3G is an at&t myth

wired is conducting about satisfaction with 3g network coverage. here's how i feel about at&t's 3g "coverage":

except for the twenty or so minutes i spend reading the nyt on my daily commute, i have the 3g network turned off about 90% of the time. doing so reduces my dropped call rate by about 90% at my house, where reception is spotty. mind you, the coverage still stinks at my house, but at least i can talk on the phone without it sounding like an endless verizon commercial.

i'll call it the 90/90 rule. reduce 3g connectivity time by 90%, reduce dropped calls by 90%.

may 19, california special election

the endorsements of the publications i read seem to be all over the place, so that really gave no hint as to how i might lean. the text of the initiatives themselves is cryptic -- as always -- but i found the league of women voters guide to be clear and concise.

we all google for errors

so hopefully this one will save a ruby/rails newbie some time. i upgraded to rails 2.3.2 and started seeing a weird error when trying to start the console:

...../rubygems/requirerment.rb:150:in 'parse':ArgumentError:Illformed requirement ["~> 1.1.pre"]
...../rubygems/requirerment.rb:150:in 'parse':ArgumentError:Illformed requirement ["~> 1.1.pre"]
...../vendor/rails/railties/lib/console_with_helpers.rb:5:NameError: uninitialized constant ApplicationController

at first, i thought it was because i hadn't renamed application.rb to application_controller.rb (which is what rails 2.3.x looks for). but what it really was is that i hadn't updated rubygems from 1.3.1 to 1.3.2.

to fix, all i needed to do was run:

gem update --system

if only you could eat technology too

update: well after a couple days passed, i tried my extra special technique again, only to curious see a picture of the location with a bus passing by -- again. then of course, it dawned on me that street view was not being updated in anything close to real time. so, no epiphany after all.

if i were a good boy who saved his pennies, i'd bring my lunch to work. i'm not.

which means my daily routine at about 2 p.m. is to wonder what to have for lunch. one of my favorites is a hot dog cart called, da beef. i don't eat the dogs, but get a delicious italian beef sandwich, which is a thinly sliced steak sandwich drenched in au jus and topped with spicy peppers. that's good.

the problem is that these cart people don't show up consistently. and since they're a cart, they don't have a phone (they need to make use of modern telephony, i.e. a cell phone). which means, i walk -- fortunately, it's only three blocks -- only to find them not there. then i'm upset.

but today, i decided to use my brain instead of my feet and that's where google maps, street view comes in handy. punch in the address and voila, i see the location where the cart is supposed to be, but today is not. no fruitless walking for me today.

now my next epiphany needs to be what i can eat. and there it is. today's the day to try 'good pizza'.

about RailsPlayground

to say i'm a novice systems administrator is giving me too much credit. outside of knowing how to list the contents of and change directories, i really don't have any idea of what i'm doing. okay, that slightly understates my skills, but not actually by that much. but when you're trying to get a startup going sometimes -- often times, really -- you end up taking on things that you suck at (like RoR programming, but that's another matter).

i love the idea of open source software and want to give back, but i really don't know how i can contribute in a meaningful way. but you have to start somewhere, so instead of hacking out something, i'll detail my experience getting a rails app up and running on RailsPlayground.

but first, i want to give a quick review of their service after one week.

- the setup of my VPS with an image including Rails, Passenger, mySQL, SVN, and Centos 5.2 from registration to completion was less than 30 minutes. that is excellent. the whole process is apparently quite streamlined from their end.

- the response time on tickets has been excellent. none of the issues that arose were particularly tricky but they were all resolved within an hour. they also have a live chat for quick questions. response is not quite instantaneous -- the techs seem to be monitoring chat, while doing other work as well -- but it's quite convenient when you have a small question that doesn't necessitate the opening of a trouble ticket.

- their pricing is competitive with the other providers out there. it falls on the lower side, but they're certainly not the only option at this price point.

- now, the bad. their documentation is quite poor. it's not only sparse, but it's often either outdated (which i assume is the reason why it's incorrect in spots) . on the other hand, lxadmin and hyperVM -- their two server administration tools -- are pretty easy to use and seem to be relatively robust in their feature set.

