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Monday, April 26, 2004

Stardate 57042.6 (04-26-2004)

I bought a wireless router Saturday, along with a DVD recorder and a new video card. I had intended to buy only the card because Patrick has a new game that requires a better video card than what was in the computer. I also had "The Simpsons: Hit and run" that required it. That game is pretty fun, even April enjoyed it. Basically, you run around town trying to fulfill tasks. I have not seen all the animations that the commercials had, but I intend to. The router took a few days to get up and running. The manual says there is a reset switch, but I had to call tech support to have them tell me I needed to hold it in for fifteen seconds. The tech guy spoke with an accent, which makes me suspect the service center is in India.

I've been watching Steven while Carl and Erica go to a class on house buying. Patrick asked me last week if Steven could still come over after they were done. I take it from this he likes having Steven over. I am not sure how Steven feels about it. He's been good, as he quickly tells his dad. It would be better if the weather were nice, and everyone could play outside.

Rachel has been keeping her own journal. She writes in it from time to time. I found out because April was cleaning her room, and it was open. On a day where she had several meltdowns, she wrote that it was one of her best days because she got to stay over at a friends house, and she scored two goals. She reads this one every once in a while. I hope it encourages her to keep her own up.

Thomas has been to daycare a couple of times. The last time the person said he cried the six hours he was there. I guess the older they are, the harder it is to get used to being away from home. Patrick and Rachel didn't seem to have as much of a problem as Thomas does.

Saturdays are very busy lately. There is AYSO soccer in the morning, Jayhawk soccer in the afternoon, and April goes to work. One more week until she goes to days, and I go to 4 ten hour days. I am looking forward to having Friday off. It'll be a big change, but I think it will be for the best.


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Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Starfest and Lightsabers

Stardate 57042.0 (04-20-2004)

I had a fun time at Starfest over the weekend. There was so much to do; I barely had time to catch my breath. This was different from conventions I have attended in the past. I knew far more people, and there were a number of friends there. The hotel that hosted it was nice. There was some controversy over the autographs. Starland, which puts on the convention, was charging for the autograph, and then you needed to buy the picture on top of that. There was objections to spending $40-$50 on it. In response, some of the guests were signing pictures without the ticket, so on Saturday every guest was watched over by a convention employee.

Another task I had set for myself was to observe what they were doing as far as activities, what sort of problems they encountered, and generally, how everything was laid out. I attended all four Star Fleet Academy courses. The person that gave this did an excellent job of combining an impressive amount of knowledge on the subjects with a good sense of humor. Each one included audience participation. When approached, he was interested in coming to Salt Lake City, but if not, I think we could provide an alternate. The courses were well attended, so I think they would be well received here. I was told some of the guests were very interested in doing an appearance in Salt Lake.

The panel by the ENTERPRISE project was enlightening. I kind of knew that UPN was not reaching as many cities as other networks, but I didn't realize the rating were not taking into account fans tend to tape the show or watch in groups. We tape shows to watch later all the time, and I am sure many others do. I now wonder how many shows were canceled because people were not 'watching' them. I suppose they assume if you tape it you fast-forward through the commercials. I read an article in the newspaper that said networks have little patience for shows to take off. If it is not an instant hit, it gets canceled. They author speculated that famous shows such as 'M*A*S*H*' and 'All in the Family' would not have made the cut if they were to premiere now.

They did show the TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine" with the 60's special effects redone with CGI. I missed the first part of it, so I did a search on the web to see if I could watch it there, but the web site is gone. I'll have to see if anyone has a copy of the MPG. And because I stayed to watch it, I missed getting into the family feud style trivia contest.

Friday I rode up the elevator with Richard Hatch of "Battlestar Galactica" fame. He seemed like a nice guy. I missed seeing Sean Astin (Samwise Gamgee of "Lord of the Rings"). Dominic Keating was funny.  The costumes were great. Some of the people were trying to voice lines, but unless you were in the first three rows, you couldn't hear what was said. I was also pleasantly surprised to find kid oriented things had been added to the schedule. I think this is important for Utah, where large families are not unusual. .

It was good to see Ray Meyer again. He is struggling with getting the Hudson up and going, but I am sure he can do it. He was great for new, interesting ideas here.

I bought a couple of Darth Maul double lightsabres for the boys, and a poster of Captain Jack Sparrow. Rachel was much harder. She is not interested a lot in this stuff. I finally settled on a bookmark with the "One ring rule them all" on it, and a gold ring attached. I told her that it was the One Ring, and asked if she remembered what happened when someone put it on. She immediately replied that they turn invisible, paused to think about it, and said "Wow! Thanks, Dad". The only problem was that Patrick heard it as well, and pestered her the rest of the day to see it.



It was 75 degrees and sunny in Denver, and cold and raining in Salt Lake. I was expecting it to be much colder in Denver. Due to a lack of players on the Jayhawk team last Saturday, Rachel ended up playing three soccer games. Patrick has decided after playing that day he likes soccer again.

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Sunday, April 11, 2004

Easter

Stardate 57041.1 (04-11-2004)

I've been getting a few questions lately about programming language choices. Some of them come from the new team. Others come from blogs by Bruce Eckel and others. It's another religious issue for some. This one is better than that one because of stricter typing, better speed, easier to learn, and on and on. My typical response is I use the language best suited to the job. C++ is good because there are many versions for every operating system in existence.  Java can almost say the same thing, as can Perl and Python. C# is limited to Windows. I do them all for various things. Perl is the original Common Gateway Interface language. On my ISP, it and Python are the only choices. Java and C# are fun to play in, but they are often referred as platforms instead of languages. What this means to me is that I will spend a lot of time trying to find the class I want to open a file. There are ten to fifteen to choose from. So I fall back on C++ quite a bit.

