Dichotomy...

2010-03-03T17:14:00.002-05:00

After attending weddings on consecutive weekends in NYC and Jamaica, I can safely say that I never need to hear the following list of songs ever again:
Anything by Lady Gaga
Miley Cyrus - Party in the USA
Jay-Z - Empire State of Mind
LMFAO - Shots
Black Eyed Peas - I Got A Feeling

Additionally, thanks to the water aerobics DJ at the resort in Jamaica who would play these two songs following his class every day (I never attended, but could hear the songs from the beach or other pool), these songs are also hereby banned-for-life from my ears:
Tim Wilson - Booty Man
Mighty Sparrow - The Big Bamboo

2010-02-11T09:42:00.004-05:00

Forgot one more review I meant to put up in my last uberpost.

Sick Puppies - Dressed Up As Life
In case you haven't heard of the Free Hugs Campaign, I thought now might be a good time to plug it. And if you haven't heard of Sick Puppies, you should have. They're a rock group from Australia that somewhat defies classification, other than to say they're great to listen to. There's some influences from Linkin Park (sans turntables), there's a little Muse (sans fantasy themes and epic feel) thrown in, and stylistically they're probably most like Lovehammers, but with slightly more edge. Then thrown in the occasional passage that is reminiscent of another down under band - The Living End. This record runs the gamut from straight-up rock to ballads to really crunchy riffs with absolutely killer bass lines from Emma Anzai, one of the best young female players I've heard. Meanwhile, vocalist (and guitarist) Shimon switches seamlessly from a falsetto to a growl and overall has a very smooth timbre when singing in the middle of his range. Song lyrics trend towards the darker side of the human experience, but I think most people can identify with the feelings of emptiness, loss, or hopelessness being conveyed with some point in their own lives. Bottom line - this record is fantastic and one of the best albums I've picked up in a long time.
Rating: Lava

2010-02-09T14:33:00.001-05:00

Been meaning to post about a few things for a while, but it's a long post, so I keep putting it off. But welcome to more reviews!

After our first massive snowstorm of the winter, we dug out just in time for the holidays. Emily's parents and brother stayed with us for Christmas, and we had a great time with them and my family, both at my parents' house and at ours. Emily put together an amazing Christmas feast featuring roasted chickens that worked out perfectly. And who doesn't love chocolate pecan pie for dessert? We spent New Year's Eve at a friend's house who was out of town (under the auspices of dog-sitting). Everything was going fine until some total asshat showed up and ruined our party for everyone. After that it was off to Miami for the Orange Bowl, despite the loss, we had a great time doing some sightseeing and sampling local fare. Then it was snowstorm after snowstorm until today, when we're expecting another 10-20" of snow. Whee! Then we enter the busy part of the year. This weekend is Valentine's Day, next weekend we're in NYC for Meg's wedding, the following weekend we're in Jamaica for another wedding, and then it's Kristin's baby shower. And all of a sudden it's mid-March!

Jersey Shore
Some people insisted on watching this at our NYE party. There's a lot of things on TV I haven't watched, but I'm willing to say that this is easily the worst thing ever broadcast on TV. If I thought it was supposed to a parody or satire, it would be brilliant (though still painful to watch). But I'm reasonably certain it's just extending the stupidity of other MTV shows further into the netherworld of unfathomable braindeath. I'm not even kidding. I think I lost at least a few dozen IQ points watching an hour of this trash. Although, to be fair, after the first 20 minutes, my brain started replaying episodes of the Simpsons to prevent me from slipping into a coma.
Rating: arsenic

Miami
Despite near-record cold temperatures, 50 degree Miami with palm trees beats 20 degree DC with snow-covered pines any day. Monday night we had appetizers at a seafood place near the Grove and dinner at a Cuban place, then topped it off with a night cap at the illustrious Biltmore hotel lounge. Tuesday was gameday, but kickoff wasn't until 8 pm. We hit up a bay cruise that took us all around Biscayne Bay so we could see Star Island, Fischer Island, Palm island, and Hibiscus Island. A beautiful bright sunny day, but still a bit chilly, but it was nice to be out and about. After the cruise we drove over to South Beach and had a fabulous lunch at Caffe Milano. Then we walked along the beach for a while before heading out. We took in an amazing sunset on Key Biscayne at the lighthouse, then it was off to Pollo Tropical for a light dinner before trudging through rush hour traffic up to (what is now) ~~Joe Robbie~~ ~~Pro Player~~ ~~Dolphin~~ ~~Land Shark~~ Sun Life Stadium. Yeah, we lost the game, but had a lot of fun in Miami. Most of Miami is exactly what I expected: very spread out, very flat, very gritty but covered in bright paint. Certainly there are areas of tremendous wealth, but there are also areas of extreme poverty, just like any major city.
Rating: Aureolin

Miami International Airport
And you thought Newark was bad... Okay, to be fair, Newark is much much much worse. But on such a relativistic scale, the much much much isn't really important. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the nicest airport in the world, Miami is a 1.0001 and Newark is a 1.0000000000000001. See what I mean? When we arrived, we needed to find the hotel board to summon the hotel shuttle. We eventually found it in the ticketing area (not the baggage claim or ground transportation area). Except that the phones had all been removed the board was stripped completely bare. We also noticed walls throughout the airport with bare wirings hanging out that had once attached to monitors. No signs notifying us of construction or "please excuse our mess" or that kind of thing. Lots of signs in Spanish though. When it comes to food, maybe it was just the terminal we were in, but there was nothing hot or fresh to be found. Nearly everything you could buy to eat there was pre-packaged and sold out of a fridge unit. Additionally, the terminal just looked dirty and had poor natural lighting, was laid out terribly, and was entirely too small for the number of people in it. All around a completely terrible experience at MIA. Avoid at all costs.
Rating: Myrtle

Iowa Hawkeye Fans
The thing about U(sic)GA fans is that they're just a bunch of dumb hicks, most of whom never even went to the college they root for. But at least they're unapologetic about it, and they know how to mock opposing fans. Most of the Iowa fans we went en route to or in Miami were very pleasant and friendly, although it was hard to strike up a conversation with them that didn't revolve around tractors. No, I'm not kidding. But after our bay cruise, populated entirely by friendly Iowa fans, we got booed by another fan waiting to board. Literally, booed. That's the best you've got? Booing? I wasn't upset as much as embarrassed for this poor Hawkeye fan. Later, in South Beach, we got drive-by booed by some giggly middle-aged women, only, in SoBe, you can't really drive-by anything because traffic is moving at a crawl. Pathetic. Only later did we realize that Iowa fans saved their real heckling after the game, once they've gotten good and drunk. Their best jeers: As a group walked up to us, they yelled Ga Tech, then under their breath mutter sucks. And another group told us to go back to Atlanta. Yikes, watch out. Here's the thing: I would never mock a stranger in passing just because their team lost and mine won, no Tech fan would, not even U(sic)GA fans. So the small handful of classless Iowa fans kind of ruined my impression of the entire group. But even more so, if you're going to mock us, be original or at least malicious, and do it to my face. Like "that's the country's #2 rushing offense?!?" And I hate to break it to you, but Atlanta is waaaay nicer than Iowa City. Overall nice people, but lousy as fans.
Rating: Puce

Rent
The stage musical, not the monthly payment to a landlord in exchange for lodging, although, I suppose technically I'm talking about both. We saw it at the Keegan Theatre's Church Street location, which is a converted townhouse near Dupont Circle which seats maybe 100 people. I firmly believe that all live performances (of pretty much anything) should be in such settings. You really get immersed in the performance and can see the facial expressions and feel the emotions being conveyed in a way that is impossible in a setting like most modern performance spaces. At any rate, using a single stage setup with a few moving tables, and a fantastic cast, this performance of Rent was amazing. I've never seen it before, so chaulk some of that up to first-time newness, but I've seen La Boheme and SLC Punk (no matter what James Merendino says, I think it's loosely based on the opera) before, so I knew what I was getting myself into. (Unless you count my previous knowledge of Rent - Homer Simpson playing the landlord Mr. Stingly in Rent II: Condo Fever - "Where is the rent/I must have the rent/dollars dime and nickels/I need them all right now. ... I literally chewed the scenery") All the performers were micced, although with their powerful voices, this was almost unnecessary. This is the second Keegan performance I've seen, and was equally impressed with the first. I would recommend Keegan to anyone, and if tickets hadn't already sold out for Rent, I'd have recommended it sooner. One other mention, Roger was wearing a God Forbid shirt featuring the State of Liberty with the slogan "In Greed We Trust". Loved it, except that Rent is set in 1994 and God Forbid didn't form until 1996.
Rating: Palatinate

Winter 2010
Snow, snow, and more snow. The snowstorm in mid December dropped about 2 feet. Then it was so cold for weeks that it stuck around forever. Finally it had nearly all melted just in time for the 6" we got in later January. Which was followed a couple days later by another 3-4", and then a couple days later, we got 32". Roads are still a mess, some basic services aren't operating, and we're due for more snow this afternoon in the 10-20" range (although, the current radar images look like we might luck out and most of the storm may miss DC). Seriously, who pissed off nature this year? 2/25 cannot possible get here soon enough - get me out of here and off to sunny warm Jamaica please!
Rating: Liver

2010-02-09T11:36:00.002-05:00

HaloScan's datacenter is fried, so they're discontinuing their free service and requesting that user upgrade to something that costs $12/month. No thanks. So I'm removing the embedded HaloScan comments and turning on Blogger's comments instead. Alas, this means you will no longer be able to go back in time and re-read the old comments, but I've got them exported in an XML file if you ever get weepy over days long gone by. Anyway, let me know if you have any issues using the new comments. It should work for anyone with a Google or OpenID account.

2009-12-07T14:28:00.003-05:00

HELL YES!!!

Orange Bowl, here we come! Get ready to get Wrecked Hawkeyes!

ACC Championship Game Recap
Orange Bowl Announcement
Scott Blair (SB14) - One Man Clemson Wrecking Crew

2009-11-13T11:10:00.004-05:00

Typically, strange dreams (for me) are caused by eating too much delicious delicious garlic before bedtime. However, two nights ago, I didn't have anything garlicy and still had very bizarre dreams. The most memorable one occurred right before my alarm went off. I was officiating a CAN flag football game. The opening kick-off went out of bounds, so I explained to the receiving team that they could either have the team re-kick 5 yards back, take the ball where it went out of bounds, or take the ball at their 35. The ball had gone out only 10 yards from where it was kicked, so you'd be stupid to do anything besides take it where it went out. But they wanted them to re-kick for some reason. At this point, the game was outside, but bounded by woods. Later on, the offense was near the goal line and committed a flag guarding penalty. When I marked off the 10 yard penalty, I ended up in the opposite endzone. The field is supposed to be 80 yards from goal line to goal line. At this point, the game had somehow moved inside into a large room vaguely resembling our bedroom. So instead of 10 yards, I ended up marking the penalty half the distance and then trying to explain that the home team had set the field up wrong.
Other than typical dream weirdness (like outside turning into a bedroom), this dream brought up two things. 1 - I am entirely too preoccupied with flag football. This is something I have becoming increasingly aware of, and I feel like this really drives home the point. This may in fact be the final justification for me not coaching again next season. 2 - How sad is it that in my own sports dream, I'm a referee and not the game-winning quarterback or (more realistically) game-saving defender knocking down a hail-mary pass?

2009-10-28T15:23:00.003-04:00

Several people here and on a few message boards have pointed out that this particular problem is a lot less straight-forward than I had initially hoped. Even still, I think I want to play around with it a bit and see what there is to see.

Here's a couple of links to some software that other people/companies have developed that attempt something similar.
Celemony
Antares
Audio to MIDI conversions

2009-10-15T16:15:00.002-04:00

I had a new project idea while I was in the shower this morning. Basically, it would take in a music file and output the musical notation. Or at least something reasonably approximating it. There may already be software that does this, I really haven't checked. But this doesn't seem all that complicated to do. You basically take a digital sound sample and FFT it like crazy. This gives you your frequency response at periodic intervals throughout the sound file. Since your sampling frequency is locked-in by the sample rate of the digital audio, you can vary the output interval by changing FFT size and overlap. Obviously this impacts your resolution, but even with a 1 Hz resolution, this is theoretically more than adequate to differentiate even between natural and accidental notes on the lowest end of a piano. We're talking about frequencies around 30 Hz here, and much below that, human hearing drops off and the "sound" you hear is really more of a full body vibration than anything your ear is picking up specifically. Anyway, so my plan is to take the FFT of each periodic sample and identify tonals that stand out. These should be identifiable as musical notes with some reasonable degree of accuracy (given some wiggle-room to account for variance in tuning). After that, you've basically got a chart of musical notes across time. Then I just need to plot them onto a musical scale. This doesn't identify specific instruments, but if you tried to play it, it should be fairly obvious which instruments play which parts. Other potential problems are dealing with effects processors. Chorus, reverb, wah, distortion, etc all add elements to the final sound that the original instrument did not actually play. But those are the kinds of things I'm curious to see if this process can isolate and weed through to find the original music underneath.

2009-09-14T14:13:00.002-04:00

Last week was the first relaxing vacation I've had in years. I think since I spent the week at Edisto Beach before my cousin Brian's wedding. Sure, Emily and I have been some great places for a week's vacation since then (Malta, London), and had several long weekend vacations (Stanardsville, Cleveland). But those vacations have always been full of sightseeing and so much to do. No doubt they were fun vacations that I wouldn't trade for anything, but I didn't realize what I was missing. This past week I had no plans and no timetable at all, save for watching the Tech/Clemson game and having dinner with Emily's grandparents. It was nice to just sit back and a take a deep breath and not have to go anywhere or do anything with any real urgency. We spent some time on the beach a couple days, went to the sea turtle center, toured a civil war era fort, and generally just relaxed and did things at a very leisurely pace. Definitely something I need to keep in mind next time I'm thinking about a vacation.

