Yesterday the Linux Mint people announced that the RC of Linux Mint 17, called "Qiana" because not all that many women's names start with "Q" and end with "A", is available. Heck with the RC, updates will turn it official soon enough, so I installed it on a partition on my laptop that previously housed a prior version of Mint. Version 13, I believe, because I keep about four earlier versions of Mint on my laptop for no other reason than because I can. There's also an installation of Windows 7, but it has decided it's no longer going to boot so it really doesn't count.

Anyway it took about 2-3 hours, which was really a fresh install. I keep all my data files on a partition separate from the programs so I can just pave a partition, install the newest version, and add any additional programs I need to do the stuff I like to do. In this case that included Flash. For some reason the Flash player wouldn't admit to its own existence on Mint 17, even though apt said it was installed. Five minutes' work and I was able to work the puzzles I like to do, pretending they keep my mind sharp.

Then, since Mint is based on Ubuntu, "Qiana" is a rebranding of Ubuntu 14.04 (Trusty Tahr) with a different user interface. Since Ubuntu trusty has been out for about a month and it's a long-term release that will be supported for several years, I went ahead and installed it, but I haven't decided yet whether I will keep it until the next long=term release in 2016 or whether I'll just update every six months with the interim Ubuntu/Mint releases.

Since trusty has been out for a month now and looks like the rough edges have been smoothed, I went ahead and put Xubuntu 14.04LTS on my desktop server. It seems to be working just fine as well, apart from the same Flash issue I saw in Mint.

So what else have I been doing today? Napping. Listening to some Internet streams Snacking. Napping some more. And counting my many, many blessings that I've been back to work for two weeks and will be going back for a third on Monday.

Speaking of which, I brought my laptop home with me yesterday but I haven't unpacked it yet. I don't have anything I have to do. I just brought it home to test out work's VPN. Maybe I'll just do that on Starbucks on Monday.

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Today is Mother's Day, and in reading through a bunch of my posts from last year I found the one I put up exactly 364 days ago for Mother's Day 2013. I don't really have anything to add to that, so I'll just put up a link to it here. (If you're reading this on LJ, it'll point you to the Dreamwidth version. Actually it'll do that if you're reading this on Dreamwidth too.)

So Happy Mother's Day again.

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When I was a kid we had a Peanuts coffee-table anthology that I enjoyed reading, even when I didn't always get the jokes. I distinctly remember one story line where, after going crazy for a week trying to find an overdue library book, Charlie Brown finds it in the refrigerator. He goes off celebrating down the hall, prompting Schroder to remark, "There's nothing quite like the feeling of being let off the hook."

I know exactly how he feels.

About two weeks ago I was this close (holds his index finger and thumb about a millimeter apart) to having to make some extremely unpleasant choices stemming from my prolonged inability to find a job. That day I got an email from a recruiter in Florida. Usually I ignore those because many of them seem to think I live somewhere near the Washington on the east coast, or that I'd be interested in leaving Seattle to go work a three-month contract doing Java development in South Carolina (wrong, wrong and wrong), or some such thing, but this guy worked for a company I'd had an excellent contracting experience with before, and the job description sounded like something I both could handle and enjoy, so I pinged him back and asked him to tell me more.

After a brief phone conversation, on Monday he sent me a link to a questionnaire designed to assess my skill with computer concepts in general and Linux in particular. He said there'd be about 30 questions and it'd take a couple of hours. OK, I enjoy doing that sort of thing, so I started and answered the first question . . . and the next . . . and the next . . . and the questions just kept coming and coming, and for the most part I kept answering them and kept answering them. Four hours later I had provided answers to 55 of 59 questions, everything from "How do you list the files and folders in the current directory, including hidden ones?" (very easy) to "Have you ever compiled your own Linux kernel? What are the steps to do so? Why would you do it?" (moderately technical). I sent the questionnaire off and went back to job hunting.

This was on Monday afternoon. That evening the recruiter called me, told me the client had been impressed both with my answers and the way I answered them (conversational yet in some depth, and indicating I had had experience with the topics rather than just reading about them), and wanted to know if I could meet him for a face-to-face interview the next day.

Ummmm . . . yeah.

So my daughter drove me to Redmond and hung out at the library there while I met with the client. We hit it off well and the next day I had a job offer. I just finished my first week of work, and I am very, very happy.

