band names, squid news

Band names I annoy my wife by proposing:

• Stick -- One-man Styx tribute band
• Ventricle -- One-man Heart tribute band.

Also, last night I discovered that while I like watching both octopus and squid swim... move... squirt... whatever... in the ocean, I prefer eating squid

I've always been suspicious

will I learn my lesson?

Once again, it's release time. And, again I'm in the middle of it all. And, everyone is taking vacation. Time to post nonsensical ramblings, incomplete thoughts, and bad grammar. I'm feeling very burnt out.

Why don't I realize that work will never be finished? And, that it's OK to leave work after putting in _only_ a 8 hour day... particularly when we are supposed to work 7.5 hour days.

I hate leaving in the middle of something. I thought my speedy internet connection would mean I'd be able to work more from home... but it's still hard to interrupt myself when I'm focused on something. But, it is good at making geeks jealous.

Liz has been working a lot of late shifts, so I feel less urgency than usual to go home at a decent time.
Last couple weeks have all been ~60 hours. Co-Worker #1 has been out on vacation or traveling, so there's no one to pester me to go home.

important net neutrality news

Ninjas endorse net neautrality:


No net neutrality could prevent the search for Spock!

excellent use of benny hill music

http://stevenf.com/downloads/sophie-vs-roomba.mov

Utopia article in IEEE spectrum. Squid. Book.

To make certain people jealous, here's a cool article in IEEE Spectrum about Utopia.

I've been remiss updating my boring list of things I've put in my mouth and un-insightful book reviews. I know that's what my vast readership has come to expect.

Best thing I've put in my mouth: Seaweed and Smoked Squid Salad at Go Sushi. Mmm, translucent crunchiness.

Lastest book read: 'The Bonehunters' by Steven Erickson. Because I'm waaaaaay to impatient, I ordered it from Canada. It was very good.

Mmmmm.... 15 Mbps

I love you, Utopia. Mmmm... broadband.

Now... if only I can navigate the many websites describing Wi-Fi on Linux, and which versions of which cards of which brands of wi-fi cards work consistently... Ugh. Maybe I'll just string a cat5 cable into the other room.

good 'n bad 'n plenty

Good stuff:

• Haagen Dazs Mayan Chocolate Ice Cream
• Subversion
• The 15 Mbps internet connection due to be installed tomorrow. Think of all the pr0n, and pirated music, and ... I'm sure there are other things on the internet. Pirated software? Pirated movies? Pirates? Pilates?
  
• She Wants Revenge. Creepy stalker music is the best music.
  

Bad stuff:

• Being the merge/build monkey at work. Some of it is good... I have a good view of the whole project. But, then crunch time comes around, and I'm the guy at the end of the line that has to integrate all the changes before passing things along to CM. Contractors are late with their delivery. Partly because of last-minute requirements updates; partly because of them thinking testing on a virtual Windows host under VMWare is adequate for a system that'll be deployed across 4 Solaris servers. I can't do anything but wait and watch as things come screeching to a halt. Right when things get to me. And I'm taking tomorrow off. And I'm wasting time writing this.
  

new york city, day 7

Forgot to mention about Day 5:

• While we ate at the vietnamese place near NYU, a man walked around the corner.
• This was no ordinary man.
• This man had a cat perched on his head.
• Definitely one of the highlights of the trip.
  

Day 7:

• We had some great weather for the majority of the trip... That changed Sunday. Rain, rain, rain.
• I loved walking around the city previously... Today, not so much. This could also be because I'd already packed and checked-out of the Hotel, so I was stuck in soggy shoes for the rest of the day.
• Walked over to the Hell's Kitchen Flea Market with co-worker #1. We were very early, so there weren't many booths set up yet. And, because of the rain, most people had tarps covering their wares.
• Decide to try to wait out the rain at the Cupcake Cafe on 9th Ave and 39th street. The sweet potato glazed donuts were very good. The rain did not want to be waited out, so we decided to go over to times square to finally settle on a birthday gift for Liz.
• There's a shop near Times Square... American Craftsman... or something like that, that sells these intricate wood boxes (among many other cool things). Bought Liz a cool little box with many compartments.
  
