This morning was a tough one: with the outside temperature hovering in the uppers 20s would I be able to get out of bed before dawn for a hour long walk? Yes and no. I slept poorly last night. At times I would wake up, sweating profusely*, other times I would simply toss and turn to the point I was keeping everyone else awake. Eventually I sought the sandman in the other bedroom grumbling about "the mattress being too soft" as I made my exit.
(*my beloved little German Shepherd, Beeper, can roast anyone out of bed. Should science discover the source of her radiant heat I am quite sure a Nobel Prize in some kind of scientific field would follow along shortly thereafter. It's rare that she sleeps up against anyone; her normal place in the bed, if she is even in the bed, is balled up near the bottom (given her mostly white and tan coloring, with a sprinkling of black, and her seemingly unnatural ability to squeeze into an impossibly small ball, she takes on the appearance of a slightly toasted cinnamon bun while sleeping, and a hot one at that)).
But rise before dawn I did and I manged to get in a 45 minute walk, not the 60 minutes I wanted, but close enough. It was cold, yes, but the quiet and stillness of a cold morning was a welcome change.
Today at lunch I'll make up the difference in my workout by either walking to the old Durham Athletic Park and back, with a stop at The Book Exchange of course, sauntering up the American Tobacco Trail in the other direction or I'll head down to the YMCA for 30 or 45 minutes on the elliptical torture device followed by some weights.
As for my reading Kelly and I both started reading The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Yes, I am still reading A Movable Feast by Hemingway. In general I don't like to read two books at the same time; I prefer to give my full attention to one and move on from there. However Kelly wanted to read this book with me but there is a problem: I read at a faster pace than Kelly. So we agreed we would both read a bit each night and when I got to some kind of natural break point I would put down The Glass Castle and pick up something else thus giving Kelly time to catch up before lights out. So far, after one night, the plan seems to be working.
So what is The Glass Castle all about? As I have pointed out previous the book is a memoir about a girl growing up with alcoholic parents, at least that was my understanding before opening the book. Turns out the Walls children are going to have to put up with hardships beyond parental alcoholism. "Such as" you may ask? How about a mother that seems to take no interest in raising her children; Jeannette's first memory, from when she was three, was lighting herself on fire via the kitchen stove while cooking herself a hotdog. The Walls family was big on self-reliance. But therein lies a problem: while a child of three might remember a traumatic event, even vividly, I doubt any child of three posses recall at the depth Walls claims she did.
That said this may be a simple case of a third-party story becoming a first-party memory. If your mother told you the same story of an event from your childhood I could conceive that, over the years, that same story could be internalized and associated with the very real traumatic event that links the two together. That said I am not a child psychologist, or someone who has been degreed in Earl Childhood Development (or a parent for that matter) so take all that with a grain of salt. Still Walls' writing is solid and easily digestible. Her story, so far, is well told and easy to follow and her writing is descriptive enough for one to make their own mental pictures (not all writers are able write like this, so my hat goes off to her for her efforts; they are appreciated).
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
Of motorcycles and books
Allow me to present my Dark Horse: The Suzuki VStrom 1000. This oddly named bike, one NOT named after Strom Thurmond, by the way, has been an on-again/off-again contender for quite some time. I have to admit, I was smitten with the Buell Ulysses for quite some time I but I think the overall ride-ability of the of the VStrom wins out in the end. When will I get my bike? Well, I'm just not sure. I have to live up to my end of the bargain I made with the household CFO. My goals are clearly defined, I know what I need to do and how to accomplish these goals so I have no excuse.
In fact today I got up an hour early and hit the road, walking, for the first time in MONTHS. I enjoyed the walk immensely. I did NOT enjoy getting out of bed one hour early but once up I didn't miss the extra sleep. Besides, if I stick to it, along with everything else I have to, I could have ridden my motorcycle into work today. Got to stay motivated!
So, what about the books? Last night I intended to start The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, a memoir about growing up the child of alcoholic parents. Sounds enjoyable. Turns out Kelly wants to read the book too, and at the same time, and she needed to look over some things for work before bed last night (my preferred reading time). So I put that book down and picked up The Moveable Feast by Earnest Hemingway. This book is another memoir about Hemingway's life in Paris, France in the early 1920s. The book reads quickly and seems to be a collection of short stories about the people and goings-on in Paris at the time.
It turns out that Hemingway was friends with Gertrude Stein of all people. So far the funniest dialog in the book are conversations between Hemingway and Stein, what a hoot it would have been to be a fly on the wall during their conversations! Hemingway also mentions the river Seine icing over in the winter. I wonder, with global warming continuing at such a rapid pace, does the Seine ever ice over in the winter?
