My previous post rewritten by the inimitable Anthony Towns:

An enigmatic lady named Erinn Clark,
Was scheduled to switch coasts in the dark.
But missing her plane,
She will happily explain,
Had little effect on her lark.
A bold southern dame, she insisted;
To be on the next flight or waitlisted
(She was, as you'll see,
A New Years escapee)
And her charms just could not be resisted.
Her flight went to Tampa and then to LA,
Finally dropping her off in sweet San Jose,
Florida thus departed,
And the airline outsmarted,
Finally, now it's time for horseplay!
Let's introduce her partner in crime,
Though "Val Henson" is too hard to rhyme.
Throw 'em in a ball pit,
To their necks if they fit,
And they'll have a glorious time.
But first to a black tie affair,
To greet the New Year in a style debonair,
She was ready to skate,
But was forced to placate,
With jewelry, a shirt and a glare.
The guests were exciting and fun,
All happy and gleeful but one,
She was Lina by name,
Thought the Eve's not the same,
Without fireworks, like a day without sun.
In spite of it all, it failed to suck,
A climax as midnight eventually struck,
The year's dawn arrived,
And our heroines revived
With vegan duck which you don't have to pluck.
To summarise the rest of the story in brief:
There's being spoonfed Indian bits by the chief,
In ballpits they're tossed,
In forests they're lost,
And meanwhile namesys provides light relief.
Finally it comes time to return,
To the coast where the sunrise will burn.
But a feeling of doom,
And a small viral bloom,
Can be quite a cause for concern.
But a satisfactory note that is not,
On which to end this poetical jot,
Instead wishing this:
A year full of bliss,
May all that is good be your lot!

And people wonder why I fangirl him?

The following is a repost from my old blog, originally written one year ago. As I start to write this, it’s the last minute of my country’s 87th birthday (the Finnish Independence Day). It got me thinking about nation-states and independence and whatnot. And I came to a threefold conclusion: First, there is some value in independence. Getting rid of the status of a Grand Duchy in personal union with Russia was certainly a good step for Finland, in light of the rough road the Russians themselves have since travelled. For the same reason, the two wars Finland fought against the USSR were quite worthwhile. Similarly, if Finland were to be threatened by a neighbour again, armed defense would certainly be justifiable. Second, there is no intrinsic value in independence. If a humanly life (including freedom and local government) can be guaranteed even if there is no Finnish state in itself, I see no reason to hold on to the old-fashioned concept of a nation state. Third, I am in favour, as a long-term goal, of a world government. Of course, a single government becomes a single point of failure in case of a coup, for example, but if the global state is arranged properly, the danger of a successful coup is minimal. On the other hand, a world government is in far better position to institute necessary policies to combat the global problems of poverty, climate change and other such issues than the current system of competing and cooperating nation-states. In the current system, the big issues are easily put aside in name of local opportunism. Finland is by no means immune to that problem. The great crises of the 20th Century were its devastating wars. Fortunately, we have overcome them to a sufficient degree. The great crisis of the 21st Century is not terrorism – though it is a symptom. The great crisis is caused by the limits of growth, and we are already feeling quite concretely the nearness of those limits. If something is not done, our current civilization will crash spectacularly. The human race will probably survive – but do we really want to live through another Dark Age? Long Live the Earth!

