Diary of a Network Geek

Or are you just happy to be using opensource software?

I never know if I should capitalize “opensource”. Should it be OpenSource? Gah, I hate stuff like that!
But, I love Linux. I may not be incredibly well versed in the ways of Ubuntu, but, that’s okay because now I can download a free pocket guide to Ubuntu in PDF format. Of course, you could buy the $10 print version, but why?

So, c’mon you Linux geeks and wannabe Linux geeks! Go get it!

I finished Vampire Zero by David Wellington Friday night.

Vampire Zero is the third, and apparently last, book in the vampire series by Wellington that started with Thirteen Bullets and was followed by Ninety-nine Coffins.  I’ve already reviewed those here and, if you read those reviews, you’ll know that I think David Wellington has done a great job reinventing the vampire genre with his vision of the vampire as monster.  But, to me, that’s worth repeating, because I really hate the humanization and romanticizing of vampires that’s gone on in modern literature.  Wellington’s vampires, though, are monsters.  They’re like bipedal sharks who live on blood and think as well as humans and have their own form of culture.  But, they are like sharks.  They’re predators and they hunt humans.

In Vampire Zero, Wellington presents us with the last vampire hunter, Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton, who’s trying to hunt down her old mentor, Jameson Arkeley.  In 99 Coffins, he took on the vampire curse to help Caxton lay the brood of Civil War era vampires to rest, because she just couldn’t quite manage it herself.  In that book, Arkeley claimed he would dispatch those beasties, and then turn himself in to Caxton for his own execution.  As you might imagine, he wasn’t quite able to pass that final test and retreated out into the world.  Naturally, Caxton is the only one really qualified to hunt and kill vampires, so she ends up trying to track Arkeley down before he gives into the bloodlust of the vampire curse and starts killing humans, or, worse, starts making more vampires.   Before he becomes “Vampire Zero”.  The term, of course, is derived from regular epidemiology, where “patient zero” is the first known case from which all other cases of a disease derived.  In this case, however, the disease is even more deadly than anything we’ve ever imagined.

Naturally, she doesn’t quite manage to stop Arkeley from making more than one new vampire, but it’s a long, twisty ride to that point.  Caxton stays hot on her former mentor’s trail, becoming more and more like him along the way.  She even becomes a Special Deputy U.S. Marshall, just like Arkeley was before he turned.  The difference, of course, is that Caxton can see what’s happening.  She can see how she’s becoming harder and colder and more driven, while caring less and less about other people’s feelings, as she gets closer to her mentor-turned-vampire, in more ways than one.  But, she also has to fight the system, the bureaucrats, the paper-work and the less motivated public servants.  It’s no easy job, even for someone far less human and caring than Laura Caxton.
It’s brilliant work.  Both Caxton’s and Wellington’s.  The writing and the story are both really, really engaging and compelling.  No less so for the fact that humanity’s future may well hang in the balance.  Something, incidentally, that Caxton is quite aware of pretty much all the time.  But, Wellington’s writing and Caxton’s awareness don’t distract from the action at all.

In short, this is a great ending to a great series.  Though, the way the book ends, there is room for a sequel.  At least one more.  I hope Wellington writes that eventually.  I do love his work and these books.
So, hopefully, I’ve given you enough warm, fuzzy feelings about a vampire book and series to get you to check out Vampire Zero, after hitting the other two books, of course.  It was a damn fine read.

It may be obvious by now, but I’m not a graphic designer.

Still, I appreciate the work. I mean, I understand the effort and appreciate the people who put in the work to make good design. And, I have to admit that design, good and bad, fascinates me.
So, to make amends for my various bad design, I offer the few good designers who might stumble across my site some nice bits.

I don’t know about full-time, professional designers, but I need a good bit of inspiration now and again. I often get photography and graphic design magazines just to stare at and get ideas. But, they get very proud of those magazines and charge dearly for them, so, in this new, tighter economy, what are we to do? Well, why not look at free, on-line design magazines! How about 42 Free Online Magazines for Designers?
Need more inspiration? Well, personally, I’m obsessed with logos, so I found the Logo Designer Blog endlessly entertaining.

