Posts from — May 2003

I’m on the bus again, and for the first time since I’ve been home, it’s thundering out. I love being in the city during thunderstorms. I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s the thunder in combination with the huge, imposing buildings that gives me a feeling that I am surrounded by powerful forces. Sort of like being in the mountains, perhaps. Anyway, I’m rather wet right now because I don’t have an umbrella, largely because I’m heartbroken over the loss of my old umbrella. It had this awesome, snappy deploying action that made me feel like a superhero or something. Rest in peace, umbrella.
So this afternoon I went to the vending machine and bought a bag of chips, as I often do. However, this time the bag felt abnormal in some way. I checked the date on the bag and found out that the chips were 22 days past the expiration date. Now, if I had just eaten them and then found out about this, I would not have been too upset, but I couldn’t go into a bag knowing it was old like that. So I read the back of the bag and found the customer service phone number. I called this nice lady from Dallas, who sounded inordinately concerned about the freshness of my Fritos. She asked me a few questions (some about my information, some about the bag) and then promised that I would receive a coupon for a “replacement” in a week or so. It it’ll be at least 2.5 OZ of chips coming my way. But the fun didn’t stop there.
I went back to the vending machine, and read a phone number that went to the people who run the vending at the Travelers Home Office. I called the number, and this woman was totally uninterested in my plight, but she did give me instructions on how to get money back. She said, “Throw out the chips and go down to the express cafeteria and tell them you need a refund.”. So, not only am I not presenting the chips to the people down there, but she also didn’t ask me what my problem with the vending machine was. When I told her, she didn’t care, which is a bit unsettling because I was hoping to get some assurance that fresher food would be on my floor in the future. So I went downstairs and got a bag of chips (which expire Jul 15, so I had plenty of time to savor the flavor). Boris, one of my coworkers, offered to eat the expired chips. Thus we got three bags of chips for $.75. Heck, that’s almost production cost
The funny thing is, the woman from the vending company cut me off before I stated any problem, so I could have been calling her to complement the fine quality of products offered, and she would have offered me a refund! Well, now I know where to go if I need some spare change… (kidding)
At the end of last week, I finally got mconsole (one of my projects.. I’d link to my project page but my site is down) working fully. My dad used it last night, and it’s a really good setup right now. The controls aren’t exactly obvious, but it’s possible to figure everything out, which is one of the goals of the interface. It’s up to Tim to decide where the project goes from here, as my needs have been satisfied.
The wheels of GSG (the Good Space Game) are beginning to turn. GSG was a 3d space shooter game that Tim, Matt K and I worked on freshman year. The code has a lot of good parts, but was not strong enough to sustain prolonged development. We were using a lot of technologies with which we were not familiar, which made it difficult. The current plan is to implement a second version (first release) of GSG during our senior year. Implementation, however, is one of the easier parts of the project, if done correctly. We plan on spending the next year in a planning and research phase of the project, which is fitting for our busy schedules and the huge scale of the project. I’m in the process of completing an exhaustive overview document for the project, outlining my ideas for its functionality and methods for development. I’ll throw these up on my site once it’s done I’m pushing pretty hard to make sure that this iteration of the project is done in a well-planned, methodical way, unlike most of our projects. That’s not to say that this method is necessary on the others, it’s just that this one is so big that coding in an ad-hoc, hackish manner will cause the project to fail in my opinion.

Wow…
there are like 1.5 feet of water on the road I’m on right now.. I’m not exaggerating.. this is wild. It’s like driving through the ocean.. a ‘wave’ just went over this guy’s hood and now he’s stuck in the water on the side of the road. That’s really rough. I sure am glad I don’t have to wait for a ride at the bus stop in this weather. As the bus drives in the puddles on the side of the road, the plume of water reaches higher than the top of the bus. It’s like I’m in India or something. I wonder what would happen to my laptop if the bus were hit by lightening. Ooh, hail Awesome.

