Planet #WPIRC

&lt;p&gt;Microsoft did something good today. Today's &lt;a href="http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/aug08/08-19EasyPathPR.mspx"&gt;press release&lt;/a&gt; announcing the new and updated licensing schemes for server products running in virtualized environments brings them right back into touch with their customers and with their own Hyper-V virtualization technology they frankly had no choice.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The new licensing scheme basically allows migrations between physical hosts, without having to license each of the hosts as well. In an enterprise setting this is how it has to be, and I sincerely doubt that anyone has really handled this differently before, regardless of the licensing limitation that has been in place until now.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The press release also mentions that extended support for their server products running in virtualized environments, as long as the virtualization vendors validate their products through the &lt;a href="http://windowsservercatalog.com/svvp"&gt;Server Virtualization Validation Program&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Well done Microsoft. even though it's about time you got it right.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=fsdjoK"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=fsdjoK" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=1w9LTK"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=1w9LTK" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/369362103" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at August 22, 2008 02:05 AM

&lt;p&gt;VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 users around the globe are experiencing huge problems with their infrastructure. A bug in the latest version of the VMware enterprise virtualization software might render thousands, if not more, virtual machines unbootable.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This incredible situation is caused by a licensing bug, that basically expires all licenses on August 12th, 2008. When a VMware ESX lisense expires like this the implications are that VMotion and DRS no longer works and perhaps more serious in the short term is that you will not be able to power on any VMs that are powered off. Rebooting a running VM from inside the guest OS should work fine, but do not try running a virtual power cycle on any running VMs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VMware are working on a fix that should be be available for &lt;a href="http://www.vmware.com/download/vi"&gt;download&lt;/a&gt; by noon, PST on Aug 13th.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VMware &lt;a href="http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&amp;docType=kc&amp;externalId=1006716&amp;sliceId=1&amp;docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&amp;dialogID=21652920&amp;stateId=1%200%2021658178"&gt;KB 1006716&lt;/a&gt; should have more info on the issue, but is not available at the time of this post. Perhaps the VMware KB is running on a VM hosted on a VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 itself? Most likely it's due to traffic issues though.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A suggested workaround for the issue is to disable NTP on the ESX hosts and manually set the date to some date before the 12th. I would not recommend this unless you really have to, as you might get into a world of hurt if your VMware Tools are set to sync time with the Host server. Imagine a Windows 2008 Server Domain Controller that suddenly gets it clock set to an earlier date. Active Directory does &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; enjoy this.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For now, if you are running ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 keep your VMs running and do not power them off. Hopefully you don't have critical VMs turned off anyway, so the impact is likely to be small unless you have a critical need for DRS/HA. For those of you that haven't upgraded to ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 yet, wait until the new installation media is available. I downloaded the media kits yesterday in preparation of my upgrade here at work, I'm very happy I didn't do the upgrade last night like I planned to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Update 1:&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;/em&gt;VMware has issued a statement outlining their current status and what to expect in the time to come. They also promise an update ever two hours. &lt;blockquote cite="http://communities.vmware.com/message/1020789#1020789"&gt;The problem is caused by a build timeout that was mistakenly left enabled for the release build.&lt;/blockquote&gt; as well as an express update&lt;blockquote cite="http://communities.vmware.com/message/1020789#1020789"&gt;VMware Engineering has isolated the root cause and is working to produce an express patch for impacted customers today. The target timeframe is 6pm, August 12, 2008 PST.&lt;/blockquote&gt;For full details, read the whole &lt;a href="http://communities.vmware.com/message/1020789#1020789"&gt;update&lt;/a&gt; at the source. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Update 2:&lt;/h3&gt;The promised express patches has now been released. More details and downloads available at &lt;a href="http://www.vmware.com/landing_pages/esxexpresspatches.html?start=600"&gt;vmware.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;New iso and tarballs are to be released sometime this week, so of you are planning an upgrade hold your horses a few more days.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;VMware CEO Paul Maritz has also issued an &lt;a href="http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2008/08/letter-from-vmw.html"&gt;official statement&lt;/a&gt; on the problems customers have experienced, and how VMware is handling it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;h3&gt;Update 3:&lt;/h3&gt;New tarballs and ISO's has now also been released and are available at the link above.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=a3eNlK"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=a3eNlK" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=FEUVwK"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=FEUVwK" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/362913005" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at August 22, 2008 02:05 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://opticalpork.com/v/IMG_4138.jpg.html"&gt;&lt;img src="http://opticalpork.com/d/183-2/IMG_4138.jpg" class="photo"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Inspired by &lt;a href="http://binarybonsai.com/je-ne-sais-quoi"&gt;Michael Heilemann&lt;/a&gt;, I've decided to post a few photos and try to explain why photography actually matters to me. I'm not talking about your run-of-the-mill family/holiday snaps here, but more like the photos I post on my photo site &lt;a href="http://opticalpork.com"&gt;opticalpork.com&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is extremely difficult to explain. Why do I take photos? Why do I go looking for things to photograph? It's not that I feel a great need to document everything or even anything at all.I think it's some kind of escape more than a need to try to express myself through the photographs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I refuse to call myself an artist, this isn't art in any way. It's just a way for me to create my own reality. I get to chose what is in focus, how I frame things and which elements I want to emphasize or call attention to.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://opticalpork.com/v/Frozen.html"&gt;&lt;img src="http://opticalpork.com/d/173-2/Frozen" class="photo"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt; I just spent two hours walking around the &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/v/Misc1/Photography/PhotoTrips/August2008/"&gt;Bergen city center&lt;/a&gt; with my camera in hand looking for something to photograph. Doing exercises like this makes me appreciate the small details more. I go around looking for that little special thing that can suddenly appear right in front of you just begging to be photographed.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I still feel like I'm invading peoples privacy and being outright rude when photographing them randomly, so I tend to photograph objects rather than people. I might sneak in a photo of someone randomly though, the 70-300 really comes in handy there.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://opticalpork.com/v/IMG_2600.jpg.html"&gt;&lt;img src="http://opticalpork.com/d/142-2/IMG_2600.jpg" class="photo"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All in all, I'm not a photographer. I'm not an artist. I just like taking photos, and enjoy being able to use my camera in the way I want to. That's all there is to it. It all boils down to one simple thing; I enjoy it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Feel free to browse around the &lt;a href="http://opticalpork.com"&gt;opticalpork&lt;/a&gt; site as well as browse through my &lt;a href="/gallery/"&gt;Gallery&lt;/a&gt;. I enjoy feedback on all my photos, but remember that most of them are taken without a whole lot of reasoning before shooting.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I don't think, I photograph.