Li-Nox

I had to continue my rant from last night, concerning the Linux operating system. You know who is the worst enemy to the Linux OS? The Linux-geeks themselves.
I like to point and click.
I like menus, and wizards, and context sensitive, graphical help.
I like being led by the hand, especially into uncharted territory.
It took me a while, but I've conquered Windows. I know pretty much where everything is, and where I have to go to find what I don't know. The Linux-geeks always tell me how "exactly like that" many Linux versions are. I tell them "go ahead, show me something; configure the network adapter or something". So they do, instinctively opening up a command line shell window, and typing away long command lines with short inexplicable command names and a lot of directory paths with "\BIN" in them. Err, sorry "/BIN".
The moment I have to resort to opening a command line window, I get a rash. Really, I do. You have to do that with windows, sometimes, too, but I keep it down to minimum.
Another thing that makes me break into hives is "don't you want to use a REAL operating system?".
No, I don't. My goal is to use an easy to operate OS. Let me tell you that I have enough problems with my own software, that I don't need to occasionally recompile a kernel so I can do something that is appears, instinctively, trivial to me. Don't everyone want to drive a "real" car? But still everyone goes with automatic gear, power steering, and computer controlled, high precision, anti-lock, anti-skid, smarter-than-the-average-bear brakes.
As long as it does what I need it to do, I couldn't care less what's under the hood. Is it comfortable? Yes. Is it easy to use? Yes. Is it - relatively - safe? It depends, as always on the driver, but Yes.
Linux is "safer" because there are very few Linux machines. Wait until we get a mass of them. Then watch the worms crawl out and the viruses...well, do whatever viruses do and infect.
All that, and I haven't even touched the wide range of versions out there. This is turning into another UNIX debacle. I asked someone for a Linux version that I could use to learn a little bit on, so I don't come off as a complete idiot. By the time he listed the last of the options, I have forgotten the first. I just want something aimed at the average home user.
The blank look on his face was simply priceless. It's the same look I'm sure IBM engineers had as they watched OS/2 (Warp 4) go the way of the Dodo. The same look they had as the let Microsoft drag the entire world of PC software down the proverbial toilet.
Operating Systems for your average, everyday, layman, home user? What a strange notion. It will never go anywhere. There is no future in it...
Is there?

Back On!

So, I'm back on. Where was I? Rebuilding my two weeks old computer from scratch. An unfortunately timed power outage stopped windows in the middle of a write to disk, and caused it to never come back again. It would reach, while loading the drivers to something called "mup.sys" and restart the computer.
The sad thing is that I googled up "windows restarts after mup.sys" and got cries for dating as far back as Win-NT 4.0. Pathetic. It turns out that whatever it is that is supposed to go up right after mup.sys is sensitive to something or rather (never did find out). The great thing is that Microsoft in it's infinite wisdom keeps generations of changes to help me return to a stable configuration. They have very detailed and very clear instructions on how to restore an good configuration on their site. Very helpful. Except for one thing. Everything they suggest that you try requires Windows to ACTUALLY COME UP!!! Since that was my original problem, I tried other options suggested by hacks and quacks, and ended up formatting my hard drive and reinstalling everything.

I should write a story. Adventures in reinstalling Windows!
So I have a wireless keyboard and mouse. Work like a dream. Even before the OS actually starts. The BIOS today is a wonderful thing. Everything goes well, until I install the motherboard drivers (for the network card, mostly). The moment I do that, the keyboard and mouse simply stop working! Why? For the love of God, why?!
So I tried everything. Looked for newer drivers, tried resetting multiple times, and everything else I could think of. Now, the receiver is connected via a USB hub. I tried to disconnect it from the hub, for no avail. I eventually crawled under the desk, and unplugged the hub itself, and plugged it back in. Everything suddenly started to happily work. This looks like something that a start would solve. But No.
And do I learn from my experience? Of course not. Because the speakers were next. I've installed all the drivers, multiple sets of them. And they do not work. I tried everything I could think of, and eventually in a step of desperation crawled back under the desk, and pulled out the plug, and pushed it back in again. The stupid Realtek HD audio manager came up, and stupidly said to me that I've just plugged something into output number 2, what do I want it to do? I chose "Line Out", and ta-dam! All's well. If it's that clever, why did I have to do anything, damn it!

