Just out of curiosity...

Hm. We had a severe thunderstorm pass right over us, with a lightning bolt striking our house and/or the ground nearby. Talk about loud -- ouch! No damage to the house itself, but various electronics got fried. They were on surge protectors, but this was a fairly direct hit. Lost the server and TV, and had to reboot the stove (!) -- well, power cycle it, that is. (It has a microcontroller to control the oven, and time/temperature are set and displayed digitally.)

I'm sure there will be some others that I haven't discovered yet.

Up side: That much less junk to move to Seattle. :-)

Alabama invades Massachusetts. Hilarity ensues.

Edit: for those who are curious about how state route signs should appear.

It's official. I'm Amazonified.

Looking forward to heading out to Seattle.

In Seattle now, visiting Amazon. They've put us up at the W, an ultramodern, ultratrendy place with origins in New York. I don't think I've felt as unhip in my life as I have staying at this place. (When I checked in, I asked the folks at the registration desk where the registration desk was -- I honestly thought it was a bar.) I think we both have been taken by Seattle, though, and I by Amazon. At this point, it's pretty much a sure thing.

I've put up a couple pics from Rome. First, see my brother, Myke, and his girlfriend, Lisa, in Orvieto:


Oh, and the Vatican's Swiss Guards don't like it when you stop to take their picture and don't want people posing with them, as this family found out:


Unless, of course, you're cute and female:

And... Statesified

Back in the good ol' US of A.

Let's see... Thursday: Hung out with Maya in Rome. Visited Palatine Hill and the Colosseum, walked through Campidoglio, lunch in Piazza Competelli, saw Caravaccio paintings in the cathedral (name?) in Piazza del Popolo, had excellent gelati on via del Prefetci (check?), and located the guys who are displaying/selling her art at the festival on the banks of the Tevere. Dinner was at the academy that night.

Friday: Went to the Vatican Museums, met up with my brother, had lunch at a pizza-by-the-slice place near the S. Anna restricted entrance (he did some research at the Vatican while I was at the museums), then the Pantheon, and back to the academy for dinner.

Saturday: Slept in a bit (oof, was I tired). Then took a bus to the Vatican to mail a few things off, met up with my brother at the Spanish Steps, lunch nearby (ravioli with cheese and pine nuts... mmm...), Santa Maria degli Angeli just off Piazza della Republica, saw another protest, then gelati in Trastevere, and a farewell dinner again in Trastevere. Like most nights, I hung out at the terrace at the academy talking with friends and drinking excellent wines far later than I should have. Unlike most nights, I had to get up less than three hours later to...

Sunday: Woke up at 4:30 am to catch a 7 am flight from Fiumacini. Connected in Frankfurt and Toronto before heading back to Pittsburgh -- a total of 19 hours of travelling. As usual, immigrations and customs officers were polite and courteous with the notable exception of the U.S. officials.

More from Italia

Wednesday: Ended up taking just a day trip up to Orvieto (in Umbria). Went through Etruscan caves, the cathedral there (which was fairly distinctive from Rome -- apparently, zebra stripes were the in thing back then in that region), and a couple art galleries. Had lunch at a fairly good place whose name escapes me, but the dishes I wanted were out and I accidentally ordered roughly the same thing I had last night for dinner (filet with peppercorns).

Had dinner back in Rome at an Ethiopian place. Still savoring it.

Three rolls of film left, three days left.

Quick update from Italia

Sorry, I only have a few minutes before bed. I want to jot this down mostly for my memory. No pics yet; I'm doing this trip entirely on 35 mm.

Sunday: Got here. Took train to Trastavere, seemed like SoCal at first from the vegetation and highways. Then I saw a few houses and cars and noticed that they were somewhat different. On the third stop, the accordians boarded.

Visited Santa Maria del Trastavere, San Clemente, San Giovanni del Laterno. Hung out at a barbeque at the American Academy (where I'm staying, and where my brother is a fellow).

Monday: Roman Day. Torre Argentina, Piazza Venetzia, ruins, Fora Romano, houses beneath Ss. Giovanni e Paolo. After dinner, hung out with Academy folks and drank more wine.

Tuesday: Vatican Day (on my own). Did the art tour of St. Peter's basilica, visited John Paul II's tomb, attended a mass in St. Peter's where the choir was a children's choir from San Diego. Had hoped it would be in Latin (which I can vaguely follow), but it was mostly in Italian.

Later today (Wednesday): Going up north toward Umbria/Tuscany. Probably will spend the night there.

Food: excellent. Wine: even better. Having access to crystal clean water from the various spigots installed all over Rome (thanks to the aqueducts) on my long foot treks: totally awesome.

Traffic: absolutely crazy. I'd definitely drive a motorini (scooter) if I lived here.

Could I live here? Probably, but the close quarters might get to me; I'd also have to get used to not having access to various shops on Sundays and between 3-6 pm. Those late, long, delicious dinners? Sure, sign me up.

More Thursday or Friday.

Random geekery for your amusement: U.S. map colored by ZIP code.

