Coding Slave: The Blog

Q: What’s the difference between software and reality?

2012-07-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

A: A router

Recently I have come to take an interest in woodworking, specifically making musical string instruments. Good fortune has provided me with a basic woodworking shop and some cash for buying materials and hand tools.

So I designed an instrument. I used Adobe Illustrator and created a very nifty design for a cigarbox slide guitar. I planned and measured every piece down to the precise distance the tuning pegs need to be from the edge of the headstock.

An initial design

I was very proud of myself and my vivid imagination.

I watched a lot of videos made by woodworkers who had done what I was hoping to do. After a few nights of study, I bought some wood and some glue.

Things went according to the plans I made in software. I attached headstocks to necks using an impromptu mounting apparatus.

Mounting headstock to neck

I learned to use a scroll saw and drum sander to shape the headstocks.

Finished headstocks on necks

So far, so good. Then it came time to shape the curve of the necks. I figured that I’d just run the area of the neck, between headstock on one end and mounting block on the other, through a router using a ¾” round over bit. The bit would give the neck an even round corner that I could sand down to a nice curve overall. No problem.

Well, it was a problem! Turns out that a router is not a simple mechanical beast.

Routing a guitar neck is not easy on a table router

The bit rotates but one way, thus making routing both sides of the neck, between headstock and mounting block, an excursion into advanced router technique. It was not simply a matter of running one side of the neck though the router and then doing the same for the other side. And, that I angled the headstock back away from the plane of the neck, prevented me from putting the neck flush on the router table.

Headstock mounted at a 15 degree angle to neck

In no time at all I destroyed 4 necks trying to round them out using the router. Obviously I needed to rethink my development procedure.

No problem, right? I mean, I am a software developer. I deal with solving these sorts of problems every day. All I needed to do was give thoughtful analysis to the problem at hand and make some sort of real world utility to set the situation right. Then, it was just a matter of moving the wood through the router twice, once for each side.

So, I thought things out. I even consulted an expert. My keen analytic ability allowed me to come up with a solution. All seemed good to go.

Then my hands gave out. Twenty five years ago, before I got into this software thing, I developed Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, due to repetitive motion while painting a house. Realizing that I could not use my hands to make a living, I went into computers and software. Software has been very, very good to me.

But, today the ghost of the past haunts me.

The reason that I started woodworking is that I’ve come to think that living in cyberspace is an existence lacking in authenticity. There’s no smell of families cooking an evening meal as I troll Facebook. There’s no glean of sweat off bodies in an online game. There’s no negotiation of personal space in a crowd on Twitter. I wanted more of the real world in my day to day experiences.

I got what I wanted. Yet, I wish that Illustrator had told me when I started all this to be careful, that my hands would give out. But there is no reason it should have. In software, reality is just something to emulate, akin to a printer, a monitor, a Bluetooth device or attack target. The software running an unmanned drone knows nothing of the bloodshed and pain it will leave behind. Nor does it need to. If recent events have taught me anything at all, it is this: in the digital domain, reality is an abstraction.

Q: What is the hardest lesson to learn about business?

2012-03-08T11:38:00.001-08:00

A: Learning to give the people what they want

Back in my early twenties, when I thought wealth meant having a lot of money, I wanted some. With an undergraduate degree in Music Composition, the only option I saw available to me was to go into business for myself. I knew two businesses well. The first was gourmet foods, which I learned during high school at an after school job I had working in a gourmet store in Greenwich Village. The other was industrial sewing machines, an experience I acquired during the year that I spent between high school and college, working for a relative in the machinery section of the Garment District of New York, over in the West Twenties, off of 6th Avenue.

When it came time to put my borrowed money where my mouth was, I did the math and realized that I did not have nearly enough to establish myself, let alone compete, in the cut-throat, enormously capital intensive business of equipment manufacturing. So I opened a gourmet store in Somerville, Massachusetts.

Now you may be asking, “isn’t opening a store selling expensive food in a blue collar town such as Somerville a bit risky?” You’d be right to ask me this. But, at the time, I had great faith in the inevitable gentrification of the planet as well as my ability to sell snow to an Eskimo.

I opened 500 sq. ft. of retail space in Union Square, Somerville. To my right was an upscale pizza restaurant. A greasy spoon diner that sold burgers and steak n’ cheese subs was located to the right of the upscale pizza restaurant. To my left was a vacant storefront.

I sold expensive baked goods, cheese, crackers, some fancy jams and mustards, and high priced deli food. Also, I manufactured gourmet sandwiches that customers took out or ate at a little counter I set up in the window.

One morning, as I was sitting at the window having a cup of coffee before the lunch rush started, I saw a truck pull up and deliver a residential Kenmore stove and refrigerator, a few KitcheAid mixers and a glass showcase into the vacant storefront to the left of my establishment. Another truck pulled up a few minutes later and unloaded about twenty cases of Duncan Hines cake mix and icing. I could tell it was Duncan Hines because that’s what was written in big letters across each box.

I went about my day’s business.

The next day, lo and behold, I had a new neighbor, an erotic cake bakery. It was run by a guy named, Paul and a woman, whose name I cannot remember. The reason I remember Paul is that when I went over to introduce myself, he showed me the .38 revolver he carried in a holster inside his pants waist. You tend to remember people like this.

Anyway, it turns out that Paul and What’s-Her-Name had a very simple business model. What’s-Her-Name used the KitchenAid mixer to mix up a box of Duncan Hines cake mix with some milk and eggs. Then, she poured the batter into a penis or breast mold and baked the mixture in the Kenmore oven. Once baking was complete, she covered her creation with Duncan Hines icing in a variety of colors. When finished, she put her ware in the showcase. If What’s-Her-Name got tired of making penis cakes, she moved over to breasts. Paul sat at the showcase taking money from customers.

Advertising? No problem. Within a month of operation, the City of Somerville tried to shut them down, citing some obscenity statute. They closed for a day. News of the closing made it to all of the major telecasts in Boston. The judge threw the case out of court and they opened for business the next day selling their wares to a line of customers that extended out of the store and down the block. The buying public was hot to get some of those erotic cakes.

Paul and What’s-Her-Name’s business boomed. They made standard erotic cakes. They made custom erotic cakes. Many a party given in Somerville, Cambridge and parts of Boston was incomplete without one of their creations.

Me? I was going broke. My baked goods were made by a guy who came from 3 generations of European pastry chefs. I had a small following for Sunday morning croissants. Otherwise, the stuff went stale in my pastry case. My sandwich business paid the rent, but paled when compared to the burgers and steak n’ cheese sales that filled the coffers of the greasy spoon down the way.

Still, I did not give up hope. My stuff was better. I could make a go of it.

One day, at about 2 PM, after the lunch rush was over, a young man walked in and asked for an Italian. “What’s an Italian?” I asked.

“You know, some salami, cheese and the works,” he replied.

I showed him the menu of my wonderfully exquisite, gourmet sandwiches. “This is what we make here,” I said.

“I just want an Italian,” he said.

“Sorry,” I said.

He left and went down the street to the greasy spoon to get his Italian and give them his money. I never saw the young man again.

Paul and What’s-Her-Name thrived. They made enough money to open a bigger store near the Cambridge Court House. Seems lawyers wanted those erotic cakes too. Also, their expansion included tables, chairs and a counter for a luncheonette within the space. Now the buying public could have an Italian, a BLT, a burger or breakfast when not in the market for an erotic cake.

The greasy spoon continued to support its owners comfortably.

Me? I closed up shop within a year and got a job working with some of the roughest kids the Boston School System had to offer.

The takeaway? Now, whenever someone asks me for an Italian, or the allegorical equivalent, I do my utmost to ignore my opinions, predispositions and desires, and give the requester what he or she wants, not what I think he or she should have. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I’m not. Right now I am running 70% in favor of the requester, which is a pretty good considering it took only thirty five years to get here.

Q: What is the dirty little secret of unemployment?

2012-02-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

A: Robots

OK, I’ll admit it. I have a competency issue when it comes to grammar and punctuation. Getting the quotation marks, commas and clauses to work correctly is an ongoing challenge for me. If it wasn't for the solace I find by knowing that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a less than perfect speller, I'd probably hang it up as a purveyor of words and wit.

But, F. Scott was and I will not.

Still, I do want to improve.

A few weeks ago I enlisted the help of an experienced English composition teacher to go over my work and show me the errors of my ways. Our relationship was established via my Gmail account. I wrote him an email asking if he’d like to edit and proofread some of my work. He wrote back, yes. We had a few additional email exchanges to get the ball rolling.

During the exchange of emails, I notice a littled advertisement at the top of my Gmail account telling me about a product named, Grammarly. I clicked the advertising link and went to the Grammarly site. It turns out that, for a nominal fee, Grammarly’s artificial intelligence will analyze my writing for grammar and punctuation errors, tell me the errors and suggest corrections.

I figured, what the hell and signed up for a seven-day free trial, with credit card verification. Turns out the service is useful. If I were a college student, it would be an essential tool that I’d need to stay viable in the impersonal competition that has become modern education.

Later in the evening, after a session with Grammarly, I got to thinking about Bill Joy’s article in Wired a few years back, Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us. Joy’s position is essentially this: in the future human beings will be nothing more than food for computing machines, a.k.a., robots.

