The Life of a Raven

Dear Google, Your Search is Sucking

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 14:13:05 GMT

Dear Google,

I've been using your Search for a very long time. I left Alta Vista for you, even though you didn't have advanced operators at the time. You were that good. And you just got better. You added all those little tools like OR and the "exclusion minus" and filter operators like "site:" that enhanced my GoogleFu and let me amaze my friends and co-workers with my ability to find stuff.

Then your search got a little fuzzy, and you got even better. You found "copier" when I searched for "copy", and that was pretty useful, especially when I could say "+copy" when I knew I didn't want "copier" in the results.

But recently, you've betrayed me. Google Search has become so fuzzy that it's almost useless. You try to make "intelligent" guesses about what I want and return pages that are so far off that they don't even include all of my search terms in the first few hits, even though there are pages that do further down the list.

And the plus-operator, that used to mean "search exactly for this word", doesn't do that any more. And putting quotes around a phrase no longer means "find exactly this phrase"... instead, it starts returning hits that not only have the words of that phrase scattered all over the page, it returns pages that don't even have all the words.

Yet your "Advanced Search" form hasn't changed. If I type into the "find this exact phrase" box, I don't get "this exact phrase", I get fuzzy results that aren't what I'm looking for.

Google, you have crippled my Search. You have stolen my GoogleFu by making what used to be predictable tools very unpredictable. You try to second-guess what I really want, and you don't let me clarify when you guess wrong... you just second-guess my clarifications, too.

I never thought I'd say this, but Google, I think it's time I started seeing other search engines. You and I just aren't as compatible as we once were, and I'm afraid that we may not have a future together. I need a Search that works and can do exactly what it's told. You're just trying too hard to guess what I need, and failing to see that I'm telling you exactly what I need in clear, certain terms.

Maybe, if you work at listening to what I have to say, instead of telling me what you think I want to hear, we can save this relationship. Maybe, if you go back to being the Search I fell in love with, this might work out.

But for now, I've got a date with Yahoo! Search. I'll give you a call sometime.

Got my hands back in the mud

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 03:53:50 GMT

I just got home just a little bit ago from my first pottery wheel-throwing class at www.wichitapottery.com, home of The Secret Gallery, at Meridian and 2nd. It was really nice.

They're conveniently less than five minutes from my house, which is a nice bonus. But the big deal for me is that they're very affordable. $40 for a four-week class, and current students get access to the studio on Friday from 1-9 at no additional charge.

I see that City Arts' fees have come down from the last time I looked a few years ago... $110 for a 10-week class, plus firing fees. So they're not much more expensive, but that ten weeks is a bigger commitment and, last I looked, studio time outside of class was extra. With a new class starting every month, it's easy to drop into the schedule.

I had emailed ahead of time to ask about availability and was told I could just show up a little early the first night; no reserving a spot or paying in advance. When I got there, Jill (the owner) had already labeled a shelf with my name and gave me a tour of the studio. It's kind of funny, but that little touch made me feel special.

I liked that the class was fairly small and informal, with only six students. Everyone in the class was at a different level, and only one of us had never thrown before. The instructor had to feel around for just how much instruction people needed, and he worked with that pretty well. (I hate to admit, but I can't remember my instructor's name.)

I haven't thrown for a few years, and only have a 10-week class under my belt. But it came back pretty quickly, and throwing pots is basically the only mechanical art form requiring dexterity that I took to naturally. I can't draw a straight line, but throwing pots just works for me. And it's a very functional art form that I enjoy owning and using.

The studio was clean, the owner, instructor and students were all friendly and fun.

I'm looking forward to Friday... I just happen to be off work, and I expect to spend some of it down at Wichita Pottery.

That's the ticket.

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:53:58 GMT

I took a couple days off at the beginning of the week to hang out with my family, it being spring break and my son was out of school. We hit the bookstore on Monday, as we have a bad habit of doing, but this time I had a real motive. Generally, I've got way too many books already, and the bookstore is just a tease... lots of stuff to look at, knowing I shouldn't buy anything because I have a lot to read at home. But this time, I wanted to browse the songbooks.

I'm struggling with learning the guitar. I want to play, but I'm getting bored... I want to play all kinds of styles, but my chord changes come too danged slow, and rhythm guitar solo is kind of dull. I can't play well, let alone sing and play, and you pretty much have to sing to get melody, or you have to be really good at strumming and picking out a melody at the same time.

But part of the problem I've been having is that I'm not playing any music that interests me. I like folk music, but it gets old... sixty songs, three chords. Woo. So having browsed online for simple arrangements of popular acoustic tunes, I wanted to browse the actual music. And I ended up with "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Acoustic Guitar Songs." I like the Dummies and Idiots books in general, but this one was coincidence... it's a beginner book from Alfred Publishing with the Idiots label on it, and Alfred is the exclusive publisher of sheet music for several big artists.

But this book was exactly what I was looking for. Some great songs, some of them with simplified arrangements (Classical Gas, anyone?), and intros to each song with a guide and tips for playing the song (plus background information on the song and artist). Tablature (fingering diagrams for individual notes), because although I know how to read music, it's painfully slow... I have to pencil in all the fingerings until I learn it anyway, so I might as well get a book that lays out the TAB for me. And it had a nice mix of rhythm and fingerstyle songs.

And this finally did it. I can hardly put the guitar down, and I find myself at work looking forward to heading home so I can race past my family and into the basement to play my guitar.

I poked at "Classical Gas" a bit, and I can see that one coming but it's a little complicated. I took a look at "Layla" and put that one on the back shelf... Clapton earned his reputation. Tried a little of "Cats in the Cradle" and I want to learn that one, but it's got a few too many multi-note finger-plucks right now. But it's Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair / Canticle" that's got me hooked. I love their music and it's acoustic guitar feel... and this turns out to be the song that convinced me I can play fingerstyle. The right-hand finger pattern rarely changes, so the right hand can get into a groove while the left manages the mostly simple chord changes.

It's coming along after just a couple days, and if I can get to changing chords smoothly without skipping a beat on the right hand, I'll be ready to sing along in no time. Problem is, it's a duet... one singer sings Scarborough Fair while the other sings Canticle on top of it. That'll be tricky to do solo. :)

Dear DNS administrators

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:51:51 GMT

If you administer a DNS server, please... know the rules and follow them!

