You know I got this job you see and unlike the two previous jobs I was told I had to use a Windows laptop and could not put linux on it.

They gave me a sparc workstation so I did not have the real horsepower to run most of the blastwave.org packages.

I was stuck on a Windows workstation working in a world of Unix.

After getting used to it for a year and sticking with RH9 through two incarnations of Fedore Core, I took the dive. My home laptop needed an upgrade and Fedora Core 3 would be it.

So, I went through the linux installation which was cute and nice and boring. I did not have the diskspace for an upgrade so re-installed over my root partition but left my /home partition alone of course. I got the blank screen but specified my resolution of the undetected LCD and all was well. Linux installs usually take up too much of any review and its always boring because in many ways its easier to install Linux than Windows but who cares. Most people never install a new or upgrade an OS on their home box so its a disingenous arguement to begin with.

The real key is the post-installation and three great gripes most Fedora users have:

1. No mp3 support, java and loads of other desktop crap users want.

2. No 3-D acceleration on some ATI cards.

3. No frickin' menu editing.

You know the first one is not a great big fat hairy deal to me know. It use to be something of a search but not anymore to get all the stuff "missing" from Fedora that usually is commonly installed on other distros.

http://www.fedorafaq.org/ Fedora Faq

Fedora Faq was a step by step pretty damn painless guide for me. Updating my packages through yum and following this Faq was painless and I had everything I ever needed to rock and roll with mp3 support, mplayer and java for example. The only thing I was missing were the win32 codecs for mplayer but that was simple to get.

The toughest part was something particular to me and my stupidity. Always consult Hardware Compatibility Lists before buying hardware if you use linux, period. I had to snag the madwifi drivers for m Netgear pcmcia wireless card. I can follow freaking instructions so getting it to work was pretty much reading and following directions.

Ok, on reboots and restarts with RH9 and such I had to reseat my pcmcia card before the usb hotplugging to recognize the card and the network settings to work. No such problems in Fedora Core 3. So upgrading has a bonus.

Being a Unix sysadmin I am not afraid of the command line and I am not scared to update via yum which I really kind of like but I miss a Synaptic style interface frankly. Of course ask and it shall be delivered. I found gyum which is barebones but hell it works. This should damn well come standard.

I find it somewhat annoying that RedHat disables DMA by default. But that is easy enough to fix.

The one thing is that this puppy Fedora Core 3 is sooo much faster than RH 9. I don't know if its the pre-linking or the new kernel or what. But it feels a hell of a lot snappier.

Evolution is really cool but the pre-filters slow pop3 downloads like mad and I disabled that crap. Suddenly getting my mail is 5x faster. Wow.

Firefox rocks as a browser choice and I usually like Epiphany.

I was understanding when RH 8 had not menu editing. I was annoyed when RH 9 did not. Now I am just pissed off. The Nautilus method of menu editing is not perfect or quite a reliable as KDE but even the KDE way has issues sometimes. It did work with a few bugs and pretty well if I remember right from the old Ximian Desktop 2 on my Suse 9 box I had at work at my last place.

Silly crap is what it is. I have to give Fedora props though it has not driven me nuts and I have yet to edit a desktop file with vi as root.

Why?

Unlike Suse that takes an everything and the kitchen sink approach or XD2 that stripped too much from the menus Fedora really sets up the menus very, very well.

Even though I know how to switch back to the browser version of Nautilus I am trying the spatial view and frankly it needs a shortcuts sidebar all Mac OS X finder style. Without that sort of thing navigating with Nautilus is kind of a pain of windows everywhere.

Network browsing worked as well as XD2. I liked the new changes for gnome 2.8 for handling media which is nice.

One of the few things outside of the minor desktop bits that seperate distros are the system tools. I really like RH's simple one tool for one config issue approach. While I would like a control center (Gnome kind of had one with start-here frankly if distros took advantage of it) the menu entries are so much better in their structure between Server/System Tools and such than say the contorted mess of Windows throwing everything in one place.

