Category: Databases, Smartphones & Computers

Caveat: Sith Master of Silicon Valley

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Internet & Blogging / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

I was reading a Forbes magazine article (byline Brian Caulfield and Wendy Tanaka 06.13.08) about the failure of the Microsoft-Yahoo deal and Yahoo's subsequent scramble for googlence, and one of the lines that stood out to me was a characterization of Larry Ellison (the wildly eccentric boss of Oracle Corp) as the "Sith Master of Silicon Valley."   I liked the idea that this might be on target.

I'm a shareholder in Oracle, and furthermore, I hold an Oracle certification as a Database Administrator – which is ironic since all my actual DBA and development work has been with Microsoft's competing SQL Server product, for which I hold no certification.

Despite this, I am not a fan of their product line, exactly – it is about as baroque as a high technology product line can get and still function.  The reason I bought stock in the company was, rather, because I saw first hand, during my years working with the Paradise Corp (a pseudonym) IT department the amazing ease with which Oracle's enterprise sales team took my employers for a multimillion dollar ride.  A project which was started in 2003 is still going on, years after the original anticipated "go live" date, and as far as I know, it barely works if at all, and only with a zillion caveats (appropriate to mention, I suppose, for this blog).

I figured if all of Oracle's sales teams were half as effective as the ones working my IT higher ups at Paradise, that company had a locked down revenue stream for decades to come.  So, through thick and thin, I remain a loyal Oracle shareholder – and among all my long-term holdings, it's been, overall, one of the most pleasing.  Or maybe that's just the luck of jumping on (and off and on again) the bandwagon at the right time?

Caveat: Ook!

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Found Online / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / Politics, Economics & Current Affairs

"Ook!" is what is known as an "esoteric programming language."  I've developed a certain passing fascination for these constructs, which I've pursued in my wikipediasurfing.  There are various kinds, but what they share is a certain in-jokey relationship to the practices of theoretical computer science.

Another esoteric language I particularly like is "whitespace" – a programming language that allows you to write code using nothing but ASCII whitespace characters, such as tab, space, and linefeed.  It then treats all other characters as its own  whitespace, thus allowing you to, in theory, embed a secret whitespace program into the code of some other (slightly) more conventional programming language – perhaps "Ook!" 

Meanwhile, I've also been pursuing research into xenotheology – the study of alien belief systems, I guess.  Obviously, since we don't know anything about aliens (yet), this is a strictly hypothetical-based pursuit.  But fascinating.  What do aliens believe?  Or rather, what would they believe, if they existed?  How will what aliens believe interact with what humans believe, in a potential first-contact situation?  Will we be evangelized?  Will they be?  Would human religions as currently structured survive a first contact with an equally (but differently) religious but alien civilization?  I suspect some religions would cope better with aliens than others – especially those currently "fringe" religions that have a belief in aliens (or other worlds/planets), etc., already embedded in their dogmas:  e.g. scientology or, most notably, mormonism.   All of which is to say, which president would you rather have handling a sticky alien first-contact situation:  President Romney or President Huckabee?

