Balinares

08:57 pm

So, away from home for two weeks. As usual, vacations are spent in entirely too many places, doing entirely too many things, and while I usually dig that kind of craziness, this time, just this time, I could really have used some real, actual rest.

Still loving you guys, but don't you dare post too much. When I get home, I want to sleep. :)

09:22 pm - Dude...

The CFO of our parent company was in flight 447.

I didn't know him personally, but the transition from the kind of horror that is comfortably dulled by the TV's screen, to something that I have a direct link to, is too uncomfortable for words.

My sole hope is that there was an explosive decompression of the cabin that knocked everybody out right away so they didn't have to watch themselves go.

06:00 pm - On the proposition 8 Supreme Court of California ruling.

I have been remiss in updating this blog. There were those entries in my head, with such exciting titles as The Saddest Pizza In The World (A True Story), or The Great Garden Battle Of 2009, and I entirely failed to commit them to actual words on account of a complicated mix of 'augh, what if my writing sucks?' and 'surely tomorrow I'll feel like posting'.

Straddling the line between insecurity and procrastination. Story of my life!

But this is important, so let me post right away.

The ruling of the Supreme Court of California re. proposition 8 has caused much sorrow: at first glance, it seems to uphold the ban on gay marriage.

At first glance.

And yet.

Quoting page 36 of the ruling (emphasis mine):

"... Same-sex couples, as well as opposite-sex couples, enjoy the constitutional right, under the privacy and due process clauses of the California Constitution, to establish an officially recognized family relationship. [...] Proposition 8 reasonably must be interpreted in a limited fashion as eliminating only the right of same-sex couples to equal access to the designation of marriage, and as not otherwise affecting the constitutional right of those couples to establish an officially recognized family relationship."

Or, to sum up: same-sex couples have exactly the same constitutional rights as opposite-sex couples, EXCEPT to have their relationship designated with the word 'marriage'.

Under the guise of upholding it, in effect the Supreme Court has eviscerated proposition 8.

Leaving us with only the much lighter concern of finding a new word for marriage. Any ideas? I suppose it can be anything, 'mareej', even 'mariage' -- just NOT, absolutely NOT 'marriage'.

I wonder if 'ǝbɐıɹɹɐɯ' would be allowable. :)

(From Daily Kos, via chris_sawyer.)

10:01 pm - The Science of Cataclysms.

In non-baby-related news, Slashdot relayed this article, which at first glance you might be tempted to overlook as yet another boring viewpoint on Finance and The Crisis and Stuff.

Don't.

This is a personal account by the man who found himself writing the software which the financial industry has been using to automatically consolidate debts into bonds. First, prime mortgages; then subprimes; then subprime-backed bonds and then the bonds backed on those bonds.

It's like watching a frame-by-frame replay of the world's most interesting train wreck.

I am having a hard time describing my feelings after reading this. There is a pure, cold and perhaps a little morbid mathematical beauty to this, that mortiferous and perfectly logical chain of causes to consequences -- all happening beyond the understanding of anyone involved, because the entire purpose of the system was to encapsulate entire worlds of arithmetical complexity to the point where the sole human-facing interface could be narrowed into a commoditized dashboard sporting but a few variables.

A few months ago, I was sent to attend a conference organized by Oracle on the topic of Business Intelligence -- the core business of the group that owns the company I work for -- which roughly amounts to spectacularly expensive software that purports to model your entire business, and lets different people supervise and control what aspects thereof fall under their responsibility on the basis of convenient, bite-sized atoms of data. It left me with a similar feeling, something uncomfortable, precariously balanced between the fascination for the mathematical beauty of the engineering involved, and sheer terror at the stark disconnect between those people's now fulfilled craving for artificial understandability and the organic complexities of the real world their actual businesses -- and we're talking Fortune 500 here -- exist in.

I asked someone a question to that effect. "How does this system account for mismatches between the models and reality?"

