The meaning of life (I)

I used to party allot. And every other night I drink or smoke or something myself to oblivion I found the meaning of life but always forget to write it down. Well, not always - once, drunk as a sailor, I set out to prove the genius of my nightly diatribes and I wrote some on paper. Needless to say, the next morning, it was hard to say what was more painful, the headache or the shame of reading the proof of my stupor glossolalia.
Anyway, I stop drinking alcohol after one night, while in a club, I took a cab and went home to move my car to a safer parking lot because it had a broken window (nothing unusual, every other week they would broke the passenger window an steal the GPS). Moved the car (5.30 AM) and went back to party. Next morning (afternoon really) woke up in a friend house, took a cab home, see no car, went to the police and report the car stolen...
Still I get these "epiphanies" late at night, somewere between reading and sleeping. For your delight, here are the latest:
1. I know how to best describe the shit I'm in: I live in a town that has no McDonalds!
2. It should be illegal to have both GNOME and KDE at the same time on a computer. After initial "KDE feaver" with desktop effects, transparency and all, yesterday I almost decided to move back to GNOME because it's cleaner and faster. Less than 12 hours later I'm reluctantly back to KDE because NetBeans 6.5 looks awfull in GNOME - cluttered, full of strange artefacts, plain ugly.
Both desktop environments are quite ok on their on and any flaws will be disregarded in absence of imediate comparison. Yet having them both only get's you in an endless dilema with the sole result that you end up hating either one of them.

How about some real worries?!

Last night on National Geographic I understand why we are going down as fast as we are. I saw a lady that was a "Lion-Human Conflict Specialist"! Common people! Do we really need occupations like "lion-human conflict specialist" or "frog leap motivational speaker" or "elephant dump odour officer"?!
Did we sort out all our problems and really have nothing else to worry about than lion-human conflict? Why don't you drop me a line and I'll sort out the conflict for you: lions eat people. It's that simple. We don't need a full time job for that.
Here I say it: I don't give a rat's ass about the whales on brink of extinction as long as we have every 5 seconds a child dying of hunger (count to five to see what that means). From over 800 million people that die of hunger every year I trust there will be a child that, if we really need them, will genetically engineer a herbivore lion.
If you really don't know what to do with your time and/or money help that child to survive and get an education. It might grow up to invent a really efficient way to cure rejection complex so all the ecologist teenagers could get a real life, stop "saving" the lions and save themselves from chronic virginity.

Why computers are so fun...

Finally on the mark?

I often thought I can make a brilliant "bankruptcy consultant". It would work like this: monitor what brands/products I like and you'll know who's going to go down soon. Let me give you a few examples:
Saab - first bought by GM, now a few steps from closing
Maserati - saved at the last breath by Fiat (now they are doing ok-ish but I don't fancy them as much as before - they became too pretentious)
Rothmans - I smoke Rothmans since 1992 and now only some 2% of restaurants that sell cigarettes have them.
Akay - almost dead and buried
Jungans(whatches) - bouht one 10 yrs ago as "the wach" now they make quartz chinese-like movements. Only a few months ago I used to say "If all goes well next year I'll buy myself an Audemars Piguet". Since it didn't go well, there's no way I can afford one anymore so they might escaped the "Luca curse" :D.
Boss - "No1" was the only perfume I used to buy. They don't make it anymore.
The list can go forever and don't even get me started on music! Who knows/still listens/remembers Sinead OConnor, Keith Jarrett, Zakir Husain, Dresden Dolls, Camille, Brian Eno, K's Choice, Anouar Brahem...?!
So it seems I have a innate tallent to pick loosers (like me?!).
Whell, it might be that this time, with Fedora, things are different. Here is a guy that takes piece by piece the next releases of Fedora and Ubuntu and came to this conclusion:
"...considering the differences - Fedora 11 seems to be a full 6 months ahead of Ubuntu. Most of the features included in Fedora 11 now (gnome-media, faster boot, KMS, Plymouth, Firefox 3.1, Thunderbird 3, OpenOffice 3.1, etc) are planned only in Ubuntu 9.10."
Read the full comparison here.

