J.P. Morgan Knows What You Did Last Summer

Photograph by Edward J. Steichen, 1903

Suspicious Rook Is Suspicious

Or, "Rooks have a remarkable aptitude for using tools, scientists have found."

Image thanks to the BBC.

Being open about our interest in crows has begun to pay off. Whenever our family and friends see anything corvid-related, they think of us. Even better: they buy it, or take a picture of it, or make a note of it, and send it to us.

Thus this article I just received from my dad, about tool use among ravens in captivity. Apparently they don't use tools in the wild, but in the lab, they're more creative than we thought:

Tests on captive birds revealed that they could craft and employ tools to solve a number of different problems.

The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, came as a surprise as rooks do not use tools in the wild.

Despite this, the UK team said the birds' skills rivalled those of well-known tool users such as chimpanzees and New Caledonian crows.

Arcology

So I'm halfway through an obscure French movie with the unfortunate title "Eden Log". Weirdly, even though I'm like 99.999% sure (yes, five nines) that it's a French movie, all the dialogue is in English.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it for a few different reasons.

For one, it's a kind of "vision quest" narrative. The protagonist starts out deep in the earth, in total darkness, naked, hideously disfigured (what little we can see of him) and capable only of meaningless jerkings and incoherent grunts. As the story unfolds, we follow him towards the surface. The darkness gradually recedes before increasing amounts of light. His movements become more coordinated, purposeful. His disfigurements turn out to be caked mud, which he washes off. He clothes himself. He begins to speak intelligible words, complete sentences. A little bit at a time, he learns more and more about the world he's been "born" into.

I find this narrative arc fascinating, especially if the story is well-told. This movie seems to be doing a pretty good job of it, slowly but steadily incrementing the changes, the "growth" of the character. I am enjoying the way they keep improving the lighting on the set, and adding new props, and the way the script conveys the idea of growth.

Speaking of growth, the third reason I'm enjoying this movie is that it seems to be about some kind of arcology. An arcology modeled after a tree, both in design and in philosophy. And I think that arcologies are pretty neat, at least in theory. So any halfway-decent story set in an arcology, or about an arcology, gets my attention.

An Unexpected Twist

So Netflix sent me a movie the other day.

I start reading the sleeve, and it turns out this movie has a plot.

Needless to say, I was disappointed. It was my understanding that the whole point of this movie was that there was no plot. Just a single, awsome, undeniable premise.

A premise so awsomely undeniable, that no plot was necessary.

A premise so undeniably awsome, that any attempt at narrative justification would just chump it up.

That was my understanding. As it turns out, however, there's a plot:

FBI agents Neville Flynn (Samuel L. Jackson) and Sean Jones (Nathan Phillips) are tasked with escorting a witness, ex-mobster John Saunders (Mark Houghton), to a high-profile trial and to keep him safe from those who would do him harm. As the film's title suggests, however, an onboard assassin determined to rid the G-men of their precious cargo unleashes a crate full of venomous snakes in this taut airborne thriller.

That's right. A plot.

Who knew? And why bother?

The Meeting: Stream of Consciousness

Or, maybe I should pay more attention...

Another day, another boring meeting... Haha, people have the funniest wallpapers... I don't care about this meeting at all... Time to catch up on some paperwork... Or catch up on my blogroll... Whatever... Wait, what? Is this guy apologizing to me? Why? Oh. He's apologizing for wasting my time? No, it's okay, I know how to keep myself busy... Oh, there's a story? He's been taking some management classes... He's learned to value my time better... So now he's wasting my time telling me all of this... That's it, I'm clearing my calendar. No more meetings!

Wheel Of Robbery, Turn Turn Turn

Or, Garage Sales Are Awsome

So we had a garage sale this weekend.

MRS. C: You know this means we're officially homeowners, now.

ME: All those mortgage payments we've been making didn't count?

MRS. C: Nope!

I put this in just to show that I'm not the only one around here who likes to take a ride on the wackytown express.

Anyway, garage sales are awsome. I had no idea. And the best part? We now have enough space in the garage to park the car!

Along the way, I learned a bunch of interesting stuff.

Stuff I learned about garage sales
First, I learned that the thing about a garage sale? You're selling junk. Seriously. Junk. If it weren't junk, you'd be keeping it. Or you'd be selling it on Ebay for more than it's going to cost you to post the item, set up the auction, pack up the item, take it down to the shipping store, and send it off to the buyer.

