My Fashion Idols

19 May 2007, 14:57 — Uncategorized

My friend Bob and I were sitting down today watching a silly show on TV called “I Can’t Believe I Wore That” about fashion in the 70’s and 80’s.

I’ve never been a fashion guy myself. I like the clean, cut, professional look, like generals with grayish hair or old business tycoons.

In fact, i just came upon this web page about America’s Most Famous Business Tycoons and realized that that is my ideal.

If I really wanted to look hip and cool, I’d go for a Steve Jobs look. Or maybe Steven Spielberg.

Three Components to Security

17 May 2007, 14:02 — Security

Bruce Schneier says,

…security consists of protection, detection and response–and you need all three to have good security.

Think about that. I do.

Delphi Hacks

17 May 2007, 9:51 — Software Development

Very impressive.

Little Patches of Grass

12 May 2007, 15:12 — Reflections

Churches should be like little pastures full with sheep.

When people say that, more progressive Christians usually think about a pasture, full with sheep, and a powerful shepherd to lead them. Such visions usually end in difficulty, since the shepherd always assumes the position of leadership, determines a vision and sets out on an ambitious program to get all the sheep along. With bold statements, the shepherd will hold up this vision for all to see, declare “this is the will of God”, and lay it down as the basic rule for all the little sheep to measure themselves against. So all the strong and muscular sheep, who are well integrated and ready to submit themselves to authority, align themselves with the vision and become the “progressive sheep”, and are entrusted with leading others; while other sheep who are not as willing to submit themselves, or for various reasons shouldn’t do so, become the “less progressive sheep”, and are as such in dire need of intercession, help (sometimes forceful), and prayer, to get along and become progressive. The goal for such pastures is to have sheep donning beautiful uniforms, marching along in columns of five or ten to the hymnal chorus. When interrogated about their mission or faith, they will all respond in the prescribed manner, properly beginning and ending their statement with a forceful “sir!”. These sheep often have lieutenants, making sure that they all march in order, that uniforms are neat and clean, and that no one is falling behind. “How do you expect to slay the wolf with dust on your jump wings?” they will ask the sheep under their command, and all sheep will then dutifully polish their jump wings, proving to their superiors that they are, indeed, fit for action.

The tendency of these sheep in actual battle will be to storm the enemy head on. The lieutenant sheep, full of ambition to impress their superiors, will usually run first; and will lead the whole flock in sprinting across the battlefield with loud war-cries, and just as naturally will also be the first to be cut down by the enemy machine-gunners. This will derail the entire attack, as the individual sheep now have lost their leader, and will be uncertain as to how to best go on. Some will continue running and will be cut down as well, some will throw themselves on the ground, wondering what the heck is going on, and some will run the other way, not stopping until they have found another flock of sheep who might have better luck. This will be followed by a general – but gradual – retreat, and many will ultimately return to the home pasture, although few sheep will from this moment on look the other sheep in the eyes, and no one will talk about the attack or what went wrong. (There are even more progressive pastures who will indeed write after-action reports, try to determine the cause of failure, and press the attack harder the next time, oftentimes with equal results.)

No, these are not the pastures I’m thinking about.

When I think “pasture”, I think of a little patch of grass next to a stream, where a shepherd rests under a tree, keeping a half-closed (but watchful!) eye on his little sheep. This pasture is different. This shepherd does not exercise authority – he knows his authority but rarely uses it, and then only to make sure that harmony is kept within his little domains. His pasture is for healing. This is a quiet little patch of grass, safe from the worries of the world, where sheep can come to rest, be safe from the wolves, and feed upon green, fresh, juicy grass.

These sheep do not march in columns. Instead, these sheep sit in the grass, seeking the will of the Master. The shepherd joins them from time to time, but does not impose his will on the sheep; he knows better than that. His delight is in seeing the sheep grow up to be all that they can be. He knows that some of the sheep will never leave the pasture, taking up careers in servanthood and helping and caring for the others. Other sheep may grow up to be vicious warrior sheep, leaving the pasture for times and seasons and go out to hunt wolf. And when a couple of sheep join together – for bonding together in purpose, vision and belief makes them much stronger than on their own – nothing could gladden the shepherd’s heart more.

Ultimately, this shepherd knows the Master himself. He knows that this is not his own pasture, but that the Master has ordained him and entrusted him with the care of the Master’s sheep. He knows that the Master has a vision and a plan for the pasture, but this the shepherd keeps in his own heart and rarely shares with the sheep themselves. He does not see himself as a leader, but as a servant; but in the Master’s eyes, this shepherd is the greatest leader of them all, a leader after His own heart. For he is not afraid to lay down his life for these little sheep in his care.

The Master knows this. And the Master is not afraid to add sheep to this little pasture, for He knows that they will be well taken care of. Some sheep He puts there for a time, to heal, rest, learn and then move on; other sheep He adds to the pasture permanently, to remain there and serve.

