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Geeks vs. Nerds

The girl called me a nerd. I said I wasn't a nerd, I was more of a geek. So what's the difference, she asked? I tried my best to remember the Slashdot article but couldn't. So I had to do a little research (by which I mean googling).

There are several of these kinds of top ten lists available.

Or you can look for definitions, like nerd and geek.

So it seems like geek is more computer-influenced, which is probably true for me, and maybe more socially aware, which may not be true, but don't tell anyone.

I (heart) VCs

Nothing personal about any VCs, of course, and I'm sure the ones involved with my company are great people, but this kind of thing makes me wonder. It's Phillip Greenspun's essay about how arsDigita went from a succesful company he founded to a money-losing company that forced him out, despite the fact the VCs didn't own a majority of the stock. I am mildly interested by the legal angle (how much power do stockholders have compared to boardmembers?) but the aspects of how a company should deal with using VC funding to grow are more interesting. It is a little surprising how naive Phillip comes across with some of this story, too. But it was refreshing to see him admit to doing a lot of things (the ferrari!) for publicity, trying to maintain a certain image for the company.

The topic for future discussion, of course, is what the ultimate goal of a company should be. Is eternal growth and market domination the only goal? Or can you have other goals and still be succesful? Do you need to go public to be succesful? How about just to be a market leader?

I hope there are other options.

Radio

One of the nice things about living in this particular part of California is that I am able to set all 5 of my car radio presets to non-commercial stations. I have weaned myself off of commercial radio entirely, and now I can't stand listening to radio ads. I encourage you to try to make this switch yourself. You can thrill to NPR and PRI shows, you can laugh along with college DJs, you can discover sounds you didn't know about. Radio run by people who care about making radio, not about making money.

Try here for a list of noncommercial radio stations to get started.

If you are wondering why commercial radio would be bad even without the ads, try reading this Salon article.

And you thought the artists were the only people screwed over by the system.

Project Censored

I'm not sure I believe in all these stories, but sometimes it does good to investigate alternative viewpoints. I'm not a believer in intentional conspiracies - never attribute to malice what you can attribute to greed or incompetence - but there are some interesting things here.

Project Censored's top 25 censored stories of 2000

But I'll do my (little) part to help spread the word.

Movie Review: Memento (spoilers)

I knew it was a gimmicky movie, but it seemed like such a neat gimmick I had to try it and see how well they executed it. And it had gotten a lot of good reviews, so I had higher than normal expectations going in. The gimmick, in case you missed it, is that the main character has a memory condition where he is no longer able to make new long-term memories; after a few minutes, his memory fades away. The last things he can remember are related to the incident involving his wife that was murdered. His life since then has happened in chunks of only a few minutes, while he keeps trying to improve his system of notes, polaroids, and tattoos to help his quest to find his wife's killer. He keeps having to reconstruct his life every few minutes to determine where he is and what he is supposed to do next.

Overall I thought the movie was well done, and would recommend it, but much more discussion leads to spoilers. You're warned.

I wasn't disappointed by the movie - I thought it was well constructed, the gimmick was executed well, and it did have an emotional impact on me. But it had an ambiguous ending, which is always a little frustrating for the puzzle-solving part of my brain. Did his wife get murdered? Was his wife diabetic? Did Sammy really exist? Was Sammy's wife diabetic?

To try to answer these questions, a friend I saw it with and I tried to reconstruct the sequence. Let's see if I can remember what we came up with [I'll edit this as I find more reliable info out there]:

• The earliest thing we see is the black and white sequence of Lenny in the hotel, talking on the phone about Sammy Jankis. Presumably, he is talking to Teddy.

• He learns that he is talking to someone who identifies himself as a cop. He goes down to the lobby and Teddy is there.

• Lenny drives to an abandoned building and goes inside. The man who murdered his wife is supposed to show up.

• Jimmy shows up, thinking it is a drug deal. Lenny kills him and puts on his suit.

