| flooding. fuck jasper reports. |
[Apr. 17th, 2007|12:31 am] |
The damned power went out around midnight-thirty last night. I powered down the laptop, and went to bed--without lights, there's not really anything to do at that hour, and we don't have flashlights. I magically happened to wake up not long after eight in the morning, and while I was considering what to do with the contents of the fridge, the power came back on. Despite spending roughly eight hours without power, the fridge kept its contents well-refrigerated. My frozen broccoli remained pristine, my ice cubes unmelted. I think I was pessimistic due to the last refrigerator mishap I had, when the compressor died and it filled the fridge with hot air.
Work was tiring as hell today. I discovered ( dorkery ). But honestly, fuck Jasper Reports.
I think I'm coming down with what she had over the weekend; I'm feeling generally yecchy. She made me soup and ordered in some Chinese food, after we started our getting-home process which consisted of immediately taking off our shoes, flopping on the bed and reading the new comics that arrived today. I got Ex Machina v5, Sandman Mystery Theatre v1 and Lucifer v1-2. Clearly I'm starting some new series. (As always, my books show up on LibraryThing as I manage to add them.)
It's all floody outside; it was pretty surreal. Every so often, the mayor of a town somewhere in this state mentions that because of low rainfall, they might have to start limiting water usage. There then quickly follows a torrential downpour; it's our local version of a rain dance. I wonder if someone made water-consumption-limiting rumblings over the last week or two.
The power outage apparently included a surge which conked out my router. I couldn't connect to it over wireless; I couldn't even connect to it via a regular wired ethernet connection. The thing's lights go on, but it's toasted. I went with Carin out to the Mart to get another WRT54G, and discovered that they're charging sixty bucks a pop. I've ordered one for cheaper from eBay, and I'm going to return the Mart router as soon as the cheaper one comes in.
And so I was able to mail in that "at most two pages" paper which I finished at one page plus about three lines on page two. I'm frankly not excited by systems analysis, and I'd said absolutely everything I could have usefully said.
Comments: Slashdot 1 2 3 |
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| back in the office. a production issue. |
[Apr. 5th, 2007|02:12 am] |
In the office again today, I worked on some smaller issues, and I finished up a number of larger-scale changes. It turns out you can pretty much easily see if a Jasper report is empty by checking report.getPages().size() > 0, so long as you make sure you set the output when no data is supplied to NoPages; else you get some ugly crap with the word null repeated across the page.
I also discovered a new and exciting Java error during production hours, which I was able to find a solution to and get fixed without bothering Brian, who normally does the support stuff. It was java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space, which is different from a regular OutOfMemoryError. It just showed up in the middle of the day for no apparent reason. I guess production issues are like that. Sure, Steve sent some all-caps emails, but I'm pleased with the way I handled it.
Hm. I sure hope I have something other than dorkery to write about tomorrow.
Comments: Slashdot |
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| a note on pgp, and bonding with jeff. |
[Apr. 1st, 2007|12:29 am] |
I wrote a proposal for using PGP to allow for the secure transmission of prescriptions from doctors to pharmacies, because my father had explained what was needed, and it mapped pretty cleanly onto the signing and encryption mechanisms provided by PGP. I started writing it, added notes, explanations and definitions, and had something like four single-spaced pages to send off. Nobody's mailed me back about it, but I'm pleased with what I wrote. I think it's the first time I've ever written a whitepaper or something like it. I'm pleased with how it came out. ( dorkery. ) Security is inherently hard in many ways; there's a reason why people fail to use it properly, and it's not that they're idiots.
Today, I found something batshit that Phyllis Schlafly said, so I made a Wikiquote page for her. Yes, all of those are reliably sourced. She really did say all that.
I have textbooks for two of my courses now. I'm excited about my Manheimer's Cataloging and Classification; it looks deliciously wonky. And my copy of the AACR2 did indeed arrive as a shrink-wrapped stack of pages. I don't understand why we couldn't just get electronic versions of it, but what do I know?
