Played some tennis this afternoon and then had lunch with a bunch of family members. Tomorrow is volleyball day. And hopefully shopping day, as I got zero of my planned four errands done today. More interesting posts will follow when I'm not dead.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 31 August 2002 at 11:37 PM

I made some progress on unpacking today, but didn't get around to finishing. I got the important stuff done though, as I no longer have large, empty suitcases cluttering up the (very limited) floor space in my room. Now I just need to worry about getting all the clutter off my desk, and things will be close to livable.

I'm going to read a bit from my networking book and then get some sleep, I guess.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 31 August 2002 at 12:13 AM

At some point tonight or (more likely) tomorrow I need to plug into a phone line and check my Whirlpool email, submit my timesheet, and do other Whirlpool things. I also need to decide how much time I'm going to devote to Whirlpool this semester. It doesn't seem like 333 is going to eat up too much of my time, but I don't have a good feeling about the workload that'll be generated by my classes.

Anyway, Whirlpool has been on my mind a lot recently. I really shouldn't even be worrying about this, but four years of CS brain-washing seems to have done the trick. Anyway, here's the situation I've been thinking about. At Whirlpool they have a lab where they test refrigerators. The lab has 160 test stalls and each test has certain requirements that limit the number of stalls that can be used for the test. Further, each test has a priority (A, B, C) and there are some time-frames attached as well. For those of you who aren't CS people, I've just sketched out a scheduling problem. The lab utilization is not all that high and, as I showed them during the last couple of weeks I was there, considerably lower than they thought it was, so writing a scheduling application that assigns products to specific stalls makes a lot of sense to me. But I'm a computer scientist. The engineer's solution was to develop better tools to help the testers keep better track of which stalls were in use (I wrote the program for that the last week I was at Whirlpool); basically a better way to do what they're already (kind of not) doing.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I just don't like seeing problems with (to me at least) relatively straight-forward solutions that aren't being solved. I think Ron Loui got me started thinking about this when he was telling my 513 class that we needed to look for projects that would "change the way people work for the better." This scheduling problem isn't really in the right scope for 513, but it would definitely change things for the better at Whirlpool.

I guess this kind of illustrates the difference between a computer scientist and someone who can write code. The CS guy has what George Bush called "the vision thing." The coders just write applications that meet the spec they've been given; no real insights into the problem are needed. I'm very glad I'm in the former group, but it can be a bit frustrating at times.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 30 August 2002 at 12:23 AM

Chris posted about Leonard Nimoy's musical career. Now it's my turn. Apparently in addition to a his music and television/movie career, Mr. Nimoy has tried his hand at photography. (Note: some images on the linked site may not be suitable for family viewing. Unless you happened to grow up in a nudist colony.)

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 28 August 2002 at 11:31 PM

I decided to update some of the software on my computer this morning, so I downloaded and installed Winamp 3. It's a pretty cool program with lots of cool skins, but I don't think I'm going to have to go back to Winamp 2.x. You see, the one feature that I really used a lot, the ability to right-click on a folder and add the entire folder's contents into the current playlist, is missing in Winamp 3. If anyone out there knows how to enable this feature in Winamp 3, let me know. Otherwise I'll have to go download Winamp 2.x later tonight.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 28 August 2002 at 11:11 AM

If you're looking for better posts than you can find on this site, I'd like to recommend the newest addition to the -273 community: Minutia Press. In a small departure for -273, the owner of Minutia Press is not a WashU student. He's a professor. A professor who, as I discovered earlier this week, likes to play with dry ice and plays on an amateur hockey team. Go to his site now for lots of fun reading.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 28 August 2002 at 9:18 AM

Tonight I went with michael, Chris, and others out to Fenton, MO where we raced go-karts and splashed each other in bumper boats. A lot of fun was had by all, but a return trip might be necessary, as the Apartment 12 Go-Kart Showdown was marred by the fact that Chris's go-kart was extremely underpowered, which made our race a bit of a blowout. But we had a good time bumping each other and racing around the track.

