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June 19th, 2006
08:52 pm - travel, day 2
Why didn't I move to the management world earlier?
I asked something along those lines yesterday. Today, I don't necessarily have an answer. But I do have more...experience.
First off, today was *totally boring*. I got up a little late, but I didn't sweat it so much because the keynote addresses didn't begin until 11:00. My suit was pressed and ready to go at nine and I was ready to go by ten, so everything was fine. I got to the conference venue (it's held at the Shangri La, the hotel chain owned by the richest man in Hong Kong) basicallly on time. The keynote addresses happened. Yes, plural: 5 people spoke about really boring stuff. You don't want to know. Then it was lunchtime, which was disappointing. I expected yummy made-to-order food but I got basically buffet. I spoke to people who "had something to say," but had not real time to listen. The best part was waiting for the next sessions to happen, standing by the pool, watching bikini'd Asian women swim here and there.
In the afternoon I attended a session about voice-over-ip, VOIP, "voyp" as they say out loud, "void" as I say to myself. I mean, it's just packets, people! Just data! No, that's not true. I'm aware of it too. What about net neutrality? etc etc. There are issues. They will be worked out sooner or later. This was almost the most interesting part of the day. But not quite.
I came back to the 30-floor hotel. Much of the day I spent thinking "wow, I'm on the Top Floor." Ha ha I'm a sillly nut. But I get my kicks where I can. I had a little wine and some yummy snacks. Saan: I took some pics, no worries. The other "executives" looked at me funny, and so did the wait stuff, but I got some pics. There was a nice mixture of salmon and fish eggs, some goose liver and yellow tomatoes and good mayonaisse and very good pistascio mousse (sorry, I don't have a spell checker integrated into logjam here, so probably pistascio is spelled wrong). And decent Australian wine to boot.
I talked to this friendly Australian, Collin, and another woman, Lille. I wondered if the stores stayed open past eight o'clock. They both looked at me all crazy--"eight o'clock?! Are you from Germany or something?" Stores don't close here until nine or ten. So I took a taxi to City Hall. No joke--city hall, orchard lane, that's where you go here, if you want to go shop or go to bars or do other touristy things.
So I went shopping, because I like shopping ONCE in other countries. I just wonder what their shopping-mall experience is like. Yes, I'm weird. Shopping near city hall in Singapore (sorry, I would say more specifically what this mall was called, it was Razor or Rassor or something of that sort but I just can't recall), anyway shopping near city hall in Singapore is *just like* shopping in Europe. No difference at all. So don't bother.
BUT
But I met this fellow in a bookstore (I can't resist bookstores, at least I always want to browse whatever's on sale) among the books about being a manager, since I'm going to be a manager and all. This bookstore was full of "how to be a manager" books. Silly, silly stuff. Anyway, there was this funky fellow there. He was shorter than me (duh, but hey, I'm only 5'10) and, well, "colored", darkish skin or whatever. He walked up to me and asked where I was from, etc etc. The crux of the conversation was this, though: he believed the Government (any of them--Chinese or American or Russian) had taken his soul, his *cyber-soul*, and controlled it, and made it do things. He believed that there was this Force present on the Internet (naturally run and controlled by the military) that could control things in the external world. And he believed that everybody, I mean *everybody*, was nano-technologically enhanced--and hooked up to the global net. And he wanted to know all my opinion about that.
I'm cool with that. But it got a little funkier when he started talking about the face that he saw in his computer screen when, during the early 90's, he was programming too much. Like this spirit came out and talked to him. I asked him what the spirit's name was, but he wouldn't tell me. I told him that if he really believed that the government was controlling his cyber-soul, he should really go take it back. But I'm afraid my English didn't quite cut all the way through...
Then I went to a bar that Collin recommended. Nothing special. Singaporean beer ("Tiger") really isn't so good. After that, back to my 30-floor hotel and the bar downstairs. Watched some football, laughed and joked and rolled my eyes with Lille as we listened to Collin and Mike. That was basically it.
