For a couple days, I seem to have trouble getting to hosts on my own network, and I recently noticed that I’m getting IP addresses in the wrong range. This should have been a clue. 😉 I just realized that I’m on my neighbor’s wireless network.
Not good.
I had a teflon tape moment (to borrow a metaphor from MJD) recently in discovering the watch command.
You know how you run the same command repeatedly, trying to see if it changed? Like ls -la file.name to see when it’s done downloading, or ps ax | grep foo to see if a particular process has terminated, or whatever. Well, turns out that the watch command does exactly that:
watch -n 10 ls -la file.name
Now, you were already aware of that, and have been using it for years, or it’s a completely new thing to you, and you’ll wonder why you never knew about it. Like teflon tape.
I now use this command several times a day, and can’t imagine how I put up with all that extra typing before. Right now, I’m using it to watch my firewall ruleset change as the spam pours in. The spammers seem extra busy this week.
I’ve had a set of computer speakers and subwoofer sitting in the closet for some time, waiting for when I have an office in which I can use them. I finally dragged them out this weekend and set them up in the place where I usually use my laptop. I figured I might as well be using them for something.
After a little experimentation, I’ve discovered that the headphone jack on my laptop is broken, and only sends signal in one channel unless you lean on one side of it. What genius thought it would be a good idea to put the headphone jack on the front of the laptop? (ie, facing one’s lap.) Seems to guarantee that if you actually use your laptop in your lap – like, say, while flying – you’ll break it.
So it turns out that my Palm Tungsten E produced better sound than my laptop, which seemed rather strange to me. So I’ve got my Tungsten plugged into these speakers and subwoofer, and listening to “Feedback” while working. The only trouble there is battery life.
I’ve been listening to Early Days & Latter Days, which I picked up at Fry’s in Palo Alto. I guess I had forgotten quite how much Zep I listened to in high school and college. Lots and lots of memories in this music.
If it keeps on raining,
Levee’s going to break.
If it keeps on raining,
Levee’s going to break.
When the levee breaks,
I’ll have no place to stay.
I remember that being how we’d talk about the stress and workload, among other things. “If it keeps on raining …”, we’d say. And then, later, “All last night, sat on the leveee and moaned.”
Of course, Kashmir and Stairway have their own set of memories.
On a related note, I found that when I tried to play these CDs in the CD player software under Linux (whatever one that happened to be) it was unable to play it. Perhaps some kind of “copy protection”? Dunno. Worked fine one I ripped it to Ogg. I guess I’ll never actually listen to it from the physical media.
While at OSCon, I spoke with someone who was a representative for a company that I would really like to work for. People I know work there, and seem mostly happy. And it’s a cool/interesting company, with respect to technology usage. He was encouraging, but not so much that I could assume it was a done deal.
Well, I’m afraid I allowed myself to get my hopes up just a little too much, even though I knew it was, realistically, a long shot, given that I’m not willing to move out of central Kentucky. So when I spoke with him today, and they said that, unfortunately, they really needed people in LA, and they would keep me in mind for future positions, I was sorely disappointed.
Granted, life is not unpleasant, but I would still like to be working somewhere where I feel like I’m making a difference in the world, and where I’m actually doing something I’m really good at, as opposed to a job that I can do, but which doesn’t really require any particular skills that I’ve worked so hard to develop.
So, I’m not exactly depressed, but very disappointed. Maybe something will come up, and they’ll be able to use someone off site. I’ll try not to get my hopes up. The secret is keeping expectations low.
I’ve hired a few great hackers. In general, it is very hard to get them to work on things that they’re not interested in. However, if you can spark their interest, you can persuade them to give you better work than you are paying them for. This is a very difficult balance to maintain.
Now, I certainly don’t claim to be a great hacker. But, when working on projects that are uninteresting to me, my burnout rate is very fast. But I’m also disciplined enough to keep plodding on. I’m doing an upgrade now – roughly 200 machines from NT to XP, and RAM in about 600 machines. This is not exciting work. But I keep doing it because it’s what I’m getting paid to do. And, after all, my job is what I do in order to pay for the part of my life that matters.
