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Flu season is upon us. IBM sponsors a flu-shot drive every year, offering flu shots to all employees for free. They have some company come on site and you flash your badge, sign on the line and they shoot you. I got mine about four hours ago. My arm aches. I have a headache too. They said it was a “weakened virus.” Weakened how? Did they take each virus and break both legs? Or soak them in acid like you might weaken an eggshell? Well, I tell you from first hand experience, a weak virus is still mean. Maybe it is like a wounded badger; more vicious than ever.
This is the fourth year in a row I have gotten a flu shot. Last year I caught the flu anyway. As miserable as it was, it did have a silver lining; I am ten pounds lighter this year than I was last. Come to think of it though, I am not sure I lost 10 pounds of fat…. I think I barfed up my spleen and maybe a few other organs.
I sit here at work, with my head in a cloud trying to force myself to work, but not doing so very successfully. Maybe I should have waited until 4 P.M. to get my shot.
I was so happy to learn that the 2.6.26 kernel had a free as in speech alternative to the madwifi Atheros driver, ath5k. I have not been so happy that it has been crashing my machine periodically. Since diagnosis of a hung machine without a serial console that is running X is nigh on impossible, I had no choice but to fold and go back to madwifi. However, since then, I have moved on to 2.6.27, which has some changes to two wireless APIs, causing the madwifi driver to fail to build. I wanted to leave my desk with its hard-wired connection but didn’t want my machine to hang again. So I determined to forward port the madwifi driver to work with 2.6.27.
Here’s where I showed myself that I am starting to get git. I was able to dig through the commit logs to find the appropriate changes and make applicable changes to the madwifi driver. Fortunately for me, I was able to make all the changes without too much trouble. I don’t know how many times I have “learned” git. I have been to tutorials, read the man pages, and gone over my notes time and time again. I guess that I finally have reached a critical mass of knowledge such that I was not so scared of not being able to do what I wanted to do that I could simply do what I wanted to do. Woohoo. Yes, I admit that while I may not be half as smart as this ugly brain-child of Linus Torvalds, at least I can learn to be its master. Next step: ditch SVN. No really, the next step would be to diagnose the ath5k hang issue and post a patch to LKML. Now that would be truly great. But it is a task for another day.
Finally a crust and crumb that I can brag about. This is a loaf that I started as part of a Toastmasters speech. The speech was about how to make the best pizza dough ever. Since for demonstration purposes, the pizza dough and the pain a l’ancienne dough are identical to start with, I figured nobody would notice. Really the only difference is that the pizza dough has slightly less water in it, which makes it less sticky to the point that you can handle it. The pain a l’ancienne dough is so sticky that you really don’t want to touch it unless you are armed with copious amounts of flour.
The first and only time previously that I made this recipe, I found myself just a little bit rushed (smaller holes) and slightly over cooked them (dry crumb). This time, rather than shaping them as baguettes, I shaped a fat batard, which puffed up nicely. And differently than other batches of bread I have done, I did my final shaping right on the foil I was going to bake it on so the final transition to peel would not degas it. I think this was especially important on this loaf because the dough was so wet.
To round out the meal (It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone) Lauren made a batch of delicious beef stew with home-made noodles. I am telling you, we eat like kings (and queens) in our house.
As one of the free swag items that they handed out at the Linux Plumbers Conference, I received an Intel branded 1GB USB flash drive. Unless you are blind, it would have been impossible to notice the BRIGHT red, green and blue blinking LED that was activated any time the device was plugged in. If I was susceptible to epileptic fits, I am sure it would have caused a seizure. Anyway, not being one to tolerate annoying behavior from electronic devices, I decided to fix it. I popped it open at the seam to find that it came apart very nicely, without breaking anything. Then, I took my fingernail clippers and clipped off the leads to the LED and accompanying resistor and gently removed them from the enclosure. Thank you, Intel, for the flash drive, but next time, please make it less flashy.
In my five years at IBM I have not gone to a real Linux conference. I admit I am partially to blame. I keep telling myself that I will try harder to work on something cool so I can publish it and go to a conference, but I am not really one of the geeks that must be heard. In other words, I have an opinion, but you will most likely have to ask for it.
The past three days (September 17-19, 2008), I have attended the Linux Plumbers Conference, or LPC. It was held in none other than the beautiful Portland, Oregon, so I was eager to attend. In fact, I registered for the conference as soon as I learned about it with high hopes that IBM would be willing to foot the bill later. And they did! (Thank you, IBM!)
