Frustrations, Issues, Presidents No comments yet

Conservativism and McCain

By on February 9th, 2008

I find myself back at a Panera (note I was at a different one yesterday). I am taking a brief break between the things that I have to do today in different locations and I really needed some coffee. Panera has both good coffee, decent wireless connection, and is right along the path I had to drive anyway. It would have been foolish to pass it up.

As I was sitting here I was reminded of a conversation from some obviously very conservative gentlemen at the Panera yesterday near to me. They were all in agreement that Senator McCain was not the right guy for the republican party. They all had the opinion that he was not conservative enough for the republican party but the exact issue that he was not conservative enough on varied between them.

Continue reading Conservativism and McCain →

Blogging, Blogs, Life, Tech No comments yet

The tree was heard…

By on February 9th, 2008

I was talking with someone the other day and explaining how that I was really enjoying my blog set up, how that I felt it was the thing I should have done a long time ago, that I felt that there was lot more flexibility and options by doing it myself as to using myspace or even a regular blog space. I have complete control and can do whatever, say whatever, and even make it look however I want to. However, I was also noting that the traffic to a independent blog site was a bit harder to generate. After all, if you are on myspace, you post your blog and all your friends at the very least get the notice. So during this conversation I made the comment of something like, “After all, if the tree falls in the forest and no one was there to hear it, did it really make a sound?”

I guess I no longer have to worry about the tree falling being heard. A few nights ago, I installed a WordPress plugin that counts actual traffic hitting (and presumably reading) the blog parts of the page. Yes, I was getting stats on the website from webalyzer, but a little bit harder to figure who is doing what. Anyway – the traffic is small, but about what I expected given the massive changes I have made and the general newness to this site in the last month or so.

A few things amaze me a lot though that I thought I would share. The tool does some wonderful tracking of things and reports on them. For instance, the number of folks that are using specific search terms for things and getting to this page from information that was contained on here from at least 3 or 4 years ago, if not closer to 5 or 6 is amazing. To those folks, I am apologetic. I know you were here looking for collectibles, possibly cards or model trains, or maybe even beanie babies <GAG>. Anyway, I have not been really actively involved in that for a number of years and the page has not really indicated that for while either.

Another amazing one was the number of folks that are coming here from one of my other websites. Notably the one that comes to mind is eligius.org, which is a the site for jousting/medieval equestrian group. There are probably some links there, but I am not completely sure about that these days.

Now this next one, it really makes me feel good, but at the same time I really have to wonder who. So one of the search criteria that showed up was “Ray Cornish” Kentucky. For those that are not familiar that is a very specific search that will only find Ray and Cornish in order and should look for them in conjunction with Kentucky. It is the kind of thing that geeks often do themselves to see how well known they are on the net. Ironically, my jousting/SCA name is much more well known then me – Raynold of Wharram.

But here is the thing, I didn’t do that search to land here this past week. So, I kind of have to assume that someone is specifically looking for me. Makes me wonder, is it some long lost friend that just happened to give it a try or do I have some secret stalker? Well, whichever, next time whoever it was that did the search drop me a note and let me know who you are.

Heroes, Music 2 comments

My Heroes have always been cowboys…

By on February 6th, 2008

My heroes have always been cowboys, andCowboy chasing or roping a calf. they still are, it seems. I am sure that a number of your recognized the title of a song by Willie Nelson, himself a certain type of cowboy/hero type, but more on him and that idea later. And yes, for those that are wondering, on one of my recent late drives I put in a greatest hits of Willie and after listening, I was inspired for at least five or six blogs.

So, as to my heroes – just as the song says, I spent most of my youth dreaming of and playing at being just like one my heroes. Not sure that I learned the little bits about taking what you need from the ladies and leaving them with a sad country song until a bit later – but I am not sure that is absolutely a requirement – though I guess in reality that lonely drifter image that is unwilling to bend to anyone or anything, including progress is part of the attraction. It is certainly the reason that they are still my heroes today. Continue reading My Heroes have always been cowboys… →

Farm/Ag, Horses, Tech No comments yet

Weather, Technology, and Farming

By on January 31st, 2008

I have stated elsewhere how I am a study of opposites – especially when it comes to such things as my desire to be farming and working outside, with horses versus what I actually do with technology. Normally, aside from minor record keeping with the farm tasks, there is very little overlap between the two. However, that changed the other day, interestingly enough because of the weather. And it occurred to me how often this is the case.

In general with the farm, especially growing crops and with delicate livestock like horses, weather is something that we keep an eye on. If there are winter storms, flooding, severe weather, or what have you we make changes in the daily routines and check on animals a lot more often. In some of those cases, as a winter or especially a spring storm blows in we will often put them up in the barn – often just in the nick of time.

Case in point of how this relates to my career in information technology. Every day that I see a big severe storm on the forecast I am always doing extra checking to make sure that systems are staying online, that I continue to have power to my servers, and that my multiple telecommunications connections are still online. Just this past week, we had a fairly severe storm (of a spring nature, lots of wind, lightning, rain) blow in – the severity of which caught me and apparently most forecasters by a bit of surprise. Anyway, I came out of a restaurant and everything was dark in the area. This including my server locations.

Just like I would do as a storm was coming in with the horses, I went into an emergency mode taking care of getting servers offline before the batteries died and eventually the restoration of everything once power was restored. Anyway, the point of all this, now I have twice as much reason to be the weather junky that I have typically been in the past.

Computer, Frustrations, Internet, Tech No comments yet

MySQL & Sun

By on January 23rd, 2008

I noted on something that come across my inbox yesterday that MySQL is being sold to Sun. I was kind of shocked and a bit disturbed by this. A note, the deal was reported worth one billion dollars. Not a bad deal of you were one of the two contributors to the code (see below).

First my shock, I was under the impression that MySQL had been developed and released under the GNU GPL licensing schemes. Which basically I thought meant that the code was free for everyone to develop and that everyone got to use all the contributions that came from everyone developing the code base. And that all this development leads to great things on the software package and everyone is happy. Apparently however, there are some variations where the GNU GPL licensing allows for code to be wholly owned by a few people – in this case apparently two. And I guess, though I didn’t realize this, that they have not taken any code developments from anyone else – otherwise how would they be able to sell the MySQL product to Sun?

Now my disturbance – Sun has a bit of a bad track record with things from an open source stand point. What is even worse about this particular product that they have acquired is that it is used by, well I suspect millions of computers, but if not, easily approaching the first million for sure. I know in my server room there are now less than 20 installations of MySQL, possibly more. Now when all of those were installed there were no license fees of any sort associated with using them. Now that Sun has purchased the product, will that change for the future usage of the product? Beyond that, will the product have new innovations in the future that keep up with technological demands? Or will it become stagnant, wither, and eventually die?