Erdos Had The Number First

Casablanca has got to be one of the best movies ever. Everybody knows the “Play it again, Sam” line, even though it was never said in the movie.

It’s not just the strength of Bogart that makes the film, either. It’s a strongly political work, and it’s more about how sometimes the bastards get you down, but you can’t let them. You’ve got to keep fighting for what you know is the right thing, even when it’s hard. Even when you might have to let the woman you love go.

And it’s hard for Rick. He’s been hurt, he fought with the Loyalists in Spain. He’s lost wars and women and he’s just trying to have some peace since he can never go home again (something they never address, he just can’t go back to the states). The Spanish Civil war is something I think that is too far from
the American mind when they think about WWII.

Rick has killed people through action and inaction, and when he points a gun at you, you know you’re in trouble. Even though he’s a tough guy, when the bar gets shut down he makes sure his staff still get paid. He helps people escape to America and runs a fair buisness: anyone can come in, and anyone with money can drink.

The other people are just a hard-assed as him. It makes me glad that I’ve never had to flee my home, never had to bribe an official to get my family on the plane. I cannot imagine if it were my wife asking Rick if it would be OK to sleep with the official to get their exit papers. If it were me asking him to hold some bit of something that, were I caught with it, they would shoot me.

Even though it was made more than 60 years ago, the film still has the power to resonate. And lets face it, Ingrid Bergman is someone to fall in love with. She is the woman who wakes Rick from his slumber (though she is mostly the cause of it to begin with). She is Helen of Troy, Cleopatra and Joan of Arc all rolled into one. The cause of and the solution to the wars men fight.

And then there is Sam. Sam is Ricks friend, assistant, and lookout. Rick respects Sam, and vice versa, though it is 1942 and Sam is black. 1942 is not a time when you could be black in America and eat in any restaurant you want. I’d like to think Sam is the harbinger of things to come.

The thing that strikes me most about the movie is that it was made during a time when so many films were total crap. Sugar coated escapism and melodrama were all people living through depression and war could stomach it seems. Enter ‘Casablanca’, with it’s political call-to-action and it’s reminder that sometimes real sacrifice is required when there are bigger things at stake.

I tell you there is a very fine line between being detail oriented and detail fixated.

I think this is the dividing line between a good sysadmin and a BOFH.

So, I’m walking around the chemist like an idiot, looking for two things: band-aids and bars of soap. I also need onions, but I need to go to a different store for that. I like London, but it’s times like these when I feel I need some sort of handbook like in the “Accidental Tourist”.

I need band-aids because I cut my finger pulling off the airline tags from my bag, in a bad omen event. I was standing there in the tube station, bleeding from the largest, non-fatal, paper cut ever. Just standing there thinking “Damn it, where am I going to get a band-aid?”.

So, I go to the Chemist (or drugstore, for the un-with-it-not-person-of-the-world … I was trying to figure out how science would help me when I was told it was place not a person).

Anyway, back to me looking like an idiot. So there I am, staring at the shampoos and the security guard, who has been circling me like a wary bird, asks if I need help finding something.

Yes I do, I told him. And yes, I answered to his next question, I am an American. He’s from Nigeria himself, but was in Chicago a few weeks ago, in transit to visit his familiy in Wisconsin. Funny world.

Still didn’t get my bar of soap, but at least the bleeding has stopped.

Hiring people is difficult. Often times, in the IT world, you’ll just rely on a headhunter and be done with it. But that is problematic and expensive.
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There is a new version of Cerc (v0.2) , now with non-bounds checked indexes as
well as bounds checked ones. Now it mimics STL containers with the inclusion of an
at() method.

The ChangeLog is here and the source can
be downloaded from here and the Doxygen docs can
be found here

As always, let me know if you have any thoughts about this stuff. Thank you.

I fixed a compilation problem related to errno. I’ve only seen it on Mandrake, but this
may have affected other people. It was a simple fix (added errno to one header).

Now it works under Mandrake 10 too.

The Changelog is here and the
actual source is here

Let me know if you see anything else.

Everybody’s talking about it, I might as well too.

I feel bad for the guy. He’s done two things that will probably haunt him forever.

1) He will be known as the man who killed 3000 blogs
2) He has started the trend of audio posts for important things. You
heard it here first, folks. Text only blogging will now be passe
when you have something really important to say. The technorati
will now post audio missives to communicate to the Great Unwashed
of those who were not there when it started.

But I do feel bad for the guy because he is a person. He even says that in his sermon.
speech. What will audio blog posts be called, I wonder?

You can read more from Doc Searls
here and see what he has to say.

Lastly, without people like Dave, nothing
would ever get done in society. I mean that without irony. It is they who always co-operate
who allow the free-riders in every game to still function, keeping the game playable.
Without those who always trust, games of scarce resources would be unplayable, and
the incubator of great ideas would always be cold and empty.

These are mostly just notes from a yet to be writtrn paper. read at you’re own risk.

people talk a lot about a kind of convergence that one does not often actually see: useful convergence. I ussually use the tool metaphor to combat ideas of convergence: multi-tools often suck.

the swiss army knife (SAK) is a good example, it’s ok in an emergency but noone says “leave the toolbox, I’ve got my SAK.” and show me the SAK that has a gear puller on it.

The SAK is a good example because it works well in an emergency, but when does anyone have an emergency DVD to play? or an emergency audio clip?

the other issue is complexity, in that people aren’t smart enough to understand tools that are too complicated. look at computers, argueably humanities most complex single tool. few people understand that and many just use it within very narrow ranges … a computer isn’t just a magic typewritter after all.

personally, I want tools that work and are useful, cleverness is a secondary concern.

I had a disasterous interview the other day. it’s hard not to take rejection personally when, you know, you’ve been rejected.

But I need to be an adult about it, since not being an adult put me into the worst job I ever had.

but thats another story.

first, I’d like to tell you that in the one hour I was there I got a feel for exactly what problems they were facing. I also knew that the main guy in the interview was a problem. In the words of my HR prof, he didn’t get it.

but here’s the thing, this guy isn’t a problem for them, no matter what I think. He’s a problem for me, and that is the important thing. He’s not a problem for them for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that he’s been promoted and he is the guy who holds things together. He’s the wizard there.

In every company there are the people who make the company work, no matter what (well, in sucessful companies, at least). He’s one of them.

It ties into my theory of minimum effort. The theory goes that all companies degrade into a state where everyone is doing the minum effort. Minimum is defined by the culture the organization has. It is at that equilibrium point that the organization is optimized as a system. the key goal for managers is to insure that minimum effort is high enough and, like predators, weed out the weak and sick.

But thats, also, another story. There were three people in the interview, and the one guy really didn’t care because I didn’t have any skills that mattered to him. The woman didn’t care either, and the one guy who did care only cared because he didn’t want to hire me. I think I’m pretty good at spotting that, especially because this guy asked all the same questions I did and generally had the same interviewing style. If you’ve ever interviewed with me I just want to say I’m sorry now, and that I have learned a harsh lesson.

the lesson is cast in especially sharp reliefe by my MBA. I am a little more than half done with my MBA, and I’ve learned a great deal already. it’s just too bad I didn’t learn it sooner.