The Z

Today is the third time somebody has offered to buy my Z from me, after seeing it sitting in the garage. It's presently something of a wreck. It's driver's-side rear tire is low on air, it's covered in a thick layer of dust, its paint needs some help, and so on. I guess I can understand why people want to buy the car from me. If I had more time, I would probably want to buy that car (provided I didn't *have* one, of course) and do whatever these people want to do to it. My guess is they want to clean it up and make a fun weekend car out of it.

Part of me wants to just give in, and sell the car. I'm afraid to ask how much they want for it. But I really want the car to be driven. It's just so sad to see it sitting in the garage like that. I'd really spend more time on it and in it if I had the time and money to get it back on the road again. I don't foresee never getting it back on the road, and that's what makes me hang on to it. It doesn't cost me too much (well, I have been paying $75/mo for five years to park it) to just keep it, whereas if I were to let go of it, and regret it later, nothing in the world could bring it back to me. And, it's not just any, it's my Z. I built the sucker, and i know every inch of it. Letting go of it would be such a shame.

I should probably call this newest guy and ask him what his plans for the car are. I'd be happy to let him fix it up and drive it if he wanted to, but I don't see any equation where I cannot retain some use of the car.

Sigh

Recruiters again

On september 13, I got this email:


Job Title: Sr. Unix Administrator
Length of Contact: 6 months contract to hire
Job Description: Client is looking for a Sr. Unix Administrator for a contract to perm position in Cincinnati, OH. Description: Responsible for the installation, maintenance, and tuning of a UNIX/AIX hardware and software systems. Performs system-debugging tasks. Has sound understanding of shell scripts. Has experience scripting in Perl, C and C++ languages. Has overall knowledge of the hardware and software components UNIX/AIX operating system. Supports all users of UNIX servers. Solid understanding of HACMP software. Familiar with AIX in an lpar environment. Summary of Job Functions Prepares installs, and implement UNIX/AIX operating software and associated components. Develops test plans for implementing new software or new releases of software. Thoroughly tests hardware and software upgrades and if necessary works off shift hours to accomplish the testing. Debugs and corrects installed UNIX/AIX operating system software as required. Applies maintenance to system software as required. Debugs and applies corrective maintenance to system software as required. Documents and notifies Developers and Business Analysts of software and hardware upgrades. Tunes system software for peak performance and availability. Assists Developers with high level problem program debugging and correction. Provides end user and Developers support via Customer Support. Provides off shift on call support for production system support. Makes system hardware and software recommendations as required. Assist in evaluating and installing new applications software. Provides technical training for Information Technology personnel as needed. Requirements Utilize System monitoring Tools - 10% Monitor and maintain system health and performance - 10% Install, configure, and maintain AIX server hardware and software - 20% Troubleshoot and correct AIX related problems - 25% Manage internal projects and provide project-related services – 10% Manage other administrative tasks as needed – 25% Required Skills Logical reasoning & problem solving Working knowledge of Change Management Very strong organizational skills Ability to lead a project and drive it to completion Desire to mentor and share skills with other team members Willing to travel for ongoing education Working knowledge of backup software. (Veritas Netbackup, sysback, mysysb, tar etc) Ability to adapt quickly, welcomes change Composition and Documentation (English) handle multiple, concurrent tasks Withstand moderate to high stress Must be able to work with little to no supervision Working knowledge of TCPIP Knowledge of AIX Operating Systems Sound Knowledge of Shell Scripts Working Knowledge in the use of C and C++ Knowledge of EMC Enterprise Storage system connected to file servers via a Fibre Channel SAN General PC and Workstation Skills Ability to maintain UNIX Disaster Recovery Plan Sound technical communication skills. Sound customer service skills and communication skills Working knowledge of AIX 5.1 and above utilizing Dynamic LPAR. Preferred Skills Any experience with the following products would be a benefit IBM’s WebSpere MQ Series IBM’s Websphere App Server BMC’s Patrol for UNIX, Perform Predict Linux on Intel, pSeries, zSeries

Thanks,
Priya



I was not interested, and replied:


Hello, Priya. I think I have the qualifications you are looking for in this position, but my availability is not until two weeks from today, when I am released from the federal penitentiary at ADX Florence, in Colorado. After that time, though, I should be able to fill the position.

