It’s not that I expect there to be thousands of drooling people out there just hanging on for the moment that I open my text editor to let loose massive pearls of glorious illuminated wisdom, but I still feel pangs of guilt when I haven’t posted in a while. So, for those times when you’ve visited here three or four times in a three day period and have STILL seen no entry, I turn you to the autopilot.

I will say this: SQR SUCKS! What an amazingly archaic language. I haven’t used a Let statement in more than 15 years. Criminy.

So, like a fool, I forgot my camera yesterday. All kinds of great shots passed me by as a result. Today, I made damn sure I brought it with me. While the protests today don’t come anywhere near matching those from yesterday, there were still decently strong. What kind of cracked me up, though, is that they all stood firm at the corner of Montgomery and Market while the cops, who created a barrier around them to keep them corralled, blocked traffic on Market. Seems sort of backwards.

So, check out the pics from today. The one with the woman twirling the ribbon was sort of interesting. It’s hard to tell, but it’s the same woman wearing the “Peace” shirt and antennae in one of the last pictures. I also found the “Unfuck the World” sign to be funny. All in all, it’s very similar to a circus, complete with sideshows. I’m happy to announce, however, that they all seemed more on target with their message today. This looked like a genuinely peaceful protest. Let’s hope it stays that way.

For some time now, I’ve had a little box sitting in the lower right hand corner of this page advertising various products and services that I dig. I haven’t been too terribly on top of it, primarily because it currently makes me zero funds, but I figured I was due for a slight change. More of an experiment, really.

I watched The Screen Savers for the first time last night (I’ve only had Tech TV for about two weeks now) and just loved it. They had Philip Kaplan, founder of Fucked Company, on last night, touting him as a magic man who makes money on the Internet just by breathing right. I think even Kaplan was a bit uncomfortable with how much credit they were giving him.

One of the sites Kaplan has built is called MarketBanker. It allows website owners to sell text links to advertisers at rates they fix. Since I have a spot precisely for text advertising, I decided to sign up and give this thing a go. I don’t guarantee that it will make me any money, but if it at least pays for the hosting of the site for a month or two, I’ll be pretty happy.

Part of the reason for this inspiration also had to do with a recent look at my web stats. It looks like I’ll break 500 unique visitors this month, which is a massive record for me. Last month, I saw my visitor total rise about 50 percent. This month it went up by 100 percent. I attribute much of this to the fact that I finally got my act together and linked to my Blogger archives, which is being swept constantly by search engines. Loads of people looking for Java information are coming here, and I find that encouraging. I like Java, I like talking about Java, I like programming in Java but, unfortunately, I’m not given much opportunity to even deal with it in my current job. I’ve spent my free time building a PHP-based content management system geared toward folks like me who use a web hosting service rather than running their own servers, as most CMS applications assume. It’s in a working stage, but is in no way ready for prime time. It needs loads of polish and testing and UI enhancements, but I’m at the point where I am able to run 80 percent of a site from it. Combine that with my sponsorship and user admin tools, and you’ve got yourself a complete content website solution. Of course, all that time spent on PHP takes time away from Java.

So, once I’m in a better position on the CMS stuff, I’ll probably start focusing on Java again. I’ll also *finally* release the source code to my Java-based image manipulation program. It currently lacks a user interface as it was intended to run as a server-side application for user-uploaded photos. I built it with a stock photography website in mind, but still haven’t had the chance to get on to working on that site. The CMS will help cut down development time on the site significantly, so that’s my first priority.

I’m also teaching myself Windows CE/Pocket PC programming using VC. The book I purchased, Programming Microsoft Windows CE by Douglas Boling, focuses on the Win32 CE API, which is written in C. It’s far more tedious than the MFC, but extremely powerful and kinda fun. I feel pretty confident about things so far. My reason for learning this is two-fold. First, I don’t feel there are enough high-quality Pocket PC applications out there. I own a Cassiopeia E-125, which runs the Pocket PC 2000 OS, and have a heck of a time finding stuff that I like. A lot of applications are geared toward the newer PPC 2002 OS, which is all fine and good but I don’t have the $300 necessary to get a new PDA. Besides, whatever I learn here will translate easily to the PPC 2002 and any subsequent technologies, which I feel is a software market just ready to explode.

