So, today is the last day of Guadec. I’ll be heading home tomorrow. There was a GUADEC party last night that was a blast. I’ve met a lot of people from all around the world. Nokia is giving a talk right now about their involvement with Open Source. It’s very exciting to have a large company like Nokia announce their involvement with the community. I would really like to write more, but I’m trying to pay attention to the talk. I’ll definitely write a bunch when I get home. I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon sometime. I can’t wait to sleep in my own bed.
I’m still in Germany – w00t!
This is post number 2 from Germany. I went to Heidelberg yesterday. They have this big castle there which is conveniently placed at the top of a pretty high hill. The walk up to the castle was pretty brutal. I took a bunch of pictures from the top of the castle that came out pretty nice. I’ll try and post pictures tomorrow when I have access from my laptop. Heidelberg is much more touristy than Stuttgart. They have all these little tourist shops and restaurants. I also walked along the ‘Philosopher’s Walk’ which was pretty nice. It also suffered from being at the top of a steep hill. Well, I guess I was the one who suffered. It’s called the ‘Philospher’s Walk’ because Hegel used to walk along it or something like that. I was cursing him as I was climbing up the thing. I took pictures from there also. There’s a really nice view of the castle from there.
I’m writing this entry from an iMac that is in the internet cafe here. That would normally be fine, except this one has a German keyboard or something. It’s mostlty the same except the ‘Y’ and ‘Z’ keys have switched places. Oh, and there are a few more keys: öä€ß§°. :o)
It hit 38° C in Heidelberg yesterday. That’s like 98° F. In similar news, I’m having a little bit of trouble keeping myself hydrated. I’m drinking a bunch of water, but it took me a little while to figure out that that was the problem.
Stuttgart is so alive with people. There is this main pedestrian-only street called Königstraße which is just bustling with people. There always seems to be some kind of fair going on. I spent a bunch of time in the Schlossgarten (a park similar to Central Park) and there are always people there. On a Thursday afternoon the place was packed with people. Awesome.
Alright, I’m going to head over to where the conference is to catch the bus to Esslingen for a little medieval town action. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some pictures tomorrow.
I’m in Germany – w00t!
Well, I made it. I’m posting this from some internet cafe in Stuttgart, Germany. The plane ride was a blast. It was really cool to see what I’m guessing was some part of New York or Long Island from that height in the dark. Each streetlight looked like a christmas tree light. The food they served us on the plane wasn’t that bad. While I was eating I was thinking about how flying is entirely ridiculous. We were never meant to fly. I almost laughed out loud. There I was something like 35000 feet over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean eating some pasta/chicken dish and a brownie. Fuck you nature – we’ll make wings. haha. I woke up over France. Yeah – France is just a bunch of farms. That’s it. I came over here and I looked at it and it’s all farms.
Once I landed in Stuttgart I exchanged my US cash for Euros. It’s a very weird experience to hand a person a bunch of $50 bills and have them hand you four pieces of paper that look fancy, have numbers on them, but don’t really hold any value in your mind. What are these things, fancy receipts or something? I dig that they have 1€ and 2€ coins though. Oh, when I got on the train, some kid sat across from me and he was wearing a shirt that said, “Long Island” on it. Pretty freaking weird.
It’s very weird to go to google and get redirected to www.google.de by the way. I’ve got to remind myself to setup webmail for myself because right now I don’t have a way of checking my email. That wouldn’t be such a problem except that if there’s any news about the conference I’ll be getting it in email. Bah. I took a bunch of pictures already, I’ll try and post them later if I get some access from my laptop. Alright – I’m going to try and find some food that isn’t *wurst. Later.
Germany, Here I Come
Alright, I’m leaving for Germany in less than 24 hours. I’m finding that I’m more nervous than I thought I would be. I’m kind of surprised because I don’t get nervous very often. It’s not the flight that’s making me nervous. I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s not the flight. I think it’s just that I don’t know so many things about what’s going to happen in the next few days.
It’s going to be good to get away. I think it will be good for me to clear my head for a week or so. I haven’t spent 6 nights in a row in a hotel before. That’s going to be kind of weird. It’s long enough that it might make sense to actually put my clothes in the dresser that they have in the room.
