Double Toil and Trouble

We walked out of the meeting to hold one of our own, those impromptu get-together for those who want to continue talking because they felt they didn’t get enough of it during the meeting itself or to gossip about the people from the meeting.

As usual, it was “held” in the hallway as the other meeting attendees filed past us while shooting various looks ranging from barbed, squinty ones to tired, “I can’t believe these jerks still want to talk more”.

I don’t know why I wanted to take part, but one of the guys I knew and sort of liked had decided to stop and talk so I did, too. Stupid, I should have said my see-you-laters and been on my way.

After some preliminaries, which went as well as can be expected among friends, the we bit through the hard shell and got to the soft, chewy nougat center: when was friend and co going to be able to migrate their agency into the consolidated environment?

“Our environment is so complex, it’ll take us three years,” Friend Guy said.

“Three years?!” I cried incredulously.

“Oh yes. We’ve got all sorts of applications and we’re going to have the vendors come back in to reconfigure them. In addition, there are Solaris servers that cannot be migrated …” he droned on.

Given what I knew about Friend Guy, he was a batty combination of technician who knew just enough to understand the generalities of the technology we used but not enough to prevent a drowning death. In other words, he was a Windows systems administrator.

I had usually just shrugged the old shoulders and moved the subject on to other, safer topics. You see, Friend Guy is a loud son-of-a-bitch with a God-granted baritone that could stop a charging rhino. He epitomized the adage about the man with the microphone always wins, only he needed no microphone.

Today however, I decided to dust off my SCUBA equipment and go for a deep dive. Like an alligator who latches on to the leg of the wildebeest and drags it down in the water, log-rolling all the way, I’d gotten tired of the bluster and wanted to hear that dying gurgle.

“I doubt it would take 3 years, Friend Guy. I mean, we aren’t talking about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter here. This is tried-and-true stuff. The protocols we use for authentication are all well-known; and besides …” I started.

“No, no, man. You have no idea, it’s very complex.” He bellowed.

“No, it’s not,” I asserted. “This is the same thing Tax said when they were initially migrating. As it turned out, it took us less than two months to get them on board. They, too, had originally thought it would take years.”

No way was I going to let go of my grip on that yummy wildebeest leg. Doubling down, I dove deeper.

“Here’s the thing, it’s all standardized protocols that we know about and unless you guys are doing something completely untoward, we can handle. And by untoward, I mean Banyan Vines, or some shit like that.”

“No, but we’re using SAMBA” he said, still bellowing although the strong wind had died down to a stiff breeze.

“SAMBA is still a protocol we understand how use, Friend Guy. It’s not that complex.” I plod on, determined to persevere.

“Yeah, but on Solaris?”

A glint had appeared in his eye, the kind of glint a man who was about to put the sword to the neck of a vanquished enemy in the arena would have in his eye. A smile began to break the edges of his lips as they prepared to form a smirk.

“Solaris? Please. You forget I was a UNIX administrator before I started working here, right? In fact, by using SAMBA on Solaris, you’re actually reducing the security of your Active Directory.” I said as I trained my alligator eyes on his panicked wildebeest eyes.

I continued.

“By the way, who told you it would take three years? The vendors? Because you know that vendors would love nothing more than to drag out the so-called reconfiguration so they can charge you heaven and earth for shit that’s easy to do.”

“No, it wasn’t the vendors. It was my boss,” he said, with a little less enthusiasm.

“Your boss?”

“Yeah.”

“Is your boss a programmer?”

“No, he’s been in IT for a long time and has done a lot of these kinds of migrations and he knows how they …”

Oh now, this was too much. What an  utterly ridiculous thing to say and, being in the no-nonsense river of death, I decided to apply the coup de grâce.

“Oh come on, that’s a fallacy, Friend Guy. Just because someone’s been in IT a long time doesn’t mean he knows anything about this particular migra—” I began.

“OH, AND  YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING! PLEASE. I’M OUTTA HERE.”

Caught flat-footed for a second, it dawned on me he was attempting the old Ninja vanishing trick, only it wasn’t with smoke bombs, but the blistering hot air of bluster.

“Oh no,” I thought, “you’re not getting away that easy.”

“Are you running away?” I said to his retreating back, raising and holding a plastered smile on my face.

He turned back for a split second and shot me a look that told me he was no longer Friend Guy, just Guy and continued shuffling away in a cloud of more bluster.

Oh well, you win some, you win some.

The Simple Explanation

My back hurts. twitter.com/fwoodbridge/st…
— Fred Woodbridge (@fwoodbridge) February 18, 2012

Language, Young Lady!

