Richard A. Johnson

Severed Fifth has been here for years!

OK, probably not the brightest idea to mix a little bit of LL Cool J and Severed Fifth, but I just couldn’t stop myself. Do you know what Severed Fifth is? No? Where the hell have you been? You have? Awesome! </jcastro>

Jono Bacon is in the process of finishing up his second album as part of his Severed Fifth project. If you know Jono, then you know there is a bunch of loud noises, a few grunts, and a wanna-be British man screaming from the depth of his gut. Years back, prior to the release of the first Severed Fifth album, Denied by Reign, I had the privilege of listening to a few of its tracks at a Linux fest. To quote myself after hearing some tracks:

“Oh yeah…this is the kind of shit I want to listen to before I break into someone’s house and rob them.”

I have heard a couple of the raw tracks through the Severed Fifth UStream channel, and I think my previous quote still stands. I haven’t heard the words yet, well not all of them. One day I overheard Jono growling something about My Little Pony, so you never know!

One thing Jono recently added was Fair Pay. Jono has been spending quite a bit of money to keep the Severed Fifth project afloat and recently if you remember, another group released an album where you paid what you thought was fair. Well, Jono is doing the same. If my broke arse can afford to donate money for some incredible music that I am free to do whatever I want with, then so can you! Only afford $1, groovy, Jono could use it. If you were planning on heading to space this year and still have $20,000,000 lying around, screw space, rock out with Severed Fifth instead!

While recently reading through the Severed Fifth website, I came across one of the posts talking about how Severed Fifth was being used in quite a few online videos. Don’t know about you, but I found not only the work cool, but the fact there are some people I would have never expected listening to metal using it in their video. Check that out and definitely look the videos over.

Street Team time! You can help spread the word of Severed Fifth in your community. When Denied by Reign came out, myself and a friend worked hard to try and get airplay on Q101, a local radio station here in Chicago. They were impressed to say the least, but 2 things stopped them from doing so. Metal wasn’t really their genre though they played some, and the other was the fact Jono was a misplaced British guy who isn’t from Chicago. Hey we tried. I did however get the local college to play it on their airwaves, so a few people got to hear the goodness.

So, if you are a metal head, or even if you aren’t, head on over to Severed Fifth’s website and check it out. I promise you a good time, and who knows, you just might end up a metal head if you weren’t already one.

Mama said knock you out!

It all started a bit over a month ago when I lost 2 machines to a natural disaster, one being my build machine which was powerful and the other being my laptop, which I used the most. Then yesterday when finishing my bike ride, busted spokes sent me into a nice slide with a broken wheel. The other day I noticed a clicking in my server, hard drive is what it sounded like. So I was able to power up, make a final backup, and noticed it wasn’t clicking. So I ran it for a day and just now, it died. One of these days I will have all of the money in the world and this type of stuff won’t bother me so much, but right now I am flat ass broke. So, until I can scrape together some money, I do not think I will be able to help much around the Ubuntu world. I will be using my netbook for pretty much everything right now, and if you have a netbook, lord knows you can’t do much with it besides surfing the intertubes.

Calgon! Take me away!

I have setup my own Tracks instance on my web server, installed Shuffle on my Android phone. I have created all of my contexts, setup my common tags, setup next-actions/waiting for/someday lists, but I have nothing TODO. On my desktop, I fired up Task by Taskwarrior to take a look and nothing!

So, with work beginning on Maverick for Ubuntu, and of course Kubuntu, I need something to do. So JR, Scott, Harald, Jon, David, and whoever else I forgot, gimme sumpin’ to do already!

Speaking of getting things done, as many of you know Task is my favorite. I needed something that I could access with my computers and my phone, so Tracks and Shuffle are the two best things for a droid phone. I want Task on my phone, and seeing as we now have Dropbox on the droid, I am starting to think about how I can get a GUI for Task on my phone as well. Oh, maybe that could be a to do!

Phil Bull, the amazing Ubuntu Documentation writer, says he wants stuff on the left and UDS on the moon, so this is just for him, while he waits for the manual to be released!

