Random raves

You know, I don't profess to know everything. *gasp!* And I have quite happily admitted all the way along that this whole Linux/Postfix thing has been a steepish learning curve for someone who has been a Windows admin for over 8 years. I've happily admitted it to my colleagues as well. However, while I'm fine with constructive criticism (most of the time, I'm not perfect, and it has been a hard lesson to learn over my life) and particularly suggestions about how to do things better, I intensely dislike being doubted  in matters in which I feel fairly competent.

Today a slight issue came up with a kludge we currently have to put in place for users who have more than one mail alias. The current system does not play nicely with the Windows Active Directory, and only "sees" the default mail address for the user, and not any additional aliases. So if we need to cover variations like "steven.bloggs" for "stephen.bloggs", we have to put in a Custom Recipient and redirect the additional address to the correct one. It's annoying and shouldn't be necessary.

When I put Postfix in, it won't be necessary to do that kludge, since the address harvesting routine I'll have in place will gather all the aliases that might be associated with a mailbox. This will be much nicer. It's a script that runs at an hourly interval, picks it all up, does a bit of magic and then puts all the addresses on the Postfix server to be used for mail delivery lookups.

I sent an email to the accounts creation people today saying that when we switch over to the new system, we will have to find the existing kludges and tidy them up. Once it's done, everything will be nicely streamlined, and since there are only a couple of dozen of them, it won't take long. So, I get a return email from one of the VMS admins (who helps look after the existing mail systems, kind of, and whom I normally get on well with), totally questioning everything that I've put in place so far:

• The address harvesting shouldn't be asynchronous, we should be doing dynamic lookups. [Leaving aside the fact that I wouldn't be able to do my re-addressing magic that way, the load on the Postfix server and the AD and the delay while a remote query takes place for each message would be ridiculous.]
• Did I know that AD only lets you return 1000 records at a time during an LDAP query? And yunno, we've got 4000 users and all, so I might be missing email addresses with my address harvesting. [Uh, yes, since I haven't been a VMS admin for the last 8 years, I've been a Windows admin, and I do know how Windows/AD works, thank you. And my Perl script can do as many iterative queries of 990 records as necessary, while it dumps the results in an array for further processing - I certainly have all the email addresses.]
  
• We would have to get rid of a custom attribute in the AD that currently facilitates mail delivery. Oh, and it's linked to other stuff which has nothing to do with mail. [My process would ignore that attribute. Since it was specifically created to facilitate mail delivery, it shouldn't have been linked to anything else. Since it requires an extra step to create the attribute with the current account creation process, wouldn't it be better if we can now ditch it?]

Regarding that last, I've specifically said all along, and specifically mentioned in the design document which he received, oh, about 5-6 months ago, that one of my primary aims was to get rid of that stupid custom attribute in the AD. Everytime I move a mailbox, I have to manually go in and change it to the correct parameter. It's ridiculous.

I admit that I could have been a little faster with the nuts-and-bolts doco that I need to give to him and the other Unix admin, but my design doco quite clearly laid out my aims (espcially removing the custom attribute), and sketched out the main methods I was going to use to achieve it (including the asynchronous address-gathering routine). Since the fucking email is my responsibility, and is what my position rests on, the nuts-and-bolts doco is only a courtesy anyway. If the mail is delivered, that's all he needs to know. Questions about the base design could have been asked months ago, not when I've finalised it (all bar the shouting).

The thing is, he's been really helpful up until now about the actual OS-based stuff (since he and the other guy are responsible for all the Linux servers), but now he starts throwing spanners in the works? I sent a fairly lengthy email responding to all his points. Politely. But I hope that he doesn't start feeling twitchy about the whole thing, because that could cause major problems. While he is a VMS/Linux guru, he knows nothing at all about Postfix, and I was hoping that was a very clear demarcation line. Well, we'll see on Monday, no doubt. I'm hoping it's just dorky geekboy cluelessness and not a "you can't play with my toys" kind of thing.

