I'll be moving back home tomorrow. That's all I really wanted
to say here.
I just downloaded and installed the Seti@Home text client for unix. Up until today, I didn't even know that such a thing existed. So, now I've got the distributed.net client and the Seti@Home client. My poor little 166MHz CPU will never have a minute to rest!
I'm reading Snow Crash lately. Stephenson is a really fun author to read.
I just registered my first domain names yesterday! I registered the domains www.hoteldetective.org, www.katie-and-rob.org, and www.thedreadpilotrobert.org with www.joker.com. If you try to go to those sites, you'll find that there are no servers for them yet. I'll have to figure that part out. That registrar is a German site, so I paid in Euros; between that and the Canadian stuff I charged to my credit card this past weekend, Citibank might wonder why I became so worldly all of a sudden. :)
I just heard an editorial by John Flansburg on NPR's Marketplace about how rock stars are stupid for dissing Napster. Flansburg rocks.
Here's a book-on-tape review I just wrote for the NASA GRC summer intern newsletter:
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
I'll make this review short and sweet. The Right Stuff is a book about the Mercury Seven: the men who "pushed the envelope" of flight and rode the first American space capsules (and after reading or listening to this book, you'll understand that those are two very different things).
For those of you who, like me, grew up seeing the Challenger explosion rather than the Mercury launches, this classic will color in the personalities behind the famous names of John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Alan Shepard, Chuck Yeager, and others.
If you read my previous book-on-tape review of Skunk Works, you'll be happy to know that The Right Stuff is a world apart. Where Skunk Works is bland and stiff, The Right Stuff is easygoing and almost poetic -- a real pleasure to listen to. Where Skunk Works jumps around in time, The Right Stuff flows logically, in chronological order. Where Skunk Works's timid reader struggles with the first-person perspective on people he can't relate to, The Right Stuff's narrator sounds much more dignified and natural in the semi-omniscient third-person perspective.
Wolfe lets you in on the colorful details of the rigorous and sometimes bizarre medical tests that the astronauts-to-be had to undergo. He tells you the wives' side of the story and the implicit "deal" that an astronaut's wife had to accept and which the news media never understood. He doesn't paint over the drinking and carousing in which most of the Mercury Seven and their high-flying buddies partook in the remote towns where they were stationed, either. To be sure, Wolfe makes up some of the details, but the effect makes you feel like you were really there at each flight test, funeral, bar, and press conference.
I haven't seen the movie version of The Right Stuff, so I can't
tell you how it compares, but I sincerely recommend it as a book or book-on-tape.
The tape was an intimidating sixteen hours long -- even longer than the
car trip it was intended for -- but I never wanted it to end.
There were about twenty of us, and we shared three rooms. I anticipated some problems from the start as far as the number of people in a room, but I didn't anticipate the right problems. I thought I might lose sleep because of the number of people in the room, or that it might be hard to get into the bathroom. The real problem was that we were only allocated two keys per room (although, if you asked around, you would only be able to find at most one person claiming to have a key). This necessitated kind of a chain-gang-like mode of activity, where if you wanted to do anything outside of the hotel, you had to (a) do whatever the other nineteen people were doing; or (b) convince the other nineteen people to do what you want to do. This experience gave me a keen appreciation of how otherwise intelligent people can, when put in a large enough group, be utterly paralyzed by indecision. We spent a lot of time just standing around, trying to decide what to do next, where to eat, who to put in what cars, what direction to walk in, etc. So, that part of the trip was really frustrating.
As a result of all this standing around, we didn't get to do a whole lot. We got there around 9 p.m. Friday, but we had to wait around for a couple hours for the arrival of the car with the guy under whose name the rooms were booked. I was one of the drivers, and I think mine was the only car (out of five) that didn't get completely lost; one of the cars actually wandered halfway to Toronto.
Anyway, on Saturday, we walked around the boardwalk at the bottom of the river, and then we walked around the area at the top of the falls. We went up the Skylon tower (www.skylon.com) for an overpriced lunch, and it gave us a nice view of the area. Then we went on the "Behind the Falls" walk, where you walk through some tunnels behind the falls that have portals where you can see out. The falls themselves weren't impressive, but these portals were even less impressive -- all you saw was a white wall. So we walked around some more, then some of us went back to the hotel for a dip in the pool and jacuzzi. After dinner, we tried to go to a Casino, but there was a very long line outside, and we decided it wasn't worth it. So on Sunday morning, some of us decided we'd had enough and left (I'd at least had the foresight to know that if I drove, I'd be able to decide for myself when to leave).
