For me a perfect Samba share lets me log in as my account on the machine. Here’s how to set that up on Ubuntu Feisty:

Edit /etc/samba/smb.conf and turn on user accounts:

Now you just have to add a “Samba user”. My theory is that if it’s the same username as a system account, all actions that the Samba daemon takes are done under that user account. The password can be different, though, which is nice. This way you can transfer a file over to your home directory without modifying permissions, and the file will be owned by you once it’s there.

That’s it!

New rule: whenever a someone says that the free market is absolute crap at providing health care, you’re not allowed to regurgitate any health-care-lobby adds you saw on TV in the late 90s. Your argument isn’t going to get anywhere with you talking about a guy in Britain who had to wait three months for a new hip when people in America are allowed to die horrible, bloody deaths in emergency waiting rooms:

Early on May 9, she was wheeled into the ER by county police officers.

“Thanks a lot, officers, she’s a regular here,” a nurse said. “She has already been seen and was discharged.”

After the nurse again refused to help, Rodriguez slid off her wheelchair and onto her knees in a fetal position, screaming in pain, according to a federal report based in part on surveillance videotape.

Over the next half hour, hospital staff walked past her. Soon, her boyfriend, Jose Prado, who had left for about an hour, returned to the hospital.

“When I came back, I found her lying on the floor with blood coming out of her mouth,” Prado said. “She said, ‘Honey, help me! Nobody will help me here!’”

He pleaded with medical staff and then a county police sergeant to intervene, but no one did.

“I told him she had blood in her mouth,” Prado says he told the sergeant. “But he told me, ‘Don’t worry, she just has chocolate in her mouth.’”

Then he called 911.

“My wife is dying and the nurses don’t want to help her out,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter

“What’s wrong with her?” a dispatcher asked.

“She’s vomiting blood,” Prado said.

When the dispatcher refused assistance, he hung up and frantically ran back to Rodriguez.

“I just hugged her. I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t think of anything else,” he said.

Eventually, officers arrested her on a parole violation.

Police wheeled her out of the ER, then returned minutes later after Rodriguez’s heart had stopped. Autopsy results revealed she died of a perforated bowel that probably developed in the previous 24 hours, a condition that is often treatable if caught early enough.

“They took her outside to die like an animal,” Prado said.

I got a new job! As of the 25th I’ll be working for the good people at VodPod. I’ve heard it described as a “video aggregation site”, but I think that doesn’t really capture it. I think it’s more like Delicious for videos. Whenever you come across a video that you like, you can click the bookmarklet and have it saved in your VodPod account. Then you can put a badge on your blog (like I’ve done) or just keep track of your favorite videos all in one place. This should be a big change for me and I’m really looking forward to it.