Sun Alumni Blogs
Day 11 - Wednesday, September 3 - Keewatin, Ontario - Today 47 miles - total miles 2741
Wednesday we didn't move. We stayed on Lake of the Woods. We explored the Kenora and Keewatin area and just took it easy. Kenora has a wonderful farmers market right on the water and seaplanes coming and going just off shore. This part of Canada has lots of fly in resorts and private islands. It is fun to think about spending time on a private island some day.
In the afternoon we sat on the deck in front of our B&B and played cribbage. It was a warm day with no wind and no bugs! Other than the fact that Duke beat me it was a perfect afternoon. I highly recommend the Spruce Lake Bed and Breakfast in Keewatin.
Day 12 - Thursday, September 4 - Keewatin, Ontario to Thunder Bay, Ontario - Today 310 miles - total miles 3051
Thursday we drove to Thunder Bay on Lake Superior. Thunder Bay is in the eastern time zone and is the farthest east we will go on this trip. It is also Canada's biggest wheat terminal. The last several days we have seen lots of combines in the fields harvesting the wheat.
We have seen several wonderful waterfalls on this trip. Yesterday we stopped at Kakabeka Falls just outside of Thunder Bay. It seemed like the best but then I say that about all of the big ones.
Watching the Republican National Convention on C-Span last night was an interesting experience. I got to see unadulterated subject matter without distracting and biased comments!
It hit me hard that my past rejection of most things political came from having to endure the second-guessing of wanna-be pundits and aging talking heads with anger management problems.
In the past I would watch Obama and McCain and would tune out quickly after the usual barrage of fawning or disparaging comments from the talking head TV personalities.
Unadulterated speeches are far more interesting to me because I can actually take in the content, the body language, and the emotions accompanying the delivery.
Last night I got to hear for the first time how John McCain experienced a transformation from a hotshot pilot to a dedicated patriot, from a focus on self to a focus on service, through the care and support he received from fellow American prisoners of war. As he put it, "He fell in love with his country" as a result of his experiences in prison.
Though still crippled from his experience, he is not bitter nor is he stuck in the past regarding his torture. He seems to have learned to be a better person which is one of the best possible outcomes from such a travail.
I would not have had the pleasure of getting the whole story from John McCain's viewpoint if I had not watched his convention speech on C-Span.
Getting information straight from the source is a liberating experience.
Watching Sarah Palin the night before was a similar revelation. From the very first sentences she made it plain that she is a force to be reckoned with. Her pointed observations about Barack Obama and the media started at the very beginning of her speech and increased in intensity throughout her 36 minute speech.
According to my neighbor, James Carville's observations were way off base. He claimed that Carville said Sarah was making nice for the first part of her speech and then they flipped the switch and she started hitting the Republican talking points.
Sarah Barracuda is evidently more than Carville can confront. She was in high gear from the moment she started speaking, like a pit bull with lipstick. What she said made a lot of sense to voters who are tired of the leftward tilt in American politics.
If you want to make up your mind about Sarah Palin, John McCain, Barack Obama, or Joe Biden, you need to see what they say and how they say it. Listening to a media "political expert" is an absolute waste of time, unless you want a biased viewpoint.
Watch events on a channel that gives you the news, not one that "interprets" and "shapes" the news.
(The above is my own opinion, based on my personal observations. Your mileage and reactions may be quite different.)
There has been lot of talk about the new Google Chrome's Javascript virtual machine called V8 . I just glanced at the google chrome's third party software licenses and was surprised to see that V8 assembler is licensed from Sun Microsystems. Sun made no news about it and it is another example of great innovation coming from Sun.
Update: I just checked the source code of V8 and it indeed
HT: Kevin
It never fails to amaze me that people in the public eye blatantly contradict themselves over and over and over again while on camera. This is an excellent clip from the Daily Show and is well worth your time to watch.
After listening to Senator McCain’s speech tonight, I felt I had the opportunity to hear an impressive resume from an impressive candidate. It was a speech full of homilies, code words to activate the religious right, and was righteously jingoistic. Despite the content of the speech, I believe John McCain believes he’s running for the right reasons and that he truly believes his approach is the best one for the US to follow going forward. Despite many disagreements over policy, for some reason, I’ve always liked McCain and tonight’s speech reminded me of that.
