Road rant

Road rant.


OR Get off my road and out of my rear view


OR If they were thinking what I am seeing.

[Disclaimer: These thought have been going through my head as I drive for the past week or so... They are intended as humor though most are based on not so funny situations I have been in recently.]

The speed limit is 55. That means go 60 on the straight in the passing areas and 40 on the curves.

If I fill your rear view mirror, you will move over. Then I can speed past and slow down on the next bumper.

Ahh - a wide open road, go go go. Wait how fast am I going? Hit the brakes. I think I will sit here next to this other car so no one can pass me.

I am a professional driver with tinted windows and a for hire license plate. I can go 80 in a 65 and zip in and out around slower cars and cut people off and it doesn't matter.

I can drive 70 mph while eating breakfast and talking on my cell phone... as long as it is not raining. When it rains I know to use two hands on the wheel, use lights and wipers, go at least 10 mph below the speed limit, and pump the breaks ever few minutes especially on curves.

Staying close the to car in front of me also helps.

If it is very cold and wet slow down ON bridges as well as through a curve.

When traffic is merging from an on ramp, move over to the left. Even if it means cutting off another car and bringing the speed of that lane down by 10-15 mph.

Don't change lanes unless necessary, even if you are going slow in the fast lane. Other will go around.

When traffic is merging from an on ramp, maintain a constant speed... it does not matter the spacing of the vehicles.

-SML

Revisiting wiki search and cleanup - Part 1

The short version:

how can you - a Fedora contributor - assist in making the wiki more useful for everyone?
1. Archive old pages so they do not appear in a default search.
2. Move all meeting minutes and irc logs to the Meeting namespace.
3. Move all user pages to the User namespace


The long version (and the answer to Why me?):


As the release of Fedora 11 approaches a variety of housecleaning occurs. Rawhide becomes the working location for F12. Fedora 9 gets marked as end of life and all the bugs in bugzilla get noted as "wontfix, please open against a newer version if issue persists." The Docs Project will review the Release Notes process, archive old notes, and setup for F12.

This seems like a good time to revisit the state of the wiki and particularly the issue of search is borked. A lot of progress has been made to assist users and contributors with finding information in the wiki. The backend database settings were changed so that 3 letter words - like F11 and git - would be indexed. The fonts teams and feature pages show nice use of categories to track progress. Ambassadors and Marketing have been culling old information and grouping event information. Docs Project and Packaging have also made great strides in categorizing and renaming pages. I probably should not have tried to point out good example as I am sure I have missed others.

Yet when I search for a page recently created I still have to sort through many many extra hits. The newest pages of equal relevance are listed LAST. For my search for the release announcement for F11 my target was hit 7 of 7. Searching "F11 feature" on the other hand finds 127 hits with the default display of 20 hits per page. This makes it harder to find a new page. These 127 hits also include a number of irc logs and meeting minutes.

This doesn't seem useful for active contributors let alone attracting new users.

Changing the sort order to newest first may be an option, and Ian is looking at some other options this summer. Meanwhile: how can you - a Fedora contributor - assist in making the wiki more useful for everyone?

1. Archive old pages so they do not appear in a default search.
2. Move all meeting minutes and irc logs to the Meeting namespace.
3. Move all user pages to the User namespace.


Why this will help:


The default search only searches the "main" space.



If everyone that hosts meetings was to ensure that all the meeting minutes and meeting logs are in the Meeting namespace that would reduce a lot of hits right there. There are about 100 pages of Board/Meetings/$DATE and that is just one team. Also, if all the FC5 and FC6 related pages and other older feature pages and even the older FWN pages were in Archive they also would not be found with a generic "gnome" or "kde" search.

Q: What if you need to find those minutes or those old feature pages?
A: Use the advanced search and add "Meeting" or "Archive" to your search locations. Also the pages can be grouped together in a category that can then be browsed.

Q: I search for various meetings almost everyday. Will I always be using advanced search?
A: That is fine. OR: Log in and modify your account settings so that "Meeting" is part of your default search when you are logged into the wiki.

Q: Doesn't Archive mean delete?
A: No. There is a separate procedure for requesting a page to be deleted. Simply moving a page to Archive is a good way to take it out of the default search but still keep it in existence for legacy SIGs or historical purposes.

Q: Why me?
A: There are plenty of pages to move. It doesn't take long to move 5-10 pages. If 100 contributors each moved 10 pages in the next week that would be a HUGE chunk of cleanup. Start with pages related to a project or team that you work on or if you have been around awhile, start with an old project and look for pages to Archive. If a few team members move the meetings pages they can also clean up any "how to host a meeting" procedures as well.

Next time: Using "Special Pages" to find pages to move, pages to categorize, and categories to use.

Meanwhile, start at my notes on wiki cleanup page.

-SML

Taking a class

Occasionally there is a silver lining to a slow economy. Within a technical training company it is common to allow instructors to cross train by sitting in other classes offered by the same company for little or no cost. There is usually the expectation that the class is either one that the instructor may eventually teach or at least a related topic that will enhancing the instructors ability to teach the classes they already teach. For the full time trainer it may be a job requirement. For an active contract instructor it is usually more of a courtesy if a seat is available - and with the right to bump the trainer in favor of a last minute paying customer.

