Author: Bobby Rockers

While I was Musing the Fire Burned.

There is pain, in this world, that once experienced leaves a permanent scar in our heart.  We are changed for as long as we live.  And though we walk through life, and laugh, and love; something of ourselves has been removed.

I believe, being Catholic, that when we talk about the peace of God; we are talking about that moment when God returns our hearts to the way they were before that pain.  To those who have experienced such suffering, that alone would be salvation.

The same mistakes, only sooner.

Yes, another set of links. I have a pretty massive bookmark list to empty out and everyone who visits suffers because of it.

  • Dijkstra’s Algorithm – Wikipedia is like a drug. Hello my name is Bob.
  • Beating Ubuntu – A editorial on how to take the Linux desktop title away from its current leader.
  • Desktop Linux: Mission Impossible – Editorial discussing if it is even possible for desktop Linux to ever win the OS war.
  • Kontact & Google Apps – Kontact is probably the best Outlook replacement on Linux and this tutorial by Linux.com helps you get it working with Google.
  • Retirement Mistakes – Ben Stein (look up his wikipedia bio, you will be floored by how smart this guy is) discusses the 3 biggest retirement mistakes people make.
  • Raising Smart Kids – Some tips on how to develop children with above average intelligence.
  • The POG Gallery – Glen Palmer first designed the closed bold semi-automatic paintball gun before the Auto Cocker had even been conceived. To this day his son makes the best paintball guns in the world (with not electronics in them.) Here are some beautiful examples.
  • Worlds Most Expensive Scotches – The title says it all.
  • Bill Cosby’s Rant – This is part of a speech Bill gave at the 50th Anniversary commemoration of the Brown vs Topeka Board of Education Supreme Court Decision.  It is an interesting commentary on the state of civil rights in the United States.
  • Are Rich People Parasites – An editorial by David Gordon that discusses the economic value of wealth in a free market society.

Sacred memories and future promise.

Got a couple links I have been meaning to post.

  • Coding Style – Is a post by Linus Torvalds about the success of Linux and why it should not be underestimated. The same explaination could be used to describe the success of capitalism.
  • Timevault – HowToForge article on getting desktop snapshots on Linux using Timevault. It’s Gnome/Ubuntu specific but still worth the read.
  • Ubuntu upgrade cycle and KDE – Is the initial article in hotly debated online discussion about the place of KDE in the Ubuntu world. I posted this for reference and not because I agree with the author, Stephen Shankland.
  • Webmin HowTo – Article discusses configuration and installation of Webmin, the most comprehensive web management utility in existence (for any OS.)  Webmin has been around for a long time and is an amazing management tool.
  • 20 Entrepreneurial Quotes –  Just like the title says.  A very nice list of inspirational quotes for the self motivated.
  • KWord Tips and Tricks – KWord is a word processing application for the KDE desktop enviroment.  It is lightweight, fast, and has some functionality that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the Open Source world.  A nice little howto for some of its features.
  • KDE vs Gnome – Another in the long list of vs articles between KDE and Gnome.
  • Getting Quickfind Fixed – If you have ever used Firefox’s QuickFind, then you can appreciate this fix.  If you haven’t used it, they you should really try it out.
  • Donald Knuth –  This is just the wikipedia article on Donald Knuth.  I have been reading some of his papers and wanted to reference his wikipedia bio.

Corrupting good manners.

2007 was the worst year I have had for keeping this blog regularly updated.  It was not from lack of intention but a product of over stimulation.  Writing has become a luxury I haven’t had time for since starting work at Cobb.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on this.

This blog is the closest thing to a diary I have had, and I find myself a little disconnected without posting.  Links, updates, comments, and complaints I have had with myself disappear because of a lack of documentation. So, while this is not a big post; hopefully it will be a start… or rather a re-start.

I have also updated the wine list; adding, appropriately for the date, a couple bottles of sparkling white wine and a really awful Riesling.  I have started a scotch list, but don’t have enough to post just yet.  Thankfully a friend has remedied this problem and we will post that when I have had a chance to review those bottles.

It is easy to be brave from a safe distance

Sorry for the long delay in posts. It took a while but someone finally created a Google Maps powered routing tool for runner and bikers. It even lets you save your route. Below are a couple routes I have been looking at around my house:

  • 15 Minute: A short timed route that takes just about 15 minutes for me to run.
  • Here is the default 2 mile route I run around my neighborhood.
  • 3 Mile Route: I have been looking for a good one for a couple years now. It took sixty seconds to find with this page.
  • 3 Mile Number 2: Because who wants to go the same way every time.
  • 4 Mile Route: Need a route that is longer than the 5k I will be running.
  • 5 Mile Route: My first long, post 5k run.
  • 6 Mile Route: This is a hill training route for my up-coming 10k.
  • 6 Mile Route: Flat campus route for daily marathon training.
  • 7 Mile Route: Final run before the Sept. 10k around Lake Hefner.
  • 8 Mile Route: My first route that takes me through OU campus.
  • 8.7 Mile Bike Route: When my shins get bad, and I have to take a break from running.
  • 10  Mile Route: Double digits at last, and it only to me 9 years to get back to them.
  • 11 Mile Route: At some point I am just going to have to circle the whole town.
  • 12 Mile Pre-Half Route: Longest run before the half marathon in Tulsa.
  • 14 Mile There and Back: Run out to lake Thunderbird rest stop and come back.  Good hill work.
  • 16 Mile Loop along Section Lines: Gotta love Oklahoma grid sections.  Sure makes it easy to figure long routes.  Sooner road and Depot Blvd mostly.
  • 18 Miles East/West Lake Loop: Many marathoners don’t run more than 18 miles before their first.  Hopefully this means I am within reaching distance.
  • 20 Flat Route: First time over I-35 and back.
  • 22 Mile Flat: Still trying to take care of my knee; so flat routes are the rule.  Actual milage is a little over 22 but I honestly am not that picky any more… well at least until 26.2.  Last long run before the OKC marathon!

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

When I first starting working as a computer programmer, I constantly ran into the problem of bosses who wouldn’t appreciate the severity of the problem I was describing to them. After a number of years I improved on the situation by modifying the language I used when explaining a problem. This didn’t solve all of my employment issues (at the time I didn’t fully appreciate how dysfunctional the communication chain was in my employers hierarchy) but it helped substantially.

To understand what words mean when you are talking to programmer I recommend this article by Charles Miller. Here is an excellent example of a software engineering concept that non-programmers often fail to understand:

To a programmer, a problem is trivial if there is a clear solution, and the only thing that needs to be done is to implement it.

The only caveat is that triviality refers to how hard the problem is to solve, not how hard it is to implement the solution. So there is no necessary relation between a task being trivial, and how long it takes. To the programmer, once the plans for the bridge have been drawn up, the materials chosen properly and the model tested for how it would survive wind, traffic and earthquakes, actually building the bridge is trivial.