Hog’s Blog

This election year it seems like there is more involvement by churches in terms of letting candidates speak as well as candidates speaking about religious issues than I recall from the past.  My memory may be flawed but Saddleback Church hosted both candidates and asked both candidates about a variety of questions.  This got me to thinking about the mix of religion and politics and how we often try to separate them.

What I mean by the separation is that our society seems to place a sense of error on those that have convictions that are derived from a faith based system.  These convictions are referred to as “religious” and often given less weight because of the base from which these beliefs were derived.  Values that have a basis from a religious text are considered antiquated, or inferior to “current thinking.”  For instance, Barak Obama raises this point in the following video from YouTube .   An intresting assertion is where Senator Obama is talking about his claim that we cannot enforce laws or govern based on religious arguments because  “… in a pluralistic society we have no choice.  Politics depends on our ability to pursuade each other of common aims based on a common reality.  It involves compromise, the art of what’s possible.  At some level, religion does not allow for compromise.”

(Parenthetical comment here: By the way, I’m not picking on Senator Obama.  I thought he was very articulate in this clip and although I can’t say I completely agree with his comments, they did get me to thinking.  To be honest, every candidate that runs in the political systemhas to make choices about their value systems; many times when their values are in conflict with the mass opinion; it’s a tough job)

He’s right.  Most “religions” do not allow for compromise over certain values that they hold to be foundational.  And in many cases, these values can be in conflict.  So, the question that arises is how do we resolve these conflicts?  In a pluralistic society how do we choose our morality?

As stated earlier, we use the term “religious” to denote people who have a set of values based on some sense of a spiritual nature.  For instance, Christians, Jews, Moslems and most religions say it is wrong to steal.  There is little argument over this value and I would suspect that most, if not all nations, have some law that indicates there is a punishment for taking someone else’s property.   No dispute, no long winded debates and no candidates saying “I’m for stealing and my opponent is against it.”  We agree so its not a problem.

Where its a problem is where we do not agree.  Abortion is an issue that has been debated for a long time and is probably one of the most polarizing issues we face in the US.  Ms. Nancy Pelosi was asked a question on “Meet the Press” back in August.  Here is what Tom Brokaw asked:

“Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade, whether you’re looking at it scientifically or theologically. If he were to come to you and say, ‘Help me out here, Madame Speaker.  When does life begin?’ what would you tell him?”

Ms. Pelosi answered, “I would say that as an ardent, practicing Catholic, this is an issue that I have studied for a long time.  And what I know is, over the centuries, the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition.  And Senator–St. Augustine said at three months.  We don’t know. The point is, is that it shouldn’t have an impact on the woman’s right to choose.”

I’m not going to get into the politics of abortion except to say that we have several different view points on what the right answer is.  Some say life begins at conception so abortion is wrong under any circumstances.  Others say its ok if the pregnancy was caused by a rape or an incestuous relationship.  Another opinion is that it is acceptable anytime before birth.  Even our current laws seem to be in conflict on this issue as a person could be prosecuted for manslaughter if they caused an unborn child’s death but say its ok for the mother to terminate its life if its in the first three months.  There are a lot of conflicting opinions about what the right answer is.

What is interesting is that many of the arguments against abortion are drawn from spiritual sources and most of the arguments in favor of abortion are drawn from societal desires, or morality of mass opinion.  Does mass opinion trump spiritual morality?  It would seem that societal morality is becoming the new religion.  At least, what used to be considered moral absolutes are the spiritual minority.

My point is that whatever a person believes is derived from his religion.  Whether that is the religion of tradition, spiritual enlightenment or mass morality or pure self interest; the basis for those decisions is their religion.  The decisions people make about not lying, helping their neighbor or keeping the extra change a cashier accidentally gave them come from the core of their belief system, or better stated, their religion.

