JoseB Blog

Protesting is a fundamental right in this country. Sometimes its the only way to achieve change. In the 60's there were two protest movements. I saw it. The Civil Rights and Vietnam war protests.  Yes, there was violence, blood was shed, but they brought about change. Change for the better. An end to a pointless war and overt discrimination against black people.  There will be more protests because a lot of change still needs to happen in this country.  Those who use the protests to inflict violence on others are to be condemned. And those who protest in peace to take this country closer to the ideals of our founding fathers are to be commended.

There are super stars in every field. After all, you have world class lawyers, doctors, architects, engineers, etc... The same goes for developers. Everyone should be given an equal opportunity to succeed,  but not everyone is equally talented or productive. For this reason managers need to treat their team members differently and even unequally in certain cases. I realize saying this may be controversial, especially to an HR person, so I will clarify.   Early in my career I had a manager who considered himself very fair and he treated everyone the same.  He was a stickler for details regarding punctuality, appearance and rules and regulations and gave anyone (whether junior or senior) a hard time if these rules were not followed to a tee. Eventually this manager lost all his experienced senior developers. Why? Its because they expected better treatment and perks given their superior work quality and productivity. The lesson here is that you give your best peopl...

When I studied weather to be a pilot dew point had to be understood. I recently googled 'dew point' to see what was out there on the topic and I did not see anything that explained it at a 'for dummies' level  so here goes... To understand dew point there are a couple of concepts that need to be understood first. The first thing is that hot air can hold more water vapor than cold air. So if its 90 degrees, that air will hold more water vapor than air that is at 50 degrees. So you can think of the current air temperature analogous to the size of a glass that can hold water.  This large glass here will represent a 90 degree day and it can hold more water than this smaller glass that represents a 50 degree day. 90 degree day can hold more water Now lets look at relative humidity. Relative humidity is a percentage of how much water is in the air (glass) relative to the size of the glass (air temperature). So lets fill the 90 degree day glass halfway. Its 50% humidity here. ...

I believe that the vast majority of the best IT Managers out there were former developers.  In my 41 years in IT, I have worked for a variety of managers and without question the ones who had a technical background were the best. If you think about it, it makes sense. Here are some reasons why: IT Managers are often called upon to troubleshoot failing IT Projects. Projects can fail for different reasons but the root cause is always founded in one of the following.  How can someone with no developer experience know how to figure out where a project is failing? Poor project planning (task estimation, sprint planning) Incomplete requirements Flawed architecture or design Poor quality code Poor testing Poor or no deployment process Non technical managers often focus on metrics to measure project progress and quality (like lines of code, use cases done, bug counts). Unfortunately developers know how to rig metrics 99 times out of 100 in their favor to hide the reality of what'...

The day was Nov 4, 1984 and I had been doing touch and goes with my flight instructor, Alicia Sykes. After one of the landings she said, "OK, you're ready. I'm getting out and you're going to do your solo." Those words caught me completely by surprise because I didn't think I was ready yet. I knew that I was getting close because I had 13 hours flight time and most of that was touch and goes. But I really didn't think that today was the day.  I asked Alicia, "Really, you think I'm ready?" She said, "Yes."  I said, "Why don't we wait till the next lesson, just to make sure, by then I'll be ready for sure." She said, "Nope, you're ready now. Just go up and do what you've been doing, watch your airspeed and you'll be fine." I realized I had no choice, she was not going to let me off the hook (she was a very firm instructor). She got out of the plane (a Cessna 150 aka Midlands 10) by the runway an...

Before I answer that I'll give you a clue as to why it is who it is. If you are into music and know how some of the Beatles songs were written, you will know the answer. Here are among my favorite Beatles songs:  I am the Walrus A Day in the Life Strawberry Fields Baby You're a Rich Man Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for me and my Monkey Dear Prudence I'm so Tired Revolution Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds In My Life And You're Bird Can Sing Across the Universe Ticket to Ride Nowhere Man Hey Bulldog That should tell you who it is. So if you guessed John Lennon you're right. Those are all John songs. A trick to know who wrote which Beatles song is by who sings it. Whomever sings it almost always mostly wrote it.  But here's the thing. I know that Paul is the more musically talented of the two. And Paul has written quite a few masterpieces like Yesterday, Blackbird, Elanor Rigby, Hey Jude, Let it Be, We Can Work It Out, just to name a few.  But there...

Everyone listens to music differently.  Some listen to the words first, others the music, and others listen to both. I am one of of those who just listen to the music, and then maybe later (sometimes years later) I listen to the words.  My brain is wired for sound. I went for many years not knowing anything about the lyrics of many Beatles songs. The melodies and George Martin's production were too powerful for me to pay attention to anything else.  For some reason, I am wired to interpret music as repeating sonic patterns made of melodic note sequences, chord sequences, and bass and rhythm sequences.  If I like the song, I will listen to it over and over and I will dissect and analyze each individual pattern for anything interesting. I will literally play a song in my head over and over each time focusing on a different instrument. The most interesting  songs have new patterns I've never heard before that are pleasing. The more complex the production (with orch...

