Geezer

There are 380 posts filed in Geezer (this is page 6 of 38).

Red Hat IPO

A red hat


I was thinking about the early days of Red Hat this weekend and the company’s IPO. That got me looking up Red Hat’s S-1 statement which was filed for their IPO. Two things made me laugh:

1. Red Hat all of 125 employees when it went public, and
2. Red Hat actually told investors it was banking on ad revenue from its website!

OUR STRATEGY

We seek to enhance our position as a leading provider of open source software and services by:

– continuing to enhance our Web site to create the definitive online destination for the open source community; [Emphasis mine]

– expanding our professional services capabilities to capture large corporate business on an enterprise basis;

– increasing market acceptance of open source software, particularly through technology alliances and sharing our development efforts and resources with third-party developers;

– continuing to invest in the development of open source technology; and

– enhancing the Red Hat brand through targeted advertising and public relations campaigns.

What makes this even funnier is that the S-1 also lists Google as a Red Hat customer:

Red Hat Customers in 1999

Hmm, where do you think all of that web advertising revenue went?

The company is quite different today than the company that went public in 1999, which seems to have been more smoke and mirrors. I’m glad they finally figured it out because it’s good to still have them around!

Blogging tugs at me again

A teletype keyboard at the Living Computer Museum, Seattle, WAAs I scrolled through Facebook today, I noticed the location on a friend’s post was listed as Hayes, NC. It turns out that Hayes does not exist as a municipality but still appears on maps as it was once a stop on the railroad. That reminded me of the old “Neuse Station” depot that I used to live near and how it, too, shows up in maps as Neuse, NC though there’s nothing really there. I then did a search of my blog for posts including “depot” and turned up a great one I wrote in 2005 when I researched Neuse Station:

It was a day spent working in my yard which ignited my current interest. I took a break from digging a trench to climb up the hill near the tracks. On my way up, I spotted the stump of a sawed-off telephone pole. Nearby was a glass insulator, which led me to discover a long length of telegraph wire.

Curiosity got to me. How old was that wire?

I started putting a picture together from the resources on the Internet. These tracks behind our house are the oldest railroad tracks in North Carolina. They belonged to the Raleigh and Gaston Railroad, which was commissioned in 1834 to build a line from Raleigh to Gaston, where other lines led to Petersburg and Norfolk.

Work was slow and sloppy, but progress was eventually made. The first stop northward was a station called Huntsville. Later this stop became known as Neuse Station. Neuse was located right outside my neighborhood. That makes this spot near my neighborhood the second-oldest depot in the state.

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Tom Petty’s final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more – LA Times

During my three years on the USS Elliot (DD-967) I listened to a lot of music. When we were in-port San Diego I was getting introduced to alternative music through 91X. At sea, the collective CD collection of my shipmates was the soundtrack. I heard many artists I wouldn’t otherwise have heard. Nirvana, De La Soul, Big Daddy Kane. Some I hated. Others I hated but later learned to love. And then there was Tom Petty.

Of course, you couldn’t grow up as a radio listener in the South without knowing Tom Petty so I’d been a fan from way back. Full Moon Fever came out just before I went on deployment, though and it earned a special place in my preferred music rotation. I don’t even remember which one of my shipmates owned it, but we played the hell out of that CD. And I never got tired of it.

Thanks for the music, Tom. You were one hell of a rocker and a great guy.

This is not the way things were supposed to happen.

When I sat down with Petty in the outer room of the cozy but fully equipped recording studio at his home above Malibu beach, the idea was for him to reflect on the wildly successful 40th anniversary tour he and the Heartbreakers had wrapped less than 48 hours earlier at the end of three sold-out nights at the Hollywood Bowl.

It was a triumphant stand particularly rewarding to Petty, a Florida transplant who considered himself and his band mates California adoptees. He said as much from the stage each night, noting how the Heartbreakers, although composed entirely of musicians born or raised in and around Gainesville, Fla., had been born at the Village Studios in West Los Angeles.

Source: Tom Petty’s final interview: There was supposed to have been so much more – LA Times

Dubai: The Vegas of the Middle East, with a catch

Johnny Walker Red

A recent story about a Brit who inadvertently ran afoul of the law in Dubai reminded me of the first (and last) time I visited Dubai.

When I was in the US Navy in the early 1990s my ship made a stop in Dubai. A group of my fellow sailors and I booked rooms at (what was at the time) a fairly high-end hotel to relax. I was astonished when entering my room to find a thank you card and a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, a gift for our protecting the Gulf. Being gifted a bottle of fine scotch in a Muslim country was a taste of the odd juxtaposition and tension in Dubai, where east meets west and tries to offer something for everyone.

In the days I wandered around Dubai seemed clear to me what the cultural expectations were. Back then it was a few hotels and mostly sand but now Dubai advertises itself as an exotic playground, the Las Vegas of the Middle East. It seems to me it’s easier now to cross a line one didn’t mean to cross, though I have not been back since. I was planning a trip to Dubai with my wife around Sept 11, 2001 but .. .uh, soon scuttled it :-(.

(Wikimedia Commons photo by Mohylek)

Sandra Boynton’s whimsical animals have been delighting kids for 40 years – The Washington Post

I love this profile of children’s book author Sandra Boynton. Mentioning it at family dinner tonight elicited gleeful reminiscences of the favorite books the kids read (and were read) when they were little.

Sandra Boynton lives on a farm in rural Connecticut. She works out of a converted barn, surrounded by pigs in overalls, frogs wearing cowboy hats, a clutch of bemused chickens and a few skeptical sock puppets.Standing there, you get the feeling that at any moment they might all come alive and break into a high-stepping song-and-dance. Which they probably will. Because this is Boynton’s world, and in Boynton’s world, animals do whatever she wants. And what she wants them to do, mostly, is make her smile.