At the end of the day the only way everyone can be right is if there is no standard by which to measure right and wrong.  I don’t think living in that world would be very pleasant.  One thing is sure, every person on this planet will one day face death.  In that day all the questions about morality, good and bad and who was right and who was wrong will be answered.  Until that day, every one of us lives out his or her religion in the form the choices we make and the paths we choose.  Choose wisely.

I’m home from a business trip and I’m catching up on the news.  I tend to listen to CNN as I think overall they are pretty good.  They, like other news agencies, have their own political bent which is pretty transparent but not too nauseating.  Ok, cack to the news.

So Scott McClellan comes out with a book that casts more shadows of darkness on the Bush administration and the way it conducted itself during the lead up to the Iraq conflict.  I’m not too overwhelmed about Scotty’s credibility per se as any former employee is likely to not be too happy with their past employer so you have to take anything someone says with a grain of salt.  I suspect the truth is in the middle somewhere.

That’s not what bugs me though.  What bugs me are the presdiential candidates getting all worked up about how the president “deceived” them.  “Yeah, Scotty, that’t right, he’s a deciever” they say.  I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to throw a flag on this one and call a penalty.  Do the current presidential candidates expect us to believe that somehow they were misled by the sitting president?  Really?  The same people that sit on countless committees and have access to a significant amount of “confidential” material and expert opinion that us normal “Joes” don’t have access to.  You mean these folks with access and connections simply believed the president outright and allowed themselves to be deceived about Iraq?  Hmmm, begs the question about whether these same people are really smart enough and have enough individualism to be president themselves.  Will they simply believe what the experts tell them?  Will they not put their critical thought into something and challenge the status quo?

Based on what I heard way back when I thought going into Iraq made sense.  Heck, Hillary thought so and so did John Kerry as did a whole lot of other people on both sides of the aisle.    Now, I don’t sit on any special military intelligence committees as some of our so called leaders do, so I can’t claim I made my decision on the best or broadest set of information.   But, based on the information I did have, I came to a conclusion.  A conclusion that many of the 545 folks running the country at the time did as well.

I would have so much more respect for all candidates (Hillary and McCain) if they simply said, “We made the decision we did based on the best information we had at the time.  Reflecting on the past several years and current evidence it was not the right decision.  Here is what I propose we do now going forward. …”

Is there a single politician that can say they made a mistake and here is how we will move forward?  Take responsibility for their decisions rather than blame someone else?

I don’t think that all the politicians that blame Bush are being fair.  I don’t think any of them are simple minded enough to have been deceived unilaterally by Bush; let’s face it, Bush himself isn’t that smart.  Let’s just be honest and figure out where we go from here.  I know where we are at is messed up.

That said, we did make a mess in the Middle East and we need to have a plan to get out of there in a timely (and not reckless) fashion.  May our presidential candidates be leaders and not 3-year olds blaming Mr. Nobody for their decisions.  It is a mess and people are getting killed.  Let’s figure out how not to screw the folks over there and ourselves up more by being politically expedient and reckless.

I was thinking today about the current cost of gas while filling my Honda today. $3.56 a gallon seems like a lot for gas. Of course, compared to prices in Europe its a steal, but then, Europe generally has a much better set of mass transit and you can get around walking without too much trouble too depending on where you are. Back to the gas price though…

My brain tends to fire in rather random ways. So, in thinking about the gas price made me think of how demand for energy is what fuels the price (pun intended). Of course, demand is generally driven by people or at least increasing populations which made me think about the world population. Depending on your sources it seems like we had about 3.8 billion folks on the planet in 1970 and a mere 40 years later, give or take, we’ll have about 7 billion folks.

This got me to thinking. Not everyone will be driving cars for certain but this increase in people definitely will drive higher demand for energy. Of course folks are fervently looking for new sources of energy but one of the resources that we haven’t really talked about is food and water. With the number of people increasing there will be increasing demands on this scarce resource as well.

So, today, we hear about energy prices and how we need to find alternate sources I was wondering at what point does the rest of the globe adopt China’s practice of limiting the population growth by imposing mandatory, state run, abortion? It seems to follow logically that we will face this problem eventually. If we can’t populate another planet or find the right energy solutions or food sources then we’ll have to control the population size.

