I saw this posted up on a wall on campus. UNL is providing an opportunity for students, teachers, and I don't know who else to help the less fortunate in our city with taxes. That doesn't sound terribly exciting, does it?
I think it's a cool opportunity, because my university is doing something to offer free tax assistance to those who need it and maybe didn't know it was available. Volunteers train and become certified to become tax assistants and will help families when that dreaded time comes around. I signed up and I think I'm going to find time to help out. If anything, I'll learn more about how to do my own taxes!
Here is the link: http://involved.unl.edu/eitc
I don't think the time line on this moves pretty quickly, so act now if you are remotely interested.
On another note, I posted a Brett Dennen song in my last entry. The video that follows is of a song that I've known and liked for a while, but I never actually made it through the whole video. I just finished watching it, and it's pretty powerful. I don't like the idea of guilting people into doing something, but this at least shows us how oblivious we can be to the world around us when we become wrapped up in our blessings. It's kind of neat to watch, and it's a great song.
Ok, it's Friday, and I'm going to relax.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Giving and receiving the love
I've touched on it briefly before, but one of my biggest kicks since this summer is cultivating a passion for doing something to make the world around me a better place. That may seem fairly daunting to many people--myself included. I made a comment on another friend's blog after he touched on the issue. There is this concept that something needs to start somewhere for any movement to happen. Oftentimes, it seems the initial spark is the one that requires the greatest courage to accomplish. The absolutely essential part is that it requires action. It requires a commitment to an ideal. It requires doing something before change can occur. I find we have certainly accomplished greatness in complaining about oppression or poverty or hatred--you name it, and we're probably good at complaining about it.
It reminds me of the character Pip in "Great Expectations." In one scene, he and his friend go through their accounts and record all their debts. In doing so, they made themselves feel much better about the debt they incurred. Interestingly enough, they never actually paid off their debt, but rather were satisfied in merely acknowledging them. However, acknowledgment doesn't pay bills. Likewise, if we have grown complacent in merely talking or complaining about things we dislike in the world, not a lot gets done.
So I suppose a big part of it is having the eyes to see what needs to change, and having the hands to make it happen. Interestingly enough, people carry different versions of what the "right" world looks like. So that could make quite an interesting scenario if everybody is applying their efforts in different directions. I suppose this is where things like tolerance, empathy, and understanding come into play. I personally take most of my direction in the things I find to be absolute in my life. I recognize not all of my friends or whoever may be reading this share my beliefs, and I don't dare force mine upon anybody. However, lately I've actually been committing to my faith and learning about the character of God in order to better emulate it. The common thing I see so far is overwhelmingly the issue of love. If there really is a God, and if He really does love me, why shouldn't I share that? This love can apply to things like compassion, tolerance, and standing against oppression and hatred. I don't know if this is a stark contrast to an opinion of the Christian faith as one of judgment and fear. Frankly, I don't know what the prevailing views on Christianity are today. The Christianity I subscribe to lately has been the one that encourages me to share the love I see in my life. This is my motivation. This is how I see what I think needs to change.
That being said, I don't argue that a lack of God or faith precludes a person from exhibiting love. To be honest, I know lots of people who are just as passionate about helping others who don't share the same views I do.
Moving on, it would probably be a good idea to "walk my talk" as it were? What have I been doing in response to the passions that have been rising in me since this past Summer? Well lately I've been getting down to People's City Mission in Lincoln. This is an organization that is committed to serving the poor and homeless of Lincoln. This was a fantastic find for me because it is a great venue to give something of myself in a scenario that aligns well with my passions. Most of the work I do is helping them manage their IT and database systems. I found a great opportunity to use my education and skills I've been developing over the last few years to help them focus on doing what they do best and not fighting with the computer. I helped them cut what used to take weeks worth of work into about 10 minutes when dealing with data.
Another cool project I get to be a part of is helping to organize the "Run for the Homeless" set to take sometime in the Spring of '09. It's a pretty big project ahead of me, but I'm so excited to get a chance to be involved at this age.
One of the exciting things I saw in this whole experience is that there are so many ways to contribute just a little bit and make huge impacts. It also goes to show that all of us can find something we have to offer and turn it into something useful. The classic mold of helping at a homeless shelter is serving in the kitchen or taking out trash. Throw that mold away. Don't put a "you must be this tall to ride" sign on your efforts. Anything helps, doesn't it?
So the point of this post wasn't to create a self-righteous "look at me" sentiment. Rather, I hope it goes to show you that we can all find a motivation to make the world around us a better place. We can all find some way to return the things we were given to do something good for others. Finally, it isn't that difficult to find a way to help. The opportunities are all around us.
Ok, enough of my talking. These songs and artists are awesome and show a much more entertaining way to say what I'm talking about.
Enjoy, and thanks for reading:
It reminds me of the character Pip in "Great Expectations." In one scene, he and his friend go through their accounts and record all their debts. In doing so, they made themselves feel much better about the debt they incurred. Interestingly enough, they never actually paid off their debt, but rather were satisfied in merely acknowledging them. However, acknowledgment doesn't pay bills. Likewise, if we have grown complacent in merely talking or complaining about things we dislike in the world, not a lot gets done.
So I suppose a big part of it is having the eyes to see what needs to change, and having the hands to make it happen. Interestingly enough, people carry different versions of what the "right" world looks like. So that could make quite an interesting scenario if everybody is applying their efforts in different directions. I suppose this is where things like tolerance, empathy, and understanding come into play. I personally take most of my direction in the things I find to be absolute in my life. I recognize not all of my friends or whoever may be reading this share my beliefs, and I don't dare force mine upon anybody. However, lately I've actually been committing to my faith and learning about the character of God in order to better emulate it. The common thing I see so far is overwhelmingly the issue of love. If there really is a God, and if He really does love me, why shouldn't I share that? This love can apply to things like compassion, tolerance, and standing against oppression and hatred. I don't know if this is a stark contrast to an opinion of the Christian faith as one of judgment and fear. Frankly, I don't know what the prevailing views on Christianity are today. The Christianity I subscribe to lately has been the one that encourages me to share the love I see in my life. This is my motivation. This is how I see what I think needs to change.
