Category Archives: Musings

Posts where Ben just things about stuff and recalls the olden days.

A proposal for improving the calendar

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My wife said she missed me writing about non-tech things. The monkey’s paw curled.

Last night I came up with what can only be described as man’s most brilliant idea in the last century: CalendarFiasco. The Gregorian calendar — while a marked improvement over the Julian calendar — sucks. It makes no sense.

What’s in a name?

Thankfully, there’s precedent for changing the calendar. That’s part of what got us here. There was a time when September was the 7th month, October the 8th, November the 9th, and December the 10th. Those names made sense once upon a time.

Another thing that doesn’t make sense about them: they contain the sound “bər”. What do you say when you’re cold? Brr. But the northern hemisphere mid-latitude weather during many of those months isn’t particularly cold. So let’s start by re-arranging the names such that the “brr” months are the coldest months.

November and December can stay put. But we’ll replace January with September and February with October. Now the cold months are appropriately named. “But, Ben,” you whine, “what about the southern hemisphere?” Well, I guess they should have thought of this first, huh?

“Okay,” you plead, “but the names still don’t make sense from a numerical standpoint.” So what? I’ve improved some parts of it without making anything else worse. The ordinals didn’t make sense before and they don’t make sense now.

But wait! There’s more! You know what’s light and airy? Late spring. Right now, our calendar buries January and February — the “airy” months — in a pile of snow. Tragic. Since we’ve displaced those two months already, let’s move them to a more appropriate place. April and May can shove off to where September and October were. January and February will take their spot.

So my new calendar now has month names that make a lot more sense:

  1. September
  2. October
  3. March
  4. January
  5. February
  6. June
  7. July
  8. August
  9. April
  10. May
  11. November
  12. December

Where it all begins

Earth orbits the sun in a regular path. We could start the year at any arbitrary point. But January 1 is such a silly point. It’s less than two weeks after the winter solstice, which is a meaningful part of the orbit. Why not simply move the start of the year?

It is important to my wife that the winter solstice remain in December, so in the interests of marital harmony, I will make September (formerly January) 1 the first day after the (typical day of the) solstice. To make the transition easier, I put together a handy mapping of Gregorian dates to CalendarFiasco dates for your reference.

Feedback

…is not allowed. This proposal is perfect and I will not tolerate any dissent.

Book review: The Goal

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I am a sucker for novels as allegory for technologists. When my friend Bex recommended Eliyahu M. Goldratt’s The Goal, I knew I had to give it a try. Surprisingly, the wait for the audiobook was measured in months, so I had plenty of time to wait. But the wait was worth it.

The Goal is set in a Rust Belt town where the local factory is struggling to remain productive (and therefore profitable). Our narrator is the plant manager, who is pouring all of himself into trying to save the plant. This, as you might expect, puts a serious strain on his home life. By chance, the narrator runs into his college physics professor. The professor works in a few moments here and there to help his former student improve the plant’s flow — often in counterintuitive ways — by asking questions that lead the team to a successful outcome.

You might ask what early-1980s industrial manufacturing has to do with the modern software industry, and you’re right to ask it. The setting is not immediately applicable, and a lot of the references (and attitudes in a few places) are very dated. But just like in my review of Tom DeMarco’s The Deadline, I did not find myself thinking “boy, I’m sure glad that problem is solved now.”

What’s the goal?

We still face (as do people in many other industries) being judged on local performance, whether or not that helps — or even hurts — the broader organizational goals. A person whose performance is graded based on the number of tasks they complete will complete as many tasks as they can, regardless of whether or not it creates a bottleneck downstream or is “wasted’ work. As Jonah, the professor character, says “a system of local optimums is not an optimum system at all. It is a very inefficient system.”

This, perhaps, is the one lesson that we’ve retained. System administrators know, even if managers and executives sometimes forget, that fully-utilized systems are brittle. If you want a resilient system, you need to have excess capacity in order to handle bursts. Stable systems are inefficient, and efficiency for efficiency’s sake is a bad goal.

The overall message of The Goal, and the first question that Jonah asks, is “what is the goal of the organization?” For businesses, the goal is to make money. It’s not to manufacture widgets, ship software, sell services, or whatever. Those are ways the business achieves the goal of making money. Market fit, quality, price, etc are factors in how successful the product is, but aren’t the goal in themselves. The rest of the book describes how to analyze flow through the process to optimize overall throughput in service of that goal.

Other lessons along the way

I’m not sure how much Goldratt intended for me to take these additional lessons from his novel, but I picked up a few other things along the way. First, is that if you’re too busy to update your documentation, you will get busier due to out-of-date documentation. At one point, the plant’s leadership team is operating under assumptions based on outdated documentation, which causes them to make the wrong decision. Bad documentation leads to rework, which is both demoralizing to the worker and counter to optimizing throughput.

