Diary of a Network Geek

I finished Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson last night.

Okay, so let me front-load this review with all the bad things up front. The main character’s name is Hiro Protagonist. I mean, can you get any more gimmicky than that? And, as often seems to happen with Stephenson’s books, things come to an end very quickly. And, by that I mean, they build to a state of extreme tension over more than three-hundred pages and then end in less than twenty, often without much in the way of explanations or tying up of loose ends. Snow Crash is no different.

But, those things aside, it’s a damn fine bit of science-fiction.
The story follows Hiro, who’s a hacker that’s currently working for Uncle Enzo’s Cosa Nostra Pizza as a delivery driver. Hiro, however, runs afoul of Uncle Enzo after crashing his delivery car trying to get a late pizza delivered on time. He’s aided by a skateboard courier by the name of Y.T. She’s a little under-age, but she’s a great courier and, now, a friend of Uncle Enzo. That’s a good thing, considering that the Mafia is a nearly ubiquitous franchise in the world of Snow Crash. In fact, most franchises seem to be nearly ubiquitous and have managed to become their own little countries, as are the California suburbs, or “Burbclaves”, where most of the book’s action takes place.
So, when Hiro gets fired from his job at Uncle Enzo’s, he goes to his part-time job as a stringer for the Central Intelligence Corporation and starts selling them intelligence. While in the on-line world known as the Metaverse, which Hiro helped program, searching for some juicy intel, he watches one of his hacker friends get infected with a new computer virus called “snow crash”. Nothing new there, right? Well, not quite… There’s a new twist to snow crash. It seems that this virus not only infects your computer, but it does something to your mind, too. And, now, someone’s trying to infect Hiro with it.

So, that’s the basic premise. I won’t spoil the book by telling you how it all turns out. But, I will drop a few hints. There’s a bunch of religion involved. And ancient Sumerian artifacts and the Metaverse and one of Hiro’s ex-girlfriends and raft-riding refugees and more. It’s complicated, convoluted and entirely entertaining. In many places it seems so light and comical that it’s almost a farce, but, really, that just off-sets the intensity of the other, more philosophical passages.
If you haven’t read it yet, read Snow Crash.  It’s Neal Stephenson at his best and it’s great.

So, a funny thing happened Friday night.

As I wrote in my last entry, I went to dinner with three friends Friday, to celebrate one’s birthday. The prettier half of the married couple, actually, L. To make things easier, I ran by their apartment and rode with them to A’s apartment. As per usual, I snuck past the security gate behind someone else and popped up to their apartment to visit for a moment before we left to gather up our last gustatory adventurer.

We walked down to their car and I went around to the rear passenger-side door via the back of the car. I watched with growing horror as the couple parted, J going to the driver’s seat and L going, by herself, to the front passenger side door. She opened her door and let herself in. I sat down behind her.

“So, you guys have been married for a long time now, haven’t you?” I asked, knowing that it had been less than a year.
“What do you mean?” J asked me as his wife started to laugh. “What?”
“I think he was asking why you didn’t open the door for me.”

That scene repeated several times before J was finally shamed into opening his wife’s door for her.
You try to raise them right, but these kids today…

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The spirit , the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur."
   --Vince Lombardi

So, a married couple, a recent widow and a divorced man go out for dinner…

No, that’s not the start of a joke. Those are my plans for the evening.
It’s a sad, little personal life, but it’s mine, all mine.

(An interesting side note, though there is a word for a divorced woman, namely divorcee, there is not, apparently, an equivalent term for a man. How odd.)

Okay, not actually coffee, but a coffee mug.

In the same vein as T-Shirt For Tough Guys, a UK company is now offering a “Knuckle Duster Mug“. For those of you not familiar with the phrase, a “knuckle duster” is slang for brass knuckles. From what I understand, they’re quite nasty. Can’t say how well the coffee mug will stand up if you use it that way, though.

It’s the perfect thing for those of us who are thugish in the morning before we’ve had our coffee!

At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

Tuesday night, I took “before” pictures.
Knowing that the Queen of the Damned will likely read this, I hesitate to mention how heavy I’ve gotten. Let’s just say that I’m the heaviest I remember being, ever, and I’d like to lose forty pounds or so. And, it’s not like I haven’t been meaning to get back in shape after last year’s “little episode”. Chemotherapy takes that weight off great, but it all seems to come back with the hair! And, every pound seemed to bring a buddy!!

In any case, I started planning for this even before treatment ended. I got several books on exercise and I had a new pair of running shoes from before I was diagnosed. Not that I’m allowed to start running at my age, but they’ll give me support for taking the dog on walks.
I’ve had a subscription to Men’s Health for several months now. Believe it or not, in spite of being the male equivalent of Cosmo, there’s really a lot of pretty good health advice in there. Granted, there are lots of articles on women that my, admittedly limited, experience leads me to believe are somewhat suspect, but at least there aren’t any articles on how to achieve orgasm while caulking your windows. (I swear to you I actually saw an article like that in a women’s magazine when I was working as a security guard in college! I would not lie to you about something as important as this!) I’ve even bought several of their cookbooks now, in an attempt to eat better, and healthier. If I can just stop going out with friends so often, I think I’d do better there.
And, of course, all of this is just smoke and mirrors if I can’t get my shit together and actually start working out. Doing anything, really, would be better than I’ve been doing for the past couple of months. Just walking the dog would be a start.