Anyway, that was the second race of the night. The first race was a bit different. In addition to the six of us on the track, there were also a few other cars, one of which was driven by a little red-haired kid who pretty much put us all to shame. It was next to impossible to get around him. I sneaked past him when he pulled up next to his dad and little brother in one of the double cars, but I don't think anyone else got around him (although michael was getting pretty close there at the end). I almost lapped Chris in that race, but they called us into the pits before I got the chance. I'd been gaining on him all race, and I'd finally caught up to him when they ended the race. I just needed one more lap to take him.

In between go-kart races we did the bumper boats. We had to pair up so that all of us could be out at the same time, but I think we all had a good time.

After we got back from the track michael and I made tacos and had a late dinner. The tacos were really good and pretty cheap. I think we made 12 tacos for less than $6, which beats Taco Bell.

Classes start tomorrow for me. I have a 1 o'clock class and a 5:30 class. I'm not really ready for them, but I guess I'll make do. It's somewhat sad that classes haven't started and I'm already looking forward to having Monday off, though.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 28 August 2002 at 1:08 AM

I'm tired. I spent the evening unpacking all my stuff and trying to get wireless print server to work. Neither project is done, so those are two more things to add to my list for tomorrow. Also on my list are a trip to Sam's to buy soda and candy for the ACM Lounge, getting a new (to ACM) computer set up in the lounge to replace heap.cs.wustl.edu, organizing my closet, and a couple other things.

I also need to get over to my grandmother's house as soon as she gets back from Hilton Head and pick up my little mini-fridge. We need freezer space more than fridge space right now, but either one would be useful. I think, as a general rule, none of us is going to be able to buy any frozen food in bulk this year, as we just don't have the space to store it.

Anyway, classes start Wednesday, and I'm not really ready for them. I'm still operating on my Whirlpool schedule, which means I woke up this morning at 6:30 and am just about to fall asleep sitting at my desk now. Chris said something about go-karting and bumper-boating tomorrow; I just hope I can stay awake for it all.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 27 August 2002 at 12:52 AM

I'm not sure if I mentioned this here already, but last spring I had a friend who got some dates confused and missed his graduation. It was a pretty funny story involving showing up a week late in cap & gown, but not nearly as funny as this.

As a consequence of missing the graduation ceremony, my friend didn't pick up his degree. He spoke to a secretary who told him that all the uncollected degrees would be mailed out to the degree recipients, and he didn't really think about it again.

Well, the summer progressed, and my friend searched for, and then found,a job. Most of the summer slipped by, and in mid-August, some what out of the blue, he began to wonder what had happened to his degree. He hadn't received it. His parents hadn't seen it. His brother denied doing anything to it. So my friend called someone at his university to find out when they were going to mail out the degrees. During the course of this phone call, he learned two essential facts. 1) The degrees had been mailed out in mid-June. 2) He hadn't received his because he hadn't actually graduated.

That's right folks, despite buying a cap and gown, putting Class of 2002 on his resume, and telling his employer that he had a degree, he didn't really have a degree. He was one class shy of a degree. One class and an exit exam shy of a degree, actually. The claims to have taken the exit exam (the university disagrees with him on this point), but doesn't argue the missing class.

As things currently stand, the situation remains unresolved. The university seems willing to work with him on this, perhaps realizing that they, in the guise of his advisor, failed to tell him he was missing a class. I'll update you when I hear more about the situation.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 26 August 2002 at 11:20 PM

There are three grocery stores near my apartment here in St. Louis: ghetto Schnucks, college Schnucks, and ritzy Schnucks.

Chris has already mentioned the craziness of the ghetto Schnucks on his site, and everyone at WashU is familiar with the 24/7 characteristics of the Schnucks on Clayton, so I thought I'd talk about my trip to the ritzy Schnucks in Ladue.

The first thing I noticed about the ritzy Schnucks was its high rent neighbors. One of the other buildings in the shopping center was a Barnes & Noble and another looked like a gourmet dog treat store (further investigation needed on that, however). Anyway, once I reached the Schnucks parking lot, it was very clear that my Toyota Echo was the smallest and cheapest car in a parking lot full of Lincoln Towncars, Cadillacs, and a variety of foreign cars with German names.

