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More Amazing Olaia Insights

December 4, 2003 / Jim

I was heading out after 5pm to
replace the mail server for Lord Electric and took along Olaia as my
little assistant. She’s always such good company, so helpful and
charming. This was probably going to be a long boring replacement, as
it involved pulling the server (a 2U unit mounted in a rack), stripping
out the 4 year old parts, and installing the new blazing fast
processor, memory, motherboard, and RAID disks. It sounds simple, but
it never really is. I am continually amazed at how long simple computer
tasks end up taking sometimes. It’s a simple transplant. Install a new
and updated Linux system, and then copy over all the configuration
files.

So here I am, heading out with Olaia. "Daddy, " she says, "People are always more important than flags."

"Huh,
uh," I stammered, glancing out the window and noting what she saw, an
American and a Puerto Rican flag on two flag poles. "Wow, little girl,
you are so wise. Do you know that most people go their whole lives
without realizing that? You are amazing. You know at the age of five
what some people don’t know at 85."

Olaia, grinned in the back seat. "Yeah, Daddy, am I smart?"

"Oh, yes, you are very smart, but more… you’re wise and you care about people. Where did you learn that?"

"I dunno."

"Well,
you’re too much, sweetie. Did you know that people fight over those
flags. Some people think one is better than the other and they try to
fight about which one is bigger, higher, lower, or more important? And
you know what they should know. They shouldn’t fight over flags."

She continued grinning bashfully.

The
server installation did not go as expected (it never does, so I should
have expected it, right?). Olaia stayed with me, coloring, and handing
me tools when I needed them.

Once, she brought me a cup of water from the water cooler. "Here Daddy, I brought you some water because maybe you’re thirsty."

"Oh,
thank you, " I absentmindedly said, engrossed in the guts of the
computer and some board or cable that would not fit where it was
supposed to.

"Daddy, aren’tcha gonna drink your water."

"Huh? Oh, yeah." I had forgotten I was holding it. "Hmmm, thank you Olaia. That was delicious.

Olaia
grinned, wrinkling up her face bashfully. She hung out with me until
Laura came with dinner, a nice Wendy’s triple cheeseburger, my
favorite. I ended up getting to bed around 3am, and as I drove home, I
smiled thinking about my little wise assistant.

Sun Tzu and his The Art of WAR

December 3, 2003 / Jim

The Art of War, although often
studied within the business world, is frequently misunderstood
and incorrectly applied by those not versed in the language of war.
I have read two different translations of Sun Tzu’s The Art of
War. It is a fascinating treatise of
what is required to win when losing is not an option. As a military
man, I have studied it not just for its lessons of the battlefield,
but for its gems of wisdom on leadership and the true cost of war. I
didn’t stop there, however. General George S. Patton’s writings have
(after reading Sun Tzu) some amazing similarities.
I don’t know if Patton was a disciple of Sun Tzu or if he arrived at
some of the same conclusions but nonetheless here are examples:

Sun Tzu: Now, when your weapons
are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your
treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of
your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert
the consequences that must ensue. Thus, though we have heard of
stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with
long delays.
Patton: A good solution applied
with vigor now is better than a perfect solution applied ten minutes
later.
Sun Tzu: Do not repeat the tactics
which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated
by the infinite variety of circumstances.
Patton: Good tactics can save even
the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best
strategy.

There are many similarities in the
philosophies of each, and while Sun Tzu primarily wrote of
battlefield tactics, he also has some to say about leadership and
discipline, moving men, and accomplishing goals.

Patton’s writings incorporate much of
Sun Tzu, but diverge a bit from the minutia
of battlefield tactics from the pithy "Go forward!" to the
sublime "It’s the unconquerable soul of man and not the nature
of the weapon he uses, that ensures victory."

The modern William Edwards Demming and
Walter A. Shewhart took these tenants and expanded upon then further,
creating their revolution in quality control during WWII and beyond.
"Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and
service." "Cease dependence on mass inspection to achieve
quality." "Drive out fear."

Then came another student, by the name
of Jack Welch, CEO of GE. Almost, a modern day Patton in the
boardroom, he transformed the culture of GE from bloated,
bureaucratic, and slow moving to an empowering,
nimble entity where every employee was an agent for change with
responsibilities and authority.

If Sun Tzu could be summed up into one
word it would be "deception."

Patton would be "action."

Demming is "purpose."

Welch is "transformation."

