Scent and Memory

It sometimes amazes me how much of an effect some smells have on me.

I know they say that smell is the sense with the closest ties to memory, but sometimes it’s surprising that the memories come with a depth of feeling that you wouldn’t believe possible until you experience them.

Of course, a lot of us have the memory triggers from certain perfumes or shampoos or what have you that remind us of our first love (I know that I do). However, I have some that a lot of people would consider odd.

A lot of my childhood involved training in martial arts – first kung fu and then European and Japanese sword arts. Sometimes I think they were the happiest times in my life until I met my first love.

As a result, two of my major scent triggers (other than the aforementioned shampoo, perfume, and makeup) are well worn leather and cosmoline (gun grease).

Of course, the leather comes into play because of my harnesses, belts, baldrics, scabbards and gloves (who would ever guess all of the straps and things you have to wear). The deep, musky smell of leather gloves or baldrics which have had the dyes cured into them by the sweat of your body is just somehow very intoxicating (and a darn site more pleasant than the black and blue stains the leather leaves on your hands and chest before the dyes have been locked in by the salt – ask Karyl about the screaming blue hands).

There are probably, however, some people who are wondering what gun lube has to do with martial arts. The answer is simple – good carbon steel blades will rust if they’re not properly lubricated and I try not to buy blades that I wouldn’t be willing to use anymore (which means that they’re all good carbon steel blades).

The same was true of my sifu and my other teachers, so I have a lot of memories that involve the smell of well worn leather and cosmoline. It reminds me of times with the grass beneath my feet and the wind ruffling my hair and fighting robes, blade in hand, standing lightly and waiting to respond to the situation facing me. It’s a very serene feeling that I think more people should be able to experience.

It’s the place where you simultaneously loose yourself and find yourself, and I have to say that it gives you a different perspective on a lot of things.

It was enough of an influence on me that, after the relationship with my ex ended, my style of dress changed as well – back to one more reminiscent of my training clothing. Simple, comfortable, flowing shirts and pants that were almost monk-like in style (Loose black semi button up shirts with no appreciable collar and loose black pants).

I spent a lot of time at the lake training and meditating. It was my way to find myself again. Amusingly it also frequently got me accused of looking like a monk, a priest, or a mercenary.

What brought up this trip down memory lane? Taking care of my blades, of course. After all, I don’t want them to rust. I have too much respect for them to do that. Ask any of the fencers I chided for not taking care of their equipment while I was teaching them in college.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Papa Roach – Forever

Cargo Cult Computing

InformationWeek has an article asking why Microsoft doesn’t have a cult following like Linux, Java, and FOSS do.

The comments on the article itself as well as the ones on Slashdot (what? Didn’t think something like that would slip past them did you?) make me feel rather ill.

I don’t want a cult in things that I use to do a job. I want solid tools to work with and a decent chance to find answers to questions that I might have if I can’t answer them myself. Mentioning a cult makes me want to go the other way.

Who the hell cares about fanatical fanboys? They tend to do more harm than good because they scream about anything that is different than what they love.

Want to know the reasons that Microsoft products are used in so many enterprises?

They’re fairly easy to use, they don’t require being compiled or excessively tweaked “out of the box” for most tasks, the learning curve for most basic tasks is small, there are a whole LOT of 3^rd party software providers, and the formats that they use for documents are the same ones used by most businesses. I realize that the last item in that list basically says “everyone uses Microsoft stuff because everybody uses Microsoft stuff,” but it’s true.

(Yes, the new Ribbon interface and Vista break the slight learning curve, but I’ll get to that in a minute)

For most enterprises, those are the important things. Most larger businesses have some sort of licensing deal on the MS software so they’re not paying retail for it, IT people familiar with Microsoft products aren’t horribly hard to come by, and, more importantly, “normal” workers familiar with Microsoft products are dead simple to come by.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a Microsoft fanboy. In fact, I’m not a fanboy of anything except maybe usability. I’m more of a right tools for the job kind of guy. I use stuff from Redmond, I use open source stuff (hell, I even release some small open source stuff), and I use various pieces of 3^rd party commercial and free software. (as in cost. Dear gods do I hate Stallman for his “Free” vs. free crap. Want an example of the downside to software cults? Go look at that fool.)

Is there room for improvement? Heck yes. Do they need slavering fanatics to accomplish it? No. They just need to listen to their customers a bit more.