I love storms.

Two weeks of work completed as of today. A long, rainy weekend lies ahead of me. I was going to write about recent developments in my mconsole project in this entry, but my mind is elsewhere at the moment.
For about at least an hour and a half at the end of the work day today, I talked with, and more importantly, listened to Boris (another developer on my project) and Ann (my project’s manager). The project has been a work in progress for over a year now, and we were reflecting on what did and didn’t work.. mostly what didn’t. Things are way behind schedule, originally we were supposed to release in March, now the date is set for August. The August date now looks infeasible for a quality release, but we need to convince the right people of that to get another extension.
Why is it taking so long?
Well, the answer is, predictably, communication and social coordination. Honestly, if given *complete* specs, I could singlehandedly code the entire system in two months. I it difficult to put into words, especially when explaining to people who have never worked in a corporate setting, what takes so long. A large part of the cost comes from overspecialization. First of all, specialization in the business has many advantages. If my computer breaks, I make a call and someone who knows my computer comes and fixes it. If my account gets locked from a server, I call tech support and they fix it for me. Calling tech support at work (which I’ve done many times) is very strange, because they’re actually there to solve the problem and know what they’re talking about, not to just get you off the phone. Anyway, specialization is used in getting many fringe parts of the project done as well. We don’t have anyone on our development team who can write CoolGen COM proxies, so we find someone who can and have him write them. I didn’t know how do query Active Directory programmatically, so I contacted someone who did who gave me sample code which I adapted to the web service that I was working on. We have people who we work with who specialize in our database design, BizTalk and Exchange setups, and business requirements.
All of these people provide things that we don’t have on our small team, so there certainly is a benefit. Many problems arise from these specialists. For example we have ‘database modelers’ who design our databases and figure out how we use existing ones. These modelers know about databases. They do not, however, know about the business of Boiler Machinery (the project). This means that we need to transfer all of our knowledge to them in meetings. Meanwhile, they draw upon their experiences and try to match our application up with something that they’ve done in the past and treat it the same way. Frustration ensues. It took the programming team 3 months to figure out how the business worked (and all of the exceptions to the rules), then we spent 6 months explaining it to everyone else.
I wish I had some solution to this, but I really don’t. An inexpensive way to make as many people know as much as possible is what’s needed. I don’t have the answer though.
Although it sounds really frustrating, I have enjoyed it and learned so much more than I expected from this summer and the last. I’m not sure I’d want to work somewhere like this after I graduate, but I really have no idea.
We’ll see..

So after the first week of work, I don’t feel as tired as I would expect. Without much transition time from finals, it was hard to get started, but now that I’m here it’s not too bad. I think part of it’s that I haven’t been doing too much work, I’ve had to spend most of my time fighting the system to get accounts on everything (still no email!). I finally got a significant amount of work given to me this afternoon, dealing with some data “scrubbing” (fixing errors in data) with perl and, more importantly, writing SQL Stored Procedures to be used by our various components. Good fun.
Our August release date (right around when I’m leaving) cannot be moved, so we’re all going to be working very hard until then.
If I’m lucky, I’ll be seeing The Matrix again tonight, so maybe I’ll have a better grasp of it.

I went to the 10:00 showing of The Matrix Reloaded in Winsted last night. It was actually better than I expected. Warning: some minor spoilers.

My disclaimer to this entire reaction is that The Matrix Reloaded cannot be cleanly evaluated as a stand-alone movie (unlike the original). For example, subplots that seemed totally tangential and wasteful may become important in the next movie, so I’ll try not to judge it on that.

