February 24, 2008
November 12, 2007
Couch vs. Sofa
October 19, 2007
I'm told the Internets have become quite popular
My employer, Telemetry Investments, now has a web site. We're hip, yo! Also, check the careers section - we're hiring.
September 26, 2007
Bikes in the city
NYC is trying out a new bike-friendly street layout, and it's all good news. As David Byrne points out, this is how they do it in Europe. I had the chance to bike in Copenhagen, and the feel was so different from cycling here. Much less fear of death-by-taxi or pedestrian collision, much more relaxing. It's slower too. Cyclists pay attention to stop-lights, and generally ride at a less frenzied pace - I guess that's the price of going mainstream.
June 17, 2007
i have a blog?
Ping? I still exist. This blog still exists. The rest of the story has to wait a while.
February 11, 2007
A year in New York (well, 13 months actually)
I don't know why, but let's start with this:
The Westminster Web site hopes to match last year's 125 million hits from more than 125 million countries. And once again, the Empire State Building will be lit in purple and yellow to highlight the show.
Wrong wrong wrong. Hits are indivisible, integer-like, one-to-one things. No way that X hits can come from more than X places. And what's with these 125 million countries? Must've come from the Eastern Bloc countries splitting apart. And all New Yorkers know that the Empire State is always lit with white light, and they just photoshop the color in later. Duh.
November 08, 2006
Best brand name for motor oil ever
Robot Butter. No, it doesn't exist. But if it did, I'd buy it.
November 04, 2006
Umm
Hey, where'd October go? Oh well, gone's gone. I'm trying to get it all together for one last push into non-inane blogging. In the meantime, here are links to my favorite programmer-bloggers:
Joel Spolsky, the grandaddy of 'em all (for me at least). I read his blog back before I knew what a blog was. Lately he seems to have jumped the shark over the wasabi thing, but we'll see if he can rally.
Damien Katz took the blog world by storm when he wrote about his work on the forumula engine for Lotus Notes. Now he's writing about his new project, CouchDb. My only complaint: I still don't know what CouchDb is. Damien, please, point me toward the explanation for people who can program but know nothing about modern web development!
Steve Yegge is the guy who made me realize Joel was jumping the shark. Steve recently did some popular stuff about agile programming and Google's dev process, but my favorite stuff is from his blog-rants. His Perl rant... I stumbled across it (following links from ongoing, probably) after I'd spent a summer hacking up a client-server cross-platform Perl thingy. The software worked and yet I felt guilty about inflicting a system written entirely in Perl on my employer. Steve's rant helped me realize where the pain was coming from.
Anyhow, some links and a vague reference to a future blog resurgence. That's all's I got for you. See you in January (hopefully sooner though - I just don't want to set the bar too high).
September 17, 2006
View from the office
Seeing as we're about to move uptown, I decided it was time to take some photos from the office. What more can I say? Best. Office. Ever.
August 20, 2006
Synonymania!
May 20, 2006
Nostalgia
What ever happened to
- Chlorofluorocarbons
- BattleBots
- BMX
- Smartfood
- JennyCam
April 09, 2006
Woohoo!
March 18, 2006
Overshared
Today my barber told me that I remind her of Lex Luthor.
February 20, 2006
Non-recommendation: Feige Grundman
When I lived in Pittsburgh, I had the bad luck to rent an apartment from Feige Grundman. I couldn't believe how much maintenance that apartment required. There were holes in the floor and wall. A part of the ceiling fell in. The sewage system backed up into the basement... twice. We had rats... twice. The water heater burst. Feige did fix these things, though not nearly as quickly as I would have liked.
I cannot recommend Feige as a landlord. If anyone's considering renting from her and wants more information, please feel free to get in touch (email andy at dullroar dot org).
February 12, 2006
Weekend update
I moved in early January. I've gotten no mail since the move, even though I filed a change of address with the post office. Why? I just found out: the post office has decided to forward all my mail to a completely different address than where I live. I've called the post office a couple times asking where my mail was, but they had no clue. Who did? The New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker) subscriptions department, which was able to tell me the new address to which my mail was being forwarded, a place not far from the yoga studio where the wife volunteers.
Speaking of which, Sidewinder's got a troll. Which means, hey, her site's troll-worthy. Nice to be able to raise that much of a reaction in a reader.
