Personal - Being late

I have noticed that every time I meet R.Y. while commuting I am… shall we say "not at my best"? I wondered why is that. So I figure: we only meet on a bus at a time that means I'm very late, so it usually means I've tumbled out of bed and into my uniform in under ten minutes.
It's interesting though that my poor state doesn't bother me otherwise. Maybe I should readjust my answers on that meme to get "dork" instead of "geek".

Books - Edward E. "Doc" Smith - Galactic Patrol (Lensman Series Book #3)

So, I've read somewhere that it was among the first, defining works of the Space Opera genre. I got curious. All I've go to say after reading it is thank God it's not 1937. I have never read a fanfic, not on FFN, not even intentionally bad fanfic, that was this horrible. I can hardly call it a proper novel. The very outdated technology and nomenclature was bad enough ("ray guns", "ether"? WTF!), but the over-the-top depiction of absolutely everything, the non-existent characterization, and Gary Stu hero, a notable lack of morals and disregard for human life really made it hard to believe it was a published work (a bestseller?), not something scribbled in a bored 4th grader's note book. The worst parts were the blatant racism and sexism: worship of classical idealized Arian God-like build and features (a seven foot tall blue-eyed blonde male whose body is described by a male narrator, in a male leading character's words, speaking to an obviously intended male reader, as "beautiful") and the stated as truism belief of the narrator that women are inherently feeble minded and are only good for treating the wounded, recreation and procreation. I've wanted to stop reading so many times, but I've kept on to try and see if it got any worse. I was unpleasantly surprised to discover that it had, indeed, got worse.

Of purely historical interest nowadays. Avoid if possible, read with caution.

Books - Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sisters (Discworld, Book 6)

So, the promised review. I've read the Hebrew translation (that's what I had with me), without reading the original before or after (I might yet). I've managed to reverse translate some of the jokes, but still I didn't laugh nearly as much as I remember laughing while reading The Colour of Magic. Partly it's because a peculiarity of mine: while reading or especially watching comedic situations, I often feel embarrassed for the "fool" instead of laughing at him. Thus I didn't laugh too much at Magrat's naïvete or Granny Weatherwax's imposing personality. Reading the reviews I've noticed I've missed some (most?) of the Shakespearian jokes. Gytha Ogg is brilliant ("Three marriages and an adventurous girlhood had left Nanny Ogg with thigh muscles that could crack coconuts"). That's it.

Life - A weekend on base

Last Thursday, fifteen minutes before end of the work week, a guy who is in charge of arranging the duty shifts / rotation calls and says I must stay for the weekend because they really need me and they're very sorry It's on such a short notice and they'll compensate me later. The notice was indeed short — I was already "late for duty" by hours and needed many more to get home and take things for the weekend and get back. So they decided the need was grave and I won't go home. Instead my parents can bring me items I might need¹.

Ridiculous, but an order is an order and thus, I've spent the weekend with some old and new friends. Everything but the weather was great - the guys (people brought laptops and guitars!), the CO ("I don't like to do the paperwork, can we pretend I didn't catch you asleep and you'll stay awake for two more hours?"), the girls (I took guesses at their data, will check Monday how I did), even the notorious cooking (compensated by local take-out joints being open 24/7). We eventually got so tired from the heat and humidity I beat a guy at chess who in usual circumstances would wipe the board with me.

A girl, all of one month in the service behind her (one day out of bootcamp), didn't handle third watch too well (Why go to sleep while there are friends around to talk to? Because you don't share a watch with those friends meaning your sleep cycles aren't in sync, but of course you have to stop being a teenager for a moment to get this) and whined to the CO about being too sleepy on the third night. He took pity and so I got to fill in for her.

She realized she has done something not nice and to appease her conscience (her own words) brought me vending machine coffee and snack bars at around 4AM, claiming insomnia. We end up sitting there talking until dawn and the end of the shift. What's interesting is that instead of the oversized dirty field uniform she wore short, tight, black somethings with more lacy under-somethings in sight. Also she was playing with her hair and rocking back and forth, showing decent amount of cleavage.

I kept my distance, playing the perfect listener and gentleman, letting her tell me a condensed account of her life ages ten to eighteen, and pretending not to notice anything, thinking she didn't need me to be a guy, but two hours later, with first light, the magic gone and we departing in different directions, I realized that maybe she was hitting on me and I was a giant prat for not even taking a phone number², especially since I had the perfect legit reason — to read her her own file off the computer at the office³.

