Slaves to Pedantry

Fuck lawyers, fuck computers, fuck eBay, and fuck stupid fuckers that run our lives. 

I've had an item listed on eBay for months now, a Playstation game called Streak Hoverboard Racing. That's the actual title of the game. I said "GAME", not an actual "self-balancing scooter" device. But as I tried to modify the listing, I was unable to save because of this beauty:

It may be hard to read if it's too small in the graphic, but the key points are that "the term HOVERBOARD is a registered trademark, please ensure that you are authorized to use the term..." 

What it really is is total bullshit. I'm not trying to list a "self-balancing scooter" as any idiot looking at the listing category or the picture or the listing itself would be able to tell. 

People, this is the future. It's the intersection of stupid AI, stupid businesspeople, soulless lawyers, idiot programmers, and pedantic adherence to rules. It's the same dogshit I deal with at work where we can't even drop a file from an automated report into a network directory by request of the owner of the directory because there are three layers of security surrounding it and none of the actual people involved in the process have any control over the implementation pieces. 

It's another example of how American productivity is brought to its knees by risk aversion driven by all the wrong incentives. I've seen this in many companies I've worked for where it really feels that IT has forgotten its role is to serve its customers and instead management pushes policies that make it feel like we're really here to serve auditors and lawyers who bring $0 into the organization. 

And today on eBay I find that I cannot even save a text description of a silly listing for a little video game. So instead I have to reduce the accuracy of the listing by calling it "Streak racing" because calling it "Streak self-balancing scooter racing" would be both stupid and incorrect. Clearly since the title was accepted a few months ago when I first added the listing, this is something new. But I'm sure it's only a matter of time before eBay would have had an audit drone look over a report, ignore context, identify the listing, and just cancel it without giving me a chance to explain. 

Ok, rant over, this slave will now go back to work. Have a nice day. 

Squadron Signal Collector's Notes

My god what am I doing with my life? I've been a book collector long enough to know what a horrible hobby it is. Books are big, ungainly, and easily susceptible to damage from water, sunlight, fire, and smoke. They're also losing popularity and are becoming more of a niche thing with each passing day. So why, later in life, have I decided to pick up yet another collecting pursuit, and of a book set no less?

Squadron Signal Publications is a long-lived publication arm of Squadron, a company that specialized in printing military books and selling scale models since the 1970's. It started in 1968 in Detroit, MI, but spent most of its years in Carrollton, Texas. Squadron Signal produced a steady stream of books about planes, ships, infantry, and tanks through the early 2000s, when it went through a series of ownership changes before finally landing in the hands of Brandon Lowe in Georgia, who's primarily a scale model enthusiast (you can read the story of how he acquired the Squadron brands here [squadron.com]). The company produced hundreds of books, although the frequency of releases became more sporadic in the late 2010s. What the label's publishing future holds is uncertain. 

I first remember seeing Squadron Signal books at the hobby shops I would sometimes frequent. They were always beautiful to me, usually featuring nice paintings by Lou Drendel or Don Greer on the cover. They were often 8.5 in x 11 in softcovers in landscape format, though some issues were printed in portrait, and in the 2010s they started producing hardcover editions. Each one was packed with text and photos with captions. There were different series published, each with a different specialization:

1000: Aircraft In Action

The original "in action" series focused on a particular vehicle or class of vehicle, tracing the development and variants. These are all printed in landscape orientation and the photos are black and white but the books featured a color insert in the middle to show examples of the aircraft color schemes.

1601 - 1608: Mini in action series

One notable subset within the 1000 series is the "Mini in action" set. These eight books were similar to the rest of the 1000 series books but they were half the size at 8.5 in x 5.5 in and printed in portrait mode. I don't know the strategy behind this line. Despite the cute format, they are not written for children, these are just like other Squadron books and loaded with facts and photos. Most of this line though did not have their own full size book except for the A-10 Warthog. The others feature aircraft that are a bit more obscure so perhaps they used this format to give these vehicles treatment with less content. Or, maybe the publishers were just experimenting.

