At some point I’ll post a bit more about Berkman’s technical infrastructure (and maybe even post X-rated pictures of our sexy servers), but for now I just want to note that our cute little web server, already a few years old and soon to be replaced, is happily chugging along at a load level of 15 and serving out somewhere around half a million requests today as we get an unusually high amount of traffic (as usual!) after being featured on a few prominent sites. Not to mention that its doing okay at fending off the occasional (did I say occasional? I meant constant!) ssh brute force attack, where we generally see about one connection attempt per second. Fun, isn’t it?

A year and a half ago I posted an entry that discussed online relationships and the beginnings of blogging, in which I briefly discussed the relationship of two semi-prominent bloggers and also took a few moments for self-pity. The two, Jason and Meg, were written up in a _New Yorker_ piece that introduced the world to blogging by telling a classic love story with an electronic twist. Doesn’t it make you nostalgic, thinking back to a time when people didn’t know what a blog was? When, in fact, a blog was something different than it is today?

Anyway, the follow-up is that Meg and Jason are now engaged, an interesting tidbit I stumbled across when I happened to click on Meg’s “about” link today. Backtracking a bit I found an entry announcing the good news and reflecting on that original 2000 _New Yorker_ article:

bq. A lot has changed in the five years since Rebecca wrote “You’ve Got Blog.” Pretty much everyone knows what a blog is now, and most people are probably sick of hearing about them. Pyra was bought by Google, who now own Blogger. Neither Ev nor I nor any of the people who were involved in Blogger when Rebecca came to visit our offices in San Francisco are involved in the product anymore. Most of us don’t even blog very consistently these days. And I don’t think any of us qualify as “A-list” bloggers anymore — there certainly are no more shrines to Pyra!

Blogging has, like everything always does, sold out, gone mainstream, gone corporate, been invaded by spammers, been monetized, been vanilla-ized so that everyone has a LiveJournal or a MySpace or any of a thousand other blog-pretender services, there are millions of blogs, most of them are crap, and there is just no way (and really no reason) to keep up. Meanwhile so many of the original techie webheads who started the blogging “revolution” have moved on to other things and don’t post frequently or with any consistancy anymore, if at all.

I know I’m going a little overboard with the nostalgia lately, but I was reading some of Luis’s and Nat’s older entries about working in a high tech company even after the supposed bubble had supposedly burst, and I just keep feeling like I missed out on the revolution. The world is fundamentally different, and when it was all happening I was just growing up and in school, and missed out on a chance to really experience it all first-hand, get my feet wet, make my millions, and be part of the revolution. Will we ever again in our lifetimes have that sort of atmosphere of unbridled enthusiasm and belief in the power of technology to change the world? Will we ever again have such a concentration of raw energy, such a massive engine of change? Man, I hope so. I really hope so.

At Berkman its easy to feel the change, to feel it in your bones. At one point that place was a shining beacon of light in a legal world that couldn’t get a grip on the internet. They were leading experiments and bringing people together and figuring out how to regulate the net and how to apply the law to new and shifting tech. Now that, too, is mainstream, the law has adapted, things have settled, and Berkman is about putting out studies and working on research projects, like a “real” research institute. Not that there is anything wrong with that, or that Berkman has gone down hill, its just that the whole climate, the whole atmosphere has changed. A global warming of the net, so to speak — that is, if you believe in that sort of thing. 😉 The Berkman of today just doesn’t feel as sexy and cutting edge as it did when I was reading about it in high school and was participating in OpenLaw and the like.

So here I sit, awaiting the next big thing. Probably not a great way to be spending my time, but really there is not much for me to do. I get a job doing something I enjoy, I stick with it, I get another one, etc. I’m not going to easily or quickly find a job that lets me feel like I’m changing the world, not anymore. I’m going to have to find a different kind of satisfaction. Perhaps one that is more earned.

