Ivory Tower Cubicle

holy crap

2009-04-22T07:44:00.000-07:00

busybusybusy. this has easily been my busiest semester with regards to non-school stuff. school stuff is manageable on its own, but when everything else demands your attention as well, it can get a tad frustrating.

i've got a busy busy 4 weeks ahead of me (actually, 3.5 weeks). couple that with a pressing deadline for work this friday (4/24) and you've got a stressed out caped coder on your hands. =/

you've GOT to be kidding me

2009-03-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

i finally sit down to dive into my networking project for the semester (which involves ssh'ing from my linux box into a box on ece.utexas.edu) and...

www.ece.utexas.edu is *down*

like, down down. i find it simultaneously:

1) frustrating as hell as i've finally sat down to work on my project in networks, and the freakin' site is down

and

2) freakin' hilariousthat the ece engineering site, of ALL SITES at utexas, is down

that's totally FSM's way of telling me to play halo wars instead of do school work tonight...

ooooh, check out this hot action!!!

2009-03-10T08:33:00.001-07:00

\>$\{{\rm EAT}:(\forall i:1\leq i\leq 5:{\rm eating}[i] \Rightarrow \neg({\rm

eaiting}[i\ominus 1] \vee {\rm eating}[i\oplus 1]))\}$\\

and there went february!

2009-03-02T08:15:00.001-08:00

i know it's the shortest month and all, but sheesh! did that go by fast, or what?

i'd apologize, but a) i'd sound like a broken record and b) it's nothing new. in my defense, however, i *did* face a layoff and the subsequent job search over the past two months. which makes it *twice* in the past year that i had to do the layoff/job search/job find fiasco. all while in grad school. so, yanno, there's that.

i know i know -- *waaaah*.

suffice it to say, i did find a job and am gainfully employed once more. while i no longer am able to walk to work (alas! what other burdens and hardships await our hero?), i do enjoy a short, highway-free commute and it really makes all the difference. never again will i commute 30+ minutes one way for work. damnit.

ANYHOW, this is a school-related blog and i suppose i should mention it at least once. in short, i'm really digging this semester. both classes are lecture classes (as opposed to discussion classes) and i can safely state that i enjoy lecture over discussion. discussion is great and it allows for interaction and, well, discussion, but i find them to be less structured and, honestly, less informative and educational. it's great to get a feel for what's topical in academic literature, but i'm more interested in being exposed to more concrete disciplines, with something more tangible to take from class.

networks from the ground up and formal methods of distributing computing -- comin' right up!! i'm having to use the ol' noggin' to come up with algorithms for formal methods and it's freakin' great. it's a challenge, but great nonetheless.

the networks class doesn't have any homework, which at first glance is welcomed, but i find that homework is usually the best tool to help learn/retain material over the break between classes. so there's a hit against it for that. however, it makes up for it via the optional programming project. it basically amounts to implementing TCP in C, using the x-kernel libraries. yes, implementing TCP in C.

coooooooooooool

school hath started!

2009-01-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

well, the break is over, back on my knees! this semester looks to be a good one, albeit a difficult one. both classes are lecture classes, rather than discussion classes (ie: read literature in the subject, discuss.) while i enjoy classes structured in such a fashion -- i get exposed to new subjects, engage in intellectual discussion over said subjects -- i must admit to an affinity to lecture classes. they and their subjects tend to be more knowledge driven -- here's what we know, here are rules and how we got to be here, learn it. i've got two this semester like that and my geek sense is definitely tingling.

in the morning, it's networks from the ground up. this is exactly what i need, network knowledge wise, and it looks to be a full-blown knowledge feast on what they are and how they work. the other class is formal methods in distributed programming. this looks to be a rigorous account of how to write concurrent programs and be confident they actually work. ok, that's a super simple take on the class, but that's what it boils down to.

btw, anyone have a job they could spare? great, thanks!

welcome 2009! starting out, somewhat similar to 2008...

