Just a quick note - had my laser surgery done on the veins in my left leg yesterday, and all went well, they tell me. It was pretty uncomfortable and fitfully painful in a small way: lots of injections, at least 20-odd for local anaesthesia and 20-30 more for the vein-collapsing goo where the veins were too small to fit the catheter: and my leg hurts like a bastard today, as to be expected.
Now I have to wear a support-hose for a week and a half while the veins seal up and close properly, but the upshot should be an absence of blood pooling in the foot and calf, which would be very nice (esp the repeated stabbing pains that come along with that)
Oh and why does catheter sound like catholic? Well it's just a little prick, an awful lot of pushing, and it can make a huge difference to your life.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
eBay
When I first encountered eBay, oh 15 years ago I suppose, it seemed like a marvellous idea,and I took to it like the proverbial amphibian to water, buying unpainted toy soldiers, painting them up and selling them off (plus, adding to my own collections), all for a tiny charge, and with a global market - marvellous for a New Zealander used to being the back end of beyond.
However, with the progress of years, and the greater and greater knowledge of the Internet among the dim, the unwary, and - especially! - the sharps and con-men, it is one of the sites that seems to have deteriorated in value and virtue.
If you should choose to list by price, lowest first, you get one of two responses - either the "premium products" get listed, lowest to highest, before anything else gets listed (ie same result), or else you get pages and pages of 'accessories' - be it buttons, bells, or batteries - to what you wanted all listed first, being marketed by the down-market compatriots of the premium product merchants, still trying to get your 'eyeballs' before you get to what you want to acquire.
On top of that, some of the purveyors of tat seem to feel they can ignore all classifications and stick their products into any and every category of business, the more irrelevant the better - this is how, while browsing for some SYW artillerymen, I came upon vibrating groin massagers, handpainted portraits of Jesus on velvet (autographed by him!) and the miracle dog-collar that will stop your dog ever barking*
Even more vexing, if such were possible, is that once you find something you want to buy, instead of doing the deal with eBay and relying on them, they whisk you off to the vendors own websire, where you have to spend -more- time just filling out some inane and over-intrusive questionairre about yourself, and then get presented with some tiny writing asserting your rights (none) and their rights (everything) and directed to tick a box to show you agree to these rights, otherwise the purchase cannot be completed.
Well, being cranky, I've started reading these assertions, and as a result have declined to complete several purchases, for completely ludicrous conditions such as (a) absolutely no returns on anything no matter what - thats a popular one, (b) the vendor reserving the rights to charge 25% or 40% on top of estimated postage and packing, for reasons unspecified, (c) you agreeing to pay for any time spent in discussing errors in shipping and mislabelling, and (d) the vendor reserving the right to ship a different product to that purchased if he has business exigencies requiring this.
And eBay itself now seems massively disinterested in helping sort out any disputes, combining difficulty in initiating complaints with an extremely dismissive attitude and lassitude.
So, I've given up. I guess I bought or sold at least $50k worth of stuff through eBay, but those days are over - the girl has vomited on that train**
*If you tighten it enough, I'm assuming
** or if you prefer, Sick Transit, Gloria Munday
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Cat TV
One of the thing both cats definitely approve of in our new abode, is the glass patio door, as it stares out onto a grove* of trees, and a thicket of bamboo, which seem to be perpetually full of bird life and squirrels.
Our mighty hunters are happy to spend hours, watching and imagining the hunt they will have if they ever, you know, venture out there. Given their prowess in hunting - basically nil - this is the sort of pipe dream definitely worth encouraging.
However, we appear to have an interloping cat prowling the neighbourhood, a shorthair black cat also called Midnight!**
It has been most entertaining, as it will come up to the patio door and stare in, while our Midnight is staring out, and they seem fascinated by each other. The first few times, our Middie would slink off in defeat pretty quickly (long years of being cowed by Brandy conditioning this, I assume), but with the passage of time & the failure to get beaten up, she has gained some courage, and now stands making the most peculiar sound, a sort of half-strangled halfwhine, half growl, descending in pitch. The other Midnight just blinks and wanders off after she gets bored, however, so it's not exactly devastating.
I should add, the couple of times Brandy has been staring out the door, as soon as Other Midnight turns up, she fluffs up, hisses, growls, and scares it off tout suite, but then she's a bossy little thing at all times.
*Well, a few trees anyway! Grove is perhaps a bit grandiose
** Name discerned from a little girl wandering the neighbourhood one night, bellowing 'Midnight! Midnight!' in a voice that would do a brass foghorn proud for both volume and harshness.
Our mighty hunters are happy to spend hours, watching and imagining the hunt they will have if they ever, you know, venture out there. Given their prowess in hunting - basically nil - this is the sort of pipe dream definitely worth encouraging.
However, we appear to have an interloping cat prowling the neighbourhood, a shorthair black cat also called Midnight!**
It has been most entertaining, as it will come up to the patio door and stare in, while our Midnight is staring out, and they seem fascinated by each other. The first few times, our Middie would slink off in defeat pretty quickly (long years of being cowed by Brandy conditioning this, I assume), but with the passage of time & the failure to get beaten up, she has gained some courage, and now stands making the most peculiar sound, a sort of half-strangled halfwhine, half growl, descending in pitch. The other Midnight just blinks and wanders off after she gets bored, however, so it's not exactly devastating.
I should add, the couple of times Brandy has been staring out the door, as soon as Other Midnight turns up, she fluffs up, hisses, growls, and scares it off tout suite, but then she's a bossy little thing at all times.
*Well, a few trees anyway! Grove is perhaps a bit grandiose
** Name discerned from a little girl wandering the neighbourhood one night, bellowing 'Midnight! Midnight!' in a voice that would do a brass foghorn proud for both volume and harshness.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Retrograde America
One thing only occurred to me over the weekend, about the American politico/social environment - and to be honest, I feel a bit retarded for not having twigged to it 20 years ago.
Simply, America had its revolution 200 years ago, unlike say England & the Continent, and the ideas that got embedded were a lot more weighted in favour of large land owners, fat cat mercantilists, and social stability, and quite disdainful of the common clay of working people ... and while the 19/20th century social revolutions that brought up the power of the working class didnt completely skip the USA, to a huge extent all of it was just suppressed/oppressed/killed off.
I mean, I know how the Union movement was anathematized and slaughtered (quite literally), and driven into a headlong bullheaded opposition to corporations, which still lingers, but it hadn't quite sunk in, the extent to which all of the accompanying social evolution just got kinda ... missed.
More later I hope - this week bids fair to be frenziedly busy (everyone trying to cram stuff in before the end of the year budget thing!)
Simply, America had its revolution 200 years ago, unlike say England & the Continent, and the ideas that got embedded were a lot more weighted in favour of large land owners, fat cat mercantilists, and social stability, and quite disdainful of the common clay of working people ... and while the 19/20th century social revolutions that brought up the power of the working class didnt completely skip the USA, to a huge extent all of it was just suppressed/oppressed/killed off.
I mean, I know how the Union movement was anathematized and slaughtered (quite literally), and driven into a headlong bullheaded opposition to corporations, which still lingers, but it hadn't quite sunk in, the extent to which all of the accompanying social evolution just got kinda ... missed.
More later I hope - this week bids fair to be frenziedly busy (everyone trying to cram stuff in before the end of the year budget thing!)
Friday, December 18, 2009
Windows Media Player
I use WMP to play music on my PC most of the time, as I've loaded all my CD's on to it. The repro quality is OK (would be better if I sprung for decent speakers of course), but it's a bit ... weird.
Today I felt in a Wagnerian mood, so typed Wagner in the search box, and got a bunch of the usual suspects: Tannhauser, Gotterdamerung, Tristen und Isolde, Meistersinger, Der Fliegende Hollander .... and also a Little Feat song, "Don't Bogart that joint". This is wagnerian? in any aspect or tone?
It's far from the first time I've gotten this sort of oddness included.
Today I felt in a Wagnerian mood, so typed Wagner in the search box, and got a bunch of the usual suspects: Tannhauser, Gotterdamerung, Tristen und Isolde, Meistersinger, Der Fliegende Hollander .... and also a Little Feat song, "Don't Bogart that joint". This is wagnerian? in any aspect or tone?
It's far from the first time I've gotten this sort of oddness included.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Medical Month
Well this does seem to be the month for things medical. On Tuesday I had a cardio stress test along with being injected with radioactive tracer (which is a lot less fun than it sounds :), and the cardiologist was not entirely sure of the result - there was a shadow or occlusion over the lowest part of the picture, and it's not clear whether it is caused by a blockage, or just by the thick muscle of the top of my diaphragm, as this is forced upward by my excess bulk.
Sooo, tomorrow I'm off to the hospital, where they will put a camera on a tube up through a vein in my groin, to have a look at my heart. If nothing is wrong, I should be out by lunchtime, but if they spot any blockage, they will insert a balloon and inflate it inside the artery to clear the blockage & I'll be in overnight (mostly to ensure nothing funny happens post-op, I think).
Given that this all started because I was feeling periodic palpitations/heavy pulse, and occasional left-chest pain, I'm more or less expecting that they will find something (and presumably fix it).
Anyway, on top of that, I visited the Vein centre last week, to check on my swollen foot/calf, and they have found some of the valves in my surface vein network aren't working properly (so leaving blood to pool in the extremity, hence the swelling), so on the 30th I'm scheduled for laser surgery with them (where they put a tiny laser into a vein, trace it up through the leg and seal the problematic points. That would also be nice, as this is a fairly annoying condition - it kinda restricts my mobility a bit, but mostly just aches a lot and is generally vexatious.
So, hopefully start the new year a whole new man! well, bits of one anyway.
-------------------------------------
Update:
======
Well, cardiac camera show done now, and all good news: no ischaemic blockages or anything like it - a few small traces of artherosclerosis unsurprising in a 51 year old, plus a lecture on losing weight, getting fitter and eating better, surprise surprise. Still don't know the cause of the symptoms but at least it's not cardiac.
Sooo, tomorrow I'm off to the hospital, where they will put a camera on a tube up through a vein in my groin, to have a look at my heart. If nothing is wrong, I should be out by lunchtime, but if they spot any blockage, they will insert a balloon and inflate it inside the artery to clear the blockage & I'll be in overnight (mostly to ensure nothing funny happens post-op, I think).