I read some people’s blogs and I wonder why I’m not as thoughtful and witty and knowledgable and well-traveled and introspective as they are. Also makes me sad I wasn’t born five or six years earlier, so that I could have taken part in the dot-com boom. I often feel unfulfilled at the end of the day, and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. There is a promise of an intangible wholeness and connectedness around every corner, but I haven’t yet been able to corner it and grab it or even see through the veil and figure out what the heck it is. Its about finding your place, and if there is one big thing on my long list of “not yet found,” that is definitely it. How to describe it — its like in a TV show like _West Wing_ when they accomplish something and the music swells, or in _Grey’s Anatomy_ when Meredith voiceovers the silly theme and the pop soundtrack rises in intensity and everything wraps up to a meaningful, 44-minute conclusion, or in _Buffy_ when she stakes the vampire, says something witty, and wanders off into the night. I can go on my little adventures and have fun with my friends and go into work, but I’m just not in that ethereal place I need to be in to feel like I’m living a meaningful, fulfilling layered life. I don’t really know what to do about it, or what I can change.

And I need to take more pictures. I always need to take more pictures. No matter how many pictures I take, I need to take more.

This is silly. I’ve been sitting here for the past ten minutes trying to start an entry about my job, and haven’t really been getting anywhere. Lots of people are asking me about what I do all day, many of those people probably wouldn’t understand the technical details anyway, and frankly I just am not feeling in a zone right now to write about it. I tell people that if you’re ever writing a blog entry that starts with “I know I haven’t updated in a while,” or “I feel like I need to post something,” you might as well just give up. On this blog I write when I feel like it about whatever feels like it needs to be written about. Plenty of interesting and/or important things happen in my life that I just don’t really have much to say about, and so I don’t, or I have something to say and by the time I’ve gotten to a computer the urge has passed. So it goes.

So my job. I like it. In many ways it is similar to what I did in the Student Union, except completely different. When I came into the Union I had almost no training and very little idea what I was getting into. I had to dive deep without a parachute (mixing metaphors, whatever) and trust that I would be able to figure it all out and stay on my feet (a third metaphor! Head…exploding!) It was kinda like that…all mixed up and jumbled, and complicated, with lots of things happening because thats how they used to happen. The trick was figuring out why things were as they were and what was the way it was for good reasons and what was like that just because no one had bothered to try something better. There was a heck of a lot to do. I started making changes. People got really upset with me. Over time, many of the changes stuck, people realized they were the right ones, and couldn’t imagine going back to things the way they were. A few things didn’t work, many things I never was able to get to.

When I got in to office I was given a huge budget and a lot of responsibility with minimal oversight and second-guessing. I figured out the big purchases that needed to be made and I made them, and they were almost always the right ones. I updated our infrastructure, I consolidated our offerings, I documented like crazy, I brought the web site to life. I turned a lot of things around.

I’m not trying to boast. I made many mistakes. I made many people angry. I did my job, and I think I did it really well, and in the process I discovered things about myself that I never knew, and I realized, in a very abstract way, what I wanted to do with my life. I really liked what I was doing, for various reasons, a major one being that I was bringing order to chaos, and I felt good at it. Another major one was that I was doing what was best for my employers — the students who elected me — whether they realized it or not. I was trying to make Brandeis better in various ways, some small, some large. It was exhausting. It was exhilirating. It was a blast.

Continue reading “What I Do All Day”

MasterCard has something new called “PayPass” that lets you pay for things by “simply” “tapping” your card on the reader rather than scanning it. So they’re adding RFID chips to their cards…great. And you’re saving about half a second because instead of swiping you are tapping. How is this innovation? How about using your neat new technology, to, say keep digital copies of all my receipts and let me access them online? Or, to help slightly with privacy, store them on the card, in a format that I can easily download onto my computer and into programs like Quicken with one “simple” “tap.” Or how about getting rid of the card altogether and letting me use small, rugged, easily transportable keyfob? There is no reason the digital wallet needs to look anything like the traditional non-digital one. MasterCard went for the easy gimmick rather than real innovation. I’m sure there are lots of other great ideas out there for improving the shopping experience and using RFID chips, smart cards, and the like. Why they decided to latch on to this particular one and put it forward as a MasterCard-specific gimmick that is incompatible with everyone else’s systems is completely beyond me.

I was wandering around Boston on Sunday when I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of a huge get out the vote march, ostensibly in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act. I say “ostensibly” because — as I expect is the norm at most major rallies — there were representatives from various causes from labor unions to socialists to rabid fans of LaRouche. It was surreal, but the gospel music was nice and it was interesting to see the various people. It was actually sort of sad when the white speakers started getting up and just not doing very well at all at mustering the enthusiasm, power, and outrage that their black counterparts put forth. There was also a big contingent of City Year volunteers who seemed to be participating in the organizing. The other obvious presence was a large group of black men wearing fancy suits. They also looked pretty official/organizer-y, in contrast with the assorted other people in various sorts of dress, like me in my t-shirt and shorts. It was interesting in a purely time-wasting sort of way to think about the logistics of the event and try to understand who really was in charge (if anyone). The serious-looking men in suits I just couldn’t quite figure out.