2000: Armor In Action

Focused on tanks and ground vehicles

3000: Infantry In Action

An eleven issue set spanning WWII and Vietnam troops

4000: Boats In Action

Boats and submarines, mostly from WWII but also some modern

5000 series

Included several groups:

• 5001 to 5009 (Modern Military Aircraft): this series of nine issues focused on a specific aircraft and included history and personal testimonials from pilots. 
• 5501 to 5801 (Photo survey series): This series provided in-depth photo reviews of a vehicle, showing everything about the interior and exterior. The books were further categorized by subject type:
• Walk Around series: Aircraft and armor were in the "walk around" set
• On Deck: naval subjects
• At the Gate: A few civilian passenger planes are covered here
• Detail In Action: There were a few of these published that blended the features of the "in action" and "walk around" series

6000 series

This set is hard to categorize because it features a diverse array of subjects. I've seen these referred to as "specials" and they can cover various historical subjects like the air war in Vietnam, a survey of a vehicle's colors and markings in a certain era, modeling tips, a review of soldier uniforms and insignia, or a specific nationality's air force (such as the Finnish Air Force in WWII), and there's even one fantasy role-playing supplement. These are some of my favorites because they covered some obscure and little discussed parts of history and like all Squadron Signal books are filled with fascinating facts and graphics.

Notable subsets:

• Famous Aircraft of the World: a short but sweet three volume set of detailed aircraft books by Richard Caruana
• Fighting Colors: a set focused on paint schemes of selected aircraft

7000: Battle History series

From what I've been able to find, there appear to only be about eight to ten books in this set.

8000: In Detail and Scale

There are some unit history books and a few scale modeling books here, but most of the series was made up of the "in detail and scale" run that featured aircraft and boats with lots of photos and descriptions of the physical properties of the vehicles and its variants. The ones I've seen reminded me of the "in action" series although these were written by different authors, are printed in portrait orientation, and I like the way they organize and format the material. These appear to have been intended mostly for modelers, but they're still interesting for general enthusiasts and historians.

10,000 series and up

This numbering starts a second generation run of subjects previously covered. There are new entries in the "in action" and "walk around" lines. These books are printed on nicer paper than the older lines, are squarebound rather than stapled, and feature more color photos than the earlier books. 

• 10,000: New generation of aviation "in action" series. Many of the same vehicles in the 1000 series are covered, with new authors (mostly David Doyle) and new covers (some paintings and some photos).  
• 12,000: New generation of armor "in action" books
• 14,000: New generation of naval "in action" books
• 25,000: New generation of aviation "walk around" books
• 26,000: New generation of naval "on deck" books
• 27,000: New generation of armor "walk around" books
• 28,000: New generation of civil aviation "at the gate" books
• 34,000: The "Squadron at Sea" series. I've not read any of these so I can't say for certain, but this appears to be an entirely new series focused on a specific boat rather than a class of boat. For example, each one is named for an instance of a boat such as "USS Arizona" or "USS Saratoga" rather than "Nimitz class" or "US cruisers".
• 36,000: Combat Chronicles series. There are only a few of these and they're oral histories of combat action.
• 39,000: A small run of "Detail in Action" books

The numbering gets a little wonky beyond this point, but some of the 10,000+ series entries got hardcover editions and they're in this range.

• 50,000: Hardcover editions of the 10,000+ series books? The numbering would be the same for the last three digits. For example, 52050 is the softcover version of 12050.
• 54,000: Hardcover editions of the 14,000 series books
• 65.000: Hardcover editions of the 25,000 series books
• 66,000: Hardcover editions of the 26,000 series books
• 67,000: Hardcover editions of the 27,000 series books
• 74,000: Hardcover editions of the 34,000 series books
• 76,000: Hardcover editions of the 36,000 series books
• 79,000: Hardcover editions of the 39,000 series books

And then it finally ends here:

• 80,000: "Historical Reference" series. There are only a few in this hardcover line offering highly detailed reviews of vehicles. 

