The Twilight Report

2008-10-10T04:27:00

30 September 2008 07:04pm: Waiting for my pizza so I can go watch daily colbert show report. Four sleeps till New York and thinking about which sweets to bring. Nice.
4 October 2008 09:35am: The line for immigration was terrible! But at least that made the security line short. Plane is full of yanks returning from vacation.
4 October 2008 10:27am: New York here I come!!!
7 October 2008 12:18pm: Today is a good day to see the ocean. Well, what passes for an ocean on the East Coast anyway...
Today at 12:04pm: You can tell who someone is for by who they complain about, as you know they are going to vote for the other. Lizards *sigh*

應龍

2006-08-06T00:54:00

Work has been keeping me pretty busy, and while I still find the regime in control of the network at Company 2 to be on the oppressive side, I am enjoying playing with foreign language input methods. I have been tasked with making software tools usable by native Chinese speakers. I have always been interested in how people interact with computers and technology, and when you take away all of the assumptions (which I have always lived with) which come along with English, things become a little more interesting.

(中文 stuff)

My knowledge of Chinese is itty-bitty, but just the fact that I can sort of distinguish different forms of Chinese from each other and from other Asian languages excites me. Maybe someday I will find the time to properly study Chinese. I think it would be a fun and useful thing to know. I almost picked up a Chinese language Sydney paper at the newsagent last night just to study the characters.

Last night I went back to Sydney Uni for "Trivia Night." It was pretty fun, we had pizza and answered trivial questions. The one question I got "wrong" was something that I really should have gotten right. The correct answer was either SGML or HTML, but I was pretty sure that HTML didn't exist in the 1980s (as specified in the question), where as I knew that SGML (on which HTML is based) had been around since the 80s. I just checked on Wikipedia, and sure enough the first specification documents for HTML date back to 1993. The reason I should have known that the "right" answer was HTML is because non-IT people with whom I was playing would be more likely to recognize the term HTML than SGML. I mean, SGML - what's that?

07

2006-08-03T06:30:00

These are the buildings my parents worked in when they were post docs at Yale. It's in New Haven, where I first lived when we moved to the states (incidentally the house that I lived, and the school that I went to have shrunk since those days!). These buildings are right near the Peabody Museum, where my Dad used to take me to see the dusty old dinosaur bones, and the rare book library where they have translucent granite walls. This was taken last year, when Mum, Don and I went to New Haven to look at the dusty old dinosaur bones at the Peabody, look at the Gutenberg bible at the rare book library, eat white clam pizza at A Modern Pizza, and of course to reminisce about old times.

Pizza

2005-01-14T16:24:00

I usually don't since it's not good for me, but today I had got pizza at the cafeteria. Every once and a while you have to reward yourself. There was this cute check-out girl there today; she often seems unusually chipper. I am usually not into tall girls, so the positive attitude must be a turn on.

Combinatorics

2004-12-31T23:09:00

Those Idiots

2004-10-21T02:38:00

So I have been working in my new department for about nine months or so now. I basically work on two major things. I don't want to get into the details of what I do, because it is pretty boring, but lets just call them Interface and Parallel. Neither have anything to do with each other. I have a partner for Parallel with whom I work with pretty closely. It has to do with the nature of the beast. When I work on the Interface, I am much more subordinate to the owner of the code, and it is therefore not a partnership. One day, when I learn more about how the Interface works it could be, but it is far too early for that.

The guy who owns the Interface code had a family emergency recently and was gone from work for three weeks. When he got back he asked me how much time I had been spending on Interface vs. Parallel. The truth is I have not been working much on the Interface, because Parallel has been soaking up all kinds of time. I find out today that my idiot manager strongly suggested that the Interface owner resign from The Company and everyone understands if he doesn't that they will probably fire him. My manager seems to think that he hasn't been working hard enough, which is bullshit.

It's bad enough that The Company continually shoots itself in the foot by getting rid of good people that they really need, but this seems totally over the top. The guy's son had been in the hospital for three weeks he comes back to work and they kick him while he's down. What makes it worse is that I think the reason they moved me into the Interface when they did because they wanted to get rid of him. They are using me as a tool to get rid of this guy and that makes me hate them.

In the afternoon I was working with my Parallel partner and we came up with an idea which I hope may tie up a whole bunch of loose ends. My Parallel partner has been at The Company for about 20 years, and he was telling me that he felt as though he had done himself a real disservice by staying here for as long as he has, because bam! they get rid of you and the things we work on are so specialized that you really don't know enough about the real world to get a decent job. After 20 years and with a family to support it is real tough to start over. I've been here for four years and I'm thinking it is time to get the hell out. Suggestions anyone? Seriously. Suggestions?

After work I was both pissed off at management, while at the same time excited about our potential Parallel breakthrough. My friend Sarah had asked me to take her portrait for her web site. She is an aspiring wedding photographer and she is going to need to advertise. I was humbled that she asked me, because she knows lots of photographers. I was also super excited to get back into the studio and shoot some pictures. Tonight was the night that we were going to get together for this.

Afterward we ordered a pizza and talked about various things. She's broken up with her sort of boyfriend and she's going to be moving to New Hampshire, probably sometime next year. I'm going to miss having her around. She says that she will be back eventually, but by the time she is, I had better be gone, for my own sake.

The Twilight Report

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應龍

07

Pizza

Combinatorics

Those Idiots