The Robot's Thoughts

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I promised a feature-size article on a seperate blog where I would write articles that would actually have an editorial review process.

Well, I delivered an 2,000+ word article titled "When to leave your first tech job". Its a guide for younger or aspiring software engineers, by a young, aspiring software engineer.

Hopefully you'll find it an enjoyable read. You can read it here.

Just click the link and read the article. Its interesting.

My iPod died today. It was accidentally flung 4 feet into the ground, where its hard drive lost the ability to function.

So this leaves me with a dilemna. Which iPod should I buy to replace my first generation iPod? Capacity is important, as 5GB was too small. Should I try to find a 10GB second gen? A 3G or iPod photo? A 6GB Mini?

Harumph.

My 24th is coming up. If soapboxers would like to conspire to chip in for half (or all) of a new iPod (with student discount, and a 10% off for recycling my old one) I'd be more then happy to have something incredibly offensive engraved in it. A friend of mine, after reading penny-arcade.com suggested 'cockthirsty'.

But seriously, I'm probably going to end up buying something rediculously expensive and unnecessary, so why not help in the hedonistic celebration that will be my birthday party.

Anyway, i'll post pictures of my iPod later. I might even dissect it, since its dead anyway.

This Wednesday I'm going to take my first "feature article" and post it on this blog's close relative (and by close, I mean 8 fingers and 9 toes) "The Robot's Soapbox".

Its been through three "editorial reviews" from some of my soapbox brethren.

It weights in at about 2500 words, which is roughly 4 pages in Microsoft word.

The article's working title is "When to know its time to leave your first job."

Is it good? Well, it got several of my friends thinking about their careers in a different perspective, so I can safely say that it is "thought provoking".

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I want you all to read it, silly. There will be a link posted to this blog when the article goes live.

In the mean time, since I don't really have much content to amuse anyone right now, I would suggest you get your jollies by visiting this site.

You know what's a funny thing about Oracle Usenet Groups?

That you can post a topic about "package size" and people will take it seriously.
When I saw that topic, one just titled "Package Size", I just started laughing to myself.

It just goes to show you that it's gonna be a while before I'm serious enough to get certified in ANYTHING.

During the presidential campaigns, I remember saluting BitTorrent to allow me to download "as much porn as one human could possibly need." Getting sick looks from some of the people around me, I continued with, "Its not like I actually _watch_ it. I'm just hoarding it in case bush outlaws the first amendment. Its not an addiction, its patriotism, baby!"

Apparently the day I joked about has come.

If coding was surgery, today would be the day my malpractice went through the roof.

Because 4 patients would've died on my table today.

4 times I had to go back to CVS and fetch a clean file of the copy of the file I was working on. The task that I'm working on is modifying one of our search routines. I'm trying to modify the cursor code to implement bulk binds and dynamic SQL that cannot be exploited by SQL Injection.

And it works fine if you don't mind the whole "not returning results" bug.

So essentially, I'm trying to upgrade code written for Oracle 8i w/o any best practice guide to something that's more up to the times, 9i style guide with native dynamic sql.

Assuming I can get it to generate something meaningful.

*sigh* back it.

Ok.
This requires some explanation. Actually, it doesn't. I was curious. I'm busy doing a lot, so I don't really have time to piss around in churches that make me uncomfortable. So I obviously need a starting point. And well, here's what some starting points, according to the Belif-O-Matic.