When I finally parked and made my way in (my parking process was interrupted by an elderly lady and her daughter, both of whom seemed to think that walking down the middle of the parking lot very slooooowly was a good idea) I realized that the people in the parking lot were not an aberration. By stepping into the store I had managed to lower the median age of the ritzy Schnucks shoppers by at least 10 years. The only people around even approaching my age were the employees manning the registers. A very different experience from the Clayton Schnucks, which always seems filled with freshman trying (usually successfully) to buy beer and other alcohol.

Once I got over my shock at the age, I noticed something else. The ritzy Schnucks was playing classical music over the PA system! It was crazy. All these old people were pushing their carts around to the sound of a piano concerto. Again, I was struck by the comparison with the Clayton Schnucks: there are always so many people there that I would never have noticed if they were playing any music, classical or otherwise.

All things considered, I would rank my visit to the ritzy Schnucks a success. I managed to negotiate my way around the elderly folks fairly well, enjoyed the eager-to-help attitude of the employees, and loved listening to the soothing sounds of classical music while I shopped.

Oh, and ritzy Schnucks was much, much cleaner than any of the other Schnucks stores I've been to.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 26 August 2002 at 11:01 PM

Lots of stuff going on tonight. Our apartment building seems to be having a party, so there are lots of people camped out on the little balcony off the first floor. The party only really got started around 11 or so, so I think it might be going on for a bit longer still.

I missed most of the party ruckus, though. Joe and I met at the Tivoli and saw Metropolis. Although my viewing of it was marred my a tall guy who sat in front of me for part of the picture and blocked the subtitles, I thought it was very, very good movie. The background animation was stellar and the plot was pretty good (like all anime, the end was a bit nonsensical), but I was a bit disappointed by the character animation. All the characters looked very stylized, and the didn't blend in well with the realistic backgrounds. Still, it was cool to see it in the theater. (It was almost worth the price of admission to see the people who were to watch it. A very different set of people from those you might normally expect to see at a movie.)

Well, it's late now, and I was dead tired before the movie started, so I think I'm going to try to get some sleep. We'll see if the party-goers will accommodate me.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 25 August 2002 at 1:56 AM

I'd planned on starting my packing last night, but my parents, in a rather spur-of-the-moment decision, decided to buy a new computer, and I spent most of th evening getting it set up. It's one of those emachines cheapies, but it'll be more than adequate for checking email, browsing the web, and perhaps burning a few CDs.

So tonight I'll need to really get cracking if I want to be all packed up by Saturday. Speaking of Saturday, does anyone want to see Metropolis at the Tivoli with me on Saturday? It's supposed to be pretty good; on the same level as Akira, I think. Let me know.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 22 August 2002 at 3:46 PM

There's something icky about wearing your dearly departed loved one's remains around your neck, even if their cremated remains have been turned into a diamond. But I think keep someone's ashes in an urn on the mantle is a bit weird, yet tons of people do that. It just seems to me that there are better ways to memorialize people than to keep bits of their body around.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 22 August 2002 at 10:22 AM

Things I should have mentioned ages ago:

• rubidium.negative273.com. Jim Tucek's new weblog.
• pager@negative273.com. My watch, in addition to receiving in-progress sports scores and my daily horoscope, also receives emails.
• My last day onsite at Whirlpool is Friday. I'll be in St. Louis Saturday afternoon.

Have I already mentioned that I'll still be working for Whirlpool (in a much reduced capacity) throughout the coming semester? Accordingly, they've given me the appropriate codes, passwords, and secret phrases to log into their corporate network from offsite. What this means is that my laptop is now a big, gaping security hole for them. (Don't you love the "Remember Password" option these programs give you these days?)

Question of the hour: Why doesn't WashU offer a web programming course that teaches you a little php, asp, .net, and some generic db stuff?