So now to bed, very very late. I don't really care. I realized today that it doesn't really matter, in any way, if I go to the conference tomorrow at any particular time, besides the time I need to give my presentation, obviously, which is at 1600. Otherwise, I'm free. Bwa-ha-ha-ha ha-ha! Sleeping in, in Singapore!
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June 18th, 2006
05:57 pm - travel day 1: Munich to Singapore to Bed
Why did it take so long for me to move over to management? Not that I'm dissatisfied with my tech career or anything--it's been awesome.
Here I am in Singapore at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, 30th floor. The top four floors (this is one of them) are a part of this hotel, but all the rooms are a part of some "executive club." I get free drinks, free breakfast, free suit pressings, and everyone is *very* nice to me. I have a special key that I have to use to get the elevators to take me up here. While on these floors I'm supposed to maintain a certain standard of dress. But I'm just hanging out naked in my room, waiting for the next world cup game, which starts in 30 minutes.
The trip here was not particularly interesting--except it was the first time I've flown business class. So much room! The food is much better. The wine is better, and the attendants are extra nice. Something interesting I noticed was that people don't talk to their fellow passengers. (Sometimes) I think it's neat when the person sitting nexts to me wants to chat. But all of these business-class folk seemed rather closed. The seats were a bit trippy, with complicated remote controls that let you move the seat in different directions, extend the seat so you're lying nearly flat, inflate the lumbar support or whatever that's called. On the flight from Bangkok to Singapore I got to sit upstairs is this massive purple-tailed airplane. The seats in that plane looked rather space age. And everything on that plane was some shade of purple.
The only hassle so far was the flight booking from Bangkok to Singapore. The dorky travel agents reserved the hotel in Singapore from the 18th to the 20th, but they booked the flight for the 19th. Eh?? I was lucky there were extra seats on today's flight, and that it was raining because that made the plane leave an hour late. With the long wait I had in the ticket line, I wouldn't have made it. But hey, at least I'm here.
It's been a very long trip, so I think I'll turn in, zone out watching the game, wait for the Melatonin to kick in, and pick up my freshly pressed suit in the morning.
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May 20th, 2006
07:20 pm - mmmm sturgeon fries
The Chinese have successfully damned up the Yangtze river. "The dam is 2,300 meters long and, when filled, the reservoir will be 656 kilometers long." As you might know, many endangered animals depend on the river, including dolphins and sturgeon and apparently sturgeon fries.
From New Scientist: Flocking birds inspire information organisation. Each "bird" carries a document, which is automatically assigned a string of numbers depending on the words it contains. Documents with a lot of similar words have number strings of the same length and a virtual bird will naturally fly with others carrying documents with number strings of the same length.
What else can this be applied to? Software developers (open sourcers) listen up: here's some projects you might want to create:
- Add a re-organizer plugin to Akgregator, or whatever feed reader you prefer.
- Extend one of the firefox feed-reader plugins to include graphical, bird flock views of your feeds
- Make a peer-production system out of this idea. How can this be mashed up with de.li.ciou.us?
- Can this be used to automatically sort email inboxes?
- Create a view of livejournal that organizes friends this way, and suggests new friends
- Create an application that analyzes song lyrics and organizes the songs.
I think the peer-production idea is most interesting. I'm stuck on peer-production at the moment--my mind keeps returning to them, looking for new areas for their use--because of Benkler's Wealth of Networks. Read this.
In other news, I've safely made it home. The kitties are very happy to see me. They definitely had a good time with our neighbors, who love cats, but had to get rid of theirs because they weren't home often enough. The cats enjoy spending time in their house though. Apparently Ember figured out how to use a door handle and kept getting in to their bedroom. Their bedroom is in the same place in the house as our living room is, which is the cat's room, so it doesn't surprise me that they were very interested in spending time in there. How A fixed the problem with Ember was pretty funny: he took out the door handle (which is horizontal) and put it back in vertically. The neighbors took pictures of the cats, too, which was great! When Saan returns I'll see if she wants to post them in her album.