It's been an interesting 24 hours. Monday
8:00 PM
I get home after working a regular day and having supper with a friend. 8:15 PM
One of our friend from church -- who happens to live a few blocks from my workplace -- calls. "Did you know your workplace is on fire?" "Uhh, no...." "Yeah, big fire, flames, dozens of emergency vehicles..." "Hmm..." So then I call my manager... "Did you know the company is on fire?" "Uhh... no...." "Yeah, sounds bad, I'm going to head in and see what's going on." 8:30 PM
I arrive at work. Cops have blocked all the entrances. I identify myself as an I.S. manager and am directed to the "manager area". (Others are kept across the street.) An eerie orange glow -- and lots of smoke -- is visible above the rooftop. This looks bad. We learn that something in the compressor room caught fire or exploded. Fire spread upward quickly. Most importantly, everyone got out without any injuries. 8:35 PM
Our T1 provider calls my cellphone. These are really, really good folks. I answer, as I'm standing next to a noisy fire truck. ISP: Hi. Just calling to let you know that your T1 is down and we're looking into it. Me: Hmm. That might be because it's on fire. ISP: Uhm, did you just say it's on fire? Me: Could be. There's a fire in the building and we're not allowed in just yet. Plus the electric company is trying to cut the power. ISP: OK then, I think we're going to assume the problem is at your end for now. This sounds bad. I know the I.S. dept. still has UPS power, since the phone system attendant is answering. But if the T1 is down, it seems that it must have burned up (its run goes very close to the affected area), and taken some phone lines with it. 9 PM
It's below freezing already, and I didn't bundle up very well. Several waiting -- but unused -- ambulances are nearby and the paramedics invite those of us waiting inside the heated vehicles. 9:30 PM
The CEO and CFO are permitted to tour the building with a firefighter. Word is that sprinklers have come on and there's water in the I.S. dept. This is potentially really bad news. The I.S. dept is in the basement and water has been a problem before, so we're prepared, but water and computers are never a good combination... After a little while, we are allowed inside as well. There is 1 to 2 inches of water on the floor in the basement, but fortunately nothing has reached the raised floor yet. The fire department supplies an AC generator to power the sump pump, plus 6 squeeges. We supply 6 people. We keep on the squeege duty until about midnight. Meanwhile, it turns out that a water pipe broke out in the shop near the fire. Water gets shut off. But the floor up there appears to unfortunately slope towards the staircase that leads to the basement. Water is coming down fast. We find what we can to block the path, and that seemed to just make the collection deeper. I periodically try to find someone that can bring a pump and a generator -- or something -- to help this get cleared up. Midnight
I head home. The water situation is improving, but not resolved yet. Others remain. Once home, I post a notice on our public website saying that our power, Internet, phone, and FAX lines are down. You just might have a problem reaching us. I also e-mail some consultants, saying that the reason the VPN doesn't work is that we had a fire. I also e-mail the new I.S. person who has an hour commute and advise him of the situation. Our fire was top story on one of the local newscasts. We watch the video of it, sigh at the annoying "on the scene" reporter (motto: "things were interesting an hour ago"), and turn in. 1AM
Time to sleep. Tuesday
6AM
Get up, in to work by 6:45. Everything is dead. No power, no water, no phones, no heat, no gas. Also, fortunately, no more water coming down. I call the other I.S. developer and tell him not to bother coming in right now, but maybe we'll call later. 8:30 AM
An impromptu meeting happens. The CEO sets communications as the #1 priority: phone and basic Internet access. Plants 2 and 4 have working power, so if we can bring up some servers and network gear on a generator, computers over there will work. No water in plant 1, where my office is. So nearest restrooms are a 5-10 minute walk through dark and damp areas. Bottled water, coffee, and donuts appear at the halfway mark to the restrooms ;-) 9:00 AM
Generators start appearing near the I.S. dept. After getting them powered up, proper extension cords found, etc., we start plugging in the phone system. Power strip 1 works. I flick the switch on power strip 2, and it all goes dead. This generator's circuit breaker keeps doing that every time we try to turn on the phone system. So we try generator #2. Phone system finally powers up. But all incoming lines are ringing at phones in sales. Volunteers go up to answer those phones. Meanwhile, phone tech shows up, and orders his own, larger generator. I call our person that's an hour away and tell him to go ahead and head in. 10:00 AM
Now we turn to the computers. We're going to have to be careful what we bring up so we don't overload the generator (and thus have an unclean shutdown on anything that's already up.) I recable power to some switches, our T1 router (ISP calls: the T1 just came up! yay!), and our firewall. Flick the switch on firewall. Generator stays up. Firewall emits a high-pitched whine. Eeep. Flick the switch again! After checking things out, we adjust the voltage a bit and determine that things are generally OK. I run the firewall on one of its two power supplies. At least if it burns one out, we can still run it off the other later. Turn it back on -- whines again, but it goes away after a few minutes. Phew. Next step: our main Linux file server. Flick the switch, and there's a satisfying "whoosh" from the fans. Excellent. Our developer shows up and observes later: "John, this was odd. When I got here, there were 7 guys standing around watching you boot up machines." 11:00 AM
Decision time. Our main ERP server is an AIX box. 8U. About a dozen disks. Certain to be a large draw. Can the generator handle it? Yes, it should. Should we power it up, given that it takes 45 minutes to come up and 20 to go down? We opt to try. I cable it up and press the power button. Nothing happens. But that is normal for AIX. After a few minutes, we start seeing hex codes on the LCD. A few minutes later, disks start coming up. All looks good... 11:15 AM
Orange alert lamp comes on for the AIX box. Uhoh. Turns out one of the drives in the RAID is bad. Time to call IBM, but at least it's mirrored to the box is up. IBM service calls are always "fun" for this. I spent a total of about an hour on the phone with them, 90% of which was spent with them analyzing error logs trying to find out what exact part number to give is, and 10% spent trying to look up our account information. Plus, the phone guy is now switching the phone system to his genset. He tries to hook it up through a home-type UPS, which is giving him fits. I get disconnected from IBM at least twice. Noon
My supervisor goes to Subway and brings in lunch for all four of us in I.S. since we don't really feel like we can leave. Word arrives that the generator that's powering the servers is leaking oil. Eeep. But it should be good until evening. On the plus side, the generator will automatically shut itself off when it runs out of oil. Won't damage itself. 1PM
IBM calls, trying again to get information about what exact part they need to bring out. Only 29 minutes on the phone this time. Word arrives that a 60kW generator has arrived that they will attempt to hook into the mains supply for the building. The main power distribution center has been burnt. Plus we aren't allowed to touch large parts of it since fire inspectors and insurance adjustors aren't done yet. But no ETA on the big generator. We make a preliminary decision to cut power to computers & the network at 5PM, and maintain the single phone system generator overnight. 2PM
Local IBM rep calls. He'll be out between 3:30 and 4. I say that'll be fine, but warn him that if he's any later, the power may be down. 3:45PM
IBM rep shows up, replaces the dead disk. It works. Whee. 4:15PM
I start powering down the AIX box. We then learn that ETA on the big generator is 5PM. So we start shutting down other servers as planned. 5PM
Big generator comes up. It works. We slowly bring up our systems. Everything is good. BUT -- we are basically maxing out the capacity on the generator. People will not be able to just come in and work like usual tomorrow. We'll be meeting in the morning to figure it all out. 6PM
We post signs at entrances warning people to not turn *anything* on. Finally head home at 6:30.

