I'm unable to bring myself to care about work today.

More on "Why Software Sucks"

So I found a null-pointer-dereference bug in Pango, one of the components required to build GTK (the graphical toolkit used by Gnome). It's one of those "oops, I put active code in an assert() statement" bugs, so it only shows up when compiling in release mode.

Fixed it, and decided to be a good citizen by filing a bug in the Gnome Buzilla system and sent in my patch.

Today, I got a reply essentially stating that it's my fault for trying to compile in release mode.

This is why software sucks. No, it's not because software is complex (which it is) or difficult to maintain (which it is). It's because people are either stupid, have a bad attitude, or both.

Happy Birthday, Carn-chan!

	src="http://images.google.com/images?q=tbn:SDKuVT3aBv8C:chiwaigallery.uhome.net/images/Happy_birthday_to_chicken.jpg">

Dimensional warp generator?

Hm... some curious spam I received:

Greetings,

We need a vendor who can offer immediate supply.
I'm offering $5,000 US dollars just for referring a vender which is
(Actually RELIABLE in providing the below equipment) Contact details
of vendor required, including name and phone #. If they turn out to be
reliable in supplying the below equipment I'll immediately pay you
$5,000. We prefer to work with vendor in the Boston/New York area.

1. The mind warper generation 4 Dimensional Warp Generator # 52 4350a
series wrist watch with z60 or better memory adapter. If in stock the
AMD Dimensional Warp Generator module containing the GRC79 induction
motor, two I80200 warp stabilizers, 256GB of SRAM, and two Analog
Devices isolinear modules, This unit also has a menu driven GUI
accessible on the front panel XID display. All in 1 units would be
great if reliable models are available

2. The special 23200 or Acme 5X24 series time transducing capacitor
with built in temporal displacement. Needed with complete
jumper/auxiliary system

3. A reliable crystal Ionizor with unlimited memory backup.

If your vendor turns out to be reliable, I owe you $5,000.

Email his details to me at: info@federalfundingprogram.com

Please do not reply directly back to this email as it will
only be bounced back to you.

Waste Heat

Tam and I are about to get a house, as you probably know. Part of me looks at this as owning my own home/domicile/kingdom, while the rest sees my own personal laboratory.

Anyway, I'm wondering why nobody has (apparently) looked at recovering the waste heat generated in a house. I don't think it's that negligible.

In the winter, it's pretty simple; everything is producing heat, so keeping things warm is rather easy.

In the summer, though... hm. You have a refrigerator pumping heat into your kitchen, trying to keep the stuff inside cold. Then there's the hot water heater and, when running, the dishwasher, stove, and oven, again putting heat into the house. Add to that the multitude of appliances (mostly computers in our case), performing computations while churning out household heat. Then we try to remove all this heat with an air conditioner. Grossly inefficient, I'd think.

If I could move the heat from the refrigerator, dishwasher, and computers and preheat the water going into the water heater, I'd be happier. Still getting the waste heat radiated from the water heater; I guess I could have an outdoor water heater used in the summer, indoors in the winter... though that's getting a bit expensive.

Of course, none of these appliances are designed for this purpose. Though they've started to make water cooling devices for computers, so I could use that (heh... running CAT 5e and cooling water through the house...).

More Mead/Feynman

Down deep, [Feynman] always wanted to do experiments himself. A hilarious account of how he was "cured" of this craving appears in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman. In the end, he had his wish. In 1986, he was asked to join the Rodgers commission to investigate the Challenger disaster. After talking to the technical people, who knew perfectly well what the problem was and had tried to postpone the launch, he was able to device an experiment that he carried out on national, prime-time TV. In true Feynman style, he sprang it full-blown, with no warning! In his personal appendix to the commission report, he concluded, "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

The day after the report was released was Caltech's graduation. As we [Feynman and Mead] marched together in the faculty procession, "Did you see the headline this morning?" he asked. "No," I replied. "What did it say?" "It said FEYNMAN ISSUES REPORT." He paused, then continued with great glee. "Not Caltech Professor Issues Report, not Commission Member Issues Report, but FEYNMAN ISSUES REPORT." He was a household word, known and revered by all people everywhere who loved truth. His own public relations were all about reality, and were, therefore, okay.

-- Carver A. Mead, Collective Electrodynamics

When Feynman said that a concept was "more mathematical" or "more abstract," he was not paying a compliment!  He had no use for theory devoid of physical content. In the Lectures on Gravitation, he says:

If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.

We called that "carrying rigor to the point of rigor mortis."

-- Carver A. Mead, Collective Electrodynamics

Attempting to recover my GPS unit myself, calling around to various pawn shops, etc. Well, first I need to find the serial number... hrm...

Planning on signing the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with SCO to review their evidence in their claim that Linux has infringed on their patents and copyrights. 'Twill be interesting.

From our wonderful IT people at Neolinear:

deathstar is currently experiencing some problems due to the high influx of requests from the timecard bots that poeple are using. As long as people continue to use these bots/scripts, the system will be very slow.

At the moment, the timecard system is down completely. I will post another messages when the situation is resolved.

We wrote the bots because the system was agonizingly slow to begin with, about 30 seconds to perform a transaction. Each working day requires at least three transactions (punch in, punch out, charge time). Thus, using the IT-provided web interface takes about 30 minutes to fill out the timecard.

The sad thing is we can't even blame it on a bad homebrew database implementation -- the backend is Postgres which, though not a terrific performer, is used in a lot of large-scale projects. Their web interface is just that craptastic.

Wake up. Get dressed and such. Check e-mail. Nothing interesting.

Ok, gather belongings, head out door. Open car. Observe lack of passenger side window.

Hmm. I'm pretty sure I had a passenger window yesterday. Along with a GPS unit, a few CDs, and change for tollbooths and such. And I'm darn sure I didn't have broken glass all over the floor of my car.

Call insurance. They say so sorry, but won't meet your deductible, we can't help you.

Call police. Dispatcher sends dumb rock in uniform over. Rock asks me for make, model, and serial number of everything. Attempt to explain that I know the title of the CDs, but not the manufacturer, and that CDs don't have a model or serial number. Rock insists that he needs model and serial number for the report.

Go to car wash place, vacuum glass out. Guy stops by, asking me if he can wash my car for me. I point out the glass and such. Guy still insists he can do a really good job.

Stop by Loafers for a sandwich. Clyde and Jen (?) entertain me and cheer me up. Much appreciated.

Call repair shops. Get quotes. Glass place says they can't help me until Monday. But but... ok. Monday's fine.

I don't get it.

autoconf is supposed to make platform incompatibilities go away (well, at least on Unix-ish systems). That is, if a program uses autoconf to build itself, I should never have to hand-edit a file, nor should I see crap like:

In file included from ../../boost/boost/format.hpp:55,
                 from ../../src/BoostFormat.h:9,
                 from formulamacro.C:43:
../../boost/boost/format/parsing.hpp: In member function `void 
   boost::basic_format::parse(const std::basic_string   std::allocator<_CharT> >&)':
../../boost/boost/format/parsing.hpp:359: use of `string' is ambiguous
../../src/LString.h:35:   first declared as `typedef class lyxstring string' 
   here
/opt/tools/gcc-3.2.1/include/c++/3.2.1/bits/stringfwd.h:60:   also declared as 
   `typedef struct std::basic_string, 
   std::allocator > std::string' here

Why must software suck so badly?

Shiny new icon. Yes, saw Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, a.k.a. Spirited Away, this weekend.