All in all, the best parts of the trip were the hotel jacuzzi, the arcade games we played after seeing the line for the Casino (it wasn't really clear, but it seemed that this was the only casino in town), and the expansive Buddhist temple next door to the hotel (which was the only sight that made it onto the film in my camera).
We ran into a lot of hassles, but some of them were due to our own cluelessness. For example, we spent an hour trying to figure out how to get back to the hotel Saturday night, because we never saw the hotel shuttle that was supposed to appear. And we shouldn't have listened to the hotel concierge, who assured us that there were duty-free shops/currency exchanges and gas stations at every bridge. (We almost had to re-enter Canada after we left to get our Canadian money exchanged back to American.) And, lastly, we shouldn't have followed the Mapquest directions given to us by one of the "organizers" of the trip -- we deludedly ended up driving around in some small town on the outskirts of Cleveland as a result of following those directions.
It was an "educational" trip in many ways.
Epilogue: here is an excerpt from an e-mail that I received today from the trip "organizer" whom I referred to earlier:
wow! can you believe we are already back? hope you guys all had
as
much FUN as i did :) it is such a great feeling to never stop laughing
and smiling... :):) and i have all of you to thank for that. i'm glad you
guys all went :) can't wait to get those pictures back.. ;)
Work is going pretty well. I've been amazed how much work I can get done in a nine-hour day, when I put my mind to it.
I gave a presentation last week to the Ohio Aerospace Institute people about the work I've been doing; it was pretty formal, with PowerPoint overheads, and the presentations are judged. Mine went very well, actually. I'll have to give another one to my branch next week -- a version with less b.s. and more of what I actually did.
At the moment, I'm simultaneously writing this entry, rewinding the cassette tapes that I keep in my car, doing laundry, and recording more of my CDs onto cassettes. How's that for multitasking?
I discovered that I actually can update my psu web pages; I have no idea why I couldn't do that before. So, I did a little updating, and I also updated various versions of my resume today.
I just downloaded the distributed.net client, and it's chugging away. I'm glad it works, since I couldn't manage to figure out how to install the seti@home client (which I'd really rather be running), and I just feel like I should give my CPU something to do in its idle time.
It's funny how I used to think of the hard-drive indicator light on the front of my computer's tower case as a "CPU-busy" light. Of course, I knew it was a hard-drive light, but when I only had one hard drive, it was pretty much six-of-one-half-dozen-of-the-other. Now that I have a (quieter) second hard drive and 99.9% of all accesses are to that drive, I have to remind myself that my CPU is working even though I don't see the familiar light or hear the familiar whirring sound.
That should be enough pointless rambling for one day.
Ohio drivers are so bad. I'm beginning to think that natives of this state shouldn't be licensed for anything larger than a bicycle.
This fall will be a pretty busy time for me. I just started thinking about having to update my resume, have it printed, send it out to different places, do the career fair, go to interviews, write a thesis, and write a curriculum vitae. Whew. I can't wait til I have a cool job and a townhouse and a pet fish.
Here's another book review that I recently wrote:
Skunk Works is an account by the former head of Lockheed's
Skunk Works, the advanced
development division that designed the U-2, SR-71, and F-117. I had
the opportunity to
hear the unabridged book-on-tape version of this work on a long road
trip recently, so just
keep in mind that some of my comments might not apply if you're reading
the book version.
The word "personal" in this book's title is something of a misnomer. While Skunk Works is completely accessible to the non-aerospace reader, it is not about Rich. The spotlight focuses instead on the planes themselves, from the time they're only a glimmer in an engineer's mind to their use in actual missions. We hear from engineers, test pilots, and Pentagon and CIA officials about their perspectives on the manufacture and operation of these top-secret aircraft.