I've been so busy, I haven't had time to blog. Rather than putting it off any longer, I'll just dump what I can remember. Last Wednesday, Sarah arrived after her holiday in Singapore, and from all accounts, had a great time. Photos as well. Sticking with the whirlwind theme, the next day, we had a "building warming" party at work for the new building we'd moved into the week before Michael and I started. The next night we had the work Christmas party, which blew the socks off any work Christmas party I'd ever been to before, and then on Saturday night we went to a party in San Francisco that we'd been invited to. On a life in general front, I'm still waiting for a Social Security number. The lack of one makes life a bit difficult for a lot of things. It also turns out that Sarah's work permit will take about 90 days to approve, so she's going to be a lady of leisure for the next few months. I've finally been issued with a work mobile phone (or "cell phone" as they call them), and so can stop roaming and paying through the nose for the privilege. We've found somewhere to live. We take possession of a 2 bedroom townhouse (split-level) in a complex in Mountain View that is 3 miles from work on the 18th. The rent is $1725 a month, which is a bit better than we were expecting. The complex we're renting in does have shared laundries, which we'd not too keen on before getting over here, but they're quite modern and secure, and there's a laundry block close to our townhouse, so hopefully it won't be too bad. The whole place had been renovated about 5 years ago, so it's all in good condition. We could have rented a 3 bedroom apartment (single level) in the same complex for about $125 a month more, but we're trying to actually make some money while we're over here... Driving on the other side of the road becomes fairly "normal" after about a week of doing it regularly. Sarah's adapted fine. Lane placement is the hardest thing, because your body's used to being in a certain spot on the road, and it's all different sitting on the other side of the car. We've managed to open a rudimentary bank account, even with my lack of Social Security number. Unfortunately I can't get paid until I have an SSN. Upside of that is that if it doesn't happen until next year, I presumably won't have to worry about income tax for this US financial year. Downside is kind of obvious... By far one of the stranger things of everyday life here is the lighting situation in the average residence. Lamps are all the rage, to the point that light switches don't exist in some rooms (notably bedrooms). Take where we're currently living for example. There's a light switch at the bottom of the stairs, there's one at the top. There's a bank of four in the living room, two of which control lights in the kitchen, and one the hallway. The last one controls a lamp in the corner of the living room, which is connected to a power socket (or power point as we'd call it). The bedroom with the attached bathroom (en suite) has two bedside lamps, and that is the sole source of light. The bathroom attached has light switches, and the walk-in robe has a light switch. It's so weird. So walking into a darkened bedroom involves walking all the way in, and fumbling around with a lamp. It's often easier to turn on the light in the wardrobe so you can see what you're doing first. I can't think of any reason for it, except tradition. It's not like they're avoiding wiring the walls or the ceiling, because it's done partially already. The bedroom has a ceiling fan, but where in Australia, there'd be a knob on the wall near the light switch to control it, it has a little chain you yank on. To add to the strangeness, there are two switches on the wall, one of which seems to allow you to turn off the ceiling fan if it's already been switched on by pulling the chain. The townhouse we're renting has a similar lamp dependency, so we're going to be making a trip to Ikea for some lamps it would seem. That's about everything I can recollect right now... Oh, I should point out that I'm really loving it over here.

