There’s a poignant and personal lesson in how the rest of the world feels out there for me today.

I was talking to havner, the release manager for the PLD GNU/Linux distro today. He’s describing life as he sees it, from the point of view of a computer geek in Warsaw. It started out as reminiscing (for me) over old types of computers not found around much, and for him, talking of trying to find parts that aren’t available to him easily so he can make these machines run.

His dream for some spare cash, like mine, is to get an Apple Powerbook. There’s one small difference. For him, it’s nine months wages. For me, it’s more or less one.

So today is a lesson in human contact online. It is possible to get to know people online, and through a language barrier too. Some things are universal. We both like making things work well, and things that really shouldn’t be able to work work anyway. We both like astronomy. His father likes Westerns. I run an ISP. He’s a college student. We’re close to the same age. I think we talked for four hours, keeping him up ‘til dawn.

This isn’t a ramble with a point, really. It’s just nice to really get to know people you work on things with.

GNOME should start adopting some of the Zeroconf, and make good use of it.

My task today was using x11vnc and x2vnc to link my two screens together. I’m logged in as the same user on both machines. They have some prior notion of each other. I should be able to just click a “link” button, then click the name of the other computer, and arrange as I like. They should authenticate each other — It’s not that hard. In a large network environment, it could be Kerberos to do that job. In a more Zeroconf setting, they can just use a magic cookie shared key, and a dialog box asking my permission on the other machine.

I can think of a thousand other uses, from file-sharing ala MacOS, to auto-synching my history and bookmarks.

Advertising on the internet is paid for per click. When you click an ad, the advertiser pays (often indirectly) the site the ad was on some amount of money. For a lot of Google ads, that’s 50¢ or more. I’ve seen some ads go for as much as $2.

So, if you’re reading something respectable, and see a worthless ad, click it. Cost the advertiser a half coin or so, and make a donation to a site you like to read in the process, all at no cost to you.

Talked to Jessica. I even used the real phone. That was nice.

I don’t think I’d do particularly well as a teacher in her place. I have a low tolerance for intellectual sloth. Sounds like she’s doing well, which makes me happy.

I’m trying to start work on a webmail system that doesn’t suck. I’ve had a lot of ideas for what it should and shouldn’t do, and it’s time to put my code where my mouth is.

As a nice confirmation of some of my ideas, I got to see some in practice, since FoolsRun managed to get me a GMail account.

Some things that the GNOME session manager should make easy:

• Manage starting x11vnc for me
• Keep gossip running.
• Respawn a crashed application if okayed by the user, and automatically (perhaps with delay) if the app should auto-respawn.
• Allow me to gracefully log out, and return as I left my desktop as much as possible.
• Allow me to log in with a clean state.

To top it off, Czeslaw Miłosz died

It’s gone.

Tonight, the inventory’s done. The few boxes of Mom’s things are sitting on the checkout counter, ready to be carried home. I went over to get a jar of lemonade, and I forgot my keys. I went to the house to get a spare from mom, and I realized that this is what it’s going to be like. The store’s closed now. Go away now. It’s not yours now. If you want something, we’ll be open in the morning, now. Goodnight, now.

Carrie proposed to me in the back room there. We lived in the back room when we first arrived in Ridgway, our little stove and a cot in there. Tonight we just held each other and cried. The familiar jingle of juice-jars rattled as we walked down the aisle to the back. My mom’s neat handwriting on index cards hanging from the shelves. “Suntime is Fun time. Remember the sunscreen” reads a sign. “Cucumbers” reads another. “Celery”, “Colorado Peaches”, “Fuji”, “Braeburn”, “Gala”, “Pink Lady”. It seems like a fantasy land, a little oasis of simplicity and honesty. The prices were always reasonable, just enough to get by. She wasn’t in it to get rich.

I feel like I’m losing the best parts of my mother. It’s there that I saw her smile, always friendly to everyone who walked in. Her neat arrangements, everything orderly and pleasant and nice.

I feel betrayed.

One for the ooold campers.

What do you call the spawn of Satan that’s quite the image of hir father?

Solon-oid

Badump, ching!

Waffles.

Last night, Carrie and I biked 20 miles for pizza and beer. It was great. Our friends Ethan and Eric make pizza every other week, and we all come hang out and contribute.

My wrists are killing me from biking that far with no grips on my handlebars. Oh, well. I’ll heal.

Score.

Yesterday, Carrie and I found H. K. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford University press, 1950 printing) in good condition. There was another copy of The Elements of Style (revised edition). The former is excellent, with some very brief and direct discourse on several hundred topics. It is not too dated. Among its words are such gems as “of shares with another word of the same length, as, the evil glory of being accessory to more crimes against grammar than any other.”

Quite the find, I’d say.

Holey <expletive/>, Kim gives good mix.

Word-maven Vruba lambasts meaningful probe to quash evil utilization of grammar. Calls for bolstering the bastion of prescriptive grammar. Has issues with attempts to revamp clash of values.

Good article on how to improve GUI and command-line integration.

There’s a lot of shit going down this month. Wait it out if you can.</cryptic>