Ferries...

Hm. One curious property I've found in/near Seattle is this one on Bainbridge Island.

The house itself is tiny -- basically a one-room cabin -- but sits on 3.5 wooded acres. The price is affordable, though.

The commute to Amazon would be interesting -- it involves a ferry trip across Puget Sound. I could easily bike it (which reduces the cost significantly -- from $13.30 each way to $7.10 one-way).

The idea would be to build it up later on. We'd have to check if that's allowed, of course. But... hmm. Interesting.

Heh... came across a site which wanted information about my company before it would let me browse. I decided to have a little fun...

Kanga International is a consultation group which assists manufacturing companies in solving logistical problems. We specialize in electronics and electromotive markets, both consumer and industrial. Our clients rely on our knowledge and experience in every step of the product lifecycle, from initial concepts to finding ways of getting the product to the customer.

Key facts:
Founded in 2000 by a group of five engineers in the software and chip design industries in the U.S. northeast and Pacific coast regions.

Profitability first achieved in calendar year 2001.

Expanded to 10 consultants in 2002. Revenues reach $700,000.

Continued growth in solving our customer's toughest issues results in "most valued partner" awards from two companies, 2003-2004.

First $1M+ year, 2003.

Hm. First time I've had a chance to even look at LiveJournal today.

Everyone, go say Happy Birthday to ! She's that awesome!

Lost Quarto of Hamlet

My scheme blinded them all, as if by fog
But for these medd'ling kids and this their dog.

Sandra Tsing Loh's (BS 83) Commencement Speech to the Caltech Class of 2005

One of my favorite excerpts:

I believe I'm on the short list of candidates for patron saint of those lost at Caltech. Junior year, I was assigned as physics lab partner classmate Sekhar Chivukula, widely regarded a genius, he's still in physics today. Of our pairing it was said: "Sekhar will do the calculations, Sandra will handle the radioactive samples." Thanks for the respect. Never mind-- By senior year, I'd developed my own law of quantum mechanics that had nothing to do with Wigner-Eckhart's Theorem or Clebsch-Gordon Coefficients-

No, Sandra's Theory was: "On any Phys 106 exam involving the spin of an atom, the answer is at least 63 percent likely to be. . . . 1/2." I don't know why but. . . You'd be amazed how often it worked: To skip the calculations and just boldly put down 1/2 and then write next to it an illegible honeycomb snarl of curlicues that vaguely resembled any of the Greek symbols--lambda, iota, zeta, tau, ampersand-- With any luck a tired Pakistani TA might just look at it, get a headache and throw you a point--!

So by the time I graduated, I had a Caltech diploma entirely made of. . . partial credit, yes-- My degree was glued together, faintly pulsing with. . . radioactivity, graded less on a curve than on a kind of wild hyperbola asymptotically approaching . . some imaginary. . . actual answer. . .

I like today's quote of the day from MyWay:

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is a beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it!

- Mother Teresa (1910-1997)

Overheard In New York joy...

Pilot: Ladies and gentlemen, I apologize for the delay in landing the aircraft, but the air traffic controller here at LaGuardia is an angry, bitter man.

Heh... at first, I thought this document was written by a judge as a ruling over the specified case. It's an amusing read.

Is it a sign of total geekiness that, when someone mentions Maxim, I think of the chip maker and not the lad mag? (The latter is probably not safe for work.)

I had some free time today (while waiting for yet-another-sync from San Jose to complete... it's been over 5 hours now, and still not 20% finished), so I thought about designing a 6502 based system. Anyone up for writing some software for it? , I'm looking at you...

I received a new catalog from Omega today. It was depressing yet entertaining, as usual.

Not because I dislike Omega or anything. They just have Dilbert cartoons in their catalog -- 96 of them, in fact. Dilbert is painful because it is a biography of my job.

Is it a sign that I might be too geeky if I can check e-mail and browse the web in my house even though the power is out in my neighborhood?

Amusing quote about Pennsylvania: "Pennsylvania has been geographically described as Pittsburgh in the west, Philadelphia in the east, and Alabama in the middle." (On how Santorum manages to get reelected.)

And what's up with the Carl's Jr/Hardee's Paris Hilton commercial? I actually haven't seen it on T.V., but I did visit their Internet site to see what the fuss was about. Very effective commerical if you're trying to sell sex, cars, or car-washing equipment. The hamburger, though, was thrown in as an afterthought. It's almost like Carl's Jr was embarrassed to be associated with the commercial.

Not getting it. Then again, I don't get the appeal of Paris Hilton either. Skanky just isn't a turn-on.

I'm not smart enough...

... to be deciding who should be the judges, school board members, and coroner for my area.

Today was a primary election day in Pennsylvania. The most important parts, in my opinion, were referendums to eliminate some of the elected row offices here and allow the state to borrow $625M for environmental improvements.