I visited Jeff this evening. I was supposed to do a photo shoot for the band, promo pictures and all that, but they weren't around, and I didn't do anything that was, strictly speaking, useful. We sat in his room and talked, and played an FMA game he had a bit. (He's terrible at games; I'm not very good, but I'm better than he is.) We went up to his attic, which is his studio, and he played some new tracks for me, and showed me how his effects panel works. I appreciated being shown the music, I really did; it's a foreign world to me, and it's something he feels very strongly about. We got dinner and talked; we sat on his stairs and talked, until he had to drive me back.
I remember Carin telling me that all-female gaggles invariably end up talking about sex. This, to my knowledge, doesn't happen with guys--but that could be a function of my guy friends, of which, let's face it, I don't have very many. However, Jeff did talk about how he feels he's been burnt again and again in his relationships, and how the shadow of the first girl he was interested in being hit and killed by a drunk driver still hangs over him, so from my experience, first- and second-hand, women talk about sex and men talk about relationships. Go fuck yourself, stereotypes.
Also, his car smells funny. I think there's some kind of old salad in there. Whatever it is, I'm not getting into that car again until it's been cleaned. Yecch. And this wasn't the Volvo, which smelled funny last time; this is the shiny Jetta, which smelled relatively clean until this time. Pity, that.
No comments today; was busy bonding.
Did You Know that those desk toys with the metal balls are called Newton's cradles? I sure didn't. |
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| another silly problem, then skiing. |
[Feb. 28th, 2007|12:52 am] |
I spent a goodly portion of my work day on another silly problem... but this one was more of a stumper, and I didn't have that moment of realizing I'd been missing an obvious point. See, I had ( dorkery ).
I went straight up after work with my father to ski. We spoke of many things; we talked about religion and tolerance, which isn't a regular subject for us. He talked about his concept of religious tolerance, and I assured him that the Left Behind series represents the faith of tens of millions of Americans. We continued the discussion as we went up and down the hill. Really, I think that's why I like skiing so much. It's fun to fly down the hill and all, but it's interspersed with a few minutes of conversation on the lift each time. By the time the mountain closed, I was very tired. They won't be making snow any more, which is sad, but they have a couple feet of it on the mountain. I look forward to a few more ski days this year, at least.
In that vein, I think I've acquired a new favorite phrase: "biblical evidence". As in, "biblical evidence suggests that Dinosaurs and humans coexisted", or "biblical evidence demonstrates that the world is square". I've seen it used in all earnestness, and it only struck me recently that it's an oxymoron. Folks can believe in the Bible, and I'm not going to step on their toes for it, but I wish they wouldn't pretend that reading from the Bible has anything to do with empiricism.
While I was out, I'd asked Carin to adapt a piece of music. There's a very pretty piano bit that plays behind the intro to "Ever Dream" by Nightwish, and I asked if she could play it. When I got back, she had a page half-full of erased and rewritten note heads, and she had indeed gotten most of it down. I know she's talented, but I keep forgetting just how talented.
Comments: Indepundit (no comment links; look in-page for February 27, 2007 12:16 PM and February 27, 2007 2:44 PM) |
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| some small bits of dorkery. |
[Feb. 25th, 2007|02:52 am] |
This morning, I uploaded a bajillion (by which I mean twenty-three) bits of art by Maurycy Gottlieb to the Wikimedia Commons. I scanned another (George Emmanuel Opitz, Dedication of a Synagogue in Alsace, 1820) from that Jewish Art book I've had sitting around. There's a lot of high-quality printed art there, certainly enough to justify the use of the scanner. I did some looking into dealing with halftone artifacts, and discovered that even what look to be reasonably well-printed images break down depressingly quickly once you blow them up a bit.
Ever wanted to calculate the correlation coefficient of two variables, but didn't have anything but awk to work with? Given a list of lines of the format line_number variable_x variable_y, running
awk '{sx+=$2; sy+=$3; sxs+=$2*$2; sys+=$3*$3; sxy+=$2*$3}
END {print (NR*sxy - sx*sy)/sqrt((NR*sxs - sx*sx)*(NR*sys - sy*sy))}'
data.txtwill give you the relevant number. Ah, awk--how did I ever do math homework without you?