Each of these great leaders and
tacticians built upon the last, grew, learned, adapted, bettered.
They used the tools they had at hand to accomplish the mission. I
would hope that humanity has learned something in over 2000 years,
but all too often, today’s upwardly mobile disciples of Sun Tzu’s
great meta-tactics of conquest and destruction apply his teaching of
deception to the widest possible swath. The Art of War is a
square peg in a round hole. The Art of War does not lead to
victory in the corporate world, and I will tell you why.

You can see Sun Tzu at work all around
in today’s society. Business is war. Co-workers quietly focus their
ambitions on upward mobility, concealing their movements within the
company as they maneuver their way into an
advantageous position. Whether intentional or not, much of reality
TV draws on Sun Tzu’s teachings of misdirection and deception. If
you are weak, appear strong. If you are strong appear weak. More or
less if you are on an episode of survivor, and you are strong, that
is, if you have the advantage, hide it. Keep it secret. Do not let
your enemy know you have such power. If you are weak, you must be
careful not to let your enemy know. You must study your enemy and
trick him into error. Get him reacting to you instead of seizing the
advantage you know he has.

This works on reality TV. It is always
the most deceptive person, the one who disguises his true intentions
until the last possible instant. This is the person that convinces
his adversaries up is down, black is white, and advantage is
disadvantage. This is the person that wins, not the most likable,
not the smartest, not the strongest. The person that wins is
generally not the one with the obvious assets. In fact, it could be
the fat weird abrasive gay guy. The winner is the one that most
convincingly hides his true face, obfuscates
his inner strategy, and conceals his movements with rigorous
discipline.

Deception is fine, when the goal is
victory in an adversarial arena. That is, there is really nothing
collaborative about reality TV. Sure, the producers will give the
group some common task in which they need to cooperate, but it’s
really just for the fun of the viewer. Make no bones about it, these
shows are war, everybody looking for advantage at every possible
moment. Reality it is not, at least no reality in which I would want
to live.

The real shame is that we see that Sun
Tzu thrives in this arena, and we attempt to apply it to the world in
which we live and breath. We say to our young children, "What
you see on TV is only make believe." And "Don’t try this at
home." As adults we should know that Coyote could never operate
as he does and expect to succeed.

Yet we fail to see that Sun Tzu is
ill-suited to the real world, in fact, as Gen Patton found out, not
wanted either. Within the confines of business and society, we
actually hurt society by focusing on "winning at all costs,"
deceiving our co-workers while we maneuver for position in the
corporate structure, furthering our personal ambitions to the
exclusion of others or the wellness of the company (think Enron,
Worldcom).

They say, "Well, that’s the real
world, folks. If you can’t handle it stay at home, and leave
business to the big boys, " and they will puff themselves up
like a little male lizard flaring its neck up for an appearance of
formability. You play warrior, but warrior
you are not. You would treat your fellows as adversaries, pretended
foes upon whom to project your energies. You deceive, because you
seek your prize. You seek your victory. You seek your fortune, like
a great warrior predator strutting upon the grassy safari, beholden
to no one, dependent upon no one, answering to no one.

Now, pardon me if I burst your bubble,
but that is NOT "the real world." The little lizard world,
I described is a world divorced of humanity, the savage world of the
animal kingdom, the horrendous world of war and violence. Human
beings have evolved to be cooperative creatures. We didn’t get
speed. We didn’t get strength. We didn’t get size, or a short
gestation period, or quick maturation, or flight, or or or. We got
shafted in every possible way according to the laws of nature as we
see them, as Sun Tzu saw them. We need each other for even the most
basic of necessities.

We did get one thing, though, that sets
us apart, on the top, at the crest of the wave of life, the pinnacle.
We got love. Love calls us to others’ needs, love inspires us to
help rather than hurt. Love is compassion, empathy. Love is what
takes away personal fear and allows us to trust, allows us to work
together for a common goal.

Reality TV is an perversion of our
natural social order, an order where we should collaborate rather
than compete, an order where our goals are mutual rather than
individual. Love is not to be about individual satisfaction,
gratification, or needs. It is not about you, just as people are not
just put here on earth for you. The sooner you realize that Sun Tzu
was the master of being successful in an aberrated world, the master
of hell, guru of a perverted state, the less you will attempt to
apply his principles to this world of creation and potential.

For if it is in this pit of fire where
you reach your potential, where you find success, then it will
spread, it will consume those not strong enough to resist its flames.
If you become master of the flames, you damn humanity, your
children, your fellows to the same torment. The weak shall be
consumed, and you will say to them, "you were not strong
enough." A thousand souls will lay scattered upon the landscape
in various states of starvation and despair. A few tens will
survive, wild-eyed fearless, standing defiant amidst
the flames. To survive in this world they have had to give up their
humanity, leave their compassion behind, to stand finally alone with
nary a soul to raise a cup of water to their burning lips. In the
end, they shall finish their days alone, kept from the banquet to writhe
in the street wailing and gnashing their teeth.

