Planet TriLUG

“Let me run this by you”

2012-02-07T16:38:16+00:00

One of the biggest compliments anyone can pay me is to tell me “let me run this by you.” I’ve been hearing this more often from friends and colleagues and it never fails to humble me to hear that people value my opinion.

Super Bowl XLVI

2012-02-06T15:19:45+00:00

Congratulations to the world champion New York Giants for winning Super Bowl XLVI.

I’ve been an NFL fan since I was nine years old. I was born the year before the first Super Bowl, and my team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, won Super Bowl IX on my ninth birthday, so I’ve always had a soft spot for the game (NFL expansion has made sure that my birthday will never fall on Super Bowl Sunday again). In all those years of watching football, I have never seen the situation where one team wanted to let the other score a touchdown, and to watch an offensive player tried his damnedest not to score one.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the Super Bowl without Papa Johns Pizza, and this year I got to order from the brand new Pittsboro store. Here is a screenshot of the OpenNMS store monitoring instance:

I ordered our pies about 2pm for a 5pm pickup and it went flawlessly (included getting 50% off by using the promotion code “CANIAC” since the Carolina Hurricanes had won their last game). We had some of the gang from the office and other friends over, and it was a nice respite from trying to get OpenNMS 1.10 out the door.

The commercials could have been better, however.

torsocks ready for review

2012-02-06T06:42:40+00:00

Ever thought “hey, I’d like to use this with Tor“? Well, I’m giving someone in the Fedora community the opportunity to review a package that will allow you to do just that. Torsocks provides a “usewithtor” functionality to allow many network-utilizing programs to go over the Tor network instead of exposing your doings to the public Internet directly. As soon as the package has made its way through the review process I plan to push it out to EPEL as well.

Water system bills, revisited

2012-02-05T15:30:24+00:00

Remember how I said that John Carman, Raleigh’s Public Utilities Director, has been going around telling anyone who’ll listen that Raleigh’s water infrastructure is aging rapidly and will soon need major maintenance? The Raleigh Public Record looked at the report put out by the city’s Water Utility Transition Advisory Task Force (WUTAT):

Raleigh’s underground water infrastructure, mainly pipes in the ground, needs more than $7 billion in repairs, according to City Public Utilities Director John Carman. These are not immediate costs, he said, but now is when Raleigh should be planning to replace pipes that will age out during the coming decades.

Carman told the Record the current financial model for the system does not put away any money to pay for replacing pipes that have a lifespan of anywhere from 60 to 100 years.

“We have $500 million worth of pipe that was installed before World War II,” Carman said.

Kudos to the Raleigh Public Record for raising awareness about this issue.

Outlet mall to become Chinatown

2012-02-05T15:01:04+00:00

Last week, I made my first trip to the Prime Outlets mall in probably ten years. The outlet mall, across I-40 from the RDU airport, was a very popular place to shop in its prime (pardon the pun). It was also an even more popular place for RTP workers to grab lunch as there were very few restaurants in RTP for the longest time. It was obvious from last week’s visit, though, that times have changed for the mall. I was shocked at how empty it was, with storefront after storefront dark. Fortunately for me, my clothing store was still around but few other stores were.

Still, I was struck by how clean and tidy the mall was, in spite of its lack of tenants. It was obviously being well kept. There was no decline in its care. I told Kelly later that night that if I had a few million lying around, I would buy that mall. We agreed that the Triangle was a good market for an outlet mall.

Turns out someone beat me to it, someone with plans to make it the Triangle’s Chinatown.

MORRISVILLE — For all the amenities the Triangle has to offer, there’s one big-city attraction that remains conspicuously absent.

It’s Chinatown.

Now a developer is planning to rectify that by attracting a collection of Chinese businesses to the most unlikely of places – a nearly deserted outlet mall across Interstate 40 from Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

The $130 million project, which calls for two parking decks, a five-star hotel and a cultural center to be built on-site, would turn the Prime Outlets mall near the airport into one of the most colorful and distinct structures in the state.

“You’re going to know you’re in Chinatown,” said Mark Herman, CEO of Panda Properties Sino, the Durham company that has put the property under contract. “It’s definitely taking lemons and turning them into lemonade.”

While it’s an interesting idea, sinking $130 million into the mall might not be the most prudent use of money, particularly if the dramatic changes in the interior and exterior make it difficult to sell should the Chinatown idea not take off. It will be interesting to watch the upcoming changes, regardless.

N&O’s editorial covers nuke plant mistake

2012-02-05T02:40:31+00:00

I was happy to see today’s News and Observer editorial on the November mishap at Progress Energy’s Brunswick nuclear plant. This time the hand-tight bolts part made it into print, unlike the previous article by John Murawski which left that part out of the print edition for brevity’s sake, apparently.

I’ve got another blog post pending on this topic, based on the report that NRC released. I hope this incident is a reminder to Progress Energy that when one deals with nuclear energy, “close enough” isn’t good enough.

The Nov. 16 shutdown at Brunswick’s Unit 2 was caused by a coolant leak from a pressurized vessel that produces steam. Mildly radioactive water flowed out of the chamber rather than boiling inside. At one point, according to an N&O account, “the water was flowing out at a rate of over 10 gallons a minute, about 100 times more volume than would flow out under normal circumstances.”

As a result, according to the NRC, “instead of pressurizing the tensioning device to 13,000 psi, the team actually pressurized the device to 1,300 psi.” Later, Progress Energy personnel were “able to rotate 8 nuts by hand, 10 nuts by wrench with no agitation, 31 nuts by wrench and agitation, and 15 nuts by wrench with additional agitation,” the NRC said.

Got that? Those investigating the leak were able to turn some of the nuts on a reactor pressure vessel by hand. That’s not tight enough for a tire change.

via Tighten up – Editorials – NewsObserver.com.

