Venting

The VoIP problem

/ hsoi

In recounting my AT&T problems, folks have suggested I go with VoIP – Voice Over IP, basically telephone over the Internet (instead of your phone lines). This is services like Vonage, MagicJack, and even the local Time Warner Cable provides such service.

I’ve been reluctant to do this because VoIP can have issues, tho the software and systems are getting better and these days folks have reported generally good experiences.

The main reason for my reluctance? Time-Warner Cable’s Internet service has more ups and downs than a roller coaster at Cedar Point. Maybe not long stretches of outages, but if the service drops while you’re in the middle of a call and doesn’t come back for a couple of minutes, what good is that when you’re in the middle of an important phone call?

And in just the past 48 or so hours while I’ve dealt with this AT&T mess? My RoadRunner Internet connection has burped like this at least a dozen times. All short downtimes, but still interruptions in service.  Hell, as I write this post it went down twice! *sigh*

For all of AT&T’s customer service failings, the actual service has been quite reliable. Reliability is very important to me. Unfortunately AT&T’s customer service has been anything but reliable.

I just feel screwed no matter which direction I turn.

….

Oh and get this. As I write this, AT&T continues to boggle my mind.

I just got an automated call from AT&T (on the apparently now working line). They are now saying someone will be coming out tomorrow — Christmas Eve — between 2 PM and 6 PM.

Um… that won’t work.

And what happened to all this “priority” and “expedited” for this morning service?

Wow. AT&T. So much FAIL. So much FAIL.

Oh the pain

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

I love Apple. You know that. Without Apple, I’m not sure what sort of life and career path I would have taken.

But… I’ve held off on upgrading to Lion (Mac OS X 10.7) and Xcode 4 for numerous reasons. One is because my day job’s requirements still need some older OS support so we had to hang back on Xcode 3 (which won’t work under Lion). But the other is all the reports of the hell, dreck, and problems in the upgrades.

I’m now in a position where I have to upgrade one dev machine to Lion and Xcode 4 in order to work on some cutting edge iOS stuff.

Oh it hurts.

The worst part of Lion is switching how scrolling works. I understand why it was done, but it still sucks. (Yes I know I can change it).

And then Xcode 4… oh, for all its improvements, all the changes are huge. It’s killing my productivity to make the adjustment. All day long I’ve been dealing with the New World Order of Lion and Xcode 4, and let’s just say I haven’t been all that productive… tho if I could count the string of obscenities spewing from my mouth as productive, then I guess productivity is at an all time high.

*sigh*

It’s just a matter of adapting and getting used to it all. I know. And if this is the worst problem in my life, then life’s pretty good.

Still.. just had to vent.

I keep saying it will all be better, that 10.7.4 or .5 will fix a bunch of things. That Xcode 4.3 will bring back User Scripts. But I’m not holding my breath.

Dear parents at the next table…

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

Dear Parents at the Next Table at Freebirds last night:

This is a restaurant, not track and field. Your child needs to sit in their chair, not run laps around the place. And no, telling your child “You have to ask the Manager if you can run around” is not an acceptable way to quell their running about.

When the child refuses to ask the Manager and instead asks if they can go outside with younger sibling in tow to continue running about… please don’t be surprised if I question your judgment in not just letting your sub-6-year-old children out of your sight, but also in letting the children play in the parking lot.

I will say I was happy to see Dad finally get up to go mind the children, but it took the “older” child coming back into the restaurant and hollering that his sibling went into a store down the strip. I know a way to have prevented this, but if I told you you’d just think I was being an asshole questioning your parenting skills. Well yes… yes I am.

Note as well, this dining establishment does not have busboys; you are expected to clean up after yourself. Yes, that means when your infant makes an unholy mess on the floor, YOU need to clean it up. I expect a 6-9 month old baby to make a mess when they eat because that’s what they do and cannot be expected to know better. But you appear to be a 20-somthing “adult” and I expect you to know better. Apparently I expect too much.

And then you wonder why people don’t like (your) children. Really, it has little to do with the children… it has everything to do with their parents.

Hacking vs. Programming

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

The hackers get a lot of attention these days. These are the basketball players who make the slam dunk that makes it to the highlight reel. But basketball games are won by teams of players executing on the basics – the solid play well executed, the dribble, the layup, the pass that gets the ball to the star. In the long run we need more real programmers to make solid, dependable programs that don’t have be be rewritten from scratch when a change is needed.

Full story.

My kingdom for a project where we can program, not hack.

Why can’t things work the first time?

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

Bought a Samsung Blu-Ray player. The HDMI port didn’t fully work (no video signal). Had to return it and so far the second one seems OK.

I’m presently hooking up the new printer (Epson Workforce 63o). First document I print it printed at 50% size and I can’t figure out why. Tried to photocopy and it came out horrible. Running a printer head cleaning, print head realignment, but why should a brand new device need that??

Does anyone understand the notion of “quality” any more?

*sigh*

Neighborhood nuisances, discrimination

/ hsoi / 4 Comments

Right this moment I can hear a cat outside my house, moaning. It won’t shut up.

