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Daynotes on a budgetThe weekly Diary of a PC GeekUpdated: Sunday, January 07, 2001 10:26 PM -0600 |
Monday, January 1, 2001
Bootstrapping
In the old days, computers had three basic things that happened when they started up - there was a basic hardware systems diagnostic check, which reviewed the status of the machine and verified that it was ready, then there was a little piece that ran out and loaded the main portion of the operating system.
That little piece of code used to be called a bootstrap. It was part of the hardware, and yet part of the OS. If it didn't work, nothing else did, either. If the boot loader program failed, nothing else happened.
That's kind of how life is, sometimes. Today is the beginning of a new year, and while I personally do not go in for the fol-de-rol that some do about resolutions and such, many people do. Personally, what's wrong with July 17th? March 4th? August 3rd? Any old date at all works for "making resolutions."
It's not really whether or not you intend to keep them that counts, either. It's more important as to what they are.
These days, let's face it; we all need to do a little more to make sure we all get through together. I'm not saying "hey, if you've got a couple of grand in the bank and your neighbor does not, give him what you have." Hell, no. You've earned it, you keep it.
But what I am saying is "hey, let's keep an eye out for one another." Let's check in on one another once in a while. If we spent a little more time in one-to-one contact, or in getting together and laughing as a group, this world might well be a better place.
January 1 isn't a date that's any better or worse to start improving the world, but let's face it - we've got to start somewhere, and that's as good a place as any - once you've gotten yours, take a look over your shoulder, and make sure the next fellow's doing OK, ok?
We don't get a chance to reboot all that often. As individuals, as a group, as a society. If you do have the opportunity, stop, take a moment, and think about what you're doing and where you're going. And see if you can help someone else along the way. Call it a good deed, a "senseless act of kindness" or paying it forward, I don't care. Just do something nice for someone else; you never know when you'll need the help, and you'll never be able to tell what kind of a difference you'll be able to make if you never try.
Yup - one New Year's resolution kept, at least for three hours. I'll start with something focused, and then ramble beyond that. Isn't the goal of this sort of thing to improve what I do? Oh, I'm sure some of you thought that it was enough to keep me off the streets or out of the barnyards, but hey, a fella's got to start somewhere, right?
Tonight (yesterday? Last year? Last Century? Last Millennium? Check "All of the above" and we're fine, thanks) I had a chance to visit with some old, and I do mean OLD, friends. Most of us go back to high school, and some further. One fellow was telling me of his impending retirement from the Army Reserves. In two years, he'll have put in a total of twenty - two active, eighteen reserve, and he'll be able to retire.
And that's just not right. Not at all. I know plenty of people old enough to retire - heck, I can rattle off the names of at least a dozen politicians who should have retired YEARS ago, that haven't yet. But a fellow I know, ready to "retire"?
The whole fact is made doubly painful by the part that he graduated a year behind me in school. Yup, a year after I did and now we're STILL talking retirement age. Sorry, I refuse to give in that easily - I'M NOT THAT BLOODY OLD!
Ach, well. Could be worse; I could be getting fitted for some form of restraint. Don't ask.
We went to my friend's new house, which they built after their starter home, and he did this one up just right - high ceilings on the main floor, a second-floor laundry room (with yes, a floor drain in the middle of the room just in case it overflows - had twice since they moved in). A bedroom for each child, each room large enough to provide plenty of space for extra children, should they show up. A big bedroom, with a huge closet and master bath, for mom and dad. Then, the main floor had a dedicated office (oh, what I wouldn't give for that one) - plus other very nice design touches (back entry with a bathroom right nearby, though I would have made the back bath a full bath so that when Monkey Boy comes roaring in from outside, playing King of the Mud People, I could send him to the showers before he got into the rest of the house - especially since She Who Must Be Obeyed has repeatedly told me that hosing the children off in the yard (and in the nude) is most likely a violation of a number of laws. Please, before the UMPs (Ugly Mental Pictures) form in your heads, I hasten to add that the children, and not I, would be the naked ones.
The only way you'll find me naked in my yard is when the county assessor shows up. If that won't drop my property values by a good 40%, I'm just not in bad enough shape yet.
Anyway, we had a wonderful time, chatted, ate too much spicy food, and are now paying the consequences of it.
I expect that, somewhere later today, I'll recover the lost brain cells and perhaps revitalize those that chose to die whilst I consumed something called a "Slushie" - closest thing to it I've ever had was a 7-11 Slurpee, but I'm fairly certain the Slurpee's alcohol content was non-existent (even allowing for the things to ferment on one's dashboard for weeks at a time). This thing tasted something like peaches or apricots or something, and kicked like a castrated, ornery mule.
What? You don't think castration wouldn't make someone angry? Well, I tell you what - you try it and let me know. Me? I've got plans later. Medical experiments. Fun stuff like that.
No one said being a Daynoter was going to be easy... ;-)
LATER (1600): Well, so far we've accomplished slightly more than diddle around here, which is a good thing, considering I was up until 4 am.
Note to self, and other parents with upright small criminals in
the home - thou shalt not leave open bags of anything, especially candy,
anywhere in range where small chimps can lay hands on them. Last night I
cracked into a bag of Reeses Miniature Peanut Butter cups, and took three - I
swear - the wrappers are still here on the computer desk.
This morning, we awoke (well, at one point around 10 am I staggered out from the bedroom, turned the television down a wee bit, and changed the television from my daughter's choice, which had been the Rose Parade in Spanish, to the English-language version. Oh, I'm not at all opposed to having her learn another language and all that - I'm just a little irritated with the "what's that? What did he say? What did that mean?" questions. Especially when she's asking her younger brother, who is an as-yet-untested linguist of as-yet-indeterminate abilities - clearly, Spanish is not yet his bag. He blew her off, most of the time). And when we got the eyeballs screwed into the head right-side up again (I'm getting more and more disturbed by this whole aging process - stuff's falling apart, not doing what it used to, or doing things completely backwards. Gone are the days when I could pound two cans of Mountain Dew, a snickers bar, and a jelly donut and call it a balanced breakfast. I can't even indulge in spicy foods after 8 pm without having a long night of indigestion. This just wasn't part of the original tour guide - I guess it was the Microsoft Demo version I saw pre-birth), we come out to find seven Reeses Miniatures left. If I had to guess, there were probably about 35 of them in there - so if I had three, and there are seven left, that leaves, what, twenty-five? And split that between two individuals, that gives you a grand total of way the heck too much sugar before breakfast..
We've accomplished little other than to have the kids play with a few toys - Jack, at present, is completely wiped out on his bed, flat on his back as if he was dropped there, toes up, snoozing away... Oh, I just gotta - that's to remind me when I'm ready to remove his head just for fun, that is.
Anyway, I did finally manage to chop through the whole thing and created the 2001 calendar, which will be the master for THIS year... Gulp. Next time I'm going to have my head examined.
Actually, I think next time I do this I'll use Perl. I downloaded a version of Perl for Windows from ActiveState the other night, because I've just about given up understanding Delphi. When I called Borland, and they said "Uh, Inprise" and I said "I need an upgrade for Turbo Pascal" and they said "Delphi" I made the mistake of saying "sure". It sure ain't the Turbo Pascal I remember.
Anyway, the stuff I used to do in TP was pretty much file manipulation/information extraction sorts of tools, and I need a few more that I just haven't got the programs to build it in, unless I use Perl.
