My Semi-Mobile Prison

So, I didn't see anything in the news about it anywhere, but I was stuck in what became the worst traffic jam of my life on Friday.

I went up to Sunnyvale (a few miles north of San Jose) to work in our office there on the laptop that the VP of Sales is using. My employee came with me in his car with the intention of meeting his wife there and then going on to San Francisco for the weekend. I wasn't able to leave until 3PM, which is right at the cusp of when you would normally want to get out of that area before hitting bad traffic.

Many people know that there has been some construction going on south of Gilroy where there is a turn-off of the 152 that leads to Hollister. Although it usually doesn't happen to me, I got stuck in traffic there for about 20 minutes. I was a little frustrated, but okay.

I drove past the Hollister turn-off and accelerated back up to about 80MPH, went about two miles and noticed a CHP car leading a group of cars in front of me. Before I knew it, I had come to a complete stop.

10 minutes go by... we start moving a little. 30 minutes go by... then an hour... two hours and I've only traveled about 3 miles.

After every turn, when in the back of my mind I would picutre an end to the line of cars and signs of high-speeds ahead, I would always find a never-ending line of steel and brake lights.

I sent a text message to John (the IT Tech in my department), letting him know what was going on. I also sent messages to a few other people. I tried to make some phone calls but the calls rarely went through.

I passed the time by listening to a horde of CD's, scanning for radio stations that were in English (not much luck with that in Pacheco Pass), and finally by watching a movie on my laptop- the only one I had, "Blazing Saddles".

I also mastered the art of using "Gravity Power" to move my car. This involved coming up to a steep hill, turning my engine off, throwing it into neutral, and using the emergency-brake to control my speed. Whether I did or not, I'd like to think that I saved some gas this way...

The movie finished and the sun had set. I was still progressing very slowly. Earlier on, I had reached the lake at the East end of the pass. I could see a portion of the road on the other side of the lake and could make out what seemed to be two or three large trucks, all of them motionless.

After nearly losing my mind along with what must have been another 20,000 people, I finally reached the end of the line of cars. It seemed that one of the lanes was closed off due to an accident and they were nearly finished with the cleanup.

Now, the clock on my dash read 10:05! I sped off into the Valley below towards Los Banos where I could get something to eat.

I then sent another text message to John, telling him that I was finally on my way home. He then called me and told me that he and his wife had decided to cancel their trip to San Francisco and come back to Fresno. He had discovered the traffic jam for himself not far past Casa De Fruta, and had been there for about 45 minutes...

So, I suggested that he either turn around and go back to San Jose or hope that the authorities open up the second lane.

As it turned out, I stopped at Ryan's Place for a late dinner (which is always good) where one of the employees told me that a tire truck had caught fire over the pass. Since it was tires that was burning, there was nothing to do about it but let it burn itself out, which apparently took about 5 hours.

John sent me a message the next day saying that they were out right after midnight, which was about when I arrived at home.

To sum up, it took me 9 hours to drive from Sunnyvale to Fresno, which usually takes about 2.5 hours... I hope to never experience that kind of madness again.

Quotes from Everyone's Favorite Product Manager!

[This was first published on 07/30/08 - It's now 03/12/19 and I think it's safe to say that the person I'm speaking of below was Brian Gardner: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianjgardner001/]

Alright, this will probably only make you laugh if you work with me at Yosemite Technologies (or if you have ever worked with the person that I'm quoting).

I've compiled a list of snippets from emails that I've received from everyone's favorite VP, none other than 'The Doctor' himself- you should recognize who it is right away:


"I don't remember agreeing to this, so I'm assuming there is some mistake on my part."

"I had to simplify your slides both for compatibility and readability reasons. But we're going to need to move off of Powerpoint soon to avoid these issues as well as the risk of corruption you run with a frequently edited ppt file."

"I looked at what you wrote about the Watchguard option and am not comfortable with the fact that it doesn't seem to provide packet state inspection (commonly called spi or stateful packet inspection). SonicWall, iptables and the open source solution above provide this capability."

...Mind you, just about every firewall since 1998 has had SPI.

And my favorite conversation so far:

"Unless some development has occurred that we have not yet announced or planned, we don’t support the hyper-v vss writer for proxy backup. We talked about doing it but there wasn’t time with the current release. This is scheduled for development, potentially, later this year."

...It turns out that had already been developed, and everyone but this person (the product manager) knew about it.

