Serenity Springs Wildlife Center
Over the weekend, Kiara had the great idea to pack up Kiernan and me and haul us 90 minutes out to the eastern part of Colorado to visit Serenity Springs Wildlife Center. We had a great time on the tour and Kiernan was vastly amused and impressed by the large number of great cats that they have there. Christy, the tour guide, really knew her stuff and was very open and friendly. We even had our picture taken with one of their tiger cubs, and it came out great. Kiernan wasn’t too horribly sure about touching the cat even though we have plenty at home, but he did pet the little cub a few times after our urging.
If you have the time, head out to Calhan and visit Serenity Springs. They’ll show you a good time for $10 a head at the gate. You really can’t beat that price for 3 hours of fun and education. Make sure to take your camera (no video, though!)
OSCON 2010 — MIA
I’m MIA from O’Reilly’s OSCON this year, and this has turned me into a very sad techo-geek. I’m missing out on familiar faces, many classes, tons of learning opportunities, the great FSF people (Hi, Deborah!), a few after-hours parties, staying up too late, getting up too early, the SourceForge Awards (are these even happening this year?), free tattoos (if SourceForge is having their party, that is), and much much more.
Even though I’m not in Portland this week hob nobbing with the best and brightest of the Open Source world, I am here at the office having a very productive week. I guess that’s something, eh?
Light Email Day
Today’s one of those odd days where I haven’t gotten much in the way of email: personally or professionally. It’s given me some free time to clean up some stuff, get started on a few projects, do a little more reading than I normally would have done at lunch, and simply relax a bit. It’s a good start to a busy weekend.
Open Letter to Wal-Mart
Dear Wal-Mart,
I don’t know if you’ll ever see this, but I have a message for you.
If your express lane clearly states “10 items or less” (which it does) please allow your cashiers to enforce the sign. A few nights ago the shopper two people ahead of me checked out with 37 items. I counted them as they went across the scanner. He was obviously not an express shopper and should have been in one of the other three non-express checkout lanes that were open. My “quick trip” for two boxes of Pop Tarts turned into a lengthy wait.
Also, please do not allow people to exchange/return items in the express lane. On this very same trip, the young woman in front of me in line attempted to:
- Return some clothing without a receipt.
- Exchange some other articles of clothing.
- Buy some lip gloss and gum.
Of the three transactions, only #3 should have gone through. Because of the obvious lack of training you provide your cashiers and the confusing requests my fellow customer made, I was stuck for another 15 minutes in addition to the overly long delay the “37 items” guy caused. If someone wants to exchange/return items, please force them to go to the customer service desk where properly trained employees can handle the transaction.
Thank you for listening.
Followup to My Ubuntu User Post
I just received an email from an Ubuntu User employee who apologized for my banking fiasco yesterday and offered to send me a T-shirt and some stickers as a way to make up for the inconvenience of losing out on my debit card for a week.
WOW
I’m very thankful for their efforts in tracking me down and making right on something that wasn’t really all that wrong to begin with. I guess I’m just overly paranoid about my bank account and personal information. In a way, I’m justified in this because of all of the identity theft that goes on. Working for a security company as a security expert heightens my paranoia to a greater level, I guess.
Thanks again to Ubuntu User Magazine for making things right and doing so in such a prompt and great way! (Anyone that knows me, knows that I’m a sucker for a technology T-shirt.)
Thank You Ubuntu User
I doubt the folks at Ubuntu User Magazine will see this, but I want to send an open letter to them anyway…
I checked my personal checking account online at the banking web site and found a strange transaction from Topeka, KS. I’ve never been to Kansas, let alone Topeka. Red flags went up all over the place, so I called my bank for more information. They said that the charge came from “Ogden Publication.” While I had them on the phone I Googled for that company’s name and found a list of their publications. It was all rural living and self-sustainability type stuff. Nothing I’m really interested in. Nothing I really care about. Nothing I would ever order.
