Shanti’s Dispatches

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“It was true that I didn’t have much ambition, but there ought to be a place for people without ambition, I mean a better place than the one usually reserved. How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 6:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?”

—Charles Bukowski, Factotum, Black Sparrow Press, 1975

“I was called to the bathroom at the cemetery to take care of something. I walked in the bathroom and in the middle toilet right there . . . somebody didn’t shit in the toilet, somebody shat on the toilet. They shat on the wall, they shat on the floor. I had to clean it up, man, but before that, for about 10 to 15 seconds man, I just stared at somebody’s shit, man. To be totally honest with you, man, it was a really, really profound moment. Cause I was thinkin’, ‘I’m 30 years old and in about 10 seconds I gotta start cleaning up somebody’s shit, man.’”

—American Movie, 1999

“I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables—slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War’s a spiritual war . . . our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

—Fight Club, 1999

“My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men’s room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn’t so closely resemble Hell.”

—American Beauty, 1999

Via here. Thoughts. Disjointed. Need. More. Sleep.

* met a Canadian who worked for OSHA, who helps ensure & train workers on safety surrounding tires of huge machines like that pictured above (and bigger)
* he’s been visiting & working in and around the north pole for the past 20 years — the climate change, he says, is simply undeniable. The only controversy surrounding that issue now is the extent to which it is caused by humans vs. the natural cycles of the planet.

* NYC cab drivers can make roughly $1,000 per week (take home, I believe) - but that’s working 12 hour days, 7 days a week
* That comes to roughly $12 per hour. Not bad, but an 84 hour work week!?! How can spoiled Americans compete?!? (they don’t)

* Spoke to another Pakistani cabbie who believed Osama bin Laden is dead
* He said the players in the West created a major problem by funding the mujahadeen (indeed)
* Once the war with the Soviets was over, they simply looked for their next target. Combined with Islamic fundamentalism, you get some pretty nasty stuff.
* Kashmir is like the Jerusalem of central Asia — Pakistan, India & even China, claim ownership over parts of the territory

Next up… flying cars!

I’ve come across many coders who have not properly planned their Greatist Hits of programming, per se.

Sit across from a group of coders at your average meetup, and ask them if they write tests first for their fun “side project”:

Dev #1: Well, y’know, I kind of just develop the code (without tests) as I go.
Dev #2: If I had more time, y’know… I’d write tests, and stuff.

This mirrors my own tinkerings. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with Test-Driven Development or that it’s in any way inferior to Cowboy Method (TM).

I’m just saying… a lot of hackers… hackers in the wild, do not tend to follow TDD when tinkering on their own fun projects.

I would add tests… but I might change this later, and then I’d have to change the tests, too.

Ah screw it. I’ll just code it up and get the darn thing working first…

A lot of these projects end up being the del.icio.uses, YouTubes and Scribds of the world.