I can't wait for this fucking project to go live, actually.

Just have to vent; sometimes I shouldn't read the newspaper.

According to some academic twit back home, raising the minimum wage could squeeze many Maori and Pacific Island people "out of the labour market".

"Given the option, employers might switch to hiring people with more skills and education or older people with more experience.

"My study found for Maori who find the minimum wage binding, a 10 per cent rise in the real minimum wage would see a 15.8 per cent point fall in employment propensity, a drop of 13.5 hours usually worked each week, a 5.7 per cent point increase in unemployment propensity and a 10.9 per cent point increase in inactivity, that is, not working or studying."

So, that all highlights residual racism, then? Or the lag in education for the lower socio-economic classes (most of which happen to be Maori/Pacific Islander - although I can vouch for the fact they're not all non-Pakeha)? Eh? No, there apparently needs to be a "more balanced debate" over the "blunt instrument" of minimum wage rises.

Just as an addendum to my post yesterday about people prosletising about the benefits of drinking idiotic quantitites of water: drinking pure water if you're truly dehydrated is actually not an efficient way of rehydrating yourself.

If you've studied biology and/or anatomy, you'll know that water is transported into the bloodstream from the small intestine by way of osmosis. If you have an increased concentration of sodium across the intestinal wall, water is pulled across into the bloodstream (and so reduces the relative sodium concentration). Once the sodium concentration is sufficiently lowered, osmosis slows down and eventually stops.

Ok, so, to get the water transport happening, you need to have sufficient quantities of sodium in your bloodstream for it to take place, otherwise it doesn't reach a high enough concentration to get the osmotic mechanism working optimally. Drinking a lightly saline solution encourages this to occur, where pure water may just pass straight through. However, you might then think that, logically, if you drink a heavy saline solution, it'd get things working gangbusters. Of course, in reality, this isn't the case - what actually happens is that the saline solution is too strong on the wrong side of the intestine, thus drawing water out of the bloodstream and causing diarrhoea (as well as many other nasties if you poison yourself with sufficent salt). So, you know, drinking seawater is never a good idea. This is different compared to administering saline intravenously - since it goes directly to the bloodstream, it raises the sodium concentration in the right place (as well as obviously raising your fluid levels over all).

So, how to encourage the sodium/water transport to work a bit more quickly when you don't have a drip? In the late 70s (which isn't that long ago), it was discovered that glucose will transport sodium ions across the intestinal barrier into the bloodstream, on a one for one basis. Glucose is automatically absorbed by the intestine, with no other encouragement needed, since it's fuel for everything. However, too much glucose causes the same problem as too much sodium - it draws sodium out of the bloodstream, thus raising the concentration on the wrong side of the small intestine.

So, there you have it. If you have glucose in your hydrating solution, it transports the same number of sodium ions across into the bloodstream. As the concentration of the sodium rises, it draws water across the intestine until the sodium concentration reaches the appropriate balance. In the meantime, the glucose is burned off as fuel. Other things needed, if you're really going to town, are bicarbonate/citrate to reduce blood acidity, and potassium. With potassium, alas, you can't cheat with its absorption the same way as sodium - it's a purely passive process. So you need to supplement it. Bananas are good.

Good hydrating solutions will provide all those things - the Oral Rehydration Salts developed by Unicef to treat endemic diahorrea contain 3.5g salt, 2.9g citrate, 1.5g potassium chloride and 20g glucose, added to a litre of clean water. A home recipe Unicef suggest is 1 litre of water, 1/4 tsp each salt and bicarb, and 2 tbl (40g - only half of sucrose is glucose) sugar or honey. A 1/2 c of orange juice is suggested for better flavour and potassium, (the carb in that much OJ - 10g fructose - interestingly has no effect whatsoever on sodium transport, thus you need to leave the same amount of sugar in your solution).

Commercial preparations like Gatorade have WAY too much sugar in them. It's better to eat complex carbs and preload if you're going to do strenuous exercise that burns fuel. I do use stuff like that occasionally, but I end up chucking about 2/3rds away and topping it up with plain water (or whatever brings the glucose equivalent down to 20g/l).

