To the original writers of this code...

Dammit, what the hell were you thinking when you wrote this crap? "Hmm, I need this bit of functionality. Oh, here's some code which does that. I'll copy and paste it into my code."

Have you people heard of functions? You know, those reusable bits of code they taught you on the first day of CS 1? Hell, we're not even talking about "advanced" concepts such as recursion, which is covered in the fifth lecture.

Oh, look. You wrote your own sort loop. It runs in O(n⁴) time. You know, there's this nifty algorithm called bubble sort which runs in O(n²) time. I think it's lecture seven.

No, I don't want to be reminded that they pay you to write this stuff.

By the way -- and I know this comes as a shock -- there's a mechanism which allows you to put arbitrary text into your source code which is ignored by the compiler/interpreter. They're called comments. Yes, I know it sounds a bit weird -- why would anyone want to put arbitrary stuff into their code that is ignored by the computer? Well, see, it doesn't have to be completely random. You could, say, describe what it is you're trying to compute. Maybe mention that there's an obscure side-effect you're relying upon in some call. The type of stuff that might help others reading your code understand what it's supposed to do.

Next week, we'll talk a bit about indentation -- yes, something else which is ignored by the computer but helps others trace out where your spaghetti loops start and end.

I just got spam from a company advertising 30% off my first order of custom peptide synthesis.

They point out that they offer peptide modifications: phosphopeptides, biotinylated peptides, dye-labeled pepties, cyclic peptides, and many more. Free consultation on peptide design. Alternatively, I can have 20% off my first order on amino acids, building blocks, synthesis resins and reagents. And, yes, they offer Wang Resins.

I find this all very strange. Much like the first time I saw chip design software (which can cost upwards of $100k/license/year) being advertised on a billboard.

Woohoo! Caltech physicist David Politzer won the Nobel Prize in Physics! It's shared with MIT's Frank Wilczek and UCSB's David Gross.

From this year's makeup of Nobel winners, it appears that it helps to be named David and be bald. :-)

It's actually quite fun to be on the campus when someone wins the Nobel. I remember when it was announced that Rudy Marcus won the Nobel for Chemistry in 1992. Nate Lewis, Ch 1a prof., scrapped his normal lecture for a lecture on Rudy and his work. Lots of celebrations. General buzz. Everyone seems a bit happier.

[Fixed links -- thanks Carn!]

For those who have not seen it, SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X-Prize this morning.

This, to me, is huge. When I first heard of the X-Prize, I thought there was only an outside chance that it would be claimed by 2010. I figured that the chances of commercial space travel were remote in my lifetime; now, Sir Richard Branson has expanded his Virgin empire to include Virgin Galactic, already signing up passengers for flights in 2007.

Wow.

Personally, I'd like now to see follow-on prizes for the first commercial craft to do a full orbit in space and an orbit around the moon.

I just realised...

I made it through September this year without anyone dying on me. This is a marked improvement from the previous two years.

My internal clock has been off ever since I took that forsaken red-eye flight last Sunday/Monday. Going to work not long after the sun rises (~ 8 am) and getting home just before it sets (~ 7 pm) does not help. This has the effect of making me constantly sleepy, and what sleep I do get is neither long nor restful. Fortunately, I was able to spend a few hours yesterday doing yardwork in the sun; this seems to have reset things, as I got in to work early-ish yet feel awake.

In between my naps on Friday/Saturday, I managed to reassemble my computer. It needed a storage upgrade; it went from 40 GB to 250 GB (in a RAID-1 array -- I'm paranoid about disk crashes these days). I also used that opportunity to change the motherboard (it was cheaper than buying a USB 2.0 card -- go figure) and stuffed the whole shebang into a new case. Much shinier.

However, around the same time, my DSL modem decided to go kaputt. I put in a trouble ticket with Nauticom, my service provider, on Saturday morning; they claim to have 24/7 service. I called back last night; the tech told me that the DSL people hadn't even looked at it yet. Grr. This annoys me, because I had hoped to get a bit of work out of the way this weekend (and I didn't want to tail over to the office, 45 minutes away). This has angered me enough that I've started the process of switching over to the evil Comcast cable modem service which is cheaper and much faster: $50 and 4 Mbps vs. $60 and 512 kbps.

The primary reasons for using Nauticom in the first place were that we weren't sure we were going to have cable (when we moved, I was looking into a satellite dish), Comcast does not have a good reputation with their cable data service, and Nauticom's tech support was supposed to be phenomenal. Since then, we found that our house isn't suited for satellite, Comcast has taken many strides to improve their service (at least, they've been eliminating spam emanating from their network), and, well, obviously Nauticom hasn't been terribly responsive. Perhaps a bit of a knee-jerk reaction, but both Tamara and I were not able to get bits of work done as a result of this; it's not just a "wah, wah, I can't check my e-mail for two whole days!" thing (though, admittedly, there's a bit of that).

