Home again…

Dave Farquhar General

I’ve lived in St. Louis for a total of 10 years now (in two shifts), which is far longer than I’ve ever lived anywhere else. I lived in a town 60 miles south of St. Louis for another five. I lived in Kansas City for the first 9 months or so of my life. But when I graduated college, on the form I filled out there was a spot to list your hometown. I wrote “Kansas City, Mo.” in the blank. I still feel that way.
Part of it’s because I have so much family here. Part of it’s because I was born here. Part of it is because four years ago when I was royally screwed up, I came to Kansas City to straighten myself out.

I rolled into Kansas City last night around 11. So I about an hour last night hanging with my sister. I told some stories about people in St. Louis that she knows. We talked about deep subjects like gray hair and toenail clippings and ways to keep cats from drinking out of the toilet. We ripped on each other for living in the ghetto. It was a blast.

She asked me what time I wanted to get up in the morning. “Four,” I said. She knows darn well that I don’t get up before 8 if I have any say whatsoever in the matter. “Well, you just set your alarm then,” she said.

“I’ll put the alarm clock in your room,” I said. That’s a tactic both of us use. We put the alarm clock in another room so we have to get up to turn it off–the thinking is, once you’re up, you’ll stay up. In practice, what it means is I either ignore it, or I get up, hit snooze, then go back to bed for 10 minutes. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter what time I set the alarm for. I get up whenever I feel like getting up, and not a minute earlier.

She knows the drill. She does it too.

“No you most certainly will not,” she said.

Brother and sister. If you’re not me or her, you probably don’t understand. But if you have a brother or sister, you have stories or subjects only you understand. So I guess in a roundabout way, by not understanding, you understand completely.

Next up for my dining room… A TV studio.

Dave Farquhar General ,

I did it. I finally did it. I’ve been threatening for a long time to do it. I’ve finally, completely, totally gone off the deep end. And I like it.
I just ordered an 18-gig, 10,000-RPM Maxtor (formerly Quantum) Atlas III hard drive. I ordered an Adaptec Ultra160 host adapter to go with it, since this drive would pretty much saturate my old Adaptec 2940UW. And of course since I’m spending this obnoxious amount of money on a drive–around $200, when a mainstream drive of this size would go for 50 bucks–I’m protecting the investment with a $25 drive cooler. The cooler also deadens the drive’s sound, which is good. I’m a bit nervous about having a 10,000-rpm helicopter in my dining room-turned-office. Hey, where else was I going to put my desk?

I didn’t just get this drive so I could play Civ 3 or compile Linux kernels at blazing speed. I had another reason for this purchase. I also bought a Pinnacle DV500+ video capture/editing card. It’s not a cheap toy, but considering the capabilities it gives you, it’s a steal for the money. I could edit full-length movies with this thing. Well, I could with a capable hard drive. It needs a 25 MB/sec stream to spit out video, and, well, the fastest drive I have won’t do that. Ramdisks? Nice idea, but you can assume a minute of video will chew up a gig of disk, so I’d need 4 GB RAM for most of the projects I have in mind. None of my motherboards will take that much memory.

So my Duron-750 is going to become a video editing workstation. I’ll have to buy or scrounge a bit more memory–Pinnacle recommends 256 MB; I might as well do them a little better and go 384–but then I’ll have the ability to edit video in my dining room. A Duron-750 isn’t much CPU by today’s standards, but Pinnacle lists a P3-500 as the minimum, and the reviews I’ve read do fine with a 500 or 550 MHz CPU. You can assume a Duron runs at a similar speed to a P3 or an Athlon that runs 100 MHz slower, so my Duron-750 should perform like a P3-650. If that proves inadequate, hey, a 1.1 GHz Duron runs $89 these days.

The DV500+ is supposed to be a real bear to set up. We’ll see how it likes my FIC AZ11. I’ve made tricky hardware play before, so I’m not too afraid of this. Every review I’ve read complained about the setup, but once the reviewer got it running, each raved about its abilities.

I can’t wait.

Odds and ends

Dave Farquhar General

Way too heavy for me to deal with at the end of this fine Wednesday night. Bo Leuf sent me this link, which tries to explain emotions. From what I could gather, this is from the “programming emotions” standpoint–and I don’t mean willfully controlling your emotions. I mean programming a machine to feel.
I would never want to inflict what I feel on anything, even a machine. But I’m not everybody else either. I remember arguing this in a philosophy class. I was in the minority opinion that you couldn’t program a machine to feel. Strangely enough, I was the only one in the class with any CS background. Oh well.

I suspect it makes for an interesting read. I’ll add it to my to-do list.

Fide et fortitudine

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , , ,

Fide et fortitudine. That’s the motto on my family crest. It seems appropriate. If I didn’t have fidelity and fortitude, I wouldn’t be making this post, because I wouldn’t care. I’d talk about how to use Samba and Ghostscript and your favorite free Unix to set up a print server that spits out Acrobat-compatible PDF files or something.
I guess it’s an indication of how my readership has changed over the past year that I only got one e-mail message like this. A year ago I wouldn’t have dared write on the subject I wrote about Friday, for fear of alienating readership. Well, I alienated them anyway, somehow, some way, and in the process picked up a bunch more, so who cares, right?

I’ve had three days (or is it four?) to formulate a careful response. I didn’t take that much time. That says something. Obviously I’m still OK with what I wrote.

Anyway… I never know how to present reader mail, which is why I prefer people use the comments system here–I’ll call attention to the comments when there’s something good there. Speaking of which, be sure to check out yesterday’s comments. There’s some good stuff there, and I managed to change the subject just slightly by telling a story of how I gained some popularity for my writings in high school.

Back to the subject at hand. I guess I’ll turn this into a dialogue, even though it wasn’t a dialogue. Daynoter Matt Beland took issue with Friday’s post. So he wrote me.