Caveat: 김치 찌개 (Kimchi soup) via text-message

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Life in Korea

Sometimes for lunch (at work) I have 김치 찌개, which is a pretty tasty soup based on kimchi, and the kind I have also has tuna and other bits and pieces.
Windows Vista crashed twice for me this morning – I was using it to download some music from a site where I have a membership (emusic.com) that doesn’t seem particularly adept at supporting Linux.
And every time Vista does something, it asks me to approve each little step:  “continue,” “allow,” “yes,” etc.  It’s like working with an insecure 3 year-old.  I can figure out no way to deactivate all these little notifications and requests for approval.  So… just to reiterate: I’m so glad I’m doing most of my work in Linux nowadays.
I finally have got the hang of typing hangeul into my cell phone.  It’s not really straightforward at first – the “consonant” elements of each syllable-glyph are letter-keys, just like in an English-based cell phone keypad – e.g. touch ‘4’ once for ㄱ, twice for ㅋ, etc.  However, the “vowel” component is a composition:  to get ㅒ I have to touch 1-2-2-1, which is to say, vertical bar, dot, dot, vertical bar.  Like drawing a little picture.  So, to key in “김치 찌개” I touch:  4-1-0-0 -> 9-9-1 -> 9-9-9-1 -> 4-1-2-1 ->.   Compare this to what you have to do for English to type “kimchi soup”:  5-5 -> 4-4-4 -> 6 -> 2-2-2 -> 4-4 -> 4-4-4 -> 0 -> 7-7-7 -> 6-6-6 -> 8-8 -> 7 ->.
pictureNot sure if anyone really is interested in this.  I would note, however, that to say essentially the same thing, the Korean method ends up being much more efficient, in terms of the number of times your thumb has to hit the little touchpad on your phone.  I’m guessing this would pan out under broader statistical analysis.  So, is this why text-messaging is so much more popular in Korea  than in the U.S.?
Now all I need is someone with whom to exchange text messages in Korean.  Uh… oh, and I also have to have something I know how to say in Korean.  I’m working on that.
When I need to look up a word, there’s a little dictionary in my phone.  Still haven’t got very good at looking things up in Korean – the search function is “alphabetical” (which is easy if I’m looking English-to-Korean, since I’m really good with alphabetization in English) i.e. there is a “hangeul order” that you have to be comfortable with, to be able to effectively use the search.
So far, it’s easier to wait till I can go online, and go to naver.com’s online dictionary – then I can key the hangeul in using my keyboard (which I more-or-less have the hang of, though on my Linux system I still have to use a hack of keying it into a text-editor and then pasting into the browser, as I haven’t been able to get the browser to allow me to type non-western input methods directly).

Caveat: “There is great chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent”

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Quotable / The Wonders of Work

Location: Los Angeles

Soundtrack: my brother playing L7 and Echoboy on his turntable – good stuff

The quote above is from Mao Tse-tung. Many years ago (maybe 5? 6?) I had placed that quote on the home page (splash page) of my National Account Data Analysis intranet website that I built at ARAMARK (the application affectionately known as Reportomatic). At the time, it seemed very apropos to the IT/database situation there, but I’ve always assumed that the Reportomatic would eventually be upgraded or replaced. 

NadapageAt right is a screenshot of the page under discussion (click image to see larger).

Yet, yesterday morning I went to visit with old friends there: Joanne, Judy, Paul, Tom, Carol, and all the rest, and Joanne showed me that it was still there, exactly the same, all these years later. I was so pleased to have left such an ambiguous legacy!

Not surprising, perhaps, that things have changed so little there, but I still reflect that that company still seems so much more forward-looking and IT savvy than my more recent job, which was a sort of permanent IT disaster-in-progress.

Anyway, Paul and I went out to lunch in Burbank, and had some pretty good sushi at a place called Kabuki. Paul is the most brilliant database administrator I know, and I was surprised to learn he was still with ARAMARK at first, until I learned he’s a new father – this explains a great deal, as suddenly one’s need for stability and reliability in a job becomes more important than one’s frustration with the job’s nature, I suppose. I can sympathize if not quite relate. Anyway, he’s always great to talk with, and parenthood seems to agree with him.

My brother has the most amazing music collection – all kinds of ripped/burned CDs and tons of stuff on vinyl. He’s going through and playing stuff and it makes for a nice sound track.

Caveat: meanwhile, a year later

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / The Wonders of Work

So, like, I should start posting here again. 

Work's been rather unpleasantish.  Lots of stress, not much sense of reward, accomplishment, closure.   So I go into this withdrawel-from-life mode, and curse my fate.  Or something in that vein, anyway.

Tomorrow I'm going to Australia to visit my mother.  Not to where she lives in the northeastern extremities, this time, but rather meeting in Melbourne, thence to galivant around Victoria state, I guess, seeing new things.  She's got a friend in Apollo Bay (SW of Melbourne) which will be a starting point, I'm thinking.

