Forwarded to me from a random friend. I laughed a bit, so I thought I'd share.
ON DEEP THOUGHTS
A day without sunshine is like night.
ON HIGHER EDUCATION
College is a fountain of knowledge...and the students are there to drink.
ON MATHEMATICAL TRANSFORMS
A polar bear is a rectangular bear after a coordinate transform.
ON YOUTH
"Some people say that I must be a horrible person, but that's not true. I have the heart of a young boy -- in a jar on my desk."
-- Steven King, 3/8/90
ON PROBLEM SOLVING
When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.
-- Abraham Maslow
ON MATERIALISM
He who dies with the most toys, is, nonetheless, still dead.
ON ECONOMICS
The cost of living hasn't affected its popularity.
ON PUBLISHING OR PERISHING
I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
-- English Professor, Ohio University
ON REVISIONIST HISTORY
What was sliced bread the greatest thing since?
ON DATING
When aiming for the common denominator, be prepared for the occasional division by zero.
ON LAMENTATION
Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most.
ON POETIC LOVE
When you're swimmin' in the creek
And an eel bites your cheek
That's a Moray!
-- Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers
ON MODERNISM
Q: How many surrealists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Two. One to hold the giraffe and the other to fill the bathtub with brightly colored machine tools.
ON MATERIAL SCIENCE
Character density: The number of very weird people in the office.
ON EXTINCTION
Save the whales. Collect the whole set.
ON HUMILITY
To err is human, to moo bovine.
ON EXPLANATION OF THE END
"... one of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs."
-- Robert Firth
ON PROPHECY
The meek shall inherit the earth---they are too weak to refuse.
ON NUMBERS
Grabel's Law: 2 is not equal to 3---not even for very large values of 2.
ON WORLD POLITICS
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
AND FINALLY, ON DRUGS AND DEVELOPMENT
There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
To the MagiNet hotel Internet help desk people...
...I'm sorry I snapped at you today. I am the worst customer of Internet connection help desks. I know too much about this stuff, and so my patience quickly goes to zero when we're obviously barking up the wrong tree.
Background: I had trouble with the 'net connection in the Courtyard Parramatta hotel today. Worked fine yesterday, no luck today. Tried all the usual reboot, reseat cables, etc. with no luck, so I was forced to call the support line. (Yeah, I said cables - no wireless except in the lobby.)
First up was a guy who ran me through the support script. Is the computer on? Is your network cable plugged in? Are you using DHCP? Blah, blah, blah. I darn near told him that my cupholder was broken, just to see what his reaction would be, but I resisted since I really wanted this to be over with as soon as possible.
Finally he got around to asking me to reboot the modem in the room, which I hadn't thought of myself. I'm spoiled by wireless these days, forgot about the hardware that goes along with the cords. Bingo, the data light is blinking instead of steady green. Ah, I've seen this before - means the modem's not getting a data signal. Someone probably kicked the cord in the switch room. Problem found, right?
Uh, no. Apparently they don't teach first-level support about the modem lights. Despite my explanations, he drops off the phone to call the manager at the hotel. (Actually he may very well have done that just to get away from my explanations, since obviously he had no clue what I was talking about. ) The manager comes up to my room with a new modem. Fail. The manager calls back...and of course we get someone completely different since the first guy never told us who he was.
Now we're talking to a nice lady with an Indian accent (as best I could tell - I'm no expert). She starts talking to the manager, obviously walking through the support script again, while he tried to use my laptop to go through it. He's completely lost, not able to find anything she's telling him to do, while all the time the real problem is sitting under the desk happily blinking its little green failure light. I finally lost patience and took the phone over, determining that the lady on the phone was reading a Vista support script while my laptop has XP, so of course the manager wasn't seeing the stuff she was asking for. I again explain about the modem lights, and again there's no recognition on the other end. "The lights are on, it must be working!" Bah.
At this point I've realized we're going to get nowhere, so I ask the manager if any other rooms have working Internet. Apparently yes, if you go down to the 5th floor (I was on the 6th). One room switch later, everything's working fine. I don't envy the next person who tries to use the Internet connection in room 622, though.
