Work is kicking my ass. Not in a bad way, but I’m having to stretch myself in several different (and unfamiliar) ways simultaneously… and it’s making me feel stupid.
First, I’m learning Java – which is just close enough to C# that I feel like I know what I’m doing, but just different enough for it to prove to me time and again that I don’t.
Second, I’m learning about search engines. Lucene, to be specific. All those times I’ve mocked professional indexers? Yeah. Now I am one. Not as dorky as the folks who do it by hand, but still.
Third, I’m banging my head against some stoopid web programming. I’m not a web developer, but I sure am playing one on the tee-vee.
Fourth, I’ve been asked to help test some product documentation. If I follow all their steps, does the software do what they say it should do and does it look like they say it should. Click, click, click, take notes, click, click, click, more notes. Bleh.
The net result of all this is that I have zero creative energy right now. I’ve got three or four draft entries slowly becoming more and more irrelevant as Internet culture slogs forward, and, well, it’s hard for me to give a damn right now.
On the other hand, we’re really starting summer here. The Boy has survived school more or less intact and he’s enjoying his first day camp of the summer tremendously. We’ve been to two great parades (Fremont Solstice – nekkid bicyclists, woo-hoo! – and Seattle Pride). The rains of June appear to be receding. We had a great dinner with some friends we haven’t seen in way too long, and we’re looking forward to a weekend at the beach with them… There’s some stuff simmering in the background that could either get ugly or dissipate – but right now, it’s too soon to tell, and too indeterminate to devote a whole lot of cycles to worrying about it.
So… For now I’m not going to worry about it. Bring on summer!
Posted by protected static as random at 8:21 AM UTC
9 Comments »
A sickness! Madness! LOLCATS, LOLCODE… Is nothing safe?
Methinks Roy is being quite prescient by calling this “the hamster dance of 2007.” I present to you… LOL President:
IZ IN MY BLOG, TEARING MY HAIRZ OUT.
Posted by protected static as geek, humor, politics at 9:31 AM UTC
5 Comments »
It has been a momentous food weekend chez protected static, let me tell you. Of his own accord, The Boy has decided that he will eat… onion rings! And drink soda! I know, it seems a little odd to be celebrating The Boy’s embrace of junk food, but let me tell you, this is a Big Deal. Previously, onion rings were firmly in the Not Food column of The Boy’s world view. And soda was really just a perplexing WTF as far as he was concerned: it’d be Food if it wasn’t for all that irksome carbonation. And now, both are clearly seen as Food.
Then this morning, I made biscuits and gravy (Low-fat Bisquick and Morningstar Farms veggie sausage patties, so they were almost healthy. Anyway, that’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it.). The Boy briefly considered having his biscuits with something else, decided that he would try the gravy, and then announced that he loved it.
Stunned, I was. Such a rapid expansion of The Universe of Food Items According to The Boy is nigh well unprecedented. This bodes well, indeed.
(Okay; you got me. No real facts here. But it was the only way I could get the title to alliterate…)
Posted by protected static as random at 9:48 AM UTC
11 Comments »
It isn’t about nuclear missiles. It’s about encirclement:
Since the Gulf War in 1990, [...] base-creation has been on the rise. The Bush, Clinton, and younger Bush administrations have laid down a string of bases from the old Eastern European satellites of the Soviet Union (Romania, Bulgaria) and the former Yugoslavia through the Greater Middle East (Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates), to the Horn of Africa (Djibouti), into the Indian Ocean (the “British” island of Diego Garcia), and right through Central Asia (Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Pakistan, where we “share” Pakistani bases).
Bases have followed our little wars of recent decades. They were dropped into Saudi Arabia and the small Gulf emirates around the time of our first Gulf War in 1991; into the former Yugoslavia after the Kosovo air war of 1999; into Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the former Central Asian SSRs after the Afghan war of 2001; and into Iraq, of course, after the invasion of 2003 where they were to replace the Saudi bases being mothballed as a response to Osama bin Laden’s claims that Americans were defiling the holiest spots of Islam.
In effect, when it came to bases in the post-9/11 years, the emphasis was, on the one hand, encircling Russia from its former Eastern European satellites to its former Central Asian [Soviet Socialist Republics] and, on the other hand, securing a series of bases across the oil heartlands of the planet, a swath of territory known to the administration back in 2002-2003 as “the arc of instability.” [emphasis added]
Add up all those locations, and it basically leaves you with China being the only place without a US military presence – and we all know how Russia and China feel about sharing a border, don’t we?
It isn’t just Iran that’s feeling surrounded – it’s the Russian bear, too.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:09 AM UTC
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The discovery of a second delivery of Iranian weapons to anti-American forces is proof that:
1. the Iranians are up to NO GOOD!!11!ZOMG!
2. the White House is determined TO BOMB IRAN!!!11!ZOMG!
3. Some from Column A, some from Column B
4. None of the above
Answer? I have no idea. The Iranians would be fools if they weren’t running their own black ops inside Iraq and Afghanistan, and whatever else they might be, they aren’t fools. On the other hand, given that there are lots of non-state and quasi-state actors who can operate semi-autonomously in the region, these discoveries don’t necessarily mean that Iran is directly involved. Also, it would be odd – but not impossible – for the Shiite Iranians to be supplying the Sunni Taliban and Iraqi resistance groups. (I personally find it more odd in Iraq, given that the Shiite and Sunni militias are trying to kill one another, but there are rational explanations. For instance, it could still be part of an overall policy to supply both sides in order to keep Iraq destabilized. Methinks that so far, this is the only example of W living up to his ‘uniter, not a divider’ promise.)
As a final point, it should also be noted that there is a lot of division within US policy-making circles about racheting up tensions with Iran. The timing on this story may be intended to counteract some of this negative press as well as keep the BOO! SCARY IRANIANS! narrative fresh.
So there you have it: it could be the Iranians escalating things, it could be us escalating things, it could be both, or it could be neither.
I ask you, where else can you get this kind of insight? A bargain at twice the price.
Posted by protected static as politics at 9:13 AM UTC
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