Views from the Bridge

Linked blog post

2011-10-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

(Marie-) Arzel was gracious enough to give me the green light to cross-post something from her chef-oriented blog. Power to the People...with Passion!

Btw: If you read take the time to read the "bitter" post, it's worth your while to check out the more upbeat, and very practical stuff that keeps it company. The fact that she can rebound from a dented dream to craft occasionally dreamy, occasionally hard-nosed prose for others is only part of what makes her amazing.

Frivolous Friday, 10.14.2011: Gaming the system

2011-10-14T19:41:00.000-07:00

At work, the conferencing software's reach definitely exceeds its grasp. This was ably demonstrated on Monday's "Area Staff Meeting," originating in the Chicago office and streamed out to the provincials in the region. What you need to understand about our office's "big conference room" is that: 1.) "Big" is a relative designation, and 2.) It was designed when a mere handful of old-timers were movin' on up to that dee-luxe office suite in the sky-hi-hi.

Cut to 2011, and we're spilling out into the adjacent breakroom, with the latecomers bringing chairs in tow. Which means that, to someone in the back, what comes out of the conference-call speakers is more than slightly reminiscent of the "Wha-wha-wha-wha-wha..." of Charlie Brown's teacher. I suppose that could be a boon for anyone needing to sneak in some writing under the cover of note-taking. Except that's far too productive. See, I figure that when a company goes to such great lengths to waste your time, the only responsible response is to take ownership of such wastage. Maybe--dare I suggest?--even profit from it.

Naturally, I mean having the foresight to set up a betting pool, with the winner having the best accuracy in predicting:

Number of minutes between the official start time of the conference and its actual start
Number of inside jokes that only the "host" office understands
Number of times the video connection freezes or freaks out
Number of times one or both ends of the voice connection drops
Number of phone calls taken or hushed among the Powers That Be
Number of PowerPoint slides that contain the word "vision," "opportunity," or "strategic"
Number of remote workers dialing into the call who forget to mute their end of the connection
Whether or not corporate I/T will push out a Windows update that requires a reboot in the middle of the presentation

(Belatedly, it also occurs to me that the above could be trivially adapted to a college drinking game. Uh-oh. Needless to say, I won't be mentioning that to my co-workers: Given how our "keeper"--and I mean that in a good way--no longer bothers to lock the liquor cabinet, that could be exceedingly bad.)

A humbling thought for content creators

2011-10-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

The end of an NPR segment--to which Dennis & I were tuned in on the way to see The Ladykins on Sunday--ended with a clip from Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" single. Serious as the segment's topic had been, I (naturally) couldn't help but smirk, thinking of Weird Al's send-up.

Exposing yourself to parody is, doubtless, a mark of character--but it's also a bizzare badge of honor in the music industry...at least to my way of thinking. But Dennis made a more sage point when he wondered aloud, "How many of the people he's lampooned are here and gone, and he's still around."

Ouch. For someone with pretensions to being a "content creator," that's more than a little sobering. (That despite the poetry/song filk that's whiled away any number of my Frivolous Friday evenings.) But in the unlikely event that writing superstardom awaits your faithful blogger, that's one problem worth having.

Frivolous Friday, 09.30.2011: Nerdery is a continuum

2011-09-30T19:08:00.000-07:00

I'm finding I comedy works best to keep me from dwelling on how much longer I'm going to be on an elliptical machine, treadmill or what-have-you. So earlier this week it was an old standby, Office Space. (If you haven't seen it, suffice it to say that it's sort of a cult classic for programmers.) Coincidentally, this was also the same week that someone decided to riff on one of the movie's plot-points and steal fellow programmer's red Swingline stapler. Twice.

I polished off Office Space and turned back to Monty Python and the Holy Grail, riffs from which are unavoidable in the SCA. That'd be like trying to play golf without at least one wink-wink-nudge-nudge reference to Caddyshack.

Bad enough that Dennis & I have already trained each other to phrase "or"-type questions (as in, "Do you want four cheese or meat-lover's supreme?") without expecting the answer to be an obligatory "Yes." Or "True" or "1" if someone's feeling exceptionally nerdy. But then I made the mistake of remembering the phrase, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra."

(If you're not a Star Trek: The Next Generation maven, here's the schtick: The Federation has bumped into (yet another) alien race that (surprise!) just happens to be recognizably humanoid. Moreover, the Universal Translator can even babblefish--yes, I just used that as a verb-- their language into English words. Problem is, it still doesn't make sense, because the Tamarians exclusively communicate allegorically--meaning through references to stories from their history. Think of it as tribal knowledge on steroids.)

At first I thought, well, we're not that bad. But then I realized--particularly after being chagrined at how much of the "Brave, Brave Sir Robin" song I've forgotten--that any nerdery is a continuum. Meep! Ummm...how many restroom stops until Tanagra?

Ultimatum

2011-09-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's that I've been reading too much non-history, non-fiction lately. Or maybe the topics are just too...shall we say...inbred. But I've bumped into enough mentions of a game called "Ultimatum" that it's stuck with me. The word "game" is a misnomer, at least in the sense that Ultimatum is nothing you'll find keeping Monopoly company on the closet shelf. It's actually played by those who've volunteered for psychological studies in universities and other institutions that study human interactions in factor-controlled circumstances.

The basic premise starts with two people. Person A is given a fixed dollar amount (usually ten bones in the cited examples) to be split with the other person. There is no negotiation--Person A makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer for Person B. The catch is that if Person B refuses, each person receives zero.

The classical economics they teach you in high school and college would predict that even if Person A offered Person B one cent and kept the remaining $9.99 for her/himself, Person B would still have a penny more than s/he had before, and would therefore accept. Because something is always better than nothing, riiiight???

As it turns out, capital-R reality doesn't exist to fulfil the premises of classical economic thought any more than it does, say, story problems in Math. Because the ultimate result was that a low-ball offer basically meant that Person B had very little to lose, either. And, maybe it's just because the Puritans gained such an early toe-hold in the American psyche, but the impulse to punish high-handed greed is fairly strong, too. In practice, 50-50, 60-40, and even 70-30 splits had a fairly high likelihood of being accepted. But once a threshold of "unfairness" was crossed...not so much.

The metaphor to the current state of the U.S. economy (and political state) seems all-too-obvious...

As banks sit on hundreds of billions of dollars of bailout-backed credit
As corporations hoard even more than that in profits, waiting for someone else to create the jobs...and demand for their products.
As pay is not so much a fraction as it is a logarithmic base of productivity
As the cost of a college degree rises in tandem with offshoring and union-busting
As pernicious unemployment and foreclosure rates undermine consumer confidence...and spending
As we expect an entrepreneurial "creative class" to spontaneously emerge from generations taught to standardized tests
As gerrymandering and astro-turfing polarize the electoral landscape
As the concentration of wealth into a shrinking pool of bank accounts further tilts the political and legal table

Remind me again, what's the point in earning good grades, putting in your 40 hours, paying your taxes, financing your upward mobility, investing for your long-term financial security, voting on schedule, etc.? At some point, the Social Contract has to be a win-win, rather than the game of Ultimatum that's it's rapidly becoming.

If, en masse, the American worker/consumer walks away from the deal, it might actually be good on some levels. Among them decreasing personal debt and a mom-n-pop entrepreneurial boom, and maybe--just maybe--an increased focus on quality of life. But apart from that...boom. The pity is that those who play the role of Person A in this "game" they're playing will not walk away with nothing. At best, they'll be less-rich. Once again demonstrating how freakishly carefully-controlled lab results can mutate in the wild.

Frivolous Friday, 09.23.2011: Close enough for government work

2011-09-23T18:42:00.000-07:00

Slashdot today ran a piece about the U.S. Government paying its own programmers half the going rate for contract programmers. The comments, at least early-on when I read them, tended to focus on the premise that contract programmers are paid extra to, well, go away on short notice. (I've worked as a "temp"--high-tech flunkie as well as office minion--and, frankly, I have no idea where that notion comes from, at least not if a temp. agency is involved.)

Me, I'd tend to place the discrepancy at the intersection of hiring freezes and the spend-it-or-have-your-budget-slashed-next-year school of fiscal "management" that I've seen in the private sector as well.

But speculation, however plausibly grounded in past experience is not the point. Combine nerdy quirkiness and stupefying levels of through-the-looking-glass bureaucratic "logic," and the reasons could well fall outside the pale of our workaday norms. The most likely of those, to my way of thinking, include:

1.) Well, duh: People from the outside are always smarter

2.) Legendary public sector "job security" includes cubicle in lead-lined bunker and cryogenic suspension in the event of thermonuclear Armageddon

3.) Pay comparison doesn't take into account standard government-issue solid gold laptops

4.) Coders willing to take lower pay to develop "secret government technology" cachet irresistable to fellow geeks of the preferred gender

5.) Pay differences easily offset by illegal kickbacks from soda and energy drink vendors

6.) Former college interns didn't notice the "indentured servitude" clause in their NDAs

7.) Government I/T departments are the digital tar-pits where old COBOL and VB6 programmers go to die

8.) Uncle Sam's coders are rented out as cheap off-planet labor for our secret extraterrestrial allies--and neural implants don't grow on trees, you know

9.) Daily flogging and haranguing by Grover Norquist & Tea Party to destroy self-worth

10.) Once-in-a-lifetime chance to hack Andrews Air Force Base and take Air Force One out for a joyride

"Training the Trainer," revisited

2011-09-20T19:01:00.000-07:00

Those Who Know Best asked me to train our Client Services folks on "my" application. Cross-pollination, to be sure--just more in the sense of folks in lab coats and latex gloves brushing pollen off carefully selected plant and brushing it on on an equally selected other plant.

But those were the extent of the specifications, leaving me to fill in the details. Which, naturally involved bribes with food, wine, chocolate, and randomly sorting the competing teams into their Hogwarts houses. That was to make up for the pre-class quiz that they were really good sports about. The first half assembled in the big conference room yesterday for the actual hands-on session.

No worries...I was ready with easily two hours of material to cover, during which Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin and Gryffindor would take turns at the console doing actual client-type stuff on a test system. In my experience, that lends itself to questions far more than having features demonstrated to you.

What actually happened was that we quickly realized that the way they support the clients on their application is not at all how I support mine. Most notably, when there's a problem, I'm generally sticking my head straight head the database itself. Client Services, on the other hand, relies on the interface. Partly because those tools have been built for them all these years, and partly because some don't have the software nor a knowledge of SQL (Structured Query Language), much less any idea of how data fits together. Some, particularly the most senior folks do, and I had made the shaky assumption that those skills were acquired by the usual on-the-job organizational osmosis.

Wrong assumption, obviously. Which, for anyone presenting, just might trigger a freak-out because the agenda had suddenly evaporated. Which normally means pulling the plug on the whole thing or completely free-wheeling. Both are valuable meeting skills. But then the questions started flying thick as, for lack of a fresher phrase, two worlds collided.

And you know what? It was straight awesome. The balance of the two hours zipped by as I was grilled and in turn tried to get into their heads. Sure, occasionally we'd dip into the software to illustrate something. But for the most part it was meta-information: What the overall client relationships are like, some of the frustrations of working in a distributed development environment (instead of the one-stop-geek that is me), what the process is like on the client side. Those kinds of things.

I'd do it all over again...and I may just have that chance when I work with the second crew a week from tomorrow. I can only look forward to the instructive chaos that will bring.

No Friday post

2011-09-16T08:31:00.001-07:00

Company's coming for at least part of the weekend. Hope yours is a good one.

Attention Inflation Disorder

2011-09-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

We had an interesting bit of "training" over the lunch hour today. One of the deep-thinkers wired himself into our large conference room via two-way webcam, and--unloaded a couple decades of experience on us, which included the pendulum-swings between centralized and distributed computing fads, and also the dead-wrong predictions/assumptions committed by even the most forward-thinking the technorati.

For me, the money-quote was the prediction of an "information economy." Our guest re-cast that instead as an "attention economy," on the premise that information is only valuable if someone reads/views/hears (and, I would add, acts upon) it. Our colleague also theorized about our obsession with glowing rectangles (phones, tablets), and the apparent necessity of maxing out our attention bandwidth when it's not satisfied with the work and people and general doings around us.

Those two notions (attention economy and voluntary information saturation) kind of meshed into the notion that, in terms of classical economics, we're voluntarily debasing our own currency. (Most especially when those brain-CPUs are in paparazzi or "Farmville" spaces.) I suppose it wouldn't be a big deal if Moore's Law and the general premises of computing applied to the think-meat between our ears. Presumably then we could evolve to a state where our internal process monitors looked something like:

30% - Curing Disease
30% - Ending Poverty & Injustice
30% - Saving the Planet
0.0001% - How long are those eggs in the 'fridge okay after their expiration date?
9.9999% - OOOOH--SPARKLY BALL OF TIN FOIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me, I'm not holding my breath. But in the absence of unprecendented rates of brain evolution (or neural augmentation), our techniques for managing divided attentions will have to evolve to take up the slack. And, sadly, I'm not holding out any more hope for that, either. Not after seeing how stubbornly mainstream corporate culture invests in tired carrot-and-stick paradigms, years of disconnect between worker productivity and pay notwithstanding. Sigh.

But such cognitive fragmentation is something we need to start acknowledging in our work lives--and devising coping strategies for its corrosiveness. Particularly in my profession, where one is expected to toggle between blinders-on, deep-dive focus and collaborative brain-pooling in such an immediate and binary fashion. Anything less is living in denial. And, in the long run, the cost of living in that zip code is higher than anywhere else on earth.

Silly Sunday, 09.11.2011: A reorg. poem

2011-09-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

The rumor mill is humming
As it's running at full bore:
Word from the grapevine says that
A reorg. is in store.

And soon The Powers That Be
Are citing "re-alignment,"
Which for us can only mean
One thing: Reassignment.

So boxes now we scavenge,
Then we pack up all our stuff
And cough and sneeze amidst the haze
Of dust and lint and fluff.

Windex and compressed air
At each cube make a stop:
Coffee-rings fade, keyboards harvest
Crumb-farm bumper-crops!

Our PCs we then power down
And unsnarl spaghetti-wires;
Desktop Support is too swamped
With fighting bigger fires.

Traffic crowds the elevators
The hallways and the stairs
As we ferry stacks of boxes
And monitors on chairs.

We read our mail by smartphone
And quell the urge to thwack
That fool in our new office who
Has not begun to pack.

Greetings, my new cube-mate:
No doubt we'll get on fine--
So long as you keep to your half
Like I will keep to mine.

New roles and hats are donned
Tho' the going starts out slow.
And as the dust yet settles,
One thing I claim to know:

In my annual review
Surely this I did not mean
When I said that I could use
A little change of scene.

Post post-poned

2011-09-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

Home from work now, headache in tow. Tomorrow is another day, still busy, but hopefully more in the pro-active sense.

Cheers, all!

(Yet another) Sign of the times

2011-09-06T19:05:00.000-07:00

I tried to log in to Twitter earlier today, only to be greeted by the trademark Fail Whale and the uncharacteristic (of late, anyway) message that the web's foremost ADOS application was "over capacity."

But rather than immediately roll my eyes over scalability growing-pains, my first thought was to wonder where the earthquake/tsunami/hurricane/tornado/revolution had hit. (Or, more cynically, which overrated celebrity had died.)

Of course, nothing of the kind had happened (at least not anywhere off the "Hic Dracones Sunt" area of the American mind-map.) But I thought the fact that it was my first instinct to assume that the disaster was outside Twitter's server-room--and the fact that I didn't question this until some time later--was interesting. If I'm not alone, then I think Twitter should be congratulated on a serious milestone. (Good job, y'all.)

No post tonight

2011-09-02T18:49:00.000-07:00

I'm afraid I haven't been feeling too frivolous the last few days, and tonight is anything but the start of a languorous three-day holiday weekend.

Hope everyone is back home by Tuesday, safe, sane and not too sunburned.

Cheers, all!

Doreen

Update to last night's post

2011-08-31T19:38:00.000-07:00

Apparently, when you block a post from a third-party application in Facebook, you're then given the option of blocking all subsequent posts. That raises the comfort level a bit, as the application continues its lumbering waddle into platform-hood.

Facebook giveth and Facebook taketh away

2011-08-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

It's clear that Google+ has changed a bit, simply because Facebook has adapted by allowing its users to, erm, "curate" their audience. Meaning that previously, anything you posted was either public or to your circle, whereas now you can cherry-pick who can read your comments, links, etc. So that rant about your work life goes only to your friends; your parents know nothing about your revelries, etc. Kudos also for the feature that requires your approval before you can be officially tagged by someone else in a photo.

Given how social media has largely made us the curators of our personal brands, such tools seem obvious from the perspective of the rear-view mirror.

But tonight I noticed that, while options for controlling output has been made more granular, options for input have quietly been retired. Notably the "Block all" options for either people or applications. All that's left are "Block this post" and "Report post or spam." Without digging, I'm not even sure what that latter is supposed to mean. I'll guess I'll find out when the next Yelp check-in spam hits my news stream. In the meantime, I find the "trade-off" interesting: My gut feeling is this signals a tighter integration between who you know and where they're spending their money. All of course, to entice you--and your wallet--to follow.

Which only reinforces the maxim that if you can't tell what's being sold, you're what's for sale.

Frivolous Friday, 08.26.2011: The Geek Workout

2011-08-26T18:54:00.000-07:00

During the last few weeks, I've rationalized not going to the gym with the argument that packing boxes, schlepping them, wrestling a carpet cleaner and mopping both walls (for painting) and floors (for the usual reasons) was plenty of strength-training, thank you very much.

But as much as certain muscle-factions might have protested, that's exercise I prefer to the hothouse flower kind that treadmills and free-weights provide. At least there's something to occupy the mind. Even if it's only speculating on how inbred the spider population must become over the cold months when I haven't the heart to evict them. (Charlotte's Web in First Grade, read by a student teacher I absolutely adored, you understand...)

But I had a minor epiphany today after a bit of email back-and-forth Dennis & I had over the work to be done over the weekend.

Dennis:

Unless you had other plans in the works, I am planning on getting out into the detached garage and doing some cleaning. I would like to get the bee equipment and such organized and moved out to the storage shed, the small table saw ready for sale and just get the garage capable of being walked through without injuring oneself.

Now, if you want to understand the garage, what you need to know is that it has already sent Dennis to the emergency room, from whence he emerged, sporting a look that only Boris Karloff could love. (Thankfully, the forehead scar is as distant a memory as the piranha scar from his late teens. And, no, I am not making that up.)

You also have to understand that the garage is, in fact, a mess. So, being the perennial wisenheimer, I snarked back:

What?! Ruin all the "Indiana Jones and the Man-cave of Doom" fun of venturing into the garage?--are you *cracked*, man?!?!?! (Although I will confess to a certain morbid curiosity to know now many dessicated, cobweb-covered corpses you'll find felled by diving pipe-wrenches, bifurcated by Beverly-shears, flattened by giant rolling tool-cases, etc. But, then, I'm kinda sick that way...) ;-P ;-P

Awhile later, though, I realized that, Indiana Jones--despite the buffed physique and fast-twitch reflexes of a jungle cat, was actually a nerd in his own way. You don't get the "Dr." in front of your name without some of that in your mental make-up. And, seriously, how many dudes do you know could ID a 12th century inscription while being chased by a secret brotherhood through the underground crypts of Venice with a lovely blonde at their side? Yeah, exactly.

But running for your life (being from giant rolling stones or the flunkies of rival archaeologists) beats the living tar out of trying to follow the plot (minus sound) of Mad Men on the gym television.

Lamentably--at least for present purposes--occultist Nazis and Soviets are considerably harder to come by these days. And, because Mom did her darnedest to raise a post-racial daughter, I'll pass on the hordes of aboriginals from the 2nd & 4th movies, thanks. (Dear Mr. Spielberg: Congratulations on making Rudyard Kipling's ghost blush, you pandering twit.)

Training to become a Jedi Knight would be an excellent way for a geek to blow off steam after a day at the office. After all, you're going to be a force (Force?) for good, and that's one heck of a motivation. (And I imagine the bennies in the Old Republic were pretty good, before Supreme Chancellor Palpatine--a.k.a. Darth Walker--busted the Jedi union and outsourced state security to scabs.) But, there's the celibacy requirement, and I wouldn't trade Dennis for even a rainbow lightsabre, so that's a deal-breaker right there. Not to mention that being able to levitate things with my will would ultimately be counter productive for any fitness regimen.

I suppose there's the holodeck of Star Trek: The Next Generation--basically a Wii on steroids. The fringe benefit is that it AI will do everything physically possible to avoid harming you. (Unless you're as disaster-prone as Lt. Barclay, of course.) I mean, your exercise routine not only monitors your biofeedback, but it also has a plot! (If you ever thought the ST:TNG universe laughably short on chunky folks like your faithful blogger, boy, were you being unimaginative my friend!) It's the perfect workout. Now all I need to do is write code day and night and save enough money to have myself cryogenically frozen until the latter 24th century. No sweat.

Except that maybe that plan is what my favorite History prof. meant by "too clever by half." Drat.

Okay. So maybe something a little closer in space-time would be more practical. Something with motivation and mentoring. The major drawback to hoping that I'm an immortal born to duel my peers for the dubious "prize" (of what I can only assume is bragging rights) is that I first have to verify that I'm immortal. That seems...shall we say...statistically non-viable at best. So I think I'll give that a miss, if it's all the same to everybody. Cato has no doubt retired by now--and in any case, we'd both be uninsurable inside of a month. So that's likewise a bust for keeping me on my toes.

And, lamentably, I've probably missed some sort of age cut-off for the job of "Slayer." Pity. I'm more of a night owl anyway. And I can't say as I'd complain about having a trainer (a.k.a. "Watcher") with a gorgeous British accent and a thing for ancient books. Who nags you to train with cross-bows! But as extracurricular activities go, it's probably not something you want on your resume. (Although, statistically, skinny chicks earn more, so at least there's an upside.) Plus, I just pulled up Google Maps and typed in "Hellmouth," with no exact matches. Which tells me that the job market for Vampire Slayers has pretty much dried up since Buffy hung up her cross and stakes. I suppose any blood-sucking demons left are too busy reinventing themselves as sparkly heart-throbs or nostalgically crashing cosplay parties to hire themselves out as personal trainers.

All of which, of course, means that I have no choice but to find a new video podcast (my carefully-rationed supply of Wine Library TV running critically low) and again take my place in the shadow of The Buffed Ones. If only there were an elliptical machine for the mind...

Why "internet time" doesn't matter so much anymore

2011-08-23T19:26:00.000-07:00

Back in the summer of the post-dot-com-bubble-pop (a.k.a. 2001), fellow tech. writer--let's call her "A"--and I drove from Rochester, MN to the Minneapolis Convention Center for a tech. expo. She was looking for work--and tchotchkes. Whereas I'd talked my first line supervisor into letting me put 8 hours into this junket on the pretext of research, specifically the question, "What does the internet mean to your business?"

Let's face it, that particular tech. expo. was already showing the effects of the post-bubble hangover. The convention center had had to fill the space by booking a manufacturing-related expo. at the same time, discreetly partitioning them with blue curtains. As it turns out, the best answer to that question came from the manufacturing side. A micro-manufacturer of industrial tools related the story of how a customer in desperate need of a replacement for broken equipment had emailed the CAD drawings to them. After taking a look a the drawings, the manufacturer called the customer--a few hours' drive away--and said, "Send your truck now. We'll have it ready for you by the time you get here."

Naturally, at the time I was all drop-jawed about the competitive advantage that "internet time" provided. (Dennis, being a manufacturing engineer at the time, was trained in a world where dead-tree prints would have to be shipped, then re-drawn by one of the manufacturer's techs, and only then could the actual business of "manufacturing" begin. Even at dail-up speeds, receiving a digital file that could be directly imported made for blazing turnaround times.) Even today, I caught myself annoyed with Canon for only just drop-shipping yesterday a part that I ordered (gasp!) all the way back on Saturday. (The horror...)

Now, in many, many parts of the world, such digitization and delivery capabilities are positively banal. And, to me, that's a good thing. I was reminded of that tonight when I pulled a non-bill, non mass-mail envelope out of the stack. A small business' company envelope, obviously, with the city/state/zip line nearly running off the Avery label. The one-page form-letter offered the services of a (relatively) local moving storage company. Short, sweet, who-we-are-and-what-we-can-offer-you. (No physical signature above the printed one, which would scandalize Mom--old-school enough to hold each sheet of bond paper to the light to verify that the watermark was correctly aligned. But it was obviously proofread for grammar and spelling, which (sadly) pretty much puts it ahead in the game.)

The backstory is that Dennis & I just put our home up for sale, so it's pretty obvious that the MLS listing prompted the contact. And good on them for showing some hustle. In the end, it doesn't matter that property listings no longer have to wait for the classified. Nor even that reverse lookups (of addresses or phone numbers to people) are stupid-simple (if you don't mind popup ads and enough cookies to choke a certain fuzzy blue Sesame Street character). But it's the first moving-related offer I've seen since a bare-bones listing went live nearly two weeks ago.

And I can't help but notice that, in both cases, neither firm could be described as a "technology" company. Speaking for myself, I think we programmer/technology types sometimes take technology for its own sake a little too seriously. For the manufacturing and moving company, it's not All About how quickly they can access information; it's about how capable they are of doing something constructive with it. Dunno about anybody else, but I can't help but be a little humbled by that.

