Author: eboisen

I finished Breakfast of Champions – the Kurt Vonnegut novel, not Caitlyn’s favorite cereal in a former gender.  The title comes from the phrase a cocktail waitress within the story says every time she serves a martini.  Kurt Vonnegut morphs the narration of the story from third person, slowly to that of him being the narrator by the last chapter.  He is also presented as a sort of Microcosmic God to the characters within.  Despite often moving the story haphazardly through space and time, the story is pretty easy to follow.  This is more a testament to the author’s story-telling prowess rather than the simplicity of his tales.  After I read Slaughterhouse Five, I could not believe how easily he moved his characters to other planets and eras.  That was a very complex story, but it was incredibly easy to read.  Most authors would lose their audience if they attempted such abrupt setting and character changes.  I really do not know how to categorize his work.  It has comic, dramatic, and science fiction elements, but it does not really fit into any of these categories.   His stories tell so easily, in fact, that I wonder if he had the ability to view the goings-on of some alternate universe and he was simply documenting it.  I have Player Piano, which I will get to soon, but I am going to likely read Desolation Angels (Kerouac) – another garage bookshelf find, or Foundations (Asimov) next.

Imagine being an engineer trying to gather parts to build your design:

You find a part on a shelf.  You can put your hand on it.  You can see the part number printed on it.  To order it for a project five people now have to get involved and you have to figure out how to get the part number to order it because the number on the box and the number on the shelf are different than the numbers you need to use to order it.   These numbers are also different than the manufacturer’s part number.  All the numbers that refer to this particular part appear to be unique.  Why are there so many unique numbers?  What is the point of them being unique if they all describe the same part?  These numbers also do not cross-reference each other in the SAP portals engineers have available to them.  How does this system not make the company less efficient and therefore less profitable?  Why is this idiotic system being employed?  If a person participates in this idiotic system does that make that person an idiot by proxy?  I believe that feeling is inescapable.  Perhaps a cone-shaped hat should be ordered as well?

I finished Into the Wild.  It was a very thought-provoking and interesting read.  It was a very easy read as well.  It makes you think about modern society and the importance of meaningful relationships.

I have moved on to Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions.   I am about 70 pages into it.  It is written with a similar tone to Slaughterhouse Five.  Very weird, but, so far very enjoyable.  It has the character Kilgore Trout in it just as Slaughterhouse Five did.  Not sure how to describe this one so far.  I have no idea where it is going.  The defective and highly-flawed characters are very amusing.  I found this book on the bookshelf in the garage, so Isaac Asimov’s Foundations will have to wait a little longer.

I started reading Foundations and found I was feeling a little burnt out on science fiction.  I found Into the Wild on a bookshelf in the garage and was captivated by the first several pages, so I switched.  Foundations will have to wait a little while.  I saw the Sean Penn movie about a year ago, so I was familiar with the story.  The book reveals the ultimate outcome of the main character, Chris McCandless, fairly early in the book, so watching the movie has not spoiled anything.  I am about halfway through.  It’s a fairly short book so I hope to finish by the end of June.

I finished Brave New World!  It was a pretty quick and easy read compared to Cryptonomicon.  The first couple of chapters are amazing.  They paint a bizarre picture of a future where people are “manufactured” in a hatchery in large groups of identical people.  These groups are manufactured to meet society’s needs.

The groups – Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon are “made” to be happy with their role in society.  Alphas are the “superior” caste that have the highest intelligence and are selected to lead the others.  Epsilons have limited intelligence and are bred to be happy doing menial tasks.  The Betas, Gammas, and Deltas span the gap between the Alphas and Epsilons.  People are to operate socially within their respective castes.  Sex exists, but no one is to be exclusive with another and reproduction is not supposed to happen outside of the manufacturing process.  There are no close personal relationships as they exist in reality.  People are created on a production line, so there are no mothers or fathers.  Children are raised as groups and programmed according to their designated caste.  No one grows old.  They suffer a quick demise at 60 years.

The author, Aldous Huxley, gives many ruminations on sex, society, and religion.  This book was published in 1932, so it had to be done very creatively.  I am sure it was pushing censorship boundaries for its time.  Its imagery is very tame by today’s standards, but the philosophies being discussed are still very relevant.  Many have compared this book to Orwell’s 1984.  Both books present a sort of future dystopia , but do so in very different manner.   I think this book would make a great movie.  I can’t believe it has not happened yet (apart from made-for-tv movies).  Hollywood keeps recycling stories, some of which weren’t worthy of an initial telling.  They ought to do this one.  The CGI needed to create  the “duplicate” people required for this movie is available now.  This might have been something that prevented this movie from being made 20 years ago.  I definitely recommend this book.

I am planning to start on Isaac Asimov’s Foundation next.

Apparently it is trivial to make posts private in WordPress.  I am now using this feature to log work done during the day.  A great way to document things.  Just add a post per usual, but check this box before publishing:

Thank you WordPress!

