Without Comment #3

The previous two images are posted without comment, with the only editing being the blanking out of salary figures. Any conclusions you draw from them are your own. I will state that I have heard that my last news item (from May) is no longer valid, in that the competitor is no longer interested in buying the carcass of EST. Presumably someone is going to buy the carcass and start selling product again. I can't say that I'm too interested in that circus nowdays, though I've promised one potential bidder that I'd do some very limited work on a contract basis that is needed to get BRU-Pro 1.1 out the door (but very little work there would be required on my part -- BRU-Pro 1.1 was finished, other than porting to non-Linux platforms, and Richard could handle that). Beyond that, that portion of my life is over.

NewsForge linked to me Friday. I found out about it only after I'd received a half-dozen EMAILs from people pointing out tpyos on my web pages. You'd think they would have given me a little warning so I could make them click through the license prohibiting criticism, eh? :-):-):-).

Since my 800mhz laptop is running Linux nowdays, I have now installed Windows on the 800mhz Athlon that was my desktop Linux, and have retired the eMachine 433. I am thinking of donating it to a starving musician type so he can join the mp3 revolution. It's sad that this world has so little to offer for someone who just wants a roof over his head, enough money to buy guitar strings from time to time, and some cool places to play his music, but then, there's too many talentless fools with recording contracts and no place for people whose music is more than the Backstreet Boys.

Anyhow, my home network is now: 1 Linux server w/Celeron 450, 256mb RAM, laser printer, 50gb of hard drive space, SCSI card, tape drive. 1 Windows system with 800mhz Athlon, 256mb RAM, Windows 98, Turtle Beach high-end sound card, hooked to Behringer mixer and Oktava condenser mike and some shitty dynamic mike that does, however, have very good rejection characteristics, 1 cablemodem hooked to 1 personal router/firewall box, 1 wireless network access point, and of course my laptop. Hmm, the Canon scanner and Lexmark color ink-jet printer are both hooked up to the Windows box via USB. Everything is cross-mounted everywhere, i.e. the Windows box can print to the laser printer on the Linux box, the Linux box can print to the ink jet printer on the Windows box, etc.

Regarding those letters, they were scanned on the Canon on the Windows box. I then edited them using Corel Photo Paint on the Windows box. I also have The Gimp on Linux and Adobe Photoshop on Windows (don't laugh at me having so much Windows software, the scanner came with Photoshop and the printer came with a certificate saying "Choose 6 Windows titles for $25!" so I did it), but both Photoshop and The Gimp are a pain in the rear to use. Corel Photo Paint, on the other hand, is intuitive, easy to use, and did exactly what I wanted with no hassles and no need to know all sorts of arcane Photoshop terminology. This was the first time I ever used it, but probably isn't the last -- it's just too good a program.

Work is going well. I have now officially learned Java well enough to write code in it, and am about to tackle .jsp's under Tomcat. I will be writing an essay shortly for the "Editorials" page entitled, "The problem with Java". In addition, I will be creating a response to comments on my "Threads are Evil!" page, giving more in-depth programmer level details on how semaphors inside thread-safe system libraries mean that it's never okay to kill a hung thread. I also put online a review of some topographical mapping software... I guess I just felt verbose today.