the stinkin' blog

Well that’s a good blog title. Just thought I’d share a few thoughts that have come around lately. I’m surrounded by people of all sorts. Some are happy, some sad. Some are pessimists in the worst way and some run around trying to pour out some of their half full glass into other glasses. Me…I like to think I’m middle of the road. I get along well with most, don’t understand much, stay out of the political fracases, and generally try to keep everyone happy.

There are many around me that seem to thrive on attention or at least they want to embellish the idea that if they bring attention to themselves they will gain more attention from someone around them? Not sure. The one thing that stands out right now in my mind is that people “get what they give”. If you give someone crap or try to make them wrong, it will come back to bite you big time. I don’t wish ill-will on anyone, but I do see and have seen that happen a lot in the past few years on so many levels. I see it at work more than anywhere and maybe because it’s such a diverse organization?

If everyone could see that an action typically has an equal, yet opposite reaction maybe the world would begin to be a better place. I know my world would. I am in a great place right now in my life. I love what I have right now and will continue giving without prejudice knowing that I will get a good return on my investment at some point.

The holiday Thanksgiving has some meaning to me that I never realized. Most use it to get together with family, watch football and eat. Our family has taken it further. Let me describe what I mean.

We have a large plot of land in SW Alabama and on that land is a house built in 1950. This house was on a winding, hilly dirt road at the time and well away from any town of substance. However, it was very well built. What is interesting is every year we have created a tradition of trying to meet up there for a family gathering – every year we do it. It is such a natural occurrence that everyone seems to be able to get away long enough to spend at least one night and we have a WONDERFUL time.

We call the place “Opine”. Not sure exactly where it came from, but it does exist. We all enjoy being up there and together and end up working our tail off to maintain it.

For us, Thanksgiving has a meaning that is not as visible as most. My family seems to gravitate to a place that has a special meaning to us and we do it unconsciously, it just happens. To us, Thanksgiving is a natural way to get together and share in what we have been given. For that, I am thankful. I just wish I was closer!

I do a fair amount of reading various articles throughout the day in a vain attempt to keep on top of technology. I recently came across this sensationally titled article “GNU/Linux Security: Ubuntu has been Cracked!“. You were drawn in by a sensational headline only to be suckered into reading an article about security, Linux, and proactivity. We all know that Ubuntu is a very secure OS with proof by hard-core hackers at a recent “crackfest”.

Read the article. It has good information, but left ONE open question for me. “HOW” do you get proactive with users. What tools, techniques, and avenues can we use to get people to open up to a new way of doing things? Human nature is to resist change with all of our might.

Help me out with this. I run a local Meetup and have a good crowd, but the attendees are already geeks. Most of them run secure alternatives to Windows. How can we be proactive?

JP

Astrology and it’s beliefs have been around for centuries. Western Astrology can be traced back to the Babylonians somewhere around the 2nd century AD. Astrology uses horoscopic which simply constructs a horoscope based on a specific point in time such as your birthdate.

The Zodiac is based on a band of constellations through which our solar system travels through. There are 12 such constellations beginning with Aries which is tied to the North American Vernal Equinox which is where day and night are divided equally (in this case in North America). It signals the ending of winter and the beginning of the warmer seasons.

What makes this so interesting is the background on my Zodiac sign of Aries. I was born on the cusp of Aries and Taurus, but I am still considered Aries. I had been doing some reading lately and came across some insight that just NAILS who I am and how I operate.

The first paragraph where it says “the young ram is adventurous, ambitious, impulsive, enthusiastic and full of energy” is very descriptive of how I live. I love adventure, am quite impusive and ambitious, and feel like I have a ton of energy. This same article goes on to say Aries are quick-tempered, devoted to their children, and frank. This article describes me to a “T”.

What does all of this mean? I have had a lot of failures in my life, but I have 4 AWESOME boys out of the failures and would change NOTHING even if I could. Do I really need to find someone who is “compatible” with my Zodiac sign? Further reading suggests a Gemini would be very compatible with everything about me for the long term as would possibly a Leo. If sex is the only desire then a Taurus for sensuality or a Cancer for sheer pleasure.

