Friday, May 25, 2012
Free Time
An apparent side-effect of KLa and Ash being on vacation is that I have lots of time to blog.
Future Politicians, Today
I can't be the only one wondering how the politicians of tomorrow are going to spin the Facebook posts and Twitter tweets that they're generating today.
During any given election season, political mudslingers dig up old college newsletters or newspaper articles where their opponents may have said something potentially spin-worthy. Their resources are limited, however, and rarely extend past the point that their opponent became a public figure and therefore news-worthy.
Nowadays, however, anywhere between 25% and 50% of Americans have Facebook accounts, and that probably skews young. There will be no shortage of embarrassing photos, awkward tweets, and ill-advised posts made in a brief moment of insanity (the so-called "teenage years").
The more I thought about it, though, the more I started to lean towards "it won't matter." Politicians are naturally shameless to begin with and besides, these social media accounts are so ubiquitous that their opponents will probably have one too, leading to a MAD scenario.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. With Myspace and Facebook hitting nine and eight years old, respectively, the standard teenage early-adopter will be halfway through their law degree by now. Give them another decade and we'll start to see the fireworks.
During any given election season, political mudslingers dig up old college newsletters or newspaper articles where their opponents may have said something potentially spin-worthy. Their resources are limited, however, and rarely extend past the point that their opponent became a public figure and therefore news-worthy.
Nowadays, however, anywhere between 25% and 50% of Americans have Facebook accounts, and that probably skews young. There will be no shortage of embarrassing photos, awkward tweets, and ill-advised posts made in a brief moment of insanity (the so-called "teenage years").
The more I thought about it, though, the more I started to lean towards "it won't matter." Politicians are naturally shameless to begin with and besides, these social media accounts are so ubiquitous that their opponents will probably have one too, leading to a MAD scenario.
Regardless, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. With Myspace and Facebook hitting nine and eight years old, respectively, the standard teenage early-adopter will be halfway through their law degree by now. Give them another decade and we'll start to see the fireworks.
Vacation Pros and Cons
Pros and cos of KLa and Ash being on vacation:
Pros:
Pros:
- I vacuumed an entire floor without the vacuum being unplugged even once.
- I got to sleep in until 6:45 am
- I took an entire shower without having to lean out dripping wet to lift someone onto the potty.
- I didn't get to chase a squealing and laughing two-year-old around with the vacuum.
- I woke up alone in bed, without a wife to drape an arm over or a two-year-old climbing in saying, "Food time?"
- I had a cheese sandwich for breakfast instead of an omelette or banana-raisin waffles.
Vacuuming Revelation
The past couple days KLa has been waking up with a handful of bug bites. Worried that the mice we recently fought may have brought fleas into the house, she sprinkled Borax all over the floor before she left for Utah and drafted me to vacuum it up later that night.
As I was vacuuming it up, the thought occurred to me that it might not matter what powder you sprinkled on the floor. It could be glitter and be just as effective--what it did was show me how terrible of a vacuumer I normally was. It took me three or four slow passes to get up all the Borax and since my usual technique is one or two quick swipes, it's not hard to do the math and realize that maybe my standard vacuuming is fairly ineffective.
In short, regardless of whether the Borax actually did anything to the potential fleas, at the least it made me vacuum properly.
As I was vacuuming it up, the thought occurred to me that it might not matter what powder you sprinkled on the floor. It could be glitter and be just as effective--what it did was show me how terrible of a vacuumer I normally was. It took me three or four slow passes to get up all the Borax and since my usual technique is one or two quick swipes, it's not hard to do the math and realize that maybe my standard vacuuming is fairly ineffective.
In short, regardless of whether the Borax actually did anything to the potential fleas, at the least it made me vacuum properly.
Counter-Culture
I've always pictured myself as a rebel--a counter-culture anti-establishment kinda guy who ignores the usual societal norms and boundaries and laughs in the face of tradition. Take this morning for example--I had a cheese sandwich FOR BREAKFAST.