So, let’s look at my recent experience through Joy’s lens. I was using Gmail, an emailing system run by robots. A robot, in complete adherence to Google's privacy policies, inspected my emails and found that I had an interest in improving my ability to write. The robot selected and inserted an advertisement about a product that acutely matched my need. The advertised product is a service run by a robot. The agent that took my money was a robot. The agent that provided my money? A robot.

A lot of the world is run by robots. In the years to come, more robots will run more of the world, not less. So, what is a human to do? Well, one thing that humans will not be doing is the work of robots. Robots work faster and are cheaper to employ than the human model, 24/7, without bathroom breaks.

As more robots are put to work, more humans will be sitting at home watching big screen TV’s and searching for a morsel of human connection via robotically controlled social media. They will not be able to make sense of a world in which they are no longer needed and can no longer make a contribution

Another group of humans will be giving robots more capabilities that were once the realm of human activity. I mean, it’s only a matter of time until Amazon makes a shipping center that is fully automated, void of human presence.

And, another group of people will be sitting in Washington arguing about how to make America productive again. Only the sad fact is that America will be plenty productive. It's just that human beings won't be doing the producing, except for babies made in between breaks from PS3 and Xbox sessions. Over time, as the idle grow, we'll come to understand that there really is a benefit in putting birth control in the water supply. At that point, a robot will have two more things to do, determining who gets to have a baby and then, delivering the pill that allows it to happen.

PS: The piece was published by a robot and has a Grammarly score of 83 out of 100.

Q: What do programmers and plumbers have in common?

2012-01-22T12:57:00.000-08:00

A: Both make the world a better place in which to live.

I've been captivated by programming and software since I wrote my first spreadsheet formula back in the mid-eighties. Despite the complexity of languages to which I have evolved, for me, programming is a compositional act in which the lines of code are more akin to musical phrases than 'just-the-facts' morsels of an instruction set. That I can put them all together and make something that works is still pretty remarkable. That it turned out that I could make living from it is nothing short of amazing. That my code has made a difference for the better is the ultimate reward.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that coding is anesthetic. When you are in the throes of getting your stuff to work, you are completely focused on the abstract game of logical pick-up-sticks that you’ve made for yourself. Nothing else is noticed. Nothing else matters. It’s just you and the code; no food, no sleep, no kids. The state of the universe is of little concern.

Ten years ago I was of the belief that if all the coders in the world understood the awesome power we held and could unite under a common vision, we could create a place completely free of the ills that plague mankind. Turns out that our common vision is acute and episodic. It takes a lot to provoke us, but once provoked, we do act, as shown by our recent reaction to SOPA and PIPA.

Still, at the end of it all, it seemed as if we considered ourselves to be more like civilization’s plumbers rather than its guardians. I had more than casual contempt for programmers that spent a lifetime learning the ins and outs of new techniques and products for no other purpose than to enhance one’s technical prowess in order to be the smartest person in the room. I was mad that those less versed in the complexities of the coding life, civilians -- for lack of a better term -- were articulating the Big Vision for the Planet and getting the attention due to the people that actually made the world go ‘round. My thinking was that the only action that mattered was the Big Action, that a gesture that was not big enough to get the attention of CNBC, Twitter or Slashdot, was an effort wasted.

I was wrong.

Today I understand the power of humility. Today I understand that plumbers are the true guardians of civilization. Being able to keep the sewerage from contaminating the water supply is probably a first order indicator of a civilized society.

Everyday hundreds of thousands of people sit down in a front of computers to write code that makes the world work. True, some of those people try to make the world work not-so-well. But, for the most part, those slinging the bits are good folks, with good intentions. Does it matter that many are doing so in a dream-like dance between the human mind and the artificial? Dunno. I do like to think that there is a certain advantage to being aware of one’s self and one’s situation. But, ‘so what?’, if it's otherwise. The important thing is that the code allows the information to flow, uncontaminated and continuously to everybody, because a civilization without water and without information is no civilization at all.

In Memory of Nick Statman

2012-01-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

My friend, Nick Statman was buried today at Hillside Memorial Park nearby in Culver City, California. He was 59 years old, two weeks short of his sixtieth birthday. My wife and I attended the memorial service and his burial.

My connection to Nick started as a commercial relationship. Nick’s and my paycheck came from the same employer. Making money was the binding theme that defined the context of our relationship, at the onset anyway.

My relationship with Nick moved beyond the commercial quickly. One day, about 6 months into my tenure at the Day Job, Nick approached me and asked would my wife and I like to join him and his family—wife, brother, in-laws and cousins, for a Sunday’s Dim Sum in downtown LA. I accepted. I was glad that I did. I enjoyed myself thoroughly in the company of Nick and his family, sharing the pleasantries of a Sunday morning get together.

Another time, when Nick learned that my wife and I would be eating solo on Thanksgiving, he invited us to dine at his brother’s rather than go to a restaurant alone for our holiday meal.

Over the three years I spent getting to know Nick, he and I, and our wives, would spend more time together, mostly eating and letting our pets, his dogs and my dog, play together.

Nick was a kind, warm, somewhat cynical, wit. I never heard him utter a bad word about anybody. He never raised his voice. Nick was a generous man, an overall nice guy. I never left his presence feeling angry or hurt.

Nick’s brother gave a thoughtful eulogy. He ended with a simple phrase, “He was my brother and I am proud of him.” I have found it rare for so few, loving words to describe so fully the enormity of a life.

I imagine that if you did the math, you’d find out that most of us spend about half of our lifetime with and around others in the pursuit of making money. The odds are that we spend more time in the “workplace” then we do at home. Yet how much do we really know about those others with whom we labor for a paycheck? And more importantly, how much do we really care about them? How much do we really want to care?

It’s been my feeling for a long time that when this plane ride we call life takes its final approach and we come in for the landing, in the final analysis, we’re all going to want the same thing--to be around those we care about and those that care about us. It’s the rare person that wants to die alone.

Thus, the paradox: few of us want to be alone, but in that place where we go to make a buck everyday, when it comes to the important things, the things that really matter, many of us are alone and, for the most part, are unknown. It doesn’t have to be this way. Nick Statman’s life was living proof that the workplace could be different. He saw that a relationship could easily go beyond the commercial. He understood community.

Nick Statman was my friend. I am proud of him and all he held dear. I will miss him in ways words cannot describe. May his soul rest in peace.

Q: What was the biggest fashion trend at CES?

2012-01-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

A: Earphones

I just got back from two days at CES 2012 prowling from exhibit to exhibit, looking at the newest and coolest technology that the Captains of Industry have put forth to fatten the coffers of the World Economy. I found pencil thin flat-screen TV's the size of my wall, 3D video cameras priced at consumer purchasing levels, home appliances united together in electronic, domestic bliss, cars that are more like computers on wheels than basic transportation and a plethora of other gizmos that will keep the factories of the planet churning out products of delight into the supply chains of every Big Box and online retailer from Sheboygan to Shanghai. (Whew.....)

I also saw a hell of a lot of earphones. I mean, a HELL of a lot of earphones. They were coming from everywhere. Go down an aisle, there's an earphone manufacturer. Given that I went down a lot of aisles in the 1 million plus square feet of the Las Vegas Convention Center, I am betting that there were enough earphones present in the facility to adorn the ears of every head in Nevada and Utah, maybe Arizona too.

So, it got me to me to wondering, why? I mean, the only time you put on the earphones during my pot-smoking adolescence was so that you could play Led Zep at the recommended volume and not incur the wrath of your parents yelling down from the top of the basement stairs to, "turn down that noise you call music." Otherwise, we'd get together, throw the vinyl on the turntable, light up the joint, turn up the volume and pass the album cover around for collective and individual ogling as music came roaring through the loudspeakers. We wanted to hear the music together.

A lot has changed since that time. First of all, I haven't smoked pot since the Reagan Administration, despite the fact that Ronnie provided more than enough reason for me to want to puff my way into a state of dream-like oblivion. The 12" vinyl disc, with accompanying album-art cover, has gone the way of the typewriter, leaving in its stead song based music downloads for playing on an iPod.

For all the good stuff about it, the iPod is not about listening to music together. I haven't heard of many occasions where the kids are sneaking downstairs, iPod in hand, to listen to the Devil's Music in a state of group euphoria. Parent's aren't yelling at the kids to, "turn it down", because there's nothing to turn down.Yeah, you can hook an iPod into your home theater. But the primary listening device for the iPod is not the loudspeaker. It's the earphone and its scrawny kid brother, the earbud.

Yeah, the entry point for it all is still the same two holes that Nature has put on either side of your head. But, it's fundamentally a solo experience. Yes, you can share your playlists online to those that are interested. But, sharing a playlist socially does not necessarily translate in to a society of listeners. After all, there is a certain bond to be enjoyed knowing that all your friend's parents are yelling at them too, to "turn down that noise you call music."

So, there were a lot of earphones at CES 2012, too many probably. Half of the manufacturers most likely won't be in business next year. The competition is too stiff and the product is becoming more subject to the dynamics of fashion, a dynamic in which, if you have "trendsetter" status, you get a two year ride; less, if you're marketing a style for women.

Or, maybe it hasn't changed. Maybe kids hang around the schoolyard and bond over the complaint that their parents keep coming into the basement yelling, "why don't you kids take those damn things off and listen to that noise you call music, together."

Q: What happens when you put 1 and 1 together?

2011-12-28T11:35:00.000-08:00

A: Depends on the type of personality you ask.

To my observation there are two types of people in the world. The first type conceptualizes that when you put 1 and 1 together, you get 2. The second type accommodates the notion that put 1 and 1 together, you get 11.

