Ruby and NMEA

It appears there's a guy who already has Ruby code to read a NMEA stream, but it's not exactly what he's interested in. I'm also having trouble finding something in Ruby resembling a state machine (like POE or Twisted).

Since, really, all I'm doing is reading a stream from a file (in this case, it's a UNIX socket), and looking for data that feels like NMEA. When that happens, I can create any number of classes for the protocol (hey, it's complicated and ugly, but it's nowhere near as bad as IMAP4).

Admittedly, my googling hasn't been overly aggressive, but all I've found is people who have implemented their own project-oriented state machines. I could gank their code and make it work for me, but I prefer one of two options: either a well-accepted and used library (in the case of POE) or one I wrote myself (one neck to choke... uh.. mine).

There is probably somebody screaming at me that I can use a big conditional statement (because NMEA isn't really asynchronous) to handle this. Well, I grow tired of adding new conditionals when data changes or the unthinkable happens ("TIFFs? in MY integer string? Never!").

More ruby code for Last.fm

Disclaimer: I am nominally a perl coder. This means I can read Ruby, and more or less can "pick up Ruby" pretty quickly. But I am not a professional Ruby programmer, and this code may be ugly, inefficient, outright broken, or all three of the above.

Disclaimer 2: (this one's from Last.fm)

Note: Do not exceed one request per second to ws.audioscrobbler.com or any other Last.fm webservice without prior arrangement. If you're attemping anything high-traffic, we'd appreciate a heads-up first, as we don't have infinite resources. Either post in the audioscrobbler forums or contact Russ.

I didn't hear back from Russ, but as I haven't been pounding the site at all, I don't expect this to get anyone's knickers in a wad (except Ruby experts who think I did things the wrong way).

So, here's the code (apologies if the Blogger engine breaks it).

#!/usr/bin/ruby

# More stuff here
require 'net/http'
require 'rexml/document'
include REXML

# Some constants
baseurl  = 'http://ws.audioscrobbler.com/1.0/user/'
username = 'avriette'
datafile = '/neighbours.xml'

# Let's make the user class up here.
class LFpeer
 def initialize(username, url, avatar, matchpct)
   @username    = username
   @url         = url
   @avatar      = avatar
   @matchpct    = matchpct
 end
end

# Grab the neighbors list from last.fm, turning it into xml
neighbors = [ ]
neighbor_data = Document.new( Net::HTTP.get_response( URI.parse( baseurl + username + datafile ) ).body )

XPath.each( neighbor_data, "//user" ) { |element|
  neighbors << LFpeer.new( 
    XPath.match( element, "//user:username" ),
    XPath.match( element, "//url" ),
    XPath.match( element, "//image" ),
    XPath.match( element, "//match" )
  )
}

That should get you started. It just pulls down a list of your neighbors and makes them into objects. Upon having your neighbors, you should be able to do a Net::HTTP.get_response using baseurl from above, LFpeer.url, and re-iterate over the whole thing again. However, in so doing, you'd make one request, followed by fifty requests (and you could then traverse that list, etc), which violates their request for no more than one request per second.

Posting this feels a little like WP:BEANS, but I don't think I've published anything too "beansy." That having been said, please don't abuse last.fm.

Oh, and they're hiring. So maybe if you do something spiffy, they'd be cool with that.

Also, advogato, advice on any screwups I made in my Ruby are appreciated. I am truly and totally infatuated with the language, and expect to be finding uses around the house for it (my GPS daemon, some robotics projects, and so on...)

Writing Ruby for tools

(not likely to be taken for Nina Simone or KRS-One)

Rather than figure out the current state of perl, I decided today I was going to hack together my tool in Ruby. The notion is pretty simple. Last.fm gives us the ability to see what our "friends" are listening to. They also give us the ability to listen to "radio" (which they don't clarify whether it's sponsored or not) that is "recommended" based upon our tastes. Minor digression here, but what exactly is the recommendation for somebody who loves Velvet Acid Christ, Nina Simone, and KRS-One? It strikes me that that particular Venn Diagram would be, uh, distorted.

So I got to thinking, if I find what other people who are listening to, who also listen to the same things I am listening to, and I get enough of a sample size, there should be a reasonable amount of overlap. Maybe there are five records out of the fifty or so "neighbours" I have at Last.fm listen to the same thing, and maybe I haven't got it.

This leaves the statistics. I'm very surprised that Last.fm doesn't have a simple "recommend music" feature. Anyways, so I now have a script that will pull down all of my neighbors' recently listened to music, and stores it in Sqlite. The problem now is that I have a script that takes a second to pull down fifty of my friends. I can then pull down untold numbers of records that they listen to, and do this in seconds. I'd even like to ruby-on-rails it so that others could do the same with their accounts. But Last.fm requests that we don't make more than one request a second. I have an email in to them asking permission.

And things start to get very curious if I add in the Amazon interface (Amazon has a SOAP interface where I can pull data from them) so that I could pull down Amazon reviews of that music (which I occasionally pay attention to). But Amazon itself has recommendations for me, based on my ten-year purchase history with them. Sounds to me like I could have just written myself a new toy.

Oh. And, it's 45 lines of Ruby code, with ample commenting. I could probably have done it in less code in perl, but boy would it have been ugly.

Photoshop 10

Adobe's Creative Suite 3 is pretty neat. I am really impressed with how far Photoshop has come. I find myself wondering whether the interface is as nice on Vista as it is on the Mac. It occurs to me with all the fancy bells and whistles (and batch operations!!) I will require a machine with big brass clanking ones. And, as I don't especially feel like paying Apple $7,000 for a machine, it will be a PC.

The software is capable of taking garbage images (f-stop set at 18 instead of 2.8 for example) and rescuing them. I have only tried this with NEFs, so it may be that the data in the RAW files contains "the picture I really meant to shoot."

Also, hadn't heard of this "DNG" format, which Adobe tells me is a "digital negative." Maybe it's an agnostic RAW format. Wouldn't that be great?

Rate my recruiter

I've been mulling over building a Ruby app to list the recruiters who contact me and what they're looking for. I get maybe fifteen of these emails a day. I try to reply to all of them, telling them that I'm not presently looking, and thank them for their time. They always ask me to refer people I know who are looking (e.g., if I turn down a Solaris/HPUX job, I might know somebody who could do the job, and who is looking).

However it kind of feels like it would be advertising, and I'm sure there's some liability in there. Also, by publishing their contact information, it almost ensures that they will get a lot of emails from people who don't fit the profile they're looking for (which are admittedly pretty poor).

Being Ruby on Rails, it wouldn't even be really hard to make it user-interactive, where people could add new recruiters to the database.

I'm not proposing re-implementing Monster or Dice or any of that, but it seems that there are companies (Red Hat for one) who are looking for a specific type of person. And, that type of person is the sort of person who's likely to be in my social circle. And it always stings to see an entry on advogato about somebody being laid off or that they're having a hard time finding work.

And golly, I'd have to host the pig. Dreamhost for the win, I suppose.

Building irssi on Darwin

gordon% uname -a
Darwin gordon 8.9.1 Darwin Kernel Version 8.9.1: Thu Feb 22 20:55:00 PST 2007; root:xnu-792.18.15~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 i386

1. Build pkgconfig
2. Build glib
3. Build GNU gettext
4. Build irssi

Why does this have to be so hard? Sure, I could use fink or DarwinPorts (or whatever it is they're called), but then I trust that somebody else built my software correctly and without backdoors. At least rolling from scratch I have a little faith in what is produced. It also means that I have the source around if I need to hack something into it (whereas downloading a tree you inevitably wind up with a different copy than the one you're running).

