Surfacing For Air

Woo.  The latest couple of weeks at work culminated in identifying a transaction ID bug caused by an inadvertent 1:1 association of call to file descriptor in an asynchronous RPC implementation.

... and if you understood that, then (a) you have my sympathies, and (b) have you ever considered moving to Pittsburgh?  Because I know a company that would love to talk to you.

Only The Finest In Satire

Matt Walsh channels... well, every liberal progressive you've ever encountered, and then sets out to debunk all those right wing Obamacare myths.

Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

There are many scare tactics being used by the tea baggers in an effort to discredit Obamacare. Personally, I hate scare tactics. You should never let anyone scare you away from supporting socialized medicine, mostly because without it every poor person in the country will get sick and die. Anyway, like I said, I disapprove of scare tactics.

I would say that Mr. Walsh has demonstrated mastery of at least one of Alinsky's rules.

Go, RTWT.  Start your Monday morning with a smile.

A Guide For School Administrators

Since, apparently, it is desperately needed.

(Original public domain image from r5d via OpenClipart.org)

There.  I hope that clears things up for you.

Can we stop treating children eating their Pop-Tarts like criminals, now?  Please?

Never been...

... and hope I never will be.

The language is best described as "salty", the emotions are raw, and from my limited experience with the military, the thing with the .50 cal ammo boxes is dead on.  I may never know what it's like to be in combat, but this seems like it may - perhaps - help give an inkling of an idea of what it's like.

What Combat Feels Like, Presented in the Style of a Graphic Novel 

Since the start of the "war on terror" more than 2.5 million U.S. service members have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. While general narratives have emerged around the wars, rarely is the story told exclusively from the soldier’s perspective. 

In this short animation, veteran and writer Colby Buzzell describes a day on the ground in Iraq. “I’ve put the events of that day in a shoebox, put the lid on it, and I haven’t opened it since” says Buzzell. But the soldier's story comes to life now through stunning animation by filmmaker Evan Parsons. 

The American Mushroom

I came across the following comment on a FB post discussion of Obamacare earlier today...

I would be more sympathetic to the opponents if they were actually proposing something instead of having a massive temper tantrum.

Really.

Really.

Keep in mind that this was a comment from a fairly intelligent, relatively well-informed and politically knowledgeable individual.  They knew, for a fact, that the Republicans had no alternative to the ACA...

... and yet, all it took me was a few seconds with Google to turn up mention five or more significant Republican health care reform proposals from the past four years.

• Obamacare Facts: Republican Alternative to the ACA is Better For Millennials
• Is There a Republican Alternative to Obamacare?
• Republicans Have Offered Three Alternative Health Care Reform Bills
• Republicans Release Their Own Health Care System Reform Bill
• House Republicans file, promote an alternative to Obamacare

Now, given who my typical readers are, I am going to bet that most of you have heard of one or two of these proposals.  Maybe even all of them.  In fact, there are probably additional proposals and bills that are out there that I wasn't able to uncover.  I recall reading at one point that there were literally dozens of alternative health care reform bills proposed and killed in the house during the months leading up to the ACA.

Notice where these articles are from, though.  PolicyMic. Town Hall. CNS News.  Kaiser Health News.  Only the last is from a traditional newspaper, the Washington Times.

Repeat after me, folks.  The media is not your friend.  There is a reason that you do not know anything about these alternatives to the ACA, and that is because the mainstream media refuses to mention them, refuses to talk about them, refuses to write about them.

Republican health care reform?  They have made it into a non-thought.  It doesn't exist, because if it did exist, they would report on it!  But they're not reporting on it, so, therefore, it must not exist!  Right?

Riiiight.

They do the same thing with Libertarian candidates.  Minority conservatives.  Kermit Gosnell.  Defensive gun use.  Increases in arctic ice and decreases in hurricanes.  Anything else that doesn't fit their narrative.

In the eyes of today's mainstream media, we are all mushrooms.  Kept in the dark, and fed a steady diet of... well, you know, the smelly, nasty, disgusting garbage that the MSM spews out.

"News."

Hey, whaddya know!  It's even a four-letter word.

Linked List

RPC handshakes and mbuf corruption;multi-threaded with task list interruptions.All of the pain that a core file brings;These are a few of my least favorite things...

So, yeah, work is really worky this week, and my posting schedule (what there is of it) has suffered.  To make up for it, here's a  bunch o' linkage for yinz guys.