Actually, I did manage to rig my cell phone to connect my computer through Verizon's data packet service. It's surprisingly fast (230 kbps -- much faster than anything one can get through a standard modem). It also eats into my minutes very quickly.

Ok, back to coffee and coding.

More for my own reference, but thought I'd share...

Electoral map based on latest poll data
PBS electoral map which lets you play "what-if" games
Job growth vs. time by president

Non-scientific poll

Just trying to get an update on a vital issue in this election year:

For a second, I thought that Keenspot had taken to advertising pr0n in their banners. [I wouldn't advise clicking on that at work, btw.] Ends up that it's not pr0n, but I think it's a tad risque considering that kids might peruse Keenspot (and that appeared on It's Walky!, not something more adult-oriented).

Work update: lots of stuff has happened, partially a result of me getting the conference award and raising my visibility within Cadence. Maybe? I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, to sum up: I had wanted to transfer to another group (CAT) within Cadence after the acquisition because what they do meshes very well with my interests. Problem was that this is outside of the Neolinear CEO-cum-Cadence VP's (Tom's) fiefdom, and he's very leery of losing headcount. (Never mind that I would still be working in the Pittsburgh office, interacting with people from his groups, and essentially enabling free--at least, to him--resources from CAT to work on various integration problems. That would make too much sense, see...)

This was communicated to me (by my acrimonious manager, Rodney; the food chain is Tom > Glen > Rodney > me) as an ultimatum: "You will work on what we tell you to work on, or you can go find another job." Given this limited set of choices, I chose the latter.

Last week, Glen (who happened to be in San Jose at the same time as me) stepped in and started making some waves. He essentially pointed out to Tom that he's going to lose me either way; by allowing me to transfer to CAT, though, I can still do useful stuff for him.

Yesterday, the approval for the transfer was issued. Yay!

So, it looks like I'll be staying with Cadence after all. I'll be working for Iain, who is fairly laid back and will be pleased to have me on his team. He also has a very thick Scottish accent, so teleconferencing will be interesting. :-)

Anyway, today I'm off to Calif. again, but this time to San Diego for a wedding. I'll be back on Monday.

Holy crap.

My paper & presentation won an MVP award for my section at the ICU conference.

I got an iPod mini.

Still kind of surprised about the whole thing...

Is it a bad sign when you've signed so many NDAs (non-disclosure agreements) that you can't remember who you can tell what to and to what it applies?

NDAs are the civilian equivalent of classified information. For the most part, it's all public knowledge; you're just trying to keep others from finding it and tying it all together easily.

Why is the Fry's in Palo Alto look so crappy, both inside and out? It's like the ghetto Fry's. But how the hell can something be ghetto in Palo Alto? East Palo Alto, sure. Oakland, definitely. But Palo Alto? A few blocks from Stanford?

The expressway system here fascinates me. They're like quasi-freeways, usually divided, but with stop lights every few miles or so. I'm undecided on whether they're a good or bad thing -- I don't think I could make such a decision unless I commuted on them daily and/or lived near one.

I especially am intrigued as to how "Montague Expressway" got its name.

Conference started today (well, pre-conference seminars). Very enjoyable, despite having to haul my butt down to Santa Clara from SF at 7am. As usual, it was completely foggy in SF but bright and sunny in Silicon Valley. I'll have to do the same tomorrow, but in normal rush-hour traffic. Oy...

Spoke with someone from IBM's Essex Junction, VT site. Turns out she's actually the moderator for the session my paper is in. And she also oversees their chip design software kits, which we need a few bugs fixed in for our stuff. Heh; and my coworkers told me I'd never get IBM to fix these bugs! But, ah... IBM is a shell of its former self. So sad. Reminder to self: need to drive by the Cottle Rd site (where I interned years ago) so see how they've replaced the IBM logos with Hitachi.

As predicted, US Airways declared bankruptcy today, the second time in as many years. However, despite previous threats, they have agreed to keep flying and honor existing tickets. So I'm not as stranded here as I had thought. Drat-- er, I mean, phew. :-)

Hm... so the conference runs from 8am to 7pm tomorrow; I'm meeting with some folks for an interview/negotiations/dinner at 7:30pm. Ah, it'll be a long day. Better hit the sack.

Just had to remark on some observations at the Pittsburgh airport...

Lots of empty spaces in the AirMall, including (most annoyingly) the space that my bank, National City, used to occupy. Now I must shell out a zillion dollars in surcharges to use the PNC ATM. Grah.

It's almost dead here. There was *zero* line at the security checkpoint, on a Friday evening. While not usual in recent memory, this place used to be constantly packed when I first got to Pittsburgh.

A number of eateries are now sporting "Effective immediately, we will no longer accept US Airways vouchers." Ouch.

