Jeran's Den

Machiavelli

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 15 May 2008 23:11:48 GMT

For those who find The Prince disturbing and dislike Machiavelli for it, I recommend Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy for another view of the man's views.

How to spot a vampire

jeran@silverglass.org — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:53:48 GMT

How do you spot a vampire in the goth club? He's the one in the loud shirt and board-shorts demanding Beach Boys music. That, or he's the one in the checked yoke-front shirt, jeans and shit-kicker boots trying to organize a line dance.

SOE Fan Faire

jeran@silverglass.org — Wed, 14 May 2008 16:35:05 GMT

I keep debating this one. It's in Las Vegas in August, easy drive for me. But hotel will cost. I'm going to have to make up my mind soon to get the reservation in.

Financial aid

jeran@silverglass.org — Wed, 14 May 2008 01:32:19 GMT

Snerk

jeran@silverglass.org — Tue, 13 May 2008 20:40:01 GMT

SSL/SSH key problem

jeran@silverglass.org — Tue, 13 May 2008 17:04:51 GMT

Oh joy. http://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2008/msg00152.html

Time to regenerate a bunch of keys.

Another developer down

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:38:22 GMT

One of our developers left about a week and a half ago, major personal emergency and he had to go back to India. We finally heard from him. Apparently the emergency was a build-up of stress from some major family issues he wasn't talking about, long and short of which he's not coming back any time soon. Hope he gets all of it resolved without melting down in the process. Meantime, we've got yet another slot that needs filled at least temporarily. This one's more an analyst job than pure developer, although they may want to move someone else up and hire a developer to fill the now-vacated slot.

Oldest running computer code

jeran@silverglass.org — Sun, 11 May 2008 20:30:07 GMT

Slashdot had an article today with a simple question: what's the oldest complete piece of computer code still running? Doesn't have to be a full program, but it has to be a complete entity like a function or algorithm and not just a single disembodied line of code.

My guess is nobody'll get an answer. The oldest currently-running code probably dates back to the early 60s or so, and it lives in the custom-designed in-house mainframe accounting application of a large bank or major company so there's zero chance of anybody who knows about it discussing it outside the company. And it's probably either COBOL or RPG code. There's a reason IBM's mainframes have maintained the same instruction set for so long.

Oil prices

jeran@silverglass.org — Tue, 06 May 2008 20:37:44 GMT

Hi. We're the 70s. We're back for a revival tour, and we brought all our friends. Disco and leisure suits anyone?

Deployment night

jeran@silverglass.org — Sun, 04 May 2008 07:57:21 GMT

We're doing a deployment at work tonight. I'm on-line via VPN for the one non-critical component I'm responsible for in this one. So far, that component's working fine.

The rest of the system? Not so much, really. I'm seeing signs of tentacles around the error messages. That's usually not a good sign.

Weighted Companion Cube

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:54:04 GMT

Valve has Weighted Companion Cube plushes for sale.

Job candidates

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:50:37 GMT

/me is beginning to hate contractors. They tend to know interfaces and APIs, but have no clue what's underneath them. Long on how, short on why. And it's always the why that you need to know.

Fun with family health

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 17:10:56 GMT

Dad's home from surgery. It went well. Nothing too major, he had double-bypass surgery a few years ago and some of the holes they had to cut were starting to herniate. So they had to go back in, suture them up (including the ones that were just starting, that weren't a problem yet but would be) and lay a mesh under them to keep it from happening again.

Grandfather's home too. He went into the hospital with the usual age-related problems (he's 97 or so) a month or so ago, and they let him go home last week. He's on oxygen and has 24-hour care at the house. Mom laid the law down to him, backed up by the attorney handling his stuff back there: he will have 24-hour care. If he wants to have it at home that's fine, that's what all the saved-up money's for after all. But if he kicks the girls out, if he won't have the care at home, then he will go into the nursing home and have it there. Which it'll be's up to him, but he's not going to be alone with nobody around if anything happens to him. His heart's not in good shape, likewise lungs, and a simple fall means anything from multiple fractures on up. Back when Grandma died I said I'd normally not give him more than another year but he's just too ornery to die, but at this point I really think he's not got more than a year, maybe two, left in him. Which is annoying because he's not suffering Alzheimer's or any other mental deterioration, it's only his body that's wearing out and breaking down.

Niece is having more tests done. She had surgery for a hiatal hernia a year ago, and now she's having abdominal pain again. They're not sure what's up, so more poking and proding and drawing of blood to try and figure it out. Hopefully it's just adhesions from the earlier surgery that they can fix easily.

SNA

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:18:53 GMT

Joy. Last iteration it was SNA itself. Now I get the joy of implementing an interface using DDM running over SNA. DDM is a remote-file-access protocol that makes a database look a lot like a file, except it exploits the database backing to do things you can't do with a regular file. At this rate we're going to be writing in COBOL using 3270 workstations before we're done.

PA Democratic primaries

jeran@silverglass.org — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:52:55 GMT

They're saying Clinton won here. But when I look at the delegate numbers, I don't see much change. Obama still leads in pledged delegates and in total delegates, and is still just about 100 pledged delegates short of Clinton's total delegates (exactly where he was before the PA primary).

Candidate	Pledged	Super	Total
Clinton	1331	255	1586
Obama	1487	232	1719

I think if Clinton wants to claim she's winning, she needs to do better than this.

Convention schedule

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 23:29:54 GMT

Well, the hotel for FC sold out within 72 hours, so no FC next year for me. SOE Fan Faire is in Las Vegas in August, I think I'm going to schedule to go to that one. Comic-Con will be in July and is local so it won't cost me hotel, that should make FF doable. CaliFur is in May, but that's just too soon given financial blow-ups.

Journal debate

jeran@silverglass.org — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:09:52 GMT

Do I move back here, or stay with InsaneJournal? Feh.

Entries gone

jeran@silverglass.org — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:59:30 GMT

You may have noticed that my entries have disappeared. I've marked all of them private, and will be deleting them completely when I get home tonight.

The reason is here.

With LJ's policy, all it takes is one site I've linked to forgetting to renew their domain and a squatter picking it up. Or one loony whose page I've linked to getting mad and deciding to get even. It's simply not feasible for me to keep a continuous watch on every single page I've linked to over the years. I can't do it. I won't do it. Bye-bye LJ. I'll keep my account so I can read other people's journals, but I won't be renewing paid status when it expires and this will be the last post in my journal here.

If you want my scribblings, I'll be over at my InsaneJournal from now on. I've got Labor Day off, so that weekend I'll be hacking up a tool to post and back-date all my LJ entries to IJ.