Sheep Guarding Llama – Page 887 – Scott Alan Miller

November 11, 2007: Email, Ruby, Perl, Podcasting

Oreo made me take him out late before going to bed and then got me up in the middle of the night to take him on a long adventure through Newark. I’m not sure if he had a tummy ache or if he was just bored and tired of just laying in bed. But it was a pretty serious interruption to the night and I didn’t sleep very well.

I am so relived to have my Java class over and done with. I did not need that hanging over my head this week. This week is going to be more than hectic enough for Dominica and I without having to deal with homework too. We are going to be spending the rest of this week attempting to get ready to leave for the UK as much as possible although we are definitely in a scramble at this point.

I took the day to work on some serious Ruby scripting that I have been putting off because of the Java class. Dominica split her day between some Perl that she is trying to learn and working on her program design for Empire State College. We didn’t go anywhere today at all. Dominica cooked us a late breakfast and we ordered in our dinner from Golden City.

Dominica also worked on getting iTunes, Audible.com and the iPods set up so that they would be ready for us to take them on the trip with plenty of books to listen to as well as some walking tour podcasts which she is very excited about.

I actually spent a lot more time working today than normal. I did a ton of programming and managed to finally get the first (and very rough) form of my Ruby logging utility working. The program takes emailed log files from routers and firewalls that are sent to a central email address and processes them into a few basic components and then connects to a remote MySQL database and uploads log data into the database. So I had to get IMAP, MySQL, some parsing and a few other things working. At the end of the day I ran a small test and moved almost thirteen thousand logs over and it worked flawlessly. I was very happy about the results.

My big project tonight is updating my Zimbra email server from 4.5.0 to 4.5.9 which is a fairly serious update. That required that I stay up late so that I would only take down the email server when there wasn’t very much mail going through and people weren’t using the server. I started working on it around eight or a little bit later in the evening. As I feared that it might, it turned into an all night kind of project. Anything this critical – who can live without working email – always takes a long time even when things go smoothly. It ended up taking about seven hours to complete. Most of the time was spent making careful backups and being sure that nothing was out of place. Then I got surprised that the new version required a significantly larger amount of space than the version that I have been running so I had to add all new storage to accommodate it before I could continue. What a night!

While I was working on the Zimbra server I had the opportunity to squeeze off the fifty-sixth SGL podcast! It is short and not nearly as polished as most of the shows that I do but it has been a long time, since May 19th, since I have been able to get any show completed at all so I am very happy that at least this one was done. I got it posted to Podomatic and uploaded to OurMedia and the Internet Archive which took a very long time as they have changed their architecture since the last time that I did a show. I am really hoping that Min and I will do a few shows from the UK but the chances seem slim that more than one or two could be done with our limited time there. We will definitely be taking a lot of pictures, though.

Don’t forget that the OLPC XO goes on sale tomorrow morning at six!

November 10, 2007: Happy Birthday Luna

I was up before eight this morning. It was fifty-five degrees in our bedroom when I got out of bed and closed the window. Dominica and Oreo were still fast asleep and would be for at least another hour. I closed the window and figured that a load of dishes would help to warm up the apartment so I went to the kitchen and washed all of the dishes, loaded the dishwasher and ran a load and did some other light cleaning around the apartment. Mom would be proud – cleaning first thing on a Saturday morning. I also fired up the computers. These are newer AMD machines so they don’t generate a lot of heat but every little bit helps.

I am on call for the office this weekend so I logged in there – just over ten hours after having logged off my workstation at the office last night.

Today is the last day of the Master’s Java development course. That class just few by. I really thought that there were going to be at least two more big projects if not four and a lot more material covered. I liked the class but mostly it was just a recap of my undergrad Java 1 course which was considered to be at the Freshman level. This class moved a little faster and the homework was definitely longer and more difficult and the grading was a little steeper but for the most part I would have a hard time saying that the class itself was any harder. My last grad class also overlapped with an undergrad class (do you sense a theme here) and was far easier than the SUNY undergrad work that I did. Starting in about two weeks is my third grad class, Project Management, which (I told you that there was a theme) exactly mirrors one of my undergrad classes.