But, really, isn't irc just a glorified telnet client? irssi is very shiny, no question about that (thank you, Sungo) but would it be so hard to ask for a --dont-build-stupid-shit flag or a --glorified-goddamned-telnet flag. I don't necessarily want ircII, but there's no reason irssi has to be so complicated.

And, if you really want to go digging and start fucking jihad, the perl implementations of irc clients and servers take orders of magnitude less code to run. Because, really, we're talking about text over a socket, right?

Speaking GPS

This gorgeous piece is from Aquamist. It's a dual-pump setup for Perrin's 600+hp H6 STI. I could totally put that together myself.

I speak a number of protocols, as most of us do. The old "telnet to the mailserver and ask it what's wrong" kinds of tricks. I've never, however, spoken to a GPS receiver. Boy, is it a chatty sonovabitch. ZTerm couldn't keep up with the data coming across the port, and would continue to spew even when the receiver was disconnected.

$GPGLL,36000.0000,N,72000.0000,E,000213.991,V*12
$GPGSA,A,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,50.0,50.0,50.0*05
$GPRMC,000213.991,V,36000.0000,N,72000.0000,E,0.000000,,101102,,*38
$GPGLL,36000.0000,N,72000.0000,E,000212.991,V*13
$GPGSA,A,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,50.0,50.0,50.0*05
$GPRMC,000212.991,V,36000.0000,N,72000.0000,E,0.000000,,101102,,*39
$GPGGA,000213.991,0000.0000,N,00000.0000,E,0,00,50.0,0.0,M,0.0,M,0.0,0000*77

just going on and on for pages and pages. Tens of megs of pages, even. The GPS receiver in question is a Pharos GPS-360, which is approximately the cheapest GPS receiver ever made because it is made largely from mulched babies, and distributed free with Microsoft Streets & Trips (which is kinda garbage compared to Google Erf Pro).

Anyways, it's speaking NMEA, which is mercifully easy to parse. I thought to myself, I could just write a perl script to sit on the socket (with the '360, it's actually a serial device with a serial to USB adapter inline. That itself requires a driver, which is available on sf.) and spew out data to syslog or whichever (I want to verify the top speed of our STI – everyone says it's electronically limited at 145mph, but we've seen 155+ in the car. With telemetry, this is easier to prove). Of course, because the protocol is plaintext and serial (as opposed to parallel, which is harder), somebody has already written a module that speaks NMEA and can return perl objects with locations, etc. The API looks a bit bare, but I'm sure I can embrace and extend where necessary.

So I think the first trick is to write an OS X Dashboard Widget, since they're pretty simple to put together. After that, I may buy one of the more fancy GPS's, like this one from Arcom. There are amazing things you can do with robotics if you have the right sensors. Even LIDAR is coming down to commodity pricing.

I was asked about a week ago, "do you have any hobbies?" My answer was "my job is my hobby." It seems to me that I could spend some of my time in Taipei building a solid EE foundation from which to work up. And, I just love to solder (there were not "solder suckers" when I was a kid playing with breadboards. These things have to be one of the coolest inventions ever.) Something about the smell, or maybe just knowing that you're making a machine. Maybe the adjective for the feeling Asimovian. An Asimovian feeling of creation sent a chill down his spine as the GPS daughterboard and avionics daughterboard spoke for the first time. Hm.

Okay, I'll stop before I get too romantic.

So how did we get from GPS to 600+hp STI's? Well, when I get my own software figured out for the GPS receiver, the next step is to buy hardware. Like PC/104+, and things like that. The whole point of the entry is that I am looking forward to hardware hacking, and since I have such a strong software background, I am expecting to be able to do things that inspire sequoia-sized wood (at least for myself; I'm sure somebody on advogato is going to complain that I don't need 600hp, and I kill babies and trees. They'll be cheerfully ignored).

(note: copious links added specifically because many of us never get a chance to see this sort of stuff. spend an hour or two. look around.)

Let's sing the doom song.

Today is bath day, for both cats. Natasha is on the left, Killer is on the right. And yes, I took photos of them and published them on the internet, violating the Geneva Conventions requirements for treatment of prisoners. But, they'll smell much nicer afterwards. And, bathing a cat is such a traumatic experience for both the owner and the cat that I can probably dig right into the nasty emails I have waiting in my inbox, and quite cheerfully at that.

(note: the cats were given a sedative before the water started, so it's less traumatic for them, but it's still no picnic.)

Red Hat is hiring

They are looking for consultants, sales engineers, and a few instructors. I mention this because they keep pestering me, and I don't really know anyone looking right now. They say they want a bachelors and would prefer RHCE's, but part of the ramp-up is training. Rates are attractive, and there is a bonus schedule. The recruiters who have been contacting me have been saying Red Hat would like to grow their business by over 50% this year. I've been told they're trying to hire on as many as thirty new people.

Red Hat is located in McLean, Virginia, which is a nice enough place for tech workers (I don't know if they have relo). It's close to DC, but not too close. I've worked with their employees in the past (as a customer, and as a competitor), and I've liked every single one of them.

Just so the email addresses aren't way out in the open, I'll post a comment to this entry on my blogger page with the people to get in touch with if you want to send along a resume.

Still no luck with the mini's wireless card

Despite help from Open Species on advogato, I am still stymied by the same error message. Looking through the console log, I see:

KisMAC[314] Error could not instanciate driver WaveDriverAirportExtreme

And then bazillions of chmods and chgrps (presumably as it moves kexts around for the wireless). I think I'm just going to give up trying to get the mini to be some surreptitious wireless pilferer/cracker. I just wish I knew why. It completely baffles me that the card DTRTs on one machine, and FOADs on the other. When they're supposed to be identical.

And, (Mousse, pudding, Open Species, whichever you prefer to be called), I followed your directions, but I am just not ready to delve into the Darwin kernel. I was just starting to understand the 2.4 Linux kernel when 2.6 came out, and I've more or less given up on being in there, elbow-deep and hacking. Rather, I'll sit here and let brave people such as yourself go at it, submit patches as necessary, and work on other things like binutils, fileutils, and so on. Thanks for trying to help out, though.

Features I'd add to Skype

1. Understand the Mac address book. Don't require me to import the entries from it, just show them to me in a pane. Alternately, a little "SkypeOut" button could be added in Address Book.app, but that would break a wall I'd rather not break.
2. Grouping of contacts. Either through the Address Book (which has groups), or through its own mechanism. I want to be able to put coworkers in their own group that I can expand or minimize when needed. Considering iChat, Address Book and many other applications (generally instant messaging applications, which Skype sorta is) have this feature, it seems to be kind of an egregious omission. Probably not hard to add, and maybe even somebody at Skype is reading this.
   