Finally, let me complain about one more thing: NTP, the network time protocol implementation, has let me down. Though its documentation is full of picture of cute smiling animals, it's pretty disorganized. Like, the configuration options are scattered across a couple different web pages. Even the wiki, put in place perhaps to deal with these things, has its problems. It says that stratum 2 servers ...directly sync to at least one upstream Stratum 1 time server... Actually, the server's stratum is exactly 1 more than its current best source, which means that a server can (does!) change stratum every time it picks a new best source. Two weeks ago I was blissfully unaware of these little details. Not anymore.
It's all about the infrastructure. You can only take it for granted while it's working.
February 08, 2006
Dios Malos
Last night the wife and I saw Dios Malos at the Bowery Ballroom. They rocked! The music was pure pop beauty and catchy as all get-out. After, we saw Matt Pond Pa, who were also pretty good. I think if I were 18 or so, I'd fall all over myself for Matt Pond, but now that I'm old and bitter, no deal. Still, more than worth missing my bedtime for.
December 26, 2005
I hate cars
Moving from Pittsburgh to New York involves some downsizing. The obvious first choice for stuff to get rid of is my car. I've always been a car nut, but I can't ignore the costs. Parking, insurance, and maintenance can easily run $500 per month in Manhattan or Brooklyn. And rumor has it that if you live somewhere ultra-nice like Central Park West, parking alone can be above $1,000 per month. Wondering whether it's really worth that much money has made me realize: I hate cars.
I hate that cars cost too much. Too much to buy (above $28,000 on average), too much to maintain (it's easy to spend as much on insurance, financing, gas, and maintenance as on the car), and too much to fix (thousands of dollars to fix one lousy dent). I hate that selling cars is all about deceiving the buyer. Talking to car salesmen makes my skin crawl. Even worse, now that I'm trying to sell my car, I feel like a car salesman. And I hate that I might become a car nut like this guy. If you want to buy a nice car, fine. But putting a bunch of photos up on Flickr for everyone to gawk at just says "hopeless poser."
In other words, bye bye car. Anyone want to buy a 2000 Honda Civic Si?
December 06, 2005
Change of plans
Those who say that computer science is not an inherently dangerous field have not worked in Wean Hall. What I've learned in my decade associated with CMU is that Wean's concrete not only looks ugly and leaks in the rain, but it can also burn and fill with water.
On October 22, 1997, Wean's roof
caught fire. An accident with a propane torch lit the tar on the
roof. It was around that time that we all began to talk about Wean's
fire alarm, a state of the art system circa 1970, that notified
building occupants of problems using a pleasant dinging sound. Picture
a butler calling guests to dinner by politely tapping a fork against a
wine glass - that's the Wean fire alarm. Or, that was the Wean fire
alarm. About a month ago, they finally replaced it with a much more
aggressive system featuring a booming voice telling us all to run for our
lives. But I digress.
By the way, the photo of Wean burning was taken by a web cam at Evolution Systems.
Yesterday a burst water main sent thousands of gallons of water into Wean's third floor data center, where most of the
department's servers were kept. The water came out with such force
that it broke open metal doors and pushed around 300 pound machine
racks like they weighed nothing. This particular water main, about 18 inches in diameter, happened to be located inside my research group's machine room. For years, I'd looked at that particular pipe and thought "better not touch that." I'm proud that my paranoia was so dead on.
This picture is courtesy of Ray Link, who's written about the flood in more detail.
If you're going to put mission critical servers less than 10 feet from a water main (as we did), it's probably good to have a disaster response plan (as we did not). This would help cheer you up after you get the news that the server holding all your source code, papers, and presentations is under water. In our case, our improvised disaster response plan is to remove hard drives and place them somewhere warm to dry out a bit. We also have backups somewhere, I'm told. Everybody has confidence in the backups. Even so, I think it'll be some time before 100x100 and ESM are back online.
This brings me to the poignant part of the story: I am not nearly as worried about my data as I used to be because on Friday, I told my advisor I was leaving the program. After nearly 10 years in Pittsburgh, 6 of them spent in grad school, I'm throwing in the towel. It's now only slightly dishonest of me to say I've been through hell and high water, and while that's not the same as saying I've got a PhD, it'll have to do. I'm quitting grad school while the quitting's good, moving to New York, and starting a job at Telemetry Investments.
November 20, 2005
Everything I know about leftovers I learned in grad school
The wife and I were eating dinner. I ate some leftover potatoes. I remarked about how bad they tasted. I went back for more. The wife said "what are you doing?" I said "what?", ate some more, and complained again. It was at this point that she asked "is this what grad school is like for you?"
Technorati Tags: gradschool
September 19, 2005
What's the grossest thing you've ever touched?
What's the grossest thing you've ever touched? Leave a comment...
August 19, 2005
James Bond was here
I hate to admit it, but I've been watching AMC's James Bond marathon ("A new Bond film every weeknight in August!"). Go James! Go basic cable! Anyhow. As August has passed we've moved through a few different Bonds. Sadly, at some point we're going to hit Timothy Dalton and I'll know it's time for the fall semester to start at school.
July 31, 2005
I was going to write
I was going to write something for the blog about motorcycles and safety and such, but then this afternoon, while I was pondering the idea and sitting in traffic, someone rear-ended me. Just a tap, really, and I was in my car so no appreciable damage to me or the car. Of course, if I had been on my scooter, I have no idea where I'd now be. Surely I would have wound up on the ground and my scooter would be majorly fubar (SUV vs. scooter - no contest). Anyhow, the point is: no motorcycle safety post for now.
And what's the deal with me getting rear-ended? I've been hit 3 times (2 in Pittsburgh, 1 near Philadelphia). Each time, the collision was at 5 mph or below, while I was sitting still. Coincidence? Or am I doing something wrong? If I did something obvious like sitting still when I could be moving, people would honk at me more often than they hit me, but people don't honk.
July 21, 2005
And we're back
Yes, I'm now married and back from the honeymoon. In a word, it was all fantastic. I have many stories, and I promise I will share none of them (almost).
Meanwhile, here we have a pic of the Eiffel Tower. The thing about the Eiffel is that before you go, you might wonder why you're bothering to see such a hackneyed tourist trap. And then you get there and you realize: this thing is amazingly massive. Over 1000 feet tall. You get the camera out to snap a pic, and it doesn't fit. The tower is just too big to get it all in a single snapshot. You've got to move waaaay back, and then it's hard to capture the scale of the thing. Call me easily amused, but in the end, I thought the tower was awesome. Oh, and they light it up at night real purty, too.
Update: About that assumption that all popular stuff sucks, B says it best. Also, the wife's post on the honeymoon is fabulous, and rumor has it that there's more to come. By way of a tiny bit of explanation about her post: The term "France car" was coined by my niece. Someone asked her how she liked her trip to France last year, and she replied "Well, the France car was hot." Which, considering what happend in the France car, has got to be the understatement of the century.
June 29, 2005
Wedding Favors (again)
Ok, my last post about wedding favors was obviously a joke. Sorry for so callously toying with you all. Anyway, at this very moment, the fiancee is phoning in an order for magnetic poetry kits for everyone. We've found a place that'll do 50 piece kits with custom words. So of course, we're doing sets with 25 pieces with the fiancee's name and 25 with mine ("Andy"). This is going to rock!
Update: Yes, this entire entry was also a joke.
June 16, 2005
Today I am a man
Finally, I've entered adulthood: Today I saw some of the neighbors' kids lighting books on fire in the back yard. Doing my best impression of an authority figure, I asked the kids what they thought they were doing, whether their parents knew, etc. Then I told them not to burn books, and not to start fires in the back yard lest they burn down half the neighborhood. What happened to me? I used to be the guy starting fires, and now I'm putting them out.
June 07, 2005
Finally, we found our wedding favors!
Check out these beauties.
May 10, 2005
Go Phish
Odd thing: This morning, someone claiming to be from Ameritrade called to say that mail they'd sent me had bounced, and could I please provide my new address? Ok, I think, this could be fake, but it sounds real enough (I'd moved about a year ago, so my one year of mail forwarding could have run out).
When I agreed to go ahead, the first question from the Ameritrade rep was: "Who's your current employer?" Why do they need my current employer to update my address? I told them I'd handle the update via their web site and hung up. So I logged on and, oddly enough, it turns out that all my Ameritrade information is up to date. But then, maybe the caller's authentic since the area code and exchange of the number from which I was called match Ameritrade's contact information.
So, nothing conclusive either way to say it is or isn't a legit call. Too bad that I have no way to authenticate callers - just the hint of an attempt at an identity theft gives me the willies.
May 05, 2005
Simile of the week
The fiancee: "It's like going deep sea diving with sharks, wearing anchovy-flavored scuba gear." This was, by the way, her description of hot air ballooning.
May 02, 2005
Time warp
Just saw a Rolling Stone magazine cover whose two largest headlines were about Johnny Depp and Michael Jackson. I wondered why anyone would leave a 20 year old Rolling Stone sitting around, but then I checked the date and found out it's from February '05. Eeek!