So, back to the future (again), with some more Perl programs, this time on my local hard drive rather than churning through a UNIX box... Never thought I'd see that day.
And some of you long-time readers know my disgust with Apple - they do have good products, their problem is that they will take long-suffering customers and abuse them some more, just for fun; AND include a complete swap-out of their desktop hardware, as well. But this fellow is somewhat wacked. Though if you can't see him, you can read why here.
Tuesday, January 2, 2001
e-What? What the.... ?
Back about sixty-plus years ago, my Uncle Joe Rose went to work for a company called Deluxe Check Printers. Back in 1940, checks were a "new-fangled" invention.
Those checks went through many revolutions, and many evolutionary changes. Deluxe was for many years the largest check printer in the world. My uncle Joe started as a printer's assistant. When he retired from Deluxe fifty years later, he retired as the boss. The only "person" he answered to was "Mr. Shareholder." That's right, Uncle Joe was Chairman of the Board.
And a nicer, more humble man you'd never have met. I didn't know, for example, that one of the things he worked on was the committee, or group, that defined the font you see all those numbers in at the bottoms of checks. He helped design and establish OCR as a viable method for reading the information off checks.
When my father was looking to invest in the stock market, Uncle Joe, who wasn't anyone major in the company at the time, just another employee, told my father to invest in Deluxe. My father believed Uncle Joe, and put some money into Deluxe.
Not too unlike the recent Dot-com boom, Deluxe succeeded mightily. I remember my father telling me that if he'd bought in right at the very beginning, like Uncle Joe had urged him to do, he'd have owned something like 200 shares for every share he bought on that first day.
I can't vouch for that, but I do know that in 1982, my father invested a set amount in Deluxe Check stock at my graduation from High School. Within eight years, those five shares he purchased had become twenty, in two two-for-one stock splits.
Deluxe has long been a stable performer, in my book. The stock price has, since the early 1990s, remained stable. The dividend has been regular as clockwork, $7.40 every quarter - thirty-seven cents a share - almost a buck fifty a year per share.
Today, however, I open my mailbox, and there's a letter from eFunds. Huh? Sure looked to me like it was actually the Deluxe return address. I opened the envelope, and there was a stock certificate (I'd seen the other one a while ago) along with a letter welcoming me as a new owner of eFunds.
Apparently the Deluxe management has decided that the Deluxe name carries too damned much baggage and is not worth the hold-over they get. So, they've changed from a known, respected name to a generic, whazzat?-type name.
Sure, it happens all the time. Sure, the point is for them to be able the grow into new market segments and new areas. But eFunds? Come on. I didn't even get the full benefit of 20 shares - I own eleven shares of the new company. And, I'm guessing, some undefined amount of small change which is most likely shot.
I don't like the name eFunds. I don't know what the management intends to do, and I certainly don't like the prospects for the company. After a number of attempts to get into cash cards, credit cards, ink, and various other areas, the company seemed pretty-well adrift. I don't think the name change is going to help. And before they piss away my graduation gift, I think I'll pull it out of stocks and invest it in something safe. Like a mattress.
Well, back at work today. It was one of those days that I felt would be a big success, and a big step forward. I'd found a solution for a problem we'd been having with a long-time loyal customer; I'd found and documented another problem (which I learned was the topic of discussion a couple of cubes away while I was figuring it out), and was feeling pretty proud of myself.
The solution I found wasn't, in the end, a solution at all. I've been working with computers long enough now - I had a computer that was giving me the same problem as the customer's - so I documented a bunch of settings, and then verified it was still broke (see, I did learn a little bit from the QA training). I then made only one change. And the replication worked, this time. Wow.
So I sent the change to the customer, had him try it out, and it failed. Miserably. So tomorrow we go out to verify the customer's settings, and if that doesn't work, we reinstall the OS from the ground up (on a laptop, gulp), and go on from there.
The second issue, I was told, was a "known" issue; however, it was possible that tabbing across the fields might cause them to change in SQL.
I tried it, and no, it didn't. I verified it, about four different ways, and sure enough, I'd found a problem. Except a couple of other people looked at it and said "well, yeah, but..." I went back to our DBA, who is a very nice guy, and he did some testing, and verified that part of the problem is in our application, and part - well, most - is in the replication portion of SQL Server.
So tomorrow morning I call, and hope to receive return calls, from the folks at Microsoft I called today. The good news, if one calls it that, is that we can expect either a "oh, yeah, that's the way it's supposed to do it" or a "well, yes, of course it does it that way. You mean you didn't know either?" And just in case you're still with me, we are using column-wise replication, which, according to our reading of the documentation, fields instructions, and all the rest, is essentially field-level locking. And what we're seeing is record-level locking when we encounter conflicts - which is NOT what we need it to do.
I'm very hopeful that we'll find out that there's a setting or something we've overlooked, or I'm going to have to spend a whole lot of time getting a crash-course in replication scripting - yikes.
Oh well. At least last night we finally got the sliding glass door open on one balcony, and were able to air the place out a bit - we topped out, inside, at between 80 and 85 F yesterday; since we're not paying for heat, it's not that big a thing - but it was bloody uncomfortable. So after employing a hair dryer, a screwdriver, towels, and a crow bar, we got the door open. We also turned the heat basically off, and we're OK.
What am I saying, OK - in the next week, if the weather folk are to be believed, we will see low temps which were only dreams for highs a month back. In fact, they noted that today was our first above-20 high in the last 22 days. Good grief.
Though that reminds me - I'm not sure what it is, but Jonathan Sturm believes that Arthur C. Clarke apparently grew an "E" on the end of his name when he moved south of the equator (to Sri Lanka). I checked my copies of 2010 and 2061 - they're both "e". I'm confused.
Oh, NUTS. Ray Walston's gone, now, too. He doesn't know this, but whenever I type an e-mail to JHR, I picture, in my mind, Judge Bone from Picket Fences. An old curmudgeon, crusty, with a "Get Out" demeanor (anyone who watched more than one episode of Picket Fences and saw the courtroom scenes knows what I mean), who is a genuine, honestly nice, intelligent, and thoughtful man. You get the feeling with most Ray Walston characters that, deep down, they were afraid to crack that exterior and let you see the mush inside. I can honestly say I've never seen a Ray Walston character I didn't like on some level. The man was a professional, and he will be missed.
And then I find out that I might have mis-read the letter that Deluxe/eFunds sent me - apparently the two companies are no longer one. Howzat? Blanchard, the fellow who signed my letter as the CEO of eFunds, was the CEO of Deluxe - and Deluxe has a new chairman/CEO. I just don't get it - I've got to see what the heck's going on.
Although if you think I've got problems, at least I haven't got eleven weeks of inventory clogging the halls... hehehehe.
Wednesday, January 3, 2001
Here comes the Lege...
(with apologies to Molly Ivins)
Here they come, our local state legislature. Grab your wallets and hold on tight.
Actually, we've been extraordinarily fortunate for the last few years. The state of Minnesota is required, by law, to operate a balanced budget. Which is a good thing - but then again, when you've got two years and almost five million pockets to pick, it's possible to recover from even the worst screwups.
