Inert Detritus The Internet's dust bunnies

Slacking

I’ve fall­en off the blog wag­on. Job fairs have tak­en a lot of my free time lately.

This blog (and the pho­to­blog) occu­py a weird space in my brain: they only get posts when I’m:

1. Inspired
2. Have a few free minutes
3. Am at a computer

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, job fairs have eat­en #2, while gen­er­al busi­ness has killed #1. I’ll have more this week­end, I think.

I should try and set up a rou­tine for writ­ing posts. Just write one a day, and then post every oth­er (fig­ur­ing half the things I write are trash, that equa­tion works out well).

Want a true idea of how bad this week has been? I haven’t worked out since Mon­day morn­ing. And I had­n’t missed a day in over three weeks.

Doctors and Ears

I had an ear infec­tion back in Decem­ber, around New Year’s. It hurt, but I did­n’t ever see any­one about it (not many places are open on Dec. 31st). A few weeks lat­er, I had some issues with pres­sure in that ear.

Long sto­ry short, three doc­tors, five vis­its, one ear clean­ing, one hear­ing test, two pres­sure tests, and four pre­scrip­tions lat­er, I’m get­ting a head CT scan lat­er today to find out what’s going on.

Most reass­sur­ing words a doc­tor can speak?

“Well, if it were a head tumor, it would be so advanced at 8 months that you’d have oth­er symptoms.”

That’s just won­der­ful.

McCain, and Neoconservatism

Again, inspired by The Econ­o­mist.

John McCain (R‑Arizona) is an often-named front-run­ner for the Repub­li­can Par­ty in 2008. He is called out as a “mav­er­ick” by most hard­line Repub­li­cans, but in what I can only call an amus­ing twist of real­i­ty, he is clos­er to the orig­i­nal par­ty line than any­one has been in the past five years.

McCain stands for the con­ser­v­a­tivism that many are miss­ing today. Small gov­ern­ment, strong defense, cut­backs on gov­ern­ment spend­ing (Sen. Stevens: that means you, Mr. Bridge to Nowhere). He believes that stem cell research should be allowed (no unnec­es­sary gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion), thinks glob­al warm­ing is an issue (not will­ing to ignore the envi­ron­ment in favor of fos­sil fuel based business).

To sum it up:

He is a dif­fer­ent kind of Republican—part sun­belt con­ser­v­a­tive (who believes in lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment), and part Ted­dy Roo­sevelt Repub­li­can (who believes in using the pow­er of the state to solve press­ing prob­lems such as grow­ing inequal­i­ty and glob­al warming).

If he’s up in 2008, he will absolute­ly, with­out a doubt, get my vote. He’s shown, time and again, that his prin­ci­ples will remain uncom­pro­mised despite crit­i­cism and risk of being a minor­i­ty or a shunned outcast.

A look back, and a look forward

In his belief that Amer­i­ca need­ed to respond res­olute­ly to the dan­gers of ter­ror­ism, tyran­ny and pro­lif­er­a­tion, Mr Bush was main­ly right. His chief fail­ures stem from incom­pe­tent execution.

From The Econ­o­mist.

The Econ­o­mist took a look back at the Bush and Blair rela­tion­ship and impact on the world over the past six years, and a look for­ward at pol­i­tics, for­eign rela­tions, and world influ­ence for both the Unit­ed States and Great Britain.

But in that sin­gle line, The Econ­o­mist hit the nail on the head. Most of what we (the dis­en­chant­ed pub­lic at large) dis­agree with is not the idea, but the execution.

Per­haps Iraq was a mis­guid­ed inva­sion, built on false pre­tens­es, and rede­fined in pur­pose once entered (switch­ing hors­es mid­stream? What?). But the idea of pre­emp­tion­ism and aggres­sive, mil­i­tary-backed diplo­ma­cy is a pow­er­ful one, and one that like­ly will not only be around for some time to come, but one that will be nec­es­sary to remem­ber and use. It is a doc­trine which was sim­ply mis­ap­plied. Instead of Iraq, it should have been Iran, North Korea, Syr­ia, or Lebanon. The idea is a epiphanous one; the exe­cu­tion of it, hor­ri­ble to watch.