- the various components of the system aren't tightly integrated. as i mentioned, there are two separate admin tools. in addition, the SVN repository needs to be setup separately at a site called sourcerepo.com. that seems odd and inefficient.

overall so far, i'm happy with RP. their service in helping a very new linux admin has been well worth dealing with the outdated documentation and somewhat odd set of components. i suspect the documentation thing will get fixed soon enough, and that would give me the chance to give them a non-qualified endorsement.

the rule of thinkers

i think i'm very smart. which is not the same as actually being very smart.

now, i score high on standardized tests, graduated from the last, great hope for public school education, etc., so i'm not a dummy. that said, a curiously large number of friends happen to be a bit smarter.

i see two possible ways to look at this. the half-glass full way of looking at things is that smart people surround themselves with other smart people. this makes sense and has some truth to it. i hate dumb people. if i am guilty of prejudice, it is against dumb people. they annoy me. they bewilder me. deep down, i strongly feel they should be prohibited from procreating. thus, i gravitate toward people with brains.

i like this explanation. it reaffirms that i really am a genius. here's the flipside though and ultimately what is more accurate. the more friends you have smarter than you, the more inflated your view on how intelligent you really are. you associate with people who are similar, not to how you actually are, but how you perceive yourself to be.

the upshot: if all your friends are brilliant, you consider yourself brilliant. now start counting. if there's a "surprising" number of people just a touch more brilliant than you, bad news: you're not nearly as smart as you think.

a special offer from nike

what a deal!!!

inside my head

recently, i've been feeling a bit reflective (i.e. sad) and i've found myself pondering those things in life that truly suck.

disappointment in someone who you previously held in very high regard. that's got to be up there.

the naming of things

i used to be a real microsoft-hater. their products kinda sucked and they had those not-so-friendly predatory business practices. i've since softened in my disdain for them, especially now that bill gates, the former stone-faced evil master of the corporation now looks to be a pretty good guy. i don't necessarily agree with all his philanthropy campaigns -- anti-smoking, for one -- but he's not starting a new, even-more, right-wing, gay and abortion bashing, sect of the evangelical christian church either. i say win for bill.

which is why it gives me no pleasure to bash their products. really, it's not even their products, it's how they name them. windows 98, windows 2000, office 2003, office 2007. stop naming them after the year they were released. do you know how dated that makes your products look as soon as the calendar turns? i go to the store and see something that was made last year or even a couple years back and it certainly does not inspire me to spend my limited supply of cash. and it mildly irks me if something two years old doesn't carry some significant discount either.

it reminds me of going to a sporting events and seeing fans wearing jerseys of players who've already changed franchises twice since then. like c-web jerseys at warriors games or primetime jerseys at 49ers games. you just look stupid. all i can think about is, how long have you owned that thing and please retire it immediately. if you want to support your team, go ahead and pick someone who actually plays for them, not someone who visits a couple times a year and tries to put a mark in the l column for your beloved squad.

a childhood slogan

i recall the days when mean kids would say to unpopular kids stuff like 'roses are red, violets are blue, my mom smells like sunshine, your mom smells like poo.' technically, you could finish the invective with anything that rhymed with blue, but in reality approximately 98% of insults delivered using this framework finished with 'poo'. 'your dad forgot to shower, now he smells like poo', 'when i look at your face, it makes me think of poo'. you get the picture.

but violets aren't blue, they're, well, violet right?

it is what it is

feeling a bit reflective a few days back, i decided to walk home one evening in lieu of a $10 cab ride. i strolled up the street, earbuds in, aurally isolated from the world. but i did notice a display for grape nuts.

and it was complex. nuanced. or maybe just dumb.

on the poster, it had two phrases. oatmeal stout. pale ale. both of them with strikethroughs. then some whitespace and the words grape nuts. followed by "it is what it is".

which i find odd. because. i don't what grape nuts "is". they're not grapes. they're not nuts. and they're certainly not nuts that come from grapes. in fact, as a child, after seeing one of their tv commercials, what exactly grape nuts were and how in the hell they got the name grape nuts.

further, being plural, shouldn't it be "they are what they are". now i'm pretty sure what they mean is grape nuts are healthy -- no sugar, food coloring, etc. added. and i'm pretty sure the people who were working on the campaign knew exactly what they were, but for the rest of us we're pretty much in the dark on this.

here's an idea instead of giving us the existential explanation of what grape nuts are, why not just tell us straight away. i guarantee if they had done that, i'd have had several conversations the next day that started with, "hey, you know grape nuts actually are..."

Decree II: Regarding Work on Your Birthday

Decree II: All employers will be mandated by law to provide a paid holiday to be taken on the day of an employee's birthday.