I'm officially depressive

Proof? Here it is: my own American Beauty flying bag witch I stared thoughtless for almost 3 minutes. Ha ha ha.

Fire.FM rules almost as much as MeHead

I love Jose Enrique Bolanos. I love him so much that if I'll be a big tited blonde I'll give him a fellatio every morning (I'm a fat strait male so no luck Jose). Still, Jose Enrique Bolanos and Jorge Villalobos created Fire.FM witch is the greatest Firefox add-on ever. It plays from LastFM while sitting unintrusive down in the status bar. As I said on the Firefox page: after napster was killed by Corporate America music on the internet wasn't the same. Until LastFM and Fire.fm.
This little addon it's my new "how did I lived without this before". Like GSM, microwave and Google. What more could I ask from Jose?! Nothing really, yet he gave me more: In a replay for a user on the review list said that "middle mouse click opens a link in a new tab". It's true! My darkest ctrl+clik days are over. Now, tnx to Jose, I listen to "The Bad Plus" and browse truly in style. Thank You Jose Enrique Bolanos.
I'm microns away to write my second ever fan mail. The first one was sent at the guys that gave me a new meaning for inteligent humor: www.mehead.com (their site is "not over" but I put a sample of their impecable work here).

OSBC2009 - Welcome Video

OSBC2009 - Welcome Video from Matt Asay on Vimeo.

"The meaning of progress" toilet paper

Fedora mailing list it's boiling over about the launching preparations for Fedora 11. I hope it will not be like my previous marketing endeavours.
My love with marketing departments goes way back when I was a layouter for a small newspaper. The marketing guy would come and make me do a stupid layout with a lame idea bossing me around just because the cleaning lady and I were the only persons that listened to him. The frustration of having a fancy job name but actually being a driver/secretary (until recently called so) would transform any reasonably dim person in the perfect reason why my unbrevetted chef-d'oeuvre invention would be a success: "The One Shoot Office Gun Dispenser".
Years later, when I was boss enough, it was my favourite pass time to fuck them over and watch them vomit a learn-by-heart Kotler phrase to justify why their idea is better than the one the doorman passed me that morning. I'll always end the argument with "ok you deserve your salary now go and mimic some more work".
What's bothering me most are the overly "catchy" but meaningless slogans like "The future of Quality" for a chocolate bar or "The meaning of progress" for some toilet paper. Trying to appear smart, slogans end up being just words put together without any semantic relevance. If you have a toilet paper why not "Wipes your ass" - dammit, this is what it does!
And of course there is the meeting dynamics! Gustave Le Bon, Durkheim and Baudrillard would be in experimental study heaven in any marketing meeting. The boss, trying to conceal that he has no idea what the meeting is about and didn't even opened the documentation listens to the marketing babbling and goes something like "Yes, and we also have to convey the idea of progress and how young and fresh our company is". The marketing jumps on the wagon with "Of course, we thought of that. We want to go with 'progress'" (he's mental abilities allow him to remember only the first word mentioned). And then, the recently fucked secretary, proud of her new cunt power starts climbing the organisational ladder: "Yes 'progress' is good". The joke of the hangover-plagued design guy goes unnoticed "What is the meaning of progress?" so the sales, now knowing where the tides are turning, seal the faith of progress: "'The meaning of progress', yes, that's good, we can go with that. I have a client that has for his stores 'shopping for progress', he would like that".
People, please, if you really need them (for whatever reason that might be) please, please, please, don't make them "smart".