Hm, we didn't finish the setup for the musical in time. Bad. Now this looks like the evening gets a bit longer than expected. Also, the light scenes so far mostly suck, as it is very difficult to get light onto people's faces while at the same time leaving the back of the stage mostly dark. Damn you, stupid laws of physics.

Just reading another painfully funny The Daily WTF[1] entry. Instead of a code snippet, this was a resume snippet instead. Apart from listing skills in such heavyweight corporate tools as Emule, Kazza, Paint, WordPad, Acrobat Reader, and Winzip, the candidate also listed "Average" knowledge in a very, very wide variety of skills. The important question is, over what collection of the population is this average taken? Considering the usual demonstration of these "Average" skills, I think that the average is taken over the entire mammalian population, including all of those dolphins who (thankfully) have never even heard of "Micro Soft Visuals: Basics", and that dog at puppy training this morning that spent most of the time licking it's own genitals. Self assessments are always bollocks. Nobody's seriously going to rate themselves "half-assed" at every programming language they know. I've seen one interesting way to describe your language proficiency, though -- group languages into "used in the last 6 months", "1 year", "3 years", and "dim, dark distant past". It gives a reasonable idea of what languages you might be useful in, either through current knowledge, a past knowledge that can be polished, or perhaps knowing a language similar to the one that the company needs skills in that you can be cross-trained into.

---

1. A site dedicated to archiving, for posterity, the worst of the code that controls the world. Scary and hilarious all at once.

A friend of mine likes dark themes a lot. I tried finding some good dark themes for GTK, but all have been rather disappointing so far. The current icon sets (including Tango) are all designed for a bright, colorful desktop, aren't they? They look somewhat weird when placed on a dark background... Maybe the graphic artists could also do some iconsets that work fine with such themes. (I prefer bright ones though ;-))

Sun! Sunlight is a wonderful thing. Yesterday I came back from a six day vacation in Madrid. The weather was not warm, a bit warmer than in Finland, but especially it was dry and sunny. Pretty good autumn weather, actually. The best week I've had for a while. This was my Quest for Sun '05. I stayed at Amaya's place, slept well and long every night, had a wonderful time with some Debian people, and walked outside and visited a couple of wonderful art museums. Thank you, especially, Amaya, Holger, and Miriam. And also vi and emacs, the feline foot fetishists who rule Amaya's apartment. I took some pictures. They're touristy snapshots, not meant to be art. I meant to make notes about my experiences during the week, but the nice, classy Moleskine notebook I bought especially for the trip got lost the first full day. Some moments stuck into my mind, however.