NS records must be a valid, fully-qualified domain name (FQDN). They should (I think "must," but I haven't taken the time to be sure) match the nameservers listed in your whois/root-delegate record.

Your SOA record must point to a valid, FQDN nameserver that is the primary authority for the domain's records. That's what start-of-authority means.

These aren't just courtesy... using invalid information in your NS or SOA records will cause problems for caching name servers, and will result in users who cannot reliably reach your site. And they don't have to run a "broken" caching DNS server themselves... BIND9 gets confused by caching invalid NS records, returning a valid response on early attempts, but later returning "host not found" responses because it can't reach the invalid NS server. (Because it cached the NS record, not the root-delegate information.... your broken DNS record told it that record was authoritative, after all.)

If you are the DNS admin for a hosting service and you publish broken DNS records for your customers, and then argue with the person who points it out to you that "everything works fine"... you deserve to be fired. I will suggest that your customers find a more reliable hosting service.

Oh... and your SOA record better have a valid, properly-formatted contact in it. And keep your primary and secondary in sync... they shouldn't return conflicting information for days and days.

Long story short, if you don't understand DNS, keep your paws off of it, and don't you dare put "DNS administration" on your resume. Find a mentor who can review your work before you commit it to a public server. Set up a private server and practice on it. Read "DNS & BIND" for gosh sakes. It wouldn't hurt you to skim the relevant RFCs.

And never forget: Just because your DNS server _lets_ you do it does not mean that it is safe or valid to do it. Your DNS server is stupid (even BIND9, yes) about the rules and will let you do many evil things without a hint of complaint.

If you're using BIND9, use named-checkconf and named-checkzone. Get dnswalk and run it against your nameserver.

I'm not a DNS expert. There are a lot of little nooks and crannies that I've not explored or needed to use. But dammit, NS, MX, SOA, A, and CNAME records.... these are the basics, folks. If you can't play by the rules, please don't play at all.

Because you have wasted far too much of my day.

This has been a public service announcement. Thank you for listening.

A Guitar Center experience, with a happy ending.

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 03:30:23 GMT

Thanks to a little Christmas money, I just bought a "real" guitar... something a step above the rock-bottom basic models, with a solid-wood top. A Yamaha FG730S, if you must know, but that's not terribly important. This story isn't about the guitar, it's about the Guitar Center in Wichita, KS.

Now, before I even asked for GC gift cards, I had picked out three models I knew I was interested in. Something around $300, solid-wood top, quality construction. (A Seagull, a Yamaha and a Takamine, if you must know.) Something that wouldn't give me fits like my $80 used Harmony that just couldn't be adjusted to suit me.

So, armed with my gift card, I headed down to Guitar Center with the intent to play all three, maybe couple others in stock, and probably pick one. Little did I know that today was the last day of their extended holiday hours, and it was a popular day to be there. At any given time, there were at least five people in the acoustic room playing... at least two different guys who were playing loudly and SINGING, one of them for nearly half-an-hour. One guy was having a jam session with his girlfriend and her little brother (I guess). I picked up a guitar, but I couldn't even hear it clearly. I wandered off to look at books, and wandered back every so often... the people playing rotated, but there were several people who walked in, looked at how many people were in there, and promptly walked back out.

Thing is, I'm pretty sure that the people who were in there the longest and playing the loudest had no intention of actually buying a guitar. Certainly the trio jamming away weren't planning on buying three. And I get that Guitar Center is about hands-on, getting to play the guitar before you buy, but this was too much.

After about 45 minutes I gave up and went home, figuring I'd either go back on Monday during the day (I have the week off) or maybe I'd run down there later tonight around 6... they normally close at 6 on Sundays, but were open until 7 for the holiday. So figuring most people won't know they're open, or are dealing with dinner or whatnot, I got impatient and headed back down to arrive at 6. And it paid off... I had the acoustic room all to myself for close to an hour.

Now here's where it got even better. I had checked the web and knew they should have all three models I wanted to try in stock. I tried the Takamine first and it just didn't live up to all the rave I've heard about it... I was disappointed and I easily knocked that one out of the running. So I started looking around for the other two models and couldn't find them, just as an employee walked in... the first that had spoken to me.

Now, I have to disclose, it turns out I know the guy. Will used to play guitar at a church I attended for several years, and he's a pretty cool guy. I hadn't seen him around GC for awhile, but he remembered me. So he hunted down the two guitars I wanted and I set to comparing them.

So, giving them both a shot, it was a much better experience than with the Takamine. I wanted to like the Seagull better... even though it was most expensive, it was also the most beautiful, had a slightly wider than standard neck which I liked, and it's made in Canada instead of Asia. (Though both Yamaha and Takamine are very respectable guitar makers, I'm trying to spend my money closer to home if I can.) But I couldn't... it was just too brassy and not as clear when strummed with a fingernail or pick compared to the Yamaha. And Will even unpacked a second identical Seagull out of the back room and let me try that, since, being made of wood, each guitar is unique and may sound different. (I'll note that this model was, at sticker, a hundred bucks more than the Yamaha, so I'm sure he'd like to make the higher dollar sale.) And the second one did sound better, but it still didn't sound as good as the Yamaha. And, dollar value not withstanding, Will agreed.

I sat there with the two guitars on stands on front of me, alternating between them... playing something on one, then the same on the other. I wanted to prefer the Seagull, but I was having a hard time making up my mind. It wasn't bad, and it was brighter than the Yamaha, just a little too bright when played even a little aggressively.

At the crucial decision point, a couple teens (maybe early twenties) came in and started playing. They weren't terribly loud, but they did make the process harder. But after a few minutes, they realized I was trying to make a real purchasing choice, and they kept it quiet for the five minutes or so that I needed to make up my mind. Thank you, who ever you were, for not being Guitar Center wankers. I appreciated the gesture, and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to actually thank you while I was there.

I gave in and choose the Yamaha. It really did sound better to me, and it didn't hurt that it was the cheaper of the two... and when I looked at the tag, it turned out to be discounted even lower than the website price.

My thanks to Will, who was very helpful, and stayed after 7 on a Sunday, at the end of a nine-hour busy holiday shift when Sunday is normally six hours, without pressuring me to make a decision or giving me any kind of attitude about it.

