Cosine Jeremiah

andyhat was smart enough to post this link to Lambdacats (lolcats for programmers) that I sent to him and some other friends (and came to me via @Sutto on Twitter). It's such a good idea that I'm posting it here, too. :)

For those of you that I have not talked to recently, I have news. Today is my last day at my present employer, CCC Information Services, Inc. I have formed my own technology company and will be working as an independent contractor.

It will be a new experience. I see a lot of work ahead of me to keep the pipeline flowing. Please lend me a hand if you can or lend me your moral support if you cannot. My greatest expertise is in Unix security and application development (my strongest languages are Ruby, Perl, and C). I am good in front of a group of people in a training environment as well. Also, I am planning to build up some application security experience over the next few months as time and opportunity permits.

To my soon-to-be former co-workers at CCC: thank you for the awesome times we had the last four years! Good luck!

I'm trying to print a contract tonight, and it seems that I have no operational printer at the moment.

The laser printer seems to need all four of its toner cartridges replaced, and the ink jet has no more black ink.

*sigh*

Many of you already know that George Carlin has died, but I'd like to make a statement of my own about him. I think George was a very important man and one that should really stand out among the famous names. He was one of few that would push the limits that other people dared not traverse; he was always exploring the darker crevices of our habits as a society and our outlook on life. Of course, he primarily did so through comedy. And though not a well received movie in general, I thought his acting in Kevin Smith's "Jersey Girl" showed us all a side of George that displays wisdom and seriousness about life's issues as well. He seemed to get what life is really about and was always trying to tell other people through all his work. It seems that while many laughed, too few took to heart the message about life in what was just "comedy" to them.

George, let's do it again in the next life. Ciao!

So for about two weeks I have been trying to get new planner pages for my Franklin-Covey to cover me from July 2008 to June 2009. Unfortunately, Franklin-Covey has been making it annoying to achieve this.

First I tried their website, thinking it would be inconvenient to get to one of their brick and mortar locations. The order did not happen, however, as their website was so ungodly slow that I had to quit frustrated half an hour later. I did manage to figure out which pages I was purchasing so I could swing by one of the stores and pick it up quickly.

So a few days later I have my chance: take my lunch hour at work and walk over to the Franklin-Covey store on Michigan St. and get my pages. I do so only to find the location closed. Permanently. Grrr.

A look back online shows that Franklin-Covey has another store in Schaumburg and one in the Milwaukee area. Both possible, but let's try online again, first. Those locations are not places I frequent enough to be able to make it there soon. Second try online was much better from the performance department, and I got as far as the checkout before something happened: I selected the FREE shipping option (standard ground) on the order page, but then on the confirmation page shipping was suddenly $8. Excuse me?!

Finally, I decided maybe I'll swing by Schaumburg on my way to work on Wednesday. If they open at 9 AM or before, I can do it and get into work not-too-late. They open at 10 AM.

Aaaaarrrrrgh!

Clearcase is annoying me. My view (someone set it up for me) seems to auto-downcase my files. Very Not Good. Not being a Clearcase expert, I cannot figure out how to fix that. I really do not want to spend a lot of time digging around on this.

Update: Clearcase was fixed with some configuration changes made from the Windows Control Panel and then rebooting. I found all the little checkboxes that dictated whether cases were sensitive and if so, was case to be preserved. Notably, my previous configuration was case sensitive which would imply that I should be able to specify the case for my files. I just changed it to case-preserving case insensitive for the hell of it, though now I suspect all I needed previously was a reboot to get things working again the way they should have.

At 9:19 PM Central Time, yours truly was assaulted in the Great Hall of Chicago's Union Station by one of the local bums.

He claimed he needed fare for two tickets to Joliet (about $11 or so, I think), but didn't like that I only offered to buy the tickets instead of give him cash. When he moved on to request this from a woman sitting 10 feet away, I told him to just leave her alone. He did not like that, and threatened to punch me in the face, making a motion to do so and stopping inches short. While he choose not to repeat the motion or make a punch that connected, he did spit on my face and then left the building.

There were no officers in the Great Hall, and no one around had a suggestion, so I called 911 and reported it. No officers eventually showed, so with 6 minutes left to catch my 9:45 train I left the Great Hall and found one, who explained that since the event was by that time 20 minutes gone, it would not do any good to file a report at this point. However, should I see the man again next time I am in Union Station, he told me where the officers' office was so I could report it and file the paperwork then. It is across from the Metra ticket booth.

After leaving the officer, I barely caught my train, so my evening was not too poorly impacted. I do not regret my actions, but it is not something that calls for a repeat performance.

My parents think Obama is Muslim. Did they get this crap from Rush Limbaugh or are there other right-wing talking heads spreading it around?

Google finds this: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/muslim.asp

A Java developer at work put volatile configuration data inside a configuration file and put it in a jar file inside another jar file with the whole application to be deployed.

Is this normal? Does Java really encourage such habits?

I'm getting ready to go to Europe this week. It is always so hectic prior to a vacation.

I love this quote from Steve Pavlina (article at http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/12/quitting-to-win/):

"Isn't it amazing how social conditioning can teach you to place a high value on something that a free-thinking sane person would perceive as dreadfully undesirable? Maybe we should make the people that fall for that scheme pay more taxes too; they probably wont even notice. Oh wait... we already do that."

