Today’s theme is ‘Identity‘
(click on the photo for a larger version)
Author Archive for Jeff
Jul 15th 2003
I skipped my 9:30am managers meeting this morning so I could spend more time working on the special ‘quickdraw’ project.
At 1:30pm we had a meeting in the Jacksonville conference room. We discussed, in detail, what sort of business metrics we want to display. The human factors people were here again and gave a lot of input.
In this meeting we decided to use perl to parse the two data file and update the database directly instead of going through BusinessWorks. This is fine with me, but I was quite annoyed that I spent a lot of time working on the BusinessWorks solution and now it’s not going to be used.
Immediately after this meeting I went to a performance testing status meeting with Carole. Representatives from mid-tier engineering were there. We went over the numbers gathered from the performance test last Friday. We were able to come to the conclusion that we can do about 1.6 transactions/second per 8-cpu, 16-gig ram HP n-class server. In the production environment we’re aiming for a throughput of 19 transactions/second. Obviously we’ll need a lot of servers to do this. Everyone in the meting recognized that this is a real problem and we need to look into additional hardware.
After this meeting I dashed to the Jacksonville meeting room on the 5th floor for a 5pm meeting. Jeff Chambers was there with his two kids because he’s going to be leaving early for a softball game. Brent wasn’t at this meeting.
We talked mostly about the details of the GUI and what we can and cannot do. The human factors team came prepared with a printout of a prototype. Because BusinessWorks is out, I’ll be working with James and Sameer on the web server side and helping create the JSP code to grab the data.
When I got back to my desk at 6:30 Jenn left me a voice-mail asking if I wanted to go see a movie with her. I left work and drove up to Lenox. We drove down the street to Phipps plaza and had a snack in the food court before heading to the theater.
We got tickets to ‘Charlie’s Angles: Full Throttle‘ and watched the 7:40pm showing. It was a pretty fun movie. All of the stunts were completely over-the-top and not realistic at all but it was still good.
I got an email from Michele inviting me and my girlfriend over to her new house to have dinner with her and her boyfriend. I floated this idea to Jenn and she agreed to go.
Jul 14th 2003
I spent most of the morning today using BusinessWorks. I have a fairly good grasp of what to do with the tool but now I need to have some idea about what data I’ll need to get in order to put it into the database.
We had a 1pm meeting in 11South for the special ‘QuickDraw’ project. Brent showed up and we discussed the approach we want to take. The manager from ‘human factors’ was there as well (Kelly). She turned pale as Brent explained what all we want to do before the end of this Friday. She pledged to bring some more human factor people to our 4:30pm meeting.
During the meeting Curtis declared to Brent that he doesn’t know why he is in this project and that he isn’t having fun and he isn’t the man for the job. Brent maintained that this is a good learning experience and it’s supposed to be fun. It was a little uncomfortable during the exchange.
Brent also suggested that we all get the BusinessWorks client installed on our machines. I already have it on mine and he asked me to get with James and Elizabeth to get it installed as well. I contacted Ningyu and set up a time slot at 3:30pm to give a demonstration of BusinessWorks to the rest of the team.
Around 2:30pm Carole stopped me in the hall and told me that Sameer is now apart of this project too. This is a good thing as Sameer has extensive Java experience and could be a key player for the coding portion of the GUI.
After Ningyu gave his presentation we all headed down to the Jacksonville conference room on the 5th floor. It’s a pretty nice ‘multimedia’ room with integrated speakerphone and huge plasma-screen display. In this meeting we were joined by some more of the human factors and web people.
I worked late again today, not leaving until about 6:30pm. On my way home Jenn called and asked if I wanted to do anything with her tonight. We decided to meet at my place.
Jenn showed up around 7:30pm. She looked really good. She was wearing an army-green long-sleeved button-up shirt (un-buttoned) and a tan tank-top type shirt underneath as well as a white skirt. In addition to this she had her hair in pigtails which looked really hot.
When we were trying to figure out where to go for dinner, she suggested a place we went on our second date. We couldn’t remember the place so she suggested I look it up on my weblog since I did document the name. She poked fun at me saying that I write ‘It was delicious.’ a lot. I disagreed so she did a search and unfortunately there were quite a few matches of me writing that phrase. The restaurant was Padriac’s but we decided to go to the Orient Express instead.
Jul 13th 2003
My iPAQ PDA woke me up around 8am and I snoozed until 8:30. I woke up, got a shower, dressed, packed, and checked out of the hotel. Considering I was there in the hotel room for less than seven hours, it didn’t feel very satisfying that it cost me $90.
I drove over to Grandma’s house and Barbie was already there. We ate breakfast (which grandma cooked). She served fried eggs, bacon, and buttered toast. It was delicious!
After breakfast we sat and talked for a while. It was nice seeing Barbie again. Around 10:15am Barbie and I went to the care facility where Grandpa is staying. We visited with him for about thirty minutes. He’s been bedridden for the past eight years ever since his stroke. He’ll have his 87th birthday this next Sunday. He seemed to be doing pretty good given his condition. It was nice to see him again.
Barbie went home and I stopped by Grandma’s house again to talk with her for a little while. Finally around 11am I left to drive to Austin.
On my way to Austin I was traveling in the left lane going about 80Mph (the speed limit was 70). I was talking on the phone with Jenn and noticed that I just passed by a state trooper pulled over on the side of the road. In my rear-view mirror I saw him pull out onto the highway. I got off the phone with Jenn and changed lanes into the right lane (and slowed down), hoping that he might not notice me. I was pretty certain he was coming after me since I was the only one in the left-lane when I passed him.
About a minute later I saw him coming up fast on the left. I just knew he was going to pull behind me and flash his lights. Fortunately that didn’t happen and he pulled behind a truck (the same color as my rental car) two cars in front of me. He pulled over the truck. What a relief I didn’t get pulled over!
I drove to Dad’s house and we sat outside in the backyard talking for about an hour and half. Around 2:30 we went out to a Mexican restaurant for a late lunch/early dinner. It was nice seeing Dad again and he seems to be doing pretty well. Tex (the big black Labrador) was rambunctious as usual and Hicks (He’s about 14 years old now, we got him when he was a kitten) was just as wonderful as I remember.
I left Dad’s house around 4pm and drove to the airport. I dropped the car off with no problem and got assigned seat 14E in coach class. The flight back took longer than normal because we had to fly around a large storm. Once in Atlanta it took me like 25 minutes to get to my car because the shuttle busses were slow.
