Bluegrass On the Links

Let's get some things straight

2011-06-02T22:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've posted. At one point, I had planned on posting something daily. Then, when that didn't work out, I thought I'd post weekly. Of course, that didn't work out, either, and here it is June of 2011, and I haven't posted since January of 2010. Oh, well, what ya gonna do?

Today is the day I post some truths. If you're squeamish about that stuff, you might not want to read on. But if you want to know who I really am, and what I think about stuff, and you think you can deal, please, do read on. Some of this may not be news to you, but I guarantee you that at least some of what you think you know about me is probably not what actually is.

I'm in two long-term committed relationships. Actually, that's kind of inaccurate; I'm in a single long-term committed relationship. My committed relationship just happens to have more than one person at each end. So, let's meet my immediate family. There's Barb, to whom I'm married (legally, even, in most states). She and I met way back when we were both in college. We met on a internet BBS (bulletin board system) the likes of which almost don't really exist any more. We had the usual long-distance courtship, and got married in 1994. It was a lovely wedding, many of our dear friends were in attendance, and aside from running out of the sparkling wine before we got any, all was well. Of course it was, because we fit nicely into the mold most people are comfortable with.

We had a pretty normal life as married students, and when the time came to be done with school, we moved to where there were high-tech jobs, which at the time was Dallas, Texas. This was also the time when we really got to know our dear friends, Chuck and Cheryl, who also lived in Dallas. It was actually Chuck who convinced me that moving to Dallas was a good idea, and in hindsight, he was right for many reasons.

In Dallas, we got to live the young dual-income-no-kids life, and it was good, even if the job I moved there for tried to kill me eventually, at which time I got another better one. And, we spent a lot of time with Chuck and Cheryl, both because we didn't really know anybody else down there, and also because they are delightful people.

At some point, Barb and I fell for Chuck and Cheryl. It's the only way I can describe it.

What do you do when that happens? We had both read Heinlein, and had been exposed to the concept of plural marriage, but only academically. This was for real, and it was happening to us. The two of us talked about it on many occasions, but figured it would pass as many things do.

It didn't pass.

But, time did pass, and situations changed, and I ended up taking a great opportunity in Abilene, Texas in 1998. Barb was happy to quit her awful job in Dallas, and we moved, thinking "Abilene's not that far from Dallas." Well, it turns out that Abilene really was far from Dallas after all, and we were pretty bummed because we didn't get to see Chuck and Cheryl very much any more. And, pretty soon, they pulled up stakes and moved up to Seattle, which is where Cheryl is from.

We tried to live the quiet suburban life, mostly successfully, but as happens, plans changed again when Barb called me up at work one day to tell me she was pregnant. So, we rented a house with a yard, and started setting up a home with a place for a new baby.

Most of 1999 was a blur; we went to lots of OB/GYN appointments, and in addition to the regular job I was working, I worked on my first start-up with Chuck and a high school friend of his. When it was almost time for baby Laura to arrive, Cheryl dropped everything and flew down and stayed with us and helped with, well, everything. It was really awesome, and she and I tag-teamed running interference for Barb while she labored and we were both right there when Laura was delivered. It was really the sweetest thing. Chuck was able to fly down and join us shortly thereafter, and it was like old times again.

I really can't stress enough how wonderful the two of them were and are.

Eventually, the time came for them to go back to their jobs and lives in Seattle, and we were sad to see them go, but we got on with life, but our relationship would never be the same after that.

Our hands were full with a new baby; neither of us knew anything about what you were supposed to do with a baby, but we muddled through, and life was good, and I took a bunch of photographs and wrote a lot of stuff, and worked like mad for most of the first half of 2000. Sadly, the start-up didn't work out, and we it up sometime in 2000. Things were afoot at my regular job, too, with lots of talk about closing the Abilene office, and I started looking around for what my next gig was going to be. I knew one thing for sure: Abilene was a one-horse town, and if my office closed down, there wasn't going to be anything for me to do there. So I started looking for jobs in the Kansas City area, but really without much luck. There is a small high-tech industry there, but it's a really small market, and at the time, was on the decline.

At this point Chuck pinged me and let me know that his company was hiring software architects. We had never even considered moving to Seattle before, but we thought I should at least check this opportunity out. Working with Chuck again was definitely a plus, too. For reasons I don't even remember, the two of them traveled to KC in June of 2000 and attended my sister's wedding (I was the photographer, and shrewdly predicted I'd need an assistant, a role Chuck filled well). Unfortunately, Laura was not having a good day and was being really fussy. So, while Chuck and I were photographing the wedding and Barb was standing up with Wendy, Cheryl sat in the car with Laura, who cried and fussed the whole time.

We got to spend a lot of quality time with Chuck and Cheryl that weekend, and I think it cemented in our minds what we had only kind of figured out in the previous two months; we didn't ever want to be away from these two again.

Well, word came down from my job that the office was indeed going away, and soon. So, we made arrangements to go visit Seattle in July, and we went up and stayed for a week or so and I interviewed with Chuck's (and Cheryl's, by that time) company. It was a really good visit and we fell in love with Seattle and even more with the two of them. The company made me an offer, and after talking it over, Barb and I decided that it was the right thing. So, we packed everything up, and tied up our loose ends and moved up to Seattle. Aside from some bumps in the road, it was a lovely drive up from Abilene to Seattle and we got to see a lot of the country we hadn't seen before, and it was all really cool.

At first, everything was really great. We had an awesome apartment in Bellevue, and I had a great job, and Barb and Laura had everything they needed, and our relationship with Chuck and Cheryl blossomed, and it was just wonderful.

And then, on the same day, all three of us got laid off. It was a freakin' nightmare.

A bunch of really bad stuff happened in the December 2000 - April 2001 timeframe, which I'm not going to go into here, because it's all water under the bridge, and there's no reason to open up old wounds, but at the end of it all, Cheryl was in her own apartment in West Seattle, and Chuck was living by himself in Kirkland, and I was unemployed again. That was a pretty stressful time, but we got through it all, and after a long wait, I found another job, and we were back on our feet enough that we bought a house in Des Moines in September.

Time passed, Chuck moved from Kirkland to Seattle, Cheryl moved from her apartment into her house in Shorewood, and through a fraternal organization we all belong to, we met Joe, and it became pretty obvious that Barb and Joe had some kind of mutual attraction going on.

More time passed, and the relationship between Barb, Cheryl and me settled out into something resembling comfortable, and I could tell how awesome Joe was for Barb and vice versa, and at some point everything just fell into a nice comfortable happiness.

It's been 17 years since Barb and I married, and 11 years since Cheryl joined our family, and 9 since Joe joined the family, and things have stabilized nicely. We're all pretty happy with everything. I love them all, and they all love me and each other. We all support each other, we all annoy each other, but we all know we're in it together, and we're in it for the long haul.

Laura Grace has never known anything different, and doesn't think it's out of the ordinary. I know this because she told me so today.

So, what's the point of all of this? Well, it's high time people understand that Cheryl and Joe are Very Important People to Barb and me. It's not legal to be married to more than one person in the state of Washington, but for all practical purposes, we are all married to each other. And, it's not a passing fad. I can't think of a better arrangement for my family.

I'm happy to answer any sincere questions anybody might have, but know this: this is for real and it's not immoral or evil just because it's not your cup of tea.

