Another year has come and gone. Last night I rang in the new year with a few friends at quiet dinner party Lori and I hosted at the house. With the help of my brother’s girlfriend, Kerry, I cooked some Chinese food. Eight hours of cooking… 30 minutes of eating, good thing the food was good.

With the end of the year, I, like most, like to look back at the last year and try to decide what I would change in the new year. Unfortunately, I set pretty specific goals in 2005 and no plan to achieve them. As such, I failed in all my resolutions: I did not lose the weight I wanted to, and I did not finish my thesis (I really didn’t get that far with it at all).

This year, I am setting goals instead of specific resolutions. These goals are as follows:

1) To be more organized.
2) To get in shape. This involves both losing weight and getting active (no specific amounts).
3) To complete my thesis (this one is specific, but needs to be done).
4) Continue to improve my cooking skills (it’s becoming a big hobby of mine).

I have now been running Linux for a few months with no real difficulties. Some things have been easier than others, but since the system has been up and running, I have not gotten myself into a situation where I could not be productive on my machine. Not to say I haven’t wasted a few hours on a project or two. I do like to tinker.

Now that I am running Linux full time, I occasionally get the question, “I want to play around with Linux, which distribution should I use?” To be honest, I don’t always know how to answer this question. I choose Gentoo because I get to custom compile all my code. I have played with Ubuntu (well, Kubuntu) on my laptop and found it really user friendly. In the past I have dabbled in Red Hat (Fedora Core now I guess) and Suse. If you check out Distro Watch you will find out there are over 300 Linux distributions from which to choose.

Which brings me to my question, “Why so many distros?” At the risk a being flamed (the Open Source/Linux communities can be very sensitive), I would like to suggest that we don’t need 99% of them. The Linux Kernel is quite stable, as long as you are not on the bleeding edge. What Linux needs now is utilities, applications, windows managers and administration that mortals can understand. Without this Linux, widely accepted Linux on the desktop (for example, my mothers desktop) will not happen.

Here’s the problem, I can learn everything there is to know about running Gentoo. But the minute someone asks me to help them with another distro, I have put on my research hat before I can answer. Every distro uses different runlevels, different directory structures, different config file, and different package structures. There has been a push to standardize many of these things, but it is obviously not being widely accepted.

The other problem is development effort being spread thin. Most distributions can be identified buy some piece of custom code that was developed specifically to make part of running part of that distribution easier. All these utilities and applications are distributed across many different distro, spreading out the development effort.

My argument is that if we reduce the number of distribution, and consolidate the development effort, we would get new and exciting developments that people haven’t even though of yet. These developments would lead to a more user friendly distribution.

The Linux community likes to brag about the performance and stability of the Kernel, and they have a right to do so. What Linux need now to make it more acceptable to the everyday user is to focus on usability and standardization. With major developments in these areas, maybe we could all start recommending Linux to our mothers.

I don’t know when it happened, but I’ve notice recently that the customer has gone from always being right, to being the unwanted. At one time they would even entertain you until they got your money, but these days it seems like that don’t even want to put the effort into selling. Maybe assuming someone else will come and not ask some many questions before buying.

A couple weeks ago, I though I might actually upgrade my net connection. Maybe get the new “Ultra High Speed” package. So, after calling my ISP (the local telco Aliant) around 7:30pm, and getting a recording, I though I would inquire at there store in the mall.

When I got there the first thing I asked was if they could tell me the details of my current package. “I’m sorry, we can tell you that, we’re not an Aliant store,” the man told me. I found this to be a remarkable answer. The only signs visible in the entire store said “Aliant.” I decide to let it go though and pressed on. When I asked if he could tell me the details of there current offering, his answer was again useless: “You can find all the information online.”

At this point I was ready to leave. So with a terse , “k,” I left the store and went to see a movie. What annoys me though, is for him it was mission accomplished. I was another person to be served by the web so he won’t have to. At that point I decided, if I couldn’t talk to someone about what I wanted, I could do without. I only wish he and all the other “service” people out there could see the lost sale so that maybe the customer could be “right” again.

Ban election signs you say??? But how will we know who to vote for???

I been noticing lately that some local elections here in Newfoundland seem to be more about the number of election signs you have, and less about your platform. On one street on my drive to work in the morning, some candidates have a sign every 10 feet. Is there a need? Do they think we are all slow readers and will not have time to read the text with only one sign?

You might argue that this is part of the election process, but some of these potential consellors have not even sent out a platform to the electorate yet. They have spent more time defining their campaign colour than their ideas? Do we really want people running our towns, provinces and countries based on the number of election signs they can afford?

Last night was the last straw for me. I came home to find the sign of a candidate on my lawn. I have a stop sign on the corner of my lot, and I assume workers for the cadidate thought it was fair game and strapped a sign to it. Only there are a couple problems with this:

1) I did not approve the plcement of the sign on my lawn.
2) Attaching election signs to municiple signage is illegal according to my city’s by-laws.

Here in lies the problem: who is going to police the use of election signs? Is it reasonable to expect the people who depend on them to get elected without requiring any vision or qualifications? Seeing as how many of them do not even follow the current rules, why would we expect them to create more restrictive ones?

What we need is a collect push as the voting public. If all those who are annoyed by the site ugly, uninformative election signs (and I know there are lots of you out there) were to band together, the politicians would have to listen. So the next time a candidate comes to you door, ask them to explain why they need need so many signs? When they cannot explain, ask them if they would support banning/limiting them? If enough of us do, it is bound to catch on.

Wow, I didn’t know a website could collect dust. Oh well, it’s been a while so here’s the reader digest version.

1. I got a job. Yup, wasn’t even unemployed long enough to get EI. I am now a Product Engineer at Stratos. I no longer program full time, instead getting a chance to pay with some network equipment and other fun toys.

2. I have made the switch to Linux. I installed it on my machine along side Windows a while ago thinking I would switch back and forth a bit, but I have found that I can do everything I want in Linux. Windows is still there, but I doubt it will be much longer.

3. With the move to Linux I installed the MythTv to play with the open source PVR. Since it runs on my desktop and is not connected to my TV, I stream the recorded shows to my XBox using XBMC Mythtv. It’s quite the slick setup.

4. THE KIDNEYS ARE GOING TO AUSTRALIA. My wife won tickets in an Air Canada contest, so we are planning go somewhere between February and April of next year.

5. I’m finally going to get to Scuba dive. With the impending trip, Lori and I are going to try to get certified for diving so that we can fully enjoy the Great Barrier Reef. With my asthma I will be limited in the depth at which I will be able to dive, but at least I will be able to cross of diving on my list of goals.

That’s a quick rundown of some of the last couple months. To be honest my new job has kept me busy, so I haven’t done a hell of a lot. Maybe next time I’ll talk about my wind surfing adventures. You’ll have to stay tuned to find out.