Thank you, teacher!

Silliness

For some strange reason, I think this is hilarious:

I always thought that double shout was a tad much, even for Van Damme.

Dear (Humanoid) Woman

I’m Sorry!

Mommy, Mommy

Heh.

Penn And Fredder

I had quite the Twitter interaction with Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller and a bunch of other guys.

One of the funnier ones with with a guy, TalonNYC who asserted that all religions are true. After pointing out that many religions have beliefs that directly contradict each other (Judaism and Islam, for example, do not believe that Jesus Christ is God while Christians do) hence to say that all religions are true is an illogical statement. They can’t all be true—although they can all be false.

This is philosophy of religion 101, as it were, but it astounds me how many people don’t give any thought whatever to beliefs they hold! The very thing they accuse Christians of doing. Talon’s flimsy refuge was to point out that they’re all true to different people. Which of course continues the fallacy—either something is true or it isn’t. True for you but not for me is relativist nonsense and doesn’t hold in the real world.

Another guy, a likeable fellow name Mike Rigsby, made the claim that ‘faith isn’t rational.’ That one took me aback a few seconds. I asked him if he knew there was a difference between blind faith and rational faith. His reply was unclear. Whatever, the meat of the Twitter really comes between Penn and Me.

Penn started the whole thing with the following:

I've been playing bebop jazz for 10 years. Today, I'm dusting off the electric bass and I'm going to play some rock and roll. NoGod Band

to which I responded:

for someone who knows there's no God, you're awfully concerned by Him. The noGod band? Case of stalking The Big Guy?

He said:

I'm really concerned. The damage from superstition hurts us all.

With a slight tongue-in-cheek, I said:

aw come on Penn, including Santa?? ;)

Obviously in jest.

That started the whole heap. Here are some various statements by the big man himself, all made without providing proof:

Any belief in god is a negation of love for other people. (Asked him why he believed this, no answer.)

Morality is strictly human and not god. It's based on love and survival. Religion has no morals (After I said: “find humor in Penn talking moral rights bcos I wonder what his source of this right is, if not God.”)

I replied:

love subjective; practical for you not same for me. For you, morality choice. No objective standard,yes?

Or if base morality strictly on survival, how different are we from animals who eat their own young?

He then said:

Not just survival, also love and practicality. As far as killing one's young, that's a bible thing.

Oooh, snarky, snarky, snarky! Of course, all this proves it’s quite difficult to converse in less than 140 characters.

He continues:

Yes, "faith" is the true hate and evil.

After I said:

On love. So whatever I "love" is my morals? How about if I love killing Jews? That's OK by your defn?

He goes:

Yes, the religious have been big on killing jews.

Completely dodging the question with another cute little ad hominem which I pointed out with “nice sleight of keyboard, Penn! ”

Here’s where it got exciting, when he made the following statement with me and him going back and forth:

@fwoodbridge - Atheism doesn't need to be provable. There's nothing to prove. It's an absence of belief.

@pennjillette you need to look at a dictionary, Penn.

@fwoodbridge - Check the Oxford English dictionary. Absence of belief or disbelief - like everyone is most gods.

@pennjillette simple question: does God exist?

@fwoodbridge How would anyone know that? I know that I'm not taking your word for it, and that makes me an Atheist.

@pennjillette So you're not an Atheist, you're an Agnostic

@fwoodbridge  - Nope, agnostic is an epistemological term, once your agnostic you still have to be Atheist or Theist.

@pennjillette One doesn't necessarily go from "I don't know" to "I know: No God" Penn

I decided to use his much-loved OED (to which I happen to have access!) to define the terms:

@pennjillette Agnostic-One who holds that the existence of anything beyond and behind material phenomena is unknown

@pennjillette OED: Atheist-One who denies or disbelieves the existence of a God.

He continues with this howler:

@fwoodbridge - If you don't know, you can't believe and if you can't believe, you're atheist.

@pennjillette Penn, you can't go from NOT KNOWING to KNOWING enough not to believe. Illogical.

@fwoodbridge It's just epistemological. How things are known. In the meantime, there's no god, and I believe you know that.

@pennjillette You believe I know this. On what grounds do you believe I KNOW there's no God?

@fwoodbridge - Saying I KNOW there's no god, is the same as saying I don't believe in god, unless I AM omniscient. I'm not god.

@pennjillette BTW, happy to see you know one property of God is omniscience. Which makes Him different from Santa or unicorns!

@pennjillette In which case, you've just made a truth claim. Now prove it.

@fwoodbridge - Well, you're thinking enough that I think you'll be atheist is a little while. I hope it works out for you.

