Month: October 2003

Today I read a beautiful metaphor on one of my message boards. I’ve revised it a good deal, and present it to you here:

Most people have seen Disney’s Toy Story. A few years ago I watched the movie (again) and felt compelled by Buzz Lightyear’s character. As you may recall, Buzz was charismatic, confident and even charming. He believed himself to be an authentic space ranger, together with wings and a laser that could stun and even kill opponents. He believed he was an important member of a force fighting against a cosmic foe bent on destroying the universe.

Of course, he paid no attention to the fact that his cool gadgets didn’t really work. When he was asked if he could fly, he was able to demonstrate his flying ability to the satisfaction of all the other toys (except Woody). Buzz’s faith was so strong that he was able to produce the evidence necessary to vindicate it, quite convincingly, I might add, (almost miraculously) as he bounced around Andy’s bedroom appearing to fly.

Then something important happened. Woody was able to convince Buzz to test out his machinery, really, to see if he was truly a space ranger. Buzz watched a TV commercial, and tested his equipment. He started to seriously doubt. Later, Buzz’s doubts turned into complete hopelessness as he leaped off a staircase only to find his that his wings were useless.

As a broken toy, Buzz suffered in the depths of depression. He got rid of the stickers on his body that did nothing but serve as decorations. He experimented with his personality, acting totally different, for a while, from the way people had always known him. The courageous, confident Buzz seemed a broken and unhappy toy.

Buzz went through a major transformation. He became more human when he learned of his true identity and limitations.

He was just a toy.

Once he acknowledged this, he decided that his goal should be to try to help Woody and Andy find happiness.

At the end of the movie, in a desperate moment, Buzz had to muster the courage to use his wings to “fly” in order to take himself and Woody to the child, Andy. Amazingly, he was able to fly, only this time his response to the admiration of Woody was, “This isn’t flying. This is falling with style!” He recognized his limitations, yet working within them was able to accomplish amazing things.

I hope I can still fall with style.

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Note: I realize metaphors can be taken too far. As it stands, I think this one is beautiful; I’d rather not try to extend it too far to try to analyze the role of Andy as a loving caretaker, Sid as the incarnation of evil, and Mr. Potato Head as the need for comic relief. Or whatever.

Received this in my mail today; author unknown. Laughs unbearable! You probably have to live in Utah to get it…

In celebration of Barbie’s 40th birthday, Mattel has created a Mormon Barbie for the folks in Utah. The most popular, Celestial Barbie, comes with 8.4 children. She wears a mid-calf flower print Laura Ashley dress with conservative flats (no heels), a bow in her flowing shoulder-length hair, with puffy bangs.
Barbie wears a permanent smile and comes with her own bread making machine, store of wheat, list of ways to feed a family of 12 on less than $200 a week, casserole recipes, and year’s supply of green Jell-O.

Also available MAV (Dodge/Ford/Nissan/whatever mini-van, otherwise known as a Mormon Assault Vehicle). When you pull the cord in her back she sheds real tears and says, “You have such a special spirit, Sister,” and “Love ya!”

Occasionally you can find one that says “Oh, my heck!” but this is a manufacturer’s defect. Celestial Barbie would never say “heck.”

You can buy a Celestial Ken to go with Celestial Barbie, but he’s hard to find. He’s always off fulfilling some priesthood calling, so he’s rarely home.

Other Special LDS Barbies include:

