Terrible Analogies

There are two simple rules I follow in life:

• Never taunt a guy with skin rolls on the back of his neck
• If you don’t use a turn signal on the highway, don’t expect me to let you in

I’m amazed at how difficult some people find it to move their finger one inch to activate a turn signal.  And I find it even more amazing that these same people get upset when others don’t bend over backwards to let them change lanes when they fail to indicate a change in direction.

A turn signal is used to safely indicate a lane change and/or to warn others that your forward momentum will be coming to a halt in the immediate future.  Turn signals help traffic run smoothly and helps people avoid accidents.  If you give me a turn signal I’ll go out of my way to let you slide into my lane.  If you don’t signal then don’t get upset because I’m acing you out of what I can only assume is the space you believe your entitled to.

Prime example of this in action was last Friday night.  I’m in the exiting lane of a freeway and was coming up on a mercedes ahead of me in the left hand lane that was traveling slower than the surrounding traffic.  No turn signal.  No nuthin’.  I pass him, and as I’m doing so he honks his horn and quickly pulls in behind me.  In my rearview I can see his silhouetted form flipping me off.

I’m no mind reader.  How could I have known that he wanted to change lanes in front of me?   I fail to understand the logic of these people.  I know we all occasionally do stupid things while zoning out during a long drive, but please understand that driving is not a spectator sport, and it’s not a game of chess.  Little things like failing to use a turn indicator provides a tiny little window to your psyche, letting us see first hand how you tend to treat others privately and professionally.  If you have so little respect for your fellow motorists, why should we respect you?

Wandering the narrow, musty isles of a now defunct used bookstore in downtown San Diego, I happened upon an oddly shaped tanned book buried deep in one of the hundreds of overflowing and teetering dog-eared shelves.  Sliding it out of the shadows and into the flicker of the florescent lights I flipped it over in my hands and was greeted by an mesmerizing picture of a elderly pipe-smoking Asian from a time long past.  What I was holding was an amazingly well-preserved copy of The International Cultivator’s Handbook written by one William Daniel Drake Jr.

In this book, William Drake discusses the cultivation techniques and serving suggestions for hashish, coca, opium, and cannabis.  Contained within its pages were brilliantly amateurish photos snapped from around the world showing peoples from various cultures growing, harvesting, and ingesting a bevy of exotic and illicit substances.  I instantly fell for the low-fi, xeroxed, and pixilated black & white photos that were shuttered in a time long before computers and Adobe Photoshop existed.  I could imaging this William Drake person traveling the world with nothing more than a Kodak camera and an adventurous desire to understand not only how drugs are manufactured, but also to appreciate the cultures from which these drugs originated from.

Personally I don’t use drugs, but I could appreciate the amount of work that went into this book and the bravery it took to willingly travel into what I’m almost certain were potentially hostile environments.  I’m sure the world was a bit tamer in 1974 when this book was published, but I’m guessing that the dangers and threats from a society dependent on the production of drugs was still tangible and I’m sure very real.

I’ve been wondering what ever became of William Drake.  Has his pace slowed with the years, possibly enjoying his golden years content with the knowledge that he managed to get several books printed in his lifetime, possibly helping to shape the lives of countless numbers of people?  Did he lose his mind or did he find enlightenment?  Would he be available to autograph a copy of one of his books?  Is he still with us, or has he left this mortal coil?

Regardless, to cover all bases and honor his passing/non-passing, here are a selection of the photos found in The International Cultivator’s Handbook (click to embiggen):

UPDATE: William Drake was kind enough to comment on this post, and even offered to sign my copy of this book.  Mr. Drake is still very much active, running an info-heavy web site entitled Smoke And Illusion where you can order an online version of his latest book The Cultivator’s Handbook of Native, Natural Tobacco.

UPDATE 2: Mr. Drake was a man of his word, going out of his way to sign my copy of his book.  Check it out in this post.

