Meaditation

If you know me well, you are probably aware that I periodically suffer bouts of depression.  Tonight, as I was driving home from hanging out with some work compatriots, I was suddenly assaulted with that familiar feeling of onset.  When it happens, it is almost always over some small or insignificant thought which plants itself like an invasive seedling in my mind and proceeds to blossom into a festering tree of gloom and self-abuse.  Despite knowing that this process is happening, I frequently find myself unable to cut it down before the thoughts take root.  Tonight I thought I would try something a little different.  Rather than sitting idly by and letting the fight unfold inside my head, I will spill it out here for the world to see.  Perhaps my obsessive attention to detail and eloquence in my writing will make a match for the equally tenacious thoughts attempting to drag me down.

To set the stage for those unfamiliar, let me describe what these episodes entail.  It all starts with a tiny event, something mostly meaningless and insignificant that I should gloss over within a few minutes.  In fact, most of the time, I would; other times, more sinister events ensue.  The thought stays with me, burrowing deeper and deeper into my mind.  By this point, I know what is happening, and I try to force myself to think of something, anything else.  If I am not successful in this effort, then I am sealed into my fate for the next few hours or more.  Pernicious little thoughts needle me constantly, digging up every negative concept of myself that has ever passed through my brain.  I try to beat them back, but this is akin to swatting individual locusts in a swarm.  Eventually I just give in, and let them wash over me, doing my best to become numb.  Typically I nap or sleep for the night, and wake up feeling completely normal, these negative thoughts banished from whence they came.

Even as I type out this narrative, I find that I cannot convey in words the depth of the feeling that subsumes my reality when the depression sets in.  I’ve read extensively on the subject and I find that this is a common problem.  Sufferers find it difficult, if not impossible, to help non-sufferers understand what it is really like to experience depression.  Healthy people often say things like “remember that you control your own destiny” or “just don’t think about the bad things in your life, dwell on the good things.”  This, though, misses the awful, dark evil that is the true spirit of depression – it doesn’t just make you feel sad, it robs away your power to take exactly the steps you must to feel better.  Sufferers, such as myself, frequently know exactly what they could do to feel better but are bound within their own minds, unable to make the correction.  This is why many people turn to medication, prescribed or otherwise.  Medicine alone cannot bring happiness, but it can at least equip the imbiber with tools to beat back the beast of depression.  I have employed this technique in the past, but found that the medicine drowned other parts of my personality that I did not wish to lose; I felt no valleys of despair, but neither did I feel peaks of elation.  So, I battle the beast on my own, using only the tools I can prepare myself.

The good news is that this does work.  Difficult as it can be to fight a monster which by its very nature handicaps you, it can be won like any other fight.  The trick is to roll with the punches and play to those strengths you are left with.  As soon as you feel the onset of the dark shadow, you do anything at all that you can muster the will to do (maybe write a blog post).  Most importantly though, the real secret to a rumble in the depression jungle is to keep friends close.  Talk to someone understanding and let them know what is going on.  Don’t dump all your problems on them, but have as cheerful a chat as you can to distract yourself.  Every blow struck against the beast drains the power out of it and back into you.  And, I find, once you show you can fight back, the monster will slink back into the night, maybe not gone but at least defeated.

I delivered the following speech at my Uncle Richard’s memorial this weekend.  He passed away on January 24, 2013 at the age of 58, while skiing in Colorado.

“To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch…to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded!” This Ralph Waldo Emerson quote encapsulates my approach towards life. Though I did not know him as well as I should have liked, I can say confidently that by this metric my uncle lived a life of success beyond measure. He demonstrated intelligence in every aspect of his life, through his stellar education, his rise through the ranks in his career, and his dry, sardonic wit. Though it could be hard won, I can still hear the sound of his laughter in tribute to a worthy joke. His appreciation of beauty was beyond question; I’m sure many of you know he was a lover of nature, especially fond of birds, as evidenced by his beautiful photography and artwork. He raised two highly intelligent, passionate, and successful children with his wife, my aunt.  He grew beautiful garden patches, where ultimately a piece of him can remain forever. Though Richard has departed us, he leaves behind not one but many, many lives that have breathed easier. His passion for life and dedication to his chosen path was obvious even to those of us who, like me, made his acquaintance less than they might have liked. Even still, I can be unwavering in this certainty: Richard left this world more than a bit better than he found it, and his absence leaves it significantly more empty.

I have precious few personal remembrances of my uncle. When I was young, our families visited often, but sadly, I am not blessed with a brilliant memory of my childhood.  As I grew out of youth our two families found less and less time to spend together, until a visit became a rare occurrence.  Time passed and I grew to be a young adult, moving away from home, graduating college, and beginning my own career.  My cousins, Erica and Evan did the same, and Richard and Eileen achieved retirement.  This once again opened the window of opportunity for visits.  Over the last several years I got a chance to know my uncle as an adult, and I am very grateful for that time, short as it was.  I remember him as a man strong in both reason and intelligence, passion and humor.  On my last visit with him, in October of last year, when he and my aunt visited my town of Santa Barbara they took me out to dinner and we had a wonderful discussion about the state of American politics.  Though we certainly had our differences in that arena, we shared a passion for reasoned debate, and respect for a conclusion intelligently found, if perhaps not agreed upon.  This is something I greatly admired about my uncle; though he held his opinions strongly, he was willing to consider a well-presented opposing view.  Conversely, he brooked no nonsense and never missed an opportunity to apply his acerbic wit to those who rightly deserved it. This, too, is something to which I aspire.