• RM Barbie – This Barbie comes with your choice of a BYU or Ricks sweatshirt and mini computer, and bears her testimony in a foreign language.
• Homemaking Leader Barbie – Comes with a wide assortment of miniature baking, sewing, and craft supplies.
• Primary President Barbie – Not very popular, since this one has no hair. Pull her cord and she sings “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree,” “Give Said the Little Stream,” and folds her arms to remind everyone to be reverent.
• Relief Society Presidency Barbies – Sold in sets of three, these Barbies come complete with their own agenda! Also included are mini telephones which come attached to their ears. Batteries required, as these busy little numbers never stop running. No shutoff buttons.
• Young Women’s Leader Barbie – Comes dressed for camp with all necessary equipment, including enough insect repellent for everyone. Bishop Ken also available in camping attire.
• Young Women Skippers – Laurels, Mia Maids, and Beehives, all cute as buttons, dressed in flannel nighties for the sleepover. One-piece swimsuits and knee-length shorts outfits also available.
• Nursery Leader Barbie – This frazzled, smiling Barbie talks in her own baby-like voice and comes with an assortment of babies and toddlers, storybooks, toys, and a supply of disposable diapers. Be careful, however: on Sundays after church, all this one wants to do is sleep.
• Organist Barbie – Has rimmed glasses and comes with her very own spiral-bound hymnal. Sits only–in position to play, with arms bent and fingers extended. Piano also available.
• Chorister Barbie – right arm permanently raised to a moving square. Sings seven hymns. Batteries required.
• Visiting Teaching Barbies – Sold in sets of two, this is a true collector’s item as each set has its own recorded message. Comes with supply of message handouts and plates of birthday and Christmas cookies.
• Stake Leader Barbie – comes with a voluminous set of mini-leadership manuals.
• Salt Lake Leader Barbie- White hair in a hurricane hairdo!
• Also available: Priesthood leader husband Ken who sits permanently asleep on the stand. Eyes do not open. Snores. Batteries required.

EDIT: Of course, after I post this, I learn that it’s posted in roughly 429,000 other web sites around the planet. Eh, well. I thought it was clever, and apparently 428,999 other people think so too.

If you’re a programmer, you’ll probably get this cartoon. If you aren’t, good luck to you:

http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2003/10/03/

Remember your first homecoming? Good Lord, I do. Music, French Duck, Bees, and Matt Barnson.

The fall of 1991 was an interesting time for me. I had a new girlfriend who was a year older than me, and although that relationship was fine.. I was really much more interested in her best friend. Ah, to be 16 again. So I promptly dumped my girlfriend, asked the friend to homecoming, got turned down, and promptly asked my new EX to go with me again, and please to be my girlfriend.

Got it so far?

So, wrapped up in this soap opera was my good friend Matt, the senior who had adopted me, and best of all.. he had a car. Now, I was a poor boy, and really had spent all I had getting my ridiculous suit, so Matt and I came up with a brilliant idea. First, prepare a gourmet french dinner, Duck a l’orange. Second, prepare a suitable after dance activity, (getting a friend to loan us a hot tub). Third, write a song, to be performed as a duet, to our dates.

The gourmet dinner was to be served by our friend, Van Lindberg, doing his best waiter imitation. Matt was going to drive, and a romantic teenage night was to be had by all.

We really had no interest in the parties, the drinking, the limos.. we were going to wow the girls with our creativity and ability to create this romantic situation all by ourselves.

Two days before the date, Matt and I took a full afternoon to write the chorus to “Holdin’ Hearts, Holdin’ Hands” and had the whole shebang set up. “May I have This Dance, Holdin’ Hearts, Holdin Hands? May I look into your eyes the whole night through? Tell me, can your heart believe What your eyes couldn’t see? How I’ve hoped and dreamed of someday holding you.”

Sweet, eh?

Matt’s date, Ranj and my girlfriend, were to be picked up by Matt and I the next day in his station wagon. We had everything planned out.

The next day, I was going to be picked up by Matt at school, we were going to go to pick up the corsages (to be chilled at our houses) and we were going to place the finishing touches on the song, the night, and this experience that was going to be Homecoming.

I waited and waited at school, and no Matt. i called his house again and again.. and no Matt. (no Cel phones in those days).. finally, i get an out of breath Matt on the phone as evening approached and I was about to board the Ride-On bus to go back to my house in Rockville.

