Every year at New Years my family has a tradition: reflect on the year with a series of preposterously invasive questions about the ending year that only my mother enjoys asking or answering. At least, that’s what I used to tell her. My mother has always been a good sport with her children’s irrational reaction to family traditions and discussion. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for her poisoned genes to take root in my warped brain. It’s been her plan for the last 25 years to weave targeted pathways in my cerebrum with her genetically engineering Trojan horse of a chromosome set. All so that she had somebody else to derive pleasure from these twisted games. And I love the evil genius all the more for having succeeded.
Honestly, I’ve found that I’m already forgetting more about the past than I care to admit. People, places, experiences and conversations seem to slip by more and more every year. At this point my brain is so filled with technical gobbledigook that it’s a wonder anything else sticks. So when I look at the tradition now it seems like an amazing way to capture just a small slice of each year. Everyone is so focused on the new year that no one seems to bother putting the entire last year in perspective, or comparing your experiences to those of previous years.
I strongly encourage you to try these questions out for yourself. Be honest, be thoughtful, and be clear in your responses. If you feel bold enough to post them in a comment or on your own blog, I encourage you to do so. Otherwise, please email me if you’d like to share your answers with someone else. Until then, I hope you enjoy a snapshot of my year.
The most beautiful place I saw this year :
I walked out on a dock on the end of Tilghman Island, in Black Walnut Cove, absolutely beautiful.
At 1:51 pm yesterday, August 23rd, a earthquake registering 5.8 struck .5 below the surface in Mineral, VA. I was over 100 miles away, on the 6th story of my office building when the quake shook our conference room. For those who are seeing the joke about the “earthquake devastation”, you would appreciate all of us who freaked out for 10 minutes only to realize nothing was really wrong. But don’t underestimate 5.8, I was more than “shaken”.
I was concerned about riding the metro home, so when a friend offered to drive me home I seized the opportunity (3:30pm). At 4:20pm (2.5 hours after the earthquake) we opened the door to the apartment; the forehead-smacking dissatisfaction on my face was probably visible from space as I watched gallons of water seeping through my ceiling. Please see following clip.
I talked with the management office and they said they had been turning off water valves in individual apartments, and were going to check to make sure my upstairs neighbor had his turned off after I reported the damage. As in many other apartments in the complex, the neighbor’s hot water unit had been shaken off balance and the pipes blew, shooting water into the living room. Response crews had to unlock the water unit doors and shut off the system in order to stop further damage. I believe this was done before I returned, but I can’t verify.
My roommate returned home and we began to survey the damage, walking from room to room with my cell phone “video camera” trying to account for what had been destroyed. The living room was decimated, but both bedrooms were only partially damaged and my bathroom had been drenched. Most of my clothing, books, computers and bed seemed uneffected in the bedroom. The largest loss was my couch (a favorite of mine and my guests). Early estimates put losses around $2-3k (really great news).
We packed emergency supplies up and loaded my roommate’s car before heading back to the front desk. At 5:15pm the office staff emailed everyone that the entire building’s water main had been shut down to prevent further damage at this time, effecting all residents. The insurance company (Assurant) was largely unhelpful as no adjusters were in the office after 5, but ‘Anthony’ walked me through filing a claim with early damage reports. They’re supposed to get back to me in the next 3 days to start the claims process. He said that if we grabbed a hotel that we should save our receipts for reimbursement later. We took the opportunity to call friends and family to update them on the status. We also went to grab a bite to eat at a Pho place down the street. Boba tea is a great calming force, if you ever have the need.
I talked with the front desk people a few times, the last at 8:45, trying to get estimates on recovery efforts. They told us that damage repairs had been started in our unit, but when we inspected the apartment we found no evidence of any visitors. I returned to the office with angry words about how this clearly demonstrates my concerns with their “overly optimistic” reactions of “3 or 4 days” to recover the apartment. I told them we were grabbing a hotel room, and they offered no assistance in locating a hotel, offering to subsidize the cost of a hotel, or anything further. They advised us to simply get in contact with our insurance provider. I became gravely concerned that my patience and trust had been misplaced and misused.