Given that this all started because I was feeling periodic palpitations/heavy pulse, and occasional left-chest pain, I'm more or less expecting that they will find something (and presumably fix it).
Anyway, on top of that, I visited the Vein centre last week, to check on my swollen foot/calf, and they have found some of the valves in my surface vein network aren't working properly (so leaving blood to pool in the extremity, hence the swelling), so on the 30th I'm scheduled for laser surgery with them (where they put a tiny laser into a vein, trace it up through the leg and seal the problematic points. That would also be nice, as this is a fairly annoying condition - it kinda restricts my mobility a bit, but mostly just aches a lot and is generally vexatious.
So, hopefully start the new year a whole new man! well, bits of one anyway.
-------------------------------------
Update:
======
Well, cardiac camera show done now, and all good news: no ischaemic blockages or anything like it - a few small traces of artherosclerosis unsurprising in a 51 year old, plus a lecture on losing weight, getting fitter and eating better, surprise surprise. Still don't know the cause of the symptoms but at least it's not cardiac.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Welcome to America!
Well, I got to see my first real American guns last week - most exciting and scarey.
I was walking back from buying lunch, in mid-Little Rock, when I saw a minor car accident: two cars, heading in opposite directions, both attempting to turn into the same lane of the cross-street, and bang! meeting corner-to-corner. I couldn't say whether either or both were using indicators.
One car, driven by a black guy, careened across the crossing road, and up onto a car parking area. The other, driven by a young white guy, kinda stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Both of the drivers got out of their cars and appeared to be OK at first glance.
However, the car behind the white guys one, also trying to turn it appeared, managed to stop abruptly, just avoiding rear-ending him, and 4 young white guys got out of that car, all screaming something and waving pistols in the air. I suppose in retrospect they might have been replicas but they sure looked real.
I ducked back to the shop entrance I'd just emerged from to get some cover in case the crazy bastards started shooting, and the black guy across the road dropped flat to the pavement behind his car, but the other driver just kinda stood there. At first I thought they were screaming abuse and menacing the black driver but after a brief observation it seems they were yelling at the guy in front of them, for getting in their way when they were in a hurry to ... and I lost that part of it.
After 20 or 30 seconds, they piled back into their rust bucket, and careened off down the street they had been turning into, driving partly on the wrong side of the road. They didnt actually shoot at all.
Welcome to the wild mid-west I guess.
I was walking back from buying lunch, in mid-Little Rock, when I saw a minor car accident: two cars, heading in opposite directions, both attempting to turn into the same lane of the cross-street, and bang! meeting corner-to-corner. I couldn't say whether either or both were using indicators.
One car, driven by a black guy, careened across the crossing road, and up onto a car parking area. The other, driven by a young white guy, kinda stopped right in the middle of the intersection. Both of the drivers got out of their cars and appeared to be OK at first glance.
However, the car behind the white guys one, also trying to turn it appeared, managed to stop abruptly, just avoiding rear-ending him, and 4 young white guys got out of that car, all screaming something and waving pistols in the air. I suppose in retrospect they might have been replicas but they sure looked real.
I ducked back to the shop entrance I'd just emerged from to get some cover in case the crazy bastards started shooting, and the black guy across the road dropped flat to the pavement behind his car, but the other driver just kinda stood there. At first I thought they were screaming abuse and menacing the black driver but after a brief observation it seems they were yelling at the guy in front of them, for getting in their way when they were in a hurry to ... and I lost that part of it.
After 20 or 30 seconds, they piled back into their rust bucket, and careened off down the street they had been turning into, driving partly on the wrong side of the road. They didnt actually shoot at all.
Welcome to the wild mid-west I guess.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Tougher than that
Well, great news and bad news.
First, the great news, despite medical predictions and all expectations, my mother seems to have recovered from her operation: her kidneys have revived and resumed function, her lungs seem clearer, she's conscious and speaking. Not sure how her heart is, but this seems to be immensely hopeful!
Apparently the Thompsons are even tougher than I thought.
I'd write more about it, but my heart is too full of relief and joy.
The not so good news, my wife got fired last Friday (last thing in the afternoon of course, have to get the whole day's labour from her first). This is more than a little unexpected, as her employer seemed to have a high regard for her, before he got hospitalised with his own serious complications (pneumonia, kidney failure & other stuff).
But apparently his substitute, untrained and insecure, felt threatened by her competence and training and talent, and insisted on her dismissal because 'he couldn't get along with her'. As far as I can tell, that mostly consisted of a complete inability to delegate any work to her or anyone else, and to self-manage by constant flirtation with the edge of disaster and putting himself under unnecessary pressure (the old Hero syndrome I've seen so much of in the IT industry, basically).
We also found today that her previous wages cheque had been bounced for lack of funds. She got to the bank and cashed it directly today, so it's apparently cashflow, not malice, but a fairly good sign that the business is deteriorating rapidly - the october accounts weren't even sent out til the end of November, so the cashflow problem is just going to snowball unless someone starts actually managing the business.
Karmic revenge doesn't normally operate that quickly :)
First, the great news, despite medical predictions and all expectations, my mother seems to have recovered from her operation: her kidneys have revived and resumed function, her lungs seem clearer, she's conscious and speaking. Not sure how her heart is, but this seems to be immensely hopeful!
Apparently the Thompsons are even tougher than I thought.
I'd write more about it, but my heart is too full of relief and joy.
The not so good news, my wife got fired last Friday (last thing in the afternoon of course, have to get the whole day's labour from her first). This is more than a little unexpected, as her employer seemed to have a high regard for her, before he got hospitalised with his own serious complications (pneumonia, kidney failure & other stuff).
But apparently his substitute, untrained and insecure, felt threatened by her competence and training and talent, and insisted on her dismissal because 'he couldn't get along with her'. As far as I can tell, that mostly consisted of a complete inability to delegate any work to her or anyone else, and to self-manage by constant flirtation with the edge of disaster and putting himself under unnecessary pressure (the old Hero syndrome I've seen so much of in the IT industry, basically).
We also found today that her previous wages cheque had been bounced for lack of funds. She got to the bank and cashed it directly today, so it's apparently cashflow, not malice, but a fairly good sign that the business is deteriorating rapidly - the october accounts weren't even sent out til the end of November, so the cashflow problem is just going to snowball unless someone starts actually managing the business.
Karmic revenge doesn't normally operate that quickly :)
Friday, December 4, 2009
Mum
My eyes are hot
with unshed tears
uncounted
Time to fly away
my beautiful canary,
I'll never forget
the music you gave me
Fly from the pain
let the suffering stay behind
I'll miss you forever
with unshed tears
uncounted
Time to fly away
my beautiful canary,
I'll never forget
the music you gave me
Fly from the pain
let the suffering stay behind
I'll miss you forever
Thursday, December 3, 2009
eye not on the ball
Quoting from Matt Yglesias:
Thomas Friedman? Wow, Bill is really off his game here - I've repeatedly described Friedman as being too stupid to breathe without instruction, ever since reading the execresence he was pleased to call a book, 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree', which can be summed up as: "People in poor countries want to be rich, too. But that might not be good for us people in rich countries"*, only in 300 pages.
When they put him on TV as a pundit on - well, any and every topic it seems - I usually wind up turning it off after a couple of minutes as a less-expensive alternative to throwing things at the screen. One of his pearls of wisdom that springs to mind from recently, on the Afghanistan, started with:
"The three alternatives are, massive increase in force in order to smash the bad guys and win the conflict, stay as we are, or withdraw ..." which left me aghast. In what alternative universe do you win a guerrilla war by massive increases in force? And if it were even possible, where exactly would the USA conjure this massive increase in force from? The army and marines are about at the end of their tether with the current small boost in forces in Afghanistan, even a smallish boost in force, say another 100,000, would be completely out of reach on their current state.
Basically I'm just nutting off here: the wall of smug stupidity that encircles the seats of power here seem even more impenetrable than it was in England, hard though that would have been for me to believe before I got here.
*Cant remember who I stole that from, sorry to whoever
Foreign Policy magazine asks Bill Clinton “Who do you think is the smartest, most penetrating thinker you know (maybe other than your own family)? Are there people who should be on our list?”
The answer:
Paul Krugman — I don’t always agree with him, but he is unfailingly good. David Brooks has been very good. Tom Friedman is our most gifted journalist at actually looking at what is happening in the world and figuring out its relevance to tomorrow and figuring out a clever way to say it that sticks in your mind-like “real men raise the gas tax.” You know what I mean?
Thomas Friedman? Wow, Bill is really off his game here - I've repeatedly described Friedman as being too stupid to breathe without instruction, ever since reading the execresence he was pleased to call a book, 'The Lexus and the Olive Tree', which can be summed up as: "People in poor countries want to be rich, too. But that might not be good for us people in rich countries"*, only in 300 pages.
When they put him on TV as a pundit on - well, any and every topic it seems - I usually wind up turning it off after a couple of minutes as a less-expensive alternative to throwing things at the screen. One of his pearls of wisdom that springs to mind from recently, on the Afghanistan, started with:
"The three alternatives are, massive increase in force in order to smash the bad guys and win the conflict, stay as we are, or withdraw ..." which left me aghast. In what alternative universe do you win a guerrilla war by massive increases in force? And if it were even possible, where exactly would the USA conjure this massive increase in force from? The army and marines are about at the end of their tether with the current small boost in forces in Afghanistan, even a smallish boost in force, say another 100,000, would be completely out of reach on their current state.
Basically I'm just nutting off here: the wall of smug stupidity that encircles the seats of power here seem even more impenetrable than it was in England, hard though that would have been for me to believe before I got here.
*Cant remember who I stole that from, sorry to whoever
Business sucks
but small business sucks more, something I get periodic reminders of.
From Cat, of course, who gets the visceral reminders.
At her current job, her employer was hospitalised for pneumonia a month ago (plus kidney failure and other complications that havent been communicated), and is having a very shakey, slow recuperation - being an elderly (well older than me anyway!) diabetic smoker who doesn't keep up with his medication and regularly ODs on sugar, this probably isn't exactly astonishing, but it looks like he won't be up to daily appearances at the shop til maybe Valentines Day.
