LiveJournal Project - H2 2007

Yeah, I know, I still haven't finished 2005. I don't really want to finish 2005, because I know how it ends, so I'm putting that one off until last.

Date: 2007-07-09 19:38
Subject: The monthly update.
So, the big news of the last 30 days is that _purpleglitter_ and I took a trip to Cancun for the 4th of July. We stayed at one of those all-inclusive resorts (http://www.palaceresorts.com -- we stayed at Moon Palace) where you can eat and drink and do all kinds of activities for one fixed fee, with taxes and tips and all that good shit included as well. Given that I've had a pretty stressful month at work with email servers crashing and switching off of MS Exchange to Zimbra and all of the pain that went with it, my goal for this trip was to do as close to nothing as possible. Eat, sleep, play in the water, and get totally plowed. For the first three days, it appeared that I was on target to accomplish my goals (although I didn't really feel like getting trashed so the drunken stupor never actually came about). I slept, I went to the spa for a massage, ate some sushi (yes, I ate sushi in Mexico - and you know, it was surprisingly good) and all kinds of other stuff, played mini-golf (and lost both times, unfortunately) on the resort's built-in course, and just generally forgot about the rest of the world. No email, no cell phone, no nothing. Sounds good, doesn't it?

Well, you know what they say about all good things coming to an end. On Saturday, we went to Wet n' Wild, a water park that was down the coast from us. Those of you that have met me know that my skin is pretty pale, and in general, it only comes in two colors: white and red. So I slathered on the SPF-70 sunblock and got flushed down the Space Bowl, swirled around the Twister, and floated on down the lazy river, hoping for the best. 5 hours later, we were back at the resort and happily, my sunburn was minimal. We had dinner at the resort's fancy Mexican restaurant, where I proceeded to have the best Mexican food (hey, go figure, good Mexican food in Mexico!) that I've ever had. All was going well until about 10pm that night, and then it hit me.

I guess the Mexican gods share the Greek/Roman gods' distaste for hubris, and I suppose I had it coming, since I wrote out a postcard to my mom saying that I had eaten the food and drank the water and didn't get Montezuma's Revenge. I had nasty chills mixed in with being feverish, a sore back, sore legs, and the need to get up every hour and ten minutes to use the bathroom. What was I doing in said bathroom? Well, think "Montezuma's Revenge" and it should speak for itself. The next day, when we got up to leave, I was feeling somewhat better as far as the fever/chills went, but still achy all over and still heading to the bathroom on a pretty regular basis to shit brown water. I think I used the bathroom at Sky Harbor three or four times between the time we landed and the time we got through customs and to the car. Yikes. The chills and fever came back last night, running up to about 102F, at which point it was met with an onslaught of Tylenol and orange juice.

Decided to work from home today on the chance that whatever I've got is contagious (my current hypothesis is that I got food poisoning from the hamburger I ate for lunch at the water park, since that's the only thing that I ate that was substantially different from what Cory ate and also because it's the only thing I ate that wasn't from the resort directly), and although I actually don't feel too sick, well, the gastrointestinal distress would suggest otherwise. I called the "nurse-on-call" service that's provided by my health insurance to ask whether or not they thought I should just get some Imodium and be done with it or go to the doctor, and I was told that I should make an appointment to go see the doc. So that's on the agenda for tomorrow. At least I'm not purging from both ends.

So, you might think that, in the end, the trip to Cancun left me with a bad feeling about Mexico, but that's not the case at all. I would definitely go back; I would just be a little bit more selective about eating stuff that wasn't cooked at a 4-star resort. The funny thing is that of the two of us, Cory is the one that usually has food issues, and I'm the one with the iron stomach. Oh well. I guess I'm on the parasite diet for a few days. =/

Here are a few pictures...

And here are the full-size versions

I think this one is my overall favorite. (full-size image linked here - file is 2.2MB) I love night photography and screwing with longer exposure times and such.

In other news, we got a new bed. We'd been talking about it for at least a year; a week ago my back was hurting to the point where I was finally fed up enough to go down to the bed store and buy what I should have bought in 2004 when I got the bed that we hate. So we're now the happy owners of a Tempur-Pedic. It really does live up to the hype - I sleep better, I don't wake up sore, I don't have that sagging feeling in the middle because the bed has over-conformed to the weight in my ass (although I guess there's less of that going around these days), and overall I can say that it was money well-spent.

In other other news... My job has gone from suck to blow. There are really a lot of ups and downs with this place - sometimes it's great, sometimes it's not so great, and sometimes it's mind-numbingly bad. This is one of those times. The president of the company has decided that he wants to do a little experimental reorganization of some people to try to help us be more effective at client support. I'm one of the people that's involved -- basically, I'm now supposed to dedicate up to half of my time to client support sys/netadmin duties. Why is this a problem? Two reasons. First, when I agreed to stay on and not go to Google, one of the stipulations is that I would have time to research new product ideas, new technologies, and the like - things like Second Life, or running my own OpenVZ vs. VMware benchmarks, etc -- basically, as Director of IT, I'm supposed to be spending time figuring out ways to make things run better, faster, cooler, or whatever. As it is, I already spend about ZERO time on that because I'm busy with other shit. So now they're going to give me additional duties that are supposed to take precedence above everything else, which means that some of the already late higher-priority stuff will get pushed down, and my non-existent research time will become that much more of an ephemeral flight of fancy. Fuck, instead of having zero research time, I'll have negative research time. I suppose I could work more hours, but I refuse to put in more than 40 hours per week to chase someone else's dream. They pay me reasonably well to show up and do my job, but given that an acquisition scenario for the company is 3 to 5 years out, and given that I don't have a lot of stock options, there is no light at the end of the tunnel, no decent payoff that people working for a startup might expect -- so what reason do I have to even stay long enough to see the three founders of the company and the investors make a bunch of cash while the rest of us will probably only see enough to buy a Rolex. Bust my ass for 3-5 years for a $20k payoff? Yeah, right. $500k guaranteed is the minimum it would take in order for me to bust my ass. Anyway, I digress.... The second reason why I'm pissed off about this - it's supposed to be a two-month experiment, and not intended to be permanent. But I'm sure all of you are well aware of how these things have a way of sticking. The point of the experiment is to figure out what roles we need to hire for, but since they're only projecting that the duties assigned to me would take up 1/2 a full-time person, you know they're not going to hire someone to take it over, since all of the other new roles require at least a full-time person.