3. Handle people with multiple phone lines better. I know somebody who has two home lines, a mobile, two office lines, an office fax, and a phone that's wired into the car (this is a GM thing). That's seven phone lines for one person. In Skype's contacts list, it just shows Foo Foomaker seven times. I have to click one of them and arrow around to find the right number (which I frequently don't remember). So, put cutesy little icons next to people's names, or come up with a better way to segregate numbers.
4. Voice dialing. I can log into my Mac with my voice. I could do that way back in the Centris/Quadra days. I'd like to be able to tap my headset, say "Don Beyer Subaru" and have it just call the dealership.
5. Similarly, it would be nice to be able to end the call by tapping the headset. Essentially, this item and the above are just improvements to Skype's handling of Bluetooth headsets. My Motorola V620 can handle this, and it's got a lot less proc.
6. Codecs and other goodness on the call. While I am normally happy with the call quality (it is imperative you use a headset or dedicated mike, or it will always sound like crap), maybe one in ten calls is just awful. The "extra info" dialogue says everything is going fine, no packets lost, etc. It would be nice if the connection could be switched to a more robust protocol or the codec could be changed based on the conditions of the call (living room versus beltway traffic).

All in all, though, I've been living with Skype for a month or so now, and despite one of my customers being incredibly obtuse and blaming Skype/VOIP for being unable to reach me (even though they had an AT&T POTS line, a mobile line, and the Skype line), it's gone very well. I love this software. And I've only spent about 5 euros.

(edit: I added the "contact grouping" feature after originally publishing this post)

What's wrong with this picture?

What is the difference between the 0x86 and the 0x87 in these two Macs? bling is a Core Duo Mac Mini, and gordon is my C2D MacBook. I suspect that it's a version number or something. Frustratingly, a slog through Google's code search yields nothing more than they are both Atheros cards.

However, when I try to use KisMAC to get bling on one of the local "open" networks, it's actually unable to get the driver working:

So while the cards would appear to be substantially identical Atheros cards something about the mini's card perturbs KisMAC, and it won't function. Also frustratingly, I have an Orinoco PCMCIA card which is excellent for this sort of work, but naturally both my MacBook and my Mini lack PCMCIA cages. I'm starting to think I should get one of those USB 802.11 devices, but wonder if they are as good as the Orinoco units.

When my next laptop makes it into my lap, I think I'm going to make sure it's got room for an additional wireless card for just this kind of thing. Frown.

iTunes gift certificates

Anyone deciding they want to get rid of some cash they had sitting around, let me know. I've got a pile of stuff I want to pull through iTunes Music Store, but can't justify it (yet). Part of this is that I have 16-25 books (paper) sitting in my "to read" pile.

But, the number of books is just increasing. I'd say about 1/2 of those books were related to a book I'm writing. So ostensibly, you could be buying me a book that would make a book you'll eventually wind up buying and reading better.

The iTunes store desperately needs wish lists. Sort of like I desperately need an adoring fanbase who will come buy me stuff from my wish list (like I bought Rachel Lucas goodies from her list. Sigh.)

Tell me what you think about the Z

Comments encouraged. I really, really, love my Z. So let me explain the plan for the Z.

It's an 1982 280ZX Turbo. I've done a lot of work to it, but most of it was half-assed and it needs help. It needs paint, and it needs Recaros. It also needs the floor boards done, and a half-cage, and the dash has to be redone in aluminum. The engine needs to be yanked. The suspension needs to be replaced, starting with control arms and struts/shocks, and of course it needs a new set of tires. I also have decided that it's going to get the rear end out of a Subaru STI (the Subaru/Nissan compatibility out back is common knowledge). All told, I think it's about $10,000 worth of work to my Z, before we get into the motor. The mill itself (an RB26) is about $3,000. The work therein is about $6,000 to maybe $10,000 more in internals.

That leaves the 82 chassis at about $25,000 worth of work.

Specs are: 2,400lbs, 650hp, or a ratio of 3.7lbs/hp

I'm also considering a Factory Five Racing Cobra chassis. The car is built to be a beast. I get it in pieces, and can install everything as I go along. I can pick up a 95 Mustang for $5,000. I can then upgrade the parts that are hosed for maybe another $7,000. Same price for the RB26, $3,000. But the install is easy. Because we're not dealing with a unibody, and there's plenty of room, the actual assembly is a lot easier. I can still run an R200 or R230 out back because we're not using a Ford 427. It would be 600-700hp from a turbo RB26, applied to the back on an independent suspension, in a car that was lower to the ground, and a roadster.

The FFR chassis is $15,000 worth of parts, and I think their kits go for in the neighborhood of $30,000. So we could call it $45,000, but in reality it will be somewhere lower than that. And, the power to weight ratio of an 1,800lb car, with 650hp, is 2.8lbs/hp.

Do all the engine management with Hydra from element Tuning (and Phil is the fucking man, folks), and really the major difference between the cars is I would have 275 rubber on the Cobra and 205 rubber on the Z.

The cars would be pretty similar in performance. One, being a Cobra, is going to be a top-off roadster. The Z would be suitable for taking out in the cold.

Performance-wise, they would both be 3-second 0-60 cars, possibly 2-second with the Cobra.

But here's what's got me thinking. It might be easier to just be rid of the Z, and go with a Cobra, because the parts on the Cobra are new, whereas the parts on the Z require lots of "reconditioning."

I love my Z. It's part of my youth I'll never get back, and if I sell it, it might get wrecked by somebody who doesn't deserve it. But should sentimentality keep me in the car when the Cobra is so much better a choice?

Psychosis, freedom, and firearms.

This is just a casual reminder, folks: psychosis is temporary. To forbid people to own firearms if they have been "declared mentally ill" is to forbid able, healthy people to own them. It is to assert that there can be no recovery from mental illness. Not only is psychosis treatable by a wide variety of medications and "talking therapy" (as well as things like ECT), but that treatment is optional because the United States Bill of Rights guarantees what providence has given me – life and liberty.

The BoR does not guarantee me the right to kill people. Fortunately, being mentally ill and killing people are two entirely different things, and likewise do not belong on the same piece of legislation.

If you've never been mentally ill, you have no business making this decision. Please, try to come to an informed opinion on this and talk to somebody you know who has had issues with it. Ask them if they felt treatment was helpful.

The last thing I want to point out here is that most people now believe the USA PATRIOT Act is garbage. It is a shining example of legislation crafted under fire, hastily, with snazzy, press-attractive verbiage and features, which was over-arching and over-bearing and in the end served only tyrants. Unlike the PATRIOT Act, however, Virginia will not have a large number of people, or an ethnic class (cf., Arabs) who are being "oppressed." Instead, we may have representation from NRA-ILA, but certainly not ACLU. And everyone loves to hate the NRA.

Instead, the smaller groups of gun owners and the formerly- and presently- mentally ill, will bear the brunt of this legislation, to no definable (read: measurable) effect, with the possible exception of soothing the enraged sensibilities of the shooting victims' families.

Were it not so silly and trite, I might conjure up some sentimental statement about weeping for the loss of Virginia's decency in human rights and civil liberties. Instead, I'll happily depart for TPE, and perhaps resettle somewhere safer like New Hampshire or Texas. Let's hope it doesn't become some federal crusade to round up all the mentally ill and incarcerate them.

My status as a hack

I did throw stones at the "My Beloved Monster" dude, frankly because I don't like the notion of Yet Another Pity Circle Jerk Book. Not because he's a bad person, because I don't like his daughter, or whatever. In fact, I find it interesting. I'm just not about to go and read another one of those books. And, when I originally wrote that, I said "there, I've thrown a stone, somebody's going to come along and eviscerate me." Furthermore, I misspelled loathsome. So, my mistake. I expected the complaints, either from him or somebody who adores him (he has groupies!). It happened. No surprise there. I'm not sure why somebody would respond that I am a "hack," however. I've stated numerous times that I keep this weblog for two reasons.