Source: Sandra Boynton’s whimsical animals have been delighting kids for 40 years – The Washington Post

The N&O called him an ink-stained traditionalist. Watch what happened next!

Courtesy North Carolina State Archives

I spent my lunch hour tromping through the woods, showing the N&O’s Craig Jarvis the ruins of Isaac Hunter’s tavern. Craig had discovered my posts on the tavern and wanted to see it for himself. When my vague, emailed descriptions of the spot didn’t get him there I offered to take him there myself. After five or more minutes of us ducking under fallen trees and getting all turned around, I practically cheered when I found the foundation stones again! Craig was just as excited as I was, snapping photos on his phone and pondering how it all once looked.

I was happy to share it with him and didn’t think twice about meeting him there. I don’t know anything about the story he’s writing nor do I know (or particularly care) if I’ll be mentioned in it. What matters to me is that he’s telling the story of a place that was very important in making Raleigh what it is today.

OK, so maybe I was a little hard on the News and Observer. I know the paper has to adapt to changing conditions but I do not want to see the coverage dumbed down just to generate more clicks. I also don’t want to see journalists forced to pimp their articles just to remain in good graces with their boss. But I absolutely do want journalism to succeed. I want the News and Observer to succeed.

I also want the spinach. Lots of spinach. I want local coverage, even if it means fewer clicks. Tell me about the city’s budget, and about the controversy surrounding the latest audacious development project. Let me know about disagreements between city and county officials. Convey the complex jargon of transportation plans (rail realignments, commuter rail plans, etc) in terms I can understand. Be firm but be fair.

So while I was very, very close to canceling my N&O subscription again, I will give the paper’s new plan a chance to prove itself.

But don’t expect me to like the clickbait headlines, ok?

Running for my life


Update 11 Aug: I fixed a few of these stats, thanks to actually checking Strava this time. 🙂

Fifty-two times this year, I’ve hauled myself out of bed in the morning and shoved one foot in front of the other in an effort to get healthier. That’s a total of 158 miles so far this year. It wasn’t a new year’s resolution thing but simply a challenge to myself to see if I could do it. Somehow I’m still sticking with it, showing some real improvement in my stamina and my speed. I just ran a mile this week in 8:03 (averaging 9:40) and when I began on March 8th I averaged 11:01.

How’s my health doing? I definitely have more stamina for exercise now and enjoy those endorphins post-run. Running’s become a habit, so that’s good. I’ve dropped most of my flab, too. Last weekend I was pleasantly surprised to find my swim trunks are now too big for me. That said, I still run out of energy late in the day and have been hitting the sack well before 10 PM many recent nights. I’m hopeful that’s just jet lag residue from my trip to Las Vegas last week so hopefully it’s just temporary.

You can follow my progress on Strava if you like. I’ll follow you back (and cheer you on, too).

Frank St. Sidewalk is finally here!

Frank Street sidewalk is a reality!

At first I didn’t believe her. My friend Dana Deaton sent me a message and offhand at the end she asked me “have you seen the sidewalk at the end of Frank Street? It’s a miracle. Thanks for your work on that project.”

Wait, what? WHAT? You mean, the City of Raleigh finally put a sidewalk in on Frank Street? It did not matter that I had just driven 150 miles from the beach and had yet to unpack, I had to drop everything and take a look at this miraculous public works project.

It was over five years ago that I pulled out all the stops to convince the City to install this sidewalk. In 2012, I filled out the city’s petition, knocked on the requisite doors, and came within one vote of success. That one vote, though, was impossible to acquire, even though I went the extra effort to show what it would mean to the neighborhood kids and their parents.

I begged. I pleaded. I charmed. And when that didn’t work I may have even pestered a bit. A bit.

But I never gave up. I could not let this one vote deep-six a project that would be so beneficial to the community.
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Somehow I went from a social media producer to a consumer

A colleague will soon be working in Australia. It reminded me of my visit to the country eleven years ago, and how I crafted several blog posts to describe my trip. Such as this one:

We bought tickets for the jetcat ferry to take us to Manly, where we could walk to Bondi Beach. The ferry provided gorgeous views of the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, and my personal favorite: the sailboats racing through the harbor! It was cruel to pass these beautiful sailboats as they raced across the water, all the time knowing I didn’t have time to join them! I can’t remember a harborside city I’ve visited that had more sailboats in the water.

Clinton was amused at my happy trigger finger. “Settle, nettle!” he chided me as my camera whipped around this way and that. With a grin he reported eleven shots taken of a passing sailboat.

“Cut me some slack,” I said in defense. “You gotta understand. Not only can I not believe I’m here, it’s been winter for me for the past few months. I’m soaking all of this up!”

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Mike “Bo” Boran

Mike “Bo” Boran

Speaking of Herndon High School, last month one of my favorite teachers at Herndon, Mike “Bo” Boran, passed away. Bo was my Government teacher in senior year and a great listener to his students. Before he went into teaching, Bo was an up-and-coming musician whose former bandmates went on to form The Mamas and the Papas. I was always blown away by this.

The advent of Facebook gave me the ability to reconnect with Bo and I enjoyed hearing what was on his mind. He still remembered me after all these years. He was particularly impressed that my great uncle was Fred Turner, of Gideon v. Wainwright fame.

Bo inspired me and so many other students who were lucky to be in his class. He made it easier for me to survive high school and taught me to have a clear view of what was really going on in government. I am grateful to have known him.

Bo in The Smoothies, upper left, performing as Michael Rand