What got me thinking was how challenging this will be in the future as we face a serious moral question about life and its value. There have been countless movies and stories about these scenarios so I’m not claiming an aha moment that is new. I’m concerned about our social framework for making decisions of this magnitude today.

When drafting the Declaration of Independence the Founding Fathers had a unifying set of principles around a common moral framework. In the Declaration we read, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The founders believed in a Creator, someone who gave them life and to whom they appealed to justify their actions. In the latter part of the Declaration they go on to state, “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies,…” Clearly they found their moral justification for what they were about to do from a Supreme Judge as the one who would determine if their intentions were just or not.

Today we have moved away from a unifying set of moral authority to the morality of the masses and public opinion. It will be very interesting to watch as time goes on how we will use the wisdom of science and reason to resolve some of the most crucial moral issues; or perhaps, dismiss the issues and move forward in the name of progress.

One consequence of having a bureaucracy manage people’s health care is that inevitably trade offs will have to be made in terms of who gets what procedure and perhaps, what is best for the health of the country.

I don’t mean to imply that anyone today is even thinking such things as population control in terms of health care. I believe that those advocating for universal health care have the best of intentions and really want a level playing field for all to get access. I’m just trying to think through the potential consequences of these decisions for the year 2024 when we hit 8 billion or 2042 when we get to 9 billion. What we put in motion today has consequences in the future and it is clear that the architects of tomorrow do not have a common sheet of music when dealing with issues of a moral nature.

I was interested in extending the reach of my Canon EF 70-200mm 2.8L IS USM lens a tad. I didn’t want to buy a whole new piece of glass but there were times where I needed a tad bit more reach than the 70-200mm would provide. So, I did a bit of research and decided I was going to get the Canon Extender and needed to decide on whether I would go with the 1.4x or the 2.0x II.

The reviews I had researched were varied in terms of the impact on overall image quality. Some reviewers liked the Extender and others said it came a too high of a cost in terms of the loss of two full stops. One thing that was very consistent in the reviews is that if you were using the 70-200mm 2.8L the benefits out-weighed the cost. Armed with this info I purchased the EF 2x Extender.

I didn’t have time to play around too much yet but wanted to at least get a set of photos to show how the Extender impacted the image quality in terms of magnification as well as loss of clarity.

What I have is a sequence of 4 shots without and with the 2.0 Extender II. These were shot with my Canon Digital Rebel XT with a fixed aperture setting of f/8 for all shots. I basically sequenced through from 70mm to 200mm and then added the Extender and did the shoot again. MY only regret was not getting a 140mm shot w/o the Extender to compare an image with the same focal length. Given this was shot on a Digital Rebel one needs to also take the 1.6x multiplier into account. If my numbers are correct using the Extender and my 70-200mm lens provides a 640mm focal length.

I processed these images in Photoshop to basically resize the image from 3456 x 2304 @ 300 dpi to 800 x 533 @ 72 dpi. I did not impose any color or filtering adjustments. The raw files are available at the same location as the images below. They are large so click at your own risk

Here they are in sequence:

70 mm w/o Extender

70 mm with 2x Extender

200 mm w/o Extender

200 mm with 2x Extender

Finally, I was curious as to the image quality when the image was cropped around the watering can. In Photoshop I did a 6×4 crop around the can. Here is the result.

Overall I’m really satisfied with the Extender in terms of performance. For the most part I save my pennies to get the faster lenses so I have flexibility and I huess doing so for the 70-200mm 2.8L was the right move. I’m going to give it a whirl with my 100mm 2.8 Macro and see if that helps out as well.

I was out shopping today and I was reminded how we’ve turned into a super accomodating culture. So accomodating in fact that it makes me wonder if people really have things they are passionate about. For instance, at the grocery store I was checking out and said, “Merry Christmas” to the checker. She was a bit flustered and said, “Merry Chri… ummm, Happy Holi … ummm, have a good night.” Yikes, is it me or have we gone the way of political correctness that is out of alignment. Why is it that we need to boil everything down to the least offensive statement? Should I not say “Merry Christmas”? Heck, I’d be happy if someone responded, “Happy Hanukkah”, or “Merry Kwanzza” or something.