I remember as a child (or young adult, I don't remember exactly), we encountered a bit of a problem here and there was about a billion-dollar shortfall. That's real money, even for a state with a budget of about five billion (if I recall correctly). We boosted the sales tax, increased what it would cover, dropped spending on certain things, and slowly recovered.
At some point in the last two years (I think it was last year) our state government set up an automatic rebate plan - if the state runs at a surplus, we get it back.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all upset with getting money back. But it's pretty clear that both the economy is slowing down, and our taxing structure in this state is broken. Our schools need serious help with the way they get their money - districts with large businesses in them benefit from the property taxes a business pays. Smaller, rural districts are suffering as farmers are barely holding on, or going under.
Before we do all of this, I'd like to see a rainy-day fund - something along the order of two years of funding for the state in a fund. The income from that rainy-day fund could be used to augment school funding, and we could all rest a little easier.
But what do I know, I just pay taxes around here. It's the honorable Senator Dick Day and his ilk (</Sarcasm>) who are the real smart people around here. (whoops - </sarcasm>).
Well today was ... today. I arrived at work to find that our leading tester left only four hours before I arrived. And he'd left me a stack of notes that were totally incomprehensible. So I chopped off the part I could chew, and started chewing on it. And chewed, and chewed, and chewed.
Here's the scary part. I'm working on becoming the expert with SQL Server Replication, which is a little like saying I'm going to be the expert on Drive train couplings in 1984 Yugos. Not that I'm picking on SQL Server, as it's a pretty nice product, from what I've seen, so far.
But here's the weird thing (and hang on, this could get technical). Replication is controlled by SQL Server, not by anything we do. We set up a publication, set up a subscription method, and then take a "snapshot". How it works is the server does a snapshot, then waits. You, as a client, come up with your data, and contact the server using the subscription. The subscription determines what you can and can't see on the server, and starts sending down the filtered results. If you haven't been here before, you get the snapshot first, since it's the majority of the data you need... Then we'll filter to you.
That's the easy part. Now we're getting towards the funky stuff. We're using "merge replication" which allows you, as a client, to send your changes up to the server. The server, meanwhile, sends data down to you. With me so far? Good. Here's where it gets really ugly. When you and the server exchange data, occasionally you will send up data that conflicts with the data coming back down.
For example, you've got a simple database - name, street address, city, state, zip, phone number, and e-mail address. Joe Smith, who is in the database, moves from 1121 Smith Street, Apartment 5, to 1121 Smith Street, apartment 23. Just upstairs. So you update your copy of the database on your laptop.
Your assistant back at the home office gets an e-mail from Joe, who's moving from JSmith@AoHell.com to JSmith@Some-Other-ISP.com. She changes Joe's e-mail.
Now, when you replicate (synchronize the changes), SQL Server from the server sends down the new e-mail address. SQL, from the client, sends up the new address. Everything's hunky dory - so far.
But what happens if your assistant also notes Joe's new phone number? And so do you? Then, it gets ugly.
Computers need very clear RULES as they can't make decisions without direction. So we have to tell the computers to always use one side or the other when there's a conflict. Which is fine, except in this case.
What we expected, perhaps naively, is that the server's phone number would overwrite the client's. The server's version of the address should be over-written by the new address you've entered. Your copy of Joe's old e-mail address should be overwritten by the copy coming from the server.
What happens in practice is your address is reset to the server's information, as is everything else. The client loses. As we intended it to occur, but not for every single field. That's why we turned on the Column-wise replication checking, so that the individual columns wouldn't be clobbered.
So that was bug one, if that's in fact what it is.
Bug two, if that's in fact what it is, is far more evil.
We're relying on replication to send data from one machine to another. And with the data tables we have, we've got a lot of interlinked data. Some tables are over half "lookups" to other data from other tables. It's pretty ugly.
And one of the problems is what we call "Foreign Key Constraints." FKCs, which I've got to be careful to type, occur when you're replicating information and a child doesn't find a parent. You "violate" an FKC when you send down a child chunk of data without a parent. Sort of like letting the kids out to run in the toy store without parents.
What we found was a number of messages on usenet and other places stating unequivocally that if you send down a child record without a parent, the child gets marked for deletion - on both the client AND THE SERVER - which is a WTF if you've ever seen one. The client side, I understand. I could even see a programmatical error (that would be a bug, in human-speak) causing the delete record to bounce back up to the server. But come on, here.
So we're getting hosed, as we're sending down information that's rejected at the client, then deleted from the server. So we're losing information, and I suspect that what's happening is the server's sending down child-linked tables before looking at parent tables, and we're getting clobbered because of the order of delivery of information.
That's just insane. We'll either need to get Microsoft to fess up (yeah, right - they just released Service Pack three about a week and a half ago - admit there's more to fix? Right), or write our own replicator. Yes, sir, right there on the development schedule between "invent new alphabet" and "create void, fill with light, planets..." Yeah, you get the picture.
It's no wonder I had a headache for most of the day. And that was just for the pre-noon festivities.
This afternoon, I was fortunate enough to go to a client site again. I'd been there before, but this time was the one where I expected, if I was unsuccessful in my testing, to have to wipe and reinstall Windows 98 on an older Dell Inspirion laptop. I was so not looking forward to it that I downloaded every single driver on the Dell site that was specific to the model I had to work on, and burned them onto a CD, just in case.
I got out there, and the customer said "hey, there's one thing I forgot to do - when I did this, I got a different message." Hmmm, I says to myself I says - sounds better.
I took a whack at it, changed a few things, messed with some other stuff, fixed some things I knew about, guessed at some others, and viola! Replication!
After some messing with scripts and customization, firewalls, waiting for callbacks that didn't occur, and all the rest, I was ready to go home. Had my coat on. And we noticed one small problem. One of the machines wasn't disconnecting cleanly from the database. It wasn't a show-stopper by any means. It was, at best, an annoyance. But being the type of person I am, I said "if I'm annoyed, someone else will be. And if they're annoyed, they'll spend time trying to fix it, not to mention other time lost trying to deal with it. I'm the expert here, or I'm supposed to be, so let's see what we can do."
I took a look, and it was pretty simple to see the machine wasn't logging into the network properly. I figured that was why it never cleanly DISconnected from the network - if you never connect, you don't need to disconnect. I left my coat on, sat down, and started working on the computer. And got one of the nastiest surprises of my life. Either I don't know Windows 98/NT as well as I thought I did, or my headache was really blocking off sections of my mind that I needed for work - Or, perhaps, I've got a bigger "issue."
So, to lay out the basics - I have a simple network - one NT4.0 PDC named "Ernie". One NT4.0 BDC running SQL Server named "Bert". Four Windows 98 laptops that log into the domain "WRK". This one laptop - "Tim" - wasn't cleanly logging in. I verified the user's name on the machine ("Tim" - what else). I verified his password on the network - "Password". I checked the network control panel. AHA! I says - Right here it's not prompting you to log into the network. Check the box, put in the domain name (WRK), and do the inevitable reboot. Three minutes later, type in "Password" at the password prompt, tape the enter, start to stand up, and I'm greeted by "Your password was wrong or you do not have privileges to log into this server."
Oh, no - I don't think so, Mr. Computer - I went back, verified I had the right username and password, and just to be sure, did a "Net Accounts /Sync" at the DOS prompt to make sure the BDC and PDC had the same user information. Double check the network control panel to make sure the networking was installed. Made sure "Client for Microsoft Networks" was selected. Made sure the Identification tab had the right information in the first two fields (Machine name and Domain, though you can change the last at the login box). Restarted. Tried to log in - no joy. Huh? It's plugged in... Cables? Check Pournelle's law.