Computers are becoming too smart for my own good.

On contrast, I finally invested in a new iPod. The latest 30GB model. And I am simply madly in love with it. I can see why there are reports of hearing damage from using iPods (and other portable, mass storage music devices) too much. The only problem with it, as far as I can tell, is the internal battery. Fortunately I'm never away from a USB port for more than the 14 hours that the battery is supposed to last. And I never listen to it 14 hours straight. For some reason they don't like it when I have my earphones in during meetings around the office. Why a contrast? Because it just works. I installed iTunes, and connected the bad boy up, and everything just works. That's what I need. Like I've said, I need to be limited in my options. I need a box, riveted shut,and just working. My next computer is a Mac.

And if I hear anyone say "Linux" or "don't you want to use a REAL operating system" I will snap. But that's another rant altogether.

Tea Stains

So, I've been sick for the past week. I've been going through the full range of cold symptoms there are. I've started with a little cough, which escalated to a deep lungy-cough. I my nose started to run. It was just in time to flare my cough again, after it has subsided.
So I've been living on cough medicine, and anti-congestion pills, and tea.
Then, people wonder why I hate the winter.
It's cold! But more than that, it's wet. Sure, it's fine for people who can "stay curled up under a blanket" as everyone proclaims is the best thing about winter, but how many of really can stay in bed all day? About people with pets? Dogs, specifically. You can't train them to use the litter box...and you wouldn't want to. I have a golden retriever. And there is nothing she likes better than to go for walks in the rain. Goldens are funny that way with their love of water, whether is be standing in pools or falling from the sky. Being somewhat adamant against having my dog roam the streets alone, getting hit by the occasion car driven by your average stoned driver (everyone acts a little stoned after a day at work, no?), I walk my dog. On a lead. Even if I try to find a little break in the rain, I always end up caught by a little to a lot of rain.
It is true. I can handle the Cold. But the Wet is a real moral killer. It goes all the way to my army days, when, after standing in the pouring rain in the biggest storm of the year for about three days, I never felt so low.
So, tea. Lot's of it. Sooth the throat, loosen the lungs, worms you right up. My problem is that I have eight cups at home. I usually use a cup per day, so it means that I can stretch my cups for about a week. More importantly, there is a week between dish-washing duties. The problem is, tea stains. You see all the DIY/artsy shows. They always use tea to stain new things to make the look old. Well, I'm sad to report that my cups have now a aged, tea-stained look to their insides now.
I should really wash my cups as soon as I'm done with them.
I'll do it.
Right now!
I've finished my morning cup of tea, and I am going directly to the kitchen sink and wash it!

(muse: Um...well actually, I'm kinda late for work...no time for this.)

I'll to it tonight, as soon as I get home.
I promise!
I really do....

Comically MUD

14 years ago, we didn't have "online" gaming. Sophisticated, powerful machines chunking out shared graphics over a truly World Wide Web. We had MUD. Multi-User Dimension. Text based D&D-type games, in which we roamed from one "corner of the forest" to a "clearing in the forest" to "village gate" to another.
"You have entered a corner of the forest. To the south is a winding road. To the north there is a clearing..."
We ganged up, attacked trolls, fought wizards, and chatted happily with people from all over the world, as they converged in one university server or another. You had to earn your right to emote, then to shout, then to ask favors of the gods; the almighty sys-admins that could smite you without a word if you stepped out of the boundaries of good taste. You would suddenly find yourself in front of a mute x-windows prompt. To others, a message would appear on screen, informing that you have evaporated back into the void from whence you came.
I quit playing (army got in the way) and never got back into it. Today, I don't think I relate anymore to the online games people play. Now there are graphics, you can talk to the people (with sounded words), and God knows what's next (maybe you could scan our face unto whatever character you're playing). Text-based MUDs gave us none of that, and it all happened only in our heads. Making it, for me at least, much more real. Characters, behaviors, antics, all constructed infinite shadows of the same person. Each gamer developing an opinion about everyone else, solely on what they wrote and how they described their characters.
It was an interesting, albeit futile, exercise in trying to figure out what the person on the other side looked like, sounded like, reacted like, in real life. Now, it is much less mysterious.

