Rising from the ashes

It may or may not be a sheer coincidence — if you even believe in this sort of thing — that the symbol in the HeliOS Solutions logo is a phoenix, because we at HeliOS Solutions West may be rising from the ashes. And that also speaks for the Tux Project and any other entity that graces my office with its presence.

The landlord seems to be all over this crisis, and if I’m to take him at his word, he may have the office inhabitable by the first of the month, meaning I can move back into the office in time for — oh, I don’t know — a Christmas party masquerading as an installfest, or vice versa.

More news as developments occur, as they say.

(Larry Cafiero, editor/publisher of Open Source and Free Software Reporter, is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Burned out

No, that’s not a 420 reference — unfortunately last Thursday, there was a fire at the Felton Trading Post, where my office is located. The fire ripped through the front of the story, wiping out most of Kelly’s and Melanie’s inventory, but left my office and the back of the store unscathed (save for a smoky scent reminiscent of a barbeque that many of the machines now have).

With no power for the next two weeks, at the least, I had to move out and back into my home. And for those of you who have been keeping score at home, I rented office space because having seven computers in the living room was a bit cramped, and my better half Kyoko, who is showing annoyance after being a paragon of patience (she married me, right?), is not exactly pleased.

Now I’m looking for new space, but first since it’s Veterans Day — thank you to all those who serve our nation, by the way — the family is going to take a drive down to Monterey for a visit to the aquarium.

(Larry Cafiero, editor/publisher of Open Source and Free Software Reporter, is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)

Is it just me . . .?

A lot of times we see or hear things and wonder whether we’re the only ones who get the peculiarity or irony in what has revealed itself.

Like:

Is it just me, or has Ubuntu 7.10 made a significant number of people hit a proverbial “speed bump” in this latest upgrade? The reason I ask — my “upgrade” resulted in getting only a shell that I had never seen before, and as a result I had to revert to reinstalling the prior version of Xubuntu running on this machine — is because others who had done the upgrade had significant problems with their machines shortly afterward (many of whom, of course, righted their machines after a significant amount of adjustments, but is that how upgrades are supposed to work?). Don’t get me wrong: I like all the flavors of Ubuntu, even Kubuntu, but rather than drinking the Kool-Aid, you have to bring this stuff up when it happens for the good of the distro.

Is it just me, or do the these two people deserve more credit than they’re often given: Pamela Jones of Groklaw, and Ken Starks of HeliOS Solutions (also the blogger known as “helios“)? The former has earned my unwavering respect for doing what those in the both the legal and journalistic professions, by and large, have stopped doing; i.e., stopped doing the right thing in their professions. The latter — who as I’ve blogged in the past I have joined in a business venture — is tireless fighter for FOSS in the face of health issues that would floor the strongest of us.

Is it me, or is blogging, as I perceive it, harder than it looks?

(Larry Cafiero, editor/publisher of Open Source and Free Software Reporter, is an associate member of the Free Software Foundation.)