David's Blog -- Tech, Music, and Random Findings

Resonate

2010-02-06T18:17:00.000-08:00

"To vibrate or sound, especially in response to another vibration"

I've been digging this song lately. Maybe you can too.

"I Can Feel A Hot One"

I could feel a hot one taking me down
For a moment, I could feel the force
Fainted to the point of tears
And you were holding on to make a point
What's the point?

I'm but a clean man, stable and alone man
Make it so I won't have to try
The faces always stay the same
So I face the fact that I'm just fine
I said that I'm just fine

I remember, head down,
After you had found out
Manna is a hell of a drug
And I need a little more, I think
Because enough is never quite enough
What's enough?

I took it like a grown man crying on the pavement
Hoping you would show your face
But I haven't heard a thing you've said
In at least a couple hundred days
What'd you say?

I was in the front seat, shaking it out
And I was asking if you felt alright
I never want to hear the truth
I want to hear your voice, it sounded fine
My voice, it sounded fine

I could feel my heartbeat taking me down
And for the moment, I would sleep alright
I'm dealing with a selfish fear
To keep me up another restless night
Another restless night

The blood was dry, it was sober
The feeling of audible cracks
And I could tell it was over
From the curtains that hung from your neck

And I realized that then you were perfect
And my teeth ripping out of my head
And it looked like a painting I once knew
Back when my thoughts weren't entirely intact

To pray for what I thought were angels
Ended up being ambulances
And the Lord showed me dreams of my daughter
She was crying inside your stomach

And I felt love again

Bird Love

2010-02-06T17:41:00.001-08:00

My apartment gets a lot of big black birds hanging out on the 7th floor deck. I love how big the birds are here. It's crazy to see these things running around and wonder who is feeding them protein bars when the rest of Seattle isn't looking.

So one day I was hanging out checking out the city and the sunset and there happened to be a couple black birds hanging out close by. I took a step and they flew away a bit. As curiosity started taking over, I started seeing just how little I could move before they would get scared away. I flinched an arm and they jumped. I turned my head and they fled to the panic room. It didn't take much.

Man, birds are flighty.

In one moment, I stared up at the birds as they discussed their narrow escape at a new and safe location. I began to wish they could listen in on what was going on through my head: if only you knew that I am not here to hurt you. If only you would stay, I might actually be nice to you. I might actually take care of you. If I could communicate in some way you could understand, I could show you some bird love.

Well maybe. I think birds are kind of creepy and I would never want one as a pet.

I think people can be flighty too.

Fear of being hurt used to make me shy away from people. Any attempt by anyone to get close would send me flying to the panic room I set up for myself in my head. Since then, I have learned to be ok with being a bit more vulnerable, a bit more open, a bit more honest. Mostly I have learned to be a bit more trusting and to realize I could never be loved if I fly away from anything that came close.

If I could speak bird, I would like to be more reassuring. I would like to communicate safety and kindness to people who might want it. But I'm bad enough with human words as it is. I think I would be ok if I learned how to show more bird love.

I have seen my fair share of crap in my day. Perhaps I have actually grown or perhaps I have actually become more desensitized to fear. I think my bigger issue now is failing to be flighty is really just failing to pursue. I don't get out of the way. I just take the hit because that's what I know. But to be honest, I'd rather take the hits and cling to the thought that one day something will actually be bird love.

So there's two sides to that fence and I feel like I've been on both sides of them. On one side, I never let anybody get close. On another, I just stopped caring and hoped for the best.

I'd love to learn how to perch on that one happy place in the middle--if one exists.

I think it's going to involve me learning the language though. I used to be good at turning insides to English. Maybe I'll learn to do that again someday. That would be nice anyway.

Observe the evidences of humanity. And then clean it

2010-01-31T18:19:00.001-08:00

For the last few months, I've been working with the People's Belltown Republic. It's a small group of people who care about our neighborhood and want to invest in it. We meet on Sunday's near 3rd and Blanchard and pick up trash. Occasionally we do things to effect some environment goodness in an urban environment. However, I'm not the environmental studies extraordinaire in the group so I just do what I'm told.

There are days when I pick up things hidden in bushes and in corners that really make you realize that life is not peaches and cream for everybody. Whether forced into a lifestyle or by choice, people often leave evidence of themselves in the trash we pick up and it sometimes breaks my heart.

If anything, it moves me to compassion and compassion moves me to action. I have quickly come to love Seattle and this little crockpot of people we call Belltown. I'm really excited to see our little group grow. Moreover, it's a lot of fun to see Belltown striving to make a community of itself and to support all the groups that want to be a part of that.

This really isn't an epic post with deeply insightful meaning. I think I'm too tired right now to be epic. However, I really like what I'm doing and I think it's worth sharing. If you ever want to come check it out sometime, come join me on Sundays at 3.

You'll find a group of really cool people. You'll get to have a few beers with us after. You'll be a part of a neighborhood you may come to love as much as I do.

POST COMPLETED!

Like a kid again

2010-01-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit delayed in writing about this, but last weekend I wandered into a place in South Lake Union that quickly became one of my favorite places in Seattle.

Jillian's Billiard Club is a pool hall, an arcade, a place to hang out, and overall the place elicited a sense of unbridled excitement I hadn't felt in a long time.

I went with a few friends and everybody started nerding out right away. They have many of the old school "shoot zombies, mutants, and aliens" games and all the knock-offs of the same. There are more of the myriad racing games than you can shake a stick at--including one where you can drive a semi-truck around.

There are pool tables all over the place, as well as a few ping-pong tables upstairs.

We wandered around for a while and forgot how busy we were trying to grow up. By the end of the night, the collection of guys that went spent about an hour battling out over foosball.

Overall, it's a solid place to check out and I'm sure I'll be going back.

For this reason, I like Seattle

2010-01-05T14:01:00.000-08:00

I just saw this on TV and it turns out the commercial is also on the web site. I love that this is real. I love that this is Seattle. I love weird things.

At the Movies

2010-01-05T12:41:00.000-08:00

You know how at the movie theater they have that big sound to show off the Dolby sound system or whatever it is they happen to use? I really think more movies should start this way instead.

Eye Poping Lemur - For more amazing video clips, click here

Making it easy to find the 'lol'

2010-01-04T13:41:00.000-08:00

I'm usually a fan of simple humor. I like it when things are dumb and I don't have to spend too much energy to enjoy it. In fact, with most of the complexities and challenges I face, sometimes not thinking is a huge relief.

So it is with my latest StumbleUpon find: 5 second videos
This is corny, simple, and dumb. Aka, right up my alley:

Poke him with a stick. Yeah, he's still alive

2009-12-29T11:13:00.001-08:00

Oh goodness, it has been a while.

A recent e-mail reminded me that I had a blog, and a quick read over the last post kind of scared me because it seemed a bit depressing.

Things have been changing for me here in Seattle!

For starters, I no longer work at Microsoft. So that's really big news. I think I've already talked to the people close to me about it, so I suppose it's fair to write now.

I want to be really careful and tactful here as I write this, because I can see how this kind of thing could be a sensitive situation. So first and foremost, I think I learned a lot about the time I spent there and I am pretty excited I even had a shot.

So the long and short of it is that things weren't really working out in my team. I will refrain from going into the "why" and so on on a public blog like this. But it does make me realize the importance on working on something that elicits passion for the work. In the position I was in, I didn't feel like I was working on problems I was prepared for in college, nor was I able to get myself excited for what we were doing. Moreover, I didn't feel like I was often able to get traction in the environment I was in. So maybe it just wasn't the place I was meant to be.

In the short time since then, I have been feeling my life flowing back into me. I look around at Seattle and the relationships I've had and I realize I haven't taken much time to enjoy either. I live in a beautiful city, and I really want to stay here and pursue it more.

So where am I going now? Well, the first few days, I spent some time thinking about what I actually like to do. In college, it was easy enough to pick something up and just be good at it. I think there were a lot of things I was good at, but few things I actually took the time to enjoy. I guess in college, I didn't really need to enjoy the work. I just needed to 'dominate'.

So here are the things I have figured out:

I like working with and helping people

I like working on things that help people

I like helping people solve their problems

I like using communication and project management to walk through a solution

aka I actually enjoy meetings, which is kind of weird

I like small teams where there is a lot of collaboration

I still like writing software

So I'm still kind of figuring out what I would 'love' to be doing for work for some time. I still love doing things with music and serving others, but I suppose roles in software engineering are the only things that make sense to me professionally.

For now, I'll focus on getting back on my feet and finding a job that keeps me going here in Seattle.

If anything, this has been more of an exciting time than a depressing time. I am stoked for what the next few months hold.

I'll come up with other things to write sometime soon. It has been an awakening of a realization I have always known, but work is not the only thing that identifies me or that defines my life. I have also gotten to do some cool things with music and other stuff in Seattle in the last few months. I'll write about that soon.

Flub

2009-11-13T13:27:00.001-08:00

Work is kicking my butt lately, and I guess it's fair to say life might be too. But I suppose I ought to update my faithful followers, so here goes a dash through the week.

Sunday
Played music for kids ministry and had a good meeting about that. It looks like I get to be somewhat helpful to the people at church, so that's exciting. I also think I'm going to be responsible for a ton of planning, so that will be fun.
I also went out for a drink with my friend Ryan from my building and a new guy named Sergio. He also works at Microsoft. He is also 22. We might as well be clones. Me and all the other hundreds of 20-somethings working at Microsoft and living in Seattle. I feel so special

Monday
I had my weekly small-group thing with the guys. It was my turn to lead the group, and it made me realize what being a PM has done to my life. Seriously, I want to call out action items on every meeting and every second I feel like I'm wasting time bugs me. Like.I'm.Doing.Now.
Well I might as well finish. Anyway, the point of that story is that I like to "PM" the crap out of everything lately until I remind myself to be a normal person again.

Tuesday
Went to the Belltown Community Council meeting to make a park on Bell street from 1st to 5th. I really love the idea. I really didn't love how negative and pessimistic everybody was. But I do love my neighborhood. It's so quirky and I love it. Anyway, safety is a big deal here and Bell street isn't the poster child for the kind of place you want to hang around at night. So hopefully the neighborhood sees that doing nothing other than complaining hasn't improved a damn thing, and perhaps we could use this movement to do some good on Bell Street. We'll see.

Wednesday
Band practice got canceled, so I worked on a spec and a prototype for work all night. Thrilling.

Thursday
Frantic rush at work to get things done. Bad day. Realizing half the crap I designed isn't going through. I was pretty low on sleep at that point.
Later that night, I got invited to a random jam session and drove to Lord-knows-where in SoDo (south Seattle) to find some practice space that looked like an abandoned warehouse. I haven't actually gotten to play guitar with a group in a while--I always end up playing bass. I haven't been in punk mode in a while either, and I feel like I've drifted so far into my jazzy/indie/technical mode that I might not know how to do punk anymore. Well, I figured something out and it was fun.

Friday
Hell. I just need to make it through work and then we'll see what is worth writing about. I want to try to make it to the Belltown art walk tonight, and it would be nice if my plans to hang around and watch movies with some friends at my place go through.

The rest of the weekend
I am taking a group from my building to volunteer at FareStart on Saturday. Turns out recruiting at the McGuire is harder to do than I would have hoped. But that is what I get to do tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it. I think some people I know are having a wedding reception-type of deal (even though the wedding was a few weeks ago and not anywhere close to here) in the afternoon.
Sunday, I'm just planning on doing kid's music stuff again and trying to reclaim my life.

Wish me luck!

Hello people on the 545. I am, in fact, not dead

2009-11-04T11:28:00.001-08:00

I haven't written to you folks in a while. I'm still there every day, but somewhere between being incredibly frantic to get things done at work and desperately grasping at the notion of feeling settled in my not-work life in Seattle, I forget to acknowledge you.

The collective "you" that is one of the few constants in my Seattle social scene (...SNAKES--because the chance to continue the alliteration was just too tempting)

So one time last week, I actually got to speak to one of you.

Girl that works at Nintendo and was reading a book in Japanese: it was a pleasure to meet you and I want to thank you for being one of the first women on the bus to acknowledge my existence.

To recap for the rest of last week, nothing else happened.

One thing I have started to notice: the best way to keep an open seat next to you is to make eye contact with everybody that comes down the aisle. It's like all of a sudden I have the power to make a person realize I exist and I'm not just a warm mass of tissue next to an available seat. 545 commuters, and Seattle in general at times, seem to really just be uncomfortable dealing with you when you exist in their social experience.

Or maybe I'm just that unappealing. Who knows. Either way, I have figured you out and now I get to sit by myself most times :)

It certainly helps in my now almost-certain pass out sessions on the way to and from work. Sleeping on the bus used to really weird me out, but now I kind of love it.

But I'll certainly always wake up the next time Nintendo woman comes or some equally friendly soul walks down the aisle. I seriously doubt every individual that happens to be male on the bus is as creepy as you seem to think they are.

Anyway. I'll try to come up with something more interesting to report soon.

Some thoughts on playing bass

2009-10-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Last night, I helped out with a friend of mine who is trying to put a band together. By "helped out," I mean I got asked to sit in since apparently nobody plays bass, but it seems like these guys are planning on making this long term, so I may be "helping out" for a while.

I have always thought of myself as a guitarist first. My first instrument was a bass, but I always ended up playing guitar more and it's generally a lot more interesting to play when you're by yourself.

I started playing bass back when I listened to Blink 182 and the like pretty religiously. As a result, my bass technique was boring, I grew tired of it, and I gravitated toward guitar. As I grew up, I started listening to more interesting music and realized there was a lot more to bass than I thought, so I went back. Since then, I've learned tons more technique and playing bass is actually a ton of fun. It is maybe one of the less glorifying roles in a band, but most music producers or "HOW 2 B IN A BAND, FOR DUMMIES" books will tell you it's a pretty key role. So here are some things I picked up.

