Kazzyland

General Life Update

2008-04-26T22:45:00.002-04:00

Nothing major - just wanted to update everyone of what we've been up to.

I apologize for being uncommunicative recently, but I was waiting on news from a potential new job before I wrote again (which I didn't get and which dragged on for months). I had applied to be the manager of our engineering leadership development program at BAE this past December. I didn't get the spot, but I impressed everyone that interviewed me, and they asked me to apply for the same job at our plant in Nashua, NH. So I was up there a couple weeks ago, and once again, they told me that I had 'excellent qualifications' but they choose another candidate. I'm sick of coming in second place. :) Oh well - no huge loss. I'm not actively looking to leave my current job; I still like the work., but I wouldn't have minded a change. So basically, this past paragraph is a long way of saying that my job is the same as it has been.

Kat's graduating in a couple of weeks, and is currently looking for work. There's not much in the x-ray tech area around Binghamton at the moment. She has an interview coming up in Ithaca, and she applied at a place a little north of Scranton, but hasn't heard from them, yet. It'll be nice once we have a second income and don't have to pay school costs anymore.

I'm still studying for the PE exam. I'm scheduled to take it in October, although I haven't actually been approved by the NY state board, yet. I had to fill out a huge application listing my experience and job duties, which had to be signed by my manager. Then, a board of professional engineers reviews my application and determines whether I have enough engineering experience to qualify to take the exam. I think I do, but I'm not sure where the threshold is set. I should hear back from them in the next couple weeks. There are two actual exams, the PE and FE. Some of you may have taken the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam right after college - you don't need experience to take it. I did not take it, however, so I need to pass that as well. The FE is an 8-hour multiple choice exam in which the morning session covers all disciplines of engineering, with a heavy emphasis on EE, ME, Math, and Chemistry (for some odd reason). The afternoon session can either be a more in-depth exam of all disciplines or a discipline specific exam. I'll be taking the EE-specific portion. There is no set percentage required to pass - it varies slightly from year to year - but the average seems to be around 60-65% from the combined scores of the morning and afternoon sessions. I think I should be able to achieve that without an issue. I'll know in the next month or so, once I start taking some practice exams. The PE has essentially the same format as the FE, except it's discipline specific, so the morning session is general questions in EE, and the afternoon session has questions in a specialty of EE (computer engineering, control theory, antennas, or power). Being a power supply design, I think my choice is pretty easy. While what I do for my job will help, the power section is geared more towards transmission lines, power substations, 3-phase power, etc. It's more about power distribution than power supply design. The average passing grade for the PE tends to be around 70% and about half of the people fail it the first time around. I'm not quite sure why I'm taking the exam - it doesn't really help me in my job. I think I just want to prove that I can do it. Plus, I'll get a suffix for my name, and that's just cool.

Other random tidbits: we have an xbox 360, so if anyone else has one, send me your gamertag. We're taking a cruise in September to the Caribbean. Kat's never been on a cruise before. I'll be in State College this coming Wed-Fri for engineering design projects. At some point over the summer, we're going to do a barbeque/poker tournament weekend - we'll let everyone know when once we figure out the date.

I think that's about it, or at least, all I can think of at the moment. We'll see everyone in June at Ari and Becky's place.

A Big Fat "I'm Sorry!"

2008-04-07T15:07:00.002-04:00

Sometimes you just have to own up and take credit for your actions and this is one of those times. It has become readily apparent that my last post broke Kazzyland. I thought it might make some eyes bleed, but I had no idea it would completely break Kazzyland. I'm sorry, so sorry. The least I can do is try to make up for it via Assault by Hedgehog. :* (

The new Version of Thriller for Kazzy to pick up....

2008-01-12T14:44:00.000-05:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=LbvP7dT3Dx0&feature=related

My Mom's a BlackHawk

2008-01-02T16:16:00.000-05:00

Anyone have to deal with this while recruiting?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/graduate/story/0,,2234187,00.html

Baseball Investigations

2007-12-13T20:54:00.000-05:00

Finally, after almost 2 years the infamous "Mitchell Report" on baseball and steroids was released today.

After a quick glance, the report seems to have a lot of information which will take months to analyze.

The best part about the report I think so far is the list of recommendations by former Sen. Mitchell. One of the most thought provoking was to not discipline the players named in the report. This information is about the past, and should be left there. The purpose of the report seemed to more focused on taking care of the problem now in the present and preparing for the future.

read the summarized list of recommendations...

w00t! Its the word of the year.

2007-12-12T11:53:00.000-05:00

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22205339/?GT1=10645

Over five years later....

2007-12-05T10:29:00.000-05:00

Look where we went this past weekend!

2007-11-15T22:24:00.000-05:00

moar funny pictures

Saw this on icanhascheezburger.com and figured at least Joe and Ari could appreciate this.