• Co-worker #1 suggested we find stuff to put in all the compartments. So, we thought we'd stop at places along the way home to find little trinkets or something.
• Near the cash register, they also had a bunch of cute little miniature animals made of glass, we picked up a few to put in the different compartments of the box. Hooray! Now we don't have to search the city in the rain.
• Wander back to hotel and have lunch at Brendan's Bar & Grill, across the street from the hotel. The interior was cool and art deco-ey (yes, that's a word). Met up with Chevan again to say goodbye and thank him for showing us around.
  
• Home!

Liz ended up loving the purse, and the box of many prizes. NYC was a lot of fun, and it was great to see Chevan again since we haven't really taken the time to talk for a decade or so.

Co-worker #1 gets to stay another week for the advanced training course. I'm a little jealous. Mostly because now I don't have an excuse to not do the work that piled up in my absence.

new york city, day 4-6

Day 4:

• More training.
• More food. Italian this time. Arno's. From the swarm of waiters to seat us and take our orders, I guessed that meant good service... But, they forgot about us once they cleared away our plates. Weird. "Yes, we'd like to see the desert cart." Then nothing. For what seemed like an eternity.
  
• Walked up to Times Square. Lights! Crowds! Applebees!

Day 5 :

• More training.
• Buy the purse for Liz. Just as fabulous... And, it comes in three styles.
  
• Met up with Chevan after work. He took us on the subway down to the World Trade Center site. Then back on the subway to find something to eat.
• Found a vietnamese place near NYU. Very good. Butterfly Grill. They'd mounted butterflies in glass cases all over the walls. Was very cool.
• The calamari appetizer was very good. Much better than the usual batter coated crunchy chew rings.
  
• For the main course, got the 'spicey frogs legs'. Good. But not spicey. Chevan and I act like an old married couple, "Oooh, that looks good. Can I have a bite?"
  
• For desert, the red bean ice cream. When it arrived, I got a prize. A piece of cardboard in the ice cream. I was stunned (and a little drunk), so Chevan came to my rescue and asked for a new bowl. And, we did our old married couple routine again.
  
• Took the co-workers back to the hotel, then went out for drinks with Chevan. It was good to have a chance to catch up and gossip about old friends. Haven't had a chance to talk with him one-on-one in a long time.

Day 6:

• Sleep in.
• Realize my voice is really hoarse after yelling back and forth with Chevan to be heard over the music in the lounge. Iron shirts. Hope I don't lose voice.
  
• Grandpa & Grandma (mom's side) have seats to the Metropolitan Opera, arranged to meet with them before the trip. Unfortunately, Grandma wasn't feeling well, so I just met Grandpa. Had a fantastic lunch at the Met and saw La Forza del Destino.
  
• Accusations of innocence deflowered! Accidental shootings! Explosions! Cross-dressing! Betrayal! Murder! With subtitles (via screens installed on the backs of the seats)!
• Back to the hotel to meet up with co-worker #1 and her cousin. They're in her room, watching 'Tall, Dark, and DEADLY!'. I go up to her room to harrass her, in time to see self-defense manslaughter delivered via boat to the face. ON LAND! I can see why they were riveted.
  
• Call up Chevan to see if he's free for dinner again.
• Walk up 9th Ave, try to decide which of the many places look tastey.
• There was a cluster of 4-5 Thai places. It must have been a sign from Jeebus. Decide on Breeze. The menus are presented in CD jewel cases. Odd.
• Once again, decide to go with the the kookiest sounding thing on the menu. It was a panang curry with squid, scallops and shrimp. Served in a banana leaf. It was very good. And it came in a banana leaf, so it was clearly the winner.
  
• Also once again, Chevan and I do our old married couple routine.
• As if it's not bad enough that we're eating off each other's plates... Find out that Chevan watched Project Runway too. He pointed out the places where they filmed on our way up to dinner. Parsons, Atlas, Toys R Us, Red Lobster. And Nick was his favorite too. And, Chevan also demonstrated his Santino-as-Tim-Gunn impersonation, as we walked by Parsons' and saw the infamous Red Lobster.
  
• Back to the hotel. Call Liz.
  

new york city, day 3

Forgot to mention about day #1:

• My room has a safe in the closet. Before I left to look around the neighborhood with co-worker #1, I made sure to set the combination and put my laptop and digital camera in the safe.
• When I got back to the room. I discovered the safe door was open.
  
