קאַטעגאָריע אַרטשיוועס: מאָדנע

איין סיבה "דער באשעפער פון דעם שולד האט ניט ספּעציפיצירן אַ ריזאַן.”

איך'ווע געווען טאן אַ פּלאַץ פון ווערק מיט שאַרעפּאָינט זוכן לעצטנס און ספּאַסיפיקלי די קייוואָרדקווערי קלאַס, פּראָפּערטיעס און מעטהאָדס.

אויב איר ווילן די רעזולטאַט שטעלן צו קריק רעזולטאַטן אויבן און ווייַטער פון די געוויינטלעך סאַספּעקץ (זען דאָ), איר לייגן עס צו די סעלעקטעדפּראָפּערטיעס זאַמלונג, ווי אין:

מיקייוואָרדקווערי.סעלעקטפּראָפּערטיעס.אַדד("xyzzy");

פילע דאַנק און אַ שפּיץ פון די קאַפּל צו קאָרי ראָטה און דעם ינאָרמאַסלי נוציק בלאָג פּאָסטן (http://www.dotnetmafia.com/blogs/dotnettipoftheday/archive/2008/02/19/how-to-use-the-moss-enterprise-search-keywordquery-class.aspx)

אין מיין פאַל, "קסיזזי" איז ניט אַקטשאַוואַלי אַ געראטן פאַרמאָג.  ווען איך מוסיף עס צו סעלעקטעדפּראָפּערטיעס סייַ ווי סייַ, שאַרעפּאָינט האט איינער פון מיין באַליבט אלץ רונטימע אויסנעמען:

"דער באשעפער פון דעם שולד האט ניט ספּעציפיצירן אַ ריזאַן."

איך ספּעציעל ווי די הויפּט - שטאָט "ר" אין ריזאַן.  דעם סאָונדס צו מיר ווי די. נעץ עקוויוואַלענט פון "איך האָבן קיין מויל, און איך מוזן שרייַען."

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג.

גיי מיר אויף טוויטטער בייַ http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

גלייַך צו טורמע רשימה – סיסקאָ וופּן קליענט

לעצטע זומער, איך באשאפן אַ "גלייַך צו טורמע" רשימה פֿאַר די פרידזשידער.  #1 אויף די רשימה איז לאָראַנס אָודאַנאַל (פֿאַר ומפּינקטלעך פֿאָרויסזאָגן), אָבער אַז ס וועג ווייַטער פון דעם פאַרנעם פון דעם בלאָג :)  הייַנט, איך בין אַדינג סיסקאָ ס וופּן קליענט צו די רשימה, און אַז ס אין פאַרנעם דורך אַ נאָז.

A bunch of years ago many of clients used Cisco VPN to enable remote access to their site.  Back then, I created virtual PCs for each of these clients and installed Cisco on that? פאַר וואָס?  ווייַל סיסקאָ לאַקס דיין מאַשין אַרויף אַזוי אַז איר קענען נישט אַפֿילו בלעטער היגע נעץ פּרינטערס, לאָזן אַליין געפערלעך מכשירים ווי סקיפּע, קאָממוניקאַטאָר און די "~" שליסל.  אָבער,  אויב איר ינסטאַלירן עס אויף אַ וום, דיין וום איז פארשפארט אַראָפּ אָבער נישט דיין באַלעבאָס. 

איך בין רימיינדיד פון די כבוד טעג הייַנט ווייַל איך האָבן צו נוצן אַ סיסקאָ וופּן קליענט * ווידער * און עס לאַקס מיר און איך האָבן צו נוצן עס אין אַ מינוט.  איך 'ד גאַנץ בלאָג וועגן ווי פיל סיסקאָ וופּן קליענט פארדינט צו ווערן אין טורמע גאַנץ ווי נוצן עס ...

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג.

גיי מיר אויף טוויטטער בייַ http://www.twitter.com/pagalvin

זונטיק מאָרגן מאָדנע: “טאַטע, ער טוט נישט אפילו וויסן איר”

מיר צאָפנדיק ניו דזשערזי גאַלווין ס זענען גרויס פאַנס פון דער פּאָליטיש סאַטירע טעלעוויזיע. פּראָגראַם, די דיילי ווייַז hosted by Jon Stewart. I don’t like to get political in my blogging, אַזוי אַלע איך וועט זאָגן אויף וואָס איז אַז אָן דעם טעגלעך ווייַז, איך זאל געזונט האָבן פּערמאַנאַנטלי פאַרפאַלן אַלע פון ​​זינען פון הומאָר אויף אָדער וועגן 12/12/2000.

