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As a Theology student, I liked this.  The first half of theology is logical thinking and philosophy.

It’s not so much the 5-minute mystery game type, but more a quiz on logic as you would get in a college course.   I managed to get 15/15, but had to think very carefully about a few of the questions.  It was very good – and reminds you of how slippery the arguments/statements that most politicians and news reporters use – and how one must very carefully and precisely choose ones words and the order they appear.    One of them directly relates to crimes you might see as a jurist/Sherlock Holmes as well.  Answers are given at the end.

http://www.think-logically.co.uk/lt.htm

My dad had a dramatic and very unexpected heath incident the day after Christmas.  It was very severe and he is now looking at months of recovery at this point with likely life-long changes in his abilities.  There is still a risk of sudden death.  Feel free to email me if you want some details, but I don’t feel comfortable putting personal information up on a blog.

I simply urge you to pray for him and our family.  Please also be a bit more patient with my emailing/etc.  I may be flying home more often as well as taking care of more family matters.

Had a conversation with a guy that went like this:

Him:
I refuse to participate in any recession.

As long as I work and earn, I will save and spend just as I always did. My family’s economy won’t be dictated to by some namby-pamby report by a bunch of gloom and doom busybodies.

Seriously.

If you practice fiscal responsibility (something the U.S. government seems unwilling to do, hence the current mess), work hard and consistently, keep your skills updated and always marketable, you’ll stay out of trouble… or at least be nimble enough to make whatever moves are necessary to get out of trouble very quickly.

Me:
I used to think like you do – but I have realized the far too sad truth. We’ve rounded a moral hazard corner that is about to dramatically re-shape future perceptions and policy as to what is ‘acceptable’ pain we as a country will accept when things go wrong. And I see it as a real canary in the mine as to things to come.

I also lived within my means. I was going to buy a house 2-3 years ago, but didn’t because I saw the writing on the wall. I figured when the collapse came, I could buy a house at probably less than half of current prices. I saved and hoped to be rewarded for that foresight. But that hasn’t happened.

Instead, I now have over $2000 of new national debt in my name, housing prices have been propped up artificially, and that much more of my taxes are going into the national debt toilet instead of doing real work for roads, schools, new companies, etc. And with a moratorium on foreclosures, it makes me wish I had gone out an lived stupidly.

And now we’re about to do it again for automakers who haven’t been competitive in years. Bloated with poor products, union handcuffs, and an apathy worthy of the name ‘fat lazy American’, we’re about to enter a world of US automakers that are just as wonderful as our airline industry. Ones that go bankrupt every 5-10 years and a lovely cycle of restructuring, dollar stocks, and mediocrity that’s carefully maintained by union contracts instead of being allowed to go belly up and restructure into something viable.

Folks like to talk about Obama’s plans just like the ‘New Deal’ – but I argue it’s not the same. I applaud the idea – I think it’s the best we’ve got, but this isn’t that companies collapsed and joblessness skyrocketed. We’re in a crisis of personal debt – and we’re using new government debt to pay off personal debt. We’re in uncharted waters. What’s the answer? I don’t know – I think we’ve done the best we can. We’d have had a real 1929 this year if the govt hadn’t stepped in. But I don’t see this as sustainable.

As it is, we’ll likely find ourselves in the same ‘lost decade’ Japan did when it’s housing bubble burst. Years of no real growth while we pay off debt (yes, we’re being much more proactive, but it’s very likely the pattern we’ll follow). Meanwhile everyone slowly walks out your investment doors and when you are open for business again – it’s all moved on. The rest of the world isn’t America – and China is sitting on mountains of cash and ready to innovate, invest and become the new world leader. We’ve certainly endeared ourselves to the world enough they’ll certainly remain loyal haven’t we?

Even all that doesn’t put the nail in it for me. It’s the fact that we’re seeming to pour out money while only sort-of dealing with the underlying, fundamental problems. We gave $100’s of billions to the very banks that got us in this mess. Have *we* however started changing our credit card use and living within our means?  In my book – nope.  We’re just making someone else pay for it – our whole society (aka government who spreads the debt around via taxes).

I personally am thinking long and hard about getting my long-term investments out of the US – or diversified outside much more.  I’m thinking China is looking better now – which has a national *savings* rate of over 50% as a better bet with people that know how to make money and keep it with real products. This is all speculation though.

