What can we say? It has been 11 years since the Dead Mule was first published.

This Spring 2007 issue begins what will become, in ten years, our Second Edition.

The Technical History of the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature
I.
Each decade brings change. How many “years” is an Internet year? The year becomes exponentially smaller as each new innovation arises from the ashes of the old media. We began the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, as ya’ll know, in print (remember the thing called “paper”?) on a Power Macintosh 6100 with a blazing 28,800 modem. Sprint connection with a local ISP service. The Mac came to me via some friends in New Jersey (not southern, sorry, but she was from Arkansas, so…) who gifted it to me when my life was in turmoil. I met a Windows-At-The-Time man who married me and turned me Microsoft for a very short time.

It didn’t take long for us to become Microsoft-Weary. Constant hacking and defacing of the Mule created a need for time-consuming security work. This became annoying and boring. And we had a savant-security pro best-friend helping us out here. The Mule was trashed at least three times between 1997 and 1999. Another dear friend, John Biggs, now of Gizmo Magazine, offered to host the Mule on his Big Wide Logic server and we accepted. Unfortunately, just as we were becoming All-Things-Linux, the Mule server site still lurked in the background with vulnerabilities. This was in no way due to Biggs’ lack of due diligence, the script kiddies were then, as now, always looking for the slightest coding flaw. There are two ways to consider these burgeoning code-kids. One can become bitter and angry. Then there’s the higher route Once can realize some of these script-learning-youngster will grow up to become major professionals who contribute greatly to Internet security issues.

All the prosletysing aside, the Mule and its hosting became Linux at its core. The very heart of its being became Linux. Basically, it was me with a SuSE using KDE as a desktop and Robert with Ubuntu and Gnome. (I’m sure he’ll add his History o’Linux in another blog post.) I enjoyed Linux for three years via a swell custom-built box from my son-in-law. Ya’ll have loved it with it’s plexiglass sides, interior neon lights and flashing geegaws! Seriously, that was a great machine which has been passed on and is in continuous use utilizing Ubuntu by … yup. I even tried RedHat’s Fedora for a bit, compliments of RedHat’s PR man (at the time) … He’s now with Lulu.com for ya’ll who desire a quality publishing venue. And remember, it’s a Southern company…

Then it came time to get serious again. Robert knew we needed to go back to Mac and never look back and thusly this 12″ iBook is the little creative person’s dream machine. It goes everywhere and has some spiffy add-ons.

This is turning into quite a missive. Bear with the Mule Ed here, ya’ll. That part’s about over — Robert will take over the technical from here. The latter part is an editor’s-eye-view of the whole smellacky.

Besides, it’s time to quit typing and tend to Thompson and Linus, the Jack Russells, and Frances the Scotty, who are all looking forward to trash pick-up day. The truck’s driver, Earnest, is a friend of ours. As he drives up the alleyway, he and his crew begin barking at the insane and energetic “three amigos” who, in turn, begin to run in huge circles around the yard’s perimeter. Entertainment for everyone involved. (Except the neighbors but hey, they have dogs too.)

[if you’re reading this, note it is the unedited version… free-thinking is rarely, if ever, grammatically correct.]