I think Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is one of the most stable operating systems I’ve ever used, deserving of the “Long Term Support” label.

I haven’t been as happy with later releases. I still run 12.04 on two machines, but my work machine is running Raunchy Ramjet. It tends to die in a spectacular way a couple of times a week (always Compiz) but now I’m getting some weirdness in the unread count for Thunderbird.

I am very e-mail driven, so I always find myself looking up to the left hand corner of the screen to see if I have any new mail. While it works some of the time, quite frequently the unread counter is missing when I have a number of unread messages. But what I thought was even weirder was that once the indicator actually looked crooked:

Odd huh. Haven’t seen it since, however.

Still wish I could get .WAV files to play properly on 13.04.

Today I received an e-mail with seven invoices from one of our contract employees.

“I am now using a new accounting package to generate invoices.
Unfortunately it generates a separate invoice for each project even if the work is performed for a single customer. Each invoice references a different project activity. Hence several invoices attached.”

This struck me as funny for two reasons. First of all it says to me “Sorry, but my time is worth way more than your time, so I’ve decided to use a new accounting package that makes things easier for me although it will make things harder for you.” Not exactly the message you want to send to your customers.

While this isn’t a big deal as I like the guy, I am sure he didn’t think about the message he was sending. How many interactions can you name that are kludgy or cause you extra work and the excuse is “sorry, but the software made me do it”?

The second reason I found this funny is that open source can help solve problems like this. When talking about OpenNMS to potential clients, I often say things like “OpenNMS can be made to fit your business processes – you don’t have to change them to fit the software”.

This is an extremely powerful message, and it is why we refer to OpenNMS as a “management application platform” and not just an application.

About 15 years ago, I took a job that required a lot of travel, and I decided that I needed a new piece of luggage. I did the usual thing: I went to the mall and visited the three or so stores that sold different sizes and types of bags, and I settled on one from Samsonite. Instead of buying it there, however, I wrote down the model number and then did a search on-line. I found a site that sold the same bag, but it was also available in a larger number of colors instead of just black, and the price was about 35% of what the stores were charging. My wife found it ironic that I was bragging about both being able to get a deal on it and that I didn’t have to carry it to the car from the mall. It’s “luggage” – she pointed out.

That got me to thinking about the future of retail.

I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, mainly due to their Amazon Prime service. For a flat rate you can get a large number of things that you buy on Amazon shipped to you in two days (sometimes less) and for a fee of US$3.99 per item you can get it in 24 hours. I love this service, since I live in a pretty rural area and for me to visit any major store requires a drive of about 30 miles each way. Depending on the vehicle I use, this can cost me between two to four gallons of fuel plus my time. Also, a lot of the things I buy aren’t common, so there would be the added task of calling around to various stores to see if they have the item I need. I figure Amazon saves me hundreds of hours per year.

Now this can be hard to reconcile with my desire to shop and buy local, but I do shop local for things like food. Plus, I figure that I’m doing the planet a favor, overall, since the UPS and FedEx trucks come to the office every day and my packages are just a small cost on top of that.

So where do “brick and mortar” shops come into play? I felt that Barnes and Noble had an advantage when they added the ability to return items purchased on-line to a “real” store, but anyone who has used Amazon’s return service knows how easy it is, so that advantage was short lived as people became more comfortable shopping on-line.

For many items I expect brick and mortar stores to become more like showcases than places where you arrive, pay money and depart with an item. Apple’s stores are much like this. While, yes, you can still leave with a MacBook or iPad, much of the retail space is often given over to a stage where salespeople show you either how to use the products or why you should buy the products, and any custom configurations are still ordered on-line.

Now I see a new thing arising, and it can be summed up in these shoes:

Yes. Bask in their awesomeness. Step aside Christian Louboutin and Jimmy Choo, there is a new top designer in town – moi.