A final note for those of you that like pointing fingers or say this analysis isn’t fair.  I say we should roundly point our fingers at ourselves on this one equally. Yes, the loan companies were out of control – but you know what – so were all of us. This wasn’t Enron sitting on a hill – this was each of us living beyond our means.  This is us not picking up a copy of ‘Mortgages for Dummies’ for God’s sake.  Chapter 1 is “Figuring out what I can afford” for heavens sake.  So when that sad tale on NPR pops up and average Joe is losing his job. Tell him it’s because *you* run up so much debt and had to be bailed out. Because that’s the hard truth on this one.

Nothing is a panacea.  Over time, I’ve found the most intelligent thing you can do when making choices is to take the time to understand the good and bad about the decision/life choice/political philosophy/etc before moving forward.  If you can’t say both what’s good and bad about something – then you need to do some more homework.

So here’s a very well balance and well-written article on what’s needing some work in Linux.  Interesting points:
1. Package management – RPM’s and inter-dependencies are a huge headache.  I think people underestimate how much thankless work goes into folks who make packages that automatically resolve conflicts and versioning problems that arise with every singe release of anything.  I remember when not only did you have to go through the headache of building yourself (which required a degree in CS to figure some of these build procedures out), but you had to do the interdependency updating yourself.  Doing this yourself by hand made me want to commit suicide and really turned me off from Linux.  I thought windows install/uninstall was goofy and unstable (leaves junk even after installs/etc).  But when I realized my parents couldn’t even figure windows install out – I knew Linux was hosed for the average Joe.  Fortunately they’ve really fixed this in modern versions – but I know what’s going on underneath and it’s frightening.
2. Configuration files everywhere – same problem exists in windows – saved preferences and data files for individual programs live EVERYWHERE.  Backing up a computer/system is a huge pain the rear because of this – so much so that I’d bet that a full 50% of backups people make probably don’t actually back up the data you think it did and will get burned later.  As a solution, he even suggests it might be good to have a central configuration file – that sounds a lot like a *registry* to me…
3. Kernel Application Binary Interfaces – kernal interfaces change too much/moving target.  Haven’t had too much trouble with this – but keeping legacy support is the same problem Microsoft has had.  Apple went around this by making fat binaries with multiple executables and then just drew a line in the sand and ended backwards support.  I personally think that’s the way to go for desktops; but linux has way, way too many ancient apps that have been running in back rooms for decades now – and have to keep them running.  Legacy support is a big nasty problem that only Apple has tried to solve well.
4. Native file versioning – rollback on individual files has been in OS X and has recently come to Vista.  With the outrageous storage capacity of drives today – there’s no reason not to allow rollback saving.  Linux doesn’t have much in this department yet – but will.  It’s only recently become viable now that 1 terabyte drives are at $100 – but should become second nature.  How many times do I mess up word documents, save it, and then realize I needed the old version with revision notes in it.  Word files are like 50-100k, why not save buckets of them?  Having this built into the OS is a nice way to not have to save 50 files with different names.  Space is basically limitless anymore on desktop machines…
5. Audio application interface – multimedia on linux has always been a bit of a backwards child compared to Windows, and should be embarrased when compared to OS X.  Too many half-baked solutions, but no silver bullet.  Agree.  Unfortunately, this also implies a whole suite of tools that are user friendly for using multimedia – DVD players, video players, audio/iPod/TV tuners/surround sound/etc.  Even Windows struggles with a nice uniform exposure that my mom can figure out.
6. GUI – He actually recommends a committee to define interfaces for apps to use in order to get fast access to kernel managed system resources.  He further recommends the shockingly obvious – that GUI’s need more uniform look and feel that were actually developed by GUI experts – not Joe’s backyard garage experiment.  This is probably the #1 soft issue for non-linux people.  More on that below.  But the interfaces question sounds a lot like what Microsoft tried to do with MFC.  A common interface for asking for GUI interaction.  This is a great idea – but just like MFC – is less flexible than ‘to the metal’ coding.  There was a lot of folks that had to go back to Win32 just to get features working they needed in their guis.  One would need to think very carefully about what that interface would look like before doing it…
7. App integration with X11 – Welcome to Windows 95.  In linux, if a gui app crashes well enough, then the windowing system/gui crashes.  And people *itch about windows?  Agree on this point.  Understand how it got there, but what the user sees and experiences is what matters – and pressing <ctrl><alt><backspace> is just as fun as hitting <ctrl><alt><delete>.  I see no difference – so fix it.
8. Commercially supported save/restore – related to 2 in my opinion.  His proposal is almost already being done by IBM and others that sell *services* that provide you with an always up, always patched, always backed up server to the internet.  However, I disagree that this is universally desired.  A company cannot really take the risk of the lowest-bidder backup service won’t ever leak their important data or simply go away unexpectedly as things hit the skids.  If it must absolutely, positively be backed up and secure – companies must be able to do it themselves.  That and I, Joe Average, don’t want to have a bill each month when I can buy another hard drive.  But again, very few backup solutions really work well – amazing how bad the commercial sphere is in this department for all 3 OS’s (linux, win, mac).