Once Dominica and Oreo were awake I walked over to Airlie Cafe and picked up breakfast for us which we ate in bed while watching an episode of Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century. We watched the episode where our intrepid hero flies off to another planet to save the alien girl in distress.

Dominica spent the bulk of the day working on our backlog of laundry and working on packing for our trip next week. That was a lot of work. I did a bit of cleaning around the apartment, especially in the kitchen, and spent the evening hard at work studying for a couple of hours for my Java final exam which I want to take today so that I can get it out of the way before I get stuck with it hanging over my head for the rest of the week.

It was fairly late this evening when I finally stopped studying and sat down to actually take the final exam. It covered a lot of material that I was not expecting but that I thankfully had studied for and was well prepared for. I ended up getting a 97% on the final and am now done with my Java class. I am free and clear for the next week and won’t have to worry about homework or tests while I am in the United Kingdom. There is still one last homework assignment that has not been graded so I do not have a final grade for the class yet but should have that any day.

Dominica made dinner here out of what we had in the freezer and then baked an apple pie while she was waiting for me to finish the test.

Happy first birthday to Luna who lives in our building!

November 9, 2007: Diwali

Today is Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights.

Don’t forget that your chance to buy an OLPC XO for yourself while donating one to a needy child in the developing world begins on Monday at six in the morning. The donation is $400USD and half of that amount is tax deductible. Additionally, T-Mobile is providing free access to their network of hotspots for one year for free to donors.

It was quite cold last night but by this morning it had warmed up considerably and I overdressed for my walk to work. I was pretty warm by the time that I had arrived.

It is one week until Dominica and I hop the pond to spend a week and a half in the British Isles. But most everything is ready at this point so we just need to wait it out and soon enough, we will be there.

My morning was incredibly busy and then for lunch I sneaked away with two of my clients for a nice sushi lunch. I am glad that I was able to – my day was really busy and I needed the break.

My afternoon, as it often is on Fridays, was completely jam-packed with work. It is days like today when I really earn my paycheck. I didn’t have time for anything all afternoon. I worked as fast as I could solidly from about two thirty until nine in the evening. It was a really late night and I was burned out by the time that I was done. I was really productive though and just a ton of work was accomplished during that stretch.

It was so late by the time that I was wrapping up at the office that Dominica just went ahead and had dinner at home with Oreo. After work I walked up to Suspenders, the pub on Broadway at the head of Wall Street, and had a fish fry alone. When I left the office on lower Wall I was surprised to find that the day had turned cold and that it was raining.

It seemed oddly appropriate to me to be spending the forth anniversary of the passing of my mother sitting alone in the middle of the deserted financial district in the cold rain eating a fish fry. It gave me a little quite time to myself at least.

Dad emailed me a link to the blog of a friend of ours and my mom’s accordion student. She blogged about mom yesterday on The King’s Ranch and it was really touching. I am being intentionally ambiguous so ignore the poor writing.

November 8, 2007: No More Scaffolding

Today I am home with Oreo. We slept in as late as we could this morning. It wasn’t until after eight that we finally pulled ourselves out of bed. That means that we probably got nine or ten hours of sleep at least. Boy did I need that. I felt much better this morning.

When I took Oreo out for his morning walk we got to see our building, Eleven80, with the scaffolding all taken away. Boy does that make a difference with the appearance of the building and the entire street. We have had all three exposed sides of Eleven80 covered in scaffolding along with our facing side of Catholic Health Services since we first moved in making Raymond, Commerce and the little side Commerce streets all very dark and gloomy. Now, suddenly, there is wide open space around our building and light and a view! It’s like Commerce street is all new again.

The side street, the “other” Commerce, on the east side of Eleven80 still has construction stuff filling the one lane and the big fencing all around it but they are cleaning today as if that is going to be removed in a day or two. It will be great to have the use of that street for the first time and it should, in theory, help to eliminate the traffic congestion on our street which is horrific. Standing on Commerce is a very different experience than it was just four months ago. It is becoming an attractive street. Once the other Commerce is open I will get some pictures of the “new” Eleven80.