Want to know how happy I am? A couple of weeks ago the good people at VCon invited me to be a panelist this year. I'm glad they did, because for a couple of years I've had to decline for budgetary reasons (couldn't afford to go) and I was afraid they'd think I'd gafiated or was mad at them and wouldn't invite me back. So since I was still unemployed at the time, I told them I'd be glad to attend if I could afford to, and would know more as we approached October.

I just reserved a hotel room for VCon. That's how happy I am.

I am so happy to look forward to leaving the SNAP benefits (food stamps) behind for others who will need them more than I will.

I am so happy that I'll be able to spend $10 to buy a fellow filker's CD. Actually, I'm happy I can consider paying $10 to buy a CD without worrying about whether I should keep that money for bus fare.

But above all I am happy that finally someone, somewhere, has decided my skills and experience are valuable and has said so, both monetarily and verbally. I am happy that I'm not being forced into retirement with no assets to speak of, because I know what lies at the end of that road, and I'm not ready for that yet.

Did I mention I work less than five minutes away from a Coldstone Creamery? (Yeah, I know, I have no business stopping there very often, either calorie-wise or money-wise. But when my first paycheck comes, I'm gonna splurge just a little. Maybe a milk shake.)

Did I mention that I wrote a new song not long ago? It's only a first draft and needs major revision, but it's the first one in over six months.

Did I mention that my lead told me I was doing well so far and I wowed him with a script I wrote that did an inventory of some of the systems we monitor? That might be the best part of all.

OK, enough of that. I'm going to bed with a smile on my face.

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Fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series may recognize that phrase.

Granny Weatherwax, a powerful witch, has the ability to Borrow. She can move her consciousness into the body of an animal and see the world through its eyes, literally and figuratively. She hears what it hears, feels what it feels. She even once did this with a swarm of bees.

Borrowing, however, has its side effects. One fairly obvious one is that her conscious functions are out there soaring through the air or hunting for nuts, so when she Borrows the only things her body does are autonomous functions like breathing and heartbeat. She can't move, and I gather that her breathing is shallow enough that there's some question about whether she's still alive. So, the last thing she does when she gets ready to Borrow is to put a hand-lettered sign across her chest that reads I ATEN'T DED. Just in case anyone comes by and thinks otherwise.

Well, I aten't ded, but I haven't been around for a while. In fact it would be kind of hard for me to argue that I haven't dropped out of filk, even though I don't feel like I have. In 2012 I attended four or five filk and SF cons, including my Interfilk gig in San Diego. Last year? One. And I am in danger of not being able to go to that one this year.

The problem is simple. 2013 was a disastrous year for me financially. I only had work five months out of the year. I've had to strain my credit to the breaking point. So far I've managed to stay in my house, feed the family and pay the bills, and thanks to the ACA I have the medications I need to function properly. but it's a near thing and while the wolf isn't quite at the door yet, I can see him coming down the track. At this point conventions are a luxury I simply can't afford.

I do hope to get back to work soon. There's a market out there for people with my skill set, and I'm doing my best to create my own market. But it's tough. Think positive thoughts for me, and I hope to have better news soon.

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I suspect I've gone a bit overboard in installing apps on my new phone. At least I'm occasionally getting messages saying I have "insufficient storage" to download and install an update. Of course the message helpfully doesn't tell me what directory or item has insufficient storage so I can go fix the problem, and I am left to various spells and incantations like "clear all of your caches" (fortunately there's an app for that).

I don't suppose I strictly need three chromatic tuners, after all, especially since I really like one of them. Pitchlab was very easy to set up for my banjo and even has several alternate tunings besides the standard gDGBD. Once running it displays five lines representing the strings, and in the background is an annulus that reminds me a little of the Stargate. If a string you are tuning is off by a considerable margin you'll see a bowed line above or underneath the representation of the relevant string with a message, "TUNE UP" or "TUNE DOWN." Once you start getting close the bowed line superimposes itself on the string line and dots start rotating on the annulus. When the rotation stops you see a message that says "IN TUNE" and you're ready to go to the next string.

This beats the snot out of the Snark tuner I clip to my peghead. Not that I think the Snark tuner is bad (it's actually quite good) but I've broken at least one and lost another, I forget to take it off the peghead, my grandson decides to play with it and run down the battery, and on and on. I tend to always have my phone with me, and try to keep it charged, so access to it isn't a problem.

So last night once I got the banjo tuned and had run through a song or two, I decided to try an experiment. The banjo, like the violin and unlike the guitar, has an adjustable bridge. Unlike the violin, it also has frets. That means that due to the physics of how strings make sound, you have to position the bridge close to twice the distance between the nut and the 12th fret for the frets to sound the right notes as you go up the neck. Exactly how close is more art than science; you have to fiddle around and adjust to get it right.

