
My name is
David Robins:
Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner,
libertarian (voluntaryist),
and student.
This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.
In which I lament about catchup lectures
Technical, School ·Thursday February 12, 2009 @ 23:46 EST (link)
One-year anniversary of joining CLAMS.
Class tonight was more interesting (and more helpful for the current assignment) than it had been. The professor, Dan Grossman, is excellent and it's evident that he's taken a lot of time to prepare; he has a great set of slides (PowerPoint) each time and is easy to understand and good at explaining the material, but the material wasn't all that interesting for the first few weeks; it was material that people should have learned in undergrad, or things that people should have been able to quickly grok by reading the OCaml manual.
My expectations for a graduate-level course are that readings such as the OCaml manual or any necessary catchup (like Backus-Naur Form) should be specifically or generally assigned (generally, as in "You need to know X, Y, and Z, go learn about it from whatever source you like"). Some of these are as prerequisites: surely it's reasonable to expect that candidates have some sort of scientific undergraduate degree or at least a good background, and the intelligence to read and absorb material. In class, I expect the instructor to go over less obvious things that can't be gleaned simply by reading, or to go over things at a higher level, and, given that this teacher says attendance is important, some interaction to make it worth showing up rather than just watching the recorded lectures the next day. (Which has been true for all but the first few lectures. I wrote some of that early in the course.)
I had a bit of trouble getting my laptop connected to the network (several weeks back when I first attempted it); I had connected it in my office so that I could get the wireless certificates, and that seemed to work (at one point I'd turned off the wireless by mistake using the front switch); I needed to be logged on to the work (REDMOND) domain account for the (MSFTWLAN) certificate to be useful. To be able to reach the Internet I needed to install the ISA ("Internet Security and Acceleration") Firewall Client (from the internal "products" site); after installing it, ping and SSH work.
Obama's Magic
Political ·Thursday February 12, 2009 @ 22:20 EST (link)
This article was written by Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, and dates from back in October 2008 (it was in the queue). Although it's still relevant, for something a little more recent, try Ann Coulter's latest column "Goodbye, America! It was fun while it lasted". (An alternate title that I briefly considered was "Barak the Magic Negro".)
And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world's most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)
To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show.
For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Mr. Obama will, with a flick of his fingers, show them how to create more jobs with less money. It's simple, really. He has a wand.
Next up, Mr. Obama will re-regulate the economy, with no ill effects whatsoever! You may have heard that for the past 40 years most politicians believed deregulation was good for the U.S. economy. You might have even heard that much of today's financial mess tracks to loose money policy, or Fannie and Freddie excesses. Our magician will show the fault was instead with our failure to clamp down on innovation and risk-taking, and will fix this with new, all-encompassing rules. Presto!
Did someone in the audience just shout "Sarbanes Oxley?" Usher, can you remove that man? Thank you. Mr. Obama will now demonstrate how he gives Americans the "choice" of a "voluntary" government health plan, designed in such a way as to crowd out the private market and eliminate all other choice! Don't worry people: You won't have to join, until you do. Mr. Obama will follow this with a demonstration of how his plan will differ from our failing Medicare program. Oops, sorry, folks. The Great Obama just reminded me it is time for an intermission. Maybe we'll get to that marvel later.
We're back now. And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut -- all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he'll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!
Moving along to a little ventriloquism. Study his mouth carefully, folks: It looks like he's saying "I'll stop the special interests," when in fact the words coming out are "Welcome to Washington, friends!" Wind and solar companies, ethanol makers, tort lawyers, unions, community organizers -- all are welcome to feed at the public trough and to request special favors. From now on "special interests" will only refer to universally despised, if utterly crucial, economic players. Say, oil companies. Hocus Pocus!
And for tonight's finale, the Great Obama will uphold America's "moral" obligation to "stop genocide" by abandoning Iraq! While teleported to the region, he will simultaneously convince Iranian leaders to peacefully abandon their nuclear pursuits (even as he does not sit down with them), fix Afghanistan with a strategy that does not resemble the Iraqi surge, and (drumroll!) pull Osama bin Laden out of his hat!
Tada!
You can clap now. (Applause. Cheers.) We'd like to thank a few people in the audience. Namely, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has so admirably restrained himself from running up on stage to debunk any of these illusions and spoil everyone's fun.
