People are the main thing turning this world around

We met with members of the infertility message board this morning, and it ended up being half the day, rather than the hour or so we'd planned on. Really a great group of people, and a lot of fun. Of course we also had fun last night at Buffalo Wild Wings playing trivia. To sum up, lots of fun this weekend, none of my todo list has yet been addressed. I did manage to blow a 250W power supply on my Mandrake box. Sigh. If I ever get my office put back together, and finish the finish on my computer cart, I'll put up pictures. I did put together an image resizing script that may or may not be useful to others.

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Whenever I'm around u, baby, I get a dirty mind

Mike1: If you get a call from someone with Seymore, it's one of our people. They want to talk to you about 508 compliance.
Me: Cool. Seymore?
Mike1: C M O R. Not like Seymore Butts.
Me: How did you know that's what I was thinking?
Mike1: Because that's the first thing I thought of when I heard it.

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Just two good old boys

SCO's stock is down 32% in two days. This is after an earnings report in which they reported strong earnings and good margins. Obviously, inverstors are not in favor of SCO's current "profitability through lawsuits" business model. My brother sent me a wonderful and hilarious SCO -vs- Linux Summary. I highly recommend checking it out, but be careful of spraying whatever you're drinking all over your monitor...

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It makes no sense at all

The term "data warehouse" generally refers to a very large central repository for all the data in an organization. These tend to be huge deals that run on large mainframes or huge UNIX servers. They run things like Oracle and DB2 that cost lost of money. Lots being measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. And they are, before all else, a database server.

So in our status meaning, we find that Mr X* wants an Access database to track all reports in the data warehouse. The room was silent when Mike1 said this. Anyone with any IT experience and two brain cells to rub together would assume this was a bad joke. We've all worked here long enough to know better. He reiterated "Yes, an Access database". Keith pointed out that there is no such thing as an Access database. There is a database, and there is an Access file, and never the twain shall meet. Mike1 shrugged and noted that it didn't have to make sense, it's a government project. I opined that if this were a commercial entity that had to turn a profit I'd be very very frightened indeed.

Also, just a tip to those of you out there who aren't aware. If someone asks you for an electronic copy of something, they probably don't mean a printout. More specifically, if you give someone a printout, and they ask for an electronic copy, giving them another copy of the same printout isn't nearly as close to what they want as you might think.

Quote of the day "Hmmm, I guess we can't look at the logfile to see why the app isn't writing to the logfile..."

*I'm not being obtuse, I don't remember his name.

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Will the real Unix owner, please stand up, please stand up...

Hmmm. It would appear that SCO is on less than stable ground. Not only do they not own the patents and copyrights to UNIX as they claim, but they knew they didn't own them when they filed suit against IBM and started claiming that they were going to sue all Linux distributors as well. Novell announced today that they still owned the patents and copyrights in question, and a quick check with the US Patent and Trade Office would confirm this. Novell further exposed the fact that over the past few months SCO has repeatedly tried to get Novell to transfer ownership of the patents and copyrights to SCO, which Novell declined to do. So SCO, a Linux distributor, launches an anti-Linux crusade based on false claims of patent and copyright infringement*. Let's look for a moment at SCO's revenue. Last quarter it made $21 million dollars. Over 1/3 of that came from licensing of SCOSource. Who licensed most of that? Microsoft.

Curioser and curioser

*if there is a claim, it would be up to Novell to pursue it.

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Psychosomatic addict insane, breathe the pressure

Sid Vicious meets DSM IV. Rageboy at his finest. See also DSM IV meets Pink Floyd.

Why do people care so much about what Dave Winer says. He's done some good things, sure, but I think his reputation is completely out of sync with his accomplishments. Note recent comments by The Bird.

Other than that, my brain is fried. I'll try thinking later and see if it works better.

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Everybody hurts

every

thing

hurts

Tiled bathroom floor? Check
Resolved leaking pipes? mostly Check
New ceiling fan? Check
Tear apart office and reorganize completely? Still in post-tornado stage
Built computer cart? getting there
Regrout tile in Mae's bathroom? Today

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Music has no meaning

Liz Phair rated a full review.

