What's in my head?

Rocky Balboa Speech

2007-01-06T11:13:00.000-08:00

Here's a monologue in the latest Rocky movie that I think more of us should pay attention to. This is not a very elegant speech, and a line coming from Rocky Balboa's mouth loses something when it hits the written medium, but it has a very clear message. For me, this is the high point of the movie.

Somewhere along the line you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good; and when things got hard you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a mean and nasty place and I don't care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward; how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!

Now if you know what you're worth than go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers sayin' you ain't what you wanna be because of him or her or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that!

Until you start believing in yourself, you ain't gonna have a life.

Tiramisu

2006-12-16T13:49:00.000-08:00

Tiramisu

Ingredients:
1 14oz package savoiardi ("ladyfinger") biscuits
4 eggs
3 cups strong coffee (espresso would be traditional)
14 oz mascarpone cheese
4 oz sugar
1 oz cocoa powder
Cognac or brandy (optional) to taste

Instructions:
Separate eggs.
Beat the egg yolks and sugar together into smooth creamy consistency. If you are concerned about uncooked egg products, do this step over a double boiler until mixture lightens in color and forms ribbons when you lift the whisk up. DON'T SCRAMBLE THE EGGS!
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peak stage.
Mix the mascarpone cheese with the egg/sugar mixture and then fold in the egg whites.
Mix the coffee and liquor. Dip the savoiardi in the this mixture one at a time, and place in a single layer in the bottom of a 9x13 pan or casserole. These cookies soak up a lot of coffee and get soft quickly. It will take some practice to get right. Spoon half the egg-cheese mixture over top, evenly.
Repeat with second layer.
Dust top with cocoa.
Chill until serving time. For best results, prepare 24 hours before serving.

Dev know-it-alls and AJAX

2006-10-01T14:05:00.000-07:00

It happens every time. Someone mentions AJAX on some newsgroup of forum somewhere, and some know-it-all developer will come out and say "This is nothing new. I've been doing this for years. You are all stupid." Bleh.

While I do agree that AJAX isn't exactly new, Jesse James Garrett did a powerful thing when he coined that term: he put a handle on an abstract idea. Computer scientists need to do this type of thing all the time. The Gang of Four weren't inventing anything when they wrote about the Decorator pattern, but giving it a name made it easy for people to use and discuss it.

If you think about it, the term "AJAX Application" makes absolutely no sense. Really, what is an "Asynchronous JavaScript And XML Application"? Is it an application that helps you write tools that use Asynchronous JavaScript And XML? No! The term has matured beyond an acronym and is now used mostly to describe hybrid client web applications. ( I know I've heard people say "Google Maps is an AJAX web application". ) For better or worse, that is how the term is being used now. I believe that language evolves, and with that is makes sense that words can also evolve to mean different things.

Perhaps I should say "Google Maps is an Ajax web application."

mmmmmm pizza

2006-01-07T20:19:00.000-08:00

So a couple of nights ago I head on over to Tutta Bella Pizza here in Seattle. Pizza is one of my favorite foods, and usually I am open to the different characteristics of pizzas from different places. For example Romios Pizza is heavily laden with toppings and an incredible amount of cheese, but it's very greasy and all that cheese makes the pizza very heavy on the stomach.

There is absolutely nothing I can pick on with Tutta Bella Pizza. I sampled both the Regina Margherita (Pomordoro San Marzano, fresh mozzarella, parmigiano, fresh basil) and Prosciutto e Rucola (Italian Ham and Arugula - Pomodoro San Marzano, fresh mozzarella, prosciutto di Parma, fresh arugula, extra virgin olive oil, shaved parmigiano reggiano ) both were absolutely dilicious Neopolitan pizzas.

The crust was thin and simple, and the sauce, which most places drown out with toppings, was the highlight of the night. From what I can taste ( and I am no expert ), it seemed to be nothing more than very recently ground fresh Roma tomatoes and a pinch of salt. This sauce was fresh and light, and went very well with the crust. The cheese was added sparingly in slices, which added to the overall effect. It was a fantastic pizza which I wholeheartedly reccommend.

iClassic

2005-12-16T21:54:00.000-08:00

mmmmmmm apple!

iClassic

More food!

2005-12-12T20:12:00.000-08:00

I keep saying that when my wonderful fiancee arrives that I have many places to take her. Well the only problem with that is the fact that I have a terrible terrible memory.

So here are some more places for my list
Chinooks
Szmanias
Canlis
The People's Pub

Please leave comments with your favorite Seattle destinations!

Switch

2005-11-29T22:48:00.000-08:00

If only I could.

http://weblog.garyturner.net/switch/

Let's Eat!

2005-10-30T19:14:00.000-08:00

At a recent office party I managed to get some restaurant ideas out of my co workers. Restaurant meals have always been a luxury to me, and for a short while I will be able to sample many of Seattle's offerings. Money will probably be tight again by this time next year.

Here's the list:
"The Texan" suggested

Peco's Pit for good BBQ, even if it is cash-only takeout
Jones for even more BBQ
Stostanza Trattoria for Italian (I'm going to be extra critical of an Italian place)
Asteroid Cafe for even more Italian... I wouldn't have guessed with that name

Perchè No - Italian

Preet's - Indian, reccommended by someone of Indian descent, even!

Waterfront Seafood Grille - Seafood with a great view of the ... Waterfront!

Wild Ginger - Fine Asian

I have about 5 months... here we go!

CONGRATULATIONS, DOM!

2005-10-05T20:19:00.000-07:00

My bestest friend Dominik is getting hitched! He is scheduled to abolish his freedom shortly after I do.

Way to go, Dom!

Random linkage

2005-10-05T20:16:00.000-07:00

It appears that google knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Have you ever watched a movie that seemed to have nothing to do with what was presented in the trailer? ( Vanilla Sky comes to mind ) Here is an example of what someone did to The Shining.

mmmmmmmmmmmmm

2005-10-02T15:17:00.000-07:00

I like to make pizza.

He will return...

2005-10-01T19:39:00.000-07:00

Superman Returns

Please Lord, give me a sign!

2005-10-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

... and that He did. I guess I am destined to work at Amazon!

Learn Java?

