From POTS to TOTS
My father’s “Programming on the Side” company and my own love of solving hard problems have me wondering about building an objective, principle-based system of troubleshooting.
Articles
Articles feed (RSS)These are longer pieces. I’m always trying to get better at communicating my thoughts this is one of the places I practice.
Everything here and anywhere else also appears in the Stream. If you want to know the ones that are important to me, try Start here.
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HALT LOAD
The first post on the rebuilt blog celebrates HALT LOAD, the mainframe boot milestone from my 1996 Unisys co-op that earned the team ice cream and a cynical coworker’s “milk and cookies” quip.
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On the surface he looks calm and ready …
After sixteen years at CoreDial and its sale to BCM One, I’m feeling a little lost and deciding to build my own platform for sharing ideas that I’ll own.
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Auspicious
A letter from an eighth grader who repairs Game Boys and shares his work on YouTube pulled me out of a year of online negativity and reminded me what the internet is good for.
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The Planner Business
Michelle has started as a travel agent with Mickey’s Dream Vacations, and since agents are paid commission by the vendor, using one costs you nothing and buys expertise.
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Improvement and Reflection
I chase improvement everywhere but neglect reflection, and flipping through Christmas photos and videos made me want a regular, purposeful way to organize my thoughts and memories.
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Ninety in the books
I finished my 90-day health kick down 31 pounds, from 254 to 223, and after a plantar fasciitis flare-up I’m taking a week off the gym before aiming for 190.
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Objectivity of the bystander
Watching a coworker’s brutal 27-hour plan and a boss’s collaborative question go badly, I see how stepping out of the line of fire makes thinking and communicating clearer.
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Ruthless 39 of 90
Thirty-nine days into my ruthless health plan of seven hours of sleep, tracking every meal and gym six days a week, sleep has been the biggest win.
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Audible SciFi Sale recommendations
For fellow Audible listeners, here are my picks from the sub-$7 Super Sci-Fi Sale ending May 10, 2014, from Heinlein and Bujold to a Piper-versus-Scalzi Fuzzy showdown.
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Delicious Time
I have always taken Heinlein’s “everything in excess” to heart, but I’ve realized that the management part of my job isn’t bringing me joy and it’s time to do the work I love.
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Bums Rush
Rushed by work and family, I caught myself jumping to conclusions in email and on Twitter, and I’m resolving to slow down and ask questions before assuming people I disagree with are idiots.
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Fitting in
The Radio Flyer wagon that carried my little girls to the park four years ago still fits us all, bigger kids and X-Men games included.
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Better all the time
Eight years and four months into parenting, a night reading X-Men with Ashley and Watership Down with Allison confirms to me the trend has been upward all along.
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Don’t Think Again
Creative energy is limited, so I stop reinventing how I do repeatable work: build a reusable process, and after each task spend five minutes asking how to make it better next time.
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Disconnect the Batphone
I tell the story of a lone hero engineer who fixes the crisis at 2:37 AM and gets grilled instead of thanked, and argue that needing heroics is a sign of a sick company.
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Step up
A sign at the Franklin Institute food court, “Please, step up and help yourself,” turned into a reminder to me that your days should be what you want and only you can change them.
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Choices
Habits run on autopilot, so to change one I set a standing order to notice it, then ask “What Would I Do?” as my heroic, values-driven self.
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Sprint for Health Millstone
Eighty-six days from my goal, avoiding sweets and grains has been easy because I vividly imagined two futures, one strong at 55 and one in a hospital bed.
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Tomatoes for strength
Three weeks of the Pomodoro Technique have structured my days and improved my productivity, and the push-ups I do during the five-minute breaks are making me stronger.
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I’ll sleep when I’m dead
Sleeping little to get work done only brings that day closer; after studying Paleo sources, I found that a full night’s sleep gives nearly super-human clarity and energy.
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The game of life
I’m committing to get under 200 pounds, starting with 210 by vacation from 238 today, by eating no sugar or grains, playing hard, weighing in daily and writing about it.
