Quote of the day…

I occasionally run across excellent quotes that I simply have to share:

If you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting you write software in Lisp, you could try telling him it’s XML.

I occasionally run across excellent quotes that I simply have to share:

If you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting you write software in Lisp, you could try telling him it’s XML. -Paul Graham, “Revenge of the Nerds” (a LISP advocacy piece if I’ve ever seen one, that also slams my favorite language, Python, in this case for very good reason)

Almost makes me want to take up LISP…

Oh, and for those few of us into learning about the latest and greatest operating system, here’s another advocacy piece that, I think, is as good a marker as any for the beginning of the end of the Redmond Revolution. When Wal-Mart carries it, prices it cheaper than the alternatives, and is having trouble keeping it in stock due to demand, you know something’s going right.

here I am again

Hi guys,

Just thought I would blog on, been a fairly busy week. As it is finals week so I studied my butt off. I did well on my midterm, so I suspect I will do equally well on my final.

Angelina is sitting up on her own for the most part now, and we have started working on a sippy cup with her, tho she has not figured what to do with it other then shake it and throw it around.

Hi guys,

Just thought I would blog on, been a fairly busy week. As it is finals week so I studied my butt off. I did well on my midterm, so I suspect I will do equally well on my final.

Angelina is sitting up on her own for the most part now, and we have started working on a sippy cup with her, tho she has not figured what to do with it other then shake it and throw it around. I finally heard from my sister, was pretty excited about that. My ex and I are getting along much better, not sure what happened, but things have improved between us. I do not know why I call her my ex, we are not technically divorced yet, but anyway.

Not much else to blog about. Curt

Self-employed

Hi all. As a few of you know I’m now in the land of the self-employed. A few former co-workers and I have formed a new company, Great Salt Lake Internet Partners, LLC

We have specific specialties with Coldfusion and MSSQL as well as Real Estate specific applications. That said, we are available for work in any number of development capacities.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

EDIT by matthew: Fixed link.

Hi all. As a few of you know I’m now in the land of the self-employed. A few former co-workers and I have formed a new company, Great Salt Lake Internet Partners, LLC

We have specific specialties with Coldfusion and MSSQL as well as Real Estate specific applications. That said, we are available for work in any number of development capacities. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

EDIT by matthew: Fixed link.

The Washington Redskins and the U.S. President

So I came across a little-known (well, little-known to ME) factoid while surfing the web today looking for information about the candidates this year (from this page about silly polls):

THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS RULE. This one has an impressive winning streak–for 72 years, the victory or defeat of the Washington Redskins in their last game before the election has predicted whether the incumbent party holds the White House. If the Redskins lose or tie, the incumbent party loses the election. If the Redskins win, so does the incumbent party. By any measure the accuracy of the Redskin rule is notable. It has correlated with presidential electoral outcomes in 18 of the past 18 elections back to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

So I came across a little-known (well, little-known to ME) factoid while surfing the web today looking for information about the candidates this year (from this page about silly polls):

THE WASHINGTON REDSKINS RULE. This one has an impressive winning streak–for 72 years, the victory or defeat of the Washington Redskins in their last game before the election has predicted whether the incumbent party holds the White House. If the Redskins lose or tie, the incumbent party loses the election. If the Redskins win, so does the incumbent party. By any measure the accuracy of the Redskin rule is notable. It has correlated with presidential electoral outcomes in 18 of the past 18 elections back to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.
…the “Washington Redskin Rule” gets a little more respect. The probability of a Redskin victory or defeat correctly forecasting the presidential election 18 elections in a row has been calculated to be about one in 260 million. For those who like to mix football with politics, the Redskins’ last game before the election is with the Packers on October 31.

So it looks like we have a 1 in 2 chance of forecasting a 1 in 260 million chance here! Who do you think’s going to win — the Packers, or the Redskins?

I hate to say it, but as much as I’m planning on voting for Kerry, I really want the ‘Skins to beat the Packers October 31, so I’m going with Redskins…

BILL GATES IS THE DEVIL – OR – ReInstalling Windows XP

Well, as I’ve mentioned, my 900mhz computer with 512mb of RAM and a cable modem was running like a Commodore 64, so I finally took the plunge, and reinstalled windows XP.