Another fun thing I left behind were comics. I never was a HUGE comic books fan, but I did enjoy them, and hung around with people who kept me well informed. Israel is pretty much a desert island when it comes to comic books, and I could think of only two stores in the whole of the country, both catering local publications, and the large out of country publications. There is no real room, and no real market, for the completely original, unusual, unorthodox, and sometimes just plain corky. You got your greats and knowns, but the real fun came from the bizarre.
For the rescue, come Web Comics.
I discovered this world 6 years ago, and have become addicted to finding new strips to follow. I have to admit, I like the wired and random ones better than the online graphic-novels. It is just simply too hard for me to keep up with a long list of stories, developing once a week. I like a few. Michael Poe is always good (Exploitation Now (which is done), Errant Story) . And there are a couple more.
My recent favorite is Devil's Panties by Jennie Breeden. It's been around for a while, but I only recently discovered it. First of all, it really good, and pretty funny. Adulthood insecurities - nothing ever funnier!
Side story: Jennie is a horrible speller, due not to a fault of her own. She has a huge rant about people continually commenting on her spelling errors, and vents vehemently on a page on her site. The funny thing was that as I was reading her little wild-fire paragraph, I noticed that the page's ad was for a desktop, web-based, dictionary and spell checker. Irony has always made me laugh. I e-mailed this little cosmic interruption to Jennie, and she has been very kind in responding (I make a point to not bother people I don't know directly, but this seemed too funny to ignore). The nice thing was, that in future, rather random intersection, she actually related me to my original mail, which I thought was nice.
Back to my point....remember, I still need to explain what this has to do with MUD.
Strange, but it is the first autobiographical comic strip that I read. There probably are more out there, but I have not stumbled upon them yet. Sure, a lot of web-comics draw a main character which is, rather expectantly, a comic book writer (drawer), or a web-comic or both. The characters lives are never a reality. In DP, the scenes are taken from real life (Jennie's) and I was surprised how strange that made me feel. It dropped me back all those years ago, where I was trying to imagine what was real and what not so much. I know that whatever is drawn on the comic strip is an exaggerated, funnier, version of the reality, but it is still wired to think that there is a really person behind the character, and at least the thoughts are real.
Among my many sins, I am also a frustrated fiction writer (possibly a frustrated blogger, too), and many times things that happen to me in the day form a picture or a scene or a prelude to a dialogue. They form the basis to almost anything I write. But it's never me.
I find it very odd, trying to think that there are hints to the real Jennie from her "Jennie"-comic-proxy.
It's a stretching exercise, trying to imagine the real scene, or the inspiring scene, from the one we read in the comic strip. It gives, for me, a whole new dimension to the strip, that is rarely gained from others.
I hope she never reads this, because it sounds a little creepy, and I appear insane.

A new computer

So, I have done it, and got myself a brand-spanking-new computer. Not being a gamer, the choices were pretty clear as of what I am going to spend money on, and what I am not going to spend money on.
So I got myself a large enough, fast enough disk, a CPU to last me the next several years, and wholoto-memory. I'm still ecstatic about my Samsung 710 TFT monitor, so that stays. I also treated my self to a cord-less keyboard/mouse, just to start getting rid of all the cables. Someone really needs to get cracking on wireless electricity.
Speaking of electricity, it is a long upheld tradition, that the cords supplied with a PC box are shorter than the ones provided for a monitor. The theory being that the PCs are on the floor (or near there) close to the power outlet, and the monitors are somewhere higher up, further away. This holds to be true in most parts of the world, except for my house. I had to play power-cords musical chairs all morning with a myriad of electrical devices, until everyone had a long enough cable to provide them with power.
Ergo, the cord-less mouse/keyboard.
Now my only problem is the sound device driver. Aside from taking 2 hours to download from Gigabyte, it preceded a couple of hours trying to understand why Windows wasn't happy with the way it was. So, while am typing this the download has completed, and driver installed. Now I have to reboot. This is a good chance to see if the "Save as Draft" feature works, and also a chance for a live update for success (or failure) in setting up a simple, on-board, sound card.
(time passed)
Well, that worked!
Both the draft saving and the sound card driver. Now I can marvel at my new speakers (did I mention them?). QOTSA never sounded so good (except in my head, perhaps).
I love music. I forget how much I love to listen to music somtimes. These speakers were a long time coming.
Next on my list is, as soon as a I recover from this PC, an iPod.

