My real reason for writing this is I don't think my webpage has enough random narcissism on it. Seriously. All the webpages that I check regularly have lovely narcissistic stuff about the author's current thoughts, feelings, day, whatever. So I want to put up one of my own. It's an excuse to gratuitously scatter links all over a page, anyway, and it's smaller than uploading thousand of pictures.
Commentary on this stuff is certainly appreciated. It's sorta the point, I think. Email to mlangsdo@io.com.
As of October 1998, I've moved all old months into the archive.
As of January 2002, I've provided a link to the most current month, when there is one, which isn't always.
Feburary 13th Only 2 more months until Opteron launch and maybe I can start to discuss some of what I do at work again. Or maybe not, I don't get told a lot about long term schedules.
Things are getting a little strange in the world today. Warmongering in the Middle East, crazed Koreans threatening nuclear attacks, and Venezuleans with hand grenades at Gatwick airport. The year is certainly getting exciting.
It's funny that the big excitement we were predicted around here last year - the market share wars that will follow the launch of the Opteron and Athlon 64 - have been postponed for months, while military events are still very exciting. Whatever happened to The End of History and the liberal capitalist democrat victory that was supposed to happen AFter the Berlin Wall fell?
February 23rd To no great notice of the world, I celebrate my 28th anniversary on this earth today. Such is.
On the other hand, the temperature climbed into the 70s this afternoon, with beautiful cerulean skies. A very nice present from reality in the midst of this week of rain, gloom, and cold.
February 24th I've been reading a lot of blogs recently, basically because I think it's important for me to latch onto national trends well after they're established so I can get maximum Johnny-Come-Lately credit. Most of the blogs I've been reading are the political/conservative blogs, because I think they're interesting. Look them up yourself if you're interested, I don't do links.
The general theory on such blogs was that the arms inspections were something of a sham, a stall tactic to keep the US from going to war. Seen in that perspective, Hans Blix's decision to order the Iraqis to destroy the Al-Samoud-2 missiles was a clever ruse: the Iraqis would destroy some of the missiles and France and China could point out how inspections were working and oppose the second (or seventeeth...) US resolution for war with good conscience.
Apparently the Iraqis misread the playbook. I figured they were going to negotiate a bit and stall but in essence say, "Yes, we're going to destroy those missiles, because we support the UN!" Sure, they'd be lying, but that's not the point. Instead, the Iraqis are being truthful: "We're not going to destroy the missiles." It seems like a remarkably stupid thing to say at the same time the US is circulating the 17th resolution, and I wonder how the French and Russians are going to claim with a straight face that the inspections are working when the Iraqis are refusing to disarm? The news at 6pm is just filtering in, and I have a feeling it's going to be a couple of days before all the nations speak their bits, but it's still amazingly worrying and exciting.
* * *
On the same or slightly different note, I've read that both the 4th Infantry Division from Fort Hood and the 3rd ACR from Colorado have been cALLed up and sent to Kuwait for the Iraq war. When I was dating Missie, she was assigned to the 4th ID, and although I don't know for sure that she's with the 3rd ACR now, she was supposed to go to Colorado to work on Apache-As and it seems likely that an ACR would be lower on the equipment upgrade track than a proper Mechanized or Infantry division. So either way, I'd be willing to bet that my ex-girlfriend is going over there. I'd like to say I don't know how that makes me feel, but I do... total disinterest. Missie was not one of my more successful breakups.
I know we're supposed to support the troops, and I'm all for that, but what do you do if you know a trooper personally and aren't very fond of them?
So what do you say, Joe? Is that enough thinking about stuff, or not?
February 28th I updated my About Me! for the first time in over a year. I guess the last time I updated it was when Steph reminded me I wasn't 25 anymore, but since her and I fell out of touch, no one reminded me that I wasn't 26.
Austin froze over this week. Who forgot to put ice delays into the schedule, huh?