The thing is, I think that this is what Paul Graham is saying. He’s speaking both to employers and to the hackers themselves, about the good and bad parts of hiring “hackers.” They will produce quality work, but they are harder to motivate, because very few business problems are interesting. On the other side, if you’re one of those folks, get over yourself and learn to work under those conditions, or learn to look for another job. The days of the “rock star” programmer are long gone, and folks need to adjust.
Does the “hacker ethos” need to go away? Of course not. It is very valuable. But it needs to be tempered with a sober understanding no job is exciting all the time, and many are never exciting, but you’re not being hired for your own personal amusement, but for the benefit of a capitalist economy, and one business in particular. For the rare Great Hacker that gets to work on fun stuff all the time, relish it, because it won’t last.
Now, there are some things in the article that I disagree with, and many of these things are put in there *specifically* to pander to a particular audience. The whole “python programmers are smart, java programmers are dolts” thread that runs through it is both unnecessary and false. After all, a Great Hacker should be language-blind, right? The “get your hacker a nicer office” bit is a nice sentiment, but grossly self-serving, and simply impractical in most organizations. Treating programmers like rock stars went out with the dot-bomb, and isn’t coming back. It was really nice while it lasted, and some of us have fond memories.
On the whole, I’m not really sure who the target audience for this article is. If it is managers, it will largely get ignored. “Yeah, nice, but I’m not treating my programmers like superstars or spoiled children.” If it is the hackers themselves, then it needs to emphasize that not all of the character traits that he is discussing are *good* things, and some of them may be worth trying to change or adapt. If this is merely a psychological character study, then I think it’s pretty much right on.
What I guess I’m still not entirely clear on is why people are reacting quite so negatively towards the article. I need to read more of these reactions. I have a suspicion that the anti-Java sentiments in the article are spurring a lot of the negative reactions to be more negative than they would be otherwise.
While various people are asserting that Paul Graham’s paper Great Hackers is wrong-minded, I have to say that the talk at OSCon, from which it was derived, was one of the better things going at OSCon. Granted, a large part of his audience was the Great Hackers of whom he spoke. I don’t actually have time right now either to read the entire thing, or to figure out why so many people think that he’s wrong. But those of you who were not at his talk might be interested in reading at least the introduction to what he’s saying. I think he makes some brilliant points. And I particularly like his introduction:
I didn’t mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it efficient. I didn’t want to waste people’s time telling them things they already knew. It’s more efficient just to give them the diffs. But I suppose that’s bound to yield an alarming book.
(See Feedster for some of the remarks being made on this topic.)
I read Dancing Barefoot on the flight out to OSCon, and I read Just A Geek on the flight back. Wil Wheaton is a hugely talented writer. I am really glad I got to attend his signing at last year’s OSCon, and to hear him read. I wish him huge success with his writing, and I look forward to reading his books in years to come as he develops his style.
And, for the record, if there was ever any reason that I disliked Wesley Crusher, it was simply that he was exactly the same age as me, and he got a chance to be on that show with all those amazing actors, and in Star Trek, for Bob’s sake, and I DIDN’T. But, while I do remember feeling jealous, I don’t actually remember disliking Wesley.
Audience member: What are you current thoughts on the end of the universe?
Freeman Dyson: Well, it’s not looking good.
The question is, do you really want to live a risk-free life. If you do, you might as well take the pill now and get it over with,
Every generation needs to lose a lot of things in order to think new thoughts.
Yesterday, when the flood of fans slowed down (I think he had a meeting or something), I wandered around to the other authors there who were signing, and got them to sign bookplates for various books that are on my shelf.
It would seem that no matter how long I am immersed in this community, when I’m in the presence of Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and various other folks, I’m still always reduced to what Wil Wheaton refers to as Drooling Fan Boy. Jars of clay notwithstanding, these guys are still heroes in my eyes, and I’m reduced to incoherency when I have the opportunity to speak to them.
I remember the first time I met Brian Behlendorf. It was actually at an OSCon, although I forget which one. I had some grand sentiment planned to tell him, but I babbled something about being honored to meet him, and then fled. It is rather amusing, in retrospect. And, given that someone just did something like that to me yesterday, I’m sure it was vaguely unsettling for him, too.
Ok, I need to go down and secure a seat near power outlets.