Madonna
I was going to do a full review on Madonna, but the album simply isn't worth the effort. This is the musical equivelant of Shanghai Surprise. Stylish, impersonal, detached from any sense of reality, and self obsessed. The first single is possibly the worst song I've ever heard from a professional recording artist, and the rest of the album is no better. Avoid at all costs. The Onion summed it up best

is jittery, tuneless, and shallow to the point of self-parody: If "Weird Al" Yankovic were inclined to do a gloves-off Madonna parody, he might write a line like the single's "I do yoga and Pilates / and the room is full of hotties / so I'm checking out the bodies / and you know I'm satisfied." Oh, and that line is rapped. Good idea.

Which is similar to my reaction on first hearing it.

Kelly Clarkson
Kelly Clarkson's is much less painful. Pleasant, unoffending, and imminently forgettable. Clarkson was probably one of the better contestants last year, but not the best and even the best amonst that crowd isn't much to brag about. This album should do reasonably well and if she can come up with her own style on her next album rather try and imitate the styles of as many contemporaries as possible then she might have a decent career as a middle of the road B-level artist. She has a fine voice, but her delivery lacks commitment and believability. It's simply shallow. Her lead single was written by Christina Aguilera and Clarkson simply isn't convincing as a forceful independent woman. Aguilera would've done better to keep this one for her own album.

Speaking of Idol, I've been listening to the "Love Songs" CD. Well, I've been listening to one song repeatedly. Ruben is incredible.

Third Eye Blind's Out Of The Vein is more of the same. Not my style, but if you like them you'll probably dig it.

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Flying without wings

Roooooben is the new AmIdol. Both he and Clay looked surprised, as it seemed like everyone thought that Clay had edged him out. Regardless, I think it should be instructive to the music industry that the three people in the 10 finalists who are LEAST like Britney Spears/Justin Timberlake/etc were the finalists. The music loving public was given the opportunity to vote on what artists they wanted to hear more of, and the interchangeable cute little blondes didn't make the cut. Not that they were bad, just that others were better. People want to hear talented singers who sing from the heart, and care a good deal less about what those singers look like. If Frenchie hadn't been booted for posing nude, she would have been in the top four easily, and quite likely could have won. Rather than foisting the next boy band, the next Robbie Williams clone, the next Britney wannabe on the public, why not promote really talented artists? People will buy it, sales will go up, and the music industry might stop losing money.

Kelly Clarkson performed twice tonight. I've seen her perform perhaps a half dozen times now. She is very lucky she wasn't in this years competition, as she wouldn't have made the top 6. She has a good, strong voice, a bland personality, and no breathe control whatsoever. Just walking around the stage she was running out of wind and flatting left and right. The girls from this year were running around, doing choreographed routines, and weren't winded at all and they stayed on key the whole time.

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what's in your mind not what's in your mind not what you wear

On the Metro today there was a middle aged middle manager from some unidentified call center enlightening his seatmate with his philosophy about the importance of dress codes and how disappointed he was that the company decided to go with business casual because EVERYBODY knows that when people wear a suit and tie productivity goes up. What a freaking tool. I've worked in a wide variety of work environments. I've worked in places where slacks/Oxford/tie were required, and places where birkenstocks/shorts/t-shirts would be considered dressed up. I've never worked in one where wearing a tie would improve my productivity. Being treated decently always did, wearing a tie never did.

Also note, the American Idol 2 Tour is being sponsored by Pop Tarts. Insert your own joke here, there are many to choose from.

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Can anyone make a difference anymore, can anyone write a protest song?