“Dude.. there’s a problem” “Where are you, you were supposed to be here an hour and a half ago” Matt sighs, “I was walking home” “From where?” “The ditch where I crashed my car”

I was stunned. Our plans revolved around having independant transportation. As it turns out, a lone Bee (was it honey or Bumble) had attacked Matt in the car, and in an effort to swat it away, Matt had caused the untimely demise of his lovely limo of love.

Well, this was it.. there was no way we were going to escape from this situation. In 24 hours, 2 lovely dates-to- be were awaiting their romantic evening, the Corsages were paid for, the Chicken ready to be cooked. The song, unfinished languished on paper in my notebook.. and it looked very much like all was going to be for naught..

or was it? TO BE CONTINUED…

If you have a spare 45 to 60 minutes today, read the latest essay over at ejectejecteject.com. The only problem I ever have with Bill’s work is that, well, he goes on for a really, really long time. His skills as an essayist are improving, but growing more wordy at the same time 🙂

The topic of this essay is America’s use of “The God Button”, as well as an overall look at historical use of power, and the maturity of the human race in dealing with it.

A far-ranging essay.

As the de-facto world superpower, will history consider the period of American dominance as a remarkable period of relative peace and prosperity? Historically, dominance of a large area by a single power usually prefaced remarkably violence-free societies at the core.

And, predictably, these periods of prosperity and peace were rudely interrupted by unexpected violence.

Which end of the yardstick of time are we on now? I’m not entirely certain. Is it possible to constrain power, and people, using a democratic society? Are we a self-regulating system that can prevent corruption and a seemingly inevitable failure and revolution?

Well, enough of my ramblings. Go read the essay. He has several hundred comments on his site already regarding it, and my small contributions are lost in the rabble– as well as often wildly disagreeing with what he has to say. And agreeing just as wildly.

A co-worker wondered aloud the other day, after compiling a Linux kernel, how he could add drivers without re-compiling the entire kernel. I wasn’t sure how to do it at the time.

Now I am!

So, here’s how you compile an individual driver when you’ve FUBAR’d and forgotten to do it. This only works with ones you’ll need as modules (because in order to get one “into” the kernel, such as Reiserfs, you’d need to recompile the kernel anyway). Just kind of got stumbling around with gcc tonight, and found a combination that works…

Be aware, though, that with certain drivers that strongly touch others, I understand that you may need to re-do “make clean”, “make menuconfig” (or oldconfig, xconfig, config, whatever you use to configure your kernel), and “make dep” to get these to build. Also, if they are drivers that should be in the kernel when you boot, you’ll either need to rebuild your kernel or rebuild your initrd — which is a topic for another day 🙂

Of course, change the path to your linux kernel sources. This is a gaming kernel I’m hacking drivers on tonight while I’m home.

 gcc -I/usr/src/linux-2.4.20-gaming-r3/include -include \ /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-gaming-r3/include/linux/modversions.h \ -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -O6 -c sg.c

This was to compile the “sg.c” driver, when I was in the /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-gaming-r3/drivers/scsi/ directory. The -I (note the lack of any space in the path after) option is basically “Include this stuff”, with an additional include to modversions.h so you don’t end up with a version mismatch.

Worked a charm for me; I copied sg.o to /usr/lib/modules/2.4.20-gaming-r3/kernel/drivers/scsi/ and the did an “insmod sg.o”, and (since this is Gentoo), added “sg” and “ide-scsi” (in that order) to my /etc/modules.autoload.d, and everything was beautiful.

In large part, the reason I committed this to my blog is so that I don’t forget how to do it. I was really, really not looking forward to recompiling my entire kernel tonight because I forgot to include the “sg.o” module (generic scsi support, necessary for CD burning in Linux). What a relief; this took like 10 minutes of research, and about 30 seconds of compiling to make work!

Now, I realize there’s a bit of a language barrier, but the twisted logic of this middle eastern soldier takes the cake.

My favorite part of the rant to American reporters:

The American people want to destroy the Muslim, want to force on us their values. I cannot be a Muslim, that’s the whole problem between me and the American people. If I am a Muslim, then I am a terrorist and I am not a terrorist.

