13.1 Down 0 to Go

Yesterday (Sunday Oct. 29), I ran my very first 1/2 marathon at the Grand Rapids Marathon.  I successfuly completed the course which was beautiful. 

My wife and I run w/ the Mars Hill Running Group and we started the intermediate training schedule.  However, my wife started having joints problems and we took some time off the schedule to get her better.  Her joints though did not allow her to finish training, so she helped out at Aid station #6.

My long run of my training was 8 miles, in fact I had never ran further then 10, and that was back in high school over 10 years ago when I was running cross country.

Sunday was a great day for a race, perhaps a little too much wind in some areas but other then that a very enjoyable time.  The race course is great, a beautiful fall run w/ lots of color, trees and even a river to run next to.  There were two parts of the course where the wind was extremly strong, the first being Millennium Park and the second being just before the finish line on Winter Street.

My knee hurt throughout the entire race so I walked a lot more then I wanted to and in fact when I saw my wife at the 8.5 mile mark I really thought about quitting but fought my way through it.  Another crisis occured around the 10.5 mile mark as my calves were cramping and forced me to shuffle for a while.

This race has great group of volunteers and staff.  The aid stations are great and provide lots of support and plenty of Gatorade.  However one disappointment was that oragne slices were only provided to the full marathon people and not the half-marathon runners.  Also if you ever work at a large race, don’t ever tell a runner: “looking great, you’re almost there”  Even if it is mile 11 out of 13.  You don’t know how that person is feeling and 2 miles can seem like a lifetime. 

Trying to finish was hard due to the wind.  You rounded the corner by the downtown  Grand Valley campus and were installatly hit by a wall of wind.  In fact I felt like I was going backwards the wind was so strong.

However I did finish w/ a time of 2:43:18 and last in my age group.  But I finished and that is what is important.  Maybe next year I’ll be able to train and run w/ my wife

Updating the Official Ubuntu Book

Well a lot of people have been asking whether or not the Official Ubuntu book will be updated and I think I mentioned it here earlier, but I have finally updated Chapter 7, boy were there a lot of changes and will be getting the screenshots and everything over to Deb the editor.  Like always I’m the last one and I don’t know why, I think its beacuse I don’t focus enough on it like I should.

Anyways w/ FeistyFawn being recently announced there is also going to be another hard cover updated edition of the book and I will be working on it.  I have some thoughts on things I would like to change or add and will be first contacting the editor and secondly posting these thoughts here.

Altiris and Linux Pre-boot

Altiris uses Linux as a preboot enviroment.  One of three, WinPE, MSDOS, Linux, Linux is supposed to be the most flexible, adding in speed and also scripablitiy.  However the biggest frustration of dealing w/ Linux in the preboot enviroment is the same problem that is hindering Linux’ s adoption in the desktop/server world, the lack of driver support. 

This is further complicated by the fact that you are dealing w/ a stripped down, customized kernel that Altiris provides for you and is version specific.  For example if you use version 6.5 of Deployment Server, then you are limited to using kernel 2.6.15.1 and if you use version 6.8 of DS then you are limited to using kernel 2.6.16.20.  This causes lots of problems w/ booting newer hardware, especially the new Intel Q965 chipset that Linux struggles with.  In fact the 2.6.18 kernel has a patch that address this problem.

Note: Ubuntu 6.10 (the Edgy Eft) has backported a fix from the 2.6.18 kernel into the 2.6.17 kernel that it ships with.

So if you are using DS 6.5 and Linux as your preboot and you have some of the newer hardware how do you image your computers?  You upgrade or switch to WinPE.  Which is a harsh view of things.  I’m working at a client right now that has 5000 computers, multiple PXE servers, 2 Deployment Servers, and several package servers.  And Altiris’ solution is to upgrade…

I guess I don’t understand why the Linux Developers make such a change to how Deployment works.  How long is Altiris going to be supporting 6.5?  How often is the kernel upgraded to support changes to hardware and other improvements?  One can only help that in DS 7.0 Altiris does something and makes a change to allow for a more modular kernel.

Osama Supports the Democrats :) :) :)

Wow this is very very funny… I don’t know if I should laugh at the reactions on the following post or be afraid of the Democratic underground that thinks they are in charge. Will they be as successfull as MoveOn.org in getting people elected? It’s looking like they can’t even get Ned Lamont to win.

A very funny joke someone played

Googlebombing the Election

Thanks to GOP Bloggers for this story about Democrats trying a new tatic to win the election. Sometimes I can’ believce what the Democrats will try to do to win an election. The idea is to come up w/ a list of articles against Republicans written by “non-partisan” sources and then buy Google adwords for the most popular searches for canidates in “trouble” and link those articles to the adwords. So how are they going to do it? Well first they track all the sites via Google Spreadsheets and then spend lots of money.