The other notable aspect of the rally was when I was slowly walking sideways/backwards while observing the crowd. I turned around just in time to stop about five or six feet away from John Kerry, in the flesh. Running into him would have been sort of embarrassing. Based on my brief observations at close range, however, I think I can confirm that he is not, in fact, a robot. He even put on his “trademark” bomber jacket, although there was no motorcyle in sight.

So anyway, that happened.

One day I walked into the Student Union office and saw Annie with her ginormous Toshiba laptop with its 17" screen of massive resolution hitherto unknown to mere mortals. On it she had one web page taking up the entire screen. Of course, being the savvy Windows user, she knew how to use the Alt-Tab keyboard shortcut to switch between other open programs, like her Word documents, each also expanding to take up the entire screen. As she worked on her paper, she’d keep tabbing back and forth between the web browser and the document, but it never once occurred to her to shrink the two windows down so that she could view them both at once, side by side. Meanwhile concentration, focus, and productivity were just vanishing.

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine contains a great piece on a movement called life hacking, an attempt to better analyze the distractions of the modern workplace and develop strategies for organization and work that make people more productive.

Years ago I thought that wearable computers were just around the corner. I was hideously excited about the idea of a " remembrance agent ," an interactive software program that would constantly monitor my surroundings as I went about my daily routine, recording everything and constantly analyzing, looking for correlations. A small computer worn like just another gadget — or piece of clothing — would provide important and relevant information through a display in my glasses. It would tell me where I was and when I was last there and what I was doing and with whom and why. It would remind me of people’s names and of appointments and bring up old emails and papers and web pages based on its understanding of what I needed at any particular moment. It would know enough to understand when things required my attention and it should be obtrusive, and when it should just fade into the background and leave me in peace. It was the next evolution of computing technology, and it was just around the corner.

Well, its been eight or ten years and we haven’t seen much progress on the wearables front, meanwhile society has continued to get more and more distracting. I need not list off the litany of devices that we all know are sapping our lives away — cell phones, PDAs, PDA cell phones, cameras, PDA cameras, PDA cell phone cameras, BlackBerrys, laptops, iPods. Things keep getting more complex, our environment more demanding, information more pervasive, and yet not many people have put much serious thought into user-focused organization, prioritization, and productivity boosting.

Continue reading “Life hacking and the infinite workspace”

Today was a long day at Harvard on a Saturday, which is weird because I’m generally there Monday through Friday as well, and I felt very confused about the whole thing. After 9 to 5 at Startup School surrounded by people who were far more into the idea of creating a startup than I was, I headed over to Berkman for an hour to wait for Matt Sachs and crew to come to Harvard Square for dinner. I wandered over to the square but they had decided to go to Lexington instead, so I ate in the square, went back to Berkman for my stuff (and fiddled for another hour), and then decided to go home.

For reasons that remain unknown I decided to walk around the front instead of my normal route along the back, and it was in my very brief walk to the car to get home after a long day that a man in a coat and hat approached me. The gentleman in question spun an elaborate story about his wife taking his car, getting in a car accident, and him not having any means of getting to her at the hospital, as all of his stuff was in the car in question. There were some (perceived, at least) gaps in the story having to do with how he heard about the accident, why he needed to take an Amtrak train, etc. I felt pretty strongly that he was scamming me, but despite that, and after pretty much calling him a liar to his face, I gave him a twenty and my business card.

For some reason the homeless beggars seemed more persistant today, or perhaps more pitiful, as it was raining. I rarely give these people money, not because I think they are bad people, or that they should “find a job” or that the state will take care of them, but just because I don’t understand why they are in the square day after day, what their stories are, what they do with their lives and with the money I give them, and what my spare pocket change will really do. If it was one guy, I’d give him my fifty cents, but there are a dozen, and how to choose? I can’t give money to every person on the street, and even if I did, would it be making any difference? I just don’t know, and so I don’t give, and I try not to feel bad about it, but tonight I was feeling bad about it.

