Tourney prep

Today I’ve not found time for a normal post because I’ve been working on getting ready for National Heroscape Day.  If you need a refresher, you can read my thoughts on Heroscape itself, read about my involvement with the customs group known as C3V, or about our experiences with NHSD for the past two years.  Executive precis: Heroscape is a game that combines building battlefieds out pieces that interlock much like Legos, and then fielding genre blender armies that you compose yourself.  Thus, you see, the two major areas that require preparation are map construction, and army building.  So, this weekend I’ve done a little of both, in an attempt to be ready for the upcoming tourney (which will be held on October 18th this year).

First, the map.  For the longest time, I had this monstrosity up.  Oh, it’s pretty to look at, but not very practical to play on.  So, to get some reasonable practice in, we needed pick a couple of new maps, tear down the existing one, and build the new ones up.  I got all but the very last step of that done.  I picked two BoV¹ maps: Quasatch Playground and Burial Marsh.  The Littles² and I tore down the whole big map.  And we rather quickly slapped together Quasatch Playground.  The other map will have to wait for next weekend, or possibly Wednesday.

Secondly, the armies.  I’ve been experimenting with several ideas, most of them based around my favorites among the custom units that our group has come up with.  One of my current favorites is also one of our newest: the Crypt Guardian.  The main idea behind him is to help out one of the worst units in the official game, a sort of mummified medusa figure.  With her Stare of Stone power, she can kill just about anyone ... but only if she gets lucky: she has a 20% chance of killing a hero.  Now, true: she has a 70% chance of killing a squad figure (meaning one of the cannon-fodder guys).  But only one every turn.  If you’re facing a giant mass of, say, zombies, or maybe orcs, it’s going to take you around 10 turns to kill 2 squads’ worth.  And that’s assuming you don’t use anybody else.  That’s pretty terrible.  Plus her average defense combined with averge-low life means she ain’t gonna last that long.

So she needed some help, and we thought it probably ought to be another mummy that gave it to her.  But of course we didn’t want to create a unit that did nothing but prop up one bad unit.  So we gave our Crypt Guardian two powers: one which helps undead units with a d20 power (which Sudema is), and one that helps heroes which are either guards or queens (which Sudema is).  So it helps quite a variety of units, but there’s only one unit that can benefit from both powers, and it’s the one that needs the most help.  Sort of clever of our designers.³  One of the funnest things is that many of the other units that are helped out by the Crypt Guardian (specifically, the short list of guard heroes) are also units that don’t see a lot of play.  So you can take three or four units that normally people think of as easy pickin’s and forge them into an army with a decent shot.

One of my other favorite units is a sort of forest sprite type thing called the Eilan Sidhe.⁴  This is a bit of a harder unit to place into an army, as it doesn’t have any obvious synergies, so I’ve been playing with a few different ideas.  One odd but intriguing pairing would be with the bugbears.  The sidhe can use the trees on the map (if there are any) to get into great position, and then the bugbears can use their “Barge into Battle” power to swap places with them and lay the beat down on some folks.  Of course, on a map with no trees (or few trees, spaced too far apart), you’d be screwed.  Plus you’ll need some ranged support.  But it’s in interesting idea.

The Smaller Animal is interested in trying out or newest dragon, affectionately referred to as “Big Blue.”  She’s a beast all right, but also a unit that doesn’t have too many obvious synergies.  We could bond her with the lizard men, of course, but they’re on our restricted list,⁵ and I’ve personally made the argument that Big Blue should be on the restricted list as well, which would mean they couldn’t be paired.  You can also bond her with giant spiders, but quite frankly they’re not that exciting.  So we’re still working on that.

So that’s how my weekend has been going.  And I see that, despite my initial pronouncement of not writing a real post this week, this one is nearly as long as a normal post anyway.  So count yourself lucky.  Unless you really don’t give a crap about Heroscape, in which case I suppose you’d best count yourself unlucky.  But then again, in that case, I’m sure you didn’t read this far, so I’m not really talking to you anyway.  As always, refer complaints to the masthead.

1 “BoV” stands for “Battlefields of Valhalla,” and it means maps specifically designed for tourney play.

2 This is a term invented by our Sister Family to mean the kids below age ten.  We each have 2 in that category; ours are 8 and 2, currently.

3 Full disclosure: I’m not one of our designers.  I’m an editor.

4 Note that “sidhe” is a Celtic word pronounced “shee.”  For instance, the proper Irish spelling of “banshee” is actually “bean sidhe.”

5 Many Heroscape tournaments maintain a “restricted list,” which is a list of units that most people consider a little too good in a competitive setting.  Each army is allowed only one unit off the restricted list.

Worth Striving For

A few days ago I was talking to the CEO of my company about why I love this job so much.  I found it hard to put into words ... the best I could come up with was that I had finally found a job where I was allowed—even encouraged—to fix things.  At my last job (and at many of the companies I’ve worked for, both as employee and contractor), if you wanted to fix something that was broken or ugly, you had to have meetings about it, and you had to present business cases for it, and you had to prove to someone that it was going to make money (or save money) in some way.  At the new job, if something’s broken (or ugly), we just say: fix it.  And no one tells you how to fix it.  They just trust that you will do it the best way you know how.

Trust, you may recall, is one of the three cornerstones of what employees want, according to the Barefoot Philosophy.  So that’s a big part of the attraction, certainly.  But this is a bigger issue, touching on the concept of craftmanship that I brought up before, but only scratched the surface of.  I’ve also made a business case for why crap needs to be fixed, but this is a different side of that coin.  And I wanted to expand on this topic, partially because it would be nice to tie all those disparate thoughts together, but mainly because I was frustrated by my inability to capture the gestalt of this idea in that extemporaneous discussion with my chief executive.  But of course I’m not good at speaking off the cuff.

Then again, that’s why I have a blog.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain it is with an extended analogy.  Imagine software developement as being like building a house.  Now, there are different aspects of home construction.  Obviously the most important aspect is functionality: you need working plumbing, a sound electrical system, structural integrity, and so forth.  But never discount æsthetics.  Nobody wants to live in an ugly-ass house.

Of course, the vast majority of the coding that we programmers do is not building a new house—it’s renovating.  The house is already there when we show up; the owner just needs some repairs, or perhaps a new bathroom, or maybe even a whole new wing added on one side.  It’s often said (even by programmers) that programmers prefer writing new code to maintaining old code.  There’s some truth to that, of course.  But not as much as it seems on the surface.  There’s nothing wrong with working to maintain a beautifully built, solidly constructed old house.  Sure, you can’t go crazy and go all Frank Lloyd Wright or John Lautner on it.  The basic layout is there, and there’s only so much you can do to it.  But the popularity of home improvement shows—from modern reality TV shows like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to the public television classic This Old House, which is still on the air after 35 years—shows us that fixing up an existing structure can be interesting, challenging, intellectually stimulating ... all the things you could ask of a construction project.  I’ve worked on a few old codebases that were still a lot of fun and gave me plenty of opportunity to exercise my creativity and leave my mark, including the one I’m working on now.

But most of them aren’t like that.  Most of them are a kind of horror show train wreck.  Which is something we all end up slowing down to watch, with a guilty sort of fascination, but it’s quite another thing to be inside it while it’s happening.  Is it any wonder that most of us are desperately trying to rewrite parts of—if not the entirety of—our old codebases?  And the reason most of them are so awful is because of this very issue that I’m trying to explain.

See, working at my last job (and, as I say, for many of my previous employers) was a bit like doing a renovation for a homeowner who tells you “Just make sure the toilets flush, and the lights come on when you hit the switch, and the walls don’t fall over.  We don’t really care if it looks pretty or not.”  Which doesn’t sound so bad until you start getting into the details of it.  “Just patch the pipes with duct tape,” they tell you.  “Yeah, we know it’s not waterproof, but a few little puddles here and there are no big deal, and actually replacing the bad plumbing would take too long and be too expensive.”  And then they say, “You know what? just leave those exposed wires there.  We’ll put up some signs warning people not to touch them.  Actually patching the drywall is too much trouble, and we’ve got other stuff for you to work on.”  And then it gets to the point where they’re trying to convince you to prop up the walls with old two-by-fours from the backyard that still have rusty nails sticking out of them.  You can probably imagine how scary it is to walk into a job like this.  But what many people forget about is how utterly depressing it is to be the guy who let things get this bad.  Not by choice, of course.  But, if no one will let you fix anything ...

