Inspiration comes from the weirdest places. This time it came from a plurk that I posted saying “TheNerd wishes he could open source his life“. AaronMSB responded with the following statement “isn’t your life a little open source already. You learn and take mannerisms and stuff from the people around you”. This was quite an inspiring statement and is what this post is based on.

Life really is very similar to open source. Just think of how we adapt and change based on the actions of other people around us. We do it, for the most part, unknowingly. We absorbe this information and process it subconciously and, still subconciously, adjust our behavious accordingly. We all know this is what happens when you finally meet your “significant” other and settle down. Settling down is exactly what I am talking about. Most people don’t say “I’m going to settle down now”, it’s just natural progression and no one really even notices or questions it (there are obviously exceptions).

Not all of this information is absobed completely unconciously. Sometimes we have the choice to make a decision on what information we absorbe or reject. In this case we can be seen as the “Lead Developer” of our own “personality software” project. We make decisions based on what we see best fits the roadmap or vision of the project. Just like a newbie developer that has his latest patch evaluated and rejected because of errors, we tend to evaluate the people surrounding us and reject those which do not follow the coding guidlines or are just plain old poorly written.

But what does this really have to do with life? It has lots to do with it I think. If we were to live our lives with a good understanding of this concept I think we could make better decisions about how we act and treat other people. Life is all about learning and creating a product that you are proud of and can show it off to others, just like you would show off a new piece of software that you are proud to have been a part of. Understanding this concept would also allow you to better contribute to the other “personality software projects” of those around you. We all know that open source software is most successful when there are many dedicated people who are working towards a common goal. Life is very similar in that if you surround yourself by good people, who are dedicated to your friendship, it creates a better product in the end.

Give it some thought.
~TheNerd

I sent this announcement to a bunch of eComStation related site and hopefully it gets picked up here and there.

Hello eComStation World!

I would like to let you all know that today I have launched a new eComStation software website known as eCSWare.org. This site is a place where members will be able to upload and download eCS related software. There are many categories ranging from system and developer tools to themes and icon sets.

The site is brand new and is seeking new members and contributers. There have already been some files uploaded but I am sure there are a great many useful pieces of software that need a place to live. Currently the site is set to allow a max upload of 100 megabytes but if you want to host something bigger contact me and I we can arrange to host the file.

My hopes for this site are to create a service that is complimentary to other eCS related services and websites already in existance and to work with these resources to create a better overall eComStation community. See you there!

Dennis d’Entremont (a.k.a TheNerd)
http://www.ecsware.org
http://www.ecomstation.ca

I’ve finally gotten around to upgrading from WordPress 2.3.3 to WordPress 2.6. The upgrade went surprisingly well with only two plugins that did not work properly.

The best part of the whole process was the automatic upgrading of the installed plugins. This made it very easy to get the newest versions of most of my plugins without having to go to each of their respective sites and downloading the archives.

One thing you must remember, if you are going to upgrade your WordPress, is that you really need to backup your files and database before doing the upgrade in case something happens you wont lose your data. You should also remember to disable all of your active plugins just in case there are some incompatibilities.

I wish you good luck if you decide to take this on yourself.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

This is a short post on how Plurk (and one user in particular) saved the day for me yesterday.

Last night I noticed that I was having problems with my internet connect. More specifically, the problems seemed to be related to name resolution. I was able to reach sites which I had very recently visited, mainly Plurk because I was already logged in and had it loaded, but was unable to get to other sites such as Facebook, Google, gMail, etc.

I was also experiencing some problems with my telephone and cable tv services. For what it’s worth,  my ISP also happens to be my telephone and cable tv provider. I thought that maybe the whole of their services would go down because at one point I completely lost the signal on my TV and the phone started to ring like it was possessed by an evil spirit. But I noticed that Plurk was still going strong.