My second, more specific, reason for learning this is because I despise AvantGo. I use it and I do like the fact that I can read news stories and whatnot on my BART ride home at night, but I hate the fact that I’m limited in how much they’ll let me download and, even more so, the fact that content providers are now required to pay them for the privilege of allowing AvantGo users to view their sites. I’ve ranted about this before, so I’ll spare you, but I think web browsers should be free. The only restrictions on available content should be whatever the device can handle, not some artificial limitations built into a shaky business model. I mean, why does AvantGo require its users to go through their proxy? PDAs that are not wireless-enabled must use a host computer’s Internet connection to get the information they want. Since I already have internet access, why not just use my desktop as the proxy? My ultimate goal in learning PPC programming is to build a two-tiered application, with a client sitting on the PDA and a server application sitting on the desktop. The server will manage and fetch the requested web sites as well as refactor them, if necessary, to be placed on the PDA. The PDA will get the pages directly from the desktop rather than going through some proxy. It requires no new infrastructure and should open the internet to more sites. The server could also sit on kiosk machines in some places, similar to the way some Palm sync stations have popped up in public spaces like museums and ballparks, to allow PPC users to grab information out and about. As more PDAs go wireless, the client will have to adapt to either use a proxy that may still run on the person’s home machine or it will have to do any page refactoring itself, which shouldn’t be too big a deal as the processors running PDAs get more powerful.

And, lest anyone think I’m some kind of PPC purist, I plan to architect the thing so that I can plug in ties to the Palm OS and make it easy to port the application over. The Palm is less of a concern to me at the moment as they already have their Web Clipping technology, which seems to work pretty well. In addition, I don’t personally own a Palm, so it’s sort of less of a priority (selfish bastard).

Oh, and since it’s a browser, which I plan to give away for free, you can expect it to be GPLed. If a company comes along and wants to license it for commercial use, I’ll happily take payment, but I’ll still have an open version available.

Ahhh… big plans. So, yeah, I’m busy. Help support me by advertising here and clicking on the links you see. Buy books at Amazon through this site. Get some wine from Wine.com. And check out whatever weird links show up over there in the “Line Rob’s Pockets” box. All of this will help me build cool things for you. And, if you’re a hiring manager for a tech company and like what you’re reading, why not consider adding me to your staff. I read programming books FOR FUN! Total geek, through and through.

Blogger’s flakiness today has kept me from posting some of the stuff that has happened throughout the day. No worries, though: pretty minor, all told.

I just got back from my daily lunch jaunt around the city. For whatever reason, I chose to walk down to Justin Herrman instead of Union Square. The result is that, apparently, I completely missed the protesters. I did, however, get a chance to witness their swath of destruction.

Much of the graffiti littering the streets is, fortunately, just chalk. There are, however, several fresh spray-painted messages on various buildings, sidewalks, walls and, in one case, the front of a parking attendant’s motorized cart. It appears that, at one point today, the foot of Market at the Embarcadero was the staging point for the rally. There were still two banners, one reading “This is a non-violent demonstration,” the other decorated with various peace and heart symbols around the words “Pussys for Peace”, in all their misspelled glory.

The writing on the walls ran the gamut from “Fuck Bush” to “Go Vegan for Peace.” This brings up one of the major problems with modern activism: a complete lack of cohesion. Why are they marching? For peace. How should we get peace? You’ll get as many answers as there are protestors. Some scribbled “Teachers, not soldiers”, others wrote “No blood for oil”, and then there were, of course, the “Not in my name” folks, who prefer the US not name names during the attacks, apparently. It is because of this complete lack of organization on the part of the protestors that their efforts are in vain.

The internecine battles occurring between the various protest factions are symptoms of this. There are those who believe that a peaceful demonstration is all that should occur, while other advocate stopping the flow of everything. Then there are the black blocers, the ones that piss me off the most, who believe that destruction and mayhem are the best ways to get their message out. The result is a mishmash of messages that result in confusion for the general public, alienating them further from a cause they may otherwise support.