April 19, 2005
Lance Armstrong
Today a middle-aged yinzer chick shouted "Lance Armstrong's dying!" as I biked past her house. Odd, that.
April 13, 2005
A flat tax for a flat world
It's tax season so there's a lot of tax talk going on at school. One colleague revealed that he believes in a flat tax. He's a scientist, which means he's got a quantitative mindset and strong math skills, and yet he believes that a flat tax will work. I haven't met anyone like that before, and it made me wonder if maybe my anti-conservative bias had made me think the flat tax was a bad idea. I decided to investigate, but I didn't let my ignorance of economics, tax law, or social policy stop me. Nope, I delved right in with back-of-the-envelope calculations. Here's what I found...
April 01, 2005
Fiction
When I retire, I will write short stories. One of these stories will be about a landlord who sleeps with a carpenter so that she can get discounts on repairs. Specifically, she needs to repair a hole in the hardwood floor for one of her tenants. Tragically, the carpenter will break up with the landlord before the repair is performed. The entire story will be narrated by the tenant of the apartment with the hole in the floor.
March 14, 2005
Ramming speed, captain!
You know the drill: you're walking along, suddenly someone else is on a direct collision course with you. You both engage in a random series of feints to the left and right to try to avoid each other. What's odd to me is that we never gesture or say something to the other person like "I'm going left."
February 28, 2005
Semantics, Semiotics, Let's go shopping!
For who-knows-what reason, this morning I was pondering how odd it is that we have two words, "hooligan" and "hoodlum", that look similar and have the same meaning. Why isn't one word enough? What's the difference? If I mug an old lady on the street, which of those words would best describe me? Luckily, CMU has a subscription to the OED, which says:
hooligan - A young street rough, a member of a street gang.
hoodlum - A youthful street rowdy; 'a loafing youth of mischievous proclivities'; a dangerous rough.
It seems that the hoodlum is the older, more hardened version of a hooligan. I'm 30, and while that might qualify as youthful, it's probably not young. "Hoodlum" it is.
February 12, 2005
The Germans
The other night I was going to Whole Foods to buy dinner. As usual, the parking lot was moving at a crawl (that place is always packed). I was behind a volvo station wagon and this volvo wasn't moving at all. At first I thought it was because the volvo was waiting for a car to unpark, but then it still didn't move.
Seriously annoyed, I pulled around the volvo, and took the space that had opened up right in front of it. As I was parking, I heard honking. When I got out of my car, this middle-aged woman who had just gotten out of the volvo started berating me, loudly, in a German accent. Why had I taken this parking place? Where was my decency? Who did I think I was? All in rapid-fire succession, and with no letup. As I got to the entrance, she grabbed a basket and shouted "You want a basket? Here, take mine! Take it!" So I did. She grabbed a second basket and said "You want another? Take this one too!" I said "No, thanks, one's enough" and went into the store.
Since I'm a wimp, this had sent me into adrenaline overload. I tried to shop but felt jangly, half expecting the woman to show up again, possibly with store management in tow. I rushed through the store, but as I was finishing up at the salad bar, a middle-aged man approached me, and he too began berating me in a German accent. I spent a moment pondering whether it was possible I had made a bad parking decision. Then I asked him: "That was your wife getting out of the car, right? So how could I know you weren't just dropping her off?" He looked at me for a second or so, then walked off indignantly.
This is upper middle-class urban warfare at its worst. Maybe if Whole Foods'd lower the price on their organic tomatoes, or get some tilapia back in stock, we could see peace in our time. Until then, we'd all do well to keep an eye out for acts of terrorism: the bag of overpriced dried figs subtly dropped into our cart, or even the insidious substitution of regular vegetable samosas for wheat-free.
February 10, 2005
I had the funniest dream the other night...
Word on the street has it that I laugh in my sleep. I'm told it's not the happy-sounding type of laughter. It's more the "I'm up to something" sort. Don't know what that's about.
February 02, 2005
Four quick views of Groundhog Day
1. That Bill Murray movie. A cult classic, somewhat like Joe Versus the Volcano.
2. A silly superstition invented in Europe. Europe!
3. Folkways are the best ways. Punxsutawny, PA is situated between the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes such that the early February cloud cover there can predict the gulf stream's patterns over the next 6 weeks.
