Category: Bitterness

That’s no battle station

February 27, 2010 /

A few weeks ago, Kara and I went out to dinner at a fancy restaurant for her stepdad’s birthday, and I got to meet several members of her extended family for the first time. It was a really nice dinner and we all enjoyed ourselves. Then we walked out to the car, got in, started the engine, glanced backwards and realized that someone had smashed in the rear passenger window and stolen my bag, containing books and my laptop, and a couple hundred dollars’ worth of new clothes Kara had just had delivered by UPS. Have I mentioned that it was raining?

The waitstaff at the restaurant informed us that this was the fourth such smash-and-grab from their parking lot in three weeks. There is no camera or floodlight there. I still need to call up the building owners for a polite discussion about that.

The whole situation sucked a lot, but we got the window replaced and Kara got some of the clothes replaced by a kind friend for her birthday. My car insurance covered the window but not the contents; Kara’s home insurance would have covered them, but in neither instance did the damage meet the deductible. (I had to buy a new windshield after a rock chip incident last summer, too, so I have now replaced about 40% of the glass on my car out of pocket.) The fact is that we are very fortunate to have afforded such luxuries to begin with, and remain both fortunate and luxurious.

I replaced the laptop with a much newer, shinier, more expensive version, but then my boss took the opportunity to buy a nice new Mac Mini for my desk at work (I had been using the aforementioned four-year-old Macbook) and I returned it. The laptopless life is one plagued with tiny inconveniences, so I’ll probably buy it again in a few months when they update the hardware.

The point of this post is to eulogize my old dingy white Macbook, which, for a refurbished computer at the very low end of Apple’s lineup, did me proud for three and a half years. I used it as my only work machine for much of that time; it accompanied me to London, Innsbruck, Winston-Salem, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, London again, Paris, and Taastrup, where I dumped a glass of water into it and actually managed to grow mold on its hard drive. And then I replaced said drive and used it at the new job for another six months! No one could have asked more.

Thanks, Macbook. You were a good computer.

Geek Note: For reasons I can’t remember now, I named the laptop DEATHSTAR on our home network when I first bought it; after the hard drive resurrection (and, for the first time, the switch out of Boot Camp to native OS X), I rechristened it Fully Operational. Apparently every Death Star gets destroyed, though, so I have moved on to a new naming convention. Kara’s and my iMac is now the Batcave, the Mac Mini is the Batpod, and whenever I get the laptop again, it will be the Tumbler.

Update 2255 hrs: Kara has informed me that the iMac is named Hodge, after John Hodgman, and always will be, and HOW COULD I THINK THAT, and WHAT AM I GOING TO DO TO OUR CHILDREN, RENAME THEM EVERY TIME I READ A BOOK. (I say he’s only Hodge as long as Windows is running. He is a PC.)

February 17, 2010 /

Joseph Gordon-Levitt turned 29 today, IMDB informs me, which serves as a painful reminder of how much I haven’t accomplished with my life.

Paris Hilton also turned 29 today, which reminds me of how much I have.

I have been sick all week about this

January 25, 2010 /

So the Supreme Court made a very bad decision and now we have to deal with the consequences of this inexplicable belief that corporations have a pulse. This gives very rich people the ability to exercise unlimited political influence through partial human beings, using other people’s money. One would think we would have learned that lesson, but no! The right to free speech must be defended, where by “defended” I mean “contorted into hideous shapes.”

This is a nonpartisan issue, kids. No actual human beings are well served by infinite money being poured into politics, which is why even the people who get that money kept trying to make laws against it. If that’s like 535 heroin addicts trying to collectively decide whether to accept, y’know, a bunch of free heroin, then the Citizens United decision is effectively a mandatory heroin prescription that comes with an IV bag and drip stand. Except they’re not ruining their own lives with their addiction; they’re ruining ours.

The only way to legislatively overturn a Supreme Court decision is with a constitutional amendment. I’ve seen that proposed as one route forward, but not very convincingly. I think I have a better one, and what’s more, it’s one that the party (sort of) in power should be familiar with.