Part of the reason this is so frustrating is that some of this shit is actually dangerous.  Show me a programmer who hasn’t been told to ignore a bug that they knew was screwing over customers and I’ll show you a programmer at the start of their career.  Every business makes that choice, and I will even admit that it’s not always the wrong choice.  A bug that only affects a few customers but will cost many engineer-weeks to fix is not a sane thing to tackle.  But it’s one thing to make that call one time, and quite another to make it over and over again.  And let’s not dismiss the soul-crushing anguish of the raw ugliness of it all: you’re embarrassed to admit you were a part of the crew, and you’re constantly apologizing for your part in the mess.  Hell, it doesn’t even stop when you quit: at my most recent conference, I was still apologizing to employees that had been hired by my ex-employer after I left.  “We tried to make it better,” I would say, eyes downcast.  “But we just didn’t have the political capital.”  That’s a polite way of saying “our bosses wouldn’t let us fix anything.”

So it may sound a little weak to say “I really love my job because they let me fix things,” but try to understand it from the opposite point of view: I really hate a job where they won’t let me fix things.  It’s depressing to have to work in that environment day after day.  And, if there are any businesspeople out there reading this, let me try to put this into terms you can appreciate: this is a question of retention.  When you refuse to let people fix things, you make them miserable.  Oh, I can tell you that there are direct fiduciary benefits to a culture of improvement (and that’s true, although they’re notoriously hard to measure), but the real gain is that you keep your best, most productive employees happy, and you make it easier to hire more of the same, and if you can’t see how that is going to help your bottom line, then there’s nothing more I can say.  Here’s a great quote attributed to Hosea Ballou:

No one has a greater asset for his business than a man’s pride in his work.

I suspect this is how my CEO views it.  I don’t know for sure, because he hasn’t told me, but I’m guessing that he thinks to himself, well, my tech team always delivers when I ask them to, and sometimes even when I don’t, so if they want to go off and fix things I didn’t ask them to, and that makes them happy, then, more power to ’em.  As long as we keep doing the things that make him happy, and make the company money, he’s happy enough to let us take a little pride in our work.

And that’s what it comes down to, in the end.  I consider myself a craftsman, as I said—perhaps I should go even farther, as did web designer Richard Glover, and call myself an artisan.  I take great pride in what I produce, and I need to be producing things I can be proud of.  Give me a job that allows that—nay, encourages it—and I’m all yours.

To Vegas, Baby

You almost got a post this weekend.  I actually started a post ... I was this close to finishing it up and posting it.^*  Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of preparations to do this weekend.  We’re heading off to Vegas for a family vacation tomorrow.  The Eldest is turning 16, and that nets you more than a birthday weekend—you get a whole birthday week.  And I’ve never personally been to Vegas, so it should be fun.

Perhaps there’ll be time to finish this post during the week and you’ll get to see it next week.  If you’re lucky.

* I know you can’t actually see my thumb and forefinger, but trust me: they’re only millimeters apart.

March of the Virgos

This weekend kicks off our Virgo birthday season, so we’re doing things that The Mother wants to do.  One thing she does not want to do is sit around while I spend a few hours coming up with ways to entertain you, persistent reader.  Which is fair, really.

If you need to refresh yourself on what a birthday weekend entails for us, go back and read about the March birthday season.  We have two birthdays in March, one at either end of the month.  Then we have two birthdays about 10 days apart, centered around Labor Day.  This year will be the eldest’s 16th, and we’ll be spending a week in Vegas.  So there’s every possibility that you won’t get a decent post next wekeend either.  We’ll see, but don’t hold your breath or anything.

Not that I thought you were going to hold your breath for an entire week.  Or any lenth of time over this crappy blog, really.  And I’m okay with that.

Format Bores

Last week I posted the latest chapter of my ongoing (some might say never-ending) novel.  The Mother decided to take this opportunity to post a notice on Facebook so that my friends might be reminded that yes, I’m still writing the damn thing.  And one particularly good friend of mine asked if he could read my novel on his Kindle.  Which I suppose he could, if I turned it into a PDF.  Which of course I can.  So I did.

So, down towards the bottom of the page, you’ll find a link to a PDF representation of the novel as it stands thus far.  And hopefully I’ll be able to keep it updated on an ongoing basis so that the link will always point to however far along we currently are.  One word of caution though: the formatting ain’t pretty.

Of course, that might not be all bad.  I hope that, one day, I’ll actually finish this book.  And, when that happens, the logical thing to do would be to try to put it out in e-book format and try to get some exposure for it.  So it might occur to you, tenacious reader, that I might want to discourage people from downloading a free PDF so that I can charge money for an e-book someday.  But that’s not true.  Let me explain why.

As a software developer, I use use thousands of lines of open source code every day—undoubtely millions of lines, over the course of my career.  Without all that open source code, I’d get very little done on a day-to-day basis ... even at my paying job.  With millions of lines of free, quality software out there, any company (particularly a small company just getting started) would be foolish to ignore all that software.  Paying for something when you could get it for free (and when the free version is often of higher quality) is a pretty poor business decision.  Spending time to rewrite something from scratch when you could get it for free can sometimes make sense ... but not often.  So my entire profession is built on the concept of giving away valuable stuff for free.  It would be somewhat hypocritical of me to balk at offering a free PDF.

In fact, my intention is to keep these blog posts up as well, even after the e-book is out (assuming, of course, I ever get that far—much of this musing is just pre-hatch chicken counting, and I recognize that).  Hey, if people really want to read my book for free, on the interwebs, more power to ’em, I say.  I feel like the e-book will be a lot more convenient a format, and I hope I’m able to get some artwork (at the very least a front cover pic) that will probably be available only via the e-book, and there may even be one last editing pass for the e-book that doesn’t make it back to the blog.  So hopefully there will be some small reason to shell out some small amount of money for the “official” version, once we get that far.  (And the amount will certainly be small.  From everything I’ve been reading about e-book self-publishing, an unknown author should be pricing their e-book at under $6.  Probably well under $6.  And I’m okay with that.  I don’t need to support myself as an author—I have a day job which I love and am in no hurry to quit—and it’ll be much more about getting maximum exposure than achieving maximum profit.  At least at first.  Maybe I’ll change my mind when it comes to later books.  Assuming there are later books.  But that’s my hope.)

But, point being: I think there will be plenty of reason that many people will prefer to get the e-book version, once such a thing is available, without me adding artifical barriers to reading the thing for free on the Internet.  So why then, you may ask, is the PDF version formatted crappily?  Did I do that on purpose?

Well, yes and no.

My master copy of the novel is a Google document.  Once upon a time, Google documents looked a lot like Microsoft Word documents.  This is unsurprising, since Word has become the de facto standard for word processing docs.  There are very good reasons for this.  I hate Microsoft as much as the next self-respecting programmer, but one can’t argue that they’ve done a few things very well, and Word (and Excel) are among that small group.  I’ve used Wordstar and WordPerfect, text formats galore, HP Word and Abiword and probably many other more obscure programs that I can barely recall, but Word was the best, I have to admit.  Now, the more modern versions of Word became hideously bloated as marketing began to drive the feature set more than actual utility, but happily there are Word clones aplenty these days to fill the gap.  There’s Libre Office, for instance, which is nice if you happen to be using Linux.  But undoubtedly the best word processing solution these days is Google Docs.  It’s free, it’s available everywhere, on every operating system, and you can have multiple people edit the same file at the same time and nothing explodes.  And it works pretty much like Word.

Except for one thing.  They keep making changes to Google Docs.  Now, on the one hand, it’s free.  So you don’t really get to complain about it when they change things.  Except I’m going to anyway.  Because somewhat recently (relative to how long Docs has been around, at least), they rolled out a new “improved” version of Docs that changed the way your document looks on the screen.  It’s now paginated like it will be when it prints.  They no doubt felt this was a useful change.  Except it’s not.  This is the modern world we live in: the Internet Age.  When do we ever print anything?  This particular Google Doc gets downloaded to my laptop as HTML, which is then converted to an intermediate markup format that I typically write blog posts in, which is then converted to the pseudo-HTML that Blogspot understands, which is then posted back to the Internet.  And, now, I’m going to be converting the Google Doc directly to PDF, which people will then suck into their Kindle or Nook or what-have-you.  At no point in any of these processes does anything ever get printed.  And yet Google thinks it’s a good idea to do the knockoff-Word equivalent of locking me into print preview mode.