MB: Hi Dave,

Like you, I get asked about religion a lot, mostly by family members. They don’t seem to understand how I can work in “that industry” where so many of the workers are not Christian (or an acceptable variation, such as Muslim or Jewish.) I personally am not particularly religious, of any flavor, despite having been raised Roman Catholic. I do, however, have a number of friends who are religious of all types, and I have to say you’re being extremely unfair in your comparisons. I mean no criticism of Christianity or you personally, but it’s not a good idea to be critical of other religions without more information.

DF: Now you’re painting with awfully broad strokes to call Islam or Judaism an “acceptable variation” of Christianity. Neither of them would appreciate that label. I’m sure you already know this, but for the benefit of those who may not, here goes.

Christianity is derived from Judaism (Jesus was, after all, a Jewish rabbi). Islam is the newest of the three but it, like Judaism, traces its origin back to the patriarch Abraham. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac gave rise to Israel and Judaism; Ishmael gave rise to the Arabic nations and ultimately to Islam. Yes, the figure that Christianity calls “God the Father” is Judaism’s Yahweh and Islam’s Allah. Islam regards Jesus Christ as a prophet, but not the Great Prophet (that title belongs to Muhammed), while Judaism regards Jesus as little more than another heretic.

But your point wasn’t to write a broad explanation of Judaism/Islam/Christianity, just as mine wasn’t to write a broad explanation of pagan religions and the occult.

MB: The first thing I usually show those members of my family who ask is from the Jargon File, if you’ve not seen it before. In Appendix B, “A Portrait of J. Random Hacker”, there’s a section on religion. This is what it says:

“Religion

Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly, three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.

Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody’ religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.

Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their `native’ religions.

DF: Eastern religions blend nicely with one another and with Middle Eastern and Western religions, almost by design. There are neo-Christian sects (such as the Moonies and Hare Krishna) that do the same thing and have been doing so for longer than computers have been available to the masses.

MB: There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage to `wizards’ and speaks of incantations and demons has too much psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.”

DF: Indeed. And some Christians do take offense, rightly or wrongly. I know of Christians who pick Linux over one of the BSD Unixes strictly because of the Chuck the Daemon mascot, even though FreeBSD is the demonstrably superior OS under many circumstances. Personally, I could live without the pentagram on the Sorcerer Linux logo, but I don’t throw a fit about it because Gentoo Linux is a lot better anyway.

With computers, people can, and do, try anything. I have seen people resort to witchcraft to get things working. And in one case I’ve seen it work.

People will also tend to explain away something that’s hard to understand by drawing parallels to something else that’s hard to understand.

MB: First, let’s look at this part: (quoting Friday’s piece).

> Someone sent me a nice explanation for it. It’s a little longwinded, so
>I’ll summarize and paraphrase. It said we’ve been telling God we don’t want
>Him. And God’s a perfect gentleman, so when He’s told He’s not wanted, He
>butts out. We’ve told God we don’t want Him in our schools. We’ve told Him
>we don’t want Him in our courts. We don’t want Him in our government. We
>don’t want Him in our business. We don’t want Him in our streets. We don’t
>want Him on our televisions and movie screens. And each time we’ve told Him
>to get lost, he’s sorrowfully complied.

No, we don’t want your God in our schools. We don’t want Him in our movies, books, newspapers, streets, or most especially our government. That’s not because we’re all evil, it’s not because we don’t have faith, and it’s not because we don’t necessarily believe. It’s because we don’t all believe in the same things. No matter who you choose to represent as “God” in schools, in government, in any public forum, you’ll be leaving someone out.

I’ve fought hard to keep “God” out of schools. I’ve not fought to prevent schools from holding non-lead “Periods of Reflection” where students may pray or meditate as they like. What’s the difference? The students have the choice. If you as a parent have raised your child to be a true Christian, then they will probably pray and make you proud. However, the child in the next row who’s Buddist or neo-pagan should have the right to make *their* parents proud, too. No one has asked you to keep God out of your life, or your home, or your family. We encourage that. But your God is your choice. My God is not your choice. It’s very easy for the christians to say “but we just want everyone to share in the glory of our God” – the problem is, the rest of the world remembers that christians have not always offered others a choice. And the current refrain of “you’ve pushed God from our lives” sounds remarkably the same – you don’t want to offer others a choice.

DF: We’ve gone to the extreme of teaching relative morality where there no longer is any right and wrong, only what works for you. The end result? A couple dozen evil men hijacked planes and crashed them into buildings (or tried) because it worked for them and they could use a twisted form of Islam to justify it. So now we’re finally starting to think about right and wrong.

Should we teach Christianity in the schools? Not necessarily. Should a Christian group be allowed to assemble just like a model train club could? Absolutely. Unfortunately that hasn’t always been permitted, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly be damned.

I never said no one else should have a choice. I talked about my personal choice and gave my justification for it. And yes, it bothers me that some of the 17-year-olds I know who would like to start up a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter in their school cannot, on grounds of Church and State.

And I disagree that we can’t teach morality. You can boil the world religions down to a set of moral principles that won’t offend anyone, except possibly those who refuse to keep them. Then again, Benjamin Franklin wanted them taught, even though he wasn’t willing to keep them in their entirety.

I would also think that if you don’t want God in the movies or on TV, if you have no problems with Harry Potter, then you’re practicing a double standard.

MB: Love your God. Rejoice in your God. But love your neighbor, as well, and allow them to worship the God of their choice.

DF: Again: I never said no one else should have a choice. I talked about my personal choice and gave my justification for it. And you seem to have missed the biggest point: Anyone who follows Christianity ends up inadvertently fulfilling the requirements, as far as is humanly possible, of any other religion. And, unlike any other interpretation of God, this one doesn’t leave you to your own devices to fulfill what’s required of you. So tell me who has the kinder God? But He doesn’t force Himself on anyone, and neither do I believe in forcing Him on anyone. Indeed, you can trace many of Christianity’s problems to it (or a different form of it) being forced on people who don’t want it (or who wanted a different form).

