Scanning - for the first time in years

For the first time in years, I found myself needing to scan a page this morning.
For the first time in years, I powered up my HP ScanJet 3300C.
It last saw action (if memory serves) when Windows 98 was the lastest thing.
For the first time ever, I plugged it into my Ubuntu box.
It worked.
First time.

I kid you not.

No driver madness.
No hair pulling.

Wonderful.

Blessed are the babelfish

So this a.m. I install the 5 updates that my Ubuntu Dapper box tell me are available. I note new kernel stuff coming down...

I reboot to finish the install and all is well except my VMWare server won't boot.

Hmmm. I hate these moments. The brow furrows. Coincidence? Co-Occurence? Causal connection?

I run with the latter theory. I run vmware from a terminal window to watch for messages spewing out the exhaust pipe. Something called "g_get_language_names" is either borked or has done the borking.

I google "Ubuntu VMware g_get_language_names".

I get a hit on a Spanish page. It looks like it might be a fix but I don't read Spanish. I get the page translated.

Yup. That fixed it.

Phew.

Outsourcing the middleware layer

"Middleware tends to be just plain hard. Middleware tends to be expensive. Middleware must work all the time which can make it very expensive indeed. Middleware tends not to be the core business of enterprises that depend on it (except of course, the vendors that sell it.). So, it is expensive, complex and not a core competency. What does that add up to?" -- Outsourcing the middleware layer