Congrats again to the Kubuntu Team for releasing Tribe2 of Feisty Fawn. Also once again major thanks to Rich Johnson on once again updating the document showing all the changes.
Things that are new
I hate Cars
As I write this post I am in the car dealership in Milan Michigan. 99% of the people who read this probablly have no idea where Milan MI is or that it even existed. Anyways I was on my way home from Columbus Ohio today and noticed my car was chugging on the highway. And then the temperature gauge started jumping everytime I hit the throttle. Touch the throttle and the gauge would plummet to cold and then when I let off the throttle the guage would return to its normal position. I thought maybe my car was overheating but there was no indicator that I was low on fluid, but to play it safe I got off the highway, US-23, and looked for the first garage or gas station I could find. I pulled into Tim’s Auto Shop and while he said he was very busy he would look at it breifly to see if he knew what the problem was. We checked all my fluids and then he took it out for a test spin. If a mechanic ever says “I’ve never seen that before” you know you have a problem.
Which brings me to where I am at, the Chevy Dealership, my car is Chevy Cavelier, waiting for them to diagnose the problem. The bummer is I was supposed to be at home today, supposed to be having dinner with my wife, supposed to be doing a lot of other things. Currently its 12:53 pm and I have been here since 11:30am. Hopefully it is nothing serious and I can get back on the round quickly and see my wife. Did I mention I have been on the road 7 out of the last 8 weeks. Yeah sucks doesn’t…
***** Update 1 ***********
Ok thed problem has been finally diagnosed, apparently the bolts that hold the computer for the car in place were broken and the computer was bouncing around and it finally broke. Hence all the problems I was having with the gauges and everything else. Now I am waiting on getting it fixed. Another funny part of this adventure is one of the sales men asked what I did and when I told him I was a computer consultant he asked if I could take a look at his computer. Larry needs a new hard drive for his Dell that is about 5 years old. Blue screen of Death all the time due to drive failures. Helped him copy his “customer list,” which seemed nothing more then a mailbox? Don’t know for sure. Apparently that was good enough for him to talk to the service manager and ask him to “help me out,” whatever that menas…..
It’s currently 2:30pm and still waiting to get back on the road, more updates as it follows.
*** Update 3 ************
It’s 3pm and still waiting for my car, this sure sucks big time, was supposed to be home and supposed to have a special date with my wife tonight. Bummer on that, hopefully we can still get it to work correctly.
*** Update 4 *********
Car fixed and ready to roll. Its 4pm which means I should be home by 6:30
In another post (http://jjesse.wordpress.com/2007/05/15/sharepoint-versus-worpdress/), I spoke about problems and concerns I have had trying to come up with a nice content management system to help replace what we currently are using at work. I wanted to provide an update as to where I currently am on and how the project is currently standing. An amazing part of my last blog entry was one of the dotProject core contributors made some comments about helping out which was nice, including recommending a different product then using dotProject to meet ourrr needs.
I spent some time with MediaWiki, Drupal, Alfresco, and finally came back to WordPress. I created a test virtual machine running on my Kubuntu box and started playing around with it. I found all kinds of cool themes, plugins and other unnessecary junk to loadx into my wordpress setup. Finally I found what I was really looking for, post levels. The ability to set a level to a post and only those with higher access could see the post. Beacuse the information posted here will be specific to the company, I have setup each post with a default level of 1 and a person has to then sign in to view the post. A question I still have is how secure is the password settings behind this?
I am not too concerned about theming the site, unless I want to brand it based on the colors and everything of the company, but right now I’m pretty happy with how things look.
I like the fact that I create categories for each post and then do a quick and easy search by limiting to just the categories I want. If the topic is Client Management, then I want to see all Client Management related posts, Asset Management, Asset Management posts, etc… A thought I haven’t tried to figure out is can I first limit by Client Management and then Design Documents to only show Client Management Design Documents.
Another thing I am enjoying working with WordPress is the ease to setup and get working with page rank and uploading files. I took a look at Alfresco based on recommendations and it looked great, including file versioning, but the setup was way complex. In fact more complex then the last time I looked at Sharepoint. Am I missing something in the setup of Alfresco? I had to do a lot of configuration and customization that I didn’t have to do in WordPress. Another point that bothers me about Alfresco is you are required to run a GUI to get things to work correctly. In fact I couldn’t figure out how to install without a GUI to even test to see if it was possible. Any install documents are “hidden” behind a wall of create a username and password to sign in to see them. (That turns me off from using a product.) To setup wordpress I simply installed Ubuntu 7.04 server using the LAMP installer and downloaded the wordpress install, unziped and untarred and was ready to go with a few simple steps. No GUI required. I use phpmysqladmin because I like it, but outside of that, nothing was requried. Simple and easy to do.
So I’m now at the point to do a demo of what I’ve created after I have populated the database. Hopefully what I present can help ease the transfer from dotProject to WordPress.
subtitled: The cream doesn’t always rise to the top
If you are ever looking to see the finest of society in a town you are
visiting, please visit the Secreatary of State, or Department of Motor
Vehicles, whatever area of government is in charge of driver’s licenses,
driver’s tests, etc. You will see the finest specimans of civilization.
I would like to state four examples of the finest the great state of Ohio has
to offer:
1. Barefoot and Pregnant walking around in public: Yes I did see a young
lady walking barefoot into work today while she was pregnant, or at least so
large I hope she was pregnant. Dirty, wild, unkempt and unwashed
hair, “strutting” her stuff as she wadled into the BMV (Buerau of Motor
Vehicles).