If I quit tomorrow and we stayed here in Phoenix, with my current contract-work income remaining constant (which it probably wouldn't - but it wouldn't go up enough to offset the loss of a 6-figure job) and a reign-in on the unnecessary and occasionally over-the-top spending, I have enough in savings to last me about 2.5 years - without hitting my retirement money. If I quit tomorrow, sold the house, and we moved to Vegas to live in the condo (this thing is like a pair of cement shoes weighing me down - I love the place, but having it makes certain kinds of major life decisions [like moving, going to grad school somewhere other than AZ or NV, etc.] a lot more complicated), then income from my contract work would be sufficient to pay all of the bills and I probably wouldn't have to hit the savings at all. Seems like a no-brainer, don't it? Only thing is, I don't really want to move to Vegas. (And in case you're thinking "sell the condo" - the Vegas real estate market is more or less shit, just like the rest of the country - so in order to sell it without having to write a check to pay off the mortgage, I'm going to have to wait out the downturn for probably another couple years.)

Anyway, I think that's the bulk of what's going on in my life these days. I'll see y'all again next month. =/
Music: the sound of server fans whirring
Mood: sick

Date: 2007-07-22
Subject: Fucking Over Barry Bonds for Fun and Profit
Ok, so even if you don't follow baseball (I don't), or even if you don't like baseball that much (I don't), you probably know that Barry Bonds is only a couple of bombs away from breaking Hank Aaron's all-time record of 755 home runs. You might also know that there's a current cloud of steroid use hanging over baseball, and Barry is involved in it. His trainers from BALCO labs went to jail for manufacturing and distributing two previously-undetectable steroid products, and Barry has said repeatedly that he didn't know that the stuff they were giving him was anything he wasn't supposed to take. He's under investigation by the feds for lying to a grand jury, and there are a lot of folks out there that think that he just doesn't deserve to break the record, or that he deserves a permanent asterisk by his name if he should manage to do it. Other folks believe that the commissioner of baseball, Bud Selig, ought to do something, but it's also a commonly-held belief that Bud Selig is a pussy that won't do squat.

Why does any of this matter? Well, for the most part, it doesn't, but you know, if people really believe that Barry was on the juice, and that he's a cheater that doesn't deserve his name in the record books, there's a very simple, ele way to ensure that he never reaches 755:

Don't pitch to him. EVER.

Imagine if all the managers in MLB got together and decided that EVERY TIME Barry walks to the plate, they're going to intentionally walk him or pitch around him so that he never has anything even remotely hittable to swing at. He'd never break the record, or even attain the record, because he'd never have the chance.

Too bad nobody from MLB reads this blog. =/
Mood: insomniac

Date: 2007-08-08
Subject: defcon recap
So this year's DEFCON has come and gone, and I'm back in Phoenix still trying to figure out exactly what my thoughts are on the whole experience. Rather than trying to wax poetic with some eloquent paragraphs about all of it, I'm just going to cover each item in some random fashion.

Venue: I don't really like the Riviera, because I think it lacks some of the communal aspect that was present at the Alexis Park, but I give the con staff credit for doing a better job than last year. I suppose it's to be expected, since last year was the first year they were at the Riv, and they've probably learned a lot about how to make things run more smoothly. I'd still like to see DC happen somewhere else, though.

Talks: Definitely better than last year. I probably attended more talks this year than I have in quite some time. I'm glad they had a whole track centered around tech, law, and society, since that stuff tends to interest me more than some of the hardcore technical material, although I went to a few of those, too. I didn't come away from the con with inspiration for some great idea as I have in years past, but this year I actually felt like I learned some things which would be immediately useful.

Events: Didn't really attend anything (e.g. Hacker Jeopardy) this year. Friday night was pretty low-key, and much of Saturday night was spent bouncing around a couple of parties (more on that later). My understanding from the dc-stuff list is that HJ really sucked ass this year; one of these years I'll get a team together and we'll roll over everyone.

People: Spent a good bit of time with valenfor since he'd come up from Costa Rica to attend the con and was staying with us at the condo. Also had dinner with ioerror and a few of his friends at Osaka. Pictures of that are available in _purpleglitter_'s LJ, and there are a few linked in ioerror's as well. I met some interesting new people that I would have liked to have had the opportunity to actually sit around and talk with, but it didn't really unfold that way.