Now, the fact that this is useless and pointless is philosophically annoying, to be sure, but that’s not why I’m pissed off about it.  If that’s all it was, I might have an inner mini-rant and call it a day.  But the fact of the matter is that this moronic decision on the part of the Google team screws me in a far more concrete fashion.  Because, you see, in the old days my text went from the left side of my screen to the right side of my screen.  But now it does not.  Now it goes from the left side of the “page” to the right side of the “page” ... and not even all the way there, because of the margins.  So there’s huge, unused portions of whitespace (well, technically, grayspace) on either side of my text.  Which is visually annoying, but that’s still not the actual problem—if that were all it was, I could just increase the size of the font and be done with it.  No, the real problem is, I don’t have as much text on the screen as I used to.  I’m a writer: all I care about is the words.  I don’t give a crap what the “page” looks like, especially when there is no real page.  I want to see as many words as I can, all the time, with a minimum of scrolling.  The more I have to scroll, the more work it is.  And there’s just no good reason.

Now, I have tried to figure out how to turn off this “page mode.”  So far I’ve come up empty (if anyone here knows how, my eternal gratitude awaits if you will kindly leave me a comment explaining how to do it).  So I do the next best thing I’ve been able to figure out.  I go into “page setup,” and I find the paper size that is the hugest there is (I just recently discovered a new one called “tabloid,” which is 11” x 17”).  Then, since paper is always longer than it is wide, I put it in landscape mode (i.e. turn the “paper” sideways).  Then I set my left and right margins to be miniscule: just enough to keep the letters from physically touching the fake page borders.  This, believe it or not, still doesn’t eliminate all the wasted space on my screen ... but it’s much better.  Unfortunately, when I download as PDF, those settings are retained.  Now, I suppose I could reformat it every time I wanted to download the PDF and then reformat it again afterwards so I could go back to writing.  But, let’s face it: I’m lazy.  I’m not going to do that.

So, yes, it’s formatted crappily on purpose in the sense that I could make it not so crappy if I wanted to.  But, no, it’s not formatted crappily on purpose so that you’ll be more likely to get the e-book version once that’s available.  It’s just me not wanting to bother.  Or, if you’d like a more you-focussed reason, I feel that whatever time I might spend reformatting my document constantly is likely much better spent writing more fiction for you to read.  Or, to combine the two: there ain’t a nickel’s worth of difference between lazy and efficient.  Somebody famous probably said that.  If not, they really should have.

So, as promised, your link:

        The Diamond Flame (PDF version)

I may also add a link to this post on all the chapters.  But that’s a lot of work, so I also might not.  I’m terribly efficient.

Chapter 20

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What is this?

Travel with Welly Banks

Welly’s clothes were dripping, but not sodden.  Which made no sense, as he had only recently emerged from the water.  But perhaps that was a small thing among greater impossibilities, Johnny reflected.  The blue-skinned youth (if youth he was) put on a professorial air as he continued his speech to Roger.

“Let’s get the contractual stuff out of the way first, shall we?”  Welly started the drywashing thing again.  “I am an opener, not a pathfinder.  I open where I’m told, and am not responsible if the way opens into the heart of a supernova or the jaws of a tyrannosaurus rex.”  Roger nodded impatiently; Johnny turned to Aidan to ask him if this was likely to occur, but the water priest shushed him.  Welly continued.  “I will accompany you wherever you wish to go within the confines of Breen Lagoon, as long as your journey takes no longer than 7,919 minutes.”  (Johnny looked at Larissa; “one minute short of five and a half days,” she supplied under her breath.)  “But I cannot accompany you wheresoever you travel beyond the borders of the Lagoon.  You agree that you will not attempt to compel me to do so?”

Roger spat in her hand and thrust it out to Welly.  “Square deal,” she said.

Welly glanced at her hand with some trepidation.  “Er, yes,” he said, clutching his hands to his chest.  “I’m happy to take your word.  No need to exchange, um ... bodily fluids.”  He sniffed again.

Roger clapped him hard on the shoulder.  “Excellent, me boyo!”  She turned back to her crew.  “Aidan!  Can I get me clothes back now?”




Inside of an hour, The Sylph was back on the open ocean—or open lagoon, as the case might be—and moving along at a decent clip.  Johnny had given Roger a general direction and was feeling ahead of them every now and again to make sure they stayed on track.  Currently Johnny and Larissa were leaning on the railing, watching the gentle waves flash by.  The little blue snake around Larissa’s wrist uncoiled itself, scampered up her arm, circled her neck once, slithered down the other arm, and recoiled itself around her other wrist.  Johnny heard someone pacing behind them and turned around; it was Welly.

“I’m Johnny,” Johnny said, putting out his hand.  Welly kept his hands clasped together and sniffed again.  Johnny was beginning to get the impression that sniffing and sighing were Welly’s two major modes of communication.  Johnny lowered his hand.

“So ... you’re Welly, right?”  Welly just stared back.  “You’re the ... opener?  What exactly does that entail?”

Welly sniffed.  “I open, of course.”

Johnny felt the lunatic grin returning to his face.  “Of course.  And how does one go about ‘opening’?”

Welly sighed.  “One merely reaches out and ...”  He shrugged.  “Opens.”  His webbed hands gave a little flourish, as if to say: just so.

“So I could learn to do it, then?” Johnny asked.

Another sniff.  “You don’t learn to open.  You either can, or you cannot.  Given where you’re from, I would suppose that you cannot.”

Johnny’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.  “You know where we’re from?”

Welly glanced over at Larissa briefly, almost furtively.  “I know where you’re from,” he said.  It was obvious he was excluding Larissa from his declaration.

Johnny decided to let that slide.  “How do you know?”

A sniff.  “I’ve been there, of course.”

Johnny was puzzled.  After a week or so with Roger and a few years with Larissa, this conversation should have been old hat, but still he was feeling a bit lost.  Did Welly mean he’d been to DC?  “You’ve been where?” he asked.

“Some call it the Terrable Way,” Welly said.

“The Terrible Way?”  Johnny frowned.

Welly sighed.  “You said ‘Terrible Way,’ didn’t you?”

Johnny was confused.  “Isn’t that what you said?”

“No, not Terrible Way, Terrable Way.”

Johnny looked towards Larissa for help.  “Those both sound the same to me ...”  He shrugged.

Larissa gave the tiniest shake of her head, but said nothing.

Another sigh.  “Not ‘terrible,’ with an I,” he said.  “’Terrable,’ with an A.  Isn’t your world called ‘Terra’?”

Johnny blinked.  “Well, I guess ...”

“There you go.”

“So it’s just a coincidence that it sounds like ‘terrible’?” Johnny asked.

Welly’s sardonic half-smile flickered on the left side of his face.  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”

Larissa finally spoke up.  “That pun would only work in English,” she pointed out.

“Hey, yeah,” Johnny said, feeling a light bulb go on over his head.  “How come you speak English?”

Back to sniffing.  “Are we speaking English now?”

Johnny looked baffled for a second, but Larrissa replied instantly: “Yes.”

Another sniff.  “Yes, I suppose we are, right this second.  I learned it when I visited the Terrable Way.  How else could I have studied your great comics?”

“Comic books?”  Johnny was confused.

Welly gave him a haughty look.  “No, comics.  Performers.”

This was getting weirder and weirder.  “You came to our world? to watch comedians?” Johnny asked.

“Yes, and I studied the great masters.  Henny Youngman, and Jack Benny, and Jackie Mason, and Bob Hope.  Also, some of the younger crowd: Bill Cosby, and Bob Newhart, and Rodney Dangerfield.”

Larissa intervened.  “Rodney Dangerfield has been popular for over 35 years, and performing, off and on, for 61.”

Welly shook his head sadly.  “Has it been so long?  I lose track of the time ...”

Johnny said, “You don’t look that old.”

“The secret to staying young is to eat slowly and lie about your age.”

Larissa frowned.  “Lucille Ball,” she said.  “But she also advised that one live honestly.”

Welly seemed to grow wistful.  “Lucille Ball, yeah, she was one of the greats too.”  Another sigh.  “That honest living thing was never for me though.”  Then he turned and shuffled off.