• Teddy shows up and tells Lenny it wasn't really the guy who killed his wife. He says that he killed the real guy already, but it brought him no comfort because he forgot again. So Teddy has tricked him into killing others. Teddy also says he is also a John G. Teddy/John also says Lenny's wife was the diabetic, and he constructed the story of Sammy Jenkins to avoid that he accidentally killed his own wife. He says "Sammy didn't have a wife" and something about getting the guys that hurt his wife. [Did he say "that killed your wife"? That would be potentially important.] We also see flashes of Lenny with his wife while he has his "freaky tattoos" [does he have the "john g raped and killed my wife tattoo there?] and Lenny giving his wife an insulin injection.

• Lenny decides to trick himself into thinking Teddy/John is the one who killed his wife, so he decides to get a tattoo of the license plate. He takes Jimmy's car and a picture of it to remind him it is his car.

• Lenny drives to the tattoo parlor and gets the tattoo.

• Teddy/John tries to convince him to leave town.

• Lenny skips out the back window of the tattoo parlor and drives away in the Jaguar - Jimmy's car.

• Lenny finds a coaster in the pocket of Jimmy's jacket saying to meet Natalie at a bar.

• Lenny goes to the bar. Natalie knows Jimmy was supposed to go meet someone, and that this guy showed up in his car wearing his suit. She probably assumes he killed Jimmy.

• Natalie uses the spit in the beer trick to learn Lenny really does have a memory problem.

• Natalie takes Lenny home and learns the story about how he is hunting his wife's killer.

• Natalie takes all the pens out of the room, then tricks him into getting upset and hitting her. She leaves and he can't find a pen to write down what happened.

• Natalie comes right back and says that Dodd beat her up because of money Jimmy owed him. Lenny offers to help beat up Dodd.

• Lenny takes the note about Dodd and leaves.

• Teddy/John is waiting in the car and tells him not to believe Natalie. He writes it down on the picture of Natalie, but crosses it off. Teddy/John leaves the address of the Discount Motel and leaves.

• Lenny gets a room at the discount motel.

• Lenny hires an escort to fall asleep with and then slam the bathroom door, so he wakes up. This is similar to how he said the memory condition made him feel - like he just woke up, like his wife was just in the next room.

• Lenny takes his wife's things from the motel and goes to an abandoned place to burn them.

• The next morning, Dodd finds him and chases him.

• Lenny escapes and finds the note about Dodd and goes to Dodd's motel room.

• Lenny beats up Dodd and puts him in the closet.

• Lenny calls Teddy/John and tells him to come over.

• John comes over and they walk Dodd off.

• Lenny goes back to Natalie's and she tells him about losing Jimmy. They sleep together, and Lenny wakes up and writes that Natalie will help him out of pity since she also lost someone. She offers to have her friend at the DMV look up the license plate number. They make an appointment for lunch.

• Lenny goes back to the Discount Motel. He forgot his key. He learns he has two rooms rented there.

• Lenny finds out it is time to meet Natalie for lunch. She gives him the info on the license plate and his key he left at her house. She probably thinks she is helping him find his wife's killer. We see flashes of Lenny's wife.

• Lenny goes to the bathroom, comes back and Natalie is gone. The waiter gives him the envelope with the info and his key.

• He goes back to his room and decides Teddy/John is the killer. He writes it on the picture.

• He goes down to the front desk and tells him to let calls from John through.

• Teddy/John shows up. They get in the car and drive to the abandoned building.

• At the abandoned building, Lenny kills Teddy/John.

So, some of the images we see seem to be inconsistent - the detailed memories of Sammy Jenkins and the image of giving his own wife insulin injections can't both be true. The image of him in bed with his wife while he has his tattoos seems wrong. And I guess the point of that is to show the unreliability of memory. But it also seems strange, since as a moviegoer we can't know what to believe.

And I guess it is supposed to be ironic that he tricked himself into killing the wrong guy in the end, not anyone else. But Natalie also tricked him into killing the wrong guy, as did Teddy. So everyone is evil?

Lenny did seem like a jerk in some of the flashbacks, especially in the scenes with Sammy Jenkins' wife.

I'm just not sure how to feel about that, though. Natalie may have been kind to him, but only after she used him to take care of her problem. But Teddy and Lenny both seem like assholes. But how would you keep going if you were Lenny? Would it be worth it to continue to try to live? Ugh.

After watching the movie, I also started to get paranoid I was forgetting stuff. Did I remember my keys? My wallet? What was the system I used to condition myself to remember these things?

