DNS Woes
I've been quiet today because Charter's DNS has developed a peculiar problem: it fails to resolve the sites of just one server (so far as I can tell): mine. I can access every site I normally do except those I host and provide DNS services too. The server is up and running (confirmed via remote access I have to another computer, my server monitoring tools, as well as the help of Ed and others). While I could access the server via IP, I didn't feel like changing all of my programs so that they'd do the same for what I hope is a short outage.
Right now, I'm back thanks to a suggestion to try using the DNS servers 4.2.2.1 and 4.2.2.2 in lieu of Charter's ones that are normally fed to my computer via DHCP, and using those servers I can again access my sites.
It's a revolting development to be the only one unable to access your own site!
Burning Batteries
It seems that Apple announced a massive battery recall while I was out of town. This recall, related to the largest ever electronics recall Dell made concerning batteries a short time ago, is caused by defects in the Sony produced batteries used in various laptops over the past three years. While I've not noticed any of the issues that have been ascribed to these problems, my PowerBook has one of those batteries, according to the recall information.
Sometimes getting involved in a recall is just an issue of frustration, but I'm rather happy about it, actually. My battery still works great, but is showing a bit of age after running for almost two and a half years. That this will result in me getting a new battery is really a treat.
Whirlwind 36 Hours
Years ago, my family would go down to the Ozarks every fall around the beginning of September. After my grandparents died, however, that tradition sort of went by the wayside as other things came up. Last week, my mother suggested perhaps we should try to fit in a trip before my classes started back up on August 28. We watched the weather, and when yesterday looked rather promising, we set off on the 250 or so mile trek down to Table Rock Lake for a day. It was a fun time and also a nice test to see how the Beetle did on the highway. It started out the trip with only 600 miles on the trip gage and came back with nearly 1,200.
I'll post more tomorrow, hopefully.
Monday Madness on Tuesday: Money and Other Things
1. Would you shave your head for any amount of money? If yes, how much?
I'm not sure. I'd really dislike shaving my head, although it wouldn't be really what I'd call suffering. A few thousand, maybe?
2. What “whacky” thing might you do for a large sum of money?
Run around while holding scissors? I don't know. The person offering the large sum of money has to do the hard work of thinking of the ridiculous thing I am suppose to do.
3. What do you think is a “large sum of money?”
Depends on the context. If someone comes up to me and says they earned a “large sum of money” this year at their job, I would expect the number to have six digits. If someone said it was “my lucky day” and they were going to give me a “large sum of money” I would expect that would be a five digit number. If buying a computer costs a “large sum of money,” I would be thinking above $2,000, but likely under $3,500. If dinner was going to cost me a “large sum of money,” I'd expect the price to be between $18-$25/person.
4. Do you watch “reality” tv shows?
No.
5. If so, which do you watch and in what order do you prefer them? If not, are there any you may consider watching?
If I was going to watch one, I might watch one of the talent-focused ones or the “Amazing Race,” which I always hear very good things about.
6. Which reality show have you thought about participating in? Why?
None. If I had a talent worth entering, I might consider one of the talent related shows. I would not consider doing “Survivor,” “Fear Factor” or anything like it.
7. Share one thing you would like to do in life but have not yet done….. think about why you haven't done it and share if you wish.
Sheesh, there are a lot of things. I'd like to learn to play an instrument. I have not done it because it simply requires such a large time commitment.
Disabling Comments
For the first time in asisaid's four and a half year run I have been forced to disable comments on a post. It seems that blogspammers, which previously have either been unsuccessful with my spam filter or ignored me altogether, really liked this one post — I had to delete three spams in three days. Hence, I closed the comments on that post.
I hope it is an isolated incident.
Chariot Unslowed
“So like an empty coffee cup in June,
The winds of time blow me away too soon,
And so I tremble, question as I fade,
What does a life once lived do as a shade?
As weary sands do shift from dune to dune,
My melody is rift for a new tune.
The clock strikes now, why not tomorrow?
Its sound leaves me with naught but sorrow.”
The people pass, their heavy bags in tow,
As if the winds ne’er rain out a show,
“To shame! To shame! A shade have I become
To me full unawares – whilst beats life’s drum?
Please stop, oh death worn drum! Bring on the lyre!
Extend the wick where burns the fearsome fire!
The clock strikes now, why not tomorrow?
Its sound leaves me with naught but sorrow.”