I had put my resume out there, updated, online, a couple weeks back.  So I've been getting a lot of calls from recruiters.  Most intriguing was a nibble from a guy who wanted to forward my resume to Microsoft Corp.  Not likely to pan out, but one always wonders, "what might working for the locus of evil in software be like, exactly?"  I hear they have wicked good benefits.  Probably like what they say about hell – it's much better once you're on the inside. 

Caveat: 10000 questions and a really long commute

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism

The new job has begun.  I'm full of questions all day long, learning a new industry, new data, new applications. 

What's HL7?  It's a data interchange standard (ANSI style) for healthcare industry.

What's AdavantX?  It's a software package for managing hospitals and ASC's (ambulatory surgery centers). 

What's ADT?  Admission, Discharge, Transfer – moving bodies around the system.

I had to go by the HR department upon leaving work today to pick up my new badge.  The HR department is located in a different part of Long Beach (north of downtown instead of northeast, out by the airport, where my new job is).  So I drove over there, then as I was leaving driving up Long Beach Blvd to the 405 and there was this spectacular, postcard-framed view of downtown LA.  Which is what, 20 miles north of here.  Really remarkable, unsmoggy view.  Cool.

Meanwhile, I'm diligently going to the gym each evening.  I'm procrastinating on that even this very moment.  So far, not much to show for it – my weight won't go down, and my legs and back are sore.  This is supposed to be good for me… really.   Somehow, this is involved in "quality of life."

I'm reading (well, trying to read) Adorno's Negative Dialectics – despite the "negative" of the title it's probably one of the most constructive post-WWII efforts at making philosophy useful and interesting.   Up there with Deleuze, Foucault, et al.  But I need Hegel to make sense of this… I'm not conceptually equipped for it.   Whatever.

Caveat: Long Beach, but no beach

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / The Wonders of Work

Long Beach, California, doesn't have a beach – that I know of, anyway.  Good name, then.   

The second-largest city in LA County, I believe.  Which is really saying quite a bit, since LA County must have at least 20 cities over 100,000.  And it's bigger than Minneapolis, anyway.  Whatever – I've always liked it there, sorta – it smells of the sea, unlike most of LA, and it is gritty, without being desolately poor. 

Why in the world did I go to LB?  I had a job interview, which went really well.  Intriguing position, as a DBA and Data Analyst (at the same time, overlapping – no room for boredom, there) at a small healthcare company (runs a few hospitals, pharmacies, clinics, etc.).  Fascinating data problems – like at Paradise Corporation, my alma mater, but with a more clued in management, one hopes. 

Check this out:  the CIO of this company spends 30 minutes interviewing me, and asks these really detailed, complex SQL coding and system admin questions.  This is a CIO who is profoundly nonclueless.  He knows stuff.  Amazing… and compelling.  If they make an offer, I will accept.

Clear and almost smogless today:  southern California at it's best.  I think… hmm, is this place finally growing on me, a little bit?  I've always had a love-hate relationship with this place, intriguing giant city, yes, but a grotesque climate for the most part.  Hot.  Boring.  Hot.  Boring. 

But then it offers up a lovely cloudscape, or a sweeping urbanized swathe of green/brown/grey with a brisk taste of sea air that charms me, on a not-unbearably-hot day. 

Caveat: Saale Valley

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Hiking & Travel / The Wonders of Work

Dateline: Leipzig

Bob, Martin and I walked around Jena for a few hours, visiting some of Bob's old student-haunts. It's a picturesque university town, seat of Freidrich-Schiller-Universität, and location of former Warsaw-pact champion "optics" industry (formerly Zeiss optics I think – before WWII). Anyway, there was at least 10 cm of fresh snow on the ground, and we helped dislodge some stuck cars on narrow streets, and saw the new "Goethe Galerie" (mall) downtown, and university buildings and some medieval stuff – a fragment of the city wall. Jena is quite an old town – 11th or 12th c I guess. Martin works for Zeiss but his position is in the IT department, which was recently outsourced to "HP" – which means that Carly Fiorina was his boss – at least until last week.