The days went back to melting together as they lapsed back into everyone sleeping and eating whenever they felt like it.  The open expanse of water never changed significantly—there was always mist off in the distance, although they never seemd to get closer to it, and an occasional island would appear, very far away, but mostly it was just open, calm water.  Apparently the light never changed in the Lagoon any more than it did in the swamp, so it became impossible to keep track of how much time had passed.  Or, at least, it was impossible for Johnny.  He had a feeling that Welly knew exactly how much time was passing, down to the minute.  And when his internal counter reached 7,919, Johnny knew somehow that he would just jump overboard and swim back to the hideous mermaid creatures.

“Why do you suppose it’s 7,919?” he asked Larissa at one point.

Larissa shrugged.  “Perhaps because that’s the one thousandth prime number.”

Johnny grinned.  “Sure,” he said.  “I’m sure that’s exactly why.”  Then he laughed raucously, startling a passing Bones.

At another point, he asked Welly why he worked for the mermaid creatures.  “The scalae?” Welly sniffed.  “Well, I suppose you have to work for someone, eh?  My employment options are somewhat limited around here.”  His pale ghost of a smile came back.  “You know the secret to success, don’t you?  Get up early, work late ... and strike oil.”  He looked at Johnny expectantly.

Johnny cast about for a suitable reply and came up with: “Um, Benjamin Franklin?”

Welly sighed.

“Joey Adams,” Larissa supplied.

Johnny blinked.  “I don’t know ...”

Larissa spoke up immediately.  “Joey Adams, born Joseph Abramowitz, January 6, 1911.  Humor columnist for the New York Post, author of The Borscht Belt, ...”

Johnny knew better than to let her really get rolling.  “Right, sorry.  A bit before my time, I think.  But, you were saying? about the scalas? or, scalae, or whatever?”

Welly shrugged.  “What’s to say?  They need an opener, and I open.  It’s not much of a gig, but it’s what I do.  Keeps me in fishes while I hammer out the act.”

“Fishes?” Johnny asked.  “Is that what they pay you?”

Welly arched an eyebrow and waved out at the unbroken expanse of water.  “Common currency around these parts, as you might guess.  What do you think we eat around here?”

Talking to Welly made Johnny feel a bit dim.  “Uh, sure, that makes sense.  But couldn’t you just catch your own fish?”

Welly sighed.  “I know I must cut a dashing figure in this outfit”—he gestured at his yellow-trimmed jacket, which was still dripping on the deck, although it must have been days since he’d come on board by this point—“but the fact of the matter is, I have a lethargic nature.  That is, I’m somewhat leisurely in my approach to piscine acquisition.”  Johnny blinked at him, and Welly sighed again.  “I’m like this horse I bet on one time: it was so slow, the jockey kept a diary of his trip.”

Johnny turned back to Larissa for help.  “Henny Youngman,” she put in.

Pretty much all the conversations with Welly went like that.  Which is why Johnny almost felt relieved when, after what he guessed was three or four days of travel, Roger called out from the flying bridge: “Oy! sea monster ahead!”

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Guides: Benny Millares

[This is one post in a series about people who have had a great impact on my life.  You may wish to read the introduction to the series.]

I moved to southern California in 2007.  While The Mother had lived in this area before, I was in a strange new place where I knew no one and recognized nothing.  Little things were different: when I ordered chow mein I got chop suey, and when I referred to interstates by their numbers alone, I got funny looks from the natives for leaving off the definite article.  And of course I was starting a new job where I knew no one except the few people I’d met during my interview.

I started on the 2nd day of July (because the 1st was a Sunday).  Another person started on the same day as I did—someone who had also migrated from the East Coast, who also had long hair and a scruffy beard, whose name differed from mine by a single vowel and one doubled consonant.  Oh, he was significantly taller and far more Cuban than I, but we were doomed to be confused with each other for my entire six-year tenure there.  This was how I met Benny Millares.

Independence Day was during our first week of work.  Both of us had left our families back on the East Coast to work on the move, so we were both alone in corporate housing.  Had it been up to me, I probably just would have sat at home and maybe watched some fireworks on televsion.  But Benny convinced me we should go out.  We drove around the Hollywood Hills, window-shopped the ritzy houses in Bel Air, cruised up and down the Sunset Strip for a while.  We ended up in Venice Beach, just wandering around, stopping to chat with random strangers, watching fireworks when we could get to a place we could see them.  I’d like to say this is the sort of thing I’d done in my twenties, but the honest truth is I was never the sort to do that sort of thing on my own.  Oh, I’d tag along if my friends suggested it, but I was never the instigator.  This incident, on my third day of knowing him, became a metaphor for our relationship: he constantly forces me out of my comfort zone, pushes me to try new things, think outside the box, do more, be better.

When I ran my own business, I was usually the thinker and my employees were the doers.  But I could never think big enough to have that relationship with Benny.  It was always he who had the grand ideas and I who followed along, implementing as hard as I could and trying to keep up.  This was one of many role reversals we went through at work: first he despaired of ever seeing any change in the status quo but I was optimistic, then I lost hope while he found it; for a while, I was his boss, then he became mine.  But it was our respective roles as designer vs programmer that most defined us.  He’d think ’em up, and I’d code ’em down.

Benny stayed on after I left that job, but only for about six more months.  At that point he’d squirreled away enough money to afford to move to his Florida compound with his wife, mother, stepfather, daughter, son-in-law, and grandson.  A couple of months ago, I was able to parlay a work conference to Orlando into a bit of a family vacation—myself, the eldest, and the Smaller Animal went, while the girls stayed home.  Since Orlando is only two hours away from Benny’s new place, we knew we had to at least drop in for a visit.  But Benny, on top of being the deep thinker, hard worker, and gregarious extrovert, is also a generous soul, so we ended up staying there for several days.  I knew his wife, of course, having spent many meals and a few nights in their company in California, and I’d met his daughter a couple of times, but I didn’t know the rest of the family yet.  But I believe it really is true that good people attract other good people into their spheres, and all of Benny’s family are good people.  His stepfather welcomed us, his mother cooked breakfast for us, his wife cooked dinner for us, his daughter and son-in-law sat with us, watching movies and drinking beers.  And his grandson and the Smaller Animal spent nearly every waking minute togther.  All three of us had an excellent time and we hope we can go back again someday.

This just further illustrates why I’m pleased to know Benny.  He’s taught me, he’s managed me, he’s challenged me, he’s given to me and been willing to accept from me as well: the very definition of friendship, as far as I’m concerned.  Without Benny, my time at that job would have been quite different, and possibly much shorter.  He introduced me to Android phones, Cuban food, and e-cigarettes.  He’s traveled with me, eaten with me, and entertained me time and again with stories of his many jobs prior to his software career.  He’s been there when I needed him, and he continues to be available even though he lives on the other side of the continent.  I can easily say I’m a better—and more well-rounded—person for knowing him.




[For this exercise, I also asked my two boys to contribute their thoughts about our hosts.  The eldest gave me the following few paragraphs.  The Smaller Animal provided a few disconnected sentences at the very end, but it was like pulling teeth.  That’s more due to his shy nature than any lack of enthusiasm though.  Basically, he only talks when you’d rather he were quiet.  But I know that he really enjoyed hanging out with Anthony and considers him a new friend.]





Hey, how’s it going.  It’s me, the blog owner’s kid.  He posted my story about a bard one time? remember? no?  Well, good.  That story really kinda sucked.  Totally pulled the ending out of my ass.  Regardless, I’m pretty sure about five people are going to read this: my dad, my mom, Benny, and whoever else reads this blog for fun (the weirdos).  Anyways, enough grilling on my dad’s blog, let’s get to the meat and bones here.

Let me start off by saying: I’m still a minor.  If I walked up to some random 35 year old man, and tried to strike up a conversation, he’d brush me off.  Comparatively, if I walked up to some 14 year old person, and tried to strike up a conversation with them, they’d probably at least tolerate me.  It’s an unfortunate aspect of our society, that we think kids are stupider or less wise or whatever than adults (which is total BS, by the way).  But thankfully, there’s a lot of people who consider that opinion to be the stupidest thing possible.  And I’m friends with people like that.  I’m friends with Benny.