I was thinking about a discussion I had with Kevin a while back in which he gave me his rationale for giving money to beggars. He told me he feels fortunate at this time in his life to be in a position to have a place to live, money in his pocket, a stable job, a car, food on the table. But life is a series of ups and downs, he said, and we never know where we might be tomorrow, and when we might need to rely on the kindness of strangers. He also doesn’t believe that anyone would *choose* to beg on a street corner unless they absolutely had to. I tend to agree with him, whatever these peoples circumstances, we as a society have failed them. And I understand his sentiment, and his reasons. This is an issue that I just have not been able to come to any decision about, despite ample pondering.

So tonight when a strange man approached me, seemingly agitated, with a story that, while probably untrue, could certainly be true, I gave him $20. I had it in my wallet, after all. I had just paid $10 for dinner. If his wife really is in the hospital, I did the right thing and helped a fellow human in need. If he was just scamming me for money, well, now he has some money, and hopefully he is better off and can use it to purchase something he needs. Not knowing, it is best not to dwell on it, and now I can at least feel that I’ve given enough to somebody that I can put this question about the homeless to the back of my mind, at least for a little while.

If, by some miraculous event I get a check in the mail next week for my twenty bucks, I guess my faith in humanity will be reaffirmed, or something. But then I guess I’ll have to start worrying again about giving money to beggars.

Okay, I bought the fun Pixar short _Geri’s Game_ from the now-unfortunately-named iTunes Music Store. As I suspected, the quality is pretty disappointing and doesn’t do justice to the craftsmanship of the people at Pixar. Opening the movie in QuickTime Pro, I see that I can use the editing features to copy out sections and re-arrange the movie, but there is no way to export my results or save it from the menus. When I go to quit, however, it does ask if I’d like to save my changes into a new video file, and I can, with DRM, of course. There does not seem to be any way to get even a short segment of video out without the DRM, so any sort of remixing or fair use sort of goes out the window. I guess that is not unexpected, but it continues to be disappointing.

For a while now I’ve been telling people who would listen that a killer use for iTunes would be if Apple could somehow break into television and get TV shows into their online store. I’ve said I’d pay $0.99 or maybe $1.99 for a TV show, if I could get it the same time as it comes out on television, commercial-free.

Well, Apple has taken their first step in this regard, and announced yesterday a partnership with ABC to sell episodes of five of their shows for $1.99 each. Yes, folks, I’m a seer. I should be jumping with joy, right? Eh. First of all, they don’t seem to have the newest episodes. Second, they’re low quality, at 320×240 resolution, whereas what I wanted and expected was HDTV quality. My assumption, of course, is that they are commercial free (they’d better be!) but I can’t really test that cause I don’t feel like spending two bucks to see what all this hoopla is that surroundes Desperate Housewives if I’m getting such a low quality episode. I mean, seriously. 320×240 means that at full screen the video is fuzzy and pixelated. Thanks, but no thanks.

The apparent “target” for these videos is iPods. After many disparaging comments about video on the music player, Steve Jobs ended up coming out with a video player of his own, and it looks like an iPod. No, I don’t get it. The only way I’d get it is if the iPod was being used more for being able to take videos from place to place and plug it into a TV or computer for playback rather than watching on its tiny screen.

One thing Apple did that I *didn’t* predict was get older seasons of these five shows and sell them at a discount — $35 for 22 to 25 shows. Not bad, about in line with DVD sales. But for low quality episodes, no extras, no commentaries, no special features, and no clear path to getting them on a TV screen except through a fancy new iPod, I’m going to pass.

Come on, Apple. You’ve got the right idea. Now make it work. Let’s all hope that soon enough other TV networks will sign on, along with movie producers. iTunes could be a *great* outlet for smaller and independent films. Oh, and you might want to rename your “Music Store” and reorganize it a bit when this starts taking off, as I suspect (hope) it will. And put the videos in my Mac’s Movies folder, not the Music folder.

I’ve talked in the past about the future of television distribution, and I like what I see. But its only one very small step towards greatness. Not surprising, though, that it came from Apple.

Cyrus seems like a good mailserver and all, but why does it seem to suffer from a complete lack of documentation and user support? When I Google for Cyrus help the same few threads re-appear every single time, and they’re all questions with no answers, or a HOWTO from 1999. I’m sure Cyrus is great, and hey, Apple even uses it in OS X, but come on, where’s the beef? Don’t make me go to Courier, people.