Carin and I took a trip out to Borders this evening, where I tried to do a bit of research on nineteenth-century Polish painters, and failed utterly. There's nothing there on the subject. It's to be expected, as Borders isn't an academic library, but it was a bit disappointing. This will provide an excellent opportunity for me to put my new information-hunting skills to good use. It's surprising to me that there's such a dearth of information on the topic--to my untrained eye, there was plenty of fine art coming out of Poland in that era, but all you ever see in books on that era is France, Germany and the Netherlands. Not knowing jack about art history, I couldn't say why, but it's certainly a striking silence.
After we got back, we read some Shakespeare together: a bit of Midsummer Night's Dream and a bit of Hamlet. I may deny this sometimes, but I have indeed been getting better at making it sound like English and not like word soup. (The first trick was to stop pausing at the end of every line, whether or not it had punctuation there.) Still, I have only a faint idea of the meaning of what I'm saying, what with all the inverted clauses and subtle metaphors.
Did You Know that the word moussaka comes from the Arabic musaqqaÊża, meaning "chilled", by way of the Greek mousakas?
No comments today; nothing interesting to drop a line on. |
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| a dorky interlude. |
[Feb. 24th, 2007|01:30 am] |
I got a four-dollar scanner from the Goodwill a little while back, and I thought I'd share some tidbits about how I got it to work a week or several ago. (If I were caught up with my receipts, I'd be able to specify when I got it. Something else that needs doing...) ( dorkery. ) So, I'm pretty pleased with how everything worked out.
I didn't go into work toda, but I will for the next few weeks. Brian will be unable to drive, due to his worsening cataracts, and I'll be the onsite guy. Jim has pretty much shielded me from much of the time-sapping customer-interaction aspects of the job, so it'll be a tough few weeks.
Carin and I went out for dinner with my parents this evening, as we do on many Fridays. We got a call on our way up from my father, saying she'd received a death threat via email. It sounded familiar to that hitman scam that was reported on Snopes recently and sure enough, that was it. We went out for dinner and learned that you can apparently put moussaka into pizza, and it's delicious.
We're now a bit more ready for Caitlin-and-entourage's visit; we have extra towels and sheets. Still, it's going to be pretty crowded in here.
Today's comments: Pandagon 1 2 |
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| a four-character fix. |
[Feb. 23rd, 2007|02:20 am] |
Today's work was... humbling. Jay showed me a four character fix (literally, four characters!) which simplified a whole batch of things. In short: ( dorkery. ) And thus the day was saved.
I drove in to work today, and we had a lunch meeting. I'll be taking over certain duties for Jim, as he has a new and exciting research job. Brian will be my immediate supervisor... sort of, I suppose. Mainly, I'll be taking over the part of Jim's job that involves talking with the customers and figuring out what it is they want--this job has taught me the importance of agreed-upon specifications.
This evening, my father and I went skiing, and for the first time this year, we brought Jeff up as well. Due to a number of delays, we ended up only making three runs before the place closed, but the snow was excellent, and the scenery was indescribably gorgeous. It had been snowing earlier, and the trees were limned in white. I hope very much that we'll get to go up there early on a weekend day, walk halfway up the mountain in snowshoes, and go skiing in the evening once our passes kick in.
Jeff was very, very talkative on the way up. Maybe he's been cooped up for too long; he's working the equivalent of at least two jobs at the moment, and Jere moved out of his house a while back, leaving just Tasha and the guy who nobody wants there but nobody wants to kick out. I'd go a little stir-crazy in that situation myself. And yet, on the way back, when I put on some power metal so I could get his opinion, he asked if it was Lacuna Coil, then passed out. Yes, he drifted off to the relaxing strains of DragonForce. Definitely, definitely overworked.