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One Calendar to rule them all
A MobileMe Calendar upgrade broke my Rube Goldberg calendar sync, and the simpler replacement, Google Calendar direct to phone and BusyCal, works better and leaves me wondering what MobileMe is still for.
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AC Sludge
A puddle by the basement air conditioner cost me an evening of repairs and exposed how overcommitted I’d become, resentful of emergencies that were my own duty.
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Other People
A keynote’s simple suggestion to do code reviews together got me to send my TargetDate app source to Ryan Grier and plan to integrate it with his MyCntdwn.
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iPhone: Game On
A weekend at the Voices That Matter iPhone developers conference made my lifelong dream of writing games, begun on a TRS-80 and a C64, finally look achievable.
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Resolve
After a stressful year of what felt like going crazy, I recovered by checking my own thoughts against reality, and now old stressors look as harmless as Boggarts.
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Time Tracking
Tired of finishing days unsure what I’d done, I treated my missed project goals like any customer problem and set out to track exactly where my time goes.
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Goals not Rules
The best employees want to know what they’re trying to accomplish rather than what they’re supposed to do, so I argue you should give resourceful people goals instead of rules.
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MobileMe’s apprentice
After upgrading to iPhone 3.1 and Snow Leopard, my calendars multiplied and drained the battery; the cause was subscribed iCal calendars, and here’s the cleanup.
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Quitting Doctors
My children’s beloved pediatrician is closing her practice, and while I can’t blame ObamaCare for hers, I explain why more government in healthcare will push doctors out.
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flagging acknowledged as harmful
The White House asked citizens to report neighbors spreading fishy healthcare information, so I reported myself, and I explain why that matters and why healthcare is not a right.
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Environmental vulnerability
Keith Lockitch sidesteps the climate science debate to ask what makes us vulnerable to storms and disasters, and finds that capitalism’s wealth and energy are the answer.
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Overload and a Coke
My mental stack for sub-tasks is finite, and an overwhelming urge to do anything else turns out to be what happens when a simple task spawns too many hidden requirements.
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Upgrading software
My brother’s blog had a spam problem because someone exploited his ancient WordPress 1.5 and hid the filter, so upgrading fixed both and reminded me to patch old sites.
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Ruining the Meal of Productivity with Snacks
Small tasks keep winning my big block of time while the hard, interesting problems starve, because I dread being interrupted partway through them.
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Knowledge or Grades
Students and their parents chase grades and diplomas as magic stamps, getting cause and effect backwards, when the point of school is the knowledge the grade only measures.
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Destruction and Praise
Local newspapers praise the new administration’s stimulus and call for more oversight, when government meddling is what caused the mess, so I wrote two pieces to answer them.
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By The grace of Gaia
PepsiCo’s scramble to count its carbon emissions ahead of government mandates shows what I take to be environmentalism’s one mortal sin: producing life-sustaining food.
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Eating to sustain life
After reading Gary Taubes, I cut refined carbs and most vegetable oils, eat meat and vegetables, and lost six pounds in a few weeks without ever feeling hungry.
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Parenting and Thinking
Two ideas from positive discipline, assume positive intent and obedience is not a virtue, plus Jean Moroney’s Thinking on Paper, shape how I parent and plan.
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Network Neutrality
A comment I left on David Reed’s pro-neutrality blog, held for moderation, makes a neat object lesson: network operators own their networks just as bloggers own their comment sections.
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Inevitable Result
After the bailout passed and the market kept falling, I argue the problem is government intervention in the economy at all, not too little of it too slowly.
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Writing to government representatives
Since sincere letters to Congress get form letters back, I answered Senator Casey’s bailout reply with sarcasm, thanking him for the lovely round number of ten trillion.
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EPA preparing to control everything
The EPA’s own greenhouse gas rulemaking notice admits that regulating emissions would reach homes, schools, farms and the food supply, and I see an unprecedented expansion of its authority.
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The government as Robin Hood
I start with a thought experiment about who really pays taxes and argue that taxing the rich punishes the productive, since nobody has a right to wealth others must create.
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Intellectual Activism and Cultural Change
After deciding to spread good ideas, I tried letters to the editor, online comments and pushing GTD at work, because bad ideas thrive in an intellectual vacuum.