With their new “Ribbons” interface driving everyone crazy and Vista (which I swear has to be Windows ME round 2) being a bloated piece of crud, they may have taken a step backwards, but they’ll recover.

They need to remember that change for the sake of change isn’t good. Change for the sake of improvement is (usually. Well, okay, sometimes).

In the interest of disclosure, I should say that I’ve had friends who work at both Sun and Microsoft. I got to hear about a lot of issues on both sides, and get to see them for myself because of my network and development work.

I don’t support the full stack out of any one group, I don’t think.

• I run both Windows and Linux (more Windows lately).
• I like Eclipse, but I’ve also been a long time Visual Studio user (first for C and C++ starting back in 1998 and now for C#. I also used CodeWarrior for C++ back then for what it’s worth).
• I also use Ruby and the FreeRIDE IDE.
• I use MS SQL, mysql, postgres, and have used Oracle in the past among other databases.
• I actually prefer Word to OpenOffice because it’s easier to make documents that look good in (I’m sorry, but if I want to write a document, I want to write a document, not tweak this and widge that).
• I use FireFox and Thunderbird (but for the love of my sanity, would someone fix the memory issue in FireFox??)

The list goes on. Some things fall on the Microsoft side, some fall on the side of some open source project, and some fall on a third party solution.

I admit that I used to be an idealist about software at one time. Hell, with as often as the university beats you over the head with the opinion that open source is the best thing ever, you would have been too. However, then something happened – I started doing this for money and a lot of clients want their code to be their code (surprise surprise).

Now I tend to be horribly pragmatic. I see places where open sourcing things makes more sense and I see places where not open sourcing things is a positive thing. The people who think that one way or the other is the only way to go are just plain silly. I even maintained that opinion while I was editor of an open source magazine and stated it plainly in my first article there.

I’ve had enough of the mudslinging. My computer is a tool that allows me to do work. It is not a religion. I use what makes sense and I don’t need a cargo cult that screams “they may be more successful, but we’re *better* so why aren’t you worshipping us???!!!”

How about you?

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Delerium – Terra Firma

Happy Birthday To Me

For my birthday, the world gave to me…

A mild case of sun poisoning.

I decided to take the day off (after all, who wants to work on their birthday?) and head to the lake.

Taking along an ample supply of water and my new blade, I spent a few hours training and meditating. Unfortunately, there’s that whole problem of my being photosensitive.

Generally, it’s just a matter of wearing sunglasses since bright light really adversely affects my eyesight (on the upside, I see really well at night). However, after a winter of being cooped up, my body wasn’t used to the UV radiation and I got a sunburn and mild case of sun poisoning because there was basically zero cloud cover today.

Nothing too serious. I should be back to normal in a day or so. In the meantime, I’ll just be kind of drained and a bit queasy.

Make the pasty skinned geek comments if you like, but it’s a problem I’ve had since I was a kid. I’m just usually outside enough to have my body used to it. It’s simply that the weather was crappy during the winter (which only seems to have recently ended here) so I didn’t go out too much during the day.

On the upside, I have decided that I really like the new sword. Yes, I bought myself a new sword. If you trained with them since you were a kid, you’d occasionally buy yourself one too.

Truth be told, while I was at it, I picked up an equally well made parrying dagger to go with it.

After all, this blog is titled “Code Poet, Swordsman, Eternal Wanderer” for a reason. With basically any of my blades, my well-worn black suede jacket (which has seen many many miles over the years) and my black messenger bag, I even look the part of the wandering swordsman.

This particular blade is a slim backsword (think of a saber and now straighten the blade) modeled after the 1840 US issue NCO sword which was, in turn, based off of a French model (just like the US cavalry swords of the era were).

It’s hand forged, wonderfully tempered, and handles like a dream. At a waspish 1.5-2lbs including its solid brass hilt, it is definitely a blade made for finesse instead of force.

No frills, no fancy scrolling or etching on the blade, just a solid, simple, well made sword that, in its plainness, even manages to look a bit dressy.

I can safely say that the people I taught in college fencing would have envied it.

I can also say that, despite the sun poisoning, I really needed the day of meditation. I feel a little better for it, though I admit that I wish I could have taken up my old friend on her offer of running away to California to be with her for a while.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Dirty Vegas – A Million Ways

Danger and Opportunity

Last night, the old saw that the Chinese word for “Crisis” was made up of the characters for “Danger” and “Opportunity” came into my mind.