Spent my free time this extended weekend doing something entirely too geeky: developing a punchcard-programmed language. Except, well, nobody these days has a punchcard reader, so you put the card on a scanner and it reads the picture file.

The language runs on a Turing VM. Yes, that's right. You get a paper tape (initialised to all zeros or another state dictated by -- you guessed it -- more punchcards). Each instruction reads the value under the "head," and performs an action based on whether the value read was a one or a zero. Each action writes a zero or one, shifts the head left or right, and jumps to a new instruction.

I've even given it a 50's-esque flavour by outputting cryptic errors. E40 means card not found. E41 means card could not be read. And so on. (I'd output messages in EBCDIC rather than ASCII, but that may be going a bit too far...)

You can see the punchcards here (Acrobat format).

IT upgraded the Cadence installation I was working from this morning, costing me a bit of work. Even worse, the new install won't run, but they don't consider this a terribly high priority.

So, yeah. I can't get any work done for now. On the bright side, they're essentially paying me to surf the web.

Hrm. Maybe I'll go water the plants outside...

We're getting a house! So weird. But so cool!

A good way to really piss me off is to go behind my back on something. As happened today at work.

I'm such an ass

Names preserved to expose the guilty.


What started it all

From: John Kuhns
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:17:06 -0400
Subject: Abbreviating symmetry

Everybody,
 In the interest of consistency, when abbreviating symmetry,
the right place to chop it is between the two m's. That is,
shorten it to "sym" not "symm". You can find this stuff out
by looking a word up in the dictionary. They put dots between
the syllables (e.g. sym·me·try).

-John

>The following API methods have been added to neogeo:
>
>   setNetSymmStatus(netID, state)
>   getNetSymmStatus(netID)
>   getNetSymmStatus(netName)

And then...

From: Donald B. Reaves
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:20:54 -0400
Subject: Re: Abbreviating symmetry

Another engineer's opinion:

Seems like sym is a good abbreviation for symbol.  That would imply
that symm would be a better abbreviation for symmetry.

Don

Start the flames...

From: John Kuhns
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:29:31 -0400
Subject: Re: Abbreviating symmetry

I agree sym is a good abbreviation for both symbol and symmetry.
And in fact, whenever you abbreviate you run into this kind of
aliasing. So that's why we depend on CONTEXT to determine what
the abbreviation stands for. (Almost anywhere in NeoCell where
you see sym you can safely assume symmetry.) I think this dependence
on context is a better solution than resorting to unnatural
abbreviations. If you work in a context where both are equally
valid then maybe you can't abbreviate or clearly define which
abbreviations go with which terms.

-John

Adding fuel to the fire...

From: Lynwood E. Hines
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:42:50 -0400
Subject: Re: Abbreviating symmetry

I agree that we should be consistent with how we abbreviate.
I also agree that sym is not a good choice because it is ambiguous.
There is no "right" way to abbreviate this, dictionary or no,
because it's up to us to decide which letters we want to include or
exclude based on factors more significant than phonetic breaks.  I
personally prefer symm because it clearly is not short for symbol.
Reliance on context is dangerous as it assumes an unambiguous
context, which is not guaranteed.

I vote for using "symm" throughout the tool as the abbreviation for
symmetry.

LH

Into the fryer...

From: Phil K. Yoon
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 10:51:24 -0400
Subject: Re: Abbreviating symmetry

I want to discuss following words.

str -> is it for string or for structure?
const -> is it for constraint or for constant?

the list can go on and on...

Happy wording everyone :)

It's roaring now...

From: John Kuhns
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 11:05:58 -0400
Subject: Re: Abbreviating symmetry

"Lynwood E. Hines" wrote:
> I also agree that sym is not a good choice because it is ambiguous.

I disagree. In NeoCell (atleast in the backend), it is not ambiguous.

> There is no "right" way to abbreviate this, dictionary or no,
because it's up to us to decide which letters we want to include or
exclude based on factors more significant than phonetic breaks.

I also disagree with this statement.  There is a "right" way to
abbreviate just as there is a right way to spell. Wrong
abbreviations "look wrong" (atleast to me).

We could agree to not abbreviate symbol if anyone ever uses it.
The fact is, symmetry is used everywhere in our tool and symbol
almost nowhere. So why clutter the widely used abbreviation in the
off chance of someone somewhere getting the context wrong?

As Phil points out, context is already commonly used. Anytime you
overload a function you are depending on context. Context is a very
common way of delineating things. (PERL, for one, has many actions
dependent on context).

-John

I figured that BugZilla was the only way to resolve this dispute.

From: David Cuthbert
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 11:21:06 -0400
Subject: [Bug 1801] New: Incorrect abbreviations on machines

http://neozilla/show_bug.cgi?id=1801

           Summary: Incorrect abbreviations on machines
           Product: Neolinear IT
           Version: NeoIT-v1.0
          Platform: Other
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: B1_Blocker
          Priority: P3
         Component: Other
        AssignedTo: cappucci@neolinear.com
        ReportedBy: dacut@neolinear.com
         QAContact: cappucci@neolinear.com

As per the discussion on neocelldevel this morning, I've discovered that
a number of directories on our machines are misnamed.

All abbreviations must be context-sensitive and split on syllables. Thus,
the following directories are invalid and must be fixed:

/bin (from bi-nar-y) Change to /bi
/dev (from de-vice) Change to /de
/etc (from et cet-era) Change to /etcet
/lib (from li-brar-y) Change to /li
/misc (from mis-cel-la-ne-ous) Change to /mis
/mnt (from mount points) Change to /mount\ points
/sbin (from su-per bi-nar-ies) Change to /su
/tmp (from tem-po-rar-y) Change to /tem
/usr (from co-caine) Change to /co
/var (from lam-ba-da) Change to /lam

NeoCell's future install scripts will automatically correct these misnamings at customer sites.

Hm. Cleaning people came at 8:30 today. I was not prepared for that.

Can't complain, though. I mean, how much of a luxury is it to have a cleaning service? The very fact that we pay for such a thing banishes us to the Fifth Circle of Yuppiedom. And they do do a good job...

Grah. Hating anything to do with work right now for a number of reasons, most of which I cannot discuss here.

Closed captioning sponsored by Viagara

"We strive for perfection but when you're typing that fast, there are occasional mistakes. We regret the error."

-- ABC's Cathie Levine after a closed caption for an ABC News' Tuesday broadcast said Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan was hospitalized for "an enlarged prostitute" instead of an enlarged prostate, quoted in The Washington Post.

"He should be so lucky."

--Greenspan's wife, NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell, reacting to the "enlarged prostitute" in the Post.

With thanks to Terry Lambert

A coworker at Novell coined a term called "AI"; it didn't stand for
what you think it stands for normally, instead it stood for the
term "Artificial Importance", which applies to people who put
themselves between a goal and the people attempting to accomplish
it, in order to make themselves important by becoming bottlenecks.

Some good ways to get on my bad side:

1. Don't bother to enter the meeting you scheduled on my project into my calendar.


2. Be annoyed with me for not being prepared for a meeting I didn't know about.


3. Send an AE to our top three Japanese customers to do a half-hearted implementation of my project so they can get a "head start." Definitely don't tell me about the trip.


4. Make engineering decisions at the marketing level.


5. Insist on having me give a 1-2 hour presentation every week about my supposed progress.

Please, someone, cure me of my XEmacs addiction. And, no, Emacs is not a valid substitute. Neither is vi/vim/elvis/....

XEmacs is rather quirky, takes forever to start, and a huge memory pig. It doesn't work right when writing international documents. Depending on the system I'm on, it leaves pixel dust in random places.

