Our little terraqueous globe as the madhouse of those hundred, thousand… millions of worlds.

Carl Sagan will never get old to me.

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”

If you want to watch the video someone made featuring one of Carl’s quotes, click over here. Great imagery, different quote.

Der Untergang

An excellent film about the last days of Germany’s Third Reich.

Watching Magda Goebbels poison her six children was probably one of the most chilling scenes I’ve seen in film in a long, long time.

Sunday, 29 August 2010

• Engineering by Roomba’ing Around suggests that we try to be a little more thoughtful in our systems architectural decisions.
• Guy Kawasaki gives advice to new college students. My favorite: “Generally, if you’re clueless, shut up because there’s no reason to let everyone know that you’re clueless.”
• I am seriously considering a stainless-steel cat water fountain because I am a crazy cat man.
• I spent the day reading Jonathan Hislop’s “today” thoughts. These were some of my favorite entries. These too. (each word is a link elsewhere)

My goal is to update this thing more than once a month, when I find interesting stuff online. Here’s hoping.

on “Thought Bubbles”

“Thought Bubbles” is a phrase I picked up from a friend of mine, used to describe thoughts or ideas.

I use the phrase in conversation a lot, and sort of see my blog as a collection of thought bubbles. So, I found a new template for this blog and re-designed away. Hope you like it.

Thoughts found on my Internet

I came across an article that a designer wrote as advice to graphic design students. While I am not a graphic design student, I do occasionally dabble in print design. Really, though, I do believe that what I do as a system administrator can have ties to the design world. Systems need to be thought about before they come into existence; much like a brochure or a logo or a concert poster. Implementation requires careful consideration.

Sometimes, after all that careful thought, the solutions don’t get as much creative latitude (“Lets buy Product X”)… but sometimes creativity can be found in kludges, or implementations. It’s just a different kind of creativity than what you may find in print/web/graphic/etc design.

Statements I enjoyed include:

The things your teachers tell you in class are not gospel. You will get conflicting information. It means that both are wrong. Or both are true. This never stops. Most decisions are gray, and everything lives on a spectrum of correctness and suitability.

If you can’t draw as well as someone, or use the software as well, or if you do not have as much money to buy supplies, or if you do not have access to the tools they have, beat them by being more thoughtful. Thoughtfulness is free and burns on time and empathy.

Don’t become dependent on having other people pull it out of you while you’re in school. If you do, you’re hosed once you graduate.

If you meet a person who cares about the same obscure things you do, hold on to them for dear life. Sympathy is medicine.

Scissors are good, music is better, and mixed drinks with friends are best.

Most important things happen at a table. Food, friends, discussion, ideas, work, peace talks, and war plans. It is okay to romanticize things a little bit every now and then: it gives you hope.

Everything is interesting to someone. That thing that you think is bad is probably just not for you.

Success is generating an emotion. Failure is a million different things.

Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. Giving it can also be addicting in a potentially pretentious, soul-rotting sort of way, and can replace experimenting because you think you know how things work. Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice.

“Thoughtfulness burning on time and empathy” especially; for varying definitions of thoughtfulness. And I know too many people who depend on school to make them think about the concepts and ideas behind what they were getting into, rather than their own curiosity… their loss. I’ve even blogged about it.

So, while perusing Frank’s blog, I came across another web project, of a Jonathan Harris. Jonathan has taken pictures once a day and posted them along with a note or reflection since his 30th birthday. So far, one of my favorites:

When life casts foreign actors into your drama, they can sometimes be like cardboard cutouts, existing quietly in two dimensions, marching from their stage left entrance through the brief but glaring spotlight of attention and then quickly off into the shadows of forgetfulness, to perform in someone else’s spectacle. Other times, they stick around for a while, striking some poses, saying some words, asking some questions, changing some ideas, leaving behind babies or broken hearts or broken bones or other not so needy things. Eventually they all exit stage right, when the spotlight filament collapses or the shadow magnetism grows too strong. (October 29, 2009)

Happy Sunday! (which, for me means: mixed drinks with friends (at a table) in Charlestown, Entourage, and Mad Men.)

In which someone uses my email address and I hope for a crazy customer service encounter.

For some reason, people are under the belief that they can make up email addresses. My gmail account “pcable” is a target for this often. I get so much misdirected email it’s amusing.

A few days ago I started getting redbox receipts though, and I decided I needed to have some fun with it. I wrote their customer service department:

Hi there,

While I’m sure Redbox is a cool service (my friends tell me so!), I’ve never used it. But it seems that someone has entered one of my email address as their account email (ADDRESS@gmail.com), and I’m getting redbox receipts. Apparently they returned “Unthinkable” last night.