I told the bank to go ahead and file a claim. The first thing they did was cancel my debit card and issue me a new one (which will arrive soon.) This is a reasonable thing to do, so I was happy with that. While I was on the phone the banking lady tried to sell me on some mortgage stuff, and I was only half listening to her. Somewhere during her conversation, I remembered that my Ubuntu User Magazine subscription was coming up soon. I Googled for “Ubuntu User Magazine” and clicked the “Subscribe Now” button, which took me to the domain opifs.com. I pulled up the whois information on opifs.com and found it to be under the name Ogden Publication.
Seems like the charge was legit after all even though Ubuntu User Magazine is not listed under the main Ogden Publication web site even though it should be.
I told the bank lady (who was very nice, very professional and very helpful) that we didn’t need to file a claim, so she canceled that action very quickly, but told me that it was too late to reverse the debit card cancellation. Damn.
That means, thanks to Ubuntu User Magazine, I’m without a debit card for about a week.
My message to the magazine? Please put the name of the magazine being subscribed to in the name of the bank transaction or, at least, put your title under the listing at Ogden Publication’s web site. Shouldn’t be too hard of a task, I don’t think.
PS: I do like Ubuntu User Magazine. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have allowed the auto-renew to go through.
Theme Playground
I’ve been playing around with new themes. If the site looks different from what you’ve been seeing, that’s why. I think I’ve settled on one, but not sure. If you see a star field at the top, then that’s the current one that I’m working with.
Hope you like it as much as I do.
Long Time, No Post
This site has largely been ignored lately. I’ve just been too busy with my writing, school, work, kid and trying to have a social life. I also have nothing interesting to say. It’s not even interesting to me, so I don’t figure you’ll care about what’s going on in my life either.
Maybe something exciting will happen soon and I can post about it…. Dunno…
Longest Upgrade Ever
With the release of a new OpenOffice.org from Ubuntu (to close some security issues), Ubuntu’s servers are being hammered. I happed to flip to the ‘apt-get upgrade’ window I had going just in time to see this:
Longest Upgrade Ever
Look at the time left on the download. I don’t think I want to wait ’49,710 days’ for the download to finish. That’s roughly 187 (and then some) years. I wonder if my son’s son’s son would finish the upgrade for me?
Fortunately, the download didn’t take quite that long. It finished shortly after I got done cropping the screenshot. I still think it’s pretty funny what “progress bars” will read from time-to-time.
OSCON 2009: Day Five
Here’s my summary of day five, but it’s a little late. I didn’t get a chance to post it Friday because the wireless got cut off promptly at 2:30 PM. Yeah, I had my aircard with me, but I was too busy talking technology at the tables with my fellow geeks. It was a good time, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The day started too early, but I think that was because of the late night at the SourceForge CCA party. I managed to get to the conference center in time to catch the last two keynotes, but like most keynotes, I didn’t get much out of them. They were entertaining, though.
Following the keynotes was an interesting, but thoroughly uneducational, history of JSON. I should have gone to another talk, but such is life when you have 13+ sessions to choose from and only a summary to go off of.
After this, I attended a talk about data scalability. I learned more in this session than in most others, but there was little practical advice given. It was all theory and no practical solutions to the problems presented. However, given the scant 45 minutes the talker had to fill, I’m sure he left lots out just to shoehorn the talk into such a short time. I’m glad I attended this session as it refreshed my knowledge of what I already knew about scaling databases and gave me new items as food for thought.
The closing keynote of the conference was very entertaining, and I’m glad I sat through it. The part about “What PC can I buy for $1500 when using Linux?” was phenomenal. Now, I just need to find $1500 lying on the street. 
Then came hanging out with the friends I had made during the week. I had about three hours to kill. During this time, I helped one of the Ubuntu guys install Jaunty on a newly won HP netbook that another fella had won. Well… When I say helped, I mean I loaned him my aircard so he could install a few minor packages and get some critical updates installed. He did all of the work. I’m quite impressed by the speed of Jaunty on the new HP netbook. It made me wish I had won one of them. I think there were a total of six given away during the week.
Then came a quick train and bus ride to the airport, waiting around for a couple of hours at the airport and a very late flight home. I managed to make it home, get a shower and crawl into bed around 12:45 in the AM exhausted and happy to be home.
All-in-all, OSCON 2009 was a great trip, and I’m hoping to make it back again next year. Now to dive into my notes and prep a presentation here at work….
