may you live in interesting times

Well the past month or so, I've fallen victim to the old curse, "May you live in interesting times". Lots of family visits and funerals. My grandpa died when I was one year old, and last week my grandma's second husband passed away. Watching him suffer from Alzheimer's was very painful. I think that I have some fear to deal with there, fear that it will happen to me. Not because of genes because we didn't share any, but just because it is a horrible fate.
But therapy taught me that we are given our life journey, and it is for us to walk. Whether we get Alzheimer's or not is obviously something that we cannot control, so I need to surrender that to a higher power, and let it go.
There is a great peace in that, if we can find it.
I didn't cry until the AmVets were marching by one by one, saluting his body. My uncle gave me a Springfield M-1 cartridge casing from the 21-gun salute, it meant a lot to me. He has always loved guns, and I have just rediscovered them in the last two years. He knows that we have a similarity there, because being a responsible gun owner and target shooter takes certain psychological traits. I am so glad that we can share that.

trying to do too many things with one computer

I ran into some issues this weekend that made me ask myself, "Am I trying to do too many things with one computer?". The disk on my MacBook got full, and somehow using fetchmail and postfix to flush my inbox made bounce messages go out to everybody in my organization from whom I was not able to store mail. Hooray. Then the NetBeans IDE that I use to do mobile java development for my hobby project, talkLock, decided that since the disk was full, it should explode. Unfortunately deleting some files did not fix it. Then I remembered that since I use home folder encryption, I have to log out for my encrypted are to get shrunk. That didn't fix it either, it didn't complain, but any disk write operations zombied out. A reboot didn't fix it either.

So the next logical step would be to uninstall and reinstall the IDE. But I quit using Windows to avoid stupid crap like this, frankly. If I was using vi and gcc it wouldn't care that at one point the disk was full.

Maybe trying to use one computer to do work like logging in via xterms, running heavy java mail clients, watch movies, listen to music, develop hobby projects, browse the web, edit spreadsheets and documents, play games, etcetera is all too much to expect from an end user desktop system.

Or maybe I should expect postfix to react like that (in UNIX land you would want a mail server with a full disk to fail noisily), and the only real problem is that no one at NetBeans bothered to test what happens when your hard drive gets full.

Of course if you have a few computers then you have the issues with synching things up, and of course you cannot bring clipboard items over from one to another while working.

Or maybe I just need more rest :) One of my tools that I learned in counseling is HALT. Whatever you're thinking about when you are Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired, stop thinking, halt. Take care of your hunger, anger, loneliness, or sleepiness, then you will be clear to deal with things.

Regardless I packed up the Mac and wrote this post on my Linux laptop. Maybe tomorrow I'll try and fix Netbeans on the Mac.

But I just did a new fix in talkLock so I want to test it! Hopefully it'll work fine on the Linux machine.

Network Engineer, 7 Years, and so on

Okay, so to wrap up the whole "How to be a Network Engineer" thing, I'll make a short post.

I ended up moving from being a vendor to being a client. I was The IT Guy for a county-wide library. I had routers and switches and servers. Some of the servers were big Suns. Very fun! I learned a lot there and was very free to explore and build things.

After I was divorced and had settled down some, I decided that it was time to get out of the small town that I had lived in and go to the big city. I was already living there, so it made sense to get a job there.

I did a ~1 year stint at a law firm as The IT Guy. Gone was the freedom of the library, instead I was always being bossed around by shallow, mean, bitchy lawyers all day. It was a Catch 22 situation, and I was not psychologically healthy enough to stand up for myself and define boundaries in that environment. I quit. But I had acquired some training on SQL and gotten comfortable writing database queries and getting around on a database server.

While at the law firm, I had started exploring a Big Ten college campus next to my neighborhood, and took a night class in calculus. It was very hard but a very cool environment.

I took a job at a dry cleaner's, and set about going to school full time to study engineering. I had an Associate degree in electronics at the time. A few weeks later I got a student IT job at the university and was all set to pursue my undergrad degree.

After a year, the guys in the networking department that I hung out with had an opening for me, and I moved over there as a student employee. My new job was to set up Linux servers, work on web and automation scripts, and configure Cisco equipment. Big time real world networking experience! It was a joy.

I learned PHP, Perl, Java, and got more experience with C, C++, bash, SQL.