Curious to see if this was actually the case, I did a little searching.

According to Victor H. Mair, professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, this is not the case.

He states that the word for danger is indeed in there, but opportunity is not. However, I disagree with his opinion, because his reason for discounting the “Opportunity” portion of the equation stems from his very limited understanding of what seems to be his own native tounge.

I find this strange. Especially for someone who teaches a language as full of nuance as Chinese.

He views “Opportunity” to be only positive, and uses the definition from Webster’s Dictionary to back him up and states that “The jī of wēijī, in fact, means something like "incipient moment; crucial point (when something begins or changes)” And that the best one can hope for in a crisis is to save ones own skin.

What he does not seem to understand is that a crucial moment or moment of change is indeed a moment of opportunity. The opportunity exists for things to go very well or horribly wrong depending on how the person in the event acts.

Maybe it’s just the Taoist and swordsman in me, but I view every crisis as a shaping event in the life of the person who experiences it. It is the anvil upon which the mettle of the person in question is hammered – sometimes they break under the strain and sometimes they come out stronger and with more of their path shown to them.

I will grant that most people fear a moment of crisis and freeze up if it happens to them, but there are those of us who are able to navigate our way through it calmly. For that second sort of person, a crisis is indeed a moment of opportunity – not always welcome, but understood and dealt with to the best of our ability.

Current mood: contemplative
Current music: Alanis Morissette - Crazy

They Just Never get it Right

It seems that my alma mater is “cracking down” on file sharing.

Citing bandwidth issues and the amount of John Doe lawsuits that they are getting from the RIAA, they have decided to outlaw all p2p applications.

I find this ironic considering that, in my software dev class (2003, I believe), one of the projects available to the teams of students was to create a p2p application with a gui.

I’ve never been a big fan of their network services people, because, on the whole, none of them knew what the hell they were doing. There were, of course, exceptions, but they were few and far between.

With that said, it makes me wonder just how far they’re going to take this. Are we just talking things like uTorrent (which a lot of people in the engineering dept use to get things like linux distros) and eMule or are they going to try to kill any distributed applications that they run across for fear that they're p2p apps they've never heard of before?

If it’s the latter, they’re going to have a whole lot of trouble from the engineering college, because we did a great deal of distributed apps. Hell, even my fish tank was running on 20+ machines both on and off campus as a test at one point.

First they have the security fiasco where multiple machines with personal information, including social security numbers, were compromised for over a year without anyone noticing (and, in one case, the machine was supposed to have been decommissioned over a year before). Now they’re trying to be draconian with the network?

Sorry, folks, but you get no donations from me. I know the same goes for a lot of the other people I went to school with.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Ayumi Hamasaki – Evolution

Women and IT

Computer World is running an article on why women seem to be leaving IT.

The gist of the article is basically that women don’t want to put up with the BS, insane hours, and perpetually being on-call.

Slashdot got wind of this story, and most of the responses there were along the lines of “if they don’t want to put in the same hours that we do, forget them.”

Personally, I think that what they should be asking is why *they* are working the insane hours to begin with.

You shouldn’t live to work. You should work in order to get money to do other things like pay the rent and pursue whatever you enjoy doing.

Your job is just a job. It doesn’t love you, it won’t care if you work yourself to death doing it, and it can be done by someone else should you leave. Don’t fall for the fake macho BS of “you are your job” and don’t be guilted, intimidated or manipulated into working insane hours.

The trend to make every person do the work of several people and constantly being on call is not a positive thing. It leads to stress, very costly mistakes, burnout, and a wasted life.

Do your job and then leave the building. Go to the lake. Enjoy the scenery. While you’re there, toss that damned Blackberry as far out into the water as you can.

You’re better off without it.

Work belongs at work; just like you do – for about 8 hours a day, 5 days a week barring the very occasional overtime.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: AFI – The Missing Frame

You know, this is one of the times that I remember why I like programming.

It’s a problem solving thing.

I just spent a total of five minutes writing, testing, and running a program that did work it would have taken me a couple of hours to do by hand.

Even after all this time, that sort of thing just never seems to get old.

