Category: Rant

So I’m driving to work this morning on the beltway, and traffic comes to a grinding halt. I turn on the radio and discover that there’s been an accident way up at I-270. Now I haven’t even crossed the American Legion Bridge (which is a politically correct way of saying the Cabin John Bridge).

This disturbs me, because isn’t the beltway supposed to be some uber-escape route in the event people need to clear out of D.C. in a haste?

Back when I went to school, and grades mattered more than how you felt about yourself, the words “an accident” implied two things. One, that there was a singular accident. Two, that when one approaches the vicinity, one would expect to see the remains of a collision.

I find it incredible to be believe that with four lanes, a long exit lane, a dedicated HOV, and two shoulders that traffic could become so entangled as it did in such a short course of time from _one_ game of bumper tag. Wouldn’t you think the road designers would build some form of redundancy or alternate routing to resolve such a circumstance? I mean, put lots cars together, and there’s a pretty good chance two are gonna touch at some point.

I might point out that it took me about 2 hours to get to work, and I’m 33 miles away from my destination. Much of that time was sitting still.

Eventually I got up to the point of the accident, but unless Wonder Woman’s plane crashed into James Bond’s new car, there was no wreckage, evidence, glass, or vehicle to prove anything had happened. Meanwhile the radio station kept describing the details which I visibly could not see.

What I could see were two police cruisers. Sitting in the middle of the lane I needed to be in. Two officers were walking around a red, smoking run way of bright flares.

“Oh good,” I thought. “They’re going to remove the flares by the time I get up there and this will clear up soon.”

It was at that point I saw one of them lean over, ignite another flare, and start marking off his newly found Holy Ground in the middle of I-495. Meanwhile, two lanes of left-lane traffic were left to ponder why The Way was blocked, the shoulder unusable (as it was unobscured), and ended up remerging with other traffic without police assistance.

As I drove by, I surveyed the inside of their red cultish fire ring. Nada. As best as I could tell, they were just invoking the homestead act in some very lucrative property space.

I even went so far as to give them the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps the police cruiser had broken down or even been involved in the accident. No so. They put it in reverse, moved it, saving themselves having to walk 20 feet, so they could set up even more flares.

Eventually I got past the bottleneck and hit open road. So did a lot of other people. However, it became fairly clear to me that extending the accident scene had the secondary effect of trying driver’s patience and making them late. Their nature reaction was to speed. And up ahead in the road, unmarked vehicles were pulling people over left and right.

I got away unscathed (financially, not emotionally).

I can’t help but wonder, based upon the down stream officers, if this was more of a ruse to generate income at driver expense, or a sincere happenstance of events.

Currently the cynic in me, more specifically the one who has to stay late to make up the time while a snow front moves in, is leaning for any slant which makes sense.

So, I’m sitting there at work and my cell phone rings.

This guy introduces himself as the guy who sold me my Cell One plan before Cingular came in and made a mess of the network.

He’s telling me about how I ought to consider upgrading, and that they have new plans out. But I explained I had a finite amount of minutes, and I was happy with what I had.

But, he started making a fairly compelling case. It seemed I could nearly double my air time for about $10 more a month, plus get some frills tossed in there.

Then it dawned on me, “I’m not burning minutes on this customer service call, am I?”

There was a brief pause, “customer service?”

This guy suddenly realized he was eating up my precious minutes in an attempt to tell me why I needed more minutes.

Last night’s big event was heading to Spaghetti night, where not only was it highly social, but also productive for me.

I got to learn about a new role playing game, say hello to Alex, get a hug from Laurie and Barb, arrange a discussion night tonight with Danny, and got some great advice on drawing.

I decided to bring along a laptop and twiddle with some code while I was there. James helped me figure out some X-Windows and MySQL stuff, and he also managed to locate a subtle, but easily correctable, bug. This held my attention through most of the main movie, which turned out to be a remake of Night of the Living Dead.

The first time I saw the original, it was on a snow day in the 7th grade. The night before snow had fallen pretty deep, and the snow plows were working hard to make headway. School, for what ever reason, wasn’t canceled, and our bus showed up and after about 2 hours we arrived at school.

Once there we learned that of 5,000 students, only about 800 had made it. And since many of the teachers couldn’t make it in, classes were canceled, and we were trapped.

We were shuttled to the math department, primary because it had the best heat. One of the teachers suggested we spend the day doing math problems, but it’s amazing how fast 80 booing seventh-graders students can turn into an angry mob. Another teacher fessed up he had ordered Night of the Living Dead through the school system, and was planning on watching it after hours. If we wanted, he’d go get it and play it.