After a year of that, you can see where this is going. I got a new boss who used to work for an ISP, a state-wide ISP funded by education. I was made an offer and became, yes, a Network Engineer. In only 7 years :)

I am still a senior in Electrical Engineering at the university, but I have not taken any classes since I got my position. We'll see what happens.

Now I work on Cisco, Juniper, SMC, Force 10, and lots of networking equipment. We use BSD servers to do our work. It's not quite the fun and free environment the university was, but it's pretty cool. And now I actually control the internet bandwidth for that Big Ten university, and most of the others in the state :)

We've already got that memo. And others.

Well, I was reading The Unix Hater's Handbook again, and I came across a couple of beautiful gems that I felt like sharing.

"This book is about people who are in abusive relationships with Unix,
woven around the threads in the UNIX-HATERS mailing list. These notes
are not always pretty to read. Some are inspired, some are vulgar, some
depressing. Few are hopeful. If you want the other side of the story, go read
a Unix how-to book or some sales brochures.
This book won’t improve your Unix skills. If you are lucky, maybe you
will just stop using Unix entirely."

"Unix haters are everywhere. We are in the universities and the
corporations. Our spies have been at work collecting embarrassing
electronic memoranda. We don’t need the discovery phase of
litigation to find the memo calculating that keeping the gas tank
where it is will save $35 million annually at the cost of just eight
lives. We’ve already got that memo. And others."

Hahaha, I love it :) That's what I love about Unix folks. We all have a certain gallows humor, a dark understanding that even though we love Unix, we also hate it. We know that it's terrible. But it makes so much more sense to us than other computer operating systems. We are trapped, for good or ill.

I challenge you to find Windows experts with these qualities. People who write about Windows write stuff that reads like sales brochures. I don't like reading sales brochures, because we all know they are bullshit.

Yeah, we've already got that memo.

goto after the fall of manila

Well, I started this blog because of a character in the Neil Stephenson novel The Cryptonomicon. Goto Dengo was a Japanese sailor who survived a shipwreck, the headhunters and jungle bugs of New Guinea, and building a mine to bury Japanese war gold that he was supposed to be buried in as well. After New Guinea, he was recuperating in a mission hospital in the mountains of Luzon. While in the hospital, he had a moment of clarity, or hit rock bottom, or surrendered to a higher power. He realized that the tools that he had for living his life were no longer useful, he was on a different planet now. That is the place I was in when I started this blog.

Now I have gone through that and learned some new tools and started making some new dreams. But it is not always easy being on a new planet. Sometimes you want to go back to the familiar. And unfortunately, people that you love and trust will not always be happy with your new psychologically healthier lifestyle. They are more comfortable working with the old you, instead of a new unknown quantity. But you can't go back to the person you were before; experiences have changed you into something new, you are reborn. It is wonderful but sometimes very difficult and painful. Painful because when you see people acting toward you like you are the person you used to be, you realize how sadly flawed your relationship with them was before. You see patterns of behavior that show that you used to have compatible illnesses. Now that you are getting better, that compatibility is not there.

I am struggling with this at work, and also with a very dear old friend that I made early in adulthood. But I am struggling with both things for the same reason. I used to not listen to my feelings, and not use my words to express my thoughts and feelings. I used to always put other people's accomplishments ahead of my own. A common ailment, and one that leads to unhappiness. Now that I am expressing myself, and probably not very well yet, people seem caught off guard, and threatened. I will get better at it. But they will have to get over it; I will continue to use my words, listen to my feelings, and do something good for myself every day. The three new tools that I have that changed my life. The three tools that allow me to survive on this new planet.

life is full of Personal Growth Opportunities

Well, it's been an interesting couple of months. There is plenty I could write about, but for now I'll talk about a work situation.

Last week I went back to work while in recovery from The Crud, or what the Brits call The Lurgy, that wonderful winter-to-spring sore throat, fever, sinus agony, congestion, and fever ailment. I had started a project about a year before, and I kept struggling to get traction on it. I had actually gathered my enthusiasm and torn into it many times, but every time I thought that it was done and ready to put into production, I would get feedback with another revision. Tuesday I decided "today is the day" (once again), so I did some final testing, put it in the queue to be pushed out, and pinned down a couple of folks and asked if it was time to ship it. They gave me another revision, and then after looking at my work (for the first time in a year), they gave me a whole page of revisions.