Current mood: =]
Current music: Bon Jovi – Let it Rock

Farewell, Kurt Vonnegut. You will be missed.

Rest in Peace.

Dear Tim O’reilly,

Having seen your proposed Blogger’s Code of Conduct, I have the following to say to you:

Get stuffed.

You’re not as important as you seem to think you are despite the fact that your publishing company generally makes decent technical books. Your propositions in this area will largely fall on deaf ears because we speak in the manner that we wish to and, should you try to force the issue (though, on the web, I fail to see how you could unless you tried to get legislation passed), I foresee a wonderful backlash.

I (and, I suspect, most of the other people out there in the great ever-changing place called the Internet) will continue to speak in the same manner that I always have ever since I first signed onto a BBS all of those years ago.

As for comments on my blog or any other forum that I moderate, the only things that will be deleted are link spam.

If someone threatens me, they are perfectly welcome to try it on me in person. If they threaten a friend of mine, they go through me first. The same rules apply to “real life”.

Yes, I really am the same here that I am in person. In fact, I tend to be a bit more reserved on here with regard to certain subjects because of the larger audience.

Unlike you and your friends, half-baked threats of physical violence and death don’t phase me. I’ve been out into the world, boys and girls, and have seen both the very good and the very very bad. Someone at the other end of a piece of cable just doesn’t frighten me.

The world is a very big place full of a lot of different kinds of people. Either grow a spine and learn how to deal with the rest of the world or take your bat and ball and go home, Tim. Either way, stop trying to tell the rest of us how we should all be.

Regards,

James

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Elton John – Crocodile Rock

Of Music and Men

The New York Times has an op-ed piece by a couple of people who owned a record shop in Manhattan on what the record labels and RIAA are doing wrong.

Slashdot got wind of it, and most of the posts there have been of the “people don’t care about CDs anymore. They just want a song or two.”

Call me weird, but I actually *like* having the physical media. Maybe it’s the collector and DJ in me (and yes, I have, on occasion, been a DJ). Part of it, I think, is that I get a CD for a couple of songs and then end up finding other songs on the album that I like.

That’s not really something that you can do with iTunes.

At the same time, I want to smack the owners of music shops who say that illegal downloading has killed their sales. There are a few reasons for this.

First, not everyone who downloaded a song would have bought the album in the first place. Second, some people download a song or two in order to decide if they want to get the album. Third, have you seen the price of a new album lately?

I’m not blaming the record stores for reason three because they don’t make a whole lot per CD sold. Most of the money goes to the label and middle men. However, it’s a real part of the problem that needs to be solved.

I’m speaking as a music lover and someone whose collection is rapidly approaching 400 CDS – all of which I listen to on occasion if you can believe it. However, most of those were bought used because of the price of new albums (since I can usually get the used albums for $3-$7 each as opposed to $18 for a new one).

The major exception to the above are CDs from the local bands that I go to see. If I like the band, I will usually pick up one (or all) of their CDs at the show. I have a small stack of CDs that basically can’t be replaced because the bands in question just don’t exist anymore.

Another great thing about getting those albums is that going to the shows is a great way to meet people, including the band members. I am now friends with far too many bands because I was at their shows and we started chatting (Part of that is due to my outgoing nature. Your mileage may vary).

You could ask Karyl about the time she went to the blues show with me and the band came to my table to hang out *smirk*

As for the rest of my collection, some of it was acquired through Amazon. However, a whole lot of it was gotten while hanging out in record shops that had large used collections. The major one of those was Haffa’s just off campus of my alma mater, Ohio University.

It’s no wonder that Haffa’s has been in business for so long. Their prices are good, their staff is cool, and the town has an actual indie music scene that consistently seems to produce some good bands. In fact, prior to the university president before this one, the place used to be a rite of passage for a lot of bands. The town even sports one of the top ten dive bars in the country – The Union (which is covered inside with the stickers of bands who have played there. It is a very cool place despite being a bit crowded.)

I’d love to see albums which are full of more quality and less filler, artists which are compensated for their efforts instead of being gouged by the labels, and prices that are sane.

Maybe that makes me spoiled. Personally, I think that makes me sane. Then again, I also think that sustainability should be a top priority for any business.