Late Night Fiona A-pool

So, rockets are landing in the south and in the north, settlers behaving criminally in the east, a crumbling government, and we got ourselves a comatose Prime Minister. Living with this my entire life has built an invisible shield around my psyche. Nothing touches me anymore. Takes quite a bit to shock me into worrying.
So what do we do on a stormy Wednesday night when all is going to Hell? Go shoot some pool, of course!
I mentioned before that I attended Tulane University (a baker's dozen years ago). One of our floor residents lived close by, and brought with him a pool table. By the time the second semester rolled by, I was pretty good at eight-ball billiards. Good enough that there were occasions when, on a weekend night, I did not have to pay for single beer!
Since then, I have not picked up a cue. A few months ago I got the pool-fever again, and, with a friend, found a local pool hall where we could play. Apparently not practicing for over a decade takes it out of you. I SUCK! But all's well when you're there to have fun, drink a couple of beers, and pretend that you don't have to wake up in the morning and go to work.

Anyway, that's not the point. On the way back home, I couldn't get anything decent on the radio, only the crap they play late at night, when "the kids" listen to the radio. I pressed the CD button, hoping I left something good in there the last time, and was happy to hear that "Extraordinary Machine" was in there. It is certainly the best of Fiona Apple's albums, and one of the best albums to come out this year in general (The other is "Lullabies to Paralyze" by Queens of the Stone Age - I know, I got an eclectic taste in music). Fiona Apple is one hell of a talent. The first time I heard her voice, I was grabbed and became a fan for life. She has a rich voice and a great way of expressing herself in words and music. We had to wait a long time for this album (six years, I think, including a year of shelving, when it wasn't certain it was going to come out) but it was worth it.
Listening to the disc, I was reminded of a review of her music - and her - from a few years ago. Someone used the words "wise beyond her years" (she was twenty or twenty-one at the time).
My question is: What does that mean? She has feelings, like anyone else. Her expressive abilities make her unique. If the words are the criteria, then she is wise beyond most people's years; wiser than I'll ever be, that's certain.

--- holly shit! a lightening bolt just hit real close---

Where was I? Oh, right.
There is a global knitting circle, powered by tabloids and TV shows (E! for, example). People think they know the celebrities because they know OF them. They gossip and try to understand people they don't even know. Fiona Apple, as an example, has been completely profiled and explained, by people who never even met her. You can try and understand her emotions, or ideas, or notions of emotions. But people should really try and stop deducing directly from her art into her mind and her true, private personality.
They'll fail.
I take the art and enjoy it for what it is. A stimulant. Sometimes it tries to make you happy. Sometimes sad. Sometimes it tries to get you thinking. Art isn't always an autobiographical confession of the soul.
And now I'll go to sleep (because I'm starting to ramble incoheretly) with "Please Please Please" playing in my head (the last song I heard).
"...Give us something familiar, something similar, to what we know already, that will keep us steady....steady, steady...steady...steady going nowhere"

The "War of The Worlds" comment I almost never got to write

So, I'm driving down the highway. It's raining. There is a couple of cars stopped on the shoulder, with their owners (at least their drivers) engaged in post fender-bender information exchange. This is a red light for me, and I start hunting around for the driver no longer focused on the road, but rather on damage assessments.
And sure enough, the car behind me (about 20 meters) has both driver and front seat passenger with eyes ninety degrees to the road. By the time the driver noticed that I have stopped at the beginning of the next stretch of traffic jam he was going too fast for the distance that was left between us. He slammed on the brakes, and begun to gently slide over the wet road, finally successfully aiming his car away from mine, using a stretch of shoulder to stop. The problem was the car in the lane to our left, who was so surprised by the tail of the car behind me which has slightly intruded into its lane, has lost a little control, and was suddenly aimed at my door. I was in the right lane, about to get off the highway. The car to my left was still going pretty fast, intending to proceed on. Again, a last moment grip on the road caused the car to eventually miss me.
always good to start the day with a brush of death (or at least a trip to the emergency room).
Wonderful.

