Nothing is being done

Finally, a meaningful poll on the State of Disunion:

Also note.

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I don't mean any disrespect

Ow. Some people were talking about someone who works in the building, and I had no idea who they were talking about. Chris was trying to describe this person and said "Do you know who Paul Williams is?" Of course I do. Someone else piped up and said "But with Gilbert Gottfrieds' personality. OK, worse than Gilbert Gottfried." I've never heard anyone compared unfavorably to Gottfried. Ouch.

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Isn't that something

Select quotes from the meeting...

We're trying to get out of the middle of the battle between Finance and Program Management, but the more we try to get out of the middle the more stuck in the middle we are.

I don't think G understands that "the interfaces are difficult" means we're fucked.

I have notes on what C was talking about on some tangent related to project x. I still have no idea what she's talking about.

Mike1: J spoke to G about the status of project y and he now knows how badly screwed up the requirements are.
(didn't see):But we still have to deliver in March
Mike1: Yes, we still have to deliver in March. He doesn't care WHAT we deliver, but the OMB sees a delivery date of March so we have to deliver something by March and fix it in maintenance.
Me: So we can deliver screen shots by March and all functionality is a maintenance release?

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Everything old is new again

PABlog 1.0 is now available for download. No, I haven't upgraded my site to it yet ;)

Some night this week I'll move my stuff over. Though I suspect upgrading Mae will trash this blog until I upgrade my skin.

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He's So Gay

Bush's first choice for an open slot on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS is an anti-gay activist who equates homosexuality with incest and bestiality. I wonder how Cheney and Gingrich feel about their family members being described this way? Sanity prevails, however, as Thacker is quite proud of his hate-filled statements and Ari quite wisely announced that the White House has pulled his nomination. This is Bush's idea of compassionate conservatism? Even hardline right winger Andrew Sullivan said he was strongly opposed to Thacker and if these were the sorts of values the Bush White House wanted to promote he would not vote for re-electing Bush.

Yes, they did the Right Thing(tm) by pulling Thacker. But the fact that they considered him a worthwhile candidate in the first place indicates that they didn't find his opinions to be abhorrent. When Bob Jones University is denying any association with someone because their views are too extreme, that's serious.

In a related bit, Rolling Stone has retracted their "bug chaser" story (in which it claimed that 25% of new AIDS cases resulted from gay men actively seeking to get infected). The sources for the story all state that they never said anything even remotely close to what they were quoted as having said. Not to say that their aren't some people out there like that, but it is not the epidemic that it was presented as. No serious AIDS expert was willing to give even an estimated percentage because there has been zero research on the subject.

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Mike's Murder

Buttered popcorn flavored Mike and Ike's really do taste as disgusting as you might imagine.

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It's too cold here, turn your self bleeding inside

I need say no more, except that the "feels like" index when I left for work this morning was -16

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The Pusher

Here in Show Me Land, it is once again that time of year. No, not the time of year where the high temp is in the single digits (though it's that as well). It's time for this. The first one is always free. The dealer left some samples on the microwave, next to the sign up list. Drool...

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Points of authority

Richard Forno opines that "Apple will continue to understate the significant out-of-the-box security features Mac OSX provides. By doing so, they will continue to overlook a major benefit of their product, particularly as they continues to try to entice Windows users to switch over." I hadn't really thought about this, but I've always perceived the Mac as being inherently more secure than Win due to it's single user nature. Does this hold true with OS X as well? It's no longer single user, so I suspect it's less secure than it was. Cert reports four (4) incident reports for Mac OS 9. Four. OSX has 105. Windows (all versions) reports 708, which may sound low but they consider the several thousand Windows virii to all be one security hole. Solaris comes in with 478, IRIX with 204 (much fewer than I expected for IRIX), 378 for AIX, 22 for HPUX, 295 for SCO, 176 for BSD (all versions), and 735 for linux (all versions). Note that the Windows, BSD, and Linux numbers are all slightly misleading as the same alert can and often does apply across versions (e.g. the same problem appears in Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE; the same problem appears in Win95,98, and NT).

There's a great interview with Guido on Artima.

Yet Another Government Goes Open Source. As wonderful as this sounds, I'd really like to see the governments themselves be Open Sourced instead of the proprietary lobby structure it currently uses.

