You just have to get it out of your head that you can't do it, and then you have to start thinking about ways to do it. It is almost never the hand-grenade solution that fixes a problem. Usually, something hackish and clever does the trick. Why write a 3000-line perl module to de-duplicate my mp3's when I can write a 15-line awk script and do the rest in iTunes?
Throughout my career, I've been told that such-and-such is impossible. It's never been true. Never. What you find when somebody tells you something is "impossible" is a group of people who are engaging in serious group-think, and have convinced themselves that they have thought of every angle, every solution, and everything else. They really hate being told they're wrong. Worse, they deny that any novel suggestion could possibly work, and will often go out of their way to quash even looking into that novel suggestion. The only reason I can see for this is people being terrified of being proven wrong. I've been cast out of such groups for having such thoughts and offering such suggestions. The very notion that somebody is wrong is often very threatening to them.
I hate to place blame on people. I think it's pointless. Blame is only useful if you catch it before the act takes place – and then it's called "prevention," not "blame." So, they're not to blame, I'm not to blame. We've just got a problem, and as engineers or developers or even helpdesk phone jockeys, we have a responsibility to solve that problem. Pointing fingers and burning witches takes time away from solving the problem.
Today, while I worked a seventeen hour shift, I managed to pull off two different impossible tasks, the details of which I won't get into other than to say that there's stuff you "can't do" in OpenSolaris, and there's stuff you "can't do" in Windows. This is one of those instances where I had the motivation (which I also won't go in to; let's say that it's a personal thing), and wasn't going to let the impossible, the difficult, the hard, the incompatibilities, and the thinking get in my way. Thought and hard work prevailed where FUD had previously stymied any attempt at a solution. But, it's a one-time pass. You show somebody that the impossible is possible, and they tell you next week that something else is impossible, it's time to walk away. Such people are unchangeable, mercurial, and have motives that are much deeper than getting the job done. Work with people who want problems solved, and your life – professional and personal – will be a lot easier. Empire builders, silos, fiefdoms, etc., are the enemies of productivity. And you know when you're dealing with one. Get out while you can.
If we listen to these "that's not possible" or "that's absurd" people, we're worse than apes. Apes use tools.
Everything is possible, given enough thought and enough resources (in my case, it was time and lots and lots of thinking about the solutions).
03 October, 2008
02 October, 2008
I love programming.
Finding stuff like this in old tools I have lying around on older machines and in long-forgotten directories never fails to cheer me up:
# If we ever wanted to build a laser rifle, we'd need theseAnd, yes, the rest of the script did exactly that. Ran all the math necessary to collimate a beam into a coherent, directed energy weapon. How in the world did I forget this script?
01 October, 2008
skunkworks
1200 words today. slow day. lots of thinking needed to be done, and i did some revisions where i needed to. i am really close now to "finishing" the second act of the book. out of seven, or so. the good news is three of those acts are also written (making it almost five out of the seven; but i have to suture them together afterwards).
the little bar goes up
christ, it feels like i've been slogging at this for hours. i guess i have been. since meeting with $editor, there's another 2200 words in the skunk works. that's about 500 words an hour i guess, which is not quite the 5,000 words/8 hours i tend to pull when i really put my mind to it, but i'm happy with what i got accomplished. besideswhich, i'm supposed to be at work in, uh, four and a half hours.
i'll sleep when i'm dead, right?
fucking books. always demanding to be written. gr.
i'll sleep when i'm dead, right?
fucking books. always demanding to be written. gr.
30 September, 2008
I'm not sure what I'm more excited about.
short: writing/editing, bike gear, and riding in general...
So, first, my editor used the word "great" not once, but twice to describe what is the last iteration of Gupta. It's now time to just dust off two sentences, and add a noun to a sentence that didn't have one. I think at that point, I may ask the two editors who liked it if they'd take it in its current form (e.g., with verb tenses fixed, without the hooker, and so on). I suppose I also have to re-format it into Shunn, which I don't really like. When I "write something for myself," I do it in Garamond or Myriad. But, them's the rules and if you don't play nice the editor ain't gotta publish it. Getting closer to SFWA.
Second, she's interested in one of the shorter stories I wrote, which is really (really...) rough and is essentially filth, violence, decay, dishonesty, and outright gore from end to end. It might get wound into the skunkworks (book!!) or it might just get spun out onto its own. Or it might go back into the slush pile as something to dust off later. At any rate, she's also going to get a peek at the skunkworks and tells me what she thinks of that. About 60k words in total, 25 or so written, and some sutures need to be made. So, work to go, but I might actually have a book finished by the end of the year, and even two more short stories (I can't foresee getting any further than that with the level of busy-ness wifey and I have had of late).