Nightmare Scenario

November 29, 2003 / Jim

I had trouble falling asleep last night, probably the late dinner
and the excitement of Olaia’s sleep-over with her cousins, Mariam and
Robertito. Whatever it was, I tossed and turned before falling into a
shallow slumber. I began to have a disquieting nightmare.

I
find myself in a hospital, with rows of patients. It’s strangely bright
and open, almost as if it’s in my house. Something is happening,
something big, tragic. I must get my family out, I think to myself. Out
of where and from what, I can’t say, but there’s this urgency to move
or run or something. There is this hurried hopeful movement all around.
Something is coming, but it can be dealt with, or so everyone believes.

I
snap from the dream briefly and focus on my sleeping self. I’m asleep,
I halfway realize, and then as if to make sense of the disconnect, my
dream seizes upon the realization and weaves it into the plot.

You
are asleep. You know who comes for you in your sleep. There is some
realization that there is a Freddy Crouger, nightmare type scenario
playing out, and even though I’ve never seen a single slasher movie in
my life, I’m now in one. He’s coming for you, and there is nowhere to
hide. I choke, the realization coming over me. There is only a split
second of angst for myself, as I realize that I am in control. But the
rest? These people here don’t know they are safe, that they are in
control. I begin to run around, making tons of noise. "I know who you
are!! You can’t hurt these people. You can’t hurt me. You’ll all be
okay," I shout. I’m getting mad now. I want to find this character and
tear his head off.

Suddenly, I’m accompanied by a middle-aged Mia
Sara, Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off." We’re
walking inside a plush carpeted hotel. The hallways are wide and tall,
and everything looks like it’s covered with various earth-toned crushed
velvet. She is talking to me, in a sort of evil villain/philosopher
tone. "You will have a choice," she says. She is communicating with me
in some way beyond talking. I am filled with feelings, emotions,
anxiousness at what is to come. I’m unsure why I am here or what I am
to do.

"Answer me truthfully," I say to her, for some reason knowing she cannot lie, "am I in Hell?"

"Yes."
And she dissappears. I follow the corridor and exit into a dark street.
It still feels closed in, like a movie set of Las Vegas. I am drenched
in seeminess. It’s not unpleasant, just drenched in some sort of
manifestation of selfishness, lust, greed. Women proposition me on the
street in their high heels, fishnets, and bustieres. Street hustlers
call my name, with gay grins and bejeweled hands. "Comeon, wanna try
yer luck." It’s tempting. Looks like it might be fun. Just for second,
I think…. no feel, this isn’t so bad. It’s sad, but not evil as I had
imagined it.

I am traveling now through the streets, flying,
running, I don’t know which. I absorb the scene before me with ever
increasing ownership, and I keep accelerating until it is all so much
blur or images, faces, seeminess, sex, greed, gluttony, envy,
aimlessness, despair, and loneliness. I boldly shout to them, "Repent!!
Repent!! Jesus – God loves you! You are all loved by God." I fix on
myself, and how I sound. Repent, evil doers was not my intent. I hear
in my head the cries of a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher, facing
his congregation wagging his finger at the unworthy. My feeling as I
fly through the wasteland and all the emptiness is not that they are
evil, but that they are lost, worthy of love. "Repent!" is a call to
reach out their hands, and to not let their despair keep them from
redemption. I am aware I am in Hell, and I know with every fiber of my
being that Hell cannot exist where there is a willingness to be
redeemed. If the love of the Creator is infinite, there is no possible
reason for these poor creatures to live in the dark unless they choose
to. And no one, I know, would willingly choose to give up being loved.
I will deliver the message, "Repent, and ye shall be saved!!" I am
filled with such strength, force of will, to be saying such things. I
want to save them all, share with them what I know. No matter how far
you have fallen, you can still be saved. I know this.

And on a
dark street I come to an instant stop. In front of me are three figures
ready to accost me. I take a bold step toward them to deliver my
message. They immediately transform into monsters dripping blood,
fingers stretched out in contorted razor sharp claws, eyes rolled back,
all night of the living dead-like. They had been normal human figures a
moment earlier, but suddenly turn hideously grotesque.

