Toadkillerdog's DogHouse

How Do You Read It?

mitchell — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:50:18 GMT

That’s what the teacher of the law asked Jesus in Luke 10:25-37 (otherwise known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan).

I was having a lunch with a buddy of mine yesterday, and, since his wife is studying to be an attorney, the subject of law and lawyers came up (he had some good news to relate regarding her studies). I happened to mention that I’ve been reading Team of Rivals, and, in the book, the author stresses the point that the path to power, wealth, and prestige generally came through reading the law.

That prompted a thought this morning regarding what the per capita of attorneys might be with respect to the U.S. population, which, according to one source, turns out to be approximately 7.48% (with the highest concentration, naturally, in Washington D.C. = 2.77%). By comparison, the percent of the U.S. population engaged in the plumbing industry is 0.19%.

And that made me wonder if the reason we have so many attorneys isn’t directly related to our sinful nature.* It was our sense of Entitlement, our mistaken idea that we, too, deserved to be gods, which caused the Fall in the first place. And, ever since then, God has recognized our need for Law, presumably as a direct acknowledgement of our litigious fallen nature. We, of course, have taken that to extremes and applied beyond the spiritual to the physical realm of our existence. Everything we do is contract based – I’ll do this if you do that…and, if you don’t, well, get a lawyer. Everything’s about what’s legal or not (not whether it’s right or wrong) and what I deserve according to the contractual obligations.

For me, it casts the “teacher of the Law” in the passage in an entirely new light and especially with verse 29 wherein he feels the need to justify himself. His response smacks of the same wish fulfillment Entitlement philosophy to which the Rich Ruler adhered. It’s that great juxtaposition between the inborn knowledge that we were born and destined for greater things (being made in His image) and our poorly placed faith in our ability to get there of our own strength and effort. It’s the genesis of works-based salvation and legalism.

We still want to be our own god.

* Note that this is not a rant against attorneys. They’re a symptom, not the cause. One might note in passing, however, that the phrase “teachers of the Law” returns several instances throughout the Bible, and not very many of those are flattering.

PDC 2008: Day 1

mitchell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 20:37:00 GMT

So, I opened this up to write about it (even thought it's Day 2 and you've already heard all the good stuff), and I just realized that I left my notes back in the hotel. I had to go old school with the notes (pen and paper) because I forgot to get an extended life battery.

The good news is that I just got "The Goods," and, regardless of what you think is on it, the 160Gb Western Digital USB powered external HDD is well worth it alone.

Attendee party at Universal Studios is tonight, so I don't expect to get much more in before then. Until then, do a search for Software + Service, Windows Azure, and Live Services for the big stuff and .Net 4 (and the Dynamic Language Runtime) for the "little" stuff to see what I would've written about.

PDC 2008: Pre-Conference: RIA with Silverlight (Morning)

mitchell — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 20:17:43 GMT

So, we're finished with the first part of the pre-conference, broken up in to very manageable 2-hour chunks across today. By which I mean, of course, that we got to eat lunch. The only comment I have about lunch is that it seemed to cater rather extensively to a vegetarian crowd...lot's of meatless choices.

So, on to Silverlight...

Our presenter is Jeff Prosise, an engaging speaker who appears to be quite knowledgeable regarding Silverlight. The funniest thing he's said so far has nothing to do with Silverlight, of course: he wants us to "grok" all this stuff. Being a Heinlein fan, I appreciated the reference.

Grok is a good term for Silverlight in any case. You have to fully immerse yourself into the Silverlight experience in order to really appreciate the technology, and, by doing so, you, as the observer, will become part of the observed, i.e., resistance is futile. Prosise calls it a "game changer," and I would find myself hard pressed to argue against that interpretation. A browser plug-in which doesn't require me to learn a new coding paradigm and in which I can basically fully utilize my hard-earned .Net experience.

I plan on using this space not to cover really technical aspects of things, unless they happen to be really cool, but more as a whiteboard on which I can pass on nuggets of the really interesting parts of the presentations that you can only get from being here.

For instance, you can check out the beta site for Microsoft's Silverlight enabled search engine at tafiti.com.

Note, the one other really interesting thing that Prosise pointed out, so far, concerns the "Core" Base Class Library (BCL). He specifically called out that, in the seven assemblies the comprise the so-called "CoreCLR," it's interesting to see System.Threading. You can use Silverlight to write a mult-threaded downloadable application! How cool is that?