There was this awkward shifting -- the embarrassment of the high-born as a dirt-soled peasant asks the council of princes about beet and pigs -- and a reply which, as I remember it, went something like: "Well, that's not really the purpose of BI, is it?"

Probably not, I guess.

Perhaps all understanding is an illusion, in the end, leaving us, ironically, with the cold beauty of mathematical logic as our lone solace. Bitchin'.

09:07 pm - Gah.

In these here columns, I intended to make a post about tech-related stuff, because it's been a while and I was in a mood to anthropomorphize electronic components anyway.

Instead I must shed the recent horror right away by committing it to public words before it encysts in the back of my consciousness and leaves me forever traumatized:

HE PUKED ALL OVER ME.

Gah.

The horror. You think it the sort of thing that only happens to others, like venereal diseases or baldness. And then... Everything goes so fast. You're holding your son in your arms, crooning soothingly to him so he falls asleep, and bam. By the time the sudden white-ish protrusion from the kid's mouth registers on you, your sleeve already feels warm and soggy.

But that, my friends, is but the beginning.

Like the small tremors that are followed by the big earthquake, it gets better. And there you are, assessing damage from what you think is the last one, but then another comes, and somehow, somehow, it's bigger still.

And there's this very slightly sick smell like warm curdled milk...

At least I guess I can be proud of my son's capacity. Dude.

Thank heavens for C., who materialized right away when I started bawling, and took charge, ever unflappable. (Sometimes I suspect she truly loves everything about her baby. I'm not gonna inquire.)

I'll tolerate babies when they bear half my genome, but baby puke remains right out. c_c

Well, bah. Something like this had to happen sooner or later, you know?

Then C. cleaned up and we sat for dinner. C. suggested we have ice cream for dessert, to make me feel better.

I said: "Maybe not dairy, love."

10:10 am - Signs That I May Be Spending Too Much Time At Work...

... and/or not enough time in bed:

Yesterday evening, I was sprawled on the couch with C., blearily switching channels on the TV, and as it came to me that the switching was really fast and smooth and pleasantly devoid of lag, something clicked inside my mind and the following thought popped up:

"Gee, this sure is working so much better since I cleaned up the database."

... Yeah. Maybe I'm going to set database optimization aside for a few days.


In other, baby-related news, he's being a remarkable pain in various areas, first and foremost the butt and the ears, but then cunningly keeps me from developing lasting resentment and an urge to legally change his name to Gulliver Barnaby the Sexless, Third of the Name: the little bastard looks me in the eye and SMILES TO ME.

Of course, he doesn't do that to his mother. Doesn't need to, see: she's genetically conditioned to be his tireless personal servant day in, day out, a fact which he's been mirthfully abusing from about day one.


Also, I've been having the writing bug for days on end now, but can't seem to make anything worthwhile of it beyond unfinished fragments of stuff. Story of my life.

12:22 am - Moments in Time.

It's a small bookshop, hiding in a small street of a small town. It smells of the good kind of old, the warmth of waxed wood.

The bookseller, humbly nondescript little man, his thinning hair already more snow than ash, sits there in his tiny, universes-spanning kingdom of ink and paper, quietly watching the world go by.

He's the sort of man whom you could ask whether he has, hidden somewhere in a corner of his shop, a copy of The Neverending Story bound in copper-colored silk, and he'd smile, and know exactly why you're asking, and why it matters. I did, once.

It's a small town under sun and rain, but some live, ever, under the rain.

They're a small band of youth, perhaps in their late teens, loitering outside, outside of home, outside of school, outside of life, waiting out days that stretch into no better tomorrows.

Perhaps there is something, a hierarchy of despair that's the ruler of them, where you can only climb a step up by causing someone else grief.

Perhaps it's their way of asserting what little control they believe they have on the world around them.

Perhaps it's only because the old bookseller is alone, and it's so easy.

There they are, and they enter the bookshop.