Sometimes Guitar Center is noisier than I like, and sometimes the customers make it difficult to talk to the sales people or to hear the instrument you're demoing, but I've been very pleased with the service I've received in the several times I've been in the store. I started with buying microphones a couple years ago, looked at buying my son and myself guitars over a year ago, looked at digital pianos for my son, bought harmonicas, strings, picks, capos and so on. Every time, the staff has been helpful and courteous, no matter how many tattoos or piercings they had. I'm kind of a straight-laced 40-year-old, and I don't really feel like I "fit in" at Guitar Center, but no staff member has ever made me feel like I don't belong there.

That isn't the story I typically hear about Guitar Center elsewhere, so I thought it worth sharing.

Microcredit... an alternative to a hand-out

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:05:41 GMT

I make a reasonable living, and I share a portion of my income with those in need, both through my church and through Heifer International. I like Heifer because they do more than just give aid... they provide livestock (cows, goats, chickens and so on) and training to the poor in third-world countries, with a requirement that the first female offspring be given to someone else in the community. Give a man a fish and he eats for a day, give a family a cow and pretty soon everyone in the village has their own cow. (Well, assuming there's a bull around.)

Now I think this is great... my money doesn't feed a family for a couple days, it helps provide the seed that can pull an entire family or even community out of poverty by giving them an long-term advantage.

A few months ago, I learned of another organization that I like for similar reasons... Kiva. Kiva is a microcredit (Wikipedia) organization. Microcredit is the extension of very small loans to the poor who are unable to get a loan at a traditional bank. In Kiva's case, these loans are to small businesses in poor countries. (Made through local microfinance banks in the borrower's country.)

And the really fun thing about Kiva is that you're not giving your money away... you're just loaning it. You receive no interest, and it's always possible that you may lose the money if a borrower defaults on a loan. Barring a default, eventually your loaned money gets credited back to your account. Then you can loan it out again, or even (easily) request Kiva return your money. Out of the ~~eight~~ nine loans (just re-loaned another $25) I've made starting seven months ago, not one borrower has missed a payment.

One of the other fun things about Kiva is that you actually get to pick which entrepreneur you want to support. You can loan as little as $25, and your money gets pooled with other loaners to meet the amount being asked for. You can view photographs and summaries of what each business is involved in or starting up, how much money they want to borrow, and why they want to borrow it. It might be a farmer needing $300 to buy seed for this year's planting. Or a shop keeper wanting to expand her inventory. Or a taxi driver who needs to repair his car to say in business.

"It takes money to make money," as they say, and Kiva gives the poor entrepreneur the financial leverage necessary to get their business off the ground, take it to the next level, or get through a rough spot. It's not a hand-out... the entrepreneur pays back the loan plus interest, just like any other small business. The big difference here is that traditional banks won't extend credit to these businesses. The amounts are too small (sometimes only a few hundred dollars), and the return on investment too low. The microfinance banks are often non-profit and run to help this specific class of business. Kiva loaners help the microfinance bank stay afloat and able to help these businesses by providing interest-free capital to invest in helping small businesses.

If you're looking for a non-cluttering Christmas gift for someone this year, a Kiva gift certificate is a worthy choice. Unlike just donating money in someone's name and giving them a card, the recipient of this gift gets to choose how to disburse the funds, and when the loan is paid back, can loan it out again. Instead of a card pinned to a bulletin board, it's an ongoing involvement with an organization that helps change people's lives.

(For the record: I have never received paper mail from Kiva. Heifer sends me catalogs and regular requests for money, which can be kind of annoying. Kiva doesn't do that.)

Social media etiquette?

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 03:16:50 GMT

So I've been trying to use Facebook and figure out how I can make it useful to me. But I'm starting to wonder about the etiquette I'm seeing... things that have been socially unacceptable on other social media for years. (Usenet and mailing lists and forums were "social" long before this so-called "social media" came about.)

Facebook seems to have the idea of "socially acceptable" turned around... you are encouraged to inundate your "friends" with all kinds of crap (invites, gifts, pets, etc) and it's up to your friend to filter you. It takes discretion out of the equation because it's no longer the sender's responsibility to decide what's appropriate, it's the recipient's.

And the thing I find really weird about this is... how is this "social"? On a mailing list, my friends and I talk to each other. On Facebook, I have friends who never actually write anything at me, but shower me with gizmo after gizmo. They aren't being social with me... they are interacting with an application, which in turn bugs me with some generic bit of fluff. If I don't like the fluff, I just block it... I don't have to tell my friend I didn't like it.

I don't like having to block every danged application that people use to send me crap... it's very much like having to delete spam from my mailbox. But I don't want to entirely block the people I'm connected with so they can't send me anything.

In many ways, people seem to be interacting with Facebook as if it were a game and not as a tool to stay connected with people. And that can make it pretty useless to me. Not giving up just yet, but the inability to get most of the information I want by RSS or email is a huge strike against them. (I can't get anything out of the Groups application, apparently... even as group owner, it won't email me when someone joins or posts.)

Social media when you're not "social"

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:57:46 GMT

I segment my personal life, and I segment my online life. At one time, I ran seven different blogs, all more or less about me. Blogs about my Netflix experience, model rocketry, my religious views, roleplaying games, photography and writing. I have trouble following a catch-all blog... someone who writes about every aspect of his life all in one spot. I may want to read about his roleplaying experiences, but I don't care about his personal life... what he had for dinner, how his date went, what's happening in World of Warcraft, why his job sucks, etc. I just want to know how that roleplaying game he's developing is coming.

Kind of like this... imagine that you pick up the newspaper to read reviews about the latest movies. But along with the reviews, you get all kinds of details about the reviewer's personal life, his opinions on politics and religion, a recipe for chicken pot pie. That's not why you went to the reviews column... you went for reviews, not for the reviewer. And sure, you can skip all that stuff, but it takes some time to determine which parts you actually want to read.

When I write a blog post, I am working under the assumption that I have something worth reading. (Egotistical, I know.) That my signal to noise ratio is high... if you want to read about a novice working through the process of learning photography, then my photography blog should be interesting to you. And it's focused... it's just about photography and doesn't have a lick of religious thought in it. But were you to read my religion blog... well, you'll see a totally different side of me. (That blog was short-lived and is no longer on the net, btw.)

Thing is, this new "social media," specifically Facebook and Twitter are on my mind, are confusing that. They assume that all of my "friends" are equal, and everything I have to say is equally applicable to all of my "friends." There's no "family only" setting on Twitter. No "roleplayers only" tag on Facebook. If you "friend" or "follow" me, you get it all, and pretty much the only way to not get it all is to completely disconnect from me.