Company policies that work in your favor

2007-11-08T09:34:00.000-05:00

I got to use a boroscope this morning, which was kind of neat. I haven't had the need to use one before. We found out from a vendor earlier this week that several capacitors we ordered from them weren't screened properly. These particular caps were put into some of our boxes and shipped to the customer. Our designs are robust enough that even if one of these caps fail, we'll still pass all safety of flight testing, and our internal qualification testing (the failure mode of the cap is open, so we don't short anything). There is about a 3% failure rate for these parts without the additional screening, so it's entirely possible that there's a failed cap in one of the boxes we shipped. Our company policy (and most contracts with customers) says that if we remove a board from a shipped box, we need to re-qualify the box before we can give it back to the customer. However, we are allowed to remove the cover of the box without retesting. So it looks like I'll be taking a trip to test flight facility next week for a couple days along with my fiberoptic camera. They are located in west palm beach. Woo. :)

Halloween 2007

2007-11-05T11:14:00.000-05:00

Step 1....well, you know how it goes....

Another poker tournament

2007-10-31T14:55:00.001-04:00

Kat and I are having another poker tournament. It'll be on Saturday, December 8th at 8pm. Buy-in is $20, and everyone is welcome to stay at our place for the weekend if they'd like. Anyone interested?

How was your Saturday?

2007-10-27T23:13:00.000-04:00

Oh we had a nice Saturday. We went to a wedding on a boat. The wedding was nice, the decorations were nice, we crashed into the sea wall, the food was good...wait what? Yeah let me rephrase that...

WE...CRASHED...INTO...THE...SEA...WALL!

We were coming in to dock and Michelle was talking with the bride, I was chilling with my cousins and talking to the groom, the boat was docking and BAM!! right into the sea wall. People on the dance floor fell, Michelle is now hugging the bride on the floor, I along with many other people are now covered in drinks, and there is broken glass all over the bar and kitchen.

Good times...here's some links to news articles:
http://www.nbc4.com/news/14438875/detail.html
http://www.wusa9.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=64495

By the way this was at about 2pm so it was not dark out at all. The captain said we had a hydraulics failure and we lightly tapped the sea wall. The railing in the front was bent and the front nose of the ship was dented. Lightly tapped my foot.

Got Class?

2007-10-26T17:03:00.001-04:00

F' OSU. Hope we kick their asses this weekend.

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2007/10/26/graffiti_found_on_paternoville.aspx

bowden vs paterno

2007-10-25T15:31:00.001-04:00

I read an article by Chris Fowler today, which talks about the games this coming weekend.

here is a short section of the article which was great to read...

"Bobby Bowden is just one win ahead of JoeP now. If the Nittany Lions beat Ohio State and Joe keeps pace, he could very well pass Bowden and have the all-time wins lead.

I am curious to know if Joe is aware of that. I am going to ask him Friday morning during a little sit-down if he knows the current gap. I am pretty sure he'll just scowl, and say, "Aaaw, Fowler, Jeez. I don't know about that stuff!"

Oh, and I will be sure to drive safely and obey all traffic laws while navigating the Penn State campus, lest I get a strict scolding."

If you want to check out the rest of the article, Click Here

Internet usage at work

2007-10-23T22:30:00.001-04:00

How much do your companies monitor/restrict internet access at work? We have a generic filter that blocks most not-safe-for-work stuff, plus social networking sites and anything with streaming audio/video, but it's pretty haphazard. It'll block some blogs, but not everything, and I can't access gamespot.com, but I can get to gamepolitics.com, even though they share a bunch of the same meta-tags. Filter or not, though, all our internet usage is logged by our IT department, and periodically audited. BAE's official policy has always been that the internet is not to be used for personal reasons on business time. The way the policy has always been enforced, however, was much more lenient. As long as you were getting your work done, not missing deadlines, keeping the customer happy, etc., no one really cared if you read cnn or a forum thread or two (or posted to a blog). That enforcement seems to have changed today

Apparently, someone believes that our BAE plant has widespread internet abuse. HR sent out a harshly worded letter to all employees (which included the phrase, 'our plant has widespread internet abuse'), reminding them of the policy, and spelling out a new disciplinary system, relating to such. Basically, if any non-work related internet activity is detected coming from your PC, an automated email will be sent to your manager, BAE's ethics officer, and the HR department. An investigation will start, and if it is concluded that you were not using the internet for work purposes, you will be issued a written warning. A second offense results in immediate termination. Now, we've received other reminder emails about various BAE policies from time to time, and this was much more than that.

I have mixed feelings about this. I realize that BAE needs to make sure that employees are actually working when they say they're working, but at the same time, this seems a little heavy-handed to me. I'm not one to surf the web all day long or anything, but I do typically take 5-10 minute breaks during the day to check news, this blog, sports' scores, etc. I think I'll be restricting that to lunch time, now, at least for the immediate future.