Postscript: You might be wondering what happened to Chuck. Chuck is still very much around, and we love him, too. He's had some things to deal with, but he's dealing with them, and he knows that we're all here for him whenever he needs us. Even Cheryl. Hell, especially Cheryl. :)

Fitness, Health, Taekwondo and Me

2010-01-30T11:42:00.000-08:00

Laura started taking taekwondo in November of 2008 at a school in Burien and it she seemed to really take to it. As I watched her in class and then watched her test for higher rank, it started looking kind of fun to me, too, and last April, I started taking classes. The first few classes were pretty hard and at the time I wasn't entirely sure that I'd be able to survive, but here it is, 9 months later, and I'm still going and progressing in rank (I'm a green belt and will be testing for purple in about 3 weeks).

When I started it was all I could do to do the three 45-minute classes a week, but eventually I joined the "master club" and stepped up to four one-hour classes per week, and started doing the W.A.R. workouts as well (W.A.R. == Warriors Achieving Results, a general workout/circuit training class that does a hard workout for 45 minutes). At my peak, I was working out before lunch 6 days a week for about 1/2 hour, 4 hour-long taekwondo classes, and 2 45 minute W.A.R. classes. I say, "at my peak", because of late, I haven't been doing the lunch workouts, and life keeps intervening, and I'm lucky if I can make two or three classes, and because of a bit of awesomeness (not) I pulled the other day, I ended up going to class and not to W.A.R. (note to self: don't forget to take your meds, forget to hydrate and then eat poorly on class/W.A.R. day or you will experience dizzyness and tunnel vision and have to stop).

I've discovered some unfortunate truths along the way. I remember at one point, long before I ever thought of doing taekwondo, learning "eating right is not enough". I.e., Eat the right number of calories in the right proportions of protein/carbohydrates/fat all you want, and that's great, you might even lose weight, but you won't be healthy. Now, I've learned "exercising lots is not enough". It helps with some of the numbers (cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure), but not enough. I guess I can't eat like "normal" (whatever that means) and exercise 6-8 hours a week and expect any real results; I am in better shape than I've been in a long time, and I do have more endurance and more wind, and it's important to look back at what I was like when I first started. But, it's not enough, because I have to lose weight, and I'm not really losing weight. I've lost a little, but my joints tell me that I need to lose a lot more. So, exercising lots is not enough either.

So, where to go from here? Well, it is fortuitous that next Monday is not just a Monday but also the 1st of February. I like beginnings and this one seems to be shouting at me "time for a new beginning!". I've found a tool that combines the utility of all the fitness/diet trackers out there with the annoying social aspects of Facebook and this combination may give me a bit of accountability, which I also need. If I put my food and exercise diary where my friends and family can see it, I'll at the very least be embarrassed when I eat a pizza (yah, a whole pizza) and either enter it where they can see it, or don't enter it out of shame. That will help in the short term, and maybe get me going towards forming more good habits for the long term. So, going back to the "new beginnings" theme, I'm going to start this plan on 2/1, and see how it goes.

Now, I've still got to get my head on straight, and that's the hardest part. If I don't do that, then it doesn't really matter what I do in the long run, because I'll just run back to my bad habits in times of stress like I always do. Gastric bypass, LAP band surgery, this new plan, none of it will matter unless I figure out why I have to eat like i do. Anyway, one thing at a time, I guess.

It all started when I wrecked my bike...

2009-03-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

So, about 5 or 6 years ago, when I was gung ho about cycling (not "riding bikes"), I was out riding the Interurban Trail, towing Laura behind me in a Burley. Joe and Cheryl were along. We went out about 5 miles and then turned around and headed back and decided to stop and rest and have some water, etc. I glided up, feathered the brakes, and ever-so-gently came to a stop. And then, realized my cleats were still stuck to the pedals because I had forgotten to click out at which time I panicked and instead of either a) clicking out and leaning over or b) PEDALING, I just fell over.

If there's a feeling sicker than that just before you hit the pavement because you forgot to click out of your pedals, I don't know what it would be. If you cycle, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you don't, just trust me. It's the inevitability of the pavement meeting parts of one's body mixed together with the thought of "wow, I could have avoided this pain I'm about to feel if only I weren't a complete idiot" added to "sure are a lot of people around who are going to see this embarrassing spectacle". It's all bad is what I'm saying.

So, I hit the pavement. Hard. I also took a handlebar to the gut. Hard. Hard enough that the handlebar was all bent up and pretty much unusable in its newly current state. Laura, back in the Burly, was fine because the makers of the Burley are very aware that idiots like me exist and designed the burly so that if the cyclist goes Tango Uniform, the Burley remains upright and its passenger is spared the ugliness of being unceremoniously dumped out onto the pavement.

Laura, not knowing the agony I was in, thought it was pretty funny, which, in retrospect, it was, especially to a 3 year old. I, on the other hand, did not think it was funny. Actually, I didn't think about much of anything as I was concentrating on breathing; that handlebar knocked the wind out of me completely. I believe Cheryl and Joe were both concerned for my well-being because the next thing I remember is them asking if I was okay.

Well, I was okay enough at the time. It hurt a lot, but we still had 3-4 miles to go to get back to the cars, so I hauled this way and that on the handlebars to get them bent back into some kind of usable shape, and we headed back, and all was mostly well. Kind of. At the time, I was pretty sure that I had cracked a rib or two, but I didn't go to the doctor because I figured "what's a doctor going to do with cracked ribs anyway? tell me to take it easy and don't do that again?". In any case, I didn't bother with it and it wasn't long and all was well and normal again, and I replaced the handlebars and didn't think about the incident much.

Gross stuff coming; stop reading if you don't like gross stuff. On the other hand, if you are interested in why I would want to write the above stuff, read on.

Flash forward to about a year and half ago where I had this thing on my belly that was weird, but I didn't know what it was. All I knew was it poked out, and I could push it back in, and then later it would poke out again. I just figured it was part of a) being fat, or b) getting older or some combination thereof.

Well, I had this thing for a while, and didn't think much about it until it started hurting when I took my walks or played Dance Dance Revolution (a valuable part of my weight loss plan at the time, which was working, by the way). Still, I didn't really worry about it, although I did slow down, and eventually stop, the walking and DDR. After a while, though, I was starting to be irritated by this thing, and so was my family, and I had also figured out that it was probably a hernia.

So, I went to see Dr. Laura, our family doctor, and asked her about it and she confirmed that I had a hernia. About this time was when everything started the downhill slide, but I did not know it yet. She referred me to a surgeon and he looked at it, and we scheduled a surgery for early December. I angsted about the surgery, but did everything I was supposed to do: a bunch of blood tests, an EKG and show up at the outpatient surgery center early early in the morning. The surgery went pretty well, and I went home and did the recuperating thing, which also went okay. When I was "all better", though, I still had this frickin' pokin' out thing. So, when I went back to the surgeon for my follow-up, he said "Yah, I found exactly what I expected, an umbilical hernia and that's what I repaired. However, this other thing you have is not from that, and I really couldn't just do exploratory surgery while you were out (no consent), so we're going to have to go again."

