chillin'

The furnace repairs are underway, finally. A second HVAC guy came out this morning to replace a control unit and quickly discovered that the problem wasn't in the control unit, but in a gas valve. So the original guy who mis-diagnosed the system on Saturday brought over a new valve and he's working on installing it. Here's hoping he doesn't blow up my house.

In the mean time, here are a couple of links that kept me warm while I was chillin' on the couch last night:

• Books are "for to be to get you dead".
• If I buy a new blender I can have myself a delicious cochicken smoothie.

it's a cold night

I usually enjoy cold weather, when I don't have to be out in it. It tends to lose its attractions when I can't get my furnace to come on, though. It's less than 50 degrees in my house right now. I own four blankets. I'm sleeping under four blankets tonight.

The furnace stopped working sometime Friday night. Excellent timing, what with my family staying with me that night. A heating & air guy came out to take a look at it the next day and he determined that the furnace was fine and the thermostat was fine. The problem was a control unit between the two that was receiving the "we need heat" signal from the thermostat but wasn't passing it on to the furnace. Jiggling some wires seemed to resolve the problem and the furnace fired up. Problem solved.

Until I came back from a holiday party tonight, and discovered that the furnace was out again. I jiggled the wires, tightened the connectors, jiggled the wires, and gave up. It looks like the circuit board in that control unit is hosed. Aren't I lucky.

I need to buy a space heater.

frustration

Unix system administration can be a rewarding job, when it isn't frustrating. I needed to change the LDAP configuration of 320 servers today (LDAP is a centralized authentication system for user logins). I did some research and wrote a script that could automatically update the LDAP configuration of any client machine. One hour and 120 servers into the reconfiguration process, I discovered that the ldapclient command (which is a veritable tool of Satan, let me tell you) was not just changing LDAP settings, but was also turning off NIS configurations in the process (NIS is a protocol for sharing common system information across multiple computers). So, I managed to break 120 servers for a couple of hours this afternoon. Thankfully, I was doing this work during our slow period, when nothing important was running. It was a relatively simple task to re-write the script to work around ldapclient's weird behavior, and I got all 320 servers reconfigured and working normally without too much trouble.

LDAP configurations have been a thorn in our side for over a year at this company, so it's gratifying to have written a script will make it a lot easier to manage LDAP reconfigurations going forward. But this means I'm now our LDAP expert, so I'm probably going to come in for a lot more frustration dealing with this software down the road. Did I mention that the ldapclient utility is a tool of Satan?

I was going to post a copy of the script (just in case any despairing Unix sysadmins wander by), but it's so reliant on the particular layout of our LDAP directory that doing so would be pointless.

not much ado about something

We had a big meeting at work to discuss some ownership changes that are coming. But I can't tell you what they are, or what they mean--I know the basic change that is coming, but I don't know how much impact it will have on my employment situation, how much impact it will have on the company as a whole, or anything of any real significance at all. Even if I knew any of these things, I'm sure the FTC would require that I keep my mouth shut about it. So. Not much ado about something.

In the context of the announcement, a managing director from our new ownership team stated that "you never want to make an omelet, because once you mix everything up you can never take it apart again, and you end up with a schmoozle". I'm not positive that he actually said "schmoozle". It sure sounded like it, though. I know the point he was trying to make in context: we shouldn't expect massive changes or instability in the near future, because trying to integrate disparate organizations can create chaos and turn successful businesses into failures. I can understand why he'd want to follow that philosophy in managing his businesses, but I don't think I like that philosophy as a way of living my life. I've lived that way for a long time, and it's really rather dull. Besides, I *like* omelets.

a critical problem

During a recent Bible study we were discussing what Proverbs has to say about criticism:

The ear that listens to life-giving reproof will dwell among the wise. Whoever ignores instruction despises himself, but he who listens to reproof gains intelligence. The fear of the LORD is instruction in wisdom, and humility comes before honor.
-- Proverbs 15:31-33

He who is often reproved, yet stiffens his neck, will suddenly be broken beyond healing.
-- Proverbs 29:1

The point that was made is that criticism is a good thing. It's not easy to accept, it can hurt, but if we swallow our pride and listen to it we can learn some valuable lessons. From criticism we can learn about the flaws we hide from ourselves, about the weaknesses that we don't want to confront.

It's a good point, but it occurs to me that there's an easily overlooked corollary: if criticism can teach us about our flaws, it will be most effective when we allow people to see our flaws. It's natural to fear vulnerability. It's natural to try to control the face we present to the world, to hide our flaws and failures. It's incredibly difficult to overcome our pride and let people see what we're really like, but it's necessary if we want to obtain the full blessings of criticism.

Easier said than done, I'm afraid--it's something I really need to work on.

the power of google

I'm afraid my affection for Google's technology is a little too strong, almost to the point of being weird. But I'm a geek, so weird crushes on technology are at least to be expected, if not quite acceptable.