I’ve never been to the Seattle region; I hear it’s nice though! Maybe someday I will visit and rent a DVD from redbox. I’d better be careful, i’ve planned trips around less concrete reasons to travel. But, really, is there any way to fix this kind of thing? Should I just sign up for an account with that email address to prevent someone else from renting with my email address?

If not, well, I suppose it’s not the worst thing in the world – I’ll just be following the the movie recommendations of a complete stranger. Maybe I’ll pick up Unthinkable tonight.

Thanks for your time,

- Patrick Cable
(the real ADDRESS@gmail.com)

I’m really hoping for an equally amusing response. Come on redbox, make it happen.

Speaking Easily

I am flattered that I get asked for my thoughts on graduation speeches still.

I mean, yes, it was cool that it happened, but that was 10 months ago. It’s one of my favorite memories, and a lot of thought went into the whole thing for me.

But since I like what I told someone, here it is for the internet to see:

• When you present to the committee, present a full speech. No abstracts.
• Writing a good graduation speech is about writing something that has meaning and significance to yourself but that others can gleam some sort of message out of.
• Let’s face it: your speech will be remembered for 10 minutes after you deliver it. You are not necessarily going to inspire any sort of world-changing action, but you can make the best out of your five minutes of forced listening.
• Yes, It is five minutes. Not 5:05. Not 6. 5:00 even. I found this out after writing an 8 minute speech.
• My original draft was a lot longer than what it became; to give you an idea of what that means: draft 4 was what I submitted to the committee and draft 9 was deemed “final.” This did mean compromising a fair amount. I was disappointed a little but it was still a cool experience.
• If you are selected, though, It’s OK to push back with your editor. Correct what you feel needs to be corrected, but if there’s something you feel strongly about, then keep it. It’s ultimately your words.
• Graduation speeches that contain references to things the audience knows nothing of leaves the audience alienated, and graduation speeches that don’t come from the heart can leave the audience offended. People are pretty good at figuring out when someone is bullshitting them; and poorly delivered fake knowledge or fake enthusiasm really gets at me.
• You’ll get invited to a very fancy dinner with a lot of important people. Do not let this stress you out; it’s one night and getting a haircut is something I half regret doing. It did make the cap easier to fit on my head, though.
• You’re reading faster than you think you are. Slow down.

Thoughts for Sunday

I saw this somewhere and decided to format it. Dickens used an exclamation point at the end, though. Whoops.

The Blues

While in San Francisco, my cousin-in-law (is that a phrase that people use?) left on a Ray Charles-themed Pandora station while he was out. I was busy editing photos.

Anyways the moral of this story: this memory came to me earlier today, and I too made a Ray Charles Pandora Station. Consider me on a Blues kick.

You can find the photos, at http://www.flickr.com/patcable.

It’s about accountability

I asked a friend why he was training to get a few IT certifications (via Facebook). Someone else that I graduated with chimed in:

“Probably because we went to get a networking degree and we got an MIS degree instead and not all of us having awesome paying jobs at $MY_EMPLOYER doing what we originally intended to do ”

I wanted to paraphrase without directly quoting, but I also didn’t quite want to put words in the mouth of the writer either. Eh, the internet is a public place, right? Anyways.

To be fair, I can get behind the intent here. The curriculum that us 2005 (and before) BCNS’ers received was somewhat unfortunate. Can you really be all that surprised? Wentworth is one of a small handful of schools that have the degree; the major just got an accrediting body a few years ago. To say academia moves far behind the paces of industry would be putting it lightly.

My sympathies end there, though. I think in that tangled string of a curriculum there was a very useful and very necessary lesson. One which (I think) really drives home the most important part of systems administration–and really, everything else in life:

Self-motivation is key.

That’s it. Maybe we didn’t get that class on routing and switching I keep hearing about. Maybe they could have done a better job introducing us to newer technology. But at the end of the day, there were resources out there to those who want to use them. Faculty had resources available to them (and by extension, you) as well if you were willing to talk to them. In fact, Wentworth as a whole had a good amount of resources, if you were willing to make the effort. And, the Boston SA community has a ton of resources available if you were.. you get the point.

Maybe it’s unfortunate that lesson came with such a high price tag, but it is what it is. It would seem that the people who made the most of that lesson seemed to do alright. Somehow, I don’t think the degree-granting institution had much to do with it.