Mixtape - July 31, 2008

New mixtape.

Includes a very kick-ass song - Vantastic - from a duo called 'The Superfantastics'. Alas, I dipped into Folkie Town, indeed all the way past Folkie Town into Filkville. Sorry about that - skip it if you like.

But I think I redeemed the set with some Scott Miller and Yoko Kanno.

And what did I do today?

I pondered the mysterious of life and the funny ways that people choose to attack a problem.

Like, why, given a task to get data from A to B, with the option of doing 'stuff' to it in the process, they choose to park the connection data in a database. Maps, settings for how the server talks to which and who is connected. Queries written in a proprietary language (close to but not quite SQL). All stuffed into a database.

This feels wildly sub-optimal. Was this state of the art ten years ago? What were we thinking?

Now, yes, I can see why you would want to store transaction data in a database. Although for as much use as we put that data to we might as well send it to /dev/null.

Which Windows ain't got but there you go.


But I also had fun - I downloaded Openadaptor and fired up the examples.

From the tutorial

briandunbar_localhost_~/openadaptor-3.4.2/example/tutorial:java org.openadaptor.spring.SpringAdaptor -config step04.xml
INFO [main] Loading XML bean definitions from class path resource [org/openadaptor/spring/.openadaptor-spring.xml]
INFO [main] Loading XML bean definitions from URL [file:step04.xml]
(snip)


Now fire up the included test.html page



Enter a dollar amount, push enter and it writes xml data to the file location defined in step04.xml.

The best part - to me - is that this is a solution that scales in a way that (say) a Visual Basic written application can't.

Define a new connection in xml. Mount it on an NFS share so you can run it from multiple servers. Launch it from shell. Schedule it with cron. Get hardcore and use an enterprise scheduler. Run the proc in the background if it's going to take a while. Stuff like this is what unix is good at.

Of course, the chances of this making it from my laptop (or even my hip-pocket develoment server) to an actual Project are slim to none, but there you go.

Presidential Advice - make sure your tires are properly inflated

Make sure your tires are properly inflated.

I can't wait for the weekly televised broadcasts from the Obama White House:

• "Simple Repairs for Refrigerator Leaks That Will Save You Money"
• "Weatherproofing! Keep the heat in the house and money in your bank account."
• "Have You Checked The Filter On Your Car?"
• "Watch Your Speed! 55 saves lives and it's good for the Environment."

Via.

Fog with a Bite

Yes, China, you can host the Olympics and maybe have clean air so the competitors won't fall down and die. But you'll have to pretty much shut down the entire region to make it happen.

Drastic efforts to curb pollution include pulling half of Beijing's 3.3 million vehicles off the roads, closing factories in the city and in a half dozen surrounding provinces, and halting most construction in the capital.

Some 300,000 heavily polluting vehicles, such as aging industrial trucks, have been banned since July 1.

Even after doing all that it may not do you a damn bit of good.

'Our job is to decrease the pollution as much as possible, but sometimes it is very common to have fog in Beijing at this time,' Du said.

It's fog, with a bite to it; pollutants interacting with sunlight. Nothing to worry about. Unless you to run a few hundred meters very very quickly.

In which I bitch and moan and forget how good I really have it

So .. it's like this. My new best friend is an Enterprise Application Integration server. Written in Visual Basic [1].

I'm digging around to see why it's suddenly decided to flood an ERP application server: how does it talk to that server - what's the logic?

I found something worse than Visual Basic - I found that underneath it all the thing is using batch files to transmit XML files to the server. Lame batch files.


xmlcopy.exe very_critical.xml jde-server-005.yourcompany 6004 200


That's it: 'command file - server - port - timeout'.

I've got nothing against batch files, honest. I love batch files, for what they are, in the same way I like a boot to the head - a simple, direct way to accomplish certain tasks.





My ire was aroused when I poked around two connectors, found 22 batch files, each identical to the sample above, changing only the filename. I've got a bunch more connectors to survey.

If I want to change the destination .. or the port .. or the timeout .. of this one process I've go to edit a few dozen files per connector.





Whoever invented the idea of variables ... he died in vain.