But I can't break my addicition to font-lock-mode and indent-region. Other editors have font-lock equivalents (where it highlights various elements of my code in different colors). But I have yet to find a halfway decent substitute for indent-region.

Other editors have autoindent, where it inserts spaces at the beginning of a new line as you type. But that's a far cry from XE's indent-region, which analyzes the structure of my code (mostly looking for braces, but also has some intelligence as to some of the quirks of C/C++). If I tell it to do an indent-region on my code and it doesn't look right, 99.9% of the time it's due to a "fence mismatch" (e.g., too many '(' or ')', or trying to close '(' with ']', etc.). Compilers are horrible at picking out those kinds of errors and usually spew error messages to infinity and beyond. XEmacs is quite a time saver here.

I've tried to switch. gedit, kate, eclipse... even got an eval of SlickEdit. But like a crack addict, I keep coming back for my next XEmacs hit.

And, yes, I've even learned emacs lisp and have written extensions to make it behave as I like. For example, this causes F6 to insert the usual legal boilerplate that goes at the top of every file:

(defun insert-c-boilerplate ()
  (interactive)
  (let ( (filename (buffer-file-name)) )
     (insert (concat
"/** @file " (if filename (car (last (split-string filename "/"))) "") "\n"
" *  @brief \n"
" */\n"
"\n"
"//  Copyright (c) 2003 Neolinear, Inc.  All rights reserved.\n"
"//  $Id$\n"))))

(global-set-key 'f6 'insert-c-boilerplate)

Sickening, no? And yet I understand it. There truly is no hope...

Guaranteed instant headache.

Unless you're Ian, apparently.

Your next LJ entry

http://www.brunching.com/cgi/journalgenerator.cgi

Eh

I haven't gotten anything done lately. I've pretty much been doing nothing. Today was a loss. Current Mood: neutral No Comments

Starting NFS statd:                                        [  OK  ]
Starting keytable:                                         [  OK  ]
Initializing random number generator:                      [  OK  ]
Starting pcmcia:                                           [  OK  ]
Mounting SMB filesystems:  _


<sigh>

Oooh... VMWare 4 released today, and I qualify for a free upgrade. This pleases me greatly. :-)

Um... not much to report. Going to Chicago this weekend for my grandma's 80th birthday. Work is very busy. And we're celebrating Tam's birthday today.

Hm. Seems that another direct report to our CFO has been fired (our applications engineering manager, in this case).

In the last year, of the six people who worked for him, four have been fired (with cause -- not laid off). Not exactly a ratio to brag about...

Earlier, I sent out this:

As everyone recalls from the last employee meeting, one
of our goals this year is to announce ISO 9001 certification
status by DAC '03.  I'm pleased to announce that we're now in
the final stages of implementing our ISO 9001 procedures.

Since the ISO 9001 team has been getting a number of questions
on how this will affect our work, I've put together a brief FAQ:

1. Why are we attempting this?

A number of customers have been asking for ISO 9001 certified
software; traceability (the effects of a change) is greatly
enhanced when software development follows the ISO 9001 flow.

The EDA industry has been horribly lax at achieving this level
of certification.  Neolinear plans on being the first significant
EDA company to announce that it has achieved ISO 9001
certification, thus removing a significant roadblock to customer
adoption.


2. How will this affect developers?

As stated, ISO 9001 is all about traceability.  We have automated
tools (currently in beta testing before rollout) which will allow
us to monitor the effects of each commit made to our code bases.

This will require some cooperation on the part of the developers.
Starting next month, all commit comments must be formatted in the
 Traceability XML format.  It takes some getting used to, but
eventually becomes quite readable even without the traceability
tools.  An example is:


">http://www.w3c.org/traceability-1.0.dtd">
">http://www.w3c.org/traceability/schema">
  
    
    
    
      
        
      
    
    
      This is a sample commit comment.
    
    
      
    
  


In recent years, security has also become a significant issue.  All
such commits must be PGP signed (we have installed the Gnu PGP tools
in /opt/tools/gnupg-1.2.1 for your convenicence).


3. Does this only affect developers?

Of course not!  ISO 9001 is a company-wide initiative.  As you may
recall, the last few years have seen a rise in forging of company
press releases to manipulate stock prices.  We will be implementing
the PGP signing of all communications outside the company.  IT has
configured the SpamAssassin software to drop all incoming messages
that are not PGP-signed.

Software evaluations will also follow a rigorous ISO 9001 process.
During the evaluation process, we usually see a number of NeoCell
technology files and/or NeoCircuit device files undergo a number of
tweaks.  These changes will all be documented according to the above
format; AEs and Sales will be trained during the week before DAC.

ISO 9001 recommends (but doesn't require) that all file formats be
stored in the easily-parsed XML format.  The DAC timeframe is too
short for us to migrate; however, we will be migrating our file
formats to XML for NeoCell 4.0 and NeoCircuit 3.0.


4. I have a comment/suggestion about the process.

Great!  The Neolinear ISO 9001 team is eager to hear how the process
can be improved.  Drop us an e-mail at fool@neolinear.com.

I just now got this:

This message bounced when I tried fool@neolinear.com:

================================
[Name withheld]
Neolinear, Inc.
4801 South Lakeshore Drive, Suite 201
Tempe AZ 85283
[Phone number withheld]

How much of a guarantee is a pgp signature on a software change, considering 
that our internal network is hardly secure, with passwords being sent cleartext 
all the time?



================================
[Name withheld]
Neolinear, Inc.
4801 South Lakeshore Drive, Suite 201
Tempe AZ 85283
[Phone number withheld]

To which I sent:

[Name],

The security algorithm employed is very time-sensitive.  Thus, spoofing
such a commit message wouldn't work if, say, I signed it on *April 1st*
and used a one-time pad with an MD-5 digest tachyon.

Dave

Over the weekend, the air conditioning in our server room failed. The temperature rose to ~105°F, and the servers crashed. The jobs I had scheduled to run didn't.

This does not please me.

Did you see in the morning light?
I really talked, yes I did, to God's early dawning light
And I was privileged to be as I am to this day
To be with you. To be with you.
To be with you. To be with you.
To be with you.

Listen. I have arranged this display for... for all of you
people to... to come here this evening, and I... I know you have
been searched, but what you... you don't realise is that in the
back of it -- the Maltese Falcon -- I have it...

Ooh, right... Honda makes motorcycles, too.

My loyalties are divided. I swear by Honda engineering... heck, if they made a cereal, Honda Flakes would be the only cereal I'd buy.

Again, I have this odd craving to be on a motorcycle. I've never been on one, mind you, and up until, oh, a year or so ago I had a strong aversion to them. Then I started having dreams that I was riding on one and enjoying myself. Weird.

Anyway, today I spent a few minutes peeking at the Kawasaki web site. (Yeah, it's a rice rocket in my dreams -- the Harleys still don't appeal to me.) I'm a bit surprised how inexpensive they are (I figured that they cost as much as a normal car; you know, the whole women's swimsuit "less is more, you're paying for style" phenomenon). No, no, still not going to get one...

Polarbee, which Ninja model did you get? (I kinda like the Ninja 250R and 500R...)

Heading back down to VA this weekend; this time for a friend's wedding. Ooh, should be fun.

Shredding? Ew.

There are no good guys, there are no right answers.

Never attribute to conspiracies and cabals that which can be attributed to arrogance, ignorance, or sheer stupidity.

Excellent four-part essay in this week's Newsweek by Fareed Zakaria on the "Iraq" situation. Will post a summary and review later. (For now, you'll have to read it yourself to find out why I put Iraq in quotes.)