Learn to think like a drummer

When I play bass, I often feel like I am playing what the drummer plays, except I'm also playing notes and making less weird faces. My bass playing got immensely better when I started jamming with talented drummers. Conversely, I always found it incredibly difficult to do anything mildly interesting if the drummer was boring.
Listen to the drummer's kicks. Are you hitting the core notes there? Are you emphasizing the beat, driving the rhythm, and defining the progression with your bass?
Listen to the snares and cymbal work. Are you accenting in a tasteful way?
Listen for the drummer's fills. Do you have a run to complement?
Make sure you pay attention to the drummer. There are times when I shut out the rest of the band and just interact with the drummer and that's really all I need sometimes. It helps when your drummer is cool person because I think there is an important connection between those two roles in a band.
Last night I had the pleasure of jamming with a really talented drummer. He ended up telling me he hadn't jammed with a bassist who accented his high-hat work while also syncing up with the bass drum stuff. I really hadn't thought about that, but it just felt natural and it was actually a lot of fun.

Learn to think like the other musicians in your band

So as a bassist, we're worried about rhythm, but we also can play notes. This part is actually kind of fun if you jam with people who can articulate what they're trying to do. Knowing what movement feels right and what chords or colors are being played helps as a bass player. There is actually a lot of potential to add interesting tension, runs, complements and other musical terms that I was never taught. Bass players don't have to be stupid. Know what minors, modes, scales, and keys are. In my experience, learning to play just about every instrument in the band not only makes you awesome, but it makes you a more complementary musician regardless of the role you fill.

Learn when to be interesting. Learn when to be simple

Ok, there are times where it's appropriate to be boring. I think I make this mistake a lot where I want to play something cool and it just comes out sounding busy and annoying. So maybe you don't need to arpeggiate through the progression or add slap/pop to every song. I've heard recordings of myself where I was playing what I thought sounded really cool but then it just sounded annoying when I listened to the mixed playback. Remember there is an overall sound that you should support, not dominate.

Learn different techniques

So obviously slap/pop is the cool thing bass players "need to learn," but there are other little tricks that are also cool to know. I recently learned what I can only describe as a weird finger slip over strings that lets me play triplets and do string skipping.
For some examples, the bass player from Portugal. The Man does something cool like what I described in the verses for "Lay me back down". The classic crazy bass line that taught me a lot comes from Rush in the song "YYZ".
The bass player from Pinback is also pretty awesome and has a very innovative and unique way of playing bass. Here's a cool song called "Penelope" by them that is a good example. He almost strums it (you'd have to watch something on YouTube to see what I mean).
This final song is called "Roundabout" by a band called Yes. This is an example of going crazy without sounding annoying. The song is absolutely epic and absolutely long, but you should at least listen to what they have (or had?) going on.
Listen to different bass players for the bands you listen to and find out what cool tricks they do. Then learn them. Seriously, watch a lot of YouTube. Even if they don't teach you the techniques, half of the battle is finding out these techniques exist and then working at it until it becomes your own.

Learn to listen to different kinds of music

This should be a given for any musician. Listen to everything. Find out what you like and don't like and internalize everything into your own personal sound. The fun part about being versatile is you can walk into almost any band and contribute something cool. The absolute best is when the band can put multiple styles into one song and still do it tastefully. I think Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground does that very well. In fact, I'm even going to ask you to watch this video to see how a band that big can still put a consistent sound together.
WATCH THIS:

Mmmk, so I drove to work so I don't have a fancy bus post, but hopefully this was somewhat interesting. Granted, I doubt most of you play bass, but maybe you should learn! I have an extra one if you're ever interested :)

THAT'S IT FOR THIS POST.

Dear "People on the 545 route" the morning of 10/21/2009

2009-10-21T16:34:00.000-07:00

I fell asleep most of the way.
Sorry guys!

Also, yesterday evening I started playing with the Korg Kaossilator on the bus and lots of people asked me about it. One guy told me he was a DJ and a Producer and wished me luck after he asked me tons of questions about it. Ok.

Last thought. To you children on the bus who have been told sitting there with your mouths hanging open is ok: I'm sorry. It's not.

Or maybe that's the way kids let others know they're cool these days. Maybe I'm wrong.

But I don't think I am. Close your mouth unless you're sick and you can't breathe through your nose.

Dear "People on the 545 route" the morning of 10/20/2009

2009-10-20T09:20:00.001-07:00

Can you believe it's almost the end of October? Holy crap.

We had a crowded bus today. I hope those of you who had to stand as we barreled through the fog on the stretch of road spanning Lake Washington have a wonderful day to make up for the inauspicious start.

And I have to thank you for being a little more chipper about the situation than a gentleman on the bus yesterday evening. The bus driver on the way home last night was kind enough to stop for me after he had already pulled out of the Overlake Transit Center bus bay for the 545--even though I sneakily ran around the back way and caught him as he was leaving in my direction. Apparently, the normal long bus had broken down and we were on a normal downtown bus. A little more cozy than normal, but still convenient transportation nonetheless.

Well one fellow saw the bus as we pulled up to give him a ride and he immediately made a point of displaying his disapproval with nasty looks before he even got on. He immediately complained to the driver about "the tiny bus" and shot nasty looks at everybody as he shook his head in disgust. Of course, he ended up standing right in front of me as I also stood in the back of the bus.

Was this free transportation really that bad? Was this situation that far beneath him that he needed to let us know just how disgraced he was? It was really starting to bug me. And then he started being rude to people around him and wouldn't cooperate as we tried to work together like a human Tetris game to shuffle people in and out of the bus. He was seriously a jerk and the way he was treating everybody else was starting to get me mad.

All of a sudden I felt like I was offended as he was offensive to everybody else. As if I should be sticking up for people or the defender of the oppressed. Why, I have no idea, but I mustered up the most stone-cold glare I could manage and prayed we would make eye contact.

And then I realized how foolish I was being. Matching hatred for hatred wasn't going to fix this guy. I started thinking about how I have been on this kick of being kind, loving, and gracious to everybody. Especially the ones that make it hard and difficult. And I felt like a hypocrite for throwing it out the window and weak in my own positions for being affected by this freakazoid on the bus.

I had to check myself a lot the rest of the way home. So maybe I'm not totally awesome at being kind to the least deserving, but what makes any of us deserve kindness anyway?

So yeah, it was a good reminder of the following:

Having to stand on the bus is not the worst thing in the world

Being kind to some people can be hard

I could stand to gain some perspective and not become so enraged or emotionally affected when I see others wronged. Granted, I still think it's wrong and I still want to get involved, but not with an emotional charge because it changes the way I think

I really should charge my Zune so I would have something to do when I can't sit and read

So that seemed like a major digression, but the point is that we faced a similar situation this morning and nobody freaked out. Nobody that fit on the bus anyway. So thanks for that guys :)

I also read some really cool stuff about love this morning--what, love? dude you're lame. I know.

Yeah, I still think I'm a ways off from ever figuring that stuff out and how people are even supposed to deal with each other or believe that anybody could love them for no reason. For some people, that just could never make sense and they are convinced they can't be loved and won't allow anybody to love them. Some stare love right in the face each day and can't be convinced that it's real. Others desperately want to believe it's real but maybe can't see it. I don't know. It's all confusing and it's all something I want to believe and understand. So maybe I'll figure it out and then write a disgustingly emotional and terrifyingly boring blog post about it.

Until then, happy bussing. See you tomorrow Seattle-to-Redmond commuters.

More music toys

2009-10-19T13:25:00.000-07:00

So in my weekend defined by lack of significant accomplishments, I managed to pick up a new racket-making device for my apartment already filled with too many instruments.

I got myself a Korg Kaossilator and it is already one of my favorite things ever. It's this little machine I can fit in my back pocket and all it has for an interface is a touchpad, a knob, and some buttons. (I don't feel like stealing images today, so you may just have to click the link and see for yourself)

I spent most of my free time in my apartment sitting around with my DL-4 on loop mode--because nobody likes being confined to 8 beats--and jamming out. Only on this thing can you have that much fun with two thumbs. Well, I take that back. You can have a lot of fun with two thumbs on a Nintendo 64, but that's besides the point.

I'm not entirely sure how I could use this with a band. I'm starting to get a better sense of where my fingers should go to deterministically play certain tones, and it is capable of setting keys and the scales within that key. But otherwise I just jack around and hope whatever comes out somewhat complements whatever is being played live or looped.

Hopefully I can be cliche and boring and shoot videos of what this can do--like that hasn't been done already. It might spice up this blog better than daily letters to strangers on a bus could.

Dear "People on the 545 route" the morning of 10/19/2009

2009-10-19T09:19:00.000-07:00

Good morning!

There were only about 10 of you on the bus today. That was kind of weird. Maybe I missed the "skip out on work" memo. It's like senior skip day and only the cool kids knew about it.

Sorry I neglected to say anything toward the end of the week. Wednesday, I actually got to ride with one of my friends, so naturally I was excited--I ended up falling asleep on the bus anyway--and forgot to post. Thursday I drove myself. Friday--err, I have no excuse.

But, today, the fault is not my own. Nobody got on the bus.

I can share with you that I tried out taking a thermos of hot tea from home for the first time. My suspicion that it tasted like soap discouraged me from finishing.

I hope to see more of you tomorrow!

Dear "People on the 545 route" the morning of 10/13/2009

2009-10-13T09:30:00.000-07:00

We managed to get a short bus today. Strange, eh?

I wonder if I was the only one to wonder if I somehow managed to get on the wrong bus.

I sat in the back, so I didn't get a chance to observe everybody today. I'm sure you all were just lovely though, so thank you for being quiet as I dreamed of passing out over Lake Washington. Somehow, I woke up in sheer panic this morning when my alarm went off. I was absolutely sure everything at work was broken in the split second it took for me to go from being peacefully asleep to being disturbingly awake. Maybe that's why I'm exhausted already.

Thank you for supporting me in my mini-disaster when I realized my little Zune device decided to be out of batteries again.

There really isn't anything interesting to say today, so perhaps we'll close with another quiet celebration that we didn't all die in a horrible fiery bus accident this morning. I hear those happen all the time.

Have a wonderful day bus people,

David

Dear "People on the 545 route" the morning of 10/12/2009

2009-10-12T13:59:00.000-07:00

We shared about 45 minutes together getting to work, or wherever it was we were going. If you weren't going to work, well I think I might be jealous. We spend a good deal of time ignoring each other, and that bugs me. Anyway, this is my letter to you.

To the bus driver:
I hope you actually hear me and know that I mean it when I say thanks and I wish you a good day. I want you to feel like you exist, even though we all tend to take you for granted. Seriously, you make the morning so much better since I don't have to drive.

To the guy with the shoes:
I thought it was strange that you sat down right next to that lady when there was a completely empty seat across from me. Maybe you feel uncomfortable in the turny part where the front part of the bus attaches to the extended section, and that is totally understandable. If not, then I just think it's weird the way you sat down with such a flourish and unbuckled the seat-belt that doubles as your man-bag strap. But I will forever recognize you by your shoes. Those black and white, I-belong-in-the-50's things. I bet you're good at the foxtrot or something obscure like that. I'm proud of you for wearing them and I hope they make you feel awesome. I meant that sincerely.

To the guys who stand up way to early:
You really need to get off the bus that fast, eh? I bet it feels really cool to stand at attention and then brush past everybody so you can get to the front. Getting off first is important and all, but last I checked we both made it to the cross-walk at the same time. Whatever floats your boats, homies.

To the people who don't work at Microsoft:
Not that I fault you, but does it feel weird to be on a bus full of people who work at the same place? I sometimes feel like a sheep in the herd being shuttled off to work, and you just sit among us free to go anywhere else. I wonder if that makes you feel free. Or anything. Or if you notice at all.

To the girl I'm pretty sure works at Microsoft:
I'm also pretty sure I might have blown off an e-mail from you because I decided it was too randomizing. Oops.
It's a good thing I've become somewhat invisible on the bus.

To the lady that worked on her laptop the whole time and didn't even close it to get off the bus:
Whoa. Can I buy you a book or lend you my newspaper or something?

To everybody on the bus:
Keep up the good work. Everybody did a great job of pretending everybody else didn't exist.

Until tomorrow,

David

Smorgasbord

2009-10-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

Smorgasbord. A word that means "a collection containing a variety of sorts of things"

A word that also aptly describes my mind this evening, so why not blog about it?

Random thought #1
I was watching TV and a lady on a commercial was trying to sell Gold Bond skin lotion. She said something like "I can't feel young when my skin looks old" and I immediately thought, "it's probably because you're old."
I think I may be more practical and literal than I need to be most times.

Random thought #2
Most people, if not all, are gifted with some passion in life. Some passions are quite admirable and inspirational. Others are fascinating and cool. Lately I've been realizing one of my passions is grammar and good language use. I think most people probably find that annoying.

Random thought #3
I've been thinking a lot lately of how I could be more useful and significant with music. I spend enough time thinking about music, arranging songs in my head, and learning new instruments and techniques. I have been considering perhaps I should put it to good use. I'm really excited to figure this out, and I wouldn't be disappointed if this is something I felt drawn to more in the future.

Random thought #4
I wonder how much we let people in our past affect how we treat the innocent and unrelated of the present and future. In my own life, I often still assume nothing I have to say that takes more than 30 seconds would be interesting to anybody. This includes both in social situations and in writing. And I can think of the person in my past that makes me think this way. That person is long gone, so why is it still there? Why do other people do the same thing? I can think of others who let people I will never know affect how they interact with me. Is that right? Do I choose to hold on to those things, rather than forgiving the issue and moving on? This one is a little deeper than the others, and perhaps I'll delve into it more some other time.

