Weapons and Extreme Fighting

Let me just preface this entry with a little history about myself.

I grew up training martially (primarily kung fu with cross training in Japanese and European sword arts as well as a bit of muay thai). I got my first sword at the age of ten, but I was training before that point.

Suffice it to say that I know a little bit about martial arts and weaponry. It’s not something I go out of my way to point out, and I don’t show off. It’s just a part of my life and has been for a long time.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the two related topics for the evening.

For the last several years, extreme fighting has been all the rage. People seem to be really enthralled by the whole thing and try to bill it as some kind of knock down, drag out, no holds barred affair.

I’ve met several people who participate in matches. Most of the ones I’ve known are loud mouthed and more ego than skill. They’re very cocky and like to throw their weight around.

I found out that this isn’t just limited to the area ones that I’ve met. Flipping through the channels a few days ago, I came across one of their televised fights. I could only bring myself to watch about a minute of the first round.

No holds barred my foot. It basically boiled down to Americanized kickboxing with a bit of grappling and a little bit of submission based moves. In the first minute, I counted at least three times for each fighter when his opponent could have easily broken the person’s arm or leg due to the absolutely sloppy attacks. There were also several opportunities for faceplanting one of the two on the mat.

The kicks were too high, the punches were too slow and lacked power, and almost all of the attacks looked like they’d been performed by someone who had only been training martially for a month or two.

If this is “extreme” fighting, what the heck was I doing as a kid while training with my sifu?

Here’s the truth about fighting – most real fights between two people don’t tend to last much more than a minute or so if even that long. If they last longer than that, one of three things is usually the cause:

1) Neither party involved is very good.
2) Both parties are either really good or evenly matched.
3) The person who actually knows how to fight is trying not to hurt the other person.

The reason that these matches last so long (and why they have weight classes) is because there are so many rules concerning what you aren’t allowed to do. This, by its very nature, throws the “no holds barred” thing that a lot of people talk about out the window.

In an actual fight it doesn’t really matter who is bigger if you actually know what you are doing (in fact, little people can have certain advantages), and there are no rules preventing you from doing things like grabbing your opponent’s hand when he throws a clumsy punch and, using a grip on his thumb while applying the properly directed force, turning it so that it locks his wrist, then his elbow, in turn his shoulder, and then continuing the motion until one of those joints breaks like a matchstick (usually his elbow – it’s just the way that the leverage tends to work out).

I’m not advising that you do this. I’m only saying that it can be done and is a whole lot simpler than a lot of people seem to think. It is completely possible (and generally advisable) to stop at locking his shoulder or elbow because you’ve basically got him incapacitated at that point; especially if you can force him into a wall, or put him face first on a table in that situation. A little bit of pain can do great things like turning people who would otherwise want to knock your head off of your shoulders into your best friend who doesn’t want to hurt you anymore (at least until you let go).

Trust me. I know. On the whole, I don’t like to fight and I don’t really like to hurt people, but I like people trying to hurt me even less. I’d rather we all be civil and enjoy our lives, but I figure a little temporary pain on their part is okay if it can prevent lasting pain on my part.

I’m weird like that.

The point is that the people who do these sorts of matches have to take way too many things for granted (oh no, my opponent won’t hit me there). While this may not seem like a big deal, it turns into a real disadvantage in real-life situations. It causes your body to become accustomed to certain movements or not having to worry about certain defenses. This means that, in a real fight, not only do you not take advantage of a lot of openings that you’re presented with because you’ve trained your body not to, but you also leave yourself wide open for someone who doesn’t fight “fair” and isn’t above exploiting your muscle memory.

They’re really not as extreme as they try to bill themselves.

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Okay, now it’s time for part two – weaponry (hey, I made the point about training with a sword for a reason)

While surfing the web last night, I ran across a site where people were talking about their armories.

Don’t look at me like that. Chances are that, if you train in a martial art that involves weapons, after a while, you start to amass a collection of your own. Besides that, a lot of people just like to collect them because they think that they look impressive, or because they love the history behind them, or whatever other reason they may have.

The thing that got me about this site was that these people, many of whom claim to actually use theirs for training, were discussing the quality of their various pieces. This in itself is not weird. What was weird was the way they were assessing the quality.

Their main points were how the weapon felt (which is important), and how it looked – specifically how the furniture (guard, pommel, etc) looked. Almost none of them commented on the quality of the blades themselves at all.

I’m sorry, people, but I will tolerate a guard which isn’t perfectly shiny or which has a small cosmetic imperfection a looooong time before I will tolerate a poorly made blade or one which has a bad temper. A lot of my swords are now far from shiny in the furniture department because I actually train with them (to the point that the grips of some of them are polished smooth from use).

I can tell you that, if that blade snaps, you and everyone around you are at risk for getting hurt.

One of the really great ones that I saw on there was one person who claimed that the last time he bought a weapon from one of the places that I prefer to get my blades from, it was total and utter crap. The catch is that the last time he got one from there was 15 years ago (by his own admission) and that he started hearing that they were improving, so he decided to get another piece from there to see for himself.

He had complaints about the cosmetics of the furniture, and that the grip wasn’t perfectly symmetrical (grips very rarely are unless they are either cast, done by computer or perfectly round). Another of his complaints was that the scabbard was not perfectly snug, so the sword might occasionally rattle when sheathed (scabbards should not be perfectly snug. If they’re too tight, it takes too long to draw the blade and you can damage the blade by trying to force it into a scabbard that is too bloody tight). These were big deals to him.

This is the sign that you’re dealing with someone looking for something pretty and not something to actually use. The truth is that this company makes very good blades for the price and that they stand up to actual use. In fact, one of the period style axes that they made has become a favorite of mine to take camping because it works wonderfully (throws well too).

He then went on to say that he tried to use it for a while, and the pommel shifted. Folks, if the pommel screws on, it’s going to shift a little with use. All you do is move it back into a proper position. It’s part of the typical repairs which you make.

His solution? He used loctite to hold it in place.

Let me say that in a different way – he used a permanent or semi-permanent adhesive (which is a pain to break free and gums up the threads. Yes, even the blue stuff) to stop a part that is made to be occasionally moved from moving.

The reason the pommel was threaded onto the tang was so that the sword could be worked on a bit easier (and this company doesn’t just weld a piece of all-thread onto the end of the blade. It’s all one piece, they just thread the end). Trust me, if you ever break a grip, you’ll be glad that you can replace it easily (well, as easily as carving a replacement can be, anyway).

The people on there also went on about how superior custom made blades were compared to the ones that you can just buy. In some respects that’s true. However, there comes a point where the expense isn’t worth it.

All swords break after they’ve been used for so long. It doesn’t matter if it’s a well made $250 sword or if it’s a $5000 custom job. If you use them, there will be a point in time that they will break. You take care of them, and make sure to not abuse them, but they will eventually break, and then you will have at least two pieces of metal.

Sorry, I’m not into status contests over who paid more or which is shinier. I buy mine to use. For me, the blade quality and temper, balance, weight, and functional quality of furniture are important. Shiny doesn’t matter because, while I keep the blades oiled and well cared for, they do eventually darken a bit.

Considering that most of the people there were just looking for pretty things, somehow I’m not surprised that most of them thought that really expensive and shiny was better.

Current mood: my head hurts
Current music: Kim Ferron – Nothing but you

Just say NO

Network World is running an article about a talk given by Dave Girouard, Google’s general manager of enterprise business. In his little talk, Dave states that he believes that businesses should outsource their core IT competencies so that they can “properly focus on the value-added [activities].”