One of them advances on the bookseller, waves his arms frantically, shouting, "Mad cow disease! Mad cow disease!"

Perhaps the bookseller, in his surprise, doesn't have time to be afraid; but the diversion works all the same, and already the band is running off, taking with them what books they could snatch in a hurry.

The old man rushes to his doorstep, but it's too late: the thieves are young and they run fast, and he can only watch them disappear at the corner of the street.

But no: there is still something for him to do.

The old bookseller takes a deep breath, puts his hands around his mouth, and calls after the scoundrels, as loud as he can:

"Read them! Read them!"

09:11 pm - And, back to work.

Today was my first day at work after my parental leave.

I feel all grown up now. Daddy going to work to feed wife and kid. Right!

It turns out it was a good day to resume working, because:

1) It was a very quiet day, all in all, so I could catch up with stuff;
2) Today our bosses had a sumptuous buffet organized, on account that we hadn't had one this year yet. The salmon was divine!

It also turns out that the detailed explanations I wrote some time before leaving regarding some vastly suboptimal behavior of a particular project were read thoroughly and, when the project started crashing repeatedly, understood and put in practice. And that the stability of the project in question improved drastically right away.

I am not exactly used to have my self-confidence petted by stuff at work, so, uh, yeah. This is a good thing, especially as I've been scheming rather persistently to have the higher-ups realize that, yes, I do know what I'm doing pretty darn well, and it might be, ah, profitable for everybody involved if I could have a hand in technical decisions before they turn into technical calamities.

And it also turns out I got a raise. The kind of raise that puts the 'token' in 'token amount', mind you, but as this comes after they'd proclaimed there would be no raise whatsoever, on account of Terrible Financial Crisis Oh My God, I like to believe the message I sent during my annual review was well received. Can't be sure without asking others about their raises, but if it should turn out the "no raises, guys" thing was really not all humbuggery after all, doing so would be kind of crass. And crass is not my thing[*].


[*] For what my thing is, is bad temper. Gotta know yourself, y'know.

06:50 pm - Okay, so...

I am, right now, working on a program's code... with a baby strapped to my belly in his baby carrier.

The wonders of this new life never end.

Next step: beat kefen at Mario Kart with the baby carrier strapped on.

08:21 pm

March 4, 14:54. 3.535kg.

It's a boy. :)

07:23 am - Gah.

So, C. seems to have broken her waters, and we're off to the hospital.

...

This is going to be one of those days, I can tell. c_c

05:36 pm

Gah! Haven't updated this in way too long.

Things have been okay, busy-ish but not overly so. Most weekends have been spent out, visiting friends, or having family visit, which is good, but time-consuming.

One metric buttload of projects still lie around unfinished. (A good number take the unfinished thing so far as to delve way into unstarted territory. Evil, evil unstarted projects. I'll start your ass eventually, just you wait.)

In the meanwhile, here, have some links, courtesy of... people. You know who you are.

You may be into superhero stories, and you may not. Regardless, this fanfic about a minor villain of the Marvel universe and his brief and less than hopeful stint as not-a-villain is nothing short of brilliant, with its endearing characters and engrossing storytelling. And I'm sure the author's encyclopedic knowledge of the world of super heroes will make fans go squee.

And this is the reason why Bill Watterson should have been made president of the world.

Good times.

06:08 pm

The Internet is such a beautiful thing.

I am not there, not physically. Yet there I am, following it all, exactly as it happens, listening the real time broadcast from halfway across the planet, in between closing two client tickets.

This is a good day to be alive.

12:03 pm - Today...

11:21 am

I've got the best girlfriend in the world.

The other day, when I got home from work, she had a surprise for me. Tickets for the first and only performance of Video Games Live in France!

The show was last Thursday. And it was awesome beyond words.

Imagine an entire symphonic orchestra (violins, cellos, piano, brass, choir...), led by video game music composers who decided that their art absolutely deserved the recognition of the biggest show they could put together.