Random thought #5
I recently read a book by a woman who I later realized was somewhat feminist. I had never read any "feminist" work before, though I don't know that I would classify it as such nor should anybody. Either way, it was interesting to read as an unassuming male with no background on the author, her intent, or her work. I began unconsciously notice there were no named men other than the powerless, gay, religious, or dying. I honestly don't know if the author even intended for a person like me to read the book. I'm confused by this. I don't think I've ever been exposed to that before, nor have I had the insight into a woman's mind with those impressions of men.

I can't imagine reading one book is going to help me realize just how a woman's mind might work, nor can I assume this one woman is representative of all women. But perhaps I appreciate a bit more why women act in ways I don't get right away. That's another deep one I probably won't delve into in this post.

Random thought #6
It kind of freaks me out when I can actually see somebody actively trying to be someone or something other than what naturally are. Or when I realize I'm doing it myself. Seriously, people facing pressure to be something unnatural to them and then caving--willingly or not--happens. It happens a lot. There are times where identifying something you need to be or improve is appropriate. Change is good. But it still freaks me out if the intentions or motivations aren't right (because that's well defined...).

Ok, now enough of weird random thoughts.

Picture time:
Had to fix this. Twitpic was not impressed with my hot-linking skills
I hit myself in the face taking off my guitar. It sucked. It's usually what I enjoy doing when I have nothing else to do in an evening or if I'm spending time alone. Apparently my guitar wasn't into it and she let me know the hard way :)
Please observe alien looking bump under my right eyebrow.

One of the things I love about my apartment and why I chose this place is that I knew I'd get good views like this in time. Thank God for the sun setting in the West. This makes me think I need a better camera.

Ok, well hopefully you liked the pictures!

And that killed enough time that I feel like going to bed now. This was good :)

Cooking for a cause

2009-10-07T09:15:00.000-07:00

CATCHY TITLE, RIGHT?

In my never ending quest to come up with titles that don't make me feel absolutely ridiculous, I find myself woefully inept once again.

But now that that is over, we shall move on. Again, I haven't posted in a while and I probably must forgo the more mundane details that have passed since I last wrote. This post will be around a volunteering opportunity I've found here in Seattle that I actually enjoy.

I went to FareStart a long time ago with my team from work. I can most simply describe FareStart as a food kitchen that prepares meals for homeless shelters in Seattle. It is also a school of sorts where students can enroll and learn about cooking while serving others in their city. Even cooler than that though is the fact that the students are "homeless and disadvantaged" individuals and they are getting a new lease on life through the art of cooking.

I like food. I like helping people. I was sold.

Since the first time I went, I organized a small group of my own friends and we all marched over to FareStart and volunteered this past weekend. I cut up more carrots Saturday than I have in my whole life. I made new friends in a city where it seems harder than it needs to be to make more than "single serving friends" (to borrow a phrase from Chuck Palahniuk). People just seem to bond well when they have knifes in their hands. Who knew?

There was my group which was a mix of friends from church and work. Another group was just a bunch of neighbors in a downtown apartment complex. Another group was just one girl that decided to come by herself. I exchanged numbers with the various groups represented and we may try to organize to go together again.

I also talked to my building management and I guess I'm on point to help organize my own building to go volunteer. It may not be the Peoples City Mission where I served and made such good friends, but I love working at FareStart and I am looking forward to going back and taking new people with me. Learning new cooking tricks doesn't hurt either.

Ok, I'll come up with more things to write about and make a concerted effort to do this more often.

Cheers!

Play that funky music brown boy

2009-09-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

So I had my buddy Miranda Rensch up from Portland for Bumbershoot a couple weekends ago. Miranda and I started off at the same uber-nerd program in Nebraska, but she left after a semester to pursue more artistic endeavors. In that semester though, we made friends as musicians in the group.

Reuniting for Bumbershoot was great because we spent the whole weekend jamming out and making music through conventional and not-so-conventional means. Since that weekend, I've been having lots of fun collecting random instruments and jacking around with music. So here's what I have so far.

Instruments

Jackson JS1 Dinky
It looks like a total metal guitar, and it really is, but I've tweaked it enough that I can get some nice blues and jazz sounds out of it. The neck is fast and I love playing it.

Fender Jazz Active Bass
I looooove this bass. I got it to replace my old Danelectro. I went the extra mile to get active pickups because they give me a lot more range to dial in the right sound for various kinds of music.

Yamaha KX49 USB/MIDI Controller
I guess this counts as an instrument. In my senior year of college, I got really interested in sound production with the computer. However, I wanted to prove to all the Mac guys that you didn't have to pay tons of money (or steal) to make music. So I learned to do all that stuff the Open Source way on Linux and it was actually a lot of fun. So I have a decent keyboard to do all that nerdy synth stuff.

Amplifiers and Mixers

Behringer GX210
This amp has served me well for a long time. I've never had a good chance to push it hard, but it works great for noodling around and the onboard effects aren't bad either.

MarkBass Mini CMD 121P
I just picked this up and I love it. So I had a bass amp at home, but I left it thinking I wouldn't be playing much bass in Seattle. I was wrong, so I bought a new one. Thankfully, this thing is small enough to fit in my apartment and it's not more than 30 pounds. What is amazing is that it packs 400 watts in a small package and it sounds great. I love this amp so far. I have the volume set between 1-2 in my apartment and that's already probably too loud.

Behringer Eurorack MX1604A
I picked this mixer up in Kansas City off a guy who tried to use it as a home theater mixer. I got it cheap and it is a solid little mixer. I use this to manage the random mics I have around the apartment, and I've also used it for some recording..

Effects

Line 6 DL4
This is really the only one worth mentioning. It's an awesome delay modeler, but I use the loop machine more than anything else. This is great for running a mic into it, looping some beat box action, and then singing, humming, clapping, or making any kind of racket into the loop. This is truly too much fun and I thank Nathan Kniseley and Minus the Bear for showing me how cool these can be.

WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME ALL THIS? I DON'T CARE!

So all that being said, I met a few guys who are as into molding random noises into music as I am. I hope this eclectic mix of music styles and influences coalesces into something awesome. If it does, I'll be sure to say something about it here.

Take care!

Well, that's a peculiar laugh

2009-09-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

I was walking toward my building on my way to work this morning when a lady behind me made a strange laughing noise. Moments later, a goose honked. I was pleased to find they sounded the same. I smiled and walked into my building to start my day.

I've taken to riding the bus to work lately. It's funny that what was once a dreaded nightmare to me is actually quite enjoyable in the mornings. I still avoid taking some of the downtown buses if they look too crowded, but I've been more comfortable relinquishing control of how I get from Point A to Point B.

Riding the bus is funny. People are funny. If movies were any indication of real life, every bus ride would be the start of some wild, whacky romantic adventure where the woman sitting across from me is really the love of my life for 3 weeks and then we break each others' hearts, yet we learn some timeless lesson about boysandgirls and she's still really cool and we're best friends who exchange knowing smiles from opposing street corners blah blah blah. In real life, it's more of a "let's mutually agree the other doesn't exist and I'll read my book and you read yours and hopefully we don't die on the way to our destination." Sounds morbid, eh?

It's funny though, this is maybe day 3 of taking the 545 to Redmond from Seattle and already I recognize some of the regulars on my route.

It has been a really long time since I've last posted. I wrote about riding the bus...

Wow.

Winna Winna Chicken Dinna

2009-07-28T09:11:00.000-07:00

I don't suppose I have the time to make this one long, but I threw some scraps together this weekend and it was pretty good! I thought I'd share.

I had some steaks leftover from a dinner thing I hosted last weekend, and I wanted to use it and my other leftovers before they went bad. So here's what I did:

Cut steak into smaller cubes about a cubic inch

Throw steak into a bowl along with some olive oil, worschester sauce, ginger powder, and a little curry powder. Mix all that up and let it sit a while

Heat up my bigger cast iron skillet. Should be big enough to hold a fair amount of food. I sprayed it with Pam or whatever, but I'm not sure if I was supposed. Whatever

Dump steak in and let it brown real quick. This took under a minute or a minute and a half

Dump a cup of rice and the cup of water it needed (I have freaky insta-rice, so I don't know if that's the same for other kinds of rice)

Let the steak and rice cook together in the skillet until the water is mostly gone. I stirred in more ginger and curry powder as it cooked

Dump all that on a plate when it's done cooking

Slice 1/2 cucumber and 1 Roma tomato

Clean off some cilantro

Arrange it all on the plate all fancy like

End up with the following:

It wasn't half bad and it definitely filled me up.

Things I'd change:

Cook the steak seperately or put it in the skillet later. I like my meat more tender and less cooked than what I had

More tomatoes

I would like to try other spices with it and see what happens

Give it a shot and see if you like it. If you have a suggestion for a change, let me know.

Cheers

The Science of Traffic

2009-07-23T09:09:00.000-07:00

I found a new route to get to work this morning. I finally decided to break the comfort of habit and find a new way to get to I-5 N. See, when I first moved here, I stayed in temporary housing a few blocks south of where I live now. From there, it was pretty simple to go up University until I ran into the I-5 N ramp. Since then, I've been driving through downtown traffic to get to the same ramp. Definitely not efficient, but it was what I knew and it was habit.

So breaking habits is always interesting, but it really paid off. I found a new way to go and it goes through an interesting neighborhood. Oh yeah, and it also saves me so much time.
Note: I used Google Maps on this link because I actually prefer their route to Bing's. I feel guilty/dirty. C'est la vie. I get to work all the same.

On the drive this morning, there was a line of cars on the side of the road in the opposite lane that had apparently been in the same accident. The first thing I thought was "I hope it wasn't impressive enough that people feel the need to look."

There are way too many times when I'm driving here where traffic crawls along until we pass an accident and then people drive normally again. I wonder if police and wrecker crews would be helping traffic along by putting up tarps or something so people wouldn't have anything to stare at when they drove.

I spend a lot of time in traffic. I spend a lot of time thinking about the science of traffic. It seems like a math problem almost. The road has some measure of capacity or bandwidth, and then there is the actual throughput which is present and it's far less. So what goes into the degredation? There are things like human response times, distractions, selfishness, anger, unwillingness to merge or let people merge, bends in the road, and all kinds of reasons to slam on the breaks and ruin everybody's commute. There are just so many variables and human psychology and physics and random factors that must contribute to the reason I spend an hour driving home in the evening and only 30 minutes in the morning. I like to think about the people at the front of the traffic jam and wonder what they're doing to back things up. It's like a whiplash effect where a small action up front translates to major jam-ups miles back.

It got me thinking that traffic is really an interesting problem, and I have more respect for the people that engineer those kinds of things. That being said, I'd still encourage an improvement, but I'd be interested to find out if there is any kind of literature or publications out there about traffic. It seems fascinating to me. But maybe that's just because I sit in traffic too much.

If there is one thing I can say about my commute here is that it is still stunningly beautiful. I hope I never tire of it. From the Seattle skyline, to the grey sheet of water over Lake Washington, to the engulfing trees and mountains as I get closer to Redmond, I find myself able to tolerate the traffic because it gives me more time to take it all in.

Still, somebody needs to invent robot drivers. It would be awesome.

I have returned, and this post is about food

2009-07-22T09:17:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody. Sorry about the long hiaitus. I have had a harder time establishing my rhythm since I've moved here, but things are starting to roll right along now. I think the feeling of being "new" is wearing off, as are my excuses to put things off.

So I've got my apartment more squared away. I'm finding things to get involved in. I'm meeting new people and trying to become a part of my community--both in my building and in Belltown at large.

There are tons of things to catch up on, but in true Nebraska spirit, I'm going to toss it all aside and concentrate on food.

I've noticed grocery shopping has become a lot harder. I've always enjoyed shopping for food--in fact it's one of the few ways I can shop that doesn't make me uncomfortable--and I love to cook. The problem is that I live by myself, and I can't often find one person sizes of everything at the grocery store. I've never had to cook for just one person, so this is new and it's kind of an issue. I can't eat fast enough to preserve the food I do buy.

I've also been considering my health a lot more lately. Suddenly, I guess I'm in charge of that kind thing so maybe I should step up. I don't know what it is, but lately I'm highly interested in preserving what potential my body has left.

So I think I need to get better at planning. I would like to have a planning system where I know what meal I'm making for every day of the week and then shop accordingly. I've done this before when I lived with 3 other guys and it worked well. This planning system would be nice if it also encompassed some nutritional analysis. It would be even better if it were smarter than I am, because I know nothing about nutrition--as in, it took me forever to realize carbohydrates and calories aren't the same thing.

Like any good nerd, I looked to see if there were any web apps that could do those things.

Relish!
The site looked good and it had a clean design. But it also has a subscription fee. Maybe this service would be something I'd want to pay for in the future, but the knowledge that I could really just sit down and do this with a pad and pen makes it a tough sell for me. I didn't get to learn more about this one. Perhaps a "lite" or "bachelor" version would be useful (*cough* HINT *cough*).

Plan To Eat
This one looks pretty cool, and it seems like something that would almost persuade me to pay for it. The ability to drag in and import recipes and break them down into grocery shopping lists seems awesome. It also looks like it has Amazon Fresh integration, but I'll spare you my idealogical rants regarding that. Again, it looks like it's subscription based, so I'll pass until I decide this service is worth money to me.

H-E-B
This one has me very excited. If you're from Texas, you know what H-E-B is. It is the grocery store of all grocery stores! Yes folks, I'm this excited about a grocery store. Anyway, H-E-B has a service where they just plan weekly meals for you and they provide the grocery shopping list. I suppose the more clever name for it is "weekly suggested menus." Either way, the food looks great, and it's free, and it's awesome. On the H-E-B exclusive meal days, I can find my own things to eat. I'm going with this for now.

Ok, well that was my triumphant return to the blog scene. And it was about food. I'll run with this for a week or two and see how it goes. Ideally, this makes my grocery shopping more efficient and saves me money while keeping myself fed and healthy.

If you have any suggestions, by all means let me know. It seems like this "living by myself and pretending to be an adult" thing has uncovered lots of places for me to learn and grow.