So, I’m guessing my dad is gonna shove this in the middle of his blog post, so I won’t try to explain who Benny is, I’ll just tell you why I like him.  He’s amenable, happy, and actually pretty fun to debate psychology and the future of life and immortality with.  Seriously, we talked about all that.  Again, he’s a fairly old guy with a fully grown daughter with a child of her own.  And he discussed philosophy with me.  Maybe that’s not super impressive to some people, but to me that really speaks to a level of understanding, that just because there’s a huge generation gap between us doesn’t mean we can’t chat and debate and argue.

So, earlier, I said I considered Benny to be my friend, and I can say that with complete sincerity.  Not only for all those reasons up there, but also because he’s an amazingly gracious host.  He accommodated us, even after we showed up at like 5 or 6 in the morning, gave us directions to his house in the middle of buttfuck nowhere, paid for things that he really didn’t need to ... I mean, come on.  Tell me right now you wouldn’t at least talk to the guy.

Anyways, I’ve fulfilled my obligations.  Goodbye, five people reading this, and if you’re among those five people, Benny: hey.  How ya’ doin’?





One thing that I liked about Benny’s house was the cats.  They are like Fred and George, but they have collars ... I can’t remember what their names were, but the one that looked like Fred was named either Tiger or Lion—I think it’s Tiger, actually.  I liked the pool, and I liked how there’s a waterfall at the pool.  I liked the drums that were in the shed place, too. 

I liked playing with Anthony because he’s cool.  He’s fun to play with.  He likes the same stuff I do, I think.  I’d like to go visit him again sometime.





So there you have it.  Thanks again for having us Benny.  And thanks for being such an awesome guy.

Showdown at the Corporate Corral

This week I had one of those moments at work where I realized I was fighting battles on several fronts and I felt like everyone was attacking me.  I hasten to stress that it only felt this way: after taking a few moments to step back and contemplate, I realized that everyone was just trying to get things done in what they thought would be the best, most productive way.  Not that any of us could agree on what the best, most productive way was, of course.  But, the point is, we weren’t in it to try to tear the other person down.  Coming to that realization enabled me to calm down and leap back into the fray with a little more gentility than my initial reaction.  Being able to step back and reassess is a valuable skill, by the way, although one that only came with experience in my case.  But that’s not the main topic I want to explore today.

The primary thing that this incident set me to pondering is why we bother to fight these battles at all.  Hey, we’re getting paid either way, right?  Why not just shut up and do whatever people want, even if you know it’s doomed to failure?  Well, the most altruistic viewpoint on this is that that’s a pretty apathetic stance to take: if you do that, aren’t you really saying you don’t care about the company you work for?  If you cared, you’d want the company to succeed by doing things properly, and not to waste time having to recover from failures.  By taking a stand and fighting for what you believe is right, you’re saying that you love your company and want to save it time (and therefore money) by increasing efficiency and aiming for victory.  Cue patriotic music here.

Now, I’m not saying there’s not an element of that in most of us who find ourselves embroiled in an argument over the “right” way to do something at work.  In my line of work, I think a lot of people really do care about whether their company succeeds or not, and, when they stop bothering to insert themselves into every discussion, it generally means they’ve checked out and they’re just daydreaming about job interviews.  But, let’s face it: enlightened self-interest only gets you so far.  At our cores, we’re generally motivated by things which have a more personal bent—we work to bring ourselves pleasure, and avoid ourselves pain.

My friend and former boss Benny believes that there’s simply a joy in being passionate about something.  That there’s an intellectual thrill in concentrated debate, and that this is how you grow and expand your knowledge.  If you can manage to defend your position with intensity but without dogma, you can either convert others to your point of view, or you can become converted yourself, and that’s a win-win proposition.  Either way someone leaves the conversation more enlightened than when they went in, and that’s a laudable goal.

I think it’s more complex than that, because I think people are more complex.  I’m not saying Benny’s wrong, of course ... just that he’s only right for Benny.  Everyone is going to have slightly different motivations for why they’re holding on to their viewpoints like a starving dog with a bone, and I think it’s worthwhile for each person to figure out why for themselves.  When we understand our own drives and ambitions, we can manage them better, and recognize when they’re about to lead us astray.  Which they do sometimes.

Now, let me take a brief detour here to point out that self-analysis is inherently flawed.  That topic could fill its own blog post, but for now suffice it to say that I firmly believe that when someone starts a sentence with “I’m the sort of person who ...” it’s time to put your skeptical glasses on.  So take what I’m saying here with a grain of salt; I try to do the same myself.

To understand why I can’t seem to help getting embroiled in these work debates, I need to tell you a story, and before I can tell you a story, I need to tell you about my dad.

My father is an interesting man with whom I have a complicated relationship, but we don’t need to go into too many details.  For the purposes of this particular story, what you need to know is that he’s a self-made man.  He went to work in a paper mill as a scalesman, a job that requires no education whatsoever, and worked his way up to being an industrial engineer, a job that typically requires a college degree.  In fact, he often said he was one of only three people in the history of his company to be given the IE title without a degree.  All that I knew about corporate culture in America before I got my own first job as a programmer, I learned from my father.

People share war stories and frustrations with their families, so it should come as no surprise that I knew some of the more egregious sins of middle management before I’d ever experienced them myself.  Here’s one so pervasive it’s almost cliché: the manager asks the employee to do something which the employee knows damn well can’t possibly work.  This situation arises because middle managers don’t actually know anything about how the business works, but they always think they do.  (To be fair, there are exceptions to this rule.  Just very rare exceptions.)  The employees know, because they’re the ones who have to do all the work.  But somehow the managers never seem to want to listen to them.  (I have theories on why this is too, but that will have to wait for another blog post.)  This is the sort of thing Scott Adams and Mike Judge are thankful for, but the rest of us just despise.  From listening to my dad, it seemed like this sort of thing happened all the time.  And, I have to say: my experience in the corporate world doesn’t contradict that impression.

So, how did my father handle these situations?  Very simple.  First, he pointed out why the project was not going to work.  He talked to as many people as possible about it.  If the manager persisted, he would put his objections in writing (memo, email, whatever).  If the manager told him to do it anyway (in writing), he just went ahead and did it.  Then, when the project inevitably failed, my father got to say “I told you so” ... with supporting documentation, even.

Now you have enough background to hear the story of the first time this ever happened to me.  I hadn’t been working at my first corporate job for even a year yet.  I tried to talk my boss out of the disastrous plan, then I put it all in writing (trying not to be a dick about it), then I went ahead and did it.  When it failed, I went to him with email in hand and said “I told you so.”  I don’t remember the exact words, but basically my boss looked at me and said, “Yeah, you were right.  Now go fix it.”

And this is when I discovered that the “satisfaction” of saying “I told you so” is vastly overrated.  Perhaps for my dad it’s enough to sustain him.  But, for me, it pales in comparison to the teeth-grinding frustration of having to do the work twice when you knew goddamn well it wasn’t going to work the first time.  In the years since then, I’ve developed an almost pathological aversion to doing things I know are going to fail.  Which brings us full circle to those heated arguments at work.

Look, I try to pick my battles.  If I feel like you have more knowledge or (more importantly) more experience than I do on a given topic, I try not to put up too much of a fight even if I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.  And of course one has to be congnizant that, if you go up against someone who’s already volunteered to do some quantity of work and you actually do manage to convince everyone that they’re going to do it the wrong way, it’s almost certain you’re going to be volunteered to do it “right.”  Which is not always desireable, either from the time aspect or the responsibility aspect.  But, if we’re talking about something I have experience with, and we’re talking about going down a road that I’ve been down before, and if I know damn well that when my team or my company did it this way last time (or the last two times, or the last three times) it was an abysmal failure ... well, then, I’m going to be practically psychotic in my opposition to that plan.  It’s partially because I want to save the company money and time, sure, and it’s partially because I want what’s best and most efficient and most productive for the team and for the business, no doubt, but, if I’m being honest, it’s probably mostly because I just hate to make the same mistake twice, and I positively despise making it thrice.  I don’t even like to watch people doing work I know is doomed to failure.  Makes me feel dirty.  Like watching a car accident unfold when you know you could do something about it but are afraid to get involved.  I feel like a bad person for letting it happen.

