Older blog entries for zeevon (starting at number 174)

I was thinking today that it would be terribly funny if Microsoft got caught for some sort of accounting fraud, which seems to be all the rage in the US media (even here in Canada, Nortel is getting hit with a class action suit). After a year of hearing how Linux is bad for the economy, how Linux is a "cancer", and how Linux is "un-American", I think I would get a quick laugh out of it.

Still haven't finished the questionnaire for Biella, the anthropologist that I met at DebConf. I wanted to have it finished by Sunday, but it has just been one of those weeks. Hopefully I'll have some time tonight to answer the two remaining questions (which are pretty long and open-ended) and send it off to her.

Since talking with kmcmartin at OLS about starting a Security SIG within OCLUG, I have been seriously considering it. This was proposed more than a year ago and everyone seemed to like the idea, but it was never carried forward for some odd reason (which I don't want to get into). There still seems to be some interest, so it could very well be proposed again. Some ideas are floating around now, and hopefully they can be properly organized this time.

I am back from Debconf 2 and Toronto. James, a friend of mine from OCLUG also attended, but it looks like he'll be staying down there now (he landed a job in the Toronto area). I enjoyed myself but I think the talks would have been slightly better if questions were held until the very end. I also got a small "Powered by Debian" sticker for my iBook, which is slightly more subtle than the big, black "LINUX IS THE SHIT" sticker that is pasted on Branden Robinson's iBook.

All of my patches for the Kernel Janitors project turned out to be useless. According to Rusty Russell, SET_MODULE_OWNER in net drivers is going away in the near future. No big deal - they were only two- or three-line patches anyways. Time to have the janitor's TODO file updated, I guess.

I am currently in Toronto for Debconf 2.I am staying with some e-mail friends and I was worried that the conference would prevent us from spending time together. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised when they both showed up after work today - it turns out that they signed up for it! That was very thoughtful of them (I just hope that they enjoy it).

Before the conference got underway, I was fortunate to be sitting beside Gabriela (last name eludes me at the moment). She's an anthropologist studying Debian for her dissertation and she is wonderfully clueful. She is attending the conference in order to interview developers for her work and she types away on her tiny portable (running Linux, of course). She was telling a group of us how The Ruckus Society (and many other politically active groups) was learning to use Free software because it fit with their ideology. Cool.

I left my laptop behind today, but I'll bring it tommorow. Hopefully I will be productive in some way.

I finally caught up on the sleep that I lost during OLS only to find myself submitting corrected patches to kernel-janitor-discuss and the trivial patch monkey. Perhaps my wannabe-ness is pretty evident (most likely, with a few one-liners), but the feedback from the authors seems pretty positive, or at least non-threatening (even when one of them pointed out that the patches I sent were all wrong). So now, after sending out corrections, it's 1am and I have to wake up in 5 hours or so in order to catch a bus to Toronto, where I'll visit friends that I have never met and afterwards attend Debconf 2.

My iBook made some weird screeching noise when I woke it up from sleep at OLS today. Fortunately it happened between talks, so I didn't annoy a speaker or make myself look like too much of an ass. It also looks like I'm not the only one.

Discovered driftnet while at the conference. With this being my first time on a wireless network, this is pretty scary. Mental note: try to apply the FreeS/WAN patch to my benh (PowerPC) kernel, so that I can start using wavesec tommorow.

Last night was a busy one. The first ever OCLUG GPG keysigning party took place, and I think it went quite well. At least it was easier to put together than the GPG tutorial that I gave last month. Many participants want it to become an annual event, and I agree with them. Hopefully next year it won't conflict with something like...

...the mozilla 1.0 release party! Most of the keysigning participants also made their way over to the James Street Feed Co. in downtown Ottawa to celebrate the 1.0 milestone. The music sucked and there weren't enough tables, but there were some cool people to meet and some good conversation. Our group of 5 managed to obtain the last little table in the corner (with just enough chairs) and were joined by random people over the course of the evening. Big thanks to the guys at OEone that booked the room and set this up.

Sorry, very thin on the free software news in this entry.

Linux stuff

Got an airport card for my iBook, so that ends my laptop-related purchases for the next few years. Now I need to compile a new kernel to get it working. I'm still excited about it - it is by far my favorite machine.

I also made a patch for the kernel janitors project for the first time. As it turns out, someone else submitted a patch for the same problem about 2 hours before I was finished mine, so I didn't submit it. I was actually pleased with that because I had a chance to see how they had done things. I'll have to wait and see whether I'll become an active participant in this project (which I have always thought was neat).

Parachuting

Went parachuting for the first time today at the Gatineau Airport. Dropped from 3500 feet and had to contend with some wind, which was a bit intimidating (at least on the ground before the jump and when stepping out of the plane door). Letting go was actually very easy, but the first full turn scared the crap out of me because you tilt at a 45 degree angle (and drop a hell of a lot faster). Lots of fun, though, and I got a few pictures of other people from the ground. I will definitely be going back.

Oh, and I found another double of myself (one of the guys jumping from 11,500 feet). That's the third person that I have seen that looks a lot like me (and have had other people along to tease me about it). Scary.

My iBook has been here for a week now. I spent the first day playing with OS X, but after that I made a Debian partition and I haven't looked back. OS X is nice but I really don't feel as comfortable in it as I am in Linux. I have, however, kept a small OS X partition in case I get a bit curious again (or decide to install Cro-Mag rally).

I should really send out an announcement for the OCLUG keysigning party this weekend now that this busy week is over.

Three weeks of waiting and still no new iBook. This is really frustrating.

Had the OCLUG GPG Tutorial last night, which seemed to go rather well. This was my first talk for OCLUG and although I was a bit nervous at first, the talk opened up quite quickly and many of the audience members took an active part in the discussion.

The next event is a keysigning party which will take place on June 12th.

The first day of work almost invariably sucks. No one is organized and you get stuck going to a few meetings, so nothing really gets done (apart from a few notes jotted down on a piece of paper). Then, once said meetings are over, you still can't really start doing anything because you have to wait for another meeting later in the week where certain people will tell you what is and is not acceptable (apparently PHP is not acceptable anymore, which is a shame since I used it in this same job last year and it suited the job well).

Still waiting for my iBook. I was supposed to have it by this morning, but it hasn't even been shipped yet. So it looks like I'll be waiting another week or so. *grumble*

It snowed here in Ottawa yesterday. How depressing. I love skiing and winter and all that, but enough is enough. It's not like this snowfall is going to reopen any ski hills, it just delays rollerblading. This is why I hate spring.