PDC 2008: Pre-Conference: The Beginning

mitchell — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 16:31:00 GMT

Well, technically, it began yesterday since I flew out on Saturday. I've already managed to lose (and find) my credit card, get ripped off for wireless Internet access at the hotel, eat way too much, and lose a lot of sleep because of the time change. I woke up at 4am this morning (local) because, of course, my body is used to waking up at 6 at home. And that was after an apparently all night party going on at the hotel that kept me up late. It makes me feel for the rather large European contingent here at the conference. On the other hand, the free Starbucks coffee is helping!

Enough about my travails already. I'd love to talk about the Conference, but I can't...mostly because it hasn't started yet. I'm waiting for the all day Pre-Conference session I've chosen (Creating Rich Internet Applications with Silverlight) to start. The only thing I can actually comment so far is breakfast, which was surprisingly good. Oh, and, of course, I've already scored my first T-shirt which everyone gets as part of conference participation, but nonetheless, I'm now one up in the Grand Championship T-Shirt Scrounging Contest on my co-workers.

Stay tuned...

FileStream vs. StreamReader

mitchell — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 16:05:56 GMT

Just to carry the example a little further and show the code behind the $64 String, I thought I'd share with you the two methods I was using to read the values of the key.

First, we have the FileStream method, which, basically, reads each byte in sequence and appends it to a byte array:

65 FileStream fs = new FileStream(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory + "/keyStore.txt", FileMode.Open);

66 byte[] key = new byte[fs.Length];

67 fs.Read(key, 0, (int)fs.Length);

68 fs.Close();

69 fs.Dispose();

79 cryptoProvider.Key = Convert.FromBase64String(sKey);

Note that the result is a byte array of the appropriate length. Obviously, as you read in the previous post, that didn't work so well in this particular instance. I needed to read the entire contents of the key store into a single string so that I could perform the appropriate operation on it. So, enter the StreamReader:

73 StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(AppDomain.CurrentDomain.BaseDirectory + "/testKey.txt");

74 string sKey = sr.ReadToEnd();

75 sr.Close();

76 sr.Dispose();

So, the StreamReader reads the entire contents into a single string, rather than a byte array, allowing the conversion operation, which, oddly enough converts into a byte array (but of the appropriate size):

79 cryptoProvider.Key = Convert.FromBase64String(sKey);

Now, note, under the covers, the StreamReader, once passed a path, is simply opening a FileStream object and wrapping it for me. But I'm ok with that, as it's less plumbing that I have to write!

The $64 String...

mitchell — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:01:00 GMT

With apologies to the game show...

I was working on a cryptography project, and, without going into detail (it's SECRET, duh), I was having some issues. The other party sent me their test key in a text file, and it was Base64 encoded. Naturally, being the smart id10t that I am, I popped open my handy dandy, Base64 decoder site, decoded the string, and placed the string in the proper location for it to be used in the decoding process. Lo and behold the decryption process broke...because the key was too small!

In my investigation, it turns out that decoding it by any means other than Convert.FromBase64String() resulted in a byte array with only 31 bytes. Since a 256-bit key requires a 32-byte array, that posed an issue. Luckily, instead of reading the individual bytes from the key store (via a FileStream.Read() operation), I read it from the key store using a StreamReader.ReadToEnd() operation, then transferred it to the byte[32] array using Convert.FromBase64String(). Somehow, that padded the extra byte, and decryption worked.

It's the small things in life...and it's only $64 because it took 16 hours and that's what my $4/hr (that I'm worth) converted to ;-).

Visual Acuity of the Human Eye

mitchell — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:46:51 GMT

Not sure how accurate or useful it is, but it's certainly fascinating.

"DeCrapify" Your PC

mitchell — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 12:48:00 GMT

Article on CIO.com w/ 50 tools to police your PC. My favoritely named one (no comment on it's usefulness) is "PC Decrapifier."

(Architect == Glue) == True;

mitchell — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:44:00 GMT

I was having a conversation with a buddy of mine today, and we got on the subject of what the role of an architect really is (as we usually do). After some conversation (and good food), we came to the realization that the role of the architect, fundamentally, is to be the glue which binds the various business disciplines together. That is, the architect needs to know a little bit of something about marketing, sales, the actual business domain in which he is operating, infrastructure, development, and a whole host of others. The architect isn't an expert in all of them, and probably, none of them really, but he understands them at a deep enough level to be able to provide consistency and support across the breadth of them. He is the glue which holds them all together in order to deliver a functioning piece of technology after everything is said and done.