Now to my "War of the Worlds" comment. This of course relates to Steven Spielberg's film, which I have only recently seen (missed it in the theaters). I have to say I was surprised. Pleasantly. I liked it. I thought it was a good interpretation for the book (I once had a to write a comparative paper of "War of the Worlds" and "Childhood's End", so I have researched my opinion well).
Aside from the obvious differences (US vs UK, children, etc.) I thought the very core of the book and it's spirit were well kept. I like that a little bit of real terror was introduced into the movie, because there is a definite sense of horror in the book.
I feel that Wales' hint that the aliens (Martians, in his case) represent our own future as we become more and more dependent on machines and we place more and more emphasis on developing our laziness, was lost. This is unfortunate, because I believe that this was one of Wales' major points. The aliens in his story are parasite. Leeches, sucking the nutreants directly from Human blood rather than process it in conventional ways. Wales' was trying to warn us that this is where we are heading. Parasites on our environment, and on each other.

Other than that, good movie. I wish Spielberg would make his Sci-Fi films more like that (and less like AI, for example).
I have WOTW on DVD, and intend to watch it again shortly.

The old man and the C

Another programming rant.
But his time, I have a person in mind. Our "Old Man".
The old man (I say old, since it is all a matter of mentality. He is 63 years old), has arrived in our company eight years ago. He was brought over from another company. Our CEO has worked with him before, and brought him to be our inspiration. The experienced man of the R&D tribe. Our elder huntsman.
Only, when you're surfing the leading the edge of technology, experience only takes you so far. There is just no way to keep up with he technology for so long.

Being a C++/Java oriented company, object-oriented design and programming is our pride and joy. We have made an art form out of breaking down systems into tiny objects/building blocks.
If there is anything that I've become an expert in over the last 6 years is that.
All HIS code could easily be compiled in C. He still thinks in term of "data-flow" rather than "object-interactions". Bugs the hell out of me. I asked him, in a round-about way, once, and he made it perfectly clear of how proud he is of his use of OO design elements and program structure.
The man has clearly no idea what he is talking about.

But that's not really what's bothering me. Bothers me the aura of "the experience" he has. It has certainly lost its shine with most people in our development team (including our VP R&D), but the CEO hired him, and wont fire him.

At least in his case, experience has seemed to bring mainly fear. He has been in charge of some of our software for six to eight years now, and is still mortally afraid of it. So afraid, in fact, that when we identify a problem in his code, he will do everything in his power to show us how to work around it, rather than actually fix it.
His catch phrase: "This code has a lot of CPU time under its belt".
So friggin' what?
There are thousands and millions of paths through the massive amounts of code that have been written in our company over the past 15 years. Some of them might still be faulty. Why? Because when it comes to the very basics, programming has a lot of copy-paste work. You look at someone's solution to a problem they have already solved before, and pretty much copy it. Especially when it comes to using infrastructure. These elements change very little, so their use is pretty much a mold pattern, copied from one program to another.
Accept the one time someone does something a little different; changes the order of operation of two, seemingly unrelated, things. However, because of some error in judgment, or simply a random decision or choice, done ten years ago by someone who failed to notice that relating the two operations made any difference, something could suddenly crash. No big deal. It comes with the territory.
But we don't fix things. Oh, no. Worst case, we rewrite them with a slight change, and force everyone to change the way they have worked so far to accommodate the changes. Anything and everything other than touching the existing code and fixing it.
Living in mild apprehension is good in any field of work. It will make you think twice about jumping into a fire with improper gear, or altering a piece of code that could drag a company into a legal battle with an irritated customer. Living in terror, however, just wont do. We wont have any fire-fighters.
And no software will ever be properly fixed.

My apologies for the stupid fire-fighters and programmers analogy. I was just trying to drive a point home.

Grrrr....I hate coding twice

This is a programming rant. Everyone is encouraged to read, but some might find it boring and petty, so, please, keep on to general consumption comments.