I read an interesting article in Salon a couple of days ago that gave a hint of the activism we’re seeing right now. In it, Paul Berman, a veteran activist from the Vietnam era, said that he now believes the actions taken then may have actually prolonged that conflict. “That kind of stuff allowed Nixon to win in 1968 and again in 1972, and a Democratic president would surely have withdrawn sooner,” he told Salon. “There were famous scenes where Nixon specifically ordered that his entourage drive through streets where he knew he’d be attacked by demonstrators because he wanted the right scenes to appear on TV.” The images of long-haired youth openly showing their contempt to the president led some Americans to support him rather than be associated with such an ungainly crowd. The sympathy generated by such publicity led to the prolonging of his term as president, which also prolonged the war in Vietnam.

To the folks living in a liberal hot spot like the Bay Area, it’s hard to imagine anyone having sympathy for someone like Bush, much less Nixon, but the fact of the matter is that we’re just one small chunk of the nation. All across the midwest, to the south and into the east Bush has some major support from regular citizens, most of whom are just well — or ill — informed as the folks protesting today. Then there is the huge group of fence-sitters, waiting for one of the sides to make an argument that they can latch on to and support. Anyone expressing the mentality of “If you’re not with us, your against us” rather than calmly, coolly and intelligently explaining their point of view risks alienating members of this group and pushing them to the other side. All of the “Fuck Bush” activism has generated some sympathy for our current administration, just as all of the pro-war scare tactics disguised as patriotism have most certainly pushed some people against the war. I’m not sure how many of the people marching and demonstrating today realize that.

I should point out that I don’t believe activism doesn’t work. It’s a rather daunting task, but I believe that the protests we’re seeing today would be better served if they stayed on message. You start and anti-war protest and soon you have the folks calling on us to save the children, save the animals, save the homeless and save the environment jumping on board, each trying to tie their cause to the overarching anti-war message. Amidst all this, the original message gets lost and it makes the crowd look downright disorganized. It’s hard enough to demonstrate against a single issue, it’s made all the more so when you throw a dozen more on top of it. One step at a time, folks. That’s all I’m asking for.

Just a little while ago, a huge group of folks began marching down Mission St. Here in San Francisco, carrying protest signs and chanting. I haven’t had a chance to go outside yet (we’re having issues of our own today) but I’m sort of looking forward to it.

To reiterate from earlier: I suck for not bringing my camera to work today.

Sorry, was inspired by the headline in the SF Chronicle this morning, which was displayed in what looks like a 72 point font. So, yeah, we’re at war. Imagine that.

Downtown SF was blocked off by protestors this morning. I must say, I was impressed by their organization. They joined hands and formed circles in the intersections on Market Street to prevent traffic from flowing in either direction. So far it looks peaceful, if not somewhat annoying for the cage commuters (folks: try BART), but I feel it’s only a matter of time before the “Black Bloc” folks start causing mischief. Assholes.

Got to thinking today about how, before I came to the Bay Area a decade ago, I had never seen a real protest outside of the failed walkout we held in high school during a teacher’s strike. I got my fill of protests during my five-year stint on the Berkeley campus, covering them for The Daily Cal. Now I see protestors and barely bat an eye. There were lots of rubber-neckers on the streets checking out the demonstration, but I just stopped long enough to figure out how far down they had blocked Market.

It only looks like a couple of blocks are closed, but it’s still pretty effective. I failed to bring my digital camera to work with me today (DUMB) so, no pics for you. Perhaps you’ll get lucky tomorrow, when the cops will probably begin teargassing people.

When you start your day with a Guinness in your hand surrounded by a bunch of drunken Irish athletes, you know it’s gonna be a good one. I headed down to the Alice Radio St. Patrick’s Day shindig at the Irish Bank before heading into work this morning. Did it more for the 500 point bonus code than anything else, but I must admit I was curious. At 8am in the morning, I really expected it to be pretty empty, but someone called up the Irish Athletic Association and, well, it was pretty crowded.

