I just put up a ton of new pictures from our trip to DisneyWorld, and a few of our cats. Check ‘em out!
Also, a quick thank you to Fred, who tossed a Flickr account my way since the Yahoo buyout meant that he got a few to toss around!
Yes, I’m late to the party on this one, but we just tried out Skype and it’s everything that it claims to be: free internet telephony that just works.
My brother-in-law, whom I just mentioned and my mother-in-law have been using Skype since I told them about it a few months ago. They’ve said that it’s great.
But the funny thing is, even though I told them about it, I had never used the thing until tonight. We saw that Fred was online, and I thought “Hey, we could TALK to Fred instead of just IM with him.” So I fired up Skype, which I had installed ages ago, and spent a few minutes trying to guess my password. When I cycled through the few I thought it might be, I decided that the unhelpful “Server Error” was not a password warning but a subtle hint to upgrade. So I got the release version instead of the beta I had, and we logged in and were talking within, literally, a minute. It was only that long because I had to type in my personal info (name, city, etc).
The audio was nice, even if there was a noticable lag as the data packets worked their way over my wireless network, over SBC’s DSL line, over the ether to Mexico, over Fred’s DSL, and then over Fred’s wireless network. But the fact that there were that many transitions in the stream and Skype navigated all of them cleanly was amazing.
My mother-in-law was online as well, and so we spent a minute figuring out how to conference call. We then all sat around and chatted for almost an hour; it was the first time my wife had talked to her brother– really talked instead of text’d– in months. And it was nice.
But that tagline still seems a little odd to me. “…that just works.” It does. As I mentioned before, we threw quite a few obstacles down and Skype dodged and weaved, made it through each one. Skype, indeed, just works.
What’s interesting to me is that that’s a selling point. Shouldn’t ALL technology “just work?” Shouldn’t every program I run “just work?” Why does this need to be said?
Of course, it needs to be said because not every program just works, not every peripheral is recognized as soon as you plug it in. You have to configure it.
Which is why, although Rendezvous Bounjour is such a nice little name, I still like the idea behind ZeroConf: it’s zero-configuration networking. It just works. I turn on my laptop and see the AirPort base stations, and iTunes notices the AirTunes plugged into my stero.
It’s one of the many reasons I use a Macintosh. It just works. I plug a mouse or a drive and and it’s there.
It’s one of the reasons I prefer Objective-C to Java; it just works. Sending messages to nil? Yeah, that’s not a problem; we understand.
I understand that VoIP is terribly complicated stuff. I understand that most everything interesting that computer science is doing these days is complicated. But that doesn’t mean that it has to appear complicated. Skype, my Mac, and ZeroConf are great examples.
Word, Windows, and Linux should learn from them.
My brother-in-law is in Mexico doing translations for the Mexican government. He goes to awesome places and takes awesome pictures and posts them on Flickr.
His entire photostream is worth a look, but here’s a recent one I really loved: When translations go awry.
I started at ACS this week. Monday was a whole day of paperwork. I filled out my new address at least two dozen times. Oh, the paperless office is a grand idea, isn’t it?
Then I got down to the work. It’s Java stuff, and it’s neat. I’m inheriting some code that is just awfully not architected, so that’ interesting to say the least. I’ve become good friends with the refactoring capabilities of Eclipse.
The people are nice. I’m slowly meeting everyone, from my team of three devs (longest tenure: 6 months) to the training coordinator (longest tenure: 15 years). My manager is a very nice woman and she seems quite happy to have me on board. Rudy and Jayesh (the other two on my team) are, too.
The building is a little crumbly; it has all the hallmarks of that mid-century build-the-future architecture: the low-slung style of Frank Lloyd Wright, the brick-and-rock façade of every civic building of that era. But it does have air conditioning, even if the cell phone reception is a bit lacking.
So after two days of coding, I’m happy to say that I’m liking it. Today, while reviewing some changes I’ve made (I had just reduced six twenty-line methods into a one line call; yeah, that’s the code I got) I noticed an error and immediately understood where the problem was. Click, and it all fell into place. Going into this I was unsure of my ability to do serious coding, to keep ten thousand things in my head and balance them all out. But when that all clicked I knew that I could do this. And I’m going to enjoy it.
So Sonja and I spent last week at DisneyWorld. We have some great pictures, some fantastic memories, and hurt feet.
In getting the 5 day Park Hopper Pass we chose right. We spent a day at each of the four parks, and then spent our final park day going back to what we’d missed or just wanted to do again. The only park we didn’t complete in a single day was Epcot, but we ended up going back to Magic Kingdom and MGM Studios as well because they had some cool rides.