His title alone should tip you off that what he’s proposing is a really bad idea. Basically what his job boils down to, in all likelihood, is trying to get people to use Google “enterprise” solutions, thereby bringing more revenue into Google. The content of the article backs me up on this. I’m going to spend some time picking apart his arguments.

He states that, to quote the article, “CIOs face strict regulations and an impending brain drain with many IT officials approaching retirement.” Every industry faces this every day. Would you like to know how they cope? They train new people. Given time and experience, junior level people BECOME senior level people. You don’t just wave your CIO wand and magically create an IT guru out of the mailroom boy.

The real problem is that far too many companies are trying to do what this fool suggests and are looking to other people to do important tasks for them. Once the people that have that knowledge have left the building without teaching someone else how to do it, it’s damned hard to get back. That’s one of the things that outsourcing important things does – it CREATES a brain drain in your organization.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether or not you can afford to have that brain drain. The honest answer will vary from company to company depending on what it really does and what they’re looking to outsource. Quite often, though, it ends up being a bad idea.

Your business doesn’t live only quarter to quarter. You have to make sure that your long term plans are viable. The share holders who only want to sell off your stock in 3 months when it’s gained $1.00/share do not rule all. Take a hint from companies like Coca-Cola who listen to the opinions of Warren Buffet.

Dave promotes the “software as a service” model (where you basically pay every month for the software kind of like you do for, say, water or power). This is a great idea for the companies providing the service – they get a nice constant stream of revenue without having to do much at all. However, it’s generally not such a great deal for the company that’s paying for the service. There are, among other things, security issues, service level agreements, and having someone else holding the fate of your business in their hands to consider.

Dave, however, says that you should do it anyway even if it does potentially put your data at risk. He compares it to the fact that, at one time, a lot of companies had a vice president of electricity and that, like the management of electricity, the management of many IT functions will be routine.

Sorry, Dave, but there is a very large difference between the two. If you chose a bad power company, it won’t sell your company secrets to the competition. It’s a sad fact of life that many of the places where large companies like to outsource their IT functions to do not have the same data privacy laws that we do. In fact, there have been quite a few cases where the outsourcing companies have taken the trade secrets from their clients, told the client to shove off, and started their own company using the “client’s” IP.

The rest of the article follows along the same basic argument. All it boils down to, really, is him trying to convince his audience to use services like the “enterprise” services that his company is now offering. He even makes it a point to mention them several times.

The only other thing that really needs to be pointed out is a rather amusing statement made by him. In an effort to assuage security concerns, Dave states that “Even if you broke into a Google data center and wanted to find the information for a particular company or customer, you really would have no reasonable means of doing so.”

This is patently ridiculous. I don’t care if they say they’re designed for anonymity. The data has to be grouped by some method whether it’s a folder that has the company’s name (let’s hope not), a unique identifier, or some other method. There HAS to be some method in place for making sure that a company accesses its own data and not the data of another company. With that simple fact in place, it is NOT unreasonable to state that someone could figure out what belongs to whom.

Sorry, pal, but I’m not in the mood for Kool-Aid. Your service may be reasonably secure, but your statement doesn’t hold water.

He claims that Google is a huge success because it is innovative. By the way he speaks, he tries to make it sound like everything Google does is both innovative and successful (not to mention profitable, since he throws out dollar figures in the article).

The only thing that they have done which was both successful and innovative was their search engine. Think about that. Google is, in essence, a one hit wonder. Granted, they’re a really BIG one hit wonder, but they are a one hit wonder with a lot of failures and mediocre products other than their one hit.

Blogger isn’t innovative. It’s nice, but it’s rather pedestrian. Its main draw is that it’s almost impossible to Slashdot because of just how massive their data center is.
Their checkout service is, for all intents and purposes, a bust.
Gmail is just hotmail with search and a really big inbox.
Their chat service isn’t used by nearly as many people as AIM.
Google Earth is kind of cool, but who really cares? What’s the practical use?
Their maps service is, personally speaking, worse than Mapquest.

And who really cares about their online word processor and spreadsheet programs? Most people and companies that I know prefer to have control of both the machine that the software is on and the data that they’re inputting into it. Why? Oh no, someone cut the fiber link to the building. Damn, now we can’t get to our data or the programs that alter it.

He states that their Google Apps “has hundreds of thousands of end users at hundreds of universities and tens of thousands of small businesses.” Want to know a little secret? While that may sound impressive at first blush, it isn’t. It’s a tiny little drop in the bucket. They are, by far, a minor player in this space.

The bottom line is that he’s trying to sell other people on his company. That’s his job. However, it’s your job to not fall for the hype, make reasonable decisions based on both short and long term plans, and realize that it is possible (and all too likely of late) to be penny wise and pound stupid in business.

Don’t deliver the keys to your kingdom to someone else. It’s a bad move. The sad thing is that a lot of businesses will fall for it – especially since it’s Google that’s trying to sell them on the idea.

Current mood: amazed
Current music: Evita Soundtrack – The Lady’s got Potential

Brave New World

Last week, the local paper ran a story saying that the new state rep announced a $500,000 grant to help grow the computer gaming industry in this part of the state. It’s supposed to be part of a larger initiative to spur economic development in the fields of information technology and alternative energy.

Personally, I see this as a positive thing. This region needs help in the economic department. It honestly does.

Unfortunately, a lot of the local people disagree. They like their towns the way that they are even though the jobs that the people once had are going away.

They say that they want their towns to be prosperous, yet they decline any opportunity that is presented to them because it would change the way that things are done in the town.

The responses to the article are a case in point. You can’t see all of the comments (or the user names of the people who made the) unless you register, so I’ll give a run down of the general trend in the comments.

The first one was accusing the representative in question of trying to bring the gambling industry into the state when it stated quite plainly that it was console games like the PlayStation and XBox that they were trying to encourage the development of.

After that was cleared up, one of the people there started stating that we shouldn’t even try because this region would never be the IT capitol of the state let alone the country.

I spent the rest of the day going back and forth with this person on the issue because having a viable industry in any given area does not require that you be the “capitol” of the industry. It simply requires that you have the necessary prerequisites (which this town does. It is close to two universities that have good CS programs, is within 1.5 hours of two major cities, has good infrastructure, low cost of living, and plenty of available office space).

After that point was made, the person started attacking the local universities (which I proceeded to defend). In the end, they started to backpedal and lied, saying they were only kidding and trying to get a rise out of someone when it was painfully obvious that they were being serious.

It’s a sad trend, although it is a common one in the Appalachian region of this state. The people in this area are notoriously isolationist. I’m not saying that to be mean or weird. I say it because it’s the honest truth. It comes, for the most part, from the fact that this area was pretty isolated until the highway system was built.

This fact is made fairly obvious by the very distinctive accent that people from this region have (I am an exception to this). Travel an hour to the north (which is out of the Appalachian region), and the accent is completely different.

Before that time, the only ways to get into this area were through mountain passes or to come down one of the rivers. For the most part, the people who settled here were pretty much on their own.

The people in this area need to learn that they can’t just be the big fish in their very small pond. It will take more than a couple of manufacturing plants to save and support the economy here.

Simply graduating from high school and going to work at the mill is not going to cut it for a lot of the people that are in school now, and a lot of the older people in this area think that is exactly what the younger generation should do. They express the general opinion that if their kids or grandkids did anything else it would be a sign that the kids thought they were too good for where they came from.

The older generation honestly seems to think that their kids will grow out of it, get back to reality, and get a job at the nearest factory. The kids, on the other hand, leave the town and only come back much later if at all. There are very very few people in the 18-35 age range in this town. I really wish I was kidding.

They’re going to have to learn to accept change. This is going to be a real challenge, because it’s something that most people who live in this area are very reluctant to do.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: U2 – Until the end of the World

Complex Answers

Some people just try to make problems much more difficult than they actually are. Granted, this applies to everyday life, but in this case, we’re talking about making software.