There are a lot of things that I’m looking forward to doing in Germany. It may sound weird, but I’m really looking forward to just walking around the park that is in the middle of Stuttgart. I can’t imagine it being anything too special. I’ve seen trees, grass, and hills before, but these are German trees, grass, and hills.
I’m going to try and post to my blog when I get over there. I’ll probably be posting pictures as well. I’ve got to get to sleep now if I have any hope of falling asleep on the flight and dealing with the 6-hour time difference well. Later.
Ich finde es schön
So, I’m leaving for Germany in just a few days. My plane leaves Wednesday at 9:00pm. I’m very excited and very anxious. I’ve never been on a plane (or even inside of an airport). I’m more scared about the airport than I am about the plane. I keep picturing this scenario where I entirely blunder the process by which I get on the plane and miss it. I know it is very unlikely, but I feel like there are processes in place at the airport that I don’t understand and am likely to mess up. “You can’t say bomb on an airplane.” I’ve got to keep that in mind.
In preparation for my trip I’ve been buying all kinds of things. I bought a new pair of sneakers since my other pair have received their fair amount of trouncing. I like the new ones:
They’re also the first pair of sneakers that I’ve ever seen which have Alkaline Trio lyrics in them.
I’m giving the presentation at the next LILUG meeting. The topic is “Logical Volume Management and Software RAID”. It’s a pretty neat topic for people who are interested in managing their hard drive space in interesting ways. There will be a lot of, “Wow, I didn’t even know that problem was even solvable.” moments during the presentation. That’s what I kept saying to myself when I was first reading up on the topic. It should be fun.
I’m going to try and crash the Silent Majority show at The Downtown tonight. I don’t have tickets, and I’ll probably do anything for them. So, if you have a ticket and you need someone dead or something, get in touch with me. I pretty much need to get in. If I don’t get in, I’m going to be a fair amount of miserable for the rest of the day.
My brother got these ridiculous stress relieving balls that look like breasts. The texture isn’t too bad. I mean, it’s not going to fool anyone, but you’d be hard pressed to find more realistic feeling stress relief balls. Nak, Raghav and Steve were over the other night and we played some poker. After Nak dropped out of the game, he passed out on the couch. I couldn’t resist taking this picture, and I couldn’t resist posting it either. Sorry Nak.
Update: I got into the Silent Majority show and it was entirely awesome. I’ve never seen a crowd go off like that. I hope they were able to raise a bunch of money for James MacCauliffe (I know I just butchered his last name’s spelling). I’m really glad that I was able to be there for the show. I ran into a bunch of people from high school who I hadn’t seen in a while (Matt Tutrone, Melinda, Dave Weck, etc.) It was a good night overall.
Sticks and Stones are Nothing Compared to Your Words
Sure, I have plenty of things to talk about, but I might as well start with the most interesting topic. It also happens to be the one topic that I can’t get out of my head. I just figured I’d warn you that this post is going to get more and more boring as it goes along. But, it will hopefully be able to satiate John’s need for input.
I just spoke with Jamie a few hours ago. It’s getting more and more difficult to talk with her. You would think that it would get easier, but it doesn’t. I feel very alone after I speak with her. It’s not the kind of alone that I was prepared for. I mean, I knew she would find someone. And, yeah, that bothers me, but it’s bearable. What I hadn’t prepared for was the loneliness that is resulting from my realization that the Jamie that I dated no longer exists. I don’t know. I guess there is something comforting in knowing that characters from your past still exist. I’m not exactly sure what to do about the current situation. I mean, it’s not my place to really _do_ anything. Besides, I don’t really want to be involved. But, I wish things were working out differently. I apologize for the vagueness of this entry. I just don’t think it fair to really go into detail here. It’s a shame because it’s the details that really hurt.