2. Car full of unbuckled people, including child. A beater of a car was full
of adults with the “mom” holding what appeared to be a one year in her lap,
she was at least in the back seat of the car and not in front. The other
child, was standing on the floor of the back seat with his head out the
window. Classy….
3. Handicaped because you are fat: There should be a law that fat people
should not be able to get a handicap sticker for their car. In fact, if you
are so fat your captains chair in your full size van must be reclined in
order for you to drive, there should be a law that states you have to park in
the furthest away spot and not take up the handicap spots from people who
really need it due to injury or other more serious actual diseases. Being
obese is not a handicap, its your own stupid fault.
And just to round things out, the 4th and perhaps best example of the cream of
the crop is the “gentleman”, and I use this term loosely, with a pony tail
and a t-shirt that said “Hold me beer while I f$#k your wife, but without the
symbols. Yes sir you are one classy gentleman. In fact I’m so glad you
brought one of the mothers of your children with you because you are
re-applying for your driver’s license which was revoked.
None of these people should be allowed to vote or breed.
Ok saw this on Amazon.com today and noticed the 2nd edition of The Official Ubuntu Book is available for pre-order. Looking forward to that coming out. It is current for 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) and can help out a lot.
As always it was a pleasure to work with the great folks at Prentince Hall, Mako, Jono, Corey Burger et all…
Came across this today from Planet Ubuntu. Great idea and great job people. Keep up the good work, site bookmarked 
For some reason there has been a rumor of an agreement a la Novel/Microsoft or MS and Xandros, featuring MS and Ubuntu. It appears that someone took a quote out of context when searching Shuttleworth quotes. Mark thinks it would be great to work with Microsoft in a way that would promote both freedom and interop, not in a way that provide patent indeminification. The good news is the Ubuntu community has debunked the rumors and stories floating around the blogsphere. This post is perhaps one of the best, in fact it is the one Mark quotes in his blog entry responding to the actual criticism and the rumor.
In his entry he restates his desire to work together with MS to promote interop, but not patent indeminification. As someone who works w/ MS products for a living and does consulting for a product that specializes in Microsoft products, I wish that Microsoft would work further to make things better then force people to use their product or sue them for patent infringment. I wish I could use Active Directory to manage my Linux boxes better, to better network between my LInux box and my windows file server. All kinds of things I wish I could do. MS Office on Linux would be an awesome addition, or perhaps better standards work between their products and already established standards instead of creating their own. When will Microsoft wake up from the nineties tech world and join the current tech world were open source products and Microsoft products need MUST work together.
Best quote of Mark’s to sum up the whole thing: (BTW isn’t it great that a CEO responds so openly?)
My goal is to carry free software forward as far as I can, and then to help others take the baton to carry it further. At Canonical, we believe that we can be successful and also make a huge contribution to that goal. In the Ubuntu community, we believe that the freedom in free software is what’s powerful, not the openness of the code. Our role is not to be the ideologues -in-chief of the movement, our role is to deliver the benefits of that freedom to the widest possible audience. We recognize the value in “good now to get perfect later” (today we require free apps, tomorrow free drivers too, and someday free firmware to be part of the default Ubuntu configuration) we always act in support of the goals of the free software community as we perceive them.
Tha sums everything up….
A little late to this, but I have now downloaded and setup a virtual machine of Gutsy Gibbon Tribe 1. The first release of the newest version is an alpha release and should not be used in production environments. Since I have always focused on Kubuntu, I am really interested in the changes that have been made. Rich Johnson (nixternal) as always has created great release notes on exactly what has changed.
If you would like to download Tribe 1, feel free to visit the download page
Seriously, I couldn’t believe this when I read the story on GOP Bloggers. Let me quote the story:
City Councilor Chuck Turner said a proposed bill to uncover slavery profits in Massachusetts was a “very important and appropriate” way to move beyond the past.
Sponsored by state Rep. Byron Rushing (D-Boston) and nine other legislators, House Bill 3239 would compel companies that do business with Massachusetts search their archives for “records of participation or investments in, or profits derived, from slavery.”
The bill also directs the secretary of state to publish a history of slavery in Massachusetts. There is no punishment built into the bill, but companies failing to complete the review could lose their contract.
The point of this bill is supposed to help us move on and forget the history of slavery, but think about it. Now a company that wants to do business with the state must first spend time digging through its history to see if it benifited from slavery. How many companies still exist that existed when slavery was still practiced during the 1860’s? Let’s think this through? Microsoft? Did Bill Gates get his money from slavery? Was IBM founded with money that was created through slavery? What if a company’s founders great-great-great grand father owned a plantation that had slaves? Does that mean the company has then profited from slavery?
How many companies have been around since 1860?
Interesting post here, about someone who has ordered one of those brand-new Ubuntu Dell boxes. He had some minor problems with the laptop, but thinks he got one of the first ones as he ordered it the day the story was announced. Also has pictures of his shinny new laptop.
I wish it came preinstalled w/ Kubuntu
I’m a little unsual in the fact that I’m a conservative who also works in the tech industry. Well maybe I’m not really unusal it just seems that way as you spend time searching around the internet and other things.
Anways I have recently switched jobs from being a Windows Network Administrator to working as a full time consultant for a company that specialize in Altiris. Its a great product, but a ton of information to learn.
During my spare time, when I’m not running, spending time with my wife or hanging out w/ my dog, I work on the documentation for Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org) and have somehow become the lead for the Kubuntu side of things. The documentation is great but we always need help. So stop by and help us out…
