The Iggblog

w00t

Last day of Bob.

My sternum keeps cracking today. It feels really weird when it does. I think I need a new host body.

BigKat reigns supreme over regular KitKat. Although the lesser KitKat presents itself in a throng of KitKatlings, their combined might does not match the diety-like greatness of the BigKat.

Ouch.

My ass hurts.

I went to the gym at UCF when I was down in FL over the weekend. I haven’t used a leg press machine in a LONG time. I do leg extensions and curls at my gym, but the press works different muscles. My ass and thighs are killing me. It’s that good sort of pain that lets you know you were working hard enough… but it still sucks every time I have to get up =P.

So… Dan0 and I are looking for a new apartment since the rent at this place is going to be raised in july to an amount somewhere around $Texas. We’re looking in the Newton-ish area. A lot of these places have “all utilities included”. For a normal person with normal living habits, this is not a dangerous offer. But when a geek hears the words “Utilities included”, his brain processes it to “You may run all your machines at once if you’d like”. Assuming the wiring in the building can handle it, running all my servers at once would be interesting. Just my segment of the network has about 2500-3000 watts worth of computer power supplies. The one “end table” server counts as an electric heater too…

(Upon Seth, Amy, and I coming to my apartment to watch a video)
Me: “Damn, it’s hot in here”
Amy: “Why don’t you turn the heat off?”
Me: “We haven’t turned the heat on yet this year. It’s just that my “big” server has been running for a couple days.”

Seriously… people need to think before they offer up free electricity.

While “driving” today, an idea dawned upon me. I use the term “driving” loosely since traveling under 15mph could hardly be considered driving at all in any reasonable sense of the word. Whilst enjoying a traffic jam today on 495 it took me about one hour to traverse 10 miles. If you’re good at math, this will tell you I was going about 10mph. If you’re bad at math, it’s more like 8mph. Don’t ask why, I don’t make the rules. Anyhow, I was on the phone with Seth to keep from falling asleep and it dawned on me “I could really use some coffee right now. Like, wicked”. So Seth and I discussed the options of mobile coffee distribution for just such an occasion.

The first idea was a mobile coffee truck, like those mobile food trucks/kiosks that you see in New York City that serve salty pretzels or oily sausages of some dreadful origin. They would be permitted to drive in the breakdown lane since they were providing a service to all. Who can argue with that? another option would be to add a separate coffee lane for these trucks to drive in. Clearly these vehicles are of such importance as to demand the extra infrastructure.

The second (and far cooler) idea would be much better for the distribution aspect fo mobile coffee delivery. A semitruck would be dispatched to the traffic jam location, carrying a number of men on bicycles. This throng of espresso warriors would drive into the gridlock and maneuver between cars to get to the needy folks. One or two would have an espresso machine on their backs. The others would carry battery packs being constantly charged by those cool rear wheel generators that your parents bikes had to power the headlight. Upon reaching a needy soul, they would all yell “LET OUR POWERS COMBINE!”, and they would merge into a Voltron-like host of coffee dispensing righteousness. The battery bikes would plug into the espresso bike, and out would churn the delicious coffee. Then they would revert into their much more mobile decentralized form to get to the next customer.

Clearly this has to come to pass. I see no way around it.

w00t. Put in my 2 weeks. I actually felt bad… her voice wouldn;t stop crackling for like 5 minutes. she was so close to crying =/. As much of a pain in the ass as this place is, and as many issues as I’ve had with Bob, I don’t like leaving her in the position I’m going to be leaving her in. She’s going to spawn in april, and it takes at least 1 month to get a new trainee. Then another 4-6 months to train someone to the point that they’re autonomous. To boot, this isn’t monkey work.. it requires a good amount of analytical skill, so it’s not like they can just recruit John Q. Random from the temp agency and be done with it. So she’s going to be all alone here until she leaves in April, then they’ll be rotating people in from Chicago probably until she gets back. Then she’ll be alone again for a while.

As much as I’d like that to be a pleasant thought, I feel a little bad. meh. had to be done.

Demi-w00t =/.

PS – fun fact: this is the only job I’ve ever quit. I’ve only ever been laid off, had a contract expire, or had to leave for school before.

Bob is in a mood today. She’s redmarking my report into a bloodbath. …asking why I don’t include this or that comment (which we have never included in any reports ever), and telling me where to put arrows to indicate defects (I avoid pointing out too many blatantly obvious defects). Seriously… I use HER reports as templates to avoid this sort of thing. It’s going to feel soooooooo good when she comes up and tells me it’s time for my yearly review, and I get to tell her “Yeah well…”

preemptive w00t

I had this crazy idea that I’d quit my job today. WTF, right? It’s a monday… I’m bored… What could go wrong?

I’m “manufacturing” data again. The difference between manufacturing data and collecting data is, of course, that manufactured data has been “coaxed” in some way to make it look like you want it to. It looks “just like real data” and often we do this for the benefit of the customer, but it rubs me the wrong way on a fundamental level.

Basically, there’s a defect in these parts. I know it’s there. I can see indirect evidence of it through one of our other scanning techniques. For whatever reason, the part construction makes the echoes look really weird in this area, so it doesn’t “look” like a defect. To anyone with just a brief lesson on how this technology works, it looks like a defect-free area. The echoes I mention are waves on an oscilloscope. Generally, waves with positive amplitude are a good area, and areas with negative amplitude echoes are defects. The machine takes these waves and turns them into pixels to create an image one pixel at a time as the machine scans over the parts. However, the polarity detection in these things is crap. so if you have a waveform of an area that has a big negative lobe with a moderate positive trailing lobe, it detects it as positive.

So, what I’ve been asked to do is play with the gates (the limits set on the oscilloscope for where the machine reads data from) and “shave off” the trailing positive lobe. This will make the area look like a defect. I have no question that it is a defect, but I still think it’s wrong to do this. Presenting modified data to laypeople is wrong… even if it is to help them better understand it.

So here I go again violating my scientific integrity for this company. I’ll say it again… yay for leaving.

In other news, Bob’s boss (who is actually a really cool guy) is getting lunch for us. Free food is ALWAYS acceptable.