Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
If you're a geek, or know a geek, this book reads like our minds work while following the main character. Lots of tangents exploring the details optimal solutions to problems most folks couldn't care less about. Following a WWII marine adds some needed gritty relief from the geeky modern day chapters. The book is longer than it needed to be, but the tangents were also a lot of what I enjoyed about the book. My only complaint would be the rather corny ending.

I purchased a new phone system (AT&T CL82359) and was having trouble with the voicemail waiting indicator not showing up even though the dial-tone was flashing. I tried calling Vonage to speak to one of their "highly trained support specialists". I had a very difficult time understanding both their accents as well as their grammatical structure and inflections. The first person had no idea what I was talking about, the second level guy kept telling me I had to turn the answering machine on my phone on. I eventually got him to transfer me to "Advanced level tech support in New Jersey". I couldn't understand this person any better and she seemed to know less than level 2 support.

Turns out that after the level 2 guy had fiddled with some settings he neglected to actually leave a message, or he somehow cleared the message waiting. After I finally gave up with them after an hour I checked and the dial-tone was not longer flashing. I called myself, left a message, and before I had my finger off the hang-up button, the voicemail indicator on my handset came on and the light was blinking on the base unit. And yes, the "answering system" is still off!

Come on vonage! Your highest level technical support didn't even know what FSK was! I found myself educating them on how this stff works so they would know what to look for. The second level guy couldn't even understand the manual he downloaded for my phone - even after I showed him the page numbers to look at and even read one of them to him.

For those of you who don't know what FSK is, it's OK - you can do what I did and spend 10 seconds on google and become better versed on the technology than the "highly trained support specialists" at vonage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Message_Waiting_Indicator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency-shift_keying

Shopsmith says there are 3 things that cause a humming motor, all factory repair jobs. They forgot the fourth - pull the motor, take it apart, clean the contacts, blow the dust out, get back to building cabinets!

Many of you know I have been working extremely hard to make some quality contributions to the Linux kernel. This can be a tough environment to work it, but also very rewarding. For the last couple of months I've been working on a patch series to allow for the requeueing of Priority Inheritance aware futexes in order to make glibc pthread_condvars PI aware and avoid some of the problems with the current implementation. I recently sent out an early copy of the patch series to be reviewed by a few core people, not even labeling the mails with [PATCH] as is customary. Apparently that didn't stop someone from finding my new tongue-in-cheek error code for dealing with misbehaving user applications. I was cited on LWN's Quotes of the Week, along with Steven Rostedt, Linus Torvalds, and Andrew Morton. I was the only one, however, to earn a nickname for my efforts. Darren "graceful" Hart, thank you very much :-)

If you don't have an LWN account, I'll try and post a new link once it's publicly visible, but for now, the interesting code segment mentioned in the article follows:

+	/*
+	 * The pifutex has an owner, make sure it's us, if not complain
+	 * to userspace.
+	 * FIXME_LATER: handle this gracefully
+	 */
+	pid = curval & FUTEX_TID_MASK;
+	if (pid && pid != task_pid_vnr(current))
+		return -EMORON;

Jon Corbet has posted an article on LWN calling for ideas for topics for this year's Linux Plumbers Conference. Last year was a great success, and I looking forward to attending this year's conference. If you haven't seen it, hop over to LWN and post your thoughts on topics you'd like to see at the conference this year. Current topic suggestions include things like improved user-space I/O APIs, configuration storage, and security integration. I'm debating if I should add "making wireless not suck on Linux".... Add your own, help make LPC a success.

Geeks worldwide have been using IMAP mail servers to, among other things, allow them to have a consistent view of their email and their folders from various clients. Unfortunately, many useful IMAP features have had poor and spotty client support. The most notable for me has been server side tagging. There is the "!Important" flag... but come on... how much information can you really store with one flag? Is it something I need to do? Something I need to follow-up on? Something I just want to be sure I don't delete? Sure you can use Labels, but most clients store those in local databases so when you pull up your mail in the office (or at home) all of your hard work tagging those mails is now invisible to you! Enter Thunderbird 2.0 with support for IMAP Keywords in the form of tags. So long as you restrict yourself to the default 5 tags mentioned in the latest IMAP spec (or rfc, or whatever it is) these tags are stored on the server! No kidding! The trick is to rename the existing Tags from the default Thunderbird profile rather than delete those and create your own. If you do that, they become custom tags and don't get propagated, at least they didn't appear to for me. Once you rename your tags, your prefs.js file should look something like this:

user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label1.color", "#FF0000");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label1.tag", "Important");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label2.color", "#CC33CC");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label2.tag", "Follow-Up");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label3.color", "#CC9933");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label3.tag", "Someday");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label4.color", "#3333FF");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label4.tag", "To Do");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label5.color", "#6600CC");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.$label5.tag", "Waiting");

If instead you find entries that look like:

user_pref("mailnews.tags.someday.tag", "Someday");
user_pref("mailnews.tags.someday.color", "#3333FF");

Then you are using custom labels. I found myself in this boat, so I edited prefs.js and added all the $label[1-5] pairs and then did a manual search to retag all my existing mail with the new labels. At this point it's a good idea to copy your prefs.js to your other thunderbird installations so the client knows to look for those tags and render them in the same colors - lest you confuse yourself ;-)

Now... if only tbird would inline plain text attachments in replies....

