Is there a mouse in your future?

Much simpler:

openssl rand -base64 32 | head -c 10

Where "10" is the number of characters you want.

--Quentin

We actually had an interesting situation where I work (spacecraft operations). We had a senior aerospace engineer depart after 15 years to become an airline pilot, of all things (decided to turn a hobby into a job).

About a year later, he came back part time because the routes he flew left him with large blocks of free time at irregular periods during the month, and he was getting bored (because before his "hobby" was flying....and he stopped doing that on his days off!).

It was a win-win situation. He'd give us 40-60 hours a month of hourly work when it was convenient for him. We kept his hopper full of things like documentation, training, and other stuff that most senior guys consider dreg work. Even though he now has enough seniority to avoid pilot furloughs, he'll volunteer to drop his flight hours if the airline needs him to. He just increases his hours with us (and he's so good, we'll take whatever he gives us up to full time).

Since he's not interested in advancing up the ladder, he really does a great job on this low-visibility stuff that really helps an organization run well if it's done right.

Woohoo! Now if only we had a wheelbarrow, that would be something! :)

I've been doing very well - but 2008 was not my favorite year. Not a horrible year. Just not my favorite :) I blew my knee out and perhaps have ended my sports career forever. And I ended up in a couple of contracts that just sucked the life out of me. It took time to recover.

So, 2009 will be the year I try having more time than money :) If it doesn't work out, at least I'll go back to having other people set my agenda and be a little more grateful.

How about you? How did 2008 turn out?

Dies for me at my ISP's border router; I've never seen a traceroute die so fast. Only 2 hops before it goes dead. It makes me think that the global BGP tables are blackholing the subnet.

I checked a bunch of BGP looking glasses and they all report "Network not in table", as in there are no global routes for that IP address.

--Quentin

I understand your point, however this particular software is basically a system for tracking vehicle "funnies" on the ground, it's not something that is in the loop of the vehicle flight software or something used to make critical decisions. The old system is pretty dated and unwieldy to use (I've used it, I work for NASA). We're obligated to try out cheaper alternatives to custom code to see if it works for us without compromising what we are trying to do.

Sometimes it does work for us - the Mission Control Center workstations and the onboard command and control laptops on the Space Station were all recently converted to Red Hat. It is in many ways better than the old proprietary unix solutions because with the source it's easy to do our own mods to the software. We still test the daylights out of it since that is critical software, but it's a lot easier to support since we have the source code and can do our own bug in-house bug investigations, patch it, or rip out things we don't want/need.

I guess I'll take exception to calling astronauts the "annointed elite". Read through the biographies of the current crop of astronauts, and you'll see a pretty broad demographic of military officers, researchers, doctors, and even a teacher. Almost all came from a middle class background and got where they are through hard work.

The astronaut selection process is completely merit based, albeit extremely selective (since there's way more applicants than openings).

I'd be interested in what your propose NASA do to put "normal citizens" into space. Right now NASA and a couple of other government agencies are SpaceX's main funding source, and SpaceX probably has the best chance of coming up with a private ride to orbit for normal (albeit rather rich) citizens to go to space based on this work.

Two great stories in one comment :)

I've gotten review copies of two different technical books, but I only really made good on one of them. It's one thing if you buy the book for reference reasons - but to read it cover to cover takes me forever, I keep going off on daydreams of my own and then having to reread everything. As such, I have all the more respect for your abilities, and your philosophy about taking books.

As for my own philosophy, I'm all about singing till the cat eats me - We'll see how that pans out, heh.

Not that I think I could get on it now, but still it could be useful thing for the future :)

I'm looking forward to your thoughts.

Pixie