Danegeld 2.0 *

2011-08-19T18:05:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week, I was wickedly amused to read that the makers of the Abercrombie & Fitch line of clothing were offering to pay the cast of MTV's Jersey Shore to refrain from wearing their togs, citing concerns about their brand's image. (Cue Billy Joel: "Where have you been hidin' out lately, honey? You can't dress trashy 'till you spend a lotta money.") I was further amused when one of my classmates from Programmer's School picked up on that, offering to do the same for a substantially reduced price. And then, tonight, a librarian friend was having a Facebook conniption about Kourtney Kardashian's "librarian" get-up, which was also worth an evil laugh.

One of the downsides of the democratization in time-wasting brought to us by the internet is that celebrity can simultaneously more far-flung and more fleeting than ever before. But for the enterprising (but otherwise talent-free) flash-in-the-pan, this opens up all manner of opportunity. The obvious examples:

Trust fund do-nothings (think Paris Hilton as well as the afore-mentioned Kardashians)
Washed-up tween-idols (e.g. Britney Spears, The Biebs 5 years hence)
Serial rehabbers (i.e. Charlie Sheen, Lindsay Lohan)

Any of such otherwise useless members of society can thus fund plastic surgery or maybe a beach house--or at least the next bail--by being bought off by brands afraid of offending their more mainstream retailers. Yep, I can't help but think that Abercrombie & Fitch let the proverbial genie out of the bottle here.

Granted, such tactics won't be 100% successful. Some companies, after all, deliberately court controversy for an "edgy" image. (Look no further than the in-your-face product placements for VirginMobile, PlentyOfFish.com and Polaroid) in Lady Gaga's Telephone (NSFW version)).

But such failure is all part of my cunning plan. See, I figure I can eventually graduate to video blogging. In my "office" cleverly disguised as a spare bedroom...complete with full menagerie of stuffed animals. The current wardrobe--A green men's T-shirt and blue-striped white boxer shorts--will more than suffice. As will the humidity-frizzed hair. And the make-up that hasn't been re-touched since early afternoon.

With such anti-hipster cred. at my fingertips, I should really learn how to use it responsibly. Yeah. Nice image you go goin' there, Apple. It'd be an awful shame if I were to, say, "accidentally" flash your latest product around in front of my webcam... Ohai, Coca-Cola...oh, I'm sorry: Did I leave that can out in plain sight? My bad. Here, let me tuck it back into one of a dozen cases under the spare bed. Yes, that spare bed--the one with the wrinkled Martha Stewart bedspread, and the "Euro-shams" that look like a deflated meringue, what with the way I just wadded the pillows into them and all...

You get the idea:

Step 1: Videoblogging stardom
Step 2: Blatant extortion
Step 3: Profit!

Eh. I can think of worse ways to feather the nest. And at least I'm finally getting some mileage from the un-coolness that I've been building up since grade school...

- - - - -

* Historical note: Protection rackets go by many names--most notably the Orwellian "War on Terror" in our day and age--but few were ever so successful or wide-ranging as the Danegeld. Wagnerian/Victorian horned-helmet idiocies aside, the Vikings were a remarkable people in many ways, with a presence ranging from Constantinople (where they formed the bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor) to Eastern Canada (L'Anse Aux Meadows in the province of Newfoundland-Labrador). And they were apparently skilled enough with...errr..."international brand recognition" to be able to extort tribute from points as distant as Saxon/Norman England, Christian Spain and western Russia. And it is in honor of the, um, "business acumen" of my husband's ancestors that this post is titled.

Free for the giving

2011-08-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

There's a phenomenon known as the Tragedy of the Commons," which--in the proverbial nutshell--says that if there exists a limited source of something valuable that is available for free (or next to nothing), sooner or later some jackhole will take more than her/his fair share. This emboldens other jackholes to do the same, until the thing of value is gone and/or damaged. Not surprisingly, it boils down to the whole "socialize the costs and privatize the profits" deal that passes for capitalism these days.

But it only occurred to me (as I started gnawing my way through Chris Anderson's The Long Tail) that there is a flip-side--we might even call it the triumph of the commons. As computing and networking costs have dropped so sharply, coupled with the democratization of the tools for photography, artwork, publishing, A/V production, marketing, etc., it throws open the doors for all manner of contribution. Motivations may differ: Exhibitionism, generosity, experimentation, reputation-building, Quixotic windmill-tilting, whatever.

Not too surprisingly, Wikipedia seems to be most often cited as the poster-child for that sort of thing. The (donation-supported) hosting costs are a laughable fraction of the actual value. For that matter, I wouldn't be surprised if its hosting is pure LAMP stack--i.e. completely open-source (and thus the work of committed volunteers). In other words, the cost of the world's encyclopedia comes down to hardware, electricity, backups...and salaries/bennies for the redoubtable SysAdmins who shepherd them. Plus whatever the bean-counters and suits feel the need to skim off the top, of course--but that goes without saying. Even with that, it's cheap at thrice the price.

Ditto for the bloggers, scraping by on Google ads--or something less reputable--who are showing the world that a professionally-groomed face and opinionated mouth are not unique qualifications for political commentary. And the musicians who decide to let their audience, rather than the RIAA suits, dictate when and where their music will be heard.

The point is that, even as a few self-involved morons are Why We Can't Have Nice Things, a relative handful are the reason we can. Overall, I'd say that's a pretty amazing flip-side. And it would be a waste to overly lament the former, when the latter don't see half the kudos they deserve.

No posting this week

2011-08-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

It's already clear that this week is booked, inside work and out, so I figured it's be a little less lame to get the heads-up out before the last minute.

Have a productive week and fantastic weekend, all!

Frivolous Friday, 08.05.2011: Computer Camp

2011-08-05T20:46:00.000-07:00

Don't ask me why, but last night I realized that thirty years ago, Mom sent me off to computer camp, offered by the local University. A magical place of wonder and discovery in the camaradarie of fellow fledgling geeks. Where, even with all the excitement and exercise of the day, there was still plenty of energy left for a good sing-along by the light of our laptops' monitors. No doubt anyone who remembers computer camp remembers standard fare like:

On top of the LAMP stack,
And hosted domain,
I wrote my first web app,
But deployed it in vain.

I thought that my code had
Refused to compile--
I'd forgotten to roll my
own .ini file . . . (1)

No? Hmmm...maybe that one was just a regional variation. What about:

Once a web designer camped in a coffee-shop
Surfing the Eight-oh-two-eleven-g,
And he raised a round of funding and chatted the barista up:
You'll come and found the next Twitter with me! . . . (2)

Still no? Well, then, perhaps your crowd was musically talented enough for rounds like:

Linux kernel (Linux kernel)
Beta-trial! (Beta trial!)
Check it out from GitHub: (Check it out from GitHub:)
make-compile! (make-compile!) (3)

Or, maybe it was your first time at computer camp and you didn't know any of the songs. And it didn't matter so much, because somehow you found yourself sitting so to the dreamy-eyed guy whose hand had brushed yours as you both reached for the same cafetaria tray at lunch and then blushed. Then, IM-ing under the cover of the music, you learned that you shared the same preference for strongly-typed languages and ANSI-style indentation. And, suddenly, the concept of "pair programming" didn't seem like such a bad idea to a lone coder...

- - - - -

Lovely memories. Certainly more charming than the reality of computer camp circa 1981, what with the "terminals" being large, noisy typewriters with greenbar paper feed--i.e. no such thing as a monitor except for the one immediately commandeered by the fastest kid through the door. It's just as well that Mom doesn't know I blog, or I would sorely disappoint her now with the knowledge that, after awhile, I grew bored and sneaked off to the University Library instead. Thus dropping into more of a Liberal Arts vortex and setting back my programming career by about, oh, a dozen or so years.

But, although life comes equipped with a rear-view mirror (which should be used), it alas does not have a gear for "reverse." Yet--to extend the metaphor--making so much as a lane change might have meant never knowing some of the dearest people I know now. Something I wouldn't trade for all the money in Silicon Valley.

- - - - -

(1) Sung to the tune of "On Top of Old Smokey"
(2) Sung to the tune of "Waltzing Matilda"
(3) Sung to the tune of "Frere Jacques"

Another yardstick of "progress"

2011-08-02T20:04:00.000-07:00

At Dennis' family reunion, one of our newest Kewpie-doll cousins--at least twice removed--was running about the jungle of adult legs, Mamma's cellphone in hand. Mamma, understandably enough, was in hot pursuit of her--or, perhaps more aptly, the phone.

I leaned close to Dennis and observed (sotto vocce, of course) that the little blonde cutie-pie will probably grow up in a world that can't wrap its brain around a phone that doesn't have pictures and interactive icons and text.

As the festivities were winding down, I stepped into a conversation Dennis was having with the youngest of his Dad's brothers, now pushing 80. (But, being a farmer, he'll "retire" work-boots first, naturally.) Uncle C. doesn't quite fit the stereotype of the old-school Wisconsin farmer in a number of ways. Or, on second thought, maybe he does. Because he--from my limited acquaintance, anyway--adapts with a speed and readiness that's instructive for the likes of me. And he groks the fact that the internet--for all the garbage it contains--puts a stupefying amount of knowledge literally at your fingertips.

But Uncle C. also shared a glimpse into his Depression-era sensibilities...a world largely defined by what one couldn't afford. He, for instance, didn't know what a sundae was until his older brother--flush with the cash of his WWII Army paycheck--treated him to the choice between that and the equally mysterious "malt."

Which is about when the epiphany hit and I realized that, for all the noise that each generation makes about the thing it can count as bedrock certainties, an equally powerful touchstone is the thing that it doesn't know. And, before anyone thinks to trivialize telephones and ice cream treats, I will note that my own mother grew up in the shadow of polio (before the vaccine became commonplace). Not to mention what a mind-blowing luxury of clean, safe drinking water is in some corners of a planet three-quarters covered by sea water.

There's a reason that I never, ever feel superior to my predecessors regarding the things that they had to know to survive. You can make all the ballyhoo you want about the information that's available online today vs. what was painstakingly copied to papyrus or vellum centuries ago. The things that no one except the most pedantic would even think of uploading--much more taking for granted--are, to my mind, somewhat more telling than the "gee-whiz" navel-gazing to which tech paparazzi seem to be so prone.

No post tonight

2011-07-29T09:23:00.000-07:00

Preparations for a family reunion have called dibs on the evening, and tomorrow will come earlier than even most weekdays. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Touche.

2011-07-26T19:53:00.000-07:00

The "car doctor" for my 15 year-old beastie changed ownership somewhat recently. I've been pleasantly surprised to notice no difference in the faces nor the service since then. But, as the courtesy van driver--somewhat older than I--schlepped me to work, I made conversation by asking how things had changed.

Naturally, I was expecting a diplomatic answer. But he went on quite convincingly about how all the same folks were in place, and the former owner had made himself deliberately scarce, practicing for retirement. Which all warmed my heart, until I was collecting my backpack and clambering out of the van and he said, "Nope, the only thing that's really changed is the computer program...and that's what takes a fellow the longest time to learn."

I'll confess that I didn't have the moxie to tell him what I do for my crust. But...point taken.

Frivolous Friday, 07.22.2011: Computer wizardry

2011-07-22T22:27:00.000-07:00

For me, it's the end of an era, really. When I had first moved to La Crosse, but was waiting for Dennis to join me, I picked up a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone at Quillins to pass an evening or two. Normally I have an allergic reaction to that sort of phenomenon--particularly as the movie was due to come out. This turned out to be the exception. I finished the book series darned near three years ago--trying not to audibly sob in front of my fellow Amtrak passengers, mind you. But seeing the movie somehow closed the door on all that.

It even filtered into my work today. Testing a fix to the page that creates a new user, the user name was of course "harrypotter" with the password "horcrux7" and an email address of "harry.potter@hogwarts.edu." Which naturally triggered the question of what computing would look like in the semi-medieval world of Hogwarts and Diagon Alley and such. A few conjectures:

The most hackable passwords would be variations on "alohamora."
Monitors (and their corresponding windowing systems) would be replaced by crystal balls. (Kinda cool when you think about it...)
Avatars would be replaced by patronuses.
Wizard programmers would complain about the knut-pinching (goblin) bean-counters outsourcing their jobs to house elves.
Pen computing would necessarily be replaced by wand computing.
The strongest crypto-algorithm would be based on Parseltongue.
Rogue processes would be terminated by bringing up a command prompt and typing "aveda kedavra."
User manuals and operating systems would need to support Mermish.
Gryffindors would use Linux, Slytherins would use Macs, Hufflepuffs would use Windows, and Ravenclaws would roll their own operating systems over summer break.
Google Earth would resemble the love-child of Foursquare and a giant version of the Marauder's Map. ("Rubeus Hagrid just became mayor of The Leaky Cauldron.")

I'm too lazy to look it up right now, but if I recall correctly, it was Arthur C. Clarke who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. That's comfort of a sort, I suppose.

Ringing half the bell

2011-07-19T19:41:00.000-07:00

Pop Quiz: What would you do if you knew that 50% of your potential competition doesn't actually exist?

Maybe it's one of those unquestioned conventional wisdom things--an old wives' tale of capitalism, if you will--that bit about "Half of success is just showing up."

Or maybe it's that I'm still somewhat crabby that a contractor dude postponed my dinner with Dennis by half an hour by deciding that our shed roof wasn't worth his time. (I wouldn't call it wasted time, b/c it was spent with Dennis.)

Or maybe my trade as a web programmer raises the bar for the expectation of instant gratification.

Whatever.

We're used to the bell curve--it's baked into our judgement in so many ways, even if we've never been formally exposed to statistics. But in The Real World (TM), oftentimes only numbers greater than zero need apply. And not showing up equates to less than zero. (Yes, I understand that eBay and Craigslist vendors have differing amounts of skin in the game--each is filling a different niche--but I also humbly suggest that Craigslist would do well to (re)consider the benefits of "reputation" tier.)

Yes, I know that the business textbooks currently in vogue tell you to ignore your competition and relentlessly focus on your vision and just look at Steve Jobs and yadayadayada. (Me, I think that the problem, historically, has less to do about obsessing over the competition than recognizing it in the first place.) But if you can't help but obsess over any competition, doesn't it help you sleep better at night knowing that half of them don't actually exist?

Frivolous Friday, 07.15.2011: BFAQ

2011-07-15T20:35:00.000-07:00

An atypical first night of "babysitting bees" at the La Crosse County Fair, by many measures. The rain was mostly responsible for that. When I arrived shortly after 7pm, the Dairy building (where they sell the malts and ice cream) was packed. And--with all due respect to the talented wood-carvers, bees have a certain Fierce Creatures appeal that sometimes keeps people away, but mostly tends to draw them to the observation hive.

I like to believe that my previous incarnations of technical writer and Marketing Dept. henchwoman serve me well enough for the questions that come in. But, in the several years we've been doing this, I find that some questions are more commonly asked than others. So, while the answers are not cookie-cutter (for they are often springboards to interesting follow-up questions...which is where what I consider the "real" conversation takes place). But in the spirit of public service, here's a gloss.

What's up with CCD? Many folks strike up a conversation asking how the bees are doing--by which they mean, "Has anyone figured out the silver bullet for Colony Collapse Disorder yet?" Sadly, the answer is "No." For the simple reason that, to the best of our understanding, it's in some ways more a symptom than a disease. Monoculture (i.e. un-balanced nutrition), pesticides, migratory beekeeping, decades of fighting off parasitic mites and lethal "foulbrood" molds (i.e. the usual antibiotics arms-race), etc. come together. Rather like no one truly dies of AIDS--it's the secondary infection that kills them.

Which ones are the boys and which ones are the girls? Honeybees come in three kinds: Workers, drones and the Queen. The Queen exists to lay eggs--up to 2000 a day, which is more than her body weight. She is entirely dependent on the workers (her daughters) to feed, clean and otherwise care for her. The drones (the males) exist to mate with a Queen--more than likely from another hive. However, the workers usually kick them out of the hive to starve and/or freeze in the Fall, because they're useless at that point. The workers do everything else, from housekeeping to raising new brood to construction and carting resources, to guard duty, and finally to foraging for nectar and pollen.

How long do they live? Drones normally don't live past Autumn. Workers born in Spring/Summer live about six weeks before their wings wear out. Queens can last 2-3 years.

How does a honeybee become a Queen? Worker bees and Queen bees start out as a fertilized egg. The food on which the larva is fed determines everything. The high-protein "royal jelly" allows Queens to mature much faster (16 days from egg to hatching, as opposed to three weeks), and makes her larger. Drones, by contrast, are--Y-chromosome excepted--a perfect genetic copy of their mother.

How often are new Queens made? Surprisingly, "regime change" is typically up to the plebians, rather than the Monarchy. It could be a swarm (when the old Queen and about half the hive fly off to found a new colony) or a supercedure, when the old Queen dies or isn't performing. In either case, the workers choose suitably young larvae and not only feed them accordingly, but also build extra large cells in which the new Queens go from egg to larva to cocoon to Queen. The catch is that the first Queen to hatch typically stings her rivals to death. A few days later, she will go on her mating flight(s) and eventually settle down to lay eggs for the rest of her life.

How do you get the honey out? Bees collect nectar and partially break it down, then store it in the upper parts of the hive. Through evaporation, its water content is reduced to ~16%, at which point they cap it with wax to keep it from rehydrating. We take out the frames of honeycomb, remove the wax cap, and put the frames in an extractor, where centrifugal force pulls the honey out of the comb and out of a gate at the bottom where it can be strained and bottled.

A jar of honey I bought crystalized. Should I throw it out? No. Set the bottle in a pan of warm water, and problem solved. Unless the moisture content is too high, honey is the one food that should never spoil. (Just ask the Pharohs.)

How much honey do you get? Personally, our hives have ranged between zero and 160 pounds in a season. Mind you, the 160 came from one hive, while the one eight feet away did absolutely bupkis. Why? Because it's basically farming with six-legged livestock.

How often do you get stung? Me, less than once a year. And always, always because I did something stupid. (Dennis, who--per usual--does the heavy lifting, maybe once a year--but he's been known to do silly things, too.) Unlike yellowjackets, a honeybee can only sting you once, because for her it's a suicide mission. In other words: Stinging is a last resort--the "nuclear option," if you will. (And if you are stung by a honeybee, by all means, scrape out the stinger--fingernail, credit card, whatever--don't reach for the tweezers, because you'll just squeeze more venom into you.

Revisited wisdom

2011-07-12T19:19:00.000-07:00

About a decade and three employers ago, my team's intern signed his email with the slogan "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." I was reminded of the truth of that today, while being pleasantly surprised at how J. had consolidated a somewhat Rube Goldberg patchwork of code into an impressively streamlined VB.Net executable. "Pleasant," because it's good to see people take ownership, even of the under-appreciated scut-work. But also because it vastly simplifies the code I was planning to hang off that.

That being said, I couldn't resist asking for just one tweak: "You know what would be even more awesome?" asked I (rhetorically, of course), "if it fired off an email when it was done." "I don't think I've ever done that in VB.Net," temporized J. I was about to offer to do the Google legwork to work it out for him, when he mused aloud, "Can we just do that through the database?" Bingo. There was our answer. One stupid-simple INSERT statement, and a scheduled job (already in place) takes care of the heavy lifting.

Yeah, I'll probably be "fancy" in that I'll have the .BAT files prompt users for an alternate email address. But J.--who is about the age of the afore-mentioned intern--reminded me of the importance of intelligent laziness. That and the fact that neither of us would have come up with that solution on our own. Maybe I won't ever catch the Agile religion, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to be able to sing along with some of the hymns. (Anyone raised as a Methodist--like I was--knows what I'm talking about)

(belated) Frivolous Friday, 07.08.2011: The Grateful Dead edition

2011-07-09T20:44:00.000-07:00

(In honor of the last day of publication for News of the World--don't let the door hit'cha where the Good Lord split'cha, hey?. And in fervent hope that the public and Fourth Estate will jointly raise the standard of "journalism.")

Hackin', got my soul cashed in, just hackin', working for The Man
A raccoon more or less tipping society's trash can.

The newstands bleed scandal and ink onto Main Street
It's not news if it don't line the pockets of Fleet Street
A typical tabloid shilling self-serving pipe-dreams:
It's about ads justifyin' the means.

Royals under the microscope, celebrities are the dope:
More grease for our slipperly slope, just can't let 'em be, oh no.

Most of the blokes that you meet say they're looking for real news
Most of the time they're zoning and surfing the 'tubes.
But they'd have to read past the model on Page 2--
I say screw 'em, they'll never be nothing but rubes.

Hackin', working for The Man, no point making a principled stand
My profession ain't worth a dime, if I can't drag it down.

Now a spot-light is shinin' on me,
So bright that I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me, what a sordid trip it's been.

What in the world ever became of ethics?
Somehow we find ourselves in sleaze up past our necks--
Slinging right-wing propaganda and cheap sex
Just try and complain--we'll "profile" you next.

Hackin', got to buffalo the public--got to tell the proles
How they're gonna vote in the polls, and just keep hackin' on

My job is to keep the powerful honest
So next week I'm havin' drinks with the PM
I'd like some time to primp for that love-fest,
But if you've got a warrant, I guess you're gonna come in.

Hoisted on my own petard, watching this whole house of cards
Come down, I've run out of canards to hold off Scotland Yard--oh no.

So we'll pardon the lord and punish the minion--
The pols and public never tire of that schtick:
Even in the court of public opinion,
With no sex in the scandal, no way you'll make it stick.

Now a spot-light is shinin' on me,
So bright that I can barely see.
Lately it occurs to me, what a sordid trip it's been.

Hackin', Imma find a new home, whoa, whoa baby, back where I belong,
Starting next Sunday with The Sun, and just keep hackin' on.
Hey now, get back hackin' on.

"Frivolous Friday" postponed

2011-07-08T20:30:00.000-07:00

A late start tonight, with a bunch of dishes to do, and--much more importantly, helping Dennis set up a demo. website on my Ubuntu laptop b/c setting up concrete5 on a Windows server has been giving him static all day.

By which I of course mean, seducing him over to The Light Side. ;-) He started installation sometime after 7 tonight, and the prototype of the new website is already looking snazzier than the hand-rolled HTML of its predecessor. I've been checking in (or responding to summons, as the case may be) since. As I write, he's feng-shui-ing the Wisconsin Honey Queen's home page. Muttering to himself like the character Milton in Office Space, I might add--albeit much more productively.

So the upshot is that tonight's post will be postponed until tomorrow. G'night and thanks in advance for the patience.

Hierarchy of Lead(ing)

2011-07-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

Apparently, Those Who Know Best decided that it would be a good idea to encourage folks in the office to donate blood. An effort that's of a piece with earlier efforts to field a team for the local ACS Relay for Life (something which--I might add--I did a subpar job in managing when it was my turn).

With that disclosure, two things struck me about the email that was fired--shotgunned, really--to the general mailing list.

In an effort to do good, the drive has been cast as a contest. (In other words, a purely internal (and highly personal)--i.e. intrinsic--motivation has been replaced by an extrinsic--i.e. external--reward system.
The email never actually spelled out what the top bleeder would "win." Which effectively nulls out any motivation to go above and beyond.

Being a complete wimp about needles--despite being assured by trained medical personnel that I'm "good bleeder," thanks to highly visible veins--I have worked myself up to either donating blood or signing up to be called on for such on short notice. But not often.

Granted, that's me being me. But I started noodling the idea of motivation--particularly the extrinsic kind that can might just pass for intrisic if it's done with the right finesse. And, given that the only formal training I've had in what makes human beings tick comes from good ol' Psychology 101 in college. (In retrospect, I think my prof. and I had a tacit bargain: I could skip out of class some Tuesdays for speech tournaments and he could guinea pig me in class b/c he knew that anyone who did that sort of thing had more defenses than your average freshman. It was a pretty symbiotic relationship, all in all.)

But I digress in navel-gazing. The snippet of Psychology 101 to which I refer is, not Pavlov's drooling dogs nor Skinner's baby-in-a-box nor even the infamous Milgram or Stanford Prison experiments. No, I mean Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (without which, it seems, it is impossible to write a book on organizations these days). The premise of the hierarchy is that human needs are built as a pyramid, with what we would consider the most basic--i.e. primitive--motivations at the bottom and the more sophisticated (although hardly effete) driving forces at the top. The pyramid structure is mostly valid, although slightly misleading. For example, think of the vibrancy of Stone Age cave-painting or--much more amazingly--the Viktor Frankls and Eli Weisels of this world.

And while it's not 100% apples-to-apples analogous, I'll take a highly subjective stab at the comparable hierarchy in operation at the office:

Growth: Do I have room to play? To connect? To fail and grow?

Control: What percentage of the week do I spend merely reacting vs. adding value?

Ethos: Do I grok why we're doing what we're doing as we're doing it?

Roadmap: Do I know what needs to be done (and can I do it)? Then what?

Security: Will I still have a job when the rent's due? How easily can I be replaced?

Survival: Can I pay my (part of the) bills on the income from this job?

To my way of thinking, this is the "pyramid" (and, yes, I know it doesn't much resemble one, but you get the point) to which the Powers That Be should focus on building--assuming that there's any pretense to harnessing the value of employees who are not merely punching a clock.

I suppose, theoretically at least, you could make a point of hiring the Frankls and Weisels of this world--the people who make a conscious choice to transcend whatever's thrown at them, if only for their own sakes. But I know I wouldn't invest in the company that built a business model around that...any more than I'd knowingly invest in a the old-school carrot-and-stick school of H.R.

But let's back up for a second. The sender (notice I didn't say "author") of the afore-mentioned email about blood donation is new to our office and relatively young besides. I want to be clear about that, mainly out of fairness: No one deserves to be slammed b/c Those Who Know Best aren't necessarily the quickest learners. (Not from where I sit, anyway. For all I know, my co-workers' mileage may vary.)