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=aRs97K"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=aRs97K" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=O1mViK"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=O1mViK" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/367565303" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at August 22, 2008 02:05 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/45097-2/IMG_6466.jpg" class="alignright"&gt;This weekend most of the &lt;a href="http://gallery.sf.net"&gt;Gallery&lt;/a&gt; developers and other team members were gathered in Amsterdam, Holland, for the yearly meetup.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/45158-2/IMG_0068.JPG" class="alignright"&gt;I was lucky enough to be able to attend this year, as I missed the last two meetups in Las Vegas and in San Francisco. I did go to New York for the first ever meetup back in 2005 though, which certainly left me with a hope of meeting up with this great group of people again some time in the future.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since this was the first meetup in Europe, or even outside the US, it would have been a real shame if I was unable to attend. As it turned out, I was not only able to attend this year, I also got to take my wife with me.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was great introducing her to the Gallery people, finally she got to see that a bunch of "semi-random" people I've interacted with on teh intarweb are seemingly normal people.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/45137-2/IMG_6496.jpg" class="alignright"&gt;The event itself lasted from Friday until Sunday, with some of the attendees staying for longer periods. I can certainly understand that some of the Americans wanted to spend more than a weekend after traveling all the way to Europe. Especially with my own experience with going from Bergen, Norway to New York for a weekend three years ago. Traveling that far a distance for a weekend only is a sure way to slowly kill yourself with jetlag, even if you try to compensate by consuming large amounts of Gin Tonics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We arrived on Friday, and was picked up by Jens and Bharat at the airport. They had great fun running the "Gallery Shuttle" from Schipol to the Hotel, changing the language on the GPS based on who they picked up. Naturally the GPS was turned to Norwegian when they picked us up, though I'm pretty sure that neither one of them understood a word it said.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We all stayed at &lt;a href="http://www.mercure.com/mercure/fichehotel/gb/mer/1244/fiche_hotel.shtml"&gt;Mercure Hotel Amsterdam Aan de Amstel&lt;/a&gt; a great modern hotel just outside of the Amsterdam city center. Their rooms were nice and breakfast was great, all in all the hotel was just what we needed for a great weekend out in Amsterdam.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.paour.com/gallery2/v/travel/europe/amsterdam/DSC_6763_DxO_raw.jpg.html"&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/45210-2/DSC_6763_DxO_raw.jpg" class="alignright" title="Original Photo by Pierre-Luc Paour"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;On Friday we had a fun dinner at the Hotel, and headed downtown for a "&lt;a href="http://www.amsterdamghostwalk.com/main.php?lang=en"&gt;Ghostwalk&lt;/a&gt;". While we didn't see any ghosts, we did get a great tour of old Amsterdam with a guide who looked like some kind of Gestapo officer with his big black coat and cane.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Saturday me and my wife spent about 5 hours walking around downtown Amsterdam looking at whatever we could. We didn't really want to see most tourist attractions, but rather try to see as much of normal Amsterdam city life as possible. My feet will definitely testify that we did a lot of walking, and I ended up having to buy some new shoes to try and limit the damage done. My feet are in such a state that I'm still not walking properly. Without having to go into to much detail, I'm really glad a got some Compeed blister patches.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/d/45140-2/IMG_0081.JPG" class="alignright"&gt;The main event of the weekend was the Gallery dinner and subsequent bar round on Saturday. We had made reservations at &lt;a href="http://www.nomads.nl/"&gt;Nomads&lt;/a&gt;. Dinner was an interesting event, very different from what I had anticipated. Lots of different food, and I'm still not sure what all the different serving we had was. All I know is that the food was great, and so were the cocktails. Exotic food, combined with &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/v/Events/Gallery-Amsterdam-2008/IMG_0112.JPG.html"&gt;belly dancing&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/v/Events/Gallery-Amsterdam-2008/IMG_0117.JPG.html"&gt;general&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/v/Events/Gallery-Amsterdam-2008/IMG_0086.JPG.html"&gt;Gallery&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://www.paour.com/gallery2/v/travel/europe/amsterdam/DSC_6914_DxO_raw.jpg.html"&gt;fun&lt;/a&gt;, the dinner actually lasted for five hours before we headed out searching for a new venue.&lt;p&gt;We ended up in a Irish Pub, &lt;a href="http://www.thetara.com/"&gt;The Tara&lt;/a&gt;, where we spent the rest of the evening until we were actually thrown out due to them closing. The search for further venues for continued beverage consumation was fruitless and me and my wife headed back to the hotel together with Joan, who made a surprise visit from London. We were greeted by a friendly "Good Morning" from the hotel staff when we entered the lobby. I guess that means we were pretty late, or even very early.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Sunday we had the "official" Gallery meeting, discussing the current state of the project and it's future. I'm sure the discussions started there will continue, and I really do hope that events like this help us stay on track and work even harder to make a better product. There were some really interesting discussions going on this year, time will tell what the results of them are. These are interesting times on teh intarwebs.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Pictures from the event:&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://h0bbel.p0ggel.org/gallery2/v/Events/Gallery-Amsterdam-2008/"&gt;My Own&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.paour.com/gallery2/v/travel/europe/amsterdam/"&gt;Pierre-Luc Paour's&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href="http://gallery.michaelandkrissy.com/v/GCon/gcon2k8/"&gt;Michael Schultheiss&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Chris Kelly &lt;a href="http://ckdake.com/gallery/2008/europe/nomads/"&gt;pictures&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="http://ckdake.com/node/239"&gt;blog post&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;The list will get updated as more pictures are posted.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We had a great weekend, and we're really happy we got to meet (&lt;a href="http://jpmullan.com/blog/1321/not-off-to-europe"&gt;almost&lt;/a&gt;) everyone again.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think the slogan for this weekend would have to be &lt;a href="http://www.paour.com/gallery2/v/travel/europe/amsterdam/DSC_6747_DxO_raw.jpg.html"&gt;Good Times&lt;/a&gt;, right Bharat?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=JPQAXJ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=JPQAXJ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=ncuK6J"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=ncuK6J" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/342022224" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at August 22, 2008 02:05 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://habariproject.org/en/0-5-released"&gt;Habari v0.5&lt;/a&gt; has finally been released, with huge improvements since the last release. Many of the Habari users run their sites of the "live codebase" that lives in a not very secret SVN repository, but I'm sure there are quite a few installs out there that are still running the 0.4 release.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;If you are still runing 0.4, or even earlier versions, you are in for a treat. I would go as far as claiming that this release is what makes Habari really stand out. The new Monolith admin interface, as well as many other improvements, makes this a real milestone in the Habari history&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, if you are an existing user, UPGRADE NOW. If you are still new to Habari, install it, play around with it and fall in love with it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Kudos to the whole Habari Community who made this possible!&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="feedflare"&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=5zwF7J"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=5zwF7J" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?a=UkQyCJ"&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/h0bbel?i=UkQyCJ" border="0"&gt;&lt;/img&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;/div&gt;&lt;img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/h0bbel/~4/347811634" height="1" width="1"/&gt;</content>