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What's he building in there?

I took a break from my mad coding session to do some prep work for a little DIY fun we are doing this weekend. Measured and started cutting thresholds for three doors (Dremel is your friend), and I was going to do some weather sealing but the caulk is frozen solid from being in the garage ;). While laying out the track for the new kitchen lighting, I realized I don't have the proper bulbs, one more thing on the list. I'm now reasonably sure that the problem with the BMW is related to an oil leak which we have put off having repaired. So further testing is now in order to determine if that is indeed the problem. I believe that come spring (or at least warmer weather) I will be building a workbench in the garage, to make these home improvement projects more organized and somewhat easier. Just as I enjoy fine tuning my computers for maximum useability, I enjoy tweaking my house as well. And of course, it generally adds to the value of the house, which is a win.

The real deal 1.0 release of PABlog is imminent. .9 was a fairly alpha release, this one will be easier to manage and the structure should remain consistent version to version from now on. I'm replacing *most* of the existing DTML with Page Templates, which very nicely seperates layout from logic. I rewrote most of the front end last night and this morning, and will finish that and write a management tool and finish the tree restructure by Monday.

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Friday Night

From friday five via psychodaisy.

1. Where do you currently work? I work for USDA. I make websites for cows.
2. How many other jobs have you had and where? Um a lot. Going back to the day: City government, many theaters, amusement park (theater tech), retail management, stock brokerage, cable show, broadband content delivery, software companies, telecoms, satellite company, distance education company, internet game company, and lots of contracting gigs doing web design or computer security.
3. What do you like best about your job? My current one or my career in general? Let's go with career in general ;) I like working with technology.
4. What do you like least about your job? Dealing with idiots.
5. What is your dream job? Application development/infrastructure for a zoo, library, museum, or hospital. It doesn't get better than that.

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How I could just kill a man

We have a portal page for the several applications we've developed/are developing. As part of my design, I created a header graphic that incorporates images representative of the three business units that we are working with: e,t, and w. The last version, with images all preapproved by the business unit reps and vetted by the gov't administrator, was a very nice banner-ish header with transparencies and nice subtle flow between images. Too subtle. They want the images to be rigidly seperated from each other. Oh, and the t group was very upset because the e group's section was about 8 pixels wider than the t section. The w group was (and still is) screwed because their section is about half the size of the other two. So I created a new header, made sure that the e and t sections are within a pixel of the same width. I seperated each section with a 10 pixel vertical bar. Now, of course, there's a big to-do because... the images aren't in alphabetical order (e.g. t group is on the left, w in the middle, e on the right).

Have I mentioned that politics take precedence over EVERYTHING here? Aesthetically, the graphic looks best this way (well, it looked better with the flow between images rather than the prison bar approach) when you take image size, colors, and image composition into consideration. None of that is important. Politics are more important.

TequilaGirl listened to my ranting about this, and asked "You get paid to make changes like that". I replied "No, I get paid to not smack the crap out of them when they tell me to do stupid things."

The quote on my site as I write this is apropos: "Generally, there are very few technical problems. There are, however, an abundance of political, social, and economic problems."

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it's my business, It's my business, my biznass

I just put up a simple python script in projects. It determines if today is a government business day or not.

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John, I'm only dancing

We were just discussing the possibility of having the Government Administrator deliver all her messages to us by tap dancing morse code. That would rule.

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The Kids Aren't Alright

Who are you? First Gary Glitter, now Pete. Not a good year for brit rock has beens.

Good weekend. Bad monday. Just overloaded with stuff piling up. Prototype stuff dropped in my lap due to sick coworker, LDAP screwups, that documentation we've been ignoring for better than a year is suddenly HIGH PRIORITY, Yet Another Change to the portal page ("it's a showstopper! The header graphic doesn't say 'Service'! We can't let the testers see a system that's not completely perfect!" Um, isn't that why we HAVE testers?). blech. And yet more troubles. At least the infertility front is looking good.

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Let's bowl, let's bowl, lets rock and roll

A good time was had by all (with the possible exception of some spectators).

