FreeBSDGirl

blog.freebsd.org

2008-08-06T07:31:23Z

I may have mentioned before that I'm working on a website for blog.freebsd.org. I've got some ideas for what to put on it, but as most of my readers are FreeBSD users, I'd like to know what would y'all like to see? Some ideas I've had so far are:

Ongoing projects such as drivers that you normally have to dig down in Google to find some perforce repo with a status page that may or may not be up to date.
Security advisories.
New releases and details of all the changes being made - something a bit more in depth than the CHANGES file.

Have any other ideas? Comment and let me know!

DNS for girls.

2008-07-23T19:27:30Z

Igor was having problems understanding what a root nameserver did, so I gave him this explanation. I am proud of this.

freebsdgirl: think of them like a directory service at the mall.
freebsdgirl: you want to know if sephora has chanel no 5 perfume, so you go to the mall, look at the directory service to find out where sephora is, and then you walk to sephora and ask them directly if they have chanel no 5.

Pink Jeweled Cat-5

2008-07-17T22:30:02Z

I'm going to be moving the site over to a new server soon. Plans are being made for blog.freebsd.org, as well. More about that (and the company that's going to be hosting me and blog.freebsd.org) in a bit. It's pager week for me at IronPort, so I'm tired and busy.

ipmitool for OSX

2008-07-15T20:24:26Z

The ipmitool that comes by default with OSX sucks. I needed to use ipmitool for work, and I couldn't find any OSX ipmitool packages anywhere, so I rolled my own. If anyone else is interested, I have a copy of it here. gunzip it, copy it to /usr/local/bin, and move your /usr/bin/ipmitool elsewhere as /usr/bin is before /usr/local/bin in $PATH by default. Enjoy.

Oh, yeah. I've got a mean face.

2008-07-09T04:30:06Z

Santa Clara is the armpit of the sfbay area. I'm sorry if I'm offending anyone that lives there, but it really is. It's not the ghetto, I mean, I'm from freaking Atlanta. California does not scare me. However, I fully expect some stupid hobo to try to rob me while I'm sitting in front of the AT&T store with my shiny MacBook Pro. As such, I have prepared. I have two (2!) Leathermen. I have the one that defended me from the last guy that tried to rob me, and a cute pink Leatherman Squirt S4. On the way home from work, I practiced my mean face. If someone shady comes up to me, I will grab my leatherman and look mean. I look pretty fierce, at least when I'm not wearing my glasses. I also figured out how to dial 911 on my phone really quickly, just in case. I will be twittering the entire experience. Hopefully I'm wrong, and it won't be nearly as entertaining as I'm expecting. Follow along as I brave the dark streets of Santa Clara.

iPhone on Friday!

2008-07-08T23:21:10Z

First off, I'd like to state that I am not an iTard. I haven't bought an Apple product in a while. However, my personal phone died a month or two ago, and I've been holding off on replacing it until the new iPhone came out. Screw HTC. That phone died on me twice. I'll be at the Santa Clara AT&T ass-early in the morning on Friday. If anyone wants to join me, let me know.

This is going to be my first time waiting in line for a product release. I'm charging all three of my MacBook Pro batteries and packing my EVDO card, some salt water taffy, and a blanket to sit on. Anyone else done this type of thing before? What should I expect? What should I bring?

Breakups are hard.

2008-07-08T00:00:54Z

Sometimes, I really hate technology. It's typical in a relationship that when it ends, you divide things up. Silverware, furniture, even friends (although we didn't really have to do that, since he had his friends and I have mine). How do you split up the internet, though?

Regardless of how much you might try, if you both go on the internet and tend to frequent the same sites, chances are you're going to run into each other, either unintentionally (facebook profile updates) or because your curiosity was overwhelming and you wanted to see what he was up to (okcupid journal).

Logically, I know we weren't right for each other. I didn't so much dump him as we both realized it was over at about the same time. As a person, I don't even think I like him that much. We don't have anything in common. Our goals are so different (as in, I have goals, and he doesn't). Our personalities clashed. If not for my stubbornness, it probably would have been over a long time ago, but once I've sunk my teeth into something, I give it my all, hoping things might work out. This has been my demise in more than one relationship that should have ended early. When I'm actively trying to make a relationship work, I see ending the relationship as a personal failure. I know it's not, but it's hard to get out of that mindset.

I don't know if I really miss him all that much, but I do miss his presence. When he is around, I wish he'd leave. When he's gone, I wish he'd visit. I've never in my life felt so contrary. I keep reminding myself that living without roommates is a new thing for me. I've never lived on my own, at least, not for all that long. It really is a huge adjustment. Most of the time, I really like it. Other times, I turn on the TV just so it won't be so quiet.

Things are weird between us now. I'm friends with almost all of my exes. I don't know how I manage that, but it's true. I think he's uncertain of how to do this, and he's been acting strange. I'm the first person he's been with that lasted over 3 months; we were together a year. He's not really friends with many of his exes. Actually, I only know of one. I'm kind of wondering if it's worth it.

Amazon's recommendation system...

2008-06-05T05:13:52Z

... is awesome.