1 - Z.L. has immediately lent me two books he had with him. Book review posts to follow.

2 - or ICQ UIN? What is it that I'm supposed to ask for these days?

3 - For reasons unknown (Well… I can guess, but that would be a really long digression), the military don't tell people how well they tested, and thus everyone feels obligated to get this otherwise completely uninteresting information through black market channels and longish chains of friends-of-friends).

Life - Updates

I've found out (thanks to T.S.) that the military has accepted a plea we (mostly D.Z. and N.K.) filed two years ago about our signing for extra six months of enlisted service being illegal (though they never bothered to tell us). It means I'll be discharged in January '08 instead of July '08, and more importantly I'll get my first real paycheck in January '06. It will be minimum wage I think, but that's ten times more than what I get now!

I got tired of my trusty old Nokia 5120 and replaced it with a Motorola C650. I like Nokia better, but this one had a camera. I'm still learning to use it. It's so bloody children-oriented and the interface is so flashy. It looks unprofessional!
I don't believe I'm typing this, what am I, forty?

I've downloaded episodes of West Wing. It's not bad at all.

My boss' boss' boss and her boss were replaced today/tomorrow (scheduled, not sudden). We'll see how we like the new people.

Today, very suddenly, a new guy was added to my team. He's fresh out of training and we don't know yet how good is he or whether he likes computers/software.

HP Fandom - Wahlee's "This Moment" H/G fluff

I consider Emily a friend, and I loved her previous writing and completely agreed with her in all those shipping wars I didn't really participate in, and I find nothing wrong with the story (except the typography, which I'm sure is not her fault and will be promptly fixed). But after HBP I just want to say Ginny-Sue is, if not strictly OOC, plain dull. Jo didn't tell us, even through the eyes the worst narrator ever, what Ginny is like, except that she appears to be Fred and George's female third twin and is probably good at snogging. We don't really know if her feelings for Harry are any deeper than her celebrity crush from years past. We don't know what she and Harry talk about during their lake-side excursions (if at all). We don't know she loves him and anticipates his idiotic behavior, or why she does something so atypical and quietly accepts it. All we know is that Harry was physically attracted to her and appreciated her unsophisticated sense of humor, and later was happy dating her. So what? Maybe Harry, being depraved of human touch the way he is (thanks to his loving family), needed the kind of relationship Ron had with Lavender, got exactly that from Ginny, and unlike Ron, was deliriously happy about it? Maybe they just talk Quidditch all the time. Maybe the first thing he did was checking whether she's a real redhead. Maybe I'm being stupid and need to go to sleep.

Overanalyzing - How it all began

Or, at least, my best guess is Walt Disney cartoons are partly to blame. When I was six, I used to watch the Sunday morning cartoons with my parents on our new (well… new to us, it being bought from friends who have emigrated to the US) color TV and I remember my favorite show for a while had been Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers and my favorite character was (of course) Gadget Hackwrench.

For those who don't remember: link #1, link #2.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Management

In accordance with Ariel Sharon's plan to leave settlements in Gaza and the West Bank (what a stupid name! But I guess "Judea and Samariya" reveal it to be Jewish land and that's an inconvenient truth these days), the armed forces are in "emergency mode". Thus, some IT systems have been deemed "critical" and cannot go down, ever.
There's an underground war-room-style damage control center with walls covered by big screen maps of communication networks and traffic-light colored status boards. The room is manned around the clock by nervous, sleepy officers (some running on pure caffeine, some are in their third trimester) who are in charge of making sure nothing breaks or fix it before any one notices it broke and then make sure it never breaks again.

In a dimly lighted corner of the room, very important to the story but completely disregarded by everyone else, slacks a well camouflaged software developer turned cheap yet unreliable phone answering machine sitting a twelve hour shift, unmoving, waiting for a phone call that will never come, announcing something important broke and several room-fulls of monitoring equipment never noticed. Blended into his environment, his presence goes completely unnoticed by the war-room's proper inhabitants who forget to act like responsible officers completely on top of the situation and revert to the developers and techs they were a decade ago, not-quite-adults with baby sitters to arrange and chicken-and-egg logistical problems to solve.

Here's a good example of crisis in IT-land: Person A must have item B to be able to leave place C, which he must do to be effective. Item B is located in Place D, some four hours drive from place C and cannot be taken out until it is properly signed off by said Person A, who cannot reach it because he needs it to be able to leave place C. Something must give for the situation to be resolved, namely a set of orders or policy, but that becomes a point of pride for the brass issuing those orders, for if your orders can be waived in favor of someone else's orders, you are obviously less important.