4. Deconstruction. If we begin from the notion that a shadow represents mortality, then seeing a shadow is tantamount to recognizing one's own mortality. Only in accepting our coming death can we truly seize the joy of life. Hence, spring.
Special bonus link: Haruki Murakami's novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, features a subplot set in a town where people's shadows are literally cut off and banished. A very strange and wonderful novel, outwardly random-strange but underneath it all, creepy-strange.
Special bonus link 2: Punxsutawny Phil has seen his shadow.
January 26, 2005
Winter product reviews
Just thought I'd take a few moments to review three products that have helped me get through the cold cold Pittsburgh winter.
Rain-x Windshield schmutz happens, especially in winter. The question is, what are you going to do about it? Earlier this month, an article on Cool Tools revealed that there's windshield washer fluid with Rain-X in it available. At Target, I bought a bottle of a knock-off product (I think was called something like Rain removerX) for $1.99, and it works great. This washer fluid makes dirt and water fly off the windshield rather than sticking. Now I don't have to try to see through the layer of dark grey slurry that's all over the rest of my car.
Eucerin creme I can't tell you whether it's the dry weather or a curse placed on me by one of my many enemies, but my hands look like a mummy's these days. However, nothing works better than Eucerin for fighting off the effects for a bit. Don't get the lotion (which isn't anything special), get the creme. You might wonder why you're paying twice as much for something with the consistency of paste, but after you try it, you'll know.
Bombay Sapphire Gin If you're going to self-medicate through the depths of the mid-winter SAD, you might as well medicate in style. And what's better-tasting than Bombay Sapphire? Well, Grey Goose Vodka, actually, but until I'm out of grad school, I'll be sticking with the (marginally) cheaper Sapphire.
January 23, 2005
Snovelling Show
To the six people in Pittsburgh who shovel the sidewalk in front of their houses: Thank you! To everyone else: feh.
January 20, 2005
Sigcomm
The deadline for submitting a paper to Sigcomm, the premiere computer networking conference, is coming up in a couple weeks. Working on research for Sigcomm is a lot like having a bad cold: I don't have much fun, I stay in a lot, and I feel vaguely disoriented. Which reminds me that I once tried to create a mixed drink called a "bad cold." It was not a success.
January 07, 2005
From Hulk to Eternity: Domo-kun vs. Mr. T
We learn important lessons from TV. The A Team taught me that blowing up the bad guys is an important conflict resolution strategy. The Incredible Hulk taught me that hiding my emotions is a key part of adulthood. Is it any wonder that now I can only watch kids shows, preferably in a different language? Thus, I give you my latest fav, Domo-kun (here and here too). What can I say about Domo? He's square and brown (sort of a subterranean Spongebob) and sweaty.
December 31, 2004
New Years Eve
Looks like many people feel it's a solemn duty to blog something about the New Year. Resolutions, predictions, traffic stats, whatever. I don't have anything to say, so I created the perfect New Years message by combining all the other posts I've read, jumbling things up a bit, and spitting out the best 100 word post that 20 lines of perl could generate:
Cut my if my the January. do here, found 2005 surface Originally, look 995 gonna take let thought-provoking even one interesting Yet me Y2sKare. has found This me take is these with it Well Best inspired I years from my though, deeper there since blog Don week's Prediction interesting there my crystal Don 2004 my in common Pro here notes be “unifying on 2005 When on: like than Predictions I've better. predictions knew the I been be though, 2005 Yet back them pops one, of see actually my “Sun here years and until Another prediction see Originally, big tool knew
I think that really sums up both 2004 and blogging, don't you?
December 23, 2004
Knitting Goodness
For all the knitters out there: if you're wondering what to make/get me for my next birthday or intervention, I humbly request you consider making me a ski mask. (Found via boingboing.)
December 22, 2004
You Know You're an Adult When
After bundling up in your warmest clothes, you try to catch the bus to school and on the way get waved across the street by a crossing guard. All of which happened to me the other day. Eeek.
December 20, 2004
Cold
Just for the record, right now it's colder in Pittsburgh (5 degrees F) than any city in Minnesota.
December 05, 2004
What happened to November?
Last weekend I was walking through Target and thinking "gee, I really want to post to the blog once more in November." Guess not. Been a busy couple of weeks, what with my folks and the fiancee's meeting for the first time, Geek Night, the upcoming 100x100 retreat, and, of course, Chanukah. Plus I'm starting to have fun with Flickr and its tag-system, which lets me give y'all a link to uploaded pictures of murals.
