Jim’s Brain Online

Posted by Jim at January 27th, 2007

It looks like I’ll be moving over to Wordpress as my blogging software in the relatively near future. Those of you who read the blog through RSS feeds probably won’t notice (the feeds will be redirected). Those of you who actually look at the site will probably notice that the design will morph into the default Wordpress template until I find a template I like.

Why the change from MoveableType to Wordpress?

Mostly I’ve been told that Wordpress has less problems with comment spam. Outside of that I’ve been happy with MoveableType.

Posted by Jim at January 22nd, 2007

The Daily WTF is on my RSS feeds list. It’s a website devoted to remarkably dumb things done in programming and in IT generally.

Today’s post involves Take-Your-Child-To-Work Day, crucial servers, and a big, red button.

Now that I think about it, you don’t even have to read the post after that description. Nonetheless, I’ll just mention that as someone who has kids, it seems very true to life. In fairness to my children, however, I should mention that they don’t casually visit destruction on my computers.

Well, not recently anyway.

Posted by Jim at January 20th, 2007

This Christmas my sister bought my kids CD’s. One of them was They Might Be Giants’ album Here Come the ABC’s.

As ever with They Might Be Giants, the album is surreal and silly at the same time. It also leads to amusing conversations with children.

There’s a song on the album in which they sing the alphabet all in names of countries. It lead to what follows:

Daughter:That’s not a real country.
Me: What country?
Daughter: (giggling) Surinam
Me: No that’s a real country. It’s in Africa.
Note: I was totally wrong on that one. It’s actually in Latin America.
Me: They’re all real countries.
Daughter: West Xylophone?
Me: Well, maybe not West Xylophone.

Posted by Jim at January 13th, 2007

I didn’t watch the presidential speech about Iraq on Wednesday, but I had a good idea what was coming and figured that I could watch it online or read it if there were anything important that I missed.

So far I haven’t felt the need.

The gist of the plan is that we’re going to put in 20,000 more troops and stabilize Baghdad in an attempt to stop the violence there.

It’s funny. From before we went in I’ve believed that we were going in with too few troops. I should be happy, but…

I’ve got a bit of a problem with this one. I’m thinking that the best case scenario is that they succeed and stabilize Baghdad. Even in that scenario, there’s the whole rest of the country that would not have been stabilized. In the worst case scenario, of course, we’re just going to send more people over there without any change at all.

Er… No wait. That’s not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is that we send in more people and it actually makes the situation worse. Don’t ask me how that’d happen, but I’m sure it’s possible (just not probable–I hope).

But back to the main point of this post… Basically the whole point of having 400,000 or 500,000 troops in there is that there’s no place for insurgents to go that they can escape our troops. As it is, they can leave Baghdad and start operations somewhere else–which is the major problem we’ve been facing all along.

Also, of course, if troops follow the insurgency to the new problem spot, the insurgents can always move back to Baghdad.

We’ve got enough troops to stop an insurgency in the country. We just don’t have enough to stop insurgencies all over the country and keep them stopped.

Of course, I’ve got to admit that success isn’t inevitable even with with 400,000 troops. There’s just a far better chance then than with 130,000 to 150,000 (plus some 10,000-15,000 coalition troops).

With any luck, the current Congress will find some way to push the Bush administration along. I’ve got to admit though, that I think that unlikely. From what I understand, the power of the purse is a fairly blunt instrument and Bush has the ability to move money around from one place to another.

I deeply suspect that we won’t see an effective Iraq policy until we have an administration that wasn’t involved in getting us into this mess.

UPDATE: Just for what it’s worth, I’d like to clarify that “effective Iraq policy” doesn’t necessarily mean putting in 400,000 troops at this point. It could just as easily mean pulling out, involving other countries in the process as per the Iraq Study Group, or some other new and creative idea that seems unlikely to come out of the current administration.

