... Spore for the Mac isn't available on release day. This is a huge annoyance about companies that don't write a direct version, they have an emulated version made by a 3rd party. Thing is, I know the company that makes them and I like the

I'm trying to decide if I'm excited that Spore is being released on September 7. When they released the Spore Creature Creator they only released the Windows version, and took over a month to get out the Mac version (of course, no Linux vers

Civilization Revolution offers a feature they call "Game of the week." Each week they pick a civilization for the players to be, and a map, and everyone plays the same game with their scores going up onto the great leaderboard in the sky. I

I used to avoid the Civilization games, because so many people I knew were completely obsessed with them and played constantly. However, the FreeCiv game in Linux finally sucked me in. After a few years of playing that on and off, I find myself repea

I'm officially transitioning this blog to postings about games and whatnot. Of course, I still use Linux, so games in Linux should appear here along with the PS3 games I mostly play, plus some Mac stuff too no doubt. I'm not removing any of t

Kenneth Hess has written an interesting article on what he calls Oratopigiphobia, or the fear of open source. I wouldn't say that there's anything particularly new here, but it never hurts to read about how other people are dealing with the

I'm thinking of making this blog more about games. I haven't lost interest in Linux, but I don't eat, sleep, and breathe it anymore since I'm no longer writing about it full time. I know I don't have a massive following but I hope

I may not be a journalist at this point in time, but when I read Wired magazine 's EIC Chris Anderson's rant about how he's fed up with "PR Flacks," I had to shudder in sympathy. I've been an editor for a number of publicat

Well, Mars may not need them, but Splunk does! In fact, we need three or four of them. If you like the idea of working for me, we need some for SplunkBase. If you hate the idea of working for me, we need them for other projects too. If you're i

Those of us who like to play games that are social like MMORPGs now have something we can point to that shows that really, we're not antisocial losers. :) I know I've made some very good friends over the years through online gaming. New

Ever wondered how much effort it would take you to duplicate a particular open source project? Check out ohloh, where you can feed in information about a particular project and let their software tell you how many man-hours or how many US dollars it

I know, your life is just not complete without a new version of Linux for Dummies. :) Well, I can help with that! <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470116498?ie=UTF8&tag=renaissoft&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325

System administration is a pretty thankless job. People only think of their sysadmins when there's something wrong, and then they yell at them. However, the sysadmin is the one who keeps things going right so you forget they're there, so that

A few days ago I was minding my own business, doing something on my computer, when the power went out. I have a UPS so this shouldn't be a big deal, but sometimes UPS's fall over dead and don't tell you. Apparently mine had, as my compute

Question of the day:What are your favorite community features on your favorite sites? What keeps you going back there?

Are you in San Francisco and interested in beta testing Splunk? Hop over to the Web Development @ Splunk blog and check out the perks and who to contact. :)

Found some photos of moi on the set on the Lab with Leo Laporte 's Flickr pages. These are from the shoots in March. I'm sure the ones in April will be up sometime after the filming madness ends!

Hey folks. If you're in the Pacific NorthWest or in the Canadian SouthWest, I highly recommend attending LinuxFest NorthWest on April 28th and 29th. I'll be there, that should be enough, right? Okay, okay! There's lots of reasons to go,

I'm looking for ultra cool Linux things to do to entice people to try Linux. So they can't be uber-geek, it has to be something that a newbie could accomplish (with help, that's fine) ... something that would make them go "that's

Lookie me, I'll be on TV.

Just when you thought the Splunk Ninja had fallen asleep in the shadows, he's struck again with "Two Katanas." If you're interested in setting up Splunk servers to forward their data to one central server, then this video is worth

As much as I like to laugh, I try to avoid putting too much silly humor on my blog just so it won't become useless. Still, I have to put up this one. I've worked help desks, written manuals, and taught classes enough that this hits my funny b

A colleague pointed out to me that I was quoted in an article in Red Hat Magazine, "How to write really good documentation." It's a good discussion of how to write tech docs that people can understand.

Michael Wilde of Splunk has revealed a hidden identity to the world ... in the dark of night, skulking in IT datacenters, he moonlights as the Splunk Ninja!

I've been quiet lately. My apologies. Most of the silence is from my being a bit unsure where I was going, but now that I'm there, it's time to settle in and get comfy.