Checked the cable - seemed to be plugged in at both ends. Checked the wall jack - looked sturdy. Went back to the computer. Pinged 127.0.0.1. It worked. On a hunch, tried pinging one of the local servers - success. Tried to log off and on - nope. Steaming pile of excrement... Removed my coat and got serious. Powered the machine off completely. Removed the power cord, the laptop cord, and the battery. Let it sit for 30 seconds. Fire it back up. "Cannot log in..." GRRRRRRRrrrrrrrrrr.
Went back to the bleeding laptop network control panel. Changed it to "Windows Login" - rebooted. Logged in. Still no access to the domain. Verified that all my settings were right, bindings looked good. Rebooted again. Couldn't log in to the domain again. This was getting frustrating. Called SWMBO, just as she was pulling into the garage, to say "Hi, I'm gonna be late, could you get the kids... Oh. Sorry." Start eating crow as soon as I walk through the door tonight.
Went to the server - changed the password, did another Net Accounts /Sync, and then, for fun, tried to log on at the console as that user. It worked. Made sure the user wasn't locked out - not only was he not locked out, they didn't have any policies to prevent repeated attempts (which is why all of the above has been changed to protect the innocent). No requirements for user name lengths, password lengths - nothing fancy at all. Hmmm... But my server-console login was successful, I found I could see everything from the NT side. Everything was fine. So it wasn't the user, it was the freaking HARDWARE or configuration of the machine...
So I went back to the laptop. Rebooted again. Logged in, again, and failed, again. I got mad, and tried to fire up the browser. It popped up with the same "please log in" dialog box. With my head pounding, I just hit enter (the password was already there - and no, I didn't use my forehead. Despite my actions often giving you the impression that I'm a relative of Zippy the Pinhead, it's just not that narrow). Boom, I was out on the internet. Just to prove it to myself, I came to this page. It worked. I went to a couple of other sites and verified dates/times and so forth. I was hitting web sites live, in real time. What The... ???
I did an ipconfig -all...
Windows 98 IP Configuration
Host Name . . . . . . . . . : TIM
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . : 205.219.138.81
205.219.138.11
Node Type . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
NetBIOS Scope ID. . . . . . :
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . : No
NetBIOS Resolution Uses DNS : No
0 Ethernet adapter :
Description . . . . . . . . : PPP Adapter.
Physical Address. . . . . . : 44-45-53-54-00-00
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . : 0.0.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . :
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.255
Primary WINS Server . . . . :
Secondary WINS Server . . . :
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . :
Lease Expires . . . . . . . :
1 Ethernet adapter :
Description . . . . . . . . : Xircom CardBus Ethernet 10/100 Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . : 00-10-A4-B6-69-9B
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.31
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . : 10.0.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.2
Primary WINS Server . . . . : 10.0.0.2
Secondary WINS Server . . . :
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . : 01 03 01 5:15:21 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . : 01 06 01 5:15:21 PM
As you can see, even the DHCP worked.
The lease was obtained TODAY, at the "now" when I was working on this. But I couldn't log in.
I just don't get it.
So then I fired up e-mail - they use outlook/exchange, what a nice combination. No problems getting or sending mail. Could send mail - I even sent the above to myself. No caching tricks or anything there. At all.
I just do not get it. The computer won't log in on boot, but will when the service is called. What the hell did I miss? Anyone?
Ach, well. I think I'm going to try to bring my camera with tomorrow so this place has the occasional current picture here to go along with all the blathering I do. Though I doubt the weather will be as nice as it was today. We actually had melting snow. I was worried that the ground itself was going to go soggy, then a faint memory of solid land under all this white stuff came to me.
So I decided to put up a picture from last summer that most of you - heck, all of you except for SWMBO - haven't seen. This was done with a film camera at the pool for our apartment building. They both jumped in from the side, and I got a pretty good shot from across the pool. Jack, typically, with his devil-may-care attitude (and inflated swim-suit, no less) and panache, and Rhiannon, ever the cautious one, carefully holding her brother's hand - and the water's only three feet deep, which is less than she is tall. Smart kid.
Oh, well. Off to bed (after I do the dishes, of course). And I'm sure I'll bang my head on more replication errors and problems, and hopefully I'll solve that damned Win98 problem. If you've got any ideas, please fire off an e-mail to me, and I'll give it a try. Either I'm missing something obvious I should have checked, or it's an evil spirit inhabiting the computer. At this point, the goat's still smoking, the virgin's still screaming, and the really ugly fellow who's promised a successful result as long as he's been allowed to sacrifice both is looking a little anxious. I'd rather not pay him the $4999.95 for the process, but if it's my only option... ;-) And if you've got thoughts about replication, let me know those, as well. I'm not yet hunting pelts for my walls, but I'll tell you - if what I saw in this stuff today continues to lead me down the well-fertilized roads to hell as it appears now, I'm really going to warm up the old resume... Being the replication expert for a company that lives and dies by replication on SQL server and having replication broke seems to me to be one certain way to make sure you're not going to go anywhere but the unemployment line at a high rate of speed. And I don't wanna do that again, at all. Grrrrr.r.r.r.r. Be well.
Thursday, January 4, 2001
I Want A Do-Over.
Yup. Start right over. I think I should be allowed. I'm MUCH smarter than I was when I was a kid.
As a baby, I obviously picked the wrong parents. I mean, they loved me, raised me with the right values, and gave me a good sense of both right and wrong and myself. But they weren't rich, successful over-achievers, and that's what I'd like to be.
Well, I guess I'd settle for the rich part and leave off the others - after last year's experience getting laid off and looking for a job, I've become especially sensitive to those who also go through it.
A few weeks back I was standing in line at the grocery checkout, and the woman behind me began emptying her cart. I didn't know her from a post, but I made a couple of judgements that might not have been very nice - call it erring on the side of caution. I recognized most of the packages in her cart - they were the generic equivalents in most things; you know, instead of the Keebler Saltines, she had the generic store brand. Instead of "Frosted Cheerios" at $3.79 a box, she had the generic frosted "Oh's" which were $1.80. And down, on the bottom of the cart, below the basket, were two gallons of milk of the same kind my kids drink.
She'd emptied the cart, and it was all on the belt, with the exception of about $6 worth of milk. And I made the judgment call not to say anything about it. Sure, the store probably lost $6 in milk proceeds. But whether by design or by accident, I didn't know, and didn't want to know. I wouldn't have made that choice, but I'm not going to judge her because of it.
Today, I read Tom Syroid's latest post and my heart just broke. I could read what he'd written, and more importantly, I could read between the lines to see what he HADN'T written, as well. There's a certain agony to a job hunt when you need to find a job. It's worse when you're married, because you know you've got the support of your spouse but you still feel like you're letting them down. The real twist of the knife comes when you need to find a job and you've got kids. Every single day you get up and look for work, you feel a little less like a useful human being, and a lot more like a complete jerk.
