Life

Yeah I know... those of you that know me well will be a bit shocked at this point, but this one makes sense for me :).

Last.fm is a sort of social networking site for people that love music, or even just like music. I've only had my new account (as compared to my old one from '06) active for about a day now and I've already found several new artists that I love and more that I simply enjoy listening to. This is actually a bit of a shock for me as my predominant music tastes lean toward European electronica, specifically trance and uplifting trance (yep, there's a difference).

Music, correction good music in these genres is hard to find in the US. Our 'electronica' scene seems to focus more on the edgier, mass-produced themes prevalent in pop and hip-hop. Don't get me wrong, I like pop, and a little hip-hop but I don't connect with them. It's nice to find a site where I can explore my own tastes, particularly since I always feel like I'm in need of more music (who isn't :)).

I'd encourage anyone who's constantly on the hunt for new artists and musical styles to check the site out and sign up. While you're doing that, you might want to check out Pandora too if you haven't already. It's another great service that allows to to discover new artists and music styles. You can find me on here on Last.fm.

Good hunting!

"Let's go watch something cheerful."

This after 3 of us geeks sat here for 5 minutes listening to an archive of failing hard drive sounds.

They see me routing
My packets

I know they're all thinkin' I'm just typin' QWERTY
Think I'm just typin' QWERTY
Think I'm just typin' QWERTY
Can't you see I'm typin' QWERTY
Look at me I'm typin' QWERTY

I wanna foil some, of those crackers
But so far they all think I'm just typin' QWERTY
Think I'm just typin' QWERTY
Think I'm just typin' QWERTY
I'm really typin' QWERTY
Really really typin' QWERTY

The humans... they come with packets, they come with issues... phreaking, cracking, breaking, hacking, phishing. Destroyers and usurpers, curse them.

To all of the gadgets and gizmos that make up the corporate machine,

We are your systems administrators, not your playmates, buddies or friends. We weave the arcane arts of UNIX, SMTP and HTTP into the magic carpet which you use to scoot around performing your daily mundane tasks with greater ease and efficiency. These arts are not idly learned and are not to be trifled with. As a result, a certain level of respect is in order.

We, as administrators, are not here to amuse you. We will not clap our hands excitedly and perform a trick for you when you come to us with yet another problem. In this light, please stop coming into our offices hoping for a show and then painting on a sad expression when we don't perform a balancing act for you. We are here to keep you productive and safe out there on the Internet and in here on the intranet, that is all. There are systems in place by which you can alert us to something that seems problematic or an issue which is stopping you from completing your designated operational sequences. Said systems are in place for a reason. They keep your admins sane and, as a result, your precious data from disappearing into the ether. Use them, or know our wrath.

Many assign us the attributes of 'evil', 'creepy', 'insane' and other adjectives which, while possibly quite fitting for some, do not describe us as a group. We genuinely strive to keep our corporate overlords and their minions safe from missiles cast by darker foes. Our order is focused on corporate-service. Quite simply, if we don't do our jobs, no one gets paid. You don't want that and neither do we.

Please remember that we understand your job is stressful and important. We see a much larger picture than your average gizmo and as a result, we understand what it is you do and why it is deemed neccesary to the overlords.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

END OF LINE

nickw@nimitz ~ $ cat /dev/urandom | strings | grep -i wtf\?
WtF?
uwwtf?
TwtF?
WtF?C
wtf?
+WTf?
wTf?
wtf?
?wtf?,1P
0h>RWTF?%
wtf?
IWtF?
SwTf?

So while doing some reasearch for work today I came across the following article:

http://www.playingwithwire.com/2007/01/why-gentoo-shouldnt-be-on-your-server/

After reading the article, which was remarkably well thought out and considerate of the distribution, I decided to go read the comments (something I rarely do due to the flamewars that tend to erupt).

While perusing the name calling and questioning of intellectual prowess (along with the rare jewel of someone who actually knew what they were talking about) it occurred to me that many people really don't grasp how Gentoo is supposed to work.

Personally I've been a Gentoo user/admin for 3 years now and I'm just now starting to feel like I have a handle on how the distro works. Granted, I've never actually dived into the docs and attempted to 'learn it all!' but what sysadmin does? :) I believe Gentoo has many fantastic aspects and that it's down-sides are equally as glaring. So I've decided to put together a list of Pros and Cons for people who are thinking of switching or just need another bit of input.

