Category: Random Thoughts

The general category for posts on this blog.

Goodbye VCRs, Hello Medusa!

Random Thoughts

Sometimes I really hate the Television Networks. They seem to insist of fighting head to head instead of spreading out all over the week. Every fall season, its inevitable that of the roughly fifteen hours of TV I want to watch it all airs in the real space of about 4 or 5 hours, meaning that quite often two, three, or even four shows are on at once. Seeing as how I pretty much hate having commercials interrupt my TV shows, I tape everything and watch it later to allow fast forwarding, which also allows me to make plans any night of the week because I’m always taping anyway. One of my VCRs decided to start dying on me… crinkling tapes causing me to miss shows when they didn’t record, and its tuner started making things fuzzy… so I went looking to buy a new VCR. No one really makes VCRs much anymore, and what I really wanted was a dual tuner device so I could finally pick up that fourth show some nights (I only had three VCRs)… they don’t make those. Even these new devices with a VCR and a DVR in them only have one tuner (you can’t record on both the VCR and the DVR from two different channels at once). After a long search, I finally just gave up and started looking for a complete alternative.

I thought about going with a Windows XP Media Center Edition based PC since I know a couple of people that have them and love them, but the price seemed to be a bit much, and it only legitimately supports two tuners. Of course, you can hack it to handle as many as you want, but reports are pretty consistant that Microsoft programmed their usual bloat and once you get the 4th or 5th simultaneous recording going it pegs the processor (which shouldn’t happen, since any decent TV tuner card actually has its on encoding processor on it and doesn’t use the CPU at all) and starts chugging, causing any number of problems, unless you spend a huge amount of money on a monster machine that can handle all that. Pricey. Then I stumbled on Medusa.

Well, really its SnapSteam Media’s software, but they titled this particular setup of 6 tuner joy after the fabled gorgon killed by Perseus. I followed their recommendations, built a $500 PC (could have been cheaper, but I wanted a special case that looked like a media component and not a PC) with the exception of a 320GB drive instead of a 40 (a nice 130 hours of storage on the “Better” quality setting), and SATA-150 instead of ATA-100; and bought the Medusa pack with the 3 dual tuner cards instead of 6 single tuners. And yesterday I successfully recorded 6 programs at once. Now, with the SnapStream Beyond TV software set up to record all new episodes of all my favorite shows, I’ll never need to set a timer again.

So, like the title says… Goodbye VCRs, goodbye video tapes, goodbye setting timers on multiple units and watching TV schedules like a hawk for unexpected changes, and goodbye pain in my ass… Hello 21st Century, and hello Medusa!

NASA and the Moon

Random Thoughts

I’ve always loved the space program. I’ll watch any movie or documentary on the subject, and I’ve done many a school report on both its successes and its failures. I want us, the human race, to get out there iin the Universe and travel. As a step to that, we, NASA that is, is planning on going back to the Moon.

Now, this is one point where I disagree with lots of people as I don’t think we should go to the Moon. For one, there really isn’t anything there. Sure, we might be able to put a base up there, but it will be about as self sufficient as a space station, only much further away and more expensive to travel to. Second, going out into space, seeking out new life and new civilizations and stuff, we need to get over our reliance on Earth based launches. See, in space, you don’t need aerodynamics much… a brick flies as well as anything else in a vacuum. So, in my opinion, we should be focused on building three things… Cargo launch rockets, large capacity as efficient as possible to punch through the atmosphere and take supplies to orbit; Lander crafts, nice aerodynamic space planes for taking people in and out of the atmosphere; and Flying Bricks, for hauling cargo and lander crafts across the universe, built in space and never intended to enter atmosphere. But forget all that, and lets just stick to NASAs “the Moon is the key to space travel” idea.

They unveiled their plan… Apollo on steroids. They put up the lander module in space with one launch, then launch the crew capsule with crew later, dock in space and head to the moon. Fine, sounds like a nice plan, and they’ll be on the Moon by 2018. They plan on sending unmanned probes to the Moon to do some scouting too, in 2008 and 2011… and this is where I have a problem.