So to the unknown guy and nice Indian lady who attempted to help today, I'm sorry about being short with you on the phone. And to whoever wrote the MagiNet support scripts...dig a little deeper into what the modem lights mean, it'll save us all some frustration.
Background: I had trouble with the 'net connection in the Courtyard Parramatta hotel today. Worked fine yesterday, no luck today. Tried all the usual reboot, reseat cables, etc. with no luck, so I was forced to call the support line. (Yeah, I said cables - no wireless except in the lobby.)
First up was a guy who ran me through the support script. Is the computer on? Is your network cable plugged in? Are you using DHCP? Blah, blah, blah. I darn near told him that my cupholder was broken, just to see what his reaction would be, but I resisted since I really wanted this to be over with as soon as possible.
Finally he got around to asking me to reboot the modem in the room, which I hadn't thought of myself. I'm spoiled by wireless these days, forgot about the hardware that goes along with the cords. Bingo, the data light is blinking instead of steady green. Ah, I've seen this before - means the modem's not getting a data signal. Someone probably kicked the cord in the switch room. Problem found, right?
Uh, no. Apparently they don't teach first-level support about the modem lights. Despite my explanations, he drops off the phone to call the manager at the hotel. (Actually he may very well have done that just to get away from my explanations, since obviously he had no clue what I was talking about. ) The manager comes up to my room with a new modem. Fail. The manager calls back...and of course we get someone completely different since the first guy never told us who he was.
Now we're talking to a nice lady with an Indian accent (as best I could tell - I'm no expert). She starts talking to the manager, obviously walking through the support script again, while he tried to use my laptop to go through it. He's completely lost, not able to find anything she's telling him to do, while all the time the real problem is sitting under the desk happily blinking its little green failure light. I finally lost patience and took the phone over, determining that the lady on the phone was reading a Vista support script while my laptop has XP, so of course the manager wasn't seeing the stuff she was asking for. I again explain about the modem lights, and again there's no recognition on the other end. "The lights are on, it must be working!" Bah.
At this point I've realized we're going to get nowhere, so I ask the manager if any other rooms have working Internet. Apparently yes, if you go down to the 5th floor (I was on the 6th). One room switch later, everything's working fine. I don't envy the next person who tries to use the Internet connection in room 622, though.
So to the unknown guy and nice Indian lady who attempted to help today, I'm sorry about being short with you on the phone. And to whoever wrote the MagiNet support scripts...dig a little deeper into what the modem lights mean, it'll save us all some frustration.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Rose-Hulman CSSE Board of Advisors - March 2009
Since 2000, I've been part of the Rose-Hulman Computer Science and Software Engineering Department's board of advisors. It's not a demanding position, usually consisting of one meeting a year in Terre Haute and the occasional email conversation. I enjoy the opportunity to keep up with the happenings at my alma mater and provide some feedback to them about what's going on in the world of industry.
This year I drove down to Terre Haute on Thursday. Other than my BlackBerry Storm completely running out of power, it was an uneventful trip. Several of the board members and faculty did a short panel discussion with some students, and then had a fine dinner at Magdy's, a place I recommend if anyone happens to visit Terre Haute and is looking for a mid-to-up-scale dining experience. Thursday evening was spent in the Hampton Inn, so chosen since I could use Hilton points to avoid paying actual money.
Friday was filled with meetings for the board, including with CSSE faculty, RHIT Faculty Dean Art Western, and a student class. The Institute seems to be doing well despite the poor economy, although they have had to make cutbacks. The nearly $40k per year price tag doesn't seem to be deterring too many students, and somewhere between 450-500 freshman are expected in the fall. I was glad to hear that despite the belt-tightening, no faculty or staff have been laid off, and the department has the resources they need. That hasn't always been the case in past years, so it's good to see the level of excellence being maintained now. There are also plans to offer a Masters in Software Engineering in the Indianapolis area, which I see as a great growth opportunity for the department and Rose as a whole.
There are always some interesting side conversations at these things. The one that stuck in my mind this time was a discussion on how fundamental architecture changes are affecting how we develop software. Multi-core processors, virtualization, cloud computing - these sorts of architectures provide very different capabilities from the primarily monolithic architectures where most of the current software development patterns and toolsets were developed. It will be very interesting to see what develops in the next few years to take advantage of the new capabilities.
