The Sect of Rama

This weekend wasn't the first- and certainly won't be the last- time I've offered up my help technical support with a friend or family member's computer problem. Helping my Mom and Pop stay current is recently paying off in the forum of old family photos scanned in and sent via email. This time the reward was a half case of wine, care of a brother-in-law with a dead computer and good taste!

The haul was a bottle each of: 2004 Kongsgaard Chardonnay, 2003 Turley Rancho Burro Zinfandel, 2005 Brewer-Clifton Ashley's Pinot Noir, 2005 Zin Alley Vicolo Della Zinfandel, 2006 Roar Gary's Vineyard Pinot Noir, 2003 Aida Vineyards Vineyard 29 Zinfandel.

I've had each of these before, besides the Turley, and am a huge fan of the last four. Thanks Joe! Perhaps I should extend my tech support offer to anyone with an impressive cellar. :)

I've mentioned before my recent career choice to jump back in the trenches. And now, thanks to some smart people taking smart actions (I'm not sure I'm at liberty to discuss in more detail), most of my old organization is now part of Sun's new cloud computing effort.

I'm crazy excited to be working with the likes of Jim Parkinson and Lew Tucker again, and (continuing to work for) Will Snow.

Today marks my twelve year anniversary at Sun. That's an eternity for any job, but seems at least four times that in the tech industry. Why so long? The primary reason is the people. I've worked with enough bosses and peers to recognize a good thing when I have it, so the years keep rolling by. Secondary is I believe in our products, more than ever. Sure I would certainly change lots of things at Sun when given the opportunity (everyone drives better from the back seat :)), but I find myself recommending our stuff to anyone who would listen- with what little reputation I have at stake- because I genuinely think they're the best. So I'm still here, and happy.

Today was also a tough one. I communicated to the team the details on my toughest role change since entering the work force: I've chosen to hang up the boss hat and don the worker bee hat once more, after a three year run. I've changed positions and orgs numerous times, but this is the first time it affects other folks so directly- so I've been mulling it over for a long time.

I hesitantly accepted the position because it was such a drastic departure from what attracted me to the field since grade school: creating stuff by writing code. Over the years, I've hired locally and internationally, absorbed existing teams, suffered attrition and dealt with RIFs, and more than anything learned the importance of team cohesion and what it means to be a good manager (and good report). I'd like to think it's been a net positive run for the team and the company- I know it has for myself. The team has been massively productive and the current group is super low maintenance. And they're all my friends, so it's even harder to walk away, partly because I feel it my responsibility to see them done right, partly because I may be spending less time with some of them.

So why change back to individual contributor? I've come up with lots of reasons both for it and against it. And I'm just as hesitantly switching roles again, this time to something that's currently undefined (dealing with the transition was the top priority, figuring out what's next is just starting to enter my mind.) But at the moment, it feels like our org has plenty of strong leadership but not enough folks in the trenches getting stuff done. So I'm picking up a shovel and getting back to work partly because it feels like the best thing for the extended team, partly because I know it'll be refreshing to get into it again.

I haven't ruled out switching back again at some point in the future. In fact my boss thinks it's just a matter of time before I ask for just that (and he tends to be right about this sort of thing.) Time will tell. :)

My friends Tom, Igor and I have a good laugh whenever we see another comment on this old entry questioning the realism of the show Man Vs Wild. It seems he's got a vast legion of supports, largely women and military men. O RLY?

With the start of this season, each return from commercial break opens with this disclaimer:


no doubt as a response to the wave of criticism that the show is portrayed as genuine when in reality much of it is staged, or safety precautions put in place beforehand but never shown to the viewer (such as ropes and harnesses).

Now my beef has never been that he has help. Its very clear there's at least one camera man following him at all times- so he's never truly out on a limb. Its that he opens with the statement that he's going to (paraphrased) show you how to survive in dangerous situations, when in reality he takes what would be very unnecessary risks that he probably wouldn't even do if there weren't that off-screen safety net. Certainly makes for entertaining watching, but surviving? No.

So I was pleased to see this recent entry on Les Stroud's blog talking about the first shoot of Survivorman season 3! And better yet he's doing something that might actually occur to normal people: simulating a lost backpacker in the Sierra Nevada. I can't wait. (and yes, I will continue to watch Man Vs Wild. Who else is going to climb the waterfalls and dig up the porcupines?)

