Month: September 2007

In conversations over the last few days, I’ve been told that I’m not an atheist, but that I’m “agnostic”. Perhaps I should have business cards printed up with definitions.

Both “atheism” and “agnosticisms” are words which describe what someone isn’t. We don’t have a lot of these types of words in the English language. These two terms can only be defined by what they are not, so in that vein, I’ll describe what they are, what they are not, and why I’m not one of them.

(Confused yet?)

Theism is the belief in the existence of one or more divinities or deities. Atheism is the absence of such belief.

Gnosticism is the belief one can be privy to secret or sure knowledge regarding God or gods*. Agnosticism is the absence of such belief.

Agnosticism is not some “in-between” position of disbelief bridging the divide between theism and atheism. It is rejection or absence of a specific belief that you can know truths about supernatural beings. There are many highly religious, theistic people who are, in fact, agnostics, since they don’t think they can come to a secret or sure knowledge of the Divine.

I am not an agnostic. Since I have no belief in the supernatural of any sort, I’m not in a position to form an opinion as to whether I can come to have secret or sure knowledge of beings I don’t believe in.

I am an atheist. This does not imply a positive non-belief in a god or gods. I think they are no more likely than invisible pink unicorns or the giant spaghetti monster, but just because I think something is silly doesn’t mean I think it cannot possibly exist.

* Yes, I understand Gnosticism can actually have a much broader meaning than this, and that there’s a huge history associated with it. This is the most convenient definition, and the only easy one to target in a modern context. An “agnostic” could, of course, just be someone who does not hold to the beliefs of or who rejects gnosticism, but that’s most of the world today so it’s a meaningless distinction.

Hello folks! I’ve been absent for the last few months, working a “real job”, and now I’m back for my last year of law school.

Things are good – the wife and child are doing well. One of the best pieces of news is that I’ve accepted an offer from the firm I worked for over the summer to come back and work for them after I graduate (assuming I pass the bar and all that). This really takes the weight off.

Writing more songs, performing when I can, and joining the Baltimore Songwriters Alliance. All in all, now complaints.

How is everyone? (I recognize this is more of a group email than a blog entry, but I have nothing interesting to talk about that can be illustrated with hyperlinks.)

According to an LA Times article on left-wing vs. right-wing brain processes, it seems that human brains are actually wired differently and political preferences reflect this fact. In this test, conservatives would tend to favor an answer — even if it is the “wrong one” — more than liberals, who would tend to react to changes faster.

Really interesting.

As many of you know, I was approached by an intermediate-sized company which I would like to work for about taking a role as one of their lead UNIX administrators a couple of weeks ago. For Round 1, I prepared a few code samples, updated my resume, and wrote a lengthy cover letter pitching myself. For Round Two, I spoke with a fellow named Mike about an interview. Today, Round Three, was the technical interview.

I interviewed with two fellows named Chris and Matthew. Chris, apparently, is moving on to the Engineering department, and they need to replace him as well as attempt to backfill some head count of other UNIX admins who have moved into development within the company. A third fellow, Hung, was unable to make the interview as scheduled.

We chit-chatted about technical topics for about thirty minutes. Both guys were very amiable, and it was obvious within a few minutes that we all spoke the same “language” as far as computers were concerned. I expressed some concern that, despite hunting on the Internet, I had been unable to find any information regarding the back-end server configuration for their flagship product (though I had found some bits, pieces, and pictures regarding a competing product from 2005).

Well, it turns out there is good reason. Operating system, supporting software, and configuration is regarded as company proprietary information. All I can say is that I currently work in a data center with over 7,000 machines, and this company’s configuration dwarfs it by an order of magnitude. From their description as well, it’s a marvel of hands-off systems management and exploitation of favorable power rates and taxes in certain states. Virtually none of the servers are housed in their Southern California offices, but are located around the globe, remotely administered except for occasional trips out by admins.

There are a few weeks of travel involved, and of course the Southern California locale would require relocation. However, they treat their employees very much like a startup — despite the old-age of the company compared to most others in the industry — and have memorable company events, product launches, and so forth. They have very few admins for the huge number of customers and servers they support and, according to these fellows, no UNIX admin on the staff has ever left the company in its history.

Moral: Treat your employees well, and they will treat you well.

Anyway, from their descriptions it sounds superb compared to the somewhat ignor-ific treatment I routinely receive from UltraMegaCorp where I work now. The next step would be to be flown out to headquarters, spend a day with them in interviews and negotiations, and then fly home to either put in two weeks notice or else continue with my job as if nothing had happened. Of course, that’s the real question, isn’t it? Will it happen, or won’t it happen?