Its not Trump dividing us - its us.  Its us getting our news from sources that feed the hatred and paranoia about the other side. For example, I'm talking about right-wing news sources that say protesters are all hooligans. I'm talking about left-wing news sources that say Federal troops are all beating up protesters. I'm talking about FOX, MSNBC, Hannity, Carlson, Limbaugh, Maddow, O'Donnell, etc... The list goes on. They spew poison and like brainwashed zombies, we eat it up.  There is no black and white. The truth is not that easy to get at. It takes work. Everything is always complicated and colored in shades of grey that need to be studied to get at the truth. But we are not willing to put forth that effort. We are lazy. We'd rather get spoon fed lies by a talking head that fits our prejudiced narrative.   Sure Trump uses this division to his advantage. And Facebook makes it worse by providing a vehicle for the brainless and uninformed to spread lies that the f...

Every guitar channel person on YouTube has at least one video called 'The Top Ten Guitar Players.' I never watch them because its such a 'click bait' title. What right does anyone have to determine who the top ten guitar players are? Had they titled the video 'My Top Ten Guitar Players,' that I would watch, because its an honest title and I am always interested in other people's opinion on this topic. For me its very important that a guitar player have an original style and sound. My favorite guitar players are the ones that when I hear them play a few notes in a song I've never heard, I know its them. Here they are: Terry Kath - I have another blog post as to why he's my favorite. Suffice to say I picked up the guitar when I was in the 9th grade because of this guy. Terry abusing a Strat    Jan Akkerman - Jan is the guitarist for the highly underrated Dutch progressive rock band Focus which had a minor hit called 'Hocus Pocus' (Yes, the wa...

I see a lot of people caught up in petty social media bullshit like... Oh this BLM guy did this bad thing, so they are all Communists Oh this Trumpist did this bad thing, so they are all Fascists Lets all remember there are bad apples on both sides and stop generalizing. Its wrong. If you are caught up in that, maybe take a break and stop letting social media get you all in a tizzy? The significant issues are things like: How to handle the pandemic The economy Global warming Health care America's standing in the world Education Ending racial inequality

I forget exactly when it happened but I think it was when I was in the 9th grade, 1970 thereabouts. My older brother Mario was one of the writers for the University of South Carolina's newspaper and he was assigned to write an article about the band Chicago who was coming into town (Columbia, S.C.) to play at the Carolina Coliseum. He was given two backstage passes to briefly interview them after the show, and he offered that I come along.  I played the sax at the time, it was the instruments my parents loved and bought for me when I was in the 3rd grade when they saw I had musical inclinations. I knew nothing about Chicago, so I was very surprised at the show to see a rock band that had horns! So cool! Horns in a rock band!  Maybe Mario knew I would be blown away by seeing a sax in a rock band.  I don't remember much about the show because I was not familiar with their music at the time but I do recall Terry Kath doing some 'Free Form Guitar' feedback solo which JUST B...

When I was a kid I believed in Santa Claus and God.  Everything was simple and made sense. God made the world and Santa Claus brought the toys. Then one day I found out there was no Santa Claus. It was merely a trick parents played on their kids to bring them joy and magic at Christmas time. You would think finding that out at age 6 might be traumatic, but my reaction was more like 'Ok, it figures.' But I have to say, that event, of finding out that there was no 'magic' in this world and that everything had a logical explanation pretty much set the course for the rest of my life.  Some time afterwards, I said to myself, if there is no Santa Claus, then why should there be a God as mentioned in the Christian Bible? I mean think about it, Santa brings toys to the good kids and coal  to the bad ones, and God sends you to heaven if you're good and hell if you're bad.  Really?  I might fall for that as a kid, but as an adult? I'm sorry but I just can't fall f...

I don't worry so much anymore about the terrible things that men do to each other. As a musician, I often get into the lofty ideals for peace and love that many songs aspire to. When I see a terrible injustice, someone blowing up a building and killing innocents, a bomb taking out a terrorist and killing women and children in the process, or ISIS beheading a poor guy in an orange suit on his knees, or six million Jews killed by Hitler, the list goes on and on. When I see that I often wonder, how can mankind be so evil? How can we do such terrible things?  Why can't we all hold hands, sing Kumbaya and just get along?  Well the answer is simple, stupid. The reason is simply because humans are animals. Forget about all this crap spewed by philosophers or religion that we are different from other animals because we have established abstract concepts of morality, empathy, and such. All that abstract lovey dovey stuff goes against our nature and the nature of the universe which is k...