I shrink
for a millisecond. I am startled, and fear for a brief instant, but it
isn’t fear of dying or being attacked, it is a point of infinite
revulsion, like all possible nausea compacted into an impossibly short
period of time. Get away from me, I think.

And as quickly as it
had come, the next moments fill me with ever increasing compassion and
I say, "fill me" because I don’t get the sense that I was the one doing
it. I become bolder and bolder. My speed picks up again, and I race
toward the figure on my right at an impossible rate. I embrace his
torso and speed off, my arms wrapped as tightly as I can possibly
imagine around his breast, him facing away from me, my chin on his
shoulder. "Don’t worry, He loves you." And my embrace strengthens like
my life depends on it. I will hold onto you.

I ask him how his
life had been in this place. Had it been tough. He tells me at first it
wasn’t so hard, but then there were those that beat him. He had been
kicked down and bloodied, living on the street, in the cold for so
long. "It’s not so bad." I ask him what it was like before, in life.
"The same," he says.

The night fades, replaced by a brightly
lit plaza of intricate stone work. I come to a stop and release this
person to whom I had clung to tightly.

"Sorry, about that," I say wiping spittle off his shoulder.

And
I awake in a sweat, hot as hell, my pillow wet from drool. Yeech. I
adjust my covers and sigh. "Hon, I just had the weirdest dream. I don’t
even know if I can call it a dream."

Parenting in the Digital Age

November 28, 2003 / Jim

With technology has come a multitude of conveniences, time savers, and
capabilities of which our primitive ancestors could never have
conceived. Take for example, the instant message. It is instantaneous,
travels at the speed of light to its intended recipient, delivering
important potentially critical information at the click of a button. It
can be sent across the world, around the block, or to the next room.

Laura at 15:01:18: Jaimito is poopie

Jim at 15:01:43: Roger, I’ll change him.

Toxic waste disposal emergencies such as the one above could have not
been addressed with such efficiency before the days of IM. Thank the
Lord!

The Walking Lady

November 25, 2003 / Jim

This morning I did my two mile walk
with Jaimito in his jogger stroller. He usually sings to me, babbling
and carrying on with a musical tune. He likes music. He’s always
dancing and singing. The Wiggles, an Australian kids troupe, on the
Disney channel are his favorite characters. or the "-ggles"
as he says. Today, though he didn’t sing, just happily sucked his
bottle of juice, pulling it from his mouth to point out sights of
interest along the way. We saw trees, palm trees, a cement truck and
an airplane. Jaimito loves airplanes, or "a-bi" as he says.
I think it’s a cross between airplane and aviÃ³n, in spanish.
"A-bo, a-bo," he says turning his head up to me, pointing
to a tree. I assume "a-bo" is arbol or "tree" in
spanish. Wow, kids sure are good on the economy of language. Such
clever creatures. Yeah, Daddy, why do you have all these distinct
words. All I need to do is make a sound and point. See? Easy as pie.

Jaimito and I got back from our little
walk, and had some breakfast. He loves fruit Kixs cereal. I don’t
complain, because he can’t make a mess with it, and after all, it is
"Kid tested, Mother approved." He loves to share with me,
digging into the little cup of cereal with his dexterous deditos and
feeding me the purple ones. Why purple? I have asked him the same
question myself – perhaps when he can talk, he will reveal to me his
hidden agenda.

Yogurt is his other favorite. Cereal
and yogurt… ah, the stuff of which dreams are made, ahh, but,
Daddy, I need some of your cereal too, or actually just the milk.

Daddy likes to eat Honey Bunches of
Oats, with chocolate chips sprinkled on top. I’m bad, I know, but
little Mr. So-and-so likes to mooch the milk from me. He makes his
dramatic "mmmmmmp" sounds and smiles at me after each
successful raid into my zone, pushing his pushy wiggle-puss into my
bowl. I call him my "Moochie" or "Cachetero"
(cheeky-one) on account of his bulging cheeks.

This has become our morning ritual.

After coffee, I checked my email,
morning geek news (slashdot.org),
world news (www.msnbc.com), and
settled into work on Altabox 4.0.

This afternoon, we had a lunch date
with a local state senator to build a strategy to communicate our
vision for the tech sector with what will be, most assuredly the next
governor of Puerto Rico. The rest of the morning was uneventful, and
we headed out for our lunch.

I usually drive, because although Laura
is a good and competent driver, she’s got a lead foot. The new and
improved phlegmatic Jim, has become a passive slowpoke, as it is the
only way I can feel sane. Thanks Dad. I was pulling out of our
sub-division when the car in front of me just stopped. A woman got
out and ran across the street. Huh? I honked, what the hell is she
doing? And just as I honked, I saw a crumpled shape lying in a ditch
on the other side of the street. I pulled to the side, and leaped
from the car to screams and clamor.