• I live in Virginia, and my family is scattered throughout California, Minnesota, Taiwan, and other places I don't have a lot of contact with. My friends are in even more places than that, and some of them I have almost no interaction with whatsoever, except via the internet. This means I get emails from them saying "hey, I haven't heard from you in x weeks, what have you been up to?" Now most of them read this via RSS or even manually. I no longer have to type up these enormous diatribes about the content of my lungs or insomnia or whether and where I am working. This is for them, and because I am lazy.

• I am in fact writing a book. Books, even. And they're all collected in a little pile, and I tend to them lovingly, when I have time and inspiration. As I've said before, when I write a story like Sharks, it's very hard for me to empathize and "get back into" the frame of mind I was in when I started writing it. So I keep a trail of breadcrumbs for myself here. I can go way back, to 2003, before I had actually started writing, and see what was going on in my mind back then. There are so many half-opened, half-written books there that I can't help but to get distracted or lost when I context-switch between them. The readership of this page is actually so low, I don't mind it being public. That may change in the future, but for now, it's a fun experiment. For me.

What reminded me I needed to post this (I had a draft sitting around) was Scalzi's similar post recently. Quoting,

Which means, of course, that this site is always egocentric, not just sometimes. I'm happy the site entertains the lot of you, really I am, and I'm generally fond of you all in that Internetty way. But at the end of the day, it's more important that the site entertains me. If I decided to put ads on the site, I could make a lot of money from it, but then I would have to start worrying about maximizing returns every damn time I wrote rather than writing what interests me. If I just wrote about politics, or tech, or whatever, I could probably get more people coming in -- single-topic sites are the ones that get the most traffic, as a cursory glance at Technorati's Top 100 makes perfectly clear. But then I would be bored out of my skull. And this is exists in large part so I won't be bored out of my skull.

Anyways, this should serve as fair warning. You're either here because you're a friend of mine or family and find me interesting enough to read this drivel (or I've begged you to not make me repeat it), or you're here because I'm an unpublished hack of a writer (and this doesn't bother me). Let me swim a little in my hackishness for a second, and quote myself:

Strange. They don't know what I'm writing, other than it's fiction. And those that have said they'd like to read the book, well, depending on how well you know me, you might not like to read 120,000 words that came out of my head. I'm not writing this book for anyone but me. If it gets published, hooray, that's great. I'll never get rich, and you can't make a movie out of it because it is just so brooding, sullen, and mean. I can self-publish, and put a copy of my book on my shelf. And that will be good enough for me.

Hopefully this clears that bit up.

(as a post script, looks like the Monster guy got himself published. congratulations. you sure do got a purdy mouth....)

You know it's bad when

You fall asleep clutching a bottle of Afrin to your chest so that you can quickly apprehend that snot when it comes out of the nostril that was so thick with snot as to be untreatable. Nyquil in the fridge? Check. Trusty bottle of Afrin? Check.

Software that doesn't suck.

I've done a lot of complaining about software these last couple weeks, with Delicious Library being a festering pile, and MacJournal being a sort of overpriced beta-quality piece of shareware. But in terms of software I pay for, it's very hard to beat Skype.

I realized a couple months ago, when I was receiving threatening e-mails from a customer who gravely misunderstood our relationship, that I didn't want to be giving people a phone number that was associated with the phone company. The reasons for this are subtle. First, if I have a contract with AT&T (for example), and I then have to drop that phone line, change its number, or otherwise disappear, I have to actually justify this to AT&T, or pay whatever exorbitant fee they want to just get out of the contract.

The other reason is less to do with AT&T and more to do with my own personal feelings on communication.

Let me define first what I mean when I say "working." Because I am a contractor/consultant, I tend to work very long hours, and work some portion (but not all) of the year. The rest of the time I am generally "looking for work," but the part of the year in which I am "working" generally finances the remainder. So while I am looking for work, and nominally should be reachable, I am also not in such a desperate hurry to get phone calls that I expect to be available by phone at the drop of a (any) hat. This is unfortunately not the attitude customers have, and they send me emails with requests like "call me ASAP to talk about this position," when they really should be sending me an email so I can review the details of the contract and the work.

At any rate, this sort of "looking for work" is separate from "working," which generally applies to when I am on contract. When I am tied to a piece of work, I am almost always available 24x7 to that customer, by nature of what I do. When a 767 falls on the datacenter, I get a phone call, saying "please either resurrect the servers, or make sure our traffic fails over to the Dublin datacenter." Stuff like this. For this work, I need to be reachable, when I'm asleep, when I'm out for a walk on the Potomac, and so on.

All of the above is different from "on-site," which means I am usually attached to the ethernet port (or rarely, wireless) of somebody else. All three require different modes and permissions of communication, which the POTS system was never set up for. If only Bell had thought of acls for the original phone system (of course, it would probably be a ghastly nightmare today, and I'd be complaining about something entirely different).

So, if I am not working (and by definition, looking for work), I don't want people to think they have interrupt-driven access to my daily life. I give them a number, a throw-away number, from somebody like Grand Central, or Skype (via SkypeIn). They can call all they want, but the phone calls go to where I want. Either to my mobile (more on this in a minute), to my computer (again, via SkypeIn), or to a black hole of voicemail. It's thoroughly, totally, triaged, and archived, to boot. I can then use e-mail as a foil, voicemail when I have to fall back to he-said-she-said business, and outright ignore the "I have a HOT opportunity for a perl programmer in Missouri" (yes, with the bold and italics) stuff.

When I am working, I need to be reachable. So, I give people a SkypeIn number, as I generally have the laptop with me eighteen hours a day (sleep is for the weak, right? I can sleep the three months a year I don't work, right?). I have a bluetooth headset (a Motorla H500) that I purchased for my phone (a Motorola V620, imported to the US from Hong Kong to get past the horrible phone-locking tendencies of US carriers). I instead pair it to my MacBook, and can take calls just as though I was on the mobile, and my customer doesn't know the difference.

On the rare chances I get outside when I am working, and don't have the laptop with me (more often than not, this means it's in the trunk of the car or something), I do have the mobile phone with me, and Skype forwards calls to the phone in my pocket. What about when I need to call somebody, but I don't want to encourage them to call me willy-nilly on the mobile phone? Well, outbound caller ID is blocked. Because, in order to strip AT&T out of this equation, I also have to be able to ditch the mobile. I can then re-pair the H500 with the V620, and talk at length on the mobile, cutting back over to the VOIP and Skype (via SkypeOut) when I return to packety goodness.

The real gem that makes all this work is ironically the pre-paid service from AT&T. They've actually freed me from relyin on their service by both making it so terrible I can't rely on it, so expensive I don't want to use it, and yet easily purchased when I have to deal with a POTS holdout. I buy 400, 600, or 900 minutes a month from them, depending on how much I use the phone (more often than not, 400, for about $43). Because there's no contract on the phone, I can literally throw the SIM card away, switch carriers, numbers, contracts, et cetera, if I have a stupid customer or AT&T disgraces themselves (which they never do, right?). The great thing is, even if I have a customer who is really naggy and whiny, and must have the number to my mobile phone, I can simply toss it at the end of the contract, end of the day, et cetera, without affecting anyone but them. Because I didn't give the number to anyone else.

