Standard Mischief

At my new job, I was asked to meet with our VP. He’s the guy that runs the show at my place of employment, but he does what management he does by acting like a cheerleader. I really didn’t think he had a technical background because when I was asked to do some bare-bones IT work for him he asked me some basic questions about Microsoft XP that I was easily able to answer (and I haven’t used XP since five years ago at $BigFacelessCorp).

I’m always a bit nervous about talking to him though, because he’s very hard to read, he’s from a completely different culture. It turns out however, that he was blown away by my analysis of the log files from $SeekretDevice, and he asked me to explain exactly what I was doing. I explained that, having been given a herculean task of reading through endless log files, I had just whipped up some simple one-liners that increased my productivity twenty-fold. (You can do that at a start-up. If you need to do something, you just do it, documenting the procedure later for possible reuse. That’s why working for a start-up is made of awesome, that, and free sodas and snacks) He wants more detail, so I show him my code. He wants a step-by-step explanation, so I start in saying, “Well, do you know what grep does?”.

It’s then that I’m informed that he built the first prototype of $SeekretDevice in his basement before the founding of the company.

Yea, I was totally set up for that one.

Who won the debate?

I’d probably call it a near draw, with a slight advantage to Biden, assuming we saw a debate that was on a level playing field.

Since it was anything but a fair debate, with the media setting the tone in advance by using the Michael Moore school of creative editing to make Palin look like a moron, and with a totally unbiased moderator (that incidentally doesn’t have a book about one of the candidates set for release in the near future) , I’d have to say that Palin won on points. There wasn’t a knockout though.

I noticed, unless it happened during the 10 minutes or so I was out of earshot, that our totally unbiased moderator failed to ask any questions on border control, immigration or “gun control”

Also, I’m looking for, and will actively link to, obvious GOP supporting blogs that say Biden won, or clear Obama supporting blogs that favor Palin. So far I haven’t found any.

Are members of The House of Representatives still going to try to sell us that line about a looming fiscal crisis which needs strong action immediately, after they get back from their holiday break for Rosh Hashanah?

…and I can’t find a single bill number. Well at least without a bit of google-fu. I mean, take a look at Google News and see how many mainstream major media mavens miss mentioning HR 3997.

I’m not seeing ABC or FOX news ranking highly in the results, rather it’s SooToday.com and TransWorldNews.

I mean really, what’s up with this crap? It’s twenty fscking ought eight, and the tubes of Intarwebz has had the humble hyperlink since what, May 1996? When are y’all gonna get on the bandwagon? I’m not even demanding a hyperlink, I’d be just as happy as a simple bill number.

Don’t even get me started on the whole bloated mass of the “blogsphere”, 9 out of 10 of which are willing to regurgitate the swill that’s been spoon fed to them by the media, tossing in their two cents in without even dropping a dime’s worth of effort to grasp the breath of the whole story. Thanks for ruining the signal to noise ratio, folks.

Here’s my weak attempt at humor, a blog post from over two years ago.

Oh, and before I forget:

standardmischief $ curl ‘http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h110-3997′|wc -w
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 366k 100 366k 0 0 441k 0 –:–:– –:–:– –:–:– 517k
31626
standardmischief $

Just in case anyone else is counting, that’s thirty one thousands, six hundred and twenty six words, roughly, all mashed together with in the last two weeks. How many congress-critters have read the whole bill? How many legalese land mines do you think are hidden within? Will we get another perpetual PATRIOT act or another DMCA? What are the odds?

Well I can dream, can’t I.

Periodic downturns happen in every market, but this cycle is notable for a “credit crunch”. You can point the finger at number of firms and individuals:

• “Creative accounting” by Fannie, Freddie, and a number of Wall Street firms
• The failure of these quasi government agencies to only buy conforming loans as set out in their charter.
• A number of firms that repackaged loans for resale with the intent to conceal risk.
• People who flat-out lied on their “Option ARM” loan application forms.
• Government regulators, congress critters and other maggots that looked the other way while the bubble was inflating, instead of enforcing regulations that are already on the books.

In the unlikely event that the people and lending institutes who committed crimes that contributed to the the current mess actually get any fines, I’d like to suggest the following:

Force them to pay the fines by putting 20% down, and having them pay off the remainder on a 30-year fixed rate amortization schedule. Require the CEO or individual themselves to personally sign the payment check within a thirty day window of when the payment is due (with the sincere hope that they will remember their lessons for the next time a bubble starts inflating).

Instead, I’m confident that the taxpayers’ own unborn grandkids will pay the check, Congress will respond by making fraud even more illegal-er, and today’s lessons will be forgotten with the next market upswing.

Inspired by countertop’s modest proposal.