I have to say that as a Free Software developer, one thing I find very disappointing is people being needlessly hostile to a project of mine, and using incorrect reasoning to substantiate it.  Nine traits of the veteran Unix admin is one of those gems.

Let me first say that I actually like vi[m] quite a bit.  I’d even agree with people who say you can’t be a true Unix admin without knowing vi.  Note I said knowing, not using for every task.  On any Unix machine made before the turn of the century, you’re going to want to know vi to get around.  Emacs I never got around to using; many of my coworkers swear by it.  It looks like a fine program.  I feel no need to needlessly hate on it just because I wrote a competing program

Originally I used elvis because it’s what the Slackware version I started with (2.3 IIRC) included; see trait number 4 from the article.  I like vim as well.   It’s a great program.   It’s also very portable, as are emacs, pico and nano.

What vim is not however is ’svelte’.  It’s a pretty big boy these days, as it has a lot of features; that robustness and portability does have a trade-off.

How big is it?  On my now ancient ia32 system it’s 1.5MB.  Yes, megabytes.  Too big to fit on a floppy disk by itself; remember those?  Good times.

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1758932 2009-09-21 07:24 /usr/bin/vim.basic

emacs is a somewhat healthier 5MB.  As the author mentions, emacs does have a substantial feature set as well.

Nano, however, is just a tad smaller than vim.  And by a tad I mean an order of magnitude smaller:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 170040 2011-03-02 22:46 nano

That’s right, the bloated, easter-egg-including version of nano is 170K.   So fine, let’s compare the vim-tiny size as that’s probably a more fair comparison:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 687572 2009-09-21 07:23 /usr/bin/vim.tiny

650KB.  Better, but still substantial.  In fact, there are emacs implementations (and otherwise great editors) that are also smaller than vim-tiny:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 275724 2009-06-23 08:28 /usr/bin/jed
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 171736 2008-05-11 12:11 /usr/bin/jove

This actually isn’t a fair comparison either; the tiny version of vim does not leave out its excellent on-line help system and probably a few features not absolutely essential for a ‘tiny’ vi implementation.  In fact the full version of good old elvis is only 600KB.  When we start paring that program down, its a little closer: elvis-tiny is 76K to nano-tiny’s 50K.

The point I’m making is don’t go around saying that vim is a sleek and sexy sports car nowadays.  Its a great, feature-rich and rock-solid  editing environment.   It’s just not skinny, bony or gaunt, so don’t pretend it is.

Also I’m tired of this ridiculous ‘real sysadmins only ever use vi’ mantra.   Now tell me we should only use the console even on our desktops, as X is just too cushy for a sysadmin and makes you weak over time. This is the computing version of that guy, you know, the one who’s really into cars and always is going on about how you can brake better with your foot than ABS could ever do.  It’s 2011 for pity’s sake. Sysadmins coming out of school since 2000 have grown up on editors besides vi, they find the learning curve needlessly difficult and they had alternatives; they’re not bad people, they’re syadmins, i.e. they’re lazy.

Hate on other text editors if you want.  Just don’t do it with incorrect information.

Since I (and many other people) spend a lot of time complaining about companies that I don’t like, I thought I might spend some time pointing out things I do like for once. Some of these will be completely unsprurising if you spend any time at resellerratings

