Er Ling Ling Jiu

I just realized that today is the last day of 2008.  It’s New Year’s Eve.  With that in mind I’ll try to write something deep and meaningful, and since I’m in China I’ll give it a little Chinese flavor.  The most commonly held beliefs in China, other than political ones, are Taoism and Buddhism.  The OED defines Taoism as

[t]he central concept and goal is the Tao, and its most important text is the Tao-te-Ching. Taoism has both a philosophical and a religious aspect. Philosophical Taoism emphasizes inner contemplation and mystical union with nature; wisdom, learning, and purposive action should be abandoned in favor of simplicity and wu-wei (nonaction, or letting things take their natural course). The religious aspect of Taoism developed later, c. 3rd century ad, incorporating certain Buddhist features and developing a monastic system.

Deep stuff, huh?  I’m not religious at all but this type of thing fascinates me.  “The world does what the world does, and you should just let it happen.” (They’re actually somewhat similar to the Stoics in that regard.) Now, compare that with the OED on Buddhism.

Buddhism has no creator god and gives a central role to the doctrine of karma. The ‘four noble truths’ of Buddhism state that all existence is suffering, that the cause of suffering is desire, that freedom from suffering is nirvana, and that this is attained through the ‘eightfold’ path of ethical conduct, wisdom, and mental discipline (including meditation).

Look at this in a list.

1.  All existence is suffering.
2.  The reason we suffer is because we desire things.
3.  We can be free of suffering.
4.  Thinking is the means by which we free ourselves.

Thus, in a nutshell, the less we desire things the less we will suffer, and the more we contemplate our lives the more we can achieve happiness or “enlightenment.” That’s some pretty weighty shit.  Then there’s karma.

[T]he sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future.

In 2009, think about your actions.  This year for me is going to bring a number of opportunities where I have to make serious, life-changing decisions, not the least of which is whether I stay in China, come back to the US, or move to some as-yet-undetermined location.  If we go by what the Chinese believe, I’ll end up with exactly the future I deserve.

So that is what I wish for all of you.  From the Chinese perspective the type of person you are, and the way you act, will determine your future.  May 2009 bring you exactly the future you deserve.

But religion is illegal in China!

I’ve known a fair number of Chinese that told me flat out that Taoism and Buddism are not religions and that they consider themselves to be atheist as a westerner would understand the term.  I got along with them just fine, like I do with Jews - none of them feel the need to shove their religion/philosophy down my throat.

Personally, I believe in a form of karma, in that what you get out of your life pretty much depends on what you put into it.  Life shits on everyone - it’s what you do when that happens that determines how it turns out in the long run.  One analogy I heard was “some people let life wash over them in a wave” and they just float along with it, ending up wherever.  Others get their act together and start swimming.  You may not end up in Hawaii, but at least you won’t stay stuck next to the sewage drain pipe.

Thanks a lot Lee.

I had been neglecting to make proper back ups lately at work and yesterday one of my hard drives crashed.  I found out at about 4 am after drinking half a bottle of whiskey and dancing with my girl MJ.

In my defense we were about to move to a new server and the old back up system is a major pain in the ass.  Luckily the drive that crashed contained only software and temporarily files not user data (so my 1.5 month old back up was acceptable).

I was wondering who I could blame this on, now I know!

I found out at about 4 am after drinking half a bottle of whiskey and dancing with my girl MJ.

Hah.. the form we fill out to get sudo at my company includes a clause that we will not use sudo while intoxicated.

We handle backup/restore stuff like this by basically keeping all data off compute hosts and on massively redundant (and still backed up) filers and only OS/scratch are on hosts themselves.  Have multi-tiered levels of data integrity/speed now too.  Have too with the amount of data now.  I remember about 10 years ago when we thought hittng about 5TB total across filers was a huge milestone.. now a pair of filers is multi TB in size.

I’m going to build that kind of redundancy into the new server.  Hopefully I live that long!

While I haven’t signed a paper, I hold myself to a no sudo while intoxicated policy as well.  I think I logged in switched to root once after having a few drinks, and after very carefully and slowly doing a few things, I decided that this was a really terrible idea and that it could wait until morning.