Here’s one I’d like to add:

9. Ripping it off and then calling it your own – I was amazed how many ‘new features’, ‘updates’,  and programs that the linux community touts as star children of open source have blatantly ripped off commercial products.  Star Office is a good one.  When it was it’s own deal back in the day – it was terrible to use.  Now it’s called OpenOffice and looks just like Office XP/2003.  GIMP was the most horrid pile of hooey – but has gotten somewhat better now that it kind of looks like Photoshop.  X looked like a pile of jagged polygon edges with Motif and now most of it’s windowing systems look just like MS Windows or OS X.  Installers now work a lot like OS X/Windows.  Yet, everyone seems to walk around like they were first to come up with all these ideas.  They weren’t.  My concern is that the open source world doesn’t realize what a debt they owe to their commercial brethren for investing LOTS of time/money/effort/insanely talented people into the experience of using a machine – not just its nuts and bolts working together.  And if commercial development went away – what exactly would they be left with?

Most of the business models for open source are service models.  You don’t make money from the software, you make it from the services of setting it up/maintaining/consulting/etc the code for the job at hand.  This isn’t entirely bad – but that means money won’t come from investing 3 years to come up with revolutionary ideas.  It comes from continuing the status quo/obfuscation that is job security.  I think people have underestimated how much that force will become dominant if left by itself or if commercial endeavors become too costly.

I like forward looking websites.  Probably the best, most well known one is called Ted.  I highly recommend browsing through it’s presentations.  Very educated people giving (usually) very good presentations that are fact/data based – they tend to take a less ideologically based view than most sources.

However, research sites are interesting too.  Here’s one about ten interesting projects that Microsoft research is working on.  http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/120108-10-microsoft-research-projects.html

It stopped snowing most of today.  I see people outside.  But state DMV says you must have chains to drive around the city right now (4WD isn’t enough).  Apparently less than 30% of streets in eastern Portland are traversable right now and they’re trying to declare a state of emergency.
Only about half the flights leaving PDX are getting out – but all are delayed at least 2-6 hours right now.  Maybe I’ll be having my first Christmas in Portland…

In rare Oregon fashion, we have been getting snow in the city.  And in even rarer fashion, it’s been sticking – and how.  Right now there is a mandatory chain or 4WD+studded tires restriction on all roads.  My car can’t be fitted with chains, but it wouldn’t matter anyway – cars are buried in place as there has been no snowplows down my street since this started over a week ago.  In fact, as I type this, there are people cross country skiing around outside my windows in the street – and it seems to be the preferred method to get around town.

It all started simple enough mid-last week:

Snow had been coming on/off over the end of last week.  It would stick and make things slick as it froze up and turned to ice.  When you don’t use salt and have only half a dozen plow trucks, the roads really do get slick when they aren’t touched (see the previous post on yakkity-driving of Portland).  As of today, the streets around my house haven’t been plowed once since this all started a week ago.