Despite some missteps and some backtracking Newark does appear to be making progress. The new stadium really is bringing in the crowds and there are several downtown areas that are showing some serious improvements over the past year. Dominica and I will be in Newark for at least one more year. It will be interesting to see what happens as we move forward.

Still missing from downtown is any sort of good, mid-market eateries. We have fast food and we have deli type restaurants galore (on our block alone are two existing brick and mortar restaurants with identical deli menus and an existing “truck” restaurant with the same men and one more located in our building about to open with nothing on its menu to differentiate it from the restaurants that it faces on the same street!) as well as Subways, fried chicken and pizza. And we have some nice restaurants like the Theater Square Grill, Maize and 27Mix. But we lack normal, everyday type eateries that most people want to go to for dinner most days. We need normal places to eat in addition to what we have. The fringe is well taken care of. It is time to fill in the gaps so that people who actually live here have places to go.

Today involved a lot of cleaning and household chores for me. First and foremost was kitchen cleaning. This week has been busy and the dishes just scaled out of control before we knew what hit us. The kitchen was all but unusable for the last few days and so it is up to me to reclaim it from the clutches of dirty dishes.

Work was fairly busy today and I did not get a chance to run out to grab myself some lunch until well after two in the afternoon. I didn’t have much time so I just called over an order to Food for Life and walked over to pick it up so that I could eat at my desk.

Oreo was very playful today which is good because it means that he is healthy. We played and played in addition to taking a couple of walks. It was nice out today – perfect for walking with Oreo. It was very cold early this morning but as the day progressed the sun was out and warmed this up considerably. It was still a little chilly so Oreo had to wear his little sweater but he likes wearing it because he gets lots of people to stop on the street and tell him how adorable he is.

Dominica got home around six but I was still working. Busy day. We got ready as quickly as we could met Ramona around six thirty to go out for dinner. Traffic was horrible – the curse of the new, thriving downtown Newark social scene – so it took her a while to make it the two miles from the Ironbound to downtown to meet us. We went over to Halsey to 27Mix. It was a happening place tonight. Wall to wall people. Dinner was very good but unfortunately the music was so loud that we really couldn’t talk at all. Not the best to go for socializing. The place is mostly inhabited by the college students from Rutgers and NJIT which are very nearby.

Min and I got home at eight thirty and were tired. Boy are we ever getting old. But Oreo enjoys the extra snuggle time. So it was time to pop in Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century and head off to dreamland. I will be on Wall St. tomorrow. Just the usual. No big weekend plans other than last minute preparations for the trip to the UK. My Java class is theoretically having its final on Saturday morning which would be awesome. That would give me an entire week to relax before the trip.

November 7, 2007: Still Learning the Trains

It is Wednesday and that means that I am working out in Warren today. Today was my first attempt at going from Newark to Summit via the NJ Transit line that stops at the Newark Broad Street Station. I actually managed to get onto the wrong train this morning but they were nice enough to let me off right away so it didn’t turn into a disaster. Unfortunately the NJ Transit trains don’t notify you in any way what train they are and if they come at the wrong time then there is no way for you to tell without asking someone working there and often those people are not available as the train only stops for a minute and there are a lot of people getting on and off.

I got to Summit and got the company shuttle there which was very simple to do. This cuts half an hour or more off of the time that it takes me to get out to Warren on the days when I go out there. It is really too bad that I didn’t know how easy this was for the past eighteen months or I might have gotten rid of the car long ago. Going to Warren this way is a bit of a pain but great for once a week. Going to Manhattan is definitely the way to go though by train. I am really learning the advantages of not having a car though. In the past month I have not driven a single time and I don’t miss it at all. Never once have I wished that I even had the option of getting into my car. I don’t even think about it now. It is awesome.

