Damp Thoughts

A beautiful fall day here ....one to inflict severe homesickness in travelling natives of Seattle or Atlantis.

This morning we went through another rite of passage -- we bought the offspring an actual desk, similar to the one we have but, apparently, nicer (I haven't seen it). What is it about parents that makes us think that buying the kiddo a desk will make them better students? I lean more to the excruciatingly-patient review of the kid's homework as the way to induce that. I did it so well the other night, I reduced the kid to tears, which of course was my goal, reducing a young girl to tears proving my testosterone level. Harrumph. But afterwards, we talked quietly, and I explained why I was being so hard nosed --When it asks if a land mass of a given size is about 55% of a second land mass of a given size, you can't just multiply the first by two and swag the results -- math teachers don't think that way!!! -- and the result was, she bombed through the last four exactly right. And in fact was smiling and laughing by the end of it.

The other parental unit and the offspring are off buying a pumpkin for the traditional defacement of the fruits. While they are out, I am amusing myself by reading a manual on QMF for Windows, because I'd like to do a little bit of analysis on some numbers I've cranked from our two busiest systems -- not a lot of analysis, just a little, but more than Excel can easily do. Thiscoming Monday I make the long trek up to one of the many complexes of my company, the Biggest Little Software Company In the World. I am not looking forward to the trip, for three reasons -- first, its a lot of driving, and I have to get up way early to do it, much earlier than I like to do. Second, because while I am there, I have to participate in a Team Meeting for the group, and while those meetings are usually a blend of excruciatingly dull and agonizingly stupid, I can usually just put the phone on mute and do others things; this, however, is not an option when I am physically there. And third, because I have to meet with the manager of the group that I want to transfer to, and that means I have to Make A Good Impression, and I despise having to do that. I'm within four years of retirement, dammit! Though they, of course, don't know that. At least, I don't think they do. And I do want to make the change, because analysis -- even casual, non-rigorous analysis, which is the only kind I do -- is way more fun than what my group routinely does. The possibility of doing that is why I'm brushing up on my QMF. And yet-- and yet ---

I was reading an internal blog -- one written by one of the members of my company, intended for internal reading and not customers -- which I do on occasion for amusement, and because I do like reading about different technical items. I came across this string of pearls:

It is useful to think of Logical Channel Subsystems (LCSS's) as "containers for LPARs" as each LPAR can only use one LCSS. z9 extends the LCSS concept so that each LCSS can have two "Subchannel Sets": CS1 can only (as of z/OSR.7) have PAV Alias subchannels. CS0 can mix Base and PAV Alias subchannels.

I know that this guy is smarter than me. Whats humbling is to think of how much smarter he is than me. We're talking lightyears. I know about half of those words and concepts, but there is no way in the world I could put them together into a coherent sentence. It is awareness of what a really smart person sounds like that makes me think I am being an idiot for trying to move over to this other group, which may not be stocked with people of that caliber, but which, on the whole, has much more of them than the group I'm with now.

I have always thought of myself of as 'being on the bright side'. I qualified for Mensa, and I like to think about hard things. I still believe that given enough time, I can understand any concept that I really want to understand. But I am beginning to realize that 'enough time' is taking longer, these days. Maybe those concept are getting harder -- or maybe I'm not as bright as I think I am.

This is a scary thought. And a humbling one.