We know he's in a bit of a box, having initially blamed today's financial crisis on corporate "greed," and thus made it that much harder to call for a corporate tax cut, or warn against excessive regulation. Still, there were some pretty big openings up here this evening, and he let them alone! We'd also like to thank Mr. McCain for keeping all the focus on himself these past weeks. It has helped the Great Obama to just get on with the show.
As for that show, we'd love to invite you all back for next week's performance, when the Great Obama will thrill with new, amazing exploits. He will respect your Second Amendment rights even as he regulates firearms! He will renegotiate NAFTA, even as he supports free trade! He will.
A small part of the spendulus protest
Political ·Wednesday February 11, 2009 @ 22:02 EST (link)
Co-signed an email with other CLAMS members protesting Steve Ballmer's letter supporting the "stimulus" (porculus/spendulus/Democrat wishlist/vote-buying extravaganza).
Second Amendment Day—Wrap Up
News, Guns ·Tuesday February 10, 2009 @ 18:56 EST (link)
This was posted to the Conservatives and Libertarians at Microsoft list (CLAMS) after the shooting exercise this weekend.
The MS Gun Group first Second Amendment Day was a total success on Saturday February 7th, 2009.
Everyone began meeting up right around 10:30-11:00 out at the pit in Sultan, which fortunately for all of us the gate was open! :)
No sooner than we had shown up to the pit, than Snohomish County Sheriff had rolled on in leaving many of us to think "Ohh great, well there goes the day may as well go get beer." Amazingly enough all the cop wanted to know is what we were shooting and told us to have fun! :D
As far as the firearms go, it was a mix of 9mm, .45, .22, .44 Magnums, 10-22 Rugers, AR-15s, and a Russian Sniper 7.62 x 54 (made a nice big boom).
Targets ranged from Pomelo grapefruits to pop cans (fully loaded, from Wal-Mart), an old Toshiba Laptop which no doubt won't see another meeting or conference room ever again, and a box with a smiley face on it which faced a full on AR-15 assault and about 10 rounds from Tim's 9mm (had to make sure it was dead in case it got back up) :D.
In all the weather couldn't have been more perfect, that and no one got hurt. In the end everyone had a lot of fun and we hauled out close to 3 large garbage bags full of debris left over from others, leaving the pit a bit cleaner than we had left it.
No doubt we'll have to hold another one of these events in the weeks/months to come here. Thanks to everyone for making it out and look forward to the next one!
—AL (on CLAMS)
Shooting with the Microsoft gun group
News, Technical, Guns ·Sunday February 8, 2009 @ 21:58 EST (link)
20090207: Went shooting with Microsoft gun group at pit near Sultan (left about 0930; arrived late at the meetup point in Woodinville, but so did everyone else, it turned out; headed on to the shooting pit, arrived first, at about 1100; others arrived 5-10 minutes later).
We were shooting until about 1320, and then picked up trash until about 1400, then some of us went over to the Redhook brewery in Woodinville to eat (and drink). I called Honey and she came and joined us; six in all, including the two of us. I think we got home around 1730.
You can view the rest of the photos of the msgun shooting event (excluding dupes due to rapid-fire shooting to capture a particular shot); link goes to the thumbnail and photo viewer that I built Sunday to cull and show the photos (internally, the tools allow marking and unmarking photos for deletion; no file deletion is done, just database updates).
Tried fixing up ClamAV permissions (having it run as qscand via setting in /etc/clamd.conf so it can access /var/spool/qscan, which is where files to scan live, and adding qscand to the clamav group and then setting group write permissions on /var/run/clamav). I take back what I said about ClamAV before; at least it has standard (Apache-style) configuration files, whereas for qmail-scanner-queue, which is a rat's nest of (v4) perl, modification is either via rebuilding and passing options to configure, or by editing the perl program directly. I'm not going to re-enable ClamAV yet, but at least next time Gentoo updates qmail-scanner, I have a fighting chance of having it not break on ClamAV.
20090208: Honey's friend Anna from school came by to help her with math.
Wrote some web-based utilities to filter photos from the shooting yesterday and then some more code to show thumbnails.
Books finished: The Man In the High Castle.
Disrecommendation for new Prince Caspian
Media ·Saturday February 7, 2009 @ 19:26 EST (link)
I was recently discussing my disappointment with the new Chronicles of Narnia* first installment with someone on the Duvall list; it started with me posting the "never get out" quote in reference to the snow and then flooding, which I've used here before as it happens, which she recognized as being from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The conversation, which I'm recording so I have a place to point to when I tell people I dislike the new movies (the effects are pretty, the script is poor; these are reversed for the BBC versions, but they did what they could with the budget and technology they had 20 years ago). As I frequently do, the other party is identified by initials for their Internet privacy, but I don't believe they would object to the contents of the conversation being divulged; some minor edits were made.