That being said, I don't argue that a lack of God or faith precludes a person from exhibiting love. To be honest, I know lots of people who are just as passionate about helping others who don't share the same views I do.
Moving on, it would probably be a good idea to "walk my talk" as it were? What have I been doing in response to the passions that have been rising in me since this past Summer? Well lately I've been getting down to People's City Mission in Lincoln. This is an organization that is committed to serving the poor and homeless of Lincoln. This was a fantastic find for me because it is a great venue to give something of myself in a scenario that aligns well with my passions. Most of the work I do is helping them manage their IT and database systems. I found a great opportunity to use my education and skills I've been developing over the last few years to help them focus on doing what they do best and not fighting with the computer. I helped them cut what used to take weeks worth of work into about 10 minutes when dealing with data.
Another cool project I get to be a part of is helping to organize the "Run for the Homeless" set to take sometime in the Spring of '09. It's a pretty big project ahead of me, but I'm so excited to get a chance to be involved at this age.
One of the exciting things I saw in this whole experience is that there are so many ways to contribute just a little bit and make huge impacts. It also goes to show that all of us can find something we have to offer and turn it into something useful. The classic mold of helping at a homeless shelter is serving in the kitchen or taking out trash. Throw that mold away. Don't put a "you must be this tall to ride" sign on your efforts. Anything helps, doesn't it?
So the point of this post wasn't to create a self-righteous "look at me" sentiment. Rather, I hope it goes to show you that we can all find a motivation to make the world around us a better place. We can all find some way to return the things we were given to do something good for others. Finally, it isn't that difficult to find a way to help. The opportunities are all around us.
Ok, enough of my talking. These songs and artists are awesome and show a much more entertaining way to say what I'm talking about.
Enjoy, and thanks for reading:
Monday, October 27, 2008
"The best days of our lives"
Well it certainly has been forever since I've paid attention to this. Shame on me. Clearly it is a testament to my forgetfulness when I start every post this way.
Anyway, I was somewhat inspired by another friend's blog which aligns with a lot of my passions lately.
How often do we hear "these are the best days of our lives"? In my experience, it was always harmless enough. However, I take issue with the statement. I know I am prone to over think think many things, and I imagine not too many other people treat the subject with such gravity, but I really think there is a lot going on here.
First, I find the statement to be incredibly short-sighted. I can think back to high school when I was living the proverbial "best days of my life." However, after only four more years under my belt, I feel like I have so much more perspective and a greater capacity to appreciate the things happening to me. By all accounts, the days I'm experiencing now are far better than those I spent in high school. The very fact that my perceptions then were premature in light of my current experiences invalidates the statement in question at the time. That implies that the same could hold true now were I to say that these are the best days of my life. We can't so readily assume that the perceptions and desires we have now will stay the same as we age.
Another major point is that naming any point in time as the best days of your life is a fairly depressing declaration. By definition, if you are living the best days of your life right now, you've decided it will never get any better. Right now--when you're 18, 21, 25, 60, or whatever age--is as good as it is ever going to get. Imagine hitting your peak in high school and then having everything go downhill from there. It seems like such a bleak and sad way to think!
Now, I'm sure nobody really means it as literally as I put it. I'm sure people aren't giving up on their lives after their 18th birthday. There is something to take away from my frantic over-analysis. On any given day, it is so beautiful to think there will be another one in the future to absolutely blow this one away. It is wonderful to think that as long as we have life, we have the room to grow, learn, experience, love, or whatever we choose to do.
I think another way to think of it would be "today is the best day of my life because I have the potential to make tomorrow even better." I once heard a story of an older man who decided to estimate about how many more years he had left to live. He then calculated how many Saturdays he'd have in that span of time and put that many marbles in a glass jar. Every Saturday, he would take one out and throw it away. Well, that seems like a pretty morbid thing to do. However, it painted a great picture for how valuable our time is. Life is a finite thing, so I would encourage us not to grow complacent and peak before we are ready. I know I will never achieve perfection, but I can certainly shape my life in an upward slope and seek to improve and grow every day.
So perhaps you're reading this and thinking I think "big picture" too much. Perhaps I am so driven on continuous growth and capitalizing on potential that I miss the beauty of the day to day. I disagree. Living mindfully of tomorrow doesn't have to exclude experiencing today. As with many things in life, it should be a game of balance. Cherish today, and get ready to do the same tomorrow.
Well, I've taken something that belongs in the title of a facebook photo album and have turned it into a boring essay. However, one of the things I am really learning about life is that it is worth cherishing and one should never give up on the chance that things could get better. With that brings hope, and I think that brings joy. If we can spread that joy out across every day of our life instead of confining it to some period, that would be a pretty great thing in my book.
Ok, that's enough of my ranting. Thanks for reading.
--dp
Anyway, I was somewhat inspired by another friend's blog which aligns with a lot of my passions lately.
How often do we hear "these are the best days of our lives"? In my experience, it was always harmless enough. However, I take issue with the statement. I know I am prone to over think think many things, and I imagine not too many other people treat the subject with such gravity, but I really think there is a lot going on here.