And a movie that can do that to me is probably pretty good. And maybe it is good that it breaks some rules to make me feel uncomfortable in more than just a shock way.

I love to read reviews

I love to read reviews - something about comparing my opinions to others, finding some insight into how other people view the world, and getting to learn the plots of things that I don't have to waste my time seeing or reading or whatever.

I like sarcastic reviews, or at least reviews full of an attitude of some sort, best.

I just found some good music reviews here, although he is no longer updating it.

For my feeble attempts to keep up with the indy rock world, I tend to enjoy the reviews at Pitchfork. They actually have a number of different reviewers, so it can vary. Sometimes they are a bit too scene-influenced for me, but it is uaully pretty informative.

I'm still looking for good music review sites.

For movie reviews, I love to read the ones by the mean guy at CNN, Paul Tatara. And, doing a little digging for this entry, I found a neat site that shows all his reviews on CNN and on other sites: Rotten Tomatoes. Now you don't even have to click through the bad CNN reviewer. And he has a bunch more reviews I haven't read. I love the web.

For movies and the occasional tv reviews, Salon tends to do alright.

For reviews of movies not yet out, you can't do better than Coming Attractions.

The only book reviews I read are in the New York Times, which I won't dig up a link for since I actually get it delivered.

Video game reviews at IGN's PSX and PS2 sites are ususally decent. They don't like too many things. But they get too offtopic too often. Haven't found anywhere else as consistant, though.

I've never found a comics review site that I really agree with, but Captain Comics sometimes does OK, but still too fanboy for me. Bob's Comic Reviews does much better, but doesn't review enough. Savant is a pretty decent online zine about comics that has 2 reviews each issue, which are usually OK if sometimes too rabid.

But reviews are the place for emotions, right?

Anyways, enough for now.

I don't speak Mandarin, either

I thought this was an interesting story about how the China / U.S. spyplane situation was finally ended:

Time Article

I've kept up on the China/U.S. stuff much more since the girl spent almost a year over there. When I visited I was struck by just how different the worldview of the two cultures was. And now I can see that come through in just about every news article about the two countries.

Japan

Have I mentioned that I like a lot of Japanese things?

Until I read this, I didn't realize I may be able to blame William Gibson for this. I read Neuromancer in 7th grade and loved it, although it may have been a bit over my head at that point.

It seems as likely a place as any to explain the love of sumo t-shirts.

Passport

Some digging on MSFT's site shows that the whole Passport thing is the basis of Hailstorm, which is the basis of .NET authentication. And it is a for-pay SDK. And only MSFT servers do the authenticating. So, it would require a plug-in for people using Passport to allow authenticating to other servers. Which isn't going to happen easily.

Blah.

I'm reminded of when Whil made a comment about BillG wanting a nickel everytime someone logs on, and how maybe we should just give him that money and get on with doing other stuff.

Sounds even better nowadays.

Side Projects, Free Time, and the Plan

Or should that be The Plan?

The girl is moving to Wisconsin to go to school in a month. I am staying here for a while to keep working and finish up the release, since I am a Valuable Member of the Team.

Then what?

I'd like to live with the girl. She is neat.

I'd also like to have a job that is interesting. My job now is interesting.

So question number one is: How could I continue to work this job in Sunnyvale, CA while living in Madison, WI?

And if that can't be worked out, question number two is: What do I do to make money in Madison, WI?

Working as a programmer for the university, especially for some research project sounds pretty neat. And part of me thinks it would be neat to try something completely different. Or go back to school at some point.

Hrmmm.

But if that happens, it seems like I would have more free time. So question number three is: What would I do with my increased amount of freetime?

You know, besides putting in lame weblog entries, like this.

And the free time answer I came up with yesterday, because I always try to answer the easiest, least important questions first, was a super-easy-to-set-up-and-use .NET-compatible home server for people who want the services without storing their personal info on MSFT's servers.

Of course, I have no idea if that is even possible.

An initial search on SourceForge didn't show anything that seemed to have gained traction, although there were a number of test suites for .NET frameworks. Weird. Is it responsible ExtremeProgramming, where they are writing tests before implementing?

Heh.

