My brother-in-law sent the following quick communique from Haiti this evening:

Quick message while I have email at a guest house. Most communication
is down. LIttle phone contact. No internet at school or home.

This is terrible. Spent last night outside on soccerfield with
family. We are OK. House is structurally OK, but a mess. School
will be closed indefinitely.

Dead bodies everywhere. I’ve contacted all but 6 teachers. Several
good friends are missing. Many big buildings collapsed. Hopefully
we’ll get communications back soon.

Many teachers involved in search and rescue.

We are OK, but please keep us in your prayers.

Please pass on this email to family, etc.

He’s the principal at a school in Port Au Prince.

It seems like Haiti can never get a break, and because things are so hard there, every disaster is that much harder to bear when it happens.

I started sketching, a few months back. Last night, while my Beloved read “Son of a Witch”, I listened and sketched whatever was in view. It’s relaxing, and I think maybe some of them are not too bad. I put them all on Flickr this morning.

Over the last decade or so, I’ve had a pretty consistent cycle on learning new technologies, which I’d really like to break out of. I start by believing that something is hard – probably too hard for me to learn. And then … well, I stay there for an absurdly long time. Later on, usually out of necessity, or just because I’m tired of thinking that it’s hard, I force myself try, really hard, even though I probably won’t be able to do it. And, lo and behold, it’s usually a lot easier than I expected.

One of the unfortunate consequences of this is that I put off, for ridiculously long times, things that I wish to accomplish.

Examples of this include mod_perl, mod_rewrite, C programming, Apache modules, and jQuery. But there are others. I do this a lot.

Two things have brought this starkly to my attention recently. But they both amount to the same thing – complaining about something for *years* before finally doing something about it. And I think that in the geek world we get an awful lot of joy out of complaining about things. But fixing them is so much more full of satisfaction, it’s surprising that we often put it off so long.

The first of these was the PHP documentation. I have complained for years that the “how to install php on Apache” documentation was wrong. Yes, I’m ashamed to admit it. Years. Probably five. Perhaps more. And during that whole time, people would come on to the Apache IRC channels, ask “why isn’t this working”, and I’d say “Because the PHP docs are wrong. Silly PHP people.” All that time, of course, I was ignoring a simple truth. I’m one of those PHP people. I use PHP. For most of those years I made my living with PHP. I was one of those annoying people who complains without doing anything. That’s embarrassing.

I have repented of my ways, and I’m about half-way through fixing the offending documentation, not only to make it more accurate and less prone to error, but to strengthen the ties between the two communities, which are hurt by jerks like me who spend too much time saying “that’s a PHP problem” and too little time saying “let’s see how we can fix this.”

The other incident is within the Apache HTTPd project. I have been a committer on Apache HTTPd since September 2001, and have done some work on the documentation. But during that time I have said, many times, that I merely write about what other people do, and have declined to accept any responsibility when things don’t work quite as people want them to.

Granted, writing Apache module C code is a lot harder than patching Docbook. But it’s not impossible. I’ve just convinced myself that it’s Too Hard For Me, even though I wrote the for Nick’s excellent Apache Modules book.

Now, I did try once, long ago, to patch one of the Apache modules. mod_access, I believe. And because I had no idea what I was doing – and, more importantly, because I didn’t test it once I was done – my change was reverted within five minutes of my committing it. Mostly, I don’t talk about that, because that was entirely my fault, and was a stupid mistake. Mistakes are fine. Not testing changes is not excusable.

And I also gave a whiny presentation back in 2006, at ApacheCon in Stuttgart, entitled “Why I Hate Apache.” It was amusing, and was better received than it deserved. And, to give credit where it’s due, almost all of the things I complained about have since been fixed. None of them were fixed by me. That’s a pity. The talk would have been much more effective if it had been accompanied by patches.

But now, because I finally got off my bum and decided to do something, I actually have two changes in Apache, which will be part of the next release. The QSD flag in RewriteRule, and a teensy tweak in mod_autoindex’s CSS support (not yet complete). Neither of these are earth-shaking, but they’re the first step, I hope, over a hurdle that I set for myself for no particularly good reason.

That was a lot of talk to get to my points.

1) Don’t decide that something’s too hard before you’ve tried it. That’s not only selling yourself short, it’s being selfish with your time and talents.

2) Complaining about stuff without doing anything about it is just adding to the problem. Filing bugs is important and good, but just whining and complaining is a strong disincentive for anyone else to fix it.

So if there’s a theme to my goals (resolutions, if you like) for the new year, it’s this: Stop complaining and do something about it.

I made some resolutions last year, but they were more goals than resolutions. This year, I have a list of rather specific goals – things I want to accomplish in the coming 360 days or so. Some of them are rather vague and unmeasurable, like learning or improving a particular skill, (how do I know when I’m good enough?) while some are pretty specific To-Do items.

As I was writing out this list, I found that more than half of the items involve writing in some way. Most of it is technical writing, but some of it is non-technical. And I’ve spent much of the last two weeks working on the mod_rewrite-related parts of these goals. I’ve worked on the Rewrite Flags document, and gone through the module documentation several times, all of which is a prelude to working on the new edition of my book. And I’m now one day behind on modrewrite.org.

Other goals involve tasks around the house, such as putting up yet more shelves for our overflowing book collection, and finally cleaning out the garage and attic. But most of the goals involve, in some way, staring at a computer screen.

No, I’m not going to list the goals. I read somewhere, several times this past year, that announcing your goals is the first step down the road to forgetting about them. And several of the skill-improving goals are skills that I’m a little reticent to admit I haven’t already mastered.

(Addendum to what I already posted earlier on Facebook …)

This evening Disney ensured that I will never again watch one of their movies in the theater. I clearly can no longer trust that a Disney G-rated movie is safe for my children to watch. Instead, I’ll wait for it to come out on video, and then preview it before showing it to the kids.

Voodoo and tarot and talismans and demons and deals with the devil, and a guarantee that the kids will have nightmares for weeks to come.

Good job, Disney. I’m sure Walt would be so very proud.

Time was when if it was made by Disney, you could be assured that it would be safe, heartwarming, and perhaps even have a good message behind it. Then came Hunchback, and now this monstrosity, and suddenly we’re in a world where Walt Disney is no longer a guarantee of quality and family-friendly entertainment.

I guess Roy died just in time.

Help me understand this, people. You thought it was a good idea when he promised to close Gitmo. You did realize, didn’t you, that the folks inside would have to go somewhere else, right? Why is this a surprise? Or was the expectation that he’d throw open the doors and give them a friendly pat on the bum as they walked out?

As I understood it, the promise was not a statement that those folks shouldn’t be incarcerated, but rather than an off-shore facility with limited access to the press was an ideal situation for abuse. It seems pretty obvious that if you close a prison, the folks in it have to go somewhere else.

Seems to me like just another opportunity for manufactured outrage. Please keep in mind that if this move surprises you, you’re admitting that you didn’t think about the promise itself for more than about a half-second. And yet none of these news stories say “I told you so.” Why is that?