So I'm flying out to SFO today, and I'm supposed to return next Thursday. Given that my flights are on US Airways, I may very well be quasi-stranded out there if they file for bankruptcy this weekend and stop flying (as their management has been hinting). Doh!

They're just now saying that the recently revealed National Guard records on Bush might be forgeries.

That was my initial reaction upon seeing the documents (which was disappointing to me from a political standpoint, but I'm playing armchair forensic scientist here, not spin doctor). While they look fine for, say, anything produced in the 90's onward, the typesetting is all wrong for something supposedly written in the 70's. The key bit is that it uses a proportional-spaced font. This is impossible to produce on a 70's era typewriter or teletype.

Also, since when does a military squadron have a PO box?

Here are pictures of the document and what I think it should look like:

The joy I share with you today is http://hates-software.com/ .

Also, as a bit of a compromise (inspired, in part, by my manager's apology for his ranting outburst at me last week), I agreed to stay on at Cadence for a few extra weeks to help wrap up a project. In the meantime, however, I am permitted to search for new and better jobs.

I like to think of it as being paid to look for another job.

With thanks to ...

Sometimes, you just gotta wash your car.

Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated

I haven't updated recently because there hasn't been very much to say. Yeah, work still sucks. Whine whine whine. I'm sure you don't want to hear it, as I am sick of hearing myself thinking it. As for your next retort, yes, I am doing something about it, but I must be patient. At this point, I cannot afford to make hasty moves.

I was thinking about lightning today, as we've had a lot of storms recently. I came across the following map from NASA showing the frequency of lightning strikes worldwide. Sharing this because it's a well done map and the page itself is worth a good five-minute read.

Above: Data from space-based optical sensors reveal the uneven distribution of worldwide lightning strikes. Units: flashes/km²/yr. Image credit: NSSTC Lightning Team.

Good luck to all those starting school, either as students or teachers.

This is beyond insane.

Thursday is our normal group meeting, where we'll decide how to proceed on a certain task (I'll call it "Project X"; the technical details are long and mind-numbing, and I'll spare you -- this time).

The Product Engineer (PE) wants to get some customer input on this before we make our decision. So he's having a teleconference with said customer Wednesday night (said customer is in Japan; it'll be their Thursday morning).

The PE wants to get some slides to them before he has this meeting so the customer can mull the idea over. PE sends me e-mail at 6:30 (my time; PE is in Arizona) on Friday to have me send him slides that he can send to the customer. Of course, I've already left for the day and don't see it until Monday.

Monday morning. Fire (well, broken A/C) in the server room, authentication server is out of commission in the morning, taking down all of the workstations in the building. Only people with Cadence-issued laptops -- managers and above -- can check e-mail. In the afternoon, my manager (who was CC'ed on this e-mail) tells me about the need for slides.

Monday afternoon. Slides, random bugs that have suddently become urgent, etc., start sapping my time. PE starts pestering me (by phone, which I refuse to answer, and then by e-mail) about slides (which require me to take a zillion screen captures and edit them to show how I think it should look).

Tuesday morning. Finish slides, send them to PE (and my manager). PE promptly starts ignoring them.

Tuesday afternoon. My manager wants to have a meeting between me, him, and PE to discuss what I've proposed in the slides to make sure we understand the resources required. In addition, he wants to have a meeting before this before we call the PE. Meanwhile, PE continues to ignore slides. Work on critical bugs that I've been putting off for the slides, to the annoyance of the bug people.

For those keeping score:
Meeting: Thurday, decide to commit to project X
Pre-meeting: Wednesday night, get customer feedback for meeting.
Pre-pre-meeting: Wednesday afternoon, decide what we can present to customer.
Pre-pre-pre-meeting: Wednesday morning, decide what we can discuss with PE.

And you wonder why Cadence stock is at $12, off a high of $40?

From an IM chat:

kangadac: I had to pick Tamara up from the UPMC hospital where she was getting some diagnostic tests done.
kangadac: Next door, in the convocation center, a Hilary Duff concert was getting underway.
kangadac: I have never been so freaked by 8 year old girls before.
scaryr: heh heh heh...
kangadac: If I had leaned out my window and yelled "Hilary sucks!", I would not be typing this right now.
kangadac: Instead, my car would be dismantled and what remains of my body would be dragged through the streets of Oakland.

In other news, I have an idea for what could be a really interesting paper, but I would need an AMD Opteron system with at least 8 GB of memory. For the less geeky amongst you, this equates to "really dang expensive." And not bloody likely.

On the Cadence intraweb main site, there's a column named "Executive Corner" with supposedly witty articles from Cadence execs, along with a picture that changes every time you load the page. It's about the most dominant thing on the page, which kind of affirms the executive personality cult that pervades this company.

I've decided that you, my dear readers, have been deprived of a great opportunity to join this cult. Therefore, I present to you:

The Cadence Executive Personality Cult!