If you bang around a Meyers-Briggs lexicon of psychological types, you'll find that the first type is called a Sensing type. These folks rely upon the concrete facts to understand the world. The second type is called an Intuitive personality. For them, reality is a Big Picture in which the given experience is but an episode in a larger story.

For Sensing folks the role of language is to describe the world. For Intuitive folks the role of language is to express the world. Sensing folks ask, "How does it work?" Intuitive folks ask "Does it work?" For the Sensing folks, the beauty is in the balance sheet. For the Intuitive type, the beauty is.

When it comes to commerce, the Sensing type understands a very important fact: A business that does not make money, ain't. If the dollar amount attached to Accounts Receivable is not greater than the dollar amount of Accounts Payable, even the mightiest of businesses has a problem. And, if the problem goes on long enough, the business has a Big Problem. Profitability is acutely describable, always has been, always will be. As any Captain of Industry will tell you, profitability is best handled by Sensing folks.

Still, there is a whole world out there that cannot be described with words: explaining the color, red to a blind man or the sound of a chirping bird to one who is deaf. The only description is the experience itself. This is the world of the Intuitive. One just knows what it is.

Intuitive people experience a thing as part of a past, present and future whole. These are the people that see a ski and motorcycle and imagine a snowmobile. They see two cans tied together by a string and imagine computers talking to one another via an Ethernet cable. Give an Intuitive person a good cup of coffee, put him or her in front of sales force and you have a chain of Starbucks.

Businesses that last need both Sensing and Intuitive folks. Yet, it seems that as a business matures, the power bias moves toward the Sensing. Profitability, while essential, becomes paramount. Success is known more as a measurable quantity rather than a state of experience. Creativity, the de-facto realm of the Intuitive folk and the indescribable soul of an enterprise, becomes a transient commodity purchased from Ad Agencies that have a proven track record of staying on budget while increasing sales and market share. The transformation is not one of nefarious premeditation intent on sucking the life blood of originality from the corporate environment. Rather, to paraphrase an often used term, "it's just Sensing being Sensing."

So what's the point here? My point is this: If you are a reader that happens to have hire and fire power in your enterprise and also happens to be very good at understanding and defining profitability, when you look about your direct reports, how many people do you see that can accept that when you put 1 and 1 together, 11 is a plausible, if not useful result? If it's not half, you might be in some very real trouble.

Q: How many people can you fit into an Athenian taxi?

2011-11-26T08:23:00.001-08:00

A: As many as possible

I am forever amazed by the number of cars in the world that sit around doing absolutely nothing. Take my car, for instance. It sits in my carport all day Saturday and Sunday doing absolutely nothing. Monday to Friday it sits deep in the bowels of an office complex, three levels down, away from the elements, for 8 hours a day, doing absolutely nothing. It is just sitting there existing through another day in eternity, because eternity is how long the machine will last if left unfettered in its absolutely doing nothingness.

So let's do some math.

Let's say the typical consumer, non-commercial, car owner uses his or her vehicle for 2 hours a day. This translates in to a daily capacity usage of 8%. The unused capacity is a whopping 92%. Or to put it another way, 1 person is using a resource that has the capacity to service 11 other people. It's almost like owning a 2400 sq. ft. house, but only living in one of the bathrooms.

Sort of a waste, I'd say. Yeah, you could make the argument that by not using the excess capacity, you're not having to pay money to support the resource, heating the entire house or keeping the gas tank full for 24 hours of automotive operation. But, we'll let this go for now.

The fact is that, for the most part, having a lot of cars sitting around doing absolutely nothing might not be good in the Big Picture. But, we're Americans. We seem to have a historical sense of having unlimited resource. In Europe this is not the case. They used up all the forests a long time ago. Efficiency counts: don't heat water in big ass tanks that go cold; heat the water intensively as it comes through the pipe to the shower head, which is what I experienced in an old house at the foot of the Pyrenees. Or pack as many riders into a taxi as you can, as I experienced in Athens.

Taxi drivers in Athens can pick up passengers in transit. It's the way they do business, nothing shady about it.

I remember sitting in the back of a cab, on my way to the airport and at each stop light the driver negotiated with would-be fares for the available seating next to me. If the driver could make the deal, the street corner traveler jumped in. The driver was continually revising his route given the destinations in play, mindful of keeping his gasoline consumption down. It's sort of brilliant in a way.

So back to the 8%. Imagine what it would be like if any given non-commercial automobile was operating at say, 70% capacity. First off, parking in LA would be a lot easier because most of the cars would in use and not sitting on the side of the street doing absolutely nothing.

So, how would it work? Well, instead of owning your own car, you'd belong to a "Car Association". Membership would get you access to the car you need, when you need it. For example, when it's time to leave for work in the morning, I'd go to my smartphone, sign into my Car Association App, and get the photo and license number of the car that I'd use to get to work. The car would be sitting in the parking lot outside the local Ralphs down the street. When I get to the car, I'd use my smartphone again to photograph a bar code on the car's windshield to verify that I was indeed at the car and then punch in my password. The App would have the smarts to unlock the car via a service such as OnStar. The key would be under the driver's seat.

I'd drive the car to work, to a Ralph's nearby or to a parking lot underneath my office complex. I'd leave the key under seat. Once I exit the car, I'd contact the Car Association to have the car locked and make it available to anther driver as soon as possible.

I'd pay a monthly fee to belong the the Car Association. The fee would vary according to the class of car I want, figure Standard Plan (Corolla, no older than 5 years) to Triple Platinum (BMW 700 series, no older than 2 years). Maybe one month I'd want to go Standard. If my in-laws are coming to town around the Holidays and I want to impress them, I'd go Triple Platinum. I'd have status on demand!

Gas and upkeep? If I take an Association car to the car wash or gas it up, I'd receive a credit against my monthly fee. Or the Association would pay contractors to maintain the properties, just as my Home Owners Association pays a contractor the keep the building grounds well groomed.

Of course, for this to work, we'd need to have a lot of cars and a lot of people in the Car Association. So it will probably be an urban thing. But, what the hell? There's already a lot of cars out there. They just happen to be sitting around doing absolutely nothing. From my point of view it's just a matter of the ability to think and act differently, a small nudge on the collective automotive consciousness.

Here's some good news: It's happening as I write. There are a number of Rent-Your-Car-Out services on the rise. Think of the these service as first generation Car Associations. You have Spride and Getaround which allows you to rent the cars of others starting at $5 an hour. And the technology is already in place. OnStar has just cut a deal with Relay Rides, to unlock cars for renters.

If Car Associations take hold, maybe via Facebook or Google+, it's only a matter of time before Hertz, Enterprise and National will want a piece of the pie providing the vehicles. Having a car will be about... well... huh.... using a car.

To my understanding the dining policy in the US Army's Boot Camp is this: You can have all the food you want. Just make sure you eat what you take.

So, all we have to do is map the thinking onto automobiles: You can have all the car you want. Just make sure you use what you take.

Q: Is it possible to own a car in good conscience?

2011-11-19T07:55:00.000-08:00

A: Might be, might be

I find it funny in a way that for the last 5 years I have made my living coding around the automobile industry. I don't particularly like driving and each time I get behind the wheel I think of myself as an ecological liability. Yet, there I go driving around solo like most of the other people in LA, sucking up gas and throwing out carbon monoxide in a mechanical conglomeration of metal, glass, plastic and hand-crafted leather that will last longer than my time on Earth.

Owning a car causes me no end of moral dilemma. Yeah, I try to reduce my ecological footprint. I drive about 8 miles a day. I own a car manufactured in 2003. I rarely drive on the weekend, walking whenever I can, which might be de rigueur on the island of Manhattan, but is quite the oddity here in Tinsel Town. Yet, at the end of the day, I own and maintain close to two tons of environmental terror.

But, last week I learned something that offered me a morsel of hope that those of us driving on the highways of the planet can actually do so without bringing Mother Nature to her knees.

There is a little doubt the the electric car is here to stay. Just about all the major manufacturers are pumping out battery powered vehicles. And, new manufacturers such as Tesla and Coda are completely dedicated to the electric car space. So for me, it is not very hard to image a future 10 years from now when there are 50 million electric vehicles traveling the highways and byways of the nation. And, each of these puppies is going to require charging everyday. That's a lot of demand to drop on the power generation capabilities of America. That's the bad news.

The good news is that our national power grid has gotten pretty good at figuring out how to provide large amounts of electricity on demand to consumers everywhere, without putting the entire country into a state of anticipatory anxiety due to episodic blackouts.

Right now many houses have two power meters. One for the usual household stuff and the other for the central air conditioner. The reason for this separation is that having the air conditioner on a separate meter allows the Power Company to effectively monitor and control the device. In other words, the Power Company knows your air conditioner, it knows how much electricity it is using, has used and is likely to use. Also, the Power Company has the ability to turn the air conditioner on and off. So, when it's noontime on a hot July day in Topeka, Kansas and every air conditioner in the area wants to go on, machine intelligence at the Power Company can assess the situation and say, "well, we have so much electricity to go around and all these air conditioners want a part of it. Let's see if we can turn some of the air conditioners off for 10 minutes and allow the ones left on to get the cooling going. Then, we'll turn off those that are running and turn on the dormant ones. The humans will never notice a thing."

Great technology. So what does this have to do with cars?

