Author: David Pierron

Operating Systems … Again

So I did a little web surfing … and another controversy I have been enlightened with … Seems there’s something to Google and Microsoft … *sigh* … I get tired of this stuff … It just doesn’t make sense the amount of attention this stuff gets … There is so much enthusiasm expressed on all sides … and here is it … Gates on Google … Check out the comments left on this article … There are many different voices of opinions that come out of this … I sort of skimmed through the rest of the article not really interested in what Mr. Bill had to say … It’s a bunch of crap no matter what … It also makes me realize that nothing much will change … No matter what … I get that from reading the comments and knowing my thoughts on the matter … I could see starting a huge debate about this as well, but I’m not really interested in doing so … My last debate didn’t really interest me in the end … All that it shows me is that I have an opinion, and other people have their opinion … I think it all can be summed up with the proverbial statement “That’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla.” …

There are many comment on the article and many things described which sound like they’re great things, but the comment I agree with whole-heartedly is the guy that pointed the finger at Mr. Bill’s statement about Open Source software … Something to the … well here … let me quote it without permission:

Gates: The industry will always be a mix of free and commercial software. So there will be a balance between those. I think that we are going to have a lot of both. There are some zealots that think there should be no software jobs, that we should all, like, cut hair during the day and write code at night. Should you take some of those extreme views, I think it’s easy to say that’s not right. There are things like compatibility and 24-hour support and taking big leaps like IPTV or speech recognition. The painstaking work over a decade that you have to do, that costs hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars. That’s the commercial side. It’s good at hiring people and selling licenses and taking the risks that go with that.

I’ve always believed in low-cost, high-volume. It should be a cost that’s so obvious that you should spend, because it saves you on personnel time, hardware, communications costs, which are gigantic when compared to the price of packaged software. That cost is almost a rounding error. The value you get out of the system is a lot larger than that. I don’t just believe in a single model. There’s a lot of neat things that can be done. But I don’t think that someone who completely gives up license fees is ever going to have a substantial R&D budget and do the hard things, the things too hard to do in a university environment. But that’s OK. There will be a commercial software industry, hopefully, with companies that take the long-term approach and make the investments that drive those new breakthroughs.

So you see, he is given this public forum to make anyone think that Open Source coders are hair stylists … He then goes on to make you think that there’s no money behind Open Source and that it is doomed to failure or cannot produce the great things that his corporation can produce … Maybe Mr. Bill should confess what he’s taken from that non-profitable community … and then admit that there are many corporations supporting Open Source software and many others giving grants for development … Do most people know that Netscape went Open Source and remains profitable, it saved their business … Do many people know that IBM have partnered up with Apache … Do people know that Apache is the most used web server on the Internet? Whatever … I typed more than I wanted to about this guy … Now he’s into it with Google … So Google is hurting MSN … blah blah … same thing, difrerent company … If Google would have just accepted Microsoft’s offer none of this would be out there … Microsoft is working on AOL though … Possibly soon AOL will say “yes” and then the people associated with AOL by having a “@aol.com” on their email address will belong to the online service associated with the Microsoft Corporation …

Don’t know if many people know that in most techie forums, the people in the know don’t hold much credibility to those with an email address ending in “@aol.com” … While some discussions may start off innocently enough, at some point their credibility is questioned due to their email address … Now the techie’s that have realized the inadequacies or Microsoft and their blatant disregard for RFC standards in their products will have an even greater reason to be prejudice against someone with an “@aol.com” mail address … Wonder if Mr. Bill would change the domain? Probably would migrate all those aol.com’ers to msn’ers … I guess … who knows … who cares … As long as I am not affected by any of this and FreeBSD is still FREE, I guess I am happy … Well, as happy as one can be about computers and operating systems …

My wife and I were chatting the other night … after watching “Crash” … I think we were talking about the affluence of some of the characters and our lifestyle … She said to me “You should have stayed in computers.” and I’m like … “Haven’t you looked downstairs recently?” … I guess what she meant was that I should have stayed with a high paying computer job … I used to be a Systems Programmer in the mainframe days … That was a pretty prestigious job at that time … Now I do web hosting from my home … Well, now I have no boundaries and I can make whatever decisions I see fit … I kinda like that flexability … I guess I do miss the money though, and if I were making tens of thousands of dollars a year, I wouldn’t care what operating system my company (the one I worked for) was running … I would go home at night and code Open Source on my FreeBSD computer … Or maybe I would run the Microsoft OS I copied from my company’s MSDN subscription? Who knows?

