the company - The Twilight Report

• 22 January 2009 07:31am: There exists a person named Kevin Howard. This amuses me.
• 22 January 2009 07:42am: Ira Glass is sounding increasingly desperate for donations :( hope they don't axe the podcast.
• 22 January 2009 11:58am: The universe still works... even when you forget to notice. And other trite observations by yours truly.
• 22 January 2009 09:05pm: Wonderful. RAW files from a Nikon D700 are unsupported under CS2.
• Yesterday at 08:53am: My Australian hosting provider proves yet again that they suck. If there were alternatives.
• Yesterday at 10:21am: Layoffs at The Company once again makes me nervous for my friends, and glad I'm not there any more.
• Yesterday at 10:57am: While looking at the graveyard through my viewfinder and waiting for my tea to cool, a coworker told me a ghost story.
• Today at 11:13am: Camera running low on battery juice. This wouldn't happen on a mechanical camera.
• Today at 02:28pm: High is only thirtynine today. Happily I am in an air con restaurant.

twitter.com/plicease

I wonder why they bother teaching concurrency in computer science. There is this funny problem they teach you, involving n philosophers and n forks and a big pot of spaghetti which, if you solve it wrongly, could cause n philosophers to die of starvation. It's a well understood problem, and there are tones of tools to address it properly, most of which have been around for decades on every platform imaginable.

When I was working on parallel abstraction and timing at The Company, I went to a lot of effort to make sure that it worked concurrently. This put me in conflict with people who were too lazy to make sure their code worked properly in parallel. I even tried to make tools to make it easier for them to make code parallel safe, but no, that was too much effort, even though it mostly amounted to using a different class with the exact same interface.

In my current job at s-mart we use a locking mechanism which has an inherent race condition. Which means if something goes wrong it might corrupt data. Admittedly, the odds of that are quite low, but I don't understand why we don't use proper locking (ie. flock), which isn't conceptually any more complicated than the "simple"^{⋘note 1⋙} locking scheme that we use. In my last job at Company 2, we had a similar locking scheme, but it was hand coded, they didn't even bother to re-use the "simple" locking scheme provided by perl for systems that don't have flock^{⋘note 2⋙}.

I found this list of the The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time. I can't help but wonder if a bit more time thinking about concurrency could have kept some of these from happening often enough to make the list.

Today was my first “quarterly update” at s-mart. The very first slide had a bullet that read: “Graham xxxxx Developer Extraordinaire!”; as one of last quarters events was me starting at the company. It was nice to get the recognition. We used to have meetings like this all the time at The Company, but they were always less interesting because I was such a small cog in such a big machine. Now I am a slightly larger cog in a much smaller machine :P When I was working at Company 2 I wasn’t even invited to these meetings. It’s nice to be a person at work again.

Yesterday I

1. Signed up for Russian 1^{⋘note 1⋙}.
2. Got tickets to go to Canberra next weekend, which is dead this time of year^{⋘note 2⋙}.
3. Went to a really nice Spanish restaurant for dinner and ate many delicious things. They had pretty good margaritas. I took some pictures with my phone, but I think the memory card in my phone got erased or something. I need to start photographing for real again :/
4. Saw an interesting play about the Spinifex people. It was deeply personal but not at all bitter.

I’m sorry I left myself logged in to IM for like two days but had been so busy that I didn’t sit in front of my home computer for that whole time. Sorry if you sent me messages I wasn’t ignoring you! Promise! I will endeavour to log myself out next time, and actually be in front of my computer when it says that I am.

Kim at work told me that I could never do or say anything to surprise her. At first this made me angry, but now I don’t really care. It occurred to me that nothing she has done so far has been terribly surprising. meh.

I had an epiphany this morning about how to reorganise the provisioning code. I was glad that I had left work early yesterday rather than agonising over it, because apparently all I needed to was to get a good night’s sleep and a fresh perspective. I realise though, that I love my job, but in some ways it isn’t as challenging as when I was working at The Company, especially that period when I was working on parallel abstraction. It’s hard to compare with accomplishing the impossible.

Today we had lunch at the pub, which was fun, except they forgot our order and then pretended that they hadn’t. There is this girl who is always flirting with Andrew. I can’t remember her name.

I’m looking forward to special visitors in March.

Next up was the bedroom. I have a two bedroom flat, but I use the larger of the two as my computer room/office. Basically my computers need more room than I do.

(more)

Yesterday I had lunch with Adil, Ed, and pretty much the rest of my old work colleagues in EDA. It was really nice to see everyone and a pleasant surprise that pretty much everyone wanted to see me. After everyone else left Adil and I had a chat and I got to meet his kids, which was quite nice. Adil, don’t forget to send me that picture!