Life in Paris during the early part of last century seems to have been enjoyable, except Hemingway's apartment had no toilet or hot running water. Still, sitting alone under a tree at a Parisian cafe in Spring with a book, a loaf of warm, fresh bread, fresh whipped butter and a liter of wine sounds like a very enjoyable way to pass the time on a temperate afternoon. As poor as Hemingway made himself (and his wife) to be, financially speaking, it sounds as if they were able to enjoy life.
Work calls. Literally. Better get back to it.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Finshed the book Hiroshima last night
If you have any interest in history or WWII at all I think you would enjoy the book Hiroshima. As I have stated previously the book is about six first-person survival stories of the bombing of Hiroshima. I learned quite a bit about the city of Hiroshima. What sticks with me most if the amount of rivers that surround the city (the book mentioned seven, there appear to be even more).
Mentioned in the book is a place you can visit today, Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The building in the center of the park is the closest building to the center of the blast left standing and it has been preserved almost exactly as it was since the day of the explosion. If I ever travel to Japan again I'll make sure to visit the memorial.
If you travel by plane or rail I'd say pick up a copy of this book. You should be able to complete the book during a round-trip flight of any measurable distance. It is a fast and easy read (i.e. NOT written in Faulkner's style) and very informative. It is an excellent work of non-fiction.
I had a book selected as my next textual conquest but I think I'll go for a "free-for-all" and just pick something at random. I brought a copy of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis into the office for those nice days where I can grab a lunch outside (you know, those days I should be walking at lunch?). The Screwtape Letters is another very small book, I should be able to finish this up in no time.
Mentioned in the book is a place you can visit today, Hiroshima Peace Memorial. The building in the center of the park is the closest building to the center of the blast left standing and it has been preserved almost exactly as it was since the day of the explosion. If I ever travel to Japan again I'll make sure to visit the memorial.
If you travel by plane or rail I'd say pick up a copy of this book. You should be able to complete the book during a round-trip flight of any measurable distance. It is a fast and easy read (i.e. NOT written in Faulkner's style) and very informative. It is an excellent work of non-fiction.
I had a book selected as my next textual conquest but I think I'll go for a "free-for-all" and just pick something at random. I brought a copy of The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis into the office for those nice days where I can grab a lunch outside (you know, those days I should be walking at lunch?). The Screwtape Letters is another very small book, I should be able to finish this up in no time.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Two more books for the library
I had intended to find and purchase books five and six of Stephen King's Dark Tower series but I was not able to complete my mission. I did, however, find two gems: Hemingway's Moveable Feast and John Hersey's The Child Buyer. Total expenditure: $2.94. There are times when I feel guilty walking out of The Book Exchange in Durham, sometimes I really do.
You might recall John Hersey's name from my former blog. I am currently reading Hersey's Hiroshima, a work of non-fiction telling the stories of six survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Moving stuff. I have so far read about 1/3 of the book. The bomb has dropped, confusion rules the day and all that is known is something big, really big, feel out of the sky. The confusing part for everyone thus far is there was no air raid siren sounded. The reason for this is the people of Japan thought they would get a bombing "from both barrels" like the people of Dresden, Germany had endured. Everyone in the book so far has been under the mistaken impression that a single bomb had been dropped directly onto them rather then a single bomb destroying an entire city. The power and magnitude of an atomic bomb was unknown to the world at large - until it was dropped on the people of Hiroshima.
I'll toss this books on to the pile and I'll get to them when I can. If anyone wants to read Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust I'll be more then happy to trade for The Dark Tower V or The Dark Tower VI (or anything - what 'cha got?).
You might recall John Hersey's name from my former blog. I am currently reading Hersey's Hiroshima, a work of non-fiction telling the stories of six survivors of the bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. Moving stuff. I have so far read about 1/3 of the book. The bomb has dropped, confusion rules the day and all that is known is something big, really big, feel out of the sky. The confusing part for everyone thus far is there was no air raid siren sounded. The reason for this is the people of Japan thought they would get a bombing "from both barrels" like the people of Dresden, Germany had endured. Everyone in the book so far has been under the mistaken impression that a single bomb had been dropped directly onto them rather then a single bomb destroying an entire city. The power and magnitude of an atomic bomb was unknown to the world at large - until it was dropped on the people of Hiroshima.
