I skipped out of work early yesterday and we went to see "The Incredibles." It was awesome awesome awesome. I loved it. This is not a word I use often, so pay attention: it was perfect. I'm so glad we caught it in the theater; it's on its way out. If you get a chance, you really should go see it if you haven't already.

¶ 1010 Posted at 08.13 AM ⇒ No Comments ( movies )

As of today, we have been married for 6 months. Things change and stay the same. Although 6 months from now will be pretty different...

¶ 1012 Posted at 11.32 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us )

We saw "The House of Flying Daggers" last weekend. It was disappointing. The acting was fine, and the plot was halfway decent, but the whole setting was silly. Zhang Yimou knows how to make things pretty, but it was over the top. All style, little substance. He managed half of "magical realism." Rotten Tomatoes gave it a high fresh rating, but it's overrated. You know how every movie after "The Matrix" copied bullet time? This movie is like one of the copies, but what it's copying is "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." Save your money, or at least see "The Incredibles" instead.

¶ 1013 Posted at 09.02 AM ⇒ No Comments ( movies )

I have formulated three career plans for the next 20 years or so. Obviously, things happen, but you can only do so much in planning for the expected. This is by no means a complete list, but it's a start. In order of preference:

1. Spend 5-10 years building up money and experience, then get an MS in Operations Research and go to work for some big multinational like GE as a sort of Mr. Wolf for complex systems.
2. Spend 5-10 years building up money, experience, and contacts, then (co-)found a software business. This would be an intentionally small business, say 5-10 people, rather than the standard Austin startup. We would make either a simple product with a broad market or a complex product with a narrow market. There are ways it can be bigger, but the goal should be to have a business that can work profitably on that scale; success should be achievable having to grow bigger. I definitely don't want to deal with venture capital either, which is part of what constrains both the scale and the timeline.
3. Continue along a logical extension of my current career path: developer, senior developer, architect...

I believe you should have some idea of where you want to go. You don't have to go there, but it's helpful to have a big picture in mind. Note that I did just say the next 20 years or so. A fraction of that is hoping to strike oil and being able to retire young, but, more realistically, I recognize the foolishness of making predictions of my future self in 2025. That's a long time.

¶ 1014 Posted at 08.56 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

The NY Times "public editor" has a piece on innumeracy (here's another article referred to by the first). Lots of good points. People just don't understand numbers. When people aren't given a context, they need to know how to find the appropriate one. That people don't know how to do this makes it it easy to manipulate them. It's like thermometers that measure to the tenth of a degree. People think, surely if they have that level of precision, it must be accurate, and it must reflect a qualitative difference between different measurements. On the scales we're talking about, they're not usually that accurate. Even if they are, they aren't necessarily meaningful. Numbers can be invented just as easily as any other assertion and, with the patina of credibility they give, are probably even more invented than other assertions. Of course, people aren't so good at questioning those other kinds of assertions either, but that's for another day.

¶ 1015 Posted at 10.49 AM ⇒ No Comments ( interesting )

I didn't stop reading over the last month. I made my way through the massive "Otherland" series by Tad Williams. Thems is long books. Took me a while. It was pretty good. Imagine a vast virtual reality network of unsurpassed realism that is somehow connected to mysterious comas striking children around the world. Now write 4 books about it, books that actually have a plausible plot, believable characters, and other hallmarks of quality, and there you go.

¶ 1016 Posted at 10.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Game theory. Game theory's important, too.

¶ 1019 Posted at 10.02 AM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas )

We saw "Sideways" yesterday. It was a pretty good movie. It wasn't great, despite the rapturous praise it has received from the critical press. There were a few holes in it that prevented it from being as complete as it could have been, and it just lacked that extra punch that a really good movie needs. It's also tough to really like a movie where the main characters are annoying and hard to like. It did make me want to drink wine and play golf. I leave it to you to decide whether that's a good thing.

¶ 1020 Posted at 09.32 AM ⇒ No Comments ( movies )

When I get sick with a cold or the flu, my inclination is to help my body fight off the infection by baking it out. Your body induces a fever because viruses and bacteria are sensitive to temperature. I figure that taking acetaminophen to reduce the fever will only make me sick for longer. So I take hot showers, hot baths, sleep with socks on, etc. Drinking hot tea is a double whammy because it soothes my throat and increases my body temperature as well. All this makes me uncomfortably hot, but that's the idea. I haven't done any double-blind studies to verify effectiveness, but it sounds good.

¶ 1022 Posted at 11.24 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

We attended our first birthing class last night. We're doing The Bradley Method® because... well, I'm not exactly sure why, but I'm sure "we" have a really good reason. I do what I'm told. It's 12 weeks of 2-hour classes every Tuesday way out in the middle of nowhere (Oak Hill or thereabouts). It's an interesting mix of people in our class. We have very hippie types on one end and an (apparent) evangelical Christian couple on the other end (assuming you align people to a single axis). They all seemed like nice people. I got the sense that most of them were older than us, not that it matters. They're all due at the end of May or June, which makes us look like terrible slackers, but you try to find a class that starts around Christmas...

¶ 1023 Posted at 05.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us )

I am getting joe-jobbed like crazy lately. I think I had something like 1500 bounces on Sunday alone from spammers using made-up addresses at ketan.org as the From addresses. I am sadly becoming one of those people for whom email is an increasingly impractical medium. Plain old spam sent to me is easy to handle; it's the misdirected bounces that are really getting me. The ones that really make me mad are the snarky "your message was flagged as spam." Somehow it never occurred to these sysadmins that spammers don't use their real email addresses. Almost as bad are the challenge/response systems that automatically reply and ask that you click on a link to prove that you're real. Note to world: automatically replying to emails is bad, no matter how good the reasons may seem.

¶ 1024 Posted at 08.20 AM ⇒ No Comments ( internet )

In the not-so-distant past, I have also read "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night" by Mark Haddon and "Innumeracy" by John Paulos. They were worth reading. I am too tired to say more about them.

¶ 1025 Posted at 10.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Has the social pressure of Valentine's Day become too much? More and more couples are breaking up on or around Valentine's Day, according to this article. As for us, we're going to be cheap-skate slackers.

¶ 1026 Posted at 02.41 PM ⇒ No Comments ( articles )

A while back, I had the idea of photo maps to help visualize directions. Amazon has added something like this to their A9 web search to show you a particular location. It just shows your destination and the area around it rather than a point-by-point path from A to B, but it's still pretty slick. Just goes to show you that good ideas are inevitable.

¶ 1027 Posted at 04.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas )

Over the last week, the trees in Austin have pushed out the first tender leaves of spring. It's nice. We've got at least one more cold snap ahead of us, though, but then it's clear sailing all the way to October.

¶ 1028 Posted at 04.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( austin )

This email I got from "web@fbi.gov" is hilarious:

Dear Sir/Madam,

we have logged your IP-address on more than 40 illegal Websites.

Important: Please answer our questions!
The list of questions are attached.


Yours faithfully,
M. John Stellford



++-++ Federal Bureau of Investigation -FBI-
++-++ 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Room 2130
++-++ Washington, DC 20535
++-++ (202) 324-3000



*-* Attachment: No Virus found
*-* "KETAN" Anti-Virus Service
*-* http://www.ketan.org

Attached is the file text-indictment_cit1470.zip, which my ISP (ketan.org) has already scanned for me and found to be free of viruses. I'm so helpful. Additionally, it appears that the entire FBI fits in a single room.

¶ 1029 Posted at 10.04 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

You may have heard the term enterprise software before. Generally, they sell big software to big business. There'll be a team of dedicated sales people that works on a client for months, even years, doing demos, sales pitches, hammering out terms, etc. for and with the executives at the customer. The customer has a list of features they want that they use to narrow down the possible solutions. Eventually, if all goes well, the customer signs a contract and writes a big check. Then the professional services consultants descend, adapting the product to the customer's needs and existing business systems. After a while, there's another version of the software and the cycle repeats. There are a lot of software companies in Austin that follow the model. Tivoli was one. Motive was another. So's ROME. And that's just the companies that I've worked for.

Note that I haven't mentioned said anything about what the customers and the product do. That's because it doesn't matter. Look at the model described above and think about what sorts of behaviors it creates incentives for. There are a few biggies. First of all, you want a product that looks impressive. That's not the same thing as useful. Often those things coincide, but often they don't. When push comes to shove, the one that brings money in the door is the one that wins. Many times, sales people will demo something that doesn't actually exist. Secondly, there is no incentive to make the product simple. After all, the more complex the product, the more time it takes to install, and the more billable hours your services people rack up. Third, once you get the check, the customer no longer matters. All you have to do is a good enough job that the customer won't sue. Maybe, if you're especially forward-looking, you'll try to maintain a decent relationship so you can sell them the next version a couple of years later. Even that has a hook; you can implement a feature well enough that you're not lying when you say you can do it, but not so well that customers can actually use it. That's the next version, which is available for the low low price of $1.5 million. You can generally get away with a lot, as the people who use the software aren't usually the people who use it.

Naturally, this type of focus has an impact on development. Sales will scream for some feature they need to sell a particular client. Or they may have already sold the client on that feature and it needs to be designed, developed, tested, and documented by the end of the quarter. Services will scream that some part of the product is buggy or unusable. What matters is building something that vaguely resembles what was sold as soon as possible. Everything else is secondary. Quality is an afterthought. A well-designed architecture is too much work. One could even argue that it's bad business to focus on quality. I can't help but think that kind of business is living on borrowed time. The customers tolerate that model, and in some cases even insist on it, but I can't see a future in a company whose best customers write a seven figure check and never use the product.

So, after all that, you're probably wondering why I put up with it. Well, the easy answer is, I thought that's how the industry worked. I thought I was just being naive and idealistic. Turns out I was wrong, though, so I'm not going to have to deal with it anymore. My new job is at Works. They were one of the early dot-com cliches, selling office supplies online. 7 years and two business plans later, they have a pretty nifty product for managing payments in various organizations. The model is different. Works is what is known as an "application service provider" (ASP). The product is hosted on their servers and accessed through the web. The most well-known ASP is Salesforce.com, but you could argue that web mail is the quintessential ASP. Works gets no real money when they sign a customer. Instead, they only get paid as customers use the product. If the product isn't useful, efficient, or reliable, the customer doesn't use it and Works gets no money. The model is built from the ground up in a fundamentally different fashion that aligns their interests more closely with the customers' interests. That's the theory, at least, and what I've seen so far confirms it.

