Wow, that was quite a lapse in posting. I had a nasty cold last week that made me exhausted and very much not in the mood to use my computer when I got home from work. The weather was pretty cold and rainy, plus the whole daylight savings time thing made getting out of bed on time difficult. I even ended up taking off for half a day on Tuesday.

The only day I went out last week was on Thursday night when I was feeling a bit stressed out. Michael came home and asked if I wanted to go to Sly Fox and I said that I wanted a vodka tonic. So we headed over to the Roadhouse Grill in Skippack and had a nice evening munching on pub food (they make a great little pepperoni and mushroom pizza), and I got my vodka tonic, and a pineapple martini… and a chocolate martini with dessert. On the way home from there we picked up a couple new movies, The Chronicles of Narina and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Friday night Michael went to the men’s sweat and I got myself a sub for dinner and sat down to watch some movies.

Saturday we went to the Shaman class which went well and brought up some interesting things about culture and heritage that I think I’m going to have to sit down and write a series of essays about sometime. That evening the final sniffles of the cold disappeared and I was feeling much better. We ended up going to dinner with a woman from the shaman class who is opening a frame shop in the next couple months and wanted to get some advice on her POS system and website development.

Sunday was sunny, but a bit chilly for doing work outside. In the afternoon we decided to drive up toward Lancaster to go to That Fish Place. It was a good day for it. We bought some fish and cat supplies, visited the reptile room, and then ventured into the fish area to pick out some fish to bring home. We picked up a few nice looking little fish (I’ll need to take pictures, perhaps update the fish site too, it’s so outdated). In the evening we ended up going over to Max & Ermas in Oaks for dinner.

And now it’s Monday, the weather is beautiful and I’m stuck in the windowless office. At least it’s only a 4 day work week, hooray for having Good Friday off.

First off, I mentioned a couple entries ago that we went to the gatherings concert in Philadelphia last Saturday night. If you’re interested in reading a more in depth description of the concert from a fellow who knows a hell of a lot about music, pop over to read asphalteden’s review. He attended the show and it was a small venue, we probably walked past each other some time that night but we didn’t meet up. D’oh. Luckily there is a Robert Rich Gatherings Concert in a few weeks that we’ll be attending and he’s thinking of showing up for, we can meet him then.

Work was busy and exhausting this week, but fantastically productive.

Monday night I locked myself upstairs to fix whatever went wrong with Debian on my primary workstation. I’m not sure exactly what happened with the xfree xorg thing, when I installed my machine it was using xfree, but after two hours of fighting with getting x running properly monday night I emerged running xorg. I’m very pleased to say that I didn’t ask anyone for help during that two hours and the machine is running perfectly again. Phew.

Tuesday night we brought Caligula to the vet. He really hates going to the vet, he hisses and growls more during the yearly vet exam than he does during the whole rest of the year. But I really like the Limerick Veterinary Hospital. They are very thorough, his doctor brought him the benadryl shot he needs before vaccinations without us having to ask. And even though he hissed and growled the entire time, he made it through the exam and is a healthy two year old kitty. We also got a 3 month supply of Frontline so we can bring him outside with us when we’re gardening without having to worry about fleas and ticks.

Wednesday we were going to go to the monthly all genders sweat lodge, but we were both pretty exhausted from work and needed a break, we went to Sly Fox instead.

Thursday and Friday evening turned out to be for catching up on my own projects I am working on. I got news from Google regarding Gmail for your domain. I applied to be a beta tester about a month ago with wallaceandgromit.net, just as a personal domain that would probably only have 1 user. By some stroke of good fortune my request was granted! Michael pointed the MX records for the domain at Google friday night and yesterday I was able to start using my new gmail for wallaceandgromit.net. So now I have elizabeth@wallaceandgromit.net powered by gmail. I gave michael an address too (mostly so he can check out the service) as well as a guy who emails me regularly to help out with finding Wallace and Gromit news. I’m looking forward to seeing what this service develops into, it’s not very customizable at the moment.

Yesterday the plan was to spend the day outside, but I only managed to spend about an hour out there with Caligula before it began to rain and I came inside. It cleared up later in the day and Bob dropped by so we could go out to dinner. He hadn’t been to Sly Fox yet, so we headed over there and chilled out at the bar for the evening. We had a nice time and learned about their growler club, you get a card and have it stamped each time you fill up the growler, when your stamp is full (8 growlers) you get a free one. Free beer! Hooray!

Now I need to get dressed and head outside to clean my car.