While talking to a friend of mine the other day, he started ranting about having to re-write some code where he works. It appears as though one of his co-workers is a fan of making things difficult.

The problem in question was finding a path from point A to point B. The solution his co-worker came up with was a complex process that involved concentric circles and all sorts of other things. It made my head hurt.

It made my friend’s head hurt too. Apparently this guy has some sort of a fetish for solutions with a big O of n^2, n^3, or worse.

The best answer in this case would be to simply determine the angle that you need to travel at by doing a little math with the X and Y co-ordinates of each point. It gives you the shortest path and the big O of the solution is more than acceptable.

Even the brain dead solution which I came up with off the top of my head since it was 2am and I didn’t want to look up the math was better than the one that my friend had to replace. In fact, the computation time in this case is minimal and the path length isn’t horribly bad but the answer I gave above is a lot better.

The brain dead answer? Starting a point A, travel along X until you reach the appropriate value and then traverse Y until you reach point B.

Like I said, that solution is not optimal, but it’s still better than what was there originally.

Why do people have to make these things so bloody hard?

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Michelle Branch – Paper Pieces

Long Winding Road

I went back to my alma mater on Tuesday for a gathering of area alumni. I figured it would be a nice distraction from life in general.

I spent a while wandering around campus while I was there, and it struck me just how much of an outsider I was now.

When I was going to school, campus was home. Everyone knew me, and I couldn’t go anywhere without being stopped by two or three people. I was quite literally one of the best known people on campus. It was my element and I couldn’t picture being anywhere else.

Now I can’t picture being there again. It’s kind of funny really – being a nameless face in the crowd where you used to be one of the few names.

After wandering around the campus for a while, I stopped by to see one of my favorite professors. No, this one is not in the CS department; he’s in Philosophy. We chatted for an hour or so and generally caught up with each other.

He also spent some time asking questions about some of the things I’d done in the past that he sort of wondered about. He’s another one of those people that tends to find the weird path I’ve been on fairly interesting.

He’s still convinced that he’s going to see me on the cover of a business magazine at some point. A lot of people think that about me. I find that amusing. Personally, I’m just amazed that I’m still alive after some of it.

However, the one thing that the trip really underlined for me was that campus is yet another place that I no longer belong. Maybe I will find somewhere I do belong at some point.

As it stands, though, I feel like a perpetual wanderer. There are places that I stay but none of them are really home no matter how long I am there.

All I know is that out there, somewhere, is something that feels different. It’s just a matter of finding it. Until then, I’ll just have to try and enjoy the journey.

It’s like they say – you can never go home again.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Ambeon - High

James and the Apothecary

I have a problem – I expect specialized shops to have what they say they specialize in.

A few months back, an apothecary shop opened here in town.

Personally, I thought this was a great thing. It meant that I might be able to pick up some things that I occasionally have use for locally instead of on the net (hey, I believe in supporting local businesses when I can), and that I might even be able to meet a few more people here.

The first time I walked in was a few days after they opened, so they didn’t have a lot of stuff on the shelves yet. That was pretty understandable, and I decided to come back later when they were better stocked.

Well, I went back today.

If this is someone’s idea of an apothecary, they really need to get out more. Maybe they could even visit an actual apothecary shop.

There was about one and a half small shelving units of the capsules of things like flax seed oil and the like, tubs of powdered vitamin C, etc. Then there was a 3’ wide basket of bagged herbs, some scented oils (on another shelf), and a couple of shelves of “whole foods”. Oh, and ear candles. They actually had those, and that belongs in this section.

Here ends anything in there actually resembling an apothecary (I include the whole foods and capsules in that list though they don’t all necessarily belong there. I’m trying to be fair here).

Apart from that, there was a little incense (which can be found in most shops), but it appeared to be lower quality cones and a few things like incense burners and aromatherapy oil lamps.

The rest of the store? Candles. Lots of scented candles. And soap.

The best part? Many of the items in there are also found in several of the big box retailers in town. Funny thing is that they’re basically identical to those items and marked up a dollar or two…

The bottom line? The “apothecary shop” had probably two short isles (maybe two and a half) of shelves with three shelves per isle and a basket worth of things that actually belonged in an apothecary shop. The rest of it was basically things like scented candles and soap.

Granted, I’m used to apothecaries with a rather full selection, but this was really bad. The sad thing is that a lot of people who walk into that shop will really think it’s an apothecary because they don’t know any better.

Give me a shop filled with assorted containers full of various fun things (for a wide range of definitions of the word “fun”) and a person behind the counter who really knows what they’re doing. “I think it’s used for $X” is not a great way to earn my trust in your ability to run an apothecary shop (which I overheard when someone else in there asked him a question about one of the products).

To run a shop of that sort, you *really* need to know your stuff. It takes a lot of experience, and generally involves an apprenticeship. Heck, even I wouldn’t hazard running one, and I have a grasp on more than a little bit of it. It’s a really specialized kind of place.

So, it looks like I’m still going to be ordering pretty much everything online that I can’t get fresh unless I run into it on my travels.

Current mood: amused
Current music: K’s Choice – Iron Flower

Happy New Year.

May this year be better than the last.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Michelle Dockrey - Mal's Song

Faith and the Law

Today, there’s been a big furor over Keith Ellison's choice to place his hand on the Quran in his private swearing in ceremony. During his public oath of office, he’s going to be doing the same civil ceremony as everyone else (raise your hand, swear to uphold the Constitution) but during his private ceremony for friends and family, he’s going to place his hand on the Quran instead of the Bible.

This has some lawmakers up in arms because they say that the only book you should ever swear on is the Bible and that it’s horrible that this man is using another book to take his private oath of office. They even try to state that the Bible is the book that binds the American people together.

I think that these people need to be removed from office. They need to be taken out of office right now because they have, in a thinly veiled manner, expressed a very dangerous sentiment – that the laws of the people of the United States of America (who are quite a diverse group no matter how it seems at times) should be governed by an entirely Christian law system and that is by no means in the best interest of the people whom they are supposed to represent and serve (politicians serve you. Never forget that).

A politician’s duty is to act in the best interest of the people. It is not to act in such a manner that the tenants of his faith become law. That would be no different than the laws which limited the rights of non whites. Here’s a brief recap of United States civil rights history – those laws were struck down and for good reason – because they put the interests of one group of people above all others for the simple reason that they could (not because it was what was best for the people, and not because it was the right thing to do as was the case in mandating that buildings be handicap accessible, but because the group of people in power wanted to make sure they kept it).

One of the reasons (though by no means the only reason) that people first started settling here was to get away from the enforced religion of the Church of England. Now the politicians here are trying to become what the settlers were running away from.

The document which ties the people of this country and their political representatives together is not the Bible (which so many people seem to swear it is). It is the Constitution of the United States. If you want to swear your official oath of office on a document, do it on that one, because the faith you are should not matter. What matters is that you do what is best for the people.

It should not matter if you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Zoroastrian, or the member of any other faith. The document that ties you together with your neighbors, the people down the street, and the ones in the next town, the next county, and the next state over is not your book of faith. It is that piece of parchment that says that you have a right to free speech, that you have the right to bear arms, to peaceably assemble, and above all that the religions of others should not interfere with the making of laws or how they are enforced.

Religion is a private choice. It is something that impacts your life on a personal level. The law and how it is carried out impacts everyone that it affects no matter their gender, race, sexual preference, or religion and it should not be determined by the tenants of one faith over another.

By all means, be proud of your faith (I am). Let it help guide you in the choices of your personal life (I do). However, don’t go forcing it onto other people (whether it be through laws, rules, proselytizing, or other means).