I think the picture sums it all up. Bruce in his cape chasing a 2 year old down the lanes. Vince bowling with two balls at once. The chicken (or duck, depending on whom you ask) dance. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. Ah, beautiful. And I got the first strike of the day. And still managed to place 2nd to last.

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Let's Do The Time War

IBM has announced their OS/2 strategy for 2003. Yes, their OS/2 strategy. Apparently they are predicting that this USB thing may actually take off, so they are probably going to add more support for it.

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I've heard it before

While I was played hooky from work to celebrate Mae's birthday, I was volunteered for a new task.

The Redding team is in trouble, because their Oracle Forms application they are developing can't use Oracle Forms. The webfarm won't allow Oracle Forms. Oracle DB, sure. Forms, no. So this team of mainframe/Oracle guys has to write a web front end and Java back end. Fast. They know very very little about web development, so some of us are being tapped to provide guidance.

They have dealt with web people before, and were particularly wary of me apparently, as I'm a web DESIGNER. And I have piercings. We got along famously. I said things that they commented they had never heard from a web person. Things like "functionality is more important than being pretty" and "the web world has worked very hard to learn from what came before". I think like an old mainframer ;)

Afterwards I was IMing Mike2 about a particular JSP taglib that would be useful to them.

rev: They're very confused about the web world.
Mike2: As I understand it, they need to deliver a lot in a short time.
rev: They're 12 weeks into a 6 week project and haven't delivered yet.
Mike2: That last sentence should bother me, but doesn't for some reason. think I've been here too long.

Then CuteMatt and I were talking about them and their conversation with him about HTTP REQUEST

rev: Nice guys.
(pause)
CuteMatt: They're so fucked.
rev: Yup.

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Just a girl

This is probably the most important thing you'll read about gender and technology. Ever. Bb blogged it (and Dorothea before her). My only critique would be that this doesn't just apply to linux, as the title states. This quite easily applies to women in any technology, including all sciences, and if you want to abstract it just a tiny bit more it really can be applied to most any situation in the world. As Val notes, it can also apply to any other minority group. I would go a step further and say it can apply to ANY group. Read it. Think about it. Learn from it.

I've been to a few of the St Louis Unix Users Group meeting and I am pleased that there are quite a few women that attend and participate.

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My mom says I'm a cad

Grizzly works for a company that is offering to pay for his MCSD exam. He's been reviewing the assorted Microsoft certification options available.

Griz:I'm poking around the cert site and it looks like they've added an "intermediate" certification level. MSCP - one exam.
Griz: MCAD (you're a microsoft cad! what a great acronym) 2 exams and an elective.
Griz: all of which, done correctly are 3 of the 4 required exams for MCSE
rev: MCSP's been around for a while. It can't networking, it has to be an OS or a Server product or programming language.
Griz: yeah - the MCAD is the new one
Griz: between "I passed one lousy exam" and "I passed a bunch of (tough) exams most of which are on types of programming I will never ever do again."
rev: lol
Griz: Cad - noun - shot for Scotts caddie - a man who acts in deliberate disregard for another's feelings or rights
Griz: perfect.
rev: Hmm, sounds about right

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You say it's your birthday

Happy Birthday to my lovely and wonderful wife.

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We should get into something REAL

I always miss the best meetings.

"We need to take notification out of the trigger and make it java"

Yes, let's take a highly optimized compiled C trigger running in DB2 on an underutilized server and instead make it a high overhead Java bean running on an overworked server. That makes sense.

Does the user want realtime notification? No.
Is it a "J2EE" requirement that you not use triggers/stored procedures? No.
Does the client want us to dump the (working) system in favor of a new one? No.
Lacking any valid reason for doing this other than an undying hatred of databases and particularly stored procedures, the next reason: "It's so hard to find anyone with any SQL skills." That's funny. I've never MET a developer without a basic understanding of SQL. Most sysadmins are familiar with it as well. Most GOOD developers have a strong knowledge of SQL, particularly if they've done a lot of web development. Hell, you can't DO web development without SQL.

"It's so hard to find anyone with any SQL skills."

Yea, there are so many more people with Java skills out there.