This is what it has to do with cars: Most modern cars are digitally identifiable. For example, if you have a car with OnStar installed, the company will send you an email each month that reports the state of your car--do you need an oil change? Do you need to inflate your tires, etc...? OnStar technology talks to your car's on-board computing system and sends the email.

When it comes to electric cars, it will be possible to pass certain information about you and the car onto the Power Company: What is your customer profile? Where is the car being charge? What type of car you have? What is your current battery state? When do you need the vehicle fully charged?

Based on this information, the Power Company can figure out demand in terms of the Big Picture: "We know we have to charge 50 million cars in the next 8 hours. Given our super duper computing capabilities, we can figure out the most efficient way to charge all these cars to the specification of all these customers."

It's the typical win-win: the consumer gets another day of driving bliss; Mother Nature remains chaste.

I gotta tell ya, for the longest time I felt as if we are driving our way to vehicular Armageddon, without a care in the world about the effect that our 300 horse-power, fuel-injected beasts have on others and our planet. But, when I learn about something like the ability to power all the cars in the world using smart supply, I sleep better at night. Maybe this technology thing works, just maybe.

Q: How much data is Big Data?

2011-11-12T17:01:00.000-08:00

A: More than a single human being can type in a lifetime

(PS: This post is like a box of Cracker Jacks. There's a prize at the end.)

Recently I've developed more than a passing interest in working with Big Data. I made the obligatory pilgrimage to Hadoopsville: got a little bit of HDFS and MapReduce under my belt, taught a few intro classes. I even did an interview with Doug Cutting.

Then, about a month ago a colleague at the Day Job suggested that I take a look at MongoDB as a data store for a project I was imagining. So, I did.

As I began to piddle around the innards and start to work with the on-demand, distributed features of the product, I found myself in need of a lot of structured data, to do some advanced piddling, about 45 gigs worth.

(I wanted to make it so that I was performing operations that exceeded the memory capacity of any one machine, or any two machines for that matter.)

As I said before, I'm interested in Big Data. So allow me a moment to share with you just how big, big is. The sort of structured data I figured to use is the typical log file entry, about 100 characters long, which looks like this:

20204,2011-11-11 19:19:07.123,Leslee,Falleti,777-64-9738,625 Orange Terr.,Suite 87,MT,59430,16413,A

The structure of the line above is:

unique_id,datetime,firstname,lastname,ssn,address_1,address_2,state,zip,a_random_number,a_random_character

I figure a structured log entry like the above will provide a lot of flexibility to do some MongoDB indexing, run some Map-Reduce analysis and do some benchmarking comparison between Hadoop and MongoDB.

So let's take a look at what 45 gigs of log data looks like. Say I want to make a ~1 MB text file full of unique log entries. Such a file will contain about ~10,000 lines of text. Again, this is for ~1 MB file.

45 gigs translates into forty-five thousand 1 MB files.

Now, this is not the type of data that you keep around on a hard drive next to the pictures of your dog and grandkids. In fact, getting your hands on this sort of data is kinda hard.

So, I figured I'd make some.

I could type out 450,000,000 lines of structured data at a rate of a line every thirty seconds, which translates to 120 lines a hour, Thus, I can get out 2400 lines in a day, provided I forsake sleep and go for twenty hours without mistake. But, being the world's worst typist, we're more likely looking at a lot less than the optimal. Anyway, typing as required, I could do ~12,000 lines during a work week, which means that I could get my 45 gigs of data in say, 40 thousand days, which translates into ~123 years.

Not an option.

Or, I could create a website and get a grant from the Federal Government as a jobs initiative to get everybody in the US to go to a web site I've made and enter some data according to the structure I need. Actually, upon reflection I would need every man, woman and child to enter data over 150 times.

Again, not an option. Government cutbacks are rampant and few innocent bystanders have the patience to do a structured task 150 times.

So, I decided to automate.

I made a cute little project in Java under Maven. The program uses an address and name randomizer I made a few years ago. You can download a zip file containing the project--data generator and randomizer all-- here. (There is also a Post Office module included that is more relevant to the article that describes the randomizer.)

One of the modules, DataGen, kicks off files of unique log entries. You can set it to kick off a variable amount a files. You can kick off 10 files of 100 bytes of unique log entries. You can set the DataGen to kick off 1000 files of 1000 bytes of unique entries.

In terms of rate, DataGen presently kicks off a ~1 MB file of unique log entries of random names, addresses and US zip codes taken from some predefined lists loaded into memory, in about 2 minutes.

I configured DataGen to kick off 45,000, ~1 MB files of log entries. I started running the generation last night on my Ubuntu laptop. So in about 2 months I'll have the 45 gigs I need.

Sorta makes possible the notion that if you chained a chimp to a typewriter for eternity, eventually the beast would produce Hamlet.

Q: How do you traverse a MongoDB Collection of complex documents?

2011-10-19T17:52:00.000-07:00

A: db.stories.find({},{tags:true}).forEach(function(v){for(var i=0;i < v["tags"].length;i++){print(v["tags"][i])}})

Here is the collection, stories, against which you can run the JavaScript shown above.

[{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc28"},
"tags":["pcvim",
"twzbl",
"gajpv"],
"title":"teoqc ccqnupnqnf",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"pffafckratlladvyvmasqrkknnjfkj",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc29"},
"tags":["awdjq",
"gprzp",
"usnmd"],
"title":"iclih iqkfobaetk",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"ukuvdaqtejnpmzhgnkhmqqewcaeqch",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc2a"},
"tags":["wofcd",
"mslmt",
"zmyec"],
"title":"uhbbu zvztgyqfsv",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"vshlhdsbtodolvboympvzbidyuvdch",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc2b"},
"tags":["mzged",
"ewhwu",
"lcbwe"],
"title":"hnpjy akizruqepj",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"ybdpfhlfonkgoqbuousqszcfgbgjab",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc2c"},
"tags":["blugp",
"zbsye",
"rmfvp"],
"title":"dbzwa slnnqwpgkk",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"uwlqaardkcewhgdrclqqppruocemgb",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc2d"},
"tags":["lfcrv",
"nojgb",
"shdaw"],
"title":"ybyqk qpmubqjhcb",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"tsceoepdfczbkmrmyabnlelngacfyv",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc2e"},
"tags":["uqoal",
"grwhy",
"fvijk"],
"title":"qyfbk webdlhgnvt",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"tswcepjcgmbwybwiiauaogsupgyekq",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc2f"},
"tags":["brtmf",
"jnwso",
"alhef"],
"title":"nwyjb fywupddvyq",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"jdisibfkwqsnfysmgcrunvflcrkfca",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc30"},
"tags":["jpvqr",
"kdwdy",
"tlnsg"],
"title":"fvths itzfjwlibg",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"kfvnwulgchlbzzlntlccoebpstssjc",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"},
{"_id":{"$oid":"4e9cea4d44ae29e89c65fc31"},
"tags":["supiy",
"ceqdb",
"eryyr"],
"title":"gzist ytikusfopj",
"email":"bob@cogarttech.com",
"description":"cowehuanouftyvwlrsqhrnpjbhheuq",
"lastname":"Reselman",
"firstname":"Bob"}]

Here is the output:

pcvim
twzbl
gajpv
awdjq
gprzp
usnmd
wofcd
mslmt
zmyec
mzged
ewhwu
lcbwe
blugp
zbsye
rmfvp
lfcrv
nojgb
shdaw
uqoal
grwhy
fvijk
brtmf
jnwso
alhef
jpvqr
kdwdy
tlnsg
supiy
ceqdb
eryyr

As you might imagine, I've taken an interest in MongoDB. I don't know if I like it yet, given that it is in a way sorta of a throw back to IMS. But, hey, maybe progress is more about rewriting an old story than not.

Q: How is a Coder like a Musician?

2010-10-25T08:05:00.000-07:00

A: Please see Figure 1.

Figure 1: The Coder - Musician Matrix

Changing Advertising Paradigms and My Grandmother

2010-09-12T17:34:00.000-07:00

My grandmother was born in the year 1900 in northeast Pennsylvania. At the time of her birth 43% of population in the US worked in agriculture. Automobiles were just beginning to dot the landscape and the airplane had yet to be invented. Also there wasn’t any commercial radio broadcasting. The median household income was $438 a year, not a lot by today’s standards.

You might imagine that my grandmother was born into a horse drawn world of farmers reading aloud around the fireplace at night after a hard day of laborious toil in the fields. The reality was a bit different. Joseph Campbell was packaging and selling Campbell’s Soup in tin cans in 1890. In 1899 you could buy a box of GEM paper clips via mail order and by 1901 King Gillette, a failed bottle cap salesman, was becoming quite rich from giving away the Gillette Safety Razor in order to sell the blades. My grandmother’s world had a lot of consumer technology available.

And with all this technology came advertising, a lot of advertising.

Figure 1: Advertising for mail order buying sold a lot of consumer technology in the late 19th Century.

Pictures and Words

Up until the late 1930s the predominant advertising medium of my grandmother’s time was print, text and illustrations distributed in pages of newspapers and magazines, on billboards and point of purchase posters, and the print equivalent of the infomercial, mail order catalogs. (Please see Figure 2.)

Figure 2: Sears, Roebuck and Co. Mail Order Catalog, 1900

Yet the focus of all this advertising was as it is today— to continuously emit compelling, memorable messages about the product at hand to as many qualified buyers as possible, in as timely a manner possible, as cost effectively as possible in order to build product awareness and increase sales.