At its worst, this book is a sensationalized Discovery-channel-esque gee-whiz account. The diction sounds like it came right from the mouth of Chuck Yeager -- no matter who's talking. But the milquetoast reader sounds like he's an amateur actor trying way too hard to sound like the apparently crotchety, swearing, hard drinking men who wrote this memoir. Occasionally, another voice comes through: military official-speak. Don't get me wrong, I know nobody is going to pick up this book looking for a warm, fuzzy read. But does wording like "I became aware of the urge to urinate" belong in any "personal memoir?"
One thing about Skunk Works that confused me was its chronology.
It starts with the F-
117, then rewinds to the U-2 and SR-71. Perhaps the editors wanted
to pique the reader's
curiosity with the most modern aircraft first, but I think a topic
like stealth aircraft, where
the technology builds upon itself year after year, is better suited
to strict chronological
ordering.
I have some other minor quibbles. The various contributors repeat each
other now and
then; a conscientious editor could have edited out the repetitious
factoids. Also, the authors
really overdo it with the similes. Hours of "the radar cross-section
was as small as a ...,"
"the fire that erupted was like a...," and "it flew about as gracefully
as a..." can really grate
on you.
At its best, though, this book offers you insight into both the feats
of engineering and the
political messes that characterized the Skunk Works. You learn, for
example, about the
incredible specialization of every part of the SR-71 -- right down
to the last screw, the
state of U.S. and Soviet radar technology throughout the Cold War,
the options available to
a reconnaisance pilot who's in trouble, and the surprising number of
people who resented
Francis Gary Powers for living after his U-2 spyplane was shot down
over Soviet airspace
in 1960.
As a book-on-tape, the thirteen-hour Skunk Works, available through
the GRC Learning
Center, keeps you awake (if groaning) in the car, especially if you're
a military aircraft
buff. As ink-on-paper, though, it may not be worth your time.
I'm wondering how light bulbs came to be symbols of an "idea."
There's so much I'd like to do this week: practice yoga, learn about LaTex, wash my car windows, finish listening to my Skunk Works book-on-tape, re-start my computerized checkbook, trim my fingernails, get a haircut, and catch up on my e-mail and magazine-reading.
I just found out that you can query the NTSB Aviation Accident Database and find accident reports for any date, place, or type of aircraft.
Is it just me, or is 3rd Rock from the Sun a really, really stupid television show?
Rob and I went to the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo and Seaworld this past weekend. The zoo was great. My favorite animals there were probably the gorilla and the slender loris. The human-ness of the gorilla was really eerie. The slender loris is basically a rat with long, thin legs that lives in trees and moves very deliberately. It was just bizarre.
Seaworld was pretty fun, too. The penguins were cute! They can swim a lot faster than I realized. The park is very commercial though -- there are many exhibits that you literally can't exit without going through one of the dozens of gift shops there. Shamu was okay, but not particularly impressive. They had a Japanese pearl-diving exhibit, which was cool. And I have to admit that I gave in to consumerist tendencies and bought two beautiful sets of chopsticks in the adjoining gift shop. :)
Rob insightfully remarked that my journal isn't as exciting since I moved out of Jo's Hellhole. Very true. Sorry, folks. :)
Here's another book review I wrote:
There's lots of good stuff here. The most impressive feature of the
collection is how honest and real the narratives seem. It almost makes
you feel like you're sitting next to these people at a bar. Either the
interviewers have an amazing talent for making their subjects feel
comfortable, or they have an amazing talent for tweaking people's words
so that they sound that way.
Another nice aspect of the book is the broad range of jobs that are covered. The crappy treatment the street cleaner gets is balanced by the anxiety of the CEO. This book is neither populist nor elitist. It does not try to prove a particular agenda or philosophy.
With a phrase like "at the turn of the millenium" in the title, you
might expect some long,
boring, academic ramblings about how work has changed in recent years
-- or at least
some worn-out observations about how technology has changed the workplace,
blah blah
blah. But you would be pleasantly surprised. In fact, the interviewers
and editors have done
as much as possible to butt out of the picture -- after a short introduction,
they only step in
to preface each narrative with the name and job title of that person.
Since each self-contained narrative is only a few pages long, this book
is great for those
with short attention spans. So, in that sense, it's a perfect bathroom
book or beach book.