I know what he's going through. The overwhelming exhaustion, and yet the fear that if you stop running, you'll miss something. You drive yourself to a point far beyond exhaustion because you don't dare slow down. You don't dare leave the house without your phone, and you feel itchy if you're off the grid for more than a few hours. You compulsively sweep the various job sites on the internet for something, anything, you can do. You look at a posting and go "well, yeah, sorta" and send off a resume "just in case". You go past the local McDonalds and see the "Help Wanted" sign, and your soul just drops a notch, because you know that as a computer professional you're a heck of a lot smarter than that, but you may well end up saying "do you want fries with that?"
You go through the grocery store, looking at the shelves, looking for bargains, sorting the coupons, and find it hard to look the other shoppers in the eye. They don't know you from Adam, and most of them don't want to know about you, but you feel guilty. You feel like a criminal and yet you've done nothing wrong.
You dread opening the mailbox because that's where the bills are. You know you're current, you know you've got your act together NOW, but it's what's coming that has you worried. You find yourself looking around and saying "well, I can do without this, but the kids need that."
And while the good wishes of friends and others do help, you'd trade all of it and a number of other things for a job with a decent paycheck. All the advice in the world isn't worth one paycheck you've earned yourself.
Well, after yesterday's
fumbling with Win98 and NT, there are at least four Daynoters who will be
sending long-distance smacks up side the head. You're not going to believe
what I think the solution to the problem is (the customer was out of the office
all afternoon, so I didn't get a chance to test it). Ready with those big
smacks? A space in the username. Yup. "TIM_" -
replace the underscore with a space. I wouldn't have caught it at all
except I was checking out a SQL Log dealing with another problem and I found the
sync log had a listing for "Tim :" and the other machines in the log
were "Bob:" and "Tom:"
Okay, I'm hiding under the table for a while... There. Should be safe. I'm pretty sure right about here in this post, John Doucette, Phil Hough, Jon Hassell, and Dan Seto are all shaking their heads and muttering things. Some about me, some about Microsoft, some about my customer, and some about ... well, whatever it is, I'm sure most of it's not printable.
So that was today - I spent a significant portion of it struggling some more with replication. I think I'm getting crabby - thus the graphic. The Crab doing the Macarena is courtesy of the fine folks at Joe's Crab Shack, where you can get dancing, and crabs. Well, crab meat. And things. And we'll just stop at that, before this becomes a long slow slide from PG-13 to "uh, OK, let's go elsewhere."
And last night, before I went to bed, I re-read the want ad I'd replied to for this job I now have. Talk about not even in the same neighborhood. "Network administrator to install our product" - how that got to "SQL Server replication expert" I'll never guess. I think my goal now is to learn, help, and figure, but also be prepared to leave.
Yes, that's right. Another freakin' job hunt. I'm not sure this job or this company are a good fit for me, and I know I'm not moving forward in the knowledge I need to know to do the job as fast as I'd like. Part of it's the deep end of the pool mentality - I don't mind being thrown to the dogs, but I'd like a little tenderizing first. I've been given a half-day of training on our application - which is about one-tenth of what our customers get, from what I've been able to learn. I ask questions, and quite often get a blank dumb look - and it's not on my face this time.
I don't like being the stupid fellow on the block - I'm not very happy about getting put into the position, so I'm going to start looking. SWMBO's rule of thumb is a month per ten grand over "industry average". With a slowing economy and a short-time spot on the resume, I'm expecting to add at least 50% to the time required. I'm hoping to be moved by June, I guess.
Oh well. Off to the races. And just for the record, I didn't forget the camera this morning - there just wasn't anything I could take pictures of. There were plenty of beautiful moments, but most of them were at sunset, where my camera tends to crap out a bit.
And now, for the first time this week, I'm aiming for bed before 10 pm for a change... I've been so very beat.
Friday, January 5, 2001
Gravy With A Fork
Last night I got an e-mail (see below) which caused me to stop and think. And then today, when I was trying to eat soupy mashed potatoes and turkey in gravy (SWMBO's idea of a good lunch, apparently - I prefer my mashed potatoes to have some lumps so there's something to them - if I want food through a straw, I'll ask for it), I realized that using a fork for this meal probably wasn't the smartest move.
But then again, it's a new office. I wasn't sure where the spoons are, and in typical male fashion (or is that IT fashion? I dunno) I decided to make do with what I'd found.
But it caused me to think. I've worked with and managed lots of people in the IT industry. And all of the good ones I know of have a couple of to-do lists. The best have four.
The first list is the "do this or get fired" list. DTOGF, as it were. This list is typically (if you're good) empty. If anything's on it, it's things like "Swap backup tapes" or "fix CEO's computer." Stuff you've got to do to keep the job you've got.
Then there's the second list. The Everyday Projects list. The EP list is the one that tends to have the most on it, but it's also the one that gets worked on the most (and if your DTOGF list gets too long, well, it's time to look for a new job, some help, or more knowledge - one of the three will resolve the issues). But it's things like "Order toner" and "repair Frank's computer" and "reinstall Windows in the Accounting department" - basic "tactical" projects that keep you moving forward (or sideways, or slow the speed at which you're falling behind).
The third list is typically the one that gets the IT geeks giggling. The Projects To Grow By, or PTGB. It's the stuff like "Learn Perl / Java / CGI / XHTML / DHTML / Fly Fishing" or "Develop automated method for updating DTOGF and EP to-do lists". That's the stuff that gets IT geeks really drooling. My experience is that this is the list most IT managers go to when the budget time comes. And most of it's been there for quite some time - internet millennium (otherwise known as a few months), as it were.
But it's the fourth list that counts. The free time list, or PPP - Putz with, Play with, or Pray for. Things like "watch a sunset on a deserted lake for hours, from first color to full-dark" and "practice pole-vaulting". Things that we really NEED to do to feel human.
The problem is we often ignore the PPP list, we concentrate on the DTOGF and EP lists, and once in a while we get to the PTGB list. Sometimes the PTGB list is mistaken for the PPP list altogether. And you know what? Sometimes sorting through all those projects to find the good stuff, the really critical, important stuff, is like trying to eat gravy with a fork.
Well, I'm thinking today we're going to cover some fairly momentous territory - hold on to your hats.
First, since this is the first Friday of the New Millennium, I hereby decree that henceforth, no project or major undertaking shall be started after noon, local time, anywhere, anyplace, any time, on Fridays.
If I'd listened to myself, I'd have saved myself a whole lot of grief.
Let's back up. I've been beating my head on replication problems with a couple of our customers and thought I'd come close to a resolution the other day. Nope. Kept flogging it though, and this morning stumbled on one of those "Well, duh" deals which I should have known better.
I decided to stop out at the customer's site after an early afternoon meeting to fix a few things that had gone kerblooey, including that username with space issue. All I had to do was stop something, change a password, and start it up.
Why is it that with Microsoft products, one can never assume the simple things will work?
I plopped down, fired up the SQL manager stuff, and did my thing. Then, I checked, and everything locally worked. So I called my office and said "hey fellas, give it a try now." Mind you, I'm calling back there on a Friday, after 2 pm, when we've got a few hours left to complete testing on a maintenance release before it goes to a couple of beta customers. And within about ten minutes, I had about half the office on the other end of the phone scratching their heads, shrugging, and saying "gee, I dunno."
The smart move at that point would have been to chuck in the towel for the day and head back. But, being painfully and specifically willfully ignorant (yes, I meant ALL of those adjectives) of typical Microsoft behavior, I announced "well, we've been getting this message, and that message, and I think before we blame the other company for our problems, we should reinstall the software."