Today's comments: Slacktivist |
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| accountants do it with double entry. |
[Aug. 2nd, 2005|11:00 pm] |
I got a call from Cedar Rapids, Iowa today. It sounded interesting; I think it was for one of the many applications I sent out. I called back and described my qualifications to the fellow on the other end of the line; I'll check back tomorrow to see if they want me for anything. I like to think that my qualifications are quite respectable.
My father and I went on a long walk today. He and I go up and around the city, down the hill and back up again. It's further than I walk when it's just me going around the block. Tonight, he asked me to do a project for him, to learn about double-entry bookkeeping. Well, more specifically, to integrate robust accounting principles into my brother's software project.
So, i'll explain. We want a double-entry accounts-receivable system. We want to be able to maintain a highly granular set of data. Past data cannot be deleted. Old transactions can be archived, but histories are preserved. So, how does this work?
What I've got so far is three ledgers: Cash, Accounts Receivable and Revenue. Cash and A/R are assets, Revenue is equity. This is the result of scraping everything I could find on double-entry bookkeeping off Google, which was shamefully little. The flow is as follows. When a service is performed, Revenue is increased (credited) and A/R is increased (debited). When payment is received, Cash is debited and A/R is credited. The three ledgers represent how much money has been taken in (Cash), how much money you're owed (A/R), and the worth of the work done thus far (Revenue).
See, it looks like the following table. Each transaction is a row.
| Transaction | Cash | A/R | Revenue |
|---|
| Perform service | | 50 | 50 | | Get paid | 50 | (50) | |
Note that at any point, assets equal equity. I'm fuzzy on the precise definitions of these things, but I can apply them, which is good enough for right now.
Did You Know that in Britain, they say "accountancy" instead of "accounting"? |
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| aren't weeks arbitrary? |
[Jul. 23rd, 2005|11:00 pm] |
Hooray for weekends. I got up, eventually, but only after spending fully half of the daylight hours in bed. I guess all that not-sleeping eventually catches up with me. Weekends are really a safety device so that workers can do ridiculous overtime and not be driven mad by it.
Really, though, aren't weeks the only totally arbitrary unit of time we use? They're not exactly 1/4 month, or 1/52 year; they don't reflect any natural phenomenon like months, days and years do. They mainly serve to give us 2/7 of our time off. Imagine if weeks were six days long, with two-day weekends. Instead of 104.3 (on average) weekend days per non-leap year, we'd have 121.7. On the other hand, if weeks were eight days long, with two-day weekends, we'd have only 91.2 weekend days out of the whole year. I wonder if anyone ever had a bright idea for a metric week or some nonsense like that.
I acquiesced to Carin's desire that I watch one of her chick flicks. We saw "Little Women", which, to my tremendous relief, wasn't one of those incomprehensibly Britishy movies with everyone standing about looking uptight that my mother and sister are always watching. I was, in fact, somewhat moved by the story; Carin was indeed right about it, and I can see why she adores the movie so. (It is, of course, tremendously girly, but that doesn't make it bad.)
I think that, by some sort of de facto process, Linkin Park's "Meteora" has become our anthem for violent sex. It's got a solid beat to it, and... well, it's good for those evenings when I feel like getting a bit rougher than usual. I'm trying, and failing, to remember other tunes I've tainted by using them for sex. There was that Hot Topic sampler CD, which, I assure you, I did not buy or acquire on purpose. There was the WipEout XL soundtrack at one point. And that's all I can remember for now. |
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| hp6 release party. whee. |
[Jul. 15th, 2005|11:00 pm] |
I actually brought a book to work today. I seldom do this, but I figured that I don't get enough reading done normally, Fridays are pretty slow, and normally I have long stretches of unproductive time during which I could be reading, but end up posting inane comments on Slashdot instead. I wonder if call volume was actually worse today than on most Fridays, or it just felt that way.
I believe that the phone system can tell when I've just taken a large bite of a donut, because it is exactly at that moment---just after I've taken the bite and passed the point of no return, but before I've started to chew---that the phone will beep, and I'll be talking out of a third of my mouth. I'd have thought that I'd learn not to take big bites of anything while at work, but I guess I was hungry.
