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Opinari - Latin term for Opinion. Opinari.net is just what it seems: a cornucopia of rants, raves and poignant soliloquy.

Tuesday, July 23, 2002

Hug Your Geek!

Friday is (no kidding) National System Administrator's Day. If you have a SysAdmin in your company somewhere, please, for one day out of the year, treat him with respect and dignity, instead of cursing him for your PC pains. After all, he is only human. :)


As a tribute to all SysAdmins everywhere (I, myself, am a DBA among other things), here is a wonderful list: Advice on How People Should Utilize the Time of SysAdmins Everywhere. (Note: Thanks to the wonderful website www.sysadminday.com for this comprehensive list.)



  1. Never write down any error messages. Just click "Ok" or restart your computer. Dave likes to guess what the error message was.
  2. When talking about your computer, use terms like "Thingy" and "Big Connector."
  3. If you get a EXE file in a email attachment, open it immediately. Dave likes to make sure the anti-virus software is working properly from time to time.
  4. When sending someone your document via email, always assume that they have all the same software installed that you do.
  5. When Dave says he coming right over, log out and go for coffee. It's no problem for him to remember your password.
  6. When you call Dave to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and Popsicle sticks. Dave doesn't have a life, and he finds it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
  7. When Dave sends you an email marked as "Highly Important" or "Action Required", delete it at once. He's probably just testing some new Email software feature, anyhow.
  8. When Dave is eating lunch at his desk or in the lunchroom, walk right in and spill your guts and expect him to respond immediately. Dave exists only to serve and is always ready to think about fixing computers.
  9. When Dave is at the water cooler or outside taking a breath of fresh air, find him and ask him a computer question. The only reason he takes breaks at all is to ferret out all those employees who don't have email or a telephone line.
  10. Send urgent email ALL IN UPPERCASE. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.
  11. When the photocopier doesn't work, call Dave. There's electronics in it, right?
  12. When you're getting a NO DIAL TONE message at your home computer, call Dave. He can even fix telephone problems from remote locations too.
  13. When something is wrong with your home PC, dump it on Dave's chair with no name, no phone number, and no description of the problem. He just loves a good mystery.
  14. When you have Dave on the phone walking you through changing a setting; read the newspaper. Dave doesn't actually mean for you to DO anything; he just loves to hear himself talk.
  15. When your company offers training on an upcoming OS upgrade; don't bother to sign up. Dave will be there to hold your hand after it is done.
  16. When the printer won't print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently just disappear into the cosmos for no reason.
  17. When the printer still won't print after 20 tries, send the job to all the printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.
  18. Don't use online help. Online help is for wimps. Right?
  19. If you're taking night classes in computer science, feel free to demonstrate your fledgling expertise by updating the network drivers for you and all your co-workers. Dave will be grateful for the overtime when he has to stay until 2:30am fixing all of them.
  20. When Dave's fixing your computer at a quarter past one, eat your Whopper with cheese in his face. He functions better when he's slightly dizzy from hunger.
  21. Don't ever thank Dave. He loves fixing everything AND getting paid for it!
  22. When Dave asks you whether you've installed any new software on your computer, lie. It's nobody's business what you've got on your computer.
  23. If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Those skinny Mouse cables were designed to have 55 lbs. of computer monitor crushing on them.
  24. If the space bar on your keyboard doesn't work, blame Dave for not upgrading it sooner. Hell, it's not your fault that there's a half a pound of pizza crust crumbs, nail clippings, and big sticky drops of Mountain Dew under the keys.
  25. When you get the message saying "Are you sure?", click on that "Yes" button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren't sure, you wouldn't be doing it, would you?
  26. Feel perfectly free to say things like "I don't know nothing about that computer crap." It never bothers Dave to hear his area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
  27. When you need to add paper to the printer, call Dave. Changing the paper is an extremely menial task, and both Hewlett Packard and Lexmark recommend that it be performed only by certified network administrators with lots of time on their hands.
  28. When you receive a 130-megabyte movie file, send it to everyone as a high-priority mail attachment. Dave's provided plenty of disk space and processor capacity on the new mail server just for those important kinds of things.
  29. Don't even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. God forbid somebody else should sneak a one-page job in between your 427-page Excel spreadsheet.
  30. When you bump into Dave in the grocery store on a Sunday afternoon, ask him computer question. He works 24/7, even while at Dominick's buying toilet paper and doggie treats.
  31. If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. Dave will be there for you when your son's illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes the Access database keel over and die.
  32. When you bring Dave your own " no-name" brand home PC to repair for free at the office, tell him how urgently he needs to fix it so you can get back to playing EverQuest. He'll get right on it right away because he has so much free time at the office. Everybody knows that all he does is surf the Internet all day anyway.

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.: posted by Dave 12:04 PM


Essay: Why They Hate Us So -


A great deal of national introspection has occurred since September 11th. Many of us have run the gamut of human emotion, trying to cope with and understand why such a massacre had to happen. We blame, we fuss, we cry, we scream. And, after the emotions subside, we initiate rational thought. Moral equivalence aside (because when thousands of innocents are murdered, there is no moral justification), many Americans are perplexed by this fundamental question: what makes these people hate us (America) so much?


