Genesis of a Paper Trail

In the beginning, man created paper, and it was good. It was permanent, stateful, and could be used for warmth if the auditor got too close. Man could transfer the paper to another man, certain his message would get across. Man could doodle and mark-up the paper. For a backup solution, there was carbon paper. And, there was much rejoicing.

And, lo, God saw Man enjoying paper, and said, ""If as one people they use the paper, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." And so, God invented e-mail and the Blackberry. And suddenly, man's communication was much faster, yet intent and meaning was lost. Yet, there was much rejoicing. (?)

Finally, in the business, Man created Groupware. "Email is no longer sufficient! We need Lotus Notes databases, and Wikis, and Blogs, and forums, eRooms, and FocalPoints." And vendors grew rich providing solutions to the business Men. And no one knew where to find the information. Putting information into these systems became all anyone did. And there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Quick Hits: I'm not dead

Randomness:

* This month marks 2 years since Mom's cancer was diagnosed. She's still kickin'.

* I'm going to try and blog much more. Facebook's great. Twitter's great. Sometimes, though, I just can't hear myself think in there. Blogging's much more composition and reflection.

* I've learned to say 'No'. I've de-committed some things at church. Whitney and I have worked out some ways to get time for ourselves: Every other Saturday morning, we get 'Off'. The opposite parent takes the kids, no questions asked. It's still a work in progress, but I like where it's going.

* I'm melodramatic. I see drama where there is none. When I recognize this in myself, I'm trying to be self-deprecating, since my other problem is I TAKE MYSELF TOO DAMN SERIOUSLY. :-)

* After coming back from vacation, I'm re-evaluating lots of things. I don't know if it's really healthy for me to get up at 5am every day, for instance. I don't exercise; that's unhealthy. I have very little energy in the afternoon.

A strange sort of love story

I was staring at myself in the mirror a moment ago, washing my hands, thinking of a time years past, when I sat across from a Hazel Eyed woman:

"Why do you keep doing that?" she asked.

"What?"

"You keep doing sign language when you're talking. Why?"

It was the Fall of 1999. That summer, I thought I'd lost my soul mate, the woman who'd taught me a little bit of sign language. Her name was Whitney. I loved her so much I couldn't see straight. Even this sparkling gal from Menifee County couldn't cheer me up.

Now, in the Fall 2009, 10 years on, I realized God returned to me that woman I love.

Fact is, I got a second chance. Sad to say, I've spent most of the last 4 years in bitterness and self-delusion. When you bottle up so much darkness, it's hard to see the light shining through. Back in 1999, I would've given everything for even a glimpse of the blessings I have now--a life with Whitney, children, memories, laughter. Yet, I never felt blessed.

Staring into that mirror, looking at my nearly 31-year-old self, I felt blessed. Truly blessed. I love my wife. I always have. I always will.

Strange, rambling, meodramatic ("Squirrels in my pants") I know...just wanted to capture it.

A Dummy's way of doing CVS tagging in Subversion

User story:

As a developer, I want to tag my code every so often, so that other people can get code that's stable, not bleeding edge.

This is the classic CVS usecase: Commit your code, and then tag it as 'Production' or 'Released' or whatever. In CVS, that entails touching every file. In Subversion, that's a constant-time operation you can do wholly on the server.

Let's say you want to copy your current /trunk to /tags/release-1.0 tag. Issue this sort of command

svn copy http://server.foo.com/Repo/trunk http://server.foo.com/Repo/tags/release-1.0

Great huh?

Thing is, that's great for leaving a trail of tags in your wake (Beta 1 -> Beta 'N', Release 1.0 -> 2600). What it's NOT good for is for the 'moving tag' usecase: I want to tag my code and then change that tag to point at a new revision of code. This is useful for when 2 modules are evolving towards a release:

\module1
   \trunk 
      \common

\module2 
   \trunk
      \common <-- grabs code from module1 via an svn:externals link

Typically, you want that external in module 2 to point at a /tag, not at /trunk (You can always have your external specify an explicit revision number, but that smells bad to me...it's a maintenance point)

An alternate solution, using a /tag:

\module1
   \tags
      \PRODUCTION
   \trunk 
      \common

\module2 
   \trunk
      \common <-- grabs code from module1 via an 'svn:externals' link

in the above, the svn:external points at /tags/PRODUCTION, instead of /trunk. Great...so what happens when you're on the team responsible for module1 and you want to publish the next baseline of code? You can do one of two things, based on your environment:

1. Create a new tag and have everyone alter their svn:externals defintion


2. Delete the old tag (using svn delete) and then create the same tag again with a new revision (svn copy, as shown above)

#1 is the 'opt in' solution where the consuming team makes a conscious choice to get the new code. This is better if they need to do integration work.

#2 is some great sleight-of-hand for when you want things to all share code invisibly, without resorting to pointing at /trunk.

Finally, the punchline: That #2 item above is so fall-off-the-log obvious, I couldn't even conceptualize it until this week. Made a 1 line change to my 'tagger' ruby script that wraps the svn command line and now I can overwrite my old PRODUCTION tag with a new baseline and all the downstream components see the change when they 'svn up'.

Randomness: Found my coffee cup

[Insert obligatory apology/observation about not updating my blog here]

It's a brand new me, folks. Less introspective. Focused on "What" and "How", not "Why." 'Why' is an empty question where one can spend one's whole life.

I'm 30 now. I'm married. I have two kids I love very much. I also have no idea who I really am. Most of this blog from these many years is complete B.S., I'm afraid--at least the stuff about me.

I'm hoping I've turned a corner, and I got a sign about that the other day: I got something back that I thought was lost.



Years ago, the last time I thought I "had it together" I had a coffee cup that I used to take everywhere with me at work. I drank less coffee then, but I'd still fill it with water in the afternoons. Right after I proposed to Whitney, I lost it. Last Wednesday, I found it on a shelf, forgotten in one of our labs.