Irish chicks: WAY hot.

Didn’t stay for too long — got a frantic call from my boss about the servers going down over the weekend and the story I’ll need when the executives come looking for my head (long story short: it’s actually *his* job to monitor the things. I’ve placed an automatic monitoring system in place that he just needs to configure, but he just hasn’t done it. Grrrrr…) — So I headed off to the office. Having not eaten breakfast yet, the Guinness when straight to my head, so it’s been a pretty good morning here, all in all. No pain.

On my way back to the office there was a “massive” peace protest at the corner of Market and Montgomery. I had heard reports on the radio about masses of protesters terrorizing the streets of downtown San Francisco. Dozens of cops were out in force, ready to quell any uprisings, and it looked like I was about to walk into some excitement. Then I got there. I’d say about 40 people or so were gathered on the corner carrying banners and singing weird protest songs (one of them sounded like a sample from a Moby tune). It was pretty pathetic, to be honest. We’ve heard some stories about protesters saying they were going to attempt to shut down the Pacific Stock Exchange and try to completely hobble the financial district. Truth is, I doubt there’s a big enough force for that.

Here’s my take on the protestors: too many of them hurt the cause rather than help it. I am against this war — I haven’t seen a single piece of evidence to indicate that Saddam is at all an imminent threat — but I can’t stand the way folks protest it. Peaceful demonstrations are all well and good, but all too many of them become confrontational. Take the “Black Bloc” breakaway protesters. They’re typically a much smaller group of people — maybe 10 percent of the larger demonstration — but they’re the ones who color the entire event. They break away from the group and vandalize local businesses, claiming to be against capitalism, consumerism and U.S. imperialism. The regular protestors, while denouncing the black bloc’s methods, don’t seem to give a lick about them, silently condoning their actions by their own inaction. As a result, we have the image of anti-war protestors as being a group of communist/socialist anti-imperialists bent on mayhem and destruction. I’ve seen pictures where the standard protestors smile in the background watching the black bloc folks destroy public and private property. Why the hell aren’t they stopping them?

And what about the protestors carrying signs containing derogatory messages about our government officials. What is this, the third grade? “Don’t side with Bush, he’s a poopy head.” That’s essentially what this screams to me. Granted, I refer to Bush as “that beady-eyed monkey” on a daily basis, but it’s usually in front of some material criticism of his policies. I listened last week to his first press conference of the year (it took him three months, folks… what the hell?) and was pretty appalled to hear him talk about what “his government” wants rather than what the American government wants. He actually referred to it as his government. That, to me, speaks volumes. Pounce on his flaunting of the tradition of international consensus building, pounce on his overeagerness to rush into a war that has little or nothing to do with the attacks on American soil that raised our hairs to begin with, but stick to the issues instead of the schoolyard taunts. It just makes us all look bad.

My argument against most protests is that they lack intelligent, cohesive arguments for their side. Rather than intelligently debate their beliefs, their message often gets lost in a barrage of angry screams that serve only to alienate those who genuinely agree with their cause, but would rather be associated with a more cool-headed bunch. This was true during the whole affirmative action flap, it’s true now. To be perfectly honest, no amount of intelligent discourse is going to stem the tide of war. The fact is that a vocal majority of the American public seem to either agree with the president or are so apathetic that they don’t care what happens. One of the earmarks of a solid democracy is a well-informed and educated electorate, but truth and fact are things that are manipulated easily by those in charge. Bush and his crowd have successfully convinced much of the US population that war with Iraq is a good thing and, like it or not, it looks like we’re going to war.

Initially, the pro-war crowd said they’d back down if Hans Blix and his crew found no serious indication of WOMD in Iraq. Their report has indicated, essentially, that there’s really no way to tell. That doesn’t mean that Iraq is hiding weapons, nor does it mean Iraq isn’t hiding weapons. It just isn’t possible to know for sure unless Saddam whips ‘em out for the world to see. By then, it would essentially be too late, but going on the assumption that he has these weapons is one hell of a dangerous move. Colin Powell did deliver some evidence to the U.N. and the American public, but this evidence is a tad sketchy and has never been backed up by another country’s surveillance.