2005-09-24T21:18:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to be on the recruiting loop and I figured I should get better at Design Patterns, Java, etc etc.. So I bought Head First Design Patterns, mostly because it was highly praised by D, a coworker and friend who knows his stuff. The book has so far been a really good read, even if the tone is a little first-year-ish.

It wasn't until I couldn't define finally() at work that I realized that perhaps I should brush up on my Java, as well. Maybe become a java certified developer...or something. What really interested me was when R showed me Java(TM) Puzzlers : Traps, Pitfalls, and Corner Cases yesterday. I was hooked on the very first "puzzle", which is more of a warm up than anything else. The problem was something like "Write a Java program that shows the change when you pay $2.00 for something that costs $1.10". Forget the lame symbols and decimal places for a sec, the point of the story was that

System.out.println( 2.00 - 1.10 );

doesn't work! It prints 0.899999999!! Imagine if you didn't remember THAT little tidbit when you are conducting interviews for a GIANT ONLINE RETAILER!! Moral of the story: 10^(-something) doesn't work too well in double. Either calculate in cents using int ( or long, or whatever ), or use BigDecimal. The real punchline for me was the gotcha for using BigDouble: use the BigDecimal( String ) constructor instead of the BigDecimal( double ) constructor, or you just end up wrapping your crappy problem with a big fancy class... yay computers.

BigDecimal twoDolla = new BigDecimal("2.00");
twoDolla = twoDolla.subtract(new BigDecimal("1.10"));
System.out.println( twoDolla );

Since I am ranting about Java, I must say that I love the new features of Java 5. Enums? Goooood! They're extendable, iterable, and more! Generics? Gooood! No more casting PLUS compile time type checking! Add those with the new enhanced for loop? JOY! But you see, there's just one problem...a problem that makes me very angry....
The new for loop works when the second argument in the parameter list is an instance of a class that implements the Iterable interface. I can see how this is a nice, clean definition, but please notice with me that an Iterator is not iterable. What does that mean? THE NEW FOR LOOP DOES NOT WORK WITH ITERATORS!!! ARRRRRRRRRRRG! Before I get hate mail, let me state that yes, you can't "iterate over an Iterator". I'm looking at it from a slightly higher level. A for loop should know what to do with an iterator, really.

Google takes over the wold

2005-06-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

... sort of :)

I just found out that Google has now made digital sattelite images of the WHOLE FREAKING PLANET avaialble through Google Maps Sattelite images of Canada and the US have been available for some months now. I tried to go over to Italy, but only very specific locations are available with much detail.

Here are some interesting images:
Eiffel Tower
St. Peter in Rome
Florence, Duomo
Olympic Stadium ( Montreal, Canada )
West Edmonton Mall - North America's largest shopping mall more info (in Edmonton AB Canada)

There are more available at http://perljam.net/notes/interesting-google-satellite-maps/

I guess I'm THAT easy to read

2005-06-12T13:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, two of my friends told me that I would rate ESFJ on the Myers-Briggs type indicator. So I just took a form of the , and here is the result:

Your Type is
ESFJ

Extroverted	Sensing	Feeling	Judging
Strength of the preferences %
22	1	38	89

ESFJ type description by D.Keirsey
ESFJ type description by J. Butt

Qualitative analysis of your type formula
You are:

slightly expressed extrovert
slightly expressed sensing personality
moderately expressed feeling personality
very expressed judging personality

I am just stunned by the seemingly effortless way I was rated by my peers. Is that a good thing? I don't see a problem with it. This is me, and if that's what people see, then I am proud. Just more proof that when you talk to me, I am not curling my moustache while brewing sinister plans in my head.

She loved the menus!

2005-05-31T20:14:00.000-07:00

My fiancee got my letter today. I sent her a copy of what I think the menu should look like. She loved the presentation! Her voice went up an octive as she spoke about it, and that's the sign that I did a good job. Yes!

You would think I would know better...

2005-05-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

...than to send four women into a store that sells nice stuff ...during a sale.. with my checkbook.

Yep, we picked up our centrepieces, bombonieri, and bridal shower gifts today. The grand total is a wonderfully astronomical amount that brings tears to my eyes. I guess to some people, "sale" means "buy more expensive stuff with the current budget" indstead of "we can now buy the same stuff on a smaller budget". It's all good, tho. At the end of the day, we have stuff that is quite a bit better than what we thought we would have.

All that's left of this chapter is the brute force labour it will take to decorate 32 centrepieces, 120 bombonieri and 80 bridal gifts. Shweet.

A terrible, terrible insult

2005-05-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

I was watching Star Trek TNG today, in particular the episode "Tapestry", in which a "dead" Jean-Luc Picard is given a chance to go to his youth and correct one of his biggest regrets. Back in the Academy, Mr. Picard got into a fight with some rather large guys, and was impaled by one of them over an enormous knife.

Sounds like something you would want to undo?

It turns out that he takes his opportunity to correct this mistake. When he is returned to life, he is no longer Captain, but a lowly crewman. It turns out that his brush with death was one of his definining moments in life, that affected how he made decisions, and how he focused his life.

The whole thing was summarized by Q, the person who gave him his chance to go back in time. What he said affected me very deeply:


          ... he never
   realized how fragile life is...
   how important each moment can
   be... so his life never came into
   focus. He drifted through much of
   his career, with no plan or
   agenda... going from one
   assignment to the next, never
   seizing the opportunities that
   presented themselves...
                             [snip]
   He learned to play it safe. And
   he never, ever got noticed by
   anyone.

I heard that and got the chills. This is possibly the worst insult someone could give me about how I approach life. Having it written in this way gives me a new perspective on my carreer and life goals. If you know me, and see that I am perhaps acting in this way, it would be much appreciated if you would help me out!

2005-04-24T18:35:00.000-07:00

*sigh*
So the link below shows the new Superman.
This just doesn't look Hollywood ready. Looks like a Hallowe'en custume.
Super Hero Hype!

oh Google, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways

2005-04-06T00:44:00.000-07:00

Holy awesome, Batman! Google has tied in their satellite images into Google Maps! I can't believe it. It's too bad that they couldn't find some way to label the streets on the images. I'm sure they'll do it eventually. Go to Google Maps, find some location, and click on the "Satellite" link located on the right side of the screen.

