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.

Friday night we met the usual movie night crew, at one of their places this time. We talked a lot, caught a couple episodes of the Daily Show on their TiVo. Ate some food and had a couple beers. We ended up leaving pretty early because we were both tired.

I did get to try out my new lambic glasses, Michael brought home a case of the Lindenman’s Peche lambic, mmmm.

Most of the beautiful day yesterday was spent outside cleaning up the yard. Raking leaves and dead plants out of the garden and carting them off to the compost heap out back. Michael helped me dispose of a rose “bush” that I wasn’t strong enough to destroy myself. That silly rose bush thing has annoyed me since we moved in, it has giant thorns and maybe two unimpressive flowers per year, and grows uncomfortably close to the faucet for the hose. Now hopefully the root (which was about 3 inches in diameter!) that was left in the ground won’t manage to spawn a whole new plant.

For dinner last night we went out to Sly Fox where we picked up a growler of their new Cascade IPA. Bob swung by shortly after we got home from dinner, and we watched a movie and had a couple beers before I abandoned them to get some sleep around 10PM.

This morning I woke up around 9AM and finished John Varley’s Millennium, which I borrowed from Bob recently. It was a fun, quick read. Exactly what I needed. Michael made breakfast and then headed out to Bob’s place to meet up with another friend and drive out see some Aikido thing in Princeton, NJ. I was invited along too, but eventually declined, despite their plan to hit Triumph on the way home. I’m fairly non-girly about lots things, but all sports – martial arts included – put me to sleep, and it would probably be rude to bring a book.

This alone time is nice. Plus it’s raining out, perfect day to get some stuff done that’s been sitting on my to-do list for a while.

It’s so nice out today.

I’ve had a nice, productive week. Wednesday morning I was almost to work when I encountered a detour on route 63, the main street of the town I work in. Great. I was late for work because of the increased traffic and I had to hit the backroads that I’m not familiar with. The rest of the day went like that too, problem after problem at work. I remaind was in a surprisingly good mood through it all, everything that happened was out of my control, why worry/get annoyed by it?

That night Michael and I headed over to the Roadhouse Grille in Skippack for their wine and cheese tasting. They do this every Wednesday night and we’d never gone to one. I was happy we did! The wines were excellent, the cheeses were wonderful and strong. After the wine and cheese we had a light dinner and headed home around 9PM. It turned out to be a very nice, relaxing evening.

Yesterday we learned some good news from Verizon (our telephone company). Michael was out taking a walk and apparently stopped to chat for a moment with the Verizon folks working on the phonelines. He asked what they were doing. “Installing Verizon FiOS,” they said. OMG FIBER AT MY HOUSE! Currently we have DCA.net DSL, and pay a reasonable amount for the perks of being able to run servers and have several static IPs. But lately we’ve moved a lot off our connection, we’re no longer running a mail server there, most of the websites have been moved off, and going back to a strictly residential internet connection would not be terrible. The cheapest FiOS business line with a static IP is $100/month, which is pricey but might be worth it if they don’t block ports. We’ll see when it’s actually installed and starts being offered.

On my way to work this morning I encountered a detour, guess which road? Route 63. This was far from the other detour I encountered on Wednesday and completely unrelated, but it was funny that it was the same road making me late for work. I ended up feeling lost on all sorts of crazy back roads with lots of fellow commuters. Just when I started looking for a place to pull over so I could call my boss and tell her I’d be late I popped out in a familiar place and was able to get to work only 10 mintues late. My boss laughed when I told her what happened. Damn that route 63!

I’m not sure what the plan is this evening, I sorta want to stay in, but I sorta want to see people too. We had hoped that our DVDs of Bleak House would be here by now and we could have that for movienight, but apparently the demand for it has overwhelmed WGBH and our copy won’t ship until March 27th. Eep! Still, I asked Michael to swing by Hatboro Beverage to grab me a case of Lindemans Peche Lambic for tonight, with the excuse that I “need to try out my new lambic glasses” that I picked up at the Beer Yard last weekend.

We don’t have solid plans for the weekend either, but the weather has been beautiful so Michael and I might find some place to do some hiking. I’d love to open up The Magic Room too and spend some time up there this weekend.

Mmm happy Friday.

Yesterday I was productive – hooray! I spent the morning working on several things, and realized that while I was working on these other things it wouldn’t take too much time to toss the Debian install on the laptop and see if it would work since a bunch of time in any install is waiting anyway.

So I plugged in the wireless card and booted up the laptop with the Debian etch net install cd in. The install cd saw the wireless card, which was pretty exciting, but the firmware was not there for it to use it and connect to the network. This was to be expected, Ubuntu does the same thing. But I was hopeful that this would all work out since there is an atmel-firmware package for Debian and that’s all I needed to install for Ubuntu.

