Not much happening

In light of the stories about shark attacks on the west coast of Florida, my recent trip to Ft. Lauderdale and subsequent drunken midnight swim now seems to be one of my lesser ideas. Granted, I didn't go way out into the ocean where the sharks like to feed. I also didn't go swimming on the same beach where a shark attack happened the day before. Call me a Darwinist, a cynic, or just a master of the obvious, but if you swim in waters where ill-tempered fish are swimming around biting people's legs off, you've got what's coming to you.

On a separate note, I'm drinking my first glass of Caffrey's tonight. Apparently it was smuggled into the U.S. from the Canadian border, kind of like in the movie "Traffic." Well, maybe not, but it makes the beer taste fresher. Anyway, I had very high expectations for the beer, but I can't say that they were all met. It's not that it was a bad beer by any means, but when compared to a Guinness or a Wexford, it wasn't all that and a bag of chips. Just goes to show that a beer's worth is directly dependent on the quality of the situation where it was consumed in mass quantity. Why else would anyone drink Busch???

Not much happening right now. We'll see what tomorrow brings...

The world is no longer flat

Introduction. It has come to my attention recently, a fact so staggering, so mind shattering, that it has caused me to question my system of beliefs and morals. It is a fact, among few, in the highest classes of intellectual context. Topics such as love, religion, and politics all pale in comparison to this single, daunting, and fatally absolute truth:

Some people don't know when they're going to fart.

Now for those of you that are dismissing this as a childish editorial on par with the classic novel "Everyone Poops," I urge you to continue reading.

Definition. Yes, I have learned that some people don't know when they're going to fart. It's really not something that I've thought all that deeply before. I had assumed that everyone else was just like me, in which any given fart, or "element of flatulance" if you will, came with a certain subset of unplanned, but quite definite and noticeable, warning signs. Now I'm not even going to attempt to list out the entire set of warning signs, as the list is neither definable nor appropriate for public reading, but I think it's safe to say that anything from slight intestinal ramblings to flat out assus explosus ("explosion of the ass") qualifies. Regardless of the warning signs, the important point here is that the warnings, regardless of their origin or magnitude, always preclude any given moment of flatulance. This is a known fact. No one has come out and stated it, nor has anyone challenged it. I'm fairly certain no studies have been done on it, and I'm not even convinced anyone has thought about it before to the level of which it has disturbed me. Yet, in one quick sentence by a well-educated and strong-willed person, one short burst of words, my constant and never changing view was shattered. My world was no longer flat.

Denial. This just can't be. There is no sound reason to believe that an event as powerful and memorable as farting can "just happen." It goes against science, and I don't want to be the one to go against science! Yet still, I've been re-assured that this can, and quite often, does happen. It can't be! I refuse to take this as truth, but I find myself wondering how else to know for sure. There's no baseline for testing something like this. It's unthinkable. Even if there were a baseline, how large would the sample set have to be? How would it be precisely monitored and recorded? How could false positives such as bean dip or tainted pancakes be accounted for? Proving or disproving this is simply not feasible.

Acceptance and reflection. Okay, so I can' disprove this fact. Yes, it goes against everything I know and believe in, and yes, I'm basing all of this on one person's portrayal of the truth, but I am a logical person, and if I can't disprove something, I can't say that it isn't true. The truly disturbing portion of this little intellectual discovery of mine is really a second-order realization: if some people can't foresee, acknowledge, and possibly prevent something as elementary and obvious as a brewing fart in its stages of pre-release, what other things are people not able to notice, predict, or prevent? More importantly, is the converse true? Am I missing something that everyone else understands and accepts? As an example, something that I think about from time to time: do wombats spontaneously combust becoming projectile rodents, causing imminent death unless quickly avoided by means of an acrobatic leap to the left or right? What if I'm the guy that gets killed by the flaming wombat? Folks will hear about it on the evening news offering me the same level of pity that they did to the woman who was, apparently unseen and unpredicted by her inner thoughts, burned by hot coffee she had just purchased from a fast food restaurant. They'll say, "What a dumb shit. How could he not see that coming? Hell, it had flames shooting out of it."

Closing. The world is no longer flat... random and unpredictable flatulance is everywhere... and I will be on the lookout for flaming wombats.

A day of new things

Today was a day of new things for me, or at least a day of realization of new things; some good, some bad.