The problem with that is, he doesn't have a 2ic, and hasn't trained anyone to take over several of the more important bits of the job - like, ordering supplies, a fairly critical feature for floristry!, and sending out billing for regular contracts etc*. Worse than that, he has more-or-less delegated his authority to run the place to -two- people, one of his florists and the, umm, I'm not quite sure what her job is but I'd call her floor-manager.
One of the results of that is that things fall between the cracks regularly, but that is tolerable. More or less tolerable anyway.
The bigger problem is that neither is temperamentally suitable to manage - the floor manager is a wind-up merchant, someone who is perpetually agitated and tries to spread that agitation to everyone she works with, and is apparently feeling severely threatened by Cat (with her furrin experience an' book-larnin' an' stuff I guess). The senior florist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to work on the threshold of perpetual crisis - he puts off everything until the last minute, so is always putting himself under maximal pressure.
Of course, if he cocks up anything, what could be a minor & correctable hiccup turns into epic disaster, usually with knock-on effects on several other projects/items. I've worked with project managers like this, myself - briefly! - and I recall the enormous frustration and stress it generates.
How long Cat will last like this, I don't know. Possibly she will last til the owner returns, but it seems unlikely. She is talking about starting her own business: she perceives a market opening in the largest mall in the city, which has no floristry on offer, and if she can drum up some government grants for startup money, I think she'll try to arrange to get a stall or cart there to explore that.
-------------------------
*to be fair part of that problem is that he had to fire his bookkeeper for being crooked (and also enormously annoying), and hadn't found a replacement when he got laid low ... but he hadn't exactly made it a priority either.
From Cat, of course, who gets the visceral reminders.
At her current job, her employer was hospitalised for pneumonia a month ago (plus kidney failure and other complications that havent been communicated), and is having a very shakey, slow recuperation - being an elderly (well older than me anyway!) diabetic smoker who doesn't keep up with his medication and regularly ODs on sugar, this probably isn't exactly astonishing, but it looks like he won't be up to daily appearances at the shop til maybe Valentines Day.
The problem with that is, he doesn't have a 2ic, and hasn't trained anyone to take over several of the more important bits of the job - like, ordering supplies, a fairly critical feature for floristry!, and sending out billing for regular contracts etc*. Worse than that, he has more-or-less delegated his authority to run the place to -two- people, one of his florists and the, umm, I'm not quite sure what her job is but I'd call her floor-manager.
One of the results of that is that things fall between the cracks regularly, but that is tolerable. More or less tolerable anyway.
The bigger problem is that neither is temperamentally suitable to manage - the floor manager is a wind-up merchant, someone who is perpetually agitated and tries to spread that agitation to everyone she works with, and is apparently feeling severely threatened by Cat (with her furrin experience an' book-larnin' an' stuff I guess). The senior florist, on the other hand, seems to only be able to work on the threshold of perpetual crisis - he puts off everything until the last minute, so is always putting himself under maximal pressure.
Of course, if he cocks up anything, what could be a minor & correctable hiccup turns into epic disaster, usually with knock-on effects on several other projects/items. I've worked with project managers like this, myself - briefly! - and I recall the enormous frustration and stress it generates.
How long Cat will last like this, I don't know. Possibly she will last til the owner returns, but it seems unlikely. She is talking about starting her own business: she perceives a market opening in the largest mall in the city, which has no floristry on offer, and if she can drum up some government grants for startup money, I think she'll try to arrange to get a stall or cart there to explore that.
-------------------------
*to be fair part of that problem is that he had to fire his bookkeeper for being crooked (and also enormously annoying), and hadn't found a replacement when he got laid low ... but he hadn't exactly made it a priority either.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Approaches to politics
We're accustomed to thinking of liberalism and conservatism as parallel ideologies, with conservatives preferring less government and liberals preferring more. The equivalency breaks down, though, when you consider that liberals never claim that increasing the size of government is an end in itself. Liberals only support larger government if they have some reason to believe that it will lead to material improvement in people's lives. Conservatives also want material improvement in people's lives, of course, but proving that their policies can produce such an outcome is a luxury, not a necessity.
The contrast between economic liberalism and economic conservatism, then, ultimately lies not only in different values or preferences but in different epistemologies. Liberalism is a more deeply pragmatic governing philosophy -- more open to change, more receptive to empiricism, and ultimately better at producing policies that improve the human condition -- than conservatism.
Now, liberalism's pragmatic superiority wouldn't matter to a true ideological conservative any more than news about the medical benefits of pork (to pick an imaginary example) would cause a strictly observant Jew to begin eating ham sandwiches. But, if you have no particular a priori preference about the size of government and care only about tangible outcomes, then liberalism's aversion to dogma makes it superior as a practical governing philosophy.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Anniversary
Well, yesterday was our 15th Anniversary, so we went out for dinner to celebrate, to Acadia, definitely one of the nicest restaurants around here. It's perched on a bit of a hillside, with a series of staggered tiers of cedar planking, and beautifully light: and the hillside view I guess reminds me a bit of Wellington.
Had a wonderful meal, spinach salad then Duck breast, accompanied by a truly golden Hungarian Tokay - Cat had Lobster bisque and the pork tenderloin which was also quite wonderful - and generally talked about how amazed we were to have made it so far, and in such strange and unexpected directions. Somehow it seems our marriage has lasted no time at all, and to have gone on for as long as we can remember. The blessing of poor memory perhaps :)
Next month, on the 15th, is the anniversary I consider more important, 18 years since we first met: probably use that as an excuse to go out for dinner again :)
Had a wonderful meal, spinach salad then Duck breast, accompanied by a truly golden Hungarian Tokay - Cat had Lobster bisque and the pork tenderloin which was also quite wonderful - and generally talked about how amazed we were to have made it so far, and in such strange and unexpected directions. Somehow it seems our marriage has lasted no time at all, and to have gone on for as long as we can remember. The blessing of poor memory perhaps :)
Next month, on the 15th, is the anniversary I consider more important, 18 years since we first met: probably use that as an excuse to go out for dinner again :)
Friday, November 20, 2009
A little more cosmology
OK, second post for the day - I started to answer this in comments, but it got a bit unwieldy.
Martin observed:
Of course, the fact is that we exist and are sufficiently self-aware (ordered) to question why the universe is so ordered. I suggest that situation was _much_ more likely to have arisen in a relatively ordered (low entropy) universe.
Accordingly, the proposition that a low entropy universe was unlikely in some general sense is meaningless. Given the condition that intelligent beings are questioning the nature of their universe, I would suggest that the likelihood is high that they live in a low entropy universe.
It is a bit like knowing some one has thrown dice (each 1-6) totalling 10 - impossible if they only threw one die, unlikely if they threw 2 dice, but unexceptional if they threw 3 dice.
Bottom line - nothing about an event which only occurs once (that is, is truly unique, not one of a class of similar events) can be used as inference. Likelihood and probabilty are concepts properly applicable to repeated events.
The idea that this is true because we are here to observe it, has been labelled the anthropic principle*, and in the overall article, Carroll ... hmm, I was going to say addresses this, but actually he more or less just hand-waves in the direction of it without really taking it on board.
I have to say I'm decidedly iffy about the whole proposition of 'what the universe should be like' as it is so freighted with undefined expectations as to be untenable, and I have to concur that judging from a unique event is just a dodgy idea at best.
And also:
Of course the corollary of my view is that it is very likely (IMO vitually certain) that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere in our universe.
It is furthermore very likely that some of them (about half, for lack of any evidence) are cleverer and more advanced than us. Unfortunately, a race that is clever and expansionary enough to reach us may not be particularly nice (the nice races who are ecologically balanced etc will not have the same pressure to expand and seek out new frontiers). Our fate could easily be comparable to that of the Australian Aborigines - pushed aside by more powerful and numerous aliens looking to exploit the resources of our part of the universe in ways we didn't even know existed.
But it is also very likely that any aliens are all so far away that they will never contact us - so who cares.
One could also postulate that any race clever enough to survive and expand without poisoning their environment might have awoken to the benefits of cooperation and mutual assistance ... or just that they have already had a look at us and written us off as not worth contacting :)
But I agree, they are likely to be so far away that nothing short of gravity-radio (or something based on the Pauli principle perhaps) will enable contact.
* not spelled priniciple despite the persistent attempts of this stupid software to 'correct' it to that :(
Martin observed:
Of course, the fact is that we exist and are sufficiently self-aware (ordered) to question why the universe is so ordered. I suggest that situation was _much_ more likely to have arisen in a relatively ordered (low entropy) universe.
Accordingly, the proposition that a low entropy universe was unlikely in some general sense is meaningless. Given the condition that intelligent beings are questioning the nature of their universe, I would suggest that the likelihood is high that they live in a low entropy universe.
It is a bit like knowing some one has thrown dice (each 1-6) totalling 10 - impossible if they only threw one die, unlikely if they threw 2 dice, but unexceptional if they threw 3 dice.
Bottom line - nothing about an event which only occurs once (that is, is truly unique, not one of a class of similar events) can be used as inference. Likelihood and probabilty are concepts properly applicable to repeated events.
The idea that this is true because we are here to observe it, has been labelled the anthropic principle*, and in the overall article, Carroll ... hmm, I was going to say addresses this, but actually he more or less just hand-waves in the direction of it without really taking it on board.
I have to say I'm decidedly iffy about the whole proposition of 'what the universe should be like' as it is so freighted with undefined expectations as to be untenable, and I have to concur that judging from a unique event is just a dodgy idea at best.
And also:
Of course the corollary of my view is that it is very likely (IMO vitually certain) that there are other intelligent beings elsewhere in our universe.
It is furthermore very likely that some of them (about half, for lack of any evidence) are cleverer and more advanced than us. Unfortunately, a race that is clever and expansionary enough to reach us may not be particularly nice (the nice races who are ecologically balanced etc will not have the same pressure to expand and seek out new frontiers). Our fate could easily be comparable to that of the Australian Aborigines - pushed aside by more powerful and numerous aliens looking to exploit the resources of our part of the universe in ways we didn't even know existed.
But it is also very likely that any aliens are all so far away that they will never contact us - so who cares.
One could also postulate that any race clever enough to survive and expand without poisoning their environment might have awoken to the benefits of cooperation and mutual assistance ... or just that they have already had a look at us and written us off as not worth contacting :)
But I agree, they are likely to be so far away that nothing short of gravity-radio (or something based on the Pauli principle perhaps) will enable contact.