One day will come when all His pastures will be tended like this. He is waiting for that day. And these sheep will not be mindless drones, they will all be perfected in their individual skills. And when these sheep run across the battlefield towards the enemy, they will not be cut down; they have learned their lessons beforehand. They will move as a well-functioning body of believers; logistics, medical care and leadership will be integrated in it. And the pastures will remain in their function to heal, teach and train.

For these pastures are not as innocent as they seem. They are His barracks, for training an entire army of soldier sheep… cleverly disguised as little patches of grass.

After Five O’clock

10 May 2007, 16:27 — Reflections

It’s a few minutes after five o’clock in the afternoon, and step by step, a calm settles over the office. The people who’ve been running around the entire day, busy as little worker bees, drop off one by one. The drapes are pulled down over the windows, lights are turned off, and soon, the only sound that is heard is the quiet, distant hum from the ventilation and the computers left to work over the night.

I always enjoy the serene calm that settles at this time of day. There’s a kind of quiet pleasure reserved for those people who are left to enjoy it. No phones are ringing, no emails arrive in the inbox. A few friends on ICQ or MSN to chat with, and you might even drop off to McDonalds for a hamburger. And depending on what you do, you might code a few hours (if it’s something interesting you’re working on), or just toying around. A quiet time of undisturbed peace.

Walking through the empty office at night is a process of discovery. Instead of the glare of the day, there now appears a forest of little lights and hums – LEDs blinking away in the night, quiet little muffled sounds from hard disks working, computers never stopping to pause but faithfully working through the night at the various tasks assigned to them. It’s a workshop, left unattended by human eyes for a while, only watched over by some watchdog processes, checking the operations every minute with clockwork precision, always ready to alert a human if something goes wrong.

You notice different things, too, when walking through it at night. Little posts that stand out, casting eerie shadows over the floor… The server cabinets look more like huge, looming things better put at Stonehenge than in the warehouse; and the cubicle walls become little intricate mazes where gnomes lurk in the shadows. And if you look really hard, it’s almost like you can make out quiet, dim little ghosts rising from the floor. The software seems to come alive, and the processes appear in hazy ghosts with odd names like sWeb, pMainGateSMS and yaWatchdog. They sit there, looking at you in the night, carefully inspecting what you write; with silent stares, saying nothing … but always ready to comment on your work with sad, disapproving eyes, should you dare to take a shortcut somewhere in the code.

When daybreak comes, the ghosts vanish. Soon the place is filled anew with busy people busying themselves with business. But somewhere in those machines, the same ghosts are lurking… and just waiting to come out again, when the shadows fall.

New Bloggers

10 May 2007, 14:49 — Cool links

Marie Breskic is an old friend of mine from Skövde. She’s just recently started blogging. These days she lives in Brcko in Bosnia/Hercegovina and writes (in Swedish) about her life, her faith, and observations from a totally different part of Europe.

Wie ein dünner Nebel

8 May 2007, 13:29 — Poetry

Dann kommt das mal zu Ende.

Kein Wort wird mehr gesagt
Keinen Blick auf dir geworfen
Keine Träume mehr besteht.
Du sagst “auf wiedersehen”
Wir meinen’s aber nicht.

Und wie ein dünner Nebel
Im Sonnenschein verjagt
So wirst du jetzt für mich
Immer schwacher, leichter, dünner
Bis nichts von dir mehr bleibt.

Zu Ende…

Ich hätte einen Traum, das wir glücklich zusammen waren
Aber wenn diese kalte, harte Realität eingesetzt hat
Dann hat es nicht länger gelungen.
Nun muß ich nur herausrücken
Eine Liebe ich nicht erfahren habe
Von meinem schmerzenden Herz.

Wie geh’ ich von hier weiter?
Wohin soll ich jetzt?
Das ist mir egal.
Meine Augen blicken nicht mehr
Und mein Herz, voll Weh, ist leer.

So werde ich auch
Wie ein dünner Nebel
Im Sonnenschein verjagt.

As per always, please report any grammatical errors, as I suspect there may be plenty …

09:35 and Everything is FUBAR

8 May 2007, 8:49 — Software Development

A state of FUBAR occurred today at 09:35. Unusually fast, I thought.

I tried to run a program I’ve written today from a mapped drive, t:. It works beautifully when I run it from my hard drive on c:, but .NET considers t: to be less secure, and therefore the program throws a SecurityException when I try to run it from there. I don’t know why. I guess I could trace the setting down and change it somehow, but I don’t have the heart for it.

It is a wonderful practical application of the policy “Security by Insanity“.

The program, incidentally, works beautifully. It reads Excel files and transforms them into resource files. It works on my computer (Excel 2007), it works on our shared server (Excel 2003), but fails mysteriously with an “an exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation” exception on the customer’s computer (Excel 2003) and his colleague’s computer (Excel 2003).

FUBAR is an excellent term. It is an acronym for “Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition”. (Feel free to replace “fouled up” with a stronger term also beginning with F, if you want to.) It is thought to come from the U.S. military during World War II. Another useful term borrowed from the military is BOHICA (Bend Over, Here It Comes Again), or SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up).

The IT industry has a lot of things in common with the U.S. military, I’ve noticed.