preposition

up and at: 'em

Here is an exchange i had with an Anonymous coworker today:

A: blah blah blah copy some files

T: sudo -u webuser cp somefile-1 somefile

A: Thanks.

sleep 300

A: When you did the copy, it didn't overwrite the file. Can you do it again?

T: sudo -u webuser cp somefile-1 somefile

im2: [silence]

T: No output, so it ran fine. Your task must have re-downloaded the bad file.

A: No, my task doesn't do that.

T: Ok, but you're going to be back here again in 5 minutes.

sleep 900

A: Ok, can you copy it one more time? I fixed the task.

at: Elevator Action 2

Thursday at work nearly started off in the best possible way.

As i got near the turn to get into the office, i noticed that purnendu had appeared in the lane next to me. He was talking on his cell phone as he drove. I imagine someone as important as purnendu can't really justify driving to work unless he's also doing business on the phone at the same time.

We pulled into the parking lot, when i noticed that now coworker Erik was also in the train. The three of us were quickly greeted by a red Civic sitting in the way of everything. We waited for a moment, then purnendu honked. The Civic crept forward, pretended to swerve into one, two parking spots, then finally found a third. We zoomed on, down to the ramp where purnendu and i usually park. But most of the spots were full. Purnendu went too far down the ramp and was greeted with zero empty spots. I saw what was happening, quickly zipped into a spot just behind where purnendu had stopped. But in my haste and excitement, i fucked it up, and had to back up to correct. As i was correcting, purnendu's reverse lights on. Erik swerved around both of us to go down to the lower deck where he usually parks. I corrected and parked, leaving purnendu to fend for himself.

I jaunted down to the elevator, where coworker Greg had already pushed the elevator button. Erik showed up soon thereafter. The rightmost (laziest) elevator came, but purnendu hadn't shown up yet, so it didn't matter.

What i had been hoping for was that after watching purnendu struggle with so many things that would probably make him cranky, i could then sit in the "purnendu sucks ass" elevator with him AND TWO OTHER WITNESSES. It would have been the greatest Thursday morning ever.

at: Elevator Action

There are three elevators at work which serve the eight floors that comprise the building.

Normally, i try not to use elevators. I would almost always rather take the stairs and pretend that i'm exercising.

When dave and i still worked at Cnet, dave counted something like 200 stairs between the BART platform at Montgomery and the 5th floor where engineering lives. That's not a lot of cardio, but it's better than my current lifestyle of drive to work, get in elevator, climb nothing.

I am flummoxed by the building i currently work in, though, because while there are stairs, they're completely useless.

From the parking levels, the stairs go up and outside of the building.

The lobby has no entrances to the stairwells, because the stairs go outside of the building. Furthermore, these are fire doors that are locked from the outside.

And then, not that it matters, since there's no useful way to get into the stairwell in the first place, NexTag occupies the entire sixth floor, meaning there's no hallway for the stairways to exit into, meaning those doors are locked from the stairwell side.

In short, the stairs are useful only if you are going from inside the office to outside the building, and don't want to get to your car. Since there are only a handful of restaurants within walking distance (one of which is McDonalds), this scenario rarely arises.

So naturally, these elevators are crazy.

There's a well-known project that Berkeley CS undergrads do as part of CS 162 (the OS class) where they implement an elevator algorithm. Something to do with threads, i think. Anyway, i am convinced that our elevators were programmed by Stanford grads. Much like the nextag codebase.

The elevators seem optimized for two things:

1. Stopping at every floor
2. Breaking with people in them

It's generally the case that if you get on the elevator on P2 and it stops to pick someone up on P1, it will also stop on L, and the people who got on at P1 and L will be visiting floors 2 through 5 inclusive. I can only imagine what the other elevators are doing at this time. What do elevators do in their free time? Do they just hang around?

I get the feeling that the leftmost elevator must feel like Thomas, always cursing lazy Percy and that little bitch Toby. I wish they would all adopt a more positive attitude, like Bob the Builder and his friends. Can we be faster than stairs? YES WE CAN!

Kevin Smith, during his Q&A session at Zellerbach (which was attended, by the way, by every Kevin Smith fanboy in the northern half of the state -- all of whom had brought with them awkwardly worded questions, teary requests and loud, annoying, unfunny opinions) talked about Blue's Clues and Dora the Explorer in the context of activities for use with psychoactive substances. "SWIPER NO SWIPING!"