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May 14th, 2006
05:58 am - Brujo, Santero, Palero
Five years ago, just before leaving for Aachen--almost exactly five years ago, in fact--I happened across a newly opened Botanica just 4 blocks south of my workplace. There was only a small white sign that, as far as I remember, had something like "Botanica Chama" written in black permanent marker. I peeked inside, got very excited, and planned to come back with Saan later that week.
Only one or two days before leaving, we went to the botanica together. A woman, the proprietess, and a male child of hers were there. One wall was covered in palos, which are barks and roots and branches from various holy and powerful trees from the Mexican and South American jungles. There was a fantastic selection of special-purpose candles: 7 African Powers, Shango and Yemaya, reversibles, and more. Oils and powders, religious artifacts like Marias and various saints rested up a shelf. I don't remember the full extent of what was available, but I remember thinking, this is real. I'd visited the "real" ones before--in Dallas and San Francisco and Roswell (!)--but this was the first (and last) I found in Albuquerque.
I asked a few questions about the palos. The proprietess didn't know many of the details (or didn't want to tell me). Her husband, the Santero, arrived within a few minutes. He answered my questions knowledgably and, I don't know, somehow shined with honesty and there was just some kind of jive, some feeling I had about him--here my words fail terribly. We left with some palos intended to help us have a successful trip to Europe.
Jump to this week. We're back in New Mexico. Saan will here much longer than I; I'm going to San Francisco for a few days. We needed to visit a botanica again to stock up on supplies, so I found one in the yellow pages. When the Santero (let's call him "S") picked up the phone I immediately had this feeling: it's him. They had closed their shop--it required too much upkeep and hassle--but he invited us over to his house to buy our supplies directly from him.
He and his family live on a ranch south of town; you have to make many left turns to get there. There was a tall fence made of adobe, and two white metal gates about truck-size; one led to their front door while the other was obviously used by said trucks. Many dogs greeted us with healthy barks so naturally, we didn't want to simply waltz in amongst them. But there was no visible doorbell or other sort of noisemaker. Once again S arrived shortly after we did. He greeted us and led us around the house to the garage out back.
I miss the dust here, the red brown dirt, the smell of it, even the taste.
You know a Palero has power when he speaks in a language you don't know and half an hour after leaving you can't exactly see straight, you are left spinning and wondering, "what did I learn? When will I consciously learn it?" He showed me a layout for an altar, how paleros use cowrie shells for divination, then he opened the family temple. We stood at the door and could do nothing but gawk.
I'd like to say more, but I'm feeling a bit reserved--and a bit dizzy.
Current Mood: spin span spun
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February 19th, 2006
01:48 pm - Lazy Sunday
OPML: I've heard about it before, but until today never understood its usefulness. Though the acronym stands for Outline Processor Markup Language, you might call them reading lists. For instance, this article has Best Food, Best Wine and Best Food Porn reading lists in OPML. Compared to the open source reading list from the same site, OPML rocks.
The music collection: our loss was tragic. I like that Saan has started using AudioScrobbler. You can mash up Upcoming, a community-maintained events calendar and Audioscrobbler, for a particular user.
James Governor's MonkChips is one of my favorite blogs. IT analyst stuff: it's led me to most of the interesting links I've found today.
Declarative Living: "Declarative Living is about publishing preferences to the web cloud, in the form of metadata that can be aggregated to create models of interest.
Services like flickr, audioscrobbler, and allconsuming are good examples of the trend towards web users making their preferences and interests public." He goes on to note that Declarative Living is similar to declarative programming: the programmer states a bunch of facts and relations, then teases truths and proofs from the computer. Tell me, O Oracle, what music would I like to hear today?
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January 7th, 2006
11:20 pm - grrr computer
I think the schools feature is pretty nifty. So I tried to add a few of the schools I attended to my schools list. All of the schools already exist in the LJ school list, so I figure it must not be very complicated--not much room for error, right? Ha! Shows how optimistic I am.
I find UNM, for instance, then click the button "Add" next to my name. Logically, this should add the school to my list. It takes me to my schools page which says, "You have not listed any schools. Browse the school directory to find and add schools." No matter how many times I click "Add", regardless of which school I use, this keeps happening. I've tried it in Konqueror and Firefox, but that has made no difference. I cleared my browser cache, as suggested on the support page. I just cannot add schools. Strange.