I found this reading fascinating and learned a lot more about using the Zodiac in finding what I want in life. In my everpresent quest for enlightenment, this reading definitely helped!

Wednesdays at the Pugh house are boys night. Liz is training for triathlon’s and goes off to St. Pete Beach for a swim and run on Weds nights so I get to spoil the twins. It’s always a riot. Tonight was no different.

As I was headed to pick them up from daycare I saw a lot of build up around the area. We have had temps in the mid 90’s (record breaker today at 96F) and dewpoints in the UPPER 70’s (equates to 95%+) humidity. Needless to say the air was ripe for some thunderboomers if the air could muster some lift. We have been stuck with a ridge of high pressure to our west that has been acting like a lid…nothing has been able to form since there is no lift! The high finally started easing further west which allowed the sea breeze collision to create some wicked storms.

I took this picture when I started hearing some pinging on the roof and looked out to see hail! Hail in central FL with 90+F temps is unheard of, but obviously this was a wicked thunderstorm. No damage, but it sure was cool.

Even better is we picked up at least 3″ of rain. My pool is almost overflowing and it had been down more than 6″. I was about to have to add some water to it – unheard of in mid-June.

Hopefully this pattern will continue. We need the rain badly and those pesky high pressure ridges have no where to go so they sit where they need’nt sit. I love thunderstorms.

Needless to say, the boys night was a night inside. A fun night nonetheless. We have so much fun. Even now as I write this I continue to see flashes of lightning in the distance while the boys sleep quietly in their beds. Summertime. Love it.

Wow…what a ride.

These past few months have been a roller coaster. The twins are so active and SO much fun. Life is hard, but I play hard and as a family we have a lot of fun. Work…let me elaborate on work some.

I manage software partners for a great Linux company. At the moment I am working through a dozen or so opportunities and boy is it hard to manage them all. I still have not found that great system for managing everything. It is definitely fun, but also consumes a lot of time. Thank goodness, time is flexible in this company as I have to work with companies around the world.

I have updated my blogs and am trying to resurrect a few other niche sites and automate them (task unto itself!). So hopefully I can make another attempt at some regularity. Sure would like to try. One day I’ll figure out how to get organized and stay organized. I have no hope at the moment for organization.

Life is fun. Live it.

Thoughts on Ubuntu 8.10.

I get a big kick out of trollbait articles like this one. For starters he starts with a problem that manifests itself in only a few computers and instead of helping developers by informing them that he has the problem as well, he simply complains about the problem and points out that others have it as well.

The 2nd beef is the “hope clause”. I “hope” that a problem “gets fixed”. Hope is not help. Go to launchpad.net and enter a bug. Help fix the problem instead of complaining about it. The idea behind open source is community involvement.

You see, Microsoft has $$$billions$$ of dollars and thousands of developers that do one thing – continue to slather crap onto Windows. Ubuntu has neither of those resources. If it did, you can be assured the problems you see would not happen.

Get up, be a part of the community. Give back to what is given to you.

I forced a brief hiatus of my server whilst I upgraded it to a new server distro. Can you guess which one? Ubuntu Server, of course. I ended up learning a lot about debian distros and am now almost 100% running again. What fun!!!

I plan on posting a few items here that need some documenting shortly.

It is now Thursday and nearing the end of my three weeks of freedom from work. A rather cloudy day and I plan on getting my garage to a point where I can at least park a car in it. Hurricane Ike is stirring up the Gulf, creating some cloudiness, and some giving us some wind so that makes working in the garage all the more bearable.

It has been a good three weeks. I managed to get a fair amount done. Completed a number of projects, managed to clean up a lot of the overgrown yard, researched some new ideas, and did some relaxing with some PS3 games.

Off to get the garage out of disarray and into a better state of affairs.