Stupid moths, getting in my cold cereal...
Stupid moths, getting in my cold cereal...
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Open Source and Productivity
I was so productive this evening that I decided to finish it off with a little blogging.
I love my job. There isn't a day that I don't look forward to going into work. With KLa and Ash leaving for Utah this morning, I was left with a free evening and the activity that sounded the most fun was to go back to work after dinner.
If there was one downside to my job, however, it's that everything is "Proprietary and Confidential." We use a lot of open source software (OSS) at work, but it's pretty one-directional--we only select OSS software that doesn't require us to contribute back. It's a fact of life for a proprietary company like ours, but still not the dream world I would live in if I could. Every since I could program I've worked on and contributed to open source projects and I've always enjoyed the open sharing.
For the past couple days I've been working on adding joystick support to our software. It's been a fun project, made infinitely easier by finding two pieces of OSS that make working with joysticks a breeze. I did run into one snag, though--one of the joysticks just wouldn't work properly. After spending some time on my own troubleshooting, I looked up the chatroom where the developers hung out and grilled them with some questions.
With their guidance, it took 20 minutes to fix the bug instead of two hours. I went away with a fix for my problem and a big savings in time, and they went away with an improvement for their software. That's what my perfect world would be like all the time--everyone sharing, and everyone winning.
Until then, I'll keep enjoying my job, and mentally thanking all those open source developers who put so much of their time and resources into making free and incredibly useful software, asking little and requiring nothing in return.
I love my job. There isn't a day that I don't look forward to going into work. With KLa and Ash leaving for Utah this morning, I was left with a free evening and the activity that sounded the most fun was to go back to work after dinner.
If there was one downside to my job, however, it's that everything is "Proprietary and Confidential." We use a lot of open source software (OSS) at work, but it's pretty one-directional--we only select OSS software that doesn't require us to contribute back. It's a fact of life for a proprietary company like ours, but still not the dream world I would live in if I could. Every since I could program I've worked on and contributed to open source projects and I've always enjoyed the open sharing.
For the past couple days I've been working on adding joystick support to our software. It's been a fun project, made infinitely easier by finding two pieces of OSS that make working with joysticks a breeze. I did run into one snag, though--one of the joysticks just wouldn't work properly. After spending some time on my own troubleshooting, I looked up the chatroom where the developers hung out and grilled them with some questions.
With their guidance, it took 20 minutes to fix the bug instead of two hours. I went away with a fix for my problem and a big savings in time, and they went away with an improvement for their software. That's what my perfect world would be like all the time--everyone sharing, and everyone winning.
Until then, I'll keep enjoying my job, and mentally thanking all those open source developers who put so much of their time and resources into making free and incredibly useful software, asking little and requiring nothing in return.
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Andrenaline Junkies Got Problems
Ah, nothing quite like the glare of oncoming headlights in your lane to get the adrenaline flowing! The thrill of adventure, the squealing brakes, the wife tourniqueting the arm...just another day in California driving.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Fence
We probably wouldn't have done it ourselves except interestingly, it was like pulling teeth to get a quote on our fence. We had a general contractor acquaintance come over and measure, but he never followed up. I know for a fact he was looking for work, which is why I offered the job to him, but I suspect he weighed digging postholes in California's rock-hard soil and eating, and decided ramen wasn't that bad.
Our neighbor wanted to repair a joint section of our fence (the section from our side that was in the best shape and the last one we would have done if it was up to us, unfortunately) and had a man come out to give a quote. He, too, made measurements, then vanished and never reappeared. It's odd.
So we decided to take a shot at it ourselves. My dad and I had put up a fence when I was younger so between that and a few websites (and a healthy dose of "winging it") we got what we needed and began.
First, Ash waterproofed the boards:
The missionaries from church were eager for a service project and I was happy to oblige. For the cost of a couple burgers from Five Guys, they did all the heavy work of digging the postholes. (Note to self: don't put a posthole so close to a tree next time. Whoever you sucker into digging the hole will take a long time getting through the roots.) I poured cement, cut boards, and "managed."
