I just discovered that my hotel room has free ethernet. Drury Inn rocks, and don’t let anyone else tell you differently.
So, after checking my email (just 627 messages waiting for me!) I’m now sitting at a lovely indian restaurant waiting for tandoori murg. Most of the people here are indian, which is always a good sign. And they brought me a basket of complementary popadum. What more can one want?
Ah, here comes my food …
I went geocaching this evening, but was utterly unsucessful.
Geocaching in Chigago without having a car is a bad idea. The caches are too far apart. Now, I suppose that’s probably the case in any city, but it made me think that it would be a good thing to identify the places where visitors might be staying in Lexington, and try to make it so that they can find one or two caches within a 1 mile walk.
I probably walked 3 miles, and it was pretty dark by the time I got to my first intended target. But the nature reserve was closed, and, besides, it was DARK. I chose to go towards the higher concentration of caches, rather than going to the cache that was closest. That was probably a bad choice. But it looks like I won’t actually find any caches while I’m here. And that’s very disappointing.
Maybe, just maybe, I’ll go back out after dinner. I don’t know yet.
On the way back I found an Indian restaurant real close to here, and I’m going to go there after dinner.
I just got done writing up the TOC for a book proposal for a book that I’ll hopefully start writing next month. I’m pretty excited about it, which is really weird, coming off of working on Apache Cookbook for the last zillion months or so. But, strangely, I am. I won’t tell you what the book is called, right now, for a variety of reasons. But at the rate that I have sort of planned, it would be out sometime late spring 2004.
Training today was excellent. I have seldom attended training where I learned so much, where the content was presented so clearly, and where the instructor was so knowledgeable, and yet, at the same time, so willing to admit when he didn’t know the answer. Symantec earns my vote of confidence in their training.
And, despite the fact that I wasn’t officially registered for the class, I was able to sit in on it. And this actually worked out pretty well, as I shared a workstation with another student, and we were able to have some decent discussions of the product, as well as helping one another out with problems encountered.
OK, time to go get some Indian food.
Sitting in the training room in Chicago. Turns out that although we are training on a networked device which provides internet security, we don’t actually have an internet connection here, so I can neither check my email, blog, nor, which is most distressing, get on IRC. Sitting through a training class without having IRC to distract me will be quite a feat.
I’m here for training on the Symantec Gateway Security 5400 Series. I don’t know what that is. Hopefully, within the next two days I’ll find out.
So, anyways, the trip up here was largely uneventful. Just two things stick out from the experience. Ok, three. I forgot one.
Sitting in the Lexington airport was a *little* more interesting this time. In the past I have flown when the business travellers aren’t there, so the wireless network is quiet. This time, it was midafternoon on a Monday, so the business travellers were out in force. Also, I had
better tools this time.
A quick scan showed that there were 3 other people using the wireless. Of those, 2 were alarmingly insecure Windows machines. Unfortunately, one of them shut down and got on a plane shortly after I found him. The other was a laptop named “Patti & Tim’s Cool Laptop”. Patti & Tim, if you’re reading, you may want to consider locking down your file shares just a little bit more, or, at the very least, changing your administrator password so that it is no longer “administrator”.
No, I didn’t do anything illegal, immoral, or unethical. I suppose that someone may be able to construe it as “breaking and entering” when I left a friendly note for Patti & Tim, encouraging them to not use wireless networking until they had installed Zone Alarm. But I felt that
it was neighborly.
The next memorable thing was the guy sitting behind me on the plane. He was out to impress somebody, and he kept getting louder and louder as we travelled. Fortunately, the flight was only an hour. Apparently he managed some kind of manufacturing plants around the world. Notably in
Sao Paulo, and all over China. I learned that the rivers in Sao Paulo are exactly the same as the sludge in an American sewage treatment plant. And I learned that every business in China is composed of thieves. This guy seemed to be the classic example of the famed Ugly American, and I was glad not to be sitting next to him. Apparently he had some chip on his shoulder about someone bootlegging a product that his company made, and he was determined that every business in the world was a part of this fraud. Every one but his own, of course.
