musings from the sleep deprived

I was starting to finally reach the point where I needed a new hard drive. So this is where the geek in me really kicks in. I want to investigate all the options, examine all the different speeds, formats, capacities, cache sizes, and even cabling that is available.

So the first realization is that this will not be the end-all-be-all upgrade. The intent is to get me over the immediate problem I have of being low on space while, not compromise on performance and not hit the bank account too heavily either.

So, first decision: SATA, IDE or SCSI. For the first time ever, I’m not going down the SCSI road this time. For the extra money you pay, you’re simply not getting enough value anymore. For a quick comparison, here’s the largest SCSI drive available from one of my favorite hardware vendors compared with the IDE drive I settled on:

• Maxtor Atlas IV 147.1GB 10K RPM Ultra320 80-pin HDD (Drive Only)
  Price: $692.75
• Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 PLUS 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer ATA/100 HDD (Drive Only)
  Price: $121.00

Ok, yes, 10000 RPM. I agree, thats faster than the IDE, but Jesus Maria, thats almost 6 times the price. No, I’m sorry, that just won’t fly anymore.

Ok, so SATA? After doing a bunch of reading, my general feeling is that eventually, I will switch over to SATA. Just not yet. Why? Well, for one thing, I don’t need it yet. SATA has two real advantages for me: speed and expandability. However, right now, the speed argument is limited by my current motherboard. Until I do an upgrade on the motherboard that has a higher backplane bus speed and/or onboard SATA support and/or PCI-E bus support, there’s really no advantage. As far as expandability is concerned, SATA *does* offer many more device possibilities than standard IDE. For right now, these drives I’ve just purchased will last me into the near future. Let’s say a year or more. So once I make the commitment down the road to do a full system upgrade, then SATA may come up again. For now, not necessary. Oh, and just for completeness, here’s some SATA pricing:

• Maxtor DiamondMax 10 300GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer SATA HDD (White Label)
  Price: $210.00
• Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 200GB 7200RPM 8MB Buffer SATA HDD (Drive Only)
  Price: $123.00

Very reasonable. So down the road, this will definitely be worth further investigation. The “old” IDE bus may very well relegated to just CD/DVD type devices. That would be nice.

I’m also now considering a home network upgrade to go wireless. With the advent of 802.11g, there’s now a secure, high speed mechanism in place that is reasonable in price as well. I’m not committed to it yet, but I’m getting closer.

Finally, we got a Digital Voice Recorder for the wife. Birthday time, and this was her wish. She’s going to lots of boring lectures, and having a voice recorder lets her sleep in class without missing anything. Very important. I’ll post the model in this post once we’ve received it. No sense spoiling the surprise (or whats left of it).

So after 4 or 5 failed attempts to reload my wife’s machine with XP Pro and associated stuff, I finally buckled down and took the hard road. I followed my own advice to friends about the proper methods for installing a machine securely, and keeping it secure. It worked. But Jesus, this is scary stuff.

So in the early steps of the installation, for the XP CD and the SP1 CD I burned, the network is unplugged. I also have an applications CD burned which has the firewall on it (Tiny Personal Firewall, if you must know), which I then installed. Also installed the virus checker (PCcillin), and did the first of many rounds of virus checking. Once again, this is before its actually been live on any network.

Everything clean to this point, so I figure out which interface (there are two in the machine, one for the private home network) is which, and IPify the external interface, and finally, plug it in. Immediately switch over to the firewall configuration and put it into the ‘connected to an unsafe network’ category, and sit back a bit to watch. 26 attacks in the first 10 minutes. Not bad. I download the virus checker updates, and rescan the whole machine. Still clean.

Next step is windows updates, which also go on smoothly (no, I didn’t install SP2). Five or six reboots later, and the machine’s pretty much ready for primetime. Clean installation, no current viruses, and based on current patterns, roughly 2-3 attacks per minute on various ports. Gotta love the little kiddies with their scripts. Oh well. If television has taught me anything, its that with great power comes great responsibility. And right now, it appears that to utilize the great power of the Internet, I (and everyone else with any interest in keeping their machines clean) has the responsibility of parenting a bajillion script kiddies and their fucking brainless attacks.