My general sense of the interview was that, although I know I bombed a few of the technical questions, I’d rate myself as a 7 out of 10. Not quite senior administrator material, but I could grow into the position. And the fact is, a lot boils down to what my competition is. I think I did very well on the code samples they requested (thanks to friends for reviewing, you know who you are!), and that I’m a fairly obvious fit personality-wise and experience-wise, but that there are some fundamentals I’m sketchy on.

Specific things I blew:

• “Uh, an inode is a data structure on a disk which has a start block and end block.” No, doofus, an inode is the data structure that points to the disk blocks which contain the data on the disk and also contains information about the ownership, access time, modification time, and other information about a file. When you do an “ls”, you’re seeing inode information.
• “Well, yes, I know that you *can* mount a filesystem which has a bad superblock because there are multiple copies of the superblock, but I can’t remember the specific argument to mount the filesystem.” Again, doofus mistake, it’s not an argument to “mount”, you have to use newfs (or mke2fs) to identify the superblock locations, then modify the superblock pointer using fsck. Not thinking well under pressure there.
• “The /etc/passwd file contains the username, GECOS, password hash (or, if the system uses shadow passwords, an x or !), userID and groupID.” Yes, genius, it also contains the user’s home directory location and shell.

Overall? Well, they are trying to fill several positions, and apparently have had trouble finding competent senior admins to do the job. I really only have to be better than whoever the next fellow is.

I’ve interviewed a lot of UNIX administrators. Most of us, sadly, are idiots and end up out of the business inside of a few years. Other ones get so pigeon-holed into a particular role that they stop learning new aspects of their job.

So it’s up in the air whether or not there’s going to be a “next step”… but at the very least, I realized that despite my experience there are certainly a few areas I need to work on.

For many years, my family has done without broadcast or cable television. The TV was in the basement; the only available cable TV plugs were in the main family room on the ground floor, and one in the master bedroom.

We had television sets in neither of those places. The TV in the basement was used pretty much strictly for XBox and watching movies.

Then we decided to reorganize. The front room became the family room, while the main basement room was re-purposed for reading, computing, and studying. This layout seems a bit more natural, given our usage patterns, but it’s had some interesting side-effects.

For one, I decided to hook up the TV to the cable. Realize, we only pay for cable Internet. I was told at the time I signed up that a few channels would come through because they don’t have a filter option for “Internet only”. To my surprise, there were around fifty channels available. This was far more than the dozen or so channels I expected. Including Discovery, Disney, History, HBO, Weather, and most of the local broadcast stations.

The side-effects of this unexpected bonanza have been profound. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, we no longer have children piling on the bed to wake us up because they are bored and want us to do stuff with them. Instead, we hear the sounds of the Disney Channel or Cartoon Network echoing up the stairwell to wake us. Our children are now talking about Hannah Montana and the Sweet Life of Zack and Codie rather than Harry Potter. We have strict “No TV” times now to limit when children are allowed to watch the boob tube.

When we go to Grandma’s house now, the children are more likely to ignore the television set, which is always on at their house and generally tuned to news or sports. Prior to this, my kids would be glued to the tube at Grandma’s because they didn’t have this stuff at home. We now hear occasional wheedles from children for toys and items that they saw on TV. My older kids will sit down and watch ‘Dirty Jobs’ or the History channel with their dad and appreciate it, at least for a little while.

My watching habits haven’t changed much. I didn’t watch any TV for many, many years, and these days it’s much the same. I prefer to get my news from news web sites, and I only turn on the tube when I’m interested in an alternative distraction. Christy, too, doesn’t seem to spend much time couch-surfing, despite her misgivings about HGTV being available 24/7 and our occasional addiction to that channel when it’s available in the hotel rooms when we’re on vacation.

Overall, a working television set is a mixed bag. There are some pluses, and some minuses. Our daughter is more likely to retreat to her room or the basement to read and get away from the onslaught of the TV, and spends about as much time on the computer as before. Our younger boys don’t complain about being bored so much. The oldest boy gets bored with the TV frequently and prefers to go play with his friends in the neighborhood. There’s a bit less fighting about using the computer than before.

But left to their own devices, the kids would have the tube playing just about every waking moment, even if they weren’t watching. There are times when I think that perhaps I should disconnect the cable again for a couple of weeks just to compare for myself what life was like for the nine years in this house without television.

A long time ago, this story about dog intelligence arrived in my inbox from a friend who sometimes goes as “Marcelo” online. I thought I’d share it.

