| California is inhabited mostly by morons. |
[Nov. 6th, 2008|01:41 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  angry | ] |
That's all I can conclude after Prop 8 passed. It's infuriating that someone out there was able to force my tax dollars to be spent deliberating over something government has no business deciding. It's infuriating that the majority of citizens of this state have decided that they like discrimination. It's disgusting to realize how easily people can be duped into giving up the freedoms that our Constitutions were so painstakingly crafted to ensure we could never lose.
To all of you who voted for Prop 8: you are morons. You are fear-driven animals, not rational human beings with minds of your own. Next time you'll probably vote for the law that regulates who you can fall in love with, and who you can make friends with. And after that you'll vote for the law that tells you when to laugh and when to breathe and when to take a crap. You're mindless idiots that will put all of us in shackles just from your own stupidity.
Any time you vote for a law that controls what your neighbor can do, you've taken away your own rights as well, you stupid dumbass. You think you've voted to protect your way of life but in reality you've helped destroy all of our lives. You've just put one more nail into all of our coffins. You're the reason George Orwell's vision of 1984 has become a reality, and you don't even realize what you've done. To yourself. To all of us.
Why don't you just climb into a pod and stick tubes into your body right now and save some time. (cf The Matrix...)
Or, better yet, wake the hell up and quit dancing to the puppetmasters' strings. Realize that you're just giving your support to a faceless powermonger who doesn't give a damn about you or your values. A shadow ruler who is *NOT* on your side, and who will steamroll right over you just as soon as you've given up enough of your rights. WAKE UP!! |
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| Because what's worse than being talked about |
[Mar. 27th, 2007|02:48 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Capercaillie | ] |
is NOT being talked about! I threatened to write something about my friend Majella. And no, I don't make idle threats...
Though of course as threats go, it's not a very intimidating one. I mean really, Majella's a cool person, a lovely lady and great fun. I suppose over the course of time I might eventually see something unpleasant about her but in the meantime, she's just a fascinating, thoughtful, insightful, caring friend. I'm fortunate to have crossed paths with her.
Interestingly enough, though I've known who she was for quite a long time, we've only recently actually said more than a cordial hello/goodbye to each other. And now the conversation has meandered over a sprawling vista of topics, sometimes challenging, sometimes entertaining, always enlightening. Some has been a timely reminder of things I once knew, and need to know again (and really ought not to have forgotten in the first place...). Sometimes I think I needed to have had these conversations long ago. But I suppose, "when the student is ready, the teacher appears" - I probably wasn't ready.
We meet a lot of people in life. Some would say that every person you meet carries a lesson for you, every event is driven by a purpose. Sometimes I think that's just our poor human minds seeking the psychological comfort of a pattern in this random existence, projecting designs in a vain attempt to divine a hoped-for underlying order, and predict the next link in a chain of events. Other times I'm certain that there really is a purpose, a lesson to be learned in each encounter. Maybe a less deterministic way to look at it is that everything that happens, every one you meet, provides an *opportunity* for you to learn. It's always up to you to recognize the opportunity, and then absorb the lesson. I look over my past and wonder a lot about certain people who have come and gone, wondering what their role was in their brief intersection with my life. I look around me now and wonder about the people present, wondering at their role and how long they'll continue to be present.
But there are a few people who stand out, who just so obviously have some wisdom to offer, that all you have to do is absorb it and appreciate it. Majella is one of those people. |
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| Changing of the guard |
[Jan. 30th, 2007|08:59 pm] |
Recently Kurt Zeilenga, Founder of the OpenLDAP Project, informed me that he needed to step down as the technical leader of the Project. Today he appointed me as the Chief Architect. Woohoo...
In reality this isn't much of a change; Kurt had effectively been deferring the technical guidance of the Project to me for at least the past year already. So this just makes it official.
It's nice to be working on this Project in this role. It's nice to have taken what was at best a mediocre proof-of-concept code and turning it into the fastest, most scalable, most secure LDAP server in the world. Not because those achievements in themselves are so unusual. I had already done the same thing with the AppleShare server for Unix at my old company. What's nice is that this code is completely out there in the open - anyone in the world can check and verify that my claims are true. My AppleShare server was the first to support TCP/IP, even before Apple's own server, but besides a few engineers inside Apple and a few customers, nobody ever knew about it. It was also the fastest and most scalable AppleShare server in the world, easily handling tens of thousands of clients when even Apple's best server could only support a hundred or so, with response times two orders of magnitude faster than anything else.