First, I find the statement to be incredibly short-sighted. I can think back to high school when I was living the proverbial "best days of my life." However, after only four more years under my belt, I feel like I have so much more perspective and a greater capacity to appreciate the things happening to me. By all accounts, the days I'm experiencing now are far better than those I spent in high school. The very fact that my perceptions then were premature in light of my current experiences invalidates the statement in question at the time. That implies that the same could hold true now were I to say that these are the best days of my life. We can't so readily assume that the perceptions and desires we have now will stay the same as we age.
Another major point is that naming any point in time as the best days of your life is a fairly depressing declaration. By definition, if you are living the best days of your life right now, you've decided it will never get any better. Right now--when you're 18, 21, 25, 60, or whatever age--is as good as it is ever going to get. Imagine hitting your peak in high school and then having everything go downhill from there. It seems like such a bleak and sad way to think!
Now, I'm sure nobody really means it as literally as I put it. I'm sure people aren't giving up on their lives after their 18th birthday. There is something to take away from my frantic over-analysis. On any given day, it is so beautiful to think there will be another one in the future to absolutely blow this one away. It is wonderful to think that as long as we have life, we have the room to grow, learn, experience, love, or whatever we choose to do.
I think another way to think of it would be "today is the best day of my life because I have the potential to make tomorrow even better." I once heard a story of an older man who decided to estimate about how many more years he had left to live. He then calculated how many Saturdays he'd have in that span of time and put that many marbles in a glass jar. Every Saturday, he would take one out and throw it away. Well, that seems like a pretty morbid thing to do. However, it painted a great picture for how valuable our time is. Life is a finite thing, so I would encourage us not to grow complacent and peak before we are ready. I know I will never achieve perfection, but I can certainly shape my life in an upward slope and seek to improve and grow every day.
So perhaps you're reading this and thinking I think "big picture" too much. Perhaps I am so driven on continuous growth and capitalizing on potential that I miss the beauty of the day to day. I disagree. Living mindfully of tomorrow doesn't have to exclude experiencing today. As with many things in life, it should be a game of balance. Cherish today, and get ready to do the same tomorrow.
Well, I've taken something that belongs in the title of a facebook photo album and have turned it into a boring essay. However, one of the things I am really learning about life is that it is worth cherishing and one should never give up on the chance that things could get better. With that brings hope, and I think that brings joy. If we can spread that joy out across every day of our life instead of confining it to some period, that would be a pretty great thing in my book.
Ok, that's enough of my ranting. Thanks for reading.
--dp
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Be the change you want to see in the world
This will be a quick one:
I've been getting fairly 'musical' lately and actually writing songs again. Part of that includes coming up with crap to write about. One idea I have is kind of a response to John Mayer's "Waiting" or whatever it may be called.
One thing I noticed is that it's all good and well to see tragedy in the world and take notice. It's another to sit on your rump, and 'wait' instead of doing something about it. Obviously there is plenty of hatred in the world, but I go with the mindset there is nothing I can do to change somebody else, but I can mold myself into who I want to be. So, the above quote is apropos and I've been thinking about it lately and how I might turn the idea into a song.
I stumbled across this blog post and thought I'd share. Enjoy?
I've been getting fairly 'musical' lately and actually writing songs again. Part of that includes coming up with crap to write about. One idea I have is kind of a response to John Mayer's "Waiting" or whatever it may be called.
One thing I noticed is that it's all good and well to see tragedy in the world and take notice. It's another to sit on your rump, and 'wait' instead of doing something about it. Obviously there is plenty of hatred in the world, but I go with the mindset there is nothing I can do to change somebody else, but I can mold myself into who I want to be. So, the above quote is apropos and I've been thinking about it lately and how I might turn the idea into a song.
I stumbled across this blog post and thought I'd share. Enjoy?
Nerd times
So far this summer, I've not really had to use my personal laptop for more than browsing the Internet or listening or recording music. This seemed like too light a task load to depend on Windows Vista as my only operating system. I really don't have a big problem with Vista. I think if you're intelligent about the way you use a computer it should suit the needs of most, albeit slowly in some cases. So I decided I wanted to give dual-booting a try.
I had installed Ubuntu on an old Compaq PIII a few years ago and I loved picking around with it and seeing what it could do. Linux is great for squeezing functionality out of aging hardware, and I definitely put it to good use in school. I always wondered how Linux would do if I gave it a more powerful platform to play with. My laptop had a 110GB drive on it that I wasn't even close to filling, so I decided I'd give it a shot.
The first step was to carve out some extra space because the Vista partition occupied the entire drive. The cool thing Vista has is a non-destructive partitioning tool. I was able to use it to reduce the partition by 15GB to create some room for a new OS. The "Disk Management" tool can be found by right-clicking on "My Computer" and selecting the "Manage..." option. From there, I used the "Disk Management" tool to reduce the partition by a given amount of space. There are plenty of resources for how to do this on the Internet, but that wasn't really the difficult part.
Once that was done, I had to figure out what flavor of Linux to use. I had been toying with Puppy Linux for a while. The disk image was only 90MB, which fits just fine on a mini CD. The really cool thing about Puppy Linux is that it loads itself from the CD into your computer's RAM and runs completely from there. That being said, it is ridiculously fast. Granted, a distribution that is only 90MB is going to be pretty stripped down. It wasn't the prettiest thing, but it had all the basics to do what I wanted. The only thing I didn't like was the package manager wasn't incredibly intuitive, and I was so used to Aptitude from Debian/Ubuntu.
So, I started with Puppy Linux and used the tools on the CD to reformat the previously freed hard drive space. It took me a while to figure out Linux likes the ext2 format (I had always just let the Ubuntu install dialog do that for me), but once I did, I was able to burn the image to the disk. The tricky part came when I tried to figure out how to pull off dual-booting.