Active day

2012-02-05T02:26:17+00:00

Wow, what a day! It started off with a lazy start. After breakfast I spent time upgrading our home’s main Linux fileserver. This was followed by some family basketball practice.

After basketball practice, I headed over to attend the first anniversary celebration of the St. Monica Teen Center, a center where magic takes place in Southeast Raleigh. It was good to chat with folks there and to see how proud those kids are to have that center.

After the St. Monica party, I grabbed lunch before heading out the door for Travis’s basketball game. The Salvation Army was short on referees today so I was “volunteered” to referee the game (along with a coach from the other team). The teams played a good game and I had fun with it, too.

After the game, the family chilled out in front of the TV watching Night At The Museum 2. I watched for a bit until 4:30, when I gathered up ingredients to make my second dish from the Cajun cookbook Kelly got me for Christmas. I was happy to see that the local Food Lion had everything I needed, so I was back in a flash to commence the chopping needed for the jambalaya. A few hours and a few Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPAs later, we sat down to a tasty, lively chicken jambalaya. There were smiles all around!

Now although it’s just 9:25 PM, I’m headed for my book and bed. It’s a fitting ending to a fun-filled day of growth.

(Oh, and N.C. State beat visiting Wake Forest today.)

piano

2012-02-04T20:21:44+00:00

After a very long time of looking, we have found a piano to add to our home – and my wife is quite excited!

It’s a spinet style, which is perfect for our living room. And it helps displace the tv which all too often can become the focal point of a home, family, and marriage – not that we don’t still have a tv (we have a couple), but it’s no longer the focus when entering the house

I hate it when I have to do this (SJK vs. PP)

2012-02-03T17:05:49+00:00

Update:It would seem that shortly after my post, SJK Took it all back and then some. You should still support PP, though.

As many long-time readers may remember, I have been a supporter, in the past, of the Susan J. Komen foundation. My grandmother had breast cancer. I’ve participated in the local Race for the Cure in her memory. I’ve done fund raisers and made donations and encouraged other to donate.

This week, I have to stop all that. Because they’ve publicly stopped funding Planned Parenthood, for reasons that are superficial at best, and politics of the worst kind if we are honest with ourselves.

Look, I believe in the SJK mission. I think they’ve been a great organization over the years. But if they are going to step outside that mission to make a statement, to cut funding to the women who actually NEED the services they were funding, perhaps it’s time to find another breast cancer prevention and awareness charity. And when I do find one, I’ll share.

In the mean time, please help out Planned Parenthood. They do more for women and women’s health than damn near anyone else, and that’s a hell of a lot more important than politics.

Perl shortcuts in Vim

2012-02-02T16:37:44+00:00

Since I’m home sick and trying to figure out how to do something productive with my time, I figured I might as well share something useful. The following are a few hotkeys I have set up in vim that I use when working on perl:

map <F2> : call PerlCritic()<CR>
map <F3> : call PerlCheck()<CR>

map <F4> :!perltidy -i=4 -ci=4 -syn -w --add-semicolons --indent-spaced-block-comments --closing-side-comments --cuddled-else --maximum-consecutive-blank-lines=2 -l=120 -wbb=" + - * / x \\!= == >= <= =~ \\!~  < > ? & =  **= += *= &= <<= &&= -= /= ?= >>= ??= //= .= \\%= ^= x="<CR>

func! PerlCritic()
    exec "w" "Save the file
    exec "!perlcritic --stern "expand("%:t")
endfunction

func! PerlCheck()
    exec "w" "Save the file
    exec "!perl -c %"
endfunction

Facebook files for $5 billion IPO

2012-02-01T23:18:44+00:00

Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO today in what will likely be a wildly successful stock market debut.

I laughed when I recalled my post from five years ago in which I thought the idea of Facebook being worth $15 billion was crazy. That was before I got hooked on it, of course (along with about 800 million other people). Now $15 billion sounds like too little.

I’ve been astonished at the role Facebook has played in the recent revolutions around the world. It will be interesting to see how the company grows from here.

the two things

2012-02-01T13:09:16+00:00

I recently came across “The Two Things“, a somewhat old, but possibly still accurate (or at least humorous look) at a variety of topics.

You know, the Two Things. For every subject, there are really only two things you really need to know. Everything else is the application of those two things, or just not important.

It’s got me wondering – if you had to give The Two Things about your job/field, what would they be?

And – if you had to describe your whole job in a tweet (<= 140 characters), could you do it?

ground school

2012-01-31T23:18:49+00:00

A few months ago one of the Groupons available in Lexington was for the first hour of flight along with an initial ground school lesson at the private pilot training company next to the airport.

This Saturday from 1300-1500 I’ll be taking ground school. Woot!

I’ve known a lot of pilots in my life, and have always wanted to join the ranks

Updated packages for gpredict and TuDu in Fedora and EPEL

2012-01-31T21:56:22+00:00

Last night/earlier today I pushed updates to both the Gpredict and TuDu packages in Fedora. TuDu also resides in the EPEL repositories for those running EL5 and EL6 and those repos were also updated. If you are a user of either of these packages I’d appreciate you testing out these new packages to make sure they work. Both packages are awaiting karma (and love) in Bodhi (Gpredict | TuDu).

I’m also going to start working on getting the necessary dependencies into EPEL so I can ship Gpredict there as well.

Build Engineer wanted…

2012-01-31T20:39:37+00:00

My company, Citrix, is looking for a build engineer with experience in RPM, deb, ant, and Jenkins/Hudson. Programming knowledge isn’t necessary but scripting in bash or python would be good. Work with an open source project would also be a plus.

They would need to be located in our of our offices (Santa Clara California, Hyderabad India or Bangalore India).

If you are interested let me know and I’ll get you in contact with the people in the know. They are still working on the job posting so there isn’t anything to look at just yet.

