Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world?
Dark, Ironic Frost
My son was asked to memorize “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost for a 6th grade assignment:
Profiles in Management: The Baffled Bigwig
Our Sr. EVP dropped by today for a meet and greet . . . he was 45 minutes late, and when he arrived, it was obvious he had no idea who he was talking to.
“Is this the IT group?” he asked.
It was explained to him that some of the people were from IT, but some were from the call center and tech support.
“And do they all report to you?” he asked the senior manager in the room.
Here’s a little trick I’ve picked up over the years: When you’re addressing a group of people, take a few minutes beforehand to learn who they are. It will make them feel less insignificant.
After this fiasco, he went off to a catered meeting with other highly compensated executives, and I went out to buy my own lunch.
Prediction: This meet and greet will be mentioned in at least two exit interviews in the not-too-distant future . . .
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Worst Day of the Year
A British psychologist has devised a mathematical formula for computing the most depressing day of the year:
My Next Career
Somehow at dinner the subject of moving to Texas comes up . . . not a discussion so much as a stream of consciousness monologue by my wife, who has relatives in Texas, and it’s much cheaper to live there than it is here, and so on.
“But what would you do for a job?” she asks me.
Word of the Day
Dopeler effect n : The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
Parental Guidance
I talked my 11-year-old son and his friend into seeing House of Flying Daggers instead of Meet the Fockers.
The title alone — Meet the Fockers — is a tipoff to the level of wit that you’re going to be dealing with. Fockers! Get it? It sounds like a naughty word! HA HA HA HA! Geez, make an effort, will ya?
How about House of the Flying Fockers? You meet the Fockers and throw daggers at them. That sounds like a good movie!
Structured Procrastination
I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time.
Do It Yourself
A fellow parent at hockey practice asks me, “Does your son lace up his own skates?”
A USC Man Looks at UCLA Football
A crazy thing happened after this year’s USC-UCLA football game . . . because the Bruins were able to keep the score close for the first time in years, UCLA coach Karl Dorrell was rewarded with a two-year contract extension.
Tsunamis: Another Reason I Just Stay Home
From Reuters:
PHUKET, Thailand — William Robins vowed Monday to change his life forever after the professional golfer from California and his new bride, Amanda, narrowly escaped death in the grip of a tsunami.
The newlyweds were honeymooning on Phi Phi island — made famous by the film “The Beach” starring Leonardo DiCaprio — when a giant tsunami wave slammed into it Sunday.
A Pretty Good One-Sentence Analysis of Blogs
True believers of one stripe or another, no longer content to merely bore spouses and neighbors with their nutty opinions, can now spew forth on their own blogs, thereby playing a pivotal role in creating the polarized climate that dominates debate on nearly every national issue.
My Dog Reviews How the Grinch Stole Christmas!
The Grinch is very mean to his dog, Max, not because he doesn’t like dogs, but he is very mean to everyone. You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch!
Mister Lucky
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
Is money a guarantee of happiness?
Use the Database
It seems like a shame to have to even talk about this, but I really have found myself having way too many discussions over the years about how to avoid the use of relational databases.
Today we were talking about replacing database reads and writes in a system design with file system access, XML, just floating the data around in memory, or some combination of the above.
“What time of day will this system be running?” the DBA asked.
“During business hours.”
That’s right! We’re actually planning to do a database write in the middle of the workday!
Why the thought of doing this freaks people out to the degree that it does is something I’ve never been able to figure out, but there’s an idea that persists among the less educated that read-only production access during the business day will max out an RDBMS.
Look . . . a relational database is one of the greatest tools you have as a software developer, for this reason: Relational database technology has been around since the 1970s, and, unlike a lot of other technologies, has not really changed much in all that time.
So what have all the smart database people at IBM, Oracle and Microsoft been doing during the ensuing decades? Sitting idly about?
No, indeed! They’ve been using the time to optimize the technology!
As a result, modern relational database management systems are highly efficient software systems. With few exceptions — and I can’t think of one offhand — any operation that you perform inside the RDBMS will be more efficient, more reliable and more scalable than writing your own code to do it outside the RDBMS.
Is it possible that your home-grown data management algorithm will be better then the combined efforts of thousands of Ph.D.s over the last 25 years?
Yes. Is it probable? No.
Thus spoke The Programmer.
Learned Helplessness
Psychologists have found that if you put a dog in a cage and repeatedly zap him with an electrical shock, the dog will soon stop trying to avoid the shock because he realizes he’s got nowhere to go.
This is called “learned helplessness.”
I mention this for educational purposes, not because it sounds like life in a nutshell . . .
Christmas at the Office
I’m in receipt of the following “Secret Santa” email:
Please come by my desk to pick a name. Then go buy (and wrap) a new toy that represents that person. Humor is the key here! Get creative and have fun! We’ll open the toys, have a laugh with each recipient, and then donate the toys to charity.
Translation: Buy something that confirms the recipient’s worst suspicions about what people really think of him (or her), and then we’ll all go home and hang ourselves.
Clarence Thomas, Judicial Nincompoop
Clarence Thomas is back in the news . . .
During a recent Meet the Press appearance, Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, questioned Thomas’ competence as a Supreme Court justice and was subsequently accused of racism, which is pretty much guaranteed to happen if you say anything critical of a black man, woman or child.
I Don’t Feel Good
Something I Learned Today
There’s a good Chinese restaurant in Orange called Yen Ching. The last four digits of the phone number are 3300.
If you make a mistake and dial 3000, you’ll get Children’s Hospital, also in Orange, but they won’t take a dinner reservation.