Current mood: recovering from the flu
Current music: AC/DC – Money Talks (it seemed appropriate)

End of an Abusive Relationship

I first learned Java 4 or 5 years ago (I think). There were several reasons for that. Among them were the fact that it is mostly cross platform and that the computer I had at the time wasn’t beefy enough to run Visual Studio .NET (I got a new computer about a year later, but the damage was already done heh).

Over the years, my one main complaint with the language has been that it’s a royal pain in the ass to lay out a GUI with it (for me at any rate). My general cycle goes thusly – make a change, compile, run, tweak, compile, run, finally get it right (maybe. If not, then back to tweaking), and then move on to the next change.

The main problem with this is that most of the apps I’ve had to do with it have required a GUI component. Heck, most of them have been a GUI and business logic sitting on top of a database. This means that I spend 80-90% of my time trying to get the GUI to look halfway decent and the other 10-20% doing the actual logic coding.

I can safely say that the containers scheme has given me more headaches than even having to do manual memory management in C or C++. That at least is fairly straightforward even if I dislike having to do it when I don’t have to =]

It’s the reason that I have no example programs in Java on my website. I loathe even thinking about doing GUIs in it anymore. I’ve had enough of the bull and have decided that it’s time to move on.

I’m switching over to C#. The language is rather similar, most of the people I’ve had to deal with were Microsoft-centric anyway, and laying out a GUI in Visual Studio is a piece of freaking cake.

Another upside is that the job market for C# is a heck of a lot bigger here than it is for Java.

I’m not tossing out Eclipse because I may have to maintain some of my old code, but chances are that I won’t be doing any new Java-based projects.

You’ve been an interesting partner, but it’s time for you to join my other ex, Perl. I’m just not into S&M when it comes to writing code *smirk*

Current mood: liberated
Current music: Don Henley – The Garden of Allah

Important things that most companies need to learn.
(In no particular order)

• The customer is NOT always right.
• Always back the people who report to you if the customer (or whoever is attacking them) is wrong.
• Always maintain your integrity.
• Remain even handed and level headed.
• It is alright to lose a customer to maintain your integrity or if they become a real problem.
• Low cost is not always the best policy – you can be cheap, high quality, or have good service. Pick two at the most. Option one often has to be chosen alone.
• You are a part of your community. ACT LIKE IT.
• The people on both sides of the sale are important. Treat your employees with contempt and they will leave on the first chance they get.
• If your company has a bad reputation, it is probably deserved. Examine yourself honestly and find out why. After you know the reason, FIX IT.
• Don’t shoot the messenger.
• Value honest, constructive criticism.
• Be open to new ideas.
• Realize that some ventures fail and accept it.
• Be wary of people who advocate going after the quick buck at the expense of long term goals.
• Plans should cover short, medium, and long term goals and have some sort of backup strategy.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Tears for Fears – Break it down again

Of Life and Experience

Sorry for the lack of updates. It’s been hectic of late.

On the upside, I’ve started training again, so I’m really beginning to feel a lot better physically. It’s amazing how that works =]

It amazes me how often I seem to be treated like a young kid who doesn’t know anything. Granted, at 26, I’m not as old as some other people, but, so far at any rate, it’s been a long interesting trip and I seem to have covered more ground and lived more than a lot of people in the twilight of their years.

That’s not to say I know everything. Hell, I learn new things every day and I’ll be a bit concerned if I ever seem to stop. However, for most things, it’s just not my first dance.

I have enough stories that I don’t even bother to tell most of them to people who don’t know me very well because they’d never believe them (hey, they have a hard enough time believing that the mala I wear around my wrist was a gift from a group of Tibetian monks when they ask about it). I think the comment one of my training partners made one day around 10 years ago was that I was 16 going on 600.

I’ve just always sort of been thrust into the leadership position either by circumstance or (rarely) someone’s design. I’ve become the voice of wisdom and experience among other things.

Despite that, everyone seems to think that I don’t know anything. Though, to be fair, they also seem to think that I’m some sweet, innocent guy, and that’s just not true. I may be a nice guy, but sweet and innocent I’m not. I’ve been through too much to be either (I do admit, though, that I can be sweet on occasion, but that’s generally for specific people).

After having friends die around you, keeping others alive, and running across people that wanted you dead for various reasons, a lot of the innocent just sort of leaves you. As for the sweet part, let’s say that I tend more toward hopeful cynicism. I smile, but not like I used to. It feels more like a mask most days now.