@pennjillette Ah, the well-known "wish you well" dodge to providing proof! :-D Thanks, Penn. A real pleasure chatting with you!

@fwoodbridge - Thanks, man. It's really not a dodge. I did explain my point, and I think you understand it well.

Well, if you consider not answering any questions with any definitive answers, getting the basic idea behind agnosticism and atheism wrong, indulging in ad hominem utterances, he was a really great guy with whom to speak!

I’ll still catch his very entertaining show though. I just won’t trust his judgment on matters religious—especially when you consider this is his next book!!

Silman On Focus

Here’s a letter to International Master Jeremy Silman at chess.com:

LionHeart319 asked:

I’ve been spending hours and hours of study to improve my game, I mean I’m kinda obsessed with the game. But recently (after reading a couple of books, improving my tactics, and solving a lot of chess puzzles), I seem to lack focus in almost every game I play. I can’t understand but I just seem to loose track in the middlegame, committing lots of mistakes, giving a piece for free, and other blunders.

What can you recommend to improve one’s focus on the game?

Dear LionHeart319:

I … have … no … idea. Thanks for the question!

Heheh!

After this, Silman answers some other questions, but then ends up answering LionHeart’s question at the end of the article anyway. I wonder if LionHeart focused long enough to read that far. Good lesson.

Tiger Booboo

I’m a huge fan of Amy Chua’s new book, The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” which is, I think, an exquisitely told memoir of trying to fit the square peg of her strict Chinese upbringing in the round hole of modern American children.

For some inconceivable reason, many people—many who haven’t even read the book—think Chua’s advocating a certain style of child-rearing, a manual if you will. It’s no such thing. It’s a memoir, morons!

I believe there are some excellent things to take away from the Tiger Mother method and some things to reject. Even Amy Chua ultimately regrets many things she didn’t (or did) do.

Various Americans of Asian origin have risen up like a typhoon of recriminations against Chua because, I think, they hated growing up in such a strict environment. One such is Lac Su, the author of I Love Yous are for White People. CNN approached him for comment and he wrote this article in response.

Here’s where the irony comes—in the article, a screenshot of which appears below, Su writes that he still “bare wounds that haven’t healed.” That’s right, “bare”. It seems he should have listened more to his parents, and perhaps he’d know the correct spelling and tense of the word “bear”. Sorry Tiger Mother.

Come Fly With Me

This is damned hilarious!

FlyLO

Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy

The beads of sweat are forming faster than I can dispatch them. My soon-to-be one-year-old son lies limp in my arms, finally asleep as I achingly pull myself up off the couch balancing all 290 lardy pounds augmented by his 22 (and 1 ounce!) on the edge of a razor.

Any abruptness will bring the pain as red eyes force their way past closed eyelids, sending the necessary commands to the mouth via the brain: “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.” No sir, this has got to be smoother than silk which means slow, slow, slow. And up I rise as he thankfully continues his unconscious ride and, standing, I survey the territory ahead.

A panic briefly tickles the nerves, where is that cat? The one thing that could derail this operation was nowhere to be seen. I know this because Cessna, the last of the Mohicans as I like to call her, has indeed been the cause of much discomfort in our household in re my little monkey: a well-placed swat, a belching meow, the old Dead Cat Draw where she suddenly falls in your path forcing a decision either to step on her or last-minute, find a way to change the rhythm of your footfall appropriately. These weren’t her most effective tactics however. No, that was the Thread The Needle tactic. With each step, she would, slinky-like, attempt to weave in and out of your advancing feet, all the while employing that infernal meow.

Thankfully, she was occupied somewhere else so the only other thing that could derail moving Freddie from the couch to his crib was the terrain itself: a cataclysm of strewn toys, bottles, clothes, cups, and “binkies”. A quick calculation, a wet finger extended into the air stream and I was off. Empty bottle approaching at Flight Level 350, Mach 2, sidestepped. A posse of binkies rendezvousing at 3 O’ clock, dodged no problem. Around the couch, past the Christmas Tree, enter the hallway, scan ahead, no bogeys and here comes his door.

“Uhoh,” I thought, realizing I didn’t have the use of my hands employed as they were in ye olde cradle manoeuver so if that door ahead was locked I’d be in doodoo, the deep kind. Luckily, I saw the sliver of daylight that indicated the door wasn’t locked or shut. Extending a foot, I pushed past it and entered the lair where I could just make out in the humid gloom (“this humidifier works a treat!”) the hulking mass of crib and goal.