You know what else I hear a lot of outside? All the  mallard ducks quacking up a storm.

Now personally these don’t bother me too much. I’m used to the noises and accept them as a part of the neighborhood.

I suspect there’s been yet another muscovy duck roundup because I see barely any in the neighborhood now. 😦  Either that or some larger critter is prowling the neighborhood at night and eating them (which could be, but unlikely given the pattern).

I was speaking with a neighbor about this yesterday. It’s odd to us that people complain about the muscovy’s. They don’t really make noise. Sure they poop, but the mallards do too, as well as the cats that wander around, people’s dog’s, and all the other wild birds and critters that roam about. So why are the muscovy’s targeted? Well, probably because US Fish & Wildlife Service allows them to be rounded up *sigh* but everything else gets some sort of protected status; thus, muscovy’s are easy targets (due to the USFWS’s misguided regulations). As well, I know from talking to some people that they don’t like what muscovy’s look or act like because it doesn’t fit the stereotype of a duck, like a mallard does. At first we didn’t like them either, because at first glance the caruncles on their faces can be off-putting, but once you start to really look at them you can see how gorgeous these birds can be (plus they have some pretty cool personalities).

But meantime, there’s more disturbance and trouble from what’s protected than from what is not.

Isn’t discrimination wonderful?

Tolerance. You keep using that word…

/ hsoi

… I do not think it means what you think it means. (thank you Inigo Montoya).

I just read a story. A guy was sitting in a restaurant. At the next table some elderly gentleman was apparently speaking very loudly to his dining companion. The first gentleman was aghast because he was listening to the old man saying “the most disgusting, evil racist invective” he had heard. The first gentleman was so incensed he “was ready to jump over the booth and stab him in the eye with a fork.” While he didn’t do that, he did loudly state that he “should have requested seating in ‘no bigot'”, and the old man’s dining companion then steered the conversation in another direction.

While I cannot deny the old man’s intolerance of blacks and women, the first gentleman is also displaying great intolerance; in fact, the intolerance is so strong it aroused violent feelings within him.

The sad part is, I know the first gentleman and I believe he considers himself an open-minded progressive person. The fact he is upset at hearing someone speaking in racist tones denotes that he considers himself a tolerant and non-racist person. But it’s evident he still has his prejudices. The question is, is he aware of the log in his own eye?

If you are truly tolerant, then you are going to be tolerant. Period. That means you are going to deal with things you do not like or agree with, or could find totally revolting. THAT is toleration; dealing with things you already like, by definition, is not toleration. So if you’re going to call yourself tolerant, then you best behave that way, period. Or, be honest in your assessment and representation of yourself.

I make no bones about the fact that I’m not a totally tolerant person. I really don’t care what your skin color is, gender, race, religion, national origin, creed, hair style, clothing, if you have less than 10 fingers, the shape of your nose, your choice in music, whatever. I really don’t care.  Yeah I may not like all of it, but so what? That’s your life, you go live it. What I will not tolerate is bullshit. I don’t like bullshit, I don’t like to be bullshitted, I don’t dole out bullshit. I do not tolerate assholes. I do not tolerate mean people. I do not tolerate people telling me how to live my life and forcing their preferences and choices upon me (don’t you be calling yourself “pro-choice” then spend time working to deny me of my ability to choose merely because you don’t agree with my choices).  I will not tolerate ill-behaved children. I will not tolerate chicken being served for dinner all the time.

There are things I tolerate, there are things I do not. I will not represent myself as tolerant unless I truly am. I will not represent myself as open-minded unless I truly am. If I have a log in my eye and fail to see and remove it, I hope someone will point it out to me so I can remove it and see (myself) more clearly.

Simplicity

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

I am an engineer by trade, and Wife points out that I have an engineer mind.

While I spend much of my time working with complex systems, I understand that simplicity is king. Simplicity is actually quite difficult to achieve because it takes work. You start off doing what you need to do, over time things grow and it will become more complex and kinda messy. You must take the time to stop, step back, and reengineer and rearchitect things to regain that simplicity. Typically this will mean you must discard and cast off.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Tao Te Ching #48:

In the practice of the Tao,
every day something is dropped.
Less and less do you need to force things,
until finally you arrive at non-action.

Simple is not easy, but it is best.

I’ve seen a few things in the past couple days that reinforce this.

I stumbled across this blog posting on “What is good code?”

Good code is simple. Even complex good code is comprised of simple building blocks. Good code hides or cuts through the complexity in the problem, to provide a simple solution – the sign of a true coding genius is that he makes hard problems look easy, and solves them in such a way that anyone can understand how it was done (after the fact). Simplicity is not really a goal in its own right, though; it’s just that by means of being simple, code is more readable, discoverable, testable, and maintainable, as well as being more likely to be robust, secure and correct! So if you keep your code simple (as simple as possible, but no simpler), it is more likely to be good code – but that is by no means sufficient in and of itself.

And all of this talk of simplicity isn’t just something for the world of engineering…. I think it applies to all things in life, and I think it’d do well to be applied to government.