Big Bang Theory

2007-10-17T13:08:00.000-04:00

Has anyone been watching this? It's a new sitcom on CBS, about a group of super-nerds and their hot girl neighbor. At first, I thought the show was going to be bad, as the first episode relied heavily on the cliche of nerds not being able to function around attractive girls and having awkward moments ensue. The past few episodes haven't been nearly as bad about that, though, and the writing is pretty decent. The show has the four archetypes of nerd:
1) The closest-to-normal nerd - tries to fit in as best as he can with normal people, even though it doesn't work most of the time.
2) The thinks-he-suave nerd - hits on all the ladies with cheesy pick-up lines, always gets shot down, but keeps trying.
3) The ultra-shy nerd - is essentially a mute around women
4) The ultra nerd - sees absolutely nothing abnormal about the way he acts, and thinks the world would be a better place if everyone thought like him, which makes him my favorite character. :)

The four of them are theoretical physicists, and the show contains a ton of geek humor. It's funny even if you only understand that the dialogue is meant to convey geekiness, but hysterical if you're a science nerd (like me) and actually understand all the terms and geek culture.

World in Conflict

2007-10-12T15:04:00.000-04:00

I dowloaded and played through the demo for this from Gamespot. It was quite impressive. It's a real time tactical game, set in an alternate Earth where the USSR decides to invade the US towards the end of the Cold War. There's no base building or resource gathering mechanic at play; instead, you have a set number of reinforcement points that you use to call in units. When those units are destroyed, their point value will slowly be added to your available reinforcement points. In multiplayer, you choose to play as 1 of 4 roles: Infantry, Armor, Air, or Support. Support includes demolitions, repair vehicles, bridge builders, and artillery. The rest are self explanatory. Regardless of which role you choose to play, you can call units from any of the other roles, but they'll cost ~50% more reinforcement points than someone who has taken that role. To win, you need to control 'command circles' throughout the map. The more command circles you control, the more dominance your faction has. The more dominance you have, the faster you'll win. It uses a system close to Battlefield: Vietnam for anyone who's played that. Controlling command circles also gives you tactical aid points, which you can use to call in things like air strikes, artillery barrages from off-map, laser guided bombs, air-dropped extra units, repairs, and of course, tactical nukes. I haven't bought a new game in a few months, since we're trying to save money until Kat's out of school, but I'm thinking about picking this up.

This Weekend

2007-10-08T08:44:00.001-04:00

What's everyone's plans for this weekend? Does everyone have tickets? We'll probably be getting into State College around 8:30 on Friday night. Is everyone going to be there early enough to go out somewhere?

Why is Jack Sparrow at a Cystic Fibrosis Conference?

2007-10-05T00:45:00.000-04:00

That's a damn good question. And yet, there he was. Who am I to question?

xkcd

2007-10-04T15:41:00.000-04:00

I don't know if any of you read xkcd. It's an online webcomics, geared towards gamers/geeks/mathematics/coders, etc. It's quite good - you all should read it. Some of the strips (click on them to view a larger version):

Bored...

2007-10-02T15:58:00.001-04:00

I'm bored out of my mind working at home all day.... I get my work done quickly and have no idea what to do. I can't leave my computer because of sporadic meetings, so does anyone have any ideas of how to kill time at work...

Ari's housewarming party

2007-10-01T17:52:00.000-04:00

Ari - what's the plan for the weekend of the 19th? Is it ok to stay the weekend at your place? Any specific activities planned? Poker tournament? If Schulte and Kate wanted to show up on Saturday to hang out, would that be ok?

9/80 work schedule

2007-10-01T17:43:00.000-04:00

Starting next week, BAE is going to start a 9/80 work schedule. If you don't know what that is, the basic idea is that you work 80 hours in 9 days and get every other friday off. So my work week will look like:

Week 1: 9 9 9 9 8
Week 2: 9 9 9 9 X

BAE will still keep a manner of flex time, so it's not quite as rigid as above, but I will lose some flexibility in my work schedule. On the other hand, if I'm looking for someone at 2pm on Friday now, I'll typically find them. Currently, the plant becomes half occupied on Friday afternoons because of our current flex policy. I think I'll like this work schedule as long as management truly treats the off-Friday as a weekend, like they said they will. The fear among a bunch of the engineers is that the off Friday will simply be used as an unpaid-overtime day.

I'm reserving judgment until we've had the schedule for a couple months, but I think (or maybe just hope) it will go well. On the plus side, my first off Friday will be the Friday before Ari's party, so we might be able to get down there an hour earlier (Kat will still have school, so we can't leave much before 4).

Penn State says no logo for you!

2007-09-28T10:15:00.001-04:00

http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2007/092007/09272007/319892/

I think it's hilarious that they claim a local resident "designed" the logo - umm...by flipping the existing logo and making some subtle changes? Right. Great design work there!

Traveling yet again

2007-09-25T14:30:00.000-04:00

I'm leaving for a business trip in a couple hours. I'm going to Ft. Wayne, Indiana again to help them debug some hardware, and this time, I'll be out there for the rest of the week, instead of just the one night like I was a couple weeks ago. Kat's not too happy about having to be alone for three days. She hopes this is the last trip I'll have to take for a while. I don't mind, as I tend to make money on my trips. We get our full per diem amount regardless of whether we spend it all on food, and in Ft. Wayne, it's something like $70/day, and I'll typically only spend about $30 of that.