Another lesson is that priorities that aren’t clearly communicated and understood aren’t priorities in fact. People have to understand what they’re supposed to be working on and why. If that changes and they don’t know about it, they’ll keep following the old priorities. Understanding the “why?”, especially when something seems counterintuitive, is important to get people to buy in and follow the plan.

Lastly, the Socratic method only works if both people are willing to use it. At one point, having seen how well the Socratic method worked to lead him to improvements at the plant, the plant manager tries it on his estranged wife. Because she sees his questions as having seemingly-obvious answers, he comes across as an asshole. Asking questions to understand the layers of an answer can be a very helpful approach, but everyone involved has to be in the right space for it.

My verdict

Overall, I thought The Goal was a solid book. The lessons are well-communicated, valuable, and not overly-preachy. The audiobook version is surprisingly well-produced, which made it fun as well as informative. If I ever become a college professor (unlikely!), I’d love to teach a course of allegorical novels, and The Goal will fit in well with The Deadline and The Phoenix Project.

The Life of a Showgirl

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Taylor Swift’s twelfth studio album came out last week and I know you’re all wondering what a no-talent man has to say about the work of one of the most successful women in music history. My wife and I stayed up to stream it right at midnight, and I’ve listened to it probably two dozen times since.

The Life of a Showgirl is a departure from the “coffee shop” vibe of several of Swift’s recent albums (specifically folklore, evermore, and The Tortured Poets Department). It’s not the lyrical showcase that The Tortured Poets Department was, but it is fun. I’ve read a few professional critic pieces which are…not exactly laudatory…and I’m not sure that’s fair. Overall, this album is not at the top of my Taylor Swift albums rankings; it’s somewhere in the middle. But it’s also remarkably consistent. There aren’t any songs that I’d consider clankers. I’m not sure which, if any, will be added to my favorites playlist, but several of them are solid contenders.

Track-by-track

“The Fate of Ophelia” leads off the album with a catchy bass line. I interpret the lyrics to be about her fiancé, but I’ve seen some saying it’s about the fan support that helped her get through the breakup that fueled much of The Tortured Poets Department. In any case, it’s really fun to listen to, and the video is enjoyable, too — I particularly appreciate that each single is single-take and the effects are practical instead of CGI. If Taylor wants to retire from music, I’d be interested to see her direct a feature film.

Up next is “Elizabeth Taylor.” I don’t have much to say about this one. It was the early leader for favorite track on the album, but it’s slipped a bit since. Liz gives way to “Opalite”, which is probably my favorite track on the album. It goes from subdued to exuberant and back in a way that makes it great to sing along to.

“Father Figure” was not what I expected when the track listing was announced. Instead, it’s a mafia-esque tale of a protégée turning against their benefactor. Like “Vigilante Shit”, it’s a dark tale of revenge. Unlike “Vigilante Shit”, it involves Taylor talking about the size of her dick.

The fifth track on Swift’s albums tend to be among her most heartbreaking. “Eldest Daughter” is not that. It’s a sad tune, but it doesn’t carry the pain of “Dear John”, “All Too Well”, or “So Long, London.” The sadder song, albeit with a much peppier sound, is the next track. “Ruin The Friendship” is a lament for a road not taken. I’m not one to linger on the things that could have been, but even I found my heart catching at this.

“Actually Romantic” is apparently a diss track. To be frank, I’m over that genre. Taylor Swift has more money than God and is no longer the underdog in any fight. Despite that, I really like this song. It sounds a lot like Olivia Rodrigo (complimentary).

The Internet has some strong opinions about “Wi$h Li$t”. Some claim that because Taylor sings about wanting to be married and have kids that she’s secretly a conservative tradwife. The only inanity of that interpretation is only topped by the people who say the “whole block looking like [Travis]” line is clearly white supremacist. The Internet makes me tired. Anyway, this song is Just Fine™.

Do you want to know about Travis Kelce’s penis? If not, you’re out of luck. “Wood” has about as many euphemisms as it’s possible to fit into a single song. If you told me that Sabrina Carpenter collaborated on a song but didn’t tell me which one, I’d have assumed “Wood”. It’s as unapologetically horny as anything Carpenter has released with a very Jackson Five sound. I’m happy for Taylor and Travis.

“CANCELLED!” is a clear sign that Swift is secretly British. Spelling aside, this is a similar vibe to “Father Figure.” It’s followed by “Honey”, which is — for reasons I can’t explain — the most forgettable song for me. It’s a good pop song but it doesn’t stick in my head.