I really wanted the ROME job to work, as I've had more than my fill of employment volatility. I did my best to improve things, but there was only so much I could do, and only so much frustration I was willing to deal with. To be fair, things aren't that bad, but given the opportunity for something that is better in nearly every respect, how could I possibly turn it down? It's quite possible that the enterprise software model has many profitable years ahead of it. It's quite possible that I'm turning my back on lots of money, but it isn't 1999 anymore; options are nothing more than lottery tickets. What matters more is a demonstrably sustainable business and a positive environment. Baby needs cash and a content father.

¶ 1030 Posted at 01.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( software | (un)employment )

I find it fascinating and startling how little time we actually spend thinking about whether to take a particular job offer. Think about other life choices of significance. Taking a new job is less important than whether to get married or to have kids, but it's more important than whether to buy a new car or house, and about as important as which college to attend. We spend far more time thinking about those things, on the order of months or even years, but job decisions often are made in less than a week. That's just bizarre.

¶ 1033 Posted at 10.28 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

Slavery still exists. This isn't just the implicit slavery of sex trafficking, but the explicit ownership of people. Don't think it's gone.

¶ 1034 Posted at 11.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( whoa )

The NY Times has a long article on how the federal government has produced and distributed "video news releases" that are then broadcast by various news programs. In many cases, those segments are not clearly identified as being produced by the government. It's not the end of the world, but it's not exactly a positive thing. Besides, didn't anyone stop to think about how this was going to make Fox News feel?

¶ 1036 Posted at 06.41 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe..

¶ 1038 Posted at 03.51 PM ⇒ No Comments ( cool | funny )

There's something sad about leaving a job, even when it's by choice.

¶ 1039 Posted at 09.08 AM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

When you buy some fancy gizmo, file its manual. Put all your manuals in the same place. Attach to the manuals the warranty papers (if separate) and your purchase receipt. If it has a manual, it's worth keeping track of the warranty, because if it has a manual, it can break a half dozen different ways.

¶ 1040 Posted at 04.48 PM ⇒ No Comments ( tips )

I invented a term:

gentrifugal force, n.: the apparent force that flings lower income people out from the center of the city as a rising tide of higher income people moves into the previously-neglected-but-now-newly-revitalized area.

¶ 1041 Posted at 11.55 AM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas )

Last night, we had a severe thunder-lightning-torrential rain-hail storm. It was short, but while it lasted... The noise was unbelievable. I was pretty worried about the skylights and windows of the house. I am so glad I have a garage. I tried to take some pictures, but only one of them came out well. This is the front yard immediately in front of the patio:

Those pieces of hail were about 1/2" to 1" in diameter. It looks a little better in the 2160x1440 version of the picture, but that's 1.14MB.

¶ 1042 Posted at 09.29 AM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | house )

I've been watching the new "Battlestar Galactica" on Sci Fi. I never saw the original series, so I don't know how true it is. Frankly, I don't care. It's good on its own merits. If you enjoy the science fiction-y type thing, you should make a point of watching the show. The season finale is next Friday, so they'll probably start the series over again the Friday after that (April 8).

¶ 1043 Posted at 07.00 PM ⇒ No Comments ( tv )

You may have seen this geeky formulation of the Zero Wing meme before:

$ chown -R us base

I just realized that's wrong. The correct formulation is:

$ chgrp -R us base

Yeah, nobody at work thought it was funny either.

¶ 1044 Posted at 03.49 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny | geek )

Actually, what it really should be is:

find . -name '*base*' -user you -exec chgrp us \{\} \;

I won't mention the person helped with that. It's one thing to out myself as a big dork, it's another to reveal someone else.

Jokes are like software. There's research, development, design, testing, release, and, like this post, bug fixes and maintenance.

¶ 1045 Posted at 06.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny | geek )

A couple of weeks back, I read through John C. Wright's trilogy of "The Golden Transcendence." As is obvious from the title, this is a series of SF books. They were engrossing in spite of several annoying affectations. They veered into self-parody from time to time, but were overall good. It was definitely a book full of ideas. Um. So there you go.

¶ 1046 Posted at 01.12 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Someone thought to submit an article to Wikipedia about the heavy metal umlaut. I especially like:

The heavy metal band Tröjan used umlauts in their name on the 1985 release "Chasing the Storm." For Swedes the tour T-shirts from this time are particularly amusing, as "Tröjan" in Swedish translates as "the shirt."

¶ 1048 Posted at 10.14 AM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

I think it's kind of neat that you can get free wireless Internet access in cafes and restaurants. Not all that useful, but neat. What would be much more useful to me would be to have free wireless access in waiting rooms, like doctor's offices, dentists, or at the auto shop. I would definitely steer my business toward a mechanic that gave me more to do while waiting than watching "Days of Our Lives" or reading the June 1998 issue of "Bass Fishing" magazine.

¶ 1049 Posted at 11.11 AM ⇒ No Comments ( ideas )

Uma [Something] Gangatirkar, born 2.11am on April 13, 2005. 20.5 inches, 6 lb. 9.6 oz. More pictures to come.

Update: Uma Davey Gangatirkar, and 19.5 inches, not 20.5.

¶ 1051 Posted at 11.55 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us )

I put up some baby pictures.

¶ 1052 Posted at 01.49 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us | pictures )

Even more baby pictures

¶ 1056 Posted at 01.42 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us | pictures )

We filled out the paperwork to officially name her Uma Davey Gangatirkar. We had various Western names that we liked, but there was something a little... remote about them; we didn't really feel it. Davey, obviously, has a real connection and real significance. You may hear it pronounced "Devi" by Indian people (there's a difference in the D). In at least a couple of Indian languages, "devi" means goddess. So that's nice, too, but I don't want to diminish its significance as Jessica's name.

We spent a lot of time looking at names. We rejected lots of them. Uma won because it has a lot of nice qualities, besides being agreeable to us both:

1. It's relatively known, thanks to Uma Thurman, but not at all common.
2. It's Indian, so it reflects her real (as opposed to imagined, like with Celtic names) heritage.
3. It's short and really, really easy to say, which goes a little way to balance out the Gangatirkar at the end, and should shield her from the trauma I suffered growing up.
4. She'll be able to say her own name at an early age because it's short and the sounds are easy for a small child.
5. She has an automatic animal mascot in the puma.

On the subject of names, Slate has two interesting excerpts from the new book Freakonomics.

¶ 1058 Posted at 12.02 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us | names )

My sister, my mom, and my two cousins visited today. Here are a few more pictures.

¶ 1062 Posted at 11.12 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us | pictures )

I have spun off Uma-related things to her own web site. I'm using Blogger + Picasa + Hello, which is working well enough. There's even an Atom feed. Like you weren't expecting this...

¶ 1064 Posted at 12.22 AM ⇒ No Comments ( site | us )

I'm back at work today, so the flow of pictures will slow. I've set myself the goal of at least one picture per day, though; even if they are repetitive, who can resist another picture of such a cutie?

¶ 1069 Posted at 06.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

People are doing really cool things with Google Maps.

¶ 1071 Posted at 04.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( cool )

See penguins going through airport security.

¶ 1073 Posted at 02.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

House Resolution 227:

H. Res. 227 In the House of Representatives, U.S., April 26, 2005. Whereas the United States is deeply enriched by its Indian American residents; Whereas the Indian American community and the graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in the United States have made valuable and significant contributions to society in every profession and discipline; and Whereas IIT graduates are highly committed and dedicated to research, innovation, and promotion of trade and international cooperation between India and the United States: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That the House of Representatives-- (1) recognizes the valuable and significant contributions of Indian Americans to American society; (2) honors the economic innovation attributable to graduates of the Indian Institutes of Technology; and (3) urges all Americans to recognize the contributions of Indian Americans and have a greater appreciation of the role Indian Americans have played in helping to advance and enrich American society. Attest: Clerk.

My dad went to IIT, as have many other distinguished Indian immigrants to the United States.

¶ 1074 Posted at 11.54 AM ⇒ No Comments

An article in the NY Times Magazine makes a persuasive argument that television programs are intelligent and getting more so.

¶ 1075 Posted at 04.16 PM ⇒ No Comments ( tv )

There's little point in having a site search these days since you can just tell Google to restrict a search's scope to a single site. It's a little jarring for the user experience, though, since Google's results page will look completely different from the rest of your site. It'd be nice if Google allowed you to submit your own CSS link to be embedded in the results page. That way, "my" site search would look like the rest of my site, except of course with the appropriate credit due Google somewhere on the page.

¶ 1076 Posted at 12.22 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet )

Replacing the roof is going to hurt. A wide swath of Austin got hit by that Good Friday hailstorm and had severe roof damage. The insurance will pay for part of it, but the amount they pay is basically what it would cost for the intern at Bob's Discount Roof and Bakery to do it, minus the deductible. On top of the birth and delivery fees, the new refrigerator, and all the A/C and heating improvements last October, it's been an expensive year, and the stock market hasn't been kind to us lately. Oh well. We have Uma.

¶ 1080 Posted at 10.33 AM ⇒ No Comments ( house )

We have found the following to be very useful over the last few weeks/months:

• My Brest Friend nursing pillow.
• HEB (grocery) store brand diapers. They fit Uma better than the Huggies the hospital started us on.
• Kiddopotamus SwaddleMe infant wrap. It's a lot easier and more secure than with a receiving blanket.
• The Happiest Baby on the Block (book and/or DVD). We watched the video. It's not magic, but it still works really well to calm Uma when she's unhappy for no apparent reason. It's still helpful, though less so, when she's hungry or gassy or uncomfortable, but then, in those cases, we should be feeding, burping, or moving her as appropriate.
• The Baby Book by Sears and Sears. Comprehensive, well-researched, and sensible information and advice.
• Not a product, but a person: Lanell Coultas, our doula, who was invaluable for helping Jessica deliver and keeping me sane.
• Not a product, but a class/service: Bridget Brown's Bradley Method® class. The Bradley Method tends to look at modern birth and delivery practices negatively. That is understandable, but it's also off-putting to be brow-beaten. Bridget is a lot mellower and tolerant than (what I gather to be) the Bradley Method norm, so there was no issue with that. There was a lot of useful information and preparation in a relaxed, friendly environment. It helped also to be around other expecting, first-time parents, especially ones as likable as the ones in our class.

Even if you don't take this class, or any Bradley class, I highly recommend you take some sort of comprehensive class (or combination of classes) that teaches you about pregnancy, labor, delivery, and baby basics. I have no opinion on the quality of Lamaze, but it does not seem to be as comprehensive. Books and videos and talking to people you know will only go so far. This is not something for which you want to be un(der)-prepared. I hope this helps.

