Ramble On

So, I’m woefully behind on actually taking any pictures. Much less posting to my flickr account

But a few pictures of some attention-whoring Miniature Horses are quite fun. Almost as fun as the day the brown-eyed girl and I had visiting them.

So, the fellas threw me a bachelor party the other evening, my “man shower” leading up to the wedding. It was a rather tame affair, some football watching and beans and hotdogs and hamburgers and things.

Well, there was the stripper.

You know, I’m really not the stripper type.

But it was my man shower. And that only happens once. A man has got to sow some leftover wild oats, you know?

The stripper was fast and easy and a little dangerous. Just what you’d want.

The only real issue came when I took the stripper home. I mean, really, I wanted pictures, and we needed some privacy. The fiance really didn’t understand at first.

But she eventually did. And was rather amused.

Did I say “Yes”?

What I meant was what he said

Only substitute g/rss/s//atom/g

There’s a great reason I stay subscribed to Rands. Sometimes I’m tempted to drop it, because I don’t get a chance to really, really read him. And his posts are dense. I have dozens of posts flagged to read later and I never get to it. And they are longer than many of my own emails.

And that’s saying something.

But sometimes I take a moment and read one of them, in full. Twice even. There’s multiple topics covered, really. But two things jumped out and hit home. In introspection about a question about technology - asked by a Dean of the local College:

The next generation already knows more about computers than you do and they haven’t even made it to college yet.

The current generation never knew a home without a computer. They assume they have ready access to just about any piece of information… and they’re probably working on their own Linux distribution right now.

The point is actually about the the worthiness of the College experience in software devs. But I pulled it out to focus on the point I wanted to highlight. The current generation of students knows way more than we do about technology. Repeat that a thousand times until it sinks home and you begin to rethink about how you approach technology (*hint* you are already behind. So think more innovatively).

Something else I’d like to point out - and it’s not about outsourcing from America - it’s about making a difference and innovating, period.

* You can’t outsourcing creativity.
* You can’t outsource thinking.
* You can’t outsource passion.

Rands gets it. Do you?

l.m.orchard:

I’m tired of filling out profiles…

I’d really like our toolset to be here one day.

Examples of what not to do - courtesy of Yours Truly.

Although, you got to spill a little milk to get it from the barn.

No, I have no idea what the hell that means either. I just made it up.

But if you are going to screw up, you might as well let everyone know about it. So keep your unixhiearchysep - aight?

I’m absolutely fascinated by the Damn Interesting website - especially this story about the birth of FM Radio. I don’t completely know how accurate the stories are. But wow, they are interesting.

I actually like Mark Pilgrim. And drink recipes from the router is actually pretty cool

But I’m beginning to wonder if Apple Product Groups should develop a Pilgrim Number. Maybe the PilgriDoctorow Number.

(hey, pot kettle black for me. I’m sure there’s a YoungNumber somewhere for campus computing groups )

Joel Spolsky is running a great little blog essay series on three different management methods. While I don’t ever agree completely with Spolsky - and you probably won’t either - you ought to read them.

For the few managers/director-types that may be reading this blog. You really, really, really need to read the essay about Command and Control Management and make sure that you don’t identify with the subject of the essay. And if you do. You better seriously think about your own philosophies.

Joel sums it up with the Identity Method as his heralded method. The summary statement is:

In general, Identity Management requires you to create a cohesive, jelled team that feels like a family, so that people have a sense of loyalty and commitment to their coworkers.

The second part, though, is to give people the information they need to steer the organization in the right direction.

Dr. Phil Windley, comments on this too, addressing some of the points.

A quote:

For the identity method to work, employees have to be comfortable arguing with the boss and the boss has to be comfortable with that. As Joel says, if you give people information and then discuss the ramifications of actions with them, the group will typically come to a good decision.

I’m very, very, very thankful that I’ve had direct managers that knew that I wasn’t disrespecting them when I questioned (or even argued) directives that flew in the face of where I knew the technology was. And I hope that I openly encouraged the staff that I’ve managed to ask questions, and even flat out tell me that I was wrong about something, because they’d often know better than me. That honest, open, reflective exchange, being willing to admit when you are wrong, and building a core philosophy and vision in your team and letting each team member up and down the “ranks” contribute ideas/details/work to achieving that philosophy and vision is the only way you get trust and respect (and success) in your team.

Discussion Question

So when in the samheck are we going to get rid of the Fax?

Commentary

So let’s go down the list of things that are so early 19th century

• It generally requires an Analog line (1)
• The resolution is generally terrible (2)
• The general workflow with faxes is terrible (3)
• Security, Schmurity (4)
• Two Words: Paper Jam (5)

FootNotes

1. No, I don’t want to hear about internet-steal-your-money fax services. Or the fact that you faxed over your cellphone. I mean honestly if you fax over your cellphone, or you are applying a crappy resolution analog data transmission over TCP/IP you are a complete geek. But not a modern geek, you are like the geeks that build their own telegraph, or re-record your Peter Cetera on your way rad Edison wax cylinder. Actually the latter crowd is way cooler than you.
2. Okay, so I know that Group3 faxes are like 400 lines an inch. But really give me a dollar for how many messed up, illegible faxes have you seen. Now give me five dollars for each clean, clear, fax you have seen. HEY LOOK OUT THERE’S NEIL DIAMOND RIGHT BEHIND YOU.
3. Play along with the home game. Make word document. Print it out, fax it. Recipient gets it, carries it to the IT person to scan it in and give them a word document of it. IT person forces intern to use pirated 5 year old version of OCR software running on Windows ME. Which they do because Myspace keeps crashing. I mean really, why print it out when you can just email it to that person and 14 other people on the CC: line?
4. Like they don’t get enough practice already forging their spouse’s/significant other’s/parent’s signature already. <serious> Really, when are we going to allow digital signature admissibility? Sure, they aren’t secure, but it’s not like crappy resolution forged signatures are any better</serious>
5. Damn it feels good to be a gangster.