The day that Caro left for college, we all knew (at least I did), that from this day forward we would most likely no longer live together as a family under one roof.  That morning it was as if the kids wanted to savor every last moment together. There was no fighting, they laughed and played together like elementary school children. As the moment got closer, they ran around, wrestled on the bed like old times.  When the moment for Caro to leave arrived, it all came to an abrupt stop. Caro and Mom got in the car, there were some teary eyes and the car drove off. And the house was very quiet with me, Rebe and Rofo dealing with the new reality.

What is LDAP? The P in LDAP stands for Protocol, the same as the P in HTTP and FTP. So right off the bat you see that LDAP is a protocol that is at the application level (same as FTP and HTTP) that rides on top of TCP/IP (a transport level protocol). Like HTTP and FTP, LDAP is based on a client sever model. You have an LDAP client that connects to an LDAP server and sends LDAP requests and receives LDAP responses. LDAP services typicallly run on port 389. Unlike HTTP which is a stateless protocol (no connection is kept alive between requests by a client), LDAP is more like FTP in that you have to connect with credentials (called binding), perform operations (typically to lookup data in the directory) and then disconnect (aka unbinding). An interesting thing is that LDAP is supported by browsers (just like FTP is also supported by browsers) and you can enter an address like ldap://UrlAddress/ and the browser will switch to the LDAP protocol and pop up a small window to let you do dire...

Its apparent the election is over and McCain-Palin will win. The economy and financial markets are in a tailspin yet at the same time the so called 'undecided' are going to McCain. How could this be? The press all seems to think its because of Palin. While that makes for a great story and seems plausible, after more thought, I dont think so. What is happening is that really there are two kinds of 'undecided' voters. The kind that don't care about the color of a presidential candidate have been in Obama's camp for a long time given the economy, the two wars, the lack of an energy policy, and the environmental policy. The 'undecided' who have been waiting have been looking for an excuse not to vote for a black man. And the election is near so they are now falling under McCain-Palin (or whoever else the Republicans would have nominated). There is nothing Obama can do about this, so its over. I predict the election will not be close and both Ohio a...

Lets think about this. Did sending 30k additional troops to a country of 27 million bring about the recent reductions in violence? Well, when the bombs were going off every day in Iraq, it was said that the only way to achieve peace was thru political means, not military means. And what happened in 2007? The Sunnis starting shooting at AlQueda instead of us (the so called Sunni Awakening) Al Sadr signed a ceasy fire silencing the Shiite Militias So you tell me - was it the 2 things above or was it the surge that reduced the violence? Oh, you say the surge enabled those 2 things to happen. Well, I go back to logic. You tell me that 30k troops in a country of 27 million can make that difference. I support our troops. But I don't think the surge could have had much of an effect.

The past seven and a half years have been like a nightmare and soon it will all be over. Irregardless of whether McCain or Obama win, the main point to rejoice about is that soon we will be rid of the most ignorant president this country has ever had. Here is the legacy of the W era. The suppression of scientific reasoning. Bush's denial of global warming will be one of his greatest follies. The suppression of stem cell research. The rise of 'intelligent design' theories and attempts to teach creationism in science classes at school. The attack on the environment. Removing the US from the Kyoto Accord. Repeal of the Clean Water Act. Removing federal land from National Park protection. Loading the EPA with former business executives who have done all they can do favor business at the expense of the environment. Softening up laws to increase gas mileage. Intollerance of opposing points of view. Questioning the patriotism of people who disagree with the Iraq war. Lab...

Yesterday was a sad day. Tim Russert, one of the best political reporters passed away very unexpectedly. He was one of the few out there that was objective and did not participate in sensationalized overblown reporting. But here at our house, the baby bird that Rebeca found under the palm tree alomost 2 weeks ago died. It was unexpected as he was eating well and growing, then the day before yesterday he stopped eating and died the next day. Rebeca was at Josefina's house when it died so I had to tell her the sad news when I picked her up. Rebe just sat there quitely in the car and her big eyes got red, filled with tears and she whimpered softly. I have to say I was proud of the way she handled it. She cried for about 10 minuts and then she held my hand and spoke about the bird and wondered about things. About why he died, whether we will see him again when we die. She was told by someone that animals and people go to seperate heavens. I assured her that was not the case. ...

It has been about 2 years since my last post. Unfortunately everything I said about this stupid Iraq war has turned out to be true. It has truly turned into a quagmire very much like Vietnam. With one notable exception. About a month ago there was a drive to raise food and supplies for the troops in Iraq where I work. Large boxes were placed at the entrances to work for people to drop in canned goods and anything else for the troops. To my surprise those boxes were always empty. I checked them from time to time and I tell you, no one donated anything. I have a theory as to why no one cares and it leads to the one major difference between the Iraq war and the Vietname war. In the Vietnam war we had the draft and the soldiers dying were the young kids of middle classes parents all across America, many of them college educated people. That is why the public support for the war was so low, given that our soldiers were dying for a questionable cause. The war was affecting a signifi...