All posts by rbowen

100 year old lease deemed invalid

100 years ago, british settlers leased 1 million hectares from the Maasai people, for a period of 100 years. The lease ran out last weekened, and the Kenya government says that their claims are invalid, and that it won’t recognize the colonial-era lease.

I wasn’t even aware of this lease, as I’m sure most people weren’t. But it it seems that the Maasai people thought that it was something that would be honored when the time came.

I wonder how many other bargains like this were made in the name of future generations. In most of Africa, the Europeans just took whatever they wanted. The Maasai are one of those rare cases where the white folks actually were unable to suppress the local population, and so made some kind of financial deal with them instead. I wonder where I can get a copy of the text of the original lease.

Fellow Kenyan

This afternoon at Walmart, I saw someone with a Turtle Bay tshirt, and I asked him if he was from Kenya. This resulted in me getting a big bear hug from a complete stranger, because he had not met anyone from Kenya for many months. He said that he was “one and a half years old in this country”, which I find to be a wonderful way to express it. I could not immediately tell what tribe he was – I guess I’ve been away from Kenya for too long – but he said that he was from Nairobi too. And then we went our separate ways. Things to do, places to go. I wish I had time to sit down with him and have some chai and talk.

Hey, watch this!

I had a teflon tape moment (to borrow a metaphor from MJD) recently in discovering the watch command.

You know how you run the same command repeatedly, trying to see if it changed? Like ls -la file.name to see when it’s done downloading, or ps ax | grep foo to see if a particular process has terminated, or whatever. Well, turns out that the watch command does exactly that:

watch -n 10 ls -la file.name

Now, you were already aware of that, and have been using it for years, or it’s a completely new thing to you, and you’ll wonder why you never knew about it. Like teflon tape.

I now use this command several times a day, and can’t imagine how I put up with all that extra typing before. Right now, I’m using it to watch my firewall ruleset change as the spam pours in. The spammers seem extra busy this week.

First Grade

The little person starts First Grade tomorrow. She’s very excited about it, even to the point of wanting to go to bed an hour early so that she’ll be extra ready. I wish I had something to be excited about going to do on Monday. But, of course, I’m excited for her.

I warned her not to grow up too fast, or she’d be in big trouble, missy, and shook my finger menacingly at her. She giggled and said “Dad!” like only a little girl can. (Those of you with daughters can supply exactly the intonation, I’m sure!)

She really is wonderful, and I’m excited for all the adventures that she’s going to have this year.

Sound quality

I’ve had a set of computer speakers and subwoofer sitting in the closet for some time, waiting for when I have an office in which I can use them. I finally dragged them out this weekend and set them up in the place where I usually use my laptop. I figured I might as well be using them for something.

After a little experimentation, I’ve discovered that the headphone jack on my laptop is broken, and only sends signal in one channel unless you lean on one side of it. What genius thought it would be a good idea to put the headphone jack on the front of the laptop? (ie, facing one’s lap.) Seems to guarantee that if you actually use your laptop in your lap – like, say, while flying – you’ll break it.

So it turns out that my Palm Tungsten E produced better sound than my laptop, which seemed rather strange to me. So I’ve got my Tungsten plugged into these speakers and subwoofer, and listening to “Feedback” while working. The only trouble there is battery life.

Zeppelin

I’ve been listening to Early Days & Latter Days, which I picked up at Fry’s in Palo Alto. I guess I had forgotten quite how much Zep I listened to in high school and college. Lots and lots of memories in this music.

If it keeps on raining,
Levee’s going to break.
If it keeps on raining,
Levee’s going to break.
When the levee breaks,
I’ll have no place to stay.

I remember that being how we’d talk about the stress and workload, among other things. “If it keeps on raining …”, we’d say. And then, later, “All last night, sat on the leveee and moaned.”

Of course, Kashmir and Stairway have their own set of memories.

On a related note, I found that when I tried to play these CDs in the CD player software under Linux (whatever one that happened to be) it was unable to play it. Perhaps some kind of “copy protection”? Dunno. Worked fine one I ripped it to Ogg. I guess I’ll never actually listen to it from the physical media.

mod_rewrite Cookbook

Due in part to my frustration with the format of the Rewrite Guide, and in part to my desire to be writing, with, just maybe the hopes of someone publishing it some day, I’ve started working on the mod_rewrite Cookbook. Of course, there’s also a great deal of learning for me to do, and I tend to learn the most about stuff when I’m writing about it. I know, that may seem a little odd, but it’s true.

The Rewrite Guide was a great document, but over time, it has aged, grown to unmanageable size, and not kept up with the stylistic changes of the documentation or the particular rewrite questions that people are asking. So what we’re left with is a monolithic doc that’s hard to use, and lacks the most commonly-asked questions.

Maybe this is just an exercise for my own amusement, but I expect that at least someone will benefit from it, and I *know* that I will. I’ve already learned a number of things. And, of course, the real docs will benefit in some way out of this, even if not directly.

Why do you need that number?

Last night I went to an event at my daughter’s school, meeting people, filling out forms, and generally getting ready for the school year starting on Monday. One of the documents required my driver’s license number. Another required my social security number. I was reluctant to give either, generating a … *ahem* … discussion about why I was not trusting enough to provide those numbers.

The issue is so much more complex than trusting someone. There’s the complicated philosophical issue of privacy, and the equally complicated issue of identity theft. Where is this document going to be stored? How many people, and who, will have access to it? What is the data retention policy? How are these documents disposed of, if and when they are disposed of? I doubt that the school even *has* a data retention policy, let alone expecting anyone there last night knowing what it is.

Wandering around the classroom last night, I had access (without even turning over papers) to several social security numbers. With those numbers, I could obtain credit reports, mortgages, credit cards, or pretty much whatever I wanted, given time and a few interpersonal contacts.

So, 6 years from now (or whenever) will that file still be stored somewhere? Who will have access to it then? How much more computerized will the whole world be then? I suspect that the value of a social security number will only grow as we become more digital.

Is this all just baseless paranoia? How about you ask the 4.5% of Americans (Federal Trade Commission statistical survey) who were affected last year, to the tune of $4,500 apiece, not to mention the hassle and time involved. We’re not talking about someone stealing your wallet. We’re talking about someone being able to do stuff as you. And the more digital we become, the more serious that gets.

So this has almost nothing to do with trust, and everything to do with understanding that the world works differently than it did 20, or even 10, years ago. However, explaining all this to someone who is upset that I don’t trust them is not particularly easy.

No, I won’t move to LA

While at OSCon, I spoke with someone who was a representative for a company that I would really like to work for. People I know work there, and seem mostly happy. And it’s a cool/interesting company, with respect to technology usage. He was encouraging, but not so much that I could assume it was a done deal.

Well, I’m afraid I allowed myself to get my hopes up just a little too much, even though I knew it was, realistically, a long shot, given that I’m not willing to move out of central Kentucky. So when I spoke with him today, and they said that, unfortunately, they really needed people in LA, and they would keep me in mind for future positions, I was sorely disappointed.

Granted, life is not unpleasant, but I would still like to be working somewhere where I feel like I’m making a difference in the world, and where I’m actually doing something I’m really good at, as opposed to a job that I can do, but which doesn’t really require any particular skills that I’ve worked so hard to develop.

So, I’m not exactly depressed, but very disappointed. Maybe something will come up, and they’ll be able to use someone off site. I’ll try not to get my hopes up. The secret is keeping expectations low.