As you can see, it's a pretty extensive offering of items published over sixty years. I'm crazy to bother collecting them but I started buying them when I was a teen and have always found them interesting to read through. I am perhaps only partially crazy; I'm not going for a complete set. I'm mostly interested in just aviation, though I have picked up the infantry books, and select boats and armor entries. I will also not get the softcover of a book if I have the hardcover edition. There are also some books that had re-releases with different covers and I won't worry about being a completist here unless I can get the one I don't have for a song. It was also common for Squadron to take a book and update it a few years later with some extra pages, but the same cover; in those cases I'll just get the newer edition. 

Also, I get most of these in bundles on eBay where your per book cost is more affordable. The books are not really worth much although some sellers tend to price them high. I've tried selling my doubles on eBay and the fish bite very slowly unless you really drop the price. I'd hope that also working in my favor is the fact that fewer people are into books but aggravatingly enough, there are just enough individual and institutional collectors that when there's a good deal, it gets snapped up or bid up. 

As much as I like the books, the company made some questionable moves especially later in the 2010s. As I already noted, some of the books are almost identical re-releases of an earlier edition except for a new cover and higher price tag. Some of the books feel like smaller versions of coffee table books where ninety percent of the book is photos with little other substance (although the photos themselves are often treasures). There's also a great deal of duplication in the content and in a few cases I noticed they took the same text from an earlier book and just changed wording some. But I have to be fair here too; even in cases where they did that, it seemed to me that a lot of the photos were different than the ones in the earlier book. 

This is likely the last major collecting effort I'll undergo. I really shouldn't be adding more physical burdens to my life. I successfully overcame my comics, sports cards, and computer games addictions, and when those itches relapse they can be satisfied with digital copies that are inexpensive and require no physical space. I've been selling off those physical collections and donating the proceeds to charity. Perhaps I'll eventually do the same with the Squadron Signal stuff, though it will take time to finish collecting and reading them all. In the meantime, I'll post a few notes and reviews here and there and who knows, maybe it'll help other collectors.

Resources

Official web site of Squadron. Current brand owner Brandon Lowe is keeping the faith. 

David Doyle wrote a bunch of the Squadron Signal books and his website has a great list with cover images of almost all the books Squadron published. 

There's No Place like Home

I had me another Linux adventure this last week. At work I am setting up a remote development environment. Conceptually, it's really quite interesting. You use an IDE just like you always have, but it's communicating with a session on a server somewhere else and you're actually developing on that remote machine. Interesting times we live in, for sure. 

But the remote session is on a Linux box. And you know I've written before about how I respect the whole x-nix world because it's amazing and powerful, but it's also obtuse and shrouded in hieroglyphics. Well, setting up this remote environment burned up a pile of hours that it shouldn't have because of a very tricky configuration flaw that had me tearing my hair out.

At work there are others who've treaded down this path before, so there are wikis written and setup scripts available to help us get started. But it's proving to be hell for me as I have to assemble the instructions from several wiki pages; there's no cohesive approach to this documentation.

What makes it worse is that when I run various setup scripts and try to do some of the tasks, I keep getting errors. I go back and check my rights and verify I have security access to the remote resources. I check that all the software I'm supposed to install has been set up correctly. I rebuild SSH keys and update the various hosts that need to have them. Nothing is working; it says it can't find my SSH keys and credentials or can't sign into Artifactory. It's maddening and I've spent hours on it. 

Then, finally, I stumble on yet another error that doesn't explicitly tell me what's wrong, but does give me a hint. I notice that my sessions aren't getting some of the configurations they're supposed to be, like colored prompts. I navigate manually to the .bashrc file and other setup files and they're there, but apparently not running automatically when a session starts. I check the rights on the directories and files that session startup uses, and they're all correct with necessary read and execute access. I can run the .bashrc script manually and the colored prompts show up. I log out and then back in and the issue is still there. 