by Christian Mohn at August 22, 2008 02:05 AM

&lt;p&gt;We Americans drive too much. We drive to the grocery store. We drive to the pub. We drive to the school bus stop.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;A week or two ago, I made a connection between several things that had been bothering me a lot lately, and something clicked. Should have been obvious, I suppose.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;All the locally-owned businesses in Lexington are gradually going out of business and being replaced by mega-stores and national chains. Why is this? Many factors are at work, of course, but a very significant one is the zoning laws. I have to drive to the grocery store, because it's so far away. It's so far away because where I live is zoned residential, and it's a long way to the nearest place that's zoned for grocery stores. And so, if I'm going to go all that way, I might as well do all my shopping in one place. So I favor the large mega-grocery store, rather than Fletcher's Meat Market (which has gone out of business) or the produce wagon on the corner (which has moved to the corner of busier roads).&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I love so much about England, and much of Europe in general, is the tiny, privately owned stores, offering just a handful of products, and doing it really well. So I can go to the butcher and the baker and the candlestick maker, and know that they take pride in their store. And since they're just around the corner, I can walk to them and not feel like I have to drive to Walmart where I can buy everything, and it's all from China.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Zoning laws could, possibly, be reformed, and, indeed, it may become necessary as fuel prices continue to rise. But it could take generations before there there are neighborhood stores again, because we've just gotten into a certain way of living.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not so long ago, folks went down to the local diner or pub, and talked to their neighbors. I don't know any of my neighbors, except, vaguely, those with kids the same age as our kids. And even then, I can't say I've ever actually talked with any of them about anything but when the kid is coming over for dinner or a sleepover, and when they'll be back home.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So, there you go. Now that I have something to blame it on, it's all better. That's what life is about - blame and recriminations. Particularly if I can blame it on the government.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://flickr.com/photos/rbowen/sets/72157606847175366/" title="Downtown Demolition by DrBacchus, on Flickr"&gt;&lt;img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3037/2780359231_888d045df6_m.jpg" width="240" height="160" alt="Downtown Demolition" /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lexington is host to the &lt;a href="http://www.feigames2010.org/"&gt;2010 FEI World Equestrian Games&lt;/a&gt;. Exactly what this means, I'm not sure. Something like a horsey olympics. Folks around here seem to think it's a big deal.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This has been the excuse for a wave of short-sightedness that is epic even for Lexington, where the City Council seems to be composed of people who can't think past the end of the week unless someone draws pictures.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In preparation for these games, just 2 years away, they are spending a huge amount of money, and building a facility to host them. The assumption is that after the games, folks will flock from around the world to use our fabulous new facility. Of course, since Lexington doesn't have an international airport, this seems wildly unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Additionally, and more sadly, they are building a ginormous hotel downtown to host the folks who will come for the games. So for a couple weeks, we'll have a full hotel in Lexington, and then for the next 20 years it will be an empty eyesore. But, even sadder, they chose to tear down some of the oldest buildings in downtown lexington, and drive out some of the longest-established businesses in downtown, for this venture.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;They had a city council meeting in which they asked for the people's opinion on this. The people, unsurprisingly, were strongly opposed to it. However, the city council see this being a cash cow, and can't think past the end of 2010. Tragic. So &lt;a href="http://www.dameky.com/"&gt;The Dame&lt;/a&gt; is no more. And the Mad Hatter is no more. And a number of other businesses that were here when my parents were in college. And for what? So that some ponies can prance about and some arab sheikhs can be comfortable for two weeks. Then what? Well, the current city council will no longer be in office, so what do they care?&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com/2008/08/laughing-baby.html"&gt;&lt;img src="http://drbacchus.com/images/weekend-wordsmith.png"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;For the &lt;a href="http://weekendwordsmith.blogspot.com/2008/08/laughing-baby.html"&gt;Weekend Wordsmith&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Laugh, Baby&lt;br /&gt;August 15, 2008&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Laugh now, little one,&lt;br /&gt;it's all tears ahead -&lt;br /&gt;a vale of tears&lt;br /&gt;through which we mourn&lt;br /&gt;and weep, on even the best&lt;br /&gt;of days.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Laugh, and do not listen&lt;br /&gt;to those who tell you your lot&lt;br /&gt;is a harsh one.&lt;br /&gt;I'll let you in on a little secret,&lt;br /&gt;just between us:&lt;br /&gt;They say that only&lt;br /&gt;because they forgot to laugh&lt;br /&gt;when they had the chance -&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;thought laughter impious,&lt;br /&gt;thought tears the path&lt;br /&gt;of righteousness.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I'm glad John mentioned&lt;br /&gt;that Jesus wept for his friends.&lt;br /&gt;He'd have done well to note&lt;br /&gt;how often he laughed with them.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So laugh, my angel,&lt;br /&gt;while you're yet a baby,&lt;br /&gt;that when you are old&lt;br /&gt;you will still be young.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/80893180@N00/2756594062/"&gt;Gathara's political cartoons are on Flickr now&lt;/a&gt;. It's very sad that Zimbabwe, like Kenya, has been allowed by the international community to get away with a blatantly disregarded public poll, and the old men are still in power.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

