A Day in The Life

I've spent the day banging my head against ELF link loaders, pthread implementations and C runtime code, and the various interactions therein. While it wasn't fun, per se, it was interesting... and now that I think I've finally managed to get some indication of what the problem I'm trying to solve actually is, I'm a whole lot happier.

The actual solution (or attempt at a solution) for said problem will have to wait until tomorrow. What gets me is that, if I'm understanding things correctly, what I'm seeing is an already-known, diagnosed, and worked-around problem. Getting to that point, though, was a matter of digging through things until I realized what the appropriate search terms for my questions were...

... at which point, Google was nice enough to take me directly to the online change log for the piece of software in question. You know, the place that - if I had really been on the ball - I would have looked at first to see if there was a solution to this problem.

Bah.

Well, at least I know more about certain subjects than when I started the day...

(In my defense, I was under the impression that we were using the absolute latest revision of the software, and that looking in that direction for a possible fix wouldn't have turned up anything useful. I still should have tried, though. It's the software equivalent of making sure the power cord is actually plugged in.)

Quote of the Day

Shamus Young gives you the skinny on what code reuse really means, which includes the following gem of a line:

"RaymondSort files are written in ANSI C and a profane variant of Esperanto."

Awesome.

These are the days of miracle and wonder

An note on an Apple patent application - not otherwise interesting except for the following comment:

As devices continue to shrink, certain physical features become limiting factors for further size reduction... the thickness of the devices appears to be approaching the limits imposed by the need to accommodate the headphone jack.

Yowza.

There are, indeed, the days of lasers in the jungle...

Interesting Take on Tea Party Organization

Via Q&O:

There is no TP "president", no "treasurer", no "communications director". In fact, the movement is a collection of hundreds, if not thousands of local TPs which identify with the movement as a whole.

I'm intrigued. While I'm sure there's parallels between other organizational entities - revolutionary cells, for one, come to mind - there's a long history of independent Baptist churches in the US that have the same sort of loose structure. You can probably draw some correlations between the Tea Party organization and the decentralized "organization" of the internet, as well... probably more so, in that the TP organization seems to be based more or less on modern social networking and communication mediums.

Some blog, or blogs, out there right now are on their way to becoming the Tea Party version of The Federalist Papers.

It's Snarky Thursday, Apparently.

Ghettoputer of the Gormogons, on news that one of Senator Barbara Boxer's advisors was arrested for trying to bring marijuana into a Senate office building:

The discovery that Sen. Boxer's senior economic adviser is a stoner gives much-needed context to the Democrats' disjointed, nonsensical economic belief system.

Moe Lane over at RedState helps us further understand the situation:

Now, I will not pretend that I do not have a certain rough sympathy for the fellow, coupled with a healthy contempt for his underlying arrogance. As someone privately commented to me on the matter, it must be pretty bad having to got to work for a Senator like Boxer every day: you’d almost need a painkiller.

Tam on Home Buying

Buying a house is merely exchanging cash for a dry place to keep your stuff; it is not a magic "wealth building" slot machine... If you want to actually generate real wealth, you need something more than some dirt with a box on it.

Tam @ View From The Porch. Fifty-five gallon drums of snark laced with real insight, all served up at reasonable prices.

Absence of Evidence

I'm thinking, right about now, that I need to hit the bookstore and by every iota of writing by Mike Flynn that I can get my hands on.

SF theologian. I love it.