Blog Title: Something cheesy this way comes

Bookish

I've read a few decent books recently:

Juggler of Worlds, by Niven & Lerner is billed as a "prequel to Ringworld," although I don't really see how that is so - it could just as easily be billed "a Known Space extraordinaire." This book is good, if you already are into Niven's known space books - Beowulf Schaffer and Nessus really pop out, and it's good storytelling. The accumulated baggage of known space (stepping discs, hyperdrive, moving planets, stasis boxes, etc) are handled with aplomb such that they feel like natural parts of the story and are not distracting in their power.

I re-read The World of Null-A, The Players of Null-A, and Null-A three, by A.E. van Vogt in preparation for reading johncwrights Null-A Continuum. Obviously, the first book in the series is the best, and nothing which follows can quite rise to its level. That said, I think the next best of the books is Wright's - van Vogt had a habit of tossing dozens of ideas into a page, and then only exploring a couple of them. Wright has much of the same galactic/universal scope of van Vogt, but he seems a bit more concerned with making sure that it ends up making sense upon reflection. His work basically treats Null-A Three the way that most sf fans treat Highlander 2 ("what movie?"), but this is not a fault - Three is by a long margin the least of the books. I would say that this is a case where Wright's work can bridge space to join van Vogt's (this makes sense if you've read the books, and if you haven't, then I think you've got some reading to go do). The right sequence to read these is World, Players, and Continuum. And when you're done, go read The Weapon Shops of Isher, and maybe a few more of van Vogt's brilliant works.

I also re-read Disturbing the Universe, by Freeman Dyson, and was struck by the poetry of creation - Dyson is one of the greatest living minds, and he has successfully balanced upon the shoulders of giants: we should allow ourselves to learn more from him. This book chronicles many of the things he encountered across his career - like Feynman, he has had a breathtaking range of activities, and has not permitted himself to become blindered in his experience of the world.

Another re-read was James Tiptree's Brightness Falls from the Air. This is stunning in its ambition, and flawless in execution. The pathos of the story of the murdered star lacks many analogs: perhaps Vonnegut's narrator's prologue to Slaughterhouse Five comes close, but the idea of a collective guilt and shame on display publicly is quite compelling.

FORE!

I've recently taken control of a bunch of switches in a lab - these are dusty old Fore Marconi Ericsson ASX-200-BX chassis, with a variety of cards. Of the ~10 SCPs I've tested so far, three have ForeThought on them - all of the others are looking for bootp based OS (argh), and the three which have FT have exceptionally old versions - two have 5.3.1, and I upgraded the third from 3.25 to 4.0.6. Yikes. Current FT images don't support the i960-based SCPs (they do support more recent generations of the P5/P6 series), and the current FT image is in the 9.x range.

I've been having a devil of a time trying to figure out how to get the 5.3.1 OS copied onto the SCP which has the 4.0.6 OS - they run incompatible versions of PNNI - but the tftp loader seems to be unable to actually make connections to a SolarWinds TFTP server. I get lots of sessions starting, but then encounter path errors. Argh.

I don't have a service contract, and even if I did, this would be like calling Microsoft for Win 3.1 -> Win 95 upgrade advice. Anyone out there got any ideas about how to do this (or how to set up a bootp-based OS server for these old things)? I can limp along with static PVCs, but it's lame when the whole reason is to provide an ATM core for more interesting things to happen on the edge.

Reason #314152 why Sarah is awesome

Pan seared steak with red wine pan sauce for two*, along with sweet potatoes. Oh hell yeah.

I'm not sure that the only way to every man's heart is through his stomach, but it's certainly a tasty way to get there.

Add to this a Recanati cabernet, and delightful conversation, and you've got the makings of me being thrilled that I got home early.

And so for this, and for lots more things, I give thanks - but most importantly for Sarah having chosen to be my wife for the last 10 years. I wouldn't be half the man I am without her.




*I walked in the door while in the middle of a phone call, and I was just about bowled over by how awesome the house smelled. Mmmmm.... the cattlemen are right: beef IS what's for dinner.

Great Success!

I have had a series of meetings this week, and happily, I was able to convince those people who needed to be convinced that water is actually wet.