Now we reach the point where I tie the bike stuff in with the hernia stuff. It turns out that most likely, this 2nd hernia (or the 1st one, from my point of view) got started the day I wrecked my bike and took the handlebar to the gut. To be fair, I do not think that had I rushed to the doctor that day, she would have found this and been able to give me a pill that would spare me future surgery. In any case, if you wear cleats and use clipless pedals, always remember to click a foot out before you stop and you can avoid this whole nightmare.

Back to the first surgery. Right before I went in, the anesthesiologist came to see me and confirm what I was getting done and so forth, and he mentioned in passing that I have a "funky EKG" and did I know anything about it? I, of course, did not know about it, but he didn't seem concerned and we went ahead with the surgery. I did, however, ask Dr. Laura what a "funky EKG" was and she got a copy of it and looked at it and had her husband look at it and concluded that I had Premature Ventricular Compressions (or PVCs), and referred me to a cardiologist to get checked out "Just In Case". As will become clear, this is the first and last "Just In Case" anything I'm doing because it all went sideways from here.

I had my first appointment with the cardiologist, and he ordered up a bunch of tests: another blood test, another EKG, an echocardiogram, a "Nuclear Stress Test" and I had to wear a monitor for 24 hours. I went and did all that stuff, which was a pain, and when it was all done, everything looked good except the results of the something-grams they took as part of the nuclear stress test were "inconclusive".

So, the cardiologist says "you need an angiogram." I had had enough of the testing, and really didn't want an angiogram. My surgery for hernia #2 (or #1, from my point of view) was scheduled for the end of the week and I just wanted to get it over with. Well, except, now I couldn't have my surgery; I was informed that no anesthesiologist would put me under with what was currently dictated into my file. So, I had to cancel the surgery and do an angiogram that day instead.

Let me tell you this: you do not want an angiogram. Not ever. They take a garden hose, and they shove it up into your femoral artery via your groing and use this to get a catheter into your heart so they can put a contrast dye in there and take picutres of your circulatory system. He told me I wouldn't feel anything other than a little pressure. What bullshit that was. In getting into the artery, they hit that big nerve that goes down the inside of my leg not once, not twice, but 3 times, and that utterly sucked.

The funny thing about all this is, about 30 seconds after they started actually taking the pictures he said I was "all clear, everything looked great", at which point I was wondering "Then why in the hell did I need this stupid angiogram in the first place?". He finished up, and they took me back out where I started and the nurses removed the garden hose, and I bled all over everything, and they applied pressure for 10 minutes and then I had to lay flat on my back for 3 hours and then I had to do laps of the recovery room and then they let me go home and I was sore for days. The cardiologist suggested that I could have the angiogram on Thursday and then the surgery on Friday, which in retrospect would have ended up working out logistically, but would have been a very bad idea for other reasons, chief among them that I would have been groin-sore and gut-sore and that would have been to much, I think.

I got my 2nd hernia surgery for the 2nd (1st) hernia a couple weeks later and here I sit, recuperating and healing up, and, truly, all's well that ends well, I guess. I'd just as soon have skipped the whole thing, which I could have done had just remembered that I needed to put a foot down a little bit earlier.

Also, medical care is expensive and I'm way glad I have health insurance. Oh, and the "funky EKG"? Perfectly normal, lots of people have PVCs.

A Very Astute Take on Gay Marriage

2008-11-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

Seriously, people, get over yourselves.

Religion Doesn't Belong in Software Development

2008-11-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

Apparently there is a religious war going on between two factions of software developers. You have your big-design-up-front folks, and your agile folks, and if what I'm seeing in the blogosphere is any indication, they are engaged in a bitter war for religious superiority. I'm going to tell you why they're both wrong.

I cannot stand developers who get religion, especially when it's about stupid things like how to format the code (answer: pick something that everybody can live with and move on; no, your particular way isn't better than anybody else's way), how much to document the code (answer: as much as necessary, which is not as much as you think, but no more), or any of the other things we developers fight about instead of actually building the software. Religion about the development process is pretty stupid, too.

Greg's first rule of development process: if your process has a name by which it is recognized far and wide, your development organization has religion.

That's right. Agile, Scrum, XP, Waterfall, Rational, Test-First; all of those are religion, and I'm sure there are many others, as well. If you ever interview at a place and they say "We do Scrum here" or "We are an Agile shop", etc, run away, because the development group has got religion and you don't want that.

Why is religion bad? Well, by its very nature, it is rigid and inflexible, and represents in the mindsets of its practitioners the idea that they don't have to think about this stuff any more, the process takes care of it all.

Except, it doesn't, and you have to think about this stuff, constantly. The main problem is, no matter how much some developers want it to be so, one process does not fit all. For instance, if you are starting from scratch, good luck getting to your first version in any kind of useful time frame with no design up front. In that situation, you have to develop a foundation for the software, and doing it the Agile way is just not helpful because you must have some agreement at some level of what the hell you're doing before you can start doing it.

If are past that, and are evolving an existing product, then the approach you should take depends on, well, a lot of things, and there's no way any intelligent developer would say "Let's do XP" or "We need this big specification phase first" without knowing all of those things, which should be evidence that perhaps you can't use the same process for all projects.

Greg's second rule of development process: Do what works for your project right now.

I have seen various processes come and go (and come back with new names) over the years, and if I've learned anything, it's that there's really nothing new under the sun. Every so often, somebody comes up with the One True Way that nobody could ever have thought of before, and they give it a name, and suddenly it's the hot new thing. Except it's not hot, it's not new, and it can't be the One True Way. So, instead of searching for the One True Way, I've been searching for the ways that work, and the answer is: It depends.

The bottom line is, have smart and experienced developers in charge of the process, don't subscribe to one religion, and Do What Works. Sometimes that's doing a big design up front and sometimes it's doing iterative refinement in small chunks. Most of all, don't decide that what you've been doing works so well that you give it a name and write a book about it. That way lies madness.

Debates, Elections, Fear and Hope

2008-10-15T20:27:00.001-07:00

With the final presidential debate behind us, I'm feeling the need to put some thoughts down. For those of you who are likely to tl;dr me on this, I'll even give you a preview with some bullet points:

Barack Obama took the series (3-0, if you ask me).
John McCain has lost himself completely.
The vice presidential candidates don't really matter.
However, if they did matter, Biden took the VP debate 1-0.
The artificial fear that the right is attempting to whip up has nothing on the genuine fear that is the natural consequence of neo-conservative economic policies.
Town hall style debates are stupid. Sitting at the table debates are awesome.
Pat Buchanan is just really blatantly a cheerleader for the right, and it's kind of pitiful.
Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow really do rock.
John McCain's base of supporters must be idiots.

I'm sure I missed some stuff up there, but that's probably good enough for now.

So, Senator Barack Obama is just a better debater than Senator John McCain. McCain comes across as mean (the first debate), condescending (say "My friends" one more time, John), or angry (this last debate). Obama has been calm, steady and thoughful throughout all the debates. Don't take my word for it, go back and watch the debates. But, really watch, don't just cheerlead for McCain because he's a Republican. You'll see.

The John McCain of now is not the John McCain of the past. In an effort to pander to the Republican base, he's hitched his wagon to the worst of nags, and it shows. It's also not working, because the only people that support him now are that base (and oh, are they base indeed), and that's not enough to win an election. He could have pulled off this "maverick" thing if only he had actually acted like a maverick in recent memory. But, now he just looks like another neo-conservative Republican to the undecideds and any Democrat who might have voted for him based on his marverickyness, and to the Republican base, he's still to moderate, and even the nomination of Sarah Palin didn't fix that.