Finally, I was very impressed by the gentleman that drove the van that took me to the hotel. I did not ask him where he was from, but it was some middle-east country. He’s Visual Basic programmer, and has been in the country just a few months. He’s trying to get himself established, and make a little money, so that he can start seriously looking for a
programming job. I am always impressed by the work ethic of recent immigrants, as opposed to that of the rest of us. It is a tragedy how may of these folks end up trapped driving taxis, mopping floors, and working as attendants in nursing homes. Yes, I know, I’m supposed to want to retain the good jobs for Americans. But it’s guys like this, with dreams and ambitions, that I want to call Americans. Not to overglorify someone I don’t even know, but this is the sort of guy that made this nation great, and we do ourselves a great disservice by making it hard for guys like this to make their way here.
When I encounter folks like this, I’m always reminded of a customer that I wasted an enormous amount of my time and talent on – [NAME OMMITTED DUE TO BETTER JUDGEMENT] – an organization dedicated to denying this gentleman the priveleges and advantages of our country. They may have had a good point at some time in their history (not that I know what that would have been) but they have developed into outspoken bigots demanding that they are not bigots. They are, they claim, anti-immigration, not anti-immigrant. It becomes a very hard distinction to make, and I’m not sure it’s even possible.
Anyways, I’m just writing on and on because I don’t have a network connection, so I should probably shut up.
Oh, one more thing. I just discovered that I’m not actually signed up for this class. So apparently I’m just going to watch over someone’s shoulder. Or just sit in the back here somewhere. I’m not sure who dropped the ball on this.
I wanted to mention that November 8 was the feast of Saint Tysilio (or Suliau), Abbot of Meifod. He lived in the 7th Century, or thereabouts, and ended up in Brittany, near Saint-Malo. That’s about all I know about him. However, I encoutered his name many years ago, although I was not aware of it at the time.
You see, there’s a tiny town in Wales by the name of Llanfairpwllgwyngyll, which means “The Church of Mary of White Hazel Pool.” In the 19th century, a church was built there, called the church of Tysilio, or, in welsh, Llantysilio. After the church was built, the name of the town was changed to reflect this. The new name of the town is Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, making it the longest place name in the world. The bit that was added means “quite near the rapid whirlpool, the church of Tysilio under a red cave.” (Yes, those 4 Ls in a row are correct.)
I remember an entry in the Guiness Book of World Records, showing the railroad station sign for this town, and also showing the railroad tickets for this town, which were printed an extra-large size.
The Oxford Companion to the Year, where I learned that yesterday was Saint Tysilio’s feast, notes that there’s also a smal gift ship nearby called Ysiopfachgardiauwrthybontdrosyrafonddyfrdwyynllangollen, which means “The little card shop by the bridge over the river Dee in Llangollen.”
This afternoon Sarah and I went out to a birthday party at the Lang residence. The wind was just about perfect, and we flew kites. I had three kites up. Actually, various small kids, most of whom I didn’t know, were flying two of my kites at any given time. One of them will likely never recover from the experience. 😉
My big kite, which has been out of commission with a broken back for more than a year, got to fly today, and I got it pretty high up. There was hardly any wind at the ground, but up high it was tugging fairly good. It was a lot of fun. I wish I’d gotten around to fixing it earlier.
At the end of the evening, the ENORMOUS pink full moon rushed up over the horizon just as the sun was setting on the opposite side of the world, and it was absolutely gorgeous.
“Dear God, whose name I do not know, thank you for my life. I forgot how big . . . thank you for my life.” (Joe vs the Volcano)
I’m just about ready to start my two weeks of travels. Nothing compared to Ken’s whirled tour, but quite a bit for me.
Tomorrow afternoon I leave for Chicago for two days of training at Symantec. Don’t tell my boss, but I really have very little idea what I’m going to be trained on.
I get back Wednesday night, and then I leave Friday morning for ApacheCon in Lost Wages, NV. I’m really looking forward to ApacheCon this year. It’s going to be an awesome conference, and if you haven’t signed up yet, there’s still time. Especially don’t forget to sign up for the tutorials, which will all be excellent.
</shameless plug>
As I remarked in response to BrBourbon’s comments about history, I’m not sure that it’s legitimate to trace so much of human history to any one event. And, after a little more discussion on IRC, he encouraged me to write a little bit about Chaos Theory, as well as some of the other topics that we touched on.
