Anyhow, for those who want to promote such a schism, here you go. Ever since moving to Wordpress eons ago, that has been something anyone can look at, and I give it to you now, formally. That link, and its associated feed, will just show you what I’ved categorized as “work”. Nothing about my politics. Nothing about my railing on those who can’t subtract. No insights about the economy… Well, less of it, anyhow.

While I’m not going to manifest split-personalities to accomodate the few who care about some of the things I have to say and not others, you’re certainly welcome to read items categorized relevantly to what you care about.

The set was a phenomenal mix of their traditional covers as well as their new material; the crowd the normal Canadian boisterous bunch; and the experience was truly priceless. Having flirted with the band briefly in 2001, not really enjoying their music much, I’m happy to see they’ve “grown up”: A little compromise here and there has led to a full-time drummer and touring vocalist, which completely changes their color and the duration I can listen to three-to-four cellos without wanting to behead myself.

Yeah, cellos. Go listen. I would, but I’m still deaf from last night.

- I turned 30 on May 1st, and spent the day on Haystack, as I frequently do. I actually brought my tripod up to take some panoramas. They didn’t turn out as I hoped, so they’re not there. Great day, though. Man I love that mountain. It’s perfect for a day trip. Perfect.

- Mother’s Day was spent at Bog River Flow, Castle Rock, and Buttermilk Falls.

- Took an abbreviated vacation to CT and RI in the beginning of June. Went to Block Island which was supercool.

- Dad’s Day was back to the Blue Mountain Lake area, and a trip to the Adirondack Museum. I’m still super-proud of an amazing butterfly pic I took while there.

- This past weekend (4th of July) I went to Toronto to visit the Zoo and the Royal Ontario Museum which had a return of the dinos, and a really great Darwin exhibit. Great shot of a tiger, and a couple postcard-grade shots of the CN Tower/Skydome from Lake Ontario.

I quote “up” because not everyone agrees that moving out of “entry level” is “up”, and that’s okay too.

This ComputerWorld op-ed presents, sort of, both sides of the possible death trap.

As a consultant who frequently advises clients on hiring and vets candidates, there is a singular person who I love to see: The person in a forgivably-undervalued position, who is a sponge for learning, and takes it upon themselves to keep learning and playing and building their technology portfolio and skills, who wants to step up and take a swing at the next level. No whining that “my previous employments haven’t given me the opportunity to do X” or “at my last job we were all Z, so I never had a chance to play with Y”. I want to hear “My job isn’t challenging, I’ve been doing X and Y nights and weekends and really would like a shot applying what I’ve grown from a hobby”. THAT’S the difference between someone who gets “dead ended” and someone who doesn’t, regardless of their industry.

My closest colleague in my present position has a degree in History, and was hired with hobbyist-grade Linux experience and a couple graduate-level courses in programming and systems behind him (and an MSIT, but that didn’t win any points ). A few years later he’s had a series of promotions and now runs server operations for 50ish Linux systems. He’s one of the few people on Earth I can trust to take on a challenge and see it through. Why? Because he doesn’t sit around and try to keep status quo. He’s unhappy with inefficiency and wants to make things better, himself included.

I, personally, have laughably little formal training of any kind in any technology. I learn – incessantly – what I need to do my job and what everyone else needs to do theirs (other technologists, economists, politicians, sociologists, psychologists, theologists, biologists, etc. etc. etc.). There are some things that don’t interest me at all (accounting, for example) and as such know absolutely nothing useful about those things- but those are never arenas I will ever want to work in, so it’ll be okay.

I don’t care about the letters you can put after your name, or where you come from: I care about you looking me in the eye and saying “I want to do something better, I’ve demonstrated that I believe I can do it, and I’m willing to step up and swing: Hit or Strike.”

Your career path will be what you make of it, if you’re willing to do what it takes to get there.

This isn’t horribly surprising. While never a shopper there, I too have had a credit card that I handed to someone imprinted.