To me, that's entirely broken. Not everyone I want to converse with wants to converse with me at the same level and about the same things. Twitter's driving me crazy with status updates about who's eating what for dinner and with whom. I really don't care. I might care for two or three people, but not the majority of the people I'm following.

And it's seriously affecting what I say. I always write for an audience... a roleplayer audience, or a family audience, or a close friends audience. My "audience" on Twitter doesn't fit a clear-cut category by which I can filter my thoughts. I don't know who I'm writing for, because I don't even know most of them, and I don't know what their interests are.

To properly use Facebook or Twitter, I feel like I need three or four accounts on each... my "Wichita network" account, my "roleplaying network" account, my "local tech people" account, and so on.

Maybe it's because I'm from the world of Usenet and mailing lists... I seek out people based on their activities. Not based on geographic location alone (just because we live in the same city doesn't mean we have anything meaningful in common). So I blog based on what I do, I seek people out based on what they do, and I look for real-life friends who are involved in the same activities I am. And using Twitter does not count as an activity.

I suppose I'm looking for relationships, both online and offline, with people who will enrich my life... I'm busy "doing things" (important things!) and I'm not a big socializer. I'm the type of person who wants one or two good friends and that's all I need in terms of socialization. I'd much rather have coffee with one good friend than coffee with a crowd of people I barely know. But I do want to participate in larger communities of people who are involved in my hobbies. I like to "talk shop".

So where do we, the old guard of Usenet and mailing lists, fit into all this new "socialness" in which being connected seems to be more important than to whom I'm connected or why?

I'm not really sure. I don't actually use Facebook. I have an account because I wanted to be connected to certain people, but I've never really even figured out how to use it in a way that's beneficial to me.

I use Twitter quite a bit, but I haven't seen a return on the investment of time... it's like an all-day chat about nothing important. As I've used Twitter, I've noticed that the people I'm most interested in getting to know better are people who have the same interests.

I'm right on the verge of taking an axe to my friends lists on both services, politely but firmly cutting myself off from people who are just "social fluff" on my radar, and keeping those people who I find really worth the time. But then I'm afraid that my "follow" list on Twitter will be so sparse that there's no reason to be using Twitter at all. Which might not be a bad thing.

Social media and businesses

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:36:15 GMT

Shea Sylvia talks about social media douchebags. (She uses mildly foul language, but it's okay, 'cause she misspells it.)

As a consumer, and a long-time player in online community (since 1986), think the real value in social media to a business is in being real with your customers. And real isn't about this new product, or that new sale... real is about what's going on in your head, what you're doing to make the world a better place for somebody. Why you and your business make a difference. Being real gives people a chance to care about you and your business beyond "what can your business do for me?", and when they care, they're more likely to be good customers.

Social media is social... if you're not being social, then you're not doing it right. You have to stop thinking about marketing and promotion and think about interacting with people. That's the big game-changer that the internet has brought to marketing... interaction. It's not a billboard, it's not radio or television. It's not one-way, it's two-way. And if you can't enter into a two-way relationship with your potential and existing customers, then social media isn't for you.

They need to tweet more, but I think Bamboo Stix has a good start... they talk about trying to find their signature dessert, their struggles with slow business on Mondays, dealing with their sushi chef injuring his hand. Yeah, they throw in their lunch specials and stuff, too. But they feel like real people. Because they are.

What is the purpose of primary education?

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 15:54:02 GMT

So, this is an interesting question that was asked of school board candidates by the local paper.

"Should the board incorporate career and technical education courses into the state’s graduation requirements?"

One candidate said that they should be an option, and the other candidate said something that calls into question my assumptions of what primary education is about:

Kansas schools must teach employable skills to each K-12 student. After graduation, each student should be prepared to earn a living wage with skills which employers need.

Should it? I've always viewed primary education as providing fundamental skills required for life... reading, writing, math, a reasonable understanding of our geography, history and government, and exposure to the arts. Students may acquire experience with shop, home ec, foreign language, business writing, and so on, but I've always considered these to be introductory experiences, not real vocational training. If a graduate doesn't go on to formal secondary education, I expect that they're going to learn on-the-job.

I think it comes down to this for me: If a high school graduate declines to seek formal secondary training, whether it be college, technical school or an apprentice program, that graduate is 18 years old and responsible for themselves. Just because 75% of students fail to seek secondary education (is it really that high?) doesn't mean the primary education system is failing them and needs to prepare them to live with their decision. If they are satisfied with a high school education, why should we make an effort to give them more?

And I think that's the big thing for me... it's not the government's job to legislate away bad decision making. People are always going to make bad life decisions, and we can't stop them from doing so. If somehow 18 years old has become "too young to know better," whose fault is that? That's the parents' responsibility, not the school system's. And then, there are things that you just have to learn by experience... I didn't go to college right away and regretted it, later entering college in my early twenties. (And in my thirties, earning to degrees to make up for lost time. :)

Here's the thing. We will always need garbage haulers, fast food clerks and big-box store stockers. If that is all a high school graduate wants to aspire to, that's not the school's fault. It's sad that they don't aspire to more, yes, but ultimately the state is not responsible for aspirations.

Here's another thing. By the time a student graduates from high school, they ought to already have some job experience. In grade school, I sold greeting cards door to door. In middle school, I delivered newspapers. In high school, I worked at a fast food restaurant. Every one of those was a valuable experience. As sucky as working fast food was, I learned a lot about customer service, teamwork, and simply working under management.

If I were looking to hire someone and had the resume of a recent high school graduate in my hands, I wouldn't be asking what he learned in school, I'd be looking at what job experience he has. Heck, when I was part of an interview team that interviewed a lot of college graduates for a programming position, we didn't look at their school work, we looked at their job experience... the candidates who worked pizza delivery or waiting tables while in college didn't impress us nearly as much as those who worked in computer tech support or other jobs related to their intended careers.

Nothing prepares a person for working a job like actual job experience. You start at the bottom and work your way into better positions and jobs as you gain experience. Changing primary education can't fix that. It's already providing the skills necessary to work minimum-wage jobs, and I think that's all it should be responsible for. If a graduate wants better than minimum wage and doesn't want secondary education, then that graduate should expect to start at the bottom and work their way into a better job.