So, here I am, a bit peeved but more humored than anything else. Today I spent some time with a client of mine, actually a friend. His company asked me to come in and sit in while 5 other companies bid on a project they are working on. I listened to sales people all day long, and it isn’t like I have anything against all sales people, just a vast majority of them. My head was spinning when it was all over with. So, I got to listen to 4 companies give their spiel about using Linux here, possibly Windows there, and one even promoted the idea of using Macs as the workstations. Interesting stuff by these 4 companies, yet still boring as hell. Then come sales dude number five, the second or maybe third largest tool I have ever had the great privilege of meeting in my life. He comes prepared no doubt, gives us a groovy presentation handout, business cards, and even a pretty cool pen. I love swag, so I grabbed a handful of pens. I flipped over this guys business card before he introduced himself, and there it was, in big bold letters, Microsoft. Rock on, this should be entertaining, and boy was it!

I will not go in to details on who this guy is or what he does either at Microsoft or one of their partners, however Microsoft was on his business card, bigger than anything else. Anyways, he starts out rocking. He had me impressed, all kinds of charts, cost cutting avenues, cost and benefit analysis which made my socks roll it was so damn sexy. He even had the project mapped out, which none of the other 4 groups had done. Thus far, literature wise, he dusted the other 4. I was starting to cheer for this dude, got a little hot and bothered there for a second, sorry, back on track here. So, he finishes his Microsoft talk, and it was great this far. Then he thanks the other 4 groups there, and seemed really nice, until…”Let me show you where these other groups don’t make the mark, seriously Mac? Let’s start by showing you how they have this whole Linux thing wrong. First it is created in the basements of unemployed hobbiests, it isn’t as secure as its made out to be, and needless to say all of the patents they are infringing upon, therefor making it a liability for you to even use.” Now that was paraphrased, but my jaw was on the ground. He knew I literally just shat myself, but what he didn’t know is I am a Linux fanboy and hacker. I was actually dressed a little nice, wearing my typical wise guy hat. He said something else, but I can’t remember what it was, all I remember is I grabbed my laptop bag like it was my gun holster, and from it I pulled out my 9mm. Err, I pulled out my netbook, which has 2 stickers on there, and both say Kubuntu.

He just chuckled at me, which I think infuriated me more than what I had just heard. So now he tries to explain himself, back peddles at least to the point where he admits there are great corporations behind Linux development. But the 4 other groups that were there and myself really wanted to know, and before I could say anything, the CEO of the one group, Mandy I think her name was, chimed in with a, “Could you please explain the patents Linux infringes?” He gave her a brief look, and she went all comedian on him, and I had to hold back everything just not to start rolling on the floor. She lets out a, “No, before you continue, can you please explain that, as I would hate to be sued by some insane company for something they think is theres.” He wouldn’t answer at all and would only state he wasn’t allowed to speak about it. Oh boy, I am peeing myself by this time. So I look at my buddy, and I had to do it, some of you might have heard me say it before, but I just had to do it.

You know, I have been thinking about writing a piece of software that did nothing but infringe upon every software patent there was.

Brief pause, trying to get the people to do the, “OK dude, wtf are you getting at?” And when I got that look, I finished with…

But it’s to late, as Microsoft beat me to it.

Yes, very childish and immature, but it had to be done. So, that was my Microsoft bash. Listen, if you are a salesman, especially a Microsoft salesman or partner, don’t do your unfounded threats in a professional manner. You might be surprised that the people sitting in the room might just see right through you, and today, they saw through you, big time! In the end, it looks like there might be a combination of 2 of the companies used. One of the companies is the one who suggested the Macs as the workstations, and the reasoning behind it was good. On the server side, there will be Linux. In the end, a very entertaining day. Even this former or current FBI Cyber Security guy even poked fun at the Microsoft salesman. Supposedly he is one of the gentleman that also helped rip off the state of Illinois with frivolous claims about Linux, and boy did Illinois fall for it.

Anyways, just wanted to share that with everyone, as it was a fun story, probably a more of a “You had to have been there.” Now this salesman wasn’t the only one to bend the truth or outright lie, so salesman, be careful, not everyone is dumber than you anymore!