The World's Best Massage Oil

OK, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but I have tried a few different ones in my time, and now I found one that has made me stop trying to find anything better. It's called "Charlie Sunshine's Secret Formula" and I think it is just the greatest thing ever. It is slippery and long-lasting and not too greasy and everything you want. Except that you can't use it with latex. It comes in Jasmine, Unscented, and Vanilla scents, and I always get Vanilla because it is my favorite smell. You can order a little 4.8 fl. oz. bottle from Good Vibes (go to Toys and then to Oils and scroll down) or order directly from the manufacturer:

(415) 647-3973

P.O.Box 31428

San Fransisco, CA

94131-0428

Things I wish I had known about riding Amtrak before I left

1. It's expensive to get the sleeper car, but worth it if you can afford it. Free meals, free non-alcoholic drinks, a car devoted to you and other sleeper car passengers... very nice.

2. Bring small bills to tip the waiters and other people. You probably won't be spending much money on the train (it's all included, except the alcoholic drinks and playing cards) so you may not have enough to leave a few dollars with every meal.

3. The rooms are really small, and the beds even smaller, so you probably can't sleep with your traveling companion, which is lame.

4. That also means you should pack small.

5. It is a federal regulation that you need to wear shoes when outside of your room, so bring shoes you can take on and off easily. Especially if you need to run to the bathroom.

6. Don't expect to be on time. Freight trains have priority, so passenger trains stop to let them through. We were 4 hours late and missed the symphony. I didn't think trains could be that far behind, but if they travel overnight it seems to happen regularly.

7. If you eat in the dining car you will be seated with other people. This worked out really well for us, since we got to hear lots of interesting stories, but it was a little surprising at first. If you want, you can have food taken to your room.

Overall, though, it was a very fun experience. I enjoyed it a lot, and so did the girl. Yay.

Book Review: Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris)

This was a very funny book. I enjoyed it a lot. Read it all in one trip, which is always a good thing. It was a little strange at first to adapt to reading his stories instead of hearing him read them on This American Life, but I managed. It tells a lot of stories of his childhood, his attempts at college, his moving to Chicago and New York City, and then his move to France and his adventures there.

Most of it is very funny, but I think the first half, dealing with his family and childhood and things like that, was better. Maybe it was because he was a little more bitter, or maybe it was because he reveals more about his family and childhood friends than he ever does about Hugh, his boyfriend he lives with in France.

But a less-funny David Sedaris is still pretty funny.

It is strange having a much more well-rounded view of his life, though, than I ever got through his radio commentary.

Book Review: The Inmates are Running the Asylum (Alan Cooper)

This is a book where Alan Cooper (author of HCI classics like About Face and "the father of Visual Basic") talks about why interaction design (what he and his company do) is so important. It is supposedly directed at a more business audience, but also provides a nice introduction to a lot of his philosophy on why software products suck so much.

And I totally agree with him that most software sucks.

His 2 main points are:

1. You need to design software before you start programming it.

2. Programmers shouldn't design the software.

Which, in general, I think I agree with. Yay. But I had some issues. I wonder if a lot of my problems resulted from him overgeneralizing for his "business audience" to make sure they understood his points. But he goes on and on about how programmers are not like "normal" people. And that is true, sort of, but that doesn't mean all programmers are alike, either. Maybe I just take it personally because I don't feel like I fit into his category of programmers who all like to be in control of everything technological.

Maybe I'm lazy, but I like to be able to concentrate on what is important to me, and not on installing drivers or configuring networking parameters or resolving conflicting anything.

And it seems weird that he goes on and on about how programmers don't make good designers even though he was (is?) a programmer. He does try to refine the point a bit, that you can't do both at once, and it is better to have people who won't worry about programming concerns doing the design so they can focus on users more, but it struck me as a little bit of "I have made the switch, but most programmers can't." Which, again, may be because of his audience for the book. Or could be me being touchy.

His "goal oriented design" approach seemed interesting, though. You define personas, which represent specific people who will use the software. Then you create the goals for the personas. Then you create scenarios describing typical interactions with the system for the personas. Then, I guess, you actually design the system for the personas.