Iraq has apparently decided to destroy the missiles after all, at least in principle. It's very frustrating that they're doing this on the eve of the deadline. They will not have complied by the deadline, but they'll obviously be trying (for some value of trying) to comply, so the US won't be able to pass a resolution authorizing force. The entire thing is a goddamned farce. The Iraqis are going to hem and stall over every goddamned issue, and the only thing keeping them to something resembling schedule is the threat of the US stomping them flat. This absolutely sucks, and I wish Bush had figured out a way for us not to get into this mess.
March 10th Time flies when nothing much is happening, I suppose. The biggest news lately is that I got Rhonda a way cool espresso machine so she can make latte in the morning. Or given our wake/sleep schedules, so I can make it for her. Damn thing is loud, though, and I'm not used to that.
In other news, UN Secretary General Kofi Anan announced today that the US would be in violation of international law if we attacked Iraq without a UN resolution authorizing war. I suppose that means we'll have to arrest ourselves, since we're the only viable candidate for the title "World's Policemen." The entire situation continues to stink. The current tragedy, I think, is that we're going to attack Iraq because it is too expensive to keep most of the US military camped out in the Kuwaiti desert all summer, but there is no other way of guaranteeing that the Iraqis will even pretend to disarm. Of course, that raises the question: will going to war actually be cheaper than deploying? I think so, but not in pure dollar terms. The big cost of the deployment isn't economic as much as it is opportunity. If most of our combat strength is camping out in Kuwait, then they're not menacing idiot North Korean dictators and dealing with other threats. So we're going to attack Iraq because we can't credibly let them flout the disarmament process now and we can't wait 6-8 months for the inspectors to finish failing to find all of Iraq's nasty little toys. It's very sad.
I wonder what Joe thinks about it?
March 23rd Two entries a month! The madness continues.
I washed the car by hand last week, which gives one an idea how dirty the damn thing was. Washing a car by hand is one of those things that my sibs and I used to do for Dad to get spare change - it's not really dignified effort. But my car was a brownish-grey from the accumulated dirt after the ice storm, and enough was enough so I coated it with Pine Sol and hosed it down. Mmmm... Pine-Sol, the wonder cleansing fluid. Just don't bathe your kids in it, okay?
I also had to do some plumbing work this weekend (bleh!) since Rhonda decided the pipes were clogged. An attempt to clear them with vinegar failed and off to Home Depot we went to get new showerheads and teflon tape. A couple of bits are still leaking, but the water pressure is way up and hopefully that will help stop the tangles in my hair.I've been watching the war like just about everyone else on Earth (except maybe Rhonda, who just lets me watch it and then asks me about it. I'd really love to get her a basic introduction to geo-politics, so I didn't have to explain so much of the basics to her. Of course, I'd have to get two copies so I wouldn't have to make so much up. But I digress...) Watching the war is hard, given that I don't have a TV. The mainline news sources (CBS, NBC, Fox, BBC, Sky, etc) are okay, but so slow to update. I can't imagine what it must have been like in WWII, getting updates once a week at best. It must have been damn easier for the guys at the top to spin the war, without having to worry about people bitching because the military has only gone 100 miles in 4 days (which is damn fast) and it looks like it may take more than 2 weeks to wrap up the whole kit and kaboodle. Jesus.
The on the scene reporting is pretty cool, and its given me a great insight into why 100 miles in 4 days is considered fast. The mortar attack yesterday was a great example, I think. A couple of idiot Iraqis lob a few mortar shells at a convoy and don't come close to hitting it. The convoy still has to stop while people get out, find where the attacks are coming from, kill the Iraqis, and then secure the area. Securing the area is the problem - the convoy probably spent 4 hours searching for other Iraqis and getting reorganized and recovering people who went to quickly fix their vehicles or whatever. So the vehicles are probably going 10-30 miles an hour, but they're only going that fast for an hour or two a day before they get caught up in some insane silliness. ... I know it's not much of an observation, but it seems to have gotten past the TV journalists.
I've been getting all my news from The Command Post which is just a collection of people watching TV news and posting short notes about what they see. Still, it's the fastest way to get the up-to-the-minute lies, rumors, misstatements, and hearsay about the war.