We’ve got these rovers on Mars. We launch them from here, rocket them to Mars and land them, and now we have these little motorized dune buggy science robots roaming around the planet looking at cool shit. Its a good design… so, why not just adapt the existing Mars lander probes to do stuff on the Moon? Are they saying its going to take over 2 years to build a Mars lander? Or are they going to needlessly go back to the drawing board and start from scratch?

We should have a Moon lander in less than a year, period, end of discussion… why? Because, given what we’ve been able to learn about Mars using the landers, we’d probably be able to tell if its even possible to build a functioning base on the Moon and we won’t have to wait until 2018.

One of the issues with living on the Moon will, of course, be oxygen. One of the cool things about the Moon is that there is already oxygen there, in the rocks. I know it sounds funky, but one of the more common substances on the Moon is called ilmenite which is made of Iron, Titanium and Oxygen. Currently there is a contest going on, like the X-Prize they did for putting a man in space, where the object is to design a functioning process to extract the oxygen from the rocks. This is also why we need a probe on the moon within a year, to make sure we can do it, because in two or three years we will need to be sending unmanned robot vehicles with test equipment to see if it really works on the Moon. I’d hate for us to design and test, on Earth, a process for making oxygen just to get to the Moon in 2018 and find out that it doesn’t work out there. Now, maybe this is what they are planning for the 2008 and 2011 probes, but they only mentioned searching for suitable landing places.

Anyway, enough from me… my main point here is that we already have the technology, why design the same stuff over again? Just rig up a Mars lander and get thee to the Moon already!

The Last Seat on the Bus

Random Thoughts

I ride the bus to work, and I really enjoy it. I get to read, or listen to music, all the while not having to worry about idiots in traffic. It doesn’t really take any longer than driving myself did, and with gas prices these days it’s a hell of a lot cheaper. At last tally, I’m saving myself over $200 a month by riding the bus. But there is one thing that bothers me…

I get on the bus as the main transit center, which means the bus is empty or near empty when I get on. Now, traditional society dictates that since all seats on the bus are in pairs, if you get on the bus and there is an open pair, you sit there before sitting next to someone else. Women are allowed a bit of leeway, it’s okay if they sit next to another woman instead of taking one of an open pair if she doesn’t want to risk sitting next to some random man later on. As the bus drives, we pick up more people, and always by the time we reach the transfer station to the train, the bus is full.

In the city of Atlanta, we have a large population of blacks and hispanics. So, its not unreasonable to believe that often I’m the only white guy on the bus. Sometimes there are a couple of white women, but not always. As a white guy, I also have a shaved head. My hair line is receeding, and I look awful when I grow my hair out, so I shave it because it looks better. I have a goatee. So, I’m a white guy with a shaved head and a goatee. I’m also a nice guy… I’ve got no visible tatoos, no scars, and I wear business casual clothes (polo shirt and khaki pants most days). I sit and read my book (science fiction, fantasy, classic literature, mysteries, the odd other book here and there) or I have my headphones on listening to MP3s from by PDA phone. Every single day, the seat next to me is the last one to get filled.

I don’t know what’s up… should I feel slighted? Discriminated against? I don’t stink, I’ve asked. And I’m not wearing any internationally recognized symbols of hatred. I’m just a guy reading a book and/or listening to music. And yet, once it gets down to the last seat available, the next person to get on the bus will look around, scanning the entire bus looking for a chance hidden seat, before finally fixing their face in a downtrodden look of defeat and resign themselves to being forced to sit next to me.

I just don’t get it.

Another Con Bites the Dust

Random Thoughts

Dragon*Con 2005 is over. Four days in downtown Atlanta with Science Fiction nerds, Fantasy dorks, costuming goons, and the TV and movie stars and authors that go with it.

I’m tired now, and I think I will sleep. Tomorrow, or perhaps another day later this week I’ll write more about my trip.

Everyone hates the new guy

Random Thoughts

Its just a simple fact of working in the Information Technology field. New guys suck. One, they introduce change into what may be a well oiled machine of work. Two, they never know enough of the specifics to be much help for a while, and the slow you down asking silly questions. And three, they get a better computer.

See, technology moves pretty fast. What was a standard computer last year is this year’s slow model. And this is really what bugs tech guys more than anything. A new guy comes in, and he gets a better PC that the guy who’s been here a while.