So, against my better judgement, I'll slip a quick word--destined for upstream consumption--that "contests" require some sort of prize, even if it's only bragging-rights. Either that or an office-wide philanthropic effort should be built on some kind of buy-in. Because pandering to our most mercenary instincts is bad enough...but offering no pay-off in the bargain? I'd rather not see that much #fail in one place at one time. And because, for a cynical as I've become (not to mention a downright snob about which battles I'll fight) I'd don't want to see someone set up to fail (even when the set-up's not deliberate). Especially not on the first effort.

Frivolous Friday, 07.01.2011: Founding Hackers

2011-07-01T19:04:00.000-07:00

I snagged Dennis' copy of John Adams and snarfed the bulk of it while under the weather last weekend. (Exhaustive depth and breadth of research aside, I guess I was expecting more impartiality and less hagiography. Although Abigail was pretty badass, ripping Jefferson a new one by mail--while he was in office, no less! I knew she had to be a force of Nature, but I never knew that...)

But in the discussion of the illuminati of the "American Experiment," one thing that took me aback--in terms of things that we take for granted--was the claim that if Benjamin Franklin had invented nothing beyond the lightening rod, he would have still been considered a giant in practical science. But, as the kite-flying escapades and some of his more fanciful uses for the new-fangled electricity make for better stories, it's easy to lose sight of the life-and-death aspect.

Sometimes Franklin merely improved on the work of others, such as an early battery called the "Leyden jar" or capturing more heat from a fire with what became known as the "Franklin stove." Other inventions, such as bifocal glasses and the odometer, were--to the best knowledge of history--were hacks created to meet an immediate need.

And in the best spirit of hacking, Franklin could--in a sense--be considered the father of open source. The "sense" in question being that he refused to patent any of his work. From the Wikipedia article on the Franklin stove:

...the deputy governor of Pennsylvania, George Thomas, made an offer to Franklin to patent his design, but Franklin never patented any of his designs and inventions. He believed “that as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously”. As a result, many others were able to use Franklin’s design and improve it.

Thomas Jefferson, no less a tinkerer (and a math nerd besides), also dabbled in cryptology during his various duties to the fledgling republic.

However, Jefferson believed in limited-term patents to balance the financial incentive for invention (and thus human progress) against perpetual monopolies that would hurt the public interest. He, like Franklin, did not patent his work on the moldboard plow (basically a hack for the hilly soil in his Piedmont stomping grounds of Virginia.) And, to the manufacturer of a device for producing duplicate copies of one's writing--then known as a "polygraph," although the word has a different meaning now--Jefferson supplied all manner of suggested improvements--and apparently beta-tested them as well--over the course of writing thousands of letters.

I know that we have a tendency to create the founders of this country in our own image, and me highlighting their geeky pedigree is no exception. Yet the trick to biographical history is to never assume you know the people you're researching. And, above all to remember that, when you go looking for history, sometimes history comes looking for you.

A rooster worth crowing about

2011-06-28T19:22:00.000-07:00

Kudos to Rooster Andy's for the verbiage I saw on their sign during yesterday morning's commute, which publicly congratulated one of their employees for moving onto another job. That's pretty outstanding, and thought it deserved a shout-out.

I only wish I liked BBQ chicken better...

Frivolous Friday, 06.24.2011: Geek bar jokes

2011-06-24T19:06:00.000-07:00

An J2EE JDBC connection walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "What'll it be?" "Nothing right now, thanks," replies the connection as it makes a bee-line for the billiard tables, "I'm just here for the pool."

Richard Stallman walks into a bar. Recognizing him, the barkeep asks, "Hey, Richard! What's GNU?"

A memory slot walks into a bar. Peering down at its diminutive size, the bartender snorts, "You must be a cheap drunk." "Yeah," concedes the memory slot, "I can really only hold one DRAM."

An ICMP ping walks into a bar, twiddles its thumbs at a table for a second, then demands, "How long does it take to get a server around here?"

An HTML <TBODY> tag, <TBODY> tag, and <TFOOT> tag walk into a bar and order a round. When it's about time for seconds, the bartender notices that he can only see the <THEAD> and <TBODY> at their booth. "Where'd your friend go?" asks the bartender. "You mean <TFOOT> ?" reply the <THEAD> and <TBODY> tags, "He's always under the table!"

A web browser walks into a bar where a web server is tickling the ivories at the house piano. The browser sticks a few bills into the web server's jar and asks, "You take requests?"

A *nix print job walks into a bar. After a few rounds, the bartender notices how pie-eyed the job has become and sighs, "In its CUPS again..."

The Java Math class walks into a bar and announces, "Hey, everybody--the next .round() is on me!"

Steve Wozniak walks into the Genius Bar...

A SATA drive and an IDE drive walk into a bar. After nervously glancing around, the IDE disk drive whispers to the SATA, "Are you sure we want to be here? This place looks awfully SCSI to me."

Short-selling the dinosaurs, or "Here we go again..."

2011-06-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

With the rise of the smartphone, the attendant hype has included some talk about the "ghettoization" of the internet--in the sense that "the internet" is defined as content snarfed from one or more web servers from a laptop or even horrifically retro desktop computer. Yet, as I read yet another "the reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated" article, titled The Fall of Wintel and the Rise of Armdroid, it occurred to me that the coming "ghettoization" may not be drawn along the lines of content producers vs. consumers as along content itself.

The distinction between playing a game on a small screen and everything that goes behind it (interface design, scaling data and processing over multiple servers and writing/testing/deploying all the code that makes that happen) is the distinction between the proverbial tip and the iceberg. (Even minus Kate and Leo and a whole lotta CGI). I hope we can agree on that.

Disclosure: I don't own a tablet or smartphone, per se. (Yet.) A netbook--with a keyboard that would have put Margaret Mitchell ("Gone with the Wind") on the sidelines well before Atlanta was toasted--yes. And I've certainly been accused of shallow thinking. And not just recently, nor without justification.

Which, I'll admit, makes it seem more than a little pretentious to swim against the tide of "conventional wisdom." ('Cuz when business writers predict long-term computing trends, it's totally like, "Gartner data-point. Your argument is invalid." 'Nuff said, right?) Even against the swaggering conventionality of dudes like Mr. Allsworth--who, so far as I can tell, think they're scooping the meteor from "Fantasia" just as the dinosaurs double-take the bright light in the sky like some chorus line of "Durrrr." Because we all know how sharply striated the mainframe-to-minicomputer-to-PC adoption was, yes?

Mockery aside, I think I can safely predict that we're living in a Golden Age of niches--perchance even a Cambrian explosion of computing life-forms. Simply because hardware is cheap, software alternatives range somewhere between "cheap" and "free" and tying together systems is not limited to dedicated telephone wires--owned, I might add, by a monopoly. Making the statistical likelihood of such one-or-the-other thinking rather on part with being struck by lightning during a shark attack.

No doubt 24/7 availability of fully networked computers responsive in a more three-dimensional sense will change the equation somewhat. But the fact remains that small screens with cramped user interfaces are geared to forms of content for which a desktop in which you can immerse yourself for twelve hours straight (thanks to three monitors, keyboard, mouse and who-knows-what-besides) are thermonuclear-scale overkill.

For instance: There's snapping a photo, cropping it, tagging it, uploading it--yea even with LOL-caption. There's firing off the multi-person SMS message otherwise known as a tweet--or even skinny post. Stupid-simple, and as close to "free" (in terms of time and money) as possible for both the creator and the recipient. Then there's the longer-term commitment of content on the level of, say, "Avatar" or "Inception" Even bootlegged copies carry the cost of going on two hours of time. (And, in an economy where too many work more hours for less compensation, don't ever make the mistake of discounting the value of "idle" time!)

Seriously now...will the next Lady Gaga video be mixed on an iPad as facilely a throwaway iApp can make caricatures of your photos? Me, I'm thinking not. And not only from the standpoint of raw computing power--something that typically comes in inverse proportions to the prized battery life of such devices. A multi-screened Mac, fully accessorized, by contrast, will capture the nuances that dumbed-down resolutions and tinny, cheap earbuds will not. All the difference in the world between a handful of Facebook friends and millions of "L'il Monsters," in other words.

In short, content is not created equal. Either in the creation or the consumption, I might add. And never will be. Just like sometimes you can get by with the "fun-size" Snickers bar you poached from the communal candy jar--the calories don't count if you pitch the wrapper in your cube-mate's waste-basket. Honest--I read it in "Scientific American." But at other times nothing short of the infamous seventeen layer "death by chocolate" volcano cheesecake torte from the local Tchotchke's will do.

Or something like that.

Blog post Wed. night

2011-06-21T20:26:00.001-07:00

Beekeeper's meeting followed by "Date Night" takeout from Gracie's Gyros over a bottle of retsina. And suddenly it's nearly 10:30. Which, on a "school night," means that tomorrow will be Blog Night.

P.S.: Gracie's is lovely this time of year...no fighting college students for tables!

Frivolous Friday, 06.17.2011: Winged muses

2011-06-17T19:17:00.000-07:00

For the last few months, I've been either getting a project out the door, fighting fires or tying up the proverbial loose ends on nearly six years of my working life. Which doesn't leave much time for in-cubicle "play-time." Outside of work, the joy in coding--particularly having my head handed to me by another language--just wasn't there. So it was easy to let the mundane requirements of adult life take over and decompress by reading with the balance of my free time.

To me, coder's block is no different from writer's block--in terms of symptoms or treatment. Sometimes you have to force things; other times, busying yourself with something unrelated while your subconscious mind works it out. And inspiration can come from the unlikeliest places.

Take the pet store, for instance. My simple mission was to pick up a bag of finch kibble. I've never trusted a store to provide optimal housing for any birds--particularly not after the shameful conditions I saw at the PetCo north of Rochester (MN) in 2000.

So I took up my self-appointed role as Finch Inspector at Large at the Onalaska PetCo. Mixed results there--particularly where they crowded too many Spice Finches and Society Finches in the same cage. (I'll be going back tomorrow to make sure that the Spice Finch with the bald spot was, indeed put into isolation as promised. There will be Gre'thor raised with the manager if it hasn't.)

But I knew they wouldn't put the little white-capped Zebra Finch "in iso." just because it was being bullied all over the cage. And the sleek little African Silverbill was already all alone...

And I'll bet you'll never, EVER guess what happened next.

Sigh. The spirit of Charlie Brown adopting the pathetic little Christmas tree strikes again. Naturally, both birds Houdini'd out of their carrying boxes when I brought them home, which only served me & my sappiness right.

But as I settled them into their quarantine cages, I thought that this weekend would be a good idea to get a starting weight for them. As we let the flock of Gouldians live out their natural lives, we--sloppily--fell out of the habit of regular weighings. But with two new young'uns, there's no excuse for that.

Which, I realized--less that a second later--would make a splendid first Android application. And, ultimately, an equally splendid excuse to break down and splurge on a 'droid tablet--something I promised I wouldn't do before I'd written my first non-"Hello, World!"--i.e. non-trivial--Android application.

And--whaddya know?--there's my extracurricular coding mojo! Standing right there! How've ya been, old friend? Let's boogie!

(P.S.: Thank you, little ones. May your kibbles always crunch.)

Living in a three-party system

2011-06-14T18:45:00.000-07:00

Dad wanted to review the photos on his camera's memory card. Dad's a Windows user, and I don't have an SD slot on my XP desktop. So the only option was to fire up the Ubuntu laptop, log in, and hope for the best.

Now. What you should understand about my Dad is he's Mister Fix Anything, thanks to being in medical maintenance since before I was born in the hospital that employed him. Plumbing. Electrical. Mechanical. HVAC. (Computer-controlled pneumatic tube systems seem to be his special joy. That and being privy to the more colorful antics of the staff and administration--such generally being a fringe benefit of working third shift.)

He's turned his attention on desktop and laptop computers as well, so I didn't think that the Linux thing would throw him off too much. (Heck, I've managed to pass off Mandrake as Windows...and that in 2004.) Wrong. It seems that whatever software's installed on his home computer opens the root of the SD card and ignores the folder-structure to present all photos in slide-show format. To Ubuntu, however, the card was just another drive--no different from a hard drive, CD, DVD, or USB device. (Of course, the fact that his camera apparently creates a new folder for each day--which can mean a folder containing a single .JPG file--doesn't make browsing any easier.)

We fumbled through it one way or another. But it was pretty obvious that Dad was convinced that having all photos at his fingertips was The Way It's Supposed To Work, Darnitalready. His software completely concealed the folder structure (and thus the complexity) from him.

It's anecdotes like those that make me suspect--and rejoice--that operating systems will always be a multi-party system. I know my preferences, and--I fondly hope--understand some of the values that drive them. But values in operating systems--as in politics--can be incompatible to the point where compromises, while possible, have a kludgey feel to them. I more or less type for a living, and fingerprints on my monitor, frankly, skeeve me the heck out. Which pretty much rules out any tablet that doesn't dock into a keyboard. My co-worker in the pod next door, by contrast, might not be acquitted of actually naming his iPad and sleeping with it on a pillow next to him. At least not in the court of public opinion. Much the same might be said for his Android phone. And more power to him.

Which brings us back around to the politics metaphor and the moral of the story: Knowing your core values (and the trade-offs they entail) always trumps finding justification for your allegiance to a particular system.

No blog post tonight

2011-06-10T12:23:00.001-07:00

Prepping for a family reunion and having company over has called dibs on my weekend and beyond. Hope that my gentle reader's Friday is sufficiently frivolous without my contribution.

Cheers, all!

Lopsided metaphor

2011-06-07T19:35:00.000-07:00

Apparently, hyperopia is a hipster condition...at least in the sense that I've never heard of it--not that this is much of a touchstone, mind you! (The less fancy name for those of us lacking a degree in opthomology is "farsightedness.")

It occurred to me to look up the word while I was testing a fix, and realized that I was doing so with full God-Emperor-of-Dune system privileges. I should note that only a meagre handful of users have that level of access. But testing (either formally or informally) with the full menu of features at hand is not always a good thing--as I discovered to my mortification years ago when a necessary feature actually generated errors for any poor, average hoi-poloi schlub unfortunate enough to have to use it. (Small wonder it was the proverbial red-headed step-child of features...y'think?!?!)

I think it's telling that I found the word "hyperopia" not thanks to a mind that's a sponge for over-educated trivia. Nor even via an educated guess based on a two-ships-passing-in-the-night acquaintance with Greek.

No, I merely Googled, "opposite of myopia." Because "myopia"--a.k.a. near-sightedness--is a term that has some layperson mileage. And that's what puzzles me. When a person or organization or culture is described as "myopic," that's invariable a bad thing. Parochial. Head-in-the-sand. That sort of thing.

But we don't have the equivalent term of people who were so busy worrying about what's going on outside the walls self/organzation/country that they forgot to take care of business. And I think you can definitely make the case that "hyperopia" is an equally deadly sin. You saw it in the "but everybody else is doing it, and if we don't they'll eat our lunch" Wall Street lemming-stampede. You see it in investing even now...by so-called professionals. You see it in the way our country cheerleads democracy and freedom and gender equality and anti-corruption efforts in other countries but thumbs its nose at them inside our own borders.

My position? Screw the Joneses. Let them lose sleep worrying about how they're going to keep up with you. Sure, pay attention to what's on the horizon and dedicate a percentage of resources to the hic sunt dracones part of the map--no question. But otherwise, there's no substitute for taking care of business.

Frivolous Friday, 06.03.2011: Funny money

2011-06-03T19:30:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem like it's been that long since the birth announcement, but online pal A.'s daugher Z. is now old enough for visits from the Tooth Fairy. A. tweeted that $0.50 had materialized under Z.'s pillow. I twitted him that clearly imaginary beings are not subject to the laws of inflation, because that was the going rate in "my day" --an epoch that, in broad historial terms, was bookended by Wategate and Disco--which was exactly the same.

Which brought to mind one of the (few) high points of Harvard Lampoon's send-up of Tolkein, Bored of the Rings. Quoting purely from (1995-vintage) memory, the menu of the "Feast of Orlon" was satirized thusly:

Like all mythical creatures who live in the forest with no visible means of support, the elves dined frugally on nuts, berries, bark and dirt.

Needless to write, I condemned myself to English Major Hades--because we Liberal Arts types are just too literate for a monosyllabic "Hell," don'cha'know?--by snorting with laughter. Uproariously.

But that was 1995. When we looked back at gold-hoarding and rolled our eyes. When the idea of an exchange rate between, say, D&D GP ("gold pieces" to the uninitiated) and greenbacks would have been laughable. When the real-estate bubble that had middle class Americans snapping up ticky-tacky twin-dos to flip to similarly beady-eyed middle class Americans was even more laughable. (In retrospect, anyway.)

You can say what you like about the trench-war between eCommerce and bricks-and-mortar, but EverQuest and Diablo and their ilk definitely put "virtual goods" on the map. And to my mind, it wasn't so much that the RIAA/MPAA had to compete with "free," it's that they had to compete with broad-band download rates. Throw into the mix the fact that Apple has more or less conditioned us to value both songs and smartphone/tablet applications at 99 cents a pop. Texting to a specific number, last time I checked, anyway, was an automatic ten clams.

In perspective, one can only wonder at the unintended (or at least unanticipated by the masses) consequences cellphone payments.

This isn't the first time I've scratched my head at paying real money for not-so-real stuff. Or even that I've been appalled at the nasty, brutish underbelly of virtual economies. But it is the first time I've had the mortifying suspicion that we programmer & online gamer types might have--completely inadvertently, I swear!--have lowered the bar for everyone else.

Thus--I suspect--was born the notion of taking mortgages (issued to pretty much anyone with a pulse), spraying the regulatory equivalent of Lysol on them, and passing them off as actual, honest-to-Pete, value-adding "investments." And, because we 'mericans tend to be slow learners (as in, "Oh, but that was Manchuria; Japan would never have the stones to attack U.S. soil..."), we might just see a badly-scripted sequel in the staid fields of betting on your life expectancy.

Considering the number of platinum-parachuted Wall Street suits who happily short-sold your castle, I would think the thought of short-selling your actual...well...life should worry you, no? Because, in the grand scheme of things, insurance companies are only selling an egregiously non-tangible product (a.k.a. "peace of mind"): Am I wrong?

(Note to self: Do not encourage Dennis to splice Soylent Green into the Netflix line-up anytime soon. kthxbi.)

Part of me feels like I should apologize--on behalf of all Geekdom--for how the virtualization of goods might have actually softened up the economy for the Great Recession. But, on further review...eh, naaaaahhh. We're the ones who take our mortgage Algebra straight-up, without the sugar-froth of ARM or interest-only pixie-dust. And, perhaps more significantly, maybe it takes an immersion in economies that are fake-for-real (e.g. Monopoly, WoW, Eve) to appreciate the fine distinction between gold-farming and derivatives-brokering. Just saying.

It takes a tribe to raise a member

2011-06-01T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I want to perpetuate the analogy of "tribes" to a work environment, because, going on my career so far, I've rarely seen the necessary level of cohesion extend beyond, say, three co-workers.

But Best Friend H. was chunking out code when I was still struggling to parlay a Liberal Arts degree into a "real job," so I tend to trust her instincts. This past weekend, she used the phrase "tribal knowledge" in the context of griping about why outsourcing projects to contracting firms was capable of so much friction. Friction, I might add, that had nothing to do with time zones or language or even cultural norms.

That concept has been brought home the past few weeks as I've been on the short road to tinnitis, trying to block out days' worth of brain-dumping. And that's just for one application. We're trying not to traumatize the trainee, so I haven't even started loading my dump-truck just yet. (Much less the gleeful rubbing of hands, twirling of moustache, maniacal laughter, etc., etc.)

But in a much more tangible sense, I only need rewind to last Friday. I don't think I'm telling too many proverbial stories out of school when I say that a software enhancement was expected to be rolled out to the production (i.e. live) website this Tuesday, and we still needed to make a final check on the "beta" (i.e. dress rehearsal) server. Quality Assurance (QA) was already slated to test over the weekend, and Alpha-Geek was likewise planning to make the final code-push, assuming it passed muster.

I handle promotions in the afternoon, so the programmer responsible passes the issue off to me. So far the tribal knowledge seems to have trickled down, despite the fact that he's only been with us for a small handful of months.

Except the tribe missed passing on the bit of collective wisdom that says that if your patch is that important, you should probably stick around to see it safely promoted and, oh, maybe even spot-check it before handing it back off to QA. But, being a self-respecting barely-post-collegiate type, he, naturally, made for the door in anticipation of a three-day weekend.

I duly promoted the database portions, then realized that the programmer had forgotten to to merge one chunk of the code into the production branch of the Subversion repository. Hypothetically, this should be only a minimal inconvenience, because I should be able to update my copy of the "production" repository, merge the designated changes from the beta version, and commit them up.

It's an amiable enough hypothesis, to be sure. But it reckons without the fact that, between the time programmer made his change and the time I had to merge them, a directory had been deleted. Which means that Subversion had had its little drama-queen hissy-fit freakout about a tree conflict. In laypeople's terms, this leaves me with three possible options:

A.) Trust my version of the files
B.) Trust the incoming version of the files
C.) Try to negotiate a compromise

Only problem was, I wasn't privy to the "tribal knowledge" behind the "missing" folder and its contents. That had left with the programmer in question--and, for that matter, everybody else. Which left me with two possible options:

A.) Take a wild, flying stab in the dark and let other people shop-vac up any resulting damage
B.) Document what I'd done so far and the problems encountered and foist the rest of the promotion off on Alpha-Geek

Sadly, the latter was the kinder option. (From a passive-aggressive standpoint, it was probably a horse apiece, so I refuse to feel guilty about choosing (B.).) Apart from being copied on the note that Alpha-Geek had ultimately finished the promotion (after working around said freakout), I didn't hear bupkis about the incident after that. I should probably check in to see that the appropriate party was shown the error of his ways.

But the "teachable moment" from all this should, I trust, be the ample demonstration of the value of cultivating knowledge as a tribe. Or, perhaps more aptly, the counter-wisdom of grafting individuals (and even whole teams) onto a project without thoroughly marinating her/him/it in the deep end of the knowledge-pool. The best possible outcome otherwise is gross inefficiency; the worst is wholesale disaster. The foolhardy grafter should expect no sympathy in either case.

Testing...testing...

2011-05-31T20:08:00.000-07:00

...still spot-checking a code rollout to the production server. Blog post tomorrow night.

Frivolous Friday, 05.27.2001: First World Lament

2011-05-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

(Blame the "#GoodnightTwitter" trending topic from earlier this week...)

It's eleven p.m.,
The pizza is cold,
My twelfth-level Mage
Has run short on gold.

My Twitter-stream flows by
At barely a trickle.
Pandora's turned flighty;
Her stations are fickle.

My friends' updates likewise
Have slowed to a crawl.
I hear through the silence
The Facebook games call.

But I'm not keen on farming
Nor buccaneering tonight;
Don't feel like a mobster--
Much less elven knight.

I could turn to my Netflix
On-demand streaming.
(Tho' when credits are rolling,
I'll already be dreaming.)

I could pound down a 'Dew
Or blend a frapee,
Except my IM-mates
Have called it a day.

Or fire up the tablet
And download new apps.
To amuse my remaining
(Non-snoozing) synapse.

Or load my e-Reader
With books new and cool
And hope I don't short it
In a puddle of drool.

Both eyelids are south-bound,
I won't greet the dawn,
Tomorrow's a new day--
Another re-spawn.

But it's Friday night on
A three-day weekend:
And moi turn in early?!?
Cthulu forefend!

iPotato

2011-05-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

After last year's suicide scandals, Foxconn and its most glamorous customer, Apple, are again in the news, and--again--not in the good way. The invisible people who make our toys are supposed to stay off our radar. Just like the elves who make toys for Santa, don'cha'know? A predictably boring supplier is a good supplier: That's just how it works.

After reading--by which I mean deep-skimming and yes, I do consider that a distinction--the article, the Inner History Major snorted awake and mumbled, "Right. Basically we're talking the Irish Potato Famine. Got it. Zzzzzzzzzzz..." The IHM was mainly thinking of the monoculture component of the famine, what with the concerns about consistency and timing in the supply chain. Not to mention the overhead cost associated with putting the screws to multiple suppliers to insure that one doesn't chisel you out of that fraction of a penny on a three-figure tablet or smartphone: Quelle horreur... (An economy stacked in favor of absentee landlords and de-facto colonialism...that historical parallel pretty much speaks for itself.)

But IHM had a point, and the leftier-brainier part of me couldn't help but wonder: How scalable is scalability itself? True, macroeconomics has reams to say about the virtues of specialization. But even the most greasiest of gears can't avoid some grit. Or--more ominously--flaws and stress-points in the metal itself. Or--as this week has demonstrated--random acts of freakish nature.

(Then, too, the contrarian part of me--smirking sarcastically at every other part from its snarky digs--likewise couldn't help itself and wondered why anyone would shell out half a grand on a tablet to be like every other slavering fanboy/fangirl. Doubtless, the next iPhone/Android phone could easily get away with the schtick so common to '90 boutique catalogs: "Due to the natural variations in outsourced manufacturing, please allow us to select one for you." You can't tell me the Kool-aid swillers would pound that down...)

The geek in me just knows, though, that if you rely on disasters to test your failover plan, you don't really have backup. Which applies to people and their knowledge-sets just as much as it does to hardware and connectivity, by the bye. And baking in a certain amount of slack in lieu of stuffing more eggs into the same basket is, really, what it amounts to. Plus, I figure that if my own trade--programming computers--can be subjected to the ethos of assembly-line manufacturing...hey, we might as well make that botched metaphor a two-way street, no?

