Analytics

Thursday, October 31, 2019

Post #4322 M: McClanahan on PC History Tours; Jefferson & Taylor; New FreedomToon

Quote of the Day

True genius sees with the eyes of a child and thinks with the brain of a genie
Puzant Kevork

McClanahan on PC History Tours



McClanahan on Jefferson & Taylor



Political Cartoon



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "I've Got a Rock 'N Roll Heart"

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Wednesday, October 30, 2019

Post #4321 M: Internet Blackouts Don't Help; Illinois Public Pension Crisis

Quote of the Day

To lead the people, walk behind them. 
Lao Tzu 

DEAD WRONG: Internet Blackouts Don't Keep the Peace




Stossel on the Welfare State



Illinois Public Pension Crisis



Choose Life









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Al Goodwyn via Tosnhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "I Can't Stand It".

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Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Post #4320 M: Stossel Interviews Rand Paul on Foreign Intervention; Kibbe on Latin American Socialism

Quote of the Day

There is just one life for each of us: our own.
Euripides  

Stossel Interviews Rand Paul on Foreign Intervention



Kibbe on Latin American Socialism



The War on Terror



Choose Life








Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "Tulsa Time"

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Monday, October 28, 2019

Post #4319 M: Overdue Public Pension Reform; Homelessness in LA

Quote of the Day

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, 
and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.
If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts,
he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. 
The origin of myths is explained in this way.
Bertrand Russell  

Overdue Public Pension Reform




Leftist LA Politics and Homelessness




Woods on a Gender-Relevant Custody Case



Choose Life

I've done some segments on these blond sweeties; they're growing up. The second clip refers to an earlier miscarriage.






Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Bob Gorrell via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "Promises"

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Sunday, October 27, 2019

Post #4318 M: IJ on the Blaine Amendments; Rubin Interviews Sowell

Quote of the Day

To announce that there must be NO criticism of the President, 
or that we are to stand by the President Right or Wrong, 
is not only UNPATRIOTIC and SERVILE, 
but is Morally TREASONABLE to the American Public.
Theodore Roosevelt  

IJ on the Anti-Education Choice, Anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments



Rubin Interviews Sowell



IJ Fights Losing For-Profit Prosecutors Seeking to Charge Case Winners



Choose Life









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Breen via Townhall

Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "Wonderful Tonight". My brother-in--law Joe positively hates this song, probably because he heard it too often during his school years.Sorry, Joe: I happen to like it.

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Post #4317 Social Media Digest

Twitter








































































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Saturday, October 26, 2019

Post #4316 M: Woods on Why Marx Not Taken Seriously;Clinton v Gabbard

Quote of the Day

Those who, relying upon themselves only, 
not looking for assistance to anyone besides themselves, 
it is they who will reach the top-most height.
Buddha  

Tom Woods on Why Marx Not Taken Seriously



Clinton Attacks Gabbard



Rubin on Clinton v Gabbard



Choose Life



Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "Lay Down Sally"

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Post #4315 J: I completed a survey; cloud computing

What's Good For the Goose...

My late maternal uncle (a retired Catholic diocesan priest) never believed in political polls: "I've never been asked to participate." Well, neither have I, but I have a decent background in statistics and probability. I know if the sampling methodology is solid, if the sample size is large enough, it's extremely unlikely your sample results will skew widely from the "real" mean.

How then do we explain anomalies like Trump's unlikely 2016 electorate vote victory? Well, RCP rated Clinton with a 3 point lead in the popular vote, which she won by 2 in the election. And if you check the key 3 states (WI, PA, MI), the latter two were rated toss-up, and only Wisconsin, won by Trump by less than a point, was rated as lean-Clinton (by 6 points). Those 3 states had 46 votes of Trump's 306 and he needed 270 to win. Technically he could have lost PA and MI but needed to win at least one of the 3 states he won by an eyelash each. Keep in mind only Clinton in a 1992 3-way race won by a lower popular vote plurality and you have to go to the nineteenth century to find a POTUS winner who won with a lower percentage of the popular vote. I can't explain the Wisconsin discrepancy, but this post describes likely methodological issues.

Now I've created/administered a lot of questionnaires or surveys in my academic career. For all these favors I asked from study participants (of course, I thought they were interesting endeavors), I myself had never been targeted. Until now. The  National Science Foundation sent me a couple of pieces of mail, one of which looked like some kind of donation request. No, it turned about to be a survey of doctorate recipients, and I had been randomly/scientifically selected. It was interesting but odd at points; for example, they asked for my starting date for a prior position, and then asked a question later which predated the start date. A lot of it deal with the usual demographic questions along with salary and functionality of work, relevance to my doctoral studies, any supervisory experience, etc.