What's nice is that I can happily tinker away at what I enjoy, being the best in the world at what I do, and now I know the world is seeing it. The world is watching, noticing.
And this *is* what I do - create the most efficient designs in the world. Real designs, that quickly become real implementations, not just fancy theories that never pan out. It's what I've always done, and there's never been anyone who could even come close. Nobody can design as comprehensively, nobody can comprehend as quickly, nobody can implement as quickly, and nobody's implementations can run as quickly.
I remember once, back in Michigan, saying to a friend "just once, I'd like to be in a singing group where I'm the *weakest* member." I remember thinking how nice it would be to meet a fiddle player who could keep up with me. It hasn't happened. It won't happen. Nobody else's brain runs near my speed, that's just reality.
A side lesson from all of this, a point I've made many times before - don't work in secret. Closed-source proprietary code is closed because it has something to hide. Take pride in your work, excise the warts. Make everything you do something to be proud of, something to show the world, and show it. Otherwise, your work is likely to disappear into obscurity, like my old AppleShare server, and then it will have all just been for nothing. |
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| Shameless materialism |
[Sep. 9th, 2006|01:40 pm] |
The next big toy on my wish list...
http://kaburaforums.com/
As a concept car it's been around for a few years, but it looks like Mazda may actually bring it out in 2008. I wish I could buy one today. |
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| Moving on |
[Aug. 9th, 2006|11:39 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  numb | ] |
Yesterday afternoon my friend of fifteen years passed on. Ian Abramovitch went peacefully, surrounded by friends and family. I wonder if he heard any of the Highland Sun CD through the headphones I put on him, before he went. I wonder where he is now.
Life goes on. But it goes on in a slightly less orderly fashion, patching up for such unplanned disruptions. There are still people to notify, web sites to update, gig schedules to revisit. Toasts to toast, stories to tell. Where do we begin? |
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| Life |
[Aug. 6th, 2006|07:55 pm] |
Life tends to be a mixed bag, and so we take the good with the bad.
The bad here is my long-time friend Ian is currently in the hospital from a heart attack. Still in critical condition, we won't be able to visit him for a while. He's been non-responsive since he went in Friday, so who knows if he's even still there, in a real sense.
I had my phone off all week while I was at Lark in the Morning camp, so I didn't find out about it until yesterday on our way back home. So much for ending the week on a pure high.
But that does lead me to the good, which was being at Lark, spending time with old friends and meeting new ones. Enjoying music, as it is meant to be. Enjoying life, and remembering what's truly valuable and important in it. Remembering who I am, as well, not just a solitary engineer slaving away thru the long hours of the night, but a creator and interpreter of life. |
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| tick tick tick tick tick |
[Jul. 28th, 2006|12:43 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | bored | ] |
Ah, there's nothing like punctuality for kicking off a plan.
Still waiting to leave, in other words. Mendocino awaits! I have decided to leave the laptop at home, I shudder to think what mountains of spam will await me in my inbox when I get back.
Time. It's rushing past us constantly, so you'd think there was an endless supply of it. And yet there's never enough to do everything you need to do. How very odd. One day I'll figure out how to capture the rushing stream of it, drink from the firehose, and have more time than I can ever possibly spend.
Till then... |
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| Owww. |
[Jul. 13th, 2006|10:38 pm] |
Once again, I'm reminded that my turnout needs work. Having gotten to the last 5 minutes of dance class, I landed hard on my toe while trying to get a treble reel step. "If you'd been turned out, that wouldn't have happened." yeah, ok....
So, life is interesting. A new Irish dance class underway, a renfaire this weekend, and by a stroke of good luck I've snagged a ticket to the Lark Camp at the last minute. Of course, it overlaps my monthly pub gig, and rather than cut short my trip, I've decided to push the gig back one week. No point driving all the way up to Mendocino and having to rush on the way back...
Somewhere in all of this I have to remember I still have a book to write. Sheesh.