Although ... it seems to me like the fact that my motives may not be pure does not preclude them being a benefit to others.  I hope that people will take my passion—as annoying and frustrating as it may be sometimes—for the advantage it can be, and use it to its fullest.  Don’t look my gift anger in the mouth.  Just because my intentions are somewhat selfish doesn’t mean they can’t save you some heartache down the line.  And that’s worth a little ranting ... isn’t it?

a brief intermission

Rather lame for me to skip a regular post two weeks in a row, but I had a pretty important project at work to polish off before Monday, so I haven’t had as much time this weekend as I’d like.  And, as the hour grows later, I find it less and less likely that I’m going to come up with anything approaching a reasonable number of words for this week’s post.  So I think I’ll just wait until next week when I have a reasonable chance of coming up with something worth reading.

Tune in then.  Unless you’ve got something better to do.

Nothing to Say Again ... Yet Again

I can’t think of anything to write about this week.

Well, actually, I thought of several things to write about, but all of them seemed like they’d be more work than fun, and, if I spend several hours writing something that I don’t enjoy writing, you’re not going to enjoy reading it either.  Trust me on that one.  Maybe next week I can get my thoughts more organized and actually complete one of the several ideas I have in my “topics” file.

So, this is the third time I’ve written a post like this, and I seem to have started a tradition of using these posts as a retrospective on the blog itself.  And far be it from me to dismiss tradition, even one that I invented myself, mostly accidentally.

So, my handy dandy blogger.com control panel tells me I have 219 posts.  Checking how many of them are “interstitial” (that is, posts which mostly say that I’m not going to do a full post), I see 79, although some of those are more substantial than others (such as the very first “nothing to say” post), and of course 34 of them are posts over on my Other Blog.  Counting the Perl posts but discounting the remainder of the interstitials, that would leave us with 174 posts, which average around 1,500 words each.  At least, 1,500 is what I generally shoot for.  Why, you ask?  Well, I suppose it’s because I wrote my very first post, then went back and counted how many words it was, and it was 1,536, and I said to myself: that sounds about right.  Of course sometimes I fall short, and the post is only around 1,200, or even, very rarely, between 800 and 900.  But, then again, sometimes I manage to crank out 2,000-word monsters, so it probably all balances out.  If we figure 1,500 words as an average, that would be 261,000 words, which is pretty overwhelming.  If I just do a raw count of words in all the files in my blog folder (which not only includes several half-finished posts that haven’t been published yet, but also counts words in quotes and links and other things which I typically exclude in my personal word count, and would also count the interstitials), I get 250,001, plus the chapters of my novel (in a whole separate folder) adds another 56,687 words, for a total of 306,688.  (Also, it might be that there are some posts which aren’t in the directory: the very first post wasn’t in there, as it happens, although I downloaded it so I could count it just now.  But there might be others missing as well.)

Either way, somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter million words doesn’t seem an unreasonable guess.  That’s a lot of words for you not to read.  I do continue to remind you not to read this blog, as if the title weren’t sufficient.  Occasionally I post links to this blog, especially on my other blog, when I don’t want to repeat myself and I’ve already expounded on a topic plenty.  Inevitably, this leads to someone’s smartass comment: “I went to the link you provided, but it said not to read it, so I didn’t.”  Oh ho ho.  Perhaps it actually does bear saying explicitly: I don’t particularly need you to remind me of the name of this blog.  I’m the one who named it.  If you’re confused about the name, please go back and read the first post, or even go back and peruse the first ”nothing to say” post, which contains some interesting meanderings about the nature of paradox and its application to a blog which I continue to write weekly at the same time I exhort the public not to read it.  Go on and read (or reread) those; I’ll wait.

Done?  Good.  Let’s move on then.

The name is really more of a warning that you have to make a conscious choice to read a post here, despite warnings to the contrary.  Perhaps a more realistic name would have been ”Warning: Management assumes no responsibility for any time wasted while perusing the content herein.  By continuing to read, you assume all responsibility for any crappy opinions you may encounter, any statements that may cause you to be enraged and/or disgusted, and/or any words that might be considered ‘bad’ by more sensitive readers.  The reader proceeds at his or her own risk.”  But, you know ... “Do Not Read This Blog!” just seemed shorter.

So I keep on writing and telling you not to read, and that’s unlikely to change.  After a quarter million words, why stop now?  I seem to have a winning formula going.  Plus, I’m starting to enjoy it.  At least a little.  Theoretically, you do too ... else why keep reading?  I doubt anyone is assigning you my blog posts as homework, so you’ve exercised your freedom of choice to read this far.  Said freedom of choice may realistically be better exercised elsewhere, if you ask me, but you’re a big boy or girl and don’t need my permission nor my advice.  In fact, you’re sort of ignoring my opinion to read all about my opinions on various topics.  And, at the end of the day, that’s the real reason this blog is named “do not read.”  Because, that way, if you ignore me and read it anyway, you’re forced to confront the fact that you can’t possibly listen to anything I have to say without simulataneously ignoring something I have to say.  It’s a great reminder that you should take crap you read on other people’s blogs with large quantities of sodium chloride.  And it makes you confront the paradoxes inherent in life by making you live one.  And you know how I feel about paradox.

So keep reading, if you must.  I’ll keep writing.  Except when I don’t.  It’s a crazy ol’ world we live in, but it’s the only one we’ve got.  May as well make the most of it.

Perl blog post #35

Today I waxed somewhat rhapsodic about a Perl-related Kickstarter project, over on the Other Blog.  There’s very little technical mumbo-jumbo, so feel free to pop over even if you’re not a fellow technogeek.  It’s mostly about the interesting choices that Kickstarter gives us techies sometimes.

A Reflection on Self-Contradiction

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. [Emerson]

No doubt you’ve heard this quote before, although some people seem to miss the “foolish” part.  Emerson isn’t bagging on consistency here.  What he’s talking about is dogma: getting stuck on an idea and refusing to let go, even in the face of contradictory evidence.  Perhaps it would help to look at the context of the quote:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.  With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.  He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall.  Speak what you think today in hard words, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood?  Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh.  To be great is to be misunderstood.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Self-Reliance (1841)

What Emerson is advising is to admit when you’re wrong.  To embrace change, even in your own mind, and to refuse to look back and second-guess yourself.  To be completely comfortable with contradicting yourself.

I especially love how he says that a foolish consistency is “adored by little statesmen.”  If you follow politics even casually (which is about all I can stand to follow it, myself), you know that if a politician today dares to change their mind, their opponents will leap on them instantaneously.  “Flip-flopper!” is the typical epithet.  Refusal to compromise one’s principles has become a virtue, although refusal to compromise should probably not be a virtue in politics no matter what exactly one is refusing to compromise.  But, if we look back to Emerson, we see that those who do not “flip-flop” are employing a foolish consistency, which then speaks volumes about the volume of their brainpower.

Of course, the smart guys aren’t typically the ones we elect.  Adlai Stevenson is a great example.  He’s famous for two things: being intelligent, articulate and erudite, and failing to get elected to the presidency despite trying 3 times in a row.  Stevenson once said to reporters:

Isn’t it conceivable to you that an intelligent person could harbor two opposing ideas in his mind?

Stevenson here goes a bit beyond Emerson, who talked about believing something today that was the opposite of what you believed yesterday.  Stevenson takes the next step and is perfectly willing to believe two opposite things at the same time.  For a Baladocian such as myself, this is an attractive proposition.

Of course, we needn’t limit ourselves to politicians—poets have weighed in as well.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

— Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass, “Song of Myself” (51)

In just a few words, Whitman takes aim at why we contradict ourselves, and why it’s perfectly acceptable to do so.  The landscape of the human mind is vast, Whitman says.  Just as one vista may contain both mountains and canyons, both ocean and desert, so too does a person contain many ideas which are antithetical to each other.  This often leads us to feel conflicted.  We should not.  We should embrace the paradoxes in our nature.  Stephen Fry (who is neither a politician nor a poet, but easily as eloquent as either) puts it thus:

So we have first and foremost to grow up and recognise that to be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions.  I want this, but need that.  I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.  I’m maddened by this institution yet I prize it above all others.

— Stephen Fry, BAFTA speech, 2010

Oscar Wilde (once portrayed by Stephen Fry, perhaps not coincidentally) was, as usual, more succinct:

The well bred contradict other people.  The wise contradict themselves.

And now we’ve progressed from self-contradiction being acceptable, through it being something to embrace, and ended up with it being a sign of wisdom.  Sort of makes you want to start contradicting yourself right away.

Or maybe not.