Our padded schedule worked out perfectly. We arrived mid-Saturday and spent that day at the hotel and at Downtown Disney for dinner. This allowed us to be “at DisneyWorld” without having to jump right in. We also left mid-Saturday and gave ourselves lots of time to adjust back to Pacific before we had to go to work.
In staying at a Disney Resort we were mostly right; I would definitely stay on property but at a nicer resort. We stayed at the All-Star Movies Resort because it was cheap, but it was basically a Motel 6 with Disney characters on the walls and hideous Disney spreadsheets. The Disney hotel is worth it: in addition to the free buses to every park, your room key doubles as a credit card anywhere on property and they can deliver stuff to your room (although we found that service a bit slower than we would like; it took one package two days to arrive). When we go again we’re thinking of staying at one of the Epcot resorts, which are around a nice lake and very centrally-located, which would cut down on the bus-rides.
We should have planned for more downtime. Our schedule had us there for eight days and seven nights, Saturday to Saturday. With five days at the parks and two Saturdays for travel, that gave us one day of sleeping in and lounging about. We used that one day to go see Episode 3’s matinee opening day showing, so that was nice, but our feet would have been happier and we would have been more rested if we had planned for a 1-to-1 ratio of in-park to out-of-park days. We could have gone swimming in the hotel pool, or gone miniature golfing at the courses they offer, or even visited Cape Canaveral or Universal Studios or Sea World.
One of the big reasons we went was to see what was different about the east coast parks from their west coast brethren, and so I’ll share with you what we found.
The biggest difference is the size. Not only are the parks very far apart from each other (with vast reaches of swamp in between), but the parks themselves are larger. The roads are wider, the space between rides bigger, and the castle in Magic Kingdom is taller (though not as tall as Disneyland: Paris).
Speaking of the castle, it is freestanding, and isn’t connected to Fantasyland via walls like everywhere else. That struck me as odd.
Islands are a big theme. The hub at Magic Kingdom (the north part of main street, where the Walt and Mickey statue is) is an island. The Tree of Life in Animal Kingdom is an island. Tom Sawyer’s Island is actually two islands. It’s all a way to incorporate the wetlands that these parks were built on top of.
The Haunted Mansion is a big brick building that’s not very intimidating at all. Inside the Haunted Mansion is the exact same ride, with one extra joke.
They take your fingerprints at the front gate. But not if you buy the parkhopper passes we had.
Tower of Terror only has two elevator shafts. And instead of the spooky mirror they have a blacklight room filled with objects from the Twilight Zone opening. The elevator car moves forward through this room and into the actual up-and-down shaft, which is completely different than California Adventure’s ride, which is a straight up-down shaft which is quicker and less cheesy. Also, at the bottom of the elevator shaft are screens where they project stuff, like the shattering window from the Twilight Zone opening, or the electric guests in the movie.
The parks are more active. For the 50th Anniversary each park got a new attraction. A lot of the rides were recent additions or had had major updates in the recent past. Compare with Disneyland, which has seemed to lose rides lately (Space Mountain, where art thou?)
Space Mountain has two tracks, just like our Matterhorn: one is better than the other, but the whole ride is faster, darker, and generally cooler. Or maybe I’ve just forgotten ours. One thing I do remember in our Space Mountain was a line with Slater and Fed Ex robots in it. Their line is in a dark tunnel with crazy 3D images outside fake windows. Then their line goes into an open-topped area where you can see the glowing trains zip around the ride. And finally their line ends by depositing you onto the ride, which is open, a significant improvement over Disneyland’s.
They have no Matterhorn. But they are building Expedition: Everest at Animal Kingdom. This kind of thing is very common; they take rides you’re familiar with from Disneyland and put them in some park other than the Magic Kingdom. Star Wars isn’t in Tomorrowland: it’s in MGM Studios. Soarin’ Over California is in Epcot, and they just call it Soarin’ (ostensibly so that they can change the images if they want).
They have the Rock and Roller Coaster, which was pretty awesome. The Aerosmith angle is rather pointless, but the coaster itself is very nice, if a little dull at the very end. I don’t think it beats California Screamin’, though.
They have really awful places to eat.
They have characters everywhere, ready to sign and stamp your little autograph books. People line up to see Mickey and Rafiki and Timon and Aladdin. We would routinely be wandering through a park, spot an absurdly long line, and discover that it led to some character. It confused us.