Now, I know more computer than the average guy, but I’m not an IT guy, and I have to say, this has been a nightmare. After 2 days backing up files, I finally went through the process of reinstalling. What did I find?

My computer had been corrupted by viruses that got killed bu left their mark, Bugs, Trojans (not just for you know what anymore), moles, mules, and I think a gremlin. Once reinstalled, I got it working.. but I almost didn’t. See, turns out that I needed a patch from autopatch.com to stop another of these things from re destroying my stuff. (Thanks to Matt for that one). Had I not, Windows would happily have charged me to get me the patch that fixes the problem caused by their faulty programming.

Well, as I’ve mentioned, my 900mhz computer with 512mb of RAM and a cable modem was running like a Commodore 64, so I finally took the plunge, and reinstalled windows XP.

Now, I know more computer than the average guy, but I’m not an IT guy, and I have to say, this has been a nightmare. After 2 days backing up files, I finally went through the process of reinstalling. What did I find?

My computer had been corrupted by viruses that got killed bu left their mark, Bugs, Trojans (not just for you know what anymore), moles, mules, and I think a gremlin. Once reinstalled, I got it working.. but I almost didn’t. See, turns out that I needed a patch from autopatch.com to stop another of these things from re destroying my stuff. (Thanks to Matt for that one). Had I not, Windows would happily have charged me to get me the patch that fixes the problem caused by their faulty programming.

In addition, I discovered that so many of these microsoft programs are in bed together it might as well be an episode of Friends. I made my homepage on Microsoft Word. Turns out that half my pages don’t work on Mozilla, but will on Internet explorer, and never tell me the difference. Its maddening!

Furthermore, winamp and Media player keep fighting for the right to play my music (which I always knew was good, but.. sheesh!!), And now MSN explorer keeps popping up again and wanting to log on, and I can’t figure out how to make it stop!

Yup, Bill gates (to quote Ace ventura) should die of gonhorreah and rot in hll. Okay, maybe not, but the windos platform should. Matt has got me almost sold on the idea of becoming a Mac user.. I’m just afraid all I know abotu computers and recording will become obsolete and useless.

Till then, I’m happier with the way things are running, but I can’t help but notice I’m still dealing with this today, and its been a week.

Grr…

New Pictures

Ok here is a shameless plug, I just posted a bunch of new pictures of my daughter to the web site I maintain for her, so if you want to see the cutest baby in my world go to, http://curtiskoeppel1.tripod.com/

Curt

Ok here is a shameless plug, I just posted a bunch of new pictures of my daughter to the web site I maintain for her, so if you want to see the cutest baby in my world go to, http://curtiskoeppel1.tripod.com/

Curt

Googling for dirt

Running a weblog has a lot of benefits, with some downsides:

Running a weblog has a lot of benefits, with some downsides:

  • I get to hear the opinions of good friends separated by a long distance.
  • I have an easy place to dump technical information for future reference. I can’t count the number of times I’ve accessed my page on building a kernel module from various workplaces as I’ve run into problems.
  • Family and friends can keep track of what’s new in my life.
  • It’s easy for people to locate me via Google.
  • Having an online journal kind of forces me to periodically review my thoughts on various topics, and put them in writing so I know what I’m thinking.
  • People can look you up and decide to not like you due to your opinions, resulting in missed job opportunities, heat at work, and general nastiness.

It’s that last point that is painful. You see, the community in Utah is small enough — about 750,000 people in a few hundred square miles — that as a UNIX admin, you gradually come to know, and be known, throughout the area. Every interview I’ve been to while looking for my next job, we’ve known someone in common. That knowledge of somone in common can be the difference between getting the job, and not getting the job.

Running an online journal brings that one level closer to you. You put your life out on display, hanging in the breeze for anyone to examine. It takes a while for you to get your bearings, and in the meantime, those old entries don’t just go away on their own.

People you know can, and do, look you up.