So then while I'm spelunking around and trying to figure out what's going on before I go insane, I accidentally stumble on the root cause. I type the "cd ~" command to jump back to the home directory, and get a "no such file or directory" error. Ah ha! Now we're getting somewhere.

I then try "cd $HOME" and get the same error. That's it, there's a problem with the home directory definition. That has to be it, and explains why none of the scripts work, because they all depend on the $HOME system variable to be correct, and it's not. 

I check it by running "echo $HOME" and get back "home/myuser". Well, that explains it for sure! It's supposed to be "/home/myuser" with a leading slash. 

I could not find anything on the internet about this issue. The home directory is such a given in X-nix environments that only lucky idiots like me get to experience this rare situation where the home directory is broken. Of course, I can't fix it myself with the change user command because it won't work when you're logged in. I have to ask the Linux admins to fix it for me, so it's the waiting game until they get to me. 

But once that's fixed I'm sure all the setups will go more smoothly and once again I can be friends with Linux and the power it brings. If your Linux session is acting squirelly and can't find files you know exist:

• check the file or directory security rights
• check that the script referring to it is using the right location
• check that your home directory is good (and this last one should not happen unless you're really lucky like me)

You want to know why people use Windows? This is why. The only other technology I've used that's as obtuse and cantankerous is Oracle. That's not a compliment!

Review: (Puzzle) Mediterranean Windows by Eurographics

 If you like puzzles, this is a good one. It's on the easy side for all the right reasons:

• The puzzle pieces are sturdy and well made. The material is probably paper but felt almost like a light wood. "Hey dummy, paper is made of wood." Yes, I know, but some puzzles feel like thin cardboard, and these were solid and of good construction. 
• The image quality is excellent
• I did not have issues with shape or fit ambiguity as I do with some other puzzles. The shapes are well defined.

The picture is a grid of different windows and frames. This, combined with the quality of construction and image, and the variety of color, makes it easy to assemble. I was able to finish it in a few hours. 

Contrast this to the Stranger Things puzzle, which is a great image and puzzle but very difficult because some of the shapes fit in where they shouldn't and the image features many muddled spots. That beast took me weeks. 

You can get this one at Amazon for about $22, but I got this one at Sam's for about $12. 

Why Does It Always Go Like This?

I wrote before about how I left corporate America to become an hourly contractor. All the reasons I did it were legit, and they still are. But I sort of didn't follow my own rules and stay educated and as a result I felt my skills were getting outdated and I needed to do something to shore them up while not requiring me to go without an income or not have a life outside of work. So, I did something I didn't think I'd do. I went back to a full-time job.

Yes, I know. All the reasons I left before are legit and still are. Now I'm dealing with HR bullshit again; the silly annual reviews, the obsession with titles, the unpaid overtime, the requirement to be in office at least part of the week and burn two hours a day in traffic, the doing more with less, and the unpaid overtime. 

"You said 'unpaid overtime' twice."

I did, because that was the main reason I left the grind the first time. And I'm doing it again because the place I'm at has a lot of stuff I'm not familiar with and I don't understand it all and I can't be productive without understanding all the contexts around it. And so to make up for a slow pace of progress I'm compensating by putting more time in. I can put lipstick on it by saying it's due to loyalty or dedication or professionalism, and each of those things may carry some truth too, but mostly I'm just trying to figure things out. 

When I get to a point of equilibrium between knowledge and ignorance, the overtime will ease. And I shouldn't paint an inaccurately large picture of my new company's shortcomings because this might be one of the best companies I've worked for. The vacation policy is generous, the salary was very good although in terms of raw cash a downgrade from consulting, the benefits are good, and there are many little perks in the job. 

