daverea.com

Since this is Kelly’s favorite holiday, I couldn’t let the night go by without a quick online homage to trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving and that fun spirit of neighborhood togetherness that comes as kids and parents walk from house to house, exchanging smiles and sweet treats.

Last night, Kelly and I carved up our jack-o-lanterns, with some help from our trusty pumpkin carving kit. Tonight, she set out luminaries down our front path and driveway, and I think between this and the candy assortment bags she assembles, she managed to make ours the most inviting trick-or-treat destination on the block.

Noteworthy visitors? Well, the little tyke dressed up in a big poofy space shuttle costume took my “best of show” prize (he’ll be an aerospace engineer some day), and as a special treat our first pair of visitors even brought a small plate of cookies to exchage for their candy!

Ever since Oracle announced they’ll be selling support for Red Hat Linux on the 25th, I’ve noticed a lot of “Red-Hat-This” and “Oracle-That” news articles, blog entries and editorials zipping across my feed reader. Since I read a Reuters story about the announcement at work (thanks to GM’s spiffy Intranet tech news service), since then I’ve pretty much just been scanning headlines and occasionally reading the first few lines of eye-catching feeds.

What’s struck me so far – and this is a wildly unscientific, completely subjective and empirical observation – is that for the most part it seems like a lot of Chicken-Littles squawking and speculating about what’ll happen to Red Hat, why Larry Ellison should switch to decaf, or (waxing ethereal) what Oracle’s move will mean to The Movement. When I read some of those that fall into the last category, I almost feel like I should buy a big straight overcoat and an Ushanka and start calling my fellow Linux users “comrades”. That, and buy a Kalishnikov rifle – a purchase I’ve been meaning to make anyway.

But I think the posts that surprise (and sadden) me the most are the ones that are already most of the way to writing Red Hat’s obituary. This isn’t because I own any Red Hat stock (though some of my more tech-oriented mutual funds might), or because I’m a Red Hat user (I’m using Ubuntu at the moment, but I may try Suse), or even because I worry that a collapse at Red Hat would silence a strong Linux voice, advocate and success story (though it would). The real reason I believe the nay-sayers are wrong is simple: they’re underestimating Red Hat – not the company, but the people…

Sure, it’s easy to make a wrong move in the business world, especially in a market as difficult-to-navigate as the software industry. But I believe the people at Red Hat are no different than the people at any other motivated enterprise – they’re passionate about what they do. They eat, sleep and breathe their product, and – believe it or not – they have a bit of an interest in seeing their company succeed. In the spirit of American inginuity, business strength and passion, I believe the good folks at Red Hat will do just that – they’ll do what they’ve done from the beginning: they’ll innovate, solve problems, continue building a supportive foundation of satisfied customers, and fight hard to stay competitive.

Yes, they may lose some market share to Oracle. Yes, they may have to market a bit more aggressively, work a few extra hours and sharpen their cost-cutting pencils. Yes, the pundits will make dire predictions (even if it’s just in the hope that, if Red Hat really does fail, they’ll be able to claim “you heard it here first”). But I’m not ready to write Red Hat’s obituary just yet. My belief in a free-market economy, and my faith in the potential for conversion of peoples’ passion into innovation and success via hard work, just won’t let me.

Chevrolet has gone live with a new web site dedicated to the Fuel Cell Equinox:

http://www.chevrolet.com/fuelcell/

Take it from me: They drive like a dream.

I like it when a day just sort of … comes together.

I started getting the feeling this would be a “comes together” kind of day as 5:00 approached – conveniently, the task I was working on was nearly complete. I searched for a few dinner recipes before leaving for the day, and found three ideal candidates almost immediately. (As a side note, the Allrecipes rating system kicks ass.)

My grocery buying experience couldn’t have been better – the cashier at the empty express lane flagged me over, and she even cancelled out my credit card when I nearly paid with the wrong one. I enjoyed a leisurely drive home beneath sunny Autumn skies, and my car was extra-well-behaved: the ABS/traction lights didn’t even come on once! (It must be enjoying not having a soaked wiring harness after all the recent rain.)

After I got home, I speed-mowed the lawn – which now looks surprisingly good considering it normally takes a little over an hour, and I zipped through it tonight in about 45 minutes. As twilight blended into dusk, I replaced the Daytime Running Light module on my car. This little $75 box-o-electronics has been flaking out for the last six months or so, and since flaking out equates to randomly turning off my headlights in the middle of a night-time drive, I figured it was a good thing to replace. The job went perfectly, didn’t even require any tools, and the new module seems to work just fine.

And no, it didn’t stop there. After I headed inside, my PC and I were able to get KDE installed with zero errors, and I’m now cruising through this post at a record pace. And – oh yes – there’s an Amish-style meat loaf in the oven, filling the house with delicious smells as the barbecue sauce carmelizes. It’s going to be a pleasant evening…

The War on drugs and the War on terror collide!

Troops battle 10-foot marijuana plants

Whod’a thunk it?

First no spinach salad – now we’re not going to be able to eat lettuce either?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A California grower recalled its green-leaf lettuce on Sunday because of possible E. coli contamination, only weeks after tainted spinach from the same region was pulled from grocery shelves across the nation.

The Nunes Co. Inc., of Salinas, California, said it was recalling its Foxy brand green-leaf lettuce from seven Western states because water used for irrigation might have been contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

Just wash yer friggin veggies, people!

There’s been a lot of crap going on in the news lately. If this were the daverea.com of two-years-ago, I doubtless would be tearing into each new story with all the claws and fangs I could muster. If this were the daverea.com of one-year-ago, I would be gently but pointedly weighing in on selected issues – hoping no one at work fired me for my political views. But this is today’s daverea.com – and today’s daverea – and to be honest I’m just getting tired of it all.

I’m tired of hearing about Mark Foley. If the people attacking this guy had any idea what kinds of sick, twisted sh*t happens in the dark corners of the Internet every hour of every day, they wouldn’t be all that concerned with crucifying him on all the 24-hour news networks. If the guy committed a crime, then he needs to be held responsible – just like every other citizen. But justice will be served by the professionals who are pretty damn good at investigating these sorts of things, so how ’bout all the rest of y’all kindly let them handle it.

I’m tired of hearing about school shootings. There are and always will be messed-up people who do monsterous things for inexplicable reasons, and pointing a camera at the mourners as they bury the helpless doesn’t accomplish anything. I may weigh in on this a little more later, since it touches a political nerve of mine, but for now I wish they’d just lay off the rhetoric a little.

I’m tired of materialism. I’m tired of being bombarded with commercials, paid advertisements, web popups and spam e-mail. I know these things will never go away, and they come as a price of the unregulated Internet and the free-market economy that I love. I also know they could be a lot worse were it not for the valiant efforts of those who fight to keep them in check. But damn. How much penis enlargement capacity does the world need? Do I actually need six-hundred variants of an aftermarket case for my iPod? Does every 12-year-old really need a Motorola RAZR phone? And the Christmas shopping season isn’t even here yet…

It isn’t very difficult to see why
You are the way you are
Doesn’t take a genius to realise
That sometimes life is hard
It’s gonna take time
But you’ll just have to wait
You’re gonna be fine
But in the meantime

Come over here baby
Let me wipe your tears away
Come a little nearer baby
Coz you’ll heal over
Heal over
Heal over someday

from “Heal Over” by KT Tunstall