I took a little walk around Union Station and the Park Plaza at lunch today. There are dozens of police in the area, clusters of 7-10 at each entrance to the mall and smaller groups around the periphery of the park. Did someone forget to tell them the protest was yesterday? The main Post Office building has boarded up all the ground floor windows and added security, all the parking garages have uniformed and armed security instead of the usual blue jeans clad slacker. There are notices posted on every tree and pole along the edge of the park and a similar one on each entrance to Union Station. The essentially say that by entering the park/mall you consent to be searched. Any contraband will be confiscated. No cans or bottles, no alcohol at all. All signs, banners, etc must be hand held, not mounted on sticks. Ominously, the notices are signed, simply, "authority". Or perhaps it's a statement of belief. McLellan has an editorial today about how ridiculously the authorities are behaving. It does seem rather excessive. There were about 300 protesters out yesterday. They showed up, said their piece, and left.

There was tremendous concern that this would be another Seattle 99. First off, the World Agricultural Forum is little more than a front for Monsanto to lobby politicians around the world for favors, and simply not big enough (at this point) to generate the level of concern that motivated 100,000 people to travel to Seattle. Secondly, once the dust settled in Seattle it was clear that there was a handful of malcontents causing trouble there and they were shunned by the peaceful protesters. Note that all non-police issued reports on the incidents observed that the police largely ignored the armed vandals breaking windows and instead chose to focus their batons and tear gas on people who were peacefully protesting instead, many of them kneeling with their hands clasped behind their heads yelling "I am not resisting" as the batons came down on them.

While many are very critical of the St Louis Police (sometimes with good cause, other times without), they certainly have seemed to me in my time here to be far less violent and arbitrary than those in Seattle. I've lived in a lot of different cities, and witnessed a lot of different approaches to maintaining peace, and it seems to me that the police here do a good job of it without having to resort to violence. That's on the street level, however. The decisions made at the upper management level to do things like arrest the bike circus demonstrate a disturbing detachment from the real world. Or perhaps they've simply bought into Ashcroft's philosophy of "we have to destroy your freedoms in order to save them".

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I little bit of history repeating itself

The History Museum was awesome. While small, it is one of the nicer museums I've been to in terms of the quality of the galleries and exhibits. There are two permanent exhibits on the history of Missouri in general, and several galleries with special exhibits, one of which was closed for switching to a new exhibit.

Eyes of a Child, an exploration of growing up black in St Louis over the course of 40 years, is possibly the most touching presentation I've seen ever. The fight for Civil Rights is covered fairly well in the permanent exhibit, but it is made ever more personal and tragic through this display. If you can go through that and not be moved then there is something wrong with you.

Sidewalks claims to be closed due to the Eyes of a Child Exhibit, but much of it is still on display back behind the EOAC gallery. It is a very interesting collection of photographs of the city streets from the turn of the century up through the Depression, and provides insight into the only sort of history that is truly interesting: the daily lives of regular people.

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My apparatus is up to status

Notes from the status meeting:

G. wants to more of a bottleneck than they already are. I've never seen a file clerk with this much power. She is a file clerk. She now wants the application process to stop after the first step until she personally reviews and approves each one.

They are going to.... timebox the requirements. What this means is, for example, we have $1,000,000.00 for project X. Project X is estimated to take 12 weeks. By their calculation that leaves us with 3 weeks for requirements gathering, and whatever requirements we have at three weeks is what we build. Yea, because that worked so well last time we tried that approach with roughly those numbers. In October the gov't people were told to cooperate fully in requirements gathering and that it had to be done in 3 weeks. It is now MAY. I guess they meant for slightly large values of "3 weeks". Or perhaps there is some new definition of the time period "week" of which I am not aware.

The architect is gone. The second architect is gone. We will not have a third architect. P will be taking over as team lead (NOT architect) of the architecture team. There was much rejoicing, P is well respected and liked, and we'd rather he not go the way of the last two people who headed the architecture team. Between the Cube Of Death* and the Chief Architect position this place is dangerous.

Mike3 glances at my notepad and comments on the legibility of my writing. I respond "That's why I like computers".

Jury duty was everything it could've been, and less. But I got to go to Missouri Hisory Museum more on that later.

*The Cube of Death has claimed all three of it's tenants since this project started, only one of whom left the company by choice.

