un eternizador de dioses del ocaso

open letter to bill simmons

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:08:47 GMT

You know what? I'm officially done with you. Your insane, stultifying Murray Chass impersonation in your AVClub interview where you babble about how much you hate the stat revolution in basketball was hugely disappointing, but then you followed that up with your craven, spoiled whinge about Belichick's 4th-and-2 decision. You're transparently trying to become once more a "tortured Boston sports fan". Your efforts are effectively a karmic counterweight to that wonderful, sublime article about the Dooze you wrote in January; in effect, you shat all over it.

So go cry to your daddy if you want, and do what you have to do to keep the gravy train going, but i am no longer going to tolerate the insipid and inane references to embarrassing crap like pro wrestling, reality TV, and pornography because "in the end, you're entertaining." You aren't entertaining anymore; you're just another mainstream mediot with a disproportionate sense of self who's desperately opposed to admitting that things often change counterintuitively for the better. Keep it up, and your kids will be hating your guts in a dozen years.

sometimes i suspect that i'm not as funny as i think i am

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:45:31 GMT

Nix wrote:

One person at work keeps a file named -i in important directories on Solaris boxes, just to catch rm *'s in them.

Do they keep an extra pair of underpants in their car in case they shit themselves on the way to work?

meeting online friends in person for the first time is always great fun

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:54:16 GMT

Earlier this week, tyggerjai and bunnikins stopped in lovely San José, so 2wanda and i, plus elmuchacho, met them for lunch at Morocco's Restaurant. It was a lovely repast, from start to finish, and we were regaled with tales of high-flying Russians.

Saturday, Kim and i had brunch and conversation with syringavulgaris and blarglefiend at Scrambl'z, which is what you'd get if Denny's didn't suck. Later that night, we headed to dr_memory and missionista's last hurrah party before the birth of their child, where i finally met illspoken, who is a delightful conversationalist.

Remember, if you come to town, contact me. Then offer me food or booze. Only good things can happen.

not that, uh, i've ever done this

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:17:16 GMT

Billy O'Connell, Kristin Hersh's husband and manager, has coined the following term:

IMbush v. to interrupt or virtually 'jump' someone when you spy their IM status change to 'available'

what

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:54:15 GMT

<davewsmith_blog> so, the bizarro 'this can't be happening' bug today is eventually explained as documented ms sql server behavior. <dws> when provided with a datetime in milliseconds, it rounds to the nearest 1/300th of a second, which may be in the future.

oh dear

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:47:57 GMT

It's usually a bad sign when a contrarian reverses position, right?

WHAT THE FUCK PEOPLE

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:31:07 GMT

This is all lifeinbeta's fault.

voodoorrific

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 19:45:46 GMT

<ronebofh> palecur: netflix is big on not hiring assholes. <palecur> rone: for true? That is a good thing <rone> but i slipped in anyway. <palecur> you're not an asshole <palecur> you just sometimes get ridden by Baron Rectum, the asshole loa <palecur> then we throw rum at you and youre ok

enjoy your weekend! please tip your waitress

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:05:00 GMT

Q: What do you call a plan to stack your raw fish in a pyramid and pour citrus-soy sauce over it?

A: A ponzu scheme.

i think of horrible things so you don't have to

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:01:16 GMT

The Communist dictatorship doesn't always crush the pacifist monks, but that's the way Tibet.

if i'd been wearing pants, i would have crapped them

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 05:46:40 GMT

Dave Grohl (Nirvana & Foo Fighters) got Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and John Paul fuckin' Jones (do i need to say it?) together in a new band, Them Crooked Vultures. They're touring now (sadly, only east of the Mississippi and Europe).

Thanks to syringavulgaris for the heads-up.

all right, i've had it with you people

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:20:53 GMT

The only healthcare system that thrives in a true free market is the one where you get a proctological exam from Adam Smith's invisible hand. And always remember: a free market is worth exactly what you paid for it.

we knew this day would come

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:11:31 GMT

I'm going to register Republican so that i can vote for Tom Campbell for governor in the primary election.

state of the rone

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 06:47:33 GMT

I've been spending more time with Hallcrest: i prepared yeast and added it to a tank of chardonnay i helped harvest; i showed up at 06:45 one morning to help sanitize the bottling machine; and last weekend, 2wanda came with me to help pick a bunch of cabernet sauvignon grapes (we got just over a ton) at some recondite house almost smack dab in the middle of the line between Morgan Hill and Scotts Valley, after which we had a big party to celebrate. I'll be picking more grapes for them on Sunday. In addition to that, we pressed our pinot noir, which yielded nine gallons.