Unfortunately you have to click on the Satellite link to make it work, there doesn't seem to be any way for me to send you a link straight to it.

Wedding plans, installment three

2005-03-26T01:47:00.000-08:00

We have a DJ! Leo over at Good Vibrations is our winner. The man's got skills and knowledge. He even fulfilled the tri-lingual requirement! We're still not entirely sure what extra bells and whistles we want, but the rule is that we can't downsize to a smaller package, but we can upsize anytime. Since we're down for the basic package right now, I don't think that's a problem. When I visit Toronto in May, this will be one of my stops. Leo was highly recommended by those who actually experienced his work. Awesome.

At long last, I found the picture of our wedding cake. Noelia and I actually found the design we wanted back in February, but the person had the picture in her book and had no copies. It turns out it is a Martha Stewart cake. So I emailed and googled and emailed and a9ed, but came up short of finding the original picture. Then a break came when one day Noelia was looking at a website for a baker, and our design was featured on the site with an image about the size of a postage stamp. I emailed that to the Martha Stewart folks who replied with issue date, name, and an offer to buy the magazine. What is one to do? I went the analog route. I. Went. To. The. Library. Take that, modern society! I went to the freakishly overstyled Seattle Public Library. After a bit of a maze, I found the issue and the cake. :) We have decided to let that be a surprise, so I am not going to share any more information about that. I'm just proud we have our own picture of the cake, and I went to the library to get it.

Next up: flowers, decorations, bombonieri, limo, bridesmaid dresses, ...

Life is great :)

Anna Karenina

2005-03-26T00:53:00.000-08:00

On Thursday night, in keeping with my goal of seeing more plays, I experienced a bit of theatre. This was my first experience watching a play in a small, intimate setting. The room was probably half as big as a standard gymnasium, with the proper theatre seating taking up about 3/4 of that. The stage was not the elevated structure I am used to. In fact, the floor was the stage, and the audience was slightly elevated above it.

The stage was modest at best; nothing more than two translucent screens and a couple of benches. The experience, however, was as diverse and intricate as the finest Asian tapestry.

This was a production of Anna Karenina. I have never read the book, so I didn't really know what to expect. From reading the show's program, and various websites afterwards, I see that the playwright decided to present the events in a way that linked the two main characters (Anna and Levin) metaphysically. Anna and Levin share dialogue throughout the production, but only once do they speak directly to each other. It is more as if they rely on each other to bear witness to the events of their lives; as if to acknowledge that it happened.

You can read the full text online, but I'd suggest hitting the library.

I am a terribly undereducated critic, so I'll just say that I absolutely loved the play and the actors were of such vibrant quality that my memories conspire against me to make me believe that the bare stage was in fact a lush green meadow, a dark, emotionless bedroom, a church altar, and the train tracks upon which two tragic deaths occurred.

My attention span has been slipping, but the characters before me held my interest for a solid three hours. Boy do I miss theatre.

One of my interests lies in acting. I thoroughly enjoyed it in my elementary and highschool years, but ultimately chose to stage my career on the technical landscape. I'll admit, Java code pales in comparison to the raw emotion delivered through the theatre, but it is a challenge and enjoyment of a different nature. Perhaps one day I will try my hand at acting again, but for now I am far too underdeveloped as a Software Developer to devote large amounts of time to an entirely unrelated field. I would hate to suck at two important things! Not that I suck as a Software Developer, I am actually quite good; but the sheer quality of my fellow developers at Amazon has shown me that there is much more I need to learn.

Anna Karenina is presented by Atlas Theatre, with support from The Shunpike arts collective. Written by Helen Edmundson, adapted from Tolstoy. Directed by Jose Amador and Chris Mayse. Plays until April 2nd, 2005.

28 Characters . . .

2005-03-16T19:56:00.000-08:00

So on Friday my manager came up to me and said "Hey Johnny, there is this trouble ticket in your queue that needs to be resolved as soon as possible, it's very important." Noting the weight of the statement, I agreed, "I'll start on it immediately".

Let's see what I can say without getting fired... hmmm OK, the problem was that our code was not populating fields as it should have. So what? Well, this means slows the reps down, which can get customers angry...which is perceived as bad Customer Service...is not good for the company... Let's just say the company deals with a large number of Customer Service reps and an incredibly large number of emails on a daily basis.

Ok, so there's the motivation.

I was going to blab about all the things I did to find the problem, but it ended up being a story of same old same old: Repro the problem, read the logs, attach a debugger to the front end, attach one to the back end, all good. How about the middleware technology? All good.

To make a loong story short, I found the problem today. I can reconstruct it into wont-get-me-fired code like this:


if( !alreadyDidSomething ){
   doSomething();
   alreadyDidSomething = true;
}

A coworker comes to my cube and tries to help out. I was running the debugger again, and when I come to the abovementioned lines he asks "hmm where is that variable initialized?" At this exact moment, I recalled a discussion I had with a friend at school after I had found a bug I caused in our OS. "I forgot to init this variable..." "JOHNNY!", she shrieked, "how many times have you hit this problem. INIT YOUR VARIABLES!" Since then I have this great habit of ensuring that all my variables are initialized before use. Sounds trivial, but when the number of variables grows, and the complexity of the system grows, it's easy to miss one.

So it turns out that alreadyDidSomething was never initialized to false. There was the bug. The variable came to life with whatever was in memory at the time. This problem lead me to a lot of dead ends while debugging, because at times the code actually worked! The solution? When the object containing the variable is instantiated, I set alreadyDidSomething to false, like so: :alreadyDidSomething(false). (This is in the context of the constructor's signature, in C++.

I tested, and things seem to be working now. The errors in the logs are gone, and the results are always what I expect.

Now the name of the variable and other information has been altered to protect my job, but all in all, 3 and a half working days have been spent on 28 characters. Humbing. What would you have paid a programmer for fixing this?

This could lead to a whole discussion on compiler warnings and code reviews, but I'm tired.

I am Murdock

2005-03-13T09:35:00.000-08:00

I took the Which A-Team member are you??? quiz, and surprisingly ( or maybe not surprisingly to others, as crazy people like me might not know that they're crazy) I am Murdock.