However, there were also (in my district) various offices being decided. Now, of course I want the best people in those jobs. For a judge, however, that's a question of which candidates have a good understanding of and can apply the law fairly and won't bring the office into disrepute. I might be capable of deciding this by examining their criminal records and administering an exam written by the local bar association -- but all I have are their written statements. As for the school board, I'm happy with the way the district is being run and am content to leave well enough alone. Coroner? What the...? Do I look like a medical board? Does it matter whether the coroner is a Democrat or Republican?

Just how far do we want this to go? "Hi, I'm Dave Cuthbert, I'm a Republican running for Member of the Consulting Staff at Cadence Design Systems, I'm tough on software bugs, and I'd appreciate your vote today."

What's going on with my vision?

I don't really feel headache-y, maybe a bit tired, but I'm finding the light level in the office too bright. It's no brighter than normal, from what I can tell... but I'm still squinting like crazy. This is making it difficult to concentrate and get work done...

You know how various groups (e.g., Amnesty International) will recite the names of people killed or missing in certain events? (World Trade Center, Iraq war, political prisoners, etc.)

I propose that we get a group together to recite the numbers from A Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates. Hmm... do you think we could get funding from the NEA for this?

Google has a job opening for a Software Engineer/Programming Instructor. A teaching position. At a company.

Joy!

Help.

I'm stuck in a telecon until 7pm, the people in San Jose are not talking into the phone, most of them have Indian accents, and they're talking about subjects I don't care about and using acronyms I don't understand.

On Thursday, I had both a letter and (nasty) phone call from the bank which holds my home equity loan, telling me they've turned it over to collections for non-payment, docked my credit rating, and will (eventually) initiate foreclosure proceedings.

WTF? Not only am I not late on my payments, I've been prepaying the loan and was paid up through July.

I called, and they looked over the records. Oh, they said, it looks like there might be an error from when they acquired the old bank back in October. But that's not their fault, they said, the problem lies in the old bank's records.

After much yelling with the asshole in collections, I got them to review the records. I later got a phone call stating that they did me a favor by correcting them. (Yeah, screw you, too.)

On Monday, I'm signing paperwork to transfer the loan to my normal bank (National City), where I keep my checking and savings accounts and where they actually know me. It'll cost me about $30 extra per month, and there's a chance I might have to pay some closing fees, but you know... it makes me feel so much better to not be doing business with an unethical bank.

Been incredibly busy, hence this space has been empty. But we have finished our downstairs bathroom! It no longer looks like it's missing everything except the basics (toilet, sink, soap, and towel).

I worked from home yesterday, which was nice. Far more productive than a day at the office; amazing how that works.

I came in today, though, to find out that someone here abruptly quit yesterday. The whole thing is kind of shrouded in mystery. I suspect he actually gave two weeks notice, but since he's apparently going to work for a competitor, he was asked to leave immediately -- this is actually a company policy.

He was fairly high up, too -- director level.

Too tired to think now. Need more sleep.

From my brother, who is spending a year in Rome on a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome:

Just wanted to send along some photos I took from St. Peters where they were reading the rosary after the Pope's death just a bit ago. As soon as we heard the city bells signaling the death, Lisa and I jumped on my motorcycle and went to the square where there were already tens of thousands. I didn't want to use flash since it was a service, but I wanted to give some sense of the scene there.

Photo credits: Michael Cuthbert

Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.

Trogdor was a man...
He was an... LR(1) man!

Alas, OpenOffice, you are becoming a bloated pigdog which is more annoying to use than your evil twin.

If I could, I'd cut your code down to size using highly lethal martial arts techniques. It'd be like kung fu on a cracker!

Heh... it still strikes me as a tad unusual to see a stock reported as being "up $400":

AIG shares dropped $1.25, or more than 2 percent, to $56.95 in early trading on the New York Stock Exchange. Berkshire Hathaway shares were up $400, or 0.5 percent, at $87,400, also on the Big Board.

I saw the headline: "Jackson Prays With Terri Schiavo's Parents"

My immediate thought was: Michael Jackson is out there now? Can this get any weirder?

Now killing you with three square+ meals a day!

Because they're not about to be outdone by Hardee's Monster Thickburger (1,420 kcal, 107 g of fat), Burger King is rolling out their Enormous Omelet Sandwich (730 kcal, 47 g of fat) for breakfast. Note that a Whopper comes in at a comparatively modest 700 kcal/42 g. I think I'm going to start a chain which sells slabs of deep-fried lard (maybe with some beef boullion cubes for flavoring) in between two slices of bread. Or are they already doing this? I'm no health nut, but.... gaaaaaak.

Total size of my tax returns this year? 90 pages.

Ok, if I, say, owned a sole-proprietorship business which dealt in foreign securities and was trying to hide income in various places, then this might be acceptable. Alas, my life is nowhere near as exciting -- except when it comes to taxes.

Fortunately, not all of these are pages to be mailed in. Some are for auditing purposes. But still...

Oh, and electronic filing? I don't use it. It saves the government money, sure. But they charge $16 for it. Huh? Sorry, but if it saves you money, you'd better be passing some of that back to me. For $16, you're getting the ol' paper returns.