I didn’t get home until about 9:30pm. I uploaded photos from this weekend. I wasn’t too impressed with some of the shots I took around UT. I stacked the polarizer on top of the UV filter instead of switching them out and I think this distorted some of the image quality. I uploaded a few photos into a special photo album for UT.
Jul 12th 2003
The flight to Austin this morning wasn’t until 11:30 so I was able to take my time this morning getting ready. I left at 10am for the airport and arrived at my office at 10:30. I took the shuttle bus from the Marriott and checked in at a kiosk.
Once I got to the gate, I was already assigned a seat upfront (4D - next to a window). I boarded and began reading some of the BusinessWorks documentation I printed out yesterday.
After everyone was on board the Captain announced that a pinhole leak was discovered in the landing-gear hydraulic tube. The estimated time for repair was one hour. About fifteen minutes later they announced that we are going to be changing planes. Everyone deplaned and we went to a different gate, D36, where a replacement plane would be waiting for us. We all boarded and flew to Austin, arriving about an hour late.
Once in Austin I went into a stall in the restroom and changed into shorts, a t-shirt, and sandals. I picked up my rental car from Alamo and called John. He didn’t answer so I left a voice mail stating that I would be going around the UT campus today and asked that he call me back when he gets to San Antonio. I also called Dad, but he was busy with housework today so we agreed to meet tomorrow.
I drove to the downtown area and stopped at the Iron Cactus BBQ place. I had a BBQ beef sandwich, beans, and ice tea. I sat in the back on the covered outside patio. It was a pretty pleasant lunch despite being alone.
After lunch I went to the University of Texas campus and parked next to my old dormitory, Simkins. I then spent the next two hours walking around campus enjoying the beautiful weather. It was partly cloudy and hot. It wasn’t humid so the heat was quite pleasant.
I went along many of the same routes I took before as a student. Every time I come back here it’s a bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. Part of me enjoys the memories of the time I was here and another part of me has a pang of regret over not completing all four (or five) years at UT. When I think this way I get depressed thinking about potential missed opportunities and regrets.
What was supposed to be a nice time on campus turned out to be a fairly depressing episode for me. Around 4pm I headed back to my car and drove down to San Antonio.
The two-hour drive to San Antonio gave me time to think about a lot of things. I thought about the last time I was in Austin with Michele and how different it feels going by myself. Even though I’m here to visit family I think I’m not comfortable traveling by myself. It just doesn’t seem very satisfying. I like being able to go someplace with someone.
I arrived in San Antonio around 6pm and went straight to my grandmother’s house. It was very nice seeing her again and we talked for about an hour. My cousin Chris came by and we talked too. I remember when Chris was born. It’s really weird seeing him now at 20-years old.
John called me on my cell phone and we agrees to meet at a bar near NorthStar mall around 9pm. I went to the hotel to check in. I called Jenn and we talked for a while. I changed back into my ‘airplane’ clothes and headed out (following John’s directions) to the bar.
The place I met John and his girlfriend (Michelle) is called ‘Martinis‘. There is no sign for it, so you have to know where it is. The crowd was mostly older than us, but the music was good. John’s girlfriend seemed pretty nice but she didn’t talk too much. Although I didn’t talk too much either. John looks a lot different than I remember. He looks to be in better shape and has bleached blonde hair. He definitely looks like he is from California now.
An hour later John’s friend, Roland, showed up with three girls. Roland lived on the same street as John and we all used to hang out together when we were much younger. The three girls knew Roland and went to high school with him.
We left around 11pm for a lounge underneath a hotel called Havana in downtown. Traffic in downtown San Antonio at night is pretty congested. The lounge was pretty cool but there was no music. We talked some more and then sat down in a large booth.
Michelle wanted to go someplace else but I was feeling pretty tired (since it was around 1:30am and my body is an hour ahead). I agreed to be at my grandmother’s house at 9am tomorrow morning so I probably shouldn’t stay up too late. My car was back near NorthStar mall at Martinis and the three girls Roland came with wanted to leave too, so they gave me a lift to my car.
Jul 11th 2003
I got a pretty early start today. I went to work around 7am and spent the morning wrapping up the coding and testing for the partial reissues change request. I checked in something like ten files into ClearCase related to this change.
I then made several phone calls to people in other groups so I could inquire about the details of some of the metrics and instrumentation log files used for our project. I’ve been trying to get a handle on what exactly we have available and how often it is updated.
Curtis and I met with Ningyu at his desk on the 10th floor. He spent about an hour and half with us demonstrating what the Tibco BusinessWorks product can do. It’s pretty slick and I think I should be able to pick it up fairly quickly. He directed us to the ClearCase vob location where we can find the installer to install the designer on our own workstations.
Because the meeting with Ningyu lasted so long I missed lunch. In drove down the street to McDonalds and got two big macs to take back to my desk. I ate at my desk and went through some of the BusinessWorks documentation.
Today Jegan is running a performance test. I popped my head into the test lab a few times throughout the day to see how things were going. He seemed a little stressed but the test appears to have been successful with no problems. Chris and Dave were on a conference call with Jegan and we discussed postponing our scheduled 2pm meeting since they were actively monitoring the test.
At 3pm I went downstairs to the 10East conference room to attend my first ever ‘PAT’ (Portfolio Architecture Board) meeting. Not many people showed up and I had to leave at 3:30.
Jeff C. set up daily meetings to discuss the special project for Brent. Today we met in 11West at 3:30. The meeting was scheduled for an hour but we didn’t leave until around 6pm. During the meeting (Brent was not present) we wrestled with the idea of presenting a real-time solution. Several of our metrics and statistics are only updated every thirty minutes. We then looked into the idea of having a ’simulated real-time’ presentation in which we display the statistics for a 24-hour period in the span of five or ten minutes. Alonzo (my director) said that he would check with Brent on this question and several other questions we came up with.
Jul 11th 2003
Today’s theme is ‘Symmetry‘
(click on the photo for a larger version)
Jul 10th 2003
For most of the day it was a pretty calm and normal Thursday. After lunch at 1pm we all headed across the street to the ‘training center’ building where they train flight attendants. Inside this building are mockups of the insides of planes and a giant pool where they practice water landings. Also inside this building is a large auditorium.
