December 2004

Legendary Society of Men.

I love it.

We have, from left to right, Der Kapitan, Monster Hesh, Huck Finn, The Frenchman, and Quetzalcouatl.

This is an obvious sendup of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen - the difference being that no one can communicate; between Der Kapitan’s incoherent drunken German ramblings, The Frenchman’s Cousteau-esque accent, Quetzalcouatl just screaming “QUETZALCOUTAL” over and over again, Huck Finn’s southern cracker drawl and well, we know about Monster Hesh - no one can communicate here.

So Der Kapitan whips out his Luger and shoots everyone to death.

Moral of the story? Sealab 2021 has the most realistic write-up of the problems leading to the conflicts of the Victorian Era than anything else I’ve seen in a good long time.

God Bless Cartoon Network, and God Bless Adult Swim.

As a tip of the hat to the Linux.Ars guys, here are my choices for the Linux Kung-Fu End of Year Awards:

Contributor of the Year - maybe this isn’t the conventional choice, but I’m throwing in with Jakob “jimmac” Steiner. I think his consistent work in improving the look of Linux for us all has a lot to do with a better perception of software for the masses. Sometimes the little touches get overlooked, and I don’t like that.

Best Community - the Ubuntu forum community. It seems like ubuntuforums came out of nowhere and rapidly exploded into a tremendous resource for the community.

Distribution of the Year - Ubuntu. Hands down, the most aggressively awesome distribution to show up since the original Fedora Core. This is the distribution that convinced me to move my wife onto Linux and is now making me think very seriously about moving my parents onto LotD as well. A motivated community, an installer that’s simply unmatched in the field of getting things right and the strong base of the Debian system make this one the Golden Shovel recipient.

Desktop Application of the Year - Firefox, thank you, drive through and come again. I’m sure many more people than I can say many good things about this, but I’ll just say that it’s the most used application I’ve ever had. And it has never pissed me off.

Server Application of the Year - this isn’t my strong area, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say Plone 2.0 - I’ve seen a lot of CMS system that looked perfect for hosting your clan site for CS, but this one actually looks professional.

Web Application of the Year - not my strong suit, so I’ll say Wordpress 1.2 - best blog software I’ve ever used.

Development Application of the Year - boy, do YOU have the wrong guy. Uh. Let’s see. MonoDevelop? I like Mono applications.

Hardware Vendor of the Year - nVidia, just for their continued support of the Linux community and releasing new drivers. ATI, where are you?

Online Publication of the Year - LWN.net - Linux Weekly News is good. I enjoy their product and/or service very much.

Dead Tree Publication of the Year - I’m going to go with Linux Journal magazine. I always find something interesting to read when I’m strolling through Borders or where-have-you in search of a copy of Knoppix Hacks to have my picture taken with.

Best Newcomer to the Community - Ubuntu, see above.

Best Improved in the Community - Novell for their work in backing Ximian and throwing resources at Gnome, OpenOffice.org and other worthy projects, and for kicking SCO in right in the Darls.

Most Anticipated Application - from what I’ve seen a final release of Beagle should be able to make me sell a lung or two. Not mine, of course. Plenty of good ones in weaker, more trusting people. But this looks like a super-nice piece of work.

Thumbs Down - I’m going to give this to the #debian channel on Freenode. This room, for all their claims to be about Debian support, have the most inclusive and unfriendly attitude on the planet. I’ve had several people who are GOOD with *nix turn down Debian as an option just based on the reaction of #debian regulars to their support questions. These cyber-Amish smug crackheads can all climb into a Volvo and drive it off a cliff.

And for a special note, I have to commend the members of #linux and the LKF on another year of helping people. True, we may have an overall attitude that would mesh well with most high school locker rooms, but when the chips are down, these are people you can build working relationships with and trust them to provide you options that are worthwhile, as well as a few opinions that are not. Let’s hope 2005 kicks even more ass for all of us, and may we have the rest of the world under our jackbooted heel by this time next year.

Was thinking about a conversation I had with a friend of mine a few years ago, and I began to think about how the spending at my old high school and the affiliated district was allocated. Now, I grew up in the great Midwest, which I suppose carries a few liabilities with it.

It seems like the majority of spending my school district was allocated to sports programs. Now, I’ve got nothing against sports, aside from a slight worry about the jock-based heirarchy that existed at the time (does this even still exist?), but the amount of money spent on sports at my high school was, for lack of a better term, completely retarded.

My senior year of high school was in 1994, and a few things stick out in my mind. Our computer labs were saddled with Apple IIe computers, which were easily ten to twelve years old at the time. My history book dated from 1983, and my math books were rarely any better. Chris tells me that his physics book dated from early 1977, making it slightly older than he was.

But for some reason, spending a million dollars to rebuild the football stadium at the school wasn’t much of a problem.

Are things still like this? Does anyone have any memories that sort of relate to this? I’d love to hear them.

Couldn’t help but laugh at this one. Follow the links and have fun!

Pastor fired for sexual exploitation supports Bush’s values!