• Amaya's cats attacking my feet while I slept. At one point, one of them sat on my knees for a while and pounced every time I moved in my sleep.
• Tapas is a very good never-ending style of food. It just keeps coming: every time you get to the end of the plates you now have, the waiter brings more.
• Food in general was very good. Even cheap fast-food like kebab.
• Art museums in countries with a long history of art are bloody big. Both the Museo del Prado and the Museo de Arte Thyssen-Bornemisza seem to require about seven straight hours for a proper visit (I spent about three at each, and saw half of each). I think this is so that people will attract fewer cats by being too tired to move their feet during the night.
• Telling the history of love, bed, and sex to Amaya and Holger over a meal. I really should write that down some day. (They're editors.)
• One of Amaya's cats is crazy and likes showers. Or at least likes to sit in the shower after someone's used it.
• The Retiro park is wonderful. I could spend a lot of time just walking about in it. I did.
• Food in Spain is good. Spanish eating times are crazy, but you get used to them.
• Me: "Back when I was working on Kannel...". Person next to me: "Oh you worked on Kannel? It is such a nice program". Moments to live for. Enough to motivate me to write and publish some more free code.
• "Gracias", "buenos noches", and "de nada" is enough Spanish to get you live well for a week. Helps to have native speakers as guides, of course.
• Did I mention that the food is great?

Since the Quest for Sun '05 was a success, I definitely will do it again. A week of light (and sleeping properly) really improved my mood. Maybe even enough that I will be able to deal with the remaining months of dark, gloom, wet, and cold of the winter in Helsinki. The only big negative thing about this trip was flying. I suggest that international air travel henceforth shall be called "The Cattle Drive".

As I start to write this, it's the last minute of my country's 87th birthday (the Finnish Independence Day). It got me thinking about nation-states and independence and whatnot. And I came to a threefold conclusion: First, there is some value in independence. Getting rid of the status of a Grand Duchy in personal union with Russia was certainly a good step for Finland, in light of the rough road the Russians themselves have since travelled. For the same reason, the two wars Finland fought against the USSR were quite worthwhile. Similarly, if Finland were to be threatened by a neighbour again, armed defense would certainly be justifiable. Second, there is no intrinsic value in independence. If a humanly life (including freedom and local government) can be guaranteed even if there is no Finnish state in itself, I see no reason to hold on to the old-fashioned concept of a nation state. Third, I am in favour, as a long-term goal, of a world government. Of course, a single government becomes a single point of failure in case of a coup, for example, but if the global state is arranged properly, the danger of a successful coup is minimal. On the other hand, a world government is in far better position to institute necessary policies to combat the global problems of poverty, climate change and other such issues than the current system of competing and cooperating nation-states. In the current system, the big issues are easily put aside in name of local opportunism. Finland is by no means immune to that problem. The great crises of the 20th Century were its devastating wars. Fortunately, we have overcome them to a sufficient degree. The great crisis of the 21st Century is not terrorism - though it is a symptom. The great crisis is caused by the limits of growth, and we are already feeling quite concretely the nearness of those limits. If something is not done, our current civilization will crash spectacularly. The human race will probably survive - but do we really want to live through another Dark Age? Long Live the Earth!