¶ 1083 Posted at 01.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us | consuming | babies )

I read "Mathematics and Sex" by Clio Cresswell because it sounded interesting. Some of the subjects discussed were why there are two sexes, how many members of a population to "sample" before choosing a mate, and the difficulties of match-making. It's interesting stuff. The problem is it's delivered in a chatty, vapid style that makes it a real pain in the ass to read, full of stupid, unfunny jokes and "witticisms." I know why it's like that, of course. The book checks in at a slim 192 pages. Without all the crappy filler, it would probably be about 60 pages, and you can't get $15.95 (SRP) for that. It's annoying enough that it makes it a waste of time, though, which is unfortunate. It makes me glad I don't pay for books anymore.

¶ 1085 Posted at 01.01 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

I'm not sure how relaxing a day at this beach might be.

¶ 1086 Posted at 05.42 PM ⇒ No Comments

If you haven't been reading Darth Vader's weblog, you really should. It's fantastic. Start at the beginning.

¶ 1087 Posted at 03.39 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

I found a more useful use for Blogger with PHP. The standard <BloggerArchives> tag prints out the archive links in ascending chronological order, i.e., oldest first. I'd rather have them in descending order, but I couldn't figure out if I could reverse the order with the standard Blogger tag. So I did this instead:

<?
    $archiveLinks = array(
        <BloggerArchives>
            "<$BlogArchiveURL$>" => "<$BlogArchiveName$>",
        </BloggerArchives>
    );
?>

<ul class="archive-list">
<ArchivePage><li><a href="<$BlogURL$>">Current Posts</a></li></ArchivePage>

<?
foreach (array_reverse($archiveLinks, true) as $link => $name)
{
    ?>
    <li><a href="<?= $link ?>"><?= $name ?></a></li>
    <?
}
?>
</ul>

And that's that.

¶ 1089 Posted at 10.10 AM ⇒ No Comments ( web | software )

Are you familiar with Go Fug Yourself's deliciously trashy celebrity fashion commentary? I especially like their treatment of J. Lo. Apparently, there are lots of d-list starlets in Hollywood who show up to events wearing crap.

¶ 1090 Posted at 09.24 AM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

IBM has joined Microsoft, Intel, and other large technology companies in claiming there will be a critical shortage of IT workers in the United States in the coming years. These companies bemoan the decreasing numbers of students interested in math and science. Is it any wonder? How many people has the tech industry laid off in the last 5 years? Employment is only now getting its legs under it and they're claiming the sky is falling.

I have a solution to their problems: pay more money and offer more job security. Do that and the rest will solve itself. Why haven't they done that? I think it's pretty obvious: they don't want to. The cynic in me says this is just laying the groundwork for increasing those H-1B allocations. Now, don't get me wrong; I think free trade is a fine idea. H-1Bs aren't free trade. H-1Bs are temporary. The workers come in, work for a few years, gain skills and experience, save their money, and leave. At the end of 5 years (or so), we end up with 5 years of work for the employer while 5 years of experience and a big chunk of money permanently leave the country. I think our government should encourage companies to give jobs to Americans. That can mean hiring someone who is an American today, or it can mean hiring someone from another country and turning them into an American. At the end of 5 years, the employer has gotten the 5 years of work at a somewhat higher up-front cost, but the 5 years of experience stay in the country and the money goes back into our economy. Immigrants will displace American workers when they arrive. That's inevitable. Over time, however, they contribute to our economy and we end up with a stronger economy than we would have had otherwise. The emphasis is over time. If those immigrants leave after 5 years, then we pay the up-front cost of displacing an American worker without reaping the long-term benefit of gaining an American.

The H-1B program was originally intended to allow companies to hire workers who had unique skills that could not be found domestically. My extra-rectal estimate is that there are about 1,000 people in the world who are that special. Obviously, with an H-1B population numbering in the hundreds of thousands, the imported workers are a little less unique than that. This is all work that many Americans could potentially do, assuming the market was allowed to operate the way it should. Temporary immigration is government intervention into the market that short-changes the labor side, and thus the citizens and permanent residents. Eventually, that will come back around by reducing the number of domestic customers, and thus retarding the growth of those same companies and the US economy as a whole. It's not like they can switch to another country, either. The United States consumer is currently (and irresponsibly, but that's another topic) driving the global economy. China and India are growing fast, but they are so large that it will take decades before the world economy is sufficiently diverse that the US couldn't drag it down. In other words, I'm against short-sightedness, not capitalism.

Bad enough that we lose a skilled potential American. What's worse is that our loss is another country's gain. I think free trade is a fine idea, and India and China and Eastern Europe need to develop sophisticated, domestic economies. We can encourage their success without shooting ourselves in the foot. In the long run, we prosper from their prosperity. I would prefer, however, that it happen by them gaining their own advantages rather than us giving away ours.

It's good politics in the United States to speak in favor of improving the educational system. Sending jobs overseas is bad politics, so US corporations want to appear as though they care about domestic fortunes. If American tech companies really believed what they say about a worker shortage, they would offer more money and more security. That they haven't indicates that they don't believe it after all. That is unfortunate, because they would reap dividends for decades if they invested in America.

¶ 1092 Posted at 02.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics | (un)employment )

If your job is delivering pizzas and you drive a (new) Ford F-150, gasoline isn't too expensive.

¶ 1094 Posted at 11.09 AM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I get mad at sites that gratuitously use Flash and only Flash. Musicians seem to be especially bad about it. At least one other person agrees with me and compiled a list of five mistakes band and label sites make. As a corollary to that, splash pages are stupid, especially ones that you have to click through every time you visit. Someone else followed up with a couple more. I think Franz Ferdinand's web site is basically unusable because it doesn't follow the rules.

¶ 1096 Posted at 12.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | music )

The Atlantic Monthly had an article in the June 2005 issue about How We Would Fight China. Newsweek had several articles asking "Does the Future Belong to China?" It is the conventional wisdom that China will be, if not an opponent, then an increasingly dominant counterweight to the United States in the coming decades. China's economy will likely exceed the United States economy in size around 2020, and where economic power leads, political and military power soon follow. In order to keep from being eclipsed, the United States needs to bulk up. In this kinder, gentler time, that means forming alliances and building strong partnerships. There is one country that could be a solid and valuable partner, and that is India.

The common ground between India and the United States is great. India is the world's largest democracy. India has a large English-speaking population and a strong Western influence through its colonial history. India is a polyglot of cultures and ethnicities like the United States. Both nations are deeply concerned about Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Cricket and baseball are both dumb games.

India and the United States also complement each other well. The United States has a very strong presence around both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, while India is growing increasingly dominant where we are weakest in the Indian Ocean (der). India has a large supply of inexpensive labor to supply the insatiable American consumer, while the United States has deep experience and knowledge in technology and business. India's billion people are a very large potential customer for American agriculture, and their burgeoning middle class is a logical consumer of American innovation.

International relations highlight the contrast between China and India. Taiwan is China's top national security priority, and we will butt heads with them over it for a long time to come. Pakistan is India's top national security priority, and their interests align closely with ours, especially once the Pakistan's inevitable Islamic Revolution occurs. We will inevitably disagree with China over Japan and the Korean peninsula, whereas there are no similar issues with India. India and the United States share a common interest in the stability of the Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean area, and Central Asia.

China can provide a lot for us in the short-term because of their sheer brute force, but in the long run, our relationship with them will be unstable. China has too great a need to be the dominant power in a region that we care deeply about, while India is both less aggressively assertive (excepting Pakistan, of course) and has a sphere of influence that overlaps less with our own. China's repressive government and semi-planned economy bear the potential for civil strife in the long run, while India's democracy, while fractious, is inherently more stable. We've expended a lot of energy trying to push the Chinese along in terms of human rights; India is already most of the way there.

A strong partnership is more than simply being friendly and having free trade agreements. We want them to be closer than close. The US-India relationship should be as close and strong as the relationship between the United States and Great Britain or Japan. We need to ease trade and travel and eliminate foolish restrictions on Indian students studying in the United States. We need to conduct more military exercises to build operational compatibility and mutual respect. We need to engage in more joint ventures such as peacekeeping. We need to support India's bid for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In other words, India and the United States can and should be BFF. The world is changing, and the United States will need close ties with reliable partners in order to maintain its position in the new century. India is a rising power with much in common with us and much to offer as a partner on the world stage.

¶ 1099 Posted at 12.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

If you print many digital photos, you'll find this examination of labs and printers over time to be useful.

¶ 1100 Posted at 12.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( interesting )

Fanimation has some really cool fans. The Enigma, Palisade, Palmetto, Torrento, Centaurus, Punkah, and Brewmaster are my favorites.

¶ 1102 Posted at 01.14 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house | cool )

Looking for a cheap way to learn how to do home improvement? Try Habitat for Humanity. You can make mistakes and have them corrected without your roof collapsing, and you're doing good at the same time.

¶ 1103 Posted at 01.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house )

Patience is soothing a baby to sleep at 4:30am. If you try to rush it, you will fail.

¶ 1104 Posted at 12.02 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us | babies )

Uma is 50 days old today. It feels like a lot longer. I don't mean that in a bad way. Time has just been stretched since she was born. There's a weird time warp in effect. The weekend before she was born seems more recent than the weekend after she was born. I could attribute at least part of that to being awake more hours in those 50 days than I might normally have been ;-). It's not just that, though. It's not just that life has slowed down. Maybe I'm wasting less time. Maybe I'm spending less time on mindless things that made time fly. Who knows. It's weird.

¶ 1107 Posted at 11.24 AM ⇒ No Comments ( us )

Scientists have discovered that switching a single gene in a female fruit fly will induce it to behave like a male, according to the International Herald Tribune. That seems to be a solid step down the path of establishing homosexuality as being a result of genetics. And that is not a good thing. I'm not saying it's a choice, either, nor that establishing it as a choice would be any better. Frankly, I don't care, and neither should anyone else. This is one of those damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't situations. If homosexuality is proven to have a genetic cause, then social conservatives will argue it is a genetic defect. If it is proven to be a choice, then they will argue it is a depraved and degenerate practice. They can find arguments condemning it if it's caused by non-genetic biological factors, by environmental factors, or by cosmic rays and Cher. Now, I'm not saying that we should pay attention to what social conservatives think. In fact, I say quite the opposite. Arguing about whether the cause makes it acceptable is still wrong and still lets them dictate the agenda. It implicitly acknowledges that one's sexuality needs to be justified to unaffected, uninvolved parties. I say that it doesn't matter one bit where homosexuality comes from except for academic reasons. What matters is that homosexuality hurts nobody 1 and is nobody's business. Root causes are irrelevant. It just is, and that should be good enough for everybody.

