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Life is like a cookie

September 10, 2004 / Jim

I opened the freezer and my heart leapt for joy. There they
were, chocolate chip cookies with their delicious golden brown tops
and their moist frozen goodness. In a moment though, my hopes were
dashed as I realized they were burned on the bottom. Why? Why, I
beseech thee, why do you taunt me? WHY!?

“Hon, I’m gonna throw these cookies out. Every time I open
the freezer, I see them and I feel a joy so profound that I believe I
may collapse to my knees in a quivering mass. Yet only a millisecond later I
must bear the pathos of tragedy. I can’t take it I tell you. I
can’t take it. I have enough drama in my life without having to
endure this, these mocking cookies, with their lying tops and their
false hopes. Hey, that’s like a metaphor, you know, like life. All
of the universe and the struggle of human existence contained in an
infinitesimal period of frozen time. Hey that’s very literary, isn’t
it? Hon? Isn’t it?”

“Yes dear, go ahead and throw them out.”

Clarity

September 6, 2004 / Jim

Flashback to 1994

The phone was ringing on a Saturday morning as we were having breakfast. I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Lt. O’Malley, this is LTC Jones, we need to talk. How soon can you get down to the unit?”

“I, uh, I’ll be right there. Can you tell me what this is about?”

“No I can’t.”

“Okay, I’ll be right there.” This couldn’t be good. No way could this be good. What did I do? What is the problem? I had no idea, and the terse tone filled me with dread.

“Hon, I have to go to the unit.”

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Most definitely, yes, there is something wrong, but I don’t know what. I can’t talk about it… I… “ I fumbled around for keys, shoes, trying to remember where I was.

On the short drive to the port district in Oakland, I searched my memories trying to figure out what this could be about, trying to think if I did or said anything… anything. I had no idea, and that was more disconcerting than anything.

“Lt O’Malley, close the door and have a seat.”

I sat there in stunned silence, waiting for the bell to toll.

“I have received a disturbing report of your behavior, LT.”

…and? I thought.

“Two SGT’s have come forward with racial discrimination complaint against you. I consider these charges grave.”

I felt shocked and relieved at the same time. Shocked that someone could have accused me of such a thing, relieved that I knew it to be untrue.

“I – uh, never. Sir, I have never done such a thing. Who was it?” I was a little rattled, searching for the purpose, the plan, the method, why am I here, I asked myself?

“I can’t tell you, LT, but I consider the charges serious.”

“I am not a racist. What do they say I did? What could I have done? I’m married to a Puerto Rican, I live in Oakland for God’s sake. I love diversity. There’s no way I’m a racist.”

“That may be, LT, but I tell you, you have a problem.”

I stammered, repeated myself, got defensive. “Sir, it’s not true. It’s not true. I didn’t do it.”

LTC Jones, changed his tone a bit. I noticed a slightly fatherly demeanor for this young Lieutenant. “LT, you have a problem. How are you going to solve it?”

“A problem?! I never.. I didn’t. I can’t…”

He cut me off firmly. “LT, YOU have a problem. What are you going to do about it?”

Something clicked at that moment. I have a problem. Yes, I do, don’t I? I have been lost in my own bruised ego. I had tried to shirk the responsibility for this problem that had been thrust upon me. It was mine. All my own. It was not of my own making, but it had been delivered to me. I was now the proud owner of a problem not of my own making. Now novel, eh? – as if no one in humanity’s history had ever had to deal with a problem not of their own making, or consequence, or foundations contrary their own values.

How novel, how rich, how unusual, I reflected sarcastically. This is something that happens everyday. Problems arrive at the doorsteps of unsuspecting fools, delivered by incompetent, malicious, ill-intentioned, or ignorant people. Sometimes problems arrive from the Atlantic kicking up wind gusts of 150 mph. Accidents happen, sometimes through the carelessness of action, thoughtlessness, or just plain dumb luck.

“What can I do?” I asked LTC Jones. But before he could answer, I blurted out, “I want to address the company. Let me address the company, that way the individuals can hear me and I don’t have to single them out. Let me address the company and just nip this in the bud, with an apology.”