Two overriding issues have been proposed through American media groupspeak (see Orwell's 1984) to begin to rationalize such tactics. One school of thought has postulated that American colonialism is to blame. Another cites American support of Israel as the overriding cause of tension.


In the famous Balfour Declaration of 1917, Britain's Lord Balfour stated the following: "His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."


While the US political establishment endorsed the Declaration (mostly to appease Jewish voters), plainly, it was European concerns and not the US that initiated the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Based on the Brit’s justification of Jewish settlement there, it would seem that the militant Islamic community would target Britain with far more malice than the US. So why has the US borne the brunt of Islamic hostility?


Historically, America has shown limited if any desire to colonize the Middle East. In fact, Europe has far exceeded any "world domination" desires that the United States might have had. It is well documented that Britain and France raced to colonize Palestine and surrounding areas around the turn of the century. Some historians maintain that it was Europe's idea to create the Zionist state far before the Jews themselves sought to do so. Because the region served as the center of the Arab world, it benefited Europe to establish a Jewish state there. This occupation also served to get rid what was thought to be an increasingly annoying problem with Jewish settlements in Europe. The Balfour edict would both eliminate that problem, and divide the Arab world into an Asian and an African region. Obviously, the Europeans feared a unified Islamic state.


Insofar as American support of a Jewish state, this is a fact no one can deny, nor should any American apologize for doing so. Israel has been a friend of the US when no friend was to be found. However, support of the Israeli state is not unprecedented, and did not start with the US. In fact, the US was initially neutral to Israel, as Israel was neutral to America regarding the Cold War. It was not the US that supported Israel militarily after WWII, but it was Czechoslovakia, ostensibly under orders of the Soviet Union, that supplied Israel with weapons. The motivation for Soviet arming of the new nation-state was simple: break the British omnipresence in the Middle East by fortifying and fostering the growth of Israel.


Even in the rest of the Middle East, the US has shown throughout its existence a desire to stabilize rather than colonize. In 1956, it was the US that brokered a deal to rid Egypt of Israeli, French, and British invaders. It was not the US that invaded Afghanistan in the past, but first Britain, then the Soviets. In the 70’s, President Carter mediated the Israeli-Egyptian peace accord. World domination has never been a foreign policy goal of America, because such policy is paradoxical to US goals of freedom and individualism. Obviously, colonialism has not been the aim of America either.


So, if colonialism and/or Jewish support were not the root causes of the attacks of 11 SEP, why then haven’t Britain, France, the rest of Europe, and certainly the Soviet Union been targets in the past? Based on past activities, wouldn't it stand to reason that these countries certainly would have been targeted far sooner, and with far more reason than the US?


If these are not the motives for terrorist attacks, what then could possibly incite an entire group of people to dance in the streets at the sight of over seven thousand peaceful, law-abiding Americans dying at the hands of such purveyors of terror? In my opinion, the answer is much more about the very political values American leftists have espoused for years: class envy, victimization, etc. This is about, and has been about, a systematic undermining of the values of Americans for generations. The militants do not desire us to abdicate our military positions in the Persian Gulf, nor does blatant anti-Semitism motivate them. Quite simply, they feel left behind. Those that call for a jihad against us look at their own nations in comparison and they wonder why their system of patriarchy, oppression, and censorship fails; they see Westernization as a threat not only to their philosophies and convictions, but to their very existence. Inevitably, these "states without a nation" desire to maintain their archaic dominance of their peoples by using Islam as a tool to that end. Further, they hate capitalism, self-sustenance, and self-governance. For this, we pay the price of being a successful republic.


For this reason, we cannot expect diplomacy, or international law to prevail here. This is not a civilization in the truest sense. However, we are dealing with an element of fanaticism, one that seeks pure destruction of American individualism and democracy. This is a threat not only to our peace, but to our survival. Until this lunatic fringe is eliminated, or immobilized, and until the moderate Islamic wing of the Middle East is empowered, we can expect nothing less than the vitriol and scorn that spews forth from the region.

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.: posted by Dave 10:58 AM


Friday, July 19, 2002

Stupid Focus Group Politics...

Does it irritate you that our country is not so much governed on principles, or by a leader that takes a stand and presses forward with his convictions, as much as upon polls and focus groups? As a teenager, I was mesmerized by Reagan and what he did to empower those that earned their fair share to actually keep it. Does anyone remember the gargantuan tax rates of the late 70's? Stagflation? Gas lines? It took vision and leadership to move America in the right direction. The task was handled masterfully by a leader who listened to his counsel and his heart. Does anyone recall a reliance on focus-group demographics when Reagan made a decision? I don't, and I was a politico-in-blooming during the Reagan era.


These days, we read about Republican Special Interest Candidate/Democratic Special Interest Candidate, and how they are doing in the "polls". What interests the American public? What should the candidates do when elected? Why, they should poll and govern by the poll! Democracy gone technocrat. Sadly, there is no more leadership, or conviction, or genuine belief in our candidates. We have digressed to this. Rest assured, with Zogby and Gallup and the Internet in 1860, slavery would indeed have kept its awful aura of legitimacy.