Sabrina Carpenter makes her appearance on the title track. “The Life of a Showgirl” closes the album on a strong note. It’s in the “Jukebox Hero” vein of young person idolizes a performer and then grows up to be a star in their own right.

The future

Have we reached Peak Taylor Swift? Lyrically, The Life of a Showgirl is a big step back from the growth we’ve seen over her career. It’s quite possible that The Tortured Poets Department and the Eras Tour will end up being the peak of her career. There’s nothing wrong with that, every artist has to peak at some point. Swift has been turning out great music and increasing in popularity for nearly two decades now. Very few artists can say the same.

If this is the peak, then it’s not because she’s no longer capable of growth. The peak will come because of two things. The first is that she’s pretty far removed from having anything like a normal life. That makes it harder to write in a way that will resonate with the masses. Also, she’s about to get married and — despite the fact that it’s been used to malign her unfairly — some of her best work has come from heartbreak. Art is like that. So will she continue to have things to say?

Also, the album variants have reached new heights (heh). Every day in the past week, I’ve been notified of a new album variant that has a couple of unique tracks of songwriting memos or acoustic versions. It’s kind of ridiculous. Taylor Swift is a billionaire and perhaps the artist with the most say over what they release in the entire history of art. Release the version you wanted to make and leave the fans’s wallets alone.

There have been rumors that Taylor will give up music to settle down into married life. That sounds fake (especially since Taylor said “how dare you suggest such a thing?”). I wouldn’t be surprised if she takes a little time to just rest and roll around in her Scrooge McDuck money bin with her large-penised husband. Whatever comes next, I would really like to hear a straight rock album. She’s flirted with the genre some, and I bet she could shred if she wanted to.

I owe my career to Unidata

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You may wonder how a site called “Funnel Fiasco” came to have so much technology content. It all traces back to an email I sent my freshman year of college. But it’s also directly attributable to the work done at Unidata. Funded by the National Science Foundation for decades, Unidata is a cornerstone of atmospheric science education, providing software and data services. Tragically, Unidata furloughed almost all staff on Friday thanks to the assholes running the government.

A fateful email

Early in my freshman year, Dr. Jon Schrage was giving a tour of the Earth & Atmospheric Sciences facilities in Purdue’s Civil Engineering Building. (Ed note — Earth & Atmospheric Sciences is now Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences. The Civil Engineering Building is now Hampton Hall. I will use the names as they were in my time as an undergraduate.) He mentioned that he’d be doing a training on the WXP software soon if anyone wanted to learn how to use it.

Reader, I very much did. So I showed up to the Civil Engineering Building on a Wednesday night. For the next two hours, I learned how to use WXP to make weather maps. At the end of the session, Jon mentioned that he was a visiting professor and his appointment was up at the end of the year. He didn’t know who would be maintaining the software the following year.

When I got back to my room, high on the thrill of weather plots, I sat down and sent him an email. With all of the confidence of a mediocre white man, I sent this: “I’m just a freshman who doesn’t know what he’s doing, but I’ll do it.” It’s been almost 24 years, but I’m pretty sure those were my exact words.

Did I know how to use Unix (specifically FreeBSD)? No! Did I know anything about the software? No! Was I going to let that stop me? Absolutely not.

Amazingly, the department hired me. That got me through my undergraduate years and set me up to accidentally fall into a career in technology. I’d say it has worked out pretty well so far.

Where Unidata fits in

The astute reader may notice that so far the tale centers on my overconfidence. So where does Unidata fit in?

Unidata created and maintains the Local Data Manager (LDM) software. LDM allows universities and other users to reliably share meteorological data in near-real time. From models, to observations, to satellite images, to radar data, LDM provides a robust transport mechanism. A big part of my job was administering the software and providing help to students and faculty who needed data.

The department flew me to Boulder for an in-person training workshop where I learned LDM in greater depth. Later on, I returned to Boulder for training on GEMPAK, another weather visualization and analysis suite.

The software and the training helped me become a valuable contributor my department’s education and research missions. This is what led to me getting a full-time Linux sysadmin role the summer after I graduated. No doubt there are many others like me out there — not to mention all of the forecasters and researchers who learned about the atmosphere with the help of Unidata’s work.

The Unidata staff — as well as so many other federal grant recipients, contractors, and employees — deserve far better than this administration has given them.

Highways routed around towns

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“Don’t you think,” one of George Minafer’s unnamed compatriots asks in The Magnificent Ambersons, “that being things is rather better than doing things?” Minafer and his crowd are not the most sympathetic characters, and I don’t think Booth Tarkington intended them to be (although Minafer could arguably be considered an exaggerated avatar of his creator in certain respects), but I think there’s something to this quote.