Cheap Thoughts: Time for Car 2.0?

2012-01-30T19:05:42+00:00

Google's driverless car

As I was driving on the I-40 interstate the other day, I noticed how of the 12 feet of concrete devoted to a travel lane, the typical car or truck only touches two, one-foot-wide strips where the tires are. What a waste of the other 10 feet of concrete.

It made me realize how little the car has changed since it was first introduced. Oh, sure, plenty of progress has been made to the inside of the car, but what about the rest of what it takes to make a car go: the infrastructure? There are so many things we could be doing with cars but haven’t yet tried.

Why do we still build roads? All that impervious, land-hogging, surface, and only a fraction of it is useful to any vehicle. Well, the Romans did it, some might say, but thats because stones were all they had.

What about something that runs on tracks instead? We build highways with long stretches of straight pavement and permanent exits. There’s no reason why cars need to move independently on a highway. A track system could guide cars along without need for driver interaction. Multiple cars could “tailgate” on these tracks without any danger of collision. This is stuff that wasn’t possible during Roman times and not even when the interstate highway system was built in the 1950s, but we could do it now. It’d be like the car rides at an amusement park.

Yesterday near Gainesville, Florida there was a horrific traffic pileup on I-75 in which 10 people died. Drivers apparently got blinded by smoke and fog and others slammed into them. If cars were guided on tracks instead, they might have moved smoothly through the smoke and fog without incident.

Millions of drivers can expertly navigate nearly any city through the use of GPS-based navigation systems. Google has created an experimental car which can drive itself. At the same time, gas prices are skyrocketing, roads are gobbling up land, deadly accidents are commonplace, and yet we’re still driving what is essentially a glorified Roman oxcart.

Isn’t it time to reconsider how we get around? If you could design a transportation system for the planet starting completely from scratch, what would it look like?

a new website

2012-01-30T04:04:58+00:00

I’ve had a domain sitting [basically] unused for several years, but have finally found a purpose.

Along the lines of freshnews, I have launched an rss aggregator/launch service at datente.com.

There are several categories of feeds (imperfectly broken-up, but it’s what makes sense to me) that display in quasi random order. And on the front page is a smattering selected randomly from the master list.

I would love suggestions of feeds to add, and maybe even new categories, too.

Robert Earl Keen

2012-01-30T00:18:10+00:00

Kelly and I are going out tonight to see Robert Earl Keen play at the Lincoln Theatre tonight. It will be a blast, I’m sure!

Sports pic of the year?

2012-01-29T14:39:12+00:00

Ethan Hyman - ehyman@newsobserver.com - N.C. State Ethan Hyman - ehyman@newsobserver.com - N.C. State's Mark Gottfried can't believe a foul was called on the Wolfpack during the second half of N.C. State's 61-60 loss to Virginia on Saturday in Raleigh.

I love this photo Ethan Hyman of the News and Observer took of N.C. State basketball coach Mark Gottfried reacting to a foul call during yesterday’s loss to Virginia. In capturing Coach Gottfried’s acrobatics, Ethan’s photo conveyed the thrilling nature of ACC basketball in a nutshell.

Nice work, Ethan!

Work Travel Considerations

2012-01-28T18:50:19+00:00

[Note : Reposted on the proper blog.]
So I am doing a lot of travel back & forth to Seattle for work. And I got to thinking – while the reimburse me, it would be nice to consolidate the spending into a single account for both tracking and liability purposes. Does anyone have a recommendation for a credit card with a good travel program? This would be something I can dedicate to travel, and pay off after every check comes in from the office, and would be used exclusively for business expenses when I travel (airfare, hotel, food, etc).

Lego Man In Space

2012-01-28T16:24:32+00:00

Looks like the first Lego man was launched into (near) space and returned safely to Earth, courtesy of some clever Canadian high schoolers.

Video of the mission here. Story at Space.com here. Way to go, kids!

Google imagery shows tornado effects

2012-01-28T16:06:45+00:00

Raleigh's Lockwood neighborhood, pre and post tornado

Residents of the Lockwood neighborhood of East Raleigh noticed this week that the new imagery in Google Maps shows the effects of Raleigh’s April 16, 2011 tornado in stark detail. Zooming in, one sees the leafy, pre-tornado Lockwood until one gets down to the 100-foot imagery. Then, like magic, the trees that once sheltered Lockwood are seen ripped away.

I’m not dead, even if that was close one

2012-01-27T02:57:40+00:00

So last week I flew out to Seattle for one of my regular visits.[1] Lots of good work-stuff was done, and as has been mentioned elsewhere at least one adventure was had on the ground.

Getting on the ground was probably the biggest adventure. See, we were flying right into the snowstorm that hit that weekend. The majority of the flight was uninteresting – I read a WH40K novel while the in-flight movie (Moneyball – not too bad) played in my new Skullcandy Hesh Headphones[2], but the landing into SEATAC, in the middle of a snowstorm – it was exciting. Exciting in the “re-evaluate your life and do you have anything you should have done before you died because, well, shit this might be it instrument landing roller-coaster with applause and cheers when we finally touched down” kind of landing.

It’s amazing what you think in that moment. And the fact that, life has been pretty good of late, and that maybe there is *ONE* thing you should have done, an it’ll be a lot of work, but hell, you can fix that and it’s not really that big a deal…

…except maybe it is, and oh my that’s going to take a lot of work, so you better get to it, my boy.

And then you’re on the ground and it’s all OK, and maybe, just maybe it wasn’t that big a deal.

Or was it?

[1] I’m REALLY sorry I/we didn’t have time to hang out with anyone this trip, but work and weather pretty much ate my life this trip.
[2] I’m a Skullcandy fanboy now. I bought a pair of Skullcandy Smokin’ Buds a few years back based purely on the logo design and my need for earbuds. I had no idea who they were, I just knew they were on sale and looked neat. It turned out that they sounded FANTASTIC. So I bought another set when I needed some iPhone earbuds that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, and when THOSE sounded fantastic, I was hooked.