I became a fan of Chuck Taylor Slips totally by accident. When I was in high school, I used to admonish some friends of mine who were dating (and prone to “public displays of affection”) with the line “I used to be disgusted, but now I’m just amused” from an Elvis Costello song, which also included the line “now the angels want to wear my red shoes”. I was hunting around on-line for some red shoes, and I found a pair on sale on Zappos. I thought they were normal Chuck Taylors, but it turns out they were a slip-on variety. I found that I really liked them as their slip on nature made it easier for me to navigate airports, plus they have little in the way of arch support. My friend David got me into barefoot running where one major idea is that the arch should be allowed to flex for better foot health, and while I’m not running around in Vibram Five Fingers 24×7 like he does, the Chuck Taylors work just fine.

Everyone used to comment when I wore my red Slips and a red T-shirt, so I decided to get some other colors. Black was easy, but I found that, at least on Amazon, there are limited color choices. However, on the Converse website, you can actually build your own shoe. Using a little on-line tool, I was able to choose many parameters about the Slip I wanted, and for just a small upcharge and about a three week wait time, I received a one of a kind shoe that was exactly what I wanted.

This excited me for a number of reasons. As a fan of open source software, I love the “do it yourself” nature of the process. And just like open source – if you don’t want to do it yourself, you can check out designs other people have created and use one of theirs. All we need now to make this perfect is a better marketplace and some form of micropayment strategy – come up with a great design and then get a small cut of the profit when someone buys a copy of your design (or you could choose to put it up for free or require a donation to a worthy cause, etc.)

Taken to the next step, when 3D printers start becoming common, it will be the designs that have value (there is a 3D “Physibles” section on The Pirate Bay even now).

The best 3D printers will remain out of the price range of most users for many decades to come. Don’t get me wrong, within five years people will probably be able to afford simple home printing machines, but I believe we’ll see the creation of local franchises where you can send your order and then pick it up later, kind of like Kinkos. Well, exactly like Kinkos – if I were FedEx I’d have a team on this now.

It solves a couple of problems. First, I will be able to buy local again. Why use Amazon when I can walk or bike down the road to my neighborhood “3D Prints ‘n Stuff”? Second, we’ll see a swing in manufacturing back into the US (or Europe, etc.), with new jobs created for running the printers, maintaining them and tweaking the designs. Third, I’ll be able to get exactly what I want when I want it pretty much wherever I am.

I predict we have at least 30 years before you buy your new TV from the Prints ‘n Stuff store versus a retail outlet, but I expect to see businesses building around this trend well before then. It’s pretty exciting.

And since their wings have got rusted, you know, the angels wanna wear my red shoes.

The following is another of my navel-gazing posts that have nothing to do with OpenNMS. Please, as always, feel free to ignore.

Tomorrow in the United States we begin the final process to electing a new President. I hope that by late tomorrow evening we have a decision, but with the fact that presidential elections have been so close in the last decade means that there is a small but significant chance that we won’t know the outcome for some time.

Ever wonder why elections have been so hard to call since 2000 or so? My theory is that there are really no significant differences between the two major candidates.

I think this started with Bill Clinton. With the success of Ronald Reagan’s campaigns, Clinton realized that he needed to co-opt some of that populist message. Thus started a blending that Presidential candidates use to try to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, resulting in a blurring of their differences.

Now many of you reading this will say that I’m full of it, and that Romney and Obama are totally different. I disagree. As the figureheads of the Republican and Democratic parties they share the same agenda: consolidate power into the hands of the few and use that power to control the rest of the populace.

I was trying to sum up my feelings in a few words, but Conor Friedersdorf in this column in The Atlantic summed it up nicely:

Neither the Democratic nor the Republican candidate in this race is trustworthy or desirable as a leader. Obama is a left-leaning technocrat who habitually breaks his promises and is eager to assume near dictatorial powers in the realm of national security. He has little regard for the Constitution or the recklessness of the precedents that he’s setting. And Romney? He’s a right-leaning technocrat who unapologetically breaks his promises, is eager to assume near-dictatorial national-security powers, and has little regard for the Constitution.

