Selfish Crab

Pillars of learning by selfishcrab.

Warning: this text will have no correlation with the photo above. I just thought no one was really following my flickr feed and wanted to get my photos some eyeball love.

I caught the cold bug going around, which pissed me off because I was on a healthy tear for about two years. I had started bragging about my lack of illness, which of course is a fastball to the Barry Bonds of comeuppance. I should have seen it coming. Our office is a hub for many patient zeros. Damn little things.

Boss is back finally. His extended trip gave us a taste of future. Now his time with us feels like he has left already and is just visiting. It’s good, though, to have him around for what time is left.

Y’know, I liked it better when I knew all my readers were illiterate nerds. I was going to use the phrase “borrowed time” in that last paragraph, but I can’t pull hackeyed shit like that anymore, no siree, bob. Not with MFAs and English majors reading. Maybe I’ll start including poetry…

# 2006 Feb 27    {Life, work}    #

I noticed an interesting phrase in this article about Shizuka Arakawa winning the ladies’ figure skating gold:

She was emotionless for most of her breathtaking four-minute routine, then broke into a smile that only got bigger when scores were flashed. When her personal best of 125.32 points for the free skate were displayed, she flashed a “V” for victory sign then pumped her fist when she moved into first place with 191.34 points.

“V for Victory”? Have they never seen a fob sign before? This AP writer must not have any asian friends.

# 2006 Feb 25    {Life}    #

Dear Mr. Crab,

Thank you for your interest in Columbia Law School, and for your personal investment in our selection process. After careful consideration of your application for admission, we have decided to hold you responsible for the lack of registration features in Sundial. As such, we regret to inform you that we are unable to take favorable action. Columbia Law School is a place for closers and achievers, and you, sir, are clearly neither.

We wish you much success and satisfaction at your law school of choice and beyond, through out your career.

Sincerely,

Dean of Admissions

# 2006 Feb 22    {Life}    4

From: Edward Tom @ law.berkeley.edu
To: selfishcrab
Date: Feb 18, 2006 2:42 PM
Subject: AN EXPLANATION AND ANOTHER APOLOGY

At approximately 3:00 p.m. California time last Friday, February, 17, an e-mail was generated and sent in error to a portion of our applicant pool. The subject line was “You Are Cordially Invited…” and implied that the recipient had been admitted to Boalt Hall. The body of this e-mail was an invitation to an annual event hosted by two of our graduates. It was not an offer of admission.

The e-mail was generated in the context of a software training session, and was sent in error. If you did not receive the e-mail in question, you need not read further. [emphasis mine -ed.]

[...]

Once again, please accept our heartfelt apology for any distress our error may have caused.

Sincerely,

Edward Tom
Director of Admissions

Note to self: do not use applicant data during Wildfire training.

Update:  NPR mentioned it last week.  Apparently, admissions director Edward Tom accidentally sent the e-mail while training a new staff member.

# 2006 Feb 19    {Life}    3

The News seems to have invigorated our corner of the web and blogs were abuzz. It is interesting to see blogging reach a critical mass among us (of course, after everyone leaves.) All the better to keep-track-of-y’all- after-you-leave-us with, I suppose.

The office has zero productivity at the moment. I think we all want to sit around in a circle, hold hands, sing songs, and talk about the end of an era, gossip about CUIT re-orgs, and probably say a thing or two about babies.

# 2006 Feb 16    {work}    #

“Now go blog about it.” That’s how Boss ended the meeting where in he informed us he was leaving the University.

By now, I’ve had a couple of valentine’s day beers and the shock has worn off. From Boss’s perspective, it must be difficult to leave something he devoted so much energy and time to building and shaping, to leave something that carries his imprint so heavily (from the bellowing to the server names.) I empathize with his situation. But enough about him, this is my blog and it’s all about me me me. He’s deserting us! Run for the hills!

This would be the 6th departure since I have started working at AITGOC. For those of you playing the home game, that’s an average of one leaving every 5 months.

Accepting turnover, I suppose, has been another workplace lesson brought to me by the letters CU. Apparently, people move on and do what’s best for them. I better damn sure look out for myself and what I want, and not worry about what may or may not be most convenient and ideal for the organization. That, my friends, is something for the higher pay grades to worry about.

