So, today was my first day at OpenLogic.  I'm sitting directly across from a colleague I've worked with before, Scott Nicholls... who also started today.  Scott and I shared the Situation Room at the last company we worked at.

(The quick explanation for that is that we were traveling on business together, and were flipping through channels on the TV in the hotel room, and one of the major news channels was covering something important that was occurring in the Situation Room.  So, obviously, the office we shared had to be given that name.)

This setup has a real Andy Bernard/Jim Halpert feel to it, with Scott constantly annoying me a la Andy annoying Jim.


All that aside, I'm pumped to be working here, and excited to immerse myself.  One cool thing that has given me renewed interest with PC's in general is the fact that I have switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux.  I made this switch between jobs, and hope to never look back.  (I say that, but chances are good that the family desktop pc will remain a Windows XP box.  1 - I don't want to convert MS Money records to GNU Cash and 2 - my wife uses software for her Speech Pathology job with a school that only runs on Windows.) I've sort of backed into this Linux world in an odd way, by getting used to a Unix-style terminal environment by running Cygwin on Windows for several years.

So, I'm basically an odd hybrid.  A pure Linux newbie, but can get around the terminal ok.  All in all though, I'm very pleased with how easy Ubuntu has been.  I installed it on a Dell Latitude D820 laptop, and everything just worked.  Beyond installing it, doing simple tasks in GNome has proved to be very intuitive.  One quick example of that was when I had the need to access some files on a Windows share today, I immediately thought "uh-oh... this is not gonna work, or at least not be easy".  Wrong... all I had to do was Places -> Connect to Server -> Select Windows Share as my Service Type and voila, connected.

To finish, I have to throw something technical up on the post.  Now, this won't be that earth shattering to people who are already Linux guru's out there, but it was cool to me, so maybe someone can get some use out of it.  From a terminal, try the following:

There will be no Linux Vista by ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn -- Imagine if, in the proprietary era, Microsoft launched a major Windows upgrade while its main rival stood still. That would be advantage Microsoft. Under the present system it may well be advantage Linux.

I used to have street cred.  I was a hardcore VIM user.  When I was still in college and new to Unix I would find some cheezy editor like pico and stick with that for coding.  Finally I ended up on an HP-UX box with nothing but vi.  When the sys-admin told me it'd take a few weeks for him to get around to installing an editor with training wheels (his version of 'go away kid') I decided to dive into vi.

The Linux kernel team is offering to write hardware drivers for any hardware company that gives them a spec or at least access to an engineer that can answer questions.  This is big news!  Kernel drivers have been a hot topic for a long time with issues that range from proprietary drivers (is that legal with a GPL kernel or not?) to just not having a driver that worked.  Anyone who's tried to get wireless working on their Linux laptop has probably run into this problem.  Often the drivers are written by users who really need the driver because they want to use the device on Linux but they don't have access to the hardware spec.   

• Arduino for the microcontroller
• Tamiya dual motor gearbox
• Pololu motor controller
• XBee Pro - (ZigBee) 2.4 GHz wireless comms

• 1 - forward (both motors forward)
• 2 - left
• 3 - right
• 4 - backup (both motors backward)
• 5 - stop

• 1f
• 2c
• 5a

• Nakoa and I talked through all the logic and in the process he learned some simple C syntax for if/then statements and loops. Yes, I helped a lot, but I always made sure he thought through it before we took the next step. I would guide him but it was through a socratic, questioning mode.
  For example, we had the motor controller connected to the gearbox motors on the bench. We had to implement the turning code. It's not immediately obvious to an 8 year old that in order to turn left, you would have to make the right wheel turn and left wheel stop (or go backwards.) After it dawned on him what would need to happen, we'd code it up together.

   

It’s been a rough winter so far here in Colorado.  Denver and the surrounding areas along the Front Range usually experience only occasional snowstorms and cold spells separated by mild temperatures and sunny days.  Not this year.  We’ve had record amounts of snow and days upon days of single-digit temperatures.  It was during the worst of this weather that we had to finalize all 2006 business. 

I've been at the Open Source Meets Business Congress this week in Nuremberg, Germany.  My talk about OpenLogic went very well, especially the Q&A session.

Right after the Apple Newton came out, I took a job demoing them in stores because I wanted one.  Not only did I want an Apple Newton but I really wanted to go to the weekend class where they showed you all the ins and outs.  Standing in Best Buys and Circuit City's wasn't the most exciting thing I ever did but I did really like playing with my Apple Newton.  (And as an aside, my friend who told me about the gig actually got to demo her Apple Newton to the former President Bush in a Best Buy.) 

I've decided to dress a little nicer at work lately.

I've had the opportunity to spend the last three days at the hospital with my 5 month old.  (He is going to be ok - He has Respiratory Syncytial Virus and we just have to make sure he's getting enough oxygen.)  Everyone kept saying, aren't you bored?  Do you want company?  Do you feel clausterphobic?  And Frank kept trying to get me to take breaks and go somewhere.  And I was quite comfortable.  Except for this nagging feeling that maybe I was supposed to be bored or uncomfortable or a nervous wreck.  But I didn't feel any of that.

I'll be speaking at the Women in Open Source Mini-Conference at SCALE next month.  The title of my talk is "You're a Girl!?!" ... and Other Reactions Women Encounter in Open Source Software:

Matt Asay announced to the world that Delta is using Red Hat Linux.  It's not something Delta told him - he observed the Red Hat logo on the screen on his airplane. 

OpenLogic frequently gets lumped into a category that has come to be known as "Open Source Stack Providers" by certain analysts and the press. 

I sometimes get asked by aspiring manages and leaders how to deal with firing someone. It is scary to them to think of causing that much pain and that much disruption in someone’s life, as it should be.

Kaj Arnö, MySQL's VP of Community, posted recently that MySQL is changing their licensing scheme from "GPLv2 or later" to "GPLv2". 

I often get asked "What open source software should I use?" and depending on who's asking it can mean one of two things.