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.
Niagara gorge hike with dad
News ·Monday May 14, 2012 @ 01:22 EDT (link)
Dad and I took a trip to the Niagara gorge, and hiked along it, taking pictures; here are a few of them.
(Driving home back to Florida, we saw a WV license plate "CARPE AU" (seize the gold)… a good sentiment, so long as they weren't government employees.)
Florida to Canada, 22 hours
News ·Friday May 4, 2012 @ 22:45 EDT (link)
(Needs more details.)
We drove up from our place in Pinellas Park, Florida to my parents in Canada. And it's high time whoever's working on autonomous cars starts selling them commercially; I'd rather be napping while my car drives itself.
Books finished: Furies of Calderon.
A day at the beach
News ·Friday April 13, 2012 @ 19:49 EDT (link)
We went out to the beautiful white sand beach at Fort De Soto park for the day; brought some food, swam, read on the beach.
Books finished: Catching Fire, The Hunger Games, Second Foundation.
Hunger Games, Oscar Scherer
News ·Sunday March 25, 2012 @ 21:46 EDT (link)
Finished Hunger Games (book one) Saturday. Interesting. Maybe I'm reading too much anti-statism into it, though. Having their children sent to die in the middle east doesn't seem to rouse people much here and now, but then "our" state has a better propaganda arm.
On Sunday after church we went to Oscar Scherer State Park, a nice park with a lake (Osprey) and some trails. We walked the Green trail, two miles (the third mile was closed as a buffer for eagle habitats), and then I swam in the lake, and didn't get attacked by alligators, which is always refreshing. We happened to be at the park just as the Sarasota Folk and Accoustic Music Festival was finishing up, so got to hear a pretty good Simon and Garfunkel cover before we went walking. On the way home we drove out a little on FL-64 just to see what was there—came across the DeSoto speedway (which is for sale); looks like a nice area, even a few properties for sale along the road.
Books finished: Hatrack River, The Hunger Games.
Visiting the Ramanathans
News ·Saturday March 10, 2012 @ 21:35 EST (link)
After coming back from Manatee county, we stopped home to change and then drove to Sriram Ramanathan's place in Safety Harbor; he had kindly invited us and another co-worker, Carl, and his wife and two daughters for dinner. We got there at about 1845.
No war in Iran
News, Political ·Sunday March 4, 2012 @ 14:27 EST (link)
I went out to stand with some anti-war protestors today: first at Dale Mabry and Gandy Boulevard West (over in Tampa), then we moved to Dale Mabry and Interbay and walked down to the base. We were standing in the median, but were forced to leave and protest on the other side. There were some Ron Paul supporters and some Occupy people. Sometimes it's good to get off Facebook, put your shoes on and let people know how you feel. (I had a problem with a few of the chants, like "this racist war has got to go" or ones about Palestine, so I didn't participate. I don't think getting off-message like that is helpful, but most were relevant.)
I'm sold: rest of domains moved to freedns.afraid.org
News, Technical ·Sunday February 26, 2012 @ 17:00 EST (link)
The last time Bright House changed my IP for some random reason (I have my doubts if there's ever a good reason for in-use dynamic IP addresses to change), I moved one domain (i4031.net) over to freedns.afraid.org, since after looking around they appeared to be the best free DNS provider that allowed for automated updates. That was back in November. They just did it again, so I took the plunge and moved the rest of my domains over. It was a bit of a pain, but when they went and changed my IP again just a few minutes ago, it just took opening one URL to auto-update all the A (address) records. (If they start regularly changing the IP frequently, I could hook it up to a DHCP client script easily.) Anyway, I just wanted to say what a great service freedns.afraid.org is (they ask for a mention but don't require it, nor do they advertise on, frame/wrap, or redirect your domains without asking, or AFAICT do anything else remotely underhanded). Great lightweight (oppose GoDaddy's!) DNS manager; programmatic control; DNS dumps in XML or ASCII; they are far superior to GoDaddy in all ways for DNS management.
(As an aside, Firefox seems to have a bug where sometimes, at least with a laptop trackpad, it will ignore clicks on a web page (URL bar is fine); it seems related to having a site in another tab that is either slow to load or failing and retrying; at least, closing a tab with a slow-loading page in it made clicking work again.)