Ugh: I guess I'm just going to leave it at that, although I'd like to say something about Saturday night, as it was the first time in 7 or 8 years that I went acid-tripping (and it will be at least that long before I even consider doing it again, if ever), but I'm not all that sure what I want to say in the first place. It had its moments of being a lot of fun (the first three hours), and it had its moments that I really could have done without (most of the rest of it). My general assessment of the drug remains the same: it's too much of a time commitment (10-12 hours), the mindfuck is too unpredictable, and, most of all, it just makes me hate large groups of people.

I think, going into it, the reason that I thought it would all turn out OK is that I thought that we (those of us who partook in the festivities) might have all found some low-key place to hang out and discuss life, the universe, and everything, but instead we ended up bouncing around a couple of parties which were entertaining for a little while but ultimately too filled with people, obnoxious music, and just a general feeling on my part that I would have preferred to be somewhere else. Unfortunately, no one else seemed to want to leave. Add to that what I said above plus the fact that I'm simply not a social person when it comes to parties filled with people I don't know, and, well, in the end, it all blew up. As I look back on it, I don't really see any acceptable way that I could have extricated myself from the situation when it started going downhill, so I suppose I just have to say "shit happened, it's over, that's that," and be done with it.

An unfortunate thing is that I really missed out on the whole mental-journey-and-exploration aspect of the psychedelic experience. I'd like to be able to say something like, "hey, I did some acid, and this is what I learned about myself," but instead all I can say is, "hey, I did some acid, and I wished I hadn't." Maybe I should say, "well, it could have been worse." I suppose it could have been, but it could have been better, too. If I'm going to be angry with anyone, in the end, I can only be pissed off at myself, as it was of my own volition that I ate the whatever-it-was-pistachio-thingy that was infused with synthetic hallucinogens. Sunday morning, before the xanax kicked in, Cory asked me a question, the wording of which I don't remember, but I do remember that my answer was "I don't know what I think." Three days later, and I guess, in some respect, that's still true. It seems that I'm still working on that "should only be upset with myself" part.

But hey, on the plus side, I won $1000 at the blackjack table on Sunday night after missing my plane back home. Wee!

Random aside: I don't know what the ratio of heterosexual to non-heterosexual people is in the general population, so perhaps there's nothing of interest here, but I got the impression from this year's DEFCON that there tends to be a higher percentage of non-straight folks in the hacking/computer security community, and they all seem to be extremely good at what they do. I don't believe for a minute that everyone that goes to DC, regardless of sexual orientation, is intelligent - some of the attendees are dumber than a box of rocks (like Michelle Madigan) - but what I do find myself wondering, if we accept the basic premise that sexual orientation is biological, not chosen, is if there are any particular differences in the brains of non-straight folks that make them particularly good at the sort of problem-solving and creativity that's required to be a good hacker. Then again, maybe it's all just coincidental.
Mood: restless

Date: 2007-08-11 14:07
Subject: peanut butter and culture jam
I don't "read for fun" very much - mostly because I don't have a whole lot of time or because the books that are piling up as unread tend to be technical in nature and not exactly the most scintillating pieces of prose that just demand to be curled up with on the sofa, but every once in awhile, Cory gets a book loaned to her by a woman that she babysits for, and out of curiosity, I end up picking it up and blowing through it in a day or two because I feel like putting off all of the more important things that I should be doing. This iteration's read: Culture Jam: How to Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge--And Why We Must, by Kalle Lasn.

I'll save you all the trouble of wading through 200+ pages of self-righteous diatribe and summarize the book in a few lines here: Most of us lead dull lives where we are disconnected from nature, ourselves, and our community, and this is due in large part to the force-feeding of culture to us by the great marketing machines that are American corporations. Corporations are evil. The agribusiness industry is evil. The fashion industry is evil. Information overload is harmful to your health. Media outlets are evil because they only portray what the big-budget advertisers want them to portray, and they won't run ads from the little guy that run contrary to the message that the big spenders would want us to see. Our piggish overconsumption (which is encouraged by the media, large corporations, and the like) is destroying the planet. Neoclassical economics is wrong. We're all disconnected from our rage, but we need to find it again and stand up and do something. Fight the power. Hack the media. Memetic warfare.

yawn

Yes, this is a bit of a gloss-over of some points, but if you really want to know more, read the book yourself. It's about 225 pages, and it's a quick read, although Lasn does make the mistake of throwing in what I would consider unnecessarily-academic language at certain points. If the goal of the book is to convince us to take action, then the argument should be made using language that doesn't require us to stop and wonder "what does that word mean?" when we should instead be thinking about the argument itself. Anyway...

I'm willing to grant that I agree with a certain amount of his ideas, and I find the idea that corporate shareholders ought to be held responsible for the criminal wrongdoing of the corporations themselves an intriguing one, but beyond that, Lasn does a poor job of convincing me why I should care or do any of the things that he's suggesting. We're all doomed unless we get off our butts? Once again, yawn. I have no particular affinity for the human race; if we choose to destroy ourselves because we were too stupid to pay attention to how our behavior alters the environment, then so be it. We're all going to die in the end anyway. Perhaps that very statement is demonstrative of exactly the sort of disconnected-from-everything state of affairs that he refers to, but I would posit an alternative thought: perhaps the human race is not meant to continue. Yes, I suppose that presupposes (?!) some sort of master plan to the evolution of the universe wherein certain things are "meant to happen" and others are not, and that's a path that, as a Taoist, I'm only tangentially prepared to go down, but it might also be an acceptance of human nature. We build things, and in doing so, we destroy other things, and perhaps that ultimately leads us into the construction of a system that destroys us so that something else can come along. Maybe we are an evolutionary dead-end, and we just don't know it yet. I'm sure you've all heard that cliche that a leopard can't change its spots. What makes us so special that we think we can?