Face it, nobody really cares who the vice presidential candidate is. Maybe the vice presidential candidate has made a difference in elections past, but these days, not so much. Even so, surgeons could remove most of Joe Biden's brain, and he'd still pwn Sarah Palin in a debate. At best, she is completely unprepared to hold the second highest office in our land (never mind her being one melanoma away from the highest); at worst, she makes George Bush look like a fucking genius.

It's the economy, stupid. Really, it is. Republicans can sow the fear of terrorism all they want, but that only works in good economic times. What's the threat of planes flying into tall buildings compared to the fear of losing your house, your car and your big-screen television? Seriously, folks, if I don't know where my next meal is coming from, I just don't have time to think about the scary terrorists.

The debate this evening was awesome. McCain just dug hole after hole, and Obama happily shoveled the dirt in on top of him. You really can't argue with facts, and you certainly can't counter facts with lies and distortions. It was like McCain went in with a game plan of the plays he was going to run, but his playbook was inflexible and not responsive to the offense or defense of the other team. It was clear that Barack Obama has class, and it was clear that whatever class John McCain may have had has left the premises. Obama responded with facts; facts about his economic plan, facts about his health care plan, and facts about McCain's plans. McCain responded with the tired old Ayers, Acorn and taxes, oh my. Anyway, this debate format was perfect to illustrate the differences between the two.

I've always thought Pat Buchanan was a douchebag, but I had hopes that maybe he'd be a little less douchebag-y when he started appearing on MSNBC as the token Republican. I'm sorry to say, he's still just a Republican cheerleadin' douchebag. I think if John McCain had come out and performed "The Aristocrats", Buchanan would give him the debate "on points".

Just givin' a shout out to my sweetheart here, gosh darn it; Rachel and Keith make politics fun again. Yeah, they're just a tad bit biased in the direction we lean (just a tad), but you know, it's nice to have an alternative to Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity whereby such alternative isn't on Comedy Central. (I love you, Jon and Stephen, make no mistake, but Rachel and Keith are just a tiny bit more legitimate).

In honor of Mr. Olbermann, here's my special comment: Senator McCain, you are proud of your supporters, are you? You had an opportunity to repudiate their behavior on live television in front of the entire nation, and you did not take it, sir. Rather, you deflected the question by suggesting the same sort of nonsense occurs at Obama rallies. However, you offer no specific instances of such, sir, relying instead on the politics of insinuation, saying, in effect "no u". Mr. McCain, that is not an argument, that is not a debate. I defy you, sir, to offer up one instance of someone shouting, in reference to you or Governor Palin, "Kill him!", at an Obama rally. I defy you to offer up any instance remotely as despicable. Sir, you incite and inflame your supporters; your running mate stokes the fires of fear and hate, and you have the audacity to whine about "things said at your [Obama's] rallies"? And, you can't even come up with a single example? Shame on you, Mr. McCain; that is conduct unbecoming a United States Senator. And, when the respected congressman from Georgia calls you on this behavior, sir, your response is to complain that he's calling you a segregationist? Mr. McCain, you apparently did not read or hear the same remarks from Congressman Lewis that I did because that is not what he said at all. He said, "As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy. We can do better. The American people deserve better." His allusion to George Wallace was but an example of how this sort of behavior can backfire. He was not calling you a segregationist, but rather, a sower of the seeds of hatred, and, Mr. McCain, the comparison is apt. You and Governor Palin are playing a dangerous game, sir, and it is one the invitation to which I hope the majority of the American people will ignore.

In closing, Barack Obama offers real solutions, real change and real hope. Let us hope that the American people accept his offer, because the other way lies fear, darkness and despair.

Also, Senator Obama was wearing a flag pin and Senator McCain was not. Who's unpatriotic now? :P

Why EJB, Rails, and other clever object-relational frameworks are harmful

2008-08-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

Software developers have spent a great deal of time and effort developing new and better ways of dealing with data persistence. Unfortunately, the more clever the framework, the less useful it is when faced with any real-world data problems, and I'll tell you why. (This will be pretty java-centric, since it's what I know, and it's where I perceive the problem as originating, anyway. If you like .NET, I'll bet $1 that what I say below still applies.)

Before Java came along, I don't recall there being a big hoohah about elaborate persistence frameworks. You had your relational database, you had C, you had a library that you used to get your data in and out, and maybe you had some kind of pre-compiler to ease the burden of integrating the library with your code. Then C++ became interesting, and we all struggled to integrate the notion of relational data with the notion of object orientation. At that point, we were off to the races.

When Java came along, JDBC came followed shortly after, and JDBC is a decent general method of getting at your data in a database-independent (we'll come back to this notion later, by the way) manner. The reason it's decent is because it doesn't try to do too much; it lets you execute SQL on a server, and it lets you get at the results of that SQL. What more could you ask?

Well, to developers steeped in object-oriented methods, JDBC does not do enough because it doesn't turn SQL results sets into collections of objects. Further, to lazy developers, such as myself, it requires an awful lot of code just to execute simple queries. What you really want is an easy way of getting your data out of the database (which is really good at storing and querying the data) and into objects, which are easier for pretty much all of your other components to deal with.

So far, so good, mostly. Except, at this point, already the shift of the database to second-class status had begun. The relational database had become more of a necessary evil in the lack of any decent alternatives. With the advent of Enterprise JavaBeans, this became particularly pronounced, as it became fashionable to write as little SQL as possible and "let the framework do the work".

At the time, I even bought into this point of view. When EJB was still in its 1.0 version, at which time it was a neat idea, but not really usable (kind of like Jini and JavaSpaces; remember those?), I wrote a gigantic persistence framework that did all the things I wanted it to: I didn't have to write any SQL, I got to deal with object instances that were all objected-oriented and cool, and I didn't have to think about the database. Well, other than when I had to think about the database; my general-purpose way of modeling the data so it would be easy to map to objects only worked with CRUD operations on single instances. I eventually put in a lot of work to solve most of those problems and had something that worked pretty well, but only until I had to make any changes to way the data was structured to fix design problems.

At a later time, when EJB was in its 2.0 version, I had occasion to use it pretty extensively and, surprisingly at the time, it had many of the same problems I had had to solve in the framework I built. More recently, we have Hibernate and Rails which are essentially similar in nature, and they exhibit the same problems as EJB and everything else.

The overarching problem here is that they all try to abstract the database away. I've heard several arguments for doing so, but the one that crops up the most often is that you want to have database portability. There is this great desire to be able to switch database server technology without it being a Big Deal. Thus, if you abstract the database away, and make your framework stick to "standard" SQL, you should be able to just pick up your application and drop it on a new server and have it Just Work.

This is fantasy. For trivial applications, such as, say, the sample and tutorial apps that all of the frameworks ship with, sure, this can work. For real-world applications that deal in volumes of real data, though? Pure fantasy.