&lt;p&gt;I saw &lt;a href="http://yoavs.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-to-install-tidy-20-on-fedora-core.html"&gt;Yoav's blog entry on Tidy&lt;/a&gt; and for a brief moment, in the first paragraph, thought that there was actually a phptidy utility. Alas, it was not to be.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Perl has had &lt;a href="http://perltidy.sourceforge.net/"&gt;perltidy&lt;/a&gt; for some time, and, as I understand, it's a pretty hard thing to do. But I keep hoping that someone will do the same thing for PHP.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, fortunately, php syntax is enough like perl that I can use perltidy to reformat php code about half the time (I have a vim macro that runs perltidy on the selected block of text) - the other half, it complains about syntax errors and screws things up pretty well.&lt;/p&gt;</content>

by rbowen at August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

I was told, in my weekly meeting with my line manager, about a new feature on the Specsavers website. Thought I'd share... It allows you to try on frames virtually, from the comfort of your own home which is a great idea. A customer at work today even said, that ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

Some fellow has made a pretty nifty Flickr plugin for Wordpress. Install it up & authenticate it. Simple stuff. Low and behold, you get a little Flickr icon when you're writing a post, adding a photo from your Flickr collection is a few clicks away. Brilliant. In other news & ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

Before: what a mess... It's nowhere near as fun as you'd think. My back still aches from being under my desk for ages sorting out cables.. Still not amazingly tidy but it's definitely an improvement. And the worst thing is, I've run out of power sockets. So I'll have to start ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

Today I... woke up, went back to sleep, woke up again, got up, had a shower, made lunch, walked to work, worked, walked home, watched a bit of tv and... ...wasted a few minutes of your precious time by making you read this post. Come again! Mwuaha...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

Figured it was about time I sorted my Firefox bookmarks and that is a *huge* task. I've deleted loads that don't work anymore and attempted to sort out the remaining horde of mostly what I'd call "things which might come in handy one day"... Whilst doing so I found some ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

I should have done this long ago. Every time I get McDonalds for lunch at work someone has a dig at me about it. Maybe they're just jealous because I eat so much crap and don't put much weight on, heh. But the other day I had a change of ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

FixMyStreet.com is one of the coolest websites I've found in a long time.. The other week I noticed that a street light on my road remained on during daylight hours and seeing as I had nothing better to do, I set about trying to get it fixed. Wayne told me ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

I just registered a Twitter account, if only to make sure I got my username before someone else does, known as "land grabbing" - some say this Twitter lark is the new Facebook but I'm not so sure. Maybe I'll use it, maybe I won't. It's pointless without anybody to ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

MJ Ray wrote about a couple of things which puzzled him a while back... Here are a couple of things that puzzle me. 1. Templates Why is the ~/Templates/ directory empty on a default Ubuntu install? If there is a sensible reason, by all means comment and tell me. But if you right-click ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

My first phone... A Sagem MV3020 Mike was wondering what the average age of other peoples mobile phones as been. And from memory I will try to put the mobile phones I've owned into chronological order.. The first phone I ever sort of owned was my Mum's old Sagem. It was the most ...