"Are we talking about the same thing?"

My Favorite:

"Robin,

I've been designing and deploying bu architectures for over 10 yrs. I know this."

Me: "I don't see the point in discussing this any more."

This Country...

Is fucked and going nowhere fast.

I'm beyond the point of being upset and now I've just come to accept the fact that things will never change. People think that just because it's time to elect a new president that one of these schmucks is gonna save everyone's ass. Well, news-fucking-flash, when has that ever happened before? All of the people that might have actually been worth voting for were blotted out by the corporate-controlled media and have dropped out, so we're left with this group of douche-astronauts. How the hell do can you believe that fake-ass smirk that's always on Hillary's face? And do you really think that even Barack Obama truly has your interests at heart? People act as though once he gets into office he's going to pull a magic wand out of his ass and there'll be money raining down from heaven... all of a sudden global warming will be solved and we'll all have free health care. Wake up. It's been said that the American public has a collective memory of about two weeks. You'd better believe that's a fact.

My point is that we all know that just about everyone in this country... Democrat, Republican, Independent, Tree-Hugger, Arsonist, and Dog-Catcher wants RADICAL change after the shit that we've had to put up with over the last 8 years- but we're seriously FOOLING OURSELVES if we think for one second that we're going to see the kind of change that we're looking for in ANY of these candidates.

IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME- I dare your ass to try and prove me wrong. Just try... I need something to make me laugh after truly realizing how screwed we are.

Newt Gingrich and the War on Islam, er... Terror

Yesterday morning, my mom forwarded this video to me of Newt Gingrich speaking on the upcoming horrors of the War on Terror.

If you don't feel like watching all 6 minutes of it, I'll give it to you in a nutshell.

He basically says that he is really worried about the future, in that the Muslim extremists are going to do whatever they can to attack the United States on its home turf, and that we can't pull out of Iraq because we would be opening ourselves up to a world of hurt. He also says that we need to be more aggressive in going after countries like Iran, who 'have a great desire to acquire nuclear weapons and use them on us'.

Below was my response to all of this. You'll see that there were some things that I agreed with that I didn't mention above:


Right, I think I do agree with a couple of the things that he is saying, but he (like a lot of other people) is missing a big point. I'll get to that in a second.

First, I do agree with him when he talks about the seriousness of the situation… mostly. It's true that there are about 1.2 million Muslims in the UK and about 2 or 4 million in the US which could be sympathetic to the Taliban's cause. There are a lot of possibilities when it comes to a serious terrorist attack against a US city, even though it's odd that there haven't been any inside the US since 9/11 (and there are an aweful lot of unanswered questions about what really happened there- whether or not the government was involved or just turned a cold shoulder to it).

Secondly, he is absolutely right when he says that we should be worried about our civil rights/liberties and what might happen to them if there is another attack within the US. We already saw some of that with the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and the many other policy changes that the Bush adminsitration put into effect after 9/11. Another attack would certainly bring more of that.

As far as his comments go about Muslims being a threat in general, I think that he is misrepresenting the religion as a whole when he makes it sound like all people who practice it are a threat. It is true that just about every country in the world (other than the United States) absolutely hates Israel, not just Muslims, and they would love to see it disappear. There's more to say about that, but I think it's a mistake to fan the flames of the "Chistians vs. Muslims" Religious War. If you ask me, the "War on Terror" may as well be called the "War on Islam", and I'm sure there are a lot of Christians who feel that that's what it is even though they may not admit it. I don't think that just because the bible says that, for example, the Palestinians are the eternal enemies of the Jews, means that the "Christian Nations" have to have the attitude that we have a devine right to the planet and everyone else is our enemy, without a second thought.

This all makes me fell like people who talk like this are like Doctors who are only looking at and attempting to treat the symptoms of a disease, while completely ignoring the cause. The people who want to destroy us don't "hate us because of our freedom" (the biggest line of crap ever- thank you Mr. Bush), they hate us because we:

1. Support Israel by giving them Billions of dollars in aid (our tax money BTW) every year, which they turn around and use to attack and kill Palestinians and Lebonese.

2. Are constantly threatening to go to war with countries who have not even begun to fully develop nuclear technology for power plants, which is a far cry from developing nuclear weapons. While at the same time supply Israel and their nuclear arsenal to the point where they have more undeclared warheads than the UK even has.