Leaving me with some really tedious and boring crap to tidy up so we can live with this outdated gimpy excuse for Quality until the funds can be signed off and management approval gotten for a new EAI tool.




Yeah, I know - someone call the Waambulance. Sucks to be me with a job I love and working indoors and all that. At least I'm not the guy driving the airplane - talk about a day to harsh your mellow.


What I'd like to fool around with is Openadaptor.

It was written - and the development is still directed - by a bank. A German bank. Which was, sure, established in 1786 which make it a sort of Puppy as far as European banks go, but, hey, they've got spunk. The software developed by those guys outta be solid.



[1] A minority of you will skip ahead - the story from here is inevitable and well-known to anyone who has worked in IT for longer than a week.

That's not to say you can't write quality applications in VB. Just that ... like seeing a second Lieutenant with a map and compass .. it's rarely a sign that good things are ahead.

Quack

Presented without comment.

Semi-Random Linkage: Startup ideas, Shirky's Law and Fred Wilson

Paul Graham - Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund.

We don't like to sit on these ideas, though, because we really want people to work on them. So we're trying something new: we're going to list some of the ideas we've been waiting to see, but only describe them in general terms. It may be that recipes for ideas are the most useful form anyway, because imaginative people will take them in directions we didn't anticipate.

Having ideas is the easy part - execution is hard.


The flip-side of that argument ..

I’ve heard hackers brag that they could have built Twitter over a weekend. Underlying this boast is a misunderstanding of what is truly impressive. Coming up with Twitter required only a small amount of technical knowledge. The hard part was the social insight to realize such a tool would be useful. This is a social insight the bragging hackers didn’t have.

That insight is just as important as building the tool.


And this ..

Fred Wilson wrote two articles in the last few days about globalization and its effect on the Internet. When Union Square Ventures raised its most recent fund, Fred told investors “The Internet is getting more global, more mobile, more social, more intelligent, and more playful.”

I wish the internet was getting more playful- nothing more serious (I've found) than a Malaysian floor manager who can't ship product because The Cow has tripped over The Extension Cord and The Server Room has no power.

Or, just maybe, my sense of humor does not cross the language barrier so good.

Applebees - aspiring to mediocraty

Applebee's - aspiring to mediocrity in Wauwatosa.

It's a long tail of woe and not worth telling. It's enough to say that Applebee's is about ten miles of bad country road.

It's not just the Wauwatosa branch (6750 W. State Wauwatosa, WI 53213), our local version has similar issues, and has since they opened.

Ain't no reason to darken their door when similar chow and better service are just blocks down the road.

NASA at Fifty

From the Economist: NASA at 50.

America's space agency has reached middle age. Will it now recapture the glory of its youth, or dwindle into decrepitude?

Funny - I saw NASA yesterday after work, at at Rosenthal Chevrolet. He was looking at Corvettes.

I predict a wild fling with a floozy, much money expended in an attempt to recapture glory days of the 60s and domestic trauma. In the end, Mrs. NASA is going to end up with the house, NASA will be batching it in those low-rent apartments by the river and his children will be in therapy.

Sad.

Optimism

Beaton has an ear for dialog ..

Flunky: With all due respect, Sir - we have no supplies left.

Napoleon: We live off the land!

F: The Russians have burnt everything in their retreat.

N: It all depends on how you look at it! Yes, here is a delicacy!

F: A burnt stick.

N: A finely cooked branch! You have no taste for international cuisine.

Sunglasses

My sweetie.



What is that in front of her face? Her cell phone.

Why is it there? When Brenda took her picture, she was trying to hide her face and drive.

Instead of spoiling the picture, she just made it adorable.

(I dig those sunglasses, babe.)

Americans: the greatest desperados, the sternest Puritans

Joseph Bottum wrote ...

Americans swing to such extremes: the greatest desperados, the sternest Puritans.

Click the link to read why. Also - a short passage from Moby Dick.

I dunno if he's right but it sure feels that way.

O God of Earth and Altar

O God of Earth and Altar

by G. K. Chesterton:

O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry,
Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die;
The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide,
Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride.