I know Ari routinely travels for business. Anyone else take trips anywhere?

PSU-Wisconsin RV

2007-09-23T09:48:00.001-04:00

I talked with Schulte, and he's going to be in State College for the Wisconin game, so Kat and I are going to stay at his parents' house. If Craig or others still need a place to stay that weekend, they're free to take our spot.

psu #10 no more

2007-09-22T21:53:00.000-04:00

i was so pissed watching that game. I have never seen psu beat michigan. a few quick observations...

1) Can our players hold onto the football, especially Scott!!!

2) What happened to our playmakers? Namely, D. Williams and J. King. I think D. Williams had one catch the entire game.

3) When was the last time psu had an explosive offense. we've had good defenses in the past. maybe 1997, the year when we had a good offense, but not a great defense.

4) i thought michigan corners were supposed to be slow? Why didn't we take any shots downfield?

5) no more can I think about how pathetic Michigan's loss was to Appalachian St. since we lost to Michigan.

6) this loss definitely did not sting as much as 2005, so that's a positive that came out of this game ?!?

Interesting things found on resumes

2007-09-21T14:39:00.000-04:00

As I said in an earlier post, I went to the career fair at Penn State, yesterday. I'm always amused at some of the things that students put on their resumes. I talked with a student yesterday who listed, at the top of his resume:

Birthday: March xx, 1985
Age: 22
Parents: Thomas and Patricia xxxxx (not really x's, but in the interest of privacy...)

First off, what possible reason is there to include both a birthdate and an age, other than to insinuate that I can't do simple math in my head. I was also sorely tempted to ask, 'So how are Tom and Patti doing? Still well, I hope." His resume was incredible fluff. He must have had 2 inch borders and point 16 font. And the amazing thing was, he was a decent candidate. He spoke well, had some decent experience, a good GPA, and had researched BAE a little. I recommended him for an interview, but just barely.

In the course of talking with the hiring supervisor, he was telling me some other odd things he's seen. One student put that they had worked at McDonald's, and then under a 'job duties' header, listed:

Took customer's orders
Made fries
Made burgers
Filled drinks
Bagged items for to-go orders

It's a good thing he listed the he made burgers in addition to fries. That put him over the top.
Another student had worked at a cheese packing plant for two summers, and listed all the various cheeses that he had to pack. He had each summer as a separate entry in his work experience, as in:

Summer 1:
Cheese 1
Cheese 2
...
Summer 2:
Cheese 3
Cheese 4
...

At least he had different cheeses that he worked with in each of the summers. That shows a wide range of experience.

So what interesting things have you all seen?

OMG......

2007-09-20T09:43:00.001-04:00

http://runupthescore.wordpress.com/2007/09/18/will-penn-state-be-dicked/

Barry Bonds 756 Ball

2007-09-19T11:32:00.000-04:00

The guy who bought Barry Bond's 756th home run is running a vote on what to do with the ball. Your choices are, 1) send it to copperstown, 2) send it to copperstown with an asteric, or 3) send it to the moon. You can vote at:

http://www.vote756.com/marcecko/

PSU career fair

2007-09-19T10:48:00.000-04:00

Anyone planning to go to the Penn State career fair tomorrow? BAE just asked if I would go down for it. I haven't told them I will, yet (I still need to make sure it's ok with Kat), but I'll probably be there.

PSU-Buffalo

2007-09-11T18:34:00.000-04:00

My friend Bob offered me his tickets to this weekend's game - He and his wife can't make it because of prior plans. It'll just be me going. Kat is spending the weekend with her mom. Luke (Kat's brother) moved to London last week, and her mom has be a bit sad for the past week. Since they're just going to be doing mother-daughter stuff, I was just planning to stay in Binghamton for the weekend, but then the oppotunity for a state college tip arose. Anyone else planning to be in state college for the weekend? I'll be staying at my sister's place friday night and probably Schulte's place on Saturday night (he and Kate will be attending the game as well). If anyone wants to meet up sometime this weekend, let me know.

Poz

2007-09-10T14:25:00.000-04:00

I didn't watch the Bills game but it looks like Posluszny had a pretty solid game on Sunday. Second on the team with 10 talkles (9 solo) in a good defensive effort by Buffalo.

Also did anyone else notice Lavar on the sidelines at the PSU/ND game? Is he officially retired?