So here's how it works. Throwaway numbers via Skype and Grand Central, throwaway phone via Hong Kong and AT&T, and pervasive, consistent telephony via the internet and the GPRS/TDMA/etc networks. All the voicemail gets handled either by AT&T or Skype, so everything is recorded. Every inbound and outbound call is logged. And, even better, customers learn to use e-mail, so everything they say there is archived as well.

The only drawback is that the occasional prospective customer figures out the number is not POTS or a national carrier, and will proceed to blame communications problems on the medium, rather than the fact that they haven't called. Remember, everything is logged. If you called, there are three different places it could be recorded, and if there's nothing there, you didn't.

So, Skype for the win. Especially for releasing me from the chains of AT&T, for not forcing me to endure Packet8's and Vonage's horrible customer service and quality of service, for giving me an option other than Comcast VOIP, and costing about half as much as I pay for AT&T minutes.

There's one little Skype gripe, though. By registering yourself in their address book (a good idea), you open yourself up to random people calling you (and shutting down unknown callers defeats the whole purpose of allowing anybody to call your throwaway number, remember?). I have had people in China (or more correctly, that time zone) call me simply because I was 12 hours behind them.

• Hey, it's 1600 here in Hong Kong, what's it like in DC?
• Uh, well, it's 0400. Why did you call me again?

The good news is they're mostly not jerks, and I get to practice my awful Mandarin and pinyin on people who are practicing English.

Street Fighter 2

Per usual, I am last to find these bits on the interweb. However, this doesn't stop me from aggregating them here so that others may laugh at how out of touch I am:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
3. Part 3

So, they were made in Oct/Nov/Dec 2006, with nothing since. Perhaps there will not be more. And, really, this is six or seven minutes you'll never get back. But, if it's a bad investment, send me a bill. (via)

I'm going to be sick

...this is uh, it arrived, and it, again, on nightly news, I called it a multi media manifesto, because I can't think of anything that more accurately describes it. Page upon page of photos, mostly of him, the kind of narcissism that, uh, profilers say is so prevalent in this mindset.

MSNBC Anchor (not linking to it, not even mentioning the guy's name).

What the fuck is the guy thinking? He's a narcissist? My god, do people just not fucking get it? The kid was tortured and he was forced into this, and he's a narcissist for telling people that he is killing himself (and them) rather than continue to be subject to it?

Holy incomprehension, Batman.

I guess if he'd just sent them the manifesto he'd be a "failed school killer" and not a narcissist. I guess if he hadn't done anything he'd be just another pussy, another kid we beat up and make fun of in front of him. He wouldn't be a narcissist, he'd be a well-adjusted guy who just shuts up and takes it when people mistreat him.

I am going to be sick. This stuff just makes me ill. And I can't get away from it. I can't read the news, I can't listen to NPR, I can't even talk to my friends without this shit coming up and nobody fucking getting it.

What is it going to fucking take? Is it going to take somebody doing this, and letting themselves be caught so they can explain it in clearer terms? So they can be interrogated for ten years and then executed by the very people who forced them into the role of murderer-suicide? I mean, is that really what it's going to take before people realize what's going on here? My god, are all of you so fucking ignorant? So unable to accept your own role in this kind of thing?

Can we just realize we treat eachother horribly and maybe fucking stop it?

Mariner Software, MacJournal

I am writing this entry in the Blogger WYSIWYG editor, in Minefield. That by itself should more or less set the tone for my impressions of Mariner's software, MacJournal.

I first became familiar with Mariner's software via Sandy. I complained that CJ Cherryh was using Word Perfect, that Charlie Stross was using Word, and that the whole industry was more or less using PC's and Microsoft to write books. I didn't want to get married to Word early in the game, as I figured just the process of learning to use their editor effectively took time away from me actually writing. So Sandy pointed out MarinerWrite, which was a lot cheaper than Word, and had the benefit of being reasonably okay Mac software. But, the interface felt kind of chintzy, and it overall felt like a self-important version of BBEdit. Eventually I just gave up on MarinerWrite and started up the Sisyphusian learning curve of Word.

After the VT shootings, I had a big globule of bile lurking back around my tonsils, and it threatened to be spat forth into something resembling an essay. I struggled to compose all my thoughts into something that could become a coherent blog entry, but I realized I had so much to say that I really wanted a fully-featured editor. The WYSIWYG editor window in Firefox is reasonably okay for a short entry, but it rapidly becomes tedious for anything longer than a few pages (the VT essay is at present about 5,000 words).

Google has a Blogger widget for OS X's dashboard, but they still haven't updated it to reflect the new "Beta" blogger. So I'm kind of stuck with respect to an offline editor. Then, coincidentally, I got an email from Mariner, telling me about Avenir and MacJournal. Wow, I thought. Because it's "just" blogging software, maybe the spartan interface wouldn't be a bad thing.

So here are my impressions.


The application is small and clean, without flashy blinky things that everyone seems to want to include in client-side apps these days. The initial window is the nagbox, but after that you get right to the editor, which is again, clean and spartan.



It seems to want to interface primarily with .Mac and their web/blogging facilities. Now, I don't use .Mac for blogging. It's easy enough to configure it to use .Mac to store files (Blogger now has a 1gb limit on the amount of pictures I can store there, and they even tie it to a Picasa account, much like the way Flickr has now tied people to a Yahoo account – I've got my eyes on you, you Google people):


However, even though I can actually add images to the editor in MacJournal, either by drag-dropping or copy-pasting, they don't actually show up in the finished entry:


I suspect this is because the file storage part expects things to be stored on .Mac and it doesn't cooperate with the Blogger posting part. This is easy enough to fix, because I can store files in my Public folder (and in fact do) on .Mac, and then hotlink the images from .Mac into the Blogger post. This lets me use the storage I pay Apple for, as opposed to putting it in Picasa/Blogger. But, the software just doesn't "get" it.

Another problem with images in MacJournal is after you've placed them in the editor, you can't actually resize them or anything. If you take a 1600x1200 image, and copy it or drag it into the MacJournal editor window, the image stays enormous. There's no facility for actually changing the size. For contrast, Google's editor allows you to select one of three sizes. So I have a hard time understanding what Mariner's thought process was in respect to images. Certainly every weblog out there, except the few remaining tinfoil-hats-and-sgml people (who don't blog anyways, right?), has images. Usually lots of them.

There are two other things that bother me about the software. First, it has very poor "style" editing capability. Everything I want to do to the text is selectable from a pulldown menu. I very much like in the Blogger editor being able to select text and hit control-I to make things italic. I can use ⌘-I in MacJournal, but I can't get a quick shortcut to create a link in the MJ editor. In Google's editor, I have a very different palette:

So, it's kind of surprising that MacJournal, with all the features of client-side applications (you know, Objective C instead of just Javascript and client-side Java), would be so limited in its editing capabilities. I'd like to be able to indent text, as I do with the blockquote tags. Having to manually enter them is a pain, and it's a toss-up as to whether it will actually be indented when it gets published.

