jr conlin's ink stained banana

Ah St. Paddy's Day. A day when everyone is a bit Irish and tuck into a taste of the Emerald Isle.

Well, no, not really. No sane, sober person would, but let me explain a little about why i tend to enjoy Pasta or Thai instead of Corned Beef and Cabbage.

First off, let me introduce you to my Grandfather. That's him, tending the bar that he ran for a few years in Brooklyn. Sadly, the pub he ran closed, partly due to his tendency to be more generous than business savvy, but that did have one interesting side-note.

Far more often than my Grandmother appreciated, he'd come home with someone he'd met while at the pub. His arms would be filled with unusual ingredients and he'd usher his wife from the kitchen and away from the shortbreads and creamed tripe stew, and soon the apartment was filled with exotic scents and tastes from strange and wondrous lands, like Germany or Italy. My sainted Grandmother generally hated whenever he did this, but my Mom and her siblings didn't.

Irish cooking tends to "use everything but the grunt", and they pretty much mean it. Traditional Irish country food tends to use a, frankly, terrifying amount of pork, cabbage and potatoes, most of it boiled in pots above peat fires. One need remember that it was the loss of the Potato that pretty much devastated the country and lead to massive starvation. This was not a country with a wide and varied diet. Special occasions might include a bit of roasted lamb, but that tended to (literally) eat into the export business.

This might also explain why folks drank, but only a wee bit.

Mind you, modern Irish cuisine is a helluva lot better now and has even included things like fish and beef. i'll also note that Irish have taken to, ahem, "embracing the foods of other cultures" with a surprising enthusiasm to those not familiar with traditional fare.

So, aye, i'll not be partaking of the bacon knot and cabbage this year (or the next), and i prefer my corned beef peppered and sliced thin from the deli counter. i'm not exactly sure how many shepherds kept meat grinders in the dairy, either.

Still, raise a glass and a toast. To my ancestors from Roscommon, Tabhair dom ar ais ar mo dhia damanta caorach, bastaird tú!

Hey!

Oh, Hi! How are you doing?

Crap, i can't remember this guy's name. i haven't seen him in over a month and i swear my brain keeps info for less time that an Air Traffic controller at O'Hare. Think, think, who the hell is this again?

Good seeing you. i was down in the area again and was just walking around.

Dammit, ok, so he's a remotie. Perfect. That means that i may have only actually met him twice in my life. Well, go for the general small talk route, i guess.

Wait, he's talking to the guy that wrote Javascript. Ok, this is someone more important. Wait, they're talking about FuncLib? Oh Holy Hell, He is important and there are things i need to talk to him about. But he's smart, like REALLY smart. Like the kind of person who can probably focus their mind enough to fry ants with theoretical physics or something. Think, you stupid simian, what's this guy's name!?!

Wait, so the FuncLib stuff is all solid and working? That's awesome. You've been working on that for years!

Yep, really happy about it. Got a few smaller issues to deal with, but otherwise it's great. Want to see a demo?

Of course i do! Wow, this is fantastic, have you heard about some of the stuff that the XYZ team is working on that could really use this?

Wow, this IS awesome. The XYZ team would cream themselves to have this. So would Ryan. Ok, so now we know what he's been working on. Neato! There's only a few names tied to that project.

… i'm an idiot.

i'd love to help out, but there's another guy named Ryan who would be better suited to pitch in.

Fantastic! i'd love the help. Send me an email with his contact info.

Shit

Great talking with you as always. i've got to get to a meeting, but we'll catch up, right!

You bet. i'll send out that email as soon as i can…

…get into the company phone book and remember your name. Please don't fry me with your massive focused intellect. i can feel my schoolbus losing seats. Bob? John? Mike? Think you sponge, think.

Oh yeah, and that other guy you work with that has a bunch of monogrammed shirts? Thank him the next time you see him.

One of the folks i work with is saying goodbye. It happens from time to time, and in this era of self-publication, he posted his reasons on his blog a while ago. It's rather charming and i know how he feels, because i felt the same way.

Then i realized the truth.