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Tell me lies

Why does it not surprise me that corporations are demanding the Right To Lie. The article makes several excellent points, most particularly that corporations are legal fictions designed to make money and that is their only purpose. Corporations should not have the same legal protections as people, because they are not people. They should exist so long as they benefit the common good and have their charter revoked by the people, via the state, when they no longer benefit the common good. However, in our current political economy corporations are revered much more than people are. People are either consumers or irritants. To be either manipulated or removed. Our politicians will hand over the most amazingly anti-American gifts to huge corporations (see Newt's gift to Rupert Murdoch, not an American, for example) and make every effort possible to NOT do anything for the average person. This must change.

I had a very good friend in L.A., a three time loser as he liked to call himself (alcholic, vietnam vet, postal worker). He encouraged me to vote for Pat Buchanan in 92. His rationale? It has to get worse before it gets better, so let's get worst fast.

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The man on the silver mountain

My brother sent this my way. For all you LOTR fans out there...

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Man, I hate making movies. But I love that money, think I don't?

If there were more movies like Gosford Park and fewer like Dude, where's my car?. I'd probably see a lot more movies. Seriously. A solid, complex plot. Believable characters. Excellent acting. Lush cinematography. Incredible attention to period detail. This is how movies should be. There's nothing wrong with lowbrow comedy, I love comedies. But they have to be funny clever, not funny stupid.

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Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight

Ah, infertility. Two steps forward then double back. It's been an emotionally and physically exhausting few weeks and we are now in limbo, with todays procedure cancelled there is a respite until Monday. We shall see what we shall see.

A train of thought inspired by NYE. Billboard charts the top 100 songs and albums each week. Songs can stay on the charts for long periods, but generally stay on for maybe 6-8 weeks unless they are unusually popular. So with 52 weeks in a standard year, you're looking at somewhere in the general realm of 500 new songs each year that most people have a decent chance of hearing. Let's ignore the fact that the current radio market is so awful that the thousands and thousands of other songs that get released each year are never played on the radio because the artists don't have enough money to bribe their way onto the air. Accepting these (ridiculously lowballed) numbers, that means about 12,000 songs have been released in the last 25 years that people have a pretty good chance of having heard. So why is it that no matter what, no matter where, if there is a "house band" they will play the same handful of bad 70's classic rock and pretty much nothing else. Amazing. Bands that no one under 30 or over 50 could possibly care less about (Doobie Brothers, Foghat) are REALLY popular with these bands that play weddings/NYE parties/reunions/etc. And they wonder why people prefer to hire DJs to live bands. I would never consider hiring a band to play at any event based on my experiences with them over the past 15 years.

While I obviously was not enamored of the material the band chose to play, it would have been less painful (marginally) had they been more competent. The bass player was good. Very good. Solid, reliable, and managed to hold the rhythm side down largely without the help of the drummer. Guitarist one also considered himself a singer. He was possibly worse as a singer than a guitarist, but not much. Guitarist two was a workhorse, doing his part with the bass player to minimize the catastrophe. The keyboardist was not bad except when he had to solo. Whenever anyone had to solo, really. The soloist (regardless of kbd/sax/guitar/drums) invariably instantly forgot their key AND time signature and possibly what instrument they were playing. The lead singer was good, but they neglected to transpose into a decent key for him on some songs. The female singer was unquestionably the worst I've heard in my life. Of all the aspiring female singers in St Louis, they chose her? She must be married to one of the band members. She made me long for the more pleasant and on-key stylings of Yoko Ono.

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Facism with a friendly face?

I'm getting concerned about the St. Louis Police. They seem to completely overreact to events with no good reason. The World Agricultural Forum was a fine example. Literally hundreds of officers, streets blocked, secret midnight raids, windows boarded up at the Post Office, for what 300 or so peaceful demonstrators who mostly sat around the park and did nothing.

The protest at the Forest Park Metro station is another good example. The TV crews were setting up at 7AM when I was headed to work, even the the protest wasn't happening until 5pm. I got there around 4.30 on the Metro and there were about 20 police officers on the platforms. I headed up to the bus stop to catch my bus, and there were about 30 more officers, a half dozen supervisors and traffic was completely jammed because of all the police cars and vans. There were about a dozen protestors when I got there, and it topped out at about 20-25 when I left at around 5.15. I didn't see the people trying to lie down on the tracks as the paper reports happened, but I was not at a vantage point where I could see the tracks very well.