Older blog entries for ahosey (starting at number 18)

Do you ever do that thing where you talking to someone about a problem or an idea, and as you bounce around the ideas your brain kind of switches gears and the solution starts to come out of your mouth and you're thinking as fast as you're talking and it feels like you're going too fast but it doesn't matter because you know that everything you're saying is exactly right anyway.

I find that exhilarating.

I could spit a lot of bile about sendmail right now, but I won't. I'll just say that even when sendmail tries to be secure, it does it badly.

If you come home from the grocery with a six pack of warm beer, putting it in the freezer is a good way to chill it quickly. But here's a tip: only put one bottle in the freezer at a time! That way if you forget about it you've only frozen one bottle and not the whole six pack.

Don't act like I'm the only one who's ever done that.

Didn't happen tonight though. One bottle at a time.

Haven't posted a diary in a while. So why post one now? I don't really have anything to say. Oh well I'll try anyway.

Haven't really felt like hacking free software for a couple weeks. Kinda weird, I used to thirst for it like I was in a desert. I need to make another revision of xload-snmp and Miguel said he'd be happy to take my gnome-session patch if I made a couple minor changes. I guess I should get on that.

So instead of hacking I've been playing games. I started playing System Shock 2 and that's going to be a real problem. It's really my kind of game, I can tell it's going to cut into other things I should be doing - like sleep.

I guess I shouldn't worry so much about the hacking/playing dichotomy and just do what I feel.

I feel better about work than I have in a while. I think finally getting my hands on all the hardware components really helped, so that I can move forward at my own speed. Of course the project timetable has slid back over a month, but now I see nothing between me and the goal except my own fat ass.

Now dammit, why can't jlf get a rank? I know I gripe about certing someone "just because" but I really do think Jeremy deserves Apprentice rank. He can't post any articles or projects (which he has some to post) - a perfect example of what I was saying earlier about missing out on the input of good people. He's got like 10 certs and it still won't rank him. So go check it out and if you think he deserves it please give him a cert.

I looked at the comprehensive People page last night and saw a surprising number of Observers. I know Advogato is gaining popularity but I didn't expect that many uncerted people. I'm sure most of them have lots of good input to give but they can't post in article threads without a cert. So I browsed some of the Observer accounts trying to give certs but most of them have no project listings and no diaries.

Without anything to go on I can't give a cert. So new people, put up some descriptive content! I prefer to see project listings, but I think I can also tell a lot about someone from diary entries - I certified jefft just based on his diary cause it seemed clear (to me) he was a man with a clue. But I need something to go on before I can give a cert.

Other random crap:

One of the hard drives in the 486 is making a bad sound. I don't expect it to be much longer in this world. I can replace it with an old Conner I have, but the Conner doesn't like to pair with another drive on the same IDE channel. It works but it's slow. I think it creates a lot of contention for some reason. Drat.

If all the Layer 4 protocols in the world were replaced with some form of remote method calls would that be a win or a lose? I'm inclined to say win.

I have something tedious to do, which I promised someone at work I would do tonight since I didn't do it this afternoon. I'm trying to nurse a good buzz to the point where I don't mind doing it. Not quite there yet. In a world with hard cider, why does anyone drink beer?

Well I know
we're dying
and there's no sign
of a parachute
We scream in
cathedrals
Why can't it
be beautiful?
Why does there
gotta be a sacrifice?

I was browsing the diary entries and I was struck by how many people are either preparing to quit their job, wanting to quit their job, or just starting a new job. (i.e. they recently did quit a job.) Everyone agrees computer/tech workers tend to change jobs relatively often. (Relative to, say, the newspaper industry.) Why is that?

I think it's because we're all perfectionists. In order to be good at this work, you have to be very precise about it, and very thorough. Nevermind how tidy your workspace is, or your personal grooming - I'm talking about the end results of your actual work. To get good results, you must be incredibly crush-a-diamond-in-your-sphincter anal retentive.

So the problem comes when you have all these perfectionists who have to also put up with the "bullshit quotient" which is always present, in some degree, in every workplace. Day in and day out you have to bear witness to some flaw in the business process, or in someone else's department, and you know that somewhere up the line, it's ultimately affecting your work too, and that's not acceptable because you've been conditioned by years of writing software to believe your work needs to be perfect. You're dying to see this flaw get fixed, and no matter who you complain to or what you try to do, it doesn't get fixed. And of course it's not just one flaw, it's five, or ten, or fifty, depending on the bullshit quotient at your particular job. So after two or three years of bearing witness to all these flaws, you can't take it anymore and you find a new job. You know it's going to have flaws, but you figure this time they won't be so bad. This time you'll be able to bear it. And it all starts again.

