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Guys with Guitars

Tom — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 21:10:58 +0000

Last week I was invited to join an impromptu jam session. So I packed up my Gibson Les Paul and amp and went to a garage in Belleville. I joined two guys playing a Fender Squier Stratocaster Bullet and a Charvel both of whom were much better than me.

As cigarette smoke circled around me it reaffirmed my career decision as a software engineer where I work in a smoke-free cube. Also mastering musical instruments takes time and practice and does not pay very well.

Many of today’s aspiring artists create music in isolation in their basements. But music used to be a community activity. People used to gather on porches and in parlors to sing and play music together. For all of the collaborative power of the Internet nobody has mastered a system that allows people to easily make good music together.

At times we got to be quite loud. We got attention from folks walking and driving by. At one point a neighbor walked in. I thought for sure he was going to tell us to keep it down. “I have a drum set,” he said. “Next time you get together let me know. I’ll bring it by if you’d like me to join you.” The spirit of social music lives indeed.

Are Relational Databases Doomed?

Tom — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:23 +0000

ReadWriteWeb has an article on non-traditional databases. It does a good job of explaining the good and the bad aspects of developing to a key/value database.

Among the bad is the lack of integrity support in key/value databases. I am not convinced this is a huge issue. I have seen production relational databases that do not have integrity constraints.

Data that violate integrity constraints cannot physically be entered into the database. These constraints don’t exist in a key/value database, so the responsibility for ensuring data integrity falls entirely to the application.

Legacy database systems require a data modeling process. Actually I see this as a downside. Typically as a project matures, the data model changes often. This requires changes to both the model and the supporting code. Key/value databases move the responsibility to the application and eliminate the time it takes for the modeler to update the model, change the database schema and communicate these changes.

One of the other key benefits of a relational database is that it forces you to go through a data modeling process. If done well, this modeling process create in the database a logical structure that reflects the data it is to contain, rather than reflecting the structure of the application.

Lastly, the author points out the multi-tenant limitations Google and Amazon put in place to prevent one user from overloading a non-traditional database in a shared environment.

Key/value databases are usually multi-tenanted, which means that a lot of users and applications will use the same system. To prevent any one process from overloading the shared environment, most cloud data stores strictly limit the total impact that any single query can cause. For example, with [Amazon’s] SimpleDB, you can’t run a query that takes longer than 5 seconds. With Google’s AppEngine Datastore, you can’t retrieve more than 1000 items for any given query.

What do you think, friends?

photo credit: -Renegade-

Aye Cap’n, Up Thee Sevens!

Tom — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 03:52:28 +0000

This week at work we got vending machines. Friends, if you were like me, you don’t much think of just how those vending machines stayed stocked with chilled beverages and salty snacks. But seeing its sign glow caused my mind to race back to the time when I stocked vending machines. In fact I was part-owner of a vending machine route for a few long days.

My father has a business named Snakman. He owned a dozen or so machines. My mother took over the business when he passed away. I helped her stock the machines, inventory the business, pull together the records and count the cash that came in. I will never forget what hard work taking care of those machines was. Fortunately we sold the business to a local business owner. With joy I returned to my life as a software engineer.

Allow me to share a story from one place on the vending route. There was a house for mentally challenged folks. I smiled at the director as she asked me to only stock the machines with decaffeinated soda. While I filled the machine a man appeared in the doorway. He wore a captain’s hat and clutched an empty pipe. I wondered what he was thinking as he silently watched me. When I closed the machine back up, he left without a word.

There ya go, captain, enjoy the 7UP!

photo credit: Stéfan

The Physics of a Crush

Tom — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 01:36:33 +0000

For this Valentine’s Day I do not have a valentine. This blog entry isn’t going to be a love story. I certainly don’t want to kiss and tell. So I’m not going to write about any old flames. I’ll write about a crush, which I can safely assume all of us have had.

