A Busy Weekend, More on IT Work and Land Tax

[tcpip]

Was on-air last Saturday morning for 3CR's annual radiothon and helped raise a modest sum (c$1200) as part of the Unitarian Half Hour. Later than day was severina_242's birthday gathering of blini, vodka and borsch and many el-jay people. Following day gave my presentation on Prospects for Liberal and Rationalist Prospects in Islam which was well received. After that went to Retrocon and played The Keep on the Borderlands, a d20 Modern Harry Potter scenario as well as running a RuneQuest scenario. Dinner afterwards was great fun especially in the company of mareth_redorb. May even make it to Dwarfcon as well.

Last Wednesday eve was dinner with arjen_lentz and other MySQL staff and afficiandos. On topic, now only working 1 day per week on database documentation with Naturelinks which is relieving in a sense. The more I delve into MS-Access, VBA and MS-SQL server the more I feel like poking myself in the eye just for something interesting to do. In comparison, PHP/MySQL work is fun and interesting. Other work related tasks includes writing policy for Borderlands, setting up their new integrated network with the Augustine Centre and completing yet another website for Flinders Island as a tourist destination.

For Prosper I have the joyous task of compiling an 'information kit' for Victorian state parliamentarians (we start with the assumption they are ignorant not malicious). On 28th June I'll be speaking at the Global Learning Centre (1093 Pascoe Vale Rd) at 6.30pm along with others with the title "Please Explain Mr. Brumby?" on why the last State budget contained massive land tax cuts for the wealthiest landowners, yet needy schools are threatened with six year waiting lists for maintenance and 10,000 manufacturing jobs were lost last year (and we still have a 5% payroll tax!).

Two on-topic links: No, it's not a good industry. 97% of IT workers "traumatized" by their daily work. From greylock. Islam less than one percent reactionary. From erudito. Off-topic link; v3nu5 is now famous nude! (from v3nu5 of course).

Comments

[alexmoon.livejournal.com]

I am always impressed by the volume and niftiness of your engagements.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the kind words.

You will be pleased to know that I am posting this response from your new laptop. The Toshiba Tecra S1 had some proprietary drivers (sound, wireless etc) but these have all been installed.

I'll put it in the post tomorrow and send you the amount you owe.

[alexmoon.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much!

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

No problems. I had some major problems getting a version of Linux to install however; I tried Kubuntu, Fedora Core 4 and even SUSe. You've ended up with good ol' Mandrake 9.1 - which is quite old, but wonder of wonders had the best installation script for detecting the monitor type. It's a very nice user-friendly introduction to Linux.

[alexmoon.livejournal.com]

Thanks...I've been meaning to explore linux for some time now, so it's great to have a gentle nudge along a well-cleared path.

[longhairedbum.livejournal.com]

I am jealous that you have dinners with MySQL staff.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

They really are quite amazing people. MySQL is certainly one of the greatest FOSS products available; pretty much as good as Oracle, miles ahead of MS-SQL Server and all for a fraction of the cost and with robust integration with PHP.

Now if we can slowly bridge OpenOffice.org and MySQL with ease...

[longhairedbum.livejournal.com]

We're stuck with MS-SQL/Classic ASP where I currently work, so I've had very little opportunity to play with other options outside of building simple blog sites and such.

Have you ever used PostgreSQL? I can't get a handle on what most FOSS enthusiasts are using, with all the Ruby on Rails buzz drowning everything else out.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I've installed and configured PostgreSQL on an old release of FreeBSD and managed to configure some fairly hefty databases to work with it, but that's about the extent of it. It's enthusiasts swear by it which is usually a good sign.

[livelurker.livejournal.com]

I did a training course with Arjen before the AUUG conference in 2004. He just seethes with useful MySQL information :)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

We didn't discuss MySQL a great deal at the dinner; I guess even Arjen needs a break from it. But we did talk about how "free software", in order to be marketable, needs to have a high consultancy fee. Oh, and the benefits of having multi-disciplinary research teams. And how some of the high-ranking members of the OSS community could really deal with learning some basic social skills; like saying 'hello' and being interested in what other senior developers are saying.

It was the second time I've spent more than insigificant time with Arjen and I must say the more I talk to him the more I like him. A thoroughly reasonable chap.