I’m having a very busy week, and the weather is beautiful and I need to get out of cubicle-land so I’ve been going on walks during my lunch break rather than catching up on email and LJ.

So if you’ve emailed me or anything in the past few days and I haven’t responded it’s because I’m swamped with other things. I’ll try to catch up on Sunday or something.

Oh, and I’m in a much better mood than I was on Monday and I was able to fix Debian after locking myself upstairs for 2 hours determined to fix it :)

I am in a terrible mood today :\

I don’t think there is a particular reason for this mood, but the catalyst was probably waking up with a sinus headache. I don’t want it to be allergy season already.

Last night I was doing some upgrades and installing some pretty basic packages on my primary workstation and apt blew up. It’s now got dependancy errors and is stuck with what seems to be a conflict between xorg and xfree. I can’t start x, in fact, the program “startx” is gone. Arg. I messed with it some this morning and got nowhere. I’m very much annoyed that this happened now, after having a perfectly running system for 9 months, right when I’m doing work that requires a properly functioning Debian system. I’m hopeful that the solution actually is a simple one that I just didn’t see this morning with my headachey head. If not, I hope there will be some Debian people around this evening whose brains I can pick for ideas on how to fix this.

Stupid computers.

I just got back from taking a 25 minute walk, it’s nice out and I thought it would good to clear my head. There is a building near our office that had these huge beautiful dogwood trees that bloom around now, and I always love walking under them. They’re gone now. Probably got too big for the urban redevelopment program or whatever crap they have going on in Lansdale (wow, see? bad mood). No doubt they’ll be replaced with shrubs or something. This crappy mood I’m in had me almost in tears over the loss of these trees.

Ok, done complaining now. Stupid moods x_X

First off, it was a year ago today Michael and I got engaged. Hooray!

It’s gloomy out and I’ll probably be spending most of today working on the computer. I have a whole pile of projects to get to work on, so many that I’m sitting here staring at IRC overwhelmed because I don’t have my priorities straight. So, priority 1) write journal entry in order to get brain working 2) write a list of things I want to get done so I can prioritize and tackle things properly.

Michael took me down to South Street yesterday, he wrote about it here.

South Street is a part of Philly with lots of little shops and things. The last time I was there was in 1999 on a double date with Michael, and the airheads we were both dating at the time. It has changed since that last visit, the neighborhood has really gone down hill. Such is the way with cities I guess, but it’s a real shame. We only stopped a a couple of stores, 611 Records so Michael could pick up some vinyl and What’s on Tap?, a store specializing in beer and related merchandise. What’s on Tap? was going out of business, so we got a nice deal on a couple of pint glasses and a set of wine glasses. When we asked why they were closing shop the guy at the counter replied “the neighborhood has changed,” confirming my thoughts about the state of the area.

After that we headed over to west Philly to grab some food, and ended up at Marathon Grill. I was not impressed. Their beer menu had some good microbrews on it, but when we tried to order them they seemed to be out of stock of everything. No more Hopdevil on tap. No Dogfish head in bottles. I ended up getting a Guinness which was certainly the worst guiness from a tap I’ve ever had. The food was ok. Service was mediocre.

In spite of these things, and the drizzle that followed us around all day, I had a nice time. After eating we headed over to The Last Word Bookshop on Walnut street, which is a great little bookstore that I don’t visit often enough. A very strange thing happened while I was there. I was browsing the scifi/fantasy section, and suddenly thought that I should look for The Great Book of Amber by Roger Zelazny. I can’t remember who recommended it to me so long ago, but it’s a book I’ve been meaning to pick up for years. I’d never seen a copy in a used bookstore, so when I was pawing through books on the floor I was shocked when I laid my hands on it. Wow!

After picking up some books we headed over to Bucks County Coffee Co. for some coffee before the concert. The place felt just like a Starbucks, same chairs and everything, it was kind of creepy. I enjoyed a cup of cafe mocha and we sat down at a table with our new books until it was time to go to the concert.

The concert was good. I think my only complain was that some of the images shown on the screen during Michael Bentley’s preformance were a bit much to take visually (flashing, waving stuff) and I had to close my eyes. But I like to close my eyes at those concerts anyway to imagine the ambient landscape for myself, and Bentley’s music is good for that. I really enjoyed Saul Stokes’ performance.

The concert wrapped up shortly before 11 and we made our way out of the city to be home by midnight, in time for Michael to do his show. I stayed up until 2AM doing email and generally puttering around online.