The other thing that really bothers me about MacJournal is its complete lack of understanding of the richer features of blogs. I'd like to be able to assign technorati tags to posts, and to give it information about things like technorati or my shared google reader items. All this can be configured by adding templates to the software in preferences, but why doesn't it ship with this, as the software's entire purpose in life is blogging? When we reduce the featureset from something as complex as Word, to something as relatively limited as blogging, why can't we get full support for that limited set? But, as it is, I can't even use the basic tagging functions that are part of the Blogger interface (and I happen to know the API for Blogger includes tagging functionality).

I would have purchased the software, despite its shortcomings, had it cost less than $50. Perhaps $20. The reason being that, as I wrote this, my internet connection was flaky and I worried I had lost the whole entry in Blogger (I'm at the Subaru dealer where unfortunately I've just had to put four tires on the car when I expected to just be changing the oil!). Having it offline in MacJournal is a blessing in that I can save it to a local file.

But if we look at the cost of software, Sandy and I are able to buy three licenses for Microsoft Office for Mac for $150, as students. We still use those licenses today, and have for at least three years, through the various updates that have come from Microsoft. And with that $150, we get Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Entourage (, and Messenger), assorted clip-art and templates, and updates until 2007 comes out. So if we consider we get four pieces of software for $150, that's $37 per each app, only we get three licenses for them. To pay $50 for MacJournal is kind of absurd, given its flaws.

The other thing to consider here is that the $50 apparently includes Avenir. However, I can't download Avenir from the Mariner site, and it isn't immediately clear what Avenir is, or why I'd want it. I read the copy they included in their ad to me, and I was interested, but as I don't even know where to get the trial version, how can I use it, let alone understand why it makes MacJournal worth $50?

I'm disappointed with what I got for $40 with Delicious Library. I'm not going to waste $50 on MacJournal with its flaws, in the hopes it gets better. I'd rather just compose larger blog entries in Text Edit or (sigh) Word.

I remember when shareware used to be cool. I remember Player Pro and Sound Trekker. And JPEG Converter. Way back in the OS 6-8 days. Somewhere along the way, opensource, free software got to be way cooler than the shareware, and the shareware got to be more expensive. Some of the shareware guys just wanted you to send them a post card or $10. More and more, it becomes a losing proposition to pay for shareware, and a much better deal to roll my own software (like Dan does) and possibly have something I can share with my pals. I still use Dan's software (that he borrowed from somebody else) to fix up my /usr/local tree with software. Who can say that about shareware?

Raytheon job posting

Job Description

Microwave Communications Engineer

Raytheon is seeking a RF Microwave communications engineer microwave installation and support. The candidate must have 5 years working knowledge of microwave data communication, to include digital and analog radio sets. Duties will include installation and maintenance of more than 15 remotes sites throughout the Baghdad region. Extensive travel by military ground convoy and military airlift, to include fixed wing and helicopter is required. Max height tower climbing does not exceed 60 feet. All remote locations in and around Baghdad, Iraq are under US Military control and are classified as Forward Operating Bases.

So, I'm gonna be a contractor, in Baghdad, climbing around on towers "not to exceed" sixty feet. They don't say how much it is, but I've seen rates of $65 an hour from them in the past. Sounds like a picnic!

Motorcycles

I've been thinking about a motorcycle for a long time now. In the past, I always thought it would be a real kick to ride simply because the power to weight ratio is so favorable. But as I got older and mellowed out a bit, I began to think that it would be a lot of fun to enjoy just being out in the air, for rides through places like Shenandoah or down the GW Parkway. More recently, as we think about buying a second car, we have realized that the mileage of a motorcycle, and its suitability for short trips (Sandy's trip to work is less than three miles on surface streets) make it an ideal candidate for a "supplemental" vehicle.

The reason we haven't gone and bought one already is neither of us can get out of our heads just how dangerous the things are supposed to be. I think, though, that this might be the year we finally do it. Gas has gotten more expensive, and we aren't driving more so much as we're being in two separate places more often. And of course, in Taiwan, we will almost certainly be forced into owning a scooter (underbone) or motorcycle. There, it's the norm.

At any rate, it comes to mind because I had a dream last night about driving a CBR600 in San Diego, around the Interstate 8/Hotel Circle area.

This is also a test of Mariner's MacJournal software. A review forthcoming.

The cat whisperer

How does one prevent the howls of injustice coming from an imprisoned cat? Easy. A dollop of toothpaste to the roof of the mouth. Repeat as necessary. Don't worry, this one's free of charge. Extra credit for taking pictures and sending them to me.

Thank you, Nike.

And thank you for never, ever, emailing me such offensive fucking drivel again. If I want to be masturbated by a bunch of corporate glad-handing fuckos, I'll just head over to K street.

(apparently I got this sports-spam-wank because I have a Nike+iPod. somehow, that means I care)

Archstone move-out fees

It would seem that Archstone have lost their minds. Today, three weeks after we moved out, I get an email expressing happiness that our move has gone well, and general well-wishes for our health, well-being, etc. Following same is a request for $2,600 in fees for, among other things, drywall repairs and missing closet doors.

Starting with the drywall repairs, first and foremost, the people responsible for destroying drywall in our apartment are in fact the people that run the building. Thankfully, I even took pictures last time around. In fact, the problem became so protracted with these people that Sandy complained, saying that there were problems with the drywall in the apartment. They responded by "inspecting" the apartment, and telling us that the damage had been there "a long time." This of course ignores the fact that they were in there repairing other drywall, and didn't mention the drywall that they assert had been there for a long time. This means they were lying then, or lying now. Either way, it's preposterous that we should pay for repairs to their apartment, when it was they who damaged it.

As far as closet doors, this is actually kind of comical. When we first moved into the apartment, we had decided to turn the second bedroom into a library. In fact, we went to the Container Store and got an estimate for the shelving (which is, of course, still on file). We had asked them to take the closet doors off so that we could simply use the ample closet space as a place with shelves for books (my concerns regarding the huge volume of books we have are, of course, documented). However, they took the closet doors off the master bedroom closets (two, walk-in), and absconded with them. The more we complained about the apartment and the building's poor management, the more they threatened us. Eventually coming in and destroying our bathrooms (only relenting when photos were taken and published on the internet), and threatening to evict us. Finally, they told us they were not going to renew our lease ("exercising their option" to, rather than for any particular claim – we were just difficult). Furthermore, when we were trying to get out of the place, we asked for a little extra time because both of us were sick (thankfully this, too, is documented), and they told us we had better be out by COB the following day, or we would be paying for storage and hotel stays of the new residents (who have not yet moved in).

It's really kind of amazing how this company has treated residents of six years. Over that time, we have paid $119,000 in rent to them. We asked them to perform simple maintenance, to clean up after themselves, and not to threaten us (in the case of the guns). For our trouble, we were threatened with eviction, and eventually forced to move out, and subsequently threatened with a $2,600 bill for damage they made to the apartment. Do other renters normally just roll over for this kind of nitwittery? Do they fall for this kind of abuse from some twenty-two-year-old humanities major from Minnesota? What kind of people fall for this? Is it some sort of preemptive potshot because they can? They must be thinking, we can charge them whatever we want; who would dare stand up against a ten billion dollar company?

Criminy! At least they offered me a payment plan.