We, in the company I work for, have decided to go with Java in out web server. We looked at Perl and got dizzy, looked at PHP and didn't get it, and looked at ASP and, frankly, got disgusted with ourselves.
Java Servlets and JSP is the way to go, people!
At least that what we told ourselves.
People don't always realize the full extent of the damage some of MS's decisions in the past have done. I myself am surprised at the effects that these decisions and behaviors are creating, years into the future.
Anyone remembers J++ with VS6? Well, some people seem to.
We have approached one of our partners to describe our future web-server solution, and the moment we mention Java, the CTO got the hives. He fidgeted for the entire conversation, and the next day has sent us a long letter explaining why there is no chance in HELL Java is acceptable. When asked why, the man answered that they have had a "bad experience" with Java.
MS has added in J++ their own Java extensions and expansions of non-standard components and behaviors. Our partner has rushed in full faith with MS and adopted this new technology that MS seemed to except full heartedly.
Until they dropped it like a ton of bricks. Out partner had to scrap men-years worth of work because he no longer had support for the code and projects he had developed.
Java certainly hasgrown into a force with it's own inertia. Something that you can hang on to, and go with on an awesome ride. But people are still feeling the burns from J++ and shy from it like fire. For no good reason.
This is difficult for me to say, being a C++ developer and a fan, but I say it anyway.

How does this affect me? Now I have to get into Perl (shudder). Or maybe Python (not so much shudder).
The main issue is, that now that I have completed our Java-based application gateway...I get a bonus!
Code it again, Sam!

Me

How about a few words about me. Isn't that what this is all about? me...me...Me!

I was born a poor black child...down in Mississippi.

Um, wait, I think I got myself confused with a fictional character. Well, don't we all sometimes.

Let me try again.
I was born in a desert town called Be'er Sheva. Literally that means "Well Seven" or more correctly "Seven Wells" after the biblical seven wells Abraham dug when he first arrived, and was subsequently kicked off of by the locals. (Catch 22 reference: Heller used the same concept when kicking Chief White Halfcoat's family off their spot every time they settled to sink an oil well on the spot, until they just kept moving all the time, NEVER stopping to rest).
Anyway, this small-desert-town turned large-desert-university-town had little to offer other then that, so we moved north. Eventually settling somewhere called Petach-Tiqwa, but that's not relevant. By the time I was thirteen, my father was offered to relocate to the US to his company's US office, and we moved.
We came to FL, US for 2 years, and stayed for three, then another year, and then another, until we completed a stay of six years, which let me have the chance to attend Tulane University in New-Orleans, where our motto was "Grade Point Average of 0.01, Blood Alcohol Level of 4.0". Of course I'm not serious, that would kill me (if the alcohol didn't my parents would have). Besides, I'm an engineer, and I lived on an engineering floor dorm. If geek-ness induced collapse of space was possible, we could have been a black hole.
The punch line is, that I eventually had to go back to Israel to be drafted to the Army. I was sent to a base just outside Be'er Sheva, back to the middle of the desert again.
Can you imagine a bigger anti-climax than to spend one week partying on Bourbon Street, and the next eating the sandy winds of Shivta? Thinking back at it makes me shiver still.
Damn!

Dating and elephants...

Ok, so I'll start with something basic: how about a dating comment?
I just got back from a first date. How was it? Well, she laughed at all the right places, so I guess that's a start.
First dates, what a doozy.
What's appropriate? What's not?
Do I go this way or that?
At least we went somewhere quite, so there wasn't the crowed to deal with on top of things. I'm better at talking that at shouting.
We had a real conversation, instead of one of those endless monologues I find myself sometimes engaged in with someone who could not put a sentence together.
Basically, I'll say it went well, and we can look forward to proceeding.

And what do elephants have to do with? Not much....
Except for Tamar the elephant who gave birth to a baby elephant a couple of weeks ago at Jerusalem's Zoological Garden. The cool thing is, they have a web-cam and a live feed from the zoo. Best viewed after 15:00 - 16:00 GMT where the web-cam goes back to showing the inside, where the baby elephant is. Hours and hours of fun (check it out). These births of Asian elephants in captivity is pretty rare, so it's quite the occasion.

Tamar never got a chance to date. They artificially inseminated her from sperm provided by a bull from London. I guess that's another way to solve this problem...

Sending my voice into the void....

Not sure how I feel about a blog yet....
Sometimes I have something to say, but not sure anyone wants to hear.

Anyway, thought I'd try it out...

...be back as soon as I have something to say....um....about...that...