At the bottom, I think all of these great speakers were saying something about the human condition.  Which is perhaps all that any writer—whether of essays, plays, poems, speeches, or merely witticisms—wants to do.  You can write things that sound pretty, but unless there is some Truth in it, it won’t have much lasting impact.  We all search for insight, both internally and externally, and the thing we most wish to be revealed is ourselves.  It’s difficult to understand ourselves from within ourselves, just as the classic fishbowl analogy teaches us.  Those folks outside the fishbowl have a much different perspective than those of us for whom 115.5 cubic inches of water are our entire world.  So we want those people who have the ability to express themselves with some flair to express something about ourselves that we can’t see from inside.

Of course, we also hate to be criticized, for other people to point out our flaws.  Yet I think we crave it at the same time.  Just another example of our inherent tendency toward self-contradiction.

I know personally that I hate to be wrong.  Sometimes I’m accused of hating to admit that I’m wrong.  But that’s not the same thing at all, and I don’t believe I have the latter problem.  To work hard not to be wrong—to attempt to forge the future in such a way as to be as good and right as you can manage—is admirable.  To refuse to admit you’re wrong—to deny the immutable past in which everyone already recognizes your folly—is just self-delusional.  So is it self-contradictory to work overtime to prevent the future mistake, while simultaneously being completely comfortable with those in the past?  Perhaps.  If so, I don’t particularly care.  I’ve been wrong many times in the past, and I know I’ll be wrong many more times in the future.  That doesn’t mean I have to accept it meekly.

Willingness to accept your mistakes is also part of being human.  To consult one last great orator:

I am human, and I make mistakes.  Therefore my commitment must be to truth and not to consistency.

— Gandhi

Mohandas K.Gandhi often changed his mind publicly.  An aide once asked him how he could so freely contradict this week what he had said just last week.  The great man replied that it was because this week he knew better.

— a Detroit News editorial

Indeed.  This week, I’m ever so much smarter than I was last week.  Last week I was a moron.  By next week, I shall be a genius.  I’ll be different, but I’ll still be me.  Misunderstood, multitudinous, opposing, conflicted, occasionally wise, always human.

Perl blog post #34

For the past week and a half or so, I’ve been in Orlando with the Larger Animal and the Smaller Animal.  Last Sunday in particular, I was exploring The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios, so I missed a blog post for the first time in quite a while.  Sorry about that.

Part of the reason I was in Orlando was to attend this year’s YAPC, which you can read about over on the Other Blog.  I also spent some time with an old friend who lives about an hour and half to two hours north of Orlando, in the Silver Springs area.  Silver Springs is where you can take a glass-bottomed boat ride, which my grandparents took me on a few times as a child, so that was particularly awesome getting to share that with my children.  (If I know you personally, I’ve probably sent you a link to the many many pics I took while I was there.  I’ve just added the final pic and tweaked everything to perfection, but Dropbox apparently hates me at the moment.  It may take a couple of days before the final pics are there.  If you know me personally and I haven’t sent you the link, feel free to email me and ask.)

Traveling this year was particularly hideous, although much better on the way back than the way out.  Almost makes me want to stay home next year.  But I probably shan’t.

Anyway, read all about the conference if you like.  If you don’t like, you’ll have to wait until next week for further excitement here.

Perl blog post #33

 Well, it’s almost time for another YAPC, so I’m firing up the tech talk on my Other Blog.  Pop over if you’d like to see me solve a little mini-mystery in Perl.  I’ll likely be doing tech topics for the next couple of weeks, assuming I survive a week in Orlando with my elder two children.  Wish me luck!

Chapter 19 (concluded)

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Johnny looked desperately back at the fins.  There had to be something he could do ... something with his new abilities, perhaps?  But, so far, every use of them had involved being in contact with something, or sensing something far away.  He didn’t see how any of that could apply in this situation.

Suddenly he had a brainstorm.  He dashed back into the stacks and located Roger’s crossbow.  Then he sprinted up the ladder to the flying deck, barely using his hands at all.  He fumbled for the cabinet where Roger kept the flammable items and pulled out one of the bottle-looking flares.  Slamming the crossbow down on the deck, he put both feet on the brace and yanked hard on the cable.  It only clicked once, but this was a short distance shot, so that should be enough.  He loaded the bottle and shot almost immediately—Roger had taught him not to overthink his aim and just trust his instincts.  The shot was true, and the flare entered the water just behind the lobster woman ... just in front of the shark and marlin.  Almost immediately the green and red lights blossomed, under the water.  The marlin-headed scala immediately surfaced and began flailing about; Johnny thought she might be temporarily blinded.  The shark’s fin, however, cut cleanly through the underwater fireworks and continued straight on to the racing swimmers.

The head of the demonic mermaids’ leader burst out of the water just aft of the lobster scala’s tail.  Her teeth snapped together thrice; the sound reminded Johnny of hearing bear traps snap shut on televison.  The lobster woman screeched an alien gabble and increased her speed.  The shark scala breached and dove; the brown fin sunk cleanly into the depths.  The “inspirational” message to her companion had cost her some momentum though; Johnny could see she’d have to work hard to catch back up.  He took the opportunity to slide down the ladder to the deck railing again.

His mind raced.  He could take over the wheel from Bones, perhaps steer the ship into the lobster woman.  But he couldn’t really see from back there, and the great craft was hardly a precision instrument.  He’d be just as likely to hit Roger.  “Can you make it rain, or snow, or something?” he asked Aidan desperately.

Aidan kept his eyes on the race.  “I could do better than that: I can make the water around our lobster friend cling to her so she can’t escape it.  The problem is, by the time I can do that, she’s well into a whole different patch of water.  I could do it ahead of them, but then how do I keep it from affecting the good captain as well?  No, Johnny, I’ve made her slick, and I stopped the octopus lady throwing her stones, and I held the lampfish one up long enough to take her out of it.  But unless their leader gives me an opening to interfere with her as well, I’m likely to be of little further use in this contest.”

Johnny looked toward the far shore—it was actually the nearer shore by this time, as the race was well past its halfway point.  Roger was still flying through the water at a speed that beggared belief, but the lobster creature was gaining.  Slowly, almost impercetibly, but gaining.  It seemed likely that it would catch her before they reached the race’s end.

Then the shark scala rose out of the water like something in a horror movie, directly in Roger’s path.  Teeth flashed and arms with long hands and twisted fingers reached for her.  Without slowing whatsoever, Roger turned her crawl into a sidestroke.  One hand flicked out, almost like a caress, and touched the shark woman’s cheek; thick black blood began to spurt instantly.  The shark’s head lunged at her nonetheless, but Roger was already halfway past it.  She kicked at the scala hard, again using it to propel herself forward.  With an unholy screech, the shark crashed into the lobster.

After that, the race became pleasantly boring.




At the finish line, Roger stood in ankle-deep water, bent over with her hands on her knees, dripping and panting.  The scalae were a few feet offshore, in deeper water, their terrifying marine eyes promising a slow grisly death if the opportunity ever presented itself.  Johnny sincerely hoped the opportunity did not.

Finally Roger regained her breath and stood up.  She was still naked, still unconcerned.  “A fair contest!” she called to the mermaids.

There was much grunting and squalling, but the shark waved her hand and they fell silent.  “You cut me,” she said in an inflectionless tone.

“Aye,” Roger agreed amiably.  “No rule against that.  No rules against anything, for that matter.  And I just nicked ye a bit.  Ye’ll survive, I wager.”  She stared a challenge back at the leader.  “A fair contest,” she repeated.  It wasn’t a question, but still she seemed to be expecting an answer.

The silence stretched.  The shark woman ground her hideous teeth.  Finally, she spoke.  “A fair contest.”

Roger and Aidan let out identical exhalations of relief.  “Was there some doubt about that?” Johnny asked under his breath.

Aidan answered likewise, in a half-whisper.  “No doubt about the reality,” he breathed.  “But the perception of a losing party is always an open question.”  Johnny nodded.

Roger shaded her eyes with one hand.  “Our opener then?”

The scalae pushed someone forward.  It was the blue-skinned boy (or boy-like creature) who had brought the starter shell.  He reluctantly trudged through the water to the shore.