Bah, I say. BAH.

(EDIT) At some point, I will publish the step by step how to on installing a machine (from the OS perspective at least) in a safe manner to keep out the unwanted. (/EDIT)

I hate doing bills, and I love doing bills. It is, on the one hand, very satisfying to see that you have money, and where it is, and that you can reconcile it all down to the penny. On the other hand, it is a process, and one that takes a considerable amount of time if you procrastinate like I’m prone to doing. I suppose there’s a lesson in that.

Its all about discipline, I suppose. Feh.

I was struck with an idea on the way to work earlier this week. It frustrated me that the typical classmates.com type sites (and no, I won’t link to them. If you want to go visit them, you can type it your own damn self) are all based on a charge, or at a minimum, ad-based model. I despise that. So if I find that someone has listed themselves on the site under my college or high school (or even grade school!) graduating class, then in order to actually REACH them, you have to pay. Screw all that noise. So my thinking was to start a free service where people just fill it all in on their own. Completely user generated. I’m not going to looking for your school, you put your school in. Yes, I store your data for you, but it NEVER gets sold anywhere. No advertising. You have to grant an individual permission to view your information, or let it all out for the public to see. Completely configurable on a person by person basis.

The site would have to run itself (yes, lots of up front database and scripting work), but would eventually be very low maintenance. The problem with this type of resource is that invariably, it doesn’t work unless you get people going to the site. I’m not good at site advertising. Flat out. Its not that I don’t see the mechanisms inherent in the Internet and the search engine pages and such for doing so … I just hate investing the time in doing so. Blah. So yet another project that ultimately gets shelved. Maybe I’ll resurrect it at some point when the mood strikes me.

Anyway … the other side effect of all that was it got me thinking about all the people who I’ve lost touch with that I wanted to get BACK in touch with. All hail Google, index of all things important. After about an hour or a bit more of poking around, it yielded up a few email addresses for me to try. And guess what … two replies this morning. One from a high school friend who I lost touch with around middle of college, and another a GRADE SCHOOL friend who was the first person I ever played D&D with. In fact, before we even knew what D&D was, we had made our own role playing type game and maps and stuff. Man, that was cool stuff. We were … hmm, maybe 8 or so at the time?

Bottom line: I’m really looking forward to more correspondence and rekindling some of those old friendships. The Internet is such a great enabler.

I’ve decided to participate in this year’s Nanowrimo. Thats an exceptionally weird way to say ‘National Novel Writing Month’. Go check out their site if you’re not familiar. You can involve yourself with the site as much or as little as you like.

For me, the value is mostly in just the initial motivation. I’ve always felt like I had the ability to produce a written work of some quality. Publishable? No idea. But there’s one way to find out, and setting a goal like this is certainly one way to provide that initial incentive. If this is successful, and better yet, if the idea pans out into something worthy of actually putting to a publisher and letting loose on the world, so much the better. Its certainly something I would enjoy doing as a career if it was something that could support me.

Anyway … we’ll see what happens. I suspect that my failings in this, should they appear will not be in the ability to produce 50,000 words. I think that once I get started on a topic, I can just keep going. I think my main failings will be in consistency of style. I tend to write in a fairly freeform fashion, and that isn’t necessarily conducive to good readable material. This is definitely something worth exploring, despite that.

Ok, I just played through the demo of Evil Genius and I have to say, it rocks pretty hard. I’ll be going to get the retail version today so I can unlock all the stuff the demo didn’t have in it.

I can’t wait. As far as quick summary, imagine Dungeon Keeper combined with modern day James Bond/Austin Powers style heroes/minions/effects. The execution could have sucked, but it doesn’t. My only complaint so far is that in addition to having a zoom/rotate (around Z axis) in the view, I’d also like to rotate my view around the X and Y axis so that I can get right down in that shizzat. Minor complaint though.

I need to rule the world.