The three Google tools that *everyone* should use are gmail, calendar and docs & spreadsheets. Why? Partly because it's very handy to have the ability to access your email, scheduling and documents from any internet-connected computer in the world. Partly because these web-based applications are easier to use than their standalone Microsoft Office counterparts (Outlook, Word and Excel). Also because these web accessible, simple to use applications also pack in some features that the (supposedly more powerful) standalone Office applications don't have:

• gmail -- automatic grouping of replies into an easy to follow email thread. Until you see this in action, you'll have no idea how frustrating it is to manage email in Outlook.
• calendar -- you can setup events to send notifications to your cell phone via text message.
• docs & spreadsheets -- revision control is an amazing tool, especially when you share documents for other authors to edit. OK, so Word does this too--but how many people *really* have any clue how to use Microsoft's implementation of this feature?
  

I can envision a future in which the vast majority of my (non-work) computing involves nothing more than a web interface that provides me access to Google's web-based tools. Actually, I'm not too far from that right now. What am I lacking? Civ IV as a Google application?

thunderstruck -- Erik Larson

I recently finished reading Thunderstruck, Eric Larson's latest historical crime thriller. As in The Devil in the White City, Larson uses the true story of a notable crime to paint a much broader picture of social history. Some random thoughts:

• All people are broken--successful business leaders, brilliant inventors, national leaders, murderers, ordinary men and women. None of us is quite normal.
• Even the most cold-blooded criminal is a sympathetic figure when viewed from a certain light.
• For some crimes, capital punishment is absolutely appropriate.
  
• Society owes a large degree of its success in technological advancement to ego.
• Society suffers a large degree of its failure in relationships because of ego.
• People living today have no idea how much slower the world moved prior to the era of electronic communication.
• Eric Larson has a genius for taking simple history and turning it into a book that I can't put down.
• I really need to read Isaac's Storm.

peace on earth

One of the saddest stories in the Bible:

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth."

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech." So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Genesis 11:1-9

At one time mankind was united geographically, united in purpose, at peace, so confident in its own power and potential that it lost sight of God. That God had to break mankind of this hubris is clear--the purpose of mankind is, as Paul states in Acts 17:27 to "seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him", but this was never going to happen while mankind didn't see a need for God.

The solution to the problem was simple and effective--so effective that it has been tearing mankind apart ever since. In destroying mankind's ability to effectively communicate, God shattered our unity, shattered our ability to rely on each other, to trust each other. Ever since Babel humanity has been divided. Belligerent nations, feuding tribes, shattered friendships and broken families--these are the norm throughout history and they are a direct result of our inability to communicate and understand one another.

The only way to have the kind of relationships that made mankind so united and strong before Babel is to learn to communicate. A few individuals can, with enormous effort, overcome the difficulties of communication and learn to live in peace and harmony. A few marriages are characterized by true unity and a few friendships exhibit complete trust, but when mankind relies on its own efforts and its own wisdom to solve the problem the norm will always be division and conflict.

Fortunately, God has given us a real solution to the problem:

But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.

Ephesians 2:13-22

Communication will always be hard and peace will always be tenuous, but we can succeed in finding that peace and unity through Christ.

the costs of immigration

Greg Mankiw links to a George Borjas paper on immigration that identifies a serious side effect of immigration to America (illegal or legal):

Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses, we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose. Our analysis suggests that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 3.6 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 2.4 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.

I don't like supporting a policy that I know will directly harm a segment of American society that is already struggling. On the other hand, I believe that the costs of immigration are outweighed by the economic benefits that accrue both to society as a whole and to the immigrants themselves. The proper policy solution isn't to limit immigration, but to capture part of the economic windfall through taxation and use that revenue to provide support and opportunities for those that bear the brunt of the costs.

it's like that

If sports are a metaphor for life, what is art that describes sport? A beautiful metaphor for life? A meta-metaphor? I don't know how to answer that question. I *do* know that I like this song:

Well, beat the drum and hold the phone - the sun came out today!
We’re born again, there’s new grass on the field.
A-roundin’ third, and headed for home, it’s a brown-eyed handsome man;
Anyone can understand the way I feel.

Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

Well, I spent some time in the mudville nine, watchin’ it from the bench;
You know I took some lumps when the mighty casey struck out.
So say hey willie, tell ty cobb and joe dimaggio;
Don’t say "it ain’t so", you know the time is now.

Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

Yeah! I got it, I got it!

Got a beat-up glove, a homemade bat, and brand-new pair of shoes;
You know I think it’s time to give this game a ride.
Just to hit the ball and touch ’em all - a moment in the sun;
(pop) it’s gone and you can tell that one goodbye!

Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

Yeah!

--Centerfield, John Fogerty

The song makes me love baseball. Much like the book Summerland by Michael Chabon. I find it odd that I like art about baseball more than I actually like baseball.