As I watched wise old men with many years of experience in the field (meaning they know shit about current systems) mediate and judge deeply technical issues guided by very little factual knowledge, uncertain advice, caution gained by experience and rules of thumb gleaned from mistranslations of the US military and IT press, I've thought how much I don't want to get promoted to a position where I won't have time to get into the technical details and have to rely on video-conferences with "a boy"* to get a guesstimate on time to reboot a network appliance or help with pivoting some data from SQL Server using Excel. Instead I wished I could be that boy - the one they know is reliable and knows his stuff.

* - they mean "kid", but Semitic languages are chauvinistic. The proper word, "G.I" or "rating", is treated as derogatory.

I have for two years been contemplating a filk tentatively titled "I am the very model of a modern Project Manager", but alas, my rhymes leave much to be desired. I hoped this latest experience would provide inspiration, but my hopes have been shattered to bits upon my active vocabulary's rocky shore.

Life - My God! Genius! Interest improves quality!

I have been talking to anyone who would listen, trying to phrase my ideas about how the world is so fucked up because people don't do what they like. That because people are unmotivated by what they do for money they do it badly. I see it all the time and it looks like the cause of so much grief, and I'm not the only one because all the smart people I talk to agree with me (and not just to get me to shut up), and it's not just in the military or just in Israel, it's everywhere. It's nothing new, Pirsig talks about it, but just catching up on Paul Graham's latest essay I cried out "you've read my mind!". The question is: How can I make a difference? And I'm not ready to start a startup now, nor will I able to for the next three years. Damn.

Found on The Web - Bad Writing

It's so bad, it's good. Better than reading FFN! The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, 2005 Results.

Pop Culture - Serenity

Ooh, I've seen the trailer for Serenity (a.k.a "Firefly - The Movie"). I wanna go see it!

Coding - Topological Sort and Depth-First Search

So, I've actually stumbled into some code at work where I need to implement a topological sort for dependencies. And I've read about DFS and stuff, googled a bit and even opened a real comp-sci textbook we have at the office. While all I really needed was Wikipedia! And I'm prototyping in JavaScript like some microsoftie instead of in Python like real l33t h4x0rz! Oh, the shame!

Anyway, this is what I've come up so far:

Array.prototype.shuffle = function(p_nTimes) {
    if (isNaN(p_nTimes) || (p_nTimes <= 0) || (this.length < 2)) return;
    while (p_nTimes--) {
        var i = Math.floor(Math.random() * this.length);
        var j = Math.floor(Math.random() * this.length);
        var t = this[i];
        this[i] = this[j];
        this[j] = t;
    }
};

function item(p_strName, p_arrDeps) {
    this.Name = p_strName;
    this.arrDeps = p_arrDeps;
    this.bIsInStack = false;
    this.bHasBeenVisited = false;
};

function create_deps(p, k) {
    var deps = {};
    for (var i = 0; i < p; i++) {
        var curr = new item(i, []);
        for (var j = 0; j < i; j++)
            if (Math.floor(Math.random() * 100) % k == 0)
                curr.arrDeps.push(j);
        curr.arrDeps.shuffle(p);
        deps[curr.Name] = curr;
    }
    return deps;
};

function print_deps(deps) {
    for (var i in deps) {
        document.write(deps[i].Name + ': ');
        for (var j = 0; j < deps[i].arrDeps.length; j++)
            document.write(deps[i].arrDeps[j] + ', ');
        document.write('<br/>\n');
    }
    document.write('<br/>\n');
};

function topo_sort_dfs_short_circuit_on_cycle(o) {
    var list = [];
    var cycle = null;

    for (var i in o) {
        (function(p) {
            if (p.bIsInStack) cycle = p.Name;
            if (cycle != null) return;
            p.bIsInStack = true;
            if (!p.bHasBeenVisited) {
                p.bHasBeenVisited = true;
                for (var idxDep = 0; idxDep < p.arrDeps.length; idxDep++)
                    arguments.callee(o[p.arrDeps[idxDep]]);
                list.push(p.Name);
            }
            p.bIsInStack = false;
        })(o[i]);
        if (cycle != null) break;
    }

    return [cycle, list];
};

Next step is trying to see whether a non-recursive implementation is faster (yes, I benchmark JavaScript) and then STL. C# I'll do on company time (haven't installed mono yet).