I can't wait to patch some of the Kubrickesque, just absolutely IMAX stunning scenery into the skunkworks. Gleaming arrows flying through space indeed.
Unfortunately, at dinner with $editor, a goddamn thunderstorm came in on us. I had the Ninja out, and I had even parked it in a corner that ensured (it was a covered garage, but the sides are open) that it was soaked when I got back to it. I, in my black jacket, black helmet, and enormous black backpack (no, really, it's a Brenthaven 17" powerbook backpack with a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers, a powerbook, notebooks, and all kinds of other shit) set out to take the bike into the rain. In the dark. Uphill even. How I managed to get up that hill and around that ramp is kind of beyond me, it seems a lot harder in the garage (we have a steep exit with a fence that requires me to sit half way up a hill and wait for it to rise; rear brake, lotsa throttle, slip clutch, thunk, pray.). But, I made it home okay, and the toughest parts were actually not the freeway (although the curvy ramp was tough because it merged in three surface streets onto the northbound and southbound sides of the interstate) but the surface streets, because I had to keep my eye out for standing water and slick surfaces like road markings. These are a lot harder to see on the bike than in the STI, which has xenon lamps and foglamps. The ZX-7 has HID lamps in it, so hopefully that will be easier to ride in the rain.
But I did it!! I rode home through a thunderstorm on the bike, at 9pm! Colin tells me at around the "six or so months" mark, people start to get a newfound feeling of confidence and that's when they mess up. Of course, that's the mark when I'm tripling my displacement and moving from "sportbike" to "supersport." Eeks, right? Everyone says, everyone drops a bike. Maybe I need to buy a beater Rebel or something and do what A Twist of the Wrist says to do: practice low-siding.
So, speaking of low-siding, knowing the ZX-7 is a fuckuva lot faster than the 250, I didn't feel comfortable riding it without armored pants and proper shoes. I picked up a pair of Coretech jeans, which are cowhide and some textile on the inside, with armor parts on the knees, and of course denim on the outside. Good stuff. They're comfy, don't look like you're trying to be Rossifumi, and I suspect they'd do a good job of saving my ass. I also got the Sidi Doha boots. They're a little tight on the inside (big) toe, but I have very long, very narrow feet, with very high arches. So, really, they fit pretty well, and I figure I'll just develop a nice comfy callous there. The tricky thing about them is they fit almost like ski boots – your heel is up, and toes inclined down. This isn't a real problem as such, but I've been riding in sneakers, and all of a sudden, there's a lot more (or at least much stiffer) material between me and my pegs.
One of the biggest problems I've had with bikes in general is the shifter. The brake is easy to handle, you just mash it. But while most of you "tap up" and "tap down" with your toe, I have to do it with essentiall the ball of my foot. So I don't have the same sort of, uh, dexterity or feeling there. I wore the boots to dinner, and walked around in them (not the most comfiest thing I've ever done, but I've certainly worn less comfortable shoes) and by the time I got on the bike again (in the rain, second ride in the boots), I had pretty well figured out where my foot was (because I had lost the feeling; sneakers are real thin in comparison), and was shifting normally. When I'd driven out to meet $editor, I'd been missing shifts or dumping the clutch because I'd miss the peg and goose the throttle. In rush hour traffic. On the interstate. That was pretty embarassing.
The jacket with its vinyl liner kept me dry, the pants didn't get too wet (which is good, they're not machine washable!!), the boots seem to have held up to the rain, and my only complaint is rain on the visor. I gotta get that figured out.
Heh, and I had a serious itch on my nose when I was sitting in traffic. I'd reach to scratch it (I did this three times.), and thump myself in my face. Yep, I looked like a complete idiot.
But, good ride(s), enjoying the 250 thoroughly, can't wait to get out on the road with Sandy and the two Ninjas, love the gear (although the Icon gloves I think are on the "gotta go" list, and I'd like a Coretech or Dainese jacket), and had a splendid session with $editor.
Pleased. Maybe I won't kill anyone in tonight's writing.
So, first, my editor used the word "great" not once, but twice to describe what is the last iteration of Gupta. It's now time to just dust off two sentences, and add a noun to a sentence that didn't have one. I think at that point, I may ask the two editors who liked it if they'd take it in its current form (e.g., with verb tenses fixed, without the hooker, and so on). I suppose I also have to re-format it into Shunn, which I don't really like. When I "write something for myself," I do it in Garamond or Myriad. But, them's the rules and if you don't play nice the editor ain't gotta publish it. Getting closer to SFWA.