Over the years I have had the opportunity to sit in a few classes for the "cost of materials" and many classes for "free". I do not get paid for the days I spend learning instead of teaching. I also pay for my own travel but I have been very lucky to live in such a technology rich area that I can usually find a local offering. Long ago I had many students attending Intro to Linux classes ask "is that like the Cisco IOS?" When I had the option to sit in a CCNA class I took it and refreshed my memory on telecommunications while I learned a little bit about the Cisco IOS. By the way, there are several similar commands between the IOS and Linux and other Unix command line interfaces.

This spring one of my clients suggested that I cross train with the intent to teach some of the AIX curriculum. The first step is to sit in the classes. The admin class is running at the local training center this week and I am sitting in class. There are a lot more differences than I remember. I worked on AIX some in the early 90's. It still looks the same. To be fair, we are running an older TL of AIX5.3 right now so I am trying to reserve judgement until we upgrade to the AIX 6.1 later this week. Linux on the other hand has moved ahead in leaps and bounds. As much as I get frustrated by some of the bloat in some Linux distributions, overall it so much more flexible to configure.

I do not know if I will get far enough to teach this course. There are a couple other courses that go with it to have all the knowledge for any type of certification. I would like to continue the cross training, but even if that does not happen this will help me teach Linux and I already think it is worth the cost to my sponsor. I have a lot more sympathy for my students transitioning from Unix to Linux. Sure find, grep, and man can get anyone there but when you have to remember to add the path to find and work with a grep that doesn't have the --color option it does get a little harder. :)


-SML

What a morning.

It was a dark and stormy night....

No, wait. It was not night.
It was a dark and stormy morning....

A rare morning at that, one where I did not need to be any particular place at any particular time. No planes to catch. No class to teach. No family, doctor, or pet appointments. With the weather report for rain and wind all day and getting colder as the day went on, there was little reason to get out of bed. The only things waiting for me were a pile of laundry and sink full of dirty dishes. And since the cats would definitely prefer I stay in bed, I rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour.

Eventually, however, the stomach growled and I got up and headed to the kitchen. I cleaned the coffee pot, put in a fresh filter, and reached for the coffee. Uh Oh. No coffee. So much for warm coffee, a good book or movie, and not going out in to the wilds of the dark and stormy morning. After some serious consideration of just having tea, I ventured out into the world.

After spending a lot on what seemed like very little, I returned home to unpack the groceries and found I had not bought cream. Coffee - check. Cat food - check. Bananas - check. Milk - check. Dinner for later tonight and something for tomorrow - all good. But no cream. And in case you wondered, no there was not enough left at home for tomorrow mornings coffee.

And so ends my dark and stormy morning.

The afternoon went better. Dad called to say he had to come my direction for an errand and I had him stop and bring me cream. He also helped me hang my bike rack in the basement so I could finally get that up off the floor and out of the way. And now I can curl up with a drink, fresh strawberries, and a good movie.

-SML

Have you seen this Guitar Hero Ad?

What happens when Metalica Guitar Hero and a few NCAA legendary coaches get together in front of a camera?

They make a risky business commercial. Now available on You Tube for all to see over and over and over again. This UNC write up also has a link to an ESPN behind the scenes spot.

-SML

Tar Heels win title!

Go Tar Heels!

A Tar Heel Triumph: North Carolina Takes Down Michigan State, 89-72
The 2008-09 Tar Heels capture the fifth NCAA Men's Basketball Title in school history.

Several new records and a great end for some great seniors.

Celebrations on Franklin Street.
Time to go shopping for a new sweatshirt.

It was a big day for sports fans.
The NCAA Men's Basketball Championship game on opening day of Major League Baseball.

The Red Sox got rained out so they will try again tomorrow. I'll still be wearing Carolina blue but maybe, just for Spot, I'll wear my Red Sox t-shirt under my Tar Heel sweatshirt.

The Women's NCAA basketball championship game is tomorrow night. A Big East team will win. Louisville takes on undefeated UCONN. No opponent has ended a game closer than 10 points and Louisville lost twice, the closer game being a 28 point loss. They are playing really well right now and it is hard to beat an in conference opponent three times in one season but all predictions are for UConn to win this one. I'm hoping that it will at least be an interesting game.

I am also proud of my Tar Heel women even if they did get knocked out in the 2nd game. They played very well at times this season and often better than expected. They had a lot of adjustments to make and it was fun to watch them grow. I am really looking forward to next season.

-SML (UNC Alum)

It is definately spring

Procrastination happens.

I had the great plan of posting some time back with the first signs of spring. Some bulbs had popped up and I thought I should take a picture and share with the world.

Then it snowed. Not record breaking but the 6 inches was something like the 7th largest March snowfall on record for this part of NC so it did make the news - and kill off some of the early buds.

Then I did get a couple of pictures but never got them moved from the camera. That was around the time when I saw a flurry of pictures and posts about the signs of spring.

This past week I was about 400 miles north of here and when I got home I realized that spring was in full force.
Redbuds are dropping buds and dogwoods are opening up.
The cherry tree has leaves and the flowers are mostly gone.
The white ipheions on gone and the blue ones are fading.
The pear tree and the apple trees have flowers.
The phlox and periwinkle are colorful and the azaleas have buds.
The many colors of green are just appearing in the trees.

I moved a dogwood this weekend from the woods to my front yard and still need to move some periwinkle and irises then go pick up some summer annuals to plant, a few more ground cover plants, and start up the veggie garden.

The real reason I know it is spring though is that my arms are red and itchy.
Now where did I put that allergy medicine...

-SML