But, in another sense, it's an important book. It isn't just people
complaining about their
jobs. As the voices of these people pile up in your mind, you start
to realize that a lot of
people actually like their jobs -- and not for the most predictable
reasons. They hardly
ever mention money. They don't mention power much -- in fact, the interviewees
with a
lot of power just seem to be anxious about it. People seem to be most
happy with their jobs
when they like what they do from day to day, have the freedom to improve
things that are
bad, and benefit other people in a tangible way.
I can't think of any points of criticism for Gig. It's just a
terrific collection of people's
thoughts. If you want to read even more of these types of narratives
-- or you're too
cheap to buy the book -- you can read the "Work" column that appears
every Monday on
Word, the online magazine that brings
you this book.
I wonder whether the college admissions process has contributed somewhat
to the decline of civic participation. This might be a real crackpot
theory, but here are my thoughts. Little kids get into things like
Little League and scouting and stuff, and they're really into them.
They show up all the time, and they identify with the idea of being a member
of that team or club. Somewhere between then and when they become
apathetic, join-a-club-but-don't-do-a-thing adults, something must change.
Perhaps it's not mere disillusionment. I tend to think that it's
in high school that people start that kind of activity joining and nonparticipating,
because every college wants to see a long list of activities on your record.
By the time they get to college, people are well rehearsed with the show-up-for-the-first-meeting-and-write-a-check
rigamarole. And after that, it seems like many people's senses of
civic participation just go down the tubes. It's just a guess.
Harriet Welty Roquefort is a journalist and homemaker from Iowa who has lived in France for the past twenty years. French Toast is a collection of anecdotes, insight, and advice about French life from an American perspective.
As much as Roquefort illuminates the French soul, this book is not academic or semiotic by any means. The author's practical, candid, folksy style makes this book a pleasure to read, and any American visiting France can probably find some valuable tips in its pages.
A foreigner who has married a Frenchman, taught in French schools, and raised Franco-American children, Roquefort has lived the full French experience. She certainly does not paint a picture filtered through rosy-colored glasses. In fact, you may not consider the country to be as romantic as you might have thought by the time you finish the book. Not to layer the stereotypes too thickly, but Roquefort explains that while the French can be graceful, sophisticated, and witty, they can also be standoffish, bureaucratic, and chauvinistic. She explains the French attitude toward education, money, marriage, relationships, and other important subjects without ever forgetting that her American perspective on these issues is just as bizarre to the French as their perspective is to Americans.
My only criticism of this fun little book is the author's interweaving of French phrases in her narratives without a hint as to their English translation. Perhaps they are so natural to her that she does not even realize that they are in a "foreign" language, but for armchair travelers like me, some translations would be invaluable.
French Toast is, in summary, a short, sweet book about the sometimes embarrassing, sometimes funny, always eye-opening boundary between two cultures.
Another thing about NASA: they don't recycle paper. I can only imagine how much paper gets trucked out of a place like that.
I would like to go pseudo-rock-climbing one of these days. Like, up a wall, instead of actual rocks. That sounds fun. And you know how many physical activities sound fun to me. :)
I think there should be a name for that noise that cathode ray tubes
make when they're on. Not the one they make right when they're turned
on, but the continual, high-pitched one. Kinda like the noise that
fluorescent lights make. Do any of you guys know if there's a name
for that? What would you call it, if you wanted to refer to it?
Some observations about NASA. The cafeteria really sucks in comparison to the one at Lockheed. That's surprising, considering it serves a campus big enough to have its own zip code, when the Lockheed/IBM cafeteria just served three buildings. People aren't especially punctual here. They also don't seem to work overtime much (actually, you can't even get through the gate after 6 p.m.). Lastly, many of their summer interns are surprisingly dim bulbs. You'd think that the quite thorough application process would result in summer employees who , oh, have vocabularies that include words longer than seven letters, have some interest in the technical work that they're doing, and have at least *heard* of the discovery of evidence of water on Mars that was plastered all over the news last week. It makes you wonder whether they rejected anybody.
I wrote a review of the book French Toast for this week's intern
newsletter. I'll post it up here if I remember to e-mail it to my
psu account tomorrow. I'm also writing a review of Gig, which
I'm not even near finishing but which is really excellent, for next week's
edition. Now that I think about it, I could even review that book
on tape that I checked out today from NASA's learning center, Skunk
Works (with the obvious subject), for the drives to and from the lake
this weekend.