MB: Next: (again, quoting Friday)
>And I believe in the Holy Spirit. I can’t explain the Holy Spirit. But I’ve
>seen His work, I’ve felt His presence, and yeah, it’s weird. But powerful. I
>know some of the appeal of Satanism and of pagan religions like Wicca–most
>of the appeal–is power. They don’t compare to Holy Spirit power. And
>personally, I’d much rather go to a God who’s willing to look bad by saying
>no when He knows what I’m asking for is bad for me or someone else, rather
>than going to a god who’ll give me whatever I ask for to ensure I come back
>for more. God’s a whole lot smarter than me, and has a much better
>perspective than me. I’m better off when I defer to Him.

No. None of this is correct. It’s what most Christians belive, but unfortunately that doesn’t make it true. Many of my friends and coworkers are neo-pagan, Satanist, and so on. “Neo-pagan” is a very broad term, including Wicca, Druidism, Animism, Witchcraft (which is NOT Wicca), and other variations. I personally know members of each of the above religions, and my own curiosity has lead me to investigate all of those and many others as well. Please note that Satanism is not considered a Pagan religion, either by the pagans or by the satanists.

DF: I didn’t state that paganism and Satanism were related, other than that they have similar appeal. That’s what the extra “and of” is there for. Had I said, “appeal of pagan religions like Wicca and Satanism,” then you’d have a case. That doesn’t mean the same thing as “appeal of Satanism and of pagan religions like Wicca.”

MB: Let’s tackle the hardest one first. Satanism. Please note that Satanism is not considered a Pagan religion, either by the pagans or by the satanists. Christians have absolutely no doubt about this one – they’re evil. Worshipping Satan!

The first thing the followers of this religion will explain is that it’s simply not true. Christians believe in Satan, the fallen angel who defied God. They are not Christian, they do not believe in hell or heaven, and they do not worship the christian Satan – despite movies and what they consider christian propaganda to the contrary.

Here are some basic facts:
* They do not worship a living deity.
* Major emphasis is placed on the power and authority of the individual
Satanist, rather than on a god or goddess.
* They believe that “no redeemer liveth” – that each person is their own
redeemer, fully responsible for the direction of their own life.
* “Satanism respects and exalts life. Children and animals are the purest
expressions of that life force, and as such are held sacred and precious…”

The founder of the Church of Satan is a very controversial figure; his primary motivation appeared to be financial, and as such many followers of the church and of the religion do not regard him to be a true Satanist. They use the church, however, since it provides a legal framework and foundation for their beliefs and legal (if not social) protection from persecution.

DF: There are at least two forms of Satanism. The Satanism of Anton LaVey (The Church of Satan) has more to do with hedonism than the Biblical figure of Satan. That’s the Satanism you describe, and the Satanism that is best-known. Supposedly LaVey once stated he wrote the Satanic Bible as a joke but it caught on. I don’t know if that was ever verified, and I remember he died back in 1997 or 1998 so he’s not around to answer any questions anymore. I am aware that they state their Satan isn’t the same as the Judeo-Christian Satan.

There’s also another, darker religion that calls itself Satanism. Most people think it only exists in the movies, but in the small town in Southeastern Missouri I lived in for five years, they wish the Satanists practiced LaVey’s religion. These people don’t hold life in particularly high regard, either animals or humans. They drink blood, systematically break the Biblical Ten Commandments, and practice sacrifice. Sometimes they attempt human sacrifice. This dates back almost 15 years, but a Satanic group in that town had a hit list and at least two of my former classmates were on it. One of them opened her locker one day and found a cat skull in it along with a note that stated, simply, “You’re next.”

This was not Christian propaganda. I knew these girls. I went to school with them and to church with them. To my knowledge it was never publicized aside from their families asking people they knew to pray for them.

Maybe there are similar stories in Christian propaganda. I don’t go looking for that kind of stuff so I don’t know. Most of the Christians I know, sadly, are too busy beating each other up to pay attention to that sort of thing.

If Anton LaVey didn’t want to be associated with this subculture, he should have called his movement something else. If today’s Church of Satan doesn’t want to be associated with this subculture, it can always do what the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints did in order to differentiate itself from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormons): Change its name.

LaVey also didn’t do anyone any favors by portraying the Christian Satan in movies, but that just adds fuel to the argument that his motivation was money, or a joke, or both.

MB: The most common Pagan religion today is Witchcraft, including the subset of Wicca. I know many witches, including some who identify themselves as Wiccans. They do not ride brooms, they do not wear black (other than as a fashion choice – most actually wear Earth-toned clothing, brown, grey, green, etc.) They don’t fly, light candles with their breath, or anything else you may have seen in the movies.

They do, however, believe in limits.

DF: I’ve known a number of wiccans, and at times considered them friends. I even built a computer for one a few years ago. We’ve lost contact but I don’t hold anything against them. They dressed more or less like I do, hung out at a lot of the same places I did, could only fly in an airplane, and at least one of them didn’t even own a broom.

MB: (Again, quoting Friday):
>And
>personally, I’d much rather go to a God who’s willing to look bad by saying
>no when He knows what I’m asking for is bad for me or someone else, rather
>than going to a god who’ll give me whatever I ask for to ensure I come back
>for more.

Um. No. The first rule (as was explained to me by the first witch friend I aquired when I expressed interest in the matter) is the Threefold Law:

“Ever mind the Rule of Three
Three times what thou givest returns to thee
This lesson well, thou must learn
Thee only gets what thou dost earn!”

This is interpreted that any spell, any action of any kind, which affects anyone, will return to you three times. This eliminates any possibility of “black magic”, because the results of the spell will supposedly return to you with three times the power of the original spell. It’s also the belief that any spell you cast with positive effects for others will be returned threefold – so it’s better to give, for by giving, you will receive.