I'll toss this books on to the pile and I'll get to them when I can. If anyone wants to read Faulkner's Intruder in the Dust I'll be more then happy to trade for The Dark Tower V or The Dark Tower VI (or anything - what 'cha got?).
Confessions of a Former Apple Hater
This weekend I read an excellent blog post from Mitchell Ashley titled Confessions of a Former Apple Zealot. Give his article a read, it is really very well thought out and he touches on many important points regarding the whole Mac vs. PC debate. I wanted to post a rebuttal of sorts because my personal experiences are just the opposite: around the time Mr. Ashley was a lover of all things Apple I despised the company. Why? In a word: Appletalk.
Back around 1992 I landed my first job with a large company in the data networking group. Data networking, back around this time, was very different then it is today. For the record the World Wide Web had already been created, back in 1989, but it had yet to gain a foothold among the masses. Internet access was rare and generally only seen at larger companies and Universities. Most large companies had at least two concurrent networks that ran side-by-side, one for the IBM Mainframe enviornment and another for "everything else". The "everything else" network was Ethernet but it was not the Ethernet of today. Imagine 200+ users sharing three collision domains of 10 megabit ethernet, half duplex over 10base2 wiring.
A group of Macs one one of these segments along with PCs of the day could totally cause havoc on the PC side, and they usually did. The reason for this is the Macs, with their awfully implemented Appletalk protocol would simply blast the PCs off the network with unending and unnecessary barrages of broadcasts. Being a data tech back in the day was a never ending battle to keep the Macs playing nice over the network. It was a battle you would never win, at least until network technology improved with smaller collision domains, VLANs and the like.
Looking at the Macs it seemed they were far behind the times. The "professional" Macs were a slightly different breed then the "home" Macs; the Pro/Business level Macs had color screens at least where the most Macs I had seen in people's homes had tiny black-and-white screens, a useless one-button mouse and, well, not much else. Quite frankly I didn't see what all the "big deal" really ways regarding these backwards machines.
The Mac, in my mind, would remain the backwards throwback from the 70s machine until a key and crucial moment in Mac history and that was the release of OS X. Over the years I spent working professionally I would come to see the beauty of an old operating system called UNIX. The longer I used UNIX the more I questioned why PCs did so little while this OS seemed to do so much, and so seamlessly. 100 or more users could be logged into a central UNIX machine doing all manner of work and my session would remain responsive. That was pretty impressive!
Linux would follow in big brother UNIX's footsteps and emerge as the "consumer level" UNIX-like OS of choice and thus these two, along with their cousin BSD, would march happily along, a strange enclave of computing that existed somewhere between the "big business Big Iron" and the home PC.
Also during this time the World Wide Web flourished and prospered into the biggest "thing" that has happened online. Ever. People started to get online in greater numbers and as more people would manage to get online they started to adopt higher speeds of data transfer. For anyone who ever connected at 300 or 1200 baud, connecting via a modem at 56k seemed incredible. The Cable Modems and DSL lines of the world followed and we went from a society of devices that were online occasionally to a set of devices that remained online all the time, 24x7 though mostly PC owners would only access online content a couple of brief moments of the day. Around this time Apple would have a watershed moment, the release of OS X; more of that in a few minutes.
But this is where the Microsoft side of the world failed and has continued to fail ever since. To compare Microsoft's inability, even wont, to secure their operating system with the security achieved by nearly ever other is a comparison of (can't use "Apples" here), uh, Oranges and plant food. The two are so far apart they, in comparison, are not only different species but so different I am having a difficult time coming up with a comparison that really works.
As long as Microsoft machines have haunted the Internet they (MS) have relied on 3rd party companies to do what they themselves cannot: secure their own product. True, Windows 95 and the successors of that bloodline, Win98 and WinMe, could no more be secured then someone armed with a single sandbag could fend off the onslaught of an incoming tide. Allowing the company to write off the sins of the "Win95" family of OSes does NOT excuse the out-of-the-box ease of penetration of XP and Vista. Microsoft "Trustworthy Computing" has been with us for over four years I believe and I have not seen much improvement.
Why do people still use XP (and God help you, Vista)? Large companies with big budgets and IT staffs *can* secure XP and keep ahead of security issues with the product - for the most part. In fact a large company can make XP seem quite solid and easy to maintain; a technician does not come around to kick you off your computer to install patches any longer and this gives the "home user" the illusion to keeping a PC with XP or Vista up and running (well) is a trivial, hands-off affair when in fact it is anything but.
If I had a dollar for each time someone I, or my wife, works with had a question about their "(home) PC being slow" or "weird messages popping up on the screen" or "my web sites being redirected" I would be a rich man indeed.
