It’s an interesting fact that 67% of internet users will believe what has been posted on public internet sites, research from an independent consulting firm of the Pennsylvania Institute of Science has found.

Surprisingly, when the words “interesting” and “fact” are included in the post, the number increases to 72%.

“Adding a web link to the post,” adds researcher T. Roland Larph, head of the research firm Veridian Dynamics, “will then boost the factuality ratio to 83.7%.  It’s an incredible phenomenon.”

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Veridian Dynamics, located in the hills of Western Pennsylvania, is not an unknown player in the search for understanding human interaction.  The team challenged the often-quoted concept that “85% of statistics are made up on the spot”.  The actual number is actually much smaller than this, hovering between 30 and 45%, according to the team.

More information about how the study was performed can be found in the following journal entry: Human Interaction on the Internet.

“The address as entered does not match our standardized database.”

My response?

“The error message listed above does not match a meaningful concept.”

How can an address match an ENTIRE database?

After a few minutes of head-scratching and experimentation, I found that the ACTUAL error message should have been,

“The address field can only accept numbers and letters and no special characters.”

Aaaargh computer programs (and programmers) have enough trouble staying on the good side of the software users. Why do quality-control folks allow this kind of cruddy error messaging to exist?

This is a perfect example of a meaningless error message.  It contains little factual information and does not tell the user what to do to correct the data entry problem.

Below is a breakdown of what was going through my mind and how I was able to translate this message into something that made sense.

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This nearly-undecipherable message tells me the program is trying to match a field of characters to an entire collection of data which would contain not just addresses, but most likely people’s names, an assortment of dates, maybe prices, and certainly sets of specialised internal data pointers (indexes) as well as hidden scripting processes (stored procedures, triggers, foreign key cascade rules, etc.)

A “real-world” equivalent of this message would be the following message from a farmer,

“The chicken you describe does not match our farm.”

…and don’t get me started on what a “standardized database” could possibly represent.

Well, too late, I’ve started.  There’s such thing as a “Relational Database“, a “Hierarchical Database“, an “Object/Relational Database” but to my knowledge there’s no such thing as a “Standardized Database”.

Now what the original software coder may be saying in this message is:

“We used some logic to try to find the address you entered in a list of known standard postal addresses but couldn’t find it.”

However, since I know the address I entered actually exists, and could reasonably assume it to be in the database that the software is using, I started looking at things that may cause an error message.

The first thing to look at was the ‘#’ character I used in the PO Box number.  Special characters cause all sorts of problems with database-specific languages (i.e. Perl, MySQL, Oracle/Sybase stored procedures, etc) for reasons I won’t go into here.

After removing the special character and pressing the ‘Save’ button, everything worked as expected.  My data was updated in the system.

This was far too much thinking to have to do at 4:45 in the morning.

In my genealogy research i see a lot of examples where all i see are names and a set of sparse dates next to them – birth, maybe death, and some scattered census recordings. That’s it. And a spouse’s name maybe, equally bare.

That’s it, for what represents maybe 40, 50 or in some cases 70 years’ worth of the daily grind you and i face.

Haha ok, maybe no facebook or telecommuting (or tele-anything for that matter) but they had their equivalent for sure.

Point is, we’ve a new world to conquer every morning and rejoice in every evening – and in the end may have no way of showing what it was we actually did for that day.

This doesn’t mean what we do doesn’t matter.  Truth is, it’s actually the exact opposite.  Unseen forces that we can’t see or don’t think about much do impact our lives daily.

Think about things like gravity, time, and  – if one is spiritual in nature – all those mystical energies wafting about.  Without these, our world would be unrecognisable by us.  Our daily – and i dare say, minute-by-minute – existence is as much a part of the “external world” as are  items like these.

What we present to our family and friends exerts an energy and force that affects them, just as morning sunlight on a  summer sidewalk warms it, or rain on a slippery slope creates powerful mudslides.

A hundred years may pass.

No one may recall or have recorded our daily activities.