We were having a meal on the deck early last week and my ten year old son brings up a recent episode of the Show. I made the comment, "Jon Stewart knows that he better not make fun of me or there will be terrible consequences for Jon Stewart."

My son thinks about it for a minute and says: "Dad, number one: He doesn’t even know you."

I waited for a number two, but he decided that was enough and moved on to the next subject without skipping a beat.

It used to be that I could get a lot more mileage out of those kinds of jokes, but he’s getting too used to me or too mature or both. I need to adjust somehow.

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג.

טעטשנאָראַטי טאַגס:

זונטיק מאָדנע: “איך געדאַנק דעם איז געמיינט צו זייט אַ ריטש טאַון”

א ביסל איבער דרייַ יאר צוריק, מיין פרוי און איך געחתמעט מיין זון אַרויף פֿאַר אַ זומער טעטיקייט, The Midland Park Players. This is a drama group that spends about three or four weeks preparing for a play and then showing it to the parents, friends and relatives. It’s always been done very well.

איך טאָן ניט וויסן אויב אַלעמען 'ס קינד איז ווי דעם, but my son is extremely reluctant to try new things. Knowing this, we signed him up for the program. We’ve found that it’s best to alert him to these kinds of things early and often. אַזוי, אין סדר צו באַקומען זייַן נאַטירלעך ומכיישעק, מיר דערציילט אים פרי און האט אונדזער בעסטער צו מאַכן עס געזונט ווי שפּאַס, אאז"ו ו. Even with a multi-month advertising campaign, he still wasn’t convinced. We forced him to do, כאָטש, און ווי איז אָפֿט דער פאַל, he had a great time.

דורך די צייַט די צווייט יאָר ראָולד אַרום, he had once again convinced himself that he didn’t want to participate. אָבער, מיר האט געחתמעט אים אַרויף און אויף נול-טאָג, I dropped him off one morning at the high school where they practice. When I went to pick him up after lunch, ער איז געווען זייער יקסייטאַד, אַלע סמיילז און מודיע, "The play is the וועלוועטעען ראַבאַט and I want to be the Rabbit". He had spent literally months carrying on (מאל כיסטעריקלי) וועגן ווי ער האט נישט וועלן צו האָבן עפּעס צו טאָן מיט פּאַרק פּלייַערס און נאָך דער ערשטער טאָג, he wants to be the lead role in the play. We’ve seen this pattern before.

(פיל צו אונדזער יבערראַשן, ער האט באַקומען די ראַבאַט ראָלע און ער איז געווען אַמייזינג.)

Fast forward a few years. He’s been in Park Players three times now, so he’s something of a veteran. This summer (2008), Players starts up again. אין דער מיינען צייַט, ער ס לעסאָף קאַנווינסט אונדז ער טאַקע doesn’t want to play soccer and he never liked basketball. That left him with no extra-curricular activities for late Winter / early Spring. A client with whom I was working mentioned that his daughter was in a program called Stage Right. Stage right is a slightly more expensive version of Park Players and it’s not in my town, but adjacent to it. Perfect.

The thing to know about that town is that it’s practically another country in terms of wealth. It has a high-frequency train right to Wall Street and NYC in general. It’s just a wealthy place. One of the on-going family discussion themes is whether we should have moved to that town instead of where we live now. It’s a bigger town, זייַן שולן פאָרשלאָגן מער מגילה פֿאַר די קידס, אאז"ו ו. My wife grew up in that town and her parents live there, so we are "hooked in" despite not living there. I personally grew up in different circumstances in Massachusetts, so I don’t have a lot to say about this during family dinner conversation. This isn’t to say that we aren’t very happy where we live. We just know that that town is a level above our town economically.

Stage Right’s next program started too soon for us to launch our normal advertising campaign to overcome my son’s reluctance. This is when he came up with one my personal favorite arguments against doing something: "Friday nights are הויפּט נעכט פֿאַר שלאָפן אָווערס!" Stage Right was going to interfere with his weekend socials.