Would you like to schedule a follow-up phone call?

Thanks


Imagine my surprise when I received this email today:



Would be interested in a new contract now?
Priya,
Account Manager
(972) 999 0928
Broadfusion Inc.
www.Broadfusion.com


Sigh. I wonder if our friend Priya knows what the word "penitentiary" actually means.

For those of you wondering, Jimbo can show you the way:

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence

Make mine a Google, please

I am becoming concerned at how much I now rely on Google's continuing generosity. Like Apple did with dotMac, Google is now in a position to exact $LARGESUM from its customers -- who presently pay about nothing. In this case, I'm now using Blogger (which is useful, and I switched to, even though Advogato was free), gmail (which is more or less superb, and I switched to, even though my home MX was free, because now somebody else manages it), google Calendar (which I use now that I no longer have an Exchange server), and the newest piece, Google Analytics. It's really just a toy, I think. I don't ever expect to generate enough traffic for it to be meaningful. However, it does give me a chance to play with the software that they sell to the public. This means the probability that I'll recommend it for a customer down the line is much higher. Perhaps that's the hook. At any rate, I am concerned that all my stuff is tied up in Google. Like, now I really want a way to get a tarball out of google with all my Stuff or something. Of course, they'll never do it, because that means it's easier to "leave" them. They are essentially asking me to trust them, but every time anyone has ever trusted a corporation they've been burned. Right?

Oh. And I "republished" everything today after tagging. Just so those of you who want to data mine my meanderings and blackmail me when I'm president will have an easier job of it.

edit: shit, that didn't work very well. i managed to fuck up my tags. i'll have to even write a perl script to fix it, i fucked them up so badly. yay.

Self-aggrandizement

Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 10:12:09 -0400
From: NOAA Central Library 
Subject: Library Brown Bag Seminar


MEMORANDUM FOR: NOAA Employees in the Washington Metropolitan Area

FROM: NOAA Central Library

SUBJECT: NOAA Library Brown Bag Seminar

Thursday, October 12, 2006 - As a special
Columbus Day presentation, Dr. John Hesslerof the Library of Congress
will discuss: "Warping Waldseemuller: Mathematical Methods in
Historical Cartography." The Library of Congress paid $10,000,000
for the Waldseemuller map in 2003, the first map to display the
name AMERICA. The seminar will be held at 12 noon, Thursday, October
12 in the NOAA Central Library, SSMC #3, 2nd Floor.

Abstract:

Acquired by the Library of Congress in 2003, "Waldseemuller's map
supported Amerigo Vespucci's revolutionary concept of the New World
as a separate continent, which, until then, was unknown to the
Europeans.  It was the first map, printed or manuscript, to depict
the lands of a separate Western Hemisphere and with the Pacific as
a separate ocean.  The map reflected a huge leap forward in knowledge,
recognizing the newly found American land mass and forever changing
mankind's understanding and perception of the world itself." As the
Waldseemuller Map was first published in 1507, there are many
mysteries associated with how the geographic knowledge depicted in
the map was obtained as both the explorations of Balboa and Magellan
were a number of years in the future.  Dr. Hessler has  explored
the nature of many of these mysteries using various mathematical
techniques and cartographic projections to analyze the map. 2007
will mark the 500th Anniversary of the production of this map.

Upcoming Seminars:

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 -
"Whatever happened to Terrestrial Magnetism?" presented by Dr. Greg
Good, historian of geophysics and geomagnetism at West Virginia
University; Associate Editor, Geology and Geophysics Journal. This
will be the second in a series of NOAA Heritage presentations.

Thursday, November 2, 2006 -
The seminar will highlight Sea Grant cooperative efforts post
hurricanes Katrina and Rita. One highlight to be discussed is the
joint efforts between Alaska Sea Grant, Washington Sea Grant, and
Louisiana Sea Grant to transport a ship travel lift from Alaska to
the Gulf region.