• Over at The Smallest Minority, Kevin has no Faith in Government.  According to recent polls, that puts him well into the majority.
• At Sharp as Marble, Robb Allen expounds on just one of the reasons that you shouldn't be sleeping soundly at night.  I say this is one reason you shouldn't have faith in the government, either. Wait, no - make that two reasons.  Um.  Or maybe three reasons?  Wait -  four?  Man.  You know what?  Never mind.  Just go read his blog.
• Neo-Neocon points out that the presidency actually requires some skills.  I'm pretty sure she means "some skills other than continuous campaigning, fund raising and playing golf."
• Larry Correia has posted The Internet Arguing Checklist.  Learn how to give ammo to the people already on your side!  Convince the undecided!  Allow your opponents to display their petty ignorance to the world!
• Speaking of argument ammo, College Insurrection points to a Harvard (yes, that Harvard) study that shows gun control doesn't work.
• Via Questions and Observations, you can find Andrew Klavan explaining the progressive's version of the IAC: "Shut up!"
• House of Eratosthenes points out an alternate strategy employed by global warming advocates: never start a discussion, just declare that debate is useless.
• Robb Allen (there he is again... seriously, guys just go read his blog!) points out that the progressive argument for gun control is specifically based on emotion as opposed to logic.
• Not to be left out, Aaron Ross Powell has a handy pointer on How Not To Argue Against Libertarianism.  Well, really, it's got some good points on how to not argue against anything, really.  Starting off with not misconstruing your opponent's positions in order to knock down a strawman.  I guess there are some people who need to be told that's not a valid debate tactic?

Plenty of good stuff in there, right?

Now go read your Robb Allen.

With Regards to Health Care

I don't know about you, but...

Every time someone mentions "single payer", I always hear "single point of failure".

"By George, I think she's got it!"

Facebook commentary on this article over at The Smallest Minority:

The Lovely Mrs. Robb: Rope. For every last one of them.

Old Mutual Friend: Tar and Feathers first

The Lovely Mrs. Robb: Light the tar on fire first.

I think I can get behind that.  Especially as it is supposed to be a particularly cold winter.  And you know who's hardest hit by something like that, don't you?  The young and the elderly, of course.

Tar, feathers, and a match.  It's for the children.

QOTD

Again, from Don Surber in his role as the Scorekeeper:

12. From the Washington Post: "The Syrian crisis over the past few weeks has thrust President Obama into a role in which at times he has seemed uneasy: that of commander in chief." 

He's also uncomfortable with his role of running the government. 

Working with Congress.

Leading the nation. 

But he does like the golf. 

And he's not good at that, either. 

QOTD

From Don Surber, in his Daily Scoreboard:

Fort Hood, Aurora, Newtown, Navy Yard -- the only thing up in this presidency is the number of mass murders.

Bohemian Gravity

From a link at io9:

Question: What do you get when you mix a cappella, sock puppets, string theory and Queen? Answer: The geekiest (and astonishingly good, musically speaking) cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" EVAR. Easily the greatest physics-themed cover of the classic we've ever heard. Seriously. The thing's a masterpiece.

Wonder what he's talking about?  Let me ‘splain… no, there is too much. Let me sum up.

"This is madness!"

"This is PHYSICS!"

Well, physics with a dose of crunchy Bohemian goodness.  Done a cappella.

Oh, geez.  Just go watch it.  For the meeping Einstein sock puppet, if nothing else.

In Our Household...

... replace "coffee" with "tea".

Other than that, as far as I can recall from our early child rearing days, it's spot-on.

"I'm sure they'll listen to reason."

... and with that last post, I've finally added a "guns" tag to the blog.   I went back and did a quick search and review of previous postings, so now there's more than three dozen posts with that tag.  I am sure there's more out there, but at least I've made a start.  

In somewhat related news, last night the lovely Mrs. Robb decided that her M&P Shield shall be named "Chuck".

Feeling somewhat pressured at that point, I decided to display my usual talent for ripping of great writers.  Which is why my P226 is now named "Reason".

QOTD

Listening to Jim Quinn on the way in to work today, he had a couple of choice quotes.  From memory (at least until I can find a transcript of this morning's show):

"A day without a Harry Reid soundbite is like an elevator without a fart in it."

"I've carried concealed and not concealed in Starbucks for years, and so far, I've killed less people than Ted Kennedy's car."

Home Sweet Home

Vacation's over, and my happy family is now back at home, work, and school.  Generally missing the sun & surf of the Outer Banks, but that's the way the cookie crumbles.  We had a lot of fun, which was kind of the whole point.

So now I am digging into a minor memory allocation bug, and trying to catch up with the news of the week.  So.  Anything interesting happen while I was...

Wait, what?  Syria?  Obama?  Amateur hour?  Kerry said what?  Putin?  In the NYT?  Bikers where?  The NSA did what now? 

Good grief.  You can't let these jokers out of your sight even for a minute, can you?

One Can Dream

One day we might hear the First Reports of Independence...

News of Martian independence reached New York the second week of August via the Mercury packet ship, which launched with important correspondence from Security Chief  Alvarez to United Nations Secretary General Clinton-Kennedy, dated July 7 and 8, from the New Staten Deeps in Valles Marineris. The New York Times, once permission was received, first broke the news in its Saturday, August 10 edition. A 16-word, 106-character, Twitter-esque extract Snowdened from an intercepted Alvarez info stream read: “I am informed that the Martian Congress have declared the United Colonies free and independent States.” 