One of the comments that always makes me giggle a little are statements like "i'm afraid that i'm going to wake up in X years and realize i've been doing the same job and still haven't accomplished anything of lasting value." i can tell you that after nearly thirty years, i've done three different jobs and haven't accomplished anything of lasting value. i've done some impressive things, worked on a lot of cool projects, and i'd like to believe i've made the world a better place. None of this, however is of any lasting value.

i will be dead in less than fifty years. Within another decade or so i'd expect only a handful of individuals will remember my name. i have no legacy to carry my memory, nor fame or fortune to impress those that come after. i have yet to discover a cure for cancer, faster than light travel, or a guaranteed method to get a parking spot in San Francisco. No continent bears my name, nor insect, nor disease, nor truism. i will take my place in history next to the likes of Mynard Green Foot who raised sheep in the 11th Century and exists today purely in my depression fueled imagination.

And i'm ok with that.

Turns out that one can go quite mad when one strives to beat out the other eight billion currently living human beings, the previous 7 billion or so that walked before, and the potential trillions to come. So i strive to make things better for the few lives that i can. It's a more manageable goal that doesn't end in a nuclear arms race or divorce court.

i've come to realize that progress comes through reimplementing ideas, but in a slightly better form. This is also called evolution, and it has an impressively long history. It's also one of the reasons i laugh at companies that forbid anyone from examining what they're doing. They're setting up their code as an evolutionary dead end.

i take joy from little things. i have a career i'm happy with, working for a company that is doing good things and even have the ability to make little improvements for someone else. Perhaps something i do will be evolved into something that will change the world for the better. Then again, there's an equal chance that something i do will lead to the complete sterilization of the planet, but then i wasn't the guy that said "You know, i think we need a moon."

It's nice to see vibrant optimism in someone, even if it means that they've not had the crushing wave of disappointment and bitter resolution to carry on quite yet. It gives me hope for the future.

The one full of mild depression, sad realizations, and meager moments of joy.

And the occasional divorce inspired, nuclear planet sterilizations.

Facebook has bought Instagram for $1,000,000,000. That's a lot of zeroes. Good Mr. Malik has a report that the reason Facebook wanted to buy Instagram was because they were both picture platforms.

Yeah, that surprised me too.

You see, when i think of a "picture platform" i think of sites like Flickr. Go to flickr.com and feel free to waste an hour just looking at pictures. There are billions. Heck, there's even a page that shows photos that the community feels are interesting. What's more, you don't even have to have an account. That's really important. It means that anyone can view your photos because you're sharing them with the world.

That's kinda what photo sharing means to me.

Now, feel free to go to sites like instagram.com and do the same thing. Oh, wait, you can't. You have to download their app, create an account and find people who take good photos before you can see them. Well, at least there's facebook, right? Let me do a search for photos on facebook and… oh. Pretty much the same thing. i mean, i can do a search on google for facebook images, i suppose, but that's not really useful. Even if i were publish a portfolio of photos that were free to use, you wouldn't be able to find them unless you knew i shared them and had a Facebook account.

See, this is where i say that both of these services are blackholes. They suck information in, but you're not really expected to get anything back out. Indeed, one could think of these services a bit like religions (albeit, not the better portions thereof):

• You can't do anything unless you're a member.
• Members are always trying to convert the "unfaithful".
• There are aspects that are accepted without proof.
• One community may use them in a way that is quite different than another.
• Changes are met with cries of "Heresy"!

These are walled gardens and you're not allowed in unless you genuflect. For all i know, both of these companies are making up numbers and statistics because there's no way for you to know otherwise.

You know what? Sure thing. i've also got an amazing platform with zillions of photos loaded up! Why here's frequent visitor Max Foucault (who is absolutely not a name i made from hitting random twice on wikiquotes) talking about how wonderful the service is:

[It's] fantastic! Couldn't live without it. In fact i wouldn't exist if it didn't!

And look here's a photo from him that is in no way two images i grabbed off of pinterest and applied random filters to:

Don't believe me? That's because you're not part of the exclusive set of pre-alpha invitees and my crack team of imaginary developers, and there's no way for you to prove otherwise.

What's more, i'll even take .01% of what was offered for Instagram, because i believe in taking complete advantage of suckers that the service is such a benefit to humanity.

Isn't that right, noted Chinese Blogger Xū Rén:

Yes! Your service is the only one i use in China with all my Chinese friends who are Chinese!

Odd that he didn't write that out.