I made Cheesecake Swirl Brownies yesterday. Yum.
The 1900 house is on
television in a few minutes. I think I'll be suitably British and
watch it with some tea and toast.
There's a Jolly Roger hanging from a house in this neighborhood.
I wonder if it has any particular significance.
The bathroom wastebasket here has "Holiday Inn" emblazoned on the side. That leads me to wonder how and -- even more importantly -- why would anyone steal a wastebasket from a hotel? I told you the Landlady is crazy!
I miss home. Actually, I miss everywhere else -- my old Gaithersburg apartment, my dorm room, anywhere where I didn't have to abide a tyrant.
I'm starting to think that the way I drive to work, through the Metroparks, may be less safe than fighting it out on the freeways. A few weeks ago, I had to detour around an accident along the Metroparks parkway, and just yesterday I was *this* close to being hit by some kid in a red convertible driving the opposite direction in my lane. The Metroparks way may be more pleasant, but if and when a car in opposing traffic hits you, it's going the opposite way, so it's traveling about 35 mph + 35 mph = 70 mph relative to you. But if a car bumps into your car on the freeway, it's going the same way and doing at most 10 mph relative to you. The roads being so bad and the traffic being so stressful on the freeway, I think I'll continue to take the Metroparks route. I think the lesson for Metroparks parkway driving is to be suspicious that a nutcase is driving each and every oncoming vehicle.
The Landlady's grandson is staying here (in the basement) for the week to fix up her house. And he sure has been hard at work all day, every day (yes, he's getting paid). Doing what, I don't know. The only thing I've seen in the last four days is that the basement stairs are now painted white. Aside from that, I've heard continual noises of scrubbing, sweeping, drilling, and pounding, but I haven't seen any other results. Which is surprising, since this place is such a dump that you'd think anything at all would be an improvement. I'm pretty sure the grandson has just been assigned an endless string of ineffectual chores for no reason other than to fulfill Someone's monthly quota of Bossing People Around.
Must. Sleep. Now.
Doesn't it seem unusual that, despite the widespread perception of the media being liberal, the two most popular radio shows/personalities by far in the U.S. (i.e., Rush and Dr. Laura) are very conservative? Is radio different? Is the liberal label inaccurate? Is it just a fluke?
Why do people refuse to create listservs when they are badly needed?
Are people who sign up with AOL just regular ol' newbies like anybody else? Or are they expressing a desire to remain ignorant about computing?
I was just looking over a bunch of my essays and papers from high school and college. Two things struck me. One, some of the topics are ridiculously ambitious (e.g., The Effects of Charles Darwin's Theories or A Study of Truth). Two, I remember surprisingly little of the topics about which I wrote. Just for the fun of it, here's a list of some of the more interesting things I've written. If any of you guys reading this would be interested in reading any of them (and remember, many of them were written by a significantly younger me), just drop me a note, and I'll publish them here. Here are some selected titles and topics:
First, what's to like. As anyone who has heard of this book has probably also heard, it's geeky in a way that makes you wonder how it became a bestseller. This novel is a techie's dream, and I especially liked the way the military intelligence theme broadens to include meta-intelligence -- i.e., how to keep the enemy from knowing that you know their secrets. Stephenson's diction is natural and simple. And the buried treasure, cryptography, and Van Eck phreaking threads lend the story not only a kind of James Bond seductiveness but also some intriguing lessons on World War II history, global telecommunications, and, of course, basic cryptanalysis.
But there's plenty not to like, too. The flip side of "simple diction" is "complete absence of literary sophistication," which, I'll admit, is the least of the book's flaws. For all of Stephenson's implicitly asserted ability to distinguish hot air from truth, he isn't all that good at evaluating his own metaphors. For instance, comparing getting an e-mail from "root@whatever.com" to getting an e-mail from the President? Please! Stephenson can also be coy in the narration (as in his references to "Finux"), and his tone is downright condescending when he decides to explain some basic concept he doesn't think you understand. Also, Stephenson's proofreader must have been on vacation, so you can expect lots of typos in this book.