Second, she's interested in one of the shorter stories I wrote, which is really (really...) rough and is essentially filth, violence, decay, dishonesty, and outright gore from end to end. It might get wound into the skunkworks (book!!) or it might just get spun out onto its own. Or it might go back into the slush pile as something to dust off later. At any rate, she's also going to get a peek at the skunkworks and tells me what she thinks of that. About 60k words in total, 25 or so written, and some sutures need to be made. So, work to go, but I might actually have a book finished by the end of the year, and even two more short stories (I can't foresee getting any further than that with the level of busy-ness wifey and I have had of late).
I can't wait to patch some of the Kubrickesque, just absolutely IMAX stunning scenery into the skunkworks. Gleaming arrows flying through space indeed.
Unfortunately, at dinner with $editor, a goddamn thunderstorm came in on us. I had the Ninja out, and I had even parked it in a corner that ensured (it was a covered garage, but the sides are open) that it was soaked when I got back to it. I, in my black jacket, black helmet, and enormous black backpack (no, really, it's a Brenthaven 17" powerbook backpack with a pair of jeans, a pair of sneakers, a powerbook, notebooks, and all kinds of other shit) set out to take the bike into the rain. In the dark. Uphill even. How I managed to get up that hill and around that ramp is kind of beyond me, it seems a lot harder in the garage (we have a steep exit with a fence that requires me to sit half way up a hill and wait for it to rise; rear brake, lotsa throttle, slip clutch, thunk, pray.). But, I made it home okay, and the toughest parts were actually not the freeway (although the curvy ramp was tough because it merged in three surface streets onto the northbound and southbound sides of the interstate) but the surface streets, because I had to keep my eye out for standing water and slick surfaces like road markings. These are a lot harder to see on the bike than in the STI, which has xenon lamps and foglamps. The ZX-7 has HID lamps in it, so hopefully that will be easier to ride in the rain.
But I did it!! I rode home through a thunderstorm on the bike, at 9pm! Colin tells me at around the "six or so months" mark, people start to get a newfound feeling of confidence and that's when they mess up. Of course, that's the mark when I'm tripling my displacement and moving from "sportbike" to "supersport." Eeks, right? Everyone says, everyone drops a bike. Maybe I need to buy a beater Rebel or something and do what A Twist of the Wrist says to do: practice low-siding.
So, speaking of low-siding, knowing the ZX-7 is a fuckuva lot faster than the 250, I didn't feel comfortable riding it without armored pants and proper shoes. I picked up a pair of Coretech jeans, which are cowhide and some textile on the inside, with armor parts on the knees, and of course denim on the outside. Good stuff. They're comfy, don't look like you're trying to be Rossifumi, and I suspect they'd do a good job of saving my ass. I also got the Sidi Doha boots. They're a little tight on the inside (big) toe, but I have very long, very narrow feet, with very high arches. So, really, they fit pretty well, and I figure I'll just develop a nice comfy callous there. The tricky thing about them is they fit almost like ski boots – your heel is up, and toes inclined down. This isn't a real problem as such, but I've been riding in sneakers, and all of a sudden, there's a lot more (or at least much stiffer) material between me and my pegs.
One of the biggest problems I've had with bikes in general is the shifter. The brake is easy to handle, you just mash it. But while most of you "tap up" and "tap down" with your toe, I have to do it with essentiall the ball of my foot. So I don't have the same sort of, uh, dexterity or feeling there. I wore the boots to dinner, and walked around in them (not the most comfiest thing I've ever done, but I've certainly worn less comfortable shoes) and by the time I got on the bike again (in the rain, second ride in the boots), I had pretty well figured out where my foot was (because I had lost the feeling; sneakers are real thin in comparison), and was shifting normally. When I'd driven out to meet $editor, I'd been missing shifts or dumping the clutch because I'd miss the peg and goose the throttle. In rush hour traffic. On the interstate. That was pretty embarassing.
The jacket with its vinyl liner kept me dry, the pants didn't get too wet (which is good, they're not machine washable!!), the boots seem to have held up to the rain, and my only complaint is rain on the visor. I gotta get that figured out.
Heh, and I had a serious itch on my nose when I was sitting in traffic. I'd reach to scratch it (I did this three times.), and thump myself in my face. Yep, I looked like a complete idiot.
But, good ride(s), enjoying the 250 thoroughly, can't wait to get out on the road with Sandy and the two Ninjas, love the gear (although the Icon gloves I think are on the "gotta go" list, and I'd like a Coretech or Dainese jacket), and had a splendid session with $editor.
Pleased. Maybe I won't kill anyone in tonight's writing.