Funny diagnostic moment on the way out to the Harry Potter book-opening thingy. The tape adapter for my stereo wasn't working well---making static bursts on loud sounds. As I had mangled it when I reconfigured the input wire (note: doing that while driving isn't the most brilliant idea), I exchanged it for a new one at Wal-Mart. (Did I scam them? I'm still not sure.) Same problem, alas. I was worried that the speakers were blown, but fading it all the way to the back caused the same crackle. Maybe the stereo itself was dead? We tried the radio, and thankfully, it worked fine. So that narrowed it down a bit. Another bad tape adapter? A bad CD? I was pretty sure that bad MP3 CDs skip with ear-shattering squeaks, but we swapped out the CD to be thorough---no change. By process of elimination, it was either the brand-new tape adapter or the discman. But, ah, Carin had the brilliant idea of turning down the volume on the discman, and up on the radio. Much better.
Apparently the internal amplifier in the CD player distorts horribly above a certain volume. Now that it's been adjusted lower, it plays beautifully. Hooray for the process of elimination and trial-and-error, I suppose.
Carin dressed up as Tonks, in a purple cape, necktie, striped stockings and exciting boots. I was pleased. There was this adorable kid there (well, he was temporarily adorable) who asked if he could call her "Tonks" and quizzed her on HP trivia which my girl, being a mighty fangirl, handled with ease. We read comics until they kicked us out of the cafe area.
We took some time out of standing in a rather epic line to go visit Cubes and the Cat, who were out by the mall with Ben. Apparently that con that I went to last year was or is going on now. I don't miss seeing the cosplayers and LARPers. Really, I don't. The Cat and I discussed being labeled as liberals, being thought of as a unit with our significant others (do we invite Chris or Chris-and-Katie?), and considered getting together next week in Cubes's pool at some point. Because it's blazing summer out, and it'd be silly not to make use of said pool. |
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| bears colliding. |
[Jul. 12th, 2005|11:00 pm] |
We went out this evening, Carin and I, to meet up with Scott (that's the redheaded bearded dude's name!) at Bear's house. Carin did a bit of drawing, turning what were---and I'm going to stop being my usual nice self and let my inner critic roam wild and free here---flatly-drawn fanfic characters designed like the superheroes I drew in third grade into well-rendered character sheets. The thinness of plot design, I suppose, is another matter. But hey, at least they'll look good while they're being shallow. And at least Carin is getting some good practice.
We met up with Bear on the outside porch as he was sparking up his daily joint and cussing in his way. Carin had never met him before, which is a terrible oversight on my part. He's a good guy, been my father's best friend since he was in high school. They seemed to get along rather well, Bear declaring Carin to be "fuckin' normal!". I think she needed that.
I came back home to find my sister tearing down my mother somethin' fierce. She's disappointed that while Jeff went to school for only a semester and a half, and he's paying off whatever debt he incurred there, and I went to school on my own dime and on the state's sufferance, she's in considerable debt from her school bills and only digging deeper. Pointing out that her friends are going to school on money their parents had put away, she excoriated my mother for not doing... more, I suppose. I was taken aback; I get mad sometimes, but I don't think I ever get that mean.
And I used to wonder why I get a bit neurotic about saving money sometimes.
I've discovered an incredibly mind-numbing stupidity in interface design. Think about it a bit, and you'll realize why it's stupid.
Icons on the desktop.
What good are icons on the desktop? The setup with no programs running, with quicklaunch icons and desktop icons the only items present, is brain-damaged because it is nothing like the typical use case. Most of the time, when a user wants to start an application or open a document, there's already one running.
My Linux desktop, five years old though it may be, uses icewm, which doesn't have desktop icons. I haven't missed them, and any new system I start using won't have them either, if I can help it. How did I take such a terrible idea for granted for so long? How did everyone else?
Darnit, now when I build my next Linux system, I'm going to end up using either Gnome or KDE, but I'm going to have to find a way to keep myself from using the desktop. I don't suppose submitting this as a usability bug makes much sense at all... |
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