2009-08-20T16:56:00.002-04:00

One year ago today, I handed in my resignation at GD. Well, handed isn't really the right word. More like marched down to my program manager's office and told him flat out that I was quitting. It's normally kind of a rough conversation to get started. Fortunately, my manager's manager also was leaving, and gave me a good segue: "Hey, I heard Barry gave his notice today. I've decided to do the same." I had to resist the urge to skip down the hall and do a jumping heel click as I walked out of his office. Then I was giddy for about a week. Then the panic set in. The "oh god what did I do" thoughts started swirling. I knew something had to change at GD, and that meant either the workload and company needed to change (fat chance), or I needed to leave. So leave I did. But I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to hack it at my new company, going from a hotshot to bottom rung experience-wise. Almost a year later, I still have days where I spend all day struggling with something that ends up being really stupid. But I take comfort in having eventually solved it on my own. In any case, it was definitely a change for the better to join team Sedna. And though there are stressful days, I'm certainly much happier here. I've gotten the increase in responsibility and pay that I wanted but without all the GD baggage!

2009-08-17T15:28:00.000-04:00

The heat wave that hit DC last week and is still in full effect, plus the power outage we had last night got me thinking about a couple projects I've been mulling over for a while. Both of which involve some kind of backup power solution and/or house monitoring. The main thing I'm concerned about is the temperature sensitivity of our chinchillas, so keeping their room nice and cool at all times requires a separate air conditioner. But when the power goes out, so does their source of cool dry air, and during the summer, it gets steamy in their room quickly. So I'm looking at some way to make sure their A/C stays on and also a way to monitor the room remotely.

Project 1 - Backup power source
Option 1 - UPS - This is the "simplest" solution. Plug a UPS into the wall outlet, plug the A/C into the UPS and you're good to go. Any UPS large enough to support an A/C should also handle a florescent lamp and whatever monitoring device I come up with in Project 2 without breaking a sweat. However, UPS's aren't really designed to handle large inductive loads (like motors), so I have some doubts about how well this would actually work. They also are generally only meant to provide enough juice for a few minutes to shut down all attached loads when the power fails, so one large enough to run for say, an hour, is going to mean a huge battery and that means huge $$ as well - something in the range of $2500 by my estimation. They do have the nice feature of providing a near-seamless transition from wall power to battery power that other devices can't match, though power being off for 15 minutes honestly isn't going to hurt anything. We're more talking about outages that last longer than an hour.
Option 2 - Gasoline/LP/NG Generator - This is certainly more complicated no matter how you do the installation, but also provides a lot more flexibility. This requires getting some kind of generator, portable or permanent, finding a place for it in the back yard, possibly building a shelter for it, keeping it in working order, and ensuring that it has plenty of usable fuel. There are a lot of sizes and options out there, but if we're going to go this route, rather than having to run an extension cord across the house (bad idea) and up 3 stories (worse idea), we might as well get one we can patch into the house wiring, which means more complexity, but higher reliability and more flexibility. We could use it to provide backup power to other appliances as well, such as the fridge/freezer, internet router (we could still access internet via laptops), maybe some basic lighting, maybe even the central A/C if the genny's rated high enough. Obviously, cost and size go up as capacity increases, so we'd have to find a good balance between necessity and convenience. Between generator and installation costs, this is likely to be in the $2k-4k range. Generators can often be setup to start automatically when the power goes out, and can provide power directly into the existing wiring system, so you can pretty much whatever you want depending on which circuits have the backup wired in. Long-term, a permanent system is less hassle free, but those generally require a gas line connection, and since our house is 100% electric, we'd have to have a gas line run in from whereever, if that's even possible in our neighborhood.

Project 2 - Room monitoring
This one I'm much more excited about. Here's kind of what I had in mind: A device that has temperature and humidity sensors and potentially a camera. It would have a configurable timer and warning/critical threshold for each sensor type. And then some kind of network connectivity, preferably wifi just to make installation easy. Every 10 minutes/hour/whatever (depending on timer setting), it would poll the sensors and, if available, do a camera capture. Then it would upload this information and its timestamp to a website where I could monitor this data from anywhere. This could be as simple as leveraging the Twitter API to post the info as the amount of test should be very small. Depending on the complexity of the camera capture software, it could also do an overlay of the image with temp/humidity/time and just dump that to Flickr or Twitpic or whatever. Then the second piece to this is an alert system. Whenever the temp/humidity approaches the set threshold, it would set a warning and when it exceeds it would send a critical alert. These alerts could be the same posts, but with higher frequency and perhaps a prefix like WARN or CRIT, or they could be emails or text messages to a location I specify. All of this would ideally be configurable through a web interface, though I'm not personally above having some separate configuration software that downloads to the module via USB or something.
I know there exist standalone cameras with their own webservers built in that you just put on your network and they do their thing. And there are modules for several home-security products that have cameras and various other environmental sensors. But I'm not aware of a product that does all the things I've just described. I've been scoping out information on the Arduino and it's extension boards, which seems like it would meet most of my needs in this particular area. I think I would have to write most of the code/interface myself (which would be fun), but I think pricewise this Frankenstein is going to get out of control pretty quickly (I'm thinking in the $400-500 range when all is said and done). Anyone know of any other product that does anything even close to what I described that I might be able to re-purpose?
Temporary solution might be to go with an existing webserver camera and just point it at the Oregon Scientific weather station sitting in the room. This still has the limitation of not being able to post updates when the power goes out due to power loss in the camera and router. But hopefully that will be resolved in some manner by Project 1.

Anyway, some more things for me to start considering and researching. By the time I come up with something, summer will almost certainly be over and then I'll start worrying about how to keep the house warm instead of cool when the ice storms roll around in about 6 months.

2009-07-31T17:27:00.000-04:00

Because it's Friday and I want to play too:

Instructions:
Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people you like and include me. Even if you don't like me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Pick your Artist:
Toss up between Sabbath, 'tallica, and Bad Religion, but I'm going with BR.

Are you a male or female:
21st Century Digital Boy

Describe yourself:
The Dichotomy

How do you feel:
I Want To Conquer The World

Describe where you currently live:
Flat Earth Society

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Fertile Crescent

Your favorite form of transportation:
The Streets Of America

Your best friend(s) is(are):
The Gray Race

You and your best friends are:
Stranger Than Fiction

What's the weather like?:
Heaven Is Falling
(I think Fuck Armageddon... This Is Hell needs to be reserved for natural disasters)

Favorite time of day:
Slumber

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:
Struck A Nerve

What is life to you:
Entropy

Your relationship:
Sowing The Seeds Of Utopia

Your fear:
A World Without Melody

What is the best advice you have to give:
The World Won't Stop Without You

Thought for the Day:
The Positive Aspects Of Negative Thinking

How I would like to die:
Victims Of The Revolution

My motto:
There Will Be A Way

You know that:
The Empire Strikes First

If you could change your name, what would it be?
A Streetkid Named Desire

Something you are looking forward to:
Epiphany

My soul's present condition:
Atheist Peace

2009-07-27T20:56:00.002-04:00

I started watching Discovery's new show: The Colony. It's interesting, but I feel like I've been there before. I mean, anyone who's been through Boy Scouts has gone through water filtration and sanitation issues and foraging for food and battling the elements and divvying up responsibilities among group members. Obviously traipsing around the woods is vastly different than getting placed into a controlled experiment where you live in a fairly well-stocked warehouse. Anyway, I'll give it another episode, but it just feels too contrived for me so far.

2009-07-07T22:27:00.001-04:00

The last time we were at the movie theater (I think for Terminator), in the pre-movie trivia, there was a screen that said Harrison Ford was the only actor whose top 10 grossing movies all earned over $100M. Or something to that effect. Numbers and gross/net may may not be exactly right, and surely the verbiage was different. But I'm positive it was Harrison Ford, top 10, and only actor. I wasn't shocked that the only person to achieve this would be Mr. Ford. But at the time, I had kind of a "really? just him? no one else has managed that?" moment. It's actually kind of incredible when you think about it. Especially when you consider the time period that his biggest movies were released in. It's got to be easier to gross $100M when a movie ticket costs $12 than it was when movies cost $4 (like when I was a kid) or a quarter (or whatever they cost when my parents were younger and Star Wars first came out).
Certainly Harrison Ford has benefited from being involved with a couple of huge franchises - Star Wars and Indiana Jones, and I suppose even the Tom Clancy movies (Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games). There's 8 huge movies right there, and 9 if you count the new IJ & the Crystal Skull (haven't seen it, sounded terrible, couldn't possibly count). Anyway, it got me thinking - surely there must be other people who are really really close to cracking that threshold. Sitting in the theater, we started throwing a few names out, immediately coming up with Tom Hanks and Tom Cruise. So below is my list of actors/actresses I think must be at least in that ballpark, and the top movies I could think of that they appear in. Keep in mind that this involved zero research or fact checking of my part, so there's a good chance I'm way off base here.

Harrison Ford - original Star Wars trilogy, original Indiana Jones trilogy, Air Force One, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Fugitive

Tom Hanks - Forrest Gump, Saving Private Ryan, Philadelphia, Apollo 13, Cast Away, Sleepless in Seattle, A League of their Own, Davinci Code, That Thing You Do, The Green Mile, Big

Tom Cruise - Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Mission Impossible trilogy, Minority Report, Jerry Maguire, Interview with the Vampire, Born on the 4th of July, Rain Man

Johnny Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Edward Scissorhands, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Benny and Joon, Corpse Bride, Sweeny Todd, Public Enemies, Sleepy Hollow

Will Smith - Men in Black 1/2, Independence Day, Bay Boys 1/2, Ali, Wild Wild West, Hitch, I Robot, Hancock, The Pursuit of Happyness

Nicholas Cage - The Rock, Con Air, Adaptation, Matchstick Men, Gone in 60 Seconds, Face Off, National Treasure 1/2

Julia Roberts - Pretty Woman, Erin Brokovich, Steel Magnolias, The Pelican Brief, Oceans 11/12, Charlie Wilson's War, Sleeping with the Enemy, Mystic Pizza

Denzel Washington - Crimson Tide, Malcom X, The Siege, Bone Collector, Remember the Titans, Man on Fire, Inside Man, John Q, Manchurian Candidate, He Got Game, The Pelican Brief, Philadelphia

Brad Pitt - Fight Club, 12 Monkeys, Snatch, A River Runs Through It, Seven, Oceans 11/12/13, Spy Game, Legends of the Fall, Seven Years in Tibet, Interview with the Vampire, Sleepers, Mr & Mrs Smith, Benjamin Button, Troy

Angelia Jolie - Gone in 60 Seconds, Tomb Raider 1/2, Gia, Hackers, Wanted, Bone Collector, Girl Interrupted

Mel Gibson - Braveheart, Mad Max trilogy, Lethal Weapon quadrilogy, Forever Young, Maverick, Conspiracy Theory, Payback, Signs, The Patriot

Others who I don't think are there yet, but well on their way:

Orlando Bloom - LOTR trilogy, Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, Kingdom of Heavan, Troy

Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson - Harry Potter septology

Leonardo DiCaprio - Titanic, The Aviator, Romeo & Juliet, Man in the Iron Mask, Gangs of New York, The Departed

Christian Bale - Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Terminator Salvation, 3:10 to Yuma, Equilibrium, Public Enemies

Hugh Jackman - X-Men trilogy, Wolverine, Swordfish, Van Helsing, the Prestige

Honorable Mentions: Cameron Diaz, Adam Sandler, Drew Barrymore, Jodie Foster, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Keanu Reeves, Tommy Lee Jones, Jack Nicholson, Ewan MacGregor, Helen Hunt, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Eddie Murphy, Bruce Willis, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, Ben Stiller, John Cusack, Ian McKellan, Sean Connery, Heath Ledger, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, Sandra Bullock, Viggo Mortenson.

Turns out I just got bored of thinking up movies for all these people. My brief brainstorming turned up a lot of other actors with tremendous qualifications. Check out Box Office Mojo and IMDB for all your research needs.

2009-06-29T23:51:00.003-04:00

After having slammed We Are The Fallen, my journalistic integrity got the best of me and I decided to actually listen to their music. Turns out, I was completely right. You sound exactly like Evanescence. My wife agrees with me. Score one for the music critic. All those years of practice writing half a review based solely on the cover before listening to them for PunkROCKS.net are finally paying off! Although, strictly speaking, no one is paying me anything for being right, or even for being wrong, so um, yeah. There's that. Also, I'm demoting this we're-not-a-knockoff knockoff band to feldgrau. I should have done all my PR.net reviews with colors...