I really can't wait for the books on the war to come out. The history books. I'm tired of the anticipation, I want this over. Not that I think its a failure if it takes more than 4 days, I just like reading about my wars as history and not living through them. Great days can still be a pain in the tail.
And on that note, I'd better iron my shirt and brush my hair before attending an Oscars party tonight. Friviolity is strength!
March 24th So Michael Moore won an Oscar Bowling for Columbine and ranted about a fictious president leading us into a fictious war. Of course, to keep with the fictious theme, he won his Oscar for a fictious movie that claims to be a documentary but staged several scenes and edited Heston's speeches to make it look like he said things he did not actually say. You go, Moore.
The Oscar's party was fun, the hostess and I being quite catty about the clothes and whatnot. Some people kept giving me shocked glances (hi, Sweetie!) but isn't the entire point of the Oscars to make fun of these people?
March 31st I wanted to write a rant about the (male) members of Austin No Kidding! who are bitching about the lack of (single) females of the same, but I can't really get the fire going in me. My general response is, "hey, fuck you, you wankers." These guys come to one or two events, ignore anything without breasts or any female over the age of 40, and then bitch about their inability to get a girlfriend. I spent 2 years in ANK! making friends with everyone before meeting Rhonda. Now I'm still making friends, with the married couples and some of the single guys and a few of the single females (though mostly RHonda makes friends with the females). A lot of the whiny guys are creepy and I won't recommend them to the single females. If the guys were less whiny and more friendly, they'd be less creepy and I might try to organize an introduction, but as they are, no way.
Okay, I wrote a rant anyway, but not as big and formal a rant as I expected. I did write one of the wankers a letter, but I'm sure he'll ignore it because that's what they usually do.
Hmmmm... I wonder if I should edit this? Nah. If you're the fellow in question and by some off chance you're reading this, prove me wrong by making nice with people and setting up that Single's event that Janet suggested. It's always easier to bitch about something than to take positive action, but fixing something is more satisfying than bitching about it.
Which means I should stop bitching about this, but really, I am dating a very nice someone, so I don't need to do anything about it because it's not my problem.
April 2ndI got an email from Richard announcing we were done and promptly lost it, I don't know how. I'll feel much better about knowing we were done if it weren't for the large pile of work we still have to do.
April 16th My sorta-boss, Richard, took his sabbatical last summer. The way things are going, I think he's going to want another sabbatical this fall. I certainly do... the project wouldn't be half as stressful as it weren't for some of my co-workers, who seem to spend half their time thinking up new and weird questions to ask and the other half thinking up news ways to argue with settled issues. How hard is to understand that when the senior architect says, "We're not changing this," that the time to debate is over?
In other news, I got a promotion to More Work this week. I'm now the Team Lead for the Linux team, which is basically myself and one other guy (and maybe someone in California, part time, maybe, not quite sure). This doesn't give me any extra pay or privileges, but it does grant me the responsibility for maintaining schedules on Linux projects and I can write proposals for possible new Linux projects. Which I can then design and implement, more on less in my own time since the one other guy already has a full task list. Not to say that I don't have a full task list, but I get to do all this too. Frankly, I think Elsie conned me so she could get more of her own work done.
I have a vague hope that this promotion to More Work will someday be followed by a promotion to a more senior technical position and a pay raise. Probably not, unless I get a patent, significant external publication, or a trade secret. Pretty unlikely given that I'm a Linux developer. Feh. I need another 2 years in company before I can even be considered for promotion anyway. Double feh. I wonder if a Linux driver is considered significant external publication?
April 17th A further rant on my co-workers: You guys need to get some perspective. Just because you rely on some weird, strange tool like Python and find it useful does not mean that everyone in the world does. AMD has a very limited amount of money to fund software development and that money is going to get spent on products with a real business case and not your particular pet weirdness. Get it?
And just in case one of my co-workers reads this rant and gets offended: tough, and double tough. If I'm professional towards you on business time, don't bitch about what I write in my own space on my private time.