Figure 3: The Boardwalk in Atlantic City 1923 - From the start advertisers wanted to reach as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, as cost effectively as possible.

As mentioned above, there was a lot of money being spent on advertising in my grandmother’s day. And, there were a lot of big advertising agencies working on behalf of major businesses to get the message out. Powerhouse agency J. Walter Thompson, born Carlton & Smith in 1864, had billings of $1,000,000 in 1890 dollars!

Business Analytics and Sex

Not only was advertising big, it was becoming more focused. In 1912 J. Walter Thompson commissioned a market study, Population and Its Distribution. Advertisers wanted to know more about people like my grandmother, how did she fit in a demographic model and what turned her on as a buyer? An advertising paradigm shift was in the works; the use of business analytics to understand the market.

The average life span for a man or woman in the United States in 1890 was ~45 years of age. Fifteen out of every one hundred children born died in childbirth. A toothache could kill you. So when it came to selling soap, the ability to cure ills was something to be advertised.

In 1910 advertisements for Woodbury Soap, manufactured since 1870, showed an illustrated headshot of John Woodbury with text describing the dermatological disorders the product would alleviate. Then around 1911 the advertisements shift focus. Gone were the descriptions of ills to be cured in favor of J. Walter Thompson’s ingenious "skin you love to touch" campaign. Sex appeal was appealing. Sales of Woodbury’s Facial Soap went through the roof.

Figure 4: Woodbury Soap Ad - Late 19th Century

Figure 5: Woodbury Soap Ad 1915 - J. Walter Thompson's "a skin you love to touch"

The paradigm was shifting from creating rational appeal to emotional affinity. But, to my grandmother it was still just text and pictures on a billboard, or in a magazine or newspaper...until the advent of radio.

Radio: Word of Mouth Gets a Big Mouth

Despite the fact that my grandmother as born into a world in which the printed word was ubiquitous and literacy was becoming increasingly universal, my grandmother was not a big reader. The only book that she kept in her house was the Bible. Her magazine of choice was the Sears, Roebuck & Co. mail order catalog, a collection of print ads impersonating a book. My grandmother got her information about the world around her mostly from the people around her: word of mouth. So when radio, that wooden box that sits in your living room and emits sound through the magic of the airwaves, came into general use in the 1930s, my grandmother was probably astounded and intrigued. At last she could have someone to talk to her whenever she wanted. And, there were plenty of people who wanted to talk to her and were willing to pay money to have her ear--advertisers.

Radio brought in a fundamental paradigm shift, to mass communication in general and in the way advertising was devised and sold, in particular.

By nature radio requires the use of the listener’s imagination. When an announcer describes a baseball game on the radio, you recreate the game in your head. When the announcer says "fly ball to left field" your mind imagines the ball flying through the air into the left fielder’s mitt. And, if you happen to know beforehand who the left fielder is, you can image that person catching the ball. With radio, you have to recreate the ballgame in your head.

So what does this have to do with my grandmother and advertising paradigms?

Radio is time dependent. Whereas with print readers can spend as much time on an advertisement as he or she desires, going back and reread portions of the copy, with radio there is only one way to go, forward. And, that "forward" is time bound. The implications for advertising are significant. Not only does your advertisement have to be easy to imagine and easy to remember, you need to KEEP the attention of the listener for the entire times spot. Thus, dramatic impact and repetition become important forces; hence the emergence of jingles and slogans.

When it came to selling advertising, advertisers were no longer buying space on a page; they were buying the time of an audience, sometimes a minute or two in the form of commercial spots or less directly as a sponsor of an entire program.

Big Business is Watching You

By 1938 my grandmother was a middle-aged woman and advertising had turned a significant corner. 1938 was the year in which more money was spent on radio ads than on print. And another paradigm shift was in the works: the gathering of intelligence about consumer listening behavior via electronic monitoring. By the early 1940s the Nielsen Audiometer was telling advertisers when and where the radio dials of listeners were moving. Now broadcasters and advertisers could determine the popularity of shows and advertisements as a percentage of market share using the Nielsen Radio Index. Needless to say, some time became more valuable than other time and prices were set accordingly.

But all my grandmother cared about was the voice in the box. She had no idea that she was being monitored, inspected and dissected. She could care less about the cost and efficiency of advertising.

Television: The Magical Box with Wire Ears

By the 1960’s my grandmother had moved from Pennsylvania to urban New Jersey, near NYC. By 1965 she had a black and white TV, albeit one from the early fifties. That TV was a very big wooden box that was about 4 feet tall with a seventeen-inch diagonal screen on top and speaker enclosed on the bottom. (Please see Figure 6.) The set used a rabbit eared antennae on top of the box to get the sound and image out of the air and vacuum tubes to convert those waves into an audio-visual experience in her living room.

Figure 6: The Early TV Set, the precursor to the Entertainment Center

Due to her proximity to NYC, she had a lot of television available to her. She could view three national network channels as well as three local ones. And of course there was the nascent public television channel. Most of the channels broadcast from 5:30 AM in the morning until 1 AM that night. One channel ran movies throughout the night. All the others showed a test pattern accompanied by a high pitch squeal. (Please see Figure 7)

Figure 7: The 2 AM - 5:30 AM Television Viewing Experience circa 1960.

Were my grandmother to have stayed in Pennsylvania in the 1960s she would have had three channels available to her and no twenty-four hour viewing anywhere. Nielsen still reported viewer habits statistically via a set top box. Television advertised to you in the home and in the bar. Radio advertised to you at work and in the car. To my grandmother it didn’t matter. She did not watch a lot of TV in the 60’s.

Cable: Advertising for Pizzerias

My grandmother moved back to Pennsylvania around the end of the sixties. By NYC standards, she was living in a backwater. In the late seventies cable broadcasting changed everything. The backwater was evaporating. From the East Coast to the West Coast, from North to South, we were becoming one big unified viewing experience. But behind the scenes advertisers were pinpointing advertisements specific to the demographic of our zip code. Forget Nielsen. Now every cable broadcaster knew what every subscriber was watching. I might be tuned in to same MTV in Boston as my cousins were watching outside of Scranton PA. But, our ad experience was different, well beyond the general regional advertising catchment available to advertisers during the days of antennae driven broadcasting. Under the new paradigm a pizzeria in East Lansing, Michigan could advertise via cable broadcast to households in East Lansing and not have to waste precious ad dollars on worthless eyeballs in Flint, fifty miles away.

Seeing it All

My grandmother died in 1993. Her lifetime started with the airplane taking off. As a young mother the radio told her about Lindbergh flying across the Atlantic and in her old age the television showed her men walking on the moon. She had literally heard and seen it all.

At the time of her death a big color television with a very large screen kept my grandmother company during her waking hours. Her favorite shows were afternoon soap operas. As her children and grandchildren moved on, TV characters became the people in her world.
My grandmother never experienced the Internet and the rise of precision advertising facilitated by an arsenal of business intelligence technologies. But to her it would not have mattered anyway. To my grandmother it would have all been as it always was—print, sound and pictures in motion. And no matter what, to the advertiser it is as it has always been: to continuously emit compelling, memorable messages about the product at hand to as many qualified buyers as possible, in as timely a manner possible, as cost effectively as possible in order to build product awareness and increase sales.

Q: When do dreams become a reality?

2010-09-07T17:12:00.000-07:00

A: When nobody's paying attention.

Punch line here.

Q: How much does it cost to really scare Hollywood?

2010-02-28T20:03:00.000-08:00

A: $1,840.46

Table 1 below is an equipment list that I put together for the purpose of making reasonable single camera, high definition, special effects treated videos of industrial quality. No doubt, industrial quality won't put many butts in the seats of the local multiplex theater. But, it will allow me to learn enough to transform some ideas into green light possibilities, were my interests to be in that realm.

Good thing for David, Steven and Jeffery that my ambitions are in the here and now.

BTW: I just bought a 1TB drive for $119.00. In 1987 I bought a 20 MB drive for $289; that's about 50,000 time more storage at less than half the price I paid in '87.

Kevin Kelly was right. Follow the free.

Table 1: An equipment list for driving Hollywood to the hills

1	Canon HF-20,Dual Flash Memory Camcorder	568.00	568.00
1	PRO 72" Super Strong Tripod With Deluxe Soft Carrying Case	19.89	19.89
1	Gemini UF-2064HL UHF Dual Wireless System 2 Headset/Lavalier	279.00	279.00
1	Audio-Technica MB-1K Uni-Directional Vocal Microphone	28.96	28.96
1	On-Stage Stands SDS7200B	12.99	12.99
1	Peavey PV6 Mixer	89.95	89.95
1	PREMIUM 50FT 3.5mm Stereo Male to 3.5mm Stereo Female 22AWG	9.95	9.95
1	3.5mm Stereo Plug/2 RCA Plug cable - 6ft	0.76	0.76
3	Premier Series XLR Male to XLR Female 16AWG Cable - Gold Plated - 3ft	7.30	21.90
1	Apple Final Cut Studio 3	$809.06	809.06
		Total	$1,840.46

Q: What happens with you take your wife to a geek conference?

2010-02-20T16:39:00.000-08:00

A: The sofa becomes your new best friend and boring becomes your environment imagined

Actually, I am not going to go into this in any sort of detail. Those of you who are self-admitted geeks know what I am talking about.

For those of you who are not geeks, and are thinking of making a lifelong or afterlife commitment to a geek, go here or here or here before taking the vow. If you can live with it, move forward.