LTC Jones hid a smile. “That’s a great idea, LT. We can do it in the morning formation. That way it can be cleared up, and we can get on with the rest of the weekend. I’m glad we had this talk. Now get out of here.”

He was pleased, I could tell. He didn’t want to be too jubilant. It’s not dignified. But reflecting on this many years latter, I understand the difficulties of command. He had a Lieutenant and two Sergeants that were at odds. In order for his unit to function there must be accord. The unit must run without disruption, petty politics, individual negativity, bickering. The unit must have unity, a sense of esprit de corps. He doesn’t know who to trust, and probably doesn’t really care. If the charges go forward, a complaint would be filed, possibly investigated and filed away. As a commander, I can tell you that that is not a solution. It solves nothing, does nothing but document and bury the incident. Meanwhile, relationships suffer, factions form from those that support one side or the other, and the unit becomes less effective.

My direction was clear in that moment of clarity, a momentary bolt of wisdom had shot through that young heart of mine, and allowed me to divorce myself from my ego, my concern for myself, my career, my well-being, and allowed me to see my damaged unit, and know there was something I could do about it.

What LTC Jones really wanted was someone who could solve his problem, and I was the only one capable. To have been able to count on me for that task was probably something for which he was very grateful.

Spam from Colonial America

August 27, 2004 / Jim

Hey, J.M., just got this… Tell me what you think. T.J.

Subject: Gorgeous French properties.
To: f_father2@msn.com
From: bonaparte75@aol.com
Date:
08/01/1802

Take advantage now while the market is undervalued and before
cities go up. Need a place to retire? An international shipping
port? Want to make sure your family is well taken care of? Want to
double the size of your country? At less than 3 cents per acre, you
can’t beat these prices.

How can we sell so low? Simple, we like you. That and we need funds to fight the British.

Do you have a sense of Manifest Destiny? Fulfill that destiny by
taking advantage of this one special offer. We’ve even taken the
special care of pacifying the local inhabitants. Don’t worry, they
won’t cause you any problems. We promise.

Protection Welfare State

August 25, 2004 / Jim

When did the Republican party become the anti-intellectual party, hmmm?

When did we get associated with brain dead policies and never
admitting a mistake, skyrocketting deficits, and religious wacko, quasi
fascist, morons? When did this all happen, because I didn’t get the
memo.

I want to help the poor, but I don’t want to JUST take care of them.
Entitled living can lead to even bigger problems down the line as we’ve
seen. A deep seated sense of entitlement is the biggest soul draining
evil the modern world has ever known… and it sneaks up on ya, get’s
in there slowly, and before you know it you start demanding that your
gub-ment protect you from, Big Macs, dirty cigarettes, rude comments,
and terrorists. Send the poor and lower middle class to shoot the
bastards. I deserve this SUV.

Protect ME, dammit. I deserve it!!

When did this happen? When did EVEN the Republican party become such
a federalist morass of "Don’t worry ’bout nutin’. We’ll take CARE of
them, and we’ll take care of YOU," while we happily shop at Wal-mart
and whine that the government isn’t doing ENOUGH to protect me and my
children.

We need more power to take care of you. We need need more money to
take care of you. We need more wiretapping to take care of you. We need
more bombs to take care of you. We need more government, bigger
government to take care of you.

What happened to "We the People"? I guess it’s now "We the
Government." So instead of shrinking welfare, Bush and crew now have
the whole country on it, a sort of "protection welfare." In fact,
that’s what I’m going to call it. Protection Welfare. Now we’re all in
it, and we think we are entitled to it.

Has anyone stopped to ask if I want those idiots to take care of me?
I don’t need them to take care of me. I don’t expect it. I reject it.
And I reject it because it makes me lazy, robs me of my volition,
steals my thunder.

Do people need a helping hand every once in a while? Sure we do, but
we are not entitled to it. We should be thankful for any help we
receive and try to repay it in kind, because it is a gift from our
fellow citizens. We don’t deserve anything, except maybe a peaceful eternal rest.