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When no politicians agree with you
Voters pick the candidate who shares one value, then defend the whole platform like sports fans, and I argue that joining a gang this way makes the rest of your ideas a non-factor.
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A heroic journey
Taking my three-year-old daughter to WALL-E for her first movie, I had to look past the trash-heap backstory I disliked to see the heroic story underneath.
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The reason for being
After a quiet spell, I give the site a purpose: writing in order to learn, starting with a study of Objectivism, and leaving something for my children.
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Engine
A Flickr photo I took of an engine in January 2008.
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Salt Pepper Or music
My Flickr photo from late December 2007 asking whether it is salt, pepper or music.
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Window Tarp?
My Flickr photo from November 2007 of a window covered with a tarp, with a question mark in the title.
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Trouble Maker
My Flickr photo from November 2007 of a small troublemaker.
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Seeing Trees
My Flickr photo of trees from October 2007.
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Crimson King?
My Flickr photo from September 2007, titled with a question about the Crimson King.
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Eagles
My Flickr photo from August 2007 of Eagles, the fourth in a series of posts with that title.
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Real McAllister Justis
My Flickr photo from August 2007 with the caption “Now they have the real scoop”, about a McAllister family justice.
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Computer Graveyard
My Flickr photo of a pile of dead computers, a graveyard of old machines, from August 2007.
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Breakfast
My Flickr photo of breakfast from June 2007.
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Tecmo
My Flickr photo from June 2007 of a game of Tecmo, the classic football video game.
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Casualties Of War
My Flickr photo from late June 2007 of the casualties left behind after a battle.
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Ocean
My Flickr photo of the ocean from a late June 2007 beach trip.
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Ready To Fish
My Flickr photo from June 2007 of someone geared up and ready to fish.
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Comparison
The second of two Flickr photos I posted side by side in June 2007 for comparison.
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Comparison
The first of two Flickr photos I posted in June 2007 for comparison.
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Family Room
My Flickr photo of the family room from June 2007.
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Cordail?
My Flickr photo from June 2007, with a title that asks how cordial to be, spelled with a question mark.
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Jury Duty Means Sitting Around
My Flickr photo from June 2007 of what jury duty mostly is: sitting around waiting.
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Competition
My Flickr photo of a competition from June 2007.
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Still Waiting
My Flickr photo from April 2007 of the long wait that’s still going on.
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Why Unpack
My Flickr photo from April 2007 asking why I should bother unpacking.
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Waiting
I posted a Flickr photo from April 2007 of someone waiting, without comment.
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Florida
My Flickr photo from a trip to Florida in April 2007.
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Two Of Many
My Flickr photo of two of many, captioned “Ready to go”, from April 2007.
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Cover Letter
A rant with one useful tip for job hunters: skip the résumé spam and write a real cover letter to the human who will read it.
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Morning
I posted a Flickr photo of a March 2007 morning, without comment.
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Screen
GNU screen is one of the best tools a sysadmin can have, and I’d start with its copy mode (C-a Esc, C-a >, C-a ]).
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You have new Picture Mail!
I posted a February 2007 Flickr photo, announced as new picture mail.
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Not Tackling Anyone Here Either
My February 2007 Flickr photo, captioned with a joke about not tackling anyone.
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Step Up
I posted a Flickr photo of a step in December 2006, without comment.
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Mandatory waiting period
For colleagues who fly off the handle with every new idea, I impose a mandatory waiting period before acting, and most requests die a natural death until a second request arrives.
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Always Available Society Problems
Taking phone calls in public bathrooms is where the always-available society goes too far, so I offer four resolutions for staying off the phone when nature calls.
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Making Noise: Dell Dimension E521 Linux USB problems
My Dell Dimension E521 has USB problems under Linux, so I’m calling on people to make noise with Dell and Canonical, and recommending you buy from System76 instead.
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Saving Money on textbooks
From experience, my college textbook savings tips run from asking professors which books are optional to borrowing from libraries and paying cheap late fees instead of buying.
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Harrisburg
A terse May 2006 verdict from Harrisburg: Philadelphia airport sucks.