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 20 August 2002 at 10:26 PM

I am so tired right now that I can barely hold a thought long enough to post it. this is thanks in some small part to me being unable to sleep the last couple of nights, and in some larger part to the dryer in my building taking upwards of 3 hours to dry a load of laundry. but I suppose the largest part of all would have to be the handy man that knocked on my door at 9:00 this morning, and has since knocked on everything he could get his hands on. at least from the sound of things. apparently our air conditioner needed replacing. (which has the added bonus of our the air conditioner being off for the last 4 hours.)

but then again, who really cares. today Im westward bound. the lovely rachel has finally returned to columbia, and we have a date tonight. if jumping up and down in excitement were more masculine and cool, then I would certainly be doing so right now. but since its not, I suppose Ill have to channel my excitement into other more acceptable forms, perhaps a reckless disregard for the speed limit.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 20 August 2002 at 1:15 PM

its times like this that I am very thankful for the towel hanging across my window. I only have one window and its relatively small, so the towel does a fair job of blocking out most of the light. I was first motivated by the street light outside my window, but it is also especially useful when I find myself still awake at seven in the morning. (it happens more than youd think.) tonight my excuse is dreams.

I woke up about an hour ago with the ghost of a dream still manifesting in my head. since then the dream has mostly faded, but I remember this much. I had received a letter. though not an ordinary one. all the letters had been reduced to abstract geometric shapes that ran together and interlocked like a puzzle. some still resembled words, but most were so far removed from their original meaning that they lost it completely. it read like a maze. and yet somehow I read it anyway. and though written in a code I could never break, its meaning was clear. it asked for answers. and I knew I could not give them.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 19 August 2002 at 7:26 AM

my attempt to go to bed early tonight has met something of a snag. apparently tonight is my neighbors birthday (or so I have gathered from all the screaming), and to celebrate they have elected to shout a lot and play loud music.

now you might think Id be a bit irate, but you couldnt be more wrong. see, I have always felt that music would be much better without all of that annoying "trebble," and with the walls and floors of this very building serving as a sort of low-pass filter, I am now free to lie in bed and enjoy todays hottest music reduced to three low, muted notes repeating in sequence over and over again. punctuated, that is, by the occasional burst of shouting. its very soothing.

I wonder whats on television.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 18 August 2002 at 12:34 AM

Went to the library yesterday and got a few books to read before I head back to school. Then I got so caught up in one last night that I stayed up until almost midnight before going to sleep. And when I woke up an hour early this morning, rather than going back to sleep, I read my book for an hour. As a result, I've been like a zombie here at work, just going through the motions. I didn't even realize that Mike Massie had called me "Glenn" (my dad's name) until the moment for the appropriate retort had passed.

I'm not going to hold it against Mike though, mainly because he's buying me lunch today. And tomorrow Scott is taking our whole department out to the Texas Steak House to celebrate the retirement of the last Relda1 PDP-11 here. And next Friday is a free picnic at Grainger (one of our suppliers), so I'll be getting a lot of free food over the next week or so.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 15 August 2002 at 10:57 AM

Okay, it's time to address one of my pet peeves. Why are ATMs designed to display the "Please Remove Cash" message before they actually dispense the cash? It's not like these machines don't know that they haven't dispensed the money yet, they just seem to be programmed to display the message as soon as approval for the deduction comes through rather than when it actually lets you take the cash. It seems like a very poor user interface decision to display instructions for something that can't yet be done. Things like this bother me more than they probably should, but it's seems very frustrating for a machine with such wide-spread use to have stupid flaws like this.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 13 August 2002 at 3:15 PM

We have a couple of IBM servers here at work running Windows NT 4 that run all of the lab testing, and they're slated to by upgraded to Win2k later this year (and one of them will be replaced by a newer dual-processor machine), but these computers are rather the exception than the rule here in terms of age. In the storeroom a few feet from me is the old VAX that ran all the lab tests until they switched to those IBM servers. It needs to be kept running in case they need to get old test data off of it, so it is taking up quite a bit of space in there, and it's accessories take up even more space. For example, there's a big tape drive for it that stands about chest high and has a swing up top for loading tapes into. It's pretty cool.