This is where we had our ‘Revenue Pipeline’ all-hands meeting. It lasted about two hours and the first part was (to me) fairly uninteresting. The last part of the meeting was a trivia session conducted by Brent, our VP. We all broke into teams of six people and all answered ten questions. There were about nine different groups. The group I was in ties for first place and we had a runoff question but lost.
At 4:30 it came time to go to the mysterious meeting I found out about yesterday afternoon. I headed over to 11East along with the other people. James was absent and Brent had him paged. It turns out that we have exactly fourteen days to come up with a GUI displaying real-time stats about our project, Revenue Pipeline. Because it is a backend accounting system there isn’t a lot to ‘display’ about it. This team of six people is supposed to come up with something that looks slick so the executives can demo it to an outside organization Thursday after next.
That’s not a lot of time and the ‘requirements’ are fairly nebulous. Brent assigned us different type of tasks to work on. Curtis and I are working on the GUI aspect of the project. James and Elizabeth are working on the Data portion. Ningyu (an advisory developer for the scheduling project) is going to assist us with a product called BusinessWorks. We’re going to meet with him tomorrow morning. Jeff C. is going to be doing the project plan.
I was a little concerned about the group selected and spoke with Brent about it in private after the meeting. He put my concerns to rest. I’m going to have to step up and work really hard to do well on this project. It’s going to be pretty busy for me the next two weeks.
I called John and coordinated with him about this weekend. He’s going to be in Austin having lunch with his dad. I’m going to try to join them if I can.
Jul 9th 2003
It was a pretty busy and somewhat stress-filled day today.
We had a performance test scheduled to start at 9am and last all day long. For the most part Jegan coordinates the test itself and I work with him on analyzing the results.
I attended our weekly 9am staff meeting. We’re now meeting in the larger 10East conference room which has a spectacular view of the airport. I was sitting facing the windows so I was able to see planes take off and land while Carole conducted the meeting. The meeting only lasted an hour but it seemed to last a long time.
Jenn IMed me asking if I wanted to go ‘out’ with her tonight. That sounded like a good idea and I promised her that I would try to come up with something fun.
Around 10:40am Casey and I had to walk across the street to the admin building for a meeting with the business to do a final walkthrough of the requirements affected by the change request for partial reissues.
About seven of us went to lunch today late (noon). We originally went to ‘623‘ but there was a long line and no empty tables so we went next-door to Chupe’s instead. During lunch I had a nice conversation with Keith about MBA programs.
The next hour was spent prepping for our big 2pm meeting with mid-tier engineering to discuss hardware purchasing. I gave Carole a couple of heads-up on how I thought it may go.
The 2pm meeting was postponed until 2:30 because our director, Alonzo, was running late. It finally started at 2:30 even though Alonzo wasn’t available yet. As I expected the engineering group (led by their director) were skeptical about the need to purchase additional hardware. They stated that they didn’t think ‘throwing hardware’ at the problem would solve it. We tried to explain the results we’ve seen from our numerous tests but they maintained that they didn’t see things that way.
Fortunately Alonzo showed up and pledged that we would work closely with the engineers to get on the same page. I was pretty stressed out after that meeting.
After that meeting Carole pulled me into another meeting with Casey and Jay to discuss the partial reissue change request and testing schedule. We’re going to try to accelerate things. Because I’ve been working on the coding portion I’m ahead with the changes and should be able to have everything wrapped up by next Wednesday.
The performance test never even started today. There was a major problem with the DB2 database preventing us from getting any of our source data. Jegan and I worked on this and other performance-related tasks the rest of the afternoon.
At 4:30 or so I got a strange meeting request from Brent, my vice-president. Only a few people were invited: My director, James, and about four other people. Carole wasn’t invited and the invite-list didn’t make any sense. None of those people work on anything related to each other. The request simply said that more details would follow tomorrow.
I paged Carole asking her if she knew anything about this. She came by a while later and said she had no idea. I was a little worried (and thus a bit stressed) at what this could be.
I worked late today and didn’t leave until around 6:30pm. I went straight to Lenox mall to meet Jenn. On my way there I called Craig to see about this weekend since I’ll be in San Antonio. Unfortunately he wasn’t home. I also called my grandmother to let her know that I’ll be in town this weekend.
When I got to Lenox and met Jenn inside her store she asked me to bring my camera to take a picture of a funny sight of the Victoria’s Secret under construction:
I explained to Jenn that I didn’t have any free time today to find something to do (like a comedy club or a bar with a live band) so we decided to go have some drinks and play pool.
When we arrived at the pool place it was around 8:30 and we decided to ditch pool tonight and just get some dinner instead. We went to Olive Garden.
Jul 8th 2003
For most of the morning today I worked on the Exchange Valuation change request. There is something really soothing about coding (at least coding something you understand) and listening to music. It is quite therapeutic and rewarding.
Shortly before lunch, Jegan came by and asked me to work with him on putting the last touches on our performance modeling document. I had him send me all of the excel spreadsheets that I worked on yesterday and I embedded them inside the word document. I also pasted ‘links’ to the key charts for display as well.
Around 11:15 a few people started to gather around in the hallway in front of my cube. Brian and Casey were milling around asking about lunch today. I got up from my desk and joined them. They called Susan (who sits down on the 9th floor) and asked her to meet us downstairs in the lobby. James indicated that he needed to get cash and headed to the 4th floor to use the ATM machine. We walked by Alex’s desk and collected him. When we arrived at the elevator bank, James was still waiting for the elevator. I noticed that Brian disappeared. He went to the restroom. We had a couple of stops on our way down the elevator to the first floor.
When we reached the first floor, Susan showed up and then Brian and then James. As always we stood around asking each other, “What should we do for lunch today?”. Someone mentioned Schlotzsky’s but Casey didn’t seem happy about that idea. Casey then said, ‘Burger King or Wendy’s?’. I concurred with Burger King. We began walking out to the parking lot.
When we reached the parking lot I announced that I would drive some people. Casey volunteered to drive too. We drove over to Cleveland avenue to the Burger King next to the “Scary Kroger“. We arrived shortly before Casey. When we entered the restaurant, we studied the menu on the wall. I ordered an ‘All American Burger’ value menu. I only had a $20 bill in my wallet and the cashier didn’t have enough change. I had to wait a few moment while she got change. After getting my change I collected my empty cup and picked up my order which was waiting for me. I walked over to the fountain drinks and served myself some lemonade. I sat down at a round table with six chairs.