Now on to that list of priorities…

I’ve wanted to write rants/essays about a few things this week, but once I sat down to actually write them, things didn’t turn out right. So instead I will consolidate them into bullets.

• The intention to make a “game for women” is insulting. Instead game developers need to take a long hard look at how games are marketed, how they portray women and what their prize structure is like in their games.
• The Linux world is becoming increasingly filled with people who don’t know how to RTFM – this is good because it means linux is now accessible to the masses, anyone can install it! But it’s also bad because there is a very loud minority who believe they are entitled to help from anyone who knows more than them and who have no intention of ever learning how to RTFM.
• What is with women who choose nicknames like “linuxgurl” and “geekgrrl” and “techchick”? There have always been some, but it’s become an annoying epidemic.
• I love Yoplait Mountain Blueberry Yogurt.

This week has been busy with many things. I never mentioned that I had fun at the PLUG West Linux Beer Night. Their plan seems to be to start making real meetings in Malvern regularly, with presentations and all. I actually posted to the list to say I greatly enjoyed the informalish beer night itself, so hopefully they’ll want to plan more of those too. Mmmm beer and linux talk.

Last night I ran a bunch of errands after work, perhaps most importantly of which was finally getting the Rav4 to a car wash. When I got home Michael and I headed over to Sly Fox. It appears we are Sly Fox regulars now, half the hostesses now know what our favorite table is and I think we’ve had all the waiters/waitresses at least once. I finally tried their Abbey Xtra, which was a very light and smoothe Belgian that I enjoyed two pints of. Unfortunately they were out of their special Cascade IPA, so we brought home a growler of 113 IPA instead which I’ll be “diving into” this evening.

At work today they finally announced to everyone in the office that I’m going to be taking the job at the corporate office up the street, so today has been full of congratulations, this has made for a cheerful friday.

This weekend Michael and I will be headed down to the city for a Gatherings Concert with Saul Stokes and Michael Bentley. Michael just formally introduced me to Saul Stokes’ work this week, I’d previously heard some of his stuff but never knew who it was. I’m not familiar with Michael Bentley, but I expect it will be be a good concert. We had actually planned on spending the day down in Philly, visiting south street to do some shopping and grabbing dinner at somewhere nice down there, but the weather doesn’t seem to be on our side for that. We’ll see.

I read a friend’s blog this morning and she mentioned that Rita’s gives everyone a free regular waterice on the first day of spring. Oooh!

It was snowing on my way to work today, and it’s only 39F outside now, but I wasn’t about to miss a free waterice. After trying unsuccessfully to recruit some co-workers to join me, brushed off the laugh from my boss (“you’re walking? you’re going to freeze!”), I walked to the local Rita’s, which is a little less than a mile from the office.

It was cold :) But now I have my cherry waterice and I’m happy! At least I didn’t have to worry about it melting on the walk back to the office.

Tonight Michael and I are going to PLUG West Linuxbiernacht. We haven’t been to the Drafting Room in far too long, it should be fun.

I don’t seem to have posted much about my week. I guess most of the weekdays were relatively unimpressive.

I picked up some Stash Fusion Green and White Tea and Twinings Earl Grey on our weekly grocery shopping trip, both of which are great. My tastes certainly have changed a lot in these past few years.

My mother called me on Friday morning while I was at work to ask what kind of cat Caligula is. She was going to a cat show that day with work (I can only assume its this cat show) and wanted to swing by the table where she could see a little Caligula. It was nice of her to call, she called me again Saturday to tell me how beautiful the Egyptian Maus she saw were. Awww!

Friday was St. Patrick’s Day of course, I didn’t have any normal clothes that were green, so I took the rare step of wearing a skirt to work and nobody died of shock ;) After work Michael took me out Ortino’s Northside for dinner and a beer to celebrate my change in position at work and a raise (same job title, different building). For whatever reason they didn’t have any Guinness on tap, and since I’m not fond of it in the bottles or cans I “settled for” a Delirium Tremens. Mmm Delirium Tremens.

Saturday morning we woke up to some scratching in the wall. Caligula was going nuts. Apparently we have mice or chipmunks or something in the wall. Michael climbed up into the attic space above the addition to our house and apparently they got in through the basement, climbed up the wall and have been burrowing through the insulation above our bedroom and made a nest. Living in an old house is so much fun. Michael went out to Lowes and picked up some traps, while I spent the morning doing some cleaning. I rearranged out media (VHS, DVD, some books) closet so it’s looking much better.