I'm not sure how representative my information is. I probably have made 10-15% below market. For some odd reason, I've rarely had a line supervisory position; when I worked for an Equifax company years back, I had a much older data administrator working for me who basically ignored my assigned priority. He was later stripped from me by a manager who thought I wanted to fire him. I was stunned by outright insubordination. To be honest, I didn't need the hassle. I've served as the tech lead on several small/larger projects. I've often had informal authority over DBA's and developers; I've had senior managers, civil servants, and clients ask me for advice, assign me to special projects or as a mentor to other DBAs, or loan me as a resource. Oddly enough, I haven't been used much in talent acquisition, despite teaching hundreds of students during my academic career. It's not clear why; maybe they were concerned I might dominate the process, challenge their decision authority or scare off applicants. The last one I recall being on the acquisition side was on a project for a Chicago government business unit. I remember interviewing this Indian project DBA candidate, and it was clear from just general questions (no trick, overly detailed or obscure questions) that he was unqualified; I tactfully told him someone would get back in touch with him. He said, "Oh, I'll see you Monday. I have a 2-week minimum contract."  What the hell? What was the purpose of having me interview him? I didn't have to work with him; he was someone else's headache, that guy bitched about him from day 1, and they let the guy go after 2 weeks. If they had waited for my feedback, they wouldn't have made that mistake.

Did my profession have anything to do with my doctoral program work? Not really. My dissertation chair, Richard Scamell, did teach a couple of database classes I took. UH had an abysmal DBA, so bad we all had to take incomplete's the first semester because the Oracle database was mostly down, not enabling us to finish our projects. That was a motivation years later for reinventing myself as a DBA after I was forced out of academia in a recession (even then it took a couple of years to get a break; I had to find a developer job in the interim. I got a low-paying starter job as a DBA at an EPA lab in Chicago). I did do a research project where I developed an SQL (the lingua franca of relational databases, like DB2, Oracle and SQL Server) minimal manual. My UH PhD student office mate Minnie Yen used the manual with one of her students at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and we later published our findings.

Microsoft Wins a Lucrative Cloud Computing Over Amazon

I can't go into detail here, except to note I recently worked a temp gig where a government agency is in process of transitioning apps on Microsoft Azure (cloud computing). I will simply point to a Microsoft infographic which claims over 80% of federal agencies have deployed applications on its Azure platform.

Now for those readers with a limited IT background, cloud computing refers to maintaining servers running client applications and databases in external (vendor) data centers accessible through the Internet. Quite often these data centers have redundancy in the infrastructure minimizing risks to failure including geographic risk.

I gave an example of this in a prior post: I once did a DBA gig at a NASA site. Prior contractors had implemented a Data Guard (zero data loss replication) solution where the changes to a primary database/server are propagated to a standby clone database/server. So if something happened to the primary database (e.g., a hardware failure), the DBA could make the standby database primary. The problem? They deployed the two servers IN THE SAME SERVER ROOM (even the same rack). I  repeatedly advised the government civilians/civil servants this was absurd. For example, if the server room got flooded, had a fire or whatever, the standby would likely be subject to the same risks. A server in another state/region would control for that risk. But government management just ignored my warnings.

Now Oracle, for which I once worked as a senior principal consultant (the highest non-managerial rank), can and has been a pain in the ass to work with, especially with uncooperative, arrogant, and/or incompetent analysts. (I could write pages of examples, beyond the scope of this post, but one recent example makes the point, probably one I've mentioned before. Oracle had recently published a comprehensive ODA patch. I reported a technical issue with the new patch; this analyst argued that Oracle hadn't released the patch, I must have installed "beta software", and they don't support beta software. He was in a state of denial. It wasn't a close call. Oracle's internal communications were fucked up; it was just he was in denial: I even detailed step by step how I downloaded the patch, and he just refused to admit he was wrong.)

Some additional context. cloud computing is a form of leasing computer capabilities. It's a variation of the computer time-sharing industry where I worked when I first moved to Houston. You don't need to worry about infrastructure or staffing its management. In Microsoft's case, they have two types of service PaaS (platform as a service) and IaaS (infrastructure as a service). One variation of PaaS is DBaaS. In the IaaS approach, the client retains more control over things like patching. You create a VM (virtual machine) and install the application or database software. So Microsoft provides the VM and the hardware/network support, but it's more of a DIY project and often you typically bring your software licenses to the cloud. In the DBaaS approach, Microsoft provides the software, will handle relevant patching, etc.