There is a metaphysical argument which says that the big bang was the universe breaking itself into billions of tiny pieces as an effort to understand itself, and that we, as a part of the universe, are a part of that process. In the end, billions of years from now, the universe is supposed to be reunited into a singular being (for lack of a better word) which is now fully self-aware (somehow I suspect that to be a poor representation of the actual state of affairs), at which point, depending on which tradition you ask, it will either KNOW and that will be the END, or it will refragment itself again in an attempt to gain some new understanding on some different level. It's an interesting concept - maybe it's true, maybe it's not - there are some interesting tie-ins with the second law of thermodynamics and information processing if you want to go that direction, but let's assume for a moment that there is something here in one form or another.

There is another principle in the occult which says "As above, so below" or "As below, so above" - which, for the uninitiated among us, means simply that there is correspondence between the way things are and behave at a less complex level and the way things are and behave at a more complex level. Mathematics is a good place to look for these sorts of things if you prefer not to open the door to the esoteric. Principles which are true in 1 dimension (the real numbers, for instance) have analogues in the plane (R^2), or in R^n. Concepts such as symmetry, transitivity, and the like can be studied in simple structures and abstracted to more complex ones.

Let's apply this to ourselves for a moment as it relates to my suggestion from three paragraphs ago. We, as humans, seek to understand ourselves and the world around us, and we do this, in part, by conducting experiments. We use the scientific method to observe, formulate hypotheses, test these hypotheses, and so on. Sometimes, our experiments are a success, and we learn a little more about whatever it is that we're studying. Sometimes they aren't. Sometimes we just create more questions and don't really learn anything. Ok, fine. However, there are also times where we fuck up the methodology or our samples get contaminated, and we end up having to shitcan the whole thing and start over. What if the universe engages in a highly abstracted version of the same process? That would undoubtedly mean that sometimes the universe engages in experiments (so to speak) which are failures for one reason or another and therefore must be abandoned. What if one such doomed experiment is homo sapiens, the whole planet, or even this entire part of the galaxy?

We like to think that we're special and that we deserve to exist and continue existing, and, I think, we have to believe that at some level, because if we didn't, it could be argued that our destruction would come about as the result of self-fulfilling prophecy. It's similar to an argument that Daniel Dennett (I think) put forth concerning free will and determinism - i.e., even if everything is predestined, we still have to believe as if we have a choice. How, the argument goes, can we hold someone responsible for their actions when those actions occur, not as as the result of a conscious decision on the part of the individual, but as the mere functioning of an automaton, programmed to do whatever it is programmed to do? Likewise, if we're just meant to die out as a species, why should we think about conservation, preservation, and maintaining resources for the future, right? I'm sure that if my original hypothesis were true and everyone knew it, there would be some (many?) among us that would take the words "extravagant lifestyle" to the extreme. However, I also believe that there are many who wouldn't. Maybe, if you think about it, it wouldn't change our behavior very much at all. On some level, we all know that we're going to die. Life is finite. Some of us accept this knowledge fully and live every day as if it were our last. Others among us try to make healthy choices so that we can enjoy a good quality of life for as long as possible. Other groups say fuck it all, and others still don't even think about it most of the time. And, of course, there is often considerable overlap between the groups as well as cross-group migration.

Anyway, I think I've gone from having a point to make to seriously rambling with no end in sight, so I'll just end this now before I suck up any more time and just encourage all of you to ignore the disgruntled nutjobs with a "don't trust THEM, trust ME" attitude that write doom-and-gloom books which purport to explain why we're fucked and how we can unfuck ourselves by breaking free of one system of control and accepting another. Screw that. Life is both simple and complex at the same time, and meant to be figured out by each one of us at his/her own pace and in his/her own way.

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."
--Stephen Crane

Date: 2007-09-01
Subject: ARGH!
I love Perl most of the time. Tonight is not one of those times.

This is valid Perl - it compiles and runs, and it should be relatively obvious what it's supposed to do. It sets a cookie with a login session and then does a redirect to another page. The expiration date is supposed to either be at the end of the session or 5 years from now, depending on whether or not the user checked the 'Remember Me' box. In running the script that this is a part of, instead of being redirected to the correct destination page, I always found myself back at the login page with no visible error message.

WTF?! After looking at the HTTP headers returned, I found that the cookie wasn't being set properly when I did the redirect, but if I just printed the cookie, it was coming out fine. WTFOMG?! After ditching CGI.pm in favor of standard print statements (and remembering to set PerlSendHeader Off in the Apache config) it still didn't work - it spit out a standard set of data that I might expect from a 200 response code, but not the 302 that I should have gotten. WTFOMGBBQ?!?!!

Two hours of frustration later, I discover the problem - the astute and perceptive reader may already have noticed that there is no comma in the above statement after $site::cookieDomain. As such, although I can do "print Set-Cookie: $oreo\n" and see the contents of the cookie (and the script runs) - when it gets dumped into an actual HTTP response header, it is apparently invalid and thus the whole thing just barfs. Added the comma in the right place, and now it all works exactly as intended.

AAAARGH.