Tax campaign contributions and political spending. Tax the living fuck out of them. I’m talking five hundred, six hundred percent. Not on everything–just contributions from corporate general treasury funds, and just the ones that exceed the old McCain-Feingold limits. There’s plenty of precedent: we already do this to discourage behavior we consider legal but harmful, like smoking or self-employment. And one couldn’t very well argue that it restricts “free” “speech,” given that the production and purchase of political news or entertainment are already taxed in all kinds of ways. Want to make it popular? Promise to throw the money raised at the deficit or Social Security or tax breaks for plumbers. You don’t even have to actually do that, guys! Nobody will ever contribute enough to pay the tax unless they get caught cheating.

This is called an economic disincentive. Disincentives are about 80% of the reason government exists. It’s really, really past time we remembered how to create those and use them for good.

I think the engine is on the beach. The metaphor might have gotten away from me here

December 18, 2009 /

It really was pretty disorienting last year, having the television tell me that the thing I wanted from politics was actually happening. I didn’t know how to handle it. The guiding keel of my cynicism ran up short on a beach of unexpected joy.

It wasn’t really a beach, of course: it was a sandbar. Now, as we watch the you-know-what bill being painstakingly converted from a mild rebuke for the insurance industry into a roaring engine of fellatio, it’s almost soothing. Yes, yes. This is what it’s supposed to be like.

Biting the wax tadpole

October 30, 2009 /

This piece of xenophobic garbage was the top Google News story under Sci/Tech as of a few minutes ago. It makes me so angry I want to blog.

Basically, ICANN–the governing body for domain name registration–finally got around to saying people could register domains with country codes in their own character sets. Country codes are the national domain endings, like .tv (yes, Tuvalu) and .kr, that until now have been abbreviated in Latin characters for absolutely no reason. Thanks to ICANN’s legendary corporate/Western bias, people in those countries have been forced to use kludgy keyboard settings to type in Latin characters when they want to go to a website. Is it any wonder search engines were desperate to do business in China? It’s easier to click through to your site via Google than it is to type its name into the damn address bar.

And so far, country endings are still the only part of domain names to which the change applies! You still have to type the rest of the domain with Latin characters. The rest of the domain scheme is coming, but only ICANN knows when.

So naturally it makes sense for David Coursey to start mongering fear. Oh, sorry, I meant “Tech Inciting.”

“Is this a change for the better? Perhaps, but is there any doubt that if another country had ‘invented’ the Internet–say the Russians–that we’d all have had to learn to type Cyrillic characters by now?”

Jesus Christ, what decade is it? C’mon, “journalist!” LET’S GO TO HISTORY SCHOOL. Setting aside your blazingly simple-minded assertion that “the U.S. invented the Internet,” if you’d bothered to go even Wikipedia-deep in your research, perhaps you’d remember–or learn–that the URI addressing scheme was invented by a British scientist working at a lab in Geneva. Unicode’s been around since 1992, two years before Berners-Lee’s RFC 1630 and RFC 1738 formally set out URL syntax. ICANN’s policies have restricted, not fostered, the Web’s growth into a truly worldwide entity.

“How many new domains will be needed to protect international brands?”

Oh, I take it back! I hadn’t considered the possible damage to brands!

“Will there be hidden domains that cannot be displayed on some computers or typed on many keyboards?”

HEY DIPSHIT! See the fifth sentence of this entry, because THERE ALREADY ARE.

“Will cybercriminals some how [sic] be able to take advantage of this change?”

This sentence is so stupid that it must have set some kind of Internet record.

“Practically, I am not looking forward to perhaps someday having to learn how to type potentially 100,000 non-Latin characters that ICANN has embraced. How many keys will keyboards need to have?”

Record broken!