One thing that puzzled me was Stephenson's portrayals of women in the book. All of his female characters in this book are manipulative, dumb, or both. I know, you're saying, "Duh, what did you expect in science fiction?!" Yes, this genre is notorious for its sexism, but this book puzzled me because it seemed to contradict his earlier novel The Diamond Age, in which Stephenson's hero is a little girl who learns to depend on herself and question authority. It's hard to believe that the same person wrote both books.
The upshot is that I found Cryptonomicon lots of fun to read
despite its flaws, and I recommend it ("but don't take my word for it!").
Given its significant length, though, don't repeat my mistake of borrowing
it from a library if you don't want to pay some overdue fines!
The weather was really nice, and even surprisingly sunny in the afternoon. For reasons I couldn't fathom, I was the only person to wear sunscreen, and by the end of the day the other folks had really painful-looking sunburns (some of them seemed to justify the burns by saying they thought they looked better with some color in their complexions -- and they weren't kidding around!).
No, I didn't go on the famed Millenium Force roller coaster. As I unsuccessfully tried to explain to most of the other interns, I understand that some people have a good time by having the shit scared out of them, but I'm not one of those people. I say I had a `basically' good time because I spent a lot of our thirteen hours at the park fending off the bitching and moaning of other people. At a place where everybody is supposed to be having fun, they just couldn't realize that their harrassment was ruining my day. It wasn't totally ruined, though, because for a lot of the time I went on rides with another interns with tastes closer to my own. In the end, though, I lost respect for almost everyone else there.
There were definitely some fun rides there, though, and my favorite was the Iron Dragon roller coaster. It focused more on twists and turns and going through a fountain of mist than on the usual long, steep downhill slope that most roller coasters thrive on (as exemplified in the extreme by Millenium Force). Probably the biggest mistake of the day was going on Power Tower -- one of those thrust-you-straight-down-from-a-great-height rides. From the ground, it didn't look all that high or all that fast. It didn't look like that bad of an idea. But for me it was. It was ear-poppingly high with an acceleration that was definitely in excess of acceleration due to gravity. Thrilling: yes. Enjoyable: no. That reminds me, it might be good for me to get my ears checked out by a doctor before I go on any airline flights.
And now for something completely different. Here's a list of things I'd like to know more about (I'll probably do web searches on them when I find the time):
I finally finished Cryptonomicon today. I recommend
it. Review coming soon!
Darth Maul in a Tube gives a shout out to all his homies!
Only six more weeks of living in this House! Woo hoo!
Let's hear it for exclamatory sentences! Yeah!
Jamie Zawinski's gruntle is wicked cool. Despite the fact that I don't use that phrase.
I actually got stuff done at work today -- my problem was that I hadn't turned off STDOUT buffering. All good now.
I need more Froot Loops.
I have to admit that my Pentium 166 is seeming kinda slow lately. I used to play all the latest games, but I'm sure my machine couldn't handle the new ones now. And I do miss that. I think I'll get a new machine after I graduate, in December. The only game I play anymore is Shisen-Sho.
Here's a funny linuxchix post
that I read today:
> bleah. silly, silly, *silly* article. who *cares* if a bunch of
> criminals and criminal-wannabes are sexist? <sigh>
This is just one instance in the larger issue of widespread
misogynistic behavior in the criminal community.
One of the reasons that women still make only 73 cents for
every dollar a man earns is that they are extremely poorly
represented in the criminal professions. While men enjoy
the benefits of highly lucrative illegal professions such
as drug dealing, murder for hire, and international
terrorism, women are relegated to relatively low-salaried
jobs such as middle management, law, and medicine.
Though some point to the increased number of teenage girls
joining street gangs as evidence that the gender gap is
disappearing, less than 5% of crime lords are women.
This serves doubly to increase the oppression of women;
not only do women make less money, but it is widely accepted
that the true powers in any society are those who circumvent
that society's laws.
The causes of this are numerous, and are rooted in our
patriarchal society. Parents do not encourage their young
daughters to explore illegal activities in their play, while
boys take part in varied criminal activities, such as vandalism,
theft, and assault, that teach them valuable skills for their
future. Girls are also deterred from a life of crime by the
media's portrayal of criminals as anti-social and evil. They
are given few opportunities to interact with real woman criminals.