Not a Starbucks every block

In today's business briefs, it was revealed that Pittsburgh ranks incredibly low on the number of coffee shops per capita.

#1 was Anchorage, with 2.8 per 10k people.
#2 was Seattle, with 2.4 per 10k.

Pittsburgh was #142, with 0.5 per 10k.

Now, if they had done the number of bars and pubs per capita, I'm sure the story would've been considerably different.

Why you shouldn't use bad file sharing programs...

My cable modem was on the fritz over the last few days. Comcast came out today and found out that:

1. Another crew had installed an amplifier on the line in my neighborhood.
2. The amplifier I had was no longer necessary -- in fact, it was overloading the signal on the cable modem.
3. My cable line had a (fairly old) block on it, making us all wonder how the modem ever worked.

Anyway, after they left, I found the response to be a tad sluggish. I pulled out a network analysis program... and found that my line was being barraged with requests from Gnutella (think Napster) clients.

This pissed me off. There's no way I could block them, either. So I decided to write a program to accept their requests and send garbage back. Then I discovered that Gnutella has this "server discovery" feature -- a server can say, hey, you might try this other server over here, it probably has good stuff, too. At the suggestion of some guys on IRC, I implemented this feature -- except my version returns the addresses for the Recording Industry Association of America and Motion Picture Association of America. I'm sure they'll be interested.

Moral of the story: don't steal my bandwidth.

Graphic headline which pretty much tells the entire story:
Shark splits snorkeler

Just yesterday, I was remarking to coworkers that, despite being here for almost ten years, I have yet to get jury duty.

In the mail today, I received a summons from the U.S. District Court for jury duty.

Doh!

In case you haven't seen it (I hadn't, until today):
Flying lawnmower

Since many of you are dorks yet don't subscribe to (and shame on you!), I'm crossposting this...

[E-Mail to Gorton's Seafood customer service of Gloucester, Mass.]

Hello,

Please forward this to the person(s) in charge of tuning the process control mechanics -- this might be valuable feedback. Thanks.

I just purchased a package of Gorton's Beer Batter/10 Crispy Battered Fish Fillets (net weight 18.2 oz), lot #5025G2. Upon opening the package, however, I found only 9 fillets and one... well, battered fish bit. (See attached image).

However, realizing that the product is sold by weight, I decided to weigh the fish fillets. My setup isn't the greatest -- I used a postal scale, since it's the best apparatus I have in my house -- but, being an engineer, I found the results interesting. (Your process engineer will, too. I promise.)

First, I weighed the box (see image). It came out to 1 oz and a small fraction.

Then I weighed the box plus the fish (see image). To my surprise, it came out to ~20.5 oz. That's ~19.5 oz of product in a box claiming 18.2 oz!

This is a bit alarming, because most consumers will be annoyed at getting only 9 fillets -- when, in fact, Gorton's is providing them with more fish than promised.

The fish, incidentally, was very tasty. We had it with some country-style french fries and tartar sauce. I am very pleased and will continue to purchase Gorton's products. (Incidentally, would it be possible to get a tour if I'm ever up in the Gloucester area?)

Thanks, and regards,
Dave Cuthbert
dacut@kanga.org


The nine fillets and ... nugget?

---

The weight of the box

---

The weight of the fish and box

Into the obscure parts of TaxCut...

Why I'm glad I don't write accounting or tax software...

Post-October 22, 2004 Attorney Fees And Costs Related To Certain Unlawful Discrimination Claims
Enter here attorney fees and court costs paid after October 22, 2004, for actions settled or decided after that date involving certain unlawful discrimination claims, but only to the extent of gross income from such actions.

For more information, see IRS Publication 525.

I got bored while waiting for e-mail replies today. So I wrote a program which lets you change the default "READY" message on the printers here. I then mentioned it to a few coworkers.

One printer is now displaying the current CDN stock price.
Another says, "Paint it black."
The last compliments you with, "Nice pants."

The interesting thing is that this will also work on the printers in San Jose. Hmmm...

Boeing has ousted their CEO (at right) for having an affair with a younger exec (who did not report directly to him). My question is: What the hell was she thinking?! I mean, c'mon -- the whole point of having an affair is to have a "fling with some hot thing" or sleep your way to the top. This is like being your own personal sexual welfare system for rich, old, wrinkly guys. She ought to be arrested for having criminally bad taste. (Yes, in case you're wondering -- this is with tongue firmly in cheek)

I am tempted to take a road trip. In particular, I'd like to see the burning mines in Centralia, PA and various abandoned tunnels and road bits on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

As a kid, I had fantasies of digging in my parents' backyard and finding an underground cave or tunnel, either natural or manmade and abandoned. This was not exactly likely in SoCal, given that most development there is new and on granite rockbeds. In Pennsylvania, though, this could very easily happen.

Back in Pittsburgh.

Holy cow... have you played with Google Maps? It's a lot closer to what I've wanted in an interactive map. You can pan by dragging the mouse on the map, and it loads the new pieces right on the map -- no clicking on directional arrows to go to a new page.