Writing the code module that just won't die for now...

Inexpensive camera for sale

This is all your fault, . :-)

One of our field support engineers filed a bug today saying that the splash screen should have a blue border.

I only wish I were kidding.

Why I'm Glad I Didn't Take That State Department Job

For those of you who are game theoretic types, you might enjoy this.

The whole Iraq fiasco has moved international diplomacy to a new arena... one with a big top tent and three rings.

The positions of the U.S. and France have become so hard-line that either side would lose face (and, therefore, diplomatic influence) should the U.N. vote definitively either way for or against a war. The only way out of this impasse is to have another nation -- which can't be any of the position-taking states: U.S., Britain, Spain, France, China, or Russia -- propose a compromise position.

Which is what we're seeing with Guinea, of all places. Yeah, the headlines now say "U.S. May Revise Draft Resolution on Iraq," but this idea of postponement (last I've heard was April 17th) was the Guinean Foreign Minister Francois Fall's initiative. This will buy time; I'm getting increasingly convinced that waiting Hussein out (exile? internal coup?) is the only way that will prevent diplomatic feathers from getting... well, not just ruffled, but outright plumed.

Why is diplomatic influence such a big deal? Is it just about egos? Well, no; the world is a fragile place, and it is the responsibility of stable nations to keep the balance. States and dictators that get out of line (such as Iraq, but also Burma, Indonesia, North Korea, Nicaragua, ...) need to be kept in check. This is done through a variety of means: (promises of) economic assistance, (threats of) economic sanctions, diplomacy, threats of force, and, regrettably, use of force. Sadly, if we were to do a 180 and back down on Iraq, we'd lose the ability to use threats of force. And, I'm sorry to say, we don't live in a world where straightforward diplomacy is 100% effective.

What depresses me is that the person playing this game the best right now is Hussein. It'd be an easy decision if he were fully cooperative and accounted for all the missing weapons, or if he completely blocked the inspectors and provided no evidence of weapons. Instead, he's baiting the West. If this were a trial by jury, yeah, all the evidence would point to his guilt, but there would be an inkling of reasonable doubt.

Anyway... yeah. I doubt that many diplomats assigned to the U.N. are getting decent sleep these days.

Why is it that printers are so adept at ignoring print requests? It seems like this is true everywhere I've worked or gone to school.

54 vodka /home/dacut/packages/x-docs: lpstat
Printer: Hp4000West@vodka (dest Hp4000West@Hp4000West)
 Queue: 3 printable jobs
 Server: pid 21580 active
 Unspooler: pid 21581 active
 Status: waiting for subserver to exit at 13:18:20.201
 Rank   Owner/ID                  Class Job Files                 Size Time
1      dacut@vodka+577              A   577 (STDIN)            3449678 13:15:38
2      dacut@vodka+595              A   595 (STDIN)            1579456 13:16:04
3      dacut@vodka+630              A   630 (STDIN)             481680 13:18:20

When I retire, I think I'll become a cat herder.

Eric Weisstein for President

Weisstein wrote the original MathWorld and continues to edit it. This is an invaluable resource for recalling all of those tricky math concepts that you were quizzed about on a midterm once upon a time and promptly forgot, but now find yourself needing to recall. Well, at least for us less than godly types who can't whip Bessel Functions of the First Kind out of our ass...

Well, today I checked in and was surprised to discover a few additional links. There is now a ScienceWorld which is a superset of MathWorld. Aside from the original mathematics category, there are catgories for physics, chemistry, astronomy, and a special biography section. Though far from being as complete as the mathematics category, I was very pleased to see a sections on Maxwell's Equations and the dear father of all electrical engineers.

Why am I being so lazy?

I know I can work harder, concentrate harder. I know that saying that the noise in the office is too loud is a pathetic excuse. I know that I can wake up earlier and get in to the office by 8:30 or 9.

I worked much harder in college. Four hours of sleep was a luxury then. I get far more than that now, almost double, and I still complain about being too tired.

Ok, time to work. I need three hours of solid productivity before my 3:00 meeting.

So IT demanded to downgrade my laptop because their boss (who's also the HR director and CFO) wanted it. Not that I really *need* a company laptop... I just had one because we had a bunch of old spares that nobody was using until now.

I was a tad puzzled... I told them that the laptop I had was a crappy Pentium 166, missing a few keys. No, no, they insisted; you have a PII 266 or 300, Toshiba only made that model with PIIs and PIIIs; but you can pick another laptop from our crappy spares pile. I double checked; yeah, sticker says it's a Pentium, and Windows insists the same. But I handed it over anyway.

I leafed through the pile of unwanted laptops. Found an IBM Thinkpad 600. Larger screen. Larger keyboard, no missing keys. No sticker, but I booted it up and... it's a PII 233. With more memory.

I'd ask for another downgrade, but I don't want to push my luck. :-)

Grah... grumble... mrah... lack of select() and poll() in Java... gack... threads... ugh...

Started Japanese class today. I should have been dead tired, having gotten five hours of sleep, getting to work at 8:30 am, followed by class from 6:30-9:00 pm.

But it was exciting! So many words coming back to me, just because I'm hearing the language again. Weird. Neural circuits that lay dormant for years are announcing their return.

And it's a non-credit class, so all the people attending are there because they want to be there. Fun.

God save the Queen!

Today marks the 51st anniversary of HM Queen Elizabeth II's accession to the throne.

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen!
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us;
God save the Queen!

We use Bugzilla at work to track various issues. IT started using it first, though now the product teams have started migrating their bug databases to it.

I could always tell when someone was about to be fired, though, because there would be a bug in there about revoking so-and-so's access, etc. I couldn't actually see the bug since those are restricted to the IT people only, but since that was the only use for restricted bugs, it was a fairly reliable indicator.

Well, until this morning. I noticed that bug 800 (we add about 10-20 bugs per work day) was restricted. Hm... interesting. I wondered who was going to be next. But then Matt, the NeoCircuit manager, told me that they've started restricting some of their bugs, mainly so that the field support people don't go into a whining tirade about how we're all a bunch of idiots for having such a bug in the first place and that we're not fixing it the way they think we should fix it blah blah blah. And, yep, turned out that 800 was the first such bug.

Fortunately, he added me to the Circuit group so I can see those bugs now and my previous firing indicator still works. Heh heh heh...

Grr. I'm tired of these projects. I want to be able to go away for a couple weeks, refresh myself, and *then* tackle them. Sadly, not an option.

Most of my peers are now managers; the guys who were managers before are now directors. I've adamantly refused to go that route, which may eventually burn me, but it's so far working out fine. Being in a non-product group, I'm regarded as some kind of technical consultant. Right now, I have managed to come up with a piece that's in high demand, though I'm struggling to get the design finalised. Once the product groups ship it, you see, I'm going to have to live with these decisions I make now.

I have a meeting tomorrow where I have to defend a lot of my design decisions in front of a few people who would like nothing more than to see my work axed. Bring your marshmallows and hot dogs; the flame fest begins at 2 pm EST.

Hm. I should probably get started on the powerpointing since it's already past midnight and all... Instead, I think I might play another game of Link Letters. :-)

Still trying to collect my thoughts post-Columbia.

If you're an engineer and this doesn't make you do some soul searching... well, you probably shouldn't be an engineer.

My condolences to all involved -- not only the astronauts and their families, but also the mission controllers, engineers, technicians, builders, planners, and others involved with the mission.