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Packin
I posted a Flickr photo of packing in May 2006 as my trip got underway; the image no longer loads.
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Vittles
My Flickr photo of food on the road, posted in May 2006; the image no longer loads.
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Back
I posted a Flickr photo in May 2006 announcing my return to the blog; the image no longer loads.
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Enduring Freedom
I posted a Flickr photo in May 2006 under the title of the military operation; the image no longer loads.
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What I Do Not Miss
I posted a Flickr photo in May 2006 showing something I do not miss; the image no longer loads.
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Pin Ball Wizard
My Flickr photo from May 2006 of a pinball wizard in action; the image no longer loads.
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Helmet Area
My Flickr photo from May 2006 of a helmet area, apparently taken on a trip; the image no longer loads.
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Hop Hop Hop…
My Flickr photo from May 2006 with a hopping caption; the image no longer loads.
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Iowa
My Flickr photo from Iowa, posted in May 2006 during a trip; the image no longer loads.
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Wastin Time
A short May 2006 note from me idly waiting for the key master to show up.
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Allison Loves Cars
My Flickr snapshot of Allison and her love of cars, posted in April 2006; the photo no longer loads.
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Moo
My Flickr photo from April 2006 with a bovine caption; the image no longer loads.
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Time To Clean
My Flickr snapshot from April 2006, captioned as time to clean; the photo no longer loads.
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Blue Car Effect
I posted a Flickr photo in April 2006 illustrating the so-called blue car effect; the image no longer loads.
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Patience
Patience beats the business cliche of picking low-hanging fruit first: I’d rather decide what actually matters, because quick tasks aren’t better tasks and email checking can eat hours.
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Lobby
My Flickr snapshot of a lobby, posted in February 2006; the photo no longer loads.
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Wednesday Is hoagie Day
I posted a Flickr photo marking hoagie day, my Wednesday lunch ritual; the image no longer loads.
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Bad Security Is Easier
I posted a photo with the argument that bad security is easier than good, and left it without a caption.
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Next
A one-line follow-up where I promise more of the same, this time with page 4.
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ESPN grasping at zebra colored straws
The media’s complaints about the refs in the Steelers-Seahawks Super Bowl miss the point to me: the calls were fair, Holmgren’s excuses are sour grapes, and Pittsburgh was simply better.
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Lee’s Is Jumpin
My Flickr snapshot from February 2006 of Lee’s, which looks to be jumping; the photo no longer loads.
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All Levels
I posted a photo titled All Levels in early February, with no caption.
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Jenkintown
A photo from Jenkintown, with a note that the place is open until 2 on Saturday.
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The Captain
A late-January photo of someone called the Captain, with no caption.
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More Drunker
A late-January photo titled for getting more drunk, with no caption.
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Happy Birthday
A late-January birthday photo, posted without a caption.
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Shiny New parts
A photo of shiny new parts, posted without a caption.
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dammit
A photo posted with nothing but a muttered title and no explanation.
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Online software purchases
After a spilled-water laptop disaster wiped out my downloaded MS Money, I found a Target bundle and rebate cheaper than going back to Microsoft, and drew three lessons about buying software.
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Guinness, For Strength
A photo of a Guinness, offered as a source of strength.
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Tasty
A photo of something tasty, posted without a caption.
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Even Saturday
A photo suggesting that even Saturday isn’t free from whatever the picture shows, with no caption.
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But Which Songs?
A photo posted with my plea for suggestions on which songs to pick.
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Snoopy
A photo of Snoopy, with a nod to the Red Baron.
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Gotta Get Me Some ‘lectric
A photo titled with a drawled wish for some electricity, posted without a caption.
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They Do Funny Stuff
A photo of people doing something funny, posted without a caption.
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Super Chimney
A photo of a very large chimney, posted without a caption.
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East Meets West?
A photo of an East-meets-West mashup, posted with a question mark and no caption.
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Yum Donuts
A photo of donuts, captioned only by how good they look.
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Sprint picture mail and the samsung a900
Sprint’s picture mail leaves messages stuck in the pending box on the Samsung A900, so I share a browser trick that gets them to send almost every time.