His skin was a medium shade of aquamarine.  The dark, slicked back hair was almost a helmet; it was short, cut high above the odd earfins, with just the hint of a widow’s peak in the front over a high forehead.  The eyes were a pale, watery blue, the nose looked lumpy and squashed, the mouth was small, and the chin weak.  The black fins where ears should be opened and closed as if they might be gills instead of hearing apparatus.  Both hands and feet (which were bare) were webbed.  He had on a simple jacket and pants, black, trimmed with narrow yellow stripes.  The jacket hung open in the front, exposing a tight, thin shirt which appeared to be just a shade bluer than his skin.  The wireframe glasses and a habit of drywashing his hands gave him a prissy air, as if he were an accountant or librarian, and, when he spoke, his voice was vaguely reminiscent of old Droopy Dog cartoons.  And yet he reminded Johnny of a nerdy teenager more than a dusty old man, for some reason he could not put a finger on.

He splashed up to Roger and sighed loudly.  “Captain?” he asked.

“Aye,” she replied, her eyes sparkling.  “Opener?”

He sniffed.  “Welly Banks, ma’am.  At your service.”


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Chapter 19 (continued)

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The starting and ending points had been chosen, and they were simply opposite sides of the lagoon within the lagoon.  If the inner lagoon had been a clock with 12 at the point where it flowed into the bigger body of water, the race would have been from roughly 4 o’clock to 10.  The shore here apparently dropped off precipitously just after entering the water, so there were only a few feet of sandy shelf for Roger to stand on.  The lobster-headed scala, of course, could not stand; she lay on her side in the thigh-high water, her irridescent blue-green shell curled up under her belly.  Johnny could see what seemed like a billion little legs on the underside of the tail, wriggling tirelessly and making tiny whirlpools.

Roger raised her head, still completely unabashed by her nudity, and looked each of them in the eye.  “Remember, lads and lassie, ye may do anything in yer ken to aid me.  Anything.  Ketch?”  Johnny and Aidan nodded.  Larissa just stared back with her overlarge, liquid eyes.  Aidan whispered something under his breath and Bones flew off to the stern.

The shark scala was a few feet away, in deeper water, on the opposite side of the racing lane from The Sylph.  She said nothing, but the look she gave the lobster woman promised dire consequences if she did not perform.  The other scalas (or scalae) bobbed up and down behind her, making various tortured noises that Johnny supposed must be meant to be encouraging.

Roger called over to the shark woman.  “Ho there!  You have a starter?”

The shark mouth opened, the teeth still fearsome even after continued exposure to them, and a weird gutteral cry came from its throat.  After perhaps half a minute, with the echoes of the call just starting to fade away, a blue face surfaced beside her.  This head was almost entirely human-looking except for its odd hue and the fact that it seemed to have black fin-like appendages where its ears should be.  The hair was black and slicked back, and an incongruous pair of wire-rimmed glasses sat upon a bulbous nose, their frames curled around the earfins.  This new creature raised an arm, showing that he was wearing a black shirt with yellow-striped cuffs, and extended a blue hand with webbed fingers to the shark woman.  In it was what appeared to be large snail shell.

She took the shell and threw it at Aidan, hard.  The blue-skinned boy—for some reason, he reminded Johnny of a pimpled teenager—started to turn away, but the leader of the hellish mermaids put a leathery hand on his shoulder and held him there.

Johnny glanced over at Aidan, who was examing the shell.  He held it out over the water, palm upturned, and closed his eyes.  His lips moved, but Johnny could not make out any chanting.  After a few seconds he opened his eyes and nodded at Roger.  She nodded back and rolled her shoulders while working her neck back and forth.  Johnny could hear the kinks popping out as she tossed her head.  Then she bent one knee and threw the other leg as far back as she could, reaching her hands out as though she meant to dive.  When she was utterly still, Aidan tossed the snail shell onto the shelf between Roger and her opponent.

The water was crystal clear, so Johnny could see the shell settle onto the sand.  He could see the lobter woman stretch her arms out like Roger’s and tense her tail.  He could see that the toes on Roger’s forward foot were curled firmly into the sand.  Roger and the lobster creature were both staring intently at the shell.  As they all watched, it began to jiggle.  Suddenly, the horns of the snail inside the shell popped out.

Then a lot of things happened at once.

Roger’s leg straightened like an uncoiling spring and she shot up into the air, but more forward than up.  The lobster woman flung her tail out straight behind her.  The engine of the The Sylph sprang to life, and it also started to move.  Roger hit the water in a smooth dive, but the lobster woman was suddenly on her back.  It tried to grab her and pull her back, or perhaps it meant to pull her down and drown her, but Roger was slick.  Neither the hard-shelled arms nor the dozens of tiny feet could hold on to her, and Roger shot out of the scala’s grasp and added insult to injury by pushing off its head with her trailing foot.  Now Roger was a pace ahead and gaining, as the lobster woman twisted her body around to pursue.

Meanwhile, The Sylph was keeping pace with Roger.  Still trying to recover from the violent start, Johnny looked around wildly.  “What can we do?” he asked Aidan over the roar of the fan.  And then, without waiting for an answer, “and who’s driving the damn boat?!”

The corners of Aidan’s mouth turned up slightly, but Johnny couldn’t really call it a smile.  “Bones,” he answered.  “And I’m trying to find something to do.  Unfortunately, my abilities are limited at this speed.  She can move even faster than I expected ...”

Johnny was still trying to process the first answer.  “Bones is driving??  He can’t drive!”

Aidan waved distractedly.  “As long as we’re just going in a straight line he should be fine.”  Still staring down into The Sylph’s wake, he slammed a fist down on the railing.  “Damn!  I can’t reach anything bigger than a pinkeen in this water.  The scalae have scared everything off.”

Johnny blinked.  “What’s a ... ?”

“Minnow,” Larissa supplied softly from his other side.

A loud screech-squawk came out of the brass speaker in the bow at the same time as a huge splash sent ripples against the side of the airboat.  “What the hell was ...” Johnny began, but in the next instant his question was answered when a second boulder the size of his head hit the water, this one much closer to Roger.  He looked back to where they’d left the scalae by the shore, but the only one visible was the octopus one, whose tentacles were wrapped around more rocks.  She was perfecting her aim now, and the third projectile looked sure to cave in Roger’s head.  Johnny heard Larissa hiss between her teeth, like a teakettle coming to boil, and just at that moment the moray woman surfaced from underneath Roger, her teeth flashing in the sourceless light.  Roger rolled smoothly onto her back, and the rock took the moray creature in the shoulder instead.  Roger kept rolling until she was back on her stomach without missing a stroke.  Still, the diversion had cost her: the lobster woman had halved the distance between them.

There was an unholy screeching noise from the direction of the shoreline, and Johnny glanced back to see the octopus scala covered in pinching crabs.  Aidan grunted in satisfaction.

But the shark fin and the marlin fin now crested the waterline, not far behind the lobster and gaining steadily.  “Good thing she didn’t challenge one of them,” Johnny mumbled.

“Choosing their slowest swimmer does have some downsides,” was Aidan’s sardonic reply.

“Wait, where’s the other one?”  Johnny had suddenly remembered the angler fish mermaid.

Aidan’s voice was strained.  “She went too deep.  I’ve got her.”  His knuckles tightened on the railing.  “Although I won’t be able to hold her long.  But, at this speed, I think she’s out of it now in any event.”


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Another reading week

Well, it’s another reading week for me, as I make yet another attempt to get back into my book.  Of course, the last time I had a reading week was nearly two years ago at this point, and it resulted in not a single further installment of the sputtering novel.  But, then again, I’ve had a fairly crappy year—starting from when I came back from sabbatical, really—and it’s only been recently that it’s shown any hope of getting better.  So that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking with it.  Still, my characters—Johnny Hellebore and Larissa, primarily—have never been far from the front of my mind, and I finally feel like it may be time to restart the cranky engine of fiction production.  I can’t promise you a new installment next week, of course, but you may see something.  If nothing else, I’m finding and fixing typos, poor word choices, mixed tenses, etc.  I haven’t reuploaded the corrections yet, but the master document is updated through long about the beginning of “chapter” 11.  (I put “chapter” in quotes because the divisions in the story don’t really correspond to the “chapters” I’ve come up with for the blog.  So I have no idea if these chapters are anything even approaching reality or not.)

Anyway, I have nothing new for you this week.  Please feel free to reread the beginning of the book, if you like (start here).  Or read for the first time, if you didn’t read it the first time.  It’s mildly entertaining, if I do say so myself.