After some research, I thought I'd try keeping Vista's boot loader and use it to manage both operating systems. Upon further research, I learned that the Vista boot loader is new to all other Windows operating systems, and thus didn't have as much documentation or examples to help me get started. One thing I did find was a tool called Bcdedit.exe. This tool is supposed to allow you to edit the master boot record (MBR), import new entries, and manage the order. Turns out that with as much research and preparation I put into making that work, I still broke everything.
The basic strategy is that from the Linux partition, you are supposed to install GRUB in and only in the Linux partition. It needs to be isolated to that partition and unaware of the intended parent loader on the Vista side. From there, the next step is supposedly to extract boot information to some transportable media--a USB makes the most sense--and boot back into Vista. After copying that content into the Vista partition--recommended destination: the C: Drive I guess--you would use Bcdedit.exe to generate an entry in the MBR given the Linux boot information. Upon successful completion, the Vista boot loader would give you the option to boot Vista or the Linux entry. Upon selecting the Linux entry, the boot loader would then fire up GRUB and it would in turn boot up Linux in a chain-loader fashion.
The problem is that none of this worked and my biggest success was corrupting my MBR. Puppy Linux still worked from the CD though! As I'm sure you're aware, that's nice but still fairly useless. In order to get Vista back up to speed, I had to track down my Vista DVD and use the start-up repair to get it back working. That got me to be able to boot back into Vista, but it still had issues. Thankfully, I used bcdedit's export function to create a backup of the MBR before I broke it, so I was able to use the import function to put it back together. Moral #1 of the story: backups are cool.
Once Vista was fixed, I opted to go for a more mature Linux distribution to take advantage of the more intelligent installer, and the added firepower. I chose Xubuntu because I like the minimalism of the Xfce desktop manager and I have always been a fan of the Ubuntu/Debian community. I burned a LiveCD and used the installer to reformat the 15GB and install the new OS. This time, I opted to let Linux install GRUB into my MBR and let it manage all booting tasks. GRUB automatically found my Vista partition and put it in as an entry in the boot window. So now my computer boots into either operating system just fine and I'm having lots of fun with it. I went ahead and installed Compiz on my machine since I had more powerful hardware and I wanted to "geek" the thing out. All in all, it looks pretty cool--and dare I say, pretty?
I went nuts yesterday and tried installing a bunch of sound production and creation software. I don't have the list on me now, but I didn't think Audacity was quite enough. I've been entertaining the idea of using a MIDI controller to run a synthesizer emulator. I'd also like to be able to run a loop station on my laptop. Apparently, most of this software relies on a small server called JACK. As advertised, it's supposed to manage sound and data connections among inputs, outputs, and clients (or software). Unfortunately, it seems to have broken ALSA or whatever it is that pumps sound out to my sound card. Guess I'll have to fix that later.
There are no screen shots, but I'm sure you've seen a desktop before. Mine is nothing special. The important part is I had a geek idea and I made it work. Moral #2: challenging yourself and trying new things is a great idea and essential to personal growth in my opinion.
I had installed Ubuntu on an old Compaq PIII a few years ago and I loved picking around with it and seeing what it could do. Linux is great for squeezing functionality out of aging hardware, and I definitely put it to good use in school. I always wondered how Linux would do if I gave it a more powerful platform to play with. My laptop had a 110GB drive on it that I wasn't even close to filling, so I decided I'd give it a shot.
The first step was to carve out some extra space because the Vista partition occupied the entire drive. The cool thing Vista has is a non-destructive partitioning tool. I was able to use it to reduce the partition by 15GB to create some room for a new OS. The "Disk Management" tool can be found by right-clicking on "My Computer" and selecting the "Manage..." option. From there, I used the "Disk Management" tool to reduce the partition by a given amount of space. There are plenty of resources for how to do this on the Internet, but that wasn't really the difficult part.
Once that was done, I had to figure out what flavor of Linux to use. I had been toying with Puppy Linux for a while. The disk image was only 90MB, which fits just fine on a mini CD. The really cool thing about Puppy Linux is that it loads itself from the CD into your computer's RAM and runs completely from there. That being said, it is ridiculously fast. Granted, a distribution that is only 90MB is going to be pretty stripped down. It wasn't the prettiest thing, but it had all the basics to do what I wanted. The only thing I didn't like was the package manager wasn't incredibly intuitive, and I was so used to Aptitude from Debian/Ubuntu.
So, I started with Puppy Linux and used the tools on the CD to reformat the previously freed hard drive space. It took me a while to figure out Linux likes the ext2 format (I had always just let the Ubuntu install dialog do that for me), but once I did, I was able to burn the image to the disk. The tricky part came when I tried to figure out how to pull off dual-booting.
After some research, I thought I'd try keeping Vista's boot loader and use it to manage both operating systems. Upon further research, I learned that the Vista boot loader is new to all other Windows operating systems, and thus didn't have as much documentation or examples to help me get started. One thing I did find was a tool called Bcdedit.exe. This tool is supposed to allow you to edit the master boot record (MBR), import new entries, and manage the order. Turns out that with as much research and preparation I put into making that work, I still broke everything.
The basic strategy is that from the Linux partition, you are supposed to install GRUB in and only in the Linux partition. It needs to be isolated to that partition and unaware of the intended parent loader on the Vista side. From there, the next step is supposedly to extract boot information to some transportable media--a USB makes the most sense--and boot back into Vista. After copying that content into the Vista partition--recommended destination: the C: Drive I guess--you would use Bcdedit.exe to generate an entry in the MBR given the Linux boot information. Upon successful completion, the Vista boot loader would give you the option to boot Vista or the Linux entry. Upon selecting the Linux entry, the boot loader would then fire up GRUB and it would in turn boot up Linux in a chain-loader fashion.
