Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

(sung to the tune of Eddie Izzard's "Blasphemy" ditty)

Great news, everyone: I have been vasectomied! If that's not that kind of thing you want to hear about, well, you're going to want to stop reading right now.

The procedure was a piece of cake, but I really wasn't worried that it would be anything but. The doctor was really friendly and laid back, and really put us at ease during the consultation last month. I'll have to do another post in a week or two about the full process, though. The anesthetic hasn't even worn off yet, so I've still got some healing ahead of me.

My appointment was at 3, but they didn't bring me back into the office until about ten minutes after. They have you undress and lie on a table, then the doctor (ahem) scrubbed and shaved me. He then did the iodine-all-over thing - pretty much what you expect for a minor incision or donating blood - and gave me a couple injections of anesthetic. That was the worst part: he warned me that it was going to be a bit of a pinch ("this is the part where I make the joke about feeling a small prick, but it's just the doctor," he said), then an aching feeling ("kind of like if you got kicked in the balls, but not that hard"). Then he left for a few minutes for that to take effect.

Erin came in with me because she was curious to see how it went. They were fine with it, and the doctor said his one rule was that she had to remain seated off to the side. Not because she would be in the way, mind you: he's had wives pass out in there during the procedure, so he asks that they remain seated throughout the performance.

At this point, Erin said that because of the orange iodine, my balls looked like John Boehner. We told the doctor when he came back in, and he agreed - "conservative whackadoodle balls!"

He poked at me in a few places to make sure I was numb, then went to work. The entire procedure took maybe ten minutes. I didn't feel any pain, but could still feel pressure and things like that, so it was one of the weirdest things I've ever experienced. I mean, you know that something traumatic is happening to one of your most trauma-aware parts, but all you feel is some squeezing and tugging - it's weird. Erin was able to see most of what he did and said it was cool as hell: she got to watch him pulling out the vas deferns, cutting a piece out, and cauterizing the ends. I could have watched if I wanted to, but I thought it would creep me out too much. He patched up both sides with a couple stitches, and I was done.

After cleaning up and getting dressed, we walked out of the office at 4 exactly, less than 50 minutes from the time we went in there. Now, I get to take it easy all weekend with some pain meds and antibiotics, but I'll be back to normal in a week.

Plus, insurance covers the procedure so it will only cost me a $10 co-pay. Worth it.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

I've never really decided how I feel about affirmative action. As a filthy liberal, I know I should be all for it. I know that the intent is not to give minorities preferential treatment, but rather to give minorities the opportunities more commonly available to those in the majority. Historically, black kids are more likely to come from poorer neighborhoods, and it makes sense that more scholarships and financial aid should be available to encourage them to attend college. They need it more than the white kids in the rich towns with the great high schools.

At the same time, I believe strongly in meritocracy: everyone needs to work for what they get, and no one should get preferential treatment or handouts simply because of their race, sex, or nationality. But, as in the case of the kid from the underperforming high school, affirmative action can help level the playing field and remove the leg up that the white kids had just for being born the way they were.

I've had a few experiences to make me question how I feel about all of this, though.

The first was the career path of someone I know. Twenty-some years ago, after finishing up a degree in (if I remember correctly) criminal justice, he applied for the police academy. He was denied when they chose someone with lower scores in order to meet diversity quotas. To him, this was reverse racism (or reverse sexism - I don't know who ultimately got his slot at the academy). I never quite felt right about this, but realized recently that it's likely that the exams favored white guys - not intentionally, of course, but the police force has been made up primarily of white guys. It's not unreasonable to expect that their exams would aim to find the people most like the best cops, and will thus be slanted (however slightly) in favor of those in the same demographic as those cops they already have. Enacting diversity quotes could correct for that bias.

A bit of a stretch, maybe, but it makes sense.

The second experience that has shaped my views happened to me about seven years ago. I was working for Tech Crew at college, running sound and/or lighting for all sorts of events around campus. One of the few events that I still remember was a diversity presentation, maybe some kind of award ceremony. The part that stuck with me, though, was a brief speech given by the president of the university. He was extolling the virtue of the school's diversity program and citing the changing makeup of the student body. Now, I ran the PA for a lot of presentations like this, so I zoned out until he said something that caught my ear: if two students applied to the school with exactly the same background, financial situation, and grades - but one was black and one was white - the black student would be offered three to four thousands dollars more, per year, in financial aid or scholarships.

That's not at all the same thing. That's preferential treatment based on race, not level the playing field - the field was already level. I guess that, like socialism, affirmative action sounds good in theory, but doesn't necessarily work out as well in practice.

I got to thinking about all of this again because of a kerfuffle on Twitter this evening. Mike Monteiro made a few comments about conferences with all-white, all-male speaker lists, and John O'Nolan made a poorly conceived, poorly worded reply, and then things went a little bananas as dozens of people jumped into the fray.

