Sinzui

I think I've been too quite about my ideas for extending Medusa into and indexer and query engine for a metadata database. I've revised my original thoughts about Sutra, a metadata database. It is a quick revision. More details about the Friend of a Friend schema implementation and the resource directed acyclic graph implementation can be found in my journal.

As my long weekend plans were dashed by Time Life, I did not get Medusa's GUI fully working. I did refactor the UI to behave better, and added the missing menu of available emblems. I surprised that the emblem's image does not display in the GtkOoptionMenu, but does show in the GtkMenu when I select it. I'm not sure if this is a GTK2 behavior. Images do show in the GTK GtkOptionMenu hidden in Nautilus.

I'll add the query this week. I think I'll have a working app next week after I have added created the results list.

Anne and I took a four day weekend to the Blue Ridge mountains to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. We stayed at my parent's summer house which they vacated a few weeks ago. The house was recently fixed up, and it is a great escape from the troubles of the world. We needed a break from our kids and work.

Time Life, my clumsy employer, single handedly ruin this get-away. One of the backend systems failed, and because Time Life laid-off most the e-commerce team and all of my backup. No one at all Time Life had the skills (Enterprise Java + Unix) or wits to fix it. I spent three days working on it. Anne was not pleased. I was very stressed out. Time Life was an idiot last year for expecting every employee to double their efficiency. They are idiots this year for lowering goals, but halving the staff to accomplish them. Last year and this year have the same set of liabilities, the company is too dependent upon specific people. The company cannot succeed because no one person is permitted to fail in the plan.

I had decided some months ago that I would leave the company when it moves from Alexandria VA to Tyson's Corner VA. Now, with family gatherings fast approaching, I've decide to resign in the next few weeks. I have a few job opportunities already lined up, just for such an crisis. None would be ready for me in the next two weeks. I have a few weeks vacation saved up, so I may just resign, take some time to spend with my family, select the job I want.

I decided to postpone using GTKExpander until it was available in Glade, but I've made some refinements to msearch-gui nonetheless. I'm using the checkbox to hide and show the clauses. Only the visible clauses will form the query. I spent more time then necessary making gettext friendly label changes for the checkboxes; I've got to stop moving between languages and frameworks. I've got to hook the new editor behavior up the to query generator next.

I'll have a workable Medusa interface soon. Soon I'll start putting this work into Nautilus.

Still no phone service after three days, but at least I can drink the water from the taps now. The tree is gone, but I have some minor roof damage. I hurt from yard work. The turkey that started thawing from the power outage is almost ready; tomorrow I'll have friends over and deep fry it. Yum.

My home sans-tree.

I haven't contributed neary as much to GNOME as I wanted to since Huricane Isable. I've got my house and yard fixed up. My children have been quite demanding in the evening and weakends. I've played with difference GNOME 2.4 distributions. I've been setup up my next job.

I've settled to leave Time Life before the end of the year. The job doesn't interest me. As before, I'll be taking a job that promises a few interesting problems to solve each month, and some friends to make work bearable. I've been advising on e-commerce technical matters for a friend. I think I'll be offered a permanent position to make a dozen sites that will gross 30 million USD using only OSS. That is a nice challenge.

I've been entertaining friends who are in dire need of electricity and Internet. I haven't had much time to hack. I've tinkered a little with the GUI Medusa search tool, but I'm not making good progress. I've messed up the signals, probably because I'm thinking in Cocoa or SWT.

My home whomped by a tree.

I've been working intermitantly on a gui search tool that I can reuse to make widgets and dialogs that can be reused by other applications like Nautilus. I've spent more time than necessary exploring ideas. I looked into making GTKExpander work from glade-2 and libglade, but it is too much of a distraction to pursue. I'll use checkboxes for the time being and will update when glade-3 is available.

I lost my private Nautilus-with-Medusa build in my exploration of jhbuild/Fedora/Ximian unstable. I've settled on Ximian unstable for the time being (I love the rug tool). I've mixed in a few Fedora packages to get glade-2 and a few other tools working. I just built dia 9.2 so I can see and edit my diagrams again. I really do a lot of drawing before I ever start putting code to compiler.

I'm excited to learn that the BBC will be making new Doctor Who episodes. My daughter Indy and I have been watching the Sylvester McCoy episodes that are shown locally. I like the Sylvester's performance best of the actors who played the Doctor. Indy is emulating Ace saying 'wicked' for all things impressive. My wife Anne is not pleased; another generation wasted on bad SF drama.

Indy and I watched an episode of Doctor Who a few evening ago. It was Sylvester McCoy playing the Doctor in Paradise Towers. She hasn't stopped talking about it so I'll start recording them for her (because she really shouldn't be staying up to 2:00 AM to watch them). I think Sylvester was the best Doctor, and I'm sure she'll really like Ace when she is introduces in a few episodes.