Moving on. I went to a hardcore show the other day. It was the first one that I had been to in a while. It was nice to go back to one – for many reasons. It’s nice to be around a whole bunch of people who are straight edge. It’s interesting to go from a world where it is so weird to be straight edge to one where it is almost expected. There’s something about hardcore that is different from every other type of music that I’ve come across. It’s not so much about the music, but about the community. There is a real sense of comradery. I think it might be due to the raw emotion that is present in the music. When you see someone put so much emotion into creating (or listening) to music, it can really move you. I’m not saying that this makes it any better than other forms of music, just that I don’t get this kind of feeling from other genres. One of the kids had a shirt on that said, “Suicide Before Betrayal” on it. Now, it was just a t-shirt, but I’ve been thinking about its meaning since I saw it. Why can’t all friendships be that strong. Why does it feel like it’s a common thing to betray someone. I almost got into a fist-fight at the show. That is pretty odd for a few reasons: #1 I don’t get into fights and #2 Who gets into a fight at a hardcore show? Regarding #1, I just don’t ever get into fights. I didn’t get into any fights all through high school or anything like that. With that being said, I’m almost looking forward to getting into a fight. Maybe I just want to feel what it’s like to get punched in the face. Maybe I’ve watched Fight Club a few too many times. Regarding #2, for the most part, hardcore shows are peaceful things. I mean, there’s a lot of rage and emotion, but respect is a major element of the hardcore scene. I don’t really want to get into the “Mark’s mosh etiquette” rant right now, but this guy at the show was being a real dick. Basically, you should only dance with other people that want to dance. All the kids that are standing on the side of the pit don’t really want to dance and they don’t really want to catch your fist in their face. So, keep a respectful distance and everyone will be happy. Well, this guy was swinging his arms and hitting these two girls right on the side of the pit and next to me. So, I pushed him away from the girls. He came back and was swinging his arms again. So, the girls and I pushed him together, except this time he fell over. He got right up in my face and ‘fight mode’ kicked in. All of a sudden there’s a crowd of people around us and we’re staring into each other’s eyes. It was pretty intense. I loved it. Some of his buddies took him outside. His friends told me not to worry about him and that he was just having a bad day or whatever. After a few bands played and a few hours passed, he came over to me and apologized. I thought that was incredibly awesome of him. It must have taken a lot for him to do that and I really appreciate it.
I submitted a patch to sound-juicer. It doesn’t entirely fix gnome bug #153988, but it helps. It basically makes it so you can type a custom genre into sound-juicer before ripping a CD. I think the interface of sound-juicer is very refreshing and is a stellar example of what I like about the feel of Gnome. The CD-ripper is a type of program that everyone loves to throw features and awkward options into. Sound-juicer has resisted this urge and created a program that is just a joy to use. I don’t expect my patch to be accepted, but hopefully someone will find it useful. I know that I’m using it. :o)
This create your likeness as a southpark character thing has been going around the blogs the past few days. I couldn’t help myself. I made two. One of them is me in all of my bald glory and the other one is when I’m wearing my new spiffy EFF hat.
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Some People Agree with Me
It’s not easy being the angry son-of-a-bitch that my coworkers claim I am. It is a rarity that anyone sides with me when I get into one of my rants. I suppose that might be because agreeing with me will likely only lengthen the time that I bitch about something. But regardless of the reason it’s difficult to go on complaining when no one agrees with you. Well, I found a post by someone who is very respected in the technology community who actually whole-heartedly agrees with something that I have said. Tim Bray, one of the original editors of the XML specification (amongst many other accomplishments), recently wrote about his dislike for the word ‘solution’. To quote his post (which is so short that this quote is like half his post), “This is so freaking retarded, can there be a living human being who believes anyone will be more willing to drop the $450 on their box because it’s described as a ‘storage solution’?” That is pretty much my argument as well. When I read something that describes a product as a ‘solution’ I feel like someone is trying to push feces down my throat. When someone uses the word ‘solution’ I assume that they either think that I am a total idiot or that their product fills no real purpose and thus can only be labelled with the word ‘solution’. Everything is a solution. I wouldn’t use the word ‘solution’ to describe a product because I wouldn’t want a potential customer to think that I consider them an idiot, and I would rather explain the exact purpose my product serves instead of making it look like it serves no exact purpose at all.
On another note, I’ve been thinking a lot about culture and how much the overall situation really sucks right now. We’re in a quagmire of legality and lawsuits that basically puts a sleeper hold on our culture and allows record companies to own practically everything that is recorded. I wish I had more time to expand on this topic, but if you want to understand how I feel, give this panel discussion with Lawrence Lessig and Jeff Tweety a listen. Brandon describes it as the “shadier side of online piracy” and I can’t disagree more. I believe that what Jeff Tweety and Lawrence Lessig are talking about has very little to do with online piracy and it certainly doesn’t “tell you it’s not so bad”. Lawrence Lessig actually attacks people who pirate music and other content because it muddies the argument. The worldwide discussion about this should not be about online piracy because the cost of music and the availability of it isn’t really the problem. The problem that I see is that the wrong people end up owning copyrights that last nearly forever and it isn’t very easy to build on past art. I personally have stopped downloading music that is not licensed in a way that makes doing so legal. This decision was not an easy one and it is something that everyone has to decide for themselves. I don’t want to push my ideas on anyone. However, while I am actually buying CDs now, I’m also very much in favor of artists using things like the creative commons to license their work in a way that makes the most sense for them both financially and creatively.