¶ 1109 Posted at 10.26 AM ⇒ No Comments ( science! | interesting | politics )

I just took another trip into China Miéville's twisted imagination in "Iron Council." Short summary: it's a step below "The Scar," which was itself a half step below "Perdido St. Station," but still a good book. I don't know where I found the time to read it (lots of late night reading). So, um, there you are. Man. I'm a sucky reviewer.

¶ 1110 Posted at 11.48 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

There's a controversy in Austin about toll roads. A bunch of people want them. A bunch of other people don't. The latter have bumper stickers condemning toll roads as "double taxation." They make me gag. Taxpayer-funded highway construction is a popular pork item, which effectively makes everybody pay for roads that only some people use. Toll roads are a good idea because people who use the roads pay for them in proportion to their usage, and people who don't use them shouldn't. The "double taxation" catchphrase is, well, catchy, but it's also stupid. If there was no toll on the road, everyone's taxes would go up to compensate, but I don't see anyone complaining that their taxes are too low because of the tolls. Similarly, if there was no tax money being used for highway construction, the tolls would be substantially higher, but I don't see "double taxation" opponents clamoring for higher tolls. They want their road usage to be subsidized by the general body of citizens; "double taxation" is just a smoke screen.

To digress briefly on toll roads... I suspect that one thing that deters people from using mass transit more is that they have to explicitly pay per use. Using roads costs money as well, but paying those costs is decoupled from any given use of it. If we had toll roads, on the other hand, you would explicitly pay per use, eliminating that perceived difference, and (hopefully) increasing the use of mass transit.

¶ 1112 Posted at 05.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | politics )

I just wrote my first Greasemonkey script. Greasemonkey is an extension for Mozilla and Firefox that allows you to attach arbitrary behavior to the web pages you load. I've installed scripts that make the NY Times front page links go straight to the single page articles, to disable annoying Intellitxt keyword ads, to eliminate links that force a new window, and other pet peeves. The script I wrote is for fixing the footnotes of the book Practical Common Lisp. The footnotes for each chapter were at the bottom of the HTML page, making it a pain to scroll down and back. My script will grab the footnote text from the bottom and make them hidden text elements that appear when I mouse over the footnote marker. For the work that went into it, it's of rather limited use, but far more important is that I know how to do this now. This isn't something you should attempt if you don't know how to write code, sadly. Greasemonkey makes it easier, but not easy. There is a project called Platypus that works with Greasemonkey to allow interactive clicky-clicky editing of a page, but I haven't used it so I don't know how well it works.

¶ 1113 Posted at 03.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( software )

The NY Times writes about the Heritage Foundation's internship program. Quote 1:

Mr. Lowry theorizes that young conservatives are especially interested in the ideas undergirding their politics...

Quote 2:

Among the perks of the summer program is a lunch series in which interns make their way through the conservative canon. "Being raised a Christian, with family values, I want to make sure I have a solid philosophical footing," said Mr. Hurff, 21, the Wake Forest senior.
Mr. Cribb, whose uncle, T. Kenneth Cribb Jr., was a Reagan aide and a Heritage fellow, said that the internship offered a chance "to study the fundamental ideas of conservatism."

Now, this article happens to be about the Heritage Foundation, but I don't mean to pick on a conservative group. My point applies no matter what your political beliefs are. The quotes I excerpted above basically say, "you get your beliefs first and justify them second." It's a perspective that says that what you believe has entirely to do with who pitched you first and how well, that politics are about salesmanship and the first-mover advantage, not about what ideas lead to better outcomes. The better outcomes are only useful insofar as they support the advancement of the belief you already hold.

That's a problem with people, not Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives, or whatever simplistic division of the world you would like to employ. To paraphrase the cliche, "most people use argument and reason the way a drunk uses a lamp post, not for illumination, but for support." That's the kind of discourse that leads to talking heads talking past each other with competing talking points, serving less as expert commentators than as cheerleaders for "their side."

This is a viewpoint that results in the means to an end become the end in and of itself, like affirmative action or low taxes. Too often, we discover our beliefs and ideas in our heads, and we don't think about how they got there. I am immediately skeptical of someone who believes the same things their parents believe. I am also skeptical of someone who believes the opposite of what their parents belief. Being a reactionary is no better than being a follower; both serve as substitutes for thought.

I am increasingly convinced that the core of the problem is that we as a species are struggling to cope in a world that is far more complex than the world we evolved for, and we just barely manage to get by. "Getting by," though, means simplifying, ignoring, and rationalizing a lot of the things we do and deal with. We just wouldn't be able to function otherwise. We certainly make incremental improvements, like abolishing slavery or granting universal suffrage. Most people don't realize that the line separating good from bad has been the same in every one of those battles, and so the cause of progress must fight the same battles in slightly different forms with each generation. Progress still happens, but it happens in random fits and starts, and without ever finally settling the deeper issues. Critical thinking skills are necessary, not just intelligence. Some of that can be taught 1 , but I despair that it can all be. To advance beyond this state of affairs requires that we as a species change. There is a place where idealism and pragmatism converge, but getting there may be beyond us.

¶ 1114 Posted at 04.58 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

I'm trying to change my posting style to be more appropriate to the format. I have over 30 drafts of lengthier posts in various stages of completion, some of which are a year old. I tend to think of this weblog as being like a book, where you present fully-formed thoughts, but it's not. If you present a half-baked idea in book, you're in trouble. Me, I can just say, "hey, that thing I said yesterday was dumb." That's not to say that baking things longer is a bad idea, just that I want to move the slider a little bit. I shouldn't assume that I need to fully develop an idea before publishing it. In some ways, that might be counter-productive. I figure it's more valuable to see the evolution of an idea than to be presented it as a fait accompli. It's kind of like showing your work in math class. The result is useful, but the process can be just as important.

¶ 1115 Posted at 01.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( web | ideas )

In February, several House Representatives introduced HJ 24, proposing an amendment to the Constitution repealing the 22nd amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. This is likely the sort of token gesture that often takes place in Congress, but it's a good idea. I agree with the general intent of term limits, but they are not optimal. Term limits are the ideal solution to a problem we don't have, of politicians serving in office for long periods of time. The real problem is that incumbents have an inherent advantage over prospective challengers. Term limits may rectify that, but at considerable cost to the freedom of voters to elect officials of their choosing. How many people would kill to have Bill Clinton back, warts and all? We should focus instead on measures that more directly reduce the powers of incumbents, such as financing of campaigns, franking privileges, stronger anti-corruptions laws and enforcement, and elimination of gerrymandering. Term limits are a hack, not a solution.

¶ 1116 Posted at 12.27 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The Justice Department is making quiet noises about requiring ISPs to log all customer Internet use. Web hits, chat logs, file transfers, etc. would be included in this. The destruction of privacy is obvious, and you don't have to think very hard to guess my opinion. More than being offensive, however, such a policy would just be stupid. Anybody with anything to hide (and lots of people without) would switch to using encryption, such as Trillian's SecureIM, PGP, tunneling over SSL, etc. It would be useless in catching criminals. Then there would be the terabytes and petabytes of storage required, which would likely bankrupt most ISPs. I doubt this would pass, because it would be too expensive and would accomplish nothing. Even if it was practical to save all that data, even if it wasn't a gross violation of the 4th amendment, and even if mobsters, child pornographers, terrorists, etc. used unencrypted channels (which they don't even today), the government wouldn't be able to analyze all of the data; it's just too much. This is just an attempt to avoid doing the real and hard work of criminal investigation while still appearing to be doing something. Technology cannot solve social problems. It can be used as a tool, but like all tools, its effectiveness is narrow, and it cannot replace a real solution.

¶ 1117 Posted at 02.06 PM ⇒ No Comments ( internet | politics )

You shouldn't buy a house because it's an investment. I've said it before; I'll say it again, this time with numbers (and a spreadsheet).

Let's say you make $60,000 a year and you're buying a house for $150,000. You put the (previously standard, now seemingly quaint) 20% down. You're a prudent person, so you get the 15-year mortgage, fixed at a superb 4.5% annual interest rate. Your annual mortgage payment works out to be just about $11,000. You accumulate about $7200/year in principal over the 10 year period (less at the beginning, more at the end, of course). Let's say you're in for a good 10 years.

So what is this going to cost you? You should expect to pay about 1%-3% of the value of your home per year in repairs, maintenance, and non-recoverable improvements. In the state of Texas, expect to pay 2.5% in property taxes, and 0.5% to 1% in insurance. When you sell your house, you'll have to pay about 10% in transaction fees, such as brokerage fees, repairs to bring the house up to new codes, appraisals, title insurance, etc. If you amortize that over the 10 years, it's another 1% per year (simplistically). You do get a tax break from the government, but only if you itemize. You'd get the standard $4750 standard deduction if you didn't, so you only really derive benefit from whatever you pay in interest and property taxes beyond the $4850 (since most people don't itemize if they don't own their homes). In this case, you're paying about $5000 in interest and $3750 in property taxes per year, or about $8750 total. Subtract the standard deduction, and you get a tax deduction of $3900. Multiplied by the marginal tax rate of 25% on $60,000, and that's worth $975 per year. Expressed as a percentage of the home's value, that's 0.65% on the positive side. So, adding together your regular maintenance (1%-3%), property taxes (2.5%), home insurance (0.5%-1%), transaction fees (1%), and (last, but definitely not least) your annual mortgage interest (4.5%), and substracting the value of the tax deduction (0.65%), you need your home to appreciate in value by 8.85% to 11.25% per year, just to break even on all the money you've put in after 10 years.

Of course, that's not quite fair, since you're going to be living in this house. Some of the money you save from not buying a house would have gone to rent instead; you have to live somewhere. A normal, healthy cost ratio between buying and renting is 12-18, which is consistent both conceptually and in practice with the price/earnings ratio of stocks. Let's pick 15 as our number. So your house, which has a market value of $150,000, could be rented for $10,000 per year (initially). Let's say that the property appreciates at a reasonable 4% a year, and so does the rent. Your initial annual costs of ownership work out to be $11,175 (mortgage) + $3750 (property taxes) + $1000 (insurance) + $1500 (amortized transaction fees) - $975 (tax reduction) = $16,275. Let's say you're a prudent renter and you put the $30,000 down payment you didn't spend and your annual savings for renting into an S&P 500 index fund. The historical average annual return on the S&P 500 is 7.5%. After 10 years, your accumulated stock equity will be ~$156,000. Your home equity will be $173,300, from which you must subtract the 10% transaction cost of selling, which leaves you with about $155,700, for a loss of about $300. That's better than I'd expected. It turns out that the incremental benefit of the tax deduction makes a substantial difference over time. There's also a weird period in years 5-9 where you'd be ahead; I don't fully understand that (maybe a bug?).

