The Linux War Cry

After recently reading an article at linux.com as well as the comments, I thought of something. Why is it, that every "die hard" linux user wants to bring down Microsoft? Sure, you can make the argument that they are a monopoly, that Windows is a playground for every script kiddy out there. But why would the Linux community want to bring down the software giant? It almost seems that there is a vendetta out against Bill and the boys.

I bring up the question as to why not try to bring down Steve Jobs and Apple? Why not? Why limit it to just Microsoft? Is it because OS X uses the somewhat water downed version of the Linux kernel? Is it because Safari is based on Konqueror? Is it because of pretty gummy eye candy of OS X?

Look at it this way. With a Windows computer you are not limited to using Windows. You can easily change out the OS to your choice whether it be a flavor of Linux or BSD. Your choice. You want a new video card? No problem. Just open the box and put it in. Want a second hard drive maybe? Well...you get the picture.

Now, let's look at something like, oh say...the iBook. Want a new video card? Send it to Apple. Want a bigger hard drive? Send it to Apple. Heck, try to open the iBook yourself and see how far you get. The iBook is sealed shut! Yes, you can hack into it and open it, but how far are you going to get with help if you all of a sudden have a problem with your $1200 laptop?

So if you want to "take down Microsoft" don't stop there. Just take down Apple while you're at it.

The Joy of Co-Workers

Part of my job is support for the staff regarding the products we sell. Not a bad part of my job. I know the products very very well so the questions they have or problems that occur, I can easily solve ( for the most part ). However, it seems that our staff have taken to calling me regarding the most fundamental questions.

I am not saying that our staff should know everything that I do about the product, otherwise, I would be out of a job. But, for an employee that has been with the company for over 13 years, the questions as of late are border-line ridiculous. I was speaking with my supervisor the other day regarding this issue. He agreed. I was starting to become habit for them to simply pick up their cellphone, call me and ask a question without ever thinking about it or trying it themselves.

What I can do about this I'm not sure. But, I am sure that it will have to stop.

Until then...business as usual.

Rethinking...

There was a time that I really wanted to be a programmer. Web programming (especially PHP) really appealed to me. I loved it. I found that PHP could do just about everything.

I got a job doing a little bit of web programming and then the company moved. I didn't want to move since I planned on asking the girl that I was dating to marry me, so I looked for another job. After working there for a little while, mostly doing network admin stuff, I took up the additional position of web programming. Then came the day that my boss asked to make a special web application. It turned out to be a bit more than I could do. Not my skill set really, although I am still learning to program, just that there was too much to do day in and day out.

I started to get a bit frustrated and was in a bad mood all the time. Not the position that I wanted to be in considering that I went down that road once before and fought hard to get out of it. So now I am at that position again.

My boss is starting to get annoyed at me that the project has been "in the works" for about a month now. Granted it's not a small project but I haven't been able to work on it a couple of weeks.

Not sure what to do. Tell him that I just can't finish it? Tell him that I don't want to finish it? Just ride it out a little longer and see if I can get it done? Eigh...I'll just play it by ear and hopefully it will finally be over with.

Linux has no style...

I was recently looking around on kde-look at some of the latest themes. Once again I was hammered with "Vista" style this and "Mac" style that. Great...so you made your Linux computer look like Vista.

So I was thinking to myself. What about the "Linux" style? After a few moments longer of looking at the computer monitor, I realized, Linux has no style. It kind of disappointed me. Then I thought for a while longer about it. This could actually be one more benefit of Linux. Linux has style! It has any style that it wants. But!!! What you get is one stable OS that is virus free and has a huge following with great community support as well as being free and Open Source.

Now I just had another thought. Those silly little commercials where "Apple" and "PC" are talking together and there's always something wrong with the "PC". I got a nice parody of that. Picture this if you will :

PC and Apple are standing around talking. PC is being his usual dorky self and Apple is trying to be the cool hippster. Along comes Linux. All of a sudden Linux looks just like PC, then switches and looks just like Apple. Then someone says something witty and the all go off in a huff.

OK, maybe I haven't fine tuned it but after all, it's just a thought.

Designer vs. Coder...who will win?

The company that I work for started a website for one of the services that we offer about 2 years ago. It was given to me to design and implement. Since then, the site needed an overhaul.
I am by no means a designer. However, I can code in html and css like a machine. The design work was handed out to a third party designer and I was given the task of coding it to a functional web page.

I am a stickler for web standards. I hate flash. I hate IE. All the things that a designer really doesn't care about. So when it came time for me to take the mock ups and turn them into web pages, I was in for a treat.

The designer sent me the images, I sliced them up in Photoshop, and started coding. Then it came to my attention that the front page was going to contain a flash movie. All I asked the designer was, is to please give me a still image that I could put in for a fall back for those that don't have Flash installed. What was I sent? An email with statistics on how many computers had Flash.

OK...not what I asked for but I had some ground to work on. My response? I simply told the designer that it was not fair and not in the best interest of the company to discriminate against those that don't like Flash. I do not have Flash on my computer...I don't even run Windows.

Why don't I like Flash? It's useless. All the moving around of this and that while I'm trying to read the content on the page is distracting at the least. Flash is a tool for the designers that can't code. I know I know...there *can* be scripting involved with Flash but WHO CARES! What's PHP, JavaScript, dHTML, Perl and all those languages for? Scripting! Not some GUI based whatchamagig that you can put a picture here and make this move here and do something over this way. Just too distracting. I go to a website for the content. Now if it's a nice looking site, then that's all the better. But content is king.