Going into the theater, I was expecting a shaky plot filled with Neo opening six-packs of whoopass between lines. While the action was probably more prevalent in this iteration than the original, the plot did manage to garner some emotional investment. Philosophically, it starts out with really elementary “What is fate.. do I make choices?”. This topic was fun to watch, but I would be quite disappointed if the complexity of the plot ended there. It would have been too easy. In the last third of the movie, the plot really moves along and adds a lot of complexity to the concept of the Matrix. All of the questions posed by the last portion of the movie (basically all of the questions in the movie) are still left largely open by the end, though the movie ends when the action hits a minor breaking point.
Enough with the plot.. action was king in the sequel. The two most famous scenes of the movie (I determined this before watching it) are the highway chase and Neo fighting 100 (or so) instances of Agent Smith (those of you who have seen it should ignore my mistake in this sentence). The highway chase scene was excellent, except for the fact that people were shooting at the protagonists (not Neo) for the entire first half of the chase and nobody got hit. It’s just so statistically improbable that with an automatic weapon you wouldn’t hit someone in a car in front of you after much firing… it bothered me. Regardless, it was a lot of fun. My favorite part was when Morpheus takes a sword and slashes the side of an SUV and then shoots it and it explodes. I think we’ve all wanted to do that before! The big Smith v. Neo fight scene was a lot of fun, though some of the movement did seem vaguely cartoonish (similar to Shreck) at times. It is important to recognize, however, that this is not really the fault of the animators, they are at the top of their game. The industry simply isn’t ready to convincingly stage a fight like this. Although not 100% realistic, it was very well done. The characters generally look real, and it’s a lot of fun to watch them fly around (getting thrown). Importantly, this scene exists because it is part of the plot, not to showcase the cool technology. They did the best that is possible at this point.
The weapons used in the film were diversified. In fact, there really wasn’t a ‘gun battle’ as far as I can remember. The usage of swords and various weapons of a similar class was a welcome change, and made for some great scenes.
More points… Smith plays a more interesting role than before (it even makes his role in the original more interesting), and will play a critical role in Revolutions. Don’t forget to stay after the credits for the Revolutions preview!! My biggest problem with the end of the movie is that it goes to fast. The things that it covers are awesome and affect the fundamentals of the universe in which the saga is set. I really can’t explain what happened because it went too fast for me to keep up with. Although many people seem to disagree with me, I though the parts of the movie in Zion were a bit drawn out and boring. The almost random dance party/sex sequence should have been shorter, in my opinion, though it did add some to character development.
I guess that’s my reaction, leave me some comments and let me know what you think.

On the bus back from my third day at work. I’m now able to log on and use my computer, I have administrator privileges, and I’m actually running programs on it! There is still a lot of red tape in the way of me getting work done. My name was submitted to “THE SYSTEM” on Monday morning. By Tuesday I was able to get an ID, and log on to my computer and the network. Alas, my setup woes are far from over. After all these days, I still don’t have an email account. It baffles me how it can take 4 days for an account to be created in one system and to make it to all the other ones. Really, it’s all computers in the process, there’s just a lot of latency in the system because there are so many of them. So I’m relegated to waiting for the powers that be to bring me an email account. On top of that, I need to wait for the licencing to go through so that I can get Visual Studio .NET on my computer. I hate it when legal stuff and red tape gets in the way of getting work done… I’ve spent the last three days trying to keep busy with tasks that didn’t involve programming or using email, which is awfully hard on a team programming project.

End Transmission

In response to some criticisms that I have no friends, I have added a few friends to my LiveJournal page. If you have one and you’re not a friend:

1. I am unaware that you have a livejournal
2. I don’t know you
3. You are a figment of my imagination

So, not only is my computer at work new, I think it’s a better computer than all of my coworkers’! It’s 2.4 GHz of blazing email checking!
Oh, I’ll do some programming and stuff, too.

Socrates once wrote “Humor is the best policy”. Then again, that hemlock joke only works the first time.

