They're Coming To Make Me Write ASP!

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Remember when you ran away
Big Blue got on their knees
And begged you not to leave
PDE'd go berserk

You left 'em anyhow
And then the days got worse and worse
And now I see you've gone
(Completely out of your mind)

And they're coming to take you away ha-haaa
They're coming to take you away ho ho hee hee ha haaa
To the Redmond farm
Where life is beautiful all the time
And you'll be happy to see those nice young men
In their - see? Sharp coats
And they're coming to take you away ha haaa

We thought it was a joke
And so we laughed
We laughed when you had said
That you could leave the FLOSS and work for Bill

Right? You know we laughed
You heard us laugh. We laughed
We laughed and laughed but still you left
But now we know you're utterly mad

And they're coming to take you away ha haaa
They're coming to take you away ho ho hee hee ha haaa
To the happy home with bugs and Vista and viruses
Security "fixes" which patch and patch and open new hacks and holes
And they're coming to take you away ha haaa

We've read your blogs
And used your code
And this is how you pay us back
For all our kind unselfish, loving deeds?
Ha! Well you just wait
They'll find you yet and when they do
They'll make you write with ASP.net
You well-dressed geek

And they're coming to take you away ha haaa
They're coming to take you away ha haaa ho ho hee hee
To Camp Microserf where life is beautiful all the time
And you'll be happy to drink that nice Kool-Aid
In their clean white cups
And they're coming to take you away

Neuroticfish - They're Coming To Take Me Away

And Don't It Make Your Blue Eyes Red

Today I resigned from IBM to join Red Hat Canada as their new Productization Lead for JBoss Tools and JBoss Developer Studio, working with Max R Andersen, Rodney Russ, and Andrew Overholt. Yet more release engineering? Oh, hells yeah.

So, because it's been nine great years, and because I'm a mathie from way back, I'd like to present...

IBM By The Numbers

• Number of Jobs Within IBM: 3
• Number of Thinkpads Used: 4 (770, T23, T40, T60p)
• Versions of Desktop Windows Used: 3 (NT4, 2K, XP)
• Versions of Desktop Windows Anti-Virus & Firewall Software Used: 6
• Versions of Desktop Linux Used: 3 (MEPIS 3.x, MEPIS 6, AntiX 7)
• Versions of Desktop Linux Anti-Virus & Firewall Software Used: 0 (suck it, Windows!)
  
  
• Memorable Website Launches While at IBM Global Services: 7+
• Memorable Applications Built While at IBM.com: 7+
• Memorable Open Source Software Releases While at IBM Rational: 30 in 5 years (EMF 2.0-2.4 = 5, UML2 1.0-2.1 = 4, OCL & EMF-QTV 1.0-1.2 = 12, JET 0.7-0.9 = 3, EODM 0.7-0.9 = 3, GEF 3.3.2-3.4 = 2, GMF 2.1 = 1)
  
  
• Supported Modeling Builds in 1Q2004: 1 (EMF)
• Supported Modeling Builds in 4Q2008: 22 (EMF x 7, EMFT x 5, MDT x 3, M2T x 3, M2M x 2, GMF x 1, TMF x 1)
• Other Builds in 4Q2008: 3 (GEF, PDT)
  
  
• Number of Eclipse Project Committerships in 1Q2004: 3 (EMF, SDO, XSD)
• Number of Eclipse Project Committerships in 4Q2008: 25 (EMF x 8, EMFT x 6, MDT x 5, M2T, M2M, GMF, GEF, SOC, Dash)
  (Note: some projects define releng committership separately from project committership.)

And now, to get the other side of the brain fired up, I leave you with my version of...

Fall Out Boy - Thnks Fr Th Mmrs

Another build will bend and break
(But it's an easy fix, these things)
Automate, yeah let the crontab roll
In case ya don't wanna show
(Let the crontab roll, let the crontab roll)

And I want these words to make things right
Avoid any wrongs, and keep Modeling alive
Empower EMF
So after a brief break,
Gonna put my fingers back to the keys

Nine years, one helluva time
Thanks for the memories
Thick and thin, they've been so great
Workin' for the Big Blue leader

Nine years, yeah and one more time
Thanks for the memories
Thanks for the memories
With two woof'rs who needs a tweeter? Ohhh!

Been looking forward to the future
But my eyesight is going bad
Must be the late nights
It's always cloudy except for (except for)
When you look into the past (look into the past)
Nine whole years. (Nine whole years, now!)

Three jobs within Big Blue
Thanks for the memories
Websites, apps and FOSS
Wonder what became of Peter?

Nine years, yeah one more time
Thanks for the memories
Thanks for the memories
O'en source always tastes a bit sweeter

(They say) I only think in the form of crunching numbers
Up late at night, exploring six-gig log files
Goin' out of my mind
Runnin' out of disk space
I'm a line away
From getting it all to work! Woo!

(In) AD 2101
Captain say 'what happen ?'
Operator: 'we get signal'
Mech: 'Someone set us up the bomb.'

Main screen turn on. It's you !!
How are you gentlemen !!
No chance, yeah make your time
You, are on the way to destruction. Ohhh!

Nine years, it's been a slice (had a blast, one more time)
Thanks for the memories
Addicted to Eclipse now (can't get enough Eclipse now)
But what still sucks? That'd be features!

Nine years, yeah and one more time (been great years, one more time)
Thanks for the memories (for the memories)
Thanks for the memories (for the memories)
Time on Sprockets to dance vith Dieter! Ohhh!

