Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett (2003)

Terry Pratchett's 31st book, Monstrous Regiment is about as good as you would expect it to be. He is, after all, Terry Pratchett. His fluid, funny style feels spontaneous, is quirky, and playful. If you like his style, you'll like it; if you don't, you probably will not.

The themes he explores are valuable for anyone. The raucous stupidity of war, sexism and feminism, how important it is to have some socks. It is for this reason that I this book is Recommended so highly. It allegory, it is one of his greater works.

Literally, it has its few faults. He moves so quickly though the beginning and introduces so many characters that I had trouble differentiating between Lefty and Shufti for pretty much the entire book. Wazzer only really stood out in the end, which, I suppose, was the point. The end feels a little rushed. After he said what he wanted to say and just had to wrap it up to get to his next story. It begins to wax philosophical so that man paragraphs are so thick with inside jokes and information and poetic refrain that it's hard to tell what it actually means.

That said, I love Terry's books. They are right up my alley. 

A change of focus....

One thing I noticed as I cleaned out all my extra shit is that when I was younger I thought more about stories, literature, and sociology. Whereas now I think more about computers and economics....

I would rather be like the self of my past, in this regard, than the self of my present.

So I will be going through my old essay scraps and trying to turn them into something useful. Rather than just redundant and annoying rants on operating system battles and economic stupidity which obsesses my mind too much, now.

Blasting the Past

Moving a home takes a lot of work. It quickly becomes obvious that most of the work is self-inflicted. Baggage is ported from one place to another to another when there is really very little use for it. Stuff fills the nooks and crannies of my home and I didn't realize quite how much of it there was until I had to haul it somewhere else.

When I got to looking through it, I realized that most of it was work I did once, a long time ago, and given the constraints of the modern life-style, I would be hard-pressed to find any time to ever look at it again. Even though I learned a lot. Again.

One thing I learned is that Art takes time. In this world of ours where we are (increasingly) fond of science and logic, it is hard to find a time and place for art. When I was in high school, I did more than when I was in college; I was more artistic as an underclassman than as an upperclassman; I did more in school than I do now out in the "real world" (bloody awful term if you ask me...)

Now I do hardly any. Every time I try to find time for art, I fail to notice what I didn't do instead. And then I feel like I'm not getting anything 'worthwhile' accomplished. Which is truly sad.

However, nearly all of my 'art' is utter crap. I was a very angry child growing up. I visualized a lot of violence. Perhaps, if I lived in California, I would have become a Peter Jackson-esque director - except I'm not really a director personality. If, as an adult, I came across a child creating this kind of art, I would be very worried and probably turn it in to a licensed psychologist and maybe even the police after having a few words with their parents. Some of it is pretty scary shit. I never listed names of real people, it is all devoted fiction, but it is rather bloody. And the further back I go, the bloodier it became (when I was ten, I wrote about decapitation).

Hm. I was a horrible person.

And now all of that tainted work is in the recycle bin. It is time to move on into the future. Stop lamenting if I can (which I can't) how little I write in the real world. Stop looking at these stacks and stacks of paper which could go to better use as a post-consumer recycled product than just taking up valuable real-estate in my home. I feel better now that I have less stuff. I'm not pulling such a heavy burden of crap I keep meaning to go back to, but never will.

I know that I am not alone in this tenancy to hoard. Most of us, in America, (at least those of us with walls and roofs) have a little hoarder in our blood. It may not be as damaging to our lives as it is for those poor people we exploit on our evil glowing boxes, but it is there and it is damaging all the same. The scale is simply different. Whilst I rummaged though my trash, I had a lot (a very lot) of time to reflect on the astounding quantity of trash we generate because we record and keep. It's kind of a sad thing. How much of this stuff in our homes do we really use? Perhaps a little more than what we need, but a small fraction of what we have.

Just a thing to think about. I lament the lack of a great recycling system to get all this Stuff to the understuffed. People who really do Need more. Though there are a few systems. Luckily for me, I don't have a lot that people can actually use... it's all just bloody paper. The recycling is simpler that way.

I don't want this little thought to be a call to arms for throwing away all the excess shit that lies in y'alls houses. Because, if we're gonna have landfills they might as well be our homes. But if it does inspire you (somehow...), please remember to reduce first, reuse second, regift third, and recycle fourth. Try never to throw away.