Instead of keeping the parks open late, they close everything down at 9 (10 on the weekends) and offer “Extra Magic Hours.” If you’re staying in a Disney hotel, you show your key to get a wristband at whatever park is doing Extra Magic Hours (it rotates between parks; some days is no park), and then you can stay an extra three hours riding rides and having fun. At first, I thought that this was a great idea. And then I figured out that it’s just stupid. They’re keeping the park open later one night a week, thus guaranteeing that everyone who’s staying at Disney resorts will be in that park. And not just during the extra magic hours, either: you’ve only got so many hours in a day, and it takes time to move between parks, so you end up planning your park schedule based on which park has Extra Magic Hours. So everyone travels as a pack, and you’re always going to be in longer lines. Plus, if you didn’t stay in a Disney resort, you’re out of luck; no Extra Magic Hours for you.
Florida is hot enough to melt grown men.
Sonja and I both agreed that we would go again without hesitation. The trip even cost less than we initially anticipated. And with the above caveats, I think the second trip would be nicer than the first. But I would definitely want to go with more people; I think the person who would most enjoy it would be my dad: he would get a hoot out of all the movie stuff at MGM Studios, he’d love Animal Kingdom, and we would never be able to get him away from Epcot.
If you can afford it, it’s highly recommended.
So tomorrow Sonja and I get on a plane and fly to Orlando, FL to take a vacation to Disneyworld. As such, updates will be sparse, unless I decide to push some photos up here for you all to envy.
Joseph Campbell is one of those people that you would meet at a dinner party in the opening chapter of a Tom Wolfe novel, and spend the rest of the novel getting hints about the deeper meanings of the novel itself from his appearances throughout. He seems like quite a smart little fellow, and what he says seems very deep. I think I agree with him about 80%.
His basic premise from Hero with a Thousand Faces is true. He posits that every hero story follows the same formula, which is:
I would have to agree. The only exceptions I can think of are recent stories where the ‘hero’ is really an anti-hero, such as Anakin in the new Star Wars movies. This was especially surprising to me because I read the book because Lucas openly admits that the original trilogy was heavily influenced by it. you can see that readily; the above pattern is exactly what Luke does; Obi-Wan calls, Luke Refuses, Owen and Beru die and Luke goes (end of Star Wars); Luke goes to Tatooine, learns from Yoda, and masters the Force (end of Empire Strikes Back); Luke confronts the world, and uses the Force to save his father and change the world for the better.
But upon further reflection, I think that this lack of similarity is one of the big reasons that we don’t bond with the new movies like we did with the old; there is no hero to tie ourselves to and emulate, like we did with Luke and Han and Leia. No one wants to be Anakin; we all understand that he’s screwed up. Girls don’t want to be Amidala; she’s a lilly, not the tough chick. I guess you could want to be Obi-Wan, but he’s not really the central character, and is a little too straight-laced for most tastes.
One of the things that I think Campbell gets very right is how he ties the above arch to the internal psychological arch. He translates it to:
It is in this light that Campbell really shines. It is upon this basis that he builds his real discussion: that stories are important because they teach people how to live life, and how to overcome the obstacles. In the second half of the book, he ties the above cycle to the greater cosmological structure of the myth-world, and in so doing points out that the Gods of the world are the internal source of power, because the Gods of the world are a stand-in for the soul of the hero, and in turn for the soul of each and every person.
This is a powerful metaphor, and explains not only why the pattern above plays itself out so readily across the world but also why stories are such a powerful stir to our souls.
But I’m not sure I agree with it completely. It makes sense on an academic level, but it’s too clinical for my tastes. It reduces all of legend, myth, folklore, and everything too harshly down into a self-help book.
I am a Christian, and while I don’t proclaim that every word of the Bible is literally true (c.f. Exodus 11:6), I do believe in the broad outlines of the faith; God created the universe, and thereafter interacted with it in a variety of ways, not the least of which was inhabiting said world for purposes of redeeming it. Jesus-as-hero is brought up quite a few times in HWATF, but it is a Christian tenet that I cannot search my soul to find the internal power and become Christ. That doesn’t work; I am a fallen being and limited in that to being ever divided from God until death (at the earliest; until trumpet sound at the latest).
Campbell does, to his credit, make note of this, but it only is in a footnote mentioning that a Christian accepting this would be–and has been–declared heretical. But that word ‘heretical’ effectively means that a Christian accepting this idea is no longer a Christian. It’s a little bit of a conundrum, there.
Which is why I’m only going to agree 80%; the hero-story and the psychological implications are great, and the presentation is great, if a little dry at the start. The stories told are fantastic, and worth the cover price all by themselves. I even enjoyed the hero/cosmology discussion, even if I didn’t agree with his conclusions.
