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.
Every alias is the geek alias!
Technical, Work ·Wednesday May 13, 2009 @ 23:21 EDT (link)
A thread in a political forum (alias) morphed into a Star Trek thread; someone asked:
"I thought this was CLAMS, did I accidentally join the geek alias?"
In response, JD replied:
"You work at Microsoft. Every alias is the geek alias!"
It's true. Some days I see more code, pseudo-XML, algorithms, and technical arguments (and bad puns) in the non-technical aliases than the technical ones. But that's one of the reasons I'm here. It's good to be among fellow hackers, people that get it, that think in code and breathe mathematics and algorithms.
Books finished: A Brief History of Time, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
GoodReads: old books
Technical ·Tuesday May 12, 2009 @ 22:17 EDT (link)
I did some more hacking on my perl GoodReads interface, making it easier to add a book read at an unknown (null) date; I have a lot of old books I'd eventually like to catalog in my system and on GoodReads. Had to alter my database schema and make allowances for null/undef/false parameters a few places that (intentionally) didn't used to allow it.
The GoodReads API seems more stable now; it used to have a lot more random OAuth failures; I haven't seen one for a while now. It may even be safe to call the GoodReads add from my web-based update code, rather than (for example) queuing a request to a daemon to ensure that the data isn't lost if GoodReads' API fails.
Watch battery
News ·Monday May 11, 2009 @ 20:40 EDT (link)
Honey picked up a watch battery for me today, since my watch was making dying motions, and I installed it, since Fred Meyer didn't do installations. I didn't have a small enough Phillips driver, so had to use a same-size flat head.
Celebrity Apprentice: Annie was robbed
News, Media ·Monday May 11, 2009 @ 00:14 EDT (link)
Honestly, did the audience, judges, and Trump not watch the show? Let facts be submitted to a candid world!
- Annie never lost her cool in the boardroom, while Joan flung personal insults all the time, e.g. "Would spit and drown her mother in it" "Worse than Hitler" and accused her poker-playing friends of being "mafia".
- Joan absolutely caused the designer to quit. She badgered him and brought in her own expert until he left and refused to work with Celebrity Apprentice, which left Annie hanging since his company was doing both sides of the hall. While it was unprofessional of him to quit, Joan's actions definitely drove him to it.
- Outside the boardroom, Joan was much worse behaved than Annie. She held a grudge; Annie did not. Annie tried to reconcile with her in the last show; Joan refused to talk. She badmouthed Annie and her profession ("trash") whenever she had a chance. Annie only ever had a few insults outside the boardroom ("I hope she dies" is about as bad as she got, and that immediately after a "Joan-caused disaster"). In business, it's important to be under control; Joan was not.
- As everyone admitted, Annie was far more intelligent than Joan. Intelligence is a great asset in a business.
- You can't claim Annie wasn't personable: look at all the friends she had and how many were willing to donate money for her charity. Joan, for all her age and experience in the business, could only come up with about one third of the money Annie raised.
- Presumably Joan is some sort of New York City icon: that explains the indiscriminate adoration of the crowd; it doesn't explain Trump and the other judges.
- Annie won on the objective categories: she had signs for her charity and, as mentioned, raised three times the money. On the fuzzy, fudgable criteria, Joan won, which looks a bit biased from here. (I initially thought there were just four, and Trump was giving two points to each to draw out the final decision, which would have been dodgy but understandable.)
In all, given how well she did as a project manager, in remaining professional in the face of a catty mother-daughter team, and in fund-raising throughout the show, Annie should have been the Celebrity Apprentice, and only preconceived bias would say otherwise. I thought Trump was better than that.
Government tantrums: "Perception of a legitimate deficiency"
News ·Sunday May 10, 2009 @ 00:46 EDT (link)
Many Contra Costa crooks won't be prosecuted:
"Misdemeanors such as assaults, thefts and burglaries will no longer be prosecuted in Contra Costa County because of budget cuts, the county's top prosecutor said Tuesday." Pertinent comment from LiveJournal Libertarians:
For the sake of argument, let's assume for a minute that there were legitimate and desirable functions performed by this department. The ones I spotted are shoplifting/trespass/vandalism, so focus on those.