How does this happen? It’s pretty easy. Remember carbon paper? Anyone with some carbon paper behind the desk can quickly press your card against the clean side, and have an image on the paper underneath. That’s the low-tech way. The high-tech way required about $45 in electronic parts, reads the card when you swipe it, saves it, and THEN passes it on to the “real” reader to send off and be validated. Either way, the customer, unless very alert, will never know. I may know someone who attached similar things to ATM machines back in the mid-90’s as well, demonstrating how it can be done without _anyone_, the customer or the employees, to even realize it occurs.

Why? Trust. We inherently trust people we meet. They smile, we hand over plastic, they fiddle with it and hand it back with a smile. We trust. After all, they work at a brick-and-mortar store, and it’s the Evil Internet we have to be afraid of, right?

So what can we do? You can curl up into the fetal position and be afraid of everything and everyone, or you can merely be skeptical and continue to live your life. Keep an eye on your credit card instead of handing it over and then turn around to continue gabbing with the 8 people you’re buying shoes with. Look at the thing that’s swiping your card: Does it look normal? Keep an eye on your statements- Amazingly the lionshare of victims like this don’t even realize until the police call them because they’ve found their credit card number, because a surprisingly large number of people don’t review their credit card statements: They buy 400 pairs of shoes a month and don’t even notice a some other purchases at stores they’ve never heard of, or a TV… They just pay the big bold number and move on.

Security is not easy. Security sure as Hell isn’t fun (as someone who does it for a living, it’s even LESS fun for me). But security isn’t just “my” job, it’s everyone’s job. It’s your job to notice when someone does something unscrupulous. Sure, you can whine about it later, or feel violated, but be vigilant- Catch the fuckers who abuse your trust.

People who, by-in-large, have never USED it. I work with people who have never touched Vista (or barely) and gripe and moan about it. That’s like me griping and moaning about .. oh, I don’t know .. a Kyocera copier. I’ve never used a Kyocera copier. I’m sure I could drudge up arguments on the Internet that they’re horrible if I felt like it… Just like the pundits do with anything else.

I’m not defending Vista, nor claiming it to be “better” than XP. But USE it. USE IT. BEFORE you spout off about this or that.

Does Apple still sell or release updates for MacOS 9?

Does IBM still sell or support the PS/2?

Nope. These companies are businesses. They do what they do, and it’s up to the market to either reward them, or punish them, for the decisions they make.

If you don’t “like” Vista (because you’ve probably never used it, just engaged in Internet mobthink), then go get a Mac. Or use OS/2. Or Linux.

You’ll still have plenty of things to ignorantly complain about, to be sure.

• OpenFiler a really sweet SAN/NAS manager.
• Xen 3.0 is lightyears better than its predecessor. I don’t having it running on VT hardware yet, but soon.
  • oVirt has a good handle on distributed datacenter virtual server management
  • Cobbler takes the pain out of install-chain management
  • Virt-Manager is… ridiculous. I love it. I’ve built doms, cloned doms, moved them around… Stupid cool.
  • Con-Virt has only had about an hour of face time with me so far, but it’s essentially Virt-Manager .. engorged. Looks very promising for a TLM solution.

CNN’s amazing graph of delegates (right), has McCain, who has less delegates than Hillary – let alone Barak – nearly twice as “high” as them.  Now I understand that the Conservative Cable News Network has their opinions on things, and that’s fine, but to pervert a simple number graph like this is… well… disturbing.

I  do understand that one parties delegates has nothing to do with the other – I understand, very well, how the process works – and to me the graph changes nothing about my thoughts on the primaries, nor on the resultant Presidential race. But to the unfortunately large number of people out there who think that Mike Huckabee owns Kentucky Fried Chicken and Barak Obama is a Christian-hating Muslim who took the oath of office on a Koran, this graph may actually impact their opinions.

But probably not. I just thought it was very odd how the graph was biased.