3. Invaded Iraq and have brought that country to ruins, where hundreds of thousands of civilians have been killed and millions more have fled as refugees (less than a few hundred of them have been allowed into the US), when it's plain as day that we had absolutely no reason to go in there and do what we did but to control the country's oil wealth and/or carried out revenge on it's leader because our President's father was once given a death threat by him. Apart from all of that, the people who still live there, on average, have very little clean drinking water and about 2 hours of electricity everyday.

4. Since the beginning of the Cold War (at least), have been involved in overthrowing Democratic/Socialist governments all over the world so that we could put leaders in their place that were sympathetic to our causes. This is also why many other countries around the world, not just Muslims, aren't very found of the US. We have overthrown at least 14 governments in the past 100 years or so. Many people think that our country is innocent and doesn't deserve the hate that is directed toward our government, but they're either ignorant of these facts or are just in denial. This looks like an excellent book on the subject. This is also a big reason why people in Venezuala rally behind someone like President Hugo Chavez as long as they have- he's very anti-American and has been extremely innovative in helping South American countries in their attempt to rebound from the economic and social peril that can usually be blamed on the US or one of it's entities/corporations.

I could go on, but my point is that I believe we all really need to stop for a moment, take a step back, and try to look at things from as many different perspectives as possible. Maybe if our foreign policy wasn't what it is and maybe if we weren't so narrow-minded we could find a peaceful solution to all of this, without just automatically taking the Rambo approach to everything.

HP Sucks.

Here is an email that I sent to everyone in my company this morning.

Subject: Justice is Served, although Revenge would have been sweet...

Body:

I just thought that everyone who had one of those HP ZD7000 laptops that died over the past couple of years would like to know that a settlement was reached in a class action lawsuit against HP.

I haven't completed an official count yet, but I know that we've had nearly a dozen of those laptops (or more) that completely failed over the past two years or so. I had diagnosed all of them as either having defective power connectors on the motherboard, or a faulty graphics card- either of which were fatal to the health of those machines (which cost us about $2000 each when they were initially purchased).

In court, HP continued to uphold their argument that nothing was ever wrong with any of these machines and that they shouldn't be held accountable…
…Corporate swine.

The bottom line is, I have already found 6 of these machines that are eligible for free repair (and a warranty on said repair). They were nice machines when they were working, although they may be a little outdated now. Still, I'm hoping that we can either find some use for them or just sell them on eBay/Craigslist.

Vice President Robin Seaberg

These days, there are too many voters out there that are more like "meat with eyes" than living, thinking human beings. We're supposed to be an educated democratic society, yet it seems like more and more people know next to nothing about the issues or the candidates that we are involved in voting for.

Maybe I sound a little harsh when I refer to people as "meat with eyes", but it really urks me whenever I heard someone say that they voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger just because they liked his movies (or that they're voting for Hillary just because she's a woman, Obama because he's a black man, etc.). Of course, many other people just don't have the time or the interest to really pay as much attention to politics as they probably should- and that's not always their fault. One major problem is that it's not very easy to get good information about what's really going on these days.

The corporate-owned news media contributes to this in a big way. A good example of this is how CNBC managed to bar Rep. Dennis Kucinich from last night's Democratic debate, after fighting with him and eventually winning in Nevada court. The fact of the matter is that CNBC, who is owned by General Electric, really doesn't want someone like Kucinich speaking their mind on their own media outlet. Kucinich is very anti-nuclear proliferation and very anti-corporate power, which butts heads pretty hard with GE's ideologies and practices (GE is one of the biggest nuclear arms/power companies in the world- they've been building warheads for many decades). They don't mind having the other three candidates on since they know that the others won't voice anything that conflicts with their views. Of course, the problem here is that the people who are watching don't really get a broad spectrum of views and ideas... nor do they even realize that other ideas are being actively censored.

So, it takes a little extra time and effort to really pay attention to politics and make informed decisions as a voter these days. You have to spend time listening to a wide variety of radio shows and a good amount of time on the Internet reading blogs or News articles from a wide range of sources.

I can't stress enough that you can't just watch the politcal ads that you see on television and be able to make an informed decision. You would think that this would be obvious, but it seems like a lot of people do just that.

For these reasons, a few people have designated me as being their source for an informed opinion on the upcoming elections. Maybe they said that half-jokingly, but I hope I don't let them down.