Frivolous Friday, 05.20.2011: The simple joys of apocalypse

2011-05-20T17:44:00.000-07:00

The office 'fridge was growing progressively riper, so our receptionist sent an email asking us to triage anything that might be ours. I found, to my chagrin, that the bagels I'd popped in there bore a March expiration date. Which didn't disturb me nearly so much as the fact that they showed no signs of mold. Which in turn didn't disturb me nearly so much as the fact that I'd actually eaten these things. Normally, stale bread feeds the birds & such at home, but consigning them to the landfill seemed the more responsible option, under the circumstances.

That was Wednesday. Given no improvement in the smell, our office manager laid down the law and bravely did battle with the 'fridge in the late afternoon. I thanked her for her courage, and joked that if we let it go another week, we'd have to call in Bruce Campbell. No sooner had my fingers typed that than I thought, "How cool would that be???"

Welcome to Geekhood. Never mind that the end result would be a new 'fridge--maybe even new breakroom--after the shotgun and chainsaw and toxic alien guts took their toll: The trash-talk alone would be worth it.

But since then I've been noodling why geeks are stereotypically attracted to B-movies, in particular apocalyptic stuff featuring zombies and alien invasions and mega-monsters. (Naturally--nerdery being nerdery--busting Sam Raimi's chops for substituting "verata" for "barada"--thereby corrupting generations of nerds to come--just goes with the territory.)

It can't necessarily be identification with the protagonists. Simon Pegg's character in Shaun of the Dead, for instance, is a good bloke, but not exactly the sharpest dart in the board. He's loyal to his small social circle--which, admittedly has a lot of pull with we naturally introverted types. Ash Williams' encounters with the evil dead over the course of a few days seven centuries apart bring out his inner boor. But, hey, this is the kind of guy who keeps science books in the back of his car--even on a romantic getaway weekend.

One twist, though, is that, in most Japanese monster flicks that I've seen, at least one monster is more or less the protagonist. When I were but wee lass honing my reading skillz on those English subtitles, that struck me as more than a little counter-intuitive. I mean, weren't monsters and those who fought them supposed to be as black and white as the films themselves? (Now it makes much more sense. Godzilla 2000 is a good example of why.)

I think, ultimately, it comes down to the fact that disasters simply cut to the chase. There is no room for politicking. No having to wheedle buy-off from the design committee. No having to account for your time in half-hour increments. No issue-tracking. No source control. No writing use cases. Just pure problem-solving, really--although "QA" does tend to become a life-or-death matter. For once.

Most importantly, though, you know who your friends are...even when they've been turned against you. Which is why you risk everything to bring them back to themselves. After all, not having anyone else around to laugh about the whole thing when it's over is a shameful waste of a perfectly good apocalypse.

"Drawers" vs. "Blurrers"

2011-05-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Back in college, one of my niftier History profs taught the concept of the Hegelian dialectic. (Dr. L. hailed from Latvia, and on the first day of class tried passing off his accent as North Dakotan. He had me eating out of his hand from that point forward.)

Anyhoo. The basic premise of the Hegelian dialectic is that it starts with the current concept of How The World Works (a.k.a the "thesis"). But it doesn't quite cover everything. And, being creatures whose moral/intellectual impulses encourage us to shove the pendulum to the other side of its swing, Newton's Third Law kicks in (and thus is born the "antithesis"). But that doesn't quite cover all the bases, so the weltanshauung hammers out some sort of midnight backroom deal (resulting in the "synthesis").

(The cynically-minded will, of course, recognize that, after a short honeymoon in the popular conciousness, the synthesis becomes the de-facto thesis, and the process begins anew.)

But it's with such memories of thesis-antithesis-synthesis that I turn over an apparent conundrum from two authors that have lately graced my reading list.

Based on nothing save chronological order in the list, the "thesis" is represented by Gary Vaynerchuk, who likes to talk about "lines in the sand." A favorite keynote tactic is to ask the audience to raise their hands if they thought something like, "I will never get a cell phone: Why would I want people to be able to call me wherever I am whenever they felt like it," and then to ask everyone who does not currently have a cell phone to keep their hands up. To a social media consultant, these lines in the sand point to where there is money to be made.

The "antithesis"--again based on nothing other than the order in which my eyeballs hit the oevre--is represented by Clay Shirky's Here Comes Everybody. Shirky largely deals with the blurring, rather than the drawing of lines. Case in point: Professional journalism vs. amateur reporting/blogging. Or the "blind justice" dispensed by The State vs. the quasi-vigilante name-and-shame "karma" meted out via social media. This no-mans-land, to a preternaturally insightful social philosopher--which is how I categorize Mr. Shirky--is where the action lies.

For those of us who who--for whatever reason--haven't developed the superpowers necessary to decide which trend--i.e. the drawing of lines vs. the blurring of them--to bank on, I think that's where our friend Mr. Hegel comes in. Because, of course, the lines are drawn by those who have something to define...and thus defend. (Never mind that the original "defenders" of the Alamo were, technically, squatters on sovereign Mexican territory. The Bible notwithstanding, history is typically penned by the victors.)

In some cases, it's obvious that for every line-drawer (e.g. the RIAA/MPAA or traditional media) there is at least one party with a more than vested interest in blurring (e.g. indie bands, YouTube, Apple or Markos Moulitsas, Matthew Drudge). The battle lines have already been drawn; protectionist legislation will only postpone the inevitable equalibrium.

In others, the contested area is more like a no-mans-land--and that in a shadow war. To wit: In an amazingly short time, an economy predicated on raising 2.1 kids in the suburbs may seem as ridiculous as the "norm" of snarfing a farmer's breakfast (bacon, eggs, pancakes, etc.) before heading down the hall for nine hours of telecommuting.

Either way, the game is, and will always be, to give value for money. And, naturally, you're better off defining the terms of "value" rather than chasing the metrics after the fact. Whether lines are drawn only after they start to blur (or vice versa) is, to me, a chicken-and-egg kind of question. I won't presume to tackle that--nuh-uh. The job of the entrpreneur is to make money in that hinterland. The job of the social philosopher is to make sense of it on behalf of the rest of us. And, hey, ya gotta have something to think about in the shower, am I right?

Post-pwnd

2011-05-17T20:40:00.000-07:00

Home much later than expected from a meeting and after-meeting dinner downtown. Tomorrow, alas, will have to be soon enough to break the writing hiatus. Good night, gentle reader.

Frivolous Friday, 05.06.2011: Revisionism hits home

2011-05-06T19:52:00.000-07:00

Last night, the power for most of our street was off. To their credit, the folks who keep the juice flowing through the lines are normally pretty consistent about sandbagging their restore-times. This wasn't one of those times: 9:30 pm was extended to the improbably specific 12:17 am. (As it turns out, they were only off by an hour.)

Before I powered down the cellphone to conserve battery life (a.k.a. propitiate the Gadget Deities), I texted a snarky Facebook post to the effect that I was pretending to be Laura Ingalls Wilder by reading a Nook by candlelight. (Not at all surprisingly, folks from The Society for Creative Anachronism were the ones to comment.)

In reality, I rolled old-school--eking out another chapter or so in the dead-tree version of John Keay's India: A History. That was before the commotion from a power-company truck inspired a certain cat to investigate by hopping into the bow window that contained our "reading light"--meaning five taper-candles. (Mercifully, only one of them attempted to topple over during those seconds of panic.) That, in turn, inspired us to just go the heck to bed before His Doodness managed to set the house a-blaze.

But not before a certain connection was forged in made in the snarl of my synapses. The plague of Indian history lies in the fact that those who wrote stuff down weren't at all concerned with giving context to future generations. At least not for, roughly, the first couple millenia or so. Which leaves the poor historian with pottery, language shifts, copper bars, and heavily-redacted religious tracts and fawning pangyrics to chieftain-kings. (Ironically enough, this is more than can be said for India's future landlords--a.k.a. the British. By considerably more centuries, even.)

The upshot of that is that such obsessively linear (and always, always patrilineal as well as divine) geneologies and battles in which the opposing sides are invariably reckoned in neat factors of ten and kingdom boundaries expand rather than fluctuate...and most certainly never, ever, contract.

Which, harking back to the earlier jest--entirely at my own expense rather than Laura Ingalls'--reinforces my wondering at how generations to gloss over and...errrrrrr...dare we say?..."tidy up" the narrative now central to present geekdom's weltanschauung. To wit: In relative terms, the late 18th century in America is extraordinarily blessed with first-hand documentation.

Despite such abundance of what historians term "primary sources," many--sometimes diametrically opposed--political cults are willing to claim the same Founder as their patron saint. Thus is a slave-owning George Washington co-opted by the self-proclaimed mouthpieces of personal liberty--or by blatant racists who twist quotes about war profiteering into anti-Semitic screeds. Or the author of the Declaration of Independence is judged too complex to fix a pre-packaged narrative of America and is tossed aside in favor of more...(ahem!) amenable...personae.

Cynically, I don't expect any more favorable treatment a few centuries hence, when the explosion of available information is taken for granted. (At least, I hope all the way down to my marrow that it's still taken for granted.) Now, I'll 'fess up to the fact that being the proverbial fly on the wall in an age when academics almost come to fisticuffs over whether Al Gore or Ted Stevens created the inter-tubes in their garage would be downright hilarious. But, then, I'm kinda sick and twisted that way. (It comes with morphing from a Liberal Arts major into a programmer. Undergraduates of 2011, you have been warned: #LFMF and all that...)

Sadly, I think that if I were cryogenically frozen until, say 2100 and then unthawed, I would have a difficult time convincing folks that a Laura Ingalls Wilder didn't actually have to "rough it" with a first-generation eReader.

In fact, I could probablly joke about it having green text on a black background and weighing 20 pounds (what with all the clunky vacuum tubes, don'cha'know) and (horrors!) no 100G network capability, because of course that was Back In the Day(tm) when AOL enticing everyone to sign up for DARPAnet by mailing them stacks of punch-cards. And no one would laugh because, well, that's how people lived back then, riiiiiight???

That the knowledge-hungry Ms. Ingalls would have Snoopy-danced to trade (roughly) eight minutes (pre-tax) of her workday for the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin would never occur to the denizens of the 22nd century. Or--again--so I fervently hope. Because projecting our hopes and fears on History cuts both ways--meaning forward as well as backward.

Another rogue for the gallery

2011-05-03T19:50:00.000-07:00

Archiving previous versions of computer code is a good idea. I can't--much less won't--argue that. Trust me, I've borked too much code to say otherwise. I rarely miss an occasion to slag Subversion (and its front-end TortoiseSVN) to the point where it's almost a personal vendetta. I'm fully cognizant of that.

But, seriously, all I was trying to do was merge changes from a low-priority fix that had languished in testing for months. Which is when I got this error:

(Note: Server names blacked out for security reasons.)

Basically, what it's saying is that I'm trying to change some server-related property (bundled as meta-data with the actual file changes being merged) from A to A, but that it's current property is B. Something that I think rational adults would agree is a contradiction: You can't change something from A if its value is actually B.

The backstory, as it turns out, is that we changed the name of the server that actually hosts the Subversion repository (i.e. its cache of code-history) between the time I originally committed my changes to it and the time QA gave me the green light to pull them out and push them out to the next stage. It was the mis-match of URLs that was causing Subversion/Tortoise to freak out.

Unfortunately, that took the intervention of Those Who Know Best to sort out. And the whole episode is not exactly a glowing recommendation of software that's supposed to serve a haphazard distributed batch of programmers and a code-base liable to splinter off at any moment.

Now. I've done any amount of damage in Mercurial, and I personally think that the "ignored file types" feature could have been much better thought out. But the bottom line is, nearly all the grief I've come to using it to archive my code can be attributed to my own ignorance and/or stupidity. Not--and I can't stress this enough--just trying to accomplish boring day-in-day-out tasks like merging code.

- - - - -

Correction, 05.04.2011: The URL in question is actually that of the server we use for bug-tracking (issues now show the files involved). My bad...don't ask me what I was thinking with that being the repository server. Except that it might be more understandable. Sigh.

Frivolous Friday, 04.29.2011: More dorky things I wonder about

2011-04-29T17:41:00.001-07:00

Why isn't bubble wrap filled with helium to save on postage?

(And if bubble wrap were filled with helium, would it squeak instead of pop?)

Why are they called "zipped" files? (I mean, if your jeans compress you that much when you zip them, do some crunches, already!)

Would there be any cosmic fallout from buying a "Adam" tablet...and then an "Eve"...and then an Apple?

Why aren't vehicles made for the sake of conspicuous consumption (e.g. Hummers, Tahoes, etc.) engineered to run on printer ink (up to $8,000 per gallon) or--at the very least--Starbucks coffee?

(From the "Harry Potter" universe) If the genetic rarities of a Muggle-born (a wizard/witch born in a non-magical family) and a Squib (a non-magical child of a wizarding family) have children, what's the probability of the child turning out magical vs. non-magical?

Why doesn't the shiny spandex of superheroes' costumes made a tell-tale "zip-zip-zip" sound when they walk?

When a Jedi's weapon runs out of battery juice, is it considered a darksabre?

(And from the same universe) If the Sith are pure evil and know no law but their own will, why would they respect the "There can only be one master and one apprentice" rule?

Am I the only one who would only watch the royal wedding in hope that the archbishop would sneak in a "Princess Bride" riff?

The difference between programming and playing with Legos

2011-04-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

Alpha-Geek gave us a reading assignment last week, namely a SimpleTalk article called The Framework Myth. And, of course, be ready to discuss during the weekly dev. meeting. (For the tl;dr crowd, the gist of the article is that writing code for multiple purposes is overrated; you're better off staying out of the way of people who will tighten up code organically rather than imposing it from the top.)

During said discussion, Beta-Geek opined that the piece was "schizophrenic" and (not surprisingly) came out in defense of writing code in such a way that it's easier to snap existing pieces together than letting everyone roll their own. Personally, I completely missed any "schizophrenic" aspect: I thought it was just trying to cover a reasonable representation of the major points. Which, in the software world, is the proverbial breath of fresh air, given how many manufacturing/engineering philosophies are over-enthusiastically misapplied. (And, by "misapplied" I of course mean "shoved down everyone's throat with the business end of a bayonet.")

To illustrate: The same dorm-room-hacking that made Mark Zuckerberg a bazillionaire should probably not be used for software that controls nuclear reactors or the space shuttle or guide military equipment. And vice-versa.

So. Yeah. Context. It actually matters. (Who knew?) Sadly, when management gets a methodology "religion," they're far more likely to be mixing Kool-Aid in the Jones compound than, say, brewing coffee in the Unitarian fellowship room.

And that's a whole 'nuther blog-post.

But what I think is missing from the commentary was the human--i.e. personnel--cost of implementing frameworks. In my world-view, the "cost" of an over-rigid framework is not so much its overhead--meaning all the bells and whistles you don't use, but have to waste memory space on anyway. It's not even so much the rigidity of them--meaning the programming equivalent of a Happy Meal vs. going a la carte. Or even what a tedious pain in the wazoo it is to try and make a change under the hood. Particularly when the original authors consider themselves illuminati--as evidenced by lack of documentation.

Actually, maybe I should qualify that criticism of pre-fabricated "framework" code. If you want to hire people willing to snap together other people's code for a living, you can stop reading now with my appreciation for your time...and fervent hopes that you will keep those people from potentially becoming my co-workers. (Or--shudder--promoted to their proverbial level of incompetence into management.)

But that tab-A-into-slot-B Ikea mentality brings us right back around to the afore-mentioned mis-application of an industrial/manufacturing model. In that mind-set, a few bright lights (e.g. Henry Ford, Taiichi Ohno) set up the machinery to feed piece-work to droves of interchangeable automatons. Efficiency and profit ensues. (I'm doing a disservice to both gentlemen by oversimplification, btw, but you get the point, yes?)

Problem is, software is the business of solving problems, sometimes before people know they have them. But the problems change continually. Granted, history is sometimes circular. Not every problem, for instance, is solved optimally the first or second iteration through. Sometimes solutions create their own problems. The point is, that if you find yourself implementing the same solution or small set of solutions, chances are you're solving the wrong problem. Which is precisely when and why you need the sort of person who recognizes that...and can push solutions upstream. As often and as forcefully as needed. That's pretty much antithetical to the top-down ethos of manufacturing.

And, for that matter, frameworks.

In my considerably less than humble opinion, comissioning the programming Brahmins to write lego-code for the Untouchables to snap together is no less than a blatant admission of failure in software management. Possibly any number of failures. Failures of not cross-train people (or cross-pollinate functions) so the same problems aren't invariably solved redundantly. Of not smoothing out inter-team frictions (i.e. the "Not Invented Here" syndrome). Of not making it stupid-simple to sift and search existing code libraries for plagiarization--errr, I mean, code re-use. Or--most especially--of leaving no time to poke, prod and tinker.

Don't get me wrong here: I like playing with Legos, especially the very, very basic ones. Dennis gave me Lego knights and horses one Christmas, but I tend to gravitate back to the plainer blocks. More possibilities, I think. Just like writing software.

Frivolous Friday, 04.22.2011: The Monty Python edition

2011-04-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

As any geek worth their login could tell you, the near-toxic levels of coolness that come with being a software developer have...shall we say...downsides. Among them certain stereotypes. You know. Black turtlenecks. Hipster glasses. Mini-coops. The crushing fashion responsibility that comes with knowing the difference between a quotidian backpack and Tardis-on-your-back "urban-wear."

That sort of thing.

So I figured that, seeing what Chapman, Cleese, Idle, Palin, Gilliam and Jones did for the stifling stereotypes surrounding the profession of lumberjack, I could at least try to do the same for my own. (Fellow geeks: You're welcome.)

Programmer
I didn't want to be a barista anyway.
I wanted to be...a programmer!
Leaping from gig to gig--and every platform fad that rolls through Silicon Valley!
Ruby on Rails!
LAMP stack!
iOS!
Android Honeycomb!
The smell of fresh-pulled lattes!
The crack of Red Bull cans!
With my QA Team by my side, we'd sing! Sing! Sing!

[Music swells]

I'm a programmer and I'm okay,
I code all night, I code all day!

SysAdmin Chorus
She's a programmer and she's okay,
She codes all night and she codes all day!

Programmer
I chunk out code, I unit-test,
I use a reposi't'ry!
On Fridays I refactor
But make the build bug-free!

SysAdmin Chorus
She chunks out code, she unit-tests,
She uses the reposi't'ry.
On Fridays she refactors
But makes the build bug-free!

She's a programmer and she's okay,
She codes all night and she codes all day!

Programmer
I chunk out code, I drink cheap beer,
I like to watch NASCAR.
I put on studded leather,
And hang in biker bars!

SysAdmin Chorus
She chunks out code, she drinks cheap beer,
She likes to watch NASCAR.
She puts on studded leather,
And hangs in biker bars?!? [look at each other confusedly]

She's a programmer and she's okay,
She codes all night and she codes all day!

Programmer
I chunk out code, wear combat-boots
And camo. for paintball!
I roll three hundred bowling,
And pwn the whole pool-hall!

SysAdmin Chorus
She chunks out code, wears combat-boots
And camo. for paint-- [chorus disperses, grumbling in disgust]

QA Team
[crying] Dude, srsly?! We thought you were so l33t! [storms off]

The lantern and the shovel

2011-04-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Poor SysAdmin was run ragged this past weekend, what with a major upgrade (to a new server) landing on a regularly scheduled maintenance weekend. Come Sunday, a scheduled SQL job had not fired off on the new system, and with SysAdmin trying to catch some well-earned shut-eye, Alpha-Geek stepped in.

When Alpha-Geek is scratching his head, you know there's trouble. But eventually most gremlins were run to ground. It might have been lingering guilt for grilling me about an oversight that turned out to be his, but A-G surprised me by thanking me for "all [my] hard work." The way I see it, I was just doing my duty to "my" application--that's just the flip-side of the autonomy. So I duly thanked him for giving a chunk of his Sunday--freshly arrived from a business jaunt out of town, no less--to working out the remaining kinks in the new system. "There's no substitute for having the person who knows where all the bodies are buried," I IM'd--or something to that effect.

"I just hold the up the light so others can dig," quoth A-G.

Which, I suppose, is the description of an Alpha-Geek's job in the proverbial nutshell. Not a bad thing for an average geek to want to be when s/he grows up.

No blog post: The upgrade that ate my weekend

2011-04-15T11:29:00.000-07:00

Major software roll-out kicking off tonight (later than usual, b/c we're catering to West Coast business hours with a bit of a buffer thrown in). Catch y'all on the flip-side--hope your weekend is significantly less paranoia-fraught than mine will be.

Another thought on knowing what business you're in

2011-04-12T19:06:00.000-07:00

Being a rather passionate book-lover and a programmer besides, eReaders are pretty much a perfect storm of two different branches of nerdery. Coming from that viewpoint, I couldn't help but think that David Carnoy's "Fully Equipped" column in last week's CNet was missing the point--and a very large one at that.

When you buy a book, you take home a bundle of dead tree and (hopefully) plant-derived ink and that's the end of that. No account number to track what items are at your fingertips or lent out. No remembering what page of each book you're on. No built-in dictionary. And if you lose it (or some dastardly soon-to-be-ex-friend doesn't bother to return it), too bad for you.

An eReader--at least one tied to a brand-name book vendor--is a bit more lingering. Or should be. For all the previous reasons as well as the fact that corrections and/or updates and/or addendum can be pushed to it. It's not like the editors at Doubleday microchip your paperback bodice-ripper to tone down the breathy dialog/narrative whenever federal CO2 emissions standards are tightened.

I think the problem is that two different products are being sold under the same heading. To the detriment of the electronic product's value proposition. Sure, I have my problems with the extremely haphazard quality of eBooks (and even the unsuitability of the format for some). But as a programmer I do realize that it's an apples-to-pumpkins kind of comparison. Mainly because I know that storage in the cloud is not free--even simple database table associations between people and books. Nor is 99.9+% uptime. Nor are device software updates.

Now, I'm not saying that retail shelf space, shipping, offloading overstock, staffing, etc. come at a discount, either. For all I know, the costs may come out even--though I rather doubt it. What I'm saying is that the vendors are doing a dreckish job of justifying the price differential to the consumer. No, that won't be an easy campaign--too much of anything delivered over the internet is liable to be considered "free." But that's a campaign that should have been planned well before any of the gadgets ever hit the market. Currently, the perception of what an eBook should be priced is based on a perception of cost that's not entirely accurate. By all rights, "cost" should not have entered the picture. Instead, the instant and ubiquitous access and the ongoing curation of the experience (not to mention one's ever-expanding library) should have been what was sold. Not words and pictures.

Frivolous Friday, 04.08.2011: The break-room economy

2011-04-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

The Inner Curmudgeon has a field day earlier this week. Not only was one of the two breakroom tables appropriated to samples of wickless candles, but a certain coworker apparently gave my work email to Tastefully Simple: Grrrrrrr. And what in blazes is a "Norwex party" anyway? (On second thought, don't answer that. If I expect to carry cash to a party, I'm sure I can find a kegger somewhere in this town, no?)

Really-and-for-true, I have actually built up immunities to this sort of thing over the years. Honestly. Case in point: My sister's progressed from home decorating frou-frou to Avon to scented candles. We were both still living with Mom in the frou-frou phase, so I dodged that bullet. But Avon dropped animal testing, like, 20 years ago...and thus I have a couple years' worth of loose powder under the bathroom sink. Now, I thought the candles phase had burned itself out--so to speak--until Mom unloaded half a dozen on me. And--harking back to a humbler era when resourceful 9-year-olds weren't too proud to freeze their own popsicles--I would be remiss not to mention Great Aunt Coquella, the mafia Don of Tupperware dealers.

But, you have to admit, three in one week is rather a lot to process. Too much, I fear, for my left-most brain-lobes.

Or was, at least, until I twigged into the possibility that what's going on here is basically a shadow economy. Not in the contraband, black market sense, of course. But neither do I think of it as being quite synonymous with the "egg money" or "butter money" of bygone rural Americana. And therein lies my beef with the whole business: Dropping a catalog on the table and sending out an email does not add value. Moreover, it kind of implies that I can't cook for myself. Or that my face hasn't earned its lines. Or that my home needs to smell like something other than itself (don't mind the garlic hanging in the basement). Or that my houseguests are dumb enough to be fooled by fake flowers or the anachronistic fiction of wall-sconces. (They're likely to be real anachronists anyway, who won't bat an eyelash at armor, a rapier, arrow-quiver or spear hanging out in the den.)

In my grumpier moments, I find myself wishing that the "shadow economy" would just go the full monty and just develop its own currency, already. Or maybe even to straight to a barter system (as in, "Okay, I'll trade my 'Heather Glen' votives three-to-one for your 'Fiesta Cheese-ball Spread' mixes: Deal?"). Although, after further review, that could (in our globalized supply-chain world) all-too-easily lead to a nightmare of market-rigging by unscrupulous overseas gew-gaw farmers. After all, who wants to see honest wine-glass-charm artisans shuttering the shop they inherited from their great-grandparent to beg their living in the streets? Certainly not I, for one.

In all seriousness: I like to think I've had this nailed down for awhile. To me, such "entrepreneurial" ventures are a means to make a hobby--or habit, in some cases--pay for itself. Fair enough. Though I would appreciate not having the office smell like the syrupy inside of a gas station bakery case. And not be spammed by a company from which I will never, ever buy a single product. And certainly not pay the inevitable political tax that comes with not having the same priorities as my peers. (Because--let's not kid ourselves here--we all know that peeps are keeping score on an invisible DJIA-board that might as well be posted in the breakroom.)

Sigh. That's the problem working in a shop with programmers and other linear-minded folks (e.g. CAD drafters). You start expecting humans to be all Point A-to-Point B and If-Then-Else themselves. A bad habit, that. But, alas, one I can't seem to shake. And that, in turn, is probably a compliment my co-workers in general for raising the bar.