• Oh no! I've been burglarized!
• Wait... Everything is still there.
  
• Oh no! I'm an idiot who forgot to shut the damn safe door.
  

Forgot to mention about day #2:

• The shower in my room is tremendously hot. I have to turn the temperature knob all the way to cold for it to be slightly bearable. I assume the cold-water thingamajig in the shower hooziwhatsit is busted. The hot water coming in the sink is very hot... but the cold is very cold.
  
• Had dinner with co-workers #1 and #2. #1's cousin lives in Manhatten, and came out to dinner with us. She was very funny.
  

Day #3 (I can tell my vast army of 2 readers is on the edge of their seats now that I've skillfully whet their appetite with more details of the previous day's happenings):

• Got up
• Went to training
• Back to hotel
• Dinner! Heartland Brewery & Rotisserie
  
• Sampler tray full of tiny beers! Hooray Tiny Beer!
  
• Wander around Macy's, concentrate on walking in straight line.
• In Macy's, the higher we went, the older the escalators. I've never seen an escalator with wooden treads before. Sweet.
  
• Back to Hotel.
• Check e-mail. Realize the networking change that IT is doing just broke something they set up for me a couple months ago... My downloader application is barfing error e-mails around the company, complaining that it can't connect through the special NAT-ed address to the remote office. Hooray e-mail!
  
• 11pm! Hooray garbage trucks!
• Watch VW commercials friend posts to his blog. Hooray creepy VW guy!
• 11:13pm. Car alarm starts going off.
• Sweet zombie jesus, NYC is noisy. Remember tray full of tiny beers! Hooray tiny beers!
  

new york city, day 2

• Garbage trucks outside from 11-midnight
• Discover the refridgerator in my room makes a odd, short buzzing/clicking sound every 15-30 minutes... All night.
• Up at 2am. For some reason. Back to sleep.
• Up at 4am. For some reason. Back to sleep.
  
• Up at 6am . Get ready. Wonder why I kept waking up every 2 hours... Obviously, Zombie Hitler and Orville Redenbacher are involved somehow. And, don't get me started on Ladybird Johnson.
  
• Mmmmm... contintental breakfast.
  
• Training class from 9am-5pm
• Conference call back to SLC 5:30-6:30
• Run back to hotel to catch up w/ co-workers.
  
• Go to very tastey restaurant, with horrible service... But, the food was fantastic. Ida Mae Kitchen-n-Lounge

new york city, day 1

Because my co-worker forgot her journal, I will post this here for all posterity:

• At dinner tonight, our waiter sounded like Fenster from the Usual Suspects
• At dinner tonight, the soup special was a sun-dried tomato bisque with roast garlic and sweet pee puree. No, that's not a typo... Well, it's their typo not mine. And, yes, we ate it. You could really taste the pee.
  
• I found a lovely purse at the 99cent store down the street (a black purse with a embroidered blond lady sitting in a animal-print lounge chair). I think my wife will get a kick out of it... So, I must purchase it to prove I'm not the world's worst husband for travelling (for work) over her birthday. Well, I'll probably get something else too.
  
• The Chinese restaurant down the street from the hotel had some truely nasty looking garbage cans waiting for pick up... Picture 4-5 large cans, filled with meat/fish off cuts. Thank god the weather is still fairly cold.
• When we got to JFK, who was there by the gate looking fabulous? Nick Verreos, Liz's 2nd favorite designer from this season of Project Runway. Now that the chance has slipped by, I'm kicking myself for not getting Liz his autograph and/or a picture.
  

As if I needed another post on my blog proving that I'm the world's biggest dweeb.

Although I'm back in software development, after a couple years of being in Software CM, I'm getting sucked into build / source-control stuff again. Which isn't bad. Not every developer likes worrying about builds, or finds version control interesting. But, once you've seen the difference between 'good' builds and 'bad' builds... Oh, lordy, do bad builds suck.

At work, we're doing Java. Which means using Ant, simply because nearly all IDEs support it. Ant isn't necessarily horrible... But, trying to create a build for a complex system can be very, very annoying. I've been able to whip our builds into shape using my new best friend, the import task. In particular, the nugget of gold buried deep in the manual's example for the subant task.