Defiantly Flawed

mitchell — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 01:49:00 GMT

My buddy sent an email the other day, and I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to say it that way. However, when his "definitely flawed" came out as "defiantly flawed," it grabbed hold of me. I thought, "true dat!" We revel and glory in our sinfulness and shake our fists at God. We are not supplicants before the throne of grace laying ourselves at the feet of the King. We are instead, rebellious, fractious, and supercilious. God can handle our little tantrums. In fact, I have no doubt he expects them, as any good Father would. And despite all that, He still loves us. It's simply amazing. We are lost, yet He seeks and finds us. We are blind, yet He opens our eyes. We are bound, yet He sets us free.

Quotes - William H. Whyte

mitchell — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 17:37:24 GMT

"An empty wall is a testimony to the insignificance of the human spirit." - William H. Whyte

Leadership is Seduction

mitchell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:50:31 GMT

"Managers push, leaders pull. Managers use punishments and rewards, structure, process, deadlines, and milestones to get things done. And it all works, but it isn’t leadership. As a leader, think of yourself differently: you seduce. You tantalize with a vision of how the world could be... but only if people are willing and able to rise to the challenge. You motivate and energize. And while management skills (yours or others’) may be necessary to get the job done, your identity remains one of inspiration and guidance."

A friend of mine sent that to me today, and, since it's something I've been saying for years, albeit not as well probably, I thought it worth posting and seeing if anyone has any comments or reaction to it.

Quotes - C.S. Lewis

mitchell — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:41:37 GMT

I agree Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the Universe. Certainly if he goes on his present course much further man can not be trusted with knowledge. - C. S. Lewis

Searching for God Knows What: "Impostors: Santa Takes a Leak" (Chapter 2)

mitchell — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:14:08 GMT

So, I think Miller tackles an issue with which we all struggle. It's the number one thing I struggle with in any attempt to share the gospel. The constant refrain I hear is always along the lines of "yeah, but Christianity is just a bunch of hypocrites."

I think Miller points out an idea to which I have always subscribed, and, interestingly enough, was also the topic of the sermon at church this past Sunday: religion sucks. Religion, as Miller says, is people actually believing that God is who they think He is. Or, in other words, religion is a man-made structure fitting the God idea into a manageable box to which we owe no allegiance and from which we can escape whenever we like. One of my favorite lines from Big Daddy Weave's song, Fields of Grace, is about when we find that place "where religion finally dies." In Romans, Paul quotes from Psalm 14, Psalm 53, and Ecclesiastes 7 when he says that there isn't a single righteous person on Earth, and he goes on to describe humanity in some pretty devastating terms. Paul is referring to our active refusal to seek to know God. Instead, we have a tendency to want to control God by making Him over into the image that pleases us most thereby abrogating both His sovereignty and our obligation to acknowledge our own sinfulness.

So, as Miller says, we create impostor Gods. We "change Jesus around in order to make Him more like ourselves," so that we don't have to face the awful and painful truth that is we who need to change. After all, if our interpretation of God says that what we're doing is OK, then we're OK. The issue is, of course, that none of us are ok. And so, we come to "worship a very small god, a god who exists simply to validate [our] identities." These little gods become the thing to which we cling. The irony, of course, is that God really is the one who validates our identities, but He does so on His terms and only with His grace.

Titanic, Thresher, Scorpion (not a new species) and Seas of Glory

mitchell — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:15:50 GMT

Fairly interesting article on Ballard and his quest for glory on the seas in the "search for"¹ the Titanic, but my favorite line in the entire article is this:

"While searching for the sunken submarines, Ballard learned an invaluable lesson on the effects of ocean currents on sinking debris: The heaviest stuff sinks quickly." [emphasis added]

Really...do you think so? I'm fairly sure that Ballard didn't say it that way, so it begs the question: does anyone actually edit these stories for intelligent writing or are they just concerned with spelling and grammar? I'm fully aware of what Ballard meant to convey, but, really, did the write actually not think about what he was typing?

Other than that, though, it was a very informative article with interesting insight into how the military has such a huge impact on both technology and exploration. As a side note, the author mentions that Secretary of the Navy Lehman "knew of the plan," which, in and of itself, isn't very interesting, but I am reading Lehman's book, On Seas of Glory. It's an fascinating and fairly well constructed reading on the history of naval warfare in the United States.

¹ I put that in quotes because, well, you'll see when you read the article...