If you're putting out on a tarp on your lawn in the hopes that some random passerby is going to throw a couple dollars at you, it's junk.

There are a couple implications that arise from this. One is, any price is a good price. If you mark it as "one dollar", and somebody waves it in your face and asks "fifty cents?", the correct answer is "sure!"

A couple months ago we drove past a garage sale, and I saw an Aeron chair. I sat in an Aeron chair once, back during the dot-com boom. But that's a different story. The point is, they are awsome. They are expensive, and they are worth it. So I made Mrs. C stop the car, and I looked at the chair. They had it marked "$120"--an incredibly good deal. But I got clever. I asked the guy, "how about $80 for the chair?" And he agreed without batting an eyelash. At the time I thought I was the King of All Hagglers. But now I know better. He already had all the Aeron chairs he needed. As far as he was concerned, that one was junk.

Right. So. You have all this junk. You want to get rid of it. People come by, offer to pay you money to take away your junk. This is awsome. You don't want to ruin it by trying to get your money's worth. You've already squeezed all the money's worth you can get from that thing. Anything you make now is pure profit.

So we got rid of a bunch of junk this way. A crappy entertainment center, that we'd inherited from the previous tenants at a rental several years ago, and had been carting around with us ever since. A hideous dining room table, that Mrs. C has always hated with the passion of a thousand suns.

Passionate suns.

I have a theory about how people buy stuff at a garage sale. I figure, when a person goes to a store, they already have something in mind. They go to that store to buy that thing, at the store's listed price. But when people go to a garage sale, there's no telling what they'll find. They don't really have anything in mind at all, that they want to buy. So if something catches their eye, they're only going to buy it if they like the price. If they don't like the price, so what? Two minutes ago, they had no intention of buying it anyway. So if your goal is to get rid of junk (and it is), it's really important to agree to whatever price they propose.

You have a truck with you, and you'll take this horrible entertainment center away right now? Great! And you'll give me fifty dollars, too? Even better!

More stuff I learned
Another thing I learned is that people will buy the craziest things at garage sales. Pulp Fiction. On VHS. Microsoft Office. For Windows 95. The Twilight novels. Seriously. A single ugly curtain panel from a set of six ugly curtain panels.

Mrs. C did some research online, "how to hold a garage sale", like that. We learned it's a good idea to put out a cooler full of cold beverages, and sell them for 50 cents each. That's a huge profit margin, and in the Southern California sun we made bank on Coke, Fresca, and bottled water.

Wheel of Robbery
Finally, I learned that people will steal stuff from garage sales. Hearken to my freakish tale of human nature!

So these two ladies are wandering through our junkocracy, accumulating a bunch of junk that I assume they're going to buy. One of these ladies has some horrible little tchotchke tucked up under her arm. Why anybody on earth would want to buy it, I don't know. I'm not even sure why we bought it. When Mrs. C added it to the sale, I was pleased. When I saw that this woman was going to pay me for it, I was ecstatic.

Anyway, after a little while, these two ladies come up to me. The one with the horrible tchotchke under her arm holds out a stack of old clothes she wants to buy. I guesstimate the number of items in the stack, make up some hilariously low price (I find simple math tiresome, so actually counting the items and adding up the prices in fifty-cent increments was sooo not going to happen). I gesture towards the tchotchke, and I'm about to ask if she wants to buy that, too, when her friend cuts me off.

Actually, her friend cuts right in front of her, grabs a digital alarm clock off the table next to me, and asks me how much it is. I'm a little surprised to see this alarm clock, since we'd recently replaced it on account of its snooze button being broken.

Here at Chez Container, an alarm clock without a snooze button is unacceptable.

So I'm a little taken aback. I'm not sure it's really ethical to put broken stuff up for sale. On the other hand, we do have a sign that says "all sales are final" (another thing Mrs. C learned from her research). And she is offering to pay me money to take away my junk. "It doesn't work very well," says Mrs. C, helpfully. And that cinches it. I name a price, the lady pays it, and the two of them walk off.

About a minute later, I remember the horrible tchotchke. That lady totally walked off without paying for it! And I'm pretty sure her friend played interference for her, distracting me when I was about to mention it.

For a brief instant, I was annoyed. I'd been ripped off! Crime! Thievery! Buncha savages in this town!