I'm really in lecture mode at the moment. I have another one brewing on sexual politics, but I'll wait for another day to burden you all. :-)

So, there is quite a bit of discussion on Wikipedia about categories and "stub" articles. Some stub categories have too many items in them to be useful, so they need to be broken down into smaller sub-units. So, here's a discussion on creating a "settler" stub to refer to early pioneers to a country, rather than solely using the "country-bio" category:

{{settler-stub}}

While sorting through the US bio stubs I've come across certain groups that I haven't been able to assign satisfactory stubs to. Unlike the previous two stubs I've proposed, I haven't been able to these people to a particular stub type. These stub articles typically begin "John Doe helped found the town of Arwedairyet, Fivenessee." or "Jane Roe came over on the Mustfruit." (user) 20:58, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

• I've no objection to {{US-settler-stub}}, but a plain {{settler-stub}} would cut through several categories (NZ, Australia and South Africa's bio-stubs, to name just three).  23:31, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
  ...
• I think {{US-settler-stub}} would be more useful. Who would want articles on settlers from all around the world? (user) 10:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

 

You know, that last comment literally made me see red. *foam, foam, foam* Tosser. I'm afraid my willful ignorance tolerance threshold is running low at the moment. I did put my two cents in, reasonably politely, I hope. Well, actually, I don't care if it isn't (terribly) polite. Perfect, I am not.

...I'm going to have a session on things that are annoying me this week.

• Taxi drivers who leave their engines running while they wait on the rank. Come on, turn the bloody thing off. If it's stinking hot and you need the air-con, running it for 5 minutes while keeping your windows shut works wonders. And 20 degrees is not hot, wimps!
• The irresponsible idiot of a father who I saw on Saturday in Newtown. The train platform is 5 metres wide. There are lots of people trying to get to the station exits. Allowing your kids to play chasies up and down the platform is stupid at the best of times, much less when it's busy and a train could arrive at any minute. Okay, maybe you haven't seen someone squashed by a train like I have, but it doesn't require that much imagination to envisage the consequences.
• Wierdo-religion WLIs who use their supposed "disconnection from God" and "need for repentance" as an excuse for not possibly pursuing things further. After flirting assiduously for hours on Friday. Take bloody responsibility for yourself. I'm glad you didn't use the word "sin" I saw hovering over your lips or  else I wouldn't have reacted very well. It was insulting enough, considering I've been much more ethical and respectful of your boundaries than any other of the several dickhead men you've been involved with over the last year. But hell, I'm a depraved dyke, of course hanging out with me is going to get you thinking of the need for "repentance" in your life.
• Something else I've forgotten in the last 10 minutes, even though it's been bugging me all week. I hate my memory.

*sigh* Sorry, guys, I just need to get crap off my chest on a regular basis. Returning you to your regular programme...

Honestly, I sing better than this guy. And that's saying a LOT. At least I'm consistently sharp, rather than sharp, flat and all points in between, AND toneless.

I think my patience has run out (no kidding). He's been doing his banshee wail all evening (since 6pm) - it's after 11, I'm going to bed soon, and I need a fucking break.

( cut because I'm going to bitch majorly about someone who's not one of the usual suspects )

Sez me, bitching.

I hate passive-aggressive bitchiness. Reminds me of school where bunches of sanctimonious little girly-girls would get together and pick on everyone else who wasn't as well-dressed or feminine or who didn't have the right things to play with... I usually hit all those particular lacks. When I retaliated in my usual inappropriate manner (swearing, fighting, whatever), they were the wounded ones, and they quickly got the authorities on their side. It took me a looong time to get over my suspiciousness of a certain class of ultra-femme female. Well, it's still there, but I can usually reserve judgment until I see what their behaviour proves. And that particular behavioural example has got that individual well and truly on MY kill list.