Late Night TV

I work the night … and I mostly stick to the night schedule for various reasons … The most important is me keeping my waking hours to the time that I will be driving home from jobs on the road … I also appreciate the peace and serenity of the night … Some people may not understand this, but that’s okay … Phones don’t ring at night and cars aren’t pounding the streets at night … It is dark and quiet and the world I live in is sleeping … I like that …

So I am watching this movie in the middle of the night with commercials … The commercials consisted of ads geared towards old people and prescription drugs … One commercial was about “your final expenses” … and how social security pays about $250 in benefits but “your final costs” can be in the neighborhood of $6000-10,000 … “You don’t want your family remembering you this way, do you?” … So guilt the old people into leaving your relatives with your funeral bill … I don’t think they ever mentioned the word “funeral” … The other commercial put James Garner on the screen to tell you about “Reverse Mortgages” …

Then there was the Mobility chairs … One that had Arnold Palmer telling you to inquire about the chair and that “Pre-Qualification” was free … I am assuming that this particular mobility chair was covered under some senior’s health insurance or something and that this was how they initiated people to contact them about hitting up their insurance to pay for the product … In the same beat, The Rascal is advertised … It’s another mobilty chair that will help you get your life back, but this one they give away for free … They have a new one out and will be giving them away for a whole year! Well, one a month which means 12 in one year … I guess there are 12 lucky people that get a free chair, but there are the many that have to buy them … Maybe they’re covered under insurance as well?

Then all the drugs that you apparently need … Why do they advertise prescription drugs on television? You can’t go out and buy them, you have to ask your doctor to prescribe them … What’s up with that? You go in and tell your doctor what drug you need … Now you know what’s best for you? I guess this just shows you how much money is tied up in the health care industry with pharmaceutical companies that want to sell their product so desperately that they’re telling you to request their particular drug from your doctor … The guy on the commercial stating how his life was over until he started popping this particular pill … They used to arrest people for this sort of peer pressure … Anyway, so I guess if the commercial convinces you that you need this drug, you go to your doctor which generates revenue for his practice … Then you already know what drug you need, so this makes the doctor’s “practice” easier in that he doesn’t have to guess, you already have the solution … Then that drug is prescribed and you go and buy it … Circle complete … The only wrench thrown in is what if your doctor has a compatible drug that another pharmaceutical company has given him free samples to give to you to try and see if that helps? Hmm … Competition …

They should all go to hell …

Comment Spam

I was away for the weekend. Just before I had left, I had several emails that comments were left on this bLog, and they were comment spam. When I got home, my inbox was flooded with emails from this automated comment spam. While these are not posted, they’re a pain to moderate. Not that it’s difficult to go into the site admin and mark them all at one shot as “spam” and click submit … It’s just a pain that I have to act on something that is a waste of both of our times … The spammer in that his goal of having his URI spread all over the place in hopes of spiders giving him the top 10 in the search engines will never have his comments posted on my bLog … and a waste of my time having to remove them from my comment queue … I have altered the way comments are handled in hopes that this will stop the spammers in their tracks … If you have any issues with posting a comment, please let me know immediately … I think it’s pretty secure though … Because this required some software updates, this server is now at the latest and greatest PHP release …

Here we go again …

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

A good quote I picked up from the comments made on this blog entry … It took me a while to understand what was going on since it was linked to from the MSN site which had links to bLogs relating to Hurricane Katrina and this had nothing to do with that … But it raised the question of what I am doing here and what I have questioned before … The way that people happen upon this particular blog which is mine, but I am just posting my opinions, experiences … and day to day crap that some people might find interesting … I have said here that I don’t like certain things, and I have stated within these pages things that interest me and why …