Most importantly, the culture is very good. The things that pissed me off the most about culture in typical American companies are either not present here or not as bad. First and foremost, they don't believe in "management by screaming" or "management by intimidation" which I've witnessed in at least two other companies. They also preach continuous education and they'll pay for it, a considerable improvement over my past employers who would talk the talk but not walk the walk. The only weak benefit is really the company's middling 401k match, but even that could be termed average and not sub-par. 

So yes, the free labor component. I'm doing it because I'm still relatively new and I want to be productive and deliver results. I normally would tell younger people, "Don't work for free," but in fairness, there are times when you can elect to do it.

• If you're passionate about the work and enjoy it and it's not torture and you are doing it of your own volition, then it's ok, just don't let it get out of hand. 
• If your company and/or boss are good and perhaps made an honest mistake in misjudging a task's scope and it's one of those thing where a little extra effort can make things right, helping out can go a long way in building relationships and earning trust. This should not be a regular occurrence; if it is happening regularly, there's something else wrong that needs to be addressed.
• An emergency support scenario where a deadline is tight and users need help. On occasion, you do what you have to do and although chronic incidents are an anti-pattern, heroics are good marketing for you and your team.
• And then there's the reason I have to do it now. The knowledge gap about the systems, business, and processes is large enough that you have to put in time researching things to be able to function. This can be mitigated by good documentation and training, but I've already written before about how those things are commonly treated as low priority. 

I've learned that absolutes are usually wrong, and so it was with my thoughts on unpaid overtime. But I've also learned that you should be careful about when you do it and be able to identify whether the presence of it is an indicator of deeper problems or when it is a fair and appropriate response to a temporary situation.

Review: Moonsmile Paper Cutter

True to my word, I'm putting my reviews up where anyone can read them since (at least for now) it appears Blogspot won't censor my posts.

Ok, so I have this terrible affliction. I'm a book collector. Yes, I know, how horrible. It actually is. Books these days aren't as popular as they used to be, they take up a lot of space to store, and every time I move I have to lug the collection around. 

But, I love a good book, and a well made physical one is part of the full artistry of books. To help protect my books I use Brodart mylar book jacket covers. Most hardcover books will have a dust jacket, but that jacket gets beat up over time. Taking care of a dust jacket can significantly improve the value of a book; losing the dust jacket will severely limit its value. For book lovers, it's terribly irritating to see a nice book without its jacket. Yes, I know, we're weird and we like it. 

I often buy the jacket protectors at bookstores but they come in pre-cut lengths and if you have a variety of book sizes, they don't always fully protect the jacket. So the best and most economical answer is to buy a roll of the material of the correct height directly from Brodart and then custom cut them to size. For this, I need a paper cutter. 

For about $20 you can buy one on Amazon. The one I got is from Moonsmile [Amazon.com]. It's probably one of many generic Chinese plastic products you can buy there offered under different goofy made-up company names. It arrived on time and I've used it to cut my first few book jacket covers. 

Although I don't find the unit itself to be of particularly good quality, it does a good job cutting. Let me explain. As I kid I remember these big wooden guillotine cutters used in school. They were heavy and solid and did a great job cutting multiple sheets or cardstock. You can still find people selling used ones on eBay at upwards of $50. My needs are much simpler and I just needed something to cut the book covers...and occasionally for someone in my family doing crafts. So going expensive for an item that will need more storge space didn't make sense.

The Moonsmile unit is made of plastic and is very light. It comes with a decent guillotine blade and safety guard but you will still want to take care to avoid injury when using it. It's cheaply made but of sufficient quality that it does get the job done. I was able to slice up the mylar covers easily. You slide your material under the guard, then press down on the guard/clamp, and chop away. The unit also has a peg that you can maneuver the handle around to lock the blade in the closed position for safety. 