--
Reference Desk
NOAA Central Library
SSMC 3, 2nd Floor E/OC4
1315 East West Highway
Silver Spring, MD 20910 USA
Library.reference@noaa.gov
301-713-2600x124
301-713-4599 (fax)
http://www.lib.noaa.gov/

How strange that they would be chomping at the bit to declare a map they paid $10M for "a huge leap forward in knowledge" and "changing mankind's ... perception of the world itself". This wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that this map is of America, and that it was purchased by Americans, would it? And, please, Balboa and Magellan? They make it sound like

• there was nobody here to begin with
  
• that nobody had ever come from the Eurasia side of the Atlantic to our cozy little island.
  

It's almost like Americans are trying desperately to prove they are related to the world. It's kind of neurotic. On the one hand, they're saying, "see! we are related to you guys!" and on the other, they're giving the world the finger, saying "we're the most important discovery you ever made!" No wonder we need so much collective therapy.

And, wow. I wondered what had happened to terrestrial magnetism. Here I was thinking I had left it on the coffee table.

Five billion SEX per second

Wow, the new POWER 6 is dead sexy. We have some of the 5's here for production stuff. That is so much machine. I can't imagine what single task would need that sort of machine. It's almost like IBM is bringing the minicomputer up to mainframe processing capability (in terms of partitioning), only with a whole hell of a lot more mips (we have a machine here that takes up one floor of a building and is only rated at less than 300 mips). Wow. I betcha that thing can compile 1024 kernels in less than a minute (well, maybe it would have IO problems...).

Creativity, or maybe not.

It's rather amazing how much Apple's Cupertino campus resembles Microsoft's Redmond campus. I suppose the latter, phonecam, picture is not as clear as the Apple one. Trust me on this, they are strikingly similar.

Crisis du jour

Zl zbgure vf univat n cebprqher sbe jung ner bfgrafvoyl cer-pnaprebhf pbaqvgvbaf gurerva. V nz n pbzcyrgr jerpx. Jung va gur uryy qb lbh qb jura pbasebagrq jvgu fbzrguvat yvxr gung? Nsgre V'ir orra zbnavat sbe n lrne nobhg fabg naq shathf. Shpx.

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/10/19.html#a8431

that will be all.

Kooks

Wow, some people are kooks. Where does the planet keep coming up with these?

Whack-a-mole

This go around with Linux, I'm working with RHEL 4.3, which is admittedly pretty nice. I'm very pleased with most of it, and consider it to be a fine OS. However, I have serious issues with this company. When I reported a bug in one of their configurators (bugzilla 208289), they told me that they knew about the bug, and that it was fixed in Rawhide. They even told me how to fix the problem I was having. Only, the fix didn't actually, you know, work. They also suggested that I contact Redhat support if I needed a fix for 4.3 (as opposed to 5.0, which isn't out yet). I began doing that, but when I filled out the ticket, the form exploded with a big fancy ORA-P00P01 message in red text (on a grey background! eeks!). Now, despite the fact that, as a customer, I should never have seen the ORA message, and despite the fact that they're using Oracle on a Free operating system (when Postgres is tres fancy and more Free by lots), and despite the fact that this created a work stoppage for me, two things really piss me off.

First, when I complained that their system was broken, we got a rather-too-glib message back saying that the reason it crashed was the explanation I gave them was "too long." I guess that is plausible enough, so I didn't think too much more about it. I've been sick, so I wasn't in the office to trim it down and retry the ticket. What bugs me about this is that they did not test to see if this was the case. They pointed the finger at me, the customer, and said that I had fucked up, when they didn't know for sure. That's an assumption that pisses me off. Much though Sergei Tsarev and I disagreed on some things, one thing he taught me when I worked for him at AOL was to always back up what I was saying with a repeatable, demonstrable use case. If I am going to say that one of our peers or customers is a fuckup, I had better be able to prove it. So, in this case, I would have created a test case to make sure that a long error message borked the database before telling the customer to piss off. This is not what happened here.