The admin­is­tra­tion, and much of the pub­lic’s dis­com­fort with it, can be sum­ma­rized as that. In the “war on ter­ror­ism” (which is no more winnable than the “war on drugs” or the “war on pover­ty”), we need more secu­ri­ty, more fund­ing, and bet­ter ways of aggres­sive­ly stop­ping things before they start. But instead of increas­ing intel­li­gence bud­gets, we spent mon­ey on expen­sive inva­sions. Instead of financ­ing more police and trained indi­vid­u­als to screen pas­sen­gers, we bought expen­sive machines which are more “secu­ri­ty the­ater” and less “secu­ri­ty lock­down”. Instead of work­ing with the Amer­i­can pub­lic to make sure our nerves are calm and our dai­ly lives remain unaf­fect­ed, we have bans on liq­uids on planes, dai­ly warn­ings that, “Some­one, some­where, could com­mit a ter­ror­ist act at any moment. We rec­om­mend you spend lots of mon­ey to ease the anx­i­ety and uncer­tain­ty. But remem­ber, death is imminent.”

Laud­able ideas; piss-poor exe­cu­tion. Any­one in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty tak­ing notes on slo­gans for ’06?

People and Intimacy

Jade cut open my wrist last Thurs­day. I real­ized that the only peo­ple who asked me what hap­pened are those who know me real­ly well. The acquain­tances just sit and stare, not sure if they should ask: “Do I know him well enough? What if he real­ly is that depressed? What do I say?”

My good friends just come out and say it: “What the hell hap­pened to your wrist?” “Jade,” I answer. That seems to be enough expla­na­tion for them.

A link or two

From Jeff Har­rell at The Shape of Days, on secret prisons.

…it comes down to trust.

Do we trust that there are enough checks and bal­ances? Do we trust that there’s enough over­sight? Do we trust, fun­da­men­tal­ly, that these excess­es we jus­ti­fy in the name of the pub­lic good will nev­er be turned against us?

That’s a hard­er ques­tion. And one I’ll have to think about some more before I’m ready to draw a conclusion.

Measuring Success: Height, or Happiness?

Isn’t it about time we quit mea­sur­ing pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess in one dimen­sion, ver­ti­cal­ly, and start con­sid­er­ing how much your actu­al work match­es your desired work?

From Cre­at­ing Pas­sion­ate Users comes the ques­tion, “Why is our suc­cess met­ric our height on the cor­po­rate lad­der? Should­n’t we be mea­sur­ing how close­ly what we want to do match­es up with what we are doing?”

I think a lot of peo­ple work jobs that they don’t like, just dredg­ing through the job because it:

• pays well
• the ben­e­fits are good
• quit­ting requires too much effort

Those are hor­ri­ble rea­sons to stay in a posi­tion. If some­one asks you to leave your job, your rea­sons should be more like:

• I’m doing what I love
• My boss/supervisor/shareholders is/are great to work for
• They’re under­stand­ing when things in my per­son­al life come up
• My work mat­ters to people
• I’ve dreamed of doing this all my life
• I’m good at what I do
• I know this is where I should be
• The peo­ple I work with are won­der­ful coworkers
• They could halve my pay and I’d still love it

For exam­ple: some peo­ple love pro­gram­ming. They have a tal­ent for cod­ing, for design, and for smash­ing bugs. They are code gurus; they make the lan­guage dance in ways few can.

Why take this per­son and pro­mote them to a man­age­ment posi­tion? Why force them to do that in order to get a raise, or more vaca­tion, or bet­ter ben­e­fits? That’s not what they love.

Find some­thing you love, and chase it with every­thing you’ve got. Why be stuck in a job that some­one placed you in?

Find a job you enjoy, and you’ll nev­er work a day in your life.

Scorecard for the War on Terrorism

Com­ing from Bruce Schneier and TRAC:

… time­ly data show that five years lat­er, in the lat­est avail­able peri­od, the total num­ber of these pros­e­cu­tions has returned to rough­ly what they were just before the attacks.

How is it that, dur­ing the War on Ter­ror­ism, our gov­ern­ment is doing such a piss-poor job of catch­ing ter­ror­ists that pros­e­cu­tions have dropped off that severe­ly? Could it be that they aren’t actu­al­ly putting it at the top of their priorities?

For inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism[,] the dec­li­na­tion rate has been high, … [i]n fact, time­ly data show[s] that in the first eight months of FY 2006 the assis­tant U.S. Attor­neys reject­ed slight­ly more than nine out of ten of the referrals.

Fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors are allowed to turn down refer­rals to pros­e­cute cas­es from oth­er depart­ments of the gov­ern­ment. They’ve turned down about 90% of refer­rals. What’s going on here?