Electronic items - I tend to use a lot of thes

• The Dingoo A320 is just a fabulous piece of hardware if you like emulators and you’re cheap.  For about $100 (from a known-good retailer in the US, slightly less on eBay) You get a device that without any special hacking will play the NES, SNES, Genesis, and other ROMs for all those games your parents bought for you instead of saving for your college fund because you nagged them to death. Also also plays MP3s and some movies and hs 4GB storage and reads (mini)SD cards.  really just missing a camera and it might be perfect.  Sure, it’s a legal grey area due to the stranglehold companies have over the legal systems (yes Nintendo, I really owe you ANOTHER $5 for that gave my parents bought me for $75 measured in today’s money) but in my opinion you have a right to those games if you owned them as a kid.
• I may have a couple gripes but my Sprint Hero is the first (well second after my T-mobile G1 met an untimely death in the toilet) smartphone I have been satisfied with.  It can do almost anything a laptop can do, and once you get used to the haptic feedback for the on-screen keyboard you won’t know how you lived without it, as it has no hard QWERTY keyboard.  Believe me you can get used to it.  It might have something to do with the fact that Android is a polished Linux for phones, and that it’s owned by Google, but I just love android more than words.  Since Sprint is only one of two companies that have service here (go to hell AT&T) I’m glad i actually like them as well.
• I really still like our Roku set top box, despite owning many game consoles and other devices which claim to offer a supset of functionality.  Primarily because it’s pretty much ready to go out of the box, starts at $80, you can stream Netflix movies and Pandora ‘radio’ stations; if you’re into baseball you can get an MLB deal to watch all the games for some insanely low price (get with the program NFL!) and they have a fledgling apps store as well (yay TWiT podcast app).  But for double the price you can get…
• The Aspire Revo is just an awesome set-top box.  It’s $200 to start for one thing (admittedly you probably want the $330 faster version with built-in wifi) but you basically have a full computer sitting next to your TV, can play most Windows games (if you’re a hard core PC gamer stop reading, otherwise…) and can run nice software like XMBC or Boxee to try and consolidate all your media in this messy digital wasteland in which we live.

Services

• VOIPo phone service - After Sunrocket did their best to try and ruin VOIP’s name by screwing thousands of customers, I thought I was done with Voice Over IP, but VOIPo is a great company, I have had no major outages for a year and counting.  There are other services out there that are cheaper and a one-time cost (MagicJack and Ooma come to mind) but I have yet to see a cheap company who looks like they are not trying to fall into the same trap Sunrocket did by  not actually creating an ongoing revenue stream, and for $18 with all fees included a month for unlimited service, I’m not complaining.
• SpiderOak online backup service.  I really can’t say enough how important backups are, especially ‘offsite’ backups. If your computer and your backup disks get destroyed in a fire, flood or just a hard drive crash (like mine recently did) you want to make SURE you have those important pictures and documents backed up.  They do a basic account for FREE, and once you’re loving it (and you will) you get 100 gigs of backup for $10/mo.  You really cannot afford not to have this service if you have a digital camera and no backup solution today.
• Gamefly game rentals - There are a couple ways you can use Gamefly.  One is to try out those new releases that people won’t shut up about, to see if you really need to go buy it or if you can wait until it hits the bargain bin; this will easily have the service paying for itself if you’re somewhere between a casual gamer and a psychotic addict. Secondly they have pretty decent prices on used games, and being member you get a $5/$10 discount every few months you can use toward used game purchases.  I honestly didn’t want to love Gamefly; their service is one of the highest around (back when there used to be more rental services) and their shipipng is not nearly as fast as Netflix, but with the quantity of games they offer and their overall service which is just rock solid, I can’t really find anything else to really complain about, so they’re on this list.

Shopping sites (most of these are no brainers):

• Amazon.com and their Amazon Prime shipping.  I really can’t say enough how much I LOVE Prime.  For $80 you get free two day shipping, $5 one day shipping on ANY item that they sell themselves (which admittedly is not all the items you can buy on their site, but).  I used Prime to get a 100+ pound elliptical exerciser shipped to me the next day, it probably paid for itself in that one purchase!  Amazon also really empowers its customers and their ratings system is fabulous.
• Newegg for electronics. Their prices are amazing and often you can get free shipping on at least one item in a given set if you’re not being brand picky.  Their ratings are also even more reliable than Amazon’s.
• Mwave.com isn’t as highly rated quite as highly as Newegg but they are sometimes a good cross check as I’ve found some deals that were even better than Newegg’s on there.