I'm going to blame this on the fact that I'm coding on an old Dell Inspiron 700m laptop with a 12" screen and a keyboard that's too small for my hands. If I were on a real keyboard with a real (24"+) monitor, I'd have noticed the typo right away. Yeah, definitely. =)
Mood: frustrated

Date: 2007-09-09 08:04
Subject: one that makes me cry, one that makes me angry.
First, we'll cry: http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=43915

Robotech was the series that got me into anime as a kid; I used to watch it in black-and-white on the old TV in the kitchen because it was the only set that could pick up the Tucson channel that broadcast it. I watched every episode, I had every book penned by Jack McKinney that detailed the whole saga, and I had a few of the third-generation Alpha Fighter models. Hell, I still have the Robotech Art books,

And now I see that shit-for-skill actor Tobey Maguire is planning to play the lead role in a live-action version of the story. BARF! That fuckstick could barely pull off a one-dimensional Peter Parker, and now he's going to absolutely ruin something that actually held a lot of meaning for me as a kid? Thanks, Tobey. If you're really going to produce this thing, couldn't you at least have the decency to cast someone with skill in the lead role? Dye your hair blue and play Max Sterling if you absolutely must have a part, but leave Rick Hunter to someone that can actually make it believable. I don't think this actually happened. -Ed.

And now, we'll rant: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/tag/oprah-winfrey/

According to CNN, Oprah has never formally endorsed a presidential candidate before, but she's putting her fat ass (and considerable clout among people that can't think for themselves - i.e., most of America) behind the candidacy of Barack Obama. Putting aside for a moment the question of whether or not Obama is worth voting for in the first place, I cannot help but wonder how much of her decision to do this is racially motivated. Does Oprah really believe that Obama is the best candidate for the job, or is there some other agenda at work here? I don't really have an answer to that - I'd like to believe that Oprah is a smart woman; one does not become a billionaire by being stupid - but it would be impossible to say whether or not she's playing the race card or if she really believes that Obama is the best choice for the job. Given some of the barely-believable shit that's come out of Obama's mouth recently, it is becoming harder for me to believe that a reasonable, thinking person would choose B.O. over all of the other possibilities. (Me, right now I'm leaning towards Bill Richardson on the Democratic side, and Rudy Giuliani on the Republican side -- although I'd vote for Ron Paul if he weren't anti-choice.)

But the real question here is what kind of effect is the Oprah endorsement going to have on Obama's candidacy? The Oprah Winfrey Seal of Approval(TM) can certainly go a long way in terms of selling books that otherwise might not even get a second glance at the local Barnes and Noble; will it have the same sway in the political arena? And if it does, what kind of pathetic statement does that make about the American people and our complete inability and lack of will to think for ourselves and make up our own minds on issues of national importance. With the Bush Dynasty coming to a close and all the damage that's been done to our international reputation and our civil liberties as a result of it, you would think that all of us who have been unhappy with the current administration would be doing whatever we can to make sure that this time around, we get the best president we can (which is, of course, something of an impossibility, because on an objective scale, none of the current candidates are all that great - some of them just suck less than others) rather than just copping out and resigning our future to the choice of someone else with a simple "oh, hey, Oprah likes it, so it has to be good!"

Barack Obama knows so little about foreign policy that he's publicly stated that he'd bomb a nuclear-armed country (Pakistan) if he knew that Osama bin Laden was hiding in the mountains over there? Uh, hello?! What part of "nuclear-armed country" do you not understand, Barack? I said earlier that I'd like to believe that Oprah is a smart woman, but if she's supporting someone with that kind of mentality, well, I'm afraid that she's a stupid bitch. Fuck you, Oprah Winfrey. Go sit on a cactus.

Date: 2007-09-20 14:01
Subject: The Jena 6
Up until a couple days ago, I'd never heard of this story, but since it seems to be all over the front page of CNN lately, I've started reading a little about it. For those of you too lazy to go read a news site, the story goes a little something like this. Some black kids at a high school in Jena, Louisiana asked a school administrator if they could sit under a tree. He said yes, so they did. A day or two later, some white kids hung three nooses from said tree. They (the white kids) were suspended for some period of time, despite the principal's recommendation that they be expelled. No other charges were filed against the white kids. A few months later, six black kids (hence the name "Jena 6") were accused of beating up a white kid, and they were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy, charges that were later dropped down to battery and conspiracy. What happens next seems somewhat unclear from the news reports - one of the black dudes (Mychal Bell) was convicted of aggravated battery in June and remained in jail awaiting sentencing (up to 22 years). Last week a judge vacated his conviction, saying that charges should have been brought in juvenile court, not the adult system, because he was 16 at the time, but because Bell can't afford his bail, he's still in the pokey, awaiting sentencing for the other charges he was convicted of. The judge in the case refused to lower Bell's bail, citing his previous four juvenile offenses - the other 5 have made bail and are out.

Today, we have rallies led by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in Jena, Louisiana, wherein a large group of what I can only assume to be black folks from around the country are decrying the injustice perpetrated against the "Jena 6." The mother of one of the black kids is quoted as saying "I hope the DA will wake up and realize what that he's doing the wrong thing, and to release these kids. It's not equal. The black people get the harsher extent of the law, whereas white people get a slap on the wrist per se."

Ok, now, before I go any further, I'm certainly willing to grant the following points. One, there may be large parts to this story that I'm not aware of. Two, in general, the criminal justice system in the US does tend to be harsher on non-whites than whites, all other things being equal.