The main character of the dream is a merman. You know, the fullon fish man, Darryl Hannah style, legs turn into scales and fins, grow gills type thing. In the start of the dream, he’s being held in some sort of government study facility in an all underwater tank style thing. His every move is monitored, he’s hooked up to sensors constantly, etc. He is given one ‘porthole’ style opening that actually has open-air access to the outside world. Invariably (and presumably, with someone else’s help, he escapes).

Unfortunately, he also has a personality disorder, in that when he’s being held captive, he eventually reverts to his ‘base’ personality, which is probably his ‘real’ personality. He is convinced that there is another ‘freak’ like him somewhere in the world that he needs to find, that can help him, and nurture him or be a parent to him, or otherwise take care of him without having to be held captive. When he escapes, he invariably, after some short or long time, ends up heading back to the west coast of the US to search for this being.

The ‘person’ he’s looking for is actually an illithid (mind flayer, ala D&D style, no idea why). It also happens to be the head ringleader of a large criminal organization (as mind flayer’s are wont to do). He’s aware of the merman, and is invariably the one who always attempts to break him out of his captivity, and assists him in returning to their base in California. It is also aware of his personality problem.

The other manifestation of the merman’s personality, that eventually comes out as he is travelling to meet back up with this other freak, is that of a superhero, or at least secret agent. He convinces himself that he is working for the very government the he just escaped from, and even begins reporting back in to let them know what his progress is in finding his ‘arch-nemesis’ (the mind flayer).

Invariably, after each escape attempt, the mind flayer is able to assist him enough along the way (usually assisted by some other criminals he assigns to help him) to get them to meet, by which time the merman is usually fully reverted to the secret agent personality. The mind flayer attempts to get him to ‘convert’ or manifest the base personality, fails, and either lets him escape, or he escapes on his own. At that point, stranded out on the ocean (at least, in the dream thats where he was ‘stranded’, the merman radios back to his ‘base’ for ‘pickup’ from his mission, and is eventually found again and brought back (into captivity) to the very people he had escaped from previously.

The final ‘scene’ is where he’s walking back to the (or ‘a”) study area, explaining how he barely got away from this evil villain (which, in reality, the mind flayer really is) and how he barely escaped with his life, etc. They take on the role of wanting to debrief him, and direct him to a short hallway with a door at the end, darkened. They indicate he should get some sleep before the debriefing in the morning, and he readily agrees, heading down the short hallway to the door. As the door closes behind him, he can feel the splash of water under his feet, and reaches the door, which has his name on it (General Maximus or Marcus or something similar). As he opens the door, the room fills with the water from the other side, and he is once again back in captivity.

Cycle repeats.

I just read through one of the transcripts of something called The McNealy Report. This is a regular thing that is recorded and transcribed for all of Sun, as an internal sort of newsletter. I’m pretty sure that quoting any significant portion of that would get me in trouble, but I’ll give a quick summary. Scott reiterates an employee question about what to do when you’re moved around in the organization or something similar, and in these chaotic times, you don’t really even know what you’re supposed to be doing. John MacGowan (sr.vp of hr) as part of his response, mentioned:

The whole system requires really good communication between a manager and an employee. Where that occurs, it works better. Where it doesn’t, there’s a problem

So exactly how are we supposed to have really good communication when we get moved around every 3 months.

Riddle me that, Batman.

Ultimately, I’m hoping that someone in SUN’s executive management reads this and takes something good out of it.

I’ll summarize in one statement. I was talking today to manager A. She had been responsible for the day to day tasks of employee C. She was not the direct report manager, however. That was manager B. Manager B was just asked to do a widespread layoff. Employee C was part of that cut. Manager A (who lost the resource), was not consulted. Additionally, as part of a sidebar discussion today, manager B asked manager A what it was that their employee did.

If that was too confusing, pardon me. The bottom line is that layoff decisions are being made, on a fairly widespread level, that DID NOT ASSESS THE BUSINESS IMPACT of the layoff. WTF, over.

Ok, I’m not so naive that I don’t understand that in some cases, you have to make difficult decisions about your staffing, and in some cases, you need to cut people who are critical. THAT HAPPENS. But you should never, ever do that unless you understand the business impact of those decisions and have some kind of (albeit perhaps only preliminary) plan in place for how to recover from the loss of that resource.