* not spelled priniciple despite the persistent attempts of this stupid software to 'correct' it to that :(
Arkansas people II
I'm still sitting around, slack-jawed in amazement at this story:
An Arkansas woman called the cops for a domestic dispute, not because her husband was beating her or anything like that, but because her 10-year-old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. Oh wait, it gets better. The cops show up and take this woman’s crap seriously, and try to put the little girl in cuffs and arrest her. For “disorderly conduct”. For throwing a fairly standard temper tantrum. But the girl, understandably at this point, if flailing around and refusing to cooperate with anyone, and so at the mother’s request, they tased the little girl.
oh, and also this:
I've almost become inured to the stories of criminally corrupt, inept, power-abusing cops in the USA (and Arkansas seems to make a speciality of them), but this, this is just ghastly. It's not corruption, just a sense of casual brutality and violence on a scale I had never quite grasped before. Truly, the police are the biggest and best-equipped gang.
An Arkansas woman called the cops for a domestic dispute, not because her husband was beating her or anything like that, but because her 10-year-old daughter wouldn’t take a shower. Oh wait, it gets better. The cops show up and take this woman’s crap seriously, and try to put the little girl in cuffs and arrest her. For “disorderly conduct”. For throwing a fairly standard temper tantrum. But the girl, understandably at this point, if flailing around and refusing to cooperate with anyone, and so at the mother’s request, they tased the little girl.
Now the little girl is in a juvenile facility and is being charged with disorderly conduct. For, again, not wanting to take a shower when her mother told her to.
oh, and also this:
I hardly know where to begin. That some people are bad parents, and might even think calling the cops on a 10-year-old is a good idea, is not too much of a surprise: after all, noone gets handbooks, it's all make it up as you go, and some kids can be real jewels, so to speak. That the cops would show up and agree to participate at all, appalls me. That they would use potentially lethal force and shoot her with 50,000 volts of electricity for throwing a temper tantrum is just horrible beyond belief.“We didn’t use the Taser to punish the child - just to bring the child under control so she wouldn’t hurt herself or somebody else,” he said.
The police chief said his department has never had to Taser a child before. But he said if the officer tried to forcefully put the girl in handcuffs, he could have accidentally broken her arm or leg.
I've almost become inured to the stories of criminally corrupt, inept, power-abusing cops in the USA (and Arkansas seems to make a speciality of them), but this, this is just ghastly. It's not corruption, just a sense of casual brutality and violence on a scale I had never quite grasped before. Truly, the police are the biggest and best-equipped gang.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
A little indigestible physics for a change
From deep-thinking physicist Sean Carroll:
If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. ... There are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. ... Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy.
Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omelette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system. The point is that our universe is part of a bigger system. Then you can start to try to understand why it had such a low entropy to begin with. I actually think that the fact that we can observe the early universe having such a low entropy is the best evidence we currently have that we live in a multiverse, that the universe we observe is not all that there is, that we are actually embedded in some much larger structure.
Wow ... interesting theory, I'm not sure that he isn't leading the data a bit, but it certainly has a certain plausibility, at least.
If you didn't know any better, if you asked what the universe should be like, what configuration it should be in, you would say it should be in a high entropy configuration. ... There are a lot more ways to be disorderly and chaotic than there are to be orderly and uniform and well arranged. However, the real world is quite orderly. The entropy is much, much lower than it could be. The reason for this is that the early universe, near the Big Bang, 14 billion years ago, had incredibly low entropy compared to what is could have been. This is an absolute mystery in cosmology. This is something that modern cosmologists do not know the answer to, why our observable universe started out in a state of such pristine regularity and order — such low entropy. We know that if it does, it makes sense. We can tell a story that starts in the low entropy early universe, trace it through the present day and into the future. It's not going to go back to being low entropy. ... Our best model of the universe right now is one that began 14 billion years ago in a state of low entropy but will go on forever into the future in a state of high entropy.
Why do we find ourselves so close to the aftermath of this very strange event, this Big Bang, that has such low entropy? The answer is, we just don't know. The anthropic principle is just not enough to explain this. We really need to think deeply about what could have happened both at the Big Bang and even before the Big Bang. My favorite guess at the answer is that the reason why the universe started out at such a low entropy is the same reason that an egg starts out at low entropy. The classic example of entropy is that you can take an egg and make an omelette. You cannot take an omelette and turn it into an egg. That is because the entropy increases when you mix up the egg to make it into an omelette. Why did the egg start with such a low entropy in the first place? The answer is that it is not alone in the universe. The universe consists of more than just an egg. The egg came from a chicken. It was created by something that had a very low entropy that was part of a bigger system. The point is that our universe is part of a bigger system. Then you can start to try to understand why it had such a low entropy to begin with. I actually think that the fact that we can observe the early universe having such a low entropy is the best evidence we currently have that we live in a multiverse, that the universe we observe is not all that there is, that we are actually embedded in some much larger structure.
Wow ... interesting theory, I'm not sure that he isn't leading the data a bit, but it certainly has a certain plausibility, at least.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Well I guess that's good news
Hmm, been a bit scary here for the last few days.
I started having a pounding pulse & rapid heartbeats, together with a pain in the left of my chest, not all the time, but coming occasionally and going. Rather hard and terrifying to think about, or try to handle, really.
But, I made an appointment, waited, and tried to increase my daily exercise in the meantime. It turns out to be a rather simple problem, a depletion of potassium in my blood due to prescription diuretics (to help with a swollen ankle/foot), so a switch of pill, and a potassium pill (designed for horses from the size of it) seem to be the straightforward solution.
Whew :)
One thing I'm relatively pleased with, is being able to look at the problem and deal with it at all - it used to be my wont to shy away/run away even when that was a terminally (bad joke) bad idea: for almost a decade I had a lump under my left nipple, which I tried really hard not to think about at all, until I gathered the courage to tell Cat (not long after we started living together) and she helped me get to a doctor to have it examined ... turned out to be a benign cyst which he removed with a small clinic surgery procedure. A decade of spasmodic bouts of worry and terror, for naught, pretty stupid really.
It would have been good to get over this idiotic attitude earlier in life, but, eh, so be it, better late than never.
--------------------------------------
Wandering off onto something less scary and more bizarre (OK, even more bizarre):
I keep getting pinged (er, stopped, queried, laughed at, asked to explain, whichever) by my use of strange words of excessive length and obscurity. Now, I know I do love strange obscure and antique words, but the ones I'm being hauled up on, I would have thought absolutely commonplace and normal. Just in the last month, these ones spring to mind:
Felicitations (on a birthday)
Loquacious
Eloquent
Elegant
Miniscule
Convex
oh, and numerous times, Fortnight - this is regarded as a seriously bizarre word in the USA for some reason.
On the other hand, I have to say I loathe the 'ghetto/rap slang' I keep having to deal with, online - pretty much invariably from teenage white boys wanting to be cool - and just to keep up my Grumpy Old Geezer cred, I usually refuse to respond to or acknowledge it, even when I understand (which ain't always).
I started having a pounding pulse & rapid heartbeats, together with a pain in the left of my chest, not all the time, but coming occasionally and going. Rather hard and terrifying to think about, or try to handle, really.
But, I made an appointment, waited, and tried to increase my daily exercise in the meantime. It turns out to be a rather simple problem, a depletion of potassium in my blood due to prescription diuretics (to help with a swollen ankle/foot), so a switch of pill, and a potassium pill (designed for horses from the size of it) seem to be the straightforward solution.
Whew :)
One thing I'm relatively pleased with, is being able to look at the problem and deal with it at all - it used to be my wont to shy away/run away even when that was a terminally (bad joke) bad idea: for almost a decade I had a lump under my left nipple, which I tried really hard not to think about at all, until I gathered the courage to tell Cat (not long after we started living together) and she helped me get to a doctor to have it examined ... turned out to be a benign cyst which he removed with a small clinic surgery procedure. A decade of spasmodic bouts of worry and terror, for naught, pretty stupid really.
It would have been good to get over this idiotic attitude earlier in life, but, eh, so be it, better late than never.
--------------------------------------
Wandering off onto something less scary and more bizarre (OK, even more bizarre):
I keep getting pinged (er, stopped, queried, laughed at, asked to explain, whichever) by my use of strange words of excessive length and obscurity. Now, I know I do love strange obscure and antique words, but the ones I'm being hauled up on, I would have thought absolutely commonplace and normal. Just in the last month, these ones spring to mind:
Felicitations (on a birthday)
Loquacious
Eloquent
Elegant
Miniscule
Convex
oh, and numerous times, Fortnight - this is regarded as a seriously bizarre word in the USA for some reason.
On the other hand, I have to say I loathe the 'ghetto/rap slang' I keep having to deal with, online - pretty much invariably from teenage white boys wanting to be cool - and just to keep up my Grumpy Old Geezer cred, I usually refuse to respond to or acknowledge it, even when I understand (which ain't always).
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Zombie pondering
What is it with the current fascination with zombies, and vampires?
Well not-vampires in the current incarnation: I know they went from scary detestable monsters who were sometimes charismatic and charming, to mostly-scary detestable monsters who could be sexy and handsome as well, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer added the (one or two) 'good' vampires. But the latest versions, vampires who walk in the daytime? Who aren't scary bloodsuckers but sexless adoration objects? That just offends my sense of literary propriety I guess.
Aaaanyway, I kinda get the whole sublimation of sexual desire thing, especially for the teen market: and I definitely get the zombie apocalypse thing as part of the whole live-through-the-apocalypse survivor thing - after all, it isn't me that's going to be one of the zillions of dead - I remember getting bitten by that bug reading John Wyndham's apocalyptic SF*
But the absolute explosion of both genres, and the way they are being massively over-exploited and over-sold, just astonishes me. It's like the geekboys I grew up with managed to lay hands on control of the movie/tv/publishing empires, and started ramming their own tastes down everyone else's throats. And I suspect that's closer to the truth than I initially thought, after considering it some.
Of course, part of it is the barbarity of Hollywoodland**, always travelling in a pack and falling on the chosen victim to savage, drool, and cannabilise the flavour of the month, something that's been snowballing since at least the '60s.
I guess part of it is also just a massed flight into fantasy, an unconscious (or not) retreat from reality - it's too hard, it's too complex, it's too depressing, at least when you think about trying to change some of the more intolerable problems on the collective plate, and it's all just too much. Hmm, sounds like an old geezer rant at that point, am I talking collective cultural senility?