They call him "Howling Mad" and with good reason. Once a top notch pilot, the pressures of war left Murdock mad. He is known for his smirk, variety of personas and overall mental instability. When he isn't spending time institutionalized, Murdock is using his flying skills for the A-Team, driving B.A. nuts and talking to his imaginary dog.

Which A-Team member are you???

Hmm I am a bit crazy, but I thought my leadership would put me somewhere else. Oh well. Although I love it when a plan comes together, I guess I am not meant to lead the A-Team. Maybe I'll start the J-Team!

mmmmmovie trivia!

2005-03-12T18:11:00.000-08:00

FilmWise has some great movie puzzles on their site. My favorite such quiz is when they remove the characters faces from a shot in the movie, and you have to identify the movie. Someone added a nice server-side script to one such test.

It's fun, and a little addicting!

Thanks to Haskell, I understand QUICKSORT!!

2005-03-08T22:40:00.000-08:00

Oh quicksort, let me count the number of times I have learned thee.
1: Grade 11 Comp Sci
2: First year university
3: Second year university

Every time I restudied quicksort, I thought I had it. Then, no less than 30 minutes after the exam, GONE. I swear I have the memory of a bag of sand.

I have some very smart friends, and some of them work with me. One person in particular is into programming languages. This week, he mentioned Haskell. *sigh*, I thought, here comes another conversation where the other guys will talk and nod about something of which I know NOTHING. It's very humbling. So today I hit the StumbleUpon button on FireFox, and up comes Haskell. So I figure, it's a sign - time to read.

The first example, which of course highlights Haskell's strengths and exposes one of C's weaknesses, is quicksort. The idea behind quicksort is: pick an element from the array (the pivot), partition the remaining elements into those greater than and less than this pivot, and recursively sort the partitions. I don't know why that was so hard for me to remember, but there it is. Two solutions can be found at About Haskell, and I will paracode the Haskell solution here:


qsort []  = []
qsort (head:restOfList) =
 qsort elementsLT_head ++ [head] ++ qsort elementsGE_head
  where
   elementsLT_head = [ y | y <- restOfList, y < head ]
   elementsGE_head = [ y | y <- restOfList, y >= head ]

Six lines. Six. Wow. You can go see About Haskell if you really want to see the C solution, so I'm not going to list it here. Suffice to say that it's a lot longer and harder to understand. I may be biased because I love math (lines 6 and 7 are purposely designed to mimic mathematical set notation), but I think this is a beautiful way to express quicksort.

Explanation:
Line 1: The result of qsort on an empty list is an empty list. Yay.
Line 2: The result of qsort on a list of 1 or more elements, where the first element is called head and the rest of the list is called restOfList happens in the following way.
Line 3: qsort elementsLT_head, then insert head, then insert the qsort elementsGE_head.
Line 4: Where the following definitions apply:
Line 5: elementsLT_head is a list of all the elements y such that y is taken from restOfList, and y is less than head.
Line 6: elementsGE_head is a list of all the elements y such that y is taken from restOfList, and y is greater than or equal to head.

There are all sorts of pros and cons and what not, but the fact of the matter is that I re-understood quicksort as soon as I read this code, whereas the C code was far more cryptic. There are many places where you want to use C, or Perl, or Java, or InsertLanguageHere. This is not an argument for language superiority. To me, the biggest advantage of knowing multiple languages is knowing the right tool for the right job. Not to mention that you begin to see better ways of doing things in all the languages you use. Next time I'm asked to explain quicksort, this solution will come to mind, then I can write whatever code I need.

P.S. What are we sorting in the Haskell code? Any object or primitive that can be compared using <>=. Yay polymorphism!

Wedding plans, installment two.

2005-03-05T00:40:00.000-08:00

We booked a banquet hall! I will have the honour of having my wedding at Mississauga Convention Centre This place is a dream come true for Noelia, so I'm really really happy. We spoke with Manuel.. he's a great guy with which to deal. Unfortunately, I could not get seat covers as part of the plan, which means even more expense. I'm hoping that the guests are generous enough with the boosta so that I won't still be paying for this wedding on my silver anniversary. I should have asked Jeff Bezos to sponsor me when I had the chance.

I would rather not disclose the menu at this point, but I can give hints:
prosciutto, veal, chicken, pasta, seafood, porchetta, ice cream, Martinis and lots of sweets.
My guests would best be advised to refrain from eating at least two days before the event.

One thing that shocked me is the bar. They will make any drink, including martinis, etc, etc. They will have all types of coffee such as Irish, Italian, South American, espresso, cappuccino, etc, etc. Even specialty teas such as Green Tea! I'm definitely going to advertise this to my guests. I know that some people would not have even bothered to ask for Green Tea.

The excitement continues.. I'm still about 400 days from being married. It'll be quick.

I finally get it!

2005-03-05T00:37:00.000-08:00

Remember that episode of Family Guy where Stewie sings RocketMan? I never figured out exactly why that was funny. Well, today I found out. It was poking fun of a 1978 performance of the song by William Shatner.

I hate when he sings.

It's SPRINGY!!!!

2005-02-26T09:27:00.000-08:00

Look look look!!! It's SPRINGY!

From The Simpsons:

From the Webbys:

Go springy!

As if there wasn't enough wrong with me...

2005-02-24T22:50:00.000-08:00

I find this freakin' hilarious: Jack In The Box.

I guess it happened just about January 2000. The guys in my dorm succeeded in sucking me in to watching WWF wrestling again. (Now called WWE) Sure enough, I fell for The Great One, The Most Electrifying Man in Sports Entertainment, THE ROCK! Suddenly, belittling people in just the right way was the funniest thing in the world to me. Oh, I owe a lot to The Rock, to the point of ridicule, but that's another blog altogether. I have again grown weary of professional wrestling, but The Rock is still The Man.

That brings me to another hero of mine. Let's get something straight. I AM the overgrown boy scout. No drinking, smoking, "special" smoking, alcohol, etc, etc. Be good, be nice, help others, do your best, etc etc. See where I'm going with this? That's right. SUPERMAN! Hey, I could be Superman! I would use those awesome powers for good, not for evil! Well, ok I guess you understand my perspective of Superman. But in keeping with my slightly insane sense of humor, I found it disturbing yet oddly funny when I came across this link to recorded cases of the Man of Steel being a... uhh.. meanie. Granted, those pictures are all out of context, but still...

