Merry Christmas, One and All

I believe in Santa Claus. He may not be the guy on Coca-Cola commercials swigging a glass of coke while delivering presents to everyone... but during these cold dark months when Winter begins its hold on this part of the world.. the Spirit of Christmas is what reminds us that there is a hope of longer days, new fields aplanting, and summer crops. I see Santa Claus everytime someone gets a gift for someone they don't know. I see Santa Claus when the war vet in the grocery line finds his grocery paid for by someone in front of them.. I see Santa Claus when the little kid with 3rd hand clothes finds a box left on his house doorstep with a new teddy bear in it. I see Santa Claus everywhere.. which is how I remember that come 90 dark days from now.. there will be new blossoms on the trees, fresh blackberries on the brambles, and life goes on.

And to little Tommy who in 3rd grade told me that there was no Santa Claus: BAH HUMBUG!

Congrats: Matt Domsch

I am very happy to say that I did not win the board position and a better person got it. Thankyou for all the people who approved or didn't approve of me... I will try to do better for the next board elections. I will also plan to spend a heck of a lot of time on EPEL side of things in the coming 6 months as I am not going to school in the Spring.

Instead I will be working on a checklist of items

1. Learn python
2. Write a major java application for the Google phone
3. Spend time with my family as they sacrificed a lot of time for me in the Fall. (Thankyou guys).
   

About the Fedora elections

I would like to say some things about the candidates for the Fedora Board seat.

1. Matt Domsch. If you found like me that the last couple of Fedora releases have had much better mirroring and downloads.. you can thank Matt Domsch. He is a great guy who has been supporting Linux inside of Dell for many many years.
   
2. Tom "Spot" Callaway. The Aurora Linux guy and hardcore Fedora advocate.
3. Mike McGrath. Mike has done tons of work on EPEL, Extras, Smolt, and a ton of other important things that are needed to get a Fedora release out the door.
4. Stephen Smoogen. Well I have no idea why this guy is running. He hasnt done much and seems to be resting on his laurels from writing down a 'history' of Red Hat releases a while back.
   

In any case, I think all of the candidates (except that last guy) would be a good pick for the one seat. Remember the elections use approval voting... which means that the person with the most approval gets the seat. So don't click on the last guys button. Really.. I (I mean someone) have a bet riding on how few votes he gets.

Running for Fedora Board

I have absolutely no qualifications but damn-it.. its my way of making sure that people who are intelligent (ie not me) are voted in.

Stephen Smoogen (smooge)

• Goal Statement: On this December 4th of 2007, a day that shall live in unfamy, I put my hat into the ring of Fedora Project Board. My goals are to help represent Enterprise customers into Fedora and make sure that their voices are heard. My statement is that I promise an OS in every pot.. and will make sure that PPC, Sparc, and ARM get their day in the sun as full-fledged members to the best of their non-Intel ability. I realize that I am a bit of a loonm, but I would like to help Fedora grow and mature, and will do so even if not elected.
• Past Work Summary: Employee # of Red Hat. I have been in and out of Fedora for the last several years, and would like to move back into helping Fedora meet the needs of colleges and universities. I am currently working with Fedora EPEL, but in a limited capacity.
• Future plans: My plans for the Spring of 2008 will be to work on EPEL and help its infrastructure grow to more packages and more builds.
• Anything else: I worked at Red Hat from 1997-2001 and then worked at various undisclosed places in New Mexico since then. I am currently a Systems Administrator at the University of New Mexico working towards an eventual Masters in Computer Science.
  

Oh My Goodness I so want this

I think I will start on my aquarium this week! [The image is copyright of the XKCD author who I can't remember and is used under the Creative Commons license. Please see http://www.xkcd.org/license.html for more information.]

Ketchup #5: Oh boy thanksgiving

Well I spent the last couple of days on a lot of different things.. and got a little bit done on all of them..

1. cfengine.. is not like falling off of a bicycle. I keep looking at it and thinking.. if it were python I would do this.. too much school I guess.
2. class stuff. Got grades back on kudosu and turned in parser program. Got the final project today and got my deadlines on it. I will have to work every night for about 4 hours to get this thing done.
   
3. decided not to take a spring class this year. I have to focus on catching up with work load and getting family house issues dealt with.
4. had Sister-In-Law visit. Lovely as always.. wish I had had more time to spend and not be so grumpy from other stuff.
   
5. took pictures of the dog, house, family. Gave camera to paul.. he took 40 more pictures :). Then tried to get data off of camera. Seems that the camera no longer talks to the Macintosh or Linux boxes.. spent most of Sunday working on why (looks like firmware problem in camera... have to install Windows ME to fix.. time to get a new camera I think).
   
6. worked on jphoto and started seeing what would be needed to get it to work with 2.6 kernel (lots of work). then realized that the camera doesnt talk correctly anyway and that I might as well start over.
7. Family had a good time with everything. Lisa made lots of good food that we ate. Paul and I played Kingdom Hearts.. til the PS2 started to show its age and go into lockup mode. Sigh...
8. Played with android and found I could not get hello world to work in Fedora8. Not sure exactly why yet.. have to futz with it a bit.

Thats all folks.

Another Round on Passwords

Another Round on Passwords

I have to grudgingly agree with Dr Spafford on this. On our public ssh servers our main problem used to be users who set passwords to guessable words. However, while we have this occur everynow and then, the bigger problem is where users use the same password everywhere. While we limit the number of ssh attempts, make the users pick stronger passwords.. we can't stop them from using it at AOL etc. And even SSH blocking is limited as the crackers have parallelized their tools enough that as we block one host another picks up right where we blocked the last and they come from all over the internet that we can't really shut everything down.

And even if we were able to block all that.. we would just be the mythical bosun on the Titanic that Dr Spafford mentions.. making our selves useful as the ship sinks.

1. We can't make the users patch their systems since the majority of them are privately owned. [State laws or some such.]
   
2. It seems impossible to train common sense. You can tell people "Don't give your password to someone.", "Don't use the same password in multiple locations.", "Be careful of attachments.", etc and they will still do stupid things. Maybe because there is no evolutionary consequences.. "So you opened that attachment. Well its time to install Eunuchs on you."
3. Even if we were able to patch the systems AND train the users.. there are too many tools that are too expensive to replace that have to run un-encrypted etc to make much of a difference.
   

Oh well...