Now, does this mean you should buy a house? No. Does it mean you shouldn't? Again, no. Obviously not. This is just a financial calculation. There are intangible positives to owning a house, after all. Being the emotionless robot I am, I will allow only two of them. One is a degree of control over your dwelling you would not have as a tenant (in most cases). The other is that sometimes you just can't live in some properties without buying them. However, this should definitely tell you that you shouldn't expect to make or lose money on a house. It should not be viewed as being substantially better or worse than renting. Now, to be sure, buying a house only makes sense if you can derive substantial benefit from the tax deduction. If you're married, you have to use a standard deduction of $9700, which puts you squarely in the "loss" column. Ditto if you put less than 20% down, or if renting is cheap in your area. It's very complicated, so how about I stop blathering on about this and just give you the spreadsheet (Excel format)?

¶ 1118 Posted at 02.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house )

Seriously, download the spreadsheet. I have all the formulas and variables. You can enter your initial market value, mortgage duration, interest rate, down payment, marginal tax rate, standard deduction, the ratio of cost between buy and rent, property tax rate, rate of appreciation, insurance cost, maintenance cost, transaction (sale) cost, and expected return on alternate investments. It'll then tell you what your annual costs of renting and buying are, your expected tax credit, what you save per year, what your total home equity is, what your investment total is, and a couple of other things for every year up to the 35th year. It turns out I did the right thing for a single guy, but getting married ruined it ;-).

¶ 1119 Posted at 01.22 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house )

Life. Is. Good.

¶ 1120 Posted at 02.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

The Washington Post has an article you ought to read. On May 7, Susan Torres's previously benign and unknown melanoma in her spinal column began bleeding. 3 days later, she was brain dead. Today, Susan Torres is being kept alive by machines in the hospital even as the cancer spreads through her body, with her widower husband coming to watch her every day. Why have they kept this effectively dead woman alive? She is 24 weeks pregnant.

¶ 1121 Posted at 12.11 PM ⇒ No Comments ( whoa )

I got a kick out of this article. Apparently, there are multiple regional and national theft rings that specialize in medicines, personal care products, and baby formula, as those items have a high cost/size ratio, and are thus it is highly profitable to steal them. The government has found links between some of these groups and Middle East nations, though not all the way to terrorist organizations 1 . Breast feed! For America!

¶ 1125 Posted at 11.55 AM ⇒ No Comments ( funny | babies )

The general root of superstition is that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss, and commit to memory the one, and pass over the other. - Sir Francis Bacon

¶ 1126 Posted at 11.50 AM ⇒ No Comments ( quotes )

If Jessica hadn't quit her job, today would be her first day back under FMLA. Uma would have to be in day care. That's insane. We're not ready to leave Uma with strangers; we can barely leave her with family. With her current sleep schedule, I see her for a half hour in the morning and an hour at night. It's tolerable because I know she's with Jessica all day. We're lucky enough that I can support us on my salary alone. It's not an option that everybody has, but, if you do, I highly recommend it. It's not just for your kids, it's also for you.

I knew that having one of us stay home was a luxury, but watching the first episode of "30 Days" really slammed that home. "30 Days" is a show on FX by Morgan Spurlock, who brought us Super Size Me. The premise is that you see what it's like for someone to switch lives for a month. The first episode had Morgan and his fiancée Alex living on minimum wage. They let themselves start with their clothes and $200. No credit cards. No car. No insurance. No place to live. They had to live the month just on what they earned working low-opaying jobs. Morgan got a job at a temp agency, which sent him out to hang drywall, landscape, make pizzas, and more. Alex got to wash dishes and bus tables at a cafe. Along the way, they have to struggle with rent, deposits, unforeseen medical problems, and other challenges. They lived in a seedy part of town, in an apartment infested by ants. Alex walked in freezing weather to work, while Morgan spent hours waiting for and on the bus. It's agonizing to watch. I knew it was hard to live on minimum wage, but seeing it like that made it even harder, and that was as a 1-hour television program. I can't imagine what it must be like to live that way for real. I don't want to find out.

I have the luxury of a job that doesn't demand much of me physically. I don't have to sacrifice my health to eat. I have co-workers I like and respect in a positive environment. Jessica and I agree on money, and our choices are driven by what is practical, not by what is possible. She can stay home to take care of Uma, rather than us paying someone else to do it worse. My job provides us with pretty good health insurance. We can afford good cars to take us places, and we have lots of creature comforts. We don't have external forces pulling us apart. We're well-rested and healthy, so it's easier to be patient and understanding. We have a beautiful child who brings us joy. We get to see each other. We get to relax. All of these things make it possible to have a strong, healthy relationship.

I'd like to think that my appreciation for what I have will motivate me to do something to address the problem. I'd like to, but I know myself too well. I have a wife, a baby, and a house. I'm lazy and selfish. Maybe, at some point, I'll volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, but even wouldn't be completely altruistic. Nevertheless, there is value in not taking things for granted, in understanding that my family life rests on a bedrock of economic stability. Most people are worse off, economically, and that has an effect on their family lives. Poverty tugs at the ties that bind. If you believe in the importance of marriage, in the importance of people raising their own children, and of parents being active in their children's lives, then the best way to bring about the changes you seek is not by oppressing homosexuals, or condemning single mothers, or eliminating social safety nets. The best way to support family values is to fight poverty. Put it on a bumper sticker:

Support Family Values: Raise the minimum wage.

¶ 1128 Posted at 06.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us )

My skepticism toward eminent domain is related to my disapproval of the way that cities often pursue development projects. Austin, for instance, will woo big companies like Home Depot, Intel, and Samsung with tax breaks and various incentives to bring in jobs. I dislike such specificity. If you think that offering lower property taxes to Dell is a good thing, you should lower property taxes for everyone. Don't discriminate. Good development doesn't come from the city picking and choosing, but from the city embracing good policies. The government should set up a positive environment, from which positive results will naturally follow. In other words, they need to take a more hands-off approach and stop micro-managing. We should have zoning. We should have building codes, noise ordinances, environmental impact requirements, and other regulations. We shouldn't, however, offer one thing to one group and another thing (or nothing) to another group. Property must be purchased legitimately. If the owner doesn't want to sell, well, bummer. Try something else. Business should be taxed uniformly. If they don't want to come, either your overall tax structure is out of whack or attracting that employer would have cost more than it would have benefited. You shouldn't work outside the system by seizing parcels of land or granting special tax treatment. If you feel like that's the only option, you need to rethink your goals or your overall policy system, because that's where the problem is. Circumventing established policies to favor some residents over others is inherently unfair, subject to corruption, and leads to sub-optimal results. And don't even get me started on sports arenas.

¶ 1129 Posted at 12.40 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

If you're connecting two extension cords, tie the ends together before connecting the plug and socket. That way, they won't disconnect when you tug on them.

¶ 1132 Posted at 12.59 PM ⇒ No Comments ( tips )

The redevelopment of the former Austin airport continues. Last week, our fine local newspaper had an article about the search for homebuilders. The developer has released the design guidelines for homes in the project. Some of the guidelines include:

Houses must have front porches and rear-facing garages. Each block must contain at least four floor plan models, with no more than two houses having the same elevation. At least four lots must separate similar houses.

It sounds a little nit-picky, but given the suburban sprawl non-style of the last 60 years, that is welcome. The first phase will be for sale starting in mid-2007. Both the newspaper article and the design guidelines require registration, sadly, but I can send them to you if you want. I'm not going to post them here because the former is copyrighted and the latter is a 6MB PDF. I'm slowly reading the 166 pages of the latter document, and I'm getting increasingly excited, even though some genius decided to embed diagrams in it as blurry JPEGs.

¶ 1133 Posted at 10.45 AM ⇒ No Comments ( austin | house )

Today is the first anniversary of the best thing I ever did.

¶ 1134 Posted at 09.47 PM ⇒ No Comments ( us )

Will people please stop referring to George W. Bush as "our commander-in-chief?"

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States

Presumably, Congress has extended that to cover the Coast Guard and Air Force as well, but it certainly does not extend to civilians. If you are not a member of the military, he is not your commander-in-chief. Even if you are, he's not in command of anything except your military duties.

¶ 1135 Posted at 10.25 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people )

It sure is a bummer that reporter Judith Miller is in jail for not revealing a confidential source to a prosecutor. I'm finding it hard to swallow the principle she is standing for, however. The argument is that journalists need to be able to guarantee secrecy to sources in order to provide the public with important information. The problem is that it divides people into two groups, journalists and everyone else.

There are relationships that the law respects when it comes to compelling testimony. Conversations between attorney and client, spouses, or between clergy and laity are granted confidentiality under the law. That's easy to understand because those are easily defined relationships. Furthermore, these are limited relationships. A lawyer cannot argue that every conversation she has with anyone is protected, nor can a priest make a similar claim. I only have one wife.

A journalist, on the other hand, has neither a well-defined status nor a clear relationship with their source. Many journalists have professional credentials, but those credentials are not and should not be recognized in law. As such, any individual could claim to be a journalist if they have ever published an article, a family newsletter, or a personal weblog. Nor is there an objective standard for what is news worth reporting, so a journalist could argue that every single statement they hear constitutes a potential story and is thus subject to protection. Allowing such a privilege, then, eviscerates the ability of prosecutors to compel testimony from anyone. Legislatures and judges can devise finer standards, but they'd be drawing lines in a murky grey zone. Even worse, they would be creating two classes of citizens with different rights 1 , which should be offensive to everyone.

I have no solution for this conundrum. I think the prosecutor's pursuit of Judith Miller is over-zealous and misguided prosecution. It distracts from the real issues, namely whether Karl Rove committed a criminal act 2 , to what extent George W. Bush had knowledge (both before and after) of this act, and what he ought to do about it. Even that is merely a sideshow to the biggest issue of all, which is to what extent the Bush administration misled the public (either intentionally or through negligence) about Iraq. Judith Miller's situation is unfortunate, but it is not the threat to freedom and democracy that the New York Times would have you believe.

¶ 1137 Posted at 02.46 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

An actual note written by a Continental Airlines passenger sitting in seat 29E.