I complain about the weight of the unit since a heavier base would provide for a more stable cutting platform, but actually you have to compromise somewhere to get the price down so I suppose this is it. You use elbow grease to compensate for the lack of a heavy base. Some of the other online reviews complained that the cut isn't straight, but this wasn't my experience; it was fine for me but I also don't require exacting precision. 

There are variations of this cutter available. Mine is the base model that has a small paper clip tray at the top. Others may be larger to support larger paper sizes or have utility drawers that integrate into the base. 

If your needs are casual like mine, this is a sufficient device, good enough to earn a 3/5 star rating from me. But if you're using it more regularly or have commercial demands, do the right thing and get a big beastly one; this thing is a toy compared to those. 

Update 11Mar2024: After some more use, I can see why some complained about the straightness of the cut. The cutter slices nicely, but there's a little lateral wiggle room on the blade since you have to be able to maneuver it if you want to use the safety lock pin. If you try to pressure the blade to the left to ensure it cuts straight down the base's edge it will sometimes catch halfway down. It did it to me and I when I went to inspect what was causing it I could see slivers of steel or plastic at the base, meaning that the tolerances are not tight; the blade is actually hitting the base and not sliding smoothly beside it. I got a splinter when I touched it during inspection. I'm taking a couple stars off the rating for that! But, it may be an issue that resolves itself as any contact points get worn down. Still keeping the unit, it's still plenty sufficient for my use cases.

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy

One of the saddest things in the publishing world to hear or read about is when a magazine states "we are no longer publishing". 

Now, hearing this today shouldn't be a surprise. If you've been paying attention, print media has endured a slow but definite decline for the last thirty years. There are still holdouts and some popular ones continue to make the also-decreasing spots on retail shelves. But to survive, magazines now have gotten expensive, which further reduces their appeal to customers. 

Still, you always hope print will find a way to survive. There's nothing like having a tangible document in hand. I still believe in paper (and yes I like "The Office" but no, that's not the reason I say that). I believe in the sanctity of the printed word. That's not to say everything in print is correct; newspapers and books are made by humans and humans are notoriously bad at being accurate and impartial (especially today), but the good ones (David Halberstam, Bernard Fall, Anne Applebaum, to name a few) make stuff that's meaningful and stands the test of time. When a great work is in print, it can live many lifetimes if cared for properly. It's lasting and its words keep their value, faults and all, because they can't be changed. 

This is important because it makes the barrier of entry in print media much higher than that in digital media, which can be run by children (NOT bashing on all kids here, but immaturity and the lack of wisdom will put them at a serious disadvantage when writing). Digital media can be edited rapidly, which means corrections can be made quickly, but so can lies. In print, editors are often involved to help fact check and enforce grammatical standards and so the floor seems to me to be a bit higher in print than in digital. 

All this to say that today I got an email from my editor at Aviation History magazine. The publisher decided to cease operations, effectively canceling the magazine. The first concern I have is to the editors and staff who put the magazine together. I thank them for their hard work and wish them the best in their search for the next opportunity. But I too also lose a market. I'd freelanced flight simulation reviews for the magazine for...my goodness, it's been more than thirty years!

I first approached the magazine back in perhaps 1992, when I was just getting started as a freelance writer. The editor at the time was Arthur Sanfelici. He gave me a shot and endured my rookie mistakes. He eventually retired and Carl von Wodtke took over. Only a year or so ago Carl retired and Tom Huntington took the reins. My god that makes me feel old. I survived three editors. Poor Tom came in just in time to see the thing fall apart. The publishers even decided to release the magazine's last issue only as a PDF and not in print. I think that's a telling sign it was over. 

It's a sad day, as Aviation History and its sister history magazines were great reads. The HistoryNet website is still up at this time and oddly still selling subscriptions, but my last active freelance market has died. 

I feel like I've been saying goodbye a lot, but here it goes again. Goodbye Aviation History, and thanks for all the good times. You started out as one of my smaller markets and one I didn't think was that big a deal, but you ended up being my strongest and longest lasting one.