* Contrary to popular belief, the title of the first movie (and book) isn't The Chronicles of Narnia (which legitimately refers to the series), it's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (or perhaps more correctly for the movie, Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; it is far more intelligent to it by identifying the work and not the whole series).
DR: "Never get out!" he yelled. "That's it. Of course. We shall never get out. What a fool I was to have thought they would let me go as easily as that. No, no, we shall never get out."
JS: Voyage of the Dawn Treader?
DR: Indeed :). They're among my favorite books-my wife berates me for nit-picking the (recent, not the old BBC) movies when they change stuff deleteriously.
JS: Me too! I love those books… my big sister started reading them out loud to me when I was 6, and they still have a special place in my heart.
I am fearful of what the upcoming Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie will be like (I'm assuming there will be one), as I was very disappointed with their take on Prince Caspian (I'm surprised [Rotten Tomatoes] gives it such a high rating… I thought it was awful.)
DR: I haven't watched the new Caspian yet, and don't have especially high hopes.
Several things disappointed me in Lion, among them the scene where the kids hit a cricket ball through the window and that's why they're running from Mrs. McReady and eventually get back to the wardrobe (in the book, as you may recall, they're just trying to get out of her way since she's showing the house). I think it goes to character; perhaps modern younger audiences would better understand running from guilt rather than running to be obedient, which is unfortunate/sad.
My cousin [Anna] back east and I used to try to stump each other with quotes from the books… given a quote identify the speaker/occasion.
I have the old BBC series (my wife got it for me as a gift a few years back); of course the special effects are nowhere near the new series, but the dialog is better (IMO, since it's closer to the books).
JS: Totally agree on your comment about the cricket ball incident. You might want to spare yourself the experience of watching the new Prince Caspian movie at all. They did even more this time that I thought was fundamentally disloyal to the characters and story…. For example at the very beginning of the movie Peter gets in a fistfight at the train station because somebody insulted him, or something like that. In the books Peter is always the calm, responsible, level-headed one… he would never get a fistfight, much less over something so petty. Plus they fabricated a romance between Caspian and Susan, complete with a kiss scene (!?!?!) C.S. Lewis must be rolling over in his grave. Also, even with all the fancy special effects, they somehow managed to make it boring.
My sister and I used to see if we could remember all the lords without looking at the books… Rhoop, Mavrimorn, etc. :)
Honey casts off her cast
News, Technical ·Saturday February 7, 2009 @ 00:18 EST (link)
20090201: Been reading some of Paul Graham's articles over the last few days. They do fill one with inspiration to start a startup—which I may someday, if I can figure out what to sell, provided I can make more money than either my present job or consulting.
Updated my Linux machine on the Linux Counter (they sent me a reminder mail), and added three that I'd got since the last update (which was a long time ago), although I donÂt often boot into Linux on my laptop any more (which means it's long overdue for an update, which will probably be painful since it'll cross major version boundaries all over the place).
20090203: Honey's cast was taken off today; I took her to the doctor (at Evergreen Knee Foot and Ankle center); they removed it with a special saw, cut the cotton sleeve, and X-rayed her; the fracture was gone so they gave her a (removable) wrist brace to wear instead, which made Honey very happy; the cast was on her right hand, and it was extremely inconvenient
20090204: Workaholics (a kindler, gentler, optional version in theory) is back. Homework 3 has been posted for class.
20090206: Some neat Firefox tricks: shift + delete removes an autocomplete edit box entry, and if there's only one entry for an edit box it'll automatically populate, and then the GreaseMonkey extension's auto-login script will work (with the help of the allow password remembering script which removes autocomplete="off" attributes from form elements). Up all night (machine upgrades, Hell's Kitchen, Law and Order); going in to work early (0530); left at 1500; slept until 2100 when I got home; long day.
Upgrading minas-tirith clobbered my qmail-scanner changes, re-adding the (horribly broken) ClamAV to the scanner list, which caused mail sent to us to bounce (fortunately it's flooding in now that I re-disabled ClamAV).
DVDs finished: Friends: The Complete Fourth Season.