Now for the comedic anecdote that will give the title some sense.

I had a dream last night that Barack Obama called me and asked me to be his Vice President. I remember feeling a bit weary about it because I didn't really like him that much. Still, I accepted because I thought it would give me a great opportunity to make a difference in our government. I had to give an acceptance speech with him in front of a crowd of thousands of people, where I said that I was only doing this because he asked me to, and that I really like Dennis Kucinich more than Obama. Still, the crowd cheered madly and Barack gave me a firm handshake. Afterwards, Governor Arnold came up to congratulate me. He wasn't wearing a shirt, and I think it was the young Arnold from the movie "Commando". To my surprise and disgust, he started to choke up and tell me about all of his personal problems. I just rolled my eyes and walked away.

The point of this is that, I like the title, "Vice President". Like Dick Cheney, I can have most of the power and still blame everything that goes wrong on the guy above me who has more responsibility than me.

Please just refer to me as "VP" from now on... it has a nice ring to it.

Who are we kidding?

So, I walked in and sat down at my desk this morning to see a link to this article sticking out at me in an instant-message from my friend Jason.

First of all, it made me laugh my ass off. But after all of the laughter subsided I damn near started to cry, because there is a lot of truth in this article. Maybe not about Jimmy Carter being the answer to all of our problems (although it doesn't sound too bad at this point), but it definitely reminds you that the slate of candidates that we have to choose from are mostly full of shit. I only say "mostly" because I think that the usual "second tier" candidates offer the most amount of hope for the type of radical change that we need- namely, either Ron Paul in the Republican party or Dennis Kucinich in the Democratic Party (unfortunately, neither fared to well in the last primary: Paul=8% and Kucinich=1%)... apart from them, the other candidates talk a lot of bullshit but I don't think that things are really going to change that much when they get into office.

As far as the republicans go, most of them want to continue the war in Iraq and much of the rest of our current foreign policy. On top of that, we have to deal with the usual rhetoric of the Evangelical Christians blindly endorsing a candidate just because that person says the two magical words- "Jesus Christ". Thanks again to all of you who think that that is the most important thing about a candidate. I mean, it really worked last time, didn't it?

I remember the election in 2000. I was going to church regularly at the time and I couldn't believe the amount of politics that was getting mixed up into our services. Our pastor actually encouraged every to go out and vote for Bush. I also spoke to people from other churches at the time, and nearly all of them gave me the impression that it was the same way where they were. There must be a good study in all of this somewhere, because I would think that for any one candidate to grab hold of the Christian community in the country basically guarantees them at least 10% of the national popular vote.

I know I'm going off on a tangent now, but this really upsets me. In a Democratic society, citizens are supposed to be educated and able to make informed decisions on who they want to vote for. Our vote is supposed to be based on where a candidate stands on the pressing issues of the day, and not on whether or not your pastor tells you that a certain candidate has been picked by a higher power. The fact that this is happening all over the country without a second thought is just madness. I mean, I definitely believe in a higher power (that's somewhere along the lines of being a Christian), and I think that people like this are doing nothing but harm to our country when it's already in a horrible mess.

Just because the Bible says that people in public office were appointed by God to be there doesn't make it so. If that were true, then that's an awfully bad representation of The Lord. It's my personal belief that Religion should in no way whatsoever be mixed with politics if we ever want to make any progress.

Since we're on the subject of what matters most to voters in this country, I don't think it's any secret that the average voter really doesn't pay attention to much of anything that's relevant. All that they really listen to is whatever is spoon fed to them by the major news networks, which is why people like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich aren't more popular than they are now. Those candidates who I think more closely represent to true views and ideas of the people of this nation hardly get the chance to make their presence known in any of the major political debates- that is, if they can even make it into the debates at all.

To support my theory, I found a great tool (that was recommended to a lot of people by the Dennis Kucinich campaign) which has the viewer state where he/she stands on a series of major issues, then once they click the "submit" button, tells them which candidates most closely represent their viewpoints. You can find it here. I sent it out to about 20 people that I knew and then asked them to respond to me with the outcomes. I don't have the exact figures tallied up, but I can say that Kucinich, Paul, and Edwards came up a lot, while not one of the major contenders (namely, Clinton, Obama, Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee) came up at the top of anyone's list. Interesting, huh?

Well, I would love to go on as there is always so much more to talk about, but I'd better stop goofing off at work.