11.26.98

A new project

Posted in General at 1 pm

(A new project)

I’ve started a book. No, really. I’ve started a book on information architecture. I’ve got a very rough outline, A preface and the start of the introduction chapter. It’s very exciting to be pursuing this. Once I get a couple of chapters done, I’m going to see if I can get an advance from a publisher. I figure why not go straight tot he top? In my wildest dreams I’ll get it published by O’Reilly http://www.ora.com and live off the royalties.

I really want this to land somewhere between ‘Digital Cities’, ‘Information Architecture for the World Wide Web’, and ‘Neuromancer’. I want to cover the theory, the implementation, and the unexplored. I think I’ve got some good ideas about where we’ve been and where we can go as humans and our thoughts.

We’ll see how far I get. 🙂

righting

11.21.98

Great day for Macs

Posted in General at 3 pm

Let’s put it this way: RAID on NT, 3+ weeks. RAID on a PowerMac 9600, 5 minutes.

I have not lost faith. 🙂

(About yesterday: things are much better.)

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11.20.98

Back up

Posted in General at 12 pm

(Back up)

I had some problems on Sunday with the Journal Script (more permission problems) and I’ve been working on it five minutes a day for the last few days.

Angry, Mad, and Screaming inside without words.

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11.15.98

Note to Self, in the future

Posted in General at 1 pm

(Note to Self, in the future)

Be sure that you’re working in a position that plays on your strengths.

I am not an NT Administrator. But I play one in real life. There’s a certain mindset that MS uses in building it’s products. It’s got to be a unique corporate culture that builds the kind of systems and tools that have come out under the Windows series. Unique, not good.

I’m very familiar with Macs and UNIX. There’s an aspect to the logic of how the parts of these systems were built that I understand. It’s the history.

I’ve watched Apple’s OS be built since 6.2, and I’ve had some insight into the culture that produced the tools. The MacOS was built by a culture that at it’s core had a humanistic touch.

I’ve studied that background of UNIX, understanding that this is an OS built by the nerds, of the nerds and for the nerds. This system has always been developed in the interest of efficiency, and typing fewer keys.

But here’s MS caught in the middle. They’ve tried to make an OS for a population that they are not a part of. They are geeks and engineers, but hae tried to make a system that can be used by everyone. Unfortunately, they’ve failed due to one major, overriding aspect: each part the project did it differently.

No time to finish, going apartment hunting.

A-MS-U

11.11.98

Up in Flames

Posted in General at 11 pm

Today was difficult. I got a call from my brother. “Well, he finally did it.”

My throat constricted.

Wearily, I asked, “Thomas burned down the house?”

“Almost.”

My brother isn’t one for verbious communication.

It turned out that Thomas (my four year old nephew) started a fire at home, in his bedroom. His mom (Michelle) was in the bathtub. Once she discovered the fire she started getting the kids out of the house and tried to put the fire out. Once she realized she couldn’t, she called the fire department.

The fire was out before it could spread to other rooms, however all the ceilings in the house and a good meter of the tops of the walls are layered in soot and such. The four of them (including Morgan, my niece) are staying the night in a hotel.

My brother was visibly shaken when I got there. I flew out of work to get to the house. I gave the kids good, strong hugs as I saw each. It was such a relief to hold them.

The problems with Thomas stretch far further back than this particular incident. I worry about him. I’m scared for Thomas and for Morgan.

I need to talk with Ryan and Michelle. They have a problems on their hands but it’s not Thomas. It’s their own emotional well-beings.

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First new entry at Powertalk

Posted in General at 12 pm

Finally got done! Looks like it’s all taken care of. The other pages at OMSI have all been converted to the ‘go here’ pages. They can stay there for a while. A long while with any luck.

NT still sucks. (You’re lucky the post I made on Monday night didn’t get through. Damn, that was the most vile entry I never made here.)

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11.06.98

SlashDot

Posted in General at 10 pm

Another day, another artery blown out my neck.

Should it really take this kind of war to get a RAID 5 controller working on a computer? What does it mean when NT Setup says it can’t find the oemsetup.inf, yet I can put the disk in another machine, and find it exactly were it should be?

Steam, steam, steam…. I really need to bring some music into work with me next week. Talk about going without!

One of my fav sites: <http://www.slashdot.org> has been getting lots of press lately. “The New Journalism” it’s called. That’s cool, I think. But really, I now want them to pump out their blurbs on XML, have a scriptable XML parser go through it, call me up on my cell phone and read it to me… Too tek? Naa.

Writing zeros to array is… 52% complete

Grrr

11.05.98

Adventure Games

Posted in General at 7 pm

Hah-Ha! I finally got the modem working on this NT Server. I beat it! Sometimes this stuff feels like an Adventure game. “Did you get the golden key from the Water Fairy by the Great Pond?”

Plus the 3 rack-mount servers came in tonight… It looks like it’s going to take a while.

GOLD

11.03.98

Raggedy Andy Warhol

Posted in General at 1 pm

Three notes:

1. Halloween costume: It was the last minute as usual, and I hadn’t made any strong plans, but I finally decided on a costume. I had a red yarn wig, black turtle neck, red nose face paint, and a can of tomato soup.

Raggedy Andy Warhol, of course. 🙂

2. That second journal entry last week was a mistake… My form was pointing to the wrong server still.

3. Depeche Mode on The Late Show with David Letterman. Dave G. sounded absolutely wonderful. I miss the other backup singers, Hilldy and Samantha. But it was a great performance over all.

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11.01.98

Must Read

Posted in General at 12 pm

Today I spent a lot of time reading things I don’t have time to read. One was the Fortune article on Apple. Quite a change from the previous major article on this ‘company with a soul’.

It’s interesting to note that from the looks of it, the whole era of competition between Apple and microsoft is not as dead as we’ve been told.

Also I finally read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, esr’s document on Open Source software, from last year. I had read the summaries, but never the actual document. This thing reads like a project managment essay. This should be revised, extended into a ‘manager’s handbook’.

The impetous for the read was the recent posting of esr’s comentary of a recently surfaced microsoft internal memo on the Open Software market. Titled, The Halloween Document this thing is a must read for anyone interested in how MS will be approaching this threat to their kingdom.

Back to real-time work…

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