2009-01-12T09:35:00.000-08:00

well, 2008 waited till the oft-absent date of february 29th. 2009 didn't have to wait at all. my contract with my employer was axed at the end of the calendar year 2008 and after a week of consulting and providing knowledge handoff, i'm officially unemployed again.

i was a victim of an across the board termination of all IT contracts, coming from "up up above". the result was a nondiscriminatory wiping of jobs. some were expendible. others were not. my boss did pretty much all he could to keep me around, but the economy took a nose dive starting in september and my employer was, let's just say, not exactly immune to market conditions.

and not to blow my own horn, but i'm valuable to them. when you write the backend of the app that was created from ground up -- designed the database schema, created the object model, and wrote all associating data and web services exposing the model -- you possess a heavy amount of what's called "domain knowledge". normally and in general, domain knowledge translates to job security. not so much in my professional experience over the past 12 months.

alas, the tides of life. if you haven't ascertained by now, i'm relatively unconcerned about my current employment status. sure the economy sucks, but i've got a lot going for me. i have an excellent early track record with glowing references to use, my undergrad work was rock solid and i'm currently persuing a master's degree in software engineering at one of the top programs in the nation. (shameless plug) plus, i have been putting aside money pretty aggressively this past year, albeit for tuition and a new vehicle (go little '91 honda accord! go as long as you can, baby!!), but enough to easily keep afloat for a month or two with little overall dent to my financial situation. (never underestimate the value of being a bachelor and living with a roommate. i can reduce my expenditures to "survival level" pretty easily.)

school starts in a week and a half. thank whoeverShouldBeThanked for the 5 week winter break from school. i feel almost fully recharged and ready to attack a new semester. i'm looking forward to my classes as well and that never hurts. in continuation of my apparent "never took networking as an undergrad so lets take an assload of it as a grad" trend, i'm taking a class called "communication networks" which, for all i can tell, will be a semester studying instant messaging algorithms. (i kid?)

the other class i'm particularly interested in: formal methods in distributed programming. sex-ay. the textbook is entitled "concurrent programming". in december, i received a just-released tech book i had pre-ordered for a good six months entitled "concurrent programming in windows". in my personal opinion, concurrency and distributed programming, manifested in multi-core desktop chips, cloud computing, or both, is where you're going to see massive growth in the commercial software development. i'm eager to get as much formal chops as i can this next semester and use it to springboard myself into a deeper commercial understanding and skillset for concurrency and distributed programming.

*deep breath*

now, to update my damned resume...

one more paper...

2008-12-13T09:33:00.000-08:00

just one more paper and the semester is over. two presentations went down yesterday and neither of them were complete bombs. that's all i care about right now.

correction, all i care about right now is getting this paper done and turned in and to officially wrap up this semester.

so i'm up, late, working, but not on school...

2008-12-07T20:10:00.001-08:00

this weekend, by the end of it, will see me log 16 hours (and counting!) at work. like, at the office. good news -- as a contractor, i get paid hourly. bad news -- the last weekend of class for the semester is this weekend and and it's balls to the wall right now. all around, apparently.

it looks like they're letting me off of work tuesday and wednesday to allow me to catch up on school crap. um, yay, i guess? harumph.

one more week and i'll be half way to my graduate degree.

*yawn* i'm tired.

and i'm lagging on these things...

2008-12-01T10:34:00.000-08:00

my apologies for the lack of posts these past two months. right now, i'm looking at a group project due this Friday and another group project, along with presentations for both, the following weekend, for class on the 11th and the 12th.

the one due this friday has come into shape this past weekend. the group met on saturday and we're scheduled to meet again this evening and i think we're on course for a relatively safe Friday due date completion. we've gotta wrap up a few things for our group paper, clean up grammar and make it flow right, and that'll leave each of us with the individual product reviews, also due Friday. I should be able to pull something out of my butt for that. *crosses fingers*

that will lead into the last week of class, with the other group project awaiting attention. that might get a little hairy, putting things together before class. but it's the last little bit! i'm staring at less than two weeks remaining in the semester and it cannot come soon enough.

ha, no, no, you get no break, buddy

2008-11-01T12:21:00.000-07:00

i apparently have this personal unwritten rule that declares i shall never start a post with "so much has happened to me over the past , omg!" granted, abstaining from "omg" will carry on untarnished, but so much has truly happened in the past 8 days.

last friday, i received the news that my dear grandmother, the fine woman that reared the man i call pops, passed away earlier that day. it was a merciful death. she had been hollowed out by alzheimer's over the previous, shoot, 6 years? her body succumbed this past year to the fallout of a tumor poking its head in a lung or two. again, merciful. yet, a death nonetheless, and one to be acknowledged and mourned. love you, granny bird.

so, i'm in this band. it's a cover band. we do 90s covers. no, i'm totally cereal. we even have a myspace page (link), for whatever that's worth. we had our first official gig this same friday evening. i qualify "official" as "playing at a commercial establishment where total strangers could possibly be present". it was at the tiniest bar in texas (link) and the gig went, well, to those it applies - do you remember the first time you had sex? remember it being clumbsy and awkward and not exactly your finest moment? certainly in comparison to subsequent experiences? but at the same time, it was still sex!

that was our gig on friday. not pretty by any means, but a gig all the same, and damnit, the crowd enjoyed themselves. we even got paid. seriously, cash money. i believe we got a whopping $108 and it was unexpected. apparently, we get ten percent of money brought in during our time on stage, (7:30pm - 10pm). we brought in over a thousand bucks for that place that night! *pats self on back* so, friday night out, and early sunday morning, my roommate dropped my brother and i off at the airport.

anyhow, travelling to minnesota and back in a scant 36 hours is not an experience i'd soon suggest. and it brought me back to austin late on monday evening. i took tuesday as a personal berievement day (i learned the term in benefits lingo for "someone died, yo!" this weekend) and cleaned my apartment (the peasants rejoiced!) and did a little hw. tuesday, went to a halloween adult skate night at playland skaterink where my clumbsy ass tripped a seasoned roller vet on his grizzled viking ass, knocking up his knee a bit in the process. he wasn't too happy, but reluctantly accepted my apologies. i have this weekend abrasion on my shin now, it's kinda cool.

work this week was hectic and a meeting this friday saw some heavy leaning on us from business about all this stuff they promised a potential client by some asnine date. i swear, people not familiar with the development process truly thinks this shit just gets thrown together in a week. anyhow, i'm not diving into it that. suffice it to say, work's been busy and stressful in its own right.

thursday night saw band practice where we stream-lined our setlist and worked on better transitions and other logistical crap. last night was a party gig for our singer's friend's halloween party at their condos. this gig went much better than the one at tiniest, mainly because we had all our own stuff and there was a great improvement in quality overall. afterwards, it was a swimming through the tens of thousands of people in downtown last night for halloween. what a freakin' trip. i took pictures with barf, the mog, from "spaceballs" and two little rolled-up rug-shaped headed freaks from katamari! no freakin' joke! they were the costume highlight of my evening, that's for sure.

and that brings us here, today, from the 24th of october. to recap what's on my school plate, there are 4 major classifications of things to do:

- normal set of readings and reviews for mobile computing
- normal set of reading and written problems for network security
- research paper for network security
- background research for mobile computing semester project

over this period of time, i did manage to complete 95% of the first item, with just three brief reviews to write and post for papers already read. the plan of attack, between today and the 14th, the friday of class this month, in a mere 13 days, is the following: attack it, singular focus, in order listed above. just power through it, no multitasking or concurrent threads of execution, simply do the security hw, write the security research paper, and read up on mobile computing project. in 13 days. it's simply gotta happen.

and i've already spent the first half hour of my coffee shop study time this afternoon catching up on my blog! again, i have to refer you to previous posts on this subject.

gasp

2008-10-21T19:58:00.000-07:00

holy freakin' cow. this is ridiculous. first, i must apologize, as it's been too long since my last post. it's not that i don't think about it, not at all. on several occasions i've intended to submit a post only to, well, not. please forgive me, kind blog, but i think i might be lumping you in with all the other school crap i have to do. i know, i know, it's not fair, nor is it right. however, it is nonetheless. i'll direct my three readers to an earlier post on procrastination. i should've tagged it "procrastination".

as is my MO, here's the list of what's on my proverbial plate. dig in!