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Circle Of Life
A photo of food, with the loop explained: it gives me energy to work, so I can earn money, so I can buy more food.
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Selling Used Books with Amazon
Selling a $2.50 used book left me paying Amazon $2.60 in fees, so I decided half.com is the better place to sell and I won’t list anything under $3.
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People Promise
A photo of a sign making a people promise, with my hope that it includes milkshakes.
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Wildcard Weekend
A photo from NFL Wildcard Weekend, posted without a caption.
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Pretzel To the Stars
A photo of a pretzel with a grand title and no caption.
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Time For A Book To Do My Job Again
A photo of the book that stands in for my job when there is nothing else to do.
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F
A photo titled with a single letter F, posted without any explanation.
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No walking?
A photo of a no-walking sign, with a title asking whether that can really be right.
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Low % Of Oil Life
A photo of my car’s dashboard warning that the oil life is running low.
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In The Future There Will Be Infrastructure Improvement
A New Year’s Day photo of infrastructure in need of work, promising improvement in the future.
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Yum Pancakes
A New Year’s Eve photo of pancakes, captioned only by how good they were.
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Orange Rules
A photo I posted at the end of 2005 declaring that orange rules, with no further comment.
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Fiscal Recovery
A December 2005 photo titled for a bit of fiscal recovery, with no caption beyond the picture.
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Lunch
A photo of my lunch, the third entry in my ongoing bagelwich series.
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Feelin Lucky Punk
A snapshot of a lottery ticket display, posted with an offer of tickets to anyone who wants one.
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Perpetually getting organized
I’ve been trying to get organized since high school, and my habit of letting the best destroy the good keeps turning a simple GTD system into an elaborate software project.
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Idea, Fortune, Fame, Hammock
In college my goal was simply to own a hammock and have the freedom to really use it, which meant making enough money to live on the interest.
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confused argument
Ted Rall argues that giving to charity just excuses a negligent government, then undercuts himself by noting Congress allocated seventy times more to Katrina relief than charities raised.
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the incredible shrinking me
I’m drawing a line in the sand: drop from about 230 to 185 pounds by February 1, 2006, with a deadline to keep me focused and lower my life insurance rates.
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Social Security Opt Out
IRS form 4029 lets members of certain recognized religious groups opt out of Social Security and Medicare taxes, but the catch is forfeiting everything already paid in.
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The Final Hour
With one hour left of the Dark Tower audiobook after six months, I’m both relieved and bereft, and I’ve become an audiobook fan who may drop Audible for library CDs.
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Fedora and Windows XP dual boot problems
Installing XP after Fedora Core 4 wiped out my first OS, and a Fedora developer’s write-up explains why and how to recover.
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Geeky Bookworm Frugality
To resist buying $50 O’Reilly books, I got a library card: the Bucks County Community College library gives access to the Safari collection.
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Mind Games
Despite every reason to dismiss it, I want to spend my spare time writing video games, the thing that hooked me on programming back on my Dad’s TRS-80.
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Eye Relief
Here are my five habits for easing screen-staring eyes: use an LCD, turn down brightness and contrast, look at faraway things outdoors, and remember to blink.
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Zenity, Gmail & GTD
A tiny zenity shell script mapped to F12 lets me mail a next action to my Gmail inbox in seconds, making a Gmail-based GTD system actually usable.
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Super Hype bustification
Every silver-bullet technology arrives wrapped in hype, which is why I block ads, yet I still wonder how anyone finds out what’s actually out there.
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The importance of icebergs
Reading Joel Spolsky’s Iceberg Secret convinces me that the user interface is the most important thing in software, and that demos should look as unfinished as they are.
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Parenthood, Health and Time Management
Fast food saves time today but borrows against healthy years, the graduations, weddings and grandchildren I’d rather be around for as a parent.
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Make: the magazine
O’Reilly’s new Make magazine arrived and delivered, especially its 5-in-1 network cable project, which ends my hunt for console and crossover cables.