I know that Fedora can not be held responsible for X org intros of issues with the ATI stuff. But I did find that my particular ATI card the old piece of crap it is does work with 3-D acceleration btw, I just had the color depth set to high. So someone please find the time to come over and whack my silly self with a clue stick.

I love the updates that so many diversified projects have included from the latest version of gaim to the simple integrated grace of Rhythmbox back to the updates of Evolution. I had to install Abiword and gnmeric. Very surprised at the great amount of progress in Abiword. It finally handles the Word version of my resume correctly.

Though it is both the polish and speed that hits about Core 3. The graphical login is good and not completely useless slow crap that the preview stuff I saw in RH9. The desktop background is just kind of blah but the login and the general Bluecurve tweak. Very polished.

All the graphical tools well the stuff for users or samba and all the things I use have progressed. They have not made huge leaps and bounds but they have progressed.

The most frustrating side is this distro is on the edge of being one of the most professional and well put together distros ever but annoyances abound. Little things that poke you in the gut at every turn.

I like Fedora or RH or whatever. I have for awhile but that does not mean that I blind to its issues.

Something I sent to Zdnet ages ago.

I fully agree that corporate America will not and probably should not switch over entirely from Windows. However, there is a very viable niche market that few Linux distros have even bothered to pursue.

Say you run a shop where you program for a Unix platform, or maybe you have a large group of systems and network engineers that spend all day on the Unix command line.

They log onto their Windows NT machines and proceed to spend 90 percent of their day stuck inside an Exceed session or at the telnet or SSH client command line. Maybe the situation is even worse where you work with corporate IT spending money for a group of engineers or developers to have a Windows NT machine and a Unix workstation as well running two boxes out of the same cube.

If there was no market for these people, Exceed and other companies doing the same thing would go out of business. In addition, commercial Unix manufacturers would stop making workstation configurations all together. They have not.

The real market for the Linux desktop in corporate America are these people stuck spending 90 percent of their day in Unix on top of Windows or with two machines.

So, what is the solution?

A fast Intel box running Linux (SuSE is a great end-user distro) with KDE 3.0 (a really sweet desktop environment) with CrossOver Office for running Winword when the project manager sends them that complicated template with embedded graphs and images that even StarOffice chokes on.

The real key for Linux distro makers is to stop thinking of the operating system as a commercial Unix product or, worse, as a end-user Windows-style product.

MacOSX in its now BSD glory gives Linux a clue to where its head should be in viewing itself:

        * Base layer--kernel, file system, and command line innards.

        * Compatibility layer--all the Wine tools needed to run MS-Office or other programs right out of the box.

        * Interface layer--an integrated desktop environment where everything, including all system tools, have the same look and feel. (SuSE almost has this right with even its Yast2 tools available from the KDE Control Panel.)

When Linux companies stop thinking about the OS simply being the base layer with all the rest of the pieces as being simply add-ons for the adventurous, then and only then will there be a true Linux desktop choice for the masses.

Until then, it would benefit many companies that make extensive use of Unix in their IT environment to start looking at Linux for their Unix developers and sysadmins tired of living in two conflicting worlds.

Advanced video
urgency, quality
done now teamwork
cheer, cheer
blah, blah....

Business complicated
Responsibility = blamestorming
new perspective, re-hire
clear house, fuck you
sell customers
sell to customer
blah, blah....

New eyes, stab out old
with cheap silverware
dinner forks in a hotel,
in a meeting
blah, blah, blah...

Creative, intellectual
live in a cube
Think out of the box
blah...
fucking
blah....

Its a moment that
I hear myself dreaming
out loud again
I should stop that shit
because after all man
It don't mean
that I know nothing here
where the world
sleeps loud and snoring
drifting bits of
random meaning dragged
off by the scruff
of my own neck bleeding
little stings thin
pencil like cuts of my
own semblence of
what I want to think is
just another bit
of a harsh reality that
bitch slaps the
sense back into me and
I say now that
I have to stop that scheming
of the dreaming
out loud to myself again.