For those of you that are looking for the SCALE Edition of the 7 Rules for Writing World Class Technical Documentation PowerPoint, go here. Otherwise you can read the article here.

Q: Why spend time on 800 words when you can do it in 150 characters?

2010-01-30T11:28:00.000-08:00

A: Because a fruit fly is not an airplane

(Allow me to twist some logic.)

I am hearing a lot of noise in the thought-o-sphere that the attention span of the public mind is just short of 20 second sound bites and 150 character tweets.

Might be true.

Recently I had to express the benefit, modernity and newsworthiness of a very complex technical architecture in under 200 words. It took me about an hour and half with a half dozen revisions. Reminds me of the Mark Twain quote, "I would have written less, if I had more time."

The task was hard, really hard.

Let's face it, there's a lot of engineering going on to get a fruit fly off the ground, maybe more than required for an airplane. I mean, jeepers, fruit flies know how to replicate themselves!

It seems to me that issue at hand is not the brevity of message format. There's nothing wrong with a headline... as long as it's attached to a good story. In fact, headlines are a necessary part of a good story.

Sadly, most of the stories are just not that good.

[Word count: 205]

Q: What happens when you die?

2009-09-27T17:44:00.000-07:00

A: Your Facebook page lives on

I did it. I created a Facebook site for myself. I uploaded my email contact list which Facebook used to automagically send out 'friend' invites. Then I started to look at my 'friends' lists, my 'friends' of a friend's list and so forth and so on through the network. Now some of my acquaintances are 'friends', some of my current friends are 'friends', some people from my past are 'friends' and I am sure a few Facebook impostors are my new 'friends' too. Who knows, maybe Donald Fagen will be a 'friend'. Maybe a 'friend' will offer to drive me to the airport or invite me over to dinner. Maybe a 'friend' will volunteer to look after my dog while I am on vacation.

I can only hope.

Don’t get me wrong; I am really hot on Facebook. I find the notion and technology compelling. Facebook is important. These guys got it right, for the most part. I mean jeepers, the increase in the sales of BlackBerry and iPhone units that result from 'friends' just having to see what's on their walls is going to be of significant consequence. Facebook is a great step forward in the ongoing transformation of human attention into real currency.

I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but I find my introduction to using Facebook to be very meaningful. I am sorta loathe to go with the crowd. But, a I said earlier, it's an important technology.

A photographer-person that I knew from college days took a lot of photos during that time and posted them on his Facebook site. I was in a few of the photos. These photos, coupled with the ones I discovered as I put my life together to present on Facebook, have allowed me to take an objective look at my life. Words really don’t describe that which the eyes in those photos reveal. So here is a sampling.

Oh yeah, my daughters have yet to accept my invitation to be a 'friend'.

Q: What is the cure for our woes?

2009-08-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

A: Three days of fun and music, and nothing but fun and music.

Forty years ago today I woke up in the back of a Pepsi truck. I had left Port Authority Terminal the previous night on a bus to Bethel, New York to go to Woodstock. I was with my friend, Henry.

The bus got caught in traffic way outside of the festival area, so we got out and walked, all night long. Sunrise came. It was pouring rain. The only dry place that I could find was in the back of an empty Pepsi truck on the periphery of the festival field. Henry was across from me. It was Saturday morning. We fell asleep in a sitting position.

When we woke up we were cold, damp and hungry. So, we did what the times demanded. We ate the orange acid.

And thus began my participation in the Woodstock Festival.

We trudged down into the mud, found a place to the center-right of the stage, about 150 yards up and sat down. The sun came out. Things began to warm up and look a whole lot better. I was no longer cold, damp and hungry. I was someplace else, someplace really, really else.

The first band up that Saturday was named Quill or Keef Hartley. I had never heard of them at that time and I have not heard of them since. No matter.

From then on it was pretty much as depicted in the movie, except for two things: Sly and chicken tacos.

After traveling around the cosmos for most of Saturday, I needed a rest. At some point in the late night, after Janis, I fell asleep again. Somewhere in my sleep I remember feeling the ground shake. I woke up. The ground was shaking still. I got up to look around. Down on the stage was Sly and the Family Stone. The ground was not really shaking. It was moving sympathetically to Larry Graham’s bass lines. The music literally took over my body. I had no say in the matter. The next thing that I knew I was singing “Higher” while dancing around on the little piece of muddy heaven on Earth that the cosmos had given me for the weekend. Had you told then that I would carry those sounds and memories around with me for the rest of my life, I would say that you were probably right. At that point the whole notion of what it meant to be alive shifted a few degrees off the beaten path. And, at last I knew what it meant to really play the bass.

After Sly finished his act and the stage was clearing I realized that I had not eaten in two days. So, I figured that getting some food might be a good idea. I left my muddy piece of paradise and made it to the periphery at the back of the field. I found a taco stand and stood in line for a while. I bought some chicken tacos and took them back on plate to share with my friend Henry. All of the fairy dust had worn off, so I was pretty hungry.

So there I was trudging through the mud back to my spot when out of nowhere a hand came up and overturned my plate of chicken tacos. I was really hungry and really looking forward to those tacos. The guy that had tipped over my meal looked up at me from the ground where he was sitting and said, “I am sorry man.”

I said, “It’s alright.”

And, it really was. At that point I had not a stitch of anger in me. The tacos were on the ground. That was it. There was nothing to get mad about. Why? Because for the first time in a long, long while I felt safe; really, really safe. At that moment everything was all right in the world. It was as if the horror that the TV had been bringing me since Nov 22, 1963 did not exist. Walter Cronkite was not there on the 6 O'Clock News to tell me how many of us and them had been killed that day in Viet Nam; there was no “we interrupt this program to tell you that somebody has been shot … again.” There was no more fear of getting arrested and being tossed into jail for ten years for being an adolescent pot smoker. I did not have to think about what I was going to do if I was drafted when I turned nineteen, to be brought into a war that had been with me all of my life. At that moment in time and space, I was safe. Nobody was going to do anything bad to me. Nobody was going to threaten to take me in the boy’s room, cut my hair and then beat the living daylights out of me. All that I had to worry about was to not eat the purple acid that the guy on the stage was telling me to watch out for.

And, for one tiny, itsy, bitsy, teeny-weenie, morsel of time I was not alone. There were a lot of me out there. It’s a feeling that’s been hard to replicate since, despite the relief of the last election and close to thirty years of drug-free, alcohol-free living.

Then the sun came up and the rain started again. Henry and I looked at each other. It was time to go. The rain was winning.

So we worked our way out, jumped on the hood of some car going to a bus station and headed for home. I was barefoot. My shoes were out there someplace in the mud.

And so it went, forty years ago today. I was fifteen years old.

Q: What is the warranty of Open Source?

2009-07-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

A: Here, you figure it out.

This posting is rated

PG

[Pretty Geeky]
Knowing about code is helpful,
but not required.

After seven years of enterprise programming in .NET/C#, over the past year I've been relearning the hardcore aspects of enterprise level Java. Maven, Spring, Jetty, Jersey and Eclipse have become my new and free-for-download best friends.

It was hard breaking away from the Redmondians. But after the bait and switch tactic of ASP.NET MVC, I decided to take a rest from the lemming like culture of Visual Studio's "Productivity Out of the Box". I mean, couldn't those guys on Lake Washington figure out that ViewState was a bad idea from the get go?

Anyway, all aspirations come with a price and a story. This is mine:

A few weeks ago I got this bright idea to exercise my Java coding prowess by making a Java library that provides a randomization service against often used data, in this case the city, state, longitude, latitude information associated with a given United States Postal Service zip code.

It was a simple idea. The library publishes a method, getAddress(). Behind the call to getAddress() is code that gets a random Address object from a list of Address objects. The list of Address objects is composed of data that resides in an XML file that contains all the address information for zipcodes in the United States.

The XML file is embedded as a resource in the Java project to allow the library to be transportable. I got the zipcode XML file from the Internet. The effort seemed like a no brainer.

So I make the library code as a Maven project under Eclipse and write my unit tests every step of the way using TestNG. (I am obnoxiously loyal to Test Drive Development.)

I run the unit tests under Eclipse and also from the command line, just to be extra special sure. No problem. All works as planned. At the end of it all I have a nice JAR file which I can share with my coding brethren and qualified family members.

Then I get another bright idea, "Say, wouldn't it be great to expose my Random Address library as a REST service". After all, I am just as susceptible to coding trends as the next guy. So getting a handle on writing a Java based REST service using that new fangled OpenSource project, Jersey, seems a nice way to kill two birds with one stone.

(This is the part in story where the skies beginning to blacken. Evil things are about to happen.)

That night I go home from the day job and begin to read up on Jersey. It seems that all the code examples on the Internet are referencing beta versions of the Jersey artifact, which is weird because I know for a fact that there is a 1.0 version in play. All the coders at work doing REST under Jersey are using the 1.0. Anyway, I figure to myself, what the hell, just get the Jersey code examples to work and take care of upgrading to 1.0 later.

So I do. I use Jersey to get a simple REST site up and running under a Jetty web server.

Then I fiddle with the code to my Jersey REST site to make calls to the API in my Address Randomizer JAR/Library.

You know what? THE ADDRESSS RANDOMIZER LIBRARY DOES NOT WORK!

I figure, OK, I'll work around the Jersey enabled web code; after all maybe the beta version really is a dog. I write a unit test within the REST Web project that accesses the Address Randomizer directly, straight call to the JAR file.