Must pack. Hawaii tomorrow. 6:30am at airport. I evidently need a holiday, I've been such a sour cow these last few weeks.

Got to the Australian Museum, which was decent. They had a HUGE mineral collection, which is certainly the largest of any museum I've seen (and museums, I've seen a few). It's one of those sciences/hobbies that seems to have gone entirely out of vogue, and I wonder why that is. Part of the casulties of the academisation of sciences, perhaps: it's no longer cool to be going around chipping out your own rocks (not that many amateurs probably wouldn't ruin more than they manage to collect), or making your own incredibly detailed botanical watercolours, or seeing how many frogs you can galvanise with lightening. The trouble is that all those kinds of things have all been DONE, and you now need access to involved and expensive varieties of machinery and processes to make new discoveries. No wonder there is a dearth of interest in the sciences.

Getting back to the rocks, it's evident there was a great deal of sponsorship from the mining companies, which made great reference to the "pioneering spirit" of the early mineralologists... what they had to do with modern mining practice is beyond me. So, there are literally thousands of rocks of all shapes and hues. The exhibition was good at describing the elements that make up the various kinds of rock (it must be said that pyrite fascinates me the most -- how does iron and sulphur combine to produce that?), but left out what I would have found interesting, how people actually ascertained what elements composed the rocks. It could have talked about the early methods through to the modern ones, like weighing, finding specific gravity, hardness, reaction to acids, the streak test (the colour a mineral leaves when rubbed against a white ceramic tile, which is the ACTUAL colour of the mineral, regardless of oxidation), crystal structure analysis, magnetism, microscopy, and onto chromotography, etc. That all leads onto all kinds of science.

So, while it was somewhat interesting (and I don't really find rocks that interesting), it could have been made more so, although museums as a whole have definitely improved along those lines. But once again, it isn't exactly a trendy subject.

After that, I went to the Anzac memorial, which is on the way to the train station and got a bit weepy there, although the constant spiel in the exhibition area on the meaning of the Australian flag was somewhat irritating. I consider myself to be a fairly patriotic New Zealander, but really, the flag doesn't grab me. But maybe Australians are more like Americans in how they feel about it.

But, just to give an indication of what most NZers that I've encountered feel about the flag, let's play a quick game of spot the difference:

and

I can guarantee that 99.9% of the world will not be able to say which one is the Australian and which is the NZ flag. I have even encountered a number of Australians who can't bloody tell the difference. For the record, the NZ flag has only got the four stars of the Southern Cross and they are red in the middle. Australia has six stars, the sixth and six-pointed star representing the six states of the Federation.

So you can undoubtedly see why tons of NZers are keen on a campaign to change our flag. Ditching the Union Jack would be a good first step (since we're getting to the point where less than 50% of the population has ancestors originally from England/Scotland/Wales), but I'd be sad to see the Southern Cross go. The campaign is gaining some momentum, so it'll be interesting to see what results. I mean, making a change certainly worked for the Canadians. The trouble is that some of the flag debate is being tied up with the whole republicanism issue and muddying the waters, where the Canadian experience shows that the two issues are separate. Also, call me strange, but if we HAVE to have a bloody head-of-state, I'd much rather that she lives on the other side of the world and has another country paying for her upkeep.

So, yes, the visit to the Anzac memorial provided some food for thought. I also realised that I'd gotten my wires crossed on Anzac Day: my great-uncle who was killed during WWII was killed at El Alamein. It's the other great-uncle who was wounded in France. It's worth looking at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for interesting facts: both of my family members are listed there. The database which is accessible at the Imperial War Museum (well worth a visit when you're in London) has fuller details, such has the cause of death. My great-great uncle "died of wounds", which sounds like a horribly protracted process. Let's hope it wasn't.

Back to Canberra now, yippee.

One: I hate hate hate hate hate VBScript.

Two: Can poly people please stop talking about "primary" and "secondary"? It fucking winds me up.



Thank you, I needed to say both of those things. I now return you to your regular programme...