Kevin's musings

I’ve lately noticed an increase in what I call “Drive by reviews”.
They say that “first impressions are lasting impressions” and I can understand that. Everyone wants to make a good first impression and it takes a lot to overcome a bad one. However, I’ve seen more folks of late instead taking a first impression of something as a only impression, or over-generalizing based on one first impression.

A good example of this happens all the time to restaurants. How often have you heard someone say: “I went to that new restaurant and I am never going to go there again”? When asked for more details how often do they say:

• The line was long and we didn’t want to wait
• The service was slow
• The waiter carded me! (asked for ID for a adult beverage)

Of course there are many great reasons for not wanting to go back, but thinking logically about some of the above makes me at least think that I would give the place another try. Long line? It was just opening and you have no data at all what the place was like, you never even went in. Slow service? Just opening and getting the hang of things. Carded? Perhaps their is a law they are following to do so. Bad mood? Stomach ache? Ordered the wrong thing? A host of issues that could well be solved if you give the place another try in a few weeks.

Another trend seems to be “I went to $foo and didn’t like it, so I am never going to another $foo again”. Sure, some things would be the same or very similar in other restaurants in a chain, but others would not be. Is your reasoning related to one of those variables?

Which brings me to the Fedora/Linux tie in here. Every few months I see a sad tale of someone who tried the Fedora {mailing lists|forum|irc channel} and had a bad first impression, which leads to a “I am never going to use {Linux|Fedora} again!”. Please take a few moments to think logically and not judge an entire Linux distribution or Operating system based on one forum post, email or 5 minutes in an IRC channel. Do some research, work on explaining your problem better or in a different way, try a different support channel, or at the very least note that your impression is based on only one single drive by. It’s hard to overcome a bad first impression, but do consider giving more than a single chance.

For many years Fedora infrastructure has been running a talk.fedoraproject.org asterisk server. This allows contributors to talk to each other, or send voice mails, etc.

However, it gets very very little usage and also has no one really maintaining it or fixing issues with it. In the last 130days there have been a total of 95 calls using the server. There are a number of outstanding infrastructure tickets on the service that no one has dealt with. The server running it is running an outdated OS version and asterisk version.

So, we are going to retire the service on 2011-05-05.

Now, some of you might say: “But I want to use it! what can I do to save it?”

First, as it is now, it’s a waste of a server instance to run something 24×7 that only processes 1 call every few days. Any plan to continue the service would HAVE to include some way to increase usage of the service to make it worth doing. There would also need to be a group of folks who would help fix issues, enhance the service, help with updates and so on. A single interested person would be a single point of failure. If such a group forms and has a plan, please bring it to the infrastructure list/meetings.

<begin PSA>

If you’ve filed a ticket in the Fedora infrastructure trac at some point in the past (you can quickly check this by, logging in here and then going here. ), can you please take a minute to:

• See if the ticket is waiting for information from you => Please provide it.
• Has had no activity at all => Perhaps you could elaborate on your request, or add details
• Is no longer needed/wanted => Please close it
• Could perhaps be better filed somewhere else. In particular, bodhi, fas, websites and pkgdb all have their own trac instances. You’re likely to get more attention from their developers there than in the infrastructure trac => Refile and close the infrastructure ticket.

Thanks for your consideration.

<end PSA>

We have had a recent unfortunate string of pet health issues here. ;(

1. Winter the kitty: Losing weight. Bloodwork was fine. x-rays fine. We insist on a ultrasound and they find that she has lymphoma. Luckily it’s the “best” kind and means it should hopefully be treatable by a steroid and some low level oral chemo drug. She might well live out her natural span.
2. Legolas (legs) the greyhound. Limping and having trouble getting around. x-rays fine. Bloodwork fine. On to the MRI. This shows that his old racing injury on his spine is pressing on his spinal colum causing problems. Spinal surgery (including 6 days in the hospital recovering). Happily he’s doing well and prognosis is good. Just need to keep him from falling for a few more weeks and then he can do stairs again and go on (short) walks.
3. Merlin the greyhound. Not eating. Vomiting. Really bad D. Bloodwork ok except he was dehydrated. Started on IV fluids and antibiotics. Still not getting any better, refusing all food. More x-rays. Nothing. Finally a ultrasound finds that he has a thymoma thats pressing on his esophogus, causing him to be unable to eat. Currently he’s in the hospital where they are trying to get enough food in him so he gets enough strength back to do a surgery and remove the thymoma. Prognosis is unknown. If he can get enough energy, and the thymoma is well defined they can remove it all and he will be good, but not sure either of those will happen.

So, hug your cats and dogs and be happy when they are healthy.

Yesterday was my last day with Tummy.com, and next week I start in on my new job with Red Hat. (In case folks missed it, I will be taking over as Fedora Infrastructure Lead). Some big shoes (and/or sideburns! to fill, but it should be a great adventure.

The adventure begins with a trip down to Raleigh for monday and tuesday, then up to Boston wed, thursday, friday then back home.

So, if you are looking for me on IRC or mailing lists, I may be scarce next week. If you are in Raleigh or Boston and want to meet up drop me an email and I can see what I can do schedule wise (Although no promises, as I might be pretty busy).

As many of you may know, I’ve been happily working at Tummy.com for many years. It’s almost always been fun and all the folks I have worked with have been great co-workers as well as friends. I’m going to miss working with them, and I am sure they will continue to be awesome.

