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I saw George Carlin on stage three times -- once at the Cape Cod Melody Tent, a prime venue. Mr. Carlin's comedy was formative for me as it was for many people. His Occupation: Foole album was the first comedy album I'd ever heard.
Many comedians benefitted from the doors he open with his racy stuff. Lenny Bruce is rightly credited with being an earlier adopter of blue language into his routine, but Carlin made the rough stuff palatably rather than merely raunchy and angry.
His political stuff was always a decade ahead of the pack. As he drifted into his golden years, he didn't mellow, but became more pointed on his attacks at the establishment. He was the very icon of what stand-up comedy means to me.
The seven famous words on his web site sum up it best: we love you and we'll miss you.
Finally, a meaningful survey on the web (via classicaljunkie).
Don't let their size fool you: these critters are dangerous in numbers.
I have bought my first house. It's the biggest thing I've ever bought and it will require more care and feeding than any pet I've owned.
On the upside, I now have the right to vote and smoke old guy cigars.
Level me up one.
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After five years, Leostream is finally got a careers page with [EDIT: some] content on it. The times, they are a-changin'!
If you're a self-motivated developer interested in working in the virtualization market (which is ridiculously hot right now), please consider sending your resume to Leostream. You'll find all the particulars on the company web site, but I can list some of the things we're looking for in an engineer:
- C++ or Perl. These are the two primary development languages we use. C++ for Windows dev and Perl for Linux dev. Java is also a nice to have.
- You need to understand socket programming and networking cold. I don't care if you can actually resolve the address space of a given netmask, but you should know what a netmask is.
- You should have some experience with RPC mechanisms and XML-RPC/SOAP in particular.
- At least understand what a virtual machine is. If I said, "what's a VMX file", you should know that it's the VMware config file for virtual machines. If I said "VHD", you should think of the MSVS/Xen virtual disk format.
- You have to be self-directed. Leostream is growing fast and you'll need to puzzle out a lot of details for yourself. Of course, that's not to say there's no support for new developers. But, you'll need to keep your own task list up to date. :-D
- Tolerance for start-ups. Leostream does not have the amenities of larger companies. If that's important to you, you'll need to look elsewhere.
Also note that I'm not the hiring manager. Please do not send your resumes to me.
Cheers.
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One of my former O'Reilly colleagues has passed away. Erik T. Ray died last week from complications due to a biking accident. He was 38.
Erik had many interests aside from his chosen profession of programming. If you've watched The Gameshelf, you've probably seen him (he was on twice as a player). Erik wrote two books for O'Reilly, Learning XML and Perl & XML. At some point in the last five years (all of which are somewhat hazy to me now), Erik approached me to co-author a Ruby on Rails book. Unfortunately, my schedule wasn't amenable to book writing at the time.
Erik was a sweet guy. A man of his dimensions could easily have bullied his way through social interactions, but that wasn't his way. Intellectually curious, Erik was frequently cobbling together things, whether through coding, writing or more substantial media.
Erik, you will be missed.
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Sally and I watched a lot of the new Battlestar Galatica yesterday. We're nearly through Season 3. While it's an engaging story, I do find the plotting and character arcs somewhat arbitrary. It's not a "hard scifi" epic I know, but still I don't want to hear about networked computers and firewalls when I'm not working. Call them "analytic machines" and "logical ramparts" and I'll be happy.
When there's more time, perhaps I'll write a more complete criticism of the show. There are things it does very well, but it still feels a little flat to me overall.
UPDATE: Just finished season 3. Very disappointed. The character arc of Baltar just isn't believable, Apollo continues to careen wildly from one life decision to another without a lick of continuity, and the revelation of long-time characters being Cyclons was literally a random choice by the writers.
Here's a little tip for R&D: If you're going to write a series with continuity, you have to bloody plot out the series before you start. That makes it possible to plot the seasons and then the shows. If you write the shows "on demand," you end of with confusing plot twists and inconsistencies that ruin the whole story.
What a bunch of hacks.
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Does this mean we're now fiercely less independent?
Dear Internet,
Because I'm currently homeless, I do not have regular access to my taskboy.com email. If you need to reach me, please use a different address. If you don't know what that address is, I'm not telling you here.
That is all.
UPDATE Because of this fabulous article, I can read taskboy email again! I'm at the cutting edge of 1991 tricknology!
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Even though I would prefer Mr. Obama, I'm reasonably sure now that John McCain will take the White House in November. And I don't think the race will be close.
The Democrats are now polarized into two camps. One of those camps must loose in the candidate selection process. That loss will embitter the other camp, who will not vote on election day. Thus, the Republicans, who would not have had enough support to take the election, will find that their smaller base will be enough for victory.
I believe now that Ms. Clinton will get her party's nod and will fail miserably in the general election. I think Mr. Obama would do only a little better.
The only way for the Dems to win in November, short of McCain eating a baby on live national TV, is for a Clinton/Obama ticket. This conclusion is glaringly obvious, but egos are likely to prevent it from happening.
Fortunately, there's not a big policy difference between the Dems and the GOP in this election. However, there's a lot of house-cleaning that needs to be done that the Dems could do easier than the GOP (who caused a great deal of chaos in DC from 2000-2008).
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