DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

As reported throughout the web, the Gartner Group has recommended that some enterprises “immediately investigate alternatives to [Microsoft’s commercial webserver application] IIS, including moving Web applications to Web server software from other vendors.” The report’s title is telling: Nimda Worm Shows You Can’t Always Patch Fast Enough.

Think that through… one of the largest, most-quoted technical analytical groups on the planet is recommending that companies not use Microsoft software. More strikingly, they’re recommending that corporate users abandon Microsoft software. A reasonable person might have to conclude that the Microsoft software in question is dangerous.

But if that’s the case, how could IIS have gained 26% market share? How could systems administrators be so blind, to install such bad software? Especially in light of the fact that the market leader, Apache, (58% market share) is free and has a dramatically better security history?

To be sure, updating server software, and watching for new vulnerabilities, is required for all admins. But I contend that Microsoft still fares worse than any other vendor. Here’s the evidence: Microsoft has released 11 “critical security updates” in 2001 alone.

Gartner goes on to say that IIS will continue to be a victim to worms and viruses until Microsoft releases a new, “completely rewritten, thoroughly and publicly tested” version of the program. Consider the implications of that statement: IIS is so bad it can only be fixed by discarding the entire mess and starting from scratch.

Joel Spolsky has written a well-reasoned essay about why rewriting software from scratch is a huge strategic mistake. Why? Because there is no guarantee that the rewrite will be any better than the original. I agree.

But his comment that “IIS has been publically tested, for about six years now, on millions of web servers and with thousands of hackers trying to find bugs,” ignores the reality that IIS is clearly not robust enough for enterprise use, no matter how well tested it has been.

I discovered, again, that breakfast diners are notoriously difficult places to find a healthy meal, because if you eliminate animal products and dairy, all that’s left is pancakes (with no butter), dry toast, or fried potatoes. We were at Denny’s, home of four dozen variations on the “trucker’s special” theme, all of which are named “Slam,” and all of which provide approximately 1200 miles’ worth of fat-calories, as if semi trucks could be lubed through osmosis. The jokes for the morning: the “frequent eaters” card, after 10 meals, provides a free angioplasty… and the toy surprise accompanying items on the children’s menu is a Dick Cheney Commemorative heart stent.

But as far as road food goes, this was not the worst we would see… that honor belongs to the diner which served our lunch. Its decor fell somewhere between “rustic” and “dilapidated.” Its food fell, I believe, onto the kitchen floor just prior to being served.

At first glance I’d read the sign as “Best Food on Highway 9'' (which I found hilarious, as we were on Highway 97). They served the best Iceberg lettuce salad, that’s for sure. My companion’s fruit platter, described as “good sized” by the waitress, consisted of a half apple and a half orange.

Fortunately, the rest of the weekend would bring amazing meals. Breakfast at Café Sintra in Sunriver, for example, included an enormous bowl of homemade granola: nuts, seeds, and chunky organic bits that bore a startling resemblance to the output stream of an industrial log chipper. I felt like Euell Gibbons.

And that doesn’t even compare to the “official” meals of the weekend — the rehearsal dinner, the wedding reception, the morning-after brunch, even the evening-after pizza feast. Everything we ate was extraordinary — and hosted, which is remarkable, and for which I am filled with gratitude (not to mention sea bass, and grilled vegetables, and wedding cake, and pizza, and bruschetta, and ceasar salad, and wonderful Oregonian microbrews, all resting on a two-inch base of compacted, crushed granola).

The bride’s family even furnished 5 lbs of leftover pizza for our drive home.

We were without water for six hours today. Plumbing, it turns out, is one of those things you don’t really appreciate until it is gone.

Our water pressure had dropped dramatically last week. To water-systems repairmen, pressure problems nearly always implicate the well pump. Replacing a well pump costs $1500.

The hard part about replacing well pumps is this: they’re usually buried 100' below ground. Pulling a pump means having one guy haul it up, 20' at a time, while a second guy disassembles the water pipe that gets pulled out of the ground as the pump rises. Pipes are PVC, which is good, as you don’t need 3 men to carry a 20' length. Still, they’re unwieldy, flopping around in the branches and power lines through the hole cut in the roof of the wellhouse. It would be comical, if it didn’t cost so damn much.

We were fortunate: the pressure problem wasn’t due to a sick pump, but to two fractured couplings that caused all our water to squirt around inside the well rather than squirting up the pipe and out our showerhead in a refreshing, invigorating, pulsating, patented massage pattern.

So, once again, I am rinsed clean. I feel good. I even smell good. Of course, the repair bill hasn’t arrived yet.

This is a feel-good, walking-around groove, a march for people with 3.5 legs. It’s airy, it’s spacey, and it turns a corner just in the way that air and space do not. I call it Celebrity Dentist because it makes me smile — then it pokes me when I least expect it.

Playing odd meters slowly is a good way to get comfortable with them, as the slow tempo allows more time for counting. Also these grooves tend to express their intrinsic melodies in a way that faster, more note-y grooves may not.

      1   2   3   4   5   6   7    | 1   2   3   4   5   6   7   
7 RB  o   o   o   o   o   o   o    | o   o   o   o   o   o   o
- SD   o  OO O o o    OO O o o  OO |  o  OO O o o    OO O o o  O
8 KD  o o       o o         o o    | o o       o o         o o  o

Patronize these links, man:

• Virtual Drummer loop
• MIDI
• MP3

On a Fall day in 1996, walking through the Golden Gate National Recreational Area near the northernmost tip of the San Francisco peninsula, I joined a secret brotherhood. (Readers familiar with the area may wonder whether this event involved sex. Although we were not far from the nude end of Baker Beach, this brotherhood concerns itself with an altogether different kind of stones.)

I strolled along the path near the rocky part of the beach, and happened upon several unlikely, awesome vertical piles of rocks. I’m talking about single rocks stacked one on another, reaching heights of two to three feet. I was amazed at the precarious nature of the structures — I actually touched one to see if the stones were glued together. I felt awful when it toppled over.

Since that time, whenever Nature provides the raw materials, my wife and I like to build what we’ve come to call “stone sculptures.” Of course, height is the main goal, and aesthetics come in a close second. Except in special cases you need to have at least a half-dozen stones before you can begin to feel smug.

I left this sculpture near the Athabasca Falls in Jasper National Park. (Here’s are some great QTVR panoramas of Athabasca Falls.)

The practice of building sculptures of native stone appears to have begun with Inuit tribes, whose sculptures are called inuksuit. (The singular of inuksuit is inukshuk or inuksuk, or if you’re Neil Peart, inukashuk.) Here are some photos of ancient inuksuit.

Here’s are newer articles about building stone sculptures in Germany and Vancouver.