Wedding plans, installment one.

2005-02-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ah, the planning of a wedding. Very exciting and stressful. I wonder how many couples break up just over the pressures of planning a wedding. Fortunately for me, I have a fiancee that just deals with it. Stress gets too high? Call Johnny, discuss, regroup, deal with it. Noelia has the unenviable task of spearheading the wedding preparations without me. Oh, I'm not saying that I would make everything a joy, and evaporate the stress, but it would be nice if I could at least be in the same freakin' country! Such is the way of life, I guess.

While I'm at work hacking away at code, ( or, more correctly, fighting with the development environment for 8 of the 10 hours I'm at work ), Noelia's researching. I went home recently, and here's what we did:

Visit three photographers
Visit two halls ( one of them twice )
Go shopping for bomboniere, (although I linked to the traditional definition, in modern days it can be pretty much any gift given to the guests of a wedding)
Go shopping for centrepieces
Pick out my tux, as well as those of the groomsmen

Not too bad for a three day trip. That, of course, was on top of my other agenda items, such as my uncle's birthday party.

So we got a photographer: Excellence Photography, who had the most beautiful and emotional pictures and best quality video. John is a really nice guy, and I look forward to seeing the results of his work at my wedding.

I got my tux all planned out, from Tuxedo Royale, but I'm not going to show you which one because I'm not letting Noelia know before the wedding :)

Now were ever so close to choosing our banquet hall. This one is a sticky one because the closer we get, the slower our progress becomes. We got an absolutely fantastic menu from those at DaVinci Banquet Hall, right at our budget including seat covers. Carmello is fantastic to work with. He's very accommodating, and has great suggestions. We then went to check out Le Parc, who had a slightly better overall look, with the same great menu. Tradeoff? The lobby was too small for us. Granted, our wedding will be small, at about 180-200 people, so some banquet halls have had a hard time finding a room small enough for us. (GEEZ!) After I returned to Seattle, Noelia checked out Mississauga Convention Centre, which we originally dismissed as too expensive. We're still in decision-making mode, so please offer your best in the comment section!
As a side note, these websites are severely out of date. The Mississauga Convention Centre is only 5 years old, and you can certainly tell that the website has not seen any changes since around that time. The design of the page is soooo 2000. The navigation is seriously flawed.... well, I'm an SDE, not a web designer, so I'll shut up about that now.

I was so tired while I was in Brampton that I felt like my vacation was more of a business trip. It was certainly nice to see my fiancee again, though.

Got absolutely nowhere on the bomboniere. This is usually a smallish (<=$10) gift such as a nicely wrapped salt and pepper shaker, candy dish, espresso cups, etc. I face the same dillemma as all the other modern couples: I want to give something useful, but also indicitive of the occasion. I personally don't like little statues and trinkits and such. I'm waaay to messy to have those organized in a little display case or whatever. For my parents' anniversary, I gave espresso cups and saucers. They were really nice, and great for my parents, but they're just not perfect for Noelia and I. Suggestions welcome in the comment section. Centrepieces?

Suggestions welcome in the comment section.
Suggestions welcome in the comment section.
Suggestions welcome in the comment section!
Suggestions welcome in the comment section!!
Suggestions welcome in the comment section!!!!
HELP ME OUT PEOPLE, LET'S SEE THIS FANCY INTERNET THING WORK!
hmmm now wouldn't it be impressive if Google AdSense picked up this blog and then showed some places to get bomboniere? Ah, my love for Google....

David Bach @ Amazon.com

2005-02-19T08:50:00.000-08:00

Mr. David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire, Smart Women Finish Rich, Smart Couples Finish Rich, and Start Late, Finish Rich, came for a visit to Amazon.com. He had a few things to say that make sense. I'm hoping that this blog will start some conversation amoungst those that know money. Me... well, I'm not even acquainted with the stuff :(

He spoke very frankly and smartly. I tried to take some notes, and here's what I managed to record.

Are you smart with your debt?

Most people have some credit card debt, a car loan, and either rent or a mortgage.
- What are you going to do about your credit cards? Credit cards are spectacular money pits. Average interest rate hovers around 19%. One day late on a payment? Welcome to 29%... sometimes you can get to 37%. That wonderful "minimum payment" option? That will make you pay about 29K over 37 years for a 10K debt. Not good. Some reccomendations (they seem to be US-balanced, hopefully there are options internationally, as well): go to websites like http://www.lowermybills.com/ or http://www.bankrate.com and find yourself a CC with a lower interest rate. Sometimes you'll find offers such as 0% interest when you transfer your balance from another CC. Even if you get one of those letters from a CC Company offering you another card, at least read the terms. Armed with these offers, call up you CC company and ask what your rate it. If you can do better, tell them that the rate is too high and you want to cancel. Those are the magic words to make the Customer Service guy go into hyperdrive to satisfy the customer. You may even work out a 0% rate if you transfer some of your other CC debt to them. 0% interest sounds good to me!
- Car Loans?
  
  Cars are generally the single worst investment you can make. You buy the thing for a gagillion dollars, and one year later it's worth about $10. Great. This takes a little bit more number cookin', but a 3 year old car is usually a lot less.
  
  Take for example the Honda Accord. Honda has some of the best resale value in the
  industry, so I'll use this, and a Chev. Cavalier to show the difference.
  A 2004 Honda Accord LX Coupe 2D hits about 20,940.00, and a 2001 goes for about 14,415.
  hmmm ok. 6Gs for 3 years. Pretty good. Gotta love Honda.
  
  How about the Chevy?
  A 2004 LS 2Dr goes for 18K. A 2001 LS 2Dr goes for 9K. That's 50%!!
  
  (Source: http://www.kbb.com)
  
  So do your math! If Honda (for some reason) decides to offer 0% on a new Accord, and you can't get better than 10% interest from the bank for the used car, then it's your call. When the price difference is as staggering as the Chevy, however, perhaps you should consider pocketing the 50%... or investing it!
  
  Again, I reiterate, your milage WILL vary, so balance the actual cost of the loan. If you pay cash then it's usually a no brainer. Do you need BRAND NEW wheels? Hyundai had a 10 year warantee on their cars at some point. So if you want a new Tiburon, consider a 3 year old one... you still have 7 years left on the warantee!
- Mortgage.
  