HP Fandom - HBP

Warning: Spoilers ahead. Obviously.

So. Canon. At last. Again. It was kind of a disappointment, how "in character" everything was. Dumbledore is a secretive, overbearing, scheming old fool. Snape, no matter what his true motives are, is a right bastard with a flare for hating incompetence. Hermione is big-headed, Ron is a five year-old, Ginny is a smaller, though by no means less dangerous, version of Gred & Forge, and Harry is Conan The Barbarian in training. Oh, and Voldemort is Koschei the Immortal (if Jo hasn't read some Slavic mythology or folk tales, I'll eat my hat).

Compared to the good fic I've read, it was positively dull. Harry getting together with Ginny? Boring. Harry wants to split with Ginny? Boring. New Minister for Magic is a politician? Boring. The tiny magical community is unashamedly nepotistic? Boring. Most teenage girls, like most teenage boys, are stupid? Boring.
The only marginally interesting character in the whole bunch was Draco Malfoy, and seeing him only through Harry's twisted perception of the universe we don't know anything (good for fanfic, I guess). I'm willing to buy RJA's theory, but in any case I've lost my sympathies for the main characters.
Oh, self appointed Champions-Of-JKR: Tonks r0x, Lupin r0x, and together they snog, not fall asleep! BTW, I still wish for Honks as it makes for more interesting stories.

ETA: Seeing as this is the only negative review I've read, I feel I must say I don't think the book was bad, just that the anticipation was better than the thing itself, which is a known effect. Also, I probably wasn't in the best mood when reading it (on guard duty), so I'll re-read it and see how I feel then. I can only remember two times I've laughed (though not why, in either case), does it seem right?

Personal - Reading

Here I'll write what I thought about "A Mote In God's Eye".

Thanks to wikipedia I've found out I'm a straight-edge (the abstinence, not the music) slacker. Isn't being an over-educated underachieving web surfer fun?

Personal - Beat [adj. informal]

I've had a difficult few days (and nights) at work (my fault, but still) and friday I had a checkup with my orthodontist. Anyway, while reading a book I had this "I'm too tired to follow what's going on" feeling, turned off the PC and went to sleep. I don't usually turn off the PC, but sometimes when it's not doing anything I want silence at nights. I woke up at 15:02, looked at the watch and thought "No wonder I was so tired, I probably stayed up till morning…" and then "No way! The light was still up in the living room!" so this is from /var/log/messages:

Jul 15 23:56:50 tux syslog-ng[8579]: syslog-ng version 1.6.8 going down
Jul 16 15:09:56 tux syslog-ng[8820]: syslog-ng version 1.6.8 starting

Personal - On and Off line

Items dispatched on 15 Jul 2005:
Delivery estimate: 22 Jul 2005

    * 1 of: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Harry Potter 6) [Children's Edition]

It's going to be a busy week at work, so I might just survive being offline and spoiler-free. I wasn't really nervous about the book at all, up until today. Now I can't wait. Brushing up on classic SF instead.

Personal/Tech - Developer vs. Secretary mode

The first thing I do when I sit in front of (or connect remotely to) a Windows box with intention to accomplish some work, I:

1. Disable intrusive themes, sounds, animated mouse cursors, heavy wallpapers.
2. Enable showing folder path in title and statusbar, showing file extensions, showing hidden and system files, and managing html files and associated folders independently of each other.
3. Set file name and folder name completion key to tab (9) in command processor settings in the registry, so I can use the command line interface.
4. Disable all shortcut keys to accessibility options.

Only then can I get to getting things done. If I happen to be logged as someone else, I usually take care to make sure the person knows what I've done and can reverse it (if they so choose). But sometimes, I just say I refuse to work for free on such a hideously misconfigured computer.
For some reason, people who've observed me doing it (and heard what I had to say about the machine's users while I was doing it) think I'm not just condescending but weird.

Why do I call a cutesy configured computer, optimized for avoiding work "secretary mode"? To explain that, I'll have to go into the realities of universal conscription. That will wait for a later date, but be sure I'm not a chauvinist - it's just life's harsh realities.

Personal - General Update

• Got a very much overdue haircut at the new local barber (he couldn't believe I was in the military, my hair got so long). I gather the haircutting business is very competitive here and now because he treats his customers very well, looking to score recommendations. Very reasonably priced, too. This should get my chain of command off my back for a couple of months. BTW, don't worry - I won't be blogging about shopping for underwear.