In short, I agree with Mike, and think that John may have had a valid point but worded it so terribly that it didn't matter. It's true that most tech conferences have mostly-white, mostly-male speakers lists because that tends to be the makeup of prominent experts in tech-related areas. But this is a case where the merit doesn't necessarily lie with the white guys. If I may use John's own examples, it's not a given that white people make better swimmers than black people, or that black people are better sprinters than white people, or that men make better fighter pilots than women. But, if we keep looking for white people to swim, black people to run, and men to fly, then no one should be surprised if that's what we find.

Tech conferences are exactly the same: white guys speak at them because they are the big names in that world. That doesn't mean that they're better than those who aren't white guys, it just means that they have been more prominent up until now. If we keep looking for white guys to speak at tech conferences, we will miss out on a lot of different views and opinions. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a homogenous population will quickly turn into an innovationless echo chamber.

In the middle of all this back and forth on Twitter, John made a brief blog post that did little to help his position, by offering this absurd scenario:

Hypothetical scenario: I’m putting on a conference. I’m trying to fill my keynote slot and I have to choose between two people. One is a white, middle aged man, who is a fantastic speaker and a highly talented individual. He’s spoken at conferences all over the world and has a great track record. The other, is a black, lesbian female who’s just come out of college and is doing an internship for an advertising agency.

Mike is suggesting that if the rest of my speakers are “white dudes” then I should choose the second person, out of those two options - purely for the sake of having someone from a minority as a speaker.

John knows damn well that Mike wasn't suggesting a talented expert should be replaced with a recent graduate. Several other people have chimed in with comments that conference organizers have asked women to present, or that they simply want the best people for the job and those people turn out to be men (the discussion became more about gender than race). I won't argue that some of the best possible speakers for a conference won't be men; most of them probably will be, just due to the current makeup of the community. But if an organizer is only able to find one or two qualified women willing to speak, they clearly aren't casting the net wide enough. Women are becoming more prominent in the tech world, thankfully, but that doesn't mean that the only ones who are qualified are those that everyone has heard of.

I don't really have a conclusion, and didn't know where I was going when I started this. I will echo (by paraphrasing) something that Mike said: white dudes sure do get defensive when anyone challenges the throne. Mike also excoriated all-female conferences, but based on the responses he's been getting, you'd think he suggested that white men should remain uneducated and unemployed until the age of 35.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

I've been listening to The Daily Edition on 5by5 lately, and the topic of standing desks has come up a few times lately. Last year, it came to light that sitting all day is bad for you even if you exercise more to offset it. I had a standing desk for a while at a previous employer, but figured it wasn't really an option now that I work from home. I would love to get a GeekDesk, but there's no way I would spend $750 on a desk.

I got talking to some of the nerds in #5by5 Friday afternoon about it, and decided to take a crack at it. Lucky for me, I've got an IKEA EXPEDIT, so the desk attaches to a shelving unit: if I could find a good way to raise up the other side of the desk, I could just attach it to the top shelf instead of the middle one.

So I biked over to AutoZone this afternoon and picked up a $25 pair of jack stands. It may not be pretty, but my DIY standing desk is the perfect height.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

I haven't always been thrilled with the performance of the sites I host on Dreamhost, but I do like giving my money to the kind of company that will include this in their April Fool's post:

So shit, cPanel for everybody!

Yeah, I said shit. What’re they going to do – fire me? Well they can’t fire me because I QUIT. I’m buying a yacht and moving to Laguna Beach.

So shit.

Shitty shit.

Also, balls.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

The folks at Citibank don't know what they're doing.

I've been logging into their student loan website site once or twice a month for a couple years now, to make payments or check the balance on my loan. And every time I tried to login through the form in the homepage sidebar, it would fail. Like most sites, it takes you to a full login page with an error message when your login fails. I would enter the exact same username and password there, and it would let me in. I bookmarked the full login page, but usually forgot about it until I was typing my credentials into the homepage two weeks after the last time it happened.

Today, I finally found the problem when trying to figure out why the same account was failing to connect in Mint.com:

The site only allows passwords up to eight characters.

The homepage login form allowed me to enter what I thought was my full 9-character password. The full login page has maxlength="8" on the password input, so when I re-typed it there, it got my actual 8-character password. The problem wasn't with the login form, or with Mint: my password has always been one character shorter than I thought, because it got cut off when I registered.