I thought about it on a recent drive to Fort Wayne, where the Hoosier Heartland Highway in all its four-lane divided highway splendor curves around several small towns. Americans, it seems, would rather get to places than go to places. By this, I mean the journey is something to make as short as possible, not a part of the experience.

I’m no highway engineer, but every time I’ve driven the Hoosier Heartland Highway, the traffic has been almost non-existent. There seems to be very little reason for the “upgrade”, other than to let people drive faster. And as a result, there are towns that people no longer drive through. This might be good for the driver, but it seems less good for the businesses in the towns, and perhaps for us as a society.

When I drive through small towns, I sometimes wonder how much longer they have. The population of Americus, through which Indiana 25 no longer passes, has fallen from 630 in 2012 when the Hoosier Heartland Highway opened to 57 in 2023. Some of this is part of a general trend, to be sure, but not all of it.

Are we really in such a hurry that we’re willing to give up unique places in exchange for the sameness of limited-access highways with the same fast food places at every exit? Probably. I’m guilty of it myself. But there’s a lot we’re missing out on that we might not get back when it’s gone. We could do with spending more time being and less time doing.

Baseball and me in 2025

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Once again borrowing from Chris O’Donnell, I thought I’d write about my relationship to baseball in 2025.

Like many American boys, I grew up playing Little League baseball. I loved the game, even though I was decidedly bad at it. When I got to the age where I’d be on the more competitive traveling teams, I retired. Instead, I helped out as an assistant coach and scorekeeper for my younger sisters’ softball teams.

My family would go to a couple of AAA games in Louisville most years and I’d watch the All Star Game and World Series on TV usually, but that was about it. I was decidedly a casual fan. It didn’t help that “my” team was 600 miles away, which means 1. we definitely were not going to see a home game and 2. they weren’t on TV basically ever.

Reader, have I ever told you the story of how I became an Orioles fan? Again, like many American boys, I collected baseball cards. Like boys who only had sisters, I often wished I had a brother. So when I ended up with baseball cards for brothers Cal, Jr. and Bill Ripken and they played for the same team I was enthralled. Not long after that, Cal, Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game stream, and I was hooked for life.

So given that the Orioles have been really good the last few years and that I can easily watch most of their games online, you might think I’d be a more engaged fan. Well…I’m not.

Baseball invites a casualness that I don’t get from most other sports. The slowness of the game itself that some complain about is a feature to me. You can sit back, have a conversation, drink a beer or two, and just let the world go by for a bit. And MLB plays 162 games a year, so it’s okay if you miss one or ten.

I’ve tried playing in fantasy baseball leagues, but I just don’t get into it enough to do well. And my life is busy enough that watching more than the occasional game on TV is difficult. So as the 2025 baseball season starts, I’ll mostly catch up on the Orioles via the blogs I read and maybe I’ll sneak in a game here and there. I’ll keep going to the Lafayette Aviators games because they’re cheap and local. Baseball, like most sports, is better experienced in person.

“The Dress” and shared reality

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For the better part of the last decade (and perhaps longer), we’ve struggled with the fact that not everyone is living in the same reality. Political polarization is, in my view, less about reasoned differences in policy preferences and more about the fact that we’re not working from the same set of facts. Nothing I can say will convince someone who believes that a secret cabal is trafficking children in the basement of a pizza restaurant. Or more banally, that Joe Biden shut down the country at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

We recently passed the 10th anniversary of “The Dress,” which some say is the start of all of this.

The Dress was the end of objective reality as we knew it, imo

— amy brown 💫 (@amybrown.xyz) 2025-03-13T13:19:59.216Z

Was literally talking to a friend about this last night. The majority of what went viral before The Dress went viral because it reflected some kind of consensus — this is good, this is interesting, this is relatable. After The Dress, virality was permanently changed into a measurement of conflict.

— Ryan Broderick (@ryanhatesthis.bsky.social) 2025-03-13T13:22:55.128Z

The day of The Dress, I was interviewing for a job. I wasn’t allowed to have my phone at the facility, so I was offline most of the day. When I got to the airport, I had a chance to catch up on work and also the Internet. I’ll admit that I was a lot more interested in the llamas running loose in Arizona than some photo of a white and gold (don’t @ me) dress.

“The Dress” was definitely a shared experience for those of us terminally online in 2015. Whether it’s the event that tore us apart or not is harder to say. It does seem to mark a turning point, but the same could be said for the deaths of David Bowie and Harambe in 2016.