Or maybe my view is just biased by my own workplace.

There must have been some large ripple in the trust web, because everybody's talking about it now. Like everyone else, I have an opinion about the trust web, and this is it:

What I seem to be noticing is that 3 or 4 Apprentices who know each other in some way will cert each other as Journeyer, either honestly or because they just want to. None of them get Journeyer out of it yet, but it creates a relationship "subnet" which, as soon as one of them gets a Journeyer cert from a qualified Journeyer outside the subnet, wham! they all get Journeyer immediately. And there's nothing stopping any of them from being in multiple subnets so the effect might ripple thru several such "relationship subnets."

Of course this may not be a bad thing if you regard the trust web in its purest form, that's how it's supposed to work, but it sure seems to contribute to "cert inflation."

I think it would be interesting, in the name of experimentation, to require two certs from senior members (nodes, whatever) in order to get a higher cert. This would certainly raise the bar for relationship subnets as described above, because it would take three certs from outside the subnet to raise the entire subnet, as opposed to one. It would also dampen the ripple effect among people who bridge subnets.

Example: Aaron, Bob, and Chuck are Apprentices who cert each other as Journeyer. Aaron then gets two external certs as Journeyer so he is now officially a Journeyer, but Bob and Chuck are not because they still need another cert in addition to Aaron's. If Bob gets an external cert then, combined with Aaron's cert, he is now a Journeyer. Aaron's and Bob's certs then automatically promote Chuck to Journeyer. The subnet is now self-sustaining to the Journeyer level, any number of their buddies can join and they have enough Journeyers to promote anyone. If Bob is also part of a second such subnet, his promotion would not by itself create a ripple effect in that subnet, it would still require another external cert.

Applying discrete math to social relationships is kind of creepy.

In other news, I put xload-snmp on freshmeat and watched the hits roll in. See, I was conducting a little experiment where for a while I only had xload-snmp mentioned on Advogato. I found that I got one or two hits consistently each time I made a diary entry, and none besides. So that provides circumstantial evidence as to what is Advogato's main communication channel. But we already knew that, right?

We bought Midtown Madness for my son last week, and now we all play it. It's a lot of fun, especially if you are at all familiar with Chicago. I'm not really into driving games, but I like tearing around downtown Chicago at 120+ mph.

Hey, what time zone is Advogato in, anyway?

My son, almost 4 years old, has developed an interest in Batman and Spiderman. He's starting to have heroes. I think that's neat. I started thinking about my childhood heroes - Batman and Spiderman being two of them - and then I started to wonder about people who for some reason maybe didn't have heroes as children. My first thought from there was those teenagers who shot up their schools. Did those kids have heroes?

See, I was exposed to violent media as a child. Lots of violent media, probably way too much violent media. That's why I don't buy the argument that video violence drives these kids. If that were true, I'd be hiding in Canada right now with a 12 body count on my record. So what made me different? Why didn't I snap?

Let's see. I was exposed to video violence, I hated high school, I thought there were plenty of people there who deserved to "be taken down a notch." But I never did it. Never even considered it. I think the difference was, I also had heroes from an early age. Even though my heroes were "action heroes" and did their own violent acts, there was always a code of conduct driving the heroes, determining when it was time for them to use violent force.

I don't really consider myself a hero, but I have always considered myself one of the good guys because I admired my heroes and wanted to emulate them. My heroes gave me a belief that even in dark times, the good guys win in the end. My heroes gave me hope.

The good guys don't inflict themselves on the innocent. Even the not-so-innocent ones that torment the hero. There was a scene cut from Star Wars where Luke's "friends" at Toshi Station were mean as shit to him. He did not blow them away. The good guys only use deadly force when the bad guys use it first. Even the heroes with a "black streak" in them, like Han Solo or Batman, still answer to a code of morality. Han Solo is a particularly good example because his moral code became stronger as the story went on, until at the end he's volunteering to sacrifice himself for something other than a profit motive.

(As an aside, I was really irritated when Star Wars Special Edition changed the film so that Greedo shot first. Even as a kid, I knew Han Solo's life was on the line and he had reason to shoot first.)

So, did those Columbine kids have heroes? I'd like to know, but I would guess they didn't. They obviously felt unhappy and tormented, and without heroes to anchor them to the good guys and give them hope, they did whatever they felt they wanted, or needed. They didn't have the tools to withstand and control the darkness inside us - yeah, all of us - and ultimately it got them.

Make sure your kids have heroes. Make sure you have heroes. Be one of the good guys.

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