Holiday Season

I have fallen behind in my blogging. I planned to post at least once a week and it's been 9 days. Shame on me!

However as my excuse I will claim the busy times of the holiday season.

I have found a new type of book to read. Shared universe collaborative fiction. The first example I found of this is the Wild Cards series. I have the first 3 of the series. They are very enjoyable. While I'm not sure I would recommend them to everyone as they are based on the classical superhero idea (and not everyone is into that genre) I can say they are well written.

Each anthology is a collection of short stories that weaves together the plots of multiple characters who intersect in different ways. Some have major collaboration some only see each other in passing. However they all fit into one major plot line.

I'll be looking for stuff by the Midnight Rose and some of the Leviak shared universe materials in the future. Hopefully I'll be able to find them.

I've always found series set in a single contiguous universe to be very interesting. Having a mythos to delve into and explore makes the universe so much more realistic and engaging.

If the day comes that I do sit down and write a book I might toy with the idea of doing an Asimov-ish set of short stories all set in a single universe with an overarching theme.

Looking at the type of books I've been fond of in the last 5-10 years this looks like a pattern.

R.A. Salvatore. Steven Brust. Scott Lynch. George R R Martin. Sandy Mitchell. L. E. Modesitt Jr. Robert Jordan.

All of these men have created rich worlds where there are tons of interesting characters that have real interactions. For instance, I have 15 books by Brust set in the Dragaeran universe. With that much material (well over 4000 pages) the amount of depth he can create is amazing. Watching a character grow over the time of decades as opposed to the few years that a book might normally span is a wonderful gift.

Thank you to all the authors out there. Thank you for letting us come into your world and watch you at play.

Horrible Movies

My wife surprised me today. I was watching "Drunken Master" (the original!) via Netflix.

I love this movie. It is awesome. The story is pretty standard. Son is wild. Son shames father. Father sends son to trainer. Shenanigans ensue. Son is shamed by villain and learns discipline/kung fu mastery. This is not particularly novel.

The movie is also dubbed (since I don't speak Chinese). In the process of watching of movie I was once again enthralled. My wife proceeded to trash the movie. It was while I was listening to her tear into my beloved movie that something dawned on me.

Most people don't like old kung-fu movies. When they laugh it isn't because something is silly, but because they think the movie is stupid. Maybe it is a question of expectations, but the bad acting, the bad dubbing/syncing, the weak plot, and the almost random bouts of kung-fu don't detract from the movie at all for me. I still enjoy the movie.

Maybe this will encourage me to keep my opinions to myself about other movies I watch. I really hated the Transformer movie they made recently. It was horrible. It was one of those rare movies that actually didn't seem so bad at first, but the more I thought about it the more I hated that movie. I guess other people just have wildly different criteria by which they judge movies.

I still think "Drunken Master" is awesome. I'm tempted to go watch Kung-fu Hustle or Legend of the Drunken Master soon.

In the grim darkness of the future there is only war.

It's time to dust off the Necrons.

For those in the know I'm looking to field a 1k army.

1 Lord - HQ (100)
3 Destroyers - FA (150)
1 H Destroyer - HS (65)
7 Scarab Swarms - FA (84)
7 Scarab Swarms - FA (84)
10 Warriors - Tr (180)
10 Warriors - Tr (180)

PO is 4

That gives me a nice solid base of 850. I know most people aren't quite as wild about scarab swarms as I am, but that 2+ cover save from turbo boosting is nice to use to tangle up. The problem with this list is that I have too much invested in tangling up (168) and not enough in cleaning up. So perhaps I could go with something with a little more punch.

1 Lord - HQ (140 /w RO)
3 Destroyers - FA (150)
10 Scarab Swarms - FA (120)
1 H Destroyer - HS (65)
1 Tomb Spyder - HS (55)
10 Warriors - Tr (180)
10 Warriors - Tr (180)
6 Flayed Ones - El (108)

PO is 6

This is a more robust list and comes in at the full 1k mark. The H Destroyer will go tank hunting, the Destroyers will go MEQ hunting. The Scarabs are used to tie down dangerous non-CC units. The Warriors, Tomb Spyder, and Lord march up the field as a Phalanx. The Flayed Ones can either do some deep striking or can move with the Phalanx to act as a counter-charge unit depending on the army type. Since they are elites I'll probably have the option to pick out FA if necessary.

The problem is that I don't have the Tomb Spyder or the Flayed Ones. I do have a few Immortals that I would like to try and work them into the list. If I drop the wargear I could swap the 6 Flayed Ones out for 5 Immortals to get more a shooty army. This drops the PO to 5, but leaves the number to kill at 24 (30-6 or 29-5) so that has no serious effect.

1 Lord - HQ (100)
3 Destroyers - FA (150)
10 Scarab Swarms - FA (120)
1 H Destroyer - HS (65)
1 Tomb Spyder - HS (55)
10 Warriors - Tr (180)
10 Warriors - Tr (180)
5 Immortals - El (140)

This leaves us with a total of 990. The problem is that this leaves me with a glaring weakness to those nasty hidden powerfists. Those things have been the bane of my warriors in CPL, so I'd like to find a way to take them out.

