Economic darwinism and bleeding hearts

Tomorrow, the stock market will crash. The fact of this crash is already written in the future’s market, but the depth and duration of the coming recession it may herald is the realm of the astrology and numerology that is part and parcel with macroeconomics.

Like Krugman, I’d like to mark this point in time with another one:

“The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”
—Bill Clinton, 1992

The “greed is good” of the 80’s has become resurgent in this decade under the banner of libertarianism. It has provided a rationalization for our irresponsibility with a wishful-thinking outlook via such self-deluding sloganeering as “socially liberal, fiscally conservative.”

And the cornerstone of this Economic Darwinism has been the myth of Reaganomics.

I can only hope that it is among the first casualties of coming recession.

[Bleeding hearts after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 10

OOps! I (recycled my talk) again!

PHP is a hacky piece of shit that gets the job done that somehow that suits me just fine.

I honestly don’t know why I support SF PHP Meetup.

Quite frankly, I find the whole “Meetup” website strangely-segmented, overly-restrictive, and a closed-off and archaic anachronism. I am counting the days until Facebook or Ning finally gets their s—t together and wipes it off the face of the earth. But there it is, and I still show up these meetups despite opening my mouth and subsequently drinking a whole Cup ’O Instant Regret.

The only valid conclusion is I have a huge ego and just like hearing myself talk. So when Touge invited me to turn the next SF PHP meetup into a “Terry Show,” I felt strangely compelled to say yes.

And just so that you don’t have to navigate that horrible website, I, in a weird spate of generosity, decided to copy down the deets…

What: OOps! The PHP Fear and Loathing Guide to Object-Oriented Design
When: Thursday, February 7, 2008 at 7PM
Where: CNET networks, 235 2nd street, San Francisco, CA
Why: Because someone has to provide the “asshole engineer” benchmark, it might as well be me.
RSVP: The great thing is you show up. Just don’t give security the queer eye…download iCalendar, spam Upcoming, and whore this on Facebook.

A small dilemma was, as an asshole engineer, I’m fundamentally lazy—that’s why I became a software architect in the first place: so I wouldn’t have to actually write anything and could just rip into other people’s code and claim credit for their hard work.

What to do?

How about recycle an old talk FTW? After all, George seemed to like it.

OOps at SF PHP Meetup

Think of this just like Britney’s comeback performance only a whole lot worse a trainwreck.

So you better go to this talk, because my ego isn’t big enough for the both of us and I’ll need you around to pop it. If you can’t make it, maybe I’ll install Profcast or someone will stream it so you can count my cuss words on #phpc again. Then again, maybe not. Because you obviously missed the memo wherein I revealed I’m a lazy sloth.

Perhaps I’ll actually delete the slides that are truly embarrassing, but probably not. Wouldn’t want to mess with my perfect record of regret at PHP meetups.

Posted on by tychay 6

My analog blog

I showed up late to the Pownce party and crouched into the back of the line. Since there was not much else to do, I started to write something down in my notebook, which I’ve been carrying around since my iPhone replaced my Palm T|X.

(Isn’t it ironic that we used to be able to beam people our contact information and now, seven years in the future, we have to resort to pen/paper, or a phone call/exchange. Technology, why hast thou abandoned me?)

A friend, further up in the line, made the comment, “Terry Chay is writing in his analog blog.”

“Pownce Launch Party” by magerleagues

Yeah, it’s a moleskine. Don’t shoot me.

Then ensued some Q&A about what I write down in there?

Answer: really boring stuff like shopping lists, task lists, an occasional outline for a blog entry I’ll never write…

So if you ever see me writing in “my analog blog,” you know it’s nothing interesting.

[More pownce after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 15

Sex talk

Someone asked me today if I plan on attending the Sex Worker’s Art Show which will be hitting San Francisco tomorrow.

The answer is no because I’m working all weekend, I just added it to my upcoming because I thought maybe others might be interested in it. But in all honesty, I’m just an introverted conservative at heart and I’m just too shy. Heck, I feel uncomfortable walking home at night.

The book, which is an analogy of stories from strippers to internet models and phone sex operators, sounds very interesting…

Working Sex

Working Sex: Sex Workers Write About a Changing Industry . I’ll be sure to buy this book after I get all my Amazon Affiliate rebates collected in one place.

See if the tour will be near you.

[More randomness after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

The editing we live

I stopped by the Lensbaby booth at Macworld and was talking to a rep there.

He let me mess with his Canon XTi and Lensbaby 2.0. Since I’ve systematically destroyed all my cameras, it has been a long while. When my hands grabbed the camera, it was electric—my hands were made for an SLR, my eyes were made to be behind the viewfinder. I snapped a couple of photos.

Lensbaby 2.0

A lensbaby is a cheap lens that turns your expensive dSLR into a really cheap lomographic camera.

He then asked me a question he had been pestered with that day, “Why don’t you just use photoshop to do the same thing the lensbaby does?”

[My answer after the jump]Continue reading →

Posted on by tychay 8

You lost me at Tony

Subject: Tried to reach you at [phone number redacted]

Morning Tony,

I saw your resume online and wasn’t sure if you were looking to leave Tagged or if you already had. Your resume was outstanding and I wasn’t sure if you were considering scientific, lead or management roles…

Hmm…

Dear recruiter,

You lost me at “Tony.”

Take care,

terry

count: http://one.sentenc.es/

(If you’re about to ask for a favor, it helps to get the name right.)

Posted on by tychay 5

…surrounded by reality

At dinner the other day, A— quoted someone saying:

“San Francisco. 14 square miles surrounded by reality.”

I thought that was rather clever as I seem to like a slight self-effacement now and again. I bothered to look up the full reference. It turns out the quote was by our very own Mayor McDreamy and he really said:

“San Francisco, a wacky wonderful place, a place of dreamers and doers. I think someone described San Francisco as ‘49 square miles surrounded by reality.’ I kind of like that.
—Mayor Gavin Newsom, Speech at the Sierra Summit

I guess they didn’t have Google in San Francisco in 2005, because Gavin is quoting a saying about Madison, Wisconsin—the Left Coast of Wisconsin.

Sometimes, reality is a big old let down.

Parting shot. I love this city.

Posted on by tychay 3

Zippers

My grandfather once told me this story:

Every day, on his way to work as a chemistry professor at the University of Utah (1948-1973), my grandfather would pass the same man walking the other way. For some reason, each never exchanged more than a tacit acknowledgement of the other. This bothered my grandfather, but as it had happened so often, it had become the protocol.

Then one day, as they were walking toward each other, the man extended his hand to my grandfather.

Finally a chance to meet this man! my grandfather thought and happily extended his hand in return.

“No,” the man said as his hand formed into a point, “your zipper is down.”

…

I mention this story, because now is the second time in two days I’ve gone hours before realizing I forgot to zip up.

My grandfather is very famous in his home country. I heard there is a statue of him at a university there and he’s buried in the national cemetery. Somehow the thought of this embarrassment of one of Korea’s most famous scientists makes mine a little less.

I miss my grandfather.

Posted on by tychay 3