Tag Archives: geek

From the Changelog

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I previously documented my first, and thus far only, patch I submitted to Fedora. It was trivial; I’m not up for any awards or anything. But it was a good feeling, and I hope I can contribute some more substantive patches as time goes on.

Anyhow, my humble effort is now in Red Hat 6 Beta, as this snippet from the system-config-kickstart changelog for version 2.8.3-1 reveals:

- Fix an import error (#530739, nelsoninva AT gmail.com).

And another minute of my allotted 15 minutes of fame goes by the board.

Pardon my geekish giddiness, or maybe my giddy geekishness, but this feels good. And I fervently hope for more such good feelings.

-k-

When an Upgrade alone does not Suffice

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Well, then, you change themes, put up a new header, delete plugins that you’ve forgotten what-the-heck they do, rearrange widgets, and just have a blog gardening afternoon.

The theme is the (now) default WordPress Theme, twentyten. Header graphics credit, as always, is atop the right-hand sidebar.

WP 3.0 suffers from some non-working(at least for me) items:

  • Upload of new theme headers can be charitably categorized as erratic. Works sometimes; usually doesn’t.
  • Updating installed plugins from the admin panel has never worked for me.

Other than the spiffy theme, I see no compelling reason to take the WP3 plunge, save for the transient geek thrill of running the latest and greatest.

Color me transiently thrilled.

-k-.

I Have Nothing to Say, Therefore I Upgrade

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Happy New Year, y’all. Today was my first day back at $DAYJOB, and I’d frankly be hard pressed to say that we haven’t been stuck with a used year. This could be the year that I define a new $DAYJOB metric, or maybe two. The first is $DAYJOB TDS1, and the second would be $DAYJOB MIS2. Then, given the effort expended in the formalizing of these metrics, along with the needed data collection, it just may be easier to move to $DAYJOB++.

Anyhow, we’re now running the latest WordPress here in tbbsLand, WordPress 2.9.1. And, no WP’s automatic uppgrade didn’t work for me – again. But, the manual process is quick, and fairly effortless. And, yes, that includes a database backup, as well as full file backup, prior to upgrading.

Happy New Year! Y’all come back, now. I’ll try to be more attentive to this old waste of pixels.

-k-

1 Total Daily Suckage

2 Maximum Instantaneous Suckage

A Minor Nit

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I’ve inherited my Mom’s intolerance of clocks that aren’t right. I just now noticed that the timestamp on my last three posts is wrong; it’s the EDT, not EST, time.

So, I made a little adjustment to the time-stamping, after seeing this in WP settings for timezone:

Unfortunately, you have to manually update this for Daylight Savings Time. Lame, we know, but will be fixed in the future.

Roger the lame part.

-k-

UPDATE: After posting this, it originally appeared below the three chronologically previous posts. So, I had to manually update several timestamps. All’s right with the world. Lameness, however, is approaching unacceptability, as far as timestamps are concerned.

Snowbound and Upgraded

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I spent part of Snow Day today upgrading this old blog to WordPress 2.9.

I’ve never been able to get the automatic WP upgrade to work; it seems to download the upgrade, it says “Done” in the dashboard status bar, but then nothing happens. Perhaps I’m either impatient, do not understand the process, or both.

So, I reverted to my tried and true manual update process, which worked flawlessly again. And that process is quick in its own right. So, I really spent a small part of the Snow Day upgrading.

The WordPress banner files on a taller pole today, the better to be seen above the snow.

Thanks, WordPress!
-k-

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A Patch in Time

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I just got word that a patch I submitted will be included in Fedora 12.

OK, so the problem was a simple typo in system-config-kickstart, which caused it to crash when invoked with the –generate option. Something a junior high kid could fix. But that’s not the point.

I post this, not to blow my own horn, but to document an event that’s important to me. In opening the bug and posting the patch, I got to work some levers in Red Hat’s Bugzilla. I got a taste of participating in a project that I absolutely love. I did what I think one should do in FOSS projects.

As I commented when I posted the patch:

I’m very new at all this. Someday, may my talent match my enthusiasm.

And, as minor as this contribution is and will be, it’s my first one. And the taste is sweet.

-k-

And the Bolus Helped

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Back from a post Constantine upgrade reboot. Network Manager applet problems … gone!