Instead of a beginning, The Dress might be an end. I see it as the end of shared experiences. With so many entertainment options, we don’t have things like the final episode of “M*A*S*H” or “Seinfeld” to have a shared experience. And maybe that’s part of the reason we don’t have a shared reality.

I finally cancelled my Washington Post subscription

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Last week, I cancelled my subscription to the Washington Post after its owner made clear that he is going to influence the editorial direction. The news side, they say, remains un-influenced. Even if that’s true, my money is somewhat indistinguishable. I can’t say “I’m subscribing to support the journalists only.” If Jeff Bezos wants to talk free market, I will be a free market actor. I still pay for great journalism from Marketplace, NPR, WIRED, The New Yorker, Ars Technica, and my local “retired” reporter/columnist. Plus the okayish journalism from two local papers squeezed to near-death by Gannett. The billionaire can do without my $120/year.

At the risk of turning Blog Fiasco into “Ben’s Collection of Open Letters”, I wrote this to WaPo’s support when I cancelled:

Since the “other” option in the subscription cancellation workflow doesn’t provide a text field, I thought I should take a moment to let you know why. I am an ardent believer that journalism is worth paying for. I am not an ardent believer in oligarchy. If Mr. Bezos chooses to put his thumb on the scale of the Post’s opinion page, then he doesn’t need help from my money. Jeff Bezos could fund the Post’s operational losses for the next century and only lose less than 5% of his net worth. I considered cancelling my subscription after the Post did not make an endorsement in the presidential election, as many others did. Ultimately, I chose not to because I understand that the reporters and editors doing the daily work don’t control what the executives do. But I can no longer contribute to this in good conscience. Democracy may die in darkness, but oligarchy blows out the candles.

Shortly thereafter, I got a canned reply:

For 138 years, The Washington Post has committed its pages to covering and holding power to account. Our Newsroom remains dedicated to independent reporting and fact-based journalism. Our Opinion pages will now focus on the pillars of free markets and personal liberties, two underserved viewpoints in the current market of ideas and news opinion. We look forward to continuing to be a publication for all of America.

Bullshit. Blink if you need help, customer support rep.

A letter to Purdue’s president

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I sent the following email to Mung Chiang, the president of Purdue University, last Wednesday. As of publication, I have not received a reply from his office.

President Chiang,

I write to you as a two-time Purdue alumnus, former staff member, and Lafayette resident. Like many, I am concerned about the abrupt cuts in federal funding and the state and federal attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion. This not only affects an institution that I hold dear, but it harms the long-term future of society at large.

To that end, I am disappointed that Purdue has not taken a more vocal position. I understand and respect the desire to stay out of politics. But I am not asking the University to weigh in on what the top marginal tax rate should be. Purdue only stands to lose if the federal government continues to renege on commitments to funding. How can the Purdue One Health Initiative hope to be successful in an environment where science is ignored in favor of political loyalties and the NIH is being slashed?

How can Purdue continue to attract the best for its faculty, staff, and students when any effort to reach out to and support under-indexed people is forbidden? Research shows that diverse teams produce better results, so DEI programs are materially beneficial as well as ethically right.

I appreciate that what I am asking will draw unwanted attack, but it’s in the best long-term interests of the university to take a stand. As we remind ourselves in the opening line of “Hail Purdue!”: to your call one more we rally.

Yours,

Benjamin Cotton
BS 2006
MS 2014

Rights for others are about us, not them

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This is a post about my personal philosophy because I feel like it’s important for us to think about the reasons behind how we view the world.

I sometimes see people express indignation when criminals get civil rights protections or when non-citizens get the rights enumerated in the Constitution. I can understand the reasoning, but it doesn’t fit with my principles for governance. I believe that the rights we give to the others within our society are about us, not them.

Many of the rights are fundamental human rights that should apply to everyone, of course. Let’s consider those a given for now.

The rights that criminals, or suspected criminals, receive are not for them. They’re a protection for us against ourselves. It should be hard for the government to convict someone of a crime, because that protects all of us from malicious prosecution and persecution by hostile governments. And our prisoners should be treated humanely, even the ones who have committed the most heinous of crimes. It’s not because they deserve it. It’s because we want to be a just and merciful society.

Extending rights to non-citizens is a direct reflection of how the Constitution was written. The Constitution does not grant rights so much as list a subset of rights that the government can’t (or can conditionally) curtail. The idea of American governance is that the government derives its authority from the people, and thus only can do what it is permitted to do. The Constitution largely refers to “people”, not “citizens” for a reason.

What it comes down to is that I want my government to reflect the world I want to live in, regardless of how others behave or what they “deserve.”