Please note: Wordpress appears to be failing badly at this stage. I’ll be working on a fix this week, and likely will create a new site out of different, less buggy code. I’ve checked the DB, moved it to a different machine, restored from a known working backup. It appears a recent update of WP managed to completely screw up post handling. I disabled all plugins, ran health checks, etc. I’ve cleaned cookies, browsing history, used different browsers on different machines, with exactly the same outcome.

Neither one is a computer related. Both are based upon what I see as unmet needs for various groups. One is a definitely “gotta have” for one group. The other group, there is one “solution” on the market that I looked at, and it’s pretty pathetic. The other uses technology where it should be using chemistry, as the tech is simply way too expensive for mass use, and quite inflexible. Both are B2C.

Finding myself on the other side of the table in the consumer-vendor relationship has resulted in some eye opening experiences. These are things I look back on, and realize that I strenuously avoided doing during my Scalable days. But I see everyone doing it now, as they try to sell me stuff, or convince me to use things. One of the eye opening things is a bit of typecasting of sorts.

So … Suppose someone comes up to you and makes a claim. This claim isn’t backed by facts, merely by unicorns, rainbows, and their own biases. Yeah, this kind of relates to the previous post. They argue based upon the claim. Stake out their ground. Insist that “none shall pass” in a black knight, Monty Python esq manner. But they are wrong. Simply, factually wrong. Regardless of their biases, you and many others have been demonstrating the very thing that is claimed to be impossible, to customers for years.

I’ve encountered this in my career, at many places. Sadly, early in my career, I participated in some of this. You are a zealot for a particular form of tech if you can see it do no wrong, and decry reports of issues or problems as “attacks”. You are a zealot against a particular form of tech if you cannot see it as a potentially useful and valuable portion of a solution stack, and (often gleefully) amplify reports of issues or problems.

I am a fan of the Julia language. Tremendously powerful analytical environment, compiled, high performance, easy to understand and use, strongly typed, … there’s a long list of reasons why I like it. If you are doing analytics, modeling, computation in other languages, it is definitely worth a look. Think of it as python, compiled, with multiple dispatch and strong typing … and no indent-as-structure problem. My Julia fanboi-ism aside, there was an interesting blog post about using JuMP, a linear programming environment for Julia.

I am a sucker for a good editor. I like atom. Don’t yell at me. Its pretty good for my use cases. It has lots of nice extensions I can and have used. Atom is not without its dependencies though. Installing it, which should be relatively simple, turns out to be … well … interesting. [root@centos7build nyble]# rpm -ivh ~/atom.x86_64.rpm error: Failed dependencies: libXss.so.1()(64bit) is needed by atom-1.26.0-0.1.x86_64 In searching the interwebs for what Xss is, I happened across this little tidbit

So there I am updating my new repository to enable using zfs in the ramboot images. This is a simplification and continuation of the previous work I did a few years ago, with some massive code cleanups. And sadly, no documentation yet. Will fix soon, but for now, I am trying to hit the major functionality points. NyBLE is a linux environment for hypervisor hosts. It builds on the old open source SIOS work, and extends it in significant ways.

In the last few years, I’ve had major disappointments professionally. The collapse of Scalable, some of the positively ridiculous things associated with the aftermath of that, none of which I’ve written about until they are over. Almost over, but not quite. Waiting for confirmation. My job search last year, and some of the disappointment associated with that. Recently I’ve had different type of disappointments, without getting into details. The way I’ve dealt with these things in the past has been to try to understand if there was a conflict, what could I have done better.

Again, many apologies over the low posting frequency. Several things that are nearing completion (hopefully soon) that I want finalized first. That said, the major news is that this site is now on a much improved server and network. I’ve switched from Comcast Business to WOW business. So far, much better speed, more consistent performance, far lower cost per bandwidth. I do have lots to write about, and have been saving things up until after this particular objective is met, so I can work/write distraction free.