So Tuesday I tossed and turned all night, and in a display of a total lack of maturity, thought about beating the shit out of the guy that gave me a page of revisions. The gall! I had come to the end of my rope. The next morning I felt like hell, I was still somewhat sick and had gotten almost no sleep, and was emotionally totally frazzled. My girlfriend talked me down from the ledge, and helped me spin out of my anger and take a step back. I came to understand that we have a PROCESS problem, and that this is not a personal problem. It's not that people hate me or think I'm stupid or want to torment me, it's just that they have not had their attention drawn to the fact that the current process is a Catch-22, slam your hand in the door on purpose type situation.

This is a big step for me, in the past I have always gotten to this point in my work, and said fuck them, and gone to find another job, feeling totally defeated and destroyed. This time I disconnected from the defeated feelings enough to suggest a new process, and explain (without tainting with frustration) what the problems are with the current process. That was Thursday, and Friday I did not get any feedback. I would have liked to have heard some "you are my hero", "this is brilliant", "you rock" kind of feedback of course. But now I understand; "If you do not ask for what you want, you will surely never get it." So I have explained the problem, and suggested a solution. And if it turns out that it is decided that the status quo is fine, and we don't need a solution, I will not strap grenades to my body and blow everyone into quivering giblets; I will note that the current work environment is not the right environment for me, and look for a more suitable one, with my head held high, and my chest swollen with pride that I Did The Right Thing, instead of suffering in silence.

this cracked me up...

I saw this at the end of the month-long OpenBSD vs. RMS thread that ran on the misc list at OpenBSD. It was a befuddling and bizarre sort of flamefest. Basically, my take is that the OpenBSD folks suffer from some kind of stunted emotional development: Of course, RMS was incredibly zen and Ghandi-like. He was in fact in India when it took place. Now on to the wacky quote that kind of said it all for me:


Emacs/XEmacs is an excellent Microsoft Operating system shell to run.
Manage your files and browse the web.

It is released under the GPL (general public license).
Running a program on Windows is not encouraging the use of Windows.
Rather it is actually encouraging people to use Windows, you see. That's
not the same thing.

People publish screenshots of Emacs running on MS Windows and post them
on the internet, and this is the enemy of your freedom. It shows how
excellent XEmacs/Emacs run on Windows so that they don't even have to
run gNewSense.

When the dog wags his tail, the tail actually is wagging his dog. And
when the tail wags the dog, the dog is actually wagging the tail. Not
the other way around.

Oranges are free, grapefruits are not.
Oranges are free, grapefruits are not.
Oranges are free, grapefruits are not.

L505

a thought about guitar tone

Keef Riffards already knows this. Everybody else, read on:

If you have a lot of distortion on your guitar signal, and you hit the strings lightly, it goes "GLEEEEEEERRRRR". If you hit the strings hard, it goes "GLEEEEEEEEERRRRRRR".

If you have almost no distortion, but turn the amp up really effing loud, and hit the strings lightly, it goes "schliiinnngg". If you hit the strings hard, it goes "CLANGHONNNKKK!!!" If your guitar goes "CLANGHONNNNKKK", people will Respect Your Authoritay :)

How to be a network engineer in six years - Part 2

So when you last saw our hero, he had been told to RTFM, Read The Friendly Manual, and given a copy of Slackware Linux to try. I was serious about learning the UNIX-like Linux environment, and excited about my new project. I printed out the documents, took a week, and read the Installation How-To. Not an easy read, very technical, but it all made sense from my past experience. In theory anyway. So then I moved on and read the DOS/Win To Linux How-To. This was a comparison between DOS commands and UNIX commands, and a little propaganda too about how much better Linux and X-Window System are. I would definitely recommend both of these even today, years later, although save the DOS/Win document for when you hit a slump in the very long and terse Installation document, and need some perking up.

Anyway there have been a million write-ups about folks getting Linux working on this or that hardware, and it's not the point. I ended up getting Linux installed correctly on about the third try, but could not seem to get Windows to share my modem connection across the LAN with my Slackware box. The deal is, after a month of experimenting, and even installing a Slackware spin-off called Vector Linux, I ended up with a modem in my Linux box, and got it to dial up to my ISP. I learned a LOT in that month, getting around and troubleshooting the networking issues. I still remember the day I took it to work, put the modem in it, connected to the ISP, launched Netscape 4, and read Slashdot for the first time :) Very very cool.