Recovered treasure

2011-04-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

Some projects like to snowball, and 2011 "spring cleaning" is one of them. Dennis & I have lived at the same address for going on a decade. Before we moved to La Crosse, I was already working here, which left only weekends to help pack up the former house (90 minutes up the river). And by "pack up," I of course mean the process of triaging stuff.

Unfortunately, pulling up stakes for a brand-new career and town is not the best mental mind-set in which to wage the battle against sentimentality and narcissism that is part of the pack-rat's mental make-up. (Plus, when you grow up on the lower rungs of the middle class ladder--as did both Dennis & I--a certain "waste-not-want-not" mentality is baked in.) Thus, too many boxes from the attic or back closet were left with their original tape intact and stuffed into the moving truck unexamined.

Which, in itself, is a form of waste. So I want the record to show my embarrassment at the sheer number of things destined for Goodwill, the Salvation Army, or what-have-you--where they should have been doing other people yeoman's service years ago.

Fortunately, even chagrin has an upside that has nothing to do with the sense of aescetic virtue one can work up from the sight of bare shelf-space. It's rather the knowledge that it's easiest to appreciate our own wealth when we give some of it away. Not--as the adage goes--after we've lost it.

Naturally, "wealth" is not merely a matter of material things--it also encompasses our time, our skills, even kindness to folks we might not feel "deserve" it. Or maybe...just maybe...sending a life-lesson--earned at some personal cost--out to the world in the hope that it can do some good.

Frivolous Friday, 04.01.2011: The limits of crowd-sourcing

2011-04-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

A co-worker showed me a copy of a Ray Bradbury short story* where a family whose daughter suffers from a mysterious ennui-tinged illness. Rather than waste money on doctors, the family turns the conundrum into a going concern. On the premise that people are nearly incapable of withholding their advice (particularly when they can't be proven wrong), the family decides to charge all comers who wish to dispense their wisdom. (The story does have a happy, albeit suggestive ending, so no worries about the sick young lady.)

Unfortunately, that was nearly 20 years ago, and I cannot remember the story's title. But it immediately popped into mind when I saw the above ad on the "Weregeek" online comic strip tonight. Yes, I understand that we're living in an age of blogs and YouTube channels and podcasts and what-not. No better time to be alive, if you're creative.

But, really. If a professional musician doesn't write their own material, wouldn't you agree that Mr. Cruz (and his corporate sponsor) is dragging crowdsourcing down the rabbit-hole just a bit? True, the fans know what they like, and will probably draft something suited to Mr. Cruz's style. But--all things considered--it's an admission that there's nothing particularly special separating amateurs and professionals--at least in terms of talent (luck, self-promotion and an immunity to certain lifestyle elements are another story).

And that's a fiction we can certainly do without, particularly if we hope to enter a post-payola meritocracy of talent. Plus, if Coca-Cola and Taio Cruz raise their brand equity through careful management of crowdsourced talent, I (for one) would be keen to expand the scope. Here, in my opinion, are a few areas where crowd-sourcing could be put to good use in leveling the playing field between the buskers and rock stars of other professions.

A.) The seat for Minnesota's 6th Congressional district could be thrown open to an essay-writing contest for 8th Grade History students. (Bonus: The current incumbent could take the winner's place, which would be a win-win situation if I ever heard of one...)

B.) Assuming the immediate family and/or descendants of Paul the Octopus can be located and a big enough tank devised to hold the logos of all publicly-traded companies, Jim Cramer and his ilk could be easily--and far more entertainingly--"delisted."

C.) Some white-haired Australian dude could cultivate inside sources and put power and privilege under the microscope with documentation, rather than peddle opinions and press releases under the name of "journalism." Oh...wait...that's already being done, isn't it? Dang--I knew that sounded familiar. Sorry: My bad...

D.) Dark Shadows fan-fic could readily fill America's appetite for vampire porn, thus freeing up parsecs of bookshelf-space for literature that doesn't make Ann Rice look like Jane Austen by comparison.

E.) Admit it: You know as well as I do that Board of Directors meetings would be far more fun--and infinitely better-informed-as flash-mobs recruited from the mail room, call centers, janitors' closets, reception desks, etc.

F.) Womens' apparel/lingerie catalogs and the PhotoShop Disasters website: Same deal except for the dead trees part--am I right?

G.) Neilson ratings vs. YouTube/Hulu router logs: Again, 'nuff said.

H.) The clubby inanity of Superbowl commentary could be replaced with thoughtful analysis by filling the stadium with retired high school football coaches (and a few Vegas bookies) armed with laptops and close-captioning the game with randomly selected tweets.

I.) Rather than subsidize yet another comic book hero's CGI'd splash onto the big screen, can we please all agree to fire up the air-popper and settle down to stop-motion Lego animation on YouTube on Friday nights?

J.) Rather than give faux-libertarian pundits another pretext for hyperventilating, census takers will merely friend up said pundits and copy all the necessary information from their Facebook profiles.

- - - - -

* The story might be part of the I Sing the Body Electric anthology--whose "The Terrible Conflagration Up at the Place" is worth the price of admission. (Not ROFL-funny, but I double-dog-dare you to not smile when the subject of French art comes up after you've read it.) Then again, it might not. The same co-worker introduced me to "Conflagration" at the same time.

Rethinking data vs. delivery

2011-03-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

I've been paying attention to Canadian news lately for a few reasons--among them the fact that Dennis & I will likely be vacationing there again this summer, but also because the recent skirmishing over broadband capping will--to some extent--set the tone for their US counterparts.

Tabatha Southey's UBB? Oh, it stands for Unbelievable Business Baloney in the Feb 5th Globe and Mail, IMO, puts things in proper perspective--particularly the actual cost of delivering a gigabyte of broadband data (perhaps ten cents, compared to the $1 to $5 charged by some Canadian ISPs). Certainly, businesses have to make a reasonable profit. But up to 490%--while simultaneously (and ham-fistedly) dictating the business models of downstream players? Throw in the fact that the telecom/ISP industry is nothing less than an oligopoly--one colluding to shut out content-only competitors like Netflix?

Unacceptable. Particularly in light of the fact that the same industry is due to receive a tremendous bargain when the government opens up new swaths of the wireless spectrum. It's loonies to long-johns that false scarcities will be manufactured to multiply profits even further.

Thus I'm overjoyed that average Canadians had the great, good sense to call B.S. and raise a ruckus earlier this year. If nothing else, it served as the proverbial warning shot over the bow--with luck, one heard across the border.

But what I find particularly interesting--albeit in an orthogonal way--about the whole business is how it highlights the way the human mind conflates data and media: How quickly some associations can be formed, and--conversely--how difficult they can be to break. In a sense, we're seeing the echoes of how our European ancestors perceived the elaborately decorated medieval holy books or the fantastically jeweled reliquaries of of otherwise humble saints. (In the worst case scenario, we're thinking in terms of our monastery-sacking ancestors.)

I thought Ms Southey boiled it down nicely:

Applying supply-and-demand logic to this problem confuses people because information is infinite. Fear not, Canada, we’re not about to run out of this thing you call Internet. Internet’s not something you can save for your retirement. There are no children toiling away in data mines. There are no data slag heaps in Kentucky. We can consume data without guilt. It’s more like unrealized potential. It’s best to think of it this way: Whenever you watch a panda roll down a hill on YouTube, a billion pixels are set free.

I suppose that medium-to-content association is also why some people don't consider copying movies and music from friends "stealing." When you don't have the DVD/CD in hand, it's just invisible bytes on a hard drive you can't (normally) see anyway.

Or why some advocates of the DMCA vociferously opposed the legality of backup copies. I wish I could remember which politician made the analogy that ran something like "If I go to Pottery Barn and buy a plate and I drop it, I don't expect them to give me a new one for free."

It's entirely possible that my memory loss was due to my forehead repeatedly banging against the nearest sturdy object. Because the bottom line is that the content is what you're paying for (although I do consider liner notes a huge bonus). The medium is normally dictated by the market's lowest common denominator definition of "convenience"--wax cylinders, 33-/45-/77-rpm vinyl, 8-track, cassette, CD, hard drive, streaming and whatever's waiting for us down the pike.

Or let's put it another way. Assuming the sound quality is more or less apples-to-apples, you you place a different value on a conversation with your best friend when it's over your landline vs. on your cellphone or via Skype? In that situation, even the question of "convenience" is largely dependent on time of day or day of week. Given the overlap between landline, mobile and internet providers, is there truly a significant difference in actual cost?

That's a valid question. Which, to me, means that the linkage of message to medium is itself a valid thing to question. Always. Starting sooner than later. Simply because hardware drops in cost and increases in power for the major telecom players just like it does for us. Similarly, software is increasingly free--Android phones and *NIX servers being cases in point. Just like it is for us. And let's not forget how the (particularly spendy) human dimension of delivering bytes is being offshored to lower-cost environments. Unfortunately, that doesn't work for us. Only think what we would be charged if we tried dialing Hyderabad or Manila on our own dime--me, I think a double-standard's clearly at work here.

In short, technology is moving too quickly and too globally to allow an oligopoly to drag either present or future down with false scarcities. But it would be much worse if we colluded with the gatekeepers of the internet by thinking that the delivery mechanism is more valuable than the payload.

Frivolous Friday, 03.25.2011: A four-legged lesson in humanity

2011-03-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

Dennis didn't want to go out to dinner for his birthday, so it was an even more leisurely meal than most. Not that I was keeping an eye on the clock, mind you. I know this is true because Mister Kitty had not one, but two full post-dinner snuggles on the lap of his hoomin--a.k.a. the Birthday Boy.

Dennis looked down at the self-satisfied-looking creature shedding contentedly on his sweatpants and wondered aloud whether the ritual was merely another roundabout way of getting at more food. (Five-plus years on, the stray who appeared in our front yard still hasn't figured out that his next meal is more or less a given.) Presumably, over centuries, some cats have seen the benefit in turning from a feral hunter existence to living by cultivating certain understandings with two-leggers.

I mused aloud that perhaps the human half of such "understandings" might be a bit more self-serving than we'd like to admit. In an urban lifestyle where catching a mouse is an extremely rare diversion, rather than quotidian duty, cats perhaps inadvertently cater to a human pattern best left centuries behind. "Cats are courtiers," I declared.

"But what about dogs?" countered Dennis. "No," I decided after a few moments' thought. "Cats are aristocrats. The third or fourth sons of the family who have to make their fortune elsewhere. As poets, scholars, soldiers--courtiers. You know, to the manner born. Because we Lords and Ladies of the Manor have to surround ourselves with fellow aristocrats." Just as we cultivate the illusion of felines sharing "hoomin" norms via LOLcaptions, cartoons and what-not.

Kind of sad to find such tendencies thriving in a country that pitched monarchy overboard two centuries and change ago. Tabby cat hair on navy blue sweatpants aside, I suppose it's a harmless enough "legacy" of Western history. As long as it stays with the four-legged, of course.

Curating the Cult of the Self

2011-03-22T19:02:00.000-07:00

For the past couple weeks, Deaf Ear Record has obligingly humored my private nostalgia-fest by finding the CD versions of stuff that's been languishing in one of those briefcase-style cassette holders. Perhaps I'm not quite self-aware enough to know quite how banal and haphazard my musical tastes are, but I am grateful to T. and the gang for not batting an eyelash. (I joked on Facebook that a GenX vs. GenY smack-down was averted because I didn't have to call anybody "Indie McHipsterpants" for snarking at my choices.)

And speaking of Facebook, I've tripped over an odd parallel in reaching back into the past to curate one's present reality--at least when one's beyond a certain age. Case in point: Best friend H. introduced me to the Moody Blues compilation that's quietly playing counterpoint to the rain as I write. The tape deck munched my copy in the early 90s, so this is my first full listen-through in nearly twenty years. A few operatic flourishes get up my nose these days, but I have yet to facepalm.

Pair that thought with the way the can sometimes come to find you on social media (or is so much easier to find if you go looking for it) simply because of the other connections. Case in point: I saw the brother of J. (who was--in hindsight--the truest of my friends from middle school) friend up my friend from high school debate/Forensics, and within a couple of minutes had a friend request out to J. A couple days more brought a re-connection...and eventually more requests to re-connect by friends more loosely associated back in the day. As with music, past and present come to some sort of terms--but remain largely at our fingertips.

But with the immediacy also comes an unprecedented ability to filter. To uncheck the weaker songs cassettes made it too annoying to fast-forward through. To minimize the downside of friends by hiding the drunken/whiny/obnoxious/politically-incorrect posts from my feed as people never could while say, hanging out at a house party.

Think of how much attention we First World primates lavish upon the reality brought to us by gadgets whose data lives elsewhere, largely powered by software that makes it stupid-easy to cater to our own preferences. Perhaps, rather than grouching about the concept of "curated computing" at the hands of Steve Jobs, I might have done better to look in the mirror earlier to wonder how much curating ability is necessary to make shrines to ourselves of these little screens--and the "likes" and retweets and playlists and so forth they feed us.

Overall, I don't worry about it all that much--I've just a little too much faith in human beings for that. Not only their capacity to mash up and caption when they aren't creating something entirely new. But also their tendency to set those creations loose on the interwebs. Which I hope means that the digital shut-ins will always be outnumbered by those willing to leave in their wake the online equivalent of. say, an ice-sculpture, or flash mob performance in Grand Central Station, or bit of first-hand living history for children visiting a museum, or . . .

Certainly, we can curate our interactions in Web 2.0. But sending our handiwork out to be critiqued is another matter. That requires generosity of time and talent as well as the magnanimity to take feedback that can't be curated.

Frivolous Friday, 03.18.2011: The Gilbert & Sullivan edition

2011-03-18T19:12:00.000-07:00

'Spesh'ly for Koch Industries and their ilk. To ape Eben Brooks, I apologize to W.S. Gilbert. But not very much. (All the same, I live in hope that he'd at least appreciate the oh-so-very-sincere sentiment behind the satire.)

I am the very model of a modern multi-national
With business rationale which, frankly, borders on irrational.
When payroll I can't evicerate thru' outsourcing overseas
Stateside wages I'll deflate by lobbying for H1-Bs.
Likewise, my tax-burden I have arranged to shift off-shore
While blaming public debt on both the unions and the poor,
Deploring unwashed masses who won't get off their duffs,
To summon enough gumption to work two jobs to afford my stuff.

I far prefer an ad-blitz to cultivating word-of-mouth
And racing to the bottom with my moral compass pointed south,
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!

Public oversight I'll block with Apocalypic admonition
(Unless it's regulation I'm assured will quash my competition).
Florid "Letters to the Editor" I can sock-puppet by the ream,
Wealth redistributing I abhor--unless, of course, it flows upstream.
Failing that, I'll bankroll election of compliant politicians--
Whose procedural chicanery will subvert opposition--
While carpet-bombing airwaves with part-truths and full-on lies
'Til absorbed are all the social costs--and the profits privatized.

My satraps gamely game my books as Dukes of robber-barons,
Their bonus earning on the backs of cube-serfs in faux-Aerons.
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!

When I admit that fleas are caught from dogs I lie down with,
And stop mistaking Ms. Ayn Rand for Jesus Christ or Adam Smith,
When I stop paying CEOs the GDPs of nation-states
And renounce correlations of my tax cuts to employment rates,
When I stop acting though this planet's mine to plunder,
And attonement make for each dollar-goggled blunder--
In short, when my trickle-down is not only warm and yellow,
You'll say this global capitalist's a sugar-daddy fellow.

'Til then I'll live the fiction that is corp'rate personhood
My private interest rephrasing in cant terms of Public Good.
But still in matters mercantile, fiscal and fi-nan-ci-al
I am the very model of a modern multinational!

Recessionary inflation

2011-03-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

The car-doctors down at Ballweg's again pronounced my bordering-on-retro Tercel in admirable shape, mileage and salted roads notwithstanding. One outstanding concern is the oil pan gasket "sweating" a bit of oil. One of the few truly practical life lessons I can claim is this: You know you've found a good auto shop when they try to talk you out of, rather into repairs. And it seems that the change in ownership (i.e. Steve Low's to Ballweg's) hasn't changed in that respect.

But I have to admit to wiping a smile off my face when the service desk dude who rang up the bill skimmed through the summary of work done, referring to the person who handled the work order as, "A.--who was your advisor today..."

"Advisor"? Really?!

Now. I'm probably bordering on hypocritical here, simply because my second job in college (not counting work-study) was at an ever-so-slightly upscale women's clothing store. At minimum wage (plus the discount on the clothing I was supposed to buy from the store for the privilege of coming into work), I held the title of "Fashion Consultant." Anyone who knows me--and my jeans-and-baggy-cargigan dress sense--should quite rightly be howling with laughter at the irony.

I'll grant you, the "title inflation" phenomenon is not exclusive to recessionary economies. Witness, for instance, how any fool capable of picking the correct Dreamweaver menu options in the late 1990s qualified for a business card reading "Web Programmer." But--based on my perceptions from the double-whammy unemployment/inflation deathtrap of the early '80s onward--it seems to me that title inflation is a form of compensation for jobs that would normally be considered beneath the average sitcom character. You know, that alternate universe in which baristas can afford Manhattan apartments. That sort of thing.

But the problem is that inflation--in titles as in money--has diminishing returns. And the only saving grace of a bubble is that its popping restores--however temporarily--an equilibrium. At least until some skanky wanker decides to cut in line and starts gaming the system and other fools follow suit. Sigh.

Yet, to me, it all begs the question of why "Sanitary Engineers" are more societally correct than "Garbage Collectors." ('Course, as a Java partisan, I can totally get behind the value-add of garbage collection, but that's a whole 'nuther story...) Imagine how quickly life would become noxious if garbage collection stopped or the sewers were allowed to back up--how quickly we'd open our wallets to clear the stench from the apartment or house. Imagine the office (and parental) strife when day-care providers shut their doors...or home care providers stopped knocking on ours.

In the time capsule that is Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, she has (Miss) Kate Vaughn stand in for the British classism that is foil to (morally superior) American democratic sensibilities:

Miss Kate strolled away, adding to herself, with a shrug, "I didn't come here to chaperone a governess, though she is young and pretty. What odd people these Yankees are; I'm afraid Laurie will be quite spoilt among them."

"I forgot that English people turn up their noses at governesses, and don't treat them as we do," said Meg, looking after the retreating figure with an annoyed expression.

"Tutors, also, have a rather hard time of it there, as I know to my sorrow. There's no place like America for us workers, Miss Margaret;" And Mr. Brooke looked so contented and cheerful, that Meg was ashamed to lament her hard lot.

"I'm glad I live in it, then. I don't like my work, but I get a good deal of satisfaction out of it after all, so I won't complain; I only wish I liked teaching as you do."

So the question is: Have we become the enemy--i.e. the Victorian elite whose servitors were expected to be velvet-footed, when not completely invisible?

Because, no matter how (cough!) "menial" (cough!) the job may be considered, the fact remains that we all--rich or poor, potentate or peon--have exactly 168 hours in a week---112 if you get your 8 hours of shut-eye. Even the increasingly Disney-esque fiction of the 40 hour workweek eats nearly a quarter of the grand total, and over a third of a human being's waking hours.

You can't claim to respect the sanctity of life on principle and auto-magically suspend that valuation in the face of The Suits' solemn invocations of "hard choices" in the name of "shareholder value." Nuh-uh. Not while I'm within earshot, anyway.

All of which makes me sorry that I didn't actually follow up yesterday's reference to "your advisor" with a dewy-eyed, "Oh, you mean the technician?" Because, frankly, "advisor," in my mind, implies self-interest, manipulation, puppeteering: Rasputin. Nostradamus. Karl Rove. Catherine dei Medici. Cardinal Richelieu...or even Wolsey, for pity's sake. Umm, thanks, but I just want someone to tell me which car-part is borked...and to put a not-borked one in. Trust me, I'll respect technical chops that a lot more than the eminence grise pretensions...most especially from someone almost young enough to be my child.

No post tonight

2011-03-11T10:30:00.000-08:00

A house-type project has sprung up, one that I can pretty much guarantee will chew up the evening. (Hopefully, it'll only be this evening.) Torturing the shade of W.S. Gilbert--and possibly my gentle reader's poetic sensibilities besides--will have to take a rain-check.

Belated epiphany

2011-03-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Apparently, keyboards are like wine...at least so far as the correlation between price tag and one's tastes go. Meaning that there is really no correlation.

That being said, the cushy (though not back-lit), kinda-cheap Dell doesn't work with the USB-to-PS2 adapter that my keyboard of the past several years used to interface with the KVM switch. Which leaves me in a quandry of sorts, particularly in the coming months when I'll have to make some effort to make sure that software works a broad smattering of web browsers on various operating systems

(Side note: If you don't know what a KVM switch is--and to tell the truth, I've never even cared about it enough to bother looking up what the letters K, V, and M stand for, m'self--all you really need to know is that its a heinously overpriced brick that lets you connect multiple computers to the same monitor, keyboard and mice.)

My very own heinously overpriced brick is a tad...shall we say..."retro" in that it supports PS2 (rather than USB) mice and computers and VGA (rather than DVI) monitors. But the essential problem--other than the classic pull of sunk costs--has three truly viable solutions:

The hardware-based solution is to close my eyes, key in a credit-card number, and upgrade the heinously overpriced brick to anothe heinously overpriced brick that will natively support my USB keyboard/mouse and (hopefully) better monitor resolutions.
The (mostly) software-based solution is to spend a couple hundred bucks and then a weekend installing Ubuntu Linux (on a beef-up hard drive) alongside multiple versions of Windows so that I can boot into any one--but only one--of them at a time.
The hybrid solution is to install more memory, a buffer CPU and a bigger, badder hard drive and then at least a weekend figuring out how to intall Ubuntu Linux alongside multiple versions of Windows on a single workstation so that I can boot all of them and toggle between them at will.

Once upon a time, my business card read "I/T Manager," and several years on, I'm wondering whether that wasn't a joke (on the entire company as well as myself), because I suddenly--yea, even viscerally--grok the attraction of Option #1, otherwise known as "throwing more hardware at the problem."

That attraction, I should point out, is predicated on the assumption that hardware--at least in the short-term--is a better value for money on each iteration. (See also: Moore's Law) Of course, "value" is a slippery term if you can't blind yourself to the socializing-the-costs-and-privitizing-the-profits multi-national business model. I can't say I'm eyes-wide-shut there...maybe squinting?...I'll make a virtue out of being a late-adopting cheapskate yet...

Anyhoo. The term "peak oil" is certainly in cant use. "Peak food" and "peak water" aren't far behind, as our species kaleidescopes--yes, it's a verb tonight--its DNA toward 7 billion planetary neighbors. Which (in light of the push & pull of fact and rumor surrounding rare earth metals and their processing) makes the concept of "peak hardware" that much more conceivable.

What then, gentle reader? Please understand that I'm not asking that as a fatuous rhetorical exercise (e.g., No oil => no plastic; no rare earth => no chips; no plastics + no chips => no gadgets => you're screwed, jack: Discuss.) Would pinching off the option of "throwing more hardware at the problem" mean that human-based solutions would become more valuable...or even more commoditized than they already are?

Me, I'm still working through the implications. Either way, repercussions are unavoidable--and they're not particularly pretty. But that doesn't mean they're not worth serious consideration. (After all, that's the kind of thing showers and bus/subway rides were made for.)

Frivolous Friday, 03.04.2011: A pin for the corporate ego-balloon

2011-03-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

Trust me, I have less than no pity for the company that wilfully ignores the technical and organizational debt incurred by outsourcing to the lowest-bidding "body shop." That being said, the other end of spectrum--meaning, when any window-office satrap announces "We hire only the best," it doesn't exactly burnish their credibility in my eyes. (Eyes, I might add, that I'm trying hard not to roll. While anyone's watching.)

Why do I call B.S.? Because if you hired only the best, you would definitely not proclaim it with serene smugness. Not because you're afraid of spending your days preventing your "best" from being poached with shiny offers. Not because, statistically, it's about as vacuous a claim as can be made. Not even because a house packed with rock-star egos will make old Bedlam seem like a genteel Edwardian tea party in the garden gazebo.

No, rather because it's a curious habit of management to sack "the best" when they're at the top of their game. (FWIW, I've been laid off, but never sacked--which means I know better than to number myself among "the best.")

I'm currently mopping up Moorish Spain (a considerable improvement on A Vanished World, which is more sermon than history), and the reader can't make it past the year 711 before history makes a mockery of the boast of "hiring the best."

Today's Goths, of course, evoke a much different reaction than they did during the sunset and twilight of the Roman Empire. In the former imperial province of Hispania, they were--at best--a mixed blessing once spliced onto the top of its political, social, and religious hierarchy. Let's jump into their world and its environs.

In the Hispania of the year 711 CE, we're specifically talking about the Visigoth branch of the family. It beggars the imagination to wonder why anyone would want to be their king, what with well-armed relatives always eyeing one's crown. Plus, in the "Some things never change" department, there are always the Basques to make politics interesting. And so it is that Roderic--or Rodrigo, take your pick--finds himself and his army tied down on the northern border by fighting scarcely a year after yet another dynastic free-for-all has put the crown of Spain up for grabs.

For the most part, the drama is lost on the rest of the Mediterranean neighborhood. Muhammad has been dead just shy of 80 years, and in that time, the newest religion in town has recently arrived in the Maghrib (a.k.a. modern Morocco in northwest Africa), where it's caught on in a big way with the local (Berber) tribes.