We grabbed two hotel rooms up the street and requested time off from my work to deal with this today. Luckily, I’ve more than enough time off accrued to let me handle this without too much extra stress. We returned today at 11:00 to survey the scene and better understand the effect of the damage. The crews had completely dismantled our apartment, pulling up carpet in all the rooms (but leaving it in place). They had a dehumidifier draining water into the kitchen sink from the middle of the room, and we could tell that much of the water had been removed (althought the place still reeked of water damage). We grabbed a few more essentials and packed up.
At 12:30, I received a call from ‘Karine’ at my insurance company stating that they were not liable for any damages as “direct or indirect damage as a result of earthquake” is not covered in the insurance company. I went to the housing office, and informed them of the situation. I’m waiting to hear back from the general manager on what action she is taking. I let them know that I would likely hold them responsible for all damages done as a result of improper water heater installation. I’ll keep you up to date on that situation as it continues.
Overall, I’m extremely happy that I am secure in finances and am supported by friends and family. I’m alive for a couple more years at the least, and my stuff is just a little more wet than it was last week. This “catastrophe” was really easy to weather, especially in comparison to the events going around the world. I’d much rather have have a moisture problem in DC than a political problem in Libya.
EDIT – Update AUG 25 7:30 (Taken from conversation with GM)
Tomorrow, the apartment is bringing in a dry wall expert to review the apartment and provide an estimate on the amount of work required. The general manager will provide to us this information along with the effect on
the following repair schedule tomorrow. Currently, the drying crew
provided an estimate of Saturday for the drying to be completed. Dry
wall and carpet replacement will begin on Monday, meaning the earliest
possible move-in would be Tuesday (30 Aug). More likely, the work will
take several days. I offered a Friday deadline, but the general manager believed that
until more assessment is completed, any deadline wouldn’t be
meaningful.
The apartment insurance team or adjusters will also be
contacting us tomorrow to begin the claims process. I informed the general manager
that our requested reimbursements/credits cover fairly minor personal
property damages ($2,000-$3,000 by early estimates) and approximately
5 nights of housing costs under the GSA established numbers for the
region (a reasonable estimate in lieu of any other guidance).
EDIT – Update AUG 27 5:30 PM
No significant updates. The manager never got back to me with the update she promised, nor did she ever acknowledge my email. I’ll try calling the office tomorrow and get an update directly.
I’ve closed out at the hotel ($450 later), and I’m now living with a very gracious friend. It’s likely that I’ll be here until the end of the week. I’m very glad to have a place to sleep while this hurricane blows over.
EDIT – Update SEP 2 6:30 PM
I called the property today after not hearing anything. They were supposed to notify me if something changed the schedule of “Drying done by Thursday, Carpet install on Friday.” I talked to “Mercy” on the phone and she said they were doing an “assessment” and would come down and give her information on the status shortly. I got extremely angry, proclaiming exuberantly that according to the estimates given to me by Jennifer there should be no ‘assessments’, just installations. She assured me that they were doing a carpet install, and just coming down to report on the status of the apartment.
She called me back as I went to lunch at 2:20 with one of my hosts, the carpet hadn’t been installed and now wasn’t going to be until Tuesday. Tuesday!! She said “but it’s okay, they’re going to clean it and you can stay in it over the weekend” I was blown away. Two hours earlier she had either lied or made a serious, serious error about the fact that carpet was being installed.
Returned to the apartment at 5:00pm to find a bunch of people in my apartment tearing stuff out, green padding from under the carpet? They hadn’t started cleaning the apartment, despite saying that it was going to be completed by COB today. I talked with a contract lead they brought in from South Carolina. He said he started drying out the apartment on Monday or Tuesday after they found that the other company wasn’t doing their job right. He said there was still concern about water between floors, and there’s a hole in my ceiling they want to run drying through over night.
The manager doesn’t want to see me, Mercy has been brought in from Orlando to handle the cases and make my problems seem insignificant. I wish this were a joke; but in all reality I find Mercy to be much better equipped at talking to humans than the other people here. She has been all but useless to me, but at least she’s giving me more information than anyone else. I informed her that she is the first person from my apartment that called me instead of me calling them (even if I did call her two hours before). The whole staff has been disgustingly poor at communication and has all but destroyed my confidence in this company.