Rituals

In what I suppose is a fit of foresight, I bought a bottle of whisky a few days before I got married. I bought a pretty nice Tamdhu. I was thinking, it's a pretty agreeable whisky, that I could share with people if they were around (whereas some of the other stuff I drink is ... challenging), and that even Sandy could appreciate (she doesn't drink). I had the intention of having a nip of it the day I got married and thereafter on my anniversary. As it happened, though we eloped, my father was there to have a drink with me that evening.

It's funny that I seem to have gotten the ritual part pretty well. I'm not having more than a couple fingers. However, I'm using the appropriate glass (a whisky glass is almost like a tall snifter), so I can appreciate the aromas better, and it flows across the palate a little better. And while it's not the most spectacular whisky I've ever had, I am awash in the memories of having a drink with my father (something we've never done outside that evening), the sound of the Pacific through the window, the smell of the orchids in Sandy's hair, and all the feelings of the day. Here, in Virginia, at one a.m., on a breezy, rainy night, I get to relive a little bit of Hawaii, a little bit of the day we were married.

I never guessed I would be so grateful to everyone who made that day possible, rather than just reveling in being married, and being entirely in love with my wife. But I can't help but sit here and think how lucky I have been to have everyone behind me – behind us – that brought us to this day.

So, then, here's to all of you. Thank you.

Must be all those mercury martinis

and lead chips I eat. I've got pneumonia. The question of how I developed pneumonia from a virus that just gave Sandy a few days of fevers and congestion is the topic du jour. Maybe I should be the one quarantined, and not the cats, should I depart for les plages du Chine.

Redeem your favorite authors for fabulous discounts!

Everyone's heard that Vonnegut passed away by now. I had decided I didn't need to say anything because everyone was already doing that for me. I don't have anything to add to that at all. But, as usually happens with something like this, some jackass has decided it's a great opportunity to make money.

Today, I received a bulk email (one which I am more or less subscribed to, as a customer) from an online book seller (not Amazon, thank god), alerting me to the great chance I had to buy all of Vonnegut's books between twenty and fifty percent off. Sick.

Most people could greatly benefit from reading Vonnegut. If it was so important to these book sellers to increase literacy through his books, why not have them on sale all the time, instead of waiting for the guy to die first? It cheapens the books (no pun intended), and I am sure he would have been offended, were his wit and sense of irony not so sharp.

Some days it's just hard to believe how many of these ambulatory pits of depraved inanity are lurking about, waiting to surprise me.

Who are they trying to kid?

I must have that picture back! It's very important!

Do they really think they're fooling anyone?

It "can't be ruled out'' that some of the e-mails involved the firings, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters. The administration will "take all reasonable steps'' to retrieve any lost messages and will "certainly ensure that it doesn't happen again,'' he said.

...

"An extensive volume of White House e-mails regarding official government actions may have been destroyed by the RNC and not preserved by the White House,'' Waxman wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Separately, the House Judiciary Committee asked the Republican Party committee to turn over e-mails from its computer servers dealing with the firings.

White House officials disclosed yesterday that some e-mails may have been lost after they were sent through accounts set up by the Republican National Committee. The White House said the accounts are now used by 22 administration officials – most in the office of political affairs – when they feel it necessary to contact political organizations. It is illegal to use government resources for political purposes.

Is it that they have so little understanding of how email works themselves that they assume the public can't possibly see through this little charade of theirs? I mean, what gives? This is like the guy who insists they didn't get the voicemail or record of your call. Ten years ago, the internet almost was the "wild west" where lone packets disappeared en route. But today? Not hardly. Politicians have been doing this for years. Instead of just having a policy of deleting email (which would be politically impossible), they feign surprise when data is lost. Nobody's surprised that incriminating data disappeared. Nobody. So why bother lying to us? It's patently offensive.

The solutions here are simple.

• Behave. Don't do stupid shit that's going to come back to you.
• Don't behave, but don't leave evidence of it in e-mail.
• Come clean. Own up to doing whatever it is you're in trouble for.
• At this point you can either refer to a policy of deleting emails
• Or you can produce them, and hopefully people will see the reasons behind your not behaving were actually not evil.

It boggles the mind that people in office can't figure these choices out. Sure, you fucked up and did something stupid. We all know about it, why bother lying? Didn't inhale? Are you kidding me? To blame technology (accidental deletion managing to nuke copies in backups, etc) is worse than lying, it's lying while maintaining that you have every interest in telling the truth. You can bet if one of these fuckers lost an email with some stupid picture of their dog in a butterfly costume, work would stop until the critical data was recovered (if you're a sysadmin, you know this to be true, as you've been the guy recovering it, some of us many times).

Medicine as an institution.

I rant frequently about the way American society handles drug usage, both legal and illegal. The class of drug that comes to the surface most often is the narcotic analgesics. This isn't because I am particularly a fiend for opiates (although the case could be made), but rather pain is an incredibly strong motivator. Whatever my opinion on the availability of blood pressure drugs, the lack thereof doesn't remind me every waking minute that my blood pressure is low, and that I had better do something about it.

Last week, when we were moving house, Sandy and I both came down with some virus. We had the typical coughing and congestion, getting worse at night due to post-nasal drip. It got bad enough that Sandy was choking on the snot in her sleep and it hurt for both of us to breathe, eat, or otherwise push anything past our tongue.

So we made an appointment to see the pulmonologist who had treated me last year for the candidiasis, and who treated Sandy for the stenosis a couple years ago. They're good people. They saw both of us on a day's notice, which is pretty good. They agreed that we had something viral, and boy was it unpleasant. We were given the standard advice:

• drink lots of water (with the caveat that I needed to be getting electrolytes; apparently I had been drinking too much water and not getting anything else down)
• get lots of rest
• don't go to work, as you'll delay your healing and you'll get your coworkers sick
• don't take sudafed more than twice a day (I had been taking it 4-5 times, and my pulse was elevated)
• mucinex is fine for the cough
• tylenol and aspirin for the fever (both of us were in the 102F range)

We were also both given 60ml of Tussionex. This was unusual for us. In the past, the least we'd ever been written for was 120ml. Sandy and I usually get more like 450ml, and it's prescribed prn. When I was in the thickest of the lung infection, I was given 900ml a month (1T bid). As I think about this, I realize that for two doctors to independently arrive at the same quantity given two different patients of different histories is kind of suspicious. In fact, it's my guess that somebody hassled them about the amount of narcotics they were prescribing.

At the dosage I was taking last year for my lungs, 60ml is four doses. At the "recommended" dosage, it's twelve.

Come back in a week if you're not feeling better, we were told. Unfortunately, the drugs ran out, as expected, in two days. I called and asked for a refill, and the request was declined.

And so I have an appointment with them tomorrow, but for five days, I've been in excruciating pain when breathing or swallowing. My cough has gotten so bad that my throat is raw and I'm now coughing up bloody tissue with my green scabby stuff.

Who has this served? Have I been treated correctly, as the government would prefer I be treated? Is the pain and bloodied throat somehow punishment for getting sick? Or was appropriate pain medication (and cough medication!) withheld to prevent my becoming addicted? Maybe it was to limit the liability of the prescribing doctor?

Life is far too short to be playing moral games with pain. Who is it that is satisfied by my having been in pain for the last week? Whose morals have I satisfied? What good has this accomplished?

I have been unable to talk, largely unable to breathe comfortably, and have had damn near zero productivity for the last week because of the decision to not prescribe me adequate pain medication.