I will be fairly peeved if someone else declares they’re leaving soon or some likewise major announcement. Get in line, goddamnit.

I will write more mushy stuff when it gets closer to Bye-Bye-Boss time. Until then, me sleep.

P.S. I have secretly decided that Wildfire 2.0 will be my final achievement.

# 2006 Feb 15    {work}    3

To make myself less identifiable on this space, I went through past entries and changed references to the office I work for to AITGOC.

# 2006 Feb 14    {meta, work}    #

The snow promotes housecleaning, it seems.

I upgraded to Wordpress 2.0. Nothing particularly special it seems. The designMode editor is a bit flakey. Multi-user features improved, so I may have something to announce in that area soon.

Watched a movie (Heist) and read a graphic novel (Kingdom Come).

Bought Kanye West’s Late Registration offa iTunes. I was on the fence until the Grammys. You can’t get fired for buying IBM.

# 2006 Feb 12    {Life, meta}    #

I got rejected from one of my top choices today. Phooey.

# 2006 Feb 10    {Life}    5

View 1 by selfishcrab.

can’t sleep. perchance to dream?

# 2006 Feb 10    {Life}    #

The Columbia Spectator’s recent profile of DeWitt Clinton Professor of History Eric Foner prompted Professor Foner to write in this letter to the editor that almost made me spurt all over myself:

To the Editor:

Thank you for running the “profile” of me (“Professor Eric Foner’s View From the Top of the Scholar’s Ladder,” Feb. 8, 2006) and especially for the accompanying antique photograph that makes me look twenty years younger than I actually am.

I do feel it necessary, however, to call your attention to an established principle of journalism: checking your facts. Contrary to what the article reports, I am not the uncle of Jake Gyllenhaal. His mother is my former wife, not my sister, and therefore I have no relationship to him other than as a movie-goer. Spectator corrected this mistake when it first appeared in your pages a couple of years ago, but I guess institutional memories are short.

There is a lesson here that all students should bear in mind—do not believe everything you find on the Internet.

Eric Foner
DeWitt Clinton Professor of History

# 2006 Feb 10    {Columbia}    #

I take pride in upholding several important principles as a sysadmin and IT defender. One such principle is to not mess with production systems willy-nilly. By “willy-nilly”, I mean, for example, completely hypothetically, removing a join condition in a SQL statement of a cron job to see what it does, and causing every bugzilla user in AITGOC history to receive a cryptic CRITICAL ticket e-mail. Or something. Maybe. No one’s pointing fingers.

# 2006 Feb 9    {work}    2

In delaying sleep tonight, I developed a solution to annoying paparazzi: a spritz bottle! Cameras are delicate things that need pristine lenses to take clear photos. Bodyguards can spray any obnoxious cameraman. Who can sell blurry pictures?

# 2006 Feb 8    {Life}    #

I definitely did not earn my paycheck last week. It took me two days to put together Ecom usage statistics because I was trying to do a subquery IN statement on a table with almost 200,000 rows and no index. Sigh. And when mysqld kept endlessly grinding, my brilliant solution was to kill -9 the thread. Shudder not, friends, Boss showed me the ways of mysqladmin.

Sometimes shit on the servers just don’t work and I can’t figure out why. I can see the disappointment in Boss’s eyes when I can’t answer his questions about what’s going on. Sysadmin is frustrating and it only adds tally marks under the “Go to Law School” heading. I got into at least one school, by the way, so that’s nice.

# 2006 Feb 6    {nerd, work}    #

Feast, Interrupted
Originally uploaded by engineer.

Why sleep when you can photoblog.

# 2006 Feb 6    {Columbia, Life}    #

According to this great NYC map of superhero locations , Matt Murdoch aka Daredevil got his law degree from Columbia University Law School. Strangely, the panel they show reads that he was studying pre-law; that is to say, an undergrad. Somebody somewhere didn’t proofread.

# 2006 Feb 5    {Columbia}    #

It’s been four years since I swore off unnecessary <table>’s. I suppose that earns me bragging rights in a I-heard-of-them-first sort of way. That is to say, in an obnoxious way.

If you’re reading closely, you will notice the subtext here is that I’m dwelling on the past.

# 2006 Feb 3    {nerd}    #