The Seeker Blog

Ever since I was a little boy, I knew what I wanted to be or do. I was writing assembly code programs on fictional hardware that I had designed even before I had my first computer. I knew that I wanted to be a scientist or a technologist or something like that. When I got my first computer, I was hooked, and I learned to code on it. And I loved what I did. I took a rather ill-advised detour (and one that probably caused me a lot of lasting career harm) as a piano performance major, but I always went back to computers. Partly because piano doesn’t pay the bills, but also partly because computers had always been what I wanted to do.

I started as a minimum-wage sysadmin at a very small ISP over 10 years ago.I started out raw, but I had a lot of potential, and I grew into what I would consider to be a very strong sysadmin and programmer. Basically, I know what the hell I’m doing. And it’s all I’ve ever really known how to do, or at least all I’ve ever known how to make money at.

Lately, though, I haven’t felt the magic anymore. It’s become a job, yes, but it’s more than that. I really hate the current state of computing. The interesting parts aren’t interesting anymore - everyone’s abstracted away all of the direct hardware stuff, there’s no hardware hacking to speak of anymore, there’s no assembly language, no C level stuff, no systems level stuff anymore. It’s all perl and ruby and java. Which is cool in its own right, but I don’t love that as much as I love going back to the roots of it all - C, C++, assembly, all that.

And the window managers and higher level stuff suck. All of it. Some suck worse than others (I like KDE better than Gnome) but it all sucks. It’s all just rehashing one thing after another - and they’re all starting to look the same. No innovation, no imaginativeness, just a nice, friendly screen with icons and a taskbar of some sort.

This isn’t what I signed onto 10 years ago. It’s a whole different world and I’m not really much liking it.

It’s not that I want things to be more complex, really. I’m all for ease of use and getting stuff done rather than figuring out how to get stuff done. But it just feels… dumb… anymore. Like everything I loved about it is gone and all that’s left is some mainstream crap that bears little relation to what I cut my teeth on.

I feel like I’m going the way of the COBOL programmer or the dodo bird. And I don’t like it.

So I got my car back on Friday morning. I get there at 7:30 AM, right? Plenty of time to get to work by 9. I get the key, put it in the ignition, and nothing happens. No beeps, no clicks, no moans, no nothing.

So the battery was drained completely. They said it was a faulty battery. Took ‘em 45 mins to replace it and they sent me on my way. Of course, the 405 was jammed… Sigh.

So I get in the car yesterday morning, turn the key - nothing happens. Get a jump from AAA, drive to the dealer… and the battery’s dead.

Turns out that somewhere between the time I gave them the car and the time that they gave me the car back, a fuel pump relay stuck closed.

Grrr.

At least this was under warranty.

Amazing that such a little thing can cause such big headaches.

Yeah, you. The one who broke into my car on Friday night and stole a duffel bag full of dirty clothes.

Here’s what you cost me, if you give a shit:

• $500 for the window and to replace it. Bet you didn’t know or care that only GM makes the window, right?
• Over $200 for the rental car while my car sits at the dealer waiting for them to replace the fucking window that you broke.
• $100 to replace the dirty clothes that you stole and probably can’t use or fit into anyway. What use would a lowlife crack scum like you have for black khakis anyway? To try to look respectable?
• A lot of time as I waited at the rental car company to get a car because there were no cars left in the entire valley except for a fucking suburban. Oh, and…
• at least $20 in gas that I wouldn’t have had to spend for the suburban.

So. Was it worth it to get some dirty underwear, smelly shirts, and worn pants? Huh? Huh?

Fucking ashole moron. You got what you deserved. Unfortunately, because of you, I am contributing to the fucking economy to the turn of around $1000 because your mama didn’t teach you to respect the belongings of other people.

Asshole.

The bad news is someone broke into my car last night and stole a bag, and the window will cost about $250 to replace.

The good news is the bag contained nothing but dirty laundry and some thief is going to have quite a surprise. Bwahahaha.

I just learned something really interesting that I suspected while I was on the plane yesterday. I actually find this a little disturbing.

Have you noticed that while the engines start up, the air feed into the cabin goes away? And have you also noticed that you can smell jet fuel? And did you notice that as the engines throttle up, so does the air supply?

There’s a reason for that.