Still no job, although i'm feeling quite hopeful that i'll be employed by the end of the month. I've gotten some valuable (and some not-so-valuable) feedback from places that have turned me down.

i knew the job was tough

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 05:39:50 GMT

I got up at 05:10 on Saturday to go to Los Altos Hills and pick grapes for Hallcrest, along with eight high schoolers who were raising money for their soccer academy. We harvested about 2 tons of chardonnay and a half-ton of pinot noir. After a midday break, i headed to the winery to experience the first crush of the season. The chardonnay fruit was dumped straight into the press, and while that was being processed, the pinot noir fruit was crushed and destemmed, then packed away with a CO₂ blanket. I was exhausted by the end of the day, and a full night's sleep wasn't enough to restore me.

On Sunday, after going to the garden and picking about a bajillion tomatoes, 2wanda, her mom, and i headed to Hollister to buy our pinot noir for this year's wine. We bought it from the same folks from whom we bought it last year. After that, we headed down the road to taste at DeRose, whose wine is notably higher in alcohol than average, but you wouldn't know it from its flavor. I've been a fan of their négrette, but their late harvest viognier was a revelation; it was subtle and far from the sweetness you'd expect in a dessert wine.

it beats the hell out of sitting at home noodling on my craptop

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 01:41:46 GMT

I spent the day today at Hallcrest again, helping them bottle a couple of cabernet sauvignons and a pinot noir. The bottler is a little fussy and we had a few hiccups, but we got through them and didn't break a single bottle. Also, i am helping translate for one of the employees, whose English is poor. My experience is growing in leaps and bounds!

america for americans!

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:18:58 GMT

I received a call from my House Representative, Zoe Lofgren (and i note that it's not Zoë because she doesn't pronounce the 'e' in her name), asking me to join a phone conference about health care reform. The various people who chimed in with comments and questions ran the gamut from people who showed various levels of support and opposition who made civil and thoughtful contributions, to outright morons, such as one dolt who said, "I don't want the government in charge of health care. I'm an employer and people tell me they don't want benefits, and if they need anything they'll just get it for free at the emergency room." Another clown added, "Health insurance companies want to turn a profit, and there's nothing wrong with making a profit; that's what this country was founded on." Funny, i thought this country was founded on tax evasion.

a small step and a giant leap

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 06:43:36 GMT

It's been a rough few weeks, interviewing for jobs, getting turned down by some, waiting for contact from others, and dealing with family shit. Once we finished moving butterflygenius to her new digs yesterday, 2wanda and i finally got to unwind and went to Hallcrest Vineyards for a barrel tasting which toropeza kindly paid for. While there, i spoke to the winemaker, and knowing that it's getting pretty close to harvest time, asked him if there was anything i could do for him, so that i could get practical experience in commercial wine production to go with my fancy book larnin'. He told me that, in fact, he'd be giving some training today on using the equipment involved in the crush, such as the crusher/destemmer and the bladder press, as well as other equipment and steps. I jumped at the opportunity and not only did i learn a lot this morning, he fed us all some very tasty baby back ribs for lunch. I need to look at my schedule so i can send it to him so he can let me know when he can use me next; they'll be bottling tomorrow, but i have an interview, so i'll be sadly missing that. Nonetheless, today was very encouraging and educational.

i'm going to cut through the bullshit of nationwide health care with one paragraph

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 02:48:01 GMT

In many ways, foreign health-care models are not really "foreign" to America, because our crazy-quilt health-care system uses elements of all of them. For Native Americans or veterans, we're Britain: The government provides health care, funding it through general taxes, and patients get no bills. For people who get insurance through their jobs, we're Germany: Premiums are split between workers and employers, and private insurance plans pay private doctors and hospitals. For people over 65, we're Canada: Everyone pays premiums for an insurance plan run by the government, and the public plan pays private doctors and hospitals according to a set fee schedule. And for the tens of millions without insurance coverage, we're Burundi or Burma: In the world's poor nations, sick people pay out of pocket for medical care; those who can't pay stay sick or die.

If there are problems within the Obama Administration's healthcare plan, let's identify them and argue about them. But let's knock off the goddamn FUD. The Red Scare's been over for decades, OK?

attention massachusetts peeps

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 18:33:51 GMT

I have read some stuff out there about how Romney's healthcare plan in Massachusetts could be a viable alternative to Obama's plan, because it doesn't have the dreaded Maoist public option, and yet everyone is covered anyway. What is your view of it, as someone living with it?