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A cool thing I've recently encountered takes a "best-of-both-worlds" approach to assigning multicast RP addresses - plan on using anycast-RP with MSDP, but configure the MSDP/Anycast instances as auto-rp candidates, and configure all of the spokes as auto-rp listeners. Anycast then works as it does normally, but without requiring any manual configuration on the spoke routers. Neat-o!

Belatedly

17 Marheshevan was the 10th anniversary of my conversion to Judaism. Maybe it's not just a phase after all...

Maintenance Windows

A set of changes which theoretically could be done in under 5 minutes ended up with a maintenance window which was 6 hours long due to this group making sure that that group would be able to schedule it, and leaving some padding in, and then verifying with another group, etc.

Total time for the changes? 25 minutes. Including notifications and verifications. Booyah!

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I highly recommend watching this British PSA Then watch it again. This logic applies in so, so many areas...

h/t OSC.

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I know how she feels.

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A modest proposal I could support - I think that the distinctions between states are sometimes overwhelmed, and the Senate should be more than a storing ground for those with Presidential ambition.

While we're at it, could we please amend the 21st Amendment to remove section 2? A major explicit purpose of the Federal government is to regulate interstate commerce. Transport of alchohol between states should therefore be a federal matter, not a state matter.

Now THAT would be change in which I could believe.

Thinking again

Thomas writes about two interesting not-so-obvious pheomena.

And here is a very interesting statistical analysis of the male-female breakdown of college degrees.

And this is an informative picture about eating your own dog food.

Miles to go

Recently I was in a position where I didn't have something nice to say. Whether or not my opinion was justified, I should try to do a better job of saying nothing rather than saying something nasty.

Some things stay the same

Sarah is up in Boston with her family and our new nephew, so as always when she's not here, it's Civilization time!

I was Egypt, and there was noone playing Crete. It was not a terribly warlike game, other than some excellent skirmishes between Assyria (Andrew) and I. We did play with the western expansion, and had 8 people. I got to 14 cards, but only had some of the selections I did because we had called the game to end at 7ish. It was surprisingly close, and the calamities right at the end could have easily radically reshaped the outcome (Michael had 4, and I was a civil war beneficiary).

Civil war came up a lot, and seemed to start at Assyria and go clockwise.

The final scores were:
Asia (Ari) 3284
Egypt (David) 3208
Africa (Michael) 3011
Iberia (Matt) 2942
Thrace (Shoshana) 2671
Illyria (Elanit) 2510
Babylon (Martin) 2277
Assyria (Andrew) 2201

So yes, the EB domination continues, and I continue in my "always a bridesmaid, never a bride" second place string.

Everything Old is New Again

Every now and then, an old song comes up on my iPod, and I am reminded of just how good it is. In this case, Living Colour's big late-80's hit Cult of Personality, penned by guitarist Vernon Reid, was the one which caught my attention. Here are the lyrics - perhaps the je ne sais quoi that caught my ear may be apparent to others as well.

Look into my eyes, what do you see?
The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I've been everything you want to be
I'm the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I'm the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights, a nobel prize
When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You don't have to follow me
Only you can set me free
I sell the things you need to be
I'm the smiling face on your t.v.
I'm the cult of personality
I exploit you; still you love me

I tell you one and one makes three
I'm the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandi
I'm the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights a nobel prize
When a leader speaks, that leader dies
You don't have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You me power in your God's name
I'm every person you need to be
I'm the cult of personality

da'at yahid, part 2

I think that Animals is the best Pink Floyd album.

I find Gov. Palin's Annie Oakley-style public persona quite compelling, and think that both parties should try to look for others who have some of her qualities.

I think that Freeman Dyson is probably the smartest person alive. That's not the controversial part; I think he's so amazing because of how he perceives and writes about beauty in the world.

I think there are a lot of eerie similarities between IPv6 and the OSI stack.

I think The Rock worked best as a heel.

UPDATE: This guy's like an unemployed teacher

he's got no class.

Occasionally, some folks don't quite seem to know when to apply a bit of the old "shut the hell up" cream, and they not only do despicable and cowardly things, they brag about it. It is very surprising to me that Sen. McCain, whose whole public persona is based on concepts like "honor," "duty," and "loyalty," would have had a guy like this working for him.