So I’m giving the book 4 Exploded Clowns: a read-if-you-have-any-interest-in-the-topic.
I am currently flying from Montreal home; my last trip for Parasoft. Tomorrow is my last day in the office. This is the last time I’m ever going to fly through Chicago, if I can help it.
My flight left Montreal at 5:30pm local time. According to my schedule, I was supposed to arrive at Santa Ana at 10:03pm local time. Not bad.
The flight out of Montreal was delayed about 40 minutes by a storm that was threatening my layover point, O’Hare in Chicago. So we sat in the plane and I read, getting increasingly hungry; the cafeteria hamburger (oh, how I shall not miss cafeteria food) from six hours ago was running out on me. But we finally did land, and once inside O’Hare I found it as crisp and clean as I recall it being the other time I was there… last week. The dinosaur skeleton doesn’t appear to have aged any in the ensuing hours.
There is a subterranean tunnel in O’Hare that connects Terminal B to Terminal C, and it is filled with neon lights of various hues, moving walkways ferrying hurried and harried people to an fro, and a soundtrack straight out of an early video game. In short, it is the first five minutes of any science fiction movie, where they try to give the viewer a taste of the world the ensuing hours will inhabit. I would not be surprised in the slightest if the movies I am talking about were filmed in said tunnel.
So I arrive at my flight, and it is being delayed 20 minutes by the selfsame inclement weather as my previous flight. A boon, really, because I was running late, and this brief respite allowed me to procure a sandwich of some sort from the TCBY stall not a few yards from my gate. I passed on the drink because I was getting directly on the plane.
We stood as the clocks came closer and closer to the twenty-minutes-late mark, and just about that time they started boarding. Now, my previous travel experience has led my to the impression that there is supposed to be some time between the passengers getting on the plane and the plane leaving. Indeed, this trip was no different, which leads me to believe that the ‘twenty minutes late’ line was a gigantic lie from the outset.
This position is reaffirmed by the fact that, as soon as we had pulled away from the gate, the captain informed us that the entire airport was running a little late, and that we were moving into the queue to take off. Oh, and we were number 22 in said queue.
I finished Hero with a Thousand Faces (review forthcoming; I promise). I began Time.
Almost two hours after our original departure time we managed to trick the earth into letting us get away for a while, and southward we headed. Shortly into the flight “Coach Carter” began playing, and every time Samuel L. Jackson blows his coach’s whistle all the headphones leak enough that it’s heard throughout the plane. Whoever thought of that one was a real smarty.
I finished Time just as the captain came over the intercom informing us that, since our estimated arrival time was now 11:45pm, Santa Ana/Orange County/John Wayne Airport would be closed, and we couldn’t land there. The solution? We’re going to land at LAX, and the airline will ferry us down to the other airport.
Have I mentioned that this is my last trip for Parasoft, and that I’m very happy about that?
Dirty. Industrial. Busy. Chattering. Warm. Cold. Tall. Foreign. Organic. Loopy. Isolated. Inclusive. Tasty. Last.
I read a variety of political blogs, mostly left-leaning but a few more centrist and right, just so that I get a feel for everything that’s out there.
One of the blogs that I love the most is Bull Moose, not least because of the name. But what really keeps me coming back is that the perspective–a liberal christian democrat–is one that is near and dear to my heart, and that the prose is always light-hearted even in the heaviest of issues. This last point jumped out at me from a recent post:
The ugly truth is that if Jesus of Nazareth himself returned and dared to run on the Democratic line the righteous right would tar him as a bleeding heart vagabond who couldn’t hold a job and that he needed a shave. No doubt a Galilee Fishingboat Veterans for Truth outfit would call into question Jesus’ miracle claims - financed with lavish funding from Rove’s buddies in Texas and maximum exposure on Fox News. Just imagine the book - ‘Unfit to Save’.
It’s funny because it’s true.
So, I was finally home for a few hours this weekend and I plugged us back into the internets, so TCB and Exploded Clown are back online.
Where have I been, you ask? What have I been doing? It’s a long story, but here it is.
I was in Dallas for most of last week, and then in Omaha, center of the universe, on Wednesday and Tuesday. No lost luggage this time, but I have better news.
On Wednesday, I got The Call. Unfortunately, I was on a plane from Chicago to Omaha (yeah, Dallas to Omaha via O’Hare; awesome), so I didn’t get the call until almost 8pm PST, so I couldn’t return The Call.