An aside, it is a real shame that demonstrators interrupted his speech. Obviously they have a right to do so, but I submit it achieved nothing other than to reinforce stereotypes that are already well entrenched in that environment. It did nothing to enhance the alternative.
That being said, the rabid patriotism in that venue was unsettling. While I don’t believe this was the intent, it really and truly reminded me of film clips of speeches in Nazi Germany in the 1930’s with promises of jobs, defense from foreign threats, and repeated identification of “America” and Americans. Independent of McCain’s message, the audience response really made my skin crawl.
On to the content of the speech, I think it really did show McCain’s experience and knowledge, it was short on specifics and the specifics provided really didn’t constitute any new ideas, it was simply a rehash of a fiasco of an energy policy and traditional financial values (from the old Republicans - not this new breed that have been the biggest of big government profligate spenders.) I really wonder about the wisdom of running on a “change” platform when McCain has been part of the process and problem for decades and voted with the Bush Administration over 90% of the time.
Most of the speech focused on the past. Challenges of the past, politics of the past, and ideas of the past. Sure, they were dressed up in modern concepts, but it wasn’t a significant change from the status quo. Energy policy: drill more. Health care: privatize it. Abortion: get rid of legislating judges. Education: privatize it so fundie kids can get public money to attend religious schools. Social security: privatize it. Not much change there folks…
Mostly what the speech did for me was frame the choices: trust John McCain to change things, one of the same characters doing the same things and expect that we’ll get different results. (The definition of insanity.) Or do something different, take a chance that the combination of Obama with a friendly legislature can drive some meaningful change.
While I like John McCain and I respect John McCain, I cannot support John McCain in this election. The consequences are simply to dire for my daughter and her future. Could my mind change? Yes. If we were to find out that Obama has a fatal lapse in judgment, a scandal involving romantic coupling with goats, or Hillary Clinton makes an appearance on the ticket, those would cause me to reconsider. But short of that, the decision is done.
So, who will your choice be? Regardless of who you support, do please vote. It is only through participation and exercise of our Constitutional rights that we truly enjoy freedom. With that freedom comes great responsibility, choose wisely.
- Some caffeine, then off for a run, tennis later. Taking a couple of vacation days btw. #
- Red Hat to acquire Qumranet (Server and Desktop virt.) - http://tinyurl.com/5r576c #
So it is official now...
Obama's message: Enough!
McCain's message: WYSIWYG
Before last Friday, Sarah Palin was virtually unknown outside Alaska. After her speech last week and the ongoing gush of information around her, we now know she’s young, energetic, charismatic, and crazy. Her worldview is three clicks to the right of Mike Huckabee and while she gives a good speech with nice quips (thank McCain’s speech writer for that,) she is crazy and dangerous.
Don’t believe me? “The Iraq war is a task from god.” Christian or not, these words should chill your blood. This statement shows a lack of judgment, a lack of understanding, and a display of gross hubris that got us where we are in the first place.
Now we have a pit bull in lipstick (her words, not mine) who has no clue about what a VP does and has displayed for the world to see her lack of knowledge, experience, and judgment. When I think about qualified, competent, and serious VP candidates that happen to be female, if I were a woman, I would be so deeply offended I couldn’t see straight. Let’s agree, she’s no Kay Bailey Hutchison or Elizabeth Dole - our nation is the poorer for that lack of choice.
I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and simply call her willfully ignorant. America, your choice is clear. Choose wisely.
The talking head model of news broadcasting and newspaper editorializing / reporting leaves a lot to be desired. Secondhand news that is pre-digested by someone who "knows what you should hear" is no substitute for first-hand exposure to the source.
I watched the Democratic National Convention on CNN while Nancy Pelosi was speaking. Did CNN give coverage of Nancy's speech? Not when I was watching. The talking heads were busy interviewing Governor Tim Kaine, who could have been given airtime at another time.
Nancy Pelosi may have had something vitally important to say and I only got to hear a meaningless talking head interview. I may or may not agree with her, but I can decide for myself if I hear what she has to say.
I watched another talking head interview the Olympic Volleyball champions after their victory and all the interviewer could ask about was how one of the girls had disposed of her mother's ashes. It was so satisfying to see one of the girls take the microphone from the interviewer's hand and use it to give a heartfelt thanks to President Bush for his support.