The others joined me and we ate our lunches and talked. I finished mine first and got a refill of lemonade. When everyone finished lunch I threw away my trash and got more lemonade. Casey had to run an errand at Home Depot so Brian rode back with us. On the ride back I had a Pete Yorn CD in my player and James recognized the song.
After lunch Jegan and I had a meeting with middleware regarding performance testing. It was pretty productive and the seemed concerned at the numbers we arrived at. Van suggested that we may be taking a performance hit due to Tuxedo’s compression kicking in when message sizes go over 10k. We agreed to keep them in the loop for future meetings.
When the meeting concluded I worked with Anil to incorporate Exchange Valuation into the derived data ’super controller’. We had some difficulties with the way Exchange was architected so I went over to Jegan’s cube to get his opinion.
On my way to Jegan’s cube I was ambushed by Chris from mid-tier and Dave from middleware. They asked me if I had time to talk. I said, ‘actually no I don’t’. Unfortunately this didn’t matter and they proceeded to have an impromptu meeting with me regarding our performance testing methodology. About ten minutes into the discussion Anil came by (looking for me) and got sucked in too. I got ‘emotional’ in some of my responses to their questions about the validity of measuring cpu seconds per process. It wasn’t that I didn’t think they had valid points, I was annoyed that I was the victim of a meeting ambush. After the ‘meeting’ concluded Anil commented that I might have been too passionate in my responses to them.
After this I sat down with Jegan and Anil to discuss how we can fit the Exchange engine into the model for the base controller. We looked at various options and I finally came up with an idea that they all seemed to like. I told Anil that I would implement the necessary changes on the performance branch so we can test it out.
Around 5:15 I changed into my softball clothes and drove out to the east point softball field. When I arrived, we practiced hitting and catching for about an hour until the game finally began at 6:30pm.
It was a close game. At one point we were up 8-3, but then the score got tied to 10-10. In the last inning the other team scored two runs, bringing the score to 10-12. When we were up to bat, we somehow managed to score 3 runs just before time ran out and barely won 13-12. It was a fun game (it’s always fun when you win). Brian wrote a short commentary about the last inning:
Great come back last night! Down 2 with 2 outs and nobody on…Chambers singles, but loafs to first base. Bob singles and Chambers still loafs to second. James singles, and now the bases are loaded with Hollywood Huggahalli up. Hollywood singles down the left field line and two runs score and then James somehow beats out a pickle to score and we win 13 -12 to keep our playoff hopes alive.
On my way home I stopped at Publix and got groceries.
Jul 5th 2003
Jenn and I originally planned to jet away to some large city for a nice day trip. This didn’t pan out. Lack of flight availability and crappy weathers for the entire eastern-half of the United States made such a trip unfeasible.
Instead we decided to drive out to Athens, GA for the day. We didn’t leave until around noon. The 1.5 hour drive was quite nice. The sky was full of large puffy clouds and yet enough open blue patches of sky that it didn’t look overcast.
When we reached Athens, we drove by some massive fraternity and sorority houses. We parked in a parking garage on campus and began walking around. Jenn used to give campus tours so she knew exactly where to go and was full of information on many of the buildings.
It was pretty deserted on campus since it is between semesters right now. Walking around the old buildings and inviting lawns reminded me a lot of UT.
Even though it was sunny, I shot in ISO 400 because I had the polarizer on and I wanted faster shutter speeds so I would have some wiggle-room with the aperture instead of shooting wide-open. The true optical TTL viewfinder made using the polarizer such a joy. I could actually SEE the effect quite clearly. When framing a shot of a brilliant-red Japanese maple tree with the polarizer, I could easily see the difference. The non-polarized effect revealed the leaves being washed out by the sun, and the polarized effect showed only the bright-red leaves.
As Jenn and I walked towards downtown, we passed by the back-side of a chapel with the bell and rope to ring the bell unattended. She told me that the students ring the bell whenever they win a game. For fun we decided to ring the bell too. We pulled the rope and rang the bell twice. As we walked around the front part of the chapel, we saw two guys wearing suits exit the chapel and they started to look around. When we came back to the chapel area a couple of hours later we saw a wedding party exit the chapel! It turns out that we rang the bell during the ceremony. Fortunately no one caught us.
We walked around downtown and stopped in a couple of novelty stores. Then we had a late ‘lunch’ at a really great restaurant called ‘Five Star Day‘ with inexpensive food. I had a nice pulled pork BBQ sandwich with a tasty creamy potato soup. While we ate, dark clouds rolled in and it started to rain quite hard. I removed the polarizer from my camera and we took our time until the rain cleared up.
We left the UGA campus and drove a short distance to the Georgia botanical gardens. We spent an hour or two there looking at all of the nice gardens and beautiful flowers. The slightly overcast sky made for good lighting conditions to take macro photographs.
Around 7pm we left the Athens area and drove back to my place. Jenn accidentally left the lights on in her car so I pushed it out of the parking-space and get her a jump.
For dinner we went to Papacitas.
I created an ‘Athens‘ photo album with two sub-albums: UGA and Botanical Gardens.
I was a bit disappointed with several of the photos I took today. I should have been checking the histogram after taking, but neglected to do that. As a result, many of my photos were much too over-exposed and I had blown-out highlights.
Jul 4th 2003
It’s the fourth of July today! Today we celebrate Independence Day.
I spent most of the day researching places to go for a day-trip tomorrow. Specifically, I looked at Chicago, New York, Boston, and Asheville, N.C. (where the Biltmore is).
The weather for Chicago looks quite pleasant. It’s going to be partly cloudy and in the 80’s. Unfortunately Delta reduced the returning flights tomorrow and so the last flight back is around 3 or 4pm. This doesn’t give much time to spend in the city. The train ride from the airport to downtown is like 45-minutes each way.
The flights to/from New York looked fine but the weather forecast calls for a hot-and-humid (in the 90s) mostly-cloudy day with a 50% chance of rain.
The flights to/from Boston look decent but the weather forecast calls for a hot-and-humid (in the 90s) cloudy day with a 40% chance of rain.
Asheville, NC is the home of the Biltmore estate. The forecast for the Asheville area is pretty nice. To drive there from Atlanta would take about 3.5 hours. Delta has a few flights to/from Asheville as well and that would also be a solution.