There's very little unique information required for a Java build -- especially if you're a nazi and insist everyone in the group organize their source similarly. Being able to use to share a common template among 10 (and soon 30+) components of our production system is going to save a lot of time and maintenance headaches in the long run.

That being said, Ant is horrible to work with. It's not just that the build script is written in XML... ugh. Creating a flexible build scripts with Ant is a pain in the ass, particularly when you have a large set of interrelated components that needs to be collaborated on, and dependencies to be tracked among the components (and thirdparty applications).

There are a lot of Ant extensions, but little in the way of cohesion among them, or a good howto or round-up describing them. Ivy looks very cool, but it also seems like it could be a bootstrapping headache... particularly if the network is unreliable..

Ultimately, I want a build tool that provides:

• Global dependency tracking for all components
• Ability to build individual components easily. Without forcing you to repeat yourself everywhere; and not force you to put dependency information in a single file, which would quickly become a merge nightmare
  
• Easy extension of basic functionality via scripting language
  
• Not force you to learn a _new_ tool-specific scripting language
• Not force you to use 3-4 scripting languages to do reasonably complex things. e.g. the horrible M4 + Perl + Unix Shell / MS Batch spaghetti mess that soon develops in order to do anything reasonably complex with Make.
  

Boost Build (based on Jam) is reportedly good. But, IMHO, the best thing since sliced bread is SCons. It is so nice to be able to use a single language, Python, to both define your build and extend the basic functionality of the tool. Having a fully functional scripting language as part of your build script is so nice.

When you only have to worry about a single application, it may seem like overkill. But, if you've ever had to build a large system of applications, shared libraries, manipulate text files, increment build numbers, etc for 5 different target OSes... Builds aren't simple and using the right tools makes a huge difference.

Speaking of development tools, a decent version control system is also invaluable. My new favorite is Bazaar-NG. The ability to work offline and safely rename/move files and directories is sweet. Another huge bonus is that you don't have to manually track previous merges between branches (unlike CVS/Subversion). And, it doesn't leave version-control turds spread throughout my tree.

Even if bzr isn't ready to provide version control for my whole organization, it is very easy to setup a single user repository. At the moment, I'm responsible for integrating the work done by our internal developers using PVCS, and an external consulting firm that uses Subversion. It may seem like overkill to throw a third version control system into the mix, but it works. It stays out of the way (no VC turds) and allows me to have 4-5 branches of development -- one for my work, one to merge from Subversion, one to merge from PVCS, and another two or three to experiment in. And, I can merge between the branches w/out the tool forcing me to manually remember what had been merged.

Books-I'm-Reading-News:

• Finished the Steven Erickson books I'd ordered last month. From England. Because I have no patience.

Where-I'm-Going-News:

• I'll be taking some training classes at our NYC office in early March. I plan to eat a lot of food from carts.
  

Time to start hoarding

Reasons why the paranoid survivalist that lives in my brain thinks we should start digging a shelter in the crawlspace, and learn to drive a dune buggy:

• melting Siberian permafrost
• shrinking Greenland ice cap
• shifting magnetic poles
• faltering Gulf Stream
  
• SUPERVOLCANO! SUPERVOLCANO! SUPERVOLCANO!
• Elephant Rage

I've been watching too much Discovery channel.

In what-I'm-reading news :

• finished: The Anubis Gates. Once again, Tim Powers rocks
• started: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman
• ordered: House of Chains and Midnight Tides, by Steven Erikson.
  

more books

It appears this blog is becoming a log of my reading habits.

Finally finished Lords of Dus. The first half of the anthology continued to annoy me, but I can almost say that I enjoyed the last half. Ugh. Like I said, I really, really like LWE's other stuff... but this was bad, as evidenced by the month it took me to finish it. I had to force myself to keep picking it up.

On the opposite side of the spectrum: I bought Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler yesterday afternoon; and finished it yesterday evening. I'm not a huge vampire fiction fan. But, I've liked Butler's other books so I picked it up. It was quite good. From the Washington Post review on Amazon:

"I awoke to darkness," the narrator begins. She's naked, badly burned, starving and without any idea where or who she is. She comes upon a group of homes destroyed by fire, but nothing looks familiar amid the cloud of pain and confusion. She can remember basic concepts only by trying to articulate what's missing: a bed, shoes, food. As a narrator, she couldn't seem more helpless, more vulnerable, more innocent. Then she chases down a deer and eats it. We're not in Kansas anymore.