Me, I’ve never been the new guy. I’m always the replacement guy. I’m much worse off than even the old guys because I’m replacing someone who has quit or been fired, and I get his junky busted equipment. So, not only do I not get the new guy benefits of a spanking new PC, but when the company does decide to spend some cash and buy new stuff for old guys, I’m not high enough on the totem pole to get one.

Bah!

Me and my spider

Random Thoughts

It’s not actually my spider, he just lives outside my front door. Normally, I’d kill a spider living around my front door. I’d go out and spray him with insect spray until he stopped running or twitching. But I decided this time it would be different. However, I still didn’t want him building webs for me to walk through when I’m coming or going from my apartment.

So I trained him. With judicious use of knocking down web strands, I have trained this spider to build only on my neighbor’s side of the front stoop. This spider started out pretty small, but the stoop has lights on it that we, the apartment dwellers, can’t turn off, so it attracts its fair share of flying bugs. So he eats well. He’s pretty big now, I’d say his body is the size of a nickel, and with the legs he’s easily a half-dollar. And the webs he makes are pretty interesting. One night he managed to spin a perfect octogonal web, eight main lines with smaller and smaller octogons at regular intervals. Then one night he made an intricate web with two central points, which might have been an accident, or maybe he was supposed to have a guest. It’s become a nightly ritual for me to walk the dog and check out the web he’s spinning before going to bed. And he only spins his web at night… one, because only at night are the lights on that attract the bugs; and two, because my neighbor keeps tearing down the web.

Unfortunately for my neighbor, he can’t train the spider like I have. That’s because when he gets up in the morning and walks through the web, the spider isn’t in it anymore. The spider gets his food at night, then hauls it up to the top of the stoop and webs himself into a corner with his catch for sleeping and feeding. In the morning the web is empty. Now, you might be wondering why I would train a spider to build a web that my neighbor walks through just about every day…

Well, I hate my neighbor. I live in a pretty ghetto neighborhood. Guys sit on their front step and drink forties, and hang out in packs or gangs and make horrendously rude comments toward any woman who dares walk by trying to be “player of the year” or something… But my next door neighbor doesn’t do that. He’s from South Africa. His whole family is. Now, I don’t have anything against South Africans per say… but in this case is means that there are two families with a total of about 9 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment. Most of my animosity toward these people comes from their attitudes. The kids like to use car parking spots to park their bikes. They like my dog and they want to pet him, but only if he sits still, faces away from them, and they pet him lightly on the back of the head from behind. Any attempt on the dog’s part to sniff or move toward the kids earns a response of screams and running, sometimes crying. Usually this is when the dad comes out and says we shouldn’t scare the kids. Umm… what? Anyway, when we moved in, we used to walk the dog out front to do his business. But we stopped doing that, and he does his business out back. Oh, at night before bed, I’ll let him pee out front, but for any number 2, he goes out back into the weeds and trees. However, for some reason, all the other shitheads in our neighborhood like to just let their dogs run without a leash… so they come over to our area to poop, following the smell. Even though its been over 18 months since our dog has pooped out front, other dogs still come there to do their business. And my neighbor, he yells at me for it… “All thees sheeting. I come outside to sit and its smelling sheet.” “Your dog is sheeting under my front window.” and so on… but its not my dog, I explain that, but he just waves me off and gives me nasty looks. And he complains about our dog barking and making noise, which is pretty rare… and when I try to mention his kids thumping up and down the stairs at all hours of the day and night, he waves me off again.

So I trained a spider to build webs in front of his door…

Hey You!

Random Thoughts

Yeah you… look, I realize you’ve probably had a really tough day, perhaps even a really tough life, but one of the things that makes a revolving door work so well is that the work of pushing it around is shared by all the people moving through it. If you are going to get in, you have to do your share. My day hasn’t exactly been a big bowl of happy either, but you don’t see me just strolling through the doors with my arms folded making some other schmuck do all the work. If it hadn’t been for my desire to actually get to lunch, I would have stopped right there and kept you trapped until you shouldered your share… jackass.