People being people, I highly doubt that there was much correlation between the change in faith and an uptick in Berber raids into southern Spain. It had been going on for awhile, in fact, when Tariq ibn Zayid was sent north across the water to...ahem!...seek "alternative sources of revenue" for the state. That foray ended the next year in a decisive battle against what army Roderic (and his shaky allies) could throw together.

ibn Zayid won decisively, and Roderic was killed in the fray, leaving the door open for the conquest of the Visigoths' capital city of Toledo--and thence the entire pennisula. The North African governor and ibn Zayid's boss, Musa ibn Nusayr, quickly followed up with a round of devastation that basically ended any real resistance (except from the Basques, naturally).

But not before the governor, so the story goes, berated his subordinate for overstepping his authority, thrashed him with his riding crop, and demoted him. In one of history's delicious ironies, ibn Nusayr met much the same fate upon reporting--Spain's captive aristocrats and bling ostentatiously in tow--to his own bosses in Islam's capital city of Damascus.

But there is a semi-happy ending here. By tradition, Tariq ibn Zayid's invasion force landed on the isthmus of Gibraltar. The Rock of Gibraltar derives its name from the words "Jabal Tariq," meaning "Tariq's mountain." Thus, very nearly thirteen centuries later, his name lives on. Something that can't be said for his boss.

Which--for this history nerd, anyway--brings to mind another similar anecdote. For that, let's fast-forward over a millenium and change.

It is late February, 1793. A month ago, King Louis XVI felt the embrace of Madame Guillotine. The over-extended Revolutionary Army of France is, quite improbably, giving the Prussians and Austrians reason to lose sleep. Far removed from the center of action, Corsica is headed by the leader (Pasquale Paoli) responsible for prying the island away from three centuries of Genoan rule (only to be sold to France, but that's another story.)

Orders come from Paris to take the neighboring island of Sardinia. Strategically, this might have made sense to the Parisian mindset. From a local, tactical standpoint, it just comes off as stupidity--historically, the islands have been on amicable, even cozy terms. But given the Revolution's growing propensity to eat its own, insubordination is not an option. Under the circumstances, Paoli does the only sensible--if rather passive aggressive--thing: He orders his subordinate-also his nephew--to take a flop. And thus a comically under-equipped (cough!) "invasion fleet" (cough!) weighs anchor for a short tour of political theatre.

Four days later, the same woefully under-supplied rag-tag battalion is in position to take the entire island within a few more hours.

Welcome to Napoleon Bonaparte's first campaign in the service of the Revolutionary Army.

Whoops.

Fortunately for Sardinia, Paoli's nephew fabricated the threat of a mutiny, pulled rank on his future Emperor, and pointed his sails back home.

Thus I hope that the next time my gentle reader's ears and credulity are abused by the "we only hire the best" platitude, s/he will remember the flip-side of "the best" entails. Particularly if s/he is being considered for a managerial position.

- - - - -

Bibliography:

Fletcher, Richard, Moorish Spain; Los Angeles, University of California Press: 2006; pp 1, 15-20

Lowney, Chris, A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians and Jews in Medieval Spain; New York: Oxford University Press: 2005; pp 29-31, 38-39

Norwich, John Julius, The Middle Sea, a History of the Mediterranean; New York: Doubleday Publishing, 2006; pp 389-390, 412

Defeating the purpose

2011-03-03T19:07:00.000-08:00

Being a complete naif, I used to think that the worst part of contracts was their lawyerly patois of weaselese. Not so much, it turns out.

There's a backstory and it's a long-ish one. The tl;dr folks are welcome to head for the exits now--trust me, I understand completely.

The backstory is that two departments at "my" client are having a tug-of-war (of sorts).

Party A comprises the "owners" of "my" application for many years, and whose delight with "my" application has been the source of my employment and job satisfaction for over half a decade.
Party B insists that certain features of the application itself, as well as its infrastructure be changed to meet certain minimum standards. And, while it riles certain non-conformist sensibilities, I can see the point of setting a baseline for software developed by outside contractors.

(And, of course, there's me and certain co-workers. Alpha-geek. Walks-Above-The-Water SysAdmin. QA. OfficeMom. Certain innocent bystanders to boot.)

But Party B has standards, friends and bretheren. It's all about standards, don'cha'know... Which--afore-mentioned non-conformity aside--admittedly does have a certain pull with your faithful blogger. Haven't I, after all, twisted my whitey-tighteys into a bunch when Microsoft or the Mozilla Foundation or whomever thinks it knows better than the W3C? So, basically, that makes a contract with this brand-name company sorta-kinda like an API for its vendors, yes? Yeah, I can grok that.

And--let's be fair--the process of modifying and deleting extraneous and egregiously slanted terms in the voluminous "Application Service Provider" contract was actually pretty amicable. So no complaints there.

Then came the ugly question, "Who's paying for these changes?". From where I stand, Party B said to Party A, "Well, it's your application." Party A retorted to Party B: "Hey, we didn't order this!" And so the rollout--originally slated, appropriately enough, for Halloween weekend--was put on hold indefinitely while that was sorted out.

Fast forward to early 2011, when we were informed--sans fanfare--that arms had been twisted and some budget somewhere would be shaken down for the not-inconsiderable fee. Oddly enough, the rollout was then set for Valentine's Day weekend. So I'm wrapping up walking "my" power-users through the tip-of-the-iceberg changes that would actually affect them, when I'm sucker-punched by the news that a completely different set of folks need to know this, because "my" users don't have the resources to deal with the downstream users.

And so the upgrade is unceremoniously stuffed back into its cryogenic tube.

A week or so elapses between the above (ahem!) epiphany and an email informing me that Parties A and B have scheduled a meeting to hammer out the support issue. Donning my very best Chibi-eyed Look of Innocence, I offered my support "in case there are technical questions." Then I booked the tickets to crash the meeting in person, rather than via web conference.

Maybe it's just that everyone was on their best behavior b/c "company" was visiting, but the actual meeting was pretty laid-back--seriously, singing "Kumbaya" or passing a joint would not have been entirely out of place--at least from my vantage-point, anyway. The changes that were largely "mine" were pretty much accounted-for. But what blew me away was that, when it came to the question of all the auditing history that Walks-Above-The-Water SysAdmin has to do, nobody--and I mean nobody--in that room had a clue who was supposed to receive that.

I'm pretty sure I managed to keep the "Y'all are kiddin' me...riiiiiight???" I mean, after all, don't you do this contract for everybody 'n all?" look off my face and saved the actual freak-out for the safe confines of my home-pod, nestled in the nurturing bosom of my workaday "family."

That's when WATW SysAdmin enlightened me to the fact that the bulk of "his" part of the contract was written as a potential "escape hatch." In other words, the intent of Party B is to rely on entropy, to assume that the service provider would--given their druthers--cut corners, kick the can down the road, bank on no news being good news, etc.

In other other words, unwritten weaselese. The brown M&Ms clause and that sort of thing.

Problem is, that smacks of what psychologists call "projection." Were I a gambler, I'd label that a "tell." And I'm emphatically not a gambler. (If you don't believe me, ask Dennis about the infamous game of 500 with his Mom and Grandma where I was dealt what can only be described as a statistically-improbable hand--and couldn't stop giggling the whole round.)

Now. Even someone who still nurtures enough foolishness to be annoyed at a criminally illogical world, I do know that people are a special case of the Universe-at-large. For the most part, the Universe-at-large does not conform to your expectations. At least not without a lot of money or pharmaceuticals to make a gated community from your own special lower-case reality. People, on the other hand, quite often do live up--and, more aptly, down--to your expectations.

Expect to be screwed by anybody, anytime, and...well...I have a tough time scrounging up much sympathy when it happens. Because, in my naifish world, a contract essentially says, "Okay, we're spelling out the quid pro quo to cover both our butts. Because we both know that people come and go, and in the meantime we all have better things to do."

But beyond that, expecting contracts to passively do the relationship-policing for you is a management #FAIL. Most especially when the definition of "management" embodies our worst-case top-down military-industrial hangovers. Even in that extreme case, it begs the question: "Why are we wasting all these windows on hard-walled offices when we can manage by contract?" I understand that there need to be minimum standards to head off cronyism, kickbacks and the like. But at some point, an organization needs to understand that it's doling out executive salaries and absorbing the cost of the corporate caste system's perks to some tangible end.

Please understand, above everything, that I desperately hope I'm wrong here, and that the representatives of Party B--and they've been quite easy to work with thus far--just don't have that much experience with outside parties. That would be awesome, actually. Not only because it leaves me more time to worry about making sure that The Bytes successfully hook up with The Real World--but also because it basically equals a productivity #WIN.

Deferring Tuesday post until Thursday

2011-03-01T21:12:00.000-08:00

I'm just about as packed up as I can be for returning to West-Central Cheddarstan (and a fiercely-missed Dennis) tomorrow. It's been a productive--if not always comfortable--trip so far. Will share some of the insights later. In the meantime, a six a.m. wake-up call has been inexorably set, so good night.

Frivolous Friday, 02.26.2011: Bot Bingo (NSFW)

2011-02-25T19:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday @CouleeRegion tweeted "Jeez, mention 'job' and the spammers come running." Which is a sad--no, make that downright pathetic--comment on the state of our allegedly post-recession economy. (Or, to satirize a certain--ahem!--political celebrity: "How's that record-y Wall-Street-y profit-y thing workin' out for ya?)

But let's give credit where it's due. One thing I'll say for Twitter is that their bot-blocking armor has improved--largely, I believe, because of the "Block and report as spam" feature: Human judgement trumping mere algorithms, nat'cherly...

And, while it's been quite awhile since I've wanted to dunk my eyeballs in hot bleach after looking at one of my "follower"'s avatars, Twitter has obviously hunkered down for the never-ending cat-and-mouse game that is the fight against people too lazy/slimy/uncreative/lame to actually add value to the economy (a.k.a. spammers).

Yet, rather than bemoan this state of affairs, why not actually have fun with it? By which I mean a Twitter game/meme called "Bot Bingo." (Note: For the purposes of the game, it's probably best to create a separate account.) To avoid the necessity of a centralized scorekeeper, here's how I imagine the rules would work out:

1.) The "grid" is based on a 25-day month--in other words, spam-bots collected on the 26th through the 31st day of the month don't count. The "grid" is considered to be 5 x 5 (see Rule #3, below)

2.) "Bait"-tweets must be issued on the appropriate day of the month, or they don't count.

3.) The (5 x 5) BINGO "grid" looks something like this:

Row 1: The 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th and 21st day of the month
Row 2: The 2nd, 7th, 12th, 17th, and 22nd day of the month
Row 3: The 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th and 23rd day of the month
Row 4: The 4th, 9th, 14th, 19th and 24th day of the month
Row 5: The 5th, 10th, 15th, 20th and 25th day of the month

4.) The "bait" subject for tweets are as follows:

Day 1: Jobs
Day 2: Stocks and/or investing
Day 3: Real Estate
Day 4: Work from Home
Day 5: Marketing (pref. w/the word "Consulting" included)
Day 6: SEO and/or Internet Marketing
Day 7: Social Media
Day 8: Blogging
Day 9: Twitter
Day 10: Facebook
Day 11: Lindsay Lohan
Day 12: The Jonas Brothers
Day 13: Justin Beiber
Day 14: Taylor Swift and/or any dude who's ever brassed her off
Day 15: Any member of the High School Musical brat-pack
Day 16: Bacon
Day 17: Wine
Day 18: Any secret "discovered" by "A Mom"
Day 19: Health
Day 20: Any self-proclaimed "ninja" or--worse--"sensei"
Day 21: Sex (specifically, nothing that would be endorsed by the Puritans)
Day 22: Sex (specifically, anything the Victorians would consider "trashy." And, by the bye, don't overestimate their standards. These, after all, were the folks who considered 12 or 13 the "age of consent" for a chick...until the more "enlightened" year of 1885 raised that minimum to 16--unless she was to inherit property, thus giving the protection of her "virtue" the force of law until the age of 21.)
Day 23: Sex (specifically, anything that would have been criminialized before the 1960s/1970s in the industrialized West)
Day 24: Sex (specifically, anything that would raise Hugh Hefner's eyebrows and make him say, "Seriously?! I gotta see this..." right before hollering for a photographer)
Day 25: Sex (specifically, anything that would skeeve out Larry Flynt)

5.) Just like regular BINGO, the "winner" is the first in her/his Twitter group with five contiguous "matches" (vertically, horizontally or diagonally) wins.

6.) The "winner" in each Twitter group, presumably, gets bragging rights until the next month.

The cost of nothing to lose

2011-02-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

The last time I sat through any crime/spy "thriller" wherein the internet was the main antagonist, I shouted at it. (I'm sorry to report that it was no less than the "Killswitch" episode of The X-Files. But for pity's sake, I'm supposed to mistake a CAT-5 cable for a T-3 line and believe that a laser shot from a compromised weapons satellite can bulls-eye a laptop that's just been thrown from a moving vehicle? Seriously?!)

Fortunately, Daniel Suarez's Daemon (lent to me by best friend and better-pedigreed geek H.) hasn't done that yet, although the flashbacks to Stephen King's Christine and the HAL-meets-The-House-of-Usher schtick were both a tad cheesy. (I'm only about 1/3 of the way through the book; I'm hoping it redeems itself.)

But aside from the thought of a manipulative, powerful, and well-funded artificial intelligence (AI) co-opting humans via their weaknesses, one little bit actually did send a shiver down my spine, and partly because of the fortuitous intersection with current state events.

...Sobol was employing an optical license plate reader. Gragg knew it was commercially-available software--used all the time on interstates and downtown roads. But Sobol needed access to DMV records to determine who owned the car. He must have cracked a DMV database in order to get his registration information. Gragg considered the hourly rate of the average DMV worker, and realized that gaining access wasn't a problem for Sobol.

And I can't help but remember how, after the Western zeitgeist bored of cheering for German reunification, Glasnost, Peristroika, Presidents Walesa and Havel, Mother Russia and her fourteen baby republics, etc...then woke to worry about assets of the former Soviet Union put on the black market by employees who no longer had any loyalty to a system that wasn't paying them. I'm talking, of course, about the more, errr, radioactive assets.

Now. That's an extreme case. But Governor's thinly-disguised attempt at scapegoating state employees (and unions in general) to a populace already disgruntled at job losses, bank bailouts (that emphatically did not open the sluices of small business capital) underwater mortgages, stagnant wages is not doing the taxpayer any favors in the long run. (Nor, I might add, is baking in $140 million in tax breaks while threatening jobs when you don't get cooperation. Nor is reserving the right to sell off state assets without competitive bids--'cuz, you know, Halliburton worked out soooo well that way--when your campaign contributions are now under the microscope.)

Look. I don't work for the state of Wisconsin. Neither does anyone in my family. I've never belonged to a union, and have held some pretty mixed opinions of them. But the fact of the matter is that the folks at the DMV--just like the the state police and the Governor himself--ultimately work for me in the sense that my taxes are paying part of the bill. And such ham-fisted tactics--right at the outset, no less--don't even qualify as "management," much less "leadership." And that's even without the "cui bono?" questions now surfacing, thanks to Gov. Walker's transparently self-serving courtship of the media spotlight.

Government doesn't exist for the same reason as business, so I frankly consider that comparison ill-considered at best and a canard at worst. But even if the analogy were true, it's never good business--in the long run--to give your employees nothing to lose. (That should be tattooed on the inner eyelids of every MBA grad ever.) And it's certainly not a good idea in a state environment, which is so much more responsible for your well-being than any business. Which is why I refuse to have this (cough) budget (cough) perpetrated in my name without making any protest. Ultimately, it is ordinary schlubs like me who will the price if not enough people stand up to this particularly textbook example of failed management.

Frivolous Friday, 02.18.2011: The traveling programmer problem

2011-02-18T19:07:00.000-08:00

In computer science, there is a class of real-life situations--no, really--that can't actually be modeled with mathematical and/or logical formulas. The shorthand for them is "NP-complete cases," and after brief exposure to the high-level concepts, it's pretty easy to believe that their real existence is to separate the "software architects" from the folks who chunk out working code for a living.

One such is the "traveling salesman problem." The salesman has to visit multiple cities on the map one--and only one--time each. Which sounds simple enough until you stipulate that you want him to minimize the distance traveled (and thus the cost) and also not cover any leg of the trip (i.e. the line between two cities) more than once.

To date, there is no "formula" to generate that route. Thia leaves two options:

Approximation--i.e. the "close enough" approach, or
Calculating all possible combinations--i.e. the "brute force" approach.

Even with today's computing Clydesdale-power, at a certain point, brute force isn't feasible. (Hint: Simply thumb through your old Algebra textbook until you find the section on factorials, if that helps.) Despite the misleading article title, approximation is currently the most viable option, and kudos, epic props, and a side of "w00t!" to Dr. Zhang for his coup.

That being said, it neither explains--much less excuses--the unadulterated ridiculousness on parade yesterday when I had to book tickets for a business-related trip. La Crosse, WI to Los Angeles, CA--how complex could this be?

Well, one option for the outgoing part of the trip that was surely calculated by the ghost of Christopher Columbus. On acid. Because the first leg went from La Crosse to Detroit, then backtracked from Detroit to Minneapolis, and then headed to Los Angeles.

Now, the funny thing I discovered about the travel-booking software that my firm uses is that, in this presumably more environmentally-conscious era, each leg of the trip now lists its estimated C02 emissions. As metrics go, I think that one was...ummmm...counterproductive...for recommending this particular route.

But wait! It gets better.

I had second thoughts about my departure time, so I bumped the homebound time out by all of one hour later. Sorting by the least expensive to most expensive fares, the least expensive fare--which, by the bye, was nearly $500 more than for one palty hour previous--had my route thus: Los Angeles to Boston to Chicago to La Crosse. And if all went according to plan--Oh, puh-leeeze: As if...--I would be home a day later than if I'd left an hour earlier.

I sooooo wish that I'd taken screenshots along the way so my gentle reader could see that I'm not exaggerating, much less making any of this up. Fortunately, one of my co-workers was on hand to help me navigate the web app., so I at least had the comfort of camaradarie in my freakitude.

Yet I couldn't help but notice multiple airline options for the exact same departure times--for the initial flight and the connecting flight. Okay, maybe for the initial flight--given how flights are staggered among multiple runways, that's not outside the realm of possibility. But the connecting flights departing at the same time? Really?! Is there some sort of race going on? Are the pilots planning to cruise the planes side by side so they can while away the time playing charades at 30,000 feet?

[insert much banging of forehead on desk--otherwise known as Left Brain Oxycontin]

Ahhhh... That's better. Sorta-kinda. As Bull Durham's Annie Savoy observed, "The world wasn't made for those of us cursed with self-awareness." Or those of us cursed with a rudimentary capacity for logic, I might add.

Sigh...

- - - - -

A friend emailed me something like this in the very late 1990s. In 2011, it's not nearly so funny. If you want to know why I call B.S. on the supposed "efficiencies" of oligopolies (and their alleged economies of scale), this is a good part of the reason.

(And to think I used to look forward to air travel...)

Madison Avenue: Spam Never Sleeps

2011-02-15T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hmmm...maybe that doesn't scan so well as Oliver Stone's heavy-handed commentary... Dang.

Anyhoo.

Last night, while mixing teriaki marinade and paring beef for homemade jerky, Dennis mentioned the latest high-profile results-jacking busted by Google.*

Dennis suggested the incident as good blog fodder. At first, I was a little skeptical, thinking that we--by which I mean I/T folks--are pretty jaded about the cat-and-mouse arms race played by Google and legions of SEO mountebanks. (By the bye: I'm not actually mixing metaphors here; in the hands of a talented artist like Jeff DeBoer, a cat and mouse arms race can be both awe-inspiring and absolutely delightful.)

I do recommend reading the full five pages of the original New York Times expose, simply for their peek into the shadows of the world of link-farming--and, more aptly, why you should at least skim past the first link. But for me, the real takeaway is that, while software is key to boosting the signal-to-noise ratio (which is to say, a search engine's bread & butter, beer and pizza, burger & fries, hummus & pita, yadayadayada) ultimately, human intervention is a non-negotiable part of the business model. (If you read the PayPal chapter in Founders at Work, you'll notice the same schtick in the anti-fraud dept.)

And that's maybe the lesson that the "everyone" implied by the link-farmer interviewed in the NYT article should take to heart.

- - - - -

* Welcome to Valentine's Day in a dual-geek marriage. Knowing me, I was playing with banana chips--products of the same dehydrator--to see how far I could fold them over between my molars before they actually snapped and I had to crunch them out of their misery.

Frivolous Friday, 02.11.2011: Story problems for programmers

2011-02-11T18:57:00.000-08:00

One thing I noticed about UW-L's comp. sci curriculum was its emphasis on math. Maybe sometime down the road--particularly after MTH 225 (Mathematical Logic), that might have made some sense. In the meantime, I would have appreciated it if the curriculum would have covered situations that might occur in the life of the average programmer. (Heck, I would have settled for "average" in the sense of the trimmed-mean, bell-curved, and nice-round-number reality that spawns story problems.)

But it didn't. So to partially ameliorate that glaring deficit, I offer a few examples for the benefit of both textbook authors as their readers.

(Now...granted, Tom Cargill--who, like Yogi Berra, didn't really say everything he said--immediately springs to mind with: "The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time." But I think Mr. Cargill paints far too rosy a picture. So let's fix that, shall we?)

Question 1: Your firm's billing software requires that time spent exclusively on a project be billed in half- and whole-hour increments? If anything greater than fifteen minutes rounds up to a half-hour and anything between 40 and 59 minutes rounds up to one hour, what is the maximum amount of time per day you can waste on Facebook? (Choose one.):
___ A.) 3 hours and 59 minutes
___ B.) 2 hours and 39 minutes
___ C.) Dude, are you smoking crack?! You'll be interrupted so many times, you'll either have to lie like a rug or work weekends to avoid burning your PTO.

Question 2: The cost of changing specifications is 5% during the Design Phase, 15% during the Coding Phase, 65% during the Testing Phase, and 115% after implementation. Assuming an original project estimate of $100,000, what is the total amount billed to the client for changing specifications twice during the coding phase, five times during the testing phase and three times during after final implementation? (Choose one)
___ A.) $700,000 (cost as percentage of original estimate)
___ B.) $2,458,625 (cumulative cost assuming simultaneously implemented changes in each phase)
___ C.) $16,742,523.38 (cumulative cost assuming independently implemented changes in each phase)
___ D.) $100,000 (Sales bid the job at flat rate. Cheer up: Maybe they'll take you out on the pontoons they bought with the commission.)

Question 3: Your firm just signed a contract to customize software around the client's existing data-set within the next 90 days. The terms of the contract specify that you receive 25% of the data as a sample on Day 10, and the final data snapshot on Day 89. Assume that 10% of the data will contain discrepancies, and that it takes a full day to resolve 20% of the discrepancies. On what day will the application contain clean data?
___ A.) Day 95
___ B.) Day 93
___ C.) Day 92
___ D.) Whaddya mean you can't just zen what data's supposed to be entered? Aren't you programmer types supposed to be "numbers" people? Sheesh...

Question 4: A potential client has promised to send you screenshots of the Access database that's powering their core business functionality so you can evaluate the feasibility of replicating the application in something less likely to flake out for no reason. Your firm's Exchange server will emails whose attachments exceed 10 MB in size. The possible client's screenshots average 375 KB each, using the .PNG format you recommended. Assuming that the application requires 50 screenshots, how many emails should you receive? (Choose one.)
___ A.) 2
___ B.) 3
___ C.) None (Anyone savvy enough to know what a .PNG is should know to ask whether they can just upload the whole mess to an FTP server.)
___ D.) None (The potential client decided to be clever and compress the files for a single email, but your Exchange server's anti-virus software is configured to black-hole .ZIP files.)
___ E.) None (The potential client was "too busy" to type "P and G" into The Google and just printed the screens and faxed them to you.)

Question 5: Your boss has just quoted a 30-day timeline to a client, hangs up the phone, and asks for your projected completion time. Your answer is (choose all that apply):
___ A.) 42.
___ B.) Hurr (and/or Durr).
___ C.) More cowbell!
___ D.) An African swallow or a European swallow?
___ E.) I like pie.

Question 6: Your firm bills your sole client by the hour, but insists upon the fiction of the 40-hour workweek with respect to its programmers' timesheets. Assuming that each of your six programmers averages a 60-hour week January - September, how many programmers do you have to hire in October (and pink-slip before New Years') to maintain your Sugar-mommy (or Sugar-daddy) cred. with the client you invite to the company Christmas party? (Choose one.)
___ A.) 2
___ B.) 3
___ C.) Troll the local campus for the more articulate Comp. Sci students and offer them free hors d'oevres and booze to fake it

- - - -

Answers:
1.) C
2.) D
3.) D
4.) E
5.) Yep.
6.) C

In praise of the "no blue skies" business model

2011-02-08T18:45:00.000-08:00

A few months after I took the helm of "my" application, The Powers That Be decided that it would be a good idea to send me halfway across the country to meet my power-users face-to-face. Truth be told, I know I didn't absorb nearly enough of the end-user experience in those three days, but relationships solidified at a pace that phone and email can't match.

Fat times, those. Sometimes, just trying to get my work done on time while spec'ing out future work was the challenge.

A few years on, and the housing bubble popping and derivatives investment house of cards tumbling brought an end to that. We managed to hang onto the client (and thus I managed to hang on to my job), but the fallout on their end involved a lot of staff turnover. To date, only one of my original "power users" is still with the group. That would have been the most appropriate time for another face-time junket. But, of course, the budget couldn't support it just then.

With the benefit of hindsight, that was a lost opportunity, and I think we're paying for it now. And when I think of the extravagances--well, "extravagances" to my frugal Upper Midwestern sensibilities--of the era before, I can think of a few I would have happily "banked" for leaner times. That's not a mistake we'll make twice--not if I have anything to say about it. Not even if I have to put up with Delta and the FAA's sad-sack excuses for "service" in the name of a belated meet-and-greet sometime during the next few weeks.

