DocBook v5.0 now an official Committee Draft!

I'm pleased to announce that DocBook v5.0 is now an official Committee Draft! The schema can be downloaded here: http://docbook.org/xml/5.0/.

This is the result of several years work. Special thanks to all of the Committee members involved:

    * Steve Cogorno, Sun Microsystems
    * Gary Cornelius, Individual
    * Adam Di Carlo, Debian
    * Paul Grosso, Arbortext
    * Dick Hamilton, Individual
    * Nancy Harrison, IBM
    * Scott Hudson, Individual
    * Mark Johnson, Debian
    * Gershon Joseph, Tech-Tav Documentation Ltd.
    * Jirka Kosek, Individual
    * Larry Rowland, Hewlett-Packard
    * Michael Smith, Individual
    * Robert Stayton, Individual (Secretary)
    * Norman Walsh, Sun Microsystems (Chair, Editor)

Next step: OASIS standard!

Super Tuesday, indeed!

I went to my first party caucus on Tuesday. Apparently many others also attended for the first time!

The chair of the caucus was stunned, saying that on average, attendance is about 2 people per precinct. This year, that number was about 40 per precinct! At this caucus, we had about 1000 people in attendance, though I don't know for sure how many precincts were represented. They even ran out of ballots (by about 400!) and had to race to get more printed!

Speaking with a colleague last night who attended the other party's caucus, they had the same situation: many first-timers, and high attendance!

I think this is a very good sign. It means that people are taking this next election seriously and getting involved. No matter which party you align with, it's important to exercise the freedoms our forefathers fought for and our Armed Services continue to fight for.

As a result, I signed up to be a delegate to the county, district and state assemblies. Why not? It's time to get involved!

Democracy at work. I love it!

Trapped!

So, Sunday afternoon, my wife and I were enjoying a movie in our room before going to a Superbowl party at a friends house. The kids were having quiet reading time in their rooms. All of a sudden, we heard a very loud BANG somewhere downstairs.

We raced downstairs to figure out what had happened and couldn't find anything! Then when it was time to hop in the van and head out to the Superbowl party, the garage door wouldn't open! Much inspection ensued. I pulled the red emergency release on the door from the garage opener, but the door seemed about 100 times heavier than normal! I couldn't lift it to save my life. Then I noticed it, the main spring on the door was now in two pieces. The spring had snapped, and somehow, half of the spring was holding the door down under tension!

Thankfully, since I had recently bought my new motorcycle but hadn't cleared the 3rd car garage to make room for it, I had parked my truck in the driveway. We had a way to get around town, though cramped, for 5 people. We had bought an opener for the 3rd car, and Sears was supposed to send a guy on Tuesday to install it.

Realizing that I needed someone who could do repairs to both garage doors and also install the new opener, I remembered a recent post on Blue Sky Workshop about Arko Garage Doors. I gave them a call, and they had all the parts available and could come out Monday afternoon! They did a great job on the install and had the best prices in town based on my earlier searches. I would HIGHLY recommend Arko.

Now we can use both garage doors again, and no longer trapped inside!