Light ride, less than 3 miles total. Beautiful day.
Jason Mansfield is a software engineer, security enthusiast, and crazy thinker living in San Diego.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Apologize to Alan Turing
There’s a petition getting signatures demanding that the British government apologize (posthumously) to Alan Turing for their treatment of him as a homosexual.
I think they saw the objective, jumped in their cars and drove right passed it, waving in a really friendly way. Alan Turing wasn’t convicted of being Alan Turing, he was convicted of being a homosexual. Lots of people were homosexual at the time and were persecuted for it. No one at the time was persecuted for being Alan Turing.
How about we make a petition for the government to apologize to all homosexuals for their treatment by the government? Alan Turing is dead and I don’t think an apology is going to change that or make him feel better. But it might make some homosexuals that are alive feel a little better if they receive an apology.
Hooray for empty gestures!
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
How to Make Friends
Someone on a forum was relating how they feel they need more friends and asking how they can go about getting them. They explained a failed attempt to make friends at a political gathering and concerns about people with different religious beliefs. I said this:
Friends are a subset of people and compatibility, in my opinion, only has a loose correlation with matching interests. You might meet people whose interests match up to yours 90% of the time and you’ll find that they’re a dick. Interests really don’t matter that much in making friends.
You don’t control the fish you catch, you just fish until you catch one, evaluate the fish to see if it matches your criteria. To increase the chances of getting the fish you want is to try fishing a lot. Of course in the process of fishing you get better at fishing.
If you want to make friends you just have to meet and engage a lot of people. Random people in random places. You engage a lot of people and you increase your probability of finding a friend. I believe you should forget about focusing on places where people with similar views congregate. Go out to places and engage the people you find where you go… the bar, the grocery store, the gym, the hardware store. A lot of people will think you’re a freak because some part of their brain is still four years old and is afraid to talk to strangers. Whatever, they’re welcome to self-segregate.
As for religious, political, or similar affiliations, push that aside. Well balanced people don’t spend every waking moment staring at their religion or political ideology. Well balanced people have those things as a part of their life but most of their life is working, spending time with their family and friends, and totally mundane shit like making toast. Few people make toast for Jesus, G-d, Allah, or whoever. They make toast because they’re hungry. The people that make toast for the Democrats or Shiva are batshit and should be avoided. If you engage the well balanced people with an open mind and interest in their beliefs you’ll learn a lot about what makes them who they are. If they have an open mind they’ll wonder about your beliefs and how those beliefs make you who you are. If they try to shove their beliefs down your throat tell them to knock it off and don’t do it in the future. If they fail at that remove them from their friend candidacy.
We all have more common ground than not. the rain falls on the rich and poor alike. We’ve all experienced loss, we all like food, we all wonder to some degree what things are all about. Jobs, political beliefs are ephemeral and a poor basis for friendship anyway.
All that rambling aside, what I think you want to look for is a attitude. They can hate your music, hate your clothes, hate your hobbies but if your attitudes are compatible then you might be life long friends.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Speaking of Twitter...
I’ve heard it’s pretty big in Iran, and they had a relatively unpopular fellow sworn for president having won 2/3 of the popular vote…
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Van Halen M&M's: Really Clever
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
GRRRRRARRRRRRRR! MURDER!
Why is it so hard to demonstrate to tech support people that you know what you’re talking about? I guess it’s because they normally deal with people who don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m sure a lot of those people immediately say they know what they’re talking about.
But I do. In fact, I know more than both the senior guys on the other end of the line. But I get to listen to the polite one have me conduct useless tests and the defensive one tell me my network setup is wrong when he doesn’t really have a handle on networking.
It starts when defensive guy comes to upgrade our stuff. He logs into the provider-owned router and sees some settings he doesn’t recognize so he deletes them. Doesn’t even question their existence. That device was subsequently determined unnecessary and removed but the missing functionality was never configured elsewhere as appropriate. Because the guy assumed it was a mistake and not critical configuration.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Saturday, August 1, 2009
This picture is against the rules. I was told I couldn’t take this pucture even though it has nothing to do with the performance.
A better reason would be that looking at a picture of a city is like looking at a stuffed hummingbird: you capture the idea but lose everything about the experience that makes it amazing.
OpenSolars limits usernames to 8 chars
Oh noes! we’z might lose supports for rcp/rdist/uucp. Those are teh internetz!
Really, Sun? Really?