my tweets
For several months (I guess, more accurately, “years” now) I have been contributing to Stanford’s folding@home project. That’s my team I just linked-to (88135).
If you’re interested in donating your spare CPU cycles to a pretty worthy cause, I’d invite you to join my team 
I realized earlier this week that it’s been 19 years since I first started programming. Not my first exposure to computing, which was in about 1986 on my aunt’s Mac 512 .. but still a long time ago
My aunt gave me a Tandy 102 laptop that had a whole walloping 21446 bytes of storage. It had the capability to store up to 19 files, and the names had to be in a 6.2 form (ie, not the “standard” DOS 8.3 naming convention).
It shipped with MS BASIC somethingorother, and had a 40 character wide by 8 character tall screen. Oh, and don’t forget the built-in 300 bps modem (that ‘rotary’ dialed)!
I learned BASIC from Learning BASIC for the Tandy by David A Lien. I learned a LOT from that book – not the least of which was that color doesn’t work on a monochrome screen
I also learned how pseudorandom numbers can be “manipulated” to help you win games .. and that typos suck : mightily.
Some of my programming habits that I still carry (even in writing “throwaway” scripts), come from my time of writing programs on an extremely limited machine.
After playing with BASIC for a year or so, I started writing for my aunt’s old Mac iiVX (which had 5MB RAM and an 80MB hard disk!) using Microsoft QuickBASIC 1.0 (a compilable BASIC), then moved into Turbo Pascal for a couple months, and then into C++ in 1993. My introduction to C++ was in the form of working with a family friend from church who wanted to learn C++ (but knew C), and who wanted to try-out some ideas he had for work with finite element analysis software. So we (I built the mesh generator/parser, and acted as syntax fiend) built a FEA application using Borland C++ 4.0 on his 486 running Windows 3.11 for workgroups. That was a screamer compared to my little laptop: it ran at 66Mhz, and had 16MB RAM! Wow: those were the days
My cell phone has more RAM than that now, and a faster CPU, to boot!
I know I didn’t start as long ago, or as young, as some of my friends, colleagues, and cofiends – but there’s my story
I hadn’t paid attention to all the things that have to be setup when you move in such a short period of time before: electric, gas, water, change of addresses… what a pain!
But it’s worth it since we’ll have more privacy, more space, and less-close neighbors
I have the electric set to switch over to my name this weekend: now I just need water, gas, banks… yay :-\
I fly quite frequently – last year I re-met Delta‘s Gold Medallion status, and made it all the way to Platinum (go me!).
One of the perks is that I frequently get upgraded from the coach tickets I book to First/Business seats instead – for free (and free == better). I was about 23k miles away from Diamond status last year when the year ended. Delta’s rules entail rolling-over your “extra” Medallion Qualification Miles (ie those over your last milestone but less than the next one) to kick-start the next year’s earnings.
For several months last year I was traveling nearly every week from my home in Lexington to Hartford CT – which was awesome from the frequent flier standpoint: the higher up you go on the status chart the more bonus miles you also accrue to your miles balance.
The tricky thing is that MQMs are not equivalent to FFMs – the “qualification” miles are actual miles flown or 500 (whichever is greater) per segment. Whereas the “flyer” miles are those you can turn-in for free flights (and on Delta specifically, you can turn-in miles as low as 25k for free roundtrips). FFMs also come from car rentals, purchases from partners, hotel stays, etc. Last summer Marriott was running a deal whereby for every stay, in addition to the “normal” miles earned, you received a 5k mile bonus, up to a max of 60k miles. I didn’t realize the deal early enough or would’ve gotten closer to the max, but it was still a nice bonus. (BTW – Marriott is doing a triple miles bonus right now.)
When I travel for work, I like to stay at one chain if available – Marriott. They’re generally friendly, the rooms are consistent, and the hotel-provided soaps and shampoos actually work (some places they, technically, clean .. but they’re quite harsh in the process). For the last several months I have been enjoying staying at the Courtyard Marriott in Cromwell CT: I have gotten to know several of the staff, and will be somewhat disappointed to no longer be seeing them on a weekly basis. With my current project coming to an end, I’ll have to get used to a new area.
I’ve also become acquaintances with the crew at Dollar rentacar in Windsor Locks (next to Bradley airport). Jeff and Ellen have been consummate professionals, and are always extremely friendly – even to customers who are anything but. They’ve gone out of their way to be nice to myself and a couple other “regulars” because a) it’s good business, and b) we’re always friendly and smiling when we come in. Every week I reserve a compact because it’s the cheapest. Almost every week, without asking, Jeff has upgraded me (for free!) to a mid- or full-size – I even got upgraded to a mini van a couple times.