2009-06-29T16:53:00.003-04:00

At long last, and after many (one) requests, I finally got around to finishing off that Terminator review I promised Matt. It's been a while since I posted a review of anything, so I figured now might be a good time to do so. And to make up for lost time, here's a whole slew of them:

Terminator: Salvation
Preface: When T3 came out, Brian and I went to a midnight showing on opening night. We waited in line with 3 other people. At showtime, the theater was maybe 1/4 full. I was supremely dissapointed by the showing, but really liked the movie. It demonstrated the inevitability of J-Day and helped sew up that you can't really change the future. I felt like it was a good conclusion to the Arnold-era Terminator franchise.
Sidebar: If you could alter the future by changing the past, you'd never know that the past needed to be changed because you would have already done it. Time travel makes for some great movies, so long as you don't think too much about what's actually going on.
Review: I know Christian Bale got top billing and he was the pretty-boy star, but Sam Worthington absolutely crushed him in this film. He was the better actor and had the better role. He went through more of a character transformation (literally and figuratively) and I was really disappointed that he died at the end. Having watched the Sarah Conner Chronicles, I was a bit worried where the movie might be headed, but fortunately, it opted to neglect the TV show and stay truer to the history of the original trilogy (for example, there was no mention of Derek Reese). Some things I thought were extraneous: the little kid with the star hat, Bryce Dallas Howard, super-muscley CGI Arnold. I also thought they missed an opportunity to reconnect with some history by having a dog (instead of a landmine) identify Marcus Wright as a machine. On the whole, the story didn't advance much, except for barely telling the story of how John became the leader of the resistance, and giving some back story to why Skynet began using human tissue on top of metal for later terminators. In hindsight, the movie was somewhat slow for what was ultimately accomplished, but in the theater, I didn't feel that way at all. I left feeling energized (even at 1 am) and excited about the franchise again. I'm still not 100% sold on Christian Bale as John Connor. I know he's "so hot" or whatever, and he makes a great Bruce Wayne/Batman combo, but I dunno, I'm just not seeing him channel an older version of John. I feel like the writers put the pieces in for him (listening to his mother's tapes, hacking that bike, befriending a terminator), but he just failed to put them all together for me. Maybe my expectations are too high, and I don't know who else I would have cast instead, but he just wasn't John Connor for me. And if you're not going to have Sarah, you have to have John right. Despite Mr. Bale's failure (in my eyes), I still really enjoyed the film. I've heard complaints that not enough backstory was explained, but that's part of what I liked about it. It didn't treat me like a first-time Terminator viewer. It assumed I knew the basic story and got on with its business. If you went into this movie expecting a franchise recap, I can see why you'd be disappointed, but that would have made the movie uncomfortably long or awkward from working the information into all the necessary scenes. Highlander failed miserably at this, so I'm pleased Terminator avoided the minefield. I'd give the movie a solid B, bordering on a B+.

Star Trek
Who is this Chris Pine and why have I not heard of him before? He's like the spitting image of Kirk in the early years before Shattner got all pudgy. On the whole, the Star Trek movies have never failed to captivate me. Because they don't wind a coherent tale, I still can't put them above Star Wars or LOTR in my pantheon of epicly awesome nerd movies, but taken as a whole, it's a fantastic collection. This latest installment was a faithful rendition of the Trek franchise for a younger generation, and even for us long-time fans, it was really a treat to see the cast come together so well as the characters we know and love. I felt Spock was a little off, but given the plot of him struggling with his humanity, I didn't feel like it really hurt the movie. My only other complaint was that Bones perhaps said "damn it" a couple too many times. Okay okay, we got the reference, don't over do it! The Uhura/Spock relationship was probably unnecessary, but an interesting wrinkle. I loved Kirk hooking up with a green space alien chick, the appearance of Nimoy, and Chekov trying to give his voice identification. Kirk realizing his potential and confronting Spock to live up to Capt. Pike's challenge was perfect. Hell, I even liked Winona Ryder as Spock's mother because you never got a long enough good look at her under her hood to be sure that's who it was. Unlike Jennifer Morrison as Kirk's mother - that just seemed like they were trying to cram one more star into the movie for no reason at all. Only other complaint I had was the Romulan characters didn't look like the Romulans I'm familiar with, but if the Klingons could change completely and "don't talk about it," so can the Romulans I suppose. This was an amazing addition to the Trek franchise, and I give it a "live long and prosper" split-fingered greeting.

Meet The Robinsons
Just watched this on Saturday night. It was rather predictable, but entertaining nonetheless, and with a certified Disney Happy Ending and Disney Positive Message. I've decided my new favorite villain is Goob. He's the perfect level of incompetent, self-loathing, and hair-brained. Who else would think to steal a T-Rex in order to place a mind-control hat on him to capture a child? And Lewis/Cornelius didn't end up looking anything like Tom Selleck, but I love that he was voiced by Tom anyway. And anything Adam West touches has to be good, right? If I had kids, I'd let them watch this. And it was amusing to me, so it gets two thumbs up in my book.

Wicked
Everyone's been raving about it for the last couple years. I finally had a chance to see why when we were in New York for my birthday. I said at the time that it was superb. Actually, I didn't, but that's besides the point. The Broadway production really was superb, and at the time, I really thought that my mom and Emily were just being picky about things that didn't match up in the stage production vs. the book. However, I now see why they were irritated. I'm halfway through the book, and I feel completely deceived by the musical. I realize I'm not done with the book yet, but I already know the ending is different (just not how it ends), and there's a ton of other things that don't even remotely match up. The characterization of some of the main characters is way off in the musical, some major plot elements are completely changed. They've invented relationships that didn't exist, overly simplified, and softened events that were meant to be harsh. If I hadn't just finished praising a Disney movie, I'd say the musical is a greatly Disnified version of the book. I dunno, the book is fantastic, and I'm tearing through it. I can't put the thing down! I just can't help but feel a little betrayed by the stage in this case. It's really less an adaptation of the novel than a loosely related story somewhat based on facts from a similarly titled work involving some of the same characters. I'd liken it to historical fiction. The musical is to the novel what Indiana Jones was to real-life archaeology. I give the musical a 8.5/10 (assuming no previous knowledge of the Wicked story). I give what I've read so far of the book a 92%. I give the franchise synergy two points of a star without the middle pentagon (which is less than half a star, for those keeping score at home).

We Are The Fallen
Speaking of reviewing things that I haven't finished yet, here's a review of something I haven't even heard yet. "We're not Evanescence 2.0, we swear!" We're just 3/4 of the backing band with a new lead singer who writes, sings, and dresses like Amy Lee. If you don't want to invite those comparisons, maybe you shouldn't have taken up with her old band and named your new band after their original debut record, played similar music, and kept a similar graphic style. I'm just saying. I give this a rating of gray-asparagus.

June 22 - June 28
It was a bad week at work, which would have been enough all by itself, but then there was the Red Line Metro accident last Monday that left 9 dead and many more injured and certainly will put a huge dent in DC's image for years to come. Then we were hit with the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays, and Fred Travalena. Terrible. And that's before we even get into what's going on in Iran and Honduras. Can we all collectively agree to roll back the clock a week and have a do-over? Can we erase a few tragedies? Or if they must occur to balance out the universe, can we at least space them out better? Straight up terrible.

Yes, I realized I used a different review method on every single review above. Yes, I know the three movies I reviewed all involved time travel. Sorry, as Popeye said, I am what I am. I like what I like. And while spinach is fine and dandy, outer space, time travel, magic, and technology are what really floats my boat. That and Oxyclean. So long Billy.

2009-06-20T00:17:00.004-04:00

I was updating my finance spreadsheet tonight, when The Lonely Island came up on my Nerdcore Hip-Hop station on Pandora. I'd forgotten how hilarious their Lazy Sunday song was and just had to go find it on YouTube. Sometimes I wish I could get into SNL again, but everytime I watch it, it ends up sucking pretty severely, so I'll just keep my happy memories of Operaman, Goatboy, Mr. Subliminal, and Spade in America thank you very much. In the mean time, I'll leave you with this: Jorma, one third of the troupe, also stars in the Gnarls Barkley video where he cuts his own heart out. Thank goodness so many cool, creative people are down with working together.

2009-05-31T17:29:00.002-04:00

It's been an eventful day! We went down to old town Alexandria this morning for Colton and Sully's baptism at Christ Church. First off, the Mayor of Alexandria was present to accept some proclamation from the church as a thank you for the city's cooperation with the church over planning. He gave a few brief remarks that seemed well accepted. Then during the twins' baptism (along with 11 other children), when offered the light of Christ, Colton just reached out and grabbed the candle for himself. That's a boy after my own heart, a true pyro in the making (I knew eventually being born on the same day as me would pay off). Finally, this didn't mean much to me, but Emily and many of the other girls thought it was cool, we were served communion by the actress who played Kelly's mom on 90210. Frankly, good for her for furthering her education. After all the excitement of the service (which was maybe just a step or two below a full blown revival), we went over to Laura and Greg's for lunch with all the family and friends. Almost all of Laura's friends had babies around the same time, so while we were there, it was non-stop baby time. They're all in the 6 months to 2 years old range. It's true what the say, babies are the best contraceptive. Don't get me wrong, I want kids someday, but we're not ready yet. Hopefully when we are though, are other friends will all be having babies too so we can have the came kind of close-knit group of friends whose kids all grow up together.
Now to recover, I'm doing the least child-friendly thing I can think of: watching a zombie movie.

2009-05-26T16:07:00.005-04:00

"I had a tumultuous relationship ... with a girl in college and I couldn't understand what she was doing to me. Whenever I seemed to get closer to her and try to show her how much I loved her, she would back away. And then when I realized that I better give up,= this isn't going anywhere, she was st rangely attracted to me. This push and pull felt to me, and this is why I probably had so much trouble with her, it felt to me like a mathematical equation."
- Dr. Steve Strogatz, Cornell University

Though I've never thought love could be described by math, Steve is hardly alone in thinking that everyday, natural phenomenon often begins to resemble discrete (though often complex) math. It's the backbone of Mario Livio's book on the number phi. This particular quote is related to the small world theory (better know as six degrees of separation - who knew Kevin Bacon would ever contribute something meaningful to science?), but I found it amusing in a way much closer to home. Although I was never a strong math student in college, I used to spend a lot of time, especially on sleepless nights, playing math games in my head or on scrap piece of paper, always wondering if some random set of numbers or equations would turn into an interesting pattern.

2009-05-25T12:12:00.006-04:00

In the words of Mike Birbiglia:

"They say, if you don't support the war you don't support the troops, and it's just a lie, it's just not true. Because I LOVE the troops. I love the troops. Yeah, of course. They're the best asset we have. And if they weren't the troops, I would be the troops. And I would be the worst troops. I'd be like 'you expect me to carry a gun this heavy and run away screaming?'"

In all seriousness though, thank you to all our servicemen and women and their families, past, present, and future, for answering your call to duty and for your sacrifices, so that the rest of us can enjoy the freedoms you stand up to defend.

2009-05-22T12:02:00.002-04:00

I have a hard time justifying the layout of a couple grand just for something that's going to sit on my deck, but still, if I had the disposable income, I'd love to get my hands on a Buzz statue:

2009-05-18T17:06:00.010-04:00

Anyone remember their Trig and DiffEqs better than I do? Wanna help me with a problem? I have the following two equations:

A = asin(cos(X)*cos(Y))
B = atan(cos(X)*sin(Y)/(-sin(X)))

I know the values of A and B. I need to calculate values for X and Y. I tried some substitutions to simplify, but I just ended up with something uglier that I have no clue how to solve once I isolate a variable:

tan(B) = sin(A) * tan(Y) / (-sin(acos(sin(A)/cos(Y))))

Any suggestions?

2009-05-07T11:12:00.004-04:00

Originally brought to my attention by no one less than Mr. Wil Wheaton:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'
This video is pretty much perfect in every way. It really hits the nail on the head as far as previous Star Trek films go. Yes, I love the old films. Yes, I'm exciting about the new movie (if Wil likes it, that's more than enough of an endorsement for me). I expect it to be radically different than previous movies, but it really looks like a good movie.

2009-05-05T19:01:00.000-04:00

Is it wrong that I'm more excited about GoldenTusk's upcoming Terminator Theme Song parody than about the actual movie? They can afford to pay Christian Bale, why can't they pay for a makeup artist for Arnie and actually put him in the movie? He was in the last three? After Brian and I were among the excited throng of 5 people to go to opening night of T3, I'm trying very hard to temper my enthusiasm for this new movie. What I liked about T3 was the inevitability of Judgment Day, so the fact that in T4, they're not trying to rewrite canon (unlike a certain TV show, which I also enjoy with a grain of salt - I tell myself it's just an alternate reality) certainly gives it a big plus. I'm definitely curious, and will most likely see it in the theater, but at the moment, I'm honestly looking forward to GoldenTusk's video more than the movie itself.