THAT’S JUST DUMB. In this latest RIF (Sun’s term for layoffs: reduction in force), I can count at least 3 people in my immediate vicinity that are (in my view) completely critical to the business. In none of those cases was any real assessment made to determine what sort of impact having that person be gone would have, nor how to recover from that person’s absence.

What a week.

So very occasionally, when I fall asleep on my back, I get symptoms that are very similar to sleep apnea. I wake up short of breath, feeling like I had stopped breathing, or something was obstructing my breathing. Which, as it turns out, is exactly what happens. Normally, sleeping on my stomach (which is my normal mode anyway) prevents this, because it keeps the airways open better.

Tonight I was sleeping on my stomach, and woke up short of breath anyways. In this case, it felt like I had some acid reflux or something, because I could taste bile, and felt like I was coughing it up. Sort of like when you burp and get a bit too much help from your stomach, and taste bile. Except that it was blocking my breathing. What a way to wake up.

So now I sit down here waiting for the taste to leave my mouth and drinking fluids so I can get back to bed. Joy.

I pull up The Reg today, and its completely blue and SUN branded, with their ads all over it. If I wasn’t so cynical, I’d suspect that we were actually spending some money on advertising.

That kind of thinking might get me to being hopeful for the future of the company again. God, wouldn’t that be a thing. Stock up 22 cents in 2 days. Hmm. Sounds like the hot mouth project is in full swing in upper management’s attempts to court the media and/or Wall Street.

And there you have it! Another miracle in corporate efficiency. I mentioned in this post that I had just switched managers, and now I’ve been switched again. Just over two months. Brilliant. Now I get to train yet another manager, and convince yet another person that I’m worth my salt. I love this fucking process.

Post plague, and post Riot Years, some semblance of order begins to form. Ex-military types begin to form small communities and protect them from rioting, looters and other travelling bandits. Most power plants around the country aren’t functional anymore, or don’t last long, so people have gone back to other sources for power, water driven, wind driven, solar driven and in some cases, no power at all. Much of the remaining populace begins to return to a more agricultural existence, and in some cases (near natural huntable resources), they hunt for their food again. Medical care continues to exist, and the system that had begun to form before the collapse evolves and continues to do business. People exchange drugs, food, chemicals supplies, nearly anything the doctors will accept to get care. Doctors begin to form their own small communities in known central areas to provide this care, hire on their own military guards and maintain in the largest cases, whole hospitals. The largest of these become known as HC’s (hospital cities) or eventually, just Aitches, and exist in several places around the country (Denver, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, Burlington (VT) and Raleigh(NC)).

Some communities use this model to get themselves back on their own feet as well, and form ‘Free Cities’, usually quite near the Aitches, and begin to try to restore some of the public services that were present before the collapse. Some are able to bring mainstram power back online, or setup enough solar/wind based power to provide themselves with electricity and basic amenities. All of these maintain their own police/military forces, and protect themselves fiercely from outsiders.

Travel between cities is very dangerous. Bandit groups in the large stretches of country between Free Cities and Aitches and prevalent and in some case, organized as well. The Free Cities often send out caravans to attempt to find essential resources from abandoned areas, looting from whatever is available. Canned goods, gas, appliances (where applicable), in some cases technological artifacts (computers, etc), chemicals and medical supplies, etc. These caravans are constantly plagued by bandit attacks, and are always accompanied by heavy military escort.

At some point, someone (need a name here … Phoenix comes to mind … Blackbauch also) realizes that one of the resources that is being largely ignored is the knowledge and communication networks that used to exist, and begins trying to extend control over the old Internet networks and data centers. Focused heavily on high technology areas, probably based out of Texas. Their rading parties also target old technology companies and anyone producing or using large bodies of computing resources. Hard drives and storage arrays become very highly prized by these Techs. They slowly secure and resurrect bodies of data and research and teams of them focus on the cataloging of the knowledge they find and bring back online. They are largely ignored by the remainder of the Free Cities. Aitches, however, recognize the value of having access to the old research and contract with the Techs to gain access to that again. A loose alliance is formed, and health care for the Techs is secured in exchange for access to the data pools.