Memento mori

It starts like any other casual mirror check-up. You walk past a mirror, catch a glimpse in the corner of the eye and stop to see who's there. Straighten the posture, suck up the belly, up the chest and there you are. The same, everyday, you. It's the perfect opportunity for some nose picking and soul-searching. You come near the mirror to frown upon the rate your new beard grows and try a charming/sarcastic smile. On the verge of discarding the embarrassing narcissistic moment with "I need a bath and a haircut" it strikes you. First, one near the temple, than more on the hair line, everywhere. I have grey hair! I will die. But no, it's not that easy, first I will suffer all the indignities and incontinences, continuing to fear the future, glorifying the past while carefully avoiding analysing the present shit I am in. I remembered Philip Roth's Everyman, a book that scared me senseless. I swear to read it again at 60 and commit suicide if it doesn't make me laugh. It probably won't. I probably wouldn't.

Linux support is better

Why is it better? Because one asking say "My mouse it's not working in Fedora" will never get the infamous "It seem to be a problem with your mouse, please contact your wall socket vendor"
You get honest answers, human answer, like "Dunno", "Go away", "Fuck you", "Go there and read". I prefer this any day over the lines learned by heart by some idiot in a support centre whose job is to get rid of me as fast as possible without telling me anything. If I ever go into politics I'll have my speeches written by a guy from a phone line.
More over, since installing linux you already made a statement about what you are ("I'm willing to learn something new"), the experience of going through forum threads to find that others have the same problem will actually be positive, we'll make you feel you're not alone. In opposition, with commercial products, where you get to forums as a last resort when you are already angry so, reading endless posts of "I have the same problem", will only get you even more frustrated and revengeful.
And lastly, you get a decent option of "Up yours! I have 2 university degrees, so treat me like I don't know command line code not like I'm a retard". In a corporate support centre you don't get this option because your interlocutor IS a retard so it wouldn't be a fair argument.

Not for reading

This post doesn't say anything. It's for verifying that the keyboard really has a problem or I'm just typing wrong for a reason or another (most likely because I'm an imbecile!!). Yet no typing problem just the usual orthographic misspells that I'm already used to and will be screened by the computer for me (because it is sooo much smarter than me). The thing is that I'm finding myself often typing in the wrong places (a few lines up and few words to the left or write or just in another box altogether). It feels like somebody is pressing behind my back Tab, Up, Down and other such keys. Well it's now a few lines and nothing happened so probably it's just me not being used with the Vaio keyboard.

By the way I would like an add-on to the spell check that puts a explanation to the word that it's suggests. Something like this can be than avoided by analphabets like me:

Spell Checker
I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rarely ever wrong.

I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore your pleased too no
Its letter prefect in every weigh;
My checker tolled me sew.

iBook my love

As I switch to KDE from gnome I tried to update my drivers for my graphics card so I can enable desktop effects. Big mistake! I downloaded the file from ATI and installed (with sh /"file" at the command terminal). Reboot and... black screen and PANIC!!!
Boot from Fedora DVD, choose restore, read the screen, and after the chmod /mnt/sysimage I get in the command mode. The aticonfig --initial -f I write down from the end message of ATI driver installer doesn't work. Now what?! Now we go to the good'oll iBook and come the internet for a solution. Found uninstall command for ATi driver and we are back in business. Than, with desktop environment back on, I could find this which worked (almost) like a charm. I gone on with the first steps but had the devine inspiration to do new-kernel-pkg --mkinitrd --update $(rpm -q --queryformat="%{version}-%{release}.%{arch}\n" kernel | tail -n 1) BEFORE restarting X11 with init 3 (witch crashed my system). After reboot dough everything was fine and I get the awesome KDE desktop effects. Still the hero of the day is iBook. It was my first apple laptop (my second all time) and I give it to mom 3 yrs ago after 2 yrs of using it myself. It still goes so it deserves a picture!

My briliant plan works perfectly!