- the normal 5 papers read and reviewed for mobile computing
- in addition, the semester project for mobile computing. our proposal of a home security ad-hoc response network has been submitted and give the a-ok. we have a status report due on november's weekend, which, we've been told, will represent a large majority of the work done for the paper. the paper/presentation all goes down on the last weekend of class.
- the normal written hw for network security (reading required before completion)
- a research paper, to be completed in full for next november's class. like, before thanksgiving.
- a group research paper/project/presentation due at end of semester. which i feel like is already breathing down my neck in the third week of october.

my pity party of one is over. thank you for indulging me. i've found that i respond well to being able to whine like that from time to time. it's cathartic and gives me the fifteen seconds of violins i damn well deserve. also, positive reinforcement. i'm a sucker for it, even superficial in nature. call it what you will, i prefer... easy to please?

caught up!

2008-09-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

Well, I caught up to where I should've been before last weekend's classes. My Mobile Computing class solely consists of reading research papers and submitting a reader review on the Blackboard discussion board. There were five papers assigned for this past weekend of class and I only managed to read and review the first one. The written homework for the morning Network Security class (full name, *deep breath*, Distributed Information Systems Security) probably had about 25+ hours of work put into it, in addition to the time it took to read Chapters 1 through 7.

I try not to whine, but I'm not good at trying. So the worth of submitting reviews for the other four papers after the weekend is questionable at best, but I felt it needed to happen. Call it in interest of academic karma.

Tomorrow is the first day of ACL Fest and it will be a welcome, albeit brief, reprieve. I'm working a half day tomorrow and am going to do it from home. My coworkers don't really know that yet, but they will in good time. One of my group members blew up at another one today (something about "condescending" and "arrogant", but I wasn't paying all that much attention to that quaint novice. Get it?) so some quiet time at the office certainly couldn't hurt.

ACL Fest. Word.

Oh, and Death Magnetic ftw.

ssshhhh...

2008-09-19T12:01:00.001-07:00

I'm in class right now! Don't tell anyone!!

Um, not much to say, as I'm simply trying to keep my head above water. However, let me simply state START EARLY ON HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS.

It's back to school...

2008-08-30T16:40:00.000-07:00

... and images of target and wal-mart supply shopping, years upon years, flash in front of my eyes.

The start of school in the fall, that whole yearly endeavor, always surprises me. Always. granted, I'd be surprised even if it was the third week in September, but details are neither here nor there. While school is school and all students, from first timers to us volunteers ("you're voluntarily here?"), are back on their knees, the experience does seem to... mature (?) over the years. Or maybe that's just me. Just this week, upon browsing a recent Daily Texan on my boss's desk, I asked said boss, "How old were you when you realized that college students are really just children too?"

Does that ever stop happening? Looking at a previous stage in life, be it the 1st grader (now in grades that require numbers) looking at the "babies" in kindergarten or the post-doc assessing the first year graduate student on the first day of class or the tenured professor chuckling at said post-doc, do we always look back and think, "Gosh, I was just a child then!" Does that ever cease to occur?

And to answer the question on your mind, yes, I'm in the middle of school work, near the end of the 4th of 6 papers (the topics of last weekend's classes) that need to be read by, I believe, Monday night. A reader response is required for each paper. Nothing outrageous, pretty modest actually -- just a few sentences or paragraphs offering your own thoughts on that particular paper. Basically, enough to prove that you read them. However, tomorrow is your humble coder's 28th birthday, and who the hell wants to read white papers on mobile computing and MANET*s?