Ah - modern technology

2007-09-05T10:15:00.001-04:00

I find it quite excellent that the majority of places where you'll be waiting for a decent time now have wireless access - hotels, airports, rest stops, etc. I'm currently sitting in the Binghamton Airport waiting for a flight to Ft. Wayne, Indiana. We have a production facility there, and they need some help troubleshooting some power supplies on a project of mine. I was just told yesterday morning that they'd like me to fly down today. It's kinda cool that I have that kind of responsibility, but at the same time, a little annoying that I was given only a day notice. Although, I assume that if I really didn't want to go and pushed back at management, they'd be ok with it. Since I don't mind traveling, it wasn't that big a deal to me. I'm scheduled to fly back to Binghamton tomorrow night, but they may ask me to stay longer if we don't solve the problem tomorrow. Kat's not a huge fan of me traveling - she doesn't like to be home alone for long periods of time - so if I do stay, it'll only be for an extra day.

Google Earth Flight Simulator

2007-09-04T13:52:00.001-04:00

If you have Google Earth on your computer check this out:

http://marco-za.blogspot.com/2007/08/google-earth-flight-simulator.html

Great weekend of college football... here's why

2007-09-04T10:33:00.000-04:00

1. Penn State 59 - FIU 0.
2. Michigan lost to a high school team.
3. FSU loses, JoePa with 2 wins of Bowden again
4. Michigan lost to a middle school kickball team.
5. Notre Dame looked awful... anybody see that? Watching them lose made me smile.
6. Hey, did you guys know that Michigan lost to a team of Nuns with no legs?

Countdown to Kickoff

2007-08-31T11:36:00.000-04:00

For the record, I hate Kirk Herbstreit, but don't mind Chris Fowler, so I read his article today on ESPN, Countdown to Kickoff

Here is a small excerpt from the article...good stuff!

3. JoePa!
It's season 42 for Joe Paterno at Penn State, vaulting him past Amos Alonzo Stagg for longest tenure at one school. I attended my first college football game in 1972 at Beaver Stadium. I was barely 10. Joe had already been there awhile. Now that makes me feel real old. Not him, apparently. Joe is as amped up as he ever has been entering a season. He suspects he may have a special group, with a tight chemistry capable of pulling through the tight games they will certainly face.

4. Whiteout
While I am at it, I will put in a plug for the most impressive student section in college football. Penn State sold all 20,000 student season tickets in 59 minutes one morning in May. A total of 27,000 plus were in a virtual "line" via the Ticketmaster Web site. Some of the sob stories from those shut out are humorous. Like the mother who was supposed to go online and get the tickets for her daughter who had to be in class that morning, but couldn't quite navigate nimbly enough to score the tickets. Talk about mother/daughter tension! The mother called Penn State begging and pleading.

What could they do? Tickets were gone.

For the Notre Dame game on Sept. 8 (ESPN, 6 p.m. ET), the goal is to involve the nonstudents in the coordinated wearing of white and waving of white shakers. If the traditionally staid residents of the stands on the press-box side buy in, it will be great-looking: 100,000-plus forming a sea of white shirts for this twinight collision.

Penn State Senior Design Projects

2007-08-30T18:49:00.001-04:00

As some of you know, I go down to Penn State every semester to sponsor senior engineering design projects. I actually just returned from Penn State today. I'm also a member of the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State. I'm partly responsible for soliciting potential projects for future semesters. So if any of you guys have a low priority job or an r&d type assignment that your peers/employees don't have time for, you can sponsor a project and see what results you get from the students. Primarily, the projects are geared towards EEs, MEs, and IEs, but there are other majors represented, and if there is a specific need you'd have for a project, Penn State accomodates that pretty well. The cost to sponsor a project is $2500, but there's a discount (not yet defined - somewhere in the $100-$300 range) for first time sponsors. You would also need to be at PSU for the kickoff and showcase for the projects. You'll get about 4 seniors who'll spend about 10 hours/week for the semester. It's cheap labor, and also a decent recruiting opportunity. If anyone is interested in this, let me know. I can get you more information. A short summary of and projects for this coming spring is due by December 15th.

And now I'm addicted. :)

2007-08-27T22:25:00.000-04:00

Ok, so Cas and I played hooky today after the crazy weekend. I joined PokerStars and I really like it so far. Why do I like it so much? Well, I started with 1000 free chips and now I'm up to 12,000. In less than an hour. So....yeah.

I can't say I totally love it but it's a lot of fun considering I've been playing for all of three days now. The only thing about playing online is that I miss being able to watch people - it's easier for me to pick up on the patterns since I like to play at the fast tables. The upshot is that it pretty much tells me exactly what to do and when. I like that.

Thanks so much for having us up Joe - I can't wait to do it again! And I met my goal of outlasting Cas (which turned out to be not so hard, I guess!)

this weekend

2007-08-20T09:56:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to remind everyone that they're welcome to visit this weekend. We're having a poker tournament on Saturday night, and probably will be barbequing during Saturday afternoon. I know that Mike, Annie, Cas, and Michelle are staying at a local hotel because of cat allergy issues, so we still have a couple beds to offer up. Ari, Becky - were you planning to stay at our place? Anyone else able to come up?

gopsf

2007-08-17T12:20:00.000-04:00

CHECK OUT THIS WEB SITE...