Okay. Discuss amongst yourselves.

But, hey, it’s a technical blog, and it is Friday. And I was going to be on vacation today, and may even call this vacation, because it’s almost work, only not quite. But it is Apple and Linux, and about developers, developers, developers and that is pretty relevant you know?

Okay, I’ll just shut up already - and link to Wil Shipley. Because if 50 people a day walk in and sing a… wait, that’s not right. Just read the article, because there’s choice quotes like:

It’s like saying, “Should McDonald’s worry because vegetarians are boycotting the restaurant?”

Although I’m a little worried about my paint now.

So you think you want to be a elite security researcher? Maybe, just maybe, hypothetically - one of your favorite open source projects releases an announcement touting a mysterious, but CRITICAL, GIGANTIC, MOTORCYCLE DEATH MACHINE security hole - so what do you do?

One, you could crash the python-based bug tracking system trying to read the code - or you could just download it and break out FileMerge - a great little GUI diff tool free for the spelunking with Apple’s Developer Tools.

Kick it off with Quicksilver (you are running QuickSilver aren’t you?)

And drag and drop your Super Sekrit Intelligence Folders, er, Sources into the comparison panes:

And Volia! You now can unlock the Mysteries of the Railsians. Quarters not included.(*)

(* It’s a joke man, they got that release out there aight? Quit your bitchin)

Surprisingly - a federal judge actually is sane, and ruled that Major League Baseball can’t license facts.

This is absolutely fantastic. Maybe the best ruling in the entire court system this year.

Now, just keep a clue going about copyright in general (and maybe software patents too) and things get really happy.

Wow, abstract routing isn’t all that cool. Particularly if you can game the routes.

And Rails 1.1.5 has its own problems too. As my co-worker said, expect 1.1.6 soon

Notepads and Carrier Pigeons for everyone. Just hope PETA doesn’t complain about the Packet Loss.

p.s. Yes, my theory was partially right. And now I understand a little more about the impact scenarios from people smarter than me figuring it all out.

For non-ruby programmers - going through the diff of Ruby 1.1.4 compared to 1.1.5 will make your head swim.

Although I have some theories now on what the 1.1.5 release was/is supposed to fix - but I’m not sure I understand the flow of things enough to be doing anything other than typing out of my rear when I say that. If my theory is correct, I’m confused as to the actual impact scenarios - but Rails has a pretty sizeable codebase (enough that we’ve maxed the inode count on a 3GB volume with frozen rails in the apps) - and I’m just looking at diffs and well, heck if I know actually.

Maybe I should start an Inkling Market on it. (that might be ironic actually)

(of course, my black helicopter theory is still wondering if this is a ruse)

So the happy little Ruby on Rails crew done gone and got themselves a security hole

Their release announcement certainly got my attention. And I’m honestly pretty reactive (”Problem! Problem! Solve it NOW!”) - so after a broadcast to our Rails-developin’ crew - we got on it and got our system and frozen rails up to 1.1.5 and the local dev boxes got there too (thanks Duff, Rafe, Aaron, and crew). But we are pretty flexible - we can move, and move fast still (and I hope that keeps up, although I’m not sure that staying with software releases is a familiar concept to all).

I like Rails. I’m happy we are using it.

But there’s going to be some absolute hell to pay in the Enterprise environments after a vendor announcement like that. This is going to be WAY fun to watch

p.s. don’t misunderstand the last statement. I take computing security very seriously - as I’m sure some colleagues will attest, with the occasional mention of words like “paranoia”. The fun part is that every good project has to grow up now and then, and there’s some growing pains. This will be a rather interesting case study.

It probably sounds completely weird, but one of my biggest changes in switching to the Macintosh is that I’ve actually kept my Macintosh as my primary desktop longer than any other computer I’ve owned. (Ok, so I have a 20″ intel iMac and a Macbook at work, and a bunch of servers to manage, so that sort of tempers things a bit - but I’ve always had relatively modern desktop and server computers at work, so it doesn’t temper it that much).

But I’ve actually had my Macintosh 3 and a half years. And it’s still going pretty strong. Really stong actually. Now, I’ve put a off-brand USB 2.0 PCI card in it - and 2GB of RAM. And I have a second 120GB HDD where the music files are sitting.

But I really don’t have an excuse to buy the Mac Pro right now. And I can’t really come up with a good one (getting married tempers that too ).

But I am pretty excited about Leopard. And I imagine that a 4+year old computer in the spring will make Leopard and a Mac Pro will be a pretty tempting combination

Sometimes in life, the title of your post isn’t going to have anything to do with the content. Sometimes, even in the era of the wayback machine. You re-read. And you self-edit. No words, certainly none of mine, in a moment of passionate expression could accurately capture the underlying desire for any project to be the best it can be. To model the best of the best. When you already have a history for speaking out and it didn’t work before - No matter how stubborn you are, you probably have to re-evaluate the expression.

Rudyard Kipling writes to “trust yourself when all men doubt you, but make allowance for the doubting too”

That certainly should be taken to heart all the way around. Starting with me.