Unbelievable. I've heard some pretty awful stories about password policies (where they can't be longer than 6 or 8 characters, like this one, or can't include numbers or symbols), but typically they mention that on the signup page, and throw an error if you fall outside the requirements. I checked and found that the registration form does say, "Your password must be 6-8 characters in length and contain at least one number and one letter," but instead of warning me that I went over the limit, they silently "fixed" it for me and left my account less secure than I thought it was. Bang-up job, guys.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

I consider myself a feminist. I believe in eliminating gender norms and double standards. I believe in treating women no differently than you would a man. I cringe every time someone makes a comment about how a wife should be cooking or cleaning, or express the expectation that women in tech companies aren't developers, because it further reinforces generations-old sexism that too many people don't even see as such.

But sometimes, I'm not sure of the best way to be a man-feminist. I've seen posts on feminist blogs complaining about men who compliment a women's look - the gist being that the guy is an asshole for assuming that his validation is somehow necessary. That makes sense, and I don't want to be that guy. But I've also seen posts from women thankful to get a compliment when they were having a rough day or didn't know about a new look. On the whole, people appreciate compliments, but it can be a fine line when a man compliments a woman.

So what's a guy to do when he sees a woman with a shaved head? How does one respectfully tell a lady, "You are absolutely nailing that look, ma'am"?

I think it's reasonable to assume that striding up to a woman with the express purpose of telling her that is a no-no, but I'm not the type that would ever do that anyway. But what if you get to chatting with a lady at the bar, or in line at the grocery store? How does one gracefully point out how one appreciates that a stranger is doing a bang-up job defying gender norms?

Futhermore, the shaved head thing. I feel like I have to mention that this post started months ago when I saw a healthy-looking woman with a shaved head at a restaurant. And I feel like I have to say "healthy-looking woman," because no one bats an eye if a dude has a shaved head (such as yours truly), but most people assume that a woman with a shaved head is undergoing chemo. I'd like to go on the record as being pro-shaved-lady-head, and would gladly wield the clippers for anyone who wishes to undergo said. I'm not sure if that counts as feminist, but we should do it anyway.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

I grew up outside of Buffalo, then went to college outside of Rochester. After that, I moved to DC and then visited San Francisco a few times.

I barely know Buffalo or Rochester. I grew up in the suburbs, I went to school in the suburbs, and I rarely ventured into the city. Even thought I spent four and a half years right outside Rochester during what I consider to have been my formative years, I didn't have a car, so I never figured out where anything was. When I went into the city, I was in the back seat, along for the ride and not paying much attention to where we were going.

I know DC better than any other city. I lived just across the river in Arlington for my first year and a half here, and I've been living close to downtown ever since.

And after spending maybe 20 days in San Francisco, across several trips, I definitely know it better than either Buffalo or Rochester. It's weird to think that only a few trips there resulted in more quality time in a city than the first 22 years of my life did.

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

Because Erin and I are an old married couple, we prefer to do Valentine's Day at home without the circus that surrounds every decent restaurant on the night of. And, since Schmitty's parents raise rabbits and we had a few of them in the freezer, Erin found a recipe for vegetable paella with chorizo and rabbit.

I honestly don't know how Schmitty's parents can kill and skin cute little bunnies, but I'm glad it was them doing it because I am a wimp. The rabbits came to us headless, limbless, skinless, and organless, so all I needed to do was cut the meat off the bones. This turned out to be more difficult than I thought it would be, and I'm sure an experienced chef would have pulled way more meat off that carcass than I managed to. I also made the mistake of buying brown rice, which (apparently) takes a lot longer to cook than white rice, so the final stages of the recipe required a little extra time. Nonetheless, the paella was delicious, and I really wish I had taken a photo of it before we ate, because it actually looked like proper paella.

I topped it off with fresh-baked dinner rolls, and one of Erin's favorite desserts: strawberry Jello pie. Despite cutting my finger while slicing strawberries, burning my arm putting rolls in the oven, and that brown rice situation, it all came out pretty great!

Originally published at Brock Boland. Please leave any comments there.

I think I figured out the trick to shipping packages at the USPS.

I don't need to ship things often, but a year or two ago, I sold several books online and wound up paying way more than I thought I should at the post office. My mom used to send me small boxes now and then while I was at college, and the postage on them was never more than a few bucks. So why was I paying $12 to ship a book I had only sold for $20? This happened a few times, with different people at different locations, and I just wound up donating the rest of the books instead of bothering with the hassle for only a few dollars.

A few weeks ago, I was back at the post office to send DVDs of photos home to my parents. The woman in front of me was also shipping a small package, and the postal worked kept asking about shipping options for a package - insurance, tracking number, signature from the recipient, etc - until the woman said, "I'd just like to send it as first-class mail." The employee said, "That's the magic word!" and rang her up. So I did the same thing when it was my turn, and it was less than $2.50. Same thing happened again this morning.

So that's your lesson for the day. If you want to ship something of lower value and just need it to get there sooner or later, ask for first-class mail. Otherwise, I think they'll assume you want to send it priority or express or whatever, and it will cost a lot more.