They suggest trying searches like "Hotels near San Francisco." Here's the result for Brothels near Essex Junction, VT.

On a whim, I decided to buy two computers today.

Yes. Let's have an hour-long meeting first thing in the morning and agree to do nothing.

RAGE.

Ah, you must visit zug.com.

These pranksters sign their credit card receipts with interesting names. They leave IOUs to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority from Mariah Carey. They got U.S. Senators to send jokes to them.

You could easily kill a couple hours at work on this site.

The corporate online directory is not the way one should find out that he reports to a different manager.

There's a piano in my living room now. Weird.

Drunk birds crash into building's glass
Forget Amazing Grace and Ave Maria. I want John Deere tractor noises at my wake.

Grr. ETrade won't let you transfer funds from one account to another without jumping through some hoops and waiting n days. I somehow have two accounts -- one is in my name only for the Cadence employee stock purchase plan, the other is a joint account.

I am hoping to buy a share of Berkshire Hathaway class B stock. I'd prefer to get a class A share, but at $90,900 per share I can't exactly afford it. :-\ (Heck, class B shares -- the "inexpensive" shares -- are at $3,033 today.)

The price is so high because Warren Buffet refuses to allow a stock split. I agree with his philosophy behind this, but the impracticality behind it is a pain.

Carly's reign of terror has come to an end.

Oof. Authored an eight page spec today from scratch, ideas and all. That meant I was pretty much cranking away at the keyboard for nine hours straight. I was amazingly productive, though, and it felt good to get so many words and diagrams onto paper (err... well, onto electrons and then magnetic domains, at least), even if it's just a draft.

I'm especially happy because it's eight pages of meat. I blatantly disregard our formal spec templates because they're full of verbiage that nobody reads and simply distracts from what's real.

The main reason I cranked out so much so quickly, though, was that the presention of this was suddenly moved to tomorrow morning (from Friday). Or so I thought. Only after I had gotten it out and sent it for review did I find out that the meeting is a week from tomorrow. Oops. Still, though, it's a good feeling to know that I still have what it takes to grind this stuff out.

Watching people go into the VP's office, coming out, and then cleaning out their desks.

Some folks have inexplicably bizarre fetishes.

Verily, I am enjoying my time off. I don't know if I can go back to work (well, at least at Cadence, anyway) at this rate.

Today, I paid various bills and taxes, had Chinese food from the real Chinese menu at the Lucky Chinese restaurant (a favorite haunt of my Chinese coworkers -- and now I understand why), and cleaned my office (at home) a bit.

Tomorrow, I'm going to start on my taxes, though I don't expect to finish; I'm going to have to review the finer points of capital gains tax laws. Ugh. (I'd feel less bleh if the capital gains were actually anything substantial, but it's just the Neolinear stock I bought back in 2000.)

I can't deal with work anymore. I'm taking tomorrow, Monday, and Tuesday off.

I'm also trying to use up my three floating holidays because they don't pay those out if you quit or are laid off. The latter is a real possibility -- basically, the animosity between myself an my manager was reflected in my performance review. (This actually pleases me in a sick way... I'm hoping to get laid off so I can get the severance package.)

Can anyone make heads or tails of the Levitra couches?

Stuck in Chicago. My 2:30 flight was canceled, rebooked on a flight at 10:20 tomorrow morning.

My cats are going to be pissed.

Thanks for all the well-wishes and condolances. It means a lot to me. My grandmother's wake is set for Thursday, funeral and burial on Friday. I'm flying out on Thursday, returning on Saturday.

---

In lighter news, I thought I'd share an exchange at work outside my cube:

Coworker 1: Did you see that e-mail I sent?
Coworker 2: I don't check my e-mail every five minutes. I have work to do.
Coworker 3: Not for long!

(Yes, it was intended as humorous, not malicious.)

My grandmother passed away at 6:30 this morning.

I find it incredibly amusing that "god uses emacs" and "god uses vi" both produce exactly one hit.

(No, not a Googlewhack, because I used quotes and three words.)

How spooks saved Ukraine

The New York Times has an excellent article on how Ukraine's spy agency averted a civil war [6 pages] in the recent election.

If this weren't in the NYT, I'd swear it were an excerpt from some fictional Tom Clancy work. I also can't believe that they were able to get this information.

I'm not sure why I invest the time in doing stuff like this, but here's the start of my latest project...

Some links to entertain you:

Do you use Firefox? Take a look at this serious bug.

Like riding ferries? Like Norway? Let MSN Maps help you. Or, if you'd prefer, you can see more of Europe on your trip.

Via , some nerdy LOTR humour.

And, lastly, a page with some funny/interesting/bizarre movie clips.

Buggery

Wow. CBS has posted the complete independent panel investigation report [PDF, 234 pages] which led to the ousting of four CBS executives and, possibly, Dan Rather himself.

Apparently, blogging substantially accelerated the questioning of the documents. Interesting.

I'd like to know how to go about making a living doing this sort of investigative work. I'm very impressed by it; it's not the typical regurgitated bullshit that you would get by hiring a consulting firm.