(Not that that will actually happen, as I don’t have time to mess around with something that is working just fine, but the point still stands.)

On the episode of _House_ I watched today, there was talk of “breaking out the rape kit” for a patient. Which made me wonder what, exactly, the “rape kit” consists of. Of course the internet has the answer, and its not pretty. Post-rape, female victims are subject to a number of necessary tests that I can imagine are really emotionally and psychologically uncomfortable in addition to being physically awkward. I mean, it has to be done, but yuck. Not the kind of experience one should be having after such a terrible and traumatic event. And yet, in the interests of the law and catching and prosecuting the perputrator, it pretty much *has* to be done, which, in itself, is sort of another form of forced violation.

The “kit” part refers to a physical kit of sterile equipment (swabs, tweezers, gloves, and the like) and evidence bags, as well as to the instructional procedures accompanying it.

Around this time last year I yearned for a return to the fairness doctrine, which was a policy enforced by the FCC from the 60s through the 80s that required broadcasters to report on issues of interest to the community and to provide equal time to opposing points of view. As I wrote in my previous posting, I believe our current broadcast news environment is saturated with, to put it bluntly, crap. While I can’t really say truthfully that I want a return to three networks and FCC strong-arming, there is some charm in the notion that television is about serving the public, about pursuing the stories we need to hear about, about presenting information in an unbiased way, about news in an age when news was about principles and not profit.

Tonight I attended a Q&A with Newton Minow, a former FCC chairman and all around interesting guy, and I posed to him my question about the fairness doctrine, something that has been floating around in my mind ever since I first learned about it in a class freshman year. Unfortunately, Mr. Minow misunderstood my question, and responded by saying that when AM radio seemed stagnant he opened up the FM spectrum and promoted it, and now FM broadcast is the dominent form of radio.

To some extent that is an answer. As I said, the Fairness Doctrine was created in a time with only a few radio and television networks, and thus very little consumer choice. In today’s world there is much more choice, or at least the illusion of it.

I have said that one of the reasons we cannot return to such a time is because of the diversity of media (used here as the plural for medium) in today’s marketplace. We have TV, radio, satellite TV, satellite radio, cable, the beginnings of broadcast over cellphone networks to our phones, etc. The public interest argument — that the scarce airwaves must be used to serve the public good, because they belong to the public — does not hold true with 85% or more of television consumers use cable or satellite. But tonight Susie pointed out to me — quite rightly — that “choice” in this context is a red herring. Cable companies operate as natural monopolies and give consumers no choice over what channel line-up they can receive. Verizon’s plans for television over their new fiber optic network will be the same way, with one big corporation controlling the content (and charging for it). As long as we have media gatekeepers in the form of monopoly carriers, we can never truly have choice.

Mr. Minow, responding to a question from Susie, stated that cable networks were built on the backs of broadcasters, whose signals continue to be sent over them because of “must carry” provisions in the law. But times change, companies change, and you have to wonder if the networks, who claim to be doing work in the public good but in reality are no subject to virtually no useful* public interest regulation, deserve to keep getting a free ride. Not that kicking them off of cable (or forcing them to pay their way) would necessarily change much, but it might cure one small symptom of the overarching disease.

(*I said useful regulations…I don’t consider obscenity and indecency regulation to be at all useful. Sure, I understand that society can feel the need to restrict certain types of content using the same types of public interest arguments as I’ve made here, and sure I am often an advocate of federal or state regulation to force certain behaviors, but on this one, at least, I would rather the markets decide, and let people simply choose not to watch such things. The argument of intrusiveness, to me, holds no water in this day and age.)

No disrespect meant to my friends and family in the “selilng things” business, but I have serious issues with vendors. I’m finding that frequently the sales folks are un- or mis-informed, unhelpful, and bothersome. On the other end of the spectrum, sometimes they are unhelpful, slow to respond, slow to follow up, slow to get me the information I need, and bothersome. In general they don’t know everything about a system, and often instead of getting me the real answers they give me wrong ones or give me nothing at all.

When I’m tasked with purchasing something, I try to do a lot of research and get a good understanding of the product. I find that marketing brochures are generally very unhelpful once I’ve narrowed my requirements a bit — they are never specific enough, never discuss the features I’m worried about in more than a bullet point. The only useful information, I believe, is actual product manuals, because they, unlike sales literature and white papers and such, can’t overhype a system. Sure, they can say stupid things are features or design choices when clearly they’re flaws in the system, but you know what you’re getting with an instruction manual.