It was an easy sell.

So, out went the lights, and we all watched the creepy black’n’white version flicker on the side of the classroom wall. As I recall there was a lot of laughing and throwing of paper wads. Most people were cheering for the zombies.

Eventually the storm let up, the plows got through, the busses showed up, and we got home about 5pm.

The next operational school day we learned that many of the parents called in to report their children waking in the middle of the night, crying, saying something about dead people trying to eat them. The political skirmish was extinguished when it was pointed out that students were allowed to leave and do other activities, no one was forced to watch the movie, and it was only brought out by a unanimous vote anyhow.

Today I can’t help but think that teacher would have been strung up and flogged.

It appears I went to school right when common sense was just going out the window. Many of the rights / privileges my senior class enjoyed were extinguished as a it-takes-a-village mentality started to take hold. Students could no longer sit on the cafeteria stage, because we might fall off. Hall passes started appearing. And it wasn’t long before metal detectors, underwear checks, and students being expelled for having aspirin emergency kits in the glove compartment were to follow.

I still remember the day my Physics teacher looked at the head of the president of the body and said “Stacey, do you know the difference between sex and a grilled cheese sandwich?” She looked up, playing along as we did our random joke ritual every single day, “No, Mr. B., I don’t.” He smiled and said, “We should do lunch sometime” in perfect delivery and turned to write the lesson on the blackboard.

Stacey instantly blurted out laughing and turned a little red, not at what was said, but the fact that she’d let herself get suckered. Everyone else joined in, and no one thought of it after the fact. It was clear, from context, that Mr. B wasn’t serious (or interested in Stacey), but that it was humor plain and simple. Stacey understood. We understood. And that was that.

Today I can’t help but think that if this had happened in present day the teacher would be fired on the spot.

Somewhere along the way Americans have lost the ability to distinguish between reality and the imagined. We’ve been taught to play the role of the victim, and it’s our job to be hyper-sensitive to every offense out there. Doing so invites more attention our way, and quite often I wonder if it isn’t really inspired by greed for sue-happy lawyers or a spineless segment of government catering to the whims of the loudest complaint.

Funny how we look back at our grand parents and their parents and we see that these people grew up just fine, had a stronger degree of ethics, were far more educated (even when self taught), and they just seemed to be made of a better metal than nowadays. Our socialistic tendencies which are designed to protect us from every conceivable harm, even those brought on by ourselves, has left us with college students who graduate and can’t function in the real world without government handholding. Doesn’t this bother anyone else?

One year ago today, US soil was attacked. I expect to hear a lot about it in the news. I expect to see a lot of ribbons. I expect to see a show of security.

That’s why I’m not going to watch the news, wear a ribbon, but will make a comment on security.

You see, a lot of American have already mourned and come to emotional terms with what happened. A day of remembrance is nothing more than a day of television ratings. Fair-weather patriots bother me even more; too many people just wear a ribbon to call attention to themselves more than to silently commemorate. The loss of Jim Henson, Gene Roddenberry, and George Burns seemed far more sincere by Americans on many accounts. Perhaps that’s because we knew them more intimately, and we know we’re supposed to feel bad, but just don’t have the connection. I feel it’s more important to be honest about your emotional state than to follow the trend of buying a $10 flag for your car and taking a company mandated minute of silence during your lunch break. Is it true loss felt, or more of the desire to just fit in because of peer pressure?

Air travel will be particularly light as American’s fear to board a plane this anniversary. We’ve got scud missiles pointed at the clouds. NIH is checking every single car that passes through its gates. Many US citizens tremble in not being able to leave Northern Virginia fast enough, wanting as much distance as possible between them and the District of Columbia.

It just seems like society doesn’t have common sense anymore. Everyone thinks the terrorists are out to get him or her specifically. At SAIC when the planes were falling from the skies, they locked down their parking lots and you had to show a badge. If you’re a terrorist, and you’ve got scare resources of hijacked planes, where are you most likely going to put it… some place of specific military importance or of high political interest, or one of hundreds of SAIC buildings spread over the country? Hmm. Let’s think.

GEIS did the same thing for things like the Gulf War or threats from Iraq, and at times even took the GE meatball logo off the building. Security by obscurity just gives a false sense of safety. It’s like covering your eyes so the monsters under the bed don’t get you.