I mean, doing this in a way other than ignoring my normal work and blogging during work hours. :-)

---

I spent a few dollars yesterday to pick up a copy of SimCity 4. Aww yeah. I've missed this game. This version, though, is a bit more complex than I'd care for. In particular, I don't care for the interactive dispatching of police and firemen (what city has the mayor doing that?) and the interactive missions that pop up allowing you to gain karma and/or money. SimCity is not an action game, and should not strive to become one.

The soundtrack, though, is superb. They even allow you do download it.

There's a report that Texas improperly spent Homeland Security funds on a trailer to take lawn mowers to lawn mower drag races.

Yes. The National Drag Racing - Lawn Mower Association has more details about this event.

I feel like I've now seen the entire Internet. National Watermelon Promotion Board

Bonus points if you can figure out what Google search resulted in getting to this page.

For those who haven't heard, LiveJournal was acquired by Six Apart, the makers of MovableType and TypePad. I'm somewhat baffled by this; I guess I still think of LiveJournal as a hobby-slash-community-project thing rather than a business. From a business perspective, I can't see how this benefits Six Apart unless they make substantial changes to LJ, contrary to 's claims. Either make it a showcase for your technology (move it all to MT and integrate LJ-specific features into MT/TP) and/or consolidate LJ and TP to reduce your costs.

Having been through an acquisition myself with many promises made and broken, I think Brad is being terribly naive here. Ah, well. It's his company, not mine.

---

In unrelated geek news, I have strung together a set of filters which now copies any non-spam mail sent to my normal e-mail address to my cell phone. We'll see how well this works.

I happened to come across a page describing surgical debriedment of abscess subsequent to self-envenomation -- with pictures.

In other words, the page documents the lancing of an abscess. Now, this is commonly-performed technique in a doctor's office -- the catch here is that the patient was a cobra snake.

I wish I did, but I don't have anything to add beyond what's already been said about the earthquake/tsunami disaster other than to reiterate that it's a good time to consider donating to aid groups such as World Relief.

In other news, Alaska Airline's main competitor now has a website. Go visit SkyHigh Airlines. Be sure to read their inflight magazine, Good Intentions; this month's headlines include "Introducing Bench Seating" and "Personal Space: Get Over It." They also have a new partner, Noah's Livestock Transfer.

Rage.

I'm tired of trying to work with the R&D teams in India, especially when they become abusive because they can't understand what I'm writing. The 12 hour time difference does not help. A problem which should take two hours to solve ends up taking a week or more.

I can't seem to get into the holiday mood, either. I think work has a lot to do with this. A lot of people are leaving -- not for vacation, but permanently. Office supplies are dwindling -- coffee, paper towels, soap -- and we're startion to ration. I was going out and buying some of this stuff out of my own pocket, until I realized that this just allows our VP to continue to ignore the situation. No decorations anywhere, no group holiday lunch, not even a "happy holidays" e-mail from the VP.

I also just heard from our IT guy that he got yelled at because we freed up some disk space yesterday. See, IT charges us according to how much storage space we use; by freeing up some space, we decreased a revenue opportunity for them. WTF?

Magical résumé, work your stuff!

Is it alarming that I'm bored enough at Cadence to consider going back to grad school?

The Designated Hitter as Moral Hazard [NYT, registration required]

In a paper presented at the Joint Mathematics Meeting in January, Bradbury, the economist, and Drinen, the mathematician, noted that the rate of hit batsmen is 15 percent higher in the American League than in the National. [...] After they controlled for pitcher quality, batter quality, game situation and other factors that also contribute to hit batters, they found that the designated-hitter rule itself "increases the likelihood that any batter will be hit during a plate appearance between 11 and 17 percent."

Holy crap, part 7493

IBM is getting out of the PC business. [NYT] [AP] [TheReg]

This annoys me, as I'm typing this on an IBM ThinkPad next to my IBM NetVista at work. While IBM's products have neither been on the bleeding edge of performance nor cheap, they've been quite reliable and well engineered (IMHO). "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM."

Don't entertain me. Inspire me.

---

Thanksgiving was fun; Tam's family came up here, so there were nine people and two cats in my house. It sometimes felt a bit crowded, but, hey, what can you do? And it was always good to see my niece and nephew.

Unfortunately, it appears that the virii inhabiting our bodies used this as a chance to find new hosts. Tam stayed home sick today, and I didn't get in to work until 12:30. Ah, well... nothing important is going on at work, anyway, which says more about the state of things at work than my sickness.

My car was also a bit sick -- it had a hard time turning over this morning. Sounds like the battery is going (which doesn't surprise me -- it's due for a battery change methinks). I just hope it has enough juice to get me home or to an NTB store.

Nah. The US isn't an overly litigious society. From The Register:

A New York woman who ran up debts of $951,000 on her Amex account is sueing the company for $2m for allowing her to hammer the plastic, Newsday reports.

