Sunday, December 2, 2007

Work at a hospital? Don't get sick.

Just a short one this week. I have been sick most of the week. I work at a Medical Center where my Primary Care Physician works. I takes months to get an appointment with my PCP. Even the Acute Care clinic takes a few days to get squeezed in. The only advise I got was if it got worse to go to the CVS/MinuteClinic down the street. One would thing for employees that a hospital would have a better plan for taking care of sick staff.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

RedHat Vista

Okay, maybe this is not a fair title, maybe it should be MicroHat. I recently tried to renew my RHEL licenses on the RHN website. Five licenses needed to be renewed but the site would not allow me to renew all five at once but only one license at a time. Further review of the site showed a dizzying array of license options. Enough to compare with the options for Microsoft Vista. The options are confusing about what functions are included, what hardware is supported, and what support is included. Even calling their customer support about this I was handed off to a couple of people before being told call someone from sales to deal with the renewals. I did let them know how I felt.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day. Tomorrow the country will celebrate the holiday.
It is sometimes hard to consider myself a veteran. I served in the U.S. Army for over four years on active duty and in the reserves for another eight achieving the rank of Captain in the Air Defense Artillery. I never fought a battle or went to war. I spent a month in Korea evaluating the readiness and skills of our troops where the War still continues as does the longest cease fire/peace talks in history. I spent time in the Philippines where rebels were active but never came under fire. I worked with people who were part of Operation Urgent Fury in Grenada. I was in the reserves for Operation Just Cause and Operation Desert Storm (the first Gulf War). I had actually sent in my letter of resignation about a week prior to the invasion of Kuwait in a response to a get active or get out request. My resignation was finally granted in 1992.

As a child I remember my Dad being in Korea in the late 50's and in Viet Nam in the mid-60's. Do you remember when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989? I was there as a child in 1965 as they were putting some of the finishing touches on it. It is easy for me to think of my dad as a Veteran. Over eleven years of active duty and twenty plus years in the reserves. His dad was a veteran of World War II. It is much easier for me to think of them as Veterans than of myself.

Finally as I do so often on Veterans Day and Memorial Day I think of Major Frank King. You will not find him in a Google search or a listing in Wikipedia. He was my boss when I was stationed in Fort Irwin, CA as part of the Operations Group, Orange Team, Dragons as an Observer-Controller. Some men were assigned to Ft. Irwin because their career was on a rise and the assignment was considered a valuable experience and a step up the ladder. Others were assigned there because their assignments officer did not see the value in the experience or in the men being assigned there. It was the trash can where people went before leaving the service. Frank King was the former I was more or less in the latter category. But MAJ King treated everyone as a valuable member of the team and a person who would continue to greatness. He was a fine family man a stern but fair boss and good Christian. In the late Summer of 1984 after I had left Ft. Irwin and active duty to take a job as an engineer at General Dynamics I was told of Frank Kings death. A unit had rotated in for training in their brand new M1 Abrams tanks. The Orange Team worked in the Live Fire area where the soldiers used live ammunition (not blanks) and did fire and maneuver against pop up targets on the range. The M1s were out of control, MAJ King was driving around the new Commander of the Orange Team and both concurred that a cease fire and a talk to the commanders was in order. Frank picked up the microphone of the radio to call for a cease fire when he slumped over the steering wheel dead. After months of investigation it was determined that a stray round from a .50 cal. machine gun on an M1 tank had hit Frank in the back of the neck.
Major Frank King is buried in a little cemetery on the outskirts of Barstow, CA.

It is men like my Father, Grandfather, and Frank King that I think of as Veterans. And I thank them and all Veterans for their service to this country.

Friday, November 2, 2007

MacOS Vista?

Let me preface by saying that I have been a Mac user and fan since my first Macintosh in 1984. I got mine in the summer of '84 so I am a pretty early adopter. While not my original one I still have a beige Mac Plus.

I upgraded the OS on my Mac Pro last night to Leopard. While I will use it I am not very pleased with many of the "Improvements." I was really looking forward to Time Machine and Spaces. Stacks looked like it was pretty cool but I was already doing this in Tiger with a few folders in the dock. While I have spent less than an hour with the OS it already feels kind of kludgy.

I have not found a way to re-label the spaces in "Spaces" from their simple numbering system. Assigning an application to a space is a great idea but it's implementation seems broken. The first time I tried it I assigned BBedit to space 3. Clicking on BBedit in the dock switched to space 3 and opened BBedit. I went to space 1 and clicked on the BBedit icon in the dock and it to me to space 3 and BBedit like I expected. I went to space 7 and opened Firefox. Clicked the BBedit icon again but this time I did not move to space 3 and no BBedit window but I did get the BBedit menu in space 7. CodeTek VirtualDesktop Pro worked so much better but when Spaces was announced the author quit working on it and the next OS update to tiger broke it. VirtueDesktops was a reasonable substitute but again the author quite development last year because of Spaces in Leopard would do the same thing. NOT!

I had several folders in the Dock that worked great under Tiger. A right click on the folder in the dock and I could navigate the hierarchy. When moving to Leopard the folders appeared as stacks but there seems to be no way to navigate them hierarchically. This stinks.

I am reloading the OS now to include migrating from my Tiger drive as I was not given any upgrade options and needed to use a new drive so I could preserve my old settings, data, users, etc.

I will work with it some more and hopefully this lament will make it to the Leopard team at Apple one way or another and they will fix these problems.

I am still an Apple fan but it seems that success is going to their heads and they are starting to act like Microsoft. I do not mean that in a good way.

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Inspiration

A man whom I have never met face-to-face passed away early Saturday Morning (10/27). I had corresponded with him several times and met him when he was liquidating most of his equipment as he knew with pancreatic cancer his time was short. I sent him an e-mail on Friday afternoon (10/26) and got a bounce message on Monday. I don't know if he ever got the message. In his memory I am posting it here.

Dear Diehl,

So often when I am feeling down or in pain I soon find myself looking at your web site and reading about how you are doing and I feel so ashamed for worrying about my little issues. You have been such an inspiration over the last year or so since I first purchased a couple of radios from you. I really wish I had been able to meet you face to face. I guess we will just have to wait until that time when we are both finally called home. I don't expect it for decades but God has his own timetable, so we never know when.

I was looking for the first time today at your wedding pictures. My Mom's name is Carol too and I had an Uncle Harry, whom I dearly loved, that could talk your ear off.

I just wanted you to know that I have thought of, and prayed for, you often.

Every time I go to your web page I thank the Lord for giving you another day and pray that he will give you comfort.

I shall surely miss you but rejoice in your glory when the day of your promotion comes.

Yours in Christ,

Bruce

To read Diehl's cancer blog please go to http://diehlmartin.com/cancer.html .

Friday, October 26, 2007

Frustration

Flew in from Dublin, Ireland this week. All I can say is that "THE TERRORISTS HAVE WON."
From the time I entered the Dublin terminal My passport was examined no less than 7 times. Once I got my boarding pass, it was examined no less than 5 times. Even after entering the jetway there was a team of people stopping random passengers and dumping the contents of their carry on luggage and frisking the passenger.

If you are connecting to a flight in the United States be sure that you have not purchased anything liquid from the foreign Duty Free shop unless you are willing to pack it into your checked luggage after passing through US Customs.

What is going to have to happen before we can get our civil liberties back.