(click to see in Google Earth)

As promised (or threatened) I did the long loop of Breakneck Ridge after lunch. I did it in the afternoon, so it was a lot hotter and a lot harder than last week. I ran into lots of people this time. Most of them asked me for advice or how far it was going to be to the turn off. I suppose I looked like I knew what I was doing. I had this conversation several times: “Are you from around here?” “I used to be. I used to live in Beacon.”

Upwise it is like the last Breakneck Ridge hike except for more up after the saddle where you turn off for the short loop, and a more gradual descent. It is also about a mile longer. I feel like I left this hike as unfinished business when I left Beacon a year and a half ago. I’d hiked it a million times, but I left in a state where I wasn’t really up to hiking it anymore. Now that I’ve come back and hiked it again I feel a lot better about it.

After the hike I met up with my friends at Boscobel for As You Like It. I was disappointed that I missed Richard III, because it is one of my favourites, but As You Like It was really funny and definitely worth it. They presented it using a Western theme that accentuated the humour. Joe said it was his favourite Boscobel Shakespeare yet. I’m not sure that I would go that far, but it was quite good. If you are ever in the Hudson Valley during the summer I highly recommend seeing one of the plays that they are presenting that year. They usually do two plays each summer, they present them outside at Boscobel, where there is a lovely view of the Hudson.

...and with that, my Hudson Valley adventure draws to a close, as I head back to New York City, and prepare for my next big adventure in New Mexico.

The other day, someone at work asked me (not entirely out of the blue), if I “had anyone useful” in my family.

Without missing a beat I answered: “No, they are all scientists.”

Because it’s true, at least in the context of the conversation, which made the question more like do you have anyone with skills that are useful to ordinary people in your family. I mean, they contribute to the sum of human knowledge, and arguably do important things, but hardly useful skills, such as being able to cut hair (like Nina’s husband) or even fixing a Windows XP machine full of viruses that you stupidly downloaded (like me. er, the fixing part, not the downloading of viruses part).

“But wait,” I added, “it gets worse, because I grew up in a company town, where the ‘company’ was a federal laboratory, and everyone who lived in the town were also scientists.”

Later, when I was explaining this conversation to my mum (who didn’t seem to find it as inherently funny as I did), she pointed out to me that there are also engineers in Los Alamos.

“Well, they can be useful.” I said.

“Not those engineers.”

Mum seems to hold engineers in the same esteem as people who live in Melbourne (“seriously,” I can imagine her saying, “if you are in Australia, why wouldn’t you live in Sydney?”).

I know this attitude sort of filtered down to me, unfortunately, because early on when I met my friends in New York who also worked at The Company, I said with some disdain that I wasn’t an engineer, when one of them described us as a group of engineers. I have always preferred the term “programmer” or “coder” (which is actually different from what my friends do), although I do have to admit my job title was “software engineer” for those six years in New York.

They are pretty cool engineers though. They do things like make the processors that go into all of the next generation video game consoles. (When the dust settles from this round of the Console Wars, I don’t know if Sony or Nintendo will be left standing, but either way The Company stands to make a tidy profit either way). More importantly, they are cool people, who know how to have a good time and be good friends.

I told my photography teacher what my friends did once, and she thought those GPUs The Company was making were a waste of resources that could have been more appropriately allocated. Seriously though, who is she kidding, she is a professional photographer. What is she contributing to the world that is so awesome that she can go around judging other people? There is nothing wrong with being a photographer, but there is everything wrong with being judgemental and condescending.

As a rule, I hate job interviews. I often feel flustered and end up leaving thinking that I have given a pretty poor impression of my ability to communicate. My job interview with Sydney Uni's Faculty of Dentistry was a complete disaster, and it is still fresh in my mind, unfortunately. So it wasn't with relish that I woke up this morning with the prospect of an interview with my current indirect employer: Company 2. Right now I am a contractor, the primary disadvantage to this is no paid vacation or sick leave; there aren't any advantages that I can think of.

(possibly more detail than what you care about)

Anyway, to make a long story short, the interview went extraordinarily well to the point that I felt like for the first time ever I hadn't shot myself in the foot in a job interview, and that my poor interview skills for the first time wouldn't be the weak link in my overall application. For the first time, I felt if I don't get the job it is because there is someone out there who applied who is technically more qualified than myself, and I am pretty comfortable with that possibility.

Today I climbed a tree in order to rescue Tristan's frisbee. It was a lot of fun, and felt like quite an accomplishment. It reminded me of two people I know who like to climb trees: Amber and Brad. It's fun to act young.

(more random thoughts that have collected over the easter weekend)

more pictures here

(and some more)

For me, perl started out as this programming language that I didn't like because schallee liked it. I had a boss in my summer-job days who liked perl though, so I was forced to use it long enough to realize its power, and now I sometimes joke that English is a second language to my first language: perl (yes, I am a computer dork).