Pros:

---

Portage!
Portage is God's gift to mankind in the form of a package management system that actually understands how to track dependencies. Portage is the main reason I (and many other people) use Gentoo. With a few taps of the keyboard we can build a system that works properly the first time, without any need to check version numbers or package compatibility. This makes our lives easier when trying to build whole Linux systems whos components interoperate with stability and speed.

Speed
Now granted, since Gentoo switched away from the 'stage1' style builds 2 years ago (you build the entire system from the ground up, an incredibly long process) the speed aspect has been slightly reduced. However, building software objects against the native hardware will always produce a performance increase and allow you to squeeze that extra bit of performance out of your machines. It also lends another aspect that it crucial to maintaning high-availability servers, stability.

Stability
Okay some people are looking at me funny now, but seriously, a properly maintained Gentoo system is the epitome of stable. Notice I said properly maintained there. It is my belief that many people do not fully grasp how to properly administer the Gentoo distribution. Gentoo provides many powerful mechanisms to block new packages, install updates and in-general, keep your system up to date without breaking it.

Cons:

---

Time
Time is Gentoo's biggest enemy. Time is required to build your system, learn the Portage stylisms, find all the interesting places config files are located, and the list goes on. I've spent countless hours tweaking and honing my systems into submission. The process gets easier and, as a result, faster each time you do it (isn't this true with all OS installs?) however, of all the Linux distributions, Gentoo requires the most time up-front to get running.

Portage
While Portage may be a fantastic package and dependency management system, I believe it could stand some improvement. As many have noted, there are currently no mechanisms to JUST install security updates and the rather routine cycling of the profiles has been known to break the occasional build. However, disruption is usually the result of an ill-maintained system rather than an actual flaw with the profiles themselves. In my history of running Gentoo, I've only had one machine die due to a profile change and that was caused by neglect on my part. Had I done my job of setting the system up properly in the first place, the profile change would have happened transparently.

The Zealots
Linux has it's fair share of individuals who've had a bit too much caffeine and not enough lessons in social interaction whose sole goal in life seems to be defending their distro of choice as if their manhood depended upon it. Sadly, these 'advocates' seem to flock to the Gentoo distribution, probably for it's shiny colors and general coolness factor. The problem is these zelots tend to be viewed (appropriately, more often then not) as loud-mouthed, obnoxious individuals who tend to give the community a bad name. Examples show up quite often in the article mentioned above. The truth of the matter is, the Gentoo community is about 10% zealot and 90% intelligent, helpful (albeit somewhat soft-spoken) people. Unfortunately the 90% tends to get drowned out by the constant snarking and flaming of the zealots.

I'm sure I could wax far more eloquent about this topic and go into far greater depth of how to build a proper Gentoo system, but unfortunately, I'm out of time for now. Hopefully this quick list will help someone along the way during their decision making process. If you feel I missed something major in this list, by all means, tell me!

Cheers!

But only sometimes...

So today I remember that I'm still running Firefox 1.5.08 on my laptop and decide it's time to move up to 2. No problem... `emerge --sync && emerge -u mozilla-firefox` ERRRN WRONG!

/usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined reference to `XML_SetElementHandler'
/usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined reference to `XML_SetDoctypeDeclHandler'
/usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined reference to `XML_ParserFree'
/usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1: undefined reference to `XML_SetCharacterDataHandler'

... and the list goes on.

ARRG! Okay so let's rebuild the dependencies, but first figure how much CPU time this is going to smack me for:

`emerge -pD | wc -l`
180

Mother of...

Packages to update include (of course) gcc, glibc, dbus (dammit I JUST got it working, quit trying to break it!), etc!

Oy vey... I think I may just stick with 1.5 for the time being, 2.0 seems to require just too many new things.

So at one point today I was browsing YouTube (during a state enforced break) and found this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPA-LjSIlsM.

Basically it's a vid from a former WoW addict like myself. Now the video isn't much to look at but it, as well as some of the comments, inspired a sort of soul searching that was almost painful.

Keep in mind for the rest of this that this a retrospective, I've been off WoW for a while. I couldn't have written this clearly without a degree of separation.

Most people don't know just exactly how 'in' to the game I was. Normal people play 5-10 hours a week, have a life, a girlfriend, a family, etc :). At my 'prime' I was playing 16 hours a day. The game just wasn't an addiction for me any more...