So, that’s why I took the before pictures. I see those guys in Men’s Health all the time, those “before-and-after” guys, those “Bellyoff! Club” guys, and I want to be one of them. I need the “before” clearly in front of me. The last time I lost a bunch of weight, it was because I saw a picture of myself when my ex-wife and I were buying our house. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten so fat! Well, this is the same thing.

Now, I just need to make my “after” happen.

Update:  I discovered this morning that it turns out that I’m not quite at my heaviest ever, but I’d still like to lose thirty-five to forty pounds.

I know everyone’s communication strategies differ based on personal experience, but when someone walks into my office and says “Two hole punch”, do they really think that’s enough information?

Luckily, I’m cool under pressure because several of my potential responses to that are not safe for work, but, instead of using those, I calmly asked “Um, yes, what about a two hole punch?”
“Do you have one?”
“Ah, no.”
Then, without further ado, she was gone in flash of blond and a puff of lilac.

I hate having my office open up into the copier/fax room.

I think I smell a little hyperbole.

Apparently, the New York Times ran a story about how bloggers are such freakish, obsessive people who simply can’t stand to be away from their computer, even for sleep, that all the stress from blogging can actually cause our demise. Frankly, even if I were doing this professionally, I think that’s taking it too far. An article on Slate references statistics that clearly show there are far more stressful, harmful jobs than blogging. Or, really, anything white collar. And, Larry Dignan, a professional blogger for ZDNet, who was interviewed for the NYT story, clearly has other opinions about the “hazards” of blogging. (His interview, which disagreed with the sensationalist story, was not used.)

But, blogging is still hot. It’s still cool. Only, now, the press has to make some fear-based story around it to sell papers. So, now, apparently, blogging can kill you.
Film at eleven.

I’m more of a server monkey myself, but, still…

Okay, so this has been around for a bit, but I just got it the other day. A friend sent it to brighten my week, which was getting rather tedious. (Incidentally, in searching for links to the actual song in MP3 format, I discovered that this happens to be the theme song for Code Monkeys, the 8-bit cartoon on G4.)

Code Monkey
by Jonathan Coulton

Code Monkey get up, get coffee
Code Monkey go to job
Code Monkey have boring meeting
With boring manager Rob

Rob say Code Monkey very diligent
But his output stink
His code not functional or elegant
What do Code Monkey think?

Code Monkey think maybe manager want to write goddamn login page himself
Code Monkey not say it out loud
Code Monkey not crazy, just proud

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
Big, warm, fuzzy, secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you

Code Monkey hang around at front desk
Tell you sweater look nice
Code Monkey offer buy you soda
Bring you cup, bring you ice

You say no thank you for the soda, cuz
Soda make you fat
Anyway you busy with the telephone
No time for chat

Code Monkey have long walk back to cubicle
He sit down pretend to work
Code Monkey not thinking so straight
Code Monkey not feeling so great

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
Big, warm, fuzzy, secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you… a lot

Code Monkey have every reason
To get out this place
Code Monkey just keep on working
See a soft pretty face

Much rather wake up eat a coffee cake
Take bath, take nap
This job fulfilling in creative way
Such a load of crap

Code Monkey think some day he have everything, even pretty girl like you
Code Monkey just waiting for now
Code Monkey say someday, somehow…

Code Monkey like Fritos
Code Monkey like Tab and Mountain Dew
Code Monkey very simple man
Big, warm, fuzzy, secret heart
Code Monkey like you
Code Monkey like you

So, anyway, go enjoy Code Monkey, but be sure to visit the artist’s site, too.

At least, if you’re in Australia.

Actually, things are looking pretty good in Houston, too, though I can’t vouch for the rest of the country. Things in Australia, though, seem to be especially good. I subscribe to a lot of news feeds via e-mail and I got one update from Australian IT that had two articles about how good things are for IT workers there right now.

First, there was Competition Gives Entrants Quick Ticket, about how there are so many IT jobs in Australia right now that they’ve got students getting out of school early to get really good jobs with less training than ever.
Then, there was an article titled Going Global In Search of Scarce Skills, about how there are so many open jobs in IT, and so few qualified workers, that they’re bringing in foreign workers to fill those spots. So, if you’re in IT and ever fancied working abroad, this might be your chance!

So, hey, there’s never been a better time to be in IT!

You may have noticed a few very minor cosmetic changes.

That’s because I upgraded the blog to the new version of WordPress Monday night.
I have to admit, I’ve been eager for the upgrade because I’ve been a little behind on that. With all the antispam plugins I was running, though, I never really had a security problem. I did have to fix a couple of plugins and replace one. You’ll notice, for instance, that the titles are a bit different. That’s due to a plugin not working with the new version and being replaced. Other changes are all behind the scenes, but involved editing other people’s ancient, and no longer supported, plugins to work with the new version. The Time Of Day plugin, which shows you, roughly, what time of day I posted something, was one of those that I had to edit a bit.
Sadly, one very good plugin, Bad Behavior, just simply had to be turned off for now. I hope the author updates it soon for the new release of WordPress, because it’s very, very good.

Now, I just have to update all my other blogs…