Original Article available Here.

I have two words to say. And the first one is a male bovine.

I adore people for who they are. I have no vendetta against Muslims or any other religion. And I think I represent all the American people when I say that I want peace in the Middle East, and peace on our homefront. In this case, the only apparent way to gain peace was to go to war and root out the plague infesting the communities over there.

The plague there is the same as it is here, from my point of view: Fundamentalism. People cling so tightly to completely irrational points of view, and create these enclaves of superstition and lies. When you are within the group-think of such an organization, though (and I use the term “organization” lightly — in some cases, it can just be beer-drinking buddies that convince themselves racism is a good thing or something), it’s really tough to get out.

And I don’t think Fundamentalists generally see the problem here. That’s the core of the issue: if you’re deeply involved with an irrational group, you often have no awareness of the depth of your delusion.

Note that I’m speaking of Fundamentalism in the sense of people wanting to revert to “old” values and beliefs simply because they are old. Believing the world is flat and the moon missions were faked because the sky is actually a big scroll, because that’s what’s taught in the Bible, is an example of a fundamentalist belief. It’s a belief beyond logic or reason, and it’s really tough to reach people there.

The only solution to this, from where I sit, is enlightened culture. Promotion of reading, discussion of ideals. Organized programs to introduce all of the population to discussion of philosophy and dialogue. Availability at all levels of income and education to education. Easy access to public libraries, with very reasonable costs for the area to access it.

Of course, given the level of fundamentalist, irrational belief even here in the United States, I realize this is a pipe dream. But at the very least, if we can educate leaders and critical people in these organizations, not to try to prove to them the error of their ways, but to expose them to a wider world of options, we can make a positive difference.

The initial thought that I have is that, some sort of exchange program, where adults with families from both sides are given the chance to live with one another could be a real kick in the pants. Maybe a year at a time or something, with employment provided on both sides.

Obviously, there are a ton of details that would have to be worked out to make this kind of thing work. And personality conflicts are a multi-cultural phenomenon. But, if we affected the life of just one teenager, to work for good on both sides of the pond, maybe it would be worth it.

I’ll have to stew on this a while, and figure out if it’s worth my time to pursue such a venture, or just continue to sit on the sidelines and armchair quarterback the involvement of the U.S. in the Middle East.

It’s nice to see that Bugzilla is getting multi-language support; in this case, as of October 1 2003, it can handle Korean competently. I haven’t been active in the project for several years now, other than very rarely submitting a documentation fix. However, they’ve been working on multi-lingual support now for quite some time, and now you can run Bugzilla in more languages than I can pronounce!

Not to toot my own horn here, but if you’re interested in more information, try the documentation. Yeah, that’s my name up there. I undertook the original Herculean task of writing this stuff, and from what I can tell off-the-cuff, it’s still roughly 80% my work. However, the remaining 20% is far better written and maintained 🙂

As many of you know, I’m out of a job here by October 31, 2003. That looks much, much closer on this side of September than it did before! That’s only 29 days away. My goal is to walk onto a new job Nov 3, 2003. Here’s hoping. And I’m working my butt off to get there 🙂

Anyway, one of my final projects here is to get some LDAP integration into our Postfix gateway so people won’t have to muck so much with configuration files. That’s all well and good, but it seems sometimes much tougher than it really is. So I had pointed out to me this HOWTO that runs right through it. The principal difference between the way he’s doing it, and the way I’m doing it, is that he’s checking the attributes of users directly, whereas I’m adjusting aliases & stuff in an “ou=System” category so that the system configuration is a bit more separate from the user config. The main reason for this is that our users internal email addresses don’t match their external, “address book” email addresses.

It’s a bit of a kluge, but it will work out.

I’m also working on integrating our PopTop VPN into our LDAP tree to serve VPN accounts from LDAP as well. It should be an interesting 29 days.