Now, let me pause in this narration to note that if one is swimming in the alligator pool, seeking the plug, it is very very unwise to pull said plug, once found, without verifying the size of the drain. Being, as I am, a man of some girth, I assumed (there's that word again) that the drain would be functional and safe. In other words, I would expect that I'd not get sucked down the drain.
It sucked me right down with all the alligators. No room to run. Talk about "that bites", man.
Anyway, back to our story - I sat down and said "Let's reinstall. Anyone have any objections?" Nope, none.
So, one of my compatriots came down with my laptop (as I was expecting to return to the office yet today), my lunchbag, my install CDs, and some encouragement.
We made the requisite backups, saved stuff, and then nuked the system. We reinstalled the heavy-duty versions, loaded it all up, and then ran into a wee bit of a problem. You see, I hadn't noticed until after I booted the machine after nuking the software, but it came up and said "Microsoft Small Business Server" in the boot screen. You know, the one where you select NT or NT VGA mode? Yeah. No NT selection, just SBS.
Being young, rash, and full of confidence in Microsoft (I can hear you all cackling and slapping your foreheads), I forged ahead. And ran, once again, into the aphorism which I now hereby decree (that's two in one day) Dominik's Law - "Experience is what you get when you wanted something else."
You got it. SQL Server Enterprise edition will not allow replication when installed on Microsoft Small Business Server. I'm sure, buried deep in some manual that wasn't available to us when we were talking joyously about nuking software, that there's a line about having to upgrade SBS before you do anything seriously involved with any SQL server things. But, as noted, we didn't have that manual.
And I hereby decree (that's three, I can hear the padded wagon out front warming up to take me away) that the HTML code <RG> will hereby join the <EG> (*Evil Grin*), <SEG> (*Stuff Eating Grin*), and <WAG> (*Wide Ass Grin*). <RG> is "Rueful Grin". Here's how you do it. You tip your head forward about ten degrees, to the right about the same, grit your teeth, smile as wide as you can then back off 50%, stick out your right hand and say "I guess we missed something, Mr. Customer." You got it. </RG> Of course, while we're on the phone back to the office, one of the fellow says "I think I remember something about SBS and SQL Enterprise being incompatible." Grrrrr...
So, I leave, and my compatriot, who stuck by me even though he didn't have to, bucked my spirits up a wee bit. Encouragement is good, but I'd much rather have success.
So, Monday we go back at it and this time the customer's going to have to shell out a few bucks for the real NT, Exchange, and SQL Server stuff. Oh well. That's the CODB - Cost Of Doing Business.
But when I get home, I hear my son yelling for the "Basagna" leftovers. As a young man, we had a Scoutmaster who called spaghetti "bagetti". So now my son calls Lasagna "Basagna". Cute, I guess. And then my wife sticks in one of our favorite movies - "Lady Hawke". Alan Parson's score is a wee bit dated, as are the special effects, but between the scenery and the story, you don't even notice Michelle Pfieffer. I'm much more taken with the sword and Imperius, who has perhaps the single best line in the entire movie - and perhaps of any movie (at least, if you've been raised Catholic with the "no-meat-on-fridays" rules).
FATHER! I've a wounded bird here!
Oh, good shot! Bring it in, we'll dine together.
We can't eat this bird!
"Wot? Oh God, is it Lent Again Already?!?
And that's enough of that. I'm going to blow off research on SBS this evening - I need some time away from this stupid stuff, and more time to relax. You, on the other hand, need to check out this particular site, because it should drive you nuts... I don't know how he does it, but it's very well done. But before I go, that e-mail I promised...
Article provided courtesy of MediaPeak, http://www.mediapeak.com
The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it's the quiet solitude that
comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it's
the unbounded joy of not having to be at work.
Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday
morning are most enjoyable.
A
few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the
basement shack with a steaming cup of coffee
in one hand and the morning paper in the other.
What began as a typical Saturday morning, turned
into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you
from time to time. Let me tell you about it.
I
turned the dial up into the phone portion of the
band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday
morning swap net.
A
long the way, I came across an older sounding chap,
with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You
know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the
broadcasting business. He was telling whoever he was
talking with something about "a thousand marbles."
I was
intrigued and stopped to listen to what he
had to say.
"Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with
your job. I'm sure they pay you well but it's a shame
you have to be away from home and your family so
much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have
to work 60 or 70 hours a week to make ends
meet. Too bad you missed your daughter's dance recital."
He continued, "Let me tell you something Tom,
something that has helped me keep a good perspective
on my own priorities."
And that's when he began to explain his theory of
a "thousand marbles."
"You see, I sat down one day and did a little
arithmetic. The average person lives about
seventy-five years. I know, some live more
and some live less, but on average, folks
live about seventy-five years."
"Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up
with 3900 which is the number of Saturdays that
the average person has in their entire lifetime.
Now stick with me Tom, I'm getting to the
important part."
"It took me until I was fifty-five years old to
think about all this in any detail," he went on,
"and by that time I had lived through over
twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to
thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I
only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy."
"So I went to a toy store and bought every single
marble they had. I ended up having to visit three
toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them
home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic
container right here in the shack next to my gear.
Every Saturday since then, I have taken one
marble out and thrown it away."
"I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I
focused more on the really important things in life.
There is nothing like watching your time here on
this earth run out to help get your priorities
straight."
"Now let me tell you one last thing before I
sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for
breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out
of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday
then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing
we can all use is a little more time."
"It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend
more time with your family, and I hope to meet you
again here on the band. 75 year Old Man, this is
K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!"
You could have heard a pin drop on the band when
this fellow signed off.
I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had
planned to work on the antenna that morning,
and then I was going to meet up with a few hams
to work on the next club newsletter. Instead, I went
upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. "C'mon
honey, I'm taking you and the kids to breakfast."
"What brought this on?" she asked with a smile.
"Oh, nothing special, it's just been a long time
since we spent a Saturday together with the kids."
Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we're out?
I need to buy some marbles."
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND AND MAY ALL YOUR SATURDAYS BE SPECIAL!
Work like you don't need the money...
Love like you've never been hurt...
Dance like nobody's watching...
Sing like nobody can hear you…
-Author Unknown
Bill Thomas
"The Write Track"
Enjoy, OK? I think I've lost enough marbles for the rest of you to count on. And the good news is that we've only got one more Vikings loss to endure before their season is over. With any luck at all, they'll tank tomorrow, New Orleans will be in the NFC championship, and the Vikes and their coach will be packing up their lockers come Monday, and put the rest of us out of our misery.
Saturday, January 6, 2001
Nope, nothing fancy thinking-wise today. I'm running on 1/3 cylinder, and I know it.
Last night as I lay in bed, and it was 11:43 pm (I know, because I'd just awakened with a start with my glasses still on and the TV running) it occurred to me - I'd forgotten to run down the rent check.
We're fairly fortunate here in that our apartment management has a clause in the lease ("Rent paid by 5 pm on the fifth") but we know the managers - the person who takes the checks to the bank says "hey, as long as they're in hand before I leave to make the deposit, I don't care." But I don't like to push it. So I got up, staggered down the hall, dropped off the check, and staggered back.
