Journal

I started writing this right at midnight. It wasn't intentional. I just looked and there it was. For once, I am going to try to keep this pretty upbeat.

The Pittsburgh Jaunty release party was an amazing hit. I was expecting 5, we wound up with a nice group of 25 (rounded) people. The Pens were playing that night as well. Fox and Hound was kind enough to give us two pool tables at the back of restaurant. The chairs were a little short, but it worked out pretty well. We had a few quickly downloaded copies of Jaunty floating around, some spontaneous prizes and plenty of conversation for those who wanted it. The only thing I think I would change is finding a quieter venue. It was very difficult to chat with folks while the game was blaring.

My personal life has been going great. I haven't been smoking since September. I don't knowingly consume caffeine for the past month. I drink large amounts of water and I have started to eat healthier meals. During the warmer days, I try to get out to North Park and hit the trail with my bike. I blame this new health-kick on the fact that I turn 30 this May. It's just my mind telling me it's time to think about how I look and feel every day.

Work has been getting progressively better. I am extremely excited. Today, I accepted a new position where I currently work. I am looking forward to the new and exciting challenges ahead with that. My only concern was how folks were going to take my decision to move to a different group. After speaking with my managers, I think they as OK with it as they can be.

I have pretty much pulled away from volunteer fire fighting. It's not for anything other than I have put in 7 years of hard work and I am burned out. I have worked my way up from being a rookie with no previous experience to being assistant chief in that short a time. I think that's pretty impressive. It also says something about the state of the volunteer fire service. They desperately need people. I may pick it back up again at another point in my life. For now, I really want to focus on reducing my stress load and getting healthier.

I have started to pick up the guitar more often. I found some songs I really wanted to jam along to. So I spend an hour or so every day just strumming along to whatever is on the radio or my iPod. My electric guitar is still in good working order, my acoustic isn't so lucky. I had it out to a shop and they told me it would cost more than it was worth to fix. One of these days I will find a new one to add to my small collection.

My reading hasn't been very heavy recently. I need to find some new material to read. I just haven't found anything that has sparked an interest other than a quick skim or two.

Enough randomness for tonight. That's my update and I'm sticking to it.

My fingers are tired. All the information should be out for the Pittsburgh release party. I won't be there, but Scott Sweeny will be there to help out. Go check the details here. I hope many will come and celebrate.

To bed with me!

While trying to figure out my Synaptics sensitivity issues on Ubuntu 8.10, I ran across this helpful tidbit (no thanks to another planet feed publishing another post).

The old way of doing things was to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the following line to the Synaptics Touchpad InputDevice section.

Option          "SHMConfig"             "on"

One little, teeny-tiny, itsy-bitsy line. Searching for this line wasn't hard either. Give X a restart and "woosh", GSynaptics and the like are able to adjust such fine points as sensitivity, horizontal scrolling and the like.

As part of the grand scheme of things, we like to evolve. Part of that evolution requires XML and as much of it as we can get. After all, XML is clean and pretty looking.

In order to get the same simple line to work in newer versions of Xorg, you must create the following.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
<device>
<match key="input.x11_driver" contains="synaptics">
<merge key="input.x11_options.SHMConfig" type="string">On</merge>
</match>
</device>
</deviceinfo>

Not only do we like XML, but we like obscure looking and sounding directories and filenames.

/etc/hal/fdi/policy/11-synaptic-options.fdi

I beg anybody to tell me how one expects folks to believe this to be a step up from where we were? If anything, this adds a layer of confusion and unnecessary configuration fluff. Note the lack of anything that most novice users would consider related to "xorg" or "mouse" or "touchpad" until we get deep into a configuration directory.

As I stand here ranting away, I must embarrassingly admit that you can find this information on the Ubuntu Community Documentation. It is pretty well documented (minus some missing links).

Update 1:

But then I am shamed again, because I don't have the skills, time or persuasion to correct this. Alas, to the feature request (circular) file does my rant/request go.

Update 2:

As I am getting ready to just trash this rant, I am further shamed by the fact that using the "SHMConfig" option is considered a security risk and should only be done if you don't care about such. So there ARE some really good reasons why you would want to keep a setting like that hidden and obscure in the first place.