This also relates to the bLog I have running on the OctaneCrew site … Not so long ago I was contacted by people that wanted certain information removed from that bLog … While I complied immediately, I didn’t have to … The result of leaving it there would not have been good for me though, so off it came … In fact, off it all came because I didn’t want to wonder about all of the prior postings on there … I now have a guideline to go by writing on that particular bLog and I stick with it … This is my personal bLog …

So posting things on my personal bLog is okay, right? Well, check out this article … Seems some companies will terminate you from employment based on things you post in your personal bLog … Is this right? Are we not allowed to have opinions? Seems if you’re out drinking at a bar with your friends and you share this information, that’s okay, but if you post it on your bLog, then you’re in big trouble …

It’s my hope that I am never in a situation that relates to my personal site here … I rant for myself and anyone else that happens on it … You might read it, or someone else might read it … Many people don’t know about it … I have hardly any comments to worry about their content … I also don’t think there needs to be some sort of ethics posted about how I deal with comments … I wouldn’t think that anyone would have to unless it were a corporate web site or something … If someone posts a comment I don’t like, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to remove it if I choose to … and I will …

Oh well, it’s just another post from me that shares in my frustration with the people that have the time to delve into this crap … Some people are just so touchy about things … I think there is some sort of law that says if something you’ve posted is true, no matter what the statement is, you can’t be sued for it … I hope I’m right about that …

The old look is back

I dug out my old style sheet from the old installation of WordPress and did some reading on how to make it work with the theme system in the latest release of WordPress … I got it working pretty simple enough and there is certainly some room to tweak some stuff … I think I will start here and implement in the things that I liked from other themes I ran across … I just need a theme that will stretch across the whole screen since I write so much …

Current Events

Another new look: The first thing you will notice is that I switched the look of the site. I try from time to time to make the thing more appealing as it’s my home page and I look at it everytime I fire up Firefox. I also upgraded the application that runs this site.

Gary Wilson dies: The first current event is that a sound guy called Gary Wilson died in a motorcycle accident early Wednesday morning … I assume he was driving back from a job Tuesday night. I didn’t know the guy at all but had met him a couple times. The first time I met him was when I was working at The Whiskey Tango. I showed up at my normal time, went into the booth and the PA was already on. (This was before we had a door to lock). So I power up the lighting PC and head to the DJ booth to start powering stuff up and that’s where he met me. “Are you the house guy?” Yes. “I got everything on the stage wired. I’m using my own mics and I tweaked out the monitors. I’m good to go so you can go home.” I said: Hi, my name’s Dave and the walked out of the DJ booth to finish my power up routine. I don’t know that The Whiskey Tango gave their approval for Gary to send me home for the evening? So, that was my first impression of the guy and I didn’t think it was a very good one.

The next time I saw Gary he was once again at The Whiskey Tango. When I arrived he was at his board and a full system was brought in because he was the FOH engineer that was working for Spellcaster doing Octane since their long-time sound company had given notice after 3 years together. When they had originally given noticed, I expressed my interest in the job with Octane. While Octane was weighing all their options with different production companies and doing auditions, Spellcaster was doing their sound. I also assume that Spellcaster also had the option of staying with Octane full-time. I was asked to give my opinion of the night Octane was there because I had sat in the sound booth while Octane performed numerous times when they had come through there before. My curse is that I’m honest. In so many words, I told them that Gary wasn’t doing them justice. Watching the INXS reality show lately, I think the words they use are appropriate. Gary wasn’t right for Octane. In other words, I didn’t say he was bad in order to better my chances, I just told them what I thought. And I swear on my kids lives, I fully expected that evening to have been a night of realization. I expected Octane to come in there with their Spellcaster production and sound just as awesome as ever. I fully expected to tell them that they sounded great and that it probably wasn’t worth me pursuing the position any longer. See, at that time I not only would have to bring my PA out of retirement, but I would also have to purchase a bunch more gear and do a lot of maintenance before I was ready. I fully expected to tell them that they should stick with Spellcaster and I would stick at The Tango. Such wasn’t the case.

