Lots of changes at work today. Huge changes. Unfortunately, I cannot post them here (yet).

However, I can say that:

• I still have a job.
• I will not have to relocate.
• The amount of money resulting from this is more than what I had feared, but not as much as I had hoped.
• The golden handcuffs have been taken off...
• ... and replaced by golden leg irons. :-P

Still trying to figure out what this all means. Also trying to slog though the hundreds of pages of legal documents that have been thrown my way.

One casualty: Kanga Design Automation will be put on hold indefinitely. Maybe some other time.

American Science & Surplus is going to be my undoing.

[Edit: deleted, sorry. Can't reveal this anymore.]

Another system failure

Apparently, New York City's 911 system was down for a few hours [NY Times] on Friday night. The cause? Apparently, an engineer changing phone numbers for a bank accidentally changed the phone number for the dispatch center instead (the numbers were similar). Oops.

A similar thing happened to Pittsburgh a few years ago. The cause there? They added an overlay area code (which, ironically, has never been used) to the 412/724 area codes. FCC rules state that, when this happens, the affected area has to switch to ten digit dialing (where you always have to dial the area code, even if you are calling to the same area code). Nobody reprogrammed the 911 system to use the ten digit system; when they shut off the seven digit system, it could no longer relay the calls.

Both failures were caused by changed to systems outside of the scope of the basic 911 system. This illustrates why it's hard to make good systems (especially software systems): the interdependencies cause failures to propagate rapidly.

If only we could make this work at the federal level...

Brace yourself. I've found a government that (gasp!) works!

For whatever archaic reasons, Pennsylvania does not collect income taxes for municipalities, i.e., the 3% I pay to the Commonwealth stays at the Commonwealth level. This means that most Pennsylvania residents end up filing at least three separate tax returns: federal, state, and local.

Now, Tamara and I moved from Pittsburgh to McCandless last year, which complicates things a bit. Between us, there are five returns: federal, state, Pittsburgh, and one each for McCandless (which does not have a married-filing-jointly status). Pittsburgh, though, loves to be annoying; to get off their tax list, you have to take a form to your local tax collector, who has to certify that you're a resident in their municipality and that you've paid $X in taxes, blah blah blah.

Furthermore, Tamara's W-2 forms were strangely incorrect with regard to her salary while in Pittsburgh vs. McCandless.

Anyway, I brought all of this to the town hall today to see what they could make of it. First, everyone there was friendly and helpful. That's just weird to begin with. Second, they have their crap together. The lady who certified the form for Pittsburgh was able to look everything up and signed it on the spot -- no waiting!

Finally, they took our McCandless forms and proceeded to check them for me while I was there! They pointed out that I used the wrong figure for one spot and redid the calculations for me! It ended up not making a difference in the end, but they took the time to explain why they wanted the different number (state vs. Social Security wages).

Wow.

I need to find a way to work effectively while getting only 2-3 hours of sleep each night.

No, no. Speed, heroin, etc., are not good long-term solutions, and the point is to get more work done, not less; I need my faculties for that to happen...

YES!

Three hour meeting scheduled.

In at 1:00, out at 1:45.

Yes!

I've been looking at some of the odder things you can import from China.

Cartoon umbrellas
Unique solar-powered garden lights
Unbranded video equipment -- just slap your logo on
Injection molding equipment
Manhole covers

Some interesting stuff there... very inexpensive, but you have to order in quantities of 1000.

1. Work hard on project.

2. Write paper; have it accepted at conference.

3. Get the following from upper management:

Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 16:58:31 -0500
From: Jim Cappucci
Organization: Neolinear, Inc.
To: Dave Cuthbert
CC: Tom Beckley , Glen Clark , Elias Fallon
Subject: Re: OpenAccess conference

Dave and Elias,
Tom and I discussed this and don't think there is enough of a benefit to warrant you two going to the conference. Bodgan can relay any necessary information.

Jim

Asshole.

Yeah! Paper is done! It's going to be submitted to this conference.

Hm... now, if only I can get the powers that be to actually send me to this conference...

Ugh. The water heater broke yesterday, prompting an emergency run to Home Depot.