דער טאָג קומט, מיר ברענגען אים דאָרט און פאַלן אים אַוועק און ווי מיט אַלץ אַנדערש, זייַן נאַטירלעך ליבע פון ​​נאָר זייַענדיק לעבעדיק גענומען איבער און ער ס 'געווען בעת ​​אַ גוט צייַט מיט אים.

דאס פאַרגאַנגענהייַט אָפּרוטעג מיין פרוי האט גערעדט צו אים און פֿאַר די ערשטער מאָל, I think he’s tailoring his discussions very precisely for his audience. She had asked him how Stage Right compares to Midland Park Players. He tells her that "In Park Players, we have teenagers that help us out. There aren’t any in in Stage Right. In Park Players, teenagers make all props. In Stage Right, we have to bring our own props. We have to do everything. And then he twists the knife: "I thought this was supposed to be a rich town."

כל די יאָרן, I never really thought that he was hearing or understanding anything as it related to the "rich town". אָבער, עס טורנס אויס ער איז געווען.

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג.

טעטשנאָראַטי טאַגס:

זונטיק מאָדנע: “איך ווונדער אויב דיין Password איז …”

איך לעצטנס געקויפט לאָנטש פֿאַר מיין ברודער (ווי געוויינטלעך) and we ended up talking about funny things that we did at our respective colleges. At my alma mater, לאַפיעט קאָלעדזש, the academic support IT department had a very inclusive way about it. We were given a LOT of rope and I took advantage of that at times.

צוויי מיין באַליבט מעמעריז פאַרבינדן צו מיין גוט פרייַנד, Gabe. He had made the terrible mistake of telling people his freshman year that "I’m a freshman, אָבער איך האָבן סאָפאָמאָרע שטייענדיק" רעכט צו די פארשידענע אַוואַנסירטע פּלייסמאַנט קלאסן ער האט גענומען, אאז"ו ו. Many of us were similarly situated but we didn’t talk about it so much. His senior year, ווען מיר באַקענענ אים צו מענטשן, we’d say "This is Gabe. He’s a Senior, but he has Sophomore standing".

The college had some Sun workstation/servers running X-Window. They had gigantic monitors and the engineers used them for CAD and other boring engineer stuff. We CS people used them to learn programming and, אַוואַדע, צו שפּילן גאַמעס.

מיר האבן ניט ווי די קאָמפּיוטער-אָפענטיק ענדזשאַנירז צו פיל אַזוי איינער פון אונדזער באַליבט דאס צו טאָן וואָלט זייַן צו טעלנעט צו די קאַסטן זיי זענען אויף און לויפן X-אויג on them. This would pop up a pair of eyes that followed the mouse around on the screen. You could pop up even more and have literally a dozen or more of the X-eye applications running. Try not to laugh out loud when a hapless engineer is trying to close X-eye after X-eye and muttering under his breath about it 🙂

We also played X-trek on those boxes. צו טאָן וואָס, איר האט צו אָפּלאָדירן די מקור, get various dependencies wherever you could find them and build it. I wasn’t a sophisticated C programmer, but I could read header files. I was looking through these and found directives like "#DEFINE MAX_TORPEDO_DISTANCE 10". I played around with that increase range and power for phases and torpedoes, שייַעך-געבויט עס און דעמאָלט חרובֿ גאַבע דער ווייַטער צייַט מיר געשפילט.

גאַבע איז געווען אויך אַ ריזיק פאָכער פון אַ טעלעוויזיע ווייַזן גערופן בלייק ס 7. I had never seen it, אָבער וואָס האט נישט פאַרמייַדן מיר פון ינסיסטינג אַז דר. Who is the superior show. The arguments would get heated at times 🙂

יינ מאָל, it occurred to me that I could probably guess his UNIX password. I sat down next to him one day and announced in a loud tone, "I’m going to guess your password right now, Gabe." "Yeah, רעכט" was his answer. I then logged in, אריין זייַן באַניצער שייַן, פארקערט צו פּנים אים, טייפּט און האט אויס הויך, "I wonder if it’s B-L-A-K-E-7" ? Touch typing has never paid off as handsomely as it did that day.

ווייַטער וואָך (אָדער באַלד): More computer room antics from college.