The next morning, I set out to find a Borders to find something to read. I made a wrong turn on the way there, crossed an innocuous-looking bridge and ended up in Iowa. I didn’t notice that I had crossed state lines (and thus breaking the agreement on my rental car, I believe) until I saw a map later that day; that’s how excitingly different Nebraska and Iowa are.
Once I grabbed a book (The Hero With a Thousand Faces; review forthcoming), I hopped back in the car and headed back to the hotel. A Taco Bell caught my eye (as they always do) and I pulled over to get a drink. Large Mountain Dew no ice in hand, I noticed that it was now late enough to call the west coast, and so I pulled out my cell phone to return The Call.
Answering Machine. Left a ‘call me back’ message.
Back to the hotel. Joe is still asleep, getting a few hours of rest in a foreign bed on the road because he never does in his own bed at home, because he’s always working. Joe, who I admire for his absolute dedication to his job, is exactly why I’m trying to escape this job: I could see myself doing what he’s doing, and giving up sleep and all other normality for the company. I don’t want to do that.
Ring Ring. The Call Returns.
I walk out into the hall to answer it. Mary-Lou on the other end informs me that the drug test and background test that I was subjected to went fine, and that ACS is now willing to offer me the position. I accept, confirm a start date of the 23rd, and hang up.
An aside about the 23rd. I got The Call on a Thursday, while I was on the road. I knew that my schedule had me in the office that Friday, out again Monday through Thursday of the next week, in the office for another Friday, and then on vacation for a whole week, and then back in to work on… the 23rd. So agreeing to this was agreeing that I would go to Parasoft two more times. It was a little bizarre.
Sonja gets the first Bragging Call. She rejoices with me.
My Mom gets the next Bragging Call. She starts off with chitchat despite the fact that I called her. My Mom does that. I wrest control of the conversation from her and let her know, and know full well that my entire family will know within the day.
I call Rudy, but there’s no answer.
And then I head back to the room and get ready for our First Data meeting, which is why we’re in Omaha to begin with. I offer to take Joe to the Chipotle that I saw on the way to Borders, which happens to be a block from where our meeting is.
At Chipotle, I tell Joe. He completely expected it. I was amazed; I had prepared for yelling and guilt. He says he doesn’t blame me at all, and even though I know that he’s a salesman through and through, I believe him.
We do First Data after a seemingly interminable wait. Joe offers to let me run with it, and hit one out of the park to end my ParaSoft run. And I do. I don’t think I’ve done a better presentation in my entire tenure here. The fact that I was talking in front of an audience of high-level executives with divisions of people under them didn’t occur to me until later, when we all went out for drinks. Yeah, it went pretty well.
I hop on a plane and head home. One of those tiny planes with no middle row (and only 19 people) from Omaha (with only 21 gates) to Phoenix, and then a half-empty 737 from Phoenix to John Wayne. And my car even started when I got there, courtesy of my new battery.
I burrow my way into the apartment, moving boxes to locate some new pants to wear on Friday, and off I go.
I go tell Brian, my unshakable English boss. Of all the people I’m telling, I expect him to be the one who expects it most, and who will take it best. I am apparently a horrible judge of such things; he doesn’t expect it at all, and it shows. I offer to stay after the 23rd if needed, and he says that it’s fine.
I call Adam, the CEO. He’s disappointed, but he takes it well. Again, a surprise, because I had expected more yelling at this point in the narrative. He actually tried to dissuade me from going. In fact, he even offered me my position back if I decided I didn’t like ACS. When I saw him today, he tried again to convince me to stay, and I told him I’d think about it.
I then started telling everyone else. The entire day ranks number two on my Surreal Days At Work Index, right after the Layoff at Miramar that I survived. On that occasion it was all you could do to focus on the task at hand; on this occasion I were sprouting new tasks-at-hand every moment, when I realized that I wouldn’t be around to handle things that people were asking for. Bizarre.
But seeing Adam today sowed some seeds of doubt in my mind. He has a few good points; Parasoft is a great experience-getter. I see huge company’s development processes, and I get to work with great tools and great people, and I get to play with lots of interesting technologies.
But I don’t get to own anything. I don’t get to have my project. I don’t get to understand a product inside and out; I don’t get to intuit solutions when something breaks. I don’t get to inhabit the development process, to suck out the marrow of it; I only have a passing relationship where Development and I see each other at the grocery market and fumble around for new things to talk about. And I’m tired of that. I need to get down to it; I need to break out of Sales and move back in where I belong. And I’m going to go do that at ACS.