$630 and 24 hours later, I'm still sans hot water. I called Home Depot. It took 75 minutes to get a hold of someone. Turns out they forgot to call the installer yesterday. I was tempted to cancel the order and go get one from Lowe's and install it myself, but I wasn't sure that it would fit into my CR-V and apparently both the manufacturer and the county frown on non-professional installations (the former by making it difficult to make warranty claims, the latter by sending an inspector to your house).

I am quite annoyed by the county's $15 water heater permit. If this were a disposal or environmental impact fee, I could understand; but, no, I'm paying the installer for disposal of the old heater separately. If the county ran the water, sewer, or gas systems, I could also understand; they're somewhat responsible for making sure that I don't incorrectly hook up a utility line and cause a dangerous situation. But, no; this is purely a "we're going to tax this because we can" tax. Kind of like the city of Pittsburgh and its 50% (!) parking tax.

I did manage a bath by taking the largest pots I had, including and especially the 5 gallon stew pot, and running pots of hot water upstairs to the bath. Baths are always a good thing. Never pass up the opportunity to take a nice bath.

Heh. Drudge report headline: Summer Stripes?

Also: Three-headed frogs: cool freak of nature, or signs that the water isn't safe to drink?

I am starting to gather the items I need for my laboratory. I'm getting a logic analyzer with a 500 MHz sampling card, and trying to get both an analog and a digital oscilloscope.

I'm not currently winning the digital scope. I might bid higher (or even hit eBay's "buy it now" price), but (a) I'm not sure how well that scope works, and the "as-is" bit is a tad worrisome, (b) the scope doesn't come with any probes (and 500 MHz probes are not cheap), and (c) I've used that model of scope before and found its interface a bit unintuitive. On (c), I prefer scopes that have separate knobs for controlling vertical and horizontal gains and offsets; having to navigate a menu and whirl the single knob around can be annoying.

Ah, well. At least I'll be able to get a lot done with the analog scope (if I win it) and logic analyzer. If only I could win the lottery or stumble upon a bag of gold; the LeCroy WaveRunner 6200 is like the Nimbus 2000 of electrical engineers. Sadly, the WR6200 runs more than $100,000. Expensive toy, neh?

NeoCell 4.0 -- our product which does the actual layout of a chip -- is supposed to go into alpha next week.

Right now, large parts of it aren't even building, let alone running.

Meanwhile, I'm supposed to test my module and make sure that the tool can understand my output, and my module can understand the tool's output.

Multiple choice: What's wrong with this scenario?
  (a) Milestones such as "alpha," "beta," etc., are arbitrary dates and do not reflect the maturity of the software.
  (b) Nightly builds don't work, and none of the developers care.
  (c) Dave is expected to test against vaporware.
  (d) Dave agreed to work for these morons.

Ok, Dave, calm down. You just need to hold on until your stock options become liquid. Then you can do serious work on Kanga Design Automation. Please, please, let that be days or weeks, not months or years.

Step 1: Open your iTunes/MusicMatch/MediaPlayer/whatever you use to play MP3s.
Step 2: Put all of your music on random.
Step 3: Write down the first fifteen songs it plays, no matter how embarrassing.

1. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
2. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
3. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
4. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
5. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
6. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
7. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
8. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
9. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
10. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
11. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
12. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
13. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
14. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."
15. Sound bites from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - "Heads."

New glasses are always good. Things are suddenly sharper again.

Oh, and my new glasses have a magnetic sunshade attachment. They make me look a bit like Tom Quinn in MI-5. No, I didn't pick them for that reason (I actually had the people at the shop pick them out for me).

One of the tires on my CR-V was looking a bit suspicious, so Tam and I used her Civic to get to work. Ah, excellent choice. On my way to get the glasses and lunch, it was so nice out I drove with the windows down and sunroof open, zipping along the roads and highways (which I can't exactly do in the CR-V). It's 60°F here today, and clear! In February! Yet there is still snow on the ground.

Very odd.

As for work... nothing to report. We're in limbo.

Thought for the day

In a lifetime, one will have his hopes dashed many times by others with malevolent intent.

Those who, in spite of this, persist in the pursuit of realising their hopes are the true lovers, geniuses, dreamers, and madmen.