Oh, and about Target: they've got some really competitive deals on kitty litter. Dyn-o-mite!
November 12, 2004
Cute kitten available for adoption
As the fiancee says, she found a kitten who needs adopted. He really is very cute. Someone please, save him from a life of being a cage potato at the animal rescue league!
November 08, 2004
I'm turning 30 this week
Shouldn't I be freaking out? I'm not though. I was always the youngest (in my family, in my class at school, at my startup). Now I'm one of the oldest grad students, and oddly, it's refreshing. People are less prone to declare how cute I am while pinching my cheek (metaphorically, I mean).
Update: Singing telegrams were deployed.
November 03, 2004
What do you have to do to get fired around here?
The majority of voters apparently want Bush, and it's hard for me to wrap my head around that. My two little debate memories: Kerry ripping into Bush over the mess he's made of things. Bush in the third debate, sounding almost a little crazed and shouting "freedom's on the march!" It's as if the American people are saying that Bush's poor performance has raised the bar for anyone hoping to become president. Meanwhile, Bush gets to stay in office.
Daily Kos: Don't Mourn, Organize.
October 26, 2004
The Official Jagoff's Guide To Driving
I was on the Parkway (that's what we Pittsburghers call the highway), listening to William Shatner's new album (it's so good because it's so bad[*]), and a guy in front of me slammed on his brakes to let someone merge onto the highway. Almost smacked right into him too, but for my cat-like reflexes. And then the same thing happened to me again at the very next exit, with totally different people. Finally, I understand why it's illegal to mount high-caliber machine guns on the front of my car.
[*] The fiancee, possibly with tongue-in-cheek, says it's good because it's good.
October 14, 2004
Woohoo!
Unbelievable: My paper was accepted at HotNets!
October 12, 2004
Missouri loves company
Wonkette live-blogged the second Presidential debate. I've been hoping to write up my impressions about what went on, but all I really have to say is that I thought Kerry made much better points than Bush, but that I worry that there weren't any clear signs of this for people to latch onto. Why can't Bush do something really crazy like talk to people who aren't in the room or something.
Anyhow, did y'all see that Iraq's nuclear stockpile has vanished. It's official: I feel much less safe today than I did when Bush took office, or after 9/11, or ever before. This is Bush's legacy.
Flash animation of Radiohead's Creep
There's a flash "video" for Radiohead's Creep (created by the guy who does Low Morale) floating around. In the animation, as a guy sings about a girl he yearns for yet is too much of a creep to ever have, an office full of people comes into being around him. It reminds me of my time at 61C: Here's this great company coming into existence around me, and I'm just this kid with an idea. It's the usual impostor syndrome deal and all, and for me, that animation captures the feeling of it.
By the way, let me add that I believe Creep is one of the best pop songs ever written.
October 06, 2004
Edwards ?, Cheney ?
I watched the vice presidential debate last night, and I don't know what to think. Despite all the accusations thrown back and forth, the event was mostly just boring. Cheney seemed to be winning after the first half hour, but in the end, I think I'll declare this one a tie (*).
Most of the accusations in the debate seemed to be from the "technically true but misleading" category. I wasn't enough of a policy wonk to say who was more truthful, though I did catch Cheney denying he ever linked Al Qaeda and Iraq, and that's definitely a lie. Also, Cheney continued the Republican spin campaign to twist the meaning of Kerry's "global test" remark.
Regardless, I'm just sick of the distortions. Campaigns today are run in such a cynical manner, with so little grounding in the truth, it's not democracy anymore. When spin misleads people about the truth, it's a form of disenfranchisement. A vote cast based on a lie is a fraud. As a society, we reject misleading claims about the products and services we purchase. Why can't we hold our politicians to the same standard?
(*) Note that for much of the last hour of the debate, I had picture-in-picture going so I could also channel surf (caught a little Austin Powers), and so it might be the case that I'm giving Cheney extra credit because he resembles Dr. Evil.
October 01, 2004
Good debate wrap-up
Check out Attack of the Nucular Moolahs for more post-debate Bush-bashing goodness.
Kerry 1, Bush 0
My highly-biased, partisan notion of what went on in the debate last night was this: John Kerry wiped the floor with George Bush. Kerry was clear, he was concise, he listed Bush's failures, and he made the case for why he'd do a better job. I'd maybe have preferred Kerry to focus a bit more on what he wanted to do rather than what Bush did wrong, but the balance Kerry hit on wasn't bad. Meanwhile, Bush looked alternately angry and frightened, and he seemed to think that the best thing he could do is bring up the flip-flop accusation over and over.