Bailout humor that isn't so funny
Political ·Monday February 2, 2009 @ 22:22 EST (link)
(These originally were written about the rescue bill last year, but apply at least equally well to the current "stimulus".)
- The US has made a new weapon that destroys people but keeps the building standing. It's called the stock market.
- Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wal-Mart Street.
- The difference between a pigeon and a London investment banker is that the pigeon can still make a deposit on a BMW.
- What's the difference between a guy who lost everything in Las Vegas and an investment banker? A tie!
- The problem with investment bank balance sheets is that on the left side nothing's right and on the right side nothing's left.
- I want to warn people from Nigeria who might be watching our show, if you get any emails from Washington asking for money, it's a scam. Don't fall for it.
- Bush was asked about the credit crunch. He said it was his favorite candy bar.
- The rescue bill was about 450 pages. President Bush's copy is even thicker. They had to include pictures.
- President Bush's response was to meet some small business owners in San Antonio last week. The small business owners are General Motors, General Electric and Century 21.
- What worries me most about the credit crunch is that if one of my checks is returned stamped 'insufficient funds', I won't know whether that refers to mine or the bank's.
- How do you define an optimist? A banker who irons 5 shirts on a Sunday.
- WhatÂs the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four.
New terms:
CEO: Chief Embezzlement Officer.
CFO: Corporate Fraud Officer.
(Some attributed to Jay Leno, some to the BBC, some were unattributed. I got them from an internal work trading/investing discussion list. Enjoy.)
These bailouts are a horrible idea since they reward bad behavior and business practices with taxpayer money (without at least giving those taxpayers an equity stake for their trouble).
If you'd like to know how much you personally will be contributing to a $1 Trillion bailout (which is how much the banks' bailout will be, at least, and then add any auto industry bailout to that), based on your income/tax bracket, look at the article at http://seekingalpha.com/article/98028-bailout-cost-per-taxpayer-by-income. Seeing how much I'll be forced to contribute yearly (over 30 years, plus interest) hits home more than unimaginably large amounts like $1 Trillion.
Books finished: Day Trading For Dummies, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.DVDs finished: M*A*S*H: Season Four.
A Story Teller from days past
News ·Saturday January 31, 2009 @ 20:12 EST (link)
Tennessee… the patron state of all things shooting.
—Bob Lee Swagger, Shooter (2007)
20090130: For my birthday this year, I checked in 20 bug fixes, and helped Honey go over her math test.
20090131: Well, what do you know, Wikipedia has an entry for Story Teller (a serial story magazine for children that our parents bought us growing up; they came with tapes that read the stories and had sounds to turn the page; think of it as extremely low-tech TV!) and for one of the stories it serialized, Gobbolino and the Little Wooden Horse. The main page lists some other stories that I remember well, some classics, some lesser known: Wind in the Willows, The Wizard of Oz, The Little Tin Soldier (with the evil Jack in the box), Heidi, Timbertwig's Christmas Tree, Rumbles in the Jungles ("You are banished to the swamps for your evil treachery!"), The Lord of the Rushie River, The Ju-Ju Man (people would go into his cave… but never come out, although he'd acquire new furniture), Molly Whuppie ("Woe betide ye…"), Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, What Wanda Wanted, and William Tell. Ah, memories; ah for the days when people read books rather than watch television. I often say that one of the best things my parents ever did for me was to let me grow up without a television (we have one now, but only watch DVDs and pre-recorded programs on our Myth box).
The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA)
Political ·Thursday January 29, 2009 @ 01:38 EST (link)
WASHINGTON, DC—Congress is considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans.
The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
"Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said California Senator Barbara Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing."
In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U.S. employer of Persons of Inability.
Private-sector industries with good records of non-discrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement 'warehouse' stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (63%).
Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million 'middle man' positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable
employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the AWNAA contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, "Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?"
"As a Non-abled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, due to her inability to remember 'rightey tightey, lefty loosey.' "This new law should be real good for people like me," Gertz added. With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Senator Dick Durban (D-IL): "As a Senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so."
Very funnyÂ
but this is honestly what it is like working for the government and most unions. When I worked at the UWÂs Medical Center (gov, education, and health careÂ
talk about a triple-threat), this is literally exactly how it was. I literally had someone, a habitual under-performer that had been there for 15 years, ask me in a dialogue about this, ÂWhy do you feel you should get a bigger raise simply because you worked harder? How is that fair to me?Â
I realized there was no response that would make sense.
—Reply by AM (CLAMS) to the above post
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