About twelve or thirteen years ago, I was sitting on a crowded bus during the afternoon commute in Santiago, Chile. This was after my mission; I had moved to Chile and was living/working in Santiago while I waited for my future ex-wife to get a divorce so we could be married. (That’s a long story in and of itself, but not directly related to this narrative so I’ll skip it). As we sat in gridlocked traffic, I looked out the window and beheld the following spectacle: On the street corners, there were maybe 150-200 people gathered, waiting for the light to change. As I said, the traffic was gridlocked so there was absolutely no automobile movement on the street. It would have been safe to cross. Yet, the “walk” light was red, and the large crowd of humans standing on the corner dutifully waited like sheep at the corner for the light to change before crossing the street.

As the crowd grew larger, I noticed a stray dog (one of many in Chile) which walked up to the corner, looked one way, looked the other way, saw that it was safe to cross, and crossed the street. The dog, of course, was oblivious to the light and to human conventions and law. It simply walked up to the corner, saw that it was safe to cross, and crossed.

It was curious to watch the people standing on the corner. At first, there was no reaction. Then, I suppose, somebody must have realized, “Hey, the dog is right! There is absolutely no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cross the street!” One or two intrepid humans had the courage to step out into the street against the traffic light, and soon the entire herd was crossing the intersection en masse.

I don’t know if anyone else on the bus saw this, but I laughed to myself as I watched it unfold. In some sense, the dog was “smarter” than the 150-200 humans standing on the corner. The dog wasn’t constrained by society’s norms or laws; it simply saw that it was safe to cross the street and did so. I made a mental note to try to be more like the dog and less like the crowd; to constantly ask “why?” and be willing to buck convention when it made sense to do so. It has made a big difference in my life, and I pass it along in the hopes that it may enhance your life as well.

Then recent discussions about the improper behavior of a US Senator while in the airport men’s restroom in Minnesota has brought male bathroom etiquette to the fore in workplace discussions. In the spirit of celebration for the long-overdue attention to this ubiquitous facility, I submit for your consideration, “Male Restroom Etiquette”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzO1mCAVyMw

(Soundtrack is what’s funny. Safe for work, but co-workers might be grossed out, double over in laughter, or spontaneously vomit.)

Don’t be a Ralph or a Chuck!

My brain has recently been focusing on money. I mean, I’m pretty good with numbers. I enjoy math, and I like to figure out min/max statistics for online role-playing games I play in order to create the most effective character in most situations.

The other day, I thought, “why not apply that same mentality I use in gaming to my life?”

I earn very nearly the same amount of money today (within 3%) in 2007 that I earned in 2001. I heard a fellow on a talk-radio show indicate that government statistics of 2%-4% inflation per year were not even close to accurate, and actual inflation rates if we figured according to 1970’s-era and earlier calculations would tell us a story of greater than 10% inflation since 9/11/2001.

So I decided to apply my puny little brain and think in terms of “How much can I buy for my dollar?” I mean, I make almost exactly the same amount in dollars today that I did six years ago. If we look at just the last five years, from, say, September of 2002 to September of 2007, I should get a good idea of what the actual inflation rate is.

All figures are with annual compounding. Monthly/weekly/continuous compounding figures are very slightly lower.

Item	September 2002	September 2007	Inflation
Gold (ounce)	$310	$670	16.6%/year
Oil (barrel)	$26	$75	23.6%/year
2,000 sq ft townhouse (mine)	$100K	$150K	8.4%/year
1 gallon of 2% milk	$2.14	$3.54	10.6%/year

Based on this small sampling of things the average consumer might buy — investing in gold, buying fuel, buying a house, or picking up a gallon of milk — I would also submit that a 2-4% inflation rate is overly optimistic. It certainly feels like 10% or more. Simple fact is, my dollar doesn’t seem to go nearly as far as it did five years ago. In fact, five years ago my salary felt generous, enough to afford plenty of luxuries. Today, it barely covers expenses.

Admittedly, we have two extra mouths to feed. So that skews my sampling-size-of-one.

What I found interesting is how hard it is to get data on average consumer items. Like, what if I wanted to check the new retail cost of a Toyota Camry with standard options in 2002 versus 2007? Good luck digging that up. Or what about the cost of a non-king-size Snickers bar in 2002 versus 2007? Yeah, no luck there either. Cost per kilowatt-hour of electricity?

It seems in so many of these things, we have an awfully short memory… and manufacturers or providers of goods and services don’t seem to go out of their way to point out how much more their stuff costs.