  He really didn't get into this. So I guess the basic "shop around" principle applies.

Do you pay yourself first?

Use your 401(k) plan!!!! Before you even get your paycheck, Big Brother has taken more than his share. The only way to pay yourself first is by jamming some cash into your 401(k). To quote Ron Popeil, this is the "Set it and forget it" plan. Money comes out to pay your future self. No thinking involved. Better than that, many companies offer some form of matching. Why not take that raise? Rule of thumb: put at least one hour a day worth of money in there. ( Approx 12% )

What's your Latte Factor?

Do you spend $5 a day on coffee and or snacks?

That's about $150/month.

Can you invest that instead? On a long term average of 10%/year, that's $30,727 over 10 years. $113,905 over 20 years, $339,073 over 30 years, $948,612 over 40 years. Can you give up that expensive daily coffee? Is there anything else you can invest? Bagel? Chocolate? Can you brown bag your lunch? Hey, if you can give $5 a day without sacrifice, at least invest it! OR, how about still committing to the sacrifice $10/day? That's $300, month. Invested, that $61,453 in 10, $227,811 in 20 or $678,146 in 30 years!

Do you rent or own?

Plain and simple, rent == lost opportunity. Rent gets you a place to live for a month, and then it's gone. Mortgage payments at least get you closer to owning your place of residence. On top of that, your home generally increases in value, so your mortgage goes down, and your equity grows! There are legal methods by which you can purchase property without a down payment. If you can acquire more than one peice of property, rent the other one out! As THEY shrink your mortgage, YOUR equity grows. See why renting is bad?

Be the first one at new developments. (I'm pissed at myself for missing the boat on this one). Here's my (Johnny) personal example. A house I wanted to buy was 300K. I waited and moaned and groaned and thought and thought. Now, 6 months later it's not even built yet and is going for 320K. That's 20 grand for nothing! David Bach was the first one at a condo site here in Seattle. He committed to purchasing a 500K condo, with a downpayment of 70K due in 3 months. When he came back, a similar condo 3 floors DOWN was now going for 800K. Takes money to makes money, and that's about 300K... for 3 months of nothing. If he rents that bad boy, they will be paying his ~400K mortgage for him, happy to have an 800K condo for such low rent. Meanwhile, he can sell that place at any time for more than 800K. What does he get? 800K + whatever was paid in rent - 500K. Dayumn.

What brings you joy?

Find what makes you happy and try to focus on that rather than money. Having no money makes you miserable, but having lots of money won't make you happy. You need to know what you want.

Give something back

Try to make the world a better place. (nice guy :)

We then asked some questions:

Apparantly there exists some law where if you sell your property and use the profit to invest or buy more property, then the profit you made off selling the first place is tax free. At least that's what I think was said. Could be a US thing, could be a B.S. thing ;)

The numbers worked something like this:
If you are unmarried and personally live in a place for more than 2 years, then anything up to 250K profit can be used tax free to invest in more property.

If you are married, that amount goes to 500K.

Yeah, property is good, but if I'm just cutting my daily latte expenses, I won't have enough cash for a residence for a long time. What do I do with that?

It depends on how much time you want to lock that money in for. See http://www.sharebuilder.com/ for index and mutual fund info, http://www.morningstar.com/ or http://www.dodgeandcox.com/ for balance fund info, or good ol' ING Direct for money market info.

A good financial planner will:
1. Charge you
2. Be managing at least 50M
3. Have at least 5years experience, 10+ is better. It's a tough game

You can borrow from you 401(k) plan!

You have to pay back with interest, but that money is going to YOU anyway! There are details involved. Read your owner's manual.

Leverage your real estate!

Think of this.
You get a $200K condo for a $10K down payment. Then rent it out for whatever your expenses are. If (and when) the value goes up, say a minor 10%, The condo is woth 220K. Now, remember you didn't pay 200K for the condo. You invested 10K. So what do you have? 200% return on investment, that's what! You got 20K for investing 10K.

But renters are risky.. people suck!

Yeah, good renters... they can be found, but it takes work.
Check their Credit scores and Criminal Record.

All these points have to be fleshed out a little bit before you actually do invest, but it was only a 45 minute talk.

Does it all sound to simple? Yeah. David's best line of the day:
It's simple, not easy

I met the Jeff

2005-02-16T23:25:00.000-08:00

I finally got to meet Jeff Bezos. Really nice guy with a strong, solid vision. My first ever picture with a rich/famous/brilliant guy!

The Proposal

2005-02-16T22:44:00.000-08:00

I only plan to do this once....

It finally happened. I asked the wonderful Noelia to marry me. She accepted. YAY!

So the big question I've been getting from many people is "so so so how'dYouDoIt?" I hope to give the story justice here.

Before leaving Seattle, I spent 4 hours making a pretty reasonable facsimile of a clue from The Amazing Race. They folks at CBS had ignored my attempts to acquire a real clue. My copy looked remarkably close to the real thing. More on the contents of the clue later ;)

It was early morning on Christmas Day, 2004. I went downstairs and assembled a HUGE 4 foot cube of a box. This thing was massive. I then proceeded to fill over 50 balloons with helium, and carefully placed them inside the box. I got 10 red balloons and tied them to red ribbons, attached the clue to the ribbon, and then attached the ribbon to the bottom of the box. I then closed and wrapped the box. It took three rolls of wrapping paper:

The box

The clue on the ribbons

Noelia and her family came over at about 1:30 and we began to open our Christmas gifts. Noelia had an inkling that I had gotten her some sort of exercise machine or something.. what else can be in such a big box? When the time came, she opened the box, and the balloons came rushing out. Then the red balloons came up, with the clue in tow. She opened the clue. It was a detour, and read "A detour is a choice between two tasks, each with its own pros and cons. In this detour, you have to choose between safe and dangerous". Omitting personal details, the two possible tasks were as follows. In safe, she was to close the clue, and have a nice day. In dangerous, I had a nice little declaration of love, concluded by the request to turn around. There was Johnny on one knee with the ring.

The open box, the clue, and the happy couple

Maybe not Hollywood flavour, but it was enjoyed by all, and Noelia loved it.