The premise behind this conference was (at least to my knowledge) that the Ottawa Linux Symposium, or OLS, was getting to be too big to discuss some of the matters that Linux needs to deal with. There wasn’t really a good place to discuss some of the plumbing needs of Linux. For those of you not comfortable with the use of plumbing and Linux in the same sentence, here is an excerpt from the LPC website:
[quote=linuxplumbersconf.org]
The Linux Plumbers Conference (LPC) is a developer conference for the open source community. LPC brings together the top developers working on the “plumbing” of Linux – kernel subsystems, core libraries, windowing system, etc. – and gives them three days to work together on core design problems. The conference is divided into several microconferences focusing on different “plumbing” topics, as well as a general track for topics that don’t fit into the microconferences.
LPC is requesting proposals to speak at the LPC microconferences and general track. Microconference topics include:
- The future of Linux storage
- Video input infrastructure and V4L2
- Power management and tools for efficient resource usage
- Future displays and input devices
- Dbus for desktop integration
- Linux server management
- XCB and graphics
- Audio
- Kernel/userspace interfaces
- Debugging, tuning, tracing, and profiling
[/quote]
Though admittedly, I am not really a contributor in any of these areas right now, there are several of them that interest me. I really enjoyed the microconference format. Each of the microconferences was 2 1/2 hours long and attended by anywhere from 25 to 200 developers. I found that they were most interesting when there was plenty of discussion rather that merely a presentation. I also found that it was usually the people who were sitting within the first 15 rows of chairs that participated the most. Having spent plenty of time reading the Linux Kernel Mailing List, there were hundreds of people whose names were very familiar but that I had not yet put a face to. This conference was very helpful to me in that regard. Meeting these core developers and seeing the human side of them is motivating and empowering. I have the sudden urge to fix a bug and submit a patch.
All you sponsors: IBM, Intel, NetApp, HP, Google, MontaVista, SanDisk; please, please, please pledge your money for next year and the year after that. This was a wonderful conference where I witnessed first hand the power of the open source community working so hard to bring the wonders of Linux to the masses, be it desktop, server or embedded. And we can’t do it without your financial support.
After four and a half years, I finally got around to changing the keys to our house. So all you who have a key to our house and figured you could copy it and sell it on eBay for lots of money, you lose. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I probably should have done this within the first week of moving in, but having never owned a house before, it never occurred to me. Fortunately, nobody has broken in and stolen anything, so it was a free lesson.
Upon closer inspection I found that our house not only has two different lock brands, but at least three different keys. We don’t really know because we never received the keys to the two garage doors. But the rear kitchen door and the front door, though both Schlage locks, had different keys. I decided to re-key all the locks, which includes replacing the two sets of Kwikset locks and the mismatched Schlage lock set. I found three matching Schlage lock sets on eBay and then ordered a Change-A-Lock re-key set. This is the part where I give a raving review of Change-A-Lock. What an easy job. It took me 20 minutes and this was the first time I had ever taken a door lock apart. It’s no wonder how locksmiths can charge $10 per lock and still make money. The very small kit included new keys and matched, color-coded pins, and detailed instructions on how to change the pins on any one of five or six lock types. A job so easy, even a monkey could do it. Now that I mention it, maybe that’s why locksmiths charge $10 per lock, because they don’t want to do what a trained monkey can do.
I talked to our local locksmith about doing the job and he quoted me about $360 for the job. With the lock sets I found on eBay, which were identical to the locksmith’s wares, plus the re-key kit, I am able to do this myself for less than $95. The only bad part about it is that I am forced to wait for everything to get shipped to me. Alas, patience for shipping one of my weak points. I order something today, I think tomorrow would be a good day for it to show up on my doorstep.
As I was reading my daily quota of SlashDot a few days ago, I stumbled across a very intriguing sci-fi story called Engineers’s Dreams by George Dyson. The fact that he could not get it published in any science journals because it is fiction and that he could not get it published in any fiction venues because it was too technical just makes me laugh. In fact that is half the reason I was intrigued enough to read it. That and it is a story about Google.
If you have an inner geek in you, go ahead and read it. You know it is more than mere fiction.