I was running a 10 War/3 Des/1 H Des for CPL, but now I'm thinking 10 War/3 Des/1 T Spy would be better. Tank popping isn't all that important in CPL so the S9/AP2 is a bit of overkill. Nothing with a 2+ is allowed anyway. The TS gives me some much needed CC ability. While it will be prone to getting swarmed if fighting hordes I can try and drop a few scarabs from it. Hordes have a hard time dealing with T6.

You want a toe? I can get you a toe, believe me...

That line always reminds me of all the stuff I can't do. If you really needed a toe by 3 this afternoon (with nail polish on it) I am not the man to ask.

However as I was cleaning out my study and other assorted bookshelves I did realize there are some things I can do. There are also some things I started learning to do and then quit.

As a sample exercise let's take a look at the O'Reilly books I own.

Classic Shell Scripting
Sendmail
Learning PHP and MySQL
Ruby on Rails: Up and Running
Learning Perl
Practical C Programming
lex & yacc

I can actually write some decent shell scripts, ANSI C code, PHP code, and the infrequent SQL statement. Unfortunately I haven't installed MySQL in quite a while and I can't tell you the last time I actually sat down and wrote anything in a *nix system. If you asked me to write a parser or compiler I imagine you would only get some guffaws from me.

On the other hand I still haven't learned Perl (and probably never will!) or Ruby on Rails. I really want to learn Ruby on Rails. I just haven't forced myself to sit down and pick it up. I don't imagine it'll be that difficult.

So, the projects that I'd like to work on:

1) Getting a *nix box setup and running. I think I already have the hardware necessary.
2) Creating a website for my dad and writing an app so he can update the content of said page.
3) Write and very small and simple computer language. You never know when you'll need to bust out a parser, amirite?

We'll see if that stuff ever gets done. If I were a betting man I wouldn't put any money down.

The burning passion of a thousand flaming suns.

I really hate the mainstream media.

I am embarassed with the kind of foolishness people who dare describe themselves as journalists try to pull.

I love to give examples. For those of you who read CNN there is a feature where nancy grace talks about cold cases. If you've read those in the last couple of weeks you probably noticed a trend. They are all about missing pretty white girls. Generally between the ages of 16-22, 100-120 pounds, big-eyed, clear skinned, pretty white girls.

I guess the only people in this country who ever go missing are the pretty ones.

Whatever happened to using the power of the press for good? To enrich mankind or to encourage virtue in our society? The idea of ratting out the evil politicians so that we can all live in a better society? That all seems to have gone out the window. Now the only thing you'll see if what the media thinks will get the most attention.

I saw an article on CNN about what kind of tuxedo Obama is going to wear. Is that really what needs to be reported on? Really. Seriously. Of all the weighty articles to put on the front page you're putting up a piece about what kind of TUX Obama is going to wear.

As people become more and more addicted to power, pleasure, and prestige (... the years of being under Baptist preachers manifests itself in alliteration of points) the idea of maintaining a standard of virtue seems to go by the way side. Instead of wondering what kind of article will help enlighten people we only see sensational tripe.

Those articles that do try to "enlighten" us are so blatantly slanted towards a particular political philosophy that it isn't even funny. It is depressing.

I wonder how much I would be willing to pay for a service that provided factually accurate news with no spin. I find it incredibly unlikely that such a service will ever appear, but I think I would be willing to pay a good deal for it.

Bailout

I don't understand the bailout.

We're going to tax businesses and people that have turned a profit to prop up a company that is losing money.

I understand that people say the collapse of the 3 large automakers would hurt the rest of the economy. Is that really a sufficiently pressing reason to do this?

If you're going to do something unnatural shouldn't there be a reason for it? If you are going to stop the natural process of the market shouldn't there be at least some kind of solid prediction that it will have positive benefits?

"We'll lose a lot of jobs" sounds very fuzzy. Now admittedly some of this may be the fault of the media. They probably leave out a lot of technical stuff so that people don't get confused.

However in the name of cost-benefit ratio analysis I'd like to see some hard numbers on the cost of not doing the bailout versus the cost of the bailout. None of this fuzzy math garbage. Give me an economist with no vested interest in the success of the company who can explain (in very concrete numbers) the cost of not bailing out the big 3. Then I can make an accurate judgment of whether or not this is a good idea.

Without data you can't make judgments. Without good data you can't make good judgments. Give us what we need to make good judgments.

Allow me to break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well. For it's the chilling sound of your doom.

If you don't play World of Warcraft I'd suggest skipping this post. It probably won't make any sense.

I have a Death Knight on the server Ravenholdt. After starting as 51/0/0 spec I decided to experiment. I liked the longevity the build brought with Rune Tap, MoB, VB but the build wasn't very exciting. I was having a very hard time finishing in PvP and just wasn't seeing the numbers that I wanted.