Cheers!

Just popping in

2009-06-01T18:51:00.000-07:00

First, might I just say that coming to this public computer is becoming more and more enjoyable? I like to play this game called "what was the last the person before me copy and pasted". So far I haven't found anything too noteworthy, but the anticipation of some treasure is too irresistable. That and the Dean Martin and other classical music they always have playing in the lobby is pretty solid too.

Ok so anyway, I had my first day of work today. I'm still fried because I didn't really sleep last night. I don't know why, but my body absolutely didn't want to fall asleep. I didn't think I was nervous or anything, but the best I could do was watch the clock tick past 4 am, then 5, then 6, then I got fed up and just got out of bed to get ready. That, and traffic in Seattle is crazy. On the way home, I did a pretty good job reversing my directions until I decided to get on I-5 North instead of South and that was a bummer. Oh well.

Work was the standard fair of "these are your health care options" and "DON'T GIVE AWAY YOUR PASSWORDS" orientation business. The other parts were the more Microsoft specific things and that was pretty exciting. I met a lot of cool people who were from different walks and positions in their lives. All in all, it was a cool day, but 'veddy veddy' long.

I'll have more interesting things to say tomorrow. I think.

Anyway, I decided to treat myself to a real dinner tonight. The past few days I have been sticking to sandwiches. I bought some tomatoes, bread, salami, prosciutto, mozarella cheese, and some various items I haven't been using. Same thing. Lunch and dinner (I rarely eat breakfast).

So tonight I went to a sushi place in the courtyard of Harbor Steps because I saw a sign that said "HAPPY HOUR." I'm pretty sure that's Japanese for dinner salvation because I loved it. I had a bowl of miso soup, a nice salad, and a roll each of salmon and tuna. All for about $10. I'd say that's a pretty good deal regardless, but an amazing deal compared to what I've seen in Seattle so far. I'll probably be dropping by there more often.

Ok that's all I have. I'm going to see if Ice Truckers is on or something because I haven't had much to do lately other than watching geeky television shows. Or I'll read. I just finished a book called "Habitudes" by Dr. Tim Elmore. It was a book about leadership but I don't see why this book could be applied to anybody wanting to manage their lives/time/I-don't-know-what-word-to-use more effetively.

Perhaps I'll provide a better explanation on my take of the book some other time. I need to VEEEEGGGG right now.

Take care everybody!

Wide awake in Seattle

2009-05-31T14:09:00.000-07:00

Did you see what I did there with the title!? SO CLEVER!! lolololololol

Seriously though, I can never think of good titles for blog posts. But I am in Seattle now and I am, in fact, awake. So I guess that will have to work for now.

Anyway, I don't really have anything specific to say and I feel weird having to type this at a public computer. I don't actually know if there are people that read this, but in the slight chance that there may be somebody that does and could possibly be interested in what's going on in my life, I figured I would post an update.

I arrived in the Seattle-Tacoma airport at about 1:30, picked up the keys for the rental car, and started out on a wing and a prayer (and some directions I could only hope were right) toward my temporary home. While contending with Seattle traffic, I had to chastise myself over and over for thinking too Nebraskan. My mind was racing with thoughts like "this place is so big" and "there are so many people, so many cars!" and "why is everything so close together"! This is definitely nothing like the busiest parts I've seen in Omaha. Perhaps it was the stress of traveling, but that's all I could think about as I was driving from the airport into the city. I had to check myself and try to overcome all the stress to appreciate the beauty I was driving through. Washington really is a beautiful place, and the weather was stunningly amazing. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but I hear that isn't really a common thing around here. Either way, I'm pretty thrilled Seattle came up with some good weather to welcome me.

I get to stay at the Harbor Steps apartment complex. I looked up the address before I left Nebraska and I was pretty stoked to see that it was right by the water and right in downtown Seattle (at least I think this is downtown). That being said, nothing could prepare me for how beautiful and impressive the whole thing is. I get to stay on the 21st floor of the North East tower of this complex. I can throw a rock and probably hit the harbor, but odds are I would probably hit an unfortunate person walking on the streets below instead. I can see massive buildings and beautiful architecture. This is definitely a city! As I would come to find in the following days, there is still a homey atmosphere here and the people are so nice.

I spent my first night alone in the apartment. I went out to explore the streets below. It was kind of funny because I opened the door and stepped outside and I was immediately lost. The funnier part of that was I absolutely loved the feeling. I loved being able to just walk around and take it all in. It also helps that my love of having a sense of direction and knowing where North is at all times works out well with the fact that the harbor provides a great landmark (or water mark??) to help me keep my bearings.

I ate dinner by myself at a little Mexican restaurant right outside of the apartment complex called Guayma's. It was actually kind of pleasant to be able to sit by myself to decompress and unwind. It was even more pleasant to enjoy a beer with some chips and I couldn't have been happier in that moment. How wonderful it is to just be happy and feel taken care of even in the smallest things. Anyway, I ordered these ceviche tostadas that is kind of like 'pico de gallo' and a bunch of seafood blended and dumped onto a crispy tortilla. It was pretty good! Hooray for being able to enjoy good seafood again!

I got my little car back on Saturday, and I feel so much better to have that now. I was blessed to be able to rent the Corolla and get me from the airport to the garage of my new digs. Even so, it was still kind of big for my taste and the windows aren't set up as they are in my Scion, so I felt like I was driving a boat with no windows through the crammed streets of downtown Seattle. That's probably just the stress and my hatred of traffic talking though. With my little bean car handy, I feel much more comfortable zipping around the streets now (when I do feel courageous enough to go out without walking). I saw some ridiculously steep hills and for the first time in my life I considered a having a manual transmission to be a bad idea. However, I'll get used to it--just like all the other drivers here...kind of--and I even learned a cool handbrake trick from the truck driver who delivered my car. Hopefully I don't get a ton of chances to use it.

I spent some time walking around while I was looking for a grocery store. The concierge here did me a solid by telling me of the place and giving me directions.

"Sure, you can walk there!"

Actually, next time I'll probably drive. It really wasn't that close at all (View the route here). Either way though, the weather was nice and the city beautiful, so I didn't mind walking and I got to learn some more about the city. I did walk past the Space Needle and the Music Experience Project place and those both seem really cool. I'm excited to check them out someday. I also walked by the future site of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building and I got pretty excited for that too.

I found a different way to walk back that took me through the Belltown neighborhood and then down 1st avenue to see that whole stretch of restaurants and shops. How much cooler this place will be when I'm not so broke!

Last night I ran into a lady I had met on the elevator on Friday and she invited me to a small work party on the big deck of one of the buildings here. I got to meet some people and they took me out to some pub here in town. I started to realize what a beer snob I had become in Lincoln, but apparently that flies here so I'm in good company. Either way, I hope the USPS is ok with sending beer through the mail because I will be missing Emperean.

I hung out with those guys for a while and then walked a few blocks (more like a mile) to meet up with one of two people I actually know here to a small party for a girl that also works at Microsoft. Turns out Microsoft people like to get together and throw parties and they are just the way I like them: kinda nerdy. I had some fun with that and eventually went home.

This morning I got up and went to Mars Hill church. I checked out a few churches online before coming here and I was really excited to check this place out. Apparently the building used to be a really seedy and problematic club before the city relieved them of their liquor license. The church bought the building and started up a congregation in downtown. To be honest, the building was smaller than I expected and I drove right past it the first time. Inside it was pretty amazing.

Sitting at church, for the first time since I got here, I felt homesick. It was weird though because I felt so at home. It reminded me a lot of the people I came to love and know as family back at Lincoln Berean, but at the same time it was awesome to see people worshiping God the same way we did back home. It was cool to see God's church glorifying His name. It was a good reminder that God definitely is everywhere and that this whole experience is very pervasive. It was kind of an emotional morning for me and it was weird because I rarely get emotional. Either way, I was thrilled to be there.

I came up with this philosophy when I was younger: "don't date the first girl you meet." I figured this out because I moved a lot. Being the new guy. It's pretty easy to work that angle with the ladies. When I moved to Texas though, I starting hanging around with one of the first girls I met there and was immediately locked out of meeting other people in a more natural way. Plus--and this sounds terrible--there is always the danger of jumping the gone and not enjoying the best relationship out there.

I think the same can be said of looking for a church. I want to keep the mentality of checking things out, being open minded, and staying out of the way until God moves me to the right church. However, if I end up sticking around at Mars Hill, I think I'd be a happy camper. We'll see how that goes. I think they have some kind of worship service tonight and they're going to try to get me plugged in to some smaller groups and communities around the city so I can meet some people. I'm looking forward to this.

So this ended up being pretty long, but that was my weekend! Or the things I cared to write down anyway. To the readers back home, I miss you guys! But be happy for me. This is a cool place and I think I'm going to enjoy figuring out what my life is going to be here.

I start work tomorrow so I might spend some time preparing for that.

Take care everybody!

Forgot to mention! I don't take many pictures, and I don't have any cool photo album for you to check out. However, I do take some pictures on my phone and send them to Twitter occasionally. You can follow me on Twitter to catch any pictures I might toss on there

Only in Texas...

2009-05-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

Texas high school football is probably everything "Friday Night Lights" tried to convey, if not more. I was there for a few years and I loved it, but looking back I can only laugh at the ridiculousness of some of it.

In exchange for unquestioning and absolute devotion to the football program, the coaches would put these shirts together to encourage us to submit ourselves to physical torture known as strength building and conditioning.

I'm going through old clothes to sort out things I'll give away and things I'll keep before I move. I found a shirt I absolutely can't give away because it's so hilarious.

The front says "IF THE BAR AIN'T BENDIN' THEN YOU'RE JUST PRETENDIN'" with a picture of a heavily loaded bar. The poem on the back is just epic and I thought I'd share it.

THE SQUAT
WAY DOWN THIS ROAD, IN A GYM FAR AWAY,
A YOUNG MAN WAS ONCE HEARD TO SAY,
I'VE REPPED HIGH AND I'VE REPPED LOW,
NO MATTER WHAT I DO MY LEGS WON'T GROW.
HE TRIED LEG EXTENSIONS, LEG CURLS, AND
LEG PRESSES TOO, TRYING TO CHEAT, THESE
SISSY WORKOUTS HE'D DO.
FROM THE CORNER OF THE GYM WHERE BIG
MEN TRAIN, THROUGH A CLOUD OF CHALK AND
THE MIDST OF PAIN.
WHERE THE BIG IRON RIDES HIGH AND
THREATENS LIVES. WHERE THE NOISE IS MADE
WITH FORTY-FIVES, A DEEP VOICE BELLOWED
AS HE WRAPPED HIS KNEES. A VERY BIG MAN
WITH LEGS LIKE TREES.
LAUGHING AS HE SNATCHED ANOTHER PLATE
FROM THE STACK. CHALKING HIS HANDS AND
MONSTROUS BACK, SAID, "BOY STOP LYING AND
DON'T SAY YOU'VE FORGOTTEN, THE TROUBLE
WITH YOU IS YOU AIN'T BEEN SQUATIN' [sic]."

Yeah, sometimes good poems don't have to rhyme the whole way through. Or flow. Or look like poems.

Some of my best memories from high school revolved around football in Texas, and I'm glad I found this shirt. There were many like it, but this was probably the most ridiculous.

"DON'T TEXT AND DRIVE!!"

2009-05-24T10:46:00.000-07:00

I've had people yell at me to not text and drive so many times, I find myself doing the same to others now. But it makes a lot of sense. Thanks to the kind police officers pulling me over and sending me to STOP class (for turning right at a red light...how lame is that), I now have gruesome images of maimed bodies and mangled vehicle burned into my head that resurface every time I think about using the cell phone in the car. "IF YOU USE YOUR PHONE IN THE CAR, THIS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU!"

It reminds me of the scene in Mean Girls where the coach says "If you have sex, you will get pregnant and die!" But that's besides the point.

So common sense says horrible things don't necessarily have to happen the instant you touch your cell phone in the car, but the point remains: operating a cell phone in the car drastically reduces your ability to pay attention to traffic and react accordingly. I've even had a minor accident because I was distracted by my phone, but thankfully there was no real damage and nobody got hurt.

So I do a pretty good job now about not using my phone in the car. The other day, I realized there is another activity we tend to do that is just as distracting, yet nobody really says anything about it. We have portable music devices that hook up via auxilary line-in inputs or other adapters. We have thousands and thousands of songs on our iPods or Zunes that we can take with us in the car. The interfaces on them are pretty cool and allow for the browsing of media with just one finger. However, we haven't really improved the way we browse through media in the car.

Back in the "old days," we grabbed a CD and that's what we listened to for half and hour to an hour. In fact, I still do it that way predominantly. Having a whole catalog of music at our disposal allows us to be more picky about our music and often we find ourselves jumping around from artist to artist. And that's a good thing! I think it's awesome we have that kind of technology. However, I was driving around with my dad the other day and watching him go through his media device to look up some artist.

I realized we should come up with a better interface for browsing through artists, songs, and genres in a media library while driving. It needs to be something that will be efficient without compromising the ability to focus on the road. The Microsoft Sync technology seems to be taking a crack at that using voice recognition, but I've never used it so I can't really say much about it.

I was thinking perhaps a HUD interface might work well in the vehicle assuming it wasn't something that distracted too much from looking at the road. If it were the kind of thing that could be manipulated by finger gestures or by buttons on the steering wheel, it would allow the driver to browse for media while keeping hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.

Another interesting idea I thought about would be for the car to sense the moods or dynamics of the passengers in the vehicle and use that information to suggest music. What if it were like Pandora or Last.fm, except it could tell if you were in the mood for something upbeat or something mellow? What if the car were able to tell that I'm driving the car instead of my mother and select music from my favorite artists instead of blasting salsa music? Over time, the car could tell what the driver likes or doesn't like, and could use things like pulse, temperature, or other biometrics to determine what music to play. From there, the driver could make suggestions or alter the music as he or she saw fit.