¶ 1138 Posted at 04.07 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

I've been reading Joel on Software for a few years now. I've found his writing on both the business and technical aspects of software development to be insightful and informative. His most recent essay takes the cake for his most brilliant idea yet:

... duplication of software is free. That means that the cost of programmers is spread out over all the copies of the software you sell. With software, you can improve quality without adding to the incremental cost of each unit sold. Essentially, design adds value faster than it adds cost.

Emphasis his. Maybe I just like that because it massages my ego (assuming I'm as good as I think I am). It also makes sense, though. It dovetails nicely with that essay I've been writing for 2 or so years on why India isn't going to eat our lunch in software.

¶ 1139 Posted at 01.52 PM ⇒ No Comments ( software )

Rick Santorum was on "The Daily Show" last night. He clearly believes certain things very strongly. My feeling is, ok, whatever. However, he wants to legislate certain things that I just fundamentally disagree with. That provokes a different reaction. Santorum isn't arguing about what color to paint the bike shed, he's arguing about how people live their lives. One thing that separates him from other social conservatives, though, is that he says "you should do this because it leads to better results," rather than "you should do this." To me, that's a big difference. It allows me to say in response, "measure it." You believe very strongly that certain behaviors are bad and lead to bad things. Go out there and prove it. It's not enough to make a logical, qualitative argument; you can make sound, persuasive arguments based just on reason that contradict each other. Public policy needs more. It needs data. Gather some data and prove a causal effect, and then we can talk. Until then, it's just a theory, and people's lives are too important to meddle with based on just theories.

¶ 1141 Posted at 09.34 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Uma Puma's got a new look. Check it out. It's hott.

¶ 1142 Posted at 05.04 PM ⇒ No Comments ( fyi )

Every now and then, I have nothing to say.

¶ 1143 Posted at 09.35 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

The state of Oregon is concerned about losing gasoline tax revenues due to efficient automobiles and is investigating a tax on miles driven. What a monumentally stupid idea, especially since it solves a problem that is thus far only hypothetical in nature. Why would you want to discourage efficiency? Did it occur to these people that they could make up the lost revenues by increasing the existing gasoline tax?

The broader issue is what it indicates about the nature of specific taxation. Once you tax a specific thing, you become dependent on taxing that specific thing, so you make bad decisions. Sin taxes are an excellent example. Ignore that the government shouldn't be telling you what to do like that. Suppose your state taxes cigarettes heavily. At some point, it becomes in their best interest to encourage smoking. The dependency on that revenue stream warps their thinking. That's part of why I believe that all consumption taxes should be the same 1 .

Distinguishing between different kinds of consumption based on external considerations just creates artificial incentives and disincentives, artificially distorting what people would naturally do, and creating an overall inefficiency. In other words, calling some things "good" and other things "bad" is usually subjective. You don't want to tax bad things, because then you're motivated to encourage them, and you don't want to tax good things, because then you discourage them. Then there are the grey areas; something might be somewhat good, but giving it preferential treatment makes it cost more than the benefit derived. The easiest and best thing to do is to just tax everything equally, except where there is provable harm, in which case you tax only as much as it costs to remedy that harm. Anything else is unnecessary, oppressive, and inefficient.

¶ 1146 Posted at 06.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | issues )

A Cornell University researcher has found support for the notion that men whose masculinity is threatened are more homophobic, prefer SUVs, and support the Iraq war in comparison to men whose masculinity has not been threatened. It's easy to read a lot more into those results, which I leave as an exercise for the reader. I myself feel little need to display symbols of masculinity because I have done the most essentially manly deed of all: I have fathered a child. All that other stuff is empty chest-puffing. Also, I have an enormous ego.

¶ 1147 Posted at 10.45 PM ⇒ No Comments ( neat )

A group of scientists has written in Nature about the possbility of reintroducing mega-fauna to North America. Animals like lions, elephants, and wild horses were wiped out by the climate change of the late Pleistocene 13,000 years ago. Introducing such animals to the middle of North America would give these endangered species a home in a relatively stable and uninhabited area, helping to keep the species alive even as their original homes in Asia and Africa continue to be threatened. It's a crazy, grand idea.

¶ 1148 Posted at 12.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( cool )

It would be nice if more news articles (including opinion columns) stated their sources. There are obvious reasons for that. The less obvious reason I want to see such references is because in so many cases a story or allegation has only one or two sources, but the echo chamber of partisan media makes it seem like there are a lot more.

¶ 1149 Posted at 01.21 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

The death of Cindy Sheehan's son was a tragedy, and the war surrounding his death an even greater one. The Bush administration has done a poor job of appearing to value the lives lost in the war, with a degree of oblivious heavy-handedness that makes it appear as though Bush has little concern for the soldiers who have died. However, Cindy Sheehan's protest is also a stunt, and her demand being met would merely suggest that stunts like that work. The President of the United States should not have his agenda dictated by a single individual who devises a clever plan to attract attention to her cause. His agenda should be dictated by the will of the American people, however, and it's increasingly clear that a gap has grown between the two. The Bush administration can and should do more for the families of the dead and wounded. They should cease the foolish rhetoric about "making their sacrifice mean something." They should recognize and acknowledge the mistakes of the war. They should do all that and more because it's the right thing to do, not because of Cindy Sheehan.

¶ 1150 Posted at 12.18 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

This NY Times article on new fuel efficiency standards combines two of my hot-button issues: excessively selective government policies and gasoline taxes. By dividing fuel efficiency categories into "passenger cars" and "light trucks," the government encourages manufacturers to attempt to game the system. For example, according to the article, Subaru made minor design modifications to the Outback model in order to move it into the "light truck" category with its attendant, lower efficiency standards. You can't blame Subaru, as they are merely doing what is in their best interest, as the system rewards that type of behavior. The problem could be avoided entirely just by taxing gasoline at a higher rate. The costs and benefits are simple and clear; the alignment between cost and benefit couldn't be closer. Customers, and thus manufacturers, would immediately place a higher value on fuel efficiency. There would be no use for a complicated regulatory system that didn't achieve its goals anyway. It would just work. This isn't going to happen anytime soon, though, because (some) people like having systems with loopholes and benefit from costs being inappropriately externalized, internalized, shuffled, transformed, and otherwise distorted. Some people benefit, but the rest of us lose.

¶ 1151 Posted at 02.56 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

I consider it a delicious irony that so many conservatives so vocally oppose biological Darwinism while at the same time strongly supporting public policies that advances social Darwinism. It is especially ironic given how much more emphatically their Bible opposes the latter compared to the former.

¶ 1153 Posted at 10.11 AM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

I've gotten hooked on the Daily WTF, a weblog that posts examples of crimes against software.

¶ 1157 Posted at 11.45 AM ⇒ No Comments ( programming )

I don't welcome the surge in gasoline prices due to Hurricane Katrina's devastation of Louisiana and Mississippi. I think it's the right thing for the federal government to do to lend oil from the strategic reserve. I even think it's ok to temporarily lower the gasoline tax. I want gasoline prices to rise, but not this suddenly; a gradual rise will be good for our economy, but sudden shocks are bad. The important thing is to realize why this happened in the first place. When you:

1. Allow your economy to be heavily dependent on a single commodity
2. That is predominantly found in an unstable region of the world
3. Where you have started a war
4. While the world's two largest nations have gotten their economic act together and are hungry for energy
5. And your own citizens are profligate wasters

You have very little room for error. The system becomes fragile, where a single disaster can have excessive effects. Our dependency on oil has been a constant gamble, and the odds are getting slimmer and slimmer. Without a real policy change ("more" is not a policy), this sort of thing will only happen more frequently.

¶ 1158 Posted at 11.31 AM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

Officials have known for decades that New Orleans was vulnerable to hurricanes and flooding. Just last year, FEMA hired a private company, IEM Inc. of Baton Rouge, to help conduct an eight-day drill for a fictional Category 5 hurricane in New Orleans named Pam. It included staging a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, a prediction of 15 feet of water in parts of the city and the evacuation of 1-million people. But the second part of the company's work - to design a plan to fix unresolved problems, such as evacuating sick and injured people and housing thousands of stranded residents - never occurred because the funding was cut.

Source: St. Petersburg Times.

¶ 1159 Posted at 08.23 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news )

I cringe whenever someone mocks Bush's occasional mispronounciations and malapropisms. I similarly cringe when someone points out his poor record in business, mentions his troubles with alcohol, or asserts that he only got where he was based on his family. All of those things may be true, but they are also irrelevant. What matters is what Bush does, and those things should be evaluated independently. A bad idea from Bush is a bad idea. A good idea from Bush is a good idea, period. Making it personal simply distracts from the actual issues and turns politics into high school.

There is plenty to oppose in what Bush does without focusing on Bush the person. Making it personal (regardless of whether you support or oppose his policies) is illogical, as you don't and can't know Bush as a person. I have no reliable information whatsoever on Bush the person. Everything I have seen and heard has been passed through multiple channels that select, emphasize, decontextualize, interpret, and otherwise distort what might be a clear picture. Furthermore, I rarely see people I know personally making speeches, conducting town hall meetings, visiting disaster areas, or getting interviewed on prime time television. Those are all unnatural and rare occasions for a person to be in, so I cannot rely on them to give me a picture of what that person is like under more ordinary circumstances. Bush as a person is irrelevant; all that matters is Bush the President. After all, Bill Clinton had many flaws as a person, but as a President, he did a pretty decent job.

Beyond being useless, focusing on Bush the person also makes you look bad. If you're a Bush supporter, you look foolish when you say you support him because of perceived personality traits. If you're a Bush detractor, you look even more foolish when you pick on minor, personal foibles because you sound petty and mean. In both cases, you look like an immature, empty-headed dolt who is easily lead by the nose and doesn't think for himself. It makes you sound unreasonable and petulant. It's especially galling when someone will pick out a mispronunciation when Bush announces that Exxon/Mobil is going to club baby seals to fuel SUVs. Who cares how he said it, what matters is that he's trying to do a bad thing. Get some perspective. The only way we're going to accomplish anything lasting is by convincing people who currently disagree with us on various that our way is superior, or by letting them convince us that their way is superior. To do that, you have to be sober, open-minded, and reasonable, else they will write you off as irrational and not worth talking to, and I'd be hard-pressed to say they were wrong.

Speaking of being convinced that other people's ways are superior... I have also become increasingly convinced that Roberts will be a good justice. This is not because I agree with his politics, but rather, because I believe he will leave his politics outside the court room. I have come around to a more strict interpretation of the role of the judiciary and the Constitution. It has nothing to do with being against abortion, the rights of accused criminals, separation of church and state, gun control, or battered women. While I may agree with the results, the process used to achieve those results is faulty.