צי איר האָבן קיין צו טיילן? Leave a comment or email me and I’ll publish them here.

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג.

טעטשנאָראַטי טאַגס:

זונטיק מאָדנע: “ווען איך געווען אַ קליין יינגל”

ווי אַ פאָטער, somewhere along the line I discovered the "When I was a little boy" trick.

מייַן זון, מיסטאָמע פיר אָדער פינף אין די צייַט, איז פּלייינג אַ באַלאָן און ווי רובֿ ביסל יינגלעך וואָס שפּילן מיט באַלונז, he popped it. He was very upset. The world had come to an end. I said to him, "when I was little boy, איך האט אַ באַלאָן און עס פּאַפּט און יווענטשאַוואַלי, I got a new balloon." It seemed to help him cope with his loss and led to a fun talk about what it was like when I was a little boy.

That worked well as a consolation technique and I used it a several times over the next period of time. I did get into trouble once when his Monster Rancher 3 creature died. I talked about how my dog, פּרינץ, had died in a car accident. דאס מאָל, זייַן ענטפער איז געווען, "Now I feel bad about two things!" I shied away from using the "when I was a little boy" טעכניק פֿאַר טרייסט נאָך אַז.

איידער די טויט הונט אינצידענט, אָבער, I had also started to use the technique to convince him to do chores. "When I was a little boy, I had to go out and get the newspaper", "clean my room", "get Mommy her coffee cup", אאז"ו ו.

דאס אויך איז געווען שיין מצליח פֿאַר אַ בשעת, but he started to increasingly rebel against the tyranny of my childhood. One event, אין באַזונדער, marked the end. I told him to bring the garbage cans from curb back to the garage. He argued and I responded, "When I was a little boy, I had to take the garbage back to the garage." He responded, "Oh yeah! Well when you were a little boy, וואָס איז געווען נאַריש!".

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג.

טעטשנאָראַטי טאַגס:

זונטיק מאָדנע: “NOT FOR EXPORT”

Back around 1998, the company I worked for at the time received some funding to create a new e-commerce product. We had the full gamut of business requirements to meet. It had to be fast, easy for end users, flashy, multi-language, אאז"ו ו. Sad to say, I probably haven’t had as an ambitious set of work to accomplish since those heady days.

This effort pre-dated Microsoft.NET. Plain vanilla ASP was still somewhat new (or least very unfamiliar to my company). "Brick and mortar" companies were doomed. Doomed! This is to say that it was pioneering work. Not Hadron Collider pioneering work, but for us in our little world, it was pioneering work.

We were crazy busy. We were doing mini POC’s almost every day, figuring out how to maintain state in an inherently stateless medium, figuring out multi-language issues, row-level security. We even had create a vocabulary to define basic terms (I preferred state-persistent but for some reason, the awkward "statefull" won the day).

As we were madly inventing this product, the marketing and sales people were out there trying to sell it. Somehow, they managed to sell it to our nightmare scenario. Even though we were designing and implementing an enterprise solution, we really didn’t expect the first customer to use every last feature we built into the product day zero. This customer needed multi-language, a radically different user interface from the "standard" system but with the same business logic. Multi-language was especially hard in this case, because we always focused on Spanish or French, but in this case, it was Chinese (which is a double-byte character set and required special handling given the technology we used).

Fast forward a few months and I’m on a Northwest airlines flight to Beijing. I’ve been so busy preparing for this trip that I have almost no idea what it’s like to go there. I had read a book once about how an American had been in China for several years and had learned the language. One day he was walking the city and asked some people for directions. The conversation went something this:

  • American: "Could you tell me how to get to [XX] street?"
  • Chinese: "Sorry, we don’t speak English".
  • American: "Oh, well I speak Mandarin." and he asked them again in Chinese, but more clearly (as best he could).
  • Chinese: Very politely, "Sorry, we don’t speak English".

The conversation went on like that for bit and the American gave up in frustration. As he was leaving them he overheard one man speaking to the other, "I could have sworn he was asking for directions to [XX] street."