After a not-so-easy ride with James Blackwell, and the last minute surprise of Paul Sladen joining us, we arrived in New York. The sky was dark already. Instead of arriving at 15:00 or so as expected, we arrived at something like 20:00. Behind, we had left great perils like an empty gas tank and finding no gas station, and noticing one tire could use some pumping; evil officials at the US border not liking the fact that it was the first time I entered the country, which involved fingerprints and a smily face at the customs offices after a long wait; a great meal (after a long wait to get served) at probably the best restaurant in the whole State of New York; the three of us becoming terribly sleepy half an hour after resuming the drive, and having to stop for a short nap and stopping for gas once again around 70 miles away from NYC. When we did arrive, we managed to get lost a few times around the city. We crossed four bridges on our way to Brooklyn, which accidentally let me admire the Manhattan skyline by night, and finally, got to Clint's place. When we were parking, I noticed the tire was mostly flat now. Surely not the best way to land in the city. We also found out Clint and the rest had left for dinner after a long wait, as neither they or us expected to arrive so late, and we were way too freaked out with the crazy traffic and finding our way to phone them. After a while, both problems were sorted out; Clint appeared and James was able to leave. James, thanks for all you did! I owe you a big one next time! We spent some time with Clint, dilinger, biella and micah, saw the great view of Manhattan from the roof of his appartment, and eventually went to bed. Apparently, they are taking me to a place called "Dim Sum" for breakfast. I wonder how dilinger's cat tastes.

Cleaning my apartment is a bit like going on an archeological dig: A dried spaghetti noodle... when did I have spaghetti for dinner? Oh, yeah, three weeks ago.

(Tall Dark and Mysterious: See You in Ten Days)

Clint: I can't believe they're removing the religion from Pullman's Dark Materials in a movie adaption. But then, I can't believe there's gonna be a movie either since I had assumed the religious elements relegated this most excellent series to a niche market, at least in the US. This may come of living in the bible belt. I've only read the first book, and am saving the latter two for very special occasions. PS: Did they take the religion out of the Narnia movie? Just curious.

The Internet Advertising Bureau thinks the UK spend could be over a billion for the first time. It's now 5.8% of the national advertising spend and is growing at a pretty remarkable rate. Is Christmas coming early for online? OSCommerce - the future will be templated. We're doing more OSCommerce work and 2.2 MS2 is a fairly typical PHP application, with some structure, but also lots of spaghetti code. The next version is looking a lot better, including this announcement from the lead developer. Templating and styling has to be the most-requested work. I find it a little worrying that OSCommerce is not more openly developed, but it'll be good when the new release ships. Jakob Neilsen has announced the top ten web design mistakes of 2005 and "Legibility Problems" are number one. This isn't a surprise to me. Many websites, including some big names, are totally broken if your browser defaults are light text on a dark background, because that's easier on your eyes. I once spotted the Disability Rights Commission getting this wrong. Even planet.debian.org is missing a:link color: ... . The second top mistake is bad linking, including:

"In particular, don't open pages in new windows"

.which is another thing which I find irritating on many sites. If I want a new window, I'll pick the link for a "new window" from the context menu, or by shift-clicking. Does Mozilla or Firefox or something have an "ignore _blank link targets" option yet? It's only a matter of time. My own company's web site has been updated and I've tried to take these on board. We don't do any of the worst things, but there are always things we can do better. Our site isn't that high a priority - there's so much else to do. The W3C's internationalisation working group has issued a note on working with time zones. I get a lot of unusual time zone requests while programming, but I'll remember these explanations and I think I usually follow the recommendations in s1.5 anyway. Also from W3C is a Working Draft of "Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0" which they'd like feedback on, if you use or develop for mobile web devices. At first glance, it seems that many of the items are stronger versions of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. PlayStation chipping is legal in Australia but not in the UK, where it was ruled illegal last year. Chipping is the practice of adding a part to the games console so that it can play imported titles. If the chipping and the risk of breaking it costs less than the difference between imported and domestic releases, some people will want to do it. It's competition between markets. I remember similar things for the old cartridge-based machines of my youth. UK law-makers seem to be trying to kill off that trade in favour of foreign companies that want to tightly control the consoles long after they've been sold. The ruling from Australia might bring the start of a backlash against the increasingly restrictive UK laws, but it's more likely that the EU, US and others will press Australia to fall into line. Copyright seems to be one of the few areas where free trade is being reduced, rather than increased. And finally, I remember the feeling of getting sparc32 Linux working.