But wait, it gets better. Saan suggested I open a support request. So I go type the request in, click "submit", and what do I get?
Error
One or more errors occurred processing your request. Please go back, correct the necessary information, and submit your data again.
As a security precaution, the page you're viewing requires a POST request, not a GET. If you're trying to submit this form legitimately, please contact us.
What?
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January 1st, 2006
01:52 pm - The coming plague
Woman dies from bird flu but never got near poultry
This is the first bit of news like this that I've seen. I don't want to jump to conclusions: is this evidence that that dreaded event--the virus, traveling from human to human--has already happened?
"According to mathematical projections used by Washington, everything begins with an epidemic that breaks out in Thailand in a small village, where the H5N1 virus has hypothetically mutated and acquired the ability to transmit among humans." (from Turkish Press)
By the way, did you know that the last flu epidemic was probably, initially, a "bird flu"?
"Now, researchers Jeffery Taubenberger and Terry Tumbe (ph) say they have found a frightening similarity in the genetic make-up of the 1918 virus and the flu now sweeping birds in Asia. That avian flu has already killed more than 60 people. Taubenberger said the 1918 flu was almost certainly another avian flu that came from birds and somehow acquired the ability to pass quickly from person to person." (from CNN Transcripts)
Current Mood: morbid
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12:51 pm - 2005 - year of the environmental catastrophe?
New Scientist, along with 5 bi-zillion other content-makers, apparently perceive significant demand for lists about 2005. The BBC lists 100 things we've learned this year (rather full of silly brit stuff, funny sometimes). There's top tech 2005, top music 2005 and so on.
This year, New Scientist's 2005: The year in environment is worth reading. Take a trip through Scary Storm memory lane! Fondly remember watching large pieces of an Antarctic ice cliff fall into the ocean. Breath deep and sing praises as you are reminded how some certain countries keep denying the Kyoto agreement.
Sigh. At least the U.S. now officially recognizes that global warming is an issue.
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December 26th, 2005
03:02 pm - why Windows sucks, #13567
Windows cannot be installed on an extended partition; it must be installed on a primary partition. Crap crap crap crap crap!
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02:43 pm - wireless network for audio streams
I wish that some search engine would let me weight terms. Say I have a list of terms: "wireless home stereo system linux". I'd like to say that if it has all the terms except "linux", I'd like to see the results, but if "linux" is there in addition to the rest, even better--please put that result closer to the top. That would be nice.
The reason I'm wishing this right now is, I want to build an audio network in my house. The overall quality of audio in the house right now pretty much sucks. ( how much does it suck? Is there hope for non-suckage? )
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December 25th, 2005
03:47 pm - some software questions
Is there a complete guide for installing trac on a gentoo system? Trac is subversion-based, and the instructions for installing subversion + trac don't seem to be out there. There are instructions for setting up Subversion, but they are pretty icky; they don't coincide with the trac installation requirements very well. I'm just an average guy, I just want to use trac! Maybe someone can point me to a step-by-step...
Why hasn't anyone written an open-source requirements database/tracking system yet? Here are a lot of tools and their features, in case anyone is feeling antsy for a project: http://www.volere.co.uk/tools.htm
Has anyone tried the language Boo? Any thoughts? I like to learn new languages. Boo doesn't seem that different from Python, at first glance--and I love Python.
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December 18th, 2005
07:22 pm - an interesting message I just got from Google
"We're sorry...
... but we can't process your request right now. A computer virus or spyware application is sending us automated requests, and it appears that your computer or network has been infected. We'll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your computer is free of viruses and other spurious software. We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we'll see you again on Google."
Being a Linux user, it's hard to imagine that I've been infected by a worm. (Not to say that it can't happen--it's just rather unlikely right now). I do however use Tor, The Onion Router, which gives me pretty darn good anonymity. Sometimes Google shows me its Greek face, or Spanish, because my connections appears to be coming from there. But this is the first time I've gotten this message.
Update: Oh no! Google's not fixing its problem and I can't search!