Antoinette Millard, 40, says American Express should have realised she was mentally incompetent when she opened the sky's-the-limit Centurion account. Her court filing states that American Express "knew or should have known that [Millard] was acting impulsively and and irrationally at the time she entered into contract". She cites anorexia, depression, panic attacks and "head tumors" as contributory factors to her mental incompetence.

American Express has obtained a court order freezing $951,000 in assets belonging to the former vice president at the Brown Brothers Harriman investment bank. To add to Millard's woes, she is currently on $100,000 bail awaiting trial on grand larceny charges after attempting to relieve an insurance company of $262,000 for jewellery she claims was stolen, but allegedly sold. If convicted, she faces up to 15 years' jail.

For those of you going from, to, or through Pennsylvania for Thanksgiving, the tolls might be waived on the Turnpike tomorrow due to a pending strike.

If the strike lasts beyond tomorrow, fares will be a flat $2 regardless of distance traveled. It's normally ~$19 from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia.

Complete the following sentences.

Answering a recruiting query...

I got a query from a recruiter with some large, random semiconductor company, and found the following question rather amusing:

7. Do you have legal authorization to work for any employer in the
United States without any restrictions at all?  If yes, please explain.

My reply: (and, yes, I actually sent this):

I'm sure the IRS, FBI, and other TLAs might not be happy if I started
working for La Cosa Nostra or other mafia groups, drug lords, terrorists,
etc.  So those are out.  Otherwise, I'm a native US citizen, never been
arrested, never even been audited... heck, the only tickets I've gotten are
for parking violations at Carnegie Mellon.  Hm.  Maybe my life is too
boring?

I'm not a vegetarian...

... and I don't even play one on TV, but this is just gross.

That's 1,640 calories and 100 g of fat, kids.

And back to Pittsburgh again.

I couldn't get a direct flight back, so I connected in Denver. Aside from getting up at 3:30 am to catch the 6:00 flight and sitting next to someone who was built like a linebacker from Denver to Pittsburgh, it was a good flight. Denver splits the trip into nice halves, and it's an easy airport to get around; contrast with Chicago/O'Hare, which is 75% of the way to Pittsburgh (so you have an annoying puddle jumper-ish flight to deal with), has terminals spaced halfway to Milwaukee, and tends to cause luggage delays.

Spent most of yesterday hanging with my cousin, Jane, in Monterey. (If you're stalking me now, well, Hi Jane!) I hadn't been there since I was a kid (fourth grade?). Very nice area. Very expensive area. Not as far from SJ as I thought it was (though I was still feeling sleepy on the drive back... even though it was only 10:30). I also found out some curious family secrets I hadn't known before.

Saw The Incredibles with some college friends on Friday night. Excellent movie. I highly recommend it.

The conference/forum -- which was the main purpose for this trip -- was Thursday, but was mostly unremarkable. There were two good presentations, about three fair ones, and the rest were kind of a waste of time.

Annnnnd... I return to San Jose with a vengeance. Or at least a yearning -- a now-fulfilled yearning -- for In-N-Out.

Oh, this is sad.

Cadence gives you an award when you reach various service milestones. I don't have any, coming from an acquisition, but my prior time counts for ~4 years of service; I should receive one next year.

Anyway, this story isn't about me, but our sysadmin, Bill Schrier. Bill just reached the 3 year service milestone and received an extra vacation day and a plaque in the mail. Yeah, managers can't be bothered to hand it out at a meeting or anything. That's anticlimatic.

What makes it sad is that the plaque recognizes "Venkat Schrier for three years of outstanding service."

Yeah. They couldn't be bothered to get his name right.

Maybe Venkat is the guy they're going to outsource his job to? :-P

I'm fine

Thanks for the well-wishes. :-) It's just office politics. Short story: I answered a number of random questions for coworkers in Tempe last week without knowing why they were asking these questions. They edited my responses down, removed any sort of context, spun up story about how myself and another guy here allowed IP (intellectual property) to escape the company, and submitted it to our director. It has no basis in reality, so we're safe, but now I have to deal with the aftermath.

Thanks for the knife in the back, assholes.

Anyhow, here's a very Dilbert moment at work. Take one news story about a 12-year old Arkansas girl who won a $10,000 savings bond by blowing a 16 inch bubble at the Double Bubble National Bubble Blowing Contest. Take one bag of Double Bubble gum left over from Halloween. Take three coworkers on a slow Monday at work. Hilarity ensues.

I did manage to blow a 10" bubble. I'll have to work my way up from there...

Arlen Specter

Ah, I'm so glad we (Penna.) reelected Arlen Specter to the Senate. Powerful guy who is also very level headed... and likely to be the head of the Judiciary committee overseeing the appointment of 3-4 Supreme Court justices in the near future.

Excerpts from an AP wire story:

The Republican expected to chair the Senate Judiciary Committee next year bluntly warned newly re-elected President Bush on Wednesday against putting forth Supreme Court nominees who would seek to overturn abortion rights or are otherwise too conservative to win confirmation.

