Day: August 27, 2004

Categories
RDF

RDF and GUMP

Sam Ruby posts a note to a thread on the Apache GUMP email list with several questions about RDF. Stefano Mazzocchi has started answering, but others might be interested in chiming in, either at the list, or Sam’s.

Categories
Political

Fish or cut bait

 got very tired of all the stories about Bush and his National Guard duty during Vietnam. I feel there’s enough to know about George Bush now that I don’t need to go back into ancient history to get yet more data to crunch.

I’m also getting equally tired of hearing about Kerry and his experiences in Vietnam; either him holding these experiences up continuously; or others trying to take them down just as persistently. The events we’re arguing over happened thirty-five years ago. Thirty-five years ago I was a stoned 15-year old school drop out and runaway hitch hiking around the country, just before joining a religious cult.

Thirty-five years is a long time. Are you same as you were thirty-five years ago, if you’re old enough to remember that far back?

At this time, I’m not sure I would want to follow either of these men directly into combat; and I know there are people who I would trust in combat, but would not want as President. Unless we start getting real comfortable with the concept of “President Nader”, we have to pick one of these men–Bush or Kerry–to lead this country into the future for four years.

So I’d rather hear about the problems we’ll be facing in the next four years then who got shot in the butt, and who didn’t show up for their medical, thirty-five years ago.

Categories
Diversity

Breaking more glass

I have been remiss in congratulating Halley Suitt for breaking into another bastion of geek brotherhood – ITConversations. Her new Memory Lane interview series is an interesting addition to the lineup, and I’ve enjoyed listening to her recent interviews with Joi Ito and Dan Bricklin.

I personally think that Susan Hockfield, the new President of MIT, would be an exceptionally good candidate for this series. Hint, hint.

Now, if we could only get at least one woman into the It Garage group blog. I believe this is an open participation weblog, and I thought about contributing myself, but I’m not sure what the focus of the site is. It seems to be focused more on project management than tech, and to be honest, I think that I’m too close to the metal for the site.

That would be funny, wouldn’t it? A woman being too geek for a technology-based site?

But not too close for other events. Tim O’Reilly was kind enough to invite me to this year’s Foo Camp, but I had to decline (with due appreciations and much regret–this is something I would really enjoy). However, I am submitting a presentation proposal for next year’s Emerging Tech Conference, and possibly next year’s OSCON, too.

I’ve had some ideas kicking around in my head a year or two, and I think it’s time I got back into the fun, or at least try to get back into the fun: lot’s of people submitting proposals–I’ll be competing with the best. I figure if my presentation(s) is picked, I’ll know enough webloggers in the area who might be kind enough to offer me a place to stay, and this will keep costs down.