Later that day, pirate web postings from the unlicensed New York Post included its own version of the breaking news: “Advice is received that the United Colonies Congress resolved upon independence the 4th of July; and have declared war against the United Nations in form.” The same blurb appeared in the Tuesday, August 13 issue of the New Zealand Herald. On Wednesday, the Washington Examiner and Entertainment Tonight announced “Aictor reenactments of the Declarations of War by the Provincials are now available on YouTube and are said to be couched in the strongest terms.”

Impromptu Pittsburgh Storage 2013 Summit

The family & I got together with a few old college friends last night.  What with one thing and another, we ended up with representatives from NetApp, Panasas, Violin Memory, Amazon, and of course, Avere Systems.  (Well, technically, our Amazonian is in their app store division.  Still, with AWS and S3, I'll count Amazon as a storage provider, just for the symmetry of things.)

Not bad for a gathering of a half dozen friends.  We just need to get someone into EMC and we'll have just about all our bases covered.

Aside from the general "How's work going?" questions, though, we mostly caught up with each other, traded stories about kids and family, and related tales of mutual friends that not all of us have managed to see recently.

All in all, a really enjoyable evening.

Excuse Me?

Transcript: Obama's remarks on Syria

Declaring himself "war-weary" but determined to hold Syria accountable for using banned chemical weapons, President Barack Obama said Friday he was considering a limited response to what U.S. intelligence assessed with "high confidence" as a Syrian attack that killed more than 1,400 people...

"Now, I have not made a final decision about various actions that might be taken to help enforce that norm. But as I've already said, I have had my military and our team look at a wide range of options."

My military?  MY military?

Excuse me, sir... but you didn't build that.

That is our military you are talking about.

In case you have forgotten, they work for us.  We have graciously allowed you command of our armed forces... for a time.  You are not a king; you are not an emperor; you are not a dictator.

You are an employee.

A senior employee, true... but you are not irreplaceable, no matter what you may happen to think.

Bittersweet

Eldest Daughter begins her first day of high school today.

Wasn't it just last month that I saw you for the first time, your face so serious and so beautiful?

Wasn't it just last week that you fell asleep in my arms and I carried you through the Forbidden City?

Wasn't it just yesterday that we rode the Little Dipper at Kennywood for the first time, and when it was over, you looked at me with your eyes wide, and whispered, "More!"

I am so in love with you, and so grateful that you are my daughter. You are growing into a beautiful, amazing young lady. That makes me both fiercely proud, and wonderfully sad. Sad, because the little girl I once knew has become just a memory to me; proud, because the woman you are in the process of becoming is my joy.

Do well, and do good, my daughter.  Love God, love others, and never doubt that we love you.

Sic itur ad astra, Delainey.

C25K: On to Week Two

So, Eldest Daughter and I have managed to finish week 1 of our Couch to 5k training.  One week down, eight left to go!

I'm really happy with this first week.  After the first day, my feet hurt, my back hurt, and my legs hurt.  Thankfully, the program only calls for three days of training a week, so that meant I had a day to rest and recuperate.  (Eldest Daughter, having the vitality and resilience of youth, had no such problems.)  After the second day, it was more of the same, only... less so.  I expect that after today's session [1], I will be no more than a little stiff tomorrow.

Now, keep in mind that this first week is really tame. You jog for a minute, then walk for a minute and a half.  Lather, rinse, repeat for a total of 20 minutes.  As light as that workout is, though, I could feel the difference between the sessions.  The first one was a real struggle to complete.  The second, not nearly as bad... and today's session, even less of a issue.  I mean, yeah, I was panting like a dog and sweating like a pig, but that's to be expected.  The jogging/walking itself, though?  Not a big deal.

I was actually looking forward to today's session.  Seriously.  If you knew how I usually feel about running, you would know how strange that is.  Imagine how I must feel, waking up and thinking, "Oh, hey!  We get to run today!"

So, apparently, my head is in the right space, at least.  My body will get there, too.  Eventually.

Next week, we up ante.  Jog for a minute and a half, then walk for two minutes.  The goal, after all, is to eventually work up to the point where we can jog 5k without stopping.  Given this week, I am looking forward to it.  What we've done so far has primed me for it, mentally speaking. I know that the first session of the week will be tough... but I also know that I can push myself and get through it, and that after that, completing the next couple of sessions will get increasingly less difficult to accomplish.

Yeah, yeah, I know.  I'm all psyched about working my way up to running jogging for a whole ninety seconds at a time.  Baby steps, man.  Baby steps.

[1] I say "session", because this isn't a running program - it's a jogging program, really; and until the seventh week, it's really a jogging/walking program.