The problem is that none of this worked and my biggest success was corrupting my MBR. Puppy Linux still worked from the CD though! As I'm sure you're aware, that's nice but still fairly useless. In order to get Vista back up to speed, I had to track down my Vista DVD and use the start-up repair to get it back working. That got me to be able to boot back into Vista, but it still had issues. Thankfully, I used bcdedit's export function to create a backup of the MBR before I broke it, so I was able to use the import function to put it back together. Moral #1 of the story: backups are cool.
Once Vista was fixed, I opted to go for a more mature Linux distribution to take advantage of the more intelligent installer, and the added firepower. I chose Xubuntu because I like the minimalism of the Xfce desktop manager and I have always been a fan of the Ubuntu/Debian community. I burned a LiveCD and used the installer to reformat the 15GB and install the new OS. This time, I opted to let Linux install GRUB into my MBR and let it manage all booting tasks. GRUB automatically found my Vista partition and put it in as an entry in the boot window. So now my computer boots into either operating system just fine and I'm having lots of fun with it. I went ahead and installed Compiz on my machine since I had more powerful hardware and I wanted to "geek" the thing out. All in all, it looks pretty cool--and dare I say, pretty?
I went nuts yesterday and tried installing a bunch of sound production and creation software. I don't have the list on me now, but I didn't think Audacity was quite enough. I've been entertaining the idea of using a MIDI controller to run a synthesizer emulator. I'd also like to be able to run a loop station on my laptop. Apparently, most of this software relies on a small server called JACK. As advertised, it's supposed to manage sound and data connections among inputs, outputs, and clients (or software). Unfortunately, it seems to have broken ALSA or whatever it is that pumps sound out to my sound card. Guess I'll have to fix that later.
There are no screen shots, but I'm sure you've seen a desktop before. Mine is nothing special. The important part is I had a geek idea and I made it work. Moral #2: challenging yourself and trying new things is a great idea and essential to personal growth in my opinion.
Monday, July 7, 2008
All that learnin' paid off
A couple posts back, I wrote about this horrendous script I had to make for work. To sum it up, I had to iterate through, make comparisons, and write data when I found matches. Doing it iteratively, I ended up with nested loop 3 levels deep. Needless to say, the script was really slow and inefficient. I knew enough to recognize the fact, but I really could not think of a way to improve upon it.
Over the weekend, the problem got shoved to the back part of my mind that works on things without me really thinking about it. Finally the idea struck me that I could use a better data structure to perform the task. In my algorithm design and analysis class, we learned about hash functions and how to use a special table of keys and values to figure out the location of the desired data. I used something similar to that with VBScript's dictionary data structure.
Using the same assumption that I was dealing with pre-sorted data, I was able to make a dictionary for storing each first occurrence of a Supervisor ID in the data and the Excel row number as the value. I had the program create a dictionary of this information for both the Members sheet and the Addresses sheet. By using the dictionaries, the script could just jump to exactly where the desired data resided and write data that way. It took me ten minutes to do this morning what it took me nearly a week to do last week. Too bad I hadn't thought of it earlier.
Moral of the story: either pay attention to data algorithms classes, or at least know enough about it to look things up or ask a good friend.
Over the weekend, the problem got shoved to the back part of my mind that works on things without me really thinking about it. Finally the idea struck me that I could use a better data structure to perform the task. In my algorithm design and analysis class, we learned about hash functions and how to use a special table of keys and values to figure out the location of the desired data. I used something similar to that with VBScript's dictionary data structure.
Using the same assumption that I was dealing with pre-sorted data, I was able to make a dictionary for storing each first occurrence of a Supervisor ID in the data and the Excel row number as the value. I had the program create a dictionary of this information for both the Members sheet and the Addresses sheet. By using the dictionaries, the script could just jump to exactly where the desired data resided and write data that way. It took me ten minutes to do this morning what it took me nearly a week to do last week. Too bad I hadn't thought of it earlier.
Moral of the story: either pay attention to data algorithms classes, or at least know enough about it to look things up or ask a good friend.
Friday, June 27, 2008
My Summer Job
I realize I just posted, but my script is still running, it is not time for lunch yet, and I have a lot to catch up on.
I just spent some time writing about a script I had to write for work, but I've not really elaborated on what it is I do. I mentioned a few couple posts back that I work as an intern in the Business Recovery Services department for First National Bank of Omaha. As it turns out, this is an exciting, dynamic, and challenging field and I'm glad I chose to come here this summer.
The primary goal of our group is to provide internal consulting services to the corporate business units and our affiliates regarding business continuity planning and disaster recovery. The idea lies in that if a business unit can list its core processes and functionality and then identify what resources (locations, people, resources, supplies, technology) it needs to do them, it can develop plans to work around a situation in which one or more of those resources becomes unavailable.
What we do is work with each group to assist them in identifying their processes and resources, and guiding them through their planning development. We use a toolkit called eBRP to store and organize all the information and manage our efforts.
My group only consists of three people, including myself. The interesting thing is that I can bring my IT and computer science experiences to the table. I've pretty much moved into the lead role for all efforts regarding technology. Once ETS (our technology division) settles down, I'll be responsible for rolling out our planning efforts to them.
Another big thing I do is data gathering and processing. That sounds pretty bleak I suppose, but the state of technology representation in our system was immature and not sufficient to recovery business in the event of an emergency. Therefore, I had to contact different groups within ETS to identify what kinds of information we had to describe our technology infrastructure, where it was, and how we could get it into eBRP. The main areas I focused on were databases, networking, and servers. I wanted to ensure an automated data flow that would pool into our system, so I worked with the respective managers to schedule reports that would end up on my machine. From there, I had to write scripts that would parse the data and massage it into a format that would work well with eBRP's import tools. It turns out I've run into some weak spots with eBRP, and pulling all that off tends to be fairly difficult so far. The good news is that I wanted to learn the Python scripting language this summer, and it lended itself well to creating solutions for these problems.