But they existed nonetheless, and moved others to act or think in ways they may not have done otherwise.

An article came across my desk related to how “poorly” Houston did regarding work commute times, in relation to other cities across the nation.  I found the article – while brief and objective – to be misleading, nonetheless.

Here’s why.

The article states that Houston (at #6) ranked below Abiline, TX (at #1).

The longest time in the time range specified for Houston was 29 minutes.  By comparison, Abilene was clocked at a speedy 14 minutes for the commute time.

While it seems pretty bad to have to drive twice as long to get to and from work in Houston than in Abilene, let’s consider some factors that were obviously not part of the ranking:

• Total city land mass in Houston = 601.3 sq. miles.  Abilene = 110.6 sq. miles.
• Total population in Houston = 2,099,451.  Abilene = 117,063

Given that for relative baselines, we run these times through the calculatron:

• Houston is physically bigger than Abilene.  Meaning there’s more area to drive from points A to B and back.

  But the commute time average in Houston is 0.04 minutes per square mile (29 mins / 601.3 sq. mi) whereas for Abilene it’s a whopping 0.12 minutes per sq. mile (14 mins / 110.6 sq. mi).

  That works out to be more than 2.5 times faster in Houston than in Abilene on average.

• Houston has more people living (and driving) in the city than in Abilene.  Meaning there are more cars/trucks/SUV/busses/donky carts on the road to drive behind, around, and through.

  But the commute time average in Houston is 0.00001 minutes per person (29 mins / 2,099,451 people) whereas for Abilene it’s a whopping 0.00012 minutes per person (117,063 people / 14 minutes).

  That works out to be more than 8.5 times faster in Houston than in Abilene on average in this regard.

My conclusion?  Houston still wins hands-down, especially when you consider the  sheer size and scale of infrastructure in the city.  The numbers in the survey and my viewpoint on them show me that this is really a nice place to be.

Not that there’s anything wrong with Abilene – as long as I don’t have to drive to work there.

Smileyface.

References:

http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2012/01/05/houston-has-one-of-texas-worst.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene,_Texas

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston

Being a hopeless cynic has actually helped me enjoy happy moments in life
to their fullest extent,
because I know they won’t last very long.

~ Awake ~

His heart was still racing, pounding with the occasional off-beat rhythm it sometimes did when he was under stress.

Her gentle but firm grasp of his head and shoulders helped tremendously, and he could feel his heart starting to slow and fall back into its normal pattern.

Still, the tears streamed freely down his unshaven cheeks, dripping from his closed eyes onto her silken nightshirt.

“Shhhh,” she murmured softly, adding the very very light rocking motion she had employed with the children when they were younger, “shhhh… it was just a dream, it’s ok…”

He sighed heavily, calming himself now, but didn’t disengage his middle-of-the-night grasp on his wife.

“You can’t imagine…” he started, then halted as the terrors threatened to envelop him again.

“No rush, my heart,” she whispered softly, “no rush… talk when you’re ready, share it when you can.”

They held each other for a long quiet time.  He ventured out with a single sentence after collecting his thoughts.

“We had – you had decided to leave me.”

She was taken aback.  “What?  No never…!”

“It was hell,” he continued now, wanting to purge this thought from his mind, “you left and the children were traumatized.”

“I left you and the kids?  What?”

“No – you left and took the kids.  I was stranded so far from home, alone.  No one would tell me what was going on at home.  And the kids went through their own versions of hell through our court fights and…”  He stopped as his mind and heart recalled the other things he’d experienced and seen what his previously-loving dream-wife had put all of them through.

“…and it was just too much.”  He finished weakly, not wanting to share with her the thought that he’d even imagine her to act in such a way.  What would she think of him then?

