The Golden Path

Just found out today after a few hours of banging my head against a wall that in every version of Windows, you cant have a file path longer than 260 characters.  Thanks to Microsoft's neverending support for the original Win32 API, this bug is not really fixable.  More info can be found at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/fileio/fs/naming_a_file.asp

Maximum Path Length

In the Windows API, the maximum length for a path is MAX_PATH, which is defined as 260 characters. A path is structured in the following order: drive letter, colon, backslash, components separated by backslashes, and a null-terminating character, for example, the maximum path on the D drive is D:\<256 chars>NUL.

The Unicode versions of several functions permit a maximum path length of approximately 32,000 characters composed of components up to 255 characters in length. To specify that kind of path, use the "\\?\" prefix.

Of course when you are running a ruby script inside of cygwin inside of windows, getting at those Unicode versioned functions might not be so easy :(

confusion

As the title says, this post is a big heaping pile of nonsense that most people would be better off just skipping completely.

There seems to be an endless supply of interpersonal interactions in life that I don't have a clue how to handle.  How did I ever make it to this point without mastering, or at least familiarizing myself with these skills?

Case in point...names...I cant remember them for the life of me.  I know that this situation could EASILY be remedied by making a point of saying the person's name every time I talk to them, even if it is a bit odd at first.  Perhaps some sort of word association would also help.  Rather than fix the problem I stick to my regular routine of never saying names in fear that I might forget one someday.

There are countless other examples, but I don't care to enumerate them at this time...

ernesto strikes

With much needed rain and a cool breeze, Ernesto moved through on Friday. Left behind was a path of leaf destruction and a power outage in my neighborhood...what a surprise! Fortunately, as I mentioned earlier, I purchased an oil lamp for just such an occasion. Since I had never used one of these archaic devices, it took me a while to get it going (apparently, you have to let the oil soak into the cloth wick thingy which takes forever). Burning cloth also sets off fire alarms pretty easily, so if you have a hypersensitive one like I do, might want to rip it out of the socket and throw it at something before you proceed. Anyways, I survived my fourth night without power this summer with neither bumps nor bruises...and managed to read a few chapters of my latest book in the process :)

planes crash sometimes

So I am scanning my news feeds this morning when I suddenly notice that there was been a DOMESTIC plane crash...yesterday...killing approximately 50 people.  The first thing that pops into my mind is: how did it take so long for me to hear about this?  I generally consider myself pretty well informed about the news so I head over to CNN to get more details.  Once again, I am shocked to find that this story isn't even the headline on their website.

I just have to wonder how much bigger this story would have been if some "terrorist" had decided to blow up the plane rather than whatever stupid mistake happened resulting in the plane taking off on the wrong runway.  Would the bombing had made air travel any less safe than this tragedy?  Just another example of how retarded the news industry has become.  Hopefully the Homeland Security people will effect an immediate ban on short runways to prevent this tragedy from ever happening again.  Might as well bulldoze a bunch of houses and make them all 10 miles long...can't be too "safe".

wireless is easy?

Just received a used Dell laptop as my official work laptop since I was too impatient to wait my turn to get a new one.  The official specs are Dell Latitude D610 with a high resolution (1400x1050) screen and built-in wireless.  There are a few issues running the latest version of Ubuntu (LTS) on it.  First of all, the display does not work at full resolution for the built-in monitor, or for my external monitor at work.  The best I can do at the moment is 1280x1024.  The second issue is the wireless card does not work out-of-the-box.  Since a network connection is far more important than fixing fuzzy fonts, I set out to get wireless working first.  Here is what I found...

Step 1:

Determine what kind of wireless device you have built into your sytem.  The easiest way to do this is look at the output of the command "lspci" and search for something wireless-ish.  On my system, I have the following line:

0000:03:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

Step 2:

Search google for detailed instructions from someone else who has already got this device working :)

A simple search directed me to this HOWTO with some very useful information:

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=Home
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx/Dapper

Step 3:

It appears that the Broadcom chip is already supported in the latest linux kernel provided by Ubuntu.  However, the firmware is proprietary and cant be distributed.  Therefore, you have to install a package called "bcm43xx-fwcutter" and manually download the firmware.  Once you do that, simply run the extraction tool:

sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware <downloaded file>

and reboot.  Suddenly your wireless card is automatically working :)

Step 4:

Get a nice network connection tool like NetworkManager installed so that you can automagically switch between wireless and wired connections when appropriate.

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome

phily

Parents came, they saw and they left. The pic you see pretty much sums up my visit to this city...minus the sewage smell that meandered among the city streets.

Had a good time overall. My hosts were gracious and accomodating. My only real complaint is the horrible design of the turnpike systems. Has noone ever considered adding a turnaround area ever few miles? How about ever 5 miles?

Terrorization

How much longer will it take for people to realize that the real "Terrorists" in this world are news organizations and government officials who over-hype and sensationalize every issue they can get their hands on?  I'm not belittling the efforts of those who seek to inflict harm upon others, but when you stop and think about it, there has been more damage resulting from irrational and unprofessional behavior by news organizations than there ever was from real destruction of life and property (I have no solid proof of this...just speculation :P).  It might be nice if these organizations invested minimal effort to become less the tools of the criminally insane and more the purveyors of logic and reason.  Is there no money to be made in reporting facts?

While I am on the subject, why are Christians so afraid of dying?