Imagine a huge concert room full of geeks (and to some extent, of geekettes), explicitly urged to react as loudly as possible to what is taking place on stage.

Imagine the show starting off like this and then growing much wilder still from there. (Yes, they do explicitly encourage you to film and put online bits of the show. They know their audience.)

We got treated to many old favorites and a few lesser known things too. We got Christophe Héral, the unjustly under-appreciated composer of the awesome Beyond Good And Evil soundtrack, come up on stage and play along a trailer of the sequel to the game. We got Martin Leung, better known as the Video Game Pianist, come on stage and do his crazy finger magic live, including a blindfolded rendition of the good old Mario Bros theme.

It was the ultimate nerd treat. And thanks to my girl, I was there, and so where my dear friends kefen and unblue.

I've got the best girlfriend in the world.

06:23 pm - So...

I have said recently that sometimes, your dreams just don't fit within the reality of your life. I still think this is true.

But I also still think that sometimes, you gotta do whatever it takes to fit your life around your dreams.

12:05 am - November.

Ah, November. The month of cold grey rains that don't even have the decency to turn into honest to god snow, of dry withered tree leaves piling up under your windshield wipers. A month for curling up at home with a cup of hot chocolate.

If you are sane, anyway.

Which it would seen we aren't. Instead, an unspecified amount of sleeve got rolled up, and the house received major improvements over the course of the month. And I have the photos to prove it!

( We can rebuild it. We have the technology. )

Ah, November. A month well spent, yes.

... And this is where those of you guys who know me well must be asking yourselves, "What about that crazy NaNoWriMo thing, then? Isn't that exactly the kind of crazy Bali likes to indulge in, if only for the sake of picking the closest thing to impossible to fail at?" (For in my mind's eye, you guys know me very, very well, see.) Alas, I fear I must disappoint.

( NaNoWriNot. )

Then the unicorn paid us all a round of rainbow beer and I transformed back into myself (I think). Good times!

10:36 am

Well. It's been a long restless night filled with uncomfortable dreams, but on the morrow, it seems, the world has changed, a little.

I'll add my congratulations to the chorus, not because I believe a choice was made that is categorically right, but because a choice was made that involved the huge mobilization of so many under the notion there's a way to make things a lot better.

That's big. That's huge.

It means there's something going on that wasn't there before -- that everywhere, the young, the old, the disenfranchised, the apathetic, the hopeless, but also the hopeful, looked up and realized, dude, we too are America, and got to their feet and pulled back their sleeves to get a say in this all, and that, I feel, is the real, true victory on this day.

Because the task ahead is huge.

In terms of identity, what it means to be an American today is essentially defined as a set of idiosyncratic atoms, of specific cultural notions: like everybody else, Americans sum up what being an American means to them in terms of what sets them apart from citizens of other countries -- or, more precisely, what they feel sets them apart. (That distinction is important, because it necessarily embeds a perception of what other countries are like in its axiomatic base, and such perception can quickly become obsolete as others, too, change.)

Thing is, pride in one's national identity often crystallizes into pride in that specific set of cultural notions. They no longer have to justify their origin or their meaning; it's just a matter of them being ours, uniquely ours.

Meaning that as things currently stand, you cannot bring America as a country up to speed with the rest of the industrialized world on a particular subject matter if that subject matter happens to have one such cultural atom attached to it -- not without bruising a LOT of feathers and stirring hard antagonism, when it is crucial for such a change to work out that you get as much heartfelt support behind it as possible.

And don't think for one second that because a voter chose Obama yesterday, they'll also support a proposed change if that change happens to go up against the territorial pattern matching of their hindbrain's algorithms.

There's the reason why so many approaches to so many issues find themselves labeled 'unamerican'. In so far as 'american' is defined as such a set of idiosyncratic cultural atoms, then in truth, the term 'unamerican' DOES fit, semantically.