Apparently there was a slight accident,
two cars had hit each other, but caught up in it was an old woman, a
pedestrian who was walking along the side of the road. As the two
idiots drivers fought and fretted about their situation, the poor
woman lay bleeding in a drainage ditch, water flowing freely around
her.

I raced over to her, fixated on this
poor figure laying in the blood. Is she dead? I didn’t see the
accident, so I didn’t know how severe it was. It wasn’t clear exactly
what had happened. Did she fall? Was she hit? I reached her limp
form, and checked immediately to see if she was alive, breathing. I
felt awkward. This stuff only happens in the movies, doesn’t it? I
was shaking, the adrenaline had kicked in. I couldn’t help it. I was
mentally calm and in control, but my body had other ideas as it
decided to go into crisis mode. The people standing around me are all
offered "helpful" suggestions. Don’t move her, was pretty
much all they could say, I guess they were content to just stand
there and gawk while this bleeding woman lay in a ditch.

I touched her shoulder and gave her
upper torso a little tug. First thing you do in a crisis is talk to
the patient. Find out if they are okay, if they can tell you where it
hurts or where they are hurt. First aid is trained frequently in the
Army, repetitively, so that in the moment you don’t have to think.

Say there’s an explosion, your buddy
goes down, and you immediately start first aid, checking limbs,
tearing open clothes, thinking about tourniquets. "Hey dumbass,
I’m fine. Just stunned, check out the rest of the guys." If the
patient can talk, they can help you out. Basic stuff, but you’d be
amazed how often people forget.

So this woman, was stunned, a little
groggy. I recognized her from the first. She’s who, growing up in N.
Country, St. Louis, we all knew as the "Walking Lady," a
woman seen at all hours of the day, in all seasons walking around,
going shopping, running all her errands on foot. Here, lying in a
drainage ditch was our very own, "Walking Lady," Paquita as
she is called. Laura and I wondered if she was homeless, her
weathered and somewhat tattered appearance fit the bill. She lives in
our neighborhood, however. I see her most mornings as I head out on
my morning bike rides. We usually exchange smiles.

I checked her head. Looks okay, she’s
got a cut across her eyebrow. That’s where ALL the blood was coming
from. Yeah, I remember those injuries all too well. Cut above the eye
bleeds like crazy. You look like Carrie. I check around her head,
talking to her. "Does it hurt any where else?" She’s still
groggy, I can’t hear her. "You know me," I say to her,
"It’s me, from the bicycle. We meet each other every morning
when I go out on my bicycle."

She smiled. I smiled back, and imagined
myself, this huge gringo covered in blood crouched in a ditch holding
this ninety pound little old lady, stroking her head.

I enlisted the aid of a by-stander to
move her from the ditch into the shade. I was amazed at how hard it
was to lift her small frame out of the ditch. I stumbled and stepped
on her hand. I felt terrible about that. Poor thing. A limp weight is
hard to lift. Jeez. A worker from the Energy Authority, trained in
first aid arrived at the scene. He had his complete first aid kit,
oxygen, bandages, blood pressure device, etc. He went to work, while
I told her jokes and held her hand. I made her smile as her blood
pressure and pulse came back normal. "Ah, as healthy as a twenty
year old," I said.

It was super hot in the noon day,
equatorial sun. I was dressed for a business lunch, and not only was
I drenched in blood, I was pouring sweat like a thoroughbred. A man
began to fan me with a piece of cardboard he found on the road. Ah,
that felt good.

The ambulance arrived finally, and I
got out of the way. They rolled her onto the stretcher and hoisted
her up. I stayed with her to see her off. "Paquita, may you get
better soon. We’ll see each other next week, you walking, me on my
bicycle." She smiled and we parted ways.

In the end, I didn’t do anything
really. I would have been more prepared to do CPR or mouth to mouth,
but I felt good for having reacted so quickly and taking charge while
everybody else fretted and stood idle, especially the two idiots in
the cars that caused the accident in the first place. Like I said,
though, I didn’t really do anything, but today, the 25th of November
2003, I eased someone’s pain and made a new friend.

Observing the Primary Election for the New Progressive Party in Puerto Rico

November 6, 2003 / Jim

Laura and I woke up early, 0530, to get to the polling place and
begin what was to become a very long day. We had volunteered to be
observers for our particular candidate, Carlos Pesquera, in the
gubernatorial primary for Puerto Rico. It is customary to have
observers from your campaign to "assure" the election officials do
their jobs and don’t try to pull any funny business.