The federal courts have read concepts into the Constitution that simply aren't there. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you govern with the Constitution you have, not the Constitution you want. If you don't like the law, your choices are to live with it or to advocate change. Our Constitution has a mechanism for change in the legislative and amendment processes, and it does not involve the judiciary.

I believe that there is a fundamental right to privacy, but the Constitution only partly acknowledges that in the Fourth Amendment. I believe that there is substantial public interest in making it harder to acquire and distribute guns, but the Second Amendment is the law of the land. I believe the Ten Commandments have no place in the Texas State Capitol, but their simple presence does not violate the First Amendment's prohibition against Congress establishing a religion. I believe endangered species should be protected, but "interstate commerce" has nothing to do with a hapless toad. There is what is, and there is what I want to be, and I cannot resort to an abuse of power to make what I want come to pass. Taking shortcuts may seem to achieve something in the short term, but in the long run, it weakens our system of government and creates divides between our citizens. The ends do not justify the means.

¶ 1161 Posted at 12.57 PM ⇒ No Comments ( politics )

Uma's been sleeping through the night lately, while I've been waking up and staring at the ceiling.

¶ 1162 Posted at 10.11 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | funny )

Man, I code like a maniac when I listen to psytrance. John '00' Fleming is the new favorite. That man is mean. You probably have to have a sadistic streak to be a psytrance/hard trance DJ. The beat is so insistent and relentless. You have to build up a tolerance to psytrance because it's so unrelenting. You start at the clubby, radio-friendly dance music, and over the years, slowly strip away the vocals, tighten the beat, and speed it up. I used to listen to other kinds of music. Now, I only listen to music when I'm working (or goofing off). Trance is ideal for that. It's fast, but not too fast. It's repetitive, but not too repetitive. And you can get it in continuously mixed slabs an hour long or more, so there are no jarring transitions, just hours and hours of digital perfection.

¶ 1164 Posted at 02.17 PM ⇒ No Comments ( music )

Reading the media reports of preparations along the Texas coast, you would think that this wasn't some massive suckfest. Turns out you'd be wrong. Yes, they've ordered evacuations, but that smells like an ass-covering move more than anything else. It's not like people can actually leave. Here's a data point. A family friend lives in downtown Houston. She decided to do the prudent thing and bail out. As of 6:30am, she had gone 12 miles west. She left last night at 8pm. Hearing that, my sister has decided to stay put for the time being until they open up both parts of the highways for outgoing traffic and the logjam clears some. You don't want to run out of gas from idling for 10 hours. It's a good thing Houston is not a) below sea level 2) along the largest river in N. America iii) next to a large lake. And this isn't the first time in recent years that Houston has dealt with this, so hopefully they'll be less susceptible.

Please hold for a political message.... This illustrates how utterly inefficient cars are for transportation. Buses and trains would be far more effective in times like these, but our society is car-centric. Scratch that, at least in Texas. Not car-centric. I'm sure the problem would be less severe of the Suburban:Civic ratio was lower. Traffic jams are non-linear; every little bit helps when trying to avoid a breakdown.

¶ 1166 Posted at 10.29 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news )

I stopped to get gas on the way home yesterday. Our regular station was all out of everything. Luckily, there was another station nearby that still had mid-grade (no economy, though). It was weird. I want this country off its gas addiction, but cold turkey won't work. Still, I hope the two hurricanes will cause sufficient fear and cost increases to lead to permanent demand destruction. It's surreal to think that just 2 and a half hours away, the fourth-largest city in the United States is becoming a ghost town because of a massive hurricane. Yesterday was a warm, sunny, pleasant day. Not a cloud in the sky.

¶ 1167 Posted at 05.59 AM ⇒ No Comments ( news )

I can name at least thirteen couples I know who had babies between January and June (not counting ourselves). That's a lot of procreation.

¶ 1168 Posted at 12.29 PM ⇒ No Comments ( whoa | babies )

A recent study described in the NY Times suggests that people are bad at remembering which claims were true and which were false after being presented with health information. They'll remember that a particular statement was made, like "aspirin destroys tooth enamel," but they won't remember whether that was the fact or the fiction. We seem to regard familiar claims as being true, even if our familiarity stems from being told they are not true. The study was limited to health information, but it seems to me that would explain the continuing belief of many Americans that Iraq had something to do with September 11th (if you wanted to grossly misapply scientific research).

¶ 1170 Posted at 02.26 PM ⇒ No Comments ( interesting )

On the way to work today, I saw a blue Mazda RX-8 with the license plate BLU RX-8. On the way home, I saw a blue BMW M3 with the license plate BLAU M3. Also, I had meant to mention this previously... that Jaguar I saw with the POOP license plate works in the same building as I do. Well, its owner does...

¶ 1172 Posted at 09.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( other )

Released today are Fiona Apple's "Extraordinary Machine" and Franz Ferdinand's "You Could Have It So Much Better." In three weeks, Civilization IV comes out. Not sure how I'll find the time to play that, though.

¶ 1173 Posted at 01.47 PM ⇒ No Comments ( music | software )

I finished my first 5-star Sudoku today. Granted, it was yesterday's, but still... 5-star games are the hardest ones that the local paper will run. I have to play that because Jessica got tired of me ruining her crossword, and she needs something to stimulate her mind during the day. The Jumble we do online, of course. I think I've figured out the trick, or at least some of them. I'm thinking that one of my first Lisp programs will be writing a Sudoku solver.

¶ 1174 Posted at 11.30 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

It may surprise you to know that I'm not a very good programmer 1 I can't keep track of many things at a time. I have trouble multi-tasking. I don't have a very good memory, neither short-term nor long. I am lazy. I have little tolerance for repetitive tasks. Certain simple things can occasionally baffle me. My understanding of the intricacies of some computing concepts is not what it could be. In other words, I'm never going to be the guy who figures out how to prune 6 cycles from malloc on Athlon64s by using a vector add instead of a scalar multiply.

It turns out that these handicaps are not so crippling after all. They've made me into a maniac for simplicity, clarity, and elegance. I make my methods and functions simple and contained, so that they do exactly one thing. That makes it easier to keep track of the moving parts and easier to pick up where I left off. I give all of the entities verbose, descriptive names, because I'm not going to remember what they're for otherwise 2 . I try to stick to the "don't repeat yourself" principle because that means I don't have to deal with tedium. Those things are all valuable no matter how good a programmer you are, but many programmers are never forced to learn them because they never work on projects that exceed their natural abilities. Since my natural abilities are meager, most meaningful projects challenge my abilities. To make a (possibly poor) analogy, no matter how tall you are, at some point you'll be in over your head. Then it's a good time to know how to swim. Once you know how to swim, you may realize that swimming is useful even when your head is above water.

It can be even worse, though. The earlier you are forced to learn something, the better you internalize it. The longer you go without getting prodded into learning it, the harder it will be for you to learn it. Indeed, the harder it will be for you to realize that there even is something there to be learned. Many programmers never learn these things because there are a lot of ways to badly write a program that still technically works 3 .

To take the tall metaphor in a different direction... Suppose you're a 7' high school senior. You dominate the basketball court. Once you're in college, though, things are different. You can't really shoot. Your ball-handling skills aren't all that. Your physical fitness is sub-par. Compare that to the 6' point guard you overpowered in high school; he's had to lean all of those things to compete with you. The kicker is, he's going to get better and better, but you're as tall as you're going to get. Not only that, since you've gone so long without developing those skills, you don't even know where to start to learn them.

As it so happens, a lot of applications programming isn't fundamentally hard stuff when you get down to the nuts and bolts. Theoretical computer science and half a century of experience have done a pretty good job of figuring out what can is possible and practical. Most of us just aren't trying to go to the moon anymore 4 . As a result, it's not too hard to figure out some way to solve a problem. That issue has receded in importance. Even performance isn't the be-all end-all that it used to be in many cases 5 . What matters far more is choosing the appropriate solution, and implementing it simply, elegantly, and clearly 6 . What's aesthetically pleasing often has more tangible benefits.

As a result, I've gained a substantial amount of confidence in my ability to develop software. Being a really good programming in the small has diminishing value over time as compilers get smarter, institutional and industry knowledge matures, and computational resources continue to grow. I've developed a good nose for bad code. I might not be great at finding and fixing bugs, but having a good feel for the design aspects makes it less likely that I will create bugs in the first place. My code may have lots of little bugs, but its bones will be strong.

¶ 1176 Posted at 03.05 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me | software )

I've seen the trailer for the upcoming Johnny Cash bio-pic a few times now. I'm usually highly skeptical of trailers, figuring that they represent the movie inaccurately 1 . I don't even know anything about Johnny Cash. I just like the idea of listening to his music, so I downloaded some to check it out. There's something in the popular gestalt about Johnny Cash. Everybody likes him, but not in a Raymond sort of way. It's more like "now there was a man, and he sure could make music."

¶ 1177 Posted at 11.02 AM ⇒ No Comments ( music | movies )

Ok, this time the stupid is me. I was holding Uma overhead sitting in the office, occasionally swooping down on Jessica in her own chair. At some point, I swooped a little too far and the chair tipped over. Down came Humpty. I banged my head on the desk, my leg on something, and landed with all my weight on my hip on the arm rest of the chair. Ouch. But! What saves this from being (merely) an embarassing tale of my own clumsiness is that I held Uma aloft the whole time. She never came near to getting hurt. I could have used my arms to arrest my fall, but they were holding my baby girl.

¶ 1178 Posted at 08.36 AM ⇒ No Comments ( stupid people | me )

Put Jessica in black and send Uma to the orphanarium, because Mr. Daddy is gone. Yesterday, I got my fancy schmancy MSI GeForce 6600GT and today I got Civilization IV. Please send them your condolences.

¶ 1179 Posted at 10.27 AM ⇒ No Comments ( hooray )

I'm sorry.

¶ 1180 Posted at 04.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( issues )

As seen on the bumper of a Prius last night: "If you voted for Bush, a yellow ribbon isn't going to make up for it."

¶ 1181 Posted at 05.30 PM ⇒ No Comments ( funny )

I'm tempted, in the very distant future, when I am applying for a job, to send in my resume hard-copy on the reverse side ofa head shot.

¶ 1182 Posted at 09.39 PM ⇒ No Comments ( (un)employment )

Ugh. Something slammed into me last night and I now have this unpleasant sore throat and general cold-like sickness. Normally, I'd just suck it up and wait it out, but I'm freaked out now that I'll pass it on to Uma. That would be very bad. I need to go find me a bubble.

