Scenes from Silicon Valley:

• Got Bandwidth? WE DO. -sign outside apartment complex on El Camino Real.
• Overheard in the Big Long Line at Fry’s: “For Christmas I told my sister, she’s a teacher, that I’d create a database for her to keep track of her student records, but I don’t think she really appreciated the value of it. I mean, do you know how much I make an hour?”
• Jan 15, 2000: Worried about a risky operating system upgrade (with Windows there is no other kind), girlhacker sends email to a friend to let him know what she’s about to do — just in case something goes terribly wrong and she drops off the face of the Internet. She briefly considers and then opts out of creating a will. Let the cat have everything.
• I can’t believe I’m linking to this. But where are all the geeks? Craig Newmark is the only “hardcore Java programmer” of the lot.

(The upgrade went fine. I gave the cat rights to the air space over my monitor as a consolation prize.)

The Real Story of Rosa Parks, an essay by Paul Rogat Loeb, really rang true for me. It discusses how heroes become glorified to such an extent that we forget how they were able to achieve their heroics. Us normal folk forget that we too can accomplish great things. I often make the mistake of putting people I admire on a pedestal, which has two effects: 1. If I meet them and realize they are real people with nasty flaws, I am gravely disappointed and discouraged. 2. I forget that with perserverence, I too can make a difference in the world. To quote a quote by an activist from the article: “I think it does us all a disservice when people who work for social change are presented as saints… we get a false sense that from the moment they were born they were called to act, never had any doubts, were bathed in a circle of light. But I am much more inspired learning how people succeeded despite their failings and uncertainties. It’s a much less intimidating image. It makes me feel like I have a shot at changing things too.” This MLK Day I resolve to do more than think about how my commute will be more enjoyable than usual :-).

I am definitely going to buy Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions. It sounds too useful to not have around for further enlightenment into the whimsical evolution of American English. “Suggested rule: if you don’t understand the reference yourself because you haven’t read the book or seen the movie it’s from, steer clear”. Oh, but Seinfeld episodes you haven’t seen are OK, right? Yada yada. Uh, Yoda Yoda?

Eric Idle is indeed touring the U.S. this year with his “Eric Idle Sings Exploits Monty Python” spectacle. Tickets for some cities are already available online. So don’t say I didn’t warn you (like with Kids in the Hall).

While reading an article on how architects get upset when homeowners alter their original designs, I realized that notion doesn’t apply to me as a programmer. To me, software design and coding is a creative, artistic pursuit, and I could perhaps make the case that certain code is art, but it is the nature of the beast that it evolve, be altered, and sometimes even get thrown away as a learning exercise. I suppose architecture goes both ways; the finished product could be a work of art that must stay as true as a painting, or it can evolve to better suit its inhabitants. Stewart Brand makes the case for structures that evolve in his book How Buildings Learn. My preference is that a house be built to change since culture and lifestyle alters over time. A remodeling job that retains the original design intent can be more worthy of admiration, just as elegant code retrofitting is deserving of high praise. A former CEO of mine calls that “code sculpting” and places it as high as design skills on his list of desired programmer traits.

Lesson learned: Only install new devices on your PC when their tech support staff is available. I’ve spent a not-so-entertaining Friday night trying to get the Buddy B-210 from Vega Technologies installed. This $169.00 device allows you to add a second monitor, keyboard, and mouse to your Windows system, creating a second terminal for it. I was about to start looking at laptops so I could have a computer in another room, but I don’t really want to maintain a second system, even if it is portable. So I bought the Buddy device tonight, optimistically set up a monitor, keyboard, and mouse (all “borrowed” from my old 66mhz system) in my living room, and then spent the next four hours trying to get the darn thing installed. The software keeps blue screening, the PCI card and driver won’t install properly, I got patches off their web site which didn’t help, and I’ve finally given up. I absolutely hate it when installing something screws your PC up so much that it is unusable. Thank goodness for Safe Mode. Now I have to wait until I can actually be next to my computer during their tech support hours, which will be a nice trick since I have to be at work. Big Sigh. They should be very lucky I’ve worked tech support before because I am so ready to give them a piece of my mind. But I’ll be good.

I’m not really sure what to think of this site which you can use to send actual postcards from Paris. It falls in some odd category of my digital vs physical cultural evolution observations, kinda balancing out those digital postcard kiosks you see at tourist attractions. I wonder if anyone in Paris has used it.

I’ve realized that I no longer surf the web the way I used to. It’s almost too convenient now to find interesting links! I know exactly where to go to find something new to ogle. And most days I have time only for my essential daily links. But in the young days of the web I’d sit for hours, following link after link, discovering all sorts of obscure pages. These days the web is prettier, more cleverly designed, certainly more corporate, and I should try to get in a good surfing session once in a while to find out of there’s even more interesting junk. This train of thought led me to wonder if it would be at all interesting to try a “longest path” surfing challenge where you have to start and end on the same page, but never hit the same domain twice. How far could you go and still come back? Is this even a feasible idea (I feel I may have missed some logical “duh” reason why this is a stupid idea)? We’re always trying to find the shortest distance between two points… how about the longest? How much of the web can you traverse and still return to the same point without using something like Yahoo as your roundabout?

I called a friend on his cell phone today and we started jabbering. A few minutes into the conversation I asked him what the strange clicking noise was. He said he was playing with the handle on his suitcase. “Suitcase?”. “Yeah, I’m in Chicago.” I had no idea.

It always takes me a few weeks to make peace with a new IDE (integrated development environment). Along the way I usually decide that the whole concept is a bad idea and I should just use the editor, compiler, and debugger that I get along with best. There’s always some editor quirk I don’t think I can live with, some compile setting that I know the command line flag for but can’t find the darn checkbox for. I’ll grab a sympathetic coworker and rant about programmers who are given a customer they can actually understand (themselves) but still can’t create a decent UI. Then I remember that I’m not them. I hold onto the grand vision of interoperability and plow on through. I’m getting used to my sixth one now, and, true to form, I am going nuts. After fighting with CodeWarrior for hours, I realized that it doesn’t spit out class files until it has compiled all the Java files in a project. Augh. But I haven’t had any fights with the editor yet, and about all that remains is to remap the function key shortcuts in my brain. I suppose what I really need is a fully customizable environment. But I doubt I’ll get the malleability I want in the places I need it.