Now, a lot of the fault in this lies at the feet of the "standard" SQL people, and with the people who thought up SQL to begin with. "What, not how" works very well when talking about relational calculus; unfortunately, in the real world, we have to worry about "how" as well as "what". And until optimizers employed by database servers are perfect, we will have to continue to worry about "how". But, because of the promise of SQL to allow us to think about "what" without thinking about "how", other enterprising individuals have decided it's a good thing to abstract the database away.

Every database server's optimizer works differently. Queries that are exactly the same in relational calculus can give wildly different execution plans in practice. It takes an expert in the particular database technology to figure out the right way to write the queries to get the best performance. It takes an expert in the particular database technology to figure out the right way to structure the tables, indexes and constraints to get the best performance.

This brings me to my first rule of enterprise software: The database needs an expert.. Database design and database development is a first-class discipline. No matter how cool the rest of your application is, if it needs a relational database, you need an expert if you want your application to be at all scalable. That expert should be designing your databases, writing your queries, and working closely with your IT/operations people to ensure that the deployment is scalable and reliable. The corollary to this rule is Don't let Java programmers write SQL (unless the are An Expert). The skills required to write good object-oriented code do not automatically transfer to database development, and I've seen more needless bugs in applications that stemmed from Java programmers writing SQL when they don't understand how database servers work. Another corollary is: Don't let Java code write SQL. Java programmers write Java code. Framework writers don't know anything about your application. What makes you think that framework writers know how to write your SQL?

Now, my second rule of enterprise software is: Changing database servers is a Big Deal. Database portability is a myth, for reasons aforementioned, and further, switching database servers almost never happens. Abstracting the database away in the name of portability is useless, because switching database servers just isn't done, and when it is it's a Big Deal anyway.

Now, I'm not opposed to frameworks; anything that makes my job actually easier is a good thing. But, a framework should not get in my way, or force me to do things in a certain way. The framework writers don't know anything about my application, so why would they know how I should write it? So, any framework used for data access should stay out of the way as much as possible. Remember, what I want is a way of getting my data out of the database and into objects that I can use. And, I want Java programmers writing Java and database experts writing SQL, the framework should facilitate that.

And now, for my third rule of enterprise software: Access to the data should be through stored procedures. I want SQL experts writing the SQL. I also want them to have the ability to tune the SQL without having to write Java code. Finally, I don't want them to have to go wading through Java code (or XML or properties files, etc...) to find the SQL. The natural way for a database expert to write database code is via stored procedures. Thus, any framework I use will be capable of calling stored procedures. If your database server doesn't have stored procedures, well, you need to get a new database server because yours is a toy.

This is the point where I put in a plug for the framework that I like: iBatis SQLMaps. It does everything I want and mostly stays the hell out of the way.

In conclusion, let Java programmers write Java code and let database programmers write database code. You will get the highest quality and the most scalability that way, and contrary to popular belief, your applications will be maintainable and understandable, too. Don't worry about database portability.

That there is The Right Way.

Friday Snippets

2008-02-29T08:31:00.000-08:00

This smells like more desperation from the Clinton campaign (to be fair "Both campaigns have made it clear that they would go there if they had to", but it looks like the current threat is from Senator Clinton's campaign). I'm not sure what she thinks this would accomplish; I'm afraid that I agree that lawsuits from either candidate over the delegate selection process will likely break the "reinvigorated Democratic process". I really don't understand her objection to the caucuses other than the obvious fact that the people motivated enough to attend caucuses seem to favor Senator Obama. In my opinion, that's just too bad. I like the caucus system better, actually, because I get more of a sense of community participation from getting together with my neighbors and deciding things than I do from filling in a circle on a ballot and mailing it in without ever laying eyes on a neighbor (perish the thought).

Update: It looks like I'm not the only one who smells desperation.

WTF? Suspending a kindergartner for his haircut? Okay, I'm going to employ a tactic generally employed only by republican douchebags and just ridicule this and move on. I suspect that the haircut would not be a distraction to the other students (and I'm not even conceding that it actually is) were the adults not so worked up about it. This is the same kind of stupidity as not allowing a young man to wear a kilt to his prom and deserves just as much ridicule. Incidentally, that school offical still doesn't get it, but apparently the educators in Missouri are just a wee bit more reasonable, after a fashion.

I'm growing weary of this story and all of its predecessors being used as evidence to say "See? Teenagers are stupid." or "See? Teenagers are getting stupider." First, stupidity != ignorance (which the New York Times gets right, by the way), and it is intellectually dishonest to assert that they are the same thing. Second, a shortish quiz requiring knowledge of specific factoids doesn't really tell us anything anyway. It's yet more republican douchebag hit-and-run ridicule. I guess that's what people mean by sound bite news. In any case, read more here.

It seems I'm not alone in what I admire about Senator Obama and why I think he's just what we need. Awesome!

That's it, I'm getting my daughter a cellphone.

Thursday Politics

2008-02-28T10:42:00.000-08:00

I've had more time to think about the 20th (and final) Democratic Debate on Wednesday, and about the Democratic nomination process and I have some more thoughts.

I think Senator Clinton's campaign is starting to slide. I don't know if she was advised to whine about the media at the beginning of the debate or if that was all her, but in either case, that was a bad move. It made her look somewhat desperate and once the desperation starts to show in a campaign, it's over. She also got caught distorting the facts or telling half-truths several times, both by Senator Obama and by the moderators, and not just caught, but caught red-handed and flat-footed. I never had to opportunity to participate in debate in high school, but even I know that arguing against a strawman doesn't work. I know Senator Clinton is smarter than that, which is what makes me think she knows the nomination is slipping further and further from her grasp and this is causing her to make bad decisions out of a desperation to score points. At this point, I really think she could do a lot of good for the party to admit defeat, drop out of the race and throw her support to Senator Obama. That's just my opinion, though.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Senator Obama really does seem to be very easy-going and nigh on imperturbable. He doesn't really get flustered, he doesn't seem to struggle to respond to criticisms. The fact that he has actual plans behind his policy positions in addition to his emotional message of hope makes him an ideal candidate for president in my mind. After two terms of neocons ruling the roost, and two years of and ostensibly Democratic congress rolling over on pretty much everything President Bush wants, many of us have become much more cynical and depressed about the whole direction the United States has taken. Senator Obama has impressed me with his ability to energize people like me with his message of hope, and I think that, above all, is what we need in the next President. As a wise woman once told me, the President sets the tone and topic of the national dialog. We've had two terms of "terrah, terrah, fear, fear!" I think it's time for "Yes We Can".

Wednesday Thoughts

2008-02-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

I was thinking about Mark Driscoll, HMFIC of Mars Hill Church on the way into work today, and I'm still trying to figure out just what the deal is with him. His doctrine is nothing new; snake-oil salesmen disguised as benevolent shepherds have been peddling the same misogynist pap for years and years where I'm from and points south, and it's just a much of a load of crap when he dresses it up to render it more hip for a more discerning Seattle flock as it has been elsewhere and elsewhen. I think that may be the only difference. Take the same old same old and add multimedia and other modern technology, make a big show of rejecting the old, slap the "emergent" label on it, act macho and swear a lot, and you've got a completely new Christianity, one with which the youngsters identify. First, we had guitar church, now we have hoodlum church. Fortunately, this all will just be a flash in the pan, for Mr. Driscoll's church appears to have peaked; it seems it has all been an extended power trip and now that he's struggling for control of his church, it's all going to come apart at the seams as his formerly faithful flock flees and tells all. It turns out that Mars Hill Church is really All About Mark, and much less about Jesus.

