Roadtrip: Day 1

Day 1: College Park, MD to Binghamton, NY

I left College Park later than I wanted after grouting the bathroom floor (which will need more work since some of the mortar oozed up and is visible throught the grout). By 5:30pm I was stuck in Delaware traffic, and I decide to take I-95 through Philadelphia instead of going up I-295 and the Jersey turnpike. Philly traffic sucks too, so I decide to skirt the city and take I-476 up through Pennsylvania to New York. At this point Foxwoods is probably out for gambling since there’s miles and thousands of cars between me and it. But no sweat the Mohegan Tribe has opened a new gaming facility in PA, Mohegan Sun at Pocono Downs, and it’s close to my current trajectory. The bad news is that it’s all slots-type games, even worse I lose $200 to video blackjack. I’ve always assumed those machines aren’t worth playing since I could code up a cheating video machine in my sleep. Now I know they’re not worth playing. After a couple of disappointing hours (mostly spent people watching and waiting for a free machine), I bailed and raced for New York to get the bad taste out of my mouth. Binghamton was a welcome sight, even if I stayed in a (blissfully cheap) former Howard Johnson’s turned Econolodge. I used the free Internet to warn friends in central NY that I was in the area, before crashing for the night.

Roadtrip

Day 4 of my roadtrip is coming to a close, and I’m pretty sure most people don’t even know I’m out of town.

I’m out of town.

After the last paper submission I figured it was time for a break (I didn’t take any time off during the holiday season). Truthfully, I didn’t know what form the vacation would take until just days before I left town. I had the vague feeling that I wanted to do some skiing, but I wasn’t even sure about that. I’ve been lusting after a new watch ($$$, more on that in another post), and the idea of doing a little gambling to make enough for the watch seemed like as good a plan as any.

Since skiing and gambling created a small pool of options for destinations, the decision was simpler. A roadtrip north (reservation gambling & Vermont, or Quebec, Canada), a flight out west (Tahoe), or the Alps. While Tahoe would have covered one of my 101 things, any venture involving flights would have required more planning. Therefore, I’m on a roadtrip through the northeast.

I don’t really have a plan for this trip. I want to ski and gamble some, but otherwise it’s all up in the air. I’ll put the summary for each day in separate posts.

An Illegal Immigration Analogy

I got an e-mail yesterday with an analogy that tries to clarify (one perspective) on the illegal immigration situation in America. I’ve posted the whole message and my reply elsewhere, but the analogy itself, and my counter-analogy are included below.

From the original message:

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests.
Let’s say I break into your house.
Let’s say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.
But I say, “I’ve made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors.
I’ve done all the things you don’t like to do.
I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I broke into your house).

[…]

Why can’t people see how ridiculous this is?! Only in America …..

From my response:

Maybe this would have been a better analogy?

Let’s say you break into a house.
Let’s say you evict the current occupants, then ship them off to some really undesirable place you don’t want (yet).
Let’s say while you’re at it, you rape and murder many of them.
Let’s say you then kidnap and enslave some other people to level the old house, and build you a bright shiny new house.
Let’s say while they’re at it, you rape and murder a few of them.
Let’s say once the house is done, you throw the slaves out with nothing but the shirts on their backs (and no land for them either)
NOW Let’s say I break into THAT house.
Let’s say that when you discover me in “your” house, you insist that I leave.
But I say, “I’ll do the work you don’t want, and I’ll pay rent, and I’ll contribute to making the house better.
I’ve done all the things you don’t like to do.”
I’m hard-working and honest (except for when I acted just like you in the beginning).
Have I mentioned that I’ll pay rent?”

So basically the lying, thieving, rapist, murdering, kidnappers want to evict the maid for breaking and entering.

Leave a comment, and let me know where you stand on illegal immigration in the U.S.

Not quite weekly update

A stomach virus is an effective, if grim, short-term diet. So I lost a couple of pounds last week; although I will probably end up spending most of this week putting the weight back on as I re-hydrate after the illness.

Stopping by the photoclub meeting last week dropped one more item from the list, and a couple of movies brings us to:

remaining: 91 items, 83 movies, 48 lbs. in the next 956 days.

Of photo club and practice

Last week, I managed to swing by a Terrapin Photo Club Meeting (#60). I had a pleasant enough time, though I was struck by two things:

  1. Man, these people are young.
  2. There were surprisingly few photos of people

I know taking pictures of people is difficult. You have to overcome the inherent sense of voyeurism, but I think photographing the human condition has the widest reach as a photographic art form. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to street photography, peering into the .

