While some Debian-related e-mails this morning, I started thinking about Monty Python’s The Life of Brian: Cast List ========= Judean People’s Liberation Front…. will be played by Debian. People’s Front for the Liberation of Judea…. will be played by the FSF. Popular Front for the Liberation of Judea…. will be played by people who just want to get work done and use device drivers with firmware. The Roman Empire… will be played by Microsoft.

Yesterday was the last day of href=”http://linuxsymposium.org/”>Ottawa Linux Symposium, and I can’t help comparing it with the href=”http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix04/”>Usenix Annual Technical Conference, which was only a few weeks earlier. The difference in the quality and relevance (at least as far as my interests are concerned) of the papers, the energy of the attendees, and the overall atmosphere of the two conferences were distinctly different. A look at this year’s href=”http://www.finux.org/proceedings”>conference proceedings for

Whee! A quick ten minute hack involving some left-over X-10 hardware,

“apt-get install heyu”, a quick edit of a configuration file, and I

can now remotely reboot my kernel crash and burn test machine, even if

it’s completely wedged, by the simple set of commands:

heyu turn computer off

heyu turn computer on

I am so pleased with myself.

I am such a geek.