The physics of how the strings produce sound also mean that, due to the tension of the strings on the bridge and the thickness of the strings, the point at which a bridge should be in order to produce an octave at the 12th fret is slightly different for each string. There is a type of bridge called a "compensating bridge" that is designed to compensate for this differential, and that's the kind I have. (I also have a standard, non-compensating bridge somewhere in my banjo junkbox.) Since Pitchlab was working so well to tune the banjo with open strings, I decided to see how well the compensating bridge compensated.

The results were surprising to say the least. The third string came out right on pitch, an octave above the open string, but Pitchlab said the first, second and fifth strings were too high, and the fourth string was too low. Now comes the guesswork. Is the bridge really that far out of adjustment? Did I put it on backwards? Would the straight bridge work better?

Or is Pitchlab just blowing smoke and telling me that the strings are in the wrong octave?

I said at the beginning that maybe I didn't need three different chromatic tuners, but I suppose I should try using them to tune up and check the bridge to see what they say. But if I do, how will I know which of them if any is right?

Maybe I should just get a pitch pipe and tune the darn thing by ear.

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I do a lot of job hunting, so it's only prudent to belong to LinkedIn. I get to see what my friends are up to career-wise, I can keep track of what recruiters are looking for, and occasionally they have some decent career advice. I also belong to a couple of LinkedIn forums in areas that I'm either interested in (Perl, Science Fiction) or want to get more involved with (Green Energy).

LinkedIn has a "Skills and Expertise" section where you can post your skill set. Other users can then "endorse" you for those skills. This isn't limited to technology. You could claim skill at Thai cooking if you wanted to, or public speaking, or any of a host of other skills. (If you're on LinkedIn, you already know this. If you're not, sorry for the boring exposition.) When I first joined and set up my profile I added all of the technical skills I could think of that I had picked up in in mumbledy-three years of working with personal computers, including over a decade with Linux. In addition to my m4d c0mpVt3r sk1llz I added "Singer/Songwriter at Independent Musician" as a second, ongoing job title and plugged in a few skills related to that aspect of my life.

I'm always pleased when someone endorses me, but recently I got two endorsements that just left me tickled pink. Dara Korra'ti, who's been a friend for several years and who I've worked with at most of the last few Norwescons, endorsed me for Linux and banjo.

Then, just recently, I got an email telling me, "Alexander James has endorsed you!" That caught me by surprise. I hadn't thought of Alex Adams as the type to spend much time on LinkedIn, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. After all, I listed my "Singer/Songwriter" information in case anyone wanted to contact me about doing a set.

So I logged in to LinkedIn, and got a double surprise.

First, Alex also endorsed me for Linux. We've talked a few times at cons and I don't remember either of us ever mentioning Linux, but hey, maybe that's an indication that he reads my posts.

Second, he endorsed me for songwriting.

Now let that sink in for a minute. Alexander James Adams, who is responsible for songs like "Fresh Hops And Hemp," "Churn Down Columbia," "Creature Of The Wood" and of course "March of Cambreadth" – and too many other songs to list – endorsed me for songwriting.

I can't tell you how incredibly jazzed that makes me. It's like Guy Fieri telling people I know how to cook a burger. It's like Bill Nye endorsing my knowledge of physics. It's . . .

It's totally awesome, that's what it is.

Somewhere in the back of my head I know I can write songs, and once in a while one escapes that's pretty darn good. But that part of the back of my head still takes a back seat to the part of my head that's excited to hang out with so many talented people who are so good at what they do, and that I get included in that circle from time to time.

It's enough to make a fellow pronoid, I tell ya.

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If you go to the Bing front page today (and you should because the picture is great), one of the quotes they list is from Oprah, who says, "Biology is the least of what makes one a mother." I have to agree. My wife and daughter are both mother to three of our grandkids just as much as their birth mothers are. Maybe more. Happy Mother's Day, Sharleen and Tina.

And happy Mothers' Day to all of you mothers out there. The ones who take on foster children who would otherwise be lost in the system. The ones who gladly shoulder the burden of raising grandkids or nieces and nephews for whatever reason. The ones who sit outside at a Starbucks watching the crowd go by and wondering, is that the child I had to give up for adoption when I was too young to handle motherhood? And yes, to those dads who are mother to their kids as well because their wife is no longer there. And of course to all the traditional mothers who are doing the best they can with the tools they have at hand to raise kids that are happy, healthy and well-adjusted.