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Wire Train – I will not fall

Fun and Games

I like poker. Heck, I even used to be pretty good at it. It even helped pay for my books in college on a few occasions.

Unfortunately, I don’t really get to play anymore (apart from online, and most of the people who play there are absolute morons when it comes to betting) since there’s nobody around here that I know who plays much. However, while wandering around Dollar Tree, I ran into something interesting – packs of poker chips. Granted, they were plastic poker chips, but they aren’t your typical cheap looking plastic poker chips. They’re designed to look like the more expensive composite chips and have a decent feel and weight.

At $1 for 60 chips, I just couldn’t resist (since even the cheap looking plastic chips are more than that), so I put together a set of 600 – 100 each of white, red, blue, green, black, and purple (for those of you who don’t play poker, that’s $1, $5, $10, $25, $100, and $500 respectively). I figured what the heck, I’m going to start playing again eventually (and still play once in a blue moon as it is), so I might as well have a set of decent chips.

Then I had to find something to put the chips in. Standard poker chip cases are way too expensive (anywhere from $20-40 for the cheaper ones depending on capacity, and I don’t want to pay more for a case than I paid for the chips), so I went wandering through the craft store down the mall and ran into some containers for $2 each that turned out to be absolutely perfect.

Two cases fit exactly 600 chips with enough room to get them out easily, so I paid $14 for a decent poker set. All in all, it was rather a nice find. Not something I needed, but I couldn’t pass it up since poker is something I enjoy. I just wish I was able to enjoy it more often.

Besides, the family holiday gathering is this Sunday, and they used to play cards all the time, so I figure that maybe I can wrangle them into a game. It sure beats the heck out of the rather somber affair the family Christmas tends to be now that my grandmother is dead. I swear that most of the time they look like they’re still doing this just because none of them wants to be the one to quit.

I figure that, if I can pull it off, I can make a smile or two their gift for this year. It sure as hell beats most of the gifts that family members tend to exchange, and I think that we could all use it at the moment. In fact, to be honest, the memories are the really important part anyway. The gifts don’t really matter so much (though I have to say that I do love the Bosca leather wallet that I got a couple of years ago).

Apart from that, anyone around here want to play poker for fun? =]

Current mood: recovering from the flu
Current music: Massive Attack – Teardrop

Some people say that I have way too much incense (of course, they say the same thing about my music, movies, books, and various other things). I will agree that I have quite a lot of it in many different varieties, but I use a lot of it. I use it for meditation as well as to make the house smell nice. It doesn’t take up a lot of space – I just have a drawer reserved for it.

The problem comes in restocking. The person who owned the shop I used to buy all of it from (and who was something of a friend to me) sold the shop some years ago to someone else before moving across the country and didn’t give the new guy a list of all of his suppliers. Now even the shop itself is closed because business went through the floor, so I’m back to looking for the stuff all on my own.

There are no occult – or even herb and oil – shops around here (Don’t read too much into that. I’m Taoist. There just aren’t a whole lot of places that you can find incense resins – especially around here), so that’s not really an option. Besides, I can just see the reaction I’d get from going into a new shop and striking up a conversation with the person behind the counter, pulling out the bottle and going “do you know who supplies this?”

Most of it is no big deal. I’ve found replacement suppliers for all but one of the things at quite good prices (in some cases slightly better than I was getting from my friend, but that’s okay because I was contributing to the local economy). There is, however, one which I simply can not find and it’s driving me up the wall.

It’s an amber resin, but it’s cut with something to make a sort of slightly fibrous powder. Now, I can buy straight chunks of amber resin, but I really like this stuff because it mixes so well and I just can’t find it anywhere.

It’s getting to the point that I’m considering calling my old friend and asking him where in the nine hells he got the stuff from. Yes, I looked up his number for this reason. Haven’t talked to him that much since his wife died and he moved, but I want to know where the heck he got this stuff.

Thankfully, looking up his number wasn’t that difficult – he has a very unique name. I figure what the heck, I’ve been in the mood to talk to him lately anyway, but I admit that I have ulterior motives.

Current mood – tired
Current music – Socialburn – Down

TV Inspired Insanity

I admit it. Late at night, I basically just idly flip channels if I can’t sleep. This leads to some really weird thoughts (okay, let’s face it – most of life leads to some really weird thoughts for me).

While Channel surfing, I happened across a program on crystal meth. It listed two of the signs of being on meth as erratic behaviour and staying up for days on end.

I can see software developers everywhere coming under suspicion of meth use – especially during crunch time =]

Of course, I also wanted to smack the woman who was running the show because she was sensationalizing the whole meth issue by saying that that’s the reason so many houses catch on fire this time of the year – either Christmas trees catching on fire or people cooking up meth in their kitchen.

I hate people who do the shock and awe crap.

Before that, I came across an ad for the Army vs Navy game. For those of you not in the US, the Army and the Navy have one big televised football game every year. It’s a pretty big rivalry.

This lead me to wonder why the other branches of the armed forces, the Marines and the Air Force, don’t have televised games as well.

After a moment or two, I think I came up with the answer.

The Air Force team would basically say “okay, we’re here. Let the Army deal with the rest.”

As for the Marines, they’d gun down the opposing team including the coaches, preferably before the game began and then take down the referees and the crowd just to be sure that there were no rival team members hiding among their ranks.

Don’t start sending me hate mail. Several of my friends have been in the Air Force and my father’s an ex Marine. I’m allowed to make the jokes =]

Current Mood – amused
Current Music – Harvey Danger - Authenticity

Warning: This is a pointless, but amusing, post.

I was sitting here listening to the Dead Kennedys (I have way too much music according to some people), and I decided to look them up on Wikipedia just to see what it had to say about them.

I found one of the most amusing sentences that I have ever seen on Wiki:

“Included as a poster with the album, Penis Landscape depicts nine copulating penises.[5] Members of the band and others were each charged with violating California Penal Code [6]”

And for the record, my two favorite DK tracks that I’ve heard to date are “I Fought the Law” and “Night of the Living Rednecks”. The latter makes me chuckle myself silly.

Current mood – amused
Current music – Kitty – Brackish

I spent the weekend with Karyl. I think I needed the time away, even if I wasn’t in the best of moods while I was there. I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, and a distraction from that, even for the space of a movie at a time (and there were a lot of movies) was very welcome.

I think I’ll be in a better mood when certain things get straightened out. For the moment though, I deal.

In other news, according to w3.org, the web is 16 today.

Funny to think that I’ve been on it for over 10 of that not counting the times I was on the net at my friends’ houses.

I fondly remember the times back then, surfing on Frankenstein (so named because of all of the mods I made to it) at a blazing 28.8. The squeal of the modem, the slow image load times, the disconnects at the worst times.

Yet, for all of that, I cherish the memories. I think it was more for the people involved (some of which are still good friends of mine) than it was for the technology, though I admit that the sense of doing something new was nice as well.

Here’s to all of my old net-friends out there, wherever you are. If any of you come across this, please feel free to leave a note. I’d love to hear from you.

Current mood: moody
Current music: Madonna – Die Another Day

I said that I’d probably post a long overdue update of the last month, so here it is:

The series of interviews with Amazon is over. Unfortunately, I’m not flying out there for an in person, but I did make it through what seemed like an endless string of phone based ones (three interviews of about an hour each over the course of a month).

The fact that I made it though that many rounds has to say something.

That’s the only really exciting thing that’s happened. Most of the month has just been a grind unless you count the costume party we had at a shop here in town that’s run by a couple of people that I know.