I wish I had more time to expand on my ideas. I’m sure I will at some point. But, Nak got tickets to yet another Mets game today and we’re leaving in just a little bit. I took 2 pictures last night that are available on my flickr account. Nak had a great quote last night. After we both finished eating footlong chili dogs he said, “I felt like a porn star eating that thing”. Classic.
Mets Game
Nak got tickets to the Mets game and brought me along.
I’m Not Angry, I Swear
I literally have a list of things I want to talk about. I wrote all of the things that I want to talk about down on a piece of paper, folded it up, and put it in my pocket. I’m going to try and hit each of these points real quick so I can more easily convince myself that people are reading this. Here goes.
Homophobia bothers me. It really boggles the mind. In all honesty, you would think that I would appreciate homophobia a little more because it makes it easier to identify people that I want nothing to do with. You might as well be wearing an “I don’t have original thoughts” hat on your head – that’s the thing that contains your brain, which in turn contains all of those borrowed ideas that you have. Whenever the topic of gay rights comes up at work, I pretty much just have to keep my mouth shut. It bothers me so much that I don’t think I can keep myself from directly insulting people. So, I hold it all in and write it in my blog, so that people that agree with me can read it. Am I somehow failing the gay community by not defending their obvious right to touch whomever’s naughty parts that they want? I suppose – and I feel pretty bad about that. Just one more quick point while I’m on this topic. It doesn’t matter if people are born gay, if they’re somehow influenced to be gay or if they make a conscience decision to be gay. It’s still none of your fucking business who they want to hug and what they want to kiss. I have very liberal views on sexuality and I don’t think it’s something that is as weird as people think it is. I think that humans are drawn towards sexuality in general. This could be another whole blog post, so just suffice it to say that I don’t think we live in a black and white world. I don’t think that there are 3 sexuality camps (straight, bisexual, homosexual). I think there’s a gradient from one side to the other and I think the majority of people would not fall at the polls if they would only allow themselves.
Alright, moving on. I have a problem with barriers that people place between themselves and the world. It’s hard for me to exactly describe what I mean, but I’m going to try. I don’t like it when people make it seem like they’re better at something than they really are. I don’t like it when people never mention things about themselves that they fear others might not like. I want unadulterated honesty from everyone that I know. I know that I can’t really expect this from people, but I’m ultimately not interested in the person that you’re presenting to me. I want to meet the person behind the curtain. Sometimes people even hide from themselves. Sticking with my ‘man behind the curtain’ metaphor, if the man behind the curtain looks in the mirror and sees what he’s presenting to others, he’s pretty screwed. How sad must it be to get to the point where you can’t discern traits that are actually yours from traits you’ve adopted for show. Individuals aren’t the only ones who are guilty of this. Companies are the all-time victors when it comes to the ‘only look at what I show you’ game. This is part of the reason that I like open source software so much. Try and get a company to tell you all of the things that are wrong with their product. Good luck. All of this is out there in the open in the open source world and it benefits both the product and the consumer. I’m kind of getting off on a rant here, but it bothers me when I’m looking at someone and I feel like I’m looking through one of those shower doors at them. I guess the biggest culprit is pride. Being proud of yourself and your accomplishments is awesome and there’s nothing wrong with that. But, being too proud to identify your weaknesses is bad for the soul.