Lost season four shipped this week.  Unfortunately because of the writers strike this shortened season contains only 13 episodes instead of the typical 23.  Lost is one of the finest network television shows ever created, and the best (only?) way to watch and truly enjoy it is on DVD.  Free from commercials it’s an engrossing journey that’s nearly impossible to turn away from.

Included in the box set of season 4 is a faux Oceanic Airlines emergency evacuation safety card.  As always, click on the images to enlarge.

For what it’s worth, Locke is my hero

I haven’t seen season 4 before.  In fact, I go out of my way to avoid any contact with Lost until the DVDs are released.  Karin and I were enjoying episodes 1 and 2 last night when Karin noticed the following on the DVD covers:

With the plastic slip sleeve on you can see the entire cast...

With the slip sleeve off you can see everyone in shadow except Kate (who's holding Claire's baby), Sayid, Hurley, Jack, and Sun. Is this the Oceanic Six? No spoilers please, I haven't seen this season yet...

A friend at work knows I’m a huge DVD fanatic, and with a single e-mail sent me into a self destructive downward spiral of extreme wanting.  Ya see, the wife and I have been shopping around for a PS3 for its Blu-ray capability, wireless connection to the internet, and the automatic firmware updates it performs as they’re released.  We were unable to find one for less than $400.  The e-mail this particular friend sent me was for a 15% discounted price on a new 80Gig Playstation 3 being offered by Dell.  

This discount is still available, so if you want to take advantage of it, please act quickly.  After the 27th of December 2008 the offer disappears.  Click on this link, then input CTV2$2HX963145 into the coupon code.  I managed to snag an 80Gig PS3 for $350.  

Woot!  It’s shipped!  I’m finally diving into the world of Blu-ray, and I couldn’t be happier.  I’ve already ordered a few titles for Christmas, so Santa should be getting us started with upgrading our DVD collection to the Blu-ray format.  I *think* the big guy is hooking us up with copies of:

• The Ultimate Matrix Collection
• 300
• Batman Begins
• The Incredible Hulk (2008)
• Starship Troopers
• Hellboy 1 & 2
• Iron Man
• Wanted
• Pirates Of The Caribbean box set
• Hell Ride
• Transformers

Monday: We need to change all local administrator accounts company wide.  This, of course, falls to me.  I’m not a programmer, but I know enough to get by.  Upon investigation I find that there’s a total of 1253 servers that need the local admin password changed.  I’m beginning to dread this week already.

Tuesday: Begin writing a program that will crawl the network and change the password.

Wednesday:  Testing is successful.  I think this project is in the bag…uh, my manager now wants the developer account password changed, and now I’ll need to reset the password expiration countdown to zero, and expire in 90 days.  Coding resumes. 

….and a hard drive goes south in a blade….and the sharepoint server has run out of HD space…and a VP is asking for a server to be built in VM….argh!

Thursday:  Yay for me!  I’ve managed to lock out the admin account on nearly 100 machines while testing my program.  Code in a quick fix.  …heck with this, I’m going to the gym.

Friday:  Manager says, “Oh, by the way, we’ll need to change the rmadmin account at the same time we change the administrator account, and we need this done asap.  And can you unrack the Whale rack and send the equipment to S&H?”.  Unrack the equipment and then continue coding.  I’m worn out, feeling like Wilford Brimley on Valium.

Manager then says to me, “Can you come in on Saturday?  We need the passwords changed before Monday.  This is project critical.”  I begin wishing I packed a flask on my person.

Saturday (6am): Program successfully crawls the network, making changes to the administrator, developer, and rmadmin accounts, setting the countdowns to the required dates.  For a variety of reasons, only 102 servers fail to change.  Complete these failures by hand.  As I’m about to walk out the door another blade server begins to have issues with hardware.  I take the easy way out of this and convert the server to a VM and finally walk out the door exhausted, vowing not to pick up the phone on Sunday.

What can I say…I live for this shit.