1. Theravada Buddhism (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (94%)
3. Liberal Quakers (85%)
4. Mahayana Buddhism (84%)
5. Jainism (81%)
6. Neo-Pagan (75%)
7. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (72%)
8. Secular Humanism (71%)
9. Hinduism (71%)
10. Taoism (64%)
11. New Age (62%)
12. Sikhism (61%)
13. Reform Judaism (51%)
14. Nontheist (47%)
15. Bah�'� Faith (45%)
16. Orthodox Quaker (45%)
17. New Thought (39%)
18. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (35%)
19. Seventh Day Adventist (35%)
20. Orthodox Judaism (34%)
21. Scientology (32%)
22. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (28%)
23. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (27%)
24. Jehovah's Witness (25%)
25. Islam (23%)
26. Eastern Orthodox (18%)
27. Roman Catholic (18%)

I'm not so sure if I'm into Buddhism as much as the survey says I am. I don't like the idea of giving up my ideals of questing for chicks, money, power, and chicks. Unitarian Universalists? I've met some, and "total flakes" is putting it lightly.

Liberal Quakers? Maybe. I've prayed with Quakers before. Once. Out of any of the people I've prayed with (which can be counted with two hands) they were the ones I felt least uncomfortable with. And as faiths go, it doesn't really try to answer questions for you, it just surrounds you with other individuals on the same search.

Maybe I'll talk about this in more detail later.

Sorry for the lack of any update goodness. I've been running myself even more raggard then usual. I ended up coming to work late today (and i will be skipping the gym, most likely) because I crashed last night.

Why can't I get enough sleep?

Check out my Morality! 65% liberal, 35% conservative

Feel free to take it as well, and post your score in the comments. C'mon, you know you want to.

Here's a quick editorial for anyone interested in computer security to read.

Camino, the macintosh only port of the mozilla browser with a mac os x native front end (think of it as a hybrid of Firefox and Safari) is out.

Seeing as I think camino is probably the best mac os x browser out there (Opera and OmniWeb users, prove me wrong) I would recommend all the OS X users to give it a week.

Plus, I plan on doing bug triage for them in October, so I'll be part of an OS X Open Source project! Yay!

First off, I realize I STILL haven't posted pictures of how awesome rad my office is, as proof that I actually am super cool. Its because when I get home from the gym, the last thing I think about is work.

But I will try to make an effort to think about the bragging rights and post a pic of the view.

Next, Henry Rollins is speaking somewhere in Pittsburgh on Friday, the 16th of September. Its $30. Hopefully there will be a seat or two available, as I'm a big fan of his spoken word. Plus, random people at bars and a girl I used to date say I look like a mini-version of him. So I want to get my Henry Rollins impersonation act down pat so I can break into the million-dollar Henry Rollins impersation racket. If anyone is going, or needs a ride, get in touch with me.

And yes, that means I will be in town this weekend (again). I know I keep saying I gotta stop coming back, but this weekend is a 3-day weekend for me. The next time I come up will be for the coheed and cambria concert. And then, probably nothing for a month.

Here's a little thought exercise for everyone reading this blog: Make a list of all the things that make you unhappy. Then make a list a of all the things in your life that make you happy. Then spend some time brainstorming how to scratch a few off the negative list. Because life moves very fast, and there's too little time enough as it is to waste a lot of it being unhappy.

Here's an example list -- here's a quick list i made up for myself:
My Negatives

• Since moving to WV, I speak my mind less, as I'm afraid to upset everyone's gentle sensibilities of religious fanaticism and republician neo-conservatism.


• If I want a decent gin and tonic in this town, I have to make it myself.


• I spend a lot of time in my apartment, and it can make me stircrazy.

My Positives

• I'm finally chasing after something I'm passionate about doing


• My job feels like a career, as opposed to a job. Work is stimulating.


• My car rules. I really appreciate it. Even when I was briefly unemployed, I didn't curse my insurance premeium or my car payment.


• I'm able to live for myself, but I'm not just out for myself.

My plan to eliminate the negatives:

Well, I can't really help how others feel, so I don't really plan on engaging people in discussions about supposedly controvesial topics unless we've both got our facts straight and we're both willing to listen.

Alcohal is cheap in this city, and I make a fine gin and tonic. I'll just have to have company over. Perhaps I'll throw one of my sexy parties for my 24th birthday.