I couldn't let a month go by without some sort of update, even if its rambling. So whats new? Nothing terribly interesting in itself, but in the past week I've:

• Been bitten playing basketball (ok, had someone's teeth pushed into my arm).
• Did my first home demolition work. The sketchiest part was pulling down the wall around the main power panel.
• Picked out tile and fixtures for the new bathroom. This was way easier than many led us to believe.
• Celebrated Mrs R's first mother's day.
• Learned a lot about German Riesling. Trying to find something to cellar a case of for a decade or more (most likely a Spätlese). I'll be cracking these at the end of the week, and trying them over the course of several nights to try to get an idea of how they will age: 1994 Schloss Schonborn Johannisberger Klaus Kabinett, 2002 Carl Schmitt-Wagner Longuicher Maximiner Herrenberg Kabinett, 2005 August Kesseler Rüdesheimer Berg Roseneck Spätlese Gold Capsule, 2005 Dönnhoff Schlossböckelheimer Felsenberg Spätlese, 2006 Selbach Oster Zeltinger Schlossberg Spätlese.
• At Levi's request, here are some quick tasting notes on a couple of bottles I cracked this week. 2002 Heitz Cellars Napa Cabernet Sauvignon: subdued, great balance, surprising amount of fruit given its age. And a 2006 Strong Arms (R Wines) Shiraz South Australia: looks, smells like aussie shiraz, but lots less dust and way more acid. Can't wait to try it again tonight after its had some air.
• Took around 50 photos- uploaded maybe 15 of them. Fell back in love with my Nikon f/2 35mm lens.

This video has renewed my interest in raising bees. I didn't even think to keep the hive on the roof. Thats a great solution- even though I've got a backyard (as its not near any neighbor's backyards, or readily accessible by children.)

I've got nothing more to add to this excellent write-up and video clip for the alternate ending to I Am Legend. What were you thinking Warner Brothers- this is the ending that should have been.

I just noticed my Helimot H-20 motorcycle gloves sport a 2D:4D digit ratio synonymous with aggressive behavior in men.

Growing up, I watched a lot of nature shows on PBS, and they were largely upbeat and fun- so much so that there have been funny parodies made in its honor. A mere two(ish) decades later, and I find myself postponing watching the episodes of Nature on the PVR because they're so fracking depressing. The episode I watched tonight was on the decline of the horseshoe crab and potential extinction of the red knot. And my mind is still reeling from the butterfly effect described in the decline of the Steller's sea lions.

I'll reserve any social commentary, save that being a new parent makes me feel even more urgency, and anger, towards how humans are destroying the earth at breakneck pace.

Via Roy, the Origin of Quake3's Fast InvSqrt()- an interesting investigation and history lesson on a function found in the now open source Quake3 code. While hardcore graphics programming is beyond my area of expertise, it did make me nostalgic for the era when writing very efficient code was important (rather than throwing fast and faster hardware at it, which is how the majority of problems are solved these days.) Great material for a Programming Pearls 3rd edition...

A couple choice quotes:

• I wrote a very fast (pipelineable) & accurate invsqrt() 5+ years ago, to help a Swede with a computational fluid chemistry problem.
• I especially like the integer ops i = 0x5f3759df - (i >> 1); which actually is doing a floating point computation in integer - it took a long time to figure out how and why this works, and I can't remember the details anymore.

Incidently, I finally tossed my the old parts PC with the Matrox and Voodoo 2 pass-through video cards. Should have hooked it up to the Kill-a-Watt first, ah well...

These past few days, my baby has morphed from giving off a faint vanilla smell, to some sort of pleasant fruity smell. (The parents out there know what I'm taking about, those without kids probably think I'm high, but its true.) This is pretty much all you can smell, when there's no activity on the other end. :) Its nice. Curious as to the source of this smell-- as we don't use any scented baby products-- I tried a few searches that led to dead-ends. Just a bunch of folks swooning over it, JLo's purported wish to make a perfume that smells like it, and a bunch of other non-technical nonsense.

Surely there are some baby-oriented Harold McGee's out there, or even a baby HowStuffWorks that have done some research into the cause for that "new bay smell"?

This weekend, a friend took me up in his Cessna Skyhawk 172 for a tour of the San Francisco bay area. Although I've seen the bay from the sky numerous times in commercial jets, it doesn't do it justice looking through that tiny window (although sometimes it does.)

When I saw his plane, I was expecting a loud, rough, unpleasant ride-- my friend described it as a VW bug on wings. But the take off smoother than any Boeing I've been in- and a heck of a lot quicker. We were airborn in what seemed to be less than 10 seconds, with well over 1/2 the runway left. At our cruising altitude of roughly 2000', I felt like I could have fallen asleep- the engine drone was quieter than my motorcycle by far (within the cabin with a headset on), and there was practically no vibration. It was relaxing-- even with the constant chatter in the headset from the tower and other pilots.