Also, it's worth mentioning that my lovely mother, who will generally tolerate just about anything, especially as relates to Alex, absolutely hates Blue's Clues.

My other mom hates Bob the Builder because the characters are so whiny. Their motto isn't actually "YES WE CAN" but rather "OH, C'MON, CAN'T YOU DO IT FOR ME?". It's like, jesus christ, you're a crane. Just pick up the fucking girders! Bob has other shit to worry about today.

The leftmost elevator sees by far the most action, again, because round robin load balancing is a concept that never made it to Palo Alto. And it is in this elevator that someone had scratched into the brass above the floor buttons:

Where "purnendu" is the CEO and co-founder of NexTag, Inc., and "sucks ass" is a phrase that i have been known to use, but which was scribbled into the elevator while i was off in the Channel Islands.

My lunch crew had told me about the appearance of this graffiti, but i still laughed, out loud and vigorously, when i saw it in person.

You would think that the burning question of the week would be who had written this message? Whose frustration with micromanagement and blunt criticism had boiled over into a fit of grade school defiance? Could it have been business guy Joe Millionnaire, who had left at the end of last week under unknown circumstances?

But no. While we did speculate about who had written the few choice words, what was even more fascinating was that someone had crossed it out. But of course, it's scratched into brass, so it was still very clearly readable in spite of the extra scratching. And yet, someone had tried to obscure the message. Kinda.

Would purnendu himself scratch it out? Or one of his lackeys? Was there discussion about what should be done, and scratching was the best solution that could be agreed upon on short notice?

This morning, Lefty greeted me with his normal cheery dings. As i leaned over to press 6, i again caught the missive, and again simled. Why is it so funny? I don't know, but it's really a pick-me-up in the morning. At P1, i was joined in the elevator by one of the many nextag gregs[1]. As greg settled into the elevator, his eyes alighted on the poorly obfuscated message. I watched closely as he puzzled it over, grinned slightly, almost broke into a chuckle, then mumbled something about how someone clearly had strong feelings on the matter.

And yet, the mystery deepens even further, because as of tonight, someone had gotten really serious about scratching out, and did enough work that "purnendu" is now almost impossible to read, leaving the message as this:

Curiouser and curiouser.

I was sorely tempted to scratch "arnon" or maybe "greg" in above the cloud of scratches, but my aesthetic sense of scientific method was offended by the idea. The experiment must go on.

under: .0225 Tons

Another class dive weekend. Our three students for this trip were all quite good, which allowed for some nice long tours for dives 1 and 2:

1 25ft 40min
2 26ft 36min
3 21ft 19min
4 17ft 5min

Vis was a reasonable 10-15' on Saturday which improved to a solid 20+ on Sunday. James noted that we could watch the students running their compass courses under us, even with our faces out of the water. Much like the last Breakwater dive with Matt (unblogged at the moment), the water looked vaguely tropical from the surface, and it was nice to see the bottom geography of MacAbee all at once. It's amazing how long it takes to form a map of an area when you explore it in small, haphazard swatches.

When i started working in San Mateo, and thus eating lunch in downtown San Mateo -- an area encompassing some four square blocks[1] -- i was amazed at how long it took me to learn the layout when we drove a straight line to a specific eatery every day with no deviation or exploration.

Exploring under water presents an even narrower scope on each visit, so these days of great vis cement things in your head really fast.

Within 10 kickcycles of beginning the tour on dive 1, i saw a weight belt buckle sticking out of the sand. It's been a while since i've salvaged any gear[2], so i excitedly tugged on the buckle. Half of a Seasoft 35lb weight belt -- still in good condition -- came free, but the rest was still buried. I dug a little and continued pulling. Jesus, how much does this thing weigh? After a minute, i had a 35lb weight belt which had been augmented with two(!) additional 5lb weights(!!). "This once belonged to a very big man," i thought, before moving the weight belt onto a rock i figured i could find later. I wasn't about to try and lead a tour with an extra FORTY FIVE(!!!) pounds of lead attached to me.

The salvage operation later proved interesting. As i lead the tour on dive 2, James separated the two halves, moved the half without extra weight into the buoy, and left the rest at the anchor. At the end of the dive, i led the two non-sucking-air-like-cows students back to the shore underwater, encumbered with the 27.5 very extra, remaining pounds[3]. Fortunately, my BC has ~60 pounds of lift, but getting the ~100 yards back to shore was an interesting exercise nonetheless. Apparently, i didn't pull it off quite as smoothly as i'd hoped, as one of the students commented, "That looked like a lot of work" when we surfaced.

The next morning, as i headed out before dive 3 to set the buoy, i spotted a fairly large halibut hanging out in about 8' of water. On the way out for dive 4, i thought i'd see if he was still hanging around and point him out to the class. Sure enough, i found him.

"Is there something wrong with him?" Phillip asked.

"Nope."

"Doesn't he have trouble breathing on the bottom like that?"

"No. He's got his gills and both eyes on this side of his face. Here, i'll go down and poke him so you can see how he swims."

I descended and tried to gently coax the shallow halibut into his graceful upwinding halibut swimming, but got a little too close, so he just bolted. I don't know if the students got a sense of what i was talking about or not.

"That looks like some good sushi to me," Phillip attested when i returned.

There are a lot of complicated issues around the eating of animals in general, the observation of animals in the wild, and the hunting and eating of those animals. But i must say that hunting halibut with a speargun while on scuba is pretty fucking dumb. It's quite a lot like hunting cow. Lazy, prone cow. That think they're camouflaged.

On our way out to dive 4, we noticed that a friendly local otter had taken up residence atop our buoy. Now, this was greatly amusing to the students, which is fine and reasonable, but presents a few problems:

1. Otters, being related to badgers and weasels, have a jaw that locks when they bite down. Also, being related to badgers and weasels, they're mean little bitches, even if they are pretty much the cutest thing ever.
2. Otters, being marine mammals, are protected by the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which makes it a federal offense to molest them. This may or may not necessarily include shooing them off of your dive buoy, but any which way, molesting a marine mammal in front of students is probably not the best idea. Especially if you video tape it[4].
3. This[5].

Fortunately, the otter took off once James got close to it, so we didn't have to deal with any of those problems.

Other than that, it was a pretty typical MacAbee weekend. A couple seals checked us out from a distance, but didn't come play with us. Large sunflower stars (including an orange one, which is instructive under my light as a concrete example of how quickly reds and oranges are lost at depth), and a cabezon were the other highlights. Overall, it was nice to be in the water again, especially as warm-up for the Channel Islands trip this week! w00t!

above: America's Wang

I was at Northstar a couple weekends ago on a big cabin trip with roommate, roommate.girlfriend, sandiego.Ben, roommate.brother.little, and roommate.friends[14].

I'd never been to Northstar, but probably the most accurate capsule summary comes from this exchange with coworker.Tierney:

this: So i'm going to Northstar this weekend.
coworker.Tierney: Oh, you're going to Flatstar?

[transition]

One day last season, Dave was taking a tele lesson. Dave's instructor also worked out of Heavenly sometimes, and in another useful capsule summary, referred to said resort as "The Heave". Furthermore, he wasn't content to refer to keep this nickname to himself; he would also impose it on other people:

instructor guy: So were you guys up yesterday?
lift rider: Yeah, we were over at Heavenly.
ig: You were over at The Heave, huh?

Etc.

Having only spent one day on the slopes at Flatstar, i'm not sure i'm ready to take up this particular tactic. "The Heave" is a winner, though.

Conditions were pretty awful all over Tahoe on account of an early, abrupt, and hot spring setting in in the first week of March. By the time we hit the slopes, it had been sunny and 50+ degrees for two weeks without a drop of precip. Primary surface: ice and slush.

Thus, i can't comment too much on what Northstar is like, because bad snow is bad snow no matter where you are. I can say that there's a lift that services several runs full of terrain park stuff (lotsa rails, a few jumps, a couple pipes), which looked nice if you're into that sort of thing (i'm too big a weenie for parks, but i prefer freeskiing anyway). The backside and a psuedo-separated peak called Lookout Mountain boast solely black runs, but all of them are groomed. And, as is the case everywhere, the run is rated based on its steepest/trickiest point, so you get a few turns with pitch, and then a long, blue runout.