Second, I am very unimpressed with what is broken in their support system. As it turns out, when you include text with the characters (# foobar) in the "problem summary" (analogous to the "subject" in an email), the backend craps and says that there's a problem with the ticket. Now, this doesn't sound like much, but you really need to think about how this happens. The only way the database actually cares about what is in that field is if it is evaluating the text in it. That is fucking retarded, with a capital J. Your application should be truncating the text to fit into the box you provided the user (or spitting it back at the user), and it should be doing some nominal filtering to make sure what the user is providing isn't, as Sungo liked to say, a 2GB TIFF file. Because users will do shit like that to you. They see a box that says "please enter your first name" and some motherfucker is going to give you eight hundred thousand words out of a three century old Zoroastrian text. So their coding here is 100% amateur.

That's pretty disappointing. It tells me that while RHAT may have some gifted people doing development for them on the Linux end of things, that elsewhere in their company they have a few pretty typical low-end people. Microsoft strove to overcome that image, and I don't think they've ever done it. Apple has been putting themselves more and more in that category every day (in their defense, they added millions of inept users to the fray with the release of the iPod. now, the people who work for the company are sick of the "wah wah, there's sand in my panocha, please fix my ipod" complaints, and pretty much blame the customer by default). It's a truly rare company that cares about evaluating these sorts of situations to make sure they don't look like a complete ass. Sergei was right to push me (and all of us) very hard in that direction. If RHAT had actually evaluated any of the things they'd said to me, before firing off some glib email, I would be sitting here tremendously impressed, rather than wondering how the OS can be getting better, while the company can be getting worse.

I almost miss the frontier days of Linux... you know, when people who were using Linux were all geeks because, hell, you couldn't run it unless you were a geek. This meant if you sent an email to the guy who maintained the SCSI driver for your particular computer, he knew what was wrong if you presented a bug to him. Same for the company. RHAT used to be a company full of bright people like Alan Cox. Now it seems they've started recruiting people from the Dell support department.

Tsk. It's pretty sad that they've managed to reduce the overall very good impression of RHEL 4.3 made on me. I'm back to thinking, "well, Linux is an okay operating system for me to hack on and play with at home, but when my job counts on the software (and the company behind it) working and supporting me, I'm going to go with a company like Sun that actually understands." Casper Dik is a shining example of what companies like RHAT need to recruit and retain.

This concludes today's public service announcement.

&c...

I have switched to the beta of blogger, at Google's insistence. No doubt, it will catch fire tonight whilst I sleep.

I have received my first spam, despite Google's best efforts (hah) to prevent it. ftw.

How are you feeling? Well, thanks for asking. Feverish, sure. Congested? Yep. Coughing and spluttering? Yep. Bloody noses? Uh-huh. But, my patented fungiometer (the one installed right above my jaw) is indicating I've been hijacked by a virus. The cursed bugs seem to be cowering in their soup of bifidus, acidophilus, and spite.

I'm not dead yet.

It's Julian's fault.

Just when I was starting to think that maybe the 535i or 550i is "enough car" (despite both their failing to beat the 'ru down Akina), I run across this from Julian. You know, it's bad enough that I watch the various car mangas, and read the magazines, drive the goddamn STI, and test drive cars for fun without him showing me videos like that. I was just cooling off from that when I headed over to the pharmacy to pick up the next round of drugs (more cough syrup, more nasal decongestant, and antibiotics, just-in-case) when I ran across this monstrosity in European Car. Good grief! It's one of the new 3 series cars (which I'm not especially fond of) with a fucking 5L V10 out of an M5!

I was just telling Cormac that maybe, just possibly, I didn't need an M5. That, really, using 500hp on the street isn't that easy anyways. And, with that money I could pay to put a proper RB26 in the poor Z (currently lurking in an Arlington garage). I mean, would I really think "gosh, I wish I had an M5" as I'm out driving my 535 or 550? That twin-turbo six is pretty swanky, and it's not as if the V8 sucks at all. We could probably even get a 535xi sportswagon and I could go tearassing around Akina and Usui tail-wide in a wagon. Nice, that. But, given I'd be leasing the car (it just doesn't make sense to buy a BMW, not as a second car, that's for sure), I can't just tack on more power when/if I want it. If I start with the M5, I won't ever think "gosh, I need to put more power in this car." It's right under the ///M button, under my right thumb.

M5! M5! M5! M5!

And now I have somebody to blame for the car payment. We'd be in the neighborhood of $RENT per month in car notes, but we'd also have damn close to a thousand horsepower (more, considering el Z) on tap for the next appearance of Mount Akagi's white, black, and red comet(s).