Somehow, I still seem to remain charming though. Go figure.

I sort of miss being innocent and sweet, but at the same time, I wouldn’t be here if I was still that way. I guess it’s all for the best.

It just gets kind of old being treated like the kid and then ending up being the big brother because people underestimate both you and the situation.

Current mood: tired yet thoughtful
Current music: Ozzy Osbourne – Old LA Tonight

Names

This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, but I’m weird.

I think that the name of a piece of software should give you an idea about what it does. A lot of people out there, especially in the open source world, don’t seem to agree with that school of thought. Too many of them try to come up with cool or clever names for their projects.

Think about it for a minute. With the exception of PDF Creator, Open Office, and RubyZip, most of the open source programs I have on this computer have names that have absolutely nothing to do with what they actually do.

While I love Firefox and Thunderbird, their names give you absolutely no idea of what they actually do. Nor does Seamonkey (formerly Mozilla Application Suite) or IceWeasel (basically a rebranding of FireFox).

This is a real problem if you want non-technical people to actually know about and use your stuff.

I practice what I preach most of the time. If there are exceptions, they are generally for a good reason.

That said, I try to name my programs things that make sense (the ones that I make for myself at any rate. The ones I’m commissioned to write get named whatever my clients want them to be named provided it doesn’t violate trademark or something like that. If they want it named “Joe Bob’s great, cool, and ultimate app,” then by golly, that’s what it’s going to be named. After all, they’re footing the bill.).

If you look at the programs section of my website, you’ll see a few programs there and they’re all named things that make sense with one possible exception.

Zipper – it zips files from the command line. I used it for setting up my entertainment center computer. It’s actually quite handy.

Sorter – you guessed it. It sorts files. However, this was not the first thing it did, nor was Sorter the original name (which is why it’s at version 1.1.1 now). It originally started out as a way to strip underscores from file names and replace them with spaces. Sorting ended up being an afterthought (largely brought on by my finding out how much of a headache it was to sort several thousand files into alphabetic directories in Windows) so I changed the scope of the project.

The original name of Sorter was Stripper. However, that just sounded bad and wrong. Think of the reaction of people looking at my programs page and seeing two programs named Stripper and Zipper. They’d probably accuse me of coding porn apps *smirk*

Sigmaker – it makes my sig file every day. I like having variety in the quotes that are at the bottom of my email sig, but I don’t want to waste time choosing a new one every day, so I spent 5 minutes or so coding something to do it for me.

Funlibs – okay, this one sort of breaks the pattern, but there’s a good reason for it. It was a fun Madlibs style program. However, I can’t call it Madlibs because that’s someone else’s trademark, so I called it something similar. Apparently I’m not the only one, because Google turns up several other people that have also called their program Funlibs.

Yes, I realize that I also didn’t open source FunLibs, but that’s because the code is fairly ugly. I was doing it for the end result and out of boredom. I didn’t expect the code to be overly pretty. However, my naming convention stands.

The point is, name things in a way that makes sense. And I don’t want to hear “well, they can just change it if they don’t like it” or “I don’t care if anyone uses it”. First off, most people do not want to dig around in someone else’s code (not even other developers). Secondly, if you don’t care whether anyone uses your program or not WHY DID YOU WRITE IT IN THE FIRST PLACE????

Writing a program without a reason to do so is just an exercise in mental masturbation. Why do it? Even if you’re just writing it to learn something new or keep your skills sharp, write the bloody thing like you intend other people to use it because that’s what you’ll be doing on the job. Format the text well, comment it so that it’s easy to follow if it has to be updated or read, and for the love of all that’s decent, name it something that makes sense.

Current mood: tired
Current music: Rammstein – Du Hast

Where do I even start?

There is an article in IT World that covers a study linking IT sabotage and work behavior.

Apparently, this “study” was performed by the United States Military in conjunction with CERT, and they have decided that troublemakers should be easy to spot.

The list for suspicious behavior is as follows:

• disgruntled
• paranoid
• generally show up late
• argue with colleagues
• generally perform poorly

It’s time for a reality check, boys and girls. Let’s start deconstructing this list, shall we?

In this age of under funding and over working IT departments, there are a whole lot of disgruntled people out there. Managers (some, not all) treat IT as a major cost center and are always looking for ways to cut funding to it while expecting the same level of service they had when they had a well staffed IT department. After all, they always hear how much we’re supposed to love our jobs no matter what, so what’s a consistent 80 hour per week schedule between friends, right?

