SCALING WITH EVENTUAL CONSISTENCY
Originally published on the Crittercism Engineering Blog and reprinted with permission. by Kirk Strauser on April 8, 2014 CAP theorem hates you and wants you to be unhappy Some guy who isn’t fun at parties came up with the CAP theorem, which basically says it’s impossible to be consistent and available at the same time. In short, things will break and clients will lose access to a storage backend, or units in a storage cluster will lose the ability to talk to their peers.
Read moreWET SHAVING: A YEAR LATER
I'm a sucker for the idea of ritual. When I learn about a traditional, labor-intensive practice like shining shoes, oiling boots, or a complicated car washing regimen, I'm always drawn to try it myself. I imagine having the same meditative experience as the person convincing me to try their routine: feeling a connection to my ancestors, appreciating the finer things, tasting the rewards of patience, and such. So when I read an article about wet shaving a year ago, I could hardly wait to get started.
Read moreGREAT EXPECTATIONS
I probably sound like I gripe all the time, but that's really not what I'm like. I'm an optimist and happy by nature. It's just that I have high expectations for how things could be and I'm disappointed when I see people fall short of their potential. I don't complain about companies that are trying their best but fall short. I call out the ones that could be so much better but don't seem to have the desire to see it through.
Read moreMAKING DEVONTHINK SYNC BETWEEN COMPUTERS
Update: 2021-05-27 This is still getting traffic for unknown reasons. Today, in 2021, the problem is long solved. DEVONthink 3 syncs perfectly with itself and with DEVONthink To Go. Again, this is purely historical and not a reflection of the state of things today. Also, I have no idea why this post is suddenly so popular again. Help me out and let me know how you found this page? I'd sure appreciate it!
Read moreMORE SHOE FAILS
I had a wonderful experience buying new Rockport shoes from Brown Brothers Shoes in Alameda a couple of months ago, to the point that I wrote a gushing Yelp review and told all my friends to go there. Oops. My two-month-old Rockport shoes (which I wear only to work at my desk job) already need to be re-soled. The hard rubber heels have worn through so that now I'm walking on the soft foam cushion, and that can't possibly last too long.
Read moreTO SELL A CAR
In the process of moving to another state, we decided to sell my car to some friends. This turned out to be much harder than anticipated. I admit that this is entirely my fault and I deserve to be made fun of for it, but we couldn't find the title. It could be that the bank which financed the loan never sent it to us. It could be that it's in our safe deposit box in our last city and that I'll find it next month when I go back for the rest of our stuff.
Read moreAPPLECARELESS
While I almost never buy extended warranties, conventional wisdom is that you should always buy AppleCare for an Apple laptop. You have up to a year after buying your laptop to purchase the extended coverage. At a high level, you're basically buying an insurance policy for a piece of hardware with a specific serial number. Why does Apple make this so difficult? I bought my MacBook Pro directly from Apple's website.
Read moreOMAHA WORLD HERALD MAKES SCHOOL REMOVE CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
The Omaha World-Herald published a story about a Lincoln public high school who wrote "Remember the Reason for the Season" on their electronic bulletin board in front of the building. The ACLU contacted the school's principal to request that the message be removed, and the school complied. I can understand why some parents might not want that sign above the school. While I don't personally have a problem with it, I'd feel uncomfortable if my kids' school ran a similar sign that appeared to endorse Islam, Hinduism, or other religions.
Read moreON GENERATED VERSUS RANDOM PASSWORDS
I was reading a story about a hacked password database and saw this comment where the poster wanted to make a little program to generate non-random passwords for every site he visits: I was thinking of something simpler such as "echo MyPassword69! slashdot.org|md5sum" and then "aaa53a64cbb02f01d79e6aa05f0027ba" using that as my password since many sites will take 32-character long passwords or they will truncate for you. More generalized than PasswordMaker and easier to access but no alpha-num+symbol translation and only (32) 0-9af characters but that should be random enough, or you can do sha1sum instead for a little longer hash string.
Read moreSTOP THE E PARASITE ACT
This is the letter I just sent to my representative, urging him to vote against Hollywood's E-PARASITE Act: Congressman Fortenberry, please vote against the appropriately-named "E-PARASITE Act" being proposed by Rep. Smith, TX. It's the counterpart of Senate Bill S.968, the "PROTECT IP Act". This flawed legislation seeks to criminalize civil offenses and reverse our Constitutional presumption of innocence for the benefit of a tiny — but very vocal — coalition of Hollywood special interest groups.
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