It is satisfying to think about being able to put the hurt on some M3 owning java programmer with either sauerkraut (the preferred dish of bavarian ass-whuppers) or fried rice (which we seem to be dining on frequently). The Z? Hm. Minamata Hamachi? No rice, really.. Just a smelly, crusty, polluted (but oh-my-god-what-just-crushed-my-skull) fishslice.

And it's Julian's fault. I swear.

Photos from the NoVA Bush

moon_detail_final.png,
originally uploaded by avriette.

Went out to Shenandoah to see the stars and moon, hunt for mushrooms and other fungus. Unfortunately, it was tres cold out there, and it appears I've gotten my cold back. Or a cold, anyways, because it doesn't really look like the candida has returned. On the other hand, it's my throat and lungs that are bothering me, not my mouth. So maybe I managed to piss off my immune system enough that it could come back, and it just hasn't attacked me as thoroughly as before yet. I am half tempted to go to the doctor's just to get some nystatin as a preventative measure.

I'm thinking of getting one of the Takahashi refractors and the DSLR adapter for stuff like this. They have a little portable one with a triplet reducer (it's tiny) that should make stuff like this turn out a lot better. Maybe could get a Ca-K filter for it, too.

We also had a look at the lodge at Big Meadows. Looks like it would be an excellent place to go stay this winter. The 'ru is certainly the car to take out there, yeah?

Confusion

I've known that the speedometer in the Subaru is a little optimistic. When the cops are nice enough to leave those automatic radar thingies sitting around, our speedo always reads an indicated +2-3 mph, depending on how fast we're going (you know, say 30-55mph in town).

I have also heard from NASIOC, a couple people at the dealer, and some of the informal Subaru crowd that I know. The top speed of an unmodified STI is "145 mph, drag-limited." In the past, the STI has been able to reach an indicated 135 mph. This was in 6th gear, walking up from 80 mph and backing off at 135. Today, we had some competition on the course. So we made a trip up to 110 mph, again walking up in 6th. Feeling confident that the car was okay, we decided to ditch the competition, which was sticking to us a little more closely than we'd like, and walked up to 130 mph, indicated. Sandy and I both decided the competition was still closer than we wanted -- we wanted more room between us and them for the bends in the course. So the next time they got close to us, rather than walking up in 6th, I shifted down into 5 at 80 mph, and pulled all the way to 120 mph (not quite 7000rpm), went into 6th, and pulled again, up to 145 mph. I was kind of shocked, I expected to hit some sort of brick wall in power. No such thing. The competition eventually came back to us (we were sort of lounging our way around). This time, I decided to put a lot of room between us, and went back down to 5, pulled up to 120 (with a brief excursion into 7250rpm), and again up to and through 145. We ran out of room for a slight right uphill bend, and I backed off. At an indicated 155+ mph. This, in 6th gear, with no indication of a lack of power (which is what "drag limited" means), at about 6,000 rpm. So I get the impression that we'd be able to do 160-165mph, indicated, when we run out of tach. Mind you, the climb up from 120 to 155 takes a little while (maybe 10 seconds), and it's at 100% boost the whole way. So I don't think that doing 120-165 mph and then bouncing off the rev limiter is the hottest idea, anyways. The question of the day, though, is whether 165 mph indicated is actually 145 mph, or maybe if the 2006 is a little faster, or even if our factory-installed cat-back gives us more top end.

Heaven knows the aero is howling at that speed, a high pitched whining-howling noise. However, the car is tucked down to the ground, and behaves as I expect it to.

Worth mentioning is the more or less lack of braking power after these consecutive straight-of-ways. However, unlike some of the footage we've seen, there were no sparks from the pads, no smoke, not even a funny or unhappy smell. The brakes just faded. After pulling into the pit, I had a good thorough look at the car. Everything looked as it should: brake fluid looked fine, oil looked fine (and not aerated), radiator was content, brake rotors looked fine, and pads looked fine. It appears that we just need to get better pads on the car. I think probably some Porterfield R4S's are in order, and we will probably be fine.

