Older blog entries for jlbec (starting at number 17)

Weekend

Amy's parents and sister were in town, and we spent Saturday in San Francisco walking about. We then spent Sunday on the coast. I love this area, and let me tell you, I keep finding more to interest me.

What is it with Italian restaurants in Belmont/San Carlos? Near where we live there are a bunch of such restaurants, and every single one is rather pricey. Not $30 a plate, but more than I'd expect for a small place.

However, in the North Beach district of San Francisco are a ton of excellent cafes/restaurants with prices more like you'd expect. I guess we'll be going into town for Italian. The after-dinner options are better anyway.

Scripting

raph posted a diary entry discussing the slipshod way many people use scripting languages. He makes many good points, some I've been bitching about for years.

My favorite is the error checking. I've spent a lot of time doing sh scripts for dummies. I've been doing sh scripts in m4 for a long time now, so that I don't have to type out

/bin/foo -bar
if [ "$?" = "0" ]
then
    do something good
else
    do something because we broke
fi

every single time. People usually don't check errors because it is tedious. But those errors need to be caught.

My case was a fun one, because it was root-level sysadmin scripts that performed complex tasks. Some of the people I worked with didn't understand or know all the implications, and I had to have my scripts cover those cases. Lots and lots and lots of precondition testing and error handling. I'd have a 400-line script to handle 5 actual command calls.

My scripts never created untenable situations from bad user input or bad conditions. They just printed a nice error and said "try again when it's fixed". This is what a good script should do.

Why sh? Why not perl/python/name-your-own-religion? Because these admin scripts only called system commands. The semantics of Perl's system() or the equivalent are annoying when you just want to run mkdir(1). More complex items may find me in Perl, but these days I'm quicker to C.

As far as quoting goes, spend some time running commands via dsh(1), and you'll get your quoting right. Very right. Quoting isn't hard, you just have to learn the rules.

It occurs to me that the theme for the modern San Francisco nightlife has already been written. By some of the city's residents, no less.

Nothing's shaking on Shakedown Street
Used to be the heart of town

So, I have the possibility of acquiring two celeries. Do I go BP6? Does anyone else know of dual-celery boards? What do I look for wrt the BP6 and possible problems?

Help, anyone. jlbec at evilplan dot org

Golden Rule #1 correctly reads: Bryce is always at fault.

Some folks hate the Bay Area.

Maybe someday I will complain about it. Maybe someday I will itch to leave. Not yet.

I grew up in a city. I have lived mostly in cities. I love the outdoors and solitude, but on their own terms. Raleigh/Durham NC was a small city or a large town, but it was just too city-like to be solitude, and too small and boring to be a real city. Of all the places I've lived, it's the only one I've disliked.

It cannot be described how nice it was to drive into San Francisco the first time and see an actual skyline.

Why do I love this place? Saturday I had lunch in San Francisco with raph, Ankh, and Ankh's MOTAS, Clyde. The food was excellent. That evening, Amy and I went to dinner at another excellent place. Sunday I went to the beach in Pacifica, a mere 20 minute drive, and got egregously sunburnt. The drive out there itself was a feast for the eyes.

So what? The area is pretty. North Carolina can be pretty, as can many other places (my beloved Miami being one of them). There are beaches and water (a great weakness of mine). Lots of water in lots of places, though. Work is good. Good jobs can happen elsewhere. The variety and quality of culinary choices is excellent. This can also happen in various locations. However, not every location can provide all of this at the same time. And while many locations do provide this, guess what? They're all real cities.

No offense to Raleigh/Durham residents. I just like a greater variety of things to do.

lmb has a rather interesting take on the american freeway. I'd prefer to drive on them too. I didn't get to ride with the autobahn man on Saturday, riding with uzi instead. He drives fast enough himself, and has a nice musical selection.

Bryce is rather happy to have his UK keyboard. More power to him. I hated UK keyboards when I was over there. Give me a PC 101 anyday. Sun keyboards suck too. Backspace is just too small.

Work happens. They were supposed to drop off our other car yesterday morning around 10:30 or so, so I waited at home. And waited. And waited. They got the car to me at 15:15. I was not happy. So much for work. I suspect I might actually get some done today.

Whew...

I am now officially on the West Coast. Moving has happened. I hope, for her sake, that dria's move goes much easier. Every little problem that could pop up did. I have to say that the movers themselves were tremendously nice, and I thank the heavens for that.

So all the stuff is a mess in the new place, and we have one of the two cars. Cool. I can actually come to the office now.

In other things, I suspect I'll have to do a CipherSaber sometime, and certainly need to get some home net soon.

I could use good karma too

Well, my life is being packed away as we speak. Tomorrow the truck comes to pick it up. I feel empty somehow. Not empty of feeling, but empty as in cleaned out. As if my life no longer has meaning.

Either this means that materialism does define us, or I really need to get rid of some stuff!

Adrian has this to say about me:

jlbec: know from lots of irc channels (all of them??).
I don't quite know what to make of it. I'm only on maybe three IRC channels. If that's all of them, the rest of you aren't talking, no matter what you think :-)

OTOH, I've met Adrian at RH and expos, and I've been following his LDAP/KRB explorations with great interest. I managed to get way too used to the convenience of the DCE/DFS environment, and I'd like to see what can be done in the free/open/not dying soon world.

More packing............................................

lilo updated his collaboration comments based on a discussion we had. I'm not sure we got everything covered, but hey, we're collaborating! Rob, I would say that I function between Journeyer and Novice on your collaboration scale. Like most folks, I probably hover in the Apprentice range. I certainly can have my BOFH moments, dipping into Novice territory. I also can be extremely collaborative. I've done quite a few (as we all have) projects without any friction and with a reasonable exchange of ideas. That said, my forays into Journeyership are probably near the bottom, because I am nowhere nears a Master :-)

I've learned too much. Now I force myself to spend time on nice accessor methods rather than permitting direct data structure access. It's the Right Thing, but it is more work. Add to that my tendancy to overarchitecture....

I've been up too late lately. I think that will get better. It is weird not to have to show up at the office.

I have this strong urge to post a submission to FreshMeat.

Wheel 0.51
Joel Becker - April 20th 2000, 23:12EST

Wheel is a surprisingly useful tool to enable mobility and ease-of-use. It reduces friction and encourages synergie across long distances. It can also make difficult tasks easier, by providing a means to leverage those tasks in an effective measure. I'm really amazed that no one has come up with a utility like this before, as it is a relatively simple concept.

Changes: Reduction in ovoid shape, as symmetry seems to facilitate better use.

Urgency: medium

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