In order to explain what’s going on, I have to go into a bit of detail about how a jet engine works. There are four stages to a jet engine - intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust. The compressor works with a series of rotating blades that compress the air to about 3 atmospheres (I might have the number slightly wrong). Then it is fed into the combustion area, mixed with fuel, and ignited. At which point the air comes out the back at very high velocity. Most of that is thrust, but a small amount of that enery spins a turbine which rotates the compressor. It’s a very efficient design.

However, the compressor is a ready supply of compressed air, and sometimes the “bleed air” coming out of it is used for other purposes. For example, the bleed air (air extracted from the compressors on a gas turbine engine) coming out of the APU (the small gas turbine engine that generates power for the airplane while the main engines are off) is used to start the main engines.

Bet you didn’t know that the bleed air from the engines on a commercial aircraft are sent right into the cabin.

I don’t know how I feel about this, but apparently there are documented cases of people getting sick off of this air. This doesn’t make me happy, especially because the separate compressors were remove to… you guess it… save money.

Sigh.

Over the past few days, I was in Boston for the Red Hat Summit. I did not want to announce this until I was back, as this way my apartment does not become ripe for burglary. There is so much I want to say and talk about, but my sleep schedule is still wonky, so I’ll just talk about some of the highlights.

I got up at around 3am on Tuesday to catch my flight. I flew United. It was not a pleasant experience to fly United, but not necessarily an unpleasant one either. They cram you in there like sardines, and I can definitely see why people would have gotten royally pissed off at having to wait on the tarmac for 9 hours. On the way there, it was fairly clear all the way to Boston. We flew over Las Vegas, Denver, Omaha, the Iowa flooding (I saw a few busted levees), Chicago (downtown chicago looked like little boxes), Detroit/Toledo (though that was covered with clouds and I never saw it), Albany, and of course Boston. The approach to Boston was kind of cool, we flew out over the ocean (the first time I ever saw the Atlantic ocean in my life) and landed on the runway (not sure the designation, I think it was 14/32) where you come in over the ocean and the runway kind of sneaks up on you. A little scary, actually.

So I got there on Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM and checked into my hotel. The evening they had a welcome reception with lots of food (all hors d’ouvres, but you can eat all you want). So I pigged out. A coworker called me and asked if I wanted to go to dinner, I said “no, man, come down here, there’s food!) Don’t know if he did, I didn’t see him that night. But after an hour I went back to my room and went to sleep. Or tried to, I had a hard time of it.

So the next morning I get up at 6:30 AM (that’s 3:30 AM pacific time) and am completely and totally dead on my feet. I go down to breakfast (which they thoughtfully provide, it was actually a pretty nice spread) and eat, and then go to the keynote speeches. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the whole tone of it - it was very slickly polished and very corporate. Someone went through a lot of effort and spent a HELL of a lot of money on this, and somehow all that for a open-source based conference made me feel a little uneasy. It was very professionally run. So anyway, the keynote speaker was the CEO of RedHat, and he talked about where RedHat was going, which was kind of uninteresting at that time of the morning. A couple more forgettable keynote speakers, and then it was time for the seminars. There were two on kernel performance tuning which I found useful. Unfortunately they were the two most useful of the day. I have to hand it to Red Hat, that most of their sessions were actually quite useful and helpful. Unfortunately, *most* of them were quite useful and helpful, not all. There were at least two I just walked out of because I couldn’t take the droll style of presenting. I guess you get that everywhere.

Oh, did I mention Tuesday night was the night that the Lakers lost to the Celtics? I didn’t even know the next day, but it was an interesting piece of trivia, especially because I’m from LA and was in Boston.

So after all of the sessions I went back to my hotel and crashed. There was a party in Fenway Park which I decided not to go to. I did, however, have my first beer, and my forst alcoholic beverage ever, that night. The guy almost didn’t serve me for some reason, I can’t quite figure that one out. It’s true that it could lead to irresponsibility, but I asked him for a small glass. He did anyway, and the look on his face was… disturbing… when he realized I wasn’t kidding. Oh well. I had no more while I was there, and I’ll likely never see him again.

I also want trolling around the area. It turns out in the area around the Hynes Convention Center, there is a… mall. All enclosed and a very short walk. It also turns out there’s a Cheesecake Factory. I was in heaven. I went and got a piece of cheesecake and cracked up the girl behind the counter, she was my new best friend for that moment. And then I slept. Or tried to. Didn’t get much.