This is the first time I've used Yahoo in about 3 years. Can someone tell me when they changed their layout to look rather like Google?
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December 17th, 2005
November 11th, 2005
04:24 am - yum!
I know, I keep saying that. But I have my reasons!
Dinner with Unix Ronin and Cymru Llewes was really wonderful. They made definitely eclectic pizza--my favorite was the chicken mole. It was yummy for breakfast the next day too! So I was very happy twice. Thank you very very much! And your kids, wow! What fabulous little girls! So far, that was the best evening I've had this trip.
This afternoon I went to visit a software company from whom my company recently purchased a damn expensive product. The marketing guy really likes me, for some reason or another, and took me out to dinner. We went to this absolutely excellent Vietnamese place. Spring rolls, roasted quail, and chicken noodle soup, followed by pretty good lemongrass chicken and f'ing extraordinary lobster. Holy holy holy! To top it off, Vietnamese coffee. Oh my fucking gods. Yum. Yumyumyumyumyum. And Saturday night he invited me to come to his house for dinner. I don't know what I did to make this guy like me so much, but whatever: free dinner.
Okay, enough of that. I also had a really tough time tonight. At night they do construction on the exit that I have to use to get to my hotel. That normally wouldn't be such a big deal, but get this: they don't warn you ahead of time that the exit is completely closed. There is a sign that says "right lane closed" but hat's it. Nor do they provide helpful signs to let you know how to get around the construction--no detour signs or anything like that. Further, if you come from Lowell, which is south of here, and try to go under the interstate with the closed exit, you're double screwed because they again don't warn you ahead of time, nor is there any way to proceed except to get onto the freaking interstate and go the wrong direction--for 5 miles!! Then you can finally turn around, only to be foiled by the first problem: the exit you need is closed.
I know it doesn't sound that complicated, but believe me, it is, at least for a fool like me. It's not like I drive very often. I need signs, people! Signs way ahead of time that are extra informative. I spent a freaking hour trying to get to my hotel. No joke! I'm so burnt out now.
So I suppose I'll get ready for bed now. Ciao.
Oh my. A guinness commercial just showed (yum! Guinness!) and one of the lines was "Limburger cheese hats? Brilliant!"
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November 8th, 2005
01:28 pm - UnixRonin, Cymru Llewes are you there?
Day 3 in Chelmsford: nothing to report. Work is intense. Feeling sleepy a lot of the day. Cursed american coffee, so weak!
Cymru Llewes, I am interested in dinner! Is the offer still open? The only night I have plans so far is Thursday. Let me know please.
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November 6th, 2005
04:57 pm - in Chelmsford with free WiFi
Hello
I'm in Chelmsford, MA for the next week. The hotel has free WiFi--excellent!
Saan, I forgot to bring my email-account passwords, so if you need to contact me, use my work address or leave me a message here. Hope all is well there on the other side!
US Airways has misplaced my bag. So today I have to go shopping for a shirt, because I don't know when they're going to get my bag back. They didn't lose it between Munich and Philly; they lost it between Philly and Boston. In fact, about 30 people haven't received their bags yet. Rather upsetting, this. I mean, my deodorant is in that bag!
When I got on the Philly-Boston plane yesterday, my seat has one of those special half-ring-around-your-neck pillows sitting in it. (I don't know what those are called). I thought, 'Hey, great, I've always wanted one of those!' and so I used it. I had the feeling that it was left there for me, but that it wasn't mine permanently. Strange. Then someone said 'there's a book under this seat, did you drop it?' He was speaking to the guy behind me. I wondered if this was the lost and found plane. I was right, though, about the pillow. I took it with me off the plane and promptly lost it.
I ate at the hotel's breakfast buffet this morning. The food was decent enough; I got an omelette among other things. They don't use salt here, I guess! The omelette was rather plain as a result. I got some tea, too, and the waiter (who was very nice and helpful--yay Amerika!) brought a wooden box full of some 14 teas. In the bottom right-hand corner were bags of peppermint tea. I had some English breakfast tea from the top of the middle row. It tasted like black tea (barely--not great quality stuff, really) but smelled like peppermint! argh! So did the Irish breakfast tea. It was highly frustrating. The waiter did bring me tea from a separate box that tasted normal. Watching all the old people in the breakfast room (there was a 50th high school reunion here last night), I'm guessing most people drink that weak Folgers stuff here. Yuck.