Stir crazy? Well, I plan on getting myself a new laptop, so I can so relax at the book and bean and still get some Obj-C programming done. Especially now, since I've found a unit test framework.

See? Doing something like that just makes you feel better, knowing you have a plan to improve the day-to-day quality of your life, doesn't it? And you've got all the positives right there, so if you need a little pick me up, you've got it.

Finally!
I got sick and tired of searching for my own blog on google, only for nothing to show up because the only links TO this blog are ones from comments I post on other people's blogs.

But if you click here
you will see that searching for "The Robot's Thought's" actually brings this blog up.

But if you actually google search for my tagline: "Somebody google for a crackpot" I don't show up. So the search still needs some work.

But then again, so does Blogger.
In the meantime, to entertain yourself, I found You might be a right wing crackpot if...

From Top to Bottom: The "Charity Chili" I made and donated $5 to have hung up. A t-shirt I still think is relevant. Some awesome Jesus tats, and someone dressed up as emporer palpitine for their parade.

http://www.chuckherrin.com/hackthevotedemo.htm

Chuck Herrin, a certified ethical hacker, shows that anyone with enough knowledge of windows and Microsoft access (i.e. your mom, or your mom's mom) could quickly, easily, and silently modify election results to any outcome they wish.

In short, our modern, technological voting system is comically bad. I read about these systems before the 2000 election in Wired Magazine (I'm not linking to them because they're not link worthy). Being Wired magazine, I took it with a grain of salt. I read the articles, I talked about it to some people, and wrote a few letters.

In 2001, the CEO of Diebold promised then President G.W. Bush that thanks to his systems, Ohio would be going red. It was in a speech he made to a crowd of republicans. He had no idea the media is there.

Ohio happened to be THE crucial deciding state this year. Evidence, alluded to in this article (and I haven't really followed up on), shows that many "blue counties" had their vote split reversed -- the majority went republican, when historically they always went democrat.

So why hasn't the media thrown up the red flag? Screamed bloody murder and outrage?

Well, we all know that until the weather machine that I'm developing in WV got out of control and totaled America's primary source of girls gone wild porno tapes, the media was not the fourth estate it claimed to be. Hard hitting questions weren't as important as stories like "Scientists find that chocolate is good for you."

And, let's face it, we're all naive. We don't think something this shadowy or inherently evil could happen. It reeks of conspiracy theory, up there to be speculated about like those mysterious phone calls on sept. 11th, telling all the Arabs not to fly that day. Its so ridiculous, every rational fiber of your being tells you to dismiss it. Its a bankrupt idea like intelligent design, to be mocked openly in front of everyone.

But seriously, Microsoft Access is a toy. Its good for small projects, like taking care of your DVD library, and maybe middle school level programming projects. As a database backend, it falls flat on its face, even MySQL performs database functionality better then access does, backend wise.

What I'm trying to say is that Access is not the sign of a professional. If someone told me they were going to store my medical records in an access backend, I'd probably contact a malpractice lawyer on the spot (that whole HIPPA thing, you know). If someone told me they were going to store my blog posts in an access database, I'd still be so furiously pissed off at them that I'd probably punch them in the face. Even if it was a free service, I'd still punch them in the face.

And voting is important. Even the people who don't do it recognize that in some way, they are cheating themselves and the system. Disenfranchisement is a highly sensitive issue, but I'd say every registered votes views their vote as sacred as their medical record. Which means it should have similar access controls to prevent theft, tampering, or even accidental (Or malicious) modification. Out of all the engineers in Ohio chugging away on this system, someone should've recognized that Americans view their electoral system as something in need of securing. Not one of those engineers ever thought to bring up to management the fact that an Access backend is, well, insecure and negligent?

It hasn't been more then a week since the release of the iPod Nano, and already the buzz is starting to pick up, even for an apple product.

Here what I'm sure will be the selling point to a lot of potential buyers: It fits perfectly in the coin pocket of a pair of women's jeans.