And there I think I was turned off by his dismissal of a lot of the more "rigorous" user testing that is typical talk for HCI types. He pulled a "rely on our experience" line, which makes me think of all of the psychology research showing that drawing on experience is not as useful as you'd think in most fields compared to some simple, "rigorous" analysis.

A lot of the book also comes across as a commercial for his company. Which is ok, I guess, since the company is a perfect example of what he wants the process to work like, but still strikes me as a little odd.

If it had been about 50 pages shorter, it would have been much better. But it was interesting, and did give me some good ideas about "interaction design." And it all made me feel a little better about our current process.

Project Management Class: Lecture 1: Introduction and Overview

I attended the first in a series of project management classes Chris is teaching at work. I'm going to post some of my notes here, just for the heck of it.

What makes something a project?

• Internal structure - not just a single task

  • Indicates a certain level of complexity is needed

  • tasks should be the most granular level

• Constraints

• Resources

• Cost

• Somebody wants it done

3 Constraints that can be controlled in a project:

1. Time

2. Resources (Cost)

3. Scope

If you don't feel in control of all three, your project *will* move out of control.

Roles involved in projects:

• Project Manager

• Project Sponsor - The person whose authority is being wielded and has the power to make decisions on changing the three constraints after a project has started.

• Project Beneficiary - The person who benefits from the project and wants it done. If the beneficiary is not also the sponsor, you may not want to manage the project. "The politics will always feel ugly"

• Team

• Customers

• Opponents (resource competition, etc.)

Consulting projects may also have these roles (or projects with subcontractors):

• Client Manager - Counterpart to Project Manager on consulting projects

• Client Resource - Does not directly report to the Project Manager.

Timeline of a project starts:

1. Someone has a great idea / Shit hits the fan

   • Strong emotions

   • Lots of momentum to get things done

   • Newbie project managers often start at this point, which usually dooms the project

   • Things to do:

     1. Identify the Project Sponsor, make sure they are on board

     2. Understand the major parameters (goal, constraints, resources, cost, etc.) as specific as is currently understood

     3. Start with a clear understanding

   This is also the time to be negotiating things you are uncomfortable with before deciding whether or not you want to agree to take on the project.

2. Statement of Work

   • Formalized for consulting projects

   • In informal settings, use email to get agreement on what was negotiated and agreed upon so you can point to it later

Now you are ready to go form your team and your plan.

Stupid Freetime

Girl comes back, no time for weblogs?

That's not how it is supposed to work.

So here's a reminder to me about things to post about:

* Massage Oil

* Other Comic Reviews

* Functional Design Meeting Update

* Dev Process Thoughts

Yup.

Sigh.

Comic Review: Avengers Forever

This was a 12 issue miniseries. It tells the story of a group of Avengers from different times that band together to stop Immortus from killing Rick Jones, the Avengers' trusty sidekick. So, yes, it is a silly time travel story that tries to re-explain lots of Avengers continuity. Lots. It even has end of chapter footnotes detailing where things fit in.

But I'm not that interested in the continuity. If continuity were that important, the characters would age. But they don't. It's silly. It becomes really hard to relate to characters that don't have to worry about aging.

And several times in the series there is a reference to the Avengers doing what they do best - fight. And I wonder about that. Would a team of superheroes really be that useful? How many real problems can physical power solve? I'd love to see a comic explore the issues of pacifism and coercion and violence.

Anyways, the art was decent, if a bit crowded. It's hard to get a feel for the supposedly-massive scope of the story with everything feeling so crowded.

Maybe comics need wide-screen editions.

Movie Review - Highlander: Endgame

It was bad.

Baaaaaad.

And the DVD started skipping right before the "climactic" battles.

And it was strange, because the movie was really not good - bordering on incomprehensible - but it was still really frustrating to not see the climax.

It reminded me of the strangeness of watching "Slacker" for the first time, where my brain hurt because it kept trying to fit things together into a standard narrative.

Where does our standard idea of a narrative structure come from? Is it cultural? Do different cultures have different expectations for story structure?

Oh well.

The movie was bad. The acting was bad. The more you think about the way immortals work, the worse it got. Although, as Greg kept having to point out to me, just because you are immortal doesn't mean you are smart.

I think movies about people living hundreds or thousands of years tend to underestimate just how much that person would understand.