Page of Moss - bloglet for Thursday 7 June 2001

Items: now in a new, easy-for-me-to-update format. _
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12:45:02 AM, Thursday 7 June 2001

I'm not just being rude. AIM isn't letting me log back in, because it says I've logged in too recently. I hate AOL. _
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11:19:14 PM, Wednesday 6 June 2001

Earlier I mentioned Dr. Bronner's. For those that aren't familiar with it, I've decided to post a link to the wonderful text from the label of a bottle of Dr. Bronner's soap, though really the experience isn't complete when it's taken out of its natural context like this. _
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10:07:00 PM, Wednesday 6 June 2001

Kerne has inherited a bottle of Dr. Bronner's from his apartment's former occupant. This is a very great blessing indeed. I offer two words of advice:
1) Read the label! The text on the Dr. Bronner's label is the very best part. Kookery even greater than that which can be found on Usenet.
2) Regardless of what the label may say, know this: it works well as soap, but using it as shampoo will only make you unhappy. I also doubt its value as a contraceptive.

Dilute! Dilute! _
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07:57:34 PM, Monday 4 June 2001

The distinction between land, capital, and labour. _
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06:07:26 PM, Monday 4 June 2001

Mr. Jason Derleth did something a lot like this, though not as long as what you describe. Built in the SJC woodshop, no less. Not as long as what you describe (more cube-shaped, actually), but the same basic principal. You might ask him if he's any advice. _
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05:26:48 PM, Monday 4 June 2001

The other m14m bloglets are back. Terribly sorry for the delay. Finally gave up and rebuilt the configuration files myself. Now go enter something into them. _
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01:57:43 AM, Sunday 3 June 2001

Okay, so here's what happened: I logged in from a shell account on an ISP. Someone had installed a trojaned version of ssh on the shell server at the ISP, and it sniffed my passwords to this box and my home box. Having my passwords, they used them.

You should never, never run ssh from an untrusted machine, still less one that you're connected to through telnet. I should have to write "Secure systems are nothing without secure behavior" several hundred times on the chalkboard. _
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02:57:06 PM, Thursday 31 May 2001

fixing broken link. _
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09:08:51 PM, Wednesday 30 May 2001

You are Beth Gibbons, and I claim the right to answer Katherine's question about where your gallery is. _
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09:07:14 PM, Wednesday 30 May 2001

Of course, it's not really as bad as all that. There's more to life than work, and work is never as bad as it sounds in an idealized description of it. _
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03:34:11 AM, Tuesday 29 May 2001

Okay, this isn't going to be pretty. See, you're right about 1, 2, 3, and 7 partially--or at least, they match with everything else I've heard from anyone who worked in foodservice. But it's worse than that. Much worse.

1. Multitasking. This is the most hopeful one--multitasking really isn't a requirement of every job. There's a whole class of jobs that require nothing but singleminded attention, and even a somewhat less deadening class of jobs that only require attention to one thing at a time.

2. Mediocrity. Any business exists, first and foremost, to make money. In order to make money in a given industry, there are certain things that must be done. Virtually all of these things are done well enough before they're done well. Now, think about the extra effort required to get from well enough to well. Point 1: it's unnecessary effort, because everything has already been done well enough. Point 2: it costs money. Spending money for no benefit is the one thing a business is most strongly directed against doing. Oh, of course some people try to do otherwise, try to focus on something more than just making money, try for perfection--their businesses fail. To a first approximation, every job there is absolutely demands mediocrity.

3. Bullshit. In every industry, there are customers. If you don't have customers, you aren't doing business, you're growing food for yourself, or practicing a hobby, or some such. And the thing about customers is, they're spending money on your product or service, and they expect to get something for their money. They expect everything to be done perfectly. Now, (see 2), doing everything perfectly is one thing that must never happen. But a business cannot survive without its customers. So a business only has one choice--it must lie to its customers. It must conceal the necessary mediocrity in everything it does.

4. Disorganization. Thankfully, this one may not be a universal. But think about this: any time spent organizing is time that isn't spent working. And you can keep things in your head for a long, long time. And the longer you keep things in your head, the harder it is to get them down on paper, and the harder it is to rearrange them in a way that others can understand. It's not universal, but it sure is the norm.