At least the part about insanity. I managed to get fired from volunteer work!
It's not necessary surprising, just amusing. I'm smiling through this madness because I don't give a shit any more. Yesterday I went to Bucharest to finalize the sale of my office and I bought a huge LCD TV. I wonder what miracle happened so I didn't drop it out the back of the car or install it facing the wall.
I'm so out of sinc with everything that I keep having deja-vu's. Reminds me of "Adam and Eve" - a novel (Rebreanu?) about an impossible love repeated in it's tragedy throughout multiple reincarnations. I hope it's my way to cope, not the start of some mystic phase or grand epiphany. I still need to think that people can control their destiny. I'm not ready (yet) to give up and blame everything on fate. I'll be a little longer the small lab rat that tries everyday to take over the world. The delusion of The Brain and his little help Pinky it's still more appealing than fanatic faith and bigotry.

Recap day 6

All my life has been a obstinate daily struggle to avoid the conclusion that I'm an imbecile. Lately my weapons are getting blunt, my self-esteem armour shatters and my will to fight slips away in face of the overwhelming power of evidence.
I'm reading a book called "Java in 21 days". At firs I said "I'll do it in 7". Now, 5 days later, at day 6, I'm getting a day off for recap because last night I've started to read only the words without understanding anything. And whatever you might think reading my so-called English was not because of language issues.
I'm down to Lennie Tristano witch is only a step away from Keith Jarrett / The Koln Concert - the bottom of musical depression in my charts. Speaking of music, I hate that lastFm doesn't work and I'm afraid to search google to find that I have to "yum - shit" than "su bash some more shit I don't understand" All the good intentions and high moral standards of Fedora and others pales when you're deprived of music. Like this for example:

Unemploiement it's like any other job

You get together with other unemployed, rant about the management and generally about the system, brag about former unemployed positions "A few years ago I was a bum, now THAT was life!". You set goals and get rewards for finding good excuses: "I'll send my application but my mail doesn't work. I think it's the damn ISDN connection" / "Yeah, mine it's broken too. Here, have another beer". Like on any other job, at every turn there is a time crisis: "I can't take out the trash! Can't you see I'm busy?! I'm writing my resume. And after that I have to go to the social services and I'm already late" Of course, since you're late you storm out of the house but, being a smart guy, you know there's no point in going to a closed Social Services Office so you steer to the pub tired from all the hassling...

So you don't have "Martisor"

I started with "I went to buy my mom a ..." What's the name in english for 'Martzishor'. Google and Wikipedia told me it's a Romanian and Bulgarian tradition. So.. I went to buy my mom a Martisor.
It's a small golden horseshoe with the traditional white and red string.

Improved display drivers for Fedora

Seems things will look good in the next release of Fedora:

"Enabled by default on Fedora 11 will be Intel kernel mode-setting (along with the ATI kernel mode-setting that can already be found in Fedora 10). More on this is also available from the Fedora Wiki. ATI kernel mode-setting has been enabled since Fedora 10, but in Leonidas the support will be extended to support KMS on ATI R100/200 hardware.

Kernel mode-setting allows for a nice, flicker-free boot process with the Plymouth project, fast VT switching, improved suspend and resume support, and other benefits. Kernel mode-setting is also a prerequisite for running the Wayland Display Server."

Full text here

My, I'm happy with the display drivers as they are in Fedora 10. Worked out of the box.

Back to school

I feel like at the beginning of school when I always get scared of the amount of material to be covered. At every other sentence I read I go like "should also read about..." The perfect example it's 5 min ago. I was reading a meeting report on the Fedora forum and I decided to attend myself the next meeting as I felt I could help with the issue. So.. where do I register? Turns out it's by IRC... WTF is IRC?!?!?!?! I know YM and probably I could get Skype to work. So... why not making a conference on good'ol YM? Is it really necessary to make everything so hard?! I mean, I understand the ideea (YM being proprietary software and all) but, isn't this a little on the fundamentalist side? We'll ask.
On the Java front... I managed to get some working concept about programming but the effort ahead only now became clearer. There is a basic set of rules and operations. The trouble is that to be efficient you need to know as much classes as possible. It's like learning Chinese writing. After you get used with the brush and ink starts the real thing - learning the 40000 characters.