Also, spells and requests do *not* always work. You only receive what you request from a Deity (usually “the Goddess”, but there are others) if it meets the following basic conditions:

1. It is truly your heart’s desire, rather than a simple “I want this” – you
have to want it badly enough to accept the cost, because everything has a
cost.
2. It has to be something which is beneficial to you and to those around you.
3. The second law – “And it harm none, do what ye will”. It cannot be
something which would harm anyone or anything.

True, Witchcraft (and pagan religions in general, so far as I’ve seen) place more of an onus on the practitioner for their decisions and for life in general. No pagan would ever say “How could God/Goddess/the Gods allow this to happen”, because they don’t believe it works that way. The works of Man are the works of Man, for good or for ill, and preventing evil from the works of Man is also the responsibility of Man. They believe that there is no deity who will make things right – they believe that is their job as human beings. I recently gave one of my team members permission to take a day off so she could attend a Coven meeting to try to repair some of the spiritual damage done by the September 11 attacks. A prayer meeting, if you will, except that instead of asking God to help those who need it, they believe that a part of themselves goes out to all those who need it – and that if enough of them give enough of themselves, they can repair the damage to people’s hearts as much as is good or possible. (I didn’t understand that at first. She explained that they do not want to take away the pain entirely – it should hurt when you lose a loved one, because you’ve truly lost something. If it didn’t hurt, if there was no pain, then there would be no appreciation of the loss. However, they do believe it is also the responsibility of the loved ones who remain to help soften the blow as much as possible.)

Is the appeal power? I don’t know about that. It seems to me, from what I’ve seen and what I’ve read, that the power they believe themselves to have is balanced and more by the responsibility they’re given. They can’t just DO things. They have to accept costs. They have to accept pain. They have to accept that they are responsible for their own actions, and they have a near-contempt for the christian practice of Reconciliation. It’s not any God’s place, they say, to forgive them for their since. Only the people or things they’ve sinned against can do that, and it requires more than a prayer or two – you have to earn it.

DF: What you just described is power. And the forgiveness you just described isn’t much different from Judeo-Christian forgiveness. Unfortunately most Christians don’t celebrate Yom Kippur anymore, but human-to-human reconciliation is what Yom Kippur (Judaism’s Day of Atonement) is all about. Jesus Himself once said that if you’re in the temple offering a sacrifice and you realize your brother (and “your brother” means anyone and everyone) has something against you, leave your sacrifice there and go reconcile with your brother. Reconciliation is more important to God than worship! That’s something not many people seem to know. Merely asking God for forgiveness is only half of it. Some would argue that asking God without asking the other person isn’t true repentance–true repentance is turning from the sin, hating it, and wanting to make it right. Often we only go two for three on that front.

But that does bring up the other big attraction to either Satanism (especially LaVey’s Satanism) and paganism, and one they share with atheism and agnosticism: lack of a central moral authority. You’re accountable to yourself, and to the people you want to be close to, but that’s it.

I also remember reading in a philosophy class an essay titled, “Why Women Need The Goddess.” It was written by a feminist who argued that no woman should practice any religion that used male pronouns in conjunction with a deity. So maybe there are people who worship “The Goddess,” for purely feminist reasons, but there again, the motivation is partly power, although in this case it would be political power more than spiritual power.

MB: There’s more, there’s a lot more. Most christians don’t bother to look. For all the preaching about God’s love and preventing evil in the world, the most common trait I see among christians (unfortunately) is intolerance, followed closely by hatred and fear. That team member who wanted to attend a coven? She was afraid to approach me because she didn’t know if I was christian or not. She was afraid that if I was, I might do something – fire her, maybe, or just make life so hellish she had no choice but to quit.

DF: A lot of Christians don’t bother to look at their own religion, but Christians don’t have a monopoly on that. Any religion that isn’t being persecuted has plenty of complacent practitioners. Persecution tends to weed those out, which is why persecution tends to make a religion grow, rather than stomping it out. If you want to destroy a religion, subsidize it. It worked splendidly in Europe. First it twisted Christianity beyond recognition, leading to atrocities like the Crusades, then it eventually reduced it to a government-subsidized subculture. Today there are more Christians in Africa than there are in Europe.

You also see plenty of hatred, intolerance, and fear in many Muslim sects. You see it in Orthodox Judaism as well. If the tables were turned, you’d see it in the pagan religions too. It’s called human nature.

Am I being intolerant here? Some might see it that way. But I didn’t set out to tell people why they should be what I am. I set out to tell people why I am what I am. If they want what I’ve got, great, I’ll answer any question, any time of the day. If they want to leave it, that’s their choice.

MB: At first, I thought she was being paranoid. The only reason she felt comfortable talking to me about it was that I commented on a piece of jewelry she wore which signified witchcraft, and I did so favorably and in a way which showed I knew what it meant. Then I noticed a few things:

“I don’t think witchcraft is a religion. I would hope the military officials would take a second look at the decision they made.” Who said that? Gearge W. Bush, while still Governor of Texas, in regards to a decision by the military to allow soldiers to practice Witchcraft as their religion.

The second was a quote on the http://www.religioustolerance.org/ website. They’re a Canadian group who have essays and information on every religion, lined up equally. They’re no more critical of christianity than they are of any other. Apparently, this makes them unpopular with christians for some
reason.

DF: Insecure people in any group tend to lash out when they feel attacked, whether the attack is justified or not. Christianity as it’s been practiced through the centuries has problems, yes. It always did. The bulk of the New Testament is St. Paul’s criticisms of Christianity as the churches of his day, many of which he founded himself, practiced it. Even when Jesus was alive there were problems. He had a lot of harsh words for the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, but He had plenty of harsh words for His own disciples too.

Don’t project the ravings of a vocal minority on the entire group.

MB: “Neopagan faiths are modern-day reconstructions of ancient Pagan religions from various countries and eras. They experience a high level of discrimination and persecution in North America. They are rarely practiced in public for reasons of safety.”