Will this really help the Democrats win an election? Will people really respond to this attack or will they respond to substance and ideas? I sure it’s substance and ideas that win back, I don’t understand why people think a smear campaign will win people over to the Democrat “side” but I guess when you don’t have anything to run on, then its just blame the other guy for all the problems out there…

Maybe we should all edit the spreadsheet and put in Democrat names and bad press for Democrats? But I guess that would be stooping to thier level

The Feisty Fawn

Well its official SABDFL (Mark Shuttleworth) announced today the new codename for Ubuntu which will be released on the 19th of April 2007. Ubuntu 7.04 will be called the “Feisty Fawn” and here are the reasons to quote Mark’s email announcement:

With the final release of Ubuntu 6.10 approaching, and apparently set to be spot on schedule October 26th, we’re starting to look beyond it to Ubuntu 7.04, scheduled for release on 19 April 2007. In the next cycle we’ll expand on the brand new infrastructure that has landed in Edgy as well as branching out in some exciting new directions. This combination of courage and restlessness is also found in a young deer that sets out to explore a world that is new and exciting – seeing the world through eyes unprejudiced by what has gone before. In that spirit, the release will be be code named “The Feisty Fawn”.

The main themes for feature development in this release will be improvements to hardware support in the laptop, desktop and high-end server market, and aggressive adoption of emerging desktop technologies. Ubuntu’s Feisty release will put the spotlight on multimedia enablement and desktop effects.

Now I’m all excited by a new release and its time to start cranking out documentation Again but really did Edgy Eft meet its goals?

We told:

So dream a little about Xen for virtualisation, Xgl/AIGLX and other wonderful wobbly window bits, the goodness of Network Manager, a first flirt with multiarch support for true mixed 32-bit and 64-bit computing on AMD64, the interesting possibilities of the SMART package manager… and other pieces of infrastructure which have appeared tantalisingly on the horizon.

And yet I don’t we are making most of these changes. I don’t think Xen is going in by default, Xgl/AIGLX isn’t by default and Ubuntu won’t have the Edgy artwork that has been in development.

I know we are supposed to dream big w/ Ubuntu and especially Edgy Eft, but I think too many outside of the core-dev group dreamed big goals and maybe bigger goals then those core-devs did. Edgy Eft is great, new infrastructure, new artwork/theme for Kubuntu, but over all I think a lot of people are going to be disappointed.

Will that happen in Feisty Fawn as well? If we are looking to put the spotlight on multimedia enablement will that mean Ubuntu/Canonical will reach some licensing agreement on mp3? I doubt that… I don’t know how much further improvement will happen in the laptop area, I know a ton already has but should there be more? Kubuntu is using a new power manger that works very well…

I guess we will ahve to wait and see how the Fawn shapes out, but here’s hoping it will be great…. And I love getting back on 6 month development

Thin Toliet Paper

Does a company really save money by providing super thin toliet paper?  One should never be able to see through Toliet Paper.  I wonder what the cost savings in purchasing thicker TP versus all the extra TP you waste w/ the thin toliet paper.

Think about it.  If the TP is too thin you grab extra paper and folder over to make it thicker, which then wastes TP.  So once again, the question is asked, Does cheap, thin toliet paper actually save a company money?

I think there are better places and ways to save money.  Don’t spend so much on free pop/coffee for everyone or don’t pay some VIP more money then they are really worth.  Instead provide good and soft Toliet Paper and worker morale will increase.

Vista RTM Scheduled for Oct. 25

I don’t know what happened to this post, but oh well… Accordign to this article in the Seattle Times, there is a clock in Buildin 9 in Redmond that is counting down the day until Vista releases to the manufacturer or RTM. This is a big milestone because it means Vista is closer to being available to the genuine masses. The big OEM’s and other shops will get this verion of Vista and will soon start cranking out Vista PC’s and all kind of Vista goodness. Soon, should be in January.

A nice quote in the article explains a lot of the information:

An Oct. 25 RTM date would give computer manufacturers enough time to get new machines loaded with Vista into store inventories for an early January launch, which could still catch some momentum at the tail end of the holidays, said Joe Wilcox, an analyst with Jupiter Research.

The other intersting part of this article is there is a rumor that Bill Gates will launch Vista at his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show or CES.

Can’t wait for this….

Update: Now Schedule to RTM Novemeber 2 due to a security hole that was found and fixed

Review of the Official Ubuntu book

Linked from the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter I found this nice review of the Official Ubuntu book.  A couple of people have posted in response to this blog, about what is going on w/Edgy and will the information in this book help.

For Edgy we are currently working on getting the book updated and it will be included in the example content section of the distribution.  I have some more work to do for  Kubuntu, like gettings screenshots but then I will upload and we can get that solved. This should fix the bug where the same screenshot shows up in several locations.

There will not be a new book released, jsut the update on the distro release.  I hope that solves the questions

Congrats Detroit Tigers!!!!

Wow what a great weekend, I can’t believe the Tigers are heading to the World Series, I can’t beleive that this is really happening.  In 1984 I was a bleacher bum along w/ my older brother and my aunt and uncle several times and what a great time we had…

I think the best part about this team is that no one thought they would be even as close to as good as they are…. I can’t believe it, but it is October and I’m still watching Tiger baseball.

Now the question: “Whose your tiger?”