Go ahead and read the article–it’s a cornucopia of minor idiocies in the same vein. This guy is, to all appearances, a professional blogger published by a real-world magazine (albeit one with a circulation smaller than some webcomics). In a world where major news organizations fight and win legal battles in defense of their right to knowingly lie, I suppose I should be expecting media of every vintage to continue stoking the terror of small minds to drive their dwindling profit engines.

This has been Brendan Makes Fun of Something on the Internet! I will now return to my usual activity of narrow-eyed hunting for the tilde key. And hey, David Coursey: Φάτε ένα εκατομμύριο πέη.

Nononymity

October 2, 2009 /

Carrie Fisher blogs, apparently, and the evidence suggests that she’s been doing a bit of back-and-forth with the Internet in her own defense. Basically, people think she doesn’t look like she did in 1983. I will allow you a moment of shock.

On my west’ard migration a year and a half ago, while I was bumming around San Francisco on my own, someone–Sumana?–suggested that I take a night and go see a play. By happy coincidence, I was in town at the same time as Fisher, who was doing her show Wishful Drinking at the Berkeley Rep. So I got a ticket and went.

I learned a great deal about Fisher that evening (I hadn’t even known she was married to Paul Simon), and in the process saw probably the only good one-person show ever. I also laughed a lot. How can you avoid laughing at the image of Cary Grant calling up a teenage girl, at her parent’s slightly deranged request, to lecture her soberly about the dangers of LSD–twice? Or at a still from the bridge of the Death Star about which she noted that “I weighed about ninety pounds here, eighty of which I carried in my face?”

It’s one thing to know somebody is a writer; it’s another to see her perform in a self-written multimedia showcase that includes jokes about her own electroshock therapy. I liked Carrie Fisher before then, almost as much for her guest spot on 30 Rock as for Star Wars (and that was all before I knew she tried out for Han Solo). After that show, like became admiration, and she was elevated to the selective ranks of people who have secured my loyalty pretty much for good. Even if her blog posts are littered with unnecessary punctuation.

(In case you’ve noticed that I started dating a short girl with a screenwriting degree, a taste for wine and a sardonic sense of humor within months of moving to Portland: shhh.)

It’s not as if I think the people reading my blog are among those going “oh no how did princess lea get fat :(.” But I feel the need to state this anyway: Carrie Fisher rolls with my crew. And before you write a word against her, consider the fact that fuck you forever, and die in a hole.

Shitcock.

Helpful Tips on Being a Man in Professional Software Development

August 24, 2009 /
  • First of all: relax. There are more men in engineering professions than ever before; you’re not alone. What’s more, some very well-known and talented programmers are men!
  • In preparing for a career in software, learn everything you can. If you went to a school like mine, you probably found the computer science program scanty and unable to address your needs. Apply yourself hard and do plenty of independent work to overcome this deficit.
  • Studies have shown time and again that the myth of men lacking mathematical or computational ability is a complete falsehood. Make sure to have the details of these studies memorized, or naysayers are unlikely to believe you.
  • When interviewing for a software job, appear confident but not brash. Look your interviewer(s) directly in the eye and use a firm handshake; study up and be ready to reel off technical jargon when your skills are questioned. If at all possible, resist the urge to giggle.
  • Your first few days on the job may be uncomfortable. Try not to bridle when a colleague mistakes you for an intern or an administrative assistant (but make the copies anyway–it may help ingratiate you later). Correct each mistake politely, and if you hear some muttering about how you only got the job because of a gender quota, just ignore it and keep your head high.
  • Keep in mind that your mistakes will receive extra scrutiny. If you run into a problem outside your area of knowledge, you can demonstrate independence by searching for a solution first before going to a female coworker for help.
  • Everyone gets caught in a mass-forward chain from time to time. Should you open up an email titled “hot pic of the day!!! =O” and find yourself once again staring at a coquettish Randall Munroe or a wet-shirted Idris Elba, just roll your eyes and hit delete. (Of course, you may have your own admiring comment to contribute–so much the better for you!)
  • When writing out use-case diagrams, resist the urge to refer to hypothetical agents with male pronouns. Chances are you’ll just be seen as “trying to make a statement,” and may gain a reputation for being outspoken. Stick with third-person plural, or, if you must, “she or he.”
  • Similarly, when the leader of a meeting addresses you collectively as “ladies,” let it slide. No one likes a nitpicker.
  • Should you decide to pursue a romantic relationship in the workplace, use extreme caution! Dating a superior will lead to suspicion that you are doling out “favors” in exchange for having your patches accepted or your issues escalated first.
  • Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Yes, we know you have some hilarious slogan t-shirts in your closet that can help you attract attention (and maybe even feel a little saucy). But that’s not the way to climb the ladder! A button-down, some pressed slacks and a hint of eyeliner will help ensure that your coworkers take you seriously.
  • The most significant challenge facing men of our generation is how to balance a career with one’s family and children. No one’s pretending it’s easy! But if you manage your responsibilities, take a hard look at your workload, and make out a detailed ten-year plan, you can almost certainly persuade your wife to abandon her dreams and do all the real work.
  • We all know that the pressure of being male in today’s workplace can be overwhelming. Many men have a tendency to lash out in frustration before considering the consequences of their words, especially when their testosterone levels are a little off-balance, and that does nothing to help our cause. No matter what kind of sarcastic, demeaning commentary comes your way, try to hold onto your sense of humor and your dignity. With a little luck, as long as you never lose your cool, your colleagues will eventually come to see you as just one of the girls.