Being an old fart (heck, I'm better than half-way-through-the-last-half of my way between thirty and forty - well, I will be come April 7th, which will be my 37 1/2th Birthday, not that we celebrate such foolishness round here at any rate), I was surprised at the amount of traffic in the halls as I stumbled along with my Frankenstein gait, my finger-in-an-electric-socket hair, and my flannel shirt and gym shorts. Hey, we've all made fashion decisions we're not particularly proud of, right?
So this morning when the pounding started in the living room at a whopping 7:30, I was tempted, to say the least, to gut and trim up one or the other of my children for a later roasting. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and I fell asleep until something around 9:30.
Of course, we had to hop up and check out a few things. She Who Must Be Obeyed made an appointment for us this morning to once again look at the larger floorspaces in our present apartment complex. This exercise we go through every couple of years, and it's mostly futile. We looked at another apartment in our building which was in the process of being converted back over from "old handicapped" style to "normal", as there is now a "new handicapped" style which code apparently requires.
We looked across the lot at another apartment, this one with loft, which holds more promise, as we can most likely combine the Monkey Boy's bedroom and a toy room up in the loft and give us some needed relief from the toys at the same time.
However, as we were leaving that apartment, the young feller giving us the tour casually mentioned "well, there is one larger apartment we have in the complex. I think it's open right now." Of course, SWMBO said "Can we see it?" And the feller said "sure", thus sealing my everlasting doom (as if mixing Merikan and European punctuations in my quoted remarks ain't enough of a clue for you). We walked into this other place, which is, compared to our current place, slightly larger. Until you add in the second floor loft area, which adds about 30% more space.
The living room's wider than our current by about six feet, which is a huge addition. The bedrooms are slightly smaller, and we're giving up a little on the closets (SWMBO and I will lose our walk-in closet. There's two smaller closets in the new place; dollars to donuts you know which one is mine - yup, my very own two-foot-wide span to call my own, until she stores the winter coats in there). We're also sacrificing a little on the bathroom floorspace, and obviously, our second deck (and view of Buck Hill) are gone.
Regrettably, the apartment faces right over the parking lot entrance off of the main street here, so we're going to be in for a bit more noise there. This is rather unfortunate, as I do like to sleep with a window open whenever the weather allows. The good news, if you will, is that we've got a pretty good view of the southwest, which is going to be somewhat better than our current east/south range. I like being able to see what's coming from the west, and especially northwest, as that's where most of our storms come from. Out on this balcony we'll have a pretty clear shot from northwest to southeast, in a clear 180o swath.
Of course, the hike in rent is similarly painful, but there are advantages - cheaper to move (we'd most likely need to rent bodies, and not trucks, etc), and we'd also be able to do it over a longer period of time. Lastly, there's no application expense, etc., to add to the strain on the budget.
So after that, we headed out to McDonalds, where the Monkey Boy could consort with varied other Monkeys, and I sat with my laptop (I think that's a new high, or low, in geekdom - took a laptop to McDonalds Playland) and worked on, believe it or not, a SQL database for equipment tracking. When I got bored with that, I worked on Books On-Line within SQL Server to learn more. Good grief, I need a life.
Oh well. The saddest part is that the Vi'Queens won today - I know, I let down my end of the bargain. I've watched parts of five Vikes games this year. There was one game (a couple of weeks ago now) where I saw about six plays. An interception, a fumble, a score by the other team, and a punt with a long runback, if I remember right. Today, I saw one play when the Vikes were ahead 7-0.
I guess we'll have to wait for next week for them to really tank badly. Shouldn't take too long.
Oh, sure. Here I am about to go off to bed early on a weekend for a change, and then I run into a link on Dr. Pournelle's mail page about Robert Heinlein being a fascist. And then, I find that the link goes to the Straight Dope message boards. Now if there were ever two individuals I would have loved to sit between at a dinner party, it would have been Robert Anson Heinlein and Cecil Adams. Cecil's acerbic delivery and know-it-all-ism would have been a wonderful counterpoint to Mr. Heinlein's inquisitive and knowledgable nature, I imagine.
But RAH a fascist? Oh, puh-leeze. That's "puh" as in "Pull your head out of your anus" and "Leeze" as in "at least my head isn't shoved quite as far in as yours seems to be." (Warning - tired rant mode coming up - the scariest part is that I'm not leaving the keyboard until it's done - if I can pull all of this crap out of my head, just think what I could have done had I invested such mental powers into something useful, say rocket science, perhaps? Well, we'll never know. Fasten your belts, and prepare to be blown away)...
I never met the man. I came late to his writing, finding him in about 1985 or so. I first stumbled across "The Star Beast" and then kept reading. and reading, and reading... However, I believe I've got nearly everything he's published, from simple juveniles like "Star Beast" and "Red Planet" and "Rocket Ship Galileo" through "Stranger in a Strange Land" and "To Sail Beyond Sunset." I've read his compilations of short stories and other works, and I consider myself fairly well-read when it comes to the man. I'm also somewhat anal when it comes to authors I like...
But RAH a fascist? Yeah, right. One of the twits on this message board has the audacity to, early on in the "discussion" state "I've never read 'Starship Troopers' but I saw the movie." Oh, right. That's like trying to say "I've not read Shakespeare, but I saw a commercial for 'Shakespeare in Love'." Starship Troopers, the movie version, was a decent shoot-em-up-bang-bang-special-effects-man-in-space movie, but has about as much in common with that book as a turnip does with orbital mechanics.
Veerhoven's adaptation (more commonly called "butchery" in a more honest industry, such as loan-sharking) of "Starship Troopers" is pretty, well, severe. Somewhat like taking an Olympic runner, removing their legs, and then asking if they're going to set any more records. I think Veerhoven started down the road with Starship Troopers, then read John Stakely's "Armor" and said "hey, there, now THAT'S a movie I should have made." Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not Armor deserves the movie treatment (I think it would be much better as a miniseries, but then again, I agree with Dr. Pournelle - turning a book into a movie is sort of like putting great works of art on postage stamps. The best movies start as short stories, and nothing more. I don't know if it's the movie industry lacking the intelligence to grasp the fundamental plot pieces, or if it's the movie money industry who's unwilling to fund films that have some real meat on their bones, I don't know. I do know that some books would fit well into a two-hour movie. Most don't.
Starship Troopers was most emphatically not about the bugs, the skinnies, or any of the other creatures the troopers fought. It wasn't about the weapons, training methods, or combat tactics used. It was about Juan Rico's growth from self-obsessed young man to a dutiful citizen of the "country" he belonged to.
His instructor's frequent speeches, and his growth as a person, were not reflected in any of the actions the male lead (Casper Van Dein - sp?) did. The arrival of the instructor (who's name escapes me at the moment, but was played by Michael Ironside, a very good actor, in the movie) totally lacks the emotional impact it should have, as you do not see the overwhelming effect the old bird colonel had on this young boot in his lowest point in boot camp, or the effects of the man's constant pressure in class during Johnnie's high school years.
The gratuitious shots of bare breasts et. al. in the movie were a way to sex it up for the kids. They weren't part of the book - the book spent a lot more time emphasizing the role of the soldier in the society, and in the role of an informed and responsible citizen in that society. Over all of that, it made the point that the priveleges of citizenship are not, and should not, be free. Service should be required - one should have to stand in harm's way for one's country before one is allowed to have a voice in that country's continued direction and growth.