It has come down to the US’s word against Iraq’s, and this is why the international community is mostly against this action. Only three nations are openly backing action against Iraq — the US, the UK and Spain. The US and UK are already dead set on sending in troops to oust Saddam. When Blix’s report came in, they immediately added another requirement to their list of demands against Iraq to avoid conflict: Saddam Hussein must step down as ruler and leave the country. And what happens if today, on the deadline for these demands, he decides to leave? What if, as has been suggested, he puts one of his sons in power to replace him? The pro-war coalition is essentially requiring the Iraqi government to hand over the keys to them or else. Sounds kind of like blackmail to me.

And what happens if we go to war? If it’s anything like the 1991 conflict, it’ll be fairly short and sweet with a limited number of US casualties. Bush Sr. dropped the ball on that one, though, when he left Saddam in power. Did no one learn their lesson from WWI? Hitler rose to power amidst a nation demoralized by it defeat during the first world war, finding a convenient scape goat for it woes in it’s Jewish population. September 11th was a direct result of our mishandling of the middle east situation. After the Gulf War, Saddam was left in control of a government under constant US surveillance and sanctions. Whether US Sanctions led to starving Iraqi children or whether it was Saddam’s own brutality against his people is totally irrelevant — Saddam was still able to parlay his country’s problems into anti-semitic and anti-american hatred. Anti-american sentiment has long been a part of the fundamentalist Islam that dominates the Iranian culture and is spreading into Pakistan, Turkey and other predominantly Muslim nations. Afghanistan is still in ruins and members of the Taliban are still holed up in caves throughout the nation, probably still protecting Osama Bin laden and his compatriots. The chances of them entering and prolonging any armed conflict against Iraq is highly probable, detonating the powder keg that the middle east has represented for centuries. And, while this is certainly nothing new, if America suffers from getting entangled in the imbroglio, we really have no one but ourselves to blame.

American war in the middle east would resemble Vietnam only in the fact that Vietnam set a precedent for civil unrest during wartime that this nation had never seen before. I don’t believe we’ll “lose” the war like we did in Vietnam — I think it’s entirely possible that we’ll be able to dethrone Saddam Hussein and install some kind of allied-controlled government in his place. But I don’t think we can claim that to be “winning” the war. It is naive to believe that the US can end a conflict that has gone on for literally hundreds of years. And, like Vietnam, we wouldn’t be fighting a regimented government-controlled military. We’ll be fighting against people trying to secure their homeland and their way of life. A majority of the Muslim world disagrees with the fundamentalist dogma practiced by those in control in Iran and Iraq, but an attack on them can very easily be spun by the masters of deception as an attack on Islam, gathering more forces for their cause. It’s not hard to imagine the dozens of ways that our involvement in such a conflict can spin out of control.

There’s no easy answers here, because simply stepping away isn’t a good idea either. I think I’m more in line with the international community: Saddam Hussein’s regime has not demonstrated a valid commitment to total disarmament, but they have not posed an immediate threat either. We should continue with regular inspections and diplomatic means of fixing this issue. We have the technology to keep Iraq under constant surveillance, the problem is that the U.S. isn’t too willing to share, even with their allies. Without the US’s cooperation, it’s rather difficult for the rest of the international community to be sire of Iraq’s intentions. The US is the bully in the sandbox — we have all the best toys, and we’re not willing to share unless the other kids side with us. But how can they side with us when we won’t share the information necessary to make solid informed opinions? We’re asking them to go with us on faith that we’re right. Our government may very well be telling the truth, but in a world where the truth is a thing easily tarnished, bent and formed into something new, the rest of the international community is their rights to disagree with us until they see further evidence. We’ve painted ourselves into a corner and, like it or not, we’re going to war over it. And, quite frankly, we’re fairly powerless against it. Welcome to democracy.