I can understand someone saying "boy, I think Gov. Palin doesn't know enough about foreign policy to be Veep." That's a completely reasonable opinion, and she never portrayed herself as an expert in that area. This is, however, a far cry from Mr. Eisenstadt's actions here - being willing to be the anonymous source for a smear is pretty low, if you ask me.

Update: ok, so Mr. Eisenstadt is not a real person. However, the people who created him are jerks for being the source of outrageous smears. Perhaps the media could use this as an opportunity to quit relying on anonymous sources "close to campaigns"?

I will say that this does explain my question above, about how Sen. McCain could have someone like this working for him... he didn't.

Yet Another Modest Proposal

Coyote speculates on a congressional bailout. This captures so many of my feelings it's hard to put electrons on the screen.

Have we as Americans completely given up on the idea of self-reliance, or accountability for one's own risk? I certainly hope not, although my optimism in this matter is flagging.

(oh, btw, that whole "as bad as the Great Depression" meme that's floating around is total horseshit: show me a time in the Great Depression where 6% unemployment was considered high, and I'll show you compromising photos of the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.)

Porno (spoiler)

Zack and Miri Make a Porno is excellent. This is not for those who would be offended by a little nudity or crudity, but it's both very funny and quite sweet at the same time.

I did notice that along with Knocked Up and others, several of Seth Rogen's recent movies have actually embraced relatively conservative family values. A one night stand leads to a couple trying to make a marriage and family work. Sex between friends has significant emotional consequences. Hmmm. Perhaps all is not lost in Hollywood after all...

Happy Occasion

My sister-in-law Lillie gave birth on Friday to a healthy son. Mazal Tov!

And another nephew turns 1 today - so lots of good all around.

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After reading a bunch of reaction to Sen. Obama's victory (note: he'll be President Obama in January, not before), I think I've come up with the right phrase to describe the situation - he's Schrödinger's candidate. Right now, he can be all things to all people, but at some point, he'll have to collapse the wave function and take a firm position on something controversial. At that point, some will think that he's too radical, and some will think that he's not radical enough. We'll get to open the box, and see exactly how the cat's doing. I think it'll be interesting to see how long that takes...

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Syslog can really cause a hell of a lot of damage if it gets forwarded across a WAN. I've recently seen a several hundred megabit / second flow...

To Democracy!

My candidates won neither the US Presidental election nor the DC Council at-large election. Drat. You win some, you lose some.

I congratulate Sen. Obama on his victory, and pray that he is blessed with wisdom and insight far beyond his young years, and ushers in a new era of peace and prosperity for the USA. His acceptance speech, and Sen. McCain's concession speech, fulfilled the old adage of being magnanimous in victory and gracious in defeat.

I gleefully embrace the possibility of my prior judgements and opinions being shown to be wrong, and hope that I get to tell all my Democratic friends "boy, we're y'all right!"

I would like to correct a few folks who have been jumping the gun a tad: we do not have a new President. The US President is George W Bush, and technically the electoral college has not yet met to designate Sen. Obama as the President-elect - that happens in December. All things in time...

Or, as the song from Avenue Q goes:

Only for now! (Sex!)
Is only for now! (Your hair!)
Is only for now! (George Bush!)
Is only for now!

Don't stress, Relax,
Let life roll off your backs
Except for death and paying taxes,
Everything in life is only for now!

The people have spoken

So now I will give you the answers for which you've been waiting:

24 Respondents: 14 Female, 7 Male, 3 "yes, please."

18 folks are married (including all of the men), 5 are single, and one is horny ("wish I was gettin it on").

All were straight except for three bisexual married women, and one person who was "other" (I thought the categories were pretty inclusive, so I have no idea what that would be...).

Of the 14 women, 11 remove pubic hair. Of the 7 men, one does.

10 Democrats, 6 Independents, 2 Republicans, 2 Libertarians, a Federalist (hi!), one Fascist, one "none of the above," and one "all of the above."

So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

And I feel validated in my point that while pubic hair removal is common among women, it is very uncommon among straight men.

All I needed to know I learned at Domino's®

I've had multiple battles in multiple fronts lately, and they've been terribly frustrating for me. I think one of the things they have in common is that I have a customer-service background and perspective, while many others have other perspectives.