I should add, I don't especially feel like this - so far, I still find the complexity fascinating, and I haven't given up on effecting change, even if in the most zen-like fingerdrops on boulders fashion.
I don't really have any conclusion to this, by the way, just rambling on, really. But I do have a picture in the back of my brain, of a movie theatre being picketed by a bunch of werewolves and ghouls, holding up Equal Rights signs (in between tearing apart customers).
-------------------------------
Update #1:
This was a real giggle, even if you know nothing of the books/movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTtmtAQwfY
Update #2:
If you didnt see the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Go watch it, especially the first three series: provided you swallow the basic premise, it is an amazing exploration of basic feminism, growing up, and the quality of heroism (the movie, eh, not so much)
--------------------------------
*Not just Day of the Triffids, but Kraken Wakes & Chrysalids spring to mind
** that is, Big movie studios plus TV studios plus the publishing houses they mostly own, and the gaming software houses, i.e. the whole Empire of Taste thing.
Well not-vampires in the current incarnation: I know they went from scary detestable monsters who were sometimes charismatic and charming, to mostly-scary detestable monsters who could be sexy and handsome as well, then Buffy the Vampire Slayer added the (one or two) 'good' vampires. But the latest versions, vampires who walk in the daytime? Who aren't scary bloodsuckers but sexless adoration objects? That just offends my sense of literary propriety I guess.
Aaaanyway, I kinda get the whole sublimation of sexual desire thing, especially for the teen market: and I definitely get the zombie apocalypse thing as part of the whole live-through-the-apocalypse survivor thing - after all, it isn't me that's going to be one of the zillions of dead - I remember getting bitten by that bug reading John Wyndham's apocalyptic SF*
But the absolute explosion of both genres, and the way they are being massively over-exploited and over-sold, just astonishes me. It's like the geekboys I grew up with managed to lay hands on control of the movie/tv/publishing empires, and started ramming their own tastes down everyone else's throats. And I suspect that's closer to the truth than I initially thought, after considering it some.
Of course, part of it is the barbarity of Hollywoodland**, always travelling in a pack and falling on the chosen victim to savage, drool, and cannabilise the flavour of the month, something that's been snowballing since at least the '60s.
I guess part of it is also just a massed flight into fantasy, an unconscious (or not) retreat from reality - it's too hard, it's too complex, it's too depressing, at least when you think about trying to change some of the more intolerable problems on the collective plate, and it's all just too much. Hmm, sounds like an old geezer rant at that point, am I talking collective cultural senility?
I should add, I don't especially feel like this - so far, I still find the complexity fascinating, and I haven't given up on effecting change, even if in the most zen-like fingerdrops on boulders fashion.
I don't really have any conclusion to this, by the way, just rambling on, really. But I do have a picture in the back of my brain, of a movie theatre being picketed by a bunch of werewolves and ghouls, holding up Equal Rights signs (in between tearing apart customers).
-------------------------------
Update #1:
This was a real giggle, even if you know nothing of the books/movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTtmtAQwfY
Update #2:
If you didnt see the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Go watch it, especially the first three series: provided you swallow the basic premise, it is an amazing exploration of basic feminism, growing up, and the quality of heroism (the movie, eh, not so much)
--------------------------------
*Not just Day of the Triffids, but Kraken Wakes & Chrysalids spring to mind
** that is, Big movie studios plus TV studios plus the publishing houses they mostly own, and the gaming software houses, i.e. the whole Empire of Taste thing.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Brandy vs the Vaccuum cleaner, part 2
Ha! there it is, dormant, dozing in its cave, unsuspecting.
Hmm, better be careful, I'll give it a good sniff, and scent on its' corners
Good, that didnt wake it up!
Now what do I do? Too tough to scratch, and I'm not going to try biting it.
I know, I'll lean against it and doze for a bit while I think of a better plan - that way if it rouses, I'll know straight away and flee, umm, retire to my defenses.
There ... conquered at last! I shall look for a trophy, or just ...zzzzzzz
Hmm, better be careful, I'll give it a good sniff, and scent on its' corners
Good, that didnt wake it up!
Now what do I do? Too tough to scratch, and I'm not going to try biting it.
I know, I'll lean against it and doze for a bit while I think of a better plan - that way if it rouses, I'll know straight away and flee, umm, retire to my defenses.
There ... conquered at last! I shall look for a trophy, or just ...zzzzzzz
Brandy vs the Vaccuum cleaner, part 1
Oh noes! here I am, sleeping peacefully in possession of My bed, and the terrible long-nose monster is coming to scream at me! What can I do?
I'll snarl and hiss at it, that'll scare it off
Damn
OK, I'll lay my ears back and really hiss at it, that always works
Except this time
Right, time to retire to a previously prepared position - run to the other bed, quick, and hide under it, before it gets Ideas!!
I'll snarl and hiss at it, that'll scare it off
Damn
OK, I'll lay my ears back and really hiss at it, that always works
Except this time
Right, time to retire to a previously prepared position - run to the other bed, quick, and hide under it, before it gets Ideas!!
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Inside the House - Living room
The Hearth room, where we're living really (Living Room seems to mean something else in the US, like a formal parlour). It looks a lot more cramped & foreshortened in the pix than it actually is. There's a door to the back yard in the far left corner.
Inside the House - Kitchen
The Kitchen/galley - the laundry is just visible at the far end, and the end door leads to the garage. There is also a kinda waste of space they call a breakfast nook nearest the camera (with the Dining room behind where the camera is)
Inside the House - Dining Room
The Dining room, still full of junk - that's the room we initially unloaded into when we moved, so stuff that hasn't found a home yet are just kinda stuck there - and the main bathroom. Ray discretely didnt photograph the master bedroom & bathroom, so I'll have to try & get that done this weekend.
Inside the House - Bedrooms
Cat's sewing room, the guest room & the corridor leading to the bedrooms/bathrooms
Inside the House - Games room
My games room, still in mid-unpack with piles of cardboard boxes everywhere *sigh*
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
House - the Front
This is a series of pix of the front of our new place - first (or last actually seeing they are shown in descending chronological order) of a series of posts today with exterior shots.
Interior shots to follow in a couple of days - I think I've used up my upload limit for the day!
House - rear view
This is the house as seen from the back yard (the flash Mustang is Ray's, not ours!)
House - the Yard
This is a view of the back yard, more or less panning left behind the garage then from the corner of the garage just visible in the 3rd picture.
House - the Bog
The first in a series of posts of pictures of our new place - Ray was kind enough to wander around with a camera when he was over, and as his photographic skills far outweigh mine (i.e. he has any at all), I took the opportunity :)
This series is of the south side of the house, which has a sort of wide alley expanding out into the back yard. The tall wooden fence visible is actually screening off the street at the front of the property. To the left of these pix, is our neighbours house, screened with bamboo (and not having a window at all on that side of their house!) so is fairly private - unfortunately there is no actual fence in that section, so animals can wander in (or out) without hindrance, something we want to correct so we have a safe outside haven for the cats.
Unfortunately it also has a real boggy area, caused largely by runoff from the (slightly uphill) neighbours property, something we are currently exercised about solving ... Cat (of course) is researching and thinking of solutions, such as possibly a wetlands garden area, and/or a water feature, or ..... we shall see!
The current drainage ditch (vaguely visible) isn't really doing it, plus it gets clogged with soil erosion fairly rapidly.
This series is of the south side of the house, which has a sort of wide alley expanding out into the back yard. The tall wooden fence visible is actually screening off the street at the front of the property. To the left of these pix, is our neighbours house, screened with bamboo (and not having a window at all on that side of their house!) so is fairly private - unfortunately there is no actual fence in that section, so animals can wander in (or out) without hindrance, something we want to correct so we have a safe outside haven for the cats.
Unfortunately it also has a real boggy area, caused largely by runoff from the (slightly uphill) neighbours property, something we are currently exercised about solving ... Cat (of course) is researching and thinking of solutions, such as possibly a wetlands garden area, and/or a water feature, or ..... we shall see!
The current drainage ditch (vaguely visible) isn't really doing it, plus it gets clogged with soil erosion fairly rapidly.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Ingrained
Well, we had a surfeit of guests - first Ray came for the weekend, which was, as always, a good thing: as more or less my only friend in the flesh here, and a fellow wargamer. Sadly he was pretty sick this visit, and we didn't get to play a game, just sat around, mostly bitching about how bad the current rules & lists are, and floundering about trying to find a superior alternative. The current leaders for that, btw, are WRG 6th Edition, now a venerable 28 years old I think, and Armati, also not exactly fresh out of the gate, but so be it.
As always though, we stayed up very late watching movies & talking ... well, yattering on endlessly to be honest, about anything and everything. One thing that does disturb me about Ray is his seemingly reflexive sexism & racism, which - I'm not sure - either underpin or grow out of his elaborate & well-defended republicanism/conservatism. I know this periodically drives Cat absolutely wild, and occasionally leaves me aghast too, but it's a bit late to be trying to change his behaviour, so we both let it ride: besides, he has been a very staunch friend, and is in general such a good-hearted guy, it more or less just puzzles me that he hasn't grown out of that, for some reason.
Then we had 2 of Cat's friends over for lunch yesterday while I was working from home. They brought a grandson, and also their mother, and while the others were smoking, I had a fairly lengthy, and to be honest horrifying, discussion with the mother. Her racism was not just overt, but a bit breathtaking. Of course, she would be in her 60s or 70s, and I guess it may not be untypical for her generation, and for someone who grew up in rural Arkansas.
Naturally, as our guest, I didn't challenge these attitudes - they were too obviously deeply felt and strong, and having a blazing open argument over it was hardly going to change her mind, just upset everyone & terminate the visit, and possibly Cat's friendship. It did serve me as a reminder that these people are still around, and still oozing their poison where their grandkids and great grandkids can hear it, and probably absorb at least some of it.
Perhaps I was wrong to let it slide, when I think on it: that is the sort of attitude that does allow it to continue to fester. But I don't seem to have a strongly confrontational approach, and that sort of thought usually occurs to me only far after the fact.
One other thing she said almost did trip me into a heated argument though, and it's something I hear a -lot- of in the US: 'Oh they ain't poor, there's plenty of jobs if they wanted to work, they just don't want to work'.