Inter­na­tion­al Ter­ror­ism: Ulti­mate Out­come of Referrals/Criminal Prosecutions:
Date range: medi­an prison sentence
Oct. 1, 1999 — Sept. 10, 2001: 41 months
Sept. 11, 2001 — Sept. 30, 2003: 28 days
Oct. 1, 2003 — May 31, 2006: 20 days

What in the world? Sen­tences of the cas­es that pros­e­cu­tors did accept fell from 1247 days, to 28 days.

This excerpt from the report sums it up concisely:

Con­sid­er­ing the numer­ous warn­ing state­ments from Pres­i­dent Bush and oth­er fed­er­al offi­cials about the con­tin­u­ing nature of the ter­ror­ism threat, how­ev­er, the grad­ual decline in these cas­es since the FY 2002 high point and the high rate at which pros­e­cu­tors are declin­ing to pros­e­cute ter­ror­ism cas­es rais­es ques­tions.

Why, giv­en all the warn­ings and hand-wav­ing state­ments of, “You’re in dan­ger! We can’t say when or where, but be afraid,” has pros­e­cu­tion and pur­su­ing of ter­ror­ism fall­en so drastically?

We need to be ask­ing these ques­tions of the gov­ern­ment. We need to say, “Why have you tak­en so many of our lib­er­ties, and deliv­ered noth­ing tan­gi­ble in the way of actu­al results? Do you need to strip-search us in air­ports, tak­ing away our prop­er­ties to make us ‘safe’? Our phonecalls are tapped, our finan­cial records search­able, and you’ve made no progress in this ‘war’.”

It’s required data from the gov­ern­ment that made this report pos­si­ble. It allows us, the cit­i­zen­ry, to hold the gov­ern­ment account­able for their words and actions.

We need to hold them accountable.

Monday Mornings

I woke up this morn­ing to the sound of rain. I did­n’t quite expect things to be that damp when I woke up. But a rainy Mon­day? Can the week get any worse?

Wednes­day, Thurs­day, and Fri­day last week were mis­er­ably wet, as rem­nants from Trop­i­cal Storm Ernesto swept through the area.

Sat­ur­day, thank god, the weath­er cleared up for our foot­ball game. Sun­day was sim­i­lar­ly part­ly cloudy, with great weath­er for the Tekoa Ser­vice Project (pho­tos com­ing shortly!)

Even the weath­er agrees: week­ends: good. Week­days: suck.

Business Basics

My email provider, Fast­mail, had a cat­a­stroph­ic serv­er fail­ure on Thurs­day morn­ing (Wednes­day night?) The hard dri­ves on server3 became cor­rupt­ed as a result of a filesys­tem bug. They were able to quick­ly remount most par­ti­tions, but the largest (2 Ter­abytes) took much longer to check. It is cur­rent­ly still being verified.

Many users, includ­ing myself, have ques­tions.

1. Why isn’t there a back­up serv­er to host us on until this comes live?
2. Why are incom­ing emails to our account being bounced, instead of being queued for delivery?
3. Why are updates infre­quent, vague, and not reassuring?

Users of any online ser­vice are fick­le. When things break, the com­pa­ny is required to do a few sim­ple things to save face and keep customers:

1. Update sta­tus fre­quent­ly. We like to know what’s hap­pen­ing in as much detail as we can. Infor­ma­tion, good or bad, is mag­ni­tudes bet­ter than spec­u­la­tion and uncertainty.
2. Tell us, as con­fi­dent as you can be, of whose fault it is. If the data cen­ter made it, then we want to hear that you’ll be mov­ing us or tak­ing steps to guard against it hap­pen­ing again. And if you screwed up, own up to it will­ing­ly and with­out redi­rect­ing blame. Admit to it, and tell us how you’re going to win back our con­fi­dence and make sure it does­n’t hap­pen again.
3. Have a Plan B. If a serv­er goes down for emails, let us access new email in the inter­im. If a web­serv­er dies, be ready to shift users to a new one and restore from back­ups (you were keep­ing back­ups, right?)

Fast­mail has done none of these things. And so, it is with lit­tle reluc­tance that I am going to host my own email from this domain. I can find/buy/own my own mail serv­er, and retain con­trol over the domain (and mail exchange (MX) records, as a side bonus.)

Com­put­ing com­pa­nies must be run as busi­ness­es. Cus­tomers want trans­paren­cy and hon­esty, and if you refuse to give them that, basic uncer­tain­ty will quick­ly send them elsewhere.