Also worth mentioning is my getting the inside front wheel to hop and chirp on a sharp downhill right at about 85mph not too long ago under maximum-effort braking. So it would seem that under most circumstances, the brakes are pretty well sorted out for the car.

Our competition? A slightly modified RSX Type S. Of course not much of a match -- I did say we were lounging. His response to the speed and pulling away? "Is that thing stock? Man, I need to get forced induction."

We also found Northern Virginia's Usui Pass. e-mail me if you need to be put in contact with the Sil-80.

Jesus built my energy drink...

It's a love affair, mainly Jesus and my drink.

This morning was like any other. I woke up, and reached for the caffeine. Lately, Red Bull and the like haven't been doing it for me. This all started, doc, a few months back when I was looking for something to wash down some drugs at the local pharmacy. While I was there, I needed some food, too. So I headed across the hall in the Crystal City Underground, and lo, I was at GNC. This was a bad idea. GNC was having a fire sale on energy drinks called "Stinger" which are also labeled "Stacker 2" on the back. They were $.50. I figured, hey, that's one hell of a deal. I consume energy drinks frequently, and I typically pay about two bucks for them. So I buy the remainder of their stock. About eight cans. I have one can and some weird whey protein bar to buffer said drugs in the ol' stomach.

I've been drinking energy drinks since I first became aware of Red Bull years ago. When Monster came out, it was great, I could get a double-sized energy drink along with a double-sized dose of caffeine in a regular sized can. Sobe followed with their No Fear drink, and then things got seriously out of hand. I started seeing triple sized Monsters, and this weird "Boo Koo Energy" drink which was also 24oz. Then Coca Cola got into the market (at the time, Monster was independent, and out of Costa Mesa, which is where Dr. Freecloud's is, so that didn't suck. Anyways, Coca Cola comes out with this Full Throttle stuff, which actually doesn't taste bad. So I generally switch to the Full Throttle ones, which are 16 oz, but don't give me jitters, and seem to be Just About Right. Then there are the various incarnations of Monsters which taste better, and eventually the Full Throttle Fury comes out, and then this weird half-juice-half-full-throttle one, which I think tastes the best.

Anyways, fast forward to that first Stinger outside Rite Aid. Wow. I was completely floored. I don't think I've had a caffeine buzz since I was twelve. But buzzed I was. Jitters and everything. I was completely all over the place and tweaked Sandy and others who bumped into me that afternoon. After the stuff had worn off, I looked at the rest of my booty, realizing that I had just bought a whole bunch of them at $.50 per ea, and they were at least twice as effective as Red Bull. And I can't figure out why. It doesn't say that there's more caffeine in them than RB. The only thing they seem to have lots of is various B-vitamins. I have since learned that B-vitamins are viewed as important in avoiding a hangover. So those evenings (Massive Attack coming up this friday night, that'll be a vodka-and-redbull evening) when I'm having Goose and Bull all night, I suspect a "Goose and Stinger" would do less damage in the morning. Although I've yet to have a hangover from the vodka/RB combination (the Goose and I however, are no longer friends). I digress a little.

So I notice that after I go through these Stinger drinks that RB doesn't do it for me anymore. No real surprise, so I seek them out, and find more at a gas station out at Front Royal, VA (for all intents and purposes a truck stop; I wouldn't be surprised if they had mini-thins). I also find this peculiar one called Redline. And then there are all kinds of weird ones. They seem to fall into two categories:

The first category is the standard "weird B vitamins" drink. Niacin will give you the jitters (and is a proper B vitamin) but along with that are seemingly dozens of others. I am suspecting the "stacks" alluded to these drinks are stacks of B vitamins, although I have also heard of aspirin/caffeine/B vitamin stacks (which are reportedly hard on the heart).

The second category is the "humongous caffeine" drink. Redline falls into this category. After spending some time this evening researching its guts, I've updated its wikipedia entry. Also worth noting is evodiamine which apparently reduces fat uptake and is endothermic in un-food-sated mice. Go figure. In an exothermic "carb-free" drink.

So all this boils down to strange things afoot, and me drinking two RB's before I could get myself out the door this morning (I was out of all my various "weird" drinks, and have now restocked). Let's see if all said weird drinks are enough of a shock to the system to bring the Candida back! Maybe I'll gargle with the fuckers and that'll kill it. They're certainly all foul tasting enough.