Of course, I've heard this arrant nonsense everywhere I've lived - it was practically a mantra for Robs' Mob, and for most of the National Party, and it's endemic in bits of UK society, but over here it seems even more widespread. It always drives me a bit nuts, especially in times like these when there's 11% unemployment and we're going through a fairly severe depression*.
The truth is, people DO want to work, with amazingly few exceptions. Even when it is barely more than the dole, and sometimes when the net (after transport & such) is less than it, people will work, at the most amazingly wretched jobs, for disgustingly little pay.
Waitressing in this country, for instance. The legal minimum wage here is something like $7.25/hour now - except for waitresses & waiters, who have a special exemption to be paid a minimum of $2.13 .... and trust me, the number of places that pay more than the minimum is extremely small, even in quite high-tone places. The assumption is that they will make this up and more in tips, and most americans who have never worked these jobs assume that they not only make it up, but make very good money on top, just from tips.
I doubt it, severely. From what I've read and heard, there are an awful lot of tightwallets who tip minimally or not at all, and most waitstaff struggle to even make an extra $5 an hour to get to the usual legal minimum. Of course in the tightening economy, tips are one of the very easy economies: while it is 'customary' to leave a 15% tip, it is very easy to squeeze that - plus of course quite a few people just cut dining out to a minimum or nothing.
Our visitors on Monday both work as waitresses in the weekends, and one - an extremely good waitress and very popular - used to clear about $100 a day on the weekends, i.e. about $12 an hour, which is, well, OK, but hardly overwhelming. This has fallen by over 50% in the last year, so she is now getting $50 a day net ... after paying for travel, about an hours' drive each way, it leaves very little money indeed. Naturally she's looking for a position closer to home, but - also naturally - there's damn-all of them available in the current situation.
I wish I could make these people who bang on about plenty of jobs if you want them, see exactly what rubbish they are talking: and what wretched jobs are actually like. But then, I might as well wish for the moon :/
----------------------------
*That's a word that gives me a wry smile: originally it was called a crash, but that upset people, so they changed the word to a crisis - after a while that sounded too alarming, so they just called it a depression, something softer-sounding and less scarey. Of course 1929 screwed the pooch on that, so they switched to recession.
It all means the same thing tho - the economy is explosively shrinking, shedding jobs as though it were deciduous. At one point recession in the 80s started sounding scarey so they tried contraction, but that never caught on. You now have the ludicrous situation that some of the TV talking heads, exhibiting their complete cluelessness, argue about whether the current fiasco is a depression, or 'just' a recession. Duh.
As always though, we stayed up very late watching movies & talking ... well, yattering on endlessly to be honest, about anything and everything. One thing that does disturb me about Ray is his seemingly reflexive sexism & racism, which - I'm not sure - either underpin or grow out of his elaborate & well-defended republicanism/conservatism. I know this periodically drives Cat absolutely wild, and occasionally leaves me aghast too, but it's a bit late to be trying to change his behaviour, so we both let it ride: besides, he has been a very staunch friend, and is in general such a good-hearted guy, it more or less just puzzles me that he hasn't grown out of that, for some reason.
Then we had 2 of Cat's friends over for lunch yesterday while I was working from home. They brought a grandson, and also their mother, and while the others were smoking, I had a fairly lengthy, and to be honest horrifying, discussion with the mother. Her racism was not just overt, but a bit breathtaking. Of course, she would be in her 60s or 70s, and I guess it may not be untypical for her generation, and for someone who grew up in rural Arkansas.
Naturally, as our guest, I didn't challenge these attitudes - they were too obviously deeply felt and strong, and having a blazing open argument over it was hardly going to change her mind, just upset everyone & terminate the visit, and possibly Cat's friendship. It did serve me as a reminder that these people are still around, and still oozing their poison where their grandkids and great grandkids can hear it, and probably absorb at least some of it.
Perhaps I was wrong to let it slide, when I think on it: that is the sort of attitude that does allow it to continue to fester. But I don't seem to have a strongly confrontational approach, and that sort of thought usually occurs to me only far after the fact.
One other thing she said almost did trip me into a heated argument though, and it's something I hear a -lot- of in the US: 'Oh they ain't poor, there's plenty of jobs if they wanted to work, they just don't want to work'.
Of course, I've heard this arrant nonsense everywhere I've lived - it was practically a mantra for Robs' Mob, and for most of the National Party, and it's endemic in bits of UK society, but over here it seems even more widespread. It always drives me a bit nuts, especially in times like these when there's 11% unemployment and we're going through a fairly severe depression*.
The truth is, people DO want to work, with amazingly few exceptions. Even when it is barely more than the dole, and sometimes when the net (after transport & such) is less than it, people will work, at the most amazingly wretched jobs, for disgustingly little pay.
Waitressing in this country, for instance. The legal minimum wage here is something like $7.25/hour now - except for waitresses & waiters, who have a special exemption to be paid a minimum of $2.13 .... and trust me, the number of places that pay more than the minimum is extremely small, even in quite high-tone places. The assumption is that they will make this up and more in tips, and most americans who have never worked these jobs assume that they not only make it up, but make very good money on top, just from tips.
I doubt it, severely. From what I've read and heard, there are an awful lot of tightwallets who tip minimally or not at all, and most waitstaff struggle to even make an extra $5 an hour to get to the usual legal minimum. Of course in the tightening economy, tips are one of the very easy economies: while it is 'customary' to leave a 15% tip, it is very easy to squeeze that - plus of course quite a few people just cut dining out to a minimum or nothing.
Our visitors on Monday both work as waitresses in the weekends, and one - an extremely good waitress and very popular - used to clear about $100 a day on the weekends, i.e. about $12 an hour, which is, well, OK, but hardly overwhelming. This has fallen by over 50% in the last year, so she is now getting $50 a day net ... after paying for travel, about an hours' drive each way, it leaves very little money indeed. Naturally she's looking for a position closer to home, but - also naturally - there's damn-all of them available in the current situation.
I wish I could make these people who bang on about plenty of jobs if you want them, see exactly what rubbish they are talking: and what wretched jobs are actually like. But then, I might as well wish for the moon :/
----------------------------
*That's a word that gives me a wry smile: originally it was called a crash, but that upset people, so they changed the word to a crisis - after a while that sounded too alarming, so they just called it a depression, something softer-sounding and less scarey. Of course 1929 screwed the pooch on that, so they switched to recession.
It all means the same thing tho - the economy is explosively shrinking, shedding jobs as though it were deciduous. At one point recession in the 80s started sounding scarey so they tried contraction, but that never caught on. You now have the ludicrous situation that some of the TV talking heads, exhibiting their complete cluelessness, argue about whether the current fiasco is a depression, or 'just' a recession. Duh.
Thursday, October 29, 2009
new lows in ineptness
Wow, the level of incompetence in the IT industry sometimes scares me. To think, these guys all needed just 50% to pass their exams, and with a lot of them, it really shows. This week I was drawn in to assisting in the installation of a new application, which the client had paid the software vendor to send a team (possibly of one, I'm not sure) to install.
First they asserted - repeatedly - that they needed system administrator rights to install it, and that the application would not function without those rights. This would mean they, and their application, would have rights to change anything & everything on the server without notice or control by men, including all the other databases on that server, which violates about four different precepts of security, not to mention client policies and the SOX law.
When I flatly said they couldn't have that permanently, they tried to bully me into it, and when I dug in my heels, they grudgingly agreed to find out(!) exactly what rights they did need: and I agreed to permit them temporary rights til the install was completed (and privately turned on all the auditing and monitoring I could, so I could track what they were doing*). It only took a day and the involvement of their Chief Software Engineer (!!) to find out this trivial piece of information (and I'm not entirely happy with what they still need, but so be it - if it causes disk blowouts, it'll get shut down - this is the farthest possible thing from a priority application you can imagine).
Then, they complained that there was insufficient disk space. I checked & assured them that the default disks set up each had over 100GB free. After several failed attempts, and a fairly complete lack of information and insight from the vendors, I tracked their actions (being remote from them) and found that the installer they had written compels the installation to occur on the system disk, in a fairly unusual location for any database to ever be installed, and there was insufficient space on the system disk.
This is just ... well, I don't have words for it. It's the sort of crap I encountered in the 80s when software installers were brand new, before people realised the need to conform to customer requirements. The idea that someone in 2009 could be so ham-handed and generally clueless as to compel this, just staggers me. It's like buying a new Ford, and finding the designer didnt include a keystart, but required you to use a crank to start the engine.
Having finally found that, I cleared enough space temporarily to allow the install, then shut it down (which was another amazingly difficult operation I'm told, tho I wasn't doing that bit, the Windows support guy onsite did: it certainly took half an hour, ridiculous amount of time to simply close down an application). Once that was done I could transfer the database to the appropriate disk and restart it, but this has really gone down in the annals of incompetence as a shining example.
Obviously they haven't sold this to many customers yet, or the volume of complaints would have drowned them, I think. I would also have to say that whatever the client paid to have vendor-supplied 'experts' onsite was money just pissed down the drain.
* * * * * * * * *
*I would leave this turned on all the time but the drag on performance and price in terms of disk space is excessive to indulge that concept
* * * * * * * * *
These all seemed massively appropriate for our workplace or our client.
Leaders are like eagles. We don't have either of them here.
APATHY
If we don't take care of the customer,maybe they'll stop bugging us.
CONSULTING
If you're not a part of the solution, there's good money to be made in prolonging the problem.
CUSTOMER DISSERVICE
Because we're not satisfied until you're not satisfied.
CUSTOMER CARE
If we really care for the customer we'd send them somewhere better
INSPIRATION
Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99% perspiration, which is why engineers sometimes smell really bad.
MEETINGS
None of us is as dumb as all of us.
PRESSURE
It can turn a lump of coal into a flawless diamond, or an average person into a perfect basketcase
PROBLEMS
No matter how great and destructive your problems may seem now, remember, you've probably only seen the tip of them
SANITY
Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can borrow mine.
SERVICE
View all customers as beautiful buds that must be cultivated, watered, and periodically buried under manure.
WISHES
When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it's really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you're pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it's death by meteor.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Third World Plumbing in a First World country
Cat actually asked me to write this one, as she's fairly terminally disgusted with the plumbing here, and I can see her point.