Even other things like volume control? Perhaps the car can tell when people are trying to talk in the car and then it lowers the volume? There is already technology that can tell how fast you're going and adjust the volume to compensate for road noise. It's little features like that which allow the vehicle to be more responsive to the driver's needs.

Voice recognition technologies also probably have room to improve, and I'm sure there are good ways to leverage that to make selecting and enjoying music in the car a less distracting experience.

So I don't really have any more specific ideas or new directions to take on this, but for sure I see a need to redo the interface for music in the car. As technology allows us to take more music with us, we should figure out how to make the driving experience and the interface get up to speed. We should find a way to maximize entertainment value without compromising safety.

Ok, that's my rant.

What I think would be fun...

2009-05-22T06:51:00.000-07:00

Sitting at my parents' home in Bellevue is always fairly relaxing, but over the last couple of weeks I've been realizing it is somewhat isolating. There's not much in the way of kids my age I still talk to. So I spend a lot of time hanging out reading or thinking or playing guitar. I was playing guitar in my parents' living room the other day since nobody was home. The acoustics of the living room had a warmer feel than playing outside on the porch or in some dirty basement. The acoustics of a space add a lot to the subtleties of music and those kinds of things are fun to explore.

Someday, assuming I make a bunch of friends who also enjoy sitting around and making racket with instruments, I would just love to rent out a space and harness it to tease good music out of the atmosphere. I would love to find some cabin or old house out in the middle of nowhere. I would love to just sit around in its living room, or explore the small nooks and crannies of the house, or even just wander around outside. You know how each house has a smell? Perhaps there's more than just a smell in the house, but a general feel or spirit, if you will. Perhaps that can be inspiring enough to make music that carries the same uniqueness of the house.

That's what I want to do someday. Perhaps run into enough cash to rent a place like that and make a few friends that would just want to sit around and make racket all day. I know other bands have used in the same way: Led Zeppelin, Incubus, and a few others who aren't coming to mind. I think it would be fun. Now I just need to scope out some random places in the Pacific Northwest and track down other hippie music freaks.

No I'll never come back down, down from here

2009-05-18T09:44:00.000-07:00

If my life ever ends up this way, I could totally live with that

Panic! At the Bookstore

2009-05-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

One of the most exciting things about graduating was knowing I had time to read finally. The economics of time when I was school didn't really allow me to read much that wasn't absolutely relevant or necessary to my classes. Well, that's all over and I want to start reading again. So I went to Border's today and it was the weirdest thing. I felt like I hadn't been in a bookstore with no clear purpose in mind and I felt like an idiot that didn't belong there. Book shopping shouldn't be this hard!

I walked through the popular selections area and checked some of them out. I could sense my mind immediately ignoring books that didn't seem like they'd have any impact in my life or that just seemed absolutely useless. Other books I'd look at and I'd feel mildly saddened knowing there's a market for that kind of drivel. Still, I went into a bookstore to get some books and I had no idea what to get.

I finally wandered over to the Christian section which was a new thing to me. I have to shamefully admit I went looking for some books just because people had recommended them to me. I picked up "Velvet Elvis" by Rob Bell and "The Shack" by Paul Young. Both were recommended to me by a guy I respect a lot, but it still felt weird to get something just because somebody else says so. It kind of goes against my "anti-sheep" mentality. At least I finally had something in my hands.

For some reason, Thoreau popped into my head. Everything I've heard about Thoreau screams "boring" and "long-winded". Well, I'm boring and long-winded, and I've loved the small excerpts I've seen of his work. So now I have a copy of "Walden" and whatever other writings ended up in this book.

Finally, I walked over to where I knew I could find some Palahniuk. This is probably the only author I feel comfortable buying his work and knowing it will do absolutely nothing practical for me. However, he writes well and I love the way he paints such twisted pictures. It's like watching a car wreck or something. I love it.

My trip through the bookstore makes me realize my passion for things practical and useful and how uncomfortable I get when I'm just looking for something that might do me some unmeasurable good. It was strange how at home I felt when I walked over to the technology and computer section and picked through books about Sharepoint, programming languages, and Linux kernels. Have I really become that much of a geek?

Perhaps this can be a new growing point in my life. Either way, I'm stoked I got some new books AND I got a $10 gift card. I have no idea what to do with it. Right on.

Feel free to leave any further reading suggestions.

Things I'd like to do before leaving Nebraska

2009-05-14T12:18:00.001-07:00

Eat at Johnny's Cafe
I've driven past this place for years on my trips to and from Omaha. It was in some movie that was based in Omaha (About Schmidt maybe?) and I have never been. I must try it.

Visit Holy Family Shrine
Another thing I've seen for years driving to and from Lincoln. It's on I-80 near Gretna or Ashland or something. I used to always think it was a witching tower for lack of a better idea. Turns out it's a Catholic shrine or something, but I still want to check it out. It looks beautiful.

WHAT IT IS AS THE H-D-Z!
This is Dahv-speak for "I want to go to the Henry Doorly Zoo before I leave." It's probably one of the better Omaha attractions and it's usually a good way to kill a few hours.

Do something I never found time for in Lincoln
This one is intentionally vague, but I don't think I really ever made enough time to explore Lincoln and find cool stuff. I've often driven past a lot, and I walked around downtown enough my freshman year to know things are out. Perhaps I'll find them. Any suggestions on something I might have missed? Thinking about Lincoln just makes me want to drink premium beer right now, so we'll see what happens with this one.

Have any suggestions or know something I hadn't even thought of that I should do? Please let me know. Also, I might want company so come join me if you want!

Ok so now what?

2009-05-11T15:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow morning, I'm going to speak to some high school seniors from my 'alma mater' at Bellevue West. I've remained good friends with one of my teachers from that time, and have come back a few times while I was in college to talk to her classes or work on other projects to facilitate high-school/university relations. I even went back and did some recruiting things at Bellevue West. Part of me says I'm being a good alumnus, but mostly it's because I love talking to younger students and I like to help out my teacher and my friend.

It seems open-ended, and I blogged about it in my last post, but I believe the focus of my talk is to relate my life/college experiences after high school and to offer whatever advice I may have. So I'll be using this blog to organize some thoughts, but moreover, I'm seeking feedback, suggestions, or slap-in-the-face reminders of what I could have missed.

So here are my points of advice that I'll start with tomorrow:

Keep your eyes and mind wide open
Ok, so this one seems cliche, but I can think of my first weekend at college. There was so much stuff to take in. I thought I did an ok job of trying to absorb it all, but thinking back, I had a girlfriend to distract me and my own social agenda to fulfill. That first weekend was truly a blast, and I still think it should be. However, it is also really important to start learning about your environment and setting your sights beyond the clique you came with or the booze you can't wait to consume.

At UNL, Big Red Welcome is pretty much designed to do just that. Nearly every organization on campus comes out and hands you free crap in hopes that you'll sign up of something. It took me a couple of years to realize that most of the stuff I picked up I never used or looked at again, but it's a good way to pick up chow and find out what is going on at the University.

Beyond that first weekend, college to me has been about humbling myself to realize I can't possibly know everything and knowing that I was there to learn. Keeping an eye out for new opportunities to challenge myself, learn something new, and growing as a person proved to be an important skill.

If it seems stupid, go learn more about it
There are a lot of things I think are just plain crap. One thing I learned over the years is that things I used to think were worthless became more valuable as I grew older. Today, if I find myself something is complete crap, I stop and ask myself if I understand it. Have I really taken the time to peer into something and justify my declaration of something as worthless?

I thing we fear or hate that which we don't understand. However, when we to stop to see if we can find value in something, we open ourselves up to a wealth of new value in our life experiences. The same can be true of college or other post-high school experiences. If I thought a way of doing things or an idea was stupid, I found a book or took a class about it. If after the class I find it's still stupid, then I feel satisfied knowing I diligently investigated the issue and I know I've exercised my mind in doing so. In my experience, I came out of things valuing that which I previously thought was stupid more often than not. It seems there is a lot more to learn about life if we only put some effort into seeing its value.

Obviously, there is some discretion in this point. My dad likes to put it "I don't need to jump off a building to know it's not a good idea," and he is totally right. With all things come balance. With all decisions comes a critical evaluation and a weighing of benefits. The same can be said with where how we decide to experience life. Be sure to investigate things intelligently rather than stretch yourself too thin or otherwise harm yourself.

Read, Read, Read
Having access to information is so easy these days and it is amazing. One of the things I am most excited for now that I am done with school is the ability to kick back and read when I want to. Libraries and book stores are a great place to start and there are plenty of them in Lincoln.

The Internet has made getting information easy as well. If you don't have a Google Reader account or some other RSS aggregator, you should get one. If you want to learn more about finance, seek out financial blogs. If you're excited about city development, see if your city council or some other organization has a blog. It is ridiculously easy to start learning about so many things by following blogs.

Another important thing for college kids is to learn to read the newspaper or watch the news regularly. College can be a fairly isolating community. Now that seems like an odd thing to say, but I remember I was oblivious to the Katrina hurricane because I got so wrapped up in college life my freshman year. Make sure you stay in touch with the rest of the world. Set Yahoo News as your home page. Make it a habit to take a newspaper with you to lunch. Do what it takes to become an informed citizen. I think it's part of growing up and life after high school is a good place to start.

"Eat like a Bird, Poop like an Elephant"
I've written about this quote before, but I just love it. Birds supposedly eat a ridiculous amount compared to their body mass. Likewise, we should be taking in disproportionately large amounts of information. However, one thing I don't like about college is that students can be tricked into becoming leeches. There is never a push to cycle the information, process it, and create some kind of useful output.

The latter half of the quote seems fairly obvious. If we take in a lot, we should output a lot. This is beneficial both for the individual and for those around them. Be an effective channel of information. Doing so will teach you to communicate effectively and it will solidify concepts in your mind as you teach them to others.

Learn about Leadership

competitive

Don't be technically crippled
Writers love to rant and rave about how pervasive technology is in our society. Yet there are still students who can't find their way around on a computer. If you go to college, chances are high you will use a computer at some point. I'm not saying every student needs to be able to code up a business application, but it is so unlikely you will never have a job where you will use a computer. So it would behoove you to become familiar with technology and not waste everybody's time as you stare dumbly at a computer monitor. A computer can be a tool, and the more you practice with it, the better off you will be.

Learn to do the little things correctly
This is huge. I've spent too much time working with students who don't know how to put a quick slide show together or format a large document. Even things like formatting a paper MLA or APA style without having to look everything up are skills that will come up in college. These are little tricks and skills most high schools should teach their students if they are able. One should hope that before a student takes a job, they won't need remedial training on how to do the little things correctly. It's an unfortunate waste of time. The faster you learn to do these things without thinking about them, the faster and easier projects and assignments will go.

Learn to write well
This one is also huge, but perhaps I am a little biased. There were times in college where I was just dumbfounded that students were about to graduate and still couldn't write well. I won't go into horror stories with this one, but this is important repeat: important.

Part of my senior assessment before I could graduate from the business college was a writing prompt. I thought it was some kind of joke or trick question. The assignment was to explain why strong writing skills in job candidates was important to businesses. The prompt was written terribly. I couldn't believe it.

Nevertheless, the point remains. Writing well saves time, communicates effectively, and shows respect for the work and for the reader.

Seriously, I don't know how else to put this: learn to write well.

Learn to study and use time effectively
I'm not the poster child for anti-procrastination. To be honest, I get distracted just as easily as the next person. However, I like to work hard and I can usually make up for time lost.

I've heard that there are students who can study and work efficiently and actually manage to go to bed before midnight. If there were something I wish I were better at, it would be the ability to manage my time effectively.

One skill I learned was time boxing. This is a practice generally related to software development, and it is how it was taught to me. However, the practice of identifying tasks, estimating the time required to complete them, and committing to a schedule was a really effective way of getting things done.

Tools like Thymer or Remember the Milk are great tools for personal task management. I've heard The Hit List is a great tool for Mac. I don't own said status symbol, so I can't say anything about it.

Find a way to get out of the country
Nebraska isn't exactly the most cultured state in the nation. I know there are lots of kids who haven't been out of the country, been to either coast, or have even left the country. Today's economy is becoming increasingly more global, and being able to relate to a world that doesn't live on Big-Macs and pick-up trucks will be of growing importance.

Learn the balancing act
My mother did a great job of preaching balance to me my whole life, and I really appreciate it now. I would advise everybody to be well-rounded individuals and not lean too heavily on any one thing (note, this has nothing to do with my thoughts on faith or religion. That's a completely different discussion).

Don't be a sheep
High school is a pretty social place. Cliques are rampant. Many social activities are scheduled out. Students shuffle off to class together and everything happens according to routine. Things change in college, yet too many people want to continue acting like they're in high school.

Don't do things just because everybody else is. Numbers don't always make something right. Instead, think for yourself. Take pride in being different, because it is often the courage of one person willing to go against the grain that make the most significant change.

With everything that confronts you, think critically. Like I said earlier about labeling things as crap, make sure you understand what is going on before you follow the heard. Make sure it is something you would have done if you were by yourself and nobody could see you.

The same can be said for integrity and ethics. I can think of too many groups or social constructs that cause people to think they can do atrocious things because everybody else does it. History and psychology experiments reveal the sad truth. However, the same things happen in college. Nobody needs to spend a night wrapped around a toilet, yet we have social constructs that encourage it.

Don't be a sheep. Do things because they are right, not because they are popular.

Now, find a group to join
This seems an odd contradiction directly after the preceding point, yet humans are designed to be social creatures. We are generally wired to function in groups. In a practical perspective, this is useful because a group can do so much more than an individual ever could.