Ditto with being paranoid. Those same managers love to manage small kingdoms and often try to act as the no-so-benevolent dictator of all that they survey. They love to hold over the heads of their IT staff how they can all be easily replaced (when they can’t. That kind of institutional knowledge takes a long time to acquire), or better yet that they could outsource the whole shebang to India for a 10^th the cost.

Are people who are constantly worried about their jobs and only told how badly they perform paranoid? Hell yes and with good reason. Hostile enviroments breed paranoia (among other things).

I don’t know about the rest of the IT departments out there, but I know that there were (and still are with some of my clients) a lot of times where I had to work on things when other people weren’t there so the downtime they experienced was minimal. Weird hours are occasionally a fact of life, and this may come as a shock to some people, but we actually do need sleep and down time.

There were some occasions when I was still working for the non profit on campus when I came in late looking like death warmed over because I’d been run into the ground with putting out fires the night(s) before. Thankfully, the directors were pretty sane and if they saw me like that, they’d often tell me to take the day off with pay. There were even instances where I was basically “forced” to take a few days off with pay just so I could have some time for myself. They realized that, between the essentials of classes, working for them, and my travel time, I was pulling 70+ hours a week on average, and they didn’t want to see me burn out.

All I can say is that it’s amazing what a day of doing nothing but a day trip can do for your sanity and stress levels. Unfortunately, this is not the norm in the business world. The norm all too often seems to be “we need you to work 70 hours and get paid a salary based on 40. Oh, and forget about taking any of your vacation days.”

As for the next item on the list, define “arguing with colleagues.” Are we talking extreme antisocial behavior or just pointing out that the proposed “solutions” are really bad ideas. Because I hate to break it to you, but there are a lot of co-workers (be they equals, managers, or C-level) that don’t take any dissenting opinions well and have a whole *lot* of bad ideas.

Time for the last item on the list – poor performance. Most people do not work in a bubble. This is especially true in IT. A lot of what we do depends on having adequate funding and equipment, backing from the higher ups, enough people who know what they’re doing, and not getting jerked around from one partially completed project to another. If any one thing in that list fails to happen, we can be seen as having poor performance levels. What we do is very complex and if anything goes wrong, everything can go wrong.

You’ll see that a lot of the warning signs for people in IT that are going to sabotage your business can actually start in management or executive level positions. This should be pretty obvious for anyone. We’re people. We work with other people. Treat us that way.

Now, back to the argues with co-workers thing for a moment. There is one quote in this little article that is extremely telling (and, quite frankly, pisses me off to no end):

"So as far as doing the right thing, I'd suggest that you start from the basis that your IT staff are the biggest risk to your organization's security, and if anyone of them disputes this, remember that arguing with colleagues was one of the clear signs of an impending attack.”

Now let me get this straight. If you come to me and start accusing me or my staff of being the biggest risk to your organization and I defend myself or my staff because they are trustworthy and loyal, then it just proves your point because I’m being argumentative??

EXCUSE ME!?

It’s behavior like that on the part of management, directors, and above that CAUSES this whole problem in the first bloody place.

Now, the people who know me know that I am a very even handed and level headed person, but pulling something like that with me is one of the surest ways to get on my bad side in a hurry. I don’t let anyone accuse me of being dishonest or untrustworthy unless they are joking or have a good reason to not trust me such as having been burned recently (that sort of thing I can understand and work around. Like I said, I’m level headed). But to accuse me for no good reason at all and to take my self defense as an admission of guilt? Let’s say I’ve fired customers for less.

I don’t deal with abusive relationships. Nobody should.

Here’s a word to the wise, people – treat your fellow co-workers like people. I don’t care if you’re working in the mail room or in a corner office, treat your co-workers with respect. That’s not to say that you should be naive (always be aware of possible security risks, that’s just good policy), but be civil, personable and honest in your dealings with the people you work with. I know that’s a stretch in today’s screwed up corporate world, but give it a shot. You’d be amazed at the results.

Management isn’t formulaic. It’s not just numbers on a budget report and hand-wavy “risk factors”. It’s the people, damnit.

Current mood: annoyed
Current music: Supercar - Storywriter

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.

------

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