Chaos theory, at its core, is amazingly simple. It says that when you change something small, it’s possible that it will have big consequences. The technical term is something like “sensitive dependence on initial conditions”, but that’s the basic idea. It can be explained by this poem:
For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
The origins of this poem are unknown. The idea is that a thoughtless act can have enormous consequences, but the basics of Chaos Theory lie in these simple lines. A small change in initial conditions (nail vs no nail) have large consequences (kingdom vs no kingdom). But who is to say that the kingdom would have been won if the nail had not been lost? Even the simplest human equations depend on thousands of variables, many of which we are unable to ever know the values for.
I suggested, for example, that the variety of bean planted by a farmer in his field in the spring of AD328 may have been just as relevant to our current society as was the signing of the Magna Carta, or the outcome of the war of 1812. Perhaps more so, since it has had more time to percolate. And because of the complexity of the system, and the fact that historians only record those events that seem important at the time, we can never know how important that event really was.
So, I posit that trying to trace everything about our attitudes today, back to some source event in the past, is a *VERY* useful exercise, but is necessarily doomed to arrive at only a partial answer. At the very best.
For additional reading on Chaos, I recommend James Glick’s book, which makes the whole topic accessible to non-scientists.
The next time you look at CNN.com, or any other web site afilliated with Time magazine, look for the ads for the magazine. The message “Click Here to try 4 Free Trial Issues of Time!” appears next to a recent cover, which shows a kid with drugs. Yeah, it’s an article about kids taking too many prescription drugs. But it struck me as funny in a sort of “the first 4 are free” kind of way.
I’ve spent the last hour trying to find a functional webdav client for Windows, and I guess I have determined that there isn’t one. If someone would demonstrate that I am mistaken, I’d be much obliged. I’m running Win98 (because that’s what CDs I have, that’s why. No, I won’t upgrade to WinXP. Because I’m *NOT* paying for an OS ever again, that’s why.)
I just got done with the enormously frustrating installation of DAVExplorer. It was frustrating because I had to make guesses as to the dependencies, and then, when I ended up on the Sun web site, I had to chase links to find the actual file to download. Why can’t these Java people just give me something to download and install? With all the JREs and JDKs and JSEs and who knows what else, I never know what it is that I actually have to install to get one of these darned Java apps installed and working. And when I do get it installed, they never actually work as advertised. It’s little comfort that they are platform independent when they don’t work.
OK, so I got it installed, and it turns out that it does what the name says, and NOTHING ELSE. I can see DAV repositories. I can see the files in them. I can’t actually download them, edit them, or anything else that would be actually useful. What is the point of this thing, other than to tease and annoy me?
Is there seriously *no* Windows DAV client? This seems really odd. It’s not like the protocol is that complicated.
I’ve replaced FTP with DAV on my web servers because people with *real* operating systems can get functioning DAV clients to edit the content. But it appears that Windows users are just out in the cold. Having read that Windows XP, or perhaps Windows 2000, and maybe Windows 9x with IE6 installed, could access DAV shares, I thought that they would be able to do this. But on the server I see requests for _vti_bin and other such nonsense, and then the DAV “client” says that it’s not a valid “web folder.” I venture to say that it’s not a valid DAV client. Standards are there for a reason.
OK, I’m done ranting.
Last night I saw two silent movies at the Kentucky Theater. The Haunted House, starring Buster Keaton, and The Unknown, starring Lon Chaney.
I was misinformed, and the Kentucky does *not* have the original Wirlitzer. This showing was part of a fundraiser to restore the original Wirlitzer and reinstall it. They have all the pieces, and they are currently in a store room at the Singletary Center for the Arts. It’s going to cost about $650,000 to restore it, and once restored, it will be one of just 46 operating cinema organs in the world. Pretty cool.
But they did have an organ, and an organist to accompany the movie, so it was almost like the real thing. The Chaney movie was very very odd, with a deeply convoluted and confusing plot. But with the silent movie format, you didn’t actually have much dialog to rely on, just the inter-scene dialog panels, and some panels with plot explanations. It’s a very interesting format.