However, I still have to ask the following question: WTF?!#!!$#$@@#

On one hand, you have some (three, I think?) white kids that put nooses around a tree to scare the snot out of their black classmates. On the other hand, you have six black kids that beat the snot out of one white kid. Someone please, for the love of Zeus, tell me how the fuck you can compare these two incidents and say that the black kids are getting screwed? Yes, sure, the white kids probably should have gotten a harsher punishment, but these are two separate crimes that simply are not on the same level. Race has nothing to do with it, and I'm so fucking tired of everyone (white, black, yellow, brown, it doesn't matter, all you fuckers do it) using the color of their skin as an excuse to whine about having to deal with that harsh mistress we call reality. Let's think about it here for a moment. One one hand, you have a threat. On the other, you have a gang beating. Hello??! Look at any state's criminal statutes and you're going to find that "threats and/or intimidation" are classified at a different level than "assault and/or battery." Had six white kids gotten together and beaten up some black kid and gotten off with a light sentence, then there'd be justifiable basis for outrage on the part of the black community, but as it is, all I see is two publicity hounds (Jackson and Sharpton) engaging in race-baiting and asshattery.
Mood: annoyed

Date: 2007-09-27 00:18
Subject: Are they desperate or just stupid?
Ok, so, my company is looking for an entry-to-mid-level Linux admin (as the person with hiring authority, preferably mid-level, but I'll take a smart beginner that can demonstrate legitimate skillz), to be affectionately known as the Associate Network Ninja. If any of you are interested, or know someone that is, please go here http://www.rsmart.com/about/jobs and read the job posting. Follow the directions on the website for submitting your resume, or leave me a comment or an email if you'd like to know more about the position.

Easy enough, right?

Well, we posted the job on dice.com in hopes of finding a few qualified candidates. One of the requirements of the job is that you must have a good working knowledge of Linux system administration. Yes, it would be nice if you knew a little about Windows 2003, but since we only have one W2k3 production server that's going to get replaced soon anyway, it's a bonus only and won't get you the job if you don't have any of the required skills. We are a Linux server shop, not a Microsoft, Solaris, BSD, SCO, AmigaOS, DOS, or WTFOS shop. So, if you send me your resume, and on it the word Linux is nowhere to be found, or as I read your work history the word Linux is nowhere to be found, that tells me one of two things:

1: You're stupid, or you can't read, in which case I wouldn't hire you anyway.
2: You're intentionally trying to waste my time, in which case I wouldn't hire you anyway.
3: You're desperate for a job and you think I'm desperate to hire you and therefore I'll overlook it, in which case, again, I wouldn't hire you anyway.

Ugh. We did get one resume from someone that I was going to call back, until I talked to someone else I know that knows him, and got a rather unfavorable assessment of the guy as a person. Doesn't sound like someone I would feel comfortable entrusting with any root passwords. =/

Date: 2007-09-28 17:07
Subject: It's rantin' time
Ok, so, if I were a betting man (and anyone who's ever seen me at the blackjack tables knows full well that I am indeed such a man), I would say that there is a very real possibility that Hillary Clinton will end up the next President of the United States. How do I come to this conclusion? Well, right now I don't think any of the Republican candidates stand much of a chance; Bush has done so much damage to the image of the Republican party that I think there are enough pissed off people that it may very well not matter who the elephants nominate. On the Democratic side, I see Edwards and Obama putting up a good fight but coming up short, and all of the second-tier candidates will continue to languish in a state of relative anonymity as the media does its usual focus on the front-runners.

Now, it's certainly possible that someone will try a swift-boat type attack on at least one of the candidates, and there will inevitably be hidden skeletons, tales of flip-flopping, and other gaffes along the way, so there's always the chance that the next 12 months could see a complete upheaval in the race, but let's talk about Hillary for a moment.

Today she's quoted as saying that she thinks it's a good idea to give every newborn baby a $5000 bond that it can use when it's older for college or buying a house or whatever. She did not give any other details, such as the all-important one of how this plan would be paid for. Now let's think about this for a minute.

There are about 4 million babies born in the US every year. 4E6 * 5E3 = 2E10 = 20 billion dollars. This is so disturbingly wrong that it's not even funny.

1: People that choose not to get married or have children are screwed YET AGAIN. I would like to go so far as to say that it's somehow unconstitutional, but it probably isn't. Hell, if there can be a "child tax credit" then I suppose there's legal standing for this, too. Personally, I'd like to see that disappear, too. People either have children, or they don't, and there should be no reward or punishment for making one choice over the other. Giving people incentives to have children makes my blood boil. People should have kids because they want to, not because the government is prodding them along to do so. Fuckin' A.

2: Who the fuck is going to pay for this? There's a reason that Hillary didn't say how she'd pay for the program - it's because she's not the one that's going to pay for it. WE are. That 20 billion dollars I mentioned up there is only a drop in the bucket; administering a program wherein 4 million babies per year get this so-called "baby bond" is going to require the creation of a whole federal agency, or at least a division of some agency, and more bureaucratic bullshit to sustain it. That agency will have to hire workers and find office space and the like, and it will inevitably have waste and corruption and mismanagement like most other federal agencies. Oh, hey, look, there go more dollars out of my pocket.