Not only has this episode not served any meaningful purpose, it has added pain to my psyche, leading to inevitable depression. It has put the unpacking and moving in to my new home on hold. It's delayed job interviews for several companies.

This is just intolerable. Nobody should have the right – including doctors – to tell me that somebody else's morals are more important than my need to be free of pain and to live my life. I cannot fathom how people can think this is a properly functioning medical system.

It's all about lies, money, and control.

Sandy and I both knew we had a viral infection. We both knew where it was. We both knew how to treat it. We both knew how long it is reasonable to be sick with this kind of bug. Almost everything we were told to do was over-the-counter or the sort of thing your mother would tell you to do. The missing component is pain. Pain, being the motivator it is, helps perpetuate the pharmocracy. Would doctors be able to perpetuate this structure of requiring me to pay for being sick if I could control my own pain? Of course not. I would have simply picked up your average opiate cough syrup (my guess is something like the phenergan/codeine syrup, to also cope with the nausea I've been having) along with mucinex (an expectorant) and tylenol for the fever. As long as those particular barriers remain to consumers taking charge of their own treatment, the establishment will remain in power. Self-regulating, self-perpetuating, corrupt, and without oversight. They'll continue to extort huge fees from us, ransoming our very health.

O'Reilly has lost his friggin mind

Note:

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/draft_bloggers_1.html

he is actually proposing the same sort of nepotistic cabal behind wikipedia become a moderating body for weblogs as a whole. He has to be either 100% ignorant of how wikipedia works, of the utter lack of integrity in the Wales Machine, or even that the simple act of moderating against content will draw attention to it.

Any way you slice this, it's entirely, utterly stupid. And useless. Although not without comedic value (if one can believe for a moment that it will be roundly rejected and has no possibility of being accepted).

Door's to your left, Mr. O'Reilly. Perhaps it's time for you to retire somewhere like Mercer Island and just be one of those "profited on the dot com generation" hermits. Your time on the innarwebs is now up.

Theocracy

There is a blogswarm happening on April 6-8, discussing the notion of theocracy. For a number of reasons I will comment here. Primarily because I feel that theocracy is a problem in a society which has democratic tendencies. First Freedom First is an organization that maintains the "first freedom," that of "freedom from religion" is of primary importance in the bill of rights.

The founders of our nation believed that all Americans should have the right to worship according to their own beliefs, or not to worship at all. So strong was their commitment to religious freedom that they enshrined it in the first sentence of the Bill of Rights.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

It's a reasonable concern. It's even a concern that I hold. I'm on record stating that I am a buddhist, belonging to the pure land section of buddhism (which holds somewhat different values and goals than most people equate buddhism with). And, in a state (the US), where christianity is in fact the majority religion, I do feel a little persecuted. Very much like I'm some sort of novelty. When people assume I have no faith because I do not talk about God, the implicit assumption is that I'd either be christian or atheist/agnostic. It doesn't occur to anyone that I might be pantheist, ambiguously deist, gnostic, or any other of the more subtle religious persuasions.

As such, it troubles me to see movements like the above. It seems that organizations want freedom from religion. I don't see religion as a problem at all. In fact, I think it provides people a stronger (you'll have to pardon the pun) constitution. There's always something behind them (even in nihilism) that explains, to some degree, how everything they're doing or being subjected to, is either relevant or entirely irrelevant, and as such provides us needed answers when there appear to be none.

To me, the freedom "from religion" is just as bad as the xtian hegemony trying to convert all of us to their cause.

No, religion in society and politics should be entirely moot. Religion is a very personal subject by its very nature. Unless god (note little g vs big G) speaks to others as it speaks to you, it's not possible for it to be a societal question. Whether they are deluded or they actually do hear the voice of god, because I cannot hear what they hear, and I cannot verify nor comment on it, it simply isn't a social question. It's anecdotes.

Here is where the anti-theocracy people actually have some convergence with "good ideas."

Theocracy is unstable. Theocracies are driven by mobs, which are notoriously unintelligent, murderous, and mercurial. One moment we can be discussing the virtues of marriage, and the next we can be hanging adulterers from the church tower (with a nod to Stross). The mob can appoint a new "spiritual leader" just about any time somebody with enough charisma or firepower (Hitler, the Spanish Inquisition, Henry VII, the list goes on) comes along to do so.

At this point, mob rule supplants or extends what is the normal rule of law (note I am not discussing the Caliphate or Sharia). In the United States right now, we have a President who is a self-professed evangelical christian, who claims to be motivated by God (big G again) and the bible. We have a constitution that defines the law of the country, and a man bound to uphold it, acting on the interpretation of a mob (the bible, leaders in the evangelical church, the pope, etc), in addition to his interpretation of constitutional law (through yet others – Gonzalez, et al – who are biased by religion).

This is a highly volatile situation. Because churches are subject to moral vicissitudes, and mobs of people tend to make snap judgments (such as lynching, witch-burnings, etc), we cannot tell today what a religion will do tomorrow. We cannot tell because we do not know who the leaders are, and what their values are, as they change with the winds. We cannot tell what the interpretations will be in the future, nor can we be sure "new works" (such as undiscovered religious texts, the virgin mary in a grilled cheese sandwich, etc) will not appear.

And so theocracy is an entirely dangerous proposition for any nation which claims to be governed by secular law. The sort of theocracy we have in America is particularly dangerous because it is not an official theocracy. Anyone asked whether they are performing actions because a burning bush told them to will be coy in answering, or outright dodge the subject. The actions are there, the truth is not. All we can be sure of is our leaders are acting on rationale they do not share with us.

Let me discuss another failure of theocracy, this time in a publicly acknowledged theocracy: Sharia law. While most would call Dore Gold a hate-monger (and perhaps rightfully so), he has a remarkably clear account of how islamic law works, and why islamists are so stridently opposed to America (and of course Americans) in his book, Hatred's Kingdom. The notion of what is "law" in a country ruled by muslim law is a fluid concept. A basis for laws are taken from the Quran, and those laws are then further interpreted as society evolves. In the time of Mohammed, for example, we did not have nuclear weapons or modern democracies. And so, when somebody asks a current muslim leader, "what does the Quran tell us about the west?" or "what does the Quran tell us about making war with the Americans?", it is invariably the subjective interpretation of somebody who is human, and therefore has an agenda.

I am not a Quranic scholar, so I can't get into details honestly. However, one thing that stuck with me through the book was the notion of the fatwa. As religious edicts are issued, they often contradict. One imam in Indonesia may consider it legal under islamic law to wage offensive war on American soil, and another may not. Consequently, those who wish to wage war will cite the fatwa they agree with, and others will state that those attacking are violating the fatwa (and thus islamic law, mind you). This is why people fly planes into buildings, claiming Islam requires it, and others claim just as correctly that Islam is a peaceful religion and does not condone such acts.

America is really not so far off from this corrupted nest of religious subtleties. An overwhelming majority of congressmen claim to be "religious," with the overwhelming majority thereof being christian, of some bent or another. It doesn't matter whether they are a democrat or a republican. Whatever agenda they follow is, in some part, governed by laws which are fluid and subject to vast interpretation, relating to everything from going to war with Iran to abortion.

Theocracy, when overtly expressed, is at least an enemy you can see. Our theocracy, this theocratic republic, is a far more dangerous animal, and has been loosed on the world to great tragedy. How ironic that religion itself loosed this great religious monster back in 2001.