I couldn’t get through the whole thing without a Studio 60 joke! I’m sorry. It’s in paragraph seven.

April 14, 2009 /

Ready for another screed about how a television show has failed to satisfy me? You are? You are ready for some unexpected things!

I wanted to like Cupid ’09! I did. I loved Cupid ’98 and I loved Veronica Mars, so Rob Thomas + more exposure + more money had to add up to something good, right? No! Cupid ’09 is a stupid television show that is bad. Tonight I had to turn it off halfway through. I have identified three reasons for this, listed in order of increasing subtlety.

First, the writing is bad. Advertising bad. Not freecreditreport.com commercial bad, but easily eHarmony bad. I have no way of accounting for this. Rob Thomas has demonstrated repeatedly that he can write, and indeed manage a writing team well; has he concentrated so hard on that that he has forgotten how to read?

Second, the shooting style is weird and elliptic. They seem to have fewer ad breaks than a typical show, but they try to deal with that by throwing in B-roll with lots of lens flare. It ends up looking like a documentary with pretensions instead of a comic drama. (Speaking of which, it also seems to have no dramatic or comedic elements, but that goes back to #1.)

Third–and honestly, this is the killer–Bobby Cannavale isn’t Jeremy Piven. He’s a good actor, and Jeremy Piven isn’t the only guy who would be capable of taking on the role, but to make Cupid work, Trevor has to be kind of a jackass. Cannavale’s Trevor is ripped, deep-voiced, gentle, well-dressed, polite and full of faith in human nature. Piven’s was horny, cynical, scruffy and smirking. Piven was playing Han Solo, writ short; Cannavale seems to think he’s in Touched by an Angel.

Fourth, it is impossible to stop hating Cannavale’s fauxhawk, which appears in 80% of the shots. He had a fauxhawk while in the mental hospital. No. No.

Point three there is indicative of a larger issue, which is that the cast has no chemistry. They’re all about as lively as shellshocked deer. Sarah Paulsen’s lone facial expression already helped sink Studio 60, of course, but Jeffrey D. Sams’s seething bouncer roommate created just as many sparks as Paula Marshall’s Claire; Rick Gomez’s stand-in seems to deal with Trevor by simply turning to Valium.

Absent any conflict among the regulars, the show has to lean on its match-of-the-week for interest, and nobody cares about them. Nobody did before, either. We just liked seeing how they illuminated the tension between Claire and Trevor, but this time, there’s nothing there to see.