August 22, 2008 02:00 AM

• @steventrotter Thank you my dear… it was yummy! #
• I cannot believe @khara punked out on us last night. I even had a special slide just for you babe. #
• It was great finally meeing @crowskie and @lukenova last night #
• @steventrotter http://twitpic.com/83it - Wrock! #
• Retweeting @timopp: Retweeting @nikf http://stopthemanga.com/ HAHAHAH #
• @klglenn25 Hey Kristin Glenn #
• @steventrotter I will not be there today Next time hopefully #
• Who is going to buy this for Chloe? http://snurl.com/3i5p3 #
• @ABombshell Is there a blog post about this? #

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by jennifer at August 21, 2008 05:59 AM

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

by Ryan at August 20, 2008 08:05 PM

• Anyone have about 24 extra hours I can borrow? Seriously time is flying by lately. #
• Sleep deprived mom is sleepy #
• Is the RSI group coming to refresh meeting tonight? #
• @steventrotter I’m too antisocial for another social network. #
• @sogroovynow are you coming tonight? #
• @toddw You are my offical unofficial mac person too #
• for @abombshell and @JordaNinja http://snurl.com/3hpz4 #
• @steventrotter Don’t forget the part “I can’t see without my glasses” #
• Tuna sammich and easy mac.. nom nom #
• @jacook11 It will be a bit after 6:30. We will give everyone time to get there and get settled. #
• @njnrez Isn’t it the greatest thing in the world! You will miss it after she’s born. It always gave me peace of mind. #
• @khara where are you my dear… i’m waiting on you to start the presentation #

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by jennifer at August 20, 2008 05:59 AM

• Corn field on one side rice field on the other… Feel like I’m in a box of chex #
• @toddw Want me to make you one? #
• Retweeting @philsherry: Unsure or not whether you’re a prostitute? http://tinyurl.com/6qbpzw #
• http://www.facetheglory.com/ Free McDonalds Chicken Biscuit or Sandwich with purchase of drink #
• http://twitpic.com/85xu - @mitchellclay needs this shirt: http://store.xkcd.com/ #
• Jonesboro’ians, don’t forget about tomorrow’s Refresh Meeting http://snurl.com/3hg4s I promise to get a good presentation together tonight #
• I cannot forget my hoodie tomorrow. The boys are freezing me to death here! #
• @gawd0r in this office! #

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by jennifer at August 19, 2008 05:59 AM

• @lukenova direct msg me your email #
• I’m still awake… believe it or not #

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by jennifer at August 18, 2008 05:59 AM

• Its amazing that chloe can be crying, we turn on tori amos and she ok. #

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by jennifer at August 17, 2008 05:59 AM

Apropos: Hey NBC!

by Firas at August 16, 2008 08:45 PM

• @75th Nope, my group of Ledbetters are very small… My grandfather was an only child #
• http://snurl.com/3gc2w WHY HELL YEAH! #
• New avatar… FaceYourManga does not support BBW http://snurl.com/3gcyo #
• @lquessenberry so just did some awesome ass driving and kept us from getting rammed #
• from a human standpoint I’m still alive #
• @khara WRONG WRONG WRONG #
• @sogroovynow I tried to steal you a basket today but @khara wouldn’t put it in her purse #
• http://twitpic.com/7t02 - Think he’ll see this note? #
• http://twitpic.com/7t1b - Me and @steventrotter #
• @steventrotter boooooooobs #
• @toddw Boobs always get your attention! #
• @njnrez that does look like brandon! #
• 12seconds - Snick Snick http://12seconds.tv/channel/geeksmakemehot/15229 #
• @njnrez want a 12 seconds invite? #

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by jennifer at August 16, 2008 05:59 AM

• About to give Chloe Baby a bath. #
• Loretta lynns song fist city is one of the greatest songs of all time #
• Chloe is cutting her first tooth #

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by jennifer at August 15, 2008 05:59 AM

• Laid down to take a nap at 7:30pm last night… slept all night. I feel tons better today! #
• @njnrez whats wrong dear #
• @steventrotter I’ll have to skip out this week. Having lunch with my daughter #
• New Guy: “It’s not like you are from Blytheville or something”. Me: “Dude, *I* am from Blytheville”. He just walks off with head hung. #
• @hillarygayle Yay for urine! #
• Retweeting @toddw: HAHA! For the Warcraft fans… http://tinyurl.com/yu6c7b #
• http://twitpic.com/7kkt - Chloe and @steventrotter #
• @steventrotter Um… Chloe #
• @steventrotter well you are cute too dear, it’s just that my daughter is much cuter #
• @njnrez Yes… being pregnant is horrible. Blame everything on the pregnancy. #

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by jennifer at August 14, 2008 05:59 AM

• @timopp I’m out of the lunch crew until after payday… sucks to be broke #
• @Jenn2007 Looks pretty! #
• I like! http://songza.com/z/ep6zm7 #
• @timopp I can be that asshole #
• I slept in the back of @steventrotter’s car for lunch… naps ++ #
• @njnrez I haven’t updated it in oh… years? #
• @njnrez come over this weekend and we can geek out and i’ll fix it #
• @JordaNinja well, don’t forget about the geeky girl from Arkansas! #
• @steventrotter You are not one to be talking! I got your back Khara! #
• @mitchellclay has ribs cooking. nom nom #
• @steventrotter I didn’t say *I* don’t eat junk. I’m just saying you can’t lecture Khara about it! #
• @JordaNinja The bombshell should be so proud #

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by jennifer at August 13, 2008 05:59 AM

• @khara Sorry I didn’t make it darlin, did you have a wonderful birthday? #
• @Stammy I’m pretty sure they don’t send you to prison unless you have under a 3.0 #
• @toddw pandora is great. It gets me through work every day. #
• I’m having caffeine withdraws! Major headache coming on. #
• It is so pretty outside today!! Is fall around the corner?!?! #
• http://twitpic.com/7csi - The Ducks #
• http://twitpic.com/7csk - The Quacks #
• http://twitpic.com/7csy - Chloe seeing @mitchellclay for the first time after us being away for the weekend. #
• I think my pandora station has moved more towards @mitchellclay’s tastes… #
• I have a skeeter bite on my little finger #
• I know @njnrez will eat some damn chicken wangs wif us #
• @njnrez pregnancy does that. Wait until you are 9 months! #
• Listening to some Norah Jones. #
• @timopp Cool! Can we do this every monday morning?!?!?! #
• @timopp We’re sorry, but your Gmail account is currently experiencing errors. You #
• 7 minutes! #
• The park is purty today #

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by jennifer at August 12, 2008 05:59 AM

You just noticed?

