the dirty politics of milk

I hate subsidies. When special interests can bribe lawmakers to setup market distorting regulatory schemes, the special interests can effectively steal millions of dollars from consumers without anyone raising an eyebrow. They get away with it because consumers are only getting bilked for a few cents at a time. It's just business as usual. Here's an article about the dirty politics of the dairy industry:

In the summer of 2003, shoppers in Southern California began getting a break on the price of milk.

A maverick dairyman named Hein Hettinga started bottling his own milk and selling it for as much as 20 cents a gallon less than the competition, exercising his right to work outside the rigid system that has controlled U.S. milk production for almost 70 years. Soon the effects were rippling through the state, helping to hold down retail prices at supermarkets and warehouse stores.

That was when a coalition of giant milk companies and dairies, along with their congressional allies, decided to crush Hettinga's initiative. For three years, the milk lobby spent millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions and made deals with lawmakers, including incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.).

Last March, Congress passed a law reshaping the Western milk market and essentially ending Hettinga's experiment -- all without a single congressional hearing.

The last line in the story is a brilliant commentary on why America is still worth loving, despite the frequent stupidity of our government:

"I still think this is a great country," Hettinga said. "In Mexico, they would have just shot me."

something to remember

If you must drive into a ditch when you're on a secluded country road, do it when there's a helpful cowboy with his helpful cowgirl in a big pickup truck complete with towing chains driving down the same road about 30 seconds behind you. You'll be glad you picked that time to drive into the ditch, I assure you.

fighting fires

I think I've figured out what it is that I most enjoy about sysadmin work: fighting fires. No, not literal fires. If I ever have to fight a literal fire while working as a Unix system administrator, things will have gone very, very wrong. The fires I'm talking about are the system outages that have to be resolved as soon as possible, and even then it will be too late. The kind of outages that have customers asking for tens of thousands of dollars in refunds, the kinds of outages that have CEOs screaming for status reports every 30 minutes, the kind of outages that involve dozens of people unable to do their job until I fix the computers that they are depending on.

I'm exaggerating a bit--clearly, any job that features this kind of activity on a daily basis is a job that won't last long, if only because any company that has so little stability in its computing infrastructure is doomed to fail. Alternatively, any sysadmin who sees so many outages happening on his watch is a sysadmin that really needs to go back to answering phones for the help desk. The whole point of employing sysadmins is to prevent these sort of outages from ever occurring, after all.

But any IT shop that is frequently changing its hardware or software infrastructure is going to experience unplanned system outages or will face projects with urgent deadlines that absolutely must be met. These situations can be stressful, but it's a kind of stress that keeps me interested in what I'm doing. Much better to be working under pressure than sitting around waiting for something to happen, doing hardware inventory, reading or writing documentation, looking for ways to tweak software to gain incremental efficiency improvements. I *like* knowing that people are depending on me to get a job done.

We had another outage on our LDAP infrastructure for about 30 minutes yesterday morning. It could have been much worse, but I and a coworker of mine were on the problem immediately, had it diagnosed, developed a procedure for fixing each LDAP client, and had over 300 servers repaired in 30 minutes. It was *fun*. I want that kind of fun more often.

This job has been a bit too boring for my tastes. Fortunately, that should be changing. We just kicked off the planning for a massive overhaul of our core database infrastructure. We'll be migrating our storage platform to a new Hitachi SAN, our database servers to new Sun v890s, and our network gear to new Cisco switches.

This isn't that big of a deal, except for the fact that our customers want no downtime whatsoever (sad for them, because downtime will be unavoidable), and our management wants us to simultaneously be upgrading all of our customers to new versions of our proprietary software platform. And they want all of this done by the end of the 1st quarter. So the entire project constitutes one big fire. I have a feeling I'll be working a *lot* of Saturdays for the next three months. I'm glad. I'm tired of boredom.

the fallacy of power

I've been reading Bowden's Guests of the Ayatollah. Some thoughts after reading the first quarter of the book:

The radical Islamic students who overran America's embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979 believed that they were striking a blow against the evil plots of imperial America. In the minds of those students, the embassy was a critical tool enabling America's continued meddling in Iran's internal affairs. While most of the staff claimed to be serving diplomatic functions, the Iranian students knew that they were actually the agents of a superpower working to impose its will on Iran. The same superpower that had placed the Shah in power in 1953 was conspiring to defeat the Islamic revolution and return the Shah to power--how else to explain the fact that the he was allowed to come to the US for medical treatment? The students who led the attack on the embassy knew that in capturing the embassy they would find proof of America's continued plotting, would expose to the world the machinations of a scheming power.