Apart from that, I’ve basically just been dealing with several of what tend to be rather personal days. The personal issues have been the main reason I haven’t been posting – I’ve been busy with a variety of things that don’t really need to be discussed with people who aren’t already in the loop.

October is rather full of things which almost require reflection and some time alone for me. I consider it a consequence of having actually lived my life, and one that I am more than willing to accept. On the whole, it’s worth it.

In more recent news, I’ve been contacted by another company in the Pacific Northwest. We’ll have to see how that goes.

Current mood: not bad
Current music: Ghost in the Shell – Living Inside the Shell

A few minutes ago, I was sitting stock still, staring in awe.

At my television.

A lot of people who know me know how sick I am of the spin and double talk on the news every night and in the papers every morning.

Tonight was a totally different matter.

While flipping through the channels, I happened to land on MSNBC. To be more specific, I happened to land on Keith Olbermann opening a king sized can of whopass on the commander in chimp. (The article, which is a basic transcript of his speech, may be found here)

He called the president on his transparent attempts to keep a one party government, of his fear of any sort of checks and balances to his power, accused him of having not an imperial but a UNILATERAL presidency (which is very true), and basically accused Bush of trying to twist everything negative about him into an attack on the American people when it was really an attack on Bush himself.

Hell, he came right out and called Bush a liar in almost as many words. He also made the statement of Bush that “it is both convenient and personally satisfying to you, to confuse yourself with the country for which, sir, you work.”

He then proceeded to say that Bush’s only legacy will have been a “willingness to make anything political,” and called for Bush to apologize to both the troops and the American people.

He didn’t stop there, however. Read the article. I swear it deserves an award.

It was a thing of beauty to behold. I honestly wanted to cheer. The man deserved a standing ovation. It’s about time that somebody did something like this openly, vocally, with the full force of their convictions, and on a medium that millions of people watch, read, and trust (as much as we can trust the news anymore).

To top it off, this well deserved tirade was ended with the rather appropriate Edward R. Murrow quote “good night, and good luck.”

I was in awe of this much needed outburst, delivered, as it was, with righteous indignation (which was also extremely appropriate). It was refreshing, and I hope I am not the only person out there who feels that way.

Current mood: wow
Current music: Linkin Park – In the End

I’ll probably make a long overdue update in the next few days.

Until then:

Happy anniversary

Current music: AFI – Love Like Winter

Happy Birthday

I had a bad day on Thursday. Generally, this is not a noteworthy thing, but this time the bad day happened to fall on the same day as a phone interview with a company I want to work for.

My brain was refusing to work on some things that I don’t generally have a problem with. Despite that, I still managed to answer a fair number of questions correctly.

Then came the fun part – I was given a small programming task to complete after the phone call. He gave me an hour with instructions to email him if I needed more time. (It’s at this point when a friend of mine and I both have the reaction of “an hour? This should not be about an arbitrary time limit, but rather about whether or not the code works.” Oh well. It’s their world.)

So I start by coming up with an algorithm to take care of the problem and then start to write the code. My old friend Murphy decides to stop by – the noise level rises, people start vying for my attention, and best of all, Eclipse grinds to a halt. We’re not talking about the IDE slowing down for a completion list. No, it just randomly started grinding to a halt while I was typing, stayed that way for several seconds and then the characters that I typed would finally appear.

I had never had this problem with an IDE on this machine before. Fine, I’m going to cheat – time to restart the laptop. A reboot later and it’s still doing the same thing.

Arg.

I email that I’m going to need more time and get back to fighting with my IDE. Fast forward a bit. Okay, now the code’s finished. Run it to test. Aaaaaaand there’s a bug.

No big deal. Let’s just run the debugger.

Eclipse hangs again.

Bugger.

That’s it. I need a break. Email and say I’m grabbing dinner before finishing because I ran into a problem. Come back afterward to find a response saying that was okay, but he wanted to see what I had already. Oops. Too late for that now.

Okay, so I can’t use the debugger because my laptop is being a pain. I’ll be silly and use printline statements since I don’t have much of a choice.

Five minutes later, the problem is found (infinite loop due to my accidentally skipping something), fixed, the code is cleaned up, and it’s emailed off.

Somehow, though, I still think the time thing is going to work against me because I didn’t get the email message. Oh well. If it does, it does. If it doesn’t, we’ll see what happens.

The next day I found out why I was having a bad day – I woke up sick, and I was sick all weekend.

Figures.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Collapsis – October

Some of us are far too spoiled for our own good. We don’t generally have to worry about things like where we’re going to find money to pay our bills or to buy groceries so we can eat. Let’s face it. A lot of the people who read this can probably even do something like buy a new computer every year just to get a faster model without really worrying about the dent it makes in your wallet.

It’s a nothing to us – just a little bit higher on the ladder of self-indulgence than, say, stopping by the local coffee shop every morning for a late`.

This isn’t the problem. The problem comes when we think that the rest of the world is the same way just because we have never seen actual want.

Here’s a newsflash for you – not everyone is that well off.

I’ve only been around for about 26 years, but in that time, I’ve traveled within the United States a fair amount and met a whole lot of people from a great deal of different backgrounds. Some of them made six figure salaries and some others consistently wondered where their next meal was going to come from.

That’s right, folks, some people don’t even know if they are going to be able to afford to eat that day. Suffice it to say that a new computer is just a little bit out of the question, and before you say something stupid, they deserve the same access to things which could help them better their situations that everyone else does. I’d even go so far to say that they may need it a little more precisely because of their dire situation.

Yes, some of them got themselves in that situation. However, a lot of them arrived there either from birth or because of circumstances beyond their control. You’d be amazed at how much of life is out of your hands (as well as just how “economically depressed” a region in this country can be. Economically depressed? Forget the political talk. Let’s call it like it is – some areas in this country, and in almost every other country on the face of this ball of rock, are downright POOR). They deserve a shot to get themselves into a better situation. If it was you in that position, you’d want the same. Some of you would even try demanding it.

I admit that I sometimes have an entitlement moment. They aren’t frequent, but they do happen, and I feel bad about them later. On the whole, most of the things that matter to me are friends and the things in life that you can’t necessarily hold in your hands. As long as I have my friends, the money to pay my bills, decent food to eat, maybe a little extra money to play with, and people aren’t trying to kill or maim me (don’t laugh. It’s happened.), I tend to view life as being pretty good.

Do us all a favor. Try not to take what you have for granted. Even more importantly, don’t look down on people that are less fortunate than you are. They’re people too. Be a decent person and try to even help out a little if you can.

The thing that spurred on this little diatribe? Slashdot, as usual. One of the people there made the rather asinine comment questioning why the Linux community would want to have people in it who still use hardware that runs Windows98 and said that such people were technologically backwards and should simply upgrade to newer equipment.

He even got moderated up until I commented and he started getting marked as a troll.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Ivy – Undertow

While looking at Coding Horror this evening, I ran across his latest article in which he outlines the requirements for Windows Vista RC1.

This is probably the first time to date that I have ever uttered this on my blog (and only one of about a half dozen times at all) – OMGWTFBBQ??!!

(The really weird this is that spell check does not object to that… it red flags “blog” but OMGWTFBBQ is, apparently, alright. That’s just funny.)

15 gigs of hard drive space??? MINIMUM??!!!

512 RAM just to boot it up with 1GB recommended?

Good grief.

I’d never be able to run it on the laptop that I use for day to day tasks (2.4Ghz processor, 512ram, 40GB HD split 30/10 between Windows and Linux). That’s just sad.

I have a fully functioning Linux environment (including network, coding, and office utilities) running in less than 8GB of hard drive space (part of the 10 is taken up with swap and profiles) and my Windows install with all of the tools that I use on a regular basis (compilers, office programs, email, etc etc etc. Even a few games) only takes up about 15GB total.