We know for a fact that the terrorists we’re dealing with are patient. They’ll sit low for 10 years or more just planning. You think somewhere along the way they’d have access to a phone book with a street address. I’m sorry, but many of us just aren’t that important enough to be attacked: what we do or produce can quickly be picked up somewhere else by someone else. Such an attack is wasted, and the terrorists know that.

I understand the publicly stated reasoning behind it all: “we deal with government,” “we make parts used in missiles,” “we deal with the stock market.” The reality is employees who don’t understand risk analysis feel scared, and making a show of activity is creates the illusion they’re protected. This way they’ll go back to being productive and making money for the company.

Take the anthrax scare. The day it came out, the very day, near the very hour of the news report, SAIC had to call in the HAZMAT team because someone reported seeing a white substance in the stall of the women’s bathroom. When this happens, every call must be taken seriously. It’s expensive, it’s inconvenient, and it shuts the place down. It places a taxing burden on emergency response units, and those who seriously need it don’t get the on-demand service required for a real emergency. Consider this, Bin Laden himself sneaks past dozens of guards and automated systems, by passes the lobby, conference rooms filled with military, skips over a great biological target like the cafeteria, and goes up half a dozen or so floors, sneaks into the women’s bathroom, and drops a white substance overtly on the floor to be seen and recognized by the untrained. Great plan, or irrational panic? I’d argue that more financial damage was done by Americans who did a knee-jerk reaction without asking “come on, is this a likely target of benefit” than the planes themselves. Naturally, hours later the lab reports it’s dust from the toilet paper rolls. Go figure. And to be fair, other companies were doing the exact same thing. What did security do? They passed out handy-wipe packets, the kind you get to wipe your fingers after a BBQ dinner, to everyone… yeah, that’ll stop Anthrax.

Let’s get real, should a terrorist want to breach any of these facilities, do they have the resources to fake a badge? Sure do. But why go through that trouble, when you can point a machine gun at a minimum wage security guard. I once asked an AOL guard what he’d do if a gunman came in demanding to pass. The answer: “Hand him my keys and resign.”

Countries are always ready to re-fight the last war, never the current one. We assume that the tactics used will be the ones used again. That’s not how wars are fought. Look at how the Red-Coats expected the engagement — let’s point guns at each other, you fire at me, I fire at you, we reload, and go till no one’s left to drop. Change tactics, boom. Fast forward to present day, we’ve got all our defenses set up so that we can address a missile-flying and world-war-II threats. Duh, hasn’t anyone realized the enemy is already on our land, has been for years, and has access to deploy from within our borders? Crippling a country has become so much easier now that people won’t defend themselves and we rely on supply chains and lack the knowledge of basic survival skills.

I loathe the airport and NIH security policies. First of all, ask yourself, if you were going to conduct another attack, would you be doing it on a day the Americans were waiting for it? The element of surprise just worked so well last time. So, where will todays stepped up security measures be tomorrow? Why weren’t they in place yesterday? This is the same issue I take with holiday-only patriots — where was your pride of country before this event, and why did it fade so quickly?

What’s worse is that even if we had all the security policies in place, all the time, even back in 2001, it would not have prevented the attacks. Even the US government admits that. So, I ask, why if we’ve just declared the procedure benefit-less do we engage in doing it, especially at such cost? The answer: because if we don’t do something, people will says “you’re not doing anything” — and that looks politically bad for those holding public office.

It doesn’t take half a mind to fashion a decent weapon real-time on an aircraft from readily available supplies. There are so many ways to bypass security that even 60 Minutes got past airport security with a gun on national television.

I’m surprised at how panicked Americans get, too. Two planes barely put a dent in the real face of New York. One plane damaged only a section segment of one wall at the Pentagon. Yet, people were acting like DC had been flattened and the shock wave was traveling hundreds of miles. That’s movie special effects, not reality. I thought other countries had a problem with conceptualizing the size of the United States, apparently it’s own citizens do as well. If something really bad is happening, please leave the public utilities and transportation means open to emergency units. News will still travel.

The problem with current security policies is two fold. Number one, we don’t take into account that the attacker is willing to trade their life for their goal. This one is hard to combat, because the common set of deterrents don’t work. Number two, we don’t take a pro-active stance; we believe the world thinks like us, shares our views, embraces diversity, and as a whole wants to get along. People, we’re the ignorant ones.