Solution to Cheetos Orange Fingers

July 26, 2004 / Jim

Patent #10298498 – Method for the Consumption of Crunchy Cheetos to Avoid Orange Finger Syndrome.

I’ve
done it. They say that necessity is the mother of invention. Well this
one is a mother indeed. Eureka! I jumped, I danced, I rejoiced. Never
again shall I have orange fingers from eating Cheetos brand corn puffs.

Chopsticks, my friends, chopsticks.

Ahem,
it’s only the crunchy ones for me. None of that poofy nonesense. Real
men eat crunchy style Cheetos which, curiously enough, go well with a
rum and coke (lime, not lemon… perhaps another patent opportunity?)

I’ll make millions, I tell you. Millions.

Stupid Argonauts, I should’ve staffed the vessel with women

July 24, 2004 / Jim

I dismounted my bike, grabbed a couple of dollars from my bike bag,
and started into the bakery. Coming up the sidewalk were four
young attractive women. A man walking into the bakery ahead of me,
stopped short, arching his back and his head at an awkward angle as he
gawked. I almost walked into him. I cleared my throat, "Ahem, con
permiso." I shook my head, wasn’t that the damnedest thing. He should’ve
taken a picture. It would have lasted longer.

I made my way to
the line in the panadería. It was just after eight o’clock in the
morning, the busiest time. The line was long, the bakery crowded. I
tried to get there earlier, but sometimes, you just can’t get out the
door.

The young women, stepped into the bakery, chatting loudly,
giggling, carrying on. They were noticeable because they were all
dressed in filmy, revealing, noodle strap dresses, high heels, and an
unusual amount of makeup for so early in the morning. There were indeed
hot, and they were about to unleash their wiles on a bakery full of old
weak men. Poor devils.

The
bakery came to a complete
stand-still. It was like a television freeze frame, ala TJ Hooker. A
fifty-ish short balding man walking toward where I stood, muttered to
his friend, "… e gusta el lechón con gandules." I didn’t hear the
first part… Me, te (you), if it was a question or what… but the
point was clear. "Pork and pigeon peas" go well together in a sexual
way. The innuendo was unmistakable, and I tried to contain a smirk.
Only
a Puerto Rican can say he likes pork meat and pigeon peas in a way that
connotes sex. I mused on comical variations, taking liberty, but
couldn’t push it to hyperbole in Spanish. I like marshmellows in my
coffee. I like ketchup on my burger. I like little toys with my happy
meal. And slowly, with feeling… I like salty… deep fried… artery
clogging, pork rinds mashed into gigantic mounds of green bananas.
Nope, just cannot push it far enough. Everything sounded sexual in
Spanish.

I
shook my head to myself, and watched the funny time warp
within the bakery. The women were standing directly behind me
in line, carrying on, obviously excited by the eyes burrowing holes in
their flimsy clothing. I had a good vantage point to observe the
leering, as I was directly in its line of site, and despite being clad
in
a bright red spandex skin suit, bike helmet, and
sunglasses, was completely invisible. I was a camouflaged nature
photographer, dressed in bright orange, invisible to the color-blind
wild beasts. It was absurd. It was hilarious. I continued to watch the
reactions from behind my bright blue lenses, the population of older
men visually undressing the
women with their unabashed desires and their longing gazes. These
people
have not even the tiniest slice of shame, their decorum thinly dressed
in colorful food metaphors.

I asked Esteban for a dozen eggs. "Esteban, I don’t have an egg carton today, do you think you could rig me something up?"

"Sure," he said as he proceeded to put the eggs in a paper bag.

"Um, do you think you could put them in a cardboard container? I’m on my bicycle. They’ll surely break in a paper bag."

"Oh, sorry, he proceeded to break down one of the cardboard trays used to deliver the eggs, and put it inside a plastic bag."

"Um,
do you think you could put some plastic wrap around it. They’ll surely
fall out. Sorry for the bother. Next time I’ll be sure to bring my
receptacle."