Early morning

No erection this morning. Just a bitter feeling as I woke up. I dream about the magazine and what should I do about the printing house and to call..., ant to write to... When I woke up I was... here.
Have to stop thinking about that, have to wake up thinking about Java and Fedora. It will come. Hopefully.
Last night mom was seeing The Prestige on HBO and I realised I can't remember the last movie I saw. Think it was "The Wackness". No, I remember now because I really liked: "Waltz with Bashir" It made me remember another one witch I enjoyed even better - Persepolis. The one with this amaisingly insitefull view of teenage hell.

Practicalities

This morning I woke up with a huge (or at least stiff :D) erection and I realised this is going to be a problem. My mom lives in an 20.000 people small town where everybody knows everybody so right now I'm her darkest secret - "My woderfully successful son had a 15 years career in the press and now lives with me, unemployed..." - this just doesn't cut it at the local grocery store. Even if this wouldn't be the case, I know that if I'll start going out in this town (or any other), in 3 months max i'll be the "village drunk" and never get back to my feet again.
So going out it's, well... out. I'm left with good old jerking off or some kind of utopic exercise program (ha, ha, if you'll know me you'll laugh as hard as I do at this ideea)
I miss weed. With no money and probably no dealer in town it's going to be another "things I used to to"

Maybe not only a desperate plan

Europe it seems, it's at the forefront of Open Source adoption. Here I found the annual report of Open Forum Europe that says:
"Looking back, 2008 will probably be perceived as a watershed for the recognition of 'openness' as an inevitable commercial requirement. (...)
No less than 16 governments have now chosen ODF as their preferred open document format, with Germany being the latest in the list of governments making this decision. Support for ODF has now moved beyond the desk top with support within applications and the launch of the ODF Toolkit Union."
As I live in Europe this only could mean a (slim) hope that my Don Quijote-an quest could lead not only to personal salvation but, in some time, to some way of earning a living.

Schedule

It seems that I find my to do list ready made for me here. I'll learn Java (at least this is my first option - I'll decide for good in the weekend). Now I just have to devise a daily routine, something like 2h math and theory, 3h coding, 3 research on the net.

First steps

My former girlfriend came by to bring me a useless present (a telescope). She thinks she's still in love with me because she can't understand why I left her. I feel somehow sorry for her but I'm not compromising only to get us both suffer later.

As my future goes, I started to read about software development. I liked this: "Open source avoids the biggest barrier to entering the software industry: marketing and sales. Open source needs no sales and marketing budget, only a good development leader, quality software and word of mouth for adoption." Full text here.

I plan to read as much as I can tomorrow and over the weekend so Monday I'll be able to formulate a coherent set of objectives and some kind of timeframe. Right now I don't even know what question should I ask myself (apart from "how to muster courage to jump from brigde?"). Are there such things as freelance software developers? How many specialities are in "programming"? It depends on the language used (C++ or Java) or in the final destination of the code (game or network protocol). How do one gets in a open source team. What cridentials are needed? I'm pretty sure I'll be laughing in a few month at this stupid questions...

Happy birthday

I turned 35 years old today. I live in my mother's house and I have no job or any productive skills that I'm aware. I think this is enough to qualify me as a genuine looser.
Until last week I had a magazine that's gone bust. I sold everything, paid my bills and the last salaries to my former team. With the last 4000E I bought a new computer (sold even my personal MacBook Pro) and moved with mom. Paid 1000E for Vaio VGN-FW21E and left with 3000E. As I made an oath never to work in the media again I installed linux on my new laptop and I'm thinking to learn programming until I find something to do with my life.
This blog will record my path to suicide, insanity, learning linux, redemtion or a combination of the above.
Feel free to laugh at any point.