The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated. I have spent the last two weeks in training for PeopleSoft (SQR, PeopleTools I/II and PeopleCode, for those of you keeping score) and have three more days for the Enterprise Portal Administration starting tomorrow. It’s kind of interesting, though PeopleSoft seems like a total throwback to mainframes and such to me. Being more of a developer, I find I enjoy the coding classes somewhat interesting, but they move WAY too slow for my taste.

The best part about the training is that I don’t need to face my soul-crushing job for a little while. The worst part is <gasp> NO INTERNET ACCESS!!! I mean NONE! The classrooms are not wired to the outside world in order to avoid distracting the students. As a result, I haven’t been keeping up with the news or checking my email, so I literally have no clue as to what’s going on in the world. And it’s killing me.

Brought me to an interesting realization, though: I now receive more than 90% of my news information through the Web. I wondered when that would happen. See, I used to work for a daily paper and part of my job was to keep up with what the other papers were reporting. I read about three to five newspapers every day in addition to catching all of the nightly news programs I could. I was pretty well-informed at the time. Since leaving, I’ve tried to maintain my knowledge, but it has gotten harder. I used to read the paper in the morning, but It was always filled with news I had heard about from the day before. I don’t watch the nightly news as much anymore because Dani isn’t a big fan. So I’ve found myself turning to news sources like CNN.com and SFGate.com for most of my information. Of course, Fark also keeps me abreast of any really hot breaking news, filtering out a lot of the crap for me. On Sept. 11th, I heard about the terrorist attacks while listening to the morning radio. When the Columbia exploded, I heard about it on Fark first. I imagine when we go to war I’ll know about it because the TotalFarkers will have submitted it about 100 times within a minute of the initial post.

This is assuming, of course, that I’m out of training at that time. In one of the classes, one of the guys had a clamshell pager that sent him the latest news headlines. During breaks, he let us know how the stock market was doing and whether we were at war yet. That was our only window to the outside world during class. It’s been weird. And, by the way, it’s not a matter of if we’ll go to war but when. Bush is so gawdammed gung-ho about going to war he’s pretty much forsaken all other things for it. I mean, Osama Bin Laden reared his ugly little head a couple of weeks ago and we barely heard a peep about it. The folks in our government have lost sight of their objectives, and we’re all going to pay for their short-sightedness. And yes, I did vote and, no, I didn’t vote for this monkey. I voted for a different monkey altogether.

Speaking of livestock, I have preserved yet another of my past personal website incarnations for posterity. Sneh was my stab at trying to create a lit site. At the time, the sneh.com domain name belonged to some attorney firm (Skinnem, Newcombe, Edem and Hearle, or something like that) so I wasn’t able to grab it. Now it’s owned by my arch-enemy, Ultimate Search, Inc., a bunch of low-life domain name squatters who literally seem to watch what I specifically run a whois on and then snap it up before I get a chance. Bastards.

At any rate, Sneh is a total mishmash of weirdness that resulted from my living alone in a studio apartment at the corner of Haste and Telegraph in Berkeley for three years with no one to talk to but myself and the 15 cats I shared a kitchen with. I initially built it because the folks at Intuit had indicated that they would like to see some proof of my HTML skills before hiring me. So I bought the “Website in a Weekend” book to catch up on all of the stuff that had happened in HTML between 1994 and 1998 and whipped this sucker together. By some miracle I got the job, but they didn’t initially put me in a position that required HTML. Coincidence?

This was also my first foray into the free hosting available at Tripod.com. I had absolutely no clue at this time how to even get a web hosting account, so Tripod was my best answer. I continued to build it out and add some extra weirdness, including the amazing RobCam, which was a reactionary piece I built in a day after reading a story about the JenniCam. I also tried my hand at writing a travel series, which fizzled after three entries because, by then, I was out of college and finding time for road trips was getting more and more difficult. Plus, my crappy digital camera at the time didn’t produce award-winning images (What do you expect from a first-generation Casio QV that produced a maximum of 320×240 pixels? It was just below top of the line when I bought it, though).

All in all, Sneh is a fun little foray into my not-so-distant past. Check it out, but be prepared for a far wackier side of me than I usually portray on this site. Oy.