¶ 1183 Posted at 08.33 AM ⇒ No Comments ( me )

Over the long weekend, I read "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" by J.K. Rowling, "Secrets from an Inventor's Notebook" by Maurice Kanbar, and "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," also by J.K. Rowling. Back in July or so, I also read "The Know-It-All" by A.J. Jacobs and reread "The Practice of Programming" by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike. I'm not reading nearly as much as I used to. That's not because I lacked the time, but just because. I'm going to try to fix that, because I like the bookses.

¶ 1184 Posted at 10.07 AM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

It seems that owners of short buildings in Manhattan (and elsewhere) can sell the "rights" to the space above them. Those rights can then be transferred to another location to allow a developer to construct a building taller than what would normally be allowed by the zoning there. This article describes how a pair of developers bought the "air rights" to a church and a club for a cool $37 million. That's nutso.

¶ 1185 Posted at 03.20 PM ⇒ No Comments ( weird )

The Sierra Club has published a report on America's best new development projects. They picked a dozen or so development projects of various sizes from around the country that they thought would be well-planned, livable, and, yes, ecologically friendly communities. It's nice to see that it's not just about throwing stones. I hope to see Austin's Robert Mueller development in such a list in a few years (as well as us in it). There's a lot that the highlighted communities and the Mueller project have in common, and it all sounds good to me.

¶ 1186 Posted at 04.24 PM ⇒ No Comments ( cool )

If you anticipate that you may have a baby in your next house, I suggest you look for a few things:

• The master bedroom and the baby's bedroom should be close together. Ours are on opposite sides of the house, which has some advantages, but is overall a minus. If one or both parents are light sleepers, you might not want them too close.
• There should be a full bathroom pretty close to the baby's room. Ideally, it would be immediately adjacent, perhaps separating the master bedroom from the baby bedroom. This is handy for baths and cleaning up after diapers.
• There should be a second full bathroom elsewhere in the house in case your baby is a light sleeper.
• The baby's room should be away from the living room, kitchen, and other noisy parts of the house.
• The master bedroom should be large enough that you can fit a bassinet comfortably. It's likely that you will want the baby in there at least to start.
• Following the above, make sure your master bathroom has a door between it and the master bedroom. Ours does not, which made things kind of stressful for the first few months when Uma was in with us.
• Make sure that the baby's room is big enough for a crib, a dresser, a rocking chair, a changing table, and a twin bed.
• If you have rambunctious pets, you'll want to be able to close off part of the house so they can't disturb the baby. Dogs scratching themselves at night can be surprisingly loud, especially with metal tags (which I suggest taping together anyway).
• See how comfortable the baby's room is with the door closed and the AC and heat on. Uma's room is small, and we have forced air heat, which makes it alternately hot and stuffy or cold and dry with the door closed, especially since there's no thermostat. As a result, we leave her door open at night. That works well, but it means she's not isolated from noise, and we have to keep the dogs out of that part of the house. Radiators and radiant floor heating are apparently much better for this.
• If you're doing cloth diapers and washing them yourself, you'll want the washing machine to be close to the baby's room so you don't have to lug so much stuff back and forth. Even if you're not washing your own cloth diapers, you're still going to be doing a lot of laundry. It may be worth it to pay extra for energy efficient appliances, including a front-loading washer, assuming you have to buy new ones. It's not worth it if you already have inefficient ones. And, of course, having a laundry room inside the house is better than having to go out to the garage. That's true without a baby, but you're going to be doing a lot of laundry.
• Wood flooring is your friend. Tile is hard and not appropriate for many rooms, while carpet gets dirty easily and is a pain to clean. Your baby will be spending a lot of time on the floor. Laminate flooring should be fine, also.

It may sound like we're a little excessive with keeping things quiet. We're slowly getting more cavalier with making noise, as she is getting better about sleeping through noise and falling back asleep if she wakes up. However, if you have problems with your child's sleep, you will be desperate to avoid anything that might disturb her.

¶ 1187 Posted at 02.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( house | tips | babies )

We got tubular skylights installed in our living room last week. They bring in a lot of light, but it has a distinctly blue tint. We knew we would want to paint the living after we got the skylights in, but the blueness of the light certainly emphasized its importance. Saturday evening, I stopped by the local Home Depot to look at some paint samples. I went in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals, as the temperatures that day were in the 80s (just so you know why I live in Texas). I grabbed swatches of orangey yellows and headed back out. As I neared my car, I saw a sight that filled me with joy at the power of human ingenuity: Home Depot had covered the dividers in the parking lot with plastic strips advertising their credit card. I don't know what brilliant person thought of that one, but they have my admiration.

¶ 1188 Posted at 05.15 PM ⇒ No Comments ( genius | austin | house )

Apple has added (the new) Battlestar Galactica to the iTunes Music [sic] Store. According to Ars Technica, they are offering the entirety of the show's run thus far, including the mini-series (in 4 parts), the first season, and all of the second season that has been broadcast thus far. I think ad-supported media is a bad idea, so I'm happy to see the apparent success of a simpler, fairer business model for television programs.

¶ 1190 Posted at 11.41 AM ⇒ No Comments ( tv | cool )

I zipped through "Knife of Dreams," book eleven of "The Wheel of Time." There's not a whole lot good to say beyond that it was more interesting than the previous few. I'm just reading them to get to the end, at this point. The series started well, but around book 7, the train started going off the rails. He pulled in more and more characters, spinning out more and more plot threads. It became a real pain to remember what was going on, especially when years passed between volumes. Time slowed down to almost the pace of a daytime soap opera, with pages and pages and pages of nothing. He's said that the next book will be the last, which says to me that even he has gotten sick of it and is going to wrap it up as quickly as possible. Books 7-10 could have been compressed into 2 books, leaving room for the 3 books from now on that I feel he needs to finish the story well, while still stopping at a dozen.

Now, Robert Jordan has been really good at several critical elements of a fantasy epic. He has a rich backstory and a well-fleshed out pantheon of heroes and villains. He's also introduced several clever innovations. The magic in the Wheel of Time is pretty well-described on a mechanical level, to the point that referring to it as "magic" doesn't feel right. He's also come up with a novel and effective way to justify the improbably convenient (or inconvenient) things that happen to main characters, folding that into an mechanism for prophecies and reincarnation of archetypal heroes. He has an active and creative imagination for nations and peoples and cultures. Regressing to mediocrity even with those advantages makes it especially frustrating that he so thoroughly dropped the ball when it came to good old-fashioned story-telling.

Sometimes it's worse when someone misses by inches instead of miles. Maybe someday, someone can work with the raw materials Jordan conceived and rewrite "The Wheel of Time" "the way it should have been." US Copyright laws won't allow that to happen without his blessing, however, which seems unlikely. It's unfortunate because it started off so well. Oh well. There's lots of good stuff to read. I'd like to see someone break the unwritten rules of epic fantasy. Robert Jordan innovated in several ways, but he still worked within the same constraints. Contrast him with China Miéville. The incomplete list of rules that I have compiled thus far is:

• The setting is Europe-ish, more specifically, like England. That means the action takes place north of the equator in a temperate region. The people are white, and the names generally Anglo-Saxon (-ish). I realize this is at least partly due to trying to appeal to the audience, but it's still lame.
• Also pertaining to setting, the time period is generally medieval. We're talking castles, knights, and longbows. In a lot of ways, that makes sense. The world was still relatively unknown, with natural and artificial barriers to the spread of knowledge permitting a great deal of mystery. Furthermore, one can argue that the medieval era ended with the introduction of three technologies: gunpowder, the printing press, and the steam engine. The first and last make it harder to sustain the romantic, individualist heroism common to epic fantasy, while the printing press works to banish mystery by making knowledge much more freely accessed and disseminated.
• Supernatural abilities are restricted to a small subset of the population.
• Our heroes are pretty darned good at a surprising number of things, though they all have a gentle dusting of warts.
• Good people are always good. Bad people are always bad.
• Good families always spawn good people. Bad families always spawn bad people.
• Gay people don't exist.
• Humanity is the dominant race.

That's my list so far. I'm sure there are more.

¶ 1191 Posted at 02.37 PM ⇒ No Comments ( books )

Someone has been decorating trees on the highway. I drive to work on Austin's Loop 360, which meanders through the western side of town. For the last couple of years, someone has been decorating some trees at an undeveloped section along the road 1 . I don't know the name of the tree species, but it's a bushy sort of thing, about the size of a more traditional Christmas tree, with kind of a pointy candle flame shape. Anyway. The last few years saw a few trees getting decorated, mainly with tinsel and shiny garlandy stuff. This time, though, things got out of control. There are something like 35 trees decorated there for you to see as you zoom by at 60 mph. Either the mystery decorator was really feeling his/her oats this year, or there are copy cats. It's an odd thing. I like seeing them and wondering, which I guess is the point.

¶ 1193 Posted at 01.13 PM ⇒ No Comments ( austin )

Part of our nascent set of family traditions are Mexican Tea Cakes at Christmas. They're easy and yummy. That recipe makes 48 tablespoon-sized cookies, which will disappear really fast. I'm making a double recipe tonight.

¶ 1194 Posted at 11.29 AM ⇒ No Comments ( food )

Try this out:

• Two slices good bread. Whole Foods Rustic Italian Bread is excellent.
• 1 roasted red or yellow bell pepper. The jarred kind is fine, in fact, preferred.
• 4 thin slices of tomato.
• 1 slice mozzarella cheese. Fresh might be awesome, but we don't have any.
• 1/2 avocado, mashed.
• A bit of mayonnaise.
• Salt
• Black pepper

Toast the bread lightly. Spread the avocado mash on one piece, and put a thin smear of mayo on the other. Put the cheese on the mayo piece, and the pepper and tomato on the avocado piece. Salt the tomato. Pepper the tomato. I like to lay down a heavy coating of pepper, and I'm a bit of a salt fiend. Do what works for you. Then put the two halves together and eat it. It's yummy. Jessica came up with 95% of this; I only added the pepper. It's a summery sandwich to me, but that seems appropriate given it's been in the 70s here for a week.

¶ 1195 Posted at 03.41 PM ⇒ No Comments ( food )

With the end of the year upon us, I thought it might be worth looking back on the important events and milestones in my life that happened in 2005:

1. April 13, 2005: Uma Davey Gangatirkar.
.

Well, that wraps up the round-up for 2005. Join me again next year when we recap 2006.

¶ 1196 Posted at 02.38 PM ⇒ No Comments ( site | us )