Can’t we somehow celebrate our differences by acknowledging that its OK to have them and simply respect other people’s opinions? I’m getting discouraged at a country that is run by the 3% of the people that complain. The 3% of the people that wail at a Nativity Scene or squawk at a Menorah. The 3% of the people that seem to not want to believe anything or hate that others have something they embrace. Why is it that the 3% are running the show?

Perhaps 3% is a bit generous; I think its less. Nonetheless, we need to stop letting the 3% ruin our holiday. If they don’t like Merry Christmas then they should just smile, nod and move on. Quit ruining our good time. I don’t mean to be offensive to folks but if we continue down this path of watering everything down to something that doesn’t offend anyone life will be like eating Tofu … you’ll get by but won’t really enjoy it.

Merry Christmas !

I recently purchased the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens for my Canon Digital Rebel XT SLR camera. I’m not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination but I do know what kind of pictures I want to take in terms of quality, composition and the like and the stock lens really wasn’t going to be able to achieve my desires. The stock lens is an EF-S 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 II. Even though its a stock lens its actually not too bad for snapping quick photos.

Why did I choose the 70-200mm lens? Good question. I was really interested in a lens that had some telephoto capability and still had a good low f/stop rating. There were a few options that I could have pursued like the same lens w/o IS as well as the f/4 version of the same lens which was lighter but lacked the 2.8 low-end I was looking for. So after reviewing the options for several weeks and thinking about it I decided that the additional expense of the f/2.8 w/IS was worth the investment and so I shopped around and found it for about $1500 and decided to go ahead and go for it.

It arrived earlier this week and when I first pulled it out of the box all the other reviewers were shown to be accurate in that the lens is solid (read that heavy :-). Its about 3+ lbs (I didn’t weigh it) and it feels really well built. I played around with it this week and through a number of experiments I was relieved that the extra dough I spent on IS was worth it.

Here are a few example photos from a trip we took to the Asheboro Zoo on Saturday , October 27th 2007.

EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM shot at 200mm (Aperture f/2.8 Shutter 1/80)

I also found that the bokeh is amazing at 2.8. In fact, since this was a new lens I found that I need to pay better attention for the overall depth of field or you can screw up your picture. Here is a sample of what I mean:

EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM shot at 200mm (Aperture f/2.8 Shutter 1/160)

Notice that the subject in the above photo has its bottom in clear focus and yet its head is just slightly out of focus. The bokeh took over a little too aggressively. Lesson learned in that I should have probably gone to f/4 and had a better overall shot. This is my fault and not the lens’.

At the end of the day this lens is absolutely amazing and I highly recommend it if your shopping around for a high-quality overall lens. I carried the camera around the zoo all day and it wasn’t really all that annoying. For the quality of the photos versus a slightly heavier lens the tradeoff is clear; get this lens

I just completed a performance analysis of the Apache Geronimo JEE 5.0 Application Server.  I have posted the draft of the report here. The AppServer was run on the new Harpertown Intel Quad Core processors.  These bad boys are the 2.83Ghz cores with 6MB of L2 cache.  I have to admit that these babies cream.  Intel has outdone themselves with both the Clovertown and the Harpertown processors.  These babies were so fast that I had to run my two-chip system with only 4 of the 8-cores active.  Otherwise I didn’t have enough driving capacity or database to run a complete set of the workload I was testing.

Overall it looks like the Web Primitives have declined from Apache Geronimo 1.1.1.  At first I was a bit concerned but when we add some of the other  higher level functions (like getting a connection and doing some real work) we start to see the performance improvement.  I’d say on the whole Geronimo 2.0.x is better off than its predecessor, has all the functionality to run a full JEE workload with data consistency and we beat JBoss to Java EE 5.0 certification ta-boot.