Following shortly after that wave of nostalgia washes over you each late August, early September, another jolt of deva-ju presents itself, just as disarming as the preceding one. Usually first sighted towards the end of September, it's not unknown to hear of cases as early as the end of August. Resistance, as they say, is futile, and while you are wiser and stronger than any of the dozen or so previous encounters, the fight's result is never in question. Not once. And if you ever think it is in question, well, I've got just one response for that:

"I was such a child then!"

Procrastination, baby!

* Mobile Ad-Hoc NETworks -- as sexy as it sounds. seriously!

woohoo!

2008-08-03T09:58:00.001-07:00

just turned in the last homework for my summer seminar. i can really get use to this no-class-meetings-all-online thing. however, that's not going to happen.

now, i've got about a 3 weeks break before the fall semester fully kicks in. first weekend of classes is the 22nd of august. i look forward to new subjects of study, sure, but am i ready to dive into another semester, yet? ask me in three weeks.

still alive!

2008-07-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

hey no one! just checking in to say i'm still alive and everything. the summer seminar is winding down, with only one more homework due this upcoming sunday! overall, i think the class was worthwhile, just found myself taken aback by the brevity of summer. didn't i just start this class? where's the foreplay? *sigh*

anyhow, the fall semester starts up here in less than a month, with the first weekend of class being the weekend of the 22nd of august. i anticipate an increase in both posting content and frequency here soon. trust me, i'll have plenty to bitch about then. however, i still have the following to look forward to before class starts again:

- aug 2nd -- doug stanhope @ antone's. quite possibly my favorite living comedian. i see him as a hicks for the 2000's -- he's not quite as cerebral, but make no doubt, it's all there. oh, and really likes to shock unknowing audience members. he's a tad, um, crass.

- aug 9th -- roommate's birthday weekend at his folks' lakehouse. um, yeah.

- aug 15th -- potential gig for the band? dunno, but it could happen.

- aug 16th -- 10 year high school reunion. ok, seriously, when the hell did that happen? should be fun, but who the hell knows with this kinda thing.

- aug 22nd -- class. yay.

well, i'm at work, so, yeah. peace.

the greatest tragedy is our grossly degenerating attention span...

2008-07-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

listen, it's long. but please give it a shot. it nothing else, at least listen to the first and last (1 and 8) videos in the series.

bender, from futurama, puts it as succinctly as possible: "we're boned."

the related series, "How It All Ends", produced (i assume) and posted by the same person as the above mentioned series, is more personable and optimistic than the somewhat doom-and-gloom tone of the older gentlemen.

The number one piece of advice I can give anyone...

2008-06-30T06:53:00.000-07:00

And this is particularly true if, like most of us in this program, you've been earning a living following one or two specific software technologies (i.e.: .NET, Java, etc)...

DOUBLE THE TIME YOU ANTICIPATE FOR ANY GIVEN PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENT.

To answer your immediate question, yes, I was working on an assignment due at midnight up to the last hour last night. Yes, I underestimated the amount of time it required for completion. But did I screw myself over and start yesterday afternoon at 3pm?

Hells no, I didn't. I'll have you know I started this homework (HW 3 of my summer seminar -- The Practice of Programming) last Tuesday and had put at least a full 10 hours into it before Sunday arrived. 10 hours in and I was finally able to start answering the first problem Sunday morning at 8am.

My roommate found it funny. He didn't after I... um... hmmm... yeah, no, I didn't do anything to him. In fact, I think he put in about 7 hours of xbox360 and movie time as I labored away at the table a mere yards away. He kept offering words of wisdom and encouragement like "Hurry up" and "Still working on that thing?" He wasn't much of a help.

The purpose of this post is not a pity party of one for your cape-clad crusadin' coder. No, that goes little distance in the land of the internet. The purpose is that sentence above written annoyingly in all caps.