Had a conference call with an industry analyst today, we ran over by about 10 minutes. He was clearly overwhelmed by what he learned from us, and asked us to update him every quarter. This is pretty cool, the word is finally getting out that we are not only whupping every one of our competitors' tails, but in the final analysis we have No competition, we're so far and away ahead of everyone else there's just no contest. Life is good.
An old friend from college days has resurfaced in my life. The jury is still out on whether this is a good thing or not, we frequently didn't see eye to eye back then. With just about 20 years under the bridge, I wonder how we've changed, what will be different now. I wonder if there's anything actually of mutual relevance in our lives now, any reason to even be friends. Why bother?
Agh. My toe hurts. Did I mention that? Ah, yes I did. And it does. Still.
Adios. |
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| How I spent my post-summer-solstice |
[Jul. 3rd, 2006|02:44 am] |
Ah, the glamorous, exotic life of a high-flying engineer. I headed out to the CTMS Summer Solstice Festival last Friday, danced like a dervish for a few hours, played tunes a few hours more, and then did the same again on Saturday. Sunday found me bugging out to the airport for Bismarck, North Dakota.
Now Bismarck, being the state capitol, is an interesting place. But what was most interesting to me was finding www.bismanlive.com while searching for "music sessions". I was ostensibly in town to teach a couple LDAP classes for the week, but BisManLive was the real heart of the trip. I hooked up with Corey Kuntz and we visited the various live music performances around town for the week, made a bunch of new friends along the way, and capped it off with a couple jam sessions. You can say hello to Corey and some of our pals here
http://www.bismanlive.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3369#3369 and eavesdrop on a snippet of our Friday night jam here
http://media.midkotasolutions.com/media.asp?s=30878&c=2230
Definitely not my usual Celtic fare, but it was a blast nonetheless. As the great Bard once wrote - if music be the food of love, play on - give me excess of it! |
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| summertime |
[Jun. 15th, 2006|12:09 am] |
| [ | music |
| | Unnamed Mazurkas (Fiddle Music of Donegal) | ] |
blues... I am bored. Bored beyond belief. Not even learning a new fiddle tune is enough to shake it. Have I gotten so jaded that there's really nothing new and fascinating left in the world?
I've gone back to listen to the collection of tunes I first started learning, 15 years ago. I still only play about half of them, the rest I just barely scrape thru. I wonder if I'll ever master the other half. The motivation isn't really there now, I already know a zillion tunes that nobody else plays, so they're not much use in a session. They're also too hard to just spring on my band, and it's just boring to play them as solos all the time.
My friend Samantha once suggested that music was one of the things that connects me to the rest of humanity. Times like these it seems it's just another thing that isolates me. She also said that it doesn't have to be about virtuosity, and I suppose that was more her point. And yet, knowing that we humans are not perfect, I don't see that as an excuse not to strive for perfection. In a rare moment, you can play a perfect note. With practice, you may play a perfect sequence of perfect notes. Who's to say that creating perfection, one tiny spot at a time, is beyond our human capacity? And so I go on, seeking that which is so elusive. And I suppose that my chase steers me away from the mainstream, from the madding crowd.
Ultimately I guess it's not so bad to be away from the crowd, smothered under the massive herd of humanity. Yep, that's me over there, propped up in the middle of an empty pasture, a man out-standing in his field. They say it's lonely at the top. It's lonely at the sides too... |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 18th, 2006|04:33 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  quixotic | ] |
I wander through the faded halls of memory
passing images of joyful times before
those joys so bright, in color tones so shimmery
a place that I may visit never more
two roads diverged and reconverged,
and I intent on navigating both
but what's departed can't be merged
though admitting this to be I am so loathe
it's late, but short of never, so I try
to give to you the goodwill that you spent
your kindness that so dazzled in my eye
so freely given, now is freely sent
May the road rise to meet you with a smile
in my heart you'll always be true
may friends receive you warmly every mile
through them I send my love to you
I wish for you a path of great success
with challenges to keep you sharp and keen
let happiness surround you in excess
may all your pastures flourish ever green |
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| As the world turns |
[May. 16th, 2006|12:48 am] |
Jury duty this week. So far nothing for Monday or Tuesday, cool. I hope I get thru the whole week without having to go in. The last time I showed up for jury duty (must've been more than 10 years ago) I spent 3-4 days spinning my wheels. Actually got on a selection panel, and then got promptly kicked off by one of the attorneys (I think I laughed out loud at one of his questions, obviously biased). Just trying to do my part to make this a better world...