The last and oh so finally sweet step now lay ahead: working the transfer from arm cradle to crib cradle. I heard the voice of the Wise One (AKA Mom) who had done this a million, trillion times: “it never goes the same way twice, my old Paduwan. Never!” I gulp down the fear and start forward, the yawning mouth the crib waiting to take its load, but that mattress down below seemed like it was on the other side of the Universe.

I decide speed was of the essence: if I was quick enough, I could drop him on to the mattress without arousing him but if something went wrong, I could make my escape like the Millennium Falcon did in Star Wars. I was pretty sure that tired as he was, he wouldn’t cry for long. I steeled myself, extending either foot out in the ‘Straddle the horse’ Kung Fu stance I’d learned almost two decades ago.

My upper arms flexed to take the extra gravitational pull of 22 (and 1 ounce!) in motion while my hands nimbly shifted the supine body into position. The lower back muscle infrastructure fired off to take the load as I lowered him gingerly downwards, speed just right to offset any jarring effects of the manoeuver. Monitoring his eyelids as they descended provided the feedback I needed: the little monkey was still fast asleep.

Load deposited, light blanket draped over, the slow egress operation proceeds first by taking two steps backwards while continuing the observation then a quick snap-roll to the right then big, padded steps in less than three steps through the open door.

As I turn around to grab the handle, one look tells me all is well and as I pull the door shut, I spy the black tail of The Mohican disappear into the gloom.

“Damn!”

Same Old Song & Dance (With A Twist)

Ricky Gervais is not funny.

That is not to say he’s always been that way. Way back, in the original (and best) The Office era, his middle name was ‘hilarious’ then something happened. I speculate it could be when he got famous or when he sold The Office to American TV, but he became most assuredly not funny.

This diagnosis was confirmed beyond a shadow after I’d seen HBO’s Ricky Gervais: Out of England. That stumbling, diffused babbling of a show underscored it: the man’s no longer funny and I can forgive almost anything in my celebrities … but that.

And now, as if to seal himself into the unfunny tomb for eternity, Gervais puts pen to paper and writes A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais: Why I’m An Atheist for the Wall Street Journal. Now as atheistic missives to the world go (one wonders why they’re constantly proselytizing—if nothing objectively and truly matters, why bother?) it’s a very different, i.e. smellier beast from Bertrand Russell’s. In fact, it’s terrible.

First, it’s not funny.

Second, it’s replete with threadbare atheistic tropes (“science can’t prove God’s existence therefore He doesn’t exist”, “I believe in one less god than you do,” “you don’t need God to be moral,” etc.) and that’s really tiresome. That someone who really cares intellectually—in other words, a real skeptic—won’t seek to do the basic work necessary to answer these Grand Questions smacks of intellectual laziness and worse, hubris. At the very least, a true skeptic will arrive at agnosticism rather than atheism (see Kant, Immanuel; also Pascal, Blaise).

However, the shocker of the article was a recounting by Gervais of his eight-year-old self rejecting theism and the existence of God within an hour of being asked “Why do you believe in God?” by his self-described maladjusted brother. Atheism: so easy an eight-year-old could do it in an hour.

How utterly ridiculous.

And how not funny.

“Not A Damn Thing”

This old story out of Texas . Seems a guy cruises through a stop sign, or whatever, and gets pulled over by a local policeman.  Guy hands the cop his driver's license, insurance, plus his concealed carry permit.

"Okay, Mr. Smith," the cop says, "I see your CCW permit.  Are you carrying today?"

"Yes, I am."

"Well then, better tell me what you got."

Smith says, "Well, I got a ..357 revolver in my inside coat pocket.  There's a 9mm semi-auto in the glove box.  And, I've got a .22 magnum derringer in my right boot."

"Okay," the cop says.  "Anything else?"

"Yeah, back in the trunk, there's an AR15 and a shotgun.  That's about it."

"Are you on your way to or from a gun range?"

"Nope."

"Well then, what are you afraid of?"

"Not a damn thing!”

Liberals Think They Know Everything

Ramming Speed

Serenity Now

NASA?

Since the NASA administrator recently regaled the world with the news that the most important goal for NASA is now increasing Muslims’ self-esteem, Fred (great name) Fry come up with the above new NASA logo … it’s a beaut!

More from Michelle Malkin’s call.

A “Legitimate” Candidate

Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said Greene was not a "legitimate" candidate and called his victory "a mysterious deal." (Yes, how could a young African-American man with strange origins, suspicious funding, shady associations, no experience, no qualifications, and no demonstrable work history come out of nowhere and win an election?)

Snicker!

More …

BO’s Ass

Happy Everybody Draw Mohammed Day

I wish I could draw, but in the mean time: