For those who know me, they know that to say my father and I aren’t close is to misstate the epic lack of closeness. Having not spoken to him in over three years, and entirely unsure of what happened, I can only read wistfully from PZ Myer’s memories from his father.
For those who doubt the insanity of my current projects, I need only tell two things from this weekend that have happened:
Bizarro World indeed. I’m sorry, no. You don’t call people at 9pm at night to tell them you need to ruin their weekend. You ask politely early in the week, understanding how much of an imposition it is, and schedule it around what they have going on.
Today is the 134th running of the Kentucky Derby—the most elegant two minutes of racing in the world, surrounded by a week of parties—and as my mom grew up in Kentucky, and my parents met in Lexington, there’s a bit of nostalgia for the time I spent in the hills of Kentucky. While I grew up in Austin, it was typical for me to spend quite a few summer months with my mom’s family. Part of that family, though not genetically related, was a wonderfully kind woman named Janice.
Several years ago, Janice passed away. She had been my mom’s best friend for decades, and she had been like an extended aunt for my sister and I. One of the best memories I have of her is all the wonderful food and hospitality she extended to all of us. So, when I ran across a recipe for Bourbon Balls (some history), I couldn’t help but be reminded of hers. I have no idea if her recipe is “better” or “more authentic”, but the taste has lingered with me all these years.
So, in celebration of my heritage and the extended family I’ve been lucky enough to call my own for 35 years, today I’m making some Bourbon Balls and plan to have a fine Mint Julep.
I’m not speaking of the platonic love of family, nor the warm love of romance. What I refer to is instead the cold, steely glare of being loved “at work”. Perhaps it is my somewhat unique background and skill combination, but at my current employer—more than ever before—I feel entirely too loved. I want to be ignored sometimes; left to my own devices, and projects.
Instead, I am constantly asked to come in and resolve problems that others have been unable to. This invariably happens under immense time constraint and political pressure, thereby making it “extra fun”.
I try, very hard, to do two things: 1) to not discuss my work in any detail on my blog, 2) do what’s in the best interest of my clients. Of late (the past year), I have had a client of unwavering stupidity that tries even my epic patience at work. They are to the worst stereotype of government workers what those same government workers are to MIT rocket scientists. To say they are stupid does a great injustice to idiots. To say they are officious unfairly maligns Vogons.
First, just some general observations:
That, however, is only the tip of the maddening iceberg. Let me play for you, a snippet of conversation that happened today, in a mixture of conference calls and e-mail. This happened after they rejected one of those submissions because we used the wrong size hard drive.
Me : Notice that those 2 73.4GB 15,000RPM drives, in RAID-1, are only used for the operating system. The data is actually stored on a RAID-5 array of 4 300GB 15,000RPM drives. That satisfies the specification requirement for “300 GB usable disk space”.
Client : But the specification requires 80GB hard drives and RAID-5.
Me : Yes, and you’ll note all data is on a RAID-5 array. RAID-1 is at least as reliable as RAID-5. Also, there is no such thing as an 80GB server-class hard drive.
Designer : Yes, but the specification we wrote says 80GB or better and RAID-5.
Me : But the operating system is only 4 or 5GB of storage, the rest is empty.
Client : But the specification says 80GB.
Me : But it’d all be wasted.
Designer : But you must provide what’s in the specification.
Me : We are exceeding the specification by an order of magnitude in performance and reliability2 and this design is typical to everything we have done for the past decade with all our clients. We are using 16GB of RAM because the application needs memory not disk, and we have 4-cores, not two as the specifications requires.
Client : Yes, but the specification…
Do you see where this is going? Madness. A complete inability to understand that specifications, written by an “architect3”, based on heresy and 15 year old ideas, is not a reliable guide for modern computing design. Machines that need, at most, 5-10GB of disk space are having to be purchased with RAID-5 arrays of 146GB SAS drives. What is the sense in that? Oh, right, “it’s what’s in the specification”.
I have never, in my entire life, dealt with a collection of more useless people, where the simple fact that they can remember to breathe is shocking.
1 No, I’m not joking. Not black, not anything else. They’ve been rejected for having the wrong color blue even.
2 Note, that the specification has nothing useful in it like performance or reliability. It does, however, specify the length of the power cord.
3 I’m not talking about a software architect, or a systems architect (my role). I’m talking about a blueprints and pencils and concrete architect.
Job titles don’t matter, but I’ve decided—if they’d let me put it on my card—I should simply put:
Technical Hit Man
It’s about the only thing that accurately describes what I get asked to do.
As we sit in our comfortable houses, with our safe and sanitary conditions, munching on our bountiful food supply, it is important sometimes to maintain a little perspective.