2009-05-05T17:27:00.000-04:00

"Quick" NYC recap:
I was born on Long Island, but we moved to Morrocco when I was six weeks old. Apart from connecting through JFK a couple times, and Warped Tour 2002 on Randall's Island, I've never been to New York City. We've been saying for years that we were going to take a family trip there and scatter our dog's ashes on the beach near where my parents lived, but it never seemed to happen. So after our wedding last year, I insisted that we start planning a trip for this spring, and that maybe if we started early and made everyone commit, it would actually happen. We decided to combine it with my 28th birthday (since I was born there after all), and miraculously, it somehow actually happened!
Took Bolt Bus - had Wifi, comfy seats, and didn't have to personally deal with traffic, or figure out how to navigate NYC streets. Didn't take any longer than driving, and was $65 total round trip for two people, not bad when you consider gas and tolls. Highly reccomended.
Friday afternoon we walked through Central Park up to the Guggenheim. Central Park kicks the National Mall's ass. The shade helps a lot, but so does the water, rocks, and hills that kind of separate everything out so nicely. Guggenheim was somewhat disappointing to me since much of it was closed for a Frank Lloyd Wright installation. But the two open exhibits had a pretty amazing collection, one of the Manet's I actually went through the entire thought process of "if I grabbed this and ran, how far could I actually get before security caught me" before deciding that it would melt in the heat outside anyway. After that, my parents headed back to the hotel, while Emily, Ben, and I strolled down Madison Ave. We hit up a street vendor for pretzels before going back to the hotel for a quick-change (would have used a phone booth, Superman-style, if one had presented itself). Then it was off to the theater for Wicked. I really enjoyed it, maybe because it was all new to me, or maybe because Broadway theater really is that much better. Emily and my mom had some nits to pick comparing the musical to the book, so now I'm anxious to read the book and try to fill in some of the gaps myself. We headed to the Carnegie Deli for dinner after walking past Letterman's studio. My dad got a pastrami sandwich that coudl have fed three people, and Ben and my mom both had desserts that could have done the same. My cholla french toast was awesome, and I'm told Emily's cheese blintzes were equally delicious.
Saturday morning we hit up a local market for coffee and muffins and then began our subway trek down to Battery Park. We took the ferry to Liberty and Ellis Islands. City Pass saved us probably 1-2 hours waiting in lines. My parent's skipped the Status of Liberty because they had to get back uptown for a timeshare presentation. Lady Liberty is kind of puny when you see her from Manhattan, but is much more imposing up close. Ellis Island is an amazing site if you've never been. It's incredible to think about all the people who came through there and how confusing it must have been, not to mention how depressing to be stuck there when your family is just outside the gates, or to be stuck on a ship in the harbor, seeing land, and unable to disembark. We sent Ben back uptown to meet my parents at the Met while Emily and I tried to go to Grimaldi's, and struck out with an hour wait in the oppressive mid-afternoon Brooklyn heat. Instead we had great NY pizza up the street and then walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. We subwayed back to the hotel for another quick change, then it was off to the Empire State Building. City Pass again saved us probably an hour's wait. Views at sunset were spectacular and gave us some good perspective on NY life. Then we walked a couple blocks to Primehouse for dinner (mmmmmm) where we met up with my cousin Sarah (currently a grad student at Columbia). We walked off our meal down towards Union Square where we had Max Brenner for dessert at 1:00 AM
Sunday, Emily and I were up and out the door by 9, we grabbed bagels as a nearby deli and ate them in Central Park on the way to the Natural History Museum. The rest of our party was still in bed when we left, but somehow dragged themselves to MOMA across the street from our hotel. Emily and I took in the various mammals and birds exhibits, saw a show at the Hayden Planetarium (introduced by my boy Neil DeGrasse Tyson), and then toured the dinosaurs and gems and minerals exhibits. My brain was reaching information overload, and we were running low on time, but we passed through the Asian cultures exhibits on the way out, and I wish we could have spent more time there. Several items we saw are also in my dad's basement. One day I fully expect to see "on loan from the Jim Bever collection" next to artifacts in a museum. Grabbed lunch at another deli on the way back to the hotel where we rendezvoused with the rest of the family to head to Long Island. Without a useful map, we eventually made our way there, saw the old house, walked around the old pond, had ice cream at the old ice cream shop, and bought train tickets on the LIRR for the next day. Then it was off to the beach, where we scattered Dadi's ashes at sunset out on a sandbar. We had dinner in Port Jefferson before opening some presents back at the Three Village Inn.
The next morning we had a rushed, but wonderfully tasty breakfast at the Inn, before Emily and I barely caught the LIRR back to Manhattan. We made our way from Penn Station back uptown for lunch at Rouge Tomate with Emily's god-parents. Then it was back downtown to catch the Bolt Bus home.
It was an exhausting, but thrilling, 80 or so hours. Had some delicious food and got a lot of exercise and were really able to enjoy the fabulous weather. I'd say my favorite part is a toss-up between spending time in Central Park and seeing how excited little boys still are about dinosaurs. Photos are posted on Facebook if you haven't seen them yet.

2009-04-20T11:24:00.001-04:00

With all this rain today, there must be a rainbow somewhere.

2009-04-15T19:36:00.003-04:00

I've discovered my new favorite YouTube channel - FPE-TV. They interviewed Rex from Pantera a while ago and have had Shadows Fall on to give shredding lessons and Brian Beller (plays the part of William Murderface when Dethklok is on tour) to give bass lessons. Thrashtastic! Unfortunately, if Guitar Hero has taught me nothing else, it's that my fingers are utterly incapable of moving that fast.

2009-04-11T16:49:00.002-04:00

Bank of America has this thing they call a Portfolio which allows you to import your various other accounts and they track your usage, and can auto-login to the other accounts and all that good stuff. They also handle rewards clubs and credit cards. So anyway, I've been using it for a long time to get a quick glance at all my finances all in one place. One of the features they offer is a "net worth" calculation that adds up all your liquid assets and then subtracts all your debts. This number is obviously not a true worth as it only considers liquid assets and not the material colatteral used to secure things like auto loans or mortgages. But if it steadily goes up, you're building wealth, and if it steadily goes down, you're leaking money like a sieve. So, after closing on our house, I went online one day to see how poor I was, and this is what greeted me. Very very depressing. But hey, I have a house to live in and a car to drive and a job to go to, so really, as depressing as that huge red bar is, I'm pretty fortunate.

2009-04-11T10:22:00.002-04:00

Remember the Lexus commercial I railed about a couple years back? The one where they drop a car from 4000 feet while another car on the ground moving at top speed tried to out run it? The one that didn't seem right and I tried (miserably) to prove it wouldn't work that way? Well, fortunately for me, Mythbusters is the greatest show on TV, and proved this past week on their Demolition Derby super-episode that this commercial is impossible. The dropped car fell more-or-less wheels down most of the way (highest possible drag) and still hit the ground a full 2 seconds before the car on the ground reached the same point. Simulations are no match for real-world experimentation and the Discovery Channel just made Lexus look like chumps.

2009-04-10T14:48:00.002-04:00

I've been meaning to post this for a while now. This picture was from my cousin's wedding a couple weeks ago. It had been rainy most of the day, but when the time came for the couple to leave the reception, we all walked out front to see them off and there was a huge double rainbow across the sky. Not a bad way to end your wedding, or, if you're me, your anniversary. Just so happens that my cousin, also Emily and also a Bever, got married one year to the day after Emily and I did. Suffice it to say that having two Emily Bevers in the family for the last 365 days has produced its fair share of confusion. At any rate, that is all in the past, and we're back down to one Emily Bever again, as we sent the original off with her new husband, over the rainbow. Somewhat serendipitously, the father-daughter dance at the wedding was Rainbow Connection (not sung by Kermit the Frog, or MFATGG).

2009-04-01T18:11:00.002-04:00

Anderson Cooper 360: Blog Archive - Student Loan Nightmare: Help Wanted « - Blogs from CNN.com

Well boo hoo for you. If your lifelong dream was in a career field where you knew you wouldn't be able to pay off your loans, I have zero sympathy for you. Should you be able to attend the college of your choice? Sure. If you can pay for it. If it costs too much, work your way through school, go part time, get someone else to help pay for it (parent, employer, scholarship, etc), knock out core classes at a community college, or find some other way to not take on such massive amount of debt.

"I chose to go to a private school and I chose to work in a field where the starting salaries are low. Does that mean that I chose to live a life of struggle, wondering how I am going to pay my rent, afford the basics of living and still stay in my chosen career field…all while putting up with high interest rates and an amount of debt that brings me to tears?"

Yes. Yes it does. You had choices. You made them. Own up to it and quit crying for everyone else to bail you out because you made bad decisions. You signed up for loans you didn't understand? How is that my problem? Read the entire ream of paper before you sign it. I just bought a house. I spent hours doing research online before I even started looking for a mortgage or talking seriously about looking for a house. Then, I spent even more hours actually reading all the loan paperwork and closing documentation. It gave me a headache. But I read it all and asked questions about what I didn't understand.

Furthermore, "credit crisis" aside, lenders have no obligation to you to consolidate your loans. You agreed to pay the loan at the stated amount under the stated terms. A consolidation is a nice perk if you can get it, but you can't ever count on anything besides what the original terms of your loan were. And don't even get me started on Mr.(sic) Jackson's 1% brrowing plan... What bank would loan a student money at those rates?! The bank has no incentive!

I think this "article" finally pushed me over the edge to stop reading CNN. Looks like I'm back to the WSJ and Washington Post. Also, this kind of thing always reminds me of one of my favorite comics. Preach it brother Dilbert!

2009-03-27T09:33:00.004-04:00

Dear Activision and/or Metallica,

Why does Guitar Hero: Metallica come out on 3/29? I mean, that's a great date and everything, being the anniversary of the day I married my wonderful wife, but why would you release a game on a Sunday? If it came out today, you know I could spend Friday night through the wee hours of Monday playing it before having to return to work. But instead, I'm just not going to buy it until I actually have time to play it. Take that opening day numbers! You couldn't release on a Tuesday like everybody else? You had to be different? Why? I still don't get the Saturday midnight release. Please explain your logic to me.

Sincerely,
Rev. Adam
'tallica fan since 1993

p.s. Please send me an autographed copy of the game. Pretty please?

2009-03-20T14:38:00.002-04:00

5 minutes of automated voice prompts and 5 minutes of being on hold later...

Me: Hi, I'd like to cancel all my Cox services please.
Elisa: Sure, I can help you with that. May I ask why you're discontinuing your relationship with us?
Me: We're moving into a new house and we'll be using Verizon FiOS for our provider.
Elisa: Oh, well, we're sorry to be losing you. Does Cox service that address as well?
Me: Yes, but I'm not interested. FiOS provides more HD channels, more movie channels, more sports channels, faster internet speeds, and more phone services for the same price as your bundle package.
Elisa: Well, actually, that's not true if you look at what we provide you today. They only have one pricing tier for HD service *blah blah blah sales pitch blah blah blah* and we provide a 12/5 internet connection.
Me: First off, I've never come anywhere close to those speeds and we're getting 20/20 with FiOS. Second, they offer the same number of channels as you do, but include Starz in their movies package, which you charge extra for. They currently have more HD channels than you do, and their numbering scheme makes sense - you just add 500 to the regular channel number. And like I said, for the same price, we're getting more.
Elisa: Well, if you add up all those extras to their bundle price, the savings disappear quickly!
Me: Listen, I already ordered everything, I know what it costs per month, and it's the same as what I'm paying you right now, but they provide more services for the same cost. Please stop trying to sell me on Cox and just disconnect my service.
Elisa: What if I upgrade you to our higher tier internet at no charge for 6 months?
Me: Just cancel my service please.
Elisa: Is there any way we can get you to stay? You're one of our most valued customers.
Me: Why? Because I pay you so much money every month? Just cancel my service please.
Elisa: Okay, but if you change your mind in the next week/month/year, let us know what Cox can do for you!

I know customer retention translates into bonuses for these people, but when I ask you to cancel my service, I shouldn't have to ask 5 times. Just do what I tell you and don't try to convince me that I'm getting screwed by another provider. It's petty and makes you sound desperate, especially when you're wrong.

2009-03-13T12:59:00.002-04:00

Does anyone have any info on sleep patterns? More specifically, I'm trying to figure out how long each stage of sleep typically lasts. Really, I'm just looking for some kind of explanation as to why, every night for the last week, I've woken up almost exactly 4 hours after falling asleep. I'd say stress or nightmares or apnea or something if it weren't for the incredible regularity of it. And I'd say environmental, but as my bedtime varies, this phenomenon follows suit. If I go to sleep at 11, I wake up at 3. Last night after the 6OT 'Cuse/UConn game, I went to sleep at 2 am and woke up at 6. So I'm attempting to figure out what's going on in sleepyland 4 hours after I've arrived there, and why I keep getting kicked out. Any ideas?

2009-03-10T13:17:00.000-04:00

Friday morning at 8:55, I got a phone call from BOA that they needed some other piece of information. Cause, you know, filling out a form and getting a third party's signature in two hours is no problem... But we got it done and submitted with about 5 seconds to spare before our scheduled 11 am closing. But because of the delay, we had to push closing until 3. Not a huge deal in the end, but certainly very stressful and completely unnecessary. Why they only realized they needed this extra form 2 hours before closing is beyond me.
So now we're in full-on homeowner mode. We've already been to Home Depot for some supplies and we spent last night painting. More of that tonight and then we're packing like crazy until the movers come on Saturday morning. I think we're put together a decent plan for the week to make sure everything gets done, the real trick will be sticking to the plan!

2009-03-05T12:42:00.003-05:00

Also, I'm sure you've noticed that I've been posting less frequently. I still like having a blog for when I really want to ramble endlessly about things, but for more day-to-day activities, I tend to use my twitter feed.