Of course, when we’re creating for the web, content, as they say, is king. In this case, that means words. Lots and lots of words. In marketing school they called those words “copy” and the process of churning them out was “copywriting”. It’s an art, too, in its way. An art that all too many graphically creative people don’t seem to get, especially on the web. At least, I’ve seen a lot of sites that sure could use work on their words. Well, GrokDotCom has help for them at the GrokDotCom Ultimate Copywriting Cheat Sheet. Even if you think you’re very good at this, this page is worth a look. Trust me.

So, there you go.
Enjoy.
Now go make something.

So, last week I finished You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Bring Your Laptop To A Coffee Shop by John Scalzi.

I’ve been a frustrated writer since I can remember.
I’ve read more books on writing than most people even realize have been published! But, this book was different. Most writing books focus on the techniques of writing, dispensing all sorts of marginally useful advice, but Scalzi has some different advice for hopeful writers. He talks mainly about the nitty gritty that the other books leave out. For one thing, he talks about giving up the idea that one should only write “art” pieces. He talks about approaching writing like any other job. It makes sense, really, when you think about it. I mean, if you want to make a living at writing, then you have to write regularly, just like you’d work at any other job. You work regularly to get paid regularly.

Mostly, the advice is hard-nosed and drawn from his own years as a full-time, professional writer. Also, the sections are drawn from his blog, the Whatever and many are answers to questions from readers of that blog. Granted, he’s edited many of the original blog entries for the book, but I honestly don’t care that it’s mostly duplicated material I could get from the web. I find reading it from a book, an actual, bound book, far easier than trying to chase it all down on his blog. It was well worth the price.

I can’t recommend this book to most of my readers, but if you’re an aspiring writer and are tired of reading the same well-worn advice about how to write, You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Bring Your Laptop To A Coffee Shop may be just the book you’ve been looking for. It won’t tell you much about how to write, but it will give you invaluable advice about the writing life and how to make a living at it.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
   --James Baldwin

This is not new.

Setting aside for a moment the fact that there is nothing new under the sun, there are some ideas that have been around for a long time that are just now seeing the light of day. The idea I’m thinking about today is regenerative life-support systems for long-term space exploration. The idea is simple, really. You just create a tiny, self-sustaining ecosystem on a spacecraft and send it on its way toward Mars or Jupiter or wherever you’re interested in going. The astronauts tend the garden which provides them with both fresh produce and breathable air. Of course, actually implementing this system is much more challenging than it seems on the surface. Discover takes a little closer look at the problem in a recent article on their blog.

You can read a short-story about this, or at least with this as a theme, in the New Yorker on-line called Lostronaut. It’s good and it inspired the Discover blog posting. Also, it’s science-fiction published in the New Yorker, so it’s worth reading.

I stayed up late Saturday night to finish reading 99 Coffins by David Wellington.

As you may have guessed from both my predilections and the title, this is a vampire story. In fact, it’s the second in a series by David Wellington, who is a relatively new voice in horror fiction. At least, he’s part of what I think of as the “hot, young turks” who have used the Internet and blogs to promote their own work quite effectively. Wellington’s brilliant first vampire novel, 13 Bullets, which is the first in this series, was originally released on a blog. I found it via Amazon, while looking for something new and interesting to read. 99 Coffins is just as exciting and engaging as 13 Bullets, and that’s saying something.

Wellington has created a new kind of vampire. Or, rather, he’s reimagined the traditional monsters in a new way that updates them, makes them different and interesting, but doesn’t make them any less monstrous or any more romantic and “human”. In short, these are the best vampires and vampire novels I’ve read since Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Yes, I think they’re that good.
Wellington gives us vampires that are two-legged, thinking, reasoning land-sharks that can speak to humans and command awesome personal power. They’re deadly and smart and the best and worst of our natures crossed with an insatiable thirst for human blood. In 13 Bullets, there was just one active vampire to start with. In 99 Coffins, there’s also just one, but with a twist.