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And Justice For All

Today I fulfilled one of my civic obligations. I did such an effective job of sitting around in an air conditioned room reading and trying to block out the insanely bad soap opera (as opposed to what other kind?) that I have been told I should come back again tomorrow. Woohoo. At lunch I actually had to go to the library and get another book, as I plowed right through The BBC Reports. I picked up See No Evil and The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk. Polished off half of See No Evil after lunch, and if tomorrow is as eventful as today was, I'll be done with both by the end of the day. I was amazed at the number of people who brought nothing to do. There were a few professionals who spent the day either catching up on paperwork or on business calls on their cell phones, but there were an amazing number of people who just sat and stared into space or watched the painfully bad soap operas on TV. Why waste your time like that? If you're potentially going to be stuck someplace with nothing to do but wait for several hours, bring something to occupy yourself. Books, knitting, crossword puzzles, etc. I just couldn't imagine sitting there staring at the wall for 8 hours. But that's just me. I don't do nothing very well.

Driving home the deftones were on the radio, cohosting the afternoon show. The subject turned to their upcoming summer tour with Metallica and many others and to the show ICON, which apparently just did an episode about them. The guys from deftones, the DJ, his sidekick, and several other people let loose. Apparently the band are trying to make amends with their fans over the whole Napster issue (though several suggested they forget apologizing for that and consider apologizing for everything they've done since "And Justice For All"). Their approach? "Oh look at us, our lives are SO difficult, our jobs are SO hard, you should feel sorry for us." Hey, here's a thought: instead of complaining about only having 12 luxury cars with real gold trim and 4 mansions, why not go into the studio and record something that doesn't suck more than the people who didn't even pass the auditions of American Idol for the first time in like 12 years? I'm reminded of something I used to say to whining clerks when I was running Wherehouse - Music Movies and More (I managed there for about 5 years, and I never did figure out what the more was, since music and movies was pretty much it). The visual: thumb and middle finger rubbing together, I would say "This is the world's smallest violin playing the world's saddest song, get the hell back to work." The people on the radio were far less kind to Metallica. I'm an old school Metallica fan, but I think everything they've done since Master Of Puppets has sucked worse ...

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It's so much better

Mae has details about the ultrasound. All went well.

Warren Ellis (uber graphic novel enfante-terrible) has the quote of the week. Or possibly the century.

It's hard to describe just how much better the book is. It's like, "If the movie was an episode of Battlestar Galactica with a guest appearance by the Smurfs and everyone spoke Dutch, the graphic novel is Citizen Kane with added sex scenes and music by your favourite ten bands and everyone in the world you ever hated dies at the end." That's how much better it is.

And thanks to Blecha for reminding me about Ellis...

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'Twas like thunder, all through the night

Damn that was frightening. I got home from work and all the channels were covering tornadoes headed in our direction. We watched the paths on the radar and started doing what preparation we could (gather portable radio, flashlights, bottled water, batteries, etc etc) and getting increasingly nervous. We cancelled our planned trip to the gym and monitored the storm until it finally looked like we were in the clear. The storm moved south of us and headed to the Ill side. When we saw it headed for Jefferson County we called Freddy and warned him to get to shelter. Interesting stats: Since 1871 there have been 8 tornadoes in St. Louis City. There have been 31 in the County (if you don't know the STL area, the City and County are completely separate entities). The thunderstorms are still incredibly bad here (watching the lighting maps is incredible, it's basically the entire middle/south eastern section of the state is blanketed in lightning). I work with a lot of people down in St. Genvieve and over in Illinois, and I hope they all made it through OK.

Now would be a good time to note that I grew up in California. Earthquakes? Pshaw. No deal at all. I was in the big Northridge quake and the Loma Prieta. Not something to look forward to, but psychologically I can handle them just fine. I have a severe aversion (not quite phobia, but a good deal of the way there) to high winds and Tornados are just off the chart for me. I didn't enjoy that in the least. Tomorrow evening, we will alter our plans and go shopping for an emergency kit.