"No bother, really. Service is why we are here." And he handed me five eggs crudely wrapped in plastic.

"Esteban,
I wanted – Um, nevermind, good day." I wasn’t going to get my twelve
eggs today. The sirens had conspired with the gods to keep me from my
goal.

But what about this war?

July 23, 2004 / Jim

War is ugly. War should be ugly. I watch the Bush administration
trying to contain the fire, batting it back as they try to save
Mosques, civilians, trinkets within the house that is on fire. The
house is burning, you moron. You’ve got to put it out. If bad guys
are using a Mosque to store weapons, the Mosque is already gone.
Level it it and anything in it, around it, underneath it. If a block
is harboring bad guys, take it out, the entire block, eliminate the
fire, lest it spread and burn everything else. Put it out. Fuck the
civilians, they should get the fuck out if they want to live. The
house is on fire, get the fuck out, get as far away as possible, take
your kids, your family. Don’t go fucking buy fruit in the middle of a
fire fight and cry about your little girl getting shot through the
head. Get the fuck out of the burning house, because it’s coming down.
Once the fire’s out and the firefighters have gone, THEN you can come
back and put your life back together.

Does that sound terrible to you? God, I hope so. The goal of war
is to put an end to it as quickly as possible, lest we become
comfortable with it. War must be prosecuted with extreme prejudice but
no malice. War is terrible, war is not something that should be entered
lightly. I’m sorry, but “credible intel” sounds too much like a hunch
to me. YOU DON’T GO TO WAR ON A HUNCH. Hunches are for TV gumshoes.
They have no place in foreign or domestic policy. I’m starting to
wonder if we’ve learned anything since Vietnam. You can’t manage a war
and you sure as hell can’t manage a fire… you can only put it out or
let it burn.

Blessed be the Melancholics, for this world will never meet their expectations

July 22, 2004 / Jim

Sometimes I think that the black
bile will overwhelm me, fill me up to my eyeballs with anger and
despair, anger at those in power that have not accepted the true
responsibility to those they serve, and despair at being so utterly
powerless to affect the change that I feel this world so desperately
needs.

Here I am with this stinking goo leaking out of me, affecting
those around me, venom poisoning relationships, attitudes, positive
change, weighing down, hanging in the air with its foul putrefying
odor.

I was speaking to my dear old friend Courtney the other day, and
she said, "It’s just that the complete powerlessness… I mean,
the Bush administration just makes me feel so… powerless." I
had been feeling so under the weather about the present state of the
world, my military service, my military fellows, Laura’s brother
Carlos who has been put on standby to be sent to Iraq. I wanted to
scream and point out this evil mist that had settled over American
society. I couldn’t scream though, buried as I was in my own
excrement.

I have been working so hard, seems like 17 hours a day, and
getting nowhere. Oppressing me is this shroud of ugliness both from
within and without, angry, nasty, vile, desperate thoughts, as I hear
Fox News in the background, parroting cheerful messages of war and
how liberals are undermining America. Hello, people?! We’re at fucking
WAR. You’re prisoners in your OWN homes! And your government thinks
you’re all criminals and wants to SPY on all of you! Liberals are doing
what again?!

I toil for clients that don’t pay, put up with ingrates,
degenerates, and malcontents, while I hear Bush’s administration’s
"stop loss" shenanigans, designed as a back door draft,
whose purpose is to keep in harm’s way those that have already
sacrificed so much. Bush is taking advantage of the faithful service
of thousands of Americans pressing them into involuntary servitude
beyond their enlistment contracts, beyond their retirement, beyond
any measure of good faith that should have been rendered to them.
This comes from a man who did everything he could to avoid military
service himself, who never sacrificed, who didn’t do shit. Look!
daddy set me up in a cool airplane! Chicks dig pilots. Do you
think, Mr. President that chicks dig disabled veterans? Of course
you don’t Mr. President, despite what you’ve read in Penthouse.

Does it make me feel powerless in the face of this evil dictator
who acts like he owns the country? This is our country, dammit! Bush
is the CEO, we elected him to the board, but we shareholders own the
thing. It’s our country, but he wields it like his personal
conviction with his smug little smirk and federalist totalitarian
self. Midget dictator, fucking creep, smug bastard, beady eyed
miscreant, bible thumping wacko, American society hostage taking
fool, abuser of military service, arrogant trampler of civil rights,
and big business whore.

I was asked recently if I had seen Fahrenheit 9/11. Hell, no, I
responded. I’ve lived it! Why would I want to drag myself through
that shit, something to make me feel more powerless, less
significant, less valued, and a victim of a presidency gone horribly
awry. Fuck that, I can get that from Fox News, and the fucking
erroneous pay or die letters I get from the Defense Finance and
Accounting Service (DFAS) for recoupment of military service WHICH I
PERFORMED! Fuckers.

There, I’ve let some of the ugliness out, exorcised some of my
demons. Whew, it felt good. You know what. If I were ever on Inside
the Actor’s Studio (which I won’t be), FUCK would be my favorite
expletive… there’s such a nice draining feeling to it, like a good
satisfying puss-filled pimple pop.

I think I’ll go sit next to Laura and see if she’ll put up with me
now.

Data Migration Day Three

July 17, 2004 / Jim

When will I learn? I don’t care how many times in the last five years I’ve had to mess with LDAP, I never learn. Why the hell don’t I write shit down when I figure it out. Do I enjoy re-learning the same stupid crap over and over and over? Must be.

Okay here’s the thing. I shall endeavor to remember the following:

When upgrading an LDAP directory service, make sure to dump the data out of the running system before breaking it down.
If I fail to do #1, please oh please dear God have made a backup of it at least. chroot into the old environment, launch the ldap server, slapcat the whole shebang and proceed to step three
slapadd the slapcat-ed ldif file… NOT ldapadd. ldapadd is suggested in most places as the tool of choice, but slapadd is what I need. Geez, stupid fuckers. Of course who’s the bigger idiot, the fool or the fool who follows him?
Make sure to modify the slapd.conf file to change the default db from ldbm to bdm.

Pretty damn simple, eh? Not so simple when I’ve forgotten more of this LDAP shit than any sane person would care to remember.

While I’m at it, please oh please, remember for the next time about the dbmmange httpd password files. You’ve got to export the old entries, and then import them dbmmanage2 users import < old-data, modify the .htaccess files and be done with it.

Oh and a neat trick for dumping reliably an entire PosgreSQL database for an upgrade:

pg_dumpall > backup.sql

stop PostgreSQL, upgrade it, wipe the data directory, run initdb as user postgres and then psql -f backup.sql template1

Flawless. At least that part went well. The cursing was fun though.

It’s Olympic Time Again and the “Best” We Have is Popping Out All Over

July 16, 2004 / Jim

It reminds me of a scene. Picture this. There was a rising star
in the business community. He had even done pretty well monetarily,
well enough, in fact to have been invited to play polo at the club.
Look at him, they said. He’s young, so much promise. He’s bright,
good looking, and doing well for himself. We shall invite him to the
club to play polo.

So our young businessman dedicated himself to practicing a bit of
polo. He was a decent horseman, but he’d never played before. He
dutifully hired a trainer and secretly practiced on the weekends
hitting balls, riding, turning etc. He was sure he’d impress the
crowd and the blue-bloods with his ability.

The day of the polo outing arrived and he was out in front
immediately, whacking balls, shouldering into riders, shoving,
pushing, yelling. He’s going to crush them, CRUSH them and win!
WIN! WIN! He’s went for that prize with everything he had, that
little white ball bouncing around in the mud. He never took his eye
off the little white ball.

At the end of the day he’d bested the field with his take no
prisoners attitude, showed his metal and that he was superior stock,
better than the rest, worthy of inclusion.

An older gentleman made his way to the club house to find our
young friend, where he rested his hand upon his shoulder and said, “Dear
boy, a polo match isn’t about the polo.”

El Gringoqueño