“O God, I missed you so much,” he continued more strongly, as this was so true.  He had experienced years’ worth of being away from her in the span of less than a few hours’ – or perhaps minutes‘ – sleep.  Dreams have a funny way of altering one’s sense of time and place…

As she reassured him, his mind and thoughts swirled back into the darkest places in his dream, as one would use one’s tongue to poke the spot where a recently pulled tooth had been.  Like a missing-tooth gap, it hurt, but there was more to uncover, he felt.

The loneliness, he recalled.  The dark dark moments of self-doubt.  Certainly he couldn’t have just come up with that on his own.  Maybe a recent movie or story had impacted him more than he thought it had?

Then came the sweetly bitter after-taste of whisky and the dangerous memories of  standing just a little too close to the train as it rushed its way into the station.  Dark and murderous ice fell on his heart again, just like it did back when…

“No no no no nonono…!”  He shouted, and this was out loud, as he pushed back hard.

And with that, he wasn’t in his bed any more.

~ Awake ~

His wife wasn’t there.  He wasn’t married; he was something else.

He fought to get an understanding of where he was, of what he was experiencing, of who he was.

“Back out” came the cold, tinny voice somewhere in the left side of his skull.

“Wha?” came his confused, spinning reply.

Things became clearer now that he’d time to feel his real body now, stretch his hands out and slowly shake his head.  The wires connected to the backs of his arms, his hands, and on his skull tugged a warning as he moved about.

…”Hey, no, listen….”

He couldn’t believe he’d been so careless.  That was just too close.

Now his head cleared nearly fully, but the tears he’d shared with his dream-self still clung wetly to his cheeks, dampening th sides of his face.  Some had worked their way into the corner of his mouth and he tasted the saltiness, like the taste of the sea when he’d taken the plunge months ago for the first time.

The experiment was thrilling and heart-wrenching at the same time.  To experience another’s life was almost too much to bear.  But like eating potato chips,one can’t consume just one.  How many times had he immersed himself, he wondered.  And wondered what these experiences were doing to his sanity.

“Back out” came the cold, tinny voice again.  His head started throbbing.

Confused for a moment, he gave this warning some further thought and examined his situation.

Ah. Ok.

He was still in there, in the experience.  Just a tiny bit, but still there, nonetheless.

His heart was still in there and was aching from the pain his dream-self was enduring.

Like a fisherman working a stuck lure from a tree, he carefully mentally tugged, felt something give way, then pulled sharply, to fully dislodge himself from that place.

He could feel his consciousness retreating, gaining speed, coming back fully to him now.  He was awakening.

But something changed, and the feeling of free-fall enveloped him as his mind retreated too far, and shot past him.

“Gaaa” was all he could say.  The sobs from his heart shook him as he opened the eyes of his mind yet again.

Again his heart started pounding – and the now-familiar feeling of confusion racked his mind.

“No no no nonononooooo….”

~ Awake ~

It was dark and quiet, save for the fan he had turned on before going to sleep.  The familiar whirring of the blades helped him sleep, and the slowly-oscillating fan also kept the mosquitoes off him every night.

“Ah what a dream,” he murmured, “I actually dreamt I was in a dream.  Haha, so weird.”

He rolled over to see if his wife was still sleeping.  If not, he could share his dream with her before it ran off, forgotten in the night – which happened often.  She was used to his nocturnal story-telling by now, so he reached out.

…and was a little shocked to feel the flatness of the sheets next to him.

It wasn’t just the flatness of the sheets that shocked him, as she often awoke in the middle of the night to visit the toilet.  Usually this is what would wake him in the middle of a dream like this.

The bit that shocked him was the fact that the side of the bed was cold.

He felt upwards, to check the pillow.

There was no pillow.

Then it hit him.

She wasn’t there.

She hadn’t been there for years.

As a matter of fact, this wasn’t even the bed they had shared o so many years and nights ago.

The sickly feeling of loss came down like a hammer.  Again.

It was him in the dream-within-a-dream he had experienced.  With one major exception.

