off by one for 2005 October

Wed Oct 05 16:23:54 PST job search:

I had an interview today for a very cool job that I'm really excited about. I don't want to talk too much about it, but it's primarily Linux oriented and the subject matter is really exciting, so that's cool. I like them and I think they like me, so I'm very hopeful.

Wed Oct 05 21:38:36 PST no hot water -- cold water conjures up lost memories:

The hot water heater in the building died recently, so we've been out of hot water for over 24 hours. Today, before my interview, I took a cold shower, literally. It reminded me of being out at camp, and having all the hot water alread taken up. I can't count the number of cold showers I took there. Then at some point I just figured that swimming in the lake was as good as a shower and began showering a lot less. I also bought some random lye soap from TJ's because it reminded me of the Fels-Naptha that my scoutmaster used. This makes me think of the giant spiders and nasty floors that were to be found in the showers at camp.

Good times.

Great oldies, and the best of today!

(1) Thu Oct 06 12:28:45 PST i've got a job and other news flashes:

I've got a job! Apparently the interview yesterday was a success from the client's perspective and I will be starting next week! The people from the hiring company told me that the client had actually looked around at some other candidates but didn't find anyone that was anywhere near as good a fit. I am super excited about the job, so that's cool.

In other news -- I am surprised by how little people here use their horns. In Chicago, if the light was green for half a second and you hadn't started rolling forward, people were honking. But on a scale of 1 to New York City with Chicago being a 7, I think that LA has to be a 3 or a 4. I don't know if I've been honked at once.

I was listening to the band Barenaked Ladies today, as a nostalgic romp back in time, and listening to them embarasses me a little, because I hear a lot of my own musical sensibilities that were shaped in early college when I listened to BNL a lot. Much of what I would like to cut out of my own musical stylings was put there (or amplified by) BNL. I don't even say that to dis them; I think they're great musicians and they put on a great show (at least they did in 1994 when I last saw them). But I don't want to be them.

Finally, our hot water is out. We're pushing about 36 hours with no hot water, but they are working on it. Our dishes are stacking up like lepers around the pool of Siloam, except that the pool is dry as a bone. Monday I heated water up on the stove to do dishes just like we used to a boy scout camp, but I'm not going to do that today.

Maybe the cold shower before the interview was what did it?

Mon Oct 10 08:27:44 PST great weekend:

Had a great weekend hanging out with our friend Peter. We went and saw Corpse Bride; pretty entertaining and very well done. Peter and I were both wowed by the use of piano playing in the film... it was so well done and sounded so good that it really added to the sense of realism.

I had a couple of random thoughts that prompted lookups on Wikipedia:

1. The Hollywood Sign -- several movies make reference to it formerly saying "HOLLYWOODLAND" rather than just "HOLLYWOOD" -- did it really, or was that just such a good bit of myth that it showed up in several movies? Who built the sign, anyway? If it did have "LAND" at the end, what happened to it? I can't do as good a job recapping the history of the sign, and it's a short article, so you should just read it yourself if you're curious.

2. The Moody Blues -- my old roommate, The Captain, once told me that the Moody Blues recorded their orchestral rock as a last ditch joke at their record company's expense as their contract was about to expire... or at least that's what I remembered of the story when I thought about it. The true story is not far off -- Wikipedia says that they were in debt to their label, who offered to forgive their debt if they made a rock and roll version of Dvorak's New World Symphony as a demonstration of Stereo recording. They managed to instead do a hybrid rock/orchestra version of their stage show, which became the huge Days of Future Passed, and cemented their style. I am always creeped out by the guy in this picture with the orange coat on -- his eyes peer into my soul!

We were looking for a cool place to have brunch that was also close to Union Station in Los Angeles, preferably one that was vegetarian and vegan friendly. We found Alexander's Brite Spot at 1918 W. Sunset Blvd in Echo Park (at Sunset and Park just west of Sunset and Glendale). Just 2.6 miles from Union Station, and with a huge menu and tons of vegetarian fare. It has a very classic greasy spoon feel, but with a very classy vibe (it's been there since 1949). There is free parking at the bank next door on Sundays, and since it was Sunday afternoon, traffic was minimal. They are also open from 6 AM to 4 AM daily -- as Peter said, "They're open a lot!" We all really enjoyed it and will definitely be back. It was an awesome Sunday Brunch location.

(1) Sun Oct 16 09:04:10 PST compression:

I had a brainstorm this morning. I've been copying some of my old vinyl records to the computer while I still have a record player. It occurred to me that tracks on the outer grooves of an LP will sound better than tracks on an inner grooves due to the way a record moves. This is old news to some people, but not to me. The issue is that records move at a "constant angular velocity" or CAV for short. This means that the disc always spins at the same velocity. For 12 inch LPs, that velocity is normally 33 and 1/3 rotations per minute.