After the meetings, I drove back to Michigan. Some annoying road construction on I-65 added about an hour to the trip, but it was otherwise uneventful. I did see a fairly extensive wind farm along US-41 on the way, which was nice to see - green energy on the hoof, as it were. Another decade and that may become the norm rather than the exception.
I also made extensive use of the eReader on my Storm during the trip. Other than the aforementioned battery issues, it worked quite well. I'm thinking that I'll stick with the eReader over buying a Kindle for now. I can't justify spending an extra $350+ on something when the only real benefit seems to be battery life. There's ways to get around the BlackBerry's battery issues (car charger, using my laptop to recharge it, etc), and the Storm is a whole lot more convenient since I'm always carrying it around anyway.
This year I drove down to Terre Haute on Thursday. Other than my BlackBerry Storm completely running out of power, it was an uneventful trip. Several of the board members and faculty did a short panel discussion with some students, and then had a fine dinner at Magdy's, a place I recommend if anyone happens to visit Terre Haute and is looking for a mid-to-up-scale dining experience. Thursday evening was spent in the Hampton Inn, so chosen since I could use Hilton points to avoid paying actual money.
Friday was filled with meetings for the board, including with CSSE faculty, RHIT Faculty Dean Art Western, and a student class. The Institute seems to be doing well despite the poor economy, although they have had to make cutbacks. The nearly $40k per year price tag doesn't seem to be deterring too many students, and somewhere between 450-500 freshman are expected in the fall. I was glad to hear that despite the belt-tightening, no faculty or staff have been laid off, and the department has the resources they need. That hasn't always been the case in past years, so it's good to see the level of excellence being maintained now. There are also plans to offer a Masters in Software Engineering in the Indianapolis area, which I see as a great growth opportunity for the department and Rose as a whole.
There are always some interesting side conversations at these things. The one that stuck in my mind this time was a discussion on how fundamental architecture changes are affecting how we develop software. Multi-core processors, virtualization, cloud computing - these sorts of architectures provide very different capabilities from the primarily monolithic architectures where most of the current software development patterns and toolsets were developed. It will be very interesting to see what develops in the next few years to take advantage of the new capabilities.
After the meetings, I drove back to Michigan. Some annoying road construction on I-65 added about an hour to the trip, but it was otherwise uneventful. I did see a fairly extensive wind farm along US-41 on the way, which was nice to see - green energy on the hoof, as it were. Another decade and that may become the norm rather than the exception.
I also made extensive use of the eReader on my Storm during the trip. Other than the aforementioned battery issues, it worked quite well. I'm thinking that I'll stick with the eReader over buying a Kindle for now. I can't justify spending an extra $350+ on something when the only real benefit seems to be battery life. There's ways to get around the BlackBerry's battery issues (car charger, using my laptop to recharge it, etc), and the Storm is a whole lot more convenient since I'm always carrying it around anyway.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Blackberry Storm
About 4 months ago, I got a Blackberry Storm through work. My old Pearl was dying - the scroll wheel wasn't working too well - and when I asked about fixing it, I was told that with our warranty service it was easier to just get a new one.
The Storm looks cool. It's obviously meant to compete with the iPhone in terms of user experience. Nice big icons, touch scrolling, and so on. But as is so often the case with Apple imitators, it just doesn't measure up.
The biggest issue I have with the Storm is speed. The response time is very slow at times - not always, but often enough that I notice it. It's especially bad when trying to type on the on-screen keyboard. I often have to slow down to avoid missing letters or accidentally deleting something.
The touch screen is a bit strange in that you have to press the screen down to make a selection - kind of like clicking the mouse. Doing this is not very precise, which is fine for selecting big icons but makes it very difficult to edit text. Since there's no other navigation option, I sometimes find myself sending out emails with known errors because it's too hard to correct them without rewriting the whole thing.
Battery usage is pretty bad. Unless you turn off the wireless connection (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone), you're good for about one full day before your battery runs dry. This is fine if you remember to plug it in every night, but forget once and you're stuck. On the bright side, it does charge fine with a USB cord plugged into your computer, so charging at work isn't a big deal.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend a Storm right now. The next version could be much better with a few improvements, most notably fixing the occasional slowdowns. If you're considering one, I'd wait for version 2.