After watching Sarah Palin last night on C-Span, I realized that we need fewer talking heads sticking their faces in front of important news. I was fascinated with the uninterrupted coverage of the speakers who preceded her on stage.
Good. bad, indifferent or smashing, we got to hear it all on C-Span. No Blitzer, Geraldo, or Cooper adulteration or spin. Just a straight feed from the Republican National Convention to our living room.
We could see and hear what was said and could make up our own minds as to what it all meant.
I will be watching the rest of the campaign on C-Span and on the Internet.
I like news without the added ingredients and opinions hidden as news.
What a candidate says and how they say it conveys more to me than hours of post speech "analysis" by journalists who each have an axe to grind and airtime to sell.
(The preceeding is my personal opinion and is based on my personal observations. Your experience and mileage may vary.)
I probably can't do a better job than Charles Nutter in demystifying the hyped up Google browser. In its current state, it can't force a migration of Firefox (or even IE) loyalists. Not yet. I've tried it out myself on Vista for 2 hours and here's why I wouldn't switch from firefox:
(NOTE: All of this is my personal opinion only. Please fee free to ignore it. Most of what I say might sound like paraphrasing whats already been repeated in blogs around the web, but what the heck...)
(NOTE: All of this is my personal opinion only. Please fee free to ignore it. Most of what I say might sound like paraphrasing whats already been repeated in blogs around the web, but what the heck...)
- V8 might be really sophisticated with native code compilation , object data sharing across pages and a better GC. The technology is uber cool. Make no mistake. But most web apps I use aren't javascript heavy like most Google apps are. Besides, the javascript engine in Firefox 3.1 will be faster than FF 3.0 anyways. So who needs Chrome for the sake of V8?
- Google calls it a new way of experiencing web applications as opposed to web pages. Maybe the sentence should be qualified a bit more: they've built a client that works best for their own web applications (why'd they have gears by default otherwise?). Let's face it, controlling the client, the server and the applications that run therein gives a company tremendous power and control (which we all love, don't we?)
- The community around firefox is a big winner for me. The number of plugins available for FF is unparalleled. Even if chrome supports all of those extensions, that isn't enough reason to migrate.
- Privacy. I don't want Google to know about every address that I type into the Chrome omni (ominous) bar.
- Multiprocessing over multithreading for fault isolation? Sorry mac, not compelling. Besides, most runtime plugins are doing a better job of crashing (if at all) in isolation and not bringing down the browser with them. The Java SE 6 update 10 plugin is a case in point.
- I'm lazy. Blame it on interia. (Ask the 70+ % web users in the world who use IE.) I'm what most geeks would consider an early-adopter, but I'll let this one pass (unless the chrome developers come up with better iterations real fast).
- crap. according to the weather chnl - there’s an ominous looking big red blob headed towards NC. #
- Chrome made the WSJ - Walt Mossberg compares it with IE8. I think the first fatality is going to be Safari, then Firefox, then maybe IE #
- @davidgs - Chrome needs some buffing for sure - but I think they’ve made the big UI changes pretty effectively. #
- @davidgs - getting it out into the wild will improve the UE / UI #
NBC yesterday released Season 4 of "The Office" on DVD
Reitman says that the Second Life scenes scared him the most, given that you couldn't actually animate the scenes - they had to be acted out by people running the characters. Though what we delivered to Reitman were finished QuickTime files, we had the sense that he thought he was watching the action in real time; I think this is confirmed in his commentary.
He also expressed concern about how to convey the written script - Jim is a guy with a guitar from Philly who is a sportswriter - into Second Life in just a few seconds. I think we got that one. 
The deleted scenes include a great paintball fight and a funny reveal in Dwight's apartment.
The whole episode as shot ran quite long and was edited for time, so I'm glad these scenes are now available.
If you have been following my posts about the feud within the Nevada Republican party you know that two different groups selected delegate to the Republican National convention. It was left up to the national party credentials committee to decide which delegates to seat.
One group of delegates was selected by the party insiders. After the insiders lost control of the state convention they ended the convention and later had the central committee name the delegates privately.
The other group of delegates was elected at a second convention that was primarily made up of Ron Paul supporters. When the insiders blocked their efforts to elect Ron Paul delegates at the original state convention they held their own convention and elected their own set of delegates.
So the decision of which delegates to seat was left to be decided by the credentials committee which met in private last Saturday.
