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Blood Rock at 80,000 Words…

centaur 0
Blood Rock is at 80,000 words, and is complete through chapter 26 (though I have written parts of chapters 27-57, including a huge chunk at the end right around the climax). It's getting closer ... I expect the first draft to come in somewhere around 90,000 to 95,000 words.

-the Centaur

Google Knows Everything … about Windows XP SP3

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Well, turns out my Windows XP SP3 problem wasn't really a Windows XP SP3 problem at all, other than it happens to Windows XP Service Pack 3 when installed on Hewlett Packard AMD-based computers that were factory installed with an Intel-based image of Windows XP. A key Intel power management DLL isn't present, but it is referenced by the system configuration, and when Windows XP Service Pack 3 installs, it sees that the file should be there (according to the system config) but isn't (according to what it can see on the hard drive) so it installs it. And on the next boot ... boom, Windows gets stuck in an endless cycle of reboots every time it tries loading the Intel driver on an AMD processor.

The simple solution? Boot in safe mode and delete the offending file. There are other solutions, which I found at this blog by a Microsoft expert, which I found via this eWeek article, which I found via a Google search for [ windows xp sp3 problems ]. Now, I had tried Google searches the previous night at umptynothing in the morning, but when I sat down with my I-wuv-my-Mac laptop in front of the dead computer, logged on to the home wireless network, and banged out that new query fresh, it worked, first link, first time.

So it's true: Google Knows Everything.

-the Centaur

P.S. The previous article is my own personal opinion and does not reflect the opinions of my employers at the Search Engine That Starts With a G. Or, hell, maybe it does, but I was using that phrase even back when I worked for the Search Engine Company That Started With an E.

Have I mentioned I hate Windows XP Service Pack 3?

centaur 0
No? Ok. So mentioned: I hate Windows XP Service Pack 3, and the Automatic Update it rode in on.

In more detail, I just upgraded the hard drive on my wife's computer. It took quite a bit of doing - the original two methods I used to copy the old HD to the new HD failed, even my beloved PartitionMagic, because Windows XP would not learn to boot from the new hard drive. It's not that I haven't done this trick a half dozen times before with laptops, including my most recent Windows XP laptop, and after immense effort I could never find out what was wrong or fix it. However, eventually I found a cheap but effective program called Disk Copy and Clean by Avanquest that did the trick, and got the drive copied last night, Windows XP booting, took the old drive out, and closed up the case.

Then like an idiot I installed all the software updates that were pending.

One of those was apparently Windows XP Service Pack 3, whose main feature is locking the computer in an endless cycle of reboots. You can boot to safe mode, which means this problem is just enough different from the other similar problems I've been able to find online that I doubt any of those fixes will work. I'll try, of course, but in the end ... isn't it nice I have yesterday's hard drive, pre-Windows-XP-SP3?

I've said it before, I'll say it again: I wuv my Mac and its crappy user interface(1), because it just works.

-the Centaur
(1) No, that isn't sarcasm ... Windows has a better user interface, nyahh nyahh nyahh, all you Mac lovers --- and I switched anyway, because (a) I love the Unix command line and (b) my computer has to work. Shockingly, the Mac actually functioning reliably most of the time beats the many ways in which common user interface operations are faster and easier to use on Windows. You may feel like snarking that the Mac UI would be easier if I'd used it longer, and I'll just snark back that I've been using Macs since roughly 1990, and I've had no problems moving between the various editions of UNIX, Linux and Windows over the same time frame while the Mac has always felt like the odd man out. Ultimately, the gloss, great graphic design, and sheer reliability of the Mac OS X family outweighed any number of minor interface quirks.

Fanu Fiku and Dresan.Net…

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...are in the process of being recreated. Unfortunately, TopHostingSolutions has been unresponsive to my attempts to reach them, so I have switched these sites to GoDaddy, which hosts other sites run by me and my wife. Expect to see these back up in the next few days.

-the Centaur

Not enough hours in the day…

centaur 1
...to do all the things that need to be done.

I'm not sure what that phrase means, "not enough hours in the day". I say it from time to time, but what would we do with more hours in the day? If each day was thirty-six hours, wouldn't we just work longer, play longer, expect to get twelve hours of work done instead of eight? It seems like what we really want is a secret stash of hours in the day, twelve free hours we could stick in anywhere we needed.

I'd use my stash just after midnight, in those hours leading up to two where I seem to get so much done, then get on a roll that lasts to the wee hours in the morning. If I yield to that impulse, I don't go to bed until near dawn - wouldn't it be nice to work hours and hours till you're tired, and still go to bed at midnight?

Or maybe I'd just stick them in the morning, a couple extra hours in the lull of the snooze button between eight and eight-oh-seven in the morning. But some days I have to get up earlier or later, so maybe it would be better to slip the extra hours in right on cue when you hit snooze, so when you wake up seven minutes later, you're refreshed and ready for the day.