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Résumé Mountain Reduction
Faced with a mountain of résumés, I cull any that never mention the key technology in the job posting, unless the cover letter tells a very good story.
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We The Media: Finished
Dan Gillmor’s We the Media was great through chapter 8 and sparked some business ideas for me, but the later chapters rehash what anyone who reads his blog already knows.
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Away Message Culture
I wrote a Python program using Twisted and the OSCAR protocol that logs into AIM, watches my brother’s away messages, and posts them to a blog within seconds.
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Politics and reality
Bush’s re-election won’t change my day-to-day life much, so I’ll keep calling my representatives, and here are some loose thoughts on the parties and the next four years.
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NPR RSS Feeds & the Tao of Depression
NPR offers RSS feeds, and a Morning Edition story on depression management sounded to me like it would add stress to the condition it was meant to treat.
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Dichotomy
In an election year the false dilemma is everywhere, with anyone who questions the government labeled a traitor or one of THEM, which is no way to convince anybody.
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Happy One
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Blue-Tongued Blur
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Federal Regulation
Nothing is so bad it can’t be made worse by federal regulation, and a rule requiring digital cable tuners in TVs does nothing to promote the general welfare the Constitution lists.
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pre solstice concerns
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Bike Race Pictures
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Soffit Vents
I spent a holiday weekend installing continuous soffit vents under my eaves with a $45 circular saw, plugging a previous owner’s 24 stray holes, and worrying whether the vinyl caps let enough air through.
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Battery Corrosion
My Aiptek pencam was dead from corroded battery contacts, and a screwdriver flaking the corrosion off the springs brought it back to life in time for the bike race.
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Threat Advisory Questions
I asked the Department of Homeland Security what the Threat Advisory levels mean for citizens, noting that its guidance document returned a 404 and even the 404 page was denied.
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Individual Productivity Considered Harmful
A programmer’s real day involves far fewer bug fixes than the optimistic version going around, and ignoring email to get more done just means a bad idea reaches customers before anyone can stop it.
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Iraqi Freedom?
With weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda ties discredited, the war’s justification has shrunk to freeing the Iraqi people, at a cost of thousands of civilian deaths and a power vacuum that religious factions are filling.
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Put the Belt On!
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Stupidity, Laziness and Political parties
Voting for whatever candidate your party hands you is laziness, and since people die for the right to vote, I say you owe it to yourself to understand who and what you’re voting for.
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College Textbook swindle
My brother bragged about buying a semester of books for $102, so here is my method for beating the textbook racket: buy only what you really need and stash library copies.
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Googlebombing SCO and other counterattacks
The Googlebombing of SCO has put an informative page near the top of its search results, so here is one more push, plus other ways to make SCO’s extortion campaign costly.
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Medical Privacy and the Press
Reporters complain that HIPAA keeps hospitals from handing out patient details after a porch collapse, but I’m all for a law that stops random people claiming to be press from getting my medical information.
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Redhat 9, MySQL 4 and DBD::mysql
Installing Bugzilla on Red Hat 9 with MySQL 4 broke the DBD::mysql build, and the fix, which I found on a Perl mailing list, is to unset LANG before running perl Makefile.PL.
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PIX-to-PIX VPN via a Lucent Pipeline 75
My notes on getting a Cisco PIX-to-PIX IPsec VPN working through a Lucent Pipeline 75 whose NAT breaks it, fixed by routing a second address from the ISP and turning NAT off.
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Analysis: Iraq and 911
A pointed analysis passed along by Marcus Ramberg argues the terrorists got America to attack itself, and I half agree while listing recent dumb moves like freedom fries and Ready.gov.
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Struts
Apache Struts and its Model-View-Controller architecture give architects and developers a shared frame of reference, and I argue, through Howard Roark, that building on such material is no betrayal of creativity.
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Mind Games
Getting to the gym at dawn is mostly beating the rationalization reflex, and standing up and putting on gym clothes builds the momentum that has taken off about 85 pounds since November 2001.
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Lindows is bad
A cheap Walmart PC I bought for Michelle’s Nan ships with LindowsOS, whose default account is root, a security sin that makes it a poor pick for getting grandma onto Linux.