From all that terror teaches, From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation Of honor, and the sword,
From sleep and from damnation, Deliver us, good Lord!

Tie in a living tether The prince and priest and thrall,
Bind all our lives together, Smite us and save us all;
In ire and exultation Aflame with faith, and free,
Lift up a living nation, A single sword to thee. Amen.

Wal-Mart considered not-so very harmful

Mark Perry has links, facts, figures ..

Myth: According to Robert Reich, Wal-Mart turns “main streets into ghost towns by sucking business away from small retailers.”

Reality: The popular belief that Wal-Mart has a significant negative effect on the size of the mom-and-pop business sector of the United States economy is statistically unfounded.

He's special

About my youngest ...

I knew that my youngest, Cian, was a special child from the moment he was born. He has proven over and over again during his little guy life. He is the one that used to bathe in the dog water bowl. He was the child that would put his face into a plate of spaghetti and suck up the noodles. He was the one that invented the penis airplane. [1]

It should be no surprise that he comes home from church on Sunday with a handmade card for his Dad and myself. It was in my favorite color, green. He's a very thoughtful and insightful child. On the outside is handwritten "Thank you Mom and Dad" and on the inside "For not giving me up for adoption."

I died laughing. Only Cian.

[1] Don't ask.

I made you a mixtape

I made a mixtape. Which might be the most egotistical thing I've done all day, thinking that what I like you might want to hear.

And yes, the first track is from a science-fiction television show. I happen to think that the song - 'Storming New Caprica' works as a fine bit of standalone music.

Of course when I listen I know that the piece is from a scene that features a few hundred thousand tons of space-going aircraft carrier/battleship popping out of hyperspace 100,000 feet AGL, falling at terminal velocity, spitting out fighter planes through the shock wave, hull burning (clearly this is not a maneuver the builders never even thought about when they laid down the keel) and just before it goes WHAM into the ground it jumps with a nifty *pop* back into space ...

YouTube - Galactica Falling With Style

So .. yah. Enjoy. Thanks to Erica for showing the site.

What does ITAR stand for?

ITAR stand for . . .

It
Takes
Another
Resource

Jesus Hector and his Disciples in a side car - if you wanted to design legislation that would get in the way you could not do a better job.

The State's killer app is not really violence but the ability to get in the way and screw things up.

Sons of Martha - take it to heart!

Why am I still up at 05:30? I neglected my Kipling ...

They do not preach that their God will rouse them a
little before the nuts work loose.

You cannot half-ass complicated stuff like Oracle Application Server. Woe.

Now, where's the coffee?

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Cockatoo Vocabulary Report

I walk by. He does his chirp-cluck-string-a-word-thing at me.



I reply "Blah blah blah blah".

Why not? The information being exchanged is not verbal, it's information: 'hello - got a grape - boy I love grapes' and I reply 'hello - I'll get you one later'.

I'll tell you why not. His vocabulary now includes

blah-blah-blah-BLAH-blah-blah

We've got seventy more years of this.

Must be boring as snot in New Zealand

You New Zealand People must be really terribly horribly bored.

( Maybe you're like me after Battlestar Galactica went into hiatus until 2009: what could you possibly do on Friday night until the last half of the last season resumes sometime next year? )

And yes, a great big juicy smooch to you, too, SciFi Channel. {Asstards.} ) )

But, yes. Some poor wastral clicked here from Selenian Boondocks. Which is weird because Jon is about a thousand times more interesting than I am. Or at least his blog is. He works for a company that's building actual rockets. They've got a workshop and tools and all that good stuff. They even turn the rockets on once in while. They're flight testing hardware.

How fucking awesome is that shit, hunh? I mean gawd-damn.

So this guy - or gal - clicks in and then spends the next hour ( and nine minutes ( and seven seconds )) clicking through the blog archives. I'm not Lileks, Twain or Faulkner. I'm nobody. This stuff is just not that amusing, nor consistantly on topic about anything to be interesting to anyone for more than a few minutes.

All I can think of is that y'all New Zealanders must be really bored. So come on back, y'all, for a daily dose of krep blog.