So far I've gotten most of the data import processes to a state where they can be fully automated, but I want to make sure they're bug free and maintainable before I leave. Either way, it's a lot of fun and it has variety. The best part is that I feel challenged and rarely bored here.
One final thought. While working with the tools and processes here, I've begun to see how our efforts are pretty valuable to any organization. I've also seen how the tools and processes available aren't as effective, efficient, or robust as they could be. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many major players in that market so innovation seems to move slowly. It is entirely possible that if get an entrepreneurial spark before I graduate, I may try to create a more effective business recovery management solution and develop a consulting service around it. It's certainly an exciting field and I know quite a few talented people back at school that would be excited to help out. I suppose any readers that take an interest in this or have suggestions should feel free to contact me and let me know.
Ok, lunch time!
I just spent some time writing about a script I had to write for work, but I've not really elaborated on what it is I do. I mentioned a few couple posts back that I work as an intern in the Business Recovery Services department for First National Bank of Omaha. As it turns out, this is an exciting, dynamic, and challenging field and I'm glad I chose to come here this summer.
The primary goal of our group is to provide internal consulting services to the corporate business units and our affiliates regarding business continuity planning and disaster recovery. The idea lies in that if a business unit can list its core processes and functionality and then identify what resources (locations, people, resources, supplies, technology) it needs to do them, it can develop plans to work around a situation in which one or more of those resources becomes unavailable.
What we do is work with each group to assist them in identifying their processes and resources, and guiding them through their planning development. We use a toolkit called eBRP to store and organize all the information and manage our efforts.
My group only consists of three people, including myself. The interesting thing is that I can bring my IT and computer science experiences to the table. I've pretty much moved into the lead role for all efforts regarding technology. Once ETS (our technology division) settles down, I'll be responsible for rolling out our planning efforts to them.
Another big thing I do is data gathering and processing. That sounds pretty bleak I suppose, but the state of technology representation in our system was immature and not sufficient to recovery business in the event of an emergency. Therefore, I had to contact different groups within ETS to identify what kinds of information we had to describe our technology infrastructure, where it was, and how we could get it into eBRP. The main areas I focused on were databases, networking, and servers. I wanted to ensure an automated data flow that would pool into our system, so I worked with the respective managers to schedule reports that would end up on my machine. From there, I had to write scripts that would parse the data and massage it into a format that would work well with eBRP's import tools. It turns out I've run into some weak spots with eBRP, and pulling all that off tends to be fairly difficult so far. The good news is that I wanted to learn the Python scripting language this summer, and it lended itself well to creating solutions for these problems.
So far I've gotten most of the data import processes to a state where they can be fully automated, but I want to make sure they're bug free and maintainable before I leave. Either way, it's a lot of fun and it has variety. The best part is that I feel challenged and rarely bored here.
One final thought. While working with the tools and processes here, I've begun to see how our efforts are pretty valuable to any organization. I've also seen how the tools and processes available aren't as effective, efficient, or robust as they could be. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many major players in that market so innovation seems to move slowly. It is entirely possible that if get an entrepreneurial spark before I graduate, I may try to create a more effective business recovery management solution and develop a consulting service around it. It's certainly an exciting field and I know quite a few talented people back at school that would be excited to help out. I suppose any readers that take an interest in this or have suggestions should feel free to contact me and let me know.
Ok, lunch time!
While I wait...
So currently I'm at work waiting for this heinous script to finish running. Sadly, certain constraints forced me to write some pretty inefficient code when I knew there was a better way to do it and it's just killing me to watch my CPU run at 75-85% because of something I wrote.
To get an idea of the problem and the need for the monstrosity, KPMG is currently assisting our internal audit group (I suppose I ought to be careful about how much I let on here) develop standards for their own auditing of our disaster recovery procedures. Part of that means we need robust and effective calling trees to ensure smooth communication in the event of an emergency. We use a system called eBRP which is supposed to manage our employee information and generate calling trees from the data. Unfortunately, that seems to have been wishful thinking, so we have to come up with another solution. Suddenly my status as the only person on my team with programming experience becomes painfully obvious.
I recently got read-only rights to the eBRP database (internally hosted SQL Server) and I subsequently set up an ODBC connection. Since I don't have a development machine, I can't really install the majority of software publicly available and I don't think my needs justified submitting a request for SQL Management Studio. What I did instead was use Excel's data import tool to consume the ODBC data. This is kind of a neat trick, and it helped me understand the database schema a little better. However, once the request came down to figure out how to generate calling trees for KPMG, the beauty of the workaround lost its luster.
So the basic problem goes like this: for each employee, identify any employees that may report to him or her. For each of those employees, look up their contact information and record it in another Excel workbook. Seems simple enough, except this problem scales up to over 5,000 employee records linked across multiple worksheets (it did come from a database).
Again, since I'm not on a development machine, I had to figure out what language I would do this in. The requirements were that it needed to be able to run on Windows with minimal supporting installations and it needed to be able to access Excel's object models to manipulate and move data from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. VBScript came to mind as the most likely solution. I've never used VBScript before, and I really had no desire to ever try it, however it was easy enough to learn as I went and there were many examples online. I used SciTE which is a great multi-purpose editor and software deemed acceptable by the powers that be in InfoSec.