So the first step to any lasting change in the way certain things work in America -- yeah, healthcare is clearly one such issue -- is to identify the root cultural atoms that such changes go against, and cautiously detach them and their emotional baggage from the proposed implementation. To make those particular notions not that important after all.

Which does imply, in a way, redefining what 'american' means, not in the dictionary, but in people's hearts.

Can it possibly work?

Absolutely.

Two reasons why.

The first reason is that this doesn't necessarily negate conservative values. The crucial thing to realize here, is that in spirit, conservative values are not inherently wrong. Of course the government should be kept as small as possible -- but no smaller. Of course taxes should be limited to the minimum -- but no lower. Of course a functional family should be protected as the base social unit upon which individuals grow -- but so should other functional social units. It's all about what particular equilibrium best fits a particular social and economical context.

Nobody is up against a particular set of values, because values don't exist in a vacuum: they are, at heart, means to an end. Although it is a very natural thing to come to cling to values and lose sight of the ends as a result of fear. Change is always a factor of stress to the human brain. Which is alright. It's okay. That's why we need to focus on the ends, what we're trying to achieve, and then talk about how we're going to go about it with the conservative wing, or those of them willing to discuss, at least, because no one-sided ideology ever works out on its own.

As to the second reason... Many years ago, some buddy of mine, who since turned out hard-core conservative (and as far as I know, still pro-Bush to this very day), asked me what I thought America did well. This was an unfair question to ask out of the blue, because it's such a big question, it deserves a lot of thinking time, and in truth at the time all I could possibly give was a lame, lame answer. But it's a question I never stopped thinking about.

And today, I think I have an answer, a real answer to propose.

What's America is really, really good at is the "Let's do this shit" mentality. Setting up a whole new country from scratch on a new continent? Let's do this shit. Sending a man to the moon? Right, let's do this shit. Indexing every single one of the billions or trillions of Web pages out there? Private space flight within our lifetime? Hydrogen fuel cells backed by solar power? Absolutely, let's do this shit.

That, I think, is the core value. That's the edge of America. That's the thing Europe mislaid somewhere on two centuries of battlefields and for which we are looking up to you guys.

And damn it, if social democracy is what the 21st century's game is going to be, can America implement it better than anyone else before and beat the whole of Europe at its own game? Time will tell. But damn it, let's do this shit.


... Well, that's why I'm cautiously optimistic, at least.

11:34 pm

So, when we last left our fleshy-nosed hero, he'd barely had time to complete a particularly grueling assignment at work before the next enemy attacked, in the form of a former landlady decidedly unkeen on turning back a not insignificant pile of cash she owed him.

Well, languish no more, devoted fans idle bystanders. I am, this minute, holding in my hand a check from to her to the exact amount still due.

Interestingly, it all worked out when I took a deep breath in, stopped hiding behind the litigation option, and tried instead to turn to empathy, in an attempt to figure out what the hell might have prompted her to send me such an incendiary letter in lieu of the cash still owed.

Not an easy step to take, because the letter really held little nice content and much accusatory instead, and the figures sent along as justification to keep my cash were rather convoluted, and markedly devoid of explanation.

But it's the letter, in the end, from which I figured out the probable spirit of the whole disagreement.

See, that letter was in response to a reminder I'd sent earlier, that she still owed me the deposit I paid for the flat's rental by then, and which, to be legally receivable in court, should it come to that, had to follow certain norms and a certain wording, even though I tried to soften it where I could.

And, it only then occurred to me, that made her completely freak out, and her response was the equivalent of running behind the couch screaming and throwing pointy things at me from there.

... So I replied with a resolute but extremely courteous letter pointing out in what way the necessarily legal wording of my previous one did in no way detract from its fundamentally pacific intent, and where I thought she'd erred in her calculations and assumptions.

Response: my check, and a letter of apologies.

Score one for empathy.

So at this point, you'll be wondering why our still fleshy-nosed hero is not jumping for joy all over the place?