Not surprisingly, as in other male-dominated spheres, these
women are often harrassed and mocked by certain insiders,
especially teenage boys, who make up most of the "entry levels"
of criminal culture.
But the few female criminals don't network with each other --
in fact, some of their freatest trouble comes from other women,
called "prostitutes", criminal groupies who use sex for money.
I went with some other interns to the Lonestar steakhouse last night.
It was so-so. I guess it's nice to be social sometimes, but I don't
mesh with them real well. Afterwards, they went country line dancing;
I passed up that offer. The show "Eric Idle Exploits Monty Python"
is coming to Cleveland this Sunday, and I sent an e-mail out to all the
(fifty or so) interns asking if anybody else wants to go. I didn't
get any responses (except for a foreign intern asking who Eric Idle is).
No, they're not really my type of people.
Sounds like I might be going with the other interns to Cedar Point this weekend.
I managed to locate an apparent fireworks store in the area. One of these days I'll pay it a visit and see what fun items I can round up for the Fourth of July.
There was a mosquito in my office this morning. I swatted at it a lot, and somehow it managed to bite me four or five times, although I was never aware of it alighting on me. That just figures. I spend the weekend at the lake, sitting next to a pool of stagnant water that washed over the edge of the lake's shore (the water level is quite high now), surrounded by springtime allergens, and it's only in my office that I sneeze and get mosquito bites. :)
I haven't practiced yoga since I got here. I really have to remember to do it, or I may forget the sun salutations I learned altogether. I'm sure it would do a world of good for my back, being that I sit hunched over a computer nine hours a day (and that's just at work!).
Why is there no one on AIM lately?
Apathy, corruption, and control-freakitude. Three of the world's
biggest evils. I was going to rant about varous current issues, like
the missing Los Alamos hard drives, the Microsoft breakup, and high schools'
protestations about having to enforce restraining orders. But I think
those three evils sum it up best. Feel free to let me know about
any evils you think are more deserving.
On my way to and from the lake (it's four and a half hours each way), I saw:
No luck yet in finding a new place to live.
More comparisons to Lockheed Martin and Gaithersburg, MD: all the license plates here are Ohio plates, whereas only about half the plates I saw in Gaithersburg were MD plates. The people I work with here are old and white; the people I worked with there were young and of all ethnicities. (To be fair, it might not be NASA's doing -- it could be a general lack of racial diversity around here.) LM was at CMM Level 5, whereas NASA is struggling for Level 2 (this might mean something to you programmers out there). The rooms at LM were divided between offices, which had Windows PCs, and labs, which had Solaris boxen. Here, every office has several computers, which could be any mix of Unix, Windows, and Mac -- and there's no distinction between 'office' and 'lab.' For that matter, the offices at LM were tiny and windowless, whereas the offices here are spacious with large windows. At LM, everyone was fluent in OO and C++. Here, people actually like Fortran 77 and find C and C++ "scary."
A neat thing about this area is the Cleveland International Airport, which is in between the House and NASA. My office window looks out right onto the runways, and I'm sure I could spend a lot of time just staring out the window at the different planes. Now and then, when you're driving along the road next to the airport, a huge passenger jet will pass right above your car. That's exciting. It's also sorta neat to see 747s and the like roaring upwards at thirty degree angles, which is usually not the way you see them. :)
For those of you who have visited my web site recently, I apologize that it's outdated, but there's nothing I can do about it -- PSU's servers won't accept connections through ISPs like mine.
Well, wonders never cease. I just found a binder of Magic: The Gathering card in the basement of this House. I'm guessing they have to be from one of the landlady's foster children (all of whom have since moved far away from here). Because we're talking about a lady here who drives a white Ford Crown Victoria, owns Persian cats, and watches the Lifetime cable channel, for chrissakes! Not exactly the profile of a woman with geekish tendencies!