I was recently asked by a friend to modify some data on barnson.org to make it less personally-identifiable. This really brought my thought process to a head: what are we really doing here? In posting news, updates, various rants, and other information to the Internet, we’re taking conversation that would normally take place at the coffee shop and be forgotten about almost as soon as it’s said, and now nailing it down in the annals of history, forever in print for us, and others, to examine, for the rest of our lives. And beyond, maybe.

When I was on my last contract, I posted some information about the place I was working for. It was all information already available on the ‘net, and the kind of stuff anybody could figure out with a few minutes and a calculator. Yet I was pulled into my boss’s office for a potential “violation of your non-disclosure agreement” and asked to change the data.

Now, in my opinion, the information was trivial. I deleted a single sentence, and the posting was appropriate. Had I said the same thing at home, or in a coffee shop, nobody would know, nobody would care.

But the key reason why they objected? The information wasn’t glowingly positive, and my posting showed up in the first page on a Google search for the company name.

I believe it’s not what I wrote, or even the less-than-adulatory perspective it conveyed, that was the problem. It was public exposure. Had I even written “the company is small and unstable, with little money in the bank”, this would all be publicly-available information, but because of the employer-employee relationship, they could have exerted very strong pressure (“we’ll get someone else”, basically) to get me to change the information.

If it was something few other people would see, they wouldn’t care. But because of that exposure, as the Internet becomes increasingly the first source people turn to for news, rather than the television or radio, it’s becoming an increasingly important place for a company to keep a positive “spin” on their activities.

I’m not sure if this is a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing. But running a weblog, particularly where you expose much in the way of private information, is a life-changing choice. You don’t realize it on your first post, or the fifteenth, but at some point you realize it’s both a good and a bad thing in your life. In my case, at least, far more good than bad; I have a place to post important information, and given my technical specialty, it’s an acceptable quirk for most people.

But I do wonder what will be the eventual fate of traditional media outlets as blogs continue to grow to first sources of information, and continue to dominate the search engine rankings. What do you think the net effect of putting all this information on the Internet will be?

Ah the light of Friday

Well Fiday is upon us, I would say outstanding, however it is raining, which is typical for here in Seattle. Has not been that typical of late though, been like a heat wave what with 80 degree weather. Yeah Yeah, I am sure there are those of you that have it hotter then that, but I have gotten used to the mild weather and I wimp out when it gets a bit hot.

Well Fiday is upon us, I would say outstanding, however it is raining, which is typical for here in Seattle. Has not been that typical of late though, been like a heat wave what with 80 degree weather. Yeah Yeah, I am sure there are those of you that have it hotter then that, but I have gotten used to the mild weather and I wimp out when it gets a bit hot.

Anyway we had our little angel go in and pose for pictures, and wouldn’t you know it she got baby of the week, cutest baby out of 29 babies. Made me real proud. Not a whole lot planned for the weekend, just go to church and take it easy.

Have not heard from that sister of mine in quite sometime, if she is out there reading this hint,hint.

For those following my situation with my little girl, I kinda backed off for now, she has a good mom, and its not her fault that her mother and I cannot get along all the time. I did get her mother to agree to a more mutual sharing arrangement, but when I tried to get her to sign it, she would not do it, she said not until the divorce is final. So there it lays for now. Anyway not sure what else to “Blog” about.

So ttyl,

Curt

EDIT by matthew: Broke up posting into paragraphs, fixed a couple tpyos. Please be sure and use line breaks in the future 🙂

Elijah Mutt

So I’m sitting down to my computer to handle a little electronic mail this morning. It’s my usual tradition, and as usual, Elijah (my two-year-old) watched me type, hung off my arm, and did two-year-old things.

So I’m sitting down to my computer to handle a little electronic mail this morning. It’s my usual tradition, and as usual, Elijah (my two-year-old) watched me type, hung off my arm, and did two-year-old things.

He saw the colorful display of my mail reader, “Mutt” (a text-based email reader that is basically immune to viruses, very fast to use, with a steep learning curve), and said “Daddy, what’s that?”

