It looks as if I'm going to write an article for the FreeBSD Journal about the Early
Days. And by way of encouragement, they want the article by 15 February.
I've been using BSD since
19 March 1992, but that was BSD/386, a commercial sibling. It wasn't
until the following year (19 June 1993, it seems) that FreeBSD was born (or forked, or whatever). From
the calendar.freebsd file:
06/19 Charlie Root <root@FreeBSD.org> born in Portland, Oregon, United States, 1993
The original suggestion was that I should write about the issues relating to writing
“The Complete FreeBSD”, in the assumption
that it would have been particulary difficult in those far-off days. Yes, it wasn't
easy—writing a book never is—but the issues weren't related to the technology of the time,
though I did have issues with the time it took to format the book.
The real issues are elsewhere: how to write what people want to hear, how to structure it
logically. And that was quite a problem, with the result that I changed the structure of
the book from one edition to the next. I submitted the fourth edition for publication
almost exactly 20 years ago, and it had taken me well over a year and a number of missed
deadlines. Things would be no different today.
In fact, if anything, they're worse this time: explaining how to install or use software is
fairly well defined. But what historical events are of interest to the readers? I decided
that the history of the book was unintersting and started writing something about my
experiences. And of course I was immediately unhappy with it. This article will be mainly
thinking and only a little writing.
Keeping distress asleep
It seems that my attempts to get distress (Microsoft “Windows” 10 box) to stay hibernated were not successful: it keeps waking up, and I
can't tell it not to. But there's another possibility: get it to sleep, like I do
with dischord (“Windows” 7). That only goes via a secret menu, but it seems to work.
Only: it still keeps waking up, apparently every 30 minutes. I had found a way to
disable the timers, via a link “change settings that are currently unavailable”. But it
didn't seem to work.
The rider or the horse?
Do what I may, Yvonne is dead set on riding again. I hope
the “dead” is only figurative. She seems to think that if the horse is calm, there will be
no problem. But it's not the horse that's the issue: it's the rider, and she's fragile.
She could seriously injure herself just trying to mount the horse, even if it didn't move at
all. Five years ago the accident was understandable: the horse stumbled (hurting herself
as well), and Yvonne was thrown onto a rocky path. The result was ugly:
But the next time was very different. It was in the arena, she was wrapped in cotton
wool, and the horse just bucked. And despite that she was more seriously injured than the
first time:
In principle that's the kind of fall that every rider has at some time or another. Even
without any protection, most people just get up and get back on the horse. What's going to
happen next time? Death or “just” paralysis?
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“blog”, and there is
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