Our route took us over SFO, then San Francisco, towards Alcatraz, lastly over the Golden Gate Bridge for a few loops at sunset- you can see some of my photos on Flickr. Unfortunately I didn't expect such great photo opportunities, so I just had my Canon SD600 point-and-shoot, not the SLR. Ah well- perhaps that'll be how I can finagle another ride. ;)

At 2000 feet, things were much smaller than I had expected. Dunno why, but I was thinking I could spot individual people from that altitude (too many daydreams of dropping water balloons on my foes I guess), but in reality, you could only make out individual cars. Another thing I didn't realize was how crowded the skies are above the bay area. We were constantly spotting (and tracking) the vectors of other planes in our vicinity. Something that became fairly difficult and stressful at dusk. One sweet side-affect of this crowding was some turbulence we flew through near SFO. I thought it was just a random thermal, but my friend explained it was the wake of a large jet that passed through that space several minutes earlier. I wonder how strong it would have been had we been there much sooner!

Flying over the bay was a lot of fun-- it has me thinking about all the other things I've never done, despite having lived here for so long. Maybe my next trip will be on a chartered boat for some deep sea fishing. Test out those sea legs. What fish are in season this time of year? ;)

Whats with the lack of blog updates? Its been one week since I've become a father. Mrs R. and I have finally found a rhythm (if you can call it that), and are beginning to feel human once more. Getting chores done that used to be trivial- like mowing the lawn- now feel like massive accomplishments! All that baby advice people have doled out over the past few months suddenly makes sense.

I'm still fairly sleep deprived, but hope to get back into the swing of things with more regular blog updates going forward...

Earlier in the week, my wife and I took a short child and infant CPR class offered by the Red Cross here in the bay area. In a nutshell: it was horrible. I've taken a 2 day long first aid and adult CPR class maybe 10 years ago. The instructor was a 20 year paramedic veteran, and knew what you're really supposed to do, not the BS the Red Cross was pushing.

Now I realize there's only so much you can learn in 4 hours, but what really irritates me is that people may actually think they're prepared after that lame class. Maybe 1/4 of the students were expecting or new parents, the rest were day care workers, nannies, summer camp workers, etc. (It seems taking a child CPR course once a year is required.) So there are parents out there sending their kids places and thinking "oh, they're professionally trained- we're all set." At the end of the class, rather than actually ensuring people knew what to do, the "teacher" just handed out the "You're Certified!" wallet cards.

I don't even recall all the times I was mentally shaking my head at what was being taught- and a few times I tried to challenge it- but it didn't seem the other students really cared, so I stopped interrupting before I turned into "that guy" in every class. Here's a short list of the things that come to the top of my head:

• Breathing: the videos and instructions called for placing a plastic CPR barrier over the victim to protect them and yourself from exchanging anything nasty. At the end of the class, everyone got a keychain version of one. (I'll upload a pic to Flickr if we didn't already throw them out.) Whats wrong with these things? They'll probably add at least 30 seconds from the time you discover a person needs CPR and the time you'll be providing it. And, umm, the person is DYING, do you really care about catching an illness you can pass mouth-to-mouth at this time?! Whats worse is its really difficult to form a good seal over the mouth with one of these cheapo things, so you might not be providing as much oxygen to the victim as you think.
• Choking: the instructions for infants on up was to attempt to dislodge whats blocking the airway via either the Heimlich (or whatever its caled these days) or blows to the back. No mention of how much force to use, or increasing the force should it fail a certain amount of times. You just keep doing it until the person loses consciousness and keep trying while they're on the ground. Again, . Stop pussy-footing around people, break a friggin rib or two and save that person!
• Taking Control: if there's one thing I took away from my training 10 years ago, it was that people freak out in an emergency situation and everyone ends up standing around doing nothing, expecting someone else will. I've seen this countless times with auto accidents, injuries, you name it. Its like people are watching it on TV. The Red Cross class barely covered this, and certainly didn't emphasize it. IMO, the most important thing to do when you arrive at the scene is to take control. Assess the situation, and if you're not alone- give orders to people. "You, call 911!" "You, get me some towels!" "You, make sure to meet the ambulance out front and bring them to us!" You think random people are just gonna do it if you say "can someone please help?" Take control!

Ah well- I could go on, but the point of this whole rant is to call BS on the Red Cross, and hopefully open the eyes of some would-be students. If you want the real stuff, go seek out an instructor who's spent time in the field, a paramedic, fireman, or the like. The Red Cross seems to be in CYA mode to avoid lawsuits later...

Tonight I baked some buttermilk biscuits from the milk produced from the butter making session. They were enjoyed with said homemade butter, and to keep with the theme, a glass of homemade 2004 Dry Creek cabernet. All delicious. Sometimes simple meals are the best.

I also watched stage 16 of the Tour de France, despite the repeated scandals. Basso, Ulrich, Landis (who I still hope is innocent), now Vinokourov and Rasmussen? These are sad days for cycling, one of the last pure sports. Now that the Astana team is out, I'm back to pulling for team Discovery.

The night ends with another couple chapters from Michael Lopp's new book: Managing Humans. If you're a fan of his blog, you'll like the book- even if you're not a pointy hair. I'm usually bored 1/2 way through most books and set them aside- especially if they're about software or management- but this one I'm sure I'll finish.