But then I realized something: I was relieved. It was junk, and it was gone. Of all the things you could possibly steal from me, something I should never have had in the first place, and was trying to get rid of anyway? Good riddance. You're doing me a favor, lady.

Plus, your friend just paid me good money for a broken alarm clock. The Wheel of Robbery? In your face.

I Know What You're Thinking

Spoiler Alert!


You're thinking, "Under Siege is a Steven Seagal movie, so it can't be all that good."

And you're right: Steven Seagal cannot really act. It's just not his thing. I mean, I give him mad respect for showing up, hitting his mark, delivering his lines and getting paid. That kind of professionalism means a lot to me. It's not easy to pay the bills, and anybody who can pay the bills with an acting career? Right on, I say. Right on.

But back to the movie. What if I told you "Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey steal a battleship"?

Admit it: You'd be all like, "I must watch this movie STAT!" And you'd be right to do so.

"This Meeting Has No Agenda"

A Public Service Announcement

Any time somebody calls a meeting, and then tells you that there's no agenda, be afraid. No good can come of such a meeting. If at all possible, skip the meeting. Get up and walk out if you have to. If you can't avoid the meeting, insist that on having an agenda.

Even if the point of the meeting is free-form brainstorming where anybody can say anything they like, you can still have an agenda. For example:

Brainstorming Meeting - Thursday, 10:30 AM
Agenda: "free-form brainstorming where anybody can say anything they want".

And here's another piece of advice: If you're the one calling the meeting, you're the one who needs to start things off by saying what's on your mind. Asking the attendees to start talking, before you've even given them the discussion topic, is just plain wrong.

Also: If you need to have a discussion with your supervisors and peers, have that discussion with your supervisors and peers. Do NOT call a meeting with your subordinates, and have that discussion with us. We don't care. Even if we did care, we have nothing to contribute to the discussion, because we're not in a position to address any of the issues raised. So you end up having your half of the discussion, while the rest of us sit around wondering why we're here.

And before calling a meeting, please consider very carefully whether the information or request you have in mind can't be better communicated via email. (Hint: It can.)

Finally, if the meeting agenda is to encourage the other attendees to brainstorm creative solutions to vexing problems, you should probably not do most of the talking. You should definitely not cut people off any time they start to speak.

If you fail on any one of these points, I'm suspicious already. If you fail on all of these points, I'm forced to conclude that you're a tiny party hat for my behind, and it's not worth my valuable explosion time to work for you.

Coming Attractions: An explanation of the terms "tiny party hat for my behind" and "valuable explosion time".

Evolution of a Systems Administrator

Milestones:

1. Microsoft Windows: Carry out tedious, repetitive tasks by tediously, repetitively pointing and clicking on things.
2. UNIX: Carry out tedious, repetitive tasks by tediously, repetitively typing instructions on the command line.
3. UNIX: Carry out tedious, repetitive tasks by using some popular command-line shortcuts (up-arrow, tab completion) to ease the pain. Slightly.
4. UNIX: Write a utility script to carry out tedious, repetitive tasks while I update my blog.
5. UNIX: Write a utility script in less time than it would take to do the task by hand.
6. UNIX: Go back to a utility script I wrote months ago, and wonder "what the heck was I thinking?!"
   

Historical Perspective, or Historical Blinders?

On the way to work this morning, NPR told me that "due to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan", the Secretary of Defense was replacing the U.S. military commander there.

Given what the history of the Civil War has suggested to me about "newspaper editors and politicians", I'm inclined to conclude that the situation in Afghanistan is not actually deteriorating in any strategic way, and that the general being replaced is really the best man for the job...

Crowspotting Developments

In Which We Are Probably Some Kind of Bad Neighbors

Okay, so the thing about liking crows is you want to see them walking around in your front yard, doing all kinds of hilarious crow things.

The solution: Peanuts.

We have a strict rule. Crows only get peanuts if they are either a) around to see us put the peanuts out, or b) hang around outside our house making lots of noise to get our attention.

I'm not sure they know they're getting our attention, but hey. We figure, crows are smart. They should figure it out pretty quick: caw = people = peanuts.

Of course, even though crows can totally outrun (outfly?) us, they're kinda skittish. I guess they figure we might be some kind of previously un-reported teleporting human or something.

So we put out the peanuts, and then go inside and fire up the webcam in the front window. Much hilarity ensues as crows come onto the lawn and crack open peanuts and stalk around and other crowy shenanigans.