But anyways, you've been updated. If for some reason you find that RB doesn't do it, you have options. And you don't have to look like a crackhead or meth-fiend trucker anymore.

Decks, drums, and rock and roll

So my delightful wife bought me a Nike+iPod, gave me her 2gb nano, and we've discontinued using the 60gb iPod Picture that I had been lugging around for a while. Swoon. I'm in love. The '60 was just so big. I got to put about half my music on it, but I could never figure out which half (five-deep nested smart playlists anyone? just try doing that in SQL, selecting from a view of a view of a view of a view, yeah?). With the 2gb, there's just no question. I bring me my "runnin'" music (more on that in a minute) and nothing else. I suppose soon enough we'll have podcasts on it, but I need to get my iBook, nibbles, to steal some music from fruit my soon-to-be-ebayed powerbook, and subsequently upload it. Pain in the butt, but not overly muchso. So, I've been walking (not running) at work. Remember, I'm still recovering from systemic candidiasis and pneumonia. That, and I work in an underarmor, a polo, heavy denim jeans, and sneakers or boots, depending on how much work I'm doing in the datacenter. I don't come to work prepared for much of a workout. This may change. The walk from the metro to work is about a mile (now that I can walk through the Census building instead of around it), and of course the walk back is just as far. At lunch, I walk the perimeter of the Suitland Federal Facility, which is about 3 miles, depending on how you take the route. Actually, it's anywhere from 2.1 to right about 3.0 miles, but sometimes the route has to vary because of construction. There are also considerations like traffic and the air pollution that day (respiratory problems, remember?). Anyways, anything that gets me to do 15+ miles a week of walking is A Good Thing. And since I'm all registered at Nike, maybe some of my co-mac-users who also have the Nike pebble and a Nano will want to sync up (although "challenging" me is probably silly). I suspect I'll be running (and bringing a gym bag) just in time for it to be too cold for me to do so.

So, dig this. My lunch, including a liquid beverage (usually some form of energy drink, but more on that later) is about 800 calories. Of which, I burn about 600 or so on my walk. So I net 200 for lunch, leaving me 1800 for dinner, which I'm surely not doing. Net result is I'm probably losing weight (well, in addition to all the weight Candida took off me) and definitely getting fitter (all my blood tests as well as my blood pressure ~[118/65] led the doctors to say that I was very healthy, despite my, er, healthy portions of mass). My diet changed somewhat with the Candida, as well. The antibiotics were fucking up my stomach, and I started eating a lot of tofu and yogurt and vegetables (specifically, chinese broccoli, for whatever that's worth). So my intake of bad foods has reduced due to the illness, I'm not terribly inclined to go back to Census Cafe (read: "Eurest" cafeteria, barf) when I can bring my lunch with me and eat for less money and put less garbage in my gut. But enough of that.

Regarding decks, the iBook is now pimped, with 1.25gb of ram. This little 12" iBook has a 1.06ghz G4, and with the 1.25gb of ram, it's a very usable little machine. I'm the kind of guy who has 30 or more tabs open in Firefox (well, Minefield these days...). Before, I was lucky if I could open four or six tabs in a single window. Things would go to swap hell and the machine would just grind. Forget doing anything productive. It was strictly a dumb terminal. Now it's quite useful. So speaking of "decks", I've been having this kind of debate with a few people recently about "thick" vs "thin" laptops. I had rather a long discussion with Steve today via email, and I feel inclined to paste a small snippet of that:

If I may elaborate a little more, philosophically, let me borrow a little from science fiction. William Gibson referred to portable computers in Neuromancer as "deck"s. They were small, portable, not entirely powerful devices that allowed one to tap into a much larger, much more powerful computers. Sun tried to hint at this with their slogan "the network is the computer." They're right, of course. And they were pitching thin clients. SGI even has the ability to raster graphics remotely with what they call a "VAN" (a "video area network") where a vastly powerful render engine (with, say, 128 graphics pipelines) is able to do graphics tasks for machines with little to no graphics capabilities.