Right now, if I were working at NASA or a contractor, I'd be petrified. What if it were caused by something I had done? If I had spent a tad more effort on my designs -- exceeded the specifications by a tad more -- would those astronauts still be alive?

A 100% safe system is an engineer's dream. It's also unattainable. And that frustrates us to no end. But the struggle must go on.

Hm. It's past 2:30 am, and I was in bed up until a few minutes ago. I couldn't sleep because I kept thinking, "Those machines [at work] are idle. They could be running useful batch jobs overnight and have the results ready when I get in."

Of course, said jobs didn't start correctly, so I've now spent the last 45 minutes debugging them to get them started, further throwing off my sleep schedule...

Ah, well. I usually look like a zombie at work, anyway. Why should tomorrow be any different? :-P

Happy New Year!

Well, been awhile since I updated. Anyway...

Went down to Tamara's parents for Christmas and had a pretty good time. Though it was a tad difficult being away from my family. Ah, well. Tam gave me a nice octagonal mirror etched with cats in an oak frame. Also got some books, a Nerf football-ish thing that glows in the dark and has a propellor, a number of DVDs, etc.

Unfortunately, we all got sick. It was either salmonella or a Norwalk-like virus. I was back in Pittsburgh when I came down with it; after taking a bath on Thursday night, I started vomiting and then passed out. Not good. Aside from being dangerous, I made a mess of the bathroom. Recovered by Tuesday-ish.

New Year's was uneventful -- neither Tam nor I are keen on celebrating what amounts to an arbitrary calendar day.

Lots of organisational changes at work today. I still report to the same chain of command, but the other groups either report to a different VP or had managers inserted between the group managers and product teams. Our applications engineering group (customer support) now reports to VP/Finance rather than VP/Sales, which is strange and smells of a "no-confidence" vote against sales.

Got a memo asking me to attend a meeting at 3, called by Glen (my boss' boss, and manager of the electrical group). He wants to know why the physical group asked me to implement a program module a year ago yet still has no plans to actually use it. Bring your marshmallows, kids, because there will be some flames at this meeting...

Work has consumed me these last few weeks. I'm not entirely sure why or how. But I can't stop thinking about the projects I'm working on.

The scary bit is that I don't mind. It's like work has become some kind of escape (!). Even my birthday just kind of came and went.

Part of it is that I have made significant, measurable progress on said projects, which always brings a high. Like a drug addict, though, I keep going for that next high, postponing other commitments.

At least I got all my Christmas shopping done on time.

(defun clMatchPermutations (match_rules objects)
  (let ((match_args (car match_rules))
        (match_body (cdr match_rules))
        match_fun
        (match_results (tconc nil nil)))
    (setq match_fun (eval `(lambda ,match_args ,@match_body) (theEnvironment)))
    (mapcar (lambda (argset)
              (when (apply match_fun argset)
                (tconc match_results argset)))
            (cdar objects))
    (cdar match_results)))

One of those deep-thought days. As usual, I had interruptions every 15 minutes or so, but I managed to shrug them off. I managed to get hard-core pattern matching algorithms proven correct and implemented (though not quite debugged).

Usually when I write code I feel like I'm being lazy, as if writing code is not real work. I don't usually get the euphoric feeling that I do after grunging out a difficult line integral or somesuch. Today was a nice exception. I feel like I did bona fide intellectual work.

Name that list!

France	167
Netherlands	158
Denmark	152
Canada	150
Britain	149
United States	138
New Zealand	135
Spain	121

dac is ideal for high performance applications

dac is a suite of components and controls that are data aware by design rather than merely data bound
dac is designed as a secure environment
dac is not responsible for lost or damaged files
dac is a caring school
dac is housed
dac is my second home
dac is a scientific society of the ministry of information
dac is a dac is a dac
dac is placed after an adc
dac is part of DAC Group Ltd which also owns a security guarding company, an alarm company, and a CCTV company
dac is also continuing to feature the embedded systems showcase highlighting vendors of embedded systems
dac is similar to the whole abc
dac is back
dac is to set the asd threshold voltages
dac is updated and disappears
dac is very thin [don't I wish]
dac is shown
dac is used to convert a parallel digital input
dac is david andrew clayton
dac is enabled or disabled
dac is os/2
dac is then processed or conditioned to produce the required output signal characteristics
dac is in the range of 2%
dac is now complete
dac is patent pending technology that stands for dynamic adaptive compiler
dac is pleased to be a part of the give the gift of sight program
dac is good news for MUNI
dac is authorized under the agreement
dac is also the first fully designed integrated circuit
dac is stored into counting registers formed from parallel data entry up/down synchronous counters
dac is a critical part of the signal chain
dac is a new festival of audio and visual arts located in Cambridge, UK
dac is also available in horizontal mount versions with overall height of less than 0
dac is growing and taking on a larger caseload
dac is India's national initiative in high performance computing and has been engaged in research and development
dac is insulated with PE foam skin which exhibits only 45 pf/m
dac is too small
dac is the primary communications vehicle between the home medical equipment industry and Cigna Healthcare Medicare Administration
dac is shown mounted in the upper forward part of the right window
dac is implemented and can be used for offset corrections
dac is properly configured in $cyril_conf/serial
dac is a direct out
dac is an association specially for abyssinians and somalis
dac is seamless from top to bottom
dac is transferred and how is it calculated?
dac is available to assist us companies interested in developing export programs
dac is fully compatible with this process and will automatically detect if a cd disk is hdcd encoded and then perform the correct decoding
dac is proud to support
dac is built using a 0
dac is substantially more sophisticated and costs more to build
dac is driving a servo amp
dac is composed of seven members
dac is less flexible
dac is expensive because of complicated adjustments and support circuitry
dac is a dual high speed differential digital to analog converter specified to operate from a nominal +1
dac is binding
dac is to create a consolidated float data set usable by scientists for
dac is a non profit organization that is dedicated to providing the children of our neighborhood with quality sports programs
dac is immediately on your right
dac is the new crystal 4390 24/96k
dac is entirely minimalist in form and function

Somehow my deadlines have mysteriously morphed without anyone bothering to tell me.

I'm working on [insert secret project here], and was supposed to deliver a rough usage model by Friday and the first-cut at a spec by December 16th. Somehow, this has morphed into delivering an implementation tomorrow.

Um... huh?

What's worse is that my customers are not internal. Cadence is expecting this, well, now-ish.

Who's responsible for this fiasco? I'd like to choke the living daylights out of him.

Back!

Back from the honeymoon on PEI. Pictures forthcoming.

But I'll leave you with this note: if you're an innkeeper, do not let an engineer have the suite with the jacuzzi tub.

Hm. Building Mozilla for 64-bit Suns takes a long time. As in I started last Wednesday; built during the wedding; and it's still building today.

The builds are getting interrupted due to various bugs in Mozilla itself (so I have to edit the code and figure out why the compiler is rejecting it). But, still... this is on a farm of 40 Sun Blade 100s.

My Athlon box at home runs circles around a farm of 40 Blades.

That is just pathetic, Sun.

I'm married!

And I'm so happy! I've never been so happy in my life.

Despite last minute fiascoes, everything went off almost perfectly. It was kinda cold and wet on Saturday so we had the ceremony inside, in the backup room. Ah, well. We still got to take pictures outside and all of my friends and relatives got to see the fall colors in their fullest.

And, wow, do I have some terrific friends and relatives! Everyone was so helpful and cheerful. It sounds like everyone enjoyed the rehearsal dinner, reception, and post-wedding barbeque we had. About 95 people attended!

And, of course, I now have a wife whom I love and adore very much.