According to the Reno Gazette Journal:
"Ultimately, a national contest committee rejected both delegations and
named a compromise slate that included four Paul supporters and 27
delegates originally appointed by the party.
In its report, the
contest committee slammed the state party’s “ineptness” in mishandling
the delegate election that left out the “grass-roots”.
“The committee finds the state party’s delegate selection process flawed, inadequate and unacceptable,” the report said."
"Nevada Chairwoman Sue Lowden defended the state party............
But she challenged the idea that "nine people on a committee" had the standing to judge the party "inept."
"It's unfortunate they would use that particular word, and I've been assured they will make it up to us," she said."
It will be interesting how this soap opera impacts the way Nevada Republicans vote in November. I used to think it would make them stay home but I have come to the conclusion that it will be old news by then and they will come out and vote for the McCain- Palin ticket.
In any case it has been entertaining to watch. I certainly have found my first introduction to party politics educational.
Red Hat’s Spacewalk (the upstream OSS project for RHN Satellite) seems to be doing pretty well - they have a very active mailing list and are already getting external contributions. Mat Asay casts his perspective over on c-net.
Talking of growing communities - interest in JBoss in China is really picking up - there’s a new site dedicated to JBoss - Kava which contains translations of many JBoss related blogs and articles you’d find in North America and Europe.
GNU is twenty five years old this month - and Stephen Fry (English comedian, author, actor, columnist and tech. blogger) has a short video celebrating the event and introducing free software. btw. his podcasts are pretty good as well; if you’re a Stephen Fry fan and enjoy a light-hearted perspective on technology.
This week the Web is aflutter with the launch of Google’s browser - Chrome. Just for the record - I don’t think that Microsoft will win this browser war - give it 3-5 years and IE users will be in the minority - they’ve failed to innovate at the pace of the competition (Firefox) and haven’t established a Mobile Web foothold; and their desktop monopoly is finally being challenged (by OS/X, Linux and the mobile web). The thing is - IE won’t be the only victim in this war - other’s will get caught in the cross-fire - I think Safari will go down pretty quickly - probably within a year of Chrome being ported to the iPhone. Firefox (the only browser I’ve used for as long as I can remember) will be next. That bothers me - but only a little - that’s techology evolution - survival of the fittest (despite illegal monopolies). I’m happy for *any* free, multi-platform alternative to IE.
Finally, I think I pissed off a few ex-colleagues at Sun with my recent post. Thing is, I’m right. If you thought my post was overly critical (or wrong) - read this analysis on Forbes.com and try and argue against the fundamental arithmetic. It’s worth repeating my position - I’m not saying that Sun’s OSS efforts are wasted - I’m just saying they won’t save Sun. The projects and the people who’ve pushed them so hard will continue to flourish long after Sun has been dismantled and sold off.
About
A collection of blog postings from Sun's Alumni. If you are an alum and want to be included, then register.
Formats
Subscriptions
/devices/pseudo/bitbucket@0:bitbucket- A Ham Sandwich
- Adrian Cockcroft's Blog
- All things bright and distributed
- An Englishman in Dubai
- Are we there yet ?
- Ashish's thoughts
- BillSaysThis Weblog
- Blogoslovi
- Catherine Helzerman's Odd Bits
- Clear Night Sky - Digital Marketing, Rational and Effective
- Clique Communications
- CoolBoy's Weblog
- Dark Side of the Moon
- Echos of my mind
- Ecuador Adventure Travel Guide and Travel Blog
- Geoff Arnold
- Grids, Utilities & Distributed Computing
- In the Bike Lane
- Intentional | Audio Identity Blog
- JD Tangney & Associates
- John's Blog
- Kernel Junkie
- Kiran Garimella's BPM Blog
- Kreativity Personified
- Livingston Montana Art & Arts Resource, Blog, Directory, Events
- Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia
- Marion's Blog
- Musings from the Coast
- Neal Gafter's blog
- Points East
- Rich Sharples' Blog
- Rob's Weblog
- Sex, Drugs & Unix
- Surinder's baaalooog
- The Music of Time
- The Weblog of Peter Ahé
- This Child's Life
- Zen Garden
- brainstorms [next bit]
- khb's blog
- reEngineering Antonio
- shingoy’s Blog 2.0
- thoughts @ /dev/noll ??