So I look at laptops more as decks these days. I think the world is moving in that direction. I think that the computing available to us at home, as long as we have ubiquitous bandwidth (and we're 90% there), should be enough for us on our thin, portable decks. My choice is presently a 12" ibook. I love it. I even got rid of my 60gb iPod for a 2gb nano. The nano fits on a 'biner. I could hardly fit the 60gb in my pocket with my cell phone. Now everything fits in two pockets. The only reason I need a case for the laptop is it sticks out on public transit ("hey come mug me"). Otherwise, everything is small and doesn't need a lot of processor, screen, storage, or bandwidth. I've got all that at home and plenty to spare.

I think that just about sums it up. I'll have a beefy desktop machine for doing all the stuff I fantasize about doing on a plane, and count on there being bandwidth available to me so that I can take advantage of it from my seat on the plane. I'm reading Charles Stross' Accelerando now, and he uses a curious metric: the fraction of mass of the solar system used for computation. I think that's leaping a bit too far forward, but then Stross has never been much of a luddite or mud-gazer. We are getting to the point of ubiquitous connectivity (at least in the West), and we are getting to the point where I can borrow CPU from my desktop. Maybe not GPU, but companies (like Sony) want to change that. I, for one, welcome our new networked brains. Or our crustacean overlords. Or whatever.

The point is, I've moved away from my 17" monstrosity, down to a thinner, more svelte machine, and I don't need a monster for a laptop. I probably will never own another one. I hope to never have to lug one around on my back again. And I love that all my various devices fit on a carabiner in my left pocket and the only thing in my right pocket is my Ety ER4-S's in a little tucano bag.

Lastly, when is Nike going to come out with a piece of music that is as entertaining, listenable, and sweat-to-able as the Crystal Method "Drive" track? Have they signed up no other artists?

(read the Stross book)

mostlytongue-cropped.jpg

mostlytongue-cropped.jpg,
originally uploaded by avriette.

Still sick. Fluid in lungs, yeast out of control on tongue and other parts of body (!), generally feel like shit. Doctors have no idea what is going on other than Shit Is Fucked Up. I have been taking all my meds dutifully, but nothing seems to work long-term. Everything treats a symptom, and everything lasts about 12 hours. So I takes my drugs in the morning, and towards the end of the work day, I am again sick and crashing really really hard.

I've had this illness since june/july. It would be nice if it would go away and I could use my tongue for other things.

Oh, and just to keep me on my toes, last night an enormous fountain of blood erupted from my nose. Like, under pressure. I think a vein or something must have popped in there. Like little yeast jihadis attacking a blood pipeline in the sinusoidal desert or something. Fuck this noise.

Recruiters

Are all the recruiting companies outsourcing their recruiters? I keep getting calls from these indians who are obviously in call centers, who have accents so thick I can't understand what they're saying. Furthermore, since they don't understand what "solaris" is, they have this method of determining somebody's skill level:

"tell me how many years of experience you have with Solaris."
"tell me how many years of experience you have with korn shell."
"tell me how many years of experience you have with ..."

and so on. You can tell it's one of these fuckers when they start asking you questions like that. I think the reason they ask them like that is they can't actually qualify your skillset (if they did, they would be doing my job in Hyderabad instead of trying to find somebody to fill my job in Hyderabad).

What gives? I'm really sick of it, and I'm about to start hanging up on Indians, which is a total shame, because Indians are good people. But this recruiting shit is far, far worse than telemarketing ever was.

Just when you thought it was safe to breathe again

The thrush is back. Only this time it is bloodier, bumpier, and more angry than before. It's also causing me trouble breathing. I'm back on the Xylocaine mouthwash with nystatin mouthwash as well. However, this combined with several other symptoms I don't want to go into (let's say they're, um, personal) makes me think that I have a systemic "yeast problem." This is very scary. I have had pneumonia for almost six months now.

It's all I can do but to curl up in bed on my wife's shoulder for comfort. I hate that I can't be more supportive of her when I'm so terrified myself. I can't even imagine what she thinks.

I'm living healthier than I ever have -- more exercise than normal, eating right, and I'm getting illnesses normally associated with neonates and homeless people. This Is Bad.