So, being a lover of the concept of FIOS, I decided to forego my satellite internet service and try one of their bundles.  “It’s a no brainer”, I thought.  How could they screw this up on me?  Ha ha ha, I am so naive.

Well, the service works great: high speed internet access, check.  Nice TV channel selection and picture quality, check.   Easy online account management to pay your bill online, BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZT.

Here’s where the fun starts.  Verizon.com is where you primarily login to see your bill, so you might assume you could, you know, pay your bill there.  Hah.  I’ve been trying to ay my bill for weeks and all it says is:

 Our bill payment page is being improved at the moment. To pay your bill now, please sign in to www.verizon.net.

Sure, I can do that!  Oh, wait, I dont know my password cause I never use that site!  Sure, whatever, pasword reset request, insane password strength requirements, good to go right?  of course not.  Trying to pay my bill there, I’m greeted with:

  Because you have a bill that combines Verizon services, we need to direct you to the My Account Sign In page on Verizon.com to make your payment.

You seeing the problem here?  Yeah.  So, I know, I’ll email them and let them know their online payment system is totally fucked, I’ll just click on the “Contact Us” link at the top of the page and…

 

Server Error in ‘/residential’ Application.

---

Runtime Error

Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a “web.config” configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its “mode” attribute set to “Off”.

Verizon, you suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!


sudo su -
apt-get install automake1.9 autoconf autotools-dev texinfo libc6-dev-i386 gcc-multilib texi2html debhelper ia32-libs lib32ncurses5-dev
apt-get source --compile grub
dpkg -i grub*.deb


Wow that was easy. There is a known bug in grub with x86_64. it’s currently broken on x86_64, and not only is tab completion broken in the current version (9.04), it seems that when you try normal command (’setup (hd2)’ anyone?) they don’t seem to get recognized either. Makes installing grub on your migrated drive a wee bit of a pain, especially since grub-install frequently installs something not entirely unlike a bootloader for you, but not like one enough to actually, you know, BOOT.

Just checking in.  I’m still alive, and even happy usually.

On the health front it’s been up and down; the battle with Meniere’s has been hard recently.  In late spring and fall when the temperature (and more importantly it seems, the barometer) swings up or down rapidly I can still have a multi-hour attack and need to sleep it off.  Attacks nowadays now feel more like I’m not seeing things properly and it’s hard to concentrate on any task versus the old straight up room spinning, but it still doesn’t feel great especially for several straight hours.

For any other Meniere’s sufferers out there, if like me you find white-on-black text easier on the eyes, I might suggest the  InvertColors extension for Firefox.
I have had some time (and desire) to work on nano with previous maintainer David Lawrence Ramsey’s departure last year, and after reading some random person complaining about nano not having a real undo.   It turns out adding an undo implementation to an editor that really never intended to have one is hard to get right.  Especially in spaghetti C-code.  But I added some other fun things recently, being able to read from stdin like a pager.  Nano will actually be 10 years old in November 2009, party time.

Being a father of three (and second guessing every decision I make as a dad) is taking up the remainder of my time.  That, and trying to be thankful for my blessings in these times: a wife, three beautiful kids, a good job at a company I love 3 years in, a house, and good enough health that I can get myself to work and back every day without assistance.

Okay, too much negative… Let me try and be more positive here.  So as a good little liberal I do watch a lot of MSNBC (along with any good late model GenXer the  Daily Show/Colbert combo) but I do enjoy Olbermann and Maddow’s shows.  However after midnight  rolls around, what do they put on? “Nightmare on 31st?”  “Lockup: San Quentin?”   Seriously, you expect the same viewer who tunes into your channel for at least relatively in-depth political analysis at 11PM is going to stick around to watch a series of murder re-enactments?    Maybe Bill O’Reilly is right and you should bring back Donahue, but put him on at 12AM.  Seriously anything would be better than what you have on now. I don’t know how those shows are rating but man something has to change.