Now on to the performance issues. This is basically a search and compare problem, so I need to be able to iterate through the data and make comparisons. VBScript doesn't have access to Excel's search functions, so I had to loop through the data. Now, if you have any algorithm analysis experience, searching records iteratively for this solution would require one loop to go through each employee, another loop to identify their direct reports, and another loop to find contact information for each identified employee. So that's two levels of nested loops from and an n3 algorithm. It's not very pretty.
So with all that being said, I ran this script over an hour ago and it's still cooking. Some ideas popped into my head in my last meeting for a way to make the search algorithm a little smarter, and it's nice to be able to sort the data before I execute. Either way, it would've been great to just write a script to fire SQL queries and make this go a lot faster.
To get an idea of the problem and the need for the monstrosity, KPMG is currently assisting our internal audit group (I suppose I ought to be careful about how much I let on here) develop standards for their own auditing of our disaster recovery procedures. Part of that means we need robust and effective calling trees to ensure smooth communication in the event of an emergency. We use a system called eBRP which is supposed to manage our employee information and generate calling trees from the data. Unfortunately, that seems to have been wishful thinking, so we have to come up with another solution. Suddenly my status as the only person on my team with programming experience becomes painfully obvious.
I recently got read-only rights to the eBRP database (internally hosted SQL Server) and I subsequently set up an ODBC connection. Since I don't have a development machine, I can't really install the majority of software publicly available and I don't think my needs justified submitting a request for SQL Management Studio. What I did instead was use Excel's data import tool to consume the ODBC data. This is kind of a neat trick, and it helped me understand the database schema a little better. However, once the request came down to figure out how to generate calling trees for KPMG, the beauty of the workaround lost its luster.
So the basic problem goes like this: for each employee, identify any employees that may report to him or her. For each of those employees, look up their contact information and record it in another Excel workbook. Seems simple enough, except this problem scales up to over 5,000 employee records linked across multiple worksheets (it did come from a database).
Again, since I'm not on a development machine, I had to figure out what language I would do this in. The requirements were that it needed to be able to run on Windows with minimal supporting installations and it needed to be able to access Excel's object models to manipulate and move data from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. VBScript came to mind as the most likely solution. I've never used VBScript before, and I really had no desire to ever try it, however it was easy enough to learn as I went and there were many examples online. I used SciTE which is a great multi-purpose editor and software deemed acceptable by the powers that be in InfoSec.
Now on to the performance issues. This is basically a search and compare problem, so I need to be able to iterate through the data and make comparisons. VBScript doesn't have access to Excel's search functions, so I had to loop through the data. Now, if you have any algorithm analysis experience, searching records iteratively for this solution would require one loop to go through each employee, another loop to identify their direct reports, and another loop to find contact information for each identified employee. So that's two levels of nested loops from and an n3 algorithm. It's not very pretty.
So with all that being said, I ran this script over an hour ago and it's still cooking. Some ideas popped into my head in my last meeting for a way to make the search algorithm a little smarter, and it's nice to be able to sort the data before I execute. Either way, it would've been great to just write a script to fire SQL queries and make this go a lot faster.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Oops...I forgot about this
Well, I kind of let this thing go.
Since my last post, school ended, I started renting a house with a friend for the summer, and I got a new job.
School ended pretty well, and I'm looking forward to tackling my (hopefully) last year of school. There were a few interesting projects and other academic happenings which I suppose I can write about in later posts.
The house I am currently living in is fairly interesting as well. Apparently, it's an Omaha landmark. Who knew? The current owner bought it fairly recently and has been remodeling. Ours is currently the only unit done, but other college-age kids should be moving in at some point. As "guinea pigs" for the building, we spent our first week and a half without gas (so no cooking or hot water), a broken refrigerator (partially our fault, shhh), and no cable. All of those things have been fixed except for the cable, and we are getting close to done to putting everything away.
The only ridiculous thing about the house is the neighborhood. We are right on the edge of the Omaha Midtown Neighborhood, which is certainly full of beautiful building and history. The Gerald Ford Birthplace is within a few blocks of my house, actually. The less attractive part is all the prostitution and drugs in the area very close to mine. I suppose I'll live.
I recently started an internship at First National Bank. This is my third year working here in the last four, so it's kind of a neat experience to come back. I am currently working in the Business Recovery Services division. The goals of this group go nicely with all the risk management efforts we do in J.D. Edwards. This seems to go a little further than the standard risk identification, mitigation, and avoidance strategies prescribed by the modified RUP process we do in our Design Studio projects. I'll write more on that later.
Other than all those things, I'm looking forward to doing a lot of reading over the summer and hopefully I can come up with some insightful and interesting things to put here in the months to come.
Ok, time to stop pretending to work and hit the gym. ;-)
Cheers,
David
Since my last post, school ended, I started renting a house with a friend for the summer, and I got a new job.
School ended pretty well, and I'm looking forward to tackling my (hopefully) last year of school. There were a few interesting projects and other academic happenings which I suppose I can write about in later posts.
The house I am currently living in is fairly interesting as well. Apparently, it's an Omaha landmark. Who knew? The current owner bought it fairly recently and has been remodeling. Ours is currently the only unit done, but other college-age kids should be moving in at some point. As "guinea pigs" for the building, we spent our first week and a half without gas (so no cooking or hot water), a broken refrigerator (partially our fault, shhh), and no cable. All of those things have been fixed except for the cable, and we are getting close to done to putting everything away.
The only ridiculous thing about the house is the neighborhood. We are right on the edge of the Omaha Midtown Neighborhood, which is certainly full of beautiful building and history. The Gerald Ford Birthplace is within a few blocks of my house, actually. The less attractive part is all the prostitution and drugs in the area very close to mine. I suppose I'll live.
