Quitting the quitting

Even as a quitter I am a quitter.

I officially accepted an offer today. Don't ask me who with -- I just sort of like to keep names and, you know, facts, out of my rantacious musings. Things are much easier when you deal with loose conjecture, rambling, lampoonery and much less subpoenable items. If your curiosity is killing you, look me up in linkedin under less pseudonymous nomenclature. Obviously my geeky interview skills are at least semi passable... or I was the only applicant -- a possibility that is extremely plausible given the narrow scope of my experience and the job description.

I must say it is seriously weird to think of returning to work after almost 3 years of vacation. I know Ellie doesn't necessarily view it as vacation, but I certainly did. I fully expect to think back of the days living in a toolshed as "good times." But life has been on hold for a while -- no significant investment, no house, limited entertainment and toys, hillbilly bifocals... It will be nice to get back on the road to retirement (though my supercool cacti retirement graphs have come really close at times to hitting the target.)

That probably means fewer rants here... and maybe, just maybe -- more entries on house building.

And a big "thanks" to those of you that may have given references -- whether they called you or not. I'll assume they did and you and you alone were the sole reason I got the job. How's that?

Who's watching TARP?

...and what the hell is her agenda?

Oh, it's not an actual question -- more of a metaphorical question. I know who's watching TARP. Officially, it's Elizabeth Warren. If you're not familiar with her from the talk show circuits, let me give you the Spork's eye view: She's a Haaavad Law professor that goes on all the talk shows. She comes across as approachable and homey and then goes on to tell us how all the debt we have is just not our fault. It's those wicked credit card companies and marketers and advertisers and banks and all those awful people asking us to spend money and we cannot help ourselves, boo hoo hoo. It just costs sooooo much today as compared to our parents, who had it so good with their backbreaking labor, 1200 square foot houses, 3 fuzzy TV stations and total lack of iPhones. Oh, the humanity. In the richest country in the world, we just cannot earn enough to pay for our poor sad lives. It's not our fault. Someone needs to save us.

Oh, please. And she is the one now chairing the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel. When I've heard her talk about THAT she's livid (of course) trying to find out where the money went. (I'm sure the problem is with the evil companies that got the money, not with the idiots that were dishing it out with a big soup ladle.)

Anyway, the semi-point of this semi-rant is that she's written a new study on bankruptcy due to increased medical expenses in the US. Oh my god, if you read it, you'll find out medical bankruptcies have increased to 70% of all bankruptcies. And oh my god, we're all going to die. We're all going to go broke and it isn't our fault. Someone help us please. Now, I must remind you again: She's a Haaavad Law professor, specializing in bankruptcy. And she's put out previous boo hoo medical bankruptcy studies that have been criticized because the statistics included bankruptcies of which only $1000 were medical expenses.

Her agenda is clearly that the government owes us free health care. So before you swallow any of her bait or shed any tears from her boo hooing, check out this article exposing her ability to lie with statistics. Sure, while medical bankruptcies might now account for 70% of bankruptcies... the actual numbers of medical bankruptcies in the studied period are half -- yes half -- of what they were in previously studies.

Oh, but I'm sure that was an honest mistake, right?

I can't wait to see what her oversight committee will come up with.

[Later edit: a second followup article by the same author.]

Our 6000 year old planet is getting hotter all the time

[Editorial note: I am not actually taking sides on either of the following issues. And I am not really interested in arguing the specifics of either. And, in fact, I am not necessarily even presenting my own arguments here. If that's what you come away with, I didn't get my point across.]

This is a tale of two subgroups. Group number one is extremely right wing politically. And extremely religious. They think anthropomorphic global warming is bullshit. And they have a whole list of reasons:

• AGW takes an extremely complex climate model with millions of variables and makes finite predictions based on very small fluctuations in a single gas (CO2)
• AGW is generally politicized science -- and government involvement in science is bad for government and bad for science
• AGW proponents spout: whether we know if this is real or not, we should do something about it. It cannot hurt. (Pascal's wager)
• AWG proponents pretend to be science by using the word "theory" in a scientific context when they really mean "hypothesis". Theories, in a scientific context are "reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of that class. ... In general theories are expected to be functional and parsimonious: i.e. a theory should be the simplest possible tool that can be used to effectively address the given class of phenomena." (from Wikipedia). AGW is does not meet these baseline requirements... and is certainly not the simplest explanation.
• AGW proponents ignore theories of cyclical cooling/warming, sun/oceanic cycles, even though these ideas seem to successfully explain past events and have successfully predicted future changes
• AGW proponents present a whole list of facts that are, well, not facts. This list is long but examples include: Arctic passage is open now for the first time in history, Greenland has always been an arctic climate and is dangerously melting, polar bears are in decline and are going to become extinct, glaciers everywhere are all melting and getting smaller, etc.
• One of AGW's biggest hurdles isn't a problem with AGW at all. It is that it is represented by hucksters -- like Al Gore -- who obviously do not believe in AGW as they live a lifestyle that is incompatible with their own teachings and seem to be in the game for their own profit.