I ruled Chicago out due to the late return flight. New York and Boston didn’t seem to pleasant due to the hot, humid weather and chance of rain. I don’t think that’s conducive to walking around all day.
Jenn didn’t seem too keen on the Biltmore idea either. I also briefly looked at a solution to travel to the Outer Banks or the Savannah area but they weren’t possible for Saturday either.
Around 5pm I called Mom but she wasn’t there. I called Mom’s Mom, but she wasn’t there either. I also called Dad and spoke with him for a while. I told him of my plans to be in San Antonio next weekend and we made tentative plans to meet up.
I took a shower, packed my backpack with my camera and tripod, and drove out to the North Springs Marta station. I’m sure there is something closer but that’s one I know how to get to. I parked, bought two tokens, and boarded the southbound train.
While waiting for the train to leave, and during the trip down to Buckhead, I read my book. When I arrived, I called Jenn and began walking over to Lenox Mall.
On my way towards Lenox, I spotted a girl with a Canon EOS-1D (with the huge battery pack). I walked up to her and struck up a conversation about her camera. It turns out that she’s a photographer for the Atlanta newspaper. I was sort of surprised that they don’t use the EOS-1Ds. She said that all of the photographers at the AJC like the Canon’s and even a guy who used to be hard-code Nikon switched over. She had a 16-35mm lens and I asked her how she likes it. She said the extra wide angle really helps due to the crop factor. It was pretty cool talking with a real photographer.
It was about 7pm by this time and there were a lot of people already camped out in the parking lot. Most of the people brought chairs with them. We should have done that too.
I met up with Jenn after she got off work and we staked out a spot in the parking lot. She brought a large beach towel that we placed on the hot asphalt parking lot and sat down. Jenn went off to get some cash out of an ATM and some drinks. She called me a while later and asked if I wanted a hot dog and fries too.
When she came back we sat back and ate our food. It was pretty nice outside and some dark clouds formed on the horizon. Fortunately it did not rain but the dark clouds did bring a cool breeze.
Sitting next to us was a lady by herself. She engaged us in conversation and told us all about her work. She’s a psychologist and told us about some of her multiple-personality disorder patients.
Around 8:30 three Blackhawk helicopters flew overhead in formation and following them was a Delta 767 jet. Originally there were supposed to be two F-16 fighter jets escorting the Delta jet but they weren’t present. I presume the sight of a commercial airliner being escorted by two fighter jets would cause alarm to people not knowing that it was just for the festivities.
Finally around 10pm the lights in the parking lot went out and the fireworks started. I set my camera up on my tripod (legs collapsed, so it was very close to the ground where I was). I had already locked in the focus manually to some distant clouds as a reference point for infinity focus. I put it on manual mode with an aperture of f11 and a shutter speed of 4 seconds. I turned the beep off and set mirror lockup on.
The fireworks display was really spectacular and lasted about thirty minutes. During the show, I clicked off about 60-80 shots, not paying attention to the camera much as I wanted to enjoy the show. I was sure that I may get a few decent photos.
After the display, I walked Jenn back to her car and then turned around and walked back to the Buckhead Marta station. The train ride back to my car was uneventful.
When I got home, I noticed that the power had gone out. Unfortunately my internet connectivity was out too. I called the tech support line for my ISP but got an answering service which told me that they would get back to me on _Monday_. This is unacceptable to me.
I went through the photos and uploaded to them to an album on my photo gallery.
Jul 4th 2003
Today’s theme is ‘Solitude‘
For a change, I’m selecting an image without looking at any of the other entries. Larry took this photo of me watching the sunset (with wineglass in hand), shortly after dinner outside our house on Hanalei bay, Kauai, Hawaii. This photo was taken on May 5, 2003.
(click on the photo for a larger version)
Jul 3rd 2003
It was a short day at work today. Because I worked so late yesterday I didn’t come in until 9am. As soon as I sat down, Casey told me that Carole was looking for me. Indeed I had an email from Carole (sent at 7:45am) requesting that Ram or I activate the build. Ram usually doesn’t get in until around 9:30.
I immediately began the build activation process but got stopped with an error from our currency conversion service. I went into the test lab and asked Lee to allow me to diagnose the problem. Logged in as the tuxedo domain user I was able to determine that an EBS service was not running, causing the problem with currency conversion. Last night the test server had a panic and rebooted. This is probably why not everything was running. I corrected the problem and got the system ready.
Unfortunately for the testing team, Chris Alain, the unix administrator for this server sent out an email warning us that the server was going down for emergency maintenance in about 15 minutes. I forwarded the message to Carole and Lee from the testing team.
For lunch today a large group of us went to Smokey Bones to celebrate Alex and Veena’s birthdays. Today I had a full rack of baby-back ribs. It was very good and I felt quite stuffed afterwards. Unfortunately my lunch cost me over $20.
The weather today has been gorgeous. On the drive to/from lunch I sat in the back of Susan’s large Yukon. On the drive I gazed out of the window looking at the beautiful blue sky and puffy white clouds.
After lunch Larry called me and said that going to San Diego this weekend didn’t look like a good idea after all. Amy had some specific plans. I told him that this was fine but he said he would talk to her and call me back if their plans changed.
On my way home from work I called Craig. I STILL haven’t purchased anything for his birthday which was in May. I called to see if he bought the NeverWinter Nights expansion or the audio CD for Harry Potter book 5. Unfortunately he already has both. He’s still looking for the name of a day-spa so I can get him a gift-certificate for a massage/manicure/pedicure type treatment.
When I got home I put on my swimsuit and went out by the pool. It was nice and sunny still this afternoon and I read my book and baked in the sun. Larry called and told me that he spoke with Amy and if I want, they would love to have me out in San Diego this weekend. I confirmed that I would be out there.
This evening Jenn called and invited me to spend the evening with her where she’s house-sitting. I gathered up some stuff and headed out towards the Lenox area. On my way to the I-285 entrance I passed over the Chattahoochee River and saw the river shrouded in a misty fog. Fortunately I had my camera with me (I try to take it with me everywhere in my backpack). I pulled over to the side of the road, grabbed my tripod out of the back of the explorer and walked to the bride over the river. I mounted the camera and took several exposures at varying apertures. I took a few wide-open and one stopped-down to f8 and another stopped down to f11.