In high school I was in a data processing class typing at a console. From next to me came a strange sound that I can only describe as a whooshing sound that folks make when with their mouths when they’re bored. I turned to find the source was Jadwiga, our French foreign exchange student. I laughed because it was completely unexpected. She looked up and smiled.

When we finished our work, we started talking. Back at our desks she talked about a physics class she took. She produced a copy of a test she had taken before coming to America. The pages were filled with mathematics that were as foreign as the French in which it was written. I wouldn’t understand that math until my freshman year in college. She was a beautiful oracle showing me my future in a language I couldn’t comprehend.

I realized that she was at least a couple years older than me and definitely smarter than me. Of course I developed a crush on her. Thanks Jadwiga for the friendship and for inspiring me to expand my knowledge of math and science. I hope you have found happiness in your life. And, I wish all of you have a Happy Valentine’s Day!

photo credit: Andreanna Moya Photography

Riders in the Sky

Tom — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 02:02:37 +0000

Today I am in a funk. I failed to make a strategic change at work. I could complain but that’s too easy. I’m getting up again and dusting off.

I think back to my youth. I remember lying in bed reading a book. In the other room my father was practicing guitar. He was tackling the song ‘Riders in the Sky’. As I listened I could hear him start and stop the song as he made mistakes. Subconsciously I learned disappointment happens when you try to accomplish new things.

The cowboy in ‘Riders’ is asked to change his ways or be damned to an eternity of chasing ‘the Devil’s herd across the endless skies’. I believe in order to get people to change you must present them with a future which compels them to escape the emotional gravity of the present. Unfortunately, we don’t often have anything as powerful as eternal doom to compel change. I certainly didn’t.

Eventually my dad mastered the song and played it through entirely. I’d like to think he gave me the value of being persistent in the face of frustration. Friends, I will try again to introduce innovative change. But for now I’ll wait until the sound of the ‘steel-hooved cattle’ is closer.

photo credit: eye of einstein

Live in Illinois? Vote Feb 2nd

Tom — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:53:05 +0000

Friends, if you live in Illinois, get out and vote this Tuesday, February 2nd. These are my candidate picks. Why not print this post and take it with you?

Senator
Don Lowery

Governor
Adam Andrzejewski

Lt Governor
Jason Plummer

Comptroller
William Kelly

photo credit: gregarch2

Good Riddance Dedicated Servers

Tom — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:53:00 +0000

Fanboys have been wringing their hands over the recent trend of video games to evolve away from dedicated servers. With the high profile release of Modern Warfare 2 there have been calls for boycott. Then id software announced that its next game probably won’t have them either. Just today I picked up a copy of PC Gamer in which a writer whines that dedicated servers are, well, warm and friendly and multiplayer gaming without them thrusts the poor fella on the mercy of us lowly unwashed. Cry more, snob.

I kid. But it gets to the crux of why I won’t miss dedicated servers. I stopped playing Quake Zero after an incident I experienced when I joined a public server (owned by id software). A clan of players, I remember they all had a Texas handle, warned me to leave. Of course, that’s ridiculous. It was a public server that the game told me was the best match for my skills. I was clearly in the minority, so they ganged up and voted me off the server. With that they effectively turned a public beach in their private little sandbox.

Because somebody usually pays for them, server owners feel they have privileges not granted to the general public. Battlefield 2 demonstrated this well. Even though DICE took steps to make sure everyone had the same experience, it is not unusual to find server admins who modify server settings to aid stat padding or even enforcing non-sense rules like “don’t capture a flag, we need EU army hours” with kickbans.

No dedicated servers means nobody owns the server. There is no server admin who feels entitled to tweak and cheat the scoring system. There are no teenage control freaks getting jollies from kicking players. There is no elitist attitude about being deemed worthy of playing with the good ol’ boys. Good riddance dedicated servers! Without them multiplayer gaming is fairer and less frustrating.

photo credit: 1Happysnapper