I went to Canada and all I got was this lousy maple syrup.

2008-05-30T22:02:12Z

Holy crap. I keep meaning to update, but then I get distracted by any one of the million things happening in my life right now.

I attended the 2008 FreeBSD Developers Summit along with BSDCan in Ottawa, Canada. BSDCan is like Christmas for me. I love going, and I look forward to it all year. I get to see a lot of friends that I normally don't get to hang out with, and I miss them a lot. There was some awkwardness, however. A few years ago, I made a rule for myself that I would never, ever date someone affiliated with FreeBSD. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but I knew it would end badly if ever put into practice. Last year, I broke that rule. It was just a fling: nothing serious. He was at Dev Summit and BSDCan though, and it was tense trying to avoid him. Maybe I didn't end the relationship in the best way, but there's not much I can do about it now. I related this story to Leslie, adding my signature phrase "There is no sex at the BSDCan." She then busted out an awesome modified rendition of Chris Rock's "No Sex in the Champagne Room".

I met up with Leslie at BSDCan, which was a huge relief. When I stood up at Dev Summit and looked around the room, there was one other female, Diane Bruce. BSDCan itself usually isn't much better. You don't know the meaning of the term sausagefest until you've been to a BSD convention. When I showed up at BSDCan's opening ceremony, I saw Leslie sitting in the middle of the room. Yay! Another female. She introduced me to her friend, Emma. Very cool chick. We three girls hung out together most of the conference. As much as I love talking about FreeBSD with random people, I'm just a lot more comfortable hanging around girls, especially these girls. No one will ever refer to them as "such-and-such's girlfriend". As a female in tech, I've got to say that's one of the worst things I could be referred to as. Hello? I am not an accessory.

Now, on to the big announcements. I've officially joined the FreeBSD Marketing team. Yep, that's right. I'm now randi at freebsd dot org. Most of my friends know how much I've wanted to find my place in the project. It's been very important to me for a long time. I was so happy that I escaped back to my hotel room to jump up and down and squeal like a girl. Thank god no one saw that. I doubt that anyone else has quite reacted to joining the project like I did.

I've got a few projects in the works right now. Soon, I'll be setting up blog.freebsd.org. Sure, we've got release notes and such, but wouldn't it be great if we had a blog where we could pimp our accomplishments? Talk about what we're currently working on, projects recently completed. ZFS got like a one line mention in the release notes. That's a bunch of crap. How are people supposed to know about it? I know that not everyone bothers reading release notes. I'm even willing to admit that sometimes I don't bother reading the whole thing, either. I guess that's going to have to change, now.

I'm also helping plan MeetBSD California, where we will be celebrating FreeBSD's 15 year anniversary. Setting up a conference is challenging, especially on a tight budget. Know any companies that might be interested in helping sponsor us? Want to get on the mailing list for conference info? Drop me a line at the new email address.

Igor's moving out next weekend, so I'm busy packing all of his crap. I'm trying to prepare for living on my own, something that I haven't done in a very long time. I bought a pink toolset from Amazon, and I think I'm going to get a cat. Isn't that what single girls do? I also bought a PS3 last night. I'm not sure if I'm impressed by it or not. The game selection is a bit lacking. I picked up Heavenly Sword (chick with a sword, how can you go wrong there?), Uncharted, and Guitar Hero III. Any recommendations?

new glasses - i am supernerd.

2008-05-29T18:25:05Z

A message for Jack Thompson.

2008-04-30T18:00:20Z

Grand Theft Auto IV came out yesterday, and of course I bought it. I've always been a fan of the GTA series, although I never got into playing it. This was the first in the series that I could see myself wanting to play, and I was really excited to get home and get started. I didn't get all that far since I get home rather late at night (I work in San Bruno, live in Sunnyvale. You do the math), but I definitely see the appeal of the game.

It was obvious that this game was going to be controversial. It's not rocket surgery to draw this conclusion. Just check out the Ladies of Liberty City video. People are already talking about how horrible this game will be for our youth - how it promotes violence. Some fucktard stabbing some other dude in the neck while waiting in line to get this game just gives them more ammo. I doubt we're ever going to convince Jack Thompson that video games aren't the antichrist, but maybe I could find him another cause.

Remember those tickle-me-elmo dolls that came out a few years ago? There were many stories about adults - fine outstanding members of society, mind you, not the ghettoscum that's creating headlines about violence with GTA IV - being violent in their attempt to get a tickle-me-elmo for their kids. If a tickle-me-elmo can take a normally responsible, caring, loving parent and turn them into a foaming at the mouth, violent fucktard, then clearly we have a problem, Mr. Thompson. Sesame street is terrible for children! It's encouraging violence in their parents, their role models, and something must be done.

It's not supposed to be like this.

2008-04-13T17:02:37Z

For the past two days it's been sweltering in my apartment. I don't get the whole "We're in North California so we don't need air conditioning" thing. It's been in the mid 80's. The mid freaking 80's. This may make me sound like a wuss, but let me remind you, I've got servers in my living room. While it's only 85 outside, it stays well in the 90's in my apartment until the middle of the night when things finally start to cool off.