5. Uninformation. As far as I can tell, this is universal to any job that doesn't actually require detailed training. If you really can't do the job without training, then they'll either train you, or, more likely, hire people who have paid for their own training. On the other hand, if something's possible without training--if you can do it, even if you have to do it badly, or if you can eventually learn how to do it after being smacked enough--then training people is only (you guessed it) wasted money. And since these tend to be the lower paying jobs, they're the ones on which there's the least cause to waste money. Workers shift around a lot, so training them ultimately just helps the competition. And sometimes, you end up with workers that can figure things out pretty well.

(6 to be covered later.)

7. Impossible. A business can produce at a certain rate, and its customers will consume at a certain rate. Now, if a worker has time to rest, has time to serve everyone, has time to do everything that needs to be done, and do it well, this can only mean one thing: customers are consuming slower than the business can produce. And this, in turn, can only mean one thing: the business is making less than maximum profit. On the other hand, if the demand is higher than the supply can be, this means you always have a customer waiting for anything you can produce. Sure, you can't serve everyone, but that doesn't matter--you can serve the maximum possible number of people. And, as an added bonus, you can probably charge them more, too.

6. Passive-aggressive. I've saved 6 for last, because it sort of ties everything together. See, think about the situation I've just presented. We live in an entire world of workers who are kept tired and confused, made to do impossible tasks and punished when they fail to do them, never allowed to do them well when they do learn to do them, and then forced to lie to defend the very business that does all this to them. This is bad. This makes them unhappy. But none of it is so bad that they'll quit. It can never get that bad, because as soon as it does, people start quitting, there's a shortage of workers, and businesses have to make things just the least bit better to get them back. Not so much better that it's actually good, mind you--that would be a waste of money. Just better enough that it's not so bad they'll all quit. Marx offers a good first approximation of how well you have to treat the workers: he says you have to pay them just enough that they can afford as much food as they absolutely need to survive, and keep their hours just short enough that they can get as much sleep as they absolutely need to survive.

Of course, maybe if the workers actually got together, they could do something to improve their conditions. But no, that's just crazy-talk.

(And I like my job. Just imagine what someone really cynical would say!) _
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03:19:26 AM, Tuesday 29 May 2001

Velvet Underground, Ghost Story _
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12:32:37 AM, Tuesday 29 May 2001

Let's just be totally clear on this: Aleister Crowley did NOT invent the rule "Do what thou wilt". Rabelais used it centuries before; either he coined it, or he borrowed it from someone still earlier. Crowley was a ninny. _
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05:12:36 AM, Monday 28 May 2001

Just once, before I die, I think I'd really like to flame someone on news.test. _
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12:46:05 AM, Monday 28 May 2001

Identifying a troll as such will only ever make the flamewar worse. _
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08:32:06 PM, Sunday 27 May 2001

London
by William Blake

I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

In every cry of every Man,
In every Infants cry of fear,
In every voice: in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear

How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appals,
And the hapless Soldiers sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls

But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants year
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse _
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12:17:36 AM, Sunday 27 May 2001

Why that goodfornothing little... not only did they (apparently) hack my account at m14m.net, but they hacked my account at home a few minutes later. Or at least, it looks later, going by my clock. _
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10:13:56 PM, Friday 25 May 2001

m14m.net hosted bloglets: your bloglets aren't working right now because someone hacked into my account last night, and deleted your configuration files. I've just sent a note to tech support; I'll let you know when I've heard more. _
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01:53:19 PM, Friday 25 May 2001

The Connells, '74-'75 _
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09:11:32 PM, Thursday 24 May 2001

Things indentified by information in appended parentheses:

Unix commands -- manual section -- ls(1), caesar(6)
Design patterns from the Gang of Four book -- page number -- Builder (97), Command (233)
Functions in C-like languages -- argument list, if any -- init(), advanceClientListQuery(ResultSet queryResults, ClientList targetList)
Others? ...

_
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01:51:23 PM, Thursday 24 May 2001

Bloglet continues to spread! Only the newest one would prefer to remain anonymous. Huzzah for the anonymous blogledyte! _
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09:53:26 PM, Wednesday 23 May 2001

I need a more Unicious car. I'm not entirely sure what the most Unicious car would be, but I strongly suspect it's a VW Bus. _
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08:43:23 PM, Wednesday 23 May 2001

Clue:
Things like USENET and IRC aren't supposed to be easy to figure out.