THE UNIT TEST FAILS TOO!

I ask a colleague for guidance. He says to debug the unit test in the Web Project as a remote server. So, I fire up the Surefire debugger from the command line and bind in the unit test under Eclipse.

(Now for those of you common folks that are looking for breathing apparatus by which to survive this descent into the perilous depths of Java coding, please know this: if all this geekiness is causing you to lose interest, take heart! Read on knowing that in 5 years all of this technology will be replaced with a whole new set of gizmos that will be just as hard to learn and equally exasperating to use.)

Back to the coding.

So I look at the code under the remote debugger. It turns out that the XML file is not loading under the REST Web Project. I don't know why. All I know is that there is a null value where the file based InputStream transformed by getResourceAsStream() is supposed to be.

The wheels begin to spin and the self-doubt sets in. What am I doing wrong? What don't I understand? Am I loading the resource properly? Is there something about the Jetty web server that I do not understand? Is the Jersey beta code that wacky? Is there something more about the XML file format that I need to learn?

I go to lunch with a coding friend. We talk about the problem. He says that I might want to check the XML to make sure that the prolog is correct. And, he goes on to say, that it's a real craps shoot coding to XML in Java because all the XML parsers seem to work differently.

So, I fiddle with the encoding. Still, the XML file won't load.

I do some new coding in the original Address Randomizer library using the Xerces parser directly. I get a new error: Content is not allowed in prolog. I track down the error message on the Internet.

At one point I am taken to a Java bug report, UTF-8 encoding does not recognize initial BOM.

I think, can it be this deep that I have to start looking at bytes in the XML file? But, I figure, what the hell? At this point I'll do anything. I am that frazzled.

So I download the workaround code. The code is literally doing byte inspection, not my favorite topic in the world of computer programming. Turns out that the code had portions commented out. Can I trust this code? I go through it line by line trying to follow the logic. It seems that some of the comments were left in by error. I start uncommenting code. Then recommenting code.

Three hours later I am still at a standstill. I go to sleep quivering in my bed completely obsessed about the error of my ways. I just can't get it. The code is working running the unit tests under Eclipse. But, when I try to use the code in the REST Web Project, running against Maven from the command line, it fails.

It's a new day. It's the weekend. I can hit the code really hard.

So I start fresh, getting ready to completely rewrite the whole Random Address library. Then I notice something.

I try to follow good coding practice. Thus, I put the name of the XML file in the resource as a constant value like so:

/** The Constant ZIPCODES_FILESPEC. */
private static final String ZIPCODES_FILESPEC = "zipCodes.xml";

Just for giggles, I look at the name of the resource file in the file system.

The name of the XML, zipcodes.xml.

Again, the name of the XML file in the file system is, zipcodes.xml. The value assigned to the constant in my code is, zipCodes.xml. One little 'c'!

So I go back and change the constant value to:

private static final String ZIPCODES_FILESPEC = "zipcodes.xml";

The code works everywhere!

So what do we have? I spent at least three evenings trying to find the bug and fix it. I took the time of at least two of my friends trying to leverage their expertise to solve my problem. All for what?

Here's for what: Learning that the libraries under Eclipse will load a resource file, case insensitive against a filename:

/**
* This is a helper method that fetches an Xml file that is embedded as a
* resources as an InputStream and converts that input stream into a string
* that represents an in memory representation of that Xml file
*
* @param resourceFilename
* the name of the xml file. You do NOT need to prepend a '/'
* symbol to the file name. This method make the prepend for you.
* @return the xml file as a string
*
@throws IOException Signals that an I/O exception has occurred.
*/
String getXmlFileString(String resourceFilename) throws IOException {
InputStream is = this.getClass().getResourceAsStream(
String.format("/%s", resourceFilename));
return convertStreamToString(is);
}

While the libraries in my Web Project will not!

Had Eclipse failed from the get go, I might have noticed that one little 'c' a whole lot earlier and avoided many a night of fitful sleep.

I love to code, always have, and always will. Coding is an enormously demanding, yet intensely satisfying creative experience that's hard to describe to anybody but another programmer. Still, when I signed up to work with code as a way of life, I don't remember reading the paragraph that said to be suspicious of all that you see and never to expect anything to really work, particularly if you follow the Way of the OpenSource.

It's like this: most painter's don't have to know about the in's and out's of each type of paint in order to make a portrait. Paint making is mostly a third party affair. An artist gets some paint and executes the intention.

I really wish that the same could be said of OpenSource programming. I do. I really, really do.

Muse Alert!

I need to thank my wife for her patience on this one. I spent the whole weekend getting the code to run and then writing up on it.

She didn't give me any trouble at all; no "You are spending too much time in your geekiness."

Most guys would have been sleeping on the couch for lesser offenses.

Q: What happens when work goes away?

2009-07-05T15:21:00.000-07:00

A: Society goes insane

No doubt about it, the bubble's blown and payment is due. Without a moment's thought I can come up with three friends that are out of work.

It seems as if every Saturday the number of people trying to resell old clothes, VHS players and tattered furniture along that stretch of block on Venice Blvd, just west of Sawtelle is getting bigger. The sellers are people that used to work in kitchens, haul lumber at job sites, trim trees and do light assembly in local plants. The work that they did was provided by an economy that was based on funny money. And that money is long gone and it ain't never coming back; neither are those jobs.

So this where we ended up. It's like some scene out of Metropolis where the cream of society dress in white and live far up high in the clouds. The laborers dress in black and everyday march into the bowels of the earth in a eerie lockstep to man the gears of industry. Sort of like working on the line in what used to be GM. Only now they march in lockstep to the unemployment line, food stamp office or, if INS status is wanting, the nearest border.

The sad fact is that, for a variety of reasons, more and more people will be unable to participate as wage earners in the modern economy. We've moved way beyond the value of labor being the brawn of one's body. And, that taking advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities in most situations comes with a need for significant amounts of capital means that you can kiss goodbye the notion of starting an empire by selling oranges on the side of the road and reinvesting the profits. Fact is, the only viable side of the road to be had has 4 lanes in each direction with a name that starts with the letter "I", as in I95 and I80. Mickey D, Pizza Hut and Burger King tied those locations up a while ago.

Besides the important aspect of providing money to put food on the table, work organizes one's self and one's society. Ever since being ejected into the world, we've had agents that have organized our sense of self. When we were infants our parents held us and talked to us, even before we could figure out what they were saying. The subliminal message was,"You exist, you exist". We needed the ongoing message for our identity to emerge.

Then as we got older, regularity set in. Most of us had a specific meal time and bedtime. Then it was time to go to school. Our week became organized. School was soooo boring. But, as much as we hated it, the structuring of time further enhanced our sense of self and brought predictability to our world.

After school, we went to work. For some of us who were lucky enough, our life had meaning. But no matter what, just about all of us had structure. The notion of being without ego was kept far away. If we had no internal sense of existence, then that was easily provided by the alarm clock going off each morning.

But what about those of us that didn't have the parent telling us that we existed, the predictable meal and bed time and all the external structures that take a blob of undefined identity and evolve it into a mature human being? What's happens to these people?

Well, if the world won't on its own provide the structure required to differentiate, then these type of people force the world's hand. They injure themselves in public view. They'll get caught for a grand or petty crime that ends up having time structured for them: jail. In some cases they'll just join the military.

The human psyche needs structure.

Which brings us to work. Here's the deal. All the talking heads are saying that we are going to have significant unemployment for a long time, maybe forever. It takes a lot of smarts to participate in the modern economy. After a while the UPS packages will figure out how to deliver themselves and all the movie theaters will be in your house, even the 3D ones. We won't need drivers or ushers.

The birth rate might go down. But, without birth control in the water supply that's debatable. So there is a good possibility that we'll have a lot of people sitting around with no place to go, without need of an alarm clock. The external structures that reinforce ones sense of self will diminish. An ego without identity is an ego in panic.

Then as far fetched as it might sound, if the unemployment rate is high enough, for long enough, society just might go insane.

Q: What’s more dangerous than global warming?

2009-05-04T07:37:00.000-07:00

A: Riding a bicycle

OK, I’ll admit it; the global warming stuff is scaring the bejeesus out of me. You’d have to be half brain dead to think that melting glaciers, weird weather and rampant drought are not very, very serious problems.

There's no twisting my arm; I’ve drunk the kool-aid. Global warming is serious and I am not going to be an innocent bystander on the road to geothermal destruction.

So, I am paying attention and doing all that makes sense. I’ve taken a job four miles from my domicile. I drive a four-cylinder car, as does my wife. I have two trash bins in my kitchen, one for bio-degradable waste, the other is for recyclables. And, I avoid using my car whenever possible.

Which brings me to the bicycle.

I bought a bicycle a few months ago in order to kill two birds with one stone: to get some ‘free exercise’ and also to do my part bucking the trend toward environmental Armageddon. I mean, I going to go to work anyway, so I might as well burn some calories on the way there. And, there is both a moral and financial exhilaration that comes with filling the tank every two weeks. Win/win as they say.

Well that’s the dream. Let me tell you the facts. Riding a bike from West LA to Santa Monica is like going all in with the chips that represent the remainder of your lifespan. First, most streets do not have bike lanes. This means that I am forced to share the roads with four thousand pound monsters traveling at forty miles an hour, any one of which can just flick me off planet Earth with nothing more than a nudge from its right fender. And, if the fender does not get me, an open driver's side door on a parked vehicle will. The best case is that I can see it coming and hopefully avoid throwing myself over the handlebars as I careen to a stop. The worst case is that I go flying over the door into traffic, in which case I’ll get a one-way ambulance trip to a local hospital.