That said, often even the manuals are incomplete, and there is no substitute for just sitting down and playing with the system. The sales people don’t like that one bit. They need to give you a demo. I don’t want demos, I want to tinker. I want to figure out the limits of the system. I want to play. Me, a room, your product. If you believe in the product, you should be okay with this. Why aren’t you?

Anyway, I was tasked with purchasing a videoconferencing system and after a lot of research and talking to vendors and such I ended up with a local company called [on second thought, redacted]. In general they tried to answer my questions correctly and find the relevent experts on staff to give me the info I needed to make an informed purchasing decision. They set me up with an actual videoconference so I could test it, and while I didn’t really get to do much touching of the equipment (sigh) I did get to pound them with question after question after question for almost two hours. So I’ve got to give them a *lot* of credit for that, for putting up with me.

The thing is, the point that finally sold me on this product, even with my reservations, was what came at the end. They were probably a little desperate at this point to make the sale, and saw that I was still concerned about a few aspects of the system. I also said I needed something *fast*. So they offered to setup an arrangement to get us the equipment very quickly and let us evaluate it for 14 days with the expectation that if it worked we would purchase it. I was sold.

I took it back to the office and presented my proposal to the principals, who agreed to give it a go. I talked to the [redacted] folks about a week later, they send me a proposal, and I signed it and faxed it back. I thought we were done.

When I inquired today about where my stuff was, the salesman was confused. In his estimation, by signing the proposal I had agreed to a binding contract, not the previous offer to demo the equipment. They had put in an order for new equipment which was being shipped from the manufacturer, whereas with the other approach they would have been loaning us demo gear. According to him, there was never any “agreement” or “money back guarantee,” as I believed. The proposal he sent me after our extensive meetings was in no way connected to his offer to allow us to test drive the equipment. When I said we were ready to proceed, to him that meant we were buying, and the idea that we wanted to try it just disappeared from his consciousness.

To say that this puts me in an awkward position is something of an understatement.

The invoice is net 30. You better believe they’re not getting their money for at least 14 days.

And did I mention that I don’t like vendors?

I saw _Serenity_ tonight. It was awesome. You should see it. Yes you! I won’t write more now because I want to collect my thoughts and let other people see it, but it was damn good, and I continue to love, adore, and worship Joss Whedon.

Last night I got what was I guess my first late night call. My cell phone went crazy around 2:30am or so because one of our servers was misbehaving and the monitoring systems didn’t like that one bit, and didn’t think I should, either. It turned out that I didn’t actually have to do anything because my boss was taking care of it (yay!), but I poked around a bit and tried to figure out what was going on since one day son, this will all be yours. Anyway, I was up for less than an hour, fell back to sleep relatively quickly, and got into work at a reasonable hour. And then at around noon I got a headache, and it hasn’t gone away for the last eight hours.

Which makes me wonder if this late night stuff doesn’t agree with my delicate sleep cycles.

Anyway, only thing to be done about it, I guess, is learn as much as I can about how our systems work and figure out how to improve them so that I’ll get as few unpleasant nighttime surprises as possible. Which, really, is what my job is anyway, so the personal interest in sleeping and the professional interest in doing a good job definitely dovetail. So yay for that, I guess.

I’ve had a philosophy up until this point to avoid all gratuitous medications, and the first time I ever started seriously taking things like Tylenol was when I had mono back in February (hi Kelli!). That was the extent of it until a month or so into my job at Berkman when I started getting wrist pain due mostly to some bad ergonomics. My doctor told me that there really wasn’t an easy cure and it was more of a pain management issue, and prescribe ibuprofen both to reduce swelling and relieve pain. Ever since I’ve had a lot of those ibuprofen pills sitting in my drawer, and occasionally when my wrists start to hurt I guiltally swallow one.

But I think it says something about the extent of my willpower that I didn’t even *think* about taking an ibuprofen for the headache until about ten minutes ago, when it just occured to me out of the blue.

Argh, I feel so weak. And dirty. This better not become a trend.