From there I learned how to compile the kernel from source, and set up Network Address Translation (use my Slackware box as a "cable router", only using dial-up). I set up nfs, ftp, dns, and dial on demand, dhcp. By the following winter anybody could walk into my house with a PC or laptop, plug in to the ethernet, and launch their mail or browser software, and they would be on the net in a few seconds. Automagic. Think of it! In the same time it took me to get nowhere with the latest great Microsoft server system, I learned these concepts and skills:
-UNIX disk partitioning
-UNIX shell commands for working with files and running programs
-the EMACS editor
-the art of reading man (UNIX on-line manual) pages
-how to use the Slackware system configuration scripts
-how to make a serial connection with a modem using ppp
-how to use telnet to connect and use remote systems
-how to use a terminal server to hop to remote machines
-how to use CHAP to get routed to the Internet across a serial connection
-how to configure an ethernet interface on a UNIX machine
-how to configure and compile the Linux kernel from source
-how to use ftp to transfer files
-what NAT is, and how to make it work on a Linux 2.2 machine using iptables netfilter capabilities
-what DHCP is, and how to configure and use the ISC dhcpd server and dhclient UNIX tool
-what DNS is, and how to configure and use the BIND dns server, and the nslookup tool
-what NFS is, and how to configure the nfsd server and mount command
-how to use the TCP/IP tools, like ping and traceroute
-how to use the UNIX layer 3 route commands
-how to configure and use the UNIX pppd Point-to-Point Protocol Daemon to control a serial network connection
-how to find, download, configure, compile, and run UNIX C/C++ programs
-how to break the C compiler :/
-how to install Quake 2 and play it on your Slackware box :)
-that Opera was way better than Netscape 4
-netnews! rtin! PAN!
-what X-Window System is, what a window manager is, and that fvwm is a great lightweight one
-that the Linux framebuffer driver will work for X, but card-specific X-servers are much better
-how to hand-hack XFree86 using EMACS (and use tail -n to read /var/log/XFree.0.log)
-that you can burn up monitor using overly aggressive hand-tweaked X config files
-that you can listen to a cd on your laptop, while the cd is in your desktop in the other room, using NFS mount
-that you can track the positions of your buddy's team in the 24 Hours of Daytona using your laptop in the living room while watching the race
-that at the time a Pentium 100 laptop with 24MB of RAM and a 3.2GB hard disk was enough to run Slackware 7.1, and it was way faster than my Pentium II Windows machine


Okay, maybe I didn't learn all that in six months. But most of it, really! The terse style of man pages allows you to get into a technical mode where you only find the information that you need, it is all there, and you CAN find it. It is a DIY system; if you have a can-do attitude, you can do anything. You have total control over the machine, a great abstraction in UNIX, and you have the freaking source code and toolchain. Make what you want.

Looks like in part 3 we will cover moving from being a PC shop guy who discovers the wonders of UNIX to a Network Engineer. Will he escape from the Penguin's diabolical trap? Tune in next time...

How to be a Network Engineer in only Seven Years!

Well, I was working as a Branch Manager at a computer shop. It was my first IT job, 1998. I had had a restaurant career, guitar salesman career, cash register repairman career, semi-pro guitarist, and a vending machine repairman career. Sometime in 2000, I had ramped up on building and upgrading PCs, and learned what hoops Windows wanted you to jump through to trick it into working.

I started noticing that a lot of our clients were getting DSL, ISDN, and T1 connections, and building ethernet LANs. Wouldn't it be cool if I learned networking and could work on stuff like that? Some of the more senior folks at the computer company had gotten to go to a Microsoft convention of some sort, and brought me back a binder with several demo CDs from Microsoft, including a late beta release of their new network server operating system, Windows 2000 Server. So I decided to tear into it.

I bought a Win2K Server book, put together a second PC, got some ethernet cards, cable, crimpers, rj45 connectors, and a 4-port hub. I started meticulously using the book, installed the server, and going through the capabilities and configuration of all the features. The problem was, I could not get a lot of things to work "in the lab". It was supposed to be simple; you just launched this management application, clicked on this dropdown, put a check in this box, typed something in that text field. If it didn't work, ??? There were no useful logging or debugging messages, no way to see what was actually happening on my new network. Just... Nothing. The abstractions that Microsoft used were so far away from what was actually happening in TCP/IP land were frustrating me. It was like trying to do brain surgery with boxing gloves on. This experience lasted several months.

