him as "Dimwit." (Besides, I sort of wanted to see what a "yellow" ranking looked like ;-)

Got back late last night from Denver. I made the trip (720 miles) in under 12 hours. Love CO's 75mph limit.

The speaker lineup at the conference was great. I wanted to be several places at once. Maddog's keynote was great. "Linux around the world," gave his historical perspective of how Linux has spread. His recurring theme was the many managers he ran into saying, "Oh no, there's no Linux here," and then him either proving them wrong or changing the situation. At one point he considered himself the "Johnny Appleseed of Linux." Great talk.

Also of great interest was a panel discussion, by several speakers, put together at the last minute to fill in for a speaker who had to cancel due to illness. Discussed was "Why Linux?" Of particular interest was the question "why Linux instead of one of the BSD's?" It sort of boiled down to the community and Linus Torvalds.

Rasmus Lerdorf gave a particularly inspiring talk on the history of the development of the PHP scripting language. Surprising to me, was that this guy had NO formal computer science training. He developed PHP in the beginning to satisfy his need to do some things with his on-line resume.

Other very interesting talks I attended were one on embedded systems by Jim Ready and one on use of Linux in K-12 educational institutions by Harry McGregor and Justin Zeigler.

I also got to hand out a couple of resumes and finally meet the folks from LWN. All in all, a worthwhile trip.

Also of note today, I almost got fooled by kuro5hin's latest post. And digging thru past articles where additional postings have occurred, I found this nugget about Apache's open-source develoment model, posted by mbp. (Sorry about the motorbike - poor kangaroo ;-)

It appears that some on this site are "too good" to offer constructive criticism instead of just lambasting a poster. It *is* the kind of behavior I expect to see on slashdot, but not here. This is posted as a diary entry because that's where it belongs. For my use (so I don't forget in the future), and for anyone who cares to read my diary entries, the names I've put on my too-good-to-be-able-to-teach-anyone list (until I see a reason to remove them) are:

Hmm....the list seems to have mysteriously become empy.
Perhaps there is hope.

The point is: I am an apprentice-level programmer and someone has agreed with that. Until that changes, I don't see why I (or any other apprentice) should put up with empty criticism. Teach me something along with your criticism.

On other fronts, I am still looking for work. I have had a few nibbles, but no offer yet. I am travelling to Denver this weekend to enjoy CLIQ and to hand out a few more resumes in person and perhaps land an interview or two.

I spent most of the day Tuesday writing an opinion article for Linux Weekly News (not knowing whether or not they would publish it). The article was critical of VA Linux's recent decision to acquire Andover.net.

Sent the article off Tuesday night and got word Wednesday that it would be published in the Thursday edition of LWN.net.

Well, it was published, and up to now, I have received few responses. However, a couple of the responses were from people in the community that I have a lot of respect for.

For those interested, I have links for the article and one interesting response.

For the past year, I have been struggling to get my new business going - unsuccessfully. I have have decided "throw in the towel" and start looking for a "real" job. I will keep my servers up, and I will keep the distribution and t-shirt projects "alive" (at least until I get rid of the t-shirts) but all of it will take a back seat to finding a "paying" job.

I am also finding that maybe my "Linux expertise," such as it is, might not be in-depth enough for many of the Linux companies that I have applied to. Although I'm not sure how any can know that, seeing that only one has even bothered to contact me so far. However, that one was interested in my programming experience, of which I have only teaching programming experience.

And on top of that, I even seemed to have lost my apprentice ranking here on advogato.

So, being the hard-headed individual that I am, I have begun going thru the Linux Device Drivers book from O'Reilly. I have always wanted to become a kernel hacker anyway but was always "too busy." Well, since I'm no longer pushing my business, or teaching classes or system administrating (or making money), I'm no longer "too busy."

I am a little bit frustrated that my contributions up to this point are evidently not "recognizable" in the sense that I hoped they would be, but have decided it's a matter of bad timing on my part. Since everyone seems to be jumping on the Linux bandwagon these days, whose to know that I'm not just one of those. Me.