LNC in the news

2012-01-27T02:29:33+00:00

Leadership North Carolina got a brief mention from WRAL today when news spread that Governor Perdue will not run for reelection. Now-declared gubernatorial candidate Lt. Governor Walter Dalton was scheduled to speak at today’s LNC forum but canceled upon news of Perdue’s decision.

I Tweeted earlier that Dalton wasn’t there and I wonder if WRAL used my Tweet as its source. Anyway, the mention was here in an earlier revision of this story:

Lt. Gov. Walter Dalton canceled a Thursday morning appearance at the Leadership North Carolina Forum in Raleigh after news of Perdue’s plans spread. He was supposed to speak on the state’s transportation planning and policy.

The LNC mention was posted long enough for me to show it to Kelly. Dalton later convened a press conference and formally announced, after which the LNC reference was removed.

Unqualified Progress Energy workers caused fluke mishap at nuclear plant

2012-01-27T02:02:12+00:00

Yikes! I’m not going to sleep so soundly tonight knowing that Progress Energy’s Shearon Harris nuclear plant is nearby and its hapless crews can’t bolt a reactor lid properly.

Makes me wonder why the NRC is still so chummy with utilities.

Emphasis mine:

Nine of the 12 workers who performed the reactor vessel assembly were not qualified. Some received “just-in-time” (i.e., last minute) training before the Fall 2011 refueling outage, but not specifically in stud tensioning.

The workers didn’t know how to read the instrumentation and torqued the reactor vessel lid’s studs at 1,300 pounds per square inch instead of 13,000 psi. In other words, there were off by one zero, and screwed the studs at 1/10th the required pressure.

Some the bolts were left so loose they could be turned by hand, the NRC said. Others turned easily with a wrench.

via .biz – Unqualified Progress Energy workers caused fluke mishap at nuclear plant | newsobserver.com blogs.

Leadership North Carolina Forum

2012-01-27T01:19:15+00:00

Leadership North Carolina Forum

I spent the day today at the Fifth Annual Leadership North Carolina Forum. While the panels and speakers were fascinating and informative, what captivated me the most was watching my lovely and talented wife while she was working. Kelly held herself with grace and aplomb, seeming so comfortable conducting the question and answer sessions with a roomful of hundreds of participants. I smiled as I thought about just how quickly she got up to speed in doing what she’s doing, yet you’d never know it from how confident she seems.

I’ve known for 14 years how special Kelly is. Now everyone knows it, too.

Meet Isaiah Richardson

2012-01-27T00:58:49+00:00

Isaiah D. Richardson

Here’s a look at the gentleman arrested in our neighborhood yesterday for breaking and entering. His name is Isaiah Dominique Richardson, age 16. It’s easy to see why police were so familiar with Richardson: he was arrested just last month for possession of stolen goods.

In the pic above Richardson isn’t wearing the diamond earring that he had in when I saw him. Though he was arrested about 9:20 AM he was booked at 7:50 PM. That makes me think he might have spent the day being interviewed by detectives, by which time he probably had his earring taken away.

Richardson's Dec. 2011 mugshot

As you might see from his mugshot he doesn’t look like a bad kid. He gave me a friendly reply when I wished him a “good morning.” I can’t seem to find any criminal record for him (though this might be because of his age). Friendly or not, he certainly helped himself to the contents of my neighbor’s van and I don’t take kindly to strangers messing with my neighbors!

Neighborhood watch nabs burglar!

2012-01-26T02:49:00+00:00

That burglar never knew what hit him. This guy rides a bike into our neighborhood, thinking things are easy pickings here, and he rides out in the back of a police car.

My neighborhood is quickly gaining the reputation of being the place crooks go to get caught. The hapless crook must not have gotten the memo.

It all began a little after 7 AM as I was out walking the dog. As I neared home, I saw this guy riding towards me on a bike. Since I walk this way every other day, I’m usually quite familiar with the people I see this time of day but this kid was a stranger. Nevertheless, as he approached I gave him a friendly “good morning,” and he cheerfully replied. Cheerful greeting or not, I decided to get a close look at the clothes of this stranger – just in case.

Later this morning I had reason to remember the kids’s description. A sharp-eyed neighbor had called 911 after seeing a kid ducking between cars in my neighborhood this morning. She also took the time to let the neighborhood know through the neighborhood email list. Instantly, 300 neighbors knew this kid was a break-in suspect and he was in our neighborhood now. I responded to my neighbor’s email with a description of the kid I had seen. I also called the dispatcher to relay that information to police in the area.

Once I had the kids off to school I had a few minutes before I needed to go to work so I climbed into the car and drove around, hoping to find the suspect. I came upon an officer parked on Timber near Robin Hood and told him of an abandoned bike I’d seen nearby. He knew about the bike said the suspect was probably in the middle of a larceny. The officer hoped to be nearby when the kid returned so he could bust him.

After getting an update from the officer I drove on through the neighborhood, just driving through in case I happened to see anything. I didn’t really expect to see anything, of course. I really didnt’ know what I was doing. I figured it would be some sort of miracle if I even saw the guy.

It turns out I got a miracle and then some! I turned onto Banks Street and looked to my left. There was the suspect in my neighbor’s driveway and leaning against the front door of a van! He had what looked like a dipstick in his hand and was manipulating it through the van’s window. He was trying to unlock the door!

I grabbed my phone and was talking to the 911 dispatcher about the larceny in progress when I rolled back up to the officer waiting nearby. I told the dispatcher to hang on as I yelled out my window.

“He’s at Oakview and Banks right now!” I said, gesturing behind me. “He’s breaking into a white van!”