Primary education needs to concentrate on primary education, not job training.

Gimme, gimme, gimme!

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:06:05 GMT

I have the questionable habit of reading Craigslist postings in several categories. One of these categories is "Items Wanted". And while Craigslist is great at pointing out the stupidity of some people, Items Wanted is a special class all its own. (All examples are paraphrased from mashed-up listings, but are a good example of what gets posted.)

"Daughter was robbed, we need living essentials donated, like a TV, stereo, and DVD player."

Because how can you enjoy having shelter, food and clothing unless you have entertaining electronics?

"Scholarships needed. I'm a college student with great grades, and I'm working a job, but I just can't afford to pay for college. Please send me money."

They're called "student loans," girl. We all got them, you can get one too. Why would I "invest" my money in someone who is too lazy to pay their own way through college?

"I need a car. If you happen to have a car laying around that you don't want, I will come haul it off for you at no charge. Must have clear title, must run, must not need extensive work."

Come on... a salvage yard will give me at least fifty bucks for any car that can roll into the yard under its own power.

"I need a couch. Must be free or extremely cheap. Must also be in great condition, not need any repairs, and come from a smoke and pet-free home."

Because in today's economy, apparently beggars can be choosers.

Now, I suppose you never know until you ask. But I think people ought to have some sense of propriety and know how and what they can ask for. Lost everything in a fire, need food, shelter, clothing... real essentials for living? By all means, have grandma post to Craigslist for you... people will be glad to give real essentials, because we recognize people in true need.

But it's this sense of entitlement that drives me up a wall. People expect to be given something of real value just because they had the audacity to ask for it. To ask for something "for free, or real cheap" and put forth requirements that it be something worth paying good money for is just rude. I'm all for people being generous. But to solicit generosity on your own behalf is uncouth.

You need a free couch? Go ahead, ask for one... but don't ask for a free couch on the condition that it be worth $200.

The writing workshop

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 04:08:47 GMT

Has it really been a month since I posted here?

Anyway, the writing workshop is driving me crazy. The interaction between students is virtually nil, and I blame most of that on the screwy interface... too many places to talk, no easy way to know when there's a new comment in half of them (and no automatic email notification of any kind). And there's no instructor-led critique... just the instructor writes a critique, each student is invited to write a critique, and nobody actually discusses the work.

Now, our instructor commented that this is the quietest class she's ever had, so maybe other classes are different. But I feel absolutely no energy going on here. I was more excited about the class before it started than after getting back my first critique.

Critiquing other students work is tedious and difficult... some of them are better than others. Peer feedback is... mediocre. The instructor critique is decent, but it's the highlight of the party and not the payoff I was expecting.

Basically, I feel I'm reading a book and six essays, writing some out-of-context exercise that I'd never write in the process of trying to write a real story, and then getting a little not-terribly-useful feedback. I'm not getting any discussion of the work, which is something I expect from a workshop.

I think a lot of my dissatisfaction could be solved with better assignments. They're too vague and open-ended. "Write a scene in which setting is important." I struggled for over a week just to come up with the context for the scene... writing it was easy once I had that. I would much rather have assignments like what the author of the book we're using writes (as opposed to the author of the course, who writes the assignments)... "Mark has been hired to burn down buildings. After burning down the fifth building, he's caught. Now give us his story. For the first page, start with the POV of the arsonists ex-roommate, Erik, in the first-person, giving Mark's character portrait." And it goes on much longer, telling you exactly what to write... your job is to figure out how to write it. And that's what we're supposed to be learning... the "how," and I'm spending all my energy in the "what." And I think it would make for better student discussion, because we'd all be going in the same direction and could compare and contrast our work. (If we actually, you know, discussed the stuff.)

The other part of what's bugging me about it is that I'm writing stuff because I have to, and I'm not necessarily writing what I want to write. The workshop was supposed to motivate me to write, and all it's doing is frustrating me and more or less getting in the way of my writing.

I think what I'm really looking for is a writing circle, not an online workshop.

First writing assignment critiqued

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:42:47 GMT

I've already received my instructor critique on my first writing assignment. It was short. It was spot-on, I think... there isn't enough of the character's reaction in the text. The focus of the assignment was setting, and the feedback only said that I did great with the setting and criticized stuff that had nothing to do with setting. It was a valid critique, and I have nothing wrong with it in general. But somehow, I expected something more substantial for my money.

I paid $320 for a 12-week course of six two-week sessions. Each session, I get a reading assignment out of a published book ("Fiction Writer's Workshop" by Josip Novakovich), a "lecture" written by the course designer (not the instructor), a writing assignment, question and answer with the instructor, feedback from the instructor, and feedback from the other students.

Look closely at that, and ask yourself where the $53.33 worth of value is coming from? The course "lectures" are written one time and used for every class. I can find other writing students to critique my work at a hundred different sites on the net for free (and I don't put much stock in the critique of my peers at this point). So I'm pretty much expecting fifty bucks worth of critique from the instructor, and I was a little underwhelmed. (A simple view, but that more or less is the way it goes.)

I can drop out for a full refund within the next week, but I don't think I will.

First, the first assignment is kind of "soft". How much can you say about 500 words taken out of context, and not necessarily even part of a bigger story? In the later two segments, the assignments turn into "several connected scenes, 2000 words" and "a 3000 word short-story", so the assignments become more substantial. I expect that the critiques later in the class become more substantial as well, as we turn to issues of plot and characterization. This also opens up more room for discussion with the instructor.

I signed up for this class for primarily one thing... not the lessons and not even the instructor feedback. For the structure of regular deadlines. The fact that I paid for those deadlines make them more important, and I can't ignore them or casually drop out of the project because "it doesn't really matter".

I'm sure I'll benefit from the whole process... lessons, instructor and even peer feedback, and structure.

Now, if only I could figure out how to turn my one scene into a 3000-word story, it'll make this whole process a lot easier. The 2000-word connected scenes can be a sub-set of the 3000-word story assignment... so if I can take this scene, develop the characters and develop a plot, I won't have to do quite so much creative lifting. The hardest part of writing this first assignment was coming up with an idea for a scene (where setting was important)... once the idea was there, writing it wasn't so hard. Now if I can just figure out where it's all going. The next assignment requires writing two character sketches, so presumably I'm going to have to have two characters. I think this ghostship will be kind of dull with just one character anyway.