GPSF

click on FAVS. it has some great videos (Penn State Football Story), especially 97 vs OSU, 99 vs OSU, and 01 OSU.

Perception of time

2007-08-16T11:07:00.000-04:00

Kat always falls asleep before I do, but she doesn't like going to bed alone, so she ends up napping on the couch. She fell asleep around 10 last night. I'm typically on the computer at this point in the night, and last night was no different. I was playing Civ 4, and got so into the game that all concept of time just escaped me. After I played a while, I thought, 'I should wake Kat up, and we should go up to bed. It must be about 11:30 by now.' It's wasn't 11:30. It was 1am. So I'm not running on too much sleep today. Stupid time.

We're here...

2007-08-14T22:58:00.000-04:00

Well... we've made it all the way across the country. Drove 2886 miles... and we've learned a few interesting things along the way. Here are some tidbits of knowledge we gained in every state...

1. California - expensive, over-crowded, but we already knew that.
2. Nevada - Lots of desert, all at an altitude of 5,000+ feet. Kind of funny that they make such a big deal out of Denver being a "mile high" when all of Nevada and Wyoming are also at altitude.
3. Utah - Salt Flats were awesome, the great salt lake wasn't all that cool. However, outside of PA, more cops than anywhere. We saw 8 cops between CA and the PA border, 5 of them were in a 3 mile stretch in Utah. Also, Salt Lake City was beautiful, I could totally live there.
4. Wyoming - Gorgeous state. Lots of hicks. We stopped at one gas station that was not paved at all, was next to a drive through liquor store/motel, and had 50-somethings riding ATVs in wife-beaters at 8pm. Nice!
5. Nebraska - 450 miles of corn-fields.... whoopie!
6. Iowa - All rest areas in Iowa have free wireless internet. So while you're stopping to drop a deuce, you can be online too :-)
7. Illinois - Want great pizza, go to Giordano's. Yummy!
8. Indiana - First state traveling east on I-80 that has a low speed limit (bastards).
9. Ohio - Long boring state... and their state university blows!
10. Pennsylvania - Do the cops here take classes on how to hide on the turnpike? Geez!!!

That is all.

Camping this weekend

2007-08-12T12:49:00.000-04:00

For those of you in the DC / Baltimore area (which I think is everyone at this point), Kat and I will be at Greenbriar state park in Maryland this weekend. It's pretty much right in the middle of the state. If anyone has some free time on Friday or Saturday, come by and hang out for a while.

Computer Games

2007-08-10T09:23:00.000-04:00

What's everyone playing these days? I finished playing through Overlord, so I started playing Civilization 4, again. I was about 10 turns away from winning a space race victory last night, and then Louis XIV sneak attacked me and nuked by three major cities. I had been friends with him all game. We traded technologies, had open border agreements, etc. "Never trust the French" - that's my new motto.

Aggravating/Amusing Travel Story of the Day - Day 3

2007-08-09T21:47:00.000-04:00

Hi all, we're in Council Bluffs, IA tonight.

Wow... nothing amusing happened today at all... in fact, it was boring as hell! You never realize how freaking enormous this country is until you try to drive it. Our day consisted of 200 miles through Wyoming and 450 miles through Nebraska. Lots of corn fields, lots of open flat roadway with nothing interesting at all. The only bright side was that the speed limit was 75 the whole time and we were able to drive 90mph the whole way.

Aggravating/Amusing travel story of the day - day 2

2007-08-09T01:26:00.001-04:00

Hi everyone... greetings from Rawlins, WY

Not much amusing news, but lots of aggravating news. For some strange reason, all hotels in Salt Lake City were booked solid tonight... so were the ones in Park City, UT, so were the ones in Rock Springs, WY, and so were the ones in Rawlins WY (After we got the last one :-) ).

Basically, we drove 300 miles longer today than we wanted to because we couldn't find a place to stay. Last night in our hotel room in Reno, we started calling hotels in Salt Lake City and they were all booked. We then went town by town along interstate 80 calling hotels. The first place we found with a room was a Comfort Inn in Rawlings, WY (google map it if you'd like). The cost was almost triple the cost of the Silver Legacy (casino resort, mind you). When we arrived, and I checked in, I saw 5 people come in and ask if there were open rooms... the front desk clerk said they were full and that the next town over had some rooms available. The next town over is 100 miles east of here (Laramie, WY)... OUCH!!!

Anyway, a couple small amusing things happened today... 2 funny town names in wyoming that Becky mis-read when she saw them...

1. Flaming Gorge (which Becky read as Flaming George)
2. Fossil Butte (which is just funny because we had fun pronouncing it as "Fossil Butt" which we only did because we were driving for 11 hours at that point).

Aggravating/Amusing Travel Story of the Day

2007-08-07T21:40:00.000-04:00

Greetings from Reno...