On another note, I watched the 20th Democratic debate last night, and I think it was pretty clear that Senator Obama "won". The man seems to be imperturbable. Senator Clinton scowls and looks angry whenever he makes a point she doesn't like or disagrees with; Senator Obama grins or looks genuinely concerned at same. I continue to be happy with my choice of whom to support.

For my final thought for Wednesday, I want to come back to the diet/weight thing that I posted about over a year ago and then neglected to update. I actually did pretty well with the program I put myself on until late fall/early winter and managed to lose 50 pounds before my commitment to the plan, and, ergo, the weight loss, tapered off. Over the winter I managed to gain 25 of that 50 pounds back. At first, I was dismayed, and ready to just give up on the whole notion. However,I am reminded that I'm still down 25 pounds which is better than where I was a year ago at this time. So, I'm reinvigorated and to celebrate such, I took the bus this morning and took my slightly-more-than-a-mile walk to work. Who knows, maybe I can be down another 50 by winter? In any case, that's the right direction, and I'm confident that I can plan for the coming winter and maybe not put quite so much back on.

The periodic political post, part 2

2008-02-21T13:02:00.000-08:00

Well, I might as well come out. I'm officially a Barack Obama supporter; I've gone and contributed (monetarily) to his campaign. Encouragingly, this is not a lesser-of-two-evils type of decision for me. I'm actually quite pleased to be supporting Senator Obama.

So, why not Senator Clinton, you ask? Well, my first objection was rooted in how long it took her to de-support the war, if she actually has, which is unclear to me at this time. I don't fault her for voting for the invasion in the beginning (though I am in awe of the seemingly prescient wisdom of those who voted against it at the time); at that point I would have voted for it, based on the information available to me at the time and my mistaken belief that the President of the United States would not simply blatantly lie in order to get his war.

I admit, I have been caught up in the emotional response to Senator Obama. The man is a wonderful speaker (and, yes he is articulate, but I cringe whenever I read/hear the MSM describe him as such). However, that's not my only reason for supporting him. When I look at his experience besides Senator Clinton's, I'm just more impressed with what he's done than I am with what she's done. He seems less part of the establishment, while she seems more invested in the establishment.

Finally, what sealed the deal for me most recently, or rather, confirmed my leanings, as I had already voted for him at my precinct caucus, is the tack Senator Clinton is taking in her opposition to Senator Obama. She has gone off on this "Obama is all talk and no plan" theme, which is pretty slimy if you ask me, because it has no basis in fact, and she knows it. (For further discussion of this topic, see this post.)

Finally, and this is more pragmatic than idealistic, I think Senator Obama has a much better chance of defeating Senator McCain in the general election. I think Senator Clinton will lose. Hard.

Don't get me wrong; if she wins the nomination, I will most likely vote for her. I take back anything I may have said about McCain possibly being reasonable. He may not be the worst thing to happen to this country (difficult to beat BushLite at that), but he would certainly be plenty bad enough.

The periodic political post, part 1

2008-02-14T23:00:00.000-08:00

As you may or may not know, as ashamed to admit it as I am, I am a player of the collectible card game Magic: the Gathering. A new set just came out, and there is a cycle of "Bannerets" in the set (a cycle means a type of card that each color gets one of). Bannerets are, flavorwise, standard-bearers for their creature types. Gameplay-wise, they reduce the mana cost of creature spells with which they share a creature type. For instance, "Bosk Banneret" is a Treefolk Shaman, and causes Treefolk spells and Shaman spells to cost 1 colorless mana less. (I promise this ties into the title of this post).

So, I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard some talking head utter the phrase "conservative standard-bearer" in the context of what was needed in a Republican nominee for president, and I got to thinking (because I do that) about what a "Conservative Banneret" would look like, and I came up with this:

Conservative Banneret
1B

[Picture of Mike Huckabee goes in the art box]

Creature - Douchebag Republican

Douchebag spells and Republican spells cost 1 less to play.

1/1

And of course, you have to have this, too:

Luke Esser, State Republican Chairman
1UB

[Picture of Luke Esser goes in the art box]

Legendary Creature - Douchebag Republican

Whenever a caucus spell is played, you may counter 
that spell. If you do, you may search your library 
for a Republican creature or a Douchebag creature 
and put it into play tapped, and at end of turn, 
sacrifice, Luke Esser, State Republican Chairman.

1/2

It made me giggle. That is all.

Oh yah, that's why I wanted to be a Mason

2007-08-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

So, I joined another lodge recently, Alki Lodge in West Seattle. It became obvious to me that I'm going to need a new masonic "home" sooner rather than later because the lodge which raised me is well on the way to imploding. So, I started looking around for another lodge in the district, and I settled on Alki, which became the obvious correct choice after it occurred to me that I could think of more brothers of Alki that I knew and respected and admired than actually attend my current lodge.

Since I was balloted into Alki, I have attended every stated meeting, and last night, I had the distinct pleasure of attending a Master Mason degree put on by a lodge of which I was a member. Additionally, the Senior Warden asked me to give the third degree lecture which at the time pleased me to no end (later on, I was grumbly because I hadn't given the lecture in two years and it did not immediately come back to me).

We put on an excellent degree last night, and despite all of my trepidation, I delivered the lecture pretty well, to my delight and happily enough, the delight of the brethren present.

It's nice to be reminded of one of the reasons why I wanted and still want to be a Mason. There's not much better than seeing a brand new zealous Master Mason still glowing after being raised.

You have lettuce in your Fresca

2007-07-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

Du hast Kopfsalat in deinem Fresca.

Vous prenez la laitue dans votre Fresca.

Avete lattuga nel vostro Fresca.

Você tem a alface em seu Fresca.

Tienes lechuga en tu Fresca.

Вы салата в ваших Fresca.

عليك الخس فريسكا في بلدكم.

你有莴苣,你fresca .

あなたのFrescaでレタスがある。

당신은 당신의 Fresca에 있는 양상추가 있다.

There and back again: You have salad of head in your Fresca.

You're Not An Ordinary Fellow!

2007-05-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

I've finally found a non-food-aquisition-related exercise that isn't as boring as watching paint dry. This is a good thing.

See, back in the days when we had to expend great amounts of energy to catch or gather the food we ate, nobody was fat. Seriously, have you ever seen a drawing of a fat caveman? I've never met a fat farmer, at least not one that didn't hire all of his labor out to people (who, by the way, weren't fat). The problem we have is manifold:

Food is plentiful.
Food requires almost no energy expenditure to obtain.
Practically nothing we do or need requires any energy expenditure.

As a result, lots of people are fat as compared to a century ago or two centuries ago. Actually, even 50 years ago, there were not as many fat people in the United States as there are now (by percentage of population).

Okay, so what are we to do (assuming this is a bad thing and that we need do anything, which it is and we do)? Well, there's only one thing that works. And any diets or programs that actually do work are actually based on that one thing. Energy in (food) must be equal to energy out (activity) in order to not gain weight.