First writing assignment finished...

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 02:59:27 GMT

And I'm going to post it here. Oh, noes! I'm posting fiction to my LJ. I usually get peeved when people do this, so I will be not at all offended if you merrily breeze by without looking at my prose. Do not feel obligated to read it or comment on it... I only post it because I know a couple people will be morbidly curious. :)

If you do read it, keep in mind that the assignment is, more or less, "Write a scene in which setting is critical, and include a character to interact with it."

The moment I stepped through the inner door of the airlock, I knew something was wrong. The airlock door hissed shut behind me and I was greeted by silence. Where there should have been the hum and clatter of a busy station dock, there was nothing. I could hear the hum of ventilation fans, and the occasional creak of the station under spin stress, but I shouldn't have been able to. Those sounds should be masked out by the sounds of the loading dock crews, machinery shifting cargo, and the usual salty language that has been associated with sailing ships since sailing was invented. Salty language like the dock foreman would typically have applied to me for dawdling at the airlock. But the foreman's station was unmanned, and as far as I could see around the curve of the docking ring, not a man was in sight. The machinery was there, cargo lifters, crates bound for planet-side and distant ports, retaining nets holding most of it in place, all the paraphernalia of a busy port. But no people. The machines were all shut off, nothing was in motion.

It was then that I noticed the fine layer of dust over the counter of the foreman's station. No, not just the counter, there was dust over everything. The foreman's terminal, the coffee dispenser, the chair bolted to the deck, and the deck itself, all were covered in a fine layer of white dust. I know the daywatch dock foreman, and I'd be willing to bet that his crew scrubs down the deck with toothbrushes every morning. Yet now it looked like nobody had used the deck, let alone cleaned it, in years. Not a footprint or trail of any kind marred the surface of the dust, except for where I was standing.

The first thought through my head was "ghostship". The second thought screamed through my head, "biological contamination," and my heartbeat tripled. But a plague that took the crew fast enough to stop them from implementing quarantine lockdown would have likely left the foreman and crew dead at their posts, and I didn't see any bodies. I checked behind the foreman's station just in case, and was relieved to find nothing but a pair of mag-boots and a crumpled coffee cup. If the cause of this mystery was biological, it was too late for me anyway. I'd been breathing station air for minutes now, and had kicked up plenty of the dust.

I went to a comm station on the wall, more undisturbed dust and keyed up station central. After a moment, the comms computer let me know that station central must be tied up with critical duties and asked if I'd like to leave a message. So I keyed up emergency medical. Nothing.

I eyed the fire alarm box, a simple red lever button under a clear acrylic canopy, on back wall of the foreman's station. If there was anybody alive onboard, it was sure to get their attention. But it would throw the station into lock-down, sealing off each compartment of the ring. Inconvenient, to say the least. So I headed for station central.

Writing update

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 03:13:14 GMT

Okay, so I sat down to write tonight and in a short time I stripped out half of what I'd written and wrote a bunch of entirely different stuff. It's working much better and starting to come together. I've established comfortable starting and stopping points for the scene, and now I'm mostly filling in details.

I have no idea where I'd go with the scene if I wanted to turn it into a full story, but it feels like one of those things that would do well percolating in the back of my head... cargo pilot steps onto an orbital station to find the dock is deserted and everything covered in a fine white dust.

Oh, yeah... we got to nine students by the end of Saturday, so I'll be doing eight critiques every assignment. Five have introduced themselves so far, and the common theme is, "I'm taking this class to get me off my butt and working on my writing." Maybe we need writing circles more than we need workshops.

Working on the first workshop assignment

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 02:58:34 GMT

I've written over 500 words on the first workshop assignment (the target word count), and I like where it's going, but it needs a lot of work. I've managed to come up with a scene in which setting is important, but I'm having trouble getting all the scene description worked into the, admittedly slow, action.

Part of the problem is that I've got "tell a story" working against "write a scene that demonstrates that you can write setting description." This setting description may be adequate for the scene, but it's not adequate for the assignment. Which may mean I picked the wrong scene, but I'm going to keep working with it... it may not have enough setting description.

Workshop first-day let-down

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:03:30 GMT

Well, that was anti-climactic. I've been looking forward to this online workshop, and part of what I've been anticipating has been the student interaction.

When I logged onto the workshop yesterday morning, there were only three other students enrolled, which wasn't promising. By mid-afternoon, it had grown to seven, so that wasn't bad... seven seems like a nice number. I have to critique other students' work, and critiquing more than six is probably more than I want to do. (I guess people wait until the last minute to make the decision to enroll.)

So I introduced myself on the message board, as requested by the instructor, and I waited. And waited. And complained to Twitter, and waited some more. More than 24 hours later... still no other introductions. It's just weird.

Part of the deal is that I have some questions I want to ask about the assignment, but since my questions go in the same space as the introductions, I thought I'd wait until the introductions were done before I cluttered up the forum with assignment discussion. Maybe I should just ask my questions.

Maybe I need to find a better social outlet, if lack of social interaction in an online class is bugging me so much.

Waiting... for the workshop

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:27:05 GMT

I hate waiting! :) The writing workshop starts a week from today, I've been enrolled for three days, and already I'm darned impatient.

Fortunately, even though the "Lecture Hall" isn't open yet, all six "lectures", reading and writing assignments, and optional creative exercises are available. So I can start working ahead... I just can't interact with anybody in the workshop yet.

Got the text book from Amazon on Tuesday, but haven't had a lot of time to read it... mostly the introduction. A 4-week-old orphaned kitten, attacked by my stupid "but it's all that I know!" dachshund, has hampered my sleep. As has my mother-in-law being in the hospital with pneumonia and my wife spending a lot of her time up there. Tuesday, when MIL went into the hospital, Karen didn't come home until 12:30 AM. I was still up, my 8-year-old son got up, and my kitten was up. I think I managed to get to bed at one, but Karen was having sinus trouble (and ended up sleeping in the recliner). I don't think I got to sleep until two, and I got up at four to feed the kitten (who didn't want to eat, adding to my stress.) I think I might have gotten four hours of sleep on Tuesday night. So yesterday, even though I took the day off to run Nathan to the dentist, then out to my mom's, then the kitten to the vet... then some laundry and all, when I laid down to read the book, I fell asleep. And woke up minutes later to my wife coming in the door and the Leak Frog in the basement screaming that there was water on the laundry room floor. (Somehow I'd dropped a couple paper towels into the utility sink the washer drains into and it had overflowed. Not a huge deal, since the floor is kept clear after the last time we had overflow troubles. Just had to mop up a half-gallon of water.)