The networks begin to come back online, focusing on buried lines that were using railroad rights of way for their tracks. These railroads are also slowly brought back into service, and resources and communication begin to flow around the country again, completely controlled by the techs. As soon as communication between sites is restored, they quickly implement a badge identification system, and security and access to Tech resources is based on that. Aitches and Aitch staff are also pulled back into the slowly growing ‘identified’ populace, and are also allowed access to Tech resources based on ID. Eventually, fingerprint, retina-print and dna/blood-printing identification methods are brought back into standard practice.

Other Tech targets: military installations with advanced tech and satellite capabilities. Limited satellite data and connectivity is restored. International communication is (in very limited circles) restored. Weather and other military satellite data is restored (Monterey Bay). Eventually, production plants for hard drives, and research facilities into efficient storage methods are restored. International travel is slowly brought back online, primarily through shipping. Planes aren’t used yet since transponder networks aren’t online, but that eventually returns as well.

Eventually, the world is brought under one control, managed by the people who manage knowledge and technology and information. Haven’t thought too far ahead yet because I think the meat of the writing will happen during the turmoil following the collapse and during the rebuilding stages.

things to research:

diseases, bioweapons and distribution vectors
virus effects, incubation, inception of symptoms, manifestation and durations of these stages before death
where during those periods are the various virii considered infectious, and if the vectors vary by stage, how

locations for various bioweapons facilities in the world, and where various
toxics are stored and/or researched

areas where heavy pollution effects occur. projections of global warming effects, including rising sea levels, temperature increases (or decreases due to to ocean current degradation), increasingly severe weather (hurricanes, tornados, general patterns of weather formation and densities of these types of severe weather). Include trending over the past 30 years. Make sure to include on an international level, not just US centric. Earthquake and fault data. See if there are maps of faults throughout the US. Can large scale nuclear deployment on US soil trigger faults? If so, which ones and what effects might these have on our current shorelines/land masses. Volcano activity (probably limited to west coast and alaska). Pacific Ring of Fire.

I need to come up with a new world map that include blast zones, radiated zones, waste islands, and areas that are severely affected by tidal, global warming or other weather effects. Whats left?

Try and project the path technology might have taken in terms of computing and communications in the years up to the collapse. That is the ‘ground zero’ point where all research would be stopped. Keep in mind that the years preceeding the collapse were pushing Internet communications industry down, and not as much innovation would have occurred. Mass storage would also have been slowed, while high speed computing and processing would have continued.

Anything technology wise that would have benefitted military applications would have continued in force.

Need maps form the major network providers one their backbones, US and international. What lines would be affected by nuclear/weather worsening and what would be left largely intact.

Need maps of railroad routes that are actively used (Groot?) and what they principally carry anymore. Shipping lanes, major ports of entry for shipping. What would be left after ocean levels rise?

Current nuclear power facilities, both here and overseas. What would the effect of cutting off their electricity be? Assume some safeguarding systems about removing rods from reactors when cooling/electricity is removed, but assume also that some of the older ones would have accidents, also contributing to the world’s “dead zones”.

Assume that research into alternative power means would have continued, but underfunded and not much better than today. That should include wind/solar/water (offshore turbines, etc).

Ok, so some advanced ideas from a world in which to stage books.

Somewhere in the near future. I’d estimate the range at +50 years at least, if not more, and there’s nothing stopping me from writing books from the different ‘stages’ of this, happening during the course of events.

A series of presidents in the US become increasingly more powerful. All part of the same family. The name ‘Trim’ struck me as amusing (bush/trim). After several presidencies of this family, they become powerful enough to rewrite some of the more fundamental laws of the manner in which the country is governed. Presidents can serve more than 2 terms. More power to the president with less checks and balances. Things become increasingly corrupt in the various houses until the party system deteriorates and devolves into just the people who supported the Trim family. Lobbying becomes the main mechanism by which laws are passed. The initial ‘cover’ of conservativism and family values eventually recedes to expose the core: greed. Anything for money. If you have enough of it, you can buy the gov’t and its laws. Education budgets continue to wane, military spending continues to increase. Natural resources continue to be plundered. Global warming accelerates. Oil is simply taken. Countries that oppose the US in getting what they want are simply squashed under the military might.