But starting on Friday, it got going in a serious way.  It’s been snowing almost solid for 2 days now and the winds have been bitter and hard.  I ventured out during one break and now it looks like this:

That’s about a foot or better of unplowed snow.  Here’s my neighbor’s mini – yep there’s a car in there somewhere:

But this is revealing, here’s how the last *two* days of snow have piled up.  It snowed for about 36 hours very hard, then we had about an hour or so of freezing rain, a break, then about 12 more hours of snow.  When digging through a car, it looks like this.  That’s whats on everything right now (including the streets)
      

I-84 closes in the Columbia gorge for days
The only eastern road out of Portland is closed indefinitely – for at least a few days.  Right now, I-84 out in the gorge was closed after 50mph winds and 1-2 feet of snow fell in just about 24 hours.  Video of what it looked like even before it closed is here (Troutdale is at the exit of the gorge – not even in the actual gorge itself).  Visibility was below 10 feet and there were semi’s jackknifed and cars that simply got buried in the snow *as they were driving* as the winds moved around feet of snow at a time.  The TV crews sat at this gas station right at the entrance of the gorge and interviewed semi-shell-shocked folks as the cops and rescue folks pulled them out of the gorge – leaving cars/etc behind.  Right now, 24 hours later, the storm is still blowing 60mph winds and even the road crews aren’t going in.

Admiral Ackbar says: “We’re trapped!”
Right now the Portland airport looks like this – and it’s not too bad today:

Needless to say, very few, if any flights have gotten out the last two days.  Folks that were trapped there 2 days ago are just now getting scheduled for flight after Christmas day. I put my prospects of getting home for Christmas at slightly less than 50/50.

All the highways west to the coast range are closed as is the major east route of I84.  All trains going north to Seattle or south to Cali are canceled, Greyhound has been only sporadically getting people in/out.  Salem to the south is having an ice storm right now that should just about shut I5 down in that area.  In other words folks – we aren’t going anywhere:

But, I stocked up on groceries a few days ago and living downtown I can walk or take a few of the remaining buses around if needed.  So, I sit at home with the news on and work at home.  Thank goodness I can write code anywhere. Things are looking up though – it appears that temps will increase, snowing has mostly passed, and today doesn’t look too bad.  Maybe I’ll go out for another walk…

Here’s what Portland is like when it snows 2 inches and you don’t use salt or snowplows:

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-164378

Lots going on.  More than the usual Christmas – that’s for sure.

1. I need a new roommate: my old roommate is moving out – so I need someone for January.  Anyone looking for a good place downtown?  Contact me (mattfife at gmail.com)!

2. Holidays: Got a bit bogged down with running the name exchange for my family.  Funny part was doing the name drawing.  Here I was thinking about writing this clever program to draw names for other folks.  We have some members in school so you want each person’s gift giver to be a mix of folks that have money and don’t have money.  Each person got two or three names depending on ability to pay, etc.  After pondering the problem I realized the fastest solution was just to write the correct number of names on paper slip, drop them (literally) into a bucket and draw.  First round produced almost perfect results.  The only conflicts and clumps were resolved by just re-drawing with only the affected names.  Took 5 minutes tops.  Sometimes you can try to out-smart yourself – and the easiest solutions are also the fastest. Thank you Jamie from Mythbusters – I took his motivation to always to do the quickest, easiest approach and not try to over-engineer something when a much simpler and faster solution is available.  As Fr. Bob would say – “Be brief, Be holy, Be done”

3.  We might get snowed on:  Oregon is funny.  It’s like they haven’t seen snow – even though the mountains have dozens of feet on them.  But everyone’s been talking ALL WEEK about the *blizzard* we might get this weekend.  If I had my bets (and I’m putting one down now) the WORST we’ll get is 2″ of snow that’ll melt off in a day or two at most.  My real guess is that it might flurry but it won’t even stick.  Oh, the mountains will get good snow, and the coast will get some bad rain storms for sure – but the “blizzards” out here don’t even beat the average snow front in the midwest.  Still, one never drives when it snows out here.  They simply can’t drive on it.  I’m parking my car in a safe spot away from traffic and intersections for the inevitable bumper cars.

Skyline GT-R madness:
My buddy Marty got his Skyline GTR reviewed by a local car group:

There are LOTS of 1600×1200 images of everything in the car – definitely take a look.

Presale ticket passwords galore:
Everyone knows the good tickets for concerts/shows/plays/etc sell out during the pre-sale.  I get updates of upcoming shows, but unless you sign up for every stupid mailing list from the bands/shows you might want to see (and live in a sea of junk email), you won’t get the pre-sale codes.  Unless you go here to Ticket Horde