The book opens with a historical dig on a Gettysburg battlefield. No one expects to find much, since this area has been heavily mined by archaeologists and is pretty well documented. However, a grad student digs up a mystery; a hidden cellar under an old gunpowder magazine filled with coffins. An interesting enough find on its own, the historical mystery is made even more interesting by the fact that each coffin holds the skeleton of what are obviously vampires. Thankfully, they all seem to have had their hearts removed making them almost totally harmless. Of course, even a sleeping, crippled vampire is never completely harmless.
That’s why the local authorities call in former U.S. Marshall Jameson Arkeley and his erstwhile protege, Pennsylvania State Trooper Laura Caxton, the last two vampire killers who exist. Arkeley is old and crippled from their last encounter with these toothed horrors and Caxton just wants to forget about it. She’s done her bit to protect humanity and now she just wants to serve the State of Pennsylvania and her people. But, neither Arkeley nor the newest vampire to prowl the streets will let her forget. At first, she just agrees to give Arkeley a ride to the site and be his eyes, but when she sees the 99 coffins, each with its sleeping vampiric skeleton, and the one smashed coffin, she can’t just walk away. Oh, she tries, to be sure, but when that one missing vampire attacks her on the street in scenic Gettysburg, she can’t just leave the local police to try and handle something they don’t even believe exists.

As you might imagine, it’s an uphill battle for Trooper Caxton, the last vampire hunter. Not only does she have to fight the vampire, but also ignorance, bureaucracy, local politics, vampire “fans”, and her own fears. Her struggles are interspersed with notes and letters from people involved with the historical vampires in those other coffins. The tales intertwine to tell a frightening story indeed. A story far older than the Battle of Gettysburg.
I won’t ruin the story by giving you more detail than that, but, let me assure you, it’s well worth the price of the book. Wellington is a wonderful writer, giving just the right level of detail while keeping the action moving along wonderfully well. Of course, I knew that from having read the first book in this series and I like his work so well, that I bought the third in this series already and have piled it on with the rest of my “to read” books.

If you’re a fan of vampire books at all, you have to get 99 Coffins by David Wellington and read it. Of course, you’ll want to start with 13 Bullets, but, once you’ve read that, if you don’t want to read the rest of the series, I’ll be amazed. Seriously, David Wellington is one of the best new authors I’ve read in the past several years and his vampire stories are absolutely wonderful. I promise, if you’re looking for a new take on an old monster, you’ll love these books.

But, just two links.

Okay, so I’m kind of cheating with this, but, still, if it gets some of this in front of people who can use it, I think it’s worth gaming the system a bit.
First, I have a link to the Search Engine Journal post on Link Baiting, or How to Build Links in ANY Niche. For those of you in a hurry, I’ll summarize: write really, really killer content, if possible with tie-ins to other major blogs. (But, to read the article anyway.)
Secondly, the other 29 tips and whatnot are all at ProBlogger. Sure, the post title is 29 Tips, Tutorials and Resources for New Bloggers, but there’s plenty there for old-timers, too. (I keep meaning to read the ProBlogger book, too, but, it’s hiding under an exercise book, so I haven’t gotten to it yet.)

Okay, and yes, I’m hoping that the search engines will find this post and jostle me up a bit in the rankings. I am Googlerank whore. There, I said it. Happy now?

Sunday, I finished Fool: A Novel by Christopher Moore.

First of all, you should know that I pretty well love almost anything that Christoper Moore has written.  Granted, some are better than others, but I started with him back when Practical Demonkeeping was new and not even a best-seller yet.  It always struck me as funny when my parents told me about this “new” author who’d written a brilliant re-telling of the Gospel titled Lamb:The Gospel according to Biff, Christ’s childhood pal.  So, that enthusiasm for his work may effect the way I see his most current work.

But, I’ll say this, it is good.
Fool is a retelling of King Lear from the point of view of Lear’s jester, commonly known as a fool.  Naturally, that’s where the book gets its title.  Now, King Lear, if you’re not familiar, is a play by William Shakespeare about a king who, for foolish reasons, divides his kingdom amongst his three daughters, based on how much flattery they can heap on him.  The only problem is one of his daughters, the most faithful and true, in fact, won’t play the game, so he splits his kingdom between his two deceitful, unfaithful daughters.  They’re supposed to take care of Lear in his old age, but they really don’t want to take care of him so he’s sort of forced into the Medieval equivalent of homelessness.  It’s quite the tragedy.  But not in Christopher Moore’s hands.