Who’s doing the persecuting? Simple statistics says it’s not other pagans –

“About Christian Faith Groups We treat Christianity in greater detail than other religions, simply because about 88% of North Americans identify themselves with that religion. Christians outnumber the next largest organized religions by about 40 to 1 in the U.S. and Canada. We are not in any way implying that Christianity is superior or inferior to other religions.”

Please. Worship whomever you like. Write about whatever you like. But label fiction as fiction, or else write the truth when you talk about religion.

DF: Disagreement with or misinterpretation of something doesn’t make it fiction. As far as I can tell, you objected to my statement that paganism’s appeal is power (then you went on to describe power as I definie it), and you misread a clause so you thought that I was calling Satanism a pagan religion, which I was not. I glossed over a few things that you would have preferred I talk about in more detail. Neither does that make it fiction, or false.

Or maybe you just misread my intentions. Hopefully this explanation clears that up.

I can’t tell if you want me to come out and say that any other religion is OK to practice. I won’t come out and say that–that would make me a Unitarian Universalist, which I am not. I won’t try to stop anyone from practicing something else. That’s all I ask of anyone else, and that’s all the Constitution asks, so that’s all I’m going to give or ask for.

My dark places

Dave Farquhar General

I’m not sure when the downward trend started, but Sunday night I went to bed at about 9:30. I didn’t bother setting my alarm; I’m used to sleeping 7-8 hours, which would mean I’d get up on my own before 6 am. Well, at about 8:37 I sat up, looked at the clock, and realized I was way late for work.
When I’m not sick, I can’t sleep more than 9 hours. I’ve tried. It doesn’t matter how tired I am.

I was down all day. I asked my sister what the difference between anxiety and depression are. From what she said, it sounded like I’m dealing with anxiety.

At one point today I remembered when I read The Vita-Nutrient Solution, by the infamous Dr. Atkins, that he talked a lot about depression. Now I remember when I read it that the only way to get any useful information out of it is to read it with a notepad in hand and take notes, because the book is organized very poorly, and the index only gets you about half of what he has to say on the given subject. In short, Atkins is a poor writer, and his indexer is even worse. But I didn’t have time for that. I flipped through the index and I realized something. For repetitive stress injury, skin problems, and depression, there’s a good deal of overlap in the vitamins and herbals that help. I’m prone to all three, and I’ve been prone to all three for a very long time. And my arms have been fine for a long time, so I haven’t been very good about taking my regimen of vitamins. So I took my daily dose, kicking up the B complex, since it’s vitamin B1 and B2 that are more important for mental health. B6 is useful too, but not as useful as the others.

Atkins also said a few other things. The only source for one of the nutrients he recommended is raw, fresh produce. I haven’t been eating much of that for the past month or so. And he said that fats are fuel for the brain. When you’re not bringing in enough fats, your brain doesn’t work right. I haven’t been eating much of those either. So I guess that double burger, chili, fries and milkshake at Steak ‘n’ Shake I was craving Sunday night was actually pretty good for me.

I asked my sister if she thought I might need to see a doctor, since my tendencies in the mental health area seem to recur a lot. I’ll go in for counseling, then I’ll be fine for a couple of years, then I eventually find myself back in the same place again. She said to do it as a last resort, because dosing you on antidepressants is very hit and miss. You try a dose, and if it doesn’t improve, you try a different dosage. Plus the side effects suck. Atkins’ supplement dosages are pretty tight and don’t have the side effects.

And my pastor has said, repeatedly, that if you’re not feeling right, you need to go do something for someone else. I had my opportunity. After work, I stopped in at the grocery store because about the only thing I had left at home to eat was a box of mostaccioli noodles (and no sauce). As I checked out, the cashier was a younger girl. I couldn’t place her age, but I’m pretty sure she was younger than me. She greeted me with a really warm smile. As I was getting ready to pay, we made eye contact again, and she smiled again. And I seem to recall that as I bagged my groceries, she looked over and flashed me that same smile. I didn’t say anything and I found myself regretting it.

As I drove home, and as I fixed dinner, I found myself running dozens of conversations through my head. I had to make things right, I hoped I’d have the opportunity. I made a mental list of other groceries I could get. I always buy just what I need to get by for a couple of days or a week–I’m a bachelor, after all. And when it comes to things like groceries I hate planning ahead. So I drove back to the store. I scanned the checkers as I walked in. She was still there, in aisle 6. So I grabbed some things like potatoes, pancake mix, boxed soup–stuff that keeps forever so you only buy it occasionally, then you only buy it again when you miss it. I got in her line and no one got in behind me. She gave me a knowing look. “Weren’t you here earlier?” she asked.

“Yeah. I forgot some stuff,” I said. Well, it was sort of true.

“Is it cold out?” she asked.

“It’s not bad,” I said.

At some point she flashed that smile again.

“I wanted to tell you, you have the prettiest smile I’ve seen in a really long time,” I said.

Her eyes lit up. “Thank you,” she said. It was really cool.

I didn’t need to say anything else. I’d made her day. I paid and bagged my groceries as she started ringing up the person in line behind me.

As I left, she glanced back in my direction. I mouthed the words, “Good night.” I don’t know what exactly the look she gave me meant, but it definitely didn’t look bad.

Twelve words to make someone’s day. Not bad for a superintrovert like me.

And you know something? I felt a whole lot better too. And I doubt it was the B complex.

—

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll deal with some mail. I haven’t done it yet because I haven’t really felt up to it.

Software stuff I forgot about

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

I’m hoping someone can help me here. I read a couple of stories this week and can’t find them anymore. They’re fairly significant.
Evil Adobe software. The first involved an Adobe lawsuit. Some outfit was buying Adobe suites, breaking them up, and reselling the components. Adobe sued, saying this violated the click-through license. The court ruled that the reseller never agreed to the click-through license, this constituted a sale even though Adobe defined it as a license, and the vendor wasn’t violating any copyright laws by selling the software CDs and books just like stores that sell used books and music don’t violate the copyrights. The court also questioned whether a click-through license was legally binding anyway.