“Well,” I replied, “it’s a program I use to read my electronic mail. It’s called ‘Mutt'”.

Well, whaddya know, the rest of that session before heading off to work, every time he’d see me pop back to that text window with its colorful text, he’d shout “Daddy! Mutt!”

That’s my boy.

VEGAS WITH THE BARNSONS!!

Las Vegas is a city of sparkling expensive gambling delight, but many of my most memorable experiences in Sin City were had not withing the chiming money pits, but in (and above) the lighter side of Vegas.

Las Vegas is a city of sparkling expensive gambling delight, but many of my most memorable experiences in Sin City were had not withing the chiming money pits, but in (and above) the lighter side of Vegas.

Matt Barnson has acquired a reputation for being an thoughtful, responsible adult, a father, and nothing resembling the Matt who in my younger years liked to introduce me to mortal danger. No.. this time, it would be different.

We met at the Star Trek experience, but opted against Quarks bar because their menu was expensive and non Atkins-friendly. After a diner lunch, Kelly and Christy headed to the Venetian to do some shopping while Matt and I gleefully took his three kids to Circus Circus to ride the fun rides. We departed the Hilton going the wrong way on the Monorail, just to see the sites, but soon opted against that idea, as the other passengers started shooting Cyclops powered death looks toward JJ’s insistend dissatisfaction with the tour so far. Traveling back, we consulted a map, deciding on the final stop to walk across the street to the amusement park.

After a twenty minute trip through the smoke filled casinos, Matt pushing a stroller and Sara squeezing my hand with stars in her eyes, we made it to the front door, finally discovering that this was too far to walk, and being advised that the Monorail stop we wanted was the Las vegas hilton – where we had started out.

Impulsively, I grabbed a Taxi, we piled in, and were soon in the land of Circus Circus. I couldn’t wait to jump on a few rides and glefully be a kid again. After getting lost in the video arcade, we made our way through two broken escalators, And into ADVENTUREDOME. Matt decided to let me ride with the kids, but I soon had to illegally hand over my armband to matt, when JJ vehemently insisted that no ride would be acceptable far from the loving arms of his Father.

After a few hours, we headed back to the Hilton to enjoy the Buffet, which was filled with Pasta, pizza, Desserts, Chinese food, and for Matt and Christy, lots and lots of meat. After dinner, and a lesson in slot machine odds for Matt, it was time for me to face the most fearsome part of my trip… the STRATOSPHERE.

The stratosphere is the tallest building west of the mississippi.. a tower that rises high above the rest of the casinos. On top of this tower is another 10 story tower that holds a ride that pulls you up 90 feet, bounces you as you look over 1000 feet straight down, and then drops you, weightless, toward your doom, before saving you at the last minute when you have fallen 90 feet… it is also important to note that I’m scred of heights.

After an endless wait to go to the top of the tower, there I sat, waiting for the ride to fill.. Matt screaming like he always did at 18.. the responsible father.. “Look down there.. holy crap!” – Meantime, my heart is pounding in my head.. my breaths are shallow and quick. I hear the girl in th booth start a 10 count countdown, but she launches us at number 7.. and then.. she says “Thanks for riding!” and people start getting off the ride.

Matt is laughing, people are shaking and yelling. “Wasn’t that AWESOME?!” Matt yells. I’m just calm and confused.. not afraid at all.. but wondering – did I miss something? I looked at the computer captured photo.. and my face is dead and attentionless.

I had blacked out……

We rode again, of course.. and this time, I did indeed experience the ride.. and it was fun. And we got a great picture. But it was a familiar sensation, sitting next to Matt, fearing for my life, and being a little concerned that i had bitten off a bit more than I could chew.. almost a mile up.

When we parted company that night, the barnsons and the Timpanes agreed – this must become a tradition. I hugged Christy goodbye, marveling at her patience, her family, and her ability to put up with Matt and I bringing out the.. umm.. best/worst in each other. I promised Sarah, the sole remining awake child that I would see her again soon, and I just laughed as I slapped Matt on the back. Somehow, we had conquered yet another city, and completed our mission.. “Don’t Die”.