The officer sprang into action, squealing tires towards Banks! I decided to come around from the other side to see what happened. By the time I returned to Banks Street, I saw the van’s driver side door hanging open and the suspect was already in handcuffs! I felt like cheering!

Thinking about it later, I realized that communication made this arrest possible. So many people had pieces to this puzzle that if those pieces had not been shared, this guy would still be out there breaking into homes and cars. I didn’t call the cops when I first saw the kid because just being a stranger on a bike isn’t exactly a crime. My neighbor did call the cops, though, when she saw him acting suspiciously.

What’s more, the cops shared plenty of info about the suspect with my neighbor, who then took the time to share it with the neighborhood. Now we all knew who to look for and roughly where he was. I happened to have a moment I could spend looking for the suspect and an officer was conveniently parked nearby in anticipation of an arrest. It could not have been easier for the officer to catch this guy red-handed and arrest him.

This perp is at least the third break-in suspect who has been busted by my sharp-eyed neighbors since we moved here four years ago. I think that explains why break-ins around here have become pretty rare.

Word is getting around that you don’t mess with East Raleigh, and particularly the neighborhoods of Belvidere Park and Woodcrest. It’s where crooks come to get busted!

out with the old…

2012-01-25T20:26:14+00:00

…and in with the new.

On the 31st of December of last year (boy that sounds weird to say “last year” and it only be 4 weeks ago), I traded-in my 2004 Ford Escape which had served me well for 4.5 years (including racking-up nearly 90k miles in the time I had it (and for almost a year it was driven less than 10k miles … which I think means I used to drive a lot)) for a new vehicle.

my cute wife, and our new car

We had been looking at replacing one of our cars for a while, and with the end of the year incentives in place, it was a good time for us to do it.

So we are now the proud owners of a 2012 Ford Fusion in “steel blue”. It’s not quite fully loaded, but it’s more than adequate for our needs.

Raleigh raises fees for youth sports, park rentals

2012-01-25T13:06:42+00:00

In addition to the Mordecai article, I was also quoted in a separate Midtown Raleigh News article on the new parks fees.

Many parks fees had not been raised for several years, parks board members noted. For example, the citywide youth sports registration fee has been $12 since 2004.

“This is an opportunity to make adjustments that have been needed for a while,” said board chairman Mark Turner. “I didn’t feel they were necessarily drastic … The variety of programs and offerings are still a very good deal for the public.”

via Raleigh raises fees for youth sports, park rentals – News – MidtownRaleighNews.com.

New option emerges for Mordecai park center

2012-01-25T12:28:43+00:00

I was quoted in today’s Midtown Raleigh News on the new option for Mordecai Historic Park’s Interpretive Center. (Also, see the parks fees story. Two articles in one day!)

An earlier proposal involved using part of the park’s main lawn for a contemporary, window-lined building to house the center. Opponents banded together to fight the proposal, saying the building would clash with the historic charm of the park, home to Raleigh’s most significant antebellum plantation.

“We heard it loud and clear: Nobody wanted to put more buildings on the property,” said Mark Turner, chairman of the city parks board. “This solves that problem.”

via New option emerges for Mordecai park center – News – MidtownRaleighNews.com.

Ubuntu’s HUD

2012-01-24T20:04:12+00:00

I am on the road this week (shout out to Boise) and it is the first trip I’ve taken where I’m spending almost all of my time on my Macbook Air since upgrading it to run Linux.

I’ve been pretty happy with it. Wireless works fine, and while I sometimes struggle with nvidia-settings when trying to run an external monitor, I haven’t hit anything where I had to boot back into OS X, at least for very long.

As someone who has decided to run Linux on the Desktop, I am very eager for news on the future direction of such things. I noticed today on Mark Shuttleworth’s blog that he was announcing a new feature in Ubuntu called the “Heads Up Display” (HUD).

The idea is simple – instead of a hierarchical menu have an intelligent search box that learns what you use the most, and can use “fuzzy matching” to help you get to what you want fast. Once it is considered ready for prime time, I’ll probably check it out.

However, there were a couple of things about his post that bothered me. First, he wants to add voice recognition. While that is all well and good, I must be the only person on the planet who doesn’t want to talk at his electronics. Sure, I love being able to dial my mobile phone by voice when driving, but I don’t want to have to speak “Find Nekkid Pictures of Scarlett Johansson” into my browser. I experience so many people on cellphones creating noise pollution that I don’t want to have to deal with it in other aspects of technology. While this probably won’t be the default for most devices, I am still not as excited about it as Mark seems to be.

Second, nowhere in his post did he mention Gnome 3 as an inspiration. I’ve been using the much maligned desktop for awhile now and I love it. When I need to run a program I simply drag my mouse into the upper left corner of the screen and type in the name of what I am looking for in the “Type to search” box. Now it isn’t smart or fuzzy, but it gets the job done and seems to me to be very similar to HUD.

I especially liked Mark’s comment “Instead of cluttering up the interface ALL the time, let’s clear out the chrome, and show users just what they want, when they want it.” which is very similar to what I wrote about Gnome 3: “It gets me to where I need to be, and then it gets the hell out of the way.”

As someone who doesn’t plan to leave the linux desktop, I am excited when improvements like HUD are being implemented. In the ecosystem that is open source, the great ideas will propagate, and if HUD takes off I would expect to see something similar in other offerings.

Announcing DocsGlue

2012-01-24T15:59:55+00:00

Many Fedora Docs project contributors enjoy writing on the wiki using the WYSIWYG editor that is provided by MediaWiki. This is great for contributors but not so much when we are trying to pull all this information into DocBook for formal release. The solution was simple: Ian had to fix mw-render.