Our regional manager at the company was making some consulting money running around town setting up network servers for small businesses, by selling them inexpensive PCs, and installing and configuring their network services using a copy of Slackware Linux he had burned to CD. I had been offered copies of Red Hat and Slackware before, and they had been described as "a hacker operating system for your computer, written by hackers, that is really good at networking." I took my new IT career seriously though, and had no interest in "playing around" with a "hacker operating system". It sounded like a neat exercise, I had some experience with early personal computers by Commodore, where everything had to be done by writing some software. I had written a lot of small tools and games, and later done the same in DOS for about 10 years. A hacker system sounded fun, as opposed to Windows, where you had to buy an expensive development package and learn something called C++ to make tools and toys.

Since I was a manager, I was starting to feel like I was part of the Dot Com Boom, an IT Big Shot, hehehe. I started watching TechTV's stock market coverage, and reading things like CNet tech news. I knew that Sun sold serious network servers, big expensive machines, and I learned that they ran UNIX. I had heard of UNIX on and off since becoming a computer hobbyist in 1981 or so, I knew it was Serious System. I did some research and found out that Sun had released their UNIX on CD for PCs! I was very excited. I found out that it was almost 2GB of software to download, which was more than I would be able to get away with on our office network at the time, which was a slow DSL link. I also found out that, while it had been free to download for a time, it was now only available for purchase. The full CD set with a manual was around $100. It wasn't a lot of money, but I didn't think I could convince my wife at the time to let me buy it. I knew that it was a way to grow my skills and advance my career, but I didn't think I could sell it to my ex-wife. Sad, I know. Then one day I saw a story about how companies were maximizing their profits by using PC hardware running Red Hat Linux instead of Sun computers, and that Linux was "UNIX for personal computers". Eureka! So I could learn how to run a real UNIX network server, by using my laboratory PC at home! I started researching Slackware Linux, the flavor my buddy at work was so successful with. I found that there was something called ZipSlack, which was a copy of Slackware that was shrunk down to fit on a Zip disk (like a 100MB floppy for you young'uns). I made a ZipSlack Zip disk and it's companion boot floppy, rubber-banded them together, and took them home with me.

I told my coworker my intention, and he told me about a web site called tldp.org, The Linux Documentation Project. He lent me his copy of Slackware and told me to read the Installation How-To and the DOS-To-Linux How-To at tldp.org. They would explain what was happening when I attempted to install Linux on my machine, and how to do DOS-type things in the new UNIX environment.

I guess this is part one, it is time for me to go leave the office and do stuff. Happy New Year to folks out there, 2008 is coming, hold on to your hats.

Hola amigos

Not sure what is happening here. Feeling run down. I have gotten through a couple of weeks of big change and lots of activity. Some turnover at work, changing conditions. Successfully somehow paid for some gifts and surprises for my sweetie's birthday. Studied hard for my network certification test, coming this week. Then last night, Boom! I hit the wall. Had to lay in bed and just kind of daydream, escape.

This year I quit drinking, and while in counseling, started learning tools to help me live my life. I'm much healthier now in many ways. Recovering from codependency is very difficult when it is your nature. The problem is, taking things on myself that are other people's problems leaves me with no energy, time, or resources to take care of myself.

I feel like lately, I have been doing better about not seeking out other people's problems to solve. I used to actively look for something to help somebody with, rather than do something productive or good for myself. What a disease!

Now my issue is that I am always anxious. I'm anxious about things that I'm responsible for, and trying to take responsibility for. I'm anxious about whether or not other people understand that I'm not as available as I used to be for them because I'm trying to save myself now. I think of them, but I'm busy dealing with my own problems.

I'm anxious about performing at work, although I seem to have made that a lot harder than it is. I've worn myself out worrying about how other people feel, wanting them to feel like we are friends, even stopping in the middle of work to go pacify them. But it is my job to do my work, and not to worry about the emotional climate of the whole operation. Whatever state it's in, it was like that before I got there. And as long as I don't make it worse, the rest is not up to me.

