Recruiters

Every field has its annoyance, and in tech it's the Recruiter, who performs keyword matching with breathtaking inaccuracy. When asked to rate myself 1 to 10 on a skill, I asked: relative to what? A very brief moment of hope followed.

Impiety, n.

One of the finer entries from the Devil's Dictionary: "Impiety, n. Your irreverence toward my deity."

Blood Mountain (20051029)

Blood Mountain, October 2005: an idiot computer science major, a don't-jump moment, and the rest of the pictures.

The Mailbox Militia

I have no photographic proof, but all evidence points to my mailbox's repeated mauling being an orchestrated attack by the Union of Soccer Moms. My proposed defenses escalate from a concealed concrete pillar to a small tactical nuclear device.

A Million Monkeys (Doing Geometry)

Hypothetically, say you need to migrate geometry data from MapInfo SpatialWare on SQL Server to PostGIS on PostgreSQL, and a million monkeys aren't available to help. You might write this Java. Or you might not. It's hard to tell with some people.

Happy Birthday, Universe!

Another revolution of the planet around Sol, back to my effective starting location twenty-six years on. I celebrate by charring some mammal flesh and racing to the DMV to pre-pay for the privilege of owning a car. Happy birthday, universe.

From Pid to Path

With inspiration from ps.c: given a pid, here's C that walks the kernel process arguments via sysctl to determine the full path to the corresponding executable.

My plant, part I, day 12

Meet Plant, the sum total of authorized non-human life in my house, finally re-potted after three years root-bound in the same tiny pot. Twelve days later there are three new branches. Plant is cute, green, and ridiculously needy.

Of Self-Employment, Mailboxes & Minivans

A lesser-known perk of self-employment: I no longer come home wondering why my mailbox has gained a new axis of rotation. This time the culprit was a minivan, whose driver was rather more concerned about her side mirror than my mailbox.

This is not me giving in.

Xanga sucks. This isn't me finally giving in; this is me having finally found a blog system that doesn't completely suck. Boo yah.