Books finished: Foundation and Empire.
Work, Florida, Libertarian Papers
News, Work ·Sunday January 29, 2012 @ 14:36 EST (link)
General status and a few comments since I've been here a couple months (started November 14). I can't get too specific with certain things: when I was interviewing they couldn't even tell me how many developers they had (small competitive vertical industry), so presumably I can't reveal that either (and I'm sure signed something to that effect). Like at Microsoft, I have an office with a door; I would guess maybe half the developers do, and there are some open plan or shared offices. (Unlike at Microsoft, I also have a window outside—but no window to the hallway—which is nice, but it gets pretty hot at certain times of the day.) I'm working in C++ (also safe, since their job descriptions say as much), Windows (MFC projects, but it's not so bad). There's no problem parking in front of the building (which you can go find with Google Street View if you want). I tend to get in earlier than at Microsoft (0830 here, 1030 there), to be there when most people are there, and of course leave a little earlier too. It brings back memories of getting up pretty early when I worked in Toronto, to avoid the subway rush. I'm not sure I can say which project I'm working on, so I'll provide a link to the Learning Systems Group and leave it at that.
As in Word, the code base is quite old (20 years I think, vs. Word celebrating 25 in 2010), and has naturally developed some cruft. Fortunately, my manager believes in continuous refactoring, provided that features get developed according to schedule and there's some business justification. Some interesting features for the upcoming release—naturally I can't spill anything there, but I'll post something after we ship if I can be at all specific. I'm working with a good group of people; only one of the people that interviewed me, though (and the interviews asked good questions). We go out to lunch a couple times a week; frequently Mexican-style places (but usually not staffed with people of Mexicans descent; not far enough south perhaps?), although there's one guy that's more adventurous and we go for Thai etc.
After hours and when I have time I've been working on a code review tool (Apache, mod_wsgi, Python 3, Javascript, and PostgreSQL, with Mako templates for separation, jQuery and jQuery UI on the client side, and mod_auth_sspi for domain user authentication; the username is used by the system). Since it's server-based, I can and may also write a .NET—WPF—client for it; except for one request that sends back XHTML rather than JSON (it helped with SPOT), all of the server requests are already suitable, and WPF looks like a fun toy and a good technology to learn. I could also maintain a persistent server connection to get immediate updates rather than polling periodically like the web client does.
So, Florida. We haven't done a lot of traveling yet; the apartment, once organized, is about the same. The bedroom furniture was a bit of a trick to get in since the door is diagonal and cuts off one side, but it's all worked out just fine. We solved the sliding block puzzle of the living room after the movers left and it's spaced pretty well. There are a few boxes here and there and the study isn't set up—we just use our laptops on the couch—so other unpacking happens as the spirit moves. We've found the equivalent stores for groceries, and a Costco, and Amazon doesn't charge tax here so that's a bonus. In a way it's nice to have a garage, but since our other exclusive parking space is in front of it, sometimes not as convenient to get in and out. We'd like to take a drive down to the Keys; after the first time for the novelty, though, we've been recommended to take the ferry. In May we're heading up to Canada for Sharon's wedding anniversary; no big trips before that, except Honey might go up for her mother's birthday in March.
I finally got around to finishing and submitting my article for the journal Libertarian Papers; I'm happy with it, although they (or rather, the new editor, Matt McCaffrey, who took over for Dr. Stephan Kinsella just this month) may have a few editorial or style changes for me to make still. It's good to get that finished; Dr. Kinsella had recommended some style fixes, terminology clarifications, and further reading I may have wanted to incorporate; I made the style fixes right away but just got the rest done this weekend. It's an article about punishment, specifically questioning one aspect of Dr. Walter Block's ideas on the subject.
It is also my birthday tomorrow. We're going to go out to eat at the end of the week.
Books finished: Foundation, The Colour of Magic, God Emperor of Dune.
Christmas 2011 at Hedricks
News ·Saturday December 31, 2011 @ 18:56 EST (link)
For the first time in many years, we were able to drive to be with family for Christmas. It was Honey's family's turn (lucky them!), so we made the 14-hour drive to WV on Friday the 23rd after work, and arrived early Saturday morning. Technically, I wasn't supposed to be able to take vacation—even if it was accrued—until I had worked there 90 days (some probation period that seems rather silly in an at-will state), but the company is flexible and didn't mind letting me take a couple days and rearrange the holidays so I would work on the 23rd and 2nd and be off the entire week between.
