Feb 16

ED

Because Emma Dumont is in it, I watched the first episode of Bunheads. While not a great show (at least so far) it has some good lines. Unfortunately, Emma is not in Bunheads nearly enough and in some ways she’s discordant with the show.

Like a lot of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s work, it is like a stage play put on TV and Dumont’s style is very naturalistic and unforced so she’s mismatched stylistically with the feel of the show. Still, though, she’s great and amazing and enviably talented and makes it all better. Or, at times, makes the show seem worse because she is so damn good. Most of the other actors, it’s like they are listening only to hit the cue for the next line but she seems like she’s actually present in that reality.

I just wish she were in it more.

Kelly Bishop, who plays the older mother of one of the characters, is also really good. The others are meh at best.

Feb 15

Cosmac Mistake

I refer to this sort of thing as the Cosma Shalizi approach to objecting to something.

What you do is that you observe that you cannot point to an object in the physical world that has reified or exemplifies your chosen concept, and then proclaim it doesn’t exist and isn’t worth discussing. He used IQ, but many people (stupidly) use the tactic in many other areas.

I always ask them things like, “When you look at a single water molecule, where’s the wetness?” Or, “So tell me, where is love, or honor? You say you love your wife/husband. I don’t see any love anywhere. Point me to this ‘love.’ Therefore you do not and cannot love your wife.” That’s usually when the whining starts.

It’s shocking in ways that smart people can be so terribly stupid, but the STEM approach is that if you can’t measure something it does not exist. And to many in the field, “measuring” means with an actual ruler. Alas, that ethos has infected much of the rest of the world as well.

Now, to defend Shalizi a little, maybe he’s right about IQ. But his “proof” of his correctness was an atrocious bad faith hoodwinking.

Feb 15

Seeing the Real Deal

It does pay off, and help desk experience, too. You see more strangeness and learn more about computers and systems (if you’re trying) on the help desk than you’ll experience anywhere else, including in college. I already knew a lot about computers before I ever worked helpdesk but after I did I knew more than god.

Then becoming a sysadmin, you actually get to apply that knowledge and see yet more strangeness that further deepens your knowledge.

People always ask, “But how did you know that was the problem? We’ve been working on this for a week.”

And the answer is always something like, “Back in 1999 or so, I saw something very similar that reminded me of this. Did some searching to confirm it and then was able to find an old registry hack I saved from ages ago.”

It seems like a magic power, but really it’s just a lot of trial and error, experience, and thinking hard about things for a very long time.

Feb 15

Private Law

I was lucky to have a computer in the house, even though we were dirt poor and lived in a trailer with holes in the floor. Fortunately, my dad was completely obsessed with computers despite being a shade-tree mechanic for a living (along with other jobs, none that paid well), so I am not sure you’d really describe me as “privileged,” exactly. Certainly lucky, though.

Sometimes, there’d be nothing in the fridge (and I mean NOTHING), and the car would be repossessed, but the computer always stayed. At the time it made my mom supremely angry but I’m glad for it. Without that computer I likely wouldn’t have my current career and my life would be much different and worse.

I never did much with assembly, though. Played with it a little when I was 6-12, but mainly copied BASIC and programs in hex out of computer magazines, tediously and by hand, and wrote some of my own.

Just not sure how useful it is to scream “privileged” all the time as some kind of invalidation of experiences. Without actually changing the systems in place, I don’t think it helps much.

Feb 14

Snowattle

When people make fun of Seattle for not being able to deal with snow, they never seem to realize that Seattle is almost as hilly as San Francisco. Sure, it’s easy to drive in a flat city like Boston in the snow. Not so easy to go up a 18 degree slope with no winter tires in a city with a dozen snowplows!

There are hills in Seattle so steep that some cars have trouble climbing them in summer….

Feb 14

Systems Thinking

This is most of IT right here. Kubernetes, containerization, most any project, some “rockstar” person designs something so complex that even they can’t maintain or repair it six months later.

Meanwhile, I am over here being laughed at for designing my simple “toy” systems that keep working, and that a helpdesk person with six months experience can fix if needed (and it’s always needed).

Feb 14

Ducat

I usually do not get on with the “educated” as they nearly-invariably know far, far less than they think they do.

On the other hand, I usually do not wish to mix it up with the completely uneducated as they have too little knowledge to discuss much. Where are all the autodidacts? I think there aren’t that many. It’s a less common road to travel than I’d thought. I figured since I knew one (me) that they were very common.

Unfortunately that is not the case.

Feb 14

Fun Out

This is what I despise about leftist and so-called progressive discourse, the idea if that something bad happened to someone anywhere once, then it’s wrong to ever joke about it or even discuss it (in many cases) except in the most solemn and mournful tones.

Fuck. That. Noise.

I got my ass kicked on the daily in middle and early high school and you know what, I joke about it all the time. And other people can joke about it, too. I do not give a damn and I don’t think any TV shows or jokes or discussions of bullying should be banned because Blaine nearly knocked me out by hitting me with a tree branch from behind in seventh grade.

The only thing I hate more than progressives is conservatives. I’m not a natural misanthrope, all ya’ll just turn me into one.

You know what, life should be fun, not just a mournful procession to the grave were we not only sing our own pitiful monody but relish our chance to ruthlessly punish anyone else for having a laugh or two.

I don’t want to live like that, but many progressives truly do. Well, they can have their featureless concrete boxes, weeping listlessly while eating grass equivalents and moaning about everything that offends them (which is everything). I’ll be doing something, anything else, other than that horseshit.