I remember my crazy right-wing nut of an officemate once said that Kerry was in trouble because he had a 20 year Senate voting record on which he could be attacked. Maybe so, but Bush has to run on a record that includes Abu Ghraib, Iraq on fire, North Korea going nuclear, and, oh yeah, Osama still on the lam.
But what the heck do I know? Bush is ahead in the polls. Sigh.
September 17, 2004
Wean Hall
I have the privelege of working near really smart people in Wean Hall at CMU. Wean is a large concrete box built in the architectural style known as brutalism.
Previous experience has taught us that, even though it's concrete, Wean can burn. Today's rain has revealed that Wean leaks. A lot.
But no problem, because the ever thoughtful Bill Gates is going to buy us a new building.
September 08, 2004
How to pick a startup to work at
Every now and again, someone asks me how to evaluate a startup they're considering joining. They've had a couple interviews, they like the technology, environment, and the job description, but a big question remains: Will this company succeed?
The short answer is that it's impossible to know (who can tell whether the CEO is going to develop a coke habit in the next year, and whether that coke habit will hurt or help his performance?) But if I had to name just one single thing that predicts success well, it would have to be customers. When you're evaluating a company, the one thing you've got to know is whether there is demand for the company's products. What better indication is there than customers? Sure, seeing the company's full audited financials might be better, but most companies won't reveal that stuff to a guy applying for an engineering job. However, most companies do seem willing to tell an applicant some basic info about their customers.
So what do you ask? Find out how many customers the company has, how long it took to get them, and how fast they're adding new customers. How many potential customers are out there, anyway? If you haven't been kicked out of the interview by now (remember, when asking these questions, politeness counts, and do try to sound impressed with the answers!), you might also ask how much a typical customer pays, and how many customers it takes to get to break-even (that's where the company isn't losing money anymore). After you get all this info, you should be able to do a little math to see if the company is on track to capture a sizable share of the market within a few years, and get to break-even in the near future. The two things you want to see are a healthy growth rate (say, on track to capture 20% of the market within 3 years) and happy customers.
I have two more issues to cover. First, what if the company has no customers yet? It's very hard to evaluate companies at this stage, so try to find out anything you can about customer trials or surveys. Any data at all helps, but mostly, it's best to know something about the market the company plans to sell to before you dive in. And by the way, if you join a company before it has customers, you should get a lot of stock options.
Finally, we come to the ugliest issue of them all: what if the company isn't completely truthful? I tend to think that most people are mostly honest, so I don't expect outright lies (especially when it comes to dealing with someone who might become a coworker). But some amount of exaggeration of good news and minimization of bad news is common, so take all this info with a grain of salt.
I admit this is just my opinion, it's not at all sure-fire, and it's probably obvious as well. But in everything I've read about interviewing, I don't recall seeing any mention of trying to assess the company's chances. And of the people I've interviewed for engineering positions, very few have bothered to ask about customers. Beyond the details, the message is this: don't just look at the technology when considering a company to join.
August 31, 2004
Here and there
I'm in Portland Oregon at a conference right now, but if I weren't, I'd be in NY protesting the Republicans.
August 26, 2004
Farscape to return (for just a bit)
As this Farscape trailer attests, Farscape is coming back! For those who don't know: Farscape was a science fiction drama on the scifi channel that got canned a year or two ago. Unlike most science fiction, it's got a lot of non-human-looking aliens (the doubters among us will call them "ugly puppets"); it's got actual emotions and character development (doubters: "attractive women in skimpy clothes"); and it doesn't solve problems with a "particle of the week" the way bad Star Trek Next Generation episodes did (doubters don't usually get far enough to notice this). Now I'm not sure it's West Wing(*) in space, but maybe it's Sports Night?
(*) I refer to West Wing when Aaron Sorkin was around, not to the post-Sorkin catastrophe that has taken the true show's place.
August 24, 2004
Pittsburgh to CMU Frosh: Drop Dead!
It's freshman move-in day at CMU! What a great opportunity for Pittsburgh to show itself off to the thousands of parents and new students who are visiting the city (perhaps for the first time). If Pittsburgh makes a good first impression, perhaps it'll start these talented youngins on the road to loving Pittsburgh. Perhaps they'll even decide to stay in town after graduation. Who knows? Maybe first impressions are as important as everybody says they are.
