Oh joy. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html

Time to regenerate a bunch of keys.

Current Mood: annoyed

One of our developers left about a week and a half ago, major personal emergency and he had to go back to India. We finally heard from him. Apparently the emergency was a build-up of stress from some major family issues he wasn't talking about, long and short of which he's not coming back any time soon. Hope he gets all of it resolved without melting down in the process. Meantime, we've got yet another slot that needs filled at least temporarily. This one's more an analyst job than pure developer, although they may want to move someone else up and hire a developer to fill the now-vacated slot.

Current Mood: busy

Slashdot had an article today with a simple question: what's the oldest complete piece of computer code still running? Doesn't have to be a full program, but it has to be a complete entity like a function or algorithm and not just a single disembodied line of code.

My guess is nobody'll get an answer. The oldest currently-running code probably dates back to the early 60s or so, and it lives in the custom-designed in-house mainframe accounting application of a large bank or major company so there's zero chance of anybody who knows about it discussing it outside the company. And it's probably either COBOL or RPG code. There's a reason IBM's mainframes have maintained the same instruction set for so long.

Current Mood: geeky

Hi. We're the 70s. We're back for a revival tour, and we brought all our friends. Disco and leisure suits anyone?

Current Mood: weird

We're doing a deployment at work tonight. I'm on-line via VPN for the one non-critical component I'm responsible for in this one. So far, that component's working fine.

The rest of the system? Not so much, really. I'm seeing signs of tentacles around the error messages. That's usually not a good sign.

Current Mood: sleepy

Valve has Weighted Companion Cube plushes for sale.

Current Mood: amused

/me is beginning to hate contractors. They tend to know interfaces and APIs, but have no clue what's underneath them. Long on how, short on why. And it's always the why that you need to know.

Current Mood: cynical

Dad's home from surgery. It went well. Nothing too major, he had double-bypass surgery a few years ago and some of the holes they had to cut were starting to herniate. So they had to go back in, suture them up (including the ones that were just starting, that weren't a problem yet but would be) and lay a mesh under them to keep it from happening again.

Grandfather's home too. He went into the hospital with the usual age-related problems (he's 97 or so) a month or so ago, and they let him go home last week. He's on oxygen and has 24-hour care at the house. Mom laid the law down to him, backed up by the attorney handling his stuff back there: he will have 24-hour care. If he wants to have it at home that's fine, that's what all the saved-up money's for after all. But if he kicks the girls out, if he won't have the care at home, then he will go into the nursing home and have it there. Which it'll be's up to him, but he's not going to be alone with nobody around if anything happens to him. His heart's not in good shape, likewise lungs, and a simple fall means anything from multiple fractures on up. Back when Grandma died I said I'd normally not give him more than another year but he's just too ornery to die, but at this point I really think he's not got more than a year, maybe two, left in him. Which is annoying because he's not suffering Alzheimer's or any other mental deterioration, it's only his body that's wearing out and breaking down.

Niece is having more tests done. She had surgery for a hiatal hernia a year ago, and now she's having abdominal pain again. They're not sure what's up, so more poking and proding and drawing of blood to try and figure it out. Hopefully it's just adhesions from the earlier surgery that they can fix easily.

Current Mood: grumpy

Joy. Last iteration it was SNA itself. Now I get the joy of implementing an interface using DDM running over SNA. DDM is a remote-file-access protocol that makes a database look a lot like a file, except it exploits the database backing to do things you can't do with a regular file. At this rate we're going to be writing in COBOL using 3270 workstations before we're done.

Current Mood: amused

They're saying Clinton won here. But when I look at the delegate numbers, I don't see much change. Obama still leads in pledged delegates and in total delegates, and is still just about 100 pledged delegates short of Clinton's total delegates (exactly where he was before the PA primary).

I think if Clinton wants to claim she's winning, she needs to do better than this.

Current Mood: grumpy

Well, the hotel for FC sold out within 72 hours, so no FC next year for me. SOE Fan Faire is in Las Vegas in August, I think I'm going to schedule to go to that one. Comic-Con will be in July and is local so it won't cost me hotel, that should make FF doable. CaliFur is in May, but that's just too soon given financial blow-ups.

Current Mood: busy

Do I move back here, or stay with InsaneJournal? Feh.

Current Mood: annoyed

You may have noticed that my entries have disappeared. I've marked all of them private, and will be deleting them completely when I get home tonight.

The reason is here.

With LJ's policy, all it takes is one site I've linked to forgetting to renew their domain and a squatter picking it up. Or one loony whose page I've linked to getting mad and deciding to get even. It's simply not feasible for me to keep a continuous watch on every single page I've linked to over the years. I can't do it. I won't do it. Bye-bye LJ. I'll keep my account so I can read other people's journals, but I won't be renewing paid status when it expires and this will be the last post in my journal here.

If you want my scribblings, I'll be over at my InsaneJournal from now on. I've got Labor Day off, so that weekend I'll be hacking up a tool to post and back-date all my LJ entries to IJ.

Current Mood: pissed off