This all went down at FUDCon Blacksburg, just a couple weeks ago. Ian and John got together to break, fix, or eliminate the tool we once used to do the conversion of MediaWiki text to DocBook. Ian worked for several hours trying to piece code together to make mw-render work. It did not, however, ever get off the ground despite his best efforts. Several releases prior to the current version of mw-render the DocBook functionality was removed leaving it no longer useful for our needs.

Once it sunk in that mw-render was dead to us, we started looking for an existing solution. We found many but none that would do exactly what we wanted. Ian started drawing up plans for a replacement and we decided that if we were going to do the work to build a tool to do the conversions that we should really do it up right.

This brings us to the project of DocsGlue. The current vision of DocsGlue is a program that will take MediaWiki text, turn it into DocBook XML, then open a ticket in Red Hat’s Bugzilla instance for a certain guide and add the DocBook XML text as an attachment. The guide owner can then easily use the attached file as source for a guide that can then be translated and published.

DocsGlue will be usable from both the command line and the GUI. This will make it easy for anyone to use no matter how they like to operate.

This will hopefully reduce the amount of time spent on moving data from the wiki into our guides and also make this information a lot more useful for users looking for answers.

Currently the project is hosted on Fedora Hosted where all the source code will be available.

Dook-a-lyptus!

2012-01-23T19:21:40+00:00

Loving the work that the RENCI folks at Duke are doing on top of Eucalyptus. They’ve got a set of patches that sit atop Eucalyptus proper, and they call their patches “Neuca”. I lol’d when I found that out. It rolls swimmingly off the tongue.

We’ve seen quite a few of these kinds of projects. It’s a key indicator of success that people are building this functionality on top of our base.

Our ability to incorporate these kinds of patches directly into mainline will be a key indicator of our maturity as an open source company going forward.

As I discussed at SCALE 10x this past weekend, I believe that our current contributor agreement needs an update. That work will take some time, and I can’t really say much about it yet — but the prospect of working more closely with RENCI and others provides strong motivation to Get It Right. It’s a key challenge, and I’m exciting about tackling it head-on in the coming weeks.

(p.s. RAGE HATE SPELLING FAIL. The likelihood of my typing “eucalytpus” is pretty much an even money bet.)

Looking for a new Knowledge Base

2012-01-23T16:05:27+00:00

I’m looking for FOSS knowledge base software that will integrate with SalesForce. Already packaged for EPEL would be great but not required. Anyone know of such a monster?

People’s Choice Award 2011

2012-01-23T14:21:11+00:00

Heh, I just noticed that, due to the fact that my last name ranks early in the alphabet, I’m listed first in the 2011 opensource.com People’s Choice Award voting.

I really enjoyed writing those articles on running an open source business, and it is nice to be in such company as the rest of the nominees.

It’s better with a dish

2012-01-23T02:40:28+00:00

Though it was being shown locally on over-the-air TV, I decided to hunt for the N.C. State-Miami basketball game on satellite today. When I found it I was amazed at how much better the satellite signal was from the OTA signal. Players in motion seemed blocky as the compression artifacts piled on, but the signal direct from Miami was crystal-clear.

Whenever you compress a signal that’s already compressed, you really start making a mess as the tricks that compression schemes rely on get broken in the process. Given a choice, I’ll tune in the satellite signal every time if I want a quality signal to watch.

Highlights of 2011: the tornado

2012-01-23T02:15:12+00:00

Worn out but happy!

In a year full of big events, the biggest one for me was the tornado of April 16th, 2011. While the damage to our home was a 6-inch shingle, the damage to our neighborhood was significant. It also gave me a chance to really help my neighbors when they needed it.

I vividly remember growing up in Atlanta and my siblings and I being awakened by my parents and piled under a mattress in our home’s hallway as a tornado warning. The winds would howl, the rain would pound, but the tornado would remain more of an idea – an after-bedtime reason to play with my brothers and sister in the hallway – rather than a real threat. That is, until April’s tornado rolled around.

I’ve already blogged about the tornado and the cleanup efforts I participated in. Looking around the neighborhood now I see only a few homes still covered with blue tarps. Some damaged trees still abruptly end 30 feet from the ground. A ride on the Millbank section of the Crabtree Creek greenway still shocks me when I reach the path of the tornado. I dubbed that portion “Tornado Trail” and it will likely live up to that name for many years.

Still, with time comes healing. On a walk with the family through Lake Johnson park today, I pointed out to Kelly one bank of the lake that Hurricane Fran once completely stripped of trees. Now that area’s wooded over again with tall hardwoods.

Nature bounces back. And our neighborhood has weathered the storm’s after-effects very well.

Each year each of the city’s Citizens Advisory Councils nominates an organization or an individual for its Neighborhood Recognition Award. Last year the East CAC honored Powell Elementary and its PTA for the incredible service they provided to the Lockwood neighborhood following the tornado. It was one of the true highlights of my time as a CAC chair to be able to present that award.

After meeting some well-organized volunteers during the tornado cleanup, I decided to get some emergency management training through the city’s now-defunct CERT program. I felt very fortunate when I was able to lead my class of students through a disaster scenario, even though many of my fellow students were 30 to 40 years senior to me.

So now after 36 years or so of avoiding one I can say I’ve lived through a tornado. As my friend Ronneil Robinson said to me afterward, it was the day the community became a family. It was a rewarding experience to be able to help out my neighbors and get them back on their feet.

Highlights of 2011: job changes

2012-01-22T23:58:32+00:00

Last August ended with a bang as Kelly and my job situations changed dramatically. I was let go from my job at Monolith the very same day Kelly accepted a position with Leadership North Carolina.

How things happened for me is still a mystery. I received a favorable performance evaluation in June and completed the personal objectives which would’ve qualified me for a bonus. It was at this point where things got murky and other executives took issue. Rather than being paid my bonus, I was told I was no longer performing to standards even while my manager reassured me that he had always been happy with my work. But whatever . . .

