The journey continues...

Brian Bilbrey January 1, 2012

Welcome to 2012.

Things that might happen this year: Two of those are, I think, likely. Observe that I make no REALLY absurd claims about food or exercise. That'd just be crazytalk. I do note that the loonier portions of Iraq are claiming a victory over the US because we finally withdrew the last of our combat troops from that cesspit of a made-up country. We had one primary goal - dispose of Saddam. Done. We had a secondary goal, which is to leave that country in a fairly stable sovereign condition. Silly secondary goal: expensive in blood and treasure, and pointless since…

Brian Bilbrey December 29, 2011

To Be Continued

And here I am. So, Node.js. First, the lawyer crap: Node.js is a trademark of Joyent. I guess I have to say that, but seriously? Probably, just to protect the project from ne'er-do-wells out here on teh 'tubes. It's a sanely licensed project that provides good attribution to the bundled dependencies. I expect nothing less than good open source citizenship from the smart folks at Joyent. Anyway, Node.js is a hunk of code and libraries that runs on the server-side of the HTML/XHTML transactional pipeline, and allows mind-bendingly simple code to do neat things. Is it secure? I dunno. Is…

Brian Bilbrey December 28, 2011

Linux remodel, OpenIndiana build 151a, Node.js, and the DTrace Book

Lots of computing updates going on. It all started last week ... * * * It was the Thursday before Christmas, or Wednesday perhaps, the details blur just a bit. I've not been using the Linux box formerly known as Slartibartfast as a desktop machine for quite a while now. My old MacBook Pro got refurbished with a small-ish SSD drive, and that's the primary desktop system these days. It sits in a custom upright support that I created for the purpose a couple of years ago, and finally put to use Darlion — the OS X Lion -enabled former…

Brian Bilbrey December 25, 2011

Happy Kwanzicamas

A quiet day at home for us. Happily, our combat forces appear to be done in Iraq, and perhaps mostly at home with their families, at least until that notably unstable "country" blows up again. I think we have no further responsibility to send young men and women there there die, come the day that decision must be made. Aaaaand, we still have a bunch of folks in harm's way in Afghanistan. Our thoughts are with them and their families this holiday season. * * * I was momentarily hopeful, but that gift was denied - we have one casualty…

Brian Bilbrey December 20, 2011

Process and Paranormal

Process and Paranormal - it's not a Jane Austen parody, although those are surprisingly popular these days, especially those with zombies baked in. I'm just thoughtful about two different things right at the moment and rather than make progress on anything, I'll stop and discuss things here. * * * Process is much on my mind not just because of my on-again, off-again forays into the land of productivity porn. My in-field class this upcoming Winter session has Pressman's Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach as the text. Software engineering is all about process (as is personal and work productivity). I'm…