This brings the inevitable response from one or more people, "But you have to manage memory yourself!" I've hashed that argument in another blog, so I won't do it again here. Some interesting additions were from a co-worker, who stated that automatic memory management was a bad crutch to lean on. The team lead told me he had a lot of trouble following some of my code in various projects, especially the pointer stuff. This attitude bothers me. Because some do not understand the technology, it should not be used. He's not the only one. I've been lectured a few times about writing code few others understood. No one wants to learn, therefore everyone does the same stuff over and over. That's why programs I did ten years ago are still used as a model for new applications. Everyone understands how it works. Never mind that it may have flaws, or there might be a better way.

An email was sent out by the new boss, saying that we need to remove all unauthorized software or, "jobs will be lost". The threatening tone of the message made me angry, although I think it was supposed to instill fear. My dad tells me the story every once in a while about how a directive came down from a new VP that each branch manager was to fire on employee at random. That would put fear into the others, making them work harder. My dad told him that would cause his best people to leave, and he would not do it. The other branch went along, and closed within a year. We are not to do anything unauthorized, either. If we see new tools that might help us work more efficiently, then we file a request to be reviewed by five committees. I figure that will take six months or more. This seems to fly in the face of what the CEO message to find better and faster ways of doing things, and not get caught in the trap of "that's the way we've always done it". The CEO is not happy that new products take years to develop, but it seems that if there is a faster way, we can't use it.

Daylight savings time has started, and with it one of the more difficult times of the year. The sun is setting later and later, and the kids want to stay out to play longer. But they still need to get up for school, which leaves them exhausted by Thursday. They don't finish until June. It's going to be a long couple of months.

April got a new position of chemistry lab supervisor. It's a daytime shift. with a nice pay raise. We had planned for her to move to a daytime position after all the kids were in school, but this is available now, so she jumped on it. Thomas will be going to preschool in the fall, so it doesn't mess things up too much. She hasn't yet started working days because she is covering for other people who have changed jobs. By May we should be on the daytime schedule. This week was all graveyard shifts, so she is very tired. I will be going to four ten hour days to limit the amount of daycare we have to pay for.

The last part of March and the first part of April were very warm, in the 70's. This apparently caused some of the snow pack to evaporate, so they are worried about the water situation again. The USGS says if the cycle continues, Lake Powell will be completely gone by 2007.

Easter is here, and the kids are happy with all of the candy and toys. We also planted some seeds in indoor pots. There are carrots, cucumbers, watermelons, basil, peppers, and lots more. We did this a couple of years ago, and it went really well, although the pumpkins were a little small for carving. I'm looking forward to some fresh homegrown vegetables. My dad had a large garden every year (including corn), and I miss that. The garden area is ready to plant, but it needs to be warmer. I'd still like to get some pre-grown tomatoes.

Happy Easter!








End of Entry

Thursday, April 01, 2004

One Year

Stardate 57040.1 (04-01-2004)

It is officially one year since I started this blog. I've wondered off and on during that time if anyone will go back over them years later. I have not commented on much of the happening of the world at large, so they would not make good memoirs. I am somewhat surprised it has lasted this long. In school, I could never write essays or stories very well. Actually, I probably could, I just didn't want to do so. I would either not get started or not figure a way to finish a story. It's weird, because I love to read, and I do enjoy doing this.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or at least hang around a long time. I got another call this week about paying the hospital bill when I had the problem with my foot. I explained that it had been taken care of, and I will fax the letter to them. For good or bad, I am getting to be an expert at providing documentation. A few years ago, AT&T kept shutting off the cell service, citing nonpayment. We would fax a copy of the canceled check to them, and it would be restored. The next month, the pattern would be repeated. The bank we use tracked it down to a missing zero in the AT&T account number on the checks after four months. Since they could not identify the account, they simply credited it to another guy with my name. That in itself was stupid, since the account was in my wife's name. What really made me mad was when she talked to a service person, they traced it to the other guys account. Then they told my wife I must be leading a double life. Far be it to admit they might have made a MISTAKE.

People at work have been in a panic the last few days. A message went around about a software audit, and the newest head of the division is intent on being absolutely clean. A shareware text editor that is used a lot is now forbidden. What is strange is that it had been submitted for approval, but no one every heard anything again. Some of the developers are in a bad mood as a result.

I've been watching the Indian consultants with amusement. I am getting the impression these guys are strictly Win32 programmers. They finally got access to one of the internal Unix servers. They then transferred the files for the applications they are maintaining to the system, included the Windows project files. These are not at all useful. I know they have not gotten anything to compile, since the directory structure is missing pieces and there is a mix of 32 and 64 bit libraries in the project build files. With all the stories of how great, smart, and wonderful these guys are, it's a relief to see they are not supermen. This was another interesting article on the subject.

I got caught up in reading some of this guys anti-Windows rhetoric. He flooded a few blogs with how Windows sucks compared to Linux, blah, blah, blah. It was fun, because he obviously based most of his stuff on hearsay. Zealots are comical in their persistent view that they are right, everyone else is wrong, and nothing you say will make any difference. He has mellowed out, and installed Windows. I'm not a Windows supporter, but it gets things done. Unix is much better at creating automated tasks, which is what I wish computers did more of. It seems that Windows went the other direction by demanding you spend time with it. It reminds of a book call Virus by Graham Watkins I read.

Here's to more years of blogging.

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