What this attack has shown is how unprepared we are, and more importantly, were. We can’t want the government to protect our borders and at the same time deny them the means to provide that defense. Defense doesn’t equate to war. And each time a country has been completely subdued by force, peace results, and usually good relations after the fact. Each time we let the politicians dictate how, we still have skirmishes and we’ve lost. Think Japan. Think Korea.

Because we’re in a panic, many Americans are willing to trade privacy, freedoms, and liberties for security. I shake my head at this behavior. Safety does not have to come at the expenditure of these things, and more importantly, shouldn’t. Plus, the “security” we’re getting is illusionary; it’s not the real kind that gets the job done. It’s a show.

Let’s wise up and start asking the right questions. What is the realistic probability that terrorists are going to attack today? …that they are going to attack where you specifically work and live over better targets? …and what is the cost you’re paying.

As the old joke goes, “elephants are excellent at hiding in trees.” “What do you mean, I’ve never seen one before.” “My point exactly.” Before you allow fear and stress to ruin your emotional state and you’ve tossed every principle being an American is about out the window, ask yourself if those guys protecting trees from having elephants climb in them are actually providing value, and while you’re at it, find out how many elephants they’ve personally been able to stop in the past.

All this week I’ve been in Oracle training to learn more about SQL, PL/SQL, and DBAing. I completed the classroom excercises well ahead of schedule, and since there was no Internet access, I had but one activity left: thinking.

I was quite suprised that while our instructor knew many of the ins and outs of Oracle, basic questions I had about the language, it’s syntax, or why things were the way they are, that the instructor didn’t know, and worse filled in the gap of knowledge with double talk.

On a side note, that really bothers me. If someone says they don’t know to me, that’s a perfectly acceptable answer. I don’t expect experts to know everything. I’ll research elsewhere, and if I find the solution, I’ll make sure they get the answer too. However, when it’s a matter making up cruft to save face, then I have a problem and I lose confidence in the expert on a number of grounds.

But back to the original train of thought. It was spawned when the instructor said “many of the DBAs out there don’t know PL/SQL” — this is an acceptable fact, as PL/SQL is an Oracle-thing. But when the phrase “or how to program” was added, I started to take notice.

How come an Oracle DBA can make a six-figure salary with such a limited set of generic skills, while numerous people I know dripping with portable skill sets are struggling to find jobs paying half that amount. Then it hits me:

1. Their lingo covers it up to make the technical sound unapproachable. For instance, IBM mainframe consultants will talk amongst themselves about a ‘DATA SET’ — however if you the low-level peon happened to learn “that’s just a file like any other you use” then you’d start to get a little pissed about the value you were getting. And so, much of the Oracle training went: there were all kinds of techno-babble names for things which I remember learning in BASIC classes in the 6th grade. None of these application-terms seemed to match the terms already in use by the mathamatics community.

2. Supply and Demand. Let’s pick on Oracle again just for fun(personally, I think it’s the best of the commercial databases out there). Oracle is expensive. Oracle training is expensive. You don’t need many Oracle experts to do things “right” — but you do need at least one. Consequentially a company will put all of it’s eggs into one basket and train one person to be the DBA. Then they keep them there with golden handcuffs. Now, look at C/C++ people. You can get programmers a dime a dozen. Unfortnately there’s no real way to rank how good one is over another without doing some tedious work. Oracle solves that problem by handing you a certificate. Like many training classes, you get a certificate for paying tuition. Naturally, you’d think that an employer would be smart enough to look for a certification over a certificate (which usually means you passed a test). However, testing is no match for experience. I’ve known a number of MS certified people who were clueless. Before I ever wrote a line of Java code, I was able to pass their certification test. Finally, in your daily commute to work, how many drivers do you see doing illegal (or just plain dangerous) things on the road who “passed” driving certification from the DMV? The whole point is that expense and convolution can keep supply low and demand high.

3. But the real reason is: these people are solving real business problems. Everyone loves a hero. Fire fighters get more praise than fire prevention marshals… yet, who saves more lives in the long run? Your typical programers and highly-skilled techies are able to build amazing things, but it will always be the instant gratification of DBAs and Unix Admins that will draw managements attention. The interesting part is that those techies have the knowledge to do these jobs already, but aren’t challeneged by them and the domain terminology is used as a barrier to create frustration. The secret is that these positions don’t deal with technology nor products! They deal with *service*.

All one has to do, it seems, is pick a domain (like Unix systems or databases or something) which there are a large number of consumers within an organization, learn -just that domain-, and understand how to make reasonably decent trade-offs [e.g., space vs. speed].