May 6th Buying exercise equipment is too complicated, or at least, not made sufficiently easy by the web. I don't want to order something online and spend $50 on shipping and handling when I could just go to the store, but hell if I know where specialized fitness stores are in Austin. My original plan was to just buy a cheap $150 elliptical trainer from Wal-Mart, but they didn't have it and now I'm getting a bonus so my potential budget has gone up - though not enough to afford a really nice $3000 Flexor elliptical, which would almost be ideal if they weren't so damn large. Ah, well.
No other news, thank you.
May 25thRhonda and I decided to buy a wireless router today, now that my laptop with the wireless card is working again. That part went reasonably well. Trying to get the router and card working with encryption was unreal. Exactly who the hell at Microsoft thought that making people type 32 random characters in a password text field (the ones that turn characters into *) was a good idea? And what moron supervisor then decided that having done that, it was a really good idea for people to have to do it again, to "confirm their passcode". God, I hate Microsoft. I almost never get mad - frustrated and despairing, but not mad - about computers. That exercise in rampant stupidity had me bellowing.
June 3rd I flew to Germany yesterday, for one of the mostly pointless SuSE development conferences. I mean, there is some value, in that I get to talk to the SuSE developers face to face, but I don't know if there's seven-to-nine thousand dollars worth of value, since I say most of what I want to say to them in about 3 hours.
Anyway, last night I was fairly jetlagged and ended up watching German cable TV at about 4 am. South Park in German (which doesn't get translated to Sud Park though I'd have thought it would) was not the weirdest thing I saw. Even though it was pretty weird.
These German meetings would be a lot more fun if the Germans would develop air conditioning. Geez.
June 30th I was poking around on SelectSmart, taking their quiz on who my ideal candidate would be. Not a good sign for my impartiality when my first reponse to seeing Gephart's name was, "I'm not going to vote for a Democrat!" ... er. So I decided to see why they thought Gephart was the man for me, and I clicked over to his website.
The Democrats have a reputation for not being serious about foreign policy. Maybe the fact that Gephart's own site doesn't mention foreign policy or the War on Terror as campaign issues. I literally have no idea on where the guy stands.
Too bad. If he had a decent opinion on the issue, and didn't hate guns, nuclear power, and tax cuts, maybe I couldn't vote for him. But I don't know, and that's a bad sign in a Presidential candidate.
October 24th I've been a Sprint customer for over three years, and today was the first time they've called me to ask about my contract. They wanted to extend it for two years and sweeten it a tad. I guess some good is coming out of the "number portability" legislation, but I think I'll wait for November 31st or so to renegotiate with Sprint, when I can easily shop deals with their competitors. I have to say that Sprint are a bunch of rat-bastards for trying to lock me in for two years just before the legislation becomes effective on November 24th. I wonder how many people are going to get taken by this?
October 31st That did not go over well. Maybe things will change.
On an unrelated note, working with Red Hat Linux can be incredibly frustrating. The complete lack of interest in getting their product to work with other industry leading companies' products is breathtaking.
Probably shouldn't have written that. Ah, well.
November 2nd Things changed.
January 3rd I'm still alive. I need to clean this page up. I have no plans to do so anytime soon.
All my friends, like Rhonda and I, are hermits. This makes it hard to do much of anything.
January 10th The Palestinian Prime Minister announced on Wednesday that if Israel completed the security wall, unoccupied the Occupied Territories, sealed its borders, and quit the intermittent peace discussions, then the Palestine Authority would have no choice but to "seek to forge a single bi-national state with Israel."
I'm not exactly sure how this is supposed to work. Are the Palestinians going to hold elections and send representatives to the Knesset? Maybe they could elect Arafat as the representative from Ramallah and then the Israelis would have to let him travel since he'd be an Israeli citizen and legislator. I'm sure that'd work.
Why the hell would anyone believe that you can just declare yourself to be part of another country? This just makes no sense, and sadly, there hasn't been any commentary on it.
My other problem with this stupid scheme is that isn't a single, bi-national Palestinian/Israeli state been the Arab goal since 1948? They've tried war, they've tried inept diplomacy, they've tried whining to the EU, they've tried terrorism... none of that worked, so now they're just going to declare that they're Israelis. What makes them think that would work any better than anything else?