So, it turns out that I'm fat. And I need to lose weight. What's the prescription? Eat right and exercise. Eating right I can mostly handle, that's just calorie counting in some form. The exercise part sucks. I hate exercise. Not because I'm lazy, but because most exercise seems really pointless and it's pretty boring. Riding a stationary bike accomplishes nothing real, other than expending energy. The treadmill is especially boring; it's walking to nowhere.

I get some exercise because I ride the bus and thus I walk every morning and every evening, but that's not enough. Enter DDR. Dance Dance Revolution, if you don't know, is this video game that you play with your feet. It's a lot of fun, and on top of that, is an excellent aerobic workout.

I try to play it for an hour or so every day now, and I'm not bored with exercise any more. This rules.

Nothing in particular

2007-05-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Have a nice day!

God dammit, I hate homophobia...

2007-04-26T18:41:00.000-07:00

I love living in Seattle (well, Des Moines, but close enough) and I hate being reminded that this kind of stuff is still a reality. See also the video on this KIRO story, and this story at the Columbian.

This is really just what we need, schools collaborating with homophobic parents against gay children. I can't find a reference online, but I heard a clip of the father of one of the girls calling into Dave Ross' radio show, and he used the word "abomination". That should assuage any worries that perhaps I'm mis-characterizing things.

I wish I had something more profound to say, but I'm so angry about this right now I'm having trouble constructing coherent thoughts about all the different ways this is wrong and the many ways that dean of students ought to be punished.

The Morning After (the post where I gloat a bit)

2006-11-08T12:01:00.000-08:00

After six years of being held hostage by the neocon Republicans, it looks like the citizenry may have woken up. They had a chance to stop the madness in 2004, but passed on that opportunity because they identified more with a shiftless moron than they did with a decorated mostly-well-spoken intelligent veteran.

Where has throwing your lot in with the moron gotten you, red-staters? Fucking nowhere, that's where. Your glorious leader lied us into a war and has taken steps toward making our homeland over into a theocratic police state.

Well, guess what? The jig is up. You don't control the House any more, and you're probably not going to control the Senate, either, barring fraud. Your leader doesn't have a blank check any more.

I gotta say, I'm pretty happy right now. Even if the only thing the Democrats accomplish is to block anything Shrub wants to do, it's a victory. If they get nothing done other than doing no further harm, it's a victory.

To all the folks out there who still support Bush, I have this to say: Neener neener neener. Take a seat and let the real patriots try to get us out of the mess you've created.

To the Democrats: Please please please do not fuck this up. If you fuck this up, the backlash in 2008 will be colossal, and I don't want to have to move to Canada to escape the lynching progressives are going to get if a more effective neocon gets elected to the White House.

Oh, and big shout out to my home state, Missouri: Thanks for not sucking this time, guys. :)

Macrophotography

2006-09-28T23:53:00.000-07:00

Roses are cool
Originally uploaded by lafehubert.

I'm interested in all types of photography, and at some point, I bought some close-up lenses and extension tubes in order to go take pictures at the Arboretum in Seattle. That trip never materialized, and I put the stuff on a shelf.

Now, it's 6 years later and I've dusted the stuff off in order to play with it. There were these roses, you see. And this Canon EOS 5d. So, I messed around for about an hour this evening, and this is one of the photos I managed to make (more on my flickr pages; just click the photo, it'll take you there).

I did all of these hand-held, with the 50mm f/1.4 USM lens, one 550EX flash unit, and the ST-E2 wireless flash controller. To really do this right, I would need to get a focusing rail for my tripod, but these didn't turn out too badly.

This was kind of fun, and I'm starting to understand how all this works (and how hard macrophotography really is). Anyway, I just thought I'd share.

Why I needed a new guitar

2006-09-20T16:33:00.000-07:00

I've dabbled with the guitar most of my life. My folks bought me an acoustic guitar when I was a kid, and I learned to play it after a fashion. In high school a cousin of mine gave me a Fender Jaguar and a Fender tube amp, and I learned the joys of owning a really old electric guitar. But, for the most part, all I could play was some John Denver songs, and pretty badly at that.

In college, I swapped the Jaguar for a Fender Stratocaster at a 2nd hand music shop, and played quite a bit while I lived in the dorm; but alas, after I moved into an apartment, I got really really poor and sold my Strat and amp (along with my rifle collection, and anything else that I didn't need as much as I needed food and rent). After that, I pretty much forgot about the guitar.

Shortly after we moved up to Seattle in 2000, I found myself buying at the Guitar Center, purchasing an acoustic guitar. It was a Yamaha F335 dreadnought and cost me the grand sum of $179. At the time, I had forgotten most of what I knew about the guitar, and I figured it would allow me to get back up to speed plus give me some really gnarly callouses. The Sweetheart [tm] tutored me in all that is the Indigo Girls and in time, I could at least play the damn thing again.

At some point, the guitar went from being a thing I pulled off the wall occasionally to plink on to living on a stand in the living room next to where I usually sit. I actually started practicing, if you can believe that. Yet, still, I never played anything more involved that a little Travis picking and some chording.

Fast forward to Christmas 2005, when The Sweetie [tm] presented me with a banjo, which set in motion a chain of events from which I can never retreat. The banjo caused me to practice even more, and that practice translated over to the guitar, at least in left hand dexterity. And, I got interested in bluegrass music, and subsequently in bluegrass guitar and lead flatpicking.

These days I practice the guitar for a half hour to an hour almost every day, and I've finally picked up a little skill; I kind of had that a-ha moment where everything suddenly becomes so much clearer. I've even put together a band, Small Pet Advisory in which I play both the banjo and the guitar. (The band is getting pretty good, if I may say so, and I may, so I say so.)

Apparently I've contracted GAS (guitar acquisition syndrome) as a result of all of this.

I can't pinpoint exactly when, but the Yamaha started sounded less and less pleasing to my ear. Then I made the mistake of pulling a couple of Martins down off the wall at the local Guitar Center (yep, the scene of the original crime) and that ruined me forever. After much consternation and agonizing, I decided it was time for a new higher-quality guitar.

I played so many guitars, I'm not sure I could list them all, but I'll try:

Martin DX1 - sounded good, didn't like the laminated neck, HPL (high-pressure laminate) for the back and sides was weird
Martin DXM - similar to DX1, better sound.
Martin DM - Much better sound, but still laminate (plywood) back and sides
Martin D-16GT - Solid spruce top, solid mahogany back and sides, sounds like a dream
Martin D-18 - Like butter. $2000, though.
Martin D-28 - Also like butter. Sound was more subdued. $2200, though.
Martin D-35 - This is just a gorgeous guitar. About $2500. Sound is similar to D-28
Taylor 510 - Neck felt really nice, sound was not what I wanted.

Yes, there is a theme. I had pretty much decided I wanted a Martin, but I had to try the Taylor to make sure. This was a big decision, and I wanted to make sure I got it right. I think I set out to purchase one 3 times, and balked, and it took me several weeks to finally go and get it.

I ended up getting the D-16GT. It had that Martin sound I was looking for, was all solid wood, and didn't cost an arm and a leg (just an arm).

Why did I need this guitar? Well, I didn't, per se. I mean, I can't shelter from the weather in/under it and it's not very nutritionally dense. But, looking back, I've worked pretty hard to become a competent guitar player, and I think hard work should be rewarded.

Plus, I just wanted it.