Starting in April, I will be moving on to a new challenge: I have accepted the position of Fedora Infrastructure Lead.

It was not an easy decision to make, but I am really looking forward to helping out Fedora full time. There’s lots and lots of things to do and improve, but also some pretty big shoes to fill. I still intend to be active in all the places in Fedora that I already am, as well as local groups like the Boulder Linux users group and boulder hacking society.

Looking forward to the next few months!

Just a heads up that there will be a Fedora Xfce test day tomorrow!

See: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Test_Day:2011-02-17_Xfce for more information and instructions. It should be pretty easy to download a live image and test it out for us.

Help make Xfce 4.8 in Fedora 15 great!

There has recently been a bit of noise in the Fedora community around the general “feel” and direction of the community. Some folks are unhappy with some things and are voicing their displeasure. I thought I would collect a few links I found of note recently and my thoughts in general on this.

First, go off and read Spots excellent post if you haven’t already: February 1

Next up, the bugzilla folks had a very nice post about their community and growing it: Open Source Community, Simplified

So, from these we can note a few things:

• If you run into a problem, try and propose a solution. If you don’t have enough info to propose a solution, how about gathering information for others to allow them to look for solution? Something? Anything?
• Be kind and appreciative, avoid negative. Toward that end, I am going to try and praise people who propose or implement fixes or solutions and not worry as much about the people who are not.
• Removing barriers is a good thing. I’d like to see more parts of Fedora have “easyfix” lists or other things that can get people easily involved.

Now to get to the subject of this post: I think Carrots are much better than Sticks. Surely in open source communities. A reward for fixing/doing something (even if it’s only a “great job”) is much better and more productive than a “I hate this” or a “I don’t like the way things are going here”. Enough of the negative (stick) and people will stop listening to you or leave, but with more positive (carrot) others, including yourself will get more done and have a more fun time of things.

So, if you find yourself trying to get something done in Fedora and can’t get there due to too many people waving sticks at you, feel free to drop me a line and I will try and assist you into reaching for and grabbing that carrot (or at least pointing you in the right direction).

My old laptop is a thinkpad t42p. It’s a bit slow these days, and only 32bit, but otherwise it’s still a fine laptop. My Girlfriend has been using it as her full time machine for a few years now. As it has several times in the past, the fan berings started to die again recently. Not sure if it’s that they get a lot of use, or are substandard or what, but I have had to replace the fan/heatsink assembly in this laptop about 3 times now over the years. ;(

This time sadly was different. I ordered a new one, got it in just fine and decided that yesterday was the day to finally replace it. (The laptop was sounding really quite bad as the old fan would spin up, down, up, down, sputter, quit, start again, etc). I expected to take about 30min or so and would have the new fan in place. Disassembly was easy and very much like I recall from the last time I did this. Remove the keyboard, remove the housing around the touchpad/fingerprint reader, and there is the fan/heatsink. 3 screws and it should just pull right out. Not this time. The pink heatsink pad over the GPU would not come off , no matter how hard I tried.

List of items tried:

• Plastic wedge
• small screwdriver.
• Scraping all black residue off
• Floss (I could use the floss as a saw, but unfortunately, it wasn’t strong enough to get very far)

Finally I took apart more of the machine so I could remove the other end of it (normally it comes off the GPU first and slides out that side), and pried with the entire rest of the heatsink. Still no luck. So, I took a small screwdriver and a hammer and (trying to be careful) chiseled at it from each side. Finally, I got it to move on one side, stuck a screwdriver into that and chiseled with another some more. Finally that did it and the gpu was free. About 2 minutes later the laptop was reassembled and working normally.

I guess the lesson to learn here is that you should replace these things more often so the thermal pad does not degrade into a mass of glue.

Here’s my somewhat tardy report on day 3 at Fudcon 2011: Tempe. I meant to write it up sooner, but travel and recovery from travel and catching up at work have made me quite busy the last few days.

Monday, the final day of Fudcon came early as usual. I had a nice breakfast in the hotel and chatted with serveral Fedora folks, then headed off to the Venue. We were in the student union building with a number of rooms on the second floor. We did a bit of waiting on various people, and setting up laptops and work areas, then started back in on the Fedora Governance hackfest. We didn’t get too far into that before I slipped out to meet up with Jesse Keating and other Rel-Eng folks to go over processes on restarting signing servers and other updates tasks. I slipped back into the Governance talk after that, but it wasn’t long until we decided to just break for lunch and see about presenting what we had so far as a ‘Here is what we have now, how can we make it better’ type document.

Lunch was Pizza in the food court. Man was it busy there, we had a search for a table to accomodate our group. In true Fedora community, some of us got a table, someone stepped up to order and get drinks and Jared ordered and brought us pizzas. Move conversation over lunch on Governance, Infrastructure and other Fedora topics.

Unfortunately, my plane was due out later that afternoon and so right after lunch I went and said goodbye to folks and headed back to the hotel to catch the shuttle. My flight ended up being delayed by poor weather in Denver, but I did manage to make it in about an hour or so late. Then, due to bad roads, I caught the bus back to the park and ride near my house where my Girlfriend was waiting for me. As nice as fudcon was, it was also good to be home.

I have noticed a flurry of activity in the last few days from some folks, which is great to see. Gather ideas and energy at Fudcon and then move on to conquer the world. I’d like to thank Robin and Jared and all the other folks that helped organize this Fudcon, it’s a daunting task, but very much appreciated.