On specialization

Today's thought:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
R.A. Heinlein

Stay tuned to this channel for more thoughts after today's movie feature: "Captain Comestable and the Grapes of Wrath"

(no subject)

As Quell says, Thought and Action should be held separate and should not be confused. Thus, if anybody asks, I'm a Thought Phase. God knows, I'm certainly not in an Action Phase.

Bad Day

Had a particularly unproductive morning contemplating the dirtier aspects NFS caching and attempting to determine whether the legendary terabyte FS limit exists in 2.4.18 on IA64. From this I concluded that NFS caching wasn't going to happen this side of NFSv4 and that the terabyte limit is probably mythical given the default variable sizes on IA64.

I then spent an even less productive period badmouthing the appalling support tools that our beloved vendor requires. It's like, "Yeah, we have this crappy database full of problems. Searching? What you mean for string? Who would in their right mind would want to do that? Oh, you would? Really? Oh, well, I'm afraid you can't." It's like worse than infoman, which is really saying something.

Good Day

I recommend Kate Hedstrom's skits on GNU make to anyone and everyone, whether they think they're interested in compilation systems or not. The link to the paper on why recursive make is a bad idea was particular informative - I hadn't realised just how much efficiency could be improved with ":=" until I read it.

Now that I've got all that off my chest, I'm off to write furious political poetry and to anticipate the forthcoming Action phase. Or Monday, as it's more commonly known.