No, Moore takes this tragedy and makes it into a damn fine comedy, thanks to his narrator.
Moore is mostly true to the story according to Shakespeare, but with a few additional anachronisms.  His writing is light and pithy and quite enjoyable, not to mention smooth and easy.  Really, considering the weight of the subject matter, it’s a testament to his writing that the book moves so easily and well.
The story follows a fellow named Pocket, who is born somewhat disadvantaged and orphaned.  He’s left on the doorstep of a nunnery and it’s the nuns who raise him.  He has some misadventures along the way to adulthood and a job working for Lear as a fool, though we see all that as various flashbacks.  The main story line starts with Pocket relating the tale of how he watched Lear foolishly divide his kingdom.  Then, the tragic results of that somewhat stupid decision.  But, as I mentioned, somehow, he manages to make it a comedy.

Oh, hell, you’ve probably read or seen King Lear at least once.  This is the same story only funnier and written in more modern language.  And, anything by Moore is pretty good, so, all in all, I’m saying, buy this book and read it.  You won’t be sorry.

Yeah, more news, because this is a big deal.

So, this new Kindle is a really big deal. First of all, the latest version looks a lot better than the first one. The first Kindle looked like a prototype, but this version looks really slick. And, yes, there is a much nicer case available for it than there was for the first edition, according to Crunch Gear. From the pictures, it looks like they’re going to have an aftermarket booklight, too. Houston’s own Dwight Silverman has gotten his Kindle2 already and done a review, though I suspect he got his faster than the rest of us because, well, he’s a newspaper guy doing a review.

But, with any big deal, there’s always some kind of problem, right?
According to this article on the Wall Street Journal, the Author’s Guild is protesting the Kindle’s ability to read aloud to you. They claim that this violates an “audio copyright” that every written work includes. Naturally, the contention is that a machine-read, machine-stored work read in a machine-generated synthetic voice is not what is intended by that copyright. I tend to agree. If this were a computer reading website text, would there be a copyright violation? I don’t think so.
Still, it will be interesting to see how this works out.

I read an article the other day about how news is very soon not going to be free. The article claims that newspapers are losing too much money from the free news on their websites and are going to have to start charging very soon. If that happens, I really think I may just buy a Kindle, one of those fancy covers, and subscribe to a couple of papers that way. I mean, I really see the Kindle as an adjunct to print media, not a replacement for printed material. So, I don’t see myself no buying actual books any more.

Either way, I suspect that I’ll have quite a wait based on how long the delay is in getting one. Even if I were totally ready to buy, which I’m not quite, it’d probably be months before I could actually lay hands on the Kindle2, since I’m not a reporter doing a review. But, I do have to admit, this version is a lot more attractive than the last version!

UPDATE: I totally forgot to add the fact that there is now an iPhone app that lets you read Kindle-format books on your iPhone, too.  It sounds like it’s meant to be an addition to your Kindle, but they claim you can use it instead of a Kindle, so who knows.  I wonder how long it will be before they have a similar application for the Blackberry.  Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?

It’s vital to good server management to maintain a change control log.

Really, it’s best for everything in an IT department to keep a good set of change control logs, but most of us don’t do it. Well, a great little blog called Ask The Admin has an article on the Importance of Change Management Record Keeping that is a “must read” for anyone who has to keep track of more than one system.

Now, I have to admit, I don’t do a great job of maintaining documentation myself, but that’s not such a big deal since I’m a one-stop IT shop. However, if something should happen to me, it would make things better, and easier, for the next poor schmuck who has to take over. Mostly, when I get somewhere new, I’m confronted with a jungle of systems and armed with little more than a password. Sometimes, it’s not even the admin password. When I leave, though, I always try to leave behind updated, accurate, useful documentation. My desk may be a mess, but my documentation is at least usable.
The first guy I used to work for always would ask me what I’d do if he were trapped under a rock. Check the documentation was often the first thing. So, I learned, whenever possible, leave good documentation for the next guy.

Think of it as the Golden Rule of Documentation; Document for others what you would have them document for you.
In any case, read the article. Then go forth and sin no more.