The battle ended a few minutes ago when I asked one more time for the still images. They are now in my inbox waiting on my to finish this post so I can make the 7% of the population happy again. I win :)

2 SATA Drives - Kubuntu and Windows XP

A few days ago I purchased another hard drive for my computer. A 160gig SATA drive (my main computer only has SATA connections for the hard drive data). I bought the extra drive so I could install Kubuntu Linux and keep windows on my current hard drive, and just have a dual boot system. Sounds easy enough.

I put in the second hard drive as the primary drive and moved Windows to the secondary drive. Inserted the Kubuntu CD and proceeded to install. The installer came up great and asked which drive I wanted to install Kubuntu to. I chose the new 160gig drive.

After the install (~20 minutes or so) I rebooted the computer. Straight into Kubuntu. Hmmm...I thought. Maybe just a GRUB reconfiguration. After poking around a bit I noticed that Kubuntu had installed to the 80gig drive where my Windows was. BUMMER!! Good thing I made all those backups!

Checking around a bit further, I found that what I could do was:

1. Put the new 160gig disk as Primary
2. Install WindowsXP
3. Put the Kubuntu hard drive back as Primary
4. Edit GRUB to tell it that there was another hard drive there with WindowsXP
   

Now it was time to just install Windows to the new 160gig drive since I had Kubuntu installed and running great. Unplugged the 80gig drive and plugged in the 160gig drive as Primary. The installer came up and said "No Disk Found". BUMMER!!! Now what?

Checking around, I found that, in order to install a fresh copy of Windows XP, using a SATA drive, you have to install it as a SCSI / RAID. Why? Dunno. In order to do this, you need to put the drivers on a floppy disk. I don't have a floppy drive on my main computer. Now what to do?

OK. I have an older computer running Windows 2K that does have a floppy drive. Hook the Win2K computer to the router and download the drivers and copy them to a floppy disk. Then I can put the floppy drive into my main computer to load the drivers during install of WindowsXP.

Great! It works! Windows is installing...now for the fun part. Does Kubuntu boot? Will Windows boot?

The computer restarted and I had just go ahead and boot to Kubuntu. Fired up a command prompt and started editing two files.

The first file was /boot/grub/menu.lst This file is a list for grub to tell it what is loaded and where. I added the following section

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

What this does is tell Grub that Windows is there. It is located actually at hd1. However, Windows is picky. It likes to be first, but fortunately, it's not that smart. We have to trick it into thinking it is actually the first OS to boot. That is what the map(hd0) (hd1) does.

Now for the real fun part. Can I restart the computer, boot into Windows and then restart and boot into Kubuntu with no problems.

Success!!!! It works!!!

The Utility Knife

When I first took my current position, I was hired to do a few things. Mainly to connect MFP's (multi-function products) to customers networks and give support on these machines.

A few weeks later I was asked if I knew anything about websites. I had actually been doing websites as a freelancer to just about anybody that needed it and would pay for it. So, I told my boss "Sure, I can make websites". He then proceeded to tell me that the printing service that we had, needed a website. I mocked up a couple of drafts in Photoshop and showed them to him. He liked one and with a few revisions, the site was up and running.

A few weeks after that, I was asked if I knew anything about databases. Well, yeah, I knew some stuff about databases. I had worked with Access as well as MySQL, so sure. It was then brought to my attention that the IT Admin in our home office was leaving. This Admin was in charge of the company wide program that handled our customer database. It was then my duty to make any changes that were needed and fix any problems that would occur. And dealing with sales professionals, there would always be problems where a computer was involved.

Now my job consisted of connecting MFP's that were sold to our clients, web site development and database administrator.

After a few months, we started to have some networking issues. Computers couldn't connect to the domain, printers would drop off the network, high traffic. I ran an analysis of the network and determined that a switch was causing the problems. Then enters the position of Network Administrator for the branch.

Now I have four positions within the branch of the company.

At around the same time as this was going on, the print services department, needed some custom software to process quotes to customers as well as keep track of the jobs they had done. The company hired a third party company to design this software. However, there's not maintenance contract. The developer of the software came to our office and gave me an overview of the software (done in FileMaker I might add), and that was it. I did buy a book on FileMaker to help understand how to get around in it. It is still a poorly designed application (FileMaker, not what was developed for us).

Now I have five positions within the branch of the company.

The company that I work for also is a vendor for a third party imaging software. This software allows the client to scan paper documents, make them electronic and index them anyway they want for later retrieval. There was one sales rep. that was in charge of selling, installing and maintaining the software to our clients. Notice I said, "was". Since this sales rep. has left the company, it is now my responsibility to take this job over.

Now I have six positions within the branch of the company.

Do not take this the wrong way. I like the feeling that I am needed within the company and that they can count on me as “the go-to-guy”. But there are times, just like anyone else, I get very stressed. I have so much on my plate sometimes that I don't know what to dig into first. Sure, I could have told them that I couldn't do it. Or that I wouldn't do it. But, if I didn't do it, who would? Hire someone else? I doubt that. I take on these responsibilities for the better of the company. But sometimes I question my judgment.

What do I get out of taking on all these responsibilities? I get a pretty nice pay-check. I get a free car with gas and insurance that I don't have to pay for. I get a free cellphone with free long distance that I don't have to pay for. But in the end...I still end up with an ulcer.