Or perhaps in midafternoon, right when food coma hits, and you need to recharge. For me, if I push on through I get a second wind, which lasts till seven or eight o'clock at night; wouldn't it be nice to get the second wind, put in all those extra hours, and still leave by five?

Time travel. Must start working on time travel.
-the Centaur

Another battle won…

centaur 2

... I have just completed ~75,000 words for National Novel Writing Month 2008, which puts me over the top of my self-imposed target for November: 50,000 words more than I started with.

I had those extra 25,000 words to start with because I had planned to do two Nanowrimos back to back, thinking I could finish Blood Rock in October and start a new novel in November. Foolish mortal, who do you think you are, Asimov?

Blood Rock is the sequel to Frost Moon, last year's Nanowrimo entry. I have already started work on the sequels, Liquid Fire and Hex Code. I have ideas for many more in this series, but I plan to keep doing them only as long as they're fun.

Like its predecessor, I expect Blood Rock to top out at just under 90,000 words, so hopefully I will be able to finish the first draft in mid-December. Here's gunning for it!

-the Centaur

This isn’t going to go away

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I bumped into a couple African Americans in a Safeway line the other day.  All three of us were looking at a magazine cover with Barack Obama's family on the cover.   As the line moved and I turned forward, one of the men behind me said, "Wow, it still hasn't hit me," and the other said, "Yeah, I know, I can't believe it either".  I couldn't help but smile.

Then the first man said "Yeah, and the big thing is, it isn't the big story---" And his friend jumped in and said, "No, Proposition 8 is. And when that fails in the courts, they're going to look at it, and say, California, which is so liberal, didn't pass it twice ... so maybe that will make 'them' think twice."

I was dumbfounded, and had bought my pound cake and mouthwash and walked out of the store before I could think of an adequate comeback: "Did getting turned away from one or two schoolhouses make the civil rights movement stop?  No.  And this isn't going to go away either."


-the Centaur


You’re Smarter Than That

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The election season has been difficult for all of us, but especially for conservatives that bring a rational rather than partisan approach to the table. I was speaking to a good friend tonight who's quite frustrated about how things turned out, and he mentioned how irritated he was at a demand by the ACLU that Obama close Guantanamo Bay "with the stroke of a pen".

We talked about it for a while, with things getting quite heated, but from my perspective it was clear that our differences about how to treat the enemy combatants in Guantanamo Bay were the result of real substantive disagreement on issues that were not simple, as opposed to the frothing cariactures of the right that I have often heard from those on the left.

However, there was one little quip that bugged me. When I said I voted for Obama because "McCain's choice of Palin demonstrated his values to me", my friend told me that I was "smarter than that" and that I should realize that the choice of a VP is always a bone thrown to a minority member of the party.

Well, that is one theory, but it isn't the whole story. In my recent memory, at least two Presidents have picked running mates designed to enhance their experience (Bush+Cheney, Obama+Biden), one picked them to appeal to their fan base (Bush+Quayle) and at least three picked running mates that reflected part of their values.

Yes, Palin was more conservative than McCain, and Gore was more liberal than Clinton, but both McCain and Clinton spoke louder than words by selecting someone that reflected key positions that they held: Palin is a sterling, if even heroic defender of the pro-life cause, and we all know how Gore turned out as a proponent of environmentalism.

I think the best example though is Reagan's selection of ex-CIA director Bush: to me, that was a clear reflection of the values Reagan expressed after his service on the Rockefeller Commission's review of U.S. intelligence agencies in 1975, something that arguably later reflected some of Reagan's actions in office. A VP may be designed to appeal to a group of voters, but the choice of a VP still reflects the P's values. The candidates can say a lot, but who they pick for that slot says a lot to me about what they care about and what they're likely to do.

If McCain had selected Condoleeza Rice, I would have voted for him without a second thought --- but the slice of the party McCain was reaching out to was not centrists worried about national security (and pleased to have the chance to vote for a black man or a woman or both). The slice of the party McCain picked was the religious conservative wing, a group whose influence I feel is corrupting on the entire body politic. I would feel about the same if Obama had picked an actual Communist, a group that had a similar corrupting influence on an earlier era.

And, admittedly, it's only because McCain and Obama were such a toss-up up on issues that mattered to me that could I afford to let the decision rest on the choice of the VP. When the case was more clear - as in Bush vs Dukakis - I sucked it up and voted for Bush, even though I didn't approve of Quayle.

But the candidates were very close. I did a lot of research on this campaign. I read the bios of both candidates. I researched their tax policies, the economic effects, their foreign policy stances, their decisions. I followed up on information provided by partisan friends on the left and on the right, and read sources as diverse as the National Review Online and the New Yorker. I went through the positions of both candidates with a blue pen ticking off what I did and didn't like, and they came damn near close to even. So I didn't make this decision blind, or just on the basis of Palin.

