The next one against the wall

One of the most enjoying things is reading the comments to the columnist Tom Friedman in the Times. As many of you, that one-man libertarian junket is a pet peeve of mine. But recently he’s been taking a lashing on the blogs and not an column goes by where the top rated comments mention his stupid views on the Iraq War and his World-Is-Flat-But-Wealth-Never-Is for years now. They’ve figured him out and they won’t let go. Recently, I was sent this humorous takedown from the co-author of Get Your War On.

Stick a fork in Freidman, because he’s done.

So when I read this shit from MoDo that begins:

On 9/11, President Bush learned of disaster while reading “The Pet Goat” to grade-school kids. On Tuesday, President Obama escaped from disaster by reading “The Moon Over Star” to grade-school kids.

(Yes, that’s right. This New Yorker equating the murder of 3000 innocents in her city and subsequent use of it for political partisanship and a war which shredded the constitution, killed hundreds of thousands, and bankrupted the country with a few nominees who were delinquent on taxes. Believe it or not, this is the high point of the article.)

All I have to say is, “Fuck you. You’re next.”

Posted on by tychay 3

Keeping memcache consistent

As an afterthought someone decided at the last minute, that maybe the architect (me) should be on the architectural review of a product.

Normally for social networking web development, I allow for a little short term inconsistency. This is because only one user has access to modify a thing and that user isn’t likely to do two things at the same time. Because of this, concurrency is almost never a problem and. even if the data gets clobbered, the database at least is consistent and your objects are quickly fixed.

The problem with this particular project is that since a paid good is involved and many users will race to the same data store—inconsistencies can occur and they’d be more harmful than a goto statement. The solution proposed was to build a Java service to keep these eight pieces of data consistent. There was also a release plan in order to estimate the resource allocation for the new service under live site load.

Though late to the meeting, I opened my mouth and said, “You don’t need a Java service to do this. You can do it all in PHP and memcache.”

Continue reading about How do prevent clobbering in memcache using PHP after the jump

Posted on by tychay 19

Gratitude

Even though it’s been a month, I still have yet to write down my New Year’s resolutions. I think that’s because last year I only completed one of four, after being three for three in 2007, I’m demoralized.

If I were to write one, the resolution would center around becoming a person more honest with myself and, by extension, with others. So far, I’ve found it relatively easy to do the physical aspects like “workout” but rather hard to do emotional ones like “letting go.” This is compounded by the fact that it is relatively easy to write achievable goals for the former, but not so easy to for the latter.

iPhone Gratitude App

I stumbled across an application this morning after working out. It’s selling for 99 cents on iTunes.

The idea is to write five things a day you are thankful for. Every so often (every day?) after writing in the journal it gives you an inspirational quote. I guess the idea is that if you focus on the positive you can create an abundance mindset and thus be happier. As for me, I just think that we don’t focus on our inner selves enough.

We cannot exercise the physical heart directly, so we do so indirectly with large muscles moving. Perhaps we cannot exercise the emotional heart directly, so we do so indirectly with small gratitudes giving.

Maybe it’ll help, and, if you’re in the same boat, maybe it’ll help you too. The nice thing is, you can even do this without an iPhone.

Posted on by tychay 1

Cubecheater

This iPhone application is amazing:

I remember growing up with Rubik’s cubes in grade school. In college, a friend showed me how he came up with his solution at my age simply by inventing algorithms to transpose any two corners or sides. I never managed to get past two rows myself—a shame to my alma mater no doubt.

Rubiks cube (unsolvable)

It goes a long way to show the sort of person I am that as a kid I would love to “solve” cubes by cracking them open and putting it back together delta a single side piece which I would flip. I would then mix the cube up and put it back.

I guess you have to be a geek like me to get the humor in that one.

Posted on by tychay 0

#firstmac

Because it is the 25th anniversary of the Macintosh, there is twitter meme going on where you talk about your first mac.

Reading the headlines on Microsoft, Sony, and Nokia, I’m struck with just how impressive Apple’s quarterly’s are. Yesterday, I noticed that Apple’s front page was bragging that they have had over 300 million iPhone AppStore downloads since its launch.

Instead of going back 25 years, I’d rather go back seven when, in October 2001, Apple released the iPod. Now most of us don’t have to eat as much crow as Slashdot did—I purchased my first iPod one month after the release. However when Steve Jobs said then that the iPod was “the 21st-century Walkman” who didn’t think it was laced with more than a little hubris? And yet, now, we’d probably think that the iPod which reenergized the Macintosh, changed the music industry, and was parlayed into the “it” smartphone was the Walkman and much more.

Sony missed the iPod market because its acquisition of Columbia made the huge technology company a victim of the requests of its media division. Instead of learning from this mistake and moving forward, in 2005, this Japanese engineering company appointed an American entertainment executive to lead their company.

“If you look backward in this business, you’ll be crushed. You have to look forward.”
—Steve Jobs, on the 25th Anniversary of the Macintosh

My #firstmac? Well that was just under 25 years ago. I can still remember making Dungeons and Dragons maps with it in MacPaint at my best friend’s house—that computer changed my life. I went home and begged my parents to buy one and I’ve used sixteen macs since that day—I can name every one.

That moment also marked one of the last times I’d spend with my friend—the years play-acting fantasy books in the junkyard behind his house giving way to separate schooling and separate lives. That computer also changed some others lives. It was purchased with the same drug money that would later kill 18 people.

For different reasons than Steve Jobs, I can’t look back, I’d be crushed. I can only look forward.

Posted on by tychay 1

Servant leadership

Lunch and dinner are brought in every day at work. It is a wasteful affair in both cost and utility that, because of its quotidian nature, breeds laziness to a high order at the price of spontaneity and camaraderie that is often associated with eating meals.

Every week, a different group of three employees is assigned to clean up the lunch mess. It takes about thirty man-minutes to accomplish this. This week it happens to be me. Today the other two forgot so it was only me.

Thirty minutes of busy work is a long thinking time.

Continue reading about Servant leadership after the jump

Posted on by tychay 0

Ode to Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance has been delaying a release for a month and a half. As a consumer facing website, we normally have two code pushes a week. It’s a major rewrite, sure, but at this point we’re at about 20x the bug count of any previous release. The bugs are no longer: “You do this and the site goes down” but more along the lines, “You do something that nobody in their right mind would do and sometimes you get an error message, but everything is fine if you reload the page.”

Continue reading about Drunk with power and other random reasoning after the jump

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Seven things: Basura and Bathrooms

This is part one of a seven part Seven Things post. (I’ll explain later.) This first one was inspired by Andrei’s affinity for languages.

#1. I once peed in the women’s bathroom.

At work, a blue trash can reads “SAVE. Recycleable cans and bottles. Custodians do not throw out.”

Then, it “helpfully” adds: “NOT BASURA.” Basura being the Spanish word for trash.

I walk by amused.

Continue reading about Linguistics isn’t logical after the jump

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Confusion

First I have to go back to the Gold Standard because of runaway inflation. Now I have to go back to the Gold Standard because the dangers of deflation.

Seems to me if the volatility in the value of fiat currency is the problem, then these people should be putting money where their mouth is by buying up a different fungible good. Like… I don’t know… gold?

I’m totally confused.

But don’t worry, apparently I’m an expert because I can see my wallet from my bedroom.

Posted on by tychay 8