I recently started an internship at First National Bank. This is my third year working here in the last four, so it's kind of a neat experience to come back. I am currently working in the Business Recovery Services division. The goals of this group go nicely with all the risk management efforts we do in J.D. Edwards. This seems to go a little further than the standard risk identification, mitigation, and avoidance strategies prescribed by the modified RUP process we do in our Design Studio projects. I'll write more on that later.
Other than all those things, I'm looking forward to doing a lot of reading over the summer and hopefully I can come up with some insightful and interesting things to put here in the months to come.
Ok, time to stop pretending to work and hit the gym. ;-)
Cheers,
David
Monday, March 31, 2008
Random Collection of Software I Like
This post is a little more focused on technology, so if that's not something you're interested in, I'd encourage you to stop here.
There are already many posts out there like this one, but the more time I spend jumping around and taking new things in from the Internet, the more I run across new and better ways to use my computer. This is a collection of lesser-known applications I use pretty often.
This is an application launcher similar to Quicksilver on a Mac. The idea is that you can activate Colibri and start typing the name of the application you want to run, and it returns matching results as you type. I like it because I can remove shortcuts and icons from my desktop, and I can keep my hands on the keyboard.
I haven't had the chance to check this one out too much, but it seems pretty cool. It lets you find and download free TV from the Internet. Most of the channels I looked at seemed like obscure channels I've never heard of or had any interest in, but I'm sure it could be fun to use if I give it some time.
This is one of my favorites. If you are familiar with the Pandora Internet radio service at all, then this is pretty handy. It is a small desktop application that manages your radio without you having to open an Internet browser (granted, you still need an Internet connection). If you like Pandora at all, this is worth checking out.
This is incredibly useful if you use Microsoft Outlook and have a Google Calendar too. Google Calendar is free to use and you don't need a Google mail account to use it. It's nice because you can access it from anywhere, but you may still want to integrate it into your Outlook application. Google Calendar Sync lets you do just that.
Ok that's it for now. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and all of this stuff was found first in other places, but I thought I'd share with those that know me. I'll be sure to put up more if I find them.
Cheers!
There are already many posts out there like this one, but the more time I spend jumping around and taking new things in from the Internet, the more I run across new and better ways to use my computer. This is a collection of lesser-known applications I use pretty often.
Colibri
This is an application launcher similar to Quicksilver on a Mac. The idea is that you can activate Colibri and start typing the name of the application you want to run, and it returns matching results as you type. I like it because I can remove shortcuts and icons from my desktop, and I can keep my hands on the keyboard.
VirtuaWin
Virtual windows are common on Linux or Mac operating systems. They can be described as a logical way to have 4 windows within one monitor and switch between them. This allows you to organize applications and information into different windows and switch between them. I looked around to see if there was a similar solution for Windows, and I ran into VirtuaWin. After a few minutes to set up navigation short-cuts and other configuration stuff, it seems to work just fine. Unfortunately, you miss out on some of the cool transitions and desktop stuff you would get with the KDE or Gnome desktop managers, it still is a handy tool to have.SpaceTime
Miro
I haven't had the chance to check this one out too much, but it seems pretty cool. It lets you find and download free TV from the Internet. Most of the channels I looked at seemed like obscure channels I've never heard of or had any interest in, but I'm sure it could be fun to use if I give it some time.
OpenPandora
This is one of my favorites. If you are familiar with the Pandora Internet radio service at all, then this is pretty handy. It is a small desktop application that manages your radio without you having to open an Internet browser (granted, you still need an Internet connection). If you like Pandora at all, this is worth checking out.
Google Calendar Sync
This is incredibly useful if you use Microsoft Outlook and have a Google Calendar too. Google Calendar is free to use and you don't need a Google mail account to use it. It's nice because you can access it from anywhere, but you may still want to integrate it into your Outlook application. Google Calendar Sync lets you do just that.
Ok that's it for now. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and all of this stuff was found first in other places, but I thought I'd share with those that know me. I'll be sure to put up more if I find them.
Cheers!
Saturday, March 29, 2008
First Post...
I never really thought I'd have enough worthwhile or interesting things to say that I'd ever need to start a blog, but over the last couple weeks I've had the pleasure of running across things I've found interesting and thought this would be a good way to share.
I think it will primarily consist of technology news or tools that I run across, but I hope to also share things ranging from my thoughts or discoveries in the realm of music, economics, politics (although I don't see that happening very often), and any other experiences I've had so far in college.
For those of you know who have known me for more than 5 minutes will hopefully find this a far cry from my usual behavior as I intend this to be a more professional, worthwhile form of expression. I'll leave the more idiotic posts for my Xanga, which is a more satirical and sarcastic look at blogging and a delightful opportunity for me to be a moron.
Hopefully this doesn't degrade into a meaningless forum for me to voice useless opinion. And hopefully my language isn't as inflated or unnecessarily verbose as it is now (I don't know what the deal with that is). Conversely, I hope that somebody is able to find something useful or interesting in each post.
Ok, so here goes nothing...
I think it will primarily consist of technology news or tools that I run across, but I hope to also share things ranging from my thoughts or discoveries in the realm of music, economics, politics (although I don't see that happening very often), and any other experiences I've had so far in college.
For those of you know who have known me for more than 5 minutes will hopefully find this a far cry from my usual behavior as I intend this to be a more professional, worthwhile form of expression. I'll leave the more idiotic posts for my Xanga, which is a more satirical and sarcastic look at blogging and a delightful opportunity for me to be a moron.
Hopefully this doesn't degrade into a meaningless forum for me to voice useless opinion. And hopefully my language isn't as inflated or unnecessarily verbose as it is now (I don't know what the deal with that is). Conversely, I hope that somebody is able to find something useful or interesting in each post.
Ok, so here goes nothing...
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