All posts by htodd

General

So who else thinks speed dating is a bad idea?

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I was supposed to go to a “speed dating” party today, but some of my old classmates from Portland State convinced me it it wasn’t a great idea. At best I’m not sure I can make a good impression in only a couple of minutes. At worst I could get more repeated rejections than I can handle.

Well, I suppose I’m a little tired from helping at the 2003 ACM Pacific Northwest Regional Programming Contest. It was enlightening seeing all the whining. Not from the teams, either, but from the coaches. I hope the link to the scores still works. You can also try this.

No one was willing to host the contest this year, so Jason Wilcox from Portland State arranged everything in a month and a half. Unfortunately, the largest computer lab at Portland State is nowhere close to a large classroom, and the contest needs a meeting area as well as access to computers. So the classrooms were in a different building than the lab.

I’m not sure if the coach from a state school was joking, but I’m not a big fan of their athletic programs, so I’m willing to think he was just a whiner. “Do you think they had to walk in the rain in Fresno?” If they were outside I’m pretty sure they did. The contestants ended up holding their group discussions in the hallway. Anyway, if it’s not good enough for the coach, he can host the contest at his school.

The worst loon was a coach from a local private school. I don’t want to go into excruciating detail, but the leading team was from University of British Columbia and were German exchange students. The lunatic coach ranted, “In Germany, you have to take a test to stay in high school or to go on, if you’re not good enough, you’re out. … Here, any drug dealer can get into college.” He really didn’t appreciate my comment that MIT and Caltech are highly rated (deservedly) in both undergraduate and graduate education, and if they didn’t win International Computer competitions, it probably meant the competitions don’t mean all that much. He also seemed to think the big competitive power came from Taiwan and Russia and I don’t see those countries at the forefront of Computer Science. Before I left, he spent some time bad-mouthing Portland State.

Oh, well. I’m not sure I agree, but as they say, “It takes all kinds.”

So what did I get out of this?

  • A chance to help a friend out.
  • A t-shirt that’s too large for me.
  • Some IBM swag.
  • 2 1/2 hours of work on Friday, and 9 1/2 hours of work on Saturday, all unpaid.
  • Some ranting from crazy college professors.

All in all, just another day in my life.

Uncategorized

The paperchase.

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Today I picked up my diploma from Portland State University for my Master of Science in Computer Science.

It looks like the diploma sizes have changed. Previously, the diplomas at Portland State University were smaller:

I don’t know if the sizes make a difference, but my MIT diploma was significantly larger and cost a lot more.

My high school diploma was the smallest of the bunch.

The geek in me wants a table:

Degree Date Size
MIT BSEE 6/2/1986 11.25″
Portland State MSCS 8/16/2003 10″
Portland State BS Chemistry 3/18/1995 8″
Portland State BA English 8/12/1995 8″
Benson Polytechnic HS 6/5/1982 7″

All that and no life, making blog tables on a Friday night.

Uncategorized

Well, at least my grandmother seems happy.

My mother let me know that my grandmother hasn’t asked about her once, even after my mother visited her in Japan. But she did request a large ebi sushi.

She still enjoys eating though she mainly sleeps, and worries about her bowel movements. I’m glad at 98 and ailing she still has something that makes her happy.

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What are you doing here?

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I’ve been waiting two weeks for my doctor’s appointment. It was a “new patient” visit since my old doctor had left. (She left the practice about a year ago to spend more time with her kids.) So I had to figure out what to tell my doctor about my medical condition in the past year and I made a list.

I just feel like I’m falling apart lately, but these are the big points I wanted to ask him about:

  • my left ear sounds squishy when I chew
  • I have an odd rash on my left arm that made my arm scaly
  • I have odd sharp pains when I’m running
  • My floaters in my left eye are getting worse

Well, the floaters are really something I need to talk to an ophthalmologist about and the sharp pains are chronic and transient and seemed to annoy the doctor. In fact, he asked me, “What are you doing here?” And the squishy ear and rash? Basically he said if I wait the problems will resolve themselves.

Actually, he spent a lot of the time telling me that he couldn’t believe someone with an Electrical Engineering degree from MIT couldn’t get into Medical School.

Well, pal, you’re looking at him.

What a letdown.

Uncategorized

How to extort money from Portland Audubon.

The rumor is that the Portland Public Schools extorted tens of thousands of dollars from Portland Audubon for the chimney “upgrade” to Chapman Elementary school.

Tens of thousands of Vaux Swifts rest in the chimney on their migration south. From the end of August to sometime in September, the swifts circle the chimney and swirl in a vortex before they enter the chimney. And thousands of bird lovers congregate on the hillside to watch the birds.

Audubon paid to have a natural gas furnace and the small exhaust chimney installed so the large chimney could be left for “the birds.”

Now for the rumor:

The school district blackmailed Portland Audubon into coughing up more money. Portland Audubon was told that the chimney was going to be completely demolished unless $60,000 was paid for seismic upgrades. In the end, $20,000 was paid to leave the chimney up and to have the “S&M collar” installed.

It’s probably the ugliest reinforcement method I’ve ever seen.

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I wish my fuse wasn’t so short.

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I got into a bit of an argument with a “gentleman” who was driving down the street. As I was crossing the street, he must have been asleep, because I saw him a block away and instead of slowing down he decided to hit his horn. When he slowed to yell at me, I got upset. This led him to pull over and we had a little discussion.

Among his complaints, he said:

  • I came out of nowhere
  • in the middle of the block
  • wearing dark clothes at night.

Which doesn’t seem quite accurate, since:

  • I saw him coming from a ways off,
  • was crossing the street at an intersection, and
  • was wearing a bright red polar fleece coat.