This is related to a true appreciation of diversity. Diversity should be more than skin-deep, as is so popular to preach today. Diversity of thought is what I love to leverage, and a healthy social group will seek out diversity to make sure it can take advantage of each individual's uniqueness.

Thus, as an individual, it would be beneficial for us to join groups so that we can learn to work with people and benefit from the diverse mix of skills, thoughts, emotions, cultures, languages, and so on. The important thing is to join a group that would make you a better individual than you could be on your own. Be sure that the reputation of the group is something you'd be proud to append to your own.

Don't wait too long to be significant
Thanks to Van Wilder, we love to say "don't take life too seriously, you'll never get out alive." I do agree with that, and I've learned a lot about being relaxed in the face of life's pressures. However, I've seen too many young people take this idea to the extreme.

At what age do we become accountable to our community? How long is appropriate to wait before we're supposed to give back? How many years before "I'm still in college" is an excuse for wasteful and bad behavior?

The rising popularity of college created this concept of "adolescence." It used to be that kids would quickly become adults when they turned 18, but now we have this period of adolescence where we throw any responsibility to grow up out the window until it's time to graduate. And yet, as graduation approached, I heard so many of my peers absolutely panicked to have to enter "the real world." Indeed, it is a daunting prospect, but why wait until the weeks before your graduation to think about how you will relate to the world around you?

Don't wait too long to figure out who you are going to be. Learn to give back and be a significant individual why you are in college. It's actually kind of fun to do and you'll surprise a lot of people.

Get involved in community service
We have a surprising amount of talent compared to much of the need in the community and in the world around us. Yet, most of it goes to waste hidden within a college campus. Community service and social activism comes with a huge wealth of benefits and it is the appropriate and reasonable way to relate to the rest of the world. There is little reason to wait and see how you can contribute to the community, region, and world that gave you so much. We are a truly blessed people and we should learn to see how we can put our blessings to work. I also think this is a blast, and it is definitely worth looking into.

So that's all I have so far. If there is a point I missed or you think I'm way off, please leave a comment or shoot me a note. I'll check them all out and add them in before I make my presentation tomorrow.

Slides so far:

So does this mean I'm a grown-up?

2009-05-09T18:40:00.000-07:00

Well folks, I graduated today!

PROOF: Exhibit A

Graduation took about as long as I expected, and it was one of those things for which I would have been more exciting had I not been so tired. Our guest speaker was a fairly interesting guy. Eugene H. Cordes has apparently been involved in UNL in a big way and has done some impressive things in the realm of biosciences and medicine. Perhaps over my head, but I was impressed nonetheless. He was granted an honorary degree of Doctor of Science. After being honored, he gave the commencement speech for my graduating class. Not bad for a day's work.

His speech was entitled "Learning Throughout Life," and he made repeatedly the point "never stop learning." While not entirely thrilling or overly inspiring, the man said some things I wholeheartedly agree with and that was encouraging. I liked his specific point about scientific literacy. He argues our tax dollars are funding government grants for things like research, medicine, and other scientific endeavors. If we paid for them, the information is ours. Thus, we should seek out and demand to learn the information, internalize it, and metabolize it. Yet, information moves and evolves quickly. Merely relying on what you learned in school doesn't keep you in touch. Thus, constant life-long learning is vital. He argued that we as a society could take advantage of all the progress made by various research committees by things as simple as learning physiology or basic pharmacology. We could learn to work with our doctors and have an active involvement in our own health care.

So yeah, the speech was both generic and specific, inspiring and vanilla, and about the last thing I paid attention to before I zoned out. Thankfully, my college got up first and filed through the ranks to get our diplomas. The rest of it was a waiting game.

I am now comfortably at my parents' house and will hang out here until it is time to move to Seattle.

Past experiences have taught me that I don't like being idle and to be idle at my parents' home is just a recipe for disaster. I stayed in touch with a high school teacher from Bellevue West over the past few years and we tossed around the idea of me coming back to speak to her senior classes. I've spoken to high school students a few times before, but it has been about 2 years and the age gap was never this pronounced.

Yet, I love talking to younger students and sharing experiences I had about growing up and succeeding in higher education while it is still fresh in my mind.

I think I'll want to spend time talking about commitment to the community and learning to give back by leveraging our gifts. I'll probably want to talk about being proactive in self-investment and not "waiting until I'm old enough" to start taking things seriously.

Now, I've heard the Van Wilder quote "don't take too seriously; you'll never make it out alive." I can kind of agree with that, and I have recently begun to verbalize the value of being relaxed about life while still being analytical and critical. Honestly, with the way my mind works, it's the only way I can live life without burning out.

However, I kind of have a small peeve regarding college kids thinking it's fine to continually excuse bad behavior, wastefulness, selfishness, and blah blah blah (I sound like an old man), citing "I'm too young to take this too seriously." Well, at what age do young people all of a sudden become useful, contributing members of society? Is college nothing more than an excuse to be a leech? I hope not.

So I'll try to withhold going too crazy, but those are among my more significant life lessons in college. Everything comes with balance. Self-investment in both work and leisure are important. Community service and caring for one's soul are also important.

So those are my starting ideas. Does anybody else have some thoughts on things you think new to-be-college students should hear?

Realizations Regarding Online Research

2009-05-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

This will be brief, but I am reminded why I was taught to include a searchable alternative to any lengthy collection of text I put on the Internet. We break things up to be easier to read and to make better use of screen real estate. However, I'm going through some research on the Internet for a paper, and I know I saw an article that said something about IBM. However, most publishers paginate the information, limiting the effectiveness of my trusty Ctrl+F habits.

Alternative: continue publishing great information, but also include a link to an ugly long-text version so I can search it.

I want to be epic. Let's be epic

2009-05-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was wonderful because I did close to nothing but meet with remarkable people and play music.

As school is wrapping up, the Raikes School had their corporate board meeting. I serve as a student representative on the board, so somehow that justified inviting me to a lot of the proceedings and I have to say I had a wonderful time. In my mind, it is really cool to see fascinating, intelligent, and successful people take interest in the progress of a small school in Lincoln, NE. In the back of my mind, I hear the voices of most Lincoln residents who would label us as elitist or something comparable. However, I am proud to say I was counted among people committed to ensuring the success of a generation emerging from higher education and into the workforce.

Most of the meeting was focused around various goals we have achieved over the last year and goals we should have for the future. Without spilling too much of the details, I am proud to see the leaders of the school pushing the group of students in the right direction.

Friday evening, my senior class was invited to the home of Jeff Raikes. First off: what a beautiful home he had. Often I discount Nebraska or the Midwest for having nothing other than flat and uninspiring landscapes. I was blown away by that spot outside of Ashland, NE. Superficial beauty aside, I was so impressed with the conversations I got to have with some of the more noteworthy guests there. I came away from the dinner inspired to do big things like what these people were doing with their lives. Jeff's involvement with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the comments of others at my table for dinner reminded me that success means more than making a lot of money. I saw so much passion for each person's work at the table. I saw a passion for using one's talents and gifts to make the world a better place. I was somewhat starstruck, but perhaps it was the wine.

We also had a benefit concert on Saturday put on by various people within the worship team at church. That was pretty awesome as well, and I actually had a good time playing and singing for a crowd. I actually hadn't done that before. I have the recordings and I still maintain my overly self-critical positions, but I'm happy regardless. We surpassed all goals we had set for the semester and the event pushed us past $6,000 raised by a college group. I am thrilled.

If you'd like to read more about the causes we supported, you should check them out here.

Church on Sunday was beyond amazing. I haven't felt that honored to be a part of something in a long time, and I had an absolute blast playing guitar with the worship team. It was a bittersweet feeling knowing it would be the last time I would play there as a regular member of our team. However, seeing how God was glorified with our service that morning subdued any feelings of sadness I could have had. How can one be sad when such amazing things are happening in that group?

So, if there was one way I could sum up the last few days, I'd just have to say it was "epic." It was a weekend full of experiences that just blew me away with how much we are capable of doing with honorable work, passion and commitment.

This post originally started with me wanting to share a song. I've been listening to this about nonstop since last week. There's just something about the way Manchester Orchestra writes raw emotion into a song. I'm still picking through the lyrics and trying to glean some kind of meaning or significance from the song. Yet, I still just feel blown away every time I put a decent pair of headphones on and let the music envelop me for 6 minutes.

I've embedded the song, and hopefully Grooveshark cooperates, but the combination of all these experiences lately really makes me want be epic. I want to do something significant with my life. I want my life and my work to be used for something greater. I want the music I write to move people and to mean something.

Perhaps these are lofty goals. Yet, I'm at a major turning point in my life. I spent most of today working with the various moving companies to put dates to my final days in Nebraska. My desire is that I'd hit Seattle running at full steam and that I'd do something epic with my life. We'll see.

A reflection on security

2009-04-30T13:07:00.000-07:00

As a technically-minded person, I'd like to think I have a pretty good grasp on Internet security. Well I got rocked today and I didn't realize it until the moment after I hit enter and gave away some information.

I needed to find a good way to generate thumbnails on a series of images for a work assignment. I wanted it to be scriptable so I could jam in a few commands and let my computer do the work. Well I found a good solution on this blog post.

If you go there, you might notice a small pop up stating a Twitter API needs a password. To me, this made sense. I have a few applications to feed the Twitter addiction, and I didn't think twice before dropping my password to make my Twitter plug-ins work again.

This is social engineering at its finest. However, when I think of social engineering, I think of people who are too "stupid" (for lack of a better term) to realize people are playing against that ignorance. I suppose I allowed my arrogance to shove me into complacency.

It was a good reminder to realize the Internet isn't necessarily safe and my confidence in my technical ability was perfect bait.

Now I don't know whether this guy did this intentionally or not. He has some pretty solid information on there that helped me a lot. It could be a third party hijacked his site. Either way, I had to change my password and all other passwords similar to it.

A sobering reminder.

On the homestretch

2009-04-23T06:48:00.000-07:00

I don't really have anything specific to jot down lately. Perhaps that's why I've avoided posting lately, but I think now might be a good time to dump some filler in here. I'm currently waiting for my computer to update to Ubuntu 9.04, dubbed "Jaunty Jackelope." I'll record my impressions after this is all done with and I've had a chance to evaluate. My end-goal is to reclaim the entirety of my hard drive from a defunct Vista install.

The back-story on that one was I had a dual-booting solution going for a while (you might read my earlier posts to find out more about that adventure). Unfortunately, my Vista set up went down a long time ago after I tried to install SP1. Even more unfortunately, I didn't have the time to stop and fix it because it was during the busier part of first semester. So I've been running entirely on 15 GBs worth of Ubuntu. So yeah, I need to fix this. Anyway, moving on...

Run for the Homeless

This went really well! On Sunday, April 19th, we had just over 200 runners and walkers come out and show their support for People's City Mission and the struggle against homelessness. I was so relieved to see such a good turnout, and it reminded me how wonderful it is to work with people who have their stuff together. Behind the scenes, I think we overcame quite a bit to make this come off. For a first effort, the planning, logistics, recruiting, and turnout came together beautifully.

Right now, things are looking like they'll be doing this event again next year. Sadly, I won't be around to see it. Hopefully my interactions with other kids have inspired them to commit to helping out this time next year. It would be even more wonderful if some people were inspired to help beyond just an afternoon's worth of running.

I had a thought along these lines the other day. I was thinking about our fund raising goals and how much revenue we actually did generate. I thought about the turnout and how I would have liked it to be better. And then I thought about this:

From among the approximately 250 or so people that came out that day, some had a better awareness about the condition of homelessness in Lincoln. From that subset, perhaps some of them began to see how they could contribute and do something about it. Even fewer still may feel accountable to that knowledge and would become passionate about serving their community. If even 5 people came out of this event and committed to volunteering on a regular basis, I would be thrilled and would see it as a victory worth more than any revenue we could generate.

I'll see if I can get some pictures up on this site, but I will be working on putting them up on the Mission's site for sure. Feel free to check them out when they're up.

PCM Change Manager

I've mentioned once or twice that I've been working on a web application that would help the people here at the Mission organize the changes made to the web site. I'm realizing it is more of a specialized project management system where the project is hard coded to be web site maintenance. Hopefully, the differentiating value can be in the in-application file editor that I hope to hook up to the publishing process. I have an idea of how I can make that work, but I need to get the interface done first.

That has been something I've found frustrating about Grails so far. I love the MVC methodology, and I really enjoyed setting things up in Grails. I've been asking myself lately if building from the domain up is the right way to go. I'm realizing now that in doing so, I haven't really made many design considerations regarding the interface or flow through the site. This is a stark contrast to the design pattern we used in our HCI class. In this methodology, we designed from the interface down. We used personas, user tests, and even paper mock-ups and prototypes to get an understanding of how the user would use the application and designed from there. Perhaps, next time I will look for some kind of happy medium between the two.

I don't think the "PCM Change Manager" (I'll worry about catchy names later) is too far off from being done. I just need to figure out my hardware setup now and figure out how I can deploy it before I take off!

"Graduamation!"

So I'm about to 'graduamate'--or graduate, as it's more commonly known--and I'm pretty excited. I picked up my cap and gown yesterday and coughed up some money to become a proud member of the Huskers Alumni Association. I even got a pin! Word.

In all seriousness though, I'm pretty excited for this to happen. I've loved school and the opportunity to expand my mind, but I'm even more excited to get out and do some work! I think the idea of capitalizing on all the potential my professors and other people involved in my college career have tried to grow in me is thrilling. Beyond that, I'm excited to not have homework and actually enjoy my free time. In these last few weeks, any free time I've had has been sapped of it's benefits because I keep thinking about all the work I'm not doing. It is growing tiresome. Even sleep is becoming a mess. Last night I woke up at 2:30 am thinking I had to go to work. I wake up with my heart racing sometimes ready to start working on things. On a weird note, I haven't been woken up by my alarm in weeks. I seem to always wake up before it and wonder if the clock on my phone is wrong.