Of course, it's not Third World, we aren't talking holes in the ground, it's just kinda ... Second World, well intentioned, badly designed, appallingly constructed, which is how Russia has been described to me (often).
What really appalled her, in our last place, was having the toilets back up into the shower stall, while she was trying to have a shower. The underlying cause of that one was tree roots gradually crushing/lifting the combined outlet pipe, but she - well both of us really - were appalled that the toilet outlet pipe and the shower drain would be combined, rather than separately piped into the sewer mains.
Quite a bit of the plumbing, electrical and other basic infrastructure seems to be like that: just not well-thought-out, and often poorly implemented. For instance, some dimwit in the 60s thought it would be a good idea to wire houses with aluminium (sorry, aluminum haha) wire, which was cheaper, but has caused endless problems.
Another, and this still appalls me, is that the electrical plugs are largely just 2-prong, i.e. there is no earth! This is gradually being phased out (bad pun) but this stuff is still being sold and still installed in houses, despite the minimal savings and the truly lamentable lack of safety. Aside of anything else, it also means any appliances you have which have 3-prong power points, requires a converter plug in order to even fit (the plugs & sockets are also disastrously designed so that plugs are forever falling out of the wall - I have had it seriously recommended to me by electricians that you need to bend the prongs in order to alleviate this!)
Part of this is, I'm sure, because there are few or no regulations compared to NZ, England, or ... well, the civilised world*: and of course that varies state by state, as there are essentially NO federal regulations on anything like this. Part of it - and I'm sure a lot of Americans would say all of it - is that we're in Arkansas, which is regarded as relatively backward & third-worldish by most of the USA**. But a lot of it is just the cut-the-corners, minimise-everything attitude that has become more and more prevalent with the last 5 decades or so.
Bah, youngsters today! Standards are falling! Everything is worse!!
But seriously, I've had people I work with, supposedly educated and intelligent, tell me that many houses*** are, and should be, built to only last 30 years because they'll get pulled down and replaced after that anyway. Which (a) I doubt, and (b) results in insta-slums, because they look like crap after one year, and start literally falling apart after 2. Cost-efficient for the builder, I'm sure, not so much for the owner.
That, again, is a kind of tangent though, because the plumbing, electrical & stuff I am ranting about is in middle-class housing - pretty much all the houses we looked at buying, and at least the next tranche above, i.e. the ones we looked at but couldnt have afforded, all had these afflictions. I am assuming that the really affluent houses don't ... but when I stop to think about it, I'm probably wrong about that too: this is more a disease of the spirit than an absence of wealth: the shonky fly-by-night attitude of casual disregard.
Enough grumpy old rants for one day :)
*yes that's a bit harsh, I agree.
**except for Mississippi and Alabama which in the same boat
*** Many = poor peoples, i.e. black people and po' white trash
Of course, it's not Third World, we aren't talking holes in the ground, it's just kinda ... Second World, well intentioned, badly designed, appallingly constructed, which is how Russia has been described to me (often).
What really appalled her, in our last place, was having the toilets back up into the shower stall, while she was trying to have a shower. The underlying cause of that one was tree roots gradually crushing/lifting the combined outlet pipe, but she - well both of us really - were appalled that the toilet outlet pipe and the shower drain would be combined, rather than separately piped into the sewer mains.
Quite a bit of the plumbing, electrical and other basic infrastructure seems to be like that: just not well-thought-out, and often poorly implemented. For instance, some dimwit in the 60s thought it would be a good idea to wire houses with aluminium (sorry, aluminum haha) wire, which was cheaper, but has caused endless problems.
Another, and this still appalls me, is that the electrical plugs are largely just 2-prong, i.e. there is no earth! This is gradually being phased out (bad pun) but this stuff is still being sold and still installed in houses, despite the minimal savings and the truly lamentable lack of safety. Aside of anything else, it also means any appliances you have which have 3-prong power points, requires a converter plug in order to even fit (the plugs & sockets are also disastrously designed so that plugs are forever falling out of the wall - I have had it seriously recommended to me by electricians that you need to bend the prongs in order to alleviate this!)
Part of this is, I'm sure, because there are few or no regulations compared to NZ, England, or ... well, the civilised world*: and of course that varies state by state, as there are essentially NO federal regulations on anything like this. Part of it - and I'm sure a lot of Americans would say all of it - is that we're in Arkansas, which is regarded as relatively backward & third-worldish by most of the USA**. But a lot of it is just the cut-the-corners, minimise-everything attitude that has become more and more prevalent with the last 5 decades or so.
Bah, youngsters today! Standards are falling! Everything is worse!!
But seriously, I've had people I work with, supposedly educated and intelligent, tell me that many houses*** are, and should be, built to only last 30 years because they'll get pulled down and replaced after that anyway. Which (a) I doubt, and (b) results in insta-slums, because they look like crap after one year, and start literally falling apart after 2. Cost-efficient for the builder, I'm sure, not so much for the owner.
That, again, is a kind of tangent though, because the plumbing, electrical & stuff I am ranting about is in middle-class housing - pretty much all the houses we looked at buying, and at least the next tranche above, i.e. the ones we looked at but couldnt have afforded, all had these afflictions. I am assuming that the really affluent houses don't ... but when I stop to think about it, I'm probably wrong about that too: this is more a disease of the spirit than an absence of wealth: the shonky fly-by-night attitude of casual disregard.
Enough grumpy old rants for one day :)
*yes that's a bit harsh, I agree.
**except for Mississippi and Alabama which in the same boat
*** Many = poor peoples, i.e. black people and po' white trash
Friday, October 23, 2009
OMG you're going to put THAT in your mouth?
I found this hilarious - a plaintive complaint from Sarah, a Kiwi girl who lived in Chicago for 10 years and has just gone back home to live. I can well imagine after getting acclimated to US food, adjusting back to rill-kiwi-fuud will be a struggle: it sure is, going the other way.
Not that the food here is bad, per se - unlike England, it is much more palatable. It's just so incredibly processed, usually sweetened, and .... odd. Grits, something I was curious about, turn out to just be porridge, or a minor variant on it.
On the other hand, we had Carol & BJ (sisters) over for a cooked lunch a while ago, and did a roast of pork & roast veges - potatoes, sweet potato (no kumara duh!), roast carrot & parsnip & pumpkin, and it was like a revelation to them: apparently roasting has just disappeared from the american concepts of how to cook.
Ah, and ambushed again - more P1 tickets at work. I'll try to come back & edit this later to add to it.
UPDATE:
well, more of an addenda really :)
Eh, and Fridays used to be so peaceful - with half the client staff working flexi-fortnights and taking Fridays off, there wasn't a large volume of calls. Something however seems to have changed, and we are getting a steady stream of emergency-fix calls (rated Priority 1) on Fridays, to deploy changes to the application software. I suspect this may revolve around the turnover in developers, plus Thursday being the day for standard fix deployment, i.e. we're getting an upsurge in standard fixes that arent doing what they are meant to do, and noone wants to admit this and just roll back the fix ..... which is what they're meant to do of course, but that would blot their copybooks & make them look bad.
I sometimes think the role of perverse incentives in our management organisations is underestimated.
Not that the food here is bad, per se - unlike England, it is much more palatable. It's just so incredibly processed, usually sweetened, and .... odd. Grits, something I was curious about, turn out to just be porridge, or a minor variant on it.
On the other hand, we had Carol & BJ (sisters) over for a cooked lunch a while ago, and did a roast of pork & roast veges - potatoes, sweet potato (no kumara duh!), roast carrot & parsnip & pumpkin, and it was like a revelation to them: apparently roasting has just disappeared from the american concepts of how to cook.
Ah, and ambushed again - more P1 tickets at work. I'll try to come back & edit this later to add to it.
UPDATE:
well, more of an addenda really :)
Eh, and Fridays used to be so peaceful - with half the client staff working flexi-fortnights and taking Fridays off, there wasn't a large volume of calls. Something however seems to have changed, and we are getting a steady stream of emergency-fix calls (rated Priority 1) on Fridays, to deploy changes to the application software. I suspect this may revolve around the turnover in developers, plus Thursday being the day for standard fix deployment, i.e. we're getting an upsurge in standard fixes that arent doing what they are meant to do, and noone wants to admit this and just roll back the fix ..... which is what they're meant to do of course, but that would blot their copybooks & make them look bad.
I sometimes think the role of perverse incentives in our management organisations is underestimated.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Well things are a bit busy here, as the other fulltime DBA ('S') is off in Florida this week, looking after his mother & father, after his Dad had a (mild) heart attack. I'm not sure what constitutes a mild heart attack - any nonfatal one? - but it can't be fun. So I'm trying to cover his work as well, making things a bit busier than usual.
Plus people seem to be having an attack of the stupids this week, as I keep getting calls referred to our team that have nothing to do with us - in some cases, wildly wide of the mark in fact. I suspect we're treated as a bit of a dumping ground for puzzle calls.
Which is nothing very new: it's always been the case that if an error or problem doesn't have a clearly identified home, everyone usually starts by blaming (a) the database, (b) the network, and (c) security, before actually thinking what might be the actual root cause. I don't mind a certain amount of this, but it seems to be getting a bit out of hand on this contract.
One thing I found both amusing and alarming, is that with the advent of our new boss a couple of months ago, the amount of stuff we are having to deal with has risen sharply, primarily because he is visibly not up to the job and has no real understanding of what we are doing, and no willingness to learn it.
He has decided that we need a 'Team Lead' to coordinate the three (or 2.5) of us, and approached the other DBA to get him to take this on. As this is unremunerated and unrewarded, I suggested he politely (or not) decline it, but as S is a lot younger and less cynical than me, he accepted it, and is now regretting it. Naturally what this has meant is that our boss has shoved all the responsibilities and reporting for our section onto S, increasing his workload.
He didn't approach me on this, which is probably wise - I'm not sure if he correctly assessed my attitude to the idea, or just prefers not to deal with me as foreign, old & cynical, or some other issue. This doesn't concern me greatly, I must say. Even if the role were official and remunerated, I wouldn't have been interested - I've been a manager a few times now, and I know that (a) I'm pretty crap at parts of it, and (b) I hate all of the role, it's not what interests me or what I enjoy in the least.