So, mixed in with the fat vs. lean metaphors--because, hey, if corporations are officially "people," we might as well go all reductio ad absurdum while we're at it--is my wondering why business reactions to the economy-at-large seem to so closely resemble modern dietary habits. You know, the deep-dish Carnivore's Special pizza (with cheesy breadsticks, 2 liter bottle of soda plus cinnamon breadsticks for dessert) when the money's rolling in, and ramen noodles when it's not?

We all know that crash dieting--particularly after living on bacon ranch double cheeseburgers--isn't healthy in real life. During the last few business cycles, I've seen what its equivalent does to the underlying fabric of organizations. Yes, I understand: If our species had even 25% less capacity for self-delusion (as in "This time it'll be different,") the entertainment, fashion and investment industries would cease to exist. I get it. No, really.

But for everyone else...seriously, now. How can the same speculative investment in an emerging (and thus largely unknown) market be too trivial to bother with during the boom and too farm-bettingly dangerous during the bust? Not quite a strawman argument there--too many examples from business history (particularly while I'm under the influence of The Innovator's Dilemma at the moment) for that.

I guess I just don't understand why an initiative you're not willing to risk your budget and reputation on during the bad times can be a good idea during the good times. But I have seen first-hand how self-defeating the binge-and-diet cycle is, and I think that anyone who works for a paycheck has every right to expect considerably less...errrrr..."fiscal myopia" from their annointed leaders.

Frivolous Friday, 02.04.2011: Aeron-chair psychology

2011-02-04T20:13:00.000-08:00

Originally, I was planning to riff on a suggestion Dennis--bless his inventive (and somewhat twisted) brain--made. But then the proverbial "little birdie" (a.k.a. Twitter) told me that today is George Romero's birthday.

Now, in the name of honesty, I have to disclose the following anecdote. My co-worker, who is also the office's Movie Buff in Residence--let's call him "J"--lent me his copy of Shaun of the Dead. And while Simon Pegg is always fun to watch, not to mention at his absolute funniest in deadpan mode--no quasi-pun intended--the comedy just wasn't my cup of brains.

J. seemed disappointed at my disappointment, and tried to contextualize the movie as "a tribute to George Romero." "What's a 'George Romero'?" I asked. J. literally stopped in his tracks, visibly deflated, and said plaintively, "Okay. You know when you make those historical references and I don't get them? That's what this feels like." (As it turns out, the George Romero of which J. was speaking is the "godfather of zombie movies." Whoops.)

Poor J. I felt bad. Really I did. And I realized that I'd also lost a not-insignificant amount of Geek Cred. At least I can partially redeem myself for the first trespass here and now. But the memory of the incident set me wondering why zombie movies tend to be cult movies and, moreover, why they also tend to appeal to a geekier demographic.

The first thought that sprang to mind was that any apocalypse (zombie, nuclear, etc.) qualifies as an escapist fantasy. Sure, reliable 4G/wi-fi access may be hard to find, but in the meantime, office politics-as-usual are a luxury your plucky little band of survivors can't afford. Also, sheer brawn is next to useless. Mainly because if you go mano-a-mano with a zombie, you're already dead. Outwitting them enough to stay just inside shotgun range is the game, friends and bretheren.

And speaking of shotguns, my complimentary armchair theory to the above was: A zombie apocalypse would be--let's face it--the ultimate first-person shooter video game. No need to worry about gratuitous head shots because, well, it's their brains or yours. Plus, zombies are already dead, so it's technically not murder. And you can be almost certain that their former selves would actually be cheering you on. Long story short: No ethical ambiguities need apply.

In light of those two considerations, zombie movies should, by all rights, be catnip for the average geek. Alas, I've never fallen under that particular "average." True, George Carlin warned against underestimating the power of stupid people in large groups. But. The shambling pace of any zombie horde never seemed to me to qualify it as a credible threat. Nope: Too much suspension of disbelief for me, I'm afraid. Sorry 'bout that.

Then, too, the flavor of horror movies on which I was raised was decidedly more genteel and reasonable--stuff involving Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Lon Cheney Jr. and the like. You know: Scientists "renovating" ancient castles with no visible means of support. Police coronors not batting an eyelash at corpses entirely drained of blood. Silver bullets standing up to the rigors of modern ballistics. The fact that the ancient Egyptian embalming process involved not only removing internal organs, but also extracting the brain (with a hook through the nose) before discarding it. (That lovely mental image you just had there? You're welcome--no need to thank me.)

Yeah, much less suspension of disbelief involved. [eyeroll]

Why it doesn't pay to stint on I/T

2011-02-01T18:39:00.000-08:00

To respect security, I won't be mentioning names. But earlier this week, I was trying to access a large-ish website that was clearly buckling under the crush of traffic. After plinking the F5 (i.e. "Refresh") key a few times, I left the web page open as something else claimed my attention

A minute or three later, I noticed my browser's "Download" notification window asking me whether I wanted to download a PHP file and open it in the application designated for that file extension. At that point, strict professional courtesy should have made me say "no," but I rationalized that I would do no tangible harm by just peeking.

Now, if you're not a web programmer, what you need to know about how most web content is served is that it often involves some delegation. What's traditionally known as a "web server," is capable of handing off files (HTML and images and such) that don't change. When, however, the content is updated in real-time (which is to say most of the web nowadays), the task of generating it is left to another software package, sometimes known as an "engine" (e.g. servlet engine, Zend engine). The engine's output is then handed back to the "web server" as HTML and images and such and delivered back to the user's browser.

That's how it's supposed to work, anyway. In the case of the website I tried to access, the "engine" portion had clearly stalled out under the traffic load. The web server, still struggling to keep up with the requests for content, finally sent the PHP files responsible for delivering the content--or at least one of them.

That's bad. Why? Because, exposing the code files themselves exposes the inner workings of the web application. That could include information about the database structure behind it, and--in an Armageddon-worst-case-scenario--the connection information for the database itself.

In all fairness, and for perspective, that scenario would involve the proverbial perfect storm of a web server near-meltdown, sloppy programmers, and even more slovenly system/security administrators to set up that sort of situation (plus make it easy to exploit). But it's also an excellent argument for not automatically defaulting to the least expensive, get-ya-by-for-now option. In hardware or people, by the bye. Simply because there's being caught in out the perfect storm, and then there's doing the rain-dance for it. Moral of the story: Don't be that person.

Frivolous Friday, 01.28.2011: History looms

2011-01-28T19:08:00.000-08:00

I've been on a costuming kick lately, and Dennis gave me a rather extravagant present in the form of an inkle loom. My original intent had been to try tablet-weaving, until I realized that inkle weaving would involve fewer moving parts. This--in my case, at least--is a certified Very Good Thing. (Mind you that, over the years, I've managed to learn to embroider, hand-sew, crochet, tat, use a lucet and even fumble my way through netting. But in all those cases, I only have to think about one needle, shuttle or what-have-you. Ambidextrous I am not.)

Sad to report, my first attempt at warping it--meaning stretching the long threads around the pegs--didn't exactly go swimmingly. Guess who missed a key point in the (illustrated) instructions? Why, yes: That would be the former tech. writer. (Got it in one, Gentle Reader, got it in one...)

I made some jest about it on Facebook to the effect that my infinitely-more-competent-with-textiles foremothers would be disgraced. But my old Forensics Team "mentor" (and fellow geek) added a few comments involving Jacquard Looms (arguably the world's first "programmable" machines) and the Luddite rebellion (which involved looms), noting that King Ludd himself would be smiling upon me for my manual methods.

Booyah for FT Mentor, finding the nerdy dimension! I could just hug him.

A few weeks on--otherwise known as "last night"--I gave it another shot. This time I managed not to screw up the shed. But I did biff the pattern-planning, forgetting that there must always be an odd number of warp threads--which means that patterns are typically calculated from a center point (the middle thread). Thus, the second attempt is basically lop-sided by one thread. Then, too, it took me something short of a foot of weave before I started pulling the weft in tight enough to form the intended pattern.

Which is when it really hit me that, hey, this has math! Granted, not as much math as card-weaving has, but math nevertheless. Which, in this case, is not so much a matter of "knowability"--in other words, responding to fixed rules deduced from First Principles--so much as feedback: "I know this is correct when I see it like this." See, when you block the pattern out on graph paper, you're accounting for all the threads, and that's grossly misleading because, at any given time, about half will be forced to the "top" of the weave and the other half or so will be pushed down out of sight.

Which, in essence, means I could write a simple little web application that would allow the user to specify colors for all threads and then programatically generate the pattern. With a little modification, it would work for tablet-weaving as well. Personally, I like to think that Lady Ada* would smile upon such efforts.

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* "The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in the Difference Engine. We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves."

- from Ada Lovelace's notes, appended to her translation of Luigi Menebrea's article on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, circa 1843

A tale of Merlot and meta-data

2011-01-25T18:43:00.000-08:00

I stumbled across a mention of data-scraping in wine-media maven @RickBakas's Twitter stream tonight. Being who & what I am, the intersection of two of my passions meant I had to dig further.

As a disclaimer, though, let's just say that my "contributions" to wine's social media dimension has been slim. I normally watch Wine Library TV via podcasts (and thus qualify as a "lurker," and I had a very dusty account on the probably soon-to-be-defunct Corked.com wine review site. The vast majority of the wine I consume is homebrew, so I'm even more of a misfit in a world that probably has Coke vs. Pepsi type squabblings between devotees of Sancerre and fans of Puilly Fume *.

Long story short: I don't have a horse in this race.

So. The backstory is that there's a website called CellarTracker. It, from what I can see from a superficial perusing, allows those who have too many wines to remember to track the wine in their cellar--presumably before it becomes vinegar from age. Additionally--and this is the juicy part--it's basically a database of wine-tasting notes, plus other amenities you'd expect from a social website.

Then there's this other website called Snooth. It's also about wine. It's admittedly prettier, though much stalkier ("Hello La Crosse wine lover."), and does a reasonable job of impersonating a wine magazine. As part of its aggregation backend, however, Snooth trolls the web, looking for wine-related content, presumably ranks its relevance according some algorithm, and then moshes & categorizes (tags) it into something its users can use to search for relevance.

There's certainly a value-add in the filtering process, assuming that the false positives and false negatives are absolutely and ruthlessly minimized. That's been Google's bread-and-butter for a decade now, and (remembering what search was in the 90s) I'll be the last to complain about that business model. Snooth might have other ethical issues to contend with, but blatantly "stealing" data isn't one of them.

Yesterday, a windstorm-in-a-wineglass arose with the charges that Snooth had been scraping tags (i.e. the descriptive categories) from CellarTracker, in violation of their agreement not to do the same after the companies ended their partership in 2007. I'm sure my gentle reader will be shocked to learn that oenophiles can talk trash as well as anyone else, although perhaps with somewhat better sentence construction--probably comes from having to learn all that French, I suspect. ;-)

Today's development was an apology with explanation of how the oversight occurred from Snooth's Philip James. It's quite well done--to the point where it would do well as a fair example for college business and marketing majors to absorb. To her credit, @JancisRobinson (Master of Wine, travel maven and all-around class act) tweeted the apology to her 55K+ followers. Hopefully that'll tone down any lingering rhetoric.

But in the aftermath, my gut says that this is just a taste--a sip, if you will--of what's to come. Notice in this case that the bone of contention wasn't the wine reviews themselves, it was the meta-data--i.e. the thing that makes the web more than just a collection of single words. As more and more folks cross-post, recommend, rank, re-tweet, comment, follow, friend, fan, etc., the meaning will be found in the meta-data--the underlying relevance & whatever meanings can be teased from those connections and groupings. And that's even without the extra dimensions of geolocation.

Having content worth linking to, favoriting or whatever still matters--no question. But the money's in the meta.

- - - - -

* The Sancerre and Puilly Fume wine-making regions are basically across the river from each other in France's Loire valley, and both are made from the Sauvignon Blanc grape. But in wine as in religion, the narrowest differences make for the widest schisms. Or at least it sure seems that way...

Frivolous Friday, 01.21.2001: Monkey-chow

2011-01-21T20:58:00.000-08:00

As "highs" go, there seem to be two that most geeks to live for. Mind you, I'm basing that "most" on a sample based on my fellow programmers and I/T folks. The winner, by far, is complete immersion in the parts that fascinate them--be it exercising mastery of the domain or pushing the buttons of a shiny new thing to see what makes it work. The second is the "high" that comes that wrestling with a gremlin and finally prevailing.

No, what I'm talking about tonight really falls into the category of B-list "highs" for geeks. It's intended mostly for those whose work or domestic tranquility depends in some part on recognizing these symptoms. If you already grok the immersion and de-gremlin bits above, congratulations: You're already ahead of the curve.

So, in no particular order, such "symptoms" include:

Feedback main-lining If you see a geek type an arcane incantation into a black screen and seem to scrutinize the oodles and oodles of text that scrolls up the screen and off the radar--with complete grasp of its details--never mind how fast it disappears--you're witnessing an itty-bitty little geek "high." The computer has been water-boarded into divulging everything it knows. And, particularly for geeks who came of age in the 80s and early 90s, there is nothing so primally satisfying.
The "Master of the Universe" dashboard Just this morning, our formidible SysAdmin--and, no, you still won't hire him away from us if you know what's good for you--showed me a third-party tool that allows him to access/manage all the servers at once. Which, admittedly, was pretty darned cool. Mind you, at the time, I really only needed him to rename a couple folders, rescue a couple of accidentally deleted files, and bump up my permissions to a database. But I guess he had to show somebody, and--apparently--a recovering SysAdmin wannabe was good enough.
Gratuitous hardware Sure, most software doesn't insist on octal-core processors, triple-digit gigabytes of RAM, much less hard drive storage capacity that would bug out the eyes of any futuristic science fiction show ever? It's not what you actually do with it--before the next upgrade, anyway--it's what you can do. If a freak lightning strike takes out NASA's control center minutes before the the Space Shuttle is due to land, that intrepid (and hot!) intern can jack into your system and together you can save the day--and that's all that matters when the credits roll, baby!
Things that Light Up Personally, I think this is something of a revenant--for all I know insinuated into our little geeky brains via Saturday morning cartoons. But, really, how can you not pay attention to the LED on your USB drive when it's backing up data? Or, similarly, if the light's not the flashy kind--say, on your laptop's power-brick--how can you not avert your eyes after unplugging or resist the urge to cradle it against you as the little light fades, crooning, "Hang in there, help is coming," as the light dies? (If not, what kind of anthropomorphizer are you, I want to know?!?!)
The Need for Speed Mind you, I don't consider it any coincidence that our office Alpha-Geek used to race cars and just happens to be the one who seems to delight most in performance improvements. Nuh-uh. So what if the application was up on blocks while the clients were climbing the walls? Can't they see how much faster it runs now? (Don't mind the bondo and primer--that'll buff out...)
Connoisseuship of Cross-referential Arcana By which I mean "inside jokes" found outside their natural habitat. By which I further mean collating and publishing all known instances. Prime example, courtesy of @afstanton: Joss Whedon's "Han Solo in carbonite" knick-knack having a recurring role in Firefly. Or the sly little Lord of the Rings nuances in Babylon 5 (or its short-lived successor Crusade). (Or for that matter, the crudely rendered X-Files schtick in the afore-mentioned Crusade). Because who wants to be the hayseed who's getting by on memorizing all the Lexx scripts? Cosmopolitan geeks FTW!

This doesn't presume to be a thorough list--not even in a sense that would mollify most statisticians. But if you've seen any of the above behavior, chances are good that you're living and/or working in proximity to a bona-fide geek: Ave et cave.

Heretical thoughts on process

2011-01-18T18:03:00.000-08:00

When you say you're focusing on process, what I (almost always) hear is: "We can't debug our communication problem(s)."

Although, in some organizational dialects, the translation is closer to "We need more rules to cover all the exceptions we have to make."

Or, in Middle Managementese, it can mean, "I need to show my boss that I understand what it is you people do around here (and that I'm in control of it)."

At the "straw boss" level, the understanding might be something akin to, "I don't have time to do my job and referee spitting-matches over turf besides."

On the lowest rungs, process can too easily become a security blanket: "Don't make me make decisions that I could be capriciously punished for!"

Now, I don't have a problem with process when it's virtually indistinguishable from communication. And in the term "communication," I also mean the organizational semaphore that means, "Hey, my part of this job is ready for you--go get'em tiger!"

But when process becomes less than an artifact of the most sustainable, stress-free way of getting the product out the door? Problem. Why? Because processes themselves too easily become the bulwark against having to look change straight in the eyeballs. Which makes about as much sense as Prohibition in the middle of The Roaring Twenties, I'll grant you. But an all-too-large percentage of the population have a knack for mistaking laws for mores.

Substitute "process" for laws and "corporate culture" for mores, and you'll have a sense of why tying process to product is such poor management. People come and go, which by necessity puts the culture (and its organic communications flow) in constant flux. Moreover, the ultimate end of process is product, and in my trade, the product is in flux as well. Which is the crux of the problem, particularly when process is merely another outlet for politics.

The moral of the story is to rely on process as sparingly as absolutely possible. And never, ever mistake it for management--much less real leadership.

Frivolous Friday, 01.14.2011: Song of the shovel

2011-01-14T19:09:00.000-08:00

There's a music that's made
When a white velvet falls
To lay down fresh carpets
For the Winter Queen's halls

Sadly, its melody
Woos no listener's ear,
For its tunesmiths intend
That none other should hear

Its rasps nor its scrapings
Nor its snuf'lings of nose,
As the mercury drops
And a western wind blows.

Yet on plays this minstrel
Under veiled winter moon
(Though she with two handles
Could not carry a tune),

For she thinks on the Spring,
Of lilacs and sparrows--
As the banks pile higher
And blacktop drive narrows.

Then Sisphysian toils
Have some ending in sight
(Though the plow-rolls rebuild
Themselves during the night).

So the minstrel meanwhile
With her shovel plays on,
Paying the Winter Queen
Homage of labor's song.

NIH, revisited

2011-01-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

No, not "NIH" as in "National Institute of Health," actually. What I'm talking about is the "Not Invented Here" syndrome, first (for me, anyway) outlined in a Joel On Software blog post. (No relation to the web comic of the same name. At least, not as far as I know...)

The twist on the idea that occurred to me today was: It's not even a question of trusting the borrowed/purchased code when your marching orders consist of:

1.) Copy.
2.) Paste.
3.) Edit.
4.) Profit!

Rather, it's a question of what I call "borrowed expectations." Because Step #4--in my experience, anyway--is entirely predicated on the assumption, "It shouldn't take you that long." Or at least, "This should be a no-brainer." As a programmer, either of those phrases should set off the equivalent of Yellow Alert in your brain. I hesitate to put any hard numbers to it, but, after the last week, my gut's version of Algebra suggests taking your default "sandbag factor" and applying it every time you hear one of the above phrases (or a variation thereof).

In other words, if you usually sandbag by 25%--i.e. have a sandbag factor of 1.25--then you take your original time estimate and multiply it by 1.25 every single time someone informs you that "...all you need to do is..." or "...So-and-so's already done 99% of the work for you..." or "...all you and QA need to worry about is..."

All such key-phrases? Horse-hockey.

All of them.

Why? Because of a simple logical inference that should be--but mostly isn't--burned into any programmer's synapses from the get-go: Legacy Code => Constraints. In purely Algebraic terms, the correlation between the two is linear--if you're lucky. To wit: Remember how they taught you in Health Class that when you sleep with a person, you're sleeping with all their former partners and the partners of those partners all the way back to Adam and Eve? Yeah. Well, include-files (and the implicit--and often unfathomable--design decisions they implement) are basically All That And a Bag of Chips(TM @garyvee), too. Except that, with code, abstinence isn't an option: 'Nuff said.

Now, I'm not saying that there isn't a time and a place for code re-use. Actually, make that "times" and "places." I'm merely decrying the eternal optimism that such reuse embodies--even in people whose experience should be telling them--at mega-decibel volumes--that the statistical liklihood of it being "just that simple" is on par with lightning strikes, shark attacks, penny-stock billionaires and the like. Thus, arm yourself accordingly. With sandbagging, documentation (of every--cough--"unforeseen" complication), the appropriate "I told you so"s and so forth.

Look. I adore the office Alpha-Geek, and would trust him (and the majority of my co-workers) with my cat, houseplants, etc. But there are limits, and the afore-mentioned borrowed expectations of already-written-and-tested code numbers among them. There's just something about that that confounds even the left-most of left-brainers. And it's best that aspiring programmers (as well as those who work with them) recognize that. And react accordingly. And, whenever possible, don't wait to merely react; bake it into Standard Operating Prodedure.

Frivolous Friday, 01.07.2011: Disrupting technology

2011-01-07T19:18:00.000-08:00

Not "disruptive technology," mind you. I would have titled this "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective PITAs," 'cept I'm sure that sort of thing's been done to death. But here are seven nearly fail-safe ways of making sure technology doesn't happen according to plan. On behalf of my fellow programmers, pretty-please-with-fair-trade-organic-chocolate-sauce-on-top don't use any of them. Ever. Thank you.

1.) Be the Baby Duck. "Imprint" on the programmer who wrote the code. Never mind that absolutely no one else is experiencing the problem--even with your login. Never mind that you have eminently more qualified desktop/network support personnel at your disposal. Obviously, the problem is in the code, not your computer--and don't let that lazy code-monkey tell you otherwise!

2.) Bug the Debugger. In other words, when someone's devoting their whole attention to troubleshooting your problem, carpet-bomb their inbox/IM/voice-mail with fresh "findings," suggestions, or--failing those--drama. Bonus points if you work in the same building and can stand over their shoulder.

3.) Freak out when the program does precisely what you specified...yesterday. C'mon...you can't possibly be expected to remember what you told the programmer to make it do a whole day ago, for pity's sake! (See also #2, above.)

4.) Use technology to maximize your potential. For passive-aggressive behavior, that is. BCC the programmer's boss on all "bugs," particularly in scenarios 1-3, above. Use the bug tracking software to punish programmers who don't take your drama seriously enough, and circumvent it for those who do. When sending meeting invitations, trust the popularity barometer you honed in middle school.

5.) Save the biggest decisions for last. Obviously, that's not always realistic. Sometimes decisions accidentally make themselves. In those cases, whatever else you do, do not share them until it's absolutely unavoidable. Otherwise, how could you possibly expect to inject any sense of urgency into the schedule?

6.) Always remember that "Consistency is the hob-goblin of little minds." It's true. Some Famous Dead White Guy(tm) whose stuff you had to read in college totally said that. Which gives you carte blanche for changing your mind in the middle of filling out the spreadsheet that'll be imported into the database. 'Cuz all data is created equal, right?

7.) You only have time for real-time. To wit: The only time for paying attention to new features, enhancements, fixes, etc., is after they've been deployed into the cloud, burned to a gazillion CDs, blessed by the App Store, yadayadayada. Not in the proof-of-concept stage. Not in QA. Not in Beta. Oh, nononononononono... After all, you were changing the specifications right up until D-Day, so why would you ever--in your right mind, even--waste your time reviewing anything before then?

- - - - -

Credits: Big ups to Dennis for #7. (Now scampering off to hang my head in shame for not thinking of that one right off the bat.)

Rough edges and revolution

2011-01-04T17:33:00.000-08:00

Silicon Prairie News posted footage from Clay Shirky's "Institutions vs. Collabloration" TED talk. I thought it was a little weird that a 2005 talk would be considered 2011 news, but I watched it. Mainly because Cognitive Surplus was easily the best book I read in 2010--no contest.

A highly worthwhile 20 minutes, no question. But the takeaway for me was this line: "If it's really a revolution, it doesn't take us from Point A to Point B. It takes us from Point A to chaos." Which is precisely what makes revolutions inherently terrifying to all but the preternaturally nimble-footed and natural-born adrenaline junkies. That's why historians love them--the revolutions themselves as well as their navigators (and cheekiest stowaways). All from a safe distance, naturally.

The problem, though, is we're used to analyzing revolutions in Cliff Notes format. Connections are oversimplified; correlation too closely resembles causation. Even in the best history. In the worst, historicism itself is replaced by the cult of personality. As the internet revolution creeps to toward the end of its second decade, you see the "biography" of the revolution unfolding through its cast of characters:

* Mark Andreeson taking credit for Netscape
* Bill Gates issuing the "Pearl Harbor Day" memo that amounted to assisted suicide for Netscape
* Jeff Bezos and Tony Hsieh re-inventing retailing
* Brin & Page founding an unlikely search empire on the premise "Don't be Evil"
* Steve Jobs' (now-predictable) "...one more thing..."
* Ashton Kucher racing CNN to a million Twitter followers
* The Social Network: 'nuff said.

And, naturally, the graveyard is full of sock-puppets, buzzwords, dancing hamsters, Dow 50,000 predictions, much sticky residue from the IPO effervescence, Rick-rolled videos, Friendster, Dean-screams and so much more. That's the story we'll tell our kids, assuming we can unplug them from whatever gadgets connect them to their tribes and alternate lives. The revolution will have a tidy narrative.

In political revolutions, backing the winning side (multiple times if necessary) is the key to survival. Just ask Messieur Tallyrand. In revolutions powered by economics (e.g. the industrial revolution) or technology (e.g. the printing press, to use Shirky's example), backing the wrong platform doesn't seem to be quite the mistake that mistaking its context is. One solution never fits an entire family of problems. The strictest law of any change is the Law of Unintended Consequences. That sort of thing.

