Straight Edge Life

Windows XP pisses me off to no end. It’s devolution: In effect, a simpler being that’s easier to get along with because it doesn’t argue with you.. but only it’s too fucking stupid to understand your language.

I hate it. The amount of work I have to go to in order to make code that works flawlessly in windows 2000, linux and mac os x, work on windows xp is stunning. Take for example the wonderful and relatively new WebDAV protocol that’s endorsed by many of the industry’s largest players. It’s like ftp but better because it runs on port 80, the standard port for website traffic, and can be encrypted in transit. Yahoo. No more passwords sent in clear text with FTP.

So… Windows 2000 lets you connect to a WebDAV server simply by adding a network place. Enter the address of the server, http://foo.myserver.com/myusername, enter your username and password when prompted, and all-of-the-sudden you’ve got a WebDAV drive mounted on your computer just like it was a local drive. In OS X it’s as simple as hitting Apple K in the finder and entering in the address. Bam, connected to a WebDAV server. Drag and drop files at will. I think you get the idea here. This is not a difficult thing to do.

Enter windows XP. When adding a network place in Windows XP the geniuses at Microsoft decided that when you enter http://foo.myserver.com into the add network place wizard you aren’t really looking for a webdav server on the world wide web, no… you’re looking for an SMB server on your local network. Forget that SMB and WebDAV are nothing alike and that the http:// prefixing your address indicates with absolute clarity that you’re looking for an http server. No, XP wants to keep you local and in a happy little microsoft world using only microsoft technology.

Enter the average programmer who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what technology you use, he simply wants to get a job done and write some software so that you can get your job done. This is why we have standards in the industry afterall. Standards help different kinds of computers talk to each other clearly. Standards make different system work together. But when one company decides that they want to ignore these standards and make up the rules as they go along, standards really don’t mean much anymore.

Eugene is a good place. I don’t give Eugene nearly enough credit. Actually, I bitch about it quite a lot. I probably shouldn’t.

Get this… I was down at my current job site today, having a meeting with some of the bigwigs when we started casually talking about how messed up “the system” has become. Specifically how that, due to recent cuts in budgets and changes in legal statute, accused criminals can actually be rewarded for doing things that previously they were punished for in court. I won’t say what exactly because every meth cook in town will take advantage of it and run around with boxes of sudafed under their arms… but I assure you it’s NOT COOL.

I sat in awe as they discussed the ethics of making these loopholes public. Yes, technically it’s in the criminal’s best interest, but it’s also basically the same as dodging the court system entirely. Is it ethical to make this information available?

To add to the madness of this conversation I realized that letting the accused in on the loophole may be in best interest of the accused but not in the best interest of the people in the room with me. For financial reasons. It was a heavy conversation. I suggested that I program an ethical decision making matrix that would always round up. Luckily the folks in the room got the joke and we moved on to more important subjects.

But my whole point in this is that things are always more complex than we think. Especially in Eugene, Oregon. You think you can save money by cutting a “bloated” budget for the DA’s office. You ask the local newspaper to solicit a poll about which crimes should be prosecuted and which shouldn’t. You go to the voting booth and make a mark in a box. But you don’t know, the voter doesn’t know what they are doing or what the implications are. And you can’t figure it out from TV ads or voter’s pamphlets. You have to be smart, you have to listen, and you may just need to be in the right place at the right time.

Well, this is how I feel about Eugene. It’s the right place at the right time. Frustrating, awe inspiring and complex. Yes, Eugene is full of morons just like any other town. We’ve got our share of all kinds of idiots, trust me. I deal with them everyday on the roads. Don’t focus on that though… open your ears and you will hear conversations. People talk about things here. The place is small enough that people can stay in the loop without too much trouble. Just open your eyes and eavesdrop on that conversation next to you at the cafe. You’re probably listening to a judge or a prominent politician. You’d never know by looking at them, but this town is small. You probably have more influence than you realize.

I’m surrounded with noise and distraction constantly. I talk about this all the time, I know. And if I bore you to tears with this rambling I apologize… I think I need to write about things until they become clear in my own head. Sometimes that takes five or six sessions with a laptop in a cafe or a dark room.

So distraction… it’s here. It’s around me. At first I thought it was there, that I put it there, to keep my mind off all the negative things that get me down. An insulation. But simply being around negative things doesn’t get me down. For that matter, thinking about negative things doesn’t get me down that much either. I can use a bad mood for good. More than that, I can usually turn a bad thing around without too much trouble.

Assuming I’m not using noise for distraction I think I must be using it to keep myself focused. I find when a room or my mind is quiet it’s damn hard to find the motivation to do things I don’t really want to do. If I’m at peace it’s extremely easy to lose all tolerance for compromise. Right now I’m compromising. My health, my sanity, my art and my social network are at risk, no… they are on hold. For good reasons. Temporary reasons. Get out of debt. But these stunningly important things are on hold nonetheless.

When it’s quiet I am at risk of becoming acutely and painfully aware of the lack of grace in my life. I am a walking ghost.

Only a cat with experience, skill, discipline and training can do what this cat does. I figure that my bed, a fat king sized thing left over from my divorce, has roughly 5,925 square inches of top-facing surface area. My cat, Fluff Butt, is approximately the size of a football with legs and long fur. About 60 square inches. He weighs less than a gallon of milk and can easily be tucked under your arm when necessary. But whatever he lacks in size he makes up for in sheer cunning and skill. By some miracle of geometry this fluffly little feline has located not the exact center of the bed… no, that would be too easy… he’s located the dead center of the blankets on the bed. He is currently asleep at this point. And since the blankets are all slopped off of one side of the bed Fluff Butt has divided the remaining blanket area into quadrants roughly the size of face towels. Forget that I’ve set aside lavish poofy towels specifically for Fluff Butt and Josie to sleep on. Forget that I even put two pieces of turkey on these towels specifically to entice them… No, Fluff Butt eats only dry cat food and Josie eats her food off the ground. To make it worse Fluff Butt knows that I won’t move him. How could I move him? He’s like 347 cat years old. I’m afraid to pet him let alone wake him from a deep sleep. And so he is… paws twitching as he dreams of catching moths and garden snakes, and I sit here with a hot 12 inch laptop on my legs trying to stay warm. Damn him.

“A hacker does for love what others would not do for money”

- Anonymous