The bad part about all the travel is that my wife and I have only been married for 7.5 months – and being gone almost every week is just no fun at all. Thankfully, she’s been able to come with me a few times – but not as often as either of us would have liked.
It will be interesting to see where the next project will take me (and hopefully her!) in the upcoming weeks
Last year for my birthday, my lovely wife bought me a Keurig coffee machine.
I have used several at different places of work, and had been wanting one for almost a year when she got me one – she’s pretty awesome
I had had a traditional drip coffee maker for years, but only broke it out infrequently – mostly when company came over – because I wouldn’t finish a a whole pot (even a smallish one) on my own, and I have a fundamental problem with throwing the extra coffee away (it’s the Scot in me).
The advantage of the Keurig, and its associated K-Cups, is that it makes one cup at a time: no muss, no fuss (to quote Ron Popeil).
Prior to the Keurig, I had used a Flavia machine at a customer site a few years ago (and at a prior employer), and it was cool – but a little too complicated: it’s very specific about how the packets need to be loaded, whereas the Keurig just accepts them dropped-in.
There are myriad makers, flavors, and styles of K-Cups that be used with the machine, including one that acts as a reusable filter where you can load-up your own coffee for quick brewing. My wife has become a fan of the various hot cocoas and chais available, while I enjoy many of the flavored and plain coffees and teas.
The output of the Keurig is not quite as good as a traditionally-brewed tea or coffee, but the speed FAR more than makes-up for it, in my opinion. And as a cost benefit, grabbing a ~$0.50 coffee from my kitchen in 60 seconds is better than ~$4.50 from Starbucks in 5 minutes through the drive through or having to walk-in. Do the coffee shops have “better” coffee? I think so. Is it 9x better? Rarely – if ever.
If you’re a coffee fan, but not to the level of “snob” or “picky”, then I think a Keurig would be a pretty cool addition to your kitchen.
To help fulfill my stated goal of reading more, I have installed the Kindle app on my laptops. So far I’ve found scores of free ebooks that I’ve either always wanted to read, or figured I’d give a chance since they’re free. The first one I read was a collection of Aesop’s fables.
Some reactions:
Coming home from Hartford this week, my wife and I got stranded in Detroit (ok, so DTW is in Romulus… but whatever). Our flight into DTW from BDL was delayed a bit, but we still had ~40 minutes to get to our flight to Lexington. However, when we landed we found out that the flight home had been canceled due to winter weather around CVG and LEX (while the accumulations weren’t real high, the winds and low visibility made us happy they had canceled our flight).
Being stranded at an airport is something I have had to deal with on a couple occasions before (once even at DTW 2 years back), but never with anyone other than myself… and never with an important appointment the next day: my wife was slated to have lasik Friday afternoon.
Thanks to Delta’s newer ticketing system, all you have to do if your flight is canceled is to head to a self-service kiosk, scan your boarding pass, and get the new one printed-out. We decided to speak to one of the Delta customer service representatives, though, because neither of us was thrilled with the idea of being stuck in Detroit, and were hoping there might be some form of compensation (even a meal voucher) offered for the weather inconvenience.
Turns out, that when you’re friendly to the customer service folks (whether they be dedicated representatives, gate agents, or flight attendants), they can be quite nice back. When our boarding passes were scanned for our replacements, two hotel vouchers (one for each delayed passenger) and four meal vouchers printed as well! That was pretty cool, and from the automated system. The part about being friendly and asking nicely for a little help that came next was even better: Delta has “toiletries” bags for stranded passengers that include a disposable razor, toothbrush, laundry detergent, toothpaste, and a t-shirt. However, like with many other “perks” – it is up to the discretion of the customer service rep as to whether or not to hand out these “add-ons”. Our guy was very pleasant, and gave both my wife an I one. And told us where we needed to go to find the hotel shuttle that would bring us to the Best Western International Gateway hotel (which, on a side note, was the absolute BEST Best Western I have EVER stayed in!)
I have worked customer service before (and in many ways still do in my current professional services role) – and it is truly astonishing how much better service you can get if you’re not rude to the guy trying to help you out. When I worked phone and email support several years ago, I was never unprofessional to any of my customers, but some definitely received more elaborate responses because they didn’t start off with an antagonistic stance.
For years I have made it a priority every time I come in contact with a “service” representative (waiter/waitress, cashier, ticket agent, nurse, tech support, etc, etc) to be polite to them. If I have a problem, I always try to make it not sound like their fault when I can, and I try my best to be patient with them knowing that regardless of how much I may dislike the broccoli rabe they brought instead of my carrots which I ordered, it probably wasn’t intentional; or that it wasn’t their idea to have a swirling snowstorm ground all traffic into a particular region for the night.
I haven’t been as perfect on this front as we all should be, but a little smile and a polite word can go a very, VERY long way