My Republican opponents, they don’t like to talk about efficiency. You know, the other day I was in a town-hall meeting and I laid out my plans for investing $15 billion a year in energy efficient cars, and a new electricity grid and all this.

Somebody said, ‘Well, what can I do, what can individuals do?’ So I told them something simple, I said:

“You know what, you could inflate your tires to the proper levels, and that if everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper levels, we would actually probably save more oil than all the oil that we get from John McCain from right below his feet there, whatever it is that he was going to, wherever he was going to drill.”

So now the Republicans are going around—this is the kind of things they do, I don’t understand it—they’re going around, sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea as if this is Barack Obama’s energy plan.

Now two points. One, they know they are lying about what my energy plan is. But the other this, they are making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4%. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.

You know, they think it is funny that they are making fun of something that is actually true. They need to do their homework, because this is serious business. Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference.

by Firas at August 09, 2008 08:57 PM

As some of you know I have left the Appalachian Trail at Duncannon, Pa., after having some trouble with my knees and having to get back to work anyway. I had a few pictures left on my digital camera and I felt I should share them, as well as what I plan to do on the Trail next.

While I was in Duncannon I actually met Bilge Rat, the occasional hiker and merchant mariner whose favorite thing to do is to play pranks on other hikers. He was responsible for a fake electrical outlet and telephone booth in shelters in North Carolina. And, as it turned out, I hadn’t seen the last of his pranks.

On the afternoon of July 11th I actually left Duncannon to head up Peters Mountain, and after having lunch at the truckstop I went 2.9 miles or so out of town, across the Susquehanna River on the Clarks Ferry Bridge, and up the very rocky mountain to Clarks Ferry Shelter. My knees didn’t like this stumbling over rocks very much, and to this day they still bother me from time to time.

When I finally got up to the top of the ridgeline, I saw this water spigot, installed courtesy of Bilge Rat.

The next morning I made the mistake of turning on my phone before I packed up to hike out. There were four messages, all work-related. And that’s when I knew the hike was over.

So that Monday morning I returned across the bridge to the Park and Ride lot where a Harrisburg city bus stops, caught the bus into Pennsylvania’s state capital, and then a Greyhound bus home.

The Appalachian Trail, though I didn’t hike the whole thing, or even as much of it as I would have been satisfied with, has been an amazing experience. Even aside from the various injuries, the nature of my work simply won’t permit me to complete a thru-hike at this time, and probably not at any time in the near future. I do plan to get out to the Trail for section hikes as often as I can, though, hopefully beginning with several weekend hikes in the White Mountains of New Hampshire through the end of September. Some time in my life, though, when I don’t have to work constantly, I’m going to have to return and try it again.

by Michael Hampton at August 07, 2008 09:14 PM

In short: DON’T!

What in the world was Apple thinking when you try to upgrade/register/sync your iPhone/iPod and you get “Error: -19″ or “Error: -20″?? What good does this do any one? How am I supposed to fix the problem if I don’t know what the problem is? Isn’t Apple the king of user-friendliness?

When you write software, you should use good error messages. You should use good exceptions. You should use descriptive values.

Granted, some things the user cannot fix. Telling the user the database connection was lost on a web application does very little good for the user. You can however tell the user that an error that was not their fault occurred. At least then I know I can come back and try again later.

Luckily, after rebooting my iPhone I was able to install the recent software update. This may not have been the problem, but certainly Apple could have notified me that I should attempt rebooting.

In any case, be nice to your damn users!

by Eric at August 06, 2008 07:48 AM

Barack Obama’s plan to reduce the economic burden of gasoline prices is to tax the oil companies, and give $1,000 “rebate” checks to consumers. Which, of course, will result in oil companies raising the price of their product to make up for the additional cost of the tax, erasing any benefit (and raising the price of everything that uses oil to get to its destination). Consumers lose, as oil prices and the price of everything goes up. The oil companies lose a little, as the increased price somewhat mutes demand (gasoline is inelastic, but not completely so), and the government gains more power.

Hooray for big government solutions. Hat tip to Rob Port. (One benefit of the seemingly inevitable Obama administration, I’m back in good standing with my old Conservative friends!)

by Mark at August 04, 2008 05:56 PM

Barack Obama may be his own worst enemy when it comes to matters of racism and xenophobia. Speaking to a Springfield, MO crowd, he said:

Nobody thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face. So what they are going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, ‘He’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name.’ You know, ‘He doesn’t look like all of those other presidents on the dollar bills.’

Barack Obama

Here is a video clip of the remarks.

Neither Bush nor McCain has challenged Obama’s patriotism, called his name “funny” or brought up his appearance (read: racial makeup) as a detrimental quality. These aren’t real attacks that Obama is referencing. These are attacks that Obama is himself launching — against himself.

