Monday, February 11, 2013

What's cool? Happy birthday to my father!

When I was in my 20s, I worked on computer software to translate from one language to another. It was pretty fun stuff I thought, very hard to show you now how much fun it was as there's nothing left of it—and no pictures. Besides, it didn't really ever work.

But when my father was in his 20s, he was an electrical engineer and worked at the General Dynamics Corporation in San Diego with other engineers to build this rocket. This is a picture of it taking astronaut John Glenn, who passed away last year, into the first manned orbit by an American (1962).

I probably don't need to point out which is a cooler thing to have done in one's 20s.

Friday, February 1, 2013

Fire the Ubuntu staff!

Here's an idea: Why don't we just fire the entire Ubuntu staff? That way, they could go off to the Macintosh feeling guilt-free. It's a good home and a stable environment unlike the pig's breakfast they've made of Ubuntu Linux.

Or, we could be lenient. We could administer an oath to those who wish to remain:

"I hearby swear that I will do my best to disentangle Ubuntu from any notion of Unity, restore Gnome goodness, return Ubuntu to stability and resist with my very life, if necessary, any return to anything approximating Unity. I will restore to full working status and option all software that worked prior to Ubuntu Oneiric.

"I recognize that Ubuntu is a desktop platform used by many, but most especially, by software engineers whose delight is accomplishing productive work with the minimum of intrusion by experimental fantasies in unproven and cumbersome graphical user interfaces.

"I will furthermore return the window title bar controls to the right side leaving their relocation on the left side merely as an option and I will resist all further 'Macintosh wanna-be inspiration or temptation'.

"So swear I for myself and for all my descendants."

Otherwise, it's off to Mint for me.