Okay I tried but didn’t really succeed.

Sorry Dell, you want to continue to employ either incompetent or outright lying customer service staff who tell you your order is cancelled and then don’t really cancel it, you’re going to get badmouthed on blogs. When a customer calls you and says they want their order cancelled (especially when you say an item is in stock and then email saying shipment has been delayed a WEEK) YOU CANCEL THEIR ORDER.

I should have looked at the ResellerRatings for Dell before making the stupid mistake of ordering from them, but no, I had to try and save a few bucks from the wonderful NewEgg which has never given me a single problem. I won’t ever make that mistake again.

Well, I’ve been silent because there hasn’t been that much to write.  No news is good news when you have three kids.  Monique, Bree and Joey are all in good health, and although I had a two hour Meniere’s attack at work yesterday, I was still able to recover in time to go out to dinner with friends, and the last one was probably a few months ago.

By far the most annoying part of the gentamicin injection treatment for Meniere’s is not that you are effectively deaf in one ear, it’s that you cant tell where sounds are coming from.  If you forgot where your phone is, you can’t easily locate it just by calling it.  It’s hard to tell which of your kids is talking when you arent looking at them, e.g. when you’re driving.  Anyway, it’s better than the alternative of sleeping on the bathroom floor once a week to be next to the toilet.

Work continues to be great, so I assume Im going to be fired or something else, because I’ve never liked any of my jobs after 2+ years in.  Who knows, maybe Bahhhhhhston is the place for me after all, in spite of the Red Sox and Pats.  I guess when you surround yourself with a bunch of other New Yorkers even that part isn’t so bad

Yes I loved my original 4G 7″ eee netbook but boy it is hard on the hands when working on nano or work stuff for more than short burts.  The 1000H however, in spite of coming with WinXP out of the box, looks like the perfect travelling companion for the coder/sysadmin on the go/on call.

First thoughts:

• 1.6 Ghz Atom processor is snappy enough and means the lappy doesnt get too hot even while charging via AC.  Underside gets a little warm but the kb and trackpad are a nice temp.
• Big surprise and I hadn’t realized how much I liked it until it was gone: no hardware scrolling (vertical or horizontal) build into the trackpad.  UPDATE: Ahh, they have a multi-touch thing going on.  I guess I can get used to two finger scrolling.
•  Definitely more comfy keyboard, many reviews talked about excessive flex but I’m not seeing that much.  Much more concerning is that it sounds like the hard drive on this unit is defective as there is a strange ‘clunk’ every 30-60s.
• The usb ports (particuly the two on the right side) are VERY tight.  I had a few issues getting Ubuntu to boot off my flash drive, it seemed like there needed to be some kind of reseating every boot in order to work.
• Wireless is a “Ralink rt2860″ according to the windows driver.  Works happily over ndiswrapper.
• On-board ethernet does NOT seem to work out of the box.  lspci says:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Attansic Technology Corp. Unknown device 1026 (rev b0)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Unknown device 8324

or using -n:

 03:00.0 0200: 1969:1026 (rev b0)

Anyway overall very happy with it (assuming I’m wrong about the hard drive failing), and as the 6 cell MSI Wind is still a ways off, nice to have something now even if it was $550; still better than $650 (thanks NewEgg!)

Yes, I strongly prefer Free Software where possible, but sometimes no source solution exists, so you have to settle for free as in beer.

Let’s say you have a phone which claims to solve all your problems for you (yes I mean the iPhone), except syncing your calendar app over the air with something useful like Google Calendar. That is where the good folks at Nemus Tech come in. NemusSync is the solution you’re looking for as it’s completely free and fully featured. Other people hawking solutions to this problem want $40 to do this for you, or how about £20 if you want to be able to sync more than one calendar?

Anyway, the best way to ask for someone to open their source is to pony up first, so i did exactly that, and if you have the means please consider doing so as well. The donation page is at the very bottom of the programs’ main page; do the right thing folks.