At this point I remembered a service called openDNS, which provides a service that you can use to replace your default ISP issued DNS servers. I thought to myself “If only I could get to their website!”. I pondered it for a few minutes all the while not realizing that the answer was right in front of me. What was this answer? It was Plurk of course!

Since I am a computer nerd by trade and hobby, I tend to associate with folks who fall roughly into the same category. I then posted a Plurk asking for the IP addresses of the openDNS servers. Lo and behold, in about 15 seconds I had a response from Live Crunch with the answer! It took me about another 30 seconds to input the addresses into my my network connection settings but as soon as I applied the changes I was off to the races with a fully working internet connection.

For most people this might not seem like a very impressive story but for me it says a lot about the people in Plurkistan. They are always willing to help out others with advice, information, and simple words.  Just the thought of this made my day much better and put me into a good mood.

For those that want to add me to Plurk you can find me here!

PS> A special mention goes out to nethead for being the runner up. He sent me the IP addresses of the servers just a few seconds after Live Crunch.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

That’s right, please fuck off and leave me alone!

Four years ago when you called and asked for a $20 donation I thought you sounded like a noble and respectable organization that would not sell my number or continue to harass me (at least that’s what you told me). Boy was I ever wrong.

The two years following the donation I was polite and asked you nicely to remove me from your calling list. But you never did, and kept calling me four or five times a year. Each time you called I continued to ask to be remove but in a more stern and aggravated manner. You would call and leave me voice mails with a return number that when I called, I got a recording saying that I needed to call another number to be removed from the call list. I called this second number and got another voice recording saying I needed to punch in my number to be removed. I promptly did so, numerous time,  but the calls still kept coming.

You ask me why I got mad this time? Well if you were smart enough to figure out that you are annoying me and wasting my time you would understand. Yes, I can be an asshole and I am not very tolerant of this sort of action so I swore at you. What are you going to do about it? If I have no legal recourse to stop you from harassing me then a few “recorded” swear words won’t go very far on your end either.

The thing that made me the most mad about this call is that you tried to tell me how I should not speak to you. What right do you have to tell me how to talk to you when are the one that called and bothered me? Why don’t you just hang up and never call again? Why do you need to stay on the phone and tell me it’s being recorded and then threaten to tell your boss? What is your boss going to do? Call my mom? Boo fucking hooo! My mom hates you just as much, I’m sure.

I have never understood these organizations that call and ask for donations. I was weary of donating the first time because they required a $20 minimum donation. Who in the right mind asks for a specific amount over the phone? That’s just disrespectful. I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt and donate anyway and the only thing it did was land me here. The end result is that I will never donate another cent over the phone to anyone. So not only did you ruin my view of the CPPA, you also ruined my view of anyone who asks for donations over the phone. I apologize to the other guys, so if you have any quandaries with this please feel free to call the CPPA and tell them they cost you a donation.

I really think there should be penalties for this type of harassment. Why is it that the government thinks it’s ok to have people call you and solicit anything over the phone. The first thing I see when I go to the mall are signs saying no solicitors, I see the same thing on apartment building doors and other public and private areas so why is this OK over the phone or in the mail? These idiot organizations don’t even give you proper channels to contact their call centers or corporate office to complain or get removed from the list. It’s obvious the government favors these organizations over the general public’s privacy.

Anyway I was long over due for a rant.

Cheers!
~TheNerd

Over the next few days I am going to be testing out openSUSE 11 (the latest version).

What I’ve liked about openSUSE, in the past, is that it’s been a good preview of what will be included in Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and Server releases. I have taken some Novell training courses on SUSE 10.1 so for me it’s one of the easier distributions to use (although Ubuntu is still my fav).

Thus far I have completed the installation of the 64bit version in a virtual machine in VMware Workstation 6. I am very impressed with the installation process. It only took about 5 minutes of my time and then the installation went on auto-pilot. Once it was done I booted into the OS and everything worked as it should.

As soon as I get some more time to play around and use it a bit I will have more of a review to post.

Cheers!
~TheNerd