So yeah. I'm excited to get out of here. :)

On a happer note, I'll be looking for an apartment in Seattle soon, and then I can get a kitchen together and start making my own food! Selleck Cafeteria, you've been wonderful (read, "free"), but I can only stand the lack of variety for so long. It's time to move on.

I think that's all I'll put for now. I've been running across a lot of project and task management applications on the Internet lately, and I think I'd like to draw some comparisons among them. I think this is a really cool area for software, and I've found a few promising players. Maybe when I find some time...

Cheers!

By the way, the coffee I'm drinking right now is just wonderful. I have no idea what it is, but it just warms my soul because of how good it tastes. Thank God human beings are wired to take pleasure in such simple things.

Expanding Evals Idea

2009-04-14T08:00:00.000-07:00

In this post, I sketched out an idea for a new evaluation system focusing on brevity, frequent use, and graphic representation of information. I got a couple comments about it, and both focused on enforcement.

So how do you build policy and enforcement into software? Well, that can easily be done with checks before user actions to ensure the desired outcome has been achieved. To be honest, I don't like that. One of the top goals for my idea is that users should love--or at least not really hate--using the software. Building enforcement rules into the software doesn't align with that goal.

However, in order to be effective, students actually have to use the software to get effective evaluations. As put to me by Nate, if students don't have to do anything, they won't do it. That makes sense. So how do you ensure students use software that doesn't force them to? What makes us use the current evaluations system.

To answer that, I will stick with an idea that I've always carried with me for a while: be cautious when trying to make software do something a human should do. I love software because it helps us be more effective. It enables efficiencies and helps us do things better than we ever thought possible. It can even open doors in some situation. However, as a society, we shouldn't let software cripple us in areas where we should be competent with or without software.

Thus, software shouldn't always replace good policy, human management, and work ethic. In this software, I could easily hide a submit or exit button until the user fills in all the required information. I could write code that nags the user until he or she completes each evaluation. Yet, that is terribly annoying. It detracts from the user experience I want to create. It also eliminates the ability to work in increments--ie, work a bit, save it, and return to it later.

The current evaluation software doesn't have any enforcement rules, yet they get done. That is because there are policies or business rules to ensure things get done. In our context, the policy is "do your evals or something really bad is going to happen to your grade--even though we're going to be mysterious and not tell you what." In this software, the same thing will hold true.

Software should supplement, not replace, business rules. It can supplement management by providing reminders, work flow tools, collaboration and communication features, and a list of other things. But the human side of things can't be replaced by a machine.

Students won't do anything they don't have to, but a piece of software shouldn't force them to do it. If there is going to be a "bad guy" in the situation, it should be in the management and not in the tool. Enforcement will lie in management--or the faculty in this case--and it will not go into my proposed solution. In my opinion, I don't think that's where it belongs.

That being said, I do see some value in creating reminders or feedback to give the student the hint that certain tasks should be completed. I could see having some notification pop up when a user is exiting to inform them that active tasks have not been completed. It might even send an e-mail alert to inform a student that their required evaluations have not been submitted and they have x number of days to complete them.

Edit: This is a late addition I thought I should add
Another thing I see is letting the software make use of data to enable managers to enforce participation. Each point submission and comment will be associated with the user that submitted it. While it probably shouldn't be shown on the interface, the system can record that "User xyz submitted the following evaluation on mm/dd/yyyy". A PM can just look up all comments made by a user and see that there were submissions for all the appropriate categories. Good reporting tools will be essential to making this work.

I think this is kind of a fun idea. I've spent some time looking at the Google Charts API and I think that could be an awesome way to present some information. I haven't put any other design considerations into it, but it might be a fun project to work on.

Any comments, feedbacks, or angry rebuttals? Please leave a comment if you have one. If you think this would be a good project to start, let me know and I'll see if I can set one up. Drew forced me to set up a GitHub account yesterday to share my Change Management software with him, so I'll spend some more time learning about Git.

Thanks for reading! Cheers.

What's a Heartsong for anyway?

2009-04-14T06:56:00.000-07:00

Oh man, this has been one of those mornings where I would have loved to stay in bed and it's only 9:00 am.

I know I run a pretty busy life. I like to take on more than I should be able to chew. I like being in charge of things and making sure they come off ok. But occasionally it catches up to me and I crash. Like this morning.

Last night I spent most of my evening working on a group paper and preparing a presentation for another class that I will be presenting later today. The way this group operates kind of pushes me out of my comfort zone. I'm used to synchronous work in the same location. I'm used identifying tasks, doling them out, and seeing everybody get them done. Last night was so different. I'm almost surprised our presentation came together. I'm still not sure how it will go. I still have to make sure our handouts get printed off. There are many variables I can only hope go well. On top of that, I still have to eFile my taxes and the only barrier is a financial one, which is stressful enough in and of itself. In fact, one of the few things I'll really let get under my skin.

So I came to work this morning about ready to destroy something--because for some reason that's the first thing I think will make me feel better. Instead, I shut my office door and fired up my laptop. First thing I notice: it refuses to connect to the office wireless. The point goes to Ubuntu! At this point, I'm about ready to blow up.

Instead of destroying everything around me, I fire up Songbird since I can't get to Last.fm. I start up "Grapevine Fires" by Death Cab for Cutie. I shut the door. I turn the volume up.

I love this song, but for some reason the sounds enveloped me and I stopped paying attention to it. For some reason, it made me think about God. This was weird. This kind of thing hadn't happened before.

I'm taking a Leadership in Organizations class with Dr. Colleen Jones right now. She makes a big deal about teaching spirit and soul in work and in leadership. It was an odd concept to swallow at first, but it grew on me after a while. We had to read Leading with Soul for class. It's odd because I had to read it when I was a freshman and I thought it was the most expensive piece of fire-starting material I had ever seen. Reading it again as a senior, I saw so much more value in it.

The book illustrates the idea that the soul and spirit are real entities within an individual. It is interesting that the authors make a case for the soul and spirit without using religious words. This isn't a biblical concept to them. This is something we all can relate to. The spirit is the intangible way we relate to people. It is the ethereal way in which we connect and relate to the world around us. It's what we connect to when we inspire and share experiences with each other. The soul is what feeds and drives the spirit. A strong and well-attuned spirit can connect with the spirit and influence it. It works in harmony with it.

Well, I am a 'religious' person. I do see spirit and soul in a biblical sense. And this morning, mine were battered. I have taken on a huge load and I've made a considerable effort to manage it myself. This morning, I snapped into prayer without even thinking about it.

The book speaks of a 'heartsong' or prayer. It is the way in which we connect with our souls. It is how we reflect inwardly and meditate on who we are, what our significance is, and what it means to just exist. For me, it is my way of attuning my soul to my God.

Amidst the stress, the exhaustion, and the sonic ambiance as supplied by the oh-so-wonderful Death Cab for Cutie, I turned to prayer. I reevaluated the position of my soul and spirit before my God. I reevaluated the nature of my work and became that much more thankful that I even had the opportunity to be a good steward of my talents and the needs around me. Most importantly, I remembered I'm not in this alone. I don't have to manage all my personal stress by myself. My strength lies not in myself but in my Lord. My faith means more than my one-time salvation, but in my present-active salvation from life itself.

I don't know what it was, but I just snapped this morning--and it was in a good way. It reminded me the importance of finding ways to stop, reflect, realign, and be at peace with the world. I don't expect life to get any easier, and being able to leverage my 'heartsong' will be so important as I grow.

I think the book tries to emphasize that everybody has a heartsong. Prayer doesn't have to be a thing of faith. It is a thing of self-evaluation, internal dialogue, contemplation, and a conversation with the essence that makes you 'you'. This sounds incredibly corny, I know, but the idea is that we should be attuned to the intangibles of our lives. We should be able to balance our ethereal essence with the hard reality of the world around us. I think it's kind of a cool idea.

A lot of my posts have been technically related lately. I haven't really taken a religious leaning in my writing lately. This morning was just an interesting experience for me and I thought I'd share.

My Crack at Evals

2009-04-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

I don't mean to try to ride on Nick and Nate's thunder with their series on evals, but I actually came up with an idea earlier I thought I'd share. To get any new reader up to speed, we do team evaluations for our Design Studio projects in Raikes School. Many of us have been analyzing the way we do things in Design Studio to see how we can make them better. One specific area is in our evaluation system. If none of those things made sense to you, you may not find anything useful in the rest of this post.

I was taking a walk earlier today and I was thinking about how technology has changed the way people communicate. We got the pleasure of listening to Evan Williams from Twitter speak to our program last week (recorded for your viewing pleasure). Twitter is an increasingly popular way to communicate. In my experience, it is marked by brief, succinct communication, yet users are still able to say everything they need to say. I've also noticed that most Twitter users update pretty frequently.
Readers of my blog may note that brevity isn't one of my strengths ;)

Another thing I see today is the use of visual media is also a popular way to communicate. Web designers often turn to visual representations of data to mimic conventions we are used to in real life.

So my idea focused on combining short communication, frequent updates, and visual cues to create a new evaluation system.

I tried to sketch out what I thought the interface might look like with the GIMP.

In this design, the individual being evaluated is shown in the middle of the graph. I made a quick assumption that this evaluation system has identified 6 key points of success that every member of Design Studio should have. Each category is a corner on graph.

Each member on the team would be able to evaluate the individual using this tool. For each category, a user would be able to add points for each category, thereby pushing the graph out on that particular axis. This graph would quickly show where the individual's strengths are. However, an evaluation system that only focused on where an individual was doing well wouldn't be too effective. To show where an individual should improve, a user would also be able to subtract points for a given strength.

The system would aggregate the submissions for all users evaluating a given individual. This data would contribute to the overall graph for an individual. If designed well, the system could present different views with the data, but that's another story.

I gave some thought to whether a user should have a number of points to distribute for each evaluation period. Players of RPG's should find this familiar if they've ever distributed points across dimensions of a character's skills. The alternative would just allow the user to add a point, subtract a point, or do nothing to a given category. Going even further, the system could allow a user to add or subtract one or two points to allow for greater variation or more expressive decisions.

One thing I don't like about the current evaluation system is that it doesn't tie results of an evaluation to specific incidents. For example, if I did well in my 'Communications' category, I can't point to any specific behaviors or incidents to reinforce the feedback. Conversely, if I did poorly in an area, I don't know which behaviors to change. Therefore, each time a user added or subtracted a point, the system would prompt for a brief comment as to why. The system would then save the comments to each category for each user in a database or other storage system. Program managers could pull this data later for reporting purposes.

The other thing that I would want to see in this system would be shorter evaluation periods. Perhaps every week or two weeks, team members would go through this process. Hopefully, the interface is easy enough that this can be done with minimal time and effort. Another advantage of more frequent updates is that feedback is more timely, and thus more useful and relevant. Individuals would be able to see their chart as it changes and can react to the evaluations more effectively.

Perhaps a cool but not as useful feature would be the ability to take periodic snapshots of the graphs and be able to play them back. A user could see his or her graph change over time. This might be a fun way to see an individual's growth over time. This engaging interface might make user's less likely to get frustrated and tired of using the system, thus making evaluations more honest, useful, and effective.

Let me know what you think! Is this a good idea? Would you use a system like this? What glaring mistakes or disasters did I overlook with this idea?
Bear in mind this came to me as I was running through the rain from the garage to Kauffman.

Evaluations of "Evals"

2009-04-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

Nick and Nate are spending time evaluating our current Design Studio evaluation system over the next few days. Last night's post struck a chord with me. It was pretty similar to discussions I had with Ron Jeffries and relates to things I talked about in my Human Resources class. This post is to expand my reflection's on Nick's post.

An evaluation comprised of interviews could potentially put more pressure on the evaluator. However, I think this could be a good thing. In any interview situation, being able to express ideas clearly, sense the emotional and rational state of the interviewee, and maintain an ebb and flow of control in the interview as necessary. Frankly, I can't think of a reason a PM shouldn't develop skills like these.

As far as being difficult to understand, the current system is the same way. Whether spoken or written down, team members are still offering insights to the performance of other team members and it is the job of the PM to understand, compile, and analyze the evaluations of the team members. With a notepad, a good pen, and perhaps a tape recorder, an interview style evaluation would reveal the same--if not more--information as the current system.

Furthermore, I don't see understand why it is the PM's responsibility to defend anybody. Being a rational arbiter in a conversation is an important point, and it is important to have a clear-headed evaluator in the case where emotions are running high.

Moving on, I think interview style evaluations with shorter iterations would be more effective. If evaluations should be focused on how a student can improve, there should be more than four opportunities to get any real feedback or direction. This makes potential for drastic or severe changes if a student really wants to respond to feedback. If the iteration periods were shorter, a student could focus on one or two points of improvement, adjust, and move on until the next evaluation. With what we have now, any high points or low points are moderated over time to the point where whatever is being awarded or admonished has been forgotten (yay for passive voice). One of the important points impressed upon students in psychology or organizational behavioral management is that timeliness is hugely important when rewarding or correcting behavior. Another advantage of shorter iterations is that it reduces the potential that students use evaluations as a shotgun trigger to hurt other team members. There is certainly the possibility that a student who wanted to avoid confrontation would suppress any problems or issues until evals roll around and then they could blast away as they wanted. Evals should be about improvement, not venting. Therefore, in a shortened evaluation period, time no longer becomes ammunition and the evaluations offer more value to a student who truly seeks to improve.

Interviews can reveal more information than current evaluations. How many students are actually honest or specific in the current evaluation system? Suppose an evaluation reveals you did a good job in a certain area, but can't offer any information on what specific activities or instances contributed to that evaluation. Or on the contrary, suppose a student gets a negative review, but has no idea why or for what specific reasons. In an interview, a PM is in a good position to ask questions or elicit more details to get a full picture.