Heinlein was perhaps the Libertarian's libertarian. Governmental involvement in any form in his life was objectionable, if it was not reasonable. I don't think the man was a bigot - in Farnham's Freehold, written in the late 50s, I believe (can't find my copy at the moment), had a young black man named Joe acting as "houseboy" for a man and his wife - the wife was heading into a semi-permanent alcoholic haze, and that was the primary reason that they had domestic help - even though Hugh Farnham tells a guest that he'd hired Joe (not your typical houseboy - he was going to law school) to relieve his wife of the pressure of daily work; pressure, he comes to a later realization, that gave her something to do and some meaning in her life.
When it turns out that this brave new world is ruled by "black people" it is a statement of the times, nothing more. If the book had been written fifty years earlier in San Francisco, he might have used Chinese people. If the book had been written thirty or more years earlier in New York, he might have used the Irish, Italians, or any other ethnicity. It wasn't a slight to that group; it was an illustration that the "bottom" can come up "on top" in the strangest of ways.
The fact is that the book illustrated the principle that it matters not who is on top, the top doesn't much change. The "top" is decadent, exploitive, and quite often pushed to more and more excesses, breaking of taboos to convince the others of that rarified social strata that they are, in every way, separate from the "bottom". The cannibalism in the book was an illustration of the depravity of the upper class - they felt that eating their social inferiors was a definite way to show they had significant differences between them. Besides, these were non-people, or "cattle" (if you've read any of William Foestchen's alternate history of the Civil War's 35th Maine Unit as they attempt to build new lives on the world of Valennia - that series gave me nightmares).
Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", perhaps his most famous work, had a young fellow named "Mike" (Valentine Michael Smith) who returned from an attempt to colonize Mars with some strange abilities. Mike wasn't a "super being"; he was a most confused and mis-understood young man. His "disappearing" of people who threaten him is a defense mechanism, nothing more. Mike agonizes over this, until told by Jubal Harshaw to "protect Jill." Then things are clear - he will care for his water brother with his own life.
His later death from those who misunderstand him is a direct and exact parallel to Jesus' crucifixion. The killer line for me has always been "God Damn It, kill the blasphemer!". I chuckle ruefully every time I read it. The eating of Michael's earthly body later is another parallel to the Last Supper. It's an uncomfortable one, for Catholics, and it's one of those things that's easily misunderstood by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.
In "Job" Heinlein does perhaps the best one-two punch in history by pairing up God and the Devil, and making the Devil very much like a Texas cattle rancher (gee, hadn't realized the parallels there until I typed it), and God like a cranky Jewish father.
The punch hits when you come to a point where the two of them meet with "The Chairman" who is to them like they are to lowly Job. All he wants is Margarite.
Heinlein's later works do show a certain fondness for rather a lot of sexual misadventure. Given that he'd just managed to get through the so-called "Sexual Revolution" and was still struggling with his rather repressive Missourian early-last-century upbringing, I think the pendulum swung the other direction there for a while. It does detract some from his work, especially in "To Sail", but the story is still clear - a young man attempts to run from his perceived responsibilities as a soldier in "The War To End All Wars". Despite the fact that he's about two thousand years old, obsessed with his mother, and still suffering from the hero worship of his grandfather. Corporal Bronson, otherwise known as Lazarus Long, or Woodrow Wilson Smith, enlists. He goes "over there" to fight a battle that is not his - he's a six-year-old at home. And, as his belly is stitched open by machine-gun fire and he's rescued (the story's earlier been told in "Time Enough For Love"), his mother/lover, and grandfather/rival both mourn his passing.
Heinlein a fascist? Only if you believe in using the language as an imprecise tool.
Good night. I know way too damned much about science fiction. No wonder I need SQL. <RG>
Sunday, January 7, 2001
Not much new today... Yet. I've done a lot of writing on a new FAQ page I'm going to use to replace the Intro/why do this pages, and we'll hopefully answer a whole lot of other questions. I know most of you haven't asked them, but I thought I'd be nice and answer them before-hand.
But I did get out (it's over 20 outside right now, so I did it in my shorts), and added to the Buck Hill Shots...
Two gratuitious shots off the balcony today (had planned on it yesterday, but once we left the place at 11:00 am, we weren't back in for any length of time until after 6 - and our days are getting longer, here, but they're not that good yet). You'll note the picture above shows the parking lot - exciting for those of us who like that dark gray-ish/black stuff in the lower-left corner - that would be, yes, wait for it, dry pavement. Clear, dry pavement.
We typically get a decent January thaw around here, but after the last two months (which were, as you may well have heard, the coldest in some time), we usually suffer until about the third week, when the REALLY cold weather sinks in for a bit, then lightens up. Maybe we'll be fortunate that it won't work like that this year.
Strange - I was just checking stats for this place, and I'm developing a theory that my visitors like more pictures - but yesterday someone (I think it was one someone) came through here and apparently had images turned off - at least, that's my assumption as picture after picture rolled through the stat counter at zero bytes, but each page was hit. Weird, man.
Though that's fine by me. If you're here to read content instead of look at the pretty colors, so much the better.
Later: Let's see, now that we've nailed down the lid on the coffin for last year, let's see how I did on this site... Geographically, this server is located in Calgary, I believe, and tracks stats from 2 pm one day to the following 2 pm. Therefore, on 12-31-2000, at 2 pm, we started the new year. So this is traffic prior to that.
From Tuesday, October 3, which was my first full day on SpacePorts, until December 31, I had a total of 5248 visitors - that's unique IP addresses in a 24 hour period. If you visited, and came back the next day, you were a new unique visitor. Those visitors loaded a total of 49,072 pages, and slightly over 850 Megabytes of bandwidth. Big days for me were obviously October 17th, when I joined the daynoters, and Friday, December 22nd, when 110 unique visitors hit this site. November 28th I had 1657 unique page loads, and 25 megs of bandwidth transfer. Something to do with the fact that on that morning, I updated my resume on Spaceports, then linked it to my DICE.COM profile. Now THAT'S one way to blow your web stats clear out of the water.
I haven't got any way to track where people come from - I'm assuming a number of them wander in off the Daynoter ranks, but I'm sure I'm getting some strange hits from search engines (such phrases as "leather-clad sweaty monkey sex" and "cheaper computer parts available here now" nonwithstanding, of course). Meanwhile, I'll just keep plugging along.
Am I bragging? Heck no - I'm stunned, mostly. Gratified, humbled, and honored. I, frankly, had no idea this would happen, and that people keep coming back for a visit. But the bottom line is that I don't do this for you - it's for me. Sometimes I have to get things off my chest (like my Heinlein rant last night), or sometimes just to say "hey, hi there, behave, put the wrench down, and we'll discuss this like civilized people." But the problem with that is, as yet, my son can't read, so I've still got to do the talking down portion verbally. Ah, fatherhood.
And Later Still: Sure. I once heard the line that great photographers are merely people who have a good eye and go nowhere without a camera. I wish I'd had one a few hours ago. We decided to head over to the Y for a bit of exercise, and as we pulled out, we saw the Minneapolis Downtown skyline hgihlighted in a rose-orange color against the gray clouds behind it. Since most of the downtown is now "glass-box architecture" we couldn't miss it here in Burnsville. Wow. And me without my camera. Ach, well.
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