So, how do we disband this popular trend of asking the masses what they desire from the public largesse? How do we with full force tell these publicrats that they are way off base in deciding our fate as a nation on a weighted set of statistical probabilities? Simple. When you are fortunate enough to be polled, give the most irrational, erratic answer you can fathom. "Yes, ma'am. I think the government should tax air, limit use of contractions in sentences, and penalize all citizens regardless of creed, color, or other bias $25 for every sock lost in the laundry." Consider the implications of a man in elected office rationalizing a bill drafted for the sole purpose of fining the electorate for losing a sock. The irony! Maybe then, politicians would be forced to think, have conviction, and lead by their example, and not by polling data. Wouldn't that be a sight to behold?

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.: posted by Dave 4:52 PM


Thursday, July 18, 2002

Just a thought...


Everyone is aware by now, unless you view the news with blinders, that corporations far and wide are being scrutinized for inflating their revenues, and earnings reports. Is it any wonder that this has happened? Consider that most CEOs for American corporations are paid primarily with stock options. First of all, let's define a stock option. Usually on an annual basis, companies issue a structured number of options which have a specific life (usually ten years) and can be vested (or cashed in) in increments of 10-25%. The idea is that CEOs can cash these options in as prices rise, and purchase stock for the original discounted price, or they can make a profit by taking the difference in the new price and the old. Supposedly, the motivation exists for the CEO to contribute as much as possible to maximizing the value of the stock because of their short duration. They seem to be a very fair, reasonable way to reward CEOs for their performance, without burdening the company with excessive salaries. Right?

Not so fast.

The problem with compensating CEOs through options is that they will stop at nothing to make sure that stock price is lofty, even if it is artificially so. Human nature dictates that one would want to sell off stock and maximize profit from doing so before the price fell to its "true" levels. This is the primary reason that CEOs have pursued the "off the books" deals, such as what Enron did and AOL is being accused of recently, which have overvalued the company's profitability. There are other issues with payment with options as well, such as inflated salaries (does anyone doubt that some CEOs are overpaid in options because they don't count against the company's bottom line?), and a weakening of the relative strength of non-optioned shares of stock (called "dilution" by Wall-Street types).

After the fall out from the latest corporate meltdowns have dissipated, I hope that publicly-held firms will consider the travesty of such maneuvers as paying management with options. In theory, options are good. In practice, they spawn misrepresentation, manipulation, and outright lying, for the sole purpose of a temporary overvaluation of a share. Direct, monetary compensation would create a measure of affordability and viability. If the company under the CEO's watch was underperforming, the shareholders, by proxy, could either cut his salary, or terminate him altogether. Accounting practices would be cleaned up significantly, as options are an accounting mess. Shares outstanding would more easily maintain their value. And Enron debacles would be avoided.

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.: posted by Dave 3:16 PM


Tuesday, July 16, 2002


Opinari is back and rarin' to go after a month long hiatus! Seems that an incapacitated vehicle, coupled with some financial difficulties, can severely hamper your time to opine....


Today's Opinion...


Allen Iverson gave himself up this morning to authorities on charges that he threatened a cousin, and forced entry into the cousin's home while brandishing a handgun. The very fact that this imbecile can get to this point in his life, and still have the same character flaws is enough of a reason for me to state, matter-of-factly, that something should be done. Should be. But it probably won't be.


America, by and large, is a cauldron of hero-worshipping wannabes. Iverson is, by all accounts, a thug who can "shoot the rock". That makes him, in effect, an "accidental hero". In our culture, heroes are given ample opportunity to justify such troubled behavior. To me, that's as much an indictment of us as a whole as it is those who are Iverson apologists.


The bulleted list of charges against him is more than the bullets in the handgun Iverson allegedly carried that night. This is not AI's first encounter with the wrong side of the law. As a teenager, Iverson was arrested in a Hampton, Va., bowling alley brawl in 1993 and spent four months in prison before then-Gov. Douglas Wilder granted clemency. The conviction was overturned on appeal in 1995. In 1997, Iverson pleaded no contest to a gun charge after police near Richmond, Va., stopped a car in which he was a passenger and found a gun belonging to Iverson and two marijuana cigarettes. Marijuana-possession charges were subsequently dropped.


Do we see a pattern here? If we don't, perhaps we are also looking at this man with the gracious blinders that most Americans also use when viewing their athletes. Charles Barkley, one time NBA forward, and well known for his unsavory attitude on the court, once decried "I am not a role model." He is right. He should not have been. But Barkley's indiscretions paled in comparison to the dossier that Iverson has constructed for himself.

If AI is found guilty, he should be sentenced, fined, and duly punished. Any member of society other than the powerful, rich, or famous would get jail time, and then some. Iverson, if guilty, should be no exception. Once and for all, a message needs to be transmitted to the culture that is so permissive of such behavior.

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.: posted by Dave 9:43 AM


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