Apparently Microsoft Azure at one point provided Oracle as DBaaS. What's also relevant to this discussion is that Oracle has a competitive cloud solution, called Oracle Cloud. I heard from a civilian that Oracle competed on the cloud computing contract, lost their bid, and are protesting the award. But right now Oracle is competing with an aggressively-priced Azure SQL (DBaaS), a subset of Microsoft's competing SQL Server.

But there are two practical issues from an Oracle IaaS solution that I saw. First, it looked like 2 years ago, Oracle announced licensing changes that seemed de facto double the Oracle licensing/support charges to Oracle Cloud competitors Microsoft Azure and AWS (Amazon) vs. deploying on Oracle Cloud. Second, I'm on a conference call with Oracle and civilians. I asked one simple question that caught Oracle completely off-guard: why don't you have (Oracle's latest version) 19c in Azure Marketplace (like 12.2 and 18c)? The Oracle guys weakly tried to point the finger at Microsoft which publishes the images. What's worse, they NEVER followed up after the call. This was an issue because Oracle is scheduled to desupport the other two versions by June 2021. It seemed that Oracle's goal in the call was to promote the interface between Oracle Cloud and Microsoft Azure so we could implement our Oracle database on Oracle Cloud and the application VM on Microsoft Azure could connect to it. Well, knowing the clients, that wasn't going anywhere; at best, they were in a state of denial.

I was recently told by the civilians that management basically wasn't willing to spend a lot of money on Oracle licenses and support when they could get the functionality they need on economical Azure SQL. In effect, the burden of proof would be on me to justify the high cost. SIGH! Oracle is a technically superior, DBA-friendly product, but I had no information on scalability, etc., to make that argument. So it was clear it's time for me to move on to another Oracle shop. My agency had told me they had a contract for Oracle services. They will do whatever the government wants for the opportunity of a follow-up contract.

Of course, on an unrelated but topical note, the DoD awarded its JEDI contract to Microsoft over AWS (Amazon), potentially worth up to $10B. Of course, Trump has a petty feud with Amazon CEO Bezos, who of course happens to own Trump-critical Washington Post. You would hope the decision wasn't based on petty nonsense. Given Microsoft's already impressive government client list, it was probably a reasonable decision.

What's Next?

I came close to moving to North Carolina a few months back, but a contingent offer apparently fell through. Over the past week, I took a pleasant 1+ hour drive to a neighboring state, sipping on pumpkin spice coffee and watching the autumn foliage turn color. The meeting went well. There's a verbal offer on the table, probably the most interesting gig I've been offered in years. Ironically the company wanted to make an offer months back, but I had eye surgery scheduled in early May, and they took a pass.

There is a Competitor to Hallmark's Christmas Movies: Lifetime

It just dawned on me recently that my cable company's favorite channel list, which somehow got corrupted, didn't have Lifetime on the replacement list. I don't watch that much Lifetime (a lot of killer women movies), but there are a couple of seasonal cable movies I like (one is about a cut-off heiress who finds a motherless little girl's letter to Santa; another is an engaged woman who finds her flight to meet with her fiance is cancelled and ends up hitching a ride with a widower and his daughter). . I don't think Lifetime goes 24x7 like the two Hallmark channels I recently discussed, but it offers a respite from Hallmark's heavily rotated flicks.



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Friday, October 25, 2019

Post #4314 M: Stossel on Alternative Student Loans; McClanahan on the New Civil War?; Trump's Foreign "Policy"

Quote of the Day

There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. 
The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.
Woody Allen

Stossel on Alternative Student Loans



McClanahan on the New Civil War?



Trump's Foreign Policy?



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Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "Hello, Old Friend"

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Thursday, October 24, 2019

Post #4313 M: Kibbe Interviews Amash; Robot Job Killers; New FreedomToon

Quote of the Day

[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; 
have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; 
and have, in general, been as short in their lives 
as they have been violent in their deaths." 
James Madison  

Kibbe Interviews Amash




DEAD WRONG: Robot Job-Killers



Choose Life









Political Cartoon



Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "Willie and the Hand Jive"

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Wednesday, October 23, 2019

Post #4312 M: McClanahan on the Triumph of Progressivism; "Free" College is a BAD Idea

Quote of the Day

There's only one way to succeed in anything 
and that is to give everything.
nce Lombardi  

McClanahan On the Triumph of Progressivism



Tom Woods and the Peter Schiff Archives



"Free" College Is a BAD Idea



Choose Life










Political Cartoon


Courtesy of Chip Bok via Townhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "I Shot the Sheriff". His first #1.