I finally got so fed up with Sprint that I went and bought a new cell phone today on the Verizon network. It's shinier, has a much stronger connection, and I could talk to my parents for an hour on it without the battery level dropping noticably. I'm amazed that they were able to add processing power and lower power consumption.

Santa Barbara trip this past weekend, for a college friend's wedding reception (the wedding took place back around New Years, in Israel, which many -- myself included -- were unable to attend). I saw a lot of people from college whom I hadn't seen in years. It was quite a bit of fun, though far too short a visit (~36 hours) considering the travel time (~20 hours).

The travel time was grossly extended because our connecting flight to Chicago was delayed by a few hours, which put our Chicago-to-LA flight out of whack and bumped us off our LA-to-SB shuttle bus reservation. As Tamara can attest, I'm not a fun person to travel with when I am (a) sleep deprived and (b) annoyed at (my perceived) incompetence/unfriendliness of the airline staff.

Work is busy, as usual. Still no real clue as to what the heck is going on, but the rumours are flying. A few of us are in on a betting pool regarding when we'll be acquired, for how much, and some of the terms.

My bank now lets me click on a check number and see a scan of the front and back of each check I've written. That's quite cool.

's meme:
The Top 10 Things I Would Buy If I Did Not Need To Worry About Money

By which I do not mean what I would by if I had a million dollars. Because a million dollars gets smaller and smaller everyday (mentally, at least) and the amount of money you think you need to stay comfortable gets larger and larger. Also, with the endowment of a million or two million or three million dollars, you feel (or at least one feels) as if the money should be used toward something grand - a house, a charity, a life. I am suggesting that, more or less, your life continues as it is. Perhaps, yes, you stop this foolishness with school or work and you find your dream job. But I'm also suggesting that what Not Needing Money means, in this particular case, is that you no longer need to worry about rent. You can buy the name brand orange juice. You can call a cab home from the bar.

1. Window coverings for the house.
2. An extra monitor for work.
3. Electronics lab equipment so I could do all the random geeky stuff I used to sneak into the labs in the subbasement of Steele to do.
4. A snow plow attachment for my CRV. Then I'd go around plowing random roads and such when it snows. Uh, just because.
5. Lots of candles, tea, and Tim Tams to send to various people (you know who you are).
6. Dim sum every week. I wouldn't have thought of it, but others have mentioned it, and I like the idea.
7. A good chunk of Amazon's inventory.
8. The various paperwork filings needed to get kanga-da.org off the ground.
9. Ice skates. It's been far too long.
10. Gymnastics equipment for Tam.

The latest threat matrix:

al-Gebra

     At New York's Kennedy Airport today, an individual, later
discovered to be a public school teacher, was arrested trying to
board a flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a set
square, and a calculator. Attorney General John Ashcroft believes
the man is a member of the notorious al-Gebra movement. He is being
charged with carrying weapons of math instruction.
     Al-gebra is a very fearsome cult, indeed. They desire average
solutions by means and extremes, and sometimes go off on a tangent
in a search of absolute value. They consist of quite shadowy
figures, with names like "x" and "y," and although they are
frequently referred to as "unknowns," we know they really belong to
a common denominator and are part of the axis of medieval with
coordinates in every country. As the great Greek philanderer
Isosceles used to say, there are 3 sides to every angle, and if God
had wanted us to have better weapons of math instruction, he would
have given us more fingers and toes.
     Therefore, I'm extremely grateful that our government has given us
a sine that it is intent on protracting us from these math-dogs who
are so willing to disintegrate us with calculus disregard. These
statistic bastards love to inflict plane on every sphere of
influence. Under the circumferences, it's time we differentiated
their root, made our point, and drew the line.
     Remember, these weapons of math instruction have the potential to
decimal everything in their math on a scale never before seen unless
we become exponents of a Higher Power and begin to factor-in random
facts of vertex. As our Great Leader would say, "Read my ellipse."
Here is one principle he is uncertainty of---though they continue to
multiply, their days are numbered and the hypotenuse will tighten
around their necks.

Yeah, definitely getting bought. We have a guy examining our source code today. We *never* allow outsiders to see our source code.