The company shuttles are really nice, for the most part. People have made a big deal about how Google and Microsoft offer these types of shuttle services in the San Francisco and the Seattle (Redmond) areas but they are clearly not the only ones. Maybe their shuttle systems are a bit more intricate because they have larger populations in a single area but the shuttle system that we have here in the New York Metro is pretty decent when combined with the incumbent train system.

I was in Warren today for a “meeting” (sales pitch really) with HP and AMD. That was over lunch and they provided pizza which is really great because I don’t have a car when I am in Warren so getting pizza at these meetings is much nicer than going down to the cafeteria and it is enough to offset the extra cost of the NJ Transit train versus the normal PATH train. (How cheap am I to even realize that?)

The meeting was good and I managed to snag more of the awesome HP Bistro coffee mugs that they give out sometimes. I got one a few months ago and it is Min and my favourite mug and we always fight over it. Now I have two more so we can use them all of the time. This has to be one of the best marketing items ever. Simple, inexpensive (more or less) but very, very nice and useful. “Sure,” you say, “lots of companies give out coffee mugs.” And you are correct. They do. But these are very nice bistro coffee mugs that are much nicer than your average, run-of-the-mill coffee mugs. They are our favourite mugs to drink out of. Much nicer than what we are normally able to buy in the stores. And since we are both big fans of HP (we do own several HP desktops and several HP laptops and several HP servers) it makes it that much cooler to have around the apartment.

We also got two neat travel alarm clock slash thermometer slash USB hub units as gifts from AMD. Which also works out well as we are big AMD fans too. I like their products and I like them as a company and I really appreciate the fact that they do most of their fab work in Dresden and have done a tremendous amount to help rebuild that city. AMD is also considering putting another major fab facility into Upstate NY which would be great. I expect that it would be very near IBM’s fab facility in the middle Hudson Valley region. That is already a hotspot for high end chip research and development. (Kingston, a leader in non-CPU type chip manufacturing is headquartered there as well.)

I spent most of my afternoon in informal meetings as my time in Warren is normally spent catching up with people that I only get to see two or three times in a month. And next week is going to be crazy as I have another HP thing on Tuesday afternoon and then am flying to the UK on Friday evening! So not a lot of “work” was done today but a lot was accomplished. For whatever that is worth.

The shuttle home missed the evening train by about thirty seconds. 🙁 I ended up having to wait at the station for about thirty minutes. But it worked out. There was a nice guy who had interviewed with someone at my office today who was using the shuttle and train to get home and didn’t speak English comfortably and didn’t know the train system and he was stuck with me so I was able to get him to where he needed to go and otherwise he would have been on his own. So it was a blessing, I am sure.

Dominica made fish bites for dinner and had everything mostly ready when I got home so that we could eat right away. I was exhausted today and we had decided that tonight had to be a blow-off night because I was so tired. I had fallen asleep four or five times easily just on the shuttle ride from Warren to Summit! Can’t be stress – I feel great. Can’t be a lack of sleep – I have been catching up all week. No idea why. Must just be one of those days. Lack of caffeine, perhaps.

We watched two episodes of Buck Rogers in the Twenty Fifth Century and were off to bed early. I am hoping to do some serious sleep catching up tonight so that I can be useful again tomorrow.

Today was the fourteenth biggest drop in the Dow Jones Industrial in history. Not quite a disaster but definitely a huge hit. There were several factors that anyone following today will be acutely aware of – the dollar has become insanely weak and there is a panic that China is going to diversify its currency holdings away from the USD, General Motors wrote down almost forty billion today without much warning and the financial sector has been taking a huge beating do to the subprime mortgages disaster that happened some time ago (a month or two) but is only hitting the street with real numbers recently. The Royal Bank of Scotland is estimating a finance industry wide loss due to the subprime mortgages of approximately one quarter of a trillion US Dollars. (Which, I suppose, is good that at least the dollar isn’t worth so much. Ha ha.) I record this so that later readers can see the juxtaposition of events more clearly.

Another day of “dollar value” battering leading up to Min and my trip to the UK. Can’t win them all, I guess.