Since rent is due (or late fee) by Labor Day (when they’re closed), I requested an extension on the rent until we resolved the issue of crediting the rent. On Tuesday it will be two weeks since the earthquake, so I told them that I was expecting no less than 14 days credit on my rent. They only authorized 10 and asked that I pay for that amount “to avoid a late fee”. They wouldn’t even let me wait until Tuesday to close out and pay rent. These people are a$$holes.
Mercy refused to offer anything, only asking for me to make requests that they would “check on”. My biggest problem is that she’s already learned their lingo “You know, it takes how long it’s going to take, I can tell you what you want to hear, but it will still take more time.” They have done nothing to offer assistance during all of this, they’ve only been trying to cover their assets and fix their property so they can start charging again. Mercy says things like “Jennifer has authorized a carpet replacement and replacement of your vinyl ‘wood’ floors”. Yeah, because it’s all DESTROYED. They pretend like they’re doing me a favor by fixing the place back up.
Just to add the last layer of comedy to this fiasco, the contractor returned after our conversation and said “I got to the guys too late, and now they’re going to clean the whole carpet, meaning it’s going to take more time than we thought. We’ll have it done in a few hours. Sorry about that!” This place sucks.
How can something be “one million times smaller” than anything? Is small a measurement? What is twice as small as I am? Or twelve times as small as a planet? Is it a redneck term for mass? Are they saying it is a percentage of another object? As far as I know, small is a descriptive and relational term that has zero scientific meaning. Maybe I’ve gone crazy, but it just doesn’t make any sense.
At this time I would like to say that I’m 3.6 times smaller than Darth Vader, but I smell twice as nice.
(Please note that time speeds up and slows down in this article I started writing on the 18th of April)
As I sit in The Greene Turtle at BWI, I realize that the moderately sporty theme and full bar may give me an interesting possibility for introspection. So, with great resolve I start in on a fairly tasty, avocado burger and ponder the recent events of my life.
(Well, that was as far as I got before I was tempted with a piece of Macademia Nut Cheesecake, but that’s how writing works. At this point I’ve finished off my tasty meal and traveled a few hundred miles to find myself suspended in the air somewhere over Missouri.)
The most taxing part of my life, lately, has been the quest to get an internship for this summer. Being a grad student is apparently not difficult task enough to satisfy the gods, I also have to fill out loads of paperwork and fly to the east coast a few times.
I don’t like to complain too much, and the reality of the matter is that I’ve really benefited from the experience. Through interviewing with several different government agencies on more than one occasion I now feel a sense of immunity to the stinging barbs of the interviewing panel. It’s not that there are any shattered glass ceilings (for the 20-something, white male in America), but after your 20th interview in 6 months you start to place less and less stake in each one. I think half the battle is just realizing that you are wanted in this big ol’ world. Nearly everyone has the right to feel that way, but I think I didn’t let myself do it for a long time.
I’ve also become more comfortable in saying no to people. There are, literally, hundreds of places that are easily accessible to a person in computer science right now: everything from application development to taking a hammer to a hard drive. Personally, I’m just not the kind of guy that likes to track down criminals, plug small boxes into other boxes, or build robots. After everything I’ve been through I now can tell those employers that we just don’t have any chemistry and not fee. Once you realize that you’re wanted somewhere, it becomes a lot easier to do this. If I were to give any advice to a person nearing graduation at any level it would be to not accept offers just because you got them.
I’ve started to focus my knowledge of core computer organization and process flow into the field of information management and data visualization across systems. Most of my closer friends know what it’s like when I get a “topic-crush”, and right now its for data collection and aggregation. I’ll buy the drinks if you want to chat about this topic.[I'll probably leave your part of the tip for some older crushes like telecommuting, web development education, economics, or the possible existence of a Bizarro-Groucho Marx]
This new passion is partially enforced by my current research on network-based intrusion detection systems. Part of my groups task has been to create a testable out of band network for managing and sniffing traffic across large, distributed networks.