Now die-hard iPod users like myself and my friends lucky enough to own one, love the fact that their iPod has something like a 15-30GB capacity. You can carry a good three weeks of music on your iPod, assuming it played continuously and non-stop.

But all the girls we know tend to go for the shuffle, or maybe a mini. And we've always just figured that these girls just weren't big on music.

But in reality, they're just not big on big. Even not that Big on mini.

It something that you don't think about unless you're designing portable consumer electronics, but women are more adverse to carrying things like a PSP, digital camera, cell phone, and iPod around then the average gadget geek, because Pocket space is limited as fuck in women's jeans. Hell, even men's GAP jeans have fairly limited space compared to JNCOs (yes, I can still fit into jeans I used to skateboard with, and yes, I am wearing them at work right now. I rule.) so pocket space is at a premium, and having to use a belt clip for your iPod makes it conspicuous, and possibly uncomfortable if the user sits down or bends over.

Its like some genius frat boy was in charge of the form factor. Its an iPod...designed to get in women's pants!

This will probably be a quick seller to girls that are big on small, and big on music. And of course, that means that guys with girlfriend's should be smart enough to stay ahead of the curve and buy one NOW for their significant other, and just call it an early valentine's day present.

Expect iPod sales to rise, as people buy it not only for the "apple cool" factor, but because Apple understands the MP3 player market segments better then its competitors. Its likely that Apple is once again going to grow the size of the market, and its percentage of the market.

So if you have money to put in the stock market, now's the time, before the Christmas season, and the post-Christmas upgrades to Powerbooks, G5 Mac mini, and iBooks.

I know I'll be checking them out at the Apple store in Pittsburgh this weekend.

I updated my Blogger.com profile.
If you're bored, check it out.

I'm back off the techno vacation. I'm ready to geek out like crazy once again.

And that means I'll be taking the time to update my blog much more often, so hopefully, my friends who actually read my blog will actually check back more then once a week.

And I hope to have more content up and online soon. I'm going to be hacking away at the longer, more in-depth articles, but they're going to get posted to the mailing list I run.

But that also means if you're coming here for your daily entertainment, you can count on it to be updated on a regular basis and in a way where I actually have something to say.

I caught the racing bug.

I went to watch some of my co-workers drag race their Mach One and Cobra Mustangs in Ohio this weekend. It was awesome.

I'm really tempted to just run out and buy a sports car; but I'm sure paying for one would be about the exact opposite of driving one in the fun department.

Its always upsetting when the good weekends go by so quickly.

I've worked 36 hours in 4 days, plus I get paid for the holiday.

I ordered a 512MB xD memory card for my 4.1MP camera.

All my bills, save one, are paid for this month.

My next two paychecks are going to be pretty much disposable income.

Three netflix movies arrived this morning by mail.

This saturday I'm partying with friends.
This sunday I'm watching so co-workers drag race.

And I got a lot done today.

Its just great to be this relaxed.
So stop reading this post and start enjoying your friday.

I'm starting a new blog -- its not up -- yet.

Its going to be called "The Robot's Soapbox".

Its going to feature longer articles (~1000 words or so) that are much, much, more polished then what I post here. Its actually going to involve an editorial review process by some of my friends that are arrogant enough to call themselves writers (even though they have been published, how dare they!)

I'm going to try to make the template consistent with this one, after I get done fixing some of the 'bugs' that I'm aware of, but too lazy to fix. Its not like anyone has ever emailed with constructive criticism.

Some of the longer articles are just going to be based off my subjective experience. For example, a friend of mine has suggested that I write two articles based off relevant career experiences. Mostly, the two I've been asked about are:

1. How do you know when its time to bail?


2. How to make your job search work for you.

Granted, I'm not an expert, but I have some relevent experience in both areas (not that I left my last company, to make sure that record is straight, I was laid off, but the alarm was going off way before that) that could aide any college grad or first job going for second job code slinger.