To get from the main mountain over to Lookout Mountain, you have to take a short, slightly-uphill traverse. Northstar has helpfully put a pony tow here and called it "Salmon Run".

I looked around for interesting features and/or terrain, but didn't see anything obvious. There's lots of trees, but nothing that looked particularly interesting, and everything off the groomers was miserably icy anyway. There were none of the cliffs, chutes, cornices, and big bowls that keep life interesting. On the whole, i'd much rather go to Alpine.

Because i don't know any of E-ming's friends, who are all roughly intermediate anyway, and because the San Diego folks were both first-timers, i spent most of the day on my own exploring the mountain. I caught a lift on the backside with a kid. We exchanged pleasantries, and then he asked to read my helmet.

I don't appear to have a picture of my helmet anywhere for reference. I should fix that. But anyway, it has a chopped-up bumper sticker on it that says:

My man said if i don't quite diving he is going to divorce me
GOD I'M GOING TO MISS HIM

There are also a couple of dive flags from that bumper sticker; some stickers of Squidbert and Patrick that i got, improbably, from some Chilean Doritos[1]; and some hothouse stickers for yellow bell peppers, kindly affixed by Dave and Ben while riding Chair 10 a couple seasons ago (when Dave and Ben were on this continent).

It is not uncommon for people to read my helmet, as the text is quite large and prominent. Some will tell me they're reading my helmet so i'll stop moving and let them read it, while others will jump and jive (and occasionally wail) trying to follow my random head movements. Often, people will read it out loud. I don't know why they do this. Maybe they think i've forgotten what it says, or they think it will make more sense if they can hear themselves saying it.

Any which way, i haven't gotten a very interesting range of responses. Usually, i get a blank stare, or a polite chuckle that indicates the same thing as a blank stare. One guy, at Termas de Chillan (an area that did not otherwise present itself as having a wealth of English speakers -- or English readers), said, "Well, i guess keep on diving then."

"So what does that mean?" the kid asked. He had braces and a peach fuzz moustache.

"Well, that's open for interpretation," i replied. That's a pretty standard answer for any of my odd, eccentric behavior, because it is open for interpretation, and that's a large part of why i do anything. I hope i'm not so pretentious as to believe my life is a work of performance art, but i do try to keep things interesting.

He paused for a moment, thinking. Then he said, "So do you have a man-friend?" I'm not sure if he intended the hyphen, but the construction is so wonderful that i can't resist putting it there.

"Yes, in fact, i do." (I was secretly titillated to be able to answer this question in the affirmative, both because i can answer the question in the affirmative, and because it was convenient for conversational flow.)

"Oh. Do you live with him?"

"No, we've only been dating for a couple of weeks."

There was a long pause that began to feel awkward.

"It also means i'm a scuba diver," i added helpfully. And i began to prattle on about my bright yellow fins and how harbor seals like to nibble on them.

Having surmounted the homosexuality hump, we had a pleasant chat for the rest of the chair. I learned that he was from Florida, was fourteen years old, and that his family flew out once a year to go skiing.

"No offense or anything," he told me, "But we came all the way from Florida for this snow. And it's not very good."

I heartily agreed.

at: procmail is a cruel mistress

This:

:0
List-Id.*cruisecontrol-user.lists.sourceforge.net
ccuser/

Results in this:

[tyler@radix:~/Maildir]$ ls -l List-Id.\*cruisecontrol-user.lists.sourceforge.net 
-rw-------    1 tyler    tyler      815560 Apr  2 19:44 List-Id.*cruisecontrol-user.lists.sourceforge.net

Which results in me not getting mail for over 24 hours and not even noticing. Let's check the "long week" box.

In that time, i received 217 messages. 27 were unfiltered (meaning mostly mail directly to me), 22 were to the ba_diving list, and 162 were spam. God bless spamassassin, which prevented me from seeing any of them.

out: Charisma 16

What does it mean that my current idea of a perfect date is a sleepover, followed by laying lazily in bed on Saturday morning, eating a bowl of Cap'n Crunch, and watching cartoons?

What does it mean that the boy i'm dating is not only game for this, but also has tapes of Dungeons and Dragons that he bought at a comic con from someone who taped them off TV?