I booked my flight and hotel for my trip to Germany. For those few people that I haven’t told, I’m attending GUADEC (Gnome Users And Developers European Conference). It’s going to be a blast. I’m going over there entirely by myself. I’m leaving May 25th @ 9pm, I arrive in Germany the next day @ 1:20pm their time. I’ll check into my hotel and have 2 and a half full days of dicking around in Europe before the conference. I’m going to try and jet out to Paris for a day during this thing. That may become complicated because the train ride from Stuttgart to Paris seems to be 6 hours long at its fastest. But, if I can leave Stuttgart at 5:45am, I’ll get to Paris by noon. Then, I can spend about 11 hours in Paris before jumping back on a train around 11pm and getting back to Stuttgart around 6am. So, I would pretty much have to do all of my sleeping on the train. But, when am I going to get back to Europe? Do I really want to go over there, see Stuttgart and then come home? If I have the chance to spend some time in Paris, even if its just a few hours, I think I should give it a shot. The conference lasts 3 days (May 29 – May 31) and I fly home June 1st. Germany is 7 hours ahead of us – so jet lag should be exciting. I’m all kinds of excited about this. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about it more as it approaches and I’ll most likely be blogging from Germany as well.
Alright, this is the last thing for now. I spoke with Jamie for a bit last night. It’s so weird to talk to her. There are really two things that upset me about our conversation. The first thing is that she’s dating someone. Now, hear me out. That isn’t the real problem. I want nothing more than for Jamie to meet someone whom she really likes and enjoys spending time with. But, the guy that she met (I don’t know who it is and I think that’s for the better) doesn’t seem to be the best guy for her. It’s probably not fair for me to speak about her personal affairs in a public forum like this, so I’m not going to say much more. But, from the limited amount of information I’ve gotten from her, I don’t think he’ll have an overall positive impact on her life. Which really should be the absolute minimum requirement of spending any time with someone. But, that isn’t really my decision to make, so I digress. The other thing that bothers me is more of a realization that I’ve made about my own feelings than anything that actually happened during our phone conversation. I would love to expand on my thoughts here, but I don’t think I should. I should probably just put them in an email and send them over to Jamie, because she’s really the only person that this involves. But, the 1000-foot view of this is that I don’t think Jamie and I fit together very well for the last few years we were together. It’s unfortunate, and that’s what had me bummed out pretty bad last night. After we got off of the phone I was in the crappiest mood and just went to sleep early.
Thanks for listening to my various rants. I’m pretty sure the guys at work are getting tired of hearing me run off on rants about things that most people deem to be unimportant. They call be angry. Well, they call me an “angry gnome” to be specific. I don’t think I’m angry – I just think that I expect more from the world than it is offering right now. Do you hear that, world? I’m disappointed. I think you an do better.
The Sugary Smell of Spring Time
Judging from the title you might think that this post is going to be about how it’s spring time and the flowers are blooming and the birds are chirping. I guess that could be what this post is about, but it’s not. This post is going to be about abstinence only sex education. Now, you’ve probably already heard (or can quickly figure out) all of the arguments for and against abstinence sexual education. But, I think I have something else to bring to the table.
The basic idea behind abstinence only sex ed is that kids should wait until marriage to have sex. By doing that you don’t have to worry about a lot of things like getting STDs, getting pregnant, or any of a number of other nasties. The sane side of the argument basically wants to give kids the most information possible so that they can make informed decisions about their lives. They argue that you basically have to assume that some kids are going to have sex and that it would be better to have them informed enough to protect themselves.
I was thinking about why conservatives are so upset that kids are having sex. I really haven’t quite figured it out yet. It’s pretty clear that it’s not entirely about protecting them from disease and pregnancy. There’s something that makes parents want their children to not have sex. If it was possible to absolutely guarantee that sex would not cause STDs and not induce pregnancy, I believe that parents would still not want their children to have sex until they were married (or at least well into their 20s). Maybe they’re just jealous. Lord knows they have something to be jealous of.
This brings me to what I’ve been thinking about recently. I really can’t think of anything more pure than being a teenager under the sheets with a beautiful girl. I’m sure it goes the same way for girls also. I know that the nights that I spent figuring things out as a 16 year old will probably be the most real moments of my life. Thinking back now, I don’t know that you can be more alive than that. Now, I don’t know why you would want your kid to miss out on something like that. I know it’s hard to see your kid like they’re a real person (hell, it can be hard to see anyone else as a real person), but they are. Clearly they deserve to have the opportunity to make memories like this. I just don’t know what it is that makes a parent so afraid of their child having sex. I think STDs and pregnancy are definitely part of it, but I think there is something else. If anyone can think of a real reason why, please let me know. Maybe it’s just that the bible says it’s naughty. But, even non-religious parents seem to feel the same way. Maybe I’m missing something obvious – feel free to comment.