The third time I met Gary was just weeks ago at The Ocean Drive. He showed up to mix The Benderz on my system. The Benderz were sharing the main stage with Octane that evening. I had no idea he was coming until he showed up. After the Octane event and me talking with various other people, I didn’t have nice things to say about Gary’s mix of Octane, nor did I have a high opinion of the guy since the first time I met him he told me to go home. So, if he was informed of my comments, he didn’t mention a thing and we both went on with our jobs for the evening. I attempted to accomodate him with whatever he needed and let him do his thing. That was the last time I saw him until I heard about him having the fatal accident. I don’t know what the cause of the accident was, but I assume drinking. I totally could be wrong, and Dave who does lights for Octane said that getting the guy to do a shot with them involved some arm twisting, but this could have been due to him being instructed that he wasn’t allowed to consume alcohol while working for Spellcaster, I don’t know.

Anyway, so my problem here is this; It’s never a pleasant thing to hear about somebody passing away, but it’s especially difficult when you feel for the loss (as I am no stranger to loss) but there is also this guilt that you didn’t like the guy. I guess I will go through this feeling again in time as there certainly are people who I will like and those who I will be indifferent to. Gary was 24 years old. It’s not fair that someone so young should have their life ended for whatever reason. I didn’t even know he was so young. He looked older to me.

I received the email from his company’s CEO and I sent this reply:

Here today, gone tomorrow … Life’s too short … sayings you hear from time to time but don’t realize how pertinent they are until something happens that affects you personally … Who would have thought that someone as young as Gary would be gone tomorrow? I certainly didn’t and have felt uneasy for many reasons since I heard about the accident Wednesday morning. It leaves me confused with reality or at least detached from it in some way for a moment … I think I met him only 3 times … First when he came in the Tango with Zero Cool and told me to go home … Second when he came in the Tango with Octane and lastly when he came to The OD to mix The Benderz … I didn’t know he was only 24 … and as a result of these meetings with him, I certainly didn’t know him at all. I am affected by his accident in a way that someone from “the team” is gone, and that’s never something anyone would ever want to have happen regardless of opinions. I guess there’s something to be said about the guy that he could leave an impression on me just running into him 3 times … I will never forget him but will never have a chance to know him the way others have. Please extend my sympathies however you see fit, to you personally or his family and friends.

Mortal Kombat Deception: This past week before starting the Out On the Town Brian Quinn’s band played at Abilene Monday night. He didn’t call me to mix. He had another guy go to South Carolina with him to do the festival cause I obviously couldn’t do it due to working with Octane. I guess that guy did a fine enough job so that Brian didn’t even contact me to do the Abilene show again. I’ve had mixed feelings about that too. So, rather than go to the show (which I thought I might do) I played Mortal Kombat Deception all night. I played a bit with my kids, and it’s a bit of a bloody game for kids. There are some deathtraps that my son would look away from the screen for, but he’s gotten pretty good at the game. I was almost near the end of the Konquest portion and I was spending a lot of time trying to beat Scorpion. Tanya before that was a pain to konquer as well. I think I beat her that Monday night, and then later in the week is when I sat there and tried to beat Scorpion. I tried several times and gave up to go through Konquest and get more koins to buy things in the krypt. I also found out how to unlock some of the other characters. So this one night, Thursday I think, I am trying to beat Scorpion again. My wife lays on the couch and I guess she fell asleep. You have to beat him 3 times. Sometimes I didn’t even beat him once. When I finally beat him two times, I say to my wife “Did you see that?! I was so close!” and she grunts … ‘Wha?’ … so I give her crap for falling asleep. I keep at it and I finally beat the guy 3 times and when he goes down I yell, “Yeah!” … I woke her up with my yell and she tells me to be quiet. I’m like I beat the guy! The guy I was trying to beat all week, finally I beat him! She’s not impressed. I was then able to go to the certain location to unlock another character after beating Scorpion finishes the Konquest part of the game. The last guy to unlock is Raiden, and you have to beat him in Konquest to do it. He’s very difficult to beat as well and I still haven’t done it.