That’s windows, 3rd party programs, and everything (not including the portion of my CD collection that I keep ripped on my computer). For Vista, that would just cover Windows and then I’d have to add in everything else.

That’s just excessive. I mean, I realize that Windows Vista is going to be a little more resource intense – XP was designed for systems that were made six years ago, but still. That’s one heck of a jump.

From what I’ve been reading so far, Vista isn’t really even that much of a step up from XP. It’s mostly just eye candy and yet more applications that I probably won’t use. They started carving off the really interesting parts of the package as they slipped further and further behind.

I just can’t see myself using Vista unless it comes on a new computer that I buy and even then, I might just end up getting another license for XP because of the resource requirements.

I’ve been hearing similar things from a lot of people.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Echo and the Bunnymen – All in your Mind

I’ve had a nearly incurable wanderlust since I’ve been a kid.

I’ve literally grabbed a couple of day’s worth of clothing, a few hundred dollars, and driven off with no more of a plan than to see the sunrise over the mountains or run off to the beach (about 10 hours away) for seafood and to spend some time around the ocean.

I could even comment about having jambalaya for breakfast in New Orleans. (now that was a nice trip.)

It’s always just been a part of who I am. I have this love of new places and faces. It’s lead to meeting a lot of interesting people and being in some great (and some not-so-great) situations.

Thankfully, I’ve always managed to get through the rough spots with a little help from random people.

I wouldn’t give up those experiences for the world. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to do anything like that for a couple of years. It’s something I really miss.

One of the reasons I really look forward to having a new full time job again is being able to travel on my off time because I never get to anymore. I miss the ocean, the mountains, sunrise and sunset in interesting places, and getting to meet new and different people.

I admit it. In some ways I am a romantic. It’s just part of the strange package that is me.

Current mood: thoughtful
Current music: Collapsis – October

Well, the toy project I was talking about before has been posted.

I’m not completely happy with the GUI, but it was just for the heck of it so I didn’t want to spend *too* much time working on it. It was basically just an excuse to code and do something that was at least sort of novel and fun.

If you’d like to play with it, it’s posted here.

I may clean it up more in the future, and I will likely add new stories, but it’s nothing that’s really going to be aggressively added onto.

What did we learn from this, boys and girls? A trivial program which has a multi-screen GUI is no longer a trivial program =]

Current mood: calm
Current music: Professional Murder Music – A Night Like This

And now for a pointless, silly semi-rant that nobody should take too seriously:

Pardon me while I put my sarcasm hat on.

I love working with Swing.

Okay, I can take my hat off now.

Went to add some of the last functionality to the toy program today (the rest of the work needed is basically UI tweaks), and ran into a problem.

The frame was showing two copies of what I wanted to display.

Okay, let’s make sure that I told it to remove everything from the panel in question. Indeed I am. Let’s invalidate it and revalidate it. Still having the problem.

That’s weird. Time to reach for the nutshell book.

No, I’m not missing anything that could possibly help remedy the problem as things are set up now. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I decided to try something stupid.

I added the pane that I wanted to erase the contents of as the only component of another pane and then just told the program to erase that pane instead.

It worked. It’s stupid but it worked. I am rapidly learning that so much of dealing with Swing is nesting things in one container after another. It’s kind of silly, frustrating, and amusing all at the same time.

Oh well. It’s not like it’s a big deal, and it works now.

Current mood: amused
Current music: Garbage – Fix me Now

Ever have one of those days were it seems like simple tasks become major undertakings?

Yesterday was one of those.

In an effort to actually do something coding-oriented, I decided to make a fun little program. It should have taken an afternoon to get most of the functionality working (polishing the GUI is another matter). Instead, it ended up taking all day and just would not work.

I ended up stepping back for a moment and decided to start out again, this time with a simpler version of the project and then abstract away the needed parts to expand it to what I wanted in the first place. Doing that, I found my problem (and it was a fairly silly one, but I’ve been distracted and a bit stressed lately, so I can understand how I missed it).

It’s now roughly to the point where I wanted it before I start polishing the user interface and it only ended up taking me a couple of hours.

While it’s not a professional project, I will be posting it on my site when I finish tweaking the GUI so people can play with it. I figure that it should be up by the end of the week.

It’s not that it needs *that* much polish. It’s just that I have a lot of other things that I need to take care of as well.

Current mood: happy
Current music: Anggun – Snow on the Sahara

It’s been an interesting last few days.

My email address seems to have gotten listed as being that of a spammer. Again. On a good day, I might send out about 24 emails. A spammer I am not.

Thankfully, that’s been cleared up now.

I got contacted by two companies this week that I actually responded to (read that they were for full time positions and weren’t looking for things that were blatantly not me. Though I have to admit that more places seem to actually be looking at my website before they contact me).

One’s a company about an hour or so from here, and the other one is Amazon.

I’m interested in interviewing with both of them, but I’m also a bit nervous about the Amazon interview since the position includes, among other things, something I haven’t really done in two years (and that’s explicitly stated on the profile they used to find me, so I’m hoping that it won’t be that much of an issue).

The phone interview with Amazon is supposed to be a technical one, so I’m basically expecting to get hammered to the wall with it. The other one I don’t know much about yet.

I find it amusing that I get so nervous before some interviews. I know that if it goes well, it goes well and if it doesn’t then it doesn’t, but there’s just something nerve wracking about them for me. I think it’s the fact that so many of them try to grill you on things you did ages ago, trip you up just to see if they can, or ask you impossible questions (yes, some people like to ask impossible questions to “see how you will react. I consider this to be BS) so I end up sitting there trying not only to give the correct answers but to feel out the people who are interviewing me and their intentions.

I have largely become of the opinion that interviews aren’t much fun for the people on either side of the table, and there is something wrong with the people who actually enjoy them. =]

It’s funny. Interviews make me nervous, but being thrown into the sparing ring with someone doesn’t at all. I also don’t tend to get nervous when working on actual problems unless I’m running up against a hard time limit or someone is badgering me. It’s the whole “put him in a maze like a lab rat while we act smug, superior, and all knowing” thing that gets me.

Unfortunately, I’m not kidding about the acting smug, superior, and all-knowing part. I once interviewed with a company that gave me a test they had supposedly just re-written, labeled it as a C++ test and it was really just a straight C test. I got it and noticed printf statements (among other things) everywhere. I later asked the dev manager about it and basically got yelled at, stonewalled, and then told that it didn’t really matter anyway because they were porting everything to C#.

If it didn’t matter, why re-write the test? If you’re migrating from one language to another, would it not be a bit important to know the difference between the language that you say you are migrating from and the language you use as a test for prospective employees? Furthermore, why jump down a candidate’s throat who asked a rather pertinent question?

I wasn’t smug or snotty when I asked. I genuinely wanted to know. But the whole interview ended up being pretty bad, so I doubt that I would have accepted their offer if they had made one.

Hopefully neither of those interviews end up being like that one or worse. Please let me meet an at least somewhat sane company that wants to hire me. =]

Current mood: tired
Current music: Deadsy – Brand New Love

I do so love the “experts” that insist on showing their faces on Slashdot. They amuse me at times.

In case you didn’t know, Sun is open sourcing Java. I have mixed feelings about this. I hope it works out well, because I like the language, but I just can’t shake this nagging feeling that people are going to try to do lots of stupid things to the language (add things to the language that don’t belong there, break up the libraries into separate downloads, etc).

Call me paranoid, but Microsoft already tried it once. I don’t put it past other groups to try again.

The greatest suggestion I’ve heard yet? That the deprecated methods should be removed.