The UN eventually becomes a complete figurehead/pawn of the US gov’t. European Union governments are quietly brought under control and managed through new foreign policy committees. International trade organizations are eventually subsumed as well. Terrorism increases, despite best efforts, and become rampant in all parts of the world, regardless of ideology. They seem to all center on US interests, and no longer on religious backed efforts (although the core religions still play a part and some endorse these tactics).

Industrialized interests in the US are released from their confines from ECO-groups, and no longer worry about waste disposal and pollution. Smog is prevalent in all large cities, and even in smaller ones. Disposal services become to form, and end up dumping wastes in oceans and on remote islands that become ‘radiated zones’. After a final dispute with the US over shipping lanes and other interests, Cuba eventually becomes such an island, and is no longer populated except by the robotics running the waste disposal.

Crime rates rise, many cities institute a diluted form of martial law, and the local law enforcement turns to National Guard out of necessity, giving the high level gov’t even more control over the population at large. The DHS (Department for Homeland Security) eventually becomes responsible for all internal security in the country, ‘hiring’ private security companies all over the country to assist with monitoring the population. Information privacy and personal privacy becomes things of a clouded and vague past. Routine investigations into seemingly innocent people turn up arrests for very vague crimes, and very often disappear without any other information becoming available. All in the name of national security.

The Internet and information flow inside the US becomes heavily monitored, and (as a result), very slow. Liesure usage of that resource trickles down to a standstill. The trend of having every household connected eventually reverses, and personal internet connections are reserved to only the wealthiest citizens. The core backbone network providers eventually cave in to political pressures and are managed resources open almost exclusively to big business and military projects.

The health care system in the country continues to deteriorate. Eventually, only the wealthiest citizens are able to afford health care, and the large HMO and Pharma companies go under due to a lack of customers who can pay what they mandate. Doctors stop participating in national programs, and practice only locally, since they couldn’t pay the insurance premiums anyway. They begin implementing a bartering system for medical care, taking payment in money, food, goods, medical supplies, etc. This will eventually be the system used by everyone after the collapse.

The only pharmacological research that continues is in bio-weapons divisions of military projects. Ethical practices in testing are abandoned, and human trials (on criminals and otherwise terminal patients of other diseases) become commonplace.

These same trends are also mirrored (to a lesser degree, perhaps, and maybe lagged behind by years or so) by all first world countries, throughout the european union, and even into second world countries as well (whose laws were already lax enough to allow much of this type of activity).

At some point, at a time I still need to pick, one of the bio-research facilities has a problem (this might be one of the books?). Due to some disaster or other accident, the contents of one particularly potent virus or bioweapon is released into the general populace, and spreads by many vectors (airborne, water, animal and human carriers) to the entire population of the globe. Although some geographical areas are not touched (lack of exposure … maybe another book or two on these areas?), nearly 100% of the world population is exposed and infected. The disease manifests in a 2 week incubation period (where carriers are spreading the disease), 1 week of increasingly severe symptoms (talk to Ella on this. Get something particularly bad and trump it up some), and then eventually death. No known cures at all.

While all of the world is affected, there is a segment of the population of the world that is immune to its effects. Everyone is still a carrier, but roughly 20% of the world’s population doesn’t die (have this vary slightly by ethnicity).

During the final stages of the panic that surrounds the outbreak and spreading of this disease, the final president, Jeremiah Trim, makes his last decision. He decides by executive decision to turn our own nukes on several US cities to halt the spread of the disease. Several other nuclear capable countries do the same. Although not everyone called on to do so actually fires their nukes, several US cities are completely annihilated (New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Seattle). Rioting and mayhem in the remaining populace ensues, the military forces also end up with mass desertion and the current political regime is removed. Very few of the current political players survive (if any). The country (and in fact, most of the world) loses coherency, and things devolve into a particularly brutal few years of almost no order at all.