I liked this one the best:
(15s, f11)
Jul 2nd 2003
Because it’s Wednesday I had several meetings today. The first was an employee-staff meeting with Carole at 9am. She mentioned that we will have verbal mid-year reviews next week. I’m definitely looking forward to that.
Immediately following the 9am meeting was a 10am team lead meeting to discuss what code we want to build today. The meeting got off-track and we ended up talking, at great lengths, about the current architecture of the system and what ideas we have for improvement.
For lunch today Anil, Brian, James, Casey, Alex, Bob, and I went to Chick-Fil-A. I had my usual order of a chick-fil-a sandwich and the six-piece chicken nuggets. During Lunch Casey, Anil, and I sat at one table and spent almost the entire time discussing possible performance enhancements.
James showed me an evite he received about a 4th of July celebration for Saturday with some people at a cabin in the north Georgia mountains area. I don’t know any of the people (except for James) on the invite list. James only knows one person on the list too. I feel a little weary about it and asked James if he could find out more info.
I spoke with Larry briefly and he asked me what my plans were for this extended weekend. He invited me to go out to San Diego for the weekend if I want.
At 2pm Casey and I went across the street to the admin building for a meeting to go over the updated requirements for the partial reissue change request. Sarah (from Accenture) ran the meeting and did a great job. I’ve yet to have a negative experience working with any of the contractors from Accenture.
As the afternoon progressed the low-lying cloud cover started to bunch up and eventually patches of blue sky and sunshine started to peak through:
The rest of the day was spent doing performance testing in the test lab with Jegan. I ended up working late and didn’t get home until 8pm. Before I left, I took some photos of the airport from the 11th floor of my building and stitched them together:
I’ve heard from more than one person that I seem to lack passion and I give the impression that I have no personality. The first time I heard this I didn’t pay it much attention but the second time I heard this from a different person I felt need to look closely at this issue.
What does it mean to ‘have personality’? What does it mean to ‘be passionate’? I know some people with certain mental medical conditions will sometime exhibit this type of behavior but I don’t think I fall into that category. Nonetheless, I must be open to that possibility. I don’t know how to respond to questions like “Why aren’t you passionate about anything?” or “Why do you seem to have a flat personality?” I don’t think I’m trying to hide anything, I just don’t know what to say. I am who I am. Apparently though I may not be normal based on what I’ve heard.
Jul 1st 2003
The past few days it’s been very crappy weather. This morning was no different. In fact it was raining so hard this morning that I hit a traffic jam on the south-bound lanes on the west-wall of I-285, something that never happens. A couple of times during my drive into work I hit a deep patch of water on the highway and started to hydroplane. That’s definitely something I don’t enjoy doing - especially when traveling at 75mph.
At 9:30am Jegan and I attended the “1.2″ managers meeting in 11East. Once again it was a learning experience. I was worried that the topic of our performance testing would come up. Fortunately when it was brought up, Alonzo glossed over it and didn’t press us for any numbers. Our performance test yesterday was inconclusive so we didn’t want to publish the performance numbers. In addition to that, the initial numbers we saw were so horrible that we didn’t want to publish them to a large audience until we can discuss them among ourselves.
After the meeting Jegan, Rajiv, and I had a frank discussion about the performance testing results we’ve seen so far. We shared with Rajiv some of the results and he agreed that the numbers appear to be pretty grim. We asked him what he thought about our proposal to combine all of the engines into one large controller. He also seemed receptive to that idea. He suggested that we call a meeting with him and Gus to go over the specific results.
For lunch today a large group of us went to Buckhead to a small place called the Taco Stand. We’ve been there once before and the tacos are really good. The two girls working the front counter were very cute too. The whole day it has been raining. When we were about to leave the restaurant, we ran from the front door to the car. When I started my sprint, I slipped (I was wearing dress shoes so there was no traction) in the water and went sprawling on my back. I managed to recover quite quickly and didn’t even spill any of my lemonade I was carrying. My back and pockets got quite wet though. My iPAQ was in one of my front pockets and I examined it for damage. Unfortunately it did not escape harm. The top portion of the PDA had a crack in it. It still works fine and the damage is purely cosmetic but I regret that it got damaged. I also have a quarter-sized scrape on my elbow.
After lunch a few of us attended a meeting called by Scott to discuss the 1.3 Official Proration engine. The requirements are pretty simple and it seemed straight-forward to me. During the meeting Casey suggested that we create a boolean indicator on the coupon proration entity to indicate if this prorate is official or not. The requirements call for us to duplicate the entire entity and just call it a new type. This made a lot of sense and we decided to go down this route. What bothers me is that I didn’t even consider that possibility. I take pride in being able to come up with ideas like that but I completely missed it here.
The drive home today was in heavy rain. I hit traffic resistance going along I-285 northbound on the west wall due to rubbernecking in two locations. When I was near I-20, Jenn called me and asked if I wanted to join her for dinner at Lenox. She gets off work at 6pm. I agreed and continued along 285 towards route 400. Fortunately I was going against the heavy flow of traffic so it wasn’t that bad.
Jenn and I had dinner in the mall at California Pizza Kitchen.
I brought my spare HD home with me to dump everything on it and plan on taking it back to work. This is part of my backup strategy. I do quarterly backups of everything to a spare HD and store it in my desk at the office. This satisfies my need for an ‘offsite backup solution’.
Because it’s a new month, I looked through my web server usage statistics. I made note of the top five google search hits for my site for the month of June:
[code]96 - Chicago Skyline Photos
49 - Sojourn
36 - the server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool
23 - Chattahoochee River
20 - Amicalola River[/code]
Jun 29th 2003
I didn’t wake up until about 8am. Because the house is on a hill a nice breeze blows through the area and we had the windows opened last night. The gentle breeze blowing through the house made sleeping very enjoyable. The large king-sized bed was much more comfortable then my lumpy old bed at home.
Around 9am Mom & Jim showed up and shortly after that we had breakfast. Mom-Mom’s house is very charming. The whole place reeks of being cozy and it definitely shows. Before we sat down for breakfast I snapped a photo of the inviting dining-room & table. Most of the indoor photos I took this weekend were shot at ISO 1600. I much prefer the natural light than the harsh flash. I was pleasantly surprised with the relatively low noise at 1600.