This kind of [stuff] will make your blood boil if you think about it for too long. Basically, any time a government department has to allocate resources during a period of "cuts" (or more realistically these days, "no increases" or "increases less than expected") the resources will always be denied to the areas that most crucially need them so as to create the perception of a legitimate deficiency. These childish antics are precisely why no amount of money can seem to fix the public education system. When increases are less than expected, the department will throw a tantrum; pay raises for teachers and administrators within the bureaucracy will simply be fed first (allocated a greater share of the pool) and money for books, buildings, etc. will be last. Why? Because mom and dad can see the effects of crumbling buildings and 1980's textbooks but couldn't give a rat's ass about the teacher's new car. Same thing with infrastructure and transportation. If you're in charge of the highway department and facing a cut, the last thing y
ou want to do is start fixing pot holes. You want to allocate resources as inefficiently as possible so as to guarantee the perception of deficiency.
So see if you spot the irony: a 35 year veteran prosecutor (want to take a stab at his salary?) is complaining about budget cuts that, by his account, will force his office to become redundant. Read that again until you get it. In the private sector this would be the equivalent of occupational suicide. It's a catch 22: either you fire some staff and take some other sane efficiency measures, or you can throw a toddler's temper tantrum and effectively cut off your nose to spite your face. The latter is only a viable tactic in the good old boy zero accountability land of the government.
Well said, sir, well said. Just another tactic big government uses to perpetuate and propagate itself, even in times where private enterprise, not being able to steal from the taxpayer but dependent upon voluntary contracts and satisfying customer demand, has to make tough and deep cuts.
This ties in well with the book I just read, In Pursuit: of Happiness and Good Government (link below), where Murray examines the effect of throwing money at a cause, and how it is usually a net negative due to various psychological and sociological factors. (He makes this case based on the happiness of all concerned, without needing to appeal to libertarian principles of personal freedom and (severely) limited government, which not everyone will embrace, although I submit that those that don't must either desire power, beneficial income transfers, or are mentally defective.)
Books finished: Trading Chaos, In Pursuit: of Happiness and Good Government.
A symbiotic dream world
Political ·Monday May 4, 2009 @ 00:09 EDT (link)
A thought came to me while watching Glenn Beck's Tea Parties: Media Lies Exposed show (link goes to first of five): the liberal media provides the service to liberals of perpetuating their dream world. In this dream world, they are the brave victims, conservatives are racists, conservative protests are bankrolled by Fox News, and more government is the solution to everything. It's symbiotic: the liberal media gives watchers a cozy reassuring fantasy world and keeps out unkind reality, and they watch it and raise its ratings and advertising revenues.
(It's possible that the conservative minority—some shows on Fox (forget talk radio, it's opinion and doesn't pretend to be news)—is guilty of the same thing, but if so, it's far less obvious, and less heinous coming from a minority of sources or a single source; and I'm also pointing out a particular case here where the attack machine either tried to ignore an event that would be noteworthy to an unbiased observer, or ground into full smear mode.)
Ack. I hate silly disclaimers.
There really is no compulsion in this religion
Political, Theology ·Sunday May 3, 2009 @ 23:28 EDT (link)
The reason there is no compulsion in worship in the United States Constitution is because Christianity is about free will. This is well stated in this post (not mine) to the Christians at Microsoft list:
People who read the constitution and view the absence of God as a reflection of the "secularness" of our founders miss the point. The reason our constitution is absent from any hint of compulsion to worship in any specified manner is a direct result of the religious beliefs of the founders and those they represented. They believed in an almighty God, but that the only acceptable worship of Him must be of free will. To try and force a man to worship God against his will would be a violation of God's own law.