Maybe certain things go away and just return when it's time. I hope so.

On the Murder of George Tiller

Someone gunned-down George Tiller in cold blood in his church Sunday. That he happened to be an abortion clinic doctor is immaterial. Vigilante justice, retribution, and demagoguery are not roads we need go down in this country--it's been done before.

Memorial Day Hangover

I enjoyed Memorial Day quite a bit. Our trip to Kings Island (formerly Paramount's Kings Island) was great. I would actually call it an achievement--we didn't overtire ourselves, and we never had a desire to strangle one another.

For the Combs clan, that's an achievement.

We got there at 6pm Friday, having checked-in to our excellent Courtyard Inn in Blue Ash and settled our stuff. A 20 minute wait for our Gold passes later, we were in the park and headed towards Nickelodeon, standing in awe of the new ride, Diamondback. As I've tweeted and Facebooked---WOW, what a ride. Beautiful, graceful curves--it's a transcendent beauty that's really themed the wrong way. The ride's not a snake at all, it's a tour de force of elegance and grace. A shark theme would have been better.

Anyway, so we settled into an alternating pattern--Joey would ride, then Maria would ride. Where we could, we rode all togeter. As the sun set, Whitney piped-up: "Harold hasn't gotten to ride any rides...let's let him pick one for himeself." What a woman! I picked Diamondback initially, but then I supposed the line for the Beast (a 3 minute walk away in Rivertown) would be non-existent. I was right. Beast was nearly a walk-on.

After my ride, I got a text that Maria had fallen out of the stroller and hit her head. I sprinted down the side of Kings Island (let's be honest--a Jog. I'm fat.). First Aid confirmed--no big deal, just a scrape on her head.

We stayed until the fireworks at 10, and settled in to our hotel room at 11:15.

Saturday was great, if a little flat because of the crushing # of people at KI. We were pooped by ~3:30, so we came home. Maria collapsed and began snoring even before I got the car seat buckled.

Sunday was...well...hard. Our family has a certain tolerance for one another. We love one another deeply, but we can't stand one another after a certain point. Sunday ~9am was that point.

I'll spare you the details, but we basically shipped the kids off to my Mom on Monday morning just so we could have some peace and adult time. We went to see the new Star Trek movie at Movie Tavern. Whitney seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

This is total crap....

Linky

Simply put, this regulation will be the end of the automobile industry (and possibly the automobile itself). They want 42mpg fleet AVERAGE? Given current regulations, the 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid gets 42mpg average. Nearly EVERY OTHER CAR on the road will underperform.

They want these regulations by 2016...understand, that's ONE GENERATION in automotive terms, given the 5-year product lifecycles the carmakers deal with. The 2011 and 2012 cars are already done and in the pipeline at this point.

Sheesh, not like the automakers had much choice. . .so they now have consumers who can't buy a car and a government that ties both hands behind their backs.

Americans won't buy cars that run on pixie farts, go 0-60 in a couple weeks, and hold 2 people. We're big people spread across a large continent who assume safe, comfortable transportation.

My prediction: The next shoe to drop is a $5/gallon tax on gasoline. That's the only way you're going to drive the meat of the bell curve to drive an imaginary-mobile like the ones this law will require. Failing that, cars produced now through 2016 will become VERY popular for a long time, much like cars made before 1973 were in the 1970's. Cars will be WORSE for a very long time, and certain market segments won't be available anymore. There'll be buyers, but no company willing to lower their CAFE to service those buyers.

Any way you slice it, it's an Extinction-Level Event for the automobile industry...

The solution...well...or not :-)

So, as anyone who's followed my blog for a year or more knows, I got motorcycle fever last spring and summer.

It all started innocently enough. I got a ride on my father in law's scooter (hey, I had the helmet already thanks to autocross, right?) It was something of a disaster--maneuvering the 600cc scooter at low speed wasn't *quite* as easy as I thought.

Long boring story later, I had full-blown fever. I took the MSF course and REALLY learned how to ride, FINE-C, the whole deal.

Then came the apodiction: "YOU WILL NOT BUY A MOTORCYCLE."

Fair enough.

Thought I had a loophole today--an ATV. Del, my carpool buddy, hatched a plan of engineering perfection. An ATV's offroad vehicle, far away from Semi's and other could-squash-you-like-a-bug stuff. Fits quite well, no?

No. They're deathtraps.

That's also a NO on Dirtbikes.

Jetski's show promise

Bizarro Dream of the weekend....

So, Sunday, I decided to do something completely out of character--I took a nap.

My wife took one look at my cranky-pants self after church and said, "You need a Nap for Jesus."

Which is a polite way of saying, "Jesus, Harold...take a nap!"

Anyway, my bizarro dream went like this:

[Interior. Lab environment. Soft lighting, muted hum of machinery]

Serge: Hello, Harold. I'm Sergey Brin. This is Larry Page. You might know us...we founded Google.

Harold: Umm....Hi.

Serge: So, we've been studying this Twitter phenomenon for quite a few years now. What do you think of Twitter?

Harold: Oh, I like it.

Larry: Hmm...interesting.

[Harold notices he's reclined on a couch, his brain wired up to some sort of halo device]

Harold: Are you READING MY THOUGHTS?

Serge: Possibly. So, Harold, tell us how your mother laughs.

Harold: What? NO!

Serge: Nevermind...this one's uninteresting. Send him back to his bed.

[White light. Fade to black]

* * *

And, then I woke up. In my bed. :-)

Yeah, between too much House, and too much tech stuff...maybe I'm getting paranoid.

Still....FREAKY!

(Yes, I get the irony of writing this on blogger, an entity wholly controlled by Google)