My biggest contribution thus far has been a redesign of the processing server and the way data is being handled in the short and long term. This sort of architecture really got me excited about my career because of the way I could see my knowledge and input change the process. I wasn’t always right in the choices I made, but the team was able to correct the misinterpretations or detect flaws in the design fairly quickly.
All-in-all, the solution we arrived at was fairly satisfactory, and I’m already seeing ways of improving our model. Additionally, I was also able to create a web-based GUI for accessing the new information and rendering a rather crude network visualization graph. It’s a non-trivial problem for two weeks time, especially since I still struggle with graph theory.
(This has been forgotten on my phone for over a month and a half, and now the author finds himself sitting on the couch. Feeling the red-afterglow of a Netflix-hosted episode of Outer Limits…I journey forth.)
This summer…well, I guess I don’t know what my goals are. I think I might stay cool on the personal technology side of life. I’m living with two good friends within minutes one of the most fascinating cities in the world. I think that the next 3 months will be devoted to seeing, smelling, and tasting as much of the East coast as possible. As friends may attest, I seem to have a lot more time for things “next month” than I do “this month”.
Sometimes it’s good to have a moment of reflection and take stock of your position in life. I’ve heard that it is when you are at your busiest moments when you need to stop, if only for a moment, and consider all the things in your life. Well, I’m busy. Too busy, in fact, to look at all the things in my life, so I’ll just hit a few of recent technology moves that I’ve made. (Read on…)
Whenever I desire to know the nerd quantity in a room I use a fairly simple test that I perform:
Start a conversation with a nearby ‘normal’ about something interesting that isn’t solved easily (This also works if you’re mid-lecture and you’re instructing on some problem)
Begin to say: “Well, that’s an interesting problem. It’s kind of like an episode of MythBuster’s where they <insert some myth here>.”
Start the timer.
In any case, shortly after you complete step 3 you should notice that someone has turned around and said the following words to you “I SAW THAT EPISODE!!! THEY …..”.
At this point, two things happen. First, you roll your eyes or breathe in loudly and try to continue your conversation with the normal. Second, if you’re lucky, you’ll notice immediate exponential growth and the expansion of the conversation into a third or fourth person who say “Hey, are you talking about MYTHBUSTERS?!? I saw that episode, they….”. If you are not lucky, the first nerd will sense a lack of social protection, realize there’s no outlet for the feelings and words he needs to express and it will instinctively latch onto your skull and scream into your eardrum about dummies and explosives.
(That’s why I always start each test with a zeroth step: 0. pray silently to the goddess of probability that every room’s nerd quantity is x where x > 2)
You see, this test operates on the well known fact that most nerds are annoying. Contrary to popular culture, however, this is not a cute, fun, innocent annoying. This is the kind of annoying that causes eye bleeding and blackouts. I know because I get them on a daily basis. If you don’t understand this problem, I’ll let you review the thousands of dollars in unnecessary medical bills resulting from annoyance-related accidents.
For all you nerds out there:
Please stop freaking out about MythBusters. I say this for the sake of my health and your image in society. I don’t think anyone truly dislikes the show, but please stop making it something that you salivate over. It’s just television…just television. Normal people don’t even react like that to the birth of a child, and, to be perfectly honest, it’s kind of freaking the rest of us out. Especially since it happens once a week.
A while back I found there was a rather gaping void of creativity in my life and I needed to fill it with some sort of right brain activity. I had been doing things like some elementary web design and page layout stuff, but it was more about numbers than nuances when you program CSS stuff. So I decided I’d take up photography.
The main driver for this was that I was no longer “supporting” a second person in my life. So at this point I could actually afford to perform a little “me spending”. Nothing extravagant, just something to get me started and wouldn’t make me feel like a photography neophyte every time I took pictures in public. The Fujifilm S700 seemed pretty perfect for that. It was also right in my price range as a college student ( $$ < 200 ).
The camera actually wound up being fairly impressive, but a little outside my abilities at first. The round knob on the top was daunting enough with it’s 11 shooting modes. That number turned out to be 8 with the manual shooting modes out. You can also forget about any configuration menus as those would be too far.