Shortly after graduating college, my family and I had a chance to visit with the Stades and my grandmother at the lake house they owned for some time.  This is one of my very fond memories of recent years.  We enjoyed a few days of sun and relaxation, as well as sumptuous family feasts and mellow evenings of thoughtful conversation.  During the day, Richard and Eileen took us out on the lake in their boat, patiently teaching me to waterski and even letting me drive it around a bit.  I got a chance to experience my uncle’s ornithological passion first-hand, as we tried to sneak up on a nest of birds for a chance to photograph them in their habitat.  In the evenings, after dinner, Richard introduced me to his aperitif of choice, a honey-whiskey blend by the name of Irish Mist, which to this day remains my favorite drink for a quiet evening at home.  And when at last, it was time to go, Richard thanked me for visiting, and bade me return whenever I so desired.  This, to me, was Richard Stade.

I wish that I had more frequently taken him up on his offers of hospitality.  I sorely regret missing the opportunity to learn more about him, to spend more time in spirited discussion with him, to laugh with him, and learn from him.  I suppose this is common to all losses, but especially those which are so sudden and unexpected as his.  The night I learned of Richard’s passing, I wandered the streets of Santa Barbara in a fog, both mental and literal, trying to find a way to integrate this news into my mind.  I walked past some of the locales I had shown him and Eileen on their last visit, sometimes smiling at remembered conversation, but more often numbly remote.  Eventually I ate dinner and made my way home, and there I did the only think I could think of to do.  I poured a glass of Irish Mist, thought of my uncle, and raised it in remembrance of him.  I think that this is the best thing we can do to honor Richard: remember him.  And, perhaps, to breathe a little easier because we all knew him.

Well, the results are in, and you can see them for yourself!  I’ve posted a public album on Facebook with scans of all of the print jobs that came in.  Some people were a little better about concealing their identities than others (you know who you are), and I have guesses as to some of the senders, but a few of them have me mystified.  I declare this experiment a success.

I have recently acquired a new printer with a neat little capability, so I’ve decided to conduct a little social experiment.  The capability I’m referring to is ePrint, which allows printing by sending an email.  I send an email to a special address and voila, it pops out of my printer.  It works with regular emails, but it will also print attached documents and images.  It’s an awesome little perk that allows me to print something at home, even when I’m not there, so that it will be ready for me when I arrive.  It is also compatible with Google’s Beta service, Cloud Print.

So, here’s the experiment: send an email to [redacted] to print something to my printer anonymously.  Normally, the printer email address is locked down, so that it will only print for emails sent from my email address.  However, I have deactivated this setting, so that the printer will accept jobs from any email address.  Because the purpose of the technology is to print a document as though it were a normal printer attached to the computer, it doesn’t include any sender information in the printed document.  Because of this, I will never know who sent each print job.  I will leave this setting unlocked until Saturday, March 31st, after which I will lock it down again.  At the end of the week, I will write about the results of the experiment, and post some of my favorite prints.

tl;dr Send an email to [redacted] to anonymously print something out on my printer!

Recently, I have been having a civil disagreement with a coworker.  The conflict is as congenial as it can be, because he and I respect each other and neither wishes to inconvenience the other.  Sadly, the difference seems to be intractable between us.  Because, you see, the difference is an argument over coding standards.

Standards serve a very important purpose in a software shop of any size.  Any time two or more developers work together and will be reading one another’s code, it helps to have a common vernacular.  See, software languages share many features of human languages.  Languages can be spoken correctly with many accents.  Most languages develop idioms to efficiently express a complex idea to speakers, while being impenetrable to outsiders.  Complex sets of grammatical rules are created to govern the use of languages, and denote not only what is correct, but also what is proper.  Code standards are those rules for software languages, and they allow developers to communicate more efficiently.

However, standards must walk a delicate balance between guidance and dictatorship.  Standards are created with the principle goal of better code quality and to ease the burden of working on another developer’s code.  There must be some base agreement as to what these standards are and an agreement to enforce them, or the standards will be meaningless.  However, standards must be crafted carefully to not be so authoritative that they become aversive to the developers they are meant to serve.

Developing standards can be very difficult though, because many coders do something in a certain way simply because it feels right.  This may mean that they simply have never considered doing it any other way, but would be open to learn better methods.  Sometimes there is a strong argument in favor of one style over another or one method is widely regarded as “best.”  In those cases, a good group of intelligent developers will consider the facts and evaluate what is best versus what makes sense for the situation.  Sometimes, everyone just agrees on a point right off the bat, and you can move along to the next thing.  However, sometimes there are conflicts that come down to purely semantic differences, like using “you are” instead of “you’re.”  A grammar purist might tell you that “you’re” is a bastardization of language that encourages informal writing and thinking; a layperson might tell you they find “you’re” to be easier and more convenient to use, while conveying the same meaning.  Neither of these people are wrong, they simply have different styles and preferences.

The problem is that in software development, there is a tendency to regard one’s own coding style with an almost religious awe.  Sometimes the only real argument is that something feels wrong.  In the absence of any strong tangible benefit that one method provides over another, it is perfectly valid for a developer to cite their gut feeling as an objection.  It may seem silly initially, but if you have to spend hours and hours writing code that just feels wrong to you, you’ll understand why it’s valid.  It’s as though you are being asked to follow the tenets of a belief system that is contrary to your own.  If you are a wise and respectful person, you may recognize that the belief system is a valid one.  But it will never feel right to you.

This leads me to the point of this post.  Coding standards are a form of governance, most effective when of and by the people.  Individual coding styles may loosely, I think, be described as a belief system.  To be effective and fair, governance must make an effort to be separate from the individual belief systems of the governed.  It must create a set of common laws by which we can all abide, in order to maintain a coherent society.  But government must also know when to step back and allow its people to maintain their minor differences.  In developing coding standards, we must endeavor to do the same.