Author: cdwan

What Christmas means to me:

* Taking time to show family and friends that you love and treasure them.

* Enjoying foods, candies, music, and other cultural traditions that go back well beyond my childhood. Even, yes, the children running around dressed up like little elves.

* Unpacking a growing lifetime of memories of this particular season. People here, people gone.

* Considering my life in context. My incredible good fortune, my potential, my accomplishments in the past year.

* Considering what “hope for the world” might really mean. For all the bad things in the news, I have great hope for the coming year.

To all my friends and family: Know that I’m thinking of you – and if you want to give me a present, do this kind thing for yourself: Take a moment of stillness. Appreciate that it’s okay to be okay. It’s okay to feel (if only in your heart, at first) kindness and compassion for yourself.

Merry Christmas.

Granted that in this postmodern moment, when we are told that only willfully naive positivists seek something called the truth, it is important to acknowledge that more than one discrepant version may be true in some important sense. But some versions, surely, must have more points of contact with external reality and actual events than others.

Paul Farmer, Pathologies of Power

I found it to be a fine paragraph, even devoid of context. In context, however, it refers to the damning difference between the US government and mass media accounts of the treatment of Haitian refugees in the 1980s, compared with the eyewitness accounts of the refugees themselves and those of the health workers ministering to them.

You know who doesn’t get the credit they deserve? Whoever it is that’s been designing cardboard packaging materials lately. I just opened up a parcel containing a small tree (an olive tree, naturally). It was neatly supported in all directions, held the pot and saucer apart from each other, and provided air holes … all from a single piece of cardboard. I snipped two pieces of shipping tape, and unfolded the tree out of its box. The only packing plastic in the assembly was the piece of saran wrap holding the dirt in the top of the pot.

Amazing.

This link takes you to the ~20 most recent pictures uploaded to LiveJournal. In every single page I’ve tried, I’ve seen (a) a stupid joke, (b) porn, (c) a teenager trying to look deep and thoughtful.

It’s vaguely horrifying, yet addictive.

In other news, I’ve tweaked a part of my back that I hadn’t previously tweaked. Let’s hear it for expanding one’s horizons. This isn’t the “spine right across the hips,” one, nor the “just inside the shoulderblade.” No, this is the vertical muscle along the spine, about at the level of the floating ribs. As I’ve come to know it – the “standing up straight and breathing deep” muscle.

Come on body, work with me here. We’ve got a long time to go … this is no time to crap out on me.

I spent some time yesterday playing with Google Health. While it’s certainly an interesting idea, it’s very far from ready for prime time. That said, it falls in an interesting category of “technology that I’m playing with while it doesn’t work very well, but that in 10 years everyone will be using.”

My opinions

I find that the parts of my life outside of my job are so much more satisfying than the parts within it. Does that mean I’m doing it wrong? I mean, I got a copy process to run within measurement error of the theoretical bandwidth limits of the network devices … for more than 24 hours straight. 180MB/sec over a 200MB/sec connection. So?

Then I go to the gym and I’m all like “WOOO!” That feels somewhat backwards, somehow.

Anyway, so I went back to the Jiu Jitsu place and got worked over again, both Tuesday and today. After class, people who want to stay and practice do so. Both times, the senior guys came right over to me and said “let’s train a bit.” Tuesday was something like half an hour straight of being taken apart by the head instructor. Today, a few other high belts worked in.

I should emphasize that when I say “taken apart,” what I really mean is “taken to my own limits.” At no point do these guys hurt me just to hurt me. At no point do they dominate me just to make the point of their superiority. In fact, they’ll frequently demonstrate control on some technique and then back off and let me find the defense … but they make me find it at my own strength. I don’t get out for finding the trick – I get out for making it work … and then it’s into the alternate attack. It’s certainly not a gimme … there’s no “letting me out” here. However, I’m discovering that there is *always* a way to break out of some hold … always a sequence from position to position – provided that I keep trying as hard as I can.

And that, I think, is the self improvement aspect of this particular practice.

Now, to bed – to rise at 5am and catch the 7am flight home – to miss the afternoon snow-dump in Boston. Must as I like this place, I do not wish to spend the weekend here.

As I settle in for week number 2, here in Hampton, VA, here is a question that I find myself muttering from time to time:

Why do rental cars tend to have the audio systems set to “unlistenable,” when I receive them? Generally the treble is cranked to the max, and the balance is faded all the way to some corner or other. I worked for a while with the theory that the cleaning crew liked a consistent sound … but that doesn’t fit with the inconsistent and awful mix I usually inherit.