People also think they *HAVE* to put up with this kind of digital misbehavior from devices they bring into their home and it is just NOT THE CASE. My house is living proof of this, as are the others I have convinced to "make the change". Why?
Because Apple released OS X, that is why. Apple used to like to call OS X "UNIX" even though it really wasn't. It was, however, a very close relative, so close that once you were on the command line all your old friends were right there waiting. But a command line is not what makes UNIX the powerhouse that it is (it is am important component of that, yes, but bear with me). UNIX was created to be interconnected from the beginning as such it was built, from the start, with an eye towards security. Having a multi-user OS was useless if one person could corrupt the entire system for all other users. As such a strong foundation was created on which a strong OS was built. Over the years, no, decades, UNIX was improved and hardened as Internet and intranet attacks matured. Solid and dependable, not to mention safe, UNIX still plays a major role in the Internet and will likely continue for years.
OS X was built with the same security model in mind: multiuser, safe and robust out of the box. Perfect? No, hardly. A better alternative for a home user to use online? You bet. The reason I switch my ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY from XP to OS X, even going so far as purchasing computers for them was MY OWN PIECE OF MIND. Before switching the family over the OS X my parents and sister were all running a combination of XP and Me on their home machines and they ALWAYS had questions, usually about something not working at a critical time. I can't tell you how many times they would have to reload their base OSes after a virus infestation or a bungled Registry. Now that my family has switched the frequency of calls to Help Desk Greg have greatly reduced.
Sure, there is the occasional tech related question, the "how do I do..." or "is there a way to do this" but gone are the panic calls at all hours, usually the night before something big was due for school or work, with a dead or unresponsive machine.
Microsoft, rather then pouring funds into their own product to reach this kind of level of security would rather fight, what appears to me, to be a multi-front dirty fight to protect their installation base rather then to improve it. Funding the SCO suit through back-door money transfers, etc, with a hope to kill Linux was one such dirty war. Another was to push, and keep pushing, websites to adopt closed, proprietary protocols that could work only with Microsoft operating systems to force users to use MS or not be able to use many websites. On the other hand Microsoft produces and releases their popular office software for the Mac so they aren't all bad, just paranoid about losing market share (and they should be).
Anyone who says there is little difference between OS X and a PC for the home user has not used both operating systems. End of story. There is a HUGE difference in usability and Apple, with OS X, has the clear advantage.
Back around 1992 I landed my first job with a large company in the data networking group. Data networking, back around this time, was very different then it is today. For the record the World Wide Web had already been created, back in 1989, but it had yet to gain a foothold among the masses. Internet access was rare and generally only seen at larger companies and Universities. Most large companies had at least two concurrent networks that ran side-by-side, one for the IBM Mainframe enviornment and another for "everything else". The "everything else" network was Ethernet but it was not the Ethernet of today. Imagine 200+ users sharing three collision domains of 10 megabit ethernet, half duplex over 10base2 wiring.
A group of Macs one one of these segments along with PCs of the day could totally cause havoc on the PC side, and they usually did. The reason for this is the Macs, with their awfully implemented Appletalk protocol would simply blast the PCs off the network with unending and unnecessary barrages of broadcasts. Being a data tech back in the day was a never ending battle to keep the Macs playing nice over the network. It was a battle you would never win, at least until network technology improved with smaller collision domains, VLANs and the like.
Looking at the Macs it seemed they were far behind the times. The "professional" Macs were a slightly different breed then the "home" Macs; the Pro/Business level Macs had color screens at least where the most Macs I had seen in people's homes had tiny black-and-white screens, a useless one-button mouse and, well, not much else. Quite frankly I didn't see what all the "big deal" really ways regarding these backwards machines.
The Mac, in my mind, would remain the backwards throwback from the 70s machine until a key and crucial moment in Mac history and that was the release of OS X. Over the years I spent working professionally I would come to see the beauty of an old operating system called UNIX. The longer I used UNIX the more I questioned why PCs did so little while this OS seemed to do so much, and so seamlessly. 100 or more users could be logged into a central UNIX machine doing all manner of work and my session would remain responsive. That was pretty impressive!
Linux would follow in big brother UNIX's footsteps and emerge as the "consumer level" UNIX-like OS of choice and thus these two, along with their cousin BSD, would march happily along, a strange enclave of computing that existed somewhere between the "big business Big Iron" and the home PC.