Sound playing problems persist; I could head to some Fedora Forum and bitch up a storm to the effect that “#@%!@ sound don’t work!”, but since I know little about the underpinnings, I’ll do the research, use Uncle Google, and if I get my problem fixed, I’ll post the results. I’ve said it before, that using FOSS software carries an implicit obligation to invest a modicum of effort in understanding the workings. And sharing the results of your troubleshooting efforts.

I love this stuff; I wish I had it when I was a kid. To the extent that I’m still a kid, Fedora helps keep me that way.

-k-

Upgrade x2, 2 Days Late

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Last Tuesday, Constantine, the Fedora 12 Beta, was released. I make it a point to upgrade sooner rather than later. And, thanks to Fedora’s preupgrade, followed by 1.1G of downloads, and what seemed to be interminable disk-thrashing, the upgrade finished, and /etc/redhat-release now reveals:

Fedora release 11.92 (Rawhide)

Thus far, Constantine has performed well. A few sound playback problems, and a rather disgusting, persistent NetworkManager applet crash have been the only bad side effects. I can start NM applet from a terminal, just not on Gnome startup. I just downloaded a rather substantial upgrade; I’m hoping the NM problem is handled. And, I’ve never understood the sound stuff; I gotta read up on that. So, click that little badge in the sidebar, and get Constantine for yourself. Don’t cost nothin’.

After the F12 upgrade, I fired up Firefox to check this old blog, only to discover a WP upgrade awaited. After another flawless upgrade, tbbs-land now proudly runs WordPress 2.8.5.

Thanks, Fedora and WordPress!

-k-

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At Marco’s Booth

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One of the attractions at Red Hat Summit was Marco’s Booth, a place to interact with the people from Red Hat’s Global Support Services. It is called Marco’s Booth after Marco Bill-Peter, the head of GSS at Red Hat.

I dropped by the booth to relay my personal thanks for the services of our Red Hat TAM. I somewhat facetiously say that the trick here is to lay on the kudos thickly enough so that Red Hat is aware that our TAM is doing a great job, but not so thick that they promote him to a higher position, forcing us to break in a new TAM. Actually, this very thing will happen someday, and we’ll congratulate our TAM as he moves on to greater challenges, and welcome a new person to service our account. That’s the way this business works; I just work together well with our current person, and want that relationship to continue.

While I was at Marco’s Booth, I saw a demo of the upcoming Red Hat Support Portal, wherein all your trouble tickets, downloads, knowledge bases, and Atom/RSS feeds are all gathered under a common web umbrella; it should make it much easier to find things on the RH website. It’s all there now, but navigation is somewhat problematic; I have 3 or 4 Firefox bookmarks which take me to different parts of the RH site. I am looking forward to this enhancement. That isn’t Marco showing me the portal demo; I think his first name was Patrick. Conferences have a way of reminding me how bad I really am with names. Anyhow, Patrick was enthusiastic and most helpful, and dutifully noted my praise for our TAM’s service, and promised to relay it to him when he got back to Raleigh.

Oh yeah, and this is the first time that I know of that I was captured on camera at a conference; the picture is on the Flickr.

-k-

One Photo, Multiple Uses

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I sent this photo to Dave several years back, as part of my initiation into the EGC Style Council.

The pic was taken by MLB, while she and I were en route to Martinsville for a NASCAR race. We always take the Skyline Drive, the Blue Ridge Parkway, or both on our way. We like the scenery, the history, and the general slower pace of the SD and the BLP. The picture was taken at one of our must stop places on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Since then, I’ve used this pic for:

  1. The tbbsLand favicon
  2. My comments gravatar on sites that support them
  3. My FriendFeed and Twitter pictures.

The Red Hat Summit starts on Tuesday, 9/1, in Chicago. MLB and I are heading there; she’ll visit with some Chicago friends, whilst I soak up technical tips and network exchange resumes with peers.

This year’s Summit has its own networking site, as well as the usual Twitter/Friend Feed/Facebook bolus. I registered on the Summit site, and got another use of the photo for my Summit site. As I uploaded it, I thought what the hell, I’ll just take the EGC shirt there as well, and wear it on the streets of Chicago.

One more clothing item to pack, but small potatoes compared to the checking out of the electronics required for such a venture.

Geek is, as geek does.

-k-

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