29 September, 2008
update
short: blather
Work fucking sucked today. From end to end. Nobody in particular at fault, it just led to my being so irritated and drained at the end of the day, I'd thought I wouldn't be able to get anything written. Sandy, however, proved to be very tired, and was "napping" by 1950, and snoring by 2200. So, I had time to write, and because I cooked last night, I had leftovers and didn't have to forage tonight.
But I was staring into the skunkworks, thinking, boy, how am I going to finish this scene? The two most important characters in the book are talking. I know what they need to say, because I know how the book ends. But the reader doesn't, of course, so I have to, you know, think about continuity and not referring to unknown information (at least not unintentionally). Dialogue, when I'm really early in to a book, can be pretty hard to put together. I may just start taking the Toby approach and "putting shit on paper" and then smoothing it through later, in the aim of getting stuff written.
So I did. I got about a thousand words written. And about three thousand yesterday, and five thousand the day before, and I've got another five thousand to staple to the end scene I'm writing at the moment, and then I get to write some pretty cool stuff that makes fun of Neal Stephenson (because he really needs to be made fun of).
And, usefully enough, there's continuity between two of the short stories I'm working on and the book – skunkworks – so I can continue to work on those without being too distracted.
Meeting with editor tomorrrow to, hopefully, wrap Gupta once and for all. I'm ready to move on. I have to. If I get stuck with Gupta for much longer, I'm really going to lose the enthusiasm I have for the rest of my slush pile, which is at the moment almost writing itself.
Lastly, taking a leisurely stroll through Stand on Zanzibar. Holy fucking shit, Batman, it's genius. I mean, I read Sheep Look Up years ago and I liked it, but I thought, well, that's kinda been done, and people have been playing that theme out for a long time, going right back to HG Wells and such. SoZ is so incredibly prophetic that, forty years after its publishing, you can see the exact structures, politically and socially he describes. It's dense, as the man is really, really smart, but I don't want to read it too fast, in the same way that I didn't want to read Cyteen too fast, because I knew when it was over, that was it. (although apparently Cherryh has wrapped a sequel to it. afraid.)
Oh. And Google Earth on a MacPro is very, very different than running it on an Air. And with two displays, I can actually fly (yes, fly!) through Peru on one monitor, while Word has 4-up on the other monitor (14pt Garamond even). It's like heaven. And don't even get me started on having that much real estate for iTunes. Squeeee!
Work fucking sucked today. From end to end. Nobody in particular at fault, it just led to my being so irritated and drained at the end of the day, I'd thought I wouldn't be able to get anything written. Sandy, however, proved to be very tired, and was "napping" by 1950, and snoring by 2200. So, I had time to write, and because I cooked last night, I had leftovers and didn't have to forage tonight.
But I was staring into the skunkworks, thinking, boy, how am I going to finish this scene? The two most important characters in the book are talking. I know what they need to say, because I know how the book ends. But the reader doesn't, of course, so I have to, you know, think about continuity and not referring to unknown information (at least not unintentionally). Dialogue, when I'm really early in to a book, can be pretty hard to put together. I may just start taking the Toby approach and "putting shit on paper" and then smoothing it through later, in the aim of getting stuff written.
So I did. I got about a thousand words written. And about three thousand yesterday, and five thousand the day before, and I've got another five thousand to staple to the end scene I'm writing at the moment, and then I get to write some pretty cool stuff that makes fun of Neal Stephenson (because he really needs to be made fun of).
And, usefully enough, there's continuity between two of the short stories I'm working on and the book – skunkworks – so I can continue to work on those without being too distracted.
Meeting with editor tomorrrow to, hopefully, wrap Gupta once and for all. I'm ready to move on. I have to. If I get stuck with Gupta for much longer, I'm really going to lose the enthusiasm I have for the rest of my slush pile, which is at the moment almost writing itself.
Lastly, taking a leisurely stroll through Stand on Zanzibar. Holy fucking shit, Batman, it's genius. I mean, I read Sheep Look Up years ago and I liked it, but I thought, well, that's kinda been done, and people have been playing that theme out for a long time, going right back to HG Wells and such. SoZ is so incredibly prophetic that, forty years after its publishing, you can see the exact structures, politically and socially he describes. It's dense, as the man is really, really smart, but I don't want to read it too fast, in the same way that I didn't want to read Cyteen too fast, because I knew when it was over, that was it. (although apparently Cherryh has wrapped a sequel to it. afraid.)
Oh. And Google Earth on a MacPro is very, very different than running it on an Air. And with two displays, I can actually fly (yes, fly!) through Peru on one monitor, while Word has 4-up on the other monitor (14pt Garamond even). It's like heaven. And don't even get me started on having that much real estate for iTunes. Squeeee!