Nice diversion

2006-08-11T15:28:00.000-07:00

The latest "terror plot" is a certainly a nice diversion from recent unsavory happenings around the world. We're not talking about Israel and Lebanon any more; we're not talking about Iraq any more. No, we're talking about shampoo and toothpaste and how inconvenient it has become to fly.

People are saying really stupid things like "They're just trying to make us safer." and "Whatever it takes to be safe." and "Better safe than sorry."

What's really sad about all of this is that nobody in the UK or US governments is actually trying to make anybody safer. This latest "foiled plot" is just a diversion to stop us from thinking about anything important. It seems that I may not be alone in espousing this theory. If that's too fringe for you, then perhaps this AFP article might be of interest. It makes it pretty clear that this will be a boon to BushRoveCheneyCo. And this AP article provides more information, but I'm interested in this almost throwaway paragraph:

Although plots to blow up airliners using liquid explosives are not new — such an attempt was foiled more than a decade ago — the U.S. government has been slow to upgrade its security equipment at airport checkpoints to detect explosives on passengers.

If the US government really cared about our safety, how come in more than a decade they haven't been a little more proactive in the explosive detection arena? The answer is: The people in power really do not care about our safety and they never have. Actual safety doesn't get people elected. If we were actually safe, nobody would have to pretend to make us safer, and thus, they'd have to get elected by addressing real problems and issues. This is just the latest chapter in the long history of right-wing fearmongering.

The saddest thing is that it works.

Fuck this noise. I'd rather be free than safe. I can see to my own safety, thank you very much.

Hahahaha! Batter takes a swipe at intentional walk pitch!

2006-06-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've always wondered what would happen if a batter didn't want to be intentionally walked. Well, here you go. Better get that pitch way outside, there, and remember, kids, it ain't a walk until you throw all 4 balls.

Best exercise ever

2006-06-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

Stop doing aerobics, put away your step, get rid of the exercise machines and stop paying for Pilates (are those Pontius Pilates?). Get yourself a six-year-old kid and take her to the local school playfield and spend an hour or so running around and kicking the soccer ball with them. I'm pretty sure I expended more energy in that hour than I do in a two-and-a-half hour bike ride on the flat. The kid ran my ass off (and her mother's ass as well). We had fun, and I'll bet she'll sleep tonight. (I mean Monkey) (Though, I bet Barb sleeps pretty good, too, now that I think of it) Anyway, I cannot recommend this highly enough. If you don't have your own six-year-old, Monkey's available for the low low rate of $43.95 per hour. :)

Wise sayings

2006-06-22T22:59:00.000-07:00

In the vein of my previous post, I offer these for your consideration. Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. - Mahatma Gandhi If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion. - the Dalai Lama At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love. - Martin Luther King, Jr. It isn't enough to talk about peace, one must believe it. And it isn't enough to believe in it, one must work for it. - Eleanor Roosevelt Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves. - William Hazlett He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the world. - Marcus Aurelius Do you know what astonished me most in the world? The inability of force to create anything. In the long run the sword is always beaten by the spirit. Soldiers usually win battles and generals get the credit for them. You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon shots. - Napolean Bonaparte Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. - Albert Einstein Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding. - Ralph Waldo Emerson They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. - Isaiah 2:4 Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called the children of God. - Jesus Christ Peace be with you.

Why the right never gets it right

2006-06-22T11:38:00.000-07:00

In the history of the human race, the right has never gotten it right. They're not getting it right now, and show no signs of getting it right in the future. They need to find another label, because "right" is misleading. I've had a recent epiphany concerning how one (or one's government) goes about shaping the world around them. There are pretty much two options. One is rooted in force, and the other, well, isn't. I was listening to a radio talk show the other day, and the topic of discussion was the "War on Drugs", and it occurred to me that our whole political metaphor in the United States is rooted in this word "war". We're always engaging in a war on something, whether it be drugs, terrorism, or poverty. (These days, it's always a war on some concept or idea; never a war with InsertProperNoun; even the Iraq thing is "the war in Iraq", but that's another topic for another time.) This got me to thinking about how the government shapes policy in this country, and how it attempts to shape policy throughout the world, and I came to the conclusion that the right apparently believes it can use force to solve any perceived policy problem. It boils down to the hammer problem. The only tool they have is a hammer, so everything had better be a nail. Force can take many forms. The obvious one, of course, is raw military force. This is the United States' comfort zone. We're very good at deploying our military, and it makes us feel like we're doing something. But there's also coercion, extortion, and other less-forcy-seeming, but equally forceful means of bringing about an end. There are two problems with using force as a means to an end:

It's rooted in wishful thinking
It doesn't actually solve anything

I'll take the second one first, and then explain what I mean by the first bullet point. In looking back through history, the use of force has never ever solved anything. The human race has been engaging in an eternal game of Whack-a-Mole. Nothing accomplished by force or violence is enduring. The "winner" may see short term gains, but in the long run, the "winner" loses, and so does everyone else. Seriously, think back. What did the "great wars" of the past solve? Did the Civil War solve anything? (No. see "Civil Rights Movement") The Great War? (Nope. Caused Hitler, though.) World War II? (Nuh uh. Cold war, anyone?) What we did in Korea and in Vietnam appear to have made many things worse. What we're doing in Iraq right now isn't helping anything, and what we did in Afghanistan hasn't had any lasting impact. That's right, the Taliban is back, and the government we installed is corrupt.

Look, I can't actually examine every act of violence in history, so I can't provide a rigorous proof that "violence never solves anything". But, I can see patterns in how things turn out, and I think it's reasonable to say "violence rarely solves anything". I assert that this is the case.

The use of force is rooted in wishful thinking, based on the belief that one can impose one's own view of how reality "ought to be" at gunpoint. The right actually believes that it can make the "drug problem" go away by wanting to really badly and by incarcerating anybody who doesn't conform. It's not working, and it's never going to.

What's the alternative? The alternative is cooperation based on compassion and understanding. Find your inner empath. If you want to solve "the drug problem", call off the War on Drugs and apply those resources to educating the populace, treating those who want treatment. Stop using scare tactics and coercion and actually educate kids about these substances in a value-neutral manner. Kids are smart, they know when they're being lied to, so when you say "If you smoke marijuana, YOU WILL DIE!", they know it's crap. But, if you tell them how and why certain chemicals act on human physiology, they'll absorb it and be able to make better-informed decisions in the future.

This works as long as your definition of "the drug problem" is not "drugs are bad, m'kay". Look at the effects of drug abuse on society, and then look at the effects of the War on Drugs on society, and do your cost-benefit analysis. Which is worse? I say the particularly violent black market perpetuated by the War on Drugs is far more costly to society than what it's attempting to solve.

I've moved far afield here without intending to. I say that approaching problems and policy decisions with empathy, compassion and understanding is far more constructive than grabbing the hammer. I find it ironic that the (supposedly) most important person in the lives of the very people who are perpetuating the use of force made his second great commandment "Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

Republicans must really have a lot of self-loathing.

New beginnings

2006-06-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

So, I have a LiveJournal account and everything, but I don't use it for much. I made this blog account here so I could comment on somebody else's blogspot blog, and ignored it for a while. Well, I finally thought of a title for this damn thing, so maybe I'll start using it some. I'm seriously considering discontinuing the LiveJournal one and just moving here. Anyway, here I am.