2009-03-05T12:22:00.002-05:00

Things have been busy busy busy. We close on our house tomorrow, which I have to admit I'm more than a little nervous about. I've been told by everyone on our end that everything is in place and good to go. So despite several panic attacks over the last week, I'm trying to remain calm and just expect that everything is going to work out smoothly. We're in the process of securing movers for next weekend (at 27, I'm totally over lifting everything I own into and out of a truck), and scouring craigslist for some decent used furniture to fill in the gaps in our current hodepodge collection.
Work has me swamped, both literally and figuratively. But at least I'm being well compensated for my efforts and I really feel like I'm beginning (after almost 6 months) to get a handle on what it is I'm doing. I think other people are starting to realize that too and are giving me more leeway to do things on my own as well as additional responsibilities. Not to mention the 10% pay raise that I recently got! As for the literally swamped part, I spent the last week of February at a lake in central Florida about an hour northwest of Orlando doing some array testing. The handful of things I wanted to test worked out great, so for my part, the trip was a complete success. For everyone else involved, the trip was a complete failure. This new design they're testing was bound to have issues, and I can't believe that they got the Navy to buy off on it before it was fully tested and agree to put in an order to support all future boats. That's downright scary. So while I feel bad for the other parties, at the same time, initial failure is probably the best longterm result for the Navy because it destroys this other guy's credibility, preventing him from making dangerous decisions like this in the future.
On the other hand, the weather was superb down there all week, and there was a lot of hurry up and wait situations, so I got to enjoy the scenery, wildlife, and clean fresh air. I even had an opportunity to swing back down to Orlando to see Brian, Matt, Tim, and Margaret for dinner. unfortunately, I wasn't well enough organized to work something out with Nikki also, which is too bad. I owe her better than that since she was one of the few friends who came to my wedding. Anyway, we had dinner at Cuba Libre on International Drive, which was pretty good food, though very slow and slightly overpriced. Emily and I have been talking off and on about going to Disney World before we have kids. I haven't been since I was in 3rd grade and I don't think Emily's been since high school. Maybe next winter when we've recouped some of our downpayment...

2009-02-12T13:17:00.002-05:00

MLS# FX6963506, you're all mine! Er, ours!
After some unforseen (but at this point, not entirely unexpected) shenanigans on Monday and Tuesday, we finally got a call from our agent last night at dinner that we have a ratified contract! Turns out Brian was our good luck charm all along, either that or Jaipur. Suffice it to say that we both breathed a huge sigh of relief and finally got a good night's sleep. Certainly, there's a lot more to be done before we can actually claim to own and live in our new house, but the search is over, the contract is done, and the financing is in place, so things should go a lot smoother from this point forward.

2009-02-10T18:45:00.002-05:00

On Super bowl weekend, I found a house a really liked, but Emily was out of town. So we went back to see it with our agent on the following Wednesday, and then put an offer together. Greg called the listing agent first thing the following morning to submit it, only to find out the sellers had accepted another offer. It was "supremely disappointing" according to my twitter feed. So after stewing for a couple days, we got back on the horse and went house hunting over the weekend. We found a townhouse in Oakton we really liked and decided to move forward with an offer first thing on Monday. Today we got a counter offer back that we are accepting, so, barring anymore unforseen shenanigans, I think we'll have a ratified contract later tonight or early tomorrow.
Which brings me to the issue of financing. We elected to go with BOA, as they had good rates listed on their website that were competitive with the federal credit unions. But as it turns out, their mortgage department and their consumer banking department don't talk to each other or deal with each other hardly at all. So our loan officer was some schmo who knew less than I did about mortgages¹. So after out offer nearly falling through because the banker handling our mortgage application isn't really a loan specialist, Greg came to the rescue with a contact (a Vice President, no less) in the mortgage department. In one afternoon of phone calls, she got us a way better rate on the same loan product, including an increased loan amount, and churned out an approval letter. All things our previous loan officer told us it would take days to accomplish.
So, I've accomplished very little actual work today, because I spent all day on the phone with bank/real estate people. But, it sounds like we're very very close to finalizing a deal. so in the end it will all be worth it. Hopefully it means we'll have something extra to celebrate tomorrow at dinner in addition to the presence of one Mr. Morris, fresh off his NSA mind-rape session.

¹: I can't tell you the number of times I've said "All I know about real estate I've learned from the internet" during the past couple weeks. It's going to the title of my upcoming book, alternatively titled "my wife's cousin's husband is also my awesome realtor."

2009-02-09T13:59:00.002-05:00

I think I broke my face (sinus cavity) like Anquan Boldin. Only I didn't do it in nearly as glamorous a way as getting smashed by a player on the opposing team. Unless you count glassware as the opposing team and stationary as smashing. On Saturday night, I clobbered my right upper cheek on a glass of water sitting on my desk because I stood up from my desk chair and bent over to pick up one of those stupid plastic wrapper things that come on print cartridges. It hurt like crazy. Frankly, I'm amazed I didn't break the glass. Sunday morning I had a tiny little mark there, but it didn't hurt much. Today? Much much more pain. It doesn't feel particularly swollen, and it's not terribly black and blue, so I guess that's a good sign.

2009-02-02T15:16:00.003-05:00

"Who throws a shoe? Honestly! You fight like a woman!"
-Austin Danger Powers

First, someone throws a shoe at (now former) President Bush in Iraq, now we're throwing shoes at the Chinese envoy in the UK? What is this world coming to? Is just yelling at people or making signs not protesty enough? Or what happened to the classic rock-throwing? Throwing a shoe means you came unprepared to protest properly. Do your homework! Bring necessary supplies! I swear, if I have to start surrendering my shoes to get on a plane or attend a lecture, I'm going to be super pissed. It's bad enough I have to walk through a metal detector to enter places like World of Coke. You're ruining it for everyone! If you have to improvise a throwing object, why not throw a chair or a cell phone or your wallet. I mean, they're going to catch you regardless of what you throw anyway, you might as well be able to attempt running away so everyone else can get some amusement out of security guards tackling you. LEAVE YOUR SHOES ON YOUR FEET WHERE THEY BELONG!
If I ever speak in a public forum, here's my solution - if you want to attend, you have to do so naked and you have to pass through an x-ray machine so we can catch all those sword swallowers. Then you have to take a horse laxative and a desiccant and a diuretic, then be placed in a holding area for several hours until they've all run their course. This is to ensure that you can't throw feces like monkeys, urinate, or spit. You won't be allowed anything to eat or drink for 24 hours before the talk, during it, or until 1 hour after I have departed the site. Additionally, one hour before the scheduled start time, you will be given an elephant tranquilizer. Finally, I will give my talk from within the pope-mobile. Happy now?

2009-02-02T12:34:00.002-05:00

Happy Go-To-Hell-Phil Day! Apaprently, a pampered woodland creature was roused at 6 am, grabbed off the ground, saw a ton of moronic people and a beautiful day in the making, and then went back to sleep amidst fireworks, all of which somehow means 6 more weeks of winter. I understand the importance of tradition, but this particular one, as I have lamented every year since I was like 10, is inane.
In other irritating news, the Cardinals got robbed last night. Certainly the Steelers played a better game all around and probably deserved to win. But the non-review on Warner's "fumble" was complete bullshit. On a game-altering play like that, how do you not take a minute to review it? Apart from game-long terrible officiating, I thought it was one of the better games in recent memory.
The house hunting continues, although yesterday I saw a house that I'm very excited about and am trying to set up an appointment with our agent to see it again this week and start putting together an offer on it! Whoo! Moving out from under our monstrous upstairs neighbors could not possibly come soon enough.

2009-01-22T10:46:00.001-05:00

If this isn't pronounced coo-GAR, I don't know what is: Cougaar Software, Inc. I got an email from them this morning asking to schedule an job interview. Naturally, I'm going to ignore it, but I couldn't help laughing at the company name given how my grandmother pronounces certain words, like coo-GAR, ken-YA, swea-TER, and my personal favorite, boy-SCOUT-troop.

2009-01-20T15:30:00.000-05:00

I suppose all this CHANGE nonsense has some truth behind it. I mean, for the first time since before I was born, there won't be a Clinton or a Bush in the White House (if you count Bush Sr's vice presidency under Reagan). I mean, sure, Hillary will technically be in the White House regularly as part of her Secretary of State duties, and if some horrendous disaster were to occur, she isn't too far down the line of succession. But let's just find comfort where we can, knowing that our new administration is being run by alumni of the cafeteria's popular kids table.
Don't get me wrong, I hope Obama is the best President we've ever had. I just question several of his appointments and have this nagging feeling like we've just elected the most popular boy in school to be student body president. You remember, right? He pledged to make the cafeteria food taste better and put an end to all the gym-class-bullying. Well, in actuality, we all knew those things were quite unlikely to happen, but everyone voted for him 'cause he drove a Camaro or had cool hair or whatever.
So let's hope that Obama can do even 50% of what he's set out to do. Certainly I've been wrong about elections before. Back in the olden days (pre-blogs, but Brian may remember, as we were watching the returns in Woodies and both pleading for Nader not to accidentally become president via some as-yet-unknown hanging chad fiasco), I infamously said that I thought Bush would be nothing but a status-quo President, a care-taker of the office if you will. Whoops. Love him or hate him, there's no question that the office and the country are in a very different place today than they were 8 years ago.
So, Mr. Obama, here's to the future! Please don't fuck it all up. We know where you live.

2009-01-20T10:33:00.002-05:00

Rapid Update:
The rest of my holiday was fun. Emily and I had a quiet Christmas Day by ourselves and then had dessert with my parents. We had dinner the following night with family friends who we missed in London, but walked by their flat without realizing it. We went to see West Side Story at the National Theater, which still needed a bit of fine tuning, but I really liked that most of the spoken and sung parts by the Sharks were actually in Spanish. A few of our other theater-goers seemed somewhat less enthusiastic about this change, but I thought it gave the musical a more authentic flavor. The trip to Atlanta was nice, even though Tech got demolished in our bowl game. We got to spend some quality time with Michelle and Brian, and we saw Tim and Margaret and a couple of her friends from Melbourne while we were there. We discovered the glory that is Taco Mac and wish that there was one in the area, preferably next door to a Sonic (if you're interested in opening either franchise, call me, I've got our locations already scouted out). We took in the new World of Coke and the King Tut exhibits and got some Chick-Fil-A and Flying Biscuit action. We stopped by Charlotte on the return journey to see my cousins and get the scopp on their engagement. I made friends with their new baby parrot because I have shiny, dangly things in my ears. We've watched a lot of football, but are now transitioning to basketball season (though thing don't seem to be going so well for Tech this year). Work's been busy and the weather's been crappy. The city has been a mess since we got home in preparation for Obama's coronation. I can't wait for today to be over so hopefully things will start to die down a bit.

2009-01-20T08:23:00.004-05:00

Worst Idea Ever. Almost as bad as trying to drive from VA to DC today since you have to go through MD to get there now. I could not be happier that I have zero reason to hang out downtown in the freezing cold with 2 million other idiots and that I have no business reason to be driving anywhere but away from the city today.
Source

2009-01-09T23:09:00.002-05:00

This guy's various videos to the tune of movie theme crack me the up. Be sure to check out his Star Wars, James Bond, and Back to the Future vids also.

2008-12-23T15:43:00.002-05:00

All this socializing is wearing me out! We had a second Thanksgiving a couple weeks back with some of Emily's friends from work, or perhaps it was an early Christmas, we could never decide which. Then Emily's office party was the week after that, and afterward we went to go see the national christmas tree displays on the ellipse before we decided that it was too damn cold to be outside. This past weekend we had dinner with my family and some of our family friends on Saturday, and then dinner with Laura and Greg and the twins on Sunday. Those kiddos are getting big fast! Last night we had dinner with Meg and her boyfriend and one of her other friends from high school and her husband at Rio Grande. Mmmm. Today I had lunch with Mike from GD to discuss, um, nothing of any importance whatsoever, we swear. Tomorrow we'll be probably stopping by my parents' again for some dinner and to see Bobby's family, then we're going to church. Christmas Day I intend to spend being as lazy as possible and seeing as few people besides my wife as possible. Our intent this year is to establish some of our own holiday traditions, since this is our first Christmas together as a married couple. Then our Friday, I'm planning to work, and then we're having dinner with family friends. The following week we'll be mostly in the ATL for the Peach Bowl, so we'll be seeing Brian and Tim and Margaret, and possibly Darren and uncle David. I'm also trying to work out a way to see Jennifer and Sam and aunt Lynda in Charlotte on the way home. Then we're in the clear for 2 weeks until my office holiday party. Hopefully that's enough time to recooperate and recharge!

2008-12-20T11:27:00.002-05:00

Apparently, a bearcat is a real animal. All these years I just assumed it was an ungodly amalgam of a killing machine (like a grizzly bear with a chainsaw) concocted by Cincy.

2008-12-19T23:02:00.002-05:00

I met a vice admiral at work today. He was taking a tour of the Lockheed facility , but stopped by my workstation to see how the results of the testing in NUWC a couple weeks ago were looking. Apparently he's involved with the new towed array approval board somehow.

2008-12-14T11:15:00.002-05:00

My poor neglected blog...

Emily and I had a fabulous time in London over Thanksgiving. Photos are on Facebook if you haven't seen them. Here and here. We did all the typical touristy stuff: Big Ben/Parliament, Westminister Abbey, changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the Tower of London, tea, scones and clotted cream at Harrod's, the Greenwich observatory and Prime Meridian, and Borough Market. We walked or took the Tube pretty much everywhere and armed with our A-to-Zed, we only went the wrong direction once. I think we saw almost everything we had planned to see, and did everything we planned to do. I am a bit disappointed that during our entire week, not once did we have fish and chips or bangers and mash. But we did discover brown sauce, and we (well, I didn't actually help much) put on a lavish Thanksgiving feast for 9 people using a kitchen meant for 1 person and without the aid of most modern kitchen features. The turkey we got from the fresh market even had a few feathers left in it! The weather cooperated most of the time we were there. I mean, it was cold, damp, and overcast (so, London), but we only really got rained on once, and I was only uncomfortably cold once, so I consider that pretty successful. Next time we go to London, I hope we can do some other things outside of the downtown area, like maybe heading out to Stonehenge or Stratford-upon-Avon.