Da Crew

2005-02-14T23:22:00.000-08:00

Some pictures of the crew. Each of these people deserve a nice, long blog entry... but who knows when I'll get around to that! Coming up: The Proposal, Long Distance relationships, and Definition of Success. Stay tuned :)

Swiss Chalet / Train / Gossip / Life Crew

Me and Lee-Anne

Me and Jason

Where's the one of me and Paul? Grrr stupid CF card that I got from a friend caused an error. It is gone :(

Go Ahead, Get Dirty

2005-02-06T01:27:00.000-08:00

"When you grow up, you will work with your head", mom said with a smile of satisfaction on her face. "You won't have to struggle as much as we did."

As a child, I watched my parents go to work, dissatisfied with their jobs, but doing them because they needed money for the family. My grandfather spent a lot of time at work and then at his farm, and he always ached for some reason. Going to school, university or more, was the big plan for Johnny. He'll work, and come home clean and well dressed and well paid and satisfied. "Don't be like us; make something for yourself".

So that I did. I went to Waterloo and got myself a CS degree. I was interested in computers as a kid and I enjoyed problem solving. Computers seemed like fun and when I discovered I can get paid to work with them, I decided on it as a career path. It was fortunate that CS seems like a seemed safe, smart and solid career path - my parents were all over it.

I like my job. Amazon is a fantastic place to work, and my coworkers are awesome. But y'know, there's a piece of life that is missing.

I love to work with my hands on occasion. I like the to feel the grass and dirt on the farm. About 7 months ago I went to my grandfather's farm again... for the first time in what felt like eternity. It was actually 8 months. We had the unenviable task of moving a shack made of cinderblock about 280 metres. My grandfather had rented the land out to another farmer, and the location of the shack was making it impossible to process some land, which would cost the renting farmer about $200 worth of produce. To keep the deal at my grandfather's rate, we moved the shack.

It was an early 6am morning, followed by a one hour drive. When we got there, however, I felt like I was in the arms of God. There's something immensely beautiful about nature. I don't care how pretty Mac OSX is; it can't compete with nature. It was a bright morning, and the grass was about knee high.

The task at hand was a heavy one; we had to disassemble the shack block by block, load them onto the truck, and reassemble the whole structure. It was heavy work, and my hands were no longer accustomed to working with any material other than a plastic keyboard. It had been about 5 years since the good ol' days at the bleach factory. I have had all technical jobs since then.

We were done in about 6 hours. At that point, we stood back and enjoyed our accomplishment. I was quite pleased with myself. The end result was shoddy at best. We made no attempt to level the land under the shack, nor did we apply mortar.

I was dirty, aching and tired, but ohhh did it feel good to have some locomotion in my work. I don't actually move too much in my professional life. I sit at a desk, and try to tell the computer what to do. It's challenging and rewarding, and I love it, but it doesn't get the blood going. The connection with nature was phenomenal. I worked with concrete blocks, but was surrounded by life. My grandfather and I just walked around the farm for a while to appreciate the wonders of life. It was very therapeutic.

I encourage all of you who work in an office or some other location like that to at least try to get out and do something with your hands. Experience nature. Enjoy the sunset. Start a small garden. Stop outside and feel the sun shine on your face. Stop and smell the roses. Take a 10 second pause from the tasks of life, and enjoy life. At least try it when you can. It's a simple pleasure that just may get you a new hobby. The world is being covered in concrete, and concrete is forever.

My grandfather's (other) farm.

Me and the shack. A far cry from the Ford Probe, suit, and cubicle. Think different.

Do you think outside the box?

2005-01-30T13:02:00.000-08:00

When I worked as a co-op for Royal & SunAlliance, I had the priviledge of reading through the resumes of those that would replace me. One thing that popped up soo annyingly often was the fact that many people wrote the same old tag-line: "Outside the box thinker". Apparently this was supposed to grab my attention like some grand marquee "Hire this person - here is our saviour! S/he thinks OUTSIDE THE BOX!" Wow, am I trapped in a box? Are mimes the only ones who comprehend the existance of the box, and are actually trying to escape it?

When conducting interviews, I never brought up the box line, simply because I knew that this would lead me into some tangental discussion that would only eat up valuable time that I could put to better use. After all, putting that dumb catchphrase on your resume doesn't really indicate that you are unskilled. I then unwisely spent parts of the next few years just droning on and on about what a stupid line it was, when I should have been coming up with some sort of acid test to evaluate if a person really does think "outside the box". In my opinion, don't waste valuable real estate on your resume writing this junk. If you really do think outside the box, it will come through in the interview as a (possibly) pleasant experience for the interviewer, when you answer the questions that s/he has set up for you. Writing that line on your resume will only challenge the interviewer to come up with some horribly contrived example of how you actually think. More on that later, I promise.

Defining the box is where I always gave up on the problem. What defines "the box" in which most of us unenlightened fellows think? It seems that "the box" is a nice little expression given to the tendency of regular folk to narrow the parameters of a problem in obvious and uncreative ways. I wish I could describe it better than that, but that's the impression I get. Maybe I'm wrong and you should go do something else with your time. Perhaps you have a better definition that you would care to share.

OK, so you've decided to write "I think outside the box" on your resume. Fine. If you think it got you that interview that I didn't get (grumble grumble), then you know something I don't.

Here are some horribly contrived acid tests I found that will come up. My solutions are at the end of this blog entry. I don't know if they are the solutions, but they are correct.

Technical. (stolen from a site with Microsoft interview questions)

Suppose you have an array of N+1 integers. The integers are in random order, but you know each of the integers is between 1 and N (inclusive). In addition, each number appears only once in the array, except for one number, x, which occurs twice. Assume that you can access each element of the array only once. Describe an algorithm to find the repeated number. If you used auxiliary storage in your algorithm, can you find an algorithm that does not require it?

The best solution I could describe finds the integer in O(n) time and O(1) space. I'm assuming that by "If you used auxiliary storage" they mean more than a variable or two. I can't really conceive of a solution that doesn't require at least one variable, such as a for loop index.

