The Optimizer

Today, we lost our dearest, precious Dodger. He died suddenly of a ruptured tumor of the liver and...

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:39:14 -0800

Today, we lost our dearest, precious Dodger. He died suddenly of a ruptured tumor of the liver and while the suddenness means he had little pain, it caught us unprepared.

We are, of course, devastated. Dodger was ever-loyal, ever-hopeful, curious and very smart. He had an old soul and a special intuition, and anyone who knew him could tell you he was extraordinary. Losing him leaves a gaping hole in our hearts. We will never be the same pack. He leaves us, however, with some important lessons that we will try to take ever more into our hearts.

Work. When our girls arrived, Dodger stopped sleeping in our room and took up a post under their cribs. Later, having associated our ovens with the smoke alarm, he would try to shepherd us out of the house whenever we’d turn the ovens on. He always knew where he could serve our pack best.

Celebrate. When Dodger was a happy dog, you’d know. He celebrated life’s joys and embraced the moment. When especially happy, he’d bring his fuzzy soccer ball to show you. Imagine how much richer our lives would be if we could fully appreciate the joy that comes our way.

Love. Dodger had nothing but love for everyone he met. As much love as we sent his way, he sent back ten times that amount. If anyone was sick or sad, he was at their side. Love was Dodger’s principal tool for getting his job done.

Dodger was a bright, shining light, and one of the great positive forces in our lives. Our world is very much darker today.

Farewell, my best friend, my faithful companion, my little brown shadow. Now you live in us.

The Mystery of the Missing Mail

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 20:12:00 -0800

A few months ago, I started to suspect that something is rotten in the state of my email setup. I have a personal domain which forwards email for my wife and I to our gmail accounts. That way, we let google store/serve my email without being tied to a gmail.com address. This has worked very well, but recently, my wife and I both discovered that some messages were simply going missing. They made it to our domain host, but the forwarded messages never arrived at our gmail accounts. The same senders could send email directly to our gmail.com accounts, though!

This evening, I discovered the existence of SPF records, and they explain all of the trouble!

Briefly, SPF records specify which hosts are authorized to send email on behalf of a given domain name. So, if you have an SPF record, it prevents spammers (who don’t have access to your mail host) from masquerading as you. Nifty.

Except. It breaks forwarding because my email host is now sending email to google from a whole bunch of domains (everyone who sends me mail). Google is looking up the sending domain’s SPF record, and if it has one, my host isn’t going to be on the list.

Now, Google really shouldn’t ACCEPT these messages and then drop them: it should REJECT them. However, now that I know what’s happening, I can fix it.

Or can I?

As far as my research has taken me, it seems there is no provision in the SPF documentation for email forwarding. It would require the forwarding host, instead of accepting the incoming mail, to respond with a redirect command of some kind. Since none of the existing SMTP instances support such a thing, the redirect would need to look to old mailers like a rejection. Of course, at least then we wouldn’t have mail getting dropped on the floor.

So it seems that, at least for now, the only way to get your email delivered is to not forward it to a mail host that honors SPF records. For me, that means either not using gmail for storage/service or using Google Apps to host my domain’s email directly.

"It makes me think that the thoughts that I have in my head that make me feel the most lonely..."

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 18:19:00 -0700

“It makes me think that the thoughts that I have in my head that make me feel the most lonely (because I don’t think anyone else thinks them) are also the thoughts that have the most potential to make me feel connected. I just have to get them out somehow.”

- Ze Frank’s A Show, Episode 7

Software Development as a Creative Endeavor

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 15:30:00 -0700

I remember this being passed around at least a decade ago. It’s remarkable how right it is. It’s attributed to Orson Scott Card (the author of Ender’s Game), but I can’t find a canonical source to substantiate that:

Here’s the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can’t exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they’re not looking, you can carry off the honey…

Here’s the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself…

[The coder] suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports…

The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they’re surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate.

The full text is here.