KLa and I put up the first section of slats, and later the missionaries came over and again and helped finish it off.
My bro-in-law came over and helped build the gate. And just like that we were done!
Granted, the project was spread over about a month and a half of Saturdays, leading our back-fence neighbor to jokingly question which dynasty we were planning to finish the Great Wall in, but the end result wasn't half-bad. You can tell just by looking at the fence that some good management went into it.
Our next project is the fence on the other side of the house, and I hear a new missionary moved into the area. I wonder if he's ever dug postholes...
Monday, April 02, 2012
Bedtimes
Friday night and Saturday night, Ash got to bed super late--9 pm or later. The next mornings, she woke up super early--4 or 5 am.
Last night we finally got Ash to bed at a reasonable hour--7:30 pm or so, and she happily slept in until 7 am.
Moral of the story: get Ash to bed on time. (And it doesn't hurt if I get to bed on time, too...)
Last night we finally got Ash to bed at a reasonable hour--7:30 pm or so, and she happily slept in until 7 am.
Moral of the story: get Ash to bed on time. (And it doesn't hurt if I get to bed on time, too...)
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Robotics update
Party Time!!!
For dinner tonight, I had a bowl of popcorn and a cottage-cheese container full of lemonade.
I can't wait until Kla gets home.
I can't wait until Kla gets home.
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Free Memory in Ubuntu
I was so happy to figure this out that I wanted to post it for my own memory and anyone else who was also interested.
On one of my computers, my RAM was being eaten up and I couldn't figure out why. Running 'top' resulted in the following line:
Mem: 505908k total, 478736k used, 27172k free, 41888k buffers
Out of my half gig of ram, 95% was being used. Browsing the list of processes didn't give any indication that there were any particular memory hogs.
Running 'free -m' (the -m prints in megabyes instead of the default kilobytes) resulted in the following output:
user$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 494 469 25 0 41 315
-/+ buffers/cache: 112 381
From that, I was able to discover that the majority of my RAM was tied up in caching data. Not necessarily bad, since if you have spare RAM lying around, you might as well use it for something, but it was slowing down my SSH terminals to the point where they were effectively unusable. The previous couple times I had this problem, I had simply rebooted, but that was a hammer=nail solution and I wanted a better one. I finally found the solution on ubuntu-unleashed.com.
Mem: 505908k total, 120384k used, 385524k free, 204k buffers
Additionally, 'free -m' resulted in the following:
user$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 494 128 365 0 0 24
-/+ buffers/cache: 103 390
On one of my computers, my RAM was being eaten up and I couldn't figure out why. Running 'top' resulted in the following line:
Mem: 505908k total, 478736k used, 27172k free, 41888k buffers
Out of my half gig of ram, 95% was being used. Browsing the list of processes didn't give any indication that there were any particular memory hogs.
Running 'free -m' (the -m prints in megabyes instead of the default kilobytes) resulted in the following output:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 494 469 25 0 41 315
-/+ buffers/cache: 112 381
From that, I was able to discover that the majority of my RAM was tied up in caching data. Not necessarily bad, since if you have spare RAM lying around, you might as well use it for something, but it was slowing down my SSH terminals to the point where they were effectively unusable. The previous couple times I had this problem, I had simply rebooted, but that was a hammer=nail solution and I wanted a better one. I finally found the solution on ubuntu-unleashed.com.
- Flush file system buffers for safety
- user$ sync
- Become root (simply sudo-ing the final command won't work because of the redirection)
- user$ sudo bash
- Free cached memory
- root# echo 1 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
Mem: 505908k total, 120384k used, 385524k free, 204k buffers
Additionally, 'free -m' resulted in the following:
user$ free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 494 128 365 0 0 24
-/+ buffers/cache: 103 390
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