References:

1. http://deflexion.com/2006/05/server-side-message-labels
2. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

Hey, I said "occasional rant", so I'm covered! After numerous calls to "support" I finally got Verizon to change us over to their Local TV plan (for only $12.99/mo). Since those channels are in clear QAM, my TV can tune them without the need of their really-poor-quality HD DVR (the list for that piece of crap is rant in and of itself). My HDHomeRun can also tune them, which means I welcomed back MythTV to our home for the best in homebrew HD PVR goodness (1.5 Terabytes of video storage anyone? Yeah!). After several days with the Verizon set-top box disconnected (to confirm everything worked) I took it to our local Verizon Plus store and dropped it off. The rep promised me that TV service would continue and I would just be saving the $15/mo they were charging me for their crappy box (on top of the standard service fees). I made sure I double checked with him that service would continue and got a confirmation number for when they screwed it up and I needed to call in. Well... by the time I got home they had disconnected my TV service. IDIOTS! MORONS! I'm surrounded by mindless MORONS!

After two hours on the phone this morning, their billing "specialist" informed me that they can't add TV service without a set-top box because their system won't let them. They eventually got it re-enabled and set me up with a standard def set-top box free for a year, normally 5.99/mo. My TV started working again while I was on the phone with them, and I'm now watching HD local channels, but funny - there is no set-top box in the house... and she couldn't tell me if they would be delivering it or not. So now I'm watching HD while having an SD set-top box on my account, but not in my house, that I will have to start suddenly paying for in 12 months time. IDIOTS. I figured I'm best off to let the year pass and hope they either come up with a process to handle the crazy people like me with consumer level HDTVs with QAM tuners... oh wait... that's pretty much everyone with an HDTV... MORONS. Ah well, in a year's time they will likely have pissed me off in enough other ways that I'll switch to another nameless-support-free-media-conglomerate for TV "service". IDIOTS. If only OTA DTV wasn't such an amazing PITA!

Hey, So I'm John*. I don't blog. This isn't even
my blog. I'm just borrowing it.

So with all the discussion on the planet gnome about future UI changes,
along with the long time rumbling about improving file storage, I
figured I'd throw this small idea for file management out into the fray.

Here's a quick summary of the idea:

A fair amount of file data is managed by users not as files in folders,
but as objects in applications. Ask most Mac users where their music
is, and they don't say "In their user folder, under the iTunes library
folder", they'll just say "it's in iTunes". The same is likely true of
their photos and iPhoto.

So my idea is this: Don't fight user perception. Leverage file
management applications like Rhythmbox and F-Spot as top level storage
objects. Let them act like magic directories. They already deal with
searching, tagging, and storing meta-data, so lets not re-implement that
on the filesystem level.

If a user downloads a music file, they can just save to Rhythmbox in the
save-as dialog. Rhythmbox or any other file management application
functionally becomes a place to store things.

Here is the slide deck with more details.

Of course, I'm not a gnome developer. I'm just a user. So really this is
a bit of a personal vanity slide deck pitching my little homer-mobile of
an idea. But maybe, just maybe, a gnome developer might see it and think
of a better way to achieve something similar.

And since this is a blog post, here is a video of a cat:

* I'm speaking for myself in this post, and not for my employer.

So what is this bizarre plot to the left here you ask. Some highly technical computer modeling of some fringe science? Perhaps one of those new-fangled computer thingies we know dvhart is always going on about. Maybe some nostalgic artifact from his days studying electrical engineering? Well... no. In fact it is simply the beam plots of an over the air antenna I am looking at installing in my attic. Yeah... just trying to watch TV. Turns out that there is a lot that goes into picking up a TV signal - an awful lot. I'm a week into my search for the right antenna (or antennas as the case may be - VHF-HI an UHF bands you know), and so far I've determined that despite living within 3 miles of the two transmission towers I care about, and even though those towers are within 10 degrees of each other, I appear to be dealing with skyline multipath and some other issues resulting from living in a valley and being surrounded by lots of very large trees. Oh, and the foil backed insulation in my house really doesn't like radio waves. It's been fun, but I don't know how anyone without 5 years of intense math and electrical engineering coursework behind them would dare attempt a less than trivial antenna installation. Sheesh. No wonder nearly everyone I know pays for cable! So in case you're interested in what it would take to setup OTA DTV (over the air digital television) at your house, check out the following links. Happy Hacking.