I crashed at 10:30, got up again at two to take care of the kitten, and then up for good at 6:30 to take care of kitten, ducks, and get started with work by 7:30. (Yay, working from home, but I like to start at 7:30 so I can be done by 4:30 and still have an hour lunch.) While I slept well last night, aside from the 2 AM kitten feeding, now that I've made it to the end of work, I'm definitely dragging from lack of sleep on Tuesday night. I'd like to go read, but I think I'm going to take a nap.

So, while this post was supposed to be about the workshop, it's managed to focus on the workshop about as much as I have, and for much the same reasons. :)

Not waiting any more

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 16:33:50 GMT

Okay, so I had this big post about feeling like I'm waiting for something, and the realization that I have to make things happen if they're going to happen. And I turned 40 since then. And I think the "scary" thing about turning 40 isn't the realization that you're getting older, as many young folks thing it is... it's the realization that your time is limited and you haven't used the past twenty years as effectively as you wish you had. Which is a lot of what my "waiting" post was about.

Over the years, my wife and I have passed up tech-related business opportunities because they were risky. But looking back, I can see several points where we could have been the pioneers, if only we'd been willing to take the risk.

But those were just wish-I-hads... it's the dreams that have stuck with me for years, slowly being squashed by the weight of daily routine, that I'm most concerned about.

So I've enrolled in a 12-week "Fundamentals of Fiction Writing" workshop, through http://www.writersonlineworkshops.com/, which is a branch of Writers Digest Books. It's not cheap (to me), but I've got some birthday money which cuts it down to something I can squeeze into my budget. (I'm in the class starting 08/14, if you'd like to join me.)

I know a lot of "theory" about writing fiction (I have a huge library on the subject, in the guise of "it's good to know story techniques for my roleplaying"), but it's amazing how little I've actually written. I'm afraid of writing crap, really, even though I believe in the "million words of crap" theory (attributed to Ray Bradbury, but that has been requoted and reworded so many times, I can't find the original quote). So taking a workshop is as much about deadlines and outside expectations as it is needing someone to teach me the craft. "Fundamentals" syllabus does pretty much what I want... stepping through exercises on scenes, characters, dialog and so on, finally ending with writing a complete 3000-word short story (or a full novel chapter) as the final assignment. I've never finished a short-story in my life. I've never written a full novel chapter, though I've started a few.

I don't have real specific goals, other than to learn to work through the process of writing fiction. I don't have any real dreams of publishing a novel (though it'd be cool), and the most I'm realistically hoping for is to sell a short-story or two. At this stage, I want to overcome the obstacles that keep me from moving past opening paragraphs. My dream is to write a novel, while selling it is just icing on the cake.

So there... moving forward. Making my dreams happen instead of waiting for things to change. Yay, me. :)

And I'm one day older

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 16:17:09 GMT

I turned 40 this past Saturday. My mom threw me a birthday party and, as a surprise, managed to get my best friend from high school to come. It kind of blew my mind.

Tom and I played D&D and read SF, and 22 years later, he's still playing D&D and reading SF... he's introduced his 14 and 17 year old daughters to the game, too. It was somewhat surreal, having a discussion with the high school senior daughter of my best friend from high school about whether 3.5 or 4E was the better game. :)

I'd only seen Tom once since high school, and that was about 17 years ago when he was visiting town briefly. He was living in Colorado at the time, and quite too far to visit except on special occasions. Now he's living just a couple hours away... to far for a weekly game, but close enough that we could justify getting together a few times a year.

Social media and our many faces

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:21:26 GMT

Social media is weird.

So here I'm looking at Twitter, and discovering that I'm being followed by couple locals interested in writing. One of them is a reporter for the local newspaper, the other is a student of mobile computing and social media.

But my Twitter account is primarily to talk about roleplaying and writing of RP and SF, and I expect that the only people who will follow me are those who are interested in my thoughts on roleplaying and gaming.

See, this is where things get weird. It's why I have more than one blog, and at one time had five or six of them. I don't believe that the people interested in my roleplaying writing are going to necessarily be interested in my ducks. Or the people interested in starting a SF writing group are going to care about my social life.

Whenever I write, even on Twitter, I'm thinking, "Who is my audience?" And that's why the blogs are segregated... because each blog has a different intended audience. I don't assume that the audience is interested in me, but that they're interested in the topic which I write about.

Which is what makes Twitter awkward for me. I follow a handful of people, and there are others I might want to follow... but where I'm interested in reading what someone is doing in their roleplaying writing, I'm not necessarily interested in what they had for dinner, or how annoyed they are at having to stand in line, or how boring jury duty is. But Twitter doesn't lend itself to multiple accounts easily.

This pure "social media" thing seems much better suited to close friends... people who are interested in the person as well as the content. Maybe that's why it's "social" media.

Of course, that makes me wonder about people on twitter who follow fifty or sixty people... are they really interested in them as people? Or do they just become a stream of data to interact with?

The stigma of working from home

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:56:35 GMT

I live in Kansas, and a I have a 45-minute each-way commute (pretty rare around here) because I live in "the big city" and work in a small town. Gas is costing me up to $12 a day to drive to work, and because of that, I work from home two days a week. I'm a software developer and systems administrator, so I can do 99% of my job from home.

But folks at the office don't seem to understand that. Our controller likes to talk face-to-face, so he holds on to stuff until I'm in the office so he can talk to me about it. Now that I get... he comes downstairs with his printouts and notes, and just doesn't like to use email or the phone. But when he was asking me to make some changes to some data, he asked me to do that on a day I was in the office. He didn't want me doing it from home, even though I could do so just as easily. He's just not comfortable with my doing work from home, even though he's ultimately the person who approved the arrangement.

But it gets worse. "Not in the office" generally means "not working today." So I get that there's some confusion in terminology. But very often I get, "You're here today!" in a tone that implies that somehow I wasn't "here" in terms of doing my job yesterday, even though I worked from home for eight hours. And this is reinforced by the fact that they had something they wanted to talk to me about, but they couldn't do so while I was working from home.