Next morning I followed pretty much the same schedule. Breakfast was still good, two forgettable keynote speakers and then Joel Cohen, who was the co-producer of the Simpsons. That one I enjoyed. He was actually funny, didn’t talk too much about technology but the speech was enjoyable anyway. Went to a few sessions, most of which were forgettable but I learned interesting stuff anyway. I started to feel kind ill around the time of the last one, I think I was just pushing myself too hard, and ended up just taking a nap instead. Which turned out to be exactly was was needed at the time. I went to the Skywalk party at the top of the Prudential Tower, where they had bands (which were kind of lame, but they did belt out a mean minor sixth), and lots of good food (salmon roast beef, etc). I took lots of pictures, ate some food, talked to a few people, then went back to my hotel and went to sleep. Again, or tried to.

Next morning, went to breakfast, attended one session about the crash dump that was actually pretty good, checked out, took a cab to the airport, waited about 5 hours for my flight, flew for five hours, spent two hours in the airport trying to get all my ducks in a row, finally got in the car, and went home.

It was good, it was exhausting, I don’t think I want to do this again for a long time, but all in all I don’t think I regret going at all. I also missed a bunch of things, I know I did, but this post is long enough already.

I found this game from Carnegie Hall. It’s obviously designed for younger people, but I found it quite amusing even myself. It gives an introduction to the various instruments of an orchestra, and does so in an entertaining way that I bet children would love. And it does so using Britten’s famous piece, which I happen to like quite a bit.

And their take on the entire piece with narration is quite cool too.

Check it out if you have kids, I bet they’ll like it and they can learn something too.

I have not been showing this blog much love lately. This is because I have been spending the past few weeks in a great deal of deep reflection - about where my life has been, about where it is, and about where it’s going. In that vein I also started another blog that deals with some deep personal issues of mine. I will not tell you where it is right now, I’m sure you can find it if you want, but I don’t want that link existing in the blogosphere just yet. Ask me privately if you seriously can’t stand not knowing, and I might give it to you.

But it’s been a hard month. It’s been full of things that are difficult to deal with. And I had a conversation with a higher up in the company that I work that made it much more difficult to deal with.

He told me I could never be a manager as things currently are. OK, I can deal with that, I wasn’t expecting to. He told me that I’ve been there for two years and no one there really knows me. Yes, I can understand that point of view. He told me that I have caused a lot of damage with other teams with my reputation. That I have a difficult time dealing with. Basically, he both assured me that my job is not in danger and I have an opportunity to fix it, and that I’ve caused at least as much damage as I suspected I did.

I did not want to hear this, but I needed to hear this. The simple fact of the matter is that I am an angry person. I am angry because of stuff that happened in my past, I am angry because of how people have treated me, and I am angry because I can’t figure out how to get past it. I am not a mean person, I am a fair person, but even so, I am not a nice person.

And since no one knows what makes me tick, that not niceness is difficult to stomach.

I don’t know what to do about it. I really don’t. I am at a complete loss. But it is obvious that the status quo, that things being as they are, is simply not going to cut it any further.

OK, so you all remember that youtube video, the one with all the chickens? Here it is, just so you remember.

OK, ever since I found that video about a year and a half ago, I showed it to a coworker and we have been greeting each other ever since by saying “chicken chicken” to each other.

So today I was feeling punchy, probably because I was feeling miserable and covered for it in my own way. So a coworker of mine was about to leave, and I saw the coworker I say “chicken chicken” to all the time over in a cube, and said to the first coworker, “want to see a drive by chickening?”

He said, “wha?”

I said “want to see a drive by chickening?”

He was really curious by this time, and said “sure”.

So I walked over deliberately to the second coworker, walked right up to him, said “chicken chicken”, turned around, and walked away.

Apparently I’m “weird”.

Shrug.

Sorry I have not been posting much, I have had my attention diverted by something personal that I have to give some attention to. So, that said, here is a funny.

The first funny happened in the restroom, again, but it didn’t really involve any functions this time. I was sitting there doing my thing, and two guys walked in. One of them being the “when a horse” guy, and the other being a guy that is well known for having very loose lips. Well, he started talking about something that he wasn’t really supposed to talk about outside of the NOC area. So, I said in my very best Indian accent: “Thank you for telling me!”

He said, “OH SHIT!!!”.

If I had thought, I would have done my impression of his boss’s boss and told him to meet me in his office. Thought of it too late though.

Maybe he will learn that when you’re told not to talk about things, you shouldn’t talk about things.

Something else really funny happened as well, but I can’t remember what it is. Oh well. If I remember, I’ll make another post.