Nontechnical

Three people come into a hotel and ask for a room. The concierge says "Sure, that'll be $30 for the night". Each person then hands over a $10 bill. The concierge goes to give the money to the manager, which then says "No, the special this week is $25, go give $5 back." On the way back to the front desk, the concierge tries to decide how to give $5 to three people when there is no change in the drawer, so he decides to pocket $2, and gives $1 back to each person.

Now, if each of the people paid $9, and 9x3 = $27, plus the $2 in the concierge's pocket 27+2 = 29. Where's the other dollar?

Given the pattern of nine dots (in 2-dimensional space), connect all nine dots with four straight, connected line segments. In other words, if you print out the puzzle: connect all the dots with four straight lines and without lifting your pencil.
x  x  x

x  x  x

x  x  x

Solution can be found at the end.

Find x.
If you're like most of the programmers I know (including myself), then you probably tried desperately to solve the problem in a way that can easily be extended to solve a more general problem of this nature, such as "You have an array with N unique email addresses ...". So you reduced the problem to "find the repeat in the array", but couldn't conform to the O(n) time thing. That's ok, you are a great programmer. If I was the boss, I'd take that solution, and probably ask you to turn it into a C++ template or Java 1.5 generic or . Buuut you didn't exactly answer the question, so The Donald will fire you. Tough luck. Let's see what happened.
The box: You thought in computer code, didn't you? Ahh, that's alright, I won't tell anybody. You saw the word "array" and started thinking of array munging algorithms. S'ok. Let's try to think outside the box. (*sigh*) Well, what are we dealing with besides an array? Numbers... well, integers... hmmm a set of integers... a set of consecutive integers! This brings us into the other space of the problem. Let's use math to solve the computer problem! There are quite a few mathematical ideas around sets, so let's see if we can use one. The mathematical sum of a series of N consecutive integers beginning at the number a is (N*(N+a) ) /2. So in our case, the sum of the numbers 1 to 1000 is 500500. In the array, however, one and only one number is repeated, so if we sum up all the numbers in the array, we'll get 500500+x. Simply subtracting the sum of the numbers in the array from the sum of the first N numbers in the series gives us our answer. Let's try this in Perl:

use List::Util qw(sum);

sub findRepeat{
 my $n = (scalar @_) - 1; # to get the N
 return sum(@_) - ($n *($n + 1))/2;
}

Granted, this solution only works for this exact problem, but isn't that the point?

Where's the other dollar?
Another example of misdirection.
Each paid $9 for a total of $27. That's $25 for the room plus $2 in the concierge's pocket. Each guest has $1 in his/her pocket, for a grand total of $30.

Can you connect all the dots?
This one is great because it actually defines the box! =) Get out of the box!
I'll use my best ASCII art to show the solution:


|\   /
x x x
|  X
x x x
|/   x-x-x-

Ok, maybe not my *best* ASCII art, but I hope you get the idea.

What's with this blogging stuff?

2005-01-29T22:59:00.000-08:00

I have never really given blogging the respect I now think it deserves. Why would one blog in the first place, and more importantly, who cares?

Ironically enough, I found the answer in another blog. I wish that I could share it with you, but it's part of the internal blogging system at amazon.com. The very fact that amazon.com has an internal blog is what made me take blogging more seriously in the first place. I now feel that blogging is a great way to serialize one's thoughts. I think that it is tragic that many of us have great ideas and frames of thought that go unrecorded and then forgotten in time. Be honest, you've had some good ideas. You've had some intriguing random questions that would have made excellent discussion topics, but now they're gone. Lost forever. Will blogging solve this problem? Oh hell no. I'll still lose my train of thought, and *poof*, everything will be gone forever. However, the sheer convenience of a universally ( or is that internet-ally ) accessible system of recording and filing your thoughts certainly increases the odds that you will actually do it. Heck, maybe a few people will read your blog and help you develop some cockamamie thought into a well developed idea.

That brings me to my second reason for blogging: Writing. Writing is good. All I write all day is code. mmmmmmmmmm code. After some time writing computer code and attending meetings in which the presenter has provided barebones slides, my writing level has decreased dramatically. I can't believe what people write on their powerpoint slides these days. For example: "Need know reason for revenue decrease" What kind of English is that? Would it have been terribly hard to change it to sound more elegant? Are we becoming so preoccupied with efficiency that we are willing to sacrifice the more elegant and CORRECT aspects of the language? Aye, that's the topic of another blog. Let's hope that I can craft some reasonably well written entries. Besides that point, writing is also beneficial for another reason: it helps you evaluate and analyze all the branches in your thought tree. Your brain (well, maybe not your brain, but mine for sure) has a pathetically small amount of organized short term memory. Whenever I'm trying to solve a problem, there are always multiple paths to the solution. The problem is that there are too many points for me to forget what I was doing: "Well, I could do A or B or C... if I do A, then that leads to a1 and a2... oh but a2 is bad. Ok, what if I do C.. that leads to c1 and c2... but c2 sounds familiar ... did I think of this before.. was it while I was evaluating A? Is it similar to the a1 idea??? oh man... was there a B in there somewhere.... bah, let's do C" At least when I'm writing, I can write A, B, C, and then evaluate each branch as I see fit, with 100% "recollection" of all the intermediate ideas. That's good for Johnny. Not for you, the reader. In fact, why are you still reading this paragraph? You should have skimmed to something better by now.. go go, go away!

Still here? Thanks!
That brings me to my final point about blogging. There are so many topics on which I know so little, but just enough to get me into trouble. That's where you come in. It is not a responsibility of the reader to respond to my blogs. I mean, the fact that you are here reading my drivel is quite flattering. What really excites me, however, is the prospect that perhaps something I say will encourage you to offer your knowledge and/or opinion, and then I may learn. I mean, I don't know squat about... say, the true effect Open Source software will have on my future as a programmer. If I say something like "it will kill most of the paid programming jobs, because people are getting things for free!", I'm sure that those who understand the forces of the world of software will have something to say about that idiotic statement. (or is it idiotic? hmmm in some small way, that statement is a fear of mine... but again, I digress)

At this point I would have loved to present my Citizen Kane-esque Declaration of Principles, but quite frankly I don't want to force myself to conform to some set of rules that I thought were a good idea at some earlier time. This is a random stream of thoughts coming out of my brain, which, while fairly well educated, is subject to the various emotional influences that are just part of being a human.