I keep waiting for our neighbors to complain that we're spying on them.

It's just the crows, I swear!

I Like Big Books and I Cannot Lie

With apologies to Sir Mix-A-Lot.

So in addition to Understanding the Linux Kernel, I'm also reading The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote. Here's some impressions I have formed so far:

• A general's own newspaper editors and politicians are probably his worst enemies. Few things are more valuable in a military campaign than a free hand and the privilege of making his own professional assessment; robbed of these two things by the media and the government, his success becomes failure, his defeat becomes disaster, and his victory becomes impossible.
  
• The morale of the troops counts for a lot.
• Making your own reconnaissance personally counts for a lot.
• Von Clausewitz was right: The best time to utterly destroy your enemy is immediately after defeating him in battle, as he is retreating in disarray.
• Von Clausewitz was also right: The hardest thing to do in battle is pursue and destroy the enemy, when you are in disarray immediately after defeating him.
• The Civil War was essentially a war of Generals. Thousands of soldiers, but only a few personalities in a position to guide the course of the battle.
  
• I found it interesting to learn that all the professional Generals had trained together at West Point, and many of them--along with many of the amateur generals in the war--were veterans of the recent war with Mexico.
  
• With the same training, and the same experience, the war seems to have hinged greatly on the individual personalities of the Generals involved: Who had better learned the lessons of the classroom and the battlefield. Who could better understand and exploit the situations that confronted him. Etc.
• Ironclads freakin' rock.
  

In Other News

Or, I Have A Confession To Make

Okay, this is kind of embarassing: I've never customized or compiled my own Linux kernel. I understand that a lot of people have never done this. However, a lot of people aren't Systems Administrators. I know, right? I can't believe I'm actually admitting to this.

Anyway, as a sysadmin, I'm waaay overdue for a walk around the Linux block. So on the advice of a friend, I picked up O'Reilly's Understanding the Linux Kernel. The concept was, I'd download a Linux distribution, customize it this way and that, and learn as I went along. All I really needed was some kind of Getting Started or DIY guide.

Understanding the Linux Kernel turns out to be a massive frickin' tome. Thicker than any other O'Reilly book on my bookshelf. Massier than my Database Systems textbook. And so far it's looking like a pretty deep dive into the internals of the operating system. Certainly deeper than I've ever dived before, and I'm still only in the Introduction.

It's been quite an emotional rollercoaster, let me tell you.

The book arrives: What have I gotten myself into?

The intended audience: "anyone who's interested in learning more about the Linux kernel." Hey, that sounds like me. Right on!

The prerequisites: "There are no prerequisites..." Sweet! Perfect for a kernel beginner like me!

"... except familiarity with the C programming language, and maybe an assembly language." Familiarity with C, assembly a plus? Those are some pretty serious prerequsities!

Anyway, it's a book, so I can't help but read it. I think it's going to work out really well, actually.

In Other News

In other news, tomorrow's itinerary looks something like this:

4:30 AM: Get up. Our coffee-robot should have coffee made for us. Mrs. C. rides the motorcycle down to the park, to get some nighttime riding hours in. I drive the chase car.

5:00 AM: At the park. Attend the levee of the local crows who roost there in their thousands.

6:00 AM: At the park. Put in some time doing low-speed, tight-maneuver riding in the parking lot. This is a critical motorcycle-riding skill, and one that requires a lot of practice to really master.

8:00 AM: Ride home. I'll put in some cruising time, and Mrs C. will drive the chase car.

8:30 AM: Get more coffee from our friendly neighborhood coffee shop (stimulate the local economy!).

9:00 AM: Go to the local shipping joint, send off my laptop to get repaired. I've been putting this off for over a month, because I have an emergency backup laptop, and I hate paperwork and bureaucracy. Also, send my mom her birthday present, and my dad his mother's day gift. Or the other way around. I'm not sure. Mrs. C. keeps track of all that stuff.

10:00 AM: Return home. Turn on the new server we just ordered, install VMware ESXi, and get to work on "understanding the Linux kernel". I'll let you know how it goes.

Crowspotting: Crow in Flight

Or, Action Shots Are Hard

Crowspotting: The Park At Dawn

Or, 4 Crows 1 Bag

Sweet! You check it out, I've got your back!

Hey guys, what's up?

Oh, hey, a bag! Can we get in on that?

Totally! Bag for everybody!