I'm not knocking knowing, even mastering a given technology or platform--far from it. The more (and longer) you have to learn, the easier it should become to unlearn and move on. Understanding context even as it shifts is (as we say in programming) "platform independent," but not bothering to understand the platform(s) du jour is too much like letting the mob sweep you into its madness. Mobs typically have a single goal, typically miopic, and rather often sidetracked in the end. Those who incite them don't always come to fairytale endings, largely a result of the same short-sightedness.

But historical metaphors aside, the main thing to fear in any technological revolution is the tendency toward incrementalization, optimization, of doing more of the same with fewer resources. There's a time and place for that, but not when you can see people struggling to file the rough, freaky angles off new-ish forms and pound them into old pidgeonhole concepts. Witness Google's spats with China and the Wall Street Journal, Matthew Drudge and/or Julian Assange vs. mainstream media, Comcast vs. Netflix, Tivo vs. advertisers, etc.

Freaky edges, after all, are the instructive parts, the DNA mutations that or may not live long enough to make a new species, the street-corner prophets. And we are trained from kindergarten--perhaps even before--to shut our ears and eyes to them. But unless you have a failsafe plan to smuggle yourself and the family jewels to a safe country, that's no way to survive any revolution.

Frivolous Friday, 12.31.2010: Insomnia...

2010-12-31T20:50:00.000-08:00

...subtitled, The Things Geeks Wonder About as They're Trying to Fall Asleep. Well, this particular geek, anyway.

Why didn't marketers think to call it "oystershell" packaging? (Pearls + seafood > seafood by itself--am I right?)

Why did it take a whole generation to finish Death Star 1.0, when 2.0 was operational in something like three years?

When cordless mice outnumber ones with tails, can we start calling them "hamsters"?

How many C programmers reflectively invoke the increment operator in "C++" and (mentally) call the language "D"?

Wasn't MI6 (in the Bond films) rather short-sighted to have a thousand special agent numbers (000 - 999) but only 26 letters for command/support staff (e.g. "M" and "Q")? And where does "Moneypenny" fit into all this anyway?

Are Java classes considered "illegitimate" because they can only have one parent?

When the screen of Enterprise's bridge is being used for videoconferencing, how is anyone supposed to drive?

Speaking of which...am I the only one who thinks that the "Starfield" screen-saver would be 1000% better with the occasional swipe of a windshield wiper?

When my COBOL prof. reminisced about computer memory being "a buck a byte," was that just because "two bits" is retro. slang for twenty-five cents?

How will Superman's changing-room and Dr. Who's Tardis be plausible in a world of mobile phones?

What would happen if you used Romulan Ale as the chaser for a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster?

Another programming/real-world intersection

2010-12-30T20:36:00.000-08:00

At the moment, the house smells of cedar chest and banana bread, both tell-tale signs that someone was on a domestic roll today. But, rightly, that roll was supposed to stop much sooner than it actually did. That it didn't was largely a matter of not respecting dependencies. That and certain "might as well get it out from underfoot while I'm thinking about it" tendencies that will forever bar me from the "agile"/"lean" programming clubhouse.

For context: In software development (particularly the planning and scheduling parts of it), a "dependency" is pretty much what it sounds like: One bit of work can't proceed before another one is finished. When you're a one-woman band, as I so often am, it's mostly a non-issue--at least in the sense that it's not, technically, wasting time if different tasks take more or less time than expected. I can only do one of them at a time anyway.

Of course, when more than one person is involved, that's where timing becomes crucial to figure out. If Programmer A takes longer than expected to complete a "dependency," Programmer B could be twiddling his thumbs doing busywork until A finishes. Similarly, (albeit less likely), should Programmer A finishes her dependency before B expects it, she could be twiddling her thumbs if no one has her slated to pick up on anything else.

In today's case, constraining factors were the limited daylight (for shoveling) and not paying close enough attention to the clock or watch (for the washer/tryer cycles). I'd add the cat's nap schedule (because he was due for a thorough brushing), except I don't think any scheduling methodology in existence (including my gut instinct) could handle the near-quantum nature of the nap/not-nap duality that is His Doodness. The saving grace was that there was more than plenty of picking and putting and sweeping and dish-washing and random acts of organization. Thus, it was a productive day.

All the same, I'm dismayed that five years of estimating are as (apparently) as much gut instinct for non-programming projects as they are in software development. Except that this time, my gut forgot to remind me to sandbag appropriately.

Smart phones, dumb decisions

2010-12-29T18:46:00.000-08:00

I was fortunate enough to receive a few CDs to feed to the iPod, which I haven't updated in a few months. Which served as a reminder that iTunes counts how many times a track's been played. Because you know as well as I do that if that information's not being shipped back to the Mother Ship in Cupertino now, it will be. Although, upon further review, I've been accused of any number of things, but having any taste or consistency in music has not been one of them. Which means that I'm figuratively weeing in the data pool. Hee.

Certainly, knowing makes me complicit in Apple's eavesdropping--no question. But the idea of smartphone apps monetizing not only what I'm doing but where I'm doing it is orders of magnitude creepier. And more infuriating.

Frankly, this time I'm cheering for the lawyers and tobacco-settlement-scale penalties. Why? Because it's the only recourse in a world where the mobile companies have been given carte blanche by the current FCC, with its successors no more likely to curb abuses. Because, you know, forbidding software makers to pimp their paying customers to advertisers would "hurt competitiveness," "stifle innovation," and "cost jobs." (Because the oligarchs are already doing a bang-up job of that all by themselves, thank you very little.)

The notion that the free market will correct it is laughable. First, the four-way oligopoly in smartphone platforms will eventually be three--probably sooner than we imagine. (My money's on Microsoft dropping out before RIM goes belly-up.) Moreover, how many tens of millions of iPhones have been sold to people who couldn't possibly have missed AT&T's Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern collusion with warrantless surveillance?

Which brings me to my last thought: If the government were collecting that level of detail on peeps, we'd morph into a nation of mobile Luddites. Yet, as we (collectively) should have groked in 2006, that data is only one network connection connection or data dump away from being in the NSA's hands...and being classified as "state secrets." Why on earth would that single degree of separation make a difference in anyone's mind?

Which is why I believe that, even if the plaintiffs came away with a pittance and some of the co-defendents are driven out of business by a heavy-handed damages award, it'll be the best thing to happen to the market. And to set the precedent that privacy is a right, not a privilege that can be rescinded with a vague clause in the clickwrap weasel-ese.

A (cynical) thought on maintenance vs. new development

2010-12-28T18:29:00.000-08:00

I don't know many programmers who care for scut-work maintenance coding, but it does--typically--have one huge upside: Most of the decisions have already been made. Yes, I realize that has creativity-stifling connotations. Yet, to me, it seems to be a touchstone of new, groundbreaking development that everyone wants in on the glamor of designing without the responsibility for making the final call(s). Let's just say that when you find yourself in a meeting time-warp, listening to the same parties having the same arguments to avoid facing the same--now costlier--decisions, you can appreciate a spate of mindless drudgery.

As long as it's a short spate, anyway.

The trick, naturally, is to switch it up--think of it as balancing cardio and weight-lifting, if that helps. Cardio is boring (sometimes even with podcasts) And if you're working in a caste system that consistently has the same crowd on maintenance and the the other clique on shiny new development, it's a a red flag, IMO. Personally, I can only consider it "optimizing" if you're looking to develop dysfunctional habits--in individuals as well as the organization.

The subtext of an important anniversary

2010-12-27T18:35:00.000-08:00

If it were only a question of missing a birthday--even one with such a memorable date--I'd still be mightily embarrassed. But I must 'fess up to the fact that I didn't know about it until today. It turns out that this past Saturday was the 20th birthday of the World Wide Web, in the sense that Sir Tim Berners-Lee uploaded the first web page on that day in 1990 (after concocting hypertext earlier that year).

Although the actual day of the year pales in significance to the event itself, I don't think it's entirely irrelevant. If you adhere to a particular religion, you might speculate that someone was blowing off his duty to interact with family that day. Me, I prefer to project no further than my understanding of the binary character of the last week of the year. To wit: That week tends to be either: a.) A complete write-off, or b.) A bubble of productivity that defies--yea, blithely spits in the eye of--the laws of time.

The difference is in the hustle, I suppose. Given the realities of the workaday world (with its inbox-bombing, meetings held simply because that's what we do every Monday at eight, darnitalready, its cat-herding and/or consensus-building, fire-fighting, etc.), I might as easily find myself writing this post on Valentine's Day of next year. (Or St. Patrick's Day. Or Memorial Day. Or Independence Day. You get the idea...)

(On December 25, 1990, I was six days away from owning my first computer (an Epson 8088 with two 5.25" floppy drives and a CGA monochrome monitor). That was an upgrade from the second-hand IBM Selectric my friend P. had found for me. Not to knock the Selectric, mind you--as a keyboard snob, I can assure you that it spoiled me for life. That being said, it was an upgrade I imagined would be invaluably useful to my career as a freelance writer. In that aspect, at least, I can compare myself to Sir Tim: Dreams are like children in that they rarely turn out to be what you intended. That, and they can have children of their own for the next iteration of that story...)

Navel-gazing aside, I thought the anniversary was too important to leave trampled by the other obligations of this time of year. And, if nothing else, the web's underpinnings will be 21 come next Christmas. Which is as good a reason as I can think of to raise a glass--if I'm safely home, of course--to (legally) raise a toast to its birthday.

Another use for source control

2010-12-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

I picked up on some code files I haven't looked at in a few weeks. Cross checking a few "Last Modified" dates against the "Received" and "Sent" dates in an email thread, I quickly realized that it was easier to just fire up a command line and punch in a few Mercurial commands to answer questions like:

Have I made any changes since I "saved" the last round of tweaks/fixes/etc.?

What files did the last round of changes hit? What did I say about them when I checked them in? (Does what I said then even make sense now?)

When did I do that?

When you live cheek-by-jowl with the same code-base week-in and week-out, the brain tends to make its own bookmarks and annotations. Or, at least my brain tends to do that. Longer lapses are a different matter, and that's one instance where such "by-product" data from the process of using source control comes in terribly handy at times. The trivial amount of time spent pushing (commented!) changesets to the repository for safe-keeping, in my opinion, more than pays for the lack of thrashing around when it's time to pick up where you left off.

Frivolous Friday, 12.24.2010: Failed game concepts

2010-12-24T11:05:00.000-08:00

(Blame Dennis--who spent much of last night playing with the local board game peeps--for this one.)

Veggieland - Apparently, Bussells sprouts, lima beans, kale, broccoli and the like don't lend themselves to kindergarten playtime so much as colorful sugar. Who knew?

Connect Phi - Even the original market segment (young math nerds) couldn't fathom how to make black or red markers add up to an irrational number.

Commune - Focus group players quickly bored of the lack of competition when required to share all dividends and windfalls equally among players. Also, the silver "car" player marker had been replaced by a tandem bike--and, really, where's the fun of squabbling over who gets that, I ask you.

Madoff: The Game - Apparently, being fleeced in a Ponzi scheme isn't fun, even when you know that's the whole point.

Autopsy - This edgier remake of Operation failed to impress its targeted "morbid teen" demographic despite appropriately graphic playing pieces (bullets, perforated bowel, smoker's lung, etc.)

Miners of Catan - Test players despaired of building enough tunnels to trade coal for food at the company store before having to put their young children to work or dying of black lung.

Urban Myth Pursuit - Critical thinkers, fans of Snopes.com, and the generally well-informed fared poorly at this game, although the "compulsive email forwarder" demographic showed some promise.

Scooby Clue - Although the prospect of "those darned kids" turning on each other with accusations of murder appealed to many testers, the mystery mansion mashup never garnered much credibility, what with with the go-go boots, psychedelic van parked in the carriage house and all.

The accidental marketer

2010-12-23T21:12:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know this is a First World Problem, and please don't get me wrong: I like giving. But wrapping presents? [shudder] At this time of year in particular, it becomes metaphor for everything that's wrong with our credit-fueled, bling-obsessed culture. (Not to mention how it rubs my nose in the fact that I've again knuckled under. Also in how very much I suck at it: Oh, it should be a matter of trivial geometry--that is, until the paper expands and shrinks while I cut it. Tricksy paper--it hatesss usss, yess it doess, my precioussss...) I could bang on about the superficiality, the waste, the mind-boggling non sequitur that is the stick-on bow, but let's take the obvious for granted, shall we?

Sadly, the era when cardboard wrapping paper cores could be "repurposed" in light-sabre duels ended circa 1984--timing I blame more on the fact that my (non-geek) sister turned 14 and thus, by definition, too cool for such antics than the fact that Return of the Jedi was soooo 1983. ('Cuz', really, the Empire was toast, Darth Vader made his deathbed return to The Light Side, Leia and Han were finally going to have a chance to "do it," Luke was officially a Jedi, blahblahblah. For love of The Force, how much more closure do you geeks need anyway??!!)

But I digress.

It didn't help my opinion of how I spent a chunk of this evening when I realized that I, in essence, was marketing--and not necessarily in the best of ways. Obviously, printed paper and bows bling things up. (Dennis' Aunt used to forgo tags for writing the recipients' names in glitter--a custom quickly put out to pasture when she and his uncle adopted one, then two daughters.) Then, too, there's the element of artificial mystery created by disguising the contents. (Dad--the eternal practical joker--took that to an extreme with my Stepmom by nesting a jewelery within a matroishka doll of boxes--all the way up to cardboard that had once held a washing machine.)

But, for me, the most soul-sucking aspect is the pointless herd-following. Which makes it like so much other "marketing." Like the full page ad in the--dying--New York Times. A float in the Macy's parade. The eponymous stadium. The Facebook "fan page" that's only followed by other spammers. The CEO's blog that hasn't been updated (by the CEO's personal assistant, naturally) since 2004. The Twitter account that consists mainly of Foursquare-esque check-ins to the office. Robo-calling and spamming and catalog-bombing a one-time customer relentlessly enough to drive her/him into the arms of the competitor...assuming s/he ever needs such a product again.

That sort of thing. Depressing, really. Maybe I'm extrapolating the simile too much. I'm not above "recycling" wrapping paper--Dennis picks on me for it, in fact--but honestly, wouldn't it just be easier on everyone if we'd just save a small stack of "holiday" grocery store bags for gift-wrapping and call it good? Anyone with me? Anybody?

Reality check

2010-12-22T18:19:00.000-08:00

Today's mail included an envelope from my credit card company, marked "Account Information Enclosed." This being about bill-time, I opened it to find a(nother) round of "blank checks"--or as we call them, "shredder food." Granted, throwing them directly into the trash could be bad, so it's just as well that I didn't blow the envelope off. But "account information"? Seriously?

Now, it doesn't sound like the big banks have too many problems these days, but a trust deficit is definitely one of them. Direct-mail chicanery doesn't help. And if a bank's business model relies--even partially--on gullibility and impulsiveness, do I really want to do business with it? Just sayin'...

Metrics that miss the point

2010-12-21T19:35:00.000-08:00

One of the key differences between Twitter and Facebook seems to be the nature of the ecosystem that's grown up around each. Facebook seems to favor a big-tent kind of mentality--providing, of course, that they sell you the canvas. Twitter's much looser: They own the campground, metaphorically speaking, but don't seem to impose too many other restrictions as long as you're not waking people with tribal drumming and howling at the moon at two in the morning.

Different folks will of course find differing value in each ethos, of course. But they are, mostly, mutually exclusive. Say what you will about dialectic and synthesis, but I strongly feel that applying the rules of one to the mechanisms of the other is foolhardy.

Tonight @JakeWobegon tweeted about running afoul of a Twitter account that, for all practical purposes, has hired a doorman--and a snooty one at that. It's called TrueTwit. (Aside: I'd like to take this moment to congratulate the person who dreamed up the name b/c sixty-one million Brits--not to mention those of us who grew up on PBS BBC rebroadcasts--are now snickering up their/our sleeves at you. Good job.) But anyhoo...the basic idea behind the service is to "validate" those who would follow your tweets to make sure they don't associate with "the wrong crowd," as Mummy would say over tea and crumpets.

Yes, yes, I know: Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas and All That, but it's Twitter, for pete's sake! Anyone who knows half of anything about the way it works is aware of two salient facts:

Peeps don't monitor followers in real real-time (and block the spammers and other unsavory types).
Peeps who obsess about the quality of their followers never mentally graduated from middle school and shouldn't be followed anyway.

More to the point, it's not like their spam/porn shows up in your tweetstream until you follow them. Yeah, you get a sample when you block them, and that can make you want to boil your screen--I get it. But for anyone who pines for a more...ah curated...browsing experience, may I suggest building a time machine and porting yourself back to AOL circa 1996? I really think you'll be happier that way.

That's not to say that I don't actively block the obvious spammers, porn-bots or those whose (ahem!) "agendas" are diametrically opposed to my weltanshauung. But that's something I take responsibility for doing. The ones fishing for knee-jerk follow-backs normally take care of themselves. But everyone else--so far as I'm concerned, anyway--is doing me a favor.

But as much as I seem to be tilting at a strawman here, my main--and much larger--point is that "followers" can easily become valued followees, and no algorithmic metric can compete with spending a little time profile-surfing and coming to a rational judgement--sometimes only even a gut feeling before making the keep/block call. That, and if you're to important to "groom" your Twitter entourage yourself, you should probably hire a real person to do it for you.

Postcard from an alternative Universe

2010-12-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

(At least it sure feels like it.) After several years on using Ubuntu as my go-to operating system at home and on the road I'm recycling a Windows XP box (purchased in 2003) to use as a test web server.

Ooof, what a pain! (I speak in relative terms, of course). It doesn't help that it's been over half a decade since I officially impersonated a system administrator, either. Windows itself installed--albeit slowly due to the older hardware. After installation, I was greeted with an interface that even Playskool would consider "chunky." That's where the handy-dandy Dell driver CD comes in. That thing boots from CD, but because of the monitor resolution--and probably the fact that it leans a little heavily toward "landscape" than it does "portrait"--some of the window is cut off. And by "some" I mean "most," you understand. That included any buttons for installing said drivers--most importantly the video-flavored ones that would let me see the parts of the window that would let me install them.

Sigh.

In the end, it probably took me fifteen minutes to figure out how to even access the video driver files, realize that the driver CD wasn't really "installing" the driver. (Rather, it unzipped a bunch of files--including to the hard drive, where I had to locate the Setup.exe file and run it.) So, once I installed the drivers, rebooted, set the screen resolution to something I could work with, installed the network drivers and rebooted again, spelled out my internet connection information for Windows, it was time to venture out on the internet and grab Service Pack 2 (and hope that no one was prowling my neck of Teh Internets for unpatched systems).

First run at Service Pack 2 didn't go so well--Windows Update basically freaked out on me. At the time of writing, I'm on my second try and it seems to be progressing now. After that, it'll be off to install an Apache Web server, its PHP plugin, the MySQL database server, plus a few amenities for the comfort and convenience of your faithful blogger. If I'm lucky, that'll only chew up the rest of my evening.

Now, I realize that it's not fair at all to compare the 2003 version of Windows XP (customized or no) to the 2010 versions of Ubuntu. I'm too much a Hufflepuff for that. Also, two separate versions of Ubuntu died out somewhere before or during hard-drive reformatting, which basically left me with an oversized patio brick where a PC used to be. (In retrospect, I should have grabbed a Mandrake CD from the same era to see what would happen. Alas, I didn't think of that until just now.) But if there were a comparison to be made between installing a vintage operating system and childbirth--in the sense of forgetting how awful it was until it's too late--this would be an opportune moment.

And thus I find myself down the rabbit-hole, through the looking-glass, or whatever 19th century Brit. Lit. memes my gentle reader cares to resurrect. By which I mean wishing that installing a reasonably secure and usable operating system were a matter of popping a single CD into the drive. Of wistfully thinking of how dropping a web server, PHP support and a database can done by typing one single line of code into a command-prompt. Of having to make a mental note to go into the firewall and punch a hole or two in it for the web server & friends. And--for pity's sake--wishing that this whole process didn't require so darned many iterations and reboots.

Call me spoiled. But whatever you do, don't categorically slag the Linux user experience. At least not when I'm within earshot.

Technical difficulties - no post tonight

2010-12-19T19:26:00.000-08:00

What should have been a no-brainer bare-bones installation of Ubuntu and a web server for testing has turned into a right pain, for which--based on the evidence presented thus far--I'm currently inclined to blame Dell hardware. But the error-and-trial has wiped out my budgeted writing time. (And then some.)

Until tomorrow...

A new "golden ratio" for the age of outsourcing

2010-12-18T21:59:00.000-08:00

No doubt, I've harped on this theme before, but it came around to bite me again this past week--which clearly means The Universe at Large isn't heeding my rants--shocking as that may seem. [insert sarcastic eyeroll]

The backstory is that the client in question--so far as I can tell, anyway--staffs its I/T department almost exclusively with vendors (meaning temps). Mind you, I'm not slagging temp. employees: I've been there, done that and ragged out the t-shirt for good measure. But is it ever obvious when the contracts expire! That's when I stroll into work, to be greeted by emails (from their third shift) telling me to fix data in a system to which I have absolutely zero direct access.

You'd think that by this point, I'd have a boilerplate response filed away on a shared drive by now. But, apparently, I'm a slow learner. So I merely direct the "newbie" to the proper channels (i.e. the "upstream" application that actually generates the data) and make a point of carbon-copying the person who reported the original issue. Normally, that's the last I hear of it. Until the next contract renewal, anyway.

If it were a question of the company pissing away its intellectual capital in false economies, I'd shrug and dismiss them with a simple, "Good shuttance, ya mouth-breathing, bean-counting wankers." But the fact is that they're offloading some of that cost to "my" balance-sheet via the "free" training I provide to fill the vacuum of organizational know-how.

I suppose there's a rule-of-thumb metric buried in here somewhere that has to do with the ratio of temps vs. "real" employees one works with. And, while I wouldn't presume to interpret the actual significance of that ratio for any given situation, I do think it's a number worth tracking--regularly and for the long haul. Granted, it can't match the real "golden ratio" for sheer nerdtastic coolness. But if you find yourself in the position of having to triage clients, I think that there are few better indicators of the health & longevity of a business relationship.

Two weeks' notice

2010-12-17T21:10:00.000-08:00

(No, that doesn't quite mean what it usually means. But let's start at the beginning.)

To my gentle reader and honored guest in my little slice of the blogosphere:

It is times like these that make me wish I'd kept the receipts for my college English degree so that I could ask for a refund. Simply because UWEC did not teach me the vocabulary or grammar or style equal to the task of saying "thank you" for the inspiration that comes from knowing that someone might actually find the time to read this mulligan stew of rants, paeons, geek-outs, musings, pontification, navel-gazing, and intermittent loopiness.

As I see it, there are only two ways to write: As if no one's reading, and as if everyone is. Having done both, I can fairly say that the latter option is infinitely more rewarding, particularly when you have the privilege of knowing and/or interacting with some of the folks who--figuratively--stand over your shoulder every single day. It's an amazing feeling, and--selfishly--I don't want to give that up.

So what I'm thinking is to keep it honest by keeping to a regular schedule--a minimum of two days per week. I'm picking Tuesday, for tasters, because poor Tuesday seems to be the red-headed stepchild of the week. Plus, of course, Frivolous Friday. More than anything because I'm a sucker for "tradition," however spurious.

To circle back to the start, I want to again thank you, gentle reader, for having someone to write for, every night of the week, for well over a year. For me, at least, it's been quite the journey so far. And I would be honored to continue it with you, albeit on a somewhat different schedule.

Frivolous Friday, 12.17.2010: Shiny Bowl Blues

2010-12-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

First, the backstory (which, incidentally, has bupkis to do with the usual fare around here). Our cat came to us as a stray. Despite five years of two--sometimes three--solid meals a day, he still acts like he doesn't know where his next meal's coming from.

A couple weeks ago, Dennis & I could hear the percussion his metal bowl makes as he drives it against the wall while polishing it to a mirror finish. I remarked to Dennis that if either of us had any musical talent, we could write a tune to that beat, maybe even roadhouse blues as if the cat had written it. The idea stuck with me, and, well, here you have it--written with my furry muse purring on my lap, no less...

- - - - -

Shiny Bowl Blues (by the Deputy Kibble-bringer)

I was strolling through the shady grass
On a sunny August day,
When a lady stopped to scratch my ears
And pretty soon led me astray.
She carried me off to her place:
I thought I was on a roll,
Never believing I'd be staring
Down into a shiny bowl.

Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk,
Goes my bowl against the wall.
I'm always hoping to scrape up more,
Though I know I ate it all.
In this life I could only win
By having nothing left to lose,
Meanwhile, I'll nap and I'll wash and then nap some more...
And sing me the shiny bowl blues.

Oh, I know that I'm a handsome guy:
Can't blame her for taking me in.
Five years on, I'm sleek and well-groomed,
Though maybe now not quite so trim.
I could admire this face all day,
From its ear-tips to kibble-hole,
But it looks so sad peering up at me
From inside a shiny bowl.

Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk,
Goes my bowl against the wall.
I'm always hoping to scrape up more,
Though I know I ate it all.
In this life I could only win
By having nothing left to lose,
Meanwhile, I'll nap and I'll wash and then nap some more...
And sing me the shiny bowl blues.

From my windows I can see
Rabbits frolicking on the grass,
And you know the mice are tastier
On the other side of the glass.
For the taste of Squirrel Al Fresco
To Basement Cat I'd pawn my soul.
But I can only stalk the critter
Who lives in my shiny bowl.

Ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk,
Goes my bowl against the wall.
I'm always hoping to scrape up more,
Though I know I ate it all.
In this life I could only win
By having nothing left to lose,
Meanwhile, I'll nap and I'll wash and then nap some more...
And sing me the shiny bowl blues.