The Storm looks cool. It's obviously meant to compete with the iPhone in terms of user experience. Nice big icons, touch scrolling, and so on. But as is so often the case with Apple imitators, it just doesn't measure up.
The biggest issue I have with the Storm is speed. The response time is very slow at times - not always, but often enough that I notice it. It's especially bad when trying to type on the on-screen keyboard. I often have to slow down to avoid missing letters or accidentally deleting something.
The touch screen is a bit strange in that you have to press the screen down to make a selection - kind of like clicking the mouse. Doing this is not very precise, which is fine for selecting big icons but makes it very difficult to edit text. Since there's no other navigation option, I sometimes find myself sending out emails with known errors because it's too hard to correct them without rewriting the whole thing.
Battery usage is pretty bad. Unless you turn off the wireless connection (which kind of defeats the purpose of having a phone), you're good for about one full day before your battery runs dry. This is fine if you remember to plug it in every night, but forget once and you're stuck. On the bright side, it does charge fine with a USB cord plugged into your computer, so charging at work isn't a big deal.
Overall, I wouldn't recommend a Storm right now. The next version could be much better with a few improvements, most notably fixing the occasional slowdowns. If you're considering one, I'd wait for version 2.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Back in the USA again
Australia is behind me once again. I was supposed to stay another week and go to New Zealand as well, but there was a change of work plans and I came home instead. Not complaining, despite all the snow here in Grand Rapids - it's always nice to be home.
I finally decided to join the herd and join Facebook. It integrates pretty well into Twitter so I can just keep on doing what I have been, and it'll update more or less automagically. I loaded up the few pictures I took on my latest Australia journey on Facebook. The feature where you can pick out people's faces is kinda nice, although with the photo quality I tend to take, it's unlikely to matter much.
Things are pretty quiet at the moment on both work and life fronts, so I intend to relax as much as possible in the next few weeks. Things will heat up soon enough in the April-June timeframe at work, so I'd better enjoy it while I can.
I finally decided to join the herd and join Facebook. It integrates pretty well into Twitter so I can just keep on doing what I have been, and it'll update more or less automagically. I loaded up the few pictures I took on my latest Australia journey on Facebook. The feature where you can pick out people's faces is kinda nice, although with the photo quality I tend to take, it's unlikely to matter much.
Things are pretty quiet at the moment on both work and life fronts, so I intend to relax as much as possible in the next few weeks. Things will heat up soon enough in the April-June timeframe at work, so I'd better enjoy it while I can.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Australia Feb 2009 - Week 1
Back in Australia again. This time I've got company, which is a nice change from my last trip, where it was just me with a few others dropping in from time to time. There's about 30 people from various other countries (US, India, New Zealand, South Africa) all visiting here this time.
I've been out every night so far, which is definitely not helping the weight, but it's fun to spend time with folks. Been to the Irish Pub across the street from the hotel twice already. The jet lag is still hitting me a little, but I expect this weekend I'll be more or less back to normal as far as sleep cycle. Not that I'll be staying out too late, since my normal bedtime is about 10 PM anyway.
A bunch of us are going to downtown Sydney this weekend, to another hotel for Friday and Saturday nights. Should be fun roaming aimlessly around downtown.
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Visit to Portland
Good times visiting with my family in Portland, OR the last few days. I got to spend a lot of time with my parents, my brother Mark, and his wife Lisa. They all have their own lives to tend to, of course, but Mark was on vacation and the others had light enough work schedules that we were able to spend quite a bit of time together. It's too bad I didn't get up to Seattle to see my other brother Josh and his family, but that would have been pretty tight timing. Better to take it easy than to add a bunch of stress and travel.
Mark, Dad, and I went out to the Tillamook Cheese factory on Friday, which is always a good time. We took a few pictures at their 100th anniversary celebration, which was a bit on the mild side since it was Friday, but I'm sure got more interesting on the weekend. Always fun to visit out there.
Now it's off to Australia for a couple of weeks for work, followed by a week in New Zealand. I'm hoping that there will be some time for activities outside work, unlike previous trips, since our deadlines have been pushed back a bit. There's a lot of people traveling in so there should be a good group available to roam around with.
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