A lowcountry boil sits
in the pot and the smell
of the crawfish and
the seasonings burn
your nose and the
cornbread rises
in endless ovens
across the reach of
your mind and the biscuits
call for the buttermilk
and the BBQ sauce has
the tang of vinegar
and broken dreams
of sharecropper hopes
out here on the edge
of the collard greens
and sweet corn with
the hog's head still bobbing
in the brunswick stew
here in the pine tree
wastelands and the
lovely pastel Charleston
streets houses float
out there like the
delusions made as the
rain tinkles down endless
on top of the tin roofs of
Mississippi Mud Pie dreams
Where is my shotgun shack gone?
Where are the bluegrass delta-blues
elation of getting out of the
dreamy hell of the oppresive
heat of the pit of the place
that I left so long ago.

Punk was to me at 18
Spiked hair and ripped t-shirts
Old Chucks and Vans
Punk was defined as much
by what it was not
There was no glam or long hair
except for the Ramones
special exceptions have to made
Ripping guitars without
always needing a solo
Yelling into the throes
without needed the range
of a opera singer and without
the theater of the metal bands
It was to hear the hardcore
without the metalhead hype
Sitting back wearing the Docs
Flying the flannel and
making fun of the hippies
and the jocks at the same
time.

Jamming econo style with
busted instruments
but still putting the heart
to the anger and the fun
back into screaming "fuck you all."
into the mic and understanding
new wave was selling out.

It became to less and less
about the colored hair
and more about the attitude
of laughing at your own
suburban punk screw off angst.

Well, its not just ABB (Anybody but Bush).

Kerry is not as liberal as Kuicinch or Nader that is for sure.

However, Kerry is more liberal than Clinton, Lieberbush, or the way the DLC ran Gore the last time.

After all, the idea of changing NAFTA has entered from the fringe of political discussion into the national debate. He has said he will not back the FTAA.

The idea of National Healthcare has entered back into the National debate in a way Gore would not approach last time.

We are now talking about a program of National Service where kids can get money for college WITHOUT having to carry a gun.

Kerry will not take a unilateral piss on our allies in his approach to foreign relations.

He will protect a woman's right to choose.

He has pledged to lift the gag order Bush enacted on family clinics.

He will fight for real environmental legislation instead of Orwellian giveaways to the corporate powers that be.

He has pledged to let the Patriot Act lapse.

He will take away the tax benefits for corporations that ship jobs overseas.

He has pledged to close corporate tax loopholes.

He wants to get rid of the tax cuts for the wealthy and stop the deficit leak.

He wants to fight for strong enforcement of Civil Rights Laws listing the ADA and reversing Buckhannon which makes enforcement of all Civil Rights laws difficult.

He will fully fund Head Start. (really important never been funded right)

He wants a College Opportunity Tax Credit to help people to be able to afford college.

He is the first national candidate to not only talk about cleaner fuels and reducing our dependence on foreign oil but to actually talk about loosing ourselves from the "demon oil."

He has a 90% lifetime record of voting with the AFL/CIO and stands beside the base of organized labor. He does not demonize workers and their unions.

This is a man who can change his mind and makes an informed decision.

Ok, I watched SLC punk last night and saw a lot of my own experiences in it.

I began to think. Am I that much different?

I grew up in a small Southeast Ga town raised pretty much by my grandparents.

I was a white suburban punk trapped in a rural hell.

I wanted out so bad.

After college I started teaching in Atlanta. I had to go back home because I ended up in so much debt doing Substitute teaching and listening to asshole Principals laugh when I told them I was a male History teacher with no coaching experience. I was a dime a dozen trying to get in teaching Secondary Ed Social Studies.

I had the flannel and the tatoos and I hung out at the 40-watt club and I smoked the shit on the front porch of my buddies house making Low Country Boil and drinking Rolling Rock.

I wanted out again so bad.

So, I went to paralegal school thinking that I had the research experience with my history degree and ended up oddly enough getting hired doing computer tech support for a software company that made software for you guessed it lawyers.

I even met a woman I love and we got married.

We love each other and we had a child.

So, there I sat with a kid in the asshole Burbs of Atlanta hating everything about the place I lived.