A Few Good Men

Random Thoughts

“You can’t handle the truth!”
-Col. Nathan R. Jessep, A Few Good Men

It’s sad, but it’s true… there are a great many people who simply can’t handle the truth. And I mean simple truth, not ‘being brutally honest’ (which is more often a disguise for being honest, brutally). I had the misfortune of having a coworker ask about her own performance… Okay, let me back up.

I’m working on a program. And as I finish parts of it, I turn it over for requirements testing. The people who are testing it are also the people who gave me the requirements. More often than not, when they test, they complain about things the program doesn’t do, all of which are things they didn’t tell me it needed to do. As a result, I’m constantly rewriting my programs to include things after the fact. We have marathon email back-and-forths where we argue over the value of certain items. Their most common defense of a stupid business practice is “We’ve always done it that way.” And my most common attack is “We are writing a new program, so let’s take this opportunity to change the way its done and make it better.” And its not like its an alien idea… these are things they think SHOULD change, but they want the new program to work exactly like the old program and THEN change it. More work for everyone.

Anyway… so it comes that we are on the phone, and after we solve the latest fire she asks me how she’s been doing on the requirements and testing. I ask if she really wants to know and she says, “I want the truth.” I give her the truth, as kindly as I can. I don’t accuse her of giving me bad requirements, I instead explain that when working on requiements it would work better if she worked with the existing system for a couple or three weeks and documented every task she performed and later reviewed that log for missed steps or details to avoid the situation we have where daily tasks weren’t in the requirements. I explain that her testing should be testing of the requirements as written and not of desired features, and that things not in the requirements are enhancements for the next version, and if its discovered that essential requirements were missed they shouldn’t be reported as bugs, but should be brought up as requirements revisions. I explain that her testing is testing of my programming of the requirements as written, and when we move to phase two of testing, the user testing, her users will point out the missing details and at that point new requirements or revisions will need to be made. And lastly I say, that all this is for her sanity and mine, because if she’s constantly checking for items that weren’t in the requirements, then she’s going to be very unhappy; while on my end, if I spend every day rewriting my work for items that I wasn’t told about instead of working on remaining items or other projects, I get very unhappy.

In my opinion, I laid things out very clearly and kindly. I never yelled or accused, I just simply pointed out issues with the process she was using and how everyone would be happier if she did things differently. Well… except the users, but they’ll never be happy until we invent the “Do My Job” button so they spend their days like George Jetson or Homer Simpson, pushing one button when its needed.

So later that day I got pulled aside by my boss and told that I should never yell at anyone about how they do their job because its not within my authority as a contract programmer. I tried to defend myself, but he didn’t want to hear it. He only wanted to hear that I would never do it again (despite not having done it in the first place).

That’s my story… people, especially at work, can’t handle the truth… Now I will present you with a bastardized quote of my own:

“Work like you only need money. Love like you’ll never be happy. Dance like everyone’s got score cards. Sing only when nobody’s listening. And lie like your job depends on it.”

I don’t really mean that… but seriously, when someone asks for the truth, try to be sure they really want to hear it. And never ask for the truth unless you can’t handle it. And by “handle” I don’t mean “make them pay for telling it to you”.

Lies Hidden in Truths

Random Thoughts

It might just be that I’m growing cynical, or perhaps its just an understanding of the nature of people, but I’ve come to a point where I tend to examine the things that people say with a microscope, trying to find the flaws in their words.

For example, let’s take Joran van der Sloot, one of the suspects, and the only one still in custody, for the disappearance and possible murder of Natalee Holloway in Aruba. His mother has been saying, and its been repeated in the press, that her son states that “he left her on the beach because she wanted to stay.” Now, the optimist that lives inside every person wants to believe that Natalee felt that Aruba was great, better than Alabama, and that she wanted to enjoy it as much as possible before leaving, and that Joran, not wanting to be a nuisance, left her to enjoy the sounds of the ocean alone and headed home. A nice story, and would be wonderful if it turns out to be true. But the pessimist in me looks at that statement and says, “Its still true, technically, even if he killed her.” Say that Joran really wanted to have sex with Natalee, and that he didn’t want to do it on the beach, but wanted her to go back to his place, she didn’t want to, he tried to force her, she fought back, he killed her and dumped her body somewhere on the beach, either in this lake they are now draining, or leaving it to drift out to see where it sank or was eaten by animals, his statement is still true. He left her on the beach because she wanted to stay.

