This is what happens ... when government and unions are in charge!
On October 24, a vendor in Hong Kong shipped a package of LED lamps to me (these were odd light bulbs that I couldn't find locally). They used DHL for the delivery. DHL got it to Salt Lake City on October 28 (that's over a weekend) – nice, fast, efficient delivery service. But ... then DHL handed it to the U.S. Post Office for “final delivery” – in other words, the so-called “last mile”.
I do not have my package. So this morning I set about tracking it down. I called DHL, and they gave me an incredibly long U.S. Post Office tracking number: 30 decimal digits long. That's a crazy big number – big enough to give a million unique numbers to every single star in the universe. To say it a different way, if the Post Office assigned a number to every single piece of mail it delivered, that would provide a unique number for a million trillion trillion years worth of mail. Seems a bit excessive, doesn't it? The DHL representative and I wasted about 10 minutes of our lives just making sure I had the right darned number. I wonder what genius at the Post Office decided their number had to be twice as long as anyone else's?
But that's just the beginning. Here's what the logistical geniuses at the Post Office did with my package. There's a truck that delivers mail destined to Paradise. It travels from Salt Lake City (where DHL handed my package to the Post Office) to Paradise six days a week, in the morning. The Post Office did not put my package on that truck. Instead, they sent it to Mt. Pleasant, Utah, about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City (further away from Paradise). Then they sent it by some very slow service (I'm guessing llama) to their distribution center in Aurora, Colorado – 550 miles from Paradise. The folks in Aurora then put it on a truck – back to Salt Lake City, Utah. Seriously. They really did that! If I'm lucky, I'll get it on Friday.
I feel like I'm seeing a vision of what will happen to our healthcare system if the progressives succeed in turning it into a single (government) payer system...
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Sarychev Peak volcano erupts...
Paradoxes of Software Architecture...
Paradoxes of Software Architecture... Here's an interesting piece by a well-known software architecture expert, summarizing the basic architectural approaches most commonly advocated in the past 20 years or so. The objectives for software architecture have long included reusability, flexibility, and maintainability – but all three of these objectives are routinely missed by large development projects. In plain language, most large bodies of software are a mess – they have the same function implemented repeatedly, they're about as flexible as a titanium rod, and anyone tasked with maintaining it should be put on suicide watch. The exceptions to this stand out as beacons of hope – but those exceptions are scarce indeed. The author makes an attempt to explain it, but I think not very successfully.
Something the author doesn't explore, though I wish he would have, as they are questions I've been asking myself for years: are these software architecture goals actually well-founded? In other words, is it actually worth it to strive for reusability? Or would we actually be better off, in the long run, not worrying about it? That question could be asked about any of these three objectives, and I'm really not sure about the answer. Many software projects I've been part of have strived to optimize these things, investing much sweat and tears – and failed miserably. What if we simply hadn't made the investment? Would the result be any worse?
Something the author doesn't explore, though I wish he would have, as they are questions I've been asking myself for years: are these software architecture goals actually well-founded? In other words, is it actually worth it to strive for reusability? Or would we actually be better off, in the long run, not worrying about it? That question could be asked about any of these three objectives, and I'm really not sure about the answer. Many software projects I've been part of have strived to optimize these things, investing much sweat and tears – and failed miserably. What if we simply hadn't made the investment? Would the result be any worse?
Some satisfaction, a lot of schadenfreude, and a side of doom...
Some satisfaction, a lot of schadenfreude, and a side of doom... The 2014 elections are in the can, and I have very mixed feelings about the results.
I get some satisfaction from the fact that the few candidates I actually liked won their elections. Most especially, Mia Love won the election for Representative in the race for Utah's District 4, narrowly beating the Democratic candidate (Owens). She lost by just a few hundred votes in 2012 against a Blue Dog Democrat (Matheson) who didn't run this year. Why do I like her? Mainly because – unlike the vast majority of candidates from any party – she shows evidence of possessing a brain, of competence, and of ideology (things she actually believes in). While I have many points of agreement with her, I also have some disagreements – but she comes across as refreshingly normal, pragmatic, and yet still holding core beliefs that aren't going to change because they don't poll well. I want more politicians like that! For different reasons, I'm happy to see that Scott Walker won his gubernatorial election in Wisconsin. Walker exudes competence as a government executive, and, like Mia Love, has core beliefs that are unwavering. He doesn't have Love's charisma, but his pleasant, Midwest-nice demeanor is at least inoffensive. There are a few other candidates pretty high on my list of “likes” who won as well. Satisfying.
The schadenfreude, on the other hand, runs strong in this election. Oh, the pain that Obama and Reid must have felt in the past few weeks as the polls revealed the looming Democratic disaster! How delicious and enjoyable to contemplate! I will wallow in schadenfreude for weeks!
But there's a side of doom emerging from this, too. That feeling comes from the near-certainty that the victorious Republicans will squander the opportunity just handed to them by the electorate that was so pissed-off at the Democrats. The Republicans now have significant leverage: they control the federal government's purse, they control the confirmation of all future Obama appointments (including the Attorney-General and any Supreme Court vacancies that arise), and they control the legislative reconciliation process. They have no excuse for failing to significantly change ObamaCare (repeal would certainly be vetoed by Obama; change can be forced by controlling the funding). They also have no excuse for failing to force the executive branch to come clean on the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, or the Fast & Furious scandal – to mention just a few. So where's the doom in all that? The doom lies in the probability that the Republicans will do none of these things. Oh, how I would love to be wrong about this! But I'd bet money on my being right...
I get some satisfaction from the fact that the few candidates I actually liked won their elections. Most especially, Mia Love won the election for Representative in the race for Utah's District 4, narrowly beating the Democratic candidate (Owens). She lost by just a few hundred votes in 2012 against a Blue Dog Democrat (Matheson) who didn't run this year. Why do I like her? Mainly because – unlike the vast majority of candidates from any party – she shows evidence of possessing a brain, of competence, and of ideology (things she actually believes in). While I have many points of agreement with her, I also have some disagreements – but she comes across as refreshingly normal, pragmatic, and yet still holding core beliefs that aren't going to change because they don't poll well. I want more politicians like that! For different reasons, I'm happy to see that Scott Walker won his gubernatorial election in Wisconsin. Walker exudes competence as a government executive, and, like Mia Love, has core beliefs that are unwavering. He doesn't have Love's charisma, but his pleasant, Midwest-nice demeanor is at least inoffensive. There are a few other candidates pretty high on my list of “likes” who won as well. Satisfying.
The schadenfreude, on the other hand, runs strong in this election. Oh, the pain that Obama and Reid must have felt in the past few weeks as the polls revealed the looming Democratic disaster! How delicious and enjoyable to contemplate! I will wallow in schadenfreude for weeks!
But there's a side of doom emerging from this, too. That feeling comes from the near-certainty that the victorious Republicans will squander the opportunity just handed to them by the electorate that was so pissed-off at the Democrats. The Republicans now have significant leverage: they control the federal government's purse, they control the confirmation of all future Obama appointments (including the Attorney-General and any Supreme Court vacancies that arise), and they control the legislative reconciliation process. They have no excuse for failing to significantly change ObamaCare (repeal would certainly be vetoed by Obama; change can be forced by controlling the funding). They also have no excuse for failing to force the executive branch to come clean on the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, or the Fast & Furious scandal – to mention just a few. So where's the doom in all that? The doom lies in the probability that the Republicans will do none of these things. Oh, how I would love to be wrong about this! But I'd bet money on my being right...