Oh, here's something funny. I just got an e-mail thanking me for
submitting my resume to The Gambrinus Company, importer and manufacturer
of some of America's most popular beers. :) Apparently, the keepers
of the national SWE resume bank saw fit to forward my resume ("Objective:
To gain a permanent, full-time computer programming position at a forward-thinking
organization, preferably in the field of astronomy or astronautics") to
a brewer. I suppose there are worse jobs. :)
In other news, Steve may be moving out soon (yes, the same Steve who just moved in). See, Steve has a girlfriend who lives nearby (with her children). He doesn't stay at her place, because the kids are there. She has been coming over pretty often, though, and going Upstairs, which violates one of the Rules that I forgot to mention earlier:
It seems that the only real reason for this rule would be the landlady's objections to premarital sex (how she comes to equate two people alone in a room with automatic sex is beyond me). However, instead of stating this policy up front before a tenant commits to living here, she chooses to spring it (like many other bizarre policies) on tenants after they arrive. But the funniest part is her supposed reasons for this policy. Number One, having a guest in one's room would create too much noise (that's another one that's beyond me -- we all have televisions and stereos in our rooms to begin with). Number Two, the Neighbors Notice Everything. I could barely keep from busting a gut when she announced that one. Apparently, the Neighbors are little Sherlock Holmes' over there. They can apparently deduce from the presence of a (not entirely unfamiliar) car in the driveway that there are people in this house doing the Deed. Equally ridiculous, in my opinion, is the idea that it would even fscking matter what the Neighbors think!
Yes, this House has gone right to..... ludicrous speed.
I went biking yesterday through Cleveland Metroparks; it was 'No Cars, No Cares' day, meaning that many of the park's roads were closed to cars. So the pedestrians, bicyclists, and rollerbladers were free to frolick in the middle of the parkway, which was fun. It was rather cold yesterday, though, so the cool breeze one experiences whizzing around on a bike was less than refreshing. It's a truly beautiful park system, though; it actually encircles the entire Cleveland metropolitan area.
I painted the outside of my computer's tower case. It didn't exactly turn out as expected, but it's better than the previous beige. I used three of those little 3 oz. cans of modelling spray paint, plus some high gloss overcoat (which was all of Wal-Mart's supply), and at least another can of Red Metal Flake would be required to do the job 'right.' As it is now, the red fades out around the edges, with vague blotches of lighter and darker color, and there are drips on the top where the sprayer failed to divide the paint into a fine mist. My advice to any of you looking to spray-paint your tower case are: buy normal spray paint (not modelling spray paint), and be patient.
Here is a list of the items in the House that are in disrepair (that I've discovered so far!):
Here is my summary of Fortran 77: It encourages bad programming practices, and engineers definitely don't need any encouragement in that area.
Another revelation: french onion soup is no good without the bread and cheese.
I wonder just what it means for a memory to be 'happy' or 'sad.'
For instance, when I had my wisdom teeth extracted, I was miserable, but
now, looking back on it, I'm happy, because it's in the past. So,
is that a happy memory or a sad memory? Or, when I think about good
times I had with friends I'll never see again, that saddens me, because
it's likewise in the past. That just seems backwards. Rather
than thinking about my past experiences as a collection of things that
make up my life, I tend to regard my past as something that's irrevocably
gone from my life. [Sorry if I also tend to get too psychological
after perusing J's web site.]
It's very humid here. No air-conditioning at the House. Too much air-conditioning at work.
Since I bought a radio for the dining room, the only time I can't listen to NPR in the morning from the time I wake up to the time I get out of my car at work is when I'm in the shower. Not bad, eh?
I tend to compare my internship here at NASA to my co-op at Lockheed Martin. The workers here are older, more rooted, and more antisocial. As a result, I'd have to say that the interns are more insular, and we don't really get an inside look at NASA the way we co-ops did at LM.
Fortran 77 sucks.
I'm watching too much TV. Especially bad TV, like those teeny sitcoms on WB. I'm on page 193 out of 910 in Cryptonomicon, and it's due back at the library on 2000/6/14 (and it's nonrenewable!). On another note, I saw an interesting-looking book entitled French Toast on my mentor's desk; it's about an American woman who moves to France and writes about the French way of doing things.
Now that I got the sesame oil, chili oil, and tahina that I ordered, I can make sesame noodles!
I also got a can of Red Metal Flake spray enamel to try colourizing
my computer's tower case. But I'll have to try it another time, when
it's light out, less hot and humid, and not windy. I'll keep you
guys updated.