Pardon me while I repeat myself – someone suggested that parts of the language that have been deprecated (don’t use these, there’s a better way now) should be removed from the language outright, and people were AGREEING with him!

This is such a bad idea that it’s not even funny.

There’s a lot of old production code out there and a lot of it uses methods that are now deprecated. The same is true of almost any language that has been around long enough to have parts of it deprecated.

The only thing that I can figure is that the people spewing this crap are either just hobbyists or students who have never actually had to maintain anything. It just hurts my head.

Updating production code is NOT cheap. It takes a lot of time, can introduce a whole lot of problems, and it’s not something that you usually want to approach lightly (and some of us hate approaching it at all). You have to know the system really well to even try, or you could cause a lot of unseen problems.

If they want to remove those parts from Java, let’s see them suggest the same thing for their darling C and C++. Watch how fast that blows up in their face.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith, but your account shows a balance of $0.”

“Mr. Jones, the insurance company says you do not have an auto insurance policy with them. Yes, I know that you have a piece of paper that says otherwise, but the computer never lies. You are under arrest.”

Etc etc etc. The examples could go on and on.

Deprecated methods are left in there for a reason. They are tagged as Deprecated and generally throw compiler warnings, but they are left in. I don’t care if *you* don’t understand why. Just realize that they are. In time you might learn why they are for yourself. In the meantime, stop biting at our ankles. We’re trying to get things done.

Current mood: my head hurts
Current music: Savage Garden - Violet

Checking my email, I got an email from a company in Louisiana. This one was rather neat, because the person who wrote me said that he “spent waaaay too long down in the rabbit hole that is your website.”

Apparently he found me fascinating.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an opportunity that I was interested in, but that’s okay. I hope they find someone good to fill their position.

Other than that, I felt moderately unproductive today. Returned a few calls (I’ve been screening the heck out of my calls this past few weeks. Otherwise, I’d run out of minutes.), did a little planning for a couple of programs that I’m going to start working on, and then wandered around the local shops for a while.

I got things done, but it just doesn’t feel like I actually accomplished much. It’s just sort of been an off day.

I’ve decided to start doing some light training again (if the neighborhood kids will leave me the heck alone. I’m sorry, I don’t want to show them “something cool” and I most certainly don’t want to teach them – they don’t have anything even resembling discipline), and have learned the joys of not being able to see because of sweat running in my eyes. However, in my idle wanderings this afternoon, I found something that I had been looking for since I started playing with the OU fencing team back in 2001 – plain, solid-color bandanna sized handkerchiefs.

Nobody carries the bloody things. You can find print ones all over the place, but never the plain ones. I found them in the local hobby store of all places, so I picked up a couple. I’m semi-ashamed to say that I also picked up some junk food while I was out, but at least it was fairly healthy junk food (sunflower seeds and oatmeal cookies).

Hey, I can’t be completely healthy. =]

At least I’m starting to get back on the right track.

Current mood: calm
Current music: Smashing Pumpkins - Perfect

James the Grumpy Software Developer
Or
Why my Resume no Longer Lists my Home Number

Yesterday, I updated all of my posted resumes on the normal job boards. Since then, my phone has been ringing off the hook. Normally this would be a good thing. In the case of most of these calls, however, it’s a pain in the rear.

I plainly stated that I am only interested in full time, permanent positions. Most of the calls I have gotten so far are for short term contract positions, and most of those are located across the country.

(As an aside, it seems that my complaint that companies are hiring, or contracting out to, foreign HR people with *really* thick accents isn’t just isolated to the one company. I got several voicemails from different numbers that were absolutely unintelligible. If, on the other hand, they are having these people call me because they think the accent would be closer to my own, they should realize that my surname comes from the British Isles and not from more Asian locales despite my martial training.)

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

Previously, I had listed my cell phone as my preferred means of contact though I listed my home number just in case. That changed today. Most of the callers today decided that calling the home line would be a much better idea despite my wishes. One of them (who also failed to read the full time, perm portion of my posting) was so rude as to call my cell, leave a voice mail and then immediately call the home line.

There is now basically no mention of the fact that I even have a home number. It’s even been removed from my website. Now the only methods of contact listed are my cell, email, and snail mail. All of this trouble is because people don’t have the decency to use my preferred method of communication.

However, the fun and games did not just stop there. I got one person who called four times in about five or six hours, leaving the same voicemail message every time. I admit that, after about the first hour of being hammered by calls (I was literally getting a call about every 10 minutes or less), I decided to screen everyone that wasn’t in my address book. Otherwise, I would have burned up all of my minutes for the month on the second day of said month just so I could tell people I wasn’t interested in a six month opportunity in Texas.

Top it off with the fact that, when I informed the people I did not screen today that I was not interested in a short term contract halfway across the country, they didn’t listen and simply kept trying to talk me into the position.

I said no thank you. That should be enough.

Then again, so should calling and leaving a message once.

Have some tact and decency, people.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Tinnfed - Immune

It’s official. I’ve started to turn into an organization freak again.

For the longest time, I just kind of kept things in a loose “sort of together” way. Projects had their own folders, but that was about it. The important ones were in version control, but my own stuff was just kind of there.

Last week, I finally kicked myself into “cleanup” mode and started making subversion repositories for basically all of my projects. Everything from individual pieces of software to my website. I even made a repository for my scripts and a repository for my samples CD that I take to interviews.

About the only important thing that isn’t in subversion at this point is my cat. Somehow, I don’t think that he’d enjoy it. =]

While I was at it, I cleaned up the directory structure for my website to make it easier to grow. I hate to say it, but before I did the overhaul of the backend, almost everything was just in one directory. It was a huge mess to keep track of. Now it’s much nicer.

The next step for it at some point is moving it all to PHP, but I’m not going to do that just yet. There are other things that I have to work on first.

The important thing is that I’m organized again. It makes me amazed that I ever stopped having things arranged in an orderly manner.

Current mood: tired
Current music: London After Midnight - Kiss

Month in Review

Since I’ve been a bit quiet of late, I thought I should do an overview of the assorted miscellany that’s been going on. So, in no particular order, I present to you the month in review.

Since I got my laptop a couple of years ago, one thing has never worked. I could never get wireless to work properly in Linux. This was due largely to the fact that the card which came with it was a Broadcom. We tried everything including ndiswrapper. Not even my friends who write kernel modules were able to get it to work.

A couple of months ago, I finally broke down and got a new wireless card from Netgear. Within 30 minutes, it was up and running. The drivers aren’t native, but I had zero problems with the ones from MadWifi, so now I can start using Linux more regularly again.

Ironically, I read that the next kernel is supposed to have built in support for Broadcom wireless cards. Go figure.

I had a meeting with some headhunters last week, so I have more eyes out there looking to place me in a F/T position since I am tired of contracting. It ended up being a longer meeting than I was expecting because I ended up talking to several of them. Hopefully something positive comes out of this especially since I had to wear long sleeves and a tie in 95 degree weather. =]

The above is also what caused me to miss the TIGAR awards. However, I consider that a legitimate reason. Sorry, John.

I am, however, pre-registered for Ohio Linux Fest. If you’re in the area and are free that day, register and attend. It’s a decent conference.

I was without power one day and without cable and telephone the next because we were having a tree removed from the back yard since it would have fallen over before too many more seasons had passed. You never realize how much you need email until you can’t use it.

As some of you have noticed, I added RSS to the website and blog a couple of weeks ago. It surprises me the number of hits that it gets per day. I honestly didn’t think there were that many people who read this.

Also, in order to make the growth of the site a bit more orderly, I rearranged some things on the back end. It shouldn’t impact anything you see, but it will make my life easier as I continue to add things to the site. If you find anything broken, please let me know.