So I got the Debian install up and running with x, ended up installing some Gnome libs so I could get the happy-clicky-connect-to-wireless app running. I installed the atmel-firmware package and was further encouraged by websites that said “In Debian just `apt-get install atmel-firmware`!”

I spent nearly 2 hours fighting with it after `apt-get install atmel-firmware` didn’t work. And then I gave up. I don’t understand how modules and firmware play together and others I spoke with about the problem didn’t seem to understand either and we were all just poking around in the dark trying random things. I did learn a lot though, so I wouldn’t say my time was wasted.

I don’t think the issue is additional software that needs to be installed per se, since a very basic Ubuntu install still can get wireless working. It’s not the version of atmel drivers, since Debian and Ubuntu use the same one. As far as I can tell, there are two options that remain: 1) Debian and Ubuntu load and use firmware somehow differently that is unrelated to the identical Gnome connect to wireless program I used 2) There is a difference in the default kernel between Debian and Ubuntu that makes it so the firmware does not work in the default Debian kernel but works fine in Ubuntu. The next step when (if?) I decide to tackle this project again will be carefully reviewing the default Ubuntu kernel options and duplicating them in a custom Debian kernel.

So, defeated, I reinstalled Ubuntu. I finally took the advice of and did a server install rather than a regular install. Oh gosh I love the server install! The laptop only has a 3 gig harddrive and with a default Ubuntu install I was using about 2 gigs of it. The server installation doesn’t install Gnome, or even xwindows, and just gives you the basic tools for a CLI system, and takes up less than 400MB. From there I installed xwindows, XFCE4, the Gnome administration things (I do love that silly connect-to-wireless app and it didn’t depend on much), Firefox, Gimp, and a couple other programs I need on the laptop. All said and done? I’m using less than 800MB, sweet.

Even better, the laptop is running great. It’s really surprising how much resources Gnome takes up just sitting around, XFCE4 really blows it out of the water. Firefox opens up quickly, I can have a few programs open at once without really noticing. In the end, I’m happy with it now and I think the only reason I would switch back to Debian is to regain lost geek points.

Today I will be productive.

Thursday night I was very happy to not have work the next day and spent the evening trying to burn a Debian iso. I booted into Windows to do it, since I haven’t sorted out burning in Linux yet and was very annoyed to discover that whatever burning program I tried failed. I can’t burn a CD in Windows? What is wrong with me? This worked before! I pondered hardware problems and problems with the iso, and in the end just gave up the task very frustrated.

On my day off Friday I cleaned the house and went grocery shopping in the morning. At noon I drove down to visit and . We went out to Bennigan’s for lunch then swung by Best Buy so I could pick up a CD cleaner disk, which suggested might solve my CD burning problems. I hadn’t been in a Best Buy in a long time and had forgotten how annoying checkout is there:

“Do you have a Best Buy card?”
“No.”
“Because you are shopping here today you’re entitled to get 8 issues of $stupid_magazine for free, are you interested?”
“No.”
“Your phone number please?”
“No.”

FFS CAN I PLEASE JUST BUY MY THING?

After that we went back to the apartment and watched a bunch of episodes of The (American) Office. I am a big fan of the original and when watching the pilot of the American one I was miserable – it was awful! So even after they got their own script and people were telling me “it’s great” I didn’t watch it. But they were right and it’s pretty funny. The sense of humor is much different and it feels like an entirely different show, so I can disconnect it from the show I love and enjoy it for what it is. We also watched some episodes of The Colbert Report, which has it’s moments but isn’t as good as The Daily Show. I left to go home around 10:30PM.

Saturday was spent at our shaman class. I “finished” my creation story, and hearing everyone else’s was quite a treat. Of course our homework now is to rewrite the story more in-depth. I’m looking forward to exploring this further.

After the shaman class I suggested we swing by The Beer Yard which was only a few miles from where we have our class. Lew Bryson mentioned it in his PA Brewery book and said it is one of the best distributors in the state. He was absolutely correct, it was like beer heaven! Choosing which beer to take home was very difficult. I ended up getting a case of the Allagash Belgian Style Dubbel. The Allagash is brewed in Portland, Maine (represent!) and they really know how to do their Belgians, I’d tried the Tripel in the past but figured I’d take it easy and go with the Dubbel this time. I’m so excited to have found a distributor around here that sells it, before I either had to go to Maine or hit a good local pub and hope they had it in stock.

Once we got home last night I ordered a couple hoagies from the local pizzeria enjoyed a bottle of Allagash Dubbel and watched some MST3K. I went to bed pretty early.

Today my plans are to hunker down and get some work done. was right about my CD burner just needing a cleaning and I burned a Debian Etch iso and am currently burning an Ubuntu Breezy Badger iso. The plan is to finally install Debian on my laptop, and if I can’t get everything working properly and need my laptop back to a working state I’ll throw a server installation of Ubuntu on it. I’m not sure if I’ll get to it today but at least I have the disks ready. Perhaps next weekend.

Now to get to work!