"The president is well aware of what happened, when a number of his nominees were sent up, with the filibuster," Specter added, referring to Senate Democrats' success over the past four years in blocking the confirmation of many of Bush's conservative judicial picks. "... And I would expect the president to be mindful of the considerations which I am mentioning."

With at least three Supreme Court justices rumored to be eyeing retirement, including ailing Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Specter, 74, would have broad authority to reshape the nation's highest court. He would have wide latitude to schedule hearings, call for votes and make the process as easy or as hard as he wants.

While Specter is a loyal Republican - Bush endorsed him in a tight Pennsylvania GOP primary - he routinely crosses party lines to pass legislation and counts a Democrat, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, as one of his closest friends.

A self-proclaimed moderate, he helped kill President Reagan's nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court and of Jeff Sessions to a federal judgeship. Specter called both nominees too extreme on civil rights issues. Sessions later became a Republican senator from Alabama and now sits on the Judiciary Committee with Specter.

Ok, I know that some people have claimed that they want to leave the country if Bush was reelected, but isn't this a bit extreme?

Naked man jumps into wheel well of Australia-bound flight at LAX

Nous sommes désolés que notre president soit un idiot.
Nous n'avons pas vote pour lui.

More election musings...

Lots of distractions today. Every time I try to edit a bit more code, someone comes by with either a question on unrelated code or random comment about the election. I don't think much work will get done here today, by myself or anyone else.

Ah, well.

Part of me feels like ranting, "If Bush wins, I'm moving to {Canada,France,Europe,AnywhereButHere}." But I know that I won't actually move. Regardless of the outcome of the election, the United States will still be the best place on earth for conducting scientific research and engineering, hands down, in both our universities and in industry.

But we're riding the coattails of the investments during the space race and cold war. If we continue down this path, we will -- in 15-25 years -- find ourselves behind India and Japan, and possibly China. Less likely is Europe, for they need to get their house in order.

In other news, Matt (coworker) and I tried the new $3.99 pizza lunch buffet place today (Cici's). The catch is that the $3.99 doesn't include a drink; add in tax, and it's $5.65. Still cheap as far as eating out goes, but not cheap if you consider that a large pizza is about $8 (and sodas from the canteen are 40¢). The food wasn't anything to write home about, but wasn't bad, either.

We were debating whether it was a chain or not. Neither of us had heard of it, and the place didn't quite look polished enough to be a chain, but they did have custom-printed pizza boxes. A quick google reveals that, yes, it is a chain. A very large chain, though mostly in the south. This seems to be one of their few locations north of the Mason-Dixon line.

Got in late this morning to nurse a sick wife and cast my ballot. 'tis all good, though. I don't mind missing a bit of work that I don't care for. Any notion of "work ethic" was lost when they screwed me over, repeatedly, this past summer.

As points out, we have the old lever machines which look like they're from, and probably are from, the 1940s. I do worry whether they're actually doing anything on the backend, whether the old mechanical "chunk chunk click click click" counters are doing their thing.

Since I've been able to vote, I've been a registered Republican. Today, though, I pulled so many Democratic levers -- in fact, the only Republican levers were for Melissa Hart (House) and Arlen Specter (Senate). I find it alarming and sad that the party of Lincoln has strayed so far from his legend [*].

I do think that we need an electronic voting platform, but one that is open and can be subject to scrutiny by both voting/security experts and armchair forensicologists. I'm vaguely thinking of spearheading a technical effort on this front... hmm...

---
[*] I say "legend" rather than "ideals" because we have idealized the man and gloss over some rough spots: in a modern context, for example, he would be considered racist, and his handling of generals during the Civil War was not the best. But we do need to read his achievements in the correct historical context. So I don't have a problem with the elementary school textbooks that distill him as the hero who stood up to slavery and kept the nation together; we do need heros to look up to. Nonetheless, I would hope that anyone who has graduated from high school in the U.S. would realise that history is not as black-and-white as we'd like it to be. (Not the case, I know, but I can hope...)

Why, yes, now that you mention it, I am a complete dork.

Look down, and see the beggars at your feet.
Look down, and show some mercy if you can.
Look down, and see the sweepings of the street.
Look down, look down, upon your fellow man!

Bleh. So now Thunderchuck has decided that all incoming messages will be delivered to my Junk folder (and none of it will be marked as Junk mail). Oh, and this is with junk mail controls disabled.

Honestly, people. E-mail should not be this hard! It's only been a solved problem since 1970 or so.

Not being at Cadence's San Jose site means that we can't talk to anyone in HR in person. To address this (in as pitiful way as possible :-P), Cadence sends our HR rep to us for a couple days once every year or so.

I had a one-on-one meeting with her today regarding my situation. It went something like this:

Me:
Her: Hm. Sucks to be you.

It's about what I expected, really.

ARRGH

ARRGH.

And, no, it's not a rehash of Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Mozilla Thunderbird, the mail program I use, decided this morning that "Get messages" really means "Download them off the server and vaporize them."

No, not put them in the trash folder. Nor did it mark them as junk (I know that at least one was not junk). DELETED FOREVER. VAPORIZED. INTO THE ETHER.

HATE.