The funny business began right away for us. Agustín, our polling place
"head dog," tried to put us to work right away counting and initialling
ballots. I refused. "Hey we’re not election officials," I said. "Our
campaign bosses were very clear we were not to be doing your jobs."

It turned out that they had not done, nor planned to do their jobs, and
since our candidate stood to be hurt more, we acquiesced and did what
we needed to do to have the polling place open on time at 0800.

Things continued to bump along herky jerky. Agustín flashed his rural rotten toothed smile at me. "See that wasn’t so bad."

They hadn’t enough secret booths for people to vote in private, so
hoards started taking seats in the 2nd grade classroom to fill out
their ballots, twenty at a time, huddled close together. I was already
shaking my head. This was out of control. It was obvious Agustín was
this little barrio’s don. I caught him "suggesting" candidates for the
little old ladies that trusted his judgement. "Agustín, you can’t do
that. That’s fraud, you know. Do it again and I will file an
infraction."

"You know, you’re not so innocent yourself. By helping people put their
ballots in the boxes you are violating the rules as well."

This is a well worn and tired tactic in Puerto Rico. So lawless and
disorderly is the conduct, so liberal are the gentry with rules and
regulations, that there is more than sufficient culpability to go
around. No one ever enforces these laws, for fear of themselves being
caught in something. Everybody is dirty here. Everybody’s got something
in their closet. So accustomed are the people to playing ball,
negotiating everything, they are beholden to no ideals, only
necessities in the constant flux of the moment. Do what you have to do
to get by. And a common game they play is whenever accused of
wrongdoing, quick turn it around on someone else or your attacker, no
matter how small. Put them on the immediate defensive.

So, Agustín’s admonishment to me for helping these same old ladies get
their ballots in the rickety cardboard slots was my "infraction."
Agustín had met his match. I don’t know why people here are flummoxed
by this sophmoric redirect, but they are.

I’m not.

"Okay, I won’t touch the ballots. You tell another person how to vote, and I will report you."

Then he went into the guilty conscience blither blather, where he
wouldn’t shut up trying to justify himself. The process is damaged,
he’d say, he’s just helping. Why should a "wrong" candidate get elected
just because he’s better looking. If people don’t take the time to
study the candidates, then the wrong person get’s elected by accident.
"I’m just helping to avoid an accident." And he would go on and on,
flapping his deformed, cavity ridden mouth at high velocity. I told him
if the people didn’t know the candidates, they shouldn’t vote for them.
Leave that box blank. He kept on, trying his best to persuade me, his
guilty conscience and pride going on and on. All the while giving me
more and more dirt on himself. I just listened, carefully crafting the
hammer that I would bring down upon him soon enough.

I soon caught him again with a little group of people around him. He
had been pretending to count blank ballots (we were running out),
seated in the little desk of the second grade classroom. All were
huddled around him, hunched. I stood at the front of the room, in front
of the blackboard giving directions and noting irregularities.
Children!! I almost said.

"Agustín," I said, "You can’t do that. I see you." And in a more formal
spanish that sounds like a fine afternoon spent at a nobleman’s estate,
"The gentleman shall refrain from offering advice on selecting
candidates. You, sir, are damaging the electoral process."

He stopped immediately. I flagged down Laura and told her the story.
Then I reported it to the electoral unit head. He was shaken and
surprised, but as Agustín is clearly the "go-to-guy" at this polling
place, I have my doubts about how this will be resolved. It’s kind of
like when a hotel says to you, "Yes sir, we’re really sorry about that,
you can be assured that he will fired immediately."

I figured I didn’t have much pull and myself being a newcomer, it would
have been an uphill battle. All I had at that point were threats and
pieces of paper. I started to hatch a plan.

Earlier, the director of the polling place had expressed interest in
Laura and myself to help with the general elections next November. We
are young and involved, contrary to the older folks that always seem to
run these things. I had been cagey, expressing reservation. I didn’t
want to get chummy with these people. They were after all, enemies for
the day.

How do I remove Agustín from his position as chief purveyer of fraud in
Barrio Tortugo? How do I get rid of this little latin dictator wannabe?

It would have to wait, as the day was only half over and there were
ballots to be cast. Mostly the people coming through were extremely
uneducated, lazy, borderline shouldn’t-be-allowed-to-vote. It was a
pretty depressing affair. These are the people who are deciding the
future representation of Puerto Rico. These same people who are
complicit in fraud, who haven’t taken the time to read up on the
candidates, and resort to trying to get away with cheating. Good thing
the teacher was there. It was shameful. I should have punished them to
write a thousand times on the chalkboard, "I will not cheat the
electoral process. I do not wish to live in Haiti."