TWiki was introduced to me as this web application that I had to get working ASAP on doublethink, because they fired the only person in The Company who knew how to keep it running. At first I didn't want to use it any more than required to in order to get the job done. Now it is an integral part of the way that I plan and keep track of tasks, and bits of information which needs to be taken care of. I can't imagine living without it, frankly.

(incidentally, TWiki is written in perl, so these things that we don't like at first but come to like tend to build on each other)

There are a lot of things like this, but now that I am looking for work I am actually thankful that I got stuck with TWiki in my last year or so at The Company, because it gives me something concrete to talk about when people ask me certain kind of IT related questions now that I am looking for a job. It really was a good experience, though it didn't seem like it at the time.

Now I am seeing other things that I'm supposed to know that I am sure I will be extremely resistant to adding to my tool set, mainly because they will be some amount of work to learn and (ironically) they aren't perl or TWiki or one of the many other technologies that I already know. Which ones will I later be glad that I know?

I put Photoshop, along with dark room experience and studio lighting on my resumé in part because I had some of that kind of experience, but mostly just for fun, because I couldn't imagine possibly ever using that in my job (which is a pity). Today I actually gave my resumé to someone and he was like "oh, they would actually like someone who knows a little photoshop in addition to all this computer stuff."

Don flew in this weekend and on Monday we went to Snowbasin. I only went skiing once last year, and my technique has degraded as a result, but I'm starting to get my second wind. The mountain was mostly blue and black. With the exception of two gondolas and a high speed quad, the lifts are old school triples which zoom around and catch you at breakneck speed -- it reminded me a bit of Pajrito. Snowbasin opened in 1939, and is apparently one of the oldest ski resorts in the United States.

The first time we went up in the gondola there were two young girls (omg) discussing wedding rings and weddings (and nothing but). The second gondola was with three young military men discussing where they had served (all locations were stateside as far as I could tell) and how they had spent their 60 days of leave after they had finished at "the academy." I found the contrast between these two rides both refreshing as well as being disturbingly narrow. I imagined riding up in a gondola with a bunch of IBMers/ex-IBMers and one or two non-IBMers. Actually, minus the gondola, that pretty much describes every party that I attended during my years at New York.

There is a Australian "joke" which goes like this:

Q: What's the difference between a buffalo and a bison?
A: Can't wash your hands in a buffalo.

The "humor" is derived from the fact that the way that Australian's pronounce the word basin can be indistinguishable from the word bison to non-Australians.

We went to Antelope Island last weekend which surprisingly does not have any antelope, but does have a large number of bison. Don (my step father), who likes to repeat silly jokes, has been using every opportunity to tell this "joke" ever since.

Therefore: from now on I am going to refer to Snowbasin as Snowbuffalo.

e and d came out for a few days. I'm sad because now that they are gone again I realize it will be a long time before I see them again. Tell me again why I can't just bring my friends to Australia with me? e said she would try to come out within a couple of years. It's going to be hard getting used to not being able to meet up with her and Jack after herding practice to go for a hike in New Jersey.

On the bright side, It was great to see them, and I was pleased that e finally got to meet my mum. The first day they were here we went skiing at Brighton. d said that he actually liked skiing so he may be back for more at some point.

That night we had Posole (prepared by myself) and invited Clare and Val over as well so we had an interesting discussion about whether or not Biology could ever be a predictive science or not. We also discussed the stupidity of large organizations, such as IBM and LANL, and how open systems are safer to closed ones.

Everyone had seconds, and some even had thirds. Right before I left New York, e told me that she likes Mexican food... all these years I thought she was just being polite and eating the food that I make for Enchilada Night. Seriously.

The second day we took a drive to Park City to see two photography galleries. We drive through the mountains and took a number of pictures and had lunch at somebodyorother's Grill. That night e and d took us to the Red Iguana, where we had more good Mexican food.

I've been an ex-IBMer for a couple of days now. I may therefore reveal that "The Company" = IBM. I am pretty sure that comes as a surprise to nobody.

Today is the first day that I would have gone to work if I hadn't signed those papers on Friday. My last day I felt oddly detached. I was immune to things and people that ordinarily bother me, like my manager and Jeff. On the other hand I went around and said good-bye to people. It's harder to go wrong with that.

My going away party was on Saturday at Brian's house. I will be seeing people this week, but it is probably the last time that I will see "everyone" together. (Not that it could really be everyone without Sherry, Megan, Joanna and Padraic). I got to say goodbye to Sherry over lunch a week or so ago, and I hopefully I will get to visit Joanna and Padraic in California before I leave.

Everyone should come out and visit me in Salt Lake City for a ski holiday (I'll be there about 6 February to 8 March, with a short trip to New Mexico sometime the week of 22 February), or in Australia (anytime starting May 2006).

