Month: October 2013

Switching to the Saucy Salamander

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Ubuntu 13.10 (Saucy Salamander) was released this past Thursday. Normally I jump on the upgrade right away, but I was busy this week and finally got around to it over the weekend.

As with my past few upgrades, it was mostly a non-event: ‘do-release-upgrade -d’ from the command-line, answer a few prompts, and wait. I said mostly a non-event because I accidentally hit Ctrl-C in my screen session and killed the process during the configuration steps. Luckily I was able to run a ‘dpkg –configure -a’ to finish the process without any further problems.

After re-applying some of my customizations to config files (including learning Apache’s new authorization and access control setup in 2.4) and rebooting, I was running the new 3.11.0-12 kernel. I did run into an issue with the Gnome fallback desktop, however, seemingly related to a new “requirement” for accelerated graphics which my Acer “server” doesn’t have. So I switched to xfce4 and that seems to work just fine for the few times I need a GUI.

Version 14.04, Trusty Tahr, comes out in April next year.

Florida vs. Ohio weekend

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My recent Florida vs. Ohio sports contests ended up in Ohio’s favor 2-1.

It started two weeks ago when my hometown Indians lost to my current town Rays in the AL wildcard game. Yesterday we drove over to Orlando to see the Cleveland Cavaliers take on the Orlando Magic in pre-season play. The Cavs were down by 18 at one point but came back in the 4th quarter to win 110-105.

After breakfast at The Old Spanish Sugar Mill & Griddle House (where you cook your own pancakes on a griddle at your table) in De Leon Springs State Park we were in DeLand to see our alma mater Dayton Flyers take on the Stetson Hatters. This is the first season for football at Stetson since 1956 and (as I expected), the Flyers won 49-20.

So both Ohio teams won the games I attended. I wonder if the current ALCS would have been different if I had flown up to Cleveland for the wild card game. 😉

On the way home from DeLand we stopped at Epcot for dinner at the 2013 Food & Wine Festival. Yum.

WIJFR: Ender’s Game

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In order to develop a secure defense against a hostile alien race’s next attack, government agencies breed child geniuses and train them as soldiers. A brilliant young boy, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin is drafted to the orbiting Battle School for rigorous military training. Ender’s skills make him a leader in school and respected in the Battle Room, where children play at mock battles in zero gravity. Yet growing up in an artificial community of young soldiers Ender suffers greatly from isolation, rivalry from his peers, pressure from the adult teachers, and an unsettling fear of the Buggers. This futuristic tale involves aliens, political discourse on the Internet, sophisticated computer games, and an orbiting battle station.

I just finished re-reading “Ender’s Game” by Orson Scott Card. I first read this book about 25 years ago when I stumbled across it in my high school library. With the movie coming out next month I recommended it to my daughter, who unbeknownst to me had already read it, so I read it again myself to be prepared for the inevitable letdown of the film version (although maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised, and I’m looking forward to Harrison Ford’s portrayal of Colonel Graff).

I won’t go into any plot summaries or spoilers here (you can read the wiki entry for that), but even though I still remembered the major elements (and obviously, the ending) of the story it was an enjoyable read. I’ve read a lot of SF novels over the past 25 years and can almost see the influence of “Ender’s Game” (and its sequels) on the genre. For example, the Buggers (or Formics as named later in the series) are a hive-mind species, with all central control being performed by a queen. This, along with their sheer unstoppable numbers reminded me of MorningLightMountain and the Primes from Peter F. Hamilton’s “Pandora’s Star” and Commonwealth Saga novels.

Card’s personal views have been the subject of controversy lately so we’ll have to see what happens once the film is released. I’ll probably still take my daughter to see it, though.

Gotta love October: sports, politics, and more

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Today is my birthday and while it’s not as cool as past ones, there is a ton of stuff going on today.

2013 MLB PostseasonBut the best gift is post-season baseball, and this year it’s a mixed blessing. Two years ago, the Rays’ push for October baseball came down to the last day. This year, the last day of regular season play on Sunday had three teams all fighting for the two AL Wild Card spots. My hometown team, the Cleveland Indians ended up clinching one of them but my current town team, the Tampa Bay Rays, ended up tied with the Texas Rangers. But last night, the Rays beat the Rangers 5-2 in the tie-breaker game in Arlington. The Rays now travel to Cleveland for another one game playoff, the winner of which continues on to play the Boston Red Sox in the ALDS.

That’s right, my two favorite teams finished second in their respective divisions, are in the post-season, and they’re playing each other in a single game tomorrow night. It seems like a win-win situation. My Indians haven’t played October baseball since 2007 when they lost to the Red Sox in the ALCS. My Rays had eliminated by the Rangers on their last two October pushes in 2010 and 2011 (so it was a welcome victory in game 163 for multiple reasons). Either way, I’ll have a team to root for when the ALDS starts on Friday. The Indians are my childhood team, and I still haven’t lived in Florida as long as I lived in Ohio, so tomorrow night I’ll be wearing Wahoo and cheering on the Goon Squad. Go Tribe!

As if that weren’t enough Cleveland/Florida sports excitement, both my Cleveland Browns and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are dealing with quarterback controversies early in the season having recently benched their starters in favor of new blood. This has worked out better for my Browns (who are  now 2-2 and will be starting Brian Hoyer for a third time) than the Bucs (who’ve started out 0-4 and have now announced (leaked?) that Josh Freeman has ADHD).

Quite a first day of October! Oh, and thanks, Google, for the custom birthday Doodle! 🙂

Google birthday Doodle