This story should be very significant. The way around it, of course, is to rent software, which is more profitable anyway. Expect Adobe to make tracks down that path very quickly. Adobe’s software licenses are generally slightly more generous than Microsoft’s (they allow you to install their products on your home PC if your business buys them, something Microsoft no longer allows) but then again Adobe’s the company responsible for jailing Dmitry Sklyarov, so they’re still evil. Maybe not quite as evil as Microsoft, but still evil.

So if you must buy Adobe software, do it smart. Buy the suites–which generally combine three or more Adobe products and generally sell for what two products would sell for seperately–and split them up. Find a friend or coworker to go halvesies with you.

Evil viruses. I’ve been fearing for a couple of months the virus that takes the methods used by Nimda and combines them with oldschool exploits like infecting file shares and e-mailing people in your address book. Such a beast appeared last week, but the stories faded very quickly. Presumably the virus was discovered but never really made it into the wild. The stories I read suggested the virus code was very buggy.

Still, if you’re still reeling from Nimda like I am, take steps to secure your network. Put an antivirus package on your mailserver. Consider blocking access at the DNS level to your local ISPs’ mailservers and free mail providers such as Hotmail to keep users from bringing unchecked mail into your network. Deploy IE 5.5SP2 with all of the current patches. Put Outlook in the Restricted Sites zone and very seriously consider replacing Outlook with something that works right and is secure, such as the Lotus Notes and Domino tag-team. (Exchange always was a Domino wannabe anyway, and not a very good one.) And since keeping your Microsoft software up to date is a royal pain, tell your boss to start thinking about remote deployment software such as Tivoli. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s cheaper and easier than hiring another one of you and it frees you up to do real work. (My company’s been looking for another one of me for about three years, first so they could afford to get rid of me because I’m not a Microsoft lackey, and now so they can promote me. They’ve never succeeded. Presumably your company would have an equally difficult time finding another one of you.)

Linux in the enterprise. The ultimate solution to this virus crap (and other Windows-related crap) is to get rid of Windows and replace it with Linux, since Linux viruses are extremely rare and almost never damaging. While Linux has security vulnerabilities too, they’re generally more rare than Windows vulnerabilities and a desktop PC often won’t be running the programs that can be exploited. Besides, you are firewalled, aren’t you? If you are, you’re pretty reasonably secure, since in the Unix world, operating systems are operating systems–they don’t try to be operating systems and web browsers and mail clients and everything else.

But what about usability and maintainability? Linux plus KDE is no harder for an end-user to use than a PC or a Mac. Corel WordPerfect Office gives you everything you need to run your business, and secretaries like WordPerfect better than Microsloth Word anyway. Oh, you need Outlook, you say? Fine. Wait a month then. Ximian Evolution is approaching version 1.0, which will bring Outlook functionality to the Linux desktop. And if you don’t want to pay for WordPerfect Office, there’s always StarOffice. (But you can easily afford WP Office with the money you save by not buying Windows licenses anymore.)

So you don’t know anything about fixing Linux if it goes bad? So what? No sane person fixes a Windows installation either. Fixing a troublesome Windows box can easily take half a day, so the best practice is to keep an image of a working configuration, then when the user breaks it, back up user data (usually scattered all over the drive), re-image, then restore the data and be back up and running in an hour. Linux restricts user data to the /home hierarchy, so maintaining an army of Linux boxes is actually considerably easier than maintaining an army of NT boxes. Back up /home and re-image. Or if you’re really smart, you already redirected /home to a server somewhere, in which case all your desktops are now interchangeable. And Linux imaging is much easier than in NT. Linux generally doesn’t care about the motherboard, so if your video, sound, and network cards are identical, your disk images are interchangeable. Often you can get away with changing sound cards too. And if you’re limited to two or three types of NICs (probably Intel EtherExpress Pro and 3Com 90x; most cheapie 10/100 cards are covered by the Realtek 8139, DEC Tulip or NatSemi drivers), you can just statically compile those into the kernel and you’re set–then the video card is all you have to worry about. Running XConfigurator can take care of that in a matter of minutes. So a dead Linux box can be wiped and restored in 30 minutes, easy, during which your user can still be working, either on a vacationing neighbor’s PC or on your PC.

Remember too that a good percentage of NT problems are caused by toy programs users download off the ‘Net, or games or other programs people bring in from home and install. Those toys generally aren’t available for Linux, and since Linux has a low penetration in the home, people aren’t going to be bringing in their Barbie CDs and installing them. So you’re a fool not to think about Linux on the desktop in the enterprise.

Outta here. I’ve got more but I’m pretty much out of time. We’re doing a prayer vigil this weekend, and no fool signed up to lead from 1:00-2:00. When I stay up that late, my mind tends to be at its best, though my emotions tend to be at their worst (I get depressed easily). But since I can be plenty lucid at that hour, this fool signed up to lead. I’ll be back with more tomorrow.

Weeks in the making…

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I had someone ask me a few weeks ago, not terribly long after the 9/11 attack, why I believed in God. After all, most sysadmin types don’t. Or they aren’t Christian–they’re pagan, or they dabble in Eastern religions. I understand the appeal. For one who’s used to building PCs and even operating systems from best-of-breed components (or best-of-economy components, or some other selectable criteria), the idea of assembling your own religion from best-of-breed components is nearly irresistable.
I can tell you how I became a Christian, but that’s not the same as why I remained one. I’ll focus on the latter. It’s a more pleasant mental place to be.

So let’s go back to that original question: Why can I be a Christian after such a terrible thing? And since you believe in God, why didn’t your God do something about it?

Someone sent me a nice explanation for it. It’s a little longwinded, so I’ll summarize and paraphrase. It said we’ve been telling God we don’t want Him. And God’s a perfect gentleman, so when He’s told He’s not wanted, He butts out. We’ve told God we don’t want Him in our schools. We’ve told Him we don’t want Him in our courts. We don’t want Him in our government. We don’t want Him in our business. We don’t want Him in our streets. We don’t want Him on our televisions and movie screens. And each time we’ve told Him to get lost, he’s sorrowfully complied.