3: How long do you think it will take for someone to figure out how to game the system? What about illegals? What happens if the baby dies before it turns 18? Who gets the money? Call me a real cynic, but I could see some fucked-up scenario in which the parents of a baby-bond recipient receive the money if the child dies - in which case I could see some equally fucked-up scenario in which crackheads or tweakers pop out babies just for the sake of collecting the money and then quietly dispose of them when they think nobody's watching. That would never happen, you say? I'm crazy, you say? Yeah, well, this world is pretty fuckin' nuts, too. Watch and learn.

Now let's talk about the economy. The Fed just lowered interest rates and the stock market said "weee!" as it jumped about 500 points over the last couple weeks. Ok, that's great - but look at the dollar. For the first time in something like 30 years, the Canadian dollar is equal to the American dollar. Are you shitting me?! I remember the first time I went to Canada, it was about 65 cents to the dollar. The British pound is now worth 2 bucks. The Euro is about $1.45. All of this has happened within the last six years or so. Maybe you're thinking, "So what?! If I don't leave the country, it won't matter." WRONG. It does matter. Y'all know that the US continues to run in the red every year - spending more than we earn - right? Well, where do all of those borrowed dollars come from? Most of them come from foreign countries that buy up our T-bills and such. So, let's suppose that you've got a country, say, China, that has billions of dollars in dollar-denominated assets that are continuing to lose value as the dollar gets weaker. So what does China do? There are several options, two of which being that they simply stop buying US securities (oops, no more credit for Uncle Sam) or they start trying to dump them - and anyone that knows even the slightest thing about economics understands what happens to price when the supply far outstrips the demand. Oops, even weaker dollar. You and I, having our money in dollars, just got a fuck of a lot poorer. Don't believe it? This kind of thing has happened before in the 1970s - but I suspect that this time is going to be worse.

This article is worth a read: http://www.merkfund.com/merk-perspective/insights/2007-09-25.html

What do you or I do about it to avoid losing our retirement savings? Make sure you've got a decent exposure to foreign stocks, and it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a little in gold or silver. And, while you're at it, hope that the central banks of the world aren't as stupid as Ben Bernanke and the Fed.

Date: 2007-09-30 01:10
Subject: You all need to read this. Right now.
Probably preaching to the choir, but nonetheless, a damn fine piece of writing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html

Time: 01:20
Subject: ...
It's really moist and truly gentle on the anus. And yes, I'm going to bring some back.

Date: 2007-10-31 11:03
Subject: Kick him in the GOOG!
So, with Google stock hitting the $700 mark today and me sitting here at the job which I turned down Google to stay at, I thought this would be a good time for reflection on whether or not I screwed myself and made the wrong decision.

From a day-to-day work perspective, I don't think I fucked myself. I have a lot more control here over what I do or don't do on a daily basis, and decisions I make have a real impact on what happens with the company, whereas as Google, I would have just been another cog in the great machine, probably dealing with the same shit every day. Given that the job they offered me wasn't even working on stuff related to google.com (it was internal-applications SA work), I just don't think I would have been happy with that. I don't work on anything really cool here, but I don't think Google would have been any different. I suspect, though, that I would have learned more at Google in the last six months. Of course, given that I don't learn much of anything new at this job anymore other than the occasional tip or trick that I figure out myself or come across online, this may not be saying a lot.

From a longer-term perspective, again, I don't think my decision would have mattered either way, because after I leave my current position, I don't think I'm going to get another "job" working for someone else -- I'm going to do whatever it is that I have to do to go back to full-time consulting/contract work and work on my own projects. ioerror suggested to me a couple months back that I apply for a job where he's working in San Francisco; it would have been cool working with him and artkiver, but in the end, it's still just another job where you're working for someone else, making someone else rich, and chasing someone else's dream. That's not going to cut it. I think I'm probably too arrogant to work for other people for very long, too, because I end up thinking (in my defense, often this is with good reason) that I'm smarter than they are.

Where I'm questioning my decision the most is financially. When Google offered me the job, their stock was trading around $450, and I had serious reservations about the potential upside. The annual salary component to the job offer wasn't anything spectacular, but there was also a stock and option grant to it. The same Google stock that was worth about $35k on offer day is now worth about $56k. Granted, that would vest over four years, but if GOOG can go from $450 to $700 in six months, I have to wonder where it's going to be in another 3 years. Will it be at $1000? $1500? $400? The options that were worthless on offer day would now be worth another $40k. Hmm. Of course, to really get depressed about this one requires me to forecast out another three years and wonder what's going to happen - and that's pretty hard to do when I don't even know what I'm going to be doing next week - but it still gives me pause when I think about it.

So did I screw myself? Overall, I don't think so - but if my goal is to get away from the standard 40-hour-a-week job routine, I need to get off my ass.

Date: 2007-11-07 06:15
Subject: nigger nigger nigger
I bet that got your attention.

A recent post by spacekadette about an encounter with a customer combined with the recent flap over the guy on "Dog the Bounty Hunter" using the word "nigger" got me wondering...

Why is the word "nigger" so reviled in the English language that people are not even willing to use it the context of academic or otherwise non-directed discourse, preferring instead the euphemisms "The N-word" or "n******" ? Yes, we all know the word is highly offensive and that to refer to someone as a "nigger" is something that you just don't do. (There are two exceptions to this rule, apparently - A: if you're a racist and you don't care about the potential fallout, or B: you're black, and you're talking to another black person, and using the shortened form "nigga" -- apparently an accepted practice in some circles but one that I find the rationale for completely lacking -- but that's a story for another day.) But what is it that makes people even afraid to say the word in any context at all? If I'm talking about someone else that used the word "nigger", I'm not going to say, "oh, so and so said the n-word," I'm going to say, "oh, so-and-so said 'nigger'." It isn't like I'm saying it, or I'm the one making racial slurs against someone, so why do people get their panties in a twist? What is so bad about the word "nigger" in relation to all the other ways that you can insult someone's race, gender, religion, or god-knows-what-else that the moment someone says it, 95% of the population immediately loses all sense of rationality?