It was a universe. An existence in which I could escape the reality that I had been handed, or so I thought. In that world I knew I was someone. People respected me, came to me when they had problems or just wanted to talk, and looked to me for leadership. I lived out everything I wanted to be in real life in WoW. I led 40 man raids through dungeons so fast that we set server records, steered guilds from behind and the forefront, acted as a liasion between groups of people and at points, guilds and the list goes on. There was an extreme satisfaction knowing that I had somehow 'changed' things and as a result people would say "Ashenteil/Elenara? Oh I've heard of you!" when they met me.

However, the joke was on me. Over time the social structure of the realm I played on (Thunderlord, represent! :)) started to disintegrate. Many people blamed this on the large numbers of problems our 'hardware' was having (Thunderlord was an older server and the new patches had brought its raiding abilities to a near standstill). People left for other realms, real life and just about any other reason you can think of. The entire structure of the realm changed, guilds, friends lists, etc. Most of the die-hards made it through intact and formed new alliances but the foundation was now fractured.

A lot of what we went through after that break up is still chaotic in my head and as such I find it difficult to explain. Maybe one day I will finally be able to lay out why it all went wrong.

I can't really explain how I finally got back in touch with reality, that is something that continues to elude my contemplation to this day. I know for certain that it involved, in no small part, two people who cared enough to be patient with me while I sorted out a very confused Nick. They encouraged me to NOT stop cold turkey but to keep playing and start investigating the reasons I was playing for. Combined with that advise and continuing shake up of the world (By world I mean Thunderlord and the social structure therin) I was given an 'out', a chance to lay down the staff and step back into reality. It was a small portal, but by that point the choices were slim. The world I had lived in was crumbling and, as a result, so was I.

There's no way to explain how you feel when a world you were so confident was 'yours' just destroys itself around you. Maybe this is how God feels as he watches us destroy this beautiful place he created. It's a horrible, wrenching feeling. You end up rethinking a lot of your previous assumptions. For some the feeling of loss is almost too much to stand.

So that's it; you now know most of the important details of why I lost almost 2 years of contact with the real world. Looking back, I had a lot of good times with a lot of good people. Those of you who read this, I miss you all. You were part of something I will never forget. May you find something real in life to pour all those skills, desires and dreams into that made us what we were in the game.

PS:
Yes I played females in the game, and hush you, they're better looking than guys! ;) Ashenteil was my Night Elf priest and Elenara my human mage. Toward the end I was known more as Ash then Ele (El got retired in mid 2006).

Shoutouts to my UT, KnD and Cheerios people!

Lokes! You were the best mage EVER. Everyone on TL knows it, now get off that inflated gnomish ego and go dance or I shall beat you with the flaming broom! (ooooh!) PS: I miss ninjaing the zepplins with you.
Sai, Zel and Syb - We had a lot of good times. Thanks for being there when I needed to talk things out.
Aver, Zoton, Moon, and Eldo - You guys made KnD. We never did get raiding going but it was fun trying!
Mary and Dave - My late night grinding buddies! Thanks for all the fun you guys, and go get a room already!
Sage - Dude, your fruity pally rocked. Thanks for always buffin' the priest.
Imereth - I have no words. You have seared them out of my head. Kudos to holding the Silver in my 'Damn Dirty Gnome' book (second only to Lokes).
Minipaul - /point /gasp /pat /comfort /punt /giggle
Adel and Pomme - Thanks for the Cheerios experience, it made playing on TL fun for a lot of us, even when the hardware was trying to devour the universe as we knew it. I'll miss our late-night fun Pomme! :)
Ohi - OMG GTFO my damn wagon already! Okay so you're SoL but you still count in my book, good times.
Enkidu - Your rogue rocked, thanks for all the support when UT was struggling.
Omega - We had our differences, but you still tried your hardest and I respect that to this day.

And to the many I probably missed, thank you. Playing with you was awesome and I hope life treats you well!

I would encourage all of you to read this:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E2D9173CF933A15750C0A962958260.

These are the type of people we are trying to put into power over us in the US. Do you REALLY want a man who thinks that schools exist to train 'citizens' or that freedom requires 'the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do' to be in power over you?

Let me put it this way, how would you like to live in the old USSR? This is the type of speech that promotes that type of distorted reality.

Please think before you vote next year! :)