Witness the mess there is in classifying sensitive information: (h/t Slashdot)

Protecting and classifying sensitive information such as social security numbers shouldn’t be that hard, but perhaps not surprisingly the US government has taken complicating that task to an art form.

It seems that designating, safeguarding, and disseminating such important information involves over 100 unique markings and at least 130 different labeling or handling routines, reflecting a disjointed, inconsistent, and unpredictable system for protecting, sharing, and disclosing sensitive information, according to the watchdogs at the Government Accountability Office.

Read the full article (it’s short) to see just how messy the problem is. This is not simplicity, this is about the furthest thing from simplicity. How does this make life easier?

Then I see this flowchart on Department of Defense acquisitions:

The Integrated Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Life Cycle Management System -- MY BRAIN HURTS!

Wow. Even the name (The Integrated Defense Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Life Cycle Management System) is a complex beast.

I truly hope no one considers that to be a simple, streamlined process.

Have you ever noticed, any time the government talks about streamlining or improving their process, they always create some new group to do so? Nothing ever gets shut down or shed or cast off… it’s always grows.

If people are tired at how inefficient government is, at how bloated and slow it is, how complex, how confusing… why aren’t we working to truly simplify things? Why does no one believe in casting off? Why do we call them “law-makers”, as that seems to imply all they can do is make more laws instead of refining or repealing what we already have?

Why don’t we have any politicians that run on a platform of repealing, stripping down, and simplifying? Why is a discussion of “loss of government jobs” considered a bad thing? closing of government agency a bad thing?

Consider how truly simple things are better in life (or at least, consider how those ugly complex things make life difficult). Work towards the ideal.

A few simple things

/ hsoi

I’ve been reading a lot of news this morning.

One reason I tend to avoid most news is because it’s depressing. Why is it that what constitutes “news” is negative? Hatred, murder, violence, destruction, corruption, lying, scandal. Granted sometimes life is that way, but there’s an overwhelming focus on such matters in “news”. It’s a major reason I avoid 24-hour news channels because all they contain is various idiots spouting off their opinions as fact. They drive so much of the tension today. Turn off the TV and go outside. It paints a picture of a horrible world where everyone is a predator, everyone is evil, no one can be trusted. We begin to believe it and turn those lies into truth, or at least affect things enough such that we behave in that manner.

But if there’s one thing humans are good at, it’s destruction, especially self-destruction. It’s easy to destroy, it’s difficult to create. It’s easy to listen to rumor, it’s hard to find fact and truth. We don’t like difficult things.

*sigh*

I then ponder much of the negative stuff going on. I begin to wonder how much of this would be an issue of people abided by a few things:

Be responsible for yourself.

Treat others as you want to be treated. (Yes, The Golden Rule isn’t perfect, but understand the spirit).

Leave me alone and I’ll leave you alone. (Don’t tread on me.) You can live your life as you wish, I can live my life as I wish. We may find each other’s lives and choices repulsive, but so long as we’re not infringing upon the other’s ability to life their life as they wish, you can live out your repulsive life while I live out my repulsive life.

Realize that there are other people in this world and those other people may have values, morals, and beliefs radically different from you. They may make choices in life that you don’t like. But realize, you look just the same to them as they do to you. Would you want them telling you your values, morals, and beliefs are horrible and should be banned? This gets back to treating others as you’d want to be treated.

Respect is something to be earned, and that also means it’s something that can be lost. Behave accordingly because respect is measured through the eyes of others.

Beware the slippery slope, even if at the start it seems like you’ll be gaining something good.

Have balance in life. Moderation (nothing in excess).

It kinda harkens back to that “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” stuff.

It was that this country was founded upon such notions (look at why the first Europeans came to this land). But it seems we’ve forgotten it.

But we can get it back. It just starts with each one of us, deciding to live our lives that way and then doing so each and every day. It will be a struggle, most people won’t understand, but I believe it will be worth it in the end.

Or am I just being too much of an optimist? too much of an idealist? Are we just doomed from the get-go?

It’s not a parking space

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

You’ve seen them.

Handicapped parking spaces.

And there’s always this large “border” around them, of white-hashed lines filling in areas and typically making paths from the parking space to the door of the building.

Do you know what those are for? People with wheelchairs and other assistive devices to be able to maneuver. They need the room. If the van has a wheelchair ramp, those things are big and need space to unfold and descend so the person can get in and out of their van.

Do you know what those are not for?

Leaving shopping carts.

Parking your car.

And the worst offenders I see are motorcyclists (speaking as one myself) parking their bikes in them. Yeah yeah I know, you don’t want to park your bike where someone might knock it over, but now you’re parking in a way that could lead someone in a wheelchair to get run over. Park in a proper parking spot like everyone else… not in the handicapped lanes, not on the sidewalk either.

For that matter, if you’re not truly handicapped, don’t use a mirror hang tag just to get a “close in” parking spot when you’re perfectly able-bodied.

I’ve got a nephew in a wheelchair, and one of my best friends is in one too. Seeing people abuse handicapped parking spaces bugs me.