I’ve been seriously thinking about setting up a neighborhood wireless network, but the how has been bugging me. Till today. While looking for something to boost my signal strength, I came across NoCat.net. They even have a GPLed wireless authentication system.
I also found people who scoff at puny home-brew pringles antennas.
I need spam to test my email filters. Since I know that greeting card sites are notorious for selling your email address, I typee “greeting card” into Google and took off, signing up my test accounts, sending email between them and signing up for any free sites that advertise on those sites (But skipping the site that charges a “one-time small fee of $19.99” just so I can give them my opinion.)
In the process, I came across The Greeting Card Association‘s Cards for Kids program — a program aimed at getting children hooked on greeting cards:
Help us create a new generation of greeting card customers!
The concept is simple; introduce children to the joys of sending and receiving cards, and reinforce the concept at varying times during their childhood. The result will be adults who purchase cards and then share with their children the joys of card sending.
That’s it — no more birthday cards for my kids!
The cover page states the goal of the briefing—namely, to affect a “Positive Change to the Family Team”—and features a picture of two smiling children (a generic photo, not actual family members). Now, you may have thought about your family as a “team” before, but probably not in the sense of actually being out to win something. But this family is indeed out to win many things, as described in Claire’s bulleted list: harmony, happiness, love, etc. And what’s holding them back? Page 4 offers another list: negative behavior, “fighting and squabbling at inappropriate times,” lack of cooperation, disorganization.
— PowerPointless
Related to my earlier entry about meaning in work is this Wired article titled Imortal Code. The Baker’s in the article knew that they wanted to do something meaningful and they set began with that in mind:
In 1971, newlyweds Jim and Janet Baker began mining just that type of gem. Nerds of the highest order, they met while graduate students at Rockefeller University in New York City – Janet in biophysics and Jim in mathematics – and were scouting around for a technical problem that would hold their interest. One stipulation: Whatever problem they chose would have to be a problem they could solve within their lifetimes. They picked computer dictation. How long did they think it would take? “From 30 to 50 years,” Janet responds matter-of-factly, “but toward the low end.”
Jeff is wondering about the meaning of work — something I’ve been thinking about for the past few years. Why am I doing this? What benefit do I see? What does my contribution mean? Is my work meaningful to me or is it just a way to make money — that is, is it all for “the company” or is there some value for me personally apart from a way to pay the mortgage?
Some people would wonder why I even care about these sorts of things. After all, they operate from an assumption that the work world doesn’t offer any deeper meaning. They can comfortably exchange any value they create (i.e. their work) for money without considering any further benefit because they never expected anything else. I’ve even met a few people who are so unconcerned with what they do that they are perfectly willing to flip burgers as long as they get paid.
Why do I think I “deserve” anything else besides a paycheck for the work that I do. Why do I expect to gain a personal benefit from my work?
In one sense, I don’t. I accepted this work, this job, knowing that the company’s focus was not on me and my satisfaction, but, instead, they wanted to make money. I understood that they were using me and my work in exchange for some sum of money. This is the only agreement that we had. I work, I get paid.
Somehow, my ego expects more. I want to know that the eight or so hours I spend at work have meaning beyond their bottom line. I spend almost a third of my adult life here, I want access to some of the value I create, too.
Ultimatly, I find that working with freely-redistributable software helps me fulfill my work obligations (I manage systems that run mostly-free software) and my personal desire for fulfillment (I can contribute a lot of my work back to the community).
Hmmm… Wi-Fi Public Access from the Ground Up Planning, installing, and operating a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) business.
Recovery Oriented Computing looks like the kind of of software I want. Wes notes:
Crash-only software is an interesting idea; I once read that SGI developers, having complete faith in XFS recovery, would save time by simply hard-resetting machines instead of cleanly rebooting.
I should note that I once met a developer for IBM who was working on AIX’s JFS filesystem (the analog of SGI’s XFS) and he didn’t seem to have the same confidence. We use XFS on this server.
All Look Same is a website about the differences and similarities in the way “Asian” people look. It has a quiz to see if you know the difference between Koreans and Japanese. Or so Dan says. I got some funky database error when I tried.
I recently met Ephrem, a long-haired, Orthodox, Linux newbie who is interested enough in XML and tech to help me work out the bugs in my OpenWeblog code. So, I set up a weblog for him and the first thing he does is post a painting titled The Body of Christ Dead in the Tomb, which is referenced in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. As Dostoyevsky writes: This picture could rob many a man of his faith.