First thing’s first. Last Thursday I opened to mailbox to find that The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction had rejected the short story that I had sent to them just two or three weeks back. I was impressed that they had returned it so quickly, but even more impressed that the rejection slip was a personal one; it was signed by the chief editor, and the substance of the letter was such that it was obvious that he had actually read the story instead of sending a generic "this story does not meet our needs blah blah blah’ letter.

Either that, or they have a very sophisticated form letter generator.

At any rate, I feel very proud. I have my first Real Rejection Letter. I’ve taped it up over my desk. Go me.

And a side note: just the other night, I dreamt that the same magazine had purchased another one of my short stories, and that they liked it so much they had nominated it for a Hugo Award… which is kind of odd, considering that the Hugo Awards are awarded to science fiction stories, and my stories are generally horror or dark fantasy. Still, it was a sad dream to have to awaken from.

Silly me, I went and volunteered to give a presentation on Ximian Evolution, a personal information management tool for Linux; it’s basically an open source version of Microsoft Outlook, but better because (a) it’s free, and (b) it’s immune to the virus du jour that infects Outlook. I’ve been using it for e-mail and calendaring for a couple of months now, and, aside from some minor issues getting it to talk to my Palm Pilot, I’ve loved it. So when one of the gurus in LUGOD, the Linux Users’ Group of Davis, announced that he was putting together a class called "Linux On the Desktop" for the general public and asked for volunteers to give presentations, I went and volunteered.

Mind you, I’ve never done any sort of presentation like this before in my life. My only recent experience in public speaking of any sort in recent years has been acting on stage at the Renaissance Faire. So I’ve been pondering an approach along the lines of, "In sooth, I tell thee that Bill Shakespeare hath done his coding in C". But that probably isn’t nearly as funny as it sounds to me, so I won’t be doing it like that.

So last Wednesday, I met with some of the other members of LUGOD to discuss the presentation. Over boti kabob, salmon tandoori, and beer, we talked about the class and our presentations. The organizer expects that most of the people coming to the class will be Windows users who are inteested in Linux, so we have been focusing on ways that an ordinary user who is not a high-end system administrator can use Linux in a daily setting. Since I consider myself a "desktop user", a hobbyist, and not a true Linux guru, I figured I would bring a useful perspective to the project. And I think my input was valued. I really do. I’ve noticed one thing about many of the Linux folks I’ve talked to, and that is that the vast majority of them are friendly, likable folks who honestly respect people who want to learn new things. Okay, granted, if you go up to the average Linux evangelist and tell him something like, "Linux sucks and you’re a bunch of hippy communists who are probably atheists and why don’t you just give your money to Bill Gates where it belongs!" you’re likely to get nasty looks. But if you say, respectfully, "I prefer using Microsoft Windows over Linux and here are my well-thought-out reasons why," you’re likely to get a respectful response.

At any rate, the conversation wandered, as such conversations do. We talked about Linux on the desktop, but we also talked about other things: science fiction, The Simpsons, Star Trek, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, the best Indian beers, and Wuthering Heights. Okay, our discussion of Wuthering Heights didn’t last long. We all thought it was a bad book, and for precisely the same reasons.

Then I brought up a point that I’ve thought about quite a bit over the past few months, and that is that being a Linux user carries with it a certain level of social activism. Many of the Linux users I know — the more "evangelical" of them, at least, the ones who sit at booths handing out copies of Linux disks — are people with strong ethical stances. One of the founders of LUGOD is a committed vegetarian. Many have socialist leanings. Many are involved in liberal causes of one sort or another.

We talked about this for awhile. There is a common image of the average Linux user which Microsoft and other vendors of proprietary software seem to be promoting: that of a anarchist who is opposed to capitalism and who believes in destroying intellectual property laws ‘because information wants to be free", and so on. The joke of the Linux user as a "hippy communist, and probably an atheist to boot" is based on this image. It’s nonsense of course. Many Linux users and programmers are hard-core capitalists; it’s just that they believe at the same time that access to information technology should be available to everyone, and not just those who shell out thousands of dollars to a few monolithic corporations.

And while there are those in the Linux community (or, more accurately, the "open source community") who are opposed to all forms of copyright and patent law, the culture as a whole has a very strong regard for the rights of people to be credited and acknowledged (and occasionally even paid) for their work.

The vagaries of software licensing in the open source and Linux communities are complicated and I don’t feel like going into it here. Suffice to say: these people take these things very seriously.

Anyway. Linux as a form of social activism. I think that there is a point there to be made, and that it probably stems from a strong belief in the rights of all people to have access to information. The nerd heritage that I inherit from the community carries a certain level of activism, I think. I’ll probably go the environmental route. Buy a Linux box for a panda today.

In other news, one of those unfortunates who feel compelled to read my journal regularly dug and found that lordofthegrill.com is available for the taking. I hadn’t thought about that one. It’s a good idea. But I like rocket-grill.com better. Lordofthegrill makes me feel like I should be wearing tights while grilling and doing it to Irish music. I have nothing against Irish music (I love it and own several albums of it, in fact), but tights and I just don’t get along.

But I get along very well with my grill. While the jalapeno glazed ham that I made tonight was less than a roaring success (I was experimenting with supplementing my charcoal with mesquite wood, which made the fire hotter, which burned the outside of the vegetables and made the ham dry), I did make a spice-rubbed chicken earlier this week which was very good if I do say so myself. The chicken was perfectly cooked. I’m getting better.

And biking. Jennifer and I have been doing a lot of that. Yesterday we biked nearly twenty-three miles, from Dixon to Davis and back again, averaging about 13 miles an hour but occasionally pushing it up over 20 mph.

The reason for our trip was UC Davis’s annual Whole Earth Festival a three-day event filled with hippies, handmade crafts, acoustic music, and left-wing activism. Personally, I love it; I enjoy going and people-watching, listening to the music, talking to people. This year, unfortunately, we didn’t get to stay very long, only a couple of hours on Saturday. I would have liked to have stayed several hours longer, poking around, talking to people, sitting on the grass and listening to music and taking in the atmosphere. I did take some time to talk to some people at some of the wildlife and old-growth conservations booths, partially because it’s an issue I’m interested in but also partially to start gathering some resources for The Troll King’s Daughter.

LUGOD also had a booth up at the Whole Earth Festival. It seemed appropriate.