I’m probably going to take Harmony for a test ride on this setup and see how it compares to the IBM JDK by simply swapping it in.  That ought to be interesting.

I’m doing some performance testing on Apache Geronimo 2.0.1 and decided to go back to my original system and compare the 1.1.1 performance numbers to 2.0.1.  Unfortunately, I’ve run into a problem that plagued my testing and magically went away one day.  That problem was a bottleneck that kept me from getting to 100% CPU utilization.

In the course of my testing I discovered that one of the issues was my network connection.  I had relocated the systems and inadvertently changed one of the network connections from an 8254EI Gig Controller to an 80003ES2LAN GB Controller.  After discovering this problem I re-ran the measurements.

With the 80003* I was getting a CPU Utilization of approximately 90% and throughput of about 52,000 Transactions Per Second.  (The original number was 83,000 TPS at a utilization of 98.5%).  This was on a 2 Chip Dual Core Intel 2.6 Ghz system)

After switching back to the 82544* I’m tracking at 58,000 TPS at 83% CPU.  Things are going the right way but looks like there is some more work to do.

Looks like the 82544 is better on CPU utilization and Interrupt handling.  Next step is to see how to move back to the  baseline.

I am going to rant about AT&T so if you’re an AT&T lover read no further.

I used to have great respect for AT&T when I was younger. They seemed to be a looming giant with a lot of good technology; I was disappointed when the government busted them apart. This opinion was formulated having not been a real customer of theirs so my information was anecdotal at best.

However, about 7 years ago I did have an opportunity to work with them directly as a customer. My wife was traveling and was calling from a little motel she was at on her way to visit her aunt. Tired after spending the day with the kids in the car she called home (didn’t have a cell at the time) to have an adult conversation and check in. The line connection was terrible and the call got dropped twice and she redialed twice because of poor line quality. Our total phone time was less than 7 minutes. She used our phone card to bill the call to our home as she thought it would be cheaper.

I was a bit surprised the following month when an item appeared on my phone bill for $45 dollars. $45 dollars for a 7 minute phone call (or series of them); something wasn’t right. So, I called AT&T customer service and explained the situation. Surely, they would understand the problem and give me a credit for poor phone quality. I was wrong.

The representative said that there was a $7 per connect charge from the phone my wife called me from. Yikes, $7 connect charge, that was outrageous I thought. Heck, I could have purchased a meal for that amount of money (ok, a small dinner salad but you know what I mean.) I explained that there was no indication of that charge in the room and the customer service representative very politely informed me that it was regrettable but out of their control. After explaining about the dropped call and poor quality and that she could see that all 4 calls were made in the same 7 minute period surely they could provide some accommodation; I was wrong. I was also informed that the poor phone quality was in the local telco and, yes, you’re right, outside of their control. They were very sorry but I would need to pay my $40 bill for my series of calls in a seven minute period. I was really frustrated with the experience and vowed to not do business with AT&T again.

As I was happily not an AT&T customer for the next several years I was even happier to discover Mac Book Pros and became an Apple junkie. Their products were so good and you just felt good using them. Simple to maneuver and easy to understand. Then, the iPhone came out and I was both elated and disappointed. The iPhone is probably one of the most awesome devices I’ve used. Despite the negative press by people that generally do not own one I was quite enamored by the device; unfortunately, they were partnering with AT&T.

So, I was caught in a pickle as to whether I wanted to switch cellular service to AT&T so I could get the iPhone. I finally rationalized that this was the “New” AT&T and that I should give them a chance. I admit it, I compromised my resolve to not work with AT&T again.

You can read the earlier blog posts about getting the iPhone up and running; a less than stellar experience. I was getting toward the end of my return period for the iPhone and I thought the service was a bit pricey (actually, down right annoyed at the ETF AT&T imposed when they subsidized absolutely nothing in the way of the phone.) Despite the difficulties in getting the device live I was enamored by the iPhone as it is truly excellent (a bit pricey but Steve fixed that recently :-P).