I have worked at Arby's®, Hardee's®, McDonalds®, Burger King®, Domino's®, Papa John's®, Subway®, Chesapeake Bagel Bakery®, Pumpernickel's, Uncle Sid's, and about ten or twelve other restaurants. Some of these were in a team lead/manager capacity, but a fair number were in "line worker" capacity.

Here are a few lessons I've learned from my extensive food service experience:

1) I am replaceable. The customer does not care one whit for me as a human, or for my company as a organization. They care about their pizza. Therefore, no discussion of internal process is useful with them - they don't care. The customer wants to have an experience which can be summed up by "place order, give money, receive pizza." If I'm going to interact with the customer, I need to make sure that I don't impact that formula or add any additional steps or complexity to it.

2) Take their money. When someone wants to buy a product or service, make it easy. This often means that there will need to be all kinds of complexity in offices which is hidden from customer view. The customer needs to be protected from that complexity, and adequate staff and resources on the inside are required so that the customer doesn't realize that their request might be hard.

3) Don't waste their time. If there are neighborhoods to which you don't deliver, finding the answer to that needs to be the FIRST question. Don't go all the way through placing an order, and then tell me that you can't fulfill it. The customer's time is money, and is probably worth far more to them than the product they are buying is. Ignore this one at your peril! Making it hard to complete a transaction or answer a question has the hidden cost of making people want to avoid doing it.

4) Just make another pizza. If a customer complains that the pepperoni are distributed incorrectly, just make another one. Don't argue, don't hesitate, just re-do the work. It'll be faster for everyone, and the cost of the pizza is far, far lower than the value of the customer. Don't roll your eyes at the request either - some things are terribly important to some customers, and they won't make sense to the service people. That's fine, and "weird customer" stories are great for a laugh at the bar, but when at work, just give them what they want.

5) If they ask for a recommendation, provide one. Don't say "everything is good" - that isn't what they're asking: they're saying "what would YOU get today?" Even if the recommendation is based on an ephemeral mood, it's still a place for them to start making a decision.

Good, bad, and coyote

Good: my cousin Jon reviewed Lingua Franchise yesterday. It's thoughtful, although I have a tinge of sadness that that lineup is no more. More on it later.

Bad: Have you suspected that high-fructose corn syrup was really bad for you? - there seems to be more evidence in this direction.

Coyote: Jeph Jaques delivers the booty call. I've rarely seen it depicted in this pathetic a manner, and yet, it captures the essence perfectly.

For seriously ugly, we have to turn to the intestinal tract, Sarah's to be precise. She had her colonoscopy and endoscopy last Thursday, and the anesthesia didn't work. Let me repeat: the anesthetic didn't work. The level of suck here isn't really fully measurable - just imagine waking up in surgery, and yep, that's about right. Yikes. She's recovering well, and is made of stern stuff, but that's a hell of an way to add insult to injury.

Private Information

Sarah and I were having a conversation about a large number of subjects, and somehow we ended up on the topic of genital grooming. We have widely different opinions about what common practices are in this area, and thus, it's time for yet another survey...

Finally! A survey that doesn't care about getting your vote!

Click Here to take survey - results will be posted after election day, because personal grooming is a matter of national importance and not nearly enough attention.

Homies

R' Aldrich wrote a fascinating piece exploring homeschooling in the Orthodox community over at Orthonomics. This is definitely worth reading, although his figure of $10,000 annual tuition is low by a factor of 2 in this area (eek).

Some random thoughts about the state of things

I must admit to being surprised at French Prime Minister Sarkozy's opinion of Sen. Obama's approach to foreign policy.

In the "be careful what you wish for" department, the always-good Coyote points out some of the not-obvious-at-first-glance differences between the European economies and the US economy.

And finally, one of the best political commentaries I've read in a while.

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In the "haven't looked at this for a long time" category, Cisco cellular HWICs use something very similar to the old Hayes AT command set. Yikes. ATDT,CONNECT...

***%&@rh2infc924@$%$%&#@@.......NO CARRIER

What the government should have done regarding the economy

Nothing.

Well, not quite nothing, but very little. Examples of constructive "doing very little" would include

Suspending the tax on a short sale (i.e. help people get out of houses they can't afford without kicking them again)

If the commercial paper market dries up, the gov. could offer short term commercial-paper loans at 1% higher than the prevailing interest rate (i.e. the market should still be preferable).