Also purchased with the Barnes & Noble gift card was The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers. My brother-in-law gave me Powers' Last Call a couple Christmases ago, which I quite liked. Hopefully this will last me a bit longer than a single evening.

scandal! <*bum bum bummmmmmm*>

You know what's surreal?

Hearing your uncle-in-law mentioned on the Colbert Report as part of the Duke Cunningham scandal. The segment isn't available for download from Comedy Central's web site... but luckily Tivo didn't wear out as we rewind over and over to make sure we heard correctly.

So of course I've spent today googling up information instead of working. Here's a San Diego tribune story that mentions it. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here's a story in USA Today. Or... just use this google news link.

We hadn't heard anything about it till last night. Don't know much about it... other than a number of my relatives-in-law work for him, so if he is found guilty that could be very bad for them. Maybe we better clean up the spare rooms.

more books

Finished:

• Look to Windward, by Iain M. Banks -- Very cool! I'd heard a lot about the Culture from friends, and wasn't dissapointed at all.
  
• Excession, by Iain M. Banks -- Again, very good. I loves me the sarcastic Minds (immense, sentient, artificial intelligences); and the kooky ship names are great.
  
• A Feast For Crows, by George R. R. Martin. -- OK, but disappointing. It seemed to lack focus. And, it also upped the cruelty to the characters... which is getting tiresome, despite the fact that the grittier, darker world is one of the things I like about the series.
  
• Memories of Ice, by Steven Erikson -- I am all a twitter. It's hard to say exactly why I like this series so much. Like Martin's Song of Ice & Fire, it's dark. It's not orphan-farmboy- discovers-he-has-the-power-to-save-the-world. The good guys aren't just good for the sake of being good. The sense of a complete world with a unknowable history, and past civilizations is done very well. One complaint I've heard is that magic in the world seems to be overpowered... which I can agree with. But, it's still a lot of fun.
  

Just started:

• Lords of Dus, by Lawrence Watt-Evans -- I really like LWE's Ethshar books, the Obsidian Chronicles, and Split Heirs. So I bought the omnibus collection of the Lords of Dus series... I'm having a very hard time getting into it. You can tell its his first published work... or maybe that's me reading into it. Too flowery prose. Too much explanation of the character's thought-processes. Point of view seems to bounce between characters from one paragraph to the next without much warning. Ugh. Hopefully it'll get better.
  

Signs I am becoming an old man

As I near my 32nd birthday, I've realized the following:

1. Teenagers frighten me.
   
2. Naps are good.
   
3. I enjoy both the flavor and the functional properties of prunes.

P.S. Get offa my lawn!

Conclusive proof that I've always been a dork

Not that it is much of a shocker.

It struck me recently after a high-school friend's visit back to Salt Lake. Chevan was cleaning his stuff out of his parents' house, and found a Christmas card I'd given him... it would have been 1989-1991.

We were both into Star Trek. I remember making him laugh with my HP graphing calculator (48SX). It had a mode that'd let you draw on the screen. And when you were in that mode, if you pushed an invalid button, it would beep... So I drew Fleet Captain Pike in his wheelchair thingy and beeped at him. Comedy GENIUS!

But, back to the Christmas card. The artwork on the front is sorty of purpley-blue misty pine tree forest thing. It must have reminded me of Romulan ships coming out of cloak. Inside the card, I wrote:

Computer: Alert, Alert! 9 uncloaking Romulan Christmas Trees off the forward bow!

Spock: We have a 0.0090210 chance of surviving this ornamental onslaught, Captain.

Kirk: Dammit Spock... enough of that wild Vulcan logic... bring me today's scantily clad alien woman.

Chekhov: Tinsil streamers coming at us Ciptin.

Kirk: Scotty, give me full power to the engines! Now!

Scotty: It canna be done, the floosy-husit is blocking the widget-arm-mainframe-valve-matrix-modulator.

Kirk: Bones! Get down there!

Dr. McCoy: I'm a doctor, not a contortionist.

Lt. Horta (the first silicon based starfleet officier): mumble, mumble, mumble, etc...

Sulu: My thoughts exactly, Captain.

Looking back, I'm not sure how I made it through school without being beaten mercilessly.