My favorites Tolkien Quotes

Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.
Gandalf, The Lord Of the Rings, Book Four, Chapter One

Á lelya séressë! Lá equen: áva nainuvalyë; an lá ilyë níreli nar úmiéo.
(Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil)
Gandalf, The Lord Of the Rings

"If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world."
Thorin Oakenshield on his deathbed

"War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend..."
Faramir, "The Two Towers"

‘I wish it need not have have happened in my time,’ said Frodo.
‘So do I,’ said Gandalf, ‘and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.’
Fellowship of the Ring, Second chapter,"The Shadow of the Past"

"Toss me... but dont tell the elf."
Gimli, Two Towers

Like Tolkien

I'm starting to feel like Tolkien. I read the Lord of the Rings and I watched the extended edition of the Movie trilogy (which, much to my chagrin didn't include Tom Bombadil). But I was much interested in the back story: How was the story made? Who was the producer? Who made the visual for the elves and dwarves and what did he, or them, based their decisions on? but most importantly, who was Tolkien?

I remember a distinct passage in the documentary that says that Tolkien did not write the Lord of the Rings the same way every other book is written: instead of keeping certain passages and re-writing other, he re-wrote the story several times. Each time, he started from scratch and wrote a little bit more until he wasn't satisfied with how the story was heading, and started over. And so, bit by bit, like waves hitting higher and higher with the coming of the tide, he eventually got the entire story written down.

Even tough it is more anecdotal than anything else, I think this is something to be learned there: Great things takes time, patience and a lot of hard work. Perfection is not achievable unless you are willing to put a lot of efforts into something.

And part of that effort sometimes includes swallowing up your pride, rolling up your selves and starting over.

I did just that.

I've giving myself a week to come up with something. I decided that since I don't really know where I'm going in life, I might as well try something, anything, that sound like a promising solution.

Right now, I'm going for a LPI level certification. If this doesn't help me, I'll try the CCNA and if that doesn't help me, I'll get the Ubuntu LPI certification and the RHCE certs. I have little to lose (except maybe money) and everything to gain.

Certifications

So I'm looking into changing my life a bit. In 2006, I was fresh out of university and seeing I didn't have experience, I looked at doing certifications. Since I have nothing better to do than study, I've decided to looked again at that possibility. I narrowed my choices to 6:

1. Cisco CCNA
2. LPI
3. RHCE
4. Linux+
5. GCUX (SANS)
6. Brocade SAN Manager

I don't intent on getting Microsoft certifications, and so these are the closest to what I studied and do in the last years. ( All these certification can be done by simply taking the exam at either a Pearson/Vue center or a Prometric center. )

Exam Costs:

1. Cisco CCNA: 125$ x2 = 250$
   
2. LPI 5 x 155$ = 775$ (3 certifications: LPI-1, LPI-2, LPI-3)
   
3. RHCE 799$
   
4. Linux+ 239$
   
5. GCUX (SANS) 899$
   
6. Brocade SAN Manager 150$
   

Since I already have the study material for LPI and CCNA, I think I'll start with those...

A clear vision

I'll start by saying that I became obsessed with books. I cannot go into a book store and not come out with something. In the last 3 months, I bought at least 10 books...

3 books in particular changed my perspective on life. These are:

• The Last Lecture: Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow
• When All You Have Is Hope: Frank Odea
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity: David Allen

After reading these books, something became self-evident. And it is most visible in Frank Odea's book. All these people have (or had) a clear motivation that drove them to succeed. For Randy, it was his childhood dreams. For Frank, it was initially the idea that he would die alone and on the street if he didn't do anything. For David Allen... well it is self-evident: getting stuff done.

They all had this clear vision of where they were going.

And that is my problem: I don't.

I have no idea of where I'm going in life. No idea of what I wanna do. No clear childhood dreams to look up to (I already completed mine: it was graduating). No visions. No fears driving me. No motivation. No nothing.

But I'm not depressed. I am simply faced, again, with paralyzing choice : too many choices available and not enough information to make a good decision. I'm simply afraid to make the wrong decision and so I spend a lot of time trying to think about the best solution... to a problem that I don't really understand...

I've decided to change all that. I've giving myself a week to come up with a solution. Some direction to give to my life. I don't know how I'll do it, but I have to. So much is at stake.

I'll kept posting. Try to see what happen. It will be lots of soul searching...

Depression Diary

The Big Money (a blog owned by Slate) has posted a couple of exerts from a diary written by someone in the 1930s. Interesting read.

Depression Diary | The Big Money
Depression Diary, Part 2 | The Big Money
Depression Diary, Part 3 | The Big Money

"War. War never changes"

I find it cruel and ironic that I'm looking at the Fallout 3 game box while looking at this at the same time:

War... War never changes...

Wassup 2008 - The Obama Edition

Wassup 2008

It's been 8 years already?

(Interesting Note: the Director is actually the first actor you see the video)

LiveLeak.com - Flooded Road Collapses

LiveLeak.com - Flooded Road Collapses

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The US economy

I've listened to This American Life episode 355 and episode 365. I liked the conclusion on episode 355 ("this will not be the 1930's but [...] Everything will be kind of crappy"). But the conclusion on episode 365, on the bailout, scares me a little.

I just don't know what to think about all this anymore...

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Reflexions on my life and the paradox of choice

I installed a new personnal server 3 days ago. I got tired of my old Gentoo server and decided that a change of system would give me a new perspective. The 'trouble' or more exactly, the 'reflexion' started with the choise of what to install on it...

If you know anything about Linux, you know that there is a proliferation of distribution (or distros as they are called). Distrowatch lists 579 different active distros in the current list (BSD-based systems included). There is a list of "major" distributions, but, if you included derivatives, it still make a rather long list. Each have positives and negatives, and trying to decide which one is the best on pure technical merit is like trying to decide which of the 12 different sort of milk is the right one based solely on the ingredients. At the core, they are the same, and the choise is more based on impression than real merit.

The choise was not an easy one, yet, in the long run, it is really insignificant. I can always change distros in the future if I'm not satified, with minimal cost and downtime (because I planned to document every configuration change) Of course, my 'troubles' doesn't really stop at the distribution choise. You also need to chose what application to use. At that point, I didn't want to make any more important decisions, I followed advice from a book, and used the default for the rest.

It may seems insginficant (after all, it was a couple of minutes in a single day), but i've postponed that project for weeks because I didn't want to make the decision. I was afraid to make the wrong choise.

It's silly really. Any choise in this matter is better than not doing anything at all. Yet, it was still a road block. I would explain why the multiplication of choise is paralysing, but Barry Schwartz and Dan Gilbert already did it better than I ever could:

• Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice | Video on TED.com
• Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy? | Video on TED.com

To say that this isn't the story of my life would be an understatement. The problem is not taking a decision, it is trying to take the perfect decision... in everything.  I like to be efficient, yet I lose much more energy trying to find the perfect solution to any problem. Of course, this missed the obvious fact that we, as human being, are not efficient in finding the perfect solution to a complex problem. Trying to find the perfect solution to the travelling salesman problem without a computer is going to take a very, very long, time. Or course, yet again, in this case any solution is better than no solution at all...

Can you take a guess as to why I'm still single? (hint: I can't decide where to start searching!)

Anyway, I better get back to that server.

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