This morning, Bob and I took the train to Weimar and changed for the "InterCityExpress" for Leipzig, where I am now. I spent a few minutes just now answering a frustrating email from (ex)work – looks like trouble with the National Accounts commissions reporting process (the finding of new accounts sold under National Agreements eligible for commissions). The sample report run by Ravi & al. is correct format-wise but appears way off-base in terms of content – unless it was meant as a sample (which I don't think it was), it seems like something is amiss in the kingdom of DenMARK.

Bob is off shopping for rare bits of sheet music, and I'm here in the trainstation where I found a hotspot. There's less snow on the ground here than there was farther south, but Leipzig looks like an interesting city. The trip from Weimar up the Saale valley was quite beautiful under the snow, with castles up on the bluffs and old churches and all – reminded me of the Mississippi valley southeast of St Paul, in terms of natural appearance, but with that central european overlay of orderly-chaotic buildings, roads, etc.

Caveat: Beursplein

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Hiking & Travel / Language & Linguistics / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / The Wonders of Work

Dateline:  Amsterdam

I'm sitting in a cafe on Beursplein, in the Beurs van Berlage (whatever that is) in downtown Amsterdam.  I just had a very tasty soup.  I came here looking for WiFi, didn't find t-mobile but figured out KPN (dutch phone company) and for a coupla euros, I'm hooked up once again.   This is nicer than the lobby of the Ramada, where I went yesterday.

I set out this morning to go to the Rijksmuseum, but it was raining hard, and so I bought a transport pass and took a trolley (sort of indirectly).  I got to the museum and decided I wasn't in the mood (plus there was a sign announcing that a portion of it was closed), so I got back on a trolley at random and visited some grim Dutch suburb (something southwest of here, I think). 

I don't make a very good tourist, I guess – I'm just as happy riding public transport at random as I am visiting museums or landmarks.

I meet with Eurobob tomorrow in Utrecht.  Meanwhile, mostly I'm killing time.  I wrote up a a rather pessimistic review of reporting capabilities at Paradise Corp for Ravi and Tom, RE the bid for business from that large retail chain.   In retrospect, I'm wondering if it's what they wanted… but if they want me to write up the solution (as opposed to a condemnation of current abilities) that's much more in depth, isn't it? 

As in, you'll have to build such and such aggregate, using such and such process, and tie in data from here, there, and everywhere.  Seems like a request to design reportomatic 2.0.  I'm all for that, but it ain't gonna be cheap, is it?

Meanwhile, I'm reading Persiles.  So you've got this guy, Periandro (later revealed to be Persiles), dressed in drag (and looking very gorgeous, apparently), looking for his sister, Auristella (i.e. Sigismunda – and one is inclined to impute something incestuous, there).  But she is dressed as a man, and is about to be sacrificed because the barbarians want the blood from his (her) heart to test a prophecy of a future king.  But one of the barbarians gets the hots for Periandro (who he thinks is a woman) while Auristella reveals she is a woman (to avoid being murdered) and the barbarians break out into an orgy of violence and soon the whole island is in flames.  Really.

And that's just the first few chapters.

So far, Nederland reminds me of a kind of old-world New Jersey, but they talk funnier.  I don't mean that as an insult, either.  I think Dutch is a very cool language…  kind of what I expect English would sound like if I didn't understand it.  It's got similar phonetic inventory, and very similar cadences to English.  Kind of like how they talk in Jersey, right?

Caveat: A somewhat liberal metropolis

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Hiking & Travel / Internet & Blogging / The Wonders of Work

Dateline: Amsterdam

I arrived around noon, once baggage was gathered and immigration cleared. Very tired, as I failed utterly to sleep on the plane – too much anticipating or something.

I read a few chapters of Persiles, and still can't get over how peculiar it is. It ain't Don Quijote, we all know… but what the hell is it?