Has anyone ever tried to sneak a cat into a hotel/casino? Well... we have :-). The Silver Legacy has only one way to get to the guest rooms and that is by elevators whose entry ways are guarded by security. Seeing this, Becky and I decided to map our entrance strategy before bringing our stuff in from the car. We spent about 20 minutes in the parking garage trying to find ways to get Nittany past security without standing out. We eventually decided that getting the litter box in would be impossible, so we just took the litter box liner (like a garbage bag) with the litter and closing it and stashing it in a suitcase. We wrapped Nittany in a blanket and Becky carried her past while I shielded her. Turned out to be relatively uneventful. We rigged a litter box in the hotel room.

You might think what we're doing is dishonest... well... it is! But they deserve it! What kind of casino "resort" doesn't offer free wireless internet? Motel 6 does it for crying out loud!

Anyway, off to dinner and casino.

Guess how many times Steven will go.

2007-08-07T11:38:00.000-04:00

Saw this today and thought of Steve imediately:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20160745/?GT1=10252

I know the last time Van Halen toured it was with Sammy Hagar. With DLR, though, I imagine Steve will be camping out for tickets! :P

Worst part of your job

2007-08-07T10:27:00.001-04:00

What's the worst part of everyone's job? I ask because I'm currently engaged in one of the worst parts of mine.

After we complete a power supply design, we have to make sure that we're not overstressing any parts, so we perform analysis on the design, and calculate a bunch of different parameters for all the parts (worst case currents, power dissipations, voltage inputs, etc.). That's not too bad. It's all math, and I like math, even if it becomes a little repetitive. The worst part comes in when we have to formally document all of our results. Our reliability engineering group creates spreadsheets where we enter all the results of our analyses. On average, there are 2-3 parameters per part that we look at, and usually around 2000 parts on an average power supply, and a couple different conditions that we analyze. So there's a total of about 10000 pieces of data to enter into a spreadsheet. Since we do all the analysis in mathCAD (as excel becomes a bit unwieldy when dealing with calculus), this involves scrolling through 2 dozen mathCAD files, and copying those 10000 data manually. It usually ends up taking about two weeks. Typically, I can give this task to the entry level engineers in our group, but at the moment, we're so overloaded that no one is available. This data entry is the 2nd worst part of my job.

The absolute worst part of my job is called a netslist check. When we draw a schematic, we run it through a sort of compiler that lets the board layout group know what parts are connects to which other parts. Before giving the design to the layout group, we have to ensure that the entire schematic is drawn correctly, and that the compiler worked correctly. For example, if we label something as '+5V', that's different thatn '5V', or 'AGND' is different than'A_GND', etc. So what we do is print out the schematic and the netslist and compare the two. For a 2000 part power supply, you'll typically have about 1500 nets, and make sure the two match. In the entire 6+ years I've been here, the compiler has never messed up. But couple times in the past 15 years ago, there was an error that slipped through, and made it onto a production board that cost a ton of money to fix, so now the check is part of our process. Luckily, I haven't had to do one of these in a few years. These almost always go to the youngest person in the group.

East Coast Bound

2007-08-04T22:06:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to drop a quick post to wish Ari and Becky well on their cross country adventure. Hope your trip goes smooth and isn't too exhausting.

Peek-a-Boo comments

2007-08-04T07:36:00.000-04:00

I'm working on some javascript to do peek-a-boo style commenting which I found in the help section. What this should do is the blog should look like normal and when you click the comment link the comments will drop down in the page and not open up in a pop up window or take you to another page. The peek-a-booing is working but it also hides the previous posts along with the comments. I'm not sure why it's hiding the posts and I'll work on that today and tomorrow to try and get it working by monday.

Sidebar Comments

2007-08-03T11:10:00.000-04:00

Ok, I managed to add a list of the recent comments to the sidebar. I had to revert the layout to the classic template and then add some code I found from the Blogger Help. I couldn't get it working in the other template. I can mess around with it more over the weekend if Joe wants to go back to the old template. I'm not sure if there is a limit to the list so I might have to figure out how to limit it to a certain amount of comments or limit it by several days ago. There is a disclaimer to the comments though that I found:

Disclaimer: These aren't strictly the most recent comments, but just the comments for the post on the current page. Also, they will show in order by post, rather than by comment date/time. But in general, comments left on front page posts will tend to be the most recent, so this should be close enough and it still provides an overview of commenting activity.

Spiedie Fest

2007-08-03T09:04:00.000-04:00

This weekend, Binghamton has its annual Spiedie Fest - a festival named for a marinated-meat sandwich (a.k.a. a spiedie). Typically, the city gets a classic rock band to perform (I believe this year, it's Lover Boy), there's a hot air balloon race, and a volleyball tournament. The volleyball tournament is primarily why I attend, although it's a nice day at the park, too. We play on Sunday from 8am until about 2:30-3pm, typically (with a couple 45min breaks). If we qualify for playoffs, there will be a few games played after that, too. In the past, there have been 20 teams that play round robin, and then the top 6 teams play a single elimination bracket (#1 and #2 get a first round bye). In the 5 years I've played, we've only made the playoffs once (although we were tied for the last spot one other year, and had to play a 1-game tie breaker which we lost). The level of play is quite competitive, and many of the players are members of the USVBA (I hope you all can break that encryptic acronym). Even those we usually fair around .500, it's still a fun day.