Sure, I gave to progressive organizations and I fought and campaigned and did my part. Or at least I like to think I did.

Sure, I never owned the BMW but I did like Iced Lattes and could not help look back on pictures of me with spiked hair and ripped t-shirts and my old black Chucks thinking was I becoming one of those fucks I hated?

I hopped around jobs like everyone in the tech world has to right before the layoffs come down or the funding runs out. It is the way of things. But at least I like what I do. I dick around with computers and after the manager promotion went back to tech Unix Sys Admin role quick because I hated it. But still I wondered if I was becoming just another asshole.

When CNN where I worked looked like they were going to cut after the AOL merger, I jumped to Northern VA. I hated the idea but my wife was practical and right. Where the hell has the tech jobs and great school systems? Did I really want to send my kid to a private school so they could get an education?

So we moved and I worked for a defense company but in their business not weapons divisions. I still felt dirty. I hated it and I got out and work for a cable company doing work on the VoIP team as a Unix Sys Admin.

Still, I sit in a big house in Northern Va, richie territory. I still ain't got the BMW but my wife has a Volvo station wagon. I have an old Honda.

I still wear Vans and listen to hardcore punk.

But am I just another old fart sold out?

Am I just organizing and contributing to Dem and other orgs to soothe my feelings of guilt?

As I sit here I cannot say I am truly that unhappy. I have a good job, two great kids and a loving wife. I have a roof over my head. The only thing that really irks the crap out of me is the boring suburban hole I live in.

Why the fuck does it take so much money now for me to give a life to my kids that I would not feel ashamed of if I compared it to the life my grandfather gave me?

I don't know anymore.

We have to come up with the vision. Remember the contract on America that the Repubs used during the Republican Revolution? We need our own manifesto for the future.

Kuicinch may feel too much like Dukakis for my tastes. However, he has something right when he states that some libertarians, reform party, greens and other outside forces in American politics can be wooed to a Dem candidate with a unified vision of America and its future.

Here are set of my core political beliefs. I have taken these beliefs and attempted to build a real platform out of them. I propose that a platform of change around these ideals could appeal to all of America. The real key is to reclaim the language of debate and find a new progressive populist voice forged around our beliefs.

1. I believe the Government has a duty to regulate the power of corporations when the corporate interests conflict with public interests. In a capitalist society you have to work with business interests but you cannot be whores to them. When the rubber meets the road and the public interest is at stake then the citizen's interests must be preserved.

2. I believe that the full protection of the Bill of Rights outlined in the Constitution should not be curtailed. Repeal the Patriot's Act and keep government out of the bedrooms and out of the business of trying to dictate behavior and speech.

3. I believe in a woman's right to choose. It is not the government's place to regulate procreation.

4. I believe that universal healthcare is a moral imperitive and can benefit both the public and the corporate structure of this country. This can be a great benefit to both the public and business interests in America. Free up the HR departments from having to worry over healthcare and you free up an incredible amount of money into the economy. With that kind of money back into the economy insuring the uninsured with pay huge dividends in increased productivity in the end. I see a single-payer system with plenty of options much like what is available to the feds right now. However, I am open to all options that meet the requirements of universal healthcare.

5. I believe in the seperation of church and state and that public money should not go to fund religious organizations.

6. I believe in the social safety net. I believe that government can give a hand up and not just a hand out. The real issue is connecting people with jobs in the private sector. The real issue is retraining and getting people to the available jobs in their areas. Moreover, the biggest issue is figuring out how to prevent single moms from having to choose between providing for their families and abandoning their children. A workfare system with a system of available childcare, retraining programs that work with local businesses and job networking systems that focus on the local employeement needs.

7. I believe in proper education funding. Focusing on the schools in the most need is crucial and accountability for performance is important as well. There can be no more unfunded mandates. We must have the guts to put our money where our mouth is. The money has to be connected to results but the idea of results without proper funding is a self-fullfilling prophecy of doom.