But what is perhaps even cooler is the machine running the water valve tests upstairs. It's a PDP-11! Okay, it isn't the coolest thing in the world, but how many of you have ever seen one? Plus, should everything work out, this one will get me a free steak lunch. You see the PDP-11 upstairs is slated to be retired in the next few weeks (most likely to be replaced by an old 486 or Pentium computer), and when it's gone, our whole department is getting a trip to Logan's Steakhouse for lunch. Now I just have to hope that Nick can finish porting the water valve test to a Windows platform in the next two weeks.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 13 August 2002 at 9:10 AM

I'm not sure which hurts more: the large scrapes that run down my right leg from my knee to my ankle or the big toe on my right foot, which, perhaps not coincidentally, was injured in the same tumble to the ground that scraped up my leg. For a guy who is fairly well known for not ever diving for the ball, why am I the only one banged up after tonight's game of volleyball?

Anyway, sorry about the little hiatus from posting. It just doesn't seem like I've had much time this past week to sit in front of a computer outside of work. Speaking of work, my final pièce de résistance there is pretty much guaranteed to make me quite unpopular among the testers. You see, I've been asked to create a web app that tracks refrigerator test stall utilization. Roughly translated, this means I'm tracking how much the testers work, both in terms of the number of tests each of them runs and how efficiently they run their tests. I'm hoping, but not with much faith, that this little gem won't be used until I leave in a couple of weeks.

What else? Oh right. It's come to my attention that there is another WashU-based weblog floating in the ether that is the Internet. Click here to learn more. I'll add it to the links page tomorrow.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 12 August 2002 at 10:59 PM

in the last 36 hours I have eaten a bagel, some ritz crackers, and handful of potato chips. my stomach now informs me that this was grossly insufficient. it refuses to tolerate these conditions any longer and is requesting large quantities of pizza to compensate. to achieve this objective it has already begun a campaign of persistent and gnawing pain in the abdominal regions, expected to intensify as the night draws on. it has also reportedly allied with the brain, threatening to institute dizziness and a distinct drop in attentional resources if its demands are not met within the evening.

while it is my official policy not to negotiate with terrorist organs, in my weakened state, Im afraid I have no choice but to give in to its demands. I give my stomach all assurance that the call has been made and the wheels are in motion. all thats left is to wait.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 7 August 2002 at 10:32 PM

I recently misread the movie title Bridget Jones's Diary as Driving Miss Daisy. This left me confused for the rest of the day.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 6 August 2002 at 7:35 AM

to the girl in the AOL commercial:

"MESSENGE" IS NOT A WORD. a messenger does not messenge, because MESSENGE IS NOT A WORD. you do not "instant messenge" someone; you "instant message" them.

its called english; use it.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 6 August 2002 at 2:47 AM

as many have pointed out, Ive sort of been letting my online presence lapse lately. and while I may have had an excuse before, now that SIGGRAPH is over and done with, I really cant justify my absence by saying Ive been too busy. actually, since I got back from san antonio a week ago, Ive been on something of a vacation. (dont worry, its paid.) I went in to the lab a few times to have meetings about some new projects Im going to be working on, but other than that, Ive been taking it fairly easy. its a very nice change of pace. for instance, on thursday a few of us from the lab went swimming, and on friday we played some soccer with some grad students from the philosophy department. fun stuff.

however the vacation is over. its about time I got back to work, and about time I started posting again. (I can almost hear my fans rejoicing.) of course for the moment its about time I went to sleep.

more from me later.

Comments: 0 Posted by michael on 5 August 2002 at 4:01 AM

I've been pretty busy this week, and I didn't get a chance to flip through the New York Times Magazine until Thursday night. Anyway, they had a very interesting article creating movie trailers. Check it out if you get a chance.

The article focuses on creating the trailer for the Mel Gibson movie "Signs," which I'm really looking forward to seeing. I may see it tonight, actually.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 3 August 2002 at 12:29 PM