“A little here I swung at hopes of glory,
Far more I gave to live in money’s story,
I conquered many things, enlarged my realm,
A master of my life I steered the helm!”
What waits for you, old questioner, what port?
What’s left? What mark is left of your great court?
“The clock strikes now, why not tomorrow?
Its sound leaves me with naught but sorrow.
“From days came weeks, from weeks came years misled,
A promise for the next, unkept, unsaid.
Unnoticed for some greater good, I stayed
Upon the safer path I had long strayed,
Further moving myself from my hoped goals,
Ignoring them brought me to greater tolls.
The clock strikes now, why not tomorrow?
Its sound leaves me with naught but sorrow.”
The chimes vibrate the ‘bandoned coffee cup,
It rolls along where he had hoped to sup,
A mix of blinded force and choice did lead,
To this a finished act, unopened deed.
Planned not to fault the thing, the point was missed,
And left to cry once more behind the mist,
“The clock strikes now, why not tomorrow?
Its sound leaves me with naught but sorrow.”
Leopard's TextEdit to Support ODF
I'm not sure how legit this is, but one supposed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard beta tester has posted a screenshot of Leopard's version of TextEdit (roughly analogous to Windows's WordPad) that supports OpenDocument Format. See here.
Very interesting — I wonder, assuming this is legit, what else Apple might be up to with ODF?
TQ: Jobs
Here are my answers to this week's TQ from Mark.
1. What was your first real job; part of full time? Cutting the grass on weekends doesn't count unless you worked for someone other then yourself.
If it has to be working for someone other than myself, then I guess I still don't have a “real job,” and probably won't for a long while.
Nevertheless, the self-employed (and/or “freelance”) person that I am, the first memorable money producing job was probably doing some Perl development in 1998 or getting my first sell of advertising (to Microsoft, incidentally) on a site I was producing in 1997.
2. What was your worse job ever? How long did you last? What made it so bad?
Taking job to be project, since I've never really changed jobs: I'd say producing an auction metasearch a few years back. The pay was very good (I kept raising the price because I wanted out of the project, but the client was willing to pay even my escalated pricing), but it was just a miserable, mindnumbing project of combing HTML pages for traits I could use to figure out where key data was at auction site after auction site. It lasted a few months, ending after the site launched and no one seemed to care to use it.
3. If money were not an issue, and you could change careers right now, what would you start doing?
What I hope to be doing in 5-6 years. Teaching theology and religious studies at a college (four year, perhaps liberal arts, not Bible college) or university. My primary focus would be in the philosophy of religion. In an ideal world, I'd also be able to dabble in my other academic interests, particularly literature and economics. Money isn't the issue, credentials are — I need to get through at least a masters, if not a Ph.D. before this is going to happen.
4. My mother has said countless times that she would rather work for a man boss then a women boss? What is your opinion on the subject of male vs female bosses?
I have never taken well to bosses, I'll admit, hence why I've found being my own boss a much more ideal situation (though, in reality, doing my job means every client is my boss). I'd have to say it depends much more on the individual than the gender — I've worked with and under both men and women; both can be hard at times.
5. What do you think the ultimate job (for anyone) would be?
To me, I think the ultimate job would be an academic job. What could be better than exploring your favorite subject, doing research and writing on it, and teaching it to the next generation of those interested in your field? Of course, I realize I find academia much more appealing than many people do. I tend to think there is no one ultimate job, to be honest.
Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).
The Apple Code
My blogging buddy (and friendly OS nemesis) Mark had a fascinating dream that sounds almost like the Da Vinci Code turned into a story about operating systems. Mark would make a good substitute for Prof. Robert Langdon in such a book — maybe he should write it, after all, computer debates do have a tendency to take on a religious feel.
Unfortunately, Mark still has not seen the light concerning Mac OS X, so I need to help him understand the nature of this “insanely great” platform.
Now 5x Faster! Mark rightly questions how Apple could go from claiming that PowerPC was better than x86 to announcing the new Intel Macs are “5x faster.” You'll notice that the 5x number only shows up on the comparison of PowerBook vs. MacBook laptops. This is for the simple reason that Apple couldn't get a PowerPC G5 processor into a PowerBook, and hence everyone was still using a Pentium III-era competitor in the Pentium M and D-era. I think very few were deluded in this regard. The PowerBooks do handle extremely well given their aging architecture, but that's a testament to *nix not to the architecture (though RISC still seems admirable in many ways). I would suggest that the PowerPC remains a superior architecture (even Linus says so!), but that PowerPC needed someone of the likes of Intel or AMD to be pushing its desktop-oriented progress forward for it to have become a success (PowerPC's manufacturers primarily focus on the embedded space).