Speaking of which, in the software world, we've found that our stuff is 42% faster than a major competitor. (Magic numbers!) I expect after a few more tweaks we will be closer to 100% faster. Ah, the joys of software engineering. (Cue obligatory Conan quote - Conan, what is best in life?)
Hm, what *is* best in life?
Inspiration seems to have snuck away while I wasn't looking. will have to get back on that later... |
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| time keeps flowing like a river... |
[May. 9th, 2006|12:48 am] |
So, I'm supposed to be writing in here to reflect on my feelings over the course of time. When a span of time goes by that I haven't written anything, does that mean I've gone on robot autopilot again?
Actually a lot of interesting stuff has been going on. The band gig Friday was a blast. I suppose it's tough to beat performing with friends on stage, with friends in front of the stage as well. Just a huge ol' party, the perfect way to kick off a weekend.
As for the weekend, Samantha has officially decided that I'm not too scary. This ranks up there with Mostly Harmless, I think. But at least we're having fun. Saturday we started off by going to the Farmers' Market, where she was on a flower-buying spree. I just occupied myself with the bakery stands, with the fresh croissants and pastries... Then a bit of a mad dash to get her stuff together for a kids festival at the school. Her class was going to do a couple folk dances, and she had burned a CD of the music for it. While she was off putting her costume together, I was listening to the CD and noticed a large gap in a track, where the dancing was supposed to just move thru. So then I set about loading the track up in GarageBand and cutting/splicing bits of it, exporting back to iTunes to burn a new disc. This should have been all of a few minutes' work, but strangely the exported track didn't show up in iTunes the first couple times, and then iTunes hung while trying to burn the disc. Stupid thing. With precious minutes ticking away, eventually got the computer to shut off and reboot, and the new disc was made. Whew.
The festival was pretty fun too, watching all the other groups with their dances and exhibitions, running into some newly familiar faces, as well as an old colleague from several years back. Small world. There are times when I think I could happily occupy my time just learning more dances and music from other cultures, and never wish to write another line of code ever again. ... sigh... |
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| Canadian Artists are cool. |
[Apr. 28th, 2006|01:43 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | hopeful | ] |
http://www.musiccreators.ca/
A NEW VOICE
We are a growing coalition of Canadian music creators who share the common goal of having our voices heard about the laws and policies that affect our livelihoods. We are the people who actually create Canadian music. Without us, there would be no music for copyright laws to protect.
Until now, a group of multinational record labels has done most of the talking about what Canadian artists need out of copyright. Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies, but let’s be clear: lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels’ control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels’ foreign parent companies.
They clearly "get it." When I was growing up I remember the comedy sketches about The Great White North that painted Canadians as total hicks compared to us sophisticated Americans. These days it's the American public that's ignorant and unsophisticated, while the Canadians set the example for the rest of the world.
While this group represents Canadian musicians, who are probably a small percentage of the Canadian population as a whole, they are still products of their society. I'll go out on a limb and guess that their education system hasn't failed them, that they've grown up with an awareness of the world around them and not just to be concerned about themselves. The fact that there are more musicians here in the US, but no such association has formed here yet, is quite telling. Ah well. Go Canada! Perhaps more musicians will follow your lead, and put the lobbyists in their place, and put an end to the idiocy of draconian copyright laws.