• TV Fool
• Antenna Web
• AVS Forum
• HDTV Primer (the source of the image above)

Okay nothing to exciting I'm just trying out a new blog site (that requires less maintenance on Darren's part). So check out Hart on my Sleeve and let me know what you think.

For those who are wondering what I look like here is a picture. Feeling the baby move and go in on the 16th for our ultrasound. Devon is still hoping for a sister so we'll see.

Thanksgiving is here again. It was quiet one for us here, but we enjoyed our time together as a family. We even skipped out the big food preparation and instead went to Marie Callendar's for their Holiday feast. we ate to much, and Devon had way to much Chocolate Satin pie but it was nice to come home to a clean house and just relax. We hope everyone else had a great day and time to relax and enjoy friends & family, and all of their blessings.

Well I know I am in trouble with my sister for not posting more this last month. It has been a crazy month and while I have had good intentions to post I just didn't ever feel like spend my limited free time posting. So what has happened in the last month, well lets see...

Trip to Mesquite: At the end of October we made the journey to Mesquite (2 hour plane ride & then 1 hour car ride after getting baggage & car rental - dvh3 was an angel!) My oldest nephew Jordan was speaking in church as he prepared to leave on his mission to The Baltic's (Estonia). My 10 year class reunion also happened to be the same weekend so we had lots to keep us busy. Really glad to have gotten to see a few of my old classmates but I must say I enjoyed the family time most of all. dvh3 got to play with his cousins and was following his new best friend Dayton everywhere.

Well for those that don't already know, Devon is going to be a big brother in May. Baby #2 is officially on the way. Mom & Dad are very excited and Devon is also excited to be a big brother. So far he is requesting a little sister so hopefully he won't be disappointed if it ends up being a little brother.

At 12 weeks I am stilling dealing with morning/all day sickness. But it does seem to be getting slightly better. I also find that I am exhausted nearly constantly. Big thanks to Darren for picking up so much of the slack. If anyone is interested you can see the 1st ultrasounds here: # 2.

The Portland Children's Museum is currently running a "Bob the Builder" exhibit. Devon was very excited to go and luckily got there in time to meet Bob (although once he got up close he wasn't quite as excited.) He had a great time playing with all the different exhibits, especially the water tank - pump blue "water" balls through the tank. He also liked getting to try out all the machines and guess what saying they'd repeat. There was also a "Machine petting" out side where the kids could climb on really construction equipment. Definitely something we need to go back for before it is gone.

Okay the weather is starting to turn so I thought I better finally get the blog about of summer. We had a very busy summer this year & relatively short (because the rain didn't stop until late June) but we enjoyed it. Devon took a Sports class through the local Rec. center and loved getting to go play with balls. Soccer balls, t-ball, balloons, basketballs, and one of his favorites bowling. He also took a swimming class which he enjoyed especially the finally day when he got to go down the slide. We also spent a lot of time visiting new parks this summer. You can see many pics from those excursions here: Parks.

We also enjoyed a few days at the coast with friends. We visited Pacific City, OR with our friends the Mauery's and we had a great time. We have known Vernon and Lauren for basic 10 years and 3 kids later we are enjoying getting back to the point where we can have adult conversation. Thanks to Nicole their 5 year old who puts of with Devon (I believe she is his favorite friends) and helped keep the parents informed when the boys started getting tired of each other (Nathan is only 6 months older then Devon but some days that is a BIG age difference!) Even though the beach was a bit windy we had a great time. More pictures posted here: Pacific City, OR. Oh and if your interested in a funny picture of me being attacked by a blanket check out Lauren's blog from our trip - she has some great pictures of the kids too!

Free-IQTest.net - Online IQ Test

So our Friend's the Mauery's posted their test scores so I had to try it. Not to bad considering I guessed on a few, I made it into the "Gifted" category. Lots of advertisements trying to get you to sign up for stuff at the end before they give you your score though. You can wade past it all but it takes a while.

The front yard landscape project continues on helped along by great friends who willing gave up an entire SUNNY Portland Saturday to work in our front yard last weekend. We were finally ready for plants so I took a trip to a recommended nursery, Farmington Gardens, and had a wonderful time picking out plants. We ended up with over 30 plants that need to planted and as quickly as possible. When the Mauery's offered their help we gladly to them up on the offer. We got to work at 10 am and other then a lunch break pretty much worked through until 5 that evening, but we got all the plants in. The kids were great and played together or watched tv most of the day so we could work. It was amazing how much we got done. Even more amazing was the transformation to the house, plants just add so much.