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Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Post #4311 M: Groups Are Individuals, Too; Baby Boomer Problem; Constitutionalism and Liberty

Quote of the Day

He that goes a borrowing goes a sorrowing.
Benjamin Franklin

Groups Are Individuals, Too



Baby Boomer Problem



Constitutionalism and Liberty



Choose Life









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Steve Breen  via Townhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton, "After Midnight"

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Post #4310 J: Pro Wrestling, Christmas Movie Scheduling

Wrestling Review: WWE

I haven't done one of these in a while. Probably the biggest change since then is they booked WWE Kofi Kingston into a squash match with Brock Lesnar (an obvious mismatch of David-Goliath proportions). They've occasionally done that, notably the Diesel (Kevin Nash )/Bob Backlund match in the 90's and more recently the Sheamus/Daniel Bryan match. I never really bought into the Kingston reign and his related New Day comic group with pancake-flipping, cereal chugging, hips gyrating promos. On the other hand, Seth Rollins, the "Universal Champion", who unlike Lesnar makes weekly television appearances, and Lesnar had fought so many times it was getting stale. And Rollins had to engage in cheap tactics, like low blows to protect Lesnar's "beast image". So it was time to move Lesnar from Raw to Smackdown.

Don't get me wrong; the WWE did a good job portraying Kingston as someone who had paid his dues and prevailing against all odds (rather like Daniel Bryan's unlikely Cinderella Wrestlemania (30) ) to win a shot at the title. But at 6 feet and 212 lbs, Kofi is undersized in a business of big or strong men, and to be honest, I just never cared for his wrestling style, and the matches bored me. I'm not sure how I would have booked Kofi, but I thought it might be interesting to turn him heel (he's been a career babyface) or least have his New Day partners interfere on his behalf. I also thought they might tease, say, Big E going rogue and turning on Kofi, claiming he had done all the work while Kofi got all the glory. Recently going onto Twitter and seeing some black fans argue booking Kofi into a squash championship match against Lesnar was racist-motivated; seriously, dude? The WWE has put belts on the Rock, Booker T, Mark Henry, Sheldon Benjamin, Bobby Lashley and the New Day, among others, not to mention Asians and Latinos. As I mentioned earlier, there were precedents for squash matches and obvious physical mismatches. Not to mention I've seen little fan interest in the seemingly inevitable rematch; nobody believes Kingston has a legitimate shot to regain the championship from Lesnar.

As for the plotline to introduce Cain Velasquez, a former UFC fighter who legitimately beat Lesnat nearly 10 years ago with superior boxing skills, via Lesnar's brutal, inexplicable attacks on the undersized Latino star Rey Mysterio and his taller young son Dominick, posing a story of a connection with Mysterio's family is really contrived and phony. Now at 6'1" , 245 lbs, Cain is still smaller than Lesnar but is a credible opponent, more so than Kingston. Lesnar may have more trouble sending him to Suplex City. But Sheldon Benjamin perfectly summarized the problem on Raw, by pushing Rey Mysterio around, saying, "The way to get to a championship match is to push you around?" Velasquez hadn't even been in one televised WWE wrestling match, and he's going for the championship in his first match? Because he beat Lesnar in an MMA match 9 years ago? It almost reminds me of the invincible Zeus character from the late 80's  coming out of a forgettable Hogan flick. All Velasquez has shown us to date are his MMA skills, not any wrestling moves. Could the WWE put the belt on Velasquez with a limited track record? Well, they did a similar thing with Ronda Rousey. It would put an interesting wrinkle into Lesnar's character, dealing with someone who is able to hurt him. But they have to be careful with his image; a squash match against Lesnar would undermine his credibility. It's not clear how they will book this match; my guess is they have Lesnar lose the match (but keep the title) by disqualification.

The recent "draft" between Raw and Smackdown was pretty ludicrous; did anyone notice that Raw always got an extra pick at the end of each round? Not to mention Stephanie, the presumptive Raw general manager, was announcing each pick for both rounds. The bookings didn't make much sense, e.g., Kevin Owens wins a Smackdown loser-gets-fired match against Shayn McMahon, just to reappear on Raw (and seemingly booked into an angle to contest AJ Styles' US belt). Similarly Charlotte Flair had just won the Smackdown women's title with Bayley, only to immediately job it before the draft and find herself on Raw..