All those things he couldn’t believe had happened, had indeed happened.  There was no wife of many years to comfort him in this place.  The woman who had replaced her, but occupied her too-familiar body had indeed done those things his dream-self had dreamt, said those awfully painful things, and was sleeping somewhere far away, or perhaps out even now with those new friends she had taken on to replace him.

The fan whirred on nonetheless, even as his blood turned to ice in the hard, distant bed of his.

The morning took a long time to arrive that night.

When I was a child I used to hold my breath hoping my mommy would let me have my way.

Thankfully she was more mature than I was, and taught me that playing well with others goes a lot further in reaching the goals I was trying to achieve.

These childish protesters who are figuratively ‘holding their collective breath’ until Momma Obama gives them their way are no different than I was when I was three years old.

They also need to grow up and learn how to function as adults and learn how to work inside a system instead of like spoiled children who drag their feet until someone spanks them or lets them have their candy or toys.

Then again, I’m certain many who are participating have learned it’s easier to blend into a crowd of collective thought and protest a general idea that requires no individual effort on their part other than to simply “be” and object to “greed”.  Very spacey new-age philosophy but very short-sighted.  So maybe these folks have moved beyond infantile behaviour and are moving into junior-high concepts of communal living.  That’s progress then, I guess.

This was a response to a comment posted by a friend.  I slightly altered the post here as I had forgotten to include my experiences with unmarried women when responding to the original comment.  But this is the full text otherwise.  O and I added pictures because hey, i can, it’s my blog, haha

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Comment

Two things can happen if you finally figure someone out, 1. You see that their genuine and a great person and you begin to care about that person then that leads to lust or envy which is a sin or 2. You find out their fake and living a lie then you begin to feel sorry for them then hate comes in the picture because you see what a waste it is of a good life….

My response

Ah this is one I can speak on with authority – or well, experience at least 🙂

Fortunately there are more than the two options suggested, yay!

In my line of work as a software consultant, I often work away from home. This last stint in the UK started off as a year-long contract. Ended up being a three year tour when all was said and done. Family were there with me for about 8 months during that time.

The rest of the time was just me, stress, lots of work, a lot of free time, eating, drinking, and scores of young attractive co-workers hanging on my every word, just waiting for any opportunity for us to get to know each other better. Nudge nudge wink wink.  Or cruising for “friendship” from girls in the red light districts if I didn’t want an office scandal on my hands.

Ok, that was the imagined life. The reality was that there was indeed stress, lots of work and *some* free time when I wasn’t working 10 to 12-hour days and wasn’t trying to hail my family on different frequencies. The co-worker/working girl thing? Well thankfully I’d prayed some prayers years ago which God was all to willing to grant.

I didn’t ask God to keep me from temptation, nor to deliver me from evil. Those are part of life, so I knew I needed to know how to deal with both. Instead I prayed He would to turn the scent and thrill of unfaithful desire into a rancid taste. And prayed that I would see past a beautiful face and personality to see the wonderful home and family she was building with her husband.

And I prayed that as and when a counseling moment might arise where she’d ask for input, I’d respond in a way that would honor the precious life she and her spouse were crafting before their children’s eyes.

And if she wasn’t married, had no kids, or was in an unhappy marriage?  Fortunately God had given insight into how relationships are more than what is shared with the family members.

Actions we take that “would never be found out” still ripple down our family lifeline, shaking things up and tossing the ship asunder.  Or they can vibrate down the family lifeline, creating the music we’ve promised to create with our spouse, soothing and encouraging our children and parents.  Or a combination of both.

So no, thankfully any temptation to “go out for a coffee maybe”, “sneak off for a quick quiet nip at the pub”, or “say love, how’s about a little excitement tonight” was water off a duck’s back.

That’s probably been the best set of prayers I’ve ever prayed for my life guidance – in this way I protect many hearts from despair.

As for option #2? Heh Shakespeare said it best – we are indeed merely players on the vast stage. Fortunately we’ve an earthly and church family who can help us stay on queue, and realise we’re still beautiful – even after the greasepaint comes off and we think no one’s around to peek at us.