 

I finally finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon.  I started it in October.  It was a really well-written book that had two story lines that didn’t converge until the book is nearly over.  One is set during WWII and the other in about 1997.  It involves the Allied struggle to break the axis’ encrypted communication and win the war.  It also has a treasure hunt element to it in that it also entails a search for a huge hoard of axis’ plundered gold.  Some of the details of the story are so intricate that I cannot help to think that it is a non-fiction account of an untold portion of history.  At nearly 1000 pages, this is a long book.  It is easily good enough to be made into a hit movie, but I think it would have to be greatly condensed to fit into 2 1/2 hours.  I chose this book because I previously read Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash in college and really enjoyed it.  I have ordered a used copy of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for my next read.  A Brave New World was recommended to me by a former co-worker who suggested that I watch Breaking Bad years ago.  I loved that show, so hopefully her recommendation of books is on par.

I have not posted in quite a while.  I am about to wrap up a project that uses remote, wireless-communicating control panels to control the levels of six retention ponds in a municipality in Kentucky.  I am in the process of testing and putting the finishing touches on the HMI.  Here’s a screenshot of the overview screen:

This project was a challenge because I have not used Modbus in the last decade and I have not used AutoCAD to design a control panel in almost as long.  Everything came together pretty well, except for the Scope Creep part.  I have had long delays throughout the project getting information from the rep.  Now that everything is done, the rate of communication has suddenly hastened and I have been given requests for new “features”.  I have added the ability to enter a percentage limit for the gate valves, but features that require additional wiring have to be declined.  I hope to have the six panels shipped on Friday.

In my last post I talked about my morning consumption of hemp seeds and how that may affect a drug test.  Apparently the internet is correct.  I consumed hemp seeds most mornings – five or six days a week up to, but not including the day of the test.  I did not test positive for anything.  I don’t understand why the military prohibits service members from consuming hemp products.  Perhaps their tests are more stringent?

I had to take a drug test today.  I hate the idea of being forced to urinate in a bottle while some stranger monitors me.  Somehow in the last few decades the powers that be made it seem acceptable to impose this on people.  The night before the test, I Googled all my supplements and made sure they won’t cause false positives.  Apparently Onnit supplements, which I use, are all checked by a third party laboratory to ensure that they will not result in a positive drug test.  Their testing even meets USADA standards.  I figure great, I should be OK.  First thing in the morning I have my usual breakfast of Muesli and blue berries with hemp seeds.  As I add the hemp seeds, I think oh, crap.  Forgot about these.  I skipped the muesli and hemp this morning and instead made a spinach and feta omelet.  I read that I should not have an issue with the hemp seeds, but I skipped them this morning anyway.  Apparently you aren’t allowed to eat hemp products if you are in the military.  This gave me some concern, but not much I can do about it.  I eat it almost every day.  I have to take the damn test.

I leave my home earlier than usual so that I can take the stupid test and still get to work on time.  I arrive at the testing center at 7:45AM.  I check in behind a guy with all kinds of skulls, snakes, and spiders tattooed on the back of his head and fill out several forms and find a seat in the waiting room.   Every other time I have taken one of these idiotic tests I have done it at a lab that just runs tests.  This test was to be conducted at an urgent care facility.  Apparently the flu epidemic is pretty bad this year.  I am in a room full of people coughing, moaning, and wheezing.  Several are wearing surgical masks.  I flipped through some magazines and played with my phone for a little while and noticed it is 8:45.  I was supposed to have a meeting at 9:00, so I emailed some co-workers telling them that I will be a little late.  Then 9:00 rolls around.  I am still not being seen.  I inquire at the front desk and the lady looks for my information in her computer.  It doesn’t seem to be there.  She re-enters some things and tells me she will try to get me seen.  I decide to stand, because I am starting to feel bad because I have already switched seats a few times to avoid the coughing and sneezing of some of the sicker patients.  9:30 rolls around.  I still haven’t been seen.  Many more flu victims have made their way into the almost full room.  I make eye contact with the lady at the front.  She pages someone to give a status on my test and assures me it will be soon.  When I arrived some 100 minutes ago, I already had to go to the bathroom.   I chugged most of my 750ml camelback bottle on the way in.  Now I really have to go.  Finally, 10:15 rolls around and I get to go back.  I easily fill the cup.  I think I could have filled half a dozen of them.  I sign the seals and the lady conducting the test starts having trouble with her computer.  She isn’t able to enter the testing information.  What time sucking abyss have I wandered into?  At about 10:30 the system finally begins working.  Two hours and forty-five minutes of my life that I can’t have back and I will be lucky if I don’t have the flu.  I hate these tests.  They are so demeaning.  I envy the generations before me that never had to deal with this crap.  Wait in this room full of sick people and give me your body fluids when instructed.  We don’t care about you, your dignity, or your health.  Whatever happened to, “innocent until proven guilty?”  At what level in someone’s career does this finally end?