But she sure didn't help. Left or right, you're never going to win me over appealing purely to your base.

-the Centaur

Sacrifice and Responsibility

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I voted for Barack Obama; despite my long-standing desire to see John McCain become president, I didn't agree with his choice of Sarah Palin as she does not reflect my values. But I don't agree with Obama on everything either, of course, and there has been a fair amount of back and forth on The Edge mailing lists on what's good and bad about Obama's views.

But sometimes it isn't the politician's proposals that are scary; it is what the people who are allied with them believe. Recently I came across this commentary by someone more sympathetic to Obama's views than I am:

Obama raises a long-neglected concept: sacrifice

At some point, higher taxes are inevitable to bring the deficit back in line, and Obama’s plan to limit the increases to the rich aren’t likely to be enough. That is the sort of sacrifice we must make to resolve the crisis. The economy is too precarious to endure tax increases to stabilize our finances right now, and some of the ambitious programs outlined on the campaign trail will have to be sacrificed to fiscal prudence.

We must make sacrifices at the personal level, too, by reducing our use of credit and curtailing our spending, building our savings so that we are better prepared. This is a crisis spawned, in large part, by our own delusion. We wanted to believe in ever-rising stocks, in a shop-till-the-terrorists-are-defeated foreign policy and homes that were worth whatever our mortgage broker told us.

For eight years, our government borrowed to pay for wars, tax cuts and prescription drugs, while we borrowed to pay for HDTVs, iPhones and Xboxes. Buy now, pay later wasn’t just a sales pitch, it was fiscal policy. Later is now. To fix our economy we first must change our views of debt and savings.

That will take sacrifice, the one word from the president-elect’s speech that we must hear before all others. Sacrifice, after all, is the prefix for change.

Now, let me not exaggerate: what Loren Steffy is saying here is not crazy and much of it is very sensible. Even in this snippet, there are many points to agree with that have already been discussed on the Edge mailing list:
  • taxes can't be raised right now because it will damage the economy
  • taxes should be raised when the economy is more healthy so we can balance the budget
  • consumers and the government should learn to pay their own way and not skate on credit

But the attitude of "sacrifice is required" is what I find disturbing - because deep down I don't think he isn't proposing that he make a sacrifice. I seriously doubt he sees himself as one of "the rich" whom he wants to tax, or that he has an HDTV that he paid for on credit. Instead he's proposing that others make sacrifices he thinks they ought to to make the economy more healthy. As one commenter to the article said:

I agree that in tough times success often requires sacrifices. But the great concern is who will be selected to make those sacrifices, and if it isn't voluntary, is "sacrifice" really the right word? If it is only the wealthy and companies who are volunteered, then that indicates another round of partisan politics. But if ALL Americans are asked to put some skin in the game, then it will be a chance for bonding, healing, and real change.

This is why I think the language of responsibility is so more important than the language of sacrifice. Most of the issues that Steffy raises in the article have been raised by my friends in The Edge. But if both the language of "sacrifice" and the language of "responsibility" led to similar policy recommendations, why should it matter?

The problem is that sacrifice is easy in a political context, because the people who propose sacrifice rarely have to do it. One of my friends was talking about the BART expansion in glowing concerns about the jobs it will create. But who will pay for this? On another occasion I heard my friend talk about the glories of public transportation, and I know they don't have a great deal of income. So in the long run they'll gain more from being able to more quickly get to work than they'll lose in the (very modestly) increased taxes. So it's very easy to justify a sacrifice ... if you don't have any skin in the game. (Full disclosure: I voted for the BART expansion too).

Responsibility, on the other hand, never stops. I had to look at many different propositions on the ballot; none of them will raise California's taxes more than I can pay. From that perspective, I could easily say "we need to sacrifice in taxes to pay for these needed services". But I couldn't look at it that way: I had to look at the graph of the debt load of all the propositions on the ballot, and choose: which of these things can we actually afford? Yes on disaster relief, and, (based on my experiences in Japan, London, and Washington D.C.), yes on more extensive public transportation, which costs money but is AFAIK ultimately an economic lubricant. But no on everything else. Looking at the bond load over the next thirty years, I decided California couldn't afford all of it ... even if I personally was willing to make the "sacrifice".

That's why I prefer the language of responsibility over the language of sacrifice. Sacrifice is easy to make ... it's something you can do to someone else, after all. Responsibility is something you have to take on yourself.

-the Centaur

(1) The Edge is a private group of friends, not to be confused with the Edge Foundation, even though just about everyone on the Edge would find what Edge Foundation discusses as interesting, and vice versa. Interestingly, the Edge Foundation and the Edge appear to have "officially" started at almost exactly the same time, though we didn't know about them and I'm pretty darn sure they didn't know about us.