There is a big codependent issue with my sweetie. I still have trouble letting her ask for what she wants or needs, instead of trying to think for her. I think she has the same problems. We are both recovering codependents, but neither of us has ever been with someone who wasn't a "user" before. We take two nights off a week from each other. I think it is still necessary for my sanity because I am trying too hard. I am not just living my life, with her companionship. I am trying to control "us", and all I should be trying to control is me. That's all that life requires. Whew!

Lots of stuff going on. Just need to keep untangling the anxieties, and make sure I do the right thing. Like going down to the washer and dryer, and studying for my certification this evening.

Maybe I'm fighting off a bug :) Often a feeling of total emotional and psychological failure precludes some kind of influenza D-Day. Pray for Mojo!

hold on to your hats!

I refuse to comment on how long it's been since I posted, how lame the original posts were, &c. We start NOW.

So, in the past year I have:
Seen Eric Clapton live
bought a 9mm semiauto handgun that I take to the range
bought a paintball gun and played paintball a handful of times
built a badass 64-bit computer
graduated from 10 months of counseling
read 1.1 self-help books
started internet dating
met some nice girls
met a wonderful woman who I love, and see almost every day
have learned about boundaries
have learned about taking care of myself
have learned not to take on issues that don't belong to me
have learned to say "I'm paralyzed with anxiety" instead of just sitting there being paralyzed with anxiety :)
have gone to an Audi track event and ran laps in a 1988 Porsche 924S
have been to Puerto Rico with my new sweetie
saw the Observatorio De Arecibo there - you know, the 1000-ft satellite dish built into the mountains from the James Bond flick
hiked the rain forest
drove a new jeep clear across Puerto Rico and back
my folks moved to Tuscon
my mom has fibro-myalgia, and the weather is helping her
I went to Tuscon to visit them, fell in love with the desert and the mountains, and was visited late at night by a giant Great Horned Owl
More to come :)

ahh, entertainment

Well, a friend got tired of waiting for me to buy a tv, so he lent me a little one with a vcr in it. For you young 'uns, a vcr plays things like dvds that are called "tapes".

I have a few boxes of videotapes, so tonight the first thing I did when I got home was to turn it on and put in an old Formula One race. Now I have David Hobbes and V12 engines doing 17,000 rpm in the background. Excellent.

I also found that someone hooked up a wireless access point nearby with a very strong signal, and no encryption. It's working much better than the one I was using, I think I may be able to sit on the couch and use the computer. Again, excellent.

Without a tv around, I've been playing guitar and singing again. It feels good. To my friend's dismay, I don't think I'll buy a new tube for a while.

finding peers on blogger

When putting a new photo in my Blogger profile, I noticed that the word "Telecommunications" was blue, like a hyperlink. I clicked on it, and got a list of bloggers that have their "Industry" set to "Telecommunications". Oh, cool! So, being single, I started looking through the list for women who work in telecom and are bloggers. Probably we might have something in common? Of course, there aren't many. So I thought it would be cool to search other industries for single women to talk to. Hey, I'm single, okay?

Where do you search for profiles with the "Industry" set to a certain field? You don't. Sounds like a little project for me, maybe I'll try to whip something up.

In the meanwhile, I did some playing around with web url's, and found that you can search different industries if you change the last number in the url. I.E.:

http://www.blogger.com/profile-find.g?t=j&ind=36

36 is Telecommunications, and the number seems to correspond with the alphabetical list of industry choices in the "Edit Profile" area of your blogger account. It's a drop-down list.

So if you want to get acquainted with fellow bloggers, try some other numbers there and see what you find.

Maybe I'll make a little search dropdown to make it easier, or maybe somebody already has...

And it's not stalking, I'm just trying to make friends!

maybe i am cool

I was thinking that I was pretty un-cool. I don't have a tv at the moment, I don't have cable, I don't have a motorcycle, I don't have a girl to ride behind me on the motorcycle...

But then again:
I have an iPod
I have a Mac
I can write code
I have a bicycle
I have a cool old Audi
I have a tan
I have a goatee
I have a pretty blue acoustic guitar
I play and sing
I plink around on the piano
I have a job
I listen to great music
I pay my bills (most of the time - all the time would be un-cool)
I can hold my drink
I love coffee

And the last reason I'm cool: I smoke cigarettes. Everybody knows smoking makes you look really cool.