If you read all of that stuff above about Mortal Kombat, the point of the story is this. My left thumb is killing me. My back hurts, my feet and calves hurt … It was a ball busting weekend with Octane. Little sleep and 3 jobs in 2 days. I stayed at a hotel Friday night into Saturday morning showing up there at about 5am and leaving at 9am. I didn’t sleep well cause I think I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up in time. Then sun all day and I got a bit of a burn. The last time I cut my hair I used a #1 and my scalp got burnt as well … First time that’s ever happened to me … When I scratch my head, it hurts. The Saturday afternoon show ended early enough that I drove the truck to my house and slept for about an hour to an hour and a half … My wife hadn’t expected me until Sunday morning, so she was out shopping. I asked that she wake me in time to go to that evening’s show. I slept better knowing she was going to come wake me up. That night’s show was supposed to be outside, but there was a prediction of rain so we played inside … Hopping out of the truck after parking it for the weekend my feet were killing me … my dogs are screaming … so I hope I will recover by this weekend. No pain, no gain.

The WebLog

I started bLogging July 28th, 2003 … If you go back to my first post, you will see the why’s and where’s … Whatever … So when I brought up a site to cover the crew that worked with Octane, I put a bLog on there … for the most part, it was just Alex and I bLogging about the past shows and maybe some incidental stuff that came along … I guess at some point it got kind of out of hand because we told mostly the truth and started giving our opinions on the encounters that we ran into at the various clubs we set up and broke down … It all came to a head when one club we play at didn’t particularly care for the comments that Alex had left about their club, and through whatever means, the agent that booked the room was alerted to our bLog and had print out in hand when he went in for a meeting with the owners … Anyway, shortly after that meeting, my phone rang and I took down Alex’s post … A while after that, and a few conversations following, it turned out I figured I would just take the whole bLog down …

The reason why I took the whole thing down was simple … Not only was there the events that had transpired that Tuesday following the previous weekend, I wasn’t sure that maybe some stuff may be looked into further by the vindictive parties that brought the original post to the attention of the agent … Surely, the agent himself doesn’t go to OctaneCrew.Com and check out what’s happening on the crew site … So it was obvious that there was a directed source there showing the way to “the good stuff” … This is when I decided that there may exist some other “good stuff” so I removed everything …

Prior to this last straw happening, there had been other conflicts rising out of my postings … People whom I thought “knew” me questioned the posts that I had made … Saying that it didn’t sound like me, and that my words were chosen calculatingly in that they could be construed multiple ways … Well, I was floored, and for the first time ever I edited one of my posts … After this incident I came to realize that people thought I had changed since I took the job with Octane … That I carried myself in such a way that I thought I was better than everyone else … If they only knew … I have to tell you I was way more confident in my house job rather than going club to club to national shows with Octane … There is so much more pressure in this … Now I constantly question my abilities as they’re described so often behind my back and to my face …

One of the things posted in my crew bLog was that I was questioning the way another sound guy was mixing a band … He had frequencies going that I thought to myself were harsh … I mentioned it to him and he brought them down in the EQ … Later that same date, those frequencies were back … So, I thought out loud in my bLog that it’s a sign of someone who’s losing their hearing to boost those frequencies because they can’t hear they as well … The guy who was running the stuff at the time I know to be a good sound engineer … So I was questioning what he was doing because I was wondering if I was doing it wrong … (Oh, he was mixing on my PA) … so since he was running it that way, I thought to myself that I was running it wrong … but then I conflicted in myself that I thought it was harsh, and I made it sound how I thought it sounded best … This is way more detail than in my Crew bLog post, but it’s the story behind the comment that set the world on fire …

People tell me after a set … it sounded great … and I don’t believe them … People whom I trust, I ask them how it sounded, and they say great and I don’t believe them … It is my dilemma that even though everyone says it sounds fine, I don’t believe them … It’s like a curse or something … There are times that I do think it sounds okay, but I pick apart everything and there is a flaw in everything I do in my opinion … I have recorded shows and brought them home … When I can listen at my own volume and pick apart those things that flew by that particular evening … There are some recordings that could pass for something to keep around … Maybe burn to CD and listen to every once in a while … But of all of them, I know there is something I could have done differently … I guess what it boils down to is that I’m insecure …