What are you all doing this weekend?

Layout changes

2007-08-01T17:59:00.000-04:00

I altered the width of the main posting area so we don't have to scroll down as far for older posts. If this causes problems for anyone (if you are using a small screen resolution), let me know. I'll probably play with the layout a little more, so let me know if anything looks bad, or something you'd like to see added

Just for michelle

2007-08-01T11:46:00.001-04:00

Various pictures of floor bacon:

Testing....

2007-08-01T11:10:00.000-04:00

We'll try this now that Michelle invited me. Thanks Michelle! So anyway, Hi! I'm useless. Going to try to do work now.

2007-08-01T10:38:00.000-04:00

I found a neat site with flickr "toys" that let you make all sorts of stuff - if I had a picture of the floor bacon I'd make one with it (Joe, can you send it to me?) but those of you who saw Patrick at our wedding know how this ended...

Invitations

2007-07-31T12:36:00.000-04:00

Joe, did you remember to invite Aron? When he took us to the airport on Sunday, I mentioned this to him and he said he didn't receive the e-mail. I didn't think much of it at the time because I hadn't seent he e-mail either... but I noticed he hasn't posted yet, so now I'm beginning to wonder.

Tabletop Gaming

2007-07-31T11:21:00.000-04:00

Anyone play any pencil and paper RPGs? Every now and then my gaming group will play a game of d&d, Call of Cthulu, or Hackmaster. I think everyone know of dungeons & dragons, even if you've never played it. Cthulu is set in the 1920s, and has a film noir / detective feel to it. You are essentially paranormal investigators. Hackmaster is a farce of d&d. The game is meant to be played antagonistically (GM vs. players, players vs. players, etc.). Every character is assigned flaws. For example, a character I played was a kleptomaniac, and also believed he could turn himself invisible. That proved entertaining. :)
I just ordered a rulebook from amazon for a game called Paranoia. The game is set in Alpha Complex, controlled by a schizophrenic computer. The computer has made happiness mandatory. Failure to comply results in a summary execution. Apparently lots of things in the game results in summary executions. Your characters are called 'troubleshooters' and are one of the computer's means of rooting out non-happiness behavior. Paranoia also involves backstabbing the other players, as turning in 'criminals' to the computer gets you rewards. It looks like a fun way to pass a saturday afternoon.

Softball

2007-07-31T07:16:00.000-04:00

I play in a BAE softball league every summer - we have our games on Monday nights. I think our pitcher, Dave, has suffered more injuries than any other person in the league. Last night, he has a line drive hit right back at him, ricochet off his eye, and land in the outfield. I play 2nd base, and the ricochet went over my head. It was a well hit ball. There were 3 games going on at the time. All 3 stopped once they saw Dave on the ground. An EMT was called, and then he got a ride in an ambulance to get stiched up, get checked for a concussion, etc.

We blamed the whole thing on our left fielder, who dropped a ball that would have been the 3rd out and allowed the next batter to hit Dave. :)

digg vs slashdot

2007-07-30T18:56:00.000-04:00

for years i used to go to SLASHDOT for science and tech articles.

a few months ago i found a pretty cool website called DIGG. just like slashdot, you can post articles on digg, and they appear on the main page in order submitted. you can also sort by most popular.

disadvantages...people can rig the site such that their article reaches the main page due to popularity. pictures are becoming a lot more popular than articles.

either way, some good articles. check it out if you have not heard of it before!

Aggravating Travel Notes...

2007-07-30T12:26:00.001-04:00

Since i'm going to be travelling across the country soon, I thought a good way to start posting would be to post a daily amusing and/or strange and/or aggravating travel note.

I'll start with the return trip from Mike's wedding...

Aggravating travel note for the day 7/29:

Nothing like when a 7-hour layover turns into an 8-hour layover only to find out your flight gets cancelled due to whether. Then, desperately trying to get on stand-by for a coach seat on a plane where you've paid first-class fees just so you don't have to sleep on the floor at the airport.... hooray air travel!

My test

2007-07-30T08:56:00.000-04:00

Just testing to see if this works.

My contribution for the day:

For the DeLorean, it's back to the present

Congress catches on to poor work at the Patent Office, blames departure of C. Stulberger

Permissions / Posting

2007-07-30T08:01:00.000-04:00

I think I've sent out emails to everyone about being able to post. If I'm missing someone, just let me know.

test invitation acceptance

2007-07-29T19:23:00.000-04:00

i hate myspace, so thanks for starting a blog. i set up two blogs. one to post intersting articles (tech/science), and one for mlb rumormill (which i have not started)

just posting a message to test out accepting the invitation.

-SA

Test Post

2007-07-27T16:45:00.001-04:00

Test post