I'll start off with the bad: Tequiza beer. Don't be fooled, this beer is _not_ the light tasty summer beer that it pretends to be. Damn marketing people. They put it in the cooler right next to Corona, a delightful beer, and sell it as "Beer With Blue Agave Nectar And The Natural Flavor Of Lime." Beware this beer! It tastes as though someone took half a can of old-ass Tecate, about two cups of sugar, and a cup of that nasty lemon/lime juice that comes in a fake fruit-like looking containers and mixed it together in an old dirty Sunny Delight bottle. Oh yeah, it's that good. I'm not really sure why I bought it anyway. I think it's because I wanted Corona but was too lazy to cut up limes. Actually, thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure that was the reason. Well, I've learned my lesson... Oh, and just when I thought the beer couldn't get any worse, I read the label on the bottle, and noticed the words "Anheuser-Busch, Inc". Those lying, deceiving, tasteless bastards from Missouri. It's a good thing that Indiana still, by far, wins the all-time shittiest state contest, or Missouri might be in the running.

On a slightly geekier note, I downloaded and tried out Fedora Core 4 today. Actually, I'm using it to type this blog right now. It's clean, has some nice apps/tools, and has an impressive changelog. I need to poke at more of the details, but so far it looks good.

My last item for the day comes from the land of television... As I'm sure you've all noticed, you can't watch more than a few minute's worth of television without seeing an add for a new drug. What used to be Nike and Chevrolet commercials has now turned to Celebrex and Viagra. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, although I don't really care for commercials starring impotent men, but I do find some of them to be hilarious. It started off a few years ago with the long list of possible side effects. You know, may cause stuffy nose, blurry vision, anal leakage, bleeding eyes, etc. Makes me want to run out and start popping pills right away! Anyway, I heard a commercial tonight for a drug called Premarin, "for menopausal symptoms." The disclaimer for this particular drug was absolutely hilarious. I don't mean to be insensitive to anyone who has had to live through the disclaimer that I'm about to mention, but come on, get real. "For women who have a uterus, estrogen may increase risk for uterine cancer." Does that seem odd to anyone else? That's like saying "for men who have a heart, crack-cocaine and Red Bull may increase risk of heart attack." Do they really have to go into this level of detail for a 30-second commercial? Are they really so enthralled as to state the obvious? Who is honestly dumb enough to take this drug and miss the obvious; that not having a uterus qualifies them as being void of uterine cancer! Need I start a conversation about Darwinism? Again? Holy shit people, we're way past the age of enlightenment, so start acting like it.

Aptel, errr, Inple

Another big announcement recently in the IT world: Apple will stop producing PowerPC -based systems and will begin using Intel chips.

I will dispense my wisdom.... now.

There are so many things wrong with this that it makes my kidneys hurt. I'm by no means a Mac bigot, and I don't even really mind running OSX on Intel chips, but I do have a problem with how this is all being done.

First of all, why Intel chips? Why not AMD? Intel is so in bed with HP, Dell, and Microsoft, that Apple isn't going to have a chance getting anything out of them. Just think what's going to happen if/when OSX on Intel starts to take off. Well, first thing is that "dancing" Steve Ballmer from MSFT is going to send off a "We need to talk" email to his butt-buddies at Intel. Let's face it, it's not about the hardware any more, and it hasn't been for a long time. It's about the software. Even if you have quantum-computing speeds in your processors, if you don't run Windows, Linux, or OSX, you've got nothing, end of story. Point being, anyone who thinks MSFT's ties to Intel aren't going to affect the bottom-line of Apple's hardware are smoking the wacky-tobacky. AMD would have been such a better choice. They could have had a good 64-bit hardware implementation, a great inter-CPU bus system, and a supplier who is willing to work with you, rather than against you. Above all, there would have once again been some competition in the CPU market. This move isn't going to help AMD all.

Secondly, what in the hell is Apple thinking telling the public that they're completely switching architectures. "Oh, don't worry, keep buying Macs. The minor CPU changes won't affect anything." WTF!? I don't know about you, but as for myself (someone who was just about to buy a new Mac, and also works at a photo company), there's no way I'm buying anything new until the x86 stuff is out and tested. What a load of yak dung. This is why hardware companies don't release anything about new products until they're actually selling/shipping. I don't anticipate Apple hardware sales doing much of anything but plummeting into a deep dark pit (say hello to Sun while you're there) until the x86 boxes start to ship, and even then, I'll be waiting until things stabilize. In the mean-time, I'll be working on my OSX alternatives. Timing is everything when it comes to operating systems. Release quickly, release often, release features. Screwing with this is suicide.