Last week I spent most of my time in Newport, RI on a business trip that was fairly successful (for me). The thing we were testing turned out to have a massive failing that's going to have a lot of ripple effects in the community. The guy who sold the Navy on this entire scheme has got to be feeling his seat roasting right about now because he got them to go down this road without any evidence or testing to back up the decision. Idiot. It'll be interesting to see what happens when he presents the findings of this testing to the Captain. I hope I get invited to the meeting so I can see him get drawn and quartered as he grasps at straws to defend himself.

We got our Christmas tree set up last weekend and it's beginning to feel like the holidays around here. After some initial panic (like last year), I think I'm basically done with my shopping, just waiting for a few items to arrive still. Christmas seems to sneak up on me more and more every year. Maybe that's what happens when you get older.

GTDC Flag Football lost our opening game of the tournament in a poorly played and ever more poorly officiated game. Emily's decided that she's not playing next season if we have the same coaches again, and I can't blame here. I sort of feel the same way. It's fun, but only to a point. I feel like I'm putting more work into something that I'm not getting enough reward back from to have to put up with the kind of crap that we do. Oh well.

In more positive news, GT varsity football's great season got rewarded with a trip to the Peach Bowl against defending National Champion LSU. I think it's a great matchup and one we have a strong chance of winning. So Emily and I got tickets and will be meeting up with Brian and whoever else is coming to the game, so we can spend New Year's Eve cheering in 2009 with a 10-win Yellow Jackets season.

2008-11-24T11:22:00.002-05:00

Work last week was pretty hectic. Today is even worse. I'm trying to get a bunch of things wrapped up before I leave for a week. Nothing critical, but just trying to tie up all the loose ends and make sure everyone who needs to know things knows where to find them and where I left off. Despite being busy, last week was really good. I put together a big presentation for the Navy that everyone's been giving me kudos on, even though it kinda shows we've got a major issue, but the ball's in the Navy's court now, so we'll wait and see what they decide to do about it. I also set up a test server last week that apparently impressed enough people that I'm the one they want to go actually perform the testing at NUWC is December. Then I got roped into helping out with TSMS again because they're way behind schedule and desperately need integration support, so I'm being subbed out to do that as well.
In sports news, GTDC Flag Football won our rescheduled game against U(sic)GA on Saturday morning in the bitter cold. So we finished the regular season 10-0, won our division, have the best record in our conference, and should be ranked in the top 3 in the final coaches poll. Hopefully that will translate into success in the playoffs. GT varsity football got some help on the way to Tampa after demolishing Miami on Thursday night and having both UNC and UVA lose on Saturday. Unfortunately, despite a lousy showing, VT managed to get by Duke, so we're still behind the 8-ball on that one. But if UVA can beat VT in Blacksburg, GT is the division champ. We've already locked up the best possible record in the conference, so that's certainly something to be proud of for a first year coach with a brand new system.
Okay, back to work for a couple hours before I have to go hope and repack my suitcase for London!

2008-11-19T11:16:00.002-05:00

Happy Birthday Penny Arcade!

As a reader for almost all of those 10 years, I'm thrilled to see the site grow in popularity, remain successful, and never waver in their vision. Although Penny Arcade has grown from a simple comic strip into a global brand, with their own video game, countless art projects with other games, an enormous annual community get-together, their own childrens' charity, and who knows what else they've got up their sleeves, they've always delivered a consistent, quality product, even while juggling first wives and then children themselves. Congratulations guys and here's to 10 more!

2008-11-18T16:41:00.001-05:00

Google's real estate search utility integrated into Google maps alongside the circle filter application is my new favorite toy.

2008-11-09T18:19:00.012-05:00

So this weekend didn't have quite the euphoric results that last weekend had, but I still had a good time. Traffic wasn't too bad once I got past Quantico (as usual) on Friday, and I made it home today in 4 hours flat. Chapel Hill was really pretty, and our seats were right down on the field, but unfortunately, that didn't help us win the game. Anyway, here's a few pictures.

2008-11-05T23:02:00.009-05:00

Before I head down to Chapel Hill on Friday, I wanted to post a couple pictures from this past weekend in Atlanta.

2008-11-05T09:48:00.002-05:00

It seems I've been running into people I know in the most unlikely places recently. Friday night at National airport, I ran into Dave Fortner from Tech. He was up in the DC area interviewing for a new job. Then on the Metro platform on Sunday, I ran into one of Emily's coworkers at RAND. Last night, we bumped into Todd and Leah at CalTort while enjoying our free "I voted" tacos (followed by free "I voted" ice cream at Ben & Jerry's). Giving out free food just for doing something I was going to do anyway is the best idea ever, by the way.
In other recent news, the weekend down in Atlanta was good, but too short as always. Our flight down was on time for a change, so we were able to meet Matt for dinner at Gordon Biersh, and then play some Rock Band at Kristin's with Michelle, Ben, Glenn, and Matt. Saturday we tailgated with the same group for a bit, plus Christine, in the EST courtyard, which is really nice. I didn't even know it existed. Campus has changed a lot since I graduated, so it's nice to get around to some different areas. Once there, we learned that Glenn doesn't know how to properly use a grill. Seems like something I should have already known from the various 8th st cookouts, but somehow it had slipped my mind. Then we met up with Brian and his traitorous F$U friends for some more tailgating before game time. After the game, we got lost in my old neighborhood (Smyrna) looking for the South City Kitchen. We eventually found it, and the food was superb as always, but the service was a little lacking. But we got to meet Kenneth's new girlfriend and hear about what he's been up to at Motorola, so it all turned out okay. Sunday morning we had brunch at Apres Diem with Laina and Josh before I headed back to the airport to come home. They make such a cute couple, I wish we could hang out with them more often.
The game on Saturday was fantastic, culminating in a 31-28 Tech victory (FINALLY) on a goal line fumble. After leading for most of the game, a getting a little lucky, Tech finally got the monkey off our back and beat the Criminoles. Everyone has us penciled in to the Orange Bowl all of a sudden, but I think that's a little premature. I'm not familiar with all the new ACC tiebreaker rules (and finding anything on the ACC's website is impossible), but we still need to beat UNC and Miami, and probably need both VT and UVA to lose another game, and then if all that happens, we'd still need to win the ACC Championship game. Certainly the win helps us stay in position, but there's a lot of football left before anyone should be crowning anyone else ACC champs.
The election's finally over! WHOOO! I checked the map before I went to bed last night and saw Obama had a comfortable lead. That's the extent of my interest. I'm sure the cold I'm fighting has something to do with it too. Mostly I just want to sleep a lot. Especially since I need to get better before heading down to Chapel Hill this weekend. Anyway, good for Barack I guess. We'll see what the next 4 years have in store. I'm just excited that the campaigning if over and done with at last. I think this might have been the longest pre-election of all time...

2008-11-04T18:07:00.003-05:00

I was reviewing my twitter posts from the game on Saturday, and apparently, a stadium full of 55,000 people isn't the ideal place to be sending time-sequenced text messages from. Go figure. Anyway, a bunch are out of order, and some never showed up at all. Lesson learned. I'll try to keep the posts less frequent in Chapel Hill this weekend.

2008-11-04T16:55:00.002-05:00

I think there's something seriously wrong with me. Despite how much I want the election to be over and done with, I can't stop compulsively checking in with Nate Silver's 538 site. Truthfully, all I'm really interested in is the numerical models and error margins and data shifts. How did I do so poorly at statistics and advanced math in college and yet still have such a love for number theory and applications? Hopefully it won't be long before the returns start bearing out the accuracy of the algorithms. Go math! And they say the US is lagging behind... Where's Japan's regression modeling of its national elections?

2008-11-04T13:36:00.002-05:00

Why am I just now learning that Sarah Palin played girl's basketball in high school? Suddenly everything about her makes so much more sense!

2008-11-04T11:08:00.002-05:00

Voting was pretty painless this morning. I was in and out in under 10 minutes. Thankfully my last name starts with A-E; the poor saps in the L-P line were out the door when I arrived. If you haven't voted yet, I encourage you to go do so. Exercise your right or be stuck with whatever the rest of us idiots decide. Only a few more hours until the commercials and signs all go away. Could not possibly come soon enough...

2008-10-27T12:13:00.007-04:00

Is it November 4th yet? Will the campaign ads and phone calls stop please? Frankly, I could not be happier to be getting out of the DC area this weekend. I've decided that my new policy is to vote for whoever annoys me the least during the next week. We get at least 2-3 robocalls a day from campaigns, and occasionally even a real human being on the line. We don't answer the house phone, so they all get to talk to voicemail no matter what, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. So far, the list of people I'm not voting for includes Keith Fimian, Sarah Palin, Michelle Obama, Sarah Palin (yes, I know she's listed twice, her campaign calls twice as much as anyone else), and John McCain. I've been invited to more victory rallies than I could possibly attend! I decided months ago not to vote for Keith Fimian after his campaign put up signs that dangerously block the view cars coming up the 66 onramp I use, but apparently no one on his campaign read my irate email, so I still get his pleading phone calls. Also, he was apparently once vaguely involved with the Cleveland Browns. I believe that makes three strikes sir.

2008-10-21T11:44:00.004-04:00

Talk about a football-dominated weekend. Friday night started with watching Boise State obliterate Hawaii. But I had to go to bed before the end of the game, secure in the knowledge that the Broncos had it pretty well wrapped up already. Saturday morning I had to ref the 8am flag football game, then play in the 9:30 game, then ref the 11:00 game. When all was said and done in Anacostia (including a 41-24 beatdown of Clemson alumni by GT alumni), I "rushed" home. I say rushed because mostly I just crawled along 66 in the flow of out-of-state idiots and local assholes. So I missed the entire first half of the GT@Clemson varsity game, and even though the second half was frustrating, Tech came away with another win. I spent the remainder of the day on the couch, trying not to take a nap and toggling between games when one got boring. Sunday morning GTDC had another flag football game against Michigan State. Despite a slow start, our defense and a defender-ankle-shattering run by Kim saved the day as our flag football team improved to 7-0 and took a commanding lead in our division. We rushed home (this time, rushing was actually possible), showered, packed a cooler, and hit the road again for a trip to Landover. Phil's boss hooked us up with some info on a good tailgating spot which worked out really well. We grilled up some brats and chicken breasts, had some chips and queso, and then headed to the stadium. The first half was blindingly sunny in the upper deck, and rather boring on the field. The only real excitement was a missed field goal. Once the sun went down, it got cold fast, but the football got interesting as the Skins pulled out a nailbiter against the Browns. Then it was back to the tailgating field to hang out while traffic died down a bit before heading home. All in all a pretty fun weekend, but I am totally worn out. I need another weekend to recover from my weekend!

2008-10-14T11:52:00.002-04:00

Today's awesome tidbit comes from one of my coworkers. Since he's in the lab at the moment, his cell phone is on his desk and has rung several times now. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but his ring tone is a sonar ping!! That's almost as cool as the generic plastic building block model of a submarine that's at EG&G.

2008-10-13T13:28:00.001-04:00

Sources: Bowden fired at Clemson after 3-3 start HAHAHAHAHA!!!! Sucker. That's what you get for being the head coach of the most over-hyped, under-performing team of all time. We're down to one coach Bowden now, and it's only a matter of time before he gets the boot. Given F$U's downward spiral and Penn State's recent resurgence, Bobby's not likely to catch JoePa again. But he is more likely to be forced to retire, especially given Jimbo Fisher's outrageous contract where he stands to be paid $2.5 million if he's not named head coach at F$U by 2011. Meanwhile, JoePa took a huge hit on the sidelines last year, broke his leg, and still demanded to keep coaching, albeit from a booth per doctor's orders. The man is invincible! And now, back to Tommy: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

2008-10-10T16:24:00.002-04:00

If you're interested in Politics and numbers (or really just numbers), I suggest you have a look at Five Thirty Eight (so named because there are 538 electoral votes). Rather than looking at a single poll and saying that so-an-so is ahead by X points, Nate Silver's algorithms compile massive amounts of poll data and analyze it all, weighting the more historically accurate, more recent, and larger sample-size polls heavier. Of all places to see something like this, I read about this in my Sports Illustrated, because Mr. Silver is also a writer/analyst for Baseball Prospectus. He's after basically the same thing I am with Chaos Rankings, in that he wants to accumulate the largest sample sizes possible because it negates outliers. As someone who literally has dreams about how to put together this kind of thing, all the different plots and graphs on the page made my mouth water. Certainly, 538 isn't for everyone, most people will likely just zone out due to information overload once the page comes up, but I thought it was fascinating and well worth some further investigation this weekend.

2008-10-10T11:42:00.001-04:00

Charleston Chew the hamster (aka Charlie, fka Chewbacca) passed away on Tuesday night, curled up in a ball under his blankets of tissue. He was only about a year old, but he hadn't been doing very well the past couple weeks, so it wasn't much of a surprise. He'd stopped eating a few days ago and had all but quit drinking as well. Although whatever was wrong with him made him lose weight and energy, as recently as a week ago he was still getting his nightly exercise of climbing the side of his cage and then working his way across the top, commando-style, like they were monkey-bars on a elementary school playground. We put him to rest in my parents' front yard on Wednesday night on the opposite side of the driveway from Oro and near Griffin, so he's in good company.
Emily brought Charleston home in mid-November last year after one of her friends at work couldn't care for him. After picking him up at the office in the morning, apparently he slept under Emily's desk all day, then enjoyed a ride home on the Metro. Despite the change of scene, he warmed up to us right away, though at first it was hard to tell which end of him was which with all the fur! He was a teddy bear hamster, but had hair like you wouldn't believe! Think of how a caricature artist would depict Einstien's 'do, and then go wilder. When Emily's mom came to visit, she wanted to take a pair of scissors to him and cut it all off, but we managed to spare him the loss of his out-of-control mane. Charleston wasn't as big a fan of the hamster ball as Oro was, but because he was a lot friendlier, you could actually sit somewhere and play with him for a while and pet and brush him.
Charleston had been having a hard time breathing the past couple of days and hadn't really been opening his eyes much either. It's sad to see such a little creature in such obvious pain and be helpless to do anything about it besides try to make him comfortable and keep him company. On Monday night when it cooled off so much, we left the windows open at night. I like to think that the cold air put him into hibernation, where his troubled breathing became less of a hindrance and he could drift away peacefully, dreaming of doggie biscuits and yogurt drops.
Rest in peace little furry friend.