That same day, though, Kelly accepted her new position as Program Director of Leadership NC that very same day. It’s a great program designed to educate the state’s business and governmental leaders about the issues facing our state. Kelly’s role is to facilitate the many meetings that take place during each class, which means she is often traveling the state for many nights in a row while the classes are in session. It turns out Kelly travels more now that I did in my last sales engineering role.

It’s been very good for her, though, and for us. She’s so talented at organization and was craving a professional role again that it seemed the perfect fit. Having been familiar with the program for over two years, I knew how much fun it would be. In fact, I was quite jealous of her for a time. But seeing how happy and fulfilled Kelly’s been is proof positive that it’s been a good decision.

A few weeks later, I answered a Craigslist ad for a part-time Linux sysadmin position. To my surprise, my neighbor was the one who advertised the position and I quickly got an interview. I took the position and set up a schedule where I work 25 hours per week.

So, just like that our work schedules flip-flopped. Kelly became the full-time worker and I became the part-timer. I’m a stay-at-home Dad, for all practical purposes. It’s been great for providing me more time with the kids than I would’ve ordinarily gotten. I walk them to school and back each day, take them to their music lessons and basketball practices, and make sure they do their homework. When they’re at school, I work either at home or in the office. And around all that, I do my volunteer stuff like the Parks board and RCAC board organizing.

Kelly and I were marveling last night about how well our current arrangement has been working out, and it has. It took a ton of getting used to on my part but we’re making it work. It’s certainly made a difference in how we live our daily lives.

Evolution Mail and SOGo Address Book

2012-01-22T16:22:24+00:00

Just a tip for anyone using Evolution mail with the SOGo Carddav address book. Sometimes I launch Evolution (usually after a reboot) and I notice that there are no contacts in my Webdav calendar, Nothing I can do in configuration seems to help, and I get an error if I try to delete the address book to re-add it.

I figured out that if I stop Evolution, open a terminal and kill the:

/usr/lib/evolution/e-addressbook-factory

process, my contacts will reload properly. Might be some sort of race condition but I figured I’d mention it here in case someone else hits the same problem.

Oh, this is on an up to date Debian Wheezy install running Gnome 3.

Slip, slip, slipping away

2012-01-21T22:53:52+00:00

A friend posted a picture on Facebook today from Linville Caverns, which prompted me to look up our recent family visit to Linville Caverns. Only it wasn’t recent, it was over two years ago! It only seems like it was yesterday!

What was I just saying about time flying by?

Zeo: the gift that keeps on giving

2012-01-21T22:31:18+00:00

Just put my Zeo Sleep Manager birthday present through its first test – the obligatory birthday nap. Five minutes of deep sleep in a 31 minute nap.

I’m going to enjoy putting this thing through its paces!

Why Did the Feds Target Megaupload? And Why Now?

2012-01-21T21:54:57+00:00

Gizmodo points out the obvious: if the US DOJ can bust Megaupload in New Zealand, why does it need SOPA/PIPA?

The feds—those tasked as intellectual property sentinels in particular—want more power to kill sites like Megaupload. It looks like they’re not going to get their way through legislation, so setting a prominent target ablaze in a very public and dramatic manner is a great screw you to SOPA’s foes.

If that’s the case, the Department of Justice should be gagging on irony: their swift destruction of Megaupload sans SOPA proves how gratuitous the bill was in the first place. This week has been the week of copyright warfare, but the decision to nuke the king copyright violator so spectacularly only goes to show how little the feds need bigger bombs.

via Why Did the Feds Target Megaupload? And Why Now?.

Will Prince William’s tour of duty reignite simmering Falklands dispute?

2012-01-21T21:39:54+00:00

Interesting look at the continuing dispute between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands. I was not aware that the British Navy currently lacks an aircraft carrier.

As Prince William prepares to head 8,000 miles from home to serve as a helicopter pilot in the remote Falkland Islands, the traditional "Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves!" refrain seems rather far-fetched.

Britain’s naval fleet was once twice the combined size of its two closest rivals. But austerity cuts have seen billions of pounds vanish from military budgets. Even the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier hasn’t been spared — HMS Ark Royal was sent to the scrapyard last year.

Tensions have been increasing between Argentina and the U.K. as the 30th anniversary of their 10-week war over the Falklands approaches. Argentina claims sovereignty over the British-ruled islands, which are about 300 miles off its coast in the South Atlantic.

via World Blog – Will Prince William’s tour of duty reignite simmering Falklands dispute?.

Another trip around the sun

2012-01-21T11:00:19+00:00

Today I complete my 43rd trip around the sun. Watching my kids remind me how slowly time seemed to pass when I was their age. Now time seems to pass far too quickly.

I spent a little time yesterday afternoon visiting Travis’s classroom for his class’s “publishing party.” The various cards on the wall with the words “second grade” on them caught my eye. It hit me that this was the last year I’d be the parent of a second grader.

I took a moment to soak up the scene. I looked around the roomful of squirming kids, up at the decorations on the wall, and finally over at my son of whom I am so proud. I wanted to capture the moment in my memory forever, knowing it would soon be gone.

Life is short. We have precious few days together and then they’re gone for good. I hope to make the most of the ones I have left.

Every day is a good one.

Highlights of 2011: Parks board

2012-01-21T02:51:35+00:00

Last year was the year I became chair of Raleigh’s Parks board after three years serving on the board. It was something I could not have imagined when I started out and yet here I am.

Looking back, I did have some preparation for the role. As a boardmember I attended many of the ribbon-cutting ceremonies, I chaired my first meeting right after my election as vice-chair, and I filled in for the chair to speak at other park dedications the times he could not be present. I figured I could do the job, so why not take the next step and do it?