Then, when tragedy hits, finally someone misses Him.

So where was God when those evil men hijacked those four planes?

Well, we told God where we didn’t want Him to be. But I saw Him. I saw Him in the actions of Todd Beemer, who rounded up all the big guys he could find on United Flight 93 and overtook the terrorists. I saw Him in President Bush, the onetime laughingstock who’s guided our country the past two months.

That’s consistent with my experience. I’ve seen places where God isn’t welcome, and I’ve seen bad things happen there. Lots of bad things. Sometimes terrible things.

But everywhere I go where God is truly welcome, good things happen.

So, yeah, I believe in one God who created the heavens and the earth. I believe He had one son, Jesus Christ, who is the only way to God the Father–incidentally, God the Father is the same God that Muslims and Jews believe in. We’ll come back to Jesus in a minute. And I believe in the Holy Spirit. I can’t explain the Holy Spirit. But I’ve seen His work, I’ve felt His presence, and yeah, it’s weird. But powerful. I know some of the appeal of Satanism and of pagan religions like Wicca–most of the appeal–is power. They don’t compare to Holy Spirit power. And personally, I’d much rather go to a God who’s willing to look bad by saying no when He knows what I’m asking for is bad for me or someone else, rather than going to a god who’ll give me whatever I ask for to ensure I come back for more. God’s a whole lot smarter than me, and has a much better perspective than me. I’m better off when I defer to Him.

OK, back to that whole Jesus thing. Do I really believe Jesus is the only way? Well, Jesus said He was. I just got back from spending a good part of the evening with three good friends. Whatever they say, I’ll take them at their word if they tell me it’s true. None of them has ever done what Jesus did. So I take Jesus at His word.

But there’s another, more selfish, more lazy reason for it. This appeals to the sysadmin in me. I make computers do as much of my job as possible. That’s why I like Christianity, because Christianity does all the work for me. Let me explain.

Truth be told, there is one world religion, and that religion can be summed up in exactly two words: Be perfect. Now, religions like Hinduism and Buddhism and Confucism all tell you to do that, and they give you some ways. Beyond that, they offer no help.

Islam teaches full submission to Allah. Again, it offers no real help other than some practical advice.

Judaism is a bit different. Again, it tells you to be perfect. It offers some practical advice. But it takes it a little further. It also offers a promise. It offers forgiveness of sin. It offers reconciliation with God. But it doesn’t say how.

That, my friends, is where Christianity kicks in. It delivers on that promise of Judaism and offers others. The most beautiful one: Jesus told His disciples He was going away, but He’d send the Holy Spirit to be with us, and live through us. God, living and breathing inside you. You’re not perfect, but God is.

That’s the beauty of it. Let’s just say–God forgive me–that Jesus was wrong. And we’ll say that Gandhi and his Hinduism was right. So Gandhi went to heaven on the basis of his works. Well, who was greater? Ghandi or Mother Theresa? Tough call. If Gandhi’s in heaven, Mother Theresa’s definitely not in hell.

Now, I don’t hold a candle to either of those two. But I’ll put my best up against the best of my peers in any other religion. I know we all struggle. But we do some good things too. If I’m wrong, and it is on works alone that we get to our ultimate destination, my Christianity will get me the same place as my peers’ Buddhism or Islam or Judaism gets them.

And that’s why I don’t think Jesus can possibly be wrong. He’s either right, or when He’s wrong, He’s still right.

So I’ve seen enough of God that I won’t deny His existence. I’ve seen and felt and breathed enough of His power to know I want Him on my side. And here’s Jesus saying, “Be perfect. Not only will I help you, but when you fail, I’ll pinch hit for you, and credit my statistics to you.”

I’d be a fool to turn down that deal. So that’s why this sysadmin who ought to be an atheist or a pagan or a Buddhist is a Christian.

Oh yeah. I have a Web site.

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

You ask me how I am
And all I can say is I still exist…
–lyrical snippet I wrote in 1997
Yep, I’m hacked off and moody, and when I get this way, it’s best if I say little more than yeah, I still exist. I know I won’t regret saying or writing that.

BBQ. I know I cut way back on my red meat intake–I may have managed to eat none at all in October, I’m not sure–but I have this fantasy of moving back to Kansas City, buying a house next door to Gates BBQ–no relation to that scumbag Billy Gates in Seattle–setting up an expense account, and eating BBQ three meals a day. BBQ for breakfast? Don’t dis it until you’ve tried it. But make sure it’s real BBQ. Here in St. Louis, restaurants tend to do Memphis-style BBQ, which is where you cook the meat without sauce until it’s good and dried out, then you splash some spicy sauce on it and call it BBQ. Kansas Citians know real BBQ is cooked long, slow, and in sauce. It adds a little flavor and keeps the meat from drying out as much.

Gates three times a day. Sounds like a great solution to any problem. Or at least a nice distraction.

Music. I’ve been listening to a CD my sister sent me by a band called claas-p.jambor. I know nothing about them, because their Web site xeptional.com is a Flash site and I’ve removed that blight from all my PCs, permanently. (Now if I can just get them to quit prompting me for the plugin…) Well, I do know this: Their music is awesome. Ever listen to a CD, then come to a song that makes you just stop the disc and put that song on repeat play for a couple of hours? “Open Skies” is one of those songs. I know I’m not the only one like that: when Beavis and Butthead saw a video they really liked, they said MTV should just play that video over and over. Beavis and Butthead wouldn’t like claas-p.jambor though. Too punky, and they’re Christian.

But three-chord Christian punk seems to be just what I’ve been looking for.

Blogging. Dan Bowman sent me a link to a site that looks promising. If you like it when I go off on my non-computer tangents, you’ll probably find him interesting. If you wonder what it’s like to be a Catholic priest, or a former Catholic priest, you’ll probably like it. He’s only been at it for a week or so. I like him. He shoots straight, makes me think, and holds just enough back to keep an aura about him. I think he’s more enigmatic than I am.