I somehow doubt I'll sleep well tonight. Another observation: Fox declined to interrupt American Idol for any weather updates, choosing instead to scroll alerts on the bottom of the screen along with an occasionally updating hard to decipher map showing random parts of the area sometimes with and sometimes without radar on it. We kept flipping to CBS and ABC and they pretty much dropped their regular shows in favor of detailed map coverage which was appreciated. I guess fox figured that getting those ad dollars was more important than possibly saving a life.

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Everyone is perfect and you're so lame

Ah, taking the bus results in me being in a much better mood when I get to work.

I'm all for trashing hypocrites when they get caught, but how does gambling qualify as immoral? I have no respect for Bennett and am actively opposed to most everything he stands for, but give me a break. He gambles. Big freaking deal. Many, many people left, right, and center, have noted that he is being criticized not so much for the gambling, but because he has always been the first in line to kick others when they are down. I can understand that desire, but I just can't get myself worked up enough about gambling to take cheap (if well deserved) shots at him. Which of course is wildly unlike the ditto-heads who have no problem attacking anyone they disagree with over the slightest perceived flaw, however irrelevant. Which reminds me, I've always considered Rush to be the freakiest screaming weasel of an idiot until I heard Michael Savage. Now Rush seems calm and rational in comparison.

[geek stuff starts here] BB has a very interesting piece on searching and metadata in the context of poetry and RDF. The ability to meta search would be tremendous. This is a fascinating idea, seriously. I think part of the reason so much content lacks good (or any) metadata is that many(most?) content creators don't know/care enough about metadata. I count myself in that group, under the excuse "not enough time". Now if you could come up with a tool that automates generating metadata for non-textual content, you've got something worth patenting ;)

No one ever got fired for buying linux.

Steve Pemberton replies very wisely to criticism of the increasing complexity of w3c standards. To summarize: Hard things are hard to do. Deal with it. This has had the added benefit of piquing my interest in XForms. In all my copious free time. [/geek stuff]

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Down pale corridors of routine, where life falls unatoned.

How precisely does "I need about 10 minutes for you to take a look at this one page" become a three and a half hour meeting, largely about what is the workflow going to be for this process that we don't know huge chunks of the requirements or business rules for?

Yes, thank you grammarians, that was a horrendous sentence. Deal. What a crap day. Not enough sleep, mind numbingly dull meeting, long discussion about wildly convoluted government procedures that would baffle any auditor, insane traffic due to the Billy Joel/Elton John debacle on wheels, and I inexplicably chose to wear a black shirt and slacks which really helped while sitting in the hot sun (88^o today) in my black SUV. Now to run errands...

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The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue

My pregnant wife was craving BBQ yesterday. There is a place on Hampton called Smokin' Al's, owned by the same guy that owns the wonderful Pueblo Solis, that has a great reputation. For some inexplicable reason we instead went and bought a charcoal grill. Yes, we have a gas grill. I hate cooking with gas. It doesn't taste right, and I don't enjoy doing it. So we got a charcoal grill and charcoal and lighter fluid and etc etc. I enjoy cooking with charcoal, and it tastes wonderful. We will BBQ a lot this summer. We picked the right day to do it, since it is monsoon season today. Good thing I already mowed the lawn as well.

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Hey look at me lady I'm just a little baby

I got to make my first geek pregnancy joke already. It helps to know that beta levels are HCG blood levels, HCG being "the pregnancy hormone"

(11:11:37) mae: I am overwhelmed. I got a letter from MOlly. We had the exact same Beta numbers.....
(11:12:29) mae: Twins
(11:13:17) rev: Oh my
(11:13:29) mae: Totally
(11:13:37) mae: Becky is convinced. She cannot wait to hear my beta levels on Friday
(11:14:20) rev: should be interesting.
(11:14:28) mae: oh dear
(11:14:47) rev: Is it really a good idea to go straight to beta? Shouldn't we be doing alpha testing first?

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Got that feeling - luck is just a little of it - I can't stop winning

So yes, it is true. You can now call me Big Daddy. Memorialized by Szaffie.

I passed Bruce on the way to work, I drove today primarily because I got a late start due to last minute tweaks to the Resolve St. Louis website.

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