After breakfast I packed up my backpack and prepared to leave. We all did the obligatory posing for photos and then left for the Harrisburg airport.
(Mom & Mom-Mom)
(Me and Mom-Mom)
Mom & I got selected to be searched again at the Harrisburg airport. The last time this happened my camera bag set off their bomb-making material scanning device and there was quite a delay. Fortunately that didn’t happen this time.
I sat in the very last row right next to the bathroom of the 50-seat ComAir CRJ on the way back to Atlanta. I sat next to an 88-year old man who had quite a personality. He mentioned to me four times during the flight that the TSA people took away his 2-inch pocket knife and he was quite upset about it.
There were a few families traveling on this small plane and seeing one particular family around my age with a daughter around Makayla’s age made my thoughts drift to Michele. I wondered what would be different or how I would be different if her and I never broke up.
I finally finished my book: book 6 of Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series.
When I got home (Mom & Jim dropped me off) I saw a large box in the living room. It wasn’t there when I left. I called her up and she brought over a patio chair she won at work. She’s loaning it to me until she gets her own place with a patio.
Jun 28th 2003
I woke up this morning at 6am. I checked the 9:45am flight to Harrisburg (MDT) and saw to my dismay that it was now severely oversold. When I looked at it last night it looked fine. I knew that we would probably not make the flight due to the lack of seats. I called Mom and let her know about the situation. We then decided to fly into Baltimore (BWI) instead on the 9:45am flight.
Mom & Jim came by and picked me up at 8am and we went to the airport. The BWI flight was pretty wide-open, especially in first class. Indeed Mom & I got seats 1C and 1D. Jim, who was flying ‘jump seat’ was assigned a seat in the back. When the plane finished boarding there was still an empty seat in first class. The flight attendant brought Jim up to the front and I took the other empty seat so he could sit next to Mom.
When we arrived in Baltimore, we picked up the rental car - a Ford Mustang. We weren’t impressed with the internal space of the car. We drove about 1.5 hours to Mom-Mom’s house (my Mom’s Mom).
Unlike Atlanta which was rainy and nasty, the Harrisburg area was sunny and clear and the sky was actually blue! This made the drive (and the rest of the day) quite pleasant.
Shortly after arriving we had lunch which consisted of ham & cheese sandwiches with lettuce and tomatoes on a ’sweet’ roll. It was delicious.
After lunch I helped Jim work on the outside ground lights. They stopped working a while ago and it turns out that the transformer died. We replaced the transformer and all the bulbs but then we noticed that two of the lights didn’t come on. Investigation revealed that the contacts plugging into the wire was broken. We replaced two of the lights and then everything worked.
By this time it was dinner time and we had a great spread. We started out with a shrimp cocktail resting on a bed of lettuce. After that the main meal consisted of carrots, celery, olives, pork roast, mashed potatoes with cheese, green-beans with a sour-cream bacon sauce, and very delicious dinner biscuits. For desert we had chocolate and vanilla ice cream. It was quite good.
The rest of the afternoon was spent in the living room talking. Sammy, Mom-Mom’s cat, was present and quite lovable. Around 8pm or so Mom & Jim left for the hotel. Mom-Mom and I watched a little television. We watched ‘Trading Spaces‘ on TLC. Around 9:30pm I went to bed.
Jun 27th 2003
I was invited to attend a Bris today for Brian’s new son, Will. Before seeing a particular episode of Seinfeld, I never knew what a Bris was. I attempted to follow the directions to the location (his brother’s house) up in Alpharetta. Everything was going great until I attempted to find a road called ‘Brumbelow’ off of Nebit Ferry road. I went up and down the length of Nebit Ferry three times and I could never find the road.
The Bris was supposed to start at noon and it was already 12:10pm. In addition to being lost and late, my neck and upper back was in a lot of pain. I must have slept funny last night or twisted my back/neck somehow but I had to be careful how I moved my head. I could have called for directions but I was pretty pissed off about being lost and late that I decided to give up on the Bris.
In the afternoon I picked up Jenn at her house and we went to the Island Ford Chattahoochee river area. When we started on the trail, we spotted a snake sitting in a pool of water.
The cool thing about this river area are the numerous and interesting rock outcroppings. Some of them extend out so far that it makes a small cave underneath.
We went to one spot with a large rock outcropping and heavy tree cover. The light from the sun in the overcast sky shone through the green leaves in a way that made everything bathe in emerald. It was quite peaceful.
Jun 27th 2003
Jun 26th 2003
Shortly after I got into work this morning Gina, an administrative assistant, came walking by and asked if I could go outside to the Feld Pavilion and help move picnic tables. Today around lunchtime we’re having our network systems portfolio ‘all-hands’ meeting.
I walked outside to the pavilion and saw a few other people bustling about. A couple of guys were working on the huge BBQ pit. A couple of other people were arranging items to be used for the lunch meeting. I didn’t see anyone else there to help move the large picnic tables. Finally another guy I recognized from my floor came walking up. Karen, Brent’s administrative assistant, directed us to move a couple of picnic tables. Me and this other guy moved them where she wanted. At first we thought that was all she needed but then another lady had us move a couple dozen other larger picnic tables. Several times we had to move the same table multiple times as she was unsatisfied where she originally wanted it. I wonder if all women are like that when it comes to moving things.
When I finished with my thirty minutes of manual labor, I went back to the 11th floor and joined Carole and Jegan for a meeting about performance testing. We met in Carole’s office. She informed us that Sam, the testing team manager, was being transferred to another project effective immediately. This was quite a shock to me. I can only guess that it was a sack because you don’t normally transfer the testing team manager in the middle of a system test. Carole will be assuming responsibility for the six-person testing team until a replacement is found.
Carole directed us to call a meeting this afternoon to discuss another performance test for Monday. She suggested who to invite and informed us that the 10East conference room is open for a thirty-minute window at 3pm. Jegan and I set up the meeting request and sent it out to a lot of people. I worked as fast as I could on finishing up our performance modeling document to present at this meeting.
At 11:30am several of us headed downstairs and out to the Feld pavilion. It’s Called the Feld pavilion because it’s named after a former CEO of Delta Technology, Charlie Feld. Charlie joined the company around 1999 and made a lot of (good) changes and then left around 2000. After him was Bob DeRodes who left in early 2002 for a CIO position at Home Depot. Our current CEO is Curtis Robb.