8. I believe in morality in foreign policy. Too often, being pragmatic has turned to being opportunistic and bullying. In the end, we always pay for it. We have to frame our actions within the insititution of the UN and embrace our allies. We do not have to take a weak hats in our hand approach but that is not the same as being arrogant and unilateral in our actions. We have to have a policy that understand the role of diplomacy and action.

9. I believe in protecting the environment and this can be done without being proxies for industry and without destroying industry. Any progress toward a cleaner environment has to involve business interests as well as environmental groups. A balanced well thought out approach is the answer here. When the business interests work with government and play fair -- praise them (this is tough for some of us) but you have to give them the chance. This is the noose of a chance that every polluter will have the opportunity to hang themselves on. Play the game or pay big. Enforce the laws on the books with a vengence. Come up with a list of the best companies and the worst and make it a huge public affair. Take down the punks and praise those who try to do right.

10. Fiscal responsibility is key. We have to balance the budget. The borrow and spend Republicans are giving away the future for short term economic gains. We have to repeal the giveaways to the rich. We have to move the country forward toward the goal of a balanced budget. The tax cuts for the working and middle class were warranted but they were a smoke screen for other people in the highest tax brackets who did NOT want to pay their fair share. A total reform of the tax structure, simplification of the rules and the cutting of loopholes for the wealthy are needed immediately.

11. Gun safety laws need to be strengthened but a ban on firearms is not practical or workable. This is the kind of talk that soothes the hunters and brings out the harsh nuts and exposes them for the idiots they are.

12. Corporate welfare should end. It is not the government's job in a capitalist society to bail out or give aid to failing corporations. Target the worst of the pork belley giveaways to the richest corporations and make it a reform based media event. Plug this constantly along with the next point.

13. Small business initiatives that promote competition in a free market society is not the same thing as corporate welfare and should endure to promote the ideals of small business owners.

14. I believe in a military strong enough to defend the nation. A two-pronged approach to the military is needed. Weed out waste and give over better benefits to the men in the ranks. We all know there is waste in the current defense budget. This is the only way to cut down defense spending without looking weak. You highlight the cuts as unpatriotic wastes of the taxpayer dollars. You give back at least 50% of all the cuts back to the common soldiers and the vets that have given so much.

15. Independence from non-renewable energy sources should be a national goal with a set of real deadlines. A real energy policy that focuses on getting America away from the dependency on foreign oil and onto the path of using renewable resources is an idea who's time as come. We cannot simply give away more money to energy companies and destroy our national wildlife heritage. That is not the way. Initiatives and grants aimed at promoting new ideas and technologies is the real winning plan. These are the technologies that can put America businesses on top in the long term and preserve our nation's treasured resources.

16. I believe in a worker's right to organize and collectively bargain. Any law that would take away over-time benefits or prevent the rights of workers to collectively bargain must be stopped. The minimum wage must be expanded. Illegal union busting tactics must be stopped. The business of America is business but the core of business is built on the initiative, work, sweat and pride of the American worker.

Listen I have lived in the South my whole life. Dems lose by closer margins in the South than in many other Republican dominated areas.

So, how can a Progressive Dem politico win in the South. Do some research about the governor race in LA and look at Mark Warner and then think about these points.

Listen you admit you are for a woman's right to choose and then shut up. The fundies will not vote for you anyway.

You are for hunters. Half of your PR photos in the South be you with a shotgun in your hand beside a nascar racing car.

Pump up the volume on tax credits for the working poor and closing loopholes for those rich folks who don't want to pay their taxes.

You talk about conserving nature for future generations of kids to enjoy. Talk about keeping the water clean to fish in and places for people to hunt.

Talk about connecting people to jobs. Getting folks off of welfare and into the workforce in a real way, a compassionate way. Dumping folks with no hope just makes no sense.

Talk about targetting education spending to those rural schools that have been left out and unfunded for too long.

Talk about small business initiatives and getting tough with corporations that want to run rough-shod over the small towns.

Talk about helping out family farmers with loans and subsidies to protect them because all the foreign farmers are protected the same way.