And then there are the alleys and driveways. I have to watch each alley and driveway that I pass to make sure that there is no vehicle emerging. In most cases the driver will not see me coming. And, if he or she does, it has been my experience that most times it just won’t matter. The vehicle keeps going on just the same. It’s as if I have a sign on my back that says ‘Hit me’.

There is no place for bicyclists on the thoroughfares of the American city. Don’t let the Save the Planet mumbo jumbo fool you. When it comes to LA, New York, Boston or Chicago, Mother Earth has been bought off by the Big Three, or what’s left of them.

But, there is a little, millimeter size sliver of hope. Some cities get it. If you live in Barcelona, you can walk up to a ‘share a bike’ stand and take a bike through a myriad of bike lanes to your destination. Pickup, ride, drop off…simple.

The same is true in Paris and Rome. We’re not talking about a few bikes for the Birkenstock crowd. According to a friend of mine from Paris, the City of Lights is going to put 400,000 bikes on the street. This is a lot of drivers to take out from behind the wheel.

Sour grapes aside, I’ll still keep at it. I need the exercise. When worse comes to worse, I'll ride on the sidewalk despite the fact that my municipal guide to bike riding in Los Angeles advises me not to. Who knows, maybe the bike thing will catch on.

Keep hope alive.

Q: What’s a good way for a Big Corporation to save money?

2009-03-07T11:41:00.000-08:00

A: Use the Corporate Jet [listen]

OK, I’ll admit it. I don’t think that I am going to make any new friends on this one. But, what the hell?

It seems that recently there has been a lot of hubbub running through the airwaves expressing indignation about the audacity of Big Ass Bank CEO’s taking the corporate jet to Washington in order to get some bailout dough in order to allow the big wheels of finance to keep on rolling.

Whether or not bailing out cash strapped banks is a good idea is a question that is better answered by someone who actually knows something about intricacies of financial prestidigitation. As far I can tell, turning a ten dollar deposit into a hundred dollars in loans is a fantastic, yet fundamental magic trick that seems to be the bedrock of the global economy.

So I am not going to comment about the wisdom of bank bailouts. But, I do know something about the economy of corporate jets.

The Big Ass Computer Manufacturer that I worked for in the nineties had a jet. It was a Gulfstream, I think. I was never on it. That was a privilege reserved for senior executives and board members.

One day I was ranting on about the injustice of it all—thousands of assembly line workers supporting the excess privilege of corporate executives. After I finished my rant my boss sat me down to explain the facts of life. If I had to put a title on the lecture, I would call it, The Value of Time.

At the time I was working for the Big Ass Computer Manufacturer, it had 19,000 employees and was pumping billions of dollars in revenue. Also the company’s stock was headed to its $80 a share high mark. There were billions of dollar in play every day. At the top of this prosperity was a group of ten people running it all. If these guys made a good decision at 9 AM, a few million dollars showed up on the bottom line at 5 PM; make a bad decision and a few million bucks went to the red. Given these numbers, it is not that far fetched to think that the value of the senior executive’s time was worth well in excess of $5,000 an hour.

So let’s say I am Joe the CEO in New York and I have a meeting in Washington with the powers that be. Let’s use the scenario that my group of four—me and three senior VPs—are traveling on a standard commercial flight, at a ticket cost of $658 round trip from NY to Washington.

We leave my office at 10 AM, just after a 9 AM conference call with the President of France. We want to get to LGA by 10:30 AM for an 11 AM flight to DC. We hit severe traffic at the Triborough and get to LaGuardia at 10:50 AM. Due to the heavy traffic we have missed the flight. The next one is in an hour. So, we get to wait. That hour will cost my company at the least $20,000. And because we are to meet with the House Committee on Really Important Things, I am going to cost the taxpayers some money because all the Congressmen and Congresswomen will have to wait for us too.

Or we can go to Plan B. We leave my office at 10 AM, hit severe traffic, arrive at La Guardia at 10:50 AM. We go to the Corporate Hangar, get on the Gulfstream and off we go. The cost? About four thousand bucks a head back and forth. (You can lease 50 hours of a corporate jet for about $425,000 or 8,515 an hour.) While this may seem expensive at first glance, when you take a look at numbers in terms of risk mitigation and opportunity cost, four thousand bucks for a NY to Washington roundtrip flight for a Fortune 500 executive is not that bad. In fact, it's pretty good.

I know, I know, four grand is a lot for the average traveling salesman. But, these people are not average. They may be running multi-billion dollar corporations into the ground, but they *are* running multi-billion dollar corporations. The Gulfstream is nothing more than a piece of the equipment that you need to play the game. Think about it. A pair of leg pads for a NHL goalie still costs around $1200, even if the goalie plays for a last place team. It costs a lot of money to play in the Big Leagues.

So it seems to me that the real issue is not the corporate jet. It’s the people traveling in the corporate jet. I mean, all this righteous indignation would be but a murmur if the passenger were Brad Pitt, or if our 401Ks were worth the money that we put into them.

Q: What is the price of a drink?

2009-02-15T14:12:00.000-08:00

A: $36,000

The other day I had a Dim Sum breakfast with some friends in LA’s Chinatown. Afterward we decided to take a walk around the area to get a sense of the local color.

So off we went.

We came upon this big store. It was like a cross between an Asian grocery store and an Asian department store. We went inside.

We strolled past a large varieties of ginseng root and royal jelly elixir, took a turn upstairs into cookware, bowls, plates, cups and finally went back downstairs to exit. We were about to leave when I noticed a large counter displaying an assortment of liquor. I went over.

Usually I don’t go near areas where liquor is being sold. I don’t go into liquor stores. In fact, I don’t even go down the beer and wine aisle in grocery stores. Alcohol and I parted ways a long time ago in early adulthood. It was a perilous relationship that was best to terminate and one that I have little desire to rekindle. But, in this instance there was something about that counter that drew me near.

I strolled over, past the Stoli and Jack Daniels. I looked into the glass case in front of me. There it was, the $36,000 bottle of cognac:

(click to zoom in)

We’re not taking thirty six hundred dollars; we’re talking thirty six thousand dollars—a year’s salary for somebody making $18 an hour.

I had to know more.

Turns out the liquor is Remy Martin Louis XIII Black Pearl cognac:

The new release will be limited to 786 bottles, the number of decanters that can be taken from one tiercon, the type of oak barrel used by Rémy Martin to age Louis XIII. The spirit is created from 1,200 eaux-de-vie aged 40 – 100 years. The Louis XIII Black Pearl decanter is made of crystal that has a silvery gleam like polished hematite and the decanter is finished with platinum fleur-de-lis designs. Each decanter is numbered and purchasing is done by invitation only.

I was hooked. I went to the web site. There was a cute, high end, animation. In order to get anywhere beyond the introductory Flash I had to register. So I did.

And then I got this message:

(click to zoom in)

There was no more Louis XIII to be had. All 100 bottles allocated to the US market had been bought. And, it seems that one of them made it to Chinatown, Los Angeles, CA where it will be bought by somebody to whom money is no object when it comes to taking a swig of fine spirits.

So think about this the next time that you hear about GM on the verge of bankruptcy and millions of Americans being out of work—the rich really are different than you and me, always were, always will be. Just ask Louis XIII.

Q: For what did Stalin lust?

2009-02-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

A: Twitter

One of the things that made Winston Smith special was that he could hide from the camera. Everybody else in 1984 was watched all the time, but not Winston Smith. His apartment had a unique floor plan. There was one little corner in his flat where the camera could not see him. He had privacy.

1984 was a fantasy, albeit a grim fantasy. The old Soviet Union was the real deal. Stalin went to a great deal of trouble to make sure that the government knew as much about the governed as was possible. Children ratted on their parents, students on teachers, employers on employees, neighbors on each other. Complete knowledge about, and control of the comings, goings and thinking of the population was Stalin's idea of paradise.

But that was then and this is now.

Whereas in the past people jumped barbed wire fences for the right to mind one’s own business, now we can’t wait to give it way.

We used to make it hard for the State to keep tabs on us. Now it’s just a question of buying one of the many GPS enabled devices that are available for purchase. We don’t have to worry about some neighborhood commissar reporting our whereabouts. Our cell phones will do it just fine.

The sad fact is that we really don’t mind. We’re more than happy to report what we’ve eaten for breakfast, who we’re dating, the books we’re reading, even when we’re taking a bath. It seems as if we can’t wait to tell the whole world the most trivial facts about ourselves. Yet when someone on the elevator asks us how we’re doing, we say, "fine" regardless of the true state of our condition.

It seems as if we’ve created social networks with a slew of supporting technologies without having any idea about who our next door neighbors are.

But the saddest thing of all is that our billions of bite size messages don’t mean squat. Yeah, the State wants to keep an eye on us to make sure we’re not going to blow stuff up or infect Los Angeles with The Plague. So, in a sense, those messages count. But all the other messages—where we’re going, who we’re seeing, what we’re thinking—those messages don’t count. It’s noise to the powers that be. The only messages that count are the messages that The Man overlays on our messages, and those messages are called advertisements. Because you see, in the currency of human attention, advertising is what makes the world go 'round. Just ask Google.

So think about that the next time you just gotta Twitter.