There are six of us in IS, divided evenly between Operations and Development. We have two working managers, both of which are out of town all week, leaving four of us. One tech (Operations) was out sick yesterday, and I (Development) was working from home. So the one tech support guy physically in the office yesterday told someone (documented in a trouble-ticket) that they were short-handed because, "[other developer] and I were the only ones here yesterday."

But I was working. Even though tech support isn't my job, they know they can push tickets my way, especially when half the staff is out of the office. (And by "out of the office" I mean "not available for work.") And... the ticket load was not high yesterday. If it really had been, he'd have pushed work my way. So he's implying to our users that I wasn't "at work" even though I was, further reinforcing the idea that if you don't see me, I'm not working.

I've been trying to figure out how to deal with this general problem. I'm the only one in our group that works from home, so I'm a bit the outsider. I already have to deal with the "oh, yeah, you weren't here when we talked about that" stuff. But it's the continued implication that if I'm not in the office, I'm not really working that's giving me trouble.

And I don't think it's because they think I'm goofing off all day... I think it's because I'm out of sight and therefore out of mind and therefore I must not have been "at work". I'm not sure how to combat that.

Neflix set-top box, part 2

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:13:40 GMT

So I sat down before dinner to watch a TV show with my son on our new Roku Netflix player. There was some network activity going on, so quality came in at one "dot" out of four. That was noticeable, but not terrible. I was thinking it improved while I was watching it the night before, and it seemed to today as well. But about half-an-hour in, the screen blanked and I got a "loading" bar, indicating that the buffer was empty and it was rebuffering... quality was two dots.

So the question is, did it decide my connection had improved, but couldn't switch quality on the fly, so it dumped the buffer and started buffering again at a higher quality? Or had it already switched quality on the fly and something happened to cause my network buffer to completely empty, but then fill up fairly smoothly.

I find the former unlikely. I'm thinking network connectivity may have been flaky.

Later in the show, the screen froze and a few seconds later, the Roku rebooted. That was unexpected. It picked up exactly where I had been when it froze, but it does take awhile for the box to reboot, load my queue so I can select my show again, and then rebuffer the first few minutes. That may have been the Roku reacting badly to a network problem. Time will tell, I suppose.

Netflix on my TV

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 03:52:06 GMT

I received the Roku Netflix on-demand set-top box right before lunch ~~today~~ on Tuesday.

Setup took less than ten minutes, including entering the wireless MAC address into my wireless hub. It was dead simple... choose wired or wireless, pick my access point (or my neighbor's open access point with a higher strength signal), key in my wireless passkey with the remote on an on-screen keyboard... and bam, it's talking to Netflix. It gave me a five-character code I had to take to the Netflix website to identify my player, and when I got back to the living room it had already switched to a confirmation screen. From there, it's simply scroll through my "Instant" queue and select a movie to watch. It takes twenty seconds or so to buffer up the beginning of the video, but it's still a lot faster than waiting for a DVD to boot, show intros you're not allowed to skip, five second-animations between menu levels, etc.

The menus are simple and intuitive... it's almost disappointing that there isn't a lot to it. There are a few simple settings, but since you manage you entire selection of movies from a web browser (on your computer), navigation is simply limited to scrolling through your already-defined "Instant" queue.

During buffering it shows two "dots" out of four for quality, but if I pause in the middle and fast forward, it shows three dots. I watched an episode of Heroes tonight, and the quality was pretty darn good. Not DVD quality, but very acceptable on my inexpensive television.

It remembers where I am at in multiple shows, and what episode I'm ready to watch next on television series. The latter is very nice. Navigation within the show includes choppy fast-forward/reverse (fast-forwarding is limited by having to jump forward in the stream), and navigation by a selection of frames from intervals within the show. Not logical "scenes" like on a (well-designed) DVD, but apparently just every few minutes. Better than trying to fast-forward through the stream, though.

The selection on instant viewing is goofy... I get that only a fraction of Netflix' catalog is currently available for online viewing, but if you look at the first season of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, (don't laugh) the first five episodes are not available. Hmmm... the disc isn't available either. What's going on here? Has Netflix ripped this content themselves, and since they don't own a good copy of the first disc, that content isn't available? There's some agreement with this particular studio that says if you don't own the physical disc, you can't rent out digital copies? I dunno. As you progress through the series, there are three other seasons missing episodes online, though they have the disc available for rent.

(UPDATE: Okay, those first five "episodes" in Season 1 aren't episodes, they're movies that preceded the series as part of Universal Television's "Action Pack". That's probably a rights issue.)

I bought this box based on the fact that, even though the selection is limited, there's plenty of content currently available that I want to watch. This'll let me downgrade from a 4-out plan to a 3-out plan, and the box pays for itself in 15 months. But what I'm really counting on is Netflix getting more studios on board and getting a much more significant catalog for streaming.

Overall, I think it's a good deal. The box is only $100, the service is free with my regular Netflix subscription, the visual quality is very acceptable (I'm no Hi Def addict... I have a cheap TV and the box is hooked up by S-Video so it works with my input switch), and it lets me lower the cost of my monthly plan. I figure it can only get better as Netflix adds more downloadable content.

Supporting web comics

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:17:09 GMT

I have this conflict about supporting webcomics. I read about 26, from dailies to weeklies to whenever-the-heck. And as more and more of my favorites have turned to cartooning full-time, I've realized how important it is to support them financially. They're living the dream, and their success making a living as an artist is nearly as important to me as the comic itself.

But here's where I run into a problem... many webcomic artists primary source of revenue (outside of advertising) is selling paper compilations of the comic. The comic I've already read. I'm trying to reduce the clutter in my house, and buying paper copies of something I've already read online works against that. And I've proven to myself that when I do buy them, don't read them.

Some have t-shirts and mugs (and all that Cafe Press stuff), but that's mostly just more clutter.

When it comes down to it, I just want to give these artists money, without having to spend $20 to give them $5, and end up with some physical product I don't actually want. Buying a $20 book means three other artists I don't give $5 to, because $20 is my budget.

But many of these artists don't have tip jars. Some do, and they get my money, but some simply don't (seem to) want "donations"... they want to make their money through advertising and selling physical products. But when the primary product is the comic, I don't think it's "charity" when a fan wants to pay you for it. I don't think it reflects badly on the artist to have a tip jar... it's not a sign of an amateur. It's a sign of good business sense... never stand in the way of a customer wanting to hand you money.