The main problem that any online community faces, once it's hit critical mass, is controlling the number of new users. For closed communities (anything with any form of access control), there are a number of ways to do this--access by invitation only, application procedure, waiting period before posting--but for open communities, where software-based barriers to entry aren't an option, there's really only one solution: give newbies as little help getting started as possible. Leave enough information out there that someone who's actually interested can figure it out, but don't leave so much information that they won't have to work a bit to prove their interest.

Corollary: the cause of the September that Never Ended wasn't just cheap internet access; it was also the sudden availability of USENET client software made by people who didn't need it for their own use, and who therefore had no reason not to make it user-friendly. _
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08:13:38 PM, Wednesday 23 May 2001

I can't decide whether to have dinner or go to bed. _
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02:01:23 AM, Wednesday 23 May 2001

I don't find the difference between my Aeron Chair and other chairs I use to be as marked as it is for Mike--I still find my old Johnny chair comfortable enough when I get home at night--but it just struck me that my posture is noticeably better when I'm sitting in the aeron. Interesting. _
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04:09:33 PM, Tuesday 22 May 2001

Well, as of 8:00 this morning, I collapsed, unable to put off sleep any longer. I think I have to admit defeat.
Exhaustion: 1, Comic: 0.
It was still fun. I'm gonna try again in October. _
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01:40:35 PM, Sunday 20 May 2001

12 hours. A fresh start, albeit incorporating some of my earlier work. Am I insane? _
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04:01:39 AM, Sunday 20 May 2001

down by the ocean,
it was so dismal,
women all standing
with shock on their faces _
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12:32:25 AM, Sunday 20 May 2001

Well, I've got two pages done, though one of them's just a title page.
Beastie Boys, The Bloodhound Gang, Guided By Voices, The Presidents of the United States of America, Shonen Knife, Smashing Pumpkins, The Evolution Control Committee, They Might Be Giants, Violent Femmes
More goldfish.
More carrot juice. _
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06:28:36 PM, Saturday 19 May 2001

Just fixing another old link, don't mind me. "That's a fair interpretation" was meant to point to Katherine--not sure why it didn't. _
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06:11:07 PM, Saturday 19 May 2001

Gorillaz.
Potato salad, goldfish, ice cream (vanilla).
Carrot juice, kefir. _
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05:13:00 PM, Saturday 19 May 2001

I have begun. _
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04:01:33 PM, Saturday 19 May 2001

That's a fair interpretation, and similar to what I believe myself, but you must admit that the absence of Platonist erotica renders that side of the issue irrelevant to the problem at hand.

On the other hand, if someone were to write some real, nous-focused, Platonist erotica. _
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02:28:40 PM, Saturday 19 May 2001

There. Silly of me... I was reading at pc1 and I forgot to switch for the benefit of non-passwordiferous readers. The links are fixed now, I think. _
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02:17:00 PM, Saturday 19 May 2001

This category isn't as uniform as it first seems. Sure, by all means you should avoid buzzword-named programs, and marketing-named programs, but a friend of mine from my BBSing days used to just give his programs perfectly ordinary names. Women's names usually. _
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06:55:21 AM, Saturday 19 May 2001

As good a description as I've ever seen of how it's possible to be certain, in an odd but very definite sort of way, of something about which in the abstract you still quite definitely admit doubt. Ladies and gentlemen, this is how the progress of science works. This is what I mean when I say that Newton was right.

(And yes, I am going to respond to three consecutive entries from Mr. Fahey's log. That's just how it happened to work out.) _
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06:47:00 AM, Saturday 19 May 2001

Just saw The Wall, having discovered by pure chance that it was showing tonight at 11:30 at a nearby movie theater. Fucking incredible movie. _
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06:43:08 AM, Saturday 19 May 2001

Well, that's a popular way to define the difference, but I don't buy it. It may sound appealing--admittedly, the distinction sounds appealing, but you have to remember that Eros is all about sex, even if it is sometimes transformed and sublimated into something different and arguably higher (and as far as that goes, I've yet to see any Platonist erotica, though I'd love to).

If I had to come up with a solid distinction between the two, I'd say: if it's just meant to be arousing, it's pornography, but if it's meant to be literary, it's erotica. Ultimately, this has the same fuzziness as the old "art is anything that someone calls art", but I think that's essential fuzziness, not accidental. _
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06:41:31 AM, Saturday 19 May 2001

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