I had my first day back at Travelers today. This will be my second summer as an intern there. I went through all the usual orientation stuff as expected (it went a bit faster this time because only 8 of us were starting today). We have a new logo, replacing our beloved umbrella after many years of faithful service. The umbrella is going on to bigger and better things, perhaps, at Citigroup (they took it when we spun off last summer).
Anyway, I got to meet my mentor for this summer right away.. his name is Raj (I don’t try to write or pronounce his full name, not that it’s too hard, I just don’t try that hard). He was really friendly and showed me around where he works and we went out to lunch a bit later (Travelers picked up the tab for that one!). We seemed to have a lot of similar attitudes about work and stuff, even though we come from very different backgrounds.
Unlike when I interned last winter, I have a computer on my first day of work! Better yet, it’s a brand new (Compaq) machine.. Pentium 4. It’s a really nice looking piece of hardware. Unfortunately, thanks to the “Gods of PeopleSoft”, my user ID doesn’t become active in any of the company’s systems until tomorrow, so I can’t log on until then. Its day will come…

The project looks like it has been making some progress. The original date to move to production was in March, but it was eventually moved back to August. So I’m coming in as we’ re moving into the testing phase. One of my first tasks is going to be to figure out a way to quickly populate an MS SQL database with data imported from notes as well as our reference data. Once the SQL database gets up (the last thing we’re really waiting for), it will be a ton of work to push everything through testing.

I’m glad the schedule has worked out this way: I’ve been able to watch a project go from brainstorming and requirements specification to testing and production. Also, I found out that my report generation code (filling out word templates with a bunch of techniques and data sources) is going to be used, almost unaltered in testing, and maybe production. It’s cool to think that a significant amount of my code is going to be used in a corporate product!

I managed to find my grades for this semester (Spring 2003) on the Registrar’s site (which is harder than it sounds!). I did pretty well, keeping my GPA on course. Here’s the breakdown:

• Discrete Structures – B+: Damn Tzeng! I thought I would have an A in this one, especially with my good grade on the midterm, as well as Tzeng’s legendary curve… oh well
• Programming Languages – A: With that much extra credit, you can’t go wrong.
• Artificial Intelligence – A-: A bit better than I expected.
• Network Programming – B+: Quite an accomplishment considering how confused I was throughout the class. Lots of stress, one test, but it’s all over now.
• Probability & Statistics – A: I did really well on the first two exams, but I was worried about the final because my teacher got ‘too pregnant’ to teach, so I basically didn’t learn anything from the guy who came in after her. I guess it all worked out.
• Spanish for Professionals – A-: Things I learned from this class:
  1. Don’t take Spanish first thing in the morning, you can’t form sentences that early
  2. Don’t take classes that are subversively business-oriented.
  3. Just because the people in your class seem like morons doesn’t necessarily mean that the tests will be easy.

Well, I think things generally worked out… I put a lot of effort into classes last semester (and the one before) and it seems to have paid off.

Sometimes I think that I’ve learned to adapt things that I’ve learned from Cross Country in high school to academics in college. One of the most important things in running I learned my senior year was how to race instead of just running a race. When I actually began racing, I accepted the fact that running fast becomes painful, and ignored it. The knowledge that I will finish successfully makes it worth it. This can also be applied to academics; working hard and losing sleep, missing events as needed (or going to events and missing more sleep!) is a painful way to live, but it is worth it, and helps you reach your potential. Enough soap box for me, time to think about food.

Well, like most people on this site, I don’t really have anything that I think is really interesting to the rest of the world. Unlike most people on this site, I’m not a disgruntled teenage girl, nor do I write horrible poetry. I only write high-quality, politically-charged limericks in my free time.
I’ve found myself reading other people’s LiveJournals recently, so I decided to contribute something of my own. I’m using the free account right now, but I’ll start paying if I find that I’m updating it often and/or people seem vaguely interested.
I’m going to periodically throw in quotes, often from The Family Guy, such as the subject of this entry, so beware!
Okay, it’s getting late so I guess I’ll wait until tomorrow to enter anything with any content. Maybe some reflection on the last semester or year…