Well, it's like in those Japanese RPGs, where by the time you figure out the means to beat the top bad guy, it turns out there's a bigger bad guy still waiting for you from within a cloud of darkness and bad vibrations that totally dwarfs the baddy you just beat.

In this case, the ever shadowy tax service.

Apparently they fucked up something masterful in their calculations of years past and may I please fork over a huge chunk of cash that they forgot to demand until now? (That's the general idea anyway, they just didn't say please.)

It just never freaking ends, does it?

05:49 pm

Well, lately, all I feel up to posting is whining or memes, so here, have a meme, by way of... err, too many people already!


A is for age: 31. Holy crap, were have all those years gone, and do I still have time to make something of my life?
B is for beer of choice: Pêcheresse, a peach-flavored Belgian fruit beer, or Verte du Mont-Blanc, a génépi-flavored white beer from Savoy.
C is for career right now: *sob*
D is for your dog's name: No dog. My parents's dog died a few years ago already.
E is for essential item you use everyday: Hairbrush or toothbrush, I guess. About everything else I can do without.
F is for favorite TV show: 101% on the aptly name Nolife TV, I would guess. Or Scrubs.
G is for favorite game to watch: Nolife TV has a show called Superplay, where geeks of various size and shape play through notoriously difficult video games, with live commentary. That's the closest thing to watching games I do.
H is for Home town: Eh... Aix-les-Bains in Savoy is where I was born, but I've not lived there in, what, 28 years now? My parents' home down south no longer really feels like home, although the area is still where I am from in a way Picardy, where I now live, isn't.
I is for instruments you play: Long ago, a friend took it upon herself to teach me the Moonlight Sonata. I since forgot it, but my fingers, themselves, mostly didn't, surprisingly. So I guess I play some piano, for half-assed definitions of 'play'. Also, I once made the Zelda theme on an AdLib soundcard.
J is for favorite juice: Apple.
K is for whose butt you'd like to be kicking: Holy flaming bandicoot poo, I have neither the time nor the room in this window for the whole entire list, so here's a hugely abridged version: me; anybody too incompetent to realize they're incompetent; anybody incompetent who can't be bothered to do anything about it; anyone who says "That's just the way it is, always was, always will be" and means it; anybody wanting a say in who other people love; and me.
L is for last place you ate at: chinese restaurant up the hill this noon.
M is for marriage: Someday, surely. Weddings are cool because you get to have cake. And people give you gifts.
N is for your name: Either has Latin roots, in which case it means "he who works the vair", or Germanic roots, in which case it means "he who goes at war", I believe. Otherwise unremarkable. I've thought of taking jallora's name if I marry her, because 1) her name's awesome, and 2) it goes against the accepted norms for the male partner to take the female partner's name and that's bound to make countless people freak out. (Whee!)
O is for overnight hospital stay: Back when I underwent I-don't-know-what operation for my deaf ear, I suppose, well over two decades ago.
P is for people you were with today: My girl, briefly, and then coworkers.
Q is for what's your best quality: Analytical mind. I like to think I'm compassionate, but if I wasn't, would I know?
R is for what are you currently reading: My screen. I'm not typing this with my eyes closed, y'know. (I know, I know, the question is about books: right now I'm reading La Pierre et le Sabre, a biography of the great samurai Miyamoto Musashi.)
S is for relationship status: Seven years and going strong. Rocky at first, now steady. Signed a civil union a few weeks back!
T is for time you woke up today: That's assuming I'm done waking up.
U is for the type of underwear you have on: A cautiously picked piece as determined by the trustworthy algorithm of 'whatever was on the top of the pile'.
V is for vegetable you love: Oxymorons.
W is for worst habits: Procrastination, I suppose.
X is for x-rays you've had recently: None.
Y is for something candy: Yes, please.
Z is for zodiac sign: Capricorn in classical western zodiac, Sagittarius in sidereal zodiac, Dragon in eastern zodiac. Curious weirdo in either case.