If you consider that a standard LP is 12 inches, it's radius is 6 inches. Circumference is 2 Pi times the radius (or Pi times the diameter), or 2 * 6 * 3.14, which is 37.7 -- 37.7 inches around the outside groove. If the record spins 33.33 times a minute, and a minute is 60 seconds, then this translates into 20.94 inches per second (37.7 * 33.33 / 60).

By contrast, the inner grooves are only 3 inches away from the center of an LP, giving us a diameter of 6 inches and a circumference of 18.84 inches. Using the same translation to inches per second, we see that the surface of the record at that distance from the center hole is moving at 10.5 inches per second -- essentially half the speed of the outside grooves!

This matters because the more space you use to store image or sound information, the better that representation will be when you play it back -- one way to think of it is that you can draw a more detailed picture on a 3x5 card than you could on a postage stamp -- well, if the outer grooves of a record are like that 3x5 card, then the inner grooves are about half that size! Not a lot of space.

This is also basically true with computers -- the more bits of data you store, the better the representation of analog data (images and sound) can be. That's why we care about the "megapixels" of digital cameras (and that's largely why MP3s don't sound as good as a CD -- they're smaller). The way compact discs avoid the "postage stamp" problem of the inner track of LPs is that their discs spin at "constant linear velocity" (or CLV) -- this means that as the laser moves across the face of the CD, the disc changes speed so that the laser is always scanning the disc at the same speed; when the laser is on the inside "tracks," the disc spins much faster than when the laser is on the outside. The data is more "tightly packed" on the inner rings and more "loosely packed" on the outer rings -- therefore the quality is always constant!

(Incidentally, unlike LPs, CDs read from the middle of the disc out!)

This is not new news at all -- it's just a lightning bolt that hit me this morning. In fact, I'm going to guess that an article very similar to this was in Hi-Fi magazine in about 1984!

(1) Wed Oct 26 22:01:30 PST the patience of job:

The new job is great. I started out working from home for a week and a half, but now I am in the office. We're in the middle of a big project, and due to the workload and the constraint that much of the work has to be done when nobody is around, we're working weekends. (I'm working with a consultant from the UK who will be here for a couple more weeks.) I'll probably put in about 60 hours this week. Luckily, I'm getting paid overtime right now because I'm still hourly via the hiring firm that got me the job in the first place. It is really interesting work, and a very interesting work environment, unlike anything I have ever experienced. Someday I will explain, but not right now. Every day is a new adventure, that's for sure.

From the IT perspective, it is very different from NPU, but also very similar.

Essentially, we are rebuiling the company's network, which has only been tended to by hourly consultants who came in to do occaisional backups or fix minor "helpdesk" kind of things, and contractors for their more specialized software. So the similarities are, at a very basic level, lots of control and authority, hands on with Windows, Servers (Linux, yay!), and telecommunications stuff. Much of my work at NPU was indispensible for this job, and the Linux I have been doing is a big plus now.

What's different is organization and infrastructure. When this is done, I'll be the "cowboy" IT guy in the building, responsible for everything. And as I said, they have never had a full time IT guy. As a result, the system is a total mishmash of random bits of hardware as things have been cobbled together over the last 20 years. There are switches plugged in that we're not even sure if they do anything (but they're buried in tangled patch cords). The fiber switch is, I would guess, around 10 years old and is covered in strange fuzz. It sounds like a dying cow and has a post it on it that says "do not turn off -- 1999". Of course, changing some of the settings requires a reboot. I guess we'll figure out a different solution. There was a T1x2 (3 megabits) installed in March, but it has never been used as far as we can tell. The network switches are full so there are many smaller chained, unmanaged switches. Network pulls were insufficient so 2 signals were sent on one CAT-5 cable by means of a breakout box. I think the PBX is older than North Park's.... seriously, I could go on, but I think you probably get the idea. Thankfully the issue was organization and not resources that led to the current situation. As we rebuild the network we get to take a fairly "ground up" approach (within the confines of "not looking funny at the fiber switch") and that's fun to think about too.

At North Park, there was a lot of good redundancy and duplication, and that was great for the school's infrastructure, but here it will be only me (with occaisional contract help for small things if necessary). So there's a lot riding on my shoulders, which is both good, and bad. Overall though, I think it's a great experience for me to have to really step up to the plate in a way that I never really had to at NPU.

Basically, it's an exciting situation, I'm working a LOT right now, and that's ok. I'm glad I like it though; I can't imagine working 60 or 80 hours a week at a job I didn't like.

Fri Oct 28 09:55:02 PST road rage:

last night my coworker got his windshield fist-cracked by a dude with crazy road rage. i will now start locking my doors.

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