My farewell lunch at The Company was surprisingly pleasant. Pretty much everyone from the department showed up, except for my manager, but that was good because it gave Greg the opportunity to do impressions of him. There were even a few people from greater EDA who came, that I've gotten to know over the years.

When we were walking back to the building after lunch, people had bunched up into smaller sub groups, and I noticed that because of my pace I was sort of between groups, off by myself. I thought to myself: here I am the guest of honor and my anti-social tendencies have still taken over.

As I type this I just realized that I forgot to have Adil invite that cute Indian girl (the one that always seems to smile at me) to my farewell lunch.

My days at The Company are now officially numbered, and that number is: thirteen.

2005 was supposed to be the year that Decepticon's attack Autobot City on earth (as chronicled in The Movie. I took this as a sign that it was time to quit my job at The Company and go back to school and study computer graphics and distributed computing and maybe one day get a job at Pixar. I still think even being a "lowly" system administrator at Pixar would be a fun job. Being a software developer for the rendering farm would be awesome.

Appropriately enough, last Thursday, the last Thursday of the year, I went to the MoMA with e and they had a special exhibit on the art of Pixar. Most of what they showed was models and sketches that were made before anything gets done on the computer. Seeing the artists' names and countries of origin clearly labeled by each piece, one is reminded that computer animation is not just a form of entertainment, but also an art form. It's fascinating to me, because I have always been passionately interested in the interaction of expression and technology.

Highlight had to be seeing the early sketches of the Edna "E" Mode character from The Incredibles, who has been my favorite Pixar character since I saw the movie because of her energy and humor. I had one of her quotations engraved on the back of my iPod to remind me that "I never look back; it distracts from the now." In the gallery e told me she was her favorite character, to which I responded, "really? Me too."

Anyway, 2005 is coming to and end, and Unicron never attacked Cybertron and as a result, the Decepticons were not driven off as was for told in The Movie, and I'm not going back to school, just yet, but I am on my way back to Australia. (many more words and things...)

Boss: I need you to do Ted's job and your own job until we hire someone.
Dilbert: If I do well, you'll make me do two jobs forever. If I do poorly, I'll get no raise.
Boss: I can't promise anything, but there might be some verbal praise down the road.

This is why I gotta get out of here! Goodbye Corporate America!

Someone mentioned Corporate America in their journal recently, and it got me to wondering about Corporate Australia. The term doesn't really exist, because I don't think corporations own Australia to the same degree that they own America.

Recently, I was reading about Star Trek: Deep Space 9. I kept reading that the creators of the show felt that the Ferengi were the most "human" characters in the show. I've been thinking about this though, and I realized that the key word in the Ferengi's vocabulary is "opportunity." If I were to characterize the monetary and social philosophy of the US and Europe, by distilling the ideas as much as possible, I would use the word "opportunity" for the US and "lifestyle" for Europe. (I think Australia lives somewhere between those two extremes). I think that in reality, the Ferengi are the most American characters in the show, and I think the way American TV producers and writers equate human values with American values is a troubling sign of cultural imperialism.

I am still a bit groggy from last night. I'm going to go see a movie tonight, maybe I will grab a nap before I do. I don't have much time now before I go to Australia. I installed DoubleThink II in its new location today. This thing has a DVD writer and a CD-ROM (2 separate optical drives), all the standard card readers SM/MMC/SD/Memory Stick/Compact Flash, and is bristling with USB and firewire ports. It's quite impressive, although a bit of overkill since I plan to use the thing as a server. The Company came to its senses and decided to turn off port security in my office, and put a "splitter" in here (what they mean is a hub, but why bother correcting them). This will happen sometime this week. It seems crazy, but with the exception that I am still on aisle 19, I have or will have actually gotten everything that I asked for.

I had this funny dream last night that the timing team was now writing computer games instead. It was an odd feeling to wake up to.

Yet another in my series of critiques of my coworkers.

Greg is a true asset to the timing team. He is an excellent programmer, and unlike me, he understands the core timing and EDA infrastructure well. He agreed to debug a problem that we were having last night. In this business people draw up boundaries, assign blame and are rarely willing to help. Greg in sharp contrast gets in, gets his hands dirty, and has a positive upbeat attitude with a slight sardonic overtone (he likes to mimic his coworkers). I went home at like 8:30pm, seeing that there was no more than I could do. When I got into work today I found out that Greg and Alex had solved the problem (which, to my surprise actually wasn't in my code after all). I called Greg with the cover story that I was finding out what I needed to run with the fix (although I already knew), but really with the intent of thanking him for his hard work. To which he responded: don't mention it; that was a fun one.

Update: This entry was about Greg as a cricket fan.