Talk about fiscal responsibilty and the need for the government to pay its bills and not borrow and spend its way into debt.

Wrap yourself up in the Bill of Rights and talk about getting government out of their personal lives.

You wrap progressive politics around a populist voice.

If you want examples look up Mike Warner's campaign in VA. He aimed his message at the people and in a Repuke dominated state came up tops.

Well, I have a new job.

Here is the odd part. I am actually proud of our product. I work for a broadband ISP that has won two JD Powers awards and comes up every year rated #1 in at least a couple of the PC mags.

This is really weird for me. I am use to seeing the final product in a corporate environment as either decent or badly engineered or poor from a UI perspective or just shoddy.

Yes, I worked for software companies mostly up to this time.

I saw the code. I saw the way it was laid out. I knew the problems and the caveats.

Am I the only person out there with this epiphany?

I wear a leash today
with my name across
my neck and my company
on the return address
just another code monkey
in a cube
dreaming of an office
with a door to shut out
the glow of the florescent
lights pissing down on me
from the roof.

And I like the machine and
the life and the code
but that is never enough
they is the company
and they want it all.
where is the loyalty
inside of the greed?

Where is the love
inside the beast
that would lay you
off in a heartbeat
for the prize of a
buck in the coffers?

Still the corporate culture
beats the message
in every newsletter
and every memo
but my leash weighes me down
and that beeper never shuts up
at 2am for the sake of keeping
my love pure.

I understand that the company
has one loyalty and
that is the investor and the cold
comfort of the cash in the hands
of those I will never meet.

It is the hyposcrisy
that is beyond me.

My leash feels heavier every day...

The wires hum a song to me
As fingers glide across the keys
on a board here to surf the
endless ether on top of
the protocols of our lives.
It is the syn to the ack
of the collective consciousness
of anonymity hidden by the
callsigns and usernames
wired together in a song of
the humanity of the machine
and the dream of one mind in
the many out here in the wired.
It is the current of shock
in the waves of the data
in a feedback of song from
the lines that now
connect us all.

Never trust the gui.

That is right son. As an old BOFH I should have known better. There we were the man and me sitting there at the first box for a lvm controlled kernel software raided clustered linux box. Like total and complete dumbasses we went to Yast2 on a SuSE 8.0 box and tried to set up the RAID 1 partitions.

When we get this all set up, we mount the partitions and see only 20% of the capacity though in the partitioning tool in the gui it lists the drives full capacity. Yes, I do understand it is RAID 1 and I am NOT going to see the full capacity of both drives. I am talking about seeing only 20% of one drives capacity. We fight with the damn gui and try to see the commands its running through ps -ef but to no avail. In frustration ready to scream we hit command line utilities.

Guess, what the shit works straight up and right away.

Fsck.

Never trust the gui son. Sit close to the machine on the edge of the line and do your shit and watch that SuSEconfig crap too. Wish we used RH. Oh well...

The emotionless glare of the monitor lit my face. I sat there in front of the console, no more gui between me and the machine. Just a line. A blinking cursor beckoning a touch of my daily destiny.

I sighed because the last click was in. The soundtrack of my day was playing on the CD and the mouse sat abandoned.

I stretched for just a second. It was time to update the servers and promote the latest build from development into the test environment. The dance began with fingers flying fast across the keys. Each touch to the beat of the music coming down hard in my ears. My head was bobbing back and forth like a pianist in the zone.

This is my life here at work. Just another keyboard jockey sysadmin, build engineer, configuration manager, toolsmith schmuck playing the keys to the dreams of the business folks. There are other that can do what I can do but that is fine. I am good at what I do and the reason why is so incredibly simple.

I love it. This is the dream as I deploy another Solaris 8 box into production and help my compadre sysadmin (no longer a PFY as noted in earlier posts) to get the development app server raised miraclously from dead.

So, I sit here tapping my feet head moving to the rhythm of the key strokes and the key strokes to the rhythm of the music and the music in the end is what I make when the tasks fly checked off one by one into a lovely ether of the lines on the wings of the TCP/IP stack straight to the servers out there so far away.