Jeff’s Amazing blog

This will be my 4th year going to Ohio LinuxFest. It’s really blown up in popularity over the past few years and is always a good time. This year will be bigger and better than ever.

I actually got a room and will be heading up Friday night this year so I can go to the pre-party. Everyone is busy the day of the show so I hope to be able to meet more people on Friday night. I still have a free bed Friday night (I got a double room at the Drury), so if you’re interested, let me know. I made a post on the TLLTS forums so you can get ahold of me there or E-mail directly.

I registered late so if you’re not registered now, you’re REALLY late. Do it now! 

Click the picture to go to the site.

From Jono

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

This must be what I look like at work. I scaled the picture, but that’s not editing.

“It’s not just about grep” - Jono Bacon (Lugradio Season 5 Episode 12)

In other news, I really should blog more. I’ve got interesting stuff going on.

I’ve been programming BASH script and Perl lately (for a project for my home server), and am learning C. I’ve always wanted to really learn C, and it seems like it’s sticking this time. I’ve even got some VBA code (however small) in production at work!

More later… (hopefully).

So my benevolent web host updated the version of Wordpress they use a while back. What changes I noticed were generally for the better, except for one thing: all the links on the blogroll were now doubled. I tried everything I could, including deleting and re-adding the links, to no avail. It didn’t hurt anything, it just looked stupid and annoyed me. I can build an entire website by hand, but I can’t fix duplicate links in Wordpress!

Today I tried again and was able to straighten things out. What I did was switch the category on each link, save, then switch back. It killed all the duplicates. I’m not sure if this is a problem with updgrading to this version of Wordpress or if something went wrong at my host, but it’s nice to have this little bug fixed.

After months of the life of hermitude, I finally have the mighty tubes reconnected to my house. It’s nice to be back, but it is also good to go through a period without Internet access. My life is more balanced now because I see what the Internet  is good for, and where it can be a time-wasting pain in the ass. It has also readjusted my thinking on the importance of computers in my life in general.

It’s really easy for me to sit down in front of the computer and just waste time. That’s OK if that’s what I need to do, but I hate to get up hours later and find that I’ve done nothing. I need a certain amount of productivity balanced with a reasonable amount of leisure time to stay sane. Now I leave the computer off most of the time, and when I sit down to work, I do what I came to do then walk away. I gain lots of time that way.

On some subliminal level the computer symbolizes work so much that when I sit down at my desk at home I have this feeling of anxiety about getting things done. If I plan what I’m going to do when I sit down, do it, then get up it works.

I do a lot of journaling, and I’ve moved that mostly to paper and pen. I miss being able to have backups of everything I’ve written and being able to search my writing based on date or keyword. Other than that, writing on paper really has advantages. It keeps me from bleeding away time with editing stuff I may never read again, it gives me more of a 2D approach to layout, and I can carry a journal and write anywhere.

So it’s nice to be forced to re-establish my priorities a bit. Sometimes it takes an unavoidable external influence to get me there.

It’s that time of year again! Tomorrow I’m going to Ohio LinuxFest. The last 2 years have been great, and this one looks like it will be better than ever. Check out their site here.

I’ve also got a picture of me at last year’s Fest. That’s me on the left and Linc from the Tech Show on the right. If you’re anywhere near Columbus, show up and say Hi!

Maybe after this show I can edit the hour of video and 10 pages of notes from last year’s show!

I have temporarily lost access to my home E-mail account. That account died completely (and probably won’t be resureccted) around Jan 10. I’ve got a few hundred E-mail boxes available on the server that serves up this very site (thanks to 1 and 1), so I’ve created a new acount there.

I’m not going to post the address here, but if you have an address for me just take the username (the part before the @ symbol) and graft it onto @jeffratliff.org, and it will probably work. If you get it wrong I’ll probably get it anyway as all mail going to jeffratliff.org gets to me eventually.

If you have my Gmail address that one is still good also. If you don’t have it, it’s because I usually only use that one for mailing lists and other boring stuff. It’s not because I don’t like you.

Sorry about all the chaos. I prefer stability, but I can’t control a lot of things (or actually anything).