2008-10-07T23:18:00.003-04:00

It's official, I bought our tickets tonight and we're going to London for Thanksgiving! Two of Emily's close work friends just started grad school at LSE, so we'd been talking about going to visit this fall, and decided that Thanksgiving would be a good time since work will be slow, and as long as we're not traveling on the typically busy days, the airports shouldn't be too bad. So, we're watched prices for a while and as seats ran out, we finally decided to pounce and got what I think is a pretty good deal. Unfortunately, I think we may have a hard time finding the Georgia ggame on TV over there. "Pardon me my good fellow, do you know of a pub where I might be able to view the football game?" isn't likely to help me very much... Though I'm told that Hillary and Priya's "flat" (see, I already speak the language!) is near the Arsenal stadium, so maybe we'll take in a football game after all. ;)

2008-10-05T19:21:00.003-04:00

My second week of work at Sedna went well. I've started to accumulate some assignments now too, so I have things to do on a daily basis. I've learned a lot so far. I even solved a problem all by myself on Friday! Yay!
Saturday Emily and I went apple picking at Stribling Orchard, which means we missed the GT beatdown of Duke. Hey, stop laughing! Don't underestimate Duke this year - David Cutcliffe has them paying well. We got a little confused in the orchard as to what variety of apples we were actually picking, but all the ones we came home with I'm sure will take great. We have plans for applesauce following Emily's grandfather's recipe, some baked apples, and possible a pie in the near future. In the mean time, it was nice just to get out of town for a few hours and get some exercise and fresh air.
Since we were already out in the middle of nowhere, we decided to take a detour to Winchester for a Sonic excursion. I know I'm not the only one who wishes there were a Sonic closer than an hour away (with no traffic). It's not like there aren't places to put one around here. And it's not like there aren't enough people with money around here to buy franchise rights. Let's get with the program here Sonic...
After the Sonic excursion, we came home on Route 7 through Leesburg, stopping for some goodies at Lola's bakery. My pumpkin muffin was awesome for breakfast this morning, and my cinnamon-chocolate cookie was really good too. And Emily assures me that her coconut cupcake was superb also. If you're into that kind of thing, the bakery is being featured on Rachel Ray's talk show in the near future. We also wandered around downtown briefly and managed to find the bed and breakfast where Tommy and Steph got married, which, despite the debilitating heat, we have very fond memories of.
Today we had a flag football game against Iowa. I'm less than thrilled with our new coaches this year. I won't go into all the details, but they just don't see very on top of things. Anyway, we won the game to improve to 3-0 on the season, though we haven't played any really tough teams yet either. Now we're just recovering getting ready for another week at work, but I'd say we had a pretty eventful weekend where we were really able to enjoy the beautiful weather. It's going to disappear before long, so I'm glad we could take advantage of it while we could.

2008-09-23T22:51:00.002-04:00

My last week of work at GD was hectic as hell. But you'd think with an entire week off last week, I would have found time to post something. To be honest, I didn't spend much time with Jenova last week. I read a lot, enjoyed the nice weather, caught up on some projects I've had on hold forever, and watched the entire first season of House. A couple times I was going to sit down an start writing my "swan song" post about leaving my first after-college job, but now that my new job has started, that feels kind of silly. Suffice it to say that I left on good terms with everyone, I'm grateful for the opportunities that I was given there, but it was time to move on. My new job is pretty awesome so far. I got "introduced" to everyone, which mostly involved saying hello to everyone I already knew and meeting like 4 new people. I counted our employee list today - there are 29 of us. My old boss, who is now my co-worker, gave me a crash course in my new projects today. I'm not sure how much I absorbed, but I took a of of notes, and kept all his pretty sketches, so hopefully I'll at least be able to recall what he was talking about later on. Reminded me a lot of college, only way more fun. I know it won't be that way forever, but compared to the pace I was just on, it's a welcome change. Hooray for my new job!

2008-09-08T16:04:00.005-04:00

All you need to know about Sarah Palin:

"I find her to be a very dynamic, capable, smart women who, you know, it really says that John McCain made an inspired pick, to me. ... She's had executive experience, and that's what it takes to be a capable person here in Washington, D.C. in the executive branch." - George W. Bush

What does GWB know about being a capable leader? And isn't his ringing endorsement reason enough to run for the hills? [Cues up Iron Maiden]

2008-09-05T23:20:00.003-04:00

I found another amazing guitar soloist who blows me away. My fingers simply don't move that fast even when typing on my keyboard, let alone a fretboard. Leave it to the country that produced Sepultura to also produce this guy. I think I love his double-handed octave solos the most. Seriously, you try moving the exact same fingers on both hands with that precision and timing when they're on opposite sides of the neck. Fernando Miyata - bring on the shred:

2008-09-04T12:03:00.012-04:00

Last weekend, while Emily was taking an extended long weekend to visit her parents in Savannah and St. Simon's, I took an overnight trip with my family and a family friend up to the Shennandoah. Despite some iffy-looking weather, we never got rained on or overheated. I had a great time, and it was nice to get some fresh air, exercise, and a change of scene. We had a great cookout, took a hike up Stony Man where we saw the peregrine falcon nesting areas, and did a good section of the White Oak Canyon trail, which is still one of the nicest hikes anywhere. My camera came along for the ride time time, so here's a few pictures.

We had a few dinner-time visitors, including deer who were obviously (sadly) used to beign fed by humans. They walked right up to our porch and practically begged like dogs. It was cute, but sad, though I suspect we probably could have pet them had we been so inclined.

Jiminy Cricket!

This is the scene that greeted me when I walked out onto the porch at Skyland to enjoy my breakfast. Hard to beat that view to start your day.

Manly men, ready for a hike!

No, it's not dead, it's sunning itself, or at least it was until we showed up, accidentally blocked out its sun beam, and started snapping pictures. He fluttered away shortly thereafter to find a more private spot. There were a ton of butterflies around too, this one just proved to be the most cooperative.

And finally, a shot of the stream that the White Oak Canyon follows down to the falls, meandering through the forest.

2008-09-04T10:29:00.003-04:00

The OKC Thunder? Are you serious? Is this a new WNBA team? Or perhaps an MLS team? No no, it's the new name of what used to be Seattle's NBA team. I thought men's professional sports had a ban on singular team names. Besides the Miami and Orlando expansion teams, and the Jazz (which should have left that name in New Orleans where it belongs), every other NBA team has a plural team name. NFL? All plural. MLB? All plural (if you consider "sox" plural at least). NHL? Again, except recent expansion teams, all plural. So is the new rule that only legacy teams get to be plural and new teams have to be singular? Expansions, maybe, but not teams that just move - look at the Nats! Also, I'd like to point out that you've done little to distance yourselves from Seattle, since their WNBA team is the Storm. Front-office idiots.

2008-09-02T11:42:00.003-04:00

GD started blocking access to webmail today. *sigh* One more sign that I'm making the right decision by leaving. Big companies install filters like this because they can't trust their employees not to abuse them. And they can't trust their employees because they don't know their employees. In a company this big, it's easy to do nothing all day, fade into the background, and just be a waste of space. No one ever notices that you do nothing, and they'll never fire you anyway. In a smaller company, it's immediately obvious if you're not pulling your weight, so they can trust you with things like unfiltered web access because they'll know right away whether you're getting your job done or spending all day reading the latest drivel on salon.com. I can't wait to get out of here.

2008-09-01T13:03:00.001-04:00

Star Trek: The Experience closing down - CNN.com Great, now I have no incentive to ever go to Vegas.

2008-08-29T11:51:00.002-04:00

Oh snap! My dad is always right about these sorts of things. Turns out McCain named his running mate, and it's Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. My dad said many months ago that McCain would choose a woman, and I laughed at the idea of the GOP copying the Democrats, but here we are. Then I said months ago, because the Obama/Hillary supporters had done such a good job splitting their party, that as long as Skeletor didn't pick a Nazi war criminal as his running mate, he was a presidential shoe-in. Now, I haven't personally vetted Mrs. Palin, but since she was born after WWII, I think those chances are pretty remote. You heard it here first folks: McCain/Palin win the White House in a landslide.

2008-08-29T10:22:00.003-04:00

I finally got around to listening to the new Metallica single. It's okay I guess. I wasn't as disappointed by it as I was by my first listen of St. Anger (which has grown on me considerably since then). That said, the song feels recycled. It reminds me of Until It Sleeps, and a number of other songs from the Load/Reload era. And wait a second, that sounded suspiciously like a vintage Megadeth riff... Subtle attempt to bury the hatchet with Dave Mustaine with an homage or flagrant rippoff? Hmmm... It's not that the song's bad, it's just that it's nothing I haven't heard before. Besides, everyone knows Cliff Burton had a hand in all of 'tallica's best songs, and it's hard to write an album from beyond the grave, even with the aid of whatever magnetic coffin the band is now trying to sell me on. Definitely I'm going to give the whole album a listen at some point, but the single did nothing to really get me excited about the release date.

2008-08-28T19:51:00.002-04:00

Bring on The Fall! College football starts tonight, and even though the GT game isn't on TV, I'm still excited. The air smelled like fall today and it's definitely cooler. Although I can't tell you exactly where the summer disappeared to, at this point, I couldn't care less about the heat and humidity. Bring on the temperate days and cool nights, the rustling leaves, and of course, the earth tones in my closet. Don't expect to see me on Saturday's between now and December unless you're also planning to join me on my reclining couch. Also, I thought I'd throw in a shameless plug for Chaos Rankings. The preseason rankings have been up for about 2 weeks, and the week 1 rankings will be up after the late games on Monday.

2008-08-25T12:59:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if it's just residual hilarity left over from seeing Mike Birbiglia live at the Improv last night (which was awesome, by the way), but we were just talking about cars at lunch and I can't stop laughing about "my tranny is overdriven." You know how sometimes when you get on a laughter kick, suddenly everything is funnier? Certainly Mike Birbiglia put us on one of those last night. Some of his jokes I'd see before on his stand-up specials, and some were new to me, but all were well-executed and many had me in tears. So I think my brain might still be latched in funny mode (kind of like me trying to be witty at 3 am). Regardless, 3-speed trannies and overdriven trannies was way more humorous than a standard Chipotle outing.

2008-08-20T23:47:00.002-04:00

Emily and I have some exciting news! I know we just got married a couple months ago, and certainly at the time, this wasn't something we planned. But sometimes certain things don't work like they're supposed to. It's definitely something we both wanted, but we both thought it would be something to look forward to further down the road. This is such a life changing event and I hope we're ready for it. Although I suppose at this point it's going to happen whether we're prepared or not. That's right, I quit my job! Things spiraled downward so fast at GD that I was really left with no choice but to move on to bigger and better things. Well, better anyway. I'm going to a smaller company with a lot of very smart people and a completely different work environment. I have no doubt that I will be one of the worst engineers there, but I'm going to learn a hell of a lot, get to do some more fun engineering (less powerpoint, more vi), and expand my capabilities in the process. The last 3 months have been pretty miserable at work, followed by much complaining at home, so that Emily's at least as happy as I am that I finally said "enough is enough." GD gave my career a great start, but the time has come to do something (sort of) new. I'll still be a defense contractor working on submarine sonar systems, just on a different project at a different company where I already know easily half of the ~30 employees. There's something very rewarding about walking into an interview with two of the three company co-owners plus their chief engineer and being told "you don't have to sell yourself, we know what you're capable of and the job is yours if you want it, we just want to make sure that the projects we have in mind for you are something that you're interested in."

2008-08-18T22:47:00.001-04:00

Does anyone know where I can get my hands on one of these jackets? I've been watching the Russian men's teams wear them for the last week or so and very much want to see about getting one for myself. My only lead so far is the "Opening Soon" Bosco Sport website. I already tried ebay and a cursory google search.

2008-08-14T10:51:00.003-04:00

A week ago, I had zero interest in watching the Olympics. Yet every night fo rthe past week I've been up until 1 am watching. Damn you best-of-the-best international sport competition! I have to admit that I'm hopelessly hooked. And I genuinely think that NBC is doing a better job with coverage than in previous years. Sure, I'm missing a lot of events, but I still think I prefer that to the rapid-fire coverage switching that they've done in the past where you never got to watch enough of anything to really get involved. My only complaint is that I'm hearing the same stories and anecdotes over and over and over again from the announcers. Please find some new drivel. And yes, I realize that I'm hooked on the Olympics because coverage over the last week has been primarily of all the high-profile sports where 16-30 year-old girls wear skin tight outfits, like swimming, volleyball, and gymnastics. But I will also readily admit to being hooked on the men's version of each of those same sports because the level of competition is so high and it's amazing to see what the human body is capable of, especially since mine will never be.