Posted by Jim at January 10th, 2007

I don’t know if it happens to you, but sometimes I wonder what happened to people I know from high school. Specifically, I’ve occasionally wondered about Erik Prince, a person with whom I was on the track team. We weren’t close or anything, but I talked to him every once in a while. Also, his parents were wealthy and financed my class’s high school graduation party.

A few days ago, someone told me that he owned a com pany that supplied mercenaries to protect people in Iraq. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “that’s interesting. So that’s what he’s doing now.”

And then today, this:

Erik Prince, the secretive, mega-millionaire, right-wing Christian founder of Blackwater, the private security firm that has built a formidable mercenary force in Iraq, champions his company as a patriotic extension of the U.S. military. These mercenary units in Iraq, including Blackwater, contain some 20,000 fighters. They unleash indiscriminate and wanton violence against unarmed Iraqis, have no accountability and are beyond the reach of legitimate authority. The appearance of these paramilitary fighters, heavily armed and wearing their trademark black uniforms, patrolling the streets of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, gave us a grim taste of the future.

(From David Brin’s blog, scroll down a bit in the post and you’ll find it in context)

In a science fiction novel or comic book, this would undoubtedly be preparatory to me getting superhuman abilities and lead to a dramatic confrontation in the halls of Blackwater’s HQ. *

In reality of course, superpowers are not forthcoming and it remains very, very strange to find someone you knew mentioned on your favorite author’s blog as a possible source of theocratic dictatorship.

I’ve got to admit though, that I don’t think that either Erik or Blackwater is particularly likely to try to end democracy. The article that Brin pulls the quote from has a certain conspiracy theory quality to it that I can’t quite pin down. It might be that as someone who is a Christian and comes out of an evangelical background, I don’ t know anybody who’d be for a theocracy. In fact, on the rare occasions that I’ve been in Christian bookstores, I’ve been amused to notice multiple Christian, political thrillers in which the presumably atheistic left puts a dictatorship in place.

If nothing else, US citizens of all stripes share a common anxiety.

* Clarification: For those of you who don’t ever read comics or science fiction, it’s worth mentioning that it’s pretty common to have someone that the main character likes turn up later doing something that they disagree with. It’s a good way to ratchet up the tension. It’s kind of overused though.

Posted by Jim at January 7th, 2007

Just for what it’s worth, my wife came across a rather funny rant about Pachelbel’s Canon in D recently.

Basically, the guy (a comedian named Rob Paravonian) talks about how multiple pop songs include the bass line to Pachelbel’s Canon, and, how as someone who used to play cello he hates Pachelbel’s Canon.

Via: VideoSift

Posted by Jim at January 3rd, 2007

I haven’t been mentioning this sort of thing, but I’ve almost completed three full years of blogging and am about to start my fourth. I’m a little surprised that I’m still at it and think that it’s cool that some people actually read this thing (or so my stat package tells me),

I’ve never written with an audience in mind, but if I did, I’d imagine an audience of friends and occasionally family. If you’ve somehow come to read this blog without knowing me personally, that’s cool too. We’ll have to meet one of these days.

This being the first blog post of the new year, I’m tempted to reflect on the old year and set some goals for the new.

I barely know what to say about the old year though. While not spectacularly good, it wasn’t spectactularly bad either.

I started writing my novel again which is good. I didn’t finish my master’s project which is not so good. I’ve got work to do for various clients, something that does make me happy.

This year, I’d like to get a version of my business website up that I’m happy about. I’d also like to finish the current draft of my novel and start the next. In an ideal world I’d like to run more and maybe learn about technical climbing.

I’d also like to start a web comic. I’ve got a bad feeling that I’d have to learn to draw first though. I’m thinking about whether or not that’s feasible.

Beyond that, I’d like to get better at programming. In particular I’d like to improve my skills with javascript, ruby and php.

In short, I’ve got a big pile of things that I’d like to do (and this list skips a few…). I’ve just got to figure out a way to transform them into something I can actually take action on.

That’s all.