Pittsburgh, how will you respond? By putting up a speed trap right outside campus, of course. On the long downhill of Forbes, right before Margaret Morrison street. Coincidentally (I'm sure all of this is one big coincidence and not, say, some CMU official's failure to pay the yearly bribe to the city), this is the road that CMU's own directions to campus suggest that visitors take to get here. Pittsburgh, you've done it again.
My fiancee's first blog post
Sidewinder: Rock, Paper, Scissors, Tape? is Jill's first post. I'm so proud (sniffle sniffle).
August 14, 2004
John Perry Barlow interview
You've all already heard about the John Perry Barlow interview over at Reason. But I just had to pull out this quote from the very end of the interview to point out:
In order to be libertarian, you have to be an optimist. You have to have a benign view of human nature, to believe that human beings left to their own devices are basically good. But I’m not so sure about human institutions, and I think the real point of argument here is whether or not large corporations are human institutions or some other entity we need to be thinking about curtailing. Most libertarians are worried about government but not worried about business. I think we need to be worrying about business in exactly the same way we are worrying about government.
What sort of meta-behavior do we have when we get together in companies? IANAEB, but I'm curious: how do collectives of people evolve? Obviously via the evolutoin of the constituents. Or is that obvious? I hvae no idea.
(IANAEB means I am not an evolutionary biologist, of course.)
August 11, 2004
Long lost identical twin brother found, turns out not to be murderer
Remember that guy who had a bad car wreck and then was charged with murder because they found a dvd player on his dashboard. He was acquitted, but what really messed with my head for a sec is that the guy looks just like me! Check out the picture in the article.
And yes, I was joking: I don't have any missing siblings, twin or otherwise.
August 01, 2004
Finally, we know what bikes Bush and Kerry ride
In today's New York Times' Week In Review section, there's an article, Culture Wars, on Two Wheels, that tells us about the cycling styles of Bush and Kerry. All I can say is, it's about time.
As the article tells us, Kerry rides a road bike while Bush rides a mountain bike. The article also tells us that Bush falls off his bike a lot more than Kerry, though that's probably because Bush is an idiot. No no no, just kidding! It's because off-roading involves riding on rough terrain with brush, branches, large pointy rocks, and scary-looking squirrels. Anyhow, read the article and decide for yourself.
July 26, 2004
Building vocabulary the French way
We're in a minivan traveling tiny mountain roads in France, and we're late. I see a sign ahead that says something like "3 Cassis." What's a cassis? Nobody in the car knows. We continue to speed along. Several seconds pass. Then the road abruptly drops several feet. Me, my brother, my fiancee, our minivan, all our luggage, and the bikes in the rack on the back of the minivan are now flying and falling. I have a moment to be thankful that my seat belt is keeping me somewhere in the vicinity of my seat. We land, very hard, still going very fast. We have enough time to glance at each other incredulously before the road drops away again. By the third cassis, we've slowed down enough that the minivan stays on the ground. I don't think I'll ever forget that "cassis" is a noun meaning something like "sudden, large drop."
Mad props are due to Renault for their Espace minivan, which came through the cassis situation with no damage. It's not every car that can survive a jump while it's fully loaded. Plus, through all of this mountain driving it got about 30 mpg.
July 18, 2004
Avignon festival
The Festival d'Avignon is going on right now through July 27. It's a theater festival, and there are literally hundreds of plays being put up all over town. Even in the Palace of the Popes. (IANAC*, but why did the Pope need a Palace? With both small and large treasure rooms?)
Also, from a person who shall remain nameless, on the Tour de France: "If you think riding in the tour is hard, try watching it!"
* IANAC - I am not a Catholic.
July 07, 2004
The squirrel cage
There's a pretty good neighborhood bar in Pittsburgh called the Squirrel Hill Cafe that everyone calls "The Squirrel Cage" or just "The Cage." And I just saw this blog, Squeaks from the Squirrel Cage, which I was hoping would be a chronicle of one person's experiences at the Cage, but turns out to be about some guy from D.C. who works in a cubicle.
June 25, 2004
Strip defeats Starbucks
So a couple weeks ago when I wrote about the wonders of the Strip District, I left out some details. Like, for instance, that along with half a dozen or so independent cafes, there was also a Starbucks. But today, I noticed that that Starbucks had closed. I can't recall seeing a Starbucks close anywhere, ever, for any reason, until today.
June 10, 2004
Six month anniversary
Just wanted to kvell about my blog being 6 months old today. Sure, I haven't been around as long as some peopl