I don't want to work on this anymore.

This problem has no solution because it's subjective. So I'm writing a metasolution through which people can write their own quasisolutions. Or something like that. Yes, it's about as exciting as it sounds.

I see these electronic design kits for what they are: a lot of patchwork built upon patchwork with tiny pieces of string and small staples barely holding the whole thing together. Any time I try to build something on top of it, another part comes toppling down. After awhile, it gets very frustrating.

I want to scrap the entire thing and rearchitect it myself from scratch. Sadly, that's about as practical as the phone company ripping out all the wires at once and replacing them with fiber. Or the waterworks digging up all the streets in Pittsburgh at once, removing all the rusty old pipes, and laying down new pipe.

Rome wasn't built in a day. But this software sure looks like it was.

I get no respect.

scaryr: Oh, I know what to name your eventual children, by the way.
kangadac: Uhoh.
scaryr: You can have two girls and a boy or three girls.
scaryr: Ada, Pearl, and Pascal/Pascale.

The board of directors are here, and we had to hob-knob with them during lunch. Add that to a 110 minute meeting at 9 am this morning, and today should suck.

But it doesn't, because I got my Beauty and the Beast DVD from Amazon today! Woo hoo!

That's gotta hurt...

I had a 2:15 appointment to interview someone for a testing position. Oddly, I found John, the guy who was supposed to interview him before me, sitting at his desk.

Me: "John, did you trade with someone else?"
John: "No... X and Y both decided this morning that he was all talk."
Me: "Did we at least take him to lunch?"
John: "I dunno... they decided this around 10 am."
Michele (office manager): "Oh, we did. But then we took him to the airport five hours early."

Heh... how bad do you have to be that you don't even make it through half of the interview?

Also, I'm not sure what's happened, but the most recent updates to Google have caused it to start sucking ala Altavista. I'm getting a ton of irrelevant links and 404s on the first page, and frequently on the first link. Suddenly, clicking on "I'm feeling lucky" doesn't seem such a great idea...

I haven't updated in awhile out of fear that my entries would be too angsty.

That fear hasn't abated, but oh, well...

Less than three weeks to the wedding. I'm getting a tad weary of being asked if I'm excited. I'm not excited. I'm fretting. People say that no matter what happens, it'll turn out fine. Then they proceed to tell me the things they would've done differently. Gee, thanks.

Work is getting more stressful. My usual workload has tripled, mainly because there are a few others who are bored and have decided to get their noses into things that I've worked or am working on.

I can't find my cell phone for the life of me. The last time I used it was at my desk at home. It's neither there, nor in my backpack, nor at work.

My car needs its 30k mile overhaul. As if I have the time to do that now.

To access my 401(k) plan information, I need a PIN number. However, to access their customer service representatives to get a PIN number, I need a PIN number. Anyone see a problem with this?

To-do list, redeux

Ok, let's see...

• Get tuxedo measurements from groomsmen


• Try to contact the few people who didn't receive invites because they've fallen off the face of the planet


• Finalise caterer contract


• Make some prototypes of constraint templates


• Get noise canceling headphones


• Give Tam feedback on honeymoon plans


• Order rings


• Get marriage license

I am back.

And I'm exhausted.

My grandfather passed away at 1 pm on Saturday. I'm glad that I could be at his bedside.

The funeral was yesterday. I was one of the pallbearers; it was an honor.

I didn't touch a computer for a week, and didn't miss it one bit. Though now I have 450 emails to catch up on, and don't have a clue as to what's going on in the outside world. I also am now way behind on wedding planning. I need to get back into my routine.

I think that things are going ok with my family. They're figuring out what to do with my grandmother, who needs near-round-the-clock care.

Drove back from Chicago yesterday; got to Pittsburgh around 1:20 am.

Most of all, though, I miss my grandfather.

... well, to-do list will have to wait. I have to head out to Chicago... looks like my grandfather only has a couple days left. :-(

My to-do list

Things seem to be cropping onto this faster than I have been taking them off as of late. Not that I couldn't keep up; I'm just being lazy.

This is my attempt to break my laziness through public humiliation.

• Get tuxedos


• Get addresses for remaining invites that were either returned or never sent


• Call caterer (where's my menu?)


• Get prescription filled


• Water plants


• Make curry


• Implement MTM query functions for NeoCell


• Make some prototypes of constraint templates


• Get wedding program to Pastor Janet


• Meet with Tom regarding professional development


• Get noise canceling headphones to drown out loud damn annoying tech writer who sits in front of my office (just had to shut the door... grr...)


• Make honeymoon plans more firmish (plane tickets?)

I've just about had it with Linux.

It's not as great as the proponents claim. I can't believe an environment this buggy and architecturally flawed will ever be accepted into the mainstream. The NFS implementation is god awful... it's been losing my home directory every 10 minutes this morning. (No problems from our Sun or HP boxen.)

And the device drivers... eaugh.

I'm close to the snapping point and either installing FreeBSD or writing my own microkernel system from scratch.

Garrrgh!

It's Saturday... the band is playing... honey, could you ask for more?

Today's A Prairie Home Companion was a reply of a May 2000 show they did at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

Just listening to Garrison Keillor describe Pasadena made me miss it. And Caltech, as well.

And I'm starting to enjoy Nickel Creek (one of the guest bands on the show).

The social aspect to IRC and fora...

Ok, Josh, post your comment *here*. :-) I'm prolly going to take some flak just for talking about this, but here goes.

It's difficult, if not impossible, to put out an entertainment product (e.g., Avalon) and manage the fan forums (and by this I mean discussion boards, e-mail lists, IRC channels, chat rooms, ...).

Managing a forum when you're the creator makes it (seem) official, regardless of whether this is intended. If (when) the people on it get out of hand, it makes your product seem less polished. Take steps to correct this, and you're accused of trying to stifle "free speech" or manipulate people or other nasty things. It's ends up being a lose/lose situation.

Which brings us to the #avalon "problem." It (the version on Nightstar) was once the official real-time discussion forum. Of course, some people hung around quite frequently, and a community/clique (you choose the connotation) formed. Time passes. Those people have now gotten to know each other. Any newcomer is going to feel, well, like a newcomer. He/she will be at a disadvantage. Some people enjoy being in those shoes, but many do not. If the channel is still "official," this presents an image problem...

I'm beginning to understand why products which have garnered a fanbase -- whether it's Star Wars, Macintoshes, Porches, Sunbeam Toasters, etc. -- do not attempt to have any sort of "official" fan forum.

Now, Keenspot provides a forum for webcomics hosted there. I think it's best to prevent any sort of community/clique developing there for the reasons listed above. But people are going to want to discuss and form social groups, so it's good to provide links to unofficial, fan-run areas (with a huge "this is not official" disclaimer). If someone is turned off by one group, he/she can just go to another. If none of them are appealing, a new one can be formed...

With regard to the Keenspot-hosted Avalon forum, I think it's too late. If Josh tries to move it off-site, he'll be accused of those things mentioned above. Hopefully, this won't be too much heartache since Avalon is due to run its course soon.


Josh's earlier comment (posted to the previous entry) was along the lines of, "I thought that I was the only one with the thorn in my side, and that was 4-5 months ago" [i.e., it's not a thorn in his side anymore] [Sorry, Josh, I've lost the actual text! Let me know if I'm misremembering.]

Anyway, the impression I've gotten is that others want the connection removed because {they don't want it mistaken for an official forum, they don't like Josh, much of what takes place isn't Avalon-specific, just because, ...}. My intent was to provide a technical solution to the "you can't rename an IRC channel" issue. If people want to keep the #avalon name, fine by me.