Music, art, books, plays, ideas - none of these human creations have any value at all until they are shared. If you solve the riddle of Life, the Universe, and Everything but never tell another soul, taking it with you to your grave, then your discovery is worthless. If you write the most beautiful song in all of history, but never sing it for anyone else, then it may as well have never been written at all. No abstract creation has any intrinsic value; its value is realized only thru dissemination. The RIAA/MPAA exists to control the distribution of our creativity, and to derive monetary profit from that. Once upon a time, they had a useful reason to exist, when it was difficult for an individual to spread their creations on their own. But today, with instantaneous global communication, the need for dedicated distribution agents is long gone. They're middlemen in a world that no longer needs them. Time to leave them behind for good. |
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| Memory lane |
[Apr. 19th, 2006|12:28 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  nostalgic | ] |
I don't recall what prompted it, but I decided to google "metagaming microgames" and discovered there were still other people in the world who remembered playing these little gems. http://maverick.brainiac.com/cmm/mic.html I think I have 18 of the 22 games. Plus all of my Starfleet Battles stuff, miniatures, etc. Once upon a time I set out to computerize several of these games. Looks like nobody else has yet. Then again, with games like Xconq that can be customized for various worlds / rules, maybe it's just a matter of writing the proper game definitions to get one of these things going. (I remember trying to define the units for Ogre once, but Xconq didn't deal well with a single unit having multiple systems to damage and fire. It might work OK for the simpler games though.)
Getting all nostalgic. What brought that on?? |
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| what would happen if... |
[Apr. 18th, 2006|07:45 pm] |
|
Just saw a silly ITT/Devry/whatever commercial, showing some CGI of a jet flying. I think they were hawking their "game developer" degree program. As I switched off the TV and walked away, I thought to myself - what a slow animation sequence, nobody flies that slow in a game. As I was walking up the stairs I passed my cat Eva perched by the railing. "Eva would never fly so slowly." Kinda reminded me of that movie where the US Air Force was training chimps to fly jets. I wonder what it would be like if you trained cats to fly jets. Ultra fast reflexes, anyway. You could synch the guns to their purr frequency. Can you imagine trying to make a movie about this, trying to train cats to sit in a cockpit and work controls. I guess that would all be CGI, otherwise you'd go insane. |
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| everybody ought to have a maid |
[Apr. 11th, 2006|01:08 am] |
Saturday night a friend came over and surveyed the chaos that was my living room and declared it a total loss. She dubbed me the Clutter King and urged me to hire someone to clean the place. So we got online and started searching for maids and cleaning services. I particularly liked an ad titled *****IS YOUR PLACE A COMPLETE MESS??DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO??***** so I called and made an appointment for this morning.
Well, it took the entire day, but hey, the living room looks livable now. All of the biological mutants in the refrigerator/freezer have been banished. Quite an odd experience to have strangers poking thru my dirty laundry (literally) but so we go. I have taken another step forward into adulthood, and being responsible for myself, by delegating that responsibility to others. What a world. |
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| Mosquito teeth |
[Apr. 4th, 2006|11:44 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
Recently on the mosquito science mailing list, someone posted a question... Apparently they had found a "True Fact" on the underside of a Snapple bottle cap claiming that mosquitoes have 47 teeth. The poster was asking where this "true fact" came from.
I thought this reply was most enlightening:
This Snapple 'fact' was discussed on the Entomology listserv about
two years ago, and I've fielded this question several times from
folks who believed (by reading the print in the cap) that mosquitoes
must 'chew' their food.
Mosquito larvae sport a variable number of pectin 'teeth', often
ranging from 5 to 12 teeth (even within larvae of the same species).
Furthermore, I've heard some folks colloquially refer as 'teeth' to
the rays of the larval labial fans, or the components of the adult
cibarial and/or phyrangeal armatures. Other 'tooth'-like structures
are present on mosquitoes. The maxillae of the adults, for instance,
are serrated near their terminal ends. The dentition patterns were
thought as early as the 1920's to offer a means to separate certain
races of Anopheles mosquitoes. More recently (1950's), M.T. Gilles
reassessed the dentition patterns of adults of the Anopheles
maculipennis complex, and if I recall correctly, was able to induce
variations in the dentition profile by rearing the mosquito larvae at
different temperatures. It would take a bit of digging, however, to
find the references and learn the magic number or numbers of teeth.
I'd be surprised if that number turned out to be 47, or even 42.
Perhaps, this would be a good exercise for a student with too much
time on his or her hands... and little prospect of contributing in
more meaningful ways. It might be more productive to switch to
another kind of beverage, the bottles of which are topped with caps
offering a chance to win a prize. Let's hope the ingredient
information printed on the Snapple labels is correct.
Richard J. Pollack, Ph.D.
Laboratory of Public Health Entomology
Harvard School of Public Health
As for why I subscribe to the mosquito science mailing list, that's a long story... |
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