The article I'm reading on this suggests that if the Palestinians dissolve the Palestinian Authority, the Israelis would have to resume the full legal and financial burden of caring for them. But what if the Israelis don't? They're not occupying the territory, so they wouldn't be an occupying power... what happens to a population when no one wants to rule them? Who is responsible then?
It's just the weirdest thing I've seen in the last 365 days. Or one of them, anyway, and I just don't get it.
Disclaimer I completely support the right of Jewish Israelis to have their own, predominantly Jewish state and the Arabs can just lump it. At least until such time as any Arab state demonstrates the ability to respect freedom of religion for anyone who isn't a member of the locally dominant branch of Islam. Probably after then, too, but until the Jews in Israel have some guarantee that an Arab majority won't just pass a new set of Nuremberg laws, there's no point even discussing schemes that result in an Arab majority in Israel.
February 3rd In honor of Super Tuesday, I have to ask a question that I've been meaning to ask my Democrat-party friends but haven't had a chance to ask (I hate talking politics in mixed groups 'cause not everyone is sane).
But really, what the hell is up with the Kerry nomination? Did the Dems say to themselves, "Boring senator with a war record against a popular president who missed out on Vietnam? That worked great for the GOP in '96, it'll work just as well for us!" Or is there actually a some logical reason to support this that I'm missing? Anyway.
I need to reconnect one of my Linux machines to the network, 'cause editing this journal in a cygwin terminal on Windows is a pain. Which is one of the many reasons I haven't been editing it.
February 25th If Europeans are so damn sophisticated, why don't they assume that people with non-Anglo last names writing from American email addresses are probably non-Anglo descended Americans, and not natives of European countries?A few weeks ago, I wrote up a technical issue I'd been working on at AMD and posted the information on an international mailing list. Since then, I've been getting email from Germans who have looked at my last name, and decided to be helpful and clever and write to me in German. Which, despite my last name, I don't understand at any meaningful level.
The next time I write up an issue for that mailing list, I'm going to conclude with "If you have any further questions on this issue, you can contact me at <<>WORK ADDRESS<>>. Please send all emails in English." This is getting stupid.
June 11th I finally (after 4 reinstalls and a lot of swearing) got wireless networking working on my laptop. I should be posting a bit more.
November 12th Maybe I won't be posting a bit more.
Rhonda and I are engaged to get married, and have been for nearly a month. The wedding is currently scheduled for December 4th, for reasons I'm not about to go into here.
That isn't all, but that's all I feel like typing right now.
December 5th Rhonda and I got married yesterday. It was a good thing, and I'm quite happy about it. A web page will be forthcoming, but I really have better things to do today than worry about wedding related details, given that I've been doing too much of that for a month anyway.
I was never capable of not fiddling with a watch, which invariably led to a broken or lost watch. I'm not sure how well this wedding band thing is going to work out.
* * *
I poured myself a Fuzzy Navel a while back, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that we still had peach schnapps in the house. In retrospect, I should have been more surprised because I haven't had any schnapps in the house for quite some time.
My lovely bride wanted to taste the schnapps, and claimed it was "quite strong." I mocked her weenie wine drinking tolerance, claiming that schapps is only slightly stronger than wine. I then went to check the bottle, and realized that there wasn't any schnapps in the house. It was actually the remnants of a bottle of 70 proof peach brandy, which is probably why this entry is so hard to type. Not that you can notice, but I can. Excuse the typoes if you can notice.
That is all. For now, anyway. I just got married, I have no idea what new behavior I'm going to start exhibiting now.
December 7th I don't really want to go to work this morning, so I'm stalling.
I updated several ancient pages and added a directory of unsorted wedding pictures so you can see just how dorky I look in a tuxedo. Fortunately my wife is rather cute, so you can just at her instead. It's what I do.
Ring Update Still on my finger. Still not comfortable, though.
You can comment on my meaningless rants by emailing me at mlangsdo@io.com, or you could just ignore me.
Or you can tell me all about yourself with my new guestmap. Is that cool or what?