Amsterdam is about 0 degrees C – but after Minnesota last month it doesn't seem unreasonable in the least. I walked around quite a bit, located the hotel where Eurobob set up reservations, and proceeded to check in and sleep 4 hours. I'm more with it now, so I emerged in early evening darkness to find this internet spot. Logged on, looking for a nearby hotspot for my laptop – which will be much better. I was having some trouble with the yahoo email account yesterday and Sunday, but I think it's resolved.

I still need to send to Tom / Ravi @ Paradise Corp the write up on the reporting requirements that I promised before I left. I'll send that out tomorrow morning. While on the flight I also put some time in on the "white paper" I'm trying to write on Business Intelligence / Decision Support Systems. I think I have a long way to go, but I think I have a chance of producing something genuinely meaningful.

Guy Kawasaki asks, apropos the start-your-own-business thing, in an article I read in Entrepreneur magazine: are you creating meaning? That's the most important question, according to him. We shall see, I guess, but my business concept will proceed apace while I lollygag around Europe.

Caveat: So much for posting regularly…

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / Hiking & Travel / Philosophy & Cultural Criticism / The Wonders of Work

Dateline:  Pueblo, CO.

I'm zigging and zagging my way cross country, basically from Starbucks to Starbucks, using their wireless access points to stay online.   

Quit my job at Paradise, now I'm looking at being a sort of independent contractor / consultant.  We'll see how that goes.  I'll try to keep things up-to-date.  The current road trip provides a good framework from which to hang commentary.  Stayed at Wendy / Aundi's last night in Santa Fe, had breakfast at Harry's Roadhouse, and had a great deep conversation with brother Andrew. 

As in… what is the nature of consciousness, among other things.  My short answer – it's quantum mechanical self-deception.  The capacity for self-awareness and deception do appear to be tightly linked in the chain of being.

More later, then.

Caveat: A rant worth remembering…

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / The Wonders of Work

The following was writting in January, to one of our Business Systems Managers (a sort of IT department liaison who job it is to deal with us difficult business / functional folks. All that's changed is that evidence suggests that my recommendations were not taken. That's OK – I didn't think they would be. But I still want to go "on record." So here goes… any modifications or additions I've added are in square brackets [].

Please understand, my motivations are not meant as criticism of any person, department, or process, but rather, I'm driven by a desire to make things genuinely better.

I think there is a growing consensus that the "New Data Warehouse" project fell woefully short of expectations and promises.

[er… outta time … I'll add the rest later]

[um… I never finished this rant. Just as well.]

Caveat: Welcome to Paradise, Corp.

Banalities & Journaling / Databases, Smartphones & Computers / The Wonders of Work

Keeping in mind that all names are being changed, to protect the innocent, the guilty, and the idiots, here is my world.

Basically, think "Dilbert" – but without all the glamor.

Paradise Corp is a fortune 500 company — over 50 years old, a "bricks and mortar" conglomerate. Paradise went public again in the most recent decade, after several decades as a privately held company, and — unofficially at least — is experiencing some shocks under the higher level of scrutiny that being a public corporation is subject to.

As a conglomerate, it has a number of unrelated divisions with very little in common between them, except perhaps a brand and a CEO — we're in "silos," to put it in consultantese. I work for a very autonomous, $1 billion+ annual revenue division in a specialized niche in the B2B services world.

We're one of about 5 national-scale players in an otherwise fragmented, regional and mom-and-pop industry, and, until a few years ago, we held a definitive lead, in both reputation and size. The recent economic downturn, changes in the industry overall toward "commodification" of our primary product, and some serious at-loss pricing from our competitors in order to gain market share, have all contributed to our recent bout of ill-health.

My loyalty to Paradise is based in the personalities that surround me — the organization as a whole hardly merits it. Although I've no concerns regarding the general ethical soundness of Paradise, it's hardly what I would call an exemplar of corporate excellence.

I've received some good breaks at Paradise, however, climbing from being a "temp" in the billing department through billing coordinator, programmer/analyst, and now data analyst and even "data strategist" (at least unofficially) in about 5 years — all without any help from my resume, which says I should be teaching high school or, at best, pursuing my PhD in literature.

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