Sorry for the interruption but I was out of town for most of the holiday (we left the 26th for Chicago, but thats a whole post on its own!). I did however, want to brag about some of the Christmas Gifts that blessed our house this season though.

Amy’s big gift this year is to have the Master Bath and Bedroom repainted. When we bought the house from her parents, we inherited the DEEP red color of the bath and bed room. Its a dark red (think maroon) that is hard to match colors with. Now we’re going for a lighter, beachier look and are painting them Beachnut (its a lowes color). The master bath is done (Amy found some Votive candle holders at a store in Nashville), next on to the bedroom!

Grace had a very Hannah Montanna Christmas. She got a Hannah Montanna Guitar Game (like Guitar Hero) that plugs in to the tv, a Hannah Costume, and doll. Its pretty cool and she likes pretending to be a rockstar. Maybe someday. I like playing her game (since I haven’t bought Guitar HEro World Tour yet) and she’s getting better at it.

Mose got a Trampoline. One of her favorite things to do is jump. We’d wake on Saturday mornings to the heavy thud of emma jumping up and down in our door way. Now she can do it all she wants and it doesn’t make the house shake. Its pretty cool and Grace and Emma take turns on it. Amy wanted to try it out, but its for people under 80 pounds (and neither of us meet that requirement!

The girls also got some tinkertoys, and some other little odds and ends that they like to play with, but the coolest by far is my Ultimate Wall-E Robot.

We saw the movie in the theaters and we’re big fans (mose loves him). We had seen the Ultimate Wall-e at the Disney Store but we weren’t going to get him because of the price tag. Needless to say, Santa found him on Sale and he was wrapped and under the tree for me on Christmas morning. He has fun dancing, chasing the dogs around and just exploring on his own. If you haven’t seen one yet, I’ll work on some video and see if I can get anything posted. Its pretty cool though and the way he can respond to voice commands or find his own way around the room is fairly smooth.

Was there one gift that you prized more than the others??

I am by no means a guru when it comes to Linux, but, as (I think it was Zaphod Bebelbrox’s Psychiatrist) someone once said, “I’m just a guy, you know?” As such, I have been using linux for about 7 years now, and I’ve watched it grow from a fun server/toy use to something that remotely resembles a usable desktop (see Ubuntu, Mandrivia or Sabayon). Having been part of the “Linux Community” for the time I’ve been a user/fanboy, I’ve come to believe that one of the things that makes Linux so strong is its community and the development community that surrounds it. On the other hand, its also one of the things that hurts it so much.

Take for example, the gazillion different versions of Ubuntu that abound online. From Ubuntu Christian edition, to Ubuntu Muslim Edition to Ubuntu Ultimate Gamers Edition, if you’re looking for something particular, you’ll most likely find it. Some consider this a good thing. Hundreds of programmers, doing the work of reinventing the wheel. As if Joe A. can make a better wheel than Joe B. Granted, most distributions that put out a sub 1.0 release rarely make it these days and if you look at it, almost no one is developing a completely new, never been seen before distribution, but merely a derivation of something that already exists.

Ubuntu is Debian. Sabayon is Gentoo. Mandrivia was Redhat… and so on and so forth. Are all these changes really needed? Why aren’t more people joining the development teams for the major distributions? Could you imagine the awesomeness that could be achieved if the Ubuntu (which, admittedly is taking on a life of its own… being one of the worlds golden boys right now…) developers teamed with the debian developers? The result would be a rock solid server/desktop combo with one of the best package management scripts (despite my lack of love for Debian, apt-get rocks). If the guys behind the Sabayon overlay would work with Gentoo? You’d have one of the best customizable distributions around (and it would look really really good too).

Maybe its time for the linux community to quit forking around and get down to work. The Linux Desktop has come along way in the past 7 years with more and more people switching to it for every day use…. now lets make it a little more consistent.