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When I first got a Windows Phone 7 right after they came out I did what every new phone owner does and set out to customize it. There weren't all that many apps available, but one that had been ported over from either Android or iOS was simply called "Backgrounds" by Stylem Media. It was (still is) an ad-sponsored app that presented possible backgrounds for your phone. Most are pretty but mundane, some are funny, some are spectacular. As I was leafing through the collection and trying a few out, this one caught my eye:



I never got past that. It was so perfect. I made it my lock screen wallpaper and there it stayed for over two years.

In setting up my new Android phone I of course installed Backgrounds in the hope of finding it again. I still haven't found it there (although they do still have some very nice backgrounds and it's fun scrolling through them), but a quick Bing image search found the penguin with the banjo out in the wild. It is now in its place of honor on my phone's lock screen, and while all might not be right with the world, that little portion of it certainly is.

The only minor drawback is that I have a message that scrolls across my lock screen, telling anyone who happens to pick up the phone if I've left it behind in a lavatory or something similar: "If you find me please call my owner's wife at (206) xxx-xxxx". The message is white text against the off-wite background of the picture and a bit hard to read, but not so much that it becomes useless. I'm going to see if I can change the color of the text, but it's not a huge issue.

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I was barely aware of Google Voice before yesterday when my sister told me she was using it. It's a service that assigns you a telephone number that in theory will ring through to any set of phones you assign to it. So, I call her Google Voice number and it rings through to her cell phone and her house phone. There are also a bunch of other cool services like caller ID and call blocking. Nifty.

So, I decided to check it out, since I already have a Google account that I'm using for a buncha other things. I go to the Voice web page, answer a bunch of nosy questions, and it offers to either port my existing number, or let me choose a phone number by area code, or zip, or location, or by searching for a word.

Fair enough. I want to keep the cell number I have now, so let's give searching a try, since that is after all supposed to be Google's strength. Give me a 206 (Seattle metro) number, I request.

"No results returned for this search."

OK, how about Seattle?

"No results returned for this search."

Oof. Um, King County?

"No results again, fool."

What about Washington?

That produced results; unfortunately they were all for the other Washington.

Let's search for a word then. How about "Creede"? Nope.

Wait a minute. What about . . . "banjo"?

All right. Now we're getting somewhere. Voice returned a set of five numbers, all of which were of the form 50B-ANJ-Oxxx. Not really what I wanted. I was more looking for something of the form (xxx) xxB-ANJO.

So, on to the next page . . . and I hit pay dirt. The mother lode. Option number three, a phone number in the greater Los Angeles area code, is a keeper. I need to get it on business cards and pass it around to all my friends:

The world can now reach me by dialing 3-2345-BANJO.

(OK, that's really 323-452-2656, but I'm never going to remember that, and neither are you, and neither is anyone else.)

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So, after all the excitement of the weekend about transferring files, this morning I get to work, plug the phone into the Windows machine and up comes the file system in Explorer. I can move files, copy files, delete files, pretty much anything I would want to do. I look at the phone and it's just looking back at me like, "What??"

Let's see what happens after the next reboot.

Oh, and a podcast pro tip: Unless you have a truly unlimited data plan, don't blindly set a bunch of podcast feeds to update while connected to your provider's network. I managed to pull down over 800 megs of data somehow on Thursday, which is going to cost me a few dollars. It's not going to break the bank or anything, but it's still a dumb rookie mistake. I now have the podcast app set only to update when it's connected to a power source, since if I have a power source I'm likely to have a wi-fi connection, and I don't get dinged for using wi-fi connections.

And now for something completely different: It's amazing the things you remember. For instance, from 1972 I can't remember the name of the German professor who would have failed me in a 20th-century German literature class if he hadn't been going on sabbatical so he couldn't force me to retake the class. I can't remember the name of the girl I went on a double date with to a basketball game who scowled through the entire game, never said a word and didn't even say goodbye afterward. (Actually that one might be just as well.) I don't remember how the football team did. I don't remember the name of the kid in the next room over who played bluegrass banjo, although I remember he was from Lompoc, California.

But I remember this:



I found it on YouTube this morning and my Monday immediately improved. Sent my sister the link and she told me it brightened her day right up too. Maybe it'll do the same for you!

And yes, they really did have commercials like that back in the day. Dumb!

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