After a month or so of “point and shoot” stuff, I began eying up that manual mode. I still didn’t have the knowledge, but I decided it was time to read up. I then found that there were 3 basic controls that would allow for varied shots, and I could mess with them from there. Here’s a quick summary.
Shutter Speed – The amount of time the lens is exposed to the light. These are commonly notated as an amount of seconds ( e.g 1/120 sec[ave], 1/1000 sec[short], 4 sec[very long] ). Too little and the light will be too dim, to much and the motion will be blurred.
Aperture - The size of the window that exposes the world to your lens. These are represented as F-stops (e.g F-3.5[large], F-13[small]). If the size is too small, the picture will be too dark but if the size is too big then your field of focus is very small.
ISO - The sensitivity of the camera’s sensor to light. These are usually factors of 100 (some exceptions) between 100 and the thousands (ISO 100 [normal], ISO 1600 [very sensitive]). Again, too little and you’ll not see anything, but too much means the image will be grainy.
As I said, these were unfamiliar to me so I experimented a bit. Since I normally shoot scenary I took a lesson from a quick tips guide for landscape shots. I started to shoot manually and shrink my aperture for distances. Sure enough, I could now pick up distant details that I was missing with my previous shots. I was also able to
My biggest issue now is the fact that my camera is designed to be a point and shoot camera. When I’m out shooting it takes time to switch between all three settings. ISO is the worst as it’s in a menu and requires about 4 button clicks to alter it and get back to the action. Adding in the fact that manual focus dissallows alteration of settings while you’re shooting you can see why I’m considering getting an SLR soon.
I do really enjoy my camera and I’ve taken about 6000 shots this year with it. The hardest part for me is getting through the editing and removal of these shots. After any 20o+ photo shoot I find that it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half in Picasa3 to find redundancies, delete bad shots, GeoTag, and do some light (as in amount) editing. That’s not bad, but getting around to those 1000+ photos from my trip to Colorado is looking particularly daunting.
Hey, I have this thing you have to see! I’ll send ti via email, it’s 10MBs.
No wait, my email service can’t handle anything that size. It’ll have to go a different way. Okay, I’ll send it over the IM client. Wait, it says you’re using a different client than me.
Yeah, I’m using Pidgin (read: stupid Pidgin, seeming all helpful) Okay, log into Skype and I’ll send it as a file.
Okay. Wait why is it only going at 500 bytes a second?!?!? Are you running Windows 3.2? (read: or Linux, har har, but seriously why do Skype file transfers blow?) Man, I’m going to have to upload it to my FTP server and send you a link. It’ll be faster. Click, click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,click,clickity-clickity-click. Okay, here’s the link.
Man…..that sucked so bad.
I can imagine you, the reader, sitting in your seat and sobbing into a pillow at this point, “Yes, yes I was there….I had to send him a burnnn….a burrnnn…a burned cd!!!” Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad.
So in my own way I fixed it for myself. ShareItNow is a python script that you drag files onto and it will automatically upload said files to the FTP site of your choice and give you a URL to give to your friends and family. It’s simple, but it’s not bad. You do need Python, an FTP server, and a Webserver, but that’s what I have so too bad if you don’t.
Just edit the script to change the value of your server location, credentials, and a web folder the server points to and you will be golden. Once you drag a file or files onto the script it will ask you if each file is binary before uploading. Once it’s done with an upload it will print you a URL that you can use and go on to repeat the process for any additional files.
One last thing, to make Python scripts “Droppable” (meaning you can drag-and-drop a file onto a script to get some magical result) you need to enable a little switch in the registry. I added a .reg file to the project zip using the code in a tutorial on how to make droppable Pyscripts. The funny thing is that this guy wanted to do the same thing I did, but he didn’t share his code. Great minds think alike, I guess.
Most people I know would same I’m a pretty nice guy. I can be trouble at times, but by-and-large I’m a nice dude. Especially when I comes to customer service representatives. Man, those people have it rough. I get really frustrated when I hear people ragging on offshore call reps or anybody else that deal with moronic customers who demand perfection. But there’s a point at which I stop being a nice guy.