Also during this time the World Wide Web flourished and prospered into the biggest "thing" that has happened online. Ever. People started to get online in greater numbers and as more people would manage to get online they started to adopt higher speeds of data transfer. For anyone who ever connected at 300 or 1200 baud, connecting via a modem at 56k seemed incredible. The Cable Modems and DSL lines of the world followed and we went from a society of devices that were online occasionally to a set of devices that remained online all the time, 24x7 though mostly PC owners would only access online content a couple of brief moments of the day. Around this time Apple would have a watershed moment, the release of OS X; more of that in a few minutes.
But this is where the Microsoft side of the world failed and has continued to fail ever since. To compare Microsoft's inability, even wont, to secure their operating system with the security achieved by nearly ever other is a comparison of (can't use "Apples" here), uh, Oranges and plant food. The two are so far apart they, in comparison, are not only different species but so different I am having a difficult time coming up with a comparison that really works.
As long as Microsoft machines have haunted the Internet they (MS) have relied on 3rd party companies to do what they themselves cannot: secure their own product. True, Windows 95 and the successors of that bloodline, Win98 and WinMe, could no more be secured then someone armed with a single sandbag could fend off the onslaught of an incoming tide. Allowing the company to write off the sins of the "Win95" family of OSes does NOT excuse the out-of-the-box ease of penetration of XP and Vista. Microsoft "Trustworthy Computing" has been with us for over four years I believe and I have not seen much improvement.
Why do people still use XP (and God help you, Vista)? Large companies with big budgets and IT staffs *can* secure XP and keep ahead of security issues with the product - for the most part. In fact a large company can make XP seem quite solid and easy to maintain; a technician does not come around to kick you off your computer to install patches any longer and this gives the "home user" the illusion to keeping a PC with XP or Vista up and running (well) is a trivial, hands-off affair when in fact it is anything but.
If I had a dollar for each time someone I, or my wife, works with had a question about their "(home) PC being slow" or "weird messages popping up on the screen" or "my web sites being redirected" I would be a rich man indeed.
People also think they *HAVE* to put up with this kind of digital misbehavior from devices they bring into their home and it is just NOT THE CASE. My house is living proof of this, as are the others I have convinced to "make the change". Why?
Because Apple released OS X, that is why. Apple used to like to call OS X "UNIX" even though it really wasn't. It was, however, a very close relative, so close that once you were on the command line all your old friends were right there waiting. But a command line is not what makes UNIX the powerhouse that it is (it is am important component of that, yes, but bear with me). UNIX was created to be interconnected from the beginning as such it was built, from the start, with an eye towards security. Having a multi-user OS was useless if one person could corrupt the entire system for all other users. As such a strong foundation was created on which a strong OS was built. Over the years, no, decades, UNIX was improved and hardened as Internet and intranet attacks matured. Solid and dependable, not to mention safe, UNIX still plays a major role in the Internet and will likely continue for years.
OS X was built with the same security model in mind: multiuser, safe and robust out of the box. Perfect? No, hardly. A better alternative for a home user to use online? You bet. The reason I switch my ENTIRE EXTENDED FAMILY from XP to OS X, even going so far as purchasing computers for them was MY OWN PIECE OF MIND. Before switching the family over the OS X my parents and sister were all running a combination of XP and Me on their home machines and they ALWAYS had questions, usually about something not working at a critical time. I can't tell you how many times they would have to reload their base OSes after a virus infestation or a bungled Registry. Now that my family has switched the frequency of calls to Help Desk Greg have greatly reduced.
Sure, there is the occasional tech related question, the "how do I do..." or "is there a way to do this" but gone are the panic calls at all hours, usually the night before something big was due for school or work, with a dead or unresponsive machine.
Microsoft, rather then pouring funds into their own product to reach this kind of level of security would rather fight, what appears to me, to be a multi-front dirty fight to protect their installation base rather then to improve it. Funding the SCO suit through back-door money transfers, etc, with a hope to kill Linux was one such dirty war. Another was to push, and keep pushing, websites to adopt closed, proprietary protocols that could work only with Microsoft operating systems to force users to use MS or not be able to use many websites. On the other hand Microsoft produces and releases their popular office software for the Mac so they aren't all bad, just paranoid about losing market share (and they should be).
Anyone who says there is little difference between OS X and a PC for the home user has not used both operating systems. End of story. There is a HUGE difference in usability and Apple, with OS X, has the clear advantage.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
This is my initial post
I am in transition from my personal blog, which will disappear in the near future, to this blog.
Old blog: http://tbcorp.homeip.net/blog/
Old blog: http://tbcorp.homeip.net/blog/
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