Brews you can use

Same code and same input, down to the bit, only works on one machine. Reliably fails on all others. Reliably works on the working one. Same OS and system libraries, also down to the last bit.

I have to conclude that God hates me. Only the sick bastard who designed the tapeworm would be capable of such a finely-tuned annoyance.

The problem is no longer merely taunting me, it’s violating causality. Wait, does that mean it is no longer of this universe, so I don’t need to worry about it?

So, I’ve been banging my head up against cantankerous computers far more often at work. It’s been refreshing. Computer problems are so much nicer than the political wrangling, because if a computer’s being uncooperative, you have the option of kicking it in the head. Better still, the technical snags often have solutions, even if only theoretical. I’ve long since given up on the feasibility of large organizations.

(Not that the technical stuff is pleasant in absolute terms; I just found myself thinking “of course 1.3.6.1.4.1.1466.115.121.1.7 means ‘true or false’, I should have known that by now, makes perfect sense.” Stupid over-engineered protocols. And I once thought IMAP was bad…)

I roughly categorize the “engineers” at work by their output; some write code, others configs, there’s word and powerpoint (I lump those together, since they seem to come in pairs), and finally excel. I like to stay as close to the code/config boundary as possible, but have been on the word-ppt/excel boundary for many frustrating months.

Part of me enjoyed getting back to the technical problems enough to give me a bit of a scare. Once I latched on to a stubborn technical puzzle, I couldn’t let go. I was obsessed with getting it solved. It was personal; the problem wasn’t just “not being solved”, it was taunting me, and IT MUST PAY!

At about the time when the urge to put on warpaint and crawl into the #*!ng computer after the #!@*!ng insolent problem, I’d take a bathroom break, go get some water, and calm down a little bit.

The breaks didn’t cutting it for more than an hour or two, so to prevent any awkwardness or HR incidents, I started writing a powerpoint presentation. With an animated slide, natch. That did the trick. I feel much, much calmer now…

Slacktivist has posted (among many very insightful and thought provoking things, but it’s late so we’ll ignore those) a “shuffle meme” with a nice twist: Youtube links for selected tracks. It’s a nice idea, but I’m not exactly on board.

Case in point: Tom Traubert’s Blues by one of my favorite artists, Tom Waits. When I get in a music-listening mood, the very existence of Tom Waits makes me transcendently happy. It’s great that someone that good hasn’t burned themselves out, died, or noodled along in mediocrity after losing their touch. I would like to borrow his muse sometime

Tom Traubert’s Blues is one of his better songs, but even it lost something with the video added. I’m not sure what, perhaps it was just the distraction of video, or a clash with the vivid imagery of his lyrics.

The Hold Steady footage in the list is just the opposite. The lead singer’s voice always sounds a bit strained, and the video just fills in the rest of the picture…

For no particular reason, it reminds me a bit of this little gem I pulled from the BSD fortune file several years back:

“Multiply in your head” (ordered the compassionate Dr. Adams) “365,365,365,365,365,365 by 365,365,365,365,365,365″. He [ten-year-old Truman Henry Safford] flew around the room like a top, pulled his pantaloons over the tops of his boots, bit his hands, rolled his eyes in their sockets, sometimes smiling and talking, and then seeming to be in an agony, until, in not more than one minute, said he, 133,491,850,208,566,925,016,658,299,941,583,225!”

An electronic computer might do the job a little faster but it wouldn’t be as much fun to watch.
    – James R. Newman, “The World of Mathematics”

(It’s almost the problem-solving approach I use at work, BTW. Quite effective. At what, I don’t know. I think people throw me the tough ones just to watch me squirm sometimes…)

What do I have to say? Apparently not much well-formed, possibly interesting, publishable, and “on my mind when I’m in the mood to blog” for the last month or so. This is not a rare condition. I have several friends who blog/LJ/(myspace/whatever, but I don’t do those) who post even less often than I do. This is not a ping — everyone should blog at their own pace — but I had some strange ideas about blogging improving my writing, being able to find something to write about a few times a week, and generally getting better at freezing thoughts into words. No luck.

Occasionally, I think of bowing out officially like my high school chum A.J. just did. It’s preferable to leaving a dead blog hanging out on the blogrolls of the vainly waiting (Hmmm, godot.blogspot.com? of course someone else has thought of that), but I don’t think that I’m done for good (which is for the best, because another high school friend linked to me recently and bowing out now would be poor timing ). A belated welcome to Laura’s friends!

Yesterday was good enough to write about. It was Grace’s birthday; she’s 4 now, which puts here in the range of “kid”, no qualifiers necessary. No “baby”, “toddler”, not even “preschooler” really. Just “kid”. I’m already kidding her about getting old

To celebrate, I blew off work (which is always a good start to the day), and we all took the bus down to the Minnesota Children’s Museum. We split into two groups so the kids could explore at their own pace. Grace and I hit the Bob the Builder exhibit, then the Earth World. Then my phone ran out of battery, and we took a whirlwind tour of the rest of the museum trying to find Jess and Arlo. That’s when I ran into another long-lost friend from high school, who was there with her daughter. We actually managed to chat and catch up a bit in between chasing after kids.

We found Jess and Arlo back at Bob the Builder, and traded kids for a while. Things got a bit blurry at that point (Arlo’s good at that), we probably switched kids a couple more times, and then finished the museum trip playing with elaborate golf ball contraptions. I had to be reminded that this was a children’s museum a few times…

To top it all off, we hit a nice candy store on the way back to the bus stop, and brought home a couple pounds