It has become clear that the naming of the #avalon IRC channel has become a thorn in the side of many.

Before, it was mentioned that renaming a channel is not technically feasible (e.g., infrequent visitors might miss the announcement that it had been moved). However, I believe I have come up with a solution to this problem.

Visit #test30 on irc.nightstar.net. The ChannelMover bot will inform you that the channel is no longer in use and mention its successors. You will receive in invite to join #test50 (which on some IRC clients will cause you to automatically join the new channel). After a short delay, you will be kicked off of #test30.

This, of course, does not answer the question of what #avalon (on irc.nightstar.net) should be renamed to.

Questions and comments regarding the technical aspects of this are welcome (post a comment to this entry). Anything else will be deleted.

Hm. Interesting morning.

Been doing some build system setup here, trying to reduce the amount of network traffic going to our poor overloaded server. Problem is, compiling a compiler takes an awful long time...

Went to Waterworks Mall to deposit a check and do some browsing (Barnes and Noble, Radio Shack, etc.). Lots of police and media at the Ames store there; seems that an employee was stabbed while trying to stop a shoplifter. No ambulance when I got there, so it must have happened well before I arrived.

Got an Uncle Sam's pizza cheesesteak sub for lunch. Mmm... Not good for my waistline, of course, but my stomach is in bliss.

Tam's sick. We have the filters running full blast in case it's allergies, but it sounds like it's more than that. :-(

Intel Reduces Q3 Sales Forecast

Santa Clara, CA (DACWIRE) - During a mid-quarter analyst meeting today, Intel
Corporation executives revised their third-quarter sales forecast further
downward in a widely anticipated announcement.

Citing weak demand for personal computers and consumer items, Intel spokeman
Mark Wittenberg stated that the company hopes to sell "six, maybe seven,
Pentium 4 processors this quarter" after slashing prices on their main
product by up to 28%.

Sales of server and low-end processors followed the trend, with Celerons
targeted for eight units sold. Wittenberg declined to forecast sales for
their Itanium server products, but many analysts note that most server
vendors are refusing to use the chip even for free.

Hewlett Packard, which assisted in the early stages of Itanium's development,
reportedly "won't even touch it even when Intel is offering them $10/chip"
to incorporate them in their servers, according to Merrill Lynch analyst
Joe Osha.

Should sales of the Itanium chip continue to remain flat, Intel may be faced
with a tough decision regarding warehouse space. "We're evaluating our
options, but burying them in the Nevada desert seems to be our leading
choice," said Wittenberg.

A call seeking comment from Atari, which faced a similar decision in 1984, was
not immediately returned.

Surprisingly, this actually generates results:

158 sydney /usr/src/linux: find . \( name \*.c -o -name \*.h \) -exec grep -l 'NO!' {} ';'
./drivers/char/ftape/lowlevel/fdc-io.c
./drivers/net/skfp/pcmplc.c
./drivers/scsi/qla1280.c

Signs that it is going to be a bad Mondy

1. You realize that your car payment is due today (and the bank is an hour away).


2. You attempt to print a check for said payment, but the printer is out of color ink and refuses to print anything, including an entirely black-ink check.


3. You cut yourself while shaving. Badly enough, in fact, to require a band-aid on your face.


4. You dress for work, putting on a button-down shirt, dockers, black socks... and accidentally put sneakers on without realizing it.

Yes. I'm pretty much resigned to writing this Monday off.

Miserable day here. Very wet and rainy, amongst other things.

Computer wouldn't boot this morning. I'm awfully tempted to dump Win 2k -- it seems to get less stable with each supposed critical fix. This morning, winlogon wouldn't run (UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP blue screen). Grr.

We're on the second (and thankfully final) day of our engineering and sales meeting. These suck, because they're planned by sales. They're awful at planning, and what they do plan is utterly pointless. Our group found out that we were supposed to give at update about 5 minutes before the actual presentation.

Heading down to Virginia today. Hopefully the rain won't affect traffic on the turnpike. Heh. Who am I kidding? :-)

Playing financial whiz this evening. Or pretending to...

All too often, I get the feeling of, "Dang, are they billing me again, already?" when reviewing my statements. But every time I go and check, sure enough, it's time for them to bill me again.

Except this time.

I discovered that my web site operator (the folks who host kanga.org on a machine somewhere in the bowels of New Jersey) have been double billing me for the last six months, i.e., billing me twice a month instead of once. It's a small enough amount that it's slipped under my radar screen.

I think it's a bona fide error, though, no malicious intent. There were some changes to my account around that time when it started, so I'm guessing it's operator error. We'll see what they say...

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

;;

;;  journal.txt

;;  dac's journal entry

;;

;;  Copyright (c) 2002 Neolinear, Inc. All rights reserved.

;;  $Id: journal.txt,v 1.1 2002/08/19 13:22:30 dacut Exp $

;;

 

Yes.  I think work has finally gotten to me.



 

Don't much feel like working, so I'm ripping CDs to MP3s. I have to say, though, that the LAME encoder used by default in CDEx is, well, lame. Fast, yes. But, oy, does it produce an annoying ringing sound.

Using Blade instead, which is much slower but higher quality. Also allows higher bitrates.

I also have an annoying pain in my gut that's been there since last night. It does seem to be focused on my right side, but I wonder if that's just my imagination since someone I know just had his appendix removed. Seems to be diminishing... if this keeps up, though, I'll have to see a doctor or something.

Bah. I'm a wimp. I'm typing this from work.

Hm.

"Today's air pollution forecast for Pittsburgh: Air Quality: Unhealthy. Pollutant: Ozone." It's also supposed to get up above 90. Ugh.

Maybe I should try working from home today. Hrm...

Return from Paradise...

Well, I'm back. Interestingly, while I was in the air on US Airways, they filed for bankruptcy. Fortunately, they didn't force us off the plane at 33,000 feet.

Reunion was terrific! Sooo many people I haven't seen in ten years. They're all doing well; most are married with one or two kids. Most are still in the San Diego-ish area, but somewhat northward -- many people are fleeing to Temecula due to absurd housing costs in Escondido (where I'm from, about 40 min north of downtown SD).

Just as before, the cheerleader/football people were pleased to see us geeks, and vice-versa. I guess we had an atypical class in that regard. A lot of them were taking honors classes and such, and certainly did not fit the "dumb jock/airheaded cheerleader" stereotype. This pleases me.

Sandy Eggo!

Heading off to visit my ol' stomping grounds. It's my high school class' 10th reunion.

Yes, that makes me an old geezer to many of you. But I'll be an old geezer in San Diego, so :-P

Wedding invitations: done!

Well, the first batch, anyway, which is everyone we had addresses for. We were over the 1 oz limit, so they're all going out with 60c netstamps rather than the 37c normal stamps.

Lowest zip code: 02139
Highest zip code: 99762
Shortest distance: 0.3 miles, zip code 15232
Longest distance: 7,503 miles, Okinawa, Japan 901-2303

Got my Lord of the Rings DVD today! Yay!

Morning meeting went ok. Jon (NeoCell chief) pointed out some deficiencies in my (very abstract, very high-level, very rough draft) design, which is a good thing. Not what I wanted to hear, of course, but sometimes what I want is not what is good for me. This feedback will help me to refine the design.

Nonetheless, the idea is fundamentally sound, or so it seems. Unusual, yes, and there's a large risk of customers refusing to adopt the idea. It could be a big flop. But what invention that was worth a damn did not have such a risk?