He’s trying to play the persecuted messiah. And if Bush and McCain won’t fit into the “white Republican” stereotype and start launching racist and xenophobic attacks of their own, then by Zeus, Obama will act it out for us, complete with a backwoods Southern drawl accent, and then claim it as fact. As is unfortunately the case with much of the civil rights movement post Dr. King, the only thing that is apparently less tolerable than racism is the conspicuous lack of it.

This is essentially a repeat of Hillary Clinton’s victim act — pretending that she was being picked on and attacked because she was a woman (and not, gasp, because she was the frontrunner).

I find it tremendously lame for Obama to stoop to inventing racial attacks. If anything, the story here is that the American public is, on the whole, indifferent about Obama’s racial makeup. He’s polling higher than his vanilla-white opponent. Even if McCain were inclined to run racially charged attack ads against Obama, he’d be stupid to do so. The backlash would be catastrophic to his campaign. Americans, on the whole, have little stomach for racism. Obama knows this, and this may be why he’s launching false accusations of racism. He knows that the “racism meter” of most Americans is more sensitive than their “bullshit meter.”

Note: before the Obamamaniacs inevitably pile on — I am not a Republican. I am not going to vote for John McCain.

by Mark at July 31, 2008 05:39 PM

In order to answer a plea for help from a commandline phobe for an easy to use subversion client for OS X I went searching for a TortoiseSVN equivalent.  Tortoise is the subversion client for Windows so I hoped that someone would have developed something similar to integrate with Finder.  After a little bit of searching I found scplugin and recommended it.  I finally got a chance to try it out myself this evening and so far it looks really good.

by westi at July 27, 2008 07:17 PM

Can anyone recommend a good rsi prevention program for OS X?  I am used to using WorkRave on windows at $dayjob and this works very well.  Looking around it seemed to be WristSaver that was recommened for OS X but it is nowhere near as fully functioned as WorkRave.  Or am I just going to have to look into porting WorkRave to OS X?

by westi at July 26, 2008 09:45 AM

WordPress seems to have had the dubious pleasure of been nominated for the 2008 Pwnie Awards in the “Mass 0wnage” category:

It seems like hardly a week goes by without a new vulnerability in WordPress or one of its many plugins. Many of them are actively being exploited to own popular WordPress blogs and use them to serve spam or client-side exploits to unsuspecting visitors. The popularity of WordPress combined with the abysmal security practices of WordPress plugin developers places the entire Internet at risk and is worthy of a nomination.

To be fair many of the vulnerabities that are reported are within plugin code rather than the core. For more information on the CVEs reported for WordPress and WordPress plugins this year you can head over to the codex.

by westi at July 22, 2008 07:05 PM

Seeing as twitter seems to have stopped accepting my sms tweets without a PIN even though one isn’t set up I went in search of a simple twitter client for my phone.  The first one I found was twibble which so far is working very well and supports both tweeting via 3G/GPRS/WIFI on the phone as well as sending them via sms if you want.  Twibble also has support for using twitpic to tweet pictures.

by westi at July 22, 2008 06:59 PM

Yesterday at WordCamp UK 2008 I did a short presentation on getting involved with WordPress which I think went down quite well despite being the last presentation in an enjoyable two day event. I have uploaded the slides to slideshare so they are now available for people to refer to and comment on.

by westi at July 21, 2008 06:19 PM

By Mandy Schick:
Categories I’d Be Sure to Win In on the Show Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?

• Regrettable Bedfellows
• Errors in Check Bouncing
• Foods That Taste Good When You’re Hungover
• Guys You Meet in Dive Bars
• The Crushed Pipe Dreams of Recent College Graduates
• 1,001 Excuses to Avoid Going to the Gym
• The Perils of Having No Health Insurance
• Drunk Jenga

by Firas at July 20, 2008 04:50 PM

day 2 of wordcamp uk has started with a slightly emptier room. You can follow the snarky backchat via twitter - #wordcampuk

by westi at July 20, 2008 10:11 AM

A long time ago I wrote about the ways in which you can get involved in WordPress development using free available tools on windows in my post “Windows WordPress toolbox”.  Since that post I have come up with a number of useful scripts and shortcuts that I use in my WordPress development.

Here are a number tools that I use most often, these are a set of bash functions which you can stick in your ~/.bashrc file on your linux machine or mac :

//Download a patch from a trac install and apply it to a svn checkout
//e.g. wp-trac-patch http://trac.wordpress.org/attachment/ticket/2345/2345.diff
wp-trac-patch() {
svn revert -R . && curl "$1?format=raw" | patch -p0
}

//Search through a subversion checkout using grep (only search the .php and .js files)
//e.g. wp-grep the_excerpt
wp-grep() {
find . \( -name "*.php" -print , -name "*.js" -print \)  | xargs grep "$1"
}

//Merge a change from trunk to a branch in a subversion checkout of the whole repository
//e.g. wp-merge 1234 2.6
wp-merge() {
svn merge -r $(($1-1)):$1 trunk branches/$2
}

//Output the svn:eol-style property of all the files in a repository
svn-eol() {
find . \( -name "*.php" -print , -name "*.js" -print \)  | xargs svn propget svn:eolstyle
}

I hope you find this useful

by westi at July 19, 2008 03:39 PM

It has begun!

by westi at July 19, 2008 09:14 AM

Great quote by Jeff Jarvis on the need for global recognition of Free Speech as a human right:

What America should be exporting — more than Coke or troops — is an understanding of living with the ethic of free speech we have inherited and the realization that the internet is the First Amendment brought to life.

Jeff Jarvis

by Mark at July 15, 2008 07:36 PM

It’s been much too long since I posted a Trail update, so I’ll keep this kind of short even though it covers quite a few days and over 92.8 miles.

