Bradstock

On friday Megan came down for Bradstock. We helped Brad construct the tarp. There were like six of us and mostly this amounted to watching Brad do all the work. Somebody drew a parallel with workers and management at The Company. After our hard work we hung out in the pool for a while.

Saturday morning, Megan and I went to Minnewaska to do a short hike. It was great to get out and do something outdoorsy, and really nice to catch up with Megan on what's going on and The Future and all those topics of consequence. I told Megan the story about when I was driving up to Maine how I was wondering if I was going to be able to tell her apart from her sister. If I had already told her the story, she was polite enough not to say so :)

I'm going to try and have enchilada night after Sherry comes back and before Melissa leaves. Hopefully Megan will be able to come too. I think I will have a "slideshow" again.

After Minnewaska it was once again time for Bradstock. The opening act was Fuzzy Shimmer and the Band with NO Name, followed of course by FIRE IT UP!!! The pool was a nice place to cool off. Later Fuzzy Shimmer came up to play with Fire It Up! for a melding of worlds, which was great. Somebody told me that Brad was "in rare form", although to be honest it is only as rare as Bradstock itself.

To give you an idea of what it is like you can see my pictures from the past two Bradstocks:

• Bradstock 2004
• Bradstock 2003

They have a lot of content so make sure you have a fast connection before you attempt to view them.

It is really great that even though Megan lives in Boston that she still comes down to visit. I value her friendship a lot. I'm glad I will get to see her and her twin sister Justine at the end of August for the American Folk Festival in Bangor, Maine.

Lazy Programmers

I was explaining this to Megan on our Hike yesterday.

Larry Wall says that one the three principal virtues of a programmer is laziness [1]. That isn't to say that it is a virtue to lie in the pool with a beer all aftenoon [2], rather it means that it is a virtue to work smarter rather than harder.

( computer stuff... )

---

[1] The others are impatience and hubris.

[2] Nor is to not say that either, it's just that this is not what laziness means in this context.

Tech Support

Somebody asked me the other day if I did "computer stuff" on the side (in addition to my work with The Company). I said I did websites. This is true. Aside from my personal website, I run IdeaBank for Chuck. Then he asked me if I would teach people how to use computers. This is not a very interesting way for me to spend my time, nor is it something that I am particularly suited for. I am very good at writing perl code to interface with databases and hand that information off to a web browser. I am very bad at being patient with people who confuse the forward and backward slash character.

The other day my awful officemate Ron asked me if I had ever tried burning CD audio to a CD-RW. Of course not, CD-Rs are like $0.18, why would I waste my time using a CD-RW, which will probably only be written to once anyway. Ron was answering a tech support question gratis for a friend while at work. As much as I hate to admit it, I think Ron probably is over qualified for tech support. As much as I would like him to do it somewhere other than my office, he probably is a decent programmer and a good match for the application that he is paid to work on: ChipBench.

Adil's eyes light up when somebody has a problem with their notebook computer. He is always fixing people's PCs, he will even drive over to somebody's house to debug a problem via the wireless network when they aren't around. He seems to enjoy doing this so much that I wonder sometimes if he missed his calling. Still, I think he we are better off having him work on EinsTimer.

I don't know why when people find out that I work with computers, they think that means that I can help them install AOL. I'm not tech support damn it.

War of the Worlds

If one were to choose a single word, "intense" would suffice.

Tom Cruise plays a real asshole in this movie, and watching it I didn't have any motivation for wanting him to survive. Since Joe and Cicely have engaged on a boycott of Tom Cruise and what's-her-face, I think they would actually enjoy the film.

There are essentially two stories in this movie.

Firstly, there is the global conflict between the humans and the aliens [1] (the term "extermination" is used in the film). The plot is overused to the point that the world cliché really isn't strong enough to describe it. Also, the ending to me at least was a foregone conclusion, since I had long ago read the book and seen the original movie [2]. However, the movie succeeds in that it is a very well made rendition of the classic alien invaders genre. I liked the way they used (I believe) the same or similar narration at the beginning and end of the movie as was used in the original. This helps the impression that the movie is a homage rather than a rip-off [3].

Secondly, there is the personal story that involves the regular day-to-day people who happen to be living in extraordinary times. This is a necessary component; otherwise the audience would become detached watching the marines fight the aliens [4]. Even though Tom plays a jerk and I really don't need to see him survive, this part of the movie actually succeeds as well. My only complaint is that the ending of this story in the movie was completely lame.

( analysis with spoilers )

---

[1] The aliens aren't explicitly called Martians, which is probably because that would probably seem rather quaint now that NASA has started exploring the red planet.

[2] I was briefly concerned that they might change the ending to this part of the story, but happily they did not.

[3] e.g. ID4

[4] This is just one of the many ways ID4 failed rather miserably.

[5] Note that I say this to describe his strategy, rater that judge him as a person. In the end he proves himself when his daughter is in peril.