In the afternoon we headed out to Max & Ermas for some lunch. I am rarely impressed by chain restaurants, but the Max & Ermas in Oaks, PA always has good service, great food, and Victory Hopdevil on tap. Michael went with the Hopdevil and a Reuben sandwich, but after being so disappointed at not getting my Guinness on Friday night I HAD to go with Guinness. I enjoyed a Roast Beef & Brie Sandwich, which was *perfect* and for dessert we got some of the fresh chocolate chip cookies, mmmm.

I spent most of the rest of the day on the computer working on all sorts of things. I signed up for the ubuntu-women mailing list a couple weeks ago, and found it to be very… “chatty” I guess this is the way many groups start out, just getting a feel for each other, but I really was beginning to wonder if it really was a girls club and not having goals to get women involved in the Ubuntu community. I finally took some time yesterday to visit all the sites/forums/wikis/irc channel associated with it. That’s when I ran into a whole nest of politics – I sent a mail to the list asking what the official site was, and eventually learned that there are two groups that call themselves ubuntu-women, one on the forums/irc/gwos/privately run blog and the other officially endorsed by ubuntu with a mailing list, wiki and domain name. Honestly it seems like a bit of a mess, a lot of energy being pumped into two different outlets, plus the overall confusion of it. It appears that there is a consolidation effort that’s been sparked, but I don’t think I’ll be spending much time with this until it’s resolved. Ah the joys of the projects in the F/OSS world!

In the evening I watched a movie and sat with my laptop. At one point I got up to get something and Caligula stole my spot.

Today I don’t have plans, I should try to knock out all the little things on my todo list. Michael is making some omelettes for breakfast %d

I’m an American, Americans drink coffee. I started drinking it in my late teens when I was working 3rd shift in a store, it helped through some of those long nights.

Throughout my adult life I’ve gone back and forth between being a coffee nut and giving it up completely. I enjoy an herbal tea from time to time, but have never been interested in caffeinated teas, until now.

I’ve been examining my whole diet lately, and I love to have a hot drink in the morning. Lately it’s been a nice mixture of coffee (reg or decaf, depending on the day) and hot chocolate that our coffee machine spits out, I don’t need to add cream or sugar to it. It’s good, but it doesn’t make me feel the greatest when I drink that last gulp that’s particularly chocolatey. Perhaps this chocolate in the morning is not so good? I started exploring creamers and artificial sweeteners at work. We have Splenda and Equal at work and powdered creamers. I decided that Splenda is and OK sweetener that won’t kill me, but the powdered creamers are terrible. I looked at real creamers that I could buy at the store, but upon comparing “nutrition” facts I might as well stick to my chocolate coffee drink.

I could just drink it black, but, ew.

So on Monday morning I skipped the coffee, grabbed a Lipton tea bag and made myself a cup of tea. No sugar. No cream.

You know what? It’s not bad! In fact, it’s something I could get quite used to. Yesterday morning I enjoyed a cup of Lipton tea as well and it was easier to drink. This morning I went for the Earl Grey that our coffee maker here at work can prepare in just a few seconds, it’s yum!

And I feel good after a cup of tea, tea is healthy and light and refreshing in ways that a cup of coffee, cream and sweetener isn’t.

Now I must go through some old posts made by to re-read the tea posts now that I am more interested.

Yesterday a fellow in the #plug channel posted the URL to the forum thread where it was revealed that Ubuntu had a critical security bug. It’s since been slashdotted.

According to the bug report, it turns out that the normal Breezy Badger 5.10 install saves your first user’s password in a clear-text file on the system, readable by all. By default, this first user is the one set up with full sudo privileges. If this password was not changed after the install anyone logging onto this system can read this file and get root access.

Damn! That’s BAD!

I spread the news to IRC channels where I knew it would be of use, the reaction was “eeek!” all over the place as people checked the clear-text file and found their password sitting there for all to see.

An official fix via apt (just `apt-get update && apt-get upgrade` and you’re set) was out within 9 hours of discovery and a security alert was sent out on ubuntu-security-announce. Since it’s an installation file all you actually need to do is delete the file from your system (or chmod it, but why would you want to keep it?) and change your password.

I love Ubuntu, my first reaction was to try and make excuses for them.

But there is no excuse, maintaining password security is fundamental.

I’ll continue to use Ubuntu on my laptop, I do updates regularly, I don’t have other users on my laptop and I am subscribed the the security announce list. But on mission-critical machines? Not a chance. Sorry Ubuntu dear, you are clearly not yet mature enough for that.