Other than that? meh. Oh all right - how about publish that any bailout will only be for at most 10 cents on the dollar, and that all senior managers will have to stay on for six months at minimum wage (i.e. make a bailout REALLY suck).

As far as I can tell, what we've now done is fully socialized all of the risk inherent in business, and there are now companies which are turning down private short-sales because they are expecting a better government bailout. We have completely forgotten the Hippocratic approach to the market - "first, do no harm."

Greed is part of the essence of human nature - it's why God described the sixth day as "very good," so I don't know why we're behaving as though we've found some profound new phenomenon - this financial bubble pop is exactly the same as the housing pop, which is exactly the same as the telecom pop, which is exactly the same as the railroad pop. Ain hadash tahat hashemesh (there is nothing new under the sun).

Instead of acknowledging that after drinking comes the hangover, we've now launched ourselves into a world of screwed up incentives and a misunderstanding of mathematics. Bleah.

I sure wish that a Republican was running in this election...

Class notes: session 2: Preparing food on Shabbat or Yom Tov

Guiding principle: as God rested from His acts of creation on the seventh day, so too do we rest from our creative acts, and thereby show our partnership with Him in this world.

All of the various prohibitions on work on Shabbat, Yom Tov, or Ḥol hamoëd are derived from the activities performed by the Israëlites as they built the portable sanctuary (mishkan) in the desert. Many of the activities which are therefore classed as “work” are not relevant to the preparation of food (e.g. “weaving”), but there are several types of activity which are relevant. Shabbat is more stringent than Yom Tov, and there are no relevant food preparation prohibitions on Ḥol hamoëd.

Conceptual terms: yad soledet bo blech melakhah

General issues:
• Don’t fresh-grind pepper.
• Don’t squeeze lemon into water or tea (but you can squeeze lemon onto sugar which you put into tea).
• Don’t use regular sponges in washing dishes – use non-absorbent scrubbies instead.
• Food packages can be opened even if this involves tearing through printed letters. In the case of cans, the can should be fully emptied and discarded – this is due to concern about creating a new kli (vessel).
• Oatmeal is not okay: it’s making a paste, which is the same as “kneading.”
• Don’t use slotted spoons.
• Don’t carefully measure things
• Disable the light in the refrigerator – either tape the contact, or unscrew the bulb so that it does not automatically turn on when the door is opened.
• If there’s a light in the oven, it should either be always on or always off – make sure it isn’t activated by the door.

Shabbat dinner:

Shabbat Lunch:

Yom Tov:

What passes for hiddush nowadays

I had a thought this morning, while Bereshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8) was being read. I was thinking about why exactly the Torah starts when it does - after all, God calls a mulligan on the whole enterprise of creation with the flood - all of the stuff before that gets quite literally washed away, so why bother including it?

Well, RDBF had spent some time talking over Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur about the idea that when we pray for mercy and forgiveness, we're really asking for judgement to be set aside, and for us not to be punished for the things we have done wrong. We are, in fact, asking for justice to be deferred entirely. But the problem of the deferral of justice is that it leads to injustice - that is, that people who do bad are not necessarily punished.

We read Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) on the Shabbat of Sukkot (Booths) - this is attributed to be a moment of required seriousness in the midst of the overflowing joy of Sukkot. One of the major themes of Kohelet is that injustice is not corrected, and that the world in which Solomon finds himself is deeply flawed and "evil" because of it. The very next Shabbat the portion is always Bereshit.

Perhaps this juxtaposition is also there to show us that the injustice in the world comes directly from God - He is the one who permits a sin to go unpunished, after all. Cain murders Abel, and God not only does not enact any sort of punishment for this murder, he "sets His protective mark" upon Cain so that he will not be punished by anyone else.

What we perceive as injustice is in fact evidence of the overflowing mercy of the Lord, blessed is He. His concern for His creations is like that of a pregnant woman for her unborn child (in fact, the name "Harahaman (the merciful one) is derived from the Hebrew word for womb, rehem).

So instead of having the reaction of Solomon, and despairing at the success of the wicked, let us instead take comfort in the evidence of the overflowing mercy of God.