This nation was indeed founded on Christian principles. Let me ask, when was this nation founded? When the constitution was signed in 1787? Or rather when we declared ourselves free on Independence Day: July 4, 1776? This declaration of independence does not attempt to define all the laws by which we should govern ourselves but it certainly outlines the reasons for the founding of our nation. These reasons are largely based on the Christian beliefs of the founders and those whom they represented:
When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands… the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness….
With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
Their sense of this "God of nature", "equality", the one who gives all men "unalienable Rights" which no government can take away, and their "reliance on the protection of Divine Providence" came from nowhere else but their religious beliefs, which happened to be Christian. Even their sense of justice was immensely influenced by this. Our laws are based on this sense of justice which came from their Christian beliefs.
Don't get me wrong, they wanted nothing to do with a church/state theocracy as that was the type of system they had just freed themselves of, but they had no qualms about religious expression even in government. I think it was D. Prager who said "this country was founded to be free, not secular."
Re: Jefferson as a Deist. I never understood this claim, but I am admittedly not an expert. A Deist is one who believes in an impersonal God, like a watchmaker who wound up creation and left it to operate on its own. They do not believe in the personal interaction of God in the affairs of men. With this in mind, I am unable to fathom how a Deist could make comments such as this:
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the Gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever; That a revolution of the wheel of fortune, a change of situation, is among possible events; that it may become probable by Supernatural influence! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in that event." (Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XVIII, p. 237.)
Perhaps he changed his opinion during some other time in his life, but it seems impossible for a deist to make such a statement unless he does so without belief in his own words. He also said this:
"I am a real Christian - that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ." (The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, p. 385.)
Sunday shooting at SVRC
News ·Sunday May 3, 2009 @ 19:58 EDT (link)
Yesterday I ran two miles on the treadmill—got some blisters; it had been a while.
Today we went shooting at SVRC. We arrived near the end of the Black Powder group's event (as planned—I was curious as to what those events entailed); they were mostly packing up to leave as we arrived. One other person (Chris from Amazon) was shooting a Ruger 10/22 in the pistol pit; I shot a few magazines of 9mm in both the Glock 34 and Springfield EMP there and then we both shot the AR-15 in the rifle area. I tried earplugs (instead of normal outside "headphone" style ear protection); they were great; the other ear protection gets in the way when firing a rifle. After Chris left, we had the place to ourselves, which was surprising, since it was a beautiful day. We shot several magazines and then packed up and left, stopping to eat at Pickle Time in Duvall on the way home.
I ran a bore-snake through the AR when we got home, and then mixed up some lawn weed and crabgrass killer so I could spray tomorrow.
Surgical one-upmanship
Political, Humor ·Sunday May 3, 2009 @ 13:43 EDT (link)
Three Californian surgeons were playing golf together and discussing surgeries they had performed. One of them said, "I'm the best surgeon in California. In my favorite case, a concert pianist lost several fingers in an accident, I reattached them, and 8 months later he performed a private concert for the Queen of England."
The second surgeon said, "That's nothing. A young man lost an arm and both legs in an accident, I reattached them and two years later he won a gold medal in track and field events at the Olympics."
The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a woman was high on cocaine and marijuana and she rode a horse head-on into a train traveling 80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the woman's hair and the horse's ass. I was able to put them together and now she's Speaker of the House."
Is it still a 100-year flood if it happens twice in a month?
News, Humor ·Saturday May 2, 2009 @ 22:14 EDT (link)
To: Duvall MS Employees; Monroe MS Employees
Subject: 2 bedroom rental house on our farm opening up May 1st
It seems the 2 bedroom rental house on our farm opening up May 1st. This house comes with a small detached garage and a pretty good sized yard.
This house only opens up once every couple years.
The rent is $1000 per month. I pay water, sewer. They pay electric, phone, garbage. If you know someone you would personally recommend who may be interested please let them / me know.
Reply to above post:
You forgot to mention the free 100-year floor rinsing every 2 months :)
(For those not in Duvall, we got a lot of "100-year" floods in a very short timespan not long before the posting, and the house in question is in a low area that floods early and often.)
<Previous 10 entries>