On June 27 I left the Free State Hiker Hostel and crossed some nice Maryland farmland and got my first taste of what the rocks would end up being like in Pennsylvania. I hiked a very short 5.7 miles this day to Devils Racecourse Shelter. Funny how it seems the shortest days are those when I leave town.

June 28 I finally crossed the Mason-Dixon line into Pennsylvania. I made it a short day again, 7.8 miles, and hitched into Waynesboro, where I holed up in a hotel again to try to finish some work. Wound up staying there two nights.

June 30 I finally left town and went back to the Trail. I wasn’t able to hitch a ride out of town, so I wound up walking the whole 5 miles back to the trailhead. Counting this, I hiked 17.5 miles to the Rocky Mountain Shelters.

July 1 I took another short day, hiked only 3.2 miles to Caledonia State Park, where I had lunch at the snack bar and then went to hunt down a motel room in nearby Fayetteville. Here I discovered that Pennsylvania has some bizarre laws about the sale of alcohol. You can only buy packaged beer from a beer distributor, in cases of 24 or more, or from a bar, where you can buy six-packs. There was a beer store but no bar that I could find, so I passed. I have no idea how you would go about buying liquor. I did get some more work done that day.

July 2 I left and hiked 10 miles to Birch Run Shelter. Along the way I passed Quarry Gap Shelters, which was one of the nicest setups I’ve seen yet.

Thursday I made 9.9 miles to Pine Grove Furnace State Park, where I took (and failed) the half-gallon challenge. Since this is the approximate midpoint of the Trail, hikers who come through here attempt to eat a half-gallon of ice cream at one sitting. I only saw one of four other people who tried it actually succeed. This night I stayed at the Ironmasters Mansion hostel, a former station on the Underground Railroad. Much of the Trail through Pennsylvania passes near or through private property.

For July 4th I hung around the state park that morning, waiting for the rain to let up, which ultimately it never quite did. I hiked out shortly after noon and made 7.4 miles to the James Fry shelter, where I got in from the rain. This aversion to getting wet accounts for a lot of my short days, though I guess I should get over it; it’s so hot that I’m drenched in sweat all day every day anyway. I saw the old midpoint marker (the actual midpoint is south of here now).

Saturday I left and, since it was raining on and off again, and this section was extremely rocky, went only 8.7 miles to the Alec Kennedy shelter. This section was the first time I had to throw the hiking poles up and climb rocks with my hands. I also saw a sign saying that the government had sprayed for gypsy moths, but ironically they have been everywhere for the last week or so and I’ve hardly been able to get them out of my face.

Sunday I passed through Boiling Springs and saw the (closed) ATC office, then hiked on to Middlesex Township, for 12.6 miles, where I got a hotel room, and stayed over Monday. Good thing I did since it rained virtually all day Monday, with lots of thunderstorms thrown in for good measure. This section passes through the Cumberland Valley and much of it passes next to active farmland. Hint to hikers: The Flying J truckstop here has an AYCE buffet at its restaurant.

Yesterday I left Middlesex after getting a late breakfast at the diner across the street from the hotel, and went 7.2 miles to Darlington Shelter. Along the way I ran across some bridge construction and chatted with one of the construction crew there about the Trail ahead. He advised me that the descent into and ascent out of Port Clinton were “knee-breakers.” I got in early in the afternoon, but minutes after I arrived the thunderstorms rolled in and kept on rolling, so I decided to stay. Wnen I arrived, there was a snake in the shelter. We had a chat and I convinced it that it would be best for it to leave, which it did. After it started raining I saw a frog hop by. As far as I know, the snake ate it.

Today I called it a short day again, getting into Duncannon early this afternoon after hiking 11.3 very rocky miles.

I’ll be spending tomorrow here as well, partly to dry out and partly to bleed off some time. There’s a method to my madness here: I have to be in New York City next Friday, and I’ll be catching a bus from Port Clinton to get there. But it’s only 70 miles up the Trail from here, so without the short and zero days, I would overshoot it, but wouldn’t make it far enough to get to the next town (Delaware Water Gap) where I could catch a bus into the city.

My next update will probably be from Port Clinton, or if I can’t find Internet access there, from NYC. Once this conference is over I’ll be back on the Trail and won’t have any other commitments to take me off the Trail, so I can get down to the business of hiking, and perhaps make up some of this very lost time.

by Michael Hampton at July 10, 2008 01:35 AM

I’ve made some 28 miles in two days over some very rocky ground and had to take today off to rest my aching legs. I might have made it even farther, but I kept stopping to rest and to take in some rather unique scenery.

Leaving the hostel in Knoxville on Tuesday, I first discovered just how rocky the ground is, though I was yet to discover it would get worse.

Around lunchtime I ran smack into Gathland State Park, home to the world’s only memorial to war correspondents, and near the site of the Battle of South Mountain, which took place September 14, 1862, three days before Antietam, a significant yet often overlooked battle in Civil War history. There was a soda machine here and so I had a Coke with my Mountain House freeze dried lunch.

Then I got my first taste of Maryland bureaucracy, and it was rather unpleasant. The state seems to want to keep us all unsafe.

And there was also some great scenery throughout the day.

I made 14.3 miles to the Dahlgren campground and discovered bathrooms with hot showers! That was a nice way to end a hot day.

Wednesday I had planned to go into Boonsboro and visit the Turn the Page Bookstore (owned by Bruce Wilder, husband of Nora Roberts) but they didn’t open until 10 am and I felt like making some miles was more important. Probably a good thing, too, since I almost immediately ran into fields and fields of rocks, which wouldn’t quit all day.

I did get some nice views, though, and saw and a deer.