The last bit of news is that the weird referrals to the site continue. At one point last year, for some odd reason, I was getting referrals from a German porn site. Don’t ask me why. I don’t know and I’m not sure I want to know.

This month, the #2 referrer (just behind Google) is a site called dvd4arab. Apparently there is a link to me in one of their threads. I don’t know why they’re linking to me, just that they are. I can just see me having made some DHS list now because of the people visiting my site. Now all I need is some religious fundamentalist site linking to me, and I could have a great trifecta of weird referrers.

Well, that just about covers everything that has been of moderate interest for the month but has gotten lost in the shuffle. This month has just been kind of busy in a grind way instead of lots of exciting things.

Current mood: neutral
Current music: American Express – Find a New Way

You know, with all of the things going on both where I am and around the world, there are any number of things that I could rant on or discuss or give my opinion on.

I’m not going to do that tonight.

Instead, I think I’ll just say something that (I hope) is a lot more positive.

Last week, I got a card in the mail from a good friend of mine that I don’t get to talk to much anymore. It was a wedding invitation.

I’d just like to say congratulations and that I wish him well even though I won’t be able to make it to the ceremony. I hope it works out well, Tony. You deserve it.

Current mood – not bad
Current music – The Wreckers – Leave the Pieces

Interesting news… and a rant.

I realize that I don’t rant here much. Generally most of the “negative” things I have to say are said in a joking manner. There are, of course, exceptions, but the vast majority are said tongue in cheek. This one, however, is completely serious and something that I view as a real, honest problem.

I would also like to apologize in advance for being a little long-winded on this post.

Before we get to that, though, let’s do the news part. There will be plenty of time for the rant afterward.

The news is that the people who thought that Ken Lay, the one responsible for the Enron debacle, would get away without any jail time were absolutely right. He has died of a coronary before his sentencing could take place.

I’m not quite sure how I feel about that. Part of me is surprised. Part of me isn’t. Part wanted to see him face sentencing and part of me just kind of shrugs at the way it turned out. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll figure it out before too long. It just seems kind of ironic to go through the whole trial and have him die basically right before sentencing.

I think part of me feels like they should pass sentence anyway just so we can draw this to a close. Not that it really matters. It’s just that it seems like the ultimate loose end.

In other, probably less interesting news, I have added an RSS feed to the blog and website. I figure that I update often enough that it is warranted.

Now, on to the rant.

I have maintained that I have almost no problem in dealing with accents. I’ve worked with, been friends with, and known people from all over the world. As long as we can both speak English (or enough of another language that I understand), I can communicate with said person without a whole lot of trouble.

There is, however, a certain company that is making me seriously reconsider this position. I think it’s the same company, anyway. If it isn’t, then it’s a really disturbing trend.

About every two weeks, I’ll get a call from a recruiting firm that says they saw my resume online. This in itself is nothing abnormal, and I have no problem with it. In fact, I am looking for a new full time position now that I am finished with the magazine and the fact is that I am kind of tired of contracting because constantly looking for new clients gets old after a while.

The problem is that first, it sounds like they’re using voip (judging from the delay and static) and second, that the person on the other end of the line is Indian with an accent so thick that even *I* have trouble with it.

They start out by asking me inane questions like do I have any experience in an IT setting which can be answered by simply *glancing* at my resume. Of course I have no experience. My resume just has software developer and network analyst/system administrator positions on it for no reason. Please take the time to at least look at what you’re calling me about first.

Next, in the midst of trying to answer their questions, I will tell them that I can’t understand them (which is true) and ask if they could contact me via email instead. Instead of doing so, the person on the other end just keeps on with their script.

This annoys me. I restate my request and they keep going, so I inform them that since they do not listen, I have no desire to do business with them and hang up.

A couple of weeks later, it all happens again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Now, this is bad for a few reasons – first, communication is important in any relationship (business, friendship, romantic, etc). In a business setting, the person you have dealing with the general public should be able to speak in a manner which will be easily understood *by* the general public. This means that they speak the same language (in this case English), they speak at an understandable speed, and with an appropriate (or a “generic”) accent.

Doing this cuts down on a great deal of communications overhead and is a lesson that has been learned by everyone from the phone company and telemarketers to brick and mortar stores. Unfortunately, however, it does not seem to have been learned by a lot of technical companies. Here’s a hint – the same rules apply to you too.

Second, placing someone whom you know will not be understood by your target audience in a position which deals with them extensively shows an extreme lack of respect for your intended audience. In this case, if a company does this while they are trying to recruit me, they are not going to be able to do so. At all.

Third, the chances are that, if you continue to act in this manner, word will get around and it will be very difficult to connect with more customers (in this case, potential employees).

Like I said before, I think that this is the same company that has contacted me in the past. If that is the case, then they really need to get their act together. If not, then this is a disturbing trend.

Having said that, if anyone is interested in hiring me to work at a (mostly) sane company where the employees are treated with some measure of respect and not like instantly replaceable cogs in a machine, feel free to contact me. I am more than willing to listen and will relocate for the right opportunity.

I just saw an article in The Register about a poll of developers about the quality of various IDEs. Their conclusion? That Eclipse and NetBeans come in dead last.

This survey made me shake my head. It was an extremely poor excuse for a “study”. Why, you ask? First, they polled a whopping 1,200 people (that’s like asking 5 people on the street what they think of a local issue and calling it an official poll). Second, there is almost no way at all that the people they asked had experience in all of the IDEs that they listed. There were eleven IDEs listed covering a pretty wide variety of languages.

Here’s a hint, people. Looking at a pretty screen for five minutes is no way to say one IDE is better than another. You need to have actual experience in using them.

It really looked like a high school popularity contest. I just wondered who funded Evans Data Corp’s little “study”.

Do I think everything about Eclipse is perfect? No. My main complaint is that the Auto-Complete list takes too long to appear a fair amount of the time whereas on Visual Studio, it appears by about the second character of a member function/variable that you type. Is this a huge problem? Not really. I just hate digging through docs to get the proper order of arguments.

This sort of thing really makes me wonder who actually takes these “studies” seriously. They really aren’t worth the time it took to do them (though I am sure that the groups that do them are compensated *quite* well for their trouble).

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Deadsy – The Key to Gramercy Park

Well, this evening was certainly interesting. I went over to the neighbor’s house to watch the fireworks. There were many pretty lights (many of which hurt my eyes – being photosensitive can be a real bear at times), lots of whizzing sounds, and a lot of smoke.

I even managed to get hit squarely in the chin by a falling ember. That’s always fun.

Then came the last firework of the evening. The roman candle was lit. It then proceeded to fall over and orient itself toward the crowd of us. Nine screaming balls of colored fire rocketed toward us (and their house, and the cars, and my house, and the other neighbors’ cars…).

People scattered. It was nuts. Several of us almost got hit, and a few of us changed direction only to have the pyrotechnic pursuer curve along the same basic path. Talk about a great close to the evening. heh

Their daughter wanted to set off fireworks last night, but now that she’s been chased by the last firework of the evening, she has declared that she doesn’t want anything to do with them anymore. I’m sure she’ll be ready again by next year =]

Current mood: amused
Current music: Roxette – The Look

I have met yet another example of a company that I have no desire to work for in the last week.

I was told by a consulting company that part of the requirements before I even got an interview was to turn over my client list. I spent the next 5 minutes telling her that there was no way that was going to happen and she spent it trying to convince me that it was a standard and acceptable practice.

Sorry, people, but that’s not the mark of a company looking for new employees. That’s the mark of a company looking for new clients and wanting to weasel them out of other people.

My FAQ just got a new entry.

Current mood: amused
Current music: INXS & Jimmy Barnes - Good Times