Now I happily voted for Obama in 2008. I was tempted to vote for him again, mainly because the Republican attacks on him were, if not outright lies, quite often wrong. Take spending for example. Obama is attacked for “spending our children’s future” yet the growth of government spending under his administration “has actually been trivial compared to the last 4 presidents.” His administration is attacked for health care reform. As a small business owner who provides health care insurance for our employees I’ve seen my rates double – twice – in eight years. Something needs to be done. While the plan that passed is far from perfect, the idea of just repealing it and going back to the status quo is appalling. Finally, Obama is criticized for not creating enough jobs, but the Republican controlled house refused to implement any of his ideas by rejecting every jobs bill he proposed. It’s okay to disagree, but you better have a solution of your own if you want credit from me. It’s easy to just say “no” to everything. Considering the conditions he inherited and Congress, I think Obama has done an amazing job with the economy.

No, where Obama fails is in the area that is nearest and dearest to my heart: civil liberties. My view is that government should provide a level playing field and then get out of the way. More and more I’ve seen government taking an active hand in trying to control the populace. 9/11 has been used to reinforce the idea that people should do two things: live their lives in fear and buy stuff. When dealing with a person who is inconvenient to handle as either a criminal, subject to the rule of law, or a prisoner of war, subject to rules such as the Geneva Convention, why not create a new category called “enemy combatant” subject to no rules? Guantanamo is still open, the Patriot Act was renewed and strengthened, drones are being used to spy on American citizens and the NSA is building a huge data center to do the same on the Internet. And that’s just a small part of it.

So if Obama hasn’t earned my vote, that means it should go to Romney? No. I don’t see Romney doing anything better and he would probably make things worse, faster.

This year I am voting for Gary Johnson. While he has zero chance of winning, he is the only third party candidate on the North Carolina ballot, and while I rarely identify with the “Big L” Libertarian party, I like Johnson. It would be nice if his voice could have been heard in this election.

What’s most important to create viable third parties is a candidate to receive matching funds for their campaigns. In order to do so, they must get at least five percent of the vote:

Minor party candidates and new party candidates may become eligible for partial public funding of their general election campaigns. (A minor party candidate is the nominee of a party whose candidate received between 5 and 25 percent of the total popular vote in the preceding Presidential election. A new party candidate is the nominee of a party that is neither a major party nor a minor party.) The amount of public funding to which a minor party candidate is entitled is based on the ratio of the party’s popular vote in the preceding Presidential election to the average popular vote of the two major party candidates in that election. A new party candidate receives partial public funding after the election if he/she receives 5 percent or more of the vote.

I think the only way out of the quagmire created by the Republicrats and the Demmicans is to have several strong parties so that rule has to be more of a compromise instead of just “an endless slap fight” between two of them.

Still, several people have accused me of throwing my vote away, especially since the race is so close in North Carolina. That argument was almost enough to sway me, especially when thinking of things like the Supreme Court (where I would probably be more happy with an Obama appointee than a Romney appointee). But then two things happened.

First, Justice Roberts, a Bush appointee, cast the deciding vote confirming the legality of the health care reform bill’s individual mandate. I have always hoped that once a person makes it to the country’s highest court, to serve pretty much for life, that they leave partisanship at the door. Roberts demonstrated this.

Second, my friend Ron on Google+ pointed out that there will never be a way to break the two party system without some of us “throwing our vote away” on third party candidates. He said he was in it for the long game, and that convinced me. In fact I stated that we should carve a plaque stating that “On this day, someone’s mind was changed via a discussion on the Internet”.

Heh.

And anyway, I’m looking forward to feeling superior no matter who wins. Something has to change, and soon, before we degenerate into throwing shoes.

Let me close with this scary quote from Carl Sagan, taken from his book The Demon-Haunted World and shared with me via G+:

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.