Well, the bLog thing has been on my mind recently … It has been bothering me the response I’ve been getting about it … People saying I’ve changed, etc … They seem to think working with Octane I have money falling out of my pockets and I go around stepping on people’s heads … I get crap for growing my sideburns long … Sheesh … I’m not going to get any tattoos, nor am I going to pierce my face up, so gimme the long sideburns to try to fit in with the band, okay? I’m not making huge amounts of money, but I am making about the same in two nights that I made in a week (six nights) at my house gig … Was probably a good move cause that gig has now gone down to three nights … I have gained way more in expenses though … Truck just cost me $675.00 to repair … Broke down on a Friday night, so I rented for Saturday night … that cost $275.00 … So there’s $950.00 in repair and rental … Then tack on about another $100.00 for fuel over the weekend … over a grand … I can tell you I didn’t make a G this past weekend …

My attitude hasn’t changed … The attitude seems to come from where I bring my PA system into … Like I even have a choice? Octane asks me to provide my sound system for all of their shows … they had to hear my PA system before I even was considered for the job … A lot of clubs have house systems installed … The rooms where I can bring my PA in and power it, Octane wants my PA in there … It does save a lot of hassle in the wear and tear department of some of these rooms … Octane is a loud rock band … In some of these rooms, being that loud is not possible because the PA while maybe adequate for the room and a regular party band, it’s not adequate for Octane … Some of the rooms, the PA is adequate, but the system owner is so fearful of things blowing up that he’s compressed the crap out of it … This only makes Octane sound worse … So the best solution is to bring in Octane’s (my) PA … I would think in some cases people would be happy about that … Whatever … It’s what Octane wants, and since I do this, I have this reputation now of demanding that my PA is used, etc etc … Welp, it’s what my employer requires of me … So damn the rep, I do what I have to do …

Ah, just venting again, and I think it’s okay to vent on my own personal web site … isn’t it?

The Nose Knows

So I woke up yesterday, and I touched my nose … How often do you touch your nose? Welp, I never noticed how often I touch my nose, but what I did notice, it hurt … Hmm, weird … There seemed to be no reason what-so-ever that my nose should hurt when I touched it … Then throughout the course of the day, my nose started hurting all on its own, without touching it … I looked in the mirror … It looks a little swollen, maybe a little redish … Like there’s a knobby thing going on at the bridge of my nose … Did I break it? I didn’t remember getting slammed in the face by anything … Was it a sympathy injury from watching Million Dollar Baby? … Did my wife pound me in the face while I slept just cause I was sleeping and she wasn’t? Getting me back for all the sarcastic remarks I make to her from time to time? No. At least she says she didn’t … Hmm … Why does it hurt?

By late evening, I was sitting on the couch tilting my head back and it seemed there was some sinus stuff going on … Looking in the mirror, the swelling got a little bigger … Maybe I should go to the hospital? Maybe it’s a clogged passage and if I don’t go to the hospital my head will asplode? She went to bed and told me to wake her if I decided to go to the hospital … I fell asleep …

In the morning she asked how it was … it still hurt all on its own … She said ‘Oh my god, look how big it got!’ so I ran to the bathroom to check it out … It wasn’t any bigger … See how she says things that warrant my sarcasm! So, it’s to the family doctor I go … My appointment is at 2:00pm … I go, the doctor asks me if I had a good picking session lately … Honestly I didn’t … She said it was most likely a bug bite. A bug bite?! Why would a bug want to bite my nose? … In the doctor’s professional opinion, she thought the bug may have been hungry … She looked up my nose with that plastic flashlight thing and said yup, it’s infected … Scribbled on a piece of paper and now I have huge white horse pills to take twice a day until they’re gone … Bugs suck!

Can you tell?

I upgraded WordPress … If you have an older version, you’re going to want to upgrade … check out the WordPress site for details, also there is a new related release of PHP … Check out the PHP web site as well … It’s awesome that all these people are out there constantly trying to break things … More wine! More Dungenes Crabs! Tonight was a good night … I traded my drum box and power amp for another drum box and power amp … All is well …