The Mac Pro is a different story. If you look at the numbers, while it is faster, it isn't that much faster, especially when you consider it came out almost a year after the PowerMac G5 Quad. The Xeon should be faster, because it is significantly newer and has more cache and other goodies. If we ask whether the PowerPC G5 was “slow” because a processor that is a year newer and has more cache happens to go a small amount faster, then we should also ask if pre-Woodcrest Xeons are perhaps “slow” too. The answer, of course, is no, they are just older. In fact, even in the case of the PowerBook, I would add that the Intel Core line of processors not only speeds things up because of the delay in any significant upgrades for the G4 series laptops, but also because Intel has made seismic leaps in progress over the last six months.
As a whole, no surprises, if we don't look to find fault with Apple just for the sake of finding fault.
Apple the iPod Maker. It is true that Apple now draws a significant portion of profit from the iPod, but I would note that it is still a minority of their business, and most people now seem to have come to grips with the reality that it cannot be Apple's primary focus forever — especially now that Microsoft has decided to go into its “we'll lose money for as long as it takes to beat our target” mode against the iPod. I don't think anyone other than Sony (with their PlayStation) and Google have held up to Microsoft when it decides to lose short term money in order to win a market, and right now even Sony is in for the fight of its life. The Redmond road is littered with companies such as Netscape and Palm that have been unable to resist Microsoft.
Apple the Evil DRM User. iTunes does not make the iPod DRM laden. If you never use the iTunes Music Store, you will never touch DRM. It is that simple. Now, why do pragmatic foes of DRM such as myself use the iTunes Music Store? Because every once-in-a-while I'd like one song from an artist, and I sure like paying ninety-nine cents a lot better than $13.99 for that one track. (And, by the way, you do get a nice digitized album cover in that price, and if you buy the whole CD you often get a digitized booklet and perhaps a music video, so the point about lack of album art is moot.) I don't know how many others are like me, but I for the most part have what I call my “two track rule.” If I try a new artist (or old one, for that matter) and find that I want to buy more than two tracks from a given CD, I refuse to buy any more from iTMS and wait until I feel like coughing up the price for a normal CD. Right now, for example, I have an embargo on buying any tracks from MercyMe because I have bought a track or two from each of their CD's, and now I'm going to either buy nothing more from them or buy a real CD from them.
Apple the Stealer of Virtual Desktops. XGL vs. Spaces is really a stupid kind of comparison. This is really looking at things backwards. While it is true that XGL and related technologies have provided 3D representations of virtual desktops first, I would note that all of these FOSS implementations appeared initially as ways of cloning Apple's Exposé, which premiered in June of 2003 at WWDC and was released to market in October 2003 as part of OS X 10.3 Panther. Spaces continues by adding the virtual desktops that FOSS has had for years, yes, but Apple was the one that came up with 3D accelerated navigation of running applications — Spaces is a logical extension of Exposé. Yes, Apple is copying virtual desktops, but XGL is nothing more than playing catchup with Apple's Quartz Extreme (which showed up in OS X 10.2 Jaguar in 2002) and the aforementioned Expose. Apple was the first to offer an OpenGL hardware accelerated desktop, something Linux is just starting to offer in a consumer oriented distro this summer and Windows will not offer until next year.
Booking It Some More: LOTR
In my last post, I promised to redo the book meme, this time going with the book unquestionably closest to me. As it turned out, there was a book right behind me last night I didn't even notice. The Lord of the Rings: the Complete Best-Selling Classic is the rightful book to submit for this little amusement.
Open the book to page 123 and find the fifth sentence.
“Its walls were of clean stone, but they were mostly covered with green hanging mats and yellow curtains.”
Post the text of the next three sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
“The floor was flagged, and strewn with fresh green rushes. There were four deep mattresses, each piled with white blankets, laid on the floor along one side. Against the opposite wall was a long bench laden with wide earthenware basins, and beside it stood brown ewers filled with water, some cold, some steaming hot.”
(This is my first reading through the Lord of the Rings, by the way.)