Americans work too hard. Or at least they show up to the office too much. I remember my first job out of college had a month vacation -- plus five sick days. I had never heard of such a thing. Two weeks, normal. Three weeks, extravagant. But a month, unthinkable. At least for those in the 50 states (Puerto Rico? I don't know the norms there).

I later found out that our generous vacation policy was not generous at all. The company I worked for -- Barclays Global Investors -- was a subsidiary of Barclays Bank, an English-based company. And while four weeks sounds good there, it doesn't ring quite as true across the pond, where 6 weeks, and even 8 weeks, won't raise an eyebrow.

All of this amounts to me saying, companies can afford to give their employees one more day off a year. Let's be frank. Past the age of 21, and especially past the age of 30, birthdays really aren't that great. We celebrate not because of the thrill of getting older but to remind us we can still have fun, despite knees getting a little creakier, backs locking up more often, and everything slouching just a fraction closer to the floor. Have a heart, corporate America..

Decree I

hoping to spur my writing frequency, i've decided to start a new standing feature for my blog. i call it "If I Were World Czar".

the title explains it all. there are certain things that would cease to exist -- punishable by death by strangulation.

first order or business: websites are expressly forbidden from auto-playing music.

let's be honest, there are few things worse than visiting a site only to be bombarded by unexpected cacophony. speaking nothing of those times, when you are enjoying a nice track from a favored artist only to have it overlayed with some crap a web designer thought was cool two years ago when he put the site together.

the near genius of death cab

has nothing to do with their music, which unabashedly sucks*.

*unless you're a 14-year-old girl. i once attended a death cab concert. this was early in my switch from listening to nerdy hip hop to indie. a friend (a girl, not 14 years old though. she's gotten shit for it post-facto) asked me. i accepted. mostly because i wanted to see the opener, stars, who ended up sucking also. however, the show had one saving grace: the bar, specifically, the lack of line. i ordered several drinks to dull the pain and not once did i wait one second in line. which makes sense since there were two bars and i was one of two people of age. seriously, police should stakeout death cab shows for pedophiles.

i'm currently on the search for a couple of ironic gifts, and death cab t-shirts would be perfect. since i have two friends who now assert their love for death cab has died, it would be a great way to remind them of their former taste suckitude. in my attempt to navigate to the t-shirt section, i clicked on the gear link. but instead of taking me to their merch, it took me to a page listing all the equipment the band uses.

now that's smart.

certainly, throngs of 13-year-olds are out there getting no chicks. and upon visiting this page, he thinks to himself, i could play like death cab and get chicks too. they're ugly and kind of doughy just like me and they get laid. a lot. and with freshman girls too (kidding. maybe.). preying on this sort of thinking, i guarantee they could sell a lot of overpriced guitars and amps.

as could be expected though, they fall short of doing it right. it's just a list. no links to some seller where they get to make money off of people coming through their site.

i know indie rockers aren't renowned for their website skills, but seriously why wouldn't every band do this? especially knowing a little about how little they make before signing with a major label.

the state of journalism today

a couple years back, i flew out to syracuse for final round interviews of the newhouse fellowship. all six finalists received full rides to the j-school, but the two fellowship winners would also get their choice of which newhouse paper to be staffed at post-graduation.

the interview ran the weekend. and after the three days, it became starkly clear i was the second best candidate. hemmy, a korean girl from nyc via houston, was the best. funny thing, neither of us was chosen.

not that it mattered to her, since she landed a spot in la times METPRO program -- a year interning as a general assignment reporter at the times followed by a year on staff of another tribune newspaper (the south florida sun-sentinel in her case).

sometime between her time in la and fort lauderdale we drifted apart. the one time we did speak to her during the florida exile, she told me that she hated it there, at least partly because she was doing the long-distance thing with someone back in la. as soon as she finished her second year, she wanted to return to california.

now she's back. only not as a journalist, but as a lawyer at a boutique law firm.

i don't have her cv handy, but here are some of her highlights. undergrad at rice. nyu law school. couple years at a fancy nyc firm. a year at the poughkeepsie journal. a year at the la times. a year at the sun-sentinel. just published an essay in a book of blind-date horror stories. terrific storyteller. conversant in korean.

i often say journalism sucks. i say this because the only jobs within reach for me require a move to some piece of shit, redneck town in the midwest for 18k a year. i'd love work as a full-time journalist. but the love isn't strong enough to make that sacrifice. not when i can do interesting things in sf for a lot more money.