— EDIT —

I simply must share this gem from JWZ.

The deservedness of my reaction is a matter of some debate. It’s closely related to my frequent urge to grab people and shake them until they become smarter.

I know this feeling. I know it well.

— EDIT 2 —

OMFG. Some dude threw his shoes at Bush during a press conference in Iraq. To the president’s credit, he simply faded out of the way of the shoes, and made it into a joke. For once, he actually looked pretty good. I mean, I *do* want my president (among other things) to be able to dodge a thrown shoe.

I’m briefly home again, before flying out on Sunday night. I was the victim of my own success last week, and killed off enough of the four work items that I was supposed to do that I earned a fifth bullet on the “tasks for fdmts” section of the big boss’s whiteboard. In the interest of discretion, let’s leave it at the fact that it’s gonna be a challenge, and I wanted to be there next week to get started as soon as possible. Plus, hey – in a recession it’s always wise to line up the next gig before you leave.

Technically, last week ended with a bit of a whimper. I screwed up right at the end, and left myself locked out of a nearly fully configured server. Apparently I fat-fingered the root password twice in a row. It’s entirely possible to reset it, but that involves booting from DVD – the server doesn’t have a DVD drive – blah blah and it was the last day and I was low on time. I’ll be back on Monday and stick take my penalty hour then.

Similarly, in trying to build my 50TB cheap-o scratch space out of off warrantee and older disks (frankenSAN), I learned a lot about the limitations of OS X, software RAID, HFS+, and 32 bit chips. I did not have the triumphant end of the week that I would have liked. I need to take a lesson from cariaso in quitting while I’m ahead rather than expanding the scope of the work to fill the available time.

Got off the plane at 4pm yesterday and went straight to meet redmed at work. From there, we had a pleasant evening listening to the Boston Baroque do Handel’s Messiah. While it’s a mighty cultural touchstone and one of the Signs of the Season, I don’t think I’ll be signing up for a full performance of that piece again any time soon. Three hours of good music – but it was far from the raw genius that was the Creation last year. Don’t get me wrong: I think that the ensemble did as well as anyone could with it. I had the impression of “flashes of brilliance” rather than a sustained glow.

I went to the Hybrid Academy of martial arts in Virginia Beach today and had a positive experience. I’ve learned the drill – you call or email ahead explaining that you’re from out of town, cite your coach / teacher, and you ask if you can “work in” with them while you’re in town. Some places don’t reply. Some offer an annual or monthly membership as the only option. These are the ones to avoid. From others, you get a friendly “Yeah! come on down! We start at 6:30.” That was the case here. They actually have a standard “mat fee,” of $20 for regular visitors – which is a really good sign.

Walked in, suited up, and warmed up with the class. Nice folks – though there’s this funny thing about a decent martial arts place situated between a large Navy base and a large Air Force base. Short version: tough kids. Really tough. I wound up rolling (grappling) with a marine who, as he put it “grew up on the mean streets of Falluja.” This place specializes in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu – which is the style of fighting that currently owns the commercial fighting leagues like UFC. They focus on Muay Thai for standing and striking, Judo for throws, and the Jiu Jitsu for the ground. That’s, in my opinion, about as realistic and effective a mix as you’re going to find. They also boast some actual real-live UFC competitors, which was a worry to me. Some of those places are filled with angry steroid users and guys trying to prove themselves. This one, however, was fine. I worked out, learned some stuff, held my own, and invited them up to my Judo school whenever they happened to be in Boston.

I consider it a major personal accomplishment that I can now walk into a place where tough men train in combative techniques and be accepted. I don’t mean that I dominate them by any measure – I’m still very much a beginner – and that was made clear today. However, when the question is “have you done this before,” the answer is usually “yeah, some.” Do I have a “ground game?” Yes. Do I have stand up? Yes as well. When there are two groups – rank beginners and experienced guys – I wind up with the experienced guys. Perhaps best of all, I’m accepted and invited back.

This was absolutely not the case five years ago – and it wasn’t even really true a year ago. But now, twice in two months, I’ve walked into this sort of situation, held my own, and felt good about it. When I think back to the terror I had of the jocks and athletes in high school – how they seemed to be a different species from me – I’m surprised. All it really took was about five years of hard work … and now I walk into their clubs and they seem to like me.