So, we had a nice visit; dinner at Papa Pollock's on the 24th, delicious turkey. It was on the 24th because there was church on the 25th—morning only; and let's just say the same people that ate showed up at the Lord's supper, although the second meeting was rather better attended; including a handbell choir and a little girl that needed to be excused from the stage to go to the bathroom.
I caught a bug sometime during the week; sore throat to start, cough added later, and difficulty sleeping; so I caught sleep whenever I could. I also logged into work a few times, did some coding and code reviews, but not as much as I'd wanted to, being unwell; although it was all extra.
Dad Hedrick took me out to a local range to shoot one day, although he didn't want to shoot because he figured with his cataracts he'd waste ammunition, even though I told him it (at least the .22) was cheap and I had decent scopes. That was at the Baileysville public shooting range; I only shot the Ruger 10/22 and Glock 34; the AR wasn't feeding well and probably needed a good cleaning, and the red dot batteries had finally died (they were the ones that came with it).
Emily was happy to see us, and Honey played various Mario and Guitar Hero games with her, and we played Euchre (Emily and I won the first game but got beat in the rematch).
The Hedricks' faucet gave up the ghost in the middle of the week, so dad and I were tasked with picking up and installing a new one. The old one was determined to stick around, but eventually I got in there, saw the nut that was holding the stubborn horseshoe washer on, sawed off a protruding bolt with a hacksaw, and then hammered in a socket (11/16") since the nut was blocked by the hot/cold leads, and ratcheted the stubborn nut off with the help of an extension. After that installing the new one was fairly easy; although we thought we had a dud—it leaked—until dad tightened up one of the nuts on the new part that we thought was factory and thus not fixable.
For Christmas I mostly got polo shirts, mainly for work—I'm not really wearing T-shirts any more at work—and gift cards, all great and useful; and we gave mostly gift cards too, except some Looney Toons DVDs for Emily. We ate at Shirly's (China One Buffet) on the day before we left.
We left at little after 1300 Friday, and got home very early Saturday, which let me—us; Honey caught something too—spend a few days trying to recuperate and relaxing around the apartment. There was a cold snap when we got back (left in the 80s, back in the 50s) but it's supposed to get warm again soon.
Books finished: The Diamond Throne, The Ruby Knight, The Sapphire Rose.
The $400 license plate
News, Political ·Saturday December 17, 2011 @ 22:38 EST (link)
I was rather disgusted at the extortion conducted by the gang of thugs known as the state of Florida when we went to get license plates for Honey's car: just about $400 for all of it. The largest part is called an "impact fee" ($225) which is required when bringing cars into the state or buying a new car (although it is transferable from another vehicle registered in the same name). A license—any license—is merely protection money; a promise not to do harm for some period of time to a person engaging in a peaceful activity. Sort of a, "Nice house, wouldn't want something to happen to it…" demand to, well, anyone they want money from, from hairdressers to hepatologists.
Calling that $225 part of the extortion an impact fee is laughable on its face. First, they do no emission test; but that's not the most obvious flaw, for it could be reasoned that the condition of each car averages out. No; what gives the lie is that it cannot be transferred from someone leaving the state (and thus taking their car and its "impact" with them) to someone entering (net theoretical "impact" change, zero). So why do they charge the fee? Because they have more guns. That is all there is to it; and I challenge anyone to find any other valid justification.
So, I designed and ordered a bumper sticker today from makestickers.com; black on white; silhouette of a gun, pointing up (fit better that way; looks like a 1911), text:
$400 PLATE FEES
=
STATE EXTORTION
They should arrive soon. It won't do anything about the cost, but it'll let people know how I feel about it. I'm happy to provide the PNG file if anyone wants it (or the Paint.NET file with the layers), for other Florida residents that have bad memories about being robbed, although apparently the higher fees are only two years old so many would be grandfathered in. Damn, the whole state is geared towards grandfathers, it seems (see also the property tax exemption). That's the downside of living in God's waiting room, I suppose (and of the majoritan tyranny called democracy). Our cars will be sporting the stickers soon.
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