Nifty little inflation calculator: http://www.westegg.com/inflation/

Unfortunately, at least for my relatively small sample size above, it’s totally off-base. This next one offers a more usable output, indicating inflation over the past five years has been around 14%-15%… a figure I totally agree with, and which is totally at odds with the figures put out by the administration.

(EDIT: I totally mis-read their figures. They are claiming a total inflation increase of around 14%-15% from August 2002 to August 2007, which is bogus. It’s a 10%-15% compounded… So these guys are using official statistics, which I suspect are being intentionally manipulated to give citizens overly-optimistic inflation data.)

http://inflationdata.com/inflation/inflation_rate/InflationCalculator.asp

Also a nifty time-value-of-money calculator which will solve for any of the variables (like interest rate): http://www.1728.com/compint.htm

I have a conclusion. I am being misled about inflation by those in who’s best interest it is to mislead me. The actual inflation rate over the past five years has been 10%-15% per year, which is a level unheard-of since the 1970s. From everything I see, it’s going to get much worse before it gets better, as we have to increase taxation to pay the bills due on our simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, unfunded school mandates in “No Child Left Behind”, and initiatives like the RealID card.

From 1972-1979, the US dollar lost 2/3 of its value. I predict the same, or worse, for 2007-2014. Time for me to find some overseas shelters for my meager savings.

Then again, I’m a UNIX admin, not an economist. Imagine that you earned $65,000/year in 2002 and didn’t get a raise for five years. Based on the cost of a gallon of milk, in 2002 dollars, you’re earning only $39,277/year today.

What do you think? Time to panic? Or is that time long since gone? Or are my figures just way, way off?

The conversation with Christy was illuminating. “If you’re feeling overloaded, just figure out what you don’t want to do anymore,” she said. Easier said than done!

For some time now, I have realized that I’m involved in too many things, and that there are some where I really should put more effort into it if I were to truly say that I was involved at all anymore.

It’s time, I think, to do a little housecleaning. Let’s start with the easy time-wasters: Mailing lists. Way too many. First one on the list was Board membership in an organization devoted to people in certain types of life transitions.

Yeah. That’s gone. What about the affiliated mailing list for members of the organization? Well, I plan to remain a member, but I’ll resign as Board member and webmaster. Way too much to there, and after four years driving, it’s time for someone else to take the wheel. I guess the only way it will happen is if I park it and refuse to hop back in the driver’s seat.

Balsa-sailplanes? Yeah, I don’t need that one. It’s all about people scratch-building their own sailplanes. I like my sailplane, but not that much. Gone.

Exmormon? Yeah, let’s make that web-only. Maybe I’ll be interested in perusing the messages one day, but I don’t need them in my inbox.

Human_ism? Yep, I’m a Humanist, I don’t have much desire to talk about it in detail these days. Gone.

freethinking_unschoolers? Uh, this was a group for home-schooling children without relying on religion-based curricula. The fact is, the vast majority of home-schoolers do so for religious reasons, and the vast majority of home-schooling materials pander to this bias. Yeah, I lost interest in this about 3 minutes after I joined 3 years ago. Don’t know why I’m still a member.

More decisions like this, on down the line, eliminating the stuff I don’t use or don’t want in my life. Next is going home and doing the same thing. Run the drill through the old hard drives filled with data I have not used in years. Chuck out the old CAT-3 and coaxial cables stuffed into the closet in hopes that one day they will be useful. Toss the things I know I haven’t used in two years or more.

It’s painful, because I remember when each of these things — the mailing lists, the computing supplies, etc. — were useful, important, and functional to me. I strongly suspect there may be some data on those old 9GB drives, like old copies of songs that I never finished, that may have important data I’d like to keep. But if I never get around to actually inventorying them, how different is that from just destroying them and being done with it?

You gotta break some eggs to make an omelet.

Let’s get crackin’.

Back when we moved into our home, code requirements did not require a stairwell or deck on a rear door. Just a solid means of blocking access. So we’ve had a lock on our rear door for years, and just sort of ignored the fact it was a door.

Well, now we’re seeking to refinance our home to help with the tight-money situation due to Christy being back in school to get her Master’s, and the underwriters are insisting that a rear stairway or deck is required before they will approve the loan. That’s fine, but we’re planning on closing this week, and we just learned about this requirement late yesterday.

So today, I get to figure out how to build a staircase, buy the supplies, and get building. It’s over six feet off the ground, so it’s not a trivial endeavor.

Wish me luck!