The year started off with a bang when, while still vice-chair, I was invited to go on the Bill Lumaye show to discuss the Parks board’s banning of smoking in parks. It was generally a hostile crowd but I held my own and made points most folks would find reasonable. The city council later approved the ban and to date there have been exactly zero incidents or complaints about the smoking ban.

Then in September I was elected chair of the Parks board. I wasn’t going to run for chair but go for another term as vice-chair but my fellow parks board members encouraged me. I was thrilled when my fellow board members put their trust in me but also wigged out once the enormity of it all began to sink in. Turns out I needn’t have worried since I’d had over two years’ experience conducting meetings for the East CAC. I do speak before City Council far more frequently now and that can be nerve-wracking (see Tuesday’s Council session for an example – I’m on around 1 hour, 35 minutes into it), but even that is getting to be more routine.

One of the best parts of being chair is all the park dedications where I get to speak. There were many in 2011, including St. Monica Teen Center, Marsh Creek Greenhouse, Millbrook Senior Center, Dr. Annie Louise Wilkerson MD Park, Strickland Road Park Dedication, the Neuse River Greenway, Pullen Park, and probably a few I have forgotten. I winged the talk at the Neuse River Greenway but felt like an idiot afterward so when it came time for Pullen I stayed up late crafting my speech. Some Parks staffers have told me they look forward to my speeches. I try to keep them entertaining.

It was a good year for serving on Raleigh’s Parks board and this year promises to be just as much fun.

Southeast LinuxFest 2012 Announced

2012-01-20T22:47:16+00:00

Southeast LinuxFest (SELF) 2012 will be in Charlotte, North Carolina, which is a much better option than Atlanta or wherever the other proposed locations were. I am excited to see what talks will be offered this year. I am also thinking of taking the train down the Charlotte. From Richmond the train goes through the cities of Raleigh, Cary, and Durham, to name a few. Perhaps we can have a hacking car on the way down!

More Glorious Church

2012-01-20T17:54:08+00:00

Seems I was wrong when I said the church has removed from its Facebook page the inflammatory post from Dr. Cooper. It’s still there.

Also, a Facebook visitor named Adul Siler posted this as a comment on the church’s page:

“thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself! Has anyone thought about it being 10:30 at night that it is not acceptable to have loud noise blazing in a residential neighborhood. Christians are not to do of this world but yet churches have service when it is clubbing time and when the freaks come out. Then get upset when folks complain. Not even is St Aug down the street immune from having late night functions. They must get a permit to have any loud or sport events at night. Remember that St Aug had to make their football field smaller due to noise restrictions. So all those false comments being made about the cops and all is basically making all of us christian folks look bad. How would you like it if someone blasted rap or even hard rock during service on Sunday morning? You’d call the cops too to stop all the noise. Watch how you make accusations for most of the advertising out there is not for MLK on that day but for what you all and who were in the church advertised the event for. Ya’ll making yourselves look bad and everyonre else not involved. Also remember 10 or so years ago that area was drug, prostitute, and crime infested being mainly a black neighborhood. The city and private companies cleaned that area up when they began working on downtown. The only racist thing that happen was they moved many of us out of the area which was blighted, cleaned it up and gave the white folks tax incentives to move in the new or refurbished homes.Doubt ya’ll be having any kind of service late at night if it was like it use to be in that area all the way to Shaw. Admit someone made a mistake in church,everyone got carried away, and things got noisy like in the past. Don’t be surprised karma might come your way while your preaching on Sunday morning and you hear loud music outside. Sometimes its not the devil but just plain ignorance. God bless and be an example for the Lord………..”

Again, the neighbors simply want peace and quiet. No one wants to have to call the police on the church because it’s 10:30 at night and their kids can’t sleep. The police certainly don’t want to have to issue citations. Southeast District Captain Lull was all but begging the church at last Friday’s meeting not to make him issue citations.

With any luck, the publicity will allow the church to accelerate its purchase of new windows and everyone can be friends again. I’m wishing my neighbor Bishop Spain good luck!

UPDATE: Bishop Spain just posted the comment to the Church’s Facebook page:

“Bishop William S. Spain
I live and pastor in a wonderful neighborhood. On Frieday, January 13th, members of our community, the Raleigh Police Department and The Glorious Church had a wonderful and productive meeting to iron out some of our differances. As citizens we have the right to complain when there is a problem. My issue is not with my neighbors but the manner in which the police handled a call on the next night (Saturday the 14th). We have explained to our neighbors that we too are concerned about the noise that they are complaining about. We are attempting to renovate the santuary and hopefully this will improve things; however it is going to take some time to accomplish this. We’ve got to raise the money to do it.We want to work with our neighbors and we ask that the neighborhood will have patience with us. By the way, the service on Saturday was a guest group using our facility and knew nothing about our previous meeting. Let us continue to bridge the gap between us. I wecome your response”

Thank you, Bishop Spain!

Welcome Ireland (Country 25)

2012-01-20T14:10:30+00:00

Yesterday we received a PO from Ireland, which is the 25th country in which we have commercial customers.

It’s pretty exciting, although being a huge fan of Guinness I am upset that I don’t get to go.

The other countries are, in no particular order:

Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Japan, Australia, Israel, Denmark, France, Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, the UK, Italy, Trinidad, Malta, India, Honduras, Chile, Sweden, the UAE and the US.

The Big Thirst

2012-01-20T02:40:20+00:00

By Tom Sulcer

The moment City of Raleigh Public Utilities Director John Carmen mentioned the book The Big Thirst during a recent CAC meeting, I logged onto the library webpage and requested it. It arrived yesterday and surprisingly I can’t put it down.

Water is fascinating. We take it for granted, but as author Charles Fishman says, water is becoming more scarce and it will soon create conflicts.

I’m just cracking the book now and I’m sure to have more to say about it, but if you’ve ever wondered what goes into making water appear at your tap you should read this book!