but if she can't get a job back in la, then journalism doesn't just suck -- it's fucked. this is a girl who had the wherewithal to leave a lucrative gig in nyc to move to poughkeepsie so she could make 10% as much and write. and now with three years as a full-time reporter, she can't find a single reporting job in la. as a korean, no less, in a town with a whole bunch of koreans. for any number of publications that are starving for diversity. yes, i know the state of the industry. but driving young talent away certainly won't turn the balance sheets upside-down.

i'm happy she's back in la. it gives me someone to go see a show in la with when i'm down there. and she's got a great job paying good money.

but i'm sad she's not back as a writer.

it's official

i'm up-to-date on the posnanski blog.

my hangover just got worse. the sun disappeared behind the clouds. a frigid wind started blowing off the water. blah, blah, blah. this sucks.

now what, work?

the end is near

approaching the fifth and final season of the wire, i experienced a peculiar mixture of excitement and dread. excitement, obviously, because the greatest thing to ever grace the small screen was set to return and fill that huge void. dread because each episode meant one less new episode in this world.

now i am experiencing something similar again. baseball is an odd animal for me. while i enjoy the occasional game, i enjoy reading about it much more. and no baseball writer do i enjoy more than joe posnanski. i've known about joe for some time. i've loyally read rob neyer for some time and he periodically would mention joe along with the moniker 'best sports writer out there'.

but it's only been more recently, that i've become a devoted reader. for a while, i would read whenever he posted something new on his blog. but after reading great take after great take, i decided i needed to cull through the archives. essentially, it's been my work day for the past week or so.

the archives date back to october of last year, but now i'm just about caught up to april. and since i started regularly reading the blog in april, i know the stockpile of new material nears complete depletion.

good news for my employers. but, oh the dread for me...

more evidence time flies

every so often, i head back to blogger, type a few words, and hit submit. voila. a blog entry. it's not regular, so before seeing the date of my last post, i really have no idea how much time has passed since i last wrote.

the only consistent thing: it's always a lot longer than i thought.

apparently, it's been three weeks since i last made a contribution. yet to me, it seems like yesterday. if i were explaining this phenomenon to a strange girl, i'd say it like this (sarcastically, perhaps).

'writing is personal. every word you put down stays with you.'

and like most things men say to strange girls, they're not really true. it's not a lie either, but you being clever gets more priority than you being accurate. after all, if she's a girl, and she's strange -- and you're talking to her -- you're likely considering the possibility of taking her home. given this, witty plays much better than knowledgeable. much, much, better.

in reality, writing is hard. i suspect hard for everybody. and certainly hard for me. humans have an unlimited capacity for easy. that's why places like cheesecake factory and walmart proliferate like adolescent bunnies despite sucking. hard, on the other hand, happens far less often. yet understandably, they stay with you longer. we humans like the idea we conquer great challenges constantly. hence, three weeks between blog postings feeling like three hours.

chicken and the egg

follow-up to yesterday's deep thought of the day:

which came first the blue contacts or the fake tits?

blue contacts, fake tits, and asian girls

i don't know much about the following: optometry and cosmetic surgery. but i do know this. if i were to own a practice in either of the aforementioned, i would put in place some cross-marketing for the other.

let's do some math.

boob jobs run anywhere from 3k to 15k depending on the reputation of the surgeon/artist. if you just split it down the middle, you get 9k. but let's be realistic. asian girls who wear blue contacts aren't exactly rolling top shelf. sure, it could be a rich korean girl with low self-esteem (redudnant?) who forewent enough lv leather goods saved to channel their allowance to get the work done. more than likely though, it's some low-rent asian skank who thinks real modeling takes place on showroom floors alongside shiny cars whose doors open upward.

let's say the latter outweighs the former 2-1. so weighted average: 7k. my referral fee as the optometrist for sending over the girl i just fitted for some tinted lenses, 10%. that's an extra $700 in my pocket. shit, that's like ten eye exams for giving them a business card!

seriously though (at least a little bit). i live in san francisco. we have plenty of asian girls. and among the plenty, there's a small percentage of those who feel blue contacts "enhance" their appearance (it looks awful by the way). and of that small percentage, 100% of them "needed" breast enhancement to complete their look into the illegitimate child conceived in a new york minute between fembot #1 and carlo from hoboken.

it's a weird world.