Lunch was served first. They has hamburgers (both beef and tofu) and hotdogs. I sat at a picnic table with Carole Godwin, Bob Melo, Jeff Chambers, Veena Barde, James Waters, and a couple of others. There were about 180-200 people present.
After we all finished eating, Brent Browning (the vice-president over the Network Systems Portfolio) began the meeting. He talked about the usual health of the company and topics like that. This was the first time I’ve seen Brent in a large setting like this and I think he did quite well. Carole pointed out his public speaking prowess in that he rarely said ‘uhh’ or ‘umm’ while speaking.
I saw a few people snapping photos and I regretted not bringing my camera down with me too.
The last part of the meeting was a ‘creative status report’ from a couple of projects. One was a ’singing’ status report in which the managers of the project all stood in front of the microphone and sung a song set to music. The other was sort of a mini-play in which the entire team from another project acted out the trials and tribulations to software development. Their play was set to sound clips from various Beatles songs.
When the meeting concluded I went back to the 11th floor and immediately into a meeting with Carole, Jegan, and Denise from mid-tier engineering. We had a brief discussion about purchasing additional hardware for production. Denise walked us through the realities of what is feasible and what isn’t.
After that meeting I only had enough time to make some copies of our performance modeling document and head down to 10East for our 3pm meeting. A lot of people showed up from different groups. I conducted the meeting, outlining what we’re testing and what we intend to do with the results. We had a few discussions about the other groups that interact with our application and everyone seems to be on board with a performance test for Monday.
At 3:30pm we were ushered out of the room by some other people who needed to prepare for Steve Cooper’s 30-year anniversary celebration at 4pm.
I briefed Carole about the 3pm meeting and then headed down to the 10East conference room again to join Steve’s celebration. I’ve never worked directly for Steve, but I’ve worked near him a long time when I was on another project and I consider him to be a really straight-laced stand-up guy. From what people said at the celebration, that viewpoint is shared by many people. I have a lot of respect for Steve and his work ethic.
Later this afternoon I was in Carole’s office talking about something for tomorrow and she told me that she received an email from corporate security about me. My heart sank as I thought about all of the different things I could have done wrong. She started digging around her inbox and found the email. It turns out they logged an attempt to open a locked door with my proxy card. It hit me. A few weeks ago when we were walking to the parking lot for lunch I walked along one wall moving my card over the readers next to several doors. I fully expected to see the red light flash indicating that I wasn’t authorized to enter and it did. I was just playing around and afterwards the group I was with joked that I would get a visit from corporate security. It turns out that it was no joke! Carole told me not to worry about it.
I didn’t leave work until 7:30pm. While driving home I remembered why I like spring and fall so much better than summer. Even though it was ’sunny’ today, the sky was ‘overcast’ and hazy. It’s hot and muggy and you can’t even see a blue sky. I snapped a photo of this unsightly hazy sky when I got home:
I read about a different kind of spam filter on Slashdot today. It is an outlook plug-in based on the SpamBayes project. It works on a different spam filtering mechanism called Bayesian which is a form of statistical analysis. You ‘train’ it by telling it when an email is spam. After a while I learns what is spam and what isn’t. The cool thing about this plug-in is that it’s integrated within Outlook such that if you drag a spam email to your ’spam’ folder, the plug-in will automatically recognize that type of email as spam. Furthermore, if you drag a false-positive incorrectly-identified piece of mail from the spam folder to your inbox, it will automatically learn that that type of email is not spam.
I turned off spamassassin and am actually looking forward to getting some spam so I can see the filter in action!
I downloaded and installed the Canon 10D 1.0.1 firmware upgrade. I also conducted the infamous ‘focus test‘. It was very hard for me to see an out of focus situation. However I think there could be a very slight front-focus going on. I’m not worried though. The different is so hard for me to see that I can’t be 100% sure.
Jun 25th 2003
I had my weekly 9am staff meeting today. During the meeting Jeff Chambers reminded us about the fire drill. He suggested that if any of us don’t want to walk down eleven flights of stairs that perhaps we should ‘accidentally’ find ourselves on the first floor around 10am. This sort of defeats the purpose of the fire drill.
Just like clockwork, at 10am the fire alarm went off and everyone walked down the stairs and out of the building. All 1,500 people were supposed to clear out of the thirteen-story building in less than three minutes. I don’t think we met that requirement.
We hung around outside for about 15 or 20 minutes before heading back inside.
As soon as I got back inside, I joined Bob, Medhi, Susan, Scott, and Steve for a 10:30am SPA (Special Prorate Agreements) meeting. I was feeling pretty assertive today so I stepped up to the whiteboard and wrote down the different points. While I stood next to the window (it was in 11East - a conference room with nice large windows) staring outside I pondered about the importance of being assertive and standing out. It seems like it’s the correct strategy to succeed. I’m going to work on that.
After the meeting I went to Curtis’s desk to see about our lunch plans. A couple of weeks ago I helped Curtis with an oracle client problem on his computer. He needed to access a revenue pipeline development database but he couldn’t see it. I helped him add the appropriate SID and host info to his tnsnames.ora file. He was very grateful and said that he owed me lunch. I didn’t think much about this and on Monday he sent me an email asking which day this week I wanted to go to lunch. I picked Wednesday.
For lunch we went to Schlotsky’s. I had a BBQ Chicken pizza with bacon. Curtis explained that he wanted to take me out to lunch to thank me for all the help I’ve extended to him over the years working together. I told him that it wasn’t necessary and that I was just doing my job, but he insisted that I went above and beyond.
During lunch Curtis and I talked about travels. He related some stories about his recent two-week trip to Venice and Switzerland. Apparently Italians don’t like black people (Curtis is African American) and would give Curtis a hard time. This was surprising to me as I (incorrectly) thought that sort of thing was only in the United States. The stories about traveling Europe really made me anxious to go.
After lunch I met with Jegan to flesh out our formalized performance modeling document. We discussed the urgency of doing a performance test and I paged Carole requesting that we look into the possibility of conducting a test later this week instead of waiting for Monday.
Around 3pm I left the A3 building and drove across the street to the Delta general office for a meeting with the business. I met with Sarah Henley (Accenture), Gaile, Susan, and Beverly. We talked about the recently-approved change request for Exchange Valuation to handle partial reissues. Sarah was pretty enthusiastic about everything, which is refreshing. It seems a lot of peopl