I read the wowinsider and wowwiki posts on builds and thought that x/x/31 was going to be the way to go for me. I've always enjoyed pet classes and the perma-ghoul / gargoyle combination looked perfect for me. On a lark I decided to try Frost just because no one seemed to like it. It was considered the tanking tree. The tree looked a little bloated and lacking in flash.

No increased self-healing, no perma-pet, and what looked like a bunch of defensive abilities. I will still say that I don't get a lot of use out of Unbreakable Armor or Lichborne. They come in handy when soloing elites, and definitely in trying to gain the edge in 1v1 PvP. They won't stop an assist train, but they will slow it down. Combine with Icebound Fortitude and Anti-magic Shell and you can take a beating for a while.

So, if this is all that Frost has going for it, why am I so ardently dumping points into the tree (I'm 0/57/0 at the moment)? I'll tell you why. Crits. Crazy Crits. Huge Crits. Controllable, On-Demand Crits. That isn't all of course. Howling Blast has become my bread and butter. Frost Strikes is a much better runic dump. But what really draws me is seeing the big numbers coming rolling up. Oh and the 10 second AoE Crowd Control doesn't hurt.

I tried going to 0/0/5x. I really did. I even got Anti-magic zone. I got the perma-ghoul. But, the numbers just weren't doing it for me. I'm sure my rotation was miserable and sub-par. I'm sure I didn't understand the talent/ability synergy. I didn't get how Scourge Strike was anything good at all. In the end I don't care. I'm addicted to my big fat crits.

Admittedly the power hasn't grown much. I was getting the rare over 2k HB crit at 62. Now I'm still not breaking 2k by much. Maybe I need to update my gear. Maybe I've passed the heyday of Frost. Maybe the Frost Resist of things in Northrend will drive me to try a 3x/0/2x Hybrid. (I know that trying to fight water elementals as Frost was the most frustrating thing I've ever done on Waltyr)

I certainly hope not.

Process Improvement

I used to think Process Improvement was a meaningless buzzword phrase.

On more reflection, most buzzwords generally seem to come about because of a good idea however that good idea gets lost when people don't understand the core idea. They try to slap it on like a band-aid and put some semblance of the idea into practice.

For instance, with process improvement, it is easy to say "Checklists improve performance, therefore let's make lots of checklists and force people to use them". Another example would be "Statistics help us understand what we're doing, so let's go get tons of statistics."

What it really all comes down to is quality. We want to improve quality and or maintain costs. This improves the value of whatever it is we are working on.

In my job I have implemented some checklists in my programming routine. Every time I get a new assignment I create a workspace, a set of other checklists, a design document on the wiki, a test plan on the wiki, a notes file, and I take control of the assignment. This helps me get organized and guarantees that I approach every problem consistently. I am programming myself to respond to a common problem with a good response.

My boss gave me a performance review last year and one of the things he mentioned was a problem I had been having with a certain aspect of coding. I was occasionally leaving debugging information in the code. This is sloppy for a number of reasons that I won't go into.

I now have two new checks in place in my checklists because of this. I check the file diffs and I rerun the software immediately before committing it to version control.

So, I made a checklist. The checklist itself didn't help me, it is that I have the right checklist. How did I make the right checklist? By using feedback from my boss. I'm making a specific change based on a specific problem. The issue I see in plenty of places is that people implement broad shotgun-like changes and expect that to fix everything.

Specific issues I have fixed:

I never send out an assignment without a test plan. The solution was to always create a test plan before starting work on the code. Specific problem. Specific solution. This helps in so many other different ways.

I never send out an assignment with debug code still in it. I'm proud to say that since my review last year I have had no assignments returned because of debug code. The process works. Put in the checks and force yourself to obey them. If you don't rigidly obey the checklist you might as well not have it. It definitely makes things slower, but it improves quality and that is worth the tradeoff.

I will occasionally spend 30-40 minutes setting up everything for an assignment only to spend 10 minutes researching the problem to find that the solution is something as simple as retranslating a file. It sounds like I wasted 30-40 minutes doesn't it? However the time I save in all those other cases where by habit I've ingrained this discipline more than makes up for the time lost on the rare easy assignment where the checklist is overkill.

In the end my opinion from the last year's work is that rigid adherence to quality control wastes time in the short term sometimes, but in the long term it pays large dividends.

No more having to read assignments again a month after working on them because I didn't write a test plan when I wrote the code.

No more having two or three extra revisions causing version control conflicts because of left in debug code.

No more searching through unorganized text files for information on an assignment's progression. Just look at the checklists and you can know what stage it is at.

While "work smarter, not harder" can definitely be an over repeated, nonsensical phrase for some people you can actually improve your work process. It requires critical thinking to identify weak points and coming up with solutions that can be easily implemented. A thorough systematic approach is the best way to improve your quality of work.

Analyze Thoroughly.
Document Specifically.
Implement Consistently.

Purpose

I'm starting a new blog. The old one was very infrequently updated and I'd like to start from scratch.

This blog will function as a collection of random thoughts and a place for me to muse.

Feel free to respond with comments.

I will guarantee at least one new post every week. I will be trying to make a habit of organizing my musings at least once a week.

There may be philosophy or technical musings.