Sometimes, my job consists of pulling off virtual miracles—and then being told they’re the wrong color.
I blame my friend Randy for getting me interested in watches. I used to never give them a second thought, and while I had one or two, they were largely relegated to jewelry status when I was wearing a suit or tuxedo, but never really examined too closely. Since his immersion the horological world, I’ve learned a lot from him, but more importantly, I’ve started to become aware of a lot of interesting watches.
Right now, my object of horolust is the Seiko Spring Drive Chronograph. Alas, baring any massive bonus this year, I’m unlikely to pop the money for it. Still, it’s not only pretty, but immaculately built, and quite innovative in design. Basically it’s an automatic watch, but without the escapement that normally drives much of the watch. Instead, it uses a continuous unwind of the spring with a magnetic brake managed by a quartz oscillator to balance the time. Neat.
Right now, I’m just wearing a Seiko 5 military watch, with the 7S26 movement in it. Simple, and bulletproof. The picture is a slightly different model that doesn’t have the glass back.
I am on a plane to Austin tomorrow. Unfortunately, it leaves at entirely too early an hour, but it was the best itinerary that I had available—especially with first class seats. If there’s to be any benefit to the amount of travel I do, it’s that I manage to snag upgrades more easily. My mom’s house has no Internet connection, so any blogging will be light. It will, however, give me time to read, catch up on some writing, and otherwise be disconnected.
A happy holiday to everyone.
So, in addition to my RAID-1 array dying, the 160GB drive in my iMac G5 died as well. I don’t know when, since I hadn’t used it in a while, but when I went to try and recover some stuff off of it, it wouldn’t boot. After acquiring Disk Warrior, I figured out that the drive itself was failing quickly. Disk Warrior managed to recover the disk, for a period, and I managed to get about 40GB of stuff off the machine before it died. Fortunately, this included most of my photography prior to the middle of this year.
I’ve not written much lately. Mostly, it’s a reaction to the intense pressure of my job right now, along with an over-riding malaise derived from too much time at 30,000ft with the legal minimum of oxygen in the cabin. It’s not that I don’t have things to write about, but instead that I simply haven’t got the energy to spill those words onto virtual paper. Having said that, I just returned home from spending the holiday with my family in Austin, and it was a wonderful time.
My sister has been married a couple years now, and her husband is a fine man—although sometimes I think his sense of humor might be a bit much for my sister—and his family is all good, and so far things have merged relatively unscathed with my own. This was the first year, in a while, that I didn’t have a hand in most of the cooking, and my sister and her husband did a yeoman’s job of getting everything ready, on the table, and tasty. I contributed only a few small side dishes, and a coconut cake.
Last night, I returned home, and it was good to be back in my own bed, if only for a few days.
John Scalzi summarizes the insanity of the Creation Museum better than I ever could:
Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. And we’re not talking just your average load of horseshit; no, we’re talking colossal load of horsehit. An epic load of horseshit. The kind of load of horseshit that has accreted over decades and has developed its own sort of ecosystem, from the flyblown chunks at the perimeter, down into the heated and decomposing center, generating explosive levels of methane as bacteria feast merrily on vintage, liquified crap. This is a Herculean load of horseshit, friends, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of Augeas.
[ ... ]
And this is, in sum, the Creation Museum. $27 million has purchased the very best monument to an enormous load of horseshit that you could possibly ever hope to see. I enjoyed my visit, admired the craft with which the whole thing was put together, and was never once convinced that what I was seeing celebrated was anything more or less than horseshit. Popular horseshit? Undoubtedly. Horseshit hallowed by tradition and consecrated by time? Just so. Horseshit of the finest possible quality? I would not argue the point. And yet, even so: Horseshit. Complete horseshit. Utter horseshit. Total horseshit. Horseshit, horseshit, horseshit, horseshit. I pity the people who swallow it whole.
I have to admit, I’ll probably go—for the same reason I stop to look at a car wreck. The gigantic bloodshed of stupidity is unbelievable.
Saturday night, I went to a concert at the Black Cat, and it only reminded me how old I’m getting. I was along for the ride with Jenny, James, and Jenny’s husband Gary. It was a triple bill, although I have to say, I had assumed it would be a normal double bill. Some observations:
Alas, we all agreed it was time to leave before the last set, and it’s for the best. I’m simply old.
Lately I’ve noticed something, new and different, with my metabolism and how it impacts my sleep. It seems that if I have anything with a lot of sugar in it (such as last night’s chocolate truffle), I find myself unable to sleep soundly, and waking up constantly. While this is annoying, it’s also a good incentive not to do things which are bad for my blood sugar level. Odd, though.