On the other hand, arguably the best female wrestler, in terms of skill, mike work, and charisma, Sasha Banks, is back, but for some reason she's been jobbing, e.g., to Becky Lynch. (Granted, Lynch has somehow reignited her career as the current babyface champion.)  Banks was in the doghouse when she and Bayley were forced to job the inaugural women's tag team title to the less talented Australian tag team the Iiconics (who seem to have disappeared off TV recently).

Bayley quickly resumed her alliance with heel Sasha, which never seemed consistent with her perpetual babyface image. WWE finally turned her heel with a modified appearance (notably her hairstyle) and a bizarre attack on her "buddies", her signature air dancers at her entrance. (You know, those goofy inflatables you often see at auto dealerships.) And the Kabuki Warriors (especially Asuka, arguable pound for pound the best wrestler of either gender in WWE) now rightly hold the women's tag team titles. So at least the women's wrestlers seem to have improved storylines.

Enough for me to reinstate my WWE network membership? No. I'm not quite sure what would, but I haven't seen a decent faction like the Horsemen or the N.W.O. since the Nexus. The Shield came close.  Maybe the Crown Jewel contest between Team Hogan and Team Flair is a hint in the right direction. But I need to see better, more creative storylines.

Well, Hallmark's Countdown to Christmas Is About to Start

I don't recall seeing promos for it, but it looks like sister station Hallmark Movies and Mysteries started playing holiday movies over last weekend. I had to groan when I saw "The Christmas Card" play twice over 2-3 days. (This movie, a good one for cable, focuses on an Afghanistan veteran on leave lured to a California town by a homemade Christmas card by a blonde who works for her family's lumber business. He quickly takes an interest in the woman and her family, but she's in a serious relationship with a wine broker who hasn't popped the question yet. Her Vietnam vet dad connects with him; he agrees to work at the lumber company for the duration of his leave, etc. A predictable storyline; you wonder mostly how the romantic conflict plays out.) I believe it officially starts Friday on Hallmark Channel with some new flicks starting this weekend. I think it starts out with a limited schedule and transitions to a 24x7 movie schedule by mid-November.  (From what I see, they will be running their "Home and Family" programming in the late morning and early afternoon on weekdays over the first few weeks. (Consult the published schedule for specifics.) See here and here.

BEB Status Update

Btuce Breeding is my former UH PhD student office mate who suffered multiple strokes at the beginning of July.

I think I pick up a few nuggets in spouse Susan's nearly daily posts. Susan did say (after my confusion over his Presbyterian affiliation) they have attended services in other denominations; apparently they went to a Bible church this past weekend which did not set well with Susan (too much of a focus on rock music; she didn't get expected spiritual connection). More to the point, she revealed that Bruce had considered becoming a minister and/or going to law school. (Our dissertation chair, Richard Scamell, also suggested that he might have considered a religious vocation if he hadn't become a professor.) This is an interesting coincidence because I had considered becoming a Catholic priest when starting college, and I briefly considered going to law school while my academic career was collapsing--not for the usual interests. I had more of an interest in intellectual property law.)

Bruce is still having issues with nourishment/keeping his food down. He got just over 1 more week in Irving before returning to Austin and 3 weeks at a skilled nursing facility.

Finally, Susan on multiple occasions has said Bruce loves singing the doxology. More out of curiosity I did a search on Youtube and found the gem embedded below (which may not be Bruce's preferred version bur I found compelling.

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Monday, October 21, 2019

Post #4309 M: IJ District Works; Woods on Tulsi v Hillary; Ron Paul on Homeschooling

Quote of the Day

You can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.
H. Norman Schwarzkopf  

IJ District Works



Woods on Tulsi v Hillary



Ron Paul on Homeschooling



Choose Life









Political Cartoon


Courtesy of AF Franco via Townhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton/Derek & the Dominos, "Bell Bottom Blues". I don't care if it didn't hit Top 40; great song.

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Sunday, October 20, 2019

Post #4308 M: IJ Amicus Briefs; Rand Paul and the Case Against Socialism

Quote of the Day

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness 
if greatness is expected of him. 
John Steinbeck  

IJ Amuicus Briefs



Revolution on Self



Rand Paul and the Case Against Socialism



Choose Life









Political Cartoon

Courtesy of Michael Ramirez via Townhall


Musical Interlude: My Favorite Vocalists

Eric Clapton/Derek and the Dominos, "Layla" (original). A rock classic and a personal favorite. MUCH PREFERRED over his later acoustin version, which I may reluctantly cover.

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