Writing too often about computers and technology

I find it almost hard to believe that people are surprised Windows 8 has a small market share.

How old is Windows 7?

I find that in most things, people get loyalty. There are Windows-heads, Mac-heads, Democrats and Republicans, and those in between. Those who like Windows will continue to use windows and malign those who like Mac; and vice versa. Those who like Democrats will also malign Republicans who will sling the mud right back.

But image if there were several versions of Democrat OS and Republican OS. And they came out every few year to compete against themselves. The computers that shipped with Windows 7 are still young and viable. And, unlike the superphone market, I don't know anyone who replaces their computer every year or two. Not even my computer-geek friends, who may want to, do that... primarily for a lack of funds. (I don't know how or why the superphone got to be replaceable every goddamn year whether it was still working or not.)

So Windows 8 is competing against the still-young Windows 7. My girlfriend is still using Vista. My college switched to 7 about 6 months ago. They will not be switching again for a few years, I wouldn't think.

Businesses take a long time to get things done, sometimes. For good and poor reasons. Switching over your computers is expensive and time-consuming and requires that all of your employees learn something new that isn't directly affecting your business at the moment.

Why switch?

In comparison, I don't compare the version of Ubuntu I'm using; and people don't compete to have the latest Mac. The releases are not as big of a deal. They happen more regularly and are just part of a series. Not benchmarks.

Windows is still the most popular PC OS and probably always will be.

It's the next generation they've really got to worry about.

Dear Patrick R. Donahoe and Paul Vogel,

How many people change their address online versus the old and cumbersome paper way? I wonder if it is much less than expected. I expect it is. I also got to wondering if anyone in the Post Office knew why.

Here it is:

I had to change my address the other day. Finally got a new place to move into and out of limbo. The Post Office was filled with adverts telling me I could do it all online, where it would probably be faster, and more direct. I would get pretty quick e-mail notification, it probably goes straight into the USPS databases, effects my mailing address sooner, doesn't require someone to enter it in to the database and all that.

How much does it cost for someone to change their address? Online or by paper? I know the paper is more expensive. It has to be produced, first of all, and it can be mailed for free.

But online costs more for me.

But it wasn't the cost that made me mail in a change of address postcard. Changing my address online costs only a dollar. But it is the way that this dollar is charged.

It sets off my Scammer-Alert radar. Big time.

"Identity Verification: For your security, a valid debit or credit card must be charged $1.00."

That is a direct copy-and-paste from the website. Look at it again.

....For my security... I must be charged a dollar? After I filled out 4 other pages? My credit-card company might notify me of a single round dollar being charged to my card. It will ping on their professional Scammer-Alert radar. This is exactly how fake web-pages, Craigslist and email scammers operate. They don't reveal their plan until later in the game when you're a little bought into the process. I remember coming across a scammer page once which had an "about" section, a "history" and a "who we are" and it still wasn't real. I thought to myself, if they put as much effort into a legitimate business, they could probably succeed. But all they wanted to do was steal money from unsuspecting people.

I was confused. The web-page was https, but it was also a .com, rather than .org or .gov which did nothing to allay my suspicions, so I did a search. There were a lot of other people wondering if this was a scam, but it appeared that it wasn't. Which was still confusing. Why would an organization like the United States Postal Office have such a shady tactic? There are a lot of other ways to "be secure". If you need money, they just say it costs a dollar. Hell, charge five dollars. It has to cost something for you to change people's addresses, even if you have a vested interest in keeping an up-to-date mailing system complete with correct addresses. People might pay it.

But not if it say "Identity Verification: For your security, a valid debit or credit card must be charged $1.00."

That's just stupid. Identify some way that doesn't make people think your going to steal their credit card information and buy a plasma TV. Charge a dollar in an honest way.

I don't think government sponsored enterprises are inherently inferior to other enterprises, and I don't think the Post Office is, on the whole, so inefficient. I have very rarely had problems with my mail, receiving or sending, and it is usually earlier than the estimated time. I am impressed that I can send a letter to New York and it is there in about three days. That's faster than I could get there if it was the only thing I had to do.

But this is dumb. Sorry. Change it. Now.

Note:
Perhaps this is also for Nagisa Manabe, Joseph Corbett, and Megan J. Brennan. Forward it on.