While our family was in Pacific City, OR, for three days last week, I decided not to take a vacation from my running. I figured that if I took Saturday off because I was at the beach, then I would probably take another day off for this or that reason and it would snowball and I would be back on the couch in no time. It has taken me seven weeks (six of running and one with two days off to rest the weary trotters) to get me this far and I didn’t want to toss it out the window. I have run my first 5k without getting shin splints in the process. I am so happy. There are days that my legs are tired, but I wear supportive footwear and they feel much better. The biggest difference is that this time (as opposed to the 1 day ramp-up period in cross country) I took it slow to start with and let my body adjust to the change in abuse. Yes, running is abusive, but our bodies can learn to cope with the strain if given enough time. Only running three days a week also helps (rather than five).
 I figured what better place to run than on the beach? I ran down on the packed sand right next to the water line. There were several places I had to be light footed to keep out of the water. Week six of the Couch to 5k program has different workouts for each day, with the third workout being a solid 25-minute run. Back in the day, I would run 5k in less than 18 minutes, but now I am running more at the 22-23 minute pace. The fact that I can run it at all is really saying something. Last week, the last day was a 20-minute non-stop run. That was not quite 5k for me (though they estimate 20 minutes is two miles and 25 minutes is 2 1/4 miles). This week, I definitely went the distance. And man, does it feel good. The plan still has another 3 weeks left in it, but I think I am just going to switch over to my own plan now that I have hit 5k. I have several routes that I can run in my neighborhood that are about the right distance. The biggest difference between routes would probably be how many hills and where they are in the course.
I don’t know that I will ever get back into competitive running, since it seems to be against the reasons that I started running. Competitive running is pushing your body to its limits to run faster or longer. This often has the tendency to break your body in the process. I am running to be in better shape and take better care of my body, so I think that my competitive running will be like any other of the competitive activities I participate in: I lost?, oh well. But we all know that merely crossing the finish line makes us all winners.
I am currently at week three of nine in the Podrunner Intervals Couch to 5k program. This week has me running for up to three minute intervals. Last week I was starting to get worried about shin splints until I started to wear shoes during the day. Normally, I am a bare-footed kind of guy; my feet love the open air. But especially on the day after a run, I really need to wear something that has good arch support or my legs and feet feel very fatigued. I suppose this means I should go see a podiatrist or something, but the only one I know is still finishing up school and is planning to take over his dad’s practice in Utah. So a fat lot of good that does me.
I am just happy to be out and running. There really is nothing else in the world that can replace that for me. Knowing that I am self propelled and seeing the world go past me is just super great. Backpacking is similar for me, but a much slower pace.
I guess we will just have to see how dedicated I am to this running thing. I would love to be able to run 5k again. Not so much for competition sake, but for the healthy feeling you have when you are physically active. Mix that with all the fresh local veggies I plan on eating this summer and I should be healthy as a horse or something. Just as long as I don’t eat too many cookies.
Running has got to be my favorite form of exercise. But I was not born to run. All through high school, I had nasty posterior shin splints all through cross country season and right on into track season. I think I understand now more the causes of shin splints and how to deal with them. They are a repetitive stress injury, where stopping the painful activity will make them go away. Also, there some things that can be done to help treat and prevent them. With all that in mind, I have decided to start running again. Slowly this time. Well, not actually _running_ slowly, but rather starting with a slower regimen. I read that one common cause of shin splints is to start up too fast in the spring. My schedule is one I heard of from a friend, called Couch to 5k. It is a nine week program that starts you running in intervals, interleaved with a brisk walk. The first week, you only have to be able to run for 60 second intervals. The second week it is 90 seconds, and so on. Each week you run more and more until you are running for a full half hour. I think this is certainly a reasonable pace. I remember starting cross country and track like we were coming out of a cannon or something. We didn’t waste any time there. And I think this may be part of the problem in that kind of training. Sure it gets you whipped into shape really fast, but your body suffers for it. Or at least mine did.
Len pointed me to the Couch to 5k website, which is a great resource of links to running information and stuff. It takes the interval information from a program hosted by Cool Running. They also have a wealth of other information for runners. One of the links I found was a bunch of ‘pod intervals’, mp3 podcasts of music that is timed to help you stay on track with your running/walking intervals. The one that I chose was Podrunner Intervals: First Day to 5k. It uses mostly word-free music with a good beat to help you keep rhythm.
Hopefully I will be able to get back into this running thing. Walking doesn’t cut it. I can’t imagine that a treadmill would either. I have a deep-set need to move across the ground and see the world moving by; to feel the wind on my legs, arms and face; to lose myself in the run. It is really more than just the exercise that I think motivates me to run.
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