Part of me wants to think that this is some gift of keen insight when I dissect a person’s words like this, like if I applied myself I could be a good investigator for the police or some government agency. Another part of me, however, thinks this is just my willingness to accept evil in anyone, that every person is capable of horrifying acts. One thing is sure though, all of me is chilled that I could be right. I don’t want to be right, not for things like this…

Harry Potter

Random Thoughts

One thing I do that has remained a constant practice in my life has been to avoid situations where I am guaranteed my expectations have exceeded reality. Mostly this comes in with movies and books. Should I happen to not see a movie just as it comes out, or read a book within a couple months of release, and that thing takes off with reports of it being “The best ever!” there is a narrow window of opportunity to see or read it before I’m forced to put it off until the hype blows over. The reason for this is simple… people talk it up so much that it can’t possibly stand up to it.

Harry Potter is one of those things. People were telling me for years that they were simply the best books ever written, utterly fantastic, it would blow me away. So, I didn’t read them. There was so much build up, that I knew it couldn’t possibly be as good as the hype. And it wasn’t. I finally started reading the Harry Potter books a couple months ago. I’ve been reading one of them, then another book or two, then the next Potter book, and so on. I’m almost finished with ‘Goblet of Fire’ now, that’s why I’m writing. The first book… ehh… it was good, no doubt, and for young readers its an excellent book for interesting non-readers. Its short, its light, full of fluff and fun, and to any person over the age of about 18 or so, completely and utterly transparent. The plot, while not bad, was predictable. Yeah, I’d seen the movies, but that didn’t matter, even the things left out of the movie I saw coming. It was not a complicated book. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing, as I said… good for young readers or new readers, bad for anyone who has heard all the hype.

The second book was better. Still a bit predictable, and more fluff than substance, but it was a fun read that I enjoyed. However, still far from being ‘the best ever’.

The third book, moreso… the story growing up as the boy does, becoming more complicated and involved, relationships becoming less simplistic, and overall a much better book.

As I move through the fourth book, I can see it continuing to grow. The story is more complex, more textured, the characters breathe on the page and display more traits like those you find in our own world, and its beginning to lose its predictability.

I look forward to the fifth book. And the sixth, the seventh, and more, if she decides to continue on.

Now that the books are out of the way… lets talk about the fans. I’m reading the UK versions of the books. One, because those are the ones my fiancee owns. And two, because reading the book with the authentic English (or Brittish) vernacular just appeals to me more than having them all sound like a bunch of Americans despite the fact that they are in England. As such, the books I read have covers that most of the people I pass on the street have never seen. Constantly, I am berated by people yelling at me or even grabbing me or my book forcibly, demanding to know how I got ahold of the as of yet unreleased sixth book. Once I explain to them that its an old book, most of them just stomp away, not even apologizing for my sprained wrist or nearly tackling me. Few ask why the book is different, and to those that do, when I try to explain that its the original UK versions, their eyes glaze over like I’ve just tried to explain in depth quantum mechanical theory to them, and they stumble away, dumbfounded by the knowledge that Brittish English and American English aren’t the same, and that people actually write in languages other than American English. Only one person so far has actually carried on a conversation of intelligence and cared about the differences in the books (simple things like that people in the UK call a ‘flashlight’ a ‘torch’ and so on).

I’ve met numerous people who are going to go out Friday night and stay up at book release parties until 12:01am Saturday to buy their copy of the book. Because, obviously, the books bought at that time will be better than the ones the store will be selling all day the next day, at reasonable hours, like after the sun comes up, or even after a lazy brunch.

As it is, my fiancee, a huge Potter fan, but not an insane Potter fan, is actually going to wait until sometime the following week to read it. Her UK copy is being shipped overseas, and while most who order through Amazon will get their books on Saturday if they specified the next day shipping, next day from England means Monday or Tuesday.

Anyway, back to work, or something… Harry and Cedric have just… nah, not going to tell you. Read it yourself. I do recommend the Potter books… but I do not recommend becoming a Potter fanatic.