The students were wrong. Of 66 embassy staffers that were captured, only seven were working for the CIA (three of whom handled communications, and one of whom was a secretary). Those few CIA agents at the embassy had little influence and no control over events in Iran. Far from imposing America's will on Iran, the CIA was primarily concerned with trying to get enough information about the new revolutionary government to understand what was going on in the country. The students spent weeks interrogating diplomats and clerical staff, trying to find evidence of plots that didn't exist. They thought that America was capable of controlling events on a global scale and that America frequently exerted that control, but they were wrong.

America was and is a superpower, but that power has limits. Both our capability and desire to control the world are limited. Many people believe that the primary source of this world's problems is America--we are the sole superpower and we exercise power on a global scale, so problems that exist in this world could be resolved if America would just stop misbehaving. Global poverty, war, famine, environmental problems--they are all either caused or allowed to exist by an America that wields power irresponsibly, the theory goes. The people who hold to this belief are just as wrong as the Islamic students who were bewildered to find that they had overrun an office building full of mundane people doing mundane tasks. America has global influence but it is limited in scope. We are neither the primary source of nor the ultimate solution to this world's problems.

Hitch

Christopher Hitchens is funnier than a woman.

I'm fairly certain that I'm going to get in trouble for linking to this.

Which, I think, proves the point.

Which is a joke, not that women will think it (or I) am funny.

Must. Stop. Digging.

the funniest thing I read today

Mark Steyn on the Iraq Study Group's recommendations for engagement with Syria and Iran:

Of course, Syria “should” do this and Iran “should” do that and, if they were Sandra Day O’Connor, I’m sure they would. But they’re not.

happiness

Last night I got a chance to give a short talk at church. Here's what I talked about:

Why are we so often unhappy? Generally it's one of three things:

1. Possessions -- We don't have enough things, the things that we have aren't good enough and the good things that we have frequently break and decay.
   
2. Relationships -- We don't have enough friends or loved ones, our friends hurt us or let us down and the people that we can depend on eventually move away or die.
   
3. Work -- We work to much, we work too hard and we're never paid enough to compensate for all the grief we have to endure.
   

We can't solve these problems, so how can we be happy in this life? The author of Ecclesiastes tells us how:

Go, eat your bread in joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

Ecclesiastes 9:7-10

What's the secret? It seems to contradict what we know to be true. Our possessions, our relationships and our labor seem to be the primary sources of unhappiness, but we are told to enjoy all of these things. How is it possible to derive joy from imperfect possessions, imperfect people and imperfect jobs? It's possible if "God has already approved what you do". When we have the right relationship with God we can view all of these things from a proper perspective. All are blessings from God. Perfect? No, but they are blessings and if we have the right relationship with God, the right perspective, we find joy in them.

Paul makes a similar point:

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me--practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:4-10

Does God promise perfect lives that are free of frustrations and disappointments? No. But we can pray for what we need and we can pray when we're hurting. When we concentrate on serving God and when we recognize that He has blessed us with our possessions, our relationships and our work, we can be happy. We can be thankful for what we have, we can see the good in what God has given us and we can have peace because of our relationship with Him.

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

Does Christ eliminate our burdens and make our lives perfectly easy? No. But He helps with our burdens and the cost of serving Him is so much less than the cost in grief of trying to find joy solely in the things of this world. Christ is the ultimate source of rest and peace.

So, how can we find happiness?

• Serve God.
• Recognize the good in what He has blessed us with.
• Trust Him to help bear our burdens.
• Recognize that the ultimate blessing is the life that He has reserved for us.

good bye, self respect, you'll be missed

A couple of months ago a friend of mine showed me a book he had recently obtained--a 19th century 1st edition by a notable author, if I recall correctly. My thoughts went back to that book as I was unpacking some of my own books last night. I picked up an old book, took note of the decrepit binding and yellowed pages and thought to myself "I wonder if this is an early edition?"

I'm ashamed to admit that it took me at least five seconds to remember that I was holding a copy of a work by Aristotle. Yeah, I'm brilliant. But at least I give me something to laugh at.

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.