Effective e-mail communication. I guess I have to do a little computer stuff, huh? Here’s a snippet from a piece of e-mail I sent this morning, to someone who’s about to attend a seminar on effective communications:

“Dave’s rule #1: Make sure what you’re trying to communicate will actually be delivered. Therefore, you should avoid Outlook at all costs.”

To which he responded, Outlook is effective for sending mail bombs, viruses, Powerpoint presentations and Flash animations. I’m sure it transmits Anthrax just fine too. But I’ve had three, maybe even four people have Outlook just flat die in the past week. The answer is sometimes to run nfclean.exe and scanpst.exe. Sometimes I have to delete the user’s NT profile and import their PST. Sometimes I have to completely reinstall.

I hate Outlook. I hate Windows. And I can’t have another Amiga.

Give me Unix or give me death.

An end and a beginning….

Dave Farquhar General

The end. Arizona pulled it off, and little else needs to be said. The MVP going to the duo of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson was not unprecedented: the 1981 co-MVPs were Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager. Two strong arms brought down the Yankee dynasty. It took both of ’em to win the Series, and both of ’em to win Game 7.
Interestingly enough, Cey, Guerrero and Yeager were members of the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers. Their opponents were the New York Yankees.

The beginning. This was actually a fairly long process. Yesterday I proved that I can win an election in which I’m the only candidate. Our congregation elected three new officers yesterday, and I’m now a member of the Board of Directors.

I think the process got off the ground about a year ago. We had a banquet at church one Thursday night, a sort of thank-you for the church leadership. I’d just finished a stint on one committee and I was in the middle of a stint on another. We passed the mic around and shared testimonies. One of the girls sitting at the same table as me was looking kind of nervous about getting up and talking, so I slipped her a note. “This is everything I know about public speaking,” I said.

It read:
Remember why you’re here.
Be yourself.

She knocked ’em dead. She led off by reading the note.

The note made the rounds around the room. Near the end, I took the mic. Someone slipped me the note as I started talking.

I don’t really remember much about what I said. I told them about being told by three different churches, in one way or another, that they didn’t have much use for me, or that I should come back when I’d grown up. I found a church in Columbia that was different, but then I got a job in St. Louis and couldn’t take that church with me. Then I found this one. I said a lot of churches look for powerhouse, not promise. I thanked them for settling for promise.

And that night, I felt something change. I stepped over some line. I was a member of the club, the club my dad never cracked.

Now I’m a member of a slow-moving board that wields power and influence. Boards don’t have as much power as people give them credit for, and they rarely do anything quickly. My job? Look out for the needs of the members between the ages of 14 and 35. And do whatever I can to make that club a lot bigger and a lot easier to enter.

Yep, I guess I’m still young and idealistic. But maybe, just maybe, that’s appropriate now.

And this. I told you all about Emily last week. She was in church yesterday morning. Early service. Remarkable. She was leaving as I came in. She made it to a service I couldn’t motivate myself to get to. She had the right perspective. She said there was no place else she should be that morning, she was so blessed to be alive. I couldn’t disagree.

Civ3: First Impressions

Dave Farquhar General

Each game in the Civ series gets progressively better, but it also gets progressively harder to play because it gets more complicated. This makes it more fun, but potentially more frustrating for those who didn’t hop on the bandwagon in 1991 like I did.
Take the system requirements seriously. They state a P2-300, 64 MB RAM, 700 MB disk space free. I put it on a P2-233 with 64 MB. It runs but it gets bogged down. It liked my Duron-700 with 128 MB a lot better, but even that wasn’t silky smooth 100% of the time.

Graphically, Civ was respectable for its time. Civ2 had its moments but was never considered stunning. Civ3 impresses me a whole lot more. Civ3 won’t push your high-end video card (I ran it on an S3 Savage-based card and on an elderly laptop with NeoMagic 128-bit video and it did OK). It seems to be much more memory-, CPU-, and disk-intensive.

Unless you’ve been gearing up the past month or so by playing Civ or Civ2, I suggest starting off on one of the easier levels. It’s been a couple of years since I last played Civ2, but I found I was still able to be dominant on the easier levels. I found myself making some dumb mistakes as I tried to learn the new system (I kept my tech rate at 50% for several millennia, for instance, because I couldn’t figure out where to change it); you probably will too. I reached a point where I could have gunpowder and musketeers by 300 BC in the original Civ on the easier levels; you won’t find yourself doing that right away in Civ3.

The general strategy that applied to Civ all along still applies here. Expand as quickly as you can. If you find yourself near a weak neighbor that you can assimilate quickly, do so, but don’t enter a war you’re not absolutely positive you’ll win quickly. Sign a peace treaty and trade technology while you amass troops, then send them in in large waves. If you can manage to isolate yourself, either by taking a whole continent or fortifying your border, make a run for an advanced form of government, then crank up your economy. Then, once again, when wartime comes, make sure your troops are amassed and you have a good defense as well as a good offense. In Civ2 I could conquer a continent pretty quickly by moving in some high-power, fast-moving offense. That’s harder in Civ3. And entangling alliances can come back and bite you. I attacked an isolated city that was close to some natural resources I needed (oil I believe), intending to just take the city, hold it, and then do whatever it took to end the war quickly. Instead, I literally started a world war. I found my units weren’t strong enough or fast enough, and while my opponents quickly depleted their military, they had a good deal of success against my technologically superior army. I ended up losing a fair bit of land and a lot of infrastructure.

I’m glad to see these elements added to the game. It makes it a lot less simplistic.

My biggest beef: No multiplayer capability. I can’t believe anyone would release a strategy game in 2001 without any multiplayer ability. If you’re looking forward to a weekend Civfest with a couple of friends, skip this release. Wait for the multiplayer version, which should appear sometime next year. Otherwise, you’ll end up essentially buying the game twice.