"i'll take 'grammatically incorrect animals' for $500, alex"

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 23:08:16 GMT

(source)

short shameful confession

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 03:02:58 GMT

A few years ago, i realized that i was sick of listening to Pink Floyd's The Wall, or as i now like to call it, Roger Waters's The Pros and Cons of Rock Stardom.

we've rounded up these links in order to humanely release them back into the wild

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 23:36:51 GMT

Emily Bazelon interviews Ruth Bader Ginsburg about Sonia Sotomayor, women on the Supreme Court and in law, and feminism.
The concept of software engineering is dead, only 10 years too late. Now its shambling animated corpse will play out the string.
Tim Kreider writes about outrage and separating it from more productive urges.
Laura Blumenfend writes about the training that prospective Secret Service agents undergo.

where am i going, and why am i in this handbasket?

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 06:47:06 GMT

2wanda has said before (and i admit that she, as my wife, might be biased) that she thinks that computer systems administrators should unionize because we're the tech workers who are most often abused by companies. I have mixed feelings about unions, but there's little doubt that the industry takes us for granted far too often. And yet, in all of my career, i have never encountered a situation so dire as in my current place of employ. If they'd offered me a full-time position, i would have turned it down and fled screaming; however, the contract lets me stick to fulfilling tasks instead of worrying about my future with the company, or the company's future.

Right now, IT ("Ops" is reserved for another part of the company that fulfills a different role) is composed of the Director, who is a senior sysadmin with a managerial title, and one junior sysadmin. Normally, that's a bit light for a small startup, but not egregious. The guy they hired before me absconded with a new Mac laptop and an iPhone after four days there. The guy they hired before that lasted two weeks before they realized that he was a complete charlatan (he was hired over the Director's objection, too). The guy who was the boss when the current Director was hired was such an idiot that he recompiled the kernel on the phone system server in the middle of the afternoon, rebooted it, and when it failed to come up, took a few half-hearted stabs at fixing it before leaving for an appointment, leaving the phones down until the next day. This was normal for him, i was told; he was too often worse than no help at all.

Aside from the personnel problems, the infrastructure is a complete cockup. A few examples: the whole office is on a /24 (a network segment with 256 IP addresses) that has been out of available addresses for months, predictably yielding IP conflicts; the Ops team works in an office that is restricted to people with an Ops keycard for security reasons, but their network is fully reachable from anywhere in the company; the office has both wired and wireless pipes to the Internet, but they are not set up for failover, nor are services such as VPN set up to use either one; production has been running on network equipment that dates from the Clinton administration, and development is running on servers from a manufacturer that stopped making hardware in 2001; the source control repository that contains the code for the company's applications has not been backed up in months.

The CEO introduced herself to me on Wednesday, and told me, "I'm glad you're here. We really need you. As a SaaS company, infrastructure is really important to us." You know what, lady? You don't really believe that. If you did, you wouldn't keep hiring morons, you wouldn't be running your company on spit and baling wire, and you wouldn't be telling your Director of IT that you can't afford to hire the people he needs to keep your fucking company from imploding.

I cannot fathom why so many Internet technology companies run their business on a suboptimal infrastructure that is always the result of an abject failure of prioritization. They get the best possible developers because they want a top-notch product, they get the best possible sales and marketing because they want to have as many customers as possible, but when it comes to building the base on which everything runs, well, the founders just slapped together some whitebox PCs from Fry's, and the product's been running on that just fine, so why change it? It's this and eleven billion other idiotic excuses that come from people who Don't Fucking Understand how to build an infrastructure and are, somehow, Utterly Incapable of hiring someone who does.

Why? It can't be that we're scary; yes, it's easy to lean on the "sysadmins and netadmins are all disturbed or disturbing" stereotype, but you know what, every FUCKING job req out there demands "excellent writing and speaking skills", and people get hired, so maybe we're not nearly as bestial as people think. In the end, i think it's simply a complete lack of respect for what we do; we're almost never given the resources that we need to do the job right, and when the resource starvation produces less than stellar results, the blame always comes quickly at us. We need advocacy. I don't get the impression that SAGE has any idea or interest in it, but they damn well should. Maybe i'll go yell at them for a while. Yelling at people is always an effective communication tool.

the longer the wait, the sweeter the taste

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 07:55:44 GMT

After almost six years of playing at Off The Wall, one of my teams (HNS, which was named Centavo when i first joined) finally won our division (technically, Quakes won their division while i was on the roster, but that happened during the session in which i only played a game and a half in between thumb injuries, so it doesn't really count, and yes, they clearly didn't miss me that much). Last week's game was a battle for first place, where both teams had the same point total and goal differential; we started out strong but got a little crazy (again) in the second half, with no help from the ref who called a goal on a loose ball i stopped a good 10 inches in front of the line. In this week's game we only needed a tie to wrap up the championship, but we were missing most of our defenders due to work, vacation, and injuries; we also started out flimsily, giving up two early shorthanded goals (on the same penalty!). Luckily, we kept plugging away, pulled ahead, and won, and it feels good.