Yum! When I finally stopped travelling yesterday, I went to Skip's Diner and had some decent chicken strips. The honey mustard was very good. The waitress was very cute. And the Sam Adams Winter beer was fabulous! yum yum yum! I'll go back later today--the waitress invited me to come back today while she was on shift.
Anyway, enough blah blah, I suppose now I will drive down to the Burlington mall and see what I can find.
mmmm Milla Jovovich. The Fifth Element just came on one of these movie channels. One of my favorite movies. Now I wonder if I should leave....
Yeah, I guess so.
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September 11th, 2005
12:47 pm - First steps towards the dark side
Last week I got a new PDA for work. My boss is pretty nice that way, and we have tons of money to spend before the year ends, so I asked for the Siemens PocketLoox 718, and got two. But one was for him.
Anyway, this is the first Winblows thingy I've had in a long time. Yes, I'm one of those Linux junkies. In fact, I use Gentoo, the near holy grail for source code junkies (Linux From Scratch gets you higher, but is a bigger hassle). And it's been like this for years and years: I never ever use binary things.
So now I've got this Winblows thingy and I'm scared poopless! It's got Bluetooth and WiFi. I've read up on Bluetooth and have been convinced never, ever, ever! to turn it on. WiFi is mostly sort of OK...except, I know that on average it takes 30 minutes for an unpatched XP box to get hacked. I haven't found any good data about hacking CE, though.
Ah, and here lies the real problem: I've been outside the entire Winblows domain for so long, I don't even know how to find information! If I had linux questions, there are IRC channels and forums and mailing lists and friends and and and. I'm betting there are these things for Winblows, but do I have to run Internet Exploder just to see them?
So here are my questions to all those thousands and thousands who read this post:
1) Where do I get security updates for all the standard software installed on CE?
2) Where is a nice friendly place to get support? (Preferably an IRC channel)
3) Where's a trustworthy place to get software?
Question 3) really makes me nervous. I always build from source. Always always. If I don't trust the folks who are distributing it, I can check the source's validity in a number of ways. I can build trust. But what about for CE? All I can do is download binaries--and hope that it doesn't destroy my cute little machine!
The dark side is filled with just so many nasty little holes!
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12:07 pm - Livejournal pulls a U-Turn
I'm sure you've already noticed, but ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) saansaansaan has gotten her journal back. I didn't feel right with my latest entry being 'Livejournal sucks'. About 5 seconds before completely entering suck-space, LJ turned around and said, 'Uh, sorry, here's your money back.' I didn't update my journal, though, because my computer has been having problems for some three weeks now. It's driving me nuts! But it appears to be working at the moment.
Anyway, thanks LJ, for getting around to doing things right.
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August 27th, 2005
01:21 pm - where is Saan?
A message to those wondering where saansaansaan is. LJ sent a message to her email on Thursday night, informing her that
"Your account has been suspended due to a suspected fraudulent payment made from or for your account."
What really happened is the account was accidentally paid twice, then refunded once. Paypal says that LJ got their money. We haven't gotten a response from LJ recently.
According to the LJ policy, "When this occurs, it is our policy to permanently suspend all accounts involved."
Besides the "permanent" part, what bothers me is the phrase "payment made from or for your account." I imagine some dickhead who hates the letter "F" could make false payments for all users who choose a handle like FuckingHassle.
LJ support so far has failed to give any details about the problem. LJ suggested, "You may wish to contact PayPal in regards to this issue." They did not contact me, the person who really paid. Nor have they explained what the problem actually is.
We're waiting for a response, and meanwhile considering setting up the blog somewhere else.
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August 22nd, 2005
11:34 pm - email broken
By the way, in case someone out there is trying to email me: my email is broken. Wireless drivers keep crashing my machine. argh. Double argh. Grr. Mail me at work or something.
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