I think I'm going to buy one of those window unit air conditioner units. I live on the second story, and I've never installed one of these things before. I can already play this disaster out in my head. I'm going to try to put it in the window, and it's going to fall two stories to meet its demise on the asphalt. This will not be good times. I'm willing to admit that I'm a fairly clumsy person. I have my moments of grace, but they are few and far between. Installing a window AC unit will not be graceful, I can assure you.

Until I get around to doing this, some of the servers are getting powered off. Both incubus and trollop have already been shut down. I thought about shutting down succubus, but that's my NAT server. I *could* let our SMC cable modem do the NAT for us, but that just seems so... unprofessional. Lame. Pedestrian? Whatever. All of my servers act as great heaters in the winter (P4 supermicros) , but this isn't so convenient for summer time. Mother nature, hello? April is not summer. Make the heat go away.

For those of you that have shells on incubus/succubus, you probably won't be able to access them until I get this AC unit installed, which won't be until the end of May. I've got too many expenses before then (BSDCan, Baycon, Dell XPS). I have to go furniture shopping in a couple of months when Igor moves out. All I own is a computer desk and a bed. I don't have any idea where I'm supposed to buy furniture around here. I am not buying it from Ikea. I wish the west coast had Rooms To Go. They may have had furniture that I'd label as throwaway, but it's better than Ikea and they had a neat delivery service. Any suggestions for good furniture stores in the south bay that deliver?

Welcome to Silicon Valley. Life as you know it ends now.

2008-04-08T02:03:29Z

I was trying to explain why people should twitter to a group of geeks that don't live here, and I came to a sickening conclusion. I am turning into one of the Silicon Valley Borg. In light of this realization, here is my guide to becoming one of us (or rather, warning signs depending on how you see it).

Start reading Valleywag. It's a casual affair at first. You check it once every week or two. Maybe you only search for references to your employer. After a while, you add it to your RSS reader.
You start recognizing names. Names of people that no one cares about unless they also live in the valley. You may not have had a clue who Robert Scoble or iJustine was before, but now you're following them on...
Twitter. You can't adequately explain to anyone that doesn't use Twitter already why it's a good idea, but you can't help but create your own account. You start out only updating a few times from your web browser, but then you discover twhirl. Now you've got instant updates of Scoble, your friends, and...
Gizmodo, where you're scouring anything related to cell phones so you can figure out what's going to set you aside from all of the local iPhone wielding weenies. The iPhone is so trendy, it's untrendy. After all, you're watching Gizmodo and Valleywag for rumors as to when the 3G iPhone is going to be released. 60 days is what they are saying now. You're going to laugh at all the people with their 2G iPhones. Clearly, you will be superior as 2G is not nearly enough G's. You need those G's to send... uh... lots of text messages to update your twitter status! That is, until you start feeling dissatisfied with Twitter. Tweeting just isn't enough for you, anymore, so you create an account on...
Tumblr. You get confused about what you're supposed to be posting where, especially if you already have a blog entirely separate from all of this, so you try to post different content to each site until you run out of things to talk about entirely. In an attempt to drum up content that you think would be relevant to your valley peers, you sit on BART thinking about Mahalo (which, lets face it, no one really cares about), Yahoo!/Microsoft mergers, expensive escorts, and...
Facebook. As soon as you get home from your job which is probably at Google, since they seem to employ a good portion of the tech force here (let's hope you're not at Yahoo!), you start browsing jobs at Facebook, because you know it's the next big thing. You don't know how they are making money, but most people said the same of Google, too. How many people are driving around in expensive cars here due to getting on on the GOOG stock early on? Sadly, Google stock is starting to tank, so it's time to drop it like it's hot.
Update your twitter status, check to see if you have any new friends on Facebook, then go to Valleywag's happy hour. Pretend to recognize everyone there. Eventually, you will. That's when you should really start feeling scared. After enough time, you'll have forgotten that there is in fact a world outside of Silicon Valley. Don't feel bad - from what I remember, you won't be missing all that much.

I'll use lynx/links if I have to.

2008-04-08T00:10:50Z

I hate things that pop up, specifically on web pages. Not just pop-up advertising, but when you mouse over a link and then there's a little floating box that shows some "helpful" information, or maybe a miniaturized version of the page that is being linked to. It blocks the text I'm trying to read. I never click on anything in the floating box. I know how to open links in a new tab, thank you very much.

I'm an obsessive highlighter/clicker I click and drag and double click on random text as I read it. I don't know why. I hate this behavior in other people but I can't seem to stop myself from doing it. I'm noticing more and more blogs that actually do something when I double click on random text, like search for it. I hate those blogs. I never visit them again.

Is this the Web 2.0 that people keep telling me about, because it's really annoying and I want it to stop.

Good bye, stay-at-home girlfriend. Hello, Ironport.

2008-03-21T04:45:25Z

Now that I've grinded my cooking skill for the past 6 months, I'm ready to re-enter the workforce on Monday. I've accepted a position at IronPort, which means I'm a Cisco employee. It's a 100% FreeBSD position. Hooray to not selling out at a Linux job! :)