How did I manage to put 10 hours into an assignment and just be starting on the first question?

Setting. Up. The. Proper. Environment.

OK, quick you professional software developers (and I'm not talking to the masochists of ya'll out there -- you driver developers), when was the last time you built a C program? Wrote a makefile? Wrote a project in a completely different IDE than your bread and butter?

This past week had me doing all the above and more simply for this one assignment. For full disclosure (says the cape-clad coder), I'd consider myself predominately a .NET developer. My career is still young, but that's certainly the direction it has started off in, working almost exclusively within Visual Studio utilizing .NET related technologies (ASP.NET, WPF, etc). (For the benefit of those in the know, I prefer to simply black out the first two years of my career when I worked with Delphi.)

Last week, I wrote my first C program, makefile, and C++ program in YEARS. I downloaded two free C/C++ IDEs I had never used before (Quincy 2005 and Code::Blocks 8.02 -- Code::Blocks totally FTW). The spring semester saw me using MatLab and Alloy for the first time in addition to the free Java IDE, NetBeans.

And guess what? None of that is really factored in when you consider the time needed for any given assignment. Oh sure, it SHOULD be factored in. But, come on, when was the last time you factored in the 5-10 min of travel time for your commute spent simply at traffic lights and the sort.

So, 10 hours in, and I had a working C program using the book's source code. Joy. I was up on Sunday, at my homework by 8am. I had an hour off to go to HEB and another hour or off for eating/break. Other than that, I was working.

I turned in the homework around 11pm last night. It may not be perfect, but it's done. 10 hours previously in week + 13 hours yesterday = 23 hours total for assignment.

...

I can't hear my violins people!!!

And summer hath begun!

2008-06-07T13:11:00.000-07:00

So here I sit, in a coffee shop on a Saturday afternoon, finishing up the first official assignment for my summer seminar -- "The Practice of Programming". It's a survey class on the generally accepted best practices when it comes to writing code. I haven't been out there in the industry all that long (< 5 years), but I can already attest to the importance of such things. Never, ever, EVER underestimate the importance of developers' ease of comprehension of your code.

Never, ever, EVER, EVER.

Seriously, just don't.

This is a short post. In the chapter I just finished reading, it stated not to insert comments in code that are self-evident or painfully obvious. "This is a short post" qualifies as such.

And yet another blog is born!

2008-05-30T09:13:00.000-07:00

Um... how does one start off a blog exactly?

I suppose some explanation of its purpose for existence is in order. I am a student at the University of Texas at Austin working towards a Masters in Software Engineering through the Option III Schedule. I am also working full-time at a financial institute in downtown Austin.

Wow. When it's put in writing, it seems much more tangible and... ridiculous? While I won't go so far as reach Ludicrous Speed, don't think the enormity of the situation goes unnoticed by yours truly. So all I have to do is handle a full-time graduate student work load in the evenings and weekends when not working? Psshh, I can handle that. Hell, let's go ahead and add in a few other things too, like train for a triathlon, solve the country's energy crisis, and pick up Zilker Park post-ACL Fest armed with only toothpicks and snack-size Ziploc bags.

Having successfully completed my first semester just a few weeks ago, I can attest that it's not *that* bad. In fact, it was pretty good. Granted, I had to shake off a little rust getting back into the swing of things -- you'd think I'd have learned my "don't wait on semester projects till the last two weeks" lesson back as an undergrad. Ah, silly silly fool.

Over the next several weeks, months, and (hopefully) year and a half, I hope to catalog and chronicle my experience with grad school and working concurrently. Ideally, you'll get the good, the bad, and the ugly. However, the waiver I signed essentially giving UT rights to anything and everything related to me and this blog may have me thinking twice.

Naw, I'm just joking. What would I have to fear from one of the largest public higher education entities in the nation? I mean, how many connections can they really possibly have, right?

*gulp*