• Have been reading John Cowan's blog (recommended by Tim Bray). I envy his linguistics skills (I know more people who are gifted like that, namely Eli Bar-Yahalom). The entire xml-dev crowd seems fascinating, from where I stand.

  I have added some of his signatures to the sig DB I use at work. It's some Outlook VBA code that appends a random sig from an Access file upon sending an email. I've found it's a great conversation starter to draw the attention of geeks, because the people who can understand and comment my sigs are the ones I want to talk to. Also, I feel the need to show off.

• I haven't yet blogged about attending Adi Gigi's graduation ceremony on June 23d. We were, for a few months, together in programming training when she passed the "gibush" for naval officer training and was forced to choose (it's not cost-effective to let people do two costly voluntary training programs when they'll only serve in one post). She wisely chose the harder one and now, two years later, she's an officer on a Israel Navy ship.

  BTW, Israeli naval ranks are exactly the same as for the land services, so although it's called second lieutenant, actually she's an ensign.

  Letting women into the elite combat officer training programs is quite new - she's like the 10th (give or take) female to successfully complete the training, the first with her specialty, the only in her class (and with no females in the recent flight school batch at all, situation is not that good for women in combat).

  I have to mention the enlisted and commissioned crowd at the ceremony (Dani himself arrived to give them their insignia and ranks) was from a very different IDF than the one I serve in. The people I know from "the army" are IT types: analysts, application designers and coders, DBAs, systems people, tech support of various types, comms techs, etc. while the people there were boat crews, harbor defense, infantry, search and rescue, field intelligence, etc. Very little in common, except for the age and uniform (and not even that, with the navy). I felt like the geek that I am.

World News - London Bombings

I, my family, and I'm sure most of Israel's thoughts are with the victims' families and other Londoners and tourists. My country knows this pain. I hope this will not scare the British people off of the fight against terror caused by radical Islam, like it did in Spain (they have forgotten how they fought off the Moors…).

Context: Wikinews article "Four bombs rock London".

Book Review - David Weber - Honor Harrington series

So, a friend recommended this sci-fi series. He said it was good space opera and technology and tactics were not only self-consistent but even ground in actual physics (read: pretentiously "hard" military sci-fi). He also said the first two (out of at least ten) books are fully and freely available from the publisher's website. The following is what I have to say about "On Basilisk Station" & "The Honor of the Queen".

It's not given away for free because it's so addicting you'll immediately go and buy the rest of the books from Amazon. It's given away for free because of fierce competition from FFN. Seriously.

The only criticism I had for Lois McMaster Bujold's excellent Vorkosigan Saga was that it was too soft to be read by the hard core sci-fi audience (read: boys). That's how I explain it being so unknown among the sci-fi readers I talk to — it's treated like romance fiction, sometimes legitimately and justifiably so. Lois only mentions how spaceships, weapons, propulsion systems, communications, etc. work when necessary. And now I'm sure she's doing the right thing, too: Weber spews (besides too many characters' names and titles) accelerations, orbits, vectors, relative velocities, ranges and all kind of numbers and units all the time, but I'm not going to sit down with Mathematica and my high school physics textbook to run his numbers. It's dull, and it's the only thing he has working for him. The rest of the stuff that make up a good book, like: plot, characters, dialogue, subtlety, style - he has none of those.

The books have a girl-power feeling to them, which is forced and thus counter-productive. The heroine is not Cordelia Naismith by a long shot. In fact, and I ask to forgive my slight here, I think the future Admiral Lady Dame Duchess Honor Harrington is a butch. Also, she enjoys eating the cake and having it too a bit too often: She has forty-five years of experience, but she looks like a college student. She is from a high-gravity planet making her very strong, but she's also tall and graceful. She is self-consciously not pretty, but she possesses a unique beauty that makes her attractive to interesting men. She's bad at math, but is a gifted 3D tactician who can plot intricate trajectories by instinct.

The author's excuse for Regency-era social and political structure in a well-into-the-future galactic empire (which has never had a Time Of Isolation) is as plausible as any other, and the introduction of a six-legged empathic killer cat of plot-device a reasonably original twist (though she appears to love her kitty more than people), but I don't even know what to think of the heroine's naval career closely resembling Admiral Nelson's (I noticed that by myself).

Had it been published as a fanfic, I'd have said "nice try" and "props for having it proofread", but really, it feels like the bad Hollywood-movie version of some good books I've read. Don't waste your time.