I never meta data I didn't like

In my collection of web-based errata (ever wondered why this site is called Division By Zero?), I've snagged a lot of Google snafus. Here's my first Google-IBM composite snafu -- an Adsense ad from IBM sitting next to my Gmail:

NEED META TAG DESCRIPTION HERE
-- Yes, quite.

Then, clicking on the link for 'More related pages >>' yielded this:

Temporary Error (502)
-- Does that mean "502 (Bad Gateway). When a server acts
as a go-between it may receive an invalid request. This code is
returned when that happens" [1]? Or is it more like this 502? ;-)

Happy 15th, Thinkpad!

I'm on my 4th Thinkpad (770X, T23, T40, T60p) since I started at IBM, and with the exception of the first motherboard in the T40 (which died within the first few weeks and was quickly replaced), they've all survived admirably.

Happy 15th, Thinkpad!

Ain't nothin' but a SCO thang

Another nail was hammered into SCO's coffin on Friday:

[T]he U.S. District Court for the District of Utah Central District found that Novell is the owner of the Unix and UnixWare copyrights, dismissing SCO's charges of slander and breach of contract. The judge also ruled that SCO owes Novell for SCO's licensing revenue from Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft Corp. SCO is obligated to pass through to Novell a portion of those licenses, the judge said.

... [B]ecause Novell is the owner of the Unix copyrights, it can direct SCO to waive its suits against IBM Corp. and Sequant. "SCO can't sue IBM for copyright infringement on copyrights it doesn't own," Jones said. [more]

My Shiny Metal A...

Some Lenovo / ThinkPad news:

• Lenovo preloads ThinkPads with Novell Linux
  And then there were four (IBM/Lenovo, HP/Compaq, Dell, Acer).
• Lenovo to acquire Packard Bell?
  Or will Acer get there first?
• T60 and T61 Thinkpads now available in colour!
  I'd like one in Dragon, one in Prowler, and one in Crush.

And now, back to Linux

This afternoon I had my power off while SWMNBN'd friend and co-worker (and apprentice electrician) fixed his wiring problem from last weekend's 2-day rewiring adventure. Apparently he's miswired the panel for the clothes dryer so while the lights were on, nobody was home (no heat produced and therefore no actual drying).

Anyway, after the juice came back on, I docked my T60p back in its crap-o-matic port replicator and attempted to tell it to open both the laptop and monitor screens. It complied... but not before BSOD'ing in stereo.

Windows: A Survival Guide

*ponderous sigh*

After several months of enduring painful multi-monitor support (like cursor rendering problems and the inability to have monitors at different resolutions) and even more painful support for LEAP (for wifi access at work) ... I've finally given up on Linux on the Laptop and gone back to Windows XP.

This comes at a time when I no longer have my own cube at the Lab, because as Wassim puts it, I'm now "working from exile." Ed and I have elected to go mobile to save Big Blue some real estate costs (and to *cough* help the environment by staying home more).

Along with our switch to mobile status, Marcelo and Dave have moved too. They were made to give up their windows in D3 and now sit in Upper Middle Cube-land over in B3. So, to preserve the balance in the universe, Marcelo and I have gone back to Windows. (For those keeping score, that's 2 down, 2 up.)

Today was my first day at IBM without my own cube, sweet cube. Because of the aforementioned LEAP problems and because I no longer have a second monitor keeping my desk from blowing away in the breeze, it was time to revisit my Windows partition. I spent a portion of the afternoon setting up cygwin for the first time, including apt-cyg (a commandline way to update cygwin a la apt-get from the Debian/Ubuntu world). Then, in order to faciliate migrating my desktop settings from my linux partition into cygwin, I discovered Ext2 Installable File System For Windows.

This kicks ass and almost makes life in Windows bearable. It supports both ext2 and ext3 (if properly unmounted), and allows me to read & write into my linux partition via a mounted drive letter (though I haven't dared to try writing to it yet!). With this I can browse naturally w/ Windows Explorer or even with cygwin.

Next up to install was Pidgin, aka Gaim 2.0, which now supports Sametime natively, and imported my old Gaim 1.5 settings & buddy lists automatically... except where it lost my IRC buddies/chats and forgot which plugins I had enabled. Meh, close enough. Interface is a bit cleaner than the old Gaim 1.5, but I don't like the new icons.

Anyway, all the apps I use daily are back, bar one:

• Mail/IM: Gaim + Meanwhile -> Pidgin; Notes 7; GMail; Thunderbird
• Web: Firefox 1.5 or 2
• Development: Eclipse 3.3 w/ phpeclipse, shelled, eclipsecolorer, mylyn; Cirrus or Beyond Compare w/ WINE -> Beyond Compare 2; (g)vim/Kate -> EditPlus
• Console: Konsole --> cygwin console
• Filesystem: Konqueror --> ???

Does anyone know of a filesystem browser that works for Windows that allows pane splitting and supports tabs & ssh? Anything's better than Windows Explorer, but I really miss Konqueror!

Maybe I'll have to play with Cygwin/X to see if I can get Konq back that way...

EMF: Tastes great, less killing

If you google, er, 'do a Google search' for "EMF", you'll find lots of articles decrying the dangers of Electromagnetic fields (EMFs).

However, just last week, IBM released a tool called Spatio-Temporal Epidemiological Modeler (STEM), which is built using our very own EMF (that's the modeling framework, not the toxic substance). STEM, a part of the Open Healthcare Framework (OHF), is "designed to enable the rapid creation of epidemiological models for how an infectious disease, such as avian influenza or dengue fever, is likely to geographically spread over time." [1]

How's that for a carbon offset?