Pizza Hut recently (apparently) rolled out a “new” online ordering system. Let me tell you why it sucks. I’ll ignore the obvious, like strange annoying fake pop-ups in the page, and go straight to the part where I select a coupon, it puts me through the process to purchase the items on the coupon, and then it forgets to actually *apply* the coupon to my order. Of course, when I call the store itself to correct this error I find out that they don’t have any pan pizza crusts (the hell?), but that’s not all. She then calls me back to let me know that they actually do not deliver to my house. The Pizza Hut that is 1.83 miles away (according to PizzaHut.com) and that PizzaHut.com *said delivered to me* and *sent my order to* using its sophisticated online system, *does not deliver to me!*

The only logical response to such a fiasco of a system is to go to Domino’s.

Here’s a quiz question that might stump you…how can you tell the difference between someone who lives/works/plays/learns at Harvard Law School and someone who is just visiting?

Give up?

The people who stay are the ones with the PowerBooks and the ThinkPads. The ones who are just visiting have Dells, or Toshibas, or Sonys. You look around the room and every student has a black ThinkPad, and the “adults” are pretty evenly split between 12″ and 15″ PowerBooks and ThinkPads. That’s it. Nothing else.

I’ve been contemplating trading in my lovable but slightly older PowerBook in favor of a smaller, longer-battery-having, cheaper iBook that I’d be less concerned about being banging around and possibly destroying. But I’m starting to wonder if having an iBook at HLS would make me completely out of place. Do I need to keep the PowerBook just to keep up appearances?

One has to ponder these things…

I’m loving this 35 hour academic work week, in theory. The last couple weeks, though, it has been just that — a theory. This week it looks like I’ll be clocking about 45 hours, last week was around the same. Now that does include a couple hours compensation for being “on-call,” but still. I’ve probably got to tone this down if I want to keep up my cheerful sanity.

I’ve never been a big fan of meetings, but I understand why they are necessary and useful. But with the number of things on my plate right now, I’m finding that I feel the need to make up for the time “lost” to meetings. I didn’t *need* to stay late after the meeting on Tuesday messing around some more with Active Directory, I just worry that if I stop working on it, it will fall to the wayside as I focus on more immediate concerns and it will never get done. So I’m trying to be good about task switching between immediate issues and my bigger projects, like doing work on the video conferencing quote, and then taking some time to set up some mailing lists and answer some user questions, and then diving back into the AD server for a little while. It seems to be working, and keeping me from getting too caught up in (or frustrated with) any one thing.

It is important, and difficult, to balance my various priorities effectively and figure out what users “need” and what I can hold off on giving them. These sort of value judgements, I think, can only become more clear with time and experience. I’m definitely finding that some things I feel aren’t top priorities really are, now that I’m the one theoretically responsible for them. On the whole, I’m still really enjoying getting settled into this job and figuring out what my role is, what I’m best at, and where I need improvement. I can just recognize that I need to figure out a way to be productive while also being able to leave enough time that I can set aside Berkman, go home, and have some fun.

Because feeling hyper-attentive about my three “free” hours before bedtime and being upset that I’m not using them productively and feeling like people don’t appreciate that I’m giving them my time…yeah, that’s no good.

Okay technical readers, I need some help here. Today I decided to clean up my .ssh folder and regenerate ssh keys for each of my machines. I’m going to use ssh-agent to keep them safe, and use passwordless login to all of the servers I access. I’ve also discovered that I can setup a .ssh/config file that lets me set different usernames per host (useful!) and give hosts aliases. So that’s all good.

Here’s my issue, and I’ll try not to compramise the super-secret Berkman security while talking about this ;). Most of the times I’m logging into these machines I need to do things as root. For obvious reasons root ssh is disabled, so I can’t do the easy thing and setup a keypair for the root account. This means when I login I have to use either sudo to do root comands (my preference) or su to root (my boss’s preference). I like sudo because it keeps my session variables, my boss doesn’t like it for precisely that reason, and is concerned that it is an easy vector for privilege escalation. I sort of get that. I also am really bad with passwords, and don’t really want to remember which password I’m using on which machine in order to sudo or su.

The ideal method for me would be a way to sudo and have it look at my local ssh-agent for credentials. Then I’d get rid of the password problem but would still have to worry about my session stuff…maybe it could read my local dot files instead of those on the server? I dunno.

Anyway, I’m sure people have thought about this and done things about this, and I really doubt my proposal makes much sense, so does anyone have any suggestions for, basically, secure, password-less root login which maintains my settings? Or other useful ways for multiple people to share a root account while maintaining their own preferences?