And of course, another article I could do is the simplistic "so you wanna be a cocoa programmer" thingie, and explain what I'm doing to transition.

But another idea I have for an article is one on charities. I plan on sponsoring a child in africa. I made a pledge that I would start as soon as I was on my feet with a new job after seeing hotel rwanda. I plan on seeing that pledge through, to set an example to my friends. For the price of cable, you can feed, clothe, and educate someone. What's your excuse?

So i'm gonna research which one, and write an article about why I picked it.

And one final thing: I'd be willing to share this blog. If anyone is serious about having a soapbox (or expanding their existing soapbox empire) I'd be willing to grant other blogger members accounts that would enable them to post on the blog. We'd have to set up some guidelines, but I'm sure an understanding of some kind could be made.


That's enough for now. Peace.

This is how cool I am.

Yeah, you're jealous.

Oh, and doesn't anyone else think Batman is getting a little chubby as he approaches middle age?

Between moonlighting as a ruby programmer and a cocoa programmer, and nine hour days at work, I'm kinda burnt out. Not resentful, like "i wish there were more hours in the day" or "I don't get paid enough to put up with this" but more like "my wrists hurt from typing all the time, and my sleep schedule is pretty messed up."

So I'm going to avoid AIM and using the machine as anything more then a music jukebox for a day or so. I need to rest up. I'm going to spend some time outside exploring fairmont some more, and west virginia some more.

This sunday I'm going out to Ohio with some co-workers to watch them drag race their souped up mustangs and acuras. I think one guy has a Lancer Evolution that I would love to see -- since I like mitsubishi cars already, I'd love to see what a V6 turbo could do. I'll be passing by pittsburgh, and I'm driving, so if anyone wants to hang out for a day trip, and watch some racing, get a hold of me through the cell after 9, and I'll let you know if the slot's filled.

So I'm gettin' some downtime. But I'll ramp back up soon.

I joined a gym.
And I know its not punk at all.
But I gotta look good and lower my cholesterol.
there's one girl I want to notice me.
I'll have a slightly better chance if my body is buff you see.
I'm being obsessive, B-E obsessive.

"Pumping Iron for Enya", by Atom and His Package.

Even though I just joined a gym, I feel like I need to go back there, because my stress levels peaked last night. In OS 10.4, also known as Tiger, Apple really botched the default set up for Ruby 1.8. I thought I had run a shell script which would've fixed the library configuration problems, and installed rubygems and the rails framework, but the mysql gem is still choking. Apparently the problem lies with GCC 4.0. In GCC 4.0, you cannot have forward declarations of functions without function prototypes. And apparently, in the mysql.c file of the mysql rubygem, some of the functions are declared after use.

That makes no sense for anyone who's ever picked up a C book and read. That's a wonderful example of open source not really caring about backwards compatibility, and creating a horrible mess for me. But before I go attack some community of developers or anyone, there's still options left for me. Tweak the makefile. And reinstall all of ruby from the Darwin 8.0 source. Realistically, the reinstall from source is probably going to resolve everything, but its also going to be slow on a 500MHz system. I'll probably have something new soon, but for now I'm going to have to live with my sputtering jalopy of a mac.

Or just migrate all my ruby development to my PC system.

The point is I want to get the ball rolling on something. Pulling 9 hour shifts and working out for for an hour a day doesn't leave much time for development. I wanted to have CashFlow, my simple checkbook balancing app for OS X, in late alpha stage by the end of august. That didn't happen because of how complicated relocation got. (Thank you again, Uhaul, for employing dangerously underqualified shitheads). And while I was on a road trip this labor day weekend, I met a professional audio engineer who mentioned to me what kind of shareware app he could really use in his studio for sequencing samples. It seems really interesting, and something that would probably only take 4-5 weekends, depending on how much of CoreAudio I really need to use to do MIDI clocking.

You'd think I'd get use to setbacks when I spend all my tme moonlighting as a developer after work. But I'm not.