I had picked up a few bits and pieces of other China-related quasi-information and "helpful advice":

  • A Korean co-worked told me that the I needed to be careful of the Chinese because "they would try to get me drunk and take advantage of you" in the sense of pressuring me into bad business decisions.
  • We were not allowed to drive cars (there was some confusion as to whether this was a custom, a legal requirement or just the client’s rule).
  • There were special rules for going through customs.
  • We were not allowed to use American money for anything.
  • You’re not supposed to leave tips. It’s insulting if you do.

און לעסאָף, I had relatively fresh memories the Tiananmen massacre. When I was at college, I remember seeing real-time Usenet postings as the world looked on in horror.

In short, I was very nervous. I wasn’t just normal-nervous in the sense that I was delivering a solution that was orders of magnitude more complicated than anything I had ever done before. I was also worried about accidentally breaking a rule that could get me in trouble.

I’m on this 14 hour flight and though it was business class, 14 hours is a damned long time. There are only so many ways to entertain yourself by reading, watching movies or playing with the magnetized cutlery. Even a really good book is hard to read for several hours straight.

Eventually, I started to read the packaging material on a piece of software I was hand-carrying with me to the client, Netscape’s web server. I’m reading the hardware/software requirements, the marketing blurbs, looking at the pretty picture and suddenly, I zero in on the giant "NOT FOR EXPORT" warning, something about 128 bit encryption. I stuffed the box back into my carry bag, warning face-down (as if that would have helped) and tried to keep visions of Midnight Express out of my head.

Looking back on it now, I should have been worried, if at all, when I left the U.S., not when I was entering China 🙂 Nothing untoward happened and I still consider that to be the best and most memorable business trip I’ve had the pleasure of making.

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אַבאָנירן צו מיין בלאָג!

טעטשנאָראַטי טאַגס: ,

זונטיק מאָדנע: בעכעסקעם אייער זון אויף זיין טאָעס

One of the many joys I take in being the parent of a ten year old boy is finding new ways to make him laugh or think a little differently about questions and things in the world. I’ve used these techniques over the years:

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Misconstrue his questions:

Son: What day is it?

טאַטע: One day before Wednesday.

ד: ניט, what day of the month is it?

ד: טאַקע, it’s 4 days after Jan 25.

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Tickle him and tell him you’ll stop when he stops laughing.

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Go down stairs to the TV room and announce, "It’s good to be the daddy." דעמאָלט, pick him up to get the warm spot on the couch and change the channel to something good, like the Scifi channel.

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Read stories out loud. Insert ridiculous sentences in the middle of the story. My favorite is to add "killing him instantly" when the main characters encounters some minor trouble. לעמאָשל, "the knife slipped in his hand, cutting his index finger, killing him instantly." Nothing quite gets your son out of a complacent and passive listening mode as the main character being killed instantly.

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Read stories incorrectly. Read sentences backward. The best part of this is that the first couple of times I did this, my son thought he was helping me out by pointing out that I wasn’t reading the words in the right order. The down side is that he really doesn’t want me to read to him any more.

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Go to Burger King for lunch. My son would eat BK morning, night and day if we let him. When going, tell him, "I know you hate going there, but we simply have no choice." When he tries to explain that he loves BK, talk over him and say things like "We don’t have time to argue about it! We’re going and I don’t want to have a discussion!"

(This reminds me of my favorite Borg joke: "Borger King: We do it our way. Your way is irrelevant." hahaha!)

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Open a book to page 9 and say, "hmm, that’s an odd page".

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Fill the world with arch enemies. "We’re going to run quick over toe 7-11, arch-enemy of 11-7".

"Your aunt lives in Ringwood, arch enemy to the town of Squarewood."

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We drive up to Massachusetts from New Jersey several times a year and it often takes about 5 hours door to door. As we arrive home and pull into the driveway say, "oh, I forgot, we need to make a quick dash to Home Depot."

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When watching a violent episode in a TV show (such as Heroes), tell your son, "some times, at work, I need to destroy my enemies by burning them alive using the powers of my mind. I don’t like doing it, but you gotta do what you gotta do."

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When watching bad horror movies (see "It’s good to be the Daddy" העכער), ascribe improbable motives to the evil character. לעמאָשל, tell your son that the reason Jason is so angry is because he wants some cake and they won’t let him have any.

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Explain phone numbers incorrectly. Instead of telling your son to dial "201-111-2222", tell him it’s "2-011-1-12222".

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What tricks do you use?

</עק>

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