OK, so the coat is something my friend got for me in China, and is probably imitation polar fleece. The shell said “North Face Goretex” and leaked like a sieve, so I’m guessing that this liner isn’t really what it says, either.

Nevertheless, I don’t think “bright red” is a “dark” color.

None of this is probably a matter for the police, though I did try to call when I thought the driver was menacing me. 911 put me on hold, so I just hung up.

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Geek entry: more AxKit madness.

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Installing AxKit is a big pain in the you-know-where. I think it’s one of those “we build it on leenoox, you should too” projects. Feh. I don’t have any leenoox boxes in the house. So, here’s the problems I’ve found THIS WEEK:

  • AxKit requires Apache::Request.
  • The Apache::Request perl module requires mod_perl < 1.99.
  • mod_perl < 1.99 requires Apache1 (not Apache2).
  • Apache1 requires libtool 1.5.
  • Getting libtool 1.5 requires CVS.
  • Building the cvs version of libtool 1.5 requires automake, and autoconf.

And I’m still in the middle of all of that.

General

My sister’s last day in P-town.

It’s my sister’s last day here, so she was trying to fit in a lot of crap into one day.

  • First she made a quick trip to the yarn store “Lint” with Mrs. Harris,
  • then a trip downtown to Nordstrom’s, Moonstruck Chocolatier, and Kitchen Kaboodle with the Slabs,
  • then dinner with family friends at the Japanese restaurant “Ikenohana,”
  • and finally dessert with her friend Wendy.

Unfortunately, she got a migraine headache just before dinner and had to sleep in the car instead of eating. Her dessert trip was also canceled.

After we got home, my father wandered around the house aimlessly, threatening to wake my sister to see if she was OK. So instead of going to my friend Darrell’s final birthday party (he’s decided that 29 is old enough) I had to stay home and run interference.

I hope she’s feeling better since she’s on a plane back for home tomorrow.

I guess my grandmother in Japan is now bedridden and has some form of inoperable cancer. Surgery is mainly not an option because she’s 98. Last year at this time, she was still taking care of her garden, even though she lost her sight years ago.

Now she doesn’t worry about much, but does still make requests for what she wants to eat. It doesn’t matter to my grandmother who comes or goes. She didn’t ask about my aunt, when my mother took over the caretaking duties for the two weeks she was there. But my grandmother still had food requests. I’m happy she still has something to look forward to.

I’m the last unmarried grandchild and it looks like that won’t change.

Uncategorized

Woo! I look like crap!

I just looked at myself in the mirror as I was brushing my teeth and I look like doodie. I guess I have time to be tired now that my ma is back home. My sister told me I looked even worse earlier in the day.

A friend at Portland State told me he got his car broken into. But, as he mentioned, it’s not the worst thing that could happen. Then I was thinking about all the time I spent waiting in the doctor’s office today, and in the x-ray lab, and how that didn’t bother me either. What did bother me was that my mom’s chronic cough had gotten worse, and she saw some blood in her sputum. Well, the doctor had a calming demeanor, and thought things were probably fine. Knock on wood.

General

Aha! I was RIGHT!

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My mom got back from Japan and, with any luck, things are back to normal. Her chronic cough is getting worse and so it’s time to interrogate the doctor about it. I guess my grandmother is confined to bed but still has an appetite. My mom didn’t have a chance to do anything fun and just took care of my grandmother while she was there.

I know by my logs that there isn’t anyone reading this blog, but I’m going to pretend there is. And if that pretend person has been paying attention, he/she would have heard about how I thought my sister was getting a Sony digital camera while I was going to get a 500yen pen. Well, guess what? She got the camera, in orange (the only reason she wanted it was because it was “cute”) and I got a 480yen pen.

The label says 600yen, but she got it for 20% off.

Actually, she also got me a nice fountain pen with a big fat nib which was closer to 20,000yen, so I can’t complain too much (except I’d have to write in inch-high letters to use such a fat nib.)

And just in case someone is reading this blog, my sister and her friends have designed “t-shirts for our friend Megan, who is getting chemo for breast cancer. There’s also a benefit at the White Eagle in Portland on November 16th.

Uncategorized

I found some of my missing CDs.

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I thought I was missing some of my CDs, so I finally asked my ex-girlfriend if she had them. She told me she had my Journey and New Order CDs, but denied having Rick Astley and Robbie Nevil. Let’s see, it’s now 2003, and we broke up in 2001, so she’s had them for at least two years. The worst part is, she denies having Rick Astley and Robbie Nevil!

I figured out I was missing CDs because I ripped all my CDs a second time. My hard drive was close to full and AAC files took less space. I ripped all my CDs because I’m still imagining the day I get an iPod. Ah, my fantasy world where I have a job or a rich girlfriend buys me an iPod. In the real world, I only have an ex-girlfriend who has stolen my Rick Astley and Robbie Nevil CDs.

General

OK, so I volunteered to install axkit?

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I’m one of the documentation guys for the Fink Project mainly taking care of the FAQ. I talked myself into getting CVS access to help port Fink to the new Mac OS X (Panther) but then I also volunteered to help work on the new web site. We’re going try axkit which is an xml-to-whatever-format-you-want converter and I’ve had a heck of a time trying to get a web server installed with axkit working.

The problems I’ve had are:

  • I couldn’t figure out how to get all the xml perl bits installed with Apache 2.0.48 on my NetBSD box.
  • Apache 2.0.48 wouldn’t compile on my Solaris 2.6 machine without hand editing server/exports.c.
  • I had a weird mix of Perl 5.8.0 and 5.8.1 on the Solaris machine.

So, finally, three or four days later, the web server should be close to running. Now I have to try getting axkit running.