Excellent discussion of Reagan's impact

My friend barking_iguana wrote an excellent essay about Reagan's impact on politics, and how Reagan was able to establish that fantasies mattered more than reality did. If you are too young to remember Reagan, you'll want to read this.

The Old Testament had a solution for such a damaged generation: Wander around the desert for forty years until they all die off. We don’t have that option.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/barking_iguana/17052.html

A dedication for my book

TPoSaNA doesn't have a dedication page. We wanted to have a page where we each put our dedication. Christine and I couldn't think of what to say. I think it was mostly because we had left it to the end and we were scurrying to meet our deadlines. Nobody can think during those times. (Heck, the somewhat emotional last chapter was written months earlier.)

However, today I was emailing with a previous boss about the book and he said

"Every time I look up from my desk and see the spine of TPSNA on my bookcase I get a rush of pride in your accomplishment and I bet most of the folks [in the sysadmin team at Bell Labs] feel the same way."

That's when I realized that how much I am indebted to my co-workers at Bell Labs. We all "grew up" a lot during those years and the book (or the 50% that I wrote) is very much a recording of what we learned together. They are all thanked in the Acknowledgements section (and all got a free copy, of course). If we get a chance to make such a change, I will add a dedicate page to the book and my dedication will be "To my co-workers from the system administration team at Bell Labs, who are as much a part of this book as it is a part of me."

The FAA's computer delemma on 9/11

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040608005225&newsLang=en

While I don't know anything about what this seminar is, one speaker (Tom O'Keefe) is essentially the CIO of the FAA and the last time I saw him speak in relationship with that product, he talked mostly about how the FAA's computer network team had to react on 9/11.

I'd go to this seminar just to see his part of the talk.

I have voted for Howard Dean

Yesterday I walked into a voting booth and wrote-in Howard Dean for Democratic candidate. It was the conclusion of nearly a year of work, including 3 months of going without a salary to work for him.

His campaign ended before he could get on the NJ ballot, and it doesn't matter because everyone knew that the nomination would be locked up before NJ's primary happened. However it was a point of pride for me. I had been re-arranging business trips to make sure that I would be in NJ on this day.

Oh, and it is no longer a "write-in", it's a "personal choice vote". That's because you type the name on a little keyboard now, thanks to electronic voting.

Now we just have to elect Kerry and kick Bush out.