Group number two is extremely left wing politically. And generally buys into anthropomorphic global warming. They think intelligent design and religion are bullshit. And they have a whole list of reasons:

• ID takes an extremely complex model of how we got here with millions of variables and makes a finite conclusion based on one or two things it deems "irreducibly complex."
• ID is generally associated with politicized religion -- and government involvement in religion is bad for government and bad for religion
• religious proponents spout: whether or not you believe in god or not, you should try to believe. It cannot hurt. (Pascal's wager)
• ID proponents pretend to be science by using the word "theory" in a scientific context when they really mean "hypothesis". Theories, in a scientific context are "reserved for ideas which meet baseline requirements about the kinds of observations made, the methods of classification used, and the consistency of the theory in its application among members of that class. ... In general theories are expected to be functional and parsimonious: i.e. a theory should be the simplest possible tool that can be used to effectively address the given class of phenomena." (from Wikipedia). ID is does not meet these baseline requirements... and is certainly not the simplest explanation.
• ID proponents ignore theories of evolution even though these ideas seem to successfully explain past events and have led to further scientific discoveries.
• Religious proponents present a whole list of facts that are, well, not facts. This list is long but examples include: the world is only 6000 years old, the entire world was destroyed by a flood that covered the entire land mass, radiocarbon dating is inaccurate by billions of years, evolution violates the laws of thermodynamics, etc.
• One of religion's biggest hurdles isn't a problem with religion at all. It is that it is represented by hucksters -- like Benny Hinn -- who obviously do not believe in religion as they live a lifestyle that is incompatible with their own teachings and seem to be in the game for their own profit.

The failure to generalize will one day make your head asplode.

Oh bother

Probably nearing a year ago I noticed googlepages.com was changing... and not necessarily for the better. As I actually use that as a free hosting spot for miscellany -- files and a few scripts -- I figured I might ought to look at the details.

Oh cwap. It appears it is changing so much as to be unusable... and it appears the urls will not seamlessly forward/rewrite forever (if at all when it comes to the seamless part.)

It's odd that the world's leader in internet technology can't figure out you might want a static url that lasts from now until eternity. Or that you might want to use google map API inside some other google web application. (Oh, there are workarounds, but... being a cranky old bastard, I don't like change.)

Anyway, the short bit of this is that bits and pieces will probably be broken here as I move some of the static and some of the very old bits off of googlepages and onto... well, I'll figure that out when I get to it.

The Geek Interview

I suck at the job interview. I truly mean that from the bottom of my blackened and shriveled heart. And it's my fault, really it is. Self promotion does not come naturally to me... and generally when I see others do their self promotion, my eyes roll back into my head and a little remote control in my head changes the channel to something more interesting.

I also just have, over the years, found absolutely no use for storing detailed, cataloged memories of stuff I have done. From a geek point of view, that data is stored on tape.... and not in one of those tape silos where a mechanized robot hand can grab it and spin it up. No, it is stored off site in a cardboard box in a warehouse on the bad side of town in my brain. And while the tape is probably labeled properly, the box isn't -- and it's on a big ass shelf with about 8000 other unlabeled boxes. And the tape isn't some fancy schmancy reads-almost-as-fast-as-a-disk-drive tape. It is some old 2.5G 8mm Sony video tape that you have to shove into a sometimes flakey Exabyte tape drive.

It's the same reason I do piss poor when fighting with a spouse or girlfriend (and no, dear, I do not mean to imply I have both.) I don't have all my transgressions indexed neatly in an optimized sql database either. It just never seemed that important. Never you mind the fact that the lyrics from every single song I ever heard in the 1970's -- even the ones I didn't like -- are filed neatly in cache and are indexed by artist, title, subject and album cover. I might need that data. Really. I might.

So I don't do well with "You have never been supportive in this relationship" and I don't do well with "Tell me about a time when you overcame conflict in a workplace situation." I don't freaking know. I really don't. I could probably take that as an essay question, take it home, mull it over for a week and write up some long ass bullshit answer and ... it would probably give a 4 out of 5 or better. I mean: that's what school taught me -- if you can write a 5 paragraph BS answer that vaguely dances around the question asked, you get an A+.

Take that philosophy of how school works, let 20 plus years go by without any practice, add a nearly 3 year resume gap, a razor thin area of expertise and 4 cups of introverted^[1] and that's where I am now.

Someone needs to sort out a proper method for interviewing geeks. The behavioral interview style just doesn't work. The best interviews I ever participated in involved beer. One was by the pool with a beer... and I worked with him for over 15 years. The other was a weekend kegger in Austin with barbecue, beer and 4 hours of in depth technical screening.^[2] Both of these worked for me... and both landed me a job.

1. Oh crap, the recipe only called for 1 cup. Ooops.
2. Truth in lending laws require me to mention I worked here one day and quit, but my point was about the interview style, not the job itself.