Thirdly, what's the incentive of buying Apple hardware any more? Why not a Dell box running OSX? Are they going to cripple the OS so that it can't run on anything but Apple x86 boxes? Are they ready to support the vastness that is the "PC hardware" world? Good frickin' luck! I like Apple hardware as much as the next guy, but I would only ever consider buying a Mac because of its cool looks and OSX, and there are limits to each of those considerations. Cool looks are worth, at most, a few hundred bucks to me, and probably a lot less as other vendors are now trying to sell boxes that look "cooler." So really, what does Apple have left? OSX? Sure. How much is it worth? No idea. To me, not a whole heck of a lot. It's BSD with a nice GUI.

I don't know. There's a lot about this that seems wrong to me. It makes me wonder if there isn't something else going on. I'm not the first person to speculate, but maybe this is just a precursor for Intel's buyout of Apple. Even Intel isn't stupid enough to think that hardware can drive the computing market. If they did think that, I'm sure the Itanic pooch-screw has ridden them of the idea. If Intel owns Apple, they can ship "cheap" hardware that's running underneath a finely tuned OS. They can implement the latest-and-greatest architectural "standards" easily and quickly. It's very similar to the old-skool UNIX implementations (Sparc/Solaris, PA-RISC/HP-UX, Alpha/Tru64, etc.) where the hardware vendor was the software vendor, except this time they're doing it in the user-space market with "standard" hardware and an "open" operating system (quoted words being used very liberally.) For Intel and Apple, this is a good thing. For everyone else, a very bad thing. Why this will never happen (smoothly, if at all)? I'm sure Dell, HP, and Microsoft might have a little something to say to Intel if/when they buy Apple, and it's not going to be very cheery.

Ah, what a twisted web we weave.

Suntek, errr, Storun

Big news in the IT world this past week. Sun announced their purchase of StorageTek. As usual, I have lots of thoughts...

STK, the good side of the force. I use STK equipment, and for the most part, it's rock-solid. They're support is decent, and their tape libraries are second-to-none. I think they're a well-established company that will continue to be so over the next 10 years. Backups aren't going to go away, so as long as they keep with the technology, they're good to go. And then there is the other side of the force, Sun. Scott McNealy (aka "Darth") and gang are a bunch of babbling morons. They have single-handedly taken a once great enterprise giant and made it into a smoldering, festering, pile of sun-roasted silicon. The fact that they're still selling _any_ server hardware can only be accounted to vendor lockin. Their low end systems can't even come close to touching modern x86-64 systems, and their high-end stuff is, well, ummm, reliable? Not that HP is the poster-boy technology company when it comes to big iron, but despite they're sinking Itanic, their high-end stuff is bitchin-fast in comparison to Sun. Slowlaris is a joke in itself. Sure, it serves a purpose, but Solaris on x86? Get real. The OS ain't all that without the proprietary hardware underneath it. And as for Solaris 10 saving the day, well, I don't consider whiz-bang filesystems (yet to be released of course) and hugely complex profiling tools to be the definition of a great OS. Sure, they help cover up the stench of the other OS issues, but only so much can be done. And don't even get me started on the "Solaris 10 is free" issue. What a mess. Oh by the way, Sun supports Linux, err, wait, no they don't. Oh, just in, they support Linux again, but you'll have to pull teeth to get them to sell you hardware that doesn't run Solaris 10. What a freaking joke.

So, my take on this is that Sun is, and has been for the past few years, doomed. Once they lose their install base to Linux and Windows servers, they're done. Support profits only work when there's something to support. Unfortunately for STK, despite they're great products and loyal customer base, I think the amount of "suck" that Sun brings to the equation is enough to pull down STK into the black pool of nothingness that they've become so comfortable with. (FYI, for the definition of ruining a good product by bringing in too much "suck", see a company by the name of "HP".) My advice to Sun employees/users: step into the current decade and stop sucking. My advice to STK employees/users: never underestimate the power of the dark side. Watch closely, and get ready to run far and fast.

Thoughts of Hiking

Some days the issues of work, life, and their interaction wears on you. It's good to have an outlet, which is partially what this entire blog is about.

I really enjoy hiking. I wish I had time to do more of it. I've always wanted to take off on that month long hiking trip, to hike somewhere where no one has before, for that reason specifically. I read a story in Backpacker magazine tonight titled "The Unbearable Lightness of being Scott Williamson." Wow. What a story. And what a good job putting the story into words. It was somewhat about yoyo'ing the Pacific Crest Trail (Mexico to Canada and back again) in one season, but the real point of the story was to understand what a hiker thinks about when all alone. Steve Friedman, the author, nailed it on the head. I was tempted to throw on the boots and the Arc'Teryx and head for the hills.

Get the issue (May 2005), read the story, and understand.