Anyway, I had heard conflicting stories on the No Discounts policy as the company I work for has an employee benefit where with AT&T that I can get a 23% discount.  Some of my colleagues that were already AT&T customers were told, by AT&T CSRs, that the No Discounts policy applied only to the iPhone Data plan and not the minute rate plan. I called AT&T to get a clarification on this. I had decided that if the discount would apply to my minutes I would keep the phone. During my conversation I told the CSR my dilemma and asked for clarification. He said he needed to talk to his supervisor and came back and confirmed that I would receive the discount for the minutes. I asked him to document our conversation in my record in case there was an issue later on; he did. I was also told that it could take a few months for the discount to kick in and to be patient; a trait I’m not usually known for.

So, I called in August, no discount. I was told it was coming; no problem. So, I got my bill for September and was told, that I needed to fill out a form and FAX something in and then I would get my discount in a few months. When I protested that this was the first I heard of it I was told that this was the procedure and that what someone else told me was outside of her control and that she was sorry. It was at that point that I knew I had been lured into the trap and was going to be supper.

As we continued the discourse I think I was wearing the CSR down when suddenly with great confidence and delight she noticed there was an iPhone on the account and that I was not entitled to any discount. Armed with the notations in my account I told her I had had this conversation with a CSR in July and that it was documented in my record. She looked at the record and said that indeed the information was there and she was very sorry that another CSR gave me bad information and that there was nothing she could do about it; oh yeah, she was very sorry.

Alrighty, up the ladder I go to a supervisor. I could replay the conversation but he too was very sorry but there was nothing he could do.

So, my perspective is that I had an option to return my iPhones and terminate the agreement without penalty on July 10th when I originally called. A CSR happily told me I had nothing to worry about and so I kept my phones. So, I asked for them to waive the ETF due to their incorrect information and I was told that, “We’re very sorry but there is nothing that they can do.”

I’m not sure what I’m going to do at this point. Part of me wants to simply pay the ETF, sell my iPhones on eBay and not be locked into AT&T. I am very disappointed in the way they treat their customers poorly and even when they provide information that leads a customer to make a decision that later turns out to be incorrect they do not do the honorable thing and allow the customer to exit gracefully. (Note I did not ask them for anything related to the iPhone even though at the time I could have returned it and only paid a 10% restocking charge.)

This whole process reminds me of the song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who. The closing lyrics say it all,

” Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss”

AT&T may have updated their logo and created a new slogan but their lack of respect for their customers is unfortunate and, based on my experience, they haven’t changed a thing.

My conclusion at this point, “I am very sorry and there is nothing I can do”

We’ll, there are lots of things I can do. I’m musing through the myriad of options. But one thing is for certain,

I did get fooled again.

P.S. I have to say that in no way do I think the CSRs are to blame.  IMHO, they have been pretty courteous and are merely working within the constraints imposed upon them by AT&T customer policy.  In almost every dealing I’ve had with the actual CSRs I’ve been pleased with them personally.  I think that is a point that is often overlooked when people are frustrated with customer service.  CSRs get the blame for policies they have little or no control over.

I am pleased to report that Geronimo 2.0.1 has been officially voted upon and has been released. Folks can find the server at http://geronimo.apache.org/downloads. We’ve accomplished a lot in the last 9 months and it’s pretty exciting to know that we made Java EE 5.0 compatibility before other servers that “must not be named” including other open source as well as commercial offerings.

We’re now working on improving our tooling for Eclipse as well as improved monitoring and clustering.

One area that inevitably comes up is “are you guys gonna use OSGi?” Its been kicked around on the lists and I think we’re in a better position to make it happen now since we are not chasing the specification. It is clearly not going to be a simple change since OSGi is very different than the existing GBean architecture. I’m not convinced it will give users everything they think it will but I guess now is the time to start thinking about it.

TAGS: OSGi, Apache Geronimo, Java Enterprise Edition 5.0, Open Source