One drawback of interviews with shorter periods is that it means more work for the PM. Having to arrange interviews, conduct them, compile the information from each, and present reports back to students would be a lot of work in an interview. However, I think the benefits may outweigh the work here. PM's should certainly be on board with giving their team members better opportunities to respond, grow, and improve.

Another issue is that interviews may seem difficult to quantify or provide any gradable substance. First and foremost, evaluations should be about progress, not grading. DS is in a unique position in that we have to assign grades in an environment not normally driven by academic growth. In fact, I can't think of any actual growth I've experienced from Design Studio as a class.

Therefore, it would be important to identify clear goals and objectives for a Design Studio student. In the same way that a class syllabus or an overview for a chapter in a text books describes what the student should have achieved by the end, a set of Design Studio goals and objectives for a student should be expressily outlined. It should also be something reiterated and impressed into the mind of the student. If Design Studio currently has goals like I'm talking about, then we're not stressing them because I have no idea what they are off the top of my head. In what areas am I expected to grow because of this class? What are the measurable points of success in this class? What skills should I have because of my two years in Design Studio and all the hours in team time?

The answers to these questions should be the same questions an interviewer should seek to discover in an interview. This would give the PM some structure to the interview. Facilitating a two-way discussion shouldn't be difficult as the PM asks a student how another team member is doing on a certain point of success. Really, we do that now in written form, so that isn't such a big leap.

Things like communication, leadership, diplomacy, handling tough situations, persuasiveness, and other good traits for the workplace are things we seek for now and are things we should continue. Identifying core values for a Design Studio student would be a key step. Putting more emphasis on goals would be easier in an interview since I don't think anybody pays much attention to those now.

Another issue with the current system is there close to no value of meeting with the PM after evals now. The PM usually sends the student a copy of the results of their evaluation about an hour or so (if that) before a meeting. Then the PM reads the review to you. There is no value in that. I can read. I would see more value out of my and my PM's time if we were actually discussing and poring over questions when the questions mattered to me most--ie, when things happen or shortly thereafter.

Well, those are my thoughts. Either way, I'm gone after this year, so no big deal :)

Project Management

2009-04-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend of mine sent me an invite to try out the beta of an application called Thymer. This Web application is a minimalistic project or task management tool with a natural, fluid, and simple interface. I absolutely love it so far. I'm using it to manage personal projects and tasks, similar to what you can do with The Hit List for Mac. To be honest, I haven't seen or looked for too many tools like this.

Things I like about Thymer:

The Interface

Again, I cannot stress enough how much I love using it. It's clean, simple, and very intuitive. They really take pride in their one-page design. If that sounds unique, it should because you literally do everything you need on one page.
The other thing I like is that the interface is designed around one thing: managing tasks. The user's eyes are immediately drawn to the input bar and from there everything just makes sense. I don't remember all my fancy HCI terms, but this just reminds me of everything I learned in design class. The interface seriously makes me happy just using it. I'll shutup about this now.

The syntax

The simple way to use Thymer is to just type a task in and go. However, you can start pulling in many of its features with the "@" sign. With this and a few key words, you can assign tasks to a particular project, delegate to a person on your team, set a due date, and plenty of other things.

Time tracking

Being able to track time spent working on a particular task--especially if it's billable--is a cool feature to have. If used correctly, it can help an individual find out how they spend most of their day. It can also help a team manager see where the hours are going on a project. It can also be a useful estimation-training tool. I haven't investigated this feature much, so I can't really say more.

Other little tricks

I only got my invite to this last night, but I've already been using it quite a bit. The ability to set up multiple projects and arrange views by projects is nice. Being able to drag tasks around to designate priority is also a good feature. It is aware of date as a context and uses color and positioning to visually show you which tasks will be on time or may run late. Those that have already passed the due date show up in red. Assigning tasks to users could be useful for a team.

For the most part, I can see this as being useful on a personal level, but it also have been thinking about how this can be used for project management in the agile methodology. There are lots of discussions going on these days on how to make various things about our Design Studio program go better. We had Ron Jeffries in class today to review what was good and what was bad about our year of agile. The time we spent talking to him yesterday was pretty awesome too, but I digress.

We've been grumbling about VersionOne pretty much all year. There were some things I liked about the application, but I think it was fairly underutilized from what I could see. Some teams really bought into it, and others only used it at a bare minimum to make sure the powers that be were pleased. I can attempt to make a few guesses at why.

The Interface

VersionOne was cluttered. There was just so much going on in a given screen when all I want to do is grab stories or add tasks to my stories. With time and practice, VersionOne does become very navigable, but it pales in comparison with the ease of use in Thymer.

Feature Overload
As a team, the things we were concerned with were maintaining a backlog, managing stories, adding tasks to stories, and making estimates. As far as I can tell, that was it. VersionOne had nice things like burn-down chart generation, "how far behind you are" bars, and other reporting tools. We never used many of these things. Moreover, to my knowledge, our client rarely saw any of these things. Where's the value? After a while, all these things become gold plating and one really has to take a hard look and see if you're getting the return on every feature you paid for.

Replace-ability

Many software applications maintain physical metaphors and conventions to make usability more intuitive. In VersionOne's case, it was frustrating because you could kind of see where they were trying to do that, but I always felt like I could be just as productive with sticky-notes on a wall or some other simpler process. For all its glitz and glamor, VersionOne could have easily been replaced and I don't think anybody would have missed it. However, another part of the problem is that PMs and faculty can't see progress without VersionOne reports, so the teams are constrained to use a particular tool not because of its effectiveness, but because of policy. I'd take the sticky notes in a second.

Mapping Policy to Use

This one may not be VersionOne's fault at all, but I can remember how messy things were at the beginning of the year. Generating stories was one thing. Jamming them into a VersionOne backlog was another. Trying to figure out how many tasks to make up or how to break things down "just so" because the faculty might be grading something made it nearly impossible to map the value of a system to requirements for class. The point is this: a tool should mold to the needs of a team, and not the other way around. Too much time was spent trying to bend in unnatural ways to play nicely with VersionOne. Something like Thyme seems flexible enough that a team could adopt it naturally into its own way of doing things.

I didn't really plan this post before starting, so I apologize if it's not well structured. What started as a post about Thyme turned into a rant about VersionOne. However, I hope somebody finds this tool useful, and I hope we can take a good look on how our use of tools in Design Studio can be a natural, pleasant aid to a team instead of an encumbrance.

I grabbed this video from their site. Take a look at it if you want:

Color Scheme Change

2009-04-07T18:13:00.001-07:00

Two posts within a day's time. This is plain craziness.

I do most of my blog reading in Google Reader, which is a fantastic blog aggregating service by the way. Therefore, I don't really get to see color schemes on a blog. Well I just spent some time reviewing older posts in my blog. After a while, I realized that while I loved my old dark color scheme, it was just terrible on my eyes after a while.

I did a Google search to see what color schemes are best for reading large amounts of text and a few sources confirmed my suspicion: light text on dark backgrounds is no good. I didn't spend much time verifying the credibility of these sources, but I really only needed some light confirmation to make me switch.

I think my current theme should be a bit better. If anybody actually follows this on blogspot, leave me a suggestion if you think my scheme (not my posts!) is damaging your eyes.

Twitter Schmitter

2009-04-07T17:06:00.001-07:00

I decided to cave in and get on Twitter.

I really resisted this idea for the longest time thinking "this is useless. I don't see why this could be important to me at all."

To be honest, I still kind of think that way. I then realized many of the times I think something is stupid or useless, it is because I don't fully understand it. More importantly, I don't realize the potential.

Well today in Design Studio class, we had a guest speaker named Ron Woerner from TD AMERITRADE. I thought he was a pretty engaging speaker and, in my opinion, the technology oriented talks seem more interesting than the Agile talks or some other topic.

He gave us the quote "Eat like a bird, poop like an elephant." I thought that was pretty awesome. Being in college has really taught me a lot about gleaning as much information from every situation or circumstance. I often feel like a vacuum hungry to learn more. Over the last year, I've been seeing the value of being less parasitic and seeking ways to turn my 'input' into 'output'. This quote is kind of interesting because it denotes the concept of taking in a lot of input and generating a lot of input.

So what about Twitter? I think it can be a new way to get more information and learn more. Along the way, I'll probably end up seeing some of the useless stuff that made me avoid Twitter before, but I think that will be ok. It can also be a way for me to put some of my thoughts and experiences down, kind of like I'm doing with this blog.

Hopefully I can avoid making "zOMG I'm so DePrEsSeD right now I JUST ATE AN APPLE" tweets. ;)

You can follow me at TheDahv.

Resurrection of the blog

2009-04-05T21:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I certainly let a lot of time go by on my blog, so I write now with remorse and shame. However, there's no time like the present to start back up so less whining and more writing.

The focus of this entry will be around a new project I threw together and some of the tools and methodologies going into it.

The Problem

To provide some background on what I'm doing, I should probably mention that this is a project for People's City Mission. I work there now (as in 'get paid') as a member of AmeriCorps. My title is kind of a catch-all position dubbed "Internet/Web Specialist." I'm not entirely sure what all goes into being an AmeriCorps member because I wasn't told much other than that I'd be getting paid after all that time volunteering.

Anyway, one of the great things about my role is that I pretty much have free reign to consult and help the organization make better use of its technology resources. It's a cool learning exercise because most of my training is in the academic or enterprise realm. In these domains, the technology environment is generally pretty solid and there are plenty of financial resources devoted to making it competitive. In the non-profit environment, this isn't always the case. Thus, I am challenged to think critically and find out how to do less with more.

One of my main goals there is to help them make their Web site more effective. To do so, I trained a few people on how to download a local copy of the site from the FTP server, make minor edits, and push the changes back to the server. Again, this isn't my preferred environment because there is no versioning. This created the problem of multiple people making changes to the same code base and over-writing the updates of others.

To fix this, I recommended implementing a change control system. I started by setting up a rudimentary e-mail process until I could get something better in place. Eventually, I would need a solution that would track all changes being made to the site's code base, track who was making those changes, and limit the ability to make changes to capable and trusted individuals.

The Solution

I did some investigating to see if there was an existing solution that would serve those needs. Additional criteria required that the solution would incur no costs, and that any hosting requirements would create as few snags as possible.

The first thing I found was that there weren't many hosted solutions available. Therefore, I opened up my search to open source solutions that I could run on a server located on-site. I figured I could use DynDns to make it accessible on and off-site.

I looked at a few alternatives, and Bugzilla and Trac were most ideal. Both are credible and widely-used issue-tracking solutions. However, my audience isn't necessarily tech savvy and much of the terminology and concepts used on each solution could have been a problem. I also saw that each had extra features that my problem didn't need, which could have been distracting or confusing to my audience.

Therefore, I decided to create my own. It seems like a simple enough problem, and a new coding project could be good for me. I looked into Ruby on Rails as a platform and I even started my project with it. However, I learned the MVC paradigm with Grails and I found myself thinking in those terms. My love for Grails ended up being tempting me enough to switch.

I think I'll be getting a server from People's City Mission, and I plan on putting Xubuntu on it and running the project from that. For now, I'm just prototyping on my laptop and hopefully I'll get something I can deploy to a server easily.

Other Tools

I did a lot of drawing on a marker board in my office at the Mission. I'm the type that likes to sketch things out and do some design work ahead of time so. I find this makes it a lot easier to throw concepts into code. I took some pictures of my work with my phone and decided later to get these ideas into digital form. For that, I looked online for some good diagramming tools and came up with Dia. This is kind of similar to Umbrello, but Dia doesn't force you into a UML paradigm. Instead, I could use any of its multiple sheets to visualize my ideas. This ended up being kind of fun and I was able to tease out some new features and eliminate redundancies and inefficiencies in my initial design.

Hopefully, this project turns into something useful for the people that work there. My main goal is to improve efficiency and make the process of keeping the Web site up to date and effective an activity in which everybody at the Mission could participate. Ideally, there should be enough interesting stuff coming from this project that I can write more about it instead of letting another three or four months go by before I post again.

Volunteer Opportunity

2008-11-21T16:04:00.000-08:00

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.

Giving and receiving the love

2008-11-09T14:32:00.000-08:00

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:

"The best days of our lives"

2008-10-27T17:09:00.001-07:00

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

Be the change you want to see in the world

2008-07-15T09:30:00.003-07:00

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?

Nerd times

2008-07-15T06:37:00.015-07:00

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.

All that learnin' paid off

2008-07-07T13:44:00.006-07:00

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.

My Summer Job

2008-06-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

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!

While I wait...

2008-06-27T08:35:00.050-07:00

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.

Oops...I forgot about this

2008-05-21T14:47:00.030-07:00

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

Random Collection of Software I Like

2008-03-31T15:18:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

To start using Colibri, you can download it here and install it. Once it is set up, you type CTRL+Enter to bring up the interface and you start typing.

Another nice thing about Colibri is that you can customize it and set preferences by typing "Colibri" into the interface and going through the options. I did a quick search to see if there were themes available for it, and I found a nice one here called Nisus, also shown in the image to the right. To use it, download the zip file, unpack it to the themes folder (usually C:\Program Files\Colibri\Themes), and then set Colibri to use that theme from within the application's settings and preferences interface.

The only gripes I have so far is that I haven't really figured out how to "teach" it new applications. For example, I wanted to use Colibri to launch my chat program, Pidgin. Unfortunately, it didn't find it right away, so I had to put the absolute file-path to the executable within my Program Files folder. Once I do that, it remembers it for a while, but it doesn't last long. It seems like I should be able to teach it short-cuts to different applications, but I haven't figured that out yet.

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

This isn't really that useful, but it's interesting nonetheless. The basic premise is that it takes the concept of a browser and throws it into a "3D" environment. Tabs are contained in windows arranged within a large space in the application. You can navigate to different tabs by "driving" around through the space with the arrow keys.

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!

First Post...

2008-03-29T18:54:00.000-07:00

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...