2008-08-10T16:54:00.003-04:00

I spent a lot of yesterday watching the Olympics, despite the beautiful weather. Today I resolved to remedy that and spent a couple hours in the early afternoon sitting on my porch reading. I have to say, I feel more relaxed now than I have in weeks. Despite reading Watchmen, which is kind of a downer, I feel great. The air was pleasant, the humidity wasn't bad, the breeze kept the bugs away, and I really felt like I could have been at the beach. I woke up at 11, ate breakfast while watching Team USA pound the Chinese basketball team into the ground, and then went outside in my PJs and just read a book for a couple hours. It's like I finally stopped an took a deep breath. If only I didn't have to go back to work tomorrow and get wound up all over again.

2008-08-09T00:16:00.001-04:00

I think I finally found a new layout I like. I'm still working out a few kinks, but I think I'm going to stick with this one for a while. Let me know what you think!

2008-08-08T14:48:00.002-04:00

I think I managed to cancel out whatever auspicious power today held by shattering a mirror this morning.

2008-08-07T12:52:00.002-04:00

And people wonder why it takes so long for me to get any work done... This is probably the busiest week I've had, but it's fairly representative of a normal week for me. I spend so much of my time in meetings that there's precious little time to do anything productive outside of meetings. Then at least half that time is spent making sure other people are doing there jobs, doing other people's jobs for them, preparing for the next meeting, or following up on actions from the various meetings. So by the time all is said and done, I end up like Peter Gibbons, albeit for different reasons: "I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work."

2008-08-05T14:55:00.002-04:00

If there's anything a Slurpee can't fix, I don't want to know about it. Despite getting reamed at my meeting this morning, I'm feeling much better now that I've got a nice big Coke/Cherry Slurpee in my hand.

2008-07-29T14:02:00.002-04:00

Make that a straw, followed by getting stuck with an electric cattle prod, followed by getting smacked upside the head with and a giant, spirit-crushing log. What's that creaking sound I hear?

2008-07-29T12:20:00.003-04:00

One more straw got added to the camel's back today. What a fun game this is... It's like Jenga or Kerplunk. Build the most treacherous structure possible, to the point where everything is just barely holding together, with everything in "perfect" balance. Then blow on it. To quote The Offspring, my work situtation is as follows: "Cause the slightest thing and I just might snap." There are a few other choice lines form the same song that I find myself wanting to blurt out on at least a daily basis. I never dreamed when I accepted this position that the company would be my biggest obstacle. I assumed that I was the most likely point of failure, not the infrastructure around me. Let's go back to my Jenga analogy. If I'm the tenatively constructed Jenga tower, the company is a bomb shelter. A gust of wind picks up. Which is more likely to crumble? You'd think the Jenga tower, right? No friends, apparently, bomb shelters are much more fragile than they appear. The problem is that you can't build a Jenga tower at all on the rubble strewn all over the place. Okay, my analogy is rapidly losing cohesion. Suffice it to say that I am unhappy at work and things only seem to be getting worse on a near-daily basis.

2008-07-29T11:30:00.002-04:00

Also, you may have noticed that my blog appears to be suffering from missing components on occasion. The site hosting my header and images is apparently having issues. So that coupled with the formatting issues in Firefox have prompted me to redo my layout. But I'm also lazy, so it may be a while before that actually happens. In the mean time, if anyone has any suggestions for where to co-opt some decent layouts, I'm all ears.

2008-07-29T10:58:00.002-04:00

Oh good, the air conditioner in my building is broken today. Well, at least it's only supposed to reach 90. It's good that it's already 80 in my office right? Today might be a half day.

2008-07-21T18:00:00.003-04:00

*gasp* There are Twinkies in the snack machine! Not generic creme-filled snack-cakes, but honest-to-god Twinkies! Tomorrow I'm bringing in some singles to buy out the snack machine. =)

2008-07-21T12:16:00.001-04:00

Regarding my last post, let me bring you up to date with what's been going on and what I've been struggling with. First, the background:
For the last two years, my project has been me, Dave, and Jenny. Dave was the project lead and did most of the C code. Jenny was our software lead and did most of the Java code. I did pretty much everything else in between. When Dave elected to leave the company for one of our competitors, I was asked to take over as project lead. Even though Jenny is older, more tenured, and more experienced, she's a software guru, and a damn good one, but she doesn't see the big picture. She can tell you anything about how the code works, but nothing about why it's supposed to do that or why a design was done a certain way, and she knows nothing about integration or hardware. So although I was still the junior man, I took over as project lead because I do have those skills. Obviously, a team of two people can't do a team of three's workload, so I asked to hire some new people. For weeks, I wasn't getting anything useful from the higher ups and it was getting really frustrating trying to keep up with everything else going on because while I'm doing Dave's job, no one is doing my job, but it still needs to get done, so I'm trying to pick and choose only the most critical items to work on until I can get more staff in here.
To make matters worse, for the next fiscal year, we're developing our system on a brand new platform and a completely unique variant of another platform, all of which requires a lot of special modificiations and specialized interfaces on top fo what we would normally have to do for a software update. So, it's a lot more work than we've had to do in the last couple years, and so we'd need more people to do it in the first place. So the plan all along was to hire at least one entry level engineer and then one additional entry level to mid level engineer to do software and systems. I'd train up the systems guy and Jenny would train up the software guy. Obviously, it's going to take these guys a while to get up to speed and get clearances, so the sooner we get them in, the better.
Now for the new stuff:
Last week, Jenny decided she wanted to work on something new, and applied for a position on another project. This is what the last post was referring to. After being reviewed by my customer, the 9000 man hours I initially estimated for FY09 became 13000 hours, and there's currently me to do it. Now, I know a lot about our software, but I only muddle through it. I am the wrong person to teach new people how to operate in our framework and follow good coding practices. A bit of blind leading the lost action going on there. Jenny knows way more than I do about that side of things and is really the ideal person to bring new people up to speed correctly. But obviously, that won't happen if she's no longer on the team. I'm also choosing to ignore all the other various issues going on and trying to keep this dilemma as simple as possible.
The way I see it, I can either throw my hands up in the air and give up on the project or I can take this opportunity to rebuild the program from scratch. I'm not sure I have it in me to give up on something, and I'm certainly willing to take on a challenge, but at the same time, I don't want to be the captain of a sinking ship. It's also not in me to deliver a subpar product. And to be honest, my loyalty lies with my customer and not with my company on this one. Which means I can either stay at GD, and rebuild the program by hiring some new people, or I can leave the company and tell my customer that I can't continue to produce a quality product with the resources available. If I choose to leave, GD will lose the program, it will fail, or they'll sub it out to someone else, no question. There's no one else who knows enough about it to run it, even if Jenny took over as lead instead of switching projects. Dave has said he would put in a good work for me at Sedna, and I know enough other people over there that I'm reasonably confident they would offer me a job. Which adds a complicated wrinkle to the whole thing. I think if I left for Sedna, there's a 50/50 chance that GD would have no choice but to subcontract the project to Sedna, where Dave and I could work on it together again. This would definitely make my customer happy, but I don't know if I want to continue to work on the same thing if I leave the company or if I want to be Dave's sidekick forever (although there's also the possibility that I could continue as lead, and leave Dave to the coding that he's better at, assuming he even wants to work on the project again too). I'm going to run into the same problem over there too where there's not anyone below me to train up to take my place someday, so I'd be "stuck" working on the same project for the forseeable future. Nice job security, but it's something I have to think long and hard about.
Along those same lines, I have a kid fresh out of college coming in for an interview in a few minutes. I'm really conflicted about what to do if he's a good candidate. I don't think, ethically, that I can offer him a job unless I've already made up my mind to stay. Which also means that I can't leave for at least a year or so after hiring him. I'm sure GD would find some other project for him to work on, but it feels unfair to bring him on if I'm going to turn around and bail out.
Definitely some things I need to think through pretty carefully in the next few days.

2008-07-16T16:27:00.003-04:00

[Expletive deleted]!!!!!!!!!!!
Potentially very bad things are afoot at work. Very bad. Only potentially. But also very probably. My head hurts. I want to go punch some~~one~~thing. Or curl up in a ball under my covers and stay there. I need a vacation. Too bad I can't take one cause there's no one else to cover my work and I'm already doing like 2.5 people's jobs. Soon to be even more! Wheee!! Kill me.

2008-07-14T12:10:00.002-04:00

Emily and I went to see the Lion King at the Kennedy Center last night. I wish I had watched the movie more recently than 10 years ago so that I could keep all the events in correct order, but from what I remember, it seemed to follow the movie pretty closely. The costumes were amazing, but it wasn't just that an actor was dressed like a cheetah or a zebra or whatever. There was also a mechanical component that caused other parts of the costume to move to simulate a two-legged actor having 4 legs or caused the head of the animal to move along with the actor's head. I was really impressed with the technical aspects of the entire show, including making Mufasa's head appear seemingly out of nowhere. Yes yes, you can take an engineer to a musical, but he's still an engineer... I thought the costumes and characters were also very true to the movie. It was sufficiently cartoony, but without being cheesy or over the top. And some of the vocalists were just outstanding. It should tell you something that after the final curtain, Emily said she may have a new favorite musical. I'm not sure if she still feels that way today, but I've never heard her even come close to mentioning anything else ever dethroning Phantom. For me, Les Mis is still top dog (speaking of which, happy revolting Frenchmen day! Wait, that came out wrong...). There's more going on, with enough major characters that anyone can find something to idenfity with. And I think what keeps it at the top of my list is that I know in 10, 20, 50 years, I may not see as much of myself in Enjolras as I did 10 years ago, or as much Marius as I do now, but there may be more Jean Valjean. It's a story that grows with you. And yes, I understand that the Lion King wasn't a story written by anyone like Victor Hugo and that it was originally intended for a young audience, so the character complexities just aren't there. The Lion King just doesn't compare in terms of power with Les Miserables. That said, there is a lot of power to be had in African drums and tribal vocals. All things considered, I would definitely go see Lion King again.

2008-07-11T17:07:00.000-04:00

This guy is ridiculous. Apart from the video above being hilarious, the technical skill is insane. Go watch some of his other videos on YouTube too. He's a born entertainer. I miss the good old days of jamming with Geo after school or improving with Danny in his basement waiting for Chris and Tommy to show up. I think it's obvious what I have to do the rest of the evening - spend some time with my snazzy new Thunderbird.

2008-07-07T16:47:00.002-04:00

According to the FY09 tasking plan I just came up with, we have something like 9000 man-hours of work planned for next fiscal year. I think the hours per task are reasonably accurate. I have 1000 hours allocated to my the employee I get 50% of the time and 2000 allocated to our SW lead. In other words, they're both covered for the entire year. That leaves 6000 hours of work to do. Under my initial plan, I had about 2800 hours for myself and 3200 for my a hire. When I tallied the hours, I just started laughing hysterically in my office. To the point where other people poked their heads in to see what was wrong with me. Obviously, I need to hire 2 new people instead of just 1 to even that work load out a little bit. But the scary part is that if we don't make some hires soon, most of those tasks still have to be done, and it's going to take a while to bring someone up to speed so they can actually be useful. Until then, I'll just continue doing the work of 3 people. It's more fun that way...

2008-07-07T13:26:00.003-04:00

I finally got so fed up with my 401k at work hemorrhaging money (I lost over $2000 last month alone, including contributions) that I decided to temporarily transfer my entire portfolio into the lowest-yield, lowest-volatility fund available. Yes, I may only be earning something like a 1% return on my investment now, but that's arguably better than the -16% return I've been putting up with since the start of the year. Bush: "We're not in a recession." Ha! Idiot son of an asshole indeed... Next step is to shop around for a better-managed plan and see about rolling over my current balance (since I'm fully vested). Any suggestions?

2008-07-07T11:23:00.000-04:00

My endoscopy last week went fine. I don't remember a thing about the actual procedure (thank you anesthesia!). I had a mild sore throat for a couple days, but generally felt fine within a couple hours. Good news is that there's nothing wrong with me. Bad news is that there definitely has been something wrong with me. So the upside is that they didn't find anything serious like ulcers, polyps, cancer, hernias, etc, so there's no real cause for alarm. Unfortunately, it means that I'm most likely just going to have to carry around antacids the rest of my life. My next step is to talk to my doctor about any long-term implications of taking a daily PPI.
Friday morning I finally assembled my dad's new grill. It's awesome. I want one. I can't wait to have a house so I can have my very own grill. We gave it the inaugural shakedown later that day for their 4th of July BBQ, and everything came out perfectly. No charcoal casing around frozen meat anymore! It was fun to hang out with my cousins again, especially since one of them just got engaged. Soon we'll be back to only having one Emily Bever in the family again. I was supposed to swing by Tommy's after the BBQ, but as usual with my family, everything started late and then ran long, so by the time I was ready to leave, it was already 9:30, fireworks were going off, and I was ready for bed.
On Saturday, Emily and I finally watched the 40 Year Old Virgin, which was pretty funny. Made me excited for Kevin Smith's new movie, also with Seth Rogan and Elizabeth Banks. Feeling a little Steve Carrelled-out, we elected to go see WALL-E instead of Get Smart later that day after getting my mom a slick new Instinct too. Sunday was a lot more lazy on my part. Emily cleaned house most of the day (I helped a little) while I mostly lay on the couch in my pajamas watching the men's championship from Wimbledon. I rarely watch tennis, but it turns out that I picked a hell of a match to pay attention to. By the time it finally ended, I was exhausted just from watching and putting up with the multiple rain delays.