Unfortunately, it just reminds me that I'm still paying too much in taxes. :-S

I just got back from vacation in Hawaii. A link to some wonderful photos will be present within a week (probably—depends on time between family events during Christmas holiday). The neatest things I saw were a 270-degree arc rainbow and then about 30 minutes later a double rainbow with the inner rainbow as bright as neon lights in the sky.

From the comments in my previous post I think I should address a disconnect I perceive from some people: we disagree on how much power an individual actually has over his life. I have seen plenty enough in my own life to convince me that every choice we make has an extremely powerful impact, but most people have not noticed that. Instead of standing up for their publicly declared values they make decisions that empower evil concepts, such as supporting those factories and workplaces violating safety practices by either working for them, buying from them, selling to them, or owning a part of them (e.g. stocks).

If you work for an evil corporation in a life draining cubicle, going to work empowers it. Going to work is your vote to support it. Time is money, and you just gave them eight hours of your time, give or take, for a pittance in return. You know how much power they got from you by how drained you feel.

I was not going to make blog posts about my knowledge of power until I started my third blog, but it came up. :) Power is a tricky subject, and a small part of what that blog is to be about.

In a way I am looking forward to January 2008 when the Illinois-wide smoking ban in restaurants and bars goes into effect. After all, I'll be able to go to a few places that I like very much except for the smoky atmosphere. However, I do not think that Illinois should have gotten involved in this. The claim is that they do it for the health of the bar workers and waitstaff. They even dragged a never-smoked lung cancer survivor into the press to justify it. However, I still think it is wrong for Illinois to get involved.

Why? It says to people, "you are a helpless victim of cigarette smoke if you go into a smoky bar and breathe the second hand smoke, but do not worry because your government will save you from that fate so you do not have to take personal responsibility for your health." Hell, governments certainly seem to like taking away options from fat people. We might as well send all the smokers and fat people to Death Camps and get this debacle over with—after all, my government says it will make us all healthier to not be exposed to those derelicts.

Today I really kicked off my technical blog at cosine.org. And I drew a line in the sand, declaring my intention to write a tool to help out Unix administrators with configuration management. If you are into that kind of thing, go check it out and be encouraging and stuff; be particularly encouraging if you are in the Unix administration business. And be yet even more encouraging if you also know Ruby (<subliminal> Go learn! </subliminal>). ;)

I also have an upcoming article on bad policies that I'll post there, but it is really long and it may be a few posts in between before I complete it.

"Also will this work on Internet 7 or just Internet 6???"

Woohoo! Microsoft can upgrade the Internet now! :)

Today's word is Negligible Undeadness.

One's undeadness is the percentage of time worked over one's "normal" expected work week. For example, when a person that is supposed to work 40 hours works 50, he is 25% undead.

Someone has negligible undeadness when they have worked more than their "normal" work week, but only by a little. Their undeadness is in the low-to-mid single digits. Their undeadness is negligible.

This came up at work because I have 2% undeadness and was talking to co-workers that typically score around 40% and 90% undeadness regularly. If kitiara ever finds my office, there would be a total massacre.

Is it a good sign that the top U.S. commander in Iraq is named Petraeus, which rhymes with "betray us"?

The Good: I purchased a new Macbook Pro last night. Base 15" 2.2 GHz model + Applecare + 4 GB in third party RAM. I'm holding off on buying Parallels and iWork until their next revisions are available. With the purchase Apple has $100 rebates on printers (picked up a $100 HP C4280—"free" after rebate) and $200 rebates on iPods (picked up a 30 GB iPod for the wife—$50 after rebate).

The Bad: Hickley-Springs charged my UseItForEverything credit card using an invalid expiration date and calling themselves "DS Waters" (to which I answered, "who?"). The result: my credit card is now cancelled, and Hickley-Springs/DS Waters/WhoeverTheyAre has a friendly credit card fraud team from Chase looking into them. I'll be getting a replacement card in a few days. This happens just hours prior to Apple shipping, of course, and delays my order. :( And I also have to update the other vendors that charge this card non-interactively on a regular basis.

I had dinner at Bob Chinn's in Wheeling last night. It keeps getting yet more expensive to eat there, but the food is still awesome. I had the best steak they have ever served me there last night, and while we were waiting for our food Mr. Chinn himself talked to my wife and I for five minutes about his business. That may have been induced because I asked him about whatever happened to the Chicago location (which was reportedly terrible, btw). The answer was basically, "they never listened to me." Mr. Chinn is a frugal man almost to a fault, coming down hard on wasteful tendencies—it cuts into his bottom line after all—but he also said "I'll spare no expense for quality." His employees complain about the frugality but the result is a good deal on great food at a 600 seat restaurant that has lines out the door every night. For me, I wish to thank Bob Chinn for his contribution of such a fine dining experience to the Chicago area.

For those not familiar with Bob Chinn's, it is primarily a seafood restaurant but the landlubber menu is fantastic as well. Also noteworthy is the Mai Tai. It can be purchased for $33 per gallon, and after having one at the table I was considering some for take-home!