I originally published this on Facebook, but I am starting to think about dropping Facebook after reading recent articles. Dunno yet.

I don't typically do memes like these, but my cousin kinda made me feel up to it. You'll learn why I normally don't do these.

1. I think memes like these are fun, but I normally shun them because I am trying to be "too cool" to get involved.
2. My attention span is very short. It's not you, it's me. Honestly.
3. I refuse to debate because I get so terribly angry.
4. I don't know sports very well nor do I typically care to watch sports unless it's a Pittsburgh team.
5. I must be in complete control of myself. I really have a hard time with sleeping or passing out because of that.
6. I'll always be the "Jack of all trades, master of none, though often better than a master of one." Thank you Adam Savage.
7. I refuse to watch gory horror movies.
8. I can't stand the sight of blood.
9. I suck at math.
10. I couldn't tell you what day or day of the week it is without a calendar.
11. I don't watch the news or read a newspaper.
12. I like art but am not artistic.
13. I have been involved three car collisions. One was very minor, the other two I totaled the vehicles. I was given only 1 speeding ticket unrelated to the collisions.
14. I have driven a moped and a fire engine and thought the first was cool and the second was huge and clumsy.
15. Video games are awesome on the PC and suck on the console. I can't use a game controller to save my life.
16. I don't dance, mostly because I think I can't, but also because I really enjoy listening to music. Dancing just gets in the way of listening.
17. I bottle up anger. Can think of only a handful of times that I have truly been angry. Somebody would probably say that isn't healthy.
18. I have helped a friend pull an engine out of a GMC Jimmy put it in a Jeep Cherokee...in the middle of winter.
19. If I don't know you well, I am quiet. If I know you, I can't shut up.
20. The worst drugs I have ever tried (or will) are nicotine and caffeine.
21. I over-analyze actions, in-actions and consequences.
22. I am a Christian, but I do not conform to any particular denomination.
23. I believe that religion and science are both important and compliment each other.
24. I believe in destiny and free will and that they compliment each other.
25. I don't trust anybody. This is most likely because I don't trust myself. I keep trying to work on that.

So there it is. Not all are good, not all are bad. It's probably the most I have ever tried to put down in writing about myself and shared with folks.

Bear with me. This entry will be really, really incoherent. I seem to have this problem recently where I can't finish a thought. To help me with this, I have been using Tomboy to keep track of my random thoughts.

I am in the middle of writing another journal entry regarding music. I love music. It's something that I just enjoy.

I have been rereading a lot of L. E. Modesitt, Jr. recently. I really like his style. It's a lot of sci-fi, fantasy, but that's about all I can read these days that doesn't make me want to skim books.

I have been messing around with both bzr and git. I think I am starting to prefer git to bzr. I haven't really found a good use for either outside of work. I really need to find a project that could use a bit of novice coding skills. I would really like to become more comfortable working with other folks on projects. If I could be more comfortable understanding gtk, dbus and keyring I might put a bit more effort into fixing a simple feature request in network-manager-vpnc.

I have a mind to discuss my personal experience with a series of bugs on network-manager-vpnc. I must remember to write about it another time. It really should be a separate entry.

I have this week off and yet again, I am sitting at home, doing nothing. Just sitting here trying to write up some thoughts, reading my books and listening to live concerts of the Smashing Pumpkins.

I am REALLY hoping that the image plugin works as I expect it should. If it does, then I will try posting more pictures in the future.

This is shot taken on a newly opened section of PA220 near Penn State while on the way to my grandparents for Thanksgiving.

So in case you haven't noticed (I expect most except for my family DIDN'T notice), my site is in a funky state of flux. I am trying really hard to figure out the CSS for the site. While doing that, I decided to rebuild the server and update to Ubuntu 8.10.

I now have a build doc that allows me to rebuild the server and data in under 30 minutes. Considering it takes much longer to do the same on our work servers, I think it's pretty impressive.

UPDATE: I gave up on figuring out css for the site. Thanks to ikiwiki's css-market, I found something I like...for now.