Now, before anyone says "oh, well, the word "nigger" has a lot of history attached to it, what with slavery and all of that," let me remind you that black people are not the only racial minorities that have been royally fucked by the white man in this country during its illustrious history. Pretty much everyone that's not white has gotten shit on at some point or another; the native americans arguably got screwed just as much, if not more, than the blacks. The chinese were treated like shit, too, and let's not even talk about the japanese that were loyal US citizens that took it up the tailpipe during world war II. I bet you, though, that if one were to use the words nip, chink, or jap, that person would not get anywhere near the negative reaction than if the epithet in question were nigger. Double standard, anyone? As a society, either we believe that everyone is deserving of equal respect and equal outrage when they're on the receiving end of racial slurs, or we don't, and we're just afraid to admit that we believe some animals are more equal than others.

And I wonder what would happen to racism in this country if people stopped giving words power over them. One of my favorite quotes is from Eleanor Roosevelt: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Date: 2007-11-26 12:02
Subject: ...
Something's gotta change.
Mood: distressed

Date: 2007-12-05 02:18
Subject: anyone in need of a high-level system architect or IT director?
So, as most of you know, I've had a love-hate relationship with my job; well, it has officially turned to hate, and I expect that it's going to stay there. thoughtfix, be happy we didn't hire you. This place is going to shit.

First, a little background info. Over the years, I've become a more patient person than I used to be, and even mellowed out quite a bit. I'm willing to give someone a free pass once in awhile if they piss me off, particularly if it's in a workplace setting. In fact, I've doled out a couple of these in the last few months where people have said something that I found completely uncalled for or hostile; even in the face of asshattery, I have remained civil and professional. Lately, however, I've been really stressed out because there's far more work to be done than can be done by one person in a sane amount of time, and although they've agreed to hire me some help, we haven't really found anyone that was the right fit. When I get stressed out, I become irritable. Yet I've still managed to remain civil when dealing with assholes. Go me. However, I've also known that it's just a matter of time before my patience becomes exhausted and someone pisses me off to the point where I tell him or her exactly what I think. Guess what? It happened.

So Chris (pres. of the company) sent out an email to everyone about Twitter - saying that he signed up for it and thought it would have an interesting use for staying connected when people go to conferences. A bunch of folks jumped on the bandwagon and decided to sign up, too - one person said that she didn't really understand the appeal, but she did it anyway. My response to that was the following;

As far as I'm concerned, Twitter really only has serious appeal to the following groups of people:
a: People that have to jump on the bandwagon of whatever the newest fad is for fear of being left out or because everyone else is doing it.
b: People that have an overgrown sense of their own importance that they feel that others care what they're doing every minute of every day.
c: People that just have nothing better to do.
A way to communicate with others in your group that are at an event has been developed already, and it's in widespread use. In fact, there are several of them; one common choice is often referred to as the "cell phone."
I don't think it's at all coincidence that the root word of twitter is "twit."
Twitter-free and happy.
e.

A couple of people wrote back and got a good laugh out of it, including the president of the company and one of the new guys we just hired (both of whom are Twitter users), but then I got this email from our customer service guy:

And "I personally believe that some people" do it because they have people skills. "Why don't you get it, you god damn people."
So E, "Shut up and suck it up. You are not in high school anymore."This is a famous quote by his holiness E XXXXX when we both were in Women Studies class at ASU. Please don't ask why we decided to take that class. E, I still want to be on your good side, so please don't slaughter me.

Are you for real? You're calling me "his holiness", telling me to "shut up and suck it up" -- and then telling me that you still want to be on my good side? Oh, and you've sent this email to the entire company? FUCK YOU. Of all the people in the company that I thought might potentially piss me off to the point where I'd crack and just unload on someone, this guy was actually toward the bottom of the list, so I'm actually pretty surprised, but you know what, it doesn't matter. My reply was short and to the point:

Shut up and suck it up?
Ok, Anand, I probably would have let this go if you'd just sent it to me, but the fact that you've sent it to the entire team is way out of line. Forget about being on my good side, you can go fuck yourself.

So it should be interesting when I go into work in about 6 hours. I am quite pissed, and I have officially reached the limit of the amount of shit that I will put up with. If anyone gives me even the slightest bit of grief tomorrow, I will probably walk right out the door. And you know, if that happens, they are SCREWED. They don't have any other IT staff, and we're right in the middle of a huge server installation project. And you know what? I don't care. I worked over 80 hours last week - 12 hours per day for 8 days straight - trying to get shit configured and installed and secured properly. I don't need this shit. I don't have time to cook or eat healthy; I don't have time to go to the gym. I feel like I'm neglecting my girlfriend and my cats and myself because all I seem to be doing lately is working. Well, you know, maybe I just needed a little extra push to from Mr. Anand there to realize that it's just not worth it.

We'll see what happens, but I would say that the odds are good that even if I don't catch any flak tomorrow, the atmosphere in the office will be uncomfortable to the point where I end up quitting anyway.
Mood: pissed off