General

What a week! It hasn’t been my best but I’m fighting through. We are way past “thin” in my department so I am now on a frantic hiring frenzy to fill our vacant posts. The economy must be improving because finding qualified local candidates is becoming extremely difficult. That or they are moving out of state faster than I can find them. We’ll find the right people, but I may have pulled out my hair before then. If you are looking for some good computer work with a fun company, check out these job descriptions.

I guess it’s time for a personal update though there isn’t all that much to report. Work has been keeping me a little bit busier than usual, but hey, if I wasn’t working I would have to figure out something else to do. Besides, keeping busy has been instrumental in helping me through the nicotine withdrawal. I have to admit that it has been much easier this time than any time in the past. Not sure why, maybe I’ve done this enough times that I’m in good practice. ;) Well, here’s to keeping it permanent.

This is just a funny coincidence. I’m in the process of sorting through a large stack of applications for a position that recently opened up. I’ve been shocked at the large number of grammatical and spelling errors that occur in these things. I’m not a great writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I can’t imagine sending out a job application without having at least run the spelling and grammar check. Anyway, apparently I’m not alone in this frustration: Full Story

I just finished a fascinating book called The Code Book by Simon Singh. A fascinating history of cryptography and cryptanalysis throughout history that tells not only the great history of this secret world but also explains all of that funky math with a brilliant level of explanation. This guy is the math professor we all would have loved in college unlike that strange creature who we all ended up with who didn’t speak any earthly language and wrote in some strange script that was designed for Martians. In either case, if you want to know about the history of keeping secrets this is a great book to read.

Sorry for the delay. I somehow lost my phone charger on the train. But I have one now. I’ll post more either tonight or tomorrow when intoxication isn’t such an issue.

-– This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net.

Well my brain has the consistancy of jello. I’ve spent the whole weekend caught in a whirlwind of architecture and code. I have a project that needs to be well underway before I head out on vacation this week and in a non-manager style pledged to do my bit. This involved me writing some actually tough code that took me back in time so to speak.

I had recently been commenting to a collegue that it has been a long time since I used any of that knowledge that was so stridently fought for during my undergrad years. Outside of the very rare recursive function most have that knowledge has retreated to the far regions of memory. However, tonight I got to write a slightly modified version of quicksort that orders a set of keys from a hash table based upon their respective values. I have to say that there was some high elation that sprung forth as I dredged this knowledge from my unconsciousness. Kind of nice to know that I actually learned something in college and that it occasionally applies to a suit like me.

Well, I’ve finally done it. I have sunk to that level of geekness from which there is no return. I went out to start my Christmas shopping and inevitably ended up with a gift for myself; a new Treo 300 smartphone. Now I’m waiting for my lunch and posting to the blog. What has the world come to.

-– This post was made with a trial version of BlogPlanet, a photo blog client for mobile phones. For more information visit www.blogplanet.net.

A friend called this evening complaining about my lack of response to an email of his. However, I couldn’t find it anywhere. After digging around this evening I have discovered the cause and a warning too boot, Outlook Express sucks when used improperly (and maybe even when used properly). I performed a little hack that allowed me to keep my message share in a centralized network location. However, I appears for the last month or so, a copy of Outlook Express has been running on my desktop machine even though the window wasn’t visible. This means that when I checked my email with my laptop, the messages that were received by this invisible process were lost. In other words, I’ve got some of your messages and others I haven’t. So if you sent me a message during the last month or so and I haven’t responded, please don’t take it personally, I just suck at properly screwing around with software.

Last one for today, but this is an amazing piece of film and engineering:

Aparently it took over 600 takes to get this shot right. Quite an achievement.

Sorry for the lack of a photo yesterday. I was in the middle of a very long day and when it was over I wasn’t much in the mood for posting. However, I’ve got the next two weeks of pictures ready to go.

[Listening to: A Sorta Fairytale - Tori Amos - Scarlet’s Walk (05:29)]