What does disturb me is that now I have (a) an unofficial Team Lead with no real authority or review, (b) A Site manager - the boss I'm referring to above - who is essentially uninterested, and (c) a Line manager in New Orleans, who is utterly and completely detached and almost unaware of my existence. The latter manager was originally instituted as an 'emergency' measure when they dismissed the New Orleans DBA manager, and drafted this guy in, as he was already manager of the Data Warehouse team, a closely related field.
In some ways I can see his problem - he's gotten a geopgraphically dispersed team* of 16 or 18 dumped in his lap, when he's already managing about a dozen direct reports (how big his overall existing team was, I dont know). This is asking an awful lot of anyone to manage. But my company, or his boss, need a firm kick up the arse about this, as it's been going on for almost 18 months, and essentially means the DBA group are completely unmanaged.
In that time, I have heard from him twice - once to remind me to put in an overdue timesheet, and once at annual review, which brought a whole new meaning to the word farce - as he has literally NO idea what I'm doing, or any of the details of my client, or indeed of my existence really, all he could do was parrot what the site manager had written. What the point of that was, other than to tick boxes for the HR department, really noone could say. None, of course.
I have no real expectation this will change in the next year, though - while our company pays loud and frequent lipservice to the notions of ethical behaviour and appropriate management, it has never shown any least sign of actual actions to back that up (having gone through the ethics process several times, I can attest to this at some and bitter length).
OH well, back to work
*using 'team' in a completely spurious fashion of course - we are in several locations, we are working on different contracts, we are performing some different functions, we never meet, we don't even share any work or techniques. How this makes a team is a mystery.
Plus people seem to be having an attack of the stupids this week, as I keep getting calls referred to our team that have nothing to do with us - in some cases, wildly wide of the mark in fact. I suspect we're treated as a bit of a dumping ground for puzzle calls.
Which is nothing very new: it's always been the case that if an error or problem doesn't have a clearly identified home, everyone usually starts by blaming (a) the database, (b) the network, and (c) security, before actually thinking what might be the actual root cause. I don't mind a certain amount of this, but it seems to be getting a bit out of hand on this contract.
One thing I found both amusing and alarming, is that with the advent of our new boss a couple of months ago, the amount of stuff we are having to deal with has risen sharply, primarily because he is visibly not up to the job and has no real understanding of what we are doing, and no willingness to learn it.
He has decided that we need a 'Team Lead' to coordinate the three (or 2.5) of us, and approached the other DBA to get him to take this on. As this is unremunerated and unrewarded, I suggested he politely (or not) decline it, but as S is a lot younger and less cynical than me, he accepted it, and is now regretting it. Naturally what this has meant is that our boss has shoved all the responsibilities and reporting for our section onto S, increasing his workload.
He didn't approach me on this, which is probably wise - I'm not sure if he correctly assessed my attitude to the idea, or just prefers not to deal with me as foreign, old & cynical, or some other issue. This doesn't concern me greatly, I must say. Even if the role were official and remunerated, I wouldn't have been interested - I've been a manager a few times now, and I know that (a) I'm pretty crap at parts of it, and (b) I hate all of the role, it's not what interests me or what I enjoy in the least.
What does disturb me is that now I have (a) an unofficial Team Lead with no real authority or review, (b) A Site manager - the boss I'm referring to above - who is essentially uninterested, and (c) a Line manager in New Orleans, who is utterly and completely detached and almost unaware of my existence. The latter manager was originally instituted as an 'emergency' measure when they dismissed the New Orleans DBA manager, and drafted this guy in, as he was already manager of the Data Warehouse team, a closely related field.
In some ways I can see his problem - he's gotten a geopgraphically dispersed team* of 16 or 18 dumped in his lap, when he's already managing about a dozen direct reports (how big his overall existing team was, I dont know). This is asking an awful lot of anyone to manage. But my company, or his boss, need a firm kick up the arse about this, as it's been going on for almost 18 months, and essentially means the DBA group are completely unmanaged.
In that time, I have heard from him twice - once to remind me to put in an overdue timesheet, and once at annual review, which brought a whole new meaning to the word farce - as he has literally NO idea what I'm doing, or any of the details of my client, or indeed of my existence really, all he could do was parrot what the site manager had written. What the point of that was, other than to tick boxes for the HR department, really noone could say. None, of course.
I have no real expectation this will change in the next year, though - while our company pays loud and frequent lipservice to the notions of ethical behaviour and appropriate management, it has never shown any least sign of actual actions to back that up (having gone through the ethics process several times, I can attest to this at some and bitter length).
OH well, back to work
*using 'team' in a completely spurious fashion of course - we are in several locations, we are working on different contracts, we are performing some different functions, we never meet, we don't even share any work or techniques. How this makes a team is a mystery.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Advertising
It's funny about advertising - here in the US, most advertising seems to be
In the UK, it seemed to be much more
(I'd include a NZ comparison, but it's too long since I've seen kiwitv, and anyway our ads are pretty much dictated by the US/UK/Aussie markets).
I find it amusing, the different national obsessions (and particularly funny that the English are so obsessed with germs, when their approach to cleanliness is so casual much of the time). The different approaches to what presumably works to sell products is also interesting: the American approach is -much- more hardnosed and direct, and less about social pressures and (by and large) less about conformism, than the English approach.
Which is surprising, as America is far far more conformist than England ever was. I guess that is down to how they perceive themselves, as rugged and independant & all that pseudo-frontier nonsense, but it still astonishes me how little liberty there is in the 'land of the free', and how little that is perceived.
It's hard to put into definite terms, but so many of the simple things you'd take for granted in NZ are just, well, not here or not simple. I'd try to put in some concrete examples, but I've just had 3 more P1 tickets land on my desk, so any ponderous pontification will have to wait for tomorrow.
- cars, and how sexy/powerful they make you
- prescription medicines that you should badger your doctor into prescribing
- and cleaning products that cause women to have orgasms
In the UK, it seemed to be much more
- Supermarkets, and how shopping at OUR one will show your superior social status
- OTC medicines, usually to fix things wrong with your arse
- and cleaning products to eradicate all those nasty nasty gerrrmmmmsssss!!!
(I'd include a NZ comparison, but it's too long since I've seen kiwitv, and anyway our ads are pretty much dictated by the US/UK/Aussie markets).
I find it amusing, the different national obsessions (and particularly funny that the English are so obsessed with germs, when their approach to cleanliness is so casual much of the time). The different approaches to what presumably works to sell products is also interesting: the American approach is -much- more hardnosed and direct, and less about social pressures and (by and large) less about conformism, than the English approach.
Which is surprising, as America is far far more conformist than England ever was. I guess that is down to how they perceive themselves, as rugged and independant & all that pseudo-frontier nonsense, but it still astonishes me how little liberty there is in the 'land of the free', and how little that is perceived.
It's hard to put into definite terms, but so many of the simple things you'd take for granted in NZ are just, well, not here or not simple. I'd try to put in some concrete examples, but I've just had 3 more P1 tickets land on my desk, so any ponderous pontification will have to wait for tomorrow.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
These guys really are crazy II
OK, off the top of my head:
The thing is, these are all complete lies. They don't have any underlying basis of facts, they are just crazy ranting. And they are all broadcast, not by crazies crouched in basements, but by prominent media personalities, and repeated and echoed by the bulk of the media - TV, newspapers and internet channels. Some of them keep getting dragged up, again and again, even though they are comprehensively refuted each time.
And about a quarter of the country sucks all these up, repeats them, screams them endlessly, and will not listen to reason.
What's more, they are hyping themselves into such a frenzy of threats, menaces, and violence, that I fear that at some point someone will start acting on it, and people will start being murdered.
-----------------------------------------------------
*Frankly, aside of this being a good idea, the idea that you should have a veto over how your tax money is spent is ridiculous: you dont get to withhold taxes for a war you disagree with, or for other policies you may find deeply offensive.
- The health reform bill includes Death Panels that will cut off any older people from health care to keep them alive
- The health care bill will fund abortions! With your Tax Money!*
- Health Care reform will Bankrupt the Health Insurance Companies! (though noone explains why that is a bad thing)
- The health care bill means faceless bureaucrats will dictate who your doctor is
- The health care bill will introduce Socialised Medicine (whatever that is)
- The health care bill will mean rationing and you wont be able to get care that you deserve
- The health care bill means illegal immigrants will get free medical care! (not that anyone explains what is actually wrong with that concept)
- The health care bill is just like Hitler's policies (yes, seriously, that was pushed out by the NRCC)
- Health care reform will take so much money out of Medicare so old folks wont get health care because there wont be any money for it.
- Obama is running out on the troops in Afghanistan
- Obama is going crazy and pouring troops into Afghanistan
- Obama is betraying the country by not nuking and invading Iran (while still involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, not that that is mentioned)
- Obama is betraying civilisation by not supporting Georgia and launching an invasion of Russia, NOW!
- Cap and Trade is a TAX and will destroy business and make everyone poor
- Spending money on a depressed economy is crazy and will unbalance the budget
- (leading to) Roosevelt didnt solve the Great Depression, it would have gone away by itself and he did more damage than good
- Plus, Roosevelt didnt solve the Great Depression, it would have gone on forever except for WW2
- Oh and WW2 doesn't count as stimulus spending, because. Just because. (these 3 usually in the same paragraph).
- Obama was born in Kenya and his birth certificate was faked.
- Michelle Obama is a crazy vengeful radical black woman who will .... well, thats never clear
- Obama is a crazy communist vengeful black man who is going to get revenge all whites
- Women should no longer get the vote (they vote for Democrats too much)
The thing is, these are all complete lies. They don't have any underlying basis of facts, they are just crazy ranting. And they are all broadcast, not by crazies crouched in basements, but by prominent media personalities, and repeated and echoed by the bulk of the media - TV, newspapers and internet channels. Some of them keep getting dragged up, again and again, even though they are comprehensively refuted each time.
And about a quarter of the country sucks all these up, repeats them, screams them endlessly, and will not listen to reason.
What's more, they are hyping themselves into such a frenzy of threats, menaces, and violence, that I fear that at some point someone will start acting on it, and people will start being murdered.
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*Frankly, aside of this being a good idea, the idea that you should have a veto over how your tax money is spent is ridiculous: you dont get to withhold taxes for a war you disagree with, or for other policies you may find deeply offensive.
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