Of course, the riskiness of an idea is not an indication of its goodness. As mathematicians would say, riskiness is a necessary but not sufficient property of a good idea.

I'm not feeling well, and I don't know why.

I've been jittery the last few days, butterflies-in-the-stomach-type of a feeling. On the plus side, this has suppressed my appetite a bit. I'm guessing it's stress-related combined with my excessive intake of coffee.

I'm proposing a fairly dramatic shift in direction of some projects at work, which brings the necessary politicking. Campaigning for a technological decision is not unfamiliar territory to me, but it still wears me down. And then there are the wedding-related items, a trip next weekend, trying to play money-manager with stocks, ... oy.

At least it looks like we're going to get some desperately-needed rain here today:

The National Weather Service says severe thunderstorms may develop
over the head of the Ohio region this afternoon and tonight.  Wind
gusts could exceed 60 mph and hail could reach 1 inch in size.  If 
rain amounts go over 2 inches, there will be ponding of water in  
locations with poor drainage. 

The high heat and humidity will help develop scattered thunderstorms  
by late afternoon. National Weather Service Pittsburgh expects a  
front, from the Great Lakes, will move slowly southward across the  
head of the Ohio region tonight... and this may help storms to become  
better organized and severe.  

Consequently, the skywarn net may need to be activated late this  
afternoon and tonight.  Stay tuned for updates.

I've given up trying to use the Sun workstation on my desk at work. It's painful. Sun equipment used to be prime stuff; not anymore. The cheap PC next to it is much faster.

Though not as fast as it could be. I opened up the disk defragmenter, but, surprisingly, it didn't look like there was much fragmentation. Well, at first. There were only a few spots of blue on the "Analysis Display," while a good 95% of it was solid red.

Then I saw the legend: "(Red) = Fragmented files (Blue) = Contiguous files". Heh... oops.

My headphones broke today. This wouldn't normally be a newsworthy event, except (a) they were a gift from my parents, and (b) I quite liked them, as they were very comfortable to wear and produced a nice sound.

On the up-side, I think I can fix them with a dab of superglue.

I seem to be in a devil-may-care attitude about work as of late. Not that I don't do it. Just that the code I'm writing is architecturally clean, and I'm refusing to bend to our product teams' demands to pollute it so they can integrate it more easily.

dacut@hogwarts.ac.uk

How cool would that be?

Mm. Rain. I like a good rainstorm. Though I might shut down my computer after I write this, since it's a thunderstorm.

Purchased a cheap GPS unit today (should arrive Tuesday-ish). I've wanted to do some mapping for awhile now. Combined with the old laptop I acquired at work and some home-brew software in the works, I should be able to make my own maps, figure out where I got lost, etc. I enjoy wandering.

Not much else. I'll spare my few readers the usual rants about the screwed-up-ness of the NeoCell team and corporate life in general.

The Dow Jones is down more than 250, and was down 300 at one point. Gulp.

Yet I reaffirm my position by putting in a buy order (in an index fund which tracks the market). Either Tam and I will profit at others' irrational market fears when this all blows over, or the U.S. will collapse and any money we have will be worthless in the market, in the bank, or in our pocket.

When viewed this way, there's no question about what to do. Buy. Why everyone else is selling puzzles me.

Anyway... back to work, and no more day trading today. :-)

Solaris to me: "Idiot. This disk doesn't have the magic number."
Me: "Um... ok. Put it on."
Solaris to me: "Sure. Which of the 27 format commands would you like to try?"
Me: "Well, uh... how about this /sbin/fdisk thing?"
Solaris to me: "WRONG ANSWER!"
hee.
head hurty worse
Me: "Uh... how about /sbin/fdisk /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0?"
Solaris to me: "WRONG ANSWER!"
Me: "Uh... how about /sbin/newfs /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s0?"
Solaris to me: "WRONG ANSWER! Seeing a pattern here?"

Been awhile since I've posted. I've tried a number of times, but never quite got the motivation to finish an entry.

Anyway, finally got the wedding invitation paper. Now the onus is on me to get them done. Which means we need to figure out wording, finalise guest lists, etc.

I wanted to go visit my brother in Germany some extended-ish weekend in August, but it looks like the >$1500 plane fares will prevent that. Blah.

On the other hand, I did get my ticket for San Diego today. Well, almost. I have a voucher from USAirways for $105 (from a ticket I purchased but never used). You would think that USAirways' booking would be able to deal with that. Nope. I have to go to the ticket counter at the airport today. Bleh.

At least the voucher brings down the airfare to a reasonable level. USAir has the only direct flights from Pittsburgh to San Diego (by virtue of Pittsburgh being one of their hubs), but they charge quite a bit extra for them. It would've been cheaper ($340 vs. $475) for me to fly through Chicago on a comibination (!) of United and American flights. With the voucher, the difference is only $30, which doesn't bother me. I like direct flights, but not at a 30% premium.

Oh. We (Neolinear) made money last quarter! A lot ($1.7M). This surprised us, given the economic downturn. And we didn't even have to cook the books. :-) Even our stingy CFO said it was a good quarter.

On the downside, I've managed to crash Cadence about five or six times between yesterday and today. That's worse than our tool, and they (supposedly) have a real product validation team. EDA tools suck. We make Microsoft look good. Heck, we even make Sun look good.

I win. For once.

Yesterday, I received permission to use a private Cadence programming interface. This allows me to write code that is better integrated with their stuff and saves me about 8 months worth of work trying to hack together my own equivalent interface.

Today, I just got an additional pair of golden handcuffs slapped on me. Apparently, we had an excellent quarter so they tossed a few thousand stock options my way. It's all on paper, we're not publicly traded, and I don't fully vest on this new set until July 2006, but still... this pleases me.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one who appreciates a clean, consistent architecture.

If the NeoCell team were to build a house, you would have the most immaculate, well-built hallway ever. Every right angle would be 90.0000 degrees. The ceiling would be exactly 10 feet. The walls would be Pantone White 773, with the lighting set so that you could see where you were going, without a dark corner in sight.

But every room off the hallway would be in a different style, with trap doors looming, gaping holes in the ceiling. Doors would be broken off of hinges. To get to the master bedroom, you would need to enter the bathroom, crawl through the medicine cabinet into the kitchen, watch out for the exposed wiring near the sink, and open the refrigerator door to get there. When you finally got there, you would find that someone had parked their car on the bed.

The ironic bit is that the subcontractor for each room would be extremely proud of his work. There would be no inspection; after all, each subcontractor was hand-picked and to have his work second-guessed would be an insult and a wasted expense. A year down the line, the general contractor would wonder why he can't seem to sell that house.

Grr... Injured my left middle and ring fingers today, making it difficult to type.

Tam and I had fun swimming, though. We were out on Lake Arthur, and came across a huge slab of concrete about four feet below the water. We puzzled at first: was it an old parking lot, or boat ramp?

Tam finally figured it out: it was old U.S. 422. Yep... they just made the lake right over it, without bothering to remove the highway itself.

The injury came while I was clearing away algae trying to find the yellow diving line... I jammed my fingernails right into the slab. Ouch.

Tam and I went to Moraine State Park yesterday and went swimming in Lake Arthur. Muchos fun.

And then I went to Dick's Sporting Goods today, because they were having a sale. And bought, of all things, a wetsuit. Hopefully, this will enable me to continue swimming through September or even October. Oooh...

Well, not this October. I'll probably be frazzled with last-minute wedding stuff. But, eh, it'll be there, waiting for me... :-)

Heh... yes, it exists. RFC 3251: Electricity over IP