After all was said and done and all the ballots were cast, it fell upon
Laura and myself to observe the counting. It is still a hand counting
system here in Puerto Rico. It works pretty well. The polling places
are divided up sufficiently that the results come in for over 1.5
million votes cast in just a few hours.

Agustín was getting no end of pleasure handing us stacks of ballots to
count and sort. He was like a grand arch-duke waving about his servants
while he dealt with important matters, such as the bloom on his roses.
Laura and I didn’t protest the counting of the ballots for our
gubernatorial candidate. We had a vested interest.

It soon became apparent that our candidate was losing by a landslide.
3-1. My heart sank. After so much effort, so much toil, is this how it
is to end? Napoleon has returned from St. Helena… even after so much
ruin, he is still a strong-man. So it is in Puerto Rico, Rosselló, like
Napoleon, conquered much in his early years only to meet his Waterloo
and seek the refuge of exile. Our Napoleon, however, has seen fit to
come back from his exile and save us. And our candidate? Carlos
Pesquera was like the honest reformer trying to put back together the
country Napoleon had destroyed. All the people can remember is the
glory of the past. The poor want heros, glory, not reform.

After "helping" Agustín count most of the rest of the election results
too, I became increasingly frustrated by his lack of graciousness,
laziness, and assumption at our servile role. I told Laura, I’d had it. We’re
out of here. Look at these people. We’re just observers and we’re doing
all the work. They’re just sitting there watching us like slavers. They
can stay up to 3am for all I care. We’re out of here.

On the way out, I told the director of the polling station, "Here’s the
deal, Marcos. You get rid of Agustín, you get both Laura and myself.
That’s the deal. Two for one."

He jotted down our number and we were on our way.

Olaia the astronomer

September 21, 2003 / Jim

Laura: Olaia, look up. See that red star?

Olaia: Mommy, that’s not a star, that’s a planet.

Advice for Starting your Own Company

September 15, 2003 / Jim

Patton said it best "Good tactics can save even the worst strategy. Bad tactics will destroy even the best strategy."

Business plan = Strategy
Execution = Tactics

The dot com’s failed because they were mostly formed out of greed by untalented opportunists with an eye on getting rich.

You should care more about creating something real, real products, employment, and create them with passion.

So if you are going to start a company, it’s not your business plan
that’s going to save your ass, it’s the people with whom you surround
yourself, the talented, dedicated, morally straight folks that care
about the business and its success. Besides, you’re going to throw out
your business plan in the first year anyway.

And I didn’t even need an MBA from Harvard to figure that out.

From the “How Linux Will Save the World” Series

September 9, 2003 / Jim

The biological human was created to struggle
against chaos, to seek order, put things in their place. It is this
never ending quest that gives us something to do, something to strive
for. It is this quest that will eventually finish us.

We need chaos, the unexpected, the uncontrollable. It is only
through mutation, disorder, messiness that we grow as humans and become
more god like.

Technology will eventually completely rob our souls from us,
dehumanizing others to the point where a point and click will terminate
a relationship.. A point and a click may eventually signify the end of
a life. We are already heading in that direction. Think smart bombs,
cruise missles.

I read today of a 18 foot wide vending machine that basically
replaces a convenience store. It is being field tested here in the US.
The Roboshop is already popular in Japan, where space is at a premium
and wages are high for unskilled labor.

Imagine a world with no convenience stores or more importantly no
convenience store clerks, waiters, service folks. There would be no
friendly hellos, no eye contact, no have a nice day. We will all live
our lives inside the bubble of our needs that are instantaneously
satisfied, gratified, and quelled. We will download our music, order
groceries on the web, pick up milk and eggs from a vending machine,
self check out at K-mart. We won’t go outside to check the weather or
look at the sky. We will watch CNN to tell us what to think. We will
bio-engineer our children, take more pills to delay aging, and seize
more and more control. Like a hungry dictator we will pacify the
masses. Give them what is good for for them. Control is everything.

We have fewer children later in life. We control reproduction. It’s
messy business. The time isn’t right. Well guess what? The time is
never right for messiness. Messiness is something we would never choose
for ourselves. We never choose disorder. It serendipitously finds us.
It must. We need it. It is the guide that we need it to be. Want has
nothing to do with anything. What we think we want trips us up, lets us
down, and never ever meets our expectations.