The meeting itself was mostly composed of viewing 30-70 photos taken by club members and providing commentary. Praise was given liberally and genuinely, and the occasional suggestion for improvement was always constructive. Novice photographers would benefit greatly from the format they used. The advice was a bit too textbook for most experienced photogs to get much from, although it’s always nice to have your intuitions confirmed. I felt that the audience didn’t give enough artistic license to the photographer — a larger problem overall than anything else that night.

I don’t know if I’ll attend regularly, but it was an interesting experience. My best photos are always taken when I have the time and inclination to become part of particular flow — to view people and events from the inside. I find that other photographers move at too fast or disjoint a pace for me to capture anything I truly appreciate. It makes wanting to be part of photo club a tough thing for me. What I’d like the most in a photo club is a push (or the occasional shove) of motivation to get out of my normal routine and connect with new experiences and spaces. Depending on what the Terrapin Photo Club does for activities this year, maybe I’ll participate more, maybe not.

My #$%!#$ Foot!

After lots of progress on the foot (I had planned on going snowboarding yesterday), I spent most of the night being woken up by pain caused by moving my foot, and this morning it’s painful to stand/walk again.

I admit that I have gone back to my carnivorous ways and I haven’t paid much attention to my fluid intake, but I thought I’d put this nonsense behind me.  I did accidentally bang my foot into the dresser Saturday, and I spent most of yesterday walking around.  But still.
Grr…

-Sandro

Distance to the Linux desktop

I want to preface this rant (and it’s going to be a rant) with some background. I do this not trumpet my own experience , but to point out that I’m not ranting because I’m not capable. I’ve been playing with (and programming) computers for about 25 years. I ran my first Unix-based computer 17 years ago, started using Linux 12 years ago, and worked as a professional system administrator on Unix systems for over a decade. For everyday of the last 12 years I’ve had a personal unix server running in my home. Which is to say that I’ve got skillz. I fear no command line, and I can fsck with the best.

The failure of Linux is that there is no practical way for an average person to use Linux as their desktop. If a user encounters a problem, there is no source they can reliably turn for support. My particular rant addresses one such instance, but there are more, many more.
Over the last year I abandoned Windows on all my machines, eventually landing on Ubuntu for both my spare laptop and the prototype MythHDTV setup. Overall getting both systems up and running was relatively painless — except for wireless access. The house uses an 802.11g wireless access point running WPA encryption; nothing too exotic (ok, we don’t broadcast our SSID, but I’m flexible on that). But my attempts to bring these two systems onto the wireless network met with failure at every turn. The laptop has an Atheros 5212 chipset, supported by the madwifi open-source, as well as, BSD wireless drivers. In neither case could I get the system to associate with the base-station (iwconfig, iwpriv, wpa_supplicant not withstanding). On the MythHDTV (built from my Shuttle) the built-in adapter doesn’t support WPA (with or without wpa_supplicant), and the two external usb adapters I tried wouldn’t connect with the basestation using open source drivers or ndiswrapper.

After 2 months of wasted effort I’ve finally capitulated. The little laptop is now running FreeBSD 6.2, which was more tedious to setup for Gnome, but had wireless working in minutes. And I’m about to order a wireless bridge for the MythTV box, since I can’t reliably find a wireless adapter that works under Linux.

I know that part of the problem lies with the vendors, cost cutting measures mean that they’re using runtime loaded firmware in the devices (which is going to be a problem for more and more types of devices) and Linux (or Mac) support isn’t high on their lists. But there is a large portion of the blame that can be placed on the Linux community. I spent hours scouring the net looking for information to help diagnose/fix the wireless configuration on the systems to no avail. There is no single source (or even a reliable set of sources) of diagnostic support. When there is a clue how to proceed it’s poorly documented, and often incorrect or incomplete. But more glaringly the Linux community seems to have lost sight of the practicality of using computers. It’s not just good enough to mimic the features of a commercial OS, the experience of using the system has to accessible to the average person.

Why isn’t there a web-based diagnostic center for Linux users? A tool that walks users step-by-step through diagnosing and fixing problems with their system. A single, interactive, knowledge-based solution for supporting real users with real problems using Linux. No stale links to external sites, no referring to out-of-date how-to’s and broken message boards. Until such a tool (or it’s functional equivalent) exists, Linux on every desktop is a long way away.