Yet we want to control. We WANT to know. It’s built in. We classify,
pacify, and create structure. We crave control like crack cocaine. The
more we have the more we want and less satisfied we are.

Here’s the Rub

I sometimes get a glimpse into the world of Microsoft. Why did
Windows succeed so completely, so dominantly? Windows is everywhere. It
is on every new PC. It’s bought stolen, copied, pre-installed. We want
it and we will do anything to get it.

I am more and more convinced that it is because Microsoft gives the
drug addict what he craves so desperately. Control. While the service
centered Unix world was carefully creating interdependence among their
consultants and Value Added Resellers (VARS), Microsoft was out
creating a cheap product individual customers could use and control on
their very own. It was simple. It was not multi-user. It gave the basic
user a sense that it was something they could manage. It did not take a
staff of sysadmins and a ten thousand dollar budget to get it up and
running and do something useful. The PC running Microsoft Windows, gave
us poor humans a bone to chew on. Sure it was just a bone, but
we owned that bone. We bought it and it was ours, and we didn’t have to
depend on ANYONE.

Windows is a technology that is built to satisfy humanity’s all
consuming craving for control. Bill Gates has known this for some time.
Bill knows we want the crack. He supplies the crack. We reward him.
Sure our lives are miserable, but he gives us what we feel is control.
He supplies us with technology to buy and use. We have a problem we
download a patch. We fix the problem. We have a virus, we buy a virus
scanner. We need to create a document, we buy Word. We buy a solution,
prepackaged with all the features Microsoft has told us we would need.
Why deal with the messy details of our particular problem.
Why try to explain it someone and have them help us out. Just buy some
software and all problems fit nicely into its container. All supersets
do not exist. Problems outside the glossy plastic and End User License
Agreement simply cannot be.

Maybe you need to buy another piece of software or wait until Microsoft tells you that the problem exists.

In our culture of self-reliance it was the car that beat out the bus or train.

The Camel of Chaos Puts Its Nose in the Tent

I don’t know if Linux will ever overtake Microsoft. I don’t know if
liberation will ever overtake order. I do know that there has begun a
revolution though. Linux was created by an ethnic swede living in
Finland, named Linus
Torvalds. Linux was created by a person who wanted a Unix machine but
could not afford it. He decided to do something to take control of the
situation. He wrote a version of Unix for himself and named it Linux.
He pacified his need, he created order.

Like a madman though, Linus threw it all away. He threw a monkey
wrench into the mix. He scattered his jigsaw puzzle. He shuffled the
deck. He kicked down the towering cathedral and tossed its pieces to
the hungry mob. You are hungry, he said. Feast on this.

Linus made one particular decision that would plunge the world of
technology into a state of disorder the likes of which have never been
seen. He gave his code away.

The hunger that had consumed so many without them even knowing it,
had left them gaunt, wild-eyed. They had been users, disconnected from
each other, feeding on what they thought would nourish their souls.
They had not realized what the truth was, and how with it, they would
never go hungry again.

Linux just may give us hope afterall.

Linux is about messiness, confusion, interdependence. It is harder
to use, harder to accept. Its Truth is not for the faint of heart.
Linux requires of you. It requires that you deal with people to get it
running to use its potential. Linux requires that you admit your need,
admit your failings, admit your incompleteness. It will never lie to
you. However, should you accept it, Linux will take you to heights that
few users have known.

Linux did not come to conquer Bill Gates. Linux did not come to define your problem and solve it.

Linux came to give you something that you might not want. Linux will set you free.

Now, I don’t know if Linux is the future of computing or not. Will
it be killed not by Microsoft but by the listlessness and smallness of
humanity? Will Linux be struck down by our inability to accept chaos
and its
inability to solve our need for order?

I don’t know the answers. But I do know one thing. If technology
will eventually dehumanize us to the point where life has no meaning,
then Linux is our only hope.

Unintended Consquences of the Proliferation of Security Cameras.

August 30, 2003 / Jim

Just think of all the potential presidential candidates that would be disqualified for being nose-pickers.

Worker on phone with headquarters

"We can’t support that candidate